I can't believe it's been nearly 2 months since my last post. What a slacker! Though, to be fair, October was filled with a lifetime of meetings, writing the project annual report, revising staff contracts, a week of R&R in Nairobi, and I don't know what else! Despite all the work, I did find time to have some fun. Here is a photo of me and some of my Winrock coworkers at De Havanas, a restaurant/bar/nightclub in Juba.
One of the most difficult things about Juba, or Southern Sudan in general, is that there is little to do beyond going out to eat - and that gets horribly expensive. And everyone seems to drink and smoke an aweful lot...though some claim that the alcohol kills stomach parasites and smoke scares off mosquitoes, which could be true! A good thing, though, is that there is always plenty of time to talk and every person here has a fascinating story to tell which they are typically more than happy to share. At the risk of sounding like a looser, I'll admit that I have a greater variety of friends here in Juba than I had in Washington, DC. And on the whole I have gone out more often and had more rewarding interactions with people here in the past 4 months than I did in my 1.5 years in DC. I think the difference here is that everyone is a little lonely and eager for social interaction. Anytime anyone I even remotely know comes through Juba, we go out for dinner, usually with a good size group of people that we collect along the way. Any/everyone is invited to any/every event. "The more the merrier" truly applies here. We are each others' social network and family!
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