Does Your Land Cruiser Have a Winch?

Malakal, South Sudan

It was after 17:00 when the tractor rolled up. Brown and red rusted, small wheels in front of massive ones, it was an awkward, ugly, hulking brut and it was a damned welcomed sight. She jerked to a halt and two boys in soiled blue overalls slipped effortlessly from her flanks. They looked over the defeated Land Cruiser that was sunk axle-deep in the mire. They knew immediately that what was needed could be done and that it would be easy in the doing. So then the negotiation began.

'Olivia' covered in mud after a drive through town

Six hours earlier on that sunny Saturday morning I took the Land Cruiser for a ride. I had to pick up some documents at the South Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (SSRRC) so I went north on Bravo Road then west towards the river on the UNICEF road. It was late May and it would be another month before the rainy season got underway. Still, it had rained a few days before and the waters, which at first had collected in puddles, had, through sheer persistence, penetrated and muddied the hard ground.

Passing UNICEF and continuing a few meters I encountered a bog that stretched the width of the road. It was sludge in the middle and swampy on the sides but it was only a few meters to push through. I sat pondering behind the steering wheel of the Land Cruiser. I knew it would be easy to double back and go around. It would take no time at all and i had all the time in the world. But my evil version appeared - he was dressed in a ten gallon hat and the spurs glistened at his heels, whooping, whistling, and guns blazing. I shifted into gear and pressed the accelerator.

Now, whenever there is a decision to make, it is best that, having considered on it and having made it, you throw yourself fully into the doing of it. If you come slowly into a brick wall, you will certainly be thrown back by it. But, if you gather resolve and transform that resolve into momentum, then you might just punch through.

But, me, I approached slowly, cautiously, irresolutely. The soft ground gave way on the right and the vehicle sank until the axles were buried and the left side tires were in the air. Children gathered, men paused in their conversations. I stepped down from the Land Cruiser, observed the scene - she was grounded and her weather-beaten flag dangled limply from the mast-like Codan antenna.

I looked for a lorry but the lorry drivers were either unwilling or scandalous in the fees they attempted to exact. With few other options, I called my counterpart at Malaria Consortium.

‘Hey, Chris, I’m at the corner by UNICEF and SSRRC. Does your Land Cruiser have a winch?’

He knew the place and understood the situation. When he arrived, his driver and I went to work on the rigging. Meanwhile, he observed the scene and ushered the gathering children away from the activity. Then he considered.

‘I have to call some people,’ Chris said.

Soon Richard from IRD arrived and Emmanuel from Medair, Robert and David from UNICEF, and others who I did not pay attention to or don’t now remember. When Francis from OCHA came, he displayed that tact that had facilitated a thousand Humanitarian Coordination Meetings: ‘I mean who’s the idiot that…’

We fastened the winch to the grounded vehicle. Malaria Consortium put in reverse and pulled as furiously as she could. This was the wrong way to use a winch and we knew it, and this winch was poorly maintained, so after a few stern pulls the cable splintered. I cursed, Chris shook his head, and the crowd of onlookers cackled.

We sent the driver to find a tractor and the crowd dissolved. Chris bought us cold drinks and he went for lunch and we waited.

It was 17:00 when a tractor was located and fueled and dispatched on its lumbering journey to our location. I was tired, dehydrated, and bright red from a full day’s dose of sun while taking doxycycline. The boys in the soiled, blue overalls assessed the conditions and then made an offer at 200 pounds. I said it was too much. They shrugged and ascended and began to drive away. They have me by the balls and they know it, I thought. I jogged ahead, stopped the tractor, and we settled at a still abusively high 150 pounds (USD 50).

Not the incident described but it gives a sense

Then the boys in the soiled blue overalls extracted a braided steel cable from the tractor. The cable was splintered and the end folded into an enormous knot. They do this every fucking day during the rainy season and they don’t think to buy a new winch, I thought. My humor had held through most of the day but now it had left me.

It was half an hour hunched and bended and reaching and wedging and twisting with a crowbar to fasten the steel cable to a willing part of the Land Cruiser. The tractor was fired up; it lurched; the vehicle was freed. Then another half an hour to unknot the cable where it had tightened in the pulling.

Now the vehicle was free and I paid the boys in the soiled blue overalls and lumbered off on their tractor. I drove back to the compound thinking about what a damned ridiculous day it had been. Thinking about it then, I supposed the two boys in the soiled blue overalls had well earned the 150 pounds just for the knotting and unknotting a steel cable.

Then the Rains Came

Malakal, South Sudan

When the prop jet descended out of the clouds, a broad, flat, barren land spread out in every direction as far as the eye could see. Only dirt roads and round tukols and brown river channels gave distinction to the endless scrubland.

