South Kordofan Update

Our colleague Saudi from the Together for Sudan office in Khartoum visited Kadugli in late December and reports that he found Together for Sudan watchman Nazar still on duty despite the looting of our office. No usable equipment remains in the building. Our two colleagues visited the landlord who promised to do general maintenance but all equipment will need to be replaced.  Meanwhile, Kadugli remains tense and during Saudi’s visit to the local Commissioner, Together for Sudan was asked to move our upcoming Eye Care Outreach to Talodi – to which some 2,000 people from other areas of South Kordofan have fled seeking safety in recent months. The local Humanitarian Affairs Commission has lost most partners in UN agencies and international organizations. And it was not possible for Saudi to check on the more than 20 solar lighting panels, most in unstable areas, which Together for Sudan had recently set up on schools and clinics. 


See the Nuba section on our website

Kadugli Office Update

It is a great sadness that the TfS office in Kadugli, South Kordofan, has been closed since fighting swept across the area in early June.  None of our colleagues were injured but among items looted from our Kadugli office was a very expensive microscope essential for eye surgery during Eye Care Outreach. We remain hopeful that the microscope will be returned and that  – working through the Kadugli office – we may be able to continue Eye Care Outreach in the Kadugli hospital. We hope that a colleague from our Khartoum office will be able to visit Kadugli soon.  Meanwhile, our loyal guard, who was sent away by soldiers before the looting, is back in the office for which we had paid rent for several months in advance.  However, our TfS Field Representative is now working in the Khartoum office.  Alan and I were denied permission to go to Kadugli on our recent trip.
  
Lillian Craig Harris - TfS Director

Together for Sudan in the Nuba Mountains - click here to learn more

A group of trainees outside the TfS Kadugli office and project centre 

News from Kadugli

The news from Kadugli in the Nuba Mountains is less good.  The TFS office there remains closed, its work is suspended and there is no news of the stolen operating microscope and solar panels.  And we have just heard that the Sudanese authorities have turned down a request from the Director to visit Kadugli because of continuing insecurity in the town.

Letters of thanks

Some of the Together for Sudan University Graduates have recently written letters of appreciation and thanks for the support that they received in gaining and passing their University courses. They are all very grateful for the opportunity of making a difference to Sudan and improving the lives of those around them. See their words on our website.

• A letter from Alia
• A letter from Hawa
• A letter from Hana
• A letter from Asia

Furniture Found

Better news from Kadugli in that some of the furniture looted from the TFS office on 21 June has been returned, thanks primarily to good local police work.  But the eye care microscope and solar panels are still missing.  However the situation in the town is still too insecure to permit the office to resume work.  Let us pray that the holy month of Ramadan, which is about to begin, will ease the tensions there.

TfS Kadugli Office Looted

Under pretext of an imminent air raid, TfS office guard Nazar was warned by soldiers to leave the Kadugli office.  When he returned some time later he found the office stripped of computers, furniture, safe, files and all other moveable equipment. Most other NGO and INGO offices had already been looted.  We are enormously grateful to Nazar for staying at his post as long as possible despite the threatening situation.   

The Nuba People return to war

Together for Sudan’s office in Kadugli has been closed since early June following an outbreak of heavy fighting in South Kordofan between government forces and the Nuba peole.  TfS Field Coordinator Ibrahim was evacuated by UNIMIS with other INGO Forum personnel and subsequently reunited with his family in Wad Medani.  He will work from our Khartoum office for the time being.  Kawther, a TfS university graduate, who was volunteering in the Kadugli office and Fatima, our cleaner/messenger have also reached safe haven.  Fighting continues 

VOLUNTEER SUPPORT!

Together for Sudan was born out of volunteerism. Other that our full time TfS colleagues in Khartoum and Kadugli, all TfS supporters and trustees are volunteers. In particular, we depend on volunteers to help us fundraise. Recently something very heartwarming happened.


In November 2010, Paul, a graduate student at Oxford University in England, volunteered to research foundations and corporate programmes which might be interested in supporting TfS. This was excellent news, especially as Paul further agreed to advise us on possibilities of using social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter to publicise our work to the younger generation. This in itself was enormously satisfying but then almost immediately a second volunteer showed up, this time a woman.

In December Rasha, a young Syrian working temporarily in Khartoum, asked if she could help TfS in some way. Country Coordinator Neimat was delighted to send Rasha out to monitor the ten schools on the outskirts of Khartoum where our Teacher Training and Scholarships for HIV/AIDS Orphans are functioning.

