dinka

there is a tribe living around here called the dinka. before the war, most of them stayed more in the central part of southern sudan. Actually you find them all over sudan, but the biggest grouping of them are in that area. during the war, many of them, along with people from other tribes, moved to areas in sudan that were less volatile. some of that area is here in the western equatoria region. there seems to be a problem though between the dinka folks and their hosts (the other tribes in equatoria). Not sure where the problem lies, but definately has something to do with their cows.

anyhow… there is a place called yambio which is about 5 hours to the east of here by road (driving very very slowly… normal paved road would be something like 1 hour… if that) and the folks on that side seem to be having some problems. don’t know the details, but what I heard was that the dinka were unhappy with something one of the big leaders there said and this resulted in lots of gun play. It was bad enough that the UN workers and other NGOs based there were evacuated today.

this caused us some problems cause we were supposed to recieve about 15 different people from various flights, but all of those flights were diverted to pick up folks in Yambio and take them out to saftey.

all kinds of fun stuff going on.

*update* news article related to this story – click here