CRS Voices

CRS Assists Families Displaced by Violence in South Sudan

Patrick Carney — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:24:49 +0000

A family compound in a small village, 15 kilometers outside of Pibor Town in South Sudan, was burnt to the ground during an attack on the Murle tribe by the Lou Nuer. Photo by Renee Lambert/CRS

By Renee Lambert

The sun is setting over the Pibor River in South Sudan. The sound of children laughing and splashing in the murky water offers a brief respite from another long day. For a moment, I close my eyes and escape. I block from my mind the families I spoke with only a few hours earlier – Murle families who fled their homes during the deadly attacks from a neighboring tribe, the Lou Nuer, in late December here in Jonglei State.

Hundreds of the displaced families are now seeking shelter under trees alongside the Pibor River. These families are afraid to return to their villages, fearing future attacks and knowing that even if they do return, they will find nothing but a pile of ash where their homes once stood. The families now spend their days foraging for local fruits, collecting firewood, and fetching water from the river. Those lucky enough to have been registered for food assistance are also making porridge from the sorghum provided by the World Food Program (WFP). But families know that they cannot depend on this assistance forever.

We had received reports the day before that there were a number of displaced families settled near the river who had not yet received assistance other than food. So the plan was to spend the day investigating the situation. Upon arriving to the river it was immediately obvious that there were quite a number of families in need of items such as plastic sheeting to make a shelter, sleeping mats, mosquito nets, blankets, cooking pots and utensils, and jerry cans for collecting water.

In this community of displaced people one can easily spot those who had advanced warning and fled their homes before their villages were attacked: They have a few more items hanging from the trees than those who fled on a moment’s notice. Each family’s meager belongings were hanging from the branches of the tree that had become their home.

Looking through the trees, I spotted pots and jerry cans hanging from some branches, and animal skins drying on others. We talked to the families one-by-one, so we could identify the most vulnerable households, learn which village they fled from, and then register them for a distribution of essential household items the following day.
Under one tree we found five women preparing a porridge of sorghum and local fruits for a young woman who had given birth only a few days prior, in a makeshift shelter under her family’s tree. I am sure her story is not unique. This country is full of so many strong and inspiring women.

After only three hours of talking to people under the burning sun I was beginning to wilt – thoughts of warm coca cola and bucket baths tumbled guiltily into my head. The environment here is so harsh that there is little to do during the day but search for shade and wait out the heat. I struggle to comprehend how people survive day in and day out under these conditions. But human resiliency is immeasurable. Despite what people have been through, babies are still giggling and old mamas are still fiery.

Earthquake Hits Central Philippines

Patrick Carney — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:48:06 +0000

A 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of the Philippines in Negros Oriental province at 11:49 am local time on Monday (10:49 pm Sunday EST). The Associated Press is reporting dozens of fatalities and more than 100 injured in damaged and collapsed buildings and in mudslides.

Catholic Relief Services’ Philippines country program has been in touch with two of the three dioceses in the affected area. CRS Philippines expects more information tomorrow from the diocesan Caritas staff.

A “shakemap” is available from the U.S. Geological Survey. Reuters and BBC are also covering the developing story.

CRS World Report: Egypt Tuition

Patrick Carney — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:09:17 +0000

In Cairo, thousands of refugee students are grateful they’re getting an education. Listen to the CRS World Report.

‘Playing for Peace’: Villanova, CRS Team Up for Sudan

Patrick Carney — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:24:08 +0000

When the Villanova Wildcats beat the Seton Hall Pirates 84-76 in men’s basketball Jan. 18, it wasn’t just a hard-fought victory in the tough Big East conference.

The game also was a win for the people of the Republic of South Sudan, the world’s newest nation, thanks to a partnership between Villanova University and Catholic Relief Services.

Billed as “Playing for Peace,” the game gave student ambassadors an opportunity to showcase the struggles the people of South Sudan are experiencing as they work to build a nation from the rubble of a decades-long civil war.

