Day Twenty Four - Christine's Birthday!

Happy Birthday Christine!! I can’t believe it is already July 6th. I hope you had a lovely day in Canmore. Miss you and love you!

I woke up to a man talking loudly on his phone and a baby crying…not ideal. We parked ourselves at Nimule for the morning. They served a delicious breakfast, probably the best since I came here. I worked most of the morning on stuff for the report.

Nicole and I were to meet Natalie for a business meeting at 1 but we ended up being locked in the Nimule compound for a half hour. They weren’t letting anyone in or anyone out so we were forced to wait. This was probably due to the fact there are some important people staying at Nimule for independence so they were probably doing something with security at that time, inconveniently for us. Once they finally let us out, the soldiers searched our bags and asked if we had guns, maybe a joke but doubtful. We obviously had no guns.

We took a trip to JIT after the meeting. It is basically a North American style grocery store. I bought some peanuts and peanut butter. Very excited about that. They will be great for in the field. We drove past the tower which has the countdown for Independence Day and I am going to say it was malfunctioning…1 DAY 34 HOURS 2024 SECONDS LEFT UNTIL JULY 9TH INDEPENDENCE!...An odd way to countdown I would say…

I went to a Thai restaurant, Home and Away, for supper with Akshaya and a big group of her friends she has met here in Juba. It was nice. I had a good conversation with a woman from Japan and a doctor from Arizona. From here we went to the ICRC compound for a short while. I met a guy from Harvard who's wife is from Edmonton. That was interesting. I never actually asked where he was from originally...maybe next time.

So here is a brief history of Northern Bahr el Ghazal and Aweil… NBeG is one of the 25 states of Sudan(I think there are 25 states, there may only be 12, I better look that up). It borders South Darfur, Western Bahr el Ghazal and Warab and Abyei. Aweil is the capital of the state. Throughout the year rural villager from Aweil are forced to seek refuge in the city due to floods during the rainy season. I certainly can understand this because we were affected by the rains and it is just the start of the rainy season. Dinka is the language and people group in this area. The Dinka are one of the largest tribes in the South, and are easily recognizable. Very tall and thin, with high cheekbones and almond shaped eyes. On the foreheads of the men are deep scars, running along their brows and meeting in the middle. Very distinguishable. From what I understand this is an initiation boys receive when they are a teenager and the scars are to resemble horns. I have seen other patterns of these scars but do not know what they mean.

So there you go.

PEACE!