Bangui MRE

French military rations have leaked onto the market here as always. [The French force here is called Sangaris. ]

<![if !vml]><![endif]>They are far, far superior to the other countries’.

A 24-hour box is available in 48 versions (some halal/kosher, vegetarians  … ). It contains two tasty main meals, sachets of coffee, cocoa, etc … and a small solid chemical heater kit,   but sadly no wine ..

For comparison, Norway gives a sachet of dried grey mush to which you add water and get wet grey mush which you can suck through a tube.  And nothing else, as far as I can see.

Being struck by being so lush tropical and an absence of fruit, today I shopped for fruit and found a road-side seller with fantastic yellow passion fruits. So I have just trained the young person who does my shopping to make fruit salad as I like it.  

Capacity-building is so important.   

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Back to School

Just spent the last hour or so playing solitaire and listening to a whole selection of Indian and Pakistani film music I didn't really know I had on the laptop.  A nice reverie instead of thinking all day about why the Rep's signature on my short extension is so elusive!   It's needed to release the next part of my advance and I had hoped to send some of it with a Kenya colleague travelling tomorrow, to pay the rent in Mombasa.  

The solitaire was the only thing I could think of doing in a long power cut, the first one (we are on the President's line) when I have only a torch (memo tomorrow, get a lamp). Maybe it is a sign that the president is losing her grip.

Oh and my work.  I achieved the signal communication achievement this morning when half my communications team turned up at 10 and the other half at eleven when the first ones had gone already.  I had told one person –erroneously – that it was 11 when I bumped into him in the market yesterday; ironical that that person turned out to be the perfect message transmitter** and told loads of other people. 

Just the man I need for the Back to School messages, as the great conundrum here is how to do mass communication when most local radio stations have been looted and burned and very few individuals were able to retain their telephones or radios when they fled the massacres. In Kaga-Bandoro last week the schools found out that the Bac had been postponed only because a parent called from Bangui to tell them.  There are no radio announcements and only a small polemic press in the city – no news, just denouncing UN, government or anyone else on A4 flyers, probably run off on a UN photocopier. 

SMS hardly works.   The messages arrive, if they do, hours late.

We are actually going to use town criers.

** Like the perfect AIDS transmitter who is the cause of more than half the infections in any given locality (it was a driver and a secretary who shared that honour in UNICEF Somalia in the nineties).  And I guess the super Ebola transmitters.

NB A boy I met trying to get home to see his sick mother had his phone, medicine and return ticket money taken by anti-Balaka rebels at the half way check point.  He had to abandon the journey. This is daily life here.   Shooting tonight in a quartier not too far away (though generally Centre-Ville is safe enough to walk around).

BTw: Things have improved. It's no longer an ethnic civil war. Now everyone loots everyone.  Equal opportunity looting.

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Pickled Pepper p p p p

 

Kurds like everyone in the region love pickles, but today was the first time I ever saw PICKLED PEPPERS in a jar

Jargon

"I remember once partnering him and going about seven down doubled redoubled vulnerable".

Wonderful example of a correct use of jargon. Do you mind if I use it?

Using partner as a verb is 'new' (in my experience at least) typically an NGO / UN thing.  When I worked in Somalia there was a marvellously useless document that came out from one of the many secretariats or coordination bodies that Somalia always seems to produce called 'FORGING PARTNERSHIPS'. 

It was an attempt to justify a steep decline in donor funds, and so a retreat by the aid body concerned from frontline work, by suddenly seeming to think that using local partners was a good idea.

Long sections about vetting the partner (nothing about the partner vetting us!). I used to mock it by always misspelling it 'FORCING PARTNERSHIPS'. 

We are seeing that now again: we are belatedly discovering RESILIENCE (ie that beneficiaries do 90% of everything themselves anyway) to cover up our inability to provide full coverage. 

