Anniken i Sudan

Leaving Sudan

2010-05-23T12:10:00.012+03:00

My stay in Sudan is now over. Tonight I will go back to Norway, with mixed feelings.

These past nine months have been both amazing and difficult, and I want to give the people I have met the credit they deserve without using too many cliches. It seems impossible, and I apologize for this in advance. I have met many incredible people, both volunteers and staff, in Port Sudan and other places is Sudan. I admire the work done in the local communities every day, and the strong men and women carrying it out. I am still surprised by their ability to focus on the positive things, to strive forwards and work for a better society even though their own lives might not be as easy or comfortable as our Norwegian lives. To work closely with these people has been a unique chance, and I am thankful to the people that have made these past months so memorable.

To sum things up, I have chosen some pictures for this last blog post from Sudan. When I came to Khartoum almost nine months ago, I remember there were quite a few things that stroke me as strange. Now they have become (almost) as familiar to me as my "Norwegian" habits..

That you do the dishes like this - in cold water without soap

That your local coffee place looks like this

That dinner is prepared like this

That you are a big fish in a small pond, and that you therefore get invited to events like the HIV and AIDS meeting with the health minister Tabitha Boutros(left) and the first lady Widad Babikr (right).

That you party like this

and that you meet friendly camels while your on the road :)

Buying a sheep

2010-05-23T11:43:00.010+03:00

On Saturday, Ingvild and I had arranged a trip to the beach for all the volunteers in Port Sudan, with great help from many of them. Groups were formed, tasks were delegated and things were being prepared. In the end, Mahmoud, the volunteer Younis and we were responsible for buying the lunch, which included two very alive sheep.

Mahmoud making the first approach

Younis and Mahmoud checking out the sheep

After a good half hour of bargaining, we finally get the sheep into the car

And they are taken good care of at the office

Before they end up like this the next day

Leadership training!

2010-05-09T17:01:00.004+03:00

This weekende, Ingvild and I finally got to have a long planned leadership training in Sinkat, a small town two hours from Port Sudan. 15 volunteers from Port Sudan and five from other towns in the state participated in the two day course. Here are some pictures:

Mahmoud in action: the volunteer structure of the Red Crescent is discussed once more

Gabbani presenting his group's ideas

...and has to defend them too

Cooperation games

Playing volleyball..

..and cards between the lectures..

.. and watching "Pretty Woman" in the evening

A breakthrough!

2010-04-21T11:03:00.003+03:00

We have had one goal here in Khartoum: to present our workshop here at the headquarters. Because of the election, the staff has not had too much time for non-election related activities. But yesterday, we finally got a chance to speak to Emad, the head of the Organization Development department, and Sami, the head of the Youth and Volunteer department, as well as several other staff members.

Sami

We spoke about our workshop and its manual, which exists in both English and Arabic. The workshop is partly an introduction the Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement, and partly meant to provide the volunteers with strategy and planning tools. Like I have mentioned before, the Sudanese Red Crescent has 400 000 volunteers trained in first aid, both active and in-active. We want to encourage the Society to utilize this capacity, and the volunteers to plan small scale activities themselves.

Our presentation was very well received, better than we imagined. It is very likely that the manual will be “exported” to the Red Crescent branches in southern Sudan, as well as to several branches in the North. If everything goes well, we might even be able to train trainers in other branches before we leave!

From one of the workshops in Port Sudan

Still on stand-by

2010-04-18T15:34:00.003+03:00

The first multiparty election in Sudan in 24 years is now over. It has been surprisingly calm, even though candidates have boycotted the election and there have been accusation of fraud. Because of logistical problems and the low turnout the elections were extended by two more days.

The vote counting started on Friday, and for every polling station that has finished its counting, they announce the result right away. On Tuesday the last results are expected, and the winner of the presidential election will be announced. According to the newspaper Sudan Vision, president Bashir is leading with "a comfortable 85%".
The way it looks now, there will not be any major problems related to the announcement of the results.

Even though Jimmy Carter and other observers have stated that the elections have not met international standards, I still think it is an accomplishment that the election days and the three first counting days have been with no major violence. 60% of the registered voters have casted their ballot, which is a surprisingly high number.

At the Red Crescent headquarter, the staff is still taking turns at sleeping at the office. They are still on stand-by until Friday afternoon. Even though Friday still is four days away, you can practically feel the relief of the staff and volunteers – many of them walking around with a blue left forefinger, the sign for having voted.

