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
Monday, 3 November 2008
Occupational Hazards
The Abeche Meetings
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
Thursday, 30 October 2008
En Route to Abeche
At last we’re on the plane flying out to Abeche on the Chad/Sudan border. Air France it certainly is not, but then they didn’t, like Air France, tell us that “You are being upgraded, but, sadly, to a worse seat.”
It’s all one grade on World Food Programme planes – cattle-class, but frankly, you’re so relieved to be on board, no-one complains.
This morning was typical. Up before five, to arrive at the airport by six, they then decide that we’re only allowed fifteen kilos of luggage each – including hand-baggage.
With cameras, laptops, wodges of paper (including twenty copies in French and English of our project), it’s pretty impossible to be within fifteen kilos. But we got our tickets, and Simon was off like a whippet after a rat, and through the security check. I was hauled back and told I was twelve kilos overweight. I would have to wait until the very end to see if there would be room for the extra weight. I was not alone – about a dozen others stood anxiously waiting for a decision. Never mind the sheer injustice of it all – Simon weighs over twenty kilos more than me, and I surely weighed a good ten kilos more than one of the women – but that’s the system.
Suddenly, a small man appeared, with a big badge hanging round his neck – clearly a sign of his huge importance. He looked at us as if we were something nasty that had got stuck on his boots, then pronounced that we were all very naughty, and he could not possibly accept any weight over ten kilos. I knew mine weighed twelve – so while he was distracted haranguing some unfortunate, I slipped the case open and magicked away what I hoped was two or three kilos of goodies – and asked one of the security men to stand in front of it.
Then the weighing. ‘Dix kilos’ he grunted ‘Bon. Allez’.
‘Merci, Monsieur’, I called back, disappearing with the all-important permit in my hand, and recovering the rest of my stuff in a plastic bag, disappeared out to the waiting plane. Small victories, but gratifying none-the-less.
Now it’s late afternoon in Abeche. It’s been a long day, discussing and arguing, hopefully passionately (but in French, so who knows?) for our project to look after all the livestock in Eastern Chad.
It’s what we were asked to do, but understandably, with perhaps a million head – if including those of the locals as well as the refugees – it’s a huge and expensive project. Probably three million dollars a year – and of course with the global financial meltdown – this could hardly be a worse time to be looking for funding.
But still, at least everyone is enthusiastic, (UNHCR has never considered livestock before), so we’re still optimistic. And also rather proud. To be the first animal charity to be asked to work with the UN is quite something.
But of course there has to be a downside.
There is a chronic shortage of accommodation here, so I am forced to share a room with Simon.
And boy, does he snore...
Jeremy Hulme
Tuesday, 28 October 2008
Bullets in the Bath
Today was all about admin. If international flight bureacracy is a nightmare, then it's nothing compared to getting anything done in Chad. Firstly, we have to register with the Police on arrival - failing to do so results in all sorts of trouble when you try and leave the country. So our friendly crew from UNHCR guide us through the process, involving a visit to the Police compound in N'Djamena. This is a frantic, noisy, heaving mass of humanity all getting permits, paying fines, getting motor bike licences etc etc. Besides which it's 10.15am and already 40 degrees. I am not looking my best when we are ushered into a side room to have our permit photos taken, and as such the photographer even offers me his comb. I must look dreadful...
Registration secured we bounce out of the compound en route to the Ministry for our travel permits - these are something like the Holy Grail and we have been trying to secure them via various routes (again it's bureacracy, after all we are trying to help people and their animals here so it really SHOULDN'T be difficult).
That achieved and after a tortuous but frankly anticipated battle with reception staff at the Novotel Hotel over payment (every time we come here we have a similar problem) we decamp to the Meridien Hotel (which in any case is much nicer, cheaper and the wifi is free unlike the frankly extortionate £15 per hours the Novotel has thebrass neck to charge) -The Meridien bore the brunt of bombardment by various pieces of military equipment during the attempted coup in February. This manifests itself in my bathroom. On the metal exterior shutters opposite my room is a large hole around which the metal bars are bent inwards. This hole lines up with another in the wall beside my door and (inside my room), several replaced tiles on the bathroom wall. Finally there are a number of shrapnel holes in the bath mended ineffectually, since it leaks, with some sort of putty and blobs of silicon. Jeremy has to make do with a bullet hole in his door patched over with wood filler, and a hole in the ceiling.
