End of Mission Barbecue

Yesterday was pretty busy - we had a "going away barbecue" in the Norwegian House, and everyone had a task to do (and most volunteered for a lot more along the way).

Backing up a couple of steps: While the FHQ - and thus the Norwegian House - was in Khartoum it was a tradition that when a group of UNMOs / SOs had their End Of Mission held a more-or-less formal dinner at a high end restaurant, with speeches, handing over of medals, toasts* and so on and so forth.

Fast forward to the present day: FHQ has relocated to Juba,  therefore the Norwegian House has as well. And while there is plenty of pretty good restaurants in Juba, there isn't any that we're aware of that offers the requisite combination of good dining, privacy for a large group and reasonable cost**.

Logical solution: Do it ourselves - we're officers and UNMOs/MLOs and therefore fully capable of organizing something out of nothing.

A barbecue was borrowed, coal bought, enough food and drinks for 20 or so hungry 'weges was hunted down from a cross section of the shops and markets in Juba. My task was - along with a couple of others - to put meat and fowl on the barbecue and make sure it didn't turn into carbon... off course, I couldn't resist doing a bit more than that. So in the morning I joined forces with the group that went shopping for drinks and vegetables, then I pitched in a bit in the kitchen before I lent a hand in setting up the barbecue.

The barbecue was a rousing success. Enough food, enough drinks, and lots of happy faces. Speeches were made, medals handed out to everyone found deserving - in other words, everyone who have been in the mission for long enough - and most people were still hanging out and talking well past midnight. Lets just say Im getting a hunch it won't be the last barbecue in the New Norwegian House.

*) In Khartoum, toasts were done with non-alcoholic drinks off course.
**) Seeing as how the going-away-party is a semi-official occasion, it is paid for by the Norwegian House - which ultimately means it's paid for by our tax-money.

Shopping in Juba

Due to a severe shortage of coffee - the fuel that makes Norwegians tick - some of the guys staying in the Norwegian House went on an expedition over to JIT supermarket in downtown Juba, most also taking the opportunity to grab some food for the next few days. In my cause, I picked up a pre-sliced bread and a jar of peanut butter, in addition to some crackers and a couple of cup noodles.

On our way back, we made a stop at the Juba Wood Market. The prices were decent and the selection was good, so I picked up a couple of souvenirs.

The New Norwegian House still have a few teething problems, mostly caused by the fact that most of the items from the Old Norwegian House still haven't made it down here. Even so it's a comfortable place to hang out and talk to other Norwegians, getting me used to taking my mother tongue again...

Busy, busy

It is amazing how many things you need to do the very last day before you're leaving somewhere for good...

I started the day packing, then did some more packing before I headed over the YWAM school here in yei with some items; bandages, band-aids, disinfectant and suchlike for their little clinic, notebooks, pens and coloured pencils and more for their pupils... and enough US dollars for them to afford desks for their just finished classrooms and then some. They were very happy and grateful for the contribution - I just wish I could have stayed longer and done more for them... oh well, we have to do what we can with the time and resources we have.

After getting back from the school there was more packing, before my fellow Norwegian and myself went down for lunch with the BanBat officers. As always the food was excellent, and the company as well. I'm going to miss these Bangladeshi officers - I've learned a lot from them and they claims to have learned a lot from us as well. As the first Norwegians they have encountered, I would like to think that we have left them with a favorable impression. As we were getting ready to leave the table, they surprised us with a gift; we each got a really nice velvet UN baseball cap with BanBat-6 nicely embroidered in gold.

Later today (and tonight) I'll do some more packing - at this point I'm mostly moving stuff between bags - before my Norwegian friend, the resident Canadian, the two Indians from CITS and myself have a barbecue dinner in the MSA camp. After all the lunch with BanBat I'm not sure how much I'll be able to eat though...

Barbecue and campfire - the video

Updated - should work now

From last Friday; barbecue and campfire, rain be damned.

Yesterdays blogpost...

... disappeared in a puff of smoke and a torrent of rain.

On Thursday we spotted frozen chicken at our regular supplier (if by regular you mean "gets a shipment in from Uganda now and then") and promptly decided that Friday was barbecue night! So we spent some time assembling our barbecue - stacking bricks in other words - and getting the coals good and hot. Just as we put our chickens on the grill the sky opened up, it is after all still the wet season down here.

Slightly annoyed at the powers that be, but determined to have a boys night around the barbecue, we rigged up a small tarp over the food and fetched rain gear for ourselves. Sitting around a fire out in the rain waiting for our food brought back many memories from when I was an active boyscout...

The chickens turned out just about perfect, and even after eating we were unwilling to give up... so we put some firewood on the hot coals and turned our little barbecue into a campfire under the tarp. The rain had enough and gave up after a mere three hours of trying to drench us, so we took the tarp down and kept going until it got way too late - or rather early, depending on your point of view.

A very good evening well spent in the company of good friends in the MSA camp. I'm going to miss these guys.

Eid Mubarak!

Or, for those less well versed in Arabic; Happy Eid ul-Fitr!

