Mirrors

Have come to the realisation that I haven't looked in a mirror in over 3 weeks. It's strangely liberating!

P

Please note, this post does not apply to both parties of our marriage!

At the market

While at the market today Sarah and I had a rather surreal moment, and I thought I'd share it with you.

We were sitting in an outdoor "coffee shop", me with my sweet gingery coffee, Sarah with her hibiscus tea. It could have been Glasgow, Hereford or Ballymena (apart from the 30C heat).

A chicken was tied up by 1 leg in the corner, and a piglet scurried under Sarah's chair. 2 Elderly men beside us were spitting on the ground while holding their bare feet.

3 dogs and 4 pigs were lying side by side just to our right, and a bedraggled sheep came and started to drink out of the washing up basin.

A Sudanese lady walked past with a dazzling head scarf contrasting her skin tone, while 2 male soldiers walked past in uniform holding hands. A ten year old girl struggles by carrying 40l of water from a yolk across her shoulders.

We then realise the chicken has gone quiet. During our coffee it has been killed, plucked, gutted and chopped in the corner in under 10mins.

It's a funny old place!

P.

Doro life thus far

Ekke Buornje from Doro this Tuesday afternoon! Once again there is not a cloud in the South Sudanese sky and it’s really quite hard for us to believe that Christmas is just around the corner.

It does feel that we are starting to adjust to our camping style life at this end. I am learning about flexibility and that ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’ are not mutually exclusive terms. Our utilization of the Jiko (charcoal stove), is working out well although it does take a bit more planning than meal making at home. I think that is probably the major difference in life here, things just take more time, truly back to basics. Each day brings many small victories - we rejoice in these a lot. today's included stomaching my lunch after witnessing the 'meat man' at the market, butchering (the word has never seemed more appropriate!) the cow's head with an axe. 3 hours later we sat down to lunch hungry after a morning lifting boxes and happily munched on the beef from said cow.

We have been excited to find some fresh treats in the market: Oranges, Lemons and Guavas. In the heat these make a welcome break from pasta, rice and Paul’s new nemesis - lentils! We are realizing how much we took for granted the access we have to wonderful varieties of fresh fruit and veg at home. 

Yesterday was our first ‘clinical day’ and we have been given the task of clearing and readying the maternity building for opening (planned for January), along with a few other bits and pieces in what remains of December.

I thought pictures could illustrate better than I can explain. Basically, the building is currently full of boxes (mainly medical supplies which were sent in on a 40ft container and are of varying usefulness) which need to be moved to another store building.

Here are some pictures…

This is what the clinic looks like as we approach, the building on the far left is the Maternity building, the middle building is the General Clinic and on the right is a storage building which is currently being built. There is also another storage building behind the General clinic (which is where we are moving the boxes to).

A glimpse inside the Maternity building first thing monday:

And of our progress after 2 days:

It’s a glamorous task we are undertaking, dust, dirt, and creepy crawlies galore – the perfect job for me! We have managed to stay in good spirits, it’s satisfying to be doing something measurable and practical and working together is fun. My spider stamping reaction time has also definitely improved.

Here’s a wee snap I took from the clinic so that you can see a bit more of what surrounds us.

People here are friendly as we greet them in our broken Mabaan, and we’re amazed by the generosity of those who have so little, often we are asked to sit down and share chai or coffee with. 

It’s a real privilege to be here on this adventure!

Do email us we’d love to hear from you with news of home!

*S*

Learning Mabaan

A few interesting facts about our last week:

- Today was 36C in the shade

- I killed plucked and gutted my first chicken

- Sarah spotted, and I killed our 1^st snake!

- I have a definite lentil tolerance level

- We’ve both squashed scorpions

We’ve been having our 2 week intensive language course with varying degrees of success. The main mode of learning is to go out into the village and greet people, hoping that they invite you sit down. It is hoped that by sitting with people, even though you can’t really say anything, you will start to recognize words and pick up phrases.

Surprisingly we’ve managed to pick up quite a few phrases. As greetings are so important here, that’s been the first thing to get memorized. It the morning you greet people with “Did you sleep well?, followed by “where are you coming from?” and “where are you going?”. My other Mabaan phrases include: “how many children do you have?”, “we will work at the clinic”, and “can I play football?”

I thought I was doing really well until I tried to invite an elderly man to sit down, and I called him a pig by mistake! The words “coocho” and “choocho” got me muddled. That’s the only mistake I’m aware of, but I’m sure in my enthusiasm I’ve made plenty more!

Am attempting to go play football with some of the local guys tomorrow, although they look pretty good. Not sure I’m ready for bare feet football yet! Will let you know how I get on.

Hope you are all well.

Paul

An Uduk Thanksgiving

So we have arrived safely in Doro, South Sudan. 

It’s been a great first week. I shan’t bore you with everything that’s happened, but let me tell you about a funny experience on our first day here.

Would you believe that the Uduk people (who are the biggest tribal group in the refugee camp) celebrate thanksgiving! So last Thursday we were invited into the camp to one of the Uduk churches who were having a celebration. About 6 of us spent the afternoon in an area called Borfa.

Thankfully one of the American guys with us spoke pretty decent Arabic and 2 of the Uduk men spoke English which aided communication. When we arrived the men were ushered to sit in a circle, with the ladies in a different group. As kwagas (white men) we were made to sit on chairs, and we sat around talking. The girls meanwhile had to sit on the ground and helped the local women prepare the food.