Tomorrow we leave for Abeche for some real meetings and hopefully leave the bureacracy behind, at least for 24 hours...
Simon Pope
Return to Chad
I'm sitting in the lobby of the Meridien hotel in N'Djamena, capital of Chad, where we arrived last night. This trip is the culmination of a lot of hard work by SPANA in drawing up proposals at the request of UNHCR regarding refugees from Darfur who are sheltering in the East of the country, and the IDP's (Internally Displaced People actually Chadian villagers) who have themselves left their homes as a knock-on effect from the problems in Darfur.
But first of all we had to get here...
Someone once said that it is better to travel than to arrive. Personally I'd like to take that deluded individual and drag him or her screaming through some of the tortuous 21st century travel bureacracy that exists now as an obligatory requirement of getting anywhere.
In Heathrow I sailed through the x-ray machine with a Karabineer clip attached to my camera case with no problems. In the duty free I also bought some mouthwash and hair gel which I dutifully got sealed up in a security bag proving that it is not hydrochloric acid in anticipation of transit security at Paris airport. Of course, on arrival at the Paris transit desk my steel clip elicits sour looks from the x-ray operator, and a surly "Non." "Why? Porquoi? What's the problem?" I ask...
There is not an immediate response. The x-ray operator mutters to herself "Pourquoi? Pourquoi. Ah, well you may use it to punch someone with!"
The natural extension of such logic is that I should proffer my hands out to the representative of a nation that after all invented the guillotine and say "Alors! Then you must do away with these. I may after all punch someone with them but since it is the rules, I must comply." My steel clip was dropped into the bin with a clunk and a smug grin momentarily lit up the sour operators face, until she then happened upon my mouthwash and hair gel, after which she returned to a pensive frown.
"These are not allowed." she said.
"Yes they are. I bought them in duty free in Heathrow. Yes they are allowed..."
"No they are not!"
She became quite gleeful and began tearing the bag apart ready to drop then into the naughty bin, before Jeremy arrived and explained. At this point she became morose, and could barely look at me as she handed the bag back.
I might have said that I could have ignored this incident in light of the fact that on checking in at departure gate at Heathrow we were told we were going to be upgraded. I became quite elated at the prospect. You do hear about such things happening at random to fortunate individuals but it never seems to happen to you. I mentioned this to the check-in steward. "Ah yes" she replied "But unfortunately the seats you are being upgraded to are not as good as the ones you had originally." I'm still waiting for my brain to figure out the logic in this so if anyone can help me...
On the flight down to N'Djamena I sat next to a man who was wearing the latest fashion in eau de toilette. The advertising blurb for this might well have read "Stand out from the crowd. Leave a lasting impression. The new fragrance that's bound to create a stir - Eau de Stilton." So eager was he to share this new creation that he decided to unselfishly take up half my seat as well in an effort to impress on me the full effect of the aroma, which was particularly powerful at the moment he removed his shoes. Clearly he had also bathed his feet in it.
And on the flight to N'Djamena, Air France happily served up an excellent in-flight meal replete with a free bottle of wine (glass) and sharp knife (metal). I felt obliged somehow to point out to the cabin staff the potential harm that these could do to them in the hands of a crazed individual, and much more harm than someone armed with, say, a Karabineer clip. But instead, intoxicated by the subtle charms of my neighbours apres rasage, I just went to sleep.
Simon Pope
Tuesday, 24 June 2008
Writing this in the glorious luxury of the economy-class cabin of Royal Air Maroc, having just finished the delicious in-flight meal. All around me the happy passengers are dozing quietly, snoring gently, or hawking and spitting into the airsick bags.
I am feeling somewhat jaded after eight days on the move, without spending two nights in the same hotel – irritatingly leaving a rather fine pair of trousers that I’ve become rather fond of somewhere along the way.
