The Witte Times

Isoke to Ikotos, Sudan

Witte — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 04:13:04 GMT

September 6 (cont) Sister Paskwina goes on to tell us the history of the mission here at Isohe. She was actually born and spent her early childhood here. Her family was displaced by the war and she spent many of her early adult years in Uganda. Italian missionaries first came here in 1926. They stayed through 1964, when the government kicked out all missionaries. They built a small church when they first came, but began construction on a large brick church in the 40’s which was finished in 1949. It is still standing and the place of Catholic worship here since then. (The only church around here, as far as we could tell). Paskwina tells many stories about the war and its effects on the people. She witnessed cluster bombs being dropped on nearby villages by the North, and was in Isoke when bombers regularly scattered bombs onto the village. “Everyone had their hiding place!” She noted the difference between the old and newer bombs which she suspects were provided by the Chinese. The old bombs exploded several feet into the air, but the newer ones spread into the ground. Anyone hiding underground could be cut in half!”

   Sister Flo has taken us on an afternoon walk through the local tribal village. Fascinating. We amble at her casual, familiar pace from grass hut to grass hut to mud hut. There seem to be multiple enclaves of families with endless numbers of kids under 10 and young mothers under 15. Many men here have 2 wives. At one family we visited, both wives and their mutual children lived together, under one roof. More commonly, the households are separate but close by. At each group of huts, we are offered chairs to sit and make time a bit. Many of the enclaves are brewing the local, apparently very potent, sorghum-based brew. The local tribe is called Logir, according to Sister Paskwina. They speak a dialect called Otuho. We’ve learned: “Angae”, meaning “How are you?”. “Oyyu”= “I am fine”. OR, (with a handshake) “Mong”=“How are you?”. “Ogolo”=“I am fine.” “Humo” is “Thank you”. “Humo bebe”=“Thank you very much.”-mw

September 7, 2008 Sunday. It’s been raining off and on all night. We have our usual breakfast, with the sisters, of hot chapatti (?sp.) and Nescafe or tea in the little dining room. The rain is still falling when Sunday mass starts at 10. The inside of the church is spare, but impressive, with 40 foot high, arched roof (now sheet metal, after the tile rotted out). Due to the rain, the church is sparsely populated with locals. Mass is celebrated by three priests, the main celebrant visiting from a nearby town. The whole ceremony lasts 2 hours, but is regularly energized by traditional singing and dancing up and down the center aisle by about 30 girls from about 5 years to 12 or 13 all dressed in bright, traditional clothing. As accompanied by a traditional Djembe drum and ankle bells, this is a rhythmic revelation, and echoes of the roof and walls in a beautiful symphony. Gaby has been able to record a bit of the singing and dancing on her camera’s video. Cool! There is a segment in the service where local announcements and events are read to the congregation. It is then that our presence at the service is noted and we are thanked for the work we are doing to “help bring information to the outside world” of the situation and needs of Southern Sudan.
By the time the mass is ended, the church is packed to overflowing.

The rain has stopped after the mass, but the weather is too unstable for us to get anyone to guide us up the mountain behind us.

Sister Paskwina introduces us to Rebecca and Cecilia, two orphaned sisters of 5 and 7 years, respectively. They are the second and third of 5 sisters. Along with their older sister, they have lived here at the boarding school, and with the sisters, since their father shot and killed their mother three years ago. . Their mother was 8 months pregnant with her 6th baby, who also died. Supposedly, he went into a lethal rage over his lack of sons. The girls not only witnessed their mother being shot, but were threatened with being shot themselves “if they said anything”. Rebecca could only fall asleep in Paskwina’s arms for several months. “She is much better now. Almost no nightmares.” The father fled. The younger two sisters are living with the mother’s mother.-mw

