Miss Stacey Goes to Juba

Once upon a time I got offered a sweet job as the National Education Coordinator for South Sudan with the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS). The position was based in Juba. Thank God I did not take it! Nothing against JRS, but compared to Isohe, Juba is no treat. Crossing over the Nile River coming into the city, the smell alone triggered a gag reflex so fierce that I almost lost it. “Thank God!” was my immediate first thought. There is definitely a reason that things did not work out with JRS, and I think God had my sanity in mind.

So, Juba...a bit dirty. Ok - a lot dirty. Picture tons of dilapidated buildings next to modern buildings next to crumbling huts. Then picture muddy roads with big puddles of stagnant water all through the middle of town. Then picture heaps and heaps of dank, rotting, smelling garbage on the sides of the roads - everywhere! Then mix this smell with that of fish from the river and poop and urine. Mix that will a ton of people on top of each other, lots of white land cruisers, a few high fences with rich people's houses inside, and good food at high prices. There is my first impression of Juba.

We (Pietro, Andrea, Bosco, Dario, and I) rolled into town at about 6:00 - after a six-hour car ride. The road after Torit was pretty good, albeit peppered with lots of red and white boundary markers and triangular signs warning of nearby land mines. Some places even had holes where clearly, in that exact spot, was a mine a few days ago. Terrifying. They found these mines a few weeks back when a company was doing some road rehabilitation. The UN deemed the road unsafe to pass until just two days before we were to leave – not that AVSI follows UN protocol, so I’m pretty sure we would have gone regardless. In fact, I just learned that Hiyala, one of the communities I visit at least once a week, is off limits to the UN as well. Hmm. Nice to know.

Along the beautiful road to Juba - a road surrounded by tall green and gray mountains and spattered with villages popping up every now and then - it was really interesting/ creepy to hear Dario (the administrator of our office whom I love!) tell about all the battles that happened along the road, and to actually see all the leftover indications that his stories were all too historically accurate. To think, it was just four years ago that thousands of Southern Sudanese died along that road as they fought to drive Northern Government forces away from Torit.

Finally we made it past the crap of our initial descent on Juba to the Comboni (I think this word means “missionary” in Italian) Fathers’ Mission, which was like a little slice of paradise in the middle of a stink hole. My room was clean and had a nice desk and electricity. It even had a fan and a shower (more like a mister, if I am to be honest, but hey, it was water and it got me clean). AND THERE WAS A KITTEN there too!! I was so sad to leave the panda kitten (she looks like a panda and this is the year of the Olympics in China, so I have decided that Panda is a fitting name for her - Sorry Aunt Robin...I was really leaning towards Hermione Granger) in Isohe, but found JAMILA the gray, puffy tiger kitten in Juba when I arrived! It was a very exciting moment to chance upon her the first night.

Pietro, Andrea, Bosco and I had a wonderful meal (grilled chicken, french fries, and what I will call collard greens) at this lovely restaurant run by nuns - and attached to a kindergarten. I think it is their way to make income. And it is delicious! **Side note, I have never encountered so many priests and nuns in my whole life than when I am working with AVSI. And furthermore, I find that I am incredibly ignorant about priest/nun culture and that of the Catholic Church goings on/politics in general. For instance, when I was in Kitgum a few weeks ago, I went to the hospital to get checked out since I had been feeling not super for about two weeks. Ultimately, Dr. Moses diagnosed me with malaria and some stomach bacteria. As he was writing me the prescription, I casually asked him if in the pharmacy, they carried Depo Provera (injectible birth control) and explained to him that I wanted to use it on the cats here in the compound since getting them spayed was not an option and the seven cats we have already are too much. He told me that he thought they carried the pills, but to check with the pharmacy about the shot. So, as Bosco (awesome logistics coordinator for Sudan projects in Kitgum and my baby-sitter/sidekick/dad for the week I spent in Uganda) and I waited for my prescription to be filled, I asked the nice woman in the pharmacy (who just happened to be a nun), if they carried Depo. She immediately looked at me with disdain that made me feel ashamed to the core, and said very bluntly, “No. We are Christians.” Period. Oh.**

Back to the delicious meal. After we had finished, we watched a bit of Olympics, had ice cold water, and I felt a lot more energized than I had in a long while. Going from Malaria to feeling like I had a pinecone in my throat was about as fun as trigonometry, but that meal made me forget it all...A sort of crap part about not being in the States to watch the Olympics is that the only things on in our time zone, consistently, are power lifting (I have seen both men and women’s on multiple days), handball (a sport that I have only heard about in fairy tales – who knew it was in the Olympics), and fencing. Really, I am not kidding. I have not seen Michael Phelps win one gold medal or seen any gymnastics or diving or running or any mainstream, interesting sport this entire Olympic season. Such a bummer. The other crap thing about being here and watching the Olympics in public places is that people cheer when the US loses! Such a tough crowd.