It all started last Monday in Geneva where we had been invited to make a presentation to the UNHCR. That is a big deal. The livestock strategy paper we’d been asked to produce for Chad has been somewhat stalled (could it be the three million pounds we reckoned it might cost?), so it was really exciting to get a chance to shake them all up a bit. Simon (our communications guy) and I had done a bit of work on a bi-lingual presentation and a bit of film (culled from our appearance on Channel 4 News and the BBC – but don’t tell them), and it looked pretty good. We got a pretty good reception too. We've always tended to find in our dealings with the powers that be that amazingly, (and from with people who’ve got more doctorates and degrees between them than Tony Blair’s had free holidays), they rarely twig that nomads and poor farmers in Africa depend on animals. Perhaps we’ve begun to lift the veil from their eyes.
Then I went on to Marrakech that night by Air France via Paris. Big Mistake.
France was on strike. And not helped by them being whupped by Italy in the football while I was trying to get from Charles de Gaulle airport across Paris to Orly.
Royal Air Maroc cancelled a couple of flights, and I finally crawled into bed in Marrakech at two-thirty the following morning.
Then we had an inspection tour of our various clinics and projects with a couple of trustees, before winding up in Tangiers, the other end of the country, on Saturday.
I must have driven at least a thousand miles in the three days, dodging the police speed traps wherever possible, or trying to schmooze out of trouble when caught.
It normally works – ‘Oh officer, was I really doing a hundred and fifty in an eighty zone ? Surely not ? And your country is so lovely – what a silly stupid little visitor to your lovely country I’ve been’.
‘Well, yes you were. But don’t you ever be so naughty again –now off you go’
Though I did come unstuck once.
Several years ago I was stopped coming out of Ben Guerir on the way down to Marrakech, doing some amazing amount above the speed limit.
One of Morocco’s finest invited me to step out of the car and requested my driving licence.
‘Your middle name is Ferguson I see’
‘Yes’ I replied.
‘That’s interesting’ he went on,’ I once had a Ferguson television’.
‘Yesss !’ I thought to myself, ‘That should do it’.
‘That was my uncle,’ I replied, ’he made televisions’.
‘Great!’ he grinned at me. ‘Revenge at last. You’re fined five hundred dirhams – the bloody thing never did work properly’.
So in Tangier yesterday we had our annual ‘out-of-this-world-experience’, when the original It-Girl, Annie Lambton, organises a cocktail party cum fundraiser on the roof of her house in the middle of a sumptuous garden. Tangier is famous of course for its, er, ’colourful’ people, and they come along in force for drinkies, and don’t seem to mind too much having their cash forcibly extracted from them.
Jeremy Hulme
Wednesday, 3 October 2007
UNHCR Compound, Farchana - The Rocky Road to Darfur
We are told we have to be up by 6.30am. This invokes instantaneous scepticism based on numerous previous occasions when we absolutely definitely postively indubitably HAVE to be up by such and such a time, after which we spend an inordinate amount of time waiting somewhere else for something or someone, moaning about how we could have had another hour in bed or a second cup of coffee.
This morning was one of those mornings.
Today the four of us split up into two groups – Jeremy had headed down to the relative greenery of the regions surrounding the Goz Beida refugee camps, and I’ll try and post his blog from there later this week. The other half (including me) bounced along the Trans-Chadian superhighway towards Sudan/Darfur. This is the same road Jeremy and I travelled in May, one a lighting visit to the refugee camp at Ga Ga. On that journey our progress was slowed by a lengthy convoy of the Sudanese Rebel Army (JEM) coming in the opposite direction. This invoked a certain amount of nerves on the part of our UN colleagues, who respectfully (as is the policy) pulled over until they went past (which given there were 60 odd vehicles took some time) but Jeremy, on the other hand, was in his element “Look at the Mortars on that one…now THAT anti-aircraft gun could do a lot of damage.”
Today there were no incidents, although we had to negotiate large pot holes and still-running water in the wadis. After two hours we arrive at Farchana. The UNHCR guest Houses (small purpose built African style huts called rondavels) are full, so we amble over to the neighbouring World Food Programme compound where they have space – we dump our bags and head out to meet some of the local villagers. This is something we have been trying to do now for some time, as getting their perspective on the refugees is extremely important. They tell us how difficult it is now that they are both competing for resources. How little veterinary care they have access to and how much they would value it if somehow we could put together a plan to provide it. Sitting under a shady tree with them beside a dry wadi they tell us, strangers just half an hour ago, how much they appreciate our seeking them out and bothering to ask about their lives. Their lives were undoubtedly hard before the refugees arrived and now they have got that much harder. The plan we draw up will address their concerns as well.
