In July 2003, a year after we were married, Hellen Ikang gave birth to our son, Sam, and I soon found out that the salary I was earning with ATR, while enough to support a single man in my circumstances, was not enough to support a new family. I needed to increase my income, but I did not want to leave Africa or quit my adventurous life to do so.

With some regrets at leaving behind the world of safari tourism and wildlife, in 2005, I reverted to my security experience and entered the world of risk management and security contracting, where I was sure some adventures or excitement awaited me.

I almost immediately filled a vacant position as the International Valuables Movements Coordinator, running an Asset Protection team for Security Group Ltd., based in Mikocheni, lying about five minutes form the Corner Bar and ten minutes from our house.

This role essentially involved the highly confidential planning and coordination between G4S in South Africa (the client) and the various individual gold mines in Tanzania (I think there were about six of them) to arrange and facilitate the movement of gold bullion from these remote gold mines to the international airport in Dar for onward shipment abroad. The facilitation consisted of me as Senior Custodian and two assistants flying in light aircraft from Dar Int. Airport to collect the shipment of millions of dollars’ worth of gold bullion in a highly secure environment. We were fully armed and wearing bullet-proof vests during the actual on-the-ground operations both at the mine and again at Dar airport. The airstrip at the mine was secured by armed guard and dogs and the aircraft was guarded while the gold shipment was collected and signed for by me from the “Gold Room” and transported by road in armoured vehicles back to the waiting aircraft.

The airstrips were, by the very nature of where the mines were located, very remote and surrounded by bush. Some of the airstrips were as far away from the mine as seven kilometres, because the mines were situated amongst small hills. It was therefore a highly charged and very serious operation. Every box contained a single bar (and usually the shipment comprised 20 boxes… although once I picked up 32), each valued at approximately $250,000. Each individual box had to be weighed, the seal checked against the customs documents and then signed for by me. The boxes had to be in my sight every step of the way until they were signed over to someone else in Dar. This meant that the boxes were loaded into the passenger cabin of the plane and not in the belly. It was a hell of a responsibility!

I was on leave one time and my stand-in, a former Ghurkha soldier, Bijay Tschering (who began as an Assistant Custodian but was promoted by me to be Armed Senior Custodian), was at a particular mine airstrip and had just finished loading gold onto the plane when they were hit by an armed gang. The gang had been hiding in the bush waiting for the right moment. They heavily outnumbered the security force and soon took control. The pilot tried to take off, but the gang fired a few rounds into the aircraft to discourage this. They made the custodians lay flat on their faces while they transferred the gold boxes back into the vehicle; they then drove off and disappeared onto the vastness of the African bush. No-one was hurt in the incident and the place sustained only minor damage to the fuselage which did not prevent it from flying.

The most ridiculous part of this operation was being required to put our weapons, ammunition and bullet-proof vests through the luggage scanner each time we entered the airport security check gate! I frequently asked the sleepy, miserable person watching the scanner screen what it was he or she was actually looking for. They were weapons… two pump-action shotguns and my 9mm pistol!

“What do you think you are going to find?” I asked, smiling. “Maybe another identical weapon, just slightly smaller and concealed inside?” My attempts at sarcasm and humour were met with a shrug. TIA!

Security Group lost the valuables movements’ contract with G4S a year later to a lower bidder and, because of that in December 2005, I had to look for another job.

I ended up working in the shambles of post-conflict South Sudan. It was classified by the humanitarian community as a ‘high-risk posting’, but, as Churchill said, “For the rest, live dangerously, take life as it comes, dread naught, all will be well.”

In 2006, my first job was as a Camp and Security Manager for RA International at Mango Camp, in Juba town.

I was there just after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005, present through the referendum and the celebrations of Independence and creation of the newest nation on the planet, and, sadly, just a few years later, its descent into civil war.

The 30-year war between Christian Southern Sudan and the Islamic Arab North Sudan had just ended with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement but there were still victorious rebel soldiers of the SPLA everywhere… securing installations, patrolling in the bush and still tearing around the country and gradually coming back into towns like Juba in their technical vehicles mounted with 12.7 DSHK heavy machine guns toting AKs and RPGs, and Brigadiers and Generals with their fully tooled up, give-no-way escorts of heavily armed bodyguards. There were roadblocks and check points everywhere, often manned by belligerent if not drunken, yellow-eyed soldiers who had come straight out of a savage war.

It was especially scary when some fat, stroppy gold braid-festooned git turned up with half-a-dozen hard-faced bodyguards in full combat gear, draped in belts of machine gun ammo, demanding free accommodation and food. And who, when you explained the camp was full, would evict the first person they came across and take over the room.

