Permanent Revolution

Liberia Picture Project

2012-01-27T09:27:00.001-08:00

Cities

2012-01-07T20:15:00.001-08:00

Soon as I can, I'm moving back.

My heart beats at the same beat as this city (& others)

Captitalism!

2011-10-03T22:09:00.001-07:00

Title Sequences

2011-07-31T22:40:00.000-07:00

Syria

2011-07-23T21:47:00.001-07:00

Sweet flowers

2011-07-17T08:55:00.000-07:00

I took a walk last night around Willow Glen, the place I currently call home, and found a bunch of happy flowers swaying in the wind.

Radiolab concert: Buke & Gass

2011-07-15T16:11:00.001-07:00

Influencing Muslimgauze

2011-07-02T17:26:00.000-07:00

This preview of what I believe is a full-length tribute to the band Muslimgauze excites me. I love the feel, the editing, and the artistry of the composition.

Free Running

2011-06-30T12:20:00.000-07:00

This is a nice use of the GoPro cam, one of those items I lust after but have no practical use in the photographic projects I pursue. I suppose this just means I need to form a project so that I need it.

The movements these athletes perform is the way I frequently move when my eyes are closed and my mind has disappeared to unexpected lands. Equally a flier in my dreams, if I am on the ground it is rarely for long. My motion keeps me jumping, short flights with more vertical movement than horizontal. I bound, leap, soar and pounce sometimes in the context of a story. But, often just because I can. When I am asleep, I am the offspring of the drunken coupling of an agile acrobatic plane and a frog.

Dream World from Frank Sauer on Vimeo.

Sunglasses

2011-06-20T17:41:00.000-07:00

I'm grateful for my sunglasses.

This one comes from the memory of walking the beaches around Paje on the Tanzanian island of Zanzibar. Eddy, one of the myriad of beachwalkers approaches me and begins a conversation in an attempt to get me to hire him as a tour guide or anything else.
The sky is bright and the sand is white and out of nowhere he comments how lucky that I am for having sunglasses to protect my eyes. I didn't end up hiring him. But, we went to his cafe and continued the conversation over a meal.

Skateistan

2011-06-12T19:11:00.000-07:00

The more I watch this video and see the impact that simple lessons can have on the development of children, the more I am pushed to start up a group to teach disadvantaged youth photography.

SKATEISTAN: TO LIVE AND SKATE KABUL from Diesel New Voices on Vimeo.

Street Art

2011-06-11T21:03:00.000-07:00

Jazz Hands

2011-06-10T21:00:00.000-07:00

I'm grateful for fruit with jazz hands.

Alternative Thinking

2011-06-09T20:57:00.000-07:00

I'm grateful for living in a place that embraces alternatives.

Carnivals

2011-06-08T20:54:00.000-07:00

Fun under the Big Top

Yumminess

2011-06-06T20:52:00.000-07:00

Sweets of all variety

Storyland

2011-06-05T23:07:00.000-07:00

I'm grateful for a great day with a cool little kid

Breakfast

2011-06-04T11:07:00.000-07:00

I'm grateful for parents with whom I like to spend time.

Literature

2011-05-31T21:06:00.000-07:00

I'm grateful for a good book.

Merging of two sites

2011-05-30T13:45:00.001-07:00

The previous webzine that resided on its own URL has been merged into Permanent-Revolution. To see the LaunchTheRaunch listings, click on the keyword by that same name to the right. Some images are missing, hopefully to be recovered in due time.

Mystery

2011-05-28T21:08:00.000-07:00

I'm grateful for the adventure found in a lost note or treasure map.

Crazy friends

2011-05-25T11:17:00.000-07:00

I'm grateful for old friends.

Spare cash

2011-05-22T21:59:00.000-07:00

I'm grateful for spending money for the occasional treat.

Interesting Events

2011-05-21T13:33:00.000-07:00

I'm grateful for the lively attractions/events around me.

Wow Comic Fest - San Jose, CA

A Place to Rest

2011-05-20T13:30:00.000-07:00

I'm grateful that I have a good bed in which to sleep.

Shaving with My Father

2011-05-18T22:45:00.000-07:00

Somewhere around the time when we moved to Sicily, in my bag of childhood utensils was added a shaving kit. My father, my opposite then and even now in terms of follicular growth, would shave every morning (and sometimes afternoon if his military activities that day required it). I recall frequently joining him. Whereas he'd put blade to face, my set had a popsicle stick that I'd glide over my soft skin to scrape off the shaving cream.

First we'd each vigorously create foam in his mug where a cake of cream resided, activated by our fancy porcelain handled brushes. Just the right amount of water was required. All these steps and tips my dad went through with me, guiding me gently into that era when I would be doing this for a reason besides emulation.

About seven years later, I attended the seventh grade at a school that had 7-seniors, one of whom had a full beard. Secretly I assured myself that when I too was a senior, I'd grow my beard out like my father and this 12th grader did, burly and manly.

Thirty-three years later, I still don't require a daily shave. But, I do wish I had a shaving kit like my dad did back then when we'd shave and bond in front of the bathroom mirror.

Health

2011-05-17T08:17:00.000-07:00

I'm grateful for my health

Employment

2011-05-16T13:21:00.000-07:00

I'm grateful for gainful employment

Lazy Sunday

2011-05-15T07:30:00.000-07:00

I'm grateful for a lazy Sunday

Don't Tell Her....

2011-05-11T22:03:00.000-07:00

A Community of the Spirit

2011-05-02T09:49:00.000-07:00

There is a community of the spirit

Join it, and feel the delight

of walking in the noisy street

and being the noise.

Drink all your passion,

and be a disgrace.

Close both eyes

to see with the other eye.

Open your hands,

if you want to be held.

Sit down in this circle.

Quit acting like a wolf, and feel

the shepherd's love filling you.

At night, your beloved wanders.

Don't accept consolations.

Close your mouth against food.

Taste the lover's mouth in yours.

You moan, "She left me." "He left me."

Twenty more will come.

Be empty of worrying.

Think of who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison

when the door is so wide open?

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.

Live in silence.

Flow down and down in always

widening rings of being.

There's a strange frenzy in my head,

of birds flying,

each particle circulating on its own.

Is the one I love everywhere?

Drunks fear the police,

but the police are drunk too.

People in this town love them both

like different chess pieces.

Poem

2011-05-01T22:58:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when I am reading poetry, the whole flows for me, I pull something out of it that impacts me. Other times, phrase or a few lines get through the dense wall of my understanding.

I read this today out of the Coleman Barks translation of poetry by Rumi, The Essential Rumi.

Try and be a sheet of paper with nothing on it.

Be a spot of ground where nothing is growing,

where something might be planted,

a seed, possibly, from the Absolute.

It comes at the very end of a page and half poem called The Fragile Vial and for me speaks about the value of being able to be impacted, affected & shaped by the interactions with others, & in this case God.

Reading dime store philosophy at a family park

2011-05-01T18:04:00.001-07:00

A few years ago I created this personal web site with the name Permanent-Revolution. I'd recently returned from living in Russia, was in grad school with information overflowing on all forms of political leanings, but concentrating on what occurred in the Soviet Union. Trotsky's ideas detailing a permanent state of political revolution were laughable to me. But the idea of constant internal and artistic "revolutions", springs of creation for improvement, experimentation & innovation appealed to me.

Through the years this site has never, in various iterations, been exactly what I envisioned, which is fine. The time or technical skills or attention span wasn't in place. Now I aim to harness these ideas and corall them into a more cohesive and hopefully beneficial whole. But still I'm distracted. The balance if personal and social time is improving as I take the lessons of friends and family and apply them to the path.

Enlightenment comes through the consistent cultivation of your mind, body and soul.

- The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

Uglydoll 9" vinyl figures

2011-04-26T14:56:00.000-07:00

Jeero

Tray

Wedgehead

Babo

Cinko

Ice Bat

Target

Skater Zombies

2011-04-26T00:44:00.001-07:00

Bunnywith

2011-04-26T00:43:00.000-07:00

Bunnywith Baby

Bunnywith Tentacles

Bunnywith Siamese Twin

MadL

2011-04-26T00:42:00.000-07:00

Vikings

2011-04-26T00:39:00.000-07:00

Distributed by Strangeco out of San Francisco, these Vikings were from a series that dressed the same figures in different themes.

Icebots

2011-04-26T00:06:00.000-07:00

This was a series of toys I began selling in the first season owning my online designer toy store.

Large Icebots from Dalek came in red, white & black

Job hunting

2011-04-14T13:23:00.000-07:00

Back from another trip abroad, I find myself in the need to find gainful employment. And that is why I scoured the internet for pinup girls and assembled this.

Sudan: Will the North survive if the South secedes?

2011-01-20T04:38:00.000-08:00

Time

Alan Boswell

In its relatively short life, Sudan has endured two bloody civil wars; famines and slave raids; a reputation as the onetime home of Osama bin Laden; and now a President indicted for genocide and war crimes — the sort of history that makes you wonder if the nation should have been created at all. Sudan was troubled from its birth when, in 1956, the British handed over power to the Arab northern elite, despite the country's vast ethnic and cultural pluralities, setting the parameters for one of the world's most dysfunctional states. So it is not surprising that the southerners — who have suffered through the two civil wars, from 1956-72 and 1983-2005, which left 2 million people dead and 4 million displaced — are pulling the plug on Africa's largest nation. The voting in a referendum on southern independence — the key component of a 2005 peace deal — began on Jan. 9 and will last until Jan. 15; the results, not in doubt, should be announced later in the month or in early February.

In the south, the vote has sparked rapturous rejoicing. But in the north, resentment and resignation reigns. "Sorrow and pain fills my heart," says Ashraf Abdurrahman, a 26-year-old engineer in the northern capital of Khartoum. The mood goes deeper than mere sentiment. Roughly 80% of Sudan's oil reserves are in the south. Previously, oil revenues were channeled overwhelmingly to the ruling elite and Khartoum, which has gone from a dusty frontier town to a booming city with a jutting skyline, an island of prosperity in a desert of poverty and disease. By contrast, the authorities in Juba, the southern capital, are only now paving the city's streets and putting up electricity lines. Aid and development workers have flooded the south ahead of the referendum in an attempt to build some semblance of a nation in time for its independence. Once the country splits, the pro-north dynamic will likely reverse. Northerners are predicting a bleak future. "Things will not be the same," says Wafi Adam, a recent university graduate who says he's already feeling the pinch. "Food prices are getting higher. And there are no jobs." Adurrahman concludes, "When the oil goes, the north will suffer."

Some ask whether the north will continue at all. For now, it will still be ruled by the same leaders whose prioritizing of the center at the expense of the country's peripheries fueled rebellion not just in southern Sudan but also in the east, in the central-southern states of Kordofan and the Blue Nile, and in the west in Darfur. That is likely to stir more resentment and continuing violence. Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has already escalated the war in Darfur in recent months, even as millions of Darfuris remain in refugee camps. Tension is also building in the Blue Nile state, where the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) — the new rulers of the soon-to-be-independent south — already has the governorship, and in Kordofan, which is holding an election in April. Al-Bashir may have pleased the international community by allowing the south to go. But he has also likely alienated hard-line Islamists in his own National Congress Party (NCP) as well as the commanders of the Sudanese military. Hence his announcement that after the south leaves, what remains will become an Islamic republic subject to Shari'a law.

Despite a crackdown on their activities, Sudan's opposition parties smell blood. "After secession, [the north] will be in a new state," says Farouq Abu Eissa, spokesman for the National Consensus Alliance, the opposition coalition. "We need a new constitution and an interim government." Failure to produce these, he adds, will likely lead to street protests, even a popular revolution. Yasir Arman, head of SPLM's northern branch, says his party wants "dialogue and change," and if that does not happen, "there will be a confrontation for sure."

The NCP claims to be willing to listen. "We do not have an objection to sitting with all political parties to discuss a new constitution," says Rabi Abdel-Atti, an NCP communications official. But few are prepared to believe that, given the NCP's past preference to settle disputes with violence. Hafiz Mohammed, director of human-rights group Justice Africa-Sudan, expects a rebellion soon. "I don't think it will take long — less than a year," he says. "[The NCP] has made Sudan too difficult to govern." Sudan, as we know it, is at an end. But the death of one troubled state may just mean the creation of two more.

Breaking Up Is Good to Do - Foreign Policy

2011-01-19T03:02:00.000-08:00

Southern Sudan is just the beginning. The world may soon have 300 independent, sovereign nations ... and that's just fine.

BY PARAG KHANNA | JANUARY 13, 2011

This year will almost certainly see the birth of a new country named Southern Sudan. It might also witness the creation of an independent Palestine, as Palestinian leaders push for unilateral recognition of their national sovereignty within their country's 1967 borders. And within a couple of years, a sovereign Kurdistan might emerge from a still-brittle Iraq. We could be entering a new period of mass state birth: Imagine an independent South Ossetia, Somaliland, and Darfur too. The trend is nothing new, but it's picking up steam again. The most recent sovereign entrant was in 2008, when Kosovo emerged from the breakup of Yugoslavia; nine years earlier, in 1999, it was East Timor gaining independence from Indonesia.

Because of this wave of self-determination culminating in sovereignty, there are today more autonomous political units in the world than at any time since the Middle Ages of a millennium ago. Within a few decades, we could easily have 300 states in the world. Moreover, we are gradually returning to the medieval world of thousands of multilayered communities ranging from the supranational European Union to the magnetic city-states of the Persian Gulf to the indigenous communities of the Inuit of Canada and Greenland.

This instability is the cartographic expression of an underlying geopolitical phenomenon afflicting much of Africa, the Middle East, and Asia: post-colonial entropy. Except for a few, rare cases, many of the colonies that gained their independence a half-century ago have since experienced unmanageable population growth, predatory and corrupt dictatorship, crumbling infrastructure and institutions, and ethnic or sectarian polarization.

Whether or not Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan, or the Democratic Republic of the Congo technically qualify as "failed states," their fates are sealed by their colonial inheritance. Indeed, it's often their borders that are the deepest cause of their conflicts. Many of these national borders are in desperate need of adjustment, and the rest of the world should show more flexibility in allowing them to do so. Europe messed it up the first time, but now the West can support the right regional bodies to adjudicate these new borders -- helping others help themselves in the process.

By this logic, today's hot spots such as Iraq and Afghanistan are not simply "America's Wars." Rather, they are to some extent the unexploded ordinance left over from old European wars, with their fuses lit on slow release. Indeed, the United States had nothing to do with the Sykes-Picot and other agreements that parceled the Levant into French- and British-allied monarchies, or the Congress of Berlin, which drew suspiciously straight lines on Africa's map. Some of these haphazard agreements created oversized or artificial agglomerations like Sudan, which threw together heretofore independent groups of Arabs, Africans, Christians, and Muslims into a country one-fourth the size of the United States but lacking any common national ethos or adequate distribution of resources to sustain commitment to unity. Others did the opposite, like the British officer Henry Mortimer Durand, whose infamous line divided the Pashtun nation between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This growing cartographic stress is not just America's challenge. All the world's influential powers and diplomats should seize a new moral high ground by agreeing to prudently apply in such cases Woodrow Wilson's support for self-determination of peoples. This would be a marked improvement over today's ad hoc system of backing disreputable allies, assembling unworkable coalitions, or simply hoping for tidy dissolutions. Reasserting the principle of self-determination would allow for the sort of true statesmanship lacking on today's global stage.

In Sudan, the United States has certainly placed itself on the right side of this trend. It has been a key architect of the internationally sanctioned referendum that will likely result in Southern Sudan's independence, making clear that the eventual split is not a U.S.-led conspiracy to hack apart the Arab-Muslim world. Such a legitimate process has given cover to China to reorient its policy as well, balancing its staunch support for the regime of Omar Hassan al-Bashir in Khartoum with upgraded relations with the Southern government in Juba, which has in return promised to honor the China National Petroleum Corp.'s contracts. (Sixty percent of Sudan's oil exports currently go to China.)

But there is more to ushering new nations into existence than preventing neighboring antagonists from invading one another (as fundamentally important as that is). All three of the world's current quasi-states -- Southern Sudan, Palestine, and Kurdistan -- will be effectively landlocked and vulnerable unless they are provided with viable infrastructure to connect to external markets. In addition to the existing Sudanese north-south pipelines, Southern Sudan needs a new pipeline across Kenya to the Indian Ocean to export oil through additional routes. Likewise, Kurdistan needs pipelines via Turkey and Syria to Europe and the Mediterranean Sea, and Palestine needs the Rand Corp.'s proposed "Arc" of road and rail corridors to link the West Bank and Gaza into an integrated unit. These linkages to the outside world are insurance policies against dependence on and domination by neighbors, whether Sudan, Iraq and Turkey, or Israel, respectively. While the White House remains obsessed with "security guarantees" for Israel that rest on empty or short-lived gestures of goodwill, it is infrastructure, rather, that is the prerequisite to peaceful coexistence. Nation-building is as much physical as institutional; independence without infrastructure is impossible.

The entropy afflicting the post-colonial world will not stop anytime soon. States like Congo, Nigeria, and Pakistan, which are internally diffuse and often intentionally unevenly developed, will soon be too large to manage themselves. It is less likely that they will gather the competence, capacity, and will to become equitable modern states than that they will continue to inspire resistance to the legacies of centralized misrule.

