I was doing some research on sustainable technology. You know solar lantern lamps, life straws and mosquito nets - Anyway I was browsing and came upon this site: http://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/students/organizations/sec/summerfellows/features_eapen.html
Now don't get me wrong. It is good news to hear more MBA students from one of the Ivy Leagues coming out and wanting to make a difference and becoming socially concious in the work they intend to do. What puzzles me was a few things namely: why do we make stories and glorified a few when really so many thousands out there are working their ass off day in and out already doing it. I don't have an MBA, many of my friends working in the field don't have one. Does that make us less valuable in what we do? Because we don't count numbers or bring in powerful proven technologies into a community, does it mean we contribute less? Because we address social and political concerns associated with poverty - where does that leave us? I didn't think one needs to pursue an MBA in an effort to be socially conscious. I might have been naive when I did my graduate studies.
In relation to the article, can someone really tell me what Jeff Sachs and the Millenium Villages Project have really achieved with all that aid money being poured in (seriously the MVPs are not new at all and its impact have been questioned). Hmm. Sometimes we treat poverty as if it was a technical problem, we unscrew the parts, buy new parts, fix it up with new technology and voila - done. We forget that at the crux of it all, there are messy and often complex social, economical and political conditions attached to it which cannot be easily resolved by new discoveries in engineering or technology.
I tell you what I didn't like in the article: "Now is the time for forward- thinking people like Sachs, who can combine pop culture with economic development to reach the most people, both of those benefitted and the investors. And the time for emerging leaders like Eapen, who can combine two disparate degrees into socially conscious and impactful action, the kind which will lead the way to progress in the 21st century."
It smacks of big city first world arrogance.
Friday 19 November 2010
Wednesday 17 November 2010
Meet the people
My last post centred pretty much on the town and general sentiments I have about K-Town. But what's a place without its people or the very faces that defined and bring it to life,eh? So I thought I'll quickly do a quick intro into the familiar faces I have come to enjoy and of whom you might hear of every so often. And I hope when these faces read this posting, they won't be too offended that I have discretely talked about them...
I am only using initials here, for respect and discretion.
NB - At 27 years old, from Newcastle, she's one smart ass chick. She works for an NGO. She probably knows the history and politics of Sudan at the back of her hand and in her sleep, she might dream of it, who knows? But she is super cool, walks around town with her hair tight up in a bun on her head and her leather sling bag - sometimes cigarettes dangling out her mouth. She likes to drink Coca Cola and taught me to mix rum and 7-up. I am glad we share the same interests in many things except men. I like her a lot having 'solidified our friendship' after being thrown into a man-made pool and I think she is pretty.
TT - A young Japanese and with an attitude to match. Often rebelious (although unintentional I imagine), TT is great company. At professional meetings, he is serious but outside, he's fun to hang out with. His head has grown bigger since he first arrived here, he cuts his own hair with help and speaks more like an American than any Japanese I know. He also speaks Arabic with a tinge of a Japanese accent, enjoys soy sauce, plays the guitar and I suspect dreams of being a member of a Latino gang.
JH - I probably see JH more than I should. He is my colleague and lives upstairs in the guesthouse. We share office space and I await a point when we actually might get sick of each other. JH is cool though. He has scar under his right eye (I haven't ask why), wears a lot of khaki, holds various nationalities, loves cats and Arsenal football team. He listens to a lot of rock and roll (I think) as he's always air-drumming in the office.
HP - Spanish, smart, tough and pretty. HP is like one cool chick I imagine myself to be in another life. Currently she's teaching me to ride a motorbike. She makes amazing dinner, has a dog call Small Man (not that small), roam around the state collecting data. We watch a fair bit of movies at her place.
Joe - In his late 50's, Joe has gone through 2 heart bypass and is still smoking and drinking like a fish. He cooks excellent dinners and owes a really cool hang out where we go to. He's Egyptian I think, loves his monkeys (Sam, Pikolo and Lulu) and 2 dogs (Sam and Diego) and various birds. He's a lonely man sometimes I think especially in the day. I think he is an interesting man and I had a great conversation with him one night under the stars.
