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...

Farewell dinner

Over the months I've been here I've taken part in my fair share of farewell dinners - and today I was the guest of honor at the one held for my Norwegian colleague and myself. Lots of people showing up, from all the pillars in the Team Site (MLO, UNPOL, BanBat, Civil Affairs, CITS and so on) as well as a few guys from various NGOs I've been rubbing shoulders with the last year.

We held the dinner in the Blue, and he food - prepared by the cleaning staff, hijacked for the day - was plenty and tasty. After the food it was time for the speeches... and if half of what was said should be believed my Norwegian friend and myself have singlehandedly made the Team Site a better place.

I got mixed feelings about going home. On hand it's like "home, hell yeah!"... on the other hand I'm leaving behind people I've worked closely with for the last year. And while it has been times I've been wondering how people can be so incredible dense and/or stupid, for the most part we been able to put our cultural differences aside and work as a well functioning team. As people are fond to say when we have been welcoming new coworkers to Yei; we're more than a team, we're a family in Yei. And this have been made even clearer with the people who gotten redeployed to Yei from other Team Sites after July 9th - the stories they tell shows us just how lucky we been down here. Apart from an incident which took place two months before I arrived, there has been no fighting and very little argument between UNMOs - but if the stories are to be believed that is not too uncommon in other Team Sites (after all, it only takes two to fight and ruin the mood of the entire team).

I think one of the reasons why Yei have worked so well is that it's always been a small Team Site - the smallest in South Sudan - and that the officers stationed here have realized that they cannot afford to act like idiots if the team is to function. With the new, leaner mission all the Team Sites will be homes of small Teams. Hopefully the experience we have had in Yei will become common on all the sites in the future.

Barbecue and campfire - the video

Updated - should work now

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

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.

Back in Yei for the last time

Home away from home... that is what Yei has become over the last ten and a half month. And now I have just under a month left before my End of Mission, so it is kind of bitter-sweet to be back here after my last leave.

Nothing much have changed in the Team Site. A few familiar faces have left us - I meet with one of my team in Juba as I was getting ready to board, and one other on the helipad as I got of the flight as he was getting on - but also two new faces. Patrols have started again, and until we have a clear mandate from up high we're conducting them as we did before 9th July. We expect to have enough information to start changing the patrols around the same time as I leave Yei to go to check-out...

Other than that, no news of note. The flight from Juba to Yei was presumable uneventful - I say presumable since I was nodding off most of the way.

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.

Going away party?

A large number of the UNPOLs are being redeployed to other County Support Bases* within South Sudan, and as such they wanted to have a going away party Saturday night. Along with the UNPOL TSL I offered to keep the Blue open if they organised the rest - like we done in the past.

How many of the UNPOLs came? Try one - and he came two hours after the party was supposed to start and had no idea where the others were.

At least my UNMOs can organise a party... On the other hand, the Canadian UNPOL TSL, the other Norwegian, one of my Peruvians and myself had a nice evening just sitting around and talking. The weather was cool and comfortable, and Mother Nature turned on the light show; we had a major thunderstorm on the horizon.

Group photo

Due to the cancellation of leave until further notice, we have the entire team in the Team Site these days. What better time for a group photo?

 The entire team of UNMOs in Yei Team Site

The TSL was also a popular subject to photograph....

Saying farewell to good friends

One of the Canadian UNPOLs left Yei today to go home... which is sad for us but good for him since he goes home of his own volition. I figured that the least I could do was to make him waffles for breakfast, since he (and the other Canadian, who is staying) loves the waffles I make.

 Breakfast outside. tasty waffles, good friends... what's not to like? The guy to busy taking photos to enjoy the waffles is the one who left today.

Up until today there have been a balance between the Canadians and the Norwegians in the Team Site... now the Norwegians have the upper hand. Picture taken on the helipad, as we were waiting for the passengers to load up.

Celebration in the Blue

Saturday we had a Independence Party in the Blue, with lots of food, music and happy people. Started out with a nice bonfire too... Quite successful, and just the first of two we had this weekend. Pictures of Sundays party tomorrow.

South Sudan Independence Day Parade in Yei

As promised, here is the video I made of the Independence Day Celebration at Yei Freedom Square yesterday. I had to render this as a fairly small size to be able to upload it in a timely manner over my somewhat flaky connection... it's almost one hour long, so you might want to grab more than just a cup of coffee before sitting down to watch.

And while no one in the parade would win a marching competition anytime soon... well, that is not what this is all about. This is about a people and a country that have struggled for more than 50 years to have their voices heard, and now they are the masters of their own house so to speak. Sounds like a pretty good reason to throw a parade  to me - and Your Excellency, our Parade is endless!

Pretty much everyone in town was at Freedom Square - it was packed.

Separation celebration

As the Team Site Leader and local VIP from UNMIS, I had to go down to Freedom Square and take part in the official program to celebrate the creation of the 54th independent country in Africa. They managed to only run 30 minutes late on their four hour program - partly by cutting out every single break... so it was four and a half hour of standing / sitting and watching. Very interesting though, and I wouldn't missed it for the world.

A movie will be uploaded later; after I made it.

Tonight we will have a party on the team site for the UN and invited NGOs.

Last SDP - the movie

It is a long one, so grab a coffee.

Getting ready to celebrate

The website with the resolutions from the security council still wont load for me... hopefully I will have the full text for you tomorrow.

Tomorrow we have a party in the Team Site, with food and drink and music. It's going be good, and I strongly suspects that everyone will have a grand time.

I was also buying extra supplies from the Indian shop today.. and they had snacks!

The mini-samosas are very tasty!

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...

Visited Youth With A Mission school in Yei again today.

Today I visited the YWAM school again, after not having gone for way too long. In addition to bringing my new G5 (CIMIC) with me, I carried an envelope of money from my parents and a box with 300 pens from my better half and me.

We got to speak to both the administrator and the headmaster, and I think my G5 should have sufficient enformation to start drafting a Quick Impact Project for the school to get a new block of classrooms. The YWAM has big plans for the future, but also looks at thing in a long timeframe - ten years down the line they want to be able to offer secondary school in addition to the nursery classes and primary schooling. to quite the administrator: "they will arrive when they are four years old and leave uss to go to Juba University."

The joy and thankfulness of receiving what I carried was plain and easy to see; just the pens means that they can release funds for other needed items. The cash will either go to feeding the children, for books or for repairs on their one car (no car means having to pay people to bring the 50 kg bags of flour for the daily porridge). I'm sure they will prioritise wisely.

I also learned that they are going to need more desks so the children don't have to sit on the floor. fifteen desks at one hundred and fifty pounds each don't sound much, but when you live of donations as the YWAM does it can be a very steep slope indeed. With the current exchange rate it's a bit more than 700 USD, a big amount when you can't afford to give each student their own pen...

Cold and drinks

I'm not feeling my best today - like several others UNMOs I've come down with a bit of a cold after the visit from Juba yesterday. Nothing serious, just a sore throat and a runny nose, but annoying none the less.

In other news, I can state that the orange flavoured "jus" I picked up yesterday is quite tasty, and it's not just the flavour that is orange... Not as good as freshly pressed oranges, but better than most other drinks I've run across down here. And speaking of drinks, well, I found something unexpected in the shop today:

Yes, it's genuine Mountain Dew - along side a pitcher of orange flavoured drink.

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!