IT wasn't until I arrived in Juba that I learnt you can enter the semiautonomous 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 travelled around by bodaboda. Boda-bodas are small motorbike taxis 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 airconditioned Toyota SUVs the UN workers use to muscle their way around Africa. A short boda-boda trip often resulted in a traffic accident, several stops to ask directions, and a mouth full of red dust, as well as a mucky slosh through a muddy puddle, but I wasn't interested in packing myself into one of the local irregular minibuses to get around town. Jebel Kujur – a black granite outcrop near the road to Yei – is worth the trek. There, you find Rock City, where locals climb the small mountain and chisel boulders, which they roll down to others who break, manually by sledgehammer, the heavy rock into smaller rocks for construction. The smaller rocks are then hand-pulverised into gravel by Juba's teeming war widows who 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 the 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 humour, is popular among aid workers. Barbecued goat is a local speciality. I found it tough and salty, as I listened to nefarious stories about a mysterious tribe living on a nearby island in the White Nile, who were rumoured to 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 past two decades and have difficulty adapting to the current, albeit tenuous, state of peace. But one day, when I was walking the roads and taking photographs, I met an SPLA soldier, James. James was my age, about 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, while I tried to keep up with his steady pace 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 roofs. This was his brother's home, to whom James proudly introduced me. The brother wore a security uniform of a local UN detachment and was delighted to meet a tourist – my presence to him perhaps indicated the possibility that the most recent, more-than-twodecades- long instalmentofgruesome civil war might finally be over. An entire generation in South Sudan have known nothing but bombing raids, landmines, helicopter gunships and rolling tanks. Since there was no postal system in Juba at the time, I mailed the photos of James and his brother to one of their relatives in Kampala. I wonder whether they ever arrived? South Sudan's relentless Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) and Khartoumsigned the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005, tenuously ending the longest civil war (and certainly one of the most brutal) in Africa's recorded history. The SPLA have become the SPLM, the 'M' for 'Movement', as the rebel soldiers have now become a political party in Sudan, similar to Sinn Féin in Ireland. But there has been much talk of the death toll in South Sudan last year surpassing that in another troubled area of Sudan, Darfur. Sadly, further disturbances in the south indicate a potential return to war, sadly. Willows is a Canadian freelance writer, who studied at the American University in Cairo. He now resides in Toronto.
