The state that fell apart in a week.

I am in the wrong country right now. I have had this feeling for the last week. I am currently posted in Cairo, writing a report on some field work I carried out over the last few months in South Sudan. My work is not finished. But still. I should not be here.

My family and friends will disagree vehemently. Things are not good in South Sudan. Not good at all. The reasons for it are complicated, but the result is an impending civil war. Ethic divisions have opened into gaping fissures which are claiming an un-guessed number of lives as two of the largest tribes (Dinka and Nuer) begin to eliminate each other under the cover of night. Ethnic cleansing has begun, and no-one can yet see a way to stop it.

Since the 15th December, when a brief skirmish between soldiers of the presidential guard fought one another in the capital, violence has spread across the country. Two of the ten states are now nominally under the control of rebel forces what were previously part of the government's army. Embassy staff from the US and UK have been evacuated. NGOs have fled the country. One UN base closed after being attacked. The UN bases in the capital are sheltering more than 20,000 people, mainly from the Nuer tribe, who found themselves trapped in a suddenly hostile city.


Most of my colleagues have left the country. The international staff were flown out on a cargo plane chartered by a Danish agency, or they took buses to Uganda and Kenya. The South Sudanese staff are not so lucky. The Dinka staff are likely to be safer than most, but those from the Nuer tribe are in terrible danger. My colleague Gunfire (not his real name) is now living in a tent in the largest UN compound in Juba. He cannot leave the country as his wife and children do not have passports.

All this happened in a week. One week! All this, and yet I want to go back. Would you like to ask me if I am crazy? Would you like to ask me what hell I am thinking? I cannot deny that you would be right to ask these questions. It is a crazy notion. There is no moratorium on killing internationals. Agency staff have been attacked and UN soldiers killed. There is a real threat to my safety, so self preservation should be making me feel relieved to be far, far away from it. All of my close friends are safe, so there is no need to go and help them.

The work I am doing now is to be the last project I work on in my current incarnation as a researcher in South Sudan. My contract is finishing soon, and I should be looking ahead for new challenges. As I left Juba airport a few weeks ago, I was comfortable with this thought and the possibility that I would not return. It took this catastrophe wake a dormant feeling of empathy and worry. I lived in this country for a damned year, and I care. I turn on the computer every day and get overloaded with the stories of hell that are surfacing. I have become very well acquainted with an underlying feeling of constant dread that bubbles away underneath every thought and deed throughout my day. Concentration on other tasks is difficult as new bits of information spring to life on the screen, as my fingers type out the address of the news sites without my willing them too.

Is this coming from a sense of duty? Am I feeling a need to return to help those people I know that are still there? I don't know. I can tell you desire to return is strong, illogical and very, very tiring. It is not my home, nor is it my country. But it is my South Sudan. The hills in the south are beautiful. The people are striking, and proud. I have travelled across a large part of South Sudan, and been affected by its problems and trials. Even in my detached state as a Kawadja, I have come to care about it. 

South Sudan, what have you done to me? Much more importantly, what the hell are you doing to yourself?

Making a Mark

There are two sides to being a Kawadja in the middle of nowhere. One is that everyone notices you. The other is that everyone notices you. 

Let me explain. I just returned from a field project that was longer than normal. I was studying the way male and female farmers in a part of South Sudan learn their farming skills. This kept me in the field for two months. Aside from the occasional missionary, I was the only white person for hundreds of miles. My field work required me to visit several communities, and live with them for around a week each time. For a lot of people in those communities, I was the first white person they had met.

I was living with people from two tribes, the Buya and the Didinga. The Buya are principally pastoralists. Their entire life revolves around cattle. They live in barricaded villages (because of cattle raids) and the men drive their cattle from the corrals every morning on eight hour treks so they can graze. The herders are armed with AK47s to defend themselves from raiders. I went walking with them. This one little event confused the hell out of the Buya. A white person? Walking? With the cattle? Can they walk?

These were not the only questions I was asked, through my interpreter. Here is an example of one conversation:

“Can you eat our food?”

“I am a human being like you. I can do the same things.”

“Can you eat porcho and sukumawiki?” (bread and kale)

“Yes I can.”

