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:

Shooting the shit

Yet one of those slow, yet busy days.

Todays big issue was sending two of my MLOs to Bor for a two week temporary assignment - luckily for me the two fellows I wanted to send (because they are trustworthy and reliable) were more than happy to go; the lure of seeing a different part of South Sudan was too strong to resist.

The downside off course is that this leaves us with just enough people in the Team Site to conduct Town Patrols... even if I think we will manage to slip in a Welfare Patrol to Juba a few days before my Norwegian friend and I are to leave Yei to go to Check Out.

Later in the evening my Norwegian friend and I was hanging out down at the Blue with the resident Canadian, shooting the shit and in general having a good time. It's really nice to have some "neutral territory" like the Blue to hang out at; while we can (and do) visit each other for coffee and a chat it is subtly different to have a place which is no-ones home turf.

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.