The coming partitions must be performed with a combination of scalpel and ax, soft and hard power. Above all, the world must recognize that these partitions are inevitable. Our reflex is to fear changes on the map out of concern for violence or having to learn the names of new countries. But in an age when any group can acquire the tools of violent resistance, the only alternative to self-determination is perpetual conflict. After genocidal campaigns such as Saddam Hussein's gassing of the Kurds and Serbia's brutal repression of the Kosovars, it is impossible to imagine those groups again living under one government. Rather than delay, the emphasis should be on diplomatic efficiency: Speedy partitions can lead to more amicable outcomes, such as the "velvet divorce" between the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993. Both are now members of the European Union, within which they respect one another's borders even as such borders have largely become irrelevant.

Finally, we must be weary of status quo conservatism motivated by selfish concerns. Russia and China staunchly opposed Kosovo's independence for the sake of their own quasi-imperial possessions, but did a sovereign government in Pristina really undermine Russia's ironclad rule over Chechnya or China's grip on Tibet?

Each territorial conflict has a particular mix of historical, geographic, and diplomatic conditions that will breed unique solutions. But one thing is certain: The way to create a peaceful and borderless world is, ironically, by allowing ever more nations to define themselves and their borders. Then, and only then, will they seek openness and integration with the rest of the world. Breakups are sometimes the path to better friendships.

Parag Khanna is a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation. This article is adapted from his new book, How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance.

IRIN Analysis: Sudan's Abyei bracing for a "bad Christmas"

2010-12-02T08:21:00.000-08:00

ABYEI, 1 December 2010 (IRIN) - As international mediators struggle to
resolve a row over who will govern Abyei, residents in the troubled
and increasingly militarized region of Sudan are growing impatient.
Analysts fear the frustration may get out of hand.

"Indecision and delays. have made the local community nervous," an aid
worker in the town of Abyei told IRIN. "The anxiety is turning into
tension and that is the worry."

Credit: Pierre Holtz, UNICEF

Abyei straddles the border between semi-autonomous Southern Sudan and
the North. Under the terms of the once-warring neighbours' 2005
Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), it is jointly administered until
a referendum determines whether it retains its special status in the
north or joins the South.

But while a vote on Southern independence seems likely to take place
on schedule on 9 January, political wrangles mean there is little
chance Abyei's future will also be decided then, even though the
referenda are supposed to be simultaneous.

"Abyei is a concern to everybody," Lorna Marekeje, head of the Sudan
Domestic Election Monitoring and Observation Programme, told IRIN.
"The Abyei Referendum Commission cannot be set up with [just] 50 days
to go, but the people there should be given their right to decide
where they want to go."

The delay has raised tensions between the Ngok Dinka community, the
majority of Abyei's permanent residents, who mainly supported the
South during the 1983-2005 war, and Misseriya pastoralists, who bring
their livestock into the region to graze during the annual
January-to-May dry season. The North armed many Misseriya as proxy
militias during the war.

"Large numbers of armed, unemployed youth allied neither to [Khartoum
nor Juba, the Southern capital] present a serious security threat as
tensions deepen in the countdown to the referendum," the Geneva-based
Small Arms Survey warned in a recent update on Abyei.

Negotiations

According to the Enough Project, a US-based advocacy group, Sudan's
ruling National Congress Party (NCP) has proposed that in lieu of a
referendum, part of Abyei, excluding areas that produce 0.6 percent of
the country's oil, be handed to the South.

There have also been reports that the Sudan People's Liberation
Movement (SPLM), which governs the South, suggested Abyei be given in
toto to the South, in exchange for an as-yet unspecified concession to
the North.

With the support of the African Union, the NCP and SPLM are
negotiating a raft of issues that will shape their post-referendum
relationship. The SPLM insists a settlement on Abyei is a prerequisite
to progress in these talks.

"Abyei is a complicated issue, but from both sides there is a will to
have a solution," Badreldin Abdalla, deputy head of mission at the
Sudanese embassy in Nairobi, told IRIN. "I am so optimistic that they
are going to have a solution for that."

SPLM Secretary-General and Southern Minister for CPA Implementation,
Pagam Amum, shares this optimism. He recently said he was confident
imminent summit talks would "result in a breakthrough on Abyei, to
bring the anxiety and suffering of people there to a close".

Rhetoric rising

But as the clock ticks down to January, there has been much
international concern about the rising level of inflammatory rhetoric
from both sides of the border.

Many Misseriya, for example, fear their grazing rights in Abyei are in
jeopardy, even though they are enshrined in the 2005 peace deal.

"Some in Khartoum have stoked such concerns, and encouraged the
Misseriya to fight for participation in the Abyei referendum," the
International Crisis Group said in a recent report.

"While the Government of Southern Sudan has repeatedly pledged that
the Misseriya may continue their traditional grazing patterns into
Abyei and Southern Sudan regardless of the referendum outcome, the
issue of security and arms-carrying during migration has not been
sufficiently addressed, contributing to Misseriya scepticism of such
pledges," it added.

The Ngok Dinka have adamantly opposed the Misseriyas' claims that they
are eligible to vote in the referendum. And at a recent meeting in
Juba's legislative assembly, Ngok Dinka leaders warned of the
consequences of derailing the vote.

The "unconstitutional plan to forestall or abort the Abyei referendum
shall mean that the Misseriya nomads will not enjoy free access to
pasture and water in Abyei area as from this year's dry season", they
declared.

There is a fear that any such action could easily trigger violence.

"Local communities in Abyei have politicized the grazing needs of the
Misseriya who have no other way of keeping their cattle alive," an aid
worker in Abyei said. "They are now seen as proxies for Khartoum and
that is a very worrying situation."

Pointing at the lush grass along the banks of the Kiir river at Awol,
a settlement on Agok-Abyei road, Kuol Malual, a resident, said:
"Recent rains have kept the grass growing and the river full. That is
an invitation to the Misseriya herdsmen to bring their livestock down
to graze. That movement means trouble."

Settlement threat

Addressing the Juba meeting, Southern Sudanese President Salva Kiir
alluded to reports that Khartoum was encouraging Misseriya to
establish permanent settlements in Abyei.

"We cannot give a piece of the land to the Misseriya... don't think
the NCP is [so] powerful that they can take the land by force. If they
attack us, we have the right to self-defence," he said.

The growing presence of military forces around the border adds to the
gravity of the situation.

In October, the Small Arms Survey reported that Khartoum had sent
Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) troops, tanks and heavy weapons to an area
north of Abyei. Juba has accused Khartoum of re-arming some Misseriya,
while the NCP claims the Southern army (SPLA) has sent additional
troops to Abyei in the guise of local police.

"Both the Misseriya and the Ngok are heavily armed," Kur Deng, a local
resident, said. "If nothing comes out of talks. then we will have a
bad Christmas."

Rumbles of conflict

In its latest report, the ICG warned: "Command and control structures
are put to the test in such circumstances, as a single hostile
incident could inadvertently ignite much broader conflict,
particularly in the period around the self-determination referendum,
when emotions will be high."

On 24 November a helicopter reportedly attacked a Southern army
position in Northern Bahr al Ghazal state - next to Abyei - wounding
four soldiers and two civilians.

"All these open provocations and violations [by the Northern army] are
deliberately designed to drag Sudan back to war, to justify the
impossibility of conducting the referendum in the South and in Abyei,"
Southern army spokesman Philip Aguer said.

Reports of the attack were corroborated by local officials but denied
by Khartoum.

In May 2010, Misseriya herdsmen clashed with Abyei residents just
north of the region's capital. Two months later gunmen attacked the
village of Tajalei, about 30km northeast of Abyei town, killing five
people.

Abyei Chief Administrator Deng Arop Kuol, a Ngok Dinka, blamed the
Misseriya, describing the incident as part of a ploy by Khartoum "to
resettle the Misseriya in Abyei in the lands of Ngok Dinka".

Two years earlier, fighting broke out between Northern and Southern
troops deployed in joint units in Abyei, leaving the town in ruins and
prompting some 25,000 people to flee.

After those clashes, Khartoum and Juba agreed that the only armed
elements allowed in Abyei should be UN peacekeepers, SPLA and SAF
troops integrated into a joint unit, and members of a joint integrated
police unit.

Malual, the Abyei resident, is hoping there will no repetition of such violence.

"We really wanted to vote in January, but cannot understand why we are
not being allowed to," he told IRIN. "And there would be no problem
between us and the Misseriya if the politicians left us alone."

4D

2010-11-12T03:06:00.001-08:00

The Official Ralph Lauren 4D Experience - New York from Ralph Lauren on Vimeo.

Khartoum not ready for war, adviser says

2010-10-23T07:10:00.000-07:00

By Ngor Arol Garang

October 22, 2010 (JUBA) - An advisor on security affairs to president
of southern Sudan, John Kong Nyuon, on Thursday urged the region not
to believe statements attributed to senior officials from Sudan’s
ruling National Congress Party (NCP) that the north and south may
return to war.

Tensions are rising in Sudan ahead of referenda in January that will
determine whether the south secedes and whether the oil-rich region of
Abyei remains in the north or joins what could be a newly-independent
south.

The plebiscites were agreed as part of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace
Agreement between the NCP and the former rebels the Sudan People’s
Liberation Movement (SPLM) who have governed the south since the deal.

The north-south conflict lasted over two decades, around 2 million
were killed and 4 million forced to leave their homes.

Both sides have accused the other of being responsible for the delays
to the referenda, especially in the case of Abyei.

Accusations over troop deployment on the north-south border and Abyei
have become increasingly bitter over the last few weeks.

Nyuon in his statement was especially critical of former Sudanese
foreign minister Mustafa Osman Ismail for his comments on 30
September, asking students to prepare for war.

“The most irritating one was the statement which called on youth and
students from higher learning institutions in the north to prepare for
war in case the south secedes, by Mustafa Osman Ismail, a presidential
advisor and Secretary General for external relations in the National
Congress Party.”

The southern special advisor believes that the NCP are making the
statements in an attempt to get the south to vote for unity rather
than independence.

“These are just political propagandas. They are not prepared for any
war at all because they know they will not fight [as] it [...] was in
the past. What they are making these days is a simple oratory of
intimidation to scar potential southern voters in the north to vote
against their will in favor of unity,” said Nyuon.

The senior government official made the remarks while addressing
representatives of traditional leaders from greater Upper Nile in his
residence on Thursday evening.

He also urged traditional leaders to encourage internal displaced
persons still in the north to return before the referendum assisted
government of south Sudan.

Nyuon, said that even if war did breakout the Khartoum based NCP did
not have the ability to win as they had left themselves in “an
isolated triangle.”

He pointed to the ongoing conflict in the western region of Darfur as
an example of how the Khartoum has failed to win military
confronations.

“Can Khartoum really win a war involving four regions? Will they
really win any war? They may have been lucky in the past to use
marginalized groups and people by using disgruntled individuals from
corners of Sudan to fight their wars. But this is not what the current
situation tells.” said Nyuon.

Speaking on behalf of traditional leaders, chief Duer Riak Kong,
commended southern President Salva Kiir Mayardit for organizing the
recently concluded Southern Sudan Political Parties’ conference and
for issuing an executive order to pardon ex-military officers who have
fought against the southern army the SPLA.

“We sincerely thank president Kiir for organizing an all political
parties’ conference and for issuing presidential order pardoning all
those whose forces might have clashed with SPLA forces," said chief
Kong.

“This is a wise and unifying decision. South Sudan needs each and
everyone to take part in the successful conduct of the forthcoming
referendum,” he added.

The south is widely expected to vote for independence in the poll due
to begin 9 January 2011.

Calm but ready

2010-10-16T05:41:00.000-07:00

Finding a place to sit and talk is a near impossibility unless you go to a private home. Blocked from traveling north to Abyei to attend a public meeting held by the Abyei Civil Society organization but requested by the local authorities, we sent our interpreter to attend and take notes. In the north, the weekend is Friday and Saturday allowing Muslims to attend Friday prayer. But, in the south they have the same weekend as the west, Saturday and Sunday. So, in the contested area in the middle that officially is in neither, you never know for sure if on Friday you can find anyone in their workplaces.

With a bit of detective work we were able to track down the Joint Integrated Unit (JIU - army consisting equally of northern and southern forces) Commander and speak to him under the comfort of a shade tree. Thereafter, with no other people available, we went to where Ring is staying, in his cousin's compound, to go through his notes about what was said and who was present in this event held to explain the violent occurrence in the market on Monday.

We stooped low to enter the round mud walled tukul. Inside the air was perceptively cooler than the hot still air outside. This, like the few other tukuls I have been in was very well built and cared for. The walls, made of mud covered branches stuck in the ground was rubbed smooth and uniform with two small round windows above the two beds on opposite sides of the room separated by a few feet with a small plastic table in the center. Clothes are stacked meticulously on a platform on the end of one bed. Under each metal bed there are a few pairs of shoes including sandals and rubber boots. The ground is dirt unlike other tukuls who have laid linoleum on top of the dirt. But, the place is clean and very orderly. Above, two mosquito nets hang out of the way on rusty hooks available for nighttime when they can be lowered for protection.

For the next hour we hear his retelling of the rally as he draws on his notes in Arabic written on a single piece of paper. Afterward, I ask him his opinion of "the event", specifying "as a citizen not as interpreter." He misunderstood which event I meant and began telling the story of when the shots fired that prompted the rally occurred.

The incident occurred in the marketplace according to all we've talked to and was started by a few SAF (northern military) soldiers who fired in the air then ran out of the market only returning when SPLA soldiers didn't return fire. The assumed reasoning is that this was a Misseriya provocation to start a conflict that could result in accusation of violation of the CPA and thus cancellation of the referendum.

Ring tells a story of how he was awoken by a few shots that sounded like they were just outside his home. Bam! Bam! Then there was about twenty minutes before another Bam! In the meantime, he and a few others went out into the street to investigate and "to look for arms." Down the street he saw an old man scurrying along with a child then disappear behind a fence. Lights went on behind doors but the night was still and most stayed inside. Murmurs of anger between those who were out on the street mimicked that being said on the street in the last few weeks. The local government is calling for people to stay calm, be brave, and not to leave the area. But, they are widely understood to not have the personnel or capacity to protect the citizenry and civilians do not have arms to protect themselves.

These personal narratives as well as statements given to us by officials, union representatives and chiefs also come in calm telling belying the tired bravery of the South Sudanese who have lived under potential or actual conflict since 1/1/1956.

Sudan: A New York Divorce

2010-10-13T01:48:00.001-07:00

Africa Confidential
FRIDAY 8th October 2010
Vol 51 N0 20

Positions are hardening in both Washington and Khartoum in the lead up to the referenda in the South and Abyei, due in January

Within days of the United Nations' New York meeting on Sudan, the 15-member UN Security Council set off for Kampala, Juba and Khartoum. The 4-10 October trip, led by Britain's UN Ambassador, Sir Mark Lyall Grant, and his counterpart from the United States, Susan E. Rice, signals serious concerns about a return to war in Sudan over the referenda due next January. The tour was meant to send a strong message - at least from Britain, France and the USA - about Khartoum's efforts to obstruct the vote in the South and Abyei.

At the High-Level Meeting on 24 September, both Washington and Khartoum's National Congress Party (NCP) took a sharp new tone over the referenda. Diplomats and politicians in New York sketched out several possible areas of conflict, ranging from Khartoum attacking across the (still undemarcated) North-South border, focusing on Abyei, to sponsoring militias to undermine Southern President Salva Kiir Mayardit's government in Juba.

The USA now says Sudan is a top priority after Afghanistan and Iraq; Britain, which takes the chair of the Security Council next month, says the same. Yet under the Conservative-Liberal Democratic coalition, Britain is taking a more aggressive line on commerce across Africa, with the exception so far of Zimbabwe. On 29 September, it organised an 'Opportunities in Sudan' trade mission under Ambassador Nicholas Kay and invited several NCP officials in London, including Ambassador Abdullah el Azrag, previously Director of the Foreign Ministry's Arab Affairs Department. In July, British Africa Minister Henry Bellingham had declared that London wanted investment in Sudan and distanced himself from US sanctions imposed because of the regime's terrorism links, such as the 1995 attempt on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's life.

US President Barack Obama, though, left no doubt, in his speech to the New York Meeting, that his government would press for the referenda to be held on schedule on 9 January. This signals to the NCP, 'Don't think you can play foul!' commented one US official. It was a strong implicit criticism of Khartoum's tactics. In the days leading up to the meeting, Chinese diplomats were working hard to build support for a deferral of the referendum date or at least agreement for a transition period between the vote and any subsequent secession. Like South Africa's former President Thabo Mbeki, Beijing officials argue that in present circumstances, an immediate secession of the South could spark a political and security crisis - if not outright war - that would damage everyone's interests (including China's oil imports). This ignores the likelihood of instability if the referendum is delayed.

Supporting the south

Washington has been showing stronger support for the Government of South Sudan. Lieutenant General Salva found a welcome at New York think-tanks such as the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Peace Institute for his message that the 9 January referendum date is immovable. Although Salva, who is also Sudan's First Vice-President, told the UN meeting that he opposes a unilateral declaration of independence, Southerners widely expect the GOSS to 'declare UDI' if Khartoum blocks the popular vote.

The main focus of the NCP's efforts is Abyei: it now openly rejects the July 2009 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling on the district, a position launched by Gen. Salah Abdullah Mohamed 'Gosh'. The spearhead of Sudan-US 'intelligence cooperation' was clearly not sidelined when shifted from his post as National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) director last August to Presidential Security Advisor (AC Vol 50 No 17); he now presides over the North-South border issue, too. It was, of course, the NCP which had first asked the Hague-based PCA to rule on the Abyei border, after it had rejected the Abyei Boundaries Commission findings, which it had signed up to under the same the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) which governs the impending referenda.