Election time!

2010-04-12T09:49:00.006+03:00

After months of preparing, the Sudanese Red Crescent as well as the rest of the country, is ready for the first multiparty elections in 24 years. The election is part of the comprehensive peace agreement from 2005 that put an end to a 22 year-long civil war.

The ruling party's campaign poster (Port Sudan)

I came back to Sudan about a week ago, and it had been decided that Ingvild and I will stay in Khartoum until the election result has been announced. We have therefore been able to follow the last days of the preparation of the Khartoum Red Crescent branch closely.

At the head quarter, Khartoum

Over the whole of Sudan, there are at least two volunteers deployed at each polling station, they are responsible for the first aid if it is needed. All together around 17 000 volunteers have been mobilized, over 2000 of them in the Sudanese capital alone.

“Hoping for the best, preparing for the worst”, the well-used phrase gives a very accurate description of what is going on at the head quarter. The volunteers have been trained in extreme situations such as “dead body management”, just in case. Sudan is now well in its second out of three election days and no major incidents have been reported, neither by the Crescent nor by the government. Inshallah, it will stay this way during the next few days and also during the election result announcements next week.

Handing our baby over..

2010-03-18T19:48:00.003+03:00

The last weeks have been busy at the Red Crescent office in Port Sudan. We have had visitors, and a dengue fever outbreak. In between all of this, Ingvild and I have been trying to arrange training of trainers-workshops in order to secure the sustainability of our workshop about capacity building.

The volunteer leaders have chosen 13 volunteers, six men and seven women, for this job. After rearranging several meetings and workshop days, we have finally trained them all. We have focused on teaching methods and why we have chosen different methods for different parts of the workshop. Now, they will form teams of two and conduct a workshop while Mahmoud, Ingvild and I observe and take notes for two full days. After this, they are fully trained trainers.

Awadiyya is explaining the difference between the ICRC and the IFRC while I am taking notes

Zuhur in action

Awadallah, one our star students

This now feels like a mile stone, since it is the first step in handing our baby, the capacity workshop, over to the volunteers.

Visit from Madani

2010-03-18T19:30:00.005+03:00

A couple of weeks ago, seven volunteers and two staff members from Madani in al-Jazeera state visited the Red Sea State branch. They spent two days with us in Port Sudan. Here are some pictures from our trip to the beach at Kilo just outside Port Sudan.

Insaaf from Madani and Ingvild

Ohajj..

..and a volunteer from Madani

Jabana is a must, even at the beach!

Younis, one of my favourite volunteers from Port Sudan

Sunset at Kilo

Dengue fever and flexibility

2010-03-18T18:45:00.004+03:00

”Ok, finally! We’ll all meet on Sunday, 8.30 am.” It is Thursday, 5 pm, and Mahmoud has just finished calling “our” volunteers. They are the ones that we are training as trainers in order to take over our workshop after we leave. We have tried to arrange for this for quite a while and now we can finally relax, go home and enjoy the weekend.

Saturday evening. Mahmoud calls to tell us that the dengue fever outbreak in Port Sudan is more severe than expected. Several people have already died. The WHO information campaign will therefore start on Sunday, and not on Monday as planned. Since “our” volunteers are working in this campaign, our workshop is again postponed, this time by a week.

For a week, the volunteers go from door to door, inform people about the dengue fever and take samples of the drinking water in every single house (there is no running water in the outskirts of Port Sudan, and the people buy their drinking water from water tanks and store it in big clay containers; potential breeding places for the dengue flies). They also take notes about how many people have the symptoms for the disease, if they have been to the hospital or not. In southern Port Sudan, one person per every five households had dengue fever. In the evenings, the office is crowded; the supervisors (all of them volunteers) are handing in the lists from their covered area of the day.

Volunteers are being trained for the dengue fever information campaign

Even after six months in this country, I am still fascinated by the Sudanese’s flexibility and strong will to help; not once have I seen a volunteer complaining after 10 hours of house to house visit followed by several hours at the office.

Sudanese hospitality

2010-03-04T12:02:00.002+03:00

While I waited for my Arabic teacher to arrive at the language centre, I ordered a tea from the boy working in the tea shop next door. When the teacher arrives, I pull out my money to pay, but the tea boy hurries over to tell me that I paid too much last time I was there. I am impressed by his memory and honesty; last time I had a tea here was a month ago.

