Volume 10
August 29, 2004Hello, everybody.
It’s been more than a week since Volume 9, and there is a lot of catching up to do. Thankfully, I can say that all the catching up is about mostly mundane details of Allyson’s life in Garsila. Nothing particularly bad, or at least nothing worse than usual, has been happening there. One of you did email me after seeing a news report about a riot in a refugee camp in Darfur, worrying if this affected Allyson. I was unable to dig up such a report on the Web myself, but I’m guessing that the riot the report was talking about was the problem at the camp in Mukjar that I referred to in Volume 9.
As I mentioned in Volume 9, all of Doctors Without Borders’ staffers from Mukjar have moved to Garsila, making the already crowded house where Allyson lives even more crowded. Those of you who know Ally well know that she values her privacy, so this was difficult for her. But there is good news. Because of the crowded conditions, three tukuls were built in the backyard of the house. What is a tukul? Well, it seems to be the African equivalent of a wigwam – a circular, wood-framed, adobe-sided, thatched-roof house. And our Allyson was given sole possession of one of the three tukuls. In her words, “My own little round house!!!!!” (All the exclamation points are hers, so evidently, she’s pretty happy about being a tukul dweller.) For the handymen and handywomen in our circle, who want instructions for how to build their very own tukuls, click here.
I’m glad our girl is getting some privacy now. It’s just … well … too cool.
Sorry. Couldn’t help it.
Another development came last week, when the staff divided into two factions over the question of whether to get a couple of cats to combat the rat problem they’ve had. As you might guess, Allyson was in the pro-cat faction. And early this week, her faction prevailed.
As you might also guess, Allyson has become the de facto parent of one of the cats, a little white kitten named Kawaga, which is evidently the Fur word for “white.” An email from Allyson last week began with this:
“I am sitting here with Kawaga on my lap. One of our new kittens. He is so cute. He looks like a little white bat.” Reading that somehow made me very happy, because I know that Allyson is rarely happier than when she’s playing with a dog or a cat. I expect that taking care of Kawaga will do her soul a lot of good.
Another piece of good news is that Allyson and her colleagues got an oven and a TV with a DVD player. So they're baking cookies and watching movies on "really crappy," in Allyson's words, bootleg DVDs. Those of you who are sending care packages would do well to include a DVD movie in them. If you want to send something and don't have the address, click here to email me and I'll send you the details on how to send care packages.
Last week also brought Allyson’s first trips outside the Doctors Without Borders compound in Garsila – specifically a couple of visits to the nearby Internally Displaced Persons encampment to tend to injured children. (I’ve learned that one is technically a refugee only when one crosses the border into another country. If, on the other hand, you’ve been forced to leave your home but have not left your home country, you are an Internally Displaced Person, or IDP.)
I’ll let Allyson tell the story of one of those visits: “Went out to see a little 2-year-old boy with a problem with his hip. The medicine man had rigged him up with sticks and twine. Poor thing, sitting in the darkness of the hut. And they don't have anything, just so poor. But at least I saw a large storage bin of grain and some veggies growing.”
Allyson also had to go through the loss of another baby to malaria this week.
Reading these stories in Allyson’s emails about the tribulations of the people around her has made me acutely aware of the vast differences between what we, here in America, view as “essential” to daily life. It seems that I’m not alone. I’ve gotten emails from several of you recently, talking about how reading these reports has affected your own outlook. I’m going to quote a passage from one of those emails here, because I think it sums up all of them quite beautifully:
“I have felt a heavy, 'without words’ response to each report. I have fussed at myself internally for not responding, but cannot really find words that do any justice to Allyson’s works of kindness. Only two maybe: ‘grace’ and ‘beauty,’ but not in the sense that we usually use them, because in my mind she has suddenly illuminated their true meaning. The greatest gift that your reports are doing to our very small worlds is to keep our own mundane grumblings in perspective. I am drawn to reading these, in most instances, several times, discussing the events among our family, because it makes us feel a part of what is going on there through her eyes, and it humbles us in a very Zen way, to the vanity of our own complainings.”
I think we all knew, when Allyson left six weeks ago, that she was doing something good for others. I think none of us realized how much good she would do for us.
Until next time,
Chuck
Links to Aid Organizations
Doctors Without Borders UNICEF International Red CrossInformational Links
CIA Sudan Factbook United Nations Passion of the Present New York Times (Africa section)
NPR "Fresh Air" program on Darfur The Guardian's Darfur Diary
Last updated Friday, August 19, 2005