“Can you eat cheese?”

“Yes.”

“What about raw milk?”

“Ye… ummmm. No. Not the raw milk.”

“That is ok. We curdle it before we drink it.”

“Oh. Is that better?”

Being the object of such curiosity has some real drawbacks. People don’t leave you alone. Kids will follow you and giggle at everything you do. Adults will simply walk up to you and stare without saying a word or even doing anything. I was once surprised by a young man who walked up behind me in the dark, stood staring at the back of my head for a while and then started playing the home made flute he had. It was very loud and directly behind me. It was not a pleasant surprise. When the tent I was using was flooded, a dozen people came and stood around staring at it. They were doing this to express concern at the hardship and misfortune I was facing, but I think most westerners would not feel comfortable with a bunch of strangers hanging around you uselessly when you are dealing with a small disaster. Every time I sat down to do some writing, I would have people looking over my shoulder at what I was doing, even though they cannot read. 

Being the object of curiosity was not the only issue. As I was staying in the chief’s house, there were occasions when he wanted to introduce me to other members of his family in the surrounding areas. This was annoying, because it would mean a detour from our schedule for me. But it was double annoying for another reason. I was on show. The chief was showing me off to his neighbours. It is an indication of his standing that a visitor had come to his village, and he was making social credit out of it.

I felt a little like a trophy wife.

The fact that everyone notices a Kawadja means that every move I made was the subject of curiosity and intrusive study. There is, however, another more amusing side to this coin.

Twice now, mothers with newborn babies have offered to name their children after me. People here do not keep track of the years and dates according to the calendar. They time things according to events. For the people of the Buya village, October 2013 will now be the time the Kawadja drove their cattle. The funniest thing I heard came from a colleague who is working in a place hundreds of miles away from where I am based at the moment, which is called Chukudum:

“Today at breakfast my neighbor, who is from Chukudum, told me his relatives are saying there is a Kawadja in Chukudum who is eating the same food as them, drinking the same drinks, becoming like one of them. Wonder who that could be?”

WASHing

How many people do you know that wash their hands before dinner? I mean really? I know we get told to do it as kids, but did our parents really do it themselves? All the time? You sure?

I bet YOU don’t . I also bet you don’t know many people that do it at all. I hope you realize that you are breaking international WASH standards. And you should feel guilty about it. 

Want to know what WASH is? Water and Sanitation and Hygiene. It is a general sector within the sphere of humanitarian aid, and there are minimum international standards that most organisations and people working within this sector adhere to. Washing your hands before eating is one of the things that people working in this sector will teach. I just came back from assessing a project where this is an important topic. If fact, it is one of the major parts of a programme that will cost millions over its three year lifespan. One of the largest impediments to any kind of development in a country is the health and wellbeing of its people. Quite simply, if one is too sick to work or go to school, change cannot happen.  Keeping clean is part of this. People’s health is often underserved by their limited access to basic health provision and knowledge. You know why we wash our hands of course. We do it to clean off the most harmful bacteria. Why would you wash your hands if you don’t even know about bacteria?

I have caught a little glimpse of what happens when you don’t look after your own hygiene, and it ain’t pretty. Diarrhea, lots of it. Skin diseases. Eye infections. You will see a lot of photos of kids in poor countries. Look closely at the photos. You might see flies around their eyes. Eye infection, right there.

Now here is what I find interesting. The stuff I have seen underlines a basic habit that we take for granted in the UK, without quite realizing why. We wash in the UK in order to avoid smelling. We often wash because we feel it is socially unacceptable to go out without doing it. Having a shower makes us feel “more human.” But the experience here reminds me of the real reason for good hygiene which we do not often remember or even know. If you don’t wash your face regularly, your eyes will die. If you drink dirty water, you may well waste away from any number of parasites and sicknesses.

Now consider this: If someone does not know about bacteria, how do you convince them that drinking from and using clean water for washing is a good idea? How can you tell them that they need toilets and that they should not, in fact, go and shit in the woods? Want to convince them that human feces in the open can infect drinking water?  You could try and explain to them about small animals they cannot see. You could try and explain how they breed several times an hour. Perhaps you could try and tell them that these small, invisible animals cause diarrhea and eye infections. They won’t believe you though.  They will think you are making it up. Let’s be honest here, it does sound a little fantastic.

