Despite the occasional little local misunderstandings - ten thousand people in Hama and the Lebanese Prime Minister for example – I love Syria.
The people have a warmth and simplicity often lacking in other Arab countries.
Here to do the budget for next year, it is also an opportunity to take part in the Teachers’ Training Course Diana is running in Tartous this week.
The ladies involved, at least at first sight, are not the sort you’d want to get into an argument with. Yet they have a sense of humour and a desperate longing to hear of the latest developments outside their own country.
We are able to make a major contribution, not only to teaching styles, but to curriculum development.
But it is still a pretty tough society. The Veterinary Clinic retains all the joy and glamour of a 1950’s Soviet Tractor Factory – nothing is ever cleaned or repaired or painted. In a tour of the building, heaps of builder’s rubble and dangling electric cables threaten to dismember the unwary.
The same joyous atmosphere includes the local management style – i.e. shouting abuse at any underlings.
One of our drivers was roundly attacked by the Director for parking the vehicle in the middle of a muddy puddle. Quite reasonable, you might think. Except the driver had been nowhere near the car – the parking had been done by the Director himself. No matter. That’s what underlings are for.
We went to visit the Marronite Archbishop of Tartous – genial old buffer.
I was introduced in the normal style:
“This is Mister Jermy from SPANA, London”.
“ Jermy? You’re German then! Du bist ein Deutsche! Guten Tag!”, quoth he, then proceeded to sing a little ditty about the Virgin Mary to the tune of Beethoven's ‘Ode to Joy’. Quickly embracing the spirit of the occasion, I felt an overwhelming need to join in, humming the chorus enthusiastically.
After a meeting with the Ambassador in Damascus, we left for Jordan by taxi, thus facilitating the driver’s thriving little cigarette smuggling business. As we passed through the border customs area, he had so many packets stuffed down his shirt the searchers must have thought he had some kind of interesting new skin disease.
But it was good to be back in Amman – still with no rain – which makes our little green gem of an environmental garden at the education centre even more stunning.
Our Patron, the Prince, regaled us with his memories of life at Millfield School in the sixties – although strangely, he’d never heard of the trick of running round the back of the group in the long panorama school photos and thus appearing twice in the same shot.
The mighty River Jordan After battling through the budget, we treated ourselves to a trip down to the Jordan Valley, visiting the Baptism Site, right on the edge of the river.
‘The mighty Jordan’ is actually only about ten feet wide, and it’s easy to call out greetings to the people on the other side, under another flag, but it confirms the old cliché ‘It’s an ill wind…’ – the scary security situation means there is a no-go strip about two hundred yards wide on either side of the river, and running pretty much the whole way up to the Sea of Galillee. Best nature reserve in the country – with otters, marsh cats, gazelle, deer, foxes, jackals and hundreds of wild boar. And of course some stunning birds – Azure Kingfishers, like luminous jewels, Palestinian Sunbirds, Tristrams Grackles (crazy name, lovely bird) and myriad others.
There is a welcome silence there, despite the political tension, and a wonderful golden evening light, bathing the leaves and branches of the tamarisk shrubs and the stands of phragmites reeds.
Welcome especially after following a group of our Antipodean Cousins onto Mount Nebo (where Moses breathed his last after being given a brief glimpse of the land of milk and honey).
‘Strewth’, says one ‘It’s f***g hazy. I’m bloody off.’
Shades of Sir Les Patterson, much loved Minister of Culture...
Jeremy Hulme
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Writing this at about 36,000 feet flying across southern Sudan – about 4 am UK time – courtesy of the magnificent BMI (Used to be British Midland, now 80% owned by Lufthansa).
Frankly it’s pretty grim – only one toilet working for 120 people and half the televisions not working. It was exactly the same on the way out here on Sunday night, so they’ve made absolutely no progress in the ensuing five days. (I wonder if the engineers take as much notice about engine problems).
But it’s all getting a bit predictable, isn’t it – if I’m not moaning about BMI, it’s likely to be my dear friends at Air France, or even Air Mauritanie. It’s all become a sort of ‘Mr Grumpy does air-travel in Africa’. But at least when you get to Ethiopia life cheers up a bit.