September 8, 2008 Monday. Our getting to Kuron is looking more and more doubtful! The rainy season is honored here as completely changing schedules and plans. No road to Kuron, and no prospect of reliable air transport. We are waiting to hear the final word (regarding air travel) from Teody today. If we were to go to Kuron, we would likely need to leave Isoke today to drive to Loki, and take a plane from there tomorrow, flying back to Loki on Thursday. This would leave us only one full, non-travel day in Kuron.
   It’s official. We’re staying in Isoke. Getting to Kuron and the Peace Village will have to wait for another time. Moses, the director of the TB program here, quips: “Kuron is the end of the world!” For us, the end of the rainbow, ever elusive. I have a big package from Mary Clark for Sister Angela which also has in it an electronic fetal Doppler which she had wanted. I’ll leave it on Thursday with the sisters in Narus.
   Monday is a busy day at the general clinic. While I’m seeing patients, Gaby and Dan visit the primary school, where they are serenaded by Sister Selma’s class, and they get a tour of the dorm. I am feeling like an inadequate student again as I approach the amazing array of symptoms I am confronted with. I see maybe 20 to 25 patients in about 2 hours. Nearly everyone has fever, cough, diarrhea. Most I end up treating for at least malaria. Often also malnutrition and bacterial diarrhea. The lab is still closed and I would probably throw all these meds at most of these folks anyway.
   Sister Flo grabs me from the clinic at lunch time. We’re all taking a ride in a couple of the fleet of white Land Cruisers to Ikotos, a small village “not far”. This phrase is apparently African for “around the mountain, through several rivers, over a single track mud, dirt, and large-rock path, we call the road-to the next village. Less than a day.”

The trip to Ikotos in a convoy of two (yes) white Land Cruisers, is even more amazing than the road to Isoke from the Torit/Juba road. Five of us are crammed into the back on the two benches in one of the trucks. Dan, our photo-journalist, is in front.

   Ikotos seems to be on the opposite side of the mountain range that nearly encircles Isoke. Much more open, with savannah to its south and west, and Sudan’s largest mountain range looming in the western distance, Ikotos is home to regional offices for CRS (Catholic Relief Services) and a Lutheran NGO from Norway, NCS. We have come here as observers of a rescue mission. Two of the Diocesan workers, Peter and David, have been wrongly accused of burning down the thatched hut in which they were sleeping at the compound in Isoke, nearly a week ago, The “authorities” have placed them under house arrest at the Diocesan compound in Ikotos, pending “further investigation”. This has drifted on, un-resolved until now (no investigation apparent), forcing many meetings among Sister Flo and Emmanuel Obuoja, the Diocese Health Coordinator, as they await the authorities. While awaiting the appropriate mucky-mucks, the compound’s driver, Martin, gives us a tour of Ikotos. There is a brand new secondary school for girls, built by ACT funds(a cooperative venture of CRS and NCS, called Action of Churches Together) . This is a big deal in Sudan. Keeping girls in school after marriageable age-about 12-has been very difficult, if not impossible. The fact that more and more girls and young women are getting educated and even going on to university may be the one most important post-war cultural shifts.
   We also visit both the CRS and NCS compounds. I am really intrigued by what drives many of these mostly European men and women to spend long periods of time in very primitive situations like these, doing work that is fraught with frustration and continual glitches and setbacks. Edward Engels is the local food coordinator for CRS. He is Dutch, but his family is in Nairobi. He works 10 weeks, then takes 10 days off. Last year he “took a break from Africa” and did a stint in Northeast Afghanistan. “Afghanistan is much easier than here, lots and lots of money pouring in from all over, and high levels of organization. Really not much of a challenge.” When I ask him what draws him to this work, he shrugs and says: “We make a little difference, where no one else seems to care.”
   Martin steers the Land Cruiser over fields and ruts and over compacted dirt burms into a jungle grotto, where a concrete, raised stage/altar had been erected during the war. Christian worship was forbidden, and the Christians in the area met secretly in this jungle-hidden grotto, up against a hillside, protected against bomb attacks. Nearby, Martin pointed out several large boulders under which people would hide when they heard the bombers coming from the North. The people here clearly consider the hills and mountains to be more secure, both from modern raiders-bombers from the air, and from the traditional cattle raiders from adjoining tribes or villages. The hillsides are dotted with grass huts in nearly every conceivable nook or cranny or cliff.
   Back at the Youth Center in Ikotos, where the two staff have been held, people are celebrating their overdue release. Someone must have shown up from the government ministry to hear the facts and saw that they had the wrong guys. Teody later tells us that if this was more than an accident (everyone seems to think that it's not) that "it will never be the tribal people. It must be staff." The tribal people consider burning down a hut to bring a terrible curse on the offender and their heirs.

