Richard Wesley

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...

Christmas in little Bentiu turned out to be a relatively quiet affair. We, the expats of MSF and ACF that had not somehow weaseled some leave or holiday to a more favorable location, gathered at the MSF compound on Christmas eve for a wonderful dinner cooked by the field coordinator Marieno . At midnight we proceeded to the stadium area in the main town but the open air church service was cold and boring, not the wonderful african drumming that we had been hoping for. Christmas day started for me with the arrival of the water tanker from Heglig at 9am as per usual but with Gordon, the local Nuer staff member who normally takes care of this watsan exercise being off on holiday. I laughed away to myself as I sleepily found the workshop key and figured out the water pump and assorted tanks and piping. The rest of the day was spent mostly across at the clinic, with a midday meal put on for both staff and patients, consisting of two unlucky sheep who spent their last night tethered...

Life is interesting in the field and you never quite know what is just around the corner. Fighting broke out 10 days ago in Malakau , a small Nile River village 180km to the east of us here. It only lasted about 48 hours but may have left a couple of hundred dead. A southern SPLA (Sudan Peoples Liberation Army) unit thought they would have a crack at knocking off a northern SAF (Sudan Armed Forces) general that was not leaving the area as promised in the CPA (Comprehensive Peace Agreement). It all got a bit out of hand with tanks and mortar rounds apparently… hate it when that happens. All quiet here in Bentiu but I now have the evacuation box safely in my tukul beside my bed and the spare landcrusier key around my neck. At the weekend was the leaving party for Dorothy, the only other New Zealander in the area that I have met so far. She has been with ACF (Action Against Famine) and is returning home for Christmas. We all got together for a feed and then some wild music and danc...

I've been in Bentiu, my new home for the next six months, since Wednesday afternoon, only a matter of a few days. There seems to have been a lot to take in during that time and today there seems to be a minute now to type some descriptions of where I am on my first day off. (Background: After far too long waiting in Paris for a Sudan visa to enter the country I finally boarded a flight by Quatar Airways to Doha in the gulf. Then after a short wait in the half finished airport another flight down to Khartoum, the capital city of this, the largest country in Africa. I spent a few days in Khartoum and then it was another set of three flights in progressively smaller aircraft until I touched down in a little eight seater Cessna with a charming smart arse macho south african pilot). I'm now typing this email on my laptop while sitting in the living tukul, which is a very traditional African hut with a thatched roof made of dried grass and walls of sticks and mud. The floor is a mixt...

Jet black kids playing in the mud. Striking african women with platted hair and colourful clothes. Two green military tanks being washed in the river. A comical meeting with our french field coordinator and his little english, and the new government finance ministry, in a room full of people doing nothing all day. TB patients coughing behind the grass isolation fence. Chatting to the young french doctor who wants to know what a kiwi looks like. Invited to play volleyball on Sunday with the Red Cross expats down the way. Trying to help Kaliphar the mechanic with the generator even though we don't speak each other's language. Meeting with the UN World Food Program woman to try and explain needing to destroy 200 bags of donated wheat which are full of insects. Trying to figure out what exactly 'it's broken' means with respect to the vehicle radio. So many white land cruisers stirring up the dust on the road. Showering under a tap sticking out of the tin ceiling. Rice a...