Hi everyone

Well, I guess it's about time for an update. As you can see I'm still alive and hangin' in there. Last week I had my first day off in the mission and I owe it to Mohammed(PBUH). It was his birthday and as a present there were no flights. Since I was supposed to return back to Juba that day I was stuck in Khartoum. To make matters worse I had to spend the whole day at the poolside at the Sudanese German Club;)

(It's a tough life in Khartoum. The ice cream just isn't the same as back home)

The last week things have been busy here at the airfield. We are in the middle of a Kenyian deployment. About 750 troops are passing through Juba. Coming in with an MD83 from Nairobi and being shutteled to their final destination by either Antonov 74, Let-410 or Mi-8 helicopter. Up till now things are running fairly smoothly apart from the fact that the relatively peace and quiet of my tent gets disturbed by Kenyian sleep-overs.

We've also had several medical evacuations, so called MEDEVACS. For this we have a dedicated Super Puma helicopter with paramedics. Very professional guys from Germany. Even for a medical situation the UN is very bureacratic. Descisions are laid down by single officials. If you don't get his approval it's a no go. For a MEDEVAC you need a doctor's assesment of the situation. Based on this the Chief Medical Officer in Khatoum gives the green light. Last week we had a person that was run down by a car in Torit and was admitted to the local hospital. We recieved a request to fly the patient out. Luckily our chopper was already there. Problem was the patient hadn't been properly assesed by a doctor(paramedics don't count). In order to get final approval we phoned a military doctor to have a look at the patient who was already at the helicopter. Doc said it was nothing serious, just a sprained arm and a few bruises. So we called the MEDEVAC of. Much to our surprise the helicopter showed up in Juba 30 minutes later with the patient. We asked the paramedics if the doctor changed his mind and OK-ed the MEDEVAC. Turns out he never showed up at the helicopter. Paramedics assesed a serious chest wound and broken ribs and thought it better to fly him to Juba. A right decision...

But you have to be careful with who you put on the plane. Especially in the small towns they try to get patients on our aircraft but it could do more damage to airlift a wounded or sick person if you don't know what his/her condition is.

Last night we had our first real rainfall. Turns out our tropical tents won't keep the water out if the wind blows from the wrong direction. I only felt a few drops penetrate the mesh of the ceiling but some people in other tents they got their feet wet. Most of the water was gone come morning. Good part about the rain is that the temperature drops down quite a bit which is quite nice.

The general situation here in South Sudan is reasonably stable. Up in the Northern part of the South there was an internal clash within a faction about which side to join, the SAF or the SPLA. In the resulting firefight 15 people were killed including civilians. There are a lot of acusations flying left to right in the media about infringements of the CPA. Here at Juba we see a lot of SAF troops being shipped out North. A sign that the government is adhering to the CPA. However the formation of Joint Integrated Units(JIU) consisting of SAF and SPLA troops is behind schedule. It seems that units have been designated to participate in JIUs but are still somewhat reluctant to join up. Not very strange considering the circumstances. You can't expect sworn enemies to become bossom pals overnight.