Kuin and Kadang

Kadang and kuin

The most commonly eaten meal here is composed of two elements: a stiff porridge, called "kuin" in Dinka, and a sauce or "kadang." The porridge is usually made with sorghum or maize flour. The kadang is made with various combinations of two or three main ingredients. Some of the basic ones are fresh or powdered okra, peanut paste, sesame paste, tomato paste, onions, macaroni, chunks of meat, chunks of dried fish, spinach or similar kinds of greens, or leaves of certain plants.

The person eating breaks off pieces of kuin and dips them into the kadang, as you will see in the video below. You will notice that the sauce is rather slimy because it has okra in it. The Dinka really like this slimy texture, but I must admit I still haven't developed a taste for it. If I ever do, you'll know I've really become "Dinka-ized"!

Do-It-Yourself Utilities, Part Two

In my first post on utilities, I talked about electricity and dish & handwashing. Now I'd like to fill you in on another essential service: human waste management.

We have two latrines on our compound. Below is the one I usually use because it's closest to my house. We call it the "choo" (rhymes with "slow"), which means toilet in Swahili--my colleagues picked up the term in Kenya. It's shorter and a little more catchy to say than "latrine."

Our choo pit was dug by hand and is about 9 feet deep and 4 feet across. A cement slab covers the top of the pit.

The "choo" with my house in the background

Our custom-made "throne" & toilet paper holder

Made from a 5 litre bleach bottle by my creative colleague Julie

My colleague Daniel recently built a composting toilet. The pit is only about 4 feet deep and is rectangular in shape. The toilet boasts a real toilet seat and lid. After each "deposit" a cup of ashes are put into the pit to help facilitate the composting process. When the pit is 3/4 full, Daniel will drag the cement slab to a new location and then put about a foot of earth on top of the old pit. A tree can then be planted there and it will do really well, nourished by all that rich compost underneath.

Composting toilet made by my colleague Daniel

Inside the composting toilet: another creative t.p. holder here, too.

Shoeshine: South Sudan vs. Kenya

South Sudanese men, like most African men,  like to have clean, shiny shoes. With all the sand and dust in countries like South Sudan, shoes need to be cleaned regularly. That provides a good business opportunity for entrepreneurs, both big and small. 

I was recently in Aweil Town with one of our national colleagues, a young man named Dammasio. Dammasio is a pastor-in-training and will be the director of the new school we are planning to start in our village in April.

While Dammasio was waiting for me to do an errand he decided to have his shoes shined. The young man who shined them is shown below. His supplies are basic, and he uses chairs at an outdoor tea shop. Dammasio took off his shoes, and the shoe shiner gave him some sandals to wear while he waited. The cost of the shoeshine: 1 SS pound, which is about 35 cents.

Shoe shiner and his supplies

Hard at work

Putting on the shined shoes

Dammasio, with a friend, sporting his shined shoes

I'm just completing two weeks of R&R (rest and recuperation/refreshment) and have spent several days in Nairobi. I was impressed to see the "Professional Shoeshine Centre" shown below, as compared with the South Sudanese version. It struck me as a good illustration of the difference in development between the two countries. Interestingly, the cost of a shoe shine is about the same.

Shoeshine centre in Nairobi

Shoeshine publicity

Do-It-Yourself Utilities, Part One

There aren't any public utilities offered in our area, so we provide our own. We use solar panels for electricity.  Mine  provides enough power for lights, my computer, cell phone charging, a fan, etc. I still get a kick out of the fact that I don't have to pay an electric bill each month!

My solar panel

We get our water from the village well, which is capped and the water is brought up via a hand pump. My colleagues and I pay local women to bring us jerry cans of water from the well. My jerry cans (which are plastic, not metal) are yellow and can be seen under the counter in the picture below.

I fill the large black barrel on the floor on the right with water from the jerry cans. Then I use a pitcher to fill my water filter, which is on the counter just to the left of the barrel in the picture. I use the water from the filter for drinking, cooking and for brushing my teeth.

I also put water from the barrel into the blue pail next to the filter.  It has a spigot and I use it like a tap to do various things, most important of which is to wash my hands.  The gray pail on the stool below the filter and the hand wash bucket is like a sink which collects the run-off water.

The two gray basins are for doing the dishes. I fill them with water from the black barrel. The darker, shorter one is where I wash the dishes and the other one is for rinsing. Then the dishes go in the violet dish drainer, which, by the way, I inherited from a former C4C team member who had (and maybe still has!) a penchant for purple. (I also inherited my purple table and chairs from her---good thing I like purple, too!)

More utilities details to follow in a future post.

Akueth's Tea Shop

Drinking "chai" (tea) is one of the main leisure activities here in South Sudan. South Sudanese love very sweet, very hot tea. Almost every adult has at least one glass of it each day, and many have several. Tea is made and consumed at home, in the workplace, on the street, in tea shops. Making tea and selling it is one of the common income-generating activities that many women do to help support their families.

I recently had tea in a shop run by a young woman named Akueth. She is the cousin of my friends Achol and Adut and I went to the shop with them. Akueth's shop is located in Wanyjok market. Dozens of other women also make tea and sell it in the market.

Here is a video I made to show the tea making process. You'll hear lots of laughter from Achol, who got a big kick out of looking in my camera's monitor as I was filming.

 

 

Adut, Acol and I enjoying our tea :-)

 

My House

My house is located on the plot of land where the two families on my team live. It measures 24 ' (7 m)  X 14' (4 m), has two rooms and is built of cement blocks with a tin roof. My colleague Daniel oversaw the construction of the house and did a lot of the work himself, with the help of several local hired men. What a joy and privilege to have this house to call home!

Front of the house during the rainy season last fall--nothing green left now!

Front porch

View to the right side of the kitchen from the front door

Left side of the kitchen looking from the front side of the house

View of right front side of kitchen

View of left front side of kitchen, looking from the back door

My bedroom: view from door towards the shower in the corner

View from shower towards the bedroom door

Mohktar's Shop

The town nearest to where I live is Wanyjok, a 20-minute walk from my house.  It has a market (shopping area) to which I go once or twice a week. Food, clothing, soft drink and beer stores, tea shops and bars abound, as well as a few pharmacies, hardware shops and places that sell cell phone credit. There are also some bread shops, restaurants,  and a few tailors, flour grinding mills, and motorcycle and bicycle repair shops. A section of one of the side streets has a traditional market area where women sell perishable things like seasonal vegetables and leaves and peanut paste.

I get some staple items like sugar, flour, macaroni, tomato paste, onions and garlic at the shop of a trader named Mokhtar. He, like many of the other traders in the market, is from the Darfur area of Sudan. He speaks very good English and Dinka as well as Arabic (and probably a few other languages, too!). In addition to food items, Mokhtar sells things like pens, batteries, soap, perfume, toothpaste, and light bulbs. 

The main street of Wanyjok market

Mokhtar's shop

Mokhtar in his shop

Bulk items (not in order shown in the picture): ginger and cinnamon bark (for flavouring coffee and tea), sugar, flour, lentils, tomato powder, garlic, dried hibiscus flowers (from which a fruity tea is made)

Mokhtar's scale--I love the brass weights he uses.