Panagiotis
gcpetrop79
martsolka
Filed under: Uganda
I left Kampala on the 23rd of January. The plan was to spend a three-day weekend with some colleagues and friends in Murchison National Park (FRI-SUN) and Monday head on off to our respective bases. The ‘twist’ was that right after that I’d be staying up north carrying out a field visit to selected sites and reviewing work, meeting with staff, and doing the whole press-the-ham (no hanging here, only pressed) flesh-gripping and other semi-pornographic ways to talk about shmoozin.’
The trip up to Kamdini, where we would all meet (I was coming from Kampala, and the rest from Gulu and Lira) was uneventful and as usual, dusty, hot and long. I was greeted with the same sights as I normally am. Tired faces on road rehabilitation workers, bored traffic police, congested Kampala roads, and then rolling green hills hiding small Ugandan huts and even more farms and schools. The road rehabilitation has for the most part been undertaken by a Serbian firm (known far and wide for their uh, roads’ quality…?) and because it’s still in a state of I guess… sensitivity, every ten feet there is a speed bump. FOR ABOUT FIFTEEN KILOMETERS. TWICE. Fucking hell. So back to the romantic description of the trip: Lots of people sitting around who should be working looking at me, hepatitis-dripping liver-on-a-sticks being sold from dudes who seem like they’re high, and women peddling sesame balls (they’re like testicles made of sesame seeds without honey. What the fuck?) Finally we met up with everyone else, hopped on into a large 4×4 and headed off towards Murchison.
First order of business? Getting lost. Haha, not a big deal for those in the front seat but for those of us in the back in the bench-seats, time (and our asscheeks) were of the essence. I was trying very hard not to have to ‘take charge’ and ‘make sure’ we ‘get there’ but at some point I had to. “It’s 1700, we have 90 minutes of sun and we are fuck-all away from fuck-else. Let’s invest 5 minutes in knowing where we’re going make sure we get there, shower, and drink. OK? Yeah. Thank you. So we get there with bruised asses. Fantastic place. The Jane Goodall Foundation runs this chimpanzee reserve, with chimp walks and nature hikes (granola not included) and you get to sleep in a dormitory and eat good food and/or drink beer. We had a great time, and it was a totally legit thing, getting to see chimps eat, sleep, fuck, fight, swing and run around on the ground. Amazing. And all this at 15-20 meters distance. Very cool. Cool guides too, they knew everything and were very humble and it showed that they liked their work. So kudos. One of our colleagues had his birthday the second day and so began the first of 9 (yes, nine) times we would sing him happy birthday that day. Awesome. And humiliating. PERFECTION.
We left for Red Chili the next day. Red Chili is the ‘backpacker’s place’ next to the game reserve in Murchison and also next to Murchison Falls. This place was somewhat shitty and the staff all had a fucking stick up their ass. But fuck them; I was there for the lions and elephants. We arrive at the place and go to the outside pagoda/veranda/waterhole place and meet with other friends:
USAID dude wearing Ministry shirt and camo pants with a yellow Obama beanie: check
ICRC Belgian dude with a chip on his shoulder and a caustic attitude: check
Spiffily dressed Londoner ‘back to see the fam in Uganda’: check
Jaded Ugandan working for some clinical organization: check
Our motley crew: check
Later:
Country Director of Very Large NGO (this is important): check
The drinking begins. We haven’t even taken our shit out of the car and I have no way to know which tent is ours, where it is, or where the hell the toilets even are. The other Country Director arrives with a friend of his and an assortment of Pakistani Colonels on leave from the MONUC Congo peacekeeping mission.
Drinking starts. I believe 4-5 happy birthdays are sung in Indian, Greek, Acholi, English, Spanish and Swahili. Oh happy day! All of a sudden the country director dude and one of my colleagues launch into heart-warming renditions of: the sound of music, for he’s a jolly good fellow, besame mucho, and other semi-colonial testaments to falsettos. Spec-TACULAR.
Drinking continues. Heavily. Somewhere we have dinner. We move to around the bonfire and there begins my blackout. At some point I have a conversation with everyone that goes like this:
Everyone to George: “George, you’re an obstinate, foul-mouthed prick and everyone hates you.
