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.

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

Currently reading and flicking... The Art of Travel

Having read How Proust Can Change Your Life, The Consolations of Philosophy and Essays in Love, I can officially say I am quite a fan of Alain De Botton's writings. So when I found The Art of Travel on a local charity store in West Hampstead in London, I bought it - it was a second hand copy and was only 99p. It would be foolish of me to not buy it. As an avid traveller (long term mover as I do not really settled in one place necessarily), I was very excited to go through the book and see what further philosophical insights he might add. But I was somewhat disappointed at the passionless manner he talks about the wonders of travel. His grasp of chosen writers/painters/artists and other notable people like Edward Hopper (who is featured a fair bit in his other bookst) is excellent for a novice art-reader like myself. But de Botton's seemingly less-than-excited attitude towards the joys of what travel is was perhaps less impressive. He started the book with his complaints about his vacation to Barbados - forgetting to tell a colleagues he is away, the one-sided swaying palm trees, the petty argument about creme caramel and so on and then questioned how in spite of being in a very exotic location, he is still plague by the same old woes. His answer was: we do not understand or know very well the art of travel. We are constantly bombarded by travel agents, brochures on where to go but not always why and how to. 


I have travelled a fair bit in my life and have never once took myself to a travel agent (I certainly have encouraged anyone I know to do same). I don't believe that there is necessarily an art of travel i.e. how and why to. I mean, we all travel for very different reasons but it would be unwise to generalize why we travel I think (although this what he attempts to do). What I think is missing in this book and which I think is perhaps the most fundamental issue that should have been better discussed is - the faces and people you meet while on travels. Sure I can go to Rome and visit the sights like all the things tourists do and I might have a good time but I reckon if I wander the streets and have no set plans, I might end up finding a gem, a restaurant hidden in a hole, people whose lives differ from mine and more often that not, beautiful stories waiting to be untold. I believe people make places. Places come to life because of the very faces and people that make up its environment. Being able to fly into different countries doesn't quite mean we travelled. It only means we have arrived and the journey into discovery begins. He says, 'what we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home... the pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.' 


I am not sure about this but I can only say from my own experience. Travel has brought me perspective with which I understand the world around me. I still don't know a lot of things or understand the complexities of the world we live in today. I am constantly hungry for more. But I rather move from my comfort chair and see for myself what the world and exotic corners have to offer rather than observing it through media-tinted glasses and the observations of one man (or in this case, the experiences of some expert observers).

Next location: Kadugli , Sudan

After almost 3 months of waiting in anticipation for my Sudanese visa, I am finally finally going! The day I heard the news, I jumped for joy and because I was in Bremen by myself, I couldn't shout out so I updated my Facebook status, my gchat status and my Skype status. Nothing could take away me from my excitement and nothing will. So come Sunday 10 October I will board the flight that will take me to Khartoum and I imagine the first thing that will hit me upon arrival will be the prickly tropical heat - oh how I miss that!

If you haven't been reading your news, it's time to do so. If you haven't been interested in Africa, well, it's a good time to get acquainted. Come January 2011, a referendum on self-determination will be held to decide on Sudan North-South border and as such become the world's latest international boundary. The South definitely would vote for independence while the North will likely try its best to desperately hold on to a united Sudan. This should be a defining moment in Africa and would be one to watch. The line that separates the North and South remains undefined at the moment and has delayed the implementation of the 2005 2Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended almost 22 years of civil war. With anxiety building up on both sides coupled with mistrust between both parties, it will be important obviously that the signatory parties be urged to maintain peace and ensure that he country do not relapse into conflict.

To know more, visit the following links:
International Crisis Group http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/africa/horn-of-africa/sudan.aspx
UNDP Sudan http://www.sd.undp.org/

The 2010 World Humanitarian Day project

WHERE TO NEXT?

Where do broken hearts go? Well, in my case to Kadugli, South Kordofan State in Sudan. Taking a contract working on community recovery and rehabilitation. Awaiting the long long visa process right now.

A note of thanks to the ones I love

When you read this post, I am no longer living in China. I have left Beijing in early July without much consideration or thought. I only know it was time to go and I had to go. The past few months have been an unbelievable journey of epic proportions, at least in my view. It was harder than I imagined it would be and most of all, I truly understand now what it means to be alone and lonely. The man I was and perhaps still in love with left me with nothing more to say. Nothing but just bucket loads of pain and sorrow. I am human and I need explanations to understand what's going on. But I had none. What I write here is not about to be a rant or anger or pain towards him or what happened. I have accepted the situation and whatever it means, I will learn to live with it everyday. Importantly, I will be all right.He will be all right. We are both okay.

People fall in love and people split up and the cycle keeps its wheels turning over and over again. It is life, isn't it? Khalil Gibran taught me that very same thing that gives us joy are often the very same things that brings us pain. The last thing I want to be is bitterness. In the past few weeks, when friends and acquaintances heard about what happened, they have always reacted with a rather sad, sorry-but you-will-get-over-it look which I found rather amusing. It seems that there are certain appropriate behaviours that comes along with a broken heart. To shout and yell, to go get wasted with your girlfriends, to sob until the cows come home and so on. I did nothing of that sort and at first it makes me feel really strange. These are social norms and I supposed I ought to react as expected and then everyone will then fall into their respective roles and life goes on as it should.

I couldn't and right now, I can safely say with all the confidence in my heart that I am glad I behaved and did it the way I wanted it to be. Some may say it is perhaps not healthy to repress the anger and sadness. Whatever. To me, it is important to feel and understand it but who's to say what's the best way to deal with it.

I wrote this note not with the intention to discuss or even reflect upon what happened. That will happen at some point I guess. BUT I wrote this because in view of what happened, something else happened too. In my quiet grief, I found the unexpected. I found and discovered back the family and friends I had and what they really really mean to me. New friends that stood by me and reminded me of my own strength, old familiar faces that opened their homes and hearts with so much generosity and warmth and family that remained true to their word. I could not have gone through the days without them. NO, I couldn't. From the very little gestures, cigarette rolling, phone calls, emails, skype dates, gchat to nice lil cards, and dinner to all-the-best-Salone-music CD. I had it and it felt GOOD: I felt for the first time in a LONG time, I felt things are going to be better and I am going to be just fine. I hope they know they mean a lot to me. Everyone of them. I am humbled by their kindness and will forever be in debt. I take this opportunity to say thank you from the bottom of my heart.