Back to Juba

Here we are, back in Juba, in the land of polio and cholera and dust. Seeing Juba again after being in Torit and Isoke and Lafon and Imilai and Keyala really changes how I look at it. Juba is like a dusty, crowded, island located in the middle of an incredibly lush, vibrant ocean. It reminds me of the blindingly bright, hot reflections off of car roofs in a parking lot-bright and blaring to the point of inducing a headache.
I know I’m being a bit harsh on it. Juba does the best it can considering that it is a third-world city, and considering that there is no way that it could ecologically compare to the surrounding area. And it isn’t so bad, actually-today was rainy and cool and there was a wonderful breeze blowing. But the sights and smells and tastes are just all so cramped and intense, that it is difficult to relax.
We had a bit of a rough time getting off, because of some personnel issues (see, here I am being diplomatic-isn’t it less interesting?) but then we got on the road. We stopped in a village called Kudo to take some pictures of their constructed (but not yet working) Primary Health Care Center. We had to ask about 90 SPLA officers where to go, but we finally found it, hidden behind an equally constructed (and equally closed) school. There were two main buildings, a collection of showers (with no plumbing, but plenty of spiders) and a collection of pit latrines with huge thick brier branches shoved into the doorway so that it couldn’t be used. Jerome was convinced we were going to get bitten by snakes, and honestly, it was a legitimate concern, but all I got was a rusty nail in my shoe, and I got it out.
We thought we might have trouble at the bridge, but it turned out we were fine. George and Ed stopped off in the Census office to talk to a guy Jerome knew, while Jerome, Neesha and I headed off to find a hotel. We were originally going to stay with CAFOD next to Camboni brothers, but they were full (Ed didn’t want to burden Camboni). We picked up Jerome’s friend Emma (ha! Like me! My twin!) who was a guy (and not at all a male version of me) and headed over to the Sunflower Inn. The Sunflower Inn had a bit of an….off putting slogan. “Growth Through Relationships”. That slogan, paired with the fact that in the five minutes Neesha and I sat in the car, about 8 different men wandered past, leering at us and trying to start conversations. We didn’t end up staying there, because they tried to charge us 160 USD for a single, for one night. No.
We next went to the White Nile Inn, which was of the same mold as the Sunflower. Lots of pre-fab buildings lined up in rows, with air conditioning's, but often no shower heads (or toilet seats). They had wireless though, and it was where Miller stayed, so we took it. It’s pretty nice, depending on your measuring stick. By Juba standards it is fantastic and I feel lucky to be here. Air conditioning! Wireless Internet! A view of the Nile and a non-sketchy bar! Tv! Our own contained bathroom! A clean shower! Comfortable beds!
In terms of American standards, lets just say that if you were paying 100 USD a night for a hotel, you would expect things like….blankets, toilet seats, shower heads, a toilet that flushes without breaking the first time you use it, toilet paper, an air conditioner that stays on, bed nets rather than Raid sprayed into the air to keep away mosquitoes, etc. This past night was the first time I didn’t sleep under a net while in Africa and let me tell you, regardless of malaria, I would use the net just to keep the mosquitoes from buzzing around my ears all night.
Anyway. We booked the rooms and picked up George and Ed, who were trying to get to Dahabshiil (or however you spell that), the Somali money trading company, and ended up on the complete opposite side of town because they took a group taxi. We found them stranded under a billboard for detergents in the middle of this Kenyan market.
Then we went to a meeting with Malaria Consortium which went really well. Then we went to dinner at the Queen of Sheba, an Ethiopian restaurant, where Steve had invited us to come out for Mike’s (the guy we met at the Chinese food restaurant in Juba) last night. It was delicious, but a bit spicy. At one point, this dog came up, out of the street, wandered into the restaurant, and came RIGHT UP TO ME. What is it about these dogs? Why do they tempt me so? There were at least 75 people at that restaurant, and it came up to me and sniffed my feet. I scratched its head and then some guy kicked it out apologetically, because he thought it was my dog. But it wasn’t!
I took a shower (did I mention our bathroom doesn’t have a door? Better than George’s which doesn’t have a light but does have a door.) which felt fantastic, and then fell asleep. I finally finished my Harry Potter Audio book that I took on my ipod, so I have to wait to get home to hear the rest of Hagrid’s Tale. Which makes me feel nerdy, but whatever.
This morning I got up at sevenish and went to get coffee and breakfast. There was a fantastic sunrise over the Nile which I got a picture of that doesn’t do it justice, and I found the pet antelope which rebuffed all my attempts to get near it to scratch it’s ears, so at least some animals are Rabies Educated and know to stay away from people.
And here is something exciting. I got a marriage proposal before breakfast even started! A proposal before EIGHT AM. COME ON. I was just sitting on a chair looking out at the Nile and a guy pulled up a seat next to me. His name was Pasquale and he is, very unfortunately, our next door neighbor, so I will be enduring the flirting until we leave. He asked me if I had a husband which freaked me out because I don’t look old enough to have a husband, do i? He was from Khartoum, wanted to marry me (I’d be his only wife, he assured me, one man for one woman) and asked me to give him my phone number (I don’t have one-ha!) and a picture of myself (also don’t have one, unless you count the awful passport photo that makes me look like a stoned ogre-so maybe I should have given it to him after all). Awkward conversation continued until I managed to escape and go harass George and Neesha.
Neesha was showering so I convinced George that the thing he most wanted to do in all the world was keep me company while I got breakfast. I had hot chocolate (Cadbury’s) which tasted odd actually, and I put in too much water, and some toothpick bread, and George pretended to be a platonic boyfriend man-buffer so that Pasquale would back off a bit. To me, this meant looking stern and protective and standing between me and any guy that came near me. To George, it meant demanding that I let him use my sleeve as a Kleenex because “that’s what real girlfriends do”. It’s also what five year old’s do.
Then we drove around to Dahabshiil, got our money (huzzah!), got hassled by a police officer who couldn’t read and therefore didn’t catch the fact that our paper’s were expired, our driver Ugandan, and our insurance non-existent, not to mention our plates out of date. Ha! Then we went and drove Ed to Sunflower Inn, where incidentally, Delta Connection was located. This was when we discovered our suspension belt in the front of the car was broken. We drove BACK to the hotel, Ed fixed the Thuriaya, we got rained on, we got back in the car, we went to a meeting with PSI, we left the meeting, we put Ed on the plane (which took an hour, I swear), we got lunch with a real avocado chopped up!, we paid for lunch, we stopped at the Census bureau, we took the car to a mechanic and we sat there, for three hours. Neesha started feeling not so great towards the middle of it, but this nice Kenyan Somali truck driver showed us a bathroom she could use, and then she slept in the backseat. George and I played the “name that movie quote” game which got old fast, but kept being played. We also read the newspaper. And then, some Arab guy who was loading boxes of Rwenzori water into a warehouse smilingly reprimanded me on showing my knees, so I covered them. But then he seemed to stop caring and started flirting instead, which I was kind of too tired to really engage in. Jerome told me that the mechanics were asking how many cows I wanted to get married. I don’t think he gave them an answer. All in all, three hours is a long time, but we needed the suspension fixed and now it is, and we entertained ourselves so it wasn’t so bad. And now we are just hanging out in the rooms, not doing much. Hopefully we can rest for the rest of the night and leave early tomorrow to go back home.
And by the way, for all that I complain about or poke fun of Ed and his idiosyncrasies, I really miss him already. There was a palpable feeling of loss in the car as we drove out of the airport parking lot. I hope we continue to do really well even though he isn’t here.