“No, no, we cannot drop this boy here. We are too far. We will take him back.” I’m insisting. Moses, our temporary driver from Uganda, is smiling at my words in a bemused way that is not mocking, as if to say, “Whatever you say.” The boy appears to be about 12 years old. I can tell from the horizontal scars lines across his wide forehead that he is a member of the Nuer tribe. “The boy should be in school,” I say to no one in particular. Instead, he is selling gasoline – a translucent orange liquid beaming beautiful in the bright sun – from clear, plastic recycled soda bottles. Moses has run out of gas, a situation that wouldn’t normally be a problem with the number of freelance gasoline salesmen on the roadside. I have no local currency on me, however, and the boy doesn’t recognize the $5 bill I give him. Our only choice is to take him with us to Customs Market where Lulu, our logistician from Ethiopia, is purchasing a bicycle for our new cook. Lulu is retrieved, the boy is paid in local currency, and Moses is ready to take us home. But the boy. We have brought him four kilometers, by my estimate. He’s eking out a living, for his family no doubt, selling gasoline from the roadside. The least we can do is take him back to his sales point. The boy, who would not have thought twice about being dropped at the market, smiles widely from the back seat, thrilled at the rare chance to ride in a vehicle.
We push through the market, drafting behind a herd of long-horned cows that has no intention of yielding. All of humanity is here. Buses filled with people traveling to and from Uganda and Kenya. Cars honking out messages of urgency. Woven grass mats piled as high as a building, waiting for purchase. Smiling women peeling and selling candy-sweet pineapple from bed sheets spread on the ground. Tall, sunglassed, shirtless men decorated in white ashes, each carrying a long switch. Knots of men playing dominoes under a lone tree.
We’re in Juba, the “capital” of South Sudan. It’s been my home for one week now and will be for three months coming – perhaps more, depending on my fate. I have been transferred from lovely little Yambio to our new country office. Juba is proving to be exactly as it had been described – hot, dusty, unpleasant, and outrageously expensive. But, as South Sudan begins to shift from emergency mode to recovery mode, it’s vital for us to have an office in this city. All the state government bureaus are here, as are all the United Nations agencies and, at last count, 110 NGOs. With more UN vehicles than cattle on the road, this place is more the headquarters of a massive humanitarian relief effort than a Sudanese city.
Moses drops me at UNOCHA. By virtue of having received little to no sleep the prior evening, I am blessed by our country director’s suggestion to sleep in a rented tent. Our new IMC house/office (hoffice, as I call it), with its whimsically painted courtyard and ceramic tiles floors, will be beautiful and comfortable, once established. But for now it is nothing more than a flop house. We are sleeping on mattresses on the floor, getting comfortable seeing our coworkers in their pajamas, keeping our fingers crossed that there’s enough water in the storage containers that feed our showers and sinks, and running a generator as noisy as a jet plane from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. to fuel the electric ceiling fans. Without fans, the heat is unbearable. Temperatures regularly exceed 100 degrees during the day. Once the generator is put to rest each evening, I drag my mattress outside to our veranda for the night’s sleep. Last night, the neighbor’s tape-recorded Ugandan music, blaring throughout the neighborhood, kept me awake and staring at the stars through my jerry-rigged mosquito net. Only the 6:15 a.m. call to prayer from a nearby mosque convinced him to call it a morning.
The tent at UNOCHA, complete with an electric fan and laundry service, is a tremendous bargain at around $40 a night. By comparison, the shipping containers, converted to living spaces for ex-patriots, near our house go for $110 a night; meals are extra at $35 a day. We are living in a false economy. All goods for sale in South Sudan are trucked in from Uganda or Kenya; there are few production facilities here. Little of the money ex-pats and NGOs spend in Juba stays in South Sudan. And many of the Africans employed by them in Juba as drivers, cooks, and guards are Sudanese. This is the capital and there are the amenities of such – a university, several radio stations, public transportation, a cell phone network, a pizza restaurant, and an electrical system that occasionally works. But the lack of development, a result of the 20-year civil war, is more evident in Juba than in Tambura and Yambio, perhaps because it lies in sharp contrast to the culture of aid work -- our air conditioned container units, our food buffets, our wireless internet connections and satellite telephones, and our four-wheel drive vehicles. In Juba there are homeless people – homeless in a country where most living structures are made of nothing more than mud and grass. I was not aware of any homeless in Yambio and Tambura. Here there are substantial piles of rotting garbage and crumbling brick homes hinting at the days of colonialism. In Yambio the garbage, for the most part, is contained to the market. Despite being a capital city, Juba demonstrates that Sudan is far from meeting human development standards related to basic needs, health care, education, and gender equity. Having never been in any African country other than Sudan, I cannot compare. My colleagues assure me that this place is like no other on this continent.