The Wittes in Sudan continued

Witte — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 14:15:09 GMT

September 6, 2008

Sept 5, Isohe, Sudan

Hot and muggy, the air is thick with heat, the sounds of the insects, and moisture. We awake to see where we arrived the night before. Isoke is a beautiful village that lays in a lush mountain valley surrounded on all sides by these immense rock spires and mountains.-dw

Ditto! Dan got up first today, and came to our room, describing the scene outside as “right out of King Kong”. Yep. No doubt. Hard to believe that this little, exquisite, box canyon valley, an hour up a single track dirt “road”, is the site of such local ambition: a little hospital, a TB ward (separate), a clinic (attached to the hospital), a maternity ward, a lab, and a “kitchen garden“, where pregnant women are taught how to plant and grow nutritious crops. Above this enclave, is the sisters’ house, outdoor grass-hut kitchen and outhouse with showers and hole-toilets. Above this is a large brick Catholic Church, and the priests’ and Diocesan workers quarters. And next to them is the Italian NGO, AVSI’s enclave, with a large staff of 30 or so, including an Italian doctor, Doctor Saladini, a “retired” trauma surgeon, who has spent nearly 30 of his professional years in various African countries and Afghanistan.

On the veranda of the sisters’ compound, we meet Dennis Okunu, a twenty-something Ugandan agronomist who is program director -for the Diocese of Torit- of a fascinating effort to educate young pregnant women to growing high protein and high vitamin A crops in their home gardens. He has developed a large garden with soy, maize, a high vitamin varietal of sweet potato -“98% of the daily need”-, cowpeas, and amaranthan, a grain crop high in protein, whose leaves are also high in vitamins. “If I sit them down to talk to them about these things, they drift away, but if we dig in the fields, they get excited”. Clearly, malnutrition is the most prevalent and dangerous disease here, but it’s root cause is complicated by culture and politics:

Ancient tribal culture has a basis in dowries for 10 to 12 year old girls being married off.
Cows make up the traditional dowry for these girls.
War and international arms-trading has resulted in a huge number of automatic weapons in the hands of many men.
During the war, between about the late 80’s and 2005, bombing from the North, and village burning by Northern militia sent those that survived fleeing for their lives.
Cattle-raiding with guns , for more dowry cows, resulted in many deaths and injuries, not to mention living in constant fear.
Tribal people, many of whom had already been displaced by war, have moved to the protection of the hilly canyons, away from their farmable land in the valleys, and away from safer sources of clean water.
Contaminated water and lack of local crops for access to protein and vitamins cause chronic diarrhea and protein and vitamin deficiencies, especially in pregnant mothers, and infants and young children.

This area of Southern Sudan has the highest maternal mortality rate in the world: 2030 per 100,000 pregnancies. The clinic here provides not only a nutritional garden class, but also regular prenatal care and food supplements. Despite this, of the approximate 2500 births that occur in the Isoke area each year, only less than 50 are attended in the maternity ward. The rest deliver in their huts, mostly unattended, or attended by traditional midwives. Maternal hemorrhage, and infection are common. Birth control is non-existent. Most men have two wives. By the time the women are twenty, most seem to have at least 3 to 4 children.-mw

