Exhibit poster

[Montréal, Québec, Canada 17°C] Southern Sudan was a place I had not heard much about before my seven-week visit to the East African region of the continent’s largest country. It is a part of Sudan where over eight million people are now recovering from a 21-year civil war that ended six years ago after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was signed. The southern rebels fought Sudan’s army and its militias for a generation, trying to bring freedom to the south and end the military junta’s systematic repression of the Nilotic South. The war devastated the land and its people, leaving two million dead, four million internally displaced and one million refugees.

I arrived in Juba on February 26, 2009 during the dry season and met with temperatures that reached 45°C in the shade. I visited mine fields being cleared around the southern capital and observed mine risk education projects in villages still waiting for de-mining teams to remove the hidden danger. Farmers are still reluctent to till the land for fear of stepping on landmines that continue to kill and maim.

I flew to Aweil and visited dozens small villages in Northern Bahr el Ghazal. Here, people are returning to the homeland they ran from when they were attacked with a cruelty more recently witnessed in neighbouring Darfur. I interviewed men, women and children under their villages’ biggest trees. Here, up to 90% of the population have returned in the previous two years after living in displacement camps for ten, fifteen, even twenty years. They arrived without enough wells to supply drinking water, without sufficent schools, without clinics. They are finally on land that is theirs and want to stay, despite the hardships.

In the state of Warrap, I accompanied a vaccination program to the village of Lurcuk. Two medical assistants spent five hours giving innoculations against measles, tuberculosis, polio, diphtheria and tetanus. In all, 276 children were vaccinated.

Later, before my flight back to Montréal, I revisited the youth from Sud Academy, a school for Sudanese refugees in Nairobi, Kenya. I met them before my journey to Sudan and promised to return with images of their homeland, a place they barely remember and dream of returning. Most of them haven’t seen their parents or siblings since they ran from their villages, scrambling to escape the killing.

The photographs represent some of the people I met and who generously shared their stories.

The vernissage is Thursday, June 10 from 16h00-19h00 at Café Rico 969, rue Rachel est, Montréal. Videos I took during my visit will be shown at the vernissage.

I recount anecdotes of my time in Southern Sudan to friends, family, journalists and am reminded of how little we know about the place, which beckons a second visit. How the media focuses on the war in Darfur, or the International Criminal Court arrest warrant against Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir but completely ignore the immense challenges facing the southern part of the country as it adapts to times of relative peace four years after the signing of the January 9, 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which ended 21 years of civil war.

Few people I’ve spoken with realize that Sudan is divided in two: Sudan and Southern Sudan with a coalition Government of National Unity dominated by President Omar al-Bashir’s National Congress Party for the whole of Sudan, and a semi-autonomous Southern Sudan led by President Salva Kiir Mayardit’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement. Salva Kiir is also First Vice-President of Sudan under the power-sharing peace deal. Even fewer people I’ve spoken with are aware that under the mandate of the CPA, Southern Sudan is scheduled—at the end of its post-war six-year interim period—to hold a referendum in 2011 that will determine whether or not Africa’s largest country will be divided, giving independence to the South.

In the meantime, what has happened to the one million people that have been living as refugees in neighbouring countries for up to two decades, or to the four million Internally Displaced People (IDPs) who were uprooted from their homes when they fled the fighting? More than two million have already returned to their traditional homeland in the south, which was devastated by the war. How are the returnees adjusting to the tenuous peace now that they have returned to regions they no longer recognize, or for the younger ones, have never lived in?

Below are IDPs during their return to Southern Sudan in 2008 as coordinated by the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Nearly all of the Southern Sudanese I had the pleasure of speaking with while visiting the south have returned to their traditional homelands only within the last two years. Many left when they were very young while some were born in exile, which required of them complete readaptation to a homeland they do not know.

Why is our media uninterested in following the story of an African region the size of France after the end of what has been described as the Twentieth Century’s longest and bloodiest civil war? Five million displaced and two mimmion dead! What is it about the initiation of peace and democracy that persuades news editors to look elsewhere for stories? This virtual blackout of information about Southern Sudan is what led me to visit. I wanted to meet the people who are making the transition to a peaceful society.

