A trip to Kuajok and a church under a tree

Andrew covers the three states in sector 2, of which Warrup is one - so yesterday we took a trip to Kuajok (kwa-jock) with Ian and Joanna tagging along so they could check out some of the polling stations. The new battery arrived and was fitted Wednesday evening. If you leave a car out in the sun for 3 weeks and don't start it the water in the battery boils and evaporates. You live and learn!

The road to Kuajok

Kuajok is an hour and a half journey by car, north out of Wau, along a maram road which has not been levelled for a few months. I should look like a Picasso painting this morning as it was the bumpiest road I have EVER been along in my life!

We arrived in Kuajok about 3ish having picked up one of the local vicars to show us where the polling stations were. The first one we visited was in Freedom square and they told us they had already had 90% of their registered voters come in and vote. The first day they saw 2,000 people. What is astonishing, and I haven't seen this reported on the news, is that some people have to walk in for half a day to cast their votes, then walk back to their villages. The polling official we were chatting to said he was really moved by the disabled people who had managed to get there to vote under their own steam. He had actually taken a number of them home in his car.

Tuckles in Kuajok

We visited a second polling station at the secondary school then headed back to Wau dropping off the Rev Andreas and stopping at a third station on the way back. This was off the road under the shade of an enormous tree. The area was enclosed within a circle of reed fencing and very cool. I was about to ask if they had created the area especially for the voting, when one of the young officials who spoke very good English came over to talk to us and explained that this was their church. He showed us around and explained that it was built under the shade of what was actually two trees. One was parasitic, called a Lych (lie-shh), and was growing around the older tree in the middle. Their pews were tree trunks resting across two Y shaped branches at each end. Their altar was on a raised mound and the lectern a tree trunk with a piece of wood nailed to the top.

Cattle on the Kuajok road

Their Chief Francis then showed up and wanted to know what the four Coajehs (phonetic spelling of Arabic for White man) were doing in his church! Fortunately Joanna speaks good Arabic and had a long conversation with him about what she was doing in the referendum. (It probably helped that she's a Canon of Juba Cathedral!) He was very keen to tell her that all his tribe were Catholic and that was the main difference between the North and the South. I think politically it's slightly more complicated than that (understatement of the year!), but interesting that for them it's very clear cut.
There were no dwellings/tuckles to be seen near this polling station meaning people were walking in from all around. In spite of this, they had had a 95% turn out by yesterday. It made me think about our percentage turn outs for elections! I suppose the difference is these people see it as a matter of life and death.
Having navigated the cattle, we made it back to Wau by 6pm and went straight to the bar for a cold green tea (small can of Heineken!). Very interesting day!!