protest

my ear still has a problem.  I am afraid I have done some permanent damage.  Yes I should have seen a doctor, but he probably would have just said I had Malaria.  I don’t have much faith in many of the doctors here.

i took some ear drops.  they made my nose run the whole night.  sneezing and snotting all over the place.  but my ear still feels clogged up.

yesterday there was a protest in the middle of Juba town.

i didn’t witness the event, so am not a valid source of information.

my colleage thought she heard some gunshots at one point.  the jumble of news that we got on this side was that students and teachers were protesting the fact that the government hasn’t paid the teachers.   So they didn’t want to teach.  So I think was actually two protests at once.  Teachers protesting no pay and the students protesting the fact that the teachers were not teaching.

Students around these parts do seem to appreciate the fact that they can go to school unlike myself when I was that age.  I would have loved it if my teachers had gone on strike.

The most unfortunate thing about this protest was that the police managed to shoot a couple of people in the process.  At least that is what is filtering back to us here.  The first version of the story was that one girl and two boys were shot, not killed, but just wounded in various places.  Actually I don’t think it was reported that anyone was killed, just shot and now experiencing alot of pain.  The second version of the story was that a teacher and one student were shot.

Regardless of the versions, there definately was shooting taking place yesterday and there definately was a riot.  I met a man who said he had just arrived to Juba and was travelling to town when their vehicle was caught up in the middle of the protest and was stoned by the protestors.  He arrived to Juba yesterday and I think decided to leave today.

I’ve been searching the internet sites for a news feed on this and not finding anything.  When they beat a few ladies with sticks because of the clothes they were wearing, it was all over the international news in a very short matter of time.   They shoot a couple of kids wanting to go the school and nobody seems to give a damn.