Our status quo on monday 18.May

Time passes fast. We have 19 working days left now. The pressure is on at the same time as the feeling of a need for vacation is growing slowly stronger. The weather is bright blue (as always) and the heat and humidity is getting heavier. This means slow sauna type of pain for norwegians, normally. At the moment for us we are largely weather adapted and only feel agony when the sudanese them selves complain. In other words: "We will come home and freeze our assses of in the norwegian summer". 

The Street Children Centre is open in critical mode. We only provide breakfast, healthcare ones a week and clean water and soaps.  The kids are happy when at the centre and they thank us on regular basis. Three volunteers now take shifts at the centre, namely; Sadiq, Abeer and Ali Ushi. Us youth delegates are around and so is the volunteer coordinator Mahmoud Sharif.

In the picture you can see the centre from within and the children who clean and keep the centre themselves. But they have to be encouraged and someone have to stay with them at all times. The centre opens every day at 10am and closes at 2pm. The volunteers are now starting to register all the kids again and do follow up on what medical treatment they are on amongst other things. The centre has a highly insecure financial future still, but a private donor has come forth and offered 1/5 of needed funds for the critical basics. And this donor is working on finding others who could help him find the rest. Wish us luck.

Picture of Tokar city :p

This week we are going down the Red Sea coast to Tokar city. In this little rural agricultural city we will hang out with volunteers and keep a sexual health workshop. I will have a session on the movement, the values and the Red Cross mandate which is the Geneva Conventions and its protocols. We will stay in Tokar city for two days.

Next week I will hold a workshop on the Norwegian Red Cross Youth methods for teaching rules of war. 'This workshop will also cover the rules of war themselves. It will be a mix of so called participatory activities where the point is to get the participants to do the activities themselves, not just you standing infront a group lecturing. It works great in Norway, so wish me luck on my explanations here in Sudan :)

Picture: "After a hard days work"

Other than this we are now building Oslo presentations, picking out our best pictures to Norwegian Red Cross and prepare for home again. We also have alot of "afterwork" to do up to maximum one year after returning home. Five working weeks in total time has to be given to the afterwork.

I constantly deny begging people money and keep referring them to the Sudanese Red Crescent which I know do not have money to help them. If I gave them money the staff at our office described it like this: "If you give these people money there will be big mushkilla (problem)". For security reasons (not flash around money to become a target for beggers and thieves) my hands are tied. Yesterday this old nice man, clearly troubled asking for money, asked me for 30 pounds sudanese (12$) to take his wife to the doctor. I had to refer him to Sudanese Red Crescent and then he refused to follow me there. I suspect he had allready been turned down there. I have never felt so small and helpless in my life.

Stay well people and always look for the safe and genuin opportunity to help someone. I feel I have failed in that respect because one always thinks: "I can do more".