Juba adventures and insites

It’s funny to watch Animal Planet’s “wild in Africa” from the middle of it all. The television hasn’t been turned off since I arrived at this house. It can be a bit much, honestly. Working hours are 8 am to 7 pm, 6 days a week. We all live and work and eat and play at the same place, day in, day out. This seems standard for international NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and those who work for them in Juba. It’s prohibitively expensive to run an office and staff otherwise– a tented camp costs upwards of $200 USD nightly – and both transportation and communication are difficult to come by. There is no legal driving edge (evidently) and 12 to 14 year old drivers accordingly make my favorite mode of travel, by boda-boda, riskier. To call a private-hire, the equivalent of a NY livery-car-service in the bush, is an outrageously over-priced option: a 10 minute drive to a party at the UNMIS compound this weekend would have cost me $20 US each way. There are multiple phone-carriers, yet no two can contact each other. I'm using Jem-Tel for the week (before hitting the field where I'll be relegated to the realm of sat-phone only) - everyone whom I've told has inquired how exactly I was able to even get a sim-card; apparently sim cards come in waves and arrived when the tides were right.

My buddy Alex was here last week before moving to his field site for the summer and I’ve found his commentary quite poignant on the dynamics of this strange, strange place.

Leaving the compound is a bit like being punched in the face. The poverty is hard to take in and the contrasts of the city are chaotic. As the city is quickly being developed, there are a few very nice new buildings. One intends to be a business park, another is a bank. Yet most buildings seems to barely stand, or no longer are. People throw tents on cement foundations of buildings with no other remnants. Between the buildings there are small neighborhoods of huts that seem strangely out of place. They seem to belong in a rural areas with beautiful wild animals and not this sprawling confusion. The urbanization seems to surround the rural living styles and the cattle, rather than push it out. The nicest buildings seem to be those of the aid and development workers, or the businesses that cater to them. Hence, the insane prices on imported goodies and comfortable places to sleep.

Check out his blog when you have a chance.

Parsing the plethora of PDFs on this harddrive I found some relevant guidelines for managing stress and maintaining wellness as a humanitarian worker – thanks Dirk! It’s undeniable how important taking good care of one’s self is with this inherently stressful work, but it’s really challenging to prioritize self-preservation in the face of such emotionally intensive and distressing engagements. Kate and I have been doing daily aerobics and yoga sessions (much to the delight of the compound guards, I’m sure) and Sunday the boys included me in their approach for dealing – D’nile!



I went with a couple of the guys from the alliance to a cool place on the banks of the Nile river, where we drank some cold ones and enjoyed the awesomeness that is my new battery-powered ipod-speaker. It seems like we weren’t the first to discover this locale – a less fortunate visitor before left a more impressive mark with this sunken ship, whereas some locale people make good use of the river resource for bathing and a car-wash (please pardon the voyeurism here).

sunken ship and a fisherman under the mango tree:


bathing cars and bodies:



Finally, in keeping with the self-preservation M.O., a sunning lizard:


Back to work.