Let’s keep Juba clean slogan transcends in our daily lives

By Atok Dan Baguoot

December 15, 2012

“Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it”, Thomas Jefferson. 

With the rise in plastic bags importation to Southern Sudan, “Keeping Juba Clean” through do not litter slogan will emerge as one of the most frustrating tasks to execute all over towns in entire Southern Sudan but until it is virtually owned by the populaces, the fight against health hazards would remain a tough war to achieve after corruption. 

It takes personal efforts to keep the vicinity of your compound clean, something regarded as a prerogative of family hygiene. By doing so, one distance away from mosquitoes whereas, air ventilating through your compound becomes as fresh as a daytime breeze in the valleys. 

 It is a commonly known fact that most of our imported packed foods are sealed in either polyethylene plastic containers or canned/bottled an instrument which is more hazardous to our health than even quality nutrients provided by those foods because the end life of these materials in our reach tends to contaminate efficiency of nutrients in our body systems. The vicious cycle poses upon us by the environment we live in is tentatively equal to threats posed by weapons of mass destruction. A clean environment means living friendly with a healthy mind and body as a healthy city is an asset to his/her nation. 

For us to be as productive as we can, we need to treat our ecosystem with a lot of respect and care so that it in return provides us with friendly products for our daily bread. It is in the environment that these already baked pieces of bread emerged first in different forms. 

Children can never know how bread and milk come in their present forms. If there is where we have really perfected since the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was inked on paper in 2005, it is in littering and dirtying our environment with different kinds of non-degradable polythene plastic papers and cans/bottled to the extent that our surround looks incompatible with our natural senses. 

Today if one is to use a small piece of land for cultivating simple vegetables, one has to remove thousands of plastic papers before one does that job before considering the direct infertility effect caused by these materials on the soil. Plastic papers defined as none degradable burn up the micro living organisms that catalyze fertility of the soil hence, resulting in poor yield or no yield at all. 

 Once upon a time while walking in Juba town, my eyes came into unexpected contact with mountains of garbage almost everywhere in the whole town, so I had to ask myself what if such a situation persists for some more years while waiting for a referendum of the South, the answer in mind was that Juba like any other city in South Sudan would produce people whose senses can operate well in a dirty environment because overstay in our wrong made environment would acclimatize us as enemies of clean environment and the likelihood of us becoming like bushy animals is there. 

In recognizing our positive deeds to the environment, the governor of Jonglei State, Kuol Manyang Juuk had earlier issued a policy of keeping Bor town clean with a slogan “per every empty bottle dropped”, you go around collecting ten more empty and take them to their rightful places since we don’t reuse them nor do we have a policy of recycling and reduce which is called the 3Rs, Reuse, Reduce and Recycle. 

Due to that attempt, the death of cattle having swallowed plastic papers has tremendously reduced thus, cattle keepers are no longer reporting rampant death of animals around town, besides improvement in the general environment of the town. Another town with a concrete policy of keeping the environment clean is Unity State in which governor Taban Deng Gai issued a decree that banned the sale of plastic bags in town. 

Portable goods are sold in a grey paper envelope in Bentiu town, making it almost the cleanest city in Southern Sudan, though other towns have not imitated that policy of keeping Bentiu clean. Thanks to the two governors for having shown spirit in protecting the unfortunate environment. 

By the way, clean beer needs a clean environment so that it does a clean and excellent job of confusing our minds well. Besides impeding crop farming, animals’ husbandry becomes the worst hit by rampant plastic bags everywhere in Southern Sudan, and given the high demands for meat in our society, if cattle continue dying on daily basis, there would be a decline in meat supply to the markets causing a situation of us becoming man-eaters. 

 Therefore, this workable slogan of keeping Juba clean is tantamount to keeping our health clean from attacks by tropical diseases which are directly associated with an ill-health environment. It is a healthy call to all responsible citizens who mine their hygiene as we all boastfully swagger in our clean attires along freedom corridors. Being clean also deserves special attention like the referendum because diseases would never have time to negotiate another referendum with us unless we do it wholeheartedly.