Now that I’ve returned, I have more questions than before, but they are no longer based on a total lack of information. How does a rebel army like the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) make the transition from rebel forces to official army of Southern Sudan and member of the Joint Integrated Units with its former foe, the Sudan Armed Forces? How is former soldier, Lt. General Salva Kiir Mayardit adapting to his new job as President of the Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS) and First Vice President of  Sudan’s interim Government of National Unity (GNU)? What are the most imposing obstacles to the peace agreement (and there are many: serious underdevelopment, food insecurity,  intertribal conflicts, international pressures, border disputes, resource sharing, slow/non implementation of CPA requirements, census results, February 2010 national elections, the 2011 independence referendum, etc.)

I will attempt to address the above questions and others in future posts to this blog so I invite you to return here and comment on what your read. I am in regular contact with people I met in Southern Sudan and will be following their stories and the story of Sudan as it unfolds. I’ve just begun to review the thousands of photographs, hours of video footage, dozens of audio interviews, and the pages and pages of notes taken throughout my trip. I’ve started reading the books, reports, newspapers and documents I picked up while in Southern Sudan and have consolidated the names and contact details of people I met there. I’m reviewing websites of organizations I came across in Sudan and am adding links to the relevant ones to the sidebar on this blog. There are many news blogs that provide regularly updated news about Sudan, many of which I’ve added RSS feeds here as well.

Burningbillboard.org is my South Sudan resource gathering point. If you are interested, it can also be yours.

I’ve been hesitant to take mefloquine from the beginning because of the potential side effects (see previous post), which—according to the prescription—include but are not limited to “a sudden onset of unexplained anxiety, depression, restlessness or irritability, or confusion (probably signs of more serious mental problems).” Like most people, I’ve never been treated for depression, but I have felt ‘depressed’ before, lacking in confidence and motivation. A concern of mine is, would a drug like Larium (the brand name for m) instigate the “more serious mental problems” that the manufacturer delegates as the responsibility of the consumer? Besides, I don’t want to feel more anxious or depressed than what naturally occurs during episodes of cultural shock and adaptation, particularly not in situations that may already have their own normal levels of stress and misunderstanding that comes when being in unfamiliar cultural surroundings.

The warnings continue on the box with, “you may develop other serious side effects, including persistently abnormal heartbeat or palpitations,” but this time without the disclaimer blaming the person taking the medication. I’m not sure if I’ve had palpitations before but I may have. Are they warning that a heart attack may follow while taking these pills? Not something I want to contemplate from Southern Sudan or anywhere else for that matter!

Last night while chatting with Carla (the guesthouse owner) and another guest at Miti Mingi , we decided to make some tea. The only choice in the house was a herbal tea made of crushed leaves from the neem tree (Azadirachta indica). On the back of the box is written, “… Neem has remarkable healing properties…” Then it continues by listing them: boosts body’s immune system, stimulates the production of T-cells, purifies the blood, and prevents or cures during treatment of sore throats, colds, fevers, food poisoning, lowering blood pressure and cholesterol, irregular heartbeat… and the list finally mentioned malaria. Finally, an alternative and natural treatment against malaria. This tea was produced from trees in Kenya, and in the Kaswahili language the tree is called Muarubaini, which can be translated as the tree with forty cures.

According to Vandana Shiva, physicist, environmental activist, intellectual, author and future Nobel Prize winner(!?), the medicinal and chemical uses of the neem tree’s bark, leaves fruit and seed oil have been known and used in India for more than 4000 years.

I noticed the mention of neem on a back page of a pamphlet given to me at the Santé Voyage clinic where I received my vaccinations and consulted about malaria prevention. None of the medical staff mentioned any natural products as a possible alternative for the common prophylactics like mefloquine, aralen, chloroquine, etc.

In Senegal, there is a movement to bring neem to the masses to decrease the numbers of unnecessary deaths from malaria. Below is a video from the Al Jazeera show ‘People & Power’, dating from December 8, 2008:

The Forestry Department at the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations have coordinated since 1994 the International Neem Network whose activities are documented in their recent, The Activities of the International Neem Network. Other online documentation can be read from the website.

So, I’ve decided to forgo the mefloquine prescription by leaving it in my bag. I will now drink neem herbal tea and will look for neem soap to wash with as an added repellent. Or course this will be done in tandem with my other preventative measures, like sleeping under a Permethrin-impregnated mosquito net, and using mosquito repellent on uncovered skin areas between dusk and dawn when mosquitoes are most active.

