South Sudan's 2nd Anniversary

July 9 is Independence Day in South Sudan and it is celebrated a lot like we do in the US but without the great sales and fireworks (unless you count the celebratory gun fire).  In fact people here go to church on the Sunday before Independence Day to pray for the country and then again on the day before Independence Day.  On Independence Day, the government leaders have a large gathering with lots of speeches and then everyone starts to drink for the rest of the day.

On Monday I received my invitation to sit in the "good" seats at the Eastern Equatorial Celebration of Independence Day.  I asked my office if any of them wanted to go since it was really their Independence Day but they all declined, they all had parties to attend and did not want to sit through government speeches.  I was then left to go to the event.  According to the invitation the event was to start at 8:30 am and crazy me I thought that since the Governor usually is on time for his meetings that this might start on time.  No, the event finally started at 11am.  While according to the schedule from 8:30-10:30 was just for arrivals, the event was still 30 minutes late for the actual program.

I was seated with other NGO representatives, UN Staff and the ministers who were to pray over the country.  Before the program started the protocol officer told all of the people sitting on my side that we were not to take any pictures during the event, even with our cell phones.  I quickly understood because when the program started the military, police, prison guards, and wildlife officers were presented to the Governor and then they stood in front of our section.  At no time are foreigners allowed to take pictures of the military or police in any African country so the protocol officer was worried that we would get in trouble by accident.

When the program did start they were then worried about the possibility of rain so the speakers had to cut their speeches down, in some cases from 6 pages to 4.  The school children singing and dancing was a nice bonus to the day especially since it was one of the few things that I could understand.  Most of the speeches were in presented in one of the local dialects and were not translated for the development partners.

The event ended at 2 pm after the Governor gave his speech calling for everyone to work together and to move away from dependency and move towards hard work and self-sufficiency.

Besides the day of speeches the biggest difference between South Sudan's Independence Day and ours is that the only businesses that can be open are hotels, restaurants and bars.  If any other business is open then they will face large fines and harassment from the police since it is supposed to be a national holiday.  I can not imagine if the government tried to tell any business in the US that they could not be open on a holiday.  But South Sudan is only 2 years old so there is no telling how things will change as time goes on.