I had my bedroom door kicked down once in the middle of the night by two soldier-bodyguards, because the security guard on the camp gate, following standing orders, would not let any vehicle enter into the compound after 11pm. The commander, whose thugs now stood staring at me staring at the splintered wood and mangled hinges of my door, had a different perspective on the policy.

Many of the soldiers were quite aggressive or, let’s say, belligerent. They had been fighting for years in a bloody war, some from almost when it began, and some had been mere children. They knew no civilian life; they had no manners or life-skills beyond killing and trying not to be killed. One had to tread very carefully, at times, especially if the soldier had been drinking. It was a long time before a soldier, even when discharged, would give up his weapon. In the war, when entering a village, they would demand food and water for free (they took other things for granted too, but here is not the place to discuss it).

I was often faced with the challenge of soldiers demanding their rights to food and water and soon had to have a senior officer (Brigadier General rank) living on camp (for free) to act as an intermediary to explain to the soldiers that food in the restaurant had to be paid for. But I still had to give bottled water for free, as the soldiers insisted that water was a God-given right, and who was I to argue, when I had the muzzle of an AK47 shoved up my left nostril!

Juba town was at that time, emerging from years of war and the absence of any development, a sprawling mess of stone-built colonial houses and institutions, post-colonial single-story buildings and various tented accommodation camps and NGO compounds. Apart from two main intersecting thoroughfares the roads were a mess: either broken tarmac or dirt, but all full of spring-smashing potholes. In the rains, they became quagmires. Lining some of the back streets were rows of temporary shelters; low hovels made of poles and canes and covered with scavenged plastic sheets, blue UN tarpaulins or corrugated iron sheets. These were the ‘homes’ of persons displaced in the war that had recently finished. There was no water or sanitation and the places filthy and strewn with litter and rubbish.

On the porch or stoop of a boarded-up house not far from my camp lived half-a-dozen lepers; two old men and four old women. All were missing most or all of their fingers and toes and there were patches of raw pink flesh showing on their arms and legs. They were dressed in oily black rags and sat and slept on filthy woven mats on the concrete stoop. There was no water source nearby and no sanitation. On the verge opposite was a row of hovels, similar to those described above. The place stank.

I instigated a daily food delivery to this group of lepers, using left-over food from lunch in the camp. These were not plate scrapings, but the food left over in the kitchen. There was usually enough rice, beans and potatoes to fill a huge aluminium cooking pot, and during my tenure as security and camp manager my driver and I would go daily in the afternoons and dole out portions of wholesome food to these poor, eagerly awaiting people. One day at a market I had the brilliant idea of buying some dresses for the old ladies. There was much joy and many thanks when I delivered the dresses to the stoop, but passing by later, I saw that they were struggling to put them on, and the one that had managed could not fasten the buttons. How stupid of me. They had no fingers! One of the ladies was laying on her back like a stranded turtle, limbs akimbo as she tried to wriggle into the dress. We all had a good chuckle about it. They were very friendly and always laughing and making jokes. How the hell could they do that? The human spirit has no bounds.

In 2006, I was offered by Trax Construction of Nairobi a 3-month contract as a camp & security manager in Rumbek, Jonglei State. The company had been given a DynCorp’s contract to reconstruct and refurbish the war-damaged SPLA barracks at Malou.

On my second night, as we had no dining or kitchen facility in the camp where I was accommodated, I went for dinner at Afex Camp next to Rumbek airport, lying some six kilometres from the camp.

Meal over, I was driving my pickup truck back to the camp when only one kilometre from Afex I was stopped at a roadblock. The barricade was manned by a bunch of about twenty irate civilians – not soldiers.

There was a lot of jumping up-and-down and gnashing of teeth (those that had them) but I was not sure what it was all about. I was going to get stroppy at one point, but then I noticed two of the rabble had AK47 assault rifles. Being armed only with a Leatherman Multi-Tool, I decided to keep my opinion on the situation under my hat… which I was fortunately wearing, as it started to rain and they hijacked my pickup truck and drove off with it!

I was quite nervous, and with no other means of getting a ride, I began the four kilometres trek back, in darkness, in the pissing rain, and in a strange town I had only lived in for two days. At that moment, I would have given my kingdom for a truck!

The mob turned out to be casual labourers employed by the company, and who had not been paid for three months!

The following day, after much arm-waving and negotiation a mob-handed escort encouraged the boss to visit the local bank. The situation was finally resolved, and my truck was, thankfully, returned to me.

After my three-month contract ended, my first pure security role in South Sudan was when I worked for Major (retd.) Tony Sugden of Warrior Security, as the start-up manager of the newly established company in Juba.

