Tales from South Sudan war

For the next two weeks, Tinka was on the road with the South Sudan family. They had little to eat and were on alert for a possible ambush. All of them, including John’s one year old son, were exposed to danger. He says travelling while coiled up under two coffins on rough terrain made him feel he was seeing the worst of days of his life.

“We moved with just one saucepan of esh, a common food in South Sudan which is like baked bread. It is served in every restaurant there. We would stop occasionally for everyone to get their small portion. As night time approached, we would park the car near the roadside and just sleep in the bush. We would make sure the car is not very visible on the road and this would be my time to come out and breathe normal air.”

“Because of these conditions, the baby got sick. We would just sleep anywhere, the hunger and fatigue combined, but because we knew what we were running away from, we kept strong.”

Tinka recalls a point they reached at around 2pm when John decided to go hunting with his eldest son. They came back late in the night. They came back with an animal he cannot name, roasted it and ate it. Tinka is a Muslim and he had to make a tough decision. He was very hungry but he refused to eat. Later, hunger became unbearable.

“I had to eat some of the roasted meat,” he says. They drove slowly so as not to raise attention with the sound of a fast moving vehicle because they feared trigger happy soldiers could be lurking in the bushes. The road too was bad.

After about 100kms, they approached Lainya, a trading centre on the Juba route. John was suffering food poisoning from wild fruits he had eaten and Tinka had to take over the wheels.

“At this point, I had to place my fear aside because I was the only other person who could drive; there was no option. I drove until we reached Lainya.” “There people had been slain, the whole place was deserted and the smell of death was choking. There were so many corpses, it was something I had never imagined. We stopped there briefly and picked up two dead chickens which we roasted.”

They continued their journey

They got a puncture on one tyre but continued till they reached another centre, smaller than Lainya. Here too there was no trace of a human being. “We walked around the area looking for something to eat. We opened a kiosk and we were shocked by what we found; a woman had been killed and locked inside”. Still, John went inside the kiosk. He found some groundnut paste and someesh.

“It was a relief,” Tinka says, “We were hungry”. Tinka says the abnormal circumstances made sight of blood and dead bodies appear normal.

“Personally, I moved with just the clothes I had, nothing else. It was tough but I endured it”.

After moving for a few more kilometres, John had to make a tough decision. The tyre on the truck was now badly worn. So he decided to park it and walk the rest of the journey to Yei. He told his family that it was relatively safe for them to stay behind.

John, his eldest son, the first wife, and Tinka walked to Yei as the rest of the family; the two wives and the remaining children stayed behind. This journey on foot was the beginning of normalcy for them. They walked for a day and night before they reached John’s Yei home at 5am.

“My sole had worn off, my legs were swollen and I don’t even remember what I was feeling.”

They were welcomed by John’s other two wives and other children. They were given food and drink. Then John set out to rescue those he had left behind. He met a soldier friend of his and with a car, they sped off for John’s other wives and children.

Tinka spent three days at this home. He had no idea how to go back to Uganda but John told him about a Sudaneseboda boda cyclist who was familiar with routes to Uganda and he quickly got in touch with him.

The following day Tinka started his journey with the trader on their motorbike at 6am in the morning. They went through a labyrinth of routes used by smugglers of products like cigarettes. Some routes are through forests.