Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
THE FOG OF WAR
South Sudan, April 2014
A
t Adjumani, the last town of any real note before we came to the border, the signs of
the conflict in the north were already plain to see. More than once we had seen stragglers
coming down the roads, and in the villages along the river talk was of the sprawling
refugee camps springing up along the border. The further north we came, the more eviden-
ce we saw of foreign NGOs and charitable organisations flocking to the camps. As chaos
brewed ahead, it seemed Boston and I were fighting against a current - not of the river, but
of people hurrying south.
In the days following Matt Power's death, Boston and I had walked in silence. On the
east of the river, mountains of boulders emerged from the savannah. Perhaps it was only
the memory of Matt's death playing tricks on my mind, but I began to feel as if we were
somehow walking back in time, into a prehistoric past. The villages we encountered were
small and rough, with ramshackle huts open to the elements and no stores to buy food. On
the night before we reached Adjumani we camped on the outskirts of a village where the
locals watched us as if we were bandits, and only begrudgingly let us buy the only food
they had available: bush rat stewed in a pungent peanut sauce. It had black, rubbery skin
and, though Boston devoured it with relish, I could barely stomach the taste. In the end, as
I watched the leftover skull in my plate being picked clean of flesh by some of the local
children, I resolved that it was because of what had happened in the Ajai Reserve. I had
lost my appetite since then. I was beginning to wonder if I had lost my appetite for the trek.
On the 103rd day of our journey, we picked our way through thirty four kilometres of
Acholi tribal land, finally crossing back to the east bank where the air was somehow cooler
and black clouds spoke of the rains to come. I was eager for them; the heat was as fierce as
it has been on the day Matt Power died, and I would rather have tramped endless days in
the downpour than risk that again. By mid-afternoon, we followed the sweep of the river -
and there, up against its banks, was the town of Adjumani.
