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:
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 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.