 mud of the rainy season somewhere waiting for you to pull them out.
You know that you’ll never make it and without it, you know you are doomed.
 His calling awakens your bladder and reminds you of the curfew. You need to get going. You are cheerful, though, because tonight at least you have a driver. You get a lift to your living compound and are welcomed by a call for dinner. Ugali and beans. Again. You look at the food, take your plate to your tent, sit down and force down a few bites. You switch on your laptop, the custodian of hundreds of unread messages. Soon the frogs’ choir and bats hitting your tent imply that midnight is near… Yawn… You stand up and stretch.
Wait! One more message to read. Your wife and kids remind you how much they miss you and that your place is at home, in Rome, with them. You are about to reply, telling them that your supervisor asked you to postpone your leave due to an unplanned emergency but that would be too much in one day.
Just after midnight, you switch off the light and promise yourself that the following day you’ll figure out the meaning of all this… And that you will soon find “a better balance”.
In most parts of the world, people have learned how to curb the forces of nature. However, there are still places where this has not taken place yet.
Recently, I was invited by the Government of the State in South Sudan I work in. The Governor reminded everybody that a good administration should always follow a bottom-up approach and that consultations should take place in the “bomas”, the small grass root communities, first. Then, in the counties and finally, at the state level where the final consolidation is done.
After pausing for an instant, he looked around the table and noticed that the commissioner, the ministers and the general directors were all from the capital city.
As a Masters student, I often wondered about the possible applications of the Theory of Relativity in real life. Now fifteen years later, while sitting at my desk as the recently appointed head of our office in South Sudan, I understand.
A young man came to me with a request for a salary advance at the end of another day in the ‘deep field’ - a day full of nuisances and challenges. The form bore two signatures, which gave me some reassurance the request had gone through some initial screening process. I asked him for his name and what he did for WFP. The answer didn’t come immediately, so I repeated my question. After some seconds of hesitation, he uttered a few words in Dinka, the local language. Being Italian, I had no difficulty in using my body language to make him understand to come back with an interpreter which he did.
His name and function though, did not match those on the form. I asked the translator, one of the two signatories, why the name on the form was not the same name as that provided by the young man.
- “Well, because that’s his brother’s name”, the interpreter replied.
- “And where is his brother?” I queried.
- “He deceased a couple of months ago!” he said.
He certainly had a point and I was about to mellow out.
I held my breath for a moment, thought to answer, but could not but smile. I closed my laptop and called it a day.
I have twenty-four hours in Aweil to build a concrete base for the office satellite communications dish. This system enables us to cut down the communications costs dramatically, so I really have to get it up and running before the plane picks me up again. And I only have one day to do it. The challenge is to find casual laborers to help me build the concrete base. The rest of the work, I can do by myself.
After hiring a dozen of them who resign minutes after they have taken the job, I am introduced to these Darfur refugees who accepted my terms and conditions: work through the night until the concrete base is done, load the gravel, the bricks, the iron rods and transport them to the site. They take the job.
We work from 14:30 and complete the work the next day at 03:00 in the morning. At 08:30 we continue, plastering the bricks. This is when I take a picture of this man. This daily labour is a refugee from Darfur. He has little or nothing. Not even a home. He lives in a camp. He worked through the night and still, he smiles. It is comforting to see this smile.
When I pay them in the evening, they look at me like someone who just gave them an award or a present. And yet, the salary is their right. They are thankful while yet they did ME a favour!
I leave wishing I could be more of help to them another day. I realize this is what I enjoy about working in this part of the world. In all of my actions, I get the chance to see its immediate impact on the people, on the beneficiaries. I will never regret having chosen to work here. Here I get what a big salary or a promotion cannot give me: the feeling that I have been of help to a human being.
Story and picture by Cyprien Hiniolwa (Camp Juba, Southern Sudan).
When everything else is lacking, the bare necessities are really bare. Those coming from relatively developed countries have forgotten a human being needs only the very bare necessities. One of those is a proper toilet with a flush. I always loved camping, but camping for a living and especially in a non-tourist resort has never been my dream. The best you can find as a humanitarian worker in most places in South Sudan is a tent. The lucky ones have the type where you can simply walk rather than crawl in after a long and tiring day….. And a pit-latrine. What’s wrong with a tent and a pit latrine? Nothing, if it wasn’t for some small details.
According to Murphy’s Law, your tent always ends up a good twenty metres from the latrine. A distance that can reach a hundred metres depending on Murphy’s degree of concentration. At night, once you’ve decided you cannot hold it in anymore, you start summoning all your energy and courage to overcome the many obstacles separating you from the latrine. You often wonder whether it wouldn’t be less painful to simply forget about it and have a good shower the next morning.
At any rate unlike you, mosquitoes and many other unknown creatures love your tent.
So getting out of it, without being bitten to death, is the first obstacle. Obviously, this doesn’t come without stress since your tent’s zipper is usually broken and you don’t want any unwelcome tenants to swamp in. When you are lucky, you haven’t forgotten your torch so you can proceed to your ultimate destination without the further frustration of having to fiddle with that damned zipper again to get back into your tent.
The second barrier is the snakes. That is, when you have a properly fenced compound where bigger animals cannot enter as in this part of the world a lot of animals still move around freely and undisturbed. If your journey proceeds without unpleasant encounters, you can finally open the door to the pit latrine. Since you have at least another ten competitors for the same latrine, you always walk the last five metres praying that nobody else has had a similar pressing need and you won’t have to wait in the dark for fifteen minutes.
You start imagining that some disgusting slimy creature has chosen this unusual place as its den. In those moments, you are still tempted to go back to your tent with your business unfinished. However, after a few seconds of realism and the pressure from your bowels, you decide to lower your trousers and get it over with.
Story and pictures by Enrico Pausilli.
For us, aid workers, there is this magical term: the “Deep Field”. It stands for those locations where the real relief work is done. But the “Deep Field” is relative, depending on where you stand. Here I was, leaving our headquarters in Rome for my new assignment in Bor, South Sudan. A place I learned to know as the “Real Deep Field”. How deep can one go, though?
Just before leaving our Rome, I met a colleague who’d just come back from a “field” mission. “Where to?” I said. “Khartoum” he replied. Khartoum, an as-if non-family duty station, is considered by the UN to be an adverse place, bad enough to make you earn the famous hardship allowance. Khartoum, with its international airport, renowned university and air-conditioned houses and shops, is indeed considered a daunting destination by most HQ colleagues waiting for their reassignment. For me, Khartoum was just the first of two transit points on the way to “The Real Deep Field”: my final destination and the frontier to civilization.
The flight to Juba was pleasant and without surprises. Juba, the capital of South Sudan and one of the three WFP coordination centres in the area, had a more “familiar field look”: a poorly developed place, with loads of challenges. But still a place where the bare necessities could be found. Half of my colleagues were still living in tents. Offices were housed in air-conditioned containers. There was no local infrastructure, rough hygienic conditions and a volatile security situation. But all types of food, drinks and a bit of night life were available. In my first few days in Juba, I felt this was the level of isolation and hardship I was ready to tolerate.
At the mention of the word