UNMAO's Mark Argent and I at mine removal site outside of Juba near E. Rejaf. Notice the MineWolf in upper left of photo. (March 2009)

[Montréal, Québec, Canada -2°C] In a previous post from Juba, Southern Sudan, I wrote about a UNICEF managed and CIDA-funded Mine Risk Education (MRE) programs. I visited program sites where local NGOs taught children and their elders about landmines that remain hidden near their villages. At the time, there were still more known minefields to clear than there were teams trained to clear them so the clearing process would take time. In the meantime, villagers are taught how to recognize landmines or unexploded ordnances and avoid them to remain safe until the dangers are cleared by the United Nations Mine Action Office (UNMAO).

A few days after an MRE visit, Mark Argent (UNMAO) brought me to a different site outside of Juba in E. Rejaf where landmines were actively being cleared by a team of trained mine-removal personnel and a MineWolf machine that, to me, resembles a snow blower. We drove 100 metres past the minefield to a demarkated area adjacent to where landmines were being cleared. This safe area is outlined by a boundary of white-tipped sticks, within which the mine-removal teams prepare their equipment before entering the minefield, take breaks, debrief and where the UN ambulance vehicle parkes at the ready in case of injury.

MineWolf clearing minefiled near Juba, Southern Sudan. (March 2009)

After my debriefing, I was given protection gear to wear (see above photo) that I put on before heading toward the minefield where a team of de-miners were at work. In the back of the minefield, there was a MineWolf actively pounding at the earth, destroying the landmines hidden below the surface.

With minefields still dotting the landscape, farmers are afraid to cultivate the land. When the MineWolf passes over a minefield, it crushes the mines rendering them obsolete. Rarely do the mines explode during this process and when they do, the machine’s driver is rarely hurt due to its design but the machine gets damaged. Once it has passed over an entire field, the MineWolf is transferred to another minefield. At this point, mine-removal teams begin their meticulous work often accompanied with dogs trained to smell explosives.

Safe area is marked by white-tipped sticks planted in the ground to demarkate the area near Juba. (March 2009)

Since 2002/2003, landmines and explosive remnants of war (ERW) have killed or maimed at least 4,119 people in Southern Sudan. During my visit I saw a map in the UNMAO offices that showed a list of over 100 known sites needing to be cleared of landmines. During the rpevious year’s de-mining season, which takes place during the dry season from October to May/June, UNMAO cleared 79 routes and 59 areas. Detecting mines along a road takes time. The slow arduous process moves forward at a spead of about four kilometres per day with a special vehicle that has a pulling mine detector.

Mine removal team returns to safe area after a day's work near Juba, southern Sudan (March 2009)

The presence of landmines in post-war Southern Sudan continue to have a serious impact on the South’s ability to develop. Landmines cause road closures, obstruct aid delivery, hinders the return of refugees and prevents farmers from cultivating the land.

In a recently published article, Norweigan People’s Aid presents the Mokindi and Kulipapa communities, located south of Juba, Southern Sudan and their return to cultivation after the land around their village was cleared of landmines. A total of 109 anti vehicle mines, 411 anti personnel mines, 418 Unexploded Ordnance and 28 sub munitions were cleared.

Since I began this journey through Southern Sudan, I am indeed in perpetual motion. I have only returned to a place (Wau airport and the UNICEF offices) once. Otherwise, I’m moving ever forward, visiting new places with my gear on my back (or most often in the back of an Land Rover).

What does this MoJo carry in Southern Sudan? What is needed to do the job properly without being overloaded, without sacrificing mobility. So far, I’ve taken six flights in planes varying in size that seat hundreds or just over a dozen passengers. On World Food Program flights in Southern Sudan, passengers are limited to 15kgs in total baggage. This is their policy but in practice, my bags have yet to be weighed.

I sometimes wish I had different equipment, better equipment, lighter equipment but I made choices before leaving and the choices are reflected in the below photo of the equipment I brought with me.

