Day 1 Walking Streets of South Sudan beyond words

Around this area here, at five o'clock, everybody closes up because they don't want to get robbed. So, how many people in here? We are seven. Seven people in this room? Two dollars a month to be a soldier here. That's what it is. We were taken into this room with this Amanda with a sign behind him that said, thank you, Jesus. What does this do? It's like a stimulant? Get you high? They don't want to work. They are just thinking of drinking alcohol only. Drinking? Yeah. And crime? Yeah. I've heard a lot of people around here are using certain drugs and a lot of alcohol. Is that true or what's the reality? He takes cigarettes, alcohol and glue. The soldier said that you never know if there's drunk people who see a white guy and then take action. There's guys that bathe along here. There's often crocodile attacks. If you walk nearby, it could be dangerous to you. There you go, look. The guy before says one of his cows could sense that I was white, so the cow was a bit aggressive about it. Exactly, it was aggressive. We saw a guy walking out of a toilet with an AK-47 absolutely wasted drunk. This would be like one of the most valuable cows at the market, right? Because the horns are very large. And so, how much does this cow go for? Like you're standing here, somebody can just come by... Come and grab the camera. Grab your camera and go away. What are you doing today? I'm cooking alcohol. Alcohol. Do you like to drink wine? So, this is full of wine? Yeah, this is full of wine. It's like moonshine. Are you forced to commit crime? South Sudan, the world's newest country. Only gaining independence in 2011. And after gaining that independence, plummeted into civil war. South Sudan civil war. Ethnic-based violence. 400,000 died. 4 million were displaced. That civil war has now led to the near collapse of the country. Although fighting has died down in some areas of the country, it continues to rage on in others. Hunger and malnutrition rife throughout the country. South Sudan is the world's most dangerous country for an aid worker. South Sudan is the most violent place in the world for aid workers. With humanitarians constantly being targeted. Tribal violence occurs every single day. Flooding has absolutely ravaged the country. The people who live here have never experienced anything like this. My house is still underwater. Vast areas lie underwater. I've wanted to go to South Sudan for a long time. This trip has been two years in the making. The world's youngest country is tearing itself apart. Civil war has torn the world's youngest country apart. So I can live and die here in my country. Rapid descent into civil war has broken... But there isn't much the U.S. or its allies can do. Your name? My name is Divi. The near collapse of the country. Nice to meet you. Fighting each other. This is where it gets very dangerous. Okay, so made it through Juba International Airport, arrived into the city here to be honest it's an absolute mission getting into Juba let alone bringing a bunch of camera equipment. The visa situation is quite difficult. I had to provide a full list of all my equipment even down to the headphones I'm using. That's how strict they are here due to political instability, things like that with any form of camera equipment especially with me bringing microphones. As I want to try and make an in-depth video series here you really have to have strong contacts not to get shut down or even arrested. So UNICEF have been helping facilitate all the paperwork. It's piles and piles of paperwork to just come in as I am with my camera. So it's going to be quite the adventure. I think even the filming permits don't work sometimes. So we'll see what we come across. It's going to be quite the adventure here in South Sudan. We're about to head to one of the busiest parts of the city right now. Let's go see what this place has to offer. So we've arrived in this slum area here. The streets are fascinating. There's military everywhere. Long story short, we pulled over on the other side of the bridge of the Nile here. We were taken into this room with this commander with a sign behind him that said, thank you, Jesus. We were questioned. We gave him the paperwork. You see what I was saying earlier. It was already knocked down. Now we've been given two soldiers to walk around the slum. The soldier said that you never know if there's drunk people who see a white guy and then take action. So yeah, we're going to have a look around. We've arrived at this local pharmacy here and we're with the owner, Josephine. What about life generally living in Juba? How is it? Not good. And what about safety? Is it safe? Not good. Drinking? And crime? Okay. They steal your things? Yes. So what happens? They come and break in or... They used to take by force. Really, by force? Yeah, like that. With a knife or... Thank you for your time, Josephine. You're welcome. So we're here with our team and you're going to be keeping me safe here, right? You're going to be helping me out. Sure. Yeah. This neighborhood here is one of the main slums next to the river here. Yeah, it is. This is the Juba Bridge. Life here is quite difficult. You're seeing this is a slum just adjacent to the Nile. And sometimes they get dislodged by water if it rains heavily. So it floods in here. Yes. In South Sudan, there's a lot of internal displacement, right? Millions of people because of either floods or violence. So you'll find lots of camps all around the country. It's either the flood or the conflict. My name is Nick. Nick. My name is Nick. Yeah. Your name? Agor. Agor? Agorka. Daruka. Yes. Okay, nice to meet you. And what are you doing today? I'm cooking alcohol. Alcohol? As you see, this is wine. It's