last morning in the Sudan....

Kurtz has left the building......

A-musing photos......

so......the stories attached to these snap shots really need to be passed on in person.....but most of them are worth at least 300 or so words by themself, if not 1,000.....

31 December 2009

a man & his rope......

so, the story behind this photo is about 50,ooo words, but it is entertaining, I swear....and it's the only time I've actually worn a life jacket in the last 20 years.....

giving a donkey-cart the AK treatment at Vito's Old Fangak Body & Repo.....

taking tea at Vito's, part I......

......and part II

Vito...

a different perspective

so, the holidays have passed through Old Fangak, leaving many stories.

New Year's Day was spent swimming, and the construction of the new clinic is going well.

life is quite interesting in The Sudan, so much so that it is leaving me little time to post any musings.....

so.....the below video is of a Southern Sudanese artist named Duop....the song is a call to the Sudanese refugees around the globe to return to the country and help re-build - he is telling them that there is peace in The Sudan.....from Juba to Malakal to Khartoum, and to come home.....which is a nice sentiment, although the accuracy of it may be debatable....

regardless, the video features quite a bit of footage that does capture the variety of life here, far better than I can provide.....and while the music is certainly no RadioHead, it's better than lil' wayne.....and you know you want that hat.....

...just a fond farewell to a friend

yeh look at me
in my thirties
plowing forth, unsteady and unsturdy but...
I'm still alive...I'm still alive
I win a prize
I'm still alive

yeh look at me
pushing forty
suiting up for another sortie and...
I'm still alive...I'm still alive
I win a prize

I'm still alive

It may not be pretty

my life up to here
but something bold and beautiful occurred...

I'm not interred

yeh look at me
as a tragic figure
for one frivolous moment I...
I beg to differ cuz
I'm still alive...I'm still alive,
I win a prize

I'm still alive

It may not be pretty

my life up to here
but something bold and beautiful occurred...
I'm not interred

*Vic Chesnutt* 11/12/1964 – 12/25/2009

cows that I have known....

so……they’re big on cattle here in the Sudan.

they’re not big on ‘systems” though, or “structure” or “boundaries”…..or “branding” for that matter….so I’m really not sure how they can tell whose cow is whose….but apparently they can.

I imagine it’s something along the lines of “in America, you would know which dog is yours, so why couldn’t you tell which cow”; as well as the fact that it would be extremely bad form to lay claim to someone else’s cow….

regardless, somehow they do tell them apart…..and cows are money....and so the cows have the run of the place….as you can see below….

this was actually in Nairobi, taken out of a car window - my first "major bovine incident"...

the view out my back window over coffee…..

and the side yard around evening….

a man and his cow….

This bunch was grazing near the river at Old Fangak International Airport (O.F.I.A) ….and near the river is fine, but it becomes an issue when they are grazing on the airstrip when a plane is landing…..which is every time a plane is landing…..so, the pilots usually have to make 2 or 3 passes to scatter them/alert the locals to “please move your cows….or possibly your goats”….

A side note: so, O.F.I.A. is on the other side of the river from the village itself, about a 5 minute boat ride away….and, schedules being mostly a theoretical concept in the Sudan, it doesn’t behoove one to sit around in an open field on a 100 degree day waiting for a plane that may not be there for 2 hrs, if at all…or to be surprised when you hear a plane landing that you had no knowledge of….so, the built-in delay of in-flight cattle clearing is kind of nice, as when you do hear/see the plane, you know “ahhh, we’ve got at least 15 minutes to jump in the boat & get there…

unlike the AK, where air traffic overhead (even in the bush) is a relatively common, everyday occurrence; here in lovely downtown Fangak if you hear any plane, you know it will be landing at O.F.I.A, as there is absolutely no other possible reason it would be passing through the airspace – 95% of the time, that area is occupied by birds and the moon only….

and when you have one of the two boats in Old Fangak with a motor, and capable of ferrying people/freight from O.F.I.A. to the village….and the driver of the other boat (owned/operated by the Carter Centre) lives across the river from where the boat itself is kept, so if he happens to not actually be in town at the moment….it’s usually you & Stephen “the Man” Gatkose jumping in the boat and getting there….knowing you have time to finish your coffee, because the pilot will have to scatter a cow or three….

the collar means it's "special"....which could mean it's someone's cow you are taking care of....or it's breeding...or it's going to be sold...or just about anything....definitions are a hazy concept in Nuar (the local language, and name of the local tribe...pronounced "noo-air")...regardless, any woman likes a bit of jewelry & flash, no?

a side note: for just about every cow you see, you'll see a lil' white bird (from the Egret clan) following it around, enjoying the insect smörgåsbord that accompanies it's four-legged friend...the aviary scientists have creatively named this bird "Cattle Egret"...regardless, it's a quite endearing sight...

getting it's drink on....

