Don't register if you don't intend to vote.

My first spotting in Africa of a ‘Don’t register to vote’ message … on the Voice of Kajo Kaji FM last week … I think.  Though it might have been on Miraya FM (which would be a startling breach of neutrality for a UN station); I was only half-listening.   

 

Registering and then not voting means you have made it more difficult for the  60% of registered voters required for independence to be reached.   

 

It’s odd to listen in KK to Miraya (UN station out of Juba) with its ‘simple Arabic’ and bilingual programmes as  I hardly heard a word of any kind of Arabic in KK for a week.  It’s Kuku/Bari or English there.

 

By the way, KK has developed astoundingly since I was last there in 2004 – quite good roads, excellent school buildings, generators and solar in well-equipped offices in the Boma, computers widespread in offices, textbooks in schools (even if they are for the new, rather poor, S Sudan syllabus), solar everywhere, bustling trading centre in Wudu, smart border posts on the way to Uganda and the ‘Taban Lo Liyong road’ very smooth up to the Kaya river where there is a rope ferry when the river is full.  

 

I contributed to that road (as did Diana, I remember, probably George too) and drove the whole way once.

 

There are at least six different ways to call on mobile (MTN Uganda, MTN, Sudan, Zain Uganda, Zain Sudan, Sudani, Warid …  depending on which side of the county you are or on which hill).

 

The downside was massive teacher absence from the schools (however good they look) partly because teacher’s salaries are low and good people can get better jobs, but mainly because they are, as ever, not paid on time.   

 

Recently of the 900 government paid teachers in KK, 200 were dropped from the salary list at once.  Everyone now knows the word ‘downsizing’ (though the government in Juba was trying to use the word ‘rightsizing’ under pressure from the donors).  

 

Wonderful also was the hop in MAF’s small plane from an equally fast-growing Nimule, over the bend in the Nile,  the Fula rapids, the sharp ridge/valley section which prevents east-west access to KK (and why the Nile has to bend) and then into KK itself.   You can do a whole geography lesson in 15 minutes.

 

The road from Nimule to Juba is being tarmacked and the blockage now is between Gulu and the border with overloaded lorries and the endless rains this region is experiencing – good for agriculture – KK was blossoming with food crops – but not good for the roads.

 

I wonder why the English-speaking countries never adopted the ‘barriere de pluie’ approach, like in Cameroon, where traffic was stopped until the roads dried, then light vehicles only were allowed to proceed. Heavy vehicle had to wait even longer. After all, it is sensible, the rain does not of itself damage a well made road; it is the vehicles that do the damage.  

 

Barry