2nd Anniversary of South Sudan

I was in western equatorial state (WES… or WEq as I prefer to write it) last week…. Yambio then Tambura- which borders Congo.  The people of WES are relatively short, for south sudan- or for what we typically take as a Junubin.  With my 5’6, I felt quite tall - this gave me a false sense of ...confidence, security- and belonging, I guess. 

I almost forgot that this is a country of tall ass people

Today? I was rudely reminded. I went to the John Garang mausoleum for the 2^nd anniversary celebrations, and at one point I had to go looking for the Red-Cross tent. I swear I got, not only totally disoriented, but also claustrophobic. I kept looking up to find landmarks but all I could see was bodies. It was like standing in a forest of trees with no idea of what direction to take next. I believe the average height in the mausoleum was 6’6- with some Nuer and Dinka - Agar easily reaching 6’8-7. (I don’t think I am exaggerating). 

And the place was fully packed. Everywhere you turn.  And nobody was paying attention to whatever was going on in the podium- I didn’t even realize that the official program had started – and did they play the anthem? Cause none of us were aware. (It would have helped to have sound… but no speakers were installed in the main part of the stadium, so instead people were going about their business, dancing, singing, beating drums, showing off their culture.).  *That* added to the claustrophobia.  

Now… why is it that these tall people, 6’6 already, insist on leaping and jumping as part of their dance? Nuer, Dinka-Agar, Dinka-Bor, Mundari, Toposa etc..  Tall as trees and still trying to touch the sky. Amazing. Another reason why I kept looking up and seeing bodies- cause there goes another body reaching for the sky. 

After going around in a few circles... i did finally stumble to the tent (i can't ask for directions- i can't speak Juba Arabic- and although the official language is English- you cant tell that to nobody)

But.... after all that,  now I see why I am short. 

Its not even because my mom’s family comes from Eastern Equatoria- although that does not help.  No.. the dirty secret is that Dinka Malual are not tall. I stumbled onto a sign that said ‘Northern Bahr-el-Ghazal, Pirka Malual Tueng- and no I don’t know what that means- but these are my people. And lo, and behold- I could see eye –to- eye with most of the dancers. Not even one 6’’ in sight. And we weren’t even bothering to jump and leap and touch the sky. No.... we politely tied weights to our ankles (old metal cans filled with ... something that makes sound- basically a percussion instrument)  to ground us and were stamping our feet to make the anklets jingle (these are called anklets, no?).  As if to say, no.... we prefer to be close to earth, thank you.

So.. I now clearly see why my dream to reach 6’ was aborted even before I was at the starting line.  I think its all very unfair.

nb: i will post some pictures. oh and probably add on a few ramblings later

On Sudanese cuisine

Bear with me as this conjumbled .
I am constantly aggravated when reading some chirpy expat blithely shit on Sudanese food.
However......it pains me to admit eating out in Sudan generally is a sad experience outside of a few select local dishes.
Why is our food so....unremarkable?
I don't have an answer to this and I doubt many Sudanese do either{excluding those who vehemently disagree }.
Going back certain historical factors must be considered.
And even before that one must reach an internal consensus on what the great culinary cultures of the world are{and take into our consideration the deep seated western bias any foodie internalizes }.
What makes them great and how did they get there?
 Sudanese in general do not have a great interest in food.We eat to live.Gluttony is a shameful sin and one that is publicly ridiculed.The consensus is the food should be good,but not too much fuss should be made of it, and if something is put in front of you eat it and shut the fuck up.Not exactly an enviroment conducive to culinary excellence.
Maybe its the great ingredients? Our meat is some of the greatest{ free range,mostly organic} and not in much need of masking and hiding flavors or odors.Vegetables are fresh if somewhat limited.
Perhaps our historical poverty? This was a land of herders and farmers who alternated btw drought and floods.
The existing cuisine is heavily influenced by Egyptian and Turkish traditions that creeped in during their brief ruling of Sudan.
The original cuisine  of the overwhelming majority of Northern Sudan is porridge{Aseeda},gurassa[a thick fluffy pancake and a relative of injera{kisra}, sauced with dried meat reconstituted in a tomato paste sauce{tagaleeya},or roab{a yoghurt based sauce} both containing waayka{dried okra pounded into a fine powder} which is the most popular base on its own.
All simple dishes the ingredients which can travel for months without spoiling.
More mental farts forthcoming.

