Well, another day, not going to talk you through breakfast again, it was pretty much the same as the previous day, cleaned teeth, omelette, coffee (well there is the abridge version), but this morning I did realise I’d left my razor blade holder at home, I have the razor blades, but nothing to hold them with… Anyway, I’m starting to look a little beardy, so I’ll have to ask at reception again and see what they can do, I’ll keep you up to date on this latest breaking news…
Time for work, we got a cab from outside the hotel and it was another opportunity to take some pictures on the way into work. Yesterday I’d had a few discussions with some of the UNHCR staff about taking pictures in Khartoum and they confirmed a few things which I already knew, but added one more. Firstly, don’t just snap away at people, especially women, people get pretty upset with that, fair enough on that one! Don’t go walking around the streets with your camera over your shoulder, muggings and theft aren’t common because of the penalties incurred, but its best not to have the camera on show. Someone also asked if I had got a permit for taking pictures in Sudan?!? I responded with “A what?”… this was something I wasn’t aware of and apparently I should be careful around the police or armed forces as they may ask to see my permit and will get very upset if I haven’t got one (which I haven’t). So, with this in mind, the only time I am taking pictures is whilst in the cab and moving quickly and not raising the camera too high or stick it out of the window… kind of exciting really, but I am being as well careful don’t worry… J You’ll see I have updated the blog with new images and I will continue to upload as the days go by or until I am arrested which ever comes first…
Anyway, we got into the office for around 8:30 and I had the task of more data cleansing and preparation for migration. There are approximately 7,000 pictures of asylum seekers in one of the 50 UNHCR Sudan databases that need to be exported from the old database and then imported into SQL Server. As I have learnt, when an asylum seeker comes to register they have a picture taken, this picture is to ensure that they are easily identified when coming back for further consultations and to stop people impersonating them in order “steal” their place and also to stop fraudsters from registering multiple times for additional ration cards.
After the files were exported from the old database (.jpg files) I then had to manually check the a sample of the images to ensure that the exported data matched the original images in the old application. Scanning the images there was a large cross section of society, individuals, husband’s and wives, small-medium sized families and families with 3 or more generations from what I could see. For me, going through the photo’s was a daunting task, the majority of the photo’s were of “healthy” people, young children with happy smiles on their faces, couples/families looking hopeful and happy at the prospect of being successful in their applications for asylum… but there were too many images of people with a look of emaciation or appearing to be jaundiced (visibly yellow/bloodshot eyes, but I’m not a doctor so don’t take my word for it) and some had large cataracts on their eyes and treatment was obviously necessary. Whereas the images wouldn’t perhaps be to the level of an Oxfam or Save the Children advertising campaign, they were a catalogue of hope, despair and ailments.
After the image review, we were able to update the images into the new database, we encountered a few more issues with data validation but we soon fixed those issues and we are 90% complete on the first merge, once this is complete the other migrations should be relatively painless (fingers crossed).
The day had been a long one and I sat there stretching my arms into the air, saying “Man I could do with a beer” (I know only 24 hours without alcohol and that is the first thing I say, how predictable), Abdulla looked up from his computer and said, “Do you know Wonderland?”… I replied nearly replied “Is that near Graceland?” but realised it would have probably fallen on deaf ears, then remembered seeing it on the way into the compound… “Is that the Chinese restaurant on the way to the compound?” (Wonderland is the only Chinese restaurant in the entire of Khartoum, actually there are only two restaurants that we have seen in Khartoum other than street café’s (kebab shops) and the other one is on the other side of the road to Wonderland and that is an Indian Restaurant, we are going to that one for next week). Abdulla replied, “Go there, ask for “Special Tea” and give them nice smile”. We decided that tonight we would eat Chinese…
Abdul Bassit gave us a lift back to the hotel, but Carlo wanted cigarettes, we stopped in the middle of downtown Khartoum and I decided to wait in the car and watch the world go by, it was nice not to be driving past this happening in the city, but to be sat in the middle of it instead. The guys had to walk two blocks down from where we “parked” when I say parked, I mean the car was pretty much dumped at the side of the road next to a “Store” / Turkish Coffee shop with groups of people sat on blankets around the outside of it. Any one of the shops on that street may stock cigarettes, but it depended on what they had in stock, apparently this was the street where you could pretty much by anything you wanted, but you had to try pretty much every shop. The stock in these shops would rotate from food to basic house goods and so on from week to week so you had to walk the ¼ mile down the street browsing each shop in turn to find what you need.
Rob and I arrived at the restaurant at around 7:30 joining 4 other UNHCR staff members and sat down, the waitress came across and asked if we wanted a drink, I replied “Special Tea for two”, gave her “a nice smile” and she gave me “a nice smile” in return. Sure enough 2 minutes later, she appeared with a large teapot and tea cups, I poured the “Special Tea” and it was unusual tea to say the least, it was effervescing, was a golden colour and had what I can only describe as a frothy top to it… upon tasting I realised that this wasn’t in fact tea, in fact lager and obviously contraband. After a few cups of tea, we headed back to the hotel at around 8:45 for a coffee and an early night…
Then I started writing my daily diatribe and started thinking about the days events, the hypocritical way in which after looking through the images which had had a significant affect, I switched of to that and indulged myself with a pint and good food, I’ve tried to justify it to myself with a conversation I’d had the previous day asking one of the staff “how you stopped things like this affecting you?”, the answer was “life goes on, you do all you can, but you have your life to lead as well”… I know that these people care because of the job they do and the passion they have for the work, but I guess I am still trying to find the “balance” that they have and what I am doing is only a drop in the ocean compared to what these guys everyday…
As yet, no news on travelling south to Shuwak, but I am hopeful this is going to happen, it’ll be a great opportunity to travel across the country, though from what I can gather all I’ll see is a lot of desert a bit of the Blue Nile and the accommodation will be a shack and its mosquito central… but it sounds good to me.
Anyway, time for me to get some shut eye, so much for the early night, its now 2:00am…