After another twenty kilometres, we arrive at the turn for the rubbish dump. Stretched out across the road, barring our path, is a thin strip of paper, knotted together with plastic. It is, like the thousands of roadblocks that adorn the dirt tracks of Sudan, less an actual physical barrier (scissors, freedom), than it is an indication of the real barrier: the people who put the barrier in place. Lukudu looks visibly surprised. Suddenly showing more energy that I previously thought him capable of, he announces that he is going to investigate, and hops out of the car, ducks nimbly under the barrier and saunters off down the road, gesturing at me to remain in the car. I wait for five minutes before becoming suspicious. In Juba, I heard stories of hundreds of people living at the dump; villagers displaced by land speculation, living off the scraps and detritus of the city. Perhaps the barrier is a sham, I think, paranoid by now, and Lukudu is using this time to ensure the dump is empty. Just behind the car, there is a group of people arrayed around the tree that marks the turn off to the dump. I walk over to talk to them.They come here everyday, they tell me, to sift through the refuse, and pick out food, bits of machinery and scrap metal. Yesterday, however, soldiers came and put up the barrier. Apparently a brigadier has claimed that he owns the site, and has forbidden rubbish dumping. The villagers I spoke to sat almost totally still: first the dump took their fields away, and then the dump itself, their livelihood, was declared off-limits.
It begins to seem strange that the proposed ministry buildings were so close to the rubbish dump; occupying the rubbish dump, I thought, would be a good piece of realty speculation by a canny brigadier. After talking to the group I set off for the dump. I want to find Lukudu and ask him about what I had just been told. It is hard to see through the dust and smoke, and the flies descend, congregating for an important conference on my mouth, coating my eyes; my skin feels alive. After walking for ten minutes, I give up trying to brush the flies off my face, and light a cigarette, the dull blue wisps of smoke standing out in the noonday heat against the diffuse grey of the smouldering plastic. After a few more minutes, Lukudu appears around a bend, walking towards me.The barrier, he tells me, was built by the local community, who are angry about all the rubbish being dumped on their land. And it is the government, Lukudu sighed, who is going to have to pay for all of this. In the heat and stench of the dump, I think about how different Lukudu’s explanation was to that given by the rubbish-pickers by the tree. It is only on the morrow that I come to wonder how Lukudu could have found this out, when he also told me he had not met anyone on his walk. Brigadier is a strange synonym for community. Together, we walk on to the dump.There are burning slag heaps lining the road, and the burnished metal edges of tin cans protrude from the carbonised remnants of a hotel’s daily effluence. The trees are twisted, flecked with ash.
24
Giulio Petrocco
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator