GREETINGS FROM THE WORLD’S NEWEST COUNTRY

Hello all. . . I know I have a serious case of Continental drift. I have  been transitioning between Geneva and South Sudan by way of Rome, and between loose ends, logistics, and an unfortunate accident that has incapacitated my laptop and limited internet access overall, I haven’t had the time or technology to update this.  It also took me 2-3 days to be able to function with the change in weather from cold and rainy to hot, humid, and rainy.  

Making friends by having cool toys and speaking
bad Arabic.

In any case, I have been safely here in South Sudan for just over a week.  I’m living on a Salesian compound in a village called Gumbo just outside Juba.  The compound consists of  a Catholic Church, a primary school run by the Salesian sisters in my community (K-8), a secondary school and Vocational Training Center run by the Salesian Brothers with the help of some other American volunteers.  The latter offers training in automotive maintenance, electronics, computers, with more to come.   The compound is still developing, with new residences, educational buildings, and more going up every day.

First Impressions, for hopeful expansion on everything later)

• To grossly generalize the greater part of a continent, Sub-Saharan Africa is both exactly how it seemed from TV, pictures and movies, and nothing like it seems.   It's also beautiful. 
• If Lewis Carroll had lived in Sub-Saharan Africa during the rainy season, the line would go as follows: Sometimes I've  believed killed as many as six impossible things mosquitoes before breakfast.-- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
• Pretty much everything in this country comes with an acronym of some development agency. . . UN, USAID, UKAID, EU, etc.   The amount of money being invested here is quite remarkable.  Time will tell how it pans out.  The creation of a new country here is definitely a unique experiment in development. All I can do is observe, wish, hope and pray for the best, and give my work here everything that I’ve got.  
• I have witnessed how possible it is to live, and fully/happily, without electricity and running water, but I feel so lucky each and every day to have always had these things. 
• More than anticipated, this is a welcome return to my time studying and opportunity to use Arabic, which I have forgotten volumes of, but still believe it resides somewhere between my ears.  A dialect of Arabic is the main spoken language here, although with the secession from Sudan, they are increasingly transitioning to English.   It’s not dissimilar from Egyptian Arabic, and when I do try to speak I am identified as speaking “masri.”  I am hoping to spend some of my free time sitting in on Arabic classes at the school trying to recapture what I have lost.
• My mental self-preparation for 3+ months of being hot, sweaty and dirty all the time will not have been in vain. 

Mandatory foreigner-in-Africa picture of goats. 

OK, there’s a start.  What do you want to hear more about?   Leave comments, they make me feel loved and important.