The Rocky Road to Riimenze

Each year in January an anniversary celebration is held in a selected city in honour of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement. This year it was held in Yambio. The President, from the north, Omar Al-Bashir, flew in for his first ever visit to Yambio. So too did the Vice-president, who is also the President of the South, Salva Kiir. Al-Bashir made an encouraging speech that the north would accept the results of the 2011 referendum on southern secession. All went well with the 19th January celebrations which were enhanced with various song and dance performances by many well-practised children.

At 6:00am the next morning, four of us set out to drive from Juba, the capital, to Riimenze near Yambio, just over 400kms away. The route was not well sign-posted but one of our team, Justin, who is Sudanese, was able to converse with people on the way to check we had not deviated from the right route. All except a few kilometres of our journey was on unsealed roads, some parts very good but many sections simply a series of jarring potholes and craters. The journey in our Toyota Land Cruiser took us ten hours. Along the way we passed through five or six road blocks.

We saw many people and countless tukuls along the way. Most of them were probably not more than a few kilometres from their simple homes. This was their whole world, built around personal relationships, food and water, and making full use of natural resources for shelter and commerce. There were many [...]