Ramadan is over, and such a thing must be celebrated. So we, along with everyone else in the Team Site, was invited down to BanBat to share a meal. As always, their food is simply wonderful; just spicy enough to make your tongue tingle, yet not so strong it overshadows the subtle flavors. BanBat in Yei has some very, very good cooks.

Other than that, the resident Canadian and I made waffles for lunch. In other words, not much to report on.

I could never get the hang of Mondays...

It's been an oddly disjointed day today. Keeping busy, but no red thread to keep things connected.

While things are still not properly organised in Juba, we gotten several jury rigged solutions in place; enough to let us send the daily reports and deal with Leave Requests and the like. The Acting Senior MLO seems to be up at all hours, to judge from the varied time stamps on the emails I get from him. Another few weeks and it should all be working smoothly - by which time I won't be here no more

Today was also the day we sent two of my MLOs to Bor in Jonglei State to help conduct Air Patrols. In short, they get to go to a different Team Site, take part in daily air patrols for two weeks and draw 30USD extra per day for their trouble... If it hadn't been so close to my End of Mission I would have volunteered myself.

I've noted that my eating habits have changed. It used to be that I had bread for breakfast, bread for lunch and then made dinner around dinnertime (1700 - 1800). Now I have a bit of bread for breakfast, make dinner for lunch and then have a snack in the evening... it actually works quite well, but it's not a schedule I can keep up after I get home and starts working; two hour lunch breaks would be frowned upon.

Rainy Sunday

Sundays can be slow in Yei, and even more so when it's gray and rainy all day. To cheer myself up a bit I made "fancy" dinner - fried up some of the little sausages I bought in the Indian store, sliced some of the little breads in two, toasted the bread in the fat left over from the sausages and made little sausage burgers:

BBQ night!

One thing I really like about the others who lives in the MSA camp here in Yei is that it's never hard to go from a vague idea to full tilt action. More or less out of the blue we decided around the time the helicopter arrived this morning that tonight was going to be barbecue night. Just because today was Friday, and that's all the excuse you need for doing something like that.

 Making fire - fire good.

 What else is there to do while waiting for the coals to get ready than to have a beer?

 Tiny little Indian beef sausages... one of the few meats I'll buy down here that is not alive when I bring it home.

 Getting in line for chow...

 Sausages, chilli, breads, mac n cheese, mustard, catchup, salad and more... a veritable feast!

And yet, with all that food, AC was mostly well behaved and didn't try to beg or steal.

Sore, but worth it

Today was the day of the Big Welfare Tour - three cars, eight guys and 150 km of bad road each way. We we're out of the Team Site for almost ten and a half hour, and only a little more than three of those hours were spent in Juba.

Well worth the long drive and the sore back though; I got to talk to a lot of people who so far have been voices on the phone, did a bit of shopping at the PX and had a huge cheeseburger with chips for lunch.

 The mountain right behind Juba; lots of small quarries suppling the booming construction industry in town. Large rocks are turned into smaller rocks by people beating on them with large hammers. Sounds unbelievable, but I saw it with my own two eyes.

 A nice anvil-shaped cloud. Lots of those around, but not often I get to capture one on film.

 The less pretty side of a growing city; there is no official landfill, the dump trucks simply drive "far enough" out into the countryside and dump their loads.

 A bit further along the road back to Yei; grass so tall you can't tell what's behind it.

 Making a quick pit-stop on the road - the lady in the photo is a new UNPOL who asked to hitch a ride with us as opposed to waiting in Juba until the flight on Friday.

My haul from the PX - not a lot for such a long trip, but then we didn't travel to Juba just to go shopping.

Unexpected bounty

When the Canadian left the Team Site last Friday, he left a load of food with the remaining Canadian... so much that he decided to share with the other Norwegian and me. Looks like I don't have to worry about food for the rest of my stay here after todays haul:

Canada is most assuredly a bi-lingual country... the things that looks to have only English text on them have French on the opposite side.

It was unexpected, but far from unwelcome... thank you, and safe trip home!

Stoney Tangawizi

As I headed out to restock the bar yesterday I stumbled over something new again... Stoney Tangawizi. Being the curious sort, and seeing it was manufactured by a somewhat reputable company, I decided to pick up a couple of bottles for the bar.

A quick search on the internet revealed what the brown bottle held: ginger beer! And after drinking both bottles I bought I must admit that it is pretty damn tasty ginger beer too.

 A very pale, very dry and lightly carbonated ginger beer.

For beverage use only... well, This Is Africa - there is a million other things a good bottle can be used for, even if you end up thinking the gods must be crazy...

ALO training

Today was a busy day in it's own way... we had a group of instructors come from Juba to conduct a class on the finer issues of being an Air Liaison Officer (same class I had up in Khartoum back in the end of October last year). Off course it was only after they had arrived - and hour late - that we realized that no one in Juba had given any thoughts to the fact that having lunch in Yei isn't as easy as it is in Team Sites with a cafeteria... so both the instructors and the Russian aircrew that flew them here was pretty much left floating.