My second day in Juba was filled with terribly unproductive meetings with the Board of Examinations at the Ministry of Education. Since most Southern Sudanese children are still educated using Ugandan and Kenyan curricula, it means that they must travel to Uganda or Kenya every year to sit for their exams. While this seems like a logical thing to do, transporting that many kids (in a big dump truck basically) the six hours by bad road is quite dangerous, in my opinion. Three years ago, this convoy of children was actually ambushed and five were killed by the LRA. This danger, on top of feeding, housing and supervising these kids for two months in Uganda while they prepare of the exams seems like a logistical nightmare and a huge liability. On top of that, immigration authorities are asking each child to pay a $50 immigration fee, something that was never asked of them before. For kids who can’t even pay their school fees, this is a terrible burden. This year, however, was supposed to be different. The Ministry in Juba was supposed to make an arrangement with the Ministry in Kampala so that the Ugandan exams could be brought to and administered in Sudan. Obviously, this didn’t happen. So, once again, all of the children in the schools we support had to be registered again in Uganda. The issue now is that the Ugandan authorities want NOTHING to do with our students. They say that there has been a Hepatitis E outbreak in Northern Uganda, and that the Sudanese are to blame.

All of these issues I presented to the Board of Examinations in Juba, who basically told me that this was not their problem. They explained that the had indeed made an agreement with the Board of Exams in Kampala, and that our children should never have registered to take the exams in Uganda. I explained to them that our students waited until the very last minute to register (waited because they thought the government was going to make a deal with Kampala), but when the registration period was close to ending, they panicked and decided to send their names to Uganda. The people in Juba told me that “they should have trusted their government” and that this was not their problem. We went around like this for almost two hours and literally, I feel more stupid for having had such a circular, nonsensical conversation.

Then, I went with Bosco to the Tax office in the Ministry of Finance to present our list of items that should be tax exempt due to the fact that we are carrying out humanitarian projects in Sudan. Again, we were met with opposition. In my letter about school construction and school feeding programs, which asked that a variety of items that we must import from Uganda be tax exempt, the tax officer questioned me about beds, mattresses, desks, etc and told me those things were neither school construction nor school feeding. When I asked him what we should put in the school after it is built, he just stared at me and then went back to highlighting, line by line, each item “that was not justified to the mission stated in the letter.” At that point, I was ready to scream.

Welcome to my life in South Sudan. So hard to do anything good.

On a side note, I also visited the UN compound. Very interesting. It is an entire fortress filled with offices made out of mobile containers (with A/C fueled by gasoline generators pumping continuously) and row after row of tents for accommodating all of the UN and affiliated staff who are in Juba. We waited for our meeting in the UN "cafeteria" - a huge open air tent with a bamboo bar and a soda fountain and hundreds of tables topped with Hines Ketchup and Tabasco Sauce - having a glass of water in the middle of a tent city. This all would have been ok, but I was so caught off guard with the American country music being played over the radio. So weird to be in South Sudan listen to Alabama and Dolly Parton in the middle of lots of Europeans. So weird.

After my day of crap meetings, however, I still had the evening to look forward to. We went back to the Comboni Fathers' place and Pietro, Andrea, and I walked one “block” over to visit my almost-office, JRS. Father Thesing, the Country Director was delightful and the JRS office and house is wonderful. Tile floors, granite counter tops, A BLENDER! But still, I am grateful not to live in Juba.

That night, Davide, an old friend of Pietro’s and Jeff’s took us out to supper. I was promised pizza and ice cream in Juba, so they took me to a wonderful little restaurant for pizza, and then one that looked like the RTJ Country Club for ice cream. My trip was complete. I slept well that night and then we headed back across the River Nile in the rain and made our way to Isohe.

Juba...a lot like NYC to me; a fun place to visit for a day or two, but I thank God I do not live there.

Next time, I want to visit the U.S. Consulate. I hear it is pretty sweet. Swimming pool, tennis courts, and lots of good food!