In Case You Didn't Know

On November 16, 2009, In Africa, Sudan, one village at a time, By Susan

We traveled a long time for our 2 hour meeting. And we weren’t in Africa. I was greatly heartened that so many of my board and one of our research team was willing to journey to Philadelphia, by train and plane, to meet for 2 hours with Monica Oguttu my counterpart in Kenya. Mama KMET, as she is called, is an impressive woman overflowing with ideas and ways to help the disenfranchised women of Kenya. She also spends a good deal of time in the Sudan.
It was good to see my Dada (sister) again and we laughed when we were alone. We laughed for the joy of seeing each other, and for the knowing that Americans know next to nothing about what happens in the place she and I call our heart home. Just going to the bathroom is an experience which we take for granted. Everything here is automatic, the flusher, the amount of soap, the amount of water, the towels.Our obsession with cleanliness is no better showcased than in our public toilets. In Kenya there are no public toilets, there’s rarely soap or towels, and frequently the flushing of the toilet is accomplished by pouring water into the back of the john, if there is even a receptacle other than a hole.
The gathering was quite successful and I believe we have a better understanding of where we want to go next. How we shall fund it is still in God’s hands.
So this morning I was reading the Nation and saw this article, and I wondered if anyone knew about this. 10 years ago it was quite chic to care about Darfur and the Sudan, now they are just part of the abyss of suffering and drought that is called Africa. However, in my eternal desire to keep at least my readers up to date, read on McDuff.
The Nation
By WALTER MENYAPosted Monday, November 16 2009 at 12:44

In Summary

The government of Sudan has now opened voter registration centres in three Sub-Saharan countries previously left out by the National Elections Commission.

Sudanese nationals in Diaspora will now be able to register and participate in the 2010 elections from South Africa, Kenya and Uganda. Another centre has also opened in Malaysia bringing the countries identified by NEC for the exercise to 14.

And on Monday, hundreds of Sudanese nationals living in Kenya thronged the country’s embassy in Nairobi to beat the November 30 deadline set by the National Elections Commission.

Speaking after launching the exercise, Sudan ambassador Mr Majok Guandong denied the opening of the centres was a response to the pressure from the South.

“The Sudanese in Diaspora have a right to take part in the elections which the government and NEC recognise,” said Mr Guandong.

The Government of Southern Sudan had two weeks ago threatened to boycott elections if certain conditions were not met.

One of the conditions according to the head of mission of the Southern government in Nairobi John Duku was opening registration centres in Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Congo-Brazaville and the Democratic Republic of Congo where Mr Duku stressed hosts many South Sudanese refugees.

Mr Duku had said the South was unimpressed with the way the North was conducting the voter registration exercise that started November 1 to run for 30 days.

The list of eligible countries initially distributed to Missions abroad included Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, Sultanate of Oman, Bahrain, the UK, Belgium (for all Western Europe) and USA.

 
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Tomatoes

On August 17, 2009, In farming kenya, one village at a time, By Susan

Growing up I was used to seeing endless green pastures and fields of corn, soy, wheat. I even knew how to milk a cow, though the only pets we ever had were dogs.
Well, we had a goat for a few days, but it ate my mother’s prize roses and she sent it packing. I was very much in sync with harvest times back then.

Now I live in a city full of buzzing cars and screaming sirens. Even on my roof deck I don’t see the stars as I did when I was a child. There is no smell of new mown grass, or large green and yellow rectangles spreading for miles reflecting the crops that were growing. And so it was when I left Cape Charles I happened upon workers harvesting crops.

At first I saw a field with lots of old school buses and passed it by. But then, I saw the migrant workers a few yards down the road going into green fields and I had to stop. I wanted to see what harvesting looked like now.

It will come as no surprise that the workers were all Mexican. They reminded me some of the sugar cane workers in Kenya. And then I saw their faces and no one was smiling or laughing. In Kenya there is always time to laugh and joke while harvesting because there is much more equality among the farmers. They don’t import people to do their dirty work. Everyone does the dirty work.

These lean, sweat stained men, here on Cape Charles were out picking green tomatoes and piling them into baskets which went onto a truck. They were serious and strained.The truck then took the tomatoes to a processing plant where they are gassed and saved for distribution in 2-3 months. How do I know this, because I stopped to take this photo and the overseer looked at me suspiciously as if I were a reporter for a newspaper or someone from INS. I quickly flipped into my Kenyan English explaining that I wanted to take photos to send back to the workers in Kenya to see how we farm.
It did the trick, I got the photos.

Later on, as I left the fields, I began to think about farming more. How odd it would seem to an African to harvest green tomatoes and use gadgets and processes to turn them an unnatural red. I kind of felt that way too. While I can see so many advances that would help my Kenyan friends, i.e. silos, I wouldn’t want all of our advances to get over there. Most certainly I wouldn’t want to lose the flashing white smiles and laughter that their harvests bring…and I kept on driving.

 
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