The Last of the Surveys

(Sunrise on a morning in Northern Bahr el Ghazal)

After countless hours bouncing in Toyota 4x4 Land Cruisers along dusty roads in 3 states for 3 weeks, we finally completed our surveys; 170 of them.

In Northern Bahr el Ghazal, the days were long and hot. In Aweil, the capital of the state, our compound did not have running water, so my fellow surveyors and I opted to stay at the only hotel in town. Luckily, it was under new management and had significantly improved since one of my colleagues had last stayed there. There was usually running water, sometimes a vegetarian option of beans and rice, and air conditioning at night (although the power didn’t come on until around 7pm). Overall though, surprisingly pleasant.


(A mother monkey with her baby hanging on to her underside and a dik dik that hung around the hotel courtyard in Aweil.)

As we interviewed people in the communities, we noticed several differences from Warrap. First, although Northern Bahr el Ghazal is populated mostly by Dinkas, like in Warrap, the language is slightly different and so are the people. The fighting during the war was more intense at time in this area, and many people had recently returned (within the last 2-3 years) from the north of Sudan, most often from Khartoum (the capital city of Sudan). Many people were essentially still rebuilding their lives and livelihoods. While I’m glad people are returning to the areas from which they fled during the war, I sometimes found myself wondering why. The desire to return to the place where you were born after being forced to flee, and working to rebuild and possibly start a new country must have a very strong pull, but it had to be a difficult decision economically. Life in these areas is very hard, and at least one woman I spoke to said her husband had to return to Khartoum to make some money because they could not find the means to sufficiently support their family. In this state, it was the first time I began to hear people foraging for wild leaves and fruits as a means of supporting themselves and their families.

On the governance side of things, most people viewed the government as very strong, and as gatekeepers of sorts for aid. While most services to the communities were provided by NGOs, the government was seen as the one who brought the NGO services to them. This certainly elevated their perception of government, but people’s expectations of government to deliver basic services like education, water and health were still not being met.

(Children carrying water from a nearby borehole (water well). In some communities where boreholes are scarce, people may wait in a line all day to get water.)

The Dinkas of Northern Bahr el Ghazal, however, are very resilient and are trying to make the most of their situation. Two stories in particular come to mind. One is of a woman whose children were taken from her during the war by the arab raiders of the north. (During the war, children were often taken by the opposing forces and made to work for their captors for, I am assuming, very little or no pay.) Once peace had come, she was determined to reunite her family. She made it all the way to Khartoum (at least a 3-4 day journey by vehicle), miraculously managed to find her children, and brought them back home. The journey must have been extremely expensive, long and arduous. She even faced the chance that her children would not want to come back with her. For some families, their children were taken at a young age, grew up with their captors, are already making a living in Khartoum or elsewhere, and find that life is not too bad with their captors. When their parents find them, some do not recognize their parents and/or do not want to leave. Luckily, this was not the case for this woman.

Another personal story was of a woman who benefited from one of BRIDGE’s vegetable growing trainings, and found a creative way to save money. With no nearby borehole (water well), she planted her vegetable garden with the seeds and tools she received from the BRIDGE program on the bank of a river, and after they had grown, she found that tomatoes fetch a good price at the market. She was a wise woman and knew that if she just held on to the cash, it would disappear quickly (as cash does for all of us when it sits in our wallets!). There are no banks in the rural areas (only a few, 1 or 2, in the urban areas), but she needed a way to store her money. While most people I spoke to in Warrap saved money by buying livestock, she decided to put her money in groundnuts (peanuts). With the money she received from tomato sales, she bought groundnuts because they would not spoil. When she needed money, she would go to the market and sell the groundnuts. I do not know how much this scheme helped her monetarily, but most people ate 1-2 meals a day while her family was able to eat 3 meals consistently throughout the year.

After the surveys in Northern Bahr el Ghazal, we flew back to Juba for the weekend and lavished in some decent beer, pizza and Indian food from two of the best restaurants in town. However, the weekend soon ended and we were back on a plane, this time to Unity state.

(A picture of the dust storm that blocked out the sun and stars for three days in Unity state.)

