Hello again!
Another week has flown by... somehow time flies, even though it feels like I have been here for ages already!
At the moment I going through a lot of ups and downs. I feel homesick quite often. It's all still new and strange to me and of course I miss my boyfriend and friends a lot! But the people here are very nice and they help me to distract myself.
I have a lot to do anyway and I don't even know where to start! I'm rather overwhelmed by all the tasks I should fulfill so far, I still have to find my way yet. But I have some good support here. Sometimes it's a bit frustrating, I would like to start doing something but I don't know yet how.
Meanwhile I have been to the camp twice. It is very different from what we know from the media. It's more like a big village with mud houses that are standing very cramped together. Originally the government has brought the people here, mainly to protect them from the rebels (at least that's what they claimed) but also to be able to trace the rebels more easily. Meaning that everyone who was out and walking about after the curfew was presumably a rebel and was shot right away!
The people in the camp could not maintain their fields anymore at that time and are now completely depending on help from the outside.
Now, as a sign that peace is progressing, the government wants to send all the people home and is cutting down the food distribution. But the people don't have anything left at home. Houses have been destroyed and the fields are empty.
There are a lot of these camps around here. In "my" camp there are about 20 000 people today. We occupy a small health center where we treat the most common diseases (Basically everyone get gets some paracetamol and some antibiotic and maybe even a antimalarial drug because we can not do any tests to specify the diagnosis). We send the more difficult cases to the hospital in town but transport is a very difficult issue! Most of the time they have to use public transport (very nice if one has tuberculosis!) We cover the way in, but the way back they have to pay themselves, and often they can not afford that.
We recently have expanded our health center by a wing just for women. It's meant to be for women who have "private" problems like sexually transmitted diseases or after being raped. It's not being used for that purpose very often yet so we first have to earn the trust of the population. We also want to ad a room with 4 beds were we can treat inpatients as well. All of this requires a lot of work and planning!
To supervise the local staff is also quite difficult sometimes. They often just disappear without any warning and then you have to recruit others. Very often they are not qualified enough for their tasks (nursing assistants are delivering babies etc.)
Theft is also always a big issue here so you always have to keep a close eye on things... very exhausting!
But at least the locals are very grateful for this, they are always very happy when you greet them. Every time we drive out to the camp the kids go completely crazy, running after the car, waving and yelling byeeeee! And they are even more excited when you wave back at them! That brings back a lot of motivation.
We also supervise some other projects here that I still have to get to know. But first I have to focus on "my" project.
Food is very good here, the cook is excellent! At the weekends we often go to town to get a snack from the market or you just go to one of the many parties that take place every weekend. There are so many NGO's here and there is always something to celebrate ;-)
But there is a few things that I miss already, like the nice Swiss bread...
The main spoken language here is Lwo and it's quite difficult to learn, the pronunciation is more like in Asia than in Europe.
The situation is still rather quiet but you never know what happens when the peace talks fail. We regularly get security updates from all sides and get a lot of info from the national staff before it's even official.
When we're on the road we are regularly in contact with the base so I had to learn "radio talk". Today we went through our evacuation plan. It's good to know what to do in an emergency situation but it also feels very strange to be talking about destroying documents or attaks...
But usually these things happen slowly and you can see it coming, and you are always free to go when you don't feel safe anymore.
On Monday my old "boss" is leaving and the new one should arrive in 2 weeks time. Lets see what kind of changes that will bring.
So now it's time for some shopping.
Take care Anne