"It bites you, and you fall asleep"

I have been in a dusty state capital called Bor, in Jonglei State, for the past few days. We are rolling out a new 12-month work plan and presenting it to our Jonglei team in the field, all of whom are currently grounded in Bor due to deadly cattle raiding between enemy tribes in other parts of the state. The fighting has caused massive displacement and claimed nearly 1,000 South Sudanese lives since December. Our Jonglei staff, a team of about 11 young educated South Sudanese men working in governance, financial management, planning and budgeting and in the education sector, are working and living out of a hotel built on the banks of the Bahr el Jebel, a fast-moving tributary of the Nile. The hotel has spotty electric generators and internet service, and there is no air conditioning, so we have the windows open in the office we are renting here. About 50 yards outside our window there is a borehole with a hand pump where area residents fill yellow jerry cans with fresh water, seemingly round the clock. The empty cans are piled high around the hole as people wait patiently, sometimes for hours, for their turn to pump and fill. The work of obtaining fresh drinking water here is hard and never-ending, and children as small as two and three are enlisted to carry little buckets and containers from the wells.

During a Powerpoint presentation on the work plan yesterday, the team leader raised his hand and pointed at a large brown fly that had entered through the window. All 15 of us in the room silently watched the fly zip around for a minute or so. If it buzzed anyone, the person would duck and swat with wide-eyed alarm. I seemed to be the only person in the room who did not know why this particular fly was cause for such concern.

When it went back out, we closed the windows to prevent if from flying in again, even though it was sweltering in the room (temps are now higher than 100 degrees during the afternoons.) Everyone seemed greatly relieved, and we got back to our business. Later I asked a colleague what would have happened if that dread-inspiring fly had bitten me.

You would be sleeping, she said.

The fly makes you sleep?

Yes. It bites you, and you fall asleep.

Turns out I had just had my first known encounter with a tsetse fly, whose bite carries a disease called Human African trypanosomiasis, also known as sleeping sickness. The disease is endemic in 37 sub-Saharan countries and killed 48,000 people in 2008, according to Wikipedia. This insect, which only lives a few weeks, injects a parasite into its victims that invades the central nervous system, causing confusion, reduced coordination, fatigue, mania, insomnia and progressive mental deterioration leading to coma and death. I now understand why the bug was so deserving of our attention. It is an airborne serial killer.

I kept my eyes peeled for large brown flies when a colleague and I walked down to the river's edge after work. About 100 yards away, on the other side of the water, a cluster of a few hundred Dinka cattle herding families were encamped, with their animals. They were just shadows in a haze of dung fires lit to keep down the mosquitos, but we could hear laughter and the clinks of pots, and make out lines of tents and stick-built huts built on the very edge of the river. We could also occasionally see sets of huge, magnificently arcing cattle horns poking through the smoke, and hear the lowing of the cows, which sounded startlingly close, rolling across the river top. We watched a wiry man hard-paddling a canoe hand-carved from a neem tree and patched with sheets of tin, from our side of the river to the camp, and back.

I want to go across and see them, one of my colleagues said a little wistfully.

I will do it soon.

Update

I am back in South Sudan after spending a wonderful holiday at home in Key West, marred at the end by some very troubling Tahra health developments: auto-immune disease and kidney problems. After 40-plus years of fantastic health, she was diagnosed just as I returned to South Sudan – practically while I was on the plane. My parents, TJ and Victoria, immediately flew to her rescue from Virginia to help take care of the kids as she recovered from a blood transfusion after a biopsy. Still there nearly a month later, they have been lifesavers, and have become surrogate parents to the girls, who can’t ever get enough of them. Our Key West friends, many of whom helped with the kids and in other ways too numerous to mention, carried us through the last few painful and frightening weeks, too. Tahra is now feeling a little better though some adverse reactions to new, heavy-duty meds have complicated matters. Fortunately she is working with a very concerned and capable nephrologist, and we are starting to see a little light at the end of the tunnel.

Before Christmas, after much thought and discussion with Tahra, I agreed to accept an extension of my contract in South Sudan for a period of time yet to be determined. Originally I had planned only to do this for eight months, until December 2011. Over the past few months there have been negotiations between my company and its funder, over the scope and length of our proposed continued project, and finally things were resolved when my company settled on a contract extension out here through 2013. My company wants me to stay, though final terms for me are still to be negotiated and Tahra’s new health condition has given us much to think about. In the meantime, next time I’m home, in early March, we are relocating up to western Massachusetts, to occupy a rustic, 150-year-old farmhouse on 25 acres in Berkshire County, enabling Tahra and the girls to be much closer to family while I’m in and out of the country. We are keeping the apartment in Key West, with our close friend Hanrow Hartley installed as house sitter.

The big news in Juba these days is all about South Sudan’s recent decision to shut down its oil wells in protest over the north’s theft of millions of barrels of oil from the south-to-north oil pipeline. The south owns the oil but the north owns the pipeline, refinery, and port where the oil is picked up by tankers. Since the south’s independence in July, the two sides have been dickering over the price-per-barrel for export over the pipeline. Since no agreement on the fees could be reached, the north allegedly decided to steal millions of dollars worth of oil from the line, and in retaliation, last week the south shut down its wells. This action will hit both nations hard in the pocketbook, but here in Juba, citizens are applauding the move. The government says it has enough funds in reserve to get by without oil revenues for a while, and has even signed a contract to build its own pipeline from its oil fields through Kenya (to the south), which will take anywhere from 1-3 years to complete.

Meanwhile, there is renewed inter-ethnic combat in the north part of South Sudan, with a pair of tribes called the Murle and the Nuer going at each other in cattle and people-stealing raids that have left an estimated 600-700 people dead, and hundreds of women and children abducted, prompting apocalyptic front-page headlines in both the New York Times and the Washington Post recently describing the “descent into chaos’’ of the world’s newest country. There is no widespread chaos in the capital, Juba, though Landcruiser-jackings involving expats have been on the rise, prompting my company to bump up our curfew and make some other security modifications.

