14th May 2022

Yesterday there were more deaths in the town, but I don’t know the number.  The local authorities have now ensured that police and soldiers are patrolling twenty four hours a day.  They have told owners of local businesses (including Pascalina) that they can open but to close by 4pm each day.  Pascalina is going to do this very cautiously, keeping the majority of her stock inside.

I am very thankful to our local government officials, both in the town council office and the police and soldiers.  They have not been paid for many months by the national government and yet they remain at their posts, and are putting their lives in danger the whole time at the moment.  I noticed a similar sense of responsibility in the County Health Department during the time of Covid.  The lack of pay for government employees is an ongoing situation and hasn’t changed since I arrived in 2013.  The pay is rarely made up later, leaving people in all government-paid positions (hospitals, government paid teachers, local government employees etc) relying on ad-hoc work outside working hours or on family support.  Not surprisingly, the lack of pay also causes corrupt practices, especially (based on my own experience) the police and immigration officials.  Anyway, it is incredibly selfless of these unpaid civil servants to remain in their posts at the risk of life and limb.

The national government has sold the next seven years’ worth of oil to outside buyers ‘in order to pay their employees’.  It remains to be seen if they really do pay them or if they pocket the money.  In any case it is an incredibly shortsighted approach to the management of the country’s economy as oil is the only major export.  One does not have to be an economist to see that.  It is common knowledge that the officials at the top ‘eat’ the salaries of those below them, which is why they so rarely pay anybody.

A young man called Jimmy, a former orphan from the time I was at Cornerstone, came to see me yesterday afternoon.  He had been working at an electrical shop.  His employer told him to return the keys and that his employment was at an end.  It couldn’t happen at a worse time.  There is no way he can find work right now in Nimule and he has no family support, making him very vulnerable at the present time.  He has clubbed together with a friend who is a boda driver (motorcycle taxi driver) and they have decided to cross the border to Uganda and go to another town called Adjumani looking for work there.  I assisted them with the costs of fuel as they are both destitute.  I regard Jimmy as one of my children because he is on his own and I have known him since he was a child.  He is really very vulnerable.

Since writing yesterday, I have heard another possibility of who the troublemakers are.  A friend tells me that the cattle keepers are the people now in our town, making life so difficult.  The Dinka cattle keepers and raiders are one and the same people.  Boys from their background do not attend school, they mind the cattle.  I have seen this with my own eyes while at school; boys of maybe eight or nine years’ old following herds of cattle across our school compound.  Older youths do the same work, but generally carry a spear or a gun.  The poor cattle are constantly on the move, never allowed to remain in one place to graze.  As a result they are skeletal.  The purpose of keeping them is as dowries, not for profit in any other way.  These are very savage people at the best of times and can be very threatening if you try to stop them bringing their cattle through the school compound.  Apparently they are purposefully attacking the police.  It is possible this is part of a general attempt to push the local tribe out of the area so they can take it over.  According to this view, the older cattle keepers send their young boys ahead of them to create fear.  It is quite possible that this is the case. 

The oldest boy in our compound (aged 9 or 10) was rather enthusiastically talking about guns and shootings yesterday.  I can understand his childish excitement but it is a bit worrying at the same time.  What an influence the children are receiving.  

Anyway I am remaining at home for the time being, waiting for it to become possible to reopen the school.

God help South Sudan!

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