This will be the last installment describing what a typical 24 hours is like for me in Juba.
Work day ends around 5:30 pm usually and, upon return to my room in the company guesthouse, I get ready for football, which I now play almost every night. I put in contact lenses and toss two bottles of water into my backpack, along with an extra tee-shirt, some South Sudanese Pounds (money), my work ID and my cell phone. I have a little pre-football work-out routine in my room, too, during which I imagine myself in solitary confinement doing pushups and sit-ups to maintain fitness in case of attack from other inmates. Then I grab my backpack and scoot downstairs.
The guards at the gate seem enthralled whenever I go outside in my football garb, even though it's a nightly occurence. I suppose it is unusual here to see any middle-aged white man heading out for football, but clearly, this is a first for someone from my outfit, and the young guards are full of surprised smiles and approving nods for me when I walk out, no matter how many times they've seen me do it previously. “You are going for football again?” they ask while sliding open the heavy iron gate for me. “Ahh, it is good!” they say, or “You are very fit!’’
I hustle out to the main road to catch a boda (motorbike taxi) to UNMISS (United Nations Mission in South Sudan) compound just down the road. Twice a week on weeknights, I meet up with members of my expatriate football club, Juba Unathletic, at a nice little dirt field in the compound belonging to BanBat, a battalion of Bangladeshi UN peacekeepers who allow us to train there. Near the BanBat field, I look for my favorite cow, a rhinoceros-sized bull named “Ban Ki-Moo,” rumored to be owned by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. This all-white bull has a camel-sized hump behind its head and enormous gray horns like scimitars, one of which droops downward like a mammoth tusk. The horns are so heavy that the bull’s head is dragged low, and as it lumbers slowly around the UN compound, always alone, you can see its gigantic neck straining. The animal is as big as the white UN pickup trucks whose drivers unfailingly give it the right of way. The bull goes where it pleases.
On nights when my team does not have training, I leave my backpack at home and jog down to a rocky, slanted pitch across from the airport near UNMISS to play with a team of tall, athletic South Sudanese men called the Juba Airport All-Stars. Though I've never seen another white person there, the All-Stars always invite me to jump in with them, and there is no fuss, just a perfunctory nod or two, maybe a handshake. They see and share my love of the game, enough said - pass the ball. I have arranged a few matches between the All-Stars and Juba Unathletic. In fact my expat team, which is quite competitive, has matches somewhere in Juba against different South Sudanese teams almost every Saturday afternoon, often attended by a hundred or more local spectators. Recently, we borrowed the All-Stars’ pitch to play a game against a club called Konyo-Konyo, but the match ended abruptly when players on the other team began yelling and criticizing the referee, who in response pulled a semi-automatic handgun out his sweatpants. My boys and I quietly exited the field, climbed into our trucks and drove away, though from what I heard, no shots were fired and everyone is friends again. When I informed my boss of my adventures at the airport field she was nonplussed. “Has it been de-mined, I hope?” she asked.
After football each night I return to the guesthouse, where I find 10 or 12 people from my company gathered for dinner, catered by a hotel called Logali. The food is brought in trucks and set up by hotel kitchen staff in warmed chafing dishes. There is usually plenty of it – chicken, beef, rice, maize porridge, sautéed local greens. I shovel down a plate and go upstairs to shower, then look for Tahra and the kids on Skype. Video chat and get caught up with the girls, a little email, then climb into bed. Sometimes I read or watch a downloaded movie on my laptop. Recently I saw the painfully funny “Borat,’’ recommended by my brother, and enjoyed a documentary called “Bill Cunningham New York’’ about an unusual photo journalist in Manhattan. If you never caught it, a low-profile Denzel Washington movie called ‘’The Great Debaters’’ is outstanding, and “Man on Wire,’’ about a French tight-rope artist, is brilliant.
I pull up my fuzzy bedspread and wish my family a good night in a westerly direction, leaving only my nose exposed in case any malarial mosquitoes have penetrated the defences.
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