New look blog

Well...slightly.

I have updated my title picture.

The old one was cobbled together from pictures I took on my old camera during my masters research and past trips to South Sudan.

The new picture is taken with my beloved compact digital SLR (a Christmas present from my father last year). It's a view of the deepest part of the river in Kuac South Payam (near Kuajok). The posts (ŋuek) are  where cattle have been sacrificed. This part of the river is associated with a lot of spiritual activity. It's alway deep, even in in the dry season, and can be dangerous. Every few years there is a big celebration here.

I am in Wau for a monthly retox to write up and think about the last month's work

Dry season rivers

This is the River Jur south of Kuajok. I took this photograph last week, this is the fullest part of the river I have seen since I got back to Warrap at the beginning of February. I'm not trying to be sensational, it is  normal at this time of year for the river to dry up. Although, in my conversations with people living near the river, I am consistently being told that there is less water and less fish at this time of year than there was in the past. Actually, it's usually the first thing I am told when I ask about the area. I am wondering how to incorporate these notions of climate change (or at least, environmental fluctuation) in to my research. Has there really been as much change as people say? How much are people romanticising the past as a time of plenty?

This is picture is a bit further down the same river, where there is much less water

These two men are fishing with a net, in this photo they are drawing the net in. They caught 4 small fish.

At this time of year, the vast majority of cattle are taken to the toch (dry season grazing) in Gogrial East and the border with Unity State. However, some are kept in the villages and these cattle had been driven down to the nearly dry river bed for a drink.

The unbearable dryness of being

Recently I have had the feeling that everything I own here is rapidly being destroyed due to a combination of the elements and my ignorance about how to deal with them.

It is the dry season, the land is parched and there is a lot of dust being blown about by the wind.

Casualties so far;  my jeans were eaten by a goat in the village, my brogues and my trainers have holes in the side from riding my motorbike (who knew brogues were not sensible shoes for riding a motorbike?), one skirt severely ripped from very small fall from afore mentioned motorbike, phone batteries all run down and only Chinese counterfeits available in the market, USB port on solar charger mysteriously stopped working (assumed dust damage), dust in everything.

Today, I also discovered a serious termite problem in my hut. They have been physically removed as much as possible and Doom sprayed into the holes in the wall but I’m not convinced this is a long term solution.

Going to buy a large plastic tub to put my things in to prevent further dust damage.

Today is very dusty in Kuajok

I’ve been doing some interviews near the river, which is dry too…will try and post some photos soon

Five things I knew, but didn’t fully appreciated before doing fieldwork

1.     How hard women’s work can be

Backbreaking, seriously. Try mixing an enormous pot of thick porridge for 15-20 people’s evening meal and you will get my drift…Women get up first and go to bed last and work all day. It can be quite fun and you can have a laugh while you are doing it, but its incredibly difficult.

2.     How precious water is when it doesn’t just come out of a tap

Water is key to life, it is also very heavy and difficult to transport, when you are getting it from the borehole someone has to go and do that, several times a day. If there is no water – you will go thirsty, or hungry because you can’t cook without water. If you are not properly prepared you will wake up in the middle of the night thirsty and not be able to find water, which is not fun (I have been known the fumble around in the dark searching, in desparation, for liquid and resorting to drinking a mouthful of water from a jug someone left out in the kitchen, which I probably shared with a goat. It’s a wonder I am not sick more often)

3.     How notions of privacy and personal space differ cross-culturally

This is an obvious one. I said goodbye to my English notions of personal space sometime ago. Which is not such a bad thing in some ways, there is often too much privacy and too much lonliness in England. Recently I have been somewhere I was always with people in the day, sleeping outside with people at night and even small children came and watched me bathe! So the only moments of alone time I had were with a...erm..bush. Getting used to constant supervision, as well working and writing while on display and subject to enquiry I have found difficult. I have started writing my field diary with a torch under my sheet!

