Letters to My Wife
Juba, 16 May 1983
On 25 May, which is Revolution Day, an announcement is expected on re-division of the South. If the president decides to go ahead with it, there could be another civil war. As a portent of the disruption the airport is already closed.
I had planned to go up to Jonglei (the site of the great irrigation project designed to make the area a break-basket for Sudan but never finished) on the eastern side of the Nile but the person I was going to see was not there, so Stockton and I camped in the game park.
Just before we reached the park turning, there was an upturned lorry with people sitting miserably around it. Three dishevelled young Europeans wandered out and asked us if we could take them to Juba (they’d come from the north). We said we would rather not because we were travelling north. There was bound to be vehicles going south. Then they pointed hysterically to the side of the road: the other member of their group, a 23-old old New Zealand girl – lay dead with a broken neck, wrapped up in a sleeping bag with her feet sticking out. She had been riding on the roof of the lorry and was thrown off when it left the road.
We didn’t see how we could fit them and the dead girl into the short-wheel base land rover, and naturally they all wanted to go together – so we said we’d drive on to the next town and chase up the police, try to get transport. At the town, the police knew about the crash but hadn’t come to inspect it because they had transport. Up the road we met a group of Arab traders who said they were going down to Juba but not for an hour or so. They would take the body, etc. but not yet. They sold us some cloth for a shroud and then sat down to lunch which they asked us to share. We tried to explain that the people were in a bad way but to no effect. Finally, after about an hour they got in to their car, then a servant brought tea, then they lit cigarettes. Finally, we all moved off, back to the crash, they picked up the people. I told them where to go and we went off to the park.
Sue Farmer, the ODA rep, got the girl’s body plus the boyfriend flown off to Khartoum en route for the UK - no mean achievement - the same day. The others stayed here and are now being driven down to Nairobi.
Back at our camp site we felt shaken by all this, polished off a bottle of whisky with little water – because our water supply was tainted with paraffin – and went to bed horribly drunk, sick and wracked with guilt. Had we done the right thing?
The park was beautiful. We camped under a huge tree on the edge of an immense grassy plain. We had an armed guard (the park authorities insisted on this to protect us from bandits) and we all sat by a wood fire. Before the sun went down a herd of 20 giraffe came quite close and stared at us. And there were eland, zebra and lots of small deer. I fried up some Nile perch with onions and tomatoes and it was really good. Stockton, who is a vegetarian, chewed through his rabbit food. There was the slenderest new moon and a steady cool breeze. Days of great beauty, wildness and horror.
On Sunday we drove through the park and saw masses of game. We found a leopard kill and tracks of elephant.
Then back to Juba and Nairobi The European community feared that we had come to grief and were much relieved to see us again. Nevertheless, we felt like schoolboys in disgrace!
Juba, 19 May 1983
Yesterday morning lying in bed – when I still was not feeling too good – I heard a familiar voice over at the administrator’s house: “I'm Barbara Harrell-Bond*…” and there she was in the usual khaki combat gear and her hair permed into ringlets. She was looking for a bed but was turned away by the ODA rep, Sue Farmer, who, like many people, doesn’t take to her greatly. I hid behind the curtains and managed to avoid her until the evening when she burst in with Hamo Sassoon and Jean Brown. She hadn’t known them before but had managed in her usual way to latch on to them. She took me out to dinner at the Greek Club, which was nice of her, and indeed I was pleased to see her in a way. The food, though, was revolting and did my poor stomach no good at all. Afterwards, she took me along to see Liz Adamson and her husband Berhanie. They’re very nice people but I sensed they were not too pleased to see her (Berhanie was the acting UNHCR rep here last year and she sorely tried his considerable patience).
She came round again today looking for a bed. Finding Sue Farmer out it looked as if she was planning to doss down on the other bed in my room, her departure for Yei having been delayed because UNHCR clearly don’t want her. But I managed to get rid of her. This evening I shall meet her again. Jean and Hamo have invited me to supper and Barbara seems to have invited herself too and she's arranged for me to pick her up on the way.
On closer inspection I found her combat gear had been modified. She now wears what is apparently a photographer’s jacket. It looks rather like an army-issue bullet-proof vest but with lots of pockets inside and out, done up with Velcro. And in place of the jodhpur boots she now has a sturdy pair of brown lace-up boots. Her support gear includes a computer on which she intends to carry statistical analyses of the wretched refugees. She's also looking for a bed in Yei. “I only need a place to leave my luggage,” she said airily.
The following day we drove down to Yei. Masses of white flowers. We climbed an inselberg, a low extrusion of volcanic rock rising from the dusty plain. You often find a spring rising in an inselberg and here too we found a small pool in a cleft in the rock. We drank and I don’t think I have ever tasted water like this, cold and clear.
* There is always more to say about BHB. Tension, disagreements… See Post-script below.
Juba, 30 May 1983
Life has calmed down here, at least on the surface. The announcement of re-division didn’t bring people out on the streets and lead to further mutinies. But many people are far from happy, and as someone said to me, looking back in five years’ time the second civil war may be seen then to have started in earnest at this time.