Saturday, September 6: A sheet metal roof provide a nice measure of security against termites (voracious here)collapsing it , but when it rains, WHAT A NOISE!! We are awakened at about 2am to an amazing downpour. It sounds more like the gods have just dumped huge heavenly buckets of water on our roof. This goes on for a good while, then lets up into what actually sounds like rain. By morning, the sun is out and the ground is drying out.
   After breakfast, Sister Flo takes us to the “priests’ compound” to meet the regular parish priest, Father Anthony, and his staff. Africa seems to be made up of compounds. Since we’ve arrived, we’ve traveled from one to the next. It feels like a proven way of helping with security, for those who have “stuff” as opposed to those that don’t. As newbies here, not knowing what is safe and proper for exploring outside the various compounds, we sometimes feel a bit imprisoned. The longer we’re here, the more comfortable we are getting with moving about.
   The next compound we visit, our south side neighbors, are the Italians. The “Italian Compound” is the highest tech of the ones here. They have solar power, plus the obligatory diesel generator and batteries. The Italians are from AVSI, an NGO from near Bologna, which does quite a bit of nutritional education, water projects, and other social services in the surrounding area. Federico, from Milan, fluent in “British English”, gives us a very inclusive tour. Two particular points of envy: great showers (ours are uber-basic cold water stalls next to the out door toilets), and an amazing map of Southern Sudan from Switzerland. Isoke is actually on this map!
   We’re next off to the clinic/hospital. This is where we can access the internet and upload onto PNN through Dan‘s laptop. That is, during the four hours a day that the power is on. I meet up with Dr. Saladini, the Italian trauma surgeon, and follow him on rounds in the hospital. He presents every bit my vision of the imperious, I-know-best old school Italian doctor. I take far too much video of him on rounds. The patients, except for the babies, are all in one open ward, some choosing to rest on the concrete floor, where it is cooler. The babies are across the way, lying outside, on the concrete porch of the pediatric ward, IV’s hovering over them, mother’s lying next to them. Nearly all are being treated for TSS, tropical sickness syndrome, the name for what you treat when you see a baby in eminent danger-with emaciation, dehydration, bloated belly, fever, diarrhea, and vomiting-and you have no tests to prove what you are actually dealing with. So you treat for: dehydration (IV fluids, then ORS-oral rehydration salts), malaria (artusenate+amodiaquine I.V. then by mouth), worms (mebendazole), malnutrition (I.V. vitamin A, multivitamins, folic acid, and powdered formula supplementation), and anemia (oral ferrous sulfate). And you hope. The kids who I saw had often been treated this way several times. They go back to their villages, and the bad water, and very limited, low protein, low iron, low vitamin diets, and if they survive, back they come. There are many NGO-type efforts attempting to deal with this deadly pattern through education, but war got in the way-for over twenty years.
   I’ve asked our main host, Sister Florence Owacha, and the Health Coordinator for the Diocese, Emmanuel Obuoja, to meet us at the compound (OUR compound) to present them with our donation of $4000 raised through the La Madre Foundation, for solar power for the hospital, et al. We manage to video their accepting the money and also a fetal Doppler, for electronic monitoring of babies heart rates. While this is used as a casual tool now in the states, here its practical use is more likely to determine if a fetus is alive or dead. Nuances of heart rate are pretty meaningless here. The baby and mother survive or they don’t. There are no C-sections available , and while Sister Flo is attempting to build an operating theatre (it’s half built and funds have run out), the nearest hospital for emergency transfers is 6 hours away in Uganda-when the roads are open (often not during the rainy season). Additionally, the Ugandan border is simply closed after dark, so transport has to await its opening at daylight. There is no one to plead a case to at night. You just wait til morning.
   Sister Flo and Emmanuel are very grateful for the directed donation. Solar power is hugely important here. Diesel fuel is exorbitantly expensive, and getting moreso. Transporting it in 50 gallon drums in the back of Land Cruisers (Dan sat next to one on the way here) while chewing up diesel in the Land Cruiser, is brutally inefficient. Flo was thrilled to sign our receipt for receiving the donation, and even stamped it with her official stamp. They will need more funds to bring this to completion, but hopefully this will jump start the flow of more support.
   Sister Paskwina Iromo runs the primary school here, which boards often over 1,000 boys and girls. At this time of year, a large percentage (about a third is a guess) have gone home “to scare the birds out of the fields”, before harvest time. “They’ll be back when the fields dry out”.-mw

