The time has come…..the Walrus said…

Dear Friends,

Sorry I have not posted for quite a while now. Some changes have occurred recently that caused the delay.

For one I left my Job with Plan International in December 2014. This was just over one year since I left South Sudan, which has been the subject of many of my posts.

Considering that I have been writing this blog for 5 years now, the question in my mind was, should I continue writing, even if the subject of my posts will likely be quite different from the past, maybe even worse? Or should I pack it in, retire when I still have some dignity left?

After some soul searching I have decided to continue writing. This may turn out to be not one of my wisest decisions, but then no one has ever accused me of having a surfeit of wisdom.

I am working with CAP Youth Empowerment Institute now (www.capyei.org) an organization that trains youth for employment. So a lot of my pieces are likely to be about youth, employment and development, interspersed with my usual rants of course, about any and every subject that grabs my whimsy.

Thank you for staying with me this long

Sincerely

Ndungu Kahihu

————————————————–

P.S. The heading of this post is stolen from Lewis Caroll’s poem, ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter.’ My favourite stanza goes:

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
Of cabbages–and kings–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And whether pigs have wings.”

You can find the rest of it HERE

The price of leadership

Salva Kiir and Riek Machar, the two belligerents in the tragic South Sudan civil war, met in Ethiopia yesterday and committed themselves to a 60 day plan to create a transitional government that will hopefully bring this needless, self inflicted, conflict to an end.

It is about time, I say.

Many people in this region and elsewhere would seem to agree. For instance, some of the language used at the diplomatic ceremony in Addis Ababa was clearly undiplomatic, reflecting, no doubt, the growing impatience with two men who just don’t seem to get it:

“If we want to apportion blame, it’s theirs. I think sometimes they thought they could win on the ground militarily, something which is very stupid,” Mahboub Maalim, Executive Secretary of IGAAD.

“Any attempt to stand in the way of peace will have consequences,” Hailemariam Desalegn, Ethiopian Prime Minister.

 

The two war lords. The body language says it all

 

It is a real shame that things had to come down this.

The body language of the two men clearly shows they were dragged kicking and screaming to the sanity table. I hope we shall not hear more about wounded egos and peace agreements that were forced down on the threat of arrest.

But no matter. A bruised ego is a small price to pay for saving lives and rescuing a country that everyone but Riek and Kiir, clearly realizes is hanging on the edge of disaster – a dream unborn; a potential basket case – thanks to their inept leadership

In any case the price one pays for leadership today has gone up significantly, since the old days of unremitting sycophancy when the Emperor could do no wrong, even when he was butt naked.

The new price of leadership means subordinating your ego and comfort for the sake of the people who have entrusted you with power to lead them. It means working with people you do not like, for the sake of the nation. It means recalling every day that you are the leader of ‘all the people’, including those who oppose you.

The sooner the two men realize this the better for all.

Anything less is short-changing the long suffering people of South Sudan.

 

When will this madness end?

“THE Red Cross is poised to air-drop relief supplies to hundreds of thousands of South Sudanese in the first operation of its kind anywhere in the world for nearly 20 years.”

————————————————————————————–

Saving lives in South Sudan has always been a race against the weather. As soon as the rains start much of the country becomes inaccessible. The soggy landing strips become so unusable sometimes even helicopters cannot land.

As for the roads… what roads?

This time Humanitarian agencies, including Plan, have just lost the race.

The civil war that has killed over 12,000 people displaced so many others that, even with the best of conditions, it was virtually impossible to reach them all. A planting season was lost and with it any chance that people will at least be able to feed themselves when the rains start.

Now the rains have come and with it most of the country is shut down. As the Economist, echoing many media houses, reports, Catastrophe looms.

Sad when you consider that this is a man-made crisis (2 men, to be precise) one that could have been avoided if the leaders of South Sudan had exercised just a little bit of sense.

When will this madness end?

Praying For an Imperfect Peace

The deadly ten year civil war in Sierra Leone (the one that was popularized by Leo DiCaprio in the movie ‘Blood Diamonds‘) ended many years ago. But there is one scene from this tragedy (the real one, not the movie) that I still remember vividly.

