The Time for Celebration Was Over

When the date for independence was approaching they said the new terminal would be built in time. It was to be ready to receive the dignitaries that would come from many countries to celebrate the occasion. The workers were put in shifts around the clock and they worked harder and longer and later than they had ever worked before that. when I saw them on a dry day during the rainy season some weeks before the independence they had a chinese foreman. He paced the construction site amidst the timber and the rebar and the cement blocks and shouted for them to work harder. But, as I said, that was as hard as they had ever worked or knew how to work and he was the only one that would receive a bonus if the terminal was constructed on time. I came again some few days before the independence and there were more of them and they worked still harder but the terminal was still a skeleton and, by then, they had passed the point where more men and harder work could change the equation.

View of Juba from atop Jebel hill

     I came again when I left some days after the independence when hopes were still high and flags still waved and banners still hung, but the time for celebration was over. Now it was the time for running a government, for rebuilding the petroleum rigs and the roads to them, for pacifying the tribes that stole cattle, and for breaking the rebel militias that harassed the northern border. Then the work on the terminal had slowed. The workers were fewer and their pace was less hurried.

     Now it was some months later and I arrived again. From the window of the plane that stopped beside the single runway where the staircase was rolled over, I saw that the work on the terminal was further along. The skeleton had flesh but no guts inside it and no wiring like arteries along the beams and the wall studs.

     I sat beside Sarah on the 737 that had brought us from Malakal along the northern border. It was her first time on Ethiopian Airlines and my first time on anything more than a prop jet between there and the capitol. The modern world was coming, I thought. We sat until the aisle had emptied. Then on the ground, walking to the terminal, she asked how long I thought until the airport would be on the level of Nairobi. 10-15 years is what I thought, knowing that Nairobi was not a particularly good airport.

     ‘More if they go back to war,’ I added.

     In the terminal beside the baggage counter we kissed on the cheek and she went to pass through customs and then re-board the airplane. I moved to one side where I could see between the bodies that crowded the wooden counters where the bags were manually ushered after coming out of the x-ray machine. There was as much activity in the waiting as I had ever seen anywhere. Some bags had to be checked by a soldier and every bag had an owner that shoved his way in to get at it and a commotion that was created for the shoving and because there was nothing else to do for the rest of those that still waited.

     One man was fat and squat and wore a gray suit with a pin of the country’s flag on the lapel. A tall, old army officer - probably a colonel - came over to look for his bag. He wore a green uniform and a beret with a tassel. His trousers were too short for his long, old legs and I thought that was funny. They, the officer and the squat one in the suit, bumped and the gray suit said something to the green uniform. The green uniform liked what the gray suit said and he laughed. It was too much laugh for anything clever that the gray suit could have said. The gray suit took license from this and he said something else. This time is was not so funny as the first and the laughing was muted. Soon the two discovered their bags and they went back into the crowd.

     Where they had gone then another man came to that calm spot within the commotion. He stood watching the suitcases as they came out of the x-ray machine. Another man had spotted him from a distance and the two greeted each other. They put a hand on each other’s shoulder and then they shook hands and embraced. Each held something in his hand - the one held an envelop and the other a mobile phone. As they spoke the one placed the envelop in the breast pocket of his suit jacket and the other placed the phone in the pocket of his polo shirt. I could not understand them but I figured I understood well enough what they said to one another.

     ‘Hello, brother.’

     ‘Ah, my brother, hello.’

     ‘You are most welcome.’

     ‘Thank you, brother, and you too are welcome. You are well, brother?’

     ‘Very well, very well. You are well?’

     I too am well. And your family, they are well?’

     ‘Yes, very well. Thank you, brother, and yours - they are well?’

     ‘Oh, yes, quite well. Thank you.’

     ‘You are most welcome.’

     ‘Thank you. I greet you.’

     Here or hereabouts the exchange faded out and they stood watching the bags pass through the x-ray machine. More bags had arrived and the great commotion had swelled around the baggage counter. Now they spoke no more until the one in the suit jacket identified his luggage.

     ‘Fine to see you, brother. Be well,’ he said as they shook and he went to join the commotion around the counter.

     ‘Likewise, brother. Take good care.’

It Is My Bad Policy

The Major was leaving so he invited me for dinner and drinks and to introduce me to his replacement. Another American from another organization was on mission and staying at the guesthouse so I invited him to come along.

Malakal in the evening after a rain

     The Major is with the State Department, which keeps a presence to monitor the developing situation. He stays on a large compound beside a church where several NGOs and a couple of ministers rent houses. It had been a bad, hard day as many of the recent days had been bad and hard and I was in a rubbish mood. The compound is near but we went in the vehicle because we might come back late if we started drinking.

     We pulled to the gate of the compound and I sounded the horn. The guard came out and approached the window.