wine? Yes. Do you like to drink wine? No. Or you sell it? No, just to help myself. To help yourself. Yes. I'm not drinking wine. Okay. That's why my children and my family... So this is full of wine? Yes, this is all wine. This is already... That's a lot of wine. Okay. It's like moonshine. Exactly. Wow. After that, this is the sugar. Okay. Sugar, you put it inside the water. How much does it cost for 20 liters? This 20 liters? $10,000. Yes, $10,000. $15 for 20 liters of wine. Exactly. Wow, that's quite the price. $15. Okay. Thank you. Nice phone. No. And are you using the phone? Yeah. Are you calling? No. Is it working? Yeah? Yeah. It's okay? Thank you so much. Very nice of you. How many people live here? How many? How many people? How many children do you have here? I have three. Three. Plus the relative. Okay, relative. So how many people in here? We are seven. Seven people in this room? Okay. This is where the alcohol is. Yeah, I can smell the wine. Yeah. Smells good. Yeah. Very nice. Thank you. Thank you very much, Daruka. You're welcome. Nice to meet you. You're welcome. Shukran, Daruka. Shukran. Thank you. As you can see here, many people speak English. English is actually the official language of South Sudan, which is really great to interact with the locals. It brings you a lot closer talking directly to them. We've just had these two military guys shadowing us the whole time, just keeping an eye on us. So we've come to this local street stall. Abdul, right? Abdul. What does this do? It's like a stimulant? Gets you high? No, it's medicine. Medicine. Do you like to eat this? Yeah. Yeah? Yeah, the sugar. Sugar. Yeah, sugar. Mix it with the chewing gum and then some of that, right? And what does it make you feel like? Does it make you feel good? Yeah, good. Okay. Yeah. And how is life here in Juba for you? Fine. Fine? No problem? No problem. All good? Yeah, okay. Wonderful. That's what I like to hear. Yeah. All right. Thank you, Abdul. You're welcome. He said it's medicine, but I've always known to be more of like a stimulant drug, right? Yes. What is it? It's actually a drug. It's a drug. For the boys you see on the street, some of them were working long time, building site. They take it to keep them active. Like construction workers take it so they can work long hours and earn more money. Yeah. And is it addictive? I would say it is. The boys that they call the street boys or the kids that are on the streets who have left their homes, they take this together like with the glue, with this. So they mix with glue and they sniff that. And these are the similar boys that we were talking about earlier that can sometimes rob shops. So around this area here at five o'clock everybody closes up because they don't want to get robbed. Yeah, the shops here close at five. If you're not careful, they can snatch your phone, they can snatch your money. Like you're standing here, somebody can just come by. Come and grab the camera. Grab your camera and go away. It's quite common. They are, yeah. Very common. There's like one guy on the front and one guy on the back. And the guy on the back grabs it and then they drive. The other one rides faster. Beautiful bike. Did you paint it? You painting? Maybe, no. Cleaning a lot though, right? Yeah, just cleaning. Right. What was your name? I'm called Sahad. Sorry? Sahad. Nice to meet you, mate. Thank you. All right. These are massive avocados from Uganda. They're so big. So, we've met some of the street boys that I was talking about earlier. These are the boys that have to leave the towns from outside Juba because their parents can't really afford to look after them. So, they come in here and they kind of live off whatever they can really. And, you know, a lot of them unfortunately have turned to drugs like glue. This area here, a lot of them have actually left during the day. They go to a neighborhood close by which is quite reasonably dangerous. A lot of them are drinking moonshine and sniffing glue. So, it gets quite unhinged. At night time, a lot of them come over here and a lady we met before will use the words that they take over. I'm gonna meet some of them, ask them a question and hear their side of the story and why they've been, you know, pushed to such extremes. Do you come from outside the city? How far is that? 600 kilometers. And why do you come here? Huh? So, in tradition, do parents normally give a cow to their children so that they can, you know, afford a life? He's calling for the people at home to send him some money for him to be able to go back home, but they're not responsive. I've heard a lot of people around here are using certain drugs and a lot of alcohol. Is that true or what's the reality? Obviously, you've had some horrible experiences, you know, living around here on the streets and having no family for support. So, what do the drugs give you? How do they make you feel? Does it make you feel escape? When I have drank and I have smoked, I only look for food and it's not something I buy, I don't have money to buy food. Because it's a hard situation, are you forced to commit crime? When they have been suspected of anything, they are stolen. And indeed, they say, yeah, they sleep in the open, sometimes in the rain, and then people come and arrest them and suspect them. In 2018, he happened to have been arrested. He was in prison. He was suspected of robbing somebody and he had to go to prison for four and a half months in 2018. Hello, how are you? Such a hard life and they've got cuts all over them, all over their legs. And then we went and met another group of them, which another one of the street kids brought us over and took us to meet his friends. His friends really didn't like that, then they all started fighting. And you