I am the master of my infinite patience

This is my new mantra. I repeat it in my head while breathing deeply. (I feel like the guy in Fight Club who is reading books that describe the experience of organs in the first person for some reason. "I am Jack's raging bile duct" "I am Kate's racing heart and urge to yell at someone") I started saying it when I would fight with the internet here. It's a satellite so if it's rainy or windy, no internet. It's the rainy season. I play a lot of solitaire and remind myself to be patient. Then yesterday we drove through the thickest bushes and deepest muddy puddles you can imagine for at least 1.5 hours to get to Kombi to survey their kids. The school was entirely empty. There weren't more than 10 people in the whole town. The tukuls that make up the health center (that we fund and pay 3 staff members) were padlocked shut. No survey. But it was okay, because we did get to survey Kulu which was on the way back. Skip to today. We drove to Mayewe. Long drive. Hot day. No kids. Again. Apparently the teachers had gone to Mvolo (where we had just come from) to collect their salaries, so the school was closed. Deep breath. Patience. Drive home. Spend limited survey funds to pay per diem, but get no work done. News from Mvolo and MOEST (Ministry of Education, Science and Technology): Some teachers have gone home. Some have not. Unlikely they'll reopen the schools this week. Two weeks of vacation to follow. I have about 4.5 weeks left in Southern Sudan. So the next two and half weeks not used for the survey is a pretty intense setback. Luckily the next county over, Wulu, is finishing their vacation this week, so hopefully we can survey them while we wait for Mvolo to come back. Deep breath. So now I've got some time to work on data entry, finishing up the revision on the School Health and Nutrition curriculum I've been working on. It'll also be nice to not squish 13 people (!) into a Land Rover for hours on end. But after a visit from the country director earlier this week I've got my plans set for the final weeks, ironed out what my deliverables are etc. And although I'm only technically half way through my three months that I'll be gone (two weeks of vacation after my work is done!), it feels like the summer is beginning to come to a close. Every day that the country director was here, he asked me what I'd learned that day, and there was always something new to tell him. The new type of disease presentation, new explanations for why there is so much fear/hatred for the Dinka in this area, new ways that bug bits can swell up and hurt/bruise/bleed! All sorts of mind boggling things. More pictures are coming, check out the ones that are there now at http://picasaweb.google.com/roberts.kathryn if you haven't seen them yet. More soon.

A plane landed in Mvolo!

Well almost. After a long day of surveying and pricking little kids we were waiting in Mvolo center for a ride back to Domeri (where our compound is) and we heard a huge rumbling. What happened next was right out of the movies. Every single person in the store, in the town, ran outside and stared up at the sky. We hadn't seen the plane but it was sure flying low, could it be landing here?! A mass migration began, first with little kids running towards the airstrip, little girls with baby brothers and sisters on their hips and older kids whizzing by on bicycles. Then the adults started to wander over in groups, continuing their conversations but obviously curious to see who had come to what has been described as an "unlandable" airstrip. A crowd gathered, everyone was pushing their way to the front to see what exciting people and things might emerge from the plane. But then the news slowly spread through the crowd and back to the town. The plane hadn't landed, it was just flying very low and had continued on to Rumbek. What was almost the biggest day in Mvolo didn't end up amounting to much, but it was amazing how foreign the sound of a plane was to me after only 6 weeks away from the big city.

All wasn't lost though because USAID had made a visit to the town earlier so everyone went back to playing with their new toys. Radios! And not just any radios. Blue radios about the size of half a loaf of bread cut lengthwise. They come with batteries installed, but also have a hand crank and a solar panel. They receive in AM, FM and SW1 and SW2 which I've never actually heard of, but are the only frequencies we get here. The funny thing was that everything from USAID says "USAID - From the American People" on it, so everyone was joking and asking me if the radios were really from me. USAID has sponsored a couple radio programs in Sudan and they are apparently giving out radios to make sure people are able to listen to them. I got the scoop on one program when I visited the USAID compound in Juba and talked to the Education Officer. She said that they had a program that broadcasts classes for grades 1-4 every day. That way even when there are places with less teachers than they need, no teachers or untrained teachers, the kids can still learn if they listen to the broadcast. And I figure it also helps if adults end up listening to the broadcasts since it's estimated that 80% of the population is illiterate, it can't hurt! We've been visiting more and more schools here and although I admit we seriously disrupt classes by taking out students in P3 and P4, it seems like school isn't the learning environment we wish it was. With most schools taught all by unpaid volunteers, and the volunteers generally untrained with little access to resources for curriculum planning or even working with children it's no wonder that the education is relatively rudimentary. Check out this BBC article about a town we've already surveyed! (I was very entertained to find factual errors in the article, things I know from being here!) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6289528.stm

We've got a week left to finish the survey in Mvolo County before the kids go on break for a few weeks, so this week will be a big push, and after that it's on to managing all this data! I'm more than half way through my time here, and thanks to everyone who's been in touch with me so far, it's a huge help to have people to talk to, or to entertain me with stories from home. On that note please check out the addenda I'm going to add to a few blogs. I've gotten some good comments and additional info about some of the things I've written about from discerning readers. I love that people read these entries, but also remember that I'm claiming to be neither neutral nor an expert. I'm merely an observer and I am very aware (as are all of you, I'm sure) of all the biases associated with my experiences and my perceptions of what happens around me.

