silence

fortunately juba seems calm and relaxed today.  at least for the time being.

I’ve been following news reports by a guy named Rob Crilly who is currently reporting out of Darfur.  It doesn’t sound so quiet there and looks like it could get a lot worse before it gets any better.  He is also twittering here if anyone is interested to follow.

The reason for all this turmoil, at least for today,  is that the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Omar Al Bashir yesterday.  This particular man is the President of the whole of Sudan.  Needless to say, he is not very happy with the whole thing.  Go read here what the warrant of arrest is all about.  Click on this link for a google news round up on all the current news and information coming out or also check out the Sudan Watch for more information.

Mr. Crilly has written a very nice article commenting on the advocacy outside of Sudan that pushed for this indictment to happen.  I have to say that I rather agree with the points that he has made.

If anyone is interested in what other Sudanese are saying a great place to start is here – www.thesudanesethinker.com.

What it has meant for us in Juba these last few days is just a whole lot of anxiety.  There was fear that soldiers aligned with the government in Khartoum and soldiers aligned to the government of Southern Sudan might end up going at each others throats.  They are supposed to be friends and working together at the moment, but little things come up every now and then and they start a fight.  This arrest warrant is a rather big issue for the Sudanese and could have very well managed to spark things.  Fortunately, up till now nothing has happened.  Hopefully isn’t a smoldering match.

Because of our concern for a fight, we decided to temporarily relocate to one of the hotels for the past two nights.  Currently we live right next door to the barracks for the Joint Integrated Units (JIU).  These guys are made up of Northern and Southern soldiers and are the ones I mentioned in the above paragraph.  If a fight had started, we were fearing it would start there.  Not necessarily the best place to be if things had gotten a little hectic.

We are going back home tonight.  We got tired of an uncomfortable bed, overpriced food (but good) and shortage of a change of clothes.  I am hoping that sooner or later we will be able to find a better place to stay that won’t be so close to an ignition point and hopefully won’t have to worry so much about these sort of incidents.