Yei for Free Rice

Yei is a town about xx kilometers southwest of Juba, and it is absolutely beautiful. The rains started there long before they started here (speaking of rains, they are very slow this year in coming to Juba!), so everything is lush and green. The dirt airstrip was so small that you can't even see it properly from looking out of the side of the airplane, so it is a bit disconcerting when you are decending what seems to be directly into the jungle. Highlights of the trip included feeding a lolipop to a pet monkey named Max, finally getting to walk around instead of being driven around in a land cruiser, actually having a fabulous night's sleep because it is cool enough, and learning that if you crush the leaves of a teak tree, it produces a red dye that you can use as nail polish.

On the drive back to Juba we passed the first primary school built in Southern Sudan, the place where the late John Garang went to school. It didn't even look that old. It's crazy to think that schools are considered a modern invention here in Sudan.

I saw Salva Kiir this morning, the President of Southern Sudan driving by us on the way to a meeting at the Ministries - his caravan is only a few cars long, and although he has bodyguards that hang out the otherwise tinted windows of the SUVs, he keeps his own window open and his trademark hat on so that he can wave to people. So you can literally see the President, not just the motorcade, when he passes. Given the history of the country I personally would be crouched down in a ball on the floor, but you have to give the man props.

Right after seeing the Prez, I got a call that Simba had to be flown to Nairobi to go to the hospital. He has typhoid for sure (two tests came back positive), but there's something else wrong as well because he had a killer headache and fever that wouldn't go away. So off he goes for a week in Nairobi to rest with his family. I have to admit I'm just a little bit jealous :)

My mom sent me this link - www.freerice.com - where you can play a multiple choice vocabulary game and for every word you get right the sponsors of the website donate free rice to the UN World Food Program. Pretty cool!

stand up and be cunted!

Ok, I know this is of questionable taste, but seriously, I couldn't restrain myself from posting this photo. I mean, at least they finally got it together enough in Sudan to have a census. They just need to sack their current translator or focus a little on their spelling...

who can throw a stick closest to that big stone over there

so i've been stuck in this horrible downward spiral of guilt - i haven't posted, so i need to post something, but it has to be really big and worthwhile, but i don't know what to write, so i haven't posted, etc. so here's my attempt at pulling myself up out of that ridiculousness.

it's April already, and i've been in Sudan awhile now, and have settled into the pace of things. unfortunately that pace includes being sick about once a month (this time it's tonsilitis, or strep throat, they can't do a throat culture here so they're just treating it with antibiotics anyway), going to the same 4 or 5 bars with the same group of people every weekend, and still not having a permanent place to live. although that was promised in November. however, there is light at the end of the tunnel, and i am moving into a house this weekend, as soon as they put screens in and locks on the door. there are trees in the "courtyard" (i'm trying to make the fact that we have to have a 10' high wall around the compound seem a bit more appealing), and my room is painted bright aqua! i don't have pictures yet, because my camera, ipod and external hard drive were all stolen from the other place i am staying by the weekend guards (my roomates had stuff stolen as well - we narrowed it down to a 6-hour time slot), but when i get a new one or borrow someone else's this blog will be graced by photos once again.

things with the boy are still going really really well, and it's time to bestow on him a code name for this blog since, as you may have noticed, i don't use people's normal names very often. from here on out, his Petunia in Paradise name will now be Simba. Simba means "lion" in Swahili. for those of you who know him (or have heard me talk about him) in real life, it will become instantly clear why i chose this name.

anyway, simba and i went to pemba, mozambique for my R&R, which was which was absolutely amazing, incredible, relaxing, gorgeous, etc etc etc. had a hard time leaving. the week was perfect. we stayed at a campsite in our own chalet, rented a motorbike for the week, cooked fish, sat on the beach, got drunk on the beach off of liquor made from sugar cane (we never actually figured out what it was) by playing the riveting game of "who can throw a stick closest to that big stone over there". good times. seriously, it was amazing.

work is going well, i'm much more confident about things now, and my department is growing from 9 people to 15 people as of next week. very exciting!!!! and more travel coming up - Mundri in 2 weeks, Yei the week after that, and probably Yambio in the near future as well.

