Slow day

Today I have been acting as Duty Officer - which usually translates to "slow day in the office". Which is good, since it gave me plenty of time to prepare for tomorrows SDP. - which will be the first SDP we're going to conduct as a joint patrol with the UNPOLs.

We had a huge thunderstorm around four in the afternoon, which kept going for almost three hours before it slacked off... good thing my container is leak proof =)

New shop in town

And it's an Indian grocery store!

In addition to the usual odds and ends, they also have real indian spices, food and snacks... om-nom-nom!

Yei is quiet and peaceful, as it has been since I arrived here in early October. Some of the population is a bit tense due to the situation in Abyei, but I don't really see our little corner of Sudan erupting over it.

Imperfect camouflage, Nepalese lunch and tiny trees

I was just heading down to he office when I spotted this little critter sitting on my front door. His camouflage might been perfect if he's been sitting on a tree and imitating a thorn... less so when on a bright white door.

Later in the day the entire team was invited to the ECS Guesthouse for a Nepalese dinner.. the ECS has a nice compound, but like most of Yei the drainage could be better. They have a nice tukul in the middle with a raised floor and thatched roof, so we stayed nice and dry.

 When it rains, it pours... lots.

 A well thatched tukul stays cool and dry, no matter what the weather is like.

 Lots and lots of tasty Nepalese food - needless to say we made short work of the lot.

After coming back from the lunch, I happened to notice that some of the trees in camp have taken the opportunity to sprout not just flowers, but fruits as well. I have no real idea what sort of trees they are though...

 This wasn't there two weeks ago..

 This one wasn't there last week...

 And I'm pretty sure that wasn't there yesterday.

 The tree itself isn't huge - the trunk is as tall as the roof on our office.

 Fruit in the making? Berries? I just have to wait and see.

 While the tree looks quite similar to the one by our office, the flowers looks very different.

 Don't smell like much though.

The whole think is about as tall as I am, and grows right outside my front door.

Movies!

Thanks to nice people with access to better software than that which came with the camera, I can now present videos from Yei!

BanBat vs a combined UNMO-UNPOL team.

Lill Miss AC turning her charm on

Bugs!

Not in the computer - even if that is slow and buggy as it is - but close enough:

Now that the rainy season is well underway, all sort of insects crawl out of the wood work, as it were. Most of them end up as snacks for birds, cats and lizards, but there is more than enough to go around. If someone forgets to close the door to the ablutions at night, the floor in there is alive the next morning...

Two hundred and twenty two

That's how many blogposts I've made since I started. That's enough words and pictures to fill a decent sized book, at least.

Today I was informed that there will be more redeployment between team sites; one of our UNMOs will be sent to Abyei, while one UNMO will come from Abyei to us. At least I'm sure the guy coming to us will enjoy the change of pace - as I'm sure everyone know by know, Abyei isn't exactly calm and peaceful these days. For me the redeployment mostly means paperwork. However, that's tomorrows problem - right now I'm going to bunk down with my tiny laptop and a few TV shows.

Connection issues and gracious cat photos

Last night everything was down - the phone and the internet in the office was dead, the sat phone couldn't find any satellites and the cell coverage was down as well, so no cell phone or internet in my container either. Quite annoying  to be blunt about it - more so because the cell tower is still not up.

However, someone decided to invite herself in to take my mind of things...

What do you know...

Well, I didn't get that job in Juba I was 'volunteered' for, but I will become the new Team Site Leader here in Yei. So on one side I don't get to go to a huge camp, do a stressful job with long hours or pay out the nose (comparatively speaking) when I go out to eat - but I do get to stay in Yei, play with AC and hang out with the friends I've made over the last eight months.

Win-win, really. The job as the UNMO-Coordinator would have been interesting and challenging, but I like the somewhat more sedate life we have here in Yei. And since I seem to have managed well when I've been the Acting Team Site Leader, I don't think there will be too much of a shock in the end of June when I get to be the Real Team Site Leader.

Only downside I see is that I have to let someone else deal with the nitty-gritty of planing leaves and suchlike... good thing I have trained my deputy well.

Is raining, can I come in?

As I was heading into my container after a little trip out in the rain, someone slightly damp and miserable slipped in as well... Little Miss AC, whom seen to have her wet weather nest under the neighbors container, obviously wanted to be somewhere drier for a while. Off course, the prospect of petting and milk probably factored into her decision as well...

After a good brushing and a bit of milk, she wanted to explore and play - like real cats like to do.

Surprise find in the shop

Needing more bread and other staples, I headed down to the so called super market today.. and walked away with more than I had originally planed for:

Oats and beans... I've eaten all the oat porridge I had brought with me from Norway, so the white oats is a great find. And the beans, well, baked beans have always been a favorite of mine. And the jam have not been seen for a couple of months, so that was a welcome find too.

A bit later in the day we got rains - started as "just" heavy rain, but after half an hours we had a rainstorm complete with thunder, lightning and gusts of wind that made my container creak like clipper running a storm around the Cape of Good Hope, loaded to the gunwales with tea...

The beginning of the rainstorm

Football in rain, Foosball indoors

As mentioned last night, yesterday a joint team of UNPOLs and UNMOs meet the BanBat on the football pitch. The match was fast paced, full of lost opportunity and threatened by rain. I got some good bits of video of it with my new camera, but I've discovered that my laptop isn't powerful enough to turn that into something I can upload - at least not with the default software that came with it (ImageMixer 3 SE). So nice, high def videos will have to wait until I'm home on leave again or can lay my hands on some better software (not likely, seeing as I'm in South Sudan).
Still, I got a few shots of the inclement weather:

After the football game, it was time to open up the blue and let our guests try our newest actration: The foosball game (aka Table Soccer, Fussball (or Fußball if you prefer), Footzy, Bar Football and so on and so forth). We had invited a number of the NGOs in the area in for a meet and greet (and play and drink), so we had quite a few guests and a good time.