Earlier that day we were riding a minibus to the office, we had just visited our friend Abeer. One of the other passengers leans over and asks us where we’re from. “Norway! I have been to Scandinavia many, many times. Beautiful!” The friendly old man used to work on a ship, and has apparently been all over Europe. "In the summer, they only have one hour of darkness", he tells the other passengers "just imagine how I suffered in Ramadan!" He decides to pay the fare for us, since we now are visitors in his country.

Back home, Hassan, our landlord and friend, knocks on our door and brings in a plate with Sudanese sweets. His cousin's wife, who lives across the street, has seen us from her house and wanted to do something nice for us, and had therefore made these sweets as well as invited us to play volleyball with her and her friends on Friday.

These are some of the things I love about Sudan; people see and remember each other and they do not need a reason to help you or talk to you. Even though I do not have a lot of experience of traveling in Africa, I believe that the Sudanese's reputation of being the most welcoming and hospitable people on the continent is true.

Swedish tourists in Port Sudan

2010-02-18T17:26:00.009+03:00

The last week has passed extremely fast - probably because I have had friends from Sweden visiting me. After showing Nadine, Anna and Per around Port Sudan, I realized how little I have actually written about the town on my blog and how few pictures there are of the town itself. This will now change!

A typical street picture in the centre of Port Sudan (picture: Per Björklund)

Port Sudan is the main port of Sudan, and was founded by the British about 100 years ago. According to the last official census (2008), the population of Port Sudan had then reached a number of 283 953 inhabitants (1 396 110 in the whole of Red Sea State). There is a large number of IDPs (Internally Displaced People) as well as Eritrean refugees in the city, most of them living in the southern suburbs.

There aren't too many tourist attractions in Port Sudan, except the Red Sea with its famous reefs and sharks, so we have shown our Swedish friends our daily life here; the Red Crescent, movie nights at the French Centre, tea and ice cream on the corniche and the Salabona fishmarket.

Anna at the women centre in al-Qadisiyya

Near the fishmarket in Salabona (pictures: Per Björklund)

Preparing a General Assembly

2010-02-09T11:04:00.003+03:00

For the past few weeks, the volunteers and volunteer coordinators have been preparing the branch's General Assembly, which is scheduled to be held before the end of March.

The newly introduced database needs to be filled with information, and volunteer registration forms have been handed out all throughout Port Sudan. During the day, the office is filled with leaders handing in their unit's forms; they then need to be organised and registrered. By the end of this week, volunteers and staff will start putting the information into the actual database and in some weeks all the volunteers in the Red Sea State will have Red Crescent identity cards. Insha'allah.

Abeer from the center sector

Volunteers from the southern sector of Port Sudan registrating the forms

Kjeks og spagetti

2010-01-22T15:00:00.004+03:00

Nå er det over to uker siden vi landet i Sudan for andre gang, og over en uke siden vi kom tilbake til Port Sudan, kontoret vårt, våre frivillige og hverdagslivet. Det er lite som har forandret seg siden vi dro, og vi har hatt travle dager. Vi har holdt en kapasitetsbyggingsworkshop denne uka, og planen er å holde en hver uke framover.

Den siste uka har det også vært spagettilaging- og kjeksbakingsopplæring på ett av kvinnesentrene i Port Sudan. Røde Halvmåne har investert i bakeutstyr og ovner til de tre kvinnesentrene organisasjonen driver i byen. Etter endt opplæring kan kvinnene komme hit fem dager i uka og benytte seg av fasilitetene. Da må de selv kjøpe ingredienser, og kvinnene velger om de vil lage spagetti, kjeks, honning og syltetøy til eget bruk, eller om de vil begynne å selge det i nabolaget eller til den lokale kremmeren. Slik kan kvinnene også bidra med penger til familiens økonomi, i tillegg til at det kvinnelige fellesskapet styrkes gjennom arbeidet på senterne.

Spagettideig lages

Deigen går gjennom en spagettimaskin

Ferdig spagetti

Kvinnene selger ferdige varer

Three months in Sudan

2009-12-16T19:54:00.002+03:00

I have been sitting at the headquarter office in Khartoum today, the same place I was three months ago. In a couple of hours I am leaving for Norway to spend Christmas in Oslo. It seems absurd to leave; 29 degrees, aircondition and crowded streets will soon be replaced by -9, shopping hysteria and snow (insha'allah).

