I know I haven't posted for a while...

..but I've been busy. really busy. I've got a new job (fourth one in a little over three weeks!) and a new boss here, the acting Deputy Police Commissioner for the South Region, he has made me his Special Assistant. 10-12 hours days again (and 7 days a week this time, no weekends to recover), working non-stop from 7 till 6, with an hour for lunch in which I go to my container and sleep. And I have Contingent Commander duties to do including planning our upcoming medal parade and contingent meeting, which I'm doing now at 4:30 in the morning. I'm pretty tired these days. Unfortunately, unlike back home, I still have to do some of my own laundry, cook for myself, wash my dishes, shop for food, go get water twice a week etc. etc. so I don't have a lot of free time. And the *&%&*$!# Internet has either been down or slow as hell for weeks, it takes about three minutes to open an email at times. So there. Those are my feeble excuses.

I have some odds and ends to put in the blog, things I've thought of along the way but didn't put in for one reason or another, usually lack of time. Kudos to Steve Morris for making me laugh, he emailed me after I got back from London and had been moved into the job I didn't want and said "I wonder where they'll transfer you to when you go on your next trip with your kids!" Very witty, Steve, I laughed at that one.

There are some new Germans in the Mission, replacing the ones that left in Aug. I worked for a week or so beside one, Holger, who has a very dry sense of humour, especially about that legendary German fixation with detail. One day someone came into our office asking for Holder's countryman, Joerge, pronouncing it "Joerg" (you'd have to be German to appreciate that subtle distinction I think). Enyways, Holger said to him "Its Joerg-uh, not Joerg, uh, like the sound of a man stepping on a frog, uh" A bit of a pause. "But I suppose the sound would depend on the size of the man stepping on the frog". Longer pause. "Or the size of the frog." I was rolling on the floor laughing by this time.

We celebrated (?!) another End of Mission last Friday night, Joselyne, the former Deputy Police Commissioner's Admin Assistant, from Zimbabwe, a wonderful woman, unfailingly cheerful, helpful and good natured, with just the right amount of mischieviousness mixed in. My buddy Resistant, who was my Logistics Officer when I was Chief of Administration, is also Zimbabwean. I like everybody from their contingent that I've met (and I've met a lot of them, believe me, our Admin Office was a gathering place for the whole south region for them. And they were forever phoning Resistant and he was forever out getting a police vehicle serviced when they called, I started anwering the phone "Resistant's Answering Service", but anyway I digress), their country is in such turmoil, but you'd never know it when you work with them and know them, they're just fun people to be around. My hats off to the people of Zimbabwe, they'll turn their country around. As the dj said at the party last Friday, the future is bright for Zimbabwe and the future is bright for Sudan.

I'm going to borrow a bit from my email to Anna here, I'm still really enjoying it over here, Africa really grows on you, it gets under your skin and in your pores and in your heart, I love the African people, good natured, easy going, friendly, demonstrative, lots of handshakes and hugs and backslapping and laughing. It feels good to work with them and know them. And they're neve in a rush to do anything, which I like, believe it or not. I like stopping to talk with people throughout the day. It think it was Cam who told me it would be like that, he'd worked in Kenya with the UN and he said Africa just grows on you, and you were right Cam, it does, I was sitting at an outside restaurant last week, looking at the stars and thinking I'm really going to miss this when I go home. Not that there aren't stars in Canada but you can't sit outside and watch them year round. Well, I suppose you could but at certain times my butt gets too cold when I do that.

Enjoy the upcoming winter everybody.

Lecturing to the South Sudan Police Service managers

Today I had to deliver a lecture to a class of South Sudan Police Service managers on Capacity building through Recruitment, Training, Assessment and Feedback. I was asked to do it yesterday around 11:00, which means I had a day to prepare my lesson plan and PowerPoint. Secretly being pleased to be asked to develop this class, I agreed despite the short time line and set out to prepare a high level, strategic view of the topic.

I think I did all right as far as the topic went. But, we have a problem when we train the SSPS as they don’t all speak English fluently; in fact some of them speak no English at all. Not a problem, I was told, an interpreter would be provided. It isn’t easy to lecture with an interpreter, it takes twice as long as it normally does, I don’t get into any kind of a rhythm as I have to stop after every sentence or indeed after every clause for what I say to be interested, but nonetheless I forged on, undaunted.

I arrived at the South Sudan Police training facility this afternoon at 1315 hrs. as scheduled and the interpreter had left. No idea where he was, He was just gone. I knew I was in trouble when I said “No matter, let’s see how many people speak English, raise your hand if you understand what I’m saying now” and no one raised their hand….

The trials and tribulations of a UN mission

Sorry I haven’t blogged much lately. I've been transferred again, from the job I didn't want to one I do want, advising the South Sudan Police Service on Criminal and Intelligence matters. When we are transferred or "redeployed" here, we have to prepare a handover document for our successors in our old positions with a list of duties, contacts, things to do, project update reports, inventory lists, meetings to attend, regular reports to submit etc. etc. This is the second one of these I've had to prepare in less that a week, so I've just been preoccupied with that.

Last night I suffered through my third (or was it fourth?? I’ve forgotten) flooding of my container since I came back from my holiday. A spectacular thunder storm but alas when I looked down instead of up the floor of my container was covered in water (again). The uniform shirts that I had waited for a week and a half to come back from the laundry were soaking wet and stained and I’ll have to wash them again. Sigh. More handwashing, more raw skin on my hands. I have a whole new appreciation for my grandmothers, doing all their washing by hand. And it seems now that all I do with my towels is dry them out so I can use them to mop up the next flooding.