can see the cuts on their face and things because they're just constantly either fighting each other or being beaten by shopkeepers or police because they're just constantly into crime. They had a strong smell of alcohol on them and abandoned by their parents, neglected. So, they have to come into the city and they just get caught up into the wrong things. So, we just pulled over at a petrol station here. South Sudan actually has extremely large oil reserves, some of the largest in sub-Saharan Africa, right? South Sudan, economically and with food insecurity, there's big issues. What's the deal with the petrol situation? And if there's so much money, but there's so much food insecurity and poverty, then what's going on? You have South Sudan as a country that is exporting oil. It's the prime product for the country. This is the number one thing that the country produces. Number one export by far, astronomical. Exactly. Nothing else. Exactly. South Sudan depends on oil that is transported in from Kenya and Uganda. And so, you find prices are high. One liter is selling at $1.52. Do you know the average salary? The lowest salary ranges from $1,500, for example, a soldier. Soldier. On a monthly basis. Monthly. What's that? Like $2 a month to be a soldier here. That's what it is. That just proves why nobody can afford food and you're so heavily reliant on aid, right? Absolutely. The most reliant country on aid in the world. Absolutely. South Sudan doesn't have a refinery. South Sudan exports through the Sudan where it is so refined and then has to import the ready fuel for use. South Sudan's economy is 100% reliant on Sudan, like most of the refineries and then it gets exported through the Red Sea. For the oil importation, it comes from East Africa. We import fuel for vehicles, for generators and for general use. Because you can't refine it yourself. We export the crude oil. Right. So, this is the... That's why I was saying it's an interesting paradox. Yeah. Yeah, because you have the oil, you're producing it and then you have to import it. Isn't the government currently building two refineries? Those have been mentioned, but it is not forthcoming. And is that a common theme in South Sudan? Undelivered promises? Well, that's it. It's a reality. Okay. That's what it is. Somebody pulled over on a motorbike with handcuffs strapped to their waist wearing plain clothes and he worked for the government. And basically, we got taken away to a local governmental office. We had to wait for, I don't know, half an hour or so to an hour to present all these documents, getting questioned, like I said at the start of the video again. It's proving to be not the easiest to film here, but luckily with the accreditation, it's very, very necessary. I think coming here without that paperwork, I would already have been sent out of the country within the first five minutes of stepping out of the car, like you saw today. While we were at this governmental office, we saw a guy walking out of a toilet with an AK-47 absolutely wasted drunk. He was like stumbling and tripping and he was like throwing rocks at goats while he was a full AK-47. It's the middle of the... It's not even lunchtime yet, so I should give you a sign of kind of the situation here. So, we've just come to this local restaurant here. There's a sunken boat there. From the research I did, there's a few different stories ranging from that it simply came off the rope of the river here. Other ones say that it was shelled from the other side of the river during the war. There's many different theories. Quite the scene here, you know. You can sit here, eat your lunch and look over the beautiful river Nile here. Everywhere is heavily fortified with heavy security. Obviously, with the current state of the country and obviously the very recent past with the civil war, it's a very unstable place. So, I guess you just never know when something can happen. But so far in Juba, it's felt okay. Those young guys that were on drugs and things, at the end, one of those kids, he didn't want to actually say it on camera, but one of the kids, he said that he was actually a child soldier. In South Sudan, there's many issues with kids being taken away from their parents at a young age to be forced into being soldiers, whether that's for rebel groups or whatever. It's extremely grim. So, you can see this sign here. There's guys that bathe along here. There's often crocodile attacks. There's that reminder where we are deep in Africa. So, we've come into this residential neighborhood. And our team, is this quite a common living conditions for people in Juba, this kind of situation here? Yes. You even have some people keeping goats. Others are keeping cows. Inside their living room. Yeah, this is because they may be raided. Because cows are extremely valuable in South Sudan, right? Exactly, they are. You were saying before, sometimes cows can cost $5,000, $8,000 if it's a prime cow. Exactly. If I meet a nice South Sudanese girl and I want to marry her, my best chance is to find the most expensive beautiful cow and offer that. Exactly. That's how it works. This is obviously the lower economic living situations. But I've heard that people with more money tend to live in hotels. Is that right? Yes, five-star hotels. $100 to $300 and $400 per night. Per night. And who lives in there, mainly like politicians or...? Yeah, mainly if there are tourists coming to the country. But you don't get many tourists. No, you don't. Okay, so we've come into a local shop here. Who are you with? I'm Hassam. Hassam. And what are you selling here? You're a Muslim man? Yeah, I'm Muslim. Okay. And how is it being Muslim in a majority Christian country? Do you get along well with everybody? There are no