Life in Jamam

The Jamam compound is little more than a few rows of tents and two solid buildings – one being the office, the other the kitchen/eating area. We also have a nice car graveyard - a result of the effects the tough roads have on our vehicles, and the fact that we can't get parts or mechanics here in the field - and that the procurement process for these parts seems to take FOREVER.

People sit around under the big Niem tree and chew the fat after work, or relax under the leaning, shabby thatched shelter on the bed frame for a midday nap.

Evenings involve sharing dinner around the TV, everyone eating while slipping into a zombie-like state, but periodically swatting at the persistent insects that drop down from the fluoro globes onto you. People eventually get sick of the little f&ckers and retire to their tents. It’s always an early night in Jamam – mostly due to the insects I think!

I found it all a bit sleepy and relaxed, with a much slower work pace, even more than in Rumbek. Arriving on the weekend didn’t help to change my initial impressions, when activity levels were much lower than normal! But it helped to get to know the rhythm of the place, get to know everyone a little, and find out what Jamam is all about. I’d already been in South Sudan for about a month and it really was time for me to get up here to see how things work.

The town itself isn’t much to write home about (but I’ll do it anyway). Like Malakal, there is plenty of work to do on public health. The sanitation situation in this place is dire, and from initial impressions and discussions with the team, the locals aren’t too fussed about it. The market seemed insignificant, with a couple of shisha cafes and a cluster of lonely shops selling the usual dry goods. The town does have a school, and even a small clinic, but apart from that there really are no attractions in Jamam – and subsequently no reasons to go there ... except for the odd walk after work.

There are no fresh vegetables or fruit in Jamam; all any fresh food we happen to get, depending on staff buying it on their own initiative, comes from Bounj - the capital of Maban county. Subsequently our diet consists of a lot of beans, rice and lentils, and sometimes the odd dish of goat and chicken if we’re lucky. Nothing at all green. The only vegetable I was lucky to have while there was the humble pumpkin. Yum!

It was good to see some of my colleagues again after only meeting them once during the Public Health forum in Juba when I first arrived. I also met the rest of the Public Health team and, true to form, promptly forgot all their names. I realised what an uphill battle it is to work in Maban and Longechuk counties, our two areas of Public Health activities, due to a number of factors such as inaccessibility due to flooding, terrible roads (meaning our staff can apparently only travel on foot), stubborn communities expecting Oxfam to do everything and the overwhelming remoteness and sparse coverage of villages. Particularly in Longechuk, another 6 hour drive away where our staff are permanently based and trusted to carry out their activities, being brought back to base once a month to report and to get paid (!), I was unable to grasp whether it was really worth operating in such places. The flip side to this is that communities out here need just as much, if not more, assistance than most.

We travelled to Bounj, which is only about 65km away but takes around 2 hours to reach, for three consecutive days, for various reasons including meetings with the local authorities, inspections of water points and generally getting to know the program. The town is a bustling little place, with a busy market (selling vegetables and even fruit – guavas, woohoo!), garages, a mosque and a few eateries scattered around. It’s also the home to the Commissioner  and a number of other important government offices with which we need to liaise.

Travelling to Bounj was my first opportunity to see the scenery of ‘inland’ Upper Nile. The tall, yellow hibiscus-like flowers opening in the morning sun amongst the scrubby bush were a beautiful start. The other thing that made me VERY excited was the presence of baobab trees. I didn’t know they grew in South Sudan, and Maban was the first place I’d seen them. Particularly in Bounj they are huge, and loaded with plenty of reniala (the fuzzy fruit – well, that’s the Malagasy word for it anyway!).

But what amazed me most was the bird life. Much of the Upper Nile countryside is still under water due to rains from the highlands of Ethiopia that flow into South Sudan; this year the rains were unusually heavy and the water had stayed around a lot longer than usual, making many areas even more inaccessible. But this also meant other positive things; more fish around, and subsequently loads of people on the roadside in their little mud-moulded fishing platforms, fish drying in the sun; and plenty of birds, also there for what I imagine is the same reason. My bird book certainly got a workout; herons, cranes, egrets, storks, ducks, geese, kingfishers, hornbills, bee eaters, rollers, weavers and even pelicans. There was a huge variety of birds of prey, the most prolific being the black kites that owned the airspace, but there were also plenty of kestrels, eagles and buzzards in the equation.

The other, less natural activity that brought the birds was the burning of the grassland by the locals. Annually at this time of year, the local people burn the grass in order to encourage new growth for their livestock to eat. The flames leap high as they devour the grass and singe the trees, and throw up plenty of insects for the wheeling, diving kites to catch with precision mid-air.

I don’t know what this widescale burning means for other wildlife, but I can’t imagine they benefit from South Sudan’s scorched-earth policy so much. The only characters I could see seemed to enjoy the charred remains of Upper Nile’s grassland were the maribu storks and black storks that stood around in groups, seemingly gossiping about us as we passed in our Landcruiser.

The only regular physical activity that I witnessed in Jamam involved sudden bursts of frenzied activity to chase and hurl stones at the visiting pigs. The little buggers sneak their way into our compound through the flimsy bamboo fence that marks the boundary in order to muck about in our rubbish bins and generally cause trouble. They’re the dirties looking animals I've ever seen – the pigs in Upper Nile frustrate me on a regular basis because they are EVERYWHERE (even in the eateries in Bounj) and, like all animals in South Sudan, are not fenced or controlled in any way. That said, the frantic pig chase is still is one of the most amusing things about being in Jamam, and never ceases to make me laugh!

So, bringing a volleyball to Jamam upped the tempo a bit and got everyone laughing. We rigged up a dodgy net and poles just outside the front gate and, to the bemusement of the locals and passing soldiers, carried out a nightly game once it was cool enough to be active. It was a really good way to get to know everyone and I was super glad I’d brought it – and planned to bring a net on my next visit.