George to Everyone: “Ahha! But my fellow country director *NAME WITHHELD* here understands the stress and difficulties that come with my job and why I have to be so reckless and spontaneous when I am up here, in order to take out all my frustrations.”
*NAME WITHELD* to George: Actually George, I think you’re an asshole. Really. I’m with everyone else. <<silence ensues>>
George: “DAMN IT! Fine! I can live with your vile hatred and venomous words. Another fucking beer!”
That was it. I woke up at 0530 ready to go safariing!!! I was still so drunk it took me about 25 minutes to decide whether my contacts were IN my eyes or not. Eventually I had to dig out my contact lens case, realize they were not, and happily put them in while on the barge taking us across the Nile to the game reserve. I thought that it was fucking cool that I was able to take them off and store them properly in the inebriated ass-forward state I was in the night before. But I digress.
The safari starts. This was cool. Buffalo, hartebeests, waterbuck, dick-dicks (I didn’t name them), elephants, giraffes, all kinds of buzzards and birds, crocodiles, hippos, baaaaaaadass! We drove around for about 7 hours. At one point we stopped at some abandoned 70s resort destroyed by Idi Amin’s homeys, and took some Van Halen pictures… They were awesome. Didn’t see lions though.
What wasn’t cool? The tse-tse flies. Those fuckers are as ugly as cockroaches, as bothersome as mosquitoes, and as disgusting as flies. And they HURT when they bite. The inside of our land cruiser became a cemetery for the flies, and the amount of blood that came out of them when we hit them was something I hope I forget about soon.
The night before, the USAID dude had told off the Pakistanis for being too loud in the night (tents, remember?) and some Polish dude wanted to fight with a British colleague because he had heard a lot of American accents the day before and had a chip on his shoulder because the Americans voted in Obama. FUCK YOU POLISH GUY. AND YOUR UGLY GIRLFRIEND AND BALD-BUT-TRYING-TO-HIDE-IT FRIEND. …we’re Greeks.
We went the second day to the falls where I lost my shitty photography virginity. Meaning I was now able to take a picture the way I wanted to in 25 shots or less. Improvement! But I shall continue to do so.
We also tried our hand on some calisthenics, gymnastics and circus tricks. Thanks to the short guy for making me a believer in myself. I originally didn’t believe we could do what he was proposing. But with a little butt-slapping and elbow-grease (good name for a porno that!) we were able to… elevate ourselves. That’s a play on words, by the way.
Fantastic.
The next day we did a little more game driving and fucked off back to our bases. It was back to work time at Gulu base for me but I did manage to make it out to some friends’ birthday party where I proceeded to drink Too Much Red Label On The Rocks while listening to a marine play “Mr. Jones and Me’ on a guitar. Well. Yes, stranger things have happened but I was not there to witness them. This one I was, and so I report it to you here.
I won’t go into the gory details of the party, which isn’t saying there were any. Get it?
I will say that on the day I left for Lira base, 50 or 60 meters from the Gulu base, a coconut or some nut-like ‘fruit’ fell from a tree and as it was dropping to the ground, the hard-top’s left-hand side mirror slammed into it with the force of the vehicle driving, blasting the mirror OUT of the black mirror cup thingie and… into my face. Thankfully, some Japanese dude at Toyota had made this mirror to withstand those dangerous and frequent African nut-drops and so the mirror merely flew at my face and hit my mouth and/or chin, rather than blowing up in a million pieces and cutting my eyelids and cheeks into a million red, small, chaffy-like tender morsels. Thanks Cthulhu!
Lira was amazing. As soon as I got there it was discovered that one of the people I was on the trip with (we had gone back to our respective caves) had malaria AND a parasite. You see, on the way back, before we split up, everyone had the fine idea to have meat on a stick at some stop. Yours truly, cognizant of the dangers inherent in consuming badly roasted dog liver, chose to abstain from this ridiculous venture. Other whiteys chose to partake, and thus paid for their sins. Indeed. Lots of work there, visits to sick babies in nutrition centers, angry phone calls to other parts of the country, dust, sweat, and lots of plumpy nut. Plumpy NUT. PLUMPY nut. It’s just fun to say; how is your plumpy nut?