My flight from Europe to Africa, was supposed to include me, the white caucasian, bathing happily in a sea of black Africans. Swahili was to dominate the conversational soundscape with other African languages floating among the seats of those returning passengers with connecting flights to Addis Ababa, Kampala, or Dar es Salaam. But on this flight, pale-skinned Europeans dominated the landscape with English, German, Dutch and French languages competing for dominance. There were no more that 5% African representation on the second segment of the flight! I hope it’s because East Africans choose to fly on an African airlines like Kenya Airways, Ethiopian Airlines or Air Tanzania but I couldn’t prevent myself from wondering if there are more people living in Africa who travel on foot as refugees or internally displaced people than the number who fly overseas to other continents! So even before arriving, I felt colonial; that unwanted inheritance.

Midway across the North Atlantic The DC 111 is flying at 913 km/hour (ground speed) at an altitude of 10670 metres. The exterior temperature is -46 degrees Celcius. In 3 hours and 5 minutes it will be 7h36 in Amsterdam. The sun rises on Nairobi but before arriving there, there is still the Sahara Desert to cross.

I used to think the Sahara was untamable with its dunes flowing across the landscape at the mercy of the wind, burying anything it its way. The pyramids at Giza and their guardian Sphinx are prime examples of the desert’s tenacity. I don’t believe that anymore, at least in the short term. During the second leg of the flight over southern Egypt just a few hundred kilometres from the border with Sudan, dark circles blemished the otherwise uniform desert brown. Crop circles in the middle of nowhere at the end of a ribbon road that slices the landscape. But for how long. Long ago, it must have been a resting place for nomadic tribesmen. A converging oasis in the desert to forge alliances and replenish thirsty camels. Some of the circles have already lost the battle with the sand. When will the next wind storm overtake them all and remind us yet again that nature will prevail.

Later, while in Sudanese airspace, the flight crossed paths with the mighty Nile. A glimmering strip of moisture in an otherwise parched sea of sand. I will set foot on the banks of this mythical river once I arrive in Juba on February 26. But first, eight days in Nairobi

I am now comfortably staying at the Miti Mingi Guest House.

On February 16, I catch a KLM flight to Nairobi, Kenya. Fifteen hours of flying with a three-hour stopover in Amsterdam to get a scent of Europe before heading for Sub-Saharan Africa for the first time. Very exciting! Now I have an itinerary to plan out, a budget to establish, a what-to-bring list to determine, people to contact…

This all started with the desire to better understand what happens to a place once 21 years of civil war slips into the past with the signing of a peace agreement. In Sudan that translates with the January 9, 2005 signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the ruling government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M). I introduce this in a previous post.

So from Nairobi Airport, I will take a cab the Miti Mingi bed & breakfast in in the Muthangari neighbourhood of the city. I chose this place because it was referred by a friend of a friend’s friend. And because it is in the same par of town as the Sudan Radio Service (SRS), an “independant media dedicated to peace and development in Sudan” that I will be collaborating with in Nairobi, where it is based, and in Juba where it has journalist correspondents. It is also near the offices of Africa 24 Media, whose directors I will meet with to discuss their work in the African media landscape. As a Africa neophyte, starving for information about the continent mostly abandonned by North American media, A24 covers interesting stories I should have already known about but hadn’t. There may be place for collaboration.

(source: Sud Academy 2008)

While in Nairobi, I will also be visiting Sud Academy, a school established to provide a basic education for the child refugees from Southern Sudan who found themselves in Nairobi after fleeing the civil war. I’ve been in conversation with Jane Roy, who, with her husband—and Canadian Member of Parliament— Glen Pearson, started Canadian Aid for Southern Sudan (CASS).  I will be interviewing Jane Roy before I leave about CASS’ recent trip to Southern Sudan in January 2009. CASS provides funding to Sud Academy and have recently returned from their anual January visit  there. I will be meeting up with Kellee Jacobs, a CASS volunteer at the school. She is keeping a blog, The World as a Stage, about her experiences there.