Next -- and the sequence seems almost too good to be true – in late December an Iranian-American senior at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., heard about TfS. Amin and his friends did some fundraising in the school cafeteria and this week presented me with $55 for Together for Sudan!

By now, of course, I would not be surprised if other volunteers contact us from Cape Town or Budapest! So please don’t wait! We’re on a roll!

Lillian. 6 January 2011

A Christmas Exchange

Lillian the Director of Together for Sudan sent a Christmas message to the hardworking TfS Centre staff. Read it and the heart warming reply below.

Dear Neimat,


Alan and I ask that you give our greetings and the hope for blessings at Christmas and a Happy New Year to all our Together for Sudan colleagues, including those in the Nuba Mountains. This has been an extraordinary year filled with opportunities and challenges, problems and achievements. The biggest achievement is that we are still going and still going strong. The US government has, for example, just agreed that we may begin fundraising here. Given all the difficulties and opposition which we have faced, this seems something of a miracle. And I am deeply grateful to you all for your ongoing loyalty to Together for Sudan during this time of tension and financial difficulty.

On behalf of the Together for Sudan trustees I send you our love and greetings and much gratitude for the dedicated work which TfS colleagues in both Khartoum and Kadugli have provided. Without your cooperation and hard work Together for Sudan would no longer exist. Relying on our Sudanese colleagues we can continue to reach out to people who are displaced, marginalized, illiterate and, in some cases, needing hope to keep on living. It is a blessing and a privilege for us to work with you and through you with them.

May God continue to bless and keep you in 2011. This coming period in Sudan’s history will be difficult for us all, in particular for those of you on the front line of caring and helping. Be assured of our prayers and may God give your strength and wisdom. It is my hope and expectation that the work of Together for Sudan will enable more people to understand that Muslims and Christians can successfully work together in service to people in need. This is a path to understanding, reconciliation and friendship which will help make our world a better place for us all. I ask God to protect you all at this time of tension and change in Sudan.

Thank you, Neimat, for sharing this message with all our colleagues in Khartoum and Kadugli.
With much appreciation for your leadership,

                                                                    Lillian
 
Dear Lillian,


Many thanks for your wishes to staff for Christmas and New Year. We return the blessing wishes to you and Alan hoping for a brighter future to Together for Sudan under your guidance and leadership.

It is good news that the US government has agreed that TfS may begin fundraising in USA and we pray that God will give us all the strength to continue supporting the work of TfS and keep us here all safe in this difficult time of stress and complexity.

We are all appreciating your encouraging words in this letter and feeling that there are people who care after us, pray for us and wish all the best for us. The staff felt happy when I read your message to them. Your words had a great comfortable impact on the staff including Ibrahim in Kadugli when I passed some words from the message to him through the telephone.

Thank you very much for this message which comes at a time when the TfS staff and all people in Sudan need such spiritual support.

I am attaching our Christmas card wishing you and Alan all the best for 2011.

Regards,   Neimat -- with greetings from all the staff

Hope and Challenges

My early May visit to Sudan was both exhilarating and painful. Our current challenges include unstable political conditions as the January 2011 referendum looms and the continuing difficulty of working with broken communities in the Khartoum IDP areas where it is often “every man for himself”. Then there is the ongoing challenge of working in Kadugli in the Nuba Mountains where there is an almost complete lack of government provision of education for children and of health care for those who are unable to pay for it.

We also have administrative challenges as Together for Sudan continues --for financial reasons -- to operate with at least one employee too few in both our Khartoum and Kadugli offices. I am deeply grateful to our Sudanese colleagues for their loyalty and to Country Coordinator Neimat Hussein for her dedicated and inspiring leadership.

Other challenges include inadequate funding for the Women’s Literacy Project and the Teacher Training Project. To keep teacher training active we have melded its work in the Khartoum area with the Basic School Scholarships Project and while in Khartoum I attended the first session of teacher training for selected teachers from ten self-help basic schools in the settlements for displaced people which surround Khartoum.

While in Kadugli I attended a teacher training course dedicated to primary health care and learned how to put a splint on a broken leg. The enthusiasm and creativity of the 25 teachers attending the course was inspiring. I was also able to meet with a few of our university graduates now working back in their home territory. Then, in a meeting with Ministry of Education officials, TfS’s Deputy Country Coordinator Victor Gali Thomas and I were pressed to train their primary and secondary school teachers. The request underscores a long standing crisis of under educated teachers which local authorities are unable to resolve due to lack of funding from Khartoum.

