Juba – South Sudan Returning Home

Welcome to Juba, capital city of Africa’s newest country, South Sudan. Despite the sweltering heat, the locals love their suits and ties. And they have just celebrated their second independence anniversary this July. They proudly say their city is Africa’s largest village. The moniker, largest African village, comes from years of underdevelopment because of war.

Before 2005, this city was a garrison town full of grass thatched mud huts in the middle of a ravaging war zone.
Today, flashy comfy air conditioned SUVs crisscross the streets, mobile phones have become play toys and trendy apartments are popping up at an unimaginable rate. Business people from all corners of the globe, including the Chinese and Brazilians have swarmed into town to have a bite of these new found opportunities.
That means some businessmen both foreign and local have to carry three or four different cellphones, one for their personal use the rest for business.
And they very proudly display them on the coffee tables.
I was even surprised to meet a Guinean on my flight here. Dollars he said was the reason he was coming to Juba, a chance to make some good money. He said he could not find such opportunities in his home country. He even wondered why some Africans are risking all to go abroad when such opportunities abound right here in the middle of the continent.
Here in Juba, they had to start from scratch and so they need anything and everything. Just think of anything that can be sold from bottled water, cement, to generators or the food on the dinner tables, all that have to be imported.
That is the reason why Juba is listed as one of Africa’s boom cities.
All that has been a crop of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement or CPA, signed in Nairobi Kenya in 2005 between the Sudanese government of Omar Al Bashir, who is wanted in the Hague by the International Criminal Court ICC for alleged war crimes in that country, and his arch nemesis, the late Dr. John Garang, leader of the rebel Sudan People Liberation Movement or SPLM, the current ruling party in South Sudan.
The CPA agreement brought six years of a transitional period from 2005 to the subsequent referendum in 2011, when the region chose to secede from Sudan and became an independent republic.
Decades of war had relegated this vast territory which can easily swallow both Kenya and Uganda, to an era comparable to the medieval times, lamented a fellow writer friend. But he says that elusive development which the locals have yawned for is slowly coming.
Yet this city of about half a million or so people has no running water or sewage system and definitely no functional electricity grid because everybody relies on loud generators to power their electrical appliances. Even charging mobile phones is a booming business here.
The lack of piped water is the reason water tank trucks manned by Ethiopians and Eritreans crisscross the city, selling water pumped from the Nile to the locals.
And most companies are foreign owned, like the Chinese and Malaysian oil companies operating in the coveted oil fields. Crude oil exports are the source of over ninety per cent of the South Sudanese government revenues. But neighbouring Sudan which owns the pipeline and the port through which the oil is shipped to the world market has threatened yet again to close the pipeline and deprive the Juba government of their major source of revenue.
Even the only tarmacked road extending south of Juba to the Ugandan border was completed less than two years ago through a United States government funded program. Within the city itself, there are not as many tarmacked streets.
To move around one has to risk a bumpy ride on board crammed rickety passenger service vans or take the crazy motorcycles or bodabodas as they call them here. I saw four accidents here in two days with two fatalities. All involved these bodabodas.
My writer friend very modestly says this is the period of rest.
You see this country has been at war for a very long time. And now that peace has come, our people feel a need to rest and have a good time. But you have to be wise, because when the elephant has fallen, he who has no knife goes home without any meat.
What he meant was, this is the time to make or break it in Juba. But some still prefer to take it real easy and have a very good time.
Of course such good times mean blaring Afrobeat music while playing card and board games all day by roadside cafes or guzzling bottles of imported beer at midday, under the shaded mango trees by the banks of the Nile. Here is where the major foreign owned hotels and discothèques are located.
Good times can also mean uneducated youths in flashy suits preferring to look for white collar jobs in government offices because nobody wants those sweaty blue collar jobs. Leave it to the Ugandans and the Kenyans they say.
Also prostitution has become a common vice with most girls in the age old trade coming from the neighboring countries. The authorities are trying to stump out the vice by knocking down shacks and illicit brew joints.
But the greatest rabble-rouser among the locals is the endemic corruption which they say has bedeviled their young nation.
The president, Salva Kiir Mayardit had to send out letters to some of his ministers and top government officials whom he suspected of corruption, asking them to return the 4 billion dollars they stole from the government coffers.
Although an investigation was carried out, not even one suspect has been brought to book to date.
But in the past month, in a bid to fight corruption or perhaps brazing himself for a presidential election in 2015, the president has suspended his ministers of finance and cabinet affairs, pending another investigation. The two prominent ministers have been accused of trying to steal eight million dollars without authorization from the president.
The government in Juba has also been accused by human rights groups of silencing critics, including torture and unfair imprisonment of journalists and government critics like the assassination of the late columnist Isaiah Abraham, killed for his views. Also for doing little about the escalating security situation and poverty in the country, especially in the volatile and restive Jonglei state, where a rebellion has been simmering for months now, and cattle rustling and ethnic clashes remain rampant.
To the average Jubarian, life is not so rosy. Many live from hand to mouth and some survive by collecting water bottles and pop canes which litter the city streets, selling them for a pittance. Also brewing illicit liquor and hauling building rocks makes one get by.
Some have even resorted to crime. The under paid security forces have been accused of lending their guns to criminals for a piece of the loot.
Watch out and never keep a motorcycle in your house, advised my friend, unless you want to invite criminals to rob you. They also like brand new Toyotas and those other enviable brands of SUVs. You can make a million today here in Juba and lose it the next day if you are not careful.
So as the sunsets over this dusty, hot and sunny city by the bank of the Nile, I feel a pervading sense of uncertainty blanketing it. I hope the dream of these Jubarians to see their city develop and prosper shall be fulfilled.
Maybe tomorrow will be a better cooler day. Let’s hope so because today was too hot for my liking. I had to carry a bottle of water in my hand everywhere I went. One reason was to quench my thirst and the other was to stay free from any cholera or typhoid.

Carrying bottled water in the hand, that’s how they knew I was not from Juba. I was just another returnee.

by David Dedi

Born in a war torn African country, David Dedi found solace in books. This budding writer and poet, from South Sudan, Africa’s youngest nation is the author of an anthology of poetry and short stories called Borrowing Fire. As a child he grew up in refugee camps in Africa. Despite his predicament, he immersed himself into learning, seeking inspiration in works by literary greats like the late Chinua Achebe and Samuel Beckett.Through support from relatives and benefactors he was able to enrol into schools in Kenya. In 2006 after excelling in his final secondaryschool examination, he got a sponsorship at the prestigious University of British Columbia, where he graduated witha Bachelor of Arts degree in anthropology and history in 2011. Although he lost his parents in 1995at the tender age of eight, his father to a soldier’s bullet and his mother to HIV/AIDS, his quest to better his life gave him the zeal and resilience to survive, and the passion to share his experiences, through poetry and storytelling. He now lives in Canada but has recently returned to South Sudan to help in development.For him it was a poignant experience, returning home after twenty one years and meeting a changed country.