Journal

I've worked in many countries. In some, I've sent a monthly report to friends. Check in or subscribe for monthly instalments.

February 2010, Italy

From: Angharad

To: undisclosed recipients

My monthly reports have been sadly lacking (or not so sadly, depending on how much you missed me). You probably know I am no longer in England, and was offered a job in Darfur, west Sudan.

However, in a rather unexpected turn (kind of to the left just before the equator), I ended up in Italy. In a bold and daring new twist, the United Nations decided to give me some training before deploying me to a war zone.

If you don’t realise how unexpected this is, please read reports on how previous inductions have comprised clearing off the desk of someone who happened to be on holiday and passing me a pirated copy of software and a security CD designed to show one how to escape from a grenade attack by taking two large steps away, laying down and crossing your legs (I kid you not. Watch the UN security training sometime. You even get to print out your own security-ready certificate at the end of it).

I am at the Geographic Information Systems Centre of the Cartographic Section at the UNLB (United Nations Logistics Base) in Brindisi, Italy until April. The UN shares a military base with the airforce here. Brindisi is in the heel of the boot shape (yes, that is my technical opinion as a professional geographer) and I think its tourist appeal lies in the fact that Albania is just a short boat trip away. I have even got a desk of my own, though it doesn't actually have a chair or a computer or a phone on it yet.

I landed Monday night and had quite a low point when I was dumped at a cigarette-smoke-drenched hotel after midnight and told to find my own way to work the next day…. in a place where no-one speaks English…. without a pass to get in to the base once I actually found it of course <sigh>. Still, I suppose whatever doesn't immediately make one throw oneself under a bus makes one stronger.

Yesterday and today have been improvements, the mapping team, of which I am now the ninth member, are cheery and come from all over the world. I am moving in with a Spanish colleague tomorrow for a while.

I fell in love with the main street here right away. The town has a kind of faded style and a fabulously scenic harbour. I am taking a rustic ferry to work. It is driven by a laconic Italian man in shorts, who crosses the harbour, ties up and smokes while people get on and settle, seeming to have some kind of internal trigger as to when to stop smoking and head back over the harbour. This seems at once the way everyone should get to work and unspeakably exotic.

I can’t say I miss England and Newcastle-upon Tyne very much. I did learn to like many things about the city, but I was never totally comfortable there. I think a large part of that is because, deep in the dark roots of the Geordie soul, they don't really understand cake.

That is not the case here.

Oh my God! Brindisians know how to live.

The down side is that I am gluten intolerant and even though I've only been here two days, if I have to eat one more wheat based product I will die horribly and humiliatingly by implo-eruption (if you think it is impossible to explode inward and outward at the same time, just wave a bowl of pasta under my nose and step back).

There is a kind of laid back chic here which I felt immediately relaxed by. I didn't realise how tense I was in Newcastle – maybe it was just going back to study for my Masters after such a long time working, making me stressed. But it seemed sometimes so cold… I did also leave a lot behind to go to the UK to study. I shouldn't discount this impact of that.

Of course, it's too soon to see whether I will love it or hate it here. But the sun is shining by 6.30 am, its warm, I'm sharing a base with flocks of impeccably uniformed Italian air force pilots and drinking fantastic coffee in cute cafes, so it can't be all bad!

March 2010, Italy

From: Angharad

To: undisclosed recipients

Wow, another month. I am now firmly ensconced in my Italian sea-side cottage (if I said my granny flat in someone’s back yard that has a view of the harbour if I cross the lawn and lean way out over the fence, it wouldn’t have the same ring). It’s hitting 22 degrees, I am building my caffeine tolerance, and the sky is a beautiful, open blue.

After the first week of skiving… er, induction training, I have been put to work on the Darfur mapping project. So far I have mapped sand. Clayey sand, silty sand, sandy sand. Sand that lies around, flat. Sand that occasionally rolls a bit down a small hill. And my personal favourite, wadi sand that lies around flat for the nine month dry season, and then electrifyingly and excitingly becomes suspended sediment in a river as the flash floods come, then quite abruptly becomes sand again.

I have heard that Eskimos have a hundred (or is it more?) ways to describe snow. I think I’ll have to ask some Darfuris about their descriptions when I get there.