Barely an hour later we’re in the Farchana camp itself. Perhaps it's because WFP are today on Day 3 of the October food distribution programme, there is a palpable good humour about the place. Unbelievably, a man comes up to me and starts talking in very good English. He was a farmer in Darfur, who took English classes at night school. The pride he has in this is clearly evident and I regret not having more time to talk to him, but we are being pressed by a growing throng to take their pictures, and then to meet the village elders or Sheiks, so I regretfully shake his hand and say goodbye. And good luck.
Like everyone else, the Sheiks are eager to find out about SPANA and one of the younger ones, a tall, handsome Darfuri refugee has even better English than the farmer. Like the villagers, the Sheiks tell us just how important their livestock are to them, and just how hard it is to find food for these precious animals when they are competing with villagers for limited natural resources like grazing and water. And like the villagers they take the trouble, in a measured and powerful way, to thank us sincerely for bothering to come and ask them about their world and the difficulties they are facing. Despite all the horrors they have been through, and we can only guess at some of those, there’s absolutely no cynicism from them. It’s quite a humbling experience.
And so now we are back in the compound and we are in for an interesting evening. It's been quite humid all afternoon, and around 4pm we noticed some very dark clouds making their way from the East. Every now and then the wind gets up, and blows a dervish-like dust-devil through the compound, which sets the metal doors off crashing like cymbals and throwing clouds of sand into our faces. A downpour tonight is expected, but that could set the rivers off again, and we must have crossed 30 or more of them on our journey. Water is what everyone wants here, but tonight, just for once, I’ll be hoping the rain stays away. If I post a blog tomorrow, it will probably mean that we’ve been stranded!
UNHCR Compound, Farchana
Slight gap in our blog here - It's an oddity of the UNHCR that they have excellent wi-fi facilities in all their regional offices, but not at UNHCR HQ in Abeche. So I'm playing catch up here:
We are now in Farchana, about 2 hours drive due east of Abeche and close up against the border with Darfur. It's Wednesday evening, and our group is now in two parts, with half going "down south" to Goz Beida (Jeremy will update on this later in the week) and I'm with the other half down in Farchana. Today's blog will be posted separately, but here is yesterday's.....
On Monday evening we had a de-brief with the head of the UNHCR mission in Iriba – we finished about 7pm, upon which he learned that Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF) had just lost one of their ambulances, hijacked barely 50 yards from our compound. It's another reminder of just how difficult a job it is for aid agencies to work in environments like this. The UN and its agencies come in for a lot of criticism at times, but I’d defy anyone to have seen the job they do here, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and fail to be impressed by it.
The cockerel woke us all up again this time at 3.30am – We think this was his way of getting revenge on us for singing “I feel like Chicken Tonight” ever time we passed him. His cacophony, at painfully regular intervals, was interspersed by the winner of the “Noisiest Cleaner in the World” contest who decided to drag all the chairs across the dining room floor, drag them back and then, having decided that this was simply too much fun, really went to town dragging the table about as well. This was at around 4.30am.
We were all up and about ready to head back by plane to Abeche at 8am, but got word that the plane was delayed. In true “Spirit of the Blitz” style we broke open the packages of table tennis gear which we had been eyeing curiously for some days lurking beneath the coffee table. I’m not sure that a low coffee table conforms to international table tennis standards, and I’m fairly sure that on the limited number of occasions I have watched the sport on TV, I’ve seen players standing up, not seated in armchairs, but it whiled away the minutes.
Eventually we got the call to move, ride out to the airport and it's goodbye Iriba. And within a few minutes we landed at Guereda, although not before we’ve spotted lots of animals in the landscape below, many drinking at some of the fast-drying patches of water resulting from the rains.
30 minutes later and we are back in Abeche, and re-acquainting ourselves with the novelty of running water at the GTZ guest house. Pictures of the Rhine-Rühr coalfields on my bedroom wall seem a little incongruous but I’m clean for the first time in days and there is a beer in the fridge. All we have to do now is wait for the generator to come on and it might even begin getting cold.
