Basic services, like improved water sources, are needed in South Sudan, which will become the world's newest nation on Saturday, July 9. Photo: Caroline Gluck / Oxfam

This Saturday, July 9, South Sudan will become the world’s newest independent nation. Below, Oxfam’s program manager in Sudan, Augustino Buya, offers his perspective on this landmark event.

Augustino Buya was born in 1954, in Terekea in the south of Sudan, two years before independence from Egypt and the UK. In 1984 he became part of a local community self-help organization, which was an Oxfam partner. In 1987 he joined Oxfam, working his way up to program manager, a post he still holds today.

“Saturday for me as an individual is going to be a historic day because I have reached it alive. And also for all southerners it will be historical: whoever has reached that day will be happy,” said Buya.

“What I hope for the future is that there will be no going back to war. That’s what I hope.

Second, that there will be unity of the South Sudanese people to develop their new country. And that there will be good governance for the development of the Republic of South Sudan. With good governance there must be priorities. The priorities must be basic services, such as schools and healthcare, for the common man and woman.

The third priority must be the development of agriculture, to have enough food locally. These things cannot be done without good governance and support from the international community.

…I come from a family which was not educated. I am the only one who had access to education. And when I finished my education I promised to help my family.

Before I had my first child I was helping my brother’s four children. Now I have six of my own: that makes 10. This made me be very careful with my work and be committed.

Three of my brother’s children have graduated with a degree or a diploma, and so have my two eldest. The rest are still in school. I hope the new South Sudan will be an opportunity for them, because there will be a lot of opportunities and chances. That is why I’ll be happy on Saturday, when I reach it alive, because it means that for the rest of my life I know the small ones will get an education and opportunities.”

When I visited Sudan a few months ago, one of the highlights of my trip was attending a block party thrown by and for members of Khartoum’s community of Nuba people. For those unfamiliar, the Nuba region is a very remote and mountainous land in Southern Kordofan.

The party featured a band composed mostly of percussive instruments, and featured a guitar-like instrument that resembled more of an electric tennis racket than the traditional Stratocaster or Les Paul models that I’m used to seeing. The music itself was a hypnotic and throbbing kind of polyrhythmic dance-rock—the type of sound that inspired albums like the Talking Heads’ Remain in Light. A dance troupe outfitted in wonderfully colorful and ornate clothing performed several dances, some imitating fight-battles, and others with obvious courtship overtones. Perhaps the most joyous dance of the night was the line dance, which turned out to be the Nuba version of a conga-line, and ended up involving a few hundred locals all snaking and dancing their way around the large, dusty block.

One of the party’s organizers who invited me and my Oxfam colleagues to the celebration explained, “It’s important for us to create events like this to make sure the Nuba culture is remembered, and relearned, and passed down to the next generation. The Nuba people are from a hidden place, and it’s easy to forget they are there. That’s why we like to make this loud noise. To let you know we exist and are important.”

It is those words I keep reflecting on as I read of the current situation in the Nuba Mountains, where violence against the Nuba people continues seemingly unchecked. Long-suffering as a result of Sudan’s 22 year-long civil war, the Nuba people will remain tied to Khartoum government as the regions adjacent secede to the new Southern Sudan state. I keep reading how the situation in South Kordofan might turn into “the next Darfur.” Having recently seen Darfur with my own eyes, I pray that this is not the case.

Here’s a video clip from that night at the block party in Khartoum…the night I learned without a shadow of a doubt that the Nuba people “exist and are important.”

Take action now to help fund our work in Sudan.

Oxfam America music artist relations coordinator Bob Ferguson recently returned from his first visit to Oxfam’s programs in Darfur, Sudan.

In the second of two multimedia blogs featuring photos by Liz Lucas, Bob talks about getting a closer look at the fuel-efficient Darfur Stoves­—a project supported by music fans and artists like State Radio—and learns how they’re changing women’s lives.

Watch Part 1.

Oxfam America music artist relations coordinator Bob Ferguson recently returned from his first visit to Oxfam’s programs in Darfur, Sudan.

In the first of two multimedia blogs featuring photos by Liz Lucas, Bob tells the story of his memorable encounter with a family living in the Al Salaam camp for displaced people:

Watch Part 2.

It’s official this week: the southern region of Sudan will secede from the north and form the world’s newest nation.

When I read the news out of Sudan, I always wonder how the latest events are affecting the people I’ve had a chance to get to know on my visits to Darfur. 

Maryam Gado’s daughter holds the hand of a public health promoter. Photo by Elizabeth Stevens/Oxfam.

Read the rest of this entry »

The road may be long, but across southern Sudan people streamed to the polls to cast their votes. Photo by Alun McDonald/Oxfam

Tomorrow marks the last day of a week-long referendum in southern Sudan that could conclude with the creation of a new country. Across the region, voters headed to the polls to decide whether the south should break from Sudan and become its own nation or stay part of a unified Sudan.