The day I read that, as part of the peace settlement, the negotiators had agreed to forgive Foday Sankoh, the butcher of women and children, I felt physically sick.

The late Sierra Leonian, Foday Sankoh

“How could they forgive such an animal?” I asked myself. “He deserves to be hanged; a bullet is too good for him.”

History has shown that the people of Sierra Leone were much wiser than I. Sometimes peace is worth any price.

This is a question the people of South Sudan will have to confront soon, now that the second round of peace talks has resumed.

Everyone wants peace, they say. But what price are they willing to pay for it? For instance, are they willing to let killers go Scott free, knowing that one side’s killer is the other side’s hero?

It may come down to this.

The destroyed town of Bor. Over 10,000 have lost their lives and many more are displaced. It is worth paying almost any price to stop this from happening again.

Last month I took part in a web discussion organized by Reuters Thomson on the subject of peace in South Sudan. It was my first time to take part in such a discussion. Sometimes things got rather heated and I had occasion to be glad I was safely lodged behind my keyboard.

There were two camps in the conversation. One camp insisted that the most important thing to do was to ensure accountability.

“Investigations must be done with a view to punishing those who have caused these atrocities. Doing any less will be condoning impunity, yet again,” they argued.

Of course it is easy to make such a declaration from the secure perch of a Western Capital. But many of my friends, including South Sudanese, think the same.

I was in a different camp. Stability first and then all other things can follow. In a climate of war neither justice nor accountability are possible.

But the price for stability is an agreement that brings the key forces back into government, thus formally allocating them a stake in the nation’s future. It means glossing over the painful events of the past months, letting many crimes go unresolved for now, perhaps even postponing the search for accountability to a future generation.

Any other course will simply prolong the fighting. Allocating blame to any side, or even both, will just harden positions, making a near term resolution virtually impossible.

How about playing the political card, say by setting up a few scapegoats from both sides, as the ICC tried to do in Kenya? Unfortunately that card has been played already.

In any case, to misquote Jesus Christ, which of us can claim to be completely innocent in this matter? Haven’t we all been complicit, either by omission or commission?

Former friends, turned deadly enemies. Kiir and Machar will have to learn to live with each other

So what is likely to happen?

Once the inevitable posturing is over, I expect an imperfect agreement to be reached along the following lines:

1. A ceasefire monitoring mechanism will be agreed, including a commitment to flood the country with AI/UN peace keepers

2. The political questions will be addressed by inviting Riek Machar and many of his lieutenants back into government

3. The international community will make promises to assist the country in reconstruction, humanitarian relief and development, promises which may or may not be kept

4. A new government will be formed, which will immediately embark on the process of completing the post independence plans (a new census, new constitution followed by elections).

5. In the meantime the people of South Sudan, tired of war, will learn to ‘accept and move on’ many of them bitter but relieved that peace; any peace at all, is possible.

If I was part of the peace negotiations I would urge the people involved to quickly get over the posturing phase, so that the real bargaining can begin.

An end to this needless suffering cannot come soon enough

A People Who Trust Too Much

I spent five days in Juba last week. This is the first time I have been back since October 2013.

It is as hot as I remember it. My attempt to complete a 10K run in 36 degree weather, something I used to do with ease, ends up in a dazed dehydrated shuffle.

But otherwise many things have changed in Juba.

WFP food aid super lifters. The crisis this time is quite serious

The very first thing I notice at the airport are the giant heavy lift planes commissioned by the World Food Program to deliver food and other supplies to the affected people. The small planes, trucks and even Russian heavy helicopters can no longer cope. Again it is a race again the clock as no one knows when the rains will start. More than 200,000 people are trapped in temporary camps in rural areas without food, shelter or medicine. It they can not be reached before the rains shut down all roads and landing strips, I hate to think what will happen to them.

This crisis has been unique in a sad way. Most times when people face disaster they run to the safety of numbers to be found in cities and towns. But in this round the towns, being the theaters of fierce fighting between the combatant forces have offered no safety. Many people are forced to hide in the bush and subsist the best way they can, far from any help at all.