and to close, i will leave you with my favorite moment of the day: Sudan's version of an ice cream truck - a man peddling a rickety old bicycle with a dusty orange water cooler strapped to the handle bars, neon plastic flowers tied to the handle, playing "santa claus is coming to town" from a doorbell he keeps pressing which is attached to a speaker.

always something to brighten up the day :)

Allergic to Dust

Yes, it's sad but true. The itchy eyes, runny nose, cough and irritated throat tell an all too familiar tale. Sigh. I also think going jogging at the airport this past week when they were burning all the grass next to the runway didn't help matters any. For some perspective, here are 2 pictures of the same view - looking out the front of my office - the first one was taken in October and the second was taken last week.Crazy, right? That's not fog you're looking at, it's dust. It's all I can think about. Dust everywhere. After showering I have to make sure my hair is dry before leaving the house because if I drive in a car or walk when it is still wet the dust sticks to it and makes it feel like straw by the time it is dry. No amount of conditioner can help that out. And oh my poor computer! It's going to need a serious cleaning next time I go to Nairobi. Unless you sweep the floors every day it just piles up and there's a layer of sediment over everything.

Enough kvetching about dust. For something slightly more interesting, a shipment of mosquito nets came in (not my department, but still for my organization) and had to be transferred from a warehouse to other trucks for distribution, so I went with a colleague to check it out and take some pictures. Here are a few of my favorites:

I had a very lonely/homesick day last week so I just want to say I love and miss everyone at home and am hopefully soon going to have a vonage phone so calling me in Juba will be just like calling anyone else in the states. Imagine that! I'll be able to pick up the phone anytime (anytime our generator is on at least) and have one of you on the other line. Fabulous. And it won't be finicky and unreliable like skype. I can't wait!

Peace y'all

pictures and a white onion

Two highlights of my week: live music by a Congolese band (including 4 ladies dancing in pink sparkly spandex outfits), and finding white onions in the market. This may not seem like a big deal, but usually there are only small, red onions that are very strong. But a white onion, oh boy! To celebrate I made green bean salad with a vinigarette. Yummy. This week was quite busy. A few 16 hour days, and I worked both days this weekend. I can't WAIT until we hire additional staff. I have an R&R coming up in the beginning of March and need to figure out where to go. Mozambique? Paris? Zanzibar? Madagascar? What's your vote?

Also, thought I'd post some more random pictures of Sudan. Enjoy!

The guesthouse where I live

A view of Juba from the Jebel (big hill)Little to no infrastructureRoad between project sitesAnd my favorite, a road in Juba during the rainy season

Petunia is back in Paradise

Hello everyone, there's been a bit of a lapse since the last posting, but never fear, Petunia is back in Paradise. I have spent lots of time on planes and in airports during the past month, and instead of doing something productive, for my own amusement I decided to tally up the number of countries I've visited each year over the past few years. Had to consult the passport for a few of them. So here's the list, not including the US:
2003: 7
2004: 9
2005: 6
2006: 6
2007: 5
and for this year, 2008, I've been to 4 so far, and it's only been 1 month!!! Don't even start asking how many hours I've spent traveling.

It's strange, Juba actually feels like home now - I felt like I was coming back to my life. Actually having someone to come back to also helps, but I missed my friends, my clothes (was wearing my Mom's clothes for most of my vacation), and the now-familiar sights and sounds. There's also a ton of work to be done, and thankfully I have the energy to push out a lot of the planning necessary for the beginning of the year's activities, of which there are millions.

Juba is no longer the "lush" and "green" place I described in my first post. The dry season has arrived in all its dusty glory and everything is covered with a fine coat of reddish silt. To examine the contents of this substance is not something I'm prepared to do, as it's probably a nasty mixture of dirt, maram, sand, sediment from burning garbage, ash from burning the grasses by the side of the road, and a good measure of feces that I will have to pretend I'm not breathing in for the next few months until the rainy season returns (May? June? we'll see). To drive around Juba is like driving through a dust storm, and it gets particularly tricky at night when it's like driving through fog there's so much dust in the air. Luckily, the tarmac road which connects the ministries is halfway done. So the MPs can race around and everyone in town who doesn't actually know how to drive or deal with vehicles moving faster than 30 kph just gets into accidents. Joy. Maybe someone should look into installing speed bumps...

