Life in Malakal is dominated by “the mud” at this time of the year. We are late in the rainy season and in this flat town has a loam soil that has a pretty good clay content, so there is mud everywhere. Only part of the road from the airport is tarmac and even that is broken in spots.
Shops, mud, and water
The remainder of the roads in town are flat dirt roads that turn into muddy messes with the rain and traffic. There are larger and smaller holes, some filled with water and others with greasy mud. The result when it dries out is that all the roads are rough and bumpy. Our first day here we went and bought gum boots (rubber boots) to help us get around.
Muddy street before a hotel
Thankfully we’ve had good sun for 3 days so it has dried out a LOT. There has been light rain late in 2 afternoons, but not enough to really gum things up again. We had been told that we would need to have gum boots to get to the church offices and had we gone on Monday or earlier that would have been the case. However we went Tuesday and it was just dry enough in the bad places for us to get through with shoes.
Stagnant water in the street