It was a pretty dodgy time to be a foreigner in South Sudan… especially if you carried with you the suspicion of being more than just a commercial security operative. It was quite an interesting few months… but sometimes it was quite scary.

I was arrested twice by soldiers of the Government of South Sudan (GoSS) and twice by traffic police.

 The National Security thugs arrested me once for importing “military equipment”. This happened to be boots and trousers for the new Warrior Security guards, but because the boots were Army-style and the trousers were olive green cargo pants, I was accused of outfitting the rebels! I spent some very scary hours with my belt and bootlaces removed in a very dim, scruffy and unmarked holding cell. Very unsettling, I can tell you! In fact, that very day and moment I received a call on my cell phone from my brother in the UK, telling me our mum had just died. It was a terrible situation in which to receive such bad news. I was rearrested the same day by Military Intelligence and transported to their HQ, through some rusty iron gates into an unmarked compound. As I was led up the path from the car park, we walked past two dismal and dingy open-fronted cells, where three African youths were peering out at me between the bars and through the curtains of their long, dangling and matted dreadlocks. My officer escort, Lt. Joseph Achora, half turned to me and jerking a thumb at them said, “that’s where you might end up. And those guys had short hair when they went in.”

It all got sorted out in the end, thank the stars, but Warrior had to change their uniform to black cargo pants and most of the boots were ‘confiscated’ by the SPLA and issued to their soldiers.

***

In 2009, having got the company up and running to the directors’ satisfaction, I quit Warrior Security and was employed by the peerless Major (SAS retd.) David Walker of Saladin Group (the oldest established Private Military Company and Security Risk Management Company in the UK, under which umbrella was shaded Keenie-Meenie Services [KMS]).

I worked for David for two years. First, as one of the two back-to-back and cross-over Operations Managers (the other being Matt Harris, a former Royal Green Jacket soldier, who became a great friend and with whom I am in regular contact), I worked in a subsidiary of Saladin, named Veterans Security Services (VSS – the only armed security company in South Sudan).

The Country Manager of VSS was the incomparable Colonel (retd.) Simon Falkner OBE, one of the finest men and managers I have ever worked for. A former Household Cavalry officer and commander of the Airborne Brigade, Simon was a 32-year Veteran, and great storyteller with a wicked sense of humour.

(As a point of interest, the late and famous Major David Stirling, founder of the SAS, was, for one year preceding his death, the Chairman of Saladin Group).

The core ethos of VSS was to work closely with the SPLA (Sudanese Peoples’ Liberation Army) GHQ departments of ‘Wounded Heroes’ and Military Production to assist in the UN-led Decommissioning, Demobilising and Reintegration process. Our involvement was the recruiting of veterans (ex-combatants who had been wounded in some way in the war) and reintegrating them into civilian society by training and deploying them as armed security guards (VSS were the only commercial security company in South Sudan allowed to carry arms) at the premises and locations of the clients of VSS. I worked closely with and had regular one-on-one meetings with senior officers (up to the rank of Major General) of GHQS and various senior government officials including State Governors, Labour Office officials, and directors of the NSIS, etc., in order to continue the process and maintain continuity post-deployment.

It was an interesting job most of the time, but the majority of the guards we were deploying were Dinka, and having had little work ethic (many had been very young men when they joined the rebels in the fight against the Arab North and knew little else other than living in rough conditions and fighting in the bush) it was a constant struggle to maintain standards and discipline. They tended to be quite volatile and very tribal, and this caused a lot of internal problems as well.

One night in 2009, in Acacia Village, an accommodation camp in Gudele, which lies on the west side of Juba town, and which was our base of operations at that time, I was sleeping lightly in my room; one of six adjoining rooms facing a similar array across the swimming pool, when I was awoken by the sound of nearby gunfire.

I jumped out of bed and grabbed the AK47 that was propped up in the wardrobe and dashed outside onto the small veranda. The veranda was lit by an overhead bulb, so I crouched down behind the metre-high wall.

The sound of gunfire was coming from outside the compound, but I could hear the buzz/hiss of a few rounds passing overhead.

To the right of me, my fellow operations manager, Matt came out of his room and made a mad crouching dash for the arms store, which was situated behind the accommodation next to the guards’ camp, while Simon, the country manager appeared and took cover behind the brick-built barbeque that stood near to his room.

On the other side of the pool, oblivious to the potential danger, some American female from an NGO, sitting under the light of her veranda, looked up from the book she was reading and called in a loud, horsey but syrupy voice, “are you guys okaaay?”

This was responded to by various expletives.

The gunfire ceased within minutes, and in the ensuing silence and regrouping, the woman stood up, walked around the pool and approached me.

