Incredible journey

4 October

I’m flying to Nairobi to join humanitarian aid organisation Medair for a 10-week stint in South Sudan. I’m going to be teaching village elders best practice in leadership and governance, to help prepare for reuniting the country after civil war.

On the plane, I settle down for my fix of movies and Western food – eating everything to stock up for the experience to come.

The other passengers are a funny cross-section – Catholic priests all in black; affluent Africans looking chic and ethnically dressed; aid workers looking casual; nuns and missionaries; business people with laptops. All too soon we’re flying over the orange land of Kenya and it’s time to face immigration. It’s hot and steamy and passport control is bureaucratic as ever.

I’m met by the Medair Landrover, which has a big red cross on the side and a sign saying “no arms on board”. Despite the terrible road conditions, nobody wears a seatbelt because it’s easier to get out fast if needed – car jacking and muggings are one of the risks of travelling in Nairobi.

I had expected to have some time to prepare before starting work in earnest, but they decide to send me off to the field sooner than expected. Still, sitting on a veranda eating mango is not a bad setting to prepare, even if there are frequent power cuts.

1 October

I wake up at 5am in Lokichoggio, the logistics base of about 30 non-governmental organisations. It’s a very hot, barren place, where I never get cool and I’m pleased to leave. I set off for Padak, where I’ll spend most of my time in Sudan, at 6am in a tiny plane – just me, the pilot and a pile of bicycle wheels, spare parts and vaccines.

Sudan has just finished its short wet season so it’s green now, and as I fly in, children run to meet the plane and field workers stop work. I am covered in handprints as hands are pushed at me as I come out. It’s a very moving moment – I have tears streaming down my face.

I live in a small enclosed settlement of 10 mud huts that were designed for cattle. I have my own, with a mozzy tent inside, a table and chair and not much else. The wall of the camp is straw and it looks like a 15th-century village. I live with eight Kenyans, two nurses from Germany and the Netherlands and a doctor. We settle into a routine: up at 6.30am, breakfast of dry cereal at 7.30am, team meeting from 8am to 9am. We work until a 1pm lunch of tinned corn beef or tuna and veg. Then we work again after lunch from 3pm to 7pm. Dinner is at 7.30pm and I’m in bed at 9ish. It’s a simple life.

18 October

I spend the first four days in the village designing courses. In all, I’m doing five weeks of courses, three types for community volunteers, healthcare workers and village elders, with 12 topics in each.

I’ve also spent three days in the villages, a day with health students we’re training and one at eight healthcare units – huts serving 3000 people who walk up to two hours to get there. I also spend a day at our clinic, which serves 17,000 people and is frighteningly basic. There are diseases like nothing I’ve seen before; I’m amazed people survive.

It’s very humbling and not for the squeamish.

24 October

One lady said: ‘Men have told us what to do for long enough. It’s about time a sister told the men what to do’

It’s Sunday and I go to church with the German nurse, Nicola, in my ankle-length dress, straw hat and shoes. The service is in the Dinka language and I avoid the honour of sitting on the altar, joining 600 Africans on mud mound pews. The children are fascinated by white skin and straight hair – the little ones often cry when they see us because they’ve been told we are ghosts.

So far I am well, although feeling a bit nauseated – maybe it’s from too much goat.

18 November

It’s now a little over half way through my project and I have just got to the end of five weeks’ training in Padak. I have trained 65 local leaders – chiefs, heads of police/ education, village elders, almost all men with a handful of women. It’s been a stretch for both them and me – but we’ve laughed a lot and it seems to have gone well. I have learned to eat goat pie, make long speeches and deal with difficult political and religious questions, such as the legacy of colonialism. They think me very old not to be married and that I should have at least three children!

The community structure is very rigid and hierarchical – and men rule. One lady said nothing for three days and when I asked her what she had learned, she said: “We’ve been told what to do by men for long enough, it’s about time a sister told the men what to do.” My favourite questions are “Is there a moon in your country?”, and, on being shown a postcard of the Millennium Wheel, “Is the world really a ball?”

There is immense poverty here and Sudan has very poor literacy rates. For 20 years food has fallen from the skies in the form of war relief, so you always hear young boys saying “give me your pen” and “give me your water bottle”. The challenge is to break the dependency.

3 December

Today I flew to Ayod. It’s a remote place and my job for the next two weeks is again to teach the village elders and put together an action plan to break their dependency on foreign aid. It’s more risky and basic – we’re living and eating only in tents.

I’ve become more involved in the politics here. I went to three hour meetings with the commissioner and the head of security for the region. Then we held a community meeting.

I got the leaders to put their thumb prints on a flipchart charter to say they’d deliver on their promises, such as building a school – we’ll have to see if it makes a difference.

8 December

I’m back in Nairobi, where its 80°F and it’s almost time to head home. I’ve survived seven close encounters with very large snakes, a scorpion in my towel, bats in the wash area and three bouts of diarrhoea.

I feel I’ve learned to be more patient and compassionate, to laugh at myself, to be flexible to new training challenges – such as goats mating in my classroom! – and have a lot more cultural sensitivity. The people I taught are bright, wise, proud and very dedicated to learning.

They are some of the most motivated participants I have met.