During PPF’s Christmas outreaches, a team traveled south of Southern Darfur to the river town of Nyamlel, to visit an orphanage supported by PPF ministry partner African Leadership. While in Nyamlel, our vehicle suffered a puncture in one of the tires (a normal occurrence). After putting on a spare, which looked like it was about to join its predecessor, the driver recommended we drive to his office in Aweil to pick up a better spare. This would take us two hours out of our way, but we didn’t want to risk sleeping with hyenas in the desolate bush between us and our base camp in Jaac.
I was somewhere between Gok Machar and Jaac with my team. It had already been a long day. What was supposed to be a three-hour journey had doubled. It was well past dark, and our vehicle was weaving in and out between trees and thorn bushes, trying to avoid the occasional stump protruding from the “road” that was really nothing more than a glorified cow path.
One of the most expensive parts of PPF’s work in Africa is transportation. Traditionally, the most frequent mode of transport in places like Southern Sudan has been by air. But chartering airplanes is expensive — VERY expensive. Road transportation is much cheaper. It’s also slower and has traditionally been challenged by poor roads and security concerns.