South Sudan, April 2024

There are places that you visit and forget. There are people that you meet and never think of ever again. And then there are places that burrow into you and people that will walk with you for the rest of your life. More than memories. More like tattoos invisible to everyone else but you.

The three and 1/2 days in South Sudan were just like that. We visited with my brother who’d been living there for over 7 years, so we felt safe, he knows how to navigate the unwritten rules of the 4th poorest country in the world. The UK government strongly discourage any travel to South Sudan, and the travel agency was unable to sell us flights there unless we had travel insurance, which was, unsurprisingly hard to obtain. The Central African state was only formed in 2011 when it split from Sudan and it is one of the most diverse countries in Africa, more than 60 ethnic groups cohabit not always peacefully. The political situation is unstable at best.

It was my first time on the African continent and I can honestly say that nothing could have prepared me for the onslaught to the senses. Even now, almost two months after returning home, I still struggle to give words to my feelings, I am unable to give justice to what I saw. It feels wrong to say I loved it. Did I love seeing the poverty? The children half naked in the streets? The unpaved rutted roads? The living conditions? The mountains of rubbish everywhere? No. No. No. No. No. I felt ashamed of where I came from. We must do more. We must stop complaining about what we have, about what we think we don’t have.

And yet. The people. The smiles. The untapped possibilities of a whole continent.

I’m just going to offer you photos. A lot of them. Indulgently they will mean more to me than you, but I need to keep the place alive out there. Hiding behind the ‘I didn’t know’ is a stale excuse.

Flying from Cairo towards Juba, dry rivers scar the desert, the blue ribbon at the top is the Red Sea.
After the desert the land shows signs of the recently began raining season. Everything seems so endless.
The Nile changes the land it cuts through.
Juba is the capital of South Sudan, and will be our base for the next few days. It is vast and sprawling. Most of the roads are unpaved and have no names. There is no postal system. But there are hospitals and banks and schools and lots of churches. The government is here too. The UN has a compound and there is an expensive hotel for foreigners. We stayed in a Church compound, guests of the Franciscan brothers who run one of the parish in town.
Volunteers from the parish we were guests of, stayed up all night cooking for a big celebration the day after.
We visited a school founded and built by a local man on his own land to keep kids off the streets. It is heavily subsidised by charitable donations in one of the poorest areas of the city.
There are children everywhere and they are as curious about you as you are about them.
And there are orphanages who feed and clothes the ones left abandoned on the streets.
The most memorable afternoon was spent in the IDP (Internal Displaced People) Camp on the outskirts of the city. Over 100,000 people are living in tents having abandoned their land and roots. In the whole country over 2.2 million people have been displaced because of the various conflicts. The Nuer people living in this camp were wonderful, joyous, welcoming, friendly, curious.

Is it crazy to feel at home somewhere like this?

Leave a comment