The other big change since my return: it is now HOT – up over 100 degrees on some days. Arizona desert hot, as in, even your eyelids feel hot when you walk outside. And we are in the dry season now, with no rain for months, and none expected until May or so. Dust and wind are kicking up. When I play football now, sometimes we lose the ball in clouds of dust. Two weekends ago as I stared out of my bedroom window at the empty lot across the way, a mini-tornado blew through, picking up all the trash and flinging it 500 feet high into a giant, swirling vortex of plastic bags and bottles and papers. It was strangely beautiful.

Juba Nights Part Two: Ordinary Juba Nights

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.

Third Rotation

Above: View from the patio at the Ole-Sereni Hotel, Nairobi. I've seen real giraffes from this porch, as well as zebras and ostrich Ole-Sereni Hotel, Nairobi

I now feel like an expert traveler. Seven months after first flying into terra incognita, gone is the bowel-twisting sweaty anxiety before hopping on and off planes in places like Wau, Aweil, Rumbek, Juba, Nairobi, Amsterdam. These days, trip preparation is fuss-free. Packing lists I once pored over and revised are now brief afterthoughts scribbled on the backs of envelopes in between doing other things. Yawn. Another trip across the continent.

It's my third rotation, my third company-approved trip for R&R outside of Juba. The company pays for a round-trip ticket from Juba to Nairobi every eight weeks. I pay for the ticket home to Key West and back, a steep $2,500 with four connections and 36 hours of travel, but worth it to see the girls and Tahra even briefly.

Inside the Juba Airport, waiting for my flight out, the chaos now seems normal to me. Surly six-foot soldier in camos and machine gun demanding suddenly to see my visa? I wordlessly whip it out with a bored and unintimidated expression. When he flicks his eyes toward the right I know he is ordering me into another queue, to sign a passenger list. My motions in transit are now mechanical, designed to ensure maximum comfort and minimal expenditure of energy. In the crowded, hot and smelly waiting room all the seats are taken. I spot a stack of brown plastic chairs in a corner and help myself, grab one swiftly, hold it over my head and place it on the end of a row directly in front of the door out to the planes, because there will be a breeze from the door and also because I can jump instantly into the line for my plane when the barely audible call is made. I wedge my pack firmly between my legs and dive into my Kindle, flaring my arms out to ventillate damp armpits while losing myself in another Jeff Lindsay Miami murder mystery.

On the one-hour Kenya Airways flight to Nairobi I skip the in-flight meal of chicken whatever. The sodium-laden airline food, with its infused cardboard and plastic, upsets my stomach, I have realized. In Nairobi I turbo-walk past slow passengers and speed down the tunnel to the visas area. My connection to Amsterdam doesn't leave until 11 p.m. and it's only 4:30 pm or so now - no way I'm sitting in the dank and dark Nairobi airport, which reminds me a little of the old Rolling Valley Mall, for seven hours. So I take the trouble to fill out the forms and find the shortest line possible to purchase a transit visa. I produce a crisp U.S. $20 bill with no marks or writing on it (they won’t accept any other kind of US money at the visa counter, I now know), get my visa stamp and skip downstairs to get my suitcase. I find the baggage belt for my flight, even though it’s incorrectly marked as a flight from Dar es Salaam, because I’ve asked a bright-looking baggage guy and I know the belts are usually mislabeled here. Miraculously, my suitcase is one of the first around the bend. I grab it, whiz by the airport cop telling her I have nothing to declare, and exit into the sea of drivers – maybe 100 or more -- waiting behind the fences holding signs with people’s names. The drivers hush down a bit and look at me expectantly – each one of them hoping I’m their guy so they can get out of there and hit the road. As I stroll by looking for a sign with my name on it, a short Kenyan woman who works for the Universal Car Company pops out of the crowd.

“Timothy!”

I am astonished to be greeted by name.

“You remembered me from last time?”

“How could I forget?” she said.

I ponder the meaning of this. Of all the travelers passing through, she would remember ME? Is it because, the very first time I arrived in Nairobi, I got in the wrong car? Is it because I tipped one of the drivers $20, once, after drinking two double bourbons at the Ole-Sereni, and he told me he had no money to eat? Is it because I’m a freak?

In any case, she handed me off to the Universal driver who took my bag and led me to the parking lot. Twenty minutes later I was seated in the luxurious Big Five restaurant inside the gorgeous Ole-Sereni Hotel, deposited by my driver, whom I asked to return at 9 p.m. to take me back to the airport. I like this hotel because it is close to the airport and you don’t have to pass through any of the murderous roundabouts or get stuck in the notorious Nairobi traffic in order to get to it. In addition, there is a very good restaurant with a balcony overlooking a game preserve, with scrubby acacia trees and tall blonde grass, and great sunset views. However, the only animals I’ve ever seen at the hotel so far are bronze sculptures.

This evening, I have parked myself on the balcony at a table for four looking east over the preserve. When my waitress comes I order my customary double bourbon (I feel really cool saying “Make that a double!”) and an aloo tikka appetizer (shallow fried potatoes with crushed pea paste and hot peppers), and then a pan-fried leg of duck.

I drink my first bourbon while watching the sun set over Nairobi, and think about what I’m going to do when I get home again.

Juba Nights Part One: Tim's DYN-O-MITE Juba Night

I finished my can of Heineken in the back seat of Nadir’s SUV on the way to the party. Just like in high school, only now I’m in South Sudan, 43 and married with two children. Nadir by contrast is a young stud. He is Lebanese but grew up in Sierra Leone. He plays striker, of course, on my football team, often scoring fantastic goals. He runs a contracting business, has friends in high places, a full head of lush movie star hair and a young American girlfriend, the one who gave me the Heinekin from her insulated “goody bag,” which Nadir gallantly wore strapped over his shoulder as we entered the big bash at Oxfam, so as to have a supply of chilled Heinies handy at all times.

