South Sudan
Fun news: my story about Kilkilu Ana, a comedy evening in Juba has been nominated for a Gouden Freelancer Award by Bureau Wibaut! The prize is sponsored by the Dutch NVJ. Find a short interview I did with Vera Spaans on their website. The award ceremony is held in Amsterdam’s Volkshotel on November 1st.
A few phone snaps from our recent trip to South Sudan:
With escalating wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the still ongoing civil war in Sudan has gone largely ignored by the international community. For over a year, fighting has devastated the African country, since fighting erupted between two rival generals who couldn’t reach an agreement about power sharing.
11 million people have been forced to flee their homes. Although many are displaced within their home country, many have also fled violence and hunger (famine was declared in parts of Sudan earlier this month) to neighbouring countries.
Over 700 thousand people have now fled Sudan into refugee camps in northeastern South Sudan, where they still face food and water shortages and live in makeshift homes in the mud. UN organization @worldfoodprogramme said they will scale down their food distribution in the four camps we visited, as they lack funding.
“I’d Rather die by a bomb or bullet in my homeland than in a camp in South Sudan”, said one refugee who wants to go back to his homeland. But for now, most people are stuck in the camps; the area surrounding the camps is flooding, making access routes impassable (we arrived on a small plane, that can’t even fly out to Maban on most days because of the rains).
To read our story, with pictures by Guy Peterson, tap/click on this Volkskrant link.
A few phone shots from Juba, the capital of South Sudan, where we attended the South Sudan Fashion Week event. On the catwalk, models hope to be discovered by international scouts. South Sudanese models are very popular in the West; quite a few South Sudanese women became top models in the past years.
But while Western countries are looking for South Sudanese women and men for their dark skin, many South Sudanese believe lighter skin is more beautiful. They even bleach their skin, which leads to many health risks.
It’s an idea that stuck from when South Sudan and Sudan were still one country, and black people were discriminated against by Sudanese from the North (who also controlled what is now South Sudan).
But, as many people in Juba told us, because of the upcoming of black models in Europe and the US, young girls learn to love their black skin — they’re seeing that skin bleaching is done less by Gen Z’ers and millennials.
Read more by tapping on this Volkskrant link! With great pictures and videos by Guy Peterson.
iPhone snaps from the weekly at the Kilkilu Comedy Show at the Nyakuron Cultural Center in Juba, the capital of South Sudan.
To forget that the war in neighbouring Sudan is pushing the South Sudanese economy over the edge, hundreds of young South Sudanese watch the performers here “as a form of therapy”. Meanwhile, inflation in Juba is surging.
Read our reportage, with pictures by Guy Peterson, on the website of de Volkskrant. This story was nominated for a Dutch Golden Freelancer Award. Find out more about the award and nomination here.