There is at least one answer the question of how to convince people though. It comes in the form of shame. Give up on the idea of visiting a village and showing them a few things in a workshop. They won’t buy it. Far better to ask them to drink their own feces. 

This is an approach that a few people I have met recently have been taking. Let me tell you how you how it goes. One should go to a village and meet with the people there. Convince them that you are not there to give anything away, but to assist them with their problems. Keep talking. Eventually you will get around to sickness and then you can say “Wait, I can help you with that. You need to dig latrines, and to make sure you use them rather than going into the bush near your village.” They will say that you are crazy. “No, really. You should because if you don’t then your waste will get into the water and infect you.” They will insist that they know that poo is disgusting, but would not drink it. It does not go into the water, as they would see it. “Oh really?” you say. 

This is the clever bit. While you have been talking, you have all been walking around the village and you are in a place where you can see human waste lying in the bush. You have a bottle of water in your hand and you have been allowing people to drink from it. Now it is half full, so you take a stick and transfer a small bit of feces into the water. Put the lid on. Shake it up so the water is clear again. Offer them a drink…

Clueless....

I am continually being reminded of something in this work. That thing is quite simple, and yet irritating. I constantly get reminded of what it is like to be a clueless student. There are very few worse feelings in this world.

We are all, us researchers, in a constant state of “I don’t know jack.” I came out of undergraduate degree and launched into this job. It felt a little odd at first, as I came to grips the simple idea that preparing for an assignment is like cramming for an exam or an essay deadline. However, it began to sink in that each time I am put on a new project I may have a mere week to get familiar with a subject about which I know nothing. Disaster Risk Reduction project evaluation coming up? You got a week to learn about it and come up with a survey. Water, Sanitation and Hygiene baseline? Go through forty documents in two days to figure out what the hell they thought they are about to do. Peacebuilding exercise to evaluate? Oh boy, good luck with that one. Not much of that is measurable in any easy way. Good luck in that one.

A new colleague of mine, Cleopatra, pointed out a very simple truth. While speed reading a dozen DDR documents, she blurted out “I feel like I am studying again!” She just completed her MA and doubtless thought she may have left those worrisome days of cramming behind.

I had realised before graduating, that life would not be gravy in this regard. Final year undergrads can happily hold court over younger years who constantly ask for advice, seek guidance and reassurance, and who generally hope to be in your position very soon. However, conversations with other graduates had already shown me that upon finishing your degree you immediately find yourself at the bottom of the knowledge pile again. Everyone in the field you want to get into has studied more, worked longer, and experienced more than you. Welcome back to feeling like an idiot once more. Facing the slow scramble back up the face of ‘knowing what you are talking about’ is daunting enough when starting a career.

Now imagine doing this with every project you are given, once or twice a month. 

Welcome to the life of the contracted researcher.

With any luck one will end up getting contracts that require you to do research on an area you have covered before. Perhaps one might get a couple of Shelter projects in a row. Now things may not feel so desperate, as your knowledge from one feeds over to another. The more you do, the more project like this you may be given. I imagine this is how experts get made. By accident. With any luck, however, the stress of learning decreases over time as one finds oneself on a burgeoning (and completely unexpected) career path.

Now, I have to ask you, have you ever encountered someone who says “I enjoy learning”? I bet we all have. I would like to share an observation with you on this common assertion: The fuckers are lying to you. They are probably lying to themselves. Nobody likes learning. Never. What people enjoy is being learnED. They like the feeling you get when you have finally figured something out, or when you realise you know more than the other people in the room. Sounds big-headed, but it is true nonetheless. It is the relief of moving from the feeling of being clueless to the state of being clued up that is the real kick.

The problem is, I suspect that feeling of being constantly clueless is going to be with me for life. I suspect that what YOU don’t realise is that it might be with you for life too. I think that being complacent in learning is going to cripple modern and future workers. The modern worker is going to have to learn how to become an expert on new topics very quickly as jobs become less about being work for life, and more about who knows what. More and more people will be part of the knowledge based economy. Being at the cutting edge of your field is going to be crucial, and maintaining that advantage will require constant study as information and knowledge becomes easier to share. Knowing something about a lot of subjects won’t get you very far. Wikipedia knows a lot about a broader range than you. One will need to become an expert really fast to be competitive.

