Delving into South Sudan on a road trip.

DAY ONE; A MAGICAL SIGHT

We arrived at the agreed point at 6:30pm. I was traveling with my housemate, and work mate, and one of my best friends, who, for lack of interest to go into details of her real name, I will call Angel, as that is what I call her. There was only Ibra, one of the other Rafiki members we were travelling with. May be I should mention at this point that we were a group of six, four men and two women, all belonging (except me, who was hatching up plans of resigning but had a project to finish up before that) to a theatre troupe named Rafiki Theatre ltd. We had been invited by HTPVK (Holy Trinity Peace Village, Kuron- which is a village deep in Eastern Equatoria province, south Sudan, neighboring Ethiopia. The Toposa, who are the main inhabitants of the village, are closely related to the Ugandan Karamajongs and the Kenyan Turkana. They are very neglected, much like their brothers and sisters up in Karamoja, only worse since the state has very little and mostly no presence in their area) to train a new theatre group they had formed (‘they’ refers to Bishop Paride Taban, the first Bishop of the Torit Diocese, who founded the village after he retired, as a peace hub for all tribes to live together peacefully, learning from each other and developing the place. But ‘they ‘here actually refers to Ulrich Thum, the development worker and advisor for their peace programme, who had decided to employ theatre as a tool for development) to help them do their development work more creatively and in more participatory ways. Rafiki Theatre is a participatory theatre troupe acting for non-violence and development. I have been asked in the articles I have written about Rafiki, why Rafiki has a German creative director and I will not tell you what I told them but what I will tell you is that if you know what it takes to get funding in this country, then you will understand why you most of the time have to have an expat in the management of a company that depends on funding.

Anyways, so there we were, with Ibra, and we realised we still had a lot to do. So we left our luggage with him at King’s chicken and went to Eco bank. The boda guys were very tricky (yeah, we did not use a special hire) demanding for an extra two thousand (it’s always those small notes that get you thinking it’s a lot of money for god’s sake) after we had already paid fifteen thousand from Bunga. But in the end we paid, and continued to the bank.

The first blow was when I realised I had forgotten my ATM card. I felt very stupid and confused, but Angel had brought hers so she withdrew enough money to lend me some. After we said goodbye to Eunice, another friend, (who had travelled with us from Bunga – those nice people still exist), we set out in search of the things we needed.

There are so many things we hadn’t been able to buy. We had not found the pack of Pepsi sodas, or water (need I explain what these were for?). We had not found some warm socks for the cold nights on the journey, and so many other things. But above all, we had not found a voice recorder for me, as I intended to document the whole trip. And it was a Sunday. Who looks for a voice recorder on a Sunday night? It was already 7pm and all the shops we passed were closed. All.  It was amazing how the shops on Kampala road looked like they had connived to deny me access. The only places open were restaurants and bars.

I knew I could only blame myself. I had had all the time to buy it but I don’t know why I waited for that last day. I hated myself for being this endlessly last minute person who paid heavily for things I could have got for half or even less the price on normal days. But apparently all my journeys tend to fall on weekends and I never seem to have everything I need. This time I was praying to find at least one poor quality, overpriced audio recorder but it seemed like I said the prayer too late. Trust me, there was no shop open. I had tried during the day to contact a friend of mine, Sam,  who had connected me to Noah, a friend of his, but all effort to find a recorder were in vain. I just had to give up, no matter how badly I needed it. So I did. Besides, did I have a choice?

Before long, even before we looked for the rest of the materials we needed, Claus (the much asked after creative director) called Angel to tell us to report to the bus urgently to load our luggage. So the search was paused until further notice. The problem was that even after finding king’s chicken restaurant, we had not seen the bus we were supposed to board. So I suggested to Angel that we locate the bus before carrying our luggage from the restaurant, which was too heavy to walk around with, looking for Imani coach.

True to our fears, Imani was parked at the extreme end of Arua Park, quite far from king’s chicken. By the time we came back to pick the luggage, Claus and Hussein (our other esteemed member) had decided to join us at the restaurant so we could have a meal before leaving. And as such we did, being later joined by Swizen, (the final member of the group) who had failed to locate King’s Chicken until Angel and I picked him up at the entrance of the park.

It was quite a good meal. But I did not eat much, and even the little I ate I cannot remember how it tasted. I was rather anxious about the journey, as it was going to be the longest road trip I had ever taken. I was also worried about the things we had not been able to find, especially the audio recorder.

When we finally entered the bus, I was very disappointed. Not that I expected a bus full of all kinds of people at 8.30pm to smell fresh, but I found it rather congested and not quite clean. I was not comfortable from the very beginning. I was seated next to Angel and on my right sat a rather interesting woman that said quite a lot of things. Even those things that were supposed to remain thoughts. They seemed to find their way down her lips and she seemed comfortable saying them. It was not until about 9.30pm when the bus set off. I called my mum and dad and after listening to their lovely voices, I switched my phone off. Somehow I dosed off almost immediately.

There are a few intervals I remember. Like the Karuma falls, and a few other familiar places where I woke up and looked around and dosed off again. But the first time I completely woke up was at dawn when I looked to my right and saw a magical sight. The horizon was orange and yellow and somehow like a dull fire. There were silhouettes of a few hills lined up next to each other, tiny, outstanding and proud. It was a wonder to behold. I almost woke Angel up to show it to her but somehow the beauty hypnotized me and I dosed off again, waking up later to her whisper as she showed me the same amazing sight. The night was almost over.  What makes night journeys so fast; you dose off one minute, and wake up the next to find it is morning. And hundreds of miles have been covered. We stared at the young sunrise for some time. She took a picture of it.