Jennifer Joyce Kissko, an assistant professor in the university’s Center for Peace and Justice Education, said the event offered the chance to present an important concern to a wider audience that extended beyond the Villanova community.

Read the entire article.

South Sudan Violence Forces Thousands To Flee

John Lindner — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:05:11 +0000

Women gather grass to build traditional tukul homes in Jonglei, South Sudan. The town of Boma has received more than 2,400 people displaced by recent fighting in Jonglei. Photo by Renee Lambert/CRS

By Renee Lambert,

My colleague, Jane and I, flew in a small eight-seater plane from Juba to Boma Town in Jonglei, South Sudan. We were on our way to see how Catholic Relief Services and Caritas Internationalis might assist thousands recently displaced by conflict. In recent weeks, Boma, a small verdant mountain town of around 7,000 had swelled with the arrival of roughly 2,400 people displaced by inter-communal violence between two ethnic groups the Lou Nuer and the Murle. The U.N. estimates that more than 60,000 Murle fled their homes when around 8,000 armed Lou Nuer youth raided towns in search of stolen cattle and kidnapped children.

Jonglei is one of South Sudan’s most underdeveloped states. It lacks most basic services like electricity, running water, paved roads, schools and healthcare facilities. Many believe these factors are catalysts for conflict. With limited opportunities, youth often resort to violence to amass resources.

As we flew over Jonglei, the vastness of South Sudan took my breath away. The topography below us was like nothing I’d ever seen. At times it looked like we were flying over the moon—wide swaths of cratered and dusty ground that jarringly shifted to expanses of black that could have been burnt villages or rock. I saw no water sources. There were no signs of people, only vast uninhabited territories between Juba and Boma.

As we approached the town, I couldn’t even see the airstrip where we would land. We descended on a cleared grassy patch and the plane literally rolled up to the heart of the town next to an array of market stalls. Boma is an oasis of commerce in Jonglei. It’s near the Ethiopian border and its main dirt road leads to the city of Kapoeta, where Kenyan traders bring in goods for sale.

Caritas Deputy Emergency Coordinator, Jane Andanje, fourth from left, with a group of displaced children in Boma Town, Jonglei, South Sudan. Photo by Renee Lambert/CRS

When the violence broke out in Pibor, people ran for safety in all directions. Those who arrived in Boma followed a dirt path, and when possible, a river, knowing that they’d be able to get food and water along the way. Some walked for seven days straight without stopping to rest. Many said that they felt that their attackers were close behind them.

Our first stop was the office of the South Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (SSRRC). In any emergency response, working through the local authorities is critical. An SSRRC official, Alston Longony, met us. A tall lanky figure with kind eyes and a reassuring voice, Alston couldn’t have been more than, 28. Educated in Kenya as a refugee during the war, he’d returned to his hometown of Boma last May to help build his nation.

Alston’s dedication to his people was palpable. In a few short days he’d inspired a legion of volunteers to help register the displaced. He’d worked with other local authorities to canvas the community and convince families to take strangers into their homes. In all my years responding to emergencies in South Sudan I’ve never seen anything like it. Usually you arrive at the site of an emergency and find people sleeping under trees, near market stalls, or wherever they might find safety. In Boma, however, all the displaced were sleeping behind the safety of the grass-thatched fences, either in people’s mud tukuls or in the open air compounds surrounded by other families. The displaced might not have a roof over their heads but at least they are all safe behind compound walls.

Everywhere we went Alston commanded respect and admiration. His efficiency was remarkable. Soon after our meeting he’d arranged for three translators to accompany us as we visited homes. They were absolutely vital to our work. Each story we heard was heartbreaking. Jane interviewed one woman who was sitting on a thatched woven sleeping mat when we arrived and had a baby in her lap. When the attacks began her infant was strapped to her back. She took off running, desperate to get her baby to safety. She has no idea where her other six children may be, or if they survived. Her story is not unique.

