Already one week spent here in Rumbek and I am still unable to put down in words what I see and feel. I think I simply can’t understand where I am neither what me and my fellow colleagues are doing here.

‘War is not over. Now another war is being fought. In our minds’. These words were pronounced by a 15 year old boy at a workshop on overcoming post war traumas I was listening in a couple of days ago. Psychological war. Sounds scary. Yet, this is the kind of posters you get to see in the local hospital. The scars of the war are still everywhere and not just in the brain of people.

The 'environment' is tough. As expected. Electricity is a priviledge to enjoy 2-3 hours a day and with a temperature going up to 45-46C (we're just before the rain season) water is what you get to bless the most. Even when you have to shower with a spider as big as the palm of your hand, who stares at you in a scary way about half a meter from your head. And even when, as you walk to the toilet in the middle of the night, you have to watch your steps and carefully try not to direct your head lamp to the floor. This way you can pretend those big hairy cockroaches aren't there.
But at this latitude there seem to be also lots of priviledges that somewhere else you can only dream about. For instance you can have dinner under the most incredibile starry sky with Father Mario and listen without saying a word to the stories of this incredibile man who has been for more than 50 years in South Sudan. Or you can interrupt everything you are doing at 8 pm every evening, to sit outside to listen to the RAI (Italian broadcasting) news journal thanks to the portable shortwave radio which in this side of the world is still the only reliable way to stay connected with what happens in the world. Or, as it just happened to me, you can return from the local 'souk' devastated after having bargained the fluctuating price of a coke under the burning Equatorial sun, and then realize that a bunch of kids have been following you all the way home and are now staring at you across the windows and laughing like crazy.