'Forget what we've signed!'

Khartoum's New York delegation, led by Vice-President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha (still powerful despite years of speculation) left no doubts in private talks with US officials that the NCP rejected compromise on Abyei, we hear. 'The NCP clearly has its own priorities,' said one source. 'It's "Forget what we've signed on Abyei!"' A dinner arranged by the US State Department for Ali Osman and his team on 20 September was, we hear, poorly attended and the chill between Khartoum and Washington is spreading again. The NCP hopes to divide the dominant GOSS party, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, over the structure and timing of the two referenda. SPLM Chairman Salva Kiir says the referenda are indivisible. Many Southerners, though, wonder why the South would risk its own referendum for Abyei which is in the North. Nuba members already see the SPLM as having left them isolated: they will remain part of NCP-controlled Northern Sudan, whatever happens in the referendum.

Khartoum seeks to exploit divisions to pressure the SPLM over the Post-Referendum Arrangements. Issues include oil but also the 'soft borders' favoured by the African Union panel that Mbeki leads. These would favour not only reconciliation but also NCP infiltration. Some in the NCP are even floating a five-year interim before full Southern independence, Africa Confidential understands, an absolute non-starter for Southerners.

The GOSS is trying to bring on board as many dissidents as possible to counter Khartoum's tactics. Officials have been talking to militia leader Gen. George Athor Deng (now among those pardoned), serial agreement-signer Lam Akol Ajawin and Bona Malwal Madut Riing, once a major NCP critic but now ensconced in Khartoum as Presidential Advisor.

Intelligence officers from the GOSS armed forces, the Sudan People's Liberation Army, say ten 'units' comprising 'tens of thousands' of Khartoum's troops are on the North-South border, said an SPLM source. On the other side, the SPLA is arming and training. Obama flagged his support, telling the UN meeting: 'And we're leading the effort to transform the Sudan People's Liberation Army into a professional security force, including putting an end to the use of children as soldiers.' South Africa and Britain are among countries helping the SPLA transform itself from a guerrilla army into a professional force. Southern neighbours Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda may play a key role, given their economic and strategic interest in the South's independence. Should Khartoum return to war, the South could expect diplomatic and military support from its neighbours. Washington would be ready to support them, we understand.

As many warn of the threat of war, including the normally cautious, such as Episcopal Church Archbishop Daniel Deng, visiting London this week, and his British counterpart, Rowan Williams, some are looking beyond Abyei. The Bahr el Ghazal-Southern Darfur border is thinly populated and Darfur armed opposition groups use it to go South for talks and training, while Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army deploys there when Khartoum calls. If war resumes, this will matter more. Juba has good relations with 'all Darfur groups', observed one SPLM source, and if Khartoum attacks 'after the South's independence', it will once again be able to support them against Khartoum.

Stirring up trouble

Other kinds of violence threaten. At greatest risk are ordinary Southerners in the North, where they may number four million, mostly in the capital. Government media have been depicting Southerners as unwelcome and as illegal foreigners who must be sent home. Advocacy group Refugees International in a June report cited fears of 'large-scale revenge killing of Southerners in the North if even a single Northerner were harmed in the South'. Such fears recall the killing of Southerners in the capital in August 2005 and 1964. Such violence would be officially triggered but be depicted as spontaneous.

Late in September, Information Minister and regime Spokesman Kamal Mohamed Obeid declared that Southerners would lose their right to be Northern citizens if the South opted for separation. Presidential Advisor Mustafa Osman Ismael, first Secretary General of the People's Arab Islamic Conference, later seen as cradle of Al Qaida, called for people to join militias to fight. Foreign Minister Ali Ahmed Kurti, founder of the People's Defence Force militias that spearheaded the NCP jihad in the Nuba Mountains, South and Darfur, belittled Southern concerns.

In a 28 September interview with Asharq al Awsat, he responded to a question about Southern objections to being labelled 'abid' (slaves): 'It is irresponsible and a travesty that SPLM leaders talk about being insulted as "abids". Sudan is facing a new historical chapter and they talk about being insulted? People have insulted people in every country, and throughout history. The fact that SPLM leaders talk about this proves their short-sightedness, and they need to be more confident in themselves.' On the next day, the Saudi Arabian-financed paper's Editor, Tariq Alhomayed, lambasted the Khartoum regime in his editorial, concluding: 'Here we say that there is no hope in a solution to maintain Sudanese unity, since the wound is much bigger than the band-aid.' Given how much energy it has devoted to cultivating the Saudi royals, this is more damage for the NCP.

In fact, the South sounds increasingly confident. Salva is looking 'fit, engaged...and intellectually acute', observed one Western former official. The Security Council, on its 6 October visit to Juba, will have been clearly told, as one analyst put it, that this is 'a nation in waiting'.

The nation waiting in dread is in Northern Sudan, where the regime is set to intensify its repression whatever the referendum outcome. If the South goes, the main opponents of the Khartoum regime in Darfur, the Nuba Mountains and Eastern Sudan will see a big opposition vacuum. 'Many assume the CPA is only about the South,' said Monim el Gak, at the 4 October launch of Amnesty International's report 'Agents of Fear: the National Security Service in Sudan'. 'Immediately after the [April] elections, the NISS cracked down on civil society,' noted Monim, one of several rights activists tortured in 2008, predicting a repeat of such atrocities. With the help of the Arab-African bloc, the NCP last month tried, but failed, to block the renewal of UN Independent Expert on Human Rights Mohamed Chande Othman's mandate. However, he will not be able to protect Southerners in the North nor protect Southern leaders from assassination, another weapon in the NCP arsenal.

Sudan: High stakes in 2011 Sudan vote

2010-10-13T00:35:00.000-07:00

By MURITHI MUTIGA mmutiga@ke.nationmedia.com
Posted Saturday, October 9 2010 at 20:16

One of the most important votes in post-independence African history is less than 100 days away.

But there is still no consensus whether the outcome of the January 9 vote on self-determination in southern Sudan will result in the resumption of hostilities between the North and the South or signal the birth of Africa’s newest nation.

Tensions in Sudan, where a civil war claimed about two million lives before the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005, are at the highest level.

Southerners are expected to vote on whether to secede or maintain the unity of Africa’s largest country in a referendum guaranteed under the terms of the CPA deal which ended the nation’s decades-long civil war.

In interviews in Juba last week, most leaders in the South sounded a belligerent note, warning that any delay in holding the vote would almost certainly lead to bloody conflict.

“We do not like war,” said David Amuor Majur, secretary-general of the South Sudan Youth Forum for Referendum, whose organisation is campaigning for a vote for independence.

“Every war that has been fought in the South for the last half a century has been exported from Khartoum. What we are saying is that the vote for self-determination is a hard-won, non-negotiable right which we are ready to fight to preserve.”

Preparations for the referendum are well behind schedule. The president of Southern Sudan Salva Kiir has blamed President Omar al-Bashir’s ruling National Congress Party of sabotaging the work of the referendum commission charged with preparing for the vote.

Mr Bashir’s government has. in turn, blamed Mr Kiir’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) for breaching the terms of the CPA and openly agitating for independence.

In the last few weeks, multiple diplomatic efforts have been launched to avert a return to war. President Barak Obama entered the fray during the United Nations summit in New York last month, saying the United States would be actively engaged in ensuring the referendum takes place in a transparent manner.

The 15 UN Security Council ambassadors were in Juba last week where they met Mr Kiir and other senior SPLM figures before moving on to Khartoum for talks with Northern officials.

Kenya’s Foreign Affairs permanent secretary Thuita Mwangi said a round table meeting of all parties will be held in Nairobi in November to discuss contentious pre- and post-referendum issues.

The growing international concern over the situation in Sudan reflects the high stakes. The Southerners have been agitating for independence since the British and Egyptians abruptly handed power to the mainly Muslim Arab rulers in Khartoum in 1956.

Southerners, mainly Christian and animist, assert they are culturally distinct from the Northern population. Their fight for independence came at the cost of an estimated two million lives in one of the bloodiest conflicts since the end of the Second World War.

The CPA gave the South limited autonomy until January 2011 when its citizens will vote whether to maintain unity or separate from the North. A separate vote will be held in the oil-rich and fertile Abyei which straddles the two regions.

Last Friday, Mr Kiir urged the UN to deploy troops to the border region amid accusations that both sides have sent thousands of troops to the region in case war breaks out.

The twin referenda will be watched especially closely in Kenya and Uganda, two countries that have made considerable investments in the South.

Financial analyst Aly Khan Satchu said the element of risk cuts both ways. “There is clearly still considerable uncertainty around the referendum. People are not sure what the North wants and whether they will give up the South easily. But there is still scope for a deal that would see the North save face and allow the South to achieve independence.”

Evidence of Kenyan investment in the South is everywhere with local banks, insurance firms and airlines having established a foothold across the region.

“The massive foreign direct investment into the country is redefining the Kenyan national interest there,” Mr Satchu said. “There are numerous actors in the area, including civil servants helping to build local capacity, individual entrepreneurs and corporate organisations.”
But the question of whether the referendum will take place peacefully looms large. International Crisis Group’s Fouad Hikmat, one of the most respected Sudan analysts in the region, says neither side is ready for war due to the various vulnerabilities in the administrations in Khartoum and Juba.

Unresolved questions

But he said the unresolved questions, such as border demarcation, citizenship and the fate of the Abyei region could easily trigger conflict. “It is like a heavily inflated balloon. A little prick can cause a big explosion. But war is certainly avoidable.”

Mr Hikmat said most analysts have proposed a set of steps on which diplomats can focus to defuse the situation. He said both the North and the South should consider the possibility of political secession but agree on a post-referendum deal that retains some elements of economic and social integration to deal with the fears of groups such as pastoral communities that graze their cattle on both sides of the border.

This would also address the question of citizenship, considering the large number of Northerners and Southerners that live on both sides of the 1956 border.

Mr Hikmat said both sides should hold constitutional review conferences that would serve to develop new sets of laws to govern them. These meetings, involving all political forces, he said, would also serve to thrash out agreements to resolve the Darfur crisis and consolidate the peace agreements in East Sudan.

He said emphasis should also be laid on ensuring that justice is “part and parcel of conflict resolution in Darfur” and that the two main parties should lay strategies for national reconciliation after the referendum.

The Hunt

2010-10-04T21:22:00.000-07:00

We returned to Abyei today with the goal of speaking with the National Congress Party (NCP) deputy administrator, Rahman Abdelrahman, but he was out of the office for an unknown period of time. This seems to be the norm all the more here in Sudan than elsewhere that I have observed. It consistently intrigues me how many people work in political or government offices with so little work being done. But, on top of that, often people don’t know where their bosses are. Here, buildings are full of lingerers and the difference between “ be right back” and “back in two weeks” is the difference between asking the first person you speak to and talking to the person right next to him.

As we speak, an extremely important conference for the purposes of the Abyei Referendum is being held in Addis Ababa and so it is understandable that top authorities are not in their offices. In the meeting are a few leading Misseriya and Dinka Ngok Chiefs, politicians from the SPLM and NCP and international diplomats putting pressure on the two sides to agree and hopefully avoid conflict which, at this time, seems inevitable.

Day 17

2010-10-03T21:20:00.000-07:00

Day off and that two-word phrase should conjure images of relaxation and peace but it more left me with a feeling that I am in very minimal security prison. We took a walk around the immediate area but there really is nothing to see. So, we came back and continued reading and sitting and drinking and waiting for another work day to come.

Sudan: At Stake

2010-10-02T03:36:00.000-07:00

Key Post-Referendum Issues

JUBA, 20 May 2010 (IRIN) - Southern Sudan will in early 2011 hold a referendum to determine whether to remain part of a united Sudan or become a separate state. The referendum was a core component of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended decades of conflict between the Southern Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the Khartoum government.

Should the south choose to separate, the two sides will have to negotiate over various key issues:

Borders - Five major border areas are in dispute. The first, and perhaps most potentially explosive, is around the oil-producing region of Abyei. The region will decide in a separate referendum also in January whether to join the south or the north. The borders were outlined in a July 2009 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, but demarcation has stalled. At the same time, the northern Misseriya community, largely drawn out of Abyei under the new borders, has denounced the ruling.

According to SPLM secretary-general, Pagan Amum, four other areas are in dispute: the northern-most border separating Renk county in Upper Nile from the north’s White Nile state, the borderline running north-south between the south’s Unity state and the north’s Southern Kordofan (this will determine who controls the Heglig oil field), whether the Bahr al-Arab river forms the exact border between the south’s Bahr el-Ghazal and Darfur in the north, and which river forms the exact western-most dividing line between Western Bahr el-Ghazal and Southern Darfur.

Oil - An estimated 82–95 percent of the oil fields are in the south (depending on where the border is drawn). Oil revenue accounts for 98 percent of Southern Sudan’s government revenue, and 60 percent of the national budget (according to 2008 figures). The sole export route for the landlocked south is a pipeline running to the north to Port Sudan on the Red Sea. Under the CPA, the two sides divide proceeds from oil pumped in the south. They will have to negotiate how to share oil revenue, as well as any user fees levied against the south for using the pipeline and refineries. The two parties must also negotiate how to honour current oil contracts.

Water - Under a 1929 agreement between Egypt (which had control over Sudan) and Britain, and a 1959 agreement between Egypt and Sudan, they control up to 90 percent of the water. Will Southern Sudan recognize these old treaties, or will it work with Nile basin countries in eastern Africa to work towards a “fair” accord? If it honours the colonial pacts, as it has indicated to the Egyptians, the south must then negotiate with Khartoum over what percentage of the 18.5 billion cubic metres of water designated to Sudan it can claim.

Nationality - The fate of southerners living in the north and northerners living in the south has to be negotiated. Questions of citizenship and rights will have to be addressed, as well as ease of travel between the two. Egypt and Sudan have signed a “Four Freedoms” agreement, granting Egyptians and Sudanese free movement, residence, work, and ownership in either of the two countries. Could something similar be decided between the north and south?

Debts and Assets - The south’s share of Sudan’s sizeable national debt – estimated by the International Monetary Fund in 2008 at US$34 billion – will be another issue. Analysts say the north will want a seceding south to take on a portion of its public debt burden. SPLM officials have rejected such suggestions, often accusing the north of using that borrowed money to wage war against southerners. There is also the question of national assets and the properties of state-owned companies in the south.

Currency - After the CPA, Sudan’s official currency, the dinar, was replaced with the Sudanese pound. If the south secedes, will the north and south continue under the pound? A newly independent south could choose to create its own currency, or switch for a period to an established foreign currency such as the US dollar. Analysts say a decision to maintain the Sudanese pound on both sides could bond the two economies together.

International agreements - A state enters pacts every year with other countries on a variety of matters. Southern Sudan would have to decide whether to honour international agreements reached by Sudan, or whether to transfer or scrap some.

Security - The two parties must agree on what happens to key aspects of national security. They will have to decide how to demobilize the Joint Integrated Units and what would happen to the southern portion of Sudan’s national intelligence apparatus

Sudan - Analysis

2010-10-02T03:14:00.000-07:00

Analysis: Referendum raises expulsion fears*

KHARTOUM, 27 September 2010 (IRIN) - Forced expulsions, violent recriminations, mass exodus, peaceful co-existence - just some of the possible outcomes for hundreds of thousands of Southern Sudanese living in the North, and to a lesser extent, vice versa, after a January referendum when the South is likely to vote to transform its semi-autonomy into full independence.

“We are worried for the future, of what happens after the referendum,” said James Jok, a vegetable seller who has lived in the Northern capital Khartoum since fleeing violence in the Southern state of Jonglei over two decades ago.

“I am frightened that if there is independence, we will just be told, ‘go home’,” he added. “My home is now here in Khartoum – my children are teenagers and have known nothing else. I don’t want to leave.”

“I want to vote for an independent South, and I would like to go home,” Halima Arop, from the Southern border state of Unity, said in Khartoum. “But I am worried that we will not be allowed to leave peacefully.”

Sudan’s information minister Kamal Obeid fuelled such fears on 25 September when he said Southerners in the North would not enjoy citizenship rights if secession was the outcome of the referendum.

"They will not enjoy citizenship rights, jobs or benefits, they will not be allowed to buy or sell in Khartoum market and they will not treated in hospitals," Obeid said in statements carried by public radio.

"We will not even give them a needle in the hospital,” he said.

Tensions

The 9 January referendum is the climax of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended Sudan’s 22-year-long civil war between North and South over governance, resources, religion and ethnicity. An estimated two million people died and four million were forced to flee their homes.

Tensions remain high between the former enemies, however, and slow progress on the referendum process, including negotiations over reciprocal citizenship rights, has generated frustration and suspicion on both sides.

In the South, the mood on the streets appears overwhelmingly pro-secession. On 8 September, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said a Southern vote to split was “inevitable”.

In Khartoum, the growing inevitability of secession has elicited bitterness. “If the South wants to be its own country, then [it] can take its own people,” said clothing stall-owner Ahmed al Hillu, a Northerner. “Sudan is one country, and it should stay united – that way people from the South can stay here and be welcome. If not, then they should go to their new country.”

Differences

The complexities of identity in Sudan, where many people belong to several ethnic, religious and linguistic groups, often blur the distinction between Northerner and Southerner. Many of those classified as “Southerners” in the North have spent all their lives in Khartoum after their families fled the war.

