By the time I had that taken care of I had to find someone to weigh my bags. I had taken all of my winter clothes out of the bags and left them with Gabriel so they would weigh no more than the allowed amount, but then they looked at my carry on which weighed a good deal and told me I could not take that on the plane and had to check it with my other stuff. Now my bags were several kilos over the allowed amount, and it was about $5 a kilo I had to pay extra. That took some time as we had to find out who took the money for that (it was the scale man, but another fellow). All in all I had to shell out another $50 for extra baggage. I now had to experience the security check, such as it was.
This was really a scream. First there was a desk I had to pass through and they looked at the bag I had my computer and other stuff stored in. They didn’t even ask me to open my computer or take it out, but passed me through a door into a curtained off room that had a man on one side, and a woman on the other. I presumed the shakedown I was going to get was gender biased, and it was. There was no electronic security check. Rather, I was patted down, vest and all, and did not get stopped, though I had a full bottle of water in my pocket. I was then let into the waiting area, and it had only taken one hour of the two hours before the plane was to leave. The plane, naturally was late, and announcements were nonexistent, so I had to just guess when it was our time to leave and followed the crowd.
It was an easy ride to Wau, but at the airport, to my surprise, there was not check-in, nor was there any formal place where we could wait for baggage. It was hotter than Juba, which I could hardly believe, and all the passengers were crowed under the shade of a big tree while we all waited for our bags. That took about one half hour, as I chatted with a Kenyan fellow who had been through the system already and knew the ropes. The fellow that was to meet, Gabriel Yak showed up with a taxi, and as soon as the bags were there, we were off to the hotel.
The Wau River Lodge was my stopover place, and as we checked in, I was informed that the least expensive room was a tent at the far end of the large compound, but was assured it had a shower and toilet. The called it self-contained. It was okay, and the price at $140 a night seemed okay too, as it included three meals at the nice restaurant. The two fellows who had escorted me from the airport (Gabriel and Abraham) stayed with me for several hours while we planned what we were going to do the next day in Wau. In the meantime, I went over my budget, with all the expenses (unexpected ones) I had encountered in Juba, and there in Wau, I was quickly running out of money.
I called Janet with the money issue and she said she would have the money forwarded to me and that I should not worry about money, it would be there the next day. One part of the plan for the next day was to go to the bank and find the money. Later in the evening I was able to get on the Internet for a short time (Internet was available, but I was warned that it only worked in the late evening and early morning. I found out later that it was “really” available only by the swimming pool. I did finally get my mail, so that part of the problem was solved.
The lodge food was pretty good, surprisingly, so I had that hurdle over with little stress. The next morning, however, was another thing. I was promised that the young men who would accompany me to the field communities (Apuk, etc.) would be there at 8:00 A.M. sharp with a car (with or without a driver). At 9:30 A.M. they finally arrived with a story that the car would be there and was on the way. The driver from the previous night was supposed to have that all arranged with his boss, but when the boss realized how long we would need the car, the deal he had promised the night before was cancelled. We didn’t really have a car after all. Three tries later and three broken promises about driver and car, we still didn’t have a car. Abraham took me to the bank while we were waiting. We rode there in a three-wheeled motorcycle like the ones I had used so much in Lima Peru, and I noticed they were all over town, and for the most part, the only taxis in town.
The money had not arrived at the bank when we got there and the lady we spoke to said it always took three days to be cleared with the local banking system. I was leaving that day, so we had to look for other alternatives. While we waited for the car deals to fall through, I went back to the Lodge and E-mailed Home Office to change the name of the recipient of the money, so that the brother of Abraham could receive the money and hold it until I got back on Sunday night, five days later. But having done that, I still had the problem of not having enough money to pay for any car deal that would finally be made.
With all the good alternatives now behind us we took a motorcycle taxi to the place in some out of the way place in Wau where we had exchange money with the Black Market folks, and as it turned out, these same sleaze-bags were the ones who had a car and driver to rent. The negotiation took about twenty minutes of my two compatriots shouting but they finally came out with a deal that would cost me a total of 2000 SS Pounds (about $754 or $187 a day and we feed the driver). We were finally ready at early afternoon to go to the field, but first we had to go back to the Lodge to see about E-mailing again, and then have some lunch before we started out. We had agreed with the owner of the car, that I would pay half of the fee when we left and the rest when I had money again (that is if the transfer change had come through) on my return to Wau. That is still an open issue as I write this blog.
I had heard before I left for Sudan that the road to Akup was under construction and that some of it was paved. Not the case when we were actually on our way. There was a section of several miles on the way to Warup (about half way) that was graded and obviously under construction, but that didn’t last long. I was told that the government had run out of money and that there was none to be had for finishing the road.