The day after voting started, my colleague here at Oxfam, Judy Beals, sent all of us a message about what is unfolding in Sudan—a historic moment for a country torn by decades of strife and civil war. It has particular resonance for Beals, whose family moved to rural South Africa when she was 5. Growing up as a white child in apartheid, hearing only state-sponsored media and attending government boarding schools far away from home, she said she was oblivious to the realities around her—until 1976, when she moved to the US and landed on an American campus just as the Soweto riots erupted, unleashing the anti-apartheid movement globally.

“Learning, for the first time, about the country I had grown up in was overwhelming, shocking – and the beginning of my life’s work,” recalled Beals.

Here’s the message she sent about Sudan:

Beginning Sunday, the people of Sudan voted on their future. Reading about that voting–the long lines, the stories behind every vote and voter, both in Sudan and among diaspora communities everywhere, including in the US–brought me back to April, 1994, when I spent the day at the State House in Boston, simply bearing private witness as South Africans of every race voted for the future of their country. Even now, it stirs such deep, visceral emotion–the incredibly powerful act of ordinary citizens voting for their own self determination. Not sure what else to say except how proud I am to be part of an organization that stands for rights, dignity, and social justice.

Huge challenges lie ahead. Martha’s family will need to find land to settle, work out how to earn some money, and adjust to a new way of life.

They are returning to one of the least developed regions on Earth: eighty percent of adults cannot read or write, and there are few paved roads, schools, and health clinics. Less than half the population has access to safe drinking water.

Martha told me her husband, a soldier, died in the fighting. They used to be farmers, she said. She’d long ago forgotten that way of life and had no idea how she would earn a living and feed her family.

“It’s been a long time,” she said with a sigh. “I don’t even know the village where I used to live… if anything still exists.”

“You cannot compare life in the north to here. Khartoum is more developed, but things were not easy for us. I’m happy to be back, even though we have no house and no job,” she said.

“I want my children to go to school. To live in peace and not experience the difficulties we had. To live a better life in the future.”

Oxfam colleague Caroline Gluck sent us this blog from Sudan.

Martha Bol and her children spent their first night back in southern Sudan sleeping outside in the cold. It wasn’t quite the homecoming she was expecting, but after spending the last two decades living on the outskirts of the northern city of Khartoum, she was excited to be back.

“I was born here and I will stay here,”she said. “This is our land and our chance to be free.”

Read the rest of this entry »

As you can tell from our new video (above), the Berkeley-Darfur stove is a practical kind of device—plain metal, nothing flashy. After all, it’s designed not for form, but for function: To provide a safe, reliable, efficient fuel source for women living in camps in Darfur, Sudan.

But in its spare time, the stove is also something of a rock star.

In 2009, for example, the band State Radio brought one along on their US tour, asking fans to chip in to buy stoves for families in need.  By the end of the tour, they’d raised $100,000, enough for Oxfam’s partner the Darfur Stoves Project to provide stoves for 5,000 displaced families.

When I spoke to State Radio singer Chad Stokes in December, I asked what inspired him to support Oxfam’s relief effort in Darfur, where fighting between armed groups has forced 2.8 million people from their homes since 2003.

“When the situation in Sudan came into the media, six or seven years ago, it struck us as the most pressing humanitarian crisis in the world,” said Stokes, who wrote a song called “Sudan” for the 2007 album The Year of the Crow. “If people just know about it, and can influence their politicians about it, there are things that we can do to help.”

Read the rest of this entry »

My position at Oxfam America as music artist relations coordinator requires me to take meetings in some very untraditional situations. I’ve become accustomed to requests to meet musicians at places including roadhouse nightclubs, barbecue joints, lounges of tour buses, and even at the side of the stage at a Motörhead concert…but the situation I was invited into last Friday night was my favorite meet-up with an artist ever.

Chad Stokes, our friend from State Radio and their charitable organization Calling All Crows, invited me to attend their Boston-area benefit show to accept a check from them for $100,000 for Oxfam to provide fuel-efficient stoves to women in Darfur. The band and “The Crows” have been collecting donations from fans at State Radio shows around the country, and bolstering the fund with side events like the Northampton Halloween 5K that raised about $14,000.

The show was held in the Somerville Armory, a recently refurbished hall that sparkled inside with twinkling holiday lights, and pulsed with the energy of hundreds of State Radio fans from all over the Northeast who came to show support for the Stoves fund drive. In addition to songs by Stokes, the crowd was treated to surprise short sets by fellow Dispatch bandmate Pete Francis, with Jay Driscoll of Barefoot Truth on slide guitar, Matt Embree of Rx Bandits, and State Radio’s Michael “Maddog” Najarian, who traded his usual drumsticks in for a guitar for the evening. 

 Before the final set of the evening, I was invited to the stage to collect the check, a giant oversized version that Ed McMahon would have approved of, and say a few words on behalf of Oxfam. Those close to me know that I’m seldom at a loss for words in any situation, but as I walked past the podium to accept the check from Stokes and his partner Sybil Gallagher, as Calling All Crows co-directors Matt Wilhelm and Jeb Gutileus stood by, all of whom were misty-eyed and beaming at seeing the fruits of their hard work being passed on, I choked up in a way I’ve not done for as long as I can remember:

[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/8245910[/vimeo]

Read the rest of this entry »