T - 3 Days

South Sudan! South Sudan! South Sudan!

(to be chanted)

We have arrived in Juba and the city is plastered with signs announcing and celebrating the country’s upcoming independence. Three days until we are living in the newest country in the world! Sure, there are approximately a million and one  problems which are going to face this new country, but I am going to try, at least for the next few days to get swept up in the excitement and say to the naysayers (truthtellers?) “talk to the hand, my friend, I am here to celebrate!”

Rumbek 'Stoplight'. Sadly, it is no more. 

In the last week Rumbek has been a hub of activity.  The new anthem is being played incessantly by radios and marching bands, trees are being painted, roundabouts are being re-modeled; our lovely "stoplight" is being refashioned into a monument (we're guessing to the SPLA - but we won't know now until we're back in Rumbek). Greatest of all, a grandstand is being built in Freedom Square; it'll be the second (maybe third) two story building in Rumbek. Yes, indeed South Sudan is going to be a different country than the semi-autonomous state of Southern Sudan was (at least it will be less of a mouthful). 

This morning we landed at Juba airport and were ushered into the arrivals hall. This hall, usually busy, was practically bursting at the seams with all the people. Flights were arriving from Nairobi, Khartoum, Rumbek, and Entebbe. As a part of what I can only assume is supposed to be heightened security Juba International Airport has ditched the dudes who usually stand at a table with pieces of chalk. You see, historically, you would enter the arrivals hall, go to the table, be greeted by the dude-with-chalk who would then thoroughly or un-thoroughly, depending on his mood, search your bags for things he deemed unworthy of Juba. He would then take the chalk, make a mark on your bag, and you would then go on your merry way. Today was different.

No chalk men but instead a scanning machine. Yes! One scanner. One. For emphasis I will say that again: one. One machine for all of the baggage from all of those flights, some two hundred or so people, pushing up to the tables to find their bags which had been scanned and dropped into an enormous pile. I maneuvered my way through the crowd until I was in the second row of people. Standing on my tip toes for about ten minutes, I learned two things: 1- tiptoe standing is good calf exercise, 2 – there was nothing to be seen beyond the shoulders of the enormous Dinka men in front of me.

I moved around the room, squeezing between people, and found myself at the “drop point”, the place where all the bags came after being scanned. Please see the excellent and detailed diagram below:

The green dots are people – more likely than not very tall people.

The red dots are me.

The red dot by the yellow blobs is me at the drop point. 

The thin purple line is the bag route – through the scanner, pushed down the tables (at this pushing point the arrivals hall resembles something similar to wall street – a bag held high in the air, people putting their hands up yelling things. The bag eventually goes back on the table, is pushed along by bored-looking staff until it reaches the end of the table and is added to the mount of luggage).

Myself, a Kenyan woman, a German guy, a Chinese guy, and an American Dinka Guy (from South Carolina with the accent to boot) started tackling the mountain of luggage. Despite being hot, despite the pervasive smell of urine, we started to have fun. I told the Kenyan woman I didn’t think they had a very good system. She responded “You cannot fault this system. There is no system at all.” Well said. The American Dinka guy said, in his southern drawl “well, I haven’t been in an airport much like this before” and we all wondered when RoSS (that’s Republic of South Sudan) was going to put us on the airport payroll.

Long story, less long: our bags were found and we made our way out of the airport and onto the newly paved streets of Juba – the soon-to-be newest capital city of the world.