Welcome to a life of feeling clueless…

Making Friends

I would like to introduce you all, formally, to Nya Gwa. She is a very good friend, and has been in South Sudan for around two years now, working in a couple of different roles. Right now she is working in a refugee camp in the north of the country, close to border with Sudan. I am going to let you in on a conversation we have been having about friendships. Imagine us both relaxing on a couple of garden chairs, in the garden of a bar, facing the Nile. Nya Gwa has come to Juba for some R and R and has meet me in a place with some cool beats, a slight breeze, and twinkling fairy lights. We have a couple of beers on the table, and are quietly talking about the people we have met…

This is total rubbish of course. I am, indeed, sitting in the garden of that bar, but Nya Gwa has been working in a small office with no furniture for the last few months, sweating heavily and cursing the lack of wine… But still, just picture it anyway, it adds to the ambiance of the piece…

Me:

“…Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining about the usual social life here. Meeting new people here is pretty easy. The Kawadja hangouts are full of people in a casual conversation kind of mood. Talking to new people in the bars here is much easier than in the UK. It is ok to start conversations with people you have not met. The conversation usually starts with you saying “Hi. My name is Bob. I work for [insert NGO]. How long have you been here for?” The reply is just a repetition, you get the same information back. It is like people are giving out their C.V. in verbal form. However, if you see an overlap or area of common interest, it is possible to start up a conversation which can go on all night, developing into an acquaintanceship and then into friendship. If not, then you can just go and talk to the next person. “

Nya Gwa:

“Oh, that ubiquitous conversation, it drives me insane. It’s like the first week of university when the conversation is always “my name is ….. I come from…… I am studying ……”. But yes, it is easier to strike up a conversation here, the main difficulty is in trying to strike up a conversation that isn’t about work, which can be a struggle.”

“Yeah, that is a problem. I still have trouble cracking that one. But what about the non-kawadja population? It is possible, depending on where you work and play, to go most of the day without seeing one of these rare people. How do we start friendships with them? This one is much more of a conundrum to me. You see, most initial conversations with people we meet in the street and talk to go along these lines-

Me: “Good morning, how are you?”

Response: “Give me money.” Or “Have you got a job for me?”

“As a woman, there’s the whole other aspect of it, which is ‘hello, how are you?’ leading to declarations of love/saying they want to be ‘your good friend’/in one case, a man literally saying ‘Hello. Will you have sex with me?’ on the streets of Juba. In fact, because of this, I don’t start up conversations with men in South Sudan unless it’s necessary. Which is sad, but it’s true. I mean, within in a lot of the cultures here just a woman striking up a conversation with a man is pretty slutty – for example in Nuer and Dinka cultures, women don’t eat in front of men, they don’t drink in front of men. One of my national staff proudly says that when he returns home from a day of work his wife does not speak to him but just brings him some tea and then goes away. Also, I have to realize that even men who I do not perceive as in my category of potential dates, ie married men in their 50s, are perceiving me as in their range. So, there’s a whole other level going on.

The problem is, few South Sudanese women speak good English, or indeed, any English at all, especially once you leave Juba. I often provoke lots of laughter with women when I play with their children here, but it’s not really an opportunity to make a ‘proper’ friendship.”

“Alright, you trump me there. I don’t get marriage proposals. That must be a bit of a bugger. But you mention one of your staff. What about those people we meet during the course of our work? I can tell you. Most ask for more wages, which is a fair question as I am usually employing temporary teams of people to collect survey data. But let me give you an example of what happens outside of that employer-employee relationship. One of my data collectors, who I had employed on a couple of occasions now and got on well with, called me during one project and asked to meet me. She said there was a particular problem that I could help them with. When I met her, she explained that she was trying to go back to school and needed some help as it was expensive and the jobs in South Sudan do not pay very much. I suggested that I could help with finding details of scholarships in other countries, like Uganda or Kenya. But that answer was not completely satisfying to her. She did not complain further, but I could see that she was looking for financial help.