The past three months have gone by fast. The life in Port Sudan has become "normal", after cracking a few codes, both language and culture wise. Things that were hard in the beginning, like the non-existence of planning and a different concept of time, are now completely natural to me. So natural that I was (after Norwergian standards) almost embarrassingly ill-prepared for some presentations in Kassala branch earlier this week.

Ingvild practicing her Arabic (cracking that language code!)

The workshops we have worked a lot with in our branch in the Red Sea State are highly appriciated by the volunteers, and telling them about the Red Cross/Red Crescent movement, giving them tools to feel ownership to both the organisation, the activities and their communities is important to us. Our goal is to fully implement the volunteer structure decided in Khartoum. This specific goal motivates us and the volunteers and has created a great working environment.

Ingvild explaining the structure of the Sudanese Red Crescent

I am explaining the different roles in the unit committees

We still have a long way to go, and I am already looking forward to going back to Port Sudan in January to continue what we have started.

I love Kassala!

2009-12-16T11:52:00.008+03:00

Last weekend, we visited Kassala branch to see how the Sudanese Red Crescent Society is working in other places. Here are some pictures from the three days we spent there.

Presentations

Taha translating

Sexual Health presentation

IHL presentation (playing Raw War)

Picnic in al-Rimela

Music and dancing

Curious children in a tree near by

"Authentic Africa"

And camels!

Sunset

Graduation ceremony for volunteers - we got a tob!

2009-12-01T11:31:00.008+03:00

The second day of Eid al-Adha at our friend As-Sadiq's place.

Short tea break before getting the sheep..

The sheep, preslaughter
The sheep, post-slaughter

Preparing the meat'
Breakfast

On the phone, scheduling our next visit

Morgenstund har gull i munn

2009-11-24T10:24:00.012+03:00

Nesten hver morgen trasker Ingvild og jeg innom kaffedama vår på hjørnet. Hun har satt opp stoler og små bord, en slags mobil kafé. Selv sitter hun bak en gammel kommode hvor hun har kaffebønner, kopper, sukker og jeg vet ikke hva. Når vi kommer for å bestille vår daglige kanne jabnah til å ta med, har hun som regel brent og malt kaffebønnene allerede. Vi håndhilser og slenger oss ned på hver vår plaststol. Hun koker opp kaffen på en liten kullgrill, og tilføyer litt kardemomme og ingefær. (Selv er jeg ikke så glad i for mye ingefær, men sudanerne er helt gale etter det, får jeg inntrykk av.) Kaffen helles fra kjele til kanne uten at så mye som en dråpe går tapt. Tre små fingerbølkopper, jabnah-kannen og sukker plasseres på et lite brett, som vi balanserer med oss over gata og inn på kontoret. Få minutter senere spaserer de første frivillige inn; de vet hvor de kan finne dagens første kaffekopp.

A story with a happy ending

2009-11-23T11:06:00.006+03:00

It’s 2 p.m., I am sitting in my office and showing a young boy the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Lillehammer in 1994 on youtube.

Mahmoud, volunteer coordinator, Ingvild and Alex, who speaks a little Eritreaen, and our new friend in our office.

Two hours earlier, my boss delegated the responsibility of this kid to me and Ingvild. He is from Eritrea and has been in Port Sudan for some weeks. His family lives in Norway. The Norwegian authorities had asked the Red Crescent for help in tracing our new friend after his family found out he was in Port Sudan.

He understands some English, speaks a bit Arabic, and after hours of patient drawing, asking, miming and googeling, I understand that he left his country because he was going to be enrolled in the army. The young boy walked for over a week to the border of Sudan. Once here, he got robbed for all his belongings. He walked for days and then hitch hiked to Port Sudan. He ate whatever was left on the side of the road and found water by digging in the ground. In Port Sudan, he was approached by a fellow Eritrean who immediately took him to his home. This is where our friend was found by the Red Crescent.

Learning the alphabet in Norwegian

Our young friend will leave for Khartoum, and hopefully, he will be in Norway to celebrate Christmas with his family.

