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.
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.
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