Wondering where I am?

Maybe that's a bit self centered :) Maybe you're not wondering at all and figured I've been working away interviewing ankle biters (children that is, not mosquitoes or black flies) and having meetings in excruciating heat in tukuls. Though generally true, not the case lately! I've only had limited access to the internet for the past couple weeks, so here's a general life update and I'll get back to the more well thought out posting a bit later. I'm working on a baseline survey on children's health and nutrition status and knowledge and after recalculating the sampling frame at least a million times we've finally got everything going and we had the training and got the sampling started. I was nominated to be the one to prick their fingers and take blood samples to test them for anemia. Given that a lot of little kids in very rural towns already cry and run away when they see me, going after them with a needle and a wacky machine that checks their blood didn't exactly help matters. But, after months and months of pricking my own finger to teach people how to check their blood sugar and doing diabetes education I was quite the pro and only one girl cried so hard I couldn't prick her finger at all :) We're sampling children in primary 3 and 4, but because of movement and conflict and not attending school at regular intervals among other things, the kids in primary 3 and 4 range from about 8 or 9 up to 16. And the interesting thing is that those are only guesses because none of the kids know approximately how old they are, let alone their exact birthday. Plus many of them are malnourished which leads to stunting and delayed puberty so even estimating their ages is hard. So with interviews, physical exams and sample collection we've gotten through three full schools and still have quite a ways to go.

Last Friday morning we left before the sun rose to drive from Mvolo to Juba which is about 8 hours by car. Most of the time is because the roads are absolutely horrendous despite attempts to keep them maintained and avoiding the potholes is quite the task. On top of that we had a full car with one person coming down with malaria and another throwing up every 30 minutes with car sickness. Not a trip I'd like to repeat! I then spent the weekend in Juba which was quite fun since there is another intern (Arpan) based there. She was in Juba for about a year in 2005(?) so she gave me a grand tour and also knows many people still living here so I finally got a look at what the ex-pat scene is like as well as what's outside Hai Malakal (the area of Juba where we're based). I spent Sunday at the USAID complex (where there's a swimming pool!) talking to ex-pats and hanging out and meeting people which was a lot of fun. Hearing the stories of everyone working for different NGOs and UN agencies was fascinating, as was hearing the perspectives of the newly arrived versus those who had been here for years.

Then on Monday almost everyone in the agency headed to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for a retreat. We stayed at ILRI (International Livestock Research Institute) which was nice and not filled with animals like I imagined :) The retreat sessions were a bit like a recap of many of the classes I've taken at school, so it's good to know I'm learning the right stuff, plus it's amazing seeing everything that goes into supporting the people who are in the field implementing programs. Judy and I (another intern from Columbia, based in Pagak) got out to explore the city a bit which was exciting, Addis is a pretty cool and I'd definitely like to go back. And of course the food was amazing, everyone was surprised that I'd had Ethiopian food in the states, but the funniest thing of all is that when Judy and I were at Emory together we actually used to go out for Ethiopian together. Small world. I have some great pictures and photos of traditional Ethiopian dancing which is like nothing I've ever seen. I'll get them uploaded soon! We flew from Addis to Juba on Friday, but unfortunately I was the only American left in the office because a number of people are off at meetings or on leave. Arpan and I headed out to a local place called Bedouin Bar where there was a big barbecue and american music and a bit of dancing. They were projecting American movies without sound and somehow the ones they chose to best represent America were Black Hawk Down, Saving Private Ryan and Pulp Fiction. It was definitely a fun 4th although I was quickly reprimanded when I suggested trying to make our own fireworks (people said that everyone would think it was fighting. i was only kidding anyhow!). But it was lots of fun. I realized that this was my 4th July 4th that I've spent out of the country. I was arriving in Paraguay, picnicking and water fighting in the Dominican Republic, summiting Mt Kilimanjaro and now traveling around East Africa and hearing stories about life in South Sudan from veterans of hardship posts around the world. But I must say, there's nothing like watching fireworks in the states, maybe next year :)