Travels with my Stethoscope .

Tuesday June 25^th 2013

Impressions week two.

Has it really only been two weeks ? Feels like much longer, thanks in part to how lovely all my work colleagues are, and how completely at home they have made me feel. The days are certainly long, and the patients sick, but it is interesting and I’m learning lots very quickly. I’m challenged again, which is a nice feeling.

Juba itself, what I have seen of it, is truly a funny old place. There are a hundred stories, every day, from people who have been here since before the war.

 “ I remember when there were 2 motorbikes and one car here “.

Difficult to picture when you’re stuck on a lawless asphalt road struggling to turn right amongst the UN armoured cars, the local battered cars, and the poor little “Boda Bodas” (motorbike taxis). Every now and again you see a shiny white uniformed traffic guy, standing in the middle of the road, literally taking his life into his hands, desperately trying to restore some order. I really hope they’re being paid something.

The town itself, from what I have seen (which is not much) is quite grim. As you drive along the few paved roads, you can see little collections of “Tukuls” (mud and thatched conical huts), completely dwarfed by buildings, all partly under construction. You can clearly see where once there was a tiny village, now totally overtaken by “progress”. And my, the progress is surely happening at the speed of light. I swear that where there was no building yesterday, today was two stories high and had the beginnings of a roof on it . I’m not kidding.

It’s happening so fast, that the more enterprising folk have even been seen to set up shops in the partly completed buildings, while building is going on around them. I was chatting with a fellow blogger (The Guerilla Researcher – link on the right) about how it would not be unusual to see a business man, on the second floor of a half finished building with no walls and no roof, sitting at a desk with a mobile phone

“ Come over to my office – the air conditioning is great and I have a wonderful view”

There are over 300 tribes in Sudan, and over 100 different dialects. Down here in the south, the most predominant tribe are the Dinka – characterised by their size – they are extremely tall and statuesque. A lady who came to the clinic today must have been 6 feet tall, in a wonderful dress, and was quite awe inspiring .Our beds are WAY too small for them, their feet are at least a foot over the edge – I really must try and find some bigger beds!  

Then there are the African foreigners, here to find work – the Ethiopians who are also VERY tall, but unlike the Dinka, very very thin. The women are beautiful. The Westerners, the Indians, business men here to invest in a new city and make a quick buck .The NGOs, trying to help in some way whilst putting themselves right on the front line of violence and disease, people like me who provide a service for all the above. The EU army (yes, there is one!) here to try to improve aviation security. The pilots, here to teach the South Sudanese to fly, the Italian chefs, here to capitalise on the lack of good food here ( I had the best cheesecake I have EVER had tonight). The miners (there is gold here) – the UN, the Embassies.

None of this was here 3 years ago. None of it. Except the little mud Tukuls, and the families and communities that existed around them.

While ugly buildings rise out of the dust, violence erupts. Where once there were only cattle to fight about (and frankly those fights got very nasty), now there is the ever shining dollar. Suddenly there are people on the street with cash in their pockets. There are mobile phones that access the internet, there are laptops, watches, iPods, opportunity. And these people very recently were fighting a bloody war of independence. And they have guns.

We here in our compound are well respected thanks to the hard work that my predecessor put in over 5 long years. We are protected by our clients, some of whom are officials in the government, and to whom we have given the best service over many years. It is an education, and a bizarre privilege to be here.

Living in Juba I am privy to watching a capital city being born from a village, on a time-lapse camera.