After fifteen hours in a bumpy dust road with average speed 25 kilometers per hour I was thinking I cannot sit in that car anymore. After another fifteen hours we reached Kampala, capital of Uganda. From Mapuordit in South Sudan to here, Norbert Demmelbauer (50), humanitarian worker from Austria, was driving just with two short breaks for thirty hours.

„This kind of road has its advantage: the driver cannot fall asleep,“ smiles Norbert during the journey.

The region is peaceful now. But Norbert was driving on this roads also several years ago, when there were armed conflicts in north of Uganda and South Sudan. Mostly was travelling alone. The roads are no marked there – and sometimes there is not a road but just a bush. Mobile phones don´t work in South Sudan. If something happens with your car there is no car repair shop, nobody will come to help you – or it will take many hours, maybe several days.

Armed men were shooting at him, keeping him under guns in military campus, several times he had malary, more times parasites. In time of ebola epidemic in Uganda in 2001 he was working in hospital in Gulu.

His job is to solve unsolvable problems. How to transport building material or solar panels to South Sudan. How to build in this country, where is no electricity or educated people. How to install and maintain solar panels. How to speak about building toilets with local people, in culture of who is speaking about toilets a big taboo. How to build that toilets – and which type of toilets will be the best. How to deal with waste (also dangerous waste from hospital). How avoid water contamination... Norbert works for Austrian non-governmental organisation MIVA which works on technical support of hospitals, schools and orphanages in Africa.

„The best thing on my work are challenges,“ Norbert says. „We can build so many things here. And we can teach local people so many things.“ Half year lives Norbert in Austria with his family and works from his office. Half year he lives in Kampala, capital of Uganda. From there he travels across Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and South Sudan to work on technical support of projects of partner NGO´s.

At the very beginning Norbert went to Nicaragua, to teach in a secondary school. It wasn´t very quiet place thirty years ago. Pro – American government and left – oriented extremists, sandinists, were fighting of control over the country. Sandinists got into controllership in 1979. The civil war started. Nobody was safe. Armed men killed off the whole villages if they suspected somebody from collaboration with opposite army. Norbert was working in this environment for few dollars a mont. He met his future wife, Tina, there. Two from four their children were born in Nicaragua. „Tina was working as a nurse. She was head of home-defence unit. She was sentenced to death for it and had to sleep with gun in her bed,“ Norbert says.

Norbert and Tina were living eight years in Nicaragua. „We stayed in one hut and didn´t have to close a door. There was nothing thieves could take.“

Norbert´s work is always in countries with economical problems and very poor infrastructure. „Uganda is civilisation. People and things work almost like in Europe. Sudan is the worst. Nothing is produced there, there are no roads, building materials and educated people. There is very hard communication with people from Dinka tribe, majority in main part of South Sudan. They are very proud and don´t wish to receive advices from foreigners. They want everything to be done immediately and never make compromises. And they are very lazy. Eighty per cent people working in South Sudan are foreigners. I have to hire workers from Uganda even for simple works. If there is some technical problem, nobody from locals is able to solve it. I have to bring people from Uganda or from Europe.“

Country, destroyed by fifty years of war, needs some time for recovering. Norbert thinks that the most important are schools and training centres where local people can educate in usefull skills. Maybe after some time there will be also some good restaurant in which Norbert can have his favourite steak for an adequate price. Now is it possible only behind border. In civilisation, in Uganda.