mattsiller.com Blog

Makes me think of In and Out Burger in California. Hmmnnn….

So my room is about 10×8ft. Pretty small. I have a little desk and two clothes lockers, a bed, nightstand, and tiny bookcase. People come to me for movies and books. I keep a local praying mat as my rug (which at this point is its only purpose). There is nothing on my walls yet but I need to fix that. I do hang my hat and belts and towel with those Container Store sticky hooks. Guys are funny…until yesterday, I haven’t washed my sheets or towel since I returned from leave April 17. The local women do it for us so there is no excuse….other than roughing it in the desert…aar argh argh.

I’ve mentioned my hesitation to venture out at night. I do go early to brush my teeth and wash my face, because jees, those are two immediate points of internally visible grime that are hard to ignore.

I keep a case of bottled watre (that’s british spelling for the americans… or is it?) in my room to wet the pallet but I used to only drink out of the tap…granted, it was filtered through our water purification unit, but I heard at one point was the throwback water. We’ll just say the bottle water does make a difference.

In the mornings I go to the little tiny cool drink vendor that sets up shop outside our complex. His wife just had a baby, his sixth. I laugh and ask him is that why you charge these astronomical kawaji prices for a drink. He gives me free fresh flat bread and hard boiled eggs which are my breakfast, along with coke or a water. Sometimes I drink Mango juice but this country doesn’t like dilution and everything is an extra sweet, sour, or pulpy concentration and need serious watering.

For lunch, I walk into our mess hall and see which type of rice we will be eating. I have to bribe the chefs to scoop half of the rice off the plate to make room for the lamb. Then when I find out it’s lamb I have him scoop that off and I become a temporary vegetarian. You can guarantee there is always a meat or chicken overcooked as the main item. The Sudanese do not do medium or rare for that matter.

Every day our salads are a combination of tomatoes, cucumber, green pepper and carrots. Sometimes they cut it thin, sometimes thick. Sometimes they add in onions, sometimes canned mushrooms. But you can guarantee those 4 staples. We have vinegar for dressing and salt, but no pepper. (I planned ahead and brought my own pepper dispenser from Target. I get laughed at but hey, I got spice!)

Dessert is vanilla pudding or jello or anything that molds to a pan. Sometimes we have fruit coctail or orange slices. Altogether not that bad for a month. But every day for long periods of time…makes you dream about sonic and outback and texas bbq or fajitas…apple pie…gummy bears…beef jerky…tamales…damn…

In my room I have paper thin walls to the ceiling (which is better than solid walls 3/4ths up which was my former residence). On one side of me I hear a long haired bearded water technician who smokes his hookah every night snore. On the other, a Lebanese mechanic blasts ut ut music after hours. My third neighbor says he hears thumps coming from my wall. My bed is up against it. I laugh when he says that.

I told him I wish I had a reason to make those noises. Some of you know I play the piano, and some of you also know I like to move my fingers in patterns, almost playing the music without the instrument. It’s one of those relaxing things for me, like wiggling your foot or whistling or whatever. So I think I’m bugging him in my mid sleep by tapping on the walls. At least it’s not snoring.

My new job requires me being at the office by 7am latest which means my glory mornings of late dreaming are gone. I generally wake up last minute to run to the shower, cringing my eyebrows as I pass the guys already awake smoking their morning cigarettes outside my room.

I dont understand the urgency to rush to the office, especially since we have curfew until 7am, which means every morning we break it to get there on time. My colleagues are always in the Bucky (South African for truck) waiting when I show up. All I say is ‘curfew’ as we get a move on. The same guys always drive and this kind of bugs me. Old guys’ habits die hard. We go the long way to work. Initially it was because the back way (a strait shot) was real bumpy and rough through the sand. The long way, the common route, has become one big land mine and I dont enjoy the long rides in the mornings (other than seeing spanner) to the office waking up by force.

At lunch, one of our large guys drives and I get a kick out of that because he is short and plump and he has to move the seat up to reach the peddle. He struggles because before his foot reaches the peddle, his belly hits the steering wheel, so he’s stuck in the middle. Despite this, he treats the vehicle as the one thing he can control and rev’s the engine and goes fast over the bumps as he sucks in, making weird noises as he drives. It’s quite an experience.