Population figures are contested: a 2008 census calculated some 500,000 Southerners in the North, but Southern government estimates put the figure at some 1.5 million people, mainly based around the capital Khartoum. [More estimates here]

“If the South separates, Southerners in the North and Northerners in the South will be especially vulnerable to violence and loss of citizenship, resulting in statelessness,” the Washington-based advocacy group Refugees International stated in a June report. Violence, in either region, could spark retaliation on the streets of the opposing capital, it added.

The report went on to cite fears of “large-scale revenge killing of Southerners in the North if even a single Northerner were harmed in the South”.

To encourage Southerners to return home, the humanitarian ministry in Juba has released plans for a US$10m "emergency repatriation programme", launched under the slogan "Come Home to Choose".

Some aid workers are sceptical about the plan, noting that there is little time left to implement the proposal. Besides, the South's already struggling resources would be swamped if thousands of people arrived each day.

Returns have so far been affected by localized armed conflicts, lack of services, land disputes, and weak government capacity. "IDPs and refugees who returned to their places of origin after the CPA often found their houses and plots occupied by individuals or [government] staff," the Norwegian Refugee Council said in August.

"The process of restituting land and property rights is slow and has sometimes led to violence between returnees and occupants who are often IDPs themselves," it added.

Potential displacement

In August 2010, Southern Sudan’s humanitarian minister, James Kok Ruea, urged aid agencies to plan for a massive displacement of Southerners after the referendum. "People will be coming, and we will not be prepared."

Protection agencies are working to ensure the returns are voluntary. "In the context of the referendum, the UN and the humanitarian community at large are keen that procedures for voter registration, notably in the North and overseas, be finalized, widely disseminated and accessible," Mireille Girard, UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) deputy representative for Southern Sudan, told IRIN.

"This constitutes an important criterion for decision about return, for both IDPs in the North and for refugees,” she said.

"Related to the referendum is the issue of citizenship and residency rights which are still under discussion between the CPA parties," Girard added. "It is important that such information be made available to concerned populations, including Northerners in the South, as soon as possible. This will be critical in people's decisions about return."

Livelihoods threatened

The referendum presents Sudan with more nuanced options than merely unity versus partition. In the event of secession, it is not yet clear whether the border will be a “hard” one between two fully separate states, with restricted movement and visa requirements, or “soft” with free movement guaranteed for people and goods, and guaranteed residency rights.

“Too firm a barrier would threaten pastoralist livelihoods in North and South alike, create hardships for Southerners who rely on goods and services from the North and unnecessarily restrict communities which see the benefit of joint cross-border initiatives and interaction,” the International Crisis Group stated in a recent report.

Numerous thorny issues will have to be negotiated, the report says, including, “who can cross the border; their legal status; how they are to be identified; where, when and for how long they can cross; and the rights and responsibilities of individuals on both sides of the boundary (including economic activity, grazing fees, social arrangements and taxation)”.

John Ashworth, in a September briefing published by the IKV Pax Christi organization, noted: “There are fears of large-scale migrations, either voluntary or, worse still, enforced. This could well lead to a humanitarian emergency, and a number of NGOs are gearing up for this eventuality.”

But he added that the North depends on Southern labour in many areas and so was “unlikely to expel Southerners en masse”.

Northern fears

In the South, Northerners also worry about the consequences. “I fear that if there are problems in the North, if they force Southerners out from Khartoum, then we will be in a bad situation here in the South,” said Ali Said, a trader in the Southern capital Juba.

Born and brought up in Juba, his family roots lie in the Northern state of El-Gezira. “I wish to stay in the South, but I am frightened that any violence there [in the North] would be copied here in Juba,” he added.

Northerners form a key part of the business community in the South. There are also large populations of people who made a new home in the South after fleeing violence in the north-western region of Darfur. “It is impossible for me to go home, because my home is still at war,” said Mohammed Abdelrahman, a Darfuri living in Juba. “But if the South becomes a new country, will I able to stay?”

*This report has been updated to include remarks by information minister Kamal Obeid.

History and other lessons

2010-10-01T21:10:00.000-07:00

A strange storm blew in a few hours ago and I’ve been in my tent ever since reading further the Modern History of Sudan, organizing my stuff finally into stacks on the other bed. Whoever owns the suitcase and hanging boxer shorts probably will be back eventually so I tried to be respectful but I really needed to be settled at least in a small way. So, I stacked my clothing on the other bed so that I can access them easier compared with rustling around in my backpack daily and pulling out a undeviatingly wrinkled mess of damp cotton and waiting for the warmth of my body to iron it flatter. Upon the mound of clothing, I put the blanket that was on my bed as a fuzzy defense against creepy crawlers digging in and surprising me (and me them) when I choose an article of clothing and we meet by chance.

Dinner was a nice spicy bean dish over rice with some not so interesting sausages. Saskia and I dined alone in the dark. Maybe no one else wanted to brave the drizzle or maybe the camp is currently empty. Mother cat and her two kittens watched us patiently waiting for me to give up on some part of the meal and pass it down to them. Frogs came out of their hiding as always for this time of day and begin to pounce wherever we happen to step. One of these days I will unfortunately step on one. It just seems like it would be impossible not to. My phone goes over with a text message while I am away getting myself tea in the lightless area where we three times a day can mysteriously find food waiting for us. While dishing up the food, dirt from the rafters fell into the pot of rice after we’d already taken our portion. So I wonder what it is I am not seeing as I shake out loose tea leaves into a strainer and slowly pour hot water from the pitcher over them and watch for shimmering that indicates that the water level has reached the top. The sugar container is off and I remember the first time I took tea and saw an ant crawling around on the sugar. If I were to pause for every observation or thought, it would be hard to do anything. With a spoon that I hope is clean but lack the light to verify, I scoop some crystals out, drop them in my cup, stir and then head back to the aforementioned text. It is Brian the security officer asking if we are still alive because “it’s Friday and I want a pint.” I reassure him that we are but stuck in our tents in a torrential storm and wish him a tasty brew while we battle a plague of frogs. Later he responds simply, “Eat them.”

The section of my book was the concluding period of Sadiq al-Mahdi who was overthrown in a coup d’état which ushered in the Omar al-Bashir era we are still in 21 years later. Over dinner I was told that Sadiq is still alive and some would very much like to see him return to power, including supposedly some in Washington. I don’t know if this is true about US desire to see him return despite the fact that he was the last legitimately elected president of Sudan. But, it would be ironic if the west were to help him considering that Al-Bashir has been indicted on crimes against humanity by the ICC but it was Sadiq who started with the campaign of using the murahilim and then janjawid as government sanctioned killers. The Darfur and South Sudan mass murders that have resulted in well over two million corpses littering the Sudanese landscape and clogging up village wells. The format that Sadiq’s rebels started was to enter a Dinka village at dawn and kill all the men who weren’t able to escape. Then they move on to raping all the women, capturing all the children, burning down the village and filling the wells with Dinka bodies that hide some of the evidence but also poisons the water supply. Bashir continued with this subcontracting of murders and expanded out to Darfur where other troublesome people needed to be slaughtered. Looking at the civil war between North and South, you could legitimately say that that it is the Islamic Arabs against the Animist and Christian African south. But, that is only a veneer of the dynamic. Darfur though is another story because the bulk of Darfurians (or Fur since Dar means land of and Fur is the name of the people who live there - just as Tanzania’s capital is Dar-e-Salam or Land of peace) are Muslims and some of the murdered are Arabs. This place is a mess and these referenda are almost sure to reignite fighting and I will be ringside but hopefully no closer when it begins.

I will live in Abyei in a few weeks and the more I read about the area and its history, the more chilled I am. The blank stares and responses of “Good Luck” when I tell people where I am going to work begins to make sense. Just the other day, the leader of the Baggara Misseriya went to the United Nations in Muglad which is in South Kordofan north of Abyei to state that if they are blocked from the vote in Abyei Referendum, they will “burn everything down and war will begin.” Abyei, the northern outpost of town that resembles a wild west town, is the traditional grazing land of the Misseriya pastoralists and despite the fact that they, and other nomads that would pass over the border should the country split there, are legally ensured their traditional rights in perpetuity, their long feud with the Ngok Dinka who mostly populate Abyei and surrounding areas doesn’t allow them to trust.

On top of this, a National Congress Party (NCP), party of al-Bashir, minister has called for all youth to prepare for war should the south vote for secession. Another northern government minister is claiming that all southerners living in the north will be stripped of their citizenships, despite the fact that citizenship is enshrined in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended the 21 year civil war on July 9, 2006. On January 9, 2011, various referenda should be held and the final state of the nation state of Sudan will be resolved exactly six years from the signing, on July 9, 2011. There are rumors that the Carter Center fully intends to ask us all to stay until then but has failed to mention that our tickets on February 28th, 2011 is only a first draft to this job.

There is a lot of blood in this area’s history. Northwest from where I lay under my mosquito net, Darfurians are going through what people in the town I am right now went through in the last years of the 1980s onwards. Though there reportedly is no intimidation now here in Agok, the Executive Secretary of this county, a youthful Dinka with a adolescent tuft of hair on his chin and a dazzling set of perfect white teeth told us through an interpreter that, “what happens in Abyei is felt here.” SAF (Sudanese Armed Forces) troops are preparing for war in Nyama, a village north of Abyei and the Misseriya are settling in permanent structures so that they can claim they are residents and not just consistent visitors after the rains have cleared.
In December, a month after we’ve moved to our new home across the street from the UN compound, we anticipate seeing them arrive with their cattle and guns.

Tomorrow we intended to head up there to speak with members of the civil society community who have been actively and reportedly peacefully holding rallies twice a month – on the 9th to commemorate the signing of the CPA and the 22nd to commemorate the Haag Decision – but because of the rain storm that appears to continue, the roads will be a disaster. So, I don’t know what we will do, this last day before our weekend one day off.
Under the CPA, border demarcation in Abyei was supposed to be determined by a 15 member council consisting of 5 each of Northerners, Southerners and Foreign Experts. Each was supposed to examine maps and evidence on where the lines were in 1905 when the Condiminium government of British carved Abyei out of Bahr El-Gazel and put it in South Kordofan. Since then the Misseriya and Dinka have fought. Now the lines must be redrawn but the Abyei Border Commission (ABC) decision was rejected by the Misseriya and since the North is afraid of a civil war in the north, rejected it as well. The decision then went to experts in the Hague and where the ABC gave 18,000 units, the Hague came up with lines that only gave 10,000. Still the South accepted since they want almost anything that will end the conflict. But, the north was not happy with this decision either.

We desperately need to get into the Misseriya community so that we can hear their side of the story. That requires an invitation whereby we can meet chiefs after which we can find an interpreter and then study further.

I just learned a valuable lesson. At night, use the latrine with no light because the bugs don’t like it. On the way back, I saw on the path a cockroach-looking creature 4 or 5 inches long but with thick antennae that look like the horns that cattle the Dinka and Nuer adore, very long and gently curved.

Around Day 13

2010-09-29T20:57:00.000-07:00

Today is day two of our encampment in the US NGO Mercy Corps compound and I am delighted to feel a cool breeze indicating that it most likely will rain tonight. This also means that the insects are not as voracious. But, this also means that the steadily drying roads will be messed up again. Two Carter Center drivers are on day ten of their attempt to get vehicles to a city that should’ve only taken three days. First they were stuck in the mud en-route for three days. Then once out, they drove back and up a detour road but were arrested for entering the north of the country supposedly illegally. Despite the fact that they had the permit to enter South Kordofan, it was only written in English (the language of the South) and not Arabic. So, after being interrogated for several hours, all our materials inspected including hundreds of pages of briefing materials in English, they were released due to the interventions of Carter Center staff in Khartoum and Juba. They drove down to try another route and got stuck in the mud again, this time for a few hours. When we arrived yesterday after our eight hour drive up from Wau, we brought them familiar faces and some much needed cash. Reportedly the area they need to drive through hasn’t seen rain in five days so they intended to go tomorrow. But, that could now change if the lighting and storm clouds drop their stuff on the gooey Sudanese soil. As for Saskia and I, it also will hinder our movement.

We made our first visit to the northern outpost that is our Area of Responsibility (AoR) in the Carter Center’s referendum observation mission. At stake is the partition of Africa’s largest state into two countries as well as a few referenda that are called Popular Consultations. Basically, they deal with disputed border demarcations and land ownership. If the South Sudan referendum’s outcome is unity, then, for example, the results of the Abyei referendum will determine what side of the line in a single country they will reside. But, if it is for secession, then they decide what country they will be in.

Our first stop was to the United Nations to see if we can live on their base. But we were told in very clear language that there is no room for us either short-term or long-term. Being that there are no hotels and no guest houses and, for that matter we discovered, almost no buildings, we had only one other option. Across the street is an NGO compound that we’d been told was willing to house us if we come in with our own house. In this case, we’d have to build a prefabricated container providing our own generator and sanitation system. By the time we’d gotten this far, we learned that this possibility was already being pursued but delivery of our containers will take about three weeks. So, until then we will stay in this compound in tents with no air conditioning, spotty electricity, no fans, crappy showers, and bad food.

It’s a lovely cool night tonight but last night was pretty bad. Nonetheless, I found a way to improve my comfort and ended up sleeping somewhat well. By the time I settled into my tent last night I was tired from bumping along for eight hours after a not so restful evening before. The tent, a large canvas structure about the size of a tiny cabin with two twin sized beds on either side, a plastic lawn table in the corner and two chairs, is so used that the front panel no longer zips completely up. So insects, of which there are many; frogs, of which the number makes it seem apocryphal; snakes, scorpions and cats can enter relatively freely. I was already insect bitten, sweat coated and a bit depressed looking at the sad shape this camp we would have to stay in for two days is. Everything is in poor shape from the dilapidated shed where the offices run by a strange bald 30-year old Wyoming man are, to the paths that flow around the living areas (all tents) to the two latrines and showers. I thought that I would take a shower and saw the mass hordes of bugs flying around the lamp when I approached but disregarded the evidence. So, when I entered, I freaked as hundreds flew toward me, dozens smacked into my face and one long legged black creature grasped onto my finger. Flicking them off in a none so dignified panic, I turned around and went back to my tent. Inside the unzipped structure, I plugged in the floor stand fan but got nothing. The back of the fan was off, so I wondered if it was broken. But, with some experimentation, I found that the outlet, though it comes from the single bulb above, is dead. My blood started to boil. The previous night we were in a ridiculously expensive hotel but the giant loud ceiling fan kicked out hardly any wind. I woke in the middle of the night and felt that my skin was inflamed. From what I could tell, the blades were spinning the wrong direction meaning that it was blowing wind up to the ceiling. Adding insult to this, I had to pee which occurs multiple times a night as if I am an old man. I presume it is the high humidity. I put on my clothes and tramp down the outdoor corridor to the toilets. It was greatly cooler outside than in my room and now I was more irritated and thus discomfort became worse and worse. When I returned to my room, I noticed that the useless fan simply is crap and not spinning wrong. In the center of the room there was a slight breeze. So, deciding between protecting myself from malaria under the mosquito net or being cooler, I moved the mattress to the center of the room and slept relatively nicely for the remainder of the night.

Speaking of malaria, it is Wednesday and that means I should take my prophylaxis.
I forgot to mention in the list of beasties the bats. In Wau a few nights ago, at the location of the aforementioned story, we drank beers along a river that supposedly has native hippos (they emigrated recently it appears so no luck on my part) and in the trees and sky were silhouetted hundreds of bats. The next day we arrive at the current camp and in the rickety building that houses the useless fridge with never-ending and invaluable supply of bottled water, something grazed my cheek. I jokingly mentioned to Saskia who was standing outside that I’d been attacked by a bat because she was in the middle of an ongoing diatribe about the many invaders here (ironically, she’s spent years in Sudan and one one-year trip, yet she is spooked more than me). A few minutes later, I go back in and point my puny flash light up at the pitched ceiling and see a half dozen tiny bats hanging from the beams. I just got back from that same room and spent some time looking at them. In a dreadful way, they are kind of cute. An insect just hit me in the head then landed on my keyboard. We have lightning bugs here, it appears! Up to now, the most exotic thing I have seen in the animal kingdom is a large white bird with black head and long curved beak. Very African and very pretty! Also, while checking email earlier today, the compound’s neighbors gave me a stereotypical African moment when there was a loud deep drumming and a chorus of child’s voices rang out in unison for a few minutes a happy song.

Every day things get better and worse. Actually, it would be more right to say that every day gets worse and then better. For example, building on the memory of that night in the hotel and then adding not only a bad fan but no fan and in a room with horrible ventilation and no real bug control, I began getting depressed and frustrated. I wrote a few words to capture the situation but gave up on that quickly and instead tucked the ugly mosquito net into the corners of the bed, put my bottle of water on the floor along with my cell phone with alarm set and tried to sleep. The heat was bad and my skin felt ugly under all that dust and sweat. The mosquito net gave me a claustrophobic feeling and I was pissed that I couldn’t use the fan. But, I realized that I could indulge this or rise to the adventure. So, I slid out of bed, found a shirt and poured water all over it, working it around. Then, back in the mosquito womb, I laid it on my body, moved the pillow to prop the net up so it barely touches me and fell into a night of decent sleep. Once in the middle of the night I had to pour more water on my makeshift coolant blanket but all in all, it was an improved evening in a worse situation.
Today we saw the grand town that is getting so much fuss. It is on everyone’s lips and as a result, the UN compound can’t give us accommodation. We were tasked with looking for a bank but found that there are none. We looked for a guest house but were told there are none. All NGO compounds are either full or empty and not accepting tenants. So, we will have a prefab home made for us but that will take a few weeks to arrive from Khartoum. In the meantime, Saskia and I are staying put in this compound so I will have to make the best of it. Adventure and my boy scout merit badge dictates that I do.