She was an employee, but how about colleagues from other organisations? Not being an employer means I should be treated with a little more equality, right? Nope. On a project with a partner organization, one of my partner colleagues asked if I would like to go for a walk through the town we had just arrived in. I figured this for a friendly gesture, so I willingly accepted. Over coffee in a little tea shop, my ‘friend’ starts talking about education being a challenge in South Sudan. In particular, the lack of good universities for him to finish his schooling, and the cost of going to elsewhere.

Do you see where this conversation was heading? I did, before the words 'I need a little help, but only within your capacity to help' were even uttered.“

“That story is very familiar. Asking for money for school, or for a plane ticket to the UK, has happened a lot of times. Also for clothes, for a watch, for a computer, whenever you go back to the UK. There doesn’t seem to be the conception that things are expensive in the UK, actually more expensive than if they bought these things from Kenya.

But yes, I’ve lived here for two years. Do I have any South Sudanese friends? I would say I only made friends with one South Sudanese person who wasn’t part of the diaspora. I am friendly with my current staff, for sure, and they don’t ask me for money anymore. But, the reality is, whenever I leave this job I won’t have any way of keeping contact with them. And, I am their boss, so, there has to be some level of distance socially.

It makes me sad that there is this gap. Sometimes I feel guilty about it, and feel I should make more of an effort. But, at the end of the day, I spend most of my time at work interacting with people of a massively different culture from me, in a very stressful environment. When I’m finished I am tired and just want something familiar to hold on to. Someone who I can talk freely with rather than worrying about what words I use or whether they will understand what I say.”

“I just met a new colleague today. Comes from my hometown. Nothing beats talking to someone from home. I’m English, I miss sarcasm. But I do wonder about that effort. I feel like I failed a little bit. My efforts to even try and find non-kawadjas is failing. I wonder if the anthropologists have it right? Perhaps we should immerse ourselves?

Of course, the trouble with that is we have no bloody time to do that. We have too much work to do, and cannot sit around just talking to and studying people all day. I think you hit on something when you said your staff no longer ask you for money. Perhaps it just takes time and patience on our part. Perhaps we just need to keep explaining that we cannot give money, and eventually we might break through that barrier that all people have here. The barrier that says all kawadjas are rich, and can save us by giving us things.”

Explaining the principles of unionisation to the South Sudanese...

... is very much like trying to teach a shark how to swim. Or bite.

I regularly employ small teams of south sudanese staff, as do all of my colleagues. Wherever we work we need to hire daily staff that can go out into the communities we are targeting,  to carry out the surveys we have been set. There are dozens of tribes here, all of which have their own unique history and language. If we need to work in a particular area, then we need to employ people who come from the tribes that occupy the land we are working in. We have to do this for two reasons.

The first is that, obviously, we need someone who speaks the local language to do the translations for us. We have surveys that need to be filled in. We need someone who can ask the questions in Dinka, or Nuer, or Bari, or Shilluk. They will then translate the answers back into English for us. If the translation does not go well, you get rubbish data. You had better check out how well they can speak and read English before you hire them.

The second reason is less directly practical, but has much more serious consequences if something does go wrong. The biggest threats to security here is not necessarily the tension between South Sudan and Sudan, who they fought a war of independence with. The biggest threat to your everyday security is inter-tribal conflict. In a country where owning cattle symbolizes your material wealth, cattle raids are deadly. Attacks on other tribes lands, in revenge for previous killings, also happen with depressing regularity. Struggles are sparked over the use of water and grazing land. These conflicts occur at local levels, but they are represented at a national level as  the tribes vie for influence and look after their own in Parliament. Practically speaking, I am not saying that I am likely to get some Nuer guys shot dead if I take them with me on a field trip into another tribe's land. However, I might be setting them up for more than collecting bad data. They may also collect a few bruises.

