Life in Juba

Life in Juba, how do you write down what life is like here? Well the movie Ground Hog Day comes to mind. As UNPOL we work everyday of the week so really everyday is like a Monday, except the pace may not be like a Monday depending upon which Monday it is?

This part of my Blog I thought I would just post some pictures of daily life in and around the UN base. The Bull above is called Ban-Ki-Moon after our Secretary General, he was a gift from the South Sudanese to the UN. I call him Binky Moon. Shortly after this picture he tried to gore me with his horns. I avoided being gored and tactically withdrew.

Binky has the run of the base except maybe the air field? anyway he is often by the road eating. People leave him alone, he is a lot fatter than the local cattle having a whole base to feed in.

First i want to say I did not do this! Driving by the motor pool area we saw a UN vehicle parked very strangely. Anyway the driver wasn't around, maybe he was too embarrassed to stay there.

On the roof of my office in UN house, an explosion had gone off about 4 kilometres away shaking our building so I climbed up to see what and where it was. There is a quarry in one of the hills which they were blasting, needless to say everyone was thankful to hear it was just a construction blast. They are still finding landmines all over the place, so we feared someone had found one. Some landmines were found in UN Thom-Ping (where I live) last week when the rain washed them up.

The quarry blast! it become a weekly event, the office has gotten used to it so I suppose if we ever get bombed for real we would just ignore it.

My office is in there somewhere? As is my car (the Beast)....it stands out if you can see it. Yes it is rain season so those black clouds are full of rain.

Some Mongolian soldiers about to head out to another base. They were fuelling their tanks up, as I was fuelling up the beast. They looked worried that the dust and rust from the beast would migrate onto their clean tanks.

After it rains bugs show up, so far at our office we have had millions of flying ants, grass hoppers, crickets, locust, and this strange bug. The grass hoppers are about 3 inches long and one day I had dozens of them in our office apparently they taste good! (according to my African office mates, I think they were pulling my leg)

Apparently I taste good. This puppy came over to the Tukol (our cafe) and started to play with me then she must of got hungry.

More eating pics. This is a heard of goats eating garbage. Juba has a lot of garbage and very little garbage removal. Goats do what they can to help out. If you want to eat goat when in Juba...Don't. Eat the rural goat not the city goat they do taste different.

These kids were playing by our base entrance. One of the contingent members, Rob Haggarty, brought some donated soccer balls from Canada with him. when Rob went to CSB Aweil he left the balls here. John Scott, Kevin Williams, and I have been handing them out. The kids reaction when they get a ball is incredible. These kids don't have much when they get a ball its like Christmas and their birthday all rolled into one. They were so happy as you can tell by their smiles.

This bug lives in my keyboard, he must be deaf.

One evening it rained for about two hours, very heavy rain that ended up putting about 3 inches of water along the ground. Our containers are about 16 inches up off the ground. Last year the containers flooded. Our Japanese engineers have been busy making ditches and culverts to avoid a repeat.

UN-3 Tukol. As you can see me and John have an excellent view when we have our morning coffee. The coffee here is actually better than Starbucks

Steroid Ginger cat. He is friendly and twice the size of the other cats. I am not sure what this cat did but he is not skinny like all the other cats and is very muscular he was living in the Russian Air Unit quarters until they left?????

The cat eyes in the back ground belong to "Psycho cat" If Psycho cat ever stays still long enough I will try and get a picture.

There is always something interesting here so I will keep blogging when I have time. The next Blogg is a trip to Torit.

Yei 05-March-2012

It was time for another mission, this time things would be a little different. Instead of flying I would be driving. In the Republic of South Sudan the UN has some pretty stringent rules about safety. Driving anywhere outside of towns has a degree of danger. There are still a lot of landmines around both anti-vehicle and anti-personnel; there are bandits and armed rebel groups; and there are poor drivers, and lastly but the most likely to cause a problem are the poor road conditions. So we have to move about in a convoy and radio in at check points along the way.

My mission was to drive to Yei to check on the co-location there; along for the ride and to do their own work was a British Police officer Peter, two Australian Police officers Daina and Tina, and a Canadian Civilian Dan.

I was the patrol leader which meant I got to drive in the front and radio in, although my co-pilot Daina ended up working the radio when she wasn’t hanging on due to the rough ride. It took 4 hours to drive Yei.

 Our UN convoy, the road is all dirt to Yei which is about 147 KM from Juba.

On our way to Yei we passed a dump or maybe the road goes through the dump, which would be a better way to describe it. The whole place was burning with people sifting through the garbage for anything useful. Along the outskirts there are dwellings. It was sad to see children rummaging through the garbage. Unlike dumps in Canada not much of anything is thrown out in South Sudan.

The Bike in the background isn’t garbage some guy rode it there and was sifting through the garbage nearby; he put it on the hill to keep it safe.

The County Support Base at Yei, UNPOL are placed at bases throughout the Republic of South Sudan so we can be close to the Sudanese police throughout the country. At Yei are two Canadian contingent members, Steve and Tess. Unfortunately the Yei base is closing and the UNPOL will be moving to another base close by which is a UNHCR (United Nations High Commission of Refugees), part of our mission was to facilitate this.



Yei had a famous Canadian police officer here before, a fellow Calgary Police Officer Jim Shaw. When Jim was in Yei he built ‘Blue’ the social building for the camp. Thats Steve by the door.



 The inside of 'Blue' note the Canadian flags there is a lot of them. The UNPOL and SSPS all mention Jim and the good job he did in Yei.

Tess, a member of our Canadian contingent stationed in Yei.

 Steve the other Canuck in Yei

 A meeting in the Yei CSB

 Our mission team visiting the UNHCR base

Steve's accommodation, the cat is friendly and from what I was told likes Canadians as he/she? Was always following Jim around when he was stationed here.