The smoother graveled road soon ended many miles from Warup, and soon the driver was down to traveling at less than five miles an hour. In all, it took us about three hours to reach Warup, and that was only the half of it. The road continued the same way with areas where the driver was able to go up to 20 or 30 miles per hour, but most of the time he was going less than 15 miles an hour. We had left Wau at 2:30 in the afternoon and finally arrived in one of villages where we would spend the night at after 8:30 P.M.
A few people greeted up when we arrived, but it was pitch dark so I could not see much of the surroundings and would have to begin my visual survey of the area the next day. I had all kinds of help putting up my tent and some villager even gave me a mosquito net to place on the ground under my tent. So after the ten was ready and my bedding was laid out, I was able to take my place in a chair they provided me and listen to the people talk (in their home language, unfortunately. From then on that would be the normal. As soon as we stopped in any place to visit someone would always have a chair that seemed to materialize instantly on my arrival. Part of that I am sure is respect that I came this far to offer these people something—anything and they would be forever grateful. Above all other things, I have been overwhelmed with their welcome words and actions.
Soon after we got up the first day we were told there was a meeting in part of the village where we were staying. The meeting I was told had been set up for me to tell the community leaders what I am doing in their villages. The meeting turned out to be a formal gathering of all the leaders of the many communities and villages (terms I would come to understand only on my third day in this place. Heading the meeting was the head of the entire county that included the villages I had come to see, plus a large area beyond that. He was a great guy who spoke very good English. Initially I was seated along with several of leaders of some of the smaller
communities , but when this man realized that I could not hear him very well, he had me and the other pull our chairs up close to the table where he was sitting as the head of this meeting.After a s short introduction, he had me tell my complete story of what we were attempting to accomplish while here in this area and later (The Five-Year Plan for community Development), and while I took on the task word by word, Gabriel Yak who was my host interpreted all that I was saying to all the people in the meeting (I would say there were more than 100 men and a few women in the group). At the end of my report, I asked if anyone had questions for me, and of course many of them did, so one-by one I answered their questions for over one half hour. Near the end of this period, a young man stood up—he was very young compared to most of the people in the meeting and started to say something to the crowd and to me, but when I said I could not hear him as he was so far back in the crowd, the leader of the group invited him to step forward and say what he wanted to say. The young man spoke very good English, and had a lot to say about the program and what I had said, but then he rambled on for what seemed like an endless period of time about the environment, the state of things in the community and the people. Mostly he seemed to want to speak for the crowd how happy they were to have me among them.
It was a very hard time for me, as I wanted to say what we have planned for the community, but I didn’t was t raise their expectations that what I was saying was an ultimate solution to their problems. I think I was only partially successful in convincing them of that, but later as I continued my visitations of the five communities in the area, I was impressed to hear that my presence was like a “miracle” as one of the men said to me today. In one community I visited over the next few days, I leaned that the community had given me a name: “Cadoc Williams” which I learned meant, “You cured me.” So everywhere I have gone over the days I had been here aside from having to take a seat on the chairs that come out of nowhere, I have been honored with gifts, sang to, had dancers performing in my honor, sat through several cattle parades where those young people who had cows and bulls, especially, decorate them with long feather-like banners threaded through holes in the cows massive horns. My, what shows I have seen and luckily have recorded on video tape.
Another thing that has been heart-wrenching, has been the gifts I have been given while here. At the first village where I stayed overnight, called Athieng-Puol, the mother on Abraham Pajok came over to me and offered me a goat from her family’s pride of goats. I asked her son what I should do with goat, as I could not take it on the plane with me, and his answer was, “No matter, you must not refuse a gift such as that.” So there I was with a small goat that I didn’t know what to do with, but couldn’t give it back to the lady.
That same day, or later in the evening, someone came by with another gift—a live chicken. We quickly knew what to do with that gift as we were leaving the village for the place where we would make camp for the second night. I left the goat behind in the care of Abraham’s mother, which was okay for the time being. The chicken we offered to the lady who was going to be our cook for the rest of the campout, and that evening we (Gabriel Yak, Abraham Pajok our driver Waku Kadiri) ate the chicken gift, floating in a wonderful tomato-flavored broth.
That second day of my stay, November 10 went fast as we moved from village to village looking at the “environment” as most of the people I met called what I was observing. Everywhere we went, the people were complaining about the situation with lack of water in the community. To my surprise, every village I went to had one or more deep well “bore hoes” as they refer to the wells they have with the metal hand pump. And everywhere I went, those pumps that were working producing a trickle of water, were being fought over by women and young kids gathering water to fetch home and letting little of it filter down the troughs where it went into small basins where goats and cows were being watered. Each one of these places was a madhouse of activity, duly recorded on video, where people had walked in some cases many miles and hours from their homes to fetch this water.
