Even though I arrived back home last Saturday evening, I will continue with my blog, mainly so I have a record of what I did. If you choose to come along, that would be just fine as well.
Because John and I needed to be at the airport by 9 am, the plan was to be at the Live Connection site by 7.30 am so I could finish what I needed to do. However, "This Is Africa" (TIA for short!) and things rarely go to plan, so we didn't arrive at the site till 8.30 am, leaving me only 30 minutes. So I asked Paul more questions about the school and the second borehole they were planning to have drilled and he told me that he had finally got in touch with the 2IC of the drilling contractor. Apparently the boss was in Nairobi and wouldn't be back till the end of October and the first borehole was scheduled to be drilled on November 7th. I climbed up on the roof twice to get some panoramic shots of the fenced area and all the crops, talked to Pastor Paul (the leader of Live Connection in Australia), said goodbye to all the locals and jumped on a boda boda to get to the airport just 10 minutes late.
The flight didn't leave till 11 am because of all the UN & military activity that was going on - helicopters taking off and landing every 10 minutes or so! But the trip back was fine and I got some great photos of the Nile which was almost in flood. When we got back to Juba, we dropped our bags off at the hotel and went to the bus park and bought my ticket on the 6 am bus to Gulu (northern Uganda).
I then went to an air-conditioned internet cafe to check my emails - it was like heaven & I didn't want to leave! Eventually I had to because I had an appointment with a guy called Paul Wel - he has dual South Sudanese-Canadian citizenship and is working in South Sudan till the end of the year, teaching ex-soldiers how to farm - his family live in Canada. Live Connection are trying to register themselves as an international NGO with the Government and Paul is a willing helper in this process. That night I asked John to take me to a local restaurant where they served regular South Sudanese food. It was just around the corner and we ate Morocan-style, with a number of bowls on a large platter. I ate delicious beef stew, lentils, liver and raw onion with the aid of some very thin, soft, warm bread-like stuff - I think it cost $10 for the two of us!
Next morning we were up at 4.30 am and the bus left precisely at 6 am!! (this is where John & I parted company) The 200 km of road to the border with Uganda was beautiful - fully paved and without a pothole. Getting an exit stamp in my passport was chaotic and totally confusing but, in the end, only took about 30 minutes. Then you had to get a boda boda across to border into Uganda - about 1 km. Here I needed to get a another visa because South Sudan is not yet a member of the East African Community and so you cannot use a multi-entry Ugandan visa. Again after much apparent chaos & frustration, I had my visa and was back on the bus. That's when the waiting started - just 1 km up the road, two semis had crashed and blocked the only road out of town. Five hours later, they had moved one of the trucks and we could slowly get around the accident. Unfortunately, there had been a lot of rain in the area over the previous two weeks and so the roads were very treacherous - so much so that 10 km down the road, a petrol tanker got bogged in the soft mud on the side of the track. Trucks, buses & all assortment of vehicles were banked back for kilometres in both directions! Another 3 hours waiting for a Chinese bulldozer to pull it out and we were on our way to Gulu, arriving at 6 pm - my 4 hour trip had taken 12 hours (TIA).
It was too late to travel to Lira (about 100 km away), so I met up with Harriet, Miriam's older sister and she took me to her home for dinner - again that African hospitality and eagerness to entertain visitors. I met her two children, her son Leslee (6) and Nicole (3) - both as cute as buttons. I had always wondered about the kids fascination with white skin - Leslee explained that kids thought that if you pinched our skin really hard, blood would ooze out. No wonder they were fascinated! I made him pinch me really hard and told him to go to school the next day and tell all the other kids about what didn't happen. Harriet walked me back to town and to my hotel, the Peal Afrique, which was really very good. I needed a good sleep as I would be up early again the following morning.
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