A little more on Juba life...

I thought as I don't have all that much to write about as I'm busy writing my report I'd give you all a little more insight into my sort of daily surroundings, and where I'm spending most of my time as I get this project finished up now that I'm not running to meetings all the time.  

First, a shot of my desk, but if you look closer, I think you'll see something interesting.  Wrapped around the roll of toilet paper on my desk is a small reptilian visitor that fell off of my wall the other day and immediately attached itself to the closest thing on my desk.  Just below it next to the edge of my computer screen you can just see the head of his companion, who followed him in falling off the wall and decided to stick to the surface he fell on.  These sort of daily happenings keep things interesting around here.  Also, this is where the magic of report writing happens, although, only when it is lizard free. 

This is a shot from my room towards the front of the hotel, the buildings you can see are the more expensive self-contained rooms (meaning they have their own individual bathroom and shower inside instead of using the shared ones).

Here is the front gate of the resident's area looking on to the hotel bar/restaurant. The fence constructed of poles lashed together is pretty common as fencing around Juba.

A look into the restaurant area of the bar from the outside.

 The bridge from the hotel area to the parking lot area of the hotel.

Our "river", it's a pretty steam like most of the time, but when the rains are heavy this channel can be filled almost to the edge of the rock wall I'm told. In the worst of the rains here it's barely covered the bottom of the channel, but I hear September is pretty impressive in terms of rainfall.

The bar, notice the high ceilings which are a common construction element in a lot of buildings in South Sudan in an attempt to keep places cool.  The staff heer are really awesome and take pretty good care of the residence, even when the bar is busy on a weekend I can always get a drink, or more likely then not, get my take-out food reheated so I can go back to my room and chill out there.  The bar can be a little crowded and loud with music on the weekends, it's a bit of a party place.  Oddly enough all the staff (who are almost all Kenyan), and all the South Sudanese I've gotten to know here call me Maggie even though I introduce myself as Margaret.  I take the fact that they call me by a nickname as a a sign of familiarity, and I respond pretty well to it, so it all works out.

Looking down onto the restaurant area again. Slightly better picture of ceiling, which is covered with a thick layer of straw and then covered with metal (which was visible in one of the earlier photos of the outside).

My lovely room, featuring my wonderful mosquito netting that I've written about.

View of my room so you can get some sense of the space.  There's my desk, and next to it the refrigerator that holds my leftovers from the Indian restaurant I order from all the time from.  It also keeps my supply of chocolate from melting.

The most important thing in my room. My air con! It's very near and dear to me, and hasn't broken once (yet, knock on wood).

My really awesome Nokia cell phone.  These things may have the functionality of an early 1990s PC but they are indestructible and I can now play a mean game of Snake thanks to the limited game choices on it.  I also remembered how to text using a non QWERTY keyboard, which was something my fingers remembered how to do instantly much to my surprise.

Anyways, my days are mostly confined to the hotel now as I type up this report. I give a presentation of my report on Thursday to the GBV Working Group for Central Equatoria and then pretty much right afterwards jump on a plane to head home, so this will probably be my last post while I'm in the country.  I'll try and do a post that looks back a bit on the overall experience and things I learned once I'm back home.  It's been a great ten weeks, and I'm so thankful for all the experiences I've had here (even the bad ones because they give everything perspective).  Hopefully if the flights go as planned my next post will be from home in Iowa!

Kejo Kiji

So on Wednesday we set out for Kejo Kiji, about an hour and a half late due to various reasons, but not actually that far behind in terms of African time. We set out and immediately began fording streams/little rivers, which continued to be the practice for the rest of the five and half hour ride over bone-jarring roads.  Here are some of the waterways we forded in our land cruiser , we were very fortunate in that it hadn't rained the day before, so they were all at very low levels:

This one actually was a constructed "bridge" (our driver informed us it was very well constructed as bridges go) and that crossing before had been very dangerous here. It's not meant to be an actual bridge, but constructed to control/widen the flow enough that cars can cross without fear of getting suck in the mud or high water.

The walls (that's a wall right there cemented together) help keep drivers on the rockier areas of the stream/river beds so you don't end up mired in mud or deep sand. 

Shot through the windshield as we approach a stream.  Sorry for all the bits of car window that get in the way of the shots, this is what happens when you take picture through a car window as you bounce up and down a rocky road. 

Fording more water. 

The view down the road to Kejo Kiji.  

More local scenery.