....and not skittish about it

so, these two fine examples were lazing about the edge of the market on a hot afternoon, and I couldn't resist the urge to snap a pic....and in Old Fangak, cameras are still quite the exotic, magical item, so if you're not very surreptitious about usage, you're likely to get a local clamoring to be in the shot....young, old, man, woman - they have no fear of their souls being stolen, they wanna be on camera, dammit....which resulted in the below shot, one of my favorites of the entire scene so far.....

the follow-up is that after taking the picture, you must show it to the subject (easily/instantly done in these digital days), so they can see themselves....and when these two young ladies who had scampered into the frame looked at the picture and realized that they were featured next to COWS.....the shrieks & giggles of mortification needed no translating....

down by the river, as a trading boat comes into town….which leads us again to boats….

A better shot in which to appreciate the overloaded…..

…..and underpowered craft (that’s a 75 hp outboard motor strapped onto that behemoth)…

....and the majority(by a LARGE margin) of the trading/shipping boats here in the Sudan follow this same model…..but we’ll get into that nuttiness another time…..it’s late, I’m a good kind of tired….and there’s a side of beef lowing about 100 yds away….

picture pages, picture pages....

...time to get your pen or your pencil....

Fangak International Airport

they're called "Tukuls"

my digs...the mosquito net/cot to the left is my preferred sleeping arrangement, the better to take advantage of those cool night breezes....cooking and what-not is done inside the main building.....but I don't think "MTV Cribs is going to be knocking on my door anytime soon....

the current medical center

Old Fangak at evening

Fangak Drillers Local #237 working on "Big Mojo #1" (membership clockwise: Bret, Mike, Rob, Stephen "the Man" Gatkose, DK)

moments before my good-hearted Bull Connor impression....

kids will be kids.....anywhere the sun shines

letting the days go by...

so…..our story begins in the AK, last February….

actually, our story begins with a long-time dream of mine – to wake up one New Year’s Day morning on Easter Island, lying on the beach with those great stone heads looking out at the ocean with me…..

but back to the the facts…..

a local doctor, name of Jack, had snow-machined out to the lodge on Valentine’s Day weekend with his fiancée, Josie, for a few quiet days of skiing and snuggling….mutual friends had tipped them off that EagleSong was a good place for that sort of thing, so a few weeks prior he had called up & booked a cabin….

none of us had actually met before, and there is always some trepidation when having people you don’t know come out, even friends of a friend – will they be annoying, will they be uncomfortable, etc, etc……but they arrived with smiles, and it became apparent that they were “good peoples”, as they might say in South Philly….

over dinner that first night, amidst conversating about life & what-not, Jack began discussing a project he was involved with in Africa – about a doctor named Jill Seaman….who had for the past 20 years been splitting her time between Bethel, AK and southern Sudan, mostly in a village called Old Fangak.

Jack had lived & worked in Africa previously, and upon visiting the good Dr. Seaman in the village a couple of years ago, he saw the conditions, the poverty, and the overwhelming needs Jill was dealing with, and told her, “…we’ve got to get you some help….”

Old Fangak proper is a village of a couple thousand people – but within a 50 mile radius there are various homesteads, smaller & larger villages….a total population for the area over 50,000 people…..and the only doctor is a woman from Alaska working out of a 70 year old stone building …. treating people who might have walked for 4 or 5 days to reach the village, or sold a cow for the money to get a seat on a trading boat going down the river (the boats here are another 10K word post in their own right – mind-blowin’, I’m telling ya….)

Medicines Sans Frontiers/Doctors Without Borders (a fantastic organization, let there be no doubt) wouldn’t go there, as it was too remote of an area for their logistics & operations to support….MedAir wasn’t there for much the same reasons, along with a host of other NGO’s that for various political and natural realities couldn’t/wouldn’t work in the area…..

only a crazy doctor from the AK, and whatever local staff she could cobble together and train….

Jill’s a pretty amazing chick, obviously.

