R and R

MAF  have a policy that offers all the international staff based in Juba the chance to get for a week, once every 3 months. This is called, "Rest and Relaxation" time- R and R. It is a chance for a mental break from the intensity that being in this particular environment seems to demand.

The system operates on a rota basis. Every 12 weeks, we can take a week out and travel to either Kampala or Nairobi. Sometimes, our week out might clash with someone else's time away and then we need a little flexibility, which has happened to us, so we are a bit behind in taking our time away.

Last week, I felt ragged, unusually tired, worn down. We worked out that we were 4 weeks overdue for our R and R time. That helped me to feel better. On reflection, 12 weeks seems to be an optimum time to take a mental breather. When we over-ran that time, exhaustion caught up with me and I took a dive into feeling unable to cope with even the most basic of challenges. Things that could have made me laugh were making me cry!

Tomorrow, we will take our very first R and R trip, climbing aboard the MAF shuttle to go to Nairobi. No tight flying schedule for Andrew. No Juba heat. No home school. We have worked non-stop at home-school since the beginning of September, so this will be like a belated half-term.
And we are all soooo excited!
I have the longest shopping list in the world, a cooler box to carry back some meat from the more reasonably priced Nairobi supermarkets and just one appointment for us all to get our cholera vaccine whilst in the more developed Kenyan capital city. We are ready for our very first R and R...

Development...

I was quite taken aback the first time I saw this poster on a wall in Juba. It is a billboard poster that is plastered across the city, its message loud and clear:

It is great that people are being taught about hygiene in such a positive way. 

However, it shocked me to read this and to understand just how far this country has to go in terms of development when it is still having to teach people the basic necessity of using a toilet.

On the other hand, I heard a tale the other day from an international aid worker based here. 

I was told that in a certain remote village in South Sudan, people make a concerted effort to defecate outside their home, especially in the evening. The poop should then all be made fully visible for all the neighbours and passers by to clearly see the next day. The more there is on show, the better! The reason for this is because it will apparently demonstrate how well the residents have eaten and therefore show them in a good light as being well off and able to provide well for their family...

There may be some logic in this, but not much to promote good hygiene and health awareness! 

Thankfully, this does not appear to be the culture in Juba! I am all for posters like the one above....

Update

Today I am very happy to report that my brilliant bread-maker has been saved!
After a good, careful clean and a chance to cool down, we tried it again and it is working- horray!! It is such a bonus to use it; to be able to get a loaf baked for our lunch whilst I am busy with home-school. What a relief that the last misadventure did not break it. I do not want to add dough-kneading and bread-making to our weekday schooling schedule!

And on another topic, Ben was very excited this morning to have an update on the Spiky Caterpillars. His sharp eyes picked out a beautiful African Emperor Moth resting on our balcony early this morning!
We went outside to see close up what those incredible caterpillars had hatched into. Esther held her hand close by to get a sense of its size and we snapped this photo:

We rarely venture out onto our balcony. It directly faces the Juba sun and is uncomfortably hot for much of the day, but early this morning we enjoyed discovering some of the creatures who were out there, like this gorgeously patterned moth and the praying mantis:

The Final Straw

Things sometimes go wrong: a fact of life for everyone. But sometimes it can feel like too much goes wrong together- the final straw that breaks the camel's back! That is when I reach my breaking point.

Over the past week, a few minor things have made me frustrated

The local "city power" replaced our normal generator supply for electricity. This can be a good thing, because running our electricity from city power is far cheaper than using up fuel in the generator. However, it can also be an annoying thing, as city power is reliably UNreliable! It goes off and comes on in spurts.

This did not suit my lovely new bread-maker. In fact, it nearly caused a fire in my kitchen, as the erratic electricity last week messed up the bread cycle and my bread was ruined:

Overflowing mixture got onto the element and burnt inside the machine, leading to clouds of smoke billowing out of the vent and some very burnt pieces of dough being extracted from the machine:

My loaf was half-baked: what a waste of flour and ingredients!

Next, I got fed up in my ongoing battle with the disgusting cockroach.
I can live with a few little ones if I have to, even the medium size one that I found crawling over our toothbrushes last night... BUT the big ones are just too revolting.
When a large cockroach appeared on the sofa next to my chair one evening last week, I leapt into action to squirt it with poison.
By the time I got back to the sofa, armed with my can of "Doom", it had disappeared!
I went to bed that night feeling very irritated that it had escaped. I was wondering where it was hiding.
That night, I dreamed that my head and hair was full of head lice, big green bugs, clinging to my hair whilst other people looked on, disgusted with my dirty hair and keeping their distance from me!!

