Independence day

There was nowhere I'd rather have been than riding in the back of a truck bouncing along an undulating Juba road. It was a little after one in the morning on the 9th of July and we were piled onto a pick-up, soaked and ecstatic. We were soaked because we’d just forced our way through a street party and the crowd had blessed us by throwing water on us. We were ecstatic because South Sudan had just become the world’s newest nation.

The roads were quieter than they had been at midnight but the main roads and roundabouts were still alive with honking cars, boda-bodas whizzing by waving flags and crowds of celebrating citizens. Even as we drove down the rough roads away from the main action we passed groups of revellers who ran up to slap our hands and shouted with us “Oyeee! South Sudan, oyeee!”

There was little sleeping done that night. The sounds of joy went on until early morning. By the time they had subdued I was waking up to a cold shower. I’d obtained a guest pass to the celebrations, but to get good seat we were heading there early. It was a good move. We arrived at eight o’clock when a crowd had already formed, but the seating reserved for guests was still quite empty.

We climbed up to the top row where we had a good view of the road, the podium and behind the scenes. It was the perfect spot, and enjoyed a breeze that kept us much cooler than the other spectators. It was very welcome on such a hot day. Every so often we’d see stretchers carrying someone away who had collapsed from the heat – a number of them soldiers.

But despite the heat, the atmosphere was incredible. Throughout the morning cars would rush up the road, dispensing dignitaries and important figures that had come to see the Independence of South Sudan. Sometimes it would be a motorbike or police car with flashing lights and siren followed by a powerful looking vehicle. Other times it was a whole fleet of cars. The South Africans even brought two trucks full of armed soldiers.

It was after mid-day when Salva Kiir arrived (wearing his trademark black cowboy hat) and the formalities began. The National Anthem of Sudan was sung for the last time. There was complete jubilation as the flags rose - one to stand over the nation, representing freedom and independence, the other alongside that of the United States in the long row of national flags to represent South Sudan joining the international community as the 193rd member of the United Nations. With much greater gusto the new National Anthem was sung by the people.

It was astonishing to see the flag rising and the crowd in the place where just a few weeks earlier, when I had arrived, there stood a row of shops. I had driven past here a few times already. The first time I came the shops were being torn down, the next time they were completely gone, only rubble remained. Now the site was transformed. And this wasn’t the only change that had been pushed through in the run up to Independence.

For the first time a week earlier a plane landed at Juba in the dark. The guests coming in on Saturday were interviewed in the new Terminal building. And those I spoke to who had arrived earlier that week told me that they hadn’t had to fight for their baggage being thrown in through a window like I had less than a month earlier. They had collected it from tables in something that could almost be called an orderly manner.

The preparations had also included great efforts to ensure that people would know their new National Anthem. The night before, we had heard it repeatedly on SSTV while we waited for the news. School children had been practicing it and the words were being handed around or copied by people so that they would have them memorized for the day.

It was late afternoon before the ceremony was finally done. We’d had nothing to eat and were hot, hungry and tired. But despite that, no-one could have been in better spirits. Later that evening I took another drive around the town. There were less street parties than the night before, the celebrations mostly confined to the indoors. We pulled up and inspected a disco where young people were celebrating independence in the same way they do anywhere, by drinking, dancing and listening to music.

On the way home we passed by the lit up fountain. It was a beautiful thing, and a great symbol of a new Juba. While the luxury of the fountain might seem frivolous, even offensive, when the city still lacked a proper water system, it was good for Juba to have something attractive and wonderful. The city has a long way ahead, and it seemed to me that this fountain was a grand sign of the aspirations and hopes of a people whose dedication and resolve is unquestionable.

Even as the excitement and happiness still reverberates around Juba, the foreign media talk of the struggle ahead and the possibility of South Sudan become a “failed state”. An article in the LA Times implied the challenges had been set aside for the celebration (“ignored” even). But this wasn’t the case. Speakers talk of the work to be done and the challenges ahead. But rather than speak of them with concern and scepticism, as the foreign press does, they speak with the spirit of optimism and determination.

The people aren’t intimidated by the future, they know that they have achieved great things in winning their freedom, and they want nothing more than to push onwards to establish their place not just as a sovereign state, but as a great nation.

Tying the knot

A loud, high pitched ululating erupted from the crowd as the bride walked down the aisle. The cathedral was cheerfully decorated with lacy artificial flowers sprinkled with glitter. The place was packed with people, elegantly dressed bridesmaids and close family, then a multitude of others, dressed brightly and smartly, but in a more casual way.

The wedding did not differ much from what I was used to. It was held at the Episcopal Cathedral, so the order of service was much like that at my sister’s wedding. There was a lot of ululating throughout, bouncing Arabic praise songs and a festive air. The whole affair was a little more informal, and a little less grand than the weddings I was used to. There was no meal at the reception except for small snack boxes. The advantage of this was that the invitations had been given out a lot more freely.

I had never met the couple before, so I was quite surprised when I received the beautiful card inviting me to their wedding (about four days before the event). I was also a little surprised when I turned up a few minutes before the stated starting time to find myself practically alone in the Cathedral. “I thought the wedding starts at 2.30,” I said, as I was lead to a pew that seemed embarrassingly close to the front for someone so tenuously connected to the wedding couple. There was a laugh and a mention of “local time”. In Juba time is a lot more malleable; it was four o’clock before the service was underway.

While any visitor from the UK or US would have found the wedding remarkably familiar, the marriage practices of the South Sudanese can sometimes be more alien. I thought I’d heard incorrectly when a guy told me he had over 60 brothers and sisters. “My father has eighteen wives,” he explained. He went on to tell me that his father also had between three and four hundred cattle – he’d just received 72 as a gift from a man to marry one of his daughters.

The practice of funerals can also be a little different. One day we saw a great line of cars and trucks, maybe over a hundred. In some of them were people shaking rattles. It was a funeral procession for an important government minister who had recently died in India. Wakes are held for the dead and can carry on throughout the night – on one occasion close to my room I could hear singing and music from late at night until the dawn. When I walked past another of these wakes I saw a large number of chairs arranged around beneath erected shelters. People sat around and in the middle I saw a portrait of the deceased hanging.

In their celebrations and their remembrance there seemed a great deal of spirit and energy. Such occasions can be marked in different ways around the world – a small intimate gathering; a grand, solemn and sacred affair or, as in Juba, a very public, unreserved and colourful outpouring. Each is beautiful in its own way.