What this means is that they are used to sticking together. Individuals within a tribe do conflict with each other, but when they are threatened by someone from outside the tribe each and every tribemember will line up alongside their relations. Disagree with someone from the other tribe? None of his tribemates will take your side. Enter a dispute with one of your employees? You will be hard pushed to find a court or judge that take your side if he is connected to the local community. They know that banding together and helping each other out gives them strength. This is how they managed to survive decades of war. People here are used to working as a group. Now let me give you an example of how this can play itself out in my work:

I was recently commissioned to supervise a large survey in Upper Nile state. The data collectors that were to be part of the survey were salaried staff that worked for the NGO that had contracted me. The staff were being taken away from their usual work in order to carry out this survey. Because they were taken away from their usual places of work, they are granted an extra daily bonus. A "Per Diem". Now, it should be remembered that this survey plays an important part of the NGOs funding application. The survey shows how much work there is to do in the area and that they deserve the funding which pays for their projects, and incidentally pays the data collectors regular wages.

I trained this team of 20 or so people for 4 days in the various skills that the survey required. At the end of the 4th day we gave them all their certificates, everyone was happy, and we tell them to prepare to leave in the morning for the area in which we will start work. The next morning, we let them all know that we are leaving at 9am so they could start packing their things in the cars. No-one moved. An hour later, while having a briefing, a spokesman stands up and begins to deliver a list of demands for their continued participation in the survey. They wanted: raincoats; rainboots; daily allocations of tea, cake, and soda; and a 33% increase in their per diem.

In short, they are going on strike, and they waited until the last moment to tell us because they thought that was when we would be most likely to give in. Arthur Scargill would be proud.

This has happened to me and my colleagues in other places too. Much of the time it is over an additional 10 or 20 south sudanese pounds per day. On some short projects where we just wanted the work done, their strike action succeeded. We paid them. In this case, it did not. The strikers held their ground, but so did their employer. The employer went to the local authorities to look for help, and to other organisations to try to find an alternative source of data collectors. However, as they were in conflict with people from the local area, the authorities supported their own. After 3 days of negotiations, the survey was cancelled. The organization failed in its attempt to produce a yearly survey that is uses to apply for and justify its funding stream.

It is also worth noting that the group of employees also lost out on what would have been almost a months salary on top of their normal pay, but they were not willing to give in on their demands. This points to another interesting part of the national psyche of the South Sudanese that I have only just begun to realize. They will stand firm on a demand, even if it may mean hurting themselves as they do it. South Sudan's largest export, by far, is oil. The problem is that the only oil pipeline running from here to the coast is through Sudan, its old enemy. Sudan was levying a high price for South Sudan to pump its oil through that pipeline, and was also making a lot of money out of the oil as it resold it. South Sudan tried to negotiate a better deal for their oil, but Sudan though it had them in a strangle hold.

South Sudan decided the only way to break the deadlock was to stop producing oil. This hurt Sudan a lot, but it hurt South Sudan even more. The South Sudanese lost 98% of their national income.

The thing is, not one single South Sudanese person complained. They supported the government's action. They were happy to hurt themselves severely, so long as the north did not get the advantage on them.

You may be fooled into thinking that because the South Sudanese are poor, they will have to take the weaker position in any negotiation. This is FAR from the truth.

Working in "The Field"

Around a month ago, I was dispatched on my first extended trip into the field, and I would like to tell you about some of those experiences. I still have to analyse them myself, so perhaps you can help me.

First of all, what do I mean by working in the “field”? I certainly don’t mean going camping in nice green pastures where the cows eat grass, trees sway in the wind and farmers chase you off their land. These things do happen here, but that is beside the point. There are a couple of definitions of the term “the field”, and they all depend on where you are standing at the time that you define it. Lets say, for example, that you are standing in London. You work for the Red Cross. For you, working in “the field” means moving to any other country where you are running an aid programme. Therefore, if you come to South Sudan you are now working in “the field”. Have a look at my friend's definition of "the field" for another point of view.

When you get to the field, things change. You realise after a few days that working and living in Juba is nothing like it is elsewhere in South Sudan. Juba has roads (sort of). It has shops. It has restaurants. It has lots of things to buy and eat and consume. It has barbers that will give you a shave and a massage. It even has city supplied electricity. Occasionally. You have now come across a new definition of “the field”, and it is one that no longer includes you. Within South Sudan, “the field” means working anywhere that is away from your main office. For those organisations with a base in other major cities, the definition has to change a little to mean working away from those offices too (although one might like to keep that quiet. It sounds better if you can claim to have been working for months in “the field” when what you have actually been doing is living in air-conditioned opulence).