The next day it was time to return to Kampala. A shitty day, dusty, and with the roadwork continuing, another bumpy ride, and hours of work waiting at the end of the road. Not something to really look forward to, but still, it was with a happy mood that I was going south. A safari, good pictures, and some good work had been accomplished in 7 days of fieldwork. The next four weeks are almost scary compared to the last 4 weeks in terms of work. But that’s cool.
In retrospect I wanted to write a blog that was a little more descriptive but I find myself sometimes having difficulty externalizing my thoughts on things these days. Perhaps I really think too much about the work, and by the time I get around to placing it on paper or the blog it’s just been digested and regurgitated in my head too much. So I hope the above will suffice for now.
Maybe next time I’ll have something more lyrical. Perhaps the pictures will make up for it. Or maybe I’ll decide I just don’t care at all. I’m not sure if this week was good or not. I think it was fun but maybe without any people it would have been better.
Have you ever been on safari? Did you want to comment on that? Well don’t. I have decided that’s the last fucking safari I go on. Safaris suck. Wow look, a fucking warthog. Lame.
I was also going to put pictures on this thing but I can’t even be fucked to make this new mac resize the images. The only computer I know which cuts a picture to 50% size while doubling the file size. Retarded. Jobs, go die. I also hate times new roman. This blog sucks and won’t let me change the fucking thing.
Filed under: Sierra Leone
…for those living in the developed part of the world,
the others might actually find it quite useful!
(1) There are an estimated 500 million people at risk of malaria in Africa alone. Approximately 250 million nets are required to cover this population and, if a net has an average life span of five years, this means 50 million nets a year are needed to maintain coverage.
(2) Most malaria-endemic countries in Africa spend only US$ 4 per capita a year on health, equivalent to the average cost of an untreated net in countries where nets are widely available. It would require US$ 200 million a year to provide 50 million nets and a further US$ 25 million a year to treat these nets with insecticide.
(3) Paederus sabaeus Erichson also known as the Nairobi fly or Champion fly is a Staphylinid beetle f
ound in both East and West Africa. The genus Paederus has almost 600 species worldwide. It is an active predator of several crop-damaging insects and occurs in warm tropical 
climates. The insect breeds in wet rotting leaves and soil. The beetle is drawn to light fixtures and candles at night. The beetle does not bite or sting, but when crushed against the skin it releases a potent toxin known as pederin that results in itching, burning, erythema and oozing 12-48 hours later.
(4) Human African trypanosomiasis, or sleeping sickness, now threatens the lives of millions of people in Africa 
once again. The disease was under control between 1960 and 1965 thanks to mobile teams systematically screening millions of people at risk and vector control in some foci but reappeared during the 1980s. In 1995, around 300 000 people were estimated to be infected by the disease. Sleeping sickness is transmitted by the bite of tsetse flies, killing people and causing abortion and perinatal death from mother-to-child infection.
(5) Bed bugs are small wingless insects that feed solely upon the blood of warm-blooded animals. Bed bugs seek out 
people and animals, generally at night while these hosts are asleep, and painlessly sip a few drops of blood. While feeding, they inject a tiny amount of their saliva into the skin. The skin lesion produced by the bite of a bed bug resembles those caused by many other kinds of blood feeding insects, such as mosquitoes and fleas. Despite what you may have heard or read elsewhere, bed bugs are not known to transmit any infectious agents.
Backstage trivia: Two months ago I was treated for malaria falciparum ( I do sleep under a bednet and I am on prophylaxis with Malarone), three months ago I suspected presence of bedbugs on my bed, one month ago i was chasing a tsetse fly out of the landcruiser, last week I did the awful mistake to crush a nairobi fly on my leg (by mistake…)!
Filed under: Sierra Leone | Tags: case study, humanitarian, NGO, Sierra Leone
It’s been a long time I haven’t contributed to this blog and the two watchdogs (yes that is you George and Panos) started barking. It is a quiet Sunday night in Kenema, sitting at my usual post (see my first blog for details) catching up with work so I thought to drop some lines. I had actually started writing about something totally abstract while at the same time I was reviewing a few case studies I had prepared to submit together with my programme annual report to our donor when I realized that they could make a great blog so here you go…
For reasons of discretion NGO X will be the organization I am working for!
