Today we arrived in Juba, southern Sudan to begin our 10 days of assignment for MCC. First impressions are that it is dry, hot, and dusty during this time of year. There is an orange dust on the road that sticks to everything. Another thing I noticed was that many signs are in Arabic. I found out that the people here speak "Juba Arabic", some sort of Arabic dialect, and I could actually understand a few Arabic words when I heard it on the radio. Of course there are a bunch of other tribal languages that are spoken as well. And English too, of course.
Juba is a mix of people, many of them Sudanese coming from other parts of the country and many returning after years of living as refugees elsewhere during the war. There are also business folk from other East African countries coming to work in Juba, and others from even farther away, like India and China. Tonight we dined under little gazebo grass huts at an Indian restaurant.
Today we visited a water well that was dug with support from MCC. Just as we arrived in the community, a rain storm sprung upon us and a huge rainbow sprawled across the sky. Unfortunately we all ran for cover and I wasn't brave enough to get a photo. Darn. But I did take one of the sky's reflection in a puddle afterwards.
The teens here like to ride motorcycles, and apparently there are lots of accidents as a result of careless driving. We were told that there is a special unit in the hospital called the "Seneke" (or something like that) wing, named after a Chinese brand of motorcycle where all the crash victims go.
Well, I feel that it is soon time for bed and thus I must prepare myself for it. It's nice to have wireless intnernet!
Perhaps I'll continue my posts again after tomorrow's day is done.
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