Guest Author Time!

Hey everybody. So this is Adam's brother, Mark. I too am now left to wander somewhere deep in the South Sudanese wilderness although I'll be here only another week and a half or so. In the meantime, Adam and I have traveled together with Lexson from Juba after finally finishing our business there to the smaller but vibrant county of Mundri. We left around mid-afternoon on friday and until that moment, we were unsure how we would be travelling. Somehow, Lexson managed to procure a prison vehicle to tow us to Mundri. It was a Land Cruiser with benches running along the sides in the back. Lexson rode up front with the driver, while Adam and I rode in the back along with Lexson's aging mother and aunt. The journey went relatively smoothly until a few hours in, when the the aunt yelled something in Moru to Lexson. The vehicle stopped and Lexson instructed Adam to open "only the small door." (the back of the Land Cruiser shuts with two doors together). In retrospect, I wish Lexson had impressed upon us the gravity of the situation but he chose not to. Before we knew it, there was something of a cough and we were splattered with something that in a second I realized to be poor Auntie's vomit.

That's right. She puked on us...and I was covered from the neck down. Adam's arm and leg were also among the casualties. I didn't really know how to react so all I managed was a toneless, "Darn." Adam was still processing what had happened and what was all over us. We jumped out of the car and I started dumping water all over myself to rinse it off. Meanwhile, Lexson had seized the moment and was furiously taking pictures of the situation between bellows. It was actually quite hilarious and we didn't contain ourselves for long. Of course the humour was quickly lost when we got back into the vomit-smelling vehicle and bounced along a dirt road for another hour and a half praying that grandma and auntie (and by this time Adam and I as well) would hold it together and not allow a recurrence of the original event. After what seemed like forever we arrived and were forced again to wait for an eternity to shower. Nevertheless we have lived to tell the harrowing tale and are safely in Mundri as of now.