Day Seventy Nine - Shortages

Yesterday we discovered, on our way to the office, which is roughly a 30 minute-ish drive from where we live in TongPing, that there is a fuel shortage. We drove to 5 different petro stations only to find that they had no fuel. Wild goose chase. The story is that there is no fuel coming from Khartoum and the fuel that is available is from the Somalian’s who do not have a good relationship with the government, therefore, they are making it next to impossible to get petro. Black market is where it’s at yo. Our mechanic hooked us up with some petro/I think our driver had to wait in line for hours and hours to get petro. Ugg. This fuel shortage is also to be worse than the one back in June, which is not reassuring. Back in June, Lawrence once waited in line all day to get fuel and I am not even sure if he ended up getting petrol. The realities of living in South Sudan and not in a country where fuel prices are the only matters which concerns a person. Back home I would never worry about the fact that we may one day not have fuel for our vehicles. We get frustrated when the price increases by 5-10 cents. I cannot imagine what would happen if one-day people went to the gas station and they said there was no fuel. People would probably think the world was coming to an end. If fact, the world would not end, you just have to alter your schedule and limit the use of your vehicle. For example, today, after driving to the office to find that we were locked out due to the fact that it is a national holiday so our guard and fellow office mates were not working, we ended up driving back to Arkel to work for the day. Even though we wasted petro driving to the office for no reason, it all worked out. We got yogurt for breakfast and we were given a temporary office for the next month that is very close to our accommodations. And much to Alexandra’s enjoyment there is A/C, which does not really work but it is better than nothing. Back in June, boda boda’s were really the only mode of transport because no one had fuel to fill their vehicles. I hope it does not come to that. Boda’s are neat, but they are not ideal modes of transport.

I attempted to document this today, but alas I did not have my camera and my phone camera was not working for me. You should have seen the lines of vehicles and boda boda’s at the one petrol station, which was evidently providing fuel. It looked like a traffic jam but it was only people patiently waiting their turn to fill up their vehicles. The boda boda’s were the greatest sight because there were so many of them and they were in two lines, sitting in pairs. It was quite a sight.