I laugh now, this being posted here in July of 2011 to read how freaked I was having to spend "two days" in that camp. We ended up being there for three and a half months.

Photos of the Agok Mercy Corps compound can be found here

Travel fatigue

2010-09-27T22:27:00.000-07:00

I am now in some other state. Is this Western Bahr El-Gazhal? I’m not quite sure. But, it is hotter albeit less humid. It’s very hot and I don’t know where my mission computer is. I stink. The last few days I’ve been doing without deodorant. What is the point? I pull out a giant OCHA map to see where we are but I still don’t know. We are in Wau at a ridiculously expensive guest house along the main river. It is a delightful town in a monochromatic sort of way. The red dirt that saturates the landscape paints also the walls, homes, public buildings and people. I presume this isn’t a unique condition for Wau. Our colleagues will stay here while in ten hours Saskia and I will depart up the long muddy road to Ogok (Agok?) where we will stay over in a Mercy Corps tent for a day or two or three or whatever. I am confused by the linguistics of Sudan. Signs here are in English or Arabic or both and yet so often people seem to speak neither language. I had a lovely evening. Don’t get me wrong. Something about it rubbed me the wrong way and I can’t positively put my finger on the reason. Maybe it is the fact that the people I spent the evening with just sit around a table spewing “war stories” - which, for full disclosure, I love telling. But, is there anything else? For a short time the discussion was on the upcoming referendum and the peculiarities of it. But, then it returned to interesting road stories or staff stories or what not. I imagine that I’m being a hypocrite. In a few months when I have stories to share, I will enjoy the company. But, for now, I am itching to get into the field, stabilized and working.
    The team in Wau have a house and seeing it first hand made me realize how destabilizing and potentially disastrous the presumed living arrangements Saskia and I will have will be. I need some base. I need some unslippery foundation upon which to stand so that I can do great things. We both want to find a house in Abyei.
    I should go to sleep.
    I don’t understand the people here and fearfully am trying to compartmentalize them into something I do know. I hope to stop doing that and learn.

Itching to Start

2010-09-26T16:28:00.000-07:00

I have the sense that most people know more about what I am about to embark into than I do. There is a soberness when Sudanphiles hear I am responsible for reporting on Abyei followed by the resounding, “It’ll be the most interesting.”
I’ve just returned from several hours around a picnic table with Carter Center staff drinking beer, laughing and sharing stories. Saskia and I are ready to go and get the job started. We’ve sat around and passively planned things out in a sketch. But, it’s time to start...to see...to understand better.

What am I getting into?

2010-09-24T23:07:00.000-07:00

I woke this morning early to the sound of someone vomiting repeatedly and then forcefully blowing their nose. Again and again this person whose anguished retching seemed to come from within my bedroom startled me. If not from the silence but out of sleep. When I rose at the alarm, the experience was out of my mind. I lifted the mosquito net and slid out through the tight opening and waddled into the bathroom. At 8:30, the bathroom already smelled and the air was thick with humidity. My face staring back at me from the bathroom mirror looked dreadful. I stepped into the shower and bathed under surprisingly warm water. This is my seventh shower in my metal container and only the second one where I wasn’t shocked into alertness by the absence of warm water.
I still have no shampoo. The “supermarket” just beyond the reception building has a strange mix of useless, incomprehensible, and inappropriate items. If I need hair straightener, I know where to go. If I need 9x12 brown envelopes, I’d go to the same place. But I haven’t located shampoo. There isn’t a second during the day when I am not sticky with moisture. I step out of the curtainless shower and, though the water wasn’t any more than acceptably warm, the room feels as if I’d had a blazing hot shower in a confined space. I know the sensation will extend out onto the concrete path that heads down along a corridor of other white steel containers, to the red dirt volleyball court, to the stone tile terrace around the eating area and beyond. Breakfast consists of the same tasty but redundant selection of sausages, omelette, fresh fruit and instant coffee. Claudius tells me that my partner, Saskia had expressed concern about me since she too heard the vomiting person and wondered if it was me. That poor person’s plight immediately came back to me.
Most people are leaving or have left today and those of us who are heading to Wau were supposed to leave. But, yesterday at the international office, after receiving a huge brick of Sudanese pound notes, nineteen thousand one hundred Sudanese pounds to be exact, as well as vague instructions on what we will do upon arrival to our area of responsibility, Brian the security officer came out of his office and told us the flight on 748 Airlines has been cancelled and that there is not another out until Monday. So, a few of us spent the day reading material out along the Nile on couches that are broken and lumpy and said goodbye and good luck to LTO colleagues as they slowly trickled off towards the airport and their various destinations. Manel and Maimuna flew to Khartoum and will some time soon head to the Blue Nile State. Anne-Gaelle and Abubakkir will stay in Khartoum. Zenobia and Kenneth took off early via car to Western Equatoria. Matteo and his temporary partner, Casey who is one of the legal analysts, headed to Eastern Equatoria. Marte and Manuel will fly out to Bentiu tomorrow if their car was successfully pulled out of the mud and thus will meet them there. Saskia and I have been tossing around ideas on our AoR passively all day. All we really have come up with is, “It’s doable.”
Saskia and I were the first ones to be told where we will go. In secretive tones, the upper management leaned over the rickety table toward us, pointed out the sketch of the area, asked us how we feel about it, then repeated the process. My ignorance at what Abyei is became apparent to me. I don’t know why they are so concerned. I suppose the fact that two years ago the town was completely destroyed in an armed uprising has something to do with it.
The referendum everyone is talking about is that that will decide if South Sudan becomes an independent country, dividing in the west at the line under South Darfur state, extending across to the east along Southern Kordofan state, up the northern edge of Upper Nile state that borders Blue Nile. This will tear off a third of Africa’s largest country and create a new nation that stands ethnically distinct from the Northerns. But, of course, this is not a clean cut. There are traditional grazing pastures that northern tribes use in the south, traditions that are worth fighting for. On top of that, there is oil. Oil fields in Unity state and Warrap push crude out and sends it north through Southern Kordofan and other states to Port Sudan. So, oil in the Southern gets to market via the far north. These two reasons plus a few more are reason why there is another referendum, that about the status of Abyei which is officially not a part of the north or the south. If they vote to align with their northern ethnic ties - for example the Misseriyya nomadic tribes - and the secession referendum is for unity, then not much will will change besides official recognition of which direction they face. But, if they vote to be a part of their southern ethnic alignments - such as the Ngok Dinka tribe - and secession is voted for, then they will be a section of the northern boundary of a new country.
“An interesting thing about going to Abyei is no matter where you go in the world, Afghanistan or Egypt or Germany, people have heard of it. ‘Abyei! That is the tinderbox that virtually was destroyed in 2008 and if a war breaks out, it certainly will begin there.’ But, if you go to Yambio, people have to rush to a map to find out where it is,” said one of the logisticians to me yesterday. I hope it’s not as humid as it is here.
The plan is for the Wau team of Claudius and Magnhild plus the Abyei team to fly up to Wau. They will stay in their house compound and we will stay in a secure guest house that night. Then the next day our driver will pick me and Saskia up and we will drive north to Kwajok and further into Warrap state along unpaved and inevitably very muddy roads to Agok where there is a Mercy Corps compound we are allowed to stay at for a few days if need be in one of their tents. Or, also there, we can choose from two other INGO compounds, one also in tents, the other in a tuktul, the traditional clay walled and reed roof round huts we see everywhere. But, Agok is reportedly about an hour from Abyei. At night, the car stays with us and the driver goes home. But, since our Dinka driver is from Abyei, this causes a big problem except when it is only for a few days versus 5 and a half months. So, we need to be in Abyei at least most of the time. That means we have to stay at the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) compound. The problem here is that Abyei, being a hotspot, gets a lot of visitors and we will get low priority for accommodations and thus it is not assured. We will stay there but it is a certainty that we will be homeless from time to time in the most security intensive place in the referendum observation area.
When Owen, our LTO Coordinator, and Sanne, the mission director, sat Saskia and I down in the dining area and told us they’d like us to be partners and that they want to send us to Abyei, the word ‘flexible’ came up very frequently.
So, we will go up there in a few days and hopefully be able to stay in town. The first week will be full of logistics and non-referendum meetings such as building a network with the security officials from international to state to local. We need to meet with all levels of aid so that if we are in trouble, we’ve paved the way to get out.
It’s nearly midnight. Last night I went to bed at nearly three a.m. as I got stuck with some Russian pilots drinking beers and hanging out so I am tired now. Tomorrow we may go into Juba again, only my third time out of the Oasis Camp. Our accommodations are right on the Nile seemingly on the outskirts of this, the South Sudan’s capital city. A few days in there was an organized dinner out in the evening after which we went back. Then, yesterday, one of the LTOs who has spent considerable time in Sudan organized a city tour so we got to get out during the day and see some sites. But, even then, the windows of the bus were frosted. The only way to see out was via the front window, the open side doors and the back window. When I go to an unfamiliar place, I notice in time how we see in layers. I take in the big elements the first time. I see the landscape and the buildings, a reoccurring sight such as shaven headed men with big shiny sunglasses zig zagging through traffic expertly on motorcycles. These Chinese vehicles are ubiquitous. In the market, I noticed how similar the stands are to what I’ve seen in Central Asia but labeled with Arabic script. The ground is horribly uneven and muddy and smells occasionally of sewage. The items are usually cheap and bear the many languages of the developing countries they are from. Here, I see men and women in a myriad of shapes and looks indicative of their blood, lineage and faith. Many have scarified foreheads. One has a series of 6 or 7 very straight lines across his brow. A stunningly beautiful and deeply black women with shaved head walks in a flowing brightly colored shawl fluttering behind her as she moves from stand to stand examining cell phones, some bearing the silhouette and name of the head of state of my country. It is so much to take in and much doesn’t get in.
After the market and then Roman Catholic church that Salva Kiir, First VP of Sudan goes to, complete with two rows of plush leather chairs in the front, we see other important places such as a memorial park for John Garang, revolutionary and dictatorial hero of the South Sudanese people. Reading up on him and many things about this country, though, shows the complexity. Though he is revered, he was also opposed heavily due to his cruel ways. Also, he fought for unity not separation. There is little black and white.
We visit a pharmacy and Saskia and I get some antibiotics plus rehydration power plus inquire about malaria tests. They don’t carry those and don’t know where to get them. I’m on prophalaxys anyway and there are many opinions on the nature of malaria. At JIT, a real supermarket, I don’t know what to get and only purchase some hand washing powder. Saskia gets a rope which should be very useful in our camp wherever we end up.
Then we feast on Ethiopian and head back in a very leisurely afternoon. When next I go out, this time to go to the Carter Center headquarters, I sit in the front seat of a Toyota Hilux and am silent nearly the whole way. The tour before, passing by all these things and a million other things, stopping at the front gate of the UN compound in Juba and watching the giant humanitarian planes fly out, I didn’t notice this much. The vitality and decay smacks me in the face. I begin to feel a bit overwhelmed. When that night a UN staffer who comes to the Oasis Camp asks me how I feel about going to Abyei, I don’t know how to answer. I am truly excited and happy. But, what am I getting myself into?

Juba Sudan

2010-09-18T12:43:00.003-07:00

September 17, 2010 - Addis Ababa airport - Eurotrash wanders around dual halls of airport. I wish I had a cigarette right now because the environment requires it. A man in attire that resembles those worn by Saudis walks by with his entourage. A thin blue-collar looking man with French accented English converses with two men down the end of the bar. The building is mostly windows and many men with long poles are cleaning those glass walls above me. People are sharp, smiling. The French man walks across the corridor. Glimmering smiles peer out of thin faces. I feel sloppily dressed compared to the average person here. The waitress folds flatware into napkins in preparation for the next wave of diners. My vegetable sandwich comes. I don’t quite know what is in it. A Sony boom box in front of me on the counter is turned up louder and the waitress sings along with the mellow tune. The French dude is back. Beautiful Ethiopian flight attendants walk past in formation like ducks to a pond. Time for local draught beer. “Big small?” she asks. Big. Now that I’m off that neverending flight from DC to Rome then onwards to Addis Ababa, I am awake. I can go to sleep in twelve hours. Briefings start day after tomorrow. That will be Sunday
There are a lot of Chinese people here. A half dozen American yahoos just walked by with camo hats and redneck mustaches. Then again, they could be South African. But then again again, I noticed them sitting in the back of the plane from DC. This seems to be a pretty major transit city. The French dude is back. He keeps going across the way to the gate then returning. He’s going to Dakar. So are several dozen Chinese men. I like the voices of the man and woman on the radio. Whatever they are discussing, there is a calmness about their tones.
People walk around with grins on their faces. There are a lot of people mopping, cleaning and organizing. I sit by the glass wall and look off to the city which is just barely beyond the outskirts of the airport. Several multistoried buildings have cranes rotating around their cement frames. Kids play in the lush green field. A man with chunks of hair missing like a fuzzy stuffed toy that has been played with too much sits next to me. He has a thicker boned face that seems to me to indicate he too is a foreigner in this place. What is this symbol I see on the passports of an Ethiopian couple that walked by?
It’s a five point star with lines coming out where the lines intersected. I look across the way to one of the many stores in a row -
H.L. Trading Cultural Clothes & Goods
Email: hiwoti@yahoo.com Ph 251-1-64 85 08 Cell: 251-9-40 10 44
A woman with a large mane of black hair and tall forehead is busy dusting all the objects on a glass display case and moving them somewhere out of my sightline, blocked by a rack of colorful shawls. On the octagonal stand are flags - green, yellow and red striped with blue circle in the center and that lined star where the lines are yellow. An indian or some such man follows a toddler who crawls around on the white marble floor. I smile at the sight of the baby in pink velveteen and he smiles, then picks her up and tosses her in the air. She doesn’t seem to want to leave the treasures of short traditional Ethiopian chairs she found, though. Now the shop attendant is displacing wooden giraffes so that she can dust the lower shelf.
The departure board flashes from latin letters to Ethiopian script the flights for the day. This is not a busy place.
1245 Entebbe
1300 London via Rome
1415 Juba
1700 Djibouti
1835 Dubai
2120 Mumbai
2135 Beirut
2200 Bahrain
2215 Dubai
2215 Washington DC via Rome
& so on
An African man behind me studies a handwritten in red pen letter that starts, “The Kingdom of God is within you.”
It is 12:15.
Two more hours.
I spent $11 on lunch. I shouldn’t have gotten that beer...or at least a large.
A young boy talks to himself somewhere in the toilet, seemingly playing various characters in a conversation. When I come out of my stall, I see he is in a closed stall adjacent to mine and the urinals. Across from his door is a line of sinks and to the left of that on the wall is a sign that states, “Follow the arrow to the urinals.” Five feet away, above those urinals is a sign with instructions in English and Amharic how to properly utilize them.
A uniformed lady approaches me and asks in English where I am going. I reply, “Juba.” She moves on to another white person and asks t he same question. He replies, “Djibouti” and then goes back into a reposed position. I guess he’s here for another 4.5 hours. An Ethiopian boy in green sweater vest walks past me yelling, “Mommy! Mommy!” with his father and little sister in tow.
I’m thirsty.
A man in traditional Pakistani or some such garb walks past, his arms clasped behind his back. He is wearing flashy running shoes.
I really wish I had fresh socks with me.
The smell of bouillon is heavy in the air. It makes my head hurt.
A half hour before takeoff. We’re sitting in the waiting area, the nine of us, waiting to fly to Juba Sudan. Of course I can’t be positive, but I doubt any of these people are my colleagues as they all appear to be African. Then again, who’s to say that all Carter hired are whities.