I can’t describe the feelings I had in two of the locations we went to where the only well for many miles around was not working. In one village the pump was not operating because a fulcrum bolt was missing so the handle of the pump would not operate efficiently. I mentioned to the community leader that if he could find a bolt and wrench. I believed I could fix the pump in five minutes. He said there were no spare parts anywhere, and that this would be impossible even though I had offered to fix the pump for them. You can’t imagine the impact this has on a village that depends on these pumps for the only source of water. To have a community as large as his (over 6000 people was his estimate), without any source of water because of a missing bolt, is something that I see as a disgrace owned by the government of this emerging nation.
In another village we came to where the pump was working, as I watched women fighting furiously over the trickle of water that the pump was producing, the village leader explained the priorities in which the people gathering the water given. It was morning when we were at this well, so he explained that the people I was seeing there fighting over this water were people (mostly women and small children) who had walked there four hours or more that morning to get the water for their animals that they had brought along, and to carry back one jerry can of water for their families. He explained that no matter how large the family was, they were able to water their animals that they had brought along, but they were only entitled to one jerry can to return to their homes. I looked at the variety of cans that were around, and estimating their size by gallons, some were three gallon, the larger cans were normal five-gallon jerry cans much like we have at home for gasoline or water, and a few of the women had regular size buckets with lids they were attempting to fill. I noticed some of the women had brought along large plastic wash basins and were using some of the water to wash a few clothes.
The community leader went on to say that later in the morning the people who had walked two hours or more to get to the pump would be given rights to the water and the others would be driven off, whether they had water or not—thus I had the answer to the question of why the women seemed so anxious and were fighting for a place at the pump so they could fill their meager jerry cans. Lastly, my host explained, the people who lived nearby would have access to the pump late in the afternoon and evening and that it was anyone’s guess who might be using the water throughout the night.
So here I am amongst a vast community of many villages and thousands of people all spending a great part of their time over water issues, and with no real good solutions at had to cure the water problems. On Friday just after we had returned to the village (Apuk) where I have set up my tent, a man approached me who spoke English and began talking to me about he water situation in the community. I asked him if someone came into this community and drilled 100 boreholes, would that satisfy the water shortage I had seen so dramatically played out over the previous few days. His answer was, no, it would make very little difference, as the water situation is so critical during the dry season. Everyone’s energies are being depleted due to it.
Everywhere I had gone over the last few days I have asked everyone I could if they knew of anyone who had dug a well and found water anywhere near the surface. To a letter everyone I talked to said there was no water anywhere near the surface. The conclusion I came to from their comments was that my scheme of drilling shallow wells and installing rope and washer pumps on them was a wash and would not be a possible solution to the water situation. Until late in the day Friday, my next to the last day here, I had concluded that I had to come up with the roofwater harvesting alternative for any possible part solution to the water problems of this community. Then suddenly as we were riding back from the village we had visited a short time before, my host stopped the truck and we got out to look at a sandy area where women were drawing water out of holes that had been dug in the sand for a small amount of yellowish-brown water they were using to fill their jerry cans and to give to their animals. I could see there several of these shallow (four-foot deep) wells had been dug in the ground and three of them were operating. The women were idle while I was there and I asked why. I was told they had taken all the water they could for the moment, and were waiting for the well to regenerate so they could get some water back. I envisioned that like in Mozambique where we had sandy soil like this we could carefully drill several shallow wells and install pumps on them and let them be for the community rather than strictly for family use. There were no homes near this place, so I figured that if I could install three or four wells here and they produced water adequately, this might be a partial solution for the water shortage, as least in that area. As we drove on returning to our home base for this trip, I asked if there were other places like this in the community where people dug these “wells” and were getting water. I was told that there were many, but none of them were working very well, as they were continually caving in and no one was able to dig them deeper because of the caving problems. So here is my dilemma, I have two possible solutions to this cankering problem in the community: 1) we must provide a way for roofwater harvesting and long-range water storage (storing water
that comes during the rainy season, and storing enough so it can be used during the dry season.Before I finish his blog, I want to mention that because of the generosity of these fine people I am the proud owner of two goats that have been my reward for coming here. The Community Leader who gave me the second goat said he was ashamed that the gift was so small. I choked up thinking about the “smallness” of his gift. It wasn’t small to me. In addition, on Thursday the same day I received the second goat, someone came by with a gift of another chicken. The first chicken, by the way was white, while the second one, truly ceremoniously, was speckled black and white. I am now part African in the minds of the peo
ple here in this community. We’ve eaten the chicken already, and though people have offered to slaughter the goats so we can eat them, I am not about to do that. My plan is to hire two people to take care of the goats for the time that I am gone (say, until January). When I come back, I will have a ceremony set up in one or two of the villages and I will present my goat as a gift to a needy orphan, thus launching my “Goat in Trust” program, but with no “trust” associated with it. The goat will be a gift with no strings attached, except that I will be taking many photos of the ceremony.
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