Last Updated: January 25, 2002

Working With Medecins Sans Frontiers in Wau, Sudan

25 November 2000

Hi everyone - sorry for being out of touch for so long, but communication here has been very difficult. No direct email access, so I have to type this in text and send it to Khartoum whenever we manage to get a mail pouch out, and then someone there has to be very patient in copying it to cc:mail (sucks) and enter all these email addresses. Plus I've been pretty busy and don't much feel like sitting here typing late in the night. But enough excuses!

I've been here in Wau for a whole month now! But it only feels like I've just arrived in many ways, and yet also feels like I've been here for months in others. Where can I start?

Wau town is a small dot in the south of Sudan, perhaps 1,400 km almost due south of Khartoum. It's one of a few towns held by the Goverment of Sudan (GoS) in the rebel-held south. Sudan is very big - the largest country in Africa, and probably a quarter to a third the size of Canada. Wau isn't even at the southern border of Sudan yet, and Khartoum is pretty far from the northern border with Egypt, so you should get the idea that Sudan is BIG. It took some 4 hours in a Cessna Caravan (9-seater single-engine plane, same as the one I rode in Guyana) with a short refuelling stop about halfway.

Wau is in the wetter part of Sudan - but that is a relative comparison. Khartoum is about as dry as one can get and still have a huge river running through it (two in fact, the White and Blue Niles) - it's dusty, windy, and generally reddish-brown with a few trees. It's greener along the riverbanks, but only for 100m to 200 m maximum. Wau however is rather green everywhere - at least at the moment, with this being the end of the rainy season. It was very green and grassy and lush when I landed a month ago, but is now getting yellow and brown and black as the grass is drying and being burned. Why is it being burned? For security reasons. This is a war zone, and tall grass means people (ahem, the rebels) can hide and move about more easily. Anyhow, there are a lot of trees and greenery here for the moment, and less dust. But it will continue to dry out and get hotter with each passing day. The rainy season starts again in March, so we're in for a long dry spell.

The town itself once must have been rather beautiful, before all the war and violence and lack of maintenance. There are a large number of impressive brick buildings here, including a post office that actually receives mail! I haven't tried sending anything from here, but a parcel arrived from the Redeemer Lutheran Church of Portland Oregon, addressed only to "MSF Holland, Wau, Sudan". No note or identification, but filled with juice boxes, a ceramic jack-o-lantern (received on Oct 30!), granola bars, and assorted first aid tape and such. It obviously was sent by a Sunday school class, so I sent them a nice note thanking them for their kind gifts and explaining a bit about what we're doing here. And I sent them some date palm seeds to try and grow.

But back to Wau - it's rather spread out, with core of nice homes and compounds, and a business area that once must have been bustling. South of town there's a neighborhood called Nazareth that's largely ruins, reminders of the slaughter that happened here in 1998 during and after a rebel attack. Thousands of Dinkas were killed here in retaliation for an attack on the town by a former government official who happened to be Dinka. It's the most recent reason for MSF to be in Wau - they arrived here in early 1998 to help deal with the resulting emergency relief to starving internally-displaced persons (IDPs, fancy word for refugees that are in their home country. "true" refugees are displaced from their home countries). The area was never rebuilt and very few people live there now, just ghost homes of ruined mud-brick walls and overgrown yards. But to the other directions, mostly west, there are many thatched mud-brick homes called tukles once you get out of the town centre. Some 70,000 people live in Wau, and another 70-80,000 live in the greater Wau area within 10-20 km of the core. Outside that is the rebel-held land.

What have I been doing here? Well, apart from sweating a bit and trying my best to avoid malaria (it's really bad here, both in incidence and severity), I've been trying to learn how the systems work here and how I'm supposed to fit in. So far what I've discovered is that we have some very good staff running the show, and that a lot of the systems and structures once in place are now not. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is that this is a war zone, and people get evacuated regularly for weeks at a time during unrest. What it means for me is that things are running, but records and systems aren't really formalized, so there's a lack of efficiency and clarity and trying to write reports on what's being done is hell. I've managed to set up a few systems now so that at least vehicle and generator maintenance is done on time, but there are many more to tackle. I'm trying to prioritize and do things one at a time, and not to cause too many changes at once. I'm looking forward to the next month or so when most things will be set up and I can sit back and do more planning rather than reacting. Is that vague enough?

What else? Well, I'm also the guy who has to fire people on the Logistics side. This week has been a rather busy one - we sacked our radio operator because we found him during working hours sitting in our living room, watching videos (the last in a long string of problems with him). And today I had to dismiss one of our drivers for coming in late last Sunday, telling me that "you don't go out on Sunday mornings, so I though I wouldn't come in until later". I was going to give him a warning letter but discovered two other recent ones in the file, and our policy is 3 letters is a dismissal. A tough job, but there's been a lack of discipline here among the staff and unfortunately I'm dealing with the fallout of it. Part of me is rather amused too, because now after today's dismissal I've noticed that people are beginning to do the things I've been asking them to do repeatedly this week.

