Rat Race Yambio style

I stayed up fairly late finishing a report to send to the UK, which will sit spinning in the outbox until Yambio decides to acquire adequate internet speeds.

Apart from rare bursts of successful connection that allow me to blip frenetically and download the latest disastrous move by American or British leaders, over days and weeks in Yambio I gradually learn the art of surviving offline. And it's fantastic for focus and productivity.

Late at night creatures come out to play. Spiders skitter in the shadows and under the sink, bats squeak in the rafters, cockroaches scuttle across the open floor and big rats lunge across the backs of sofas and along skirting boards. I haven't seen rats inside the house before, and they may be directly correlated with the fact that Bennett has left a pile of red onions on the floor of the spare bedroom and dumped ageing rations in the hallway. If I was a big rat, I'd also head here.

Give me a big scurrying rat over a shuttling cockroach any single day of the week, but over the weekend we'll work on more effective food storage solutions.

Dinner was fascinating at the UN Mission compound in Yambio with Gabriella, a Swedish lady who works on gathering intelligence from the various UN activities and movements in this area of the country. She was previously with the UN in Central African Republic and told a gripping story of being evacuated. She'd flown in as the airport and capital city were shut down due to fighting. Because the UN instals bases away from airports, directly hindering evacuation routes, she and 26 others sought shelter at a nearby French military compound. Whilst the French Foreign Legion fought Central African militia, the UN ate French cheese and camped out.

The UN sent an evacuation plane because there happened to be a senior woman in the group who was yelling at New York down the phone. A comedy of errors by UN ground troops during the rescue made themselves look even more incompetent as the French watched, laughing. Cameroonians got stuck in the mud during the escort and, incredibly, ridiculously, with the very real threat of gunfire in all directions, Senegalese troops at the gate to the runway made the evacuees check in at the abandoned airport instead of letting them drive to the waiting plane. A random airport worker who had sought refuge there bizarrely also thought checking in was the appropriate course of action, even weighing the bags on the scales. She later had to return sheepishly to ask the passengers to carry their luggage to the plane as all baggage handlers had fled. Twenty minutes after departure the airport erupted into fighting and UN headquarters are damn lucky that their personnel weren't trapped and shot in the crossfire.

27 had already become 26 as an armed Moroccan UN staffer took a car and drove off, claiming to be self-sufficient. Gabriella thinks he survived.

The grinning child Paul from over the lane, whose house I snapped over the wall here, continues to be ever-present whenever we step, drive or skip through the compound gate. He's attached himself to Justin, our Wildlife Service compound guard, who would be a fearless defender of us if a gun battle ever shook the neighbourhood (as it has in the past).