This MoJo’s Equipment:

list of equipment:

1. One three-outlet two-metre extension cord + plug adapter

2. One 1000ml water bottle

3. One AA battery charger and one video camera battery charger

3a. Six AA rechargable batteries and three Panasonic video camera rechargable batteries

4. Panasonic PV-GS65, 3CCD miniDV camcorder

5. Pure Digital Flip Video minoHD

6. Twenty one-hour MiniDV cassettes

7. One Petzl frontal head lamp

8. One USB-camera cable (for both camera and microphone), One ethernet cable, One firewire cable

9. One Candle lantern

10. One notebook and many pens

11. One pair of binoculars

12. One first aid kit

13. Ten recordable DVDs for backup photos, video and text

14. One international press card

15. One MacBook Pro laptop computer with editing software: FlipVideo (video), Final Cut Pro HD (video), Audacity (audio), Adobe Photoshop (photo), OpenOffice (text)…

16. One ipod nano (to listen to familiar music on lonely nights)

17. Zoom H2 microphone (also used as USB memory key)

18. One nearly finished role of toilet paper (gotta find myself a replacement! FAST!)

19. Two cell phones + chargers + three sim cards (Safaricom: Nairobi, Gemtel: Juba & other towns in S.Sudan, Zain: Juba and other towns in S.Sudan.) On my business card that I had made for this trip, I have the following list of cellphone numbers: Zain: +249 (0) 909 043 138; Gemtel: +256 (0) 477 151 332; Thuraya: +88216 4333 5305; Safaricom: +254 (0) 715 657 317) ***see note below on the use of cell phones in Southern Sudan.

20. One Thuraya satelite phone + charger + one sim card

21. one traditional single seat wooden chair for meetings under the village tree.

missing in photo:

22. Sony DSC-W1 Cybershot 5.1 megapixel digital camera (used to take the above photo)

23. Three x two-Gig SD memory cards

24. Flip Video strapon-pod to hold camera onto a variety of structures

25. I wish I had brought my tripod, but I realized that I forgot it after my arrival in Juba. I was unable to find a tripod anywhere in the capital of Southern Sudan.

*** A note on the use of cell phones in Southern Sudan: Southern Sudan is a complicated place on many regards and telephone communication is no exception. First let it be known that LAN lines are nowhere to be found or rare at best. If there were LAN phone lines before the war, 21 years of conflict didn’t leave many behind. Most communication by phone is either by cellphone or by satelite phone. I say most because I’ve seen LAN phones but I’ve never seen anyone using them. Everyone is on a cellphone or two or three. And this is where it gets complicated.

Southern Sudan feels like a frontiere town during Wild West days, when large numbers of people arrived in a seemingly uninhabited place without modern conveniences. Entrepreneurs invariably competed to be the first to fulfill the needs of the population. In Southern Sudan, cellular companies are setting up their towers throughout the South and competing for customer affiliation.

Gemtel is a private telecom from Southern Sudan that, according to the Sudan Tribune received a franchise to use a Ugandan national code (+256) since 2006 by Uganda Telecom Ltd. The article states that Gemtel was supposed to stop using its country code in September 2008 but my Gemtel # still uses the Ugandan area code so it is unclear when their code will change and what that will mean for subscribers. Two other companies, Zain and Sudani use the (+249) code and both have a better distribution network throughout the south. If you have a Zain, Mobitel or Sudani simcard you can communicate between the two services but you cannot send or receive a call from cellphone with a Gemtel simcard.

Gemtel seems to have been the first to set up in Southern Sudan since the end of the war with particular focus on the capital, Juba. So many people have Gemtel numbers. Then comes Zain, the Kuwaiti Mobile Telecommunications Corporation, which according to Reuters, began setting up mobile services throughout Southern Sudan in late April 2008 that provide more coverage than was previously available. Mobitel and Sudani show up from Khartoum, which sell their cell lines only with a phone that cannot use another company’s simcard.

Communication by cellphone is only possible from within major towns in Southern sudan, so the moment you leave a town, you need a Thuraya satelite phone. A satelite phone can only receive or send calls if the phone is outside. If you are inside a building or under a roof of some kind the satelite signal will not reach your phone. Calling between Thuraya subscribers is somewhat inexpensive but once you try to call a cell or LAN line, it gets very expensive.

So if you want to communicate relatively easily, you need either one cellphone that can hold multiple simcards at once and one satelite phone if you travel outside of a town. Many people have up to three cellphones and some have a satelite phone as well. It’s a pleasure to watch people waltz between their phones or switch simcards in their phone depending on who their are calling. It is less a pleasure when trying to reach someone who is doing the waltz out of step with you. Oh, on another note, everyone buys prepaid credit for their calling needs, so many people have just run out of credit and are not near a phonecard distributor and will therefore be unable to call you back once they’ve missed your call because they were on another phone talking to someone else.