Friday 30th July

Ian here: I arrived in Mapuordit late today after around 48 hours ‘on the road’ – Sydney/Dubai/Nairobi/Rumbek/Mapuordit, including a brief overnight stay at Bethany House in Nairobi. Not the easiest place to get to, but, there again, not huge queues of people wanting to get here!!

A couple of the Mapuordit sisters I had met last year were also at Bethany, and over dinner the three of us and one of the fathers polished off a nice Barossa Shiraz I had brought for Anne – sorry dear – all in the interests of reducing luggage weight, of course! They all have to come ’out’ on a regular basis, and this was such an ‘outing’.

Sister W---- told me that July is known as the ‘hungry month’ in Mapuordit. People have usually exhausted their supplies from last year’s harvest, and the new harvest is not due until August. So, there is a lot of hunger about and it can therefore be a depressing time to be here.

Anne’s probably mentioned this before, but because S Sudan has no postal system, ‘stuff’ piles up in Bethany House, and anyone coming into Mapuordit is gently persuaded to fetch mail, needed equipment & a host of other things (I’d better be unspecific.....!).

True to form, when I crept downstairs at 5am for the journey to the airport, there was a small mountain of ‘stuff’ on the dining table for me to take ‘in’ (people talk about going ‘in’ and coming ‘out’ of Mapuordit, and this perhaps says volumes about the experience!). Fortunately, nothing too heavy to add to the 30kg I already had....

One of my ‘parcels’ worth mentioning, and which illustrates the difficulties of a lack of postal system, was an envelope of documents needing the Bishop’s signature (administration is done in Nairobi but he’s now based in Rumbek).

I was greeted by him on the edge of the airstrip at Rumbek (and also by some strange gaunt woman who said she was my wife....), he relieved me of the envelope, signed the papers and handed them in the envelope to one of the Sisters who was going ‘out’ to Nairobi on the plane I had arrived in, its propellers still turning!!

True express mail! Ink on the papers was probably still wet when they arrived back in Nairobi 4 hours later!

Anne had various ‘jobs’ to do in Rumbek, ranging from produce shopping in the market to delivering cash to one of the outlying units of the hospital (HIV) to a banking task.

The banks, however, were closed for a public holiday to mark the anniversary of the death of John Garang. He is a local hero, the former leader of the SPLA (Sudan People’s Liberation Army), killed in a mysterious helicopter crash shortly after hostilities in the civil war ended in 2005. Huge event here.

We visited the orphanage run by the Sisters of Charity who had looked after Anne so willingly last year when she fell ill in Rumbek, coming to meet me - some of the severely malnourished babies we saw last year are now a picture of health!

Next door to the Sisters’ compound, we were waiting at Pan Door (House of Peace), a Church conference centre; another of Anne’s ‘jobs’ was to take some passengers, who had been on a conference, back to Mapuordit. A Father who works for Radio Good News, an FM station run by the Church, asked to interview Anne about her experiences in Mapuordit – all in a day’s work!! Even I scored an interview, based on my extensive knowledge of Sudan, one hour after my arrival.....

Now, back to this gaunt woman who was there to greet me at Rumbek...................yes, the photos you’ve already seen on the blog do not lie and the beans & rice diet has taken its toll. But she’s well, if tired – long days, and a good deal of misery around, especially with malaria affecting children.

Some of that misery was seen on the road from Rumbek to Mapuordit. An important government official in the Roads Dept crashed his Land Cruiser into a mahogany tree on Wednesday and received serious injuries – he was taken to Mapuordit (which, by far, provides the best care in a wide area) but succumbed.

On our journey, the grieving relatives were fetching the body back in a car bedecked with tree boughs; we then passed the scene of the accident – the mahogany tree barely dented, but the Land Cruiser V-shaped.

By the way, for lovers of Anne’s blog style, don’t despair – I won’t let her off the hook! We’ve yet to agree how to keep it going whilst we’re both here – I’m amazed she’s been able to keep it going whilst here on her own as there is just so much sickness around. Pauline was called out twice last night for difficult births and Anne assisted with one.