It really is wonderful.
Apart from the injura, obviously. (That’s the Ethiopian staple diet, made from tef, a cereal unique to the country, and served up in a sort of swiss-roll, that looks and tastes just like one of the ‘refreshment’ towels served up by air-lines).
We run a couple of mobile clinics, treating the horses that are used as taxis and general haulage in most towns across the country. The state of some of these animals has to be seen to be believed – but of course the owners that depend on them are not much better. Nice to report we’ve had some real success over the last couple of years with one particularly evil disease – epizootic lymphangitis – where septic abscesses burst out all over the poor wretched creature’s head and body leading to a long agonising death.
They would be abandoned and left by the roadside – in abject pain and misery, waiting for the end – which could take days or even weeks. We managed to get the municipal authorities to support us when we take these animals and put them out of their misery (in the past, an ‘owner’ would materialise out of the soil and demand immense sums of compensation).
So, no more of that rubbish now, and not only are we able to put a humane end to their suffering, but doing so cuts down the rate of infection to other animals – which anyway (provided treatment starts early enough) we have a good chance of curing.
And it has made a huge difference – which boosts everbody's morale.
We also have a great little education programme, where we built science classrooms in three schools – they have almost nothing normally – eighty kids in a class, no books, no teaching materials – but boy, do they want to learn things. So we have a series of lessons in animal husbandry, welfare etc, and they are fighting to get on the courses (we can only do fifty at a time). I don’t remember that enthusiasm, when long ago, I was facing double maths on a Thursday afternoon.
One of the schools is up in the highlands, and the trip there is always stunning. Especially so this year because they’ve had good rains and the crops are just starting to be harvested. Doesn’t seem to stop food aid though – WFP is still doshing out 40kg of wheat per family per month. A very mixed blessing really – not only does it keep everyone ‘dependent’ – it also destroys the sale value of any surplus the local farmers produce. How are they supposed to raise spare cash to buy shoes for their kids ?
It will be interesting to see whether it carries on when the harvest is al cut and carried.
Jeremy Hulme
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Sitting here in the rather charming departure ‘lounge’ of Nouakchott International Airport, Mauritania. There is no attempt at ‘duty free’ – they don’t do booze in Mauritania – except, whisper it not, we found a restaurant (the Salamander, if you’re ever stuck here and looking for somewhere really trendy), that somehow manages to produce beer, and even a little wine – in unmarked bottles.
There is also no air-conditioning, and even though it’s now ten pm, the sun blazing all day on the corrugated tin roof has produced a warmish, somewhat intimate, atmosphere. Of course there is also no attempt at a café or even soft-drinks – probably a good thing , as I’m keen to avoid visiting the rather interesting toilet system – of infamous repute from many earlier visits.
Just as well really, as last week’s visit to Chad and the food there, left a lasting souvenir, let’s just call it a ten-day dieting opportunity. Nice to be going home at last – overnight of course – hitting my beloved Charles De Gaulle airport at five o’clock tomorrow morning, where I believe they are (surprisingly) on strike anyway.
Ah, the joys of flying with Air France.
Because of the little bit of a misunderstanding here a couple of months ago (a coup d’etat – the newly ex-President now resting in chokey), all overseas aid – EU, World Bank, etc has been suspended, and all NGOs have pulled out and gone home.
Except for SPANA, of course.
In fact we’re doing rather well, although I say it myself.
We have a clinic and a mobile team trying to help the sixty thousand plus donkeys (and a few half-crippled horses) that deliver water round the city (they forgot to put in water pipes and drainage when they built the place after independence, fifty-odd years ago).
It’s hardly a well-paid job, as you might imagine – the youngsters who slave over this (and some are still, truly, slaves), live in almost indescribable squalor and misery. The donks are fed a mixture of torn-up cardboard and millet meal.
Recently we’ve been making (locally) a simple set of headcollar and reins and dishing them out free, (over six thousand so far), as up to now they’ve just steered the poor wretched creatures by beating them on one side of the head or other. What a mess of wounds and sores that caused.
So, after a year, it was nice to see a real difference.