After about ten days in Nairobi, I fly to Juba, where the journey continues. While in Southern  Sudan, I will visit and write about several United Nations managed projects in the region. I have a contract with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) to write “Stories from the Field” about these projects. In Juba, I expect to visit UNICEF‘s Mine and Unexploded Ordances Risk Education project. I will also meet with SRS journalists, and other media outlets to gain a better understanding in the role the media plays in promoting and maintaining the tenuous peace in Southern Sudan as mandated in the CPA.

I will also be providing radio reports on a weekly basis on CKUT 90.3fm’s weekly Amandla. The pieces may be replayed on the station’s daily Morning After shows (7h00-9h00) and on Vancouver’s Co-op Radio . short video peices will be produced for the National Film Board of Canada’s CitizenShift web portal in the dossier: A Tenuous Peace. I will also write a couple of articles in The Dominion magazine. So stay tuned for lots of mobile journalism in the next three months.

From Juba, the capital of Southern Sudan, I expect to fly north to visit another UNICEF project in Abyei, one of the transitional areas just north the border between Southern Sudan and the rest of the country. The project provides support to basic education in the three transitional areas: Abyei, South Kordofan and Blue Nile states. Via email, we are establishing the itinerary and schedule to get to these project areas. If all goes well, I expect to then go to Aweil in Northern Bahr el Ghazal State, where the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM) runs the Basic Infrastructure and Livelihood Support to Highly Impacted Communities of Return in the area. I am also planning on visiting a World Vision Tonj North Emergency Response and Returnee Assistance Project a bit further south in Warrap State.

So much to do. So little time: ten weeks in all. Come along for the ride.

Santé Voyage Clinic

She was very helpful, detailing the various illnesses prevalent in Sudan and East Africa that I already listed in a previous post. Now I have a vaccination schedule that started during my visit, which started with five needles and a set of pills. It started with a 0.5mL vaccination of Hepatitis A ($58 each injection)  in my left arm. My second and last shot is next week. 1mL of the Hepatitis B vaccination ($34 each injection) was injected into the upper part of my right arm. I need to get a second dose in one month right before I leave and a third a few months after my return; or if I leave earlier than one month from now, I need to get a three doses before I leave every week.

I was then given a Tuberculin Skin Test ($5 each time) that consists of having a 0.1mL injection just under the skin of my left forearm, creating a small bump (see photo of red spot circled in ink. The bump injection had been absorbed). Next week, I get a second shot. this is to provide a sample of the level of TB in my system before I leave. Three months after returning to Montréal, I need to do it again to see if I was exposed to TB while in Sudan.

That was it for my arms. the nurse then asked me to pull down my pants (which I obliged) to give me my last two shots: a Polio vaccine (free) in my left thigh that offers protection for life, followed by the Tetanus/Diptheria (free) combined vaccinatio in my right thigh, which is covers me for 10 years.

I came home with a packet of 4 pills as a oral vaccination against Typhoid Fever ($46). These I need to take in the morning one hour before eating, with water, every second day. I will be good for 7 years.

—–

The nurse offered my a vaccination against Rabies. It was very expensive ($350) and due to my impending departure date, I was not able to take it in time, stictly due to the rabies vaccine shortage. Because of the shortage, vaccination methods have changed. Rather than get a vaccination of 1mL, the clinic offered three small doses of 0.1mL, I think once a week, followed by a blood test two weeks after the third injection to verify if the vaccination worked. The blood test results, I was told, would take two months to be sent to me, so even if I was bitten by a rabid animal, I would still have to be treated as if I hadn’t received any vaccination therapy. Decidedly, I said no to the expensive vaccine. I’ll avoid the petting zoo.

I then had a short visit with a doctor who told me about the malaria options. He seemd very confidant about prescribing me whichever Malaria pills I chose, based on the options for Sudan. He recommended Mefloquine (($20/month) to be taken once a week, Doxycycline, (once a day – $30/month), or or Primaquine (also once a day – $35/month). There was another option for Atovaquone/Proguanil, but it is very expensive ($160/month). I decided to wait and do more research before deciding, IF I want to take malaria pills and if so, which ones.

Next week, I have my second of three appointments to get my Yellow Fever and Meningitis Vaccinations and continue with above.

