MARK WAITE / PVT Bobby Ball, at right, reminisces on his Sudanese trip with Dave Chavez, who made the same voyage in 2005, at Valley Electric Association headquarters. SPECIAL TO THE PVT A crew of local electrical workers heads out in a truck to install power lines on a dusty road in southern Sudan. Advertisement

Bobby Ball, a Valley Electric Association lineman, got a rude awakening on his arrival in Entebbe Airport in Uganda on a trip to install power lines in the town of Yei, in neighboring Sudan.

Taxi drivers were struggling to take his bags, a crowd of people was pushing and shoving.

"You can't even see your luggage there's so many guys on top of you," Ball said.

Ball had never been out of the U.S. before, except for a trip to Mexico. He was participating in a similar program as VEA employee Dave Chavez did back in 2005, organized by the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, helping to build infrastructure in war-ravaged southern Sudan.

Ball and five electrical workers from Missouri had to hire a taxi driver to transport their cargo from Uganda across the border to the Sudan by land while they flew into Sudan on a small plane.

"We had to have our supplies brought down from Entebbe because we had too much weight. It was just a taxi to drive it down and they had a hard time finding a driver to do that," Ball said. "The last guy who did it was arrested by Border Patrol. The border wasn't what he (the driver) was worried about, he was worried about the rebels. But he made it."

Ball said they were told to not be out at night in Yei and drinking at local bars for fear of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army soldiers who might get out of hand. A United Nations force helped keep the peace locally, he said.

Chavez had trained some of the Sudanese crew in how to construct power lines. Ball said they know how to do the job now, though post holes that normally take a couple minutes to dig mechanically back in Nevada took two days using a local crew to dig by hand. Ball said the soil was as hard as concrete.

Ball and his crew installed about a mile of single-phase power line and another mile of primary three-phase power line.

Ironically, Ball said the power lines weren't meant for the people who don't have power in their homes. They were meant to supply security lighting along streets to places like the United Nations compound and the Samaritan's Purse, a charity organization run by the televangelist Billy Graham.

Ball enjoyed a few more luxuries than Chavez, like a compound with bathrooms and toilets instead of outhouses. He also took a side trip, a safari to Murchison Falls, Uganda, for four days, as part of his 24-day mission, while Chavez worked straight through. The safari involved a hairy border crossing by land into Uganda. Their crew leader, an experienced Africa hand, told the electrical workers to lay low, as one of the border guards was drunk, the other one was high. They were still hassled.

"I think you would not make it through the night there. We had a bunch of bottled water in back of one of the pickups. It was all bottled up and sealed," Ball said. "He (a border guard) told me, 'Hey! You're trying to bring contaminated water into Uganda!' "

The group got out of the van at one point, but Ball said Ugandan border guards with rifles ordered them back inside, a scary moment.

"The roads would amaze people. Asphalt's a beautiful thing over here. You just felt like you got beat up everywhere. When we went to the safari there was probably I'd say 40 trucks that were pulled over and just beat to death, been broke down for years, just stuck there," Ball said.

Ball struggled with the language barrier in the Sudan. "I guess I was kind of naive in thinking I would be able to pick up on some Arabic," he said.

When he chatted with the local Sudanese guys, talk naturally turned to their wives. He was surprised some of the men had multiple wives, though a couple men who had four wives were now down to two. Ball said it seemed like a flexible arrangement -- if it didn't work out, a wife could leave the marriage.

Some village compounds consisted of the husband living in the central tukal, or hut, with the wives living in small tukals around it.

Ball agreed with Chavez about the good nature of the residents.

"I thought that they'd be sad, just to be in the conditions that they're faced with. But like Dave and I spoke, they're not. They're all so happy."

Ball didn't eat the food at the compound. Instead, he lost 30 pounds on the trip, eating ramen noodles he brought with him, boiled in bottled water, He also ate trail mix. The five Missouri volunteers ate the local food and contracted giairdea, he said.

Ball and his companions had one last snag when it came time to leave. They still had too much cargo for the small airplane flight back to Entebbe, despite giving away things like backpacks and candy to a local orphanage and leaving behind tools for the workers. Again, an experienced expatriate came to the rescue and convinced the pilot to take the additional baggage, stuffing it in the aisle.

The returning Americans were never sure exactly when the plane would come, only sometime that day. Chavez said his crew had to make reservations 10 days in advance, then reconfirm those reservations every day. Ball said if they shipped their baggage by land to Entebbe, it would arrive too late for their flight back to the U.S., via Amsterdam and Detroit.

"When we hit Detroit, it's like you just won the Olympics," Ball said.