I live in Juba. For me, the definition of “the field” means everywhere else. We were commissioned to conduct a nation-wide survey on radio listening habits. All of the researchers in the company were dispatched to different areas of the country at the same time. Some packed out landrovers as if going on safari (I was one of these), others were sent in planes. One of us at least had to use a boat to get to their final location. We all had several locations to visit, many teams of data collectors to train, and new friends to make. Sounds exciting, doesn’t it?

That is because it was. The first part of the trip was comparatively easy for me. I got to stay in a hotel with mostly working generators. I got a room. It had a television. It worked. I told my colleagues this and they instantly hated me. One of my co-workers was in an area where the roads were so bad with mud from recent rains they managed to spin the car 180 degrees while going 15 miles an hour. Another was supposed to conduct a survey in a village that no longer existed since the Lord’s Resistance Army attacked it several years ago. A third has, I am told, spent most of his time walking.

But don’t worry. My troubles started pretty soon. The biggest challenge we face in the field is the team of people we have around us. We employ local people to conduct the surveys we carry out. The team we employ can make or break the project. If you get a good team, things go excellently. If you have one or two trouble makers on board, then you will encounter huge problems. On this trip some of my Data Collectors were brilliant. Most, however, I fired for stealing memory cards from the smart phones. I nearly fired another after I caught him lying about his work. My boss is now threatening to call me “The Terminator”.

I had to move from my first cushy area to a Panyagor, the county capital of Twic East, and there things altered. It is a small town that runs along both sides of the north-south road that runs from Juba in the south, to Upper Nile State in the far north. The phone charging stalls had power, as they rely on small petrol driven generators, but that was about it. The largest (and only) NGO there had a main generator that was broken. So was their other large generator. Their small back-up generator was broken too. They were down to a couple of solar panels that barely worked. This was the beginning of a theme for this trip. Generator repair men are hard to come by, and the spare parts even more so. The roads in this country are hell, so the people and parts don’t get around.

All this meant that I finally got a taste of what it is like, trying to work in a western way in the bush. In short, it does not work. I have phones to charge. A computer that needs power. I have papers that need light to be read. I had a small hut that was so bloody hot I could not work inside it without dripping sweat, even at night. As a result I tried to work outside during the night.

That was a mistake. I found chair to sit on. A table to use. I have a netbook with good battery life so I can carry on working. I was as prepared for work as possible. The problem is that no-one else has power that late at night. This means I was happily sitting there, in the dark, a computer on the table in front of me. Insects like computers. They think a small moon has just landed on earth, and they fly and hop and jump merrily toward it. Try as I might to write up the reports from the day, I found it impossible to work as insects from hell bounced off the back of my head in their scramble to get to my computer screen. When they got there they obscured my work, adding extra meaning to the prose on the screen:

“We left Bor at Bluebottle and arrived in PanyaMosquito pm. Left the data collectors in Stickinsect and drove out the meet our contact the Big Hairy Fucker…”

When the Big Hairy Fucker’s friends came to the party and started investigating my face I decided to do what everyone else in the lodge was doing. Stop working, get some tea, sit in the dark and chat.

The final stop on this journey was Ayod. As before in this trip, I was subject to the kindness of strangers as accommodation and data collectors were found for me before I arrived. Introductions to the county commissioners were made on my behalf. We were looked after. Everything was going so well. We were put in a compound that, you guessed it, had multiple generator failures.

I mentioned earlier that the organisations working in the field rely on the kindness of strangers themselves. Those broken generators? We promised to take one back to Juba for them, so it can be fixed.

As I write this entry, I am in the office of this final set of kind hosts. The solar power is working. We just had lunch of goat meat and rice. The breeze is blowing through the open windows and doors. There is a song bird warbling away on the chair next to me, trying to find his way back out again. A small flock of chickens had wandered in to inspect the floor for dropped food, and has now just left in disgust at finding nothing. I am glad to have ended up here, at the end of my field trip. The songbird and the chickens beat flies in your face any day.