Sometimes I try to look ahead 5 or 10 years and think about how I’ll remember these times. I think the daily warm and fuzzies will be hard to find.

One of our camps had 2000 IDP’s creep up and overflow the scene. The displaced locals’ intentions were unknown. Were they seeking shelter and safety, or were they being forced as a human shield by the rebels. Rampant confusion was the immediate norm. Our camp manager stepped out of his quarters to see AU troops running in the opposite direction. Bullets were flying in directions of which the sources were unknown. I can imagine that the sense of survival for the untrained civilian becomes the primary instinct. Our manager ran behind the shelter of a clump of sandbags to gather himself and scour the scene for clues and intel on just what the hell was happening.

Soon the bullets died and around midnight the camp was full of locals…camped out, lying asleep on their blankets. It must have been quite a head scratching sight. Aside from the major dilemma at hand, little kids were using the fuel bladders as trampolines and the few TV’s at the site were being raided by the locals, fiddling with the remote control buttons in an overwhelming frenzy of curiosity.

The next morning our water trucks went to collect water and the GOS said to the local driver that if one drop of water was given to those IDP’s they would slit his throat. When he returned, shaken, the locals said they if they didn’t get that water, he wouldn’t live for the GOS to play out their own threats, an unpleasant dilemma to say the least. Fortunately, our manager acted wisely and cut all water off while negotiations between the AU and local chiefs brought a quick evacuation of the locals from the camp.

This place makes uncanny and spontaneous decision making the norm. A thousand armed men on horses (aka janjaweed) must be a daunting and scary sight. This happened at one of our camps. They came close enough for discomfort, showing their flag and possible intentions. So what do you do to get them away? Discussions were had with the tenative AU. What was decided, get a mare in heat, slap her ass and hope the horses go chase. I suppose it would have been remarkably funny if it worked.

Africa is just one of those places…the bastard stepchild of Western foreign policy. I link to the following article, unrelated to the stories above, but a very interesting and worthy read about the US Administrations approach and aftermath to the Genocide in Rwanda. It’s applicable to Darfur policy because it provides high level insight into the politics and motivation of African Peacekeeping.

Many people say the biggest problem with Africa is that people and their countries want but are unwilling to give in order to receive. Billions in aid is donated each year. What is the result…more open hands. The success stories on this continent are far and few between.

Clashes like the little ones I write about (although highly unrelated to this rant) are microcosms of the overwhelming issues that surround this continent. I don’t know how one can solve the issues until Africans become accountable for their actions, take responsibility for developing themselves, and aid is used as supplements in absolutely necessary situations. Genocide would be a worthy cause for aid but the problem has to be solved swiftly and multilaterally by the international community, utilizing plans with endings. I don’t blame the Western governments for being hesitant on continually throwing dollars into the mist in places as such.

I have to think that foreign policy is much like military policy. You have to pick which battles you choose to fight. If it was my influence, I’d say that if Africa wants the pitch, they have to be willing to swing.

Friends – I recently lost a time intensive post that really frustrated me. So is technology…not the first time…we’ve all experienced it in one way or another. So be it. I’ll rewrite again shortly. Let me drop a few lines in the meantime.

This contract, this lifestyle, I write about it sometimes romanticizing, sometimes realizing, the fact is it’s hard. It’s hard b/c of isolation, desolation, any sort of ‘ation’ you’d like to add. Some people here claim there is no mental struggle in dealing with life in the desert. I argue the opposite. We are living in a hellish environment and effectively coping is a non-stop challenge.

On the occasion that I don’t feel like battling the midnight elements and distance to the restroom, I’ll use bottles in my room as urinals. (I’m not alone.) When I do expose myself, so to speak, I hop over the unlimited camel spiders that scatter outside of our residence, avoid the ominous malaria stricken mosquitoes, and dodge the rude flies with their kamikaze buzzing in your face, among the other friendly bugs plaguing the desert.

Animals are abused in one way or another. I see donkeys with their front feet tied hopping along. Dogs fight each other for territorial gain. Goats try their best to huddle in the shade, inevitably leaving numbers exposed to the unmerciful sun. No being is immune to the austerity and cruelness of the desert.