4.     The value of an electric kettle

Related to point 1 and 2. When there is no electricity water needs to be boiled on the fire, which someone has to make, so you can’t have tea or coffee quickly. Importance of quick tea cannot be underestimated.

5.     The political economy of health.

The causes of sickness and ill health are not ‘natural’. All health complaints in Kuajok are diagnosed as malaria, typhoid or brucellosis. Proper testing facilities and expertise are not here (or at least not available to the majority of the population, including me). So if you get sick, you will not get proper treatment (assuming that you can afford treatment anyway).  Kuajok is relatively large town. Whenever I travel in public transport more rural areas I ask people around me what they are travelling for, number 1 reason for coming to a big town is to seek medical treatment. I also see people with the most debilitating and painful conditions who cannot get treated. It’s all rather…sickening

Gogrial Akuol Akuith

This week I have been attending the 3^rd annual meeting of the Aguok community in Gogrial town. Aguok are the largest territorial section of Dinka in the greater Gogrial area.  What that means, basically is this: the Dinka are a large ethnic group, and they divide themselves up according to geographical distribution. So, in Gogrial East and West Counties everyone is Dinka Rek, Dinka Rek is then further geographically divided – Aguok is one of those divisions (Apuk, Kuac and Awan are the others). Aguok then divides up further… into (I think) 12 subsections.  You might have seen this represented in an abstract diagram in an anthropology textbook somewhere, but its quite simple really. People also belong to a clan (dhieth), which is a non-territorially defined patrilineal descent group. The clan I have been adopted in to, ‘Pagong’ is found across all Dinka areas. Clan is an exogamous group, so you can’t marry someone in your clan, but you can marry someone in your territorial section.

Anyway, this was a large meeting organized by elected community leaders and Aguok people employed in the government (mainly based in Juba). All chiefs and subchiefs, religious leaders, youth representatives, diaspora etc were invited. It was pretty star studded, Chief Justice Chan Reec Madut attended, so did the former Warrap Governor (and now presidential advisor) H.E Tor Deng Mawein. I also met a woman who had come from the US to attend the meeting and see her family. It was the first time she had been back to Gogrial since leaving as a child. She was going to proceed to Khartoum to see her parents for the first time in 14 years.

The broad aim was to bring Aguok people together and decide what they can do to develop the community  (there is a pot of cash behind this too – the Constituency Development Fund from the central government which needs to be allocated, so its not just chit-chat). It is also an opportunity to discuss other issues too – like relationships between Aguok and their neighbors, which can be strained. Critically, it was also a pretty good party and a general celebration of being Aguok.

Four days of discussion pushed my comprehension of the Dinka language to its limit and I can’t pretend to have gotten all the details. But now at least I know enough to know when people are talking about something I want to know about, and I am armed with a voice recorder so I will be getting a lot of it translated. I find language one of the hardest parts of research, any anthropologist that claims to be able to understand everything from a fast and complicated discussion in a language as difficult as Dinka after 8 months is either lying or fooling themselves.

Alongside the discussions there was plenty of good entertainment. Including Dinka pop stars John Kudusay and Akut Kuei. I have gotten really into their music from being here – which is lucky because its played all the time. Look them up on YouTube. More ‘traditional’ music and dancing also got everyone up from their seats regularly. Here are some photos.

attendees

children dancing with image of Salva Kiir

John Kudusay

anthropologist

cooking on an industrial scale

The Road to Wau, part 2

Public transport to Wau again. I re-iterate that I like public transport in South Sudan, I could fly, but I don’t enjoy it as much. Having said that yesterday’s journey had some highlights that made me wish I was safely strapped into a UN/WFP plane.

We went to the bus stop in Rumbek early, too early it turned out, no one was there. The two friends I was with did some negotiation on my behalf to get me (1) in a good seat, (2) in a good car  and (3) with a driver they trust (i.e. someone they know). Unfortunately this was not the first car going and meant a 4 hour wait for the car to fill up with passengers.