The dirt is so hard it is like cement yet this flower popped out, hopefully it symbolizes South Sudan as a new country

Steve and Tess hosted a really superb dinner for us. Yei is a really nice base, when we were there it had mostly closed down so only Steve and Tess were still living there.

As you can see a lot of buildings from Yei base have been moved off to other CSB sites.

A strange rock formation near Yei, from a distance we thought it was a building. Unfortunately we could not leave the road, to explore it, as the area is a danger for land mines.

The Road home to Juba.

Bentiu

February 22, 2012, I had to fly to Bentiu, which is in theUnity State of South Sudan. My Mission was to meet with UNPOL officers and get some feedback about Police Advising. I traveled with my Friend and Supervisor Georg (German Police).

We flew by plane  a small Russian plane.

Our ride it is a Russian plane an IIyushin of some sort. The aircrew told me but in true fashion I have forgotten the model. For a small plane it sure felt sturdy. I had the feeling that you could not break this plane. The Pilot had a good sense of humor.

Bentiu is located in Unity State, south of Sudan, it is along the Nile river and is the State Capital. The State UN base is located there. UNMISS stands for United Nations Mission In South Sudan.

Georg and I were there to meet with all the UNPOL, but I was also looking forward to seeing Jen and Rob two UNPOL from my Canadian Contingent. Both Rob and Jen wanted hot plates so they could cook (bought them from Konyo-Konyo of course), so I lugged them and some cheese up to their Base.

Rob teaching the picture is blurred as he never is motionless long enough to take a good picture.  Here Rob is teaching the SSPS, the other gentleman is a language assistant for Arabic. Being in the north part of South Sudan Arabic is spoken a lot.

 

Georg and I addressing Rob’s class, which was at the SSPS training facility in Bentiu. We were guests and were asked to talk for a bit. We also wanted to ask the SSPS their thoughts on Co-location and advising. We got a lot of good ideas from them. There is no air conditioning (no electricity) in this building and as you can see no computers, projectors or other high tech learning aids; here you must be a good teacher to get the message out.

Jen standing with some very tall female SSPS officers. Jen specializes in teaching Gender Child Vulnerable Persons and Protection lessons.

Me with some of the SSPS female officers after the training

There are no water pipes in Bentiu so water must be transported to businesses and homes. The main way of doing this is by donkey cart. Boys drive the carts to a pump by the Nile and fill up two 45 gallon oil drums (they are wielded together), and then sell the water around town. I figured the total weight is around a thousand pounds; those skinny little donkeys are pretty strong.

The donkey cart

Me in front of Unity State Police Headquarters. We were here to observe the registration process. Currently the SSPS is registering all Police personnel, when the country got independence from Sudan it had to quickly form a Police Service so there is a lack of personnel records for officers. Each officer will go through a registration process over the next month.

A registration line-up. The officers come here to the HQ to get registered.You can see how people take advantage of shade in Sudan. A lot of these officers walked miles to get here and register.

The River Nile cuts right through the centre of South Sudan from north to south and is used as a commercial transport for barges and boats. Here at Bentiu some UN soldiers are picking up supplies from a barge.

SSPS officers standing at attention while being addressed by a senior officer. Shade is used again.

Donkey carts loading up property from a barge by the Nile.

Somehow I knew this living container belonged to either Rob or Jen. There are two military guys in Bentiu as well but were on Patrol when we were there unfortunately. One of them I had met while staying at Canada House.

Georg and I with some ostriches that were walking down the road.

Jen, Rob, Georg, Biem (SSPS officer and friend of Rob and Jens) and I eating dinner at the Quality Inn restaurant. We ate on the roof as the building was Arabic by its architecture, it was nice and cool there at night (the sun sets at 7 PM). It was dark enough to see the stars and a very pleasant night. The sad thing about Bentiu is that it is so close to the Sudan border that conflict occurs near there constantly. There is no trade along the border so any products are shipped north on the Nile from either Uganda or Kenya via Juba. The prices on a lot of things are almost double that of Juba. The restaurant only had 3 chickens which we shared for our dinner. A lot of people in this area have limited access to food.

Konyo Konyo Market

Konyo Konyo market is an open shopping area located in Juba's southeast part near the Nile. It is a large market that sells a lot of household and some commercial stuff. Most stalls are fairly small and jam packed with merchandise. Lanes are usually specific to products so there is a spice area, clothing and electronics areas and so on. Prices are not marked and you can negotiate a little, but the venders all seem to have the same prices for their products.

Laneways can be tight, when the market is busy merchandise is arriving as people shop, so trucks large drop off stuff along the road and then kids use wheelbarrows to move the product to the stalls.

I bought a bucket which I ended up using to wash my clothes in until my Aussie and Swedish roommates (military) fixed a bunch of washing machines at our camp. Now it’s a clothes hamper

A corner of the market

A nice bike store and yes guys will drive their motorbikes through the market.

This looks very similar to a 1940’s Raleigh police bike that the Calgary Police Service used. I am guessing this is an imitation, and hasnt been here since 1940. They wanted 200 USD for it but everything is negotiable here.  My friends and Colleagues at LEBA (Law Enforcement Bicycle Association http://www.leba.org/) would love the bike shops here; you can get stuff that can really trick out a bike.

My buddy and roommate Kevin at the spice area, it smelt good in this part of the market, unlike the fish section.

Typical lane

Bike store with lots of cool stuff.

Some tight spots in the market.

The market is pretty safe during the day and the merchants are friendly. Most common language is Arabic but you can make do with English. South Sudan still has to import a lot of merchandise from Kenya and Uganda which means you will pay more the further you go north. I was in Bentiu which is close to Sudan and prices there for some things were double that of Juba.