As many of you know, living in a country without knowing the language is a constant struggle (note to self: learn how to say in Italian “Please don’t dye my hair blonde” BEFORE visiting the hairdresser again) but lots of achievement too (well, I didn’t come out with a mullet!). My Italian has improved in leaps and bounds – I now know good morning (bon giorno), goodbye (ciao or arrivederci, depending on if you like the person or not) cioccolata (no surprises there) and excuse me, please, you're welcome, after you, and bugger, a goat ate my passport (prego). In fact, Italian is quite easy – at any incomprehensible sentence, just smile and say ‘prego’ – everyone’s happy. Except at the post office. After three unsatisfying visits to the post office to try to post my sister a birthday present, my Italian-fluent colleague offered to post it, and he even had to go twice to get the damn thing off. Among the pile of incomprehensible forms, papers and registrations, I think I signed away her firstborn son, so Zachary will have to cut short a promising start at high school for a period of servitude in the Italian postal sector. Sorry.

I have attached a photo of the harbour, or at least part of it. This is my view into town, I live on the base side and catch a ferry if I want to go to the big smoke. The ferry only takes about 15 minutes – 29 seconds to actually cross the water, and 14 minutes, 31 seconds for the boatman to lounge around on either side, watching the world go by and say prego to passing pedestrians.

I hope you are all well, not too hot (Australians) or too cold (English) or too shot up (the increasing number of people I know in Sudan and various other gun-toting places) and happy!

Prego, LL

March, Italy

I know, more than one email in a month! But I am just sending a note about Rome – I had a fantastic weekend there. I love it here in Italy, and Rome is so wonderful. I have found my new spiritual home – no more snow-laden peaks in the Himalayas or goat-ridden back streets in Asia, no, I believe that enlightenment will now descend after a nice coffee by the banks of the Tiber River.

I had forgotten that every street one takes near the centre of the city is filled with beautiful buildings and sights and history and atmosphere (and chocolate). I'm trying to work out how gaining 10 kilos is part of the grand spiritual scheme.

Hope you are all well and I have lots of pictures if you want to see some! My favourites are of St Peter’s Bascilica; the scale is hard to capture, but if you haven't seen it before, it's rather large. And filled with incredible and monumental marble statues of past popes looking stern, virgins (presumably) weeping, cupids flying (unnerving - cupids are creepy), and even a couple of dragons looking all grand and weighty. I do feel sorry for the artists who got stuck with the sheep though. There are a few in the Bascilica, presumably to represent the lamb of god. Although I'm sure it is possible to make a sheep look grand and weighty, it made me think of medieval stonemasons drawing the short straws and cursing.

In short, everything is good except for the fact I am leaving in a couple of weeks, and you will then just get pictures of sand from me.

PS. Sue (and other shoppers) I almost took a picture of a shop by the Spanish Steps that was actually called 'Expensive!" to send to you :)

April 2010, Sudan

From: Angharad

To: undisclosed recipients

Well, here I am in Africa.

Ha! I’ve never started an email that way before.

This is my 5th country in 18 months – and that’s only ones I’ve lived in, I think I’ve visited four or five more. I had freaky times in Italy – I would look up in a café or on the street and for a long moment couldn’t remember where I was, or which country I was in.

Still, I doubt that’s going to happen here – I’m gonna look up and think, hmmm… stinking hot, sand everywhere, miserably poverty stricken…. I know, Sudan!

I arrived safely in Khartoum, found a nice (strange) hotel, and haven’t burst any blood vessels trying to check into the UN and get to my duty station in Darfur – I mean, I didn’t expect things to work swiftly or easily in a country like this one, but in three days I have seemed to average finalising one form every four hours. Four hot, dusty, sweaty hours. Only fifty-seven forms to go.

Khartoum is… well, I like to be culturally sensitive and mindful of the pride people have in their own countries, so sorry to any Sudanese people, but your capital city can only be described as ‘quite crap’.

The WWP (White Woman Phenomenon) is even more alive and kicking here as it is in the shadier parts of South Asia. I thought I had beaten my personal best yesterday – my second day of work. I had accepted some help and a drink (water!!) from an Algerian guy and had felt compelled to invent a large boyfriend in the course of conversation. Then he asked me, “So, when are we getting married?” After a few tense moments I realised that in accepting a glass of water I had not promised the rest of my life to him, that it was a mistake in the language and he meant ‘when are you getting married?’, as in, ‘how could a woman as old as you not be married?’ <sigh> but I can tell you, it was very, very bad there for a few seconds.