I should preface all this by saying I don’t really go out, in the serious sense, “to party,” very often any more. After all, my beard is gray, my hearing is going, probably from listening to Iron Maiden at high decibels in the eighties with mom’s big earphones strapped on, and I have a few stiff joints. But here in Juba there is a cadre of young, post-university relief and development professionals from various Western and African countries, with degrees from the Kennedy School and Johns Hopkins and Georgetown, not to mention the hundreds of young United Nations soldiers and advisors, and European Union and World Food Programme and World Health Organization people. And on weekends in Juba, they like to party – especially if they’ve experienced the deprivations of the field any time recently. In addition, the lads on my football team, most of them much younger and much less married than I am, are more than a little fond of tossing back a pint or two on Saturday night, especially after we’ve played a game, and especially if we’ve won, as we did this afternoon.

So it was that I found myself loosening up with my third beer of the evening in the back of Nadir’s truck as we jounced down a dirt lane around the corner from the colossal walled, fortified, razor-wired, heavily surveilled U.S. Embassy compound. In fact I was in a convoy of approximately seven SUVs, all packed with expat NGO type people, all of whom had decamped simultaneously from a kind of pre-party party at PACT Sudan, another NGO where the captain of my football team, Edd, a really cool young Welsh guy, works. I’d say it was about 10:30 pm and I could hear the pulsating music coming from Oxfam, a place I’d never been, over the top of the 10-foot-tall iron gates. I’m unsure exactly what Oxfam does in South Sudan but I’m guessing it’s in the hunger department.

As soon as we walked in, I could tell this wasn’t a sit around in chairs kind of party. It was a DANCE party, as in, nobody was doing anything BUT dancing inside, under a giant grass-topped tikki hut. They even had a laser machine shooting purple and red and green lasers everywhere. Hmm, what does a married guy do without his wife at a LASER DANCE party? For starters, I did the same thing I’ve done for the past 30 years at dance parties: I stood on the fringes looking in at all the exuberant bopping and hopping and spinning and shaking, while tapping my foot meekly to the beat and shouting in my buddies’ ears in vain attempts at conversation. For example:

Me: (shouting into Dave’s ear) WHERE ARE YOU WATCHING THE MANCHESTER GAME?

Dave: (shouting back in my ear) WHAT?

Me: (back in his ear, as close as I can get without putting my lips actually on his ear) THE GAME TOMORROW, THE MANCHESTER UNITED GAME, WHERE ARE YOU AND NIAL GOING TO WATCH IT?

Dave: YEAH. AT BEDOUIN. YOU COMING?

Me: I DON’T KNOW.

Dave: COOL. SEE YOU THERE. (Nods and sips beer.)

But at a certain point, maybe Beer Number Five, I reached my tipping point, and I actually gave in and began to try to dance, using Edd’s girlfriend as my foil, so as not to appear to be actively dancing directly with any of my group of nearby men friends, some of whom were also tentatively beginning to dance, while studiously avoiding making either eye or physical contact with another male. I guess it would be more accurate to say I was dancing alone while pretending that Edd’s girlfriend, who was actually dancing with Edd, was part of my dance group.

Me, dancing, involves a lot of upward finger jabbing and karate-style arm movements with my hands balled into fists. As if practicing a faux form of martial arts might somehow make the dancing seem more masculine, to anyone watching. Also, I do some squatting while finger jabbing and martial arting with my arms. Possibly to create a lower profile – not sure why the squatting but it has become one of my standard dance floor moves. An occasional squat and slow rise takes me out of the line of sight of people looking out across the landscape of bopping heads.

So then this song came on which I’m sure all of you have heard, it seems to be very popular. I hesitate to say it’s a new song, because it could turn out to be three years old, but it’s definitely a popular and modern dance song and if I had to recreate it here, here is what seem to be the only actual coherent lyrics from it, repeated over and over:

AAAY-OHH I’m saying AAAY-OOH

It’s like a DYNO-MITE, It’s like a DYNO-MITE

(then more)

AAAY-O I’m saying AAY-O

It’s like a DYNO-MITE, It’s like a DYNOMITE

I realize that it’s actually spelled dynamite but this singer is really saying it DINE-OH-MITE. The young sweaty people seemed to go crazy when this song came on, waving their arms to the “AAAY-O” parts and shouting out DINE-O-MITE at the top of their lungs, and there was even more energetic jumping, Bouncy House type jumping. When my friend Simon grabbed me and twisted my nipple, and Edd and his girlfriend began passing around a bottle of Johnny Walker for people in the dance circle to take turns swigging from, I knew it was time to leave, and I drifted away unnoticed and took the short walk home, passing unseen through the Juba night like a rustle in the wind, and thinking up words that rhyme with dynamite (gonna have me a PLEB-I-SCITE, gonna get me a PAR-A-SITE, gonna do the WALK-ON-WHITE, wow it’s a SCAR-Y-NIGHT) to give the catchy song pulsing in my head a little extra pizzaz . When I got home, the guards let me in and I went to bed.

Juba Afternoons

After catered lunch in the office compound, I head back to my pod to work on my company-issued Toshiba laptop. Lately I am writing a lot of narrative reports, Power Points, and program overviews and updates for our teams in the field, who’ve been doing presentations for the new fiscal year with the governors in the four states where we work.

At about 2 p.m. I go for “tea,’’ which for me means a mug of hot Nescafe with sugar and milk. In the kitchen, there are usually some cleaning ladies doing dishes. They wear plain blue frocks reminiscent of prison garb, but in the evening are transformed into glamorous beings with beautiful dresses and done-up hair before leaving the compound. I tip-toe around them, trying not to make a nuisance of myself while getting my hot water ready. I am conscious that they know a lot about me, because they make my bed and replace my towels. They know I’ve been looking at New York real estate and reading a Paris Review book called “Writers at Work’’ because they wipe down my nightstand daily. They know I like Toblerone and pistachios because they empty my trash. They know I like to let the morning light in because my drapes are unfailingly half drawn when I leave the room each day. They even know I keep my toothbrush next to my razor on the right side of the sink, and the floss and soap on the other side, because each implement is carefully returned to its rightful spot after the sink is cleaned.

