An early exit from southern Sudan

Well, the remainder of my travels around southern Sudan was cut short. I completed my time in Panyagor yesterday and took the flight out of there to Juba, a major city in the south of the country, early yesterday afternoon. The original plan was for me to fly from the first stop directly to the second, but somehow the LWF staff who made my travel arrangements did not know that there was no direct flight between the two, which meant I then would need to fly to Juba to get from destination 1 to destination 2. There was a flight from Juba to destination 2 this morning, but because I was supposed to be on another, nonexistent flight, that flight was full. This would have meant going on to destination 2 on Monday and doing the rest of my visits from Monday to Wednesday, when originally I was supposed to be home by Monday evening, something I had been planning on mentally for my own sanity (given the harsh conditions here) and for the sake of Sarah and Lexi – not to leave Sarah alone too long to care for Lexi.

So basically I decided to pull the plug on the rest of my trip for these logistical complications that were caused by others and because there was no easy way to communicate with me in Juba and others in two different places in Kenya to try to work out new travel arrangements – ones that would have minimized this unexpected delay in Juba. I had my cell phone with me, but because of the service provider I have, it does not work in Sudan. E-mail was not really reliable either.

This all means that I spent the night unexpectedly in Juba last night, for which I had to take some money (a few of the 100 dollar bills from the stacks I had brought with me to Panyagor). I put some effort into gathering information about getting on the UN flight from Juba to destination 2 this morning and getting in touch with LWF staff in Kenya to see what, if any arrangements, they had made (none, really), so I just took matters into my own hands and went to a travel agent and bought a ticket home. I found a decent hotel to spend the night at and was safe and all.

There is more detail to this story, parts of which were adventurous and a bit crazy, as every situation like this in Africa tends to be. Much of it is quite complicated, so I won’t go into those details here, except to say that some involved a taxi driver from the airport who took me to the wrong place yesterday (apparently the Asmara Hotel sounds too much like the Smart Café) and then took off and the hotel proprietor who set me up with a motorcyclist (like a paid taxi) to take me into town to visit the travel agent. Needless to say, I was a bit of a spectacle – a white guy riding on the back of a motorcycle (you never really see white people taking such forms of transportation). This other movement around Juba was all in the hottest heat of the day and over very dusty roads. I was picking accumulations of dust out of the nooks and crannies of my face for the rest of the day. (People write books about these sort of experiences on their trips, don’t they?)

Well, I of all people should know that such travels, especially such complex itineraries like the one for this trip that involved multiple stops and a lot of movement by various means of transportation, never go completely smoothly, that there needs to be one major fiasco on every trip, like the bus full of people breaking down in the middle of nowhere and being stranded for hours (I already lived that episode in Malawi years ago). So part of me is accepting of this fact, that this happened on this trip – the part of me that was ready to return home to Sarah and Lexi, the moderate temperatures of Nairobi, and all the modern comforts of home (I’m even grateful for a bathroom sink and mirror after this trip). But the other part of me is annoyed at another major inconvenience, which is typical of things here (both major and minor inconveniences). In so many things that I’ve tried to do here, there seems to be some inconvenience that arises, either externally (out of your control, like a power failure) or internally (poor planning on somebody’s part, the driver coming late to pick you up). In so many tasks or projects, it seems that things can never get done completely or that you hit some hurdle. And this all seems acceptable to people who live here all the time. Well, in a way it is, and maybe it’s my Western/American attitude, that I’m arrogant for being frustrated that things won’t work “right” (i.e., the American or Swiss way) and why can’t things get done, and no wonder progress is so slow. I still have those thoughts sometimes, but, on the other hand, I’ve learned a little more on this trip that many times it’s the larger, external factors (those less out of my direct control) that can cause the inconveniences or slowdowns or interruptions. But those seem to be accepted to a degree as well (no regular electricity supply in a big city, bad roads, people who can’t be reached on the phone numbers given on their website, etc.).

One way to look at it, I guess, is that this place is really a whole different world and that I can’t – and perhaps shouldn’t – try to compare it to other places I’ve lived. It is what it is, and fortunately I have the choice to stay here and experience it and put up with it or to leave and return to my home country or somewhere else in the Western world. For the time being, we’ll be here and extract what we can from living here – hopefully more positive experiences than negative ones, and hopefully we can be pleased with what we do gain, even if it’s not the full measure of what we were expecting.

I did get to southern Sudan, however, a new country for me (the 48th on my list) and one that is at a significant point in its history. It was very interesting to have visited the part of the country that many refugees are returning to now to restart their lives after Africa’s longest civil war was going on there for 20 years. Now, on to new adventures!