My area in the news...

Here is a link to a developing issue in our area. We are still looking at ways to help with this situation since we are strategically located to do something.

Reuters Africa News

Capacity Building

When a country, especially one that did not have much to begin with, has been at war for more than twenty years there isn’t a whole lot left for anyone to build on. As one of several NGOs working in this area of the country we do a lot of talking about capacity building. I am not entirely certain I have a great grasp of what exactly we mean when we use that term, “capacity building”, but we like to throw it around the way halleluiahs are used in church.
At its core, I suppose we are referring to our poor attempts to up the standard of living and develop peoples’ life skills. In a broader sense we are also talking about the peace dividends we hope are being reaped by the establishment of proper healthcare and schools. We try to offer basic skills in mechanics and building by offering people jobs who have no expertise in those areas to begin with. This can be painfully frustrating at times as our vehicles are sometimes mishandled and our construction work hampered by bad craftsmanship. An excellent example of this can be seen in the lessons I have learned while trying to get some painting done on a few of our buildings. I quickly learned not to leave the scene for more than an hour, lest I return to find paint of different colors splattered haphazardly everywhere. It has taken several paint jobs, and the work still is not very pretty, but slowly we have trained a crew of guys who are developing into somewhat skilled painters.
The problem we face is the scope of the need. South Sudan has almost no infrastructure, very little healthcare, inadequate schooling and its people have spent twenty years living off of handouts in refugee camps. We are trying to offer services for people who have nothing and it simply is not enough. The government does not yet have the capacity to meet the needs of the people and the NGOs jobs are to fill the gaps left by the government, which in this case means everything. A typical discussion among NGOs in this area goes something like this. UNHCR says, “We have just brought back 5000 Sudanese from refugee camps in Ethiopia and they are without food, schools or healthcare. What are you going to do about it?” Then the rest of us look at each other rather blankly, because we are already stretched thin with what we are doing, and respond, “Um, we don’t have the resources to meet those needs. That is the work of the government. Why aren’t they helping?” What we don’t say is that we think UNHCR was stupid for bringing the people back with no structure in place to begin with, but then again who can blame them for wanting to shut down refugee camps that have been in place for over twenty years.
And so the story goes. We run the only hospital in area as large as New Jersey and it simply is not enough. Imagine living in Newark and trying to walk to Philadelphia through mile after mile of mud during the peak of rainy season so that you can take your child to a hospital or outlying clinic for treatment of malaria…or, as is more likely the case, you simply don’t get treatment and hope the child survives.
We talk about capacity building a lot, and I think it is because it makes us feel a little better about ourselves; it makes us feel like we are actually doing something here, and if we look around I guess we really are…its just not enough. In this entire region there is one secondary school with enough room for less than one hundred pupils...which means we are building capacity on a maximum of a primary education in most cases.
We have a LONG way to go.

Recent weeks.

I realize that it has been a while since I have sat down and really communicated what exactly I’ve been up to. When I returned from the US in June, the team here went through several changes as the Program Manager, Fletcher, left and was replaced by Angelo. It has taken a few months for everyone to figure out what to expect with the new arrival and things have pretty much returned to business as usual.
A month ago I went out to Nairobi and on to Thailand for my two week R&R and returned to take over the reigns from Angelo as he left for a month in the US, visiting friends and family. With him gone I have found myself busier than usual; in addition to my usual logistics duties, I am also handling most of the administrative and programmatic duties of Angelo until he returns.
We are continuing the reconstruction of the hospital ward that burned down in February, though the work has actually stalled until we can get a new welder in from Nairobi. The logistics of keeping a construction job going has added to the usual work of keeping our programs equipped with the supplies they need.
The rains have also continued to come and probably won’t end until at least mid-October. I cannot even begin to describe the difficulties that arise from the poor infrastructure in this area. During the rainy season a simple 30km journey can take a whole day. We try ,as much as possible, to keep our vehicles from traveling too far away from town, but with ongoing programs and construction work we have inevitably needed supplies from farther north which has meant a few harrowing journeys for our drivers. A team of our drivers recently spent several days in the bush when one of our tractors broke down in the middle of nowhere, but the alternative is to hire others to do the work and this time of year prices are through the roof.
On the compound we have had a few discouraging break-ins which have left us a little baffled. Several items were stolen that suggested one or several of our compound staff might have been involved which always leaves the predicament of what to do with the people you had hoped you could count on. There are many, many idle, young people who have been brought back to this area from refugee camps in Ethiopia and in many ways it is inevitable that they will begin to get into trouble unless opportunities for employment or leisure activities present themselves. The poverty in this area is extreme and after 20 years of war there has not yet been any real development, leaving people to scratch out a living in any way possible.
September is the time of year when many budgets and proposals are put together for the next year’s activities. With Angelo gone I have found myself involved in the process of putting together several proposals for our work here to continue. While it is not really exciting work, I have actually quite enjoyed the task of thinking through what is next for this area. After a year of mostly doing physical work it has been nice to re-engage my brain a bit and put it to use.

In recent weeks I have been doing a lot of thinking about the enormity of human suffering and despair that is evident every day. As I have read the news and looked around me here, I have found myself often deeply discouraged – what impact can I really have in this ocean of hopeless humanity?? But, I am also reminded that the King filled himself up to the full with this humanity of ours. A few weeks ago I was reading a sermon by a favorite author of mine in which he talked about the birth of Jesus. As I was reading it struck me, perhaps for the first time, how frightening it must have been for the Ancient of Days, the timeless One, to come out of the comfort of eternity into this world of ours, covered in the mess that accompanies us at birth; that mess that doesn’t ever really wash off until we die. He covered himself with our humanity from the get-go, and I don’t think it is too far of a stretch to imagine that his first cry was not merely the wondrous cry of a baby gasping for that first breath but the frightened cry of having entered into our blemished flesh and blood. He knows how messed up we really are and he HAS done something about it. I hope my life and my actions point to that.