Back in Canada

As most of you know, and the rest of you probably suspect, I'm back in Canada, the mission over already. I really enjoyed it. I had difficulty the last two months using the Internet as our connection was really slow and there weren't enough computers in my section for everyone, so I had to wait my turn to get on a computer and then wait for the Internet to be working, so I didn't blog anymore. I'm going to try to sum up the last two months in the next couple of days.

It was very hot in January, 40 degrees Celsius plus every day, there hadn't been rain since Oct. so it was very dusty as well. I didn't go out much in the afternoons; I'd go to my container to eat (first picture) lunch and then back to the office. Thank god for air conditioning.

I also felt very tired in January and February; working every day with no days off and the heat seemed to catch up to me and I was exhausted by 9:00 o'clock in the evening.

If I went off base it was usually in the evening (second picture), to go out for dinner or to the market to shop for food or pick up a few souvenirs before going home. We drove the UN vehicles off-duty as well, there was no other means of transportation.

Sometimes I went for a walk in the late afternoon (third picture), it was still hot but not as bad as during the day, and I was afraid to go for a walk after dark in case I ran into (or stepped on) a snake. Those are the UN helicopters behind me that flew out to the smaller team sites during the day. I never rode on one unfortunately, the one time I was scheduled to go on one the flight was cancelled. That happened quite often.

Actually, I never saw a snake while I was there but other people told me they saw some on our base. So I never walked after dark.

But I did see some storks (pictures 4 and 5). You can see them behind me in the fourth picture. For some reason they started hanging around the UN base in Juba, probably because there was a food source there for them. They are huge animals. It was kind of disconcerting to have one fly over all of a sudden. Because of them, I started wearing a hat when I went for my walk.

I never talked much about our communal washrooms, or "ablution centres" as they are called by the UN. They were filthy and the toilet seats and flushing mechanisms and sinks were always broken and many times there was no water or it was really muddy. What really bugged me though was that there was never toilet paper or hand soap in the ablution centres but there were always stacks of condoms. I wish they would assign whoever puts the condoms in the ablution centres to put toilet paper and hand soap there instead (or also!).