Buildings & Builders....

So, here is the building project when I arrived in February:


And here it is now:


Now I know what you're thinking, it doesnt look much different (apart from the longer grass - something I can not take any credit for). You're probably wondering what I've spent the last 6 months doing, maybe even thinking I've just been lazing around in the sunshine drinking coffee and working on my tan. But if you look inside, you can see we have actually made some progress:

February 2010:

August 2010:



And it's more than just a superficial lick of paint too, we now have proper rooms with ceilings and doors. Yesterday, DIY manual in hand, I started wiring up the lights. Should prove an interesting experience. Luckily, the building is not yet hooked up to the mains (I use the word mains in the loosest possible sense...4 solar panels on the roof) so there's absolutely no chance of me electrocuting myself. Based on past experience this is no bad thing.

Once completed the building will house a maternity unit, complete with delivery room and ward, a lab and an operating theatre. Some of you may be questioning how qualified I am to oversee the building of an operating room and let me tell you, you are in good company. I dont have a clue...

Work continues to progress and we're in good shape to be all done by the end of October, however, there has been one sad development in the last week. My right hand man, John Maruti, left for Kenya and won't be back until after I leave. It was the end of an educational, humbling, frustrating and mostly beautiful working relationship. Last Monday we said goodbye:


Fortunately, I think I'm going to be able to go and visit him on my way home, which helped to ease the pain...

John has almost certainly invested more effort than anyone in the building project, being involved right from the start, and he's certainly made my Sudanese experience a lot smoother. Although he routinely called me the boss (or 'Kevo-baba' when he was feeling affectionate), he taught me way more than I taught him and fairly early on I learned that when it came to how to do almost anything here, John was almost always right. Unfortunately, he had a habit of coming and telling me the right way after I'd done it wrong. That took a bit of getting used to.

I learned that almost every problem on the building site can be solved by a string, that getting angry isn't a very effective approach to management of Africans (One of the last things he said to me before he left, as we were about to deal with a tricky situation with our labourers was "Now Kevin, don't become annoyed"), how to have a disagreement with someone and then have both of you laughing by the end, how to kill a big snake (and a goat) and how to work without power tools, the African way ("You white people taught us this, and now you dont know"). He's a bit of a legend.

In a completely random aside, his eldest son he found crying in a bush as a baby so he took him in and called him Moses. His second son he obtained by more conventional means and named Kevin...I like to think that was in anticipation of working with me...

Here, the clock is ticking. I leave Doro two weeks on Friday and I'm not looking forward to it. It pains me to think how quickly the time has passed. I feel like I'm just getting the hang of things and now it's time to leave.

On a lighter note, tomorrow I celebrate my 28th birthday. Hopefully that doesnt mean it will be a bad day.

Until next time my friends...

Being a man...

I've discovered that when you live in Sudan, particularly on an SIM base mostly inhabited by women, there are plenty of opportunities to prove yourself as a man. This week was no exception...

This coming Monday one of our number, Sandra, is leaving us to return home. We decided to have a celebration on Thursday to mark the occasion, and invite all the students she had been teaching round for dinner. This was the main course, at around 2pm on Thursday afternoon:


After much deliberation we decided to call him Julius...

Somebody had to do the dirty work of killing him, and I bravely stepped up to the challenge, provided John & Nehemiah were there to keep me right. Here are Julius and I, getting in the zone:


So we laid him out and, after repeatedly asking John how I was supposed to do it, and never once recieving a satisfactory reply (He just kept saying, "you do it like this, by force!"), I went for it. Some readers might find these images mildly disturbing...



...rest assured they arent nearly as disturbing as the sounds that went along with them. A screeching goat and shouts from John of, "Not like that Kevin!", with Nehemiah gently encouraging me to "go ahead". Apparently I never fully grasped how deep you have to cut the throat. Poor Julius...

It was then on to the less glamorous tasks of skinning and butchering, which I duly bodyswerved:


before we set it all on the fire with muscles still twitching...it smelled, and tasted, amazing (goat meat has grown on me during my time here):


Almost immediately after we'd killed the goat, the cry went out from across the compound of "Snake! Snake!" and so I sprang into action, running in the direction of the call with nothing to kill it with at all. Fortunately, I was handed a machete and I was able to kill it...eventually. After I broke it's back first (making it the second animal in quick sucession to suffer a painful death at my hands)


The above photo shows me about to strike, but I'm guessing you cant even see the snake. I cant and I know where it is...unfortunately it was pretty small. But here is the evidence, which I'm sure you were all craving, of my latest snake kill. Number 4 so far. My target is 10...


And that's it for today I think. Life progresses as normal, I'm growing more and more to love the Sudanese coffee culture. This morning I went to bring some tools to some of the guys here who were going to do some work for us and when I arrived they said "Have you had coffee yet?", before inviting me to join them...I'm hoping to introduce this custom when I return to work in October. Nothing gets done until we all have a coffee.