Monday, 1 October 2007
UNHCR Compound, Iriba
Now about to start our fourth day without running water – which leads to all sorts of interesting ‘economies’, such as shaving in the bottom half of a plastic bottle, and other exciting ‘boy-scout’ remedies – don’t even think about the loos! I suppose, looking on the bright side, at least we should have no problem getting plenty of space on the plane home next Saturday.
And talking of brightness, after a week of relentless African sun, I’m doing a very passable imitation of a conker. During one of tonight’s inevitable power cuts, I was able to sit at the head of the table, glowing quietly like Three-Mile-Island, and allow everyone to finish their delicious meal of chopped mambo leaves and hominy grits with a subdued Ikea-like illumination.
Today we went out to Amnabak, a refugee camp only about thirty miles from the Sudan border. With about seventeen thousand inhabitants, it is one of the poorest we have visited – no wells or permanent water at all – it comes in everyday by water truck. Lots of small animals though, sheep goats, and of course, hundreds and hundreds of donkeys.
Despite the extremely unhelpful military guards, we were eventually able to enter the camp, and gradually people arrived in the community ‘hut’, to hold a meeting to discuss problems and possibilities with their livestock.
We are now quite used to these – they seem to follow the same pattern. There is a front row of ‘the sheiks’, or at least men who think they are important. Then at the back sit a couple of rows of women – all dressed in dazzling coloured veils and robes, and often with babies secreted underneath who emerge squalling from time to time during the meeting.
The men usually start of with same tactics – please give us more water, more food and more (free) veterinary medicines. Then we ask them about diseases, and we get a list of symptoms that is often very hard to pin down. But while this is going on, the women at the back gradually start chipping in, usually with more pertinent suggestions. After all, it’s normally they who actually do the work of looking after the animals on a daily basis. I mean, in a community like this, just who do you think will have to carry the water home from the water-point? They gradually grow in confidence, and even start arguing with the menfolk.
They then took us around the camp – visiting the market, and the shacks and huts they’d managed to build. How on earth do the women manage to have such clean clothes in conditions like that – and with water rationed to just a few litres per head?
As we came back the World Food Programme lorry arrived with the month’s rations.
A huge crowd (of mostly women and children) quickly gathered to receive their dues.
It was sobering to think that this grain had probably been flown across the Atlantic in some super airliner, or container ship, then trucked across the desert in huge road trains – but finally, it’s loaded on the back of some placid old donkey – lowest of low tech, but it works a treat!
Jeremy Hulme
PS - Tomorrow we head back to Abeche, at which point our wonderful wi-fi access is start to end. We'll update the blog as and when we can, but it may not be for a few days!
Sunday, 30 September 2007
UNHCR Compound, Iriba
One thing we are continually being told is just how important water is here. On the flight up to the North last week, the pervasive Sahara became more and more evident, and today we saw just what an all-consuming task the search for water is.
We set off on a 5-car convoy, led by our new friends from the army (we have taken individual posed photos of them all, shouldering arms, looking mean, and one even on the back of a camel...all at their request). Today's itinerary is designed to give us an idea of how local animal owners cope in this harsh environment. And so we drive miles out over bleak arid plains, temporarily (at least) transformed by the rains into seemingly endless acres of waving grass. Criss-crossing the plains are broad dry river beds, or wadis, which sustain magnificent and ancient old trees, and in places verdant patches of greenery and even permanent bodies of water at which hundreds of animals are being watered. The villagers we met seemed content and peaceable. Their ways of life have changed little in centuries, and yet they have to be versatile to cope with bad seasons of rain, or outbreaks of disease amongst their cattle. The SPANA mission is one they are genuinely interested in, and we are overrun at nearly every stop.
We get back to Iriba with a fuller picture of how a livestock owner copes in this environment. We also discover that we have a water issue ourselves - there isn't any. If fact there hasn't been any since Thursday evening. Beer is really the only alternative but even we can't wash in beer (although I did once know someone who did just that).
Thankfully our colleagues at Oxfam, with whom we share a table at mealtimes, offer us access to their bowser, so we make a short journey cross town in their car in total darkness, fill up buckets and empty bottles and begin a very slow journey homewards.
