Update

Real, or real fake? Turns out after doing some perusing of the inter-dial and discovered that these sneakers are actually real!

All the little clues that reveal their authenticity are there, stars on the sole instead of just plain rubber etc. etc. Quite the score. I am going to scour the markets and acquire all the remaining pairs in Juba and take them to the US where I will sell them on Ebay to youth in Japan for a princely sum. A true princely sum.

Real, or Real Fake?

Me thinks the answer is real fake, but who's gonna know without a close exam of them? They're a wee bit too small, but I am willing to sacrifice comfort for style. Make a whole bunch of Japanese kids jealous. Bought them in the Konyo Konyo market here in Juba for the princely sum of $25 just a few hours before the market was the scene of a skirmish between clans who found missing cattle in the possession of the other.

Air Jordan IVs is what you are looking at. Takes me back to the 7th grade. Kris Kramer had a pair, two pairs in fact. This particular color scheme and the white ones they made too. It also reminds me of the one time that I can recall pitching a fit in public regarding a product. Walpole Sports Shop, late September or October afternoon. I can actually recall the way the light was in the shop. The sun was setting. Adam Wozniak had the very first Air Jordan's and I wanted them too. That must've been the third grade?

I wasn't very well behaved that afternoon.

Just sitting here in Juba sweating and counting the hours until next Saturday when I will be spending 10 hours in Nairobi before an epic series of flights back to LA. Wish I hadn't lost my Lufthansa Miles and More card for the second time in a year and a half. Those are some serious air miles I will be racking up.

There are now 3 'internationals' here as we added one last weekend. He has helped to really organize the workshop area in short order and is taking and inventory and arranging all the spares so they can be properly accounted for. We're going big in 2009 and a serious inventory control system is much needed.

I am officially bored now. I have had lunch. There isn't a comfortable chair in this place. I may as well go lie down.

Oh, maybe not. My people have decided they want to do some work I've been asking them to do now. Goody.

A Little Bit of Justus

I was reminded of Justus, PA's favorite son Blaise Edward Defazio, this evening. The gods have been smiling upon me and have provided me with frozen boneless chicken breasts. Only $20 a pound, so not too unreasonable. Might even have been only $20 a kilo, which would be an even better deal.

2 weeks ago whilst in Khartoum I was astounded to see Old El Paso Soft Tacos in a box on a store shelf. Apparently the old embargo doesn't quite extend to Old El Paso. Or Carrier Air Conditioners for that matter, but I digress.

So I had the tacos in a box burning a whole in my food shelf and I decided to whip them up. The turned out rather well if I do say so myself. I have no spice mix leftover, but i do have some more chicken and taco sauce left for another meal.

Being the wonderful soul that I am, I decided I would offer my dutiful security detail a chicken taco. It was supposedly 'Tamam', though I will never really know if that was the case or not until I learn me some Juba Arabic. Even the worst food I cook has to be better than the best thing they get from the barracks. The local food here is just awful. I can barely choke down what the cook/cleaner prepares for us at lunch. Can't wait for TDI to get their chef over here! Hurry up already. Seriously, I can't even look at the lentil mush anymore, it's fast replacing mayonnaise as the number one item to get me to the nausea breaking point (aside from that mystery Chinatown/Konyo Konyo Market smell of course).

My dutiful security detail politely took his plate straight up back to the spigot and rinsed it off. And then promptly brought it inside and stacked it with the clean plates. He had given it the famed Blaise Edward Defazio "Once Over." Hold up there pal! That dish is not going back on the clean dish pile, no sir.

Blaise Edward had a habit of serving himself up a heapinghelping of venison or another rather unusual concoction then just rinsing the plate, rather than actually applying soap and a sponge.

Wau has it's very own Blaise Edward. Wau is the city my dutiful guard hails from.

Today was a long day. We had a full compliment of help around here, but a half compliment of management. Everything was being done frustratingly wrong. It was exhausting to run around and look at all the wrong. Paint all over the bathroom inspite of issuance and pleas for use of drop clothes. Locks on doors put in upside down and gaping holes so large you could fly an Antonov through without difficulty. I exaggerate, but the whole is sizeable, sizeable enough you could without difficulty just sneak your fingers through and twist the key inside. Oh, but wait; with the lock in upside down theives and child snatchers will be thrown off and not be able to enter, maybe the source of my frustration is really a stroke of luck or had been deliberatly engineered to safeguard my well being!

So tomorrow it all will have to be redone. It isn't acceptable. Appearances count. That being said maybe I should try shaving and wearing some item of FSD paraphanaelia from time to time. It is in the rule book afterall that I sport the logo. I hate oversized shirts now and the onlly available FSD shirts are too huge for my tastes. We're working on new order.

Thanks again to Khartoum for providing me with the culinary delight that is Old El Paso taco in a box after a long one. Went down smooth.

Now if only Juba could offer up the delightful array of foodstuffs Khartoum does. Night and day, Waertown New York, to New York, New York. Juba and Khartoum are worlds apart just like those two towns. Funny thing is a Khartoum has been 'downgraded' from a 10 weeks then a break for UN personnel to 8 weeks and a mandatory break location. Uhhhhh don't quite understand that one. Juba is 6 and a break for UN. Khartoum is lightyears ahead of Juba comfort-wise. No arguing that point. Municipal water, municipal power, paved roads, plenty of food etc. etc.

None of it affects me anyway since I am not UN, but if I were I'd be a little ticked off at my counterparts in Khartoum.

The Hills of Los Angeles are Burning

Thanks to Bad Religion for the blog title. I got to see them pre-departure for free at the Etnies Skatepark/warehouse down somewhere I can't remember north east of San Diego.

While I think the hills of Los Angeles are doing alright right now, no fires that I am aware of, greater Juba is ablaze. The difference being that the fires here are being set--well I guess you can't rule that entirely out in the case of the various fies that plague Southern California each year--to clear the dried out chest high grass that covers much of the Southern Landscape.

No one farms, so I am a litle perplexed as to why people bother to do this. Aesthetics, or to kill mosquitoes and drive out snakes? For fun? The way these fires move I can't help but think that many innocent little Tukuls and their inhabitants are burned to the ground. Reckless. Reckless and does nothing for the sub par air quality that already exists due to the fine dust that gets churned up by the traffic and blows everywhere.

Sunday night the fires came very close to burning into the compound, the wind changed its direction away from us and burned into our neighbors a bit, then changed direction one again and came back this way. The dutiful guard Yak--the only one of the two lifts a finger beyond opening the gate but still is asleep before I am and barely gets up before I do--unbeknownst to be me had made his way around the back fence to monitor the fire up close. I saw him back there and walked over to take a look myself with shovel in hand to give him something to work with, to create a fire line with if he so chose. He opted for a leaf covered branch to bat the flames out with. He managed to keep the fire at bay using that method quite effectively.

As I was walking back form the fence I noticed a largeish metal object on the ground. I walked over and took a closer look. It was a UXO. A UXO inside an organization that specializes in the clearance of such items compound. Not sure if it is a fluke, or I should be worried. A neighbor might have dumped it over the fence, who knows how it got here. It had no fuse so it was very safe, but still.

Thanks to all 2 readers out there for patiently awaiting my next entry. The Deputy Director of FSD was in town with me here in Juba for a week after we hit up Khartoum. I will doing some catching up on the finer points of those two weeks very soon.

Major achievement today in finding a package of frozen boneless chicken breats and mozzarella cheese! Only cost me $30 too!

Going to go whip up something with it all. I happen to have a spare box of stove top to go along with it.