I’ve tried to start conversations with them a few times but get the vague sense from their whispered replies and abrupt departures that they would rather not talk to me. I should know their names, but I don’t, which bothers me. So for now there are just a lot of nods and smiles between us, and that seems to be ok with them.

Back in my pod with my Nescafe, one of my office mates, a contracts manager from Madagascar, begins his daily shtick.

"Tim." He says, without looking up from his paperwork.

"What."

"We go now?"

"Not yet. Soon." I say, whilst pecking my keyboard.

Really we don't leave until 5 pm or later but for some reason, this silly exchange has become part of the afternoon repartee and everyone in the office (about six of us, all guys, I am the only non-African) seems to get a small chuckle out of it.

Between five and six we cram into a company Land Cruiser and one of the drivers (we usually have two and sometimes three on duty) takes a load of us on the short drive from the office back to the guest house, where approximately 12 of us live. One of my colleagues consistently claims the comfy passenger seat up front due to her self-proclaimed "wide diameter."

At home, I trudge upstairs to my room, a nice corner room overlooking our dusty street and from which I can see over a tall cinderblock wall into the property across from us, which includes a modest house that reportedly belongs to the son of the Vice President. I sit down in my padded swivel chair and commence one of my favorite activities of the day: freeing my feet from sweaty socks and wiggling my toes while watching school kids and tired workers walking home from behind my tinted glass window.

To Yei and Back

I’m back in South Sudan after a too-short trip to the Keys, where I ate great food, caught up with old friends, and soaked in as much of the girls and Tahra as possible in 10 days. Happily wrestled with weeds and dead banana branches in the yard. Swam at Fort Zack in wind-smacked chop one day, then floated atop water like glass the next, half-submerged ears muffling the happy squeals of kids up the beach. Tahra’s blessed cooking and my own sheets; the smell and feel of my family’s skin, the pleasant mustiness of the old apartment; Gryffyn and Ursula’s bellies, and laughter; tears over missing tutus, hair brushing and shoes. Home.

A few days after returning to Juba I invited myself on a working trip down south, where I’ve not yet been, with a colleague who oversees my company’s education programs. The place is called Yei, and there seemed a good deal of envy and interest from my co-workers when they found out I was going. “You must try the honey!” “You will like Yei, the weather is nicer!” “It is greener and cooler than Juba, and there is much rain!” Someone even said Yei is known as “Little London” though no one could say why. Our mission: to check on the status of four young school teachers from states in the north, for whom my company is providing full scholarships at the Yei Teacher’s Training College. And some higher-ups asked me to do a little outreach on the company’s behalf at the Yei Crop Training Center and the Women’s Empowerment Program, two big projects we have supported.

We drove southwest out of Juba in a direction I had never been, skirting some low hills on the edge of town. There, the asphalt ends, and white signs stick out of the bushes marking the future sites of big new national ministries – immigration, social welfare, water resources and irrigation – they will all be out here on the edge of town in new buildings, miles away from the crowds and bustle in downtown Juba where everything is currently located. Now, though, the area is used for dumping; every 20-30 yards or so, I can see a two-wheeled track beaten through the grass and acacia shrubs and little forest enclaves strewn with thousands of flimsy empty and flattened plastic water bottles – some of them could have been mine. I admit that I don’t know where my trash goes, though there definitely is not any recycling program here. Why not? Everything is expensive here. Taking care of trash is very low on the country’s priorities list at the moment. I do, however, see a future for a recycling-based NGO.

It will be a four hour ride on very bumpy dirt roads to Yei, which is not far from the border with Uganda and the dreaded Lord’s Resistance Army rebels, possibly the most insanely inhuman rebels on earth. We are transporting the wife of the principal of the Teaching College, who has clearly done some shopping while in Juba. We load up her stuff in the back of the green Land Cruiser Prado, cushy inside but with an unwholesome smell emanating from the dashboard, apparently, on my side of the car. The further south we drive, the more jungle-like the landscape becomes. The northern areas I’ve seen have lots of savannah, but down here it is hillier, some low mountains and escarpments, and the landscape is lush, and green, and suddenly a new type of tree pops up – teak trees. There are groves and groves of them, mostly immature – harvested for buildings and furniture and flooring, certainly. I’ve not seen these trees in Juba or in the north. Other highlights of the drive: my first wild monkeys. I had not before seen monkeys in South Sudan though they are here. These are just little guys, three of them, reddish-brown, loping along like monkeys on all fours across the road, scampering into the green. And a monitor lizard, big and brown, crossed the road in front of us. My colleague says he has seen cobras out here too.

We arrive in Yei, which bears no immediately discernible resemblance to London, and interview the young teachers at the college, in a computer lab. They are tired at the end of the day and a little wary of two inquisitive guys asking a lot of questions about how they are doing. Emotionally they are fine, they say, but academically they are struggling. The college is rigorous, classes are taught in English and these young women spoke other tribal languages and Arabic mostly when they arrived. So they had language challenges in addition to adapting to a new environment far from home (they are all from the northern parts of South Sudan, culturally and ethnically distinct from the south part of South Sudan.) But they are relishing their time at college, in particular, the on-the-job training which involves teaching actual classes in Yei-area primary schools, under the observation of college instructors.

We next stopped by the Yei Crop Training Center, without an appointment, at about 6 pm. We got through the gates and drove past well-ordered plots of maize, sorghum, okra, pineapples, sesame, peanuts, eggplant and hot peppers, interspersed with papaya trees. Food is growing here, and not just staple crops, I was happy to see. Yei is known as a self-sufficient agricultural zone where small-holder famers grow a lot of food, I found out. Melons and pumpkins were growing in abundance. We found David Bala, the principal, who graciously showed us around his home on the center – he is a farmer, and he leapt at the opportunity to give us a private tour. Next to his house, I saw a papaya tree growing fruit the size and shape of nuclear missiles. His goal when he retires from teaching is to launch a pineapple farm with 4,000 pineapple plants, and to add 600 beehives for honey. I commented about his beautiful passion fruit and voila, his wife Mary, whom he calls Madame, brought out a glass pitcher of cold, bright orange passion fruit juice, squeezed from his own fruit, and cookies she baked herself. I tried some of his avocado juice, too, which was delicious and rejuvenating, and he wouldn’t let us go without taking a half-dozen ears of freshly harvested maize.