When I really think about it, the lack of levity could really drag you down. Bugs, dust, sand, rodents, and heat are just a few of the elements which remain a constant nuisance and are ‘a part of the experience’. Not to mention the cultural phenomenon of dysfunction, poverty, and death. Nothing about the environment is inviting or fun. I’m halfway through, six months done, and at this point I’m in it for the business. I’m amazed that locals have lived in this element for centuries upon centuries. I rationalize their acceptance by thinking they know no other way.

As contractors, we use cliches like “Another day another dollar” and “Another day in paradise” to motivate eachother. But the mental struggle based on the elements mentioned is a daunting barrier that we constantly navigate.

So, how do you cope? How do you sanely live in a place like ‘hell on earth’ Darfur? You do so by appreciating the little things…

Movie nights with the coworkers builds camaraderie. We live for the morning sunrises, the poker games, the funny moving/looking camels, the absurdity of seeing 20 smiling locals packed into the back of a pickup truck or minature bus.

Our former residence pet, he was raised from a pup. The two year old hard nosed mut of a dog, Spanner, stays away from the camp because he’s now not invited, on policy. But we always recognize him by his curly tail driving to work in the mornings . He runs along side our Toyota pickup in that fantastically optimistic and loyal mindset all dogs share. We whistle at him and holler, “good luck on another day, Spanner”, as we toss him some bones out the window. Sometimes he runs in full stride, sometimes he limps from the previous days battles. Seeing him brings a sense of simplicity and happiness. But I fully expect that one day on our drive Spanner will not be running alongside our vehicle. Darwin comes to mind.

The guys out here are a good bunch. They laugh alot, keep things in perspective, and help the days pass reasonably quick. Daily reminders of function and dysfunction somehow provide a balance we fall inbetween. Everyone copes in one form or another. Those that chose to accept and acknowledge these realities in the lightest manner stay level.

We had our first rain the other day, two months too early. Rain in the desert is an experience. I’ll go into that in a second. First, leading up to the rainy season are the dust storms (Haboobs), which have been an almost daily occurrence the last three weeks. Hot gusts of dust and sand are blown in horizontal swirls that smack into you with wrath. Some scream like a girl upon their first encounter. Anyone lucky enough to be outside in the middle of these afternoon swaree’s have the pleasure of creating nature’s victimized art. By this, I mean that if you are lucky enough to be looking from an indoor vantage point at a victim stuck on the outside, and if you are lucky enough to have a camera at the right moment, you can snapshot this victim creating a uniquely shielding body pose accompanied by a super ugly face as they fight through the nastiness.

When you were a kid, did you ever play ‘unique pose’, the game where you had to come up with a pose (body and face) to your friends that nobody in the world had ever made before in the history of mankind? The ones made by newcomers to the Haboob come close in taking the cake.

The above picture above shows the incoming Haboob and rainy mix into our complex. When the rains do come, the wind and blowing sand doesn’t stop. The rain is just added into the mix. And it’s serious rain, rain with a purpose. It falls large and hard. But when you’ve been without rain for nine months like desert folk, the wrath is forgotten and a spontaneous 30 minute holiday of joyous rain-dancing ensues.  You feel like a kid again.  I ignored the warnings that once rainy season is in full force, I will not want to see another drop. I instead stood outside and absorbed the seasonal rain with a glowing happiness like all life in the desert.

In the mornings when I drive to work, I’m seeing an amazing urgency by the locals to finish building their brick walls and houses, because if the walls are not finished and cement plastered by the time the rain does come, the porousness of the bricks lead to a collapse of the structure, and another years disappointment.

The job is going well. I’ve been back into Sudan for 21 days and I surprised myself the other day with a sudden comfort and acceptance in this environment; this harsh, austere, poor, uncertain, and remote place. I couldn’t believe the thought. How in the world did my personal snapshot of happiness actually sit content considering the circumstances? I came back to earth with an enlightened realization that one, it was because I was driving home from work. No matter where you are, leaving the office always seems liberating, like 500 lbs of weight are lifted off your shoulders for the next few hours until sleep. Two, I’ve only been back 21 days. Once I get into that 4th month, I know I’ll be itching to be normal again.  That tropical vacation wont come soon enough. Just cant get away from the sand.