Our new colleague at The Rwanda Focus, Macharia Kimani is a Kenyan journalist who has for the last three years been in and out of Juba, the capital of South Sudan. In this piece he describes some of his experiences there.

The unforgettable sight in the town is the big sleek vehicles parked outside tukuls. (Internet photo)

That was true to a certain extent three years ago. Today it’s a different story.

The first time I was in Juba reality hit home when the plane doors opened and forty five degrees of pure heat enveloped me, perspiration trickling down instantly. This was going to be survival for the toughest. It was the hottest welcome I have ever received in my life, and the surprises were just to begin.

That day in 2006 was to mark the beginning of my three year on and off stay in Sudan, working as a journalist for an English fortnightly, the Sudan Mirror.  At first it was a calling to the cause and then it became an exercise in keeping myself alive, healthy, and relevant, three of the essential requirements of survival in Juba.

The heat beats down on your brain to the point you may become disoriented. There are individuals I know who never lasted two weeks and opted to scramble out of there back to difficult livelihoods home than stay, leaving behind the powerful allure of dollars.

Walking from the tarmac to the immigration hall seemed like a reincarnation of the biblical 40 days in the desert. The heat on the ground seeping through my shoes, the sun so directly pointed at me I thought there were three of them.

Among other things I would report on the emerging economy, the challenges of the indigenous people as well as the visitors and investors plus progress on implementing Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement, CPA, a document designed in 2005 to end the 22-year protracted war pitting the Arabic North against the Christian black South and bring about self-sustenance and government to the southerners.

Juba International airport is a large hall partitioned between departures and arrivals. The first thing you notice when you enter is an engulfing powerful smell, acrid urine emanating from the lavatory at the entrance from the tarmac.

In the hall there are no metal detectors or scanners. Arriving and departing passengers are made to open their luggage - suitcases, boxes, wrapped items anything that is luggage, for the customs and security guys to manually go through. Your clothes, toiletries, undergarments, everything is ransacked in full view of every passenger. Privacy? That’s where you leave it first time, and subsequently always. But then even if metal detectors or scanners were there they wouldn’t work because there was no electricity at Juba International.

I finally made it through and got a Toyota Prado taxi cab to the office cum residential compound, giving directions in English and getting replies in Arabic.  Surprised with the Prado? Today taxis in Juba are 16-cylinder brand new Sport Utility Vehicles or new Toyota Mark 11 Grande and other 4x4’s from Japan. Now how is that for the barren unexplored bush that is Juba? But the Prado taxis are only for those with plenty of dollars to dispense. For the masses it is motorcycle taxis that are in various states of disrepair and that are driven so recklessly in and around town that it is reckoned they kill at least fifteen Sudanese in Juba a day.

The unforgettable sight in the town is the big sleek vehicles parked outside tukuls (mud huts). Equally interesting are the satellite dishes and VSAT equipment adorning the sides of these huts.

As we head towards my destination I watch post war landscapes; the ruins of bombed out buildings; battered and inert military hardware; the rusting fuselage of a downed fighter jet all amidst mud huts and mango trees. Everyone around here seems to wear jungle camouflage combat fatigues and guns – mostly AK 47s. Everyone is a soldier here, it looks certain, and several complete their military attire with a pair of slippers, mostly mismatched, for boots.

Juba is a place of strong smells; excrement that is out in the open; uncollected garbage and the permanent cloud of dust hanging over the town.

Once in my new dwellings I need a shower. In the bathroom I turn on the shower and guess what, a blob of water hyacinth plops out!

That green water weed that was about to choke Lake Victoria and that floats on the River Nile; that is what this green slimy blob that pops out of the shower is. The shock sends me reeling back and I stumble almost falling backwards. It’s common for hyacinth to pop out of taps in Juba. So I learn. There is no water purification plant in southern Sudan and what you get out of the tap – that is if your dwelling happens to have piped water – comes straight out of the river.

My appetite for the shower is gone for the moment.  

The afternoon is unbearable with the heat and boredom. We discuss security and situational updates. I am told people around here are trigger happy. I learn the strain of malaria defies East African anti-malarial drugs and treatment is with drugs from Khartoum hundreds and hundreds of kilometers away, and over the sea in the United Arab Emirates.