Meanwhile, back in Juba, I notice many other changes, some subtle and others quite plain. For one the town looks half empty. There are no traffic jams and the thick crowds I used to see near Konyokonyo market are nowhere. Juba is clearly a recovering ghost town.

The view from 10,000 feet. Jebel Kujul mountain, normally a popular hiking sport for Kawaja ‘expatriates,’ is now deserted.

My colleague Jane explains it to me:

“People ran away after the fighting and many took their families to Uganda or Kenya for safety. The ones who came back are adults who need to work.”

The next day, on my short walk to the office, I am able to confirm this. I count fewer than 5 children, going to school, where previously there were crowds.

The construction boom that started in 2013 is gone. I am surprised at how many ‘for rent’ signs I see (five in our office neighborhood alone). I have never seen anything like this before. There are no new projects starting and many that were going on have stopped.

It is simply amazing how quickly a city can be brought to its knees by insecurity.

Office to rent sign near the office. The construction industry was one of the first casualties of the civil war

I am told the situation is worse outside Juba. Bor remains a destroyed ghost town. Malakal is a constant battle zone, despite the ceasefire agreements signed in Addis Ababa. The town changes hands yet again in the week when I am in Juba as the government forces retake it from the rebels.

The people are as resilient as ever. Many do not want to talk about their recent painful experiences, although I can tell each of them has a story to tell. It is too early, I think. In any case everyone is buried in work. Plan has set up a huge humanitarian response program and most staff are working more than 12 hour days just to cope.

But one of my colleagues says something that sticks in my mind.

“This war is not between the Dinka and the Nuer. It is simply between Salva Kiir and Riek Machar, two people who seem willing to destroy the country in order to rule it. If the two find peace, the country will find peace.”

The tragic flaw of the African, it seems, is that we put too much faith in authority, what Hofstead called, ‘power distance.’ The politicians seem to own not just our labor and property, but our reasoning faculties too. At a word we will kill and die for them and then fail understand what just happened. South Sudan is just the latest chapter in this tragic story of a continent that trusts too much.

In Kenya today there is a process going on where politicians seem to sink daily to even lower levels of ignominy in the eyes of the public. I know some are not deserving of such a reputation. But I can’t help thinking that this cutting of authority down to size maybe the long term salvation of the African people.

We must stop deifying our leaders and start valuing our capacity to steer our destiny.

Next time politicians tell Kenyans or South Sudanese to kill or fight for them I hope we shall take a collective breathe and have a long laugh at their expense. Then politely invite them to go jump in the River Nile.

The Quality of Mercy

Let me tell you a dirty little secret about Humanitarian response.

If you are ever to be caught up in a humanitarian  disaster, pray that it is god-made, not man made. There is an important distinction.

You see, the hearts of many donors, who end up giving the money for disaster response efforts, are strangely fickle at times. For instance, there is less sympathy for victims of man-made disasters like civil war, political insurrection etc than of natural disasters like hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes etc.

In the same vein, rapid onset disasters tend to elicit more sympathy (before the shock wears off) than long drawn out ones like say drought and famine, unless there are many dead.

All this may sound cynical and in a way it is. But it is a fact of life, albeit one that is not often spoken about, at least in polite company.

“The quality of mercy is not strain’d/ It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven” wrote Shakespeare. But clearly he was not writing about modern disasters and response thereof.

My experience has shown me that, in our field, sympathy is not unconditional. It is influenced by geopolitical realities, just like most other elements of the development industry.

I first met this reality in a London pub ten years ago. It was a quiet Sunday night. I had arrived from Geneva where we had spent a tense four days trying to stretch the resources of a mid-level agency to cover four emergencies in different parts of the globe, all happening at the same time. To make matters worse, as we were still negotiating about who to try and save first, another disaster, an earthquake, struck Pakistan. Now we had to respond in five places.

So I arrived in London, enroute to Toronto, not only tired but greatly discouraged and feeling depressed. That is how I repaired to a nearby pub to try and wash away my feelings of impotence with alcohol. There were only five other people in the pub. Three were locals as I later learned. They were very happy to welcome me and even offered to buy me a round.

How could I say no?