It is nearing 4 in the morning. I can’t sleep. The flight to Juba was delightful with the exception that crushing fatigue made me alternate between sleep and hallucinate. Before the plane got of the ground, a gentleman across the way introduced himself as Claudius from Cameroon. One of my Carter Center colleagues. When deployed, he was in Washington DC and so was on the long Ethiopian airlines flight. We chat a bit while my row mate, a very thin hip young man hands me stuff from bag including his passport as he tries to make his carry-on small enough to go into the overhead compartment. Finally situated, he sits by the window. A few minutes later a flight attendant tells me I can move elsewhere, he and I being the only ones sharing a row. To this, I promptly move to a window seat so that I can watch the Ethiopian and Sudanese landscape move under me. It was cloudy but when I wasn’t forced into sleep, I was able to see some wonderful sights. It became move and more exciting as we approached Juba and the land became a lush green coat of plains, the occasional red dirt road, and villages of circular thatched roof huts.
The hot and humid African air felt good on my skin as I bent down and exited to place my feet for the first time on this continent’s ground. Claudius commented on the heat, following that it isn’t this hot in Cameroon. I thought it felt good. Later in the evening, the heat became heavy. But, at the moment, it was wonderful.
The passport control and baggage claim was a funny chaotic experience with being brusquely motioned here and there, the staff seemingly frantic by the small spurt of passengers who needed to get through. I wrote my name and other information on a piece of paper, handed my passport and WHO yellow vaccination card to the man and then received it back after he gave a cursory glance at it. Claudius...Claud and I stood by a table where grumpy men, some with disfigured faces showing wounds presumably from the violent civil war that only just ended a few years ago, stood waiting to check out luggage. Finally a vehicle parked outside the hole in the wall between us and the tarmac and an inefficiently large number of hands worked fast to get everything off and into the waiting passengers’ hands. Again with hardly a look inside, my bags were given chalk marks and I was allowed to proceed to the other side of the hall where Owen, the LTO Coordinator, and his driver Peter waited.
I’m glad for a bunch of the things that occurred in the following hours.
We arrived at the camp, a collection of extremely utilitarian metal shacks placed in tight rows along the White Nile river, and I was allowed to check in. But, I don’t know what to do when there is vague instruction like that. I began to settle in since every other time I have been in such a situation, I haven’t wanted to and just placed stuff in the room, looked around and then went downstairs only to find out that the others are lingering. This time, shortly after I began unpacking, Peter the driver came and prompted me to come to the river. There Claudius and I received our phones and netbooks and I met Manuel. In the next half hour or so, we were joined by Manel - a young dreadlocked African who has lived much of his life in the US but recently returned to Senegal where he begun a consulting firm - Saskia, who is a young woman from the Netherlands - and Maimuna - an older elegant woman from Kenya. My voice stinted by fatigue, I was all the more so quieted as the diverse and impressive capabilities I will work with became obvious.
Things I was pleased with. Though (so far), I am the only one who had never been to Africa, there are several who had never been to Sudan. Interestingly, those three who hadn’t were the three Africans. Manuel was core staff in the last Carter Center EOM and Saskia, it came out later, wrote her dissertation on SPLA recruiting, preparation and other topics and thus has spent a total of about a year and half independently in the country. Manel has never done elections. Saskia also admits that she is clueless about elections. Claudius was excited to see the Nile for the first time. Of those I spoke to, no one understood the financial situation as well as a variety of perplexing logistical things. Over dinner, Saskia and Maimuna both agreed with me that they’d prefer to just start working or at least be told what to do. But, tomorrow (today) is a free day where there might be a boat ride to an island at some time, around 3, where we will meet somewhere down the shore of the Nile and go to some island in some direction. Breakfast is some time, which we easily found. If we want to go somewhere, just ask. Someone will come over around 11 to talk to us about the per diems. Sunday we will begin briefings but four of us will still not have arrived. There is really no firm time we can expect to deploy into the regions and where we will go is unknown yet. It was good to hear that I’m not alone in finding this a bit frustrating. But, it also sounds great to hear that though we will be given regions to monitor, we very likely will be moved around at a moment’s notice to jump on a UN plane to go to this remote place or go check out this story or cover from this person who has contracted malaria or typhoid.
The sickness thing is creepy. It is a given that we all will get sick. Manel says he’s gotten malaria a half dozen times and half the people here don’t bother with prophylaxis because of the sheer difficulty in prevention. Mosquitoes are everywhere. With repellent, they still find warm skin. Under the mosquito net for the few hours I slept, my skin tingled with the understanding that they will find a way. Then there is the tse tse fly, rabies, water borne parasites, dust, etc. I will get sick. We all will get sick and not just a little. And when that happens, you hope you aren’t in some UN container or pitching a tent in Darfur when that happens. Manuel spoke of taking a two hour chopper out into the middle of nowhere and filling in for a fortnight for someone who fell ill during the spring presidential election mission.
I will try to sleep again.

Sudan (video) Sudan polling extended - April 12, 2010

2010-09-12T11:39:00.000-07:00

Sudan (video) South Sudan sees polls as prelude to referendum - April 11, 2010

2010-09-05T11:44:00.000-07:00

The Kochs

2010-08-31T11:21:00.001-07:00

The billionaire Koch brothers & war against Obama: newyorker.com

Sudan (video) Sudanese youth call for separation

2010-08-23T11:29:00.000-07:00

Sudan (video) LRA raids increasing in south Sudan

2010-08-20T11:30:00.000-07:00

Sudan (video) South Sudan Prepares for Vote

2010-08-18T11:52:00.000-07:00

24: Pilot (1994)

2010-07-13T12:31:00.000-07:00

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Mud Run 2010

2010-06-04T09:21:00.001-07:00

Face to Face with a Prehistoric Killer

2010-04-11T19:53:00.000-07:00

There I was, exposed in a clearing around which were tall trees and cacti. I felt his musty breath first and then heard a cracking of branches as he adjusted his massive weight from one leg to the other. Then I saw him, hidden behind a eucalyptus eying me suspiciously.

I was able to click off one photo before my flight sense kicked in and I bolted for the main area of the Discovery Center where all around me brave children ran desperately for colored eggs. Parents disparaged their height as other greedy beasts grabbed the few pastel eggs faster leaving nothing for the slower children. I hope the fate of T-Rex and these short creatures is not the same.

May 1st Can't Come Too Soon

2010-04-11T19:25:00.000-07:00

For months I have pondered getting a studio. But, I am getting control of my finances and working on using that which I have and so these two factors made me think long and only recently act. What I mean about that second point is that I buy things intending to use them and then don't or don't to the degree that I rationalized its purchase. In 2007, I bought a very fancy video camera because I intended to make a film. In the 30 months I've owned it, I rarely touch it. Recently, because I'm making a video montage for my work, I've used it actively and have become more interested in it. Nonetheless, I have an idea to sell it and use the money to upgrade my still camera to an EOS 5D Mark II, a very pricey purchase but one I can guarantee I would put to use. In November, I bought some studio lighting with the thought that I would use it to pay it off in 3 months. I haven't. But, I have used it a lot and have even made some money off it. My photo gear inventory is getting better and better but I have not really lost the inertia completely (though shed much of it) that stops me from putting all my potential into it.

This studio, though not so expensive, is another piece of the puzzle. One of my excuses for not using my studio lighting more is that I have no place to put it up without rearranging rooms. A friend offered me her back room to have as a studio. But, my excuse then to myself was something to the effect of control. I want to photograph people who may not be wise to bring into a friend's (or my) house. Plus, I still wanted for control. The room is layed out strange for my purposes, a window here, raised floor, etc. I think these are all excuses for the real reason that I just want to have a place of my own. Control. Control runs through my life in various places from the large to the mundane such as desiring to have the steak knives in the kitchen in a different place or my burst of interest in beautifying the outside.

Come May 1st, I will have a permanent place to shoot - smallish but ample (I think and hope!). It's not all about control though. This studio is in an artists' studio building that is one of the centers of a monthly art gallery event where people can drop by and see new works. In a few months it can be a place for me to show off my art in my own personal gallery and sell stuff, recruit models, and meet new people - those people who also work there and their friends. Recruiting models appeals to me a lot because I can see that as my next excuse not to use it enough. Though I am more confident with models now, I still get nervous. The expectation is that if you ask someone to model for you, you have everything worked out. But, I still freeze up for ideas. I hope to get anyone who walks by in to practice on. Plus, I've already had a few requests of me to photograph them including an acquaintance who wants sexy photos taken for her boyfriend. So, hopefully this will be what I envision it to be. A place where excuses disappear and I can be free to improve my tools and feel connected.

Santa Cruz

2010-04-11T18:40:00.000-07:00

Last weekend a few of us got up at 3:30am in order to race the sunset, to be in Santa Cruz to watch the town become warm with orange rays. Into the night we sped in my Town car, the three of us, zipping around, drinking coffee and fighting off the sleepiness. Though we didn't make sunrise (and knew that ahead of time), we did arrive to see the downtown asleep. We found a coffee shop, got some more hot beverages and some breakfast and sat relaxing and watching people trickle in, notice the strangers on their couch, and move elsewhere.
We followed up this with a trip to Año Nuevo state park up Highway 1 in order to see sea lions. We hiked out into the dunes and sea grass for about a mile and half before seeing hundreds of mothers and babies laying on the sand. The ranger, a funny little stuttering man whose eyes sparkled with joy of his job, gave us a bunch of information on the lives of sea lions. Unfortunately I brought my camera out there (and a tripod with no plate to attach the camera) but no card so there were no images to take home with me.
Around this time our friends from San Jose gave word that they'd arrived to Santa Cruz, so we hiked back and found them downtown (after I bought a great fake mustache) and headed to a vegetarian cafe, Saturn.

It appeared that the early morning was affecting us around this time. But, after some shopping along the boulevard of the old town, we headed out to the boardwalk for some video games, shooting, amusement rides and sun on the beach.

I've seen a lot of this kind of photo, where a light source hits the lens and creates a hazy glow and so this is my first attempt ~ unsuccessful but still fun. Poor Jasmine was scared when I took this photo because we were walking across a rickety old train bridge with widely set boards under which is a body of water meters ominously sparkling.

We got home around 10 pm exhausted but bouyant because of our adventures.

A Long Time Coming

2010-04-11T17:57:00.000-07:00

Outside my window the rain is falling. I came indoors about an hour ago from a few hours of gardening in the rain. The last few weeks I've been working a lot in our yard (a dreadful side yard completely barren, a sad side yard that has a dilapidated dog run and weeds, and a backyard that has skeleton elements of beauty and serenity but stopped there years ago) planting some seeds and seedlings, vines and young trees, and started creating a quaint rugged garden path from used brick.

A few grapevines and climbing vines I planted around the patio in hopes that in a year or two they will lay on top and create dappled light and more beauty in this aluminum and concrete sitting area.

Well, these are boring photos. But, this is what some fig vines I planted last May look now - not dead but haven't grown much. I hope that this season they will begin to grow as summer warms up and cover up some of this cinder block wall.

Here we have the side of the house where our dog lives. High on the list is rebuilding the awful living quarters (not really seen in this photo - she is on a nice but small wooden platform, not the pen you see) but first I tackled creating a nice path that will be visually appealing but also cut down on the epidemic of mud. Along the path will be ground cover that should further control drainage - hopefully.

Next we have the other side of the house, the side that rarely is looked at because there is nothing there (was - I put in some stuff before thinking to take before photos). But, this is ridiculous because on that side there are two windows. One big one from the dining room that looks out onto a poorly drained mud puddle and another that is above the kitchen window that looks out onto the same. In front of the dining room window I planted an apple tree and today (after taking these photos) put in a bunch of creeping ivy ground cover that hopefully will stretch and cover the dirt. In front of the kitchen window, I planted a boysenberry bush that will climb up the fence. Additionally, under the window is a table that will probably house my growing succulent collection (another three added today including a big prickly pear) and some other things.

Internet in 1969

2010-03-29T21:06:00.000-07:00

Feminist cry

2010-03-22T10:57:00.000-07:00

2/26/2010

2010-02-27T13:32:00.000-08:00

For the last few weeks I have been expecting to find something horrific.
Coming home from work is a fearsome experience because whereas Vlad used to meet me in the foyer, plaintively meowing his displeasure at being left alone for a prolonged period of time (or pleasure to see me - my cat is rusty), for weeks he hasn't done that. So, I will force myself to not panic but do a quick search for him, afraid to find his lifeless body.
He lost the ability to climb stairs a week ago so I carried him up and down.
He lost the ability to jump up on chairs so I made a bed in front of the fire where he can be comfortable and feel safe.
On the morning of my mother's sixty-second birthday, I came downstairs and saw Vlad in his carrying case, a location he's shown preference for in the last few weeks, laying on his side eyes open and head precariously hanging off the edge of the doorway. I paused, pulled in my breath, walked off to attend to breakfast, spun on my heel, approached him, crouched down and petted his rabbit fine fur. He looked up at me in slow motion and uttered three long hoarse meows that sounded as if he was summoning up the last energy he had then put his head down again, eyes unmoving, chest motionless.
I thought I witnessed his good-bye.
My father was up for some reason already so I asked him to come see me when he could. In the meantime, I petted Vlad again a few more times and he moved his head again, this time meowing two inaudible utterances.
When dad came into the kitchen, I told him what I'd seen and quickly asked him to please put Vlad to sleep.

That's all I can say right now. Sixteen years is a very long time. I am blessed.

What would you taste like

2010-01-30T21:07:00.000-08:00

Created by Recipe Star

Foreign Language Acquisition

2009-11-25T22:00:00.000-08:00

Hypnotic Walk

2009-11-03T18:21:00.000-08:00

Discreet Charm of the Bored

2009-10-19T15:01:00.000-07:00

...the most frightening aspect of loneliness... You think you're being damaged while loneliness is happening to you, and the worry amplifies the pain.

Shampoo Planet, Douglas Coupland

Ghana 1989

2009-10-16T11:28:00.000-07:00

Que sera sera

2009-10-12T17:20:00.000-07:00

And just like that I am calm.

A week ago I was wracked with anger. Last Wednesday I was bursting to cry out of frustration and helplessness. I felt like s**t and I felt like was s**t. My father and I were at the gym working out together. He noticed something about my manner that was different. Possibly the way I held my head. Possibly a distance in my eyes. I spewed my angst. He acknowledged that I have been a dark thing recently but also noted that he and my mother have noted improvement and are proud of my composure under the pressures of the economy and other known stresses upon me. We went on to exercise especially hard that night and I considered all these things.

I continue to be amazed by the lack of response by management for the Sudan job. With every email of follow-up I send, it goes to a couple of people. Almost three weeks ago I got an unprompted email saying that they were in their final stages of planning. Since then I have emailed a variety of emails with statements, comments and questions and have received nothing return. There still is a lingering hope. But, generally it is a distant consideration. As for the other job, I am surprised by their silence. I'd like to think that it's well known that though I don't envision my future extending on in an industry such at that, I will give it 110% while there. This is what I did when my tasks involved faxing endlessly and connecting wayward calls with the proper people. In a job that is more challenging than those doldrums, my integrity will give them what they want. Or, maybe they've read my hysterical statements of last week. Frankly, that would suck. As I walked to the market late last night to get some milk, it dawned on me that maybe someone there reads this and with that realization I slapped my forehead and continued onwards into the darkness of the night for a dinner of mac 'n cheese plus milk and pomegranate shower gel. Or maybe I'm being paranoid. Talking with others who work there, hiring is infamous for dragging their feet. It's only been a week.

In the meantime, I'm finally enjoying my free time. Tonight I redid most of my photo album - not linked elsewhere but viewable here. Furthermore, I feel my senses and creativity returning.

I was able to get a few passes to an advance screening of Where The Wild Things Are showing tomorrow here in overcast Fresno.

Today I found on the Islamic Cultural Center of Fresno website that they have classes in Farsi. So, I've requested information on when they begin again and am very excited about taking them every Sunday 11:30-1:30.

I'm excited about the future and look forward to whatever will come.

Time for some Captain Love pampering.

Captain TJ Love Klokedile

2009-10-12T11:57:00.001-07:00

We just got in a new shipment of Captain Love. Be the first on your block to feel the warm embrace of Love. Supplies are limited, kids, so shake out your socks and run down to your local participating Five & Dime now!!

Bear & Bee

2009-10-08T11:14:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time there was a Bear and a Bee who lived in a wood and were the best of friends. All summer long the Bee collected nectar from morning to night while the Bear lay on his back basking in the long grass.

When winter came the Bear realized he had nothing to eat and thought to himself "I hope that busy little Bee will share some of his honey with me." But the Bee was nowhere to be found - he had died of a stress induced coronary disease.

Good times

2009-10-03T15:41:00.000-07:00

...it is difficult to feel accomplished when you're not accomplishing something that matters to you. Doing something "for your own good" is rarely for your own good if it causes you to be less than who you really are.

from "The Element" by Ken Robinson, Ph.D.

Everything has faults. If not structural than some other way such as circumstantial, financial, textual, philosophical, aesthetic, conceptual, spatial.

I don't remember how I found the internship listing but I applied and received word back at some point in time. The interview occurred over the phone. I sat on my friend's floor in her San Francisco apartment staring out at her dreadful (but potentially cool - a potential never met before she left) backyard, across the neighbors' yards towards the evergreens that edge Golden Gate park exactly one block away north. I don't remember any of the questions asked nor any of my answers with the exception of one.

"When do you intend to move to San Francisco?"

"As soon as I have reason to," was my direct response. Laughter on the other end of the line.

Their email (or call) a few days later started off "you now have a reason to move to San Francisco." Now the process of apartment hunting begun. I looked at a bunch including a very large one bedroom when it comes to floor plan. The drawback was that the ceiling was barely six feet high and entry into the apartment was through a garage that the owner used daily. My bedroom would look out onto the garage. The living room had a door to the backyard.

The apartment I settled on was a minuscule thing. When I went to look at it, there were two available. I looked first at the one advertised, one that still had someone living in it. It seemed bigger to me and had three windows that look out onto Geary Avenue, a major thoroughfare that usually has a lot of activity on it. This appealed to me. I knew that I would spend a large amount of time in my apartment as I was in my final semester of grad school and thought that having a nice view would be beneficial. The other one was right next door and was at the end of a remodel. Its layout was very different. Instead of one large closet, it had two small ones and above them was an 18" indent in the wall where I could store stuff. There were two windows in the apartment. One was a large one that looked out onto a roof (and across to the next apartment - not the one available for rent). The other was a tiny one over the kitchen sink. The main room (if it is possible to say there were separate rooms) was about 10x12. The kitchen was a peninsula that measured, I suppose, 5x5. There was no counter space besides a small spot where a dish drainer could sit. Whereas the first apartment had only a cocktail refrigerator, this one had a 3/4 sized one that was brand new. Next to it was an ancient stove over which was a exhaust fan and above that a small cupboard. Spin around from the stove and you needn't step forward to reach the sink.