Southern Sudan is hard to describe if you are used to the norms of civilization. People will think nothing of it to relieve themselves in the open. Nature has called and nature has got to be answered. A grown man will without a second’s thought, right there in front of you loosen his pants, squat and do his business. In the morning hours it’s even worse - whole families and neighborhoods congregate to answer the call of nature, like a wicked sect that knows no age or sex difference.

Months later I somehow acclimatize to the climate and the people. There are kind and humble people here, and there are many you can only describe as savage and barbaric ones. You will mainly know the difference by whichever situation you are in.

The polite, civilized ones will ask you in for a meal, occasionally.

But this is the lesson you learn quickly – when invited for food decline politely. Some of it is prepared and cooked beautifully but then they have a local green staple that is like spinach. It never leaves the plate! It stretches and pulls and stretches, I suggest if you try to eat this thing carry a pair of scissors!

The mother of all shockers is the bottle of raw cooking oil among the plates, salt shakers and serving spoons. Raw cooking oil is added to any sort of cooked food on the table and people here immensely enjoy adding it to roast beef, as well as porridge, and I bet you have never seen shinier Kaunga!

It is said the fat helps the people withstand the sun and elements of nature that come with the harsh climate. The fat protects their skins.

Drink bottled water or boil and treat it yourself. Sudan is now among only six countries in the world that has the guinea worm – the most embarrassing and painful of all worms.

The female guinea worm can grow to between 2 and 3 feet (0.91 m) long and be as thick as a spaghetti noodle. Approximately one year after the infection began the worm attempts to leave the body by creating a blister in the human host’s skin—usually on a person’s lower extremities like a leg or foot.

This blister causes a very painful burning sensation as the worm emerges. Within 72 hours the blister ruptures, exposing one end of the emergent worm. There is no vaccine or medicine to treat or prevent Guinea worm disease. Once a Guinea worm emerges a person must wrap the live worm around a piece of gauze or a stick to extract it from the body. This long, painful process can take up to a month.

I have also learnt to withstand insults and occasional slaps with a straight face and apologetic, malesh asma, ana maaruf walai, malesh….. Am sorry, I swear I didn’t know, am sorry and chant it like your life depends on it.

When an AK 47 brandishing half naked Dinka over six feet tall with a very dark face full of lacerated patterns that are a norm that part of the world hits you and asks eta mujunun? (Are u mad?), you do not talk back. Not even if your offence is as small as running into him. He will shoot you for that.

 Several lives have been taken with pieces of lead from rusting but effective AK47s.

Want to get married? Search anywhere else but southern Sudan. The most expensive women are to be found there. The dowry of an educated bride could be costed to up to US$ 50,000 in head of cattle. The extreme dowries discourage many a young men without a fortune. My humble means dictated I pass on the beauties.

There is much wildness and lawlessness and chaos but Juba in 2009 also has made some progress. From the darkness of post war uncertainties to earnest construction of roads, bridges, new permanent buildings, hotels, schools, hospitals and a semblance of rule of law.

Non governmental organizations (NGO’s) and other Government of South Sudan initiatives have seen the establishment of proper latrines and people are being taught other rudiments of hygien.

Already one of the most expensive towns in Africa, to some lengths compared to Angola, life in Juba became even more expensive the day the International Criminal Court indicted Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, for war crimes.

The many business and employment opportunities dwindled down. There is little circulation of money and the dollar is hard to find. Inflation has risen and the exchange rate has been shooting up, whereas one US dollar exchanged for 2 Sudanese pounds a few years before, by September 2009 it was exchanging at 2.7 pounds.

Gun shots rent the air in Juba regularly. Uninvestigated murders of foreigners and local alike are the norm. There is an effort however to beef up security and now nightly patrols are carried out by the army, the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army trying to reign in a totally lawless situation.

Another problem is eating already rampant in the new Government of Southern Sudan: corruption. Kickbacks are the order of the day in the offices of the fledgling government. No service is delivered without a backhander. The lawlessness coupled with the corruption means that is South Sudan ever attains self rule it will come into being as an already failed state.  

Other signs already indicate how badly an independent Government of Southern Sudan would be run. Today the government of President Salva Kiir demands and decrees that all jobs below managerial positions be given only to locals. East Africans, Eritreans, Ethiopians, Lebanese and other foreigners have started emigrating out of Juba, taking with them badly needed skills the society needs to function with a semblance of normalcy.