Return

Apologies for the long silence; bad internet connections follow me like avenging furies.

I'm back in Juba after three weeks in the UK, where I attended four weddings and gave the impression to the happy couple at each one that I made a special trip back for theirs.

As noted before in this blog, a rapid nosedive in the security environment means we all go into hibernation, where we are locked in our guest houses for the necessary days and survive on Rice Krispies and jelly (or whatever) from the hibernation kit, a locked trunk in the guest house kitchen.  Some experienced aid workers are reputedly able to sleep for weeks straight in these situations, like rodents.  When I got back I realized that I went away with the key to the hibernation kit for my guest house, so it was lucky there were no security incidents in my absence or our next house meeting would have been a frosty affair.

Speaking of hibernation, if we have an overnight guest, they now have to sign a waiver confirming that they will not be entitled to any of our emergency food, although on the plus side the waiver doesn’t yet go as far as saying that they will become the emergency food in the event of hibernation.

The rules of the guest house also now say that we all have to be inside five minutes before curfew – on the basis that curfew means the time by which you have to be inside, the rule is therefore that curfew is now five minutes before itself.

For a dreadful few weeks around independence time, curfew was 11pm, so now that it has been put back to 1am the nights seem to stretch ahead of one infinitely.  One of my colleagues recently returned home from his deployment and was found on his first night back standing on a bench on Blackfriars Bridge at 3am, arms aloft and bawling “no f---- curfew!” at the sleeping city.