More of South Sudan

The Live Connection (LC) site is about 10 km out of Bor. The land has a road frontage of 100 mt and goes back for maybe 200 mt (5 acres). It was granted to them by the South Sudanese Government. You get there on a boda boda and it can take 30-45 minutes. That's John Chol (my host) on the back - he's an unpaid pastor of a church in Juba and is a quiet, gentle, humble man.

I met Paul Deng, a nice young man who is the manager of the site. In this photo, Paul is displaying some of the local maize variety that they had grown recently. They had also grown tomatoes, ochre, zucchini, eggplant, dura, Lady's Fingers, two types of beans and pumpkin, just for starters.

Earlier this year, the LC team plus the locals, erected the first building on the site. The RH hand end is bedrooms while the LH end is a training room. It was really quite well built with timber and the roofing panels being shipped from Australia.

The people who live on site ( left to right & front to back) include Paul Deng, Nyawut (Monica's sister), Monica (Jacob's wife) & her baby, Jacob, Nyalith (someone's aunt), Nyagai (Majok's wife), Majok. John Chol is on the far right.

I asked Paul a hundred questions, given that I don't know much about farming. He explained that the initial fenced area (50 x 50 mt) has been gradually cleared and then cropped and that the first time that the whole plot will be cropped will be in next year's wet season which starts in April. They are such a hospitable people and wanted me to eat lunch with them. Monica made their favourite dish which consisted of acop (small balls made from maize flour) topped with a stew of ochre & green bean leaves. It was delicious!

After finding the boundary pegs and walking the boundary as far as possible, we headed back to town and booked our flight back to Juba the next morning. Then we headed to Pastor Elizabeth's place where Paul and I started work on a plan to build Stage II of the project - a primary school for the local kids who currently have to walk 2 hours into town. After we got as far as we could with the information we had, the others had a church meeting in their local Dinka language. Even though I didn't understand what they were saying, the dynamic was very interesting - each person was given as much time as they wanted, to present their case - and the others just sat there without interupting. It went on for about an hour and as I understand it, whatever the matter was, it was not resolved and they would have to have another meeting on another day. We had dinner (beef stew with beautiful, fresh, soft buns to absorb all the juice!) in almost pitch dark with torches. We also walked back to our hotel in the dark, bathed and flopped into bed.