Reclaiming Activism.By Alex DeWaal

I read this awhile ago and feel its important.
http://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2013/04/30/reclaiming-activism/

Reclaiming Activism
For most of my adult life I introduced myself as an “activist” first and a writer, researcher, or practitioner of humanitarian action or peacemaking second. Then, about seven or eight years ago, I became rather uncomfortable with the word. Not because I had diluted my personal commitment to working in solidarity with suffering and oppressed people, but because a group of people, in whose company I didn’t want to be, were claiming not only to be activists but to define “activism” itself. I am speaking of course about the policy lobbyists in Washington DC, also known as “designer activists,” who took on the role of promoting certain causes related to Africa, and who arrogated to themselves the privilege of defining these problems and identifying and pursuing ostensible solutions. It was no accident that those purported solutions placed the “activists” themselves at the center of the narrative, because many of them were Hollywood actors—or their hangers on—for whom the only possible role is as the protagonist-savior. The actions they promoted all had one thing in common: using more U.S. power around the world.
I was not the only one to find this arrogation of “activism” offensive, demeaning and counter-productive. One of the most refreshing aspects of our recent seminar at the World Peace Foundation was finding out just how much the consensus among national civil society activists from Uganda and Congo, as well as Sudan, has coalesced around the view that the basic narratives and policy prescriptions of the Enough Project and its ilk are not only simplified and simplistic, but actually pernicious. Theirs isn’t activism: it’s insider lobbying within the Washington establishment using celebrity hype as leverage. They are not just a benign variant of advocacy, perhaps somewhat simplified: they are wrong.
It’s time to reclaim activism. It’s time to reassert some of the fundamental principles that made activism an honorable vocation and practice.
Some of the principles are contained in blog posts relating to our February-March seminar, easily findable under the tag “advocacy.” Let me outline three such principles.
First, activism should be undertaken in partnership with affected people, under their leadership. It should facilitate those people defining the problem for themselves—it is only by defining their problem that they can ever be master of it, rather than it becoming master of them. It should be sensitive to their leadership. Activists should be alert to the possibility that local people will be dazzled by the illusory prospect of outside salvation and surrender their own leadership to their supposed foreign friends. And so activists should approach the people with whom they hope to act, in a spirit of humility and self-effacement. That is the practice of solidarity.
Second, activism should seek truth and speak truth. That means being honest to the facts, and doing the hard work of finding out realities, and when required, changing one’s mind accordingly. There should be no sacrifice of uncomfortable and complicated truths for the sake of simple messages that foreign audiences can understand and to which they can relate easily. A central part of activism is the hard intellectual work of understanding.
Third, activism should challenge power. That doesn’t mean abandoning the pragmatics of calculating effort and impact, of calibrating intermediate and strategic goals. But it does require being honest about where the greatest concentrations of power lie, and how that power is utilized, and making that power uncomfortable, at least. Lobbying that merely adjusts the trajectory of super-power policies, in directions that are not uncomfortable for that superpower to shift, is not challenging power, but giving power an alibi. The U.S. government didn’t need the Enough Project to know that bad things were happening in Darfur, that Joseph Kony is a villain, and that the war in eastern Congo is causing desperate suffering. But maybe it needs principled and brave people to tell it that the interventions in Somalia, Libya and Mali are deeply problematic, that its friends in power in Juba, Kampala and Kigali need to be more honest and less militaristic. “Activists” who pick only on the already-identified bad guys are at best activists-lite, whose inconvenience to policymakers is that handling them takes up precious time. If these policy lobbyists did mount such challenges, they might lose some of their insider access and glamour, but they might gain our respect.
So: three clear principles to guide an individual or organization aspiring to the honorable term “activist.” One: act in solidarity and support of the affected people, and don’t impose on them. Two: be honest to the facts, and open to inquiry into the facts. And when the facts change, change your mind. Three: be ready to challenge the biggest powers: the U.S. government and its allies.

mango season

its mango season in south sudan. and its absolutely fantastic.