We were served 2 cups of Chai tea (with lots of ginger and lots of sugar), followed by 2 cups of coffee (espresso sized cups, 1/3 filled with sugar and topped up with coffee. You don’t mix the sugar in, and you keep getting it topped up until all the sugar is gone!). It’s amazing!

Us men then had to go and greet another village group a few minutes walk away (while the girls continued cooking). When you enter a village you have to shake everyone’s hands (everyone!). So you will go round the youth circle, then the women, then the elders, then the men (maybe 20 or 30 in each circle).

We had the Chai and coffee routine again and then they brought out this massive platter of food for us. Mainly nuts or bean based, all salty and peanut buttery. There was lots more chat and then we asked permission to leave (repeat all the handshakes), and returned to the initial village (repeat all the handshakes) and arrived just in time for the food to be ready there (all the same stuff as before!). I drank about a litre of water just to stop my mouth drying out completely! It was tremendous, we were all stuffed! (And the girls did eventually get fed and watered too)

We have since been assured not every day is like this!

This week has seen us start our “Intensive Mabaan language course”. I’m sure there will be humorous stories to follow .

P*

Below: The inside of our new home for the next 6 months. Complete with some Sarah homely features.

The tale of 3 shopping trips

This past week has been spent getting ready for our flight in on Wednesday.

Many of you will know that although Sarah and I are similar in many ways, shopping is an area that we differ greatly! Bear this in mind as you read the following…

Shopping trip number 1:

On Monday we went to Toi market. This is a 2^nd hand clothes market quite close by in Nairobi. It is difficult to describe, I tried to take a sneaky picture but it doesn’t really do it justice.

The market it basically is rabbit warren of stalls, with alley-ways only a few feet wide. The paths are rocky and muddy, and it’s very easy to lose your sense of direction. The stalls varied from immaculately arranged rows of lady’s jeans or men’s shirts, to stalls with a mound of clothes piled 3 feet high. Some stalls had music blaring, all with people saying “Karibu (Welcome), come and look.” A real mishmash of colours and sounds. There must be literally a thousand stalls, with hundreds of tonnes of clothes. I’ve never seen anything like it! You think Primark on Sauchiehall street on a Saturday afternoon is crazy- that has nothing on Toi market!

I think Sarah was born to be in this place. Able to spot an Urban Outfitters top at the bottom of a pile of clothes from 100 yards.  Being able to negotiate 4 pretty patterned tops for 50p! She got skills! I on the other hand felt somewhat out of my comfort zone… at least in a shopping centre there’s a coffee shop for me to sit in for a while. My only consolation was getting a vintage Spurs shirt for £3!

I have a funny feeling this may not be our last visit to this place…

Shopping trip 2:

On Tuesday morning we found out that there was not as much household stuff in Doro as we were expecting. So off we headed to the local supermarket looking for things including: 4 picnic chairs, buckets, basins, a water barrel, plastic drawers, electric fans, cooking pots, crockery and cutlery, pillows, bed linen, and more. And this would be fine, but when you have 30 different sizes of water barrel in front of you, which one do you pick? And how do you get it all home??? So with a lot of guess work and thankfully a delivery system we got round that one. We’ll let you know when we realize that we’ve bought all the wrong stuff.

Shopping trip 3:

 Possibly the most stressful shopping trip of my life- The food shop! Imagine going to Tesco but told you needed to buy all the food you would eat in the next 3 months. Then imagine that, but you’re not allowed any fresh fruit or veg, no fresh meat, no liquids. Then imagine it where the only brands you recognize are twice the price you’d pay at home, and you have no idea about the other brands. 2 full trolleys later, with a fair amount of prayer, and a huge amount of help from Karissa one of our colleagues, we finally got it done! Again watch this space as we crave for whatever we forgot to buy.

An interesting week to say the least. Thankfully we can forget about the food shop for 3 months.

That’s all for now. Our next entry will be from South Sudan! Thanks or the emails and prayers. Feel free to keep them coming.

P

p.s. It’s the wee things that remind you of home. 

Hello from Nairobi

Jambo from Nairobi! 

We arrived on Tuesday and have 2 weeks here for training and prep prior to flying into South Sudan on the 21^st.

We’ve had a good few days so far relaxing and exploring the city in between meetings.

Thursday was Paul’s birthday and we ventured out, despite the thunderstorm, to an Ethiopian restaurant ‘Habesha’, where we had a really yummy meal, didn’t have any idea what we were eating most of the time but it tasted GOOD!

Here is a wee pic of Paul munching away being very culturally sensitive and eating with his right hand, unlike the first half of the meal!

So far observations in Nairobi include:

- We’d forgotten how uneasy you can feel when you’re totally lost and are trying to look like you know exactly where you’re going.
- We’re getting braver at walking elbow-to-wing mirror in the haphazard city centre traffic, my new mantra is, “I am smaller than the space”.
- Proper coffee is not cheap here (£9 a bag), well some is but Paul reckons in tasted like dust!
- Taps marked ‘C’ do not always indicate cold water.
- Boardgames by candlelight (lots of powercuts) could be a new favourite.

Next week promises lots more meetings and the task of buying all the food we anticipate needing for 3 months! We will try to update the blog again before we head into South Sudan.

Please do feel free to email either of us we’d really love to hear from you.

*S*