My goodness, what progress this new country of South Sudan is making! It is exceptional really to think about it. There is a new flag proudly flying above every building and a new national anthem to sing. They have already created a new constitution and are busy with the redefining of the roles and responsibilities of their Ministries.

Many of the Ministers have been (or are in the process of being) retired or relocated to other agencies. The intelligence agency has been disbanded and will be restructured and reformed in the near future due to security concerns from the old guard working too closely with their northern counterparts.

And while there may be some allegations of misappropriation of donor funds there is certainly nothing that I have noticed in my short time here. As a matter of fact there are already some entrepreneurial local folks who are driving new Hummers (?) and building new houses (?) for themselves all over the city.  It shows how industrious and hard working they can be when they put their minds to it.

South Sudan has just introduced a new currency into circulation and the old money will be worthless by the end on August. Note to self get rid of your Sudanese pounds as soon as you can.

Therefore with all this progress and these fantastic changes happening to the newest country in the world, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to visit a neighborhood in Juba called, “Rock City”. It is located at the base of, “Jebel Mountain” and it is close to a Hotel called (appropriately) “Jebel Lodge” where a lot of UN folks go to relax and take a swim. Yes, they have a swimming pool here and a restaurant and folks love going there to sit back and read a book. Since I had never been there, I was excited to see a new area of Juba that I had not seen previously.

My expectations were high and the thought of going to, “Rock City” conjured up visions of little bars and small hotels where folks came to unwind after a long hard week. I even expected to see some seedy little hole in the wall nightclub when we drove through the area.

Well I must say, like everything else in this mission, my vision and expectations of what to expect were quickly and quietly quashed as we drove into the neighborhood.  As a matter of fact, I was absolutely speechless and in awe by what I saw. It took me several moments to comprehend the sight and determine that it was actually real and not an amusement park.

Small children and their mothers, sat under a Mango tree with hammers (or other tools of husbandry) and knocked or chipped away at bigger rocks in order to create piles of stones that they could stack up along the roadside. These piles of stones were stacked in a cone shape and were approximately three feet in height. That means they were approximately three to four feet across the base of the pile.

The first day I drove through Rock City, I never saw any men working here, only women and children in the heat of the day under the Mango tree trying to make a living in order to survive.  I watched in awe as a woman came down from Jebel Mountain carrying a bucket on her head that was laden down with rocks. It would have crushed my vertebra. The second day I drove by, I did see a man carrying rocks and then I saw the other men collecting the money from the sales.

It was definately a first for me to see hand made gravel being sold so these families could survive. It was obviously a trade that had been handed down from generation to generation due to the length of time they had been located here. So long in fact, that they had their own name forever lodged in time. “Rock City”! It was like something out of the Flintstones era!

I wonder how many of these cone shaped gravel piles the other folks had to create and sell in order to buy their new Hummers and build their new homes? 

Daniel Jones

Juba, Sudan