Global Handwashing Day Festivities led by School children…
During Global Hand Washing day 2008,NGO X initiated relevant festivities in 6 operational Health Action Zones in Gorama Mende chiefdom. 495 randomly selected students from 33 primary and secondary schools at NGO X’s operational areas in Gorama Mende chiefdom participated in a sequence of festivities that included sensitization and training on “Proper Handwashing Behaviours & Affiliation with Germs and Common Diseases (Diarrhoea, ARI)”, distribution of soap, kettles, IEC materials and community awareness through student parades.
In order, for children to understand the route of transmission between Handwashing, Germs and Diseases, NGO X’s Health team prepared a simple “Germ Gel” with common hair styling gel and glitter cosmetic. A small amount of “Germ Gel” was put on a child’s hand who subsequently had to handshake with his/hers friends and so on… At the end of the game the audience counted how many hands were glossy! The idea was based on the Lifebuoy Swasthya Chetna (“HealthAwakening”) program began in 2002 as a rural health and hygiene education initiative in India that used the “Lifeboy”-glow germ demo kit.
A few weeks later the Global Handwashing Day, a group of children were playing outdoors when a mother brought food in front of them. Some of the kids attended to instantly start eating while some others stopped them urgently and explained them how their hands might be germ carriers and that they should all immediately go and wash their hands.
Global Handwashing Day Workshop for street-food vendors…
During Global Handwashing Day NGO X in collaboration with the Environmental Health Office of Kenema District Health Management Team, financially and technically supported a workshop with title “Promotion of hygienic behaviours to Public Food Handlers” for 50 street-food vendors and 10 stakeholders from greater Kenema township. Handwashing promotion stickers prepared by NGO X and distributed to participants.
A couple of weeks later, a street-food vendor near the main Kenema town flea market was identified by the Health Programme Manager to carry a bottle of water connected to a bar of soap with a string. The bottle had a NGO X handwashing promotion sticker on it.
Malnourished children & the Positive Deviance/Hearth approach…
Ada Kamapoh, 7 months old was admitted at the PD/Hearth session with entrance weight 4.2 kg which indicated severe malnutrition. Ada is Adama’s (mother) and Alfred’s(father) last child. Both parents had little knowledge on appropriate child feeding practices and household disease treatment behavior. Mother was totally discouraged by community’s overall opinion that Ada would not survive.
By the third session Ada graduated with a weight of 9.2 kg, overall she managed to gain 5 kg through the PD/Hearth sessions. This event motivated more mothers with malnourished children to join the Hearth.
On their own initiative they established two new Hearth sites in Kennyema. Hearths were facilitated by volunteer mothers which also formed a club named Ndo Makeh, meaning ‘Raising children the proper way” in Mende dialect. They also supported the Hearths with food contribution from their own farms.
Ada’s mother testimony:
“I am grateful to NGO X’s nutrition team. My baby was seen in the community as a living corpse that will not survive. I was not happy because there was no one to lead me on how to sustainably rehabilitate my own baby. My child had severe weight loss, pale colour hairs and all visible features of malnutrition… When I attended the 1st cycle at the Hearth session Ada started gaining weight immediately. I am happy that my baby has changed and now the members of the village talk about Ada being a human being again.”
Filed under: Uganda
So there it is. The big day came and went. Obama gave his speech, almost everyone cheered, and every channel in Africa was most certainly tuned into the event, cheering on the first black president of the US. Not too shabby. And, in my view, a nice turn of events with the speech not being too melodramatic or straining to become epochal or ‘epic.’ It was pretty clear what his goals were as well, and it was good to see that they were pretty much in line with… uh, the line that he’s been selling to the US electorate (and the rest of the world) thus far. So we’ll see. Certainly one thing that jumped to my mind, while thinking about all the ‘yes we cans’ and ‘our time is nows’ and all the rest of the circus, was a certain other promise which the Western world has made concerning the amount of expenditure every year on international aid. This was envisioned to reach 0.7% a while back, but still isn’t there in most places. I do hope that Obama and his new administration see an eventual increase in funding for development and emergencies as an integral part of working his new system of renewed international leadership. The US government has a lot of very technically-minded individuals and a lot of very experienced people working in development. With an increase in aid and care taken to make it work and provide some support and traction to poorer countries, I think there could be a huge chance for it to really have an exponential effect on the good name of the US in the world, while at the same time helping those who want to help themselves. Perhaps the tons of money sent over to Iraq to provide 7-ply toilet paper for Halliburton private security guards could now actually be spent fighting cholera, malaria and malnutrition in other parts of the world, where instead of petroleum the only thing you get when you dig are termites.
