Something About The Law

Noong was not to be that day.

From the UNMIS gate, we called the first driver. Land Rover No 1 had experienced a mechanical failure outside Abyei, stranding the Project Team. We called the second driver. Land Rover No 2 had got stuck in the mud near the River Kir, stranding the workshop participants.

Crikey, we thought. This was serious enough to summon the Operations Manager. We called the Operations Manager, a former US marine who was sure to mount a slick rescue operation. The Operations Manager was also sitting on a road-side tree stump – having experienced mechanical failure.

The entire compound population was scattered across the Abyei countryside, none of us with immediate hope of rescue. My colleague and I set off for the new office, the eerie ex-UNDP base, so we would guarantee a roof for the night.

A UN driver let us hitch to the market. We hid from the vicious sun in the shade of a teetering truck, considering our next move. Through the stream of donkey carts and suspicious stares from turbaned Misseriya traders, two men in green army fatigues approached. I froze to the spot.

To my surprise, they shook hands with us and moved on.

“They are fine, Sophia. JIU.”

The CPA engineered the Joint Integrated Units as a security compromise to bar government forces and SPLA troops from the Three Areas. Though no deterrent in 2008, the JIUs are less liable to drunkenness and intimidation, so my colleague claimed.

Eventually, we hitched with another UN vehicle, which dropped us in a mud-bath of a field. We picked our way through the dirt around the edges of a dejected concrete ruin. This was the SPLA’s most recent headquarters in Abyei – bombed to the ground.

As the new office came into sight, we entered clusters of Tukuls adorned with UNHCR plastic sheeting. I asked my colleague how many people had returned to Abyei after it became a ghost town in 2008. “We’re still expecting another 20,000.”

I also wanted to know how my colleague would describe the root causes of the slaughter that occurred in this field two years ago.

“It’s ongoing. Even a fight between two children can lead to a battle. Everybody wants to occupy this patch of ground.”

We pounded on a blue gate and a thin boy welcomed us in. This boy must have been about 13. He looked like a blade of grass in a World Cup t-shirt.

The compound was still but not peaceful. Newly-finished concrete outhouses surrounded over-grown weeds and the remnants of two cabins scorched to the ground.

The largest outhouse contained a pile of mattresses and a single bed frame. We sat on opposite sides of the bed frame, spoke for some time and then fell silent. The boy stood at the entrance, motionless.

I recalled that I had a packet of biscuits from UNMIS. I rolled back the wrapper half way and extended them to the boy. His eyes lit up, and neatly – one by one – he picked out every biscuit in sight. He must have been starving.

My colleague asked him whether he went to school. He nodded. So my colleague asked him why he was not in school. He had no uniform. My colleague held up a pass, his short name in large capitals. The boy squinted, trying hard, but eventually shrugged and sauntered off.

We sat silently for an indeterminable length of time. It was one of those moments of mid-afternoon heat when one strives to minimise movement so as not to provoke further waterfalls of perspiration.

Suddenly, whoops of laughter peeled across the compound. The project team had made it. For the next several hours, the compound came alive. My colleagues shifted around mattresses, reclined, dozed and shared jokes.

I sat under a tree with a fellow M&E enthusiast. He is a young colleague from Upper Nile, half the size of the two project officers to which he often plays side-kick. The Operations Manager cruelly greets them as “the two bulls and the calf”. But this colleague is no calf.

He is sharply articulate with penetrating intelligence. My colleague told me how he was born in the late eighties and attended one of the first primary schools in his village. In his first years of learning, he recalled, resources were so rare that they used cassava to write on the chalk boards.

As he neared the end of primary school, life took a worrying turn. Local rebels were forcing boys to “join the movement”. Many school friends became so-called “Lost Boys” – the poster children for Sudan’s civil war in the nineties.

Yet, my colleague was lucky. A group of missionaries accepted him for a boarding school in Nairobi. He left Sudan, finishing secondary school in 2008. My colleague was saving for a higher education, and started working for this NGO so that he could look after his mother.

He was happy to return to southern Sudan, he said. Since the CPA, he claimed that people had felt hope. Strangely enough, many southerners venerate George W. Bush whom they view as the broker of the agreement. I wonder whether it would comfort the ex-President to know that he maintained popularity at least here.

My colleague also mentioned how sceptical people in Abyei felt about UNMIS. People do not trust UNMIS civilian protection and rumour has is it that, when push comes to shove, UNMIS would support the stronger government in Khartoum.

You can read the UNMIS mandate here.

The sun was starting to drop when we received good news. We left the boy with some money for food, and departed in a delegation for the vehicle that hearsay suggested we would find at the market. Beside a cigarette vendor, we re-connected with one of our national staff.

Events suddenly descended into confusion. Two of my colleagues left the group, saying that they would remain in Abyei for the night. Another pair of colleagues struck off in search of phone credit. The only remaining colleague led me into a rented car, claiming that this would drive us to the official NGO vehicle at the local mechanic’s. We arrived at a bustling end of the market. My colleague exited the vehicle, yelled “come!” – and vanished into the crowd. Then three men climbed into the rental van with me.

For a split second, the first time during this trip, I felt a surge of fear. We were approaching the UN curfew. I could not find my colleagues. I was in an unofficial vehicle. I was the only woman. I was in Abyei.

Thankfully, the cloud of vendors parted and I caught sight of a Land Rover baring the NGO logo and “no weapons” decal. I was flushed with relief.

I encountered, once again, the friendly eyes of Agok’s village elder. Since we had met that morning, he had waited with the broken vehicle all day and never reached the training.

As the Land Rover spun out of Abyei, there was an atmosphere of celebration. Homeward bound at last.

But not so soon. Just past the checkpoint over the River Kir, the clouds burst. The landscape turned to brown glue, laced with veins of lightening.

Up ahead, we saw flashing lights. It was the beginning of a tail-back of bogged-down trucks. We slid and ground to a halt, the wheels descending deeper into the mud.

I was wondering what the night would bring. I was the only female in a vehicle of six men. If we were to sleep that night, we were going to have to sleep on each other. I had not “done my ablutions” for a good twelve hours. I did not want to leave the vehicle and wander into the bush alone. I wondered how this was going to work.

But – miraculously – a courageous driver and muscular colleagues navigated the glue. Once again, we were sliding across the open road.

After three and a half hours on the move, I rejoiced at the crunch of compound gravel. A bowl of lukewarm boiled goat had never tasted so delicious.

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