I have documents from the 90s which say that children are ALL traumatised by events and MUST HAVE counselling (draw pictures, do role play whatever the 'culture decides', but usually what a Swedish or Norwegian university professor thinks is good for the moment)*. 

Now we have resilience everywhere, 80% of children are perfectly all right after any manner of disaster … (I exaggerate).   

There are a dozen resilience jobs on reliefweb this week.  I have even applied to do one (full disclosure) for West Africa.

* Some of you will recall that Fugnido camp in Ethiopia was the farm for growing SPLA soldiers (25 000 boys and 4 girls – the boys eventually became the 12 000 lost boys. )  SPLA would only allow Swedish SCF to work there and they were heavily into psychosocial as was the mode in the 90s. So the only word you ever heard in the meetings was (given a general lack of front teeth) Shy-ko-sho-sal.

NSA, Huxley, Orwell ...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/12/orwell_1984_sales_rocket/    - very good especially the highlighted first comment, which leads you to :

 

 

http://theliterarysnob.tumblr.com/post/7484768452/nineteen-eighty-four-orwell-vs-brave-new-world

 

For those with affinities to France there is an interesting resonance now with the ‘cultural exception’ which France is defending in trade talks with the US.

Somali for special purposes SSP

From a 1993 word-list meant for American soldiers in Somali:

 

ENGLISH	SOMALI	PRONUNCIATION
Yes/No	HAA/MAY	("HA/MY")
We Are American Military	WAXAAN NAHAY	("WAHAN NAHY EEDAMADA CIDAMADA MARAYKANKA")
We Are Here To Help You	INAAN INDIN CAAWINO AYAAN	("IN AN EEDIN AWENO AYAN HALKAN OO CHOGNA")
What Do You Need?	MAXAAD DOONAYSAA?	("MAHAT DOANAYSA?")
Give me	I SII	("ISEE")
Wait Here	WAA KU SUG	("HALKEM KOOSOOK")
Stop!	JOOGSO!	("CHOK SO!")
Hands Up	GACMACHA KOR U TAAGA	("GAMAKA KOROOTAG")
Lie Down	JIIFSO	("CHEEF SO")
Face Down	WAJIGAAGA DHULKA SAAR	("WICHEE GAGA LULKASAR")
Get Up	STAAG	("KA")
Be Quiet	AAMUS	("AMMOOS")
Put Your Weapon Down!	HUBKAAGA OHIG!	("HOOPKAGA DIG!")
Leader	HOGAAMIYE	("HOGAMEEYA")
Family	REER	("RAYN")
Refugee	QAXOOTI	("KAHOATEE")
Do You Speak English?	MA KU HADLI KARTAA INGIRIISI?	("MAKO HADLEE KARTA INGREEZEE?")
What Is Your Name?	MAGACAA?	("MAGA-A?")
Who Is In Charge?	YAA KA TALIYA HALKAN?	("HALKAN YAHOOKOOMA?")
Come	KAALAY	("KALAY")
Danger!	KHATAR!	("KHATAR!")
Do Not Drink The Water!	BIYAHA HA CABIN!	("BIYAHA HA-ABIN!")
Mine Field	GEGI MIINAYSAN	("GEGI MEENAYSAN")
Keep Out!	KA DHEEROW!	("KA DERO!")
Warning!	DIGIIN!	("DIGNEEN!")
How Is The Road?	WADDADU WAA SIDEE?	("WADDADOO WA SIDAY?")
Get In	SO GAL	("SOAGEL")
Don't Be Frightened	HA CABSANIN	("HA APSANIN")
Are You Carrying A Weapon?	HUB MA SIDATAA?	("HOOB MA SIDATA?")
Don't Fire	HA RIDIN	("HARIDIN")
Don't Shoot Us	HA NA TOOGAN
You Are a Prisoner	MAXBUUS BAAD TAHAY	("MAHBOOS AYAT TAHAY")
Stay Where You Are	HALKAAGA JOOG	("HALKAGA CHOAG")
Line Up	SAFTA	("SAFF TA")
Show Me	ITUS	("ITOOS")
Are There Any Dead?	CID DHIMATAY MIYAA JARTA?	("IDD DIMATAY MIYA CHIRTA?")
Boil Your Water	BIYIHIINA ISKA KARIYA	("BIYIHEENA EESKA KAREEYA")
Wash Your Hands	QACMAHIINA DHAQA	("KAMIHEENA DAKA")
Thank You	MAHADSANID	("MAHATSENIT")
Don't Be Afraid
	HA CABSAN	("HA ABSAN")

