It is one o'clock in the afternoon and if I am to survive here for any length of time, my best course of action is to do nothing. Having considered carefully all the options available I have come to the conclusion that today I do NOTHING more. No ifs or buts, no excuses, it's an unconditional nothing, absolutely nothing, in fact, definitely nothing today for sure.
Everyone here becomes lethargic during the middle of the day when the heat outside is at its fiercest. Coupled with the constant cloudless sky when the sun beats relentlessly down from dawn until dusk, most gentlemen, accustomed to a more gentile type of lifestyle, are required to take a certain course of action, or in this case non-action. So today I have decided to stay indoors and do nothing. Totally, utterly and completely nothing. Except maybe to drink coldish water, coke, mango juice, eat succulent oranges and listen to the BBC World service. Which in this part of the planet becomes an interesting occupation as reception varies greatly all the time. At least the wireless keeps me up to date with what’s been going on in Sudan! Oh yes, and the UK, wherever that may be these days!
Anyway it’s Friday and everyone’s got the day off! It’s my first day off (half a day really) in over a fortnight. So much for the thirty-seven and a half hour week I thought was mentioned somewhere along the line when I took this job on!
Being a Friday there are relatively few people or vehicles in the streets. Only a few strategic personnel are at work in the aid agencies offices, such as the managers, the guards and the radio room staff, who are constantly monitoring essential traffic moving around the region servicing the refugee and displaced persons camps. So today everything is quiet and peaceful. Not so the early mornings: It happened two nights after I arrived in Nyala last week and it happened again last night. Someone, or maybe there was more than one person, it was difficult to tell, moves around the streets at 4am in the morning, banging what can only be described as a very large tin drum. The rhythmic marching sound at that time of night carries for a considerable distance and is first detected as just a weak, almost imperceptible sound gradually getting louder and louder before passing directly underneath my bedroom window, at which point the noise becomes very loud, finally fading away as the ‘player’ or players move further away though the streets of the town. Just drums, and marching feet, no other instrument is to be heard. Needless to say, the sound is enough to wake the dead. I have never heard a similar noise before, and am pretty sure it does not occur everywhere, but I believe it is to awake everyone, which it certainly does, so that they have time before dawn to take a meal. The custom being to fast in daylight hours during Ramadan. Not long after the drum beating is over the faithful are called to early morning prayers. I’m sure it would go down well in the village on a Sunday morning before daylight. An early morning call for everyone in Martley to rise and take breakfast before walking to church! Another job for the parish lengthsman warden no doubt. At least St Peters church bells are melodious and always tuneful.
Having practically finished the work here in Nyala, I will be visiting Garsila in Western Darfur tomorrow where facilities, I am told, hover between the basic and non-existent. So whats new? At least here we do have a mobile phone network. For once on an assignment I have managed to make use of the mobile to phone home, normally I work in areas where no such luxuries exist. So it’s been one of the rare occasions when possession of a mobile phone has been really useful. Now I expect to get a message from Orange informing me that I am roaming again. As if I didn’t know that already! You can’t go anywhere these days without ‘big brother’ keeping a watch on your every movement! We do have Internet connections of sorts here as well. An attempt was made to download the October Villager off the Martley website but I eventually gave up after twenty-five minutes when the connection timed out. Even received a message, from Yahoo I think, apologising for the problem! It might have worked had the script been in old-fashioned plain text: but in .pdf, with pictures as well, it was surely asking a bit too much! Sending and receiving e-mails from here, via a web browser, is just as interesting. It’s a bit like watching paint dry to see the indicator at the bottom of the page crawling almost imperceptibly and relentlessly along towards the end stop. And stop it does when the power cuts off, or the server goes down at the crucial moment, and you need to start all over again! Occasionally it never even bothers to reach the end but sticks halfway along when the telephone connections crash, it’s at that point, that one gives up in frustration. So you can see that life here is full of surprises and challenges and not just a bed of roses.
The journey to Garsila can be accomplished by road, it’s a good days journey by truck, normally undertaken in convoy. Or about six hours by Discovery or Land Cruiser in the dry season, but virtually impossible during the wet. It is however considered wiser and more prudent to travel by WFP helicopter under the present circumstances. I expect to stay there, if all goes well, for a couple of days before returning back here to Nyala. Any delay with the equipment or hold-up with the work and it means an extra five days with nothing being done before returning back to base. The helicopter only making a couple of quick passenger trips every week early in the mornings. The rest of the time it is busy delivering food to the camps. After that I almost certainly leave the southern region and head towards El Fasher in Northern Darfur followed a little later by a journey westwards to work in the EL Geneina area, located fairly close to the western borders of Sudan. Look them up; the towns are on any decent map. Travel they say broadens the mind and invigorates the spirit. It certainly broadens the seat. Being teetotal I’m not qualified to give a judgement on the spirit bit.
Suppose it’s not so bad here really. Just that there are pleasanter places to live and work. And cooler!
The electricity went off a few minutes ago so will have to ‘save and close’ before the battery gives out.
Have a nice day
J.