SUDAN Info....

A cheap place to stay for the UN MO's (prob about $5.00/day)









An expensive place to stay ($22.00 USD/Day)includes A/C!!





Bad little things!

Rain season

The following gives you a prospective of how large SUDAN is!! The black outline is Sudan, the green highlight is Germany.


A UN Team Site

Another UN Team Site

Course is complete! Finally!~

WOW... where to begin,...

We had a 3 day exercise where we lived at a UN Mil Obs team site and we completed various tasks as assigned... Tasks came in at all hours and encompased all of our training. We would complete patrols and meet with the different factions.


On the first night the team that was given orders on how to watch the compound that we were sleeping in decided not to follow orders and sat inside a closed container for warmth. During this time several bandits entered the camp and stole several items from us including entering our tent, where 9 guys were sleeping and stole the commanders uniform...he was not impressed!



By the way.. we were able to purchase all of the items back the next day at a local Black Market which did not go over well when the press showed up and started conducting interviews!! AHHH BTW.. I had all of my stuff!



For the final 2 days of the course we had guest speakers and dealt with mission specific training and information... these were prob the best and most informative two days!! We even had a lady from Foreign Affairs who is from Sudan and still has family over there and still visits.. She made us culturally aware and taught us the information that you can't get from a text book... she was great!!

On Friday the course was complete!

Week 3 Complete!

The first two days of week 3 were spent on Medicine! and the medical bag that we will be issued.... WOW!!! It's huge! 1/2 the bag is only for use by a Dr thats when and if you can find a Dr or call and speak to one...


We also had classes on insects, snakes, spiders and other things that can kill you. We learned about ALL of the wonderful diseases and how many we would actually get!

From there we had a 1/2 day exercise to put all of our basic training to use... it was a good experience and got us out of the classroom..


On Thursday we did a full day of road navigation by car and drove around 250kms around the boonies of northern kingston. There were several off portions that were interesting, full of mud and massive pot holes..
Crater Analysis

Friday consisted of Media lessons and Stress management...

I am off to Toronto for the weekend!

Have a great weekend!

Week 2 DONE!

Well it's the end of week two of training. This week was only 3/4 full of PowerPoint... Not as bad!

I am now sharing a room with a LT COL and a guy from Mali Africa... Both great guys!


This week was a little more interesting as we learned about Multicultural communication skills - This is something that Toronto EMS should look into teaching. We had a very interesting course on foreign weapons... I can now fully feild strip and reassemble an AK-47 in under 1 minute!! Whoo Hoo!!


UN subjects such as Humanitarian Assistance, Human rights, Law of Armed Conflict, and investigations were completed this week.

The investigation course was run by an associate of mine from Toronto Police...

Ok so here is the interesting stuff. We had to take a course on Conduct after Capture to know what to do if we are kidnapped or taken hostage and how to survivve and gather inteligence. We learned about tactical driving and what to do when in a car and under attack.

The first exercise was a stand exercise for us to be judged on how well we can conduct negotiations... I had an irate farmer who was blocking a major road because the UN had been speeding and killed two of his best goats... (these are actually based on real incidents that have happened). I did well BTW...

We also had our first driving test (standard vehicle). One of the parts of the test was testing your parallel parking skills... I laughed at the amount of space they used... When asked why I was laughing I said bvecause I am from Toronto... We would NEVER get that much space and if we did it would have a bus parked in it..LOL

Yeh.. I passed!

Friday night Todd joined me in Kingston and we went out with the guys to a Pub..can't remember the name... It wasn't to bad... dinner and drinks.. bumped into an old friend Brian at the pub and he and his GF took us to a club called The JOY Club while the rest of my course mates went to some westren bar... WE had a great time as there was a Cuban festival party going on!! Loads of ppl and great music! My course mates had a shit time at a shit bar that had the ugliest people in it!! LOL

Anyhoot... I am off to OTTAWA for the weekend.

Week 1 - Complete

Well I have finished my first week of UNMO training. The week consisted of DEATH by Powerpoint. We have learned a lot of the basics of Military Observer (Mil Obs) work and functions.

The staff are from a variety of backgrounds including 5 internationals. The officer staff are from Denmark, Sweeden, Pakistan, Mali (Africa), Mongolia and of course 3 from Canada.

The students: 25 of us including 2 from Mali, Brazil, Kirgyzstan, Bosnia. The CF students are Captains, Majors and Lt Col's. They represent Singals, Medical, Lawers, Infantry, Armoured, Navy, and Air Force.

A very diverse group!!

This week we did practical Communications and navigation. We also learned about handling secret information, Observation, reporting, driving, diversity and patrolling.

I am heading home for the weekend,...