Mark Tribble (’85) writes from Sudan, where he is helping bring electricity to the small town of Yei.

WOW! Sudan. I can’t believe I have been here for over a year. Having worked in Africa for 6 years and traveled extensively throughout the world, I never imagined a place like this existed in the year 2006. Yes, the slums of India are incomparable in human misery, but Sudan is a tragedy that never seems to satisfy itself.

I find myself in Yei, South Sudan trying to bring electricity to people who have essentially been fighting since independence from the British in 1956. Many American southerners have heard of Sudan because of the evangelical lure of the Holy war being fought between the Islamic North and the mainly Christian south. More recently, Darfur. This isn’t a holy war; it is a war about oppression, greed, age old tribalism and now it is about Oil. Sudan is the third largest producer of Oil in Africa. During the cold war a visit to Moscow or to Washington DC pledging allegiance and smiling was good enough to get an African dictator money, now Religion is the tool for nation building.  One man’s pagan is another man’s saint.

Driving from Uganda in July 2005 through the lush countryside on an absolutely horrible road, my mind started to wander -- thinking back to 1985 when I joined the Peace Corps and served in Kenya. However, that experience barely prepared me for what I would find when I arrived in Yei. Awaiting me in Yei was devastation and hopelessness. We arrived in the twilight and could not fully appreciate the level of depravation. In the morning when we started exploring the town and trying to find our way, the cold reality struck me that this was going to be a very difficult job. 

The project I am working on succeeded in bringing emergency street lighting to the town of Yei. To say the least the impact has been profound and has changed the town. Many new impromptu stalls sprang up at night under the lights, and children could read under the lights as well. As our system has expanded we have made many people happy, but we have made enemies as well. As many foreigners that have come before us, we are making enemies without even knowing. The newly formed electricity system attracts all the bad elements of South Sudan. Many of them were the motivators during the last war. They see Power and they know it is real power, money and more importantly control.

In just over a year we have installed a generation station, over 100 streetlights and connected almost 100 customers. Yei has been transformed and the difference is tangible. During raids by rogue rebels in neighboring towns over the last year, Yei was spared. Yei is a small village with so many returning refugees it is impossible to count them due to the fluid nature of the population movements. Yet, most people get one meal a day if they are lucky and have to work very hard for that. I still am not sure if the electricity has made these people materially better off, but in the town there is a sense of security and hints of pride are starting to return.

As I near the end of my contract here in Sudan, I wonder if our presence will make a difference to the people here at the village level. The tens of thousands of women who, every day of their lives, must collect water and firewood or face serious retribution. These women are never rewarded with anything other than a life of misery. To be a Sudanese woman of 50 is a miracle. While the oil rich politicians in Juba and Khartoum talk of 4 lane interstates and American shopping malls, the people of South Sudan stumble on through life with nothing except the pain and drudgery of a deprived human existence under the harshest of conditions.

Tribble is in Sudan with NRECA International, which provides people in developing countries with access to electricity. He and his co-workers have installed street lights and an electric grid with funding from USAID. Tribble majored in economics at UT and then joined the Peace Corps. He later earned a master’s in economics from New Mexico State University and worked in the electric industry in Texas and Boston before taking a job in Ukraine. He also worked in India and Southern Africa before his posting in Sudan.

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