As the evening grew old, we all got mellow and loud, as many good drinkers do. Lubricated by the best of British bitters, we suddenly became bosom buddies and began to confide in each other; about our work, families, hopes and desires, in that strange and trusting way known to drunks the World over. Being strangers to each other (at least I was) we could speak our deepest secrets in the knowledge that we would likely never meet again.  Those were the good old days before facebook, twitter and the NSA.

I told my new friends what I did for a living and described the last week and the rare confluence of disasters that had hit the World in a short space of less than a month. To my surprise they had all heard about the disasters. Two of the men were already planning to contribute money through one of their favorite charities and another man was thinking about it.

“Which disaster will you contribute to?” I asked him.

“I will support any except Pakistan.”

I looked at him in some shock, wondering at such political incorrectness.

“Why?”

“I will not support a country that supports terrorism in my country.” This was post 911 and feelings were still very strong, so I could understand. But with time, I have come to learn that this was not the rare exception that I initially thought it was.

But this piece is about South Sudan.

The crisis in the country is about ten days old today. Agency rapid assessments of the impact are on-going but early estimates indicate over 180,000 people have been displaced so far.

The BBC has been doing a good job of highlight the plight of the displaced people as well as the frustratingly slow progress being made to start peace talks in Ethiopia and secure a ceasefire.

I am not in South Sudan myself but I would dare to estimate that tens of millions of dollars will be needed to take care of the affected people, hundreds of millions more if the weather goes bad or the peace talks fail.

Plan is already responding to this crisis and we shall be launching a series of appeals for support in the coming days. So will other agencies; with the UN playing a prominent lead role as usual.

One thing I do expect is that we shall all have difficulty in attracting the kind of support required. The common sentiment in such situations, sometimes expressed in online chat groups is: “They got themselves into this, why should we help?”

Unfortunately ‘They’ the political leaders responsible for causing this crisis are not the ones doing the suffering. As usual that role is allocated to poor women, children and the elderly – the young men having run away to escape harm or gone off to fight for one belligerent or the other.

To make matters worse, two more humanitarian disasters have escalated in neighboring Congo and the Central African Republic, with almost a million people displaced in CAR alone.

Guess what they have in common with South Sudan?

They are all man made.

Kiir and Machar in better days. How times and ambitions change!

Happy 2014 – A Prayer for Sanity…an Explaination

Happy new year to all my friends.

May 2014 bring blessings to all our lives, comfort to the afflicted and sanity to our politics.

Three months have passed since I last posted on this blog. You deserve an explanation for the long absence.

In October 2013 I accepted a new position with Plan International as a Global Adviser. This required me to move from Juba in South Sudan to Nairobi in Kenya.

It has been a difficult transition in many ways. You will not be surprised, I am sure, to hear that, although my body left South Sudan, my heart is still there. The crazy events of the last three weeks have made things even harder for me. Many of my colleagues and friends have been caught up in the renewed conflict. Many of my South Sudanese friends have been directly and tragically affected and I could not help feeling like I had abandoned them.

A former colleague lost his cousin. Our staff in Bor were caught up in the fighting that is still going there and some of them spent days in the bush. Our international staff were evacuated after a tense four days of uncertainty.

But it is R___, a friend and former student intern in our department whose story has especially touched me. He is Nuer and his family was caught up in the first round of fighting in Juba. In the process he lost four relatives, including two younger brothers. Luckily he is safe.

The well ordered town of Bor. Once again the news for all the wrong reasons

I have been immersed deeply in the reality of South Sudan since 2006. I can understand the depth of communal emotion, the anger and fear that have been sparked by these events. How this will be healed is likely to be the biggest challenge for the future, even if the two belligerents come to an agreement.

Once again I am forced to the conclusion that the true tragedy of Africa is poor leadership. South Sudan is a poor country but with great potential and some of the most resilient people on Earth. But their leaders have clearly failed the people, no matter how you look at it. If Kiir and Machar find peace among themselves, the nation will be at peace. But when they fight…

It recall the tragic events in Kenya in 2008 when two bulls (Kibaki and Raila) blindly fought for power. The results were tragic and the nation has never recovered.