The Wittes Travel to Sudan

Witte — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:06:58 GMT

We're on our way to Southern Sudan to visit the Trinity Peace Village in Kuron. The village was started by Bishop Paride Taban. Here's the Wikipedia entry to Bishop Taban:

Paride Taban (1936) is a Sudanese Emeritus Bishop of the Roman Catholic Church and is co-founder of the New Sudan Council of Churches. Taban was Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Torit in southern Sudan from 1983 until 2004. Since his retirement from the diocese, he has been leading an effort to make peace in Sudan real by setting up the Kuron Peace Village, established in 2005.

Peace Village Kuron endeavors through education and a demonstration farm to help people of southern Sudan produce enough food. It also works to provide education for people living nearby, emphasizing education of girls, but also providing classes for boys and adults. The farm also brings people of different tribes together, an attempt to promote general peace among the many neighboring ethnic groups.

Sunday, August 31: Getaway day. Gaby and I are packing and also having a brunch party for (wife) Babs' birthday, which we'll miss this Thursday!!:((

We'll travel to London, where we'll meet up with Dan tomorrow. The three of us will leave for Nairobi tomorrow night, arriving on Tuesday morning. We plan to stay at a Hostel run by German nuns (!) that night and fly the next day to the northwest border, at Lokichoggio. "Loki" is an enclave where many NGO's (Non-government, non-profit organizations) have their outposts. The East Africa U.N. Food Program originates from here. We'll meet Sister Florence from Isohe Clinic here, plan to stay overnight, and then drive across the border "for about a day's drive" to Isohe. We hope to have internet access there. We plan to stay in Isohe for 4 days, helping and gathering information in any way that we can.

There are many unknowns in this trip. Stay tuned.

Mike

G. and I had dinner with Mary Clark on Friday. Mary spent 6 weeks at the Kuron Peace Village earlier this year.

August 31, 2008

Spent most of the day packing for the trip. Got Passport, tickets info, money, cameras etc ready to go. Trying to pack light considering all the camera equipment I’m bringing and the fact that we will most probably take a small plane into the Sudan interior where baggage weight could be a factor to reach Kuron as the roads are still reportedly impassable due to the long rainy season they are having.
LAX to London non stop on British Airways.-dw

September 1, 2008

London Heathrow Airport. United now with Mike and Gaby, who flew out of San Francisco, finding them buying coffee near the gate for our flight to Nairobi, Kenya. Another all night flight awaits us.-dw

September 2, 2008

We arrived in Nairobi. After a long wait in the queue (in contrast to Emma Watson, whom Gaby spotted on our plane, star of Harry Potter movies, and her companion that are whisked through the visa process) for a transit visa through Kenya we find Teody , our diocese contact who greets us with her driver. The drive into Nairobi to the guest house where we will spend the night is in itself a bit of culture immersion. First they drive on the left here and the roads are awful. Following a lane is completely non existent. The pot holes can swallow cars whole and the dirt shoulder or sidewalk is an acceptable driving lane except where boulders and rocks have been piled to prevent this. The Muslim women walking the streets, some colorful and not completely covered and others completely shrouded in black except for the eyes mix on the side of the roads with the stylish modern dress of other men and women. The many pedestrians walking, the many people not going anywhere just sitting finding time, charcoal vendors, plant vendors, knife sharpeners, natural limb furniture makers and wicker weavers set up wherever, and the general life on the unkempt trash strewn and in disrepair highway and streets is a real eye opener. In the neighborhoods security is an obvious issue. All neighborhoods and or homes have gates maintained by a guard. Walls surround all compounds topped with either broken glass or razor wire. Joblessness and poverty are an obvious problem here in Nairobi.
Fighting much traffic we are finally taken to the Pension Guest House that is run by a sect of nuns originating out of Germany. They use the funds generated to support their orphanage of some 80 Kenyan children. We will stay until our Sudan visa is acquired by our liaison, Teody. My papers that I sent Postal Express never arrived and this may delay us a day.
Assuming we will get our visas to Sudan as planned we purchase our plane tickets to Lokichoggio by the Sudan border to leave tomorrow. Lokichoggio is, I’m told, a desolate place set up on a wind blown plain near the Sudan border by the United Nations as a headquarters to distribute the food gathered from world relief groups who’s intended use is distribution in the needed area of Sudan. There we will be met by another contact who will take across the Sudan border and on to Ishoe our first intended destination where we are delivering funds raised in the USA to construct a solar generating station for the clinic in the village.-dw

