not my best decision, but at least I was prepared

Tomorrow I am going to our clinic in South Sudan.  Not southern Sudan (the county that is (or was until Hamas kicked off on 7 Oct) in the news for its civil war) but South Sudan, a country in its own right which gained independence from Sudan in 2011 (but itself had a civil war 2013-18 (ish)).  Africa, huh?  The civil war (which really continued until 2020) led to large scale evacuations and many people from the Central Equatorial Region of South Sudan fled further south to Uganda, which formed the refugee settlements I am working in: BidiBidi, and the lessor known Palorinya.  There are also several other refugee settlements and large towns that accepted refugees, to give credit to Uganda.  Anyway, at their peak these two places had almost half a million people between them, and still house more than 400,000 today: bigger than Manchester, four times the size of than Bath!

Our clinic is located about an hour (30 of those minutes accounted for by the immigration processes) just across from the Ugandan border town of Moyo, which is about 90 minutes from our Centre in BidiBidi. For context, the population of Moyo is around 11,000 people.  Anyway, I thought I’d drive up after work, get some decent food and a good night’s sleep in one of the small hotel-guest houses there and go across the border first thing – heading north but the clocks go backwards by an hour (…?).

I packed the usual stuff: my two passports (another time), cash in three currencies (Uganda Shilling, South Sudan Pounds, and of course USDs), medical kit, some clothes and a few other bits, and headed out at about 1730 – a little later than intended, but you know how things can get.  I also decided to go on a moto – much more fun than driving, though not official charity policy – but by sheer coincidence I had my helmet, body armour gloves and pants in the bottom of my suitcase!  I say it was 90 minutes, ideal as it goes dark at 1900, but unfortunately, I had forgotten that a bridge had been washed away in the ‘first’ rainy season of the year, so add 40 minutes to that.  About an hour or so into the journey it started to cloud over, and within minutes it was hammering down.  I couldn’t decide whether to seek refuge under a convenient tree (and see it get gloomier and gloomier), or tough it out (refreshing, in the heat).  I quickly decided on the latter, as the roads were bad enough in daylight.  But of course, I was in a spiral now… the clouds and rain reduced the light and so reduced my speed, which made it darker, which reduced my speed.

Eventually I had to stop, it was getting crazy; I could barely see, never mind read the road for the rocks, dips, sand and water channels.  Ahh, I didn’t say that the headlight wasn’t working.  OK, when I thought I would be having a sundowner in Moyo, that didn’t seem to be an issue, but not at this point.  So anyway, into my rucksac and shazam!  The head torch I had also packed.  It was a bit crazy at first, I couldn’t get it around my helmet and shine on the road very well, so tried wrapping it around the number plate and handlebars, but no, too much vibration and it wasn’t focussed on the road.  Arggghhh!  Finally, I decided just to hold it, with my hand sort of on the handlebar.

Or put another way, I was riding a headlight-less motorbike, one-handed, in pitch-black darkness, on an extremely rough unmade road, alone, in the middle of the African bush, with just a head torch (at least I also had a power bank in my bag).

I was passed by another fan of extreme motorbiking in the dark, though he had the benefit of a working headlight, so I pushed hard to follow him and keep in the glow of his headlight, desperately following his line.  Incredibly, 20 minutes later, all turned out well.  There were absolutely a few dodgy moments, adrenaline inducing foot-down moments, but amazingly all turned out well and unexplainably I did not have an ‘off’.

Context, the first pic, if you really zoom you can see the line between trees and sky.  The second is with my headtorch (in left hand).

The beer didn’t half taste good that night!