Safari South Sudan

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.

Arby from the Holy Guns, and a Member of the Juba Jews

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.

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.

Orphanage

My football team practices two evenings a week on a little field at the Living Waters orphanage in Juba.  This is pretty good, although there are a few hazards.  There is a low wall at one end behind which lives the park keeper from comics from the sixties, so balls only go over in one direction and are presumably punctured with the spike used for picking up leaves.  There is a very old and sick alsatian dog that staggers about the compound and often falls into a coma on the edge of the six yard box.  And we have found all sorts of strange things in the long grass; transistor radios, bits of glass and a kitten have all been held aloft with a cry.

The presence of the orphanage is useful as there is a never-ending supply of orphans who can be called upon to make up the numbers on either team or tossed over the wall on a fruitless ball hunt.

The Danish Refugee Council funds a workshop at the orphanage where the boys stitch leather footballs and volleyballs, and these are sold to local traders.  The graduation of 20 boys was a couple of days ago, and two of us from the team were honoured guests at the ceremony.  This was an amusing occasion; the team captain's mobile phone rang with the ring tone of the Jam's Town Called Malice while the local pastor was opening in prayer, and somebody rode a motorbike very close to the marquee and revved it while he watched (and drowned out) proceedings.  All of the boys were given certificates and we clapped them up to the stage.  One boy was wearing a huge golden medallion, which is not in keeping with the required orphan's uniform (think Oliver!).

Prizegiving

Graduates and honoured guests.  Note man with eyepatch.  He had a huge scar on his face, and spends his life traveling around and education children on road safety, presumably based on experience

Another project at Living Waters is the bakery, which turns out delicious bread and cakes.  The guests were given cakes and they were indeed delicious; mine had a maggot in it but it was only a small one and it was dead.

We are told that the leather workshop has ambitious plans - next on the production line will be belts, wallets and the menu holders for local restaurant the Queen of Sheba.  We were invited to inspect a selection of prototypes, which included a belt with 'God is Grateful' emblazoned on it.  My suspicions were aroused that the wallets were not made by the orphans of Living Waters, Juba, as they had 'Made in Ethiopia' printed inside, but I guess they were examples of what is to come.

Swimming

Life in Juba is tiring, hot and dirty, so there's nothing like a visit to a swimming pool to take the edge off.

Your choice is limited to two.  The Acacia Hotel offers a 15 metre long pool filled with a liquid the colour of lemon squash, a mostly Western clientele and a tame Dik-Dik that sniffs around your bag and eats the apple you were saving for after your swim.  The pool is busy but can usually be emptied by some vigorous bombing and ducking.  If you have a ball you can throw at people then so much the better.

The Jebel Lodge pool is more of an African hangout and is usually filled half with lemon squash and half with people.  None of the tactics that served us well at Acacia worked here and it was a hazardous place as most of the swimmers were doing the backstroke, swimming underwater or with their eyes shut.  We did witness some of the worst diving imaginable; in this photo I demonstrate how it's done.

Textbook

The greatest pleasure from the pool is derived not from the exercise but from the temperature of the water.  In fact, a paddling pool is a serviceable alternative, and people with those in their back gardens are popular people.  I would imagine that the key demographics for their manufacturers are five year olds and aid workers.

The other good thing about going to the pool is that it can make you forget you are in Juba, a necessary state every now and then (swallow enough water and you can forget more or less everything).  Having said that, one of my colleagues returned to London from his deployment and showed his photos to his friends, who remarked that it looked more like he'd been on a boozy holiday than on a life-saving mission to a fragile state.

Malualkon

I'm writing in the village of Malualkon, not far from the border with the North and in the heart of Dinkaland.  Yesterday some tiny clouds appeared in the sky and were greeted like long-lost friends by the team here, desperate for some rain to cool the nights and wash the cars, buildings and children.

When the rains come they will long for the dry season, as most of the compound will turn into a lake, the tukuls will flood and the snakes will increase in number and curiosity.  At the moment the most notable thing about the compound is the group of huge predatory birds (kites maybe) that sit patiently on the trees, waiting to swoop at us at mealtimes and go for bits of meat on forks.  I'm pleased to report that the bald head of the area programme manager is an even more tempting target, so when he's around it acts as something of a lightning conductor, keeping the rest of us attack-free.

