By Ngor Khot Garang
In this world, there are many people who take advantage of life-threatening situations and no wonder, the world has completely changed, and it has come to be true that, what is truly hurting for me as a common man is extremely pleasurable for the other. This is to say that as I constantly pray to my God who sometimes takes long to respond to my prayer requests, someone on the other end of the road is praying for the same situation to worsen because the existence of this problem with it comes many opportunities to him.
This is the case in today’s South Sudan, millions of people are facing humanitarian crises and there are crooks mostly men who should have chosen the right path for this young country profiting from the country’s crises. They have turned government offices into dining tables and with salivating mouths seated outside are starving citizens who have to spend months or more for any morsel that may fall down from these people’s tables so that they gobble it, but the irony of this phenomenon is that these people never care if their citizens starve or not.
And more saddening is the fact that they have eaten the country dry. And citizens wandering about trying to get by are silenced whenever they try to speak up. Is this stealing or are we witnessing the rat race over the country’s stolen resources? If this is a scuffle over the country’s wealth, why not give citizenry the thin teat to suck too? Or does what we are witnessing mean to tell us that there are some human beings who are more important than others?
But why, we are in the same country and so in the same soil we would be buried. And wonderment as it is what I normally wake up with is whether these eaters are absolutely aware of the fact that the soil equates us all. We may be different on this earth; some are poor and others are rich. You may be powerful, you may as well live under a sealed roof and drive an expensive car or drive with motorcades.
You can kill people as much as you can. You can as well use your power to loot the country and rob others of their happiness but down, beneath the soil where the once mighty paupers have gone never to rest but suffer more, there is equality. It is in this soil that we would be eaten up by maggots and rot forever. And it is not far, no matter long it would take, that time will surely come and helpless that day would be your bodyguards, money or the little gods you worship.
And before you think otherwise, just know that am not getting you on the spot, am just a young man who is concerned about your future because I know when you are completely comfortable with your family, something must be wrong somewhere and this without doubt will cost you everything including eternal life if you surely believe in eternity.
If you have been robbing this country for a very long time, repent and God will save you. God has spoken clearly that those who rob the poor will be mocked on judgment day and remember that you are not safe if you are still one of those people who amass public funds. There is enough in this country of ours but why are majority of us still living below poverty line? Does this mean that we don’t work or is there someone we should blame for our poverty? No, there must be something and something indeed must have gone amiss. And am not afraid to break it open, it is true few people are benefiting from the country’s crises and they want things to deteriorate for their own good and to maintain status quo. This is evidenced by the prevalence of V’8s and people with protruding stomachs in a country where majority of people go to bed with empty stomachs rumbling at the emptiness. How can you buy V8s and eat road money and how did you manage to grow that big stomach when majority of people are flat on their stomachs? This is a tepid stagnant shame.
Another sad fact is that the country is endowed with many minerals, but it is contributing little or nothing to infrastructure development because the money earned from these minerals only end up in individual pockets. The country and the citizens are always forgotten because there are people who feel that they are more important than others. Corruption and tribalism are valued more than a university degree.
This means that for one to get a good job, he must have some relatives in the same field he is interested in, otherwise, he would be considered a vagabond with a bachelor in his hands, and this is not a new thing. Many young South Sudanese are now suffering with their papers because they are not connected. And it would be hard for many South Sudanese who are still studying, it is sad that corruption and tribalism are what they must practice to succeed.