The eagerly awaited pictures of the building are on their way. They have been taken but are still on someone elses camera. Like I said, I wont let you down...

Birthdays..

This week one of our number celebrated his birthday (Dr Rob, the boss). This, along with my own impending birthday on August 25th (not that I'm dropping hints) served as a timely reminder of something I've been meaning to share with you for a while. None of my friends here know when their birthdays are, or even how old they are. Usually they try and work it out from what they can remember, and it tends to change from time to time.

The other day I was having a bad day, and not only because I had to spend the whole day cutting and welding metal together. At the end of the day Iwas sitting with some of my friends under a tree when Joash asked me, "Kevin, why do you keep quiet like that".

When I explained to him that I'd had a bad day he said, "In our culture we say that it's your birthday". I thought he'd misheard me and explained "No no, I said I had a bad day, not that it's my birthday...it's Dr Rob's birthday today not mine"

He replied, "Yes, we say that if you are having a day like that, when you are unhappy, it means it muyst be the day you were born". I'm not sure what I think of that one to be honest. Was certainly an interesting exchange.

Speaking of anniversaries, of sorts, this evening at team devotions we were remembering some of our predecessors here who were among the first SIM Missionaries in Sudan in the late 30's. There were 5 of them here, working in the clinic (part of which still exists today) and building bridges with the then unreached Mabaan tribe. 70 years ago this month, two of them were killed when the clinic was bombed during World War Two, having only been here for 6 months or so.

Makes you think about the sacrifice these people were willing to make, living in a hard, isolated place(there were no planes waiting to come and whisk you away...no airstrip either), and staying even though they knew they were in danger. In order to spread the message of Jesus. I wonder if I'd be willing to do that, or if I'd be allowed to...probably not. One of my colleagues offers some eloquent insight (and some photos) here.

While we are on the subject of photo's, it was brought to my attention recently that I have offered you no pictures of the building project I am woring on on this particular medium and so you have all being relying on your imagination on the occasions when you ponder what my work looks like.

So, in the next few days I shall endeavour to post some up to date pictures so that your overworked imaginations can get some respite. I will however have to think creatively about how to get these pictures as I seem to have misplaced my camera, but dont worry. I wont let you down...

Fun Times...

The other day I heard someone say something I haven't heard in a long time:

"Ah Kevin, you are hilarious"

This would have been a big boost to my morale if Stephen (one of my friends) had been amused by my dry Scottish wit, unfortunately he was amused by my attempts to speak Arabic.

Speaking of morale, this week has been a difficult week in all sorts of ways, and not just because I lost my sunglasses. For some reason I've found myself being even more short tempered than usual (and I am not alone in this), and have probably shouted at more people on the building site in the last 5 working days than in the total 6 months before. Clearly, this is not a good development and you can be assured that I'm doing everything I can to address it. Before I push John too far and he starts fighting back...Because he is much stronger than I am.

All that being said, in my defence, some of my strongly worded comments have been in his best interests. He has a distinctly 'African' approach to health and safety, and this has led to us not always seeing eye to eye. Credit to him though, he's always willing to take my comments on board.

This week has been punctuated by plenty of late night visits to the clinic to address our ongoing problems with solar power (turns out solar power doesnt even work properly in Sudan, so if you were thinking of using it in the UK then don't). This is the same problem I reported previously, although this time there was a happier outcome.

On Wednesday evening I found myself up there at around 11pm standing watching as the nurses attended to two seriously ill children (one of whome was literally gasping for breath) thinking "this is rubbish, they are both going to die". We've had a number of dead children in the last few months, mostly to killer Malaria, and this is the outcome I have come to expect. It's all pretty tragic. But, praise God, it looks like they have both turned the corner and life to fight another day.

Not to paint too dark a picture however, this week has not been without it's fun times. Saturdays and Sundays are now usually dominated by extended trips to the market with my friends and this weekend was no different.

The market is situated in the nearest town, Bunj, and looks something like this:


I really like Bunj, it even has a hardware store, of sorts, where you can buy some basic building supplies (pretty useful in my line of work):



And plenty of shops, like this one, where you can buy basic staple foods.



But my favourite thing is that there are plenty of places to drink good Sudanese style coffee. Every week we go to the same place, here:


and hang out for most of the afternoon and accumulate in number as more and more people come along. It's a bit like Friends but without the tedious humour.

Here is me yesterday, with a few of my good friends, enjoying some coffee.


Good times...

So as I discover new ways to shield my beautiful blue eyes (sans sunglasses) and encourage my hilarious araottish wish, I will keep you posted. Keep your sticks on the ice!