Rained off

The South Sudanese rainy season is manageable as it's not monsoon-like and it isn't daily. During heavy downpours life pauses as people take shelter under trees or roofs, always emerging as pristine as when they entered. I get grease, food, dust and mud all over my clothes from the second I don them in the morning.

The most inconvenient thing about the rain is that the road we use to reach our project site looks like the inside of someone's mouth as they chew a toffee.

Departure to the bush was rained off, more due to political hold ups and car maintenance issues than the weather. But we made ourselves useful in Yambio, reviewing workplans and getting more organised for attempt number 2 tomorrow.

We took a flask of tea over to Clement's so we could learn how to play the traditional game abanga. Clement and his friend Charles, and all the family and random community members who stopped by to watch had an expert handle on this game's strategy. Ivan and I adapted to it woefully slowly. The aim is to manoeuvre these nuts (some oil palm kernels in there too) around the playing board, 'feeding' from your opponent when you get into the correct position and eventually leaving the other player with nothing. The casual rhetoric when making moves - 'I have no food to give' or 'I need food but there isn't any' - is poignantly topical for South Sudan. Clement and Charles displayed some insanely good mathematical planning to anticipate moves. Practice needed.

In a rare move for Yambio, a cool wind whipped up and a fleece became handy.

I learned how to jump start a flat car battery today, so a day's delay in reaching the field has been useful in that regard.