 

FW: ethical question

 

In the recent kidnapping incident in Dadaab, where I am based just now, a driver was killed and another driver and staff member were shot, one seriously.   

 

The four expatriate hostages, our colleagues from here, Nairobi and Oslo, were eventually rescued by a combination of the Kenya army and Somali warlords after a walk of three nights into Somalia. One was injured; another developed a badly infected foot.

 

In a recent incident involving a CARE team visiting a camp, five policemen in the escort car were blown up. Two lost their legs. Again they were there to protect agency staff.

 

Kenyan colleagues say (almost openly) that we put them in danger if we are on missions with them.  

 

The police become victims for us also.

 

In this context, since I am not allowed to visit the camps just now for security reasons, and have to stay permanently within the secure compound, I am not expecting to be here beyond the end, in September, of the current short contract.  

 

It remains to be seen if I will be deployed elsewhere.

 

Barry Sesnan

Uganda +256 757 219 288

Kenya +254 734 338 434

Skype: barryechobravo

 

Dadaab news from Barry

 

 

It is one of the nearer misses in an eventful career on the front line.  I have just (after an awful dry spell unemployed) been appointed as interim manager (3 months) of the Norwegian Refugee Council's Education programme here.  The programme as I found it when I arrived ten days ago consists of a youth vocational training centre in each of the four major camps and one in town (there are half a million refugees here mostly from Somalia).   We, the non-refugee staff live in a huge secured "humanitarian compound" in the small town of Dadaab.   The camps are within 15km in two directions.  We go there in police-escorted convoys usually.   Right now we can't leave the compound even to buy telephone air time.

 

We have about 600 refugee and Kenyan youth (in the town's Centre) doing a one year course. Half a day on a skill (electrical, computers, masonry, plumbing, hair/beauty etc) and half a day on academics depending on their level - anything from basic literacy and numeracy to secondary equivalent.  At the end we form them into small teams for six months and give them some tools to start up a small business.  It has mixed results (Somalis are much more naturally traders and dealers than brick-layers).

 

So yesterday just by coincidence and because there had been low level security concerns already near one of  'my' centres with an amateur IED (improvised explosive device) thrown at a police car a couple of evening before, it was decided that the visiting team (from Oslo - top boss, regional boss, Nairobi boss, would skip the camp youth centre and come to the town youth  centre. So I didn't go with them. Their three cars were attacked in a planned ambush in a narrow piece of road leading out of our camp premises. They shot at the drivers. One car got away by crashing through a fence. One driver was killed and the other wounded, hopefully not too badly, in the hip. Another staff engineer was injured in the stomach. They have been flown to Nairobi.  One Kenyan staff  member was wounded too. Those in the car that got away (my direct boss, an Italian, and the head of the organisation, from Oslo, presumed target??, the regional manager of Somali origin himself sped to a police station and got back to our quarters before long.  It seems the others were driven off, one car was apparently immobilised by satellite, so they were all pushed into the other one, which came to a halt about 30 km away.  Footprints go off into the bush, 6 kidnappers, two women (Pakistani, Norwegian) and two men (Canadian, Philippino).