My friend, the late Berkeley Hackett, used to say that South Sudan seems to have learned all the wrong things from Kenya. I wish he was wrong.

It is my prayer that sanity will prevail and that the damage done can be quickly addressed. The people of South Sudan deserve no less.

This Bor branch of KCB was looted in the recent fighting. Foreign investment is a long term casualty as, without stability, there can be no development. Why is it so hard for our leaders to get this?

As for me, I hope to continue posting my thoughts on this blog for the coming year. It will not always be about South Sudan since my job and location have now changed. By there is much to be said about my continent and I hope some of it will be positive.

I thank you for being part of my readership for the past 5 years.

The Trouble With Airports

One day, if you suitably bribe me (preferably with a crate of Tusker beer) I might tell you some of the hair rising experiences I have had in my 25 years of traveling around the world.

They range from a near miss from an exploding landmine, a bungled mugging (I was the intended victim, not the villain), a conversation with an armed police man that went very wrong, a near argument between a bus and a train (I was on the bus) and close plane crashes at least twice. I will also tell you how to survive a bandit attack (make sure you carry a lot of bottled water or the bandits are armed with ancient AK-47’s or both).

But this one is gratis

There is one encounter, though, that I can tell about you for free. It relates to my perpetual problems with airports, immigration officers, and airline staff. Not all of them mind you. For instance I nearly collapsed in surprise last week when a Kenyan immigration officer actually smiled at me. At first I thought I had done something wrong, like wearing my pants on backwards. Finally I explained it to myself that she must be new to the job.

But airports really do have a thing against me. For one, I seem to have spent most of my life stuck in one airport or other, either going or coming from one place or the other. In fact next time you want to build a personal airport, don’t bother hiring an architect. I’ll do it for you, for free.

Check in Kiosk at Dar es Salaam Airport. This is actually one of my favorite airports, perhaps because Tanzanians are so polite.

Every continent I have visited, except Australia, has at least one airport that hates me – in that I am guaranteed to have a bad time every time I pass through it. For Europe it is London, Heathrow (it used to be Frankfurt but the Germans got their act together). A few years ago the surest way to get my blood pressure up was to tell me I would be transiting through Heathrow (Deathrow, I used to call it). Luckily I discovered Schiphol, just in time to save my sanity. Thank God for the Dutch.

 In America the culprit is Atlanta airport.

Last week I flew through Atlanta airport, again.

I was not disappointed. By the time I landed there, a special committee had been formed to plot how to make my life a perfect hell. It started with my Delta Airlines ticket, which claimed it could get me from Washington DC to Toronto by flying south.  I blame my poor geography. Otherwise the minute I looked at the map I started fuming about bookings and maps.

“Surely there must be one person in this US of A who can read a map?”

Then I remembered I was flying on points, the cheapest ticket there is. So cheap that they did not assign me a seat until the last possible moment and that only after calling out twice to make sure there were no paying passengers remaining.

A lesson on how to tip

It had started pleasantly enough. I was to fly out of Regan airport. An elderly African man in security uniform (he spoke with a West African accent), sitting outside in the hot sun, offered to check me in so that I would not have to line up inside. This he did with calm efficiency. Then he gave me a lecture on the reason why all civilized people should tip.

“You mean, Canadians you don’t know about tip?”

I apologized profusely for tipping him in Canadian dollars and promised to be more civilized in future.  Then I headed down to gate 21 to wait for my seat assignment.

MD88. I used to hate Delta. Now I just remembered why. By the way, can you locate seat 35A?

The worst seat in the sky

I was eventually assigned seat number 35A on an aging MD 88. In fact the plane was not aging. It was just plain old. So old they must have retired it after doing duty as a museum exhibit.

I am willing to bet that #35A is the worst seat you could ever get anywhere.

You see the MD 88 has a funny construction. Instead of hanging the engines from the wings or sticking them on the tail or the nose like all civilized airplane makers do, the folk at McDonnell Douglass decided to play a practical joke on us and stuck them at the back.

Yes, right next to sit number 35A. Imagine one and a half hours, six inches from a blaring airplane engine. By the time we landed in Atlanta I was not only half deaf but the journey felt ten times longer.