Our experiences in Unity state were again unique from those in other states. First, the land was very swampy, complete with crocodiles, large monitor lizards, snakes, and a great variety of birds (the herons were especially elegant). As a result of the large number of birds, most people grow maize instead of sorghum because it is harder for the birds to eat, and with many rivers, more people fish for a living. Secondly, the majority of people in this state are Nuer, not dinka. (So much for the Dinka language skills I picked up in the other states.) Most people here have markings on their faces from a pattern of incisions made deep into the flesh on their faces, which resulted in slightly raised dots all over their faces (men and women) or lines across their foreheads (men).

Unity state is also where most of the oil in south Sudan is found, although the 2% of the oil revenues that are supposed to stay in the state seem to really stay in a few people’s pockets. On our travels to various communities, we saw many pipelines and the compounds of the oil companies. I even saw the compound of one of the first companies to find oil in Sudan (Chevron or Shell), which subsequently closed after several workers were killed. Some noticeable improvements from the money were seen though. In infrastructure, there was one long paved road through town, better dirt roads in many places, and city power from around 8pm until early morning. However, people’s lives were still very hard, lacking many basic services.

Another difference was that politics are more contentious in Unity than elsewhere. The elections are almost here and the campaigning is in full force. The governor is not very popular, and while the SPLM (Sudan Liberation Movement) is the major party in South Sudan (this party and the SPLA- Sudan People's Liberation Army- were the major entities fighting the war against the north), the wife of the vice president of South Sudan decided to run for governor of Unity as an independent candidate. Her husband, of course, is with the SPLM, but is still supporting her campaign. She, however, has the support of the people and may win. Basically, if she does win, the SPLM will be angry, and if she doesn’t win, the people of Unity will be angry. Either way, it will be very interesting to see what happens. The elections are from 11-13 of April and the results should be announced that week.

During our conversations with communities, the elections and campaigns were at the front of people’s minds, as was peace and security. These issues seemed to be more important and more often mentioned here, than in the other states. It appeared that campaigns were taking up all the time of the government, so there was no time left to listen to community needs. On top of this, a few communities we visited were recently re-established as communities (one within the last year, others within the past few years). This meant that local governments were even newer that the state or national government. The government of Unity state called people to return to the places of their forefathers, and so they did. Some came from the north and others came from towns and areas within Unity state. I’m sure they were promised many services when they returned, but they are still waiting. Needless to say, it is an uphill battle for both the government and the people of these areas. Interestingly enough though, I asked one person if they were considering moving back to where they were before they moved back to their birthplace, and they said no. This was now their home, and despite the hardships, they did not intend to move.

(Large tukuls, or huts. You may thing the largest ones are for large families. On the contrary, people live in smaller tukuls, and they build these large structures for their animals. At times, it seems that animals are worth more than people.)

In addition to the differences in the community and landscape, there were differences in our “off-time” as well. There were quite a number of people who came from Juba to work on monitoring spot checks and other program areas in Unity at the same time we were doing the governance survey. Since I normally work on monitoring and evaluation (M&E), this meant that when I returned from a day of interviews, there would be meetings to attend regarding a specific program area. On the upside, when we finally did stop working, it was great to hang out with that group of people (plenty of entertainment). The generator on the compound could not be run all day, and often, while we waited for city power to kick in at night, we would bring up chairs to the roof of one of the buildings and make it a scotch night. These nights were great until there was a 2-3 day dust storm, which blocked out the sun during the day and the stars at night. (After being out in the dust all day, some people’s hair would look either more gray or more orange, and you would swear that everyone had put powder foundation on their faces.)

One of my favorite aspects of the trip to Unity was the food. When I was there last summer, the food was good (curried vegetables..yum!), but I had heard horror stories of how bad it had become. I heard the cook was stubborn and had to be coaxed into using salt and pepper as seasoning. No matter, I thought, I will use the fear of vegetarians to force some good food to come. (Some cooks, when they hear I am a vegetarian, first tell me that there are no vegetables, and it will be very hard for me to eat. However, I think they get nervous, cook things they normally wouldn’t, and vioala! Delicious food.) It might have been that, or the fact that there was a new team leader in place, there was a large group from Juba coming, and either the cook or the team leader wanted to impress us. Still, I’d like to think it was the fear of the vegetarian… My favourite meal there had to be the foule (or fuul- Egyptian beans- fava beans- with onions, garlic, tomatoes, spices, and olive oil).

