Well this has been an interesting week.
Monday started with an early morning phone call saying that the working group that I sit in on once a month has been requested to meet with the Governor of East Equatorial (where I live). Of course the call came in at 7:45am and the meeting was to take place in 1 hour. Now I am not saying that my town is big, because it is not, but I had just gotten out of the shower and I had not had my breakfast, so I had to hurry to get ready for work and this meeting that I knew nothing about. Great way to start my 3rd week in country!
The meeting went fine and it turned out that there was nothing for my organization to do, the work that the Governor wanted done was in a part of the state where we don't work.
The rest of the week was fairly uneventful: meetings, email discussions, etc, etc. By Thursday I was tired of being in the office so I decided to go out into the field to meet with the farmers.
What was supposed to be a quick 1/2 day trip turned into a whole day excursion, but then this is Africa. We started to drive to Kudo and about 30 minutes into our trip we are stopped by a rope across the road and some UN vehicles. Seeing the UN vehicles is nothing new here, I think that more than half the cars on the road are UN. When we get to the rope we see that it the land mine removal group and that they had just put up the rope. We now had to wait 45 minutes for them to finish what they were doing on the sides of the road before we could continue. They close the roads down when they do these projects so that if they miss one of the mines no one driving by will be injured. Since I had experience with road trips in Africa I knew to bring a book along with me, so during the land mine stop I just opened up the book and read.
We finally got to one of the farm areas and started to distribute the seeds we brought with us. When I got out of the car and met with the farms they thought that it was interesting/strange that a woman was the boss. The female farmers started laughing at me and then when they were told that I was the boss, their eyes got really big and they wanted introductions. The children were different story, they all ran from me. I am not sure that they had ever seen a white person before and I was scary to them.
I have pictures from the trip I will try to load this weekend.
Thursday was a long day of distributing seeds but worthwhile to get a chance to see where the farmers work and how they clear the land.
Friday was another day in the field, but this time we were looking at the fields of cassava that could be purchased. We were on one of our farmers lands looking to buy his cassava stalks to provide to other farmers for the next planting season. We had to determine how many acres were available and ensure that the plants were disease free.
Of course on the way to the field we got a flat tire, no trip is uneventful. A trip that was to take 2 hours once again took all day.
I got back to the office on Friday and was looking for something different to do, rather than sit at the hotel for the evening. So some of the other aide workers and I went over to the UN compound and had drinks with the UN MISS workers. It was a good night. It is hard to describe the night. The bar is an open cabana with cold beer, flags from the countries that are working on the compound and lots of trailers. The guys were great and the stories were interesting. Most of the people that were there work with the Policing unit so they thought that it was interesting that I worked with farmers. It was nice to sit and talk with them but I know that my body could not keep up with them over a long period of time. Lets just say that the Bosnia's can drink and smoke more than anyone I have seen!
Today, Saturday, was the first day that I walked around the town by myself. It was a short day in town but I went to the market to see what I could get and I will be in good shape when I finally move out of the hotel and into my house. The interesting thing is that being in the market was the only time since I have been here that I have been called "white person" or one of the two local words for it. It has been nice being in town and not being called that.
Hopefully next week will be uneventful but since this is South Sudan I am not counting on it. I hope that everyone at home is starting to enjoy the beginnings of summer. I will be thinking of you while I am hotter than you know where.
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