There and Back Again

The five early returnees are safely in Kampala; in fact, they were there before Vasco and I got back to Lui.

That's not the Juba scoop I wanted to lead with, but I'm sure it's the most important piece of news for many of you reading this blog.

Now, Juba. Our journey to Juba in an old Toyota 12 passenger van took five hours. We were exhausted, dehydrated, and covered in a fine dusting of red dirt when we arrived. We got to the Sahara Resort, where we may or may not have had reservations, and found that it looked nothing like its picture online. Nothing. Nothing at all. Luckily (or not?) they did have room for us, so we doubled up into four rooms -- Vasco and Joe, Robert and Nancy, Tammy and me, and Emily. Most of us didn't find electricity or running water in our rooms when we got there. That shouldn't have been a big deal after almost two weeks in Lui, but in the presence of a TV, an air conditioner, a flush toilet, and a shower, it was a crushing blow. After a while everyone had power and water, though, and we were happy to wash before we gathered for lunch. We ate well and spent a comfortable night before going to the airport this morning to get all of the above except Vasco and me onto the plane. Then Vasco and I came back, not in the promised bus, but in a "special hire" Toyota Land Cruiser with air conditioning.

The land southeast of Lui, in Central Equatoria, is a bit different from the area around Lui and Mundri. There are far fewer, and much shorter, trees, and much more tall grass. The hills have more round, black, rocky outcropping. We saw Chinese surveyors working between Ronkon (I think) and Juba. We spent quite a while at one of the checkpoints having our passports and visas examined. (On the way back, in a new Land Cruiser with tinted windows, we were waved through without even much slowing down.) The bridges mostly have no railings, and in one river we saw the rusted-out shell of an SUV, left over from an accident that killed two people.

The hotel was more expensive than anything I have ever personally paid for in the United States, but it was identical, for all practical purposes, to what I pay 30 USD per night for in Egypt. Apparently that's a matter of supply and demand in Juba -- lots of UN, government, NGO, and business people, few hotel rooms. Christina's cooking in Lui will stand up to what we paid about 20 USD each for in Juba any day of the week. Some of us were hoping for gin and tonic, in an ironic salute to our colonialist forebears (aside from liking g&t), but the hotel had neither tonic nor limes. Most of the roads in Juba are dirt; we traversed one paved road and two roundabouts. Sadly, we did not see the Nile. There was no ice cream at the hotel or the shops across the road from it. Gas cost 1.5 SDG/liter.

Vasco and I had to make a choice about how to get back. The bus turned out not to be going till tomorrow. To wait for it, we'd have had to pay for two rooms for another night. There was a matatu going today, but it was leaving between 8 and 9 a.m., which would mean that we wouldn't be able to see our friends off at the airport, and we really wanted Vasco there to help navigate if necessary. The only other choice was to hire a car, at a very high price. That's what we did, partly because it was still going to be significantly cheaper than staying another night, and partly because Vasco's wife is in the hospital (yes, Lui hospital, which is up and running despite the usual absence of doctors) and we didn't want to keep him away from her any longer than necessary. The negotiations for the price of our trip turned out to be very frustrating. A middleman promised us a certain price inclusive of gas and any other fees. The driver he'd engaged, with the Land Cruiser, left for a bit with a promise to return for us, and then the middleman told us he wasn't coming back and connected us with the driver of a Nissan Sentra, totally the wrong car for the ride. That price, in conversation with the middleman, started out lower but rose to equal that of the Land Cruiser. The driver of the Sentra eventually agreed to the arranged price plus the price of gas. I said no. Eventually Vasco and I got him to agree to pay the gas himself out of the arranged price. Then the first driver came back and told us to get in the Land Cruiser. At this point I had given the Sentra driver the first part of the money -- he'd asked for it all up front, but I said he'd get the balance when Vasco and I were safely in Lui. So the two drivers argued for a while, with the middleman, about who'd be driving us. Finally the Land Cruiser driver won out, and the Sentra driver gave him my large bill, but then he insisted that we pay for the gas in addition to that agreed price. We said no, and he argued, but finally I said, "OK, then, we will take the Sentra because this driver has agreed to the middleman's price." So then the Land Cruiser guy, a Kenyan named Collins, decided he could live with it too. Vasco and I were proud of ourselves for pulling it off, but we ended up giving him kind of a big tip because he had a flat on the road and then lost most of the tread off his spare, and he didn't harangue us for more money but was just solicitous for our safety. I will just say alhamdulillah for all the Egyptian cab drivers who gave me the experience of haggling about ride prices so that the Juba experience wasn't too overwhelming. I guess the moral of the story is to avoid middlemen.

Juba is a funny mix of looks-like-Lui and looks-like-Cairo. I feel like I can extrapolate from Juba what Khartoum must be like. Someday I hope to see it.

The airport experience convinced us all that the way in and out of Lui isn't Juba. It took our travelers a full hour to get through check-in, baggage weighing, and immigration to be ready to go through security screening. Mundri International is much simpler. It was good Vasco was there; a friend of his works in immigration and probably smoothed the way a bit. On the way back to our car, we actually saw Bishop Bismarck of Mundri, who'd come to Juba for a clergy wedding yesterday. This trip has been full of unexpected coincidences like that.

Deb and Dan had some really helpful conversations while I was gone. We're going to be working on parish-t0-parish connections this week -- and going to Lozoh, Advent's sister parish, Sunday for church, as well as each continuing our own projects. I was ready to come back to Lui this morning and really happy to have arrived. Whenever Wayne and I have moved to a new state, I have not quite felt at home till I traveled out and returned back to the new place. I guess Lui has become my home in Sudan, because leaving Western Equatoria and then driving back in past Lunjini school and the familiar houses along the road gave me something like that same sense of comfort.