Alas, I am now back in Juba, where the food on the compound is not very good, and where I will work from the office for all of April. A week long Easter holiday for local staff was recently declared for the beginning of April, the elections happen the week after, and at the end of the month, we are bringing in every one from the field to Juba for an all staff meeting. Until the all staff meeting, I’ll be working on entering and analyzing the data I collected from my livelihoods survey, taking over for my boss when she is on post-rotation, and hopefully finding the motivation to exercise more and get in shape for the hiking I will do on my trip to Turkey in June.

(Below: Tae Bo is brought to Unity! Me attempting Tae Bo on the roof on our compound in Bentiu, Unity State.)

America: Where Brides are Free

(Interviews were typically held under trees.)

This past week, I spent most of my time traveling to various communities, conducting interviews and surveys, and learning a lot about Dinka culture (the major ethnic group) in Warrap State.

At its core, the BRIDGE program is geared toward connecting the government with the people and the people with the government. So, the purpose of our visit was to ask community members questions about how they view the government and its services. In theory, if the BRIDGE program was doing a good job, involving the government in all that it does in the communities, then over time, we should see an increasingly positive view of the local government in the communities in which we work. To find out whether this is true, we asked questions about local government responsiveness, effectiveness, and about the community’s confidence in the local government.

Overall, people were more positive about local government than we had anticipated. After 22 years of civil war, even the smallest amount of change or help from the government seemed to result in high levels of confidence in the local government. Some, however, were still critical of the local government, and rightly so. In one community we visited, the community had made enough bricks and collected enough money and volunteer labour to build up the walls of a small 4-room school to the roof level. This was one year ago, and still, the government (or any NGO) had not provided a roof for the school. This type of inaction generally lowered the perception of government effectiveness among community members.

(Traditional chiefs of an area called Tonj, participating in a local government training supported by the BRIDGE program.)

Some interesting insights came out of our first week of implementing these survey questions. First, when community members think about the government, non-profit/ non-governmental international organizations (NGOs) are always attached to that perception. No one ever thought of the government working alone, many argued that the government shouldn’t work alone, and sometimes, it was unclear whether people could really differentiate between the help the government was giving and the NGOs. While this does show that the NGOs are working with the government to give out aid and implement development projects (a good thing), it may also be dangerous. As the situation in Sudan becomes more stable, some NGOs, especially those giving out relief aid, will inevitably leave, taking their resources (money, food, etc.) with them. What then, will become of the perception of local government?

Embedded in this question is that of community expectations of government. In Warrap, we really didn’t ask any questions about what the community expects of the government (although, we have corrected this and added a question on this subject for the next two states). In our survey this year in Warrap, results have been mostly positive. Naturally, as the BRIDGE program continues, you would think that the community’s perception of government would be increasingly positive. In reality, if the expectations of government are raised each year, and the perceived level of service does not meet those expectations, the perception of government could become more negative over time. As a result, even if the BRIDGE program was doing a better job each year; the results of this survey may not show that.

(A latrine being built for a local school.)

A third major insight, or rather, surprise, came when we interviewed a community where BRIDGE was not working. For all those data analysis junkies out there, this community served as our control group. The idea behind interviewing a community we were not working in was to get a sense of how an average community views government without the BRIDGE program. Theoretically, if BRIDGE, a program that is bridging the gap between the government and community, was successful, you would see a more positive perception of government in communities where BRIDGE was present than in communities where BRIDGE was not present. This unfortunately, was not the case for our control group community, Alek North.

