In Juba no-one (white) walks. But I'm in the minority that doesn't have a Land Cruiser – I'm here as a researcher on my own – so I have to get around dodging the hurtling Land Cruisers on foot, or on boda-boda motorbike taxis. (There's apparently an entire ward of Juba General Hospital nicknamed the 'Senke' ward, after the Chinese 'Senke' motorbikes that seem to be the essential accessory of every entrepreneurial Juba teenager).
Over the last week I've developed an objective NGO ranking based on Land Cruiser driver courtesy, which I hope will guide your charity Christmas-card buying. At the risk of multiple libel suits, here it is:
- 10/10: Mines Advisory Group - impeccably courteous drivers at all times. And with a healthily robust attitude to handling unexploded bombs. And head-quartered in Manchester. Full marks.
- 7/10: Vétérinaires Sans Frontières - weird charity, slightly weird driving. Particularly poor road positioning, but not often driving fast, so scores higher for general safety.
- 5/10: UNICEF - very fast, quite erratic, bad at roundabouts (whichever 1930s British colonial civil servant planned the road system in Juba, they loved roundabouts)
- 3/10: World Food Programme - WFP drivers scare me for all sorts of reasons – they're the logistics road kings, staffed by hard-bitten Kenyan ex-truckers who don't take any shit from anyone. But mainly because they NEED TO GO TO INDICATOR SCHOOL.
- 0/10: Save the Children UK – arsehole roadhogs. SC-UK vehicles twice bore down on me while I was walking along the road - there are mostly no pavements - honking their horns and then drenching me in mud right before important meetings. Evidently model their driving style and attitude to pedestrians on that of their patron.
This really is hilarious. (I mean, you know, in an awful way.) I must circulate it round Save the Children.
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