 

Killing in these circumstances is VERY rare but prolonged holding as hostages for ransom can last months.   No one has yet claimed to have the hostages and generally it is thought to be the work of bandits rather than a political group like Shabaab.   The chances the Kenya police and army will find them in the first day or two is high (we are told they are being tracked, now it is daylight again). It's thorn bush country - our colleagues are unlikely to be strong enough to continue a long forced march.   However there are puzzling elements to this attack, and of course later, there will be a lot of questions about why the visit was so widely announced beforehand and why so many high ransom people were in three cars moving very closely together.   Agencies usually don't pay ransom but in Somalia the local people are often embarrassed by what has happened and contribute something to get them released. Then a compensatory mechanism if often worked out.

 

Also, out of at least 30 agencies doing different things in the camps every day - why the Norwegians of all people? Generally no one has a grudge against Norwegians!  

 

 

FW: NRC Dadaab

 

Hi all

 

I am here in Dadaab, Kenya doing an interim manager position for NRC; I came just eight days ago.

 

This morning there was a high level NRC delegation from Nairobi and Oslo. They were in three cars visiting projects in the camps, and they were ambushed at the gate of the NRC new compound in Ifo 2 camp.

 

One dead, two injured and four kidnapped. The kidnapped are all expatriate colleagues (Norwegian, US-Pakistani, Canadian, Philippino;  we all had breakfast together this morning).  They are assumed to have been taken into Somalia (just 100km from here). The Kenya army is in pursuit with helicopters.

 

I am safe as I had not joined the delegation going to the camps, since they were to visit my project in Dadaab town on their return.  

 

More later

 

 

Barry Sesnan

Uganda +256 757 219 288

Kenya +254 734 338 434

Skype: barryechobravo

http://barrysbook.blogspot.com/

 

for job seekers

 

Mandate for protection

"UNISFA, the Ethiopian peacekeepers [in Abyei], have a mandate for civilian protection but they do not have a mandate for cattle protection".

 

Reminds me of the Banyoro in Kasenyi who wanted UN to convey all their cattle for them back to Uganda. When I suggested that they could sell one to hire a barge of a lorry, I was regarded as crazy.  

 

 

FW: From Nigeria

You travel by road, a petrol tanker catches fire. By air, plane crashes.

"You sit in your house, the plane comes to meet you. You go to church, Boko Haram attacks you. You go by sea, militants attack you. You finally run to your village, you are kidnapped. Is there any safe place in Nigeria?"

 

 

Says it all really - teachers earn just $100 a month in Uganda

Daily Monitor

Live updates, state of the nation address

President Museveni.  

By Emmanuel Gyezaho & Online Team  

Posted  Thursday, June 7  2012 at  17:00

President Museveni says that he demands the clamour for more pay by public servants must stop so the government can concentrate on the development of the roads and electricity sector. The only public servants who deserve to demand a pay rise are the scientists, who cannot be easily replaced. If a teacher leaves, he can easily be replaced but it is not so easy to replace a doctor.
[Replies to heckler that that he is confused if he confuses jets with salary increases. Says that the jets are the umbrellas of Uganda. They are for protection. ]
President Museveni identifies the core issues of the economy that need development as defence and security, law and order, electricity, roads , health, tourism and scientific innovation. Only when these are addressed will the government consider salary increases.

Don't you just love jargon:  "... essential for bringing issues on the ground to the table  ... "

Very wet Entebbe; myriad of beautiful birds in garden;

power cut; facing hotel's generator drowns out birdsong.  Pentecostal church will soon chip in. No hope for birdson now

Can this be true? Oh how the world has changed.

Did anyone else notice this in UN resolution 2009?
13. Decides that the measure imposed by paragraph 9 of resolution 1970 (2011) shall also not apply to the supply, sale or transfer to Libya of:
...
b) small arms, light weapons and related materiel, temporarily exported to Libya for the sole use of United Nations personnel, representatives of the media and humanitarian and development workers and associated personnel, notified to the Committee in advance and in the absence of a negative decision by the Committee within five working days of such a notification;
When did we start having armed media and armed humanitarians? Or it was happening all the time and I didn’t know?

