Snippets of Life in Juba

We are six weeks into our life in Juba! Here are a few random snippets of some of our experiences so far, in no particular order...

• A walk to church: Some pictures of our walk in the lane next to our compound, on the way to attend a local church down by the River Nile:

The litter in Juba is incredible. I find it so disheartening to see so much litter, squashed bottles and rubbish lying around; the smell isn't very nice either! It is the end of the rainy season and much of the litter is still disguised by the lush greenery in Juba. I imagine that alot more refuse will be revealed once the green grass and plants die away and are replaced by dust, showing up all the litter that lies beneath.
However, it's lovely to see that litter clearly does not bother the kids- they run and race down the gravel path and find trees to shake and fun to have, wherever they are and whatever the environment!

• Sunday Lunch by the Nile:Waiting for Sunday lunch at a hotel cafe on the banks of the River Nile:

Sitting on our plastic chairs, at our plastic tables, waiting for our classic African-style meal of chicken and chips, in an exotic Nile setting! (photo credit to Esther, who is getting very good with taking pictures!). 

Ben found a piece of shedded snake skin as he explored around the mango trees before our lunch arrived. Thankfully we did not find the snake who had grown bigger and who the skin used to belong to!

• Growth in Juba: A friend here recently told me that Juba is listed as one of the fastest-developing cities. I guess I can believe it. Everywhere we look, we see buildings shooting up. The speed at which the layers are added floor by floor is impressive. I wonder if the infrastructure will also be built up, to support all the development. It could be a dilemma as the city grows, with roads and water supplies and electricity supply being huge areas also needing input. Here are a couple of examples of what we see around us as we walk about near our house:

There is also another brand new 5-storey building going up on our doorstep, immediately outside the compound and right in front of our home. Once it is completed, we will have many neighbours overlooking us... but also a building to help block out some of the intense afternoon sun which currently streams into our front windows, creating a sort of indoor furnace effect. It is hard to express just how hot a place Juba is. We feel the heat beginning to intensify as the rains come to an end and the ground begins to show signs of drying out,

• About my Oven: I am having fun and games with my gas oven in my Juba kitchen. The knob which I would use to turn the back right gas ring on or off has a mind of its own. It keeps deciding to leap off the front of the cooker onto the floor, splitting into 2 separate parts as it flies across the kitchen! This leaves me helpless, with a burning gas ring and no way of turning off the flame! I find myself scrabbling on the kitchen floor, dripping with sweat in the heat, trying to locate and reassemble the 2 parts of the knob and then trying to fit them back on the front of the oven to extinguish the flame:
• 

 Meanwhile, the knob for the front right gas ring has been missing since we moved in, making it tricky to use that ring at all! Health and Safety officers would have a field day if they ever made it to my kitchen here!
However, in the absence of Health and Safety officers and with there being no "Hotpoint" shop in Juba to replace the broken parts on my oven, we resort instead to Andrew's Tool Box. Joel proudly presents The Pliers, which I currently use to turn on/ off the gas rings:

• Treats from abroad We are discovering just how expensive a place Juba is to feed a family of 5. We are also finding out what is and isn't available in Juba. Sometimes shopping can be rather a stressful experience, as the ingredients I may think I need for a certain meal simply are not available or are just too expensive to justify buying them. However, we are also finding out that there are some amazing people out there who have passed through Juba and who understand the dilemmas we face when it comes to shopping. When they visit from Nairobi or Kampala (cities which both have huge supermarkets and more reasonable prices) they bring much appreciated treats and random supplies for us...

 If I had photographed the supplies we got this week a few days earlier, you would have also seen some fresh salad vegetables, biscuits for the kids and a whole lot more chocolate, but sadly the chocolate supplies are already hugely depleted... ( I wonder who could have eaten it all already??).
Woodlee also got his treats. as bags of cat food were flown in from Kampala this week!
And I have not included the night-time pull-up nappies for Joel, or the fresh brown bread which has been greedily gobbled up, or the dental floss which I had especially requested. I did see dental floss last week in a Juba shop. At a cool 40 SS pounds (£8 sterling), I suddenly lost the sense of urgency to buy any here, so asked for some from Uganda instead!

• About Milk Buying fresh milk here is not an option. So we find ourselves mostly resorting to powdered milk. This big tin of Nido milk powder will see us through a few weeks and is handy to have in the larder:

 We often used powdered milk in Tanzania, so it not something completely new to us, but we used it as a back-up there to supplement the milk we had delivered fresh from the milk-man. Here, Nido powder is our main source of milk. We drink at least one and a half litres a day. Since my milk jug can only hold about 1 and a quarter litres, it is necessary to keep refilling the jug. So out comes the water jug to measure the water into the milk jug. Then we stop and measure out the 12 tablespoons of powder per litre into the water. then stir it all up to create our milk supply for most of the day... and then the jug gets empty and we start all over again! Not quite as simple as opening a bottle of fresh, pasteurised milk!

So here are a few little parts of our new life in Juba, Meanwhile, home-school is starting to take on its own rhythm, Joel is enjoying his school and Andrew is busy with a tight flying schedule. It's a busy time all round as we adjust and settle and learn about our new environment.

Learning in a Developing Nation

Living in a developing nation brings a whole new context to the learning that our children do. When the curriculum Esther and Ben receive comes from the developed UK, some of the lessons and their outcomes can be far removed from the reality of life in Juba.

We have had an example of this already. For his history lesson, Ben was asked if he could identify any other ways of cooking than on an electric or gas oven in his kitchen. We are fortunate to have a gas cooker here in Juba, but when you live in Africa, you are also used to seeing people cook outdoors on open fires or small coal fires, not just ovens in kitchens.

