A Red Cross and Red Crescent Life
The days fly by like a comet through space. Infinite fast. 
We now have the Plans of Action and it is time to make that plan happen. I come to work 09:30 and right away we have morning meeting with the SRCS state director, our contact person. Thereby we rush to office to answer communications over mail and go on to plan or execute activities. Current activities under planning and execution can be seen in the activity plan I posted in the last blog. We are driven around over an area as big as a country to meet, greet, learn, present and engage people and activities. And this is only between 0930 and 1800 Sunday to Thursday. On my own time I have Arabic training, Shotokan fighting and a constantly growing social life. And let us not forget mosquito bites, flies in the thousands and damp, damp, hot climate which makes a Norwegian quite uncomfortable all day through. 

This is my Red Cross life in Sudan. Ever since I realized how great the Red Cross/ Red Crescent  cause is I have struggled equally hard to maintain a private life in self development. When your mind and heart is caught up in a strong engaging cause or work it is easy to forget yourself. It is even easy to forget the simplest thing: Eating. So I have to really work to remember to train my body, read to replenish my mind, and spend a calm minute everyday to feel myself and have a focused and tranquil mind (And keeping a calm tranquil mind in all the suffering among the faiths around us is a challenge also). 

But do not get me wrong. LIFE IS GREAT!

Our work is now more fluent and we are starting to see possible plans of action emerge. The last weeks have been frustrating beyond my limits and my body reacted powerfully with irritation over the ongoing helplessness I felt and still feel. But now I realize these ways which gives more of hope as well. The rainstorms of the last weeks have settled and the mosquitoes and flies have taken over. My companion is down with heavy illness to the gut, which is normal for the population to suffer because of the flies and this might be the reason she is ill. We do not quite know. None of us has so far suffered Malaria. The population in the area suffers in the same way and 35 new refugees come every day across the border from Eritrea. “They derive from Somalia mostly, but some also from Eritrea itself. The state of Sudan will take the refugees by bus into the neighbor state, Kassala, to a big refugee camp driven by the UN” says Mr. Mohamed Taha Osman, Branch director of Red Sea State Red Crescent [Sudan is a federation and is divided into separate states like USA]. On top of all this the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) is here to evaluate the food stability situation and flood hazards in the area of Tokar where 400 000 people might suffer food insecurity and shortage already or very soon. 
Me and Anine has been visited for a week by Christine Weima Lager, Youth Director Norwegian Red Cross. Our talks and discussions have been resolving a lot of frustrations on the above conditions and we have a stronger focus on our purpose here. It feels far too easy to lose focus in these situations. Christine is also a fellow Norwegian and I remember how great it is to speak my mother tongue on a daily basis again. Thank you, Christine. Our focus as youth delegate is: “The volunteers are the most important resource to train and learn from. Help with the democratic build up in the organization from the volunteer level. Help the volunteers in reaching the people in need, by joining on their activities in the communities”. This is how I orient my focus in my work here.

The market, harbor and the park is still the best places to relax in the afternoons. And further exploration of the enormous market, or “souq” in Arabic, is done on the days I do not mind the flies and the heat so much. Life is, maybe despite all I just told you, very much cheerful, happy and optimistic. I enjoy my life here and the more Arabic I speak the more I enjoy it. All the people I meet here are happy and thankful for life and good health. We could all learn something from them, because all though we might have the educational level, they have the right focus of a happy life. Maybe in long times of wealth we lose a lot of the contact with our day to day “here and now” consciousness. And I believe in “the now” as the moment which contains happiness, whereas the past and future contains regrets and worries.