I have just had my first of what will be seven cold morning showers. There are no functional hot water heaters in the prefabs in the field. So I gingerly soap selected parts and contort my body into awkward poses while conducting surgical-strike rinses, punctuated by sharp intakes of breath and exhaled expletives. I’m out of the shower in 90 seconds and feel marginally cleaner. I spent the night in a one-room prefab with a buddy from Madagascar who is also in the field for a while, working on contracts stuff. We had our own beds, and the generators were working so we had the AC on. Interestingly, I realized in the morning that the fuzzy blanket I snuggled under all night under has a giant green marijuana leaf design on it. I am guessing the procurement people did not realize this.
My roommate and I are both heading to the same place today – up to Aweil, in Northern Bahr el Ghazal, which is about a four hour drive north on bad dirt roads. We load up some materials needed by people in the compound up there, which include chains and a couple of boxes of “pangas’’ – curved knives made by local blacksmiths out of scrap metal, which are used for cutting down crops like sorghum and maize. My company does a lot of work with crop and vegetable farmers.
We strike out on the road in a mud-splattered white Land Cruiser. I notice how much greener everything is compared to when I was up in May, when the landscape was brown and brittle looking. I understand now why many people say South Sudan has the capacity to become the breadbasket of Africa. There is tall green grass as far as the eye can see, in every direction, and stretches of wetlands from daily rains where, in April, there was just brown dust and dirt, and thirsty-looking, thorny acacia trees. Mostly absent previously, birds are ubiquitous now, too - ibis, storks, tiny scarlet, blue, orange and black birds that look like finches, water fowl. The crows in Sudan have white shawls splashed across their backs and wings, and the starlings here have orange beaks.
Everywhere, small clusters of crops have been planted in close around the tukols, whose thatched roofs poke up out of the fields like wizard hats. It’s mostly tall maize and sorghum, both staple grains that are used to make a kind of porridge that is taken with almost every meal. But there also are ground nuts, okra and sesame growing out here. And there are tall palm trees with leaves that look like saw palmetto and small coconut-like fruits that have bright orange meat inside; I saw some kids munching on the palm fruit while walking to school along the road. I see melon and squash plants, too.
It’s a bumpy and long but mostly uneventful drive. We pass thousands of small herds of cows and goats, many tended by small children. The one exciting moment comes when, in the middle of nowhere, we see a crowd of spear and stick-waving people running fast, en masse, up the center of the dirt road, in the same direction as us. We can hear the women ululating “ay-yay-yay-yay-yay-yay-AAAY!’’ and some singing, and laughing and dancing.
I get out to snap a few pics and the mob stops to oblige me, shaking their spears and sticks and smiling.
I ask our driver what that was all about.
“They are campaigning for a leader,” he said.
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