South Sudan: The travel book to South Sudan is not yet written. South Sudan’s relentless SPLA (Sudan People’s Liberation Army) and Khartoum signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005 after more than two decades of particularly brutal civil war, tenuously ending the longest civil war in Africa’s recorded history. Today, travel into South Sudan is a reality. But it certainly isn’t easy. In June of 2006, after gaining the confidence of living in Cairo for a few years, I traveled across the scorching Sudanese Sahara by un-air-conditioned train, with the intention of taking a barge up the White Nile to the South Sudan city of Malakal. I made it by bus as far as Kosti, a small dusty rural town with just one soccer pitch, a few hours south of Khartoum. Every day the perspiring and encouraging officials at the dock told me, “buukara …†– literally ‘tomorrow’ in Arabic But I sat on the docks of Kosti for weeks, waiting for the barge to depart before I altogether abandoned that trip. January of this year, I flew through Khartoum from Cairo to Juba, the capital of South Sudan. One of the challenges of traveling in Sudan is money. You must bring cash. There are no international bank machines. Credit card stickers, advertised in Khartoum’s gold and silver shops, are merely a red herring to distract the buyer from the reality of intense international economic sanctions. Most banks change money in Khartoum, but aggressive money-changers with their banquet tables full of foreign currencies, are the only method elsewhere. US greenbacks are most recognized currency changed to the newly-issued Sudanese pounds. Another challenge to traveling Sudan lay in acquiring the tedious and seemingly endless travel permits. It’s complicated: Arab nationals are able to fly into Khartoum and casually pick-up a visa in the airport. Canadians must first get a letter of introduction from their embassy – $50 CDN in Cairo, and then pay $100 USD cash at the Sudanese embassy in for the visa. The wait for the visa ranges between hours and weeks. An Israeli entry permit stamped in your passport will bar you from attaining a Sudani visa altogether. I have friends in Khartoum, which is why I entered from the north, and too, a friend in Khartoum Central Security who walked me through the elephantine pace of obtaining travel permits to South Sudan. Simply stated, “if you’re not with Big Oil, a military apparatus, or an aid organization, then why do you want to go into the south?—there is nothing there.†And there truly is nothing there. No hospitals, postal system, schools or general infrastructure. I saw one road being paved in the African savannah capital of Juba, South Sudan. Aid organizations and Big Oil are there—they buy-up the few hotels to house their employees. I stayed at Global Camp, near Souk al-Munuki, which is a tent camp with three decent meals, laundry services and showers. They also have a bar serving watery Ugandan and Kenyan beers Pilsner and Bell, along with the Sudani beer, Nile. The rate including meals was $100 USD per night. Fuel shortages, due to the Kenyan border closing this year, meant irregular electricity supplied by generator—curiously, they had no shortages when it came to supplying television and satellite dishes to watch the African Cup soccer games at night. It wasn’t until I arrived in Juba that I learned you can enter the semi-autonomous region of South Sudan more easily through Kampala, Nairobi and Addis Abba. But a travel permit into South Sudan, issued by the Government of South Sudan, will not allow you to go into the north. What is there to do in Juba? I traveled around by boda-boda, which is a small cc motorcycle the local young men daringly drive down Juba’s gravel and clay roads. I’m told the term originated in nearby Uganda when the motorcycle taxi drivers would shout “border-border†(‘boda-boda’). The young men, their black African faces red with road dust, tore down the clay roads of Juba, with me on the back of their motorbikes – dashing around the large white air-conditioned Toyota SUVs the UN workers use to muscle their way around Africa. A short boda-boda trip could result in a traffic accident, several stops to ask directions, and a mouth full of red dust, or a slosh through a mud puddle, but I was not interested in packing myself into one of the local irregular mini-buses to get around town. Jebel Kujur – a black granite outcropping near the road to Yei is worth the trek – where you will see Rock City. There, locals climb the small mountain and chisel boulders, which they roll down to others whom break, manually by sledge-hammer, the heavy rock into smaller rocks for construction. The smaller rocks are then hand-pulverized into gravel by Juba’s teeming war widows whom have no other way to make a living. All this, all day, in the relentless Sub-Saharan sun and scorching heat. As I walked to Jebel Kujur from Souk el-Munuki, hoards of small children would run up to the edge of their huts and gleefully shout ‘good morning – good morning’, no matter what time of day. Rarely did a local approach me and ask for money without offering a service. There are several restaurants and bars in Juba. Queen of Sheba and the White Nile Club were regular stops for me, where I met aid workers all too happy to ask what I was doing in Juba on holiday—sarcasm, the poor-man’s humor, is popular among aid workers. Barbequed goat is a local specialty – I found goat meat tough and salty, as I listened to nefarious stories about a mysterious tribe living on a nearby island in the White Nile, who were rumored snatch local children because all the tribe members were syphilitic and unable to procreate. I heard many stories. And I was warned never to approach the rebel SPLA soldiers, now the local police force, since they had known nothing but guerrilla warfare for the last two decades and now have difficulty assimilating in the current tenuous peace-time. But one day, when I was walking the roads and taking photographs, I met an SPLA soldier, James. James was my age, about 40, and had been taken by the SPLA when he was a small boy and pressed into service. It was his father’s regiment that came, took him and taught him to kill. I did not ask James questions, at the risk of appearing invasive. As we walked the dusty roads of Juba, at his in his steady pace and in the blistering African sun, I listened to his story. James was on the notorious death march, documented in the film God Grew Tired of Us, where he and other young Sudanese boys walked a thousand miles to flee the genocide. He spoke of drinking urine to stay alive. He spoke of watching others die. He spoke of many disturbing things which painted horrific images, but never did the tone of his voice display emotion. We walked on for quite some time, which was nothing new to James, though, I repeatedly had to stop at kiosks and buy water, since I was on the verge of collapse from dehydration and heat exhaustion. James took me down a back road to one of the small groupings of traditional round African huts with thatched roof. This was his brother’s home, whom James proudly introduced. The brother wore a security uniform for a local UN detachment and was delighted to meet a tourist – my presence to him perhaps indicated the possibility that over two decades of gruesome civil war may finally be over. An entire generation in South Sudan has known nothing but bombing raids, landmines, helicopter gunships and rolling tanks. Since there was no postal system in Juba at the time I wrote this article, I mailed the photos of James and his brother to a relative’s address in Kampala – I don’t know if they ever got them. * Darfur, a western Sudanese province the size of Texas, is not generally considered part of the Christian/animist Black African conflict in South Sudan. The current problems in Darfur, though sincerely serious, are unrelated to the civil war between the north and south. **Pete Willows, a Canadian, has lived and worked as a freelance writer and editor in New Zealand, America, Canada and Africa. He now resides in Toronto with his family. BM
