The loooong drive to Loooongechuk

Oxfam GB has a public health program in Upper Nile state, in Maban county - where all this emergency refugee response is also going on. But we also used to work in Longechuk county, and had a base in a town called Udier, not far from the capital of Mathiang. At the end of last year we pulled out of Longechuk to focus on Public Health needs in Maban, both in long-term and emergency programs.


We still have some loose ends to tie up in Longechuk, and so one fine morning I set off with the Public Health Promotion team to go and meet with the Commissioner and Director of Rural Water in Mathiang. The drive is about 4 hours in the dry season.

The landscape is fairly uninteresting, with vast scrubby plains that stretch as far as the eye can see, perfect territory for oil companies such as Petradar to operate their big oil rigs and gas plants. They're dotted around everywhere. But that's only in the parts high enough to not get flooded every year.

Underneath this seemingly dry grassland is a lot of water, even though you don't see it at first glance. But every now and then you catch glimpses of the water there, when it opens up to lilypad-dotted swamps with water birds. Wildlife spotting amongst the dry grassland and scrubby acacia forest was a real highlight. We saw herds of antelope, white-eared Kob, crested cranes, huge flocks of pelicans and maribu storks, a gaggle(?) of running ostrich, nomadic Arab felata and their huge herds of cattle and goats ... all in a day's drive.

 

 

 We also unfortunately came across a small group of guinea fowl, who took on our Landcruiser in a foot race on the red dusty road. Let's just say that we won, though they paid the ultimate price with their lives! Our driver wasn't slowing down for them to get out of the way; and the silly bird that jumped up from the road as the Lancruiser bore down on it slammed right into the windscreen, leaving a huge round spiderweb-like imprint on the driver's side. We ground to a screaming halt, and when the dust cleared, we saw the carnage behind us: no less than 6 poor guinea fowl were strewn across the road. It had scared the hell out of me; I had just started to nod off to sleep. 

But this is South Sudan, and no food goes to waste. We picked up all the feathery little bodies and put them into the back, to be turned into dinner a few hours later. Beats eating the usual beans, rice and greasy meat soup.

A successful day's drive? I guess it depends on whether you're a guinea fowl or not.