The Journey

Day 1

Our journey to Juba began early on Saturday morning, August 9th. We rose early, around 05:45, ready to set off for our new home and place of work! We sailed from Cowes in the Isle of Wight, bound for England's mainland, on the 7am ferry...

 Munching our breakfast on board the ferry, we said farewell to the lovely Isle of Wight.
We had 11 pieces of luggage with us, safely stowed in our hire-car on the car deck, but a certain suitcase contained a very special item: my brand new bread-maker, which I have been assured we cannot do without in Juba! I never thought I'd see the day that I would travel with such a big item in a suitcase, but I squeezed it into that suitcase the day before...

 ...and I packed it in securely with sweaters and fleeces, to try and protect it from being damaged as the case was thrown about on and off the aeroplanes!

 This mighty machine is not only here in Juba with me today, but has been trialed and found to make the most delicious bread :-)) It was worth all the effort of squeezing and shoving and sitting on the suitcase to get it to close, in order to get the breadmaker here!
We then drove up to London and spent the day and overnight with a good friend and her family, before continuing the next day.

Day 2
The taxi called for us at our London address at a bright and breezy 06:30. Bleary-eyed, we lugged our baggage into the taxi and made our way to Heathrow for the all-day flight to Nairobi.

We got to Nairobi a little bit late and then had to wait a looooooong time for the luggage to be off-loaded onto the airport carousel. Around midnight, we finally emerged into the cool Nairobi night air, to be given a lift from a kind friend back to the Nairobi MAF compound. We gratefully sank into our beds there around 1am.

Day 3
Waking up on Day 3 at 05:50 felt painful!
We were picked up around 06:30 to drive to Nairobi's Wilson airport, to board the MAF shuttle flight to Juba. The pilot was a South African friend who flew us to language school on our very first few weeks with MAF in Tanzania back in 2009! It seemed only right that we should have the same pilot to start us on our way with our next MAF venture! Along with 3 other passengers, we 5 all boarded as passengers, including Andrew, who was off duty on this flight!
All aboard for Juba...

There was a sense of familiarity for me as I gazed down on the arid African landscape of northern Kenya:

 What was different was seeing the local housing as we landed for a brief stop to off-load passengers and freight at Lokkichoggio:

The second leg of the flight revealed a new landscape. This is South Sudan in the rainy season- what a contrast to the dry earth of northern Kenya at this time of year!

I spent much of this leg of the journey regretting the 2 chapati and the bottle of fruit juice I had guzzled at our interval in Lokkichoggio! I was feeling rather queasy, so it was with great relief that I noted the moment when we began the descent over the River Nile...

 ...and we soon spied Juba below us as we came in to land:

We came low enough to see the houses (the round houses are apparently called "tukuls"):

  Soon, we were on the ground! My stomach was pleased to be on solid ground again! We were all excited to finally be in the place of our new home, after waiting so long to get here- as well as a little apprehensive about all the things we have yet to learn about living in this new country.

It was great to move straight into our new home- and even better to get a good night's sleep that night, without having to wake up early for a boat, a taxi ride or a flight!
The house was chaos, with boxes and suitcases and muddle abounding, but by lunchtime the next day, we had our tablecloth on the table and found a delicious banana loaf in our fridge (baked by a kind neighbour :-)). The cake doubled up as an impromptu 40th birthday cake for a certain family member- happy to celebrate that life in Juba certainly does begin at 40!