Today has been a series of wild rides through some seemingly un-mappable roads in Nairobi. Teody and Joseph in front, Dan, Gaby and me crammed in the back of Joseph’s Toyota Corolla, careening into each other with the back and forths of the game of dodge ’em that J. is playing with some very big buses and trucks. It is all more than worth it as we stop for lunch at Habesha, an outdoor Ethiopian restaurant, which I could never find again in a million years. Teody ordered a sampler of about eight really delicious dishes, all served on a huge flat bread of maize, which we would tear off and scoop a bit of one of the spicy dishes onto with our fingers. Best -food-of-trip so far!--mw

Teody has worked feverishly to get our visas for Sudan. They were supposed to be ready today at the Embassy. We park outside while she's admitted through the security gate. Signs say "no photographs", and the guards only let in cars after looking under each one with mirrors--for plastic explosives. I guess.

The Guesthouse Westlands, run by the German order of Precious Blood sisters has a very tropical air. Common dining hall opening onto a small patio with many broad leaf plants. We met a middle-aged black man at dinner, who was visiting Nairobi “for both business and pleasure”. He lives in Tanzania and was bussing back there tonight. He and our host German nun were un-sure were California is. The good sister had us as Australian, and wondered how far the trip form there to here was. This had Gaby in stitches, and me wondering just how far Australia WAS from here anyhow.--mw

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Breakfast with the Sisters of The Precious Blood Guest House.

“MakingTime”: Teody Lotto, our guide and our local life blood here in Nairobi, gave me a book by a Dutch Missionary in which he interviews Southern Sudanese refugees. He spent hours, sitting under trees, listening to their stories. In Africa, much value is placed on “making time” by chatting with friends and listening to their stories. In the West, we call it “wasting time”. What a different perspective, placing high value on sitting listening to friends. Taking in and spreading their stories. Hopefully we will be able to “make time” during our short stay here.

As Dan reported, Nairobi is a bit of a cultural shock. A huge, sprawling, diesel-engulfed beast with no obvious heart. Thousands of locals, seeming to charge aimlessly up and down the streets, going…where? Teody tells us that un-employment is intolerably high here. Joseph, our amazing, intrepid, and fearless driver (Massai Cabs) warns us to roll up our windows when we slow down, to avoid having a hand dart in and spirit away valuables from our person(!) We feel a bit imprisoned here. We are safely hanging out (making time) at the Guesthouse Westlands as we await Joseph, Teody, and our ride to the Airport for our flight to Loki. But outside the guarded gate, is a bit of unprotected chaos. A bit of me senses that American fear is behind this; that familiarity would remove much of this feeling of guarded imprisonment.

Gaby and I were up most of last night, our bodies still convinced that it is daytime. Gabs watched "American Gangster" on her iPod (are you kidding Me?) at 3am. I read a little then drifted off as the morning trucks started bleating in earnest outside our window.

