January Update

I was just in Niertiti, our eastern-most project in Western Darfur. It’s an interesting place, because of the politics. Niertiti is very near the border between West and South Darfur. It is also very near to the Jebel Marra, which is controlled by the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA).

Niertiti itself was a tiny town of about 5000 people which became host to two camps of internally displaced populations of 30,000. There was just one small government outpatient clinic here before the camps. So we now work in that alongside the government health workers and we built a 50 bed hospital also, with a 40 bed feeding center for undernourished kids. This is a pretty unstable area, and gunshot wounds are a fairly frequent thing to treat in the hospital.

From here, we run a mobile clinic (meaning that we go there in the morning and return with the team in the evening) twice a week in Thur, right on the border between West and South Darfur. This clinic gets a lot of patients from the South Darfur side, the local government controlled areas, and the rebel controlled areas. About 10 days ago, 3 trucks full of food from the UN’s World Food Program were stolen near here by the rebels and taken into the Jebel Marra. This was kind of embarassing for the local government. Afterwards, the town of Thur was sacked, and there was quite a bit of gender-based sexual violence. We aren’t able to go back to our clinic in Thur until we can assure the safety of our team. It should be fairly soon.

We also run a clinic in the Jebel Marra, the rebel controlled zone, in Kutrum. This is maybe one of the most peaceful regions of Darfur! The government can’t dislodge the SLA from this mountainous area, and the SLA is in control so it’s not moving. Therefore, no fighting (although we do treat some gunshot wounds from the border zones). We see about 200 outpatients a day and have a 10 bed hospital there. Three people (a doctor, a translator and a driver/logistician) leave from here on Saturday morning to work with the local staff during the week, returning to Niertiti every Thursday evening. I was there today, and got to meet 3 SLA commanders. They seemed like pretty nice guys.

In Bulbul, our water distribution project is starting up nicely. This is a village in which a nomad tribe has decided to settle, to avoid continued conflict between them and the farming communities in which they grazed before. Between 15,000 and 25,000 (real figures are hard to get) have arrived in the village since July, and the water supply was not up to the volume. We now have 4 wells installed and pumping, and we are now getting the distribution system in place. We will also be distributing non-food items (jerricans for carrying water, soap and blankets) to the families. If we end up working in the hospital in a larger village nearby (Kass, another possible new project), we could operate a mobile clinic here.

I still have way too much to do, but it’s better than at the end of the year. We have the layoff in El Geneina, hiring in Nyala, finalizing 2007 accounting, putting in place a system to track expenses by activity, getting everyone into our human resources data base, and a host of smaller items.

It rained here the last few evenings! This may not be surprising to you, but it's about the equivalent of snow in Indiana in August.

I am heading up to the big city, Khartoum, on Monday for a few days to work with our country-wide Human Resources coordinator on some issues. I didn't move at all for quite a while, but now I'm making up for lost time.