Things could not get any worse from here surely, could they?

They could.

Remember Atlanta airport still had a reputation to live up to. The welcoming committee had just finished putting the final touches on a diabolical plan to make my life even more miserable. It was to start at Gate E23.

By the way do you know why Czech is the number one beer drinking nation on Earth? Or why so much Canadian and European beer these days tastes suspiciously like Camel piss?

Next time.

Atlanta Airport. On the way to Gate E23. The ‘fun’ has just began

Dinner with the Mullah

Just in case you thought that crazy stories happen to me only in South Sudan, here is one from the North. Those who have followed my Sudanese adventures  may recall that I visited Kassala, in eastern Sudan,  on a number of occasions and had some interesting encounters with bureaucracy, donkeys and others (see: Allah had nothing to do with it).

During my Kassala visits, I got to sample the best coffee you will ever taste made by Mama Ali. I traveled on one of the flattest roads I have ever been on. 600 kilometers of tarmac with barely a hill to be seen. So flat that Ali, the Plan driver used to do the distance in four and a half hours.

I even had time to discover the long lost ancestors of the Australian Aborigines. It turns out they are none other than the Hadendowa, a sub tribe of the vast Beja people’s (see also Cosmogony of the Beja People). The Beja are a proud nomadic race that straddles Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Egypt. They make a living in some of the harshest land you could ever see. Not that you will know it from their fierce pride that leads them to thumb their collective noses at all kinds of authority be it government or religion.

Kassala State is one of the poorest regions in Sudan

One of the best strategic moves that the SPLA made in their fight against the North was to convince the Benja peoples to declare their lot with them. When the Eastern front of the war was declared, the Khartoum Mandarins knew there was no way they could ever suppress the Beja – I doubt that anyone can. Suddenly they started talking peace and, though not very well known, the (EPA) Eastern Peace Agreement was signed before the better known CPA.

By a strange coincidence I met the man who developed the SPLA eastern strategy and commanded their forces in Kassala and we became good friends. I hope he will publish his experiences one day.

Handedowa tribesman, a branch of the Beja people. They have an uncanny resemblance to Australian Aborigines. They even use boomerangs

But I am digressing. I meant to tell you one of the bizarre story’s that happened to me in Kassala. Appropriately, this had something to do with religious bureaucracy.

During one of our visits we were hosted to dinner by the Kassala state authorities. The Wari (Governor) was not in town and the role of host fell to his deputy and the Imam of the Kassala Mosque, the chief religious leader in the state.

They put on a great show for us with sumptuous food and music performances by different groups. But I was not at ease. I had been told that the branch of Islam practiced in this area was of the most conservative variety, linked to the Wahhabi sect of Saudi Arabia. I was not sure what to expect..

In my own ignorant way I would see in my mind the religious chief  shooting to his feet and declaring an instant fatwa on the whole party event. After all most of the guests were not even Muslim. As for me, I am not sure what I am and I feared my troubles with the Khartoum Bureaucracy may have preceded me to Kassala.

An aside:  a year later I was to find out that my fame had indeed preceded me when I attained the dubious milestone in 2011 of being flatly denied a visa to travel back to Khartoum or Kassala. Thus Sudan became the only country to ever refuse me entry in over twenty years of trotting the globe. The, post-Soviet, Eastern bloc came close when I was nearly denied entry into the, then, Czechoslovakia. But the youthful looking Ambassador relented. He approved my visa with a strange condition. I had to go back to the Embassy and report to him after my trip was done. Getting into the country was a whole other story.

I digress again, my apologies.

Mount Kasala, seen from the top of Plan’s office. The tourism potential here is very high

So we were in Kassala city on this balmy evening, being entertained by the Deputy Wari, the Imam and other important dignitaries. It was a Friday and almost everyone was dressed in flowing white robes, having just come from prayers. One of the groups that had been invited to perform for us was an instrumental band comprised of high school students. They were very good and did a few songs. The final number and the only one I recognized was Boney M’s ‘Ma Baker’ done purely to instruments of course.

