Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Down at the port, I chartered a motor boat that would take me out onto the swamp. It
was the only way I could make the crossing to Bor and find out if there truly was a way
forward. At the small dockside, I bid my SPLA stalwarts goodbye, and climbed into the
boat. Siraje, too afraid to return to Juba alone, clambered in afterwards, helping to haul
aboard the packs. Soon we were assailed by refugees hoping for a free ride - some citizens
of Bor eager to get back and rescue more of their possessions, some traders working the
water between here and the city, others soldiers returning to base in town. We took as many
as we could, only driving them away when the boat could take no more.
As we began the slow navigation through the papyrus channels, a single droplet of rain
landed on my head.
I looked back at the white-plastic sheets suspended from trees, at the tents and open-air
campsites where people were living. 'What will happen to all the refugees when the rains
really come?' I asked.
The man at the tiller only shook his head; he did not want to imagine the answer.
Some hours later, Bor loomed above our little vessel. The journey had been spectacular.
Cutting through the wind, we had soared across miles of Sudd, through tangled fields of
papyrus and reed. Sometimes the channels were only two metres wide; this was a land-
scape only a true local could properly understand. Under the boatman's direction, we
weaved north and east, driving legions of storks before us. Sometimes we rounded tiny is-
lands where more refugees camped - internationally displaced persons (IDPs) who hadn't
made it to the greater camp at Minkaman but still preferred the solitude and relative sanc-
tuary of the swamp. At least here, there were plentiful fish to catch, and the threat of sud-
den violence was kept at bay by the miles of entangled papyrus. This, I thought, was as
good a place as any to wait out a war.
At my side, a young Dinka soldier clung to the edge of the boat. Garang was twenty-
seven years old, returning from Minkaman to join his unit in the city. Already a soldier
for thirteen years, he had joined the SPLA as a child to fight against the Arabs, and had
since risen through the ranks to become a sergeant major. Now, he told me, he was only
a part-time fighter, taking up his gun only when it was needed. 'I fought with the Dinka
Youth when the Nuer rebels came to take Bor,' he said. 'The city's changed hands four
times now, but it's back under government control at last.'
'Bor belongs to the Dinka then?'
'It's more complicated than that. Some of the rebels want to think of it as just govern-
ment Dinkas fighting Nuer rebels, but . . . I don't hate the Nuer. In fact, my girlfriend's
one. But I do believe in government, and I do believe in unity. The rebels need to under-
stand that we're all one nation. And the only way to make them understand is to defeat
them here.'