It's impossible not to think of Stuart Hall and Eddie Waring commentating on "It's a Knockout" as the water sloshes around, but we have enough to wash and clean our teeth with. Quite an easy task compared with what we'e seen today - donkeys being loaded up with water barrels and buckets by small children, who have first dug holes in the sandy bottoms of dry rivers. They do at least have their donkeys to help them home.
Saturday, 29 September 2007
UNHCR Compound, Iriba
We woke nice and early this morning, about four o’clock to be precise. Some blooming cockerel was courting his lady friends, just outside the window. I know SPANA is meant to be all about protecting animals, but I swear, a couple more hours of ‘Little Red Rooster’, and we’ll be enjoying roast chicken for dinner.
But at least it got us up and away nice and early, off to see the refugee camps around Iridimi.
Of course you have to have a detachment of the local Coldstream Guards along for ‘security’ – which means a lot of hanging around and gesticulating, handshaking and kissing before we finally hit the road.
The landscape is a little softer here, more trees and more grass on undulating terrain – with occasional flashes of vivid colour as bee-eaters, ‘superb starlings’ and other unnamed jewels dart amongst the brush on either side. There seem fewer villages as well – yet every so often we pass a herd of sleek, shiny goats, knee-deep in thick grass, while the goat herds wave enthusiastically at our trucks.
Then finally we’re in Iridimi camp, bleak and desolate, yet with striking images as women in fabulous coloured robes struggle to move their livestock or ride donkeys through the swirling sand.
The wind is a real curse – modern cameras just do not like being filled with fine, wind-blown dust, and when one can taste it, and feel it in your eyes and nose, it’s scary to think what it must be doing to all those tiny little motors and moving parts. Yet, it’s impossible to resist trying to film small, laughing children playing in front of their shacks and donkeys…
Then we have a meeting organised for the ‘sheiks’ of the camp – back in their homes in Darfur they would have been the village headmen – and other members of the camp committee – mostly women.
With quiet dignity they told us of their problems, particularly about their animals, reinforcing, if it was ever necessary, the fundamental truth that these people absolutely rely on their animals. We gently pry from them the symptoms of the many deaths they have suffered. Anthrax is common, but also PPR and Sheep-pox, similar to Smallpox, and just as deadly.
Gradually a picture emerges. They say they are short of water, grazing and firewood, and of course veterinary help when problems occur. But perhaps more worrying, for the first time we are hearing about problems with the local villagers – sometimes ending in violence, and usually aimed at the women.
Afterwards, we head for Touloum, slightly bigger than Iridimi, but with the same sort of problems.
Meanwhile, Simon, who had been eating all sorts of strange things recently, but certainly not fish, gradually went green around the gills and was forced to leave us very suddenly, and was last seen heading rapidly towards the horizon looking for a nice, thick, friendly bush to hide behind.
Once again we heard from the headmen and women the usual list of complaints: water, firewood, animal feed etc. But again, and this time even more vehemently, they complained of the growing hostility from the local villagers. One woman complained that she had been cutting grass to bring back to the camp, when she was attacked, her grass taken, her sickle stolen, but worst of all, they took her beloved donkey.
I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised – many villagers feel all the aid goes to refugees, while they lose a lot of the best grazing – yet in the midst of all the problems and misery, it is just one extra burden the world could do without.
Jeremy Hulme, CEO SPANA
Friday, 28 September 2007
UNHCR Compound, Iriba
We left Bahai at about 8.30 this morning full of uncertainty about how or when we were going to get down to the next, more southerly set of refugee camps gathered around the town of Iriba. Although actual distances between places is not immense, there are no roads as such, just tracks in the sand.
The vital flights that connect the camps and facilitate the aid workers effort are operated by the amazingly well-organised non-profit organisation Air Serv International, who as an added plus have good-humoured and flexible pilots. As a consequence we find ourselves airborne, flying south to Iriba. Below us, we can see a long group of traditional Arab nomabs livestock: laden camels, a string of goats or sheep and then the family on horse back. They are carrying out their traditional "transhumance" or seasonal migration to take advantage of the lush pasture brought about by the recent rains - in an area where competition for natural resources has always been a struggle, the conflict in neighbouring Sudan (just a few kilometres from Bahai, and which is as much a clash between cultures as anything else) means that tolerance of Arab nomads amongst Chadian villagers is diminishing. In truth the situation is far more complicated than can be summarised here, but it gives just some idea of how difficult the task is for us to find a soloution which reflects the interest of all livestock owners in the region.
