South Sudan: Where we ended up as we journeyed to the Promise Land
4 min readBy Kon Joseph Leek, Juba, South Sudan
March 26, 2018 (SSB) — This wasn’t long before you where born, it is a live event, it’s a matter of living in Junub and see it all. This is the tale of our journey.
It was several days drive to the Promise Land on a long, dusty rough serpentine road with stuck and logs, uncleared thorns and cactus butts. It passed through the meandering rocky rivers and fords, gorged valleys, thick jungles, windy scorching deserts and to the blissful rhododendron bushes. The driver, our million-pounds-worth-driver successfully drove us through and that wasn’t the end of the journey.
While the Promise Land was some few hundred miles away arrived a murky gigantic swamp swarmed with a million of snakes that looks like thousands of ropes thrown on the mud, frogs whose noisy sounds is as of generators of Konyo-konyo and Jebel markets, fireflies with several sparkling lights flashing as club lights, crocodiles lies there as logs Hippos bulging as rocks and anthills plus other dangerous swamps’ inhabitants.
The eye-blurring dizzy driver was then advised to slow down by the passengers of whom among them were several drivers but the driver was adamant to heed to the guidance. This sent rage and fear among the passengers. The other passengers who claimed to know driving thought of helping the driver for suspecting him of being tired and weak and maybe sleepy because he has driven for long according to them – they asked to take from him but he (driver) gave a cold shoulder.
As the others attempted to take the steering wheel by force came an abrupt crying and screaming of several different voices; women, children and men (drivers included), in the process the car curved into the swamp, deeply inside the swamp– some tenth of miles away from the main dusty road hence causing one of the murkiest scam in history! There, it got stacked!
Americans and Western Europeans agricultural workers tried to come for rescue, the giant hook from the agricultural tractor was thrown to them in the swamp in order to place it where they would be pulled out but they couldn’t find a hole for the hook to hold. After the tractor drivers thought that the hook was readily placed and therefore time to pull it out, nothing was there to be seen, only the hook as it was thrown!
The Americans and Europeans rethrown it and the results remained the same – the drivers in the stacked car thought they knew what they were doing, they are until this day still gambling with solutions. Many have been taken by alien canoes to some small strange highlands for safety and others have died of hunger and diseases remaining few malnourished passengers whose fade is unknown in the near future
And as I write this note, they are still in that hideous murky swamp rigorously pointing fingers; if you didn’t do this, this won’t have happened and so this, and so that and la la la…!
Now, on the dry land are the Americans and Europeans with their long sweaty noses in attempts to pull out the car and all its content. Chinese and their Asians brothers with their hands pocketed and others hands akimbo believing that things will be alright on their own; maybe that the swamp is soon going to miraculously dry up and the stacked fellas would obviously majestically match out on their own.
Our Northern friends with their Arab cousins in their revered honeymoon of course nodding their heads in approval possibly muttering something like, ‘Binarefiinu, binarefiinu!’. And our African brothers with their hands on their heads and mouths agape probably bubbling out, Chineke ooh Mama!
I, I too the writer is one of the passengers, not a driver. I don’t know about you the reader, Aren’t you?
Talk to me on j.konleek@gmail.com
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