Obviously, I got the second one. Initially I was disappointed but quickly grew to really enjoy it. The first thing I did once I was given word by the lunatic property manager that I was accepted, was to measure the room and plan out ways to maximize the space, or lack thereof. For the closets, I purchased a series of wire mesh squares that form cubes that I used as a dresser. Since the closets themselves lacked doors, I bought two tension rods and white lightweight curtains to hide the mess within. I bought a futon from Ikea and a red pad cover. If the room was small, I felt I needed to cheer it up with happy colors. The floor of the apartment was hardwood but someone had painted the floor boards maroon so it wasn't so pleasant. Under my futon I placed a large multi-colored banded rug and then into the kitchen was a runner also full of reds and oranges and yellows. No black. No purples. None of the normal colors I'd utilized in the past.

The problem of the counterspace was remedied by buying a butcher block cart and placed that right next to the sink. It extended out into the room but was invaluable. Since the apartment had no bathroom and going down the hall for the toilet or to shower meant locking your door, keeping track of my keys was very important. So, I hung up several ram's head hooks on the door frame and worked out a system, revamping it occasionally since repeatedly I locked myself out. Everything had a place and there was no leeway for sloppiness. Every single day I would have to clean near thoroughly the apartment. No dishes could be left undone. Nothing could be left out or else opening my bed was difficult or impossible. The only work space that could be somewhat wild was my architect's desk, one I'd bought four years previous specifically because I'd moved into a tiny room and the desk I had before was not going to fit. The necessity to economize on space led me to buy a horrendously low quality 15" LCD TV that I attached to the wall. It, a portable DVD player and Netflix were very often the core of my entertainment because I was living in San Francisco, working for free thirty hours a week, commuting 200 miles each way to Fresno once a week for a single class, and so in need of supplementing my zero income and student loan balance that equaled not enough. I'd already had a successful internet toy business and that took up much of my free time. Whenever I wasn't working, toying or studying, I couldn't justify going out. So, I watched a lot of movies on this TV that hung above my desk.

I even liked the almond colored walls with light blue and pink trim. The fault in the apartment was those toys. Without the business, I would've had much more room. Without the business, though, I would've been hurting all the more for money. All in all, though, I took great pride in my place. It was weird though when people came over because, though I knew it was small, once you put another body or two in it, the place really showed its size.

I finished the internship, went to Russia with my parents for about a month, and then returned to San Francisco where I signed up with a temp agency and was given one one-day job where I did nothing for eight hours except read the Wall Street Journal before being sent to Joseph Schmidt Confections to fill in. My friends really enjoyed the fact that I always had superb chocolate and brought boxes of it to every event. When one friend turned 30, I showed up to her dinner thrown in the back room of a fancy restaurant (we were thrown out at eleven when the room turned into a dance floor) with what looked like a pizza. The box that the chocolates came in was just like a small pizza box. That and the fact that my date left in the middle because she had another party to go to brought laughter.

I was casually dating a girl. Or at least I thought I was. She is a very charming lady with a stunning smile and great fluid way of chatting with anyone. We'd go out to dinner and have a lovely time. Much to my dismay though was that every single time we were to meet up, she'd delay or cancel or change plans. My equilibrium was upset. One of the first times we were to meet up, she calls a few hours beforehand and asks if it's okay that her parents come as well. They popped into town and so she indicated that she was in a difficult spot. Thinking they were from Sacramento, I went with the flow. If someone is 100 miles from home to visit their daughter, you give them some slack. But, during the course of the meal, I learn from her father that they live just over the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin. Popping over to surprise their daughter was only a ten minute drive.

So, I invited her to Cholpon's thirtieth bash, paid for the dinner and a few drinks amounting to over a hundred dollars and after we'd finished eating and laughing and having a great time, she excused herself as she had to rush to her friend's drag queen party. I stared dazed with a crooked smile, blinked, rose and kissed her on the cheek good-bye and then sat back down. Half the table looked at me with WTF expressions. I laughed and the evening went on wonderfully nonetheless.

Day in and day out I worked at the chocolatier. Often Joseph Schmidt would drop by my cubicle and we'd chat about Middle East politics or art or anything. Early on in my time there I told a friend of mine in the midwest where I worked. He told me that Joseph had come to his little town for the opening of a coffee shop there that sells his truffles and this 68 year old flirted with his 32 year old sister. The next day I mentioned that Sam had met him in Galesburg and Joseph laughed then told me "what a dump of a town. But, great cafe." I told him about the flirt and he laughed again and stated plainly "well, she's cute!" Joseph flirted with all the women there. Even though I loathed the monotony of the job, I looked forward to talking with him and enjoyed the company of my coworkers.

Brutalized finger

2009-10-01T10:24:00.001-07:00

While we were trying to nail and screw together the 8x8 foot frame that will support the floor boards to this doggie platform, I slipped and gashed my finger. Extremely well oxygenated blood flowed down my finger and dripped off the tip. Bandaged, I continued working. This was on my index finger of my right hand, my hammer hand. So, it was aggravated with every swing or manipulation of tools. By the time I was able to shed the bandage, it was clown nose red throughout. Now it aches and a redness around it combined with slight swelling makes typing difficult.

I just wrote a letter to an international development organization that I was recommended to several weeks ago expressing my predicament. I didn't go into details though about the pros and cons. Basically I stated that on Monday I may have to accept a job unless I hear from them positively. Initially this job description stated that we'd start in early October but as of today, the first of that month, they haven't finalized preparations so I am in limbo.

For two months I've been aching for a job and now I am on the cusp of getting one and I am anxious. This job is at a place I used to work. I know everyone there. I like almost everyone there. The job is a step up and interesting, probably. The pay is very good considering it is in Fresno. What is there to complain about?

In a conversation with a friend yesterday, I told her that it is good on paper. But, it's not enough. I went on to tell her that I see vividly all the good in this job. But, I also can't help but see the bad just as vividly. "It is only a year," I tell myself. In the first interview I gave my word that I would stay at least a year. But, a year means that I am further away from the skimpy network that I have begun to build. I wouldn't have gotten recommended for this job in Sudan if it weren't for my trip to Kyrgyzstan. Things are difficult enough now but in a year I will be in a worse situation. Furthermore, I'm sick of compromising for the sake of survival.

The weather has cooled. Walking across a parking lot yesterday at Target, I felt pangs of anxiety looking at what I subjectively consider the soulless artless environment I will most likely tread water in for awhile ~ all for the greater good.

Doggie platform

2009-09-30T22:16:00.000-07:00

The level in the small bottle of ouzo is getting too close to empty but I take a swig and enjoy the licorice essence coating my mouth. Gus Gus mumbles in my ears. The day was hotter than it seemed it would be. Yesterday I had my second interview and left feeling energized. I am poor in interviews. I have poor eye contact and babble. Words escape me and I have the sense that I am vibrating. When it concludes, I loathe to shake hands with anyone because my hands are wet or if not wet, sticky. But, I feel that despite all the above being true about this event, I did well. And that makes me proud. Additionally, the assignment I've been given has bought me time and that pleased me. I was afraid that he'd offer me a job. I don't want this job.

Slowly my room is getting bigger as I sell off my stuff. To date I've brought in over a thousand dollars by dispensing with collectibles. Dad asked if I would regret it later. I told him it doesn't matter. I don't want stuff. It is a pity that I'm receiving less than value on these things.

I started researching the topic I'm to write on in order to prove my ability to hold a thought. Though I was told that there is "loads" of available information, I'm finding it hard to locate much substantial. I will most likely push this off until the weekend out of exasperation. There is insufficient concentration.

I love the packaging of the Ouzo of Plomari. It is a delicate bottle that itself is not so interesting. But, it comes in a cardboard tube with a painting of a mermaid on it. In her hands is a garland of sea grass and pink flowers. A ship is in the background flying what I think is the Icelandic flag. But, that doesn't make sense because I bought this alcohol at Duty Free in Athens. I go to my bookcase and find my world atlas and find that I was wrong about it being Icelandic. What I was thinking of was Finland but that is the inverse of what I see. So, I look up Greece and find that this is the flag except without the stripes. This was a very good purchase, the Bartholomew Mini Atlas World. It looks new but I bought it in 1997 after coming back from Kyrgyzstan the first time. Funny that it looks so good since I've referred to it an absurdly huge number of times. I suppose we treat well those things of perceived value. The gilded edges of the pages show the book's wear. The world has changed since I bought this book. East Timor is not listed here.

Talking through issues in the last year, I've discovered countless times when I haven't listened to the alarm in my head. I wasn't unaware. I just didn't pay heed but pushed forward with my own agenda selfishly or equally as common an occurrence, selflessly. The alarm is screaming, distracting me. But, I feel I'd be a fool if I'd be mindful of it. I don't want this job.

Four years ago, my father and I labored in the sun to dig through hard-pan in order to make a deep hole into which we would pour gravel and sand so that his dog would have a nice and sanitary home. Sparks flew up as metal tools struck the ground. Sweat flowed. Our muscles fatigued quickly. Nothing much became of it after that. The dirt we'd pulled out morphed into permanent hills around the yard. Poor drainage created a smelly pool that frequently was muddy and thus not where Maggie would stay. Today we built a platform for her. Instead of digging down we've raised her up out of the muck.

Brilliant.

Last time I saw her, she looked horrified and petrified. Stage fright?

Real Men Tax Gas

2009-09-21T14:01:00.000-07:00

This article by Thomas Friedman caught my eye this morning:

Do we owe the French and other Europeans a second look when it comes to their willingness to exercise power in today’s world? Was it really fair for some to call the French and other Europeans “cheese-eating surrender monkeys?” Is it time to restore the French in “French fries” at the Congressional dining room, and stop calling them “Freedom Fries?” Why do I ask these profound questions?

Because we are once again having one of those big troop debates: Do we send more forces to Afghanistan, and are we ready to do what it takes to “win” there? This argument will be framed in many ways, but you can set your watch on these chest-thumpers: “toughness,” “grit,” “fortitude,” “willingness to do whatever it takes to realize big stakes” — all the qualities we tend to see in ourselves, with some justification, but not in Europeans.

But are we really that tough? If the metric is a willingness to send troops to Iraq and Afghanistan and consider the use of force against Iran, the answer is yes. And we should be eternally grateful to the Americans willing to go off and fight those fights. But in another way — when it comes to doing things that would actually weaken the people we are sending our boys and girls to fight — we are total wimps. We are, in fact, the wimps of the world. We are, in fact, so wimpy our politicians are afraid to even talk about how wimpy we are.

How so? France today generates nearly 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power plants, and it has managed to deal with all the radioactive waste issues without any problems or panics. And us? We get about 20 percent and have not been able or willing to build one new nuclear plant since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, even though that accident led to no deaths or injuries to plant workers or neighbors. We’re too afraid to store nuclear waste deep in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain — totally safe — at a time when French mayors clamor to have reactors in their towns to create jobs. In short, the French stayed the course on clean nuclear power, despite Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and we ran for cover.

How about Denmark? Little Denmark, sweet, never-hurt-a-fly Denmark, was hit hard by the 1973 Arab oil embargo. In 1973, Denmark got all its oil from the Middle East. Today? Zero. Why? Because Denmark got tough. It imposed on itself a carbon tax, a roughly $5-a-gallon gasoline tax, made massive investments in energy efficiency and in systems to generate energy from waste, along with a discovery of North Sea oil (about 40 percent of its needs).

And us? When it comes to raising gasoline taxes or carbon taxes — at a perfect time like this when prices are already low — our politicians tell us it is simply “off the table.” So I repeat, who is the real tough guy here?

“The first rule of warfare is: ‘Take the high ground.’ Even the simplest Taliban fighter knows that,” said David Rothkopf, energy consultant and author of “Superclass.” “The strategic high ground in the world — whether it is in the Middle East or vis-à-vis difficult countries like Russia and Venezuela — is to be less dependent on oil. And yet, we simply refuse to seize it.”

According to the energy economist Phil Verleger, a $1 tax on gasoline and diesel fuel would raise about $140 billion a year. If I had that money, I’d devote 45 cents of each dollar to pay down the deficit and satisfy the debt hawks, 45 cents to pay for new health care and 10 cents to cushion the burden of such a tax on the poor and on those who need to drive long distances.

Such a tax would make our economy healthier by reducing the deficit, by stimulating the renewable energy industry, by strengthening the dollar through shrinking oil imports and by helping to shift the burden of health care away from business to government so our companies can compete better globally. Such a tax would make our population healthier by expanding health care and reducing emissions. Such a tax would make our national-security healthier by shrinking our dependence on oil from countries that have drawn a bull’s-eye on our backs and by increasing our leverage over petro-dictators, like those in Iran, Russia and Venezuela, through shrinking their oil incomes.

In sum, we would be physically healthier, economically healthier and strategically healthier. And yet, amazingly, even talking about such a tax is “off the table” in Washington. You can’t mention it. But sending your neighbor’s son or daughter to risk their lives in Afghanistan? No problem. Talk away. Pound your chest.

I am not sure what the right troop number is for Afghanistan; I need to hear more. But I sure know this: There is something wrong when our country is willing to consider spending more lives and treasure in Afghanistan, where winning is highly uncertain, but can’t even talk about a gasoline tax, which is win, win, win, win, win — with no uncertainty at all.

So, I ask yet again: Who are the real cheese-eating surrender monkeys in this picture?

San Jose onwards

2009-09-20T01:26:00.000-07:00

Last night I shot out into the night in a deliberate urgency to return home. The windows of the town car were down a bit, the din of wind rushing through the small openings reverberated, the luring shoosh of tires on asphalt heard muffled in the background. I had my earphones crammed into my ears, an audio book serving to blot out the thoughts that have been haunting me recently. Listening to the woes of industrialists in the libertarian philosophical novel Atlas Shrugged, I used their angst in a vain attempt to mollify my own. To the greater degree is worked but it took a lot of energy to keep my mind on track, to listen, to lose myself in the drama of an endless succession of monologues.

The roaring wind made me think of standing on a platform in blustery Astara, Azerbaijan staring at the Caspian Sea. A stray dog crouched up on me from under the cement edge startling me. He looked beaten down, his eyes full of fear and urgency. I had nothing to give him and felt bad, sorry for this poor beast. A few hours later, I had my driver take me back to that spot where I hoped to find the German Shepherd to give him some of my left over fish kabob, but he was not there anymore.

Today I packaged up a large number of items I've successfully sold off. Surprisingly, sales are decent and a few items that I've shipped out have actually made me some money. That is to say that after working it out in a spreadsheet of cost of item when I purchased it from the distributor minus listing fees plus s/h charged minus actual shipping plus selling price = profit/loss and a few items have brought a profit unlike how selling went several months ago when I was trying to clear things out quickly. This bout of productivity came after church. The service was a waste of time which is a huge disappointment because I very much want to get involved in a church and take part in activities. This is only the second time I've gone, the first time being over six months ago. On the outing, I enjoyed the service so now we are 1 up, one down.

But, after such a concentrated period of tedious work, I felt psychologically exhausted and after a few false starts, went for a walk this time without musical accompaniment. On friday, I went through the motions of job searching, becoming more and more pressurized by the seeming futility of it all. So, I ventured out into the 95+ heat in tight jeans with no sunglasses but an iPod cranking out tunes. Usually I listen to audio books or podcasts but this time I felt that I needed to rest my mind or at least don't give it more fodder for depression. Regularly tugging at my scraggy goatee, mustache and side burns, I meandered in a general direction of downtown San Jose, my translucent desire to visit the neighborhood of brick buildings near the HP Pavilion spurring me onwards. Instead I found myself on a somewhat familiar street, an oasis of businesses in this dreadful sea of suburbia. With thoughts of my presumed failure to land a long-term but still temporary job in Sudan dragging me down I then wanted to find a bookstore to rest in as well as drift away in the sanctuary of words and pictures. But, the only one I found was a really cute shop that only caters to children. This wasn't of any assistance to me especially since I wanted to look at language books of Arabic. Then and to a much lesser degree now, I still hold out some hope that I'll get an email or phone call offering me a space on this election monitoring mission so I wanted to get a jump start on language acquisition. Exhausted by this point ninety minutes in, I kept going seeking that goal.

Eight days ago I was startled to find a message on Facebook from a friend of mine asking if I was interested in going to Sudan. Someone from the Carter Center had asked her for recommendations on people to serve as a long term there and so this woman from Serbia contacted me. Thrilled, I replied immediately and received a message back the next day from her saying that people whose opinions she trusts in the OSCE give me high marks and so she thought of me when asked. The next day I received an email and attached job description and responded immediately.

The roar of silence.

I returned from my walk after nearly three hours exhausted and took a shower to rinse the literal crust of salt off of me and then napped before going up to San Francisco to a bar where a friend of a friend was DJing.

Today's walk was only about two hours broken up by 15~20 minutes at the gym where I got bored with pumping iron very rapidly. During that time in transit to and fro, I saw four people on the street.

This is why I find suburbia to be corrosive. It is true that cities have too much cement and feel on one level dead because of this. San Francisco from the street seems to have so little greenery and partner that up with the bleak weather makes for a awful soup of unhealthy living. From the air, though, you will see that the trees and flowers are abundantly hidden in the center of blocks, the buildings that make up apartment complexes and houses serving as castle walls to the treasure within. What serves as a counterbalance to the appearance of cemented over paradise is the quantity of people walking to a corner store or to the bus or train stop or simply down the block to visit someone. Driving is naturally discouraged due to the horrendous parking situation. I read recently about cities that charge citizens huge fees to own a car and I am all for that provided that the policy makers back that up with alternatives which, sadly, San Francisco fails at.