The MacArthur Foundation agreed with that sentiment earlier this year – you can chek theirs and others thoughts on the matter here, here and here…

so Jack returned to the AK, and with a couple of other people started the Alaska Sudan Medical Project (you can check out the main website here), whose main goal is building a new medical facility for Jill and Old Fangak, as well as drilling wells and bringing clean water to an area that is absolutely desperate for it…..and along with those, the possibility of some hope for the future….

so….as you might imagine, I was intrigued by the story & his passion for it, and ended up spending a couple of hours talking with him about the project & the scene in Africa….on that night, it was 20 degrees below zero and there was 12 feet of snow outside my window….90+ degrees and sunshine sounded awfully nice, and I nonchalantly mentioned that if they were going over next winter to give me a call, see what my plans were…..

and the next morning they went out skiing, and then we had another pleasant evening…..and the next day they were snow-machining back to Anchorage….

and that’s where the prologue ends….I went about my spring & summer, as y’all know….and Sudan might have been in the back of my mind, but it was pretty far back….I set up plans to spend autumn in Oregon, winter working on a project in Austin and traveling….

until the last weekend in September, when Josie ran into my sister at the Anchorage Weekend Market….

they chatted, and my sis asked her about the Africa project…to which Josie replied that they were setting up to send a team over at the end of October, but were still looking for people – in particular, she mentioned that they needed someone who could go over & stay for a few months to manage the project on the ground…more than the two weeks or so commitments that they could get from most of the doctors, well-drillers, etc that they were working with….

her words were, “we need someone with bush experience – someone willing to live in primitive conditions…..no running water, only well – no electricity except what we’d get from gas powered generators & batteries….sleeping w/mosquito nets….someone with construction experience who could deal with having limited tools, resources, & fuel… someone who could handle the travel & stress of the scene…do you know anyone?”

basically, she said everything EXCEPT the sentence, “We need your brother, and is he actually crazy enough to say yes?”

so my sister, who was thinking, “they need Dave, and he’s crazy enough to say yes…” told her she would talk to me and have me get in touch with Jack…

which I did, after quite a few chuckles as she replayed the conversation to me….I’ve seen enough of my karmic signposts to recognize one smacking me in the face….

so….I called Jack, told him I was flying into Anchor-town on the 10^th of October (plans I had already made, so as to avoid freeze-up and being locked in once the lake started icing over), and that we should meet-up then and discuss the project….

we met, and discussed the harsh realities I’d be facing, the plethora of inoculations I needed to get, the details of the construction, as well as the amazing nature of the whole scene….the tipping point for me was when he mentioned that if I took the job, it would be necessary for me to take a boat up the rivers once or twice a month for supplies, fuel, pick up team members flying in, etc….

the image of a sunrise on a continent I’ve never seen, and me plunging into the middle of the Nile River on Jan 1, 2010 materialized into my head, and I told him, “I’m your man, Jack, let’s go build a hospital in Africa…”

….as I mentioned, it’s nice to recognize your karma as it happens every once in a while…and are we not our brother’s keeper?

or, as I relayed to a friend later that night as it began to sink in….“I’m going to build a f**king hospital in f**king Africa….”

so….three weeks later, on Halloween, I was on a plane to Nairobi….and three days later, standing on a dirt airstrip about a ¼ mile from Old Fangak, with three other cats from the AK, and about twenty boxes of tools, equipment, and mosquito nets….

and here we are….

so DK, what’s the rumpus?

more on that next time, but a few quick notes:

the moon: I wasn’t crazy, the phases are at a right angle from “normal”….quite cool to watch from night to night….

the birds: probably only thousands, but it seems like millions…ibises, kites, cranes, red-cheeked cordon bleu’s….simply stunning, and a constant daily entertainment for me…

the temperature:…it’s equator hot, man…96 degrees in the shade, literally…mid-day siestas are a must, but my tan’s already reaching George Hamilton levels….it cools off at night, and by midnight is down to 65-70, quite pleasant…

the cuisine: I’ve represented myself well, and been the polite honored guest who tries and eats everything….my mama raised me right…but let’s just say this ain’t Paris, and I’m cooking for myself as much as possible…

the work: tough, mainly due to conditions….AK rules apply: it takes twice as long, is twice as hard, & is at least twice as expensive as expected….but nothing I can’t handle….

….and last Monday, I was spraying 20 squealing village kids out of a hose from the new well we had successfully got up and running after 10 days of constant set-backs…..there was no FatBurger, but it was indeed a good day…