     ‘It is closed,’ he said ‘You must come during business hours.’

     ‘We do not come for business. We were invited by the Major.’

     ‘You are welcome but the vehicle you leave here,’ he said.

     ‘But here is not safe for the vehicle.’

     ‘Nothing can happen here,’ he said.

     ‘Things do happen here,’ I said. ‘Right here the vehicle was broken into and the fuel was stolen.’

     ‘Here it is safe and you cannot enter with the vehicle.’

     ‘But I was invited and I have entered with the vehicle before,’ I said, which was true.

     ‘You know two ministers live here so there is a policy,’ he said.

     Often when you are a foreigner and you press them they will relent. This one gave no sign of relenting but I decided to press harder. I said I wanted to speak to the supervisor.

     ‘It is a bad policy,’ I said and I knew it was a mistake as soon as it was out.

     ‘So my policy is bad?’ he said.

     Damn, I thought, now he has taken it personally.

     ‘I don’t agree with the policy,’ I corrected but it was much too late now.

     ‘No, my policy is bad,’ he said and now it was a statement.

     It was a statement and it was a damning statement. It was the worst statement that could have been said ever and at that moment. It was a statement that you said and regretted saying as soon as you said it but knew that there was no undoing it.

     ‘Now you cannot enter,’ he said. ‘It is my bad policy.’

     'Neither me nor the vehicle?' I said.

     'No,’ he said. ‘Because it is my bad policy,'

     He repeated this several times and I tried to smooth it over but there were no words in his language or mine that could fix this now.

     I called the Major.

     ‘Hey, Major. We’re here at your gate but we can’t come in. It seems I have insulted the security guard.’

     The Major came. He is a big man, heavier and wider in the body than you would expect from looking at his face. He came and the guard told him that we may not enter because it was his bad policy.

     ‘What policy?’ said the Major.

     ‘The policy that the vehicle may not enter.’

     ‘OK, let’s speak privately a moment,’ said the Major.

     Major put his arm around the security guard and drew him into the compound. We waited and when I glanced back at the colleague that was with me I said something about two people catching each other at the end of a bad day. He smiled. He is good at withholding judgments or at least appearing to. In a few minutes the gate opened and we were allowed to pull the vehicle in.

     We parked and followed the Major to his house at the far end of the compound.

     'Jesus, man, you're causing me a lot of fucking grief tonight,' he said.

     ‘Yeah,' I said. 'I’m definitely the asshole tonight.’

You Will Remember This Dust

In the dry season the wind carries the dust and you get the dust on your skin and your clothes and in your hair so that you smell of the dust. The dust smells of the town so that you also smell of the town. It is a dry, powdery, sour smell so it is not a smell that you would want for yourself or from another. But for you and for the others - those that live in huts and burn sticks and carry water in jugs from the river, those that are unwashed and unlaundered and entirely accustomed to it - for you and them it is a unifying smell. If in so many ways we are different, at least we have that much in common.

Young women and girls in the village of Hai-Salaam

     You think of all the places where there is dust and of all the places where you have been and there is dust, and you think that this must be unique among them. You think that of all the places that you will go to or go back to, you will never smell this again and you will remember the smell of this dust always.

     You will remember the smell and you will remember the rough, dry, scaly-ness of it on your arms and you hands and the sharp sting of it in your eyes and the cracking flakiness of it mixed with the sweat in your hair. You will remember the taste of it in your mouth and the sound when it grinds between your teeth and the heaviness of it in your spit. You will remember this dust and you will take the memory of it wherever you go. You will compare other dusts to your memory of this dust and you know nothing will quite be the same as it. Maybe one day you will become nostalgic for it.

On The Trail There Is No Perfection

It was dry when Mike came to Malakal. The rains had ceased a few weeks before but the land was still tall and green with grasses and it was overgrown with bush. The bushfires would come soon but not yet. This would happen when the tall grasses were no longer green and had lost their resistance. Then the villagers would burn the grasses so that they would not burn when the cattle were grazing in the fields.

Villages work in the fields a few weeks after the last rains

     Then, when there was the burning, the air would smell thickly of the smoke and the ash. The ash was like a powder, thick and hazy, heavy in the air. It would carry on the wind in fibrous strands. The ash that you did not breathe you wore on your skin and on your clothes. The ash that did not fall on you fell scattered upon the ground and collected along edges like hair clippings. If you stood in it for only a few minutes you would smell of it and, when you came out of it, you would still smell it. It would be so thick and so constant that you might think the whole country was covered in it.

     But it was not the time of the bushfires yet. When Mike came the grasses were still tall and green and well fed. Mike was a soldier and then a security contractor and now an aid worker. When he was young he rode two-stroke motorcycles. He talks of hard rides and bad falls and near misses along beaten trails through the backcountry of Alabama. Now, in older life, he still loves bikes and talking of them and he rides them plenty good enough. Some boys never grow up, they only grow older.

