The very last day of my mission

Today was the last official day of my mission in South Sudan, and it was a day full of frustration - mostly because the lock on the door to my door decided to break, and break in such a way as to prevent me from getting the door open. It took seven (!) hours for the landlord to send someone over to fix it, so my entire schedule for the day got messed up majorly.

My boxes and bags are repackages again, this time inventoried and signed off. Now I just need a cargo number from the UN, and I can hand them over to the AdmOff for further processing. Without the UN cargo number it can be months before I see them again... I found it better to get everything sorted out today, just in case.

I also got a bad case of travel fever.  A couple of days ago I would happily have stayed on a couple months more, now I can't wait to get home.

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.

Last working day of the mission

Yes, I did in fact get my package today - one "under armour" shirt (a cool-max t-shirt torso with uniform jacket sleeves) and one envelope with a birthday letter and a small present from my parents! Only took it about three months to get to me... way to go, MovCon. Fair is fair though, a lot of the delay was due to a severe lack of forward planning from UN.

Most of the morning was spent sipping coffee in the cafeteria down in Camp, waiting for our tickets and travel authorizations to come through - which they haven't so far. So me and some of the others decided to give up and return on Monday, walking back to the Norwegian House and have a simple lunch. Even though Sunday is technically our last day in the mission, getting into camp should be no trouble at all.

Tomorrow we're going to have a farewell party for the six of us that are going home, so this afternoon we'll have to go shopping.

Almost tangible package

In the continuing saga about my box I can report almost tangible results... while I didn't find it while I visited MovCon LogBase today, they called me pretty much as soon as I got back to the Norweigan House and told me they had found it and had put it aside for me. As an added bonus I spotted a bag one of the other Norwegians have been hunting for since June as well, so that's a win-win. We're both getting our long missed stuff tomorrow morning!

I was also told today that our tickets have been booked; leaving next Wednesday and flying much the same route to Norway as I did the last time I was on leave. So while it might been fun to have gone via Entebbe and cross out yet another country from my list of places to go, it's even nicer not having to learn the layout of yet another airport I won't come back to anytime soon. And I'll get to pick up a few souvenirs from Ethiopia as well... just like I'm planning to pick up a couple of t-shirts from South Sudan tomorrow or Monday.

Been a sort of lazy Wednesday

Only... not really. Yes; I didn't get too much done today, but getting it done took a lot of footwork. I started trying to track down my package I started out at MovCon down at the terminal, then wandered off to the MovCon office in the main camp before waking all the way over to the Logistics Base on the outskirts of camp... and then I had to go through several lists of stuff that just arrived from Juba on paper ("Computers? What computers?")...

Got lucky though; my box IS in Juba, but the container it is in arrived last Friday and have yet to be unpacked. And since it was stacked on top of two others... They will unearth it for me though, so I can pick it up tomorrow after lunchtime. I'm excited - apparently one of the things in the box is a birthday present from my parents.

After doing that, and having lunch with the other Norwegians in the tukul, I came to the realization that  I didn't want to sit around in camp until the others were done at work... so I walked up to the Norwegian House. 2.59km done in 28 minutes, on dusty and muddy dirt roads, surrounded by the locals, a burning sun in a cloudless sky, and around 40 degrees Celsius - my uniform was soaked with sweat when I arrived. Welcome to Afria - I'm most assuredly not from around here.