It is also full-on WWP here because I’m working for the peacekeeping (military UN) department in a difficult country and the ratio of men to women is terribly skewed. So the WWP is happening at work too. I have decided that DPKO (Department of Peacekeeping Operations) needs to print two protocols for western women new to Sudan. 1: How to Sweat With Dignity, and 2: How to Gracefully Accept Extravagant Chat Up Lines From Very Large, Blue-Helmeted African Soldiers With Outrageous White Smiles, Mean Combat Boots and Fatigues Who Carry Extremely Business-Like Semi Automatic Weapons.

Yep, grace and dignity, that’s what I intend to contribute to this mission. Well, I will, as soon as I uncurl from my foetal position and get out from under the covers of my hotel bed. Which will be Thursday, when I am flying out to El Fasher in Darfur. Well, at least I’ll be in one place for a while!

Then I think I’ll go home and help mum raise chooks for a few decades. Very quiet, very small, peaceful chooks.

May 2010, Darfur

From: Angharad

To: undisclosed recipients

I am now in El Fasher, capital (and I use that term extremely loosely) of Northern Darfur.

I have learned important new skills here. 1. I can say thank you, hi, OK and water in Arabic – can’t write any of them though so you’ll just have to take my word for it. 2. I can get a UN form found, filled in and submitted in under three hours, and 3. I can drink two and a half litres of water without even thinking of peeing – though really, is that a skill or a new super-power?

Food is available, though I’d kill someone – well, injure them- well, insult their mother – for a good novel. The UN guesthouse I’m in is fine. I’m staying here until I can find a house. The ‘kitchen’ is a bit laughable because apart from the stove and a sink, its entire compliment of equipment consists of two frying pans and a box of dirty glasses. I have boiled water in strange ways before, but frying it is certainly a first. I would say that the shower is also a pathetic excuse, but in my experience a really bad shower is a half full (or is that half-empty?) bucket, so anything that actually comes out of the wall from a certain height should be regarded gratefully. Oh, I’m sounding jaded. I’m sure any decent new age guru would tell me each and every new squat toilet should be experienced joyfully and fully. And I do have everything I need here – washing machine (bucket), clothes line (plastic chair), storage unit (windowsill) bedside table (same plastic chair), bed (bed!!) and entertainment area (roof, if I cart my plastic chair up the stairs for somewhere to sit and have entertaining thoughts).

This area is about as undeveloped and poor as you can get (well, it as before the UN moved here and locals started charging US$5,000 a month for a house – no, I’m not kidding, and the guest house isn’t cheap either). I am grateful because I’m sure lots of Darfuris would be impressed with my accommodation. But they can insult my mother all they want (sorry mum), they’re not getting my plastic chair.

One of my Arabic speaking colleagues took me to the market and in a wild spending spree, I bought things like a mug and plate. I even found a really specky stainless steel kettle in the small open stall of a tall Arabic trader, though disappointingly the advertised whistling didn’t eventuate. The market was such a new experience, I wish I could have taken photos for you, but photography is forbidden here (I don’t think that’s a Muslim decree. I think its more like a ‘we’ll-beat-you-up-for-being-an-American-spy’ decree). Just imagine lots of men with crowded, dusty stalls made of sticks and burlap (or a blanket on the ground with their products spread on it) selling shoes, baskets of spices, plastic bags of washing powder, and luckily, cutlery (1 pound for a fork…). A bit of donkey and horse-and-cart traffic weaving around, driven by (or sat upon by – I’m constantly wincing in sympathy for the poor little donkeys) men in long white robes. And, of course, sand and dust everywhere. So there you go, take your pick of Darfur souvenirs – though posting anything would also be a challenge. I haven’t actually seen any post offices and suspect ‘mail’ is a somewhat foreign term here. There is a UN postal address but I wouldn’t bother – I think the official pouch goes via New York, possibly with diversions through Albania and Samoa.

It’s not so hot here (maybe 30-45 degrees instead of Khartoum’s 40-45) so that’s a relief. Well, you know. Relatively. Actually I don’t mind, the heat is dry (as you’d expect in a desert) so it’s just like a hot spell in Perth. Though there was a thunderstorm last week – lightning, thunder and rain, which I am told is very unusual for this time of year.

Post rain was interesting – usually it smells like nothing but dust and sand here, with the sky a brown colour in the evenings as the sun goes down over the sand haze. But you can take it from me, direct... er, nose witness, that when the dust settles and there is moisture somewhere, the deep Sahara smells like wet goat. Well, actually, hordes of wet goats. With maybe a damp donkey or two thrown in.