Because I was unable to reach Sudan on schedule – due to volcanic ash over Europe – I missed a phenomenal Eye Care Outreach at Abu Gebeiha, some 10 hours by dirt track from Kadugli. Sadly (from my standpoint only) the outreach could not be rescheduled due to onset of the rainy season during which travel outside Kadugli becomes virtually impossible. During the outreach the eyes of 1,063 people were examined, 806 were given medication, 252 were operated on for cataract, 292 were given reading glasses and ten individuals (mainly children) were referred for further medical help in Khartoum. One person told the Eye Care team that, “We don’t have money for medical help and we asked God to send you.” After telling me this, TfS Field Representative Ibrahim Ahmed Jabir added “I feel proud, grateful and happy as a result of our work.”

So, despite all difficulties, I remain encouraged by:

*Strong leadership in both our Khartoum and Kadugli offices, including dedicated employees in both offices who believe in their work and are even willing to suffer hardship to keep it going;

*Increased opportunity to expand TfS work in the Nuba Mountains;

*Loyal institutional and individual donors who are doing all they can during a time of international financial difficulties to supply the funding we need;

*Growing recognition among Sudanese friends and TfS Patrons that TfS will be able to continue to serve and,

*The most impressive group of TfS Trustees we have ever had including the best cooperation we have experienced to date in areas of management and fundraising.

We are Christians and Muslims working, as always, TOGETHER FOR SUDAN.

Lillian

Another Visit to Sudan

My evening flight from Washington Dulles to London on 3 May was followed by a six hour layover after which I flew on to Khartoum via Beirut, in total 22 hours of travelling. British Ambassador Rosalind Marsden, Together for Sudan Trustee and my long suffering hostess for the next two weeks, kindly sent a car to pick me up at the Khartoum airport by which time it was early morning of 5 May local time. I managed four hours sleep before Country Coordinator Neimat Hussein showed up for several hours of briefing and discussion. Despite the exhaustion I was, as always, exhilarated to be back in Sudan. And I am, of course, very grateful to Neimat and her colleagues in both Khartoum and Kadugli for putting up with my bi-annual fact finding missions which are very disruptive of their work!
Over the next several days Neimat and I did the rounds of local patrons and partners and international funding charities, thanking those which support Together for Sudan and seeking new partnerships. I also spend hours in the TfS Khartoum office talking to staff members and receiving visitors including Dr. Nabila Radi who runs our Eye Care Outreach. I have learned to love and sometimes to resist Dr. Nabila because she knows that those who “look on suffering” with the intention of helping are often greatly blessed and therefore usually insists that I go with her to visit those who are dying, diseased, deformed by leprosy or otherwise in a position to teach me more about compassion. I’ve learned a lot from her.



Another highlight of my Khartoum visit was attending the graduation of 127 Community Health Care Workers, over 100 of them women, in a makeshift tent in one of the settlements for the displaced outside Khartoum. When the Sudanese are happy they dance – and we did, celebrating the graduates’ new ability to contribute to their communities as well as support themselves and their children.
This visit was dominated by opposition from the government’s Humanitarian Affairs Commission (HAC) to my planned visit to the TfS sub-office in Kadugli, capital of the Nuba Mountains in Southern Kordofan. But after several days delay, which required that I extend my stay in Sudan, and having written a letter of apology for obtaining my visa from the Sudanese Embassy in Washington rather than from HAC (!), I was eventually allowed to travel to Kadugli. I am enormously grateful to TfS Office Manager Saudi Abdel Rahman for the hours he spend at HAC headquarters and the patience which he displayed.
When finally allowed to fly to the Nuba Mountains, Neimat and I spent four days in Kadugli getting to know Field Representative Ibrahim Ahmed Jabir and Field Coordinator Saleem Musa, both new employees since my last visit to Kadugli in early 2008. I was delighted to see how well they are working together. We arrived to find 25 community leaders, 10 of them women, from the countryside outside Kadugli engrossed in a course in Primary Health Care. All are members of “development committees” in their home areas. Neimat and I called on the Ministries of Health and Education where we were warmly greeted and asked to expand our training of teachers and community workers. At the Kadugli Hospital we were thanked for the TfS Eye Care Outreach which has resulted in the opening of an Ophthalmology Centre there. (The newly hired ophthalmologist was in Khartoum trying to raise money to run the centre!) Other highlights of the visit were visiting some of the now more than 30 young women put through university by TfS who are now back in the Nuba Mountains as teachers, health workers and government and INGO employees. As always, I felt blessed to be part of a growing work which is helping hundreds of individuals improve their lives. For further information see the June Together for Sudan Newsletter.