Iriba is a photogenic African village, and after dumping our kit in the UNHCR compound, and once again mentally congratulating whoever had the presence of mind to install wi-fi here, we go off to meet at first the District Prefecture, and then the genial Canadian Director of the Care International office here. SPANA is funding some Community Animal Health Workers in the three refugee camps they manage and we shall be visiting them over the next few days. It's now mid-afternoon, and we are off to meet the Sultan of the region. I have put on a clean shirt for the occasion.
The Sultan has a real Palace. We breeze in through his gates in our 4x4 Toyota, and dislodge part of his gatehouse with our radio antenna. In the corner of the palace forecourt is a well kept but ancient John Deere tractor. We take our shoes off, go up the steps and inside. In his snow-white robes the Sultan, who had been sitting on the ground in front of his imposing throne, stands up to greet us. This is a scene, I think, that people like Mungo Park, TE Lawrence and even Livingstone will have found familiar. We pay our dutiful respects to the Sultan, who listens, but keeps and eye on the TV playing Arabic music beamed from Sudan. After hearing what SPANA is about, he listens more intently. A memory stirs in which I am reminded that when I was a small boy, I had some aspiration to sit on the floor of a Sultan's Palace chatting with the big man. Even the accoutrements of a modern Sultan (mobile phone, cable TV, funky fly-swat with built in torch) can't dispell my enthusiasm for having ticked this "to do" item off my life list.
Thursday, 27 September 2007
UNHCR Compound, Bahai
Woken up this morning at 5.40am by ‘Dick Van Dyke’, an itinerant Dutch solar-cooker ("cuisine solaire") salesman, switching on his radio, full blast. Dick is our ‘new friend’, working hard to get the ‘most annoying man in Africa’ award – and boy, I think he’s going to make it, with a record score. Not only does he monopolise the one bathroom and loo, he will also help himself to the best room, the best seat in any vehicle. Even worse, he demands that everyone else gives up their baggage allowance on the little planes here, so he can get his damn cookers in the hold.
People adopt a strange ‘mockney’ accent, saying “Hullo, Mary Poppins” whenever the poor fellow rushes purposefully past. “Zere’s ten sousand vimmin waitink for me in ze camps”, he announced solemnly. He must have wondered why we all started sniggering. “Oh, so that’s what he’s got in that case – Viagra”, someone whispered.
Thankfully we managed to lose him at the little airport in Abeche, where we found ourselves boarding a nine-seater bound for the camps in the north – round Bahai, close up to the Sudanese border, landing on a grassland airstrip.
Complete with armed guards – you can’t go any where here without turbaned ‘cool dudes with the shades’ waving Kalashnikovs around. "Government Security", someone said. Well, perhaps. They certainly weren’t the Coldstream Guards. We drove past abandoned villages, and others with wonderful, huge thatched-roofed huts, and children herding goats and sheep. Because a miracle has occurred this year – rain! Lots of it! And so, just for once, the plains are a sea of waving grass. Camels stand idly by, chewing the cud and looking disdainfully at us, as only camels can. And of course there are donkeys everywhere.
Eventually we come to the place we have really travelled all this way to see, Oure Cassoni refugee camp. Home to twenty-two thousand traumatised ex-villagers from central Darfur, and their animals – approaching forty thousand head.
We were given a warm and hearty welcome as we sat down to talk to the village ‘committee’, along with the local aid workers, to try and find out their needs and problems and start to think of a plan to help them and there animals survive in this often harsh and unforgiving land.
Tuesday, 25 September 2007
UNHCR Compound, Abeche
The UN compound in Abeche is something of an oasis. I’m currently sitting on a wooden table underneath a straw roof providing shade from the hot afternoon sun. The 14-seater WFP (World Food Program) flight across from Ndjamena takes just 90 minutes, and we disembark into the now searing heat rebounding off the tarmac runway. Our friends from UNHCR greet us warmly and we go through the process of dutifully presenting our credentials and permits to travel to the jovial police commissar at the airport station. And then we are off into Abeche.
