The basketball team were staying in our Camp and were suitably tall so as to confirm that they were ball players of international quality even without the Air Jordan shoes and the ubiquitous basketballs that were carried around. They were all South Sudanese but many were schooling abroad in the States, Australia, England or East Africa. I am told their eyes sparkled with a quiet confidence as they strolled the Riverside, but I was unable to see this since clouds generally formed around the region of their mid-chest and their heads were obscured in the mist at that height. The game was delayed for days and rumours were awash in Juba. It turned out that the stadium had not been finished and with no court there would be no match. All was rescued when the local school offered their court to the teams and the match was scheduled for the following day.
The school was buzzing in the cool of the evening; chairs standing in rows and crowds pouring in. Heidi arrived early to get a good seat, walking down with our medical students (we finished teaching early to ensure the entire game would be caught). I was delayed after being called to see a collapsed bishop in church. That is another story but I will indulge it here briefly, only because of the prior treatment he had received. This gentleman had in the past had interventional treatment to his heart in Kenya after being sent there by the church with a heart attack. Despite this advanced Western treatment in the past, his initial response to feeling unwell was to visit a ‘local doctor’ or ‘traditional healer’. After an afternoon of soaking in chicken’s blood and a number of other herbal remedies he felt no better and then the incident I was called to review occurred. It is just a reminder of how deeply entrenched the traditional life here is. And who’s to say that some of these treatments don’t work (though I am fairly sure the chicken’s blood did not help his angina)?
Anyway, back at the school basketball court the atmosphere was hotting up as the air temperature cooled with the falling sun. Amidst the cheering and ululating and chants of ‘Uganda is dead’ in Juba Arabic the players fought it out on the concrete. A great game and even though the South Sudanese physically dwarfed the Ugandan players the final result saw Uganda finish a hairs breadth ahead. The Score keeper was probably the most tired of all the people on the day having to constantly write the latest score up in chalk and quickly rub it off and re-write it every few seconds, usually having to rescue his chalk from the children who were drawing pictures on the back of the board.
A few of the medical students before the game
The Republic of South Sudan team get ready to represent their country
The challengers Uganda
Uganda made a very strong start
South Sudan fighting back
A lot of patriotism amongst the crowd
A battle of the flags
The children finding something to do with the chalk and blackboard scoreboard
The crowd getting behind the local team as they bring the score to a draw
Atmosphere and tension mounting
Tension showing in the final few minutes for the ROSS team
The football was a more organised affair- from the South Sudanese end. The Kenyan national team had been double-booked and was unable to come, only discovered by a roving South Sudanese journalist who spotted it on their website. Instead one of their top premiership teams was sent last minute to face the white shirted team from the South. The newly refurbished stadium (pimped up in record time by a Chinese team that seemed to never leave the site) was crammed full. Heidi and I had to slip in with borrowed ‘PRESS’ passes to sit in the journalist’s area. The game was great fun, though less atmospheric than the basketball, particularly being separated from the real local supporters, many of whom had climbed onto the walls to see the action. South Sudan scored three of the four goals on the day but lost 3-1. South Sudan, however, was the first team to score in the opposition net and led 1-0 for most of the first half. It is early days for the National teams since many of the players had never played together before and these matches only represent the beginning of a new sporting era here.
Apart from all the events around Independence work has continued in the hospital with regular teaching sessions and visits to see patients at the UNMISS hospital to review the sick while their physician was away. And so it continues.
Onto the football James and his 'press' pass to help get us into the stadium
The walls filling up
The wall full
The national anthem, a small error of the sprinklers starting briefly
The teams hitting the pitch
A last minute team talk in front of a packed crowd
If there was anything to climb up it was
The brand new floodlights were also put to good use.
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