Welcome to Juba?

I followed this sign, and got from D.C. to Juba in no time flat. 

Well, maybe not no time. Just two 8 hour flights, a night in Nairobi and another 2 hour flight. Side note: it didn't get light in Amsterdam until after 8 am. I was really disoriented when we were landing because I was pretty sure it was about 8 am and yet...total darkness.  I kept checking my watch.  And then I realized, nope, that's just northern Europe in winter.  And then northern Europe gave me my last Starbucks coffee for the next month and a half, free internet, and a wander through an exhibit of the Dutch master's paintings of witner at the airport branch of the Rijksmuseum and I was happy again.

In Nairobi I spent most of my day sitting in the car while the poor HR person in the Nairobi office spent two hours trying to get a passport-sized picture stapled to a visa at the Sudanese embassy.  This will be predective of things to come.  The best part of this visa is definitely that it says I am 200 cm (6 and half feet) tall with brown eyes and black hair.  Me to a tee.

Landing in Juba was like landing in many other regionally signficant but otherwise small African cities.  Disintegrating carcas of crashed jet by runway?  Check.  Single runway you turn around at the end and head back to the terminal? Check.  Military jets and helicopters? Check. UN and World Food Program planes? Check.  Fingers crossed the livestock are off the runway?  Check.  "Welcome 193rd Country of the World" Banner?  Well, that was a new one. 

I went straight to the office. 

Then walked down the street...

...to the guesthouse where the expats stay.



This is the tukul, the common space where there is a tv and meals. 

Electricity is intermittent.  Good thing we've got generators, though the constant roar in the background and waves of diesal fumes are giving me a major Baghdad flashback, as are the moments of sudden darkness, a blissful silence and then it hits: the wave of 100+ degree dry heat the (generator dependent) air conditioner was just barely holding back.

Are you jealous yet?