Soon R&R

Four more days and I am leaving my duty station. Then 3 days in Juba and then going on R&R! I really need a change in the air, scenery, whatever. Just a change. Unfortunately my R&R won’t be that jolly after all: handling the last leg of my divorce, but I guess I’ll be ok. It will be so great to see friends after almost a year. Sometimes I really feel guilty for neglecting them, but I find it so hard to write mails from the field.

More and more often I think about leaving South Sudan. This is my seventh month, usually it is not so hard to resist for 9 months. The problems might start later. Life is tough here: I’ve been living in a tent for 7 months, in the beginning we did not have power or internet, the shower is still a bucket and a cup. But actually I don’t mind all this: in a way it makes you free, it makes you detached from all the useless stuff in the developed world and it proves that it is possible to live in so basic conditions. As a Tom Barman – Guy van Neuten song says: “Luxury is a rich man’s take on reality”.
But I do miss a good morning cafe au lait or a match of tennis:) Tell me I am not spoiled;)

When I think about leaving this place I get full of excitement: something new, somewhere else and my thought immediately are somewhere else. But I feel also sadness: I went through so many things here, good and bad. The looser that I am, I will remember only the good things. And needed to “reinvent” myself and by some strange twist of faith it happened right here. That is one connection that never can be broken.