Looking at the world, taking a step back, as once does (right?), it’s almost comical how pathetic other countries can be sometimes. I won’t name names. But it’s amazing what has happened since Obama won the election. I consider it something close to what happens when you win the lottery. You get lots of aunts and cousins calling you to tell you about their ‘chronic coposis’ syndrome, loser kids and drunk husbands, who would be SO much better if only you could just help them out a little bit. Well, FUCK YOU grandma, kick your son’s ass, lose weight, and stop buying your jack-off husband moonshine, and watch your chronic coposis slowly go away you FUCKING REDNECK (and by FUCKING REDNECK I mean any country hanging off of Obama’s cock and balls, waiting for a handout). All of a sudden, Obama is going to solve everything. There’s about as much of a chance of him ‘helping everyone out’ in 4 years (that’s 1,460 days) as there is of Santa Claus giving every little shit a toy over Christmas. Hmmm… 160 million dollars for the inauguration ceremony. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? Wasn’t that how much it was? Something like that anyway.
By the way, I thought thepoem read out was a good one. Nice and contemporary. No daffodils and shorn sheep. Or whatever.
Special note to Bakoyianni, the Foreign Minister of Greece:
Please shut THE FUCK up. No one respects you. Just get back to work. The capital and goodwill you inherited from your husband’s brains being made into fine red mist years ago by someone’s gun are GONE. Stop asking the US to solve your little regional problems. Actually I’m wrong, you’re so obtuse you aren’t even asking for solutions. You’re asking for fucking ‘attention’ like someone’s ignored little redheaded stepchild. There’s a WAR ON IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN so no one really cares about your special little problem with FYROM. Greece spent millions and MILLIONS to get on the security council and pissed it all away playing with itself while embarrassing itself trying to send industrial waste to Sudan, a country it was also aiding in Darfur (only while it was on the SC of course) and fucking at the same time because some jackass in the UN thought the… (wait for it, wait for it!) GREEK delegation there could actually be in charge of the illegal arms embargo on Sudan! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA blow me. Now Greece will be spending a few months anally raping Eastern Europe as the presidency of the OSCE. Hmmm let’s see… Could the FYROM question be something to deal with there? We always get special presents when Greece heads an institution as well, as, I guess ‘growing up’ gifts. For the last presidency of the EU? Why, the US invasion of Aye-Rak! Thanks Dubyah, and go fuck yourself. For the OSCE? Hi Greece, welcome aboard the big boys. Now please solve the Russian gas problem. We should have just canned all the teargas from Athens in December, and sent that in liquid form over to Kiev, where the Ukrainians are busy playing with Europe like a child with an anthill and a magnifying glass. I hope your dad comes spanks you, Europe. Oh wait, dad happens to be… Greece… the presidency of the OSCE. NICE. Which reminds me, are we ever going to have a new EU foreign policy person? This Solana guy has been busy either being irrelevant or ineffective for 15 fucking years. Nice democratic processes Brussels, thanks. I want my MEP taxes back assholes.
Special note to BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7840712.stm
If you read the above article, you will see that Paul Henley states that the Turkish army invaded Cyprus to protect its citizens. What citizens? Cyprus, for the 123359539th time was NOT split between Turkey and Greece like a sandbox, but was its own country. Even though Ankara and Athens wanted to believe it was a sandbox, it’s obvious that very few times were the Cypriots asked how they felt. There were ethnic Turks and ethnic Greeks (as pure as anyone can be in this part of the world… say it with me: We’re all Phoenician-Caucasian hybrids with some Egyptian thrown in) but how many citizens can there have been from Turkey? Should Egypt have invaded as well? I don’t get it. If someone has any light, then let me know. As I understand it, there are a hell of a lot more Turkish citizens since then since there have been a lot of immigrants to the Turkish northern Cyprus. So that’s strange. Mr. Paul Henley, stop the crack.
And now, for your reading pleasure: The most hilarious site I have ever seen:
www.fuckthesouth.com Obviously this is a very, very upset person. Dated, but NOT forgotten!
