7 October 2007

Juba, organised chaos

A delightful view from the balcony of the Hotel Paradise in Juba, where we reluctantly had to stay. The UN camp had filled up with delegates to the peace process connected to the LRA in Uganda, so we lost our bookings there. However we did get some useful time in the mapping office at the UN compound, a sprawling town of airconditioned rooms built inside containers. Very expensive, very well organised, all the latest stuff, and lots of people sitting in the coolth watching movies on the laptops! I am sure that some very important work gets done there, though. I hope.

This picture is across the street for one of Juba's markets, a bustling tent-like bazaar of just about anything you can think of - mostly food and clothing, but plenty of high end mobile phones, motorbikes, televisions, and electronics. Here a woman is thinking about crossing the dusty main road, looking at the steady stream of four-wheel drived vehicles - I have never seen so many of them per square kilometre as I did in Juba. Not just with UN markings - everyone working or doing business here seems to have one.
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