Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
THE IMPENETRABLE SWAMP
Juba to Bor, South Sudan, April 2014
'M
issionaries, mercenaries and misfits,' said the man behind the hotel bar. 'Everyone
here's a lunatic with nowhere better to be, but if you find the right one, they might be able
to help you get north.'
Two days after we had been dragged to the Blue House, I was prowling the hallways
of Bedouin Lodge - a popular hotel crammed between an abattoir and a graveyard where
dogs regularly dug up human remains - intent on finding a way to further our expedition.
The morning after our arrest, our equipment had been returned and the spies' specious
charges all dropped - half of me understood that, when the soldiers had found nothing
suspicious, they had decided to let us go; but I also suspected they had been looking for
money, some kind of bribe. Whatever it was, I didn't want to stay in Juba long. The prob-
lem was how to go further. Allam had prepared papers that would allow us - mindless
government agents aside - to get to the city of Bor, a further 120 miles downriver. But,
after that, there were still five hundred miles before the border with Sudan.
The man in the hotel bar was Andy Belcher, a white Kenyan pilot who had turned
hotelier and refused to leave Bedouin Lodge even when Juba erupted into ethnic violence.
Belcher was a gregarious man with a sardonic sense of humour; you had to have a certain
kind of mania to live and work in a warzone.
'I can . . .' Belcher began, '. . . make some introductions.'
'Introductions?'
He gave me a knowing smile. 'Leave it with me, Lev.'
Boston crossed the bar and went into the hotel lobby. Once or twice he tried to venture
outside, only to reappear moments later, seemingly unwilling to wander too far. In the past
days, I'd been watching him closely: he was peculiarly skittish, refusing to engage me
when I'd tried to broach the subject of his family and what they would make of me drag-
ging him further north. 'You are not dragging me, Lev,' he kept saying. 'I want to see the
