$100 a night in Juba

Honestly, this is what you get for $100 a night in Juba. Depending on how busy it is, you might pay $150. If you came just after Juba became the capital of the south a couple years back, you paid over $250.

This city is very hard to figure out. We left our compound today (which I'm not sure that all aid and development workers do very often) to make a run to the store for comfort staples before we head north to another office which apparently is much more rural and isolated. I bought a notebook, which might not be all that comforting, but it was much cheaper than the $14 bug spray and the $20 Nescafe can. Also, I forgot to mention earlier that my first dinner in Juba was a $22 piece of teriyaki chicken. It was a going away party and so we went to a fancy place and ate amazingly overpriced food on a boat sitting on the Nile. But if you walk through the middle of this town you could never imagine such an exquisite and poorly priced dining experience.

Leaving the compound is a bit like being punched in the face. The poverty is hard to take in and the contrasts of the city are chaotic. As the city is quickly being developed, there are a few very nice new buildings. One intends to be a business park, another is a bank. Yet most buildings seems to barely stand, or no longer are. People throw tents on cement foundations of buildings with no other remnants. Between the buildings there are small neighborhoods of huts that seem strangely out of place. They seem to belong in a rural areas with beautiful wild animals and not this sprawling confusion. The urbanization seems to surround the rural living styles and the cattel, rather than push it out. The nicest buildings seem to be those of the aid and development workers, or the businesses that cater to them. Hence, the insane prices on imported goodies and comfortable places to sleep.

This place is inundated with aid workers and development organizations. Inundated.

While I'm trying to make sense of some of my naive observations, this city seems to have a dense hope. The urgency that people are building with and all the activity seems to suggest that people are anxious for something strong and stable. Truth is I don't know much about this town. I don't know anything. I'd like to spend a lot of time walking through it talking to as many people as I can. Yet, my travels tomorrow will bring very different experiences.

Everything so far has been remarkably unlike what I expected. I played badminton today with a bunch of fun Indian business men. It turns out there is an Indian consulate in our compound. I am terrible at badminton, but that is one thing I did expect.