A SEASON of MIGRATION in the EAST Foreward Our Party in Sudan

A SEASON OF MIGRATION IN THE EAST Tt2ETPA<C.ET Foreward Our party in Sudan consisted of five persons: four from INTERTECT and my companion, Rita. When we sit down to talk about our experiences, it’s striking how differently each of us saw things. As for me, most of my time I worked directly with the Sudanese government in a small village in ^Y Jastern Sudan called Shouak. Arabic was the common tongue, and most of my friends and fellow workers were Sudanese. After five and a half months in the country, my talk was sprinkled with Arabic phrases and I had come to know and love village life in the eastern desert. Kent Hardin, one of my associates, was also based in Shouak but in the initial days spent most of his time working to the north in Kassala with the Sudanese refugee authorities and the refugees from the Ethiopian province of Eritrea. He too learned the Arabic ways of the Sudanese, but as the member of our group most closely associated with the Eritreans, his vocabulary was often sprinkled with the words (and mannerisms) of the Eritreans. More than any of us he came to love the bitter, tangy coffee made by the refugees and celebrated as a form of intercourse between associates and a prerequisite to any down-to-earth work. o<oer Rita worked in Wad Kowli, a camp for Tigrayan refugees, approximatelyflO0)miles south of my base in Shouak. Her memories are essentially Tigrayan, the language, the customs of the refugees, their dress, their mannerisms, their food, and their longing to return to the mountains in time to grow a crop. Along with the refugees she watched the rainstorms slowly gathering over the mountains and wondered how good the rains would be when it was time to leave. She knows little of the Sudanese customs and culture and, like many of the refugees, developed something of a distrust for their Arabic keepers. Ron was with us only a short time. His job was to discover problems in the camps relating to protection of the refugees from the Sudanese (at that time there were none). He dealt primarily with the expatriate relief staff in the Tigrayan camps and with the leaders of the refugees, trying to pin down rumors that some of the refugees had been forced into prostitution. He dealt mainly with the voluntary agencies, groups of people he was long familiar with, so his views were that of the outsider looking over the situation. My brother, Chris, came out with only one assignment, to build roads. He had to fight the U.N. bureaucracy to get the funds, the political support, and the necessary signatures to begin. Then he had to round up the required machinery from Sudanese contractors to carry out the work. The people he dealt with were a special breed, Sudanese with one foot in Sudan and one foot in the modern technological world. To these people "can do" was a byword and, far from encountering the slow, plodding bureaucracy the rest of us dealt with daily, Chris found a team that was willing to push to make things happen. My need to write about Sudan has been compelling. The project represents, as clearly as any, the work I do, the issues I confront and the beliefs I hold. Much of what happens during a typical relief operation is unknown or perhaps unclear to an outsider. What is seemingly straightforward is often very complex and relief approaches that are well publicized may be entirely inappropriate and counterproductive. In many cases, my views and approaches to emergencies are radically different than those of the organizations I work with. Many people disagree with my views and have other perspectives that are just as right as my own. Many of the people depicted as devils in this story may, in others’ eyes, be the true heroes of the operation. They are entitled to their opinions; I’ll stick to mine. - Frederick C, Cuny Mexico City & Istanbul 1986 relief operation he was known as "ole leopard shoes". At the time, little did I realize that "ole leopard shoes" and I would become close partners in this god forsaken outpost along the Atbara River. Omar and I headed back to Khartoum and reviewed the situation. It was depressing. The only two bright spots that I found were two people that I had met previously but only on a social basis. The first was Angela Berry, an attractive and perky blond nutritionist who had been hired by UNHCR to try and straighten out the feeding programs. I had met Angela on a visit to Thailand three years earlier and had been impressed with her openness and interest in the field. In the halls in Geneva, however, I heard that she was not trusted by the Branch Office and indeed she had collected her fair share of "enemies" in the house. It seemed she had a pension for going over superiors’ heads when things did not work right; not just a little, but all the way to the top. If her refugees were not getting food, then by god she would go straight to the High Commissioner. I like that kind of person, so she was already starting off on my good list. There were some question marks, however, about Angela. She accompanied Omar and me on our visit to Kassala and had participated in some of the discussions with the relief organizations there. It was obvious that Angela knew the basics, but when she talked I found that people were not listening to her. Not that they didn’t like her, it was just that they wouldn’t take information from her. For someone in her position, i.e., having to lay down health and nutrition standards and develop common practices and approaches to combating hunger in the camps, this could be a lethal flaw. The second hopeful presence was that of Michael Day-Thompson. Mike and I had met briefly in Pakistan some years earlier. He was a logistics specialist, a former British SAS Officer who had his way of getting things done. Mike was a consultant to UNHCR and a true professional in every sense of the word. He had a reputation for working long and hard and I could tell by the tiredness in his eyes that this operation was no exception. The grandest thing about Mike, however, was that he never lost his humor. He could cuss down the "bloody buggers" for screwing it up and let forth against the Sudanese as well as any old colonialist. But, unlike me, the more he yelled at people, the more they seemed to love him. Mike and Angela appeared to be the two spikes that were holding the railroad together. But looking at both of them I could tell that things were swiftly coming apart. Angela, who should have been tanned and healthy looking from all the time she was spending outdoors, was pale and thin and Mike was down at the eyelids. As for the rest of the people on the UNHCR Team, they were practically useless. Our trip had underscored another factor in the operation. The distances that had to be covered were enormous. A trip from the UNHCR suboffice in Gedarif or from the COR regional headquarters in Showak to any of the refugee camps was a one-day trip. Going to Kassala as easy enough; the Khartoum-Port Sudan highway was paved, but even so it was a three hour trip. Getting to the other sites, however, was problematic. A major camp at Safawa, fifty miles east of Gedarif, was a four hour trip by land cruiser and many of the other settlements were likewise off the main roads and required a long, tiring journey to reach. Since the staff was small, they had become circuit riders and the process of spending four hours on the road, two hours in the camps and four hours back to home base meant that 11 everyone was dead tired. Worse, little could actually be accomplished in the short time they were in the camps. Complicating matters, no radios had been installed and no courier system had been established, so even the simplest communications had to be carried by hand. For all practical purposes, the chief relief officials had no command or control over the operation. There was one final disturbing element that I had learned of during my trip. The head of the suboffice in Gedarif was an American named Peter Parr. Peter had become embroiled in the American operation to smuggle the Falashas out of the country and HCR questioned who he really reported to, UNHCR or the American Embassy. A gulf had developed between he and Nickolas Morris and it was obvious that neither one could stand the other. The people in COR were convinced that he was CIA. His tour, however, was about to end and Omar had talked the team leader of the International Rescue Committee into replacing Parr in January. Mike Menning and I met each other briefly during the trip. During the meeting, Omar mentioned that he was considering recommending to UNHCR that I be sent out as a consultant to help the suboffice in Gedarif. While I had been expecting this, it was the first time that the subject had breached openly and while Mike openly expressed his support for the idea, I could tell by his eyes that he was not sure whether he liked the proposition or not. Back in Khartoum I was finally able to conduct a real workshop.

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