In the morning, the problem posed by nasty bugs seemed much less urgent. However, I still decided to try and find Mr Disgusting. Joel helped me and he discovered the bug under the lounge cupboard!

Lots of poison later, squirted by me as I chased it over sofa and under chair, I cornered him, with Ben's help! HURRAH!!! We finished him off. This is the only way I can tolerate these Juba cockroaches: D-E-A-D!!

A view to scale, next to Ben's foot!

When things seem to be challenging, I find that I notice more annoyances that generally would not seem so bad, but can loom larger when a positive mood is hard to muster. I got fed up with the dust that gathers ever so quickly in this environment, as the rainy season has stopped and the hot, dry air and local fires lead to an increase in household dust. This is what came off on my fingers as I ran my hand over our bookcase: Yuk!

Meanwhile, the noise from a neighbour's generator, outside of our compound, has been making me tired and grumpy. The noisy engine runs late into the night, just a few feet from our bedroom window.
It is hard to sleep as this noisy machine chugs away.
It is hard to resolve this situation, as the neighbours need electricity during their evenings. In this developing country, the generator is the only means they have of electric power after dark. It is just frustrating that they run their generator so close to our bedroom and so late into the night. I am getting tired of  the noise stealing my sleep and worn out from going to sleep later than I want to.

All these minor annoyances of living here have been building up.
Today, I am afraid I am tired and feel worn down. But the straw that broke my proverbial camel's back today was the RAT that I discovered in our kitchen this morning, just as I was getting breakfast ready!!
I don't know if I am now feeling more tired from the screaming I did as I found it cowering by my fridge, or from the crying I did afterwards. Sometimes, all the things I hate seem to crowd together to mock me. It was hard to feel positive today.

When I saw the rat, I ran outside in tears, with Joel in my arms, slamming the door behind us all, with Esther and Ben close on my heels. I found a bemused local staff member and asked him to kill the vermin. He set off for my house, but I went in search of friends for comfort! I found Joel's teacher, who came to my rescue with a hug and a prayer. She then took my camera to get this shot of the offending rat for this blog:

We thought the rat was dead, but as Miss Carolyn zoomed in with my camera lens, the nasty little creature staggered to its feet and tried to run off! I started my involuntary "rat scream", but Brave Miss Carolyn instinctively grabbed a nearby log and beat the rat down, putting it firmly out of its misery and reassuring me that this little rodent would never set its 4 feet in my house ever again!!
I grabbed my camera for a shot of the action, much to the amusement of our compound guard!

After all the drama, it was time to go home- and time to face the mess that had been left on the floor in my house from rat poo:

I'd love to say that I calmly cleaned up and managed the situation.
Instead, I was a mess. I was tearful and totally fed up with not being able to have control of my home: erratic electricity, noise disturbance when I try to sleep, disgusting creatures in my home, dirt and dust in proportions that I just never experienced outside of Africa. It all felt like too much. This was a day that I didn't want to be here.
I cancelled school today, I was too tired to cope with trying to teach AND clean up. Joel went to preschool, but Esther and Ben accompanied me to the local shop to buy every kind of cleaning product, rat poison and insect spray I could find, then they came home with me and had a practical lesson on "Cleaning"!!
We wiped, we sprayed, we swept, we washed up, we moved furniture, we beat the mats outdoors, we mopped, we dusted... then we sat down and ate a precious "mars bar" that we had discovered in the shop! It was a bit stale and tasted a bit odd, but it was still a treat after all that hard work!

Amazingly, since my little dip into negativity this morning, I have actually been encouraged by some lovely, lovely emails that have just come through from people who have known nothing about how I felt today, but wrote just when I needed it, with what I needed to hear. It can only be God's perfect timing, sending encouragement at just the right time :-)
Also, when I sit and watch the latest MAF film that a friend pointed out to me, with some shots of Andrew doing his work, I am reminded of why we are here. And I am reminded to try and get things into perspective, as see that I have so little to complain of compared to the intense suffering of many in this country:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeBecUEkb3E

Road to Paradise

Today, we had a MAF outing to a beautiful swimming pool at a hotel on the other side of Juba. It was so much fun to go out as a group for a swim and lunch at "Jebel Mountain Lodge". We have another short-term MAF family staying in Juba right now, so it was great for our children to have some new friends to play with at the pool.
It was a lovely break from the everyday routine and a chance to relax in pretty surroundings:

To reach this little "Paradise", we had a 20 minute drive across Juba. Here are some of the sights along our road to paradise... Some of these images might go a little way in showing you what Juba is like and portraying some of the challenging driving conditions we faced...

