Tea Time, Oil on Canvas 40cmx30cm
Waxbills and Red Bishop birds are companions on my jog around Juba3. Seeing Alison’s great photo of waxbills I decided to do a painting. Not that I have ever painted birds before! After a massive fight, with feathers everywhere, a painting asserted itself.

In the north of the country, there are fears of the impact that the Quela Quela flocks will have on the harvest. There has been no spraying for a number of years, and the flocks have reached humongous proportions.

In Juba Town, our Chinese contractors celebrated the Mid-Autumn festival, sometimes called the Harvest Moon. The full moon that rises on the 15th day of the 8th month of the Chinese calandar, is traditionally celebrated with mooncakes, which unfortunately, I didn’t get to try.

The lurking rain did not materialise to spoil the braai, which Sher and Yoga sorted for the UNOPS team. Excellent goat kebabs in Sher’s famous Afghan marinade, meat skewered between green peppers and tomatoes. A visual delight. Manoel did his best to ensure that his Brazilian jungle juice cocktail (An evil mix of granadilla, condensed milk and vodka) put soul into the evening.

Shooting close to the office first thing in the morning. Cops and Robbers stuff, or cops and cops stuff, with one person killed. They have closed the roads making life a tad more difficult with the resulting traffic chaos.

A bunch of evening functions have messed up my jogging schedule, and although its possible at night under the security lights, Im weary of snakes.

Awake at 2am listening to the rain on the metal roof. No frogs this early. An interesting observation while driving through Juba Town to the office, dodging motorcycle riders who weave aimlessly across the road, without any regard for where motorcars are, is that all their mirrors are angled so they can watch what they look like while they are riding.