The office is fine, I’m sharing a container with a nice Ethiopian (a major… or is that a Major? I can’t get used to all this military… er... stuff) and a slightly feral Frenchman. The people in my mapping unit are all very nice so far - mostly African men, with some middle eastern men thrown in for variety. There is one other woman though – wonder of wonders. But this really is a strange place...

I locked all of my baggage for the trip here and of course lost one padlock key. I had a similar experience in Peru when a nice young man from a hotel hand-sawed the padlock off for me quite cheerily (which was a bit of a worry because South America is also the only place I’ve ever had a pack stolen…), so I asked the security guard/caretaker (strangely, a local man named Adam, or so he claims) at the guesthouse here if he had a handsaw. Nope, no saw, but he headed off purposely and I waited in the hot sun for him to return with some kind of padlock-breaking tool. What he actually came back with were two rocks.

Frankly, I was sceptical, but he smashed away like a professional… er, rock smasherer, and what do you know, with persistence and rock panache it works. Good to know if you are ever lost in a desert with only a padlocked bag.

That’s about it. Stay well, drink coffee, eat cake, spend your day without sand in your knickers <sigh> and if you are in WA, start stockpiling biscuits and milk (for some reason that is what I am craving at the moment. Mmmm…

shortbread biscuits…..) for the visit I am attempting to make to your shores... not sure when, as at the moment I am only on round one of the form-filling-in, but after visiting another four or five offices for stamps, signatures and redirections to other offices, I intend to have holiday leave approved soon, maybe June.

July 2010, Darfur

From: Angharad

To: undisclosed recipients

It is Saturday, I have just been to the PX (the DPKO shop in the main compound where things are supposedly duty free, meaning after they drag the imported good across the militia-infested desert they only charge 10 times what its worth) and I found shortbread biscuits. Sometimes they only have canned peas and a box of old teabags; but today I hit the jackpot! I am at home, looking at the unopened packet next to my cup (well, plastic mug) of tea; we actually have electricity AND water for the moment, I am not in the office for one whole day, and an Egyptian captain (Captain?) just bought me a tin of chocolates (without a marriage proposal attached, thank goodness). The postive about living in a place like El Fasher is that when good things happen, it’s easy to appreciate them! Mind you, I think I’m a bit high on the chocolate, so I will have to finish this email before the crash comes :)

I arrived back in Khartoum last weekend from Western Australia. The June report was cancelled as I was too busy hanging out with Frodo (my dog) and mum’s chooks. There were consequences to my three week holiday though – my friend, an African lady, who picked me up from the airport greeted me with “Lisa! You have put on weight! So, now you are fat.” I have always liked that phrase about the military – ‘join the forces, travel the world, meet interesting people, and shoot them.’ I sometimes think the UN is the same – travel the world, meet new colleagues and mortally insult them through culturally inappropriate comments. Oh well, the men back in the El Fasher office didn’t seem to mind, apparently I came back from leave ‘looking very beautiful’, so suck on that, skinny girls.

We had another haboub (dust storm) last night, but it was a fairly small one so we only lost electricity for a short time and the sand on the floor was merely ankle deep in the lounge room this morning. Cleaning is a pain in the butt here though – everything is ALWAYS sandy (including me). We are getting the roof fixed this week, it has rained a few times in the last month and we found that it leaks – not really surprising considering the roof consists of sheets of tin held down with random lumps of cement. Have I mentioned this is a strange place? There are currently seven young guys (yes seven, it’s worse than a British road works site) stomping around on our roof, with another couple of men stirring a drum of tar they are melting over a fire conveniently built on the street outside our gates. I guess it’s a good thing the street is just a length of sand….

Otherwise things are the same; hot. Unfortunately the social scene in Darfur is… well, non-existent, so if you want more news I can send you a personal update on how long it took this month to get my money out of the local bank, where I have found a shop that sells cheese (they even claim it is ‘mature edam’…I don’t know, can edam come out of a goat?) or my new personal best marathon viewing time of the BBC news channel in a single sitting, let me know.

Whoa, I can feel my blood sugar dropping so better go make another cup of tea and crack open the bikkies.

