Epik Thoughts

See, I knew more would happen yesterday.  That’s ok, I can tell you all about it now.

For the techies:

I got the server and tried to insall SBS 2003 only to discover that the laptop was using a SATA driver that SBS didn’t recognize.  After slapping my forhead and saying “duh” I found the drivers and pressed F6 at the beginning of the install.  That’s when it happened.  It asked me to put my driver disc into drive A:.  Drive A:?  Who the heck has a Floppy drive any more?  Well, that shot my server install plans full of holes.  So here I am on Day 6 researching and downloading.  I think I just might have found a digital angel though.  Someone else posted the exact process to get around this.  Check it out if you’re interested.  And pray that this works.

For everyone:

After having some trouble with the server install and realizing that I couldn’t do anything else without Internet access, we started to head off to Save the Children for dinner.  That’s when someone said Haboob and that’s when I saw a huge wall of brown.  If you hit that link, it looked exactly like the first photo in the article.  Not the least scary thing I’ve seen in my life.

We decided to make tracks over to dinner so that we wouldn’t get stuck in it.  I’ve got some great video of the sand and the amazing amounts of rain that came afterword.

So we had a nice lasagna (inside) and headed home.  The rain that night was incredible.  I think it was the tin roof above me that made it sound like more rain than I’ve ever heard before.

Day 6 is pretty boring so far, so I’ll save that for the next time I get access.  Might be a few days, might not.

2 Comments | In: Darfur, Technology | tags: haboob, sand, server. | #

I should call this Part 1 since I’m here at WHO again, and I don’t know what the rest of the day holds yet. We got the server in a few minutes ago, but I can’t do anything at the office because their ancient generator is down… again.

I should tell you a little about power here in Geneina. Basically, there is city power… in theory. They turn it on around 3pm and turn it off around 11pm, if you’re lucky. If you want power outside of those hours, you have to provide your own. So all of the NGOs in town have their own generators. Some are big, some are little, some are new some are old.

WR has a new one on order, but in the mean time, this is what we’re using at the office.  Those are open barrells of deisel with hoses running into them, by the way.

4 Comments | In: Darfur | tags: generator. | #

After were were done with the Internet at WHO we tried to get a ride back but found out all the cars would be at least an hour. So we walked back. That was probably the closest I will ever get to seeing what it was like in biblical times. Walking through the dusty streets in my flip-flops past kids on donkeys and goats in the streets. It was really quite interesting.

When we got back we had dinner and eventually set up for season two of The IT Crowd. Before we got a chance though, the wind picked up and we were in a sand storm… or so I thought. It lasted 20 minutes and we never even went inside. We just covered the projector and waited it out. Then we watched season two and went to bed.

2 Comments | In: Darfur | tags: dust, walk. | #

I feel better every day, I’m getting used to the heat and how to handle it. The biggest thing for me is just slowing down. If I move at my normal pace, I overheat and get sick. Since day one I’ve been drinking lots of water, but they’re starting to run out of bottled water, and there’s none available in the markets. All of the NGOs in town work together and communicate, and they’re all in the same boat. One of the guys here has already started to filter local water, just in case, but we’re all hoping more bottled water will come in soon.

Today is really my first full work day, and it’s going well. Their laptops are really sick, but I’m making headway. At about 11:00 we came out here to WHO to get some desperately needed Internet (where I am right now) and it’s doubly nice because the room we’re in is air conditioned (WR doesn’t own a single working air conditioner right now in Geneina)

And on a completely different topic. The first night I was here, one of the cats that lives at sultan house had a kitten just outside my door. The next day, she moved it into my room under the bed across the way from me. She’s pretty quiet, so I’m not too concerned, but the momma cat woke me up last night when she knocked something over in my room. Freaked. Me. Out. Of course the dog-fight on the other side of my wall (facing the street) freaked me out too. It sounded like it was IN my room. And some of the goats sound exactly like somebody is getting slowly tortured to death down the street.

I have a feeling that the rest of my life I’m going to start half of my stories with “when I was in Darfur…”

1 Comment | In: Darfur | | #

Saturdays are considered a “Casual Workday” in Darfur, not unlike home. Basically you work if you want to and however much you want to. So I could have slept in had I been able to, but oh well. It gave me a chance to get some video around the house and get into a routine. I took a shower (an interesting experience) and actually ate some breakfast.

Later in the day I worked on a couple of the laptops that they had at the house. Nothing exciting, but I did teach them a little about computer maintenance that should help when I’m gone.

I also discovered that the “no shorts” policy doesn’t apply inside the house, and I also discovered that shorts are a wonderful thing when the temperature is approaching 100. Sadly, due to the policy, I didn’t bring any. The short story is that I now have one pair of shorts and one less pair of jeans. (and a couple of jeans-tubes that I have kept, just in case)

The geeks in the audience will appreciate this: While fiddling around I discovered that I had both seasons of the IT crowd on my USB drive, between my laptop, a new projector that they just got shipped in, and a very interesting choice of backdrop, we sat around and watched the first season. They all seemed to like it, but then again they do have limited entertainment here.