Sun, heat and presidents

2009-11-18T10:32:00.004+03:00

My adrenaline is pumping while I scan the audience around me, just waiting for another woman to faint. I ignore the two presidents on the stage only ten meters away from me. My biggest priority now are the masses of women around me. It is at least 30 degrees, the sun is burning, and the water tanks have been empty for over an hour. There is no system here; people are pushing from all directions to get closer to the stage. Some of them have been here since 7 o’clock in the morning, and since most Sudanese eat their breakfast at 10 or 11, they are not exactly well prepared for hours of standing. The police men are hitting the girls and women in the front, pushing them back with long sticks; completely ignoring the fact that these people are being pushed by hundreds of others from behind. The school girls next to me are crying, they are not allowed to leave by their teacher, since she has the responsibility for them. In the end, one of them faints. Me and my Red Crescent colleagues pick her up and try to make our way through the crowd towards the ambulances. During the four hours we are working, around 70 people are transported to the hospital this way.

I understand that a presidential visit is a big event, but the organizers could have done a better job. When the water tanks are empty at 9.30 and the police are hitting and pushing crying women further away, this means that the event could have been better prepared. I am happy to do my job as a Red Crescent volunteer, but preventive work, like enough water, a shaded area to relax in and fences would have been helpful.

Volunteers preparing for the big day

Hardcore playing

2009-11-14T17:45:00.004+03:00

Like the Norwegian Red Cross Youth-members we are, we like to play. We have brought several of our typical games to Sudan, most of them include running or jumping. In our third workshop, the participants were tired. So we encouraged them to jump up and down for two minutes. This was the result in the downstairs office the following day:

Cold coffee and workshops

2009-11-10T22:47:00.006+03:00

”Ya khawaja! I don’t like my coffee to get cold!” It is the third two-day workshop we are conducting in a week, 20 Sudanese around me are more interested in their coffee than in me finishing my sentence. I must admit, after a quite intense week with language difficulties, pedagogical challenges and different cultural codes, I am about to get very frustrated. Even though I know it’s not necessarily rude to interrupt or to address someone as “white person” instead of saying their name, it still gets to me. It might be the knowing, but not accepting, which is frustrating to me. I leave the room; I need to be alone for some minutes. After a short time the man who doesn’t like cold coffee, comes out to check on me. He is terribly sorry, apologizes countless times. He asks me to drink coffee with him, and we are friends again.

The next day, the volunteers have brought homemade breakfast to the workshop, instead of the boring ful (horse beans) they complained about the day before. We now know when they like to have their tea, and the coffee is served hot. We explain everything more carefully, give them more time to discuss in groups and make plans for the following months. It is amazing to see how much difference this makes, both for them and for me. For the first time in a week, the volunteers are not impatiently waiting to go home at 3 p.m. They stay with us for a while, recite poems, exchange phone numbers and invite us for coffee at their place. It seems like we finally got the food and tea code in this country; hot food and drinks served at the right time. It is not only the content of the workshop that is important.

Fighting polio

2009-10-29T16:49:00.011+03:00

Compared to 2006, when there were no new cases of polio in Sudan, there were 18 new reported cases in early 2009. Because of this alarming development, the Sudanese Red Crescent Society (SRCS) has joined the newly initiated polio vaccination campaign. Other actors are the World Health Organization, the Sudanese Ministry of Health and UNICEF, which provide funding and medicine, while the SRCS is responsible for the volunteers performing the vaccinations. Since this is a door to door-campaign, the volunteers need to be trained in how to vaccinate, which children are in the target group, how to rapport and how to mark the visited houses.

Amona marking a visited house in Qadisiyya

Door to door in Qadisiyya

Afaf showing Ingvild a rapport in Umm al-qurra

Last week, Ingvild and I attended a training session and learned that all children, from one day-old babies to five year-old children, were to be vaccinated orally against polio. Babies between six and 12 months get blue vitamin A-pills, the older children get red pills. Quite easy, we thought.

When actually participating in the campaign with the volunteers this week, we soon discovered how hard it can be to get children to open their mouths – especially when it’s their first time dealing with a scary khawaja (white person). It was also quite challenging physically, we were walking around for four-seven hours every day in the outskirts of Port Sudan in 36 degrees. It is quite impressive that the volunteers do this job from 7 a.m. until 5 p.m. for three days straight.

It feels good to do participate in a project like the polio vaccination campaign, and next month we will be working with the volunteers in Haya and Durudeb, two smaller towns in the Red Sea State.

Vaccinating a little girl in Umm al-qurra

Girls showing their blue fingernails, the sign for a vaccinated child

Our very first presentation!

