Humanitarian Aid diaries

Chosen for Chevening!   Reading time- 3 minutes 2021 came about, like any other year with many highs and lows. A plethora of points worth pondering and reflecting on come to mind as I look back on and review the year just gone by. The transition from 2020 to 2021 came as I was concluding my mission in Afghanistan (Dec 2020), just a couple of days before Christmas, and starting another one in South Sudan (January 2021). By this time I had had my nose and throat poked close to if not just over 20 times for PCR testing due to the ongoing covid-19 pandemic that had resulted in many changes, especially in the cross- border travel arena. The major highlights of the year however were being chosen for Chevening (a journey that had started with submission of my application towards the end of October 2020), and being accepted into all my 3 choices of UK Universities for the programs that I had applied to read for. Jalalabad, Afghanistan. Vaccination campaign The vaccination campaign we ...

  Reading time- 4 minutes An almost palpable sense of relief  fills the vehicle as you smoothly veer off-road and start approaching Gumuruk village. The 'to' part in 'to- and- fro' is almost done, we`ll worry about the 'fro' after a few hours when we start preparing to head back to Pibor, for now we`re good, and for that we`re glad. As the time goes just past midday, and after a quick mental calculation, it dawns on us that we have just under three hours to do the 6- 7 hours worth of work we have planned for. We cannot afford to leave at 5pm as originally anticipated during a pre- travel table- top planning session as we`ll need to give an allowance of 3 hours for the return trip if we`re to get back to base before dark and assuming we face the same challenges we did on the way to Gumuruk. We will need to start off latest at 1500hrs. The sight of an unmistakable old rusty shell of a sports utility vehicle (SUV) we passed on the left side lingers on my mind. The ...

On the road to Gumuruk Reading time- 3 minutes As we set out to embark on what would ideally be a routine twice or thrice weekly visit on alternate days to the clinic, I stood stalk still for a minute and stared at the condition of the road and said to myself, "wow, we`re really doing this aren`t we". This would be the first of my visits to  Gumuruk village having had previous visits already to Lekuangole  village on the other side, North- west of Pibor, one of our 2 clinic locations which had at that time better road conditions before the rains came allowing us to travel there and set up first as we waited for the condition of the Gumuruk road to become better. I had of course received various briefings, several of them in fact on what to expect and some "tips and tricks up one`s sleeve" on how to navigate certain circumstances that humanitarian aid workers often find themselves in when out in the field (discussion for another day).  Gumuruk village in the Greater...