Nick Stockton accompanied me on the trip. We first met at Reading University and had many amusing times together. Nick is highly intelligent and has a probing irreverent mind. Altogether, he is excellent company
Our journey took us west almost to the frontier of the Central African Republic, where we stayed with some wonderful and very jolly Combioni Sisters, then north to Wau, a horrid, sweltering, dirty town, beyond to Kuajok in the Dinka plains, and then back closer to the river through the Toich lands – the Nile floodplains – Amadi and Juba.
We took a driver called Lexon, from the south of the country, whose distaste for the people grew deeper and deeper as we proceeded, and an assistant driver called William, a very ‘silly boy’ according to Stockton. ‘You're a silly boy,’ Stockton would say. ‘No, I’m not,’ William would reply with a big grin. Stockton did most of the cooking, which was a good arrangement as he’s an excellent cook. But both our insides were in a bad way most of the time. We got through yards of lavatory paper and were in particular discomfort in Wau where the bathrooms were locked up at night, where there was virtually no water and where everything was encrusted with flies. On the last day another guest of the hotel managed to steal our fan, I tried for three hours to get it back again but failed, and we felt we were melting in the heat.
Kuajok was the most interesting place. We arrived at the beginning of a Dinka dance session. It was very good and very funny and later on we had to join in pretending to be birds. The following morning we asked if we could meet a representative group of people to talk about water and animal health (the reason for our being here in the first place).
The chief and the president of the court didn’t seem too keen on this, but finally to the court-house and were told to sit next to the president. The building was packed and this raised some hopes that our Frierian dialogue would take place. We soon noticed that things weren’t quite as they seemed. The dock was immediately in front of us and sitting in it on the floor were a number of wild and dejected looking men. Of course, a court session was in process and these men were prisoners – although the chief and president vigorously denied this. Our dialogue, then became rather a formal affair with old, carefully selected men creaking to their feet, referring nostalgically to various long-departed British administrators. ‘We welcome the return of the British. Nothing has changed since the last administrator, Dr McKenzie, left!’
The lesson from this meeting was that it was a very long time since the local people had been asked for their views on anything!
I had dinner with Hamo and Jean Brown before going north. We were joined by Barbara Harrell -Bond. She managed to tag on and bulldozed me into agreeing to buy two bottles of wine to take with us. At S£18 a bottle I thought this was going a bit far particularly as Hamo hardly drinks. Of course it ended up with BHB and I drinking most of the two bottles and this did no good to my stomach – already in turmoil – at all. Hamo and Jean are well, living quietly like a couple of mice, in a quiet compound and only going out to do field work. BHB was pretty heavy, in her inimitable way, and poor Hamo obviously didn’t like her much.
The following night BHB asked me to supper at her guest house which was nice of her but it was an odd evening principally because she’d met at the guest-house a somewhat peculiar young teacher and she was patronising him like mad. And, of course, we had to get more wine and, of course, the teacher couldn’t chip in, so I had to fork out another S£18. As she worked her way through the wine – I wasn’t feeling at all well – she weighed in to an argument about the OXFAM medical programme in Yei, Paul Shears’ attitude (difficult ground here because I didn’t entirely agree with him either), my attitude, etc. etc., and then she started on about communication, how she liked to give it all etc, and I said there were lots of things I didn’t want to talk to anyone about, partly because these things might be silly or boring and for all sorts of other reasons. This led to the subject of marriage, etc. Her first husband, Nathan, talked all the time and she couldn’t stand that and was always happy when he snored, which he always did when he was asleep, because it meant he wasn’t talking. But now she felt different. What did I think? I was exhausted by this time and conversation petered out. it was good to see her here but a little goes an awful long way!
*POST SCRIPT: Dr Barbara Harrell-Bond OBE
I have always associated BHB with Sudan and she crops up repeatedly in my letters home but I now realise that we first met in Nairobi in 1982 at the time of the abortive coup staged by the Air Force against the President Daniel Moi.
She was an extraordinary character with controversy surrounding her like a swarm of bees. You either loved her or loathed her.
We were at home on Sunday 1 August when BHB knocked at our door. She was following the attempted coup and would I join her providing cover of an OXFAM vehicle? I didn’t take much persuading. The streets were unnaturally quiet and several tanks were parked at strategic points. Overhead several MiG fighters circled the city.
On our return my family gave us a furious reception. ‘What was a family man doing in the streets at a time of great danger?’ they asked, directing their wrath at BHB. ‘You were running close to the wind,’ one of my daughters exclaimed.
Later that night BHB was observing the conflict from her room at the Intercon Hotel. The residents had been warned to keep away from the windows but BHB took no notice. A shot was fired at her from the street. The bullet ricocheted off a metal table in the bedroom and hit BHB in the thigh.
The experience slowed her down but not for long. Her wound was clearly a source of pride!
Click here to read her obituary in The Guardian