Talking of differences, before here I was doing the budget in Mali – but also had time to visit the little ‘Riding for the Handicapped’ centre we run there. Don’t even think of asking how we got into it – but it is fantastic. Generally, children born damaged or handicapped in any way are abandoned. In the countryside many just die, but in Bamako they end up in one of the ‘Orphanages’.
They are fed and watered, but that’s about it. No school – no treatment.
We can help about twenty five of the wee scraps, who come three mornings a week, and ride around a sand-filled yard on two bomb-proof horses. There is also a physiotherapist, and we have toys and desks and paper and crayons, and they all just love it. Their faces light up when they get lifted onto the horse - suddenly they don’t have to look up at everything. It also makes a tremendous difference to their muscle control and co-ordination – after a year or so they’re almost unrecognisable.
But, I suppose due to the financial crisis, the partners we had in funding have pulled out (without warning). It’s not fair for SPANA to have to put in any extra – they’re doing enough already.
But if I can’t find some one or other to help out, I might well be having to tell them they can’t ride on the horses any more. We will have to stop making a difference for those few children.
Jeremy Hulme
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I'd have put money on there being problems about us getting out of Abeche, it was all but inevitable. It was only the relative euphoria of a successful series of meetings that allowed us to ignore the lack of running water at the UNHCR guest house (mistakenly named as "Villa Rosa" - it didn't have running water when we were there in March 2007 either).
We were assured that unlike the last occasion, when we had the flight tickets in our hands but were not on the passenger list, there would be no problems. This was a foolish thing to do. This time we were on the passenger list, but we didn't have the right form from UNHCR. Unless we had it, we were not going anywhere...
There then followed a series of frantic phone calls (all unnecessary since the plane was due to leave 2 hours later than we'd been told..) after which the papers arrived, we got our tickets and then sat on the steps for hours, quite literally watching the world go by.
Jeremy and I got back into N'Djamena at dusk, discussed the meetings, wrote our reports and sloped off to our respective rooms. On any trip like this a moderate amount of, (how shall I say this to avoid upsetting those of a nervous disposition...), lets say, indigestion, is an occupational hazard. However, lets say then that we were both affected by an immoderately bad dose of it. Since Friday 31 October was Halloween in any case, fellow guests in the hotel must have thought that we had joined in the celebrations early by dressing up as the undead even before breakfast. We managed to pull ourselves together for a de-brief meeting with the genial Serge Male , UNHCR's representative in N'Djamena - his genuine support and enthusiasm for the SPANA project made us both feel better.
Ploughing back to the hotel in an elderly and decrepit taxi, (the UN drivers being unavailable), the traffic first slowed and then stopped while up ahead about ten uniformed soldiers were busily engaging themselves in methodically beating a man to the ground with the stocks of their automatic rifles. Our taxi driver began reversing, the soldiers shot us nervous glances - they knew that while their countrymen expect this, even they knew not to beat a man to death in front of white aid workers - they ambled back to their vehicle and clambered on board. As we drove past, the man was slowly picking himself up, looking worse for wear but nonetheless alive.
I'll always wonder what might have happened had we not come past...
Simon Pope
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Abeche has changed quite a bit since we were here last. A EUFOR peace keeping force has helped bring even more people into what is a relatively small town, and things are getting cramped. The UNHCR compound has now not just expanded sideways over neighbouring lots but across the road (where it now has a canteen...) and there is even wi-fi, adressing the strange situation that existed last year when there was wi-fi in far flung locations like Iriba, but none at HQ!
One of the things that had frustrated us after we submitted our list of recommendations to UNHCR back in January was the lack of feedback, but in truth it's all but impossible to talk through these things by e-mail or over the phone - you just have to sit in the same room as everyone concerned (or as many people as you can get in one place at one time)and do it that way. And so while we won't yet tempt fate and give exact details about what may or may not be happening, I think we can be pretty pleased with the fact that SPANA will be involved in something very unique, innovative and ground-breaking in 2009, and all the people who have suppported our efforts to raise awareness of the importance of working animals and livestock to many people in poverty around the world should be very very proud of what they have helped us achieve.
Simon Pope
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