I brought enough underwear and socks for three weeks so I’d only have to do hand washing every three weeks, I should have brought enough underwear, socks and uniform shirts for nine months!!!

It hasn’t been a good couple of weeks. My first day back the power and water were off in the washrooms and its kind of gone downhill since then. Can’t find one of my power adapters, forgot to plug my fridge back in one day and the frozen stuff melted (I only have a couple of power outlets so I have to unplug my fridge to plug in my kettle or toaster or hot plate). The Internet was down for two days. These are the dog days of the mission.

A few more pictures from the London/Paris trip and then on with life in Sudan

A last set of pictures from the holiday before I start boring you with all the bad things that have happened since I got back (like no electricity or running water on Monday morning; a storm on Tuesday night that left the floor of my container covered in water; breaking my can opener on Wed. (maybe I eat too much from cans!) etc. etc.

Enyways, the first picture is the girls and I in front of the Louvre in Paris, we didn't get there in time to go in, just get our picture taken in front of it. That seems somehow appropriate for us. The second picture is the four of us in front of Notre Dame. I said a prayer for all of us (and especially the men who get involved with my daughters). The third picture is us all at another nice restaurant in Paris, one of the only three pictures in which Sandra is smiling (just kidding. There had to have been at least seven or eight... oh, never mind). Number four is us all at Disneyland Paris but I can't remember the ride, Melanie is practicing for her audition with the World Wrestling Federation or whatever they call themselves these days. Number 5 is outside the subway station in London before I went back to our hostel to get my bags and head to the airport. It seems like such a sad picture now in retrospect.

Back in the Sudan.

(The photos: # 1, every father's worst nightmare, Mark Goode with my daughters (they liked him a lot, #2 all of us out for dinner with Mark, he was stopping over in London on the way to visit his grandparents (he told me he loved me again, when he was drinking of course), # 3 having lunch in a nice restaurant in Paris, # 4 beneath the Eiffel Tower, # 5 on top of the Eiffel Tower doing the obligatory silly face picture, just after I called my mom on my cell phone to wish her a happy birthday (I got the answering machine!)

Well the vacation is over, we got to Disneyland Paris so we’re three-fifths of the way to our goal of going to every Disneyland on the planet; we saw two very good plays (the second one was Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, Sandra and I saw it in Vancouver years ago and really liked it, we’ve wanted to take our girls to see it ever since but it never came to Canada or anywhere near in the US again; when we got to London I noticed it was playing there so we got tickets and as we suspected the girls all liked it a lot too. A great night out).

I know I said I’d have lots of time to update my blog on holidays, well it didn’t turn out that way, I got up at 6:00 or 7:00, way ahead of everyone else but I was reluctant to use the laptop and the wireless Internet in our room (we stayed in a Hostel-one room-bunk beds) in case I woke everyone else up, so I went and got a coffee and read my novel or listened to my mp3 player in the park outside our hostel, a couple of mornings I did some laundry at a nearby Laundromat, a treat for me as I didn’t have to wash my underwear and socks by hand for a change. And hang them all over the place to dry.

I enjoyed seeing and being with and talking to the girls a lot; I didn’t realize I missed them as much as I did until I saw them. I think I held it together with them except for one conversation we had, just the four of us, at breakfast one morning when I was telling them what I want to do with the rest of my life. I got kind of emotional in that, couldn’t finish what I was saying. And on the day I left to fly back to Sudan, I was walking around Harrod’s Dept. Store looking for them but couldn’t find them and I got quite teary eyed about leaving them again and not seeing them for another four months (our next family Reunion trip is in Jan., to Egypt.). I can tell you all this in the blog because they told me on this trip that they don’t read my blog, the rats! Enyways, it was a good trip, I loved being able to go to a nearby bakery in the morning to get coffee and a pastry while they all slept until 10 or 11; getting a good haircut for a change from an actual hair stylist (no offence Jas, but your buzz cuts just aren’t very flattering on me); being able to get around easily on public transportation, public bathrooms with soap and towels; healthy food handling practices and conditions in restaurants that mean not getting sick after you eat; good coffee instead of the instant coffee they serve everywhere here; chocolate desserts; things I really took for granted before the mission.

I have to give credit to Sandra here, I was so fed up with dealing with our (RCMP) administration trying to organize our Family Reunion trip that I gave up, I was prepared to not go on one, it was just an exercise in frustration for me. I get enough frustration in my life here, thank you very much. But Sandra took the initiative and got the trip approved and got the airfares for all of us, so I owe her a lot of thanks, the trip would not have happened if it wasn’t for her. I’m glad now obviously that we did go, it was a lot of fun, like when we traveled with the kids when they were little, we’d get one motel room and there would kids sleeping all over the floor, not an inch of free space anywhere. Good times, great memories. Mind you I was exhausted by 11 PM and fell into bed and slept, Sandra tells me the girls stayed up till 2 or more talking and laughing, waking her up repeatedly. I never woke up at all. Too tired.

Alas I found out while on my holiday that I’ve been transferred to a new job here in Juba, one that I don’t want and have let be known several times that I don’t want, so I suspect my enjoyment of the mission and Juba is about to change significantly; in fact if it turns out the way I think it will I’ll be requesting a move to Khartoum in the near future to help orient new Canadian police coming to the mission. I don’t want to go to Khartoum, I like Juba a lot but it’s the lesser of two evils as far as I’m concerned. Such is life, don’t enjoy it too much, it will change on you if you do (that’s my one and only superstition, actually, I try to never get too happy or too contented in anything because that guarantees its gonna change and not for the better. I forgot about that unfortunately).