Yes I am Still Here....

... and no I have not forgot about the blog. After the last trip just having a hard time getting back into plus the web here has been worse than usual and I don't have the patience for it.



I got back to Abyei, Monday 17Aug. and there have some changes of course. Some minor like me moving to a different container... one that doesn't smell like the south end of northbound goat. And when I got back to the old container, it was infested with little cockroach type critters, not my idea of a home away from home. So I packed my bags and I moved.... and some of those litte s&*^s moved with me but only one or two so I am ok with that they are easier to get rid of in small numbers. A squish here and squish there and that is that.



Anyways the next change and more importantly is Abyei, which used to be a county in South Kordofan State, is now on its way to becoming a state of its own. It will be, once the president signs off on it, the 27th state of Sudan. This a big step forward for the region, now it will get a real budget, increased infrastructure, more police, and hopefully a formal justice system. Of course all this will not happen in the next four months but hey who would have thunk!? Abyei State!



And also in line with that the JIPU are going to be getting a lot more vehicles, right now they have about 8 but half of them don't work and 99% of the ones that work aren't 4X4's so they cannot patrol to villages in them, especially in the muddy season like now. So good things all around, for the most part.



Now as far as my work here goes... hmmm... what can I say about that? Well today we had an attempted homicide/shooting/arson in Abyei Town (they like to add the "Town" on the end to distinguish it from the hole area which is also Abyei)... anyways. This is the story. A man, actually a soldier buys 6 cows from another man sometime ago, the cows for some reason won't stay at the new place and are always wandering back to the original owners and eventually the new owner cannot get them to come back. So he goes to the Chief of the tribe that he bought the cows from and asks for help. He doesn't get it plus he is now out $1000 SDG that the chief charged him for "helping" and today he went to the chief's house with his assault rifle and some incendiary substances, sets the place a blaze and sits out front waiting for anyone to exit the burning buildings so he can shoot them. No one exits, but a resident and his son come buy and try to put out the fire and the son gets shot in the leg. He is hospital, should be ok.



But... if the shooter turns out to be from the other predominant ethnicity around here it could have all sorts of ripple affects. Not that it will, but it has the potential to ignite a conflict in this area and possibly involve the entire country. All because of some dumb cows.

So that's it in a nut shell.

As far as the weather goes we are getting rain on an intermittent basis every four or five days or so, nothing like was described to me when we first go here. We were told that the in the rainy season you can't go anywhere, because of the mud, it rains everyday for a couple hours and the roads turn to mush. That hasn't been true this rainy season, very little rain and the roads are great. So that also is a good thing as far as I am concerned. In reality it might not be a very good sign of things to come for the region if they start getting less and less rain. Later.