Beer beer beer and more beer

Oh my. 4th of July weekend. Wow.

Yeah.

Juba knows how to celebrate the 4th, let me tell you. I'm going to sleeping for a week.

On Friday there was a large party at a bar in town which, conservatively, everyone on the planet was at. It was loud and raucous and sweaty and there was lots of jumping up on the bar and dancing (not by me, obviously, but by others).

Surreally, there were also two small children running around. They are the son and daughter of a French man and his Sudanese wife and they come to all the social events in town. They are, maybe, like 8 and 5 and there they were, running around, dodging between the gyrating couples on the dance floor and suddenly popping up under your arm at the bar to ask for a water. Everyone kinda keeps an eye out for them and, as far as I can tell, they have a fabulous time.

I again, found myself swept in to the maelstrom that is my ex-mercenary gentlemen and never had to pay for a drink the whole night. Which is a dangerous dangerous thing. Which explains, I suppose, the 2.30 am moment when I found myself linked armed, standing next to the fetid wadi outside the bar, singing The Gambler with a terrifying SPLA secret police officer who was trying to seduce my, very unimpressed, friend.

Good times, good times.

Saturday was relatively uneventful, I left a party at very early o'clock in a rare bid for maturity.

But Sunday, sunday was a complicated mess of social events and beer. Beer by the Nile, watching men in canoes drift around in to rocks and arguing politics (which I have become very bad at, by the way, I need to learn more about this election). Beer in the USAID compound in a house that was air conditioned, had real floors, real carpets, real furniture, real flatscreen tvs and, oddly, real wall sconces and wainscoting. Beer at the River Camp with more political argument. Beer on the veranda of a UN house while I got my tail kicked at Gin Rummy.

Finally, and best, though, beer at the side of the pool which we sneaked in to at midnight, swimming around in the dark drinking Tusker and taking ridiculous pictures as revenge for the US Embassy not letting us in today.

When I say good times, I really do mean it. Good good times.