Juba is an expensive place to live. This is mostly because it runs on a sort of emergency economy; industry has never been able to develop, and if it did it got shelled in the war, so if you buy something it came from Khartoum or Uganda.
Even fruit gets imported, which is a ridiculous situation in a country that is incredibly hot and wet - lovely weather if you're a pineapple you'd imagine. Agriculture here stopped to allow the war to go on, and people have never got out of the subsistence mentality.
I discussed this with Anuol, our lawyer and coincidentally a friend of a friend in London. (He went to law school in Newcastle and his accent has to be heard to be believed; he is the only Sudanese I know who says 'aye' instead of 'yes').
Anyway, we discussed the lack of entrepreneurship in South Sudan, and the fact that planning ahead, even in the fairly short term, is mostly absent from the national psyche. I wondered if it was due to the war, living each day as it comes as it may be your last. He said no man, it's a lack of education. People who have been to university plan ahead better due to the experience of spending their whole loan in fresher's week and surviving on super noodles for the next 10 weeks.
That's a valuable lesson, even if it's the only one you get.
I recently met a Dutch guy in Addis who was on his way to Juba. Being Dutch, his two passions were irrigation and volleyball (I'm not making this up). He was being contracted to teach modern commercial farming methods to a group of Juba farmers. If they understood his accent then they are set to make a killing because as far as I can see the most sophisticated farming method employed in these parts is kicking a mango tree until something falls out of it.
Even fruit gets imported, which is a ridiculous situation in a country that is incredibly hot and wet - lovely weather if you're a pineapple you'd imagine. Agriculture here stopped to allow the war to go on, and people have never got out of the subsistence mentality.
I discussed this with Anuol, our lawyer and coincidentally a friend of a friend in London. (He went to law school in Newcastle and his accent has to be heard to be believed; he is the only Sudanese I know who says 'aye' instead of 'yes').
Anyway, we discussed the lack of entrepreneurship in South Sudan, and the fact that planning ahead, even in the fairly short term, is mostly absent from the national psyche. I wondered if it was due to the war, living each day as it comes as it may be your last. He said no man, it's a lack of education. People who have been to university plan ahead better due to the experience of spending their whole loan in fresher's week and surviving on super noodles for the next 10 weeks.
That's a valuable lesson, even if it's the only one you get.
I recently met a Dutch guy in Addis who was on his way to Juba. Being Dutch, his two passions were irrigation and volleyball (I'm not making this up). He was being contracted to teach modern commercial farming methods to a group of Juba farmers. If they understood his accent then they are set to make a killing because as far as I can see the most sophisticated farming method employed in these parts is kicking a mango tree until something falls out of it.
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| The view from my bedroom in Juba: worth kicking |
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