A different type of grazing ground for the goats:

I snapped the shot below as an iconic Urban Africa scene: with the ever-present stray dog, the smoke rising from the stove at a local road-side cafe, customers seated on wooden benches and plastic chairs, the informal buildings which house local shops, messy power lines draped loosely over roof-tops or between buildings- and the road-side litter:

And 2 classic pictures to illustrate how much one can load onto a trike (and how rare a motorbike helmet is!):

Unfortunately, there is a petrol shortage in Juba at the moment. The petrol stations we passed were crowded with vehicles patiently waiting to purchase fuel for their cars and motorbikes:

 The queues of cars and motorbikes snaked a long way down the roads outside the petrol stations, at a complete standstill whilst pedestrians passed by:

So here are some snapshots of Juba from the back seat of a MAF vehicle! Of course, I am very new here and have much more to see and learn, but this is what I saw today and these are my impressions so far, as we ventured from the bumpy, mud-strewn roads to the incongruous setting of a beautiful hotel in this city of contrasts.

Extra Pupil

We have had an extra pupil visiting us at our home-school:

However, I think I may have to knock some minutes off his play-time for his blatant lack of enthusiasm during our morning lessons...

...and his somewhat disrespectful approach to Esther's afternoon lessons on the Tudors!

Living in a "Micro World"

In Juba, the day to day world in which I now live has become quite narrow. It can feel like I live in a micro-world! On a "normal" weekday, I have little reason to leave the compound. Apart from the occasional walk to the nearby shops or the local cafe to get "chapati", or to a restaurant with the MAF team, I am mostly at home or somewhere on the compound, like the playground or perhaps visiting a neighbour.
This means that I hardly take any exercise- so it is back to the home-videos with Rosemary Conley for my Saturday morning exercise class!

Rosemary and her fitness companions leap into life on the screen in our lounge and I try to keep up with the work-out:

I know I look ridiculous prancing around all by myself, with the children laughing at their daft mum! I look even more silly when I pick up my "weights" to join in the lifting and toning section of Rosemary's video, with these state-of-the-art weights: (!!)

 By 09:15am, my "class" is nearly over, but even with all the ceiling fans blowing at full pelt and the air-conditioning blasting, it is very hard to cool down in Juba. I have never, ever sweated as much as I have since we got to Juba, so doing these exercise classes, even early in the morning. feels like impossibly hot work! It must be good for me! It must be worth it!

Over the past couple of weeks, I have actually had more reasons to exit the metal gates of our compound and expand my micro-world...

MAF Day of Prayer
Last Wednesday, we had our MAF day of Prayer.
All staff attended a workshop-style event to learn more about the partners who use and fly with MAF. It was also a day to take time out to pray for these organisations and for the 30 different MAF programmes situated around the world. The venue for this day out was at the "Dembesh" hotel, about 10 minutes walk from our compound.

I found it particularly interesting hearing about the amazing work of Medair (http://relief.medair.org/)
Their speaker, Wendy, explained about the incredible work they do bringing practical medical assistance and leading nutrition programmes for people who desperately need it in this country. They regularly fly to their work locations with MAF, so they are an important partner for MAF in South Sudan.
It was very moving as Wendy showed us photographic examples of children who have been near starvation and then pictures of the tangible difference that the nutrition programmes can bring to restore health and life to the most weak and vulnerable of children.
Wendy explained that the pictures were being used because the mothers of the children specifically asked her to "show the world what is going on in our country" and how much the help is needed.

When she finished talking, one of our national staff members stood up and took the microphone to pray for the work of Medair. He said that listening to Wendy and seeing her photos was "emotional" for him,as he had watched his own younger brother die through lack of food. It was a sobering moment:

However, we also saw that he people of South Sudan certainly love music and dancing! There were times for local music and singing; everyone joined in enthusiastically!

When the subject matter got heavy and the adults needed time to be quieter, I took the kids to play in the hotel's pool. We all had so much fun in the pool, which we had all to ourselves!