big challenges to do with religion. So, when it comes to their interaction with the community, there are no issues of religion. Life is difficult. People are sick in their house and they have nothing to eat. But what do you do? This is how you struggle at the end of the day to have something on the table for your family. This is what she's selling to make ant's meat. This is groundnut paste. What's groundnut? It's the same groundnut that is made into plant peanuts that are given to malnourished children. So, this has high food value. This one is $100. $100 is basically like $0.10 or $0.20. Yeah. So, that man with the cows that you just saw... A lot of the time he's walking for miles and miles and their legs were tied so they can't run away from him. But he's walking straight down the middle of this busy road with his cows heading towards a cow market. Cows are a huge part of the culture and basically the economy of South Sudan. So, you can see here people cleaning up the streets and that's just outside their shop. So, they're just voluntarily picking up the rubbish off of this. You can see there's lots of rubbish here on the streets just like many countries in Africa. And for the locals take it upon themselves to try and make their shop look, you know, a bit nicer. This is a local bakery here and just making an effort. So, we've just arrived at this huge cow market. If you want to get the woman of your dreams then you've got to come forward with the goods. So, you know, long horn cows, the longer the horn, the more valuable. And you'll give sometimes hundreds of cows to a woman's family. Sometimes it can be 30, sometimes it can be 100 more. Depends, you know, how much you want to show your devotion to the woman. So, the man here in the blue, this is his cow, which is a sale, which is, I think... This would be like one of the most valuable cows at the market, right? Because the horns are very large. And so, how much does this cow go for? $1,000, right. The cow industry is one of the best ways for, you know, the common man to make money, right? So, many people get into it. Some of the cows, like the cow over there, now running around and somebody's chasing it. Is there injuries here? Because sometimes the cows can run away or charge people, no? Is it common for people to get injured? So, if you are not used to it, like if you walk nearby it, it could be dangerous to you. But the owner knows how to caress it and... Caress? Yeah. There you go, look. And the guy before says that one of his cows could sense that I was white. So, he... The cow was a bit aggressive about it. It was aggressive, it saw you as a stranger. So, they can sense different people. Even for some black people like myself who are not used to them, they know the owners. They feel the energy. Exactly. Right. Okay. Well, I hope that you sell your cow today. Thank you. Good luck. You guys have to let me know if one of these cows is going to charge me because I can't see. So, in some parts of the country, there's actually what are called cattle raiders. They go around with weapons and they steal cows. So, like cow bandits. But it's a huge industry here. You bought cows for your wife, your wife's family? Yeah, the tradition requires that. So, I mean, before thinking of marrying somebody's daughter, what comes to mind as part of the planning is, you know, okay, if you want to marry, do you have the cows that I needed? How many cows did you present for your wife? I paid at the time it was over 80. 18? 80. A0. So, I have to have somebody that I have trusted to keep them for me. And then I will continue buying. So, I have to assemble them. You build them. So, when I know I have up to 50 cows, maybe with friends and relatives and then you start planning. The more beautiful and the more tall the woman, the more cows and the better the cows you have to provide, right? Exactly. So, if it's like an absolutely beautiful woman, then you have to come through with the best of the best. Exactly. But then it's now changing because even for uneducated girls... This one is friendly. For an uneducated girl, you really have to pay more for education and for all that. So, although... She has a university degree, then more cows. Exactly. Beautiful. Shukran. Let's go. People shout Khawaja at me, which means white guy. That guy said, Khawaja, welcome back. It was really great to get a feel for the city of Juba, the capital city of South Sudan today. It's quite hard to find any kind of footage of this place, of kind of general life and things. So, very interesting to see, you know, what it's like on the streets and things. Obviously, without the paperwork, we were checked many times and there were undercover government people showing up on the back of motorbikes with handcuffs that had been called and told about our whereabouts and that we were filming and things. So, it is very strict. So, very fortunate that UNICEF has facilitated the paperwork for this. See you in the next video. We're going to go into a different part of the city. There's this huge makeshift slum camp area. So, that should be pretty interesting to see. Obviously, a huge part of this country is the food insecurity. Being one of the most reliant countries of aid in the entire world, obviously, there's very dark parts of this country. We saw some good vibes today, you know, some people struggling as well, obviously, but then some people telling us that they have a good life. Interesting to see both sides, a lot of violence in different parts of the country. This is the most secure part of the country. We will be venturing out of Juba later in the series. Thank you so much for watching. Great to be back in Africa. And in case I don't see you, good afternoon, good evening and good night.