AWOL

It’s a long time since I last wrote but you haven’t missed much. I finished my 8th week in Uganda, and my guesthouse room for that matter. I turned 31. The LRA has agreed to meet in Juba to discuss the resumption of peace talks, after there little rampage in Central African Republic. I got a generator. And a fridge. I discovered there is a dating website specifically for nomadic humanitarian and development workers like me called www.humanitariandating.com. I chickened out of trying it out. The only petrol pump in Pader broke and the attendants resorted to pumping it by hand and we started ordering it a day in advance. I managed to secure access to the District’s prison, which turned out to be a disappointing 1930 decrepit building, ridden with bullet holes and missing half of its roof and walls due to grenade attacks, with a wooden pallet across the entrance. I discovered most of the women in prison are there for beating up their co-wives. More buildings neared completion, including ours. The rains arrived, albeit in a fairly half hearted manner and several weeks late. The government announced that I need yet another two letters of recommendation before I could submit our application for registration, letters that according to them “could be from peasants, it doesn’t matter”, which begs the question, what is the point? The ‘supermarket’ started intermittently stocking Mars Bars, Bounty and Pringles. The humanitarian community in Pader grew to 41 international and local agencies. And the international agencies started talking about funding shortfalls and there being "only another year or two before the emergency funding dries up".