Lulu wipes sweat from his brow as he looks for matches to light the night’s candles. “It’s like going back to the beginning of time,” he says.
We push through the market, drafting behind a herd of long-horned cows that has no intention of yielding. All of humanity is here. Buses filled with people traveling to and from Uganda and Kenya. Cars honking out messages of urgency. Woven grass mats piled as high as a building, waiting for purchase. Smiling women peeling and selling candy-sweet pineapple from bed sheets spread on the ground. Tall, sunglassed, shirtless men decorated in white ashes, each carrying a long switch. Knots of men playing dominoes under a lone tree.
We’re in Juba, the “capital” of South Sudan. It’s been my home for one week now and will be for three months coming – perhaps more, depending on my fate. I have been transferred from lovely little Yambio to our new country office. Juba is proving to be exactly as it had been described – hot, dusty, unpleasant, and outrageously expensive. But, as South Sudan begins to shift from emergency mode to recovery mode, it’s vital for us to have an office in this city. All the state government bureaus are here, as are all the United Nations agencies and, at last count, 110 NGOs. With more UN vehicles than cattle on the road, this place is more the headquarters of a massive humanitarian relief effort than a Sudanese city.
Moses drops me at UNOCHA. By virtue of having received little to no sleep the prior evening, I am blessed by our country director’s suggestion to sleep in a rented tent. Our new IMC house/office (hoffice, as I call it), with its whimsically painted courtyard and ceramic tiles floors, will be beautiful and comfortable, once established. But for now it is nothing more than a flop house. We are sleeping on mattresses on the floor, getting comfortable seeing our coworkers in their pajamas, keeping our fingers crossed that there’s enough water in the storage containers that feed our showers and sinks, and running a generator as noisy as a jet plane from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. to fuel the electric ceiling fans. Without fans, the heat is unbearable. Temperatures regularly exceed 100 degrees during the day. Once the generator is put to rest each evening, I drag my mattress outside to our veranda for the night’s sleep. Last night, the neighbor’s tape-recorded Ugandan music, blaring throughout the neighborhood, kept me awake and staring at the stars through my jerry-rigged mosquito net. Only the 6:15 a.m. call to prayer from a nearby mosque convinced him to call it a morning.
The tent at UNOCHA, complete with an electric fan and laundry service, is a tremendous bargain at around $40 a night. By comparison, the shipping containers, converted to living spaces for ex-patriots, near our house go for $110 a night; meals are extra at $35 a day. We are living in a false economy. All goods for sale in South Sudan are trucked in from Uganda or Kenya; there are few production facilities here. Little of the money ex-pats and NGOs spend in Juba stays in South Sudan. And many of the Africans employed by them in Juba as drivers, cooks, and guards are Sudanese. This is the capital and there are the amenities of such – a university, several radio stations, public transportation, a cell phone network, a pizza restaurant, and an electrical system that occasionally works. But the lack of development, a result of the 20-year civil war, is more evident in Juba than in Tambura and Yambio, perhaps because it lies in sharp contrast to the culture of aid work -- our air conditioned container units, our food buffets, our wireless internet connections and satellite telephones, and our four-wheel drive vehicles. In Juba there are homeless people – homeless in a country where most living structures are made of nothing more than mud and grass. I was not aware of any homeless in Yambio and Tambura. Here there are substantial piles of rotting garbage and crumbling brick homes hinting at the days of colonialism. In Yambio the garbage, for the most part, is contained to the market. Despite being a capital city, Juba demonstrates that Sudan is far from meeting human development standards related to basic needs, health care, education, and gender equity. Having never been in any African country other than Sudan, I cannot compare. My colleagues assure me that this place is like no other on this continent.
Lulu wipes sweat from his brow as he looks for matches to light the night’s candles. “It’s like going back to the beginning of time,” he says.
******
Now that I'm in the big city, I have regular access to the Internet and therefore can manage my own blog. My sweet brother-in-law Rick was acting as blog master previously. However, being as challenged as I am, I cannot determine how to manage the layout of the photos or how to add captions. So, I'll tell you about them here. The first photo shows the juxtoposition of the jets on the runway next to the mud hut tukuls. The second is the exterior of our new home in Juba. The third is the street outside our home.
