Sudanese official tours Wisconsin cooperative
(by Eric Quade)

Many tourists set out on overseas trips to relax, enjoy scenery and bring home a souvenir as a memento of their time spent away from the hardships of their day-to-day lives.

But in the case of southern Sudan resident and government official Raymond Pitya Morbe Kenyi, his weeklong visit to Wisconsin has an aim to accomplish more than filling the pages of a photo album. He wants to learn how to rebuild his war-torn country.

Raymond is the undersecretary of the ministry of housing, lands and public utilities in southern Sudan, and he is also in charge of urban highways there.

Although maps indicate there is only one Sudan officially, Raymond said the political realities of the region split the country into northern and southern realms. Northern Sudan is characterized by Islamic and Arab culture; Christianity and traditional African ways are the norm in the southern parts of the country. Economics also divide the north and south in Sudan, he said. Much of the country’s natural resources are concentrated in the south, but most of the wealth tied to those resources ends up in the north.

Culture clashes and inequities between the northern and southern parts of the country have fueled 40 years of civil war, Raymond said, but some progress toward peace has been made. An agreement signed in 2005 established a three-pronged government system (a northern house, a southern house and a “unity” government) with the promise of a 2011 referendum that will decide whether Sudan will become one or two countries.

A lasting peace may be in Sudan’s future, but the country must first cope with the realities of a violent past. Mines litter the path between Raymond’s hometown of Juba, where approximately 4,500 of the state capital’s 250,00 people are plugged into the local power grid, and the city of Yei where a brand new power station has been built that serves about 200 of the city’s 200,000 residents.

Developing the corridor between Yei and Juba is important because Yei is a conduit for trade from neighboring Uganda, he said. An effort is underway in southern Sudan to remove the explosive ordinance that lies hidden underground and rebuild the area’s ravaged infrastructure.

The key reason why Raymond is touring Barron County and other parts of Wisconsin this week is to get ideas about how to effectively bring electricity to southern Sudan’s urban areas. With that goal in mind, Raymond accepted an invitation from the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association to witness firsthand how electric cooperatives in the United States operate and then take the knowledge back to his countrymen.

Raymond started his Wisconsin tour Monday morning at Barron Electric Cooperative and was given a chance to ask its executives questions about what types of challenges to expect when setting up an electric utility and how to cope with those challenges. After a day touring Barron Electric’s operations, the southern Sudan native visited Barron Country’s ‘hot mix’ plant on Tuesday; that leg of the trip had nothing to do with electric utilities, but the opportunity to see the state-of-the-art facility was too good to pass up, since his governmental responsibilities also include southern Sudan’s highways. Wednesday’s itinerary includes a tour of the Adams-Columbia Electric Cooperative in central Wisconsin, followed by a Thursday visit to Dairyland Generation and Transmission Cooperative in La Crosse, Wis., to get up to speed on the distribution side of the energy industry. On Friday, Raymond is heading for home.

Applying in southern Sudan what he learns here n Wisconsin will be one step toward greater prosperity in the region, Raymond said. In addition to eventually bringing power to all of Sudan’s 10 state capitals, international organizations are also helping the country clear other obstacles, such as poor water quality, disease outbreaks (malaria, meningitis and AIDS to name a few) and a lack of health care facilities.