Access few areas

For a reason that I'm not yet familiar with, there is a skittishness about taking photos in public places. It's definitely banned around government institutions, which is not unusual. Markets and general street life in so many parts of the world are so full of activity, sights, colours and sounds and I desperately want to blip images of Yambio town. I felt confident to ask this family whether it was ok, after buying some plantains. They kindly obliged and the mother wanted to uncover her sleeping child's head.

In preparation for the field and to stave off the boredom of a weeklong diet of beans and rice, we whisked around the market buying trays of eggs, bags of tomatoes, handfuls of avocados and a pair of prickly pineapples. People have such little spare cash that I was happy to give custom to a few vendors.

Some commodities are in short supply because politics are making imports impossible. Prices in South Sudanese pounds are increasing, but not as fast as the currency is devaluing against the dollar. A couple of years ago people were getting 3 pounds for each dollar changed; on this trip we've hit 115. For people who are paid a few hundred pounds per month and whose salaries haven't increased (basically everyone who isn't lucky enough to work for an NGO or foreign company who can switch pay to dollars) there is an increasing air of desperation.

We didn't make it to the field as planned as vehicle trouble delayed us. [In short brakes that were not sensitive enough were tightened by the mechanic so as to make the mechanism unusable, choking us with a burning smell within minutes]

We made it as far as Nzara, north of Yambio, to do courtesy calls with relevant bigwigs such as the county commissioner. Nzara is notorious as the first place Ebola was described in 1976. The most exciting news in town is the reappearance of a small pod of hippos surprisingly close to homes and riverside communities bathing and washing laundry. The Wildlife Service asked us to investigate complaints of the hippos trampling crops on the way to their nighttime grazing pastures. We did see a few hefty prints and some angry women asking for handouts for school fees to replace what they could have earned from their okra and pumpkins.

We made some points about acting safely around mother hippos and their calves and agreed to investigate some more. We also left thinking that these arguments would hold more sway if the women hadn't been trampling all over the (mostly intact) remaining crops as they angrily berated the hippos.

It got my mind motoring that we could expand the project, funding dependent, to look into human-wildlife conflict issues and act as more of an advisory team for the Wildlife Service in general, raising money to deal with problems. However much due diligence would be needed before implementing any changes here given the security and political risks of operating in South Sudan.