Juba Dooba

Smooth landing (thanks African Express) next to a handful of UN helicopters and I was in! The first few minutes were kind of surreal… I guess my conception of Sudan is a bit loaded. I dodged past customs after securing my immigration stamps and met Martin, an awesome StC driver.


About 500 greetings-from-new-colleagues later I finally got the scary security briefing from Maryanna, an American staff of Save-UK (who share a compound with us, Save-US, and Save-Sweden, who all collectively are representing the Save-Alliance here in South Sudan): Mid-May, Juba experienced a good bit of armed-banditry, specifically targeting NGO residential compounds. A 10:30 ‘city-wide’ curfew was imposed, security beefed up, and new protocols mandated, inclusive of daily AM security/movement briefings. Things have cooled down now evidently, though the wire today reported that the LRA has just attacked and killed approx. 14 SPLA officers further south of here – this following last week’s collapse of the peace talks and other murderous rampages. More on that here and here.

Juba is muddy and full of bugs. And full of arms and full of aid workers. It’s bloody hot here. About 35 degrees Celsius on days without rain.



That said, Juba doesn’t seem to be all-bad. I have far more friends here than I realized – Kate, a fellow Emory undergrad, Ken Cole Fellow, Carter Center intern, Columbia grad-student is also interning for Save-US on a School Health and Nutrition project in Mvolo (I swear, one day we will open our own NGO together...). Adding to the delight: I am supposed to link up with Teohna, a fellow SIPA student working at UNDP this summer, later tonight; old pal from Sarasota (who was working in UG last year as well) Noah, as well as my former boss at RFS, Anne, by the end of the week! Small world, really….

Proof - Kate and Maryanna:


People here, though a little more shy at first than my Lugbara countrymen in Uganda, are friendly once approached. I guess 21 years of gunpowder does that to a place. I witnessed some gruff attitude during a walk through town yesterday – two Kawaja girls with cameras are maybe not the most well received, especially by SPLA soldiers. I’ve been warned that my gear will be confiscated should I accidentally shoot any officials. I’ll stick to the cute relm for now: