Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
There was no food at the hotel, so after some time we ventured back into the town centre
- fully aware of the risk, with real trepidation. Soldiers, policemen and hundreds of armed
civilians still flocked the city's filthy streets. The market place stood empty - burnt to the
ground by rebels in January - and all of the banks had been looted. An ATM machine
hung like an eyeball out of its socket on an outside wall. Inside, credit cards, cheque books
and filed accounts were strewn across the floor. Rebels and government soldiers alike had
used the bank's date stamps to plaster the walls with evidence of their pillage. The pillars
around us were covered in graffiti. 'Fuck you Nuer!' cried one, and 'Dinkas Defeated!'
claimed another. Bor, it seemed, had changed hands three or four times since the hostilities
began only a few months ago. What was happening today was just another episode in the
ongoing fight.
We ate at a small Ethiopian restaurant but we didn't stay long. The looks we got from
fellow diners - all armed to the teeth - were enough to drive us back to the relative safety
of the hotel.
In a hotel without power, night seemed to come suddenly. After dark, I lay staring at
the ceiling, wondering what tomorrow had in store. I had crossed the border into South
Sudan from Uganda only one month previously. In that time, I'd come two-hundred-and-
forty miles north through a country described by the UN as the most fragile in the world -
refugees on the roads, armed gangs roving and raping through the countryside, a govern-
ment on the verge of collapse - but there were still four hundred miles to go. From here
on, the hostilities were only going to grow fiercer - and, as if that wasn't enough, between
here and the border lay the vast sprawl of the Sudd, the biggest swampland in the world.
It had been the Sudd that stopped the Romans venturing further south in their conquest of
Africa, the Sudd that held back Livingstone and Speke and the other Victorian explorers
whose journeys I had hoped to emulate in their exploration of the Nile. For a second, in
the hotel room, the lights flickered on and then off again, and I was left wondering: was it
worth it?
In that moment, the night came alive. Gunshots punctured the silence, machine-gun fire
rattling perilously close to the hotel. I sat up. Through the shuttered windows, I saw the
darkness illuminated in flashes of brilliant red, tracers lighting up the skies above Bor.
I scrambled out of bed, stumbling onto the veranda. In the room alongside me, Siraje,
my Ugandan porter, was already awake. As the thud of heavy weapons played in bursts
outside the hotel, we hurried to pack our rucksacks. 'Where to?' Siraje asked. Outside the
room, I looked across the courtyard. Soldiers and armed civilians were already gathering
among the shadows. Who were they?
There was only one way to go. 'Up,' I said, and started to run.
Across the courtyard, close to the river's edge, a half-finished five-storey building stood
as a reminder of better times. We burst through the shattered door and swept away the