MMS - From Afghanistan, MMS has been around K-Town for almost 4 years. He is a nice bloke, kind and extremely helpful. He likes to salsa, plays the guitar and like TT, loves an evening of karaoke and if you ask him for a favour, he's happy to help out, no questions asked.
M - Another Afghani in town. M is your hard-beaten, tough and super chilled out friend that you could really always have an evening with. At 33, his life story is perhaps the most interesting one I have ever come across in my life. He has such an easy attitude and like his fellow country man MMS, if you asked for help, he doesn't turn you down. I mean he tries to be helpful.
So these are the characters that I see around here and spend time with. Looking at it, they each fit into a story, a novel one could craft with Kadugi being the backdrop of it all.
I am only using initials here, for respect and discretion.
NB - At 27 years old, from Newcastle, she's one smart ass chick. She works for an NGO. She probably knows the history and politics of Sudan at the back of her hand and in her sleep, she might dream of it, who knows? But she is super cool, walks around town with her hair tight up in a bun on her head and her leather sling bag - sometimes cigarettes dangling out her mouth. She likes to drink Coca Cola and taught me to mix rum and 7-up. I am glad we share the same interests in many things except men. I like her a lot having 'solidified our friendship' after being thrown into a man-made pool and I think she is pretty.
TT - A young Japanese and with an attitude to match. Often rebelious (although unintentional I imagine), TT is great company. At professional meetings, he is serious but outside, he's fun to hang out with. His head has grown bigger since he first arrived here, he cuts his own hair with help and speaks more like an American than any Japanese I know. He also speaks Arabic with a tinge of a Japanese accent, enjoys soy sauce, plays the guitar and I suspect dreams of being a member of a Latino gang.
JH - I probably see JH more than I should. He is my colleague and lives upstairs in the guesthouse. We share office space and I await a point when we actually might get sick of each other. JH is cool though. He has scar under his right eye (I haven't ask why), wears a lot of khaki, holds various nationalities, loves cats and Arsenal football team. He listens to a lot of rock and roll (I think) as he's always air-drumming in the office.
HP - Spanish, smart, tough and pretty. HP is like one cool chick I imagine myself to be in another life. Currently she's teaching me to ride a motorbike. She makes amazing dinner, has a dog call Small Man (not that small), roam around the state collecting data. We watch a fair bit of movies at her place.
Joe - In his late 50's, Joe has gone through 2 heart bypass and is still smoking and drinking like a fish. He cooks excellent dinners and owes a really cool hang out where we go to. He's Egyptian I think, loves his monkeys (Sam, Pikolo and Lulu) and 2 dogs (Sam and Diego) and various birds. He's a lonely man sometimes I think especially in the day. I think he is an interesting man and I had a great conversation with him one night under the stars.
MMS - From Afghanistan, MMS has been around K-Town for almost 4 years. He is a nice bloke, kind and extremely helpful. He likes to salsa, plays the guitar and like TT, loves an evening of karaoke and if you ask him for a favour, he's happy to help out, no questions asked.
M - Another Afghani in town. M is your hard-beaten, tough and super chilled out friend that you could really always have an evening with. At 33, his life story is perhaps the most interesting one I have ever come across in my life. He has such an easy attitude and like his fellow country man MMS, if you asked for help, he doesn't turn you down. I mean he tries to be helpful.
So these are the characters that I see around here and spend time with. Looking at it, they each fit into a story, a novel one could craft with Kadugi being the backdrop of it all.
Tuesday 16 November 2010
Welcome to Kadugli
Location: Kadugli, South Kordofan State, Sudan
Dear Reader,
I am writing this to you from the comforts of my little cosy room here in Kadugli. It is Eid Adha today and tomorrow, everyone is out of town and I'm using this opportunity to catch up on reading and so forth. I have been almost 4 weeks and about 1.5 months in Sudan. Many times, I sit and wonder about the reality of my situation, of where I am and then it hits me that I am actually here in a foreign land that I had merely imagined before. Kadugli is not a big town, small, easy to navigate and the sun blasting its rays on you - a constant reminder to how hot and dry it is around here. I don't mind it so much until I was hit by conjuncvitis (blurry vision, discomfort and photophobia) but that is by far the minor inconveniences of living here. I have never lived in a small town, not one this small. It took me a while to become accustomed to the nuances of everyday living and what it means. Each day, I am faced with the same routine - get up, go to work (which is 2 minutes away), work, lunch, work, dinner, occasional socialising with the crowd of expats here most likely at Joe's guesthouse, movies, reading and sleep. The next day I probably do it all over again.