     At the field office we have six Honda 125cc off-road motorbikes. They ride well when they are maintained and to maintain them takes very little effort. On the day he came we had a lunch of chapati and beef at the restaurant that the Deputy Governor owns. Once fed, we drove fast and far to the outskirts of the township where the canal separates the village from the grazing lands. We followed the canal south, passing groups of children and young women that bathed in the muddy water that was left from before the dry season returned. After a few kilometers the trail diverged from the canal and disappears into tall grasses and thorny bushes.

     The town and its surroundings was once a battlefield and for a long time it was besieged. The de-miners work slowly - as you would work if you were a de-miner - and they have so much ground to cover. The safe trails are the ones where you find tire tracks or people. If you don’t see soldiers in high boots and poorly fitting uniforms or women carrying water and firewood or young boys pulling toy cars on a tether, then you know you are where you should not be. Where the villagers fear to tread, you should also.

     This trail was overgrown on either side with tall grass and bush but there were clear tire tracks and the growth between them was stunted where the underbellies of the lorries had cut them before full height.

     We drove fast, Mike pulling up ahead and leaving everything behind and me shifting into a higher gear. The rode was mostly smooth because the earth had hardened in the sun after the rains and before the punishment of the lorries. But this motorbike is not a Road King and this trail is not a paved highway. These small Hondas are like big bicycles with fine shocks and little side mirrors and a gutsy four stroke motor. They ride easily but the ride is very different than you might be accustomed to.

Jane (left) and Susie (right) wait while their riders
take a look around

     They ride lightly and jauntily but they feel everything and they feel it completely. They feel every pebble and every patch of gravel they tread upon. They feel so much and they pass all that feeling on to you so that it is like you are feeling it directly. The trail is good in many places and you are practiced and surefooted. But on the trail there is no perfection and if something happens it will probably and hopefully happen first to your front tire. If it does, the tire will skid or it might kick out but you won’t worry much about it. You will feel and measure every bit of it and you will know that it is your front tire, which is only a placeholder. If you are good and confident and if what’s happening is not too bad, you can keep it in your front tire and you’ll ride through it. It is the back tire that steadies you because it is wider and heavier and has the torque of the motor behind it. It is what you rely on and you know it will be good to you if are in the right gear and if you give it extra throttle when it needs it.

     Eventually the bush opened to junction with a wide road. It was dusty and gravel-strewn but smooth and very well graded. It was the Chinese road that goes south to Panyikang.

     'That was fun,' Mike said when I pulled beside him. It was almost the only thing we said on that ride and it was probably too much because there was no need to say it.

     ‘A good ride,’ I said.

     We shifted into gear, turned, and took the good, new road all the way back.

And the Girl's Family Took Your Uncle?

‘I had very much on my mind yesterday.’

Tukols (traditional huts) in Dolieb, a village south of Malakal

     ‘Oh?’ I said. I was busy and I did not looked up from the computer screen.

     ‘Yes,’ said the Finance Officer. ‘My uncle was taken yesterday.’

     ‘Taken like kidnapped?’

     ‘Yes, he was taken by the parents of the girl I am going to marry,’ he said.

     I looked up from the computer screen.

     ‘How’s that now?’ I said.

     ‘I am in a competition for her,’ he explained. ‘There are three of us. One lives in Australia or UK or America. The other is a student. And there is me. The parents do not like me but the girl she likes me and she wants to marry me.’

     ‘This is back in your village?’

     ‘Yes.’

     I closed my computer screen.

     ‘We are now seeing who has the most cows to pay. The parents like the one from Australia. They were going to pick him. So I called my friends in the village and they stole the girl away.’

     ‘Your friends kidnapped the girl?’

     He smiled.

     ‘Yes.’

     ‘And then the girl’s family took your uncle?’

     ‘Yes.’

     ‘And now?’

     ‘Yesterday there was a negotiation. They gave back my uncle and my friends gave back the girl,’ he said. ‘Now the parents will consider my cows for their daughter. They know if they do something I will have my friends steal the girl again.’

     ‘Couldn’t this start trouble if you keep stealing the girl from her parents?’

     He was still smiling and he did not answer.

     ‘Now the one from Australia or wherever has 15 cows and 70,000 pounds. I have called my family - I have family in other countries. You know the whole family has to give cows or money for the marriage. Now I have 30 cows or 40 may-it-be but I don’t have as much money. When we have offered all that we can, the parents will make the decision.’

     ‘But you will steal the girl again if they don’t pick you.’

     ‘Yes,’ he said.

     ‘It seems you have an advantage.’

     He did not understand me. He thought I was speaking of the bride prices being offered.

     ‘We care more about cows and I have more. But now, you know, people want money because they go to town to buy things. So we shall see.’