Sudan(blue) vs Uganda(red)


Sunday 8nd August
Ian here (I’m afraid Anne is preoccupied with exams at the moment, and I’m blogging, so get over it!!): also, the satellite internet connection is very slow, so that it’s so hard to transmit photos at the moment. Might be the huge amount of rain that we’re in the midst of.

My main role on this visit is as HR director. The State Ministry of Health (which pays 70% of staff wages, the balance coming from hospital funds) require summarised files on each employee, and a template approach has been adopted.

So, I’ve interviewed most staff members throughout the week (they often arrive in groups of four or five, and those waiting peer over your shoulder as you complete the template.....no Privacy Act here!!) and the information is being slowly collated.

The task gives you some further insights into what people have had to suffer here over the past several decades. Most staff members have no proof of birth date (one of the requirements of the Ministry) and some have no educational certificates “as they were lost in the war”.

When you realise that the majority were either born, or were receiving elementary schooling, during the last civil war of 1980-2005, you begin to understand that from early on in life these people were regularly fleeing from bombs or missiles, and each time simply abandoned what they had. Sobering thought.

Last Sunday, a spirited (I think the kindest word in all the circumstances.....) football match took place between a local team and a team from a large group of Ugandan builders currently working in the hospital, building the new AIDS centre.

The match started off in reasonably friendly, if robust, fashion, with little quarter given in the tackle. Amazingly, some of the Ugandans were playing without boots, not that that seemed to stop them kicking the ball as hard as possible.

Towards the end of the game, with Sudan up 3 – 1, some fighting erupted, and the referee, Father D------ brought out a red card, but was persuaded by the offending player, a Sudanese, not to show it. The same player then proceeded to commit another bad foul, and a brawl resulted, at which point the game was wisely called off.

Not sure if diplomatic relations have yet been restored between the two countries........

The handing out of the soccer jerseys I brought as prizes for Anne & Pauline’s ‘Clean Up for the Cup’ competition (thanks to all donors!!) went well on Monday. The Spanish jerseys were particularly prized by the recipients, but the jury’s still out on my remark to Dr R----- about the Italian jersey having been purchased for half-price after Italy’s demise from the World Cup.....

Food distribution was another task this Wednesday. The store, an old shipping container is stiflingly hot to work in, but, compared to last year, is really down on supplies. Half-rations are the order of the day, with supplies of a number of the staples distributed last year being simply exhausted.
Not sure when the next shipment is due, and people are literally begging for more as you hand out the little we have. Very hard, when you think that none of us in the compound is hungry.

The highlight of the week? A trip to dirty, dusty, smelly Rumbek with the passports and GOSS (Government of South Sudan) permits of the various foreign nationals in the hospital.

As a result of the Kampala bombing during the World Cup, GOSS announced that as an anti-terrorism measure, it was requiring all foreign nationals in South Sudan to register. As you can’t enter the country without a GOSS permit issued by GOSS, it wasn’t clear to me how this process would enhance anti-terrorism measures, particularly as I discovered that the registration process didn’t entail cross-checking permits against passports, or providing details of our whereabouts in S Sudan.

All became clear when 10SP per person was extracted from us as a ‘registration fee’. ‘Nuff said.............

On the journey from Mapuordit, along the very rough bush track to the ‘main road’ to Rumbek at Akot, we encountered a lone Dinka cattleman. What was unusual about him was that he was quite openly carrying an AK47 (and looked prepared to use it, if need be......).

After we left here last year, the police and SPLA made vigorous efforts to disarm the locals, but guns still seem to be around. In fact, last week in Yirol there was heavy inter-tribal fighting, probably over cows, and probably also reflecting the fact that Yirol is the ‘border’ between two different Dinka groups.

Around 21 people were killed and others wounded, and the small hospital at Yirol couldn’t cope with all the casualties. Four were sent to Mapuordit, but one died on the way and another decided to go to the witch doctor. The other two arrived here and, fortunately for them, as we have no x-ray facilities here, the bullets had passed straight through their bodies.

This sort of fighting is a constant undercurrent here. Apparently, many of the Yirol dead were from a minority Dinka group, the Jur, who are despised by the majority because they are more agriculturalist than pastoralist. A man we know, a Jur, has fled to Juba (abt 300k away): apparently, only the men are targets, and the Jur women & children are safe from attack. Comforting.