The first thing I worry about is the boredom - what else am I going to do with myself each and every day. But obviously life and the universe have a way of spinning things around. Now that I've been here a fair bit, I don't mind the routine lifestyle, the same food (barbequed chicken with rice, bread and ful) or the same company. I take joy that I have great colleagues, friendly warm souls that greet me in the morning, eat at the same few places, have the occassional drink, watch movie screenings in H's courtyard, listen to music, read my books again and again and eagerly wait for the familiar phonecall from R each night. The simplicity baffled me at first but being away from the normality of what my life is or used to be gives me this opportunity to stop and breathe and stop worrying. I enjoy each day as if it was brand new.
Since I got here, I have been amazed at my ability to get up early on weekdays (Sun - Thurs are working days), learnt to ride a motorbike, be at eased with solitude, be at eased with the various bugs in my room and so on.
The work I do is turning to be more enjoyable than expected. I am glad for the opportunity to meet with different people all working in different sectors and the opportunity to glimpse into what they do. What I do is I coordinate the work of 8 UN agencies planning and implementing interventions with the aim of preventing conflict and enhance peace building efforts around the 1956 borders. South Kordofan state is a rather interesting place to be right now with all that is coming up. Voter registration starts yesterday and I can see the excitement in N (my new sanity pill) as she goes on and on about it. While I don't see much excitement in watching and observing people register (I likened it to watching paint slowly dry), I envy her work and am happy for her. She gets to see a lot more of the state and the very people who will bring change come January 2011.
I went on my very first mission earlier last week with our partnering agencies to Al Buram, not too far away from Kadugli. There's something beautiful to mud huts, barren landscape and hills in the background all tinged with history waiting to be told to the unsuspecting visitor. As we passed by a landmark, a colleague, Ibrahim would tell me what used to there. In one village called Al Dar, I sat around with a bunch of women, not understanding a word. We were discussing female genital mutilation and early marriages. Girls get married as young as 12 and between 6 and 8 years old, they are circumcised. For an untold many, the entire vagina is cut out. What this means is the girl, who barely is in puberty starts having problems right as soon as she is married off - penetration, delivery and post- delivery and so on.
All I could think of was the blue sky above me in all its glory and the hardened faces in front me and wondering how and why the universe had forgotten about them. The faces never left me and to this day, I can picture who was sitting where and the colour of their scarfs fluttering about. I can remember the face of the little boy who sat near me, his legs covered in open sores and flies picking at it every few seconds and how his sister keeps flicking it away.
In another village called Shatt Alsofia, somebody asked me my name. I said it and she told me, "In Arabic, this means guiding light". Guiding light - I never knew that but I like it. I smiled and gave her my thanks. Her name is Hanan and she is 18 years old. She also gave a beaded necklace (apparently for luck) which now hangs on my wall.
This is the start of my life and small adventures in Kadugli. What you will likely read here are my thoughts and the things I have come across. There is enough politics for you to read out there and this blog can neither be arsed nor interested to get involved in political debates. I leave that to the professionals. It doesn't mean I don't care or utterly uninterested. It's not my story to tell what ought to be, how things should be settled or who's right and wrong. There's enough sources out there that you can call on. What you will get here are just the little stories of my life here as I go about each day, marvelling at the new things I have seen and discovered.
Welcome to my world, welcome to Kadugli.
Dear Reader,
I am writing this to you from the comforts of my little cosy room here in Kadugli. It is Eid Adha today and tomorrow, everyone is out of town and I'm using this opportunity to catch up on reading and so forth. I have been almost 4 weeks and about 1.5 months in Sudan. Many times, I sit and wonder about the reality of my situation, of where I am and then it hits me that I am actually here in a foreign land that I had merely imagined before. Kadugli is not a big town, small, easy to navigate and the sun blasting its rays on you - a constant reminder to how hot and dry it is around here. I don't mind it so much until I was hit by conjuncvitis (blurry vision, discomfort and photophobia) but that is by far the minor inconveniences of living here. I have never lived in a small town, not one this small. It took me a while to become accustomed to the nuances of everyday living and what it means. Each day, I am faced with the same routine - get up, go to work (which is 2 minutes away), work, lunch, work, dinner, occasional socialising with the crowd of expats here most likely at Joe's guesthouse, movies, reading and sleep. The next day I probably do it all over again.