2009-10-21T17:02:00.005+03:00

We have been in Sudan for over a month now, and after a wish of the volunteers, we decided that is was time for our first presentation. After having talked to several volunteers and our coordinator, it was decided that we were going to have a presentation about Sexual Health as a part of a First Aid training course. Here in Sudan, this is a 18-day course, and lasting for two hours every day.

We located the puzzle that is used for Sexual Health-training, which youth delegate Anine brought from Norway last year and got translated. Since there was no English version, I spent a couple of hours translating, while Ingvild was reading up on Syphilis and Gonorrhea. In addition to HIV and Hepatitis B, these are the most common sexual transmitted diseases in Sudan.

The presentation went well, we held it half in Arabic, half in English. The volunteers Khalid and Sadiq were of great help, especially when it came to answering medical questions in Arabic. They also gave us constructive feedback on what to improve; next time we could maybe let the participants try to put a condom on a dildo instead of just showing it?

Sudanese weekend

2009-10-18T10:52:00.007+03:00

This weekend has been a Sudanese weekend. On Friday, we had Mahmoud, the volunteer coordinator, his wife, three children and two friends (who were “in the neighbourhood”) over for a visit. We were starting to understand how this works, so we had a big stock of cookies, tea, coffee, juice, sweets and cake. This stock exists no more. We had a nice, but short, time with our guests; the children drawing, the mother watching a Bahraini soap opera, the three men drinking coffee and chatting. After an hour or so, they are ready to move on to a coffee place in the town center. Apparently our coffee wasn’t as good as we thought it was.

Saturday we met Samira, our colleague Hassan’s wife. She was going to teach us how to cook Sudanese food in our home. I am not the greatest cook in the world, but feeling like a spectator in my own kitchen felt a bit strange. There wasn’t much we could do; Samira is one of the most effective persons I’ve seen. And she’s a big fan of systems, so she re-organized our fridge, told us what we should get at the market… In the end, she made three meals for us and left before it was dinner time. Sudanese visits are a bit different than those we are used to from back home.

Stress? Ma fi (there is none)

2009-10-11T17:40:00.005+03:00

Last week, we were in Tokar, a small village three hours from Port Sudan. We attended a meeting the same night we got there: the volunteers were planning a ceremony two days later. I suddenly realized that this was the first meeting they held about this specific event. Had I been in the volunteers’ place, I would have been stressed out of my mind knowing that the stage wasn’t set, the food wasn’t bought (there wasn’t even a food group yet!), the posters and banners weren’t ready. But the 15 or so people sat together, calmly discussing what had to be done and who was to be in which group. On Monday, we witnessed a great ceremony, with three singers, dancers and even the mayor of Tokar was present. And not to mention all the people!

The past days, I have seen the same happening in Port Sudan. People get together at a school; the day before they phone each other up agreeing on who should bring what, and voilà: One hour at the school is all they need to prepare drinks, snacks, seats and a small stage. I am impressed.

I realize that it might be hard to bring this laidback approach back to Norway (which mayor could attend a ceremony on a one day notice?), but as long as I’m here, I have to let organizer-Anniken go.

En dag i Tokar

2009-10-08T09:30:00.010+03:00

Klokka er 4.30, og flere moskeer er allerede i gang med å kalle inn til morgenbønnen. Jeg dytter øreproppene lenger inn og forsøker å sove igjen. Ingvild rister forsiktig i meg - klokka er blitt 7.30. Barnegråt, esler og galende haner dominerer lydbildet. Jeg pakker meg ut av myggnettingen, i natt har vi sovet ute i bakgården til lokalforeningens kontor. Selv om det (etter norsk standard) fortsatt er tidlig, har våre venner fra Tokar vært våkne i flere timer. De har vært på markedet, og nå venter de med fersk kaffe på oss.

Kort tid senere blir vi med "alle frivilliges mor", Amna, for å forberede maten til den store festen dagen etter. 650 frivillige i Tokar og Agig har gjennomført førstehjelpskurs, og disse skal nå feires med brask og bram. Siden det ikke er plass til 650 mennesker i det provisoriske festteltet, er det kun et knippe utvalgte frivillige som får delta. Det er allikevel nok å gjøre for festens matgruppe. Ingvild og jeg får hver vår kledelige pysjamas før vi setter i gang med å lage "norsk mat". Vi steker fisk og lager agurksalat (potetene ble visst glemt), ikke til lunsj som vi trodde, men til frokost. Resten av dagen prøver vi å være hjelpsomme; vaske opp, lage mat, sortere bønner. Men vi får nesten alltid beskjed om at det ikke er noe å gjøre, kan vi ikke bare slappe av? Sove litt, kanskje? Med følelsen av å ha gjort svært lite, trasker vi tilbake til myggnettingen rundt kl.23. Neste morgen får vi vite at kvinnene har slaktet to geiter, tilberedt dem i tillegg til all den andre maten, i løpet av natta..