1 Comment | In: Darfur | tags: jeans, projector, shorts. | #

I woke up early do to a little jet lag hanging on (I’m not totally immune, just highly resistant) and had a terrible back ache (p.s. Thank you honey for packing the Advil in spite of my bullheadedness). So I walked circles around the Sultan house for a while to try to shake that off.

Oh yes, the Sultan house is where WR employees sleep when not on duty. It’s a few minutes away from the offices. I found out that it’s not just a nick-name, it’s actually rented to WR by the local Sultan. Cool, huh? Anyway, it’s basically a normal sized house with a couple of out-buildings for additional bedrooms. I’m on one of those.

Friday is a day off in Darfur, so around 10am two of the staff invited me to breakfast with them over at Save the Children’s house. That was wonderful, they made eggs and crepes, but they didn’t have all the ingredients so we walked to the nearby market. It was a fairly cool day for Darfur (lower 90’s) and it was really relaxing. I didn’t eat much, but what I did eat was excellent.

Later in the day there was a beach volleyball party over at the UN’s HQ here (very nice place. they even have a pool I might get to go in next week). There were people from all over the world from several different NGO’s (Non Government Org, that’s what they call all the humanitarian aid orgs here). It was a fun time, and by the time dinner rolled around I was feeling good and even had my appetite back.

No Comments | In: Darfur | | #

I flew into Al Geneina at about 1:30. The runway is a long, mostly flat dirt road with bits of broken planes down the side. Not the most encouraging thing to see, luckily I had already landed when I saw that. We were ushered off to the side while they loaded our bags into the back of a land rover type thing and drove them over the edge of the field where they were dropped at our feet. Heading out I was met right away by someone from WR and put the back of a little taxi with the WR representative. The drive to the compound was my first major eye-opener.

Along the way I saw: Donkeys, oxen, stray dogs, men riding horses with guns, goats, pickups with a gun mounted in the bed carrying 6 or more men with more guns, children playing with sticks, piles of bricks, piles of trash, lots of UN trucks and much more.

It was kind of overwhelming, then when I arrived I dove right into work in a room they had set up for me in the back. I think being overwhelmed mentally on top of the heat started to affect me and I got really sick. They sent me back to the “sultan house” (more about that in “Day 2″) to lay down. I slept for a couple of hours, got up and tried to be social for a bit, went back to bed, tried to sleep, did a lot of praying and wishing I was home.

All in all it was one of the most miserable days of my life. All day the only food I ate was a little goat meat and bread at about 2:00.

See “Day 2″ for the good news.

No Comments | In: Darfur | | #

I hope you guys weren’t too worried about me. There’s been no Internet at WR for a few weeks and no signs of sudden return either. So I’m currently using the “V-sat” system over at WHO (World Health Org), but I have limited time here. I’ll do what I can to post when I can (hopefully again in a few minutes) but I wanted to get this post up before anything goes wrong with the connection, or my battery, or whatever.

No Comments | In: Darfur | tags: alive. | #

I’m a bit bored right now.  The other two guys are working and I’ve fixed everything I can fix here, so until I’m in Darfur tomorrow, I have nothing to do.

So I nailed down some specifics for you.  I found a map here that shows exactly where the World Relief compound is in Al Geneina, which by the way is pronounced Gen-ay-nah.  That’s ay as in “ay you, can’t you pronounce Geneina proper?”.

You can’t zoom in any further, but I put the compound dead center, that angled road is pointing right at it.  You can zoom out to see where I am in relation to the city and the airport.  The airport is a couple of dirt runways north of the city.  Note the size of the runways in relation to the size of the city.  I don’t know if that means the city is smaller than I thought or the runways are longer than normal or if I just don’t understand how citys should relate in size to airports.

By the way, I found out those are seasonal rivers.  The images you are seeing are from the dry season when they’re empty.

View Larger Map

3 Comments | In: Darfur | tags: airport, Geneina, map, river. | #

We just got back from lunch, which was delicious shishkabobs, vegetable soup, salad, rolls and some sort of mango shake that was very good.

The most interesting part of the journey was the short trips there and back.  Basically Sundan’s road system involves a couple of paved roads interconnected by many dirt/sand roads.  There are no lines, no signs, no rules.  Intersections are places where people slow down (a little) and push their way through all at once.  Growing up around all the signs, lines, police, rules, signals, etc, I would have thought this kind of thing would cause no end of accidents and road-rage, but no, everyone makes it through the chaos without even hurt feelings.  Impressive.

As I was writing this I heard someone outside yelling something on a bull horn.  I asked what he was yelling thinking that maybe it was some police action nearby.  No, just someone selling vegetables.  Oh well.

With all the new sights and sounds around me I’m really sad that I can’t take pictures and video.  It’s illegal in Sudan to take any kind of pictures.  I’ve been taking video in my room, and a little out the window (shhh).  But still it would be nice to be able to get up-close-and-personal.

I did sneak these for you.

2 Comments | In: Darfur | | #