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Reconstruction in Southern Sudan
Barry Sesnan
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[The following is from Barry's New Year's letter. -ed] Now, as 2006 starts, I am based until the beginning of February in Juba, working for Windle Trust on a project for UNHCR to help youth who have started coming back to Sudan, even before the official repatriations. Most of them were refugees in Uganda. We are training them to be emergency English teachers, since Juba has become a very Arabic town during its years of isolation. Inevitably, they are mainly male, since the first "venturers" in these situations will usually be boys and men. A surprise was that they were older than expected, but the war has gone on for 20 years. We are also supporting the English medium schools to take more students. As for Juba, Sudan, it was back after 20 years to a town stuck in a time warp. Apart from my additional weight (kilos, not authority), there is nothing different between my time in Juba in the early eighties and now. I am even riding a motorbike (actually there is less tarmac than the 6 km there used to be). Perhaps it is actually a little hotter (the surrounding areas have no vegetation after years of being cut off). And, yes, the University is no longer there. It flitted to Khartoum in 1989 when Juba was on the point of starvation. There are mobile phones, in theory, but they hardly ever work; the electricity is just as poor as ever, and, as before, it doesn't do to look too closely at the water. I live in a grass-thatched tukul (hut) in the middle of town on the compound we have been given by the Ministry because the accommodation is too expensive (and it was impossible to rent for short-term). There is hope though that it will change. Next week marks one year since the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed. Some oil money is filtering through from Khartoum, though it still seems to be stuck at the Government of South Sudan level. The next level down, the ten States, still don't have funds to spend. Contracts have been issued for roads and electricity. The roads are, nevertheless, full of posh Government of South Sudan (GoSS) cars, and South Africa gave GoSS two passenger planes. The GoSS vehicles outnumber the agency vehicles (though UN agencies and UNMIS, the peacekeepers, mainly Bangladeshis in Juba make up a lot of the traffic). Every kind of number plate is seen from the Arabic/Latin plates of Juba, to the NS of New Sudan, the Congo plates sold in Ariwara and Aru as a local income-generating activity, Uganda numbers and others. Since the road from Yei opened, a huge new market has grown up at Custom, where the road from Yei enters Juba, still the only viable road because of the presence of the Lord's Resistance Army between Torit and Juba. At Custom, Fellata traders (Hausas) from Western Sudan trade alongside young Sudanese brought up in Uganda, and prices oscillate between items brought from the north and items brought from East Africa. Ugandan money and Sudanese dinars are both accepted at Customs, and Rwenzori water from Uganda has replaced bottled water from the north since everything from the north still comes by plane; the barges have only fitfully resumed. Prices are horrendously high, but that is mainly because of the huge demand from the agencies setting up in Juba. The GoSS has said that every agency must have decision makers based in Juba, not in Khartoum or East Africa. For the first time for 20 years there is good-sized new employment in Juba, and, for instance, anyone who can drive either drives a hire car at $100 a day or has got a job with an agency. The more educated are also being swept up by the UN. So far the tensions usually experienced between returnees ("we suffered in exile") and stayees ("we suffered while you enjoyed in Uganda/diaspora") have not been too evident, though they will definitely arise as less educated stayees (or fighters in the civil war) find all the jobs taken by the educated who were outside. It has more or less happened already at Ministerial level. (Yes, stayee is a new - to me - agency word used for those who never left for one reason or another.) Boda bodas are coming in and supplementing the one bus route (same as in 1981), though the population of Juba regards them with suspicion (too fast, these boys might abduct you or rob you, or give you AIDS, a commonly expressed fear about the returnees). The Thuraya satellite telephone is king; every SPLM/GoSS cadre has one, though this may change if new mobile companies come in. I wish I had shares, as at up to $3 a minute it must be a most lucrative business. Juba is full of my former students, some returning like me. The school I was involved in founding in 1981 is still running, in English medium, and, rather coincidentally (but not bad for the image), UNHCR was giving the school things when I arrived. The Windle Trust project is also helping them. One of my first students (from my earlier tour here), Onesimo, is now Pastor Onesimo and father of five sons. To him, being cut off for twenty years when other classmates had got out has left him struggling to catch up. He came for Christmas to Entebbe and started getting up to speed on e-mail (the first public e-mail opened less than 6 weeks ago in Juba) and internet. The situation of Juba and the other garrison towns is fascinating. They are still under Khartoum for the moment, and, in spite of our assumptions, it is not obvious to them that they should join the SPLM (Sudan People's Liberation Movement)/GoSS system without some discussion. In education it is made even more complicated by the fact that the GoSS Minister of Education is not from the SPLA (Sudan People's Liberation Army) but, though a Southern Christian from Raga, named by the National Congress party as specified in the CP Agreement. Students who study in Arabic in Juba want to take the Khartoum exams (the SPLM side still has not provided a secondary exam) and go to University in Khartoum. Oh, and there are two armies, the government army in the barracks and the SPLA camped near Custom (and near John Garang's grave). By the time I left, the SPLA had still not been paid though the government army is. |