At breakfast today, here at Westlands, we talked with a 40-ish white woman with a very British accent. She was born in Nairobi, lived here until she was 14, then moved to Tanzania until now. She had just moved back to Nairobi. “Work.” She could have been from London. I had forgotten about the colonials. Very white and western folk, born in Africa before Independence. Still a strong presence, and left over cultural reminder of the not-so-long ago days of European rule.--mw

Sept. 4: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BABS!! from us three in downtown Loki! Yesterday was (another) travel day: wild ride to Jomo Kenyatta Airport, quick

Sept 3
Today we leave Nairobi for Loki (Lokichoggio), a border town with Southern Sudan and our entry point for Sudan. As a pilot I’ve read that Africa is where most planes taken out of service in other parts of the world end up. The jet we take to Loki I’m sure is one of those. A 1972 F28 Fokker East African Airlines commuter jet. As we land at Lokichoggio on a runway just wide enough for the landing gear , off the end of the runway is the remains of the same model jet that obviously had made a less than successful though probably survivable, crash landing not too long ago.
Lokichoggio is the area of the Turkana tribe. Distinctive in their dress and style the women wear colorful wraps with colorful beaded necklaces piled from shoulder to chin. The UN has turned this place into its headquarters and staging area for relief to Southern Sudan. Their many large tents are prevalent as we land at the airport. Wind swept hot and dusty we are met by Dominic who takes us to the preferred ‘Hotel’ where we await our guide Sister Florence for the journey into Sudan.-dw

Patience and the art of waiting.”Making time” again, as we await our various contacts. When Sister Flo can’t be at Loki to greet us, we stagger out of the UNHCR dominated airport, to a dirt lot swarming with Land Cruisers. On the windshield of one: “Mike Dicocese of Torit”

Sept. 4, 2008 10:20am
So we’re ‘making time’ in Lokichogio waiting to hear if our truck will get repaired in time to leave today for Sudan, and Ishoe. Sister Florence explained that when we get to the border we’ll wait for a convoy to form to more safely cross the ‘no mans’ land between the border and Ishoe to prevent raids on the vehicle. Apparently somewhat common occurrences on lone vehicles. -dw

Sept. 4, 2008 10:20am
Sister Florence showed up explaining they had trouble with the truck and that’s why she couldn’t meet us at the airport.
So we’re ‘making time’ in Lokichogio waiting to hear if the truck will get repaired in time to leave today .for Sudan, and Isohe. Sister Florence explained that when we get to the border we’ll wait for a convoy to form to more safely cross the ‘no mans’ land between the border and Isohe to prevent raids on the vehicle. Apparently somewhat common occurrences on lone vehicles.=dw

1:30pm
With the Toyota Land Crusier truck repaired we set out for the border. There are no paved roads here.
We arrive at the Kenyan border to exit immigration. Nothing more than a tin covered open air shack with an ’official’ sitting behind a desk. A few soldiers lounge in the shade of a truck by the “gate” a tree limb pole between two rock piled cairns .
Gaby and I shoot some photos of the area and border outpost. A soldier yells for us to stop and then the immigration official demands my camera. I’m reluctant and a minor standoff ensues but is quickly resolved with visually showing the official that I’ve deleted the digital photos from my camera, our apologies , naivety and assurances we will not shoot photos of border installations again.
Sister Flo says we’ll wait here for the armed convoy she asked for to escort us across the 20 miles of road through no-mans land. The land in dispute between Kenya and Sudan.
Renegade Turkana tribes and bandits are known to block the road in the no-mans land with a tree limb or rocks to stop a vehicle and then at gun point take what they want. This is the reason for the armed convoy. But after waiting an hour and still no convoy the Sister says we must go as she worries for the time of day and the long road ahead, cause as it is, we face some driving after dark. “God will protect us” says the Sister. Ok, so I renew my faith for a day and put my trust where hers lie.
Off we travel through desolate African savannah. Driving as fast, 60 -80 kph, as the vehicle can navigate over the bone jarring and at times impossible ‘highway’ to Sudan. At one time ,Martin our driver tells us, elephants roamed the area but are now gone, either killed off or relocated to the parks.
As Gaby says “the ‘Lion King’ got it right,” as it feels like we are driving through that animated vision. Tall termite towers some as high as 12ft or so dot the landscape with the ever present iconic savannah acacia trees filling the view to the horizon.
Safely through no-mans land without incident we arrive to the Sudan border and are welcomed to the country as Americans with only a per functional look at the Sudan visas that were so difficult obtain in Nariobi, Kenya.
With few stops along the way we proceed into Sudan and on toward Isohe (also known as Isoke)and always spoken as Isokay)about a total of 220km from the border. We cross many creeks either dry or low flow. Martin, our driver, tells us with a sudden rain storm though we may wait hours for the water to lower as he has in the past to make the crossings. We see lightning but no rain.
25 km from Isohe we turn off the ‘main’ road onto the road to Isohe and the only road toward Uganda. “Road” is not a proper description here. Driving at night on a one lane track through grass 10ft high and from recent showers it hangs heavily over the road. The ‘road’ is still wet and muddy from recent rains and is obviously impassable should it rain heavily. Somehow the 4wheel vehicle makes it through some challenging mud bogs. Around 10pm we finally arrive in Isohe where we are welcomed many times over and shown our rooms and where we can take a primitive shower. -dw