Lillian Craig-Harris

Another Visit To Sudan

On Sunday, 3 May, I leave Virginia for Sudan, arriving in Khartoum at 3:15 a.m. on 5 May after a several hour stopover in London. Like many people, I endure rather than enjoy long flights and always find it near impossible to sleep. On these at least twice yearly visits, I bring along a good book or two and also use the time to mull over the work ahead. Usually I don’t talk much to my seatmates as most people find it hard to understand why anyone would voluntarily go to Sudan. So it would be too complicated to tell them that this is my 23rd return since I was expelled in late 1998.

This time I’ll spend a few days in Kadugli, the capital of Southern Kordofan, in order to monitor TfS educational and educational support projects, talk to government officials and meet the two new staff members in our four person office. I’ll also call on representatives of other charities and UN agencies with which we cooperate. And every night I’ll eat either beans or bread and peanut butter (this latter carried in by me) for supper. Although life in Kadugli is now even more expensive than Khartoum, there is little food in the area and many people are chronically hungry. But sitting after dark in the street market with the generators roaring in the background is always a magical experience, a feeling of solidarity with an “end of the earth” place where human needs are enormous and anything you can do is appreciated.

In Khartoum, where I’ll spend most of my time, life is much more up market. There are grand hotels and restaurants, most very recent, embassies and high rise buildings and too much traffic. I’ll spend a lot of time in the Together for Sudan office with our nine employees and even more time battling traffic to call on potential funders including embassies and international organizations. I’ll attend an Eye Care Outreach and the graduation of our first group of public health trainees in the IDP settlements and have meetings with some of our Sudanese Patrons. And I’ll do a bit of office encouragement and management and catch up with friends. After midnight on 14 May I’ll board a flight for London and then another for the US, chasing the sun, so that it will still be 14 May when I arrive in Virginia. I’m always both sad and relieved to leave Sudan – a country whose diverse people are very kind and hospitable and captured my heart over a decade ago.

Lillian Craig-Harris

Activity in Khartoum and Kadugli Offices

Country Coordinator Neimat Hussein is on well-earned holiday from mid-March to mid-April and Deputy Country Coordinator Victor Gali Thomas is in charge of the office. Consequently, I am working through Victor, an energetic and committed southern Sudanese whom I met many years ago while living in Khartoum. The mixture of Sudanese from several areas of Sudan enriches our Khartoum office and allows me insights into a variety of Sudanese cultures. I always feel it a privilege to work with Sudanese so deeply committed to educating women and children. Since Alan and I were obliged to leave in 1999, I have been back to Sudan 21 times and plan to visit both Khartoum and Kadugli again in May. Each return to Sudan is a joyful reunion.

In the past few days the Khartoum office has concentrated on an application to the European Union (EU) for funding for our Teacher Training and Support Project in the Khartoum area and Nuba Mountains. This is probably the most difficult funding application we have ever worked on. If successful, our application to the EU will allow TfS to continue our Teacher Training and Support Project by training up to 660 teachers over a three year period and providing them with small “incentives” during a subsequent period of monitoring. In TfS experience, such gratuities have often allowed displaced people living in squatter areas to keep open the self help basic schools which they set up for their children. This is an area in which Together for Sudan has been a pioneer. We are also hoping to ask the EU for funding for ongoing training of our office staff, another necessity as the work expands and becomes more complicated.

The Khartoum office and I have also been busy recently working with a request from the Mohamed Ibrahim Foundation (MIF) for further information about our university scholars. MIF is one of three major contributors to TfS’s flagship project, the University Scholars Project (the other contributors are the UK Department for International Development and the Gordon Memorial College Trust Fund). And now the MIF offers us an opportunity on their impending website. Dr. Mohamed and his wife Dr. Hania Fadl, both TfS Patrons, inspire all who know them.

Our Kadugli office is still settling down following a major turnover of employees in recent months. TfS Field Coordinator, Saleem Musa Agoaf is supported by an assistant field coordinator, an office guard and a cleaner – and is showing signs of being a natural for the job. The Khartoum office knows that I am happy when accurate and timely reports keep coming in and Saleem seems well able to fit in with this requirement. TfS plans another Eye Care Outreach in April which will target some one thousand people, for the majority of whom it will be the first time they have been examined by a doctor of any sort. Dr. Nabila Radi, a saintly ophthalmologist, will travel to Kadugli from Khartoum once again and has offered to sleep in the office to save money.

We’ll see about that.
Lillian