Later we drove along the pitted road that diverges from the airport towards the United Nations base where we attended a meeting with the refugee agency. During the jolting ride, I gazed out the Land Cruiser's window and I thought, ‘Fuck - it looks like Iraq.’

Then the rains came. The barren skies became full and stiff gusts broke, rushing through the trees and rattling the window panes. At first a few drops came and then the sunshine returned. Some days later a few more came and again the threat passed. Then, finally and late in the season, the first downpour arrived.

The skies emptied in slanting sheets while the greedy earth drank until it was sick from the gorging. Where it could seep it seeped and where it could not seep it saturated and where it could not saturate it became a swampland. Weeds and tall grasses sprouted from the sides of the newly deepened trenches and from the spreading pools and the dead fields. Frogs, rats, flies, and mosquitos grew into a pestilence. At night after a rain, ten thousand nameless flying things would come out and swarm around a light source. The next morning, the light burned out, ten thousand nameless things lay dead on the ground.

Here they call rubber boots ‘gum boots’ and if you don't wear them then you walk barefoot. After a rain there is nowhere that is dry and everywhere is sticky or slippery or somehow both simultaneously. The black cotton soil - chewing gum-like after a rain - will tear a rubber sole from an old boot or snap the strap of a leather sandal, or thoroughly disfigure a fine new sneaker.

The roads muddy and then wash out. Along those stretches where there is broken tarmac, giant pools collect. You drive carefully through the soup and you keep to first gear but at the slightest acceleration the tire treads kick up a splatter that soils the pedestrians that walk single file in bare feet and rolled trousers.

Where the ground is elevated and the water cannot pool, the road becomes slick and takes the character of an ice sheet. More than occasionally you encounter a vehicle that has slid into trench or skidded until grounding itself axle-deep in a mud patch.

These, the stuck ones, always make a tragic scene. A bewildered driver, one hand on his hip and another scratching his head. He ponders over his fine machine - a champion among all-terrain vehicles. How could she be defeated by so modest a ditch or so shallow a morass?


And for these, the sadly defeated ones, often there is only the tractor.

Welcome to South Sudan

Malakal, South Sudan

I came to South Sudan at the end of April. I came with a nongovernmental aid organization and when I arrived it was still Southern Sudan, an autonomous region in the largest and one of the poorest countries in Africa.

After 17 years of civil war and then 11 years of fragile peace and then another 21 years of civil war, a so-called Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed in Nairobi in January 2005. The CPA called for a referendum to decide the south’s fate and after six years of strained coexistence, the voting was held in January 2011. The decision was, as expected, almost unanimous. Only Abyei, an oil-rich region along the border, was prevented from voting over a dispute concerning the eligibility of a certain north-leaning nomadic tribe that comes to graze its cattle for about half the year.

Border clashes with the north followed the referendum. Also, rebel militia groups went on the offensive. There was a new country coming and the rebel commanders - mostly disgruntled ex-generals - knew that this was the time to get before all was gotten. The RMGs - there were nine of them in the Malakal region - were an uncoordinated menace, often supported by the north to destabilize the south. They would appear suddenly, well armed, drive the army out, plunder what they could, and then disappear into the bush when the counterattack was made.

On 9 July, independence was declared. Salva Kiir Mayardit was declared President. What's more, he is also Chief-of-Staff of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army and Secretary General of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement. Soon after independence the north closed the trade routes to the south as leverage to secure more favorable oil concessions. Also, with fighting going on in South Kordofan, the smuggling routes have also been squeezed.

In Malakal, prices have risen and shelves have emptied. Rarely can you find canned meat or processed cheese, corn flakes and cocoa powder. Other basic commodities are scarce or have disappeared entirely: potatoes, oranges, apples, flour, and cooking fuel. With production infrastructure but no refinery capacity, diesel has more than doubled in price and petrol is now so scarce that many boats and vehicles are grounded and so expensive that it might be cheaper to cross town by Land Cruiser than by motorbike.

This has made the aid work harder but also more necessary. The organization I work for is called the American Refugee Committee International. It’s a moderate size NGO, headquartered in Minneapolis of all places, and works in nine countries mostly in Africa. My title is Field Coordinator, which is suitably modest but less accurate than ‘Head of Field Office’.

As a Field Coordinator you supervise the programs, logistics, HR, security, and the accounting. You manage the project managers; approve or reject the expenditures; procure, warehouse, and deploy equipment and materials; and coordinate these activities with donors, government agencies, and other INGOs. You hire and promote and discipline and when necessary fire. You’re the IT (non)expert, the instructor, the counselor, and the bearer of good and bad news. When you need help you request, then cajole, then finally plead to you country office and sometimes you get it but mostly it comes late or too little or not at all and still you manage. Also, when it is needed and if it is not entirely disagreeable to you, you dig trenches, install light fixtures, service the generator, and repair the motorbikes.