Sept 5, Isohe, Sudan

Hot and muggy the air is thick with heat, the sounds of the insects, and moisture. We awake to see where we arrived the night before. Isohe is a beautiful village that lays in a lush mountain valley surrounded on all sides by these immense rock spires and mountains.-dw

One addition to Dan’s account: we stopped in the town of Kapoeta. Only one or two apparent staff are on site at our arrival at the new “hospital” there, which seems to be situated in the middle of a muddy swamp. Dark, no power, no plumbing. A few patients lounging about. After Sister Flo met with someone nearby (impromptu meetings seem to be the norm here), and Gaby takes endless photos of the several kids we’ve attracted (and displays them to the thrilled subjects, staff re-aligns our stuff into two vehicles, Dan in one, Gaby and I in the other. And off we go…or not. It is after all supper time. So a quick stop at the Kapoeta Junction Inn, for chicken and rice (the chicken had a nice long life) and warm Coke, and satellite feed of English League football on a dark dirt “patio“ next to the dirt road to Isoke.-mw

Sept 5, Isohe, Sudan

Hot and muggy the air is thick with heat, the sounds of the insects, and moisture. We awake to see where we arrived the night before. Isohe is a beautiful village that lays in a lush mountain valley surrounded on all sides by these immense rock spires and mountains.-dw

Ditto! Dan got up first today, and came to our room, describing the scene outside as “right out of King Kong”. Yep. No doubt. Hard to believe that this little, exquisite, box canyon valley, an hour up a single track dirt “road”, is the site of such local ambition: a little hospital, a Tb ward (separate), a clinic (attached to the hospital), a maternity ward, a lab, and a “kitchen garden“, where pregnant women are taught how to plant and grow nutritious crops. Above this enclave, is the sisters’ house, outdoor grass-hut kitchen and outhouse with showers and hole-toilets. Above this is a large brick Catholic Church, and the priests’ and Diocesan workers quarters. And next to them is the Italian NGO, AVSI’s enclave, with a large staff of 30 or so, including an Italian doctor, Doctor Salladini, a “retired” trauma surgeon, who has spent nearly 30 of his professional years in various African countries and Afghanistan.

On the veranda of the sisters’ compound, we meet Dennis Okunu, a twenty-something Ugandan agronomist who is program director -for the Diocese of Torit- of a fascinating effort to educate young pregnant women to growing high protein and high vitamin A crops in their home gardens. He has developed a large garden with soy, maize, a high vitamin varietal of sweet potato -“98% of the daily need”-, cowpeas, and amaranthan, a grain crop high in protein, whose leaves are also high in vitamins. “If I sit them down to talk to them about these things, they drift away, but if we dig in the fields, they get excited”. Clearly, malnutrition is the most prevalent and dangerous disease here, but it’s root cause is complicated by culture and politics:

Ancient tribal culture has a basis in dowries for 10 to 12 year old girls being married off.
Cows make up the traditional dowry for these girls.
War and international arms-trading has resulted in a huge number of automatic weapons in the hands of many men.
During the war, between about the late 80’s and 2005, bombing from the North, and vil