I wish I could give you a better picture of what life is like here, but it's so foreign to anything I've been in before I can't think of a way to relate it. For instance, right now at 9:50 pm, I'm sitting in the house office typing this. The generator is running in the background, and it's pitch dark outside. It's about 28C, and the ceiling fans rattle and hum along with the chirping of crickets and cicadas. Every so often (tonight) there's a burp of gunfire in the distance, though how far distant I can't really tell except not close enough to give me the jitters. There's been some nights, especially the week I arrived, that there was intense gunfire for 2-3 hours, some of it very close by (say 200 m away maximum). No stray bullets though, and no signs of bullet holes or damage on our buildings or compound so that's some relief. But we live in a rather precarious area and I'm more than happy that we've found a new home away from this current spot. Out present home is called the Health Training Institute, HTI, and is part of a Catholic church compound that is in the south end of town, surrnounded on 3 sides by various different military (Mujahadeen fighters, GoS army, etc), and on one side by a river. Across the river is SPLA (Sudan People's Liberation Army) territory, and they occasionally head over at night to loot or harass the military. It's not especially a nice place to be in my books, but MSF has been here for over 2 years without incident. Even so, one of my first jobs was to finalize the rental of a new home in the middle of town, and I'm happy to say that we are slated to move in there in December if all goes well.

At the same time, don't worry! I don't feel unsafe here, though the gunfire did keep me up at night when I first arrived. So you all know, if I felt at all unsafe I would leave here as soon as I could - and MSF is fully supportive of that. In fact, both my Project Coordinator and Country Manager have repeatedly told me that if I don't feel secure here I'm free to go and it won't be held against me. So far, so good though, and I still want to stay here. I might be a bit premature, but I'm really thinking I'd like to stay here for 12 months rather than my 9 month contract. We'll see how it goes.

I apologise because this is rather rambling and incomplete, but if I waited until I had a full picture for you all this would never get sent. This is it for now, and I'll try to give more info before another months passes.

November 26, 2000

It's Sunday afternoon, our day off. It's a beautifully sunny day with a strong breeze (like most days, but a bit windier than usual). It's nice to sit around the house and not be running around like I do during the week. In about an hour, we're all headed to the ICRC (int'l committee of the red cross) house for an afternoon tea - one that I was invited to so I could make brownies for everyone! That should be fun... one of the reasons I am making brownies is that I mentioned that we don't have an oven at our house, and the ICRC people offered the use of theirs. Otherwise it's a difficult experience trying to bake with charcoal - it can be done, beautifully by our cook, but I'm not nearly that skilled!

Some more info on Sudan - the situation here is incredibly complicated, with the politicians not necessarily in charge of the military, the militias, or anything really. It seems to be a very confusing mish-mash of alliances of convenience, with the ultimate goal of making money and staying alive.

Take for example, the situation of the Murahaleen. It's like a really bad pulp fiction story. These guys are the bad-ass horsemen who are from two tribes in the north. They are given guns and ammunition from the GoS but not paid, and their sole tasks (and skills) are to accompany the GoS "relief train" from Khartoum down to Wau, protecting it, and looting/pillaging villages on the way down as payment. Yes, the Government of Sudan is arming and giving permission to the Murahaleen to loot their own citizens. The train carries supplies and such for the army, we think, but we don't really know. Right now the train has been in a town called Aweil for at least 6 weeks now, only about 120 km north of Wau. It's been a topic of conversation for a while as no one knows when or if it will come to Wau. But a small number of these Murahaleen arrived in Wau about 3 weeks ago (estimates range from 150 to 500), brandishing guns and driving cattle to sell in town. Within a few days there were hundreds of new cattle being herded around Wau, and the market was sold out of new jeans and shirts and sunglasses. Now they've been here for a while and have run out of money, and are getting bored. So they've started looting and shooting in and around town, stealing back the cattle they sold only a couple weeks ago and selling it again. The government here (and military it seems) are powerless to stop them - who knows who really commands them? It's rather scarey as they are all very young boys, early 20s if that old, no clear leadership and no discipline, and that makes them dangerous.

** Addition of 27/11/2000 - there was a gunfight last night between oneof police/army groups and some Murahaleen which resulted in a dead soldier and a wounded Murahaleen, who was then captured and taken to where ever they take prisoners. This afternoon, some distance from the hospital where we were working, a couple of Murahaleen stole some cattle from people in the middle of town, and when the crowd got angry they shot two people. Again, I think the army were involved. So this evening around 5:30 pm things were a bit crazy in town with the army blocking off a couple of roads, telling our drivers to go another way around. Our drivers were clearly frightened and worried about what might happen tonight as each side tries to get revenge, so we sent them home early. No gunfire yet, and it's almost 9 pm now, so (a) they're fighting in a distant part of town where we can't hear them; (b) they're not going to fight; (c) it hasn't started yet; (d) they're fighting in a different part of town and it hasn't started here yet. I'm too tired to really care and am hoping that I won't be awakened by gunfire tonight. Such is life in Wau these past few days. **

An "interesting" incident about two weeks ago: the Murahaleen were rumoured to be headed east, out of town. A day later they trooped back into town past the hospital we're working in, loaded down with chairs, tables, mattresses, boxes, and such. All with prominent MSF stickers on them! They'd apparently headed to Achongchong, where MSF-Belgium has been working on the other side of the conflict line. We're told the camp wasn't occupied when it was raided - I hope no one was around, as these guys are ruthless. The don't just steal your cattle and goats, they kill you first. I doubt that they are brave enough to kill foreigners... yet... but I still wouldn't want to be around. Our MSF response? We protested strongly to the local administration and through our Khartoum office, but there's little else we can do. If we protest too hard and don't do anything (ie: shut down our Wau project) then we just weaken our position. If we protest too hard and they get touchy, we get kicked out of Wau or perhaps things just get even harder to get permission for. And then there's the problem that no one really has power to do anything anyhow, and whoever does have the power doesn't want to do anything about it. We did request that the MSF stickers be removed from the items, but I have no idea if anything happened about it. Such is life in these strange times.