FFS #2

Whilst in Juba, I am getting western style food (in a sort of fusion way).  I had ‘lasagne’ but that was basically a layer of spaghetti, a layer of meat, another of spaghetti, and some ‘parmesan’.  Its fine though, the menu is extensive and everything on it is actually available.  I’m with a colleague who just happened to bump into a friend from his village back in Uganda.  On the third night he says, “Phil, let us go for a work, too much time spent in this hotel”.  Sure, I’m down for that.  Good time to go for a stroll, it is cooler now, was 37° mid-afternoon!  We set off down the ‘road’ a little after dark, him and his mate each around 6’ tall, both weighing a good bit more than 100kgs; ‘my security’ we joke.

There is a light at the side of the road a few hundred yards down.  Through the gate into the courtyard; a bar!  Excellent I think, until we sit and one says, “Let us see what food they have”.  Great, just great.  OK it was pleasant, but we sat in the dark with the music banging out eating ‘goats meet’ with our fingers.  And it is local; more meat on a butcher’s pencil, as my dad would say.  But I am now acclimatised, so you chew around the bone and gristle then jut discard the debris on the floor and watch as a feral cat stops by to get stuck in!

I have been to Juba 3 times now and each time I am obsessed by the plane you see here.  The photograph, from inside the little plane I was in, doesn’t do it justice but you understand it is not good for a Westerner to be taking photographs of aeroplanes in an African country, not that far on from a civil war… especially when, as is common, the airport is shared with the military.  It is part of the World Food Programme fleet, a ex-Russian military transport, but put to good work here (and no doubt elsewhere).  Do you think Putin needs it back right now?  

But why am I obsessed?  It reminds me of a 2nd World War long-range bomber, those down-ward looking observation windows.  Just need a machine gun poking out!