A woman sits with her infant daughter in the town of Boma, South Sudan. The woman fled with her baby strapped to her back when armed men attacked her village. She does not know the whereabouts of her six other children. Photo by Renee Lambert/CRS

The women we visited were either sitting listlessly or off in the forest foraging for leaves. They have been reduced to hunting and gathering. We asked the women if they planned to go back to their village. They all said that they had no plans to return and were looking for a space to build a home in Boma. Most of them await their husbands and children. They feel they can’t go anywhere until they’re located.

Unfortunately this cycle is likely to continue. Violence is what people know. Until people are provided with options, young men will continue to resort to violence. This whole experience really brought home for me the importance of development work. We need to help provide youth with education and employment opportunities. We need to work with them so that they discover there is another way.

Meeting Alston and seeing what he’s been able to accomplish illustrates what young South Sudanese can achieve when given the opportunity. He was able to access an education and is using that critical tool to build up his people. All South Sudanese youth deserve the same opportunity. Education and access to jobs will show them the alternative. By investing in the future of South Sudan we can help ensure that conflict in Jonglei will become a faded memory.

Renee Lambert is the CRS South Sudan deputy head of programming.

You Make Our Rice Bowls Strong

John Lindner — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:25:42 +0000

When I first heard about Operation Rice Bowl at my church in America, I thought they were talking about something I knew so well from Chinese culture. I don’t have to tell you that the Chinese people eat a lot of rice—you have been to enough Chinese restaurants and seen enough Chinese landscapes with rice paddies to know that. But rice bowl was a term I heard all the time, and not just at mealtimes.

Growing up in Hong Kong, rice bowl indicated our overall well-being. If you say you have “a new rice bowl,” you have found a new job or started a new business. An “iron rice bowl” means your future prosperity is assured. A “solid rice bowl” is a good indication that you have a sure way to make a living. If you say, “My rice bowl is broken,” well, maybe you have fallen on hard times. And so on.

When you use rice bowl this way in Chinese culture, you are really talking about your livelihood. I have found no real equivalent in American English. It is some combination of steady paycheck and nest egg.

So, when I first heard about Operation Rice Bowl, that’s what came to mind. And, really, I was not far off.

Operation Rice Bowl, which started in 1975 around the time I came to the United States, is now a mainstay of the Lenten season in the Catholic community in this country. It is such a beautiful expression of Lent, used especially as a way for parents to teach children not just about sacrifice and how central that is to our faith, but also about the poor people of the world. It can lead them to realize that there is more to their family than parents and siblings—that we are all God’s children, all part of one human family.

What a profound lesson. This cardboard box can form the foundation of a lifetime of not just giving and sharing and sacrificing, but of real solidarity with poor men, women and children, wherever they might be in the world. Can there be a better, more important lesson to learn during Lent?

The small sacrifices asked by Operation Rice Bowl—a handful of coins, a smaller meatless meal, a brief fast—add up to a real force, but they still seem tiny when you understand the poverty that is a daily reality for so many millions in the world. That is why Catholic Relief Services exists: to serve you by giving you a way to reach out to those who are poor, as the Gospel tells us we must.

The symbol of Operation Rice Bowl—giving someone who is hungry a bowl of food—is powerful. But there is another lesson I want you to take from this year’s Operation Rice Bowl, one that I hope you will share with your family, with your fellow parishioners, and with every Catholic and person of goodwill you know: For CRS, the symbol of the rice bowl is more like the one I grew up with.

Certainly, through CRS you feed the hungry. You do that every day all around the world. But beyond that, you help take away the reason people are hungry. You improve agriculture, water, sanitation and health. Where there is conflict, you try to bring peace. Where there is oppression, you try to bring empowerment.

With your help, CRS works to make sure that everyone has a rice bowl—a solid rice bowl and even an iron rice bowl, one that will feed them and their families now and for generations to come.

We so appreciate your faith in our efforts.