You can listen to ‘Ma Baker’  and other Boney M songs here. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

The song was so popular that the students were asked to do an encore, which they did. Imagine my surprise when I saw all the dignitaries rise to their feet and do an energetic jig to the instrumental strains of ‘The story of Ma Baker… the meanest cat in all Chicago town.’

For a moment I was in a panic. Now we shall surely get fatwad, I thought.  But it quickly became clear that the dignitaries had no idea what song they were dancing to. So we quickly joined in.

Have you ever tried to look holy and yet not burst out in laughter at the same time? It is very hard, believe me. But I managed it and so did my Canadian colleagues.

Luckily the rest of the night had no further near misses and our last night in Kassala ended well.

And the band played on!

The kawanja cattle raider

I think the first time I met Paul was in the Juba Hash House Harriers. As an introduction, I remember him being asked to say what brought him to Juba – you are not allowed to mention the W – word (Work).

“Cattle raiding! I came here to practice my cattle raiding skills” He answered right away.

We all had a good laugh at that.

Paul is the Canadian kawanja, white man, I mentioned earlier, who was in charge of a team of flight engineers. They suddenly left Juba when someone in Ottawa decided to pull the plug on Canadian aid money to Sudan.

Their role was to keep some of the UN planes in the air, a job they did very well, according to Paul.

They used to live in the same apartment block where I stay, before they stormed out one day because they were unhappy with the land lady’s service quality. Only to storm back in six months later when they realized they had jumped from the proverbial frying pan straight into the Juba fire.

In the interim period I ended up inheriting Paul’s old flat, the same one I use today.

James Apartments, where I stay

Like all good Canadians, Paul and his team loved to drink beer. But that was not the only reason he was popular. Paul knew where in Juba you could find the best beer at the cheapest prices. Plus he owned one of the largest freezers I have ever seen.

As the big kahuna Paul was responsible for many things. So one of the rooms in his flat was packed half full with what I gathered were aircraft spare parts. The other half was occupied by the said freezer.

Now, as I am sure you all know, aircraft spare parts have to be stored at a cool temperature all the time. Which, I am sure, is the reason why Paul needed the giant freezer. Not that I ever saw any spare parts stored in it, other than those glass containers that hold assorted liquids of the’ hops and permitted stabilizers’ variety – beer.

Now you see why Paul was so popular.

But what about those cows?

What was Paul doing leading a delegation to negotiate for dowry? He was not looking to marry a South Sudanese girl, was he?

Calm down. He was doing nothing like that.

This is the story that Paul narrated to us as we were driving back from a Hash run one Saturday afternoon:

One of his staff members, a South Sudanese young man, had come to him in a panic. Apparently he had got a young girl pregnant (such things happen). But in Sudan the consequences can be severe. The brothers of the girl had given him an ultimatum. Unless he properly married their sister, they would descend on his home and beat him senseless. In fact they promised to kill him. And they were serious.  Many Sudanese men may treat their women badly, as I have often observed. But they are also very protective. Men will easily die or kill to defend a woman, or family honor.

So what do you do as a boss when your good employee presents you with such a problem?

Paul acted like a true African. He did not suggest that the young man should flee. Instead he asked him the most important question: Are you willing to marry the girl?

“Yes,” was the answer.

The next step was to find out how many cows the family was willing to accept as dowry. The number was well over 50, a bargain when you consider that Dinka ladies go for more than 100. But this is Juba and I suspect they could have got a better deal if Paul had not showed his face too early and caused an automatic price inflation, something many foreign tourists learn to their cost. Still they haggled the price down to 36 cows.

With guns and other arms in plenty, a young man needs to be on the good side of his prospective in laws.

This is how it happened that Paul and his team spent a week looking for suitable cows to buy and then drove them to the girls homestead to pay dowry. A truce was then immediately declared. The boy would be allowed to marry the girl and pay the remaining bride price gradually.

But Paul has left Juba, as I mentioned. So what will happen to the happy couple now?

Not to worry. I have been doing my research. I am reliably informed that, so long as the boy treats their sister well, there will be no further threat from her brothers. The father might even waive the rest of the bride price in the interests of family harmony.

But the image of a white man driving a herd of cows to pay dowry will remain one of my lasting memories of life in Juba.