In fact, residents of Alek North demonstrated the most positive perception of government of all the communities we interviewed. After asking some follow-up questions, we discovered that it might have been due to the continued presence and distribution of relief aid (mostly food aid) in the community. A colleague told me that the people here know by seeing. Development is slow, but relief is very quick, highly visible, and has a high impact in the short run. In short, it can save people’s lives today, but in the long run, it often does not build the capacity of communities to take care of themselves. At its worst, the community becomes dependent on the relief organization to take care of the community’s basic needs. In Alek North, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), and to a some extent Farm Africa, is still distributing food aid to people. Several people in the community explained that when they are hungry, they ask the government for food, and the government delivers it. Therefore, they believe the government is very responsive, effective, and they are confident it the government. What will happen when WFP leaves and people realize that the government can no longer bring these services to the community?

At the end of the day, this community did not serve as a very good control group. (Unfortunately, having a connection with an NGO working in a community is the best way to speak to community members who you are not working with. If the community doesn’t know you, there is no trust, and the answers we would receive from them would not be 100% true or hones. We had a connection with Farm Africa, they could introduce us to the community, and so Alek North was chosen.)

In addition to the government perception survey, as a part of my own research, the other interviewers and I implemented a livelihoods survey I created. (Livelihoods, for those unfamiliar, is a term for how people support themselves and make a living.) In this survey, I was basically trying to paint a general picture of how community members support themselves and their families in rural South Sudan. In the survey, we asked four simple, open ended questions about the number of people in the household, how the respondent supported their household, if they were able to save anything, and the number of meals they eat per day.

(A women's center in Kuac South)

The picture I have been able to paint so far has been more or less bleak, but interesting. There have been a large number of women who head their household because their husbands either died in the war or died recently in the cattle raiding/fighting between ethnic groups. On average, most people eat 2 meals a day, although I did find people who could only scrape together enough food for one meal a day.

To support themselves, most people farm some combination of sorghum, sim sim (sesame), ground nuts (peanuts), cow peas (I think these are black eyed peas), maize, and sometimes vegetables like okra. (Vegetables are a new development brought to communities from organizations like Winrock and World Vision.) Most also have livestock, some find occasional wage labour, fish, run small tea stands (mostly women), collect grasses used for roofing and sell it at the market, or even brew alcohol (from sorghum). We also found out that since men are allowed to have multiple wives, each wife seems to be her own economic unit. Each wife gets a plot of land, house, and is responsible for feeding/caring for her children. With women responsible for food, they are more likely to farm, and the men are more likely to engage in other activities like fishing, if there is a river nearby.

(Although usually the work of women, these boys carry their small buckets to collect water.)

Livestock is interesting though. Basically, when it is a good harvest season or when you have some extra money, there is no bank to put your savings in. Instead, there is livestock. When you have savings, you buy a cow (or a goat or a sheep). When times are bad and you need money, you sell the cow to buy food. On average, a cow costs about $500 or so: bulls slightly less, and females slightly more because they reproduce. If you compare it to our banking system, it makes sense. The cow or other livestock is the bank account, and it is also an investment. With interest rates in the U.S., your money can grow. With livestock, you money grows when your cow gives birth. Further, just as the stock market can crash and you loose your money, you can also loose your money in cows when disease strikes.

In addition, cows are a culturally mandated when getting married. If you were wondering about the title of this blog entry, this is where it comes in. In order for a man to marry, he must present an agreed upon number of cows to the bride’s family. Without cows, you cannot marry, and cannot have a family. (This cultural norm, however, does have its drawbacks. Girls are often kept at home and out of school for fear that education or the journey to the school will damage or spoil the daughter, reducing the number of cows the family can get for her. Since cows are a measure of wealth, the girls of a family are very important.) One of my Dinka colleagues that I was working with in these interviews, asked me how much a bride costs in the U.S.

“In cows?” I asked.

"Yes," he replied.

“None.” I said. “Brides are essentially free.” (Except, of course, for the very nice ring many brides-to-be receive.) He was quite impressed, and we had a good laugh about how the Dinka should come to America because the brides there were free.

I’m now in Northern Bahr el Ghazal, about to embark on another week of interviewing. Dinka are again the majority ethnic group in Northern Bahr el Ghazal, but I have a feeling there will be some differences between the Dinkas of Warrap state and the Dinkas here. We will see.