(Myself at Buli's Restaurant in Kuajok, Warrap State, Southern Sudan)
I have to say I am quite tired, but there is no end to it in the near future. It started the second and third week of June. We geared up for a workshop to disseminate the central government's (Government of Southern Sudan- GOSS) recently adopted water policy to government officials in the three states in which Winrock is working (Warrap, Northern Bahr el Ghazal, and Unity states). We flew a total of about 35 people from these states to Juba, where the central government is located as is Winrock's country headquarters. We were all working about 12 hr days getting last minute things ready for the conference.While there were some minor hang ups before the conference, over all it went very well. One incident, for example, was when the Minister of Health from Unity State demanded that we pay for an extra 3 or 4 days for her to stay in a hotel of her choosing as well as her gas money while in Juba... And would you know, we gave it to her! Very frustrating.) It lasted a total of 3 days and all the participants from the states were very engaged and communicated openly with the central government representatives. We were told before the workshop that when GOSS representatives state something, the state representatives rarely say anything to challenge the statements or even add on to GOSS statements. Luckily, this was not the case for our workshop. In the end, the central government was really pleased with the workshop, and they said it exceeded their expectations.
Overall though, it went well. Aside from helping prepare for the workshop, I also worked at a registration table every morning, then took notes all day on workshop discussions and helped out the facilitator with anything he needed. Also, my boss (the chief of party) stated that I was invaluable and asked if I could stay on after August! Silly grad school getting in the way.. Honestly though, even if I did stay on, I think I would need a break anyways.
After the workshop ended there was no real break. The workshop participants left on a Friday and we (my supervisor Lutfiya- the monitoring and evaluation director) left on Monday for our trip to Warrap state in the northern part of Southern Sudan. We first flew on a World Food Programme (WFP) flight to Wau, of which our first view was of two airplanes that had crashed, then drove north to Kuajok where Winrock has a team based and a recently opened, still being constructed, compound. Kuajok was great actually. The weather was surprisingly cool (meaning not too hot- only high 80s/low 90s F), there was a lot of open space as it was a small town in the country, and it was surprisingly green. I heard the rains earlier in May were responsible for that, but I'm grateful. It was very pretty- lots of palm trees and other vegetation.
The purpose of our trip was to speak with field staff and learn more about the programs they were running, observe ongoing activities and speak to community members who are participants in Winrock activities. We traveled to Twic (twich) county first. It took about 2 hrs or more on a very bumpy road to get to the area, but just before we arrived it started storming. The sky was really pretty before the storm, but the rain made it very difficult for us to get around (even in a four wheel drive jeep!). In the end, we weren't able to meet with any communities, see any activities, or even meet with our partern organizations in Twic. We arrived and left about 30 minutes later. Only a slight waste of time... (Picture above: On the way to Twic County, possibly near Gogrial in Warrap State)
The whole next day was spent in meetings- first one starting at 8am and the last one ending about 9:30pm. Then we ate dinner... The next day we went to Akon South county to visit a few boreholes that our partner organization PACT drilled, speak with newly formed water user committees, and interview a community action group (formed to discuss and plan actions they will take to develop their own community, i.e. building schools, adult education for women, etc.) that was formed by Winrock staff. We traveled on ok to terrible roads. We saw three vehicles get stuck on the way, and we even had some trouble traversing the huge puddles (more like lakes) that were still around from the rain the other day. That trip took all day, followed by more meetings with field staff, then it was friday.
(Above: Children we met when visiting a community/borehole in Akon South.)
(Below: Video of us going through one of the very wet, muddy, and lake like areas. Thank goodness for four wheel drive. Although, even with it we were a little worried.)
ity. The woman was very remarkable. Before Winrock came to the community, she had been a member of the community school PTA and ran her own business. The community as a whole was similarly inspiring. Instead of relying on outside organizations to build things for them, they have made their own bricks and begun building a storage room for future ox-ploughs as well as a school. The group also contains a women's sub group which plans to start up a bedsheet weaving and dying business. When I left Angui, I left with a potential success story to report to USAID, and I learned some words in Dinka! Unfortunately, as soon as I returned to the Winrock compound in Kuajok, I found out our plane would leave Wau (south of Kuajok by about 1.5 hrs) very early in the morning, which meant we had to leave that afternoon (about 15 minutes to pack up and leave).Wau was actually pretty nice. It's a much bigger city than Kuajok (Kuajok is a very small town, despite it being the capital of the state). We stayed in The River Lodge to which we each paid about 130 dollars to stay in a tent. Mind you it was a very large tent- the type you see in old safari movie scenes. That night, we had the most wonderful potato soup, one beer (which did us both in- very sad), and were otherwise completely happy staring into space. There was a storm that night which we were worried would not allow planes to leave or take off (no tarmac here.. just dirt), but thankfully there was no large damage. We even took off relatively on time! Granted, this was only because we decided to fly a Southern Sudanese commercial airline instead of the WFP flight. The WFP flights are always late, sometimes leave early, and sometimes don't show up at all, stranding you for days.
I'm back in Juba now, but I'll be leaving again on Tuesday. This time, it is for Unity state. Much like the last trip, we'll be staying where Winrock has a compound, in Bentiu, then traveling to one or more counties to visit with communities and see how our activities and programs are progressing. (Below: The view we had before it poured in Twic County.)