The other passengers were a woman who was returning from accompanying her mother to Rumbek and 2 young men going to visit family in Wau. We were short of passengers for what seemed like forever. Just as I was beginning to give up hope that we would ever leave, our party was made up by 2 armed policemen, one of whom had been shot in the arm in Rumbek North they day before (its not in the news yet, but the clashed in Tonj East have spread to Rumbek North). He was going home to Wau where his family would take care of him.

The injured policeman was drinking local alcohol. Under the circumstances (having been shot with apparently given no more medical treatment than a bandage) this seemed understandable, and perhaps the most reasonable thing to be doing. However, sitting in a car with drunk armed men is never a good feeling. And it did mean an extended stop at every police checkpoint while they explained to their colleagues what had happened

Then somewhere between Cuiebet and Tonj something underneath the car fell off. (Things going wrong with cars on these dirt roads is quite common). The drivers had whatever kit they needed to patch up the problem (i.e. tie whatever had fallen off back on) and we continued to Tonj.

In Tonj we stopped for an inordinately long period of time for food and sisha. The bus stops in Tonj at a little eatery where street boys and others come and try and get a few pounds of travellers and eat their left over lunch.

We listened to music and everyone sang along, there was a particularly energetic performance to Beyonce’s ‘I Need a Soldier”. Sugar cane was passed round and lots of chatting

A few hours later we reached Wau…dropped the policeman with a bullet wound with some relatives and then I was dropped at my ‘home’ for the next few days. The driver and his friend asked if they could meet me later. I gave them a polite but emphatic, ‘no’ and went to wash the dust off myself. 

Missionary Moorings

I am now coming to you from Kuajok, Warrap State. Apologies for the long absence in blogging, which has been due in a large part to irregular access to power. Since my beloved MacBook battery is on its last legs, writing updates without power has been very difficult. Now I see why blogging is a luxury of the urban middle class. 

Kuajok is the capital of Warrap State. The first two things that anyone will tell you when you arrive in Kuajok is that (1) it is a very new town and (2) it has been very well surveyed. The latter is certainly true. The roads are so straight it would break the Romans’ hearts to see them. The first thing is technically true – as a ‘town’ Kuajok is new, but it was a mission, schools and was a large village since 1923. President Kiir himself went to secondary school in Kuajok and when he came on an official visit last week, leaned up to the window of his car and shot a special “thumbs up” to the group of secondary school students lined up in their uniform to greet him (much to their delight).

In my first few weeks here I have been told a lot about the arrival of the missionaries and establishing Kuajok as a centre. On Wednesday evening I was taken on a walk to the river port where the missionaries landed (Wanh Abun). At this time of year the river is about an hours walk away, over toic (flood plain), its still quite wet and walking is the only way to get there.

On the way we met several groups of people heading back to their home villages across the river after having sold milk, maize in Kuajok market or having just been visiting. My Dinka language – although still very limited – is now at the stage where I can have a small conversation, introduce and explain myself to people.

These two young men were walking to a cattle camp about 4 hours away, but they explained that they were strong and they would run so it would only take them 2. Young men frequently like to point out to me how strong they are and tell me how weak I am (as a foreign girl).

When we got to the river they swam across it (instead of taking the small boat) after telling me I would never be able to make it, despite my protestations that I do know how to swim!

At the river bank, to the left of the boats currently used my commuters is ‘Wanh Abun.’ Essentially a bank, the only thing that marks it out is the 6 or 7 metal posts that were once used to moor the missionaries boats. One of them has been pulled out of the ground and you can see the cast mark of a London company “Siemens”. There is also the remains of a brick structure which an old lady told me was the house of an missionary. To me it looked too small and too close to the river to be a house, more likely a store room connected with the mooring of the boats or a place to rest and unload 

The remains of the "missionary's house"

detail of the uprooted mooring post