Things you don't tell your mother...

Well, after a rosy and lovely period of complete relaxation in the States I arrived back in Khartoum where all the talk is 'plan B'...meaning, are we going to get bombed? Probably not, but the one thing that I've learned about Darfur is that just when you think it can't get any worse, it does. Over the past three weeks this place has slid into (nearly) Somalia-like chaos. No, I take that back, there are pockets of Somalia-like chaos all over the place and then pockets of relative normalcy. Unfortunately, the pockets of relative normalcy are down to exactly: two.

Added to this I am being transferred for four weeks to Geneina. How do I explain Geneina? Geneina is a good time. It's close to being the most insecure place I can think of. It's on the border with Chad - where the rumour is that 2000 Chadian soldiers are lining up to take the town. NGOs lose about a car a day there and so we have a complete ban on our vehicles leaving the compound. Bullets came through our roof there right before Christmas. The curfew is 6pm...which is up from 4:30pm where it has been. And, it's always on the brink of an evacuation. The place is evacuation-happy. They might even all be evacuated before I even get there.

Now the strange thing is...I'm really looking forward to it. And I'm not. The saner half of me just wants to stay put and go back to my quasi-normal life where the curfew's 10pm and where I know people and where the evacuations are only about once a month. And the adventure-prone half of me can't wait to go. I think I'm becoming one of those adventure/adrenaline junkies.