A new MAF compound
Another outing a few days later was to visit the proposed site of a new MAF compound. This should be developed in Juba over the next year. The staff team here is growing and that brings a need for new housing.
I climbed into a MAF vehicle with some visitors from overseas MAF offices and we all headed out to see the plot, about 20 minutes drive from our current compound. At the moment, the site is just bush!

 It was fun to explore it and hear the architect explain how it will all be developed

Just outside the boundary lines on one side, there are a few local houses:

 A couple of house are also within the boundary lines and the current landlord will have to provide alternative housing for the tenants before any building can commence. Their  traditional "tukul" home, seen here, looks so picturesque, but the standard of living it provides is very basic. We went over to meet the tenants who live there, but it was a little awkward- partly because of the language barrier (my Arabic lessons were not sufficient for conversation!!) and partly because of the circumstances, as the purchase of this land means a new location for this family.

Visitors
Aside from getting out of the compound recently, there has been the novelty of visitors to bring a bit of refreshment- and some much-appreciated chocolate (!!) - from the outside world into my micro-world! Last weekend, we enjoyed meeting the visitors from the UK and Oz MAF offices and after a staff pizza evening at the compound garden area, we hosted a movie evening in our home.

 I just had to take this photo as our guests arrived: this is definitely the way you know you have visitors in Africa: all the shoes at the front door!

Celebrating British traditions thousands of miles from the homeland!
It was also fun marking Bonfire Night on Wednesday evenning! The Brits here are few and far between, but one suggested a bonfire in honour of November 5th, so we lit the fire just after dark, (around 7pm) at the edge of the compound:

There were no fireworks, but we enjoyed a few home-baked biscuits! 

It was a good opportunity to share a bit of English history with the children. And a good way to remember traditions from a place which sometimes seems like a million miles away from our life here, but is still a part of our history and culture, even within the smaller environment of life on a compound in South Sudan!

Driving in Juba

I am not yet ready to take up the challenge of driving in Juba.

One of the off-putting factors is that the driving here is on the right-hand ("wrong"!!) side of the road:

This means that I would have to get used to sitting on what would feel to me like the "wrong" side of the car:

The actual roads themselves do not intimidate me, since we had 4 years of dodgy road surfaces in Tanzania to give me a bit of practise with roads like this one near our MAF Juba compound:

We also had dusty roads just like this one here in Juba, where sand and dust fly up from under the wheels to obliterate the vehicles in front:

 However, the roads here are much busier than the roads I navigated on the left in Dodoma! To switch to the right-hand side of the road, with all the extra cars around and all the new bumps to discover, all the dust and all the pedestrians crossing the road, does scare me. I can't help feeling like, with me at the helm, the possibility of an accident would be much increased!
There are also lots of roundabouts in Juba- I would need serious training to remember to go around them in the correct direction!

The type of traffic here also scares me. There are large trucks, lots of shiny 4x4s, military and UN land-rovers and lorries- plenty of larger vehicles like this one, to fight for space with on the bumpy roads and tracks:

 I always worried about hitting a motorbike in Tanzania or Kenya, especially since many drivers do not wear a helmet. In Juba, I believe that even fewer motorcyclists wear helmets! On Saturday, on a trip across town in a MAF car (I was a passenger!!), I had to smile at the irony as we actually spotted quite a few helmets on motorcyclists- most unusual in my brief experience here so far!

We also witnessed a motorbike going "CRASH!" into the back of a 4x4 truck, with the driver dramatically flying off his seat and being propelled through the air until, thankfully, he landed on the  road, sat up and looked dazed, but OK. I hear that the incidence of such crashes is extremely high.

And, as a foreigner here, if I was involved in such an accident, I would be instantly considered guilty unless I could be proven 100% to be the innocent party. Apparently, the view here is that locals have much to gain financially from crashing into "rich" foreigners. Plus, there is so much corruption that it would be very, very unfortunate for me to be involved in a road accident. Alot of hassle and trouble could ensue. This makes me extra nervous to get out and try my hand at right-hand driving in a city which does not exactly provide a gentle learning ground!

So, for now, I think I will stick with being a passenger and a back-seat driver; if I do become braver, I will be sure to blog about that at a later date! Incidentally, I seem to have lost my South Sudanese driver's licence, which is the only licence you are allowed to drive with in South Sudan. I just can't find it anywhere! But maybe that is fortuitous for now!!