"I'm just trying to get an overview..."

2009-09-30T15:15:00.005+03:00

Our job description has now been finalised; for the following nine months me and my co-delegate Ingvild will mainly be working with capacity building. In order to get started, we just wanted to get an overview of our branch..

So for the past week, we have been trying to figure out how the Sudanese Red Crescent Society in the Red Sea State (RSS) is organized. We are both organizers and planners at heart, so we have put up wall posters and maps in our office for us (and the volunteers) to fill in.

Trying to gather this information, we have been asking the staff, the volunteer leaders, the locality leaders, the unit leaders. So far we know that: RSS has five active localities. One of these has three sectors. Every sector is made up of seven to 13 units. One unit has at least 50 volunteer members. Conclusion: We are dealing with a lot of volunteers, which again means a lot of potensial!

Next week we hope to visit most of SRCS's centers in the Red Sea State in order to get an overview over the activities.

Fest og fritid i Port Sudan

2009-09-26T22:55:00.007+03:00

Etter kun to arbeidsdager var igjen klart for en fullbooket helg. I forkant hadde vi gått til innkjøp av en futa/tob (tradisjonelt sudansk plagg for kvinner) og var klare for at Samira skulle lære oss hvordan man skulle ta den på. Etter flere forsøk er vi endelig viklet inn i hver vår futa, drikker søt te og spiser kaker sammen med Hassans familie. Noen timer senere er vi i en stor hage med om lag 100 andre mennesker – en liten sammenkomst for å feire brudeparet, blir vi fortalt. Etter en god stund med småprat, mat og drikke dukker endelig brudeparet opp. Vi får et kort glimt av bruden, og dermed er et viktigste gjort. Kvelden vår er over.

Dagen etter er vi invitert til frivilligkoordinator Mahmoud og hans familie. De bor i Umm al-ghurra, i utkanten av Port Sudan. Her, som de fleste stedene utenfor sentrum, domineres landskapet av enetasjeshus, geiter, barn, biler og søppel.

I deres forholdsvis store hus har Mahmouds kone Zuhur forberedt henna til oss, og mens vi blir dekorert strømmer det på med nabokoner. Vi sitter med føttene i været og en kaffekopp i (den udekorerte) hånda og lytter til sladder. Henna tar lang tid, men her har ingen det travelt.

Eid mubarak!

2009-09-22T19:22:00.014+03:00

I tre dager har eid-feiringen vart. Etter en måneds faste har sudanerne nå hatt en velfortjent ferie. Det besøkes, det spises og det drikkes. Søndag var vi invitert til hjem til vår kollega Hassan og hans familie til lunsj. Det er stekende varmt og vi bes med inn i den svale, grønne hagen, og i et stort avgrenset område flyr minst 20 fugler. Familien elsker fugler, kan Hassan fortelle. Ingvild og jeg prøver å få hjulpet Samira, Hassans kone, med de siste forberedelsene. I det vi skal til å begynne å spise, kommer Samiras mor og to brødre, og vi følger etter dem ut i stua igjen. Men vi blir fort geleidet tilbake inn på det kjøligste rommet for å spise. Med MTV i bakgrunnen spiser vi nydelig sudansk mat, prøver oss fram på arabisk med Hassans barn på 16, 14 og snart ett år (”Hun var ikke planlagt!” utbryter Samira mens hun ler så hun rister). Vi blir tatt med på besøk til Samiras tante, som nesten går i bakken når vi kan ønske ”’id mubarak” på arabisk, og til Samiras mor og brødre. Overalt vanker det søtsaker, brus, kjeks. Til slutt kjører vi til den beste iskremsjappa i byen, og nærmest ruller videre til sjefen vår Mohammad Taha. Fire søte barn klatrer både på mor og far mens vi diskuterte Sudan, Norge, Røde Halvmåne, Ramadan og visumsøknader over utallige små kopper søt og sterk jabnah (sudansk kaffe). Dagen avsluttes sammen med de frivillige – igjen serveres det kaker, kjeks og sjokolade.

