Moses, our driver, is speeding us along to work down the newly created, impossibly wide dirt road. It will eventually be paved, bringing the grand total of blacktopped roads in Juba to two, and subsequently becoming, I fear, a road of death due to the fact that the crazy drivers will only now go faster. We swiftly pass a caravan of slow-moving vehicles. Moses says the vehicles are from Khartoum. Oh, yes, the returnees, I say, thinking that I’d read somewhere that returnees were coming from the north this week. One van full of clapping singing people seemed to confirm my hypothesis. But as we hone in on the lead vehicle I see that it is anything but a returning refugee jubilation. A handful of people are crowded around a wooden coffin draped in white in the back of a pickup bed. This evening on the way home, just around the corner from our house, I hear women ululating -- an equal opportunity utterance marking both joy and sorrow. Another coffin being loaded into another pickup truck. I can’t help but wonder how they died, how old they were, whether they would have died of the same cause had they been in a developed country.
***
Never try to make poor-man’s Thai food. Our cook is away, but being as I’d only been able to cook one meal for myself my entire time in South Sudan, I relish the idea of making a simple dinner. What to make? We are limited to dried goods and a few random vegetables. I decide on macaroni noodles. But, I want vegetables and protein in some sort of effort to have a balanced diet, so I mix the noodles with sliced cucumbers and peanut butter. Do not attempt this in your own home, no matter how desperate you may be.
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South Sudan: links of interest
Miranda