today i got my contract. woohoo!! had to sign about ten different pages.
it felt very official. my favorite part was the following:

“Risk Declaration

I, Paul Robert Rooker, fully understand the risk of working and living in South Sudan and I am traveling to South Sudan on my own free will. I will not hold CARE responsible for any hardships, including but not limited to personal injury, illness, kidnapping, loss of life/limb or property during my assignment with CARE. Consultants should be responsible for securing enhanced covers that include medical evacuation insurance. I absolve CARE of all the responsibilities and accept all the inherent risks involved and that CARE cannot assure me safety or saftey of my property. In accepting this consulting contract, I accept the risks indicated above."

made me think about signing off for a few more seconds, but i did in the end. its not going to be as bad as this makes it sound.

its started raining alot again. at least once a day. primarily in the morning for a couple of hours.

there is a dead tree in the compound of the house I am staying at. Saturday night, it fell over because the roots no longer could hold it in the ground, and with all the rain, the ground had become very, very soft.

it fell over on my housemate’s boyfriend’s vehicle. he owned something along the lines of a geo tracker or izuzu something. One of these small boxy four wheel drive jobs made in japan. My housemate’s Rav4 almost got smashed as well, but her boyfriend’s vehicle took the full force and kept her car from being hurt. his vehicle was hurt though, and badly. possibly a total, but they aren’t sure yet. and insurance is a bit strange in this country. he just bought the car from someone who had paid for the insurance on the the vehicle. he doesn’t know what that insurance covers. and they also don’t know if the landlord will be liable for any of the damage. even though he has been asked repeatedly to remove the dead tree.

the night guard working for us was almost hit by the tree. the chair he normally sits in was buried in branches. he fortunately realized the tree was coming down and got out of the way just in time. he was very shaken up.

one of the dogs was pretty shaken as well. she normally barks non-stop at people walking by the front of the property, but since the tree fell, she has been very quiet and when we are around the house, she comes looking for attention. poor thing.

and its raining again this morning, so the people needed to come and clean up the mess probably won’t make it. maybe tomorrow, or wednesday if its not raining.

i want to input more into this thing, like on a daily basis, but there just isn’t a lot to talk about when all i have been doing is sitting behind a computer screen the last few days inputing information that I am attempting to scrounge from the deep recesses in my brain.

they keep saying that I am going to see a contract. Was supposed to be last friday. Then moved to Mon/Tues this week, then thursday cause wednesday was a holiday. but the day is still in progress and the afternoon could hold many surprises. but im not holding my breath.

i’ll be here for five months not three. with a break in the middle where I take a little trip home again and beg forgivness from the ones that were expecting me back.

my life has been a little insane these last few months. i came back from africa, decided to stay home to look for work. didn’t find any. then i came back to kenya for a visit, was supposed to leave today and now i am staying.

got a job.

at least for three months. back in sudan. doing layout and design work.

crazy, eh?

last night i had some lovely ethiopian cusiune. unfortunately somewhere along the line something and my stomach decided they didnt want to get along. and from 12 a.m. this morning until about 10 i was visiting the bathroom on an hourly basis. was not pleasant.

and now i don’t think i will be able to manage an evening out with some friends i havn’t gotten a chance to catch up with yet. am not happy.

i had forgotten how clever the con artists are round here. had a gent walk up to me on the street and say hello and started talking to me. said he was one of the guys working with our guard peter. funny thing is the night guard at our house is Peter, so he threw me off at first. and as we were exchanging conversation i realized he was throwing back bits of information that i would inadvertantly give out, which to my ears sounded like he knew what he was talking about and that i should know who he was even though i didn’t. i got supicious when he wanted me to follow him to a car so i could help him push start it, and when i said im sure he could find someone else to help him with that, he said no not push i need you to buy me some gas. At this point i pretty much realized he had been working me pretty good, so i was trying to disengage. my problem is that I am ever so polite, so instead of telling him to #$$% off i was making up excuses why i had to leave. there was still a doubt in my mind though as to whether i knew him or no. so i gave him a bit of cash to which he started complaining wasn’t enough and i just finally had enough and walked away. i think i am just gullable and that is written straight across my forehead. part of me does feel the man deserved the cash cause he did a wonderful job of convincing me we knew each other. I also remembered that the same guy hit me up once before on the street with a very similar scenerio. This was months ago. wish my memory had kicked in about five minutes prior to the point it did.

shoeshine guys got a pretty good line as well, but i am on to that one. You walk by and they yell out at you "hey what country did you buy those shoes in?". The first time it happened to me, i was very happy to tell them, mainly because i am a vain person and was proud that someone noticed my excellent shoes. And as i was telling them they came up to inspect and started cleaning and because they have lathered up your shoe you have to sit down and let them shine it, after which they ask you for an outragious sum of money. I was lucky in that i had been getting my shoes shined at a place where they charged me reasonable rates. i had also asked a few folks what the charge should be. Now when this guy shined my shoe and asked me for the outragious sum, i through him a little less than the going rate and walked off. He wasn’t very happy. but at least i had clean shoes. speaking of which i probably should get them shined again.

internet connection in this country is irratating. it is rather expensive to have a connection into ones home, so most people frequent cyber cafes that are all over the place here. most of the time you can find a place that costs 1 schilling per minute, which is more or less the same as a penny. i heard a rumor once that the cyber cafes were losing money because their connection speeds were too fast. so they implemented something to make everything run really slowly, thus insuring that their customers spent at least enough to make them some money. i don’t know if this rumor is true or not, but it sure makes sense. most of the time it takes me something like 10 minutes to log into my hotmail account and get to the page where i can check my mail. maybe i just get impatient.

i went to change some US currency into the local schilling today and had a bit of a shock when they told me that because i had small bills (smaller than a 50 or 100) i was going to get a lower exchange rate than i would have with the larger bills. it wouldn’t have been such a big deal, but i was going to lose about 10 bucks in the overall transaction. luckily i was able to find someone who would trade my smaller bills for larger ones and then i was able to go back and get a better exchange rate. only wasted about 2 hours of my day sorting that out.

still struggling with jetlag. got home around 7 last night and passed out. Slept for 12 hours, got up had some breakfast and then went back to sleep for another 2 hours. is a rough life. but now its only 6 in the evening and i already feel like i am about to doze off again. really aggrivating.

in an attempt to work through my jet lag, i stayed out very late last night and then woke up rather early this morning. don’t think it worked.

think i will go back to the place i stay and sleep off the rest of the afternoon:)