On Saturday, our long anticipated charter flight arrived. We were to receive supplies, the most important of which were the drugs for the local clinic. Unfortunately, either due to a delay in the delivery to Juba or some other mishap, the only things on the flight were materials for the Early Child Development program, including about a dozen easel chalkboards. Even worse that meant we had to go our Monday meeting about the drug supply problems with less than awesome news.
Despite the small setback with the charter, the weekend was great. A second UN flight came and the UNICEF officer who had been stranded in Pagak and for the past week had been staying in our compound was able to leave. The UN flight brought somebody important--perhaps a new local administrator, as the flight was greeted with far more people than the usual crowd for a plane landing. The rest of the weekend was marked with non-stop women singing and drum music. Homemade hooch (a rough but potent home brew of yeast and sugar) flowed freely throughout town.
Sunday was a nice day of rest. I slept in until about 10 and just sort of fumbled around for a few hours, not doing anything in particular. Lunch was the usual blend of rice and baked beans. Afterwards though, we finished preparing a goat head for a much better and far more satisfying meal. Lately, we've been keeping the head after the goats have been slaughtered. Usually we send them home with somebody. However, the last two times one of the guys has commandeered it for a special treat--Kenyan style. Preparing it is a two day process. First it is put on a rock or grill on the fire. The heat quickly singes the hair and carbonizes the skin, locking in the moisture on the inside. Then you take a knife an scrape off all of the blackened outer layer and repeat until the outside is at the perfect consistency and the inside is mostly cooked. The next day, the head is slowly cooked in water with some spices and greens. After a few hours you have a delicious spicy soup as well as a bunch of delicious meat. Everything gets eaten and nothing is wasted.
After sitting around eating goat, we had a few cold beers and retired for a nice long afternoon siesta. Sudan can be tough sometimes and development work is painstakingly slow but its nice those times when you can laze back embrace it and have yourself a mini-vacation.
Also, in what would be great news, a malaria vaccine has shown effective results in clinical animal trials and is now set to be tested on human candidates.
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