Our night in Yei was spent in the New Tokyo Hotel, billed as the nicest hotel in Yei. It was almost clean – Spartan, with no discernible Japanese influence or connection, other than the name. No internet and one channel only on the TV (reggae music videos); no AC and no hot water. But the twin-sized bed was ok and there was a working fan. I slept under a mosquito net and awoke sweaty at 1 a.m. to find the power had gone off. It came back on at 6 a.m. in the morning. I ate a boiled egg on a dry bun for breakfast with my Nescafe, and at another ag training center we picked up some honey, which indeed was good. Said a quick hello at the Women’s Empowerment Center, where war widows were running a nice micro-enterprise project (a guesthouse) on the green banks of the Yei River, and then embarked on our four-hour bump back to Juba. On the way, we successfully avoided a crazy-eyed, drunken soldier (allegiance unknown) who flagged us down for a ride that we declined to provide, without rolling down the windows, after determining he was unarmed.

Busy market, Yei (aka "Little London")

Boda guys with Man U jersey and stickers, Yei

David Bala in his eggplants, behind his house at the Yei Crop Training Center.

Field Journal: Guns, Goats and Gospel in Kuajok

I am back in Kuajok for a couple of days, still in the field on my seven-day tour. On a beautiful cool evening as the sun sets and a big moon begins to rise, I listen to the sounds of village life drifting into the compound from the mud-and-stick tukuls on the other side of the tall fence that surrounds us. I smell dung and smoke from charcoal fires. People talking in relaxed tones in Dinka and Arabic, kids laughing, goats bleating and cows lowing, pans clattering as the women get dinner together out in the open air. By comparison, the compound is a dull place to be. Twin generators hum in the background and pump out diesel fumes round the clock; fluorescent pipes strapped to trees throw unnatural light into the shadows. As the sun sets, the program people usually retire to undecorated, air-conditioned prefabs and fire up their laptops to Skype or surf or watch downloaded movies, and the guards at the gate are the only ones left outside.

Earlier I had jokingly suggested to the team leader that we should have a barbeque, and though she seemed receptive, and I had given the compound manager money to buy some beer, it was about dinner time and I didn’t see any signs of a party in the making. So I decided to go for a walk and grabbed a South Sudanese colleague who lives full-time on the compound to go with me. Within minutes I was rewarded by an only-in-Africa scene, as I came up on two boys sitting in grass weaving palm fronds together to make toy machine guns. I snapped a few pictures as they giggled and made gun-fighter poses for me. Down the road a bit, I saw a grizzled woman using a long wooden pole to stir something steamy in a large rusty barrel. My colleague told me she was making an alcoholic sorghum-based homebrew, and I went over to investigate. As I approached, a dozen men drinking the brew and watching a football game under a thatched roof nearby walked over to see what I was up to. They invited me in for a drink but the mop-water color of the liquid, and the bits of matter floating on top, combined with the fact that the brew master was using a dirty branch to stir the stuff in a rusted barrel, prompted me to politely beg off. My colleague, whose hometown is in the far south, close to Uganda, said he has never tried the home brew, either – he wrinkles his nose and says it doesn’t look like something that would be good to drink.

Back in the compound after our walk, I was surprised to find the barbeque getting started, under a full moon. The compound manager had set up tables and chairs, and buckets filled with iced Heinekens, and was grilling a large he-goat, which he had purchased for a few hundred pounds while I was out walking, and then slaughtered, right on the compound grounds. “I saw them bringing the meat in while you were out,’’ said my roommate, a lanky consultant from South Africa who dines exclusively on his own dried meat, called biltong, made of oryx, kudu and springbok that he shoots in Namibia during annual family hunting trips. He brings his wife, daughters, deep-freezers and generators with him in trucks up to Namibia, shoots the game, skins and butchers it in hunting camps, and then returns to South Africa with a few hundred pounds of frozen meat, much of which he then sun-cures on special racks using fans and netting. He saves it for eating while on his consultancy trips to South Sudan, supplemented by a little granola and dried fruit.

I felt a little guilty for suggesting, on a whim, a barbeque that apparently resulted in the immediate death-by-throat-slitting of what had probably been a happy-go-lucky, grass-chewing father goat earlier in the day, but truth be told, the meat was without question the freshest, tastiest I’d ever had in my life. I ate more than my share, and later asked the grill master what he did with the parts he didn't cook. He said he gave the goat skin to the compound cooks, who will use it to make belts, shoes and bags. He gave them the head, also, which they will boil and eat. "The head is the best part," he said. "But I didn't think you would want any."

On Sunday morning I was up early. I’d been asked urgently to draft a lengthy letter on behalf of someone I’ve never met on a matter of some importance. It was my first ever ghost writing commission, aside from several retail-related emails and other correspondence I’ve written on behalf of Tahra (who doesn’t type), and I was nervous about it. As I sat alone in an office pre-fab in front of my laptop at 9 a.m., swatting at a pair of giant, orange-black wasps dive-bombing me and waiting for inspiration, it arrived through my open window in the form of the most amazing live singing I’ve heard since going to JazzFest more than a decade ago. It turns out there is a church behind the compound, and, it being Sunday morning, a choir of what sounded like professional African acapella gospel recording artists was just getting going. I didn’t recognize the songs or the language in which they were singing, but it was magical and I went outside to peer over the top of the fence at them and listen. I could see them, all women, all dressed to the nines in green and orange and lavender and gold, swaying and singing in perfect harmony in front of a huge outdoor congregation, their voices bouncing off the broken brick walls around them.

I listened for a while, went back inside, banged out a kickass two-page letter, and went to lunch.

