We’re at the Parish of St.Patrick’s Learning Centre is about a mile from the Uganda border in Nimule Town, and, much like the UCC learning centres, it has a couple of meeting rooms, food service, and accommodation. The bedrooms give new meaning to basic (the shipping container is looking pretty good from here), but after a long day trekking from Juba to here, and then to two small, remote villages, and back, the bed is amazingly comfortable.
The drive from Juba took almost four hours to cover about 200 kilometers. The road is the main one that runs from Juba to Kampala in Uganda, and on south through to South Africa. Much of it consists of dirt road, about two – three lanes wide, in very rough shape, and with no markings. Much of it is also under construction, and we’re simply driving right through the construction zone. Different from the trip to Nyeri, there are virtually no pedestrians on the road, and very few motorcycles. Gladys assures us the road is much improved recently, as it wasn't so long ago that the trip took a whole day.
As we were leaving Juba, we drove through acres of shanty-towns, constructed largely of rough wood and sheet metal. The main road is lined with tiny shops and businesses, most working out of the same sort of 
building – a few sticks as a framework and sides covered in corrugated sheet-metal. The fancier ones are in converted shipping containers. Garbage is everywhere, the heavy rains of last night having washed the debris into piles of plastic water bottles, bags, food wrappers, bits of clothing and shoes, and whatever (littering is common and accepted – when the buses stopped at the barrier above, the windows opened and empty bottles and garbage flew out). Even in remote places there is plastic litter everywhere, especially water bottles.
Despite it being a main arterial road, it’s quite isolated and much of the time we don’t encounter much traffic. At one point, however, we meet about a dozen big commercial tractor-trailers in a convoy racing north to Juba. Shortly after we halted at a police barrier because mines have been detected some where up
ahead; not necessarily on the road itself, but close enough that they shut the road for about an hour (the picture is discreetly taken from the back seat - the green figure is the barrier guard). By the time the way is cleared, we’re at the front of a convoy of six large coaches and a number of trucks. As the barrier is removed, our driver guns it and we lead the pack. A few minutes later, horns are honking behind us, as the coach drivers want to pass. As it is, we’re barely holding the road, careening from side to side and really putting the suspension to the test. But, as we pull over to one side, the coaches sail past, taking the curve ahead almost on two wheels, and are soon out of sight. With the buses off our tail, Martin, our driver, relaxes a bit and eases back on the speed. Before we reach Nimule, we see several trucks ditched or overturned (one with bags of maize scattered all around it), but the buses obviously got at least to Nimule without incident.
Just as we passed out of Juba, we saw part of a shanty-town that had just burned to the ground – nothing 
left but some blackened sheet metal strewn on the scorched earth. This happens a lot – rough timber houses tightly packed and scores of charcoal cooking fires make it inevitable. The lack of infrastructure, security, and housing programs make it doubly so. I imagine the people who had lived there lost everything that terrifying night.
Just a little further on, we passed over the Nile. This branch is the White Nile, and joins the Blue Nile at Khartoum, in Northern Sudan. On the banks, there are hundreds of people loading up jerry-cans of water to take home. Many women are walking with a 5 or 10 gallon jug on their heads, others are on bicycles loaded with five or six cans, and 
others simply walk carrying a can in each hand. The simple task of getting water – the essential of life – is a huge undertaking. Water trucks are also filling up, and will deliver water for a price. Indeed, along the road to Nimule, there are water barrels and cans clustered along side the road, waiting for the water truck. The water is taken directly from the Nile, without any treatment, possibly explaining the proliferation of empty water bottles everywhere. Coca Cola seems to have the bottled-water business sewn-up here; the water I’m drinking is COOL brand, but the typestyle is all Coke.
Once beyond Juba, the tin shacks give way to a more traditional African construction: a circular building
about 12 or 15 feet in diameter, with walls made of brick or wattle, topped with a steep thatched roof. A single door on one side, and maybe one or two very small windows or vents on the walls keep the construction simple. The outside is left plain or painted with a ziggurat or rolling wave pattern. The houses are in small family clusters, small villages, or in a fenced ‘compound,’ and are often accompanied by small outbuildings. Brick is used for alot of construction, and it’s made on site. Clay is dug and formed into standard sized bricks and stacked in a large cube with enough bricks to make whatever the project requires. Bricks are left out of the bottom several rows in places big enough to light fires in, to cure the bricks. I found a stack of them from a project at St. Patrick’s, and they’re curiously light. In every village or settlement, there seems to be at least one pile of bricks either ready to be cured or already being used for construction. The thatching is very thick and done with detail and craftsmanship.
Along the way, there are numerous schools, some in brick buildings, others in larger versions of the round houses. In many places, school takes place in the open, under the trees, each class under its own tree, complete with blackboard. Even in these isolated communities, the children wear uniforms in their school colours, many of them walking miles to get to school each day.
After a long steep climb into the hills, we come over the crest and see the valley beyond and Nimule in the distance. Clouds of dust rise from it as trucks rattle through or stop at 
the markets that line both sides of the road for a kilometer or two in the town. The road down into town is steeper than the climb was, and is full of switch-backs. Heavy loaded trucks labour up the hill, and those of us going down are doing our damndest not to lose control. We make it and head to St. Patrick’s to meet with the locals and learn about the peace work that’s happening on the ground.
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