 Lunch! Catfish and ugali (corn with what I can only assume is mixed with lard or something similar sort of in the style of masa for tamales, only their corn is a lot less tasty).  It's picked up and rolled into balls and used to mop up the stew the catfish comes in.  It's kind of tasteless, but very good with with the stew soaked up in it.  The catfish was also delicious.

  Washing out hands, in the bush style.

Eating the ugali.

 The "town" where we ate lunch.  This was about it, except for another row of stall on the other side of the road.  This is the major stopping point between Juba and Kejo Kiji.

 As we were about to enter the mountains.

This is actually a fence, the plants grow up and are intertwined around long sticks run horizontally through them.  These are very common fences all over Juba and smaller villages as well. They're beautiful, mostly I think because they're so natural looking. 

 The view of Kejo Kiji county from the hill the county offices sit on.

It was kind of breathtaking up there.

You could pretty much see the whole county.

Also, there were really cool rocks, the whole area is very rocky and the rock runs in linear planes that are really interesting.

 The climb down from the hill the offices were on.

 Bottom of the hill, that's a kid working on breaking up rock.  The kids work after school and on weekends in the quarries breaking up rocks into the piles you see around him to pay for their school fees.

 This was our dinner at a local restaurant, the ugali was white and the fish was whole. It was a bit intimidating if you can't tell from my face.  I was a little unsure about the whole fish/taking the scales off thing.

 A more direct view of my dinner. The white ugali was actually not very good, it was harder and didn't really have any taste.

Me putting on a braver face before we dug in. The fish was pretty decent, although couldn't really compare to the catfish earlier that day.

View down the corridor of the hotel we stayed in.  The hotel only had power from 7-12 p.m. each night so that's when we charged up our laptops for the next days work and such.  The hotel was clean, which was the most important thing, but no internet, no air con, no hot water for showers, and no western toilets, but we managed alright. There were mosquito nets.

Driving around Kejo Kiji was really interesting. At one point we drove to the police station to do our interviews and it happened to be the time of day when all the kids were out in the schoolyards for recess.  Every time we drove past a school (and there are a lot of them) one of the kids would spot us and start yelling "Gowaja!" (white person!) and suddenly all the kids would be screaming "Gowaja!" their games forgotten and they would run to the edge of the schoolyard to wave and yell so I waved and smiled back as we went by, it was hard to resist, they were pretty adorable.  

Our meetings went well and late the next afternoon we set off down the bumpy road back to Juba.

 The drive back to Juba right around sunset.

 The view out the back of the white four-by-four, the official vehicle of Africa, and getting across whatever the road throws at you.

 The view driving home.

 Getting close to Juba, the Jebel (mountain) with the sun going down behind it.

Home sweet home, sunset over Juba from the gates of the Bedouin Hotel as we got out of the car. I leave Juba in eight days, and the report is still very much in the works, so sorry if posting slows down, I won't have much to write about as I'm now spending most of my days hunkered in my container typing away.  Doesn't make for very entertaining writing (or lead to any particularly good pictures), but I'll try and post at least once more before I go. 

Fashion Show!

So on Saturday we had a fashion/cultural show at my hotel.  It's called the Festival for Fashion, Arts & Peace, and it was pretty excellent. There was a craft show featuring crafts actually made in South Sudan, and then the fashion show which also featured performances from a youth group that performs tribal dances from different parts of South Sudan.  The fashion show had traditional clothes, as well as new modern clothes inspired by traditional fabrics and styles.  We got to see some of South Sudan's new fashion talent, and generally have a really good time. I'll try and put more pictures up on Facebook, but here are a couple of the show.

One of the tribal dances:

The traditional fashion show:

 Beadwork:

 Traditional necklace or decoration (apparently given ceremonially sometimes I've heard?).

 The modern fashion show, often inspired by traditional African fabrics:

 And special guest, Miss South Sudan, who will be competing at the Miss Universe pageant later this year:

 Some dude fashions were interspersed as well:

 More modern/traditional inspired clothes:

 And finally, to wrap up the show a final dance by the dance troupe:

 Check out the little kid in the back, he was drumming like a pro with the rest of them (who were all several feet taller).

It was a pretty cool night.  There is an album I've shared on Facebook with more photos that a friend with a better camera took for better shots of some of the clothes.  I'm off to Kejo Kiji tomorrow for a one day trip, back Thursday, so hopefully I'll have some more pictures to share of other parts of the country then!