Back to keep fighting

My role here is to get to know more about the situation in Sudan with a focus on the people suffering. And I will start working to share my knowledge and skills to anyone who is strong enough in english to understand me. The goal is to be a central part in a work to create a democratic movement within the Red Crescent in Port Sudan City and Red Sea State. This movement will crave their elected in the board positions up and through the system in time. The focus will be this because I can not see how we can build the organization by and work for the suffering in this society if we do not give our own volunteers, on the ground, a voice.

Finaly I am back in the desert by the Red Sea. It is a looong painstacking journey here. Luckely the roads where built only 3 years ago, but then again the traffic is really dangerious. The road here is one of the oil roads out of sudan through Port Sudan City port into the Red Sea and the world. The traffic is huge overloaded trucks and blown tires lies scattered by the road in the thousands.

The heat is down know from 50 degrees celcius to approx 28. Life should be alot more comfortable. And it is somehow, except know the insect, espesially the flies, are booming and creating local epidemics here and there with diarrhea, eye infections and water pollution.

I feel tired today. It is hard to explain how one can feel so tired after four weeks of vacations back home in Norway. If feel frustrated at the sight of my enormous challenge here. To create as much humanitarian support as possible for the people here, through well trained and motivated local youth volunteers, without funds from Norwegian Red Cross. Except the youth delegate activity budget which is to low to get any activity started in a sustainable focus. 

And the secret is I see this enormous potential in Sudan, but feels the heel of the ruling elite crushing down on its people. The people here are powerless. To speak out means jail. One of our coordinators from the Red Crescent spoke out about the horrible situation of the street children in Port Sudan City in the newspaper. He was jailed in a "secret prison" or "ghost house" for three days and was let out after his family paid him out. So the time has not yet come for a free and productive people in Sudan. This is the time of patience and frustations. The wait for a military regime to collapse. 

The first time is soon over

People of a narrow mind fails to see that there is people who will give up all the luxury in the world to help other people. Allthough we are many, in a crowd of all it feels few. And the most of the Khawayas coming here makes a carrier of the missery here. Are they another necessary group of narrow minded like the many cynical buisnessmen in the world? If I am offered a carrier in this line of work, what can I do to represent only a pure intiative to really help the needy? 

I am near the end of our first three months in Sudan and Port Sudan City. And I am going home for christmas. I have been frustrated, stopped, misunderstood, infected, amazed, horrified, sleepless, late, ashamed, proud, confused, informed, greeted, welcomed, attacked by cat and insects, sweating, training, lecturing, uninformed and witnessing just to name a few words to describe our lives here. I have been cultural adapting and many feelings comes from that. But some of the things I read about and see here cannot simply be cultural adapted to. There are conditions and situations a world cannot live with. They are as bad as the worse of the stories from the world wars. Maybe two million people have died here in this conflict over the years. And people continue to suffer. Here everything is buisness. And I mean EVERYTHING. Your daughter, your son, drinkable water, healthcare, foodrations, the travel to a refugeecamp, the information on refugeecamps, the luxury of refugeecamp life, basic food, straws to sleep on and so it goes on. Everything is sold and slavery still very much exist.

I have heard thoughts like: "What are these "Khawayas" (foreigners) doing here? Why do they want to be here when they can be in London or any western country? They must be unsuccessful in their country to come here." "No wonder", is my respons to that. Sudan is no place for a picnic. And it is absolutely not a place one travels to experience fun and adventure. Sudan is a place where you meet you. All you see and are able to learn will contribute to the massive change to your life this country will do. Not changes by various memories but changes of values worth fighting for. Values worth living, working and fighting for in life. That goes for all of us here. Locals and Khawayas. 

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.