Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
I nodded. 'We'll have to make a decision somewhere up the road.'
Our crossing into South Sudan was still some five hundred kilometres away, but it had
been in the back of my mind for many weeks. We had barely set off from the Nyung-
we when rumours reached us of the rumbling conflict in the world's newest country, and
every time we had reached a town or village along the way the stories had intensified. Now
that we were in Kampala, a modern city, I had access to the kinds of information outlets
I hadn't for most of my trek, and those rumours had solidified into real knowledge: the
unrest in South Sudan had grown into much more. Five hundred kilometres to the north, a
country was at war.
South Sudan gained its independence from Sudan in 2011 - ending one of Africa's
longest and bloodiest civil wars - but, since then, has itself been dominated by internal
conflict. In December, just as my trek was beginning, the president, Salva Kiir Mayardit,
declared that his former vice president, Dr Riek Machar, was behind an attempted military
coup. Power politics quickly turned to real fighting when Kiir ordered the disarming of
troops from all but one ethnicity inside the Presidential Guard. Like Uganda, South Sudan
is a country in which people from many different ethnicities live side by side - but Kiir's
act ignited the simmering disharmony between his native Dinka and Machar's native Nuer.
In the days that followed, certain Dinka elements began attacking Nuer civilians in the
capital city of Juba - and, though these initial outbreaks of violence were quickly curbed,
it wasn't long before a conflict that had begun as political had come to be defined along
ethnic lines. By the time I reached Kampala, hundreds of thousands of people were being
displaced by the violence and fleeing across South Sudan's borders to refugee camps in
Kenya, Sudan - and especially Uganda.
I didn't blame Lily for being sceptical and, now that I saw her children the gravity of
what I was suggesting we do struck me more pointedly. Could I really ask their father to
accompany me into a live warzone, to act as my guide in a country he didn't know and
where he didn't speak the language? I was determined to follow the river, no matter what,
but I was beginning to believe that I couldn't ask it of Boston. South Sudan, dominated by
the vast marshes of the Sudd, had been one of the journey's greatest challenges from the
outset; I only hoped that the current conflict didn't make it impassable.
'We'll know more when we get there,' Boston declared, draining his beer as if to put a
full stop to the conversation. 'The refugees will tell us. Now, Levison, I have something
you have to see . . .'
Half of me suspected a stuffed crocodile, but Boston took me through to the sitting room
where photographs lined the walls and an old shoebox crammed with more had been un-
earthed and left on a table to pore through. It was good to see Boston so relaxed. He was
the master here and I was his guest - no longer an employer or a leader - and it was a dif-
ferent kind of smile on his face as he showed me these old photographs. Here were pictures
