More on my Sudan Holiday!

Part 2 of my Sudan documentary...

I am staying in the capital city of Southern Sudan, Juba. There is no electricity, unless you have a generator, no sewerage, no running water, and no refuse collection. Instead little tanker trucks shuttle busily around town delivering water and emptying cess pits. Different trucks that is! Sadly, rubbish is dumped just out of town, in the bush, anywhere. Litter litters the streests.

This is a simple town, probably covering an area of about 15 or 20 square kilometres. A town at the very beginning of its development. On its eastern side flows a river that has been around forever; the might Nile!

Roads here are simply not meant for cars. Instead they are great as hiking trails and goat paths. Juba has probably less than 15km of tarred road in total. The cars that attempt to navigate these roads are generally brand new government issued gangster tinted Landcruisers. The rest are probably owned by all of the aid agencies in town. Despite the roads, trucks still manage to move good around this country. That is until the rainy season. Four months of rain that turns all dirt into a quagmire. Not even six wheel drive trucks are any use then! And trust me, there are such things!
Accommodation for visitors is an interesting mix of prefabricated rooms or tented camps. Somehow I have found myself in a luxury log cabin, which is basic and clean, and absolutely perfect. It does have two air conditioners which together battle to deal with the heat of the day. Just as well, I spend that time visiting all sorts of corners of this town and meeting the most interesting people.

Yesterday I met a potential Distributor from Uganda. We parked deep in a residential area and then followed a 3 metre wide road between a mixture of tin houses and shops. Goats mewed like kittens, an old woman screamed at an old man, and a radio crackled local tunes. After about 70 metres of interested stares, we turned left into another alley and then quickly right. I found myself in a little grass square bordered on all sides by the backs of tin shacks. Steve headed across the square and entered a dingy looking place. Inside was a ramshackle bar built out of scraps of wood. Scarred and lopsided it provided space for two televisions tuned to different stations. A generator blared, just out of sight, providing the power. A third television rested on a plastic chair, where two brothers wrestled with the dilemmas involved with breaking out of prison for about the sixth time! After meeting all of the patrons, it was down to business.

With business done, it was back to finding the rollercoaster between the potholes while we navigated back to the office.

I like this town. It is simple. People are friendly and peaceful. And there is a fun hill that I get to run on every day, but more of that later!

Waiting

I am sitting in an airport at Port Harcourt. Waiting. This is what is done in Africa. So far I have only been waiting for two and a half hours. It could be far worse. It does not bode well for my trip home as this is only my first flight; there are still two more to catch after this. That is if I arrive in Lagos in time for the next one. If not, the next flight back home to South Africa leaves in two days time. I do hope I make it, but then again there is no point worrying about stuff you cannot change. I am learning to go with the flow. I don’t like it though!

My book is pretty good, but I don’t want to finish it before I get on the flight. A couple of little bugs crawl across the page I am reading. Their tiny legs pumping with vigour. I squashed one but the other was too fast. There have been a lot of bugs over here. Not wild and dangerous bugs but just little things with which I don’t normally share my space. The pasta I cooked the other night came with free weevils. Big, fat ones with stubby legs. I fished some of them out of the boiling water but gave up and decided to eat them. I think they tasted just fine! My sandwich today had one of those little ones that were also on my book. After ten days in Nigeria, I did not give the little critter a second thought. It was my cheese sandwich and it tasted out of this world.

There are plenty more bugs where those came from. It certainly explains the large population of brightly coloured lizards that seem to be everywhere. These guys enjoy them too.

The electricity has died three times while I have been waiting here. Nothing much changes; the lights go out and the slowly rotating ceiling fans rotate slower and then stop. This part of the country is oil rich and yet there is no constant power supply. Something to do with corruption and power. Most of Port Harcourt has no electricity during the day. Very simply the place runs on generators and the generators run on fuel! Fuel is hard to come by. My heart breaks for the people queuing for fuel as they wait for hours. One drives past fuel stations with long lines of empty cars. Thirsty car after car, just waiting. It is pretty incomprehensible that with all of the oil, there is no oil refinery. Or at least any oil refineries that still work. Now all oil and gas is shipped off somewhere else, refined, and then imported back into the area. Words cannot describe how ridiculous this is.

No fuel means no electricity which also means no refrigeration. It is a little difficult to freeze meat without power all of time. That does not stop anyone from trying. I can only imagine the number of times in a day that it defrosts and refreezes. It does not seem to bother anyone. It bothers me! I have become an almost very good vegan for my stay here. Whilst I have thoroughly enjoyed lots of beans, some cool bugs, and plenty of pasta, I am looking forward to meat and eggs and more meat!!!

As for queues, fuel, oil, and electricity, one can only hope that sanity will prevail over greed. But it perhaps best not to hope too much or too long.....