Also because of the closeness of living in a city, in my experience people socialize more or at least differently. Placed in a position where there is shared space, you must talk and talk often turns into other interaction. Granted, relationships often don't turn into friendships but at least there is communication. Suburbia, on the other hand, I feel isolates. Whereas people who live in small towns or the country come together for reasons including to dispel the loneliness of isolation, denizens of the suburbs have the worst of both worlds. They have personal space which city dwellers lack but not enough to pull them out of their shells.

Suburbs rot our souls, our bodies and our minds.

Kidrobot 16

2009-09-19T12:01:00.000-07:00

Kidrobot 16: KidPunk! from Kidrobot on Vimeo.

Corruption

2009-09-11T23:02:00.000-07:00

Retreating

2009-09-09T23:11:00.000-07:00

It's dark and I feel a bit on edge. I've just finished seeing Guillermo del Toro's The Orphanage and I am the only one awake in this large and shadowy house. Hungry because it's been a few hours since I last ate, I grabbed a peach, shut off the burglar alarm, went outside and sat out on the curb so that I could get out of the house and feel the warm evening air. As cars drove past me, their headlights created moving shadows over the houses, fences, trees and cars of the neighborhood. I imagined them looking at this person sitting with feet in the street and in the dark and becoming perplexed. These things further fuel my feelings of watching a show where the visuals and audio don't synch up.

Tomorrow I may decide to go back to my old job if there is a position there that I can have. Tomorrow I will have lunch with a few of my ex coworkers and will ask what the drug rehab facility is hiring for now. Word is that the job I was thinking to apply for before getting the trip to Kyrgyzstan is still empty. Back then in June I kept dragging my feet, for weeks if I recall correctly, because it felt that I'd be closing the door on finding a job that is interesting for me in the quest for getting out of limbo.

Right now I type this from my bed. Before me is a metal shelving unit that is stacked to the ceiling with much of my estate. The rest is stuffed into closets and cupboards in this, my parents' house as well as with several friends who are borrowing my stuff long-term. I wish I had a desk. Though I could use my father's desk in his study, I've chosen to use it only sporadically now because I hate the (false) sensation that I'm stopping him from using his office. Granted, he has two offices here. He doesn't care if I use his desk. He is very selfless and compassionate. If I could be half the man my father is, I will have achieved something in this life. But, I want a desk of my own. I want to be the boss of my surroundings. If I can at all have my way, the next place I live will be alone. I need a kingdom. I've deprived myself of that for much too long.

Last night I could not fall asleep for hours because my mind was racing and my emotions were raw. Now, I am generally peaceful and have an out of body feeling of release. I think I've reached the end of this chapter and need to be practical. For the last month I have signed up with six employment agencies, applied to over a hundred jobs, and spent a countless number of hours searching. Though I am fully aware that the hiring process takes a long time, I've run out of time (=$) and now need to land work no matter what it is.

I would cannibalize my belongings all the more to buy some time if I thought that would work. But, now I've gotten my belongings down to the esoteric or desired. What I mean by that is: if it has value, it would be hard to get rid of because, due to the recession, it's lost its immediate value. If it is just desired, I don't want to get rid of it. I live in an area where there are no jobs in the sphere I studied. So, I am at a disadvantage because human resource directors often don't want to interview someone who has to travel far, not if they can call someone local and guarantee an appointment easily. Besides that, there is the lingering issue of relocation costs, lag and difficulties associated with that. So, with jobs I applied for in the Bay Area, I often put my friend's mailing address. They don't need to know that I live 200 miles away. As for the few jobs I applied for on the east coast, I tried to reassure them in a casual way that I can come for an interview quickly - which is true because I have a friend who can get me on any UAL flight that has seats free.

While I worked at the last place, I kept turning them down when they offered me jobs or asked me to apply to spots. The potential embarrassment of accepting a permanent position with them and then finally getting a job in international development and leaving after they'd invested time and money in me was too much. So, I kept myself as a temp making less money and with no benefits. I even told the HR manager why I was doing what I was doing and she replied that it was no big deal. "People leave jobs all the time." But, this flies in the face of my job ethic. I don't accept jobs and then quit when I change my mind. It's like dating the plain looking girl until the beautiful one down the block is single again. I take these things seriously. Too seriously evidently since the "plain girl" says it's fine with her for us to have fun together until the girl I want becomes available and I don't listen out of respect for her. This is probably all very stupid on paper. And dramatic. I don't feel so peaceful anymore.

God! I wish I could get rid of some of this crap that is my estate. Employment agencies aren't calling. I've gone several times through the huge list of job sites for INGOs. Careerbuilder, Monster and Craigslist seem to have also been depleted by me. I suppose I can start working on liquidating some stuff. I won't always live in this small guest room of my parents'. So, when I get my kingdom (soon), my once tiny collection which as since grown like a Great Dane puppy will need to be slimmed down sooner of later.

Subprime by Beeple

2009-09-09T15:10:00.000-07:00

I'm also caught up in this bigger faster more mentality but I'm left with little physical mementos, which is fine by me. Instead of the housing collapse that this fantastic animation by Beeple illustrates, I'm watching the slow collapse of my choices due to the heavy burden of debt. To think that ten years ago I was elated to find myself debt free. Now I have an intricate (and rather unrealistic) 30-month plan to get myself out and buy back my freedom of choice. It just requires the input of cash.

subprime from beeple on Vimeo.

Ariane Moffatt

2009-09-09T11:07:00.000-07:00

Bedlam on the tarmac

2009-09-06T18:56:00.001-07:00

Watching MSNBC's show on why airplanes crash (this one devoted to water landings), I'm reminded of my first attempt to go to the capital of the country of Georgia, Tbilisi. It started as a run of the mill trip to the other side of the world. At that time I was attempting to live and work in Washington DC but wasn't getting anywhere fast and my patience level due to other circumstances was super low. After about a month I was called to go to Russia to be a long-term observer for their 2007 Parliamentary elections. I went through the normal routines of filling out paperwork and forwarding my resume to the recruiter for the US State Department for OSCE/ODIHR work. Additionally I filled out a two-page Russia visa application. Then I waited. In the meantime, I continued to bug the temp agency I worked with to get me more suitable placements by day and scoured job sites by night. One day the Russian embassy in DC called me and started questioning me about all sorts of things including the nature of PAE, the sending organization. Immediately after this, I called my contact there and reported what had happened and she was shocked having never heard about such a move by a member state of OSCE. Here is an interesting article about the tussle that ensued. In the end, after being in limbo for several weeks, the word comes back to me that no monitors will be sent and I am asked if I'd like to go to Kyrgyzstan as a short-term observer (which means being gone for about a week) or wait for Georgia as a long-term observer like I would've been in Russia. I, of course, chose LTO and so a few weeks later leave DC with the intention to be back in about seven weeks. In fact, I'd applied for a few jobs in my field and even a few apartments that would be available around the time I'd come back. From DC I flew to Frankfurt and hung out with the other US observer booted off the Russia gig, a retired career member of the diplomatic core and highly engaging gentleman, Charlie McGee. From there we popped over to Munich and did some more beer drinking while we waited for our flight onwards to Tbilisi.

After six hours we headed to the gate and met a bunch of the other internationals, a few of whom I knew from previous missions. The four-hour flight to Tblisi was uneventful as I recall. At 3am local time, I calmly watched as the lights of the capital below got larger and larger and I dreamed of finally getting to my hotel, to bed, to peaceful sleep. When we were nearly touching the runway, with no warning the plane suddenly launched its nose into the air and we all got pushed into our seatbacks as we rose quickly. A few minutes later the pilot came on and said in German and then English that visibility was not good enough and that we were heading to Ankara to refuel. This trip took an hour and all the while those who understood neither German nor English were left in the dark. Those who did and spoke Georgian or Russian or whatever tried to help to ease fears and confusion.

Once landed though was when tension broke and confrontation resulted. People were highly agitated, some cried, others got out of their seats and became belligerent. The captain explained via intercom some of our options which included getting off and staying here, renting a car and driving to Tbilisi and maybe some others. Otherwise, we hadn't the right to try to go to Tbilisi again so we were heading back to Munich and would try again the next day. At one point the captain threatened to call security if a few of the more aggressive passengers didn't calm down. We were there for a few hours before finally taking off and heading to Munich where we queued up to get hotel vouchers, meal tickets, and taxi coupons. On the way to the hotel I was set up in, I shared a cab with a funny Georgian woman who studied in the US. Neither of us spoke German and the taxi driver evidently didn't know which of two Best Westerns in this town outside Munich we were to go to. As we drove further and further out into farmland, the lady and I joked about being human trafficked.

The rest of the story is not so interesting. After taking a nap, I woke and walked around this industrial village, bought some food and drinks then killed time until a van came to pick us up and take us back to the airport where we jumped on the plane and hoped to not repeat the experience, which we didn't.

As I typed this, my email program keeps dinging that new messages have come in. I check and it is just a series of emails of international jobs from a service I paid for. Of these, I rarely see anything that matches my experience level, most of which are requesting a: Senior Technical Officer, Policy Reform Expert, Chief of Party in Ethiopia, Legal Expert, Senior Health Programme Advisor, Strategic Projects and Grants Manager, Regional Advisor, Communications and Media Executive, Research Fellow, Disaster Recovery Forestry Advisor, Senior Officer Customs, Access to Justice Consultants, Advisor, Leader, Country Director, Country Representative, Manager, Coordinator, Managing Director, Policy Advisor, Programme Manager, Chief Editor, Maternal Health Advisor, Food Security, Chief, Leader, Manager, Executive, Head, Bigwig, must have 10-15 years experience, PhD, etc.

I didn't get back to DC again until about six months later and only to clear out the locker I'd stored my belongings in and bring them back to my parents'. Instead, I went to Romania for most of 2008 where I worked as a photographer and had a beautiful but challenging time.

Now, I'm looking forward to moving to DC if I land a job where my skills will be of value. Last week (or the week before - unemployment is killing my sense of time), I applied to an assistant project officer position with IRI that really excites me. I think that I've done all I can to sell myself to them, sending an excellent cover letter to HR as well as additional materials explaining what I bring to this organization.

The concept of throwing your net out wide doesn't make much sense to me. In romantic connections or employment, I prefer to put my energy into relationships that look to be a promising good fit. Maybe this is over thinking though. Looking at job searching, I find it ridiculous to aim for applying to ten a day, trying to land anything out there. I'd rather only go for those that I think I bring something to; to those that I will stay at, enrich and be enriched by. Furthermore, from a HR director's point-of-view, wouldn't it be better if they only received applications or resumes from people who actually want the positions they apply for? Instead we are in a situation where due to the ease of applying brought on by the internet, combined with the apply to anything mind set, I hear horror stories of hundreds of candidates for a single job. Competition for jobs is hard enough without employment tourism. But, that is what my resume looks like. I have a destination in mind and, though I've enjoyed the people and things that I've done, I keep pushing on because I will not settle in for long when I know that what I should be doing is out there but I simply haven't gotten it or when I have, it was a contract position.

I'm really excited by some of the positions I've applied to (such as IRI and TM). But, at the same time, I'm worried that I'll have to take one of the dozens of other jobs I've applied to that I can do and will enjoy in a way but will not lead me to what I ultimately want which is project management or monitoring in international development.

Turquoise Mountain Foundation

2009-08-28T10:57:00.000-07:00

I found this interesting video while doing a web search for information on Turquoise Mountain Foundation, an organization started by Prince Charles in 2006 and chaired by Rory Stewart, 36-year old Scottish adventurer, scholar and author. Instead of spouting on, here is a section of an article I found from the UK's Guardian newspaper:

"...when the prince contacted him again about scouting a location for a traditional school of arts and crafts in Kabul, he went. "My gut instinct was that the Afghans probably needed plumbers and electricians more than calligraphers or carvers, but I thought I'd go and look," he says. The Turquoise Mountain Foundation, named after a lost Afghan civilisation, is the result.

On a rainy morning, I walk round the classrooms that have been built around the fort, as what will be the main school is being restored. There are 132 students, who all do three years at the centre. They are paid a stipend and competition for the places is predictably tough. Get one and you get not just a craft - calligraphy, jewellery, woodworking, pottery or miniature painting - but literacy lessons if needed, English tuition and IT classes.

It is an astonishing project. In a bustling workshop, some of Afghanistan's finest master craftsmen - taxi drivers or fruitsellers a few years ago, despite their talent - teach a new generation traditional skills that were in danger of dying out. The wood-working faculty is so successful that it pays its own way, fulfilling major commissions for universities, embassies and British luxury hotels. Fundraising was a nightmare and managing a shoestring project fun but extremely stressful, Stewart says. When the seed cash raised by Prince Charles from a celebrity dinner in 2005 looked like it was running out, Stewart started travelling, cajoling, talking, persuading, giving presentations from California to Kuwait...."

What brought me to wanting to know more about TM is that I found a job listing for a reporting officer on one of the UN's websites and was drawn in by the lively summary of their work:

"Developers are threatening to demolish the medieval cities of Afghanistan; the last masters of traditional Afghan arts are dying; high unemployment is breeding extremism; Afghans need jobs, skills, economic opportunities and a renewed pride in their national culture. The Turquoise Mountain Project will conserve a section of a medieval city, work with householders to improve living conditions, restore ancient buildings and create an academy to preserve and develop traditional skills. The project will provide vocational training, improve the living conditions of poor citizens, conserve heritage, foster the export market for Afghan goods and lay the foundations for tourism. The Turquoise Mountain (Firuzkuh in Dari) was the greatest indigenous Afghan capital of the middle ages, destroyed by Ogodei, son of Genghis Khan in ca. 1220-22 and lost to history. Its only surviving monument is the magnificent Minaret of Jam. The name of the project evokes Afghanistan's unique tradition of art and architecture." (from the TM website)

I read through the website, thought about the job listing and applied, pointing out qualifications that they ask for and pointing out my photographic skills that hopefully will whet their interest in my bid for placement as their next colleague.

8-Bit Trip

2009-08-23T11:31:00.000-07:00

Double Dutch Bus

2009-08-14T10:26:00.000-07:00

Rabbit

2009-08-12T11:09:00.000-07:00

Rabbit

Atom.com: Funny Videos | Other | Funny Animations

Rize Up!

2009-08-11T21:20:00.000-07:00

THERE IS A NEW ENERGY, A NEW FEELING COMING INTO OUR LIFE.
WE CANNOT BASE OUR EXPECTATIONS ABOUT HOW WE WILL FEEL TOMORROW, OR EVEN A FEW HOURS FROM NOW, ON HOW WE FEEL AT THIS MOMENT.
THERE ARE NO TWO MOMENTS IN TIME ALIKE.
WE ARE CHANGING.
OUR LIFE IS CHANGING AT TIMES.
THINGS, HAVEN'T WORKED OUT THE WAY WE WANTED.
WE HAD LESSONS TO LEARN.
THE FUTURE SHALL NOT BE LIKE THE PAST.
DO NOT LIMIT THE FUTURE BY THE PAST!

Birthday poetry

2009-08-11T17:05:00.000-07:00

Echoes ripple atop the wind
A hedgehog voices his praise
Artichokes pulse with love to mend
One wish I'd like to raise

Angry horses gallop into my mind
Growing gradually because of the rind
Stones from a peach
Are out of reach
A comprehensible message I can't find

Age is the elastic on the skirt of your life
Wrapping around you differently daily
When times are tight, you can be filled with strife
Your friends step in and you can go gaily

This birthday I hope was unlike the past you have felt
But like an unexpected chat with an athlete you meet
Intending to rise from your airplane seat
You boldly and flirtatiously take off your belt

Dubrovnik is where you shouldn't be
Break out of the duty to us you could flee
Birthdays are meant to be spent near to a friend
I've run out of ideas, so this is the end

A Poem I Wrote a Movie About but Never Made

2009-08-11T12:03:00.000-07:00

orb open orb death
elastic secretion
the globe has pulled apart
knee from knee elbow from elbow division of earth cells
it is the supple formation
the body with breast consist of a list
water, land, air, water, land, air
body with breast
orb's first step orb's second step
the globe's stretched appearance
amongst the filthy blackboard
and foot liquid held together
together bound in elements
tug on the cloak
universe kneeling
rocks back with the motion
and the slide projector empty goes on its rounds
strobe light misfortune
universe frantic
too many footsteps
and the central ignition takes action
mannnerist mayhem
focal pt of lighting
aerosol spray effect out and about
around the orbital head
for there is blinding
slashing
sends the other orbs to play
rather not, rather not
spectacle blade reactions
at position jugular orb earth
as body dead can radiate further
while universe regains balance

Poem I Wrote a Film to But Never Made

2009-08-11T11:10:00.000-07:00

orb open orb death

elastic secretion

the globe has pulled apart

knee from knee elbow from elbow division of earth cells

it is the supple formation

the body with breast consist of a list

water, land, air, water, land, air

body with breast

orb's first step orb's second step

the globe's stretched appearance

amongst the filthy blackboard

and foot liquid held together

together bound in elements

tug on the cloak

universe kneeling

rocks back with the motion

and the slide projector empty goes on its rounds

strobe light misfortune

universe frantic

too many footsteps

and the central ignition takes action

mannnerist mayhem

focal pt of lighting

aerosol spray effect out and about

around the orbital head

for there is blinding

slashing

sends the other orbs to play

rather not, rather not

spectacle blade reactions

at position jugular orb earth

as body dead can radiate further

while universe regains balance