Day 8 – I need Paper Clips, A Torch and Tan Shoe Polish…

It was a fairly hectic day with the stats reports again so it was an early start and a late finish (still working, thought I would break to update the bloggerama).

A few things of note happened today. We are travelling to Shuwak on Tuesday and needed to get papers from the government authorising our travel. We needed our passports and a passport picture. I’m not sure what it is that the Sudanese government do with these, but so far they have 3 pictures of me and they are about to get a fifth. We had already brought our passports into the office with the accompanying picture and passed them to the man in charge of acquiring such papers. We detailed again that we would be travelling on Tuesday, he said the papers would probably be ready by Wednesday. It appeared that I had stepped into a time warp…

Me: “I fly on Sunday, I need my visa today.”

Crocket: “Come back on Monday, we can talk then”

Me: “In case you didn’t hear me, I fly on Sunday.”

Crocket: “Come back on Monday when you are less angry Mr Paul.”

He looked at us for a second and realised what he had said, then said that he would get them pushed through for tomorrow. Phew, I thought I was back in the Embassy with the crazy people, but luckily not…

In the afternoon I’d just got myself a coffee, was sitting down to continue with some coding and then the power went, making me realise how much light the tinted windows on the building cut out light. The servers continued running as the UPS kicked in without a flicker, the satlink was still running and my laptop had switched to battery, But all power had been cut to the building. My immediate thoughts were “Where are the flack jackets and the P90’s”, perhaps this was the military koo that had been discussed and it was the beginning of a new age. I had already been told that the first two places to be taken in Sudan with previous koo’s were the Airport and the Government controlled television station, the only television station I have ever seen with tanks parked outside it and a full compliment of troops. Abdulla had told me when we passed the TV station the previous day, that if you owned the Airport and the TV station you controlled the country. I thought to myself, perhaps the 3rd building to take was the UNHCR offices. All my old army training came back in a flash, such a flash that it went straight past me, then I realised that I hadn’t been in the army. Perhaps the best reference I had was MacGyver, I needed to find some paper clips, a torch and some Tan shoe polish to create a make- shift explosive device which would harm no one in the area but render them all unconscious or make them stagger around clutching their heads. Hmmm where could I acquire these items, then “pop” the power was back on… I turned to Abdul Bassit and asked him what was happening and whether he had any paper clips, a torch and some Tan shoe polish. The answer was “The trip switches are sensitive, nothing to worry about”. Luckily he did have a box of paper clips, but he was a little light on the other items, at least I could scale a wall if nothing else…

The rest of the day went like this:

Coffee…

Coding…

Reporting…

Coffee Cigarette…

Coding…

More coding…

No Duty Driver available as usual, get a taxi…

Taxi driver showed me a new meaning of Inshallah with his driving…

Collected Room Key…

Said Hi to all my boys in the hotel…

Met Rob for dinner…

Had coffee…

Got asked for a Visa again… ok, I’ll continue here. Throughout my stay at the hotel, I have made friends with a number of the staff at the hotel. They are friendly, fun and as I have learnt love to play practical jokes on me. One of my personal favourites is “where has my gone?” You can replace with with any manner of things you might expect to find on a dining table or whatever you may have brought down to dinner and have placed on the table. Its one particular guy, Mohammed, that plays this trick on me, I’m not sure whether he is related to David Blaine or not, but damn he is good. The normal drill is that I ask him for say a Pepsi, he replies “Of Course Mr Paul”, I keep telling him its just Paul, but he insists on calling me “Mr Paul”. He returns with the drink, and walks away, then either my knife, fork, spoon or glass just isn’t there, it was there, I saw it, but now it’s gone. Every time he comes to my table, I watch his hands nothing appears to be gone then you realise something is missing. I swear he is related to Mr Tickle, very, very long arms. When I have eventually realise which item is missing, he is on the other side of the restaurant waving the missing item at me and he calmly walks back to return the item with a huge smile on his face. Sometimes we “talk” about football, I don’t particularly like footy, I don’t follow any of the games and could just about name half the members of the England team if I was pushed. But… I can have a conversation with Mohammed about football because it mainly revolves around him saying things like “Chelsea… very good, Arsenal… very good, Leeds… terrible, terrible, terrible” and me nodding and agreeing or sometimes to create some controversy, I will so “No my friend, they are good/bad” depending on which way want to go. He raises his hands and shrug in dismay at this concise and contrary opinion. Then we go on to talk about the players in pretty much the same format as above, but replacing the teams with players names… Once our “Saint and Greavsie” football commentary was out of the way, he would eventually ask if I could get him a visa so he can move to England. The first few times he asked I thought he was joking and I just laughed it off, but with the persistence of his request and the feeling that there was more to this than a joke I had to explain as best I could that I worked with computers and didn’t have that type of connection. With that news, a look of sadness fell across his face, it was heart breaking, but I felt better for him understanding what I do as a UN volunteer and that I don’t have that kind of power and influence. The evening that I clarified that fact (day 3) the conversation ended pretty abruptly and I didn’t see him for the rest of the evening, but fun resumed the following night. I’ve got to know Mohammed as best as I can without being able to speak Arabic. Mohammed has talked me through, his family and the two jobs that he has to support them, one in this hotel and another working a night shift in another hotel. The amount of money he gets paid which really is a pittance for a 12 hour working day. I know the cost of living is lower for people who live here, but with the amount of money he earns (as in many 3rd world countries) is enough to stop him ever being able to leave the country and find a better life whether the government stops him from leaving the country or not. I’m planning to give him a big tip when I leave, he really has been good fun, I can’t get him a visa but I would like him to have a few “Special Tea’s” on me… although as he has told me devout Muslim and doesn’t drink I’m sure he will find a good use for the money.

The only thing that I can assume as to why he asked me for the visa in the first place, was because he knew I was doing work for the UN and perhaps he assumed that the system in the UK worked like it does in Sudan? As I have said before, in Sudan people who are connected make things happen for their friends and family, getting jobs, giving and receiving “back hander’s” and bureaucracy is surpassed by influence. Oh… hold on, it is like the UK and the rest of the world, but in Sudan it is “blatant” for want of a better word and in the “civilised world” it is more secretive where democracy and equality is available for all, especially the more privileged. Which ever way it happens, blatant or clandestine, it affects the average person in the street in some way and at some point in their lives, but this is the way of the world we live in. Perhaps our two worlds are not that different after all? After thinking about this for some time, it’s a comparison that I couldn’t easily make between our two worlds, at least in more prosperous parts of the world, there is equality for a greater portion of the populous, but then again that still isn’t equality!

I nearly did it again, bursting into “We are the world” by Michael Jackson, I think when I get back to the UK I am going to have to go for psychotherapy … If I don’t get this checked out soon I’ll probably start talking about how great the 80’s were and they don’t make songs like they used to… oh dear…

Anyway on that happy note, I make a plea for anarchy. To all those who are reading, take up arms with your brothers and sisters, I pray that by the time I awake, TV talent show creators (XFactor, Fame Acadamy and many others) and reality TV creators (Big Brother, Wife swap blah, blah, blah) are the first against the wall. Vive La Revolution!

G’night all…

PS: I know there are a few people reading this who may take this seriously, please don’t start a revolution because I said so, I know the media has a large sway over the populous. But why not do it because you want to.

PPS: PS is my initials, how strange that I’m an afterthought by name…

PPSS: I was only kidding about the PS, I mean the anarchy bit, not the fact that my initials are PS, they really are.