Aargh. This is becoming an epic. It is now Thursday night, and I haven’t sent this for the simple reason that we haven’t had an internet connection for a few days in El Fasher. I decided to come to Kharotum for the weekend; I was to be on the Friday 5.30pm plane out of El Fasher, which for some inexplicable reason at the last minute turned out to be the 8.30am plane (try explaining having to "work remotely" for a day so you can drink coffee in the capital) which, seemingly because no-one could find a plane, then became the 3pm flight when one happened by at around 2.30. Just to let you know: The El Fasher airport (well, runway and small cement building where you are invited to sit and lose half your bodyweight in sweat) is not the kind of place one wishes to spend 9 hours of ones life. Still, I am now in a civilized café using their internet and .... mmmmm…. cake. Not good cake mind you, but I guess Darfur Peacekeeping Mission employees can’t be choosers.

August 2010, Uganda

From: Angharad

To: undisclosed recipients

Well, July was interesting.

I believe the technical Australian term (for those of you not familiar with the language) for the politically motivated security freefall that became Darfur is ‘oh, shit’. On a Saturday the UN declared an emergency and four days later here I am evacuated… oh, sorry, relocated, wouldn’t want to panic… to Uganda.

So. Kampala is nice. Tropical, lots of trees and NO SAND. It is so strange – 2 hours, 45 minutes of flight time between here and Darfur – all I can say is, people are endlessly varied and… odd. So far I haven’t seen a single person carrying a Kalashnikov, and I admit that the lack of semi-automatic weaponry on the general public is somewhat refreshing. In Darfur, one gets jailed for even thinking about sex outside marriage; here, there are tasteful billboard advertisements around the city encouraging people to stop having so much sex :) My favourite one is a huge billboard showing a picture of a middle-aged business man with the text: ‘Would you let this man sleep with your teenage daughter? Then why are you sleeping with his?’ In Darfur, alcohol is forbidden; Uganda apparently has the highest alcohol consumption per head of population in the world. There, women wander the street wrapped in a large scarf covering everything but face, feet and hands; here, women have a real style and fashion flare that - brace yourself because I have to use the only word that fits - emphasises some rather startling booty.

Actually the way the mostly very curvaceous Ugandan women sashay down the streets of Kampala is deeply impressive. I’m surprised the city doesn’t have please-don’t-have-so-much-sex billboards on every street corner.

I wouldn’t call Kampala the shopping capital of the world, but I now have so many girlie beauty products I need to hire an extra person to pretend to return from evacuation to carry my extra kilos. It may sound sad, but only a woman who has spent the last month in a desert could possibly understand the thrill of standing in a REAL supermarket trying to decide between almond and grape exfoliator and apricot kernel scrub (I got the almond and grape. Call me wild).

The only thing missing here is good cake, which even with my years of finely honed and sharpened cake hunting skills, I can’t find. Dammit. I did find the chocolate isle of the supermarket and an English language bookshop though, so I have survived. There you go. My life in exile. Grapefully exfoliated exile. I don’t know when we will return to Darfur, but quite frankly, I don’t really care at the moment! They have Thai food here!

Although even as I write that I can feel my stomach churn. It will be a great tragedy in my life if I can no longer face pad thai – it was the last meal I ate before getting the worst bout of food poisoning I have ever had and I am beginning to fear traumatic associations will haunt me. Today was my first day out of bed after some unpleasant times of puking my guts up (another technical Australian term) and worse - food poisoning really can make you think you're going to die. This morning I took myself off to the nice UN doctor. Now, I know there are terrible cancers and tumours and agonising diseases in the world, but I am convinced that there is nothing quite as gross as a doctor leaning over one’s rather embarrassingly sourced lab results and saying ‘Hmmm…. you still have parasites’ and following up with a monologue about amoeba. I am now counting down the seconds every twelve hours in breathless anticipation of swallowing my next nuke-the-parasite pill in its shiny developed world packaging. I LOVE modern medicine.

I have been approved leave and am still trying to figure out how to get from Uganda to Khartoum, but once I get that sorted I will (maybe) be in Newcastle soon. I am going to try to finish my masters thesis, which is probably a bit ambitious in two weeks but its going to be a damn site easier there than here. So wish me luck. And I’ll see you soon if you are in the UK.

September 2010, Darfur

From: Angharad

To: undisclosed recipients

Back in El Fasher. Uganda, acceptable coffee and a non-war zone seems a distant memory.

It is rainy season here. Cooler, with, you know, rain. I can't believe how much Darfur changes. There is actual grass here, which I'm pretty sure makes the goats giddy with joy. To date, some of the strangest things I have seen goats try to eat are dead sticks covered with enormous thorns, a pile of burning rubbish (yes, with actual live flames) and a wall, so come to think of it, maybe grass isn't much of an adventure.