Much love and here's to a happy AND HEALTHY 2008!

Race vs. Gender in US Politics

This Op-Ed column in the New York Times today by Gloria Steinem is particularly poignant and good for deepening the healthy debate going on in the US right now about gender and race. At least someone in the media finally said it.
Also, I want to state for the record that I haven't made up my mind about the Democratic Party candidates. However, since I'm registered to vote in New York as independent, I can't vote in the primaries. Which bothers me this time around, but at this point it's too late and I would have to vote absentee anyway.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/08/opinion/08steinem.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
January 8, 2008
New York Times
Op-Ed Contributor
Women Are Never Front-Runners
By GLORIA STEINEM
THE woman in question became a lawyer after some years as a community organizer, married a corporate lawyer and is the mother of two little girls, ages 9 and 6. Herself the daughter of a white American mother and a black African father — in this race-conscious country, she is considered black — she served as a state legislator for eight years, and became an inspirational voice for national unity. Be honest: Do you think this is the biography of someone who could be elected to the United States Senate? After less than one term there, do you believe she could be a viable candidate to head the most powerful nation on earth? If you answered no to either question, you're not alone. Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House. This country is way down the list of countries electing women and, according to one study, it polarizes gender roles more than the average democracy. That's why the Iowa primary was following our historical pattern of making change. Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women (with the possible exception of obedient family members in the latter). If the lawyer described above had been just as charismatic but named, say, Achola Obama instead of Barack Obama, her goose would have been cooked long ago. Indeed, neither she nor Hillary Clinton could have used Mr. Obama's public style — or Bill Clinton's either — without being considered too emotional by Washington pundits. So why is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one? The reasons are as pervasive as the air we breathe: because sexism is still confused with nature as racism once was; because anything that affects males is seen as more serious than anything that affects "only" the female half of the human race; because children are still raised mostly by women (to put it mildly) so men especially tend to feel they are regressing to childhood when dealing with a powerful woman; because racism stereotyped black men as more "masculine" for so long that some white men find their presence to be masculinity-affirming (as long as there aren't too many of them); and because there is still no "right" way to be a woman in public power without being considered a you-know-what. I'm not advocating a competition for who has it toughest. The caste systems of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together. That's why Senators Clinton and Obama have to be careful not to let a healthy debate turn into the kind of hostility that the news media love. Both will need a coalition of outsiders to win a general election. The abolition and suffrage movements progressed when united and were damaged by division; we should remember that. I'm supporting Senator Clinton because like Senator Obama she has community organizing experience, but she also has more years in the Senate, an unprecedented eight years of on-the-job training in the White House, no masculinity to prove, the potential to tap a huge reservoir of this country's talent by her example, and now even the courage to break the no-tears rule. I'm not opposing Mr. Obama; if he's the nominee, I'll volunteer. Indeed, if you look at votes during their two-year overlap in the Senate, they were the same more than 90 percent of the time. Besides, to clean up the mess left by President Bush, we may need two terms of President Clinton and two of President Obama. But what worries me is that he is seen as unifying by his race while she is seen as divisive by her sex. What worries me is that she is accused of "playing the gender card" when citing the old boys' club, while he is seen as unifying by citing civil rights confrontations. What worries me is that male Iowa voters were seen as gender-free when supporting their own, while female voters were seen as biased if they did and disloyal if they didn't. What worries me is that reporters ignore Mr. Obama's dependence on the old — for instance, the frequent campaign comparisons to John F. Kennedy, though Senator Edward Kennedy is supporting Senator Clinton — while not challenging the slander that her progressive policies are part of the Washington status quo. What worries me is that some women, perhaps especially younger ones, hope to deny or escape the sexual caste system; thus Iowa women over 50 and 60, who disproportionately supported Senator Clinton, proved once again that women are the one group that grows more radical with age. This country can no longer afford to choose our leaders from a talent pool limited by sex, race, money, powerful fathers and paper degrees. It's time to take equal pride in breaking all the barriers. We have to be able to say: "I'm supporting her because she'll be a great president and because she's a woman." Gloria Steinem is a co-founder of the Women's Media Center.