Ben's lesson plan stated that he should understand that "people used to cook over fires for a long time, before we had cookers". Here in South Sudan,we can take out the words "used to"! Instead, we can safely assume that the majority of people cook their food over fire. I wonder to myself how many millions of people around the world continue to cook this way. It surely must be the majority?

Because of the context of where we live, I decided to change Ben's History project to a non-historical investigation into different ways of cooking food in Juba. We decided to get some evidence of current, everyday cooking in South Sudan, so we walked down the road to our nearest cafe. I asked permission to take some "cooking" pictures for Ben's school project. The staff were very obliging. It was fun to have a little outing from the classroom and do some field work! So here are some images of everyday life in Juba, thanks to Ben's "history" lesson!

The big pot which looks big enough to cook Ben (I could not fit that on my gas oven ring!) but is actually full of delicious beans! I took a tupperware box and asked the cafe owner, Rachel, to fill up my tupperware with hot beans which I could take home for lunch. A tasty, African take-away meal!

The kettle for making tea at the cafe:

The chapati stove, with the chef hard at work at this street corner cafe:

Mmmmmmm- chapati bread being cooked! We took 10 hot chapati home for lunch too:

It is great to have Rachel's cafe so close for some quick take-away options. There is also a meat stew; I have not sampled it yet, but look forward to doing so. The food is yummy.
It is also great to be able to give Ben exposure to so much variety when it comes to learning about the world. In Juba, we have real-life examples on hand to weave into his learning, as he sees aspects of life from both the developed and developing world that we have the privilege to travel between.

Not Just a Letter

South Sudan does not have the infrastructure to support a postal service, so we cannot send or receive letters in Juba. This was a big disappointment to me when we first visited Juba! Living so far from family and friends means that receiving a letter or piece of post always brings great excitement!

Digital mail is great, I love getting emails and online messages, but I think many would agree that nothing can replace a real piece of post! It's not just a letter. It's an actual piece of our home country, bringing tangible reminders into our foreign home. It's a reminder that the connections we have with familiar people and a known culture are still alive and well, whatever the distance between us.

Being able to send post is also important to me, for the same reasons- as a way of staying connected with family and friends special to us, even though we cannot easily visit or spend time with them.

Despite this challenge, we have found a round-about way to get or to send post! It transpires that the MAF plane which visits Juba from Kenya each week can bring (or take) any mail for us from the Nairobi office. Horray!
It just means that letters may take a longer time to reach us or to be sent.
Firstly, the pilot flying up from Kenya on Mondays or Thursdays needs to remember any post. Secondly. the MAF Juba freight room which receives and checks any items from a foreign border has to let us know that we have something to collect OR I need to go and ask when I remember that a flight has come in!

Last week, Andrew walked in the front door with some post! :-)

He was a little put out as my priorities shifted, Did I make him a nice cup of tea after his hot and busy day of flying? I'm afraid not- nothing was done until the post was read!

School

School in South Sudan will be very different for us from anything we have been used to!

To start with, my youngest has now started school! After 8 years of having a little one always at home with me, I now wave goodbye to my youngest each week-day morning at 9am. Joel has started the brand new "Juba Christian Academy" (JCA) and attends the pre-school morning sessions from 9am til 12pm.

On his very first morning before leaving home...

 We left for school, with  a very proud Joel holding my hand...

We traipsed past the puddles on our compound, through the car-park and playground, past a few houses...

 ... and within a few minutes, we are at the home on the MAF compound where Joel's school will be based for the next few months (until larger premises become available).
There are just 5 pupils and 2 teachers making up this exciting venture of Juba's newest school:

 We hope that the numbers will grow, that the school will develop well and become a beacon in the community where we live.
For now, such a small school is the perfect place for our sometimes-shy Joel to start his education. He entered school with his classmates on the first morning as happy as can be:

Joel has come home at lunch time each day content and tired and pleased with himself! A new beginning, for both Joel and the future of JCA school.

Meanwhile, the word "school" has taken on new meaning for Esther, Ben and myself as we adapt to Home School in the front room of our house, which I have turned into a mini-classroom.
 I had fun creating our little classroom and kitting it out with a collection of educational goodies that I have been gathering from Nairobi, along with the wonderful resources we have had shipped in from the UK via WES (World Education Service).
WES provide all the teaching materials for British Curriculum core subjects, including lesson plans, books, maths and science equipment. It is great to be able to use their service. Esther and Ben even get their own tutors in the UK, who they can be in email contact with. I will be sending work assessments back to their tutors periodically, which is helpful for me, to keep in touch with other educators to check my children's progress.

We started school on the same day that Joel began his term. We got going with some reading exercises, with each pupil at their own desk:

A bird's eye view from the doorway:

We are using the old sports kit T-shirts from their Nairobi school as informal uniform, to mark school time from non-school time.

We have had a good half-week to ease our way into home school. So far it has been fun as we enjoy the novelty of working out our own agenda and of not having far to go to the classroom!
It will be a new adventure. And a new challenge. I have excellent resources, but have yet to work out a system to teach 2 children 2 completely different levels from 2 sets of materials- at the same time! Not to mention working out how to arrange my time to read the files and plan for the next day, along with cooking meals, washing up, washing clothes and keeping the mud and house-dust down to a reasonable level! There is also the question of when to go shopping, while still finding out where the shops are and how to calculate prices in a new currency!
So this is a new era and learning experience, for both myself and the children as we try out and discover our way forward with what "school" means for us in South Sudan. We'll keep you posted!