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:

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.

Fighting polio

Compared to 2006, when there were no new cases of polio in Sudan, there were 18 new reported cases in early 2009. Because of this alarming development, the Sudanese Red Crescent Society (SRCS) has joined the newly initiated polio vaccination campaign. Other actors are the World Health Organization, the Sudanese Ministry of Health and UNICEF, which provide funding and medicine, while the SRCS is responsible for the volunteers performing the vaccinations. Since this is a door to door-campaign, the volunteers need to be trained in how to vaccinate, which children are in the target group, how to rapport and how to mark the visited houses.

Amona marking a visited house in Qadisiyya

Door to door in Qadisiyya

Afaf showing Ingvild a rapport in Umm al-qurra

Last week, Ingvild and I attended a training session and learned that all children, from one day-old babies to five year-old children, were to be vaccinated orally against polio. Babies between six and 12 months get blue vitamin A-pills, the older children get red pills. Quite easy, we thought.

When actually participating in the campaign with the volunteers this week, we soon discovered how hard it can be to get children to open their mouths – especially when it’s their first time dealing with a scary khawaja (white person). It was also quite challenging physically, we were walking around for four-seven hours every day in the outskirts of Port Sudan in 36 degrees. It is quite impressive that the volunteers do this job from 7 a.m. until 5 p.m. for three days straight.

It feels good to do participate in a project like the polio vaccination campaign, and next month we will be working with the volunteers in Haya and Durudeb, two smaller towns in the Red Sea State.

Vaccinating a little girl in Umm al-qurra

Girls showing their blue fingernails, the sign for a vaccinated child

Our very first presentation!

We have been in Sudan for over a month now, and after a wish of the volunteers, we decided that is was time for our first presentation. After having talked to several volunteers and our coordinator, it was decided that we were going to have a presentation about Sexual Health as a part of a First Aid training course. Here in Sudan, this is a 18-day course, and lasting for two hours every day.

We located the puzzle that is used for Sexual Health-training, which youth delegate Anine brought from Norway last year and got translated. Since there was no English version, I spent a couple of hours translating, while Ingvild was reading up on Syphilis and Gonorrhea. In addition to HIV and Hepatitis B, these are the most common sexual transmitted diseases in Sudan.



The presentation went well, we held it half in Arabic, half in English. The volunteers Khalid and Sadiq were of great help, especially when it came to answering medical questions in Arabic. They also gave us constructive feedback on what to improve; next time we could maybe let the participants try to put a condom on a dildo instead of just showing it?

Sudanese weekend

This weekend has been a Sudanese weekend. On Friday, we had Mahmoud, the volunteer coordinator, his wife, three children and two friends (who were “in the neighbourhood”) over for a visit. We were starting to understand how this works, so we had a big stock of cookies, tea, coffee, juice, sweets and cake. This stock exists no more. We had a nice, but short, time with our guests; the children drawing, the mother watching a Bahraini soap opera, the three men drinking coffee and chatting. After an hour or so, they are ready to move on to a coffee place in the town center. Apparently our coffee wasn’t as good as we thought it was.



Saturday we met Samira, our colleague Hassan’s wife. She was going to teach us how to cook Sudanese food in our home. I am not the greatest cook in the world, but feeling like a spectator in my own kitchen felt a bit strange. There wasn’t much we could do; Samira is one of the most effective persons I’ve seen. And she’s a big fan of systems, so she re-organized our fridge, told us what we should get at the market… In the end, she made three meals for us and left before it was dinner time. Sudanese visits are a bit different than those we are used to from back home.

Stress? Ma fi (there is none)

Last week, we were in Tokar, a small village three hours from Port Sudan. We attended a meeting the same night we got there: the volunteers were planning a ceremony two days later. I suddenly realized that this was the first meeting they held about this specific event. Had I been in the volunteers’ place, I would have been stressed out of my mind knowing that the stage wasn’t set, the food wasn’t bought (there wasn’t even a food group yet!), the posters and banners weren’t ready. But the 15 or so people sat together, calmly discussing what had to be done and who was to be in which group. On Monday, we witnessed a great ceremony, with three singers, dancers and even the mayor of Tokar was present. And not to mention all the people!

The past days, I have seen the same happening in Port Sudan. People get together at a school; the day before they phone each other up agreeing on who should bring what, and voilà: One hour at the school is all they need to prepare drinks, snacks, seats and a small stage. I am impressed.

I realize that it might be hard to bring this laidback approach back to Norway (which mayor could attend a ceremony on a one day notice?), but as long as I’m here, I have to let organizer-Anniken go.

En dag i Tokar

Klokka er 4.30, og flere moskeer er allerede i gang med å kalle inn til morgenbønnen. Jeg dytter øreproppene lenger inn og forsøker å sove igjen. Ingvild rister forsiktig i meg - klokka er blitt 7.30. Barnegråt, esler og galende haner dominerer lydbildet. Jeg pakker meg ut av myggnettingen, i natt har vi sovet ute i bakgården til lokalforeningens kontor. Selv om det (etter norsk standard) fortsatt er tidlig, har våre venner fra Tokar vært våkne i flere timer. De har vært på markedet, og nå venter de med fersk kaffe på oss.

Kort tid senere blir vi med "alle frivilliges mor", Amna, for å forberede maten til den store festen dagen etter. 650 frivillige i Tokar og Agig har gjennomført førstehjelpskurs, og disse skal nå feires med brask og bram. Siden det ikke er plass til 650 mennesker i det provisoriske festteltet, er det kun et knippe utvalgte frivillige som får delta. Det er allikevel nok å gjøre for festens matgruppe. Ingvild og jeg får hver vår kledelige pysjamas før vi setter i gang med å lage "norsk mat". Vi steker fisk og lager agurksalat (potetene ble visst glemt), ikke til lunsj som vi trodde, men til frokost. Resten av dagen prøver vi å være hjelpsomme; vaske opp, lage mat, sortere bønner. Men vi får nesten alltid beskjed om at det ikke er noe å gjøre, kan vi ikke bare slappe av? Sove litt, kanskje? Med følelsen av å ha gjort svært lite, trasker vi tilbake til myggnettingen rundt kl.23. Neste morgen får vi vite at kvinnene har slaktet to geiter, tilberedt dem i tillegg til all den andre maten, i løpet av natta..