OpEd, Politics

In this country, we smoke hope for a living 

South Sudan has a way of bringing you down on your knees. It doesn’t matter what you do. Big or small, this country will find a way of telling you the harsh realities of this life. After all, we are a people who have learned to deny these harsh realities.

We are in a country where anything is possible. We are in an era where nothing is possible. We carry bags with millions of problems, even the president has hundreds of his own, but money is not one of those problems.

For a million others, food is the problem. If we are not careful, there will come a time in this country when families have to sell a child to feed other children. The truth is, we don’t know our tomorrow, for this country, tomorrow is on sickbed and will soon die.

In this place that we call home, most people beat impossible odds without the government or families. The government has the right to declare South Sudan as a survivors’ nation. As a way of honoring those who are still standing tall in South Sudan, the government should donate this month’s oil revenue to all the soldiers because the money that we called ours has done nothing to improve the lives of the poor.

In hindsight, we are strong people. If we can’t solve a problem, we will laugh at it until it is no more. This is the only escape strategy. At the end of the day, we only count our hope points. In this country, if you have low points, you are finished or you are completely finished or you are about to be finished. What you do with this information is none of my business.

The students hope that there will come a time when the exams will be sold on the streets of Juba. If you are in South Sudan, your chance of succeeding effortlessly is almost 100 percent. On the same note, you can lose while trying.

The government of this country has successfully stripped us of everything but not hope. We have it in abundance, sometimes in pieces. How to put these pieces together is the problem.

The politicians hope that God will give them time to sit atop the hungry population. The other group hopes that things will change for the better even when they are not so sure. This is a   sheer building of castles in thin air. It has been the only way of ignoring the raw realities of our day.  But the truth remains the same.

We are all losing in this country. Each day, your chances of losing everything including your life get to increase. Sometimes you if you are alive in this country. The only way to know this is when one hits your nail with a hammer. In South Sudan, if you close your eyes in prayer, you will be left behind. When you open your eyes, you will have to start from scratch again, from zero.

There is a story that is not known about this country, but the reality is that anything is possible in this country. The president can appoint someone without looking through his or her portfolio, the next day he will relieve the same person because of corruption.

We are carefree people, whatever that happens; it is always none of our business. The government has been there for years, but something tells us that we are on our own. There is something we need to do, let us act as if we belong. This is how we cope with everything, after all, this country makes fun of us each day and there is nothing we can do about it.

 

 

 

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