I was wearing nothing but a pair of red, Y-front underpants, rather worn, saggy and practically ineffective in securing in tight formation my dangly bits. If memory serves me correctly, they were part of a Marks & Spencer’s 3-pack, purchased in England some five or six years previously.

In my humble opinion, as long as there’s still elastic in the waistband and a few threads holding together the holes, there is no point in getting new underwear. If they get to the stage when, hanging on the washing line, the wind puffs and disperses them like those airborne dandelion seeds, then I agree it’s time to buy new ones.

The problem was, said loud American female had noticed my illustrious sartorial taste, and by breakfast next morning the entire population of the camp knew me as “The man with the red underpants!”

The tragedy, beyond the underwear disaster, was that the firefight was the result of an armed cattle raid (a common occurrence in South Sudan), and that same morning lying on the track running between the perimeter of our camp and the adjoining fields our guards discovered one of the fatalities, shot and killed in the firefight.

You never know what’s gonna happen next in a hardship posting in a conflict area!

***

My tasks broke down as one year based in Juba, deploying armed guards to commercial premises and NGOs, and to post-conflict road- and bridge- reconstruction sites and setting perimeters where the EOD guys were de-mining and destroying ordnance remnants of war, and such like.

In my next role, I spent a further year based, solo, in Wau, Western Bahr es Ghazal, as Project Manager running the UN World Food Program security contract and deploying 240 armed and unarmed guards at the WFP food distribution warehouses and the premises of NGOs and commercial clients. I frequently travelled alone in my Land Cruiser, covering many hundreds of miles throughout the northern States of South Sudan, always armed.

During this period of my life, a far happier event occurred. In June 2007, my wife Hellen gave birth to our second child, our daughter Ashleigh, in Kampala, Uganda.

When my contract with Saladin/VSS ended, I continued to work in Juba for another two years, first as a consultant Regional Risk Manager for Pax Mondial, and later as the Country Risk Manager for an American NGO named Population Services International (PSI).

***

In 2013 the South Sudanese Civil War broke out from under simmering tensions. It was a multi-sided civil war in South Sudan fought up until 2020, between forces of the government and opposition forces.^[i]

The Civil War caused rampant human rights abuses, including forced displacement, ethnic massacres, and killings of journalists by various parties. Since its end South Sudan has been governed by a coalition formed by leaders of the former warring factions, Salva Kiir Mayardit and Riek Machar.

I travelled through much of South Sudan in my time there, negotiating rebel roadblocks and SPLA checkpoints, avoiding ambushes and firefights, and generally keeping my head down. Along bomb-damaged and mined roads I passed, through forested lanes and narrow tracks, past the slaughter-stink and ash-filled middens of cattle camps, to newly-sprouted settlements of displaced, ragged souls living in the starving squalor of a dark cemetery, where, among the contaminated dust of poverty and the contaminated hearts of rampaging drunken soldiers, naked children, blind to the future beyond the next twelve hours, played with old tyres and empty cans. Dark are the wings of vultures sailing above, those angels of death that see all in the darkness below. The sadness of South Sudan is overwhelming.

In 2024, as I write this memoir, the country continues to recover from the war while experiencing ongoing and systemic ethnic violence.

“Only the dead have seen the end of war”.

                                                        George Santayana

***

Outside of South Sudan, I worked on both short- and long-term security tasks, for example running both physical and online training security and safety courses in Uganda, and as a Field Security Advisor on an oil rig in El Kuran, in the Ogaden Desert, the disputed region of Somaliland in Ethiopia. The security was in place for all the usual and necessary reasons on an oil rig, but also because of the Ogaden National Liberation Front, a Somali political and military organization which aims for the self-determination of the Somali people in the Ogaden and the Somali Region of Ethiopia had, on April 24, 2007, attacked workers camp of the Zhongyuan Petroleum Engineering, a Chinese oil exploration company contracted on behalf of the Malaysian oil & gas giant Petronas in Abole (Obale), Somali Region, killing approximately 65 Ethiopians and nine Chinese nationals.

From February 2014 to January 2017 I was contracted on the following tasks:
• Risk assessor: Client liaison and risk assessments for INGOs in Kenya and South Sudan
• Close Protection: escorting INGO clients of Halliday Finch ltd, to the Nyaragusu Refugee Camp in Tanzania.
• Consultancy for WS Insight, Juba, South Sudan for the UNMISS Man Guarding transition project on multiple sites.
• Security & Safety Manager for Maris Africa at Karebe Gold Mine, Kisumu, Kenya (12-month contract)
• Security Trainer at Alion Science and Technology head office in Entebbe, Uganda.
• Security and First Aid Trainer for Maris Africa at Equatoria Teak Company, in South Sudan