A few pictures of South Sudan in March 2012

Here are some photos from March.  March has been an interesting month even though I haven’t done as much as would have liked or taken enough photos.

 

South Sudan March 2012 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Enjoy!

Gardening in South Sudan: Week FAIL

After what appeared to be success with some sprouting plants, the dryness of the air and overwhelming heat has killed all the seedlings.

Using egg cartons as a base for the seedlings was not the best idea.  Water escaped out of the porous paper and drained away.  Every day the soil turned to a solid stone which prevented the roots from growing.  Some seeds sprouted but dies a few days later.  A new strategy has emerged.

The next available item to start the seedlings are plastic water bottles.  We drink several bottles a day and these plastic bottles get thrown out or burned in a garbage pile making them the perfect alternative – the water doesn’t drain out and there is more room for the plants to grow. I later removed the tops of the plastic bottles as they blocked the plants growth.

Unfortunately, the plants would reach a certain point then die.  These plants were just not meant to deal with the forty degree plus heat here and so they perished no matter what happened.  Even though I felt like I wanted to blog more about the gardening adventures, my shame in not succeeding made me hesitant to write so I didn’t.  

There is one last hope.  Right now the temperature during the day is too high to plant but in a few weeks the rains will come and the temperature will drop.  When the rains come, I will plant my seeds at the same time as the real farmers plant theirs.  So this experiment was a bust but I will keep trying… 

Health Data Management: System and Tools for Collection and Processing in WBeG, South Sudan

Health Data Management is all about understanding the flow of data from collection to utilization and I was lucky to be able to give a short tutorial on the system and tools at a UNDP workshop.

This three hour lecture including everything from the register books used to collect data all the way to the District Health Information Systems (DHIS) databases used by several department.  The workshop included many representatives from state Ministry of Health Departments of Health such as TB, HIV, River Blindness etc… A fond discussion was had between the departments on how their data is collected, processed, verified and utilized.  The discussion was excellent and I learn a lot about M&E in South Sudan. .

Many thanks to the UNDP M&E Specialist who allowed me the time to present.  The workshop was a great success.  Below is my presentation on the systems and tools to health data management in South Sudan.