Thankfully though, we are blessed with a very nice company from BanBat in Yei... so after a quick talk to their officers, and a enough time for them to actually prepare food, our guests (and myself) were treated to a wonderful Bangladeshi lunch. Both the instructors and the aircrew are to their hearts content, as did I. I just can't say how grateful I am to BanBat for helping out on such short notice - we're really lucky to be in this team site with such good fellows.

In other, unrelated news, I found something interesting in the shop today:

 Jus4ever - just as I was running out of orange drink powder too. 

 "Approved colourants and flavorings"... probably best not to ask.

Four exiting flavourings... looking forward to trying this tomorrow!

Mac and cheese

Before the weekend I was given a small block of cheese by one of the NGOs. Today I deceided to make use of it and make dinner for the two Canadian UNPOLs who lives in camp and myself. And what to make? Well, mac and cheese off course!

 Four cups of cooked pasta

 One cup of cheese

 "Enough" butter, milk and spices.

Result: Tasty dinner for three hungry guys.

Big spending

My pantry was all but empty today, so I decided to head downtown and do some big spending!

All of that, a big bag of bread and a crate of water (24 bottles) for about hundred pounds, or about 30 USD. I can't spend cash down here even if I want to....

Pineapple soda

 Just a bottle of pineapple soda...

Wait... what's this?

Hmm... most cunfuseing. Is it a can wanting to be a bottle? A bottle wanting to be a can? Is is a cattle or a bon?

All packed and somewhere to go

Tomorrow I set out for a four day patrol - so no blog updates until Friday at best. Maybe not even then; this coming weekend a delegation from the Welfare Section in Juba will arrive to see what we got going so far and what our current plans for the future is. So Friday might be busy and Saturday even more so - we're throwing a party in the Blue.

Today was also the last day in a while I cooked in my container - I cut the rest of the beef sausages into slices and fried them in my pot before I added beans. Turned out pretty good - or is it me lowering my standards down here? Hard to tell, but I enjoyed the meal anyhow.

Bangers, no mash

I decided to simply have sausages for dinner today - they were very tasty indeed.

Getting ready to go on Long Duration Patrol, and a nice find in the supermarket

I knew there was a reason why I like the new Indian supermarket - they got some awesome things:

 Tiny hot dogs and a tiny tin of tomato paste! My initial plan was to make a meaty pasta sauce with the help of an onion and some tomatoes, but now I'm wondering if I shouldn't just fry up some bangers... decadent, I know.

I'm getting ready to go on a Long Duration Patrol again, this time up to Lainya. Getting ready means packing, and one thing I never forget to pack when I'm on patrol is my mess kit and water... let me show you why:

 One standard issue Norwegian Mess Kit - based on a German design - all packed and ready to go.

 The nice thing with the mess kit is that it also fits a fair bit of things inside. Back when I was in training, the mess kit was a favoured place to store dry socks and underwear... here in Sudan I use for for a few survival items.

 Three bags of instant soup, six satchels of coffee and six of sugar. Enough go-juice to keep me alive for a day or two in a pinch. I decided to go for bags instant soup in my "go kit" instead of a dehydrated dinner simply due to the fact that soups can be drunk - thus no need for bringing a spoon.

 In the bottom store the things to help me prepare the food: A bottle of hand sanitizer to clean my hands before cooking, a small Esbit stove, matches, water purification tablets and disinfection swabs to clean out the mes kit with.

 The Esbit stove is extremly handy - not much larger than a deck of cards, it none the less allows me to boil water with ease.

 The stove folded out for use. It has two settings; High (shown in picture) and Low (see next picture). Each tablet burns for about 12 - 14 minutes, and according to the blurb it'll boil one liter of water in seven minutes. And the stove have storage space for six tablets... that translates to 12 liters of boiling water. Pretty amazing for such a tiny package.

A dry run of boiling water on the low setting. By boiling the water in the bottom of the mess kit, I can make soup in the insert and a double coffee in the lid. Rinse and repeat as necessary.

Naturally I hope I never have to break out the mess kit while on patrol - but I always have it close by when I'm away from the Team Site.

Tandoori chicken!

Last night was a quiet evening in the Blue - all told there were four of us present; the security officer, a Canadian UNPOL, the other Norwegian and myself. We had a good time though, since our Indian friend had helped our security officer marinating some chicken... tasty, tasty tandoori chicken.

 The picture is off topic, but I like the moon.

 These little coal burning stove is all the rage down here if you are well off - if you're not well off you make do with a stove built of bricks and mud. I am seriously considering buying one to bring home as a souvenir.

 Making it go isn't all that easy if you don't know how, as my Canadian friend and I found out... seems the trick is to light a small fire under the charcoal to heat everything up.

 Where there is smoke, there is fire - eventually.

 Looks cheerful and once the fire caught the charcoal started to smolder as well.

 The coals are getting hot and ready, so time to put the grill on and get the show on the road!

Tasty, tasty tandoori chicken!

A little video I put together this morning