Richard Wesley

The months have rolled by, I know most of the staff here pretty well, I enjoy the company of the other expats, and landing back here from Juba did feel a little like coming home. Sometimes it feels like yesterday that I arrived, and other times it feels like I have always lived here and the rest of my life is a dream. The good aspects are certainly pretty clear, living and working in the middle of Africa, with different sight and smells each day, the smiling locals and the fun happy kids. Hanging out with the other excellent people from both MSF and ACF. Helping to run a clinic that is helping a local population that have had years of war and disruption. The bad aspects are also pretty clear… living and working in the middle of Africa really. The dirt, and the rubbish, and the heat, and the flat landscape in every direction. The sometimes extremely hostile and unfriendly relations with staff, or the problems of motivation and direction with people with little initiative. Wondering if t...

I was only back in Bentiu for a couple of weeks when out of the blue I was asked to get back on the plane to a job in the capital of south Sudan, the sleepy little town of Juba. I was told that I would act as a logistics person for the emergency vaccination campaign taking place in town. I arrived last of the team though though and so drew the short straw of being more of the administration person, trying to keep track of the 12 sites, 400 local staff and 7,000,000 diners in cash. Kind of like herding cats really. It was extremely interesting to see a mass vaccination campaign in action with long lines of people, screaming children, and the piles of materials stockpiled in the days beforehand quickly diminish. Our target population was 150,000 but the turnout in the last days dropped off a lot and I think we ‘only’ did a bit over 100,000. Also in Juba right now is a cholera outbreak which MSF Spain are looking after with a treatment centre just down the road from the MSF France office ...

Saving the world is meant to be hard work, and like the saying goes 'Work hard, play hard'. Somehow then an impostor like me in the humanitarian aid field in dusty hot Sudan ended up with over a week on the beach in the paradise of Zanzibar. The contrast between the two places was certainly quite something. I spent a lot of time in the clear warm turquoise waters of the Indian ocean with several dives and lots of snorkeling . Elodie (expat doctor from Bentiu also on holiday) and I were able to experience the thrill together of cruising alongside a large turtle in about 12m of water which was amazing. It was wonderful to be able to spend so many hours swimming, relaxing and simply floating the day away. People really make or break any part of life and so I count myself extremely lucky to have met so many great people in such a short time. The four Norwegian teachers also on break from work in Africa were wonderful friends for the first week, and then Trinity, Jim and Rog...

At the three month point of a mission with MSF one gets a weeks leave to the nearest 'relaxing' country which translated to the Sudan situation seems to mean 'Zanzibar' to most volunteers . So here I am, in the warm and humid weather of the famous spice islands, surrounded by amazing clear turquoise water, and about to head out of the quaint little stone town and heard north to the beaches. I look forward to getting in some diving, though it has been a while since I did any so I hope I remember how it all goes, and hope to meet up with Elodie , the doctor from Bentiu and her boyfriend if I can for some company. If not then there should be a few other people I hope around - if not then more time in the water I suppose.

Looks like vultures are being featured by some little mag in the states... http://www.smithsonianmag.com/issues/2007/february/vulture.php I helped a little in March last year and it was a great laugh to have Susan the reporter around while my UK friend Richard and I were catching vulture chicks. (PS Another update from April 2008: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7373381.stm )

The humanitarian world is full of acronyms. At first they are bewildering, but soon they just become part of the everyday language here and you forget you are speaking another whole language… MSFF – Medians san Frontiers France, doctors without boarders french section, the organisation I am working for currently. Fiercely independent, providing emergency medicine, usually in difficult conditions. MSFH – MSF Holland, and I guess there is a MSFB around as Belgium have a mission here as well in Sudan. NGO’s – non governmental organizations… random bunches of tree hugging lefty do gooders who are not affiliated directly with national governments or the UN. ACF – Action Contra Famine, action against hunger, another French outfit which concentrates on food distribution, water and sanitation (see watsan). Friendly fun group in Bentiu, come complete with alcohol, but don’t swap F100 (see below) with them. Watsan – water and sanitation, a general term for an area taken for granted in the develo...

Another fire broke out in the Rubkona market that leveled one area of shacks and shops. The watchmen here at the compound alerted me again and I took a series of photos as the wall of flame marched from the tire shops on the right with thick bellowing smoke, to the left, with gain stores catching fire and some fuel drum explosions. The fire was quite a way from us here and it was ironic to have people in the street carry on their normal business… women and girls gracefully carrying building materials on their heads, young boys riding the donkeys which carry water from the river (swamp) to the town to sell. A wide road area where the buses leave from seems to have formed a firebreak and stopped the fire from continuing its destructive march. In the evening the area affected was still smoldering, but by the morning shops areas had been recleared and reconstruction of the simple wooden shacks already underway again. The fire is rumored to have been started by kids playing with matches - c...