Hibernation and evacuation

Security continues to be the watchword.  I'm very proud to report that I have now ticked off the bit on every boy's wish list that says that at some point his job should require him to have a UHF radio, into which he must mutter oaths involving Charlie and Tango.  I can say with absolute certainty that if disaster strikes I will forget every word in the phonetic alphabet.

If it all kicks off, we will hibernate.  This is exactly as it sounds - shut your doors and don't come out until you get a phone call from the security officer, no doubt sounding disappointed that the shooting has stopped.  Guesthouses are equipped with hibernation kits, which contain essentials: water purifying tabs, rice, tinned fish and vegetables, high energy biscuits and condoms.  These are useful for holding water and are not intended for recreational purposes.  You can be assured that stories are legion of hibernating colleagues believing themselves to be at death's door but later sheepishly emerging from the wreckage wishing they'd just used the condom for its secondary purpose.

Hibernation kits are a good idea, but these have the habit of being raided by residents for emergency snacks during peacetime.  The kit in one of our guesthouses currently contains a tube of Pringles and a bottle of olive oil.

If things get tasty enough then we put our enormously complicated evacuation plan into action.  We each have a grab bag, that lives by the door in your room and is full of essentials for fleeing to the airstrip.  Mine has two tennis balls in it for some reason.  One of my colleagues claims to have a bottle of Bombay Sapphire in hers.  I'm not sure which planes we will be fleeing on, as there never seem to be any at the airport when I go past and presumably we are not the only NGO who have hit on the idea of getting out if Juba turns into toast.

Counting votes

The voting's over, and we wait for the results.  African vote-counting tends to result in a majority for the incumbent despot of several times the population of the country, but here there is only one outcome that anyone will accept.  South Sudan has been through the wringer for this one, and to prevent secession it's going to take more than a few sensible fools who trust the present government of the north more than the guerilla-run pretender to its crown.

The turnout was way higher than the 60% required to ratify the result, although the queues tailed off disappointingly towards the end of the week.  Nobody was allowed the day off work to vote, a ploy by the government to boost the queues on the opening sunday for the world's media and its wide angle lenses.

In Juba the tripod-wielders have been denied the riots they craved, although intrepid reporters around the border in the north have been rewarded by some bloodshed, mostly caused by the classic too-many-weapons-too-little-sense combo.  The region of Abyei just north of the border (on most maps) is the big problem, where the nomadic Arab Misseriya tend to be a bit too nomadic and a bit too Arab for the liking of the neighbouring Dinka.  If South Sudan appears at the wrong end of the news in coming weeks, this will be why.

Votes

Sudan has fought itself since 1955 (with brief skirmishes of peace) over whether it wants to be one big thing or two smaller things, and in the process it killed 2.5m of its people.  Today the people of the southern bit (the ones that are left anyway) vote to determine the same question.

A paper cut is nasty, but it beats stepping on a land mine.  This is the power of democracy.

For now, the question of whether a separate South Sudan is viable or preferable is irrelevant.  A nation's worth of fathers died so that their sons could cast this vote.  I have no idea what this feels like for the sons.

In the centre of Juba there is a tower with a countdown to the referendum displayed in big red digits.  On Wednesday this read "1 day, 44 hours" which tells you something about local timekeeping and technology.  Zero hour, and time to get in line, is 8am local time.  I'll be taking my camera.

Security

The Referendum begins on Sunday.  No one has any idea whatsoever of what is going to happen; the UN has helpfully predicted that it will be something between someone getting a party popper in the eye and 4.3m people displaced by conflict.

The UN curfew is still at 1am, and walking after dark is forbidden, so when the pubs shut the town seethes with white landcruisers delivering humanitarians to their homes.  Our security officer is in his element, issuing terrible warnings about everything under the sun.  There is a security officer at a different programme who is notorious for having been mugged more than anybody under his care, but ours is the business, Zimbabwean, never happier than when shepherding fearful Westerners in fragile states.  On new year's eve he gleefully instructed us to be indoors at midnight to avoid falling bullets.  An anarchist militia isn't the real deal if its members don't usher in the new year by firing their AK47s as one into the sky, preferably in front of a BBC news crew.

Security in fragile states is a major headache for an NGO, and questions never have easy answers.  SC sent a security consultant to Somalia in October to assess whether it would be safe to open an office there.  He was kidnapped, which was unfortunate but on the bright side it did at least provide an easy answer to a question for once.  NGOs never pay ransoms, but he was released unharmed because one of his colleagues knew the right tribal elders.  Colleagues like this are worth their weight in high protein corn/soy mix.