I am astounded.

Reading and guarding

In Eastern Chad night security guards, often quite qualified formally, welcome the chance to have some electricity and to study at night for the courses, often at university level, they attend during the day. They pay for it all themselves despite the miserable salaries they get from the security companies*.

 

In Abidjan I was talking to a guard just now who, like all the others here, never seems to read anything. I asked him why he doesn't use his time to study and he said 'because madame is not here'. I was puzzled by this and asked him to explain. He said that he will study if Madame (the one he guards) gives him a book.  I suggested he buy his own, which never seemed to have occurred to him. 

 

How come that a very poor and officially highly illiterate country like Chad produces highly motivated people while a rich country like Cote d'Ivoire actually has a quite high illiteracy rate but I am sure the guard I was talking to could read).  It is to do with motivation, of course and, I think, mutual support. In some countries a boy who opens a book while he has free time or on a bus say is ridiculed by his friends. At least among the southerners of Chad  studying for yourself is supported and understood by your friends.

 

There is a cultural element, certainly, but it's not as simple as it seems.  In Chad they are usually southerners ie 'African' and often Christian, but not always.  In Cote d'Ivoire it is not really clear what is going on, as there are plenty of night schools (cours de soir) and plenty of people filling them.  

 

 

*Often run quite fiercely by French ex-soldiers on behalf of some shadowy 'big person'.  We pay about 400 dollars a month to the company; the guard gets 100 dollars if he is lucky.  Thus the UN shucks off its responsibility to be a good employer. 

Lydia Stone, author of the Small Arms Survey (SAS) report, Failures and Opportunities - Rethinking DDR in South Sudan, told IRIN, "It is not always the case that ex-combatants want to return to civilian life, or that they feel stigmatized by their role in the conflict; nor is it necessarily the case that DDR automatically brings greater security in a post-conflict setting.

 

 "For example, for the time being... greater security is achieved by keeping the soldiers in the army and paying them a salary than by pushing them out into a civilian life that offers little hope of finding a livelihood," she said.

 

 In many cases DDR is utilized in post-conflict states because, if left to their own devices, armed, unskilled, unpaid ex-combatants pose a clear threat to the success of the peace dividend in post-conflict states, 40 percent of which return to war, according to some estimates.

 

"The concept of 'reintegrating' ex-combatants back into a civilian life is largely redundant. This is because the dividing line between combatants and civilians is extremely blurred. Furthermore, the 'normal' society of Southern Sudan had been broken down during the war, so it wasn't as though there was a 'normal civilian life' to reintegrate into," Stone points out.

 

 There is also an absence of stigma attached to SPLA fighters, unlike members of abusive armed groups such as Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone, who were reviled for their war-time conduct. "The SPLA are seen as heroes, the liberators of Southern Sudan," she said.

 

 "There is not the same shame attached to having been a soldier during the war, nor the same imperative to leave the soldier's life. In fact, quite the reverse. So not only do SPLA soldiers have pride, they also have money. Clearly, this is not the target group envisaged in the 'traditional' DDR model."

 

 

 

Losinu criticized their efforts. "I had 500 cows before the war and then I lost everything. If the international community doesn't give me those cows and instead you construct schools and say that reconciliation is collective, I still always remember the 500 cows. We are different culturally. A Lendu and Hema cannot live in symbiosis."

 

 

 

Use of video in assessment of teachers

The schools don't have electricity but you set out in the morning from
your base with a lot of batteries and powerpacks.

General rule do what the local kids do. I am sure in Ethiopia weddings
are video'd even deep in the village, and youth entrepreneurs show combat,
porno movies etc - I haven't recently seen any village without its video
parlour even in the deepest rebel parts of Congo.

