Over Easter weekend, a few of us went on safari in Nimule, on the Ugandan border. Like everything else in Sudan, this was a strange experience.
It takes about four hours to get to Nimule. There is an average of three deaths on the road every day, probably because it is a good road and therefore an unusual driving experience for most of its users. We rescued a family who had rolled their car and drove them to the next town; the father was so keen to distribute business cards to his rescuers that I'm pretty sure this is a stunt he pulls every day.
A night out in Nimule involved drinks in a bar called Operation Jungle Storm, food in a restaurant with dodo on its menu (no idea) and a visit to a hip hop concert. We were lucky enough to meet members from one of Nimule's gangs, the Holy Guns (see photo). One of our number introduced us as the Juba Jews, possibly the least cool sounding crew of all time.
Safari in South Sudan involves wandering on foot with a guide wearing camouflage and carrying an AK47 (our guide promised that if we saw any animals he would shoot them). We spent some hours in the heat and saw a few warthogs, antelopes and half a buffalo, although later examination of photos revealed that we also may have seen Bigfoot. We also got stuck in a swamp and swam in a side project of the Nile, where we hurled giant weeds at each other. An elephant had killed a hippo there earlier that day, and people were gleefully carrying its skin off to dry out and sell as a tasty snack.
At dusk we returned to the river and were rewarded with sightings of hippos in the water a few feet away, and we also had a standoff with a herd of elephants, who were on the far side of the river and wouldn't cross it until we'd gone.
There was a group of Germans staying at our hotel, who were allocated the rooms we thought we'd booked, ate the dinner we pre-ordered and made it to the park an hour before us; if they'd seen any animals before we got there they presumably would have shot them.
The health and safety people haven't made it as far as Nimule, which makes the whole safari experience a lot more fun. We were also fortunate to have a talisman in our midst, one of my colleagues who is so sickness and injury prone that he picked up a parasite in Colombia and was invited by doctors to name it as no one else has ever had it. Safe in the knowledge that if anyone got eaten it would be him, we were free to roam close to rabid buffalo and make crude gestures at rogue elephants. It was a miracle he made it home without mishap, although when he was getting out of the car in Juba the driver drove off and made a good fist at running him over, which would have been a fitting end to the weekend.
It takes about four hours to get to Nimule. There is an average of three deaths on the road every day, probably because it is a good road and therefore an unusual driving experience for most of its users. We rescued a family who had rolled their car and drove them to the next town; the father was so keen to distribute business cards to his rescuers that I'm pretty sure this is a stunt he pulls every day.
A night out in Nimule involved drinks in a bar called Operation Jungle Storm, food in a restaurant with dodo on its menu (no idea) and a visit to a hip hop concert. We were lucky enough to meet members from one of Nimule's gangs, the Holy Guns (see photo). One of our number introduced us as the Juba Jews, possibly the least cool sounding crew of all time.
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| Arby from the Holy Guns, and a Member of the Juba Jews |
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| Holy Guns and Juba Jews at peace
We brought a driver from Juba with us, and in the morning there was no sign of him. We broke into his room and it was unslept in. He appeared at ten to nine, mumbling incoherently. When he turned to battle with the handle to his room, a patch of mud was visible on the back of his head, the classic sign of a night in a ditch. After two minutes in his room he emerged in exactly the same state, but with a fresh T shirt on back to front, and off we went.
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Safari in South Sudan involves wandering on foot with a guide wearing camouflage and carrying an AK47 (our guide promised that if we saw any animals he would shoot them). We spent some hours in the heat and saw a few warthogs, antelopes and half a buffalo, although later examination of photos revealed that we also may have seen Bigfoot. We also got stuck in a swamp and swam in a side project of the Nile, where we hurled giant weeds at each other. An elephant had killed a hippo there earlier that day, and people were gleefully carrying its skin off to dry out and sell as a tasty snack.
At dusk we returned to the river and were rewarded with sightings of hippos in the water a few feet away, and we also had a standoff with a herd of elephants, who were on the far side of the river and wouldn't cross it until we'd gone.
There was a group of Germans staying at our hotel, who were allocated the rooms we thought we'd booked, ate the dinner we pre-ordered and made it to the park an hour before us; if they'd seen any animals before we got there they presumably would have shot them.
The health and safety people haven't made it as far as Nimule, which makes the whole safari experience a lot more fun. We were also fortunate to have a talisman in our midst, one of my colleagues who is so sickness and injury prone that he picked up a parasite in Colombia and was invited by doctors to name it as no one else has ever had it. Safe in the knowledge that if anyone got eaten it would be him, we were free to roam close to rabid buffalo and make crude gestures at rogue elephants. It was a miracle he made it home without mishap, although when he was getting out of the car in Juba the driver drove off and made a good fist at running him over, which would have been a fitting end to the weekend.
Love this description. Nothing has changed in the past year and a half!!! I wonder if you paid as much as we did. I'm going to write a bit about my trip but I think your writing is more humourous than mine.
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