Lord Jim of Dilling - Diplomat Magazine

sudan|Di spatches“We give them painfully little. It hurts to watch their gratitude.”all the water pour out the doors. It wouldbe perfect if a fish or two came out as well,like in a Hollywood comedy.I turn around to winch him out andget badly stuck myself in the beach sand.I don’t follow my own tracks back –dummy. Have to wait hours for a tractor topull me out. The team is wonderful – twoJordanians, one Romanian, one Thai, threeSudanese and one Canadian – with greatspirits, work ethic and humour.Anyway, so much for being the expertwinter driver (“Driving in mud? Ha! Thisis nothing compared to driving in the wintersnows of Canada.”)The essence of this story for me is thejasmine flower overleaf. (I tape a nowtruly-wilted bloom in my journal). Theschool buildings we investigate all havebricked-up windows. Why? Turns outthe Sudanese Armed Forces (North) barricadedthemselves in them during theearlier years of fighting. Consequentlythere are bullet holes everywhere, insideand out. As I walked over to one building,I notice a wonderful fragrance in the airand petals on the ground. “Jasmine,” I amtold. Oh, it is such a great smell – calming,sweet, happy. You can still smell iton these pages of my journal. And here Iam counting bullet holes, while standingon a carpet of jasmine and enveloped inthe most peaceful fragrance. How sad.How very sad. Once again, the Sudanesedichotomy.In Sudan, taking pictures is risky business.ern world. The plastic bag and the plasticbottle are the most obvious and enduringlegacy of the modern world. They’re leftto lie everywhere, collecting on fences, incorners and in piles of dirt.The other legacy of Sudan, the children,are its future. But this sad country with itswonderful children needs help. Nobodycould visit and not feel the way I do. I callit happy-sad. Their huge white-toothedsmiles, which light up their faces, makeyou happy to see, yet also make you incrediblysad.August 20, 2008Jasmine and bullet holesOur joint monitoring teams alwaysincludes a national monitor fromeach side, a language assistant,patrol leader and two or more United NationsMilitary Observers. Our team is onpatrol in our white 4 x 4s. We know it isgoing to rain and we are far away fromcamp. Did I say rain? This is not rain aswe know it in Canada. Here, in the rainyseason, what pours from the sky is a rivergone vertical. Mix this with roads thatin Canada we wouldn’t even describe aswide trails and you have morass, whichis a word I have always wanted to usebut not experience. Thank goodness forpower winches and GPS.It is a wild day. Two villages, twoinvestigations. Wonderful kids at theschool, as usual. They come running outto look at the kawaja and laugh at myArabic. They are what this UN missionis, or should be, about. We do okay untilwe run into a flash-flooded river. I makeit across, with my yelping, pessimisticJordanian navigator at my side, screamingthat we are going to drown. I use the termnavigator loosely, as he still swears weare 20 miles off target when we arrive inthe village. But it is a close-call. Our teamleader gets stuck mid-river in his vehicle.It’s fun to watch everyone bail out and seeMy Canadian colleague’s schoolIwas fortunate to serve with Lieutenant(Navy) Janan Sutherland. Janan is inhis late 20s, originally from Windsor,Ontario and currently employed as aninstructor at the Canadian Forces recruitschool in St. Jean, Quebec. He is a reasonyou should be proud of the CanadianForces, and he is partly responsible forwhy its members rise to the top of everymission they are on. Quiet, super-competent,honest, humble and a natural leader,Janan was good company, especially sobecause he saw in me an older, sage-likepersonality and therefore gave me morerespect than I deserved. I milked it for allit was worth.We often made patrols to outlying villages,well off road and far away from ourteam site. The purpose was usually to dosecurity assessments to see if the villageswere having problems with banditry, rovingsoldiers, nomads stealing cattle and soforth. This day we ended up in Kortala,the home village of one of our interpret-diplomat and international canada 23