Torit Mission May 9, 2012

John Scot and myself were going on a mission to Torit. I was going to assess advising and check up on my room mate Kevin who was working in Torit temporally teaching English to some SSPS. John was going with some aid groups and a SSPS general to to an inspection on a new police station.

with some trepidation we headed out with the Beast, yes it was a road trip. Torit is about 140 KM east of Juba. Not a big deal on Canadian pavement, but in South Sudan dirt roads its a kidney killer.



The Torit Central police HQ. I am with Kelvin an UNPOL adviser who works in Torit. But lets get to the trip first!

crossing the Nile bridge and heading East to Torit.

On the other side of the Nile from Juba we waited for our convoy to form up. we would be riding with a Major General and his four body guards, and four NGO aid workers all in 3 vehicles

The road to Torit was in better shape then other dirt roads, but was still bumpy in places. The rain season had produce beautiful green views along the way.

Kids always wave and say Hi, so of course we had to stop.

And give them a soccer ball. we had a Scottish X-cop riding with us from UKaid and he thought this was fantastic. George (the x-cop), who has been in Africa years thought this village might produce shop top notch players in a few years.

John and I by the Beast, we were worried it was going to let us down, but it true spirit it got us there and back. The Beast just makes more noise now.

A bridge blown up during the civil war. we had to drive around into the river bed to cross over.

Teaching in Torit. On the first day I helped my buddy Kevin teach an English class to the SSPS

main street in Torit. That is a Mosque in the background. The South Sudanese respect all religions, which considering the history with Sudan is very refreshing.

John and Kevin in the Torit market. Torit is a very nice town and has a great market. The people are very friendly and the town is clean.

A view of a mountain range from Torit.

what the old Central Police station looked like before UNDP and UK Aid assisted in building new offices.

The new station.

Public front counter for complaints. The SSPS in Torit seem very positive and well trained, I spent the afternoon with Kelvin UNPOL team site leader) at the Central Police station and observed them at work. The UNPOL advisers for Torit had done a fantastic job in developing the officers policing skills and the SSPS themselves were motivated and hard working. One officer, a private, conducted an investigation on a two year old girl who had been raped. The officer used investigative skills and community contacts to track the suspect down. The suspect was in custody when I was there, and was waiting for justice to be served. Although a very traumatic and sad case it is good to see the SSPS and the UNPOL officers that work with them deal with crime and make the community safe.

On the way back to Torit we stopped by this destroyed tank. The SPLA had taken this tank out during the civil war. The Major General we were with told us that a convoy had been ambushed here and this tank had been destroyed. A majority of the SSPS were in the civil war as soldiers on the South Sudanese side.

me on the tank. I think it is a Russian T-55 tank.

Our convoy heading back to Juba.

Typical village in South Sudan. The shade tree is where you will find people during the day, and is the focal point in all villages.

Torit is a nice place and if you were in south Sudan would be worth a visit.

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.