Well I've been in Twic East (pronounced Twich) for almost 3 weeks now. One week left. Twic East is a county in the area of Jonglei in South Sudan. It is north of Juba, but not too far north. The town I'm in is Panyagor.
From here, Tearfund is working in a large geographical area managing feeding centres treating malnourished children and pregnant/lactating mothers; working with communities on hygiene and sanitation, and providing training and materials for kitchen gardening, crop production and fishing in order to improve livelihoods.
The area is very isolated (as is most of South Sudan) - there are few roads, and in the rainy season (now) these are impacted heavily and the area becomes inaccessible. This results in a very limited local market that only stocks a limited selection of non-perishable items, and the very few things grown locally - onion and garlic; occasionally okra. It's easy to see how malnutrition has become such a problem.
Once a week a UN helicopter arrives - on Tuesday mornings, and then on Saturdays, depending on the weather, we may receive some commercial flights but these have very very poor safety records. It is normal for them to put 3 people on 2 seats for example. So for me, the UN helicopter is my life-saver - we have food put on it in Juba for me so that I can get some fresh food, we put on things like printer cartridges, cleaning materials for the house, spare parts for our vehicles etc. Living here is a lesson in planning ahead, and having to prioritise between items that are needed.
Living conditions are basic for everyone, most people are living in mud huts with grass roofs called tukels. Then there are a few concrete buildings around - mostly belonging to the government and charities. There is no running water and no electricity. In the Tearfund compound we have one concrete building which is our office plus 2 bedrooms for staff, then we have a large marquee that is our warehouse, a couple of buildings made from metal sheets which are further stores, a couple of tukels for more staff to live in when visiting, a tent as a final accommodation option, some wash rooms (concrete base, metal sheet walls), an outside kitchen and a laine block. Water is collected from a local hand pump, and electricity is provided by a generator and solar power back up. We share our house with an army of bats who live in the roof, and due to the poor condition of the building they are sharing their wee and poo with us constantly, so the whole place stinks.
When I arrived, cooking was happening on a charcoal fire, one pot at a time. I decided we could use a gas cooker, and some other basic items like additional plastic chairs and tables to act as desks, and pots and pans. So I sent two staff to the nearest large town to do the shopping as none of these items are available locally. It took them 7 hours to drive there, and then 4 days to negotiate the shopping as the items had to be brought from Juba by the shop keeper, then 7 hours to drive back. But I have never been so pleased to have a two ring gas stove in my life! They also bought a large quantity of drinking water as we have heard that sometimes you can't even buy bottled water here.
Day to day it's pretty hot and humid. The mozzies are out in force therefore and staff are regularly down with malaria as a normal part of life here. Wrestling is the equivalent of football and is a very big deal with large competitions regularly on Saturdays in the town. Status is held in cattle, and so large herds of cows are often walking past. Interestingly we have a family of hedgehogs on the compound which before now I had assumed were a cold climate animal! We have a lot of lizards/ghekos etc (one fell on my head in the latrine last week!), and a few snakes.
Twic East has grown on me over the past few weeks. I'm only here short term, and I'm glad to be coming home again soon, but I have learned a lot, and have enjoyed getting to know the team and work in a much more rural location than I am used to.