The first thing I worry about is the boredom - what else am I going to do with myself each and every day. But obviously life and the universe have a way of spinning things around. Now that I've been here a fair bit, I don't mind the routine lifestyle, the same food (barbequed chicken with rice, bread and ful) or the same company. I take joy that I have great colleagues, friendly warm souls that greet me in the morning, eat at the same few places, have the occassional drink, watch movie screenings in H's courtyard, listen to music, read my books again and again and eagerly wait for the familiar phonecall from R each night. The simplicity baffled me at first but being away from the normality of what my life is or used to be gives me this opportunity to stop and breathe and stop worrying. I enjoy each day as if it was brand new.
Since I got here, I have been amazed at my ability to get up early on weekdays (Sun - Thurs are working days), learnt to ride a motorbike, be at eased with solitude, be at eased with the various bugs in my room and so on.
The work I do is turning to be more enjoyable than expected. I am glad for the opportunity to meet with different people all working in different sectors and the opportunity to glimpse into what they do. What I do is I coordinate the work of 8 UN agencies planning and implementing interventions with the aim of preventing conflict and enhance peace building efforts around the 1956 borders. South Kordofan state is a rather interesting place to be right now with all that is coming up. Voter registration starts yesterday and I can see the excitement in N (my new sanity pill) as she goes on and on about it. While I don't see much excitement in watching and observing people register (I likened it to watching paint slowly dry), I envy her work and am happy for her. She gets to see a lot more of the state and the very people who will bring change come January 2011.
I went on my very first mission earlier last week with our partnering agencies to Al Buram, not too far away from Kadugli. There's something beautiful to mud huts, barren landscape and hills in the background all tinged with history waiting to be told to the unsuspecting visitor. As we passed by a landmark, a colleague, Ibrahim would tell me what used to there. In one village called Al Dar, I sat around with a bunch of women, not understanding a word. We were discussing female genital mutilation and early marriages. Girls get married as young as 12 and between 6 and 8 years old, they are circumcised. For an untold many, the entire vagina is cut out. What this means is the girl, who barely is in puberty starts having problems right as soon as she is married off - penetration, delivery and post- delivery and so on.
All I could think of was the blue sky above me in all its glory and the hardened faces in front me and wondering how and why the universe had forgotten about them. The faces never left me and to this day, I can picture who was sitting where and the colour of their scarfs fluttering about. I can remember the face of the little boy who sat near me, his legs covered in open sores and flies picking at it every few seconds and how his sister keeps flicking it away.
In another village called Shatt Alsofia, somebody asked me my name. I said it and she told me, "In Arabic, this means guiding light". Guiding light - I never knew that but I like it. I smiled and gave her my thanks. Her name is Hanan and she is 18 years old. She also gave a beaded necklace (apparently for luck) which now hangs on my wall.
This is the start of my life and small adventures in Kadugli. What you will likely read here are my thoughts and the things I have come across. There is enough politics for you to read out there and this blog can neither be arsed nor interested to get involved in political debates. I leave that to the professionals. It doesn't mean I don't care or utterly uninterested. It's not my story to tell what ought to be, how things should be settled or who's right and wrong. There's enough sources out there that you can call on. What you will get here are just the little stories of my life here as I go about each day, marvelling at the new things I have seen and discovered.
Welcome to my world, welcome to Kadugli.
Sunday 14 November 2010
Invisible Children
I like watching films more than once. It helps me refresh my memories and more often than as a personal pleasure, I get to relive what sentimental ideals I have in life. So earlier, I watched this documentary called Invisible Children
http://blog.invisiblechildren.com/2010/11/a-message-to-president-obama-from-the-lra-victims/
Watch this video - about the abducted children of Northern Uganda and their message to Obama
http://blog.invisiblechildren.com/2010/11/a-message-to-president-obama-from-the-lra-victims/
Watch this video - about the abducted children of Northern Uganda and their message to Obama
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