6 months in a leaky boat? Something like that...

After a few weeks in Rumbek, it’s time for me to travel to our other field base. Jamam is a small town in the county of Maban and the state of Upper Nile, the upper-most state in the north-east of the country. Upper Nile is almost completely surrounded by Sudan, with a small part shared with Ethiopia. Oxfam has a parallel public health program in Upper Nile, which we operate in two counties, Maban and Longechuk. We also have an Emergency Food Security and Livelihoods program in the capital of Upper Nile, Malakal, which is about an hour from Juba, with a small supporting public health promotion program. So I’d planned to spend a day or so in the Oxfam office to assist our Public Health Promoter with his upcoming PH campaign for Malakal, and then travel to Jamam to get a handle on our activities there.

Getting to Jamam is quite an effort. The first leg of the journey involves flying to Malakal (about 90 minutes). Then, due to the condition of the road during the rainy season (which is now over, but the ultra-sticky mud isn’t!), we take a boat up the Nile to a town called Melut. This can take anywhere from 5 to 7 hours, depending on what and who is in our little dinghy, and the fact that its motor is pretty small. Thank goodness we’re travelling downstream. Once in Melut, a Landcruiser drives us for five hours to reach our base in Jamam. Makes me tired just thinking about it.

So, with all this in front of me I headed to Malakal, prepared for a long journey. Funnily enough we flew via Rumbek, where I’d come from to go to Juba for a meeting. It seemed strange to not be getting off the plane when we touched down on the familiar red-earth runway. The initial views of Malakal are beautiful – an emerald green snake of water-lily-studded wetlands and swamp that parallels the Nile leads you to a well organised grid-of-a-city, the dry, scrubby landscape stretching away to the horizon behind it. Logically, I was expecting Malakal to be quite a large, bustling city – given it’s the state capital – and in South Sudanese terms, I guess it is. The airport gives it that impression, being quite large and the only other city in South Sudan with actual tarmac. But the place is much less crowded; in fact there were hardly any people there – Juba airport had been a madhouse when I’d left it that morning. Just getting into the front door, fighting my way through the crush of people, was a nightmare.

But what surprised me most was the condition of the roads. If you ever want to learn to drive a Landcruiser, Malakal is a 4WD track waiting to welcome you. The roads in this town are ridiculous. The rainy season wreaks havoc on them, and I was definitely happy that I hadn’t arrived during it. The place would have been more frog ponds than roads. The complete mess of the thoroughfares makes me wonder how the taxis in Malakal – predominantly small hatchbacks – manage to get around without getting lost in the gigantic holes!

To add to this, the sanitation in Malakal is pretty ordinary. The drainage is non-existent (the clay soils makes it very difficult), and in the rainy season I can imagine the incidence of malaria being very high, with water sitting around in all the drains on the roadsides. Waste management is definitely an issue that needs some addressing, as for many places in South Sudan; but in Malakal, it seemed more prevalent than anywhere I’d seen, even more than Juba. Seeing kids playing in the piles of rubbish all around town, and particularly in the market, made me feel both sad and angry. Sad/angry that the government hadn’t established a proper waste management service; and that parents were letting their children play in such a dirty and unsafe place. 

In the ‘definitely required’ category, the government of Upper Nile had started a road reconstruction program in Malakal when I arrived. Thank God, Allah, Buddha, whoever.  Hopefully they can get that done (record time would be nice ... though nothing is done ‘on time’ here), and then address another important issue – public health! Our Public Health program certainly has a challenge ahead of it in this town.

When we reached Malakal port, I quickly discovered how dwarfed our little boat was by the barges around it – and the size of the river onto which we were about to cast it.

Plus this thing needed to be replaced – it was NOT in good condition! The fact that we were seven people plus luggage meant that we were packed in like sardines, and I was starting to dread the journey. But once I settled in, got used to the drone of the tiny motor, and had plastered myself in sunscreen, I started to enjoy it. The initial scenery was interesting, with abandoned boats adorned with pure white egrets, an oasis of palm trees and thatched-roofed villages slowly approaching us, and tall grass lining the banks.

 

Every now and then we’d pass small riverside villages or military camps, kids waving to us as we passed, or spot a stately African Fish Eagle perched in a tree.

It was the variety of bird life that kept me entertained on the journey. Tiny red weavers racing us (and easily winning) from their reedy homes; brilliant white egrets casually hanging out on mats of water hyacinth and in the trees; night herons and Goliath herons awkwardly winging their way away from our approaching boat, and all the while, Black Kites circling overhead, riding the thermals. My favourite birds were the brilliantly coloured Northern Carmine Bee-eaters that seemed to follow us on the route. It was really a twitterer’s dream to be sat in a boat for seven hours with nothing else to do than spot their avian friends. I was certainly appreciative of the small bird book I’d been given.

Some of our avian companions below...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Even the five hour evening journey on the long, bumpy, dusty road revealed its own collection of avian night life. Lines of perfectly still black-headed herons, sitting roadside, emerged out of the darkness like ghosts and large-faced white owls flew at us from out of nowhere. But there were other night dwellers in the darkness around us. As we neared our destination, that familiar smell of fish permeated the vehicle, and there were a lot of people on the road, together with square white shapes alongside us, illuminated by the Landcruiser’s bright lights. I soon realised that they were the mosquito nets of local families camping out on the roadside, in order to catch the mudfish that proliferate in the flooded land around us. I felt rather sorry for them in this situation but was slightly comforted by the fact that they were at least protected from malaria, and able to make a living – at least for some of the year. Tough life.

And eventually we reached Jamam. 5 hours later and in a little bit of trouble for travelling at night (security and all that...), it was welcome to tent city! And a whole different working experience.