Field Journal: A Night at the Bahr el Ghazal Hotel, Aweil

On my first night in Aweil, way up north from Juba in the hinterlands in Northern Bahr el Ghazal State, there wasn’t enough room for me in the company compound, so I lodged at a six-month-old hotel called the Bahr el Ghazal. The team leader dropped me there shortly before sundown, and I was on my own – no colleagues or short-term consultants for comraderie, no plans for dinner. Just me and my laptop and Kindle. I had moderately high hopes of having a comfortable stay there, because from the outside the Bahr el Ghazal is a very impressive edifice. At four stories tall, there is no building like it in the entire state. (Incidentally, “Bahr’’ means “river’’ and “el Ghazal’’ can be loosely translated to mean “of poetry.”)

Most of the architecture in Aweil comprises mud-and-stick built tukuls with grass roofs, and bamboo shacks with corrugated tin tops, with a sprinkling of simple brick or concrete buildings here and there. By comparison, the Bahr el Ghazal is a palace. Tinted glass windows on every floor, slate-colored façade, three huge chrome-faced pillars holding up a semi-circular portico in the front. It is located in a gigantic walled and guarded compound, and behind the big hotel are two other new buildings – a large restaurant and conference center made of concrete with marble, glass and tile finishings. I was even told there would be hot water for my morning shower, which put a little perk in my step, though in the morning I would find out it wasn’t true. At the time I arrived, there was no electricity.

I was taken to Room 307 by a porter who carried my backpack, and while walking up three flights of stairs in the semi-dark with him, I noticed a few blemishes. Windows without glass. Cracked, chipped and punctured wall tiles. Small piles of debris in corners. Random smears of spackle, grout and paint on walls, doors and floors. Room numbers were drawn with magic markers in an uneven hand, in different spots on doors. On the floor in front of Room 307 was a dirty tea cup, which made me wonder if it was still occupied, though I hadn’t seen any other customers in the building. The only sound was the slap of our shoes on the floor. It felt like the setting for a scary Scooby-Doo cartoon.

“Like, let’s get out of here, Scoob!”

The porter put my bag down, unlocked the door and showed me around. In the bathroom, which had a rat-sized hole in the wall, the porter vigorously pumped the toilet handle four or five times in rapid succession, to dispose of someone else’s leavings. He demonstrated how to turn on the shower, around which there was no curtain or door to keep spray from raining over the nearby toilet. There was a used loofa mitten (hairs sticking out of it) on a hook -- very convenient for mixing someone else’s dead skin cells with my own. The toilet was missing its seat, and there was a clinical-looking hose with a large metal spray nozzle next to it that gave me shivers. Despite a little roughness around the edges, the room was generally clean and would do for one night.

I settled in and, because it was rapidly becoming dark in the room and there was still no electricity, I took my laptop for company and decided to head down to the restaurant to see about dinner. Inside the cavernous restaurant out back, I could not locate any staff. Though it was definitely dinner time (about 7 pm) I did not see any other customers, nor could I smell food cooking. I seated myself at a table under a large tree to wait for activity. As the sun set, I spotted the manager of the hotel, jumped out of my seat and asked if the restaurant would be open this evening. It was now about 8 pm and I was pretty hungry.

What do you want? he said.

What do you have?

Chicken or beef. With chips? (fried potatoes)

Chicken and chips.

It will be grilled. Unfortunately we still don’t have electricity.

The manager then sat down at my table and we had a brief chat. He acknowledged having difficulty keeping things in order around the hotel, and asked me if I would like to dine upstairs on the restaurant’s balcony. So I walked up with him. A pair of South Sudanese men in business suits were having a drink at another table, but no one else was around. I could see and hear hundreds of small white egrets settling into nearby trees for the night, and hear women singing somewhere. Soon I could hear and smell cooking, too. I looked over a back wall and saw a pair of ladies grilling my chicken over an open fire and frying my potatoes in a pot of oil. Soon, it was completely dark. When a man brought my food up, I asked if he had a candle or lantern for the table, but he just said “No” and walked away.

So I flipped open my laptop and ate by its light, listening to the pulsing chorus of birds, crickets and frogs in the night.

Field Journal: Friday Aug. 12 – The Secretary General

My field trip has been productive so far. In Warrap on Wednesday afternoon, I interviewed a county water/hygiene/sanitation coordinator and got some scoop on a new water source GPS mapping project we're doing with local governments, and how it’s helping improve/expand safe water supplies for people in that state. On Thursday I took a truck drive four hours north to another state, Northern Bahr el Ghazal (NBG), to catch up with a couple of consultants my company has hired to help the state’s Council of Ministers streamline operations, and to assist the Labor Ministry in its overhaul of statewide human resources systems.

On Friday morning, my company’s team leader in NBG grabs me as he’s heading out the gates. “I am going to the Governor’s office,’’ he says. “Come with me. You need to meet the Secretary General.”

Garang Kuot Kuot is the highest ranking civil servant in NBG. He’s also a very important man in state government, with an office right across the hall from the Governor’s. I am told he is a young rising star -- smart, visionary, and respected by the Governor, and that many people have entrusted him with their hope for a corruption-free state that can gradually become capable of delivering public services to the people – clinics, schools, physical infrastructure, agriculture development. Kuot is also a former Lost Boy, one of the thousands of South Sudanese child refugees who fled the killing fields in South Sudan in the late 90s and walked hundreds of miles without food or adults to guide them, to camps in Ethiopia, then Kenya. The Lost Boys airlift landed him in British Columbia, where he graduated high school and then college.

The guards at the Governor’s compound recognize our vehicle and wave us through. We park under a big tree and walk inside a sprawling new, one-story building framed in front with modest flower gardens and carefully trimmed grass yards. Outside there are water tanks, a radio tower, a big satellite dish. We enter the building and turn left toward the SG’s office. In an anteroom, there is a woman sitting at a large desk, a couple of armed soldiers posted near an interior office door, and a group of five to six men in suits standing and apparently waiting to see Kuot. My colleague and I approach the door and ask to see the Secretary General.