I drove down to Western Equatoria State (Mundri) last week and there are mango trees heavy laden with fruit everywhere. All along the road, in every corner, everywhere- growing wild, basically.
All one has to do is get a big stick and pick a few mangoes.
Or if you want to buy mangoes just buy a whole bucket full of mangoes for real cheap (10 pounds)

We drove to a number of health facilities we work with, and at every community meeting, they brought us buckets of mangoes. 
I love this country.


Except in Juba where they sell one mango for 1 pound (in Mundri, 1 pound gets you five mangoes.  But most places they just give you for free because they do not know what to do with all that fruit.

I would love to set up a mango processing plant.

You can’t take pictures in/around Juba town.

Without being stopped and harassed. 

Even just walking with a camera in hand…its assumed that you are a journalist and therefore a danger to the public (sic)

And yet we are in our 3^rd year of independence.

A friend of mine was taking a picture of a building under construction. (his friend is the architect so this wasn’t a random building)

A guy comes up to him and tells him, ‘you are being called by that guy’ (across the street)

He goes across the street not realizing that the building he was walking into used to be national security (for the North) pre-independence.

The building has no sign, nobody introduces himself, or even tells him why he was called. Instead…

He spends 4 hrs in a room being questioned over and over again about

-       why he is taking pictures

-       is he a journalist? (the authorities fear and routinely harass journalists)

-       what’s wrong with his hair (he has dreadlocks) and how can a self-respecting man do that with his hair. If anything they should cut his hair.

4 hours. 

The worst part being that if anything had happened to him there would have been no way of knowing where he was.  And also that even after the fact, you cant really try and raise a complaint because nobody there has a name, a tag, there is not supervisor that can be held accountable.

Just a room. And persons issuing threats.

we need to do better.

Immigration

The powers that be at immigration routinely decide whether or not one qualifies to be south Sudanese, based on whether or not they think you ‘look south sudanese’.

It is extremely frustrating.

I spent about an hour at the airport yesterday (travelling back from Zanzibar) detained at immigration for having a Kenyan passport, South Sudanese travel document and not paying for a visa either in Kenya or in South Sudan.

i.e I have to have had to pay for a visa. Somewhere.

The immigration fellow kept saying things like, “No you are not south Sudanese. You are Kenyan, and just pretending”

Or

‘I will send you back to where you came from so that if you are using the south sudan travel document they have to stamp this document, and you buy a visa for Kenya. Or you buy a visa for south sudan and use Kenyan passport. Or you go to immigration hq and explain yourself there. You cannot do both.. you are behaving like a criminal.

This coupled with the fact that I constantly have to prove that I actually am from this bloody country wherever I am? 

I’m about to give up.

You can’t leave a house empty..

here.... Seriously. 

Nature takes over and you come back to find the house overran with layers of dust, spider-webs, spiders on every corner, geckos and other types of lizards flitting around, the water from the taps is a solid brown-ish muck, etc.. 

I'll be spending the next couple of days cleaning and reclaiming.

But yes, xmas and new years’ break with family.  And all I can say about that is family can be tiring. Mine especially. No gets along, lots of family drama,  sibling rivalry, etc. And the family keeps getting bigger- many new cousins and 2nd cousins and... we are determined to be a village all on our own.

Tomorrow is CPA day (Jan 9th). Its supposed to be a public holiday... doesn't seem like there's much planned though.