Mandag morgen starter vi med ny giv, vi skal på seks husbesøk hos frivillige i hele byen i løpet av de neste åtte timene. Det er godt å få møtt menneskene vi skal jobbe med, høre hva de ønsker seg av vårt opphold. Det er forbausende hvor gode samtaler man kan få til med tålmodighet, kroppsspråk og en stor porsjon godvilje!

Tirsdag morgen er vi klare for rihla (tur) til havet med 25 frivillige. Kortspill, dans, vassing i Rødehavet, mat og jabnah er oppskriften på en svært vellykket dag. En stund iakttar jeg en av de frivillige som finkjemmet det millimeterkorte håret sitt, uten helt å skjønne hvorfor. Etter noen minutter forsvinner han, og jeg får snart vite at han sitter i en bil et stykke unna med en av de andre frivillige: han holder på å fri! Etter en times tid kommer de fnisende tilbake- om ett år er det bryllup. Vår korte ferie kunne ikke ha sluttet på en bedre måte.

Så langt har det berømte kultursjokket uteblitt – for vår del har det heller vært snakk om sukkersjokk.

Heavy rains in Khartoum state

2009-09-18T17:13:00.004+03:00

The rainy season around Khartoum normally starts in July and ends in late August. Three weeks ago, the outskirts of Sudan’s capital were heavily affected by the rain. The Sudanese Red Crescent Society (SRCS) has made assessments in the area, found out how many households have been affected and what items are the most necessary. The report states that “entire communities in Khartoum state have been displaced following heavy rainfall. 22 291 homes are affected”. This means that the homes of over 100 000 people are either completely or partially damaged.

Monday me and Ingvild assisted the Emergency Response Unit (ERU) to the field, where the first food distributions were being handed out. At a later stage, non-food items (NFI) will also be distributed, and the SRCS has now asked the Red Cross/Red Crescent Federation for the amount needed to rebuild the affected area over the next five months. Read the appeal here: http://www.ifrc.org/docs/appeals/09/MDRSD007.pdf

Endelig i Sudan!

2009-09-17T20:15:00.013+03:00

Vi har tilbrakt tre dager i Khartoum, Sudans hovedstad. Den første dagen var vi på hovedkontoret til Sudanese Red Crescent Society (SRCS). Vi fikk en innføring om hva SRCS gjør og står for, i tillegg til at vi møtte representanter fra både Sveits, Tyskland og Østerrike Røde Kors. På kvelden ble vi tatt hånd om av hotellpersonalet, som viste oss hvor det gikk an å få mat etter solnedgang. Før kl.19 nå i Ramadan er det så å si umulig å få tak i.

Mandag deltok vi i et møte der omleggingen av frivilligstrukturen i SRCS ble lagt fram. Det virker som et spennende prosjekt, og det er ikke umulig at jeg og Ingvild kommer til å jobbe mer med dette i de kommende ni månedene.

Resten av tiden vår tilbrakte vi med Emergency Response Unit (ERU). Taha, som var ungdomsdelegat i Bergen i fjor, tok svært godt vare på oss. Mandag var vi ute i felten og ble invitert til å bryte fasten med ERU. Tirsdag var vi på en liten sightseeingrunde i Khartoum og brøt fasten med Tahas familie. Etter kun tre dager var det vemodig å ta farvel med hovedstaden – men det er mulig vi er tilbake allerede om en måned. Da er vi nemlig invitert i bryllup!

Å forberede seg på å ikke være forberedt

2009-09-11T14:15:00.004+03:00

I morgen reiser jeg og Ingvild (26) til Sudan for å jobbe som ungdomsdelegater i Port Sudan ved landets østkyst. Endelig skal vi begynne på vårt ni måneder lange feltopphold. I tre uker har vi blitt kurset av både Fredskorpset og Røde Kors Ungdom for å være best mulig forberedt, samtidig som vi har fått beskjed om at nettopp dette er umulig.

Tyskeren i meg elsker å organisere, fikse, forberede, så det har vært hardt å akseptere. Jeg har forsøkt å lese meg opp på Afrikas største land, forsøkt å sette meg inn i det som venter meg i Port Sudan. Hvorvidt jeg fikk til det, vil vise seg. Nå er bagasjen i alle fall pakket, vaksinene er tatt, penger er vekslet. Jeg er vel så klar jeg kan bli. Sudan i morgen, insha'allah.