I’ve always been reluctent to take Malaria pills for periods longer than a 4-6 weeks. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the following are the anti-malarial pill options: atovaquone/proguanil, chloroquine, doxycycline, mefloquine or primaquine. Some of the prescriptions require to take a pill once a day during travel in areas where malaria is prevalent, and up to one week before and after being in the area. For me that would mean taking anti-malarial medication for more than three months! Side effects vary depending on which of the pill options are prescribed but common ones include: stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, headache, dizziness, blurred vision, and itching.

These general side effects are listed in various combinations for most of the prescriptions listed above. Some have specific side effects. Doxycycline increases sun sensitivity (sunburning faster than normal) and women may develop a vaginal yeast infection. More disturbing are the side effects associated with mefloquine. After reading through the CDC’s side effects and warnings for mefloquine (which is more elaborate than the others) I remembered a friend of mine who travelled extensively through eastern Asia for longer than six months, taking anti-malarial pills the entire time. When he returned to Canada he was not well at all. He has symptoms of psychosis, schizophrenia that lasted weeks if not months! He was probably taking mefloquine based on the CDC’s list of side-effects and warnings:

The most common side effects reported by travelers taking mefloquine include headache, nausea, dizziness, difficulty sleeping, anxiety, vivid dreams, and visual disturbances. Mefloquine has rarely been reported to cause serious side effects, such as seizures, depression, and psychosis. These serious side effects are more frequent with the higher doses used to treat malaria; fewer occurred at the weekly doses used to prevent malaria.

Mefloquine is eliminated slowly by the body and thus may stay in the body for a while even after the drug is discontinued. Therefore, side effects caused by mefloquine may persist weeks to months after the drug has been stopped.

Most travelers taking mefloquine do not have side effects serious enough to stop taking the drug. (Other antimalarial drugs are available if you cannot tolerate mefloquine; see your health care provider.)

Travelers Who Should Not Take Mefloquine

The following travelers should not take mefloquine and should ask their health care provider for a different antimalarial drug:

• persons with active depression or a recent history of depression
• persons with a history of psychosis, generalized anxiety disorder, schizophrenia, or other major psychiatric disorder
• persons with a history of seizures (does not include the type of seizure caused by high fever in childhood)
• persons allergic to mefloquine
• Mefloquine is not recommended for persons with cardiac conduction abnormalities (for example, an irregular heartbeat).
• persons traveling to areas where mefloquine-resistant malaria exists

(source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, US Department of Health and Human Services)

During an extensive cycling trip to eastern Asia in the 1990s, I took chloroquine as my anti-malarial preventative treatment. Once I ran out after three months, I decided not to renew my supply after hearing of side-effect stories. I spoke to a doctor in Hong Kong who suggested I carry mefloquine with me in a two-pill doze as a self-treatment. He suggested that if I get the symptoms: extreme flu-like sypmtoms that may include fever, shaking chills, headache, muscle aches, tiredness, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. He suggested that if I got anyof these symptoms and did not have access to a doctor, to take the two pills to stop the disease from progressing while I sought a doctor to diagnose and treat my symptoms. The doctor told me that mefloquine was very strong, and after reading the above warnings, it seems as though it is.

After visiting the Medecins sans frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) website, I came across their Malaria Overview page, that begins with, “Every year, nearly 2 millions people die of malaria.” MSF discusses diagnosis, treatment and prevention. They have been treating patients with malaria in Africa, Asia, and Latin America since 1985 and have conducted many drug resistance studies in collaboration with national health ministries and Epicentre, MSF’s epidemiological research institute.

Another organiztion, The Global Fund is also mandated to support large-scale international prevention, treatment and care programs to to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. To date, it has inveted 149$ billion in 140 countries in their program.

The organization Roll Back Malaria Partnership, whose self-proclaimed vision is “by 2015 [...] malaria is no longer a major cause of mortality and no longer a barrier to social and economic development and growth anywhere in the world.” They discuss their goals of their Global Malaria Action Plan for a malaria-free world. Their website has a great segment of frequently asked questions commonly asked about the disease that are reviewed and answered by Aafje Rietveld from the World Health Organization, that has published the International Travel and Health guide to get “informed about the potential hazards of the countries they are travelling to and learn how to minimize any risk to their health.” Individual chapters of the guide can be downloaded directly from the site.

—

Other than the predeparture vaccinations, I will look into some naturopathic approaches to boosting my immune system prior to leaving as well as some alternative options to vaccinations.