Rainy season also means that it necessary to always keep one's feet on the coffee table when sitting on the couch, to avoid the hundreds of beetles/ants/scorpions/ various unidentified crawly things that love, live and die on our tiles at home. It's like the killing fields every morning; a carpet of dead bug, moth, fly, mosquito and unmentionable cockroach-like flying things strewn about the house. They must really live life in the fast lane over the wet months. I'm not bug squeamish, but it's making yoga on the floor traumatic and there were tense moments last night when something skilfully infiltrated my mosquito net and was crawling around under my t-shirt in bed. I guess my housemates will have to chalk it up to experience if it happens elsewhere than my bedroom and I suddenly fling off all my clothes.

You may ask how bugs get in? I’m not sure I’ve clearly described the state of housing in El Fasher. In wealthy countries we are used to houses being impermeable. In the desertof Darfur many people still live in huts made of mud and wood. Here in El Fasher many people do as well, but there are established houses as well – many more since the Peacekeeping Mission opened up and hundred of UN staff needed to find houses while the base camp, which is the safer place to live, is finished. So, many of us have to find a place in the streets of the town, where the risk of being attacked or home invaded is quite high.

Our house is quite large, and I share it with three other people from the Mission. But the roof is sheets of tin, as previously noted, which now leaks less thanks to seven men with barrels full of tar; the walls are, I guess, some kind of single layer of brick; and there is a hole in the kitchen wall.

Yes, a hole.

Why is unclear. We have tried to get the landlord to brick it up but for some reason that seems impossible. Vast quantities of sand blow in through the kitchen hole and through all the gaps around the windows and doors during the regular haboobs. Insects have pretty free entry and I guess we have additional air circulation opportunities….

Work is better in the sense of ‘better sealed’. But most of the buildings on the base are containers, like my office shared with the aforementioned feral Frenchman and Ethiopian Major. Sea containers go to Italy, I believe, and are fitted out to be ‘habitable’ – ie. have a window, door and air conditioner fitted. Unfortunately the Italians didn’t get the memo that Darfur comprises mostly of sand, so they put the air conditioner close to the floor instead of high on the wall. Our AC is blocked by sand around 70% of the time so we sit in a container that averages around 35 C while the techies do an endless and fruitless round of the base unblocking them. We have a small fridge, a kettle and three chairs and desks. What more could anyone want?

The Major is a lovely guy except that he insists on brewing coffee the way he would at home. This means that he puts his coffee grounds, especially brought from Ethiopia in bulk, into the electric kettle and boils it with the water. I have to trek through the desert to someone else’s kettle if I want tea.

The Frenchman is not lovely. He continuously patronises me but thinks he is charming. Sigh.

I also have to trek across a significant portion of hot sand to get to a women’s loo. I’m sure I’ve mentioned there are not many women here. We have a container with a loo in it half way across the base, which unfortunately does not have an AC or a window. It's quite a psychological challenge to pee. I open the door, kind of flap it open and closed a few times in the hopes of facilitating the rush of hot air out of the container, take a deep breath, rush in and try to pee in record time, and run out again. The problem is that it is so hot in there that it’s almost impossible to breathe.

Luckily, it is also so hot in El Fasher that although I drink about three litres of water a day, I only have to pee once every six hours or so. The Mission gives, and the Mission takes away 😊.

Have a great Ramadan (Ramadan Mubarak) and take care.

October 2010, Darfur

From: Angharad

To: undisclosed recipients

This will be the last monthly report from Darfur. I'm pretty excited and think I have told everyone I know, and many I don't, that I am starting a PhD next month.

Bugs are on the list of things I won't miss. I also won't miss walking across half the desert to the nearest ladies toilet from my office; having an 'office' that is in fact a container squashed with me and two other guys; having the highlight of my week (month?) be when the PX store has butter; but the top things I will not miss have to be Kalashnikovs and sand. Not necessarily in that order.

I will miss some things. It has been interesting. I guess not many people get to live in the Sahara way out here; the Darfurians have a unique way of life, though hard and terribly sad right now as well. The genocide that is ongoing is not something I've reflected on in these emails but it is, of course, why the Mission is here. It reminds me that all of us with passports from safe countries have a lot to be grateful for - but also, I think personally, an opportunity to do a lot more to help and protect people living in such terrible conditions as Darfurians are doing.

In all, I have made friends and haven't been shot even a little bit so it's an unsettled, somewhat difficult but timely farewell to Sudan and hello to three years of research in Southeast Asia!