04-AUG-A-9
From: Glenn Geelhoed
To: jillvl@nucleus.com
Date: 8/11/04 6:36PM
Subject: Re:
Thank you so much for your
reply! Had I known you were in Bethel, I
would have buzzed up there to see you!
The only two favorite most places on this continent you could have
picked for me would be Idaho or Alaska!
Since I know you are here on
the stateside, I will send a note about the students and how they had their
"lives transformed" by the Haitian and DR experience in the
flood/mudslide refugee camps. I will
forward to you some pictures and text in a second email, but I will not risk
any major text or image transmission to you in the Dark Continent (I can say
that to you since we are both "Africanists" most at home there‑‑see
attached.)
I would not bring an
entourage into the Sudan. I would go
alone or with a few hand picked veterans of my students. In the Somaliland excursion, I carried three
senior students with me into the "deep end of the pool" qualified by
being on more than two trips previously with me into tougher situations and
more remote. You could briefly scan some
of that in the "On‑Line Journal" option of the home Page at
http://home.gwu.edu/~gwg
As knight‑errants, I
had looked to you both with respect to your kala azar experience and your free
lance status. No lance could be freer
than mine. Like you, I finance my own
addiction through my own unencumbered means and run a global mission with sites
world‑wide on a budget of zero, with some of my students traveling on my
Frequent Flyer Miles. So, I have no
organization which can look askance at the interest I have in Darfur, for
example. I am not a gun‑slinger,
however, as are some of the MSF folk who abandon places not in headlines, and I
have continued to get back into the Congo for example to visit my own remote
group even though they have disappeared from world radar‑‑and many
of them, from the planet as well.
I will give you my contact
numbers, and if you can tell me where you will touch down last before leaving,
I may call. I have stockpiled a few
items of high value and low weight, such as sutures, select drugs, and will
either try to carry them with me when I return to the Horn hoping to sneak
(yes, I am aware of the hassles‑‑witness my Congolese border
crossings into hostilities‑‑and I only used to say "you can't
fall off the floor"‑‑but no longer do, since you may be at a
lower level yet than my Haitian and Ituri populations!) over to see you,
possibly from Gondar.
Thanks for staying in touch,
and as you start up in September, make up a wish list, and I will see if
"we" can match some parts of it!
>>> ""
<jillvl@nucleus.com> 08/11/04 06:02PM >>>
Hi Glenn Geelhoed!
What an amazing memory you
have!
I have 1 day left in the US
(I work a few months here to support my volunteer Africa habit) before heading
back to SUdan ‑ what a surprise to get your letter! Poor Haiti ‑ I am sure they can use
your help.
It is wonderful lots of
students are interested in Africa.
Do you know, I am a bit of a
free‑lancer. "We" have
been doing a program with the national staff in south Sudan for several years
but are in the process of handing our program over to an Italian NGO,
COSV. I have worked with the Nuer tribe
in Sudan since 1989 and of course have no intention of stopping! This winter I will be working somehow along‑side
COSV. Mostly I will be used in terms of
kala azar and TB treatment and med consults but a lot depends on what happens ‑
how the war continues, whether there is a kala azar outbreak again, and what it
is like with COSV. Of course I have my
base with the Sudanese people I've worked with for so long but I hope this
association with COSV works well. I will
go with COSV into Sudan for the first time next week.
Also, I plan to spend
September with MSF Swiss in Darfur. Then
I would return to my "home" in southern Sudan.
Of course I think it is a
lovely idea to host you all but I wonder how it will work with COSV? I feel very shy about committing to anything
without having an idea what will happen.
I seem to have very little planning mostly because planning is not so
possible at present. Perhaps I will have
opened a mobile center for responding to the predicted kala azar outbreak. Perhaps the fighting will return and we will
move back to our original spot out of shelling range. Perhaps I and COSV will decide I should stay
at their center simply as the medical consultant (funny term for a bush
doc).
I hope this month to have a
better picture of what this winter will bring, but it is probably better at
this point to plan with out me. Do you
know the headaches of getting into Sudan already? I'd be happy to stay in touch! I am sure I and our staff would love meeting
you all and learning from you!
Take care,
Jill
Hi Glenn Geelhoed!
THanks
for your letters! I can not wait to read your book! I am afraid it will not be
in the Amsterdam airport so I'll have to wait.
I
got your letters here in the Seattle airport awaiting my flight out - alas it
is a bit late - and internet is a bit pricey here as well so I've only glanced
at what you sent. 4 of the messages were undeliverable something about not
being able to check for viruses?
YOu
seem quite an amazing person - in fact rather awe -inspiring. I hope if we do
get to meet in SUdan it will not be too much of a shock!
By
the way, you are so right about MSF leaving when the world or they think there
is no more emergency. One good spin off of that is that they do not try to do
development work for which they have NO expertice. (nor do I but I have longevity
- which I hope helpss!).
Take care and thanks,
Jill