It's fair to say that the town is not blessed with a picturesque location, or a range of historical buildings, but it has quite an atmosphere. Low level, sandy-coloured buildings, surrounded by high ochre-coloured walls. Unmade streets passable only by black nosed donkeys, goats or 4x4’s. A thriving, colourful market selling everything from melons to motorbikes, and offering haircuts alongside 10 foot stacks of mattresses. The UNHCR compound is down a side street and is something like an airport departure lounge – British, French, Dutch, Chadian, Cameroonian and American aid workers jostle, congregate, meet, share news, swap information, come and go all day. A meeting with the head of the UNHCR programme here follows a meeting with the local head of the Government Livestock service. It's clear that, as we learned in May, there is a real enthusiasm and need for SPANA’s involvement in drawing up a strategy for livestock in the region. A strategy is needed, so that the crucial resource of livestock for the people is safeguarded and strengthened. As the sun sinks lower in the sky, we talk about the challenge ahead, and the big area we have to cover in order to meet the challenge that has been set for us. Tomorrow will see us meet with representatives of charities working on the ground. The lights come on and the sky burns orange.
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Evening – When we travel to places like this, we always have to accept (and are grateful for) the accommodation that’s provided. That said, we always hope for a comfy bed and a shower. In El Fasher in Darfur, we gritted our teeth at the terrifying toilets (more insects that London Zoo), and in Mandera in Kenya, our guest house was a converted prison, and the cells our bedrooms.
Here in Abeche, we are staying in a guest house run by the German aid agency, GTZ. It's at least a four star on the SPANA approval rating. Even the fact that the light in the shower wasn’t working was a plus, since it disguised the fact that there was a spider the size of an octopus lurking by the plug hole. On a quick stroll round the compound before turning in I disturb a toad, of which there are a large number seemingly brought out because of the recent heavy rains. This one decides to leap acrobatically six feet into the bottom of a vehicle inspection pit, from which he glares accusingly up at me. I can’t leave him there to an oily fate, so after negotiating greasy engine blocks and buckets of black sump oil I liberate Mr (or Mrs…) Toad and turn in.
Monday, 24 September 2007
Novotel Hotel, Ndjamena, Chad
It's wet and raining at Heathrow. A short hop to Paris and a longer hop down to Chad, flying over the Sahara and the Hoggar Mountains sees us arrive in Ndjamena bang on time at 8.45pm. Compared to our last visit in May, we fairly race through the customs procedure. Our fellow passengers on the packed flight from Paris are a curious assortment of charity workers, oil workers (a major source of income for Chad’s current and future economy), and others from a range of Francophone West African nations.
Past a final baggage check and I spot a smiling UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) driver, who is waving a sign labelled “UNHCR SPANA". We have arrived, in more ways than one.
Piling into the UN minibus I recalled coming out of the airport forecourt in May. Peering into the night, Jeremy and I could make out the vague shapes of taxis in the distance, all of which on closer inspection were empty. Most looked fit only for the scrapyard – banana yellow rusting Renault 12’s. Eventually we found one with a sleeping driver, who on being roused from his slumber agreed to take us to the Meridien hotel. After 200 yards, the car ran out of petrol, and our driver disappeared, robes flowing behind him, into the night with a plastic bottle. It was very dark, very hot and very quiet. And still we waited. Moped drivers loomed out of the gloom and peered at us like animals in the zoo. Eventually our driver reappeared, bottle filled with petrol, and we duly limped, coughing and wheezing (and that was just the car) into the forecourt of the Meridien Hotel. The concierge was doubled up with laughter, and we suffered a barrage of angry beeping as our bananamobile blocked the sleek landcruisers belonging to some bigger better known NGO’s.
So this time, blushes were spared. Early start tomorrow – 6am pick up and an early flight east to Abeche, which lies just 150km from the border with Darfur. This is the main provincial town in the east, and home to not just our hosts the UNHCR, but main offices of just about every big aid charity working here – Oxfam, Care International, MSF etc..
