tirsdag 24. november 2009

Morgenstund har gull i munn

Nesten hver morgen trasker Ingvild og jeg innom kaffedama vår på hjørnet. Hun har satt opp stoler og små bord, en slags mobil kafé. Selv sitter hun bak en gammel kommode hvor hun har kaffebønner, kopper, sukker og jeg vet ikke hva. Når vi kommer for å bestille vår daglige kanne jabnah til å ta med, har hun som regel brent og malt kaffebønnene allerede. Vi håndhilser og slenger oss ned på hver vår plaststol. Hun koker opp kaffen på en liten kullgrill, og tilføyer litt kardemomme og ingefær. (Selv er jeg ikke så glad i for mye ingefær, men sudanerne er helt gale etter det, får jeg inntrykk av.) Kaffen helles fra kjele til kanne uten at så mye som en dråpe går tapt. Tre små fingerbølkopper, jabnah-kannen og sukker plasseres på et lite brett, som vi balanserer med oss over gata og inn på kontoret. Få minutter senere spaserer de første frivillige inn; de vet hvor de kan finne dagens første kaffekopp.


mandag 23. november 2009

A story with a happy ending

It’s 2 p.m., I am sitting in my office and showing a young boy the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Lillehammer in 1994 on youtube.

Mahmoud, volunteer coordinator, Ingvild and Alex, who speaks a little Eritreaen, and our new friend in our office.

Two hours earlier, my boss delegated the responsibility of this kid to me and Ingvild. He is from Eritrea and has been in Port Sudan for some weeks. His family lives in Norway. The Norwegian authorities had asked the Red Crescent for help in tracing our new friend after his family found out he was in Port Sudan.

He understands some English, speaks a bit Arabic, and after hours of patient drawing, asking, miming and googeling, I understand that he left his country because he was going to be enrolled in the army. The young boy walked for over a week to the border of Sudan. Once here, he got robbed for all his belongings. He walked for days and then hitch hiked to Port Sudan. He ate whatever was left on the side of the road and found water by digging in the ground. In Port Sudan, he was approached by a fellow Eritrean who immediately took him to his home. This is where our friend was found by the Red Crescent.

Learning the alphabet in Norwegian

Our young friend will leave for Khartoum, and hopefully, he will be in Norway to celebrate Christmas with his family.

onsdag 18. november 2009

Sun, heat and presidents

My adrenaline is pumping while I scan the audience around me, just waiting for another woman to faint. I ignore the two presidents on the stage only ten meters away from me. My biggest priority now are the masses of women around me. It is at least 30 degrees, the sun is burning, and the water tanks have been empty for over an hour. There is no system here; people are pushing from all directions to get closer to the stage. Some of them have been here since 7 o’clock in the morning, and since most Sudanese eat their breakfast at 10 or 11, they are not exactly well prepared for hours of standing. The police men are hitting the girls and women in the front, pushing them back with long sticks; completely ignoring the fact that these people are being pushed by hundreds of others from behind. The school girls next to me are crying, they are not allowed to leave by their teacher, since she has the responsibility for them. In the end, one of them faints. Me and my Red Crescent colleagues pick her up and try to make our way through the crowd towards the ambulances. During the four hours we are working, around 70 people are transported to the hospital this way.

I understand that a presidential visit is a big event, but the organizers could have done a better job. When the water tanks are empty at 9.30 and the police are hitting and pushing crying women further away, this means that the event could have been better prepared. I am happy to do my job as a Red Crescent volunteer, but preventive work, like enough water, a shaded area to relax in and fences would have been helpful.


Volunteers preparing for the big day

lørdag 14. november 2009

Hardcore playing

Like the Norwegian Red Cross Youth-members we are, we like to play. We have brought several of our typical games to Sudan, most of them include running or jumping. In our third workshop, the participants were tired. So we encouraged them to jump up and down for two minutes. This was the result in the downstairs office the following day:

tirsdag 10. november 2009

Cold coffee and workshops

”Ya khawaja! I don’t like my coffee to get cold!” It is the third two-day workshop we are conducting in a week, 20 Sudanese around me are more interested in their coffee than in me finishing my sentence. I must admit, after a quite intense week with language difficulties, pedagogical challenges and different cultural codes, I am about to get very frustrated. Even though I know it’s not necessarily rude to interrupt or to address someone as “white person” instead of saying their name, it still gets to me. It might be the knowing, but not accepting, which is frustrating to me. I leave the room; I need to be alone for some minutes. After a short time the man who doesn’t like cold coffee, comes out to check on me. He is terribly sorry, apologizes countless times. He asks me to drink coffee with him, and we are friends again.





The next day, the volunteers have brought homemade breakfast to the workshop, instead of the boring ful (horse beans) they complained about the day before. We now know when they like to have their tea, and the coffee is served hot. We explain everything more carefully, give them more time to discuss in groups and make plans for the following months. It is amazing to see how much difference this makes, both for them and for me. For the first time in a week, the volunteers are not impatiently waiting to go home at 3 p.m. They stay with us for a while, recite poems, exchange phone numbers and invite us for coffee at their place. It seems like we finally got the food and tea code in this country; hot food and drinks served at the right time. It is not only the content of the workshop that is important.