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.