In fact in Bunia I spent a lot of time persuading the mayor that a large
picture of Rambo armed to the teeth on the main drag (over a video
parlour) was not that good at convincing donors that the town was now
peaceful;. Failed on that one - it's probably still there. If only I
could have had a picture of him (Rambo, not the mayor) going to evening
classes as well. We did convince a lot of militia youth to go part-time
and attend school when they were not patrolling at night shooting places
up in the name of village defence. (Having an AK47 is great for getting
the girls too, or at least for getting sex. )

Somalis set up internet wherever they are. A small generator is less
than 100 dollars, after all, and a satellite dish in the 50 dollars range.
The Somalis' middle name is Hacker.

Here in Cd'I I gave each field office a field training kit - small
generator, video, largeish screen, etc all in a robust wooden box that
would easily go on the back of our pickups. Biggest problem the
expatriate field director taking the training TV to his guest house and
forgetting to bring it and the the cables back to the office when
he went on leave. I must say it was easier when we were taking a 16mm
projector around rather than a video. Far more could watch it at a time as
well.

Somewhere ("African Affairs" of the RAS?) there is a fascinating
comparison of a PROJECT to bring Internet to Mwanza and the area around it
- half a million dollars, some big donor with a big idea (that Internet
might be useful), Their cybercafes worked less than half the time and the
project eventually collapsed.

The great part of the comparison report is that they pulled no punches
and pointed out that during the whole period youth were running internet
cafes with quite a density almost 24/7 and charging a quarter of what the
project charged. They innovated, they went for the cheapest solution and
had a great relationship with their customers and provided a whole range
of services including training, typing up for you, downloading, piracy etc

Security?

Security, what the word can mean

In 2008 I sent a report to a new colleague in UK about there being a problem with security where I happened to be at the time. Something about what I wrote was not clear and in the following exchange of messages I became aware of the assumptions that I had built into the word security. 

My assumption was that she thought of security, like I did, either as a problem, as in ‘we have security problems’ or as a group of people as in ‘we were stopped at the airport by Security’.

In fact, since she was new to the support post she was in, she had been puzzled by the way I had used the word.  For her the word security referred to something good, nice and warm, as in ‘the security of a mother’s love’ or the ‘in the security of his home’. This is security meaning ‘safeness’.

For many in the countries where I work, the lack of security, insecurity, is something real and palpable whether it is physical (danger of death, injury, imprisonment, robbery or rape), economic, as in the term ‘food security’ or in some way related to ones lack of certainty about the future. This could be simply being unsure that you will ever finish your education, or that it will be worth anything when you finally get through your years of schooling in the face of closures, poor teaching and unreliable exams. [1]

We also have Security with a capital letter.  Most people working in Africa or the Middle East need no explanation of ‘Security’. At best it means your house-guards but often it means those men with menacing dark glasses who cause everyone trouble, will never identify themselves, and can prevent you from going about your legitimate business or even ‘disappear you’..

In Congo Security can abruptly summon you to their office where you will be kept waiting, not allowed to be accompanied in the interview, not go in with your mobile phone. They may be doing it for National Security, but most often they (or your enemy) are doing it so you will pay them to stop harassing you. 

In Sudan they were people who would never show any identity card who were as often as not carrying out a personal agenda or enforcing a parallel regime which had little to do with the government officially in power. That was in the time of democracy. Later the regime and Security somehow merged. And the security services, as so often, became multiple, with overlapping functions and loyalties to different factions.

Often ‘security’ is invoked to prevent free speech and to ‘get round’ inconvenient laws.  And always, Security is the employer of young men, partly educated who could just as well have been members of gangs in the streets, or to be more optimistic, small business men.

My first houseboy in Uganda worked, he thought, for Uganda security in Nairobi and smuggled a gun for them. He was shot by the police and no one knows even where he is buried.  

.

 

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[1] FOOTNOTE In English, secure, sure, certain, peaceful and safe have subtly different meanings but in many languages the same word can cover many of these aspects. So, in Swahili usalama is safety and security and can therefore mean peace.