“He is very busy today,’’ someone clucks at us, shaking his head.

“We just need to give him some papers.’’

More head shaking. “He is very busy. You will have to come back.”

The door opens and, by luck, the SG himself is there, escorting a pair of men in business suits out of his office. He is built like a linebacker, over six feet tall, perfect teeth, handsome and well dressed in a black tailored suit. He greets my colleague and I warmly and quickly ushers us into his large office. He sits down behind a massive desk cluttered with stacks of paper, two laptops, three cell phones, pads and pens.

I realize I will only have a few minutes with him and have come with some prepared questions, but get only half-way through my first when his door opens to admit people who are much more important than we are. In the course of 20 minutes, we are interrupted approximately four times by people who absolutely have to see the Secretary General immediately, including the Minister of Finance. Kuot’s three cell phones chime in various ring tones throughout the stop-start conversation, and in between answering my questions, he gives serious-sounding instructions in different languages to a range of needy information seekers.

My final question for him is a softball: Are we helping in NBG?

He cleared his throat and clasped his hands in a thoughtful steeple under his chin.

“Teach me to use a net, I catch my own fish. Give me the fish, I come to you for another,” he said, modifying the Chinese parable to illustrate that our company’s collaborative, learn-by-doing approach is helping build his government’s capacity instead of feeding into the dependency cycle.

Boom. It was a grand slam of a sound bite. Time to get out. Look for this guy on CNN soon. As my ex reporter’s goose bumps subsided, I slapped my notebook shut and Kuot walked us to the door while charismatically greeting four new suits walking in.

Apparently he gets a lot of work done on weekends.

Field Journal: Thursday Aug. 11 - Kuajok to Aweil

1030 a.m.

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.

Field Journal: Wednesday Aug. 10 - Juba Airport

8:00 a.m.

I am sent to the field for seven days to observe some of our programs and to collect string for the upcoming annual report, which I have been tasked with drafting. I have one backpack and a laptop bag for luggage. You are allowed to take very little on World Food Programme flights. It’ll take about an hour to fly north to a town called Wau, in Western Bahr el Ghazal, where I’ll be picked up in a truck and then driven north two hours on horrid dirt roads to our compound, in a town called Kuajok, in Warrap State.

My flight is delayed by 1.5 hours - who knows why. Delays and cancellations of flights on the humanitarian airline are common. The time goes fast, though. I've found a comfortable, cushiony seat to settle in with a copy of one of the local Juba dailies, called The Citizen, just like my hometown paper in the Keys. The Juba Citizen is a bit different though. It’s a tabloid, not a broadsheet, for starters. And the dots for the i’s in “Citizen’’ are little red, inverted rhinos. The front page top-of-the-fold story is about the swearing in of South Sudan’s first Members of Parliament (MPs); I am astonished to learn there are 332 MPs in all – it seems an awful lot for a country of nine million people, and this edition of the paper includes a long editorial criticizing the seemingly excessive number of new legislators. I read the paper cover to cover, hand it to the South Sudanese man sitting next to me, and start the latest “Dexter’’ novel on my Kindle. The serial killing story set in South Florida, which features cannibals, makes me wistful and long for home.

Between chapters I glance up at the Arabic news broadcast on the corner TV and check out my fellow travelers. The waiting room is cramped, warm and damp from humidity and human breathing. There is a smell of jet fuel, diesel, body odor and cologne. Mostly African men in business suits, some tall and beautiful women draped in dazzlingly colorful dresses and scarves, but some scruffy Western relief/development types, too -- young women in baggy clothes with nose rings and frizzy hair, guys with beards, cargo pants and ball caps. And me.

My plane is called and I get in line for the shuttle out to the little white-and-blue WFP jet. I haven’t been out to the field since before Independence, since we pulled most of our staff out due to fears of militia incursions and related insecurity challenges, including skyrocketing fuel and food prices resulting from the north's invasion of Abyei and the border closure. It’s supposed to be safe now. I’ll know soon enough.

My First Boda Ride

I was running late for football practice with my team, F.C. Babel. (F.C. = “Football Club” and “Babel” because so many languages are spoken – we have Brits, a Canadian, a Welsh guy, Lebanese, Italian, Americans, South Sudanese, Kenyans, Ivory Coast etc..). Practice starts at 630 pm at the UN peacekeepers’ base, less than a mile away. Sometimes I’d run there, but it’s awkward jogging with a backpack, and on this evening, I didn't have enough time. So I worked up my courage and decided to take my first boda-boda motorcycle taxi ride.

I’d wanted to try a boda for a while but wasn’t sure how it worked – i.e., I didn’t know if the fee is negotiated first, or would they tell me how much after arriving at the destination? Are the drivers ethical, or would they see me as a wealthy expat and charge exorbitantly? Also, over the past couple of months, I hadn’t seen any expats taking the bodas, just locals – what’s up with that? Would they even accept me as a fare? And how do I choose which boda to go with – typically they line themselves up, 5-10 of them together, and seem to wait to be chosen, possibly based on the shininess and/or bling of their rides. (When parked, the boda guys are almost always washing/polishing and detailing their colorful, tricked-out motorbikes.) And then, for me, there was also this: Did I really wish to perch myself on the rear of a small, cheaply-made, fast-moving machine and sit in intimate proximity to a strange young man clamped between my legs? And what to do with my hands - grip the driver’s shoulders? Wrap my arms around his chest or waist? NOT BLOODY LIKELY.

But I had to get to practice in 10 minutes, so it was time to man up. If I acted like I knew what I was doing, I thought, maybe it would work out. So here’s what I did.

I strode rapidly from my residential compound, jumping over mud puddles, out to the main tarmac road. Head down to avoid saying a ludicrous number of hellos. (Though I’ve never felt threatened or intimidated here, I draw a lot of stares when I’m out on foot, and I find myself over-greeting.) At the tarmac road, I spotted some bodas 25 yards up the hill, my side of the road. I stopped and looked at them and raised one arm in an impatient wave. I also put on a slightly annoyed-looking face, as if to say – “Why am I waiting so long for you boda guys – can’t you see I’m in a rush?”

