An Engineer’s Darfur Journal – Part I – Arrival
September 10, 2009, Khartoum
After touching down in Khartoum at 5 a.m. after a 30-hour journey, I thought I would finally get a chance to rest. However, arriving with a 70 lb box and a 70 lb bag full of stove assembly tools tends to attract some attention at customs. A flash of my documentation as a volunteer for Oxfam America resulted in plenty of smiles and a quick trip through the line to the Oxfam driver who was waiting to take me to their guesthouse. A good first impression of Oxfam’s reputation here, and I’ve since found out from meeting their wonderful staff that it is well deserved.
My original plan was to spend just a few days in Khartoum while the necessary permits were processed for travel to El Fasher, the capital city of North Darfur, where I will spend most of my time setting up the Berkeley-Darfur Stove assembly shop. After meeting with the Oxfam staff and their partners at the Sustainable Action Group (SAG), I found out that, unfortunately, there was no rush to get to El Fasher; the shipment of stove kits from India was delayed in customs in Port Sudan. Luckily, this gave me nearly a week to wander the crowded markets in Khartoum with SAG colleagues to find a suitable generator and other tools for their office and workshop in El Fasher. Some specialty tools and materials are not available in the markets in Darfur, so we need to be sure that we have all the important pieces in place to set up the workshop. The extra time also allowed me to practice some basic Arabic phrases and sample a delicious mango from the massive Omdurman market, just down the Nile from Khartoum.
I’ll be taking a flight to El Fasher later this afternoon and am looking forward to meeting everyone from Oxfam and SAG at their field offices. Oxfam America has been expanding their efforts in Darfur considerably in the last few months, adding more than 30 employees during this time to provide services for displaced persons and affected populations. I hope they are as excited about this project as I am; if everything goes well in the next six weeks, this assembly shop should be able to produce more than 1,000 stoves per month. Families with a Berkeley-Darfur Stove will benefit from its health and safety advantages over traditional stoves, as well as save time and money otherwise spent on cooking fuel. I can’t wait to get started!
