this morning, during breakfast, a loudspeaker blared thick
Arabic. today was a clean up day in abyei. everyone was to
clean the space outside of their tukuls, or face consequences.
tonight the air is full of the sharp smell of plastic. fires line
the road. as you walk down it, you can see the black shadows of
people tending them flicker and dance.
on the way back to town after my run first those weeks ago, I saw a
cloud of smoke moving across the horizon. it bunched on itself,
then came loose. as it grew closer, I saw it was a flock of a
thousand birds. un marriage du ouiseau. they landed in one
tree, all one thousand, and sang.
within twenty minutes of landing on wednesday, I was stopped and
hassled by soldiers then told I had to attend the hospital because a
child found a grenade and pulled the pin.
welcome home. to the place with no face.
noone knows who abyei belongs to and noone comes from here. no
face. yet more arrive each day. the future is being
decided even now, but I can’t see it. I am too close to the
centre, and today, I can only see smoke.
there are soldiers from four different groups, and I can make no more
sense of them than I could when I arrived the first time. my
field co starts talking about recent tensions between acronyms, and I
lose the plot. thankfully, my job is in the hospital, the radius
of my life 480 paces.
the measles is settling. in shala. god willing. two
admissions yesterday to add to fifteen sweating in the
recubra. the feeding centre has grown. the
families of thin children spill out of rooms onto mats. the
girl I wrote about before, the “now you see her, now you don’t”,
is still in the hospital. I talked with ali as he waited for the wfp
plane to take him away, and he told me he saw her laugh for the first
time. I was glad to see her. I will tell more about her another
time. I’m on call today, and need to return to the hospital.
it was 46 today. people keep on saying the hot season is coming
with straight faces. I’ve started to sleep outside.
old
home.
new home.
old
roof.
new roof.
flower
bike.
agok.
Thank you very much for good job you have done for us because you let us see our lovely Town Abyei. I want you to send me more potos of Abyei
I believe I found your blog via a U of C alumni email… As a nurse who has been to Nigeria on several occasions to volunteer (moving to kenya soon!), I deeply appreciate your ability to beautifully articulate your experiences. i can identify with so many of your descriptions, experiences, frustrations, joys, adventures. thank you for sharing it with strangers like me:-)
a new mantra i plan to take with me to africa:
breathe in the suffering
breathe out compassion
(from "scared sacred" documentary)
You poor thing. I laughed out loud when I saw old house new house. I guess it works! Keep writing, your experiences are fascinating. Spring is trying hard to arrive in Magog, today it was 7C, a far cry from 46! shoots are poking out of the meting soil. We got the bikes out and went for a ride around the block in the mud. You know that smell of spring: melting snow, mud and things trying to turn green? Its here and its great. Breathing a sigh of releif that the ADQ didnt win the quebec elections and that JeanCharest has held on for a little longer. Life as an Anglo in Quebec is status quo. Thanks for writing this blog, it keeps me grounded and intrigued.
Hi my name is Samii and i’m in grade 6. I’m doing a speech on MSF. I think the stuff you do is amazing. You’re helping people who really need you. What could I say to help my classmates understand what MSF is really all about? We had people from MSF come to Kenora, in the fall. My mum told me about the presentation that they gave and i’ve read through the blogs and the website. Is there something that you would like to say that I could pass onto my classmates in my speech?
I read your posts and simply cannot imagine being you in the midst of the heat, soldiers and epidemics. I love the flower on the bicycles and that after a while, this is what you see. If the plot in Sudan is difficult for YOU to follow, you can only imagine how clueless the rest of us are.
Stay well James. You’re in our hearts.