Today we are confined to barracks as the Joint Integrated Unit of the North and South armies is demobilising in this area so no one is allowed out as huts are searched for weapons.  This was where the second civil war ignited in the early eighties, as Arab raiding parties took half of what was in the villages and burnt the rest.  Yesterday I met a guy who was abducted from here as a small child and brought up in Khartoum; he returned two months ago and was reunited with his mother.  They couldn't chat though as he didn't speak a word of Dinka.

We have some excellent education and livelihoods programmes here.  We are running teacher training at the moment, and yesterday I handed out per diem payments to the 150 trainees.  They stand in line for an hour, sign their name and take their money, although a lot of them seemed happy to stand in line, sign their name and then try and walk off without taking their payment.  One lady didn't show up, and after 6 weeks of perfect attendance she has missed the whole of this week.  Her excuse?  Turns out she had a baby at the weekend.  Maybe there is hope for South Sudan after all.

Queueing for per diems

Fruit

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.

The view from my bedroom in Juba: worth kicking

Cows

The two main tribes of South Sudan are the Dinka and the Nuer.  They both love their cows.  Complimenting a Dinka's cow is like complimenting an Englishman's new car; it is expected.

These Dinka and the Nuer don't really get on (cf. the English and the Scots, Americans and Canadians etc) and a Dinka likes nothing better than nicking cattle off his Nuer neighbour, which as you can imagine winds him up up something rotten.

They don't tend to eat their prize cows, although they might sacrifice one on a special occasion like a wedding, a funeral or Superbowl Sunday.  They don't even drink their milk much; they just like making them look pretty in a kind of giant version of My Little Pony.  I'm told that some even purse their lips and blow up the cow's bottom in the believe that this will improve the calibre of its milk, although if I've tasted the result I can't say I've been impressed.  You'd be amazed at how hard it is to get fresh milk in this land of cattle.

Anyway, cows are important as a measure of a man's wealth.  If I had a lot of cows, my neighbours would respect me and chicks would dig me.  I wouldn't be able to get married until I could provide a decent number towards the total heads of cattle that my male relatives put together as a bride price.

This bride price of course means that girl babies are useful as money spinners a few years down the line, all the more so if they turn out to be easy on the eye.  This makes a novel and pleasing change from the more popular idea in the developing world that it's better to have boys than girls as they are more effective water carriers and more likely to be able to give mum and dad the odd handout in their dotage.

Cows in the road.  Rule one: don't run the damn things over.

Ethiopia

Sorry for the long silence; I've been on R&R in Ethiopia, land of stunning canyons, beautiful churches and terrible internet connections.

Colleagues from Juba put me in touch with a Man who Can in Addis, and he furnished me with a landcruiser, piloted by a charming Tigrain who claimed to speak English.  It took travelling buddy Chris and me half a day to discover that he responded to all questions with the word 'yes', and a further minute to learn the extent of his English.  Getting him to stop the car for a photo op was like halting a naughty pony, with frantic whistles and clucks from the back seat eventually doing the trick a mile down the road.

We have seen the monasteries of Lake Tana, the castles of Gondar, the churches of Lalibela and the nightclubs of Addis, and been hounded by tenacious hawkers and sticky children in all four.

High quality paintings on the walls of monasteries

Devil not enjoying himself

Ultimately a disappointing experience

In Bahir Dar we met the monk on the front cover of the Bradt Ethiopia guide (5th ed); I suspect his life has been made a misery by tourists pointing this out to him, and he must be looking forward to the publication of the 6th edition.  We also met some Israelis and Americans (good job we didn't run into any Muslims) and went to a bar that on close inspection turned out also to be a brothel.

A highlight was watching Arsenal's European Cup tie with Barcelona with 200 other people in Lalibela in a room the size of my bedroom.  When Arsenal scored the tin roof came off.  People waved their shirts around their heads and sang a song in Amharic, translated roughly as 'silence to the jealous man', a pleasing alternative to 'you only sing when you're winning.'

Sports Bar