Dr. Carolyn Y. Woo
President & CEO

Senegal: ‘Daytime Disco’ Promotes Proper Nutrition

John Lindner — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:00:47 +0000

A young Mom with her baby girl at a nutrition education event in Dindefelo village, Eastern Senegal. Photo by Helen Blakesley/CRS

By Helen Blakesley,

Only yesterday I was under the British rain, bidding farewell to my nearest and dearest. Today I’m back to my francophone, sun-filled Dakar days, catching up on the latest political intrigue as Senegal heads towards a contentious Presidential election. That, and trying to work out why my water’s been turned off.

The trick, as I see it, is to try to exist in the moment, to connect with the places and people around you. Let your several lives and worlds mingle to make a space where certain universal truths exist: we all laugh, we all cry, we all need love, we all need God’s grace. Not always an easy feat.

But sometimes, a trip to “another world” can be the eye opener you need when your status quo seems to leave something to be desired. A mini adventure into the Senegalese outback just before Christmas (otherwise known as my latest work trip) served to transport me—in mind, body and spirit.

I’d been feeling rather flat since returning from Benin after the Pope’s visit (hey, it’s a hard act to follow.), so getting back on the road was just the ticket for restoring my joie de vivre. A 12-hour car journey took us first past the urban sprawl of Dakar, through dusty savannah landscapes, and then—way out East—we reached the hills, the forests, the monkeys and the wild boar.

I was there to photograph CRS’ community nutrition programs, aimed at helping Moms, babies and pregnant women in remote rural areas. And remote it was.

After the music, dancing and speeches of the welcome ceremony (I always have a kind of out-of-body experience when watching these fascinating displays) we had a mountain to climb. Literally. A 45-minute vertical climb, up to 1,300 feet in altitude. I’m afraid to say, this Brit is not the fittest, but my Caritas colleagues (the CRS partner in the programs) were true gents, letting me catch my breath—and the increasingly stunning views—as we ascended.

We stepped out of the trees into Iwol village—nestling on top of the mountain, a place left virtually unchanged since the 12th century. Huts with elegantly cone-shaped thatched roofs. No electricity and no water supply. The nearest well is an hour away, meaning that the women would have to do the trek that I just had, but daily, there and back, with jerry cans or buckets of heavy water balanced on their heads.

Delphine Keita, a 20-year-old mother of three, taking part in a cooking demonstration during a nutrition education visit in Iwol village, Eastern Senegal. Photo by Helen Blakesley/CRS

The women of the village were assembled under a tree, waiting for the nutrition program visit, most with babies on their knees or toddlers playing near their feet. The older women sat spinning cotton with wooden bobbins, twisting the thread from fluffy balls grown in nearby fields. They wore the Bedik tradition of porcupine quills through their noses and elaborate jewelry adorned ears and necks.

The visit was a mixture of monitoring the kids’ progress and providing information and guidance for the moms. Wriggling babies were weighed in a harness-cum-scale hung from a tree branch. Their upper arm circumference was measured to check for malnutrition. Vitamin drops were dripped into little mouths (not very popular with the mouths in question!)

And then came the cooking demonstration. Moms were shown how to mix maize, rice, nuts and beans to make a nutritious flour which can be turned into porridge. Each child was given a supply to take home.

As with every CRS project I visit, I was sitting there, privately hoping to myself that what we’re doing really does make a difference in people’s lives. And that’s when one woman decided to tell me her story. She’d been ashamed to bring her baby along to the program. She knew he was malnourished, but she blamed herself for not looking after him properly.

“I thought, I can’t have any more children if I can’t look after them” she told me, “ but then my cousin persuaded me to bring the child here. It made a massive difference. He gained weighed and now he’s even starting school.”

With a giggle, the woman told me she’d been so happy she fell pregnant again—and she placed that baby in my arms.

The next day, we went to a disco. No, I’m not about to regale you with tales of my nocturnal life. It was a daytime disco, all in the name of social mobilization. We saw this ingenious method put into practice in the village of Dindefelo, under the shade of a large, old tree. First, the team from CRS and Caritas played the latest hits at a healthy volume to attract their audience of mostly women, babies and young children. After a few introductions, the dancing began! I was persuaded to partake by a friendly woman with a wide smile, and once I’d gotten over my British reserve, I found myself exhilarated, and once again in a rather surreal situation.

