Mountain bike Mondays and other madness...

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Today was a sad day for the team site of Torit. Scott and Duane, our most dutiful of UN Police officers, were redeployed (read: forced to leave) to Abeyi near the proposed border area. Scott and Duane were truthful, experienced, functional police officers, and the Team Site will miss them. More on the forced redeployment when I finish my mission.

Yannick has departed for Ireland a few days ago, and if I know him, right now he is up to his eyeballs in Guiness and pub burgers with extra bacon right now.... My trip to London starts on Monday, and I can't wait. Laura and I will be meeting up somewhere... we just haven't figured out where yet. oops. Mind the Gap.

Yesterday was also the start of Ramadan, a holy month in the Muslim faith. I have been learning a lot about Islam, and find that my exposure to Western media, as critical as I am of it, still had tainted my view of Muslims. I was happy to hear that all of colleagues disagree with the methods of what we call terrorists. During Ramadan, Muslims are required to fast from sunrise to sunset, as well as abstaining from smoking, drinking anything, (water included); sex during the day is also verbotten, and some do not even swallow their own spit, making an interesting scene as some people are going outside to spit a lot today. At sunset, people head home, and in most Arabic cicites, the traffic rush at this time is extreme as all people head home to eat and drink after a day of fasting. The hot temperatures make it difficult for the no-drinking aspect of Ramadan as well. Today Murtaza was nice enpugh to teach me to make Chapati, which is a delicious flatbread. I thought this was especially nice, as he was fasting as well, and the smell was making my mouth water, and I had eaten breakfast. My education of the ways of the world continues...

Last week I was marking some english asignments belonging to my friend, Fernando. (Can you hear the drums Fernando?) If you don't get that... don't worry, it's really quite funny. Anyhow, I really began to realize what a ridiculuos language English is. The assignment was working on two-word synonym verb replacements. "George looks like his father" became "George takes after his father." etc etc.... "takes after" is a fairly common expression, but when you try to break it down and explain it, you begin to realize that it makes ZERO sense. Anyhow, after a few good laughs I got to review some of the results with him, and in the process confused myself with some of the answers. Pretty sad.

On Monday, in a fit of homesickness, I excerised my little powers as the Camp Welfare Officer and began "MOUNTAIN BIKING MONDAYS" where each week we show a different biking film. Happily, most people have been pretty receptive and excited about it, as nobody among them has ever seen anything like it. In actuality, I would be happy to sit and watch bike movies by myself on the 50" TV, but it is always cool to see peoples reactions to one of my favourite hobbies.

Finally, (I always save the best for last)... I managed to reach an agreement with the local SAF (North) Army engineers to remove the unexploded ordnance that I wrote about last week. I had filled out my UN report, fired it up my chain of command and NOTHING had happened. So I followed up on it, and found out that the UNMAO (UN Mine Action Organization) had received the reports from my superiors, and had replied "You guys are peacekeepers, you shouldn't be reporting these things to us..." How the hell else are you going to learn about this from your office in Juba...? Well hell hath no fury like a Canuck peacekeeper scorned, so I made it a personal mission to get something done about it. After giving up on the UN doing anything, I arranged a meeting with the Engineers Commander, and describing the location and type of muntions, two collections of UXO's are slated to be destroyed or removed tomorrow, under my supervision along with two of my colleagues. Of course, anything could happen, or NOT happen to stop the removal, but I am remaining hopeful that it will go ahead, and the threat to people going to gather firewood or tend their crops will be removed. But, you never know.... T.I.A. right?

Cheers,

Don

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till I come home!

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Comments

[Kim]

I absolutely love the addition of the countdown clock. Nice touch.

[Yoda]

MB videos
Hey HM, enjoy your holiday with Laura! For Mountain Bike videos, are you showing them MBWK 1 and 2 DVDs, or just sticking to the commercial stuff? Entertaining for them either way, I'm sure. A few of us are hitting up VPS fest tomorrow (Saturday). Just up and back the same day this year, since you're not there to visit. Nice countdown clock...stay safe will you, I'm looking forward to seeing you back here.

[reis]

hello
hello i am a student of mrs.cord. Thoses head honchos are not doing a very good job af protecting the people. Good job to do the jobs of thoses other people.