Victor

This is Victor, an old member of the Wildlife Service, who is deployed as a guard at our compound. He is the loveliest, warmest man. He claims he is 60, but I don’t believe that to be true. A few decades ago he worked as a chef in Khartoum and told me as we sipped tea together that he has money in a bank account there that he can’t access because he doesn’t have the funds to travel. It would also be difficult for a government employee to get permission to go given the relationship between the two countries, and I highly doubt that Victor and millions like him have got anywhere near having an official South Sudanese passport since independence in 2011.

The Wildlife Service isn’t staffed like the rangers of a national park or wardens of an RSPB reserve that we may think of in the UK. They are a group of people highly inflated in number (as are other state entities) as a way to soak up spare bodies throughout the ongoing peace process, and give them an official role. South Sudan is a highly militarised society (Adrian said he would be surprised if most homes did not own a machine gun) and most people alive have known nothing except a continuous state of conflict and uncertainty. When independence came, the vast majority identified themselves with the movement that wanted it, which can be distinguished only very hazily from the army that fought for it. There were a lot of people to make use of and they found themselves in various government bodies. These are continually added to as militia groups now active and protesting against the independent country’s government are captured, trained and deployed to the same services. Some defect back to join militias which are constantly derailing the country’s journey towards peace. I am still in the very early days of learning but I’ve never been somewhere so difficult to identify between government personnel, military, rebels and citizens. Much of the time there is no real difference and people have been various of these at various times in their lives.

Our project here has an excellent relationship with the Wildlife Service and the central ministry responsible for it in Juba, and we make it work for the game reserves we’re present at, however people are not serving within the Service out of a love for cuddly creatures or distaste for bushmeat. They largely find themselves deployed to it randomly or because of family ties and the challenge is finding the motivated and interested in amongst the war-weary, drunk and corrupt.

Victor sleeps in the left hand room of the white building behind as he has some family troubles and doesn’t have anywhere else to go, nor the spare cash to rent somewhere else. I don’t know Victor’s recent history so I don’t know how he came to be in the Service but Adrian who set up this compound in 2011 tells me that we have never had a hint of trouble in over five years (within the compound walls…). We thank Victor immensely for that as it’s quite remarkable given what the country has been through.