It worked. One of them quickly fired up his ride and zipped down to me. When he stopped I said “I need to go to UNMIS. Five pounds, yeah?” (About $1.75) The guy nodded. He was shorter than I, and skinny, and wore a black knit ski cap. Somewhere, he had rigged up a radio – I could hear music coming from his little orange and green, Chinese-made motorbike. I put one hand in a manly grip on his right shoulder to steady myself while I saddled up behind him with an awkward hop and step onto a foothold. Then I put my hands behind me, tightly gripping the chrome handle on the back of the padded seat. We wobbled a little as we took off, waiting for some Land Cruisers and trucks to careen past us down the hill, and I squeezed the seat with my thighs and leaned forward a little to keep my balance.

Why are the motorbikes called bodas? Apparently, bicycle taxis in East African border regions between Kenya and Uganda were the original bodas. The bikes were used to ferry people across the no-man’s land between border posts without the paperwork required when using motor vehicles to cross the international border. It seems to have started in the town of Busia, on the Kenya/Uganda border, where there is about a half-mile between gates - bicycle taxis would shout out “boda-boda!” (“border to border!”) to potential customers. Gradually, cheap Chinese and Indian-made motorbikes became more commonly used as inexpensive taxies in big cities like Kampala, Uganda and Nairobi, in Kenya, and spread to southern Sudan. Now there are boda motorbikes all over the place in Juba.

Ahhhh. We were in the flow of traffic, going downhill, the pleasant buzz of the motor mostly drowning out the African music on the driver’s hidden transistor radio. Everything was going great, my driver was cautious, not going too fast and staying in the right lane, slowing down at the slightest hint of trouble. I was feeling pleased with myself riding to football practice on the back of a boda, when I spotted a large herd of bulls coming towards us.

Yes. A herd of cattle -- some of them with very large horns -- was just a little ways ahead, in the road, on our side of the road, walking toward us and filling up both of the lanes. Cows used to be able to cross the road easily, but around independence, a few weeks ago, the city installed barbed wire in the median separating the uphill and downhill lanes – and now the cows can’t cross, so they were walking up the road looking for a way to get across. My driver slowed, wove in between some other cars backed up by the herd, and then, continued driving – weaving his way around the large animals, most of which moved out of our way, though at one point I had to lean precariously far to my left to avoid being impaled by the saber-like horns of a big white bull. After a couple of tense minutes, we were free of the herd, sans flesh wounds, and buzzed down the bumpy dirt road to the entrance of UNMIS. I hopped off, pulled a five-pound note out of my sock, said thanks, and arrived at training precisely on time.

Inside the New Republic of South Sudan

The first change I noticed upon returning to Juba after the country's triumphant independence on July 9th was the giant new luggage X-ray machine inside the chaotic old baggage room at the airport. It used to be that upon disembarking, people would crowd around a hole in a side wall and wait for the bags to be handed from a pickup truck. Then you would take your suitcase to a soldier with a machine gun and watch as he disinterestedly shoved your clothing around before dismissing you. Now, however, there is a giant metal box through which all incoming baggage is screened. A tall woman seated at a small table sits next to the box watching a video monitor. A couple of airport guys then hand the suitcases up to an L-shaped, high wooden counter, crowded three-to-four deep with mostly very large men in suits waiting to grab their bags. I successfully retrieved mine by wrestling my way up front and wedging myself sideways within reaching distance of the counter. One of the other passengers, much taller, eyeballed me suspiciously as I lunged and yanked my second heavy suitcase off the counter, making a ripple in the pool of waiting people. The tall man asked loudly "He has TWO?!" but no one else seemed to care, and I left my quizzical fellow traveler in the dust and rolled for the exit.

Outside I got a close-up view of the new airport terminal under construction next door. Arching metal roofs, steel buttresses flying this way and that, a lot of tall, tinted glass windows facing out on the city. It looks like a real airport terminal. There is also a large new outdoor waiting area under a newly built pavilion with benches and a proper roof. And across the street are vast new parking lots with properly graded and smoothed grounds, still under construction. Up the main tarmac road to my company’s guesthouse, I was astonished to see that tall metal, solar-powered street lights have been installed in the medians, traffic lines have been painted on the roads, and thousands of tiny colored flowers (along with some garish large plastic roses) have sprouted up. They have even strung wire between the new lamp posts in the curbed medians to prevent humans, trucks and motorbikes from randomly slashing across them to make dangerous U-turns. What’s more, the city has been cleaned! Where are the water bottles, the blown-out flip-flops, deflated tires, broken billboards, floating scraps of plastic bags and smoldering heaps of trash? They are gone – at least on the main roads. Even the watery ditches on the side of the roads are cleared of debris – what have they done with my Juba?

My driver that afternoon is now a proud new citizen of the new Republic of South Sudan. He seems happy and relaxed. He told me the celebrations were wonderful, people filled the streets draped in their new national flag, soldiers hugged civilians. There was no trouble in the capital and, aside from the PA system breaking down temporarily at the start of the big formal ceremony in the stadium, everything went smoothly.

As I rode up the road on the second Sunday after independence, Juba looked quiet, calm and restful. I saw people sitting with their backs to their shacks and storefronts, children playing in earth swept clean. It was done. After centuries of oppression, 21 years of the most brutal conflict in the history of modern warfare, the loss of more than two million South Sudanese lives – somehow, these strong people not only survived – they prevailed. They kept their oil. They will grow their own food. They will open embassies and consulates around the globe. They will have a seat in the UN in New York. They will compete in the Olympics.

On Monday, in my office, I asked about the national anthem and a colleague in the cubicle next to me, a South Sudanese man with a specialty in livelihoods, stopped typing, turned to face me and sang it loudly from memory in a deep, rolling, pitch-perfect voice full of reverence. “My favorite is the part about the martyrs,” he said when he was done.

I didn’t even know he could sing.