The idea behind the fun is that you grab the attention of your audience, get their blood pumping and endorphins flowing with the music and dancing. Then, at regular intervals, the music stops and you deliver a key message about changing nutritional practices. This time’s topic was the importance of breastfeeding. What a way to raise awareness.

Our ride home to Dakar took a little longer than expected—a truck had overturned on one of the savannah roads and a communal effort was underway to pull and push it back onto its feet, so to speak. Luckily no one was hurt. And thanks to a heart-warming trip, in more ways than one, I was back on my feet too.

Helen Blakesley is CRS’ regional information officer for West and Central Africa. She is based in Dakar, Senegal.

Haiti: 2 Years of Accomplishments

Patrick Carney — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:32:50 +0000

In the last 2 years, thanks to your support, Catholic Relief Services has:

Built 10,600 transitional shelters

Provided 10 million meals to more than 1 million people

Organized medical teams that performed more than 1,000 emergency surgeries and conducted 71,000 outpatient consultations

Helped workers crush enough rubble to fill almost 1,800 dump trucks

Hired more than 12,000 people in temporary cash-for-work programs

See all of the great work your support has made possible in Haiti over the last 2 years.

Singing, Sharing Mark 2 Year Anniversary in Haiti

Patrick Carney — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 14:33:33 +0000

Two children standing in front of a CRS-built transitional shelter in Haiti. Your support of Haiti is helping rebuild the country for the next generation. Photo Robin Contino/CRS

Robin Contino joined CRS in 2006 and worked in as the country manager in Nepal. She is a licensed clinical social worker with a background in responding to emergencies and trauma. After the earthquake, Robin was sent to Haiti to offer crisis intervention and support to all of our staff in Haiti. Since then, she has continued to support Haiti from headquarters and continues on as the Haiti advisor supporting CRS’ Haiti country program in all aspects of its work.

Robin sent this first-hand account of what it was like to wake up in Haiti on the 2-year anniversary of the tragic Haiti earthquake:

Its January 12, 2012 and I wake up to the sound of what I think is a mass loudly and passionately coming through the windows from somewhere down the hills from where I am staying in Peggyville. People are singing and sharing together. I can feel the deep compassion and its flowing through the streets.

This is my 8th trip to Haiti since the Earthquake, and every time I come I see change — real and significant change. And its amazing. You’re work and dedication is commendable beyond my words. People are moving and settling back into their neighborhoods, and they are grateful for the support of CRS staff and programs. You have uplifted lives and brought families out of unspeakable despair.

I encourage you to take a moment this day, and everyday, to remember those lost and to renew your commitment to supporting Building Haiti Better hand in hand with Haitians.

You Inspire Me and I am grateful for all that you do!

Humbly,

Robin

See how your support has helped Haiti rebuild after the earthquake 2 years ago.

What Do You Know About Slavery?

Patrick Carney — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:00:52 +0000

We don’t hear much about slavery on the news. We don’t see slaves being bought and sold on the street. Yet, slavery still exists in 161 countries around the world including the United States.

January 11 is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day. See how much you know about slavery and human trafficking by taking our short quiz. Answers are posted below.

1) How many people are currently trafficked worldwide?

A) 1 million
B) 5 million
C) 8 million
D) 12 million

2) How much money does the human trafficking industry make each year?

A) $32 billion
B) $3.2 billion
C) $332 million
D) $32 million

3) On average, how many people are convicted for every 800 trafficking cases worldwide?

A) 800
B) 1
C) 100
D) 400

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Answers:

1 – D (More than 12 million people are trafficked worldwide)
2 – A (Human trafficking is a $32 billion industry)
3 – B (Only 1 person is convicted for every 800 trafficking cases)

Do you want to learn more?

Do you want to help free slaves?

Join Catholic Relief Services in the fight against slavery and human trafficking.