SOUTH SUDAN

"(…) The first thing that I took care of when I arrived in South Sudan was to secure the services of an interpreter. Adak was a rare gem, one of the very few South Sudanese women to stay in the country during the war, who had been to school. So graceful and gentle that it was hard to believe that she was the mother of three schoolchildren. And already a widow. Her visible fragility masked, in reality, great determination and courage. The first thing from her life that she wanted to show me was this tree: several years earlier, on the day of her wedding, her husband had engraved their names on the trunk.

(…) We set off in search of a female soldier. The military staff was all worked up because John Garang was expected to return any day from Nairobi, where he had just signed for peace. So the timing wasn’t ideal. But Adak recalled meeting, in the streets of Rumbek, a female soldier whose proud air had caught her eye. We found Jamis at the market and followed her as she, nonchalant in combat fatigues roughly rolled up over a pair of thongs, went to the barracks. She re-emerged with a fine helmet and a Kalashnikov to pose with."

Extract from Zoé Zoé, Femmes du mondes, 2007, Éditions Gallimard