Joyce Angee, walks to nearby Jebel Kujur rock every morning to collect rocks. She splits the rocks into gravel for sale. “It’s not really easy my son, but when they tell you it’s the government, what do you do?” Angee, tells timeoftheworld.com about why she contributed money to gravel a road. She is speaking from her work station on the foot of Jebel Kujur rock, half a Kilometer east of her village, Lokwilili. “I first gave them 1500SSP and after a week, another 1500SSP since I couldn’t raise it at once. Thank God they treated me as a special case.”
Lack of roads and support from the national government forced elected block leaders in this village to make some tough decisions – vote to require every household to contribute about $7.5 to grade a road through the area. “When the chiefs team came to my house, I wasn’t in the house. My wife didn’t want to be bothered; so, she didn’t ask questions and she just paid. I was mad at her, but had to cool down, concluding that women are always like that,” Towongo David, a public transport mini bus driver, says referring to a common sexist thinking here that women are malleable. “Personally, I would not have paid without proper explanation. Thank God, I am reaping the benefits, at least, for now.”
Lokwilili, , 4km south of Gudele, is poverty stricken. A majority of families live on a meal a day and live in temporary mud and wattle structures just about 12km from the center of South Sudan’s capital town. After the chiefs collected the money, they approached the local government officials at the sub-county for help. The fundraising pitch went went like this: “This is what the people have, by themselves, collected to build this road; what is the government contribution?”
“Achieving basic development services is very simple when a community has a sense of togetherness… It is easy to be helped when you have already made an effort” .
Yohana Lokule, the chief of Lokwilili
“We made sure that our collecting executives explained everything to the residents: 1500SSP for registration of their plots and 1500SSP for area development, which all had to be paid at once.”
The state government provided two trucks to ferry gravel and a caterpillar grader to level the gravel onto the road. “What we (community contributions) did was buy fuel for the trucks and the grader,” says Lokule.
The collections continued. During the days of ferrying gravel and laying it where the road was to pass and grading it, the community leaders required cars and motorbike commuters to contribute.
“The boma guys made sure that every boda guy, who rides around, and the water tank drivers contributed extra money apart from the initial money collected from the community. We were told it was for the lunch and air time of the truck drivers and the driver of the grader,” says Sekwat Richard, who earns a living by transporting passengers on his bike (boda).
The grading of the road is positively impacting lives.
Residents no longer have to wad through distant diversions just to avoid flood waters and muddy patches.
“It used to be worse for school children who always had to be accompanied by grownups in order to cross the flooded area on their way to school. Worse still, sick people had to be carried to the area that was not flooded (dry land where cars stopped) in order to be taken to a hospital, but that is no more,” chief Lokule said.
Muraa Joye runs an eatery along the road. “Wash for me those dirty plates quickly; can’t you see customers waiting?,” her eyes fixed on the lunch-goers walking into her diner, the 29-year-old mother of two kindergarten-going boys shouts instructions to her staff. Around this time, before the road was paved, Muraa would abandon work to walk her children home, wadding through the mud and the flood waters that always followed the rains. Today is different. When her two boys arrive, she gives them packed food and instructs them to walk home, warning them to be mindful of bikes riding along the road. “The road has now been graveled and my boys can walk home safely so long as they keep to the side”, Muraa explains to her surprised clients.
Towongo David, the mini-bus driver who plies the Gudele –Juba town road, but resides in Lokwilili, used to park his bus at gas station far from Lokwilili at a cost every night.
“Ever since this road was graveled, I drive my bus home and leave the neighborhood in the morning with a few passengers. I no longer have to part with 2000SSP for parking at a Petrol station”, Towongo says.
Yet, pulling this off such a task of collecting money from the community requires that the community trusts its elected block leaders. When timeoftheworld.com asked Towongo why he was initially unhappy when he learned that the wife had paid the 3000SSP, he answered with one word “trust”. Then, he added: “With these tough economic times, people are looking for all tricks to raise money. Thus, you can never be sure until the results become visible.”
Absent trust, such a project can lead to tongues wagging. According to Lokule, those who didn’t know him before the vote to collect money from residents called him names. “Whenever I passed by a homestead, people started whispering. When I wore a clean cloth, they claimed I was enjoying the money collected for the registration of plots,” Lokule said. He said that some branded him Abukersha (local Arabic for potbelly). “Yet, I have always been a fat man,” Lokule says. “My track record here speaks for itself – (I have no bias towards) corruption, except (towards) serious service to my people.”
Lack of integrity is the reason such a community led project may not work in many other areas, Lokule says. In South Sudan, Chiefs are generally known to not account for community contributions. Lokule says that the reason other areas and area chiefs have failed to mobilize their residents for such projects is because of the lack of integrity among elected block and parish leaders. “There are some of my colleagues who prey on every little thing that the community raises – be it from market collections or dispute resolutions fines”, he explains.
