25 Minutes to Bor

Another flight into the field. I am picked up early and head to the airport with four colleagues. This time it's a charter plane and we are able to skirt the terminal and walk straight out onto the tarmac.

"Does anyone know what plane we're looking for?" asks our leader, a senior advisor.

"I think it's got a T on it," someone says. "From the e-mail."

We figure it out quickly, because only a handful of the small planes we are walking toward look like they are preparing to take off - it's a red and white Cessna single-prop with a fuel line attached to one wing. We climb in and I get the seat directly behind the pilot, who materializes suddenly, climbing up a little ladder and putting a leather bag stuffed with bug spray, Marlboros and folded maps next to herself in between the seats.

Some guys finish fueling up the plane, which is tight but comfy, and without fuss, comment or instruction to us of any kind, our lone pilot switches on the engine and pulls out. In fact she has not even shut the door on her side of the cockpit; she is steering with her right hand and hanging onto the door with her left.

We pause to let a big World Food Programme plane launch, and finally she shuts the door.

"Twenty-five minutes to Bor," she says to us, before hitting the accelerator. She sounds German to me, but I learn later that she is a Bulgarian who grew up in Ethiopia.

Bor is in Jonglei State, north of Juba, where my company is being encouraged to expand. It's just a day trip, and I've been told some important government officials will be at a local university to initiate a training in which we're involved. I take a reporter pad and camera.

On the way there we fly over some interesting terrain - savanna and woodland, a lonely mountain, and swamps - big green swamps laced by snaking silver tributaries of the Nile. I look closely but cannot see wildlife in either the woods or the water, though we're not flying very high.

We land in Bor, another dirt airstrip with no actual building. Hop into a Land Cruiser and straight to the South Sudan Hotel. We park under a tree and order coffees, and tea and scrambled eggs. We are early for the big event at the university. Now a group of about six, we discuss land reform in Zimbabwe, the uprising in Yemen, the differences between typhoid and malaria, and order a second helping of some good fresh bread.

Later I attend the event and am impressed by the governor, who is the most important of the VIPs present and who is referred to as His Excellency. I notice that he carefully inspects the label on a soda bottle while some of the other VIPs are speaking. He is a big man and takes his time standing up and greeting us. He is the only person without prepared remarks, and he speaks for nearly 30 minutes, riveting the audience of 50 local government administrators present for training.

He notes that millions of their family members and friends were killed in war so that their people could govern themselves. That South Sudan has needed help from other countries to obtain enough food, recover and rebuild, and will need more help to get organized as a new nation. It is time to repay the world.

 "You have come to get knowledge of a new way of doing things," he says. "The most important element is the human element."