The Sudan - 29

Ooh, thick turkish-style coffee with ginger - loverly. And perfect following our 6am walk.
My Indian colleague and i join the Sudanese man who is also staying in our guest house. The air is warm and still and the sky is a massive smudge of grey clouds on a yellowing backdrop. There are few people up and about yet, a toyota here, a vespa there and we pass a number of still sleeping people on their beds that they have dragged out into the open for the night. Im not taken aback this time as we wave a greeting to the 2 goat herders with a small collection of mangy creatures - both men each carry a 3 foot sword with ease.
All over there are hundreds, no, it must be thousands of tiny little birds picking in the dusty ground. They cant be any bigger than a matchbox and many of them have the most amazing scarlet red feathers.
By the time we return to Isha and her coffee, the sun is starting to peep over the mountains and its already beginning to get too hot for walking

There are 20 men in our session today, I am the only one without a mustache. The session kicks off in Arabic; I presume we are all here for the same reason. Amongst the gabble i hear mention of my name, so i guess im at least supposed to be here.
Our purpose here is to get a disparate group of agencies to come together to create a mid-term-review. The project here to tame the river to protect people and provide irrigation is a massive investment and the funders want to know that their money is being well spent and how the project intends to proceed for the next 4 years. Its a daunting task for these people particularly when they see it as a test of themselves and a call for them to justify thier actions. As we help them understand that this is a learning opportunity for all and a chance to plan what they want for the future, motivation builds and we conclude the day with them excitedly arranging diaries to meet and collaborate on data gathering and planning. I feel for these guys. They are doing good work for benefit of people suffering from extreme poverty. They are in at the deep end but with little management support (actually i should rephrase that - these are bright and educated people and they go on all sorts of courses - but they dont appear to have a great deal of “encouragement” or coaching) - If we did anything for these guys today - we gave them hope... and i hope that in turn this gives a few starving farmers some hope too.