A Saturday at Gu'dele is like any other, except that the rat routes that we love to call streets are worse than ever: gullies and craters that yawn like empty graves are part of the landscape. If your physical address is Block Six or thereabouts you are not better off than someone living in the gutter. The road that drops from the main artery which is paved, thanks to ABMC, is a volcanic mountain of garbage - fetid is the best adjective.

The inhabitants here do not complain because their noses are accustomed to the smell, and by the way, they will tell you that we have to contend with our political independence which we earned with blood, sweat and tears.

On a lazy Saturday morning already made uncomfortable by a stifling heat, one has to get into some twisted sneakers and hit the road to pump out sweat from one's chassis that is used to a sedentary life. A week in Juba without physical exercise accelerates death, doctors warn us. Everyone hates the thought that one day people will find you frozen like an imported Brazilian chicken because your heart just went cold.

Our lifestyle may be simple but we are moving on a fast lane: sweet tea and a tiddly piece of bread only fit for a toddler's mouth is what we call breakfast on a lucky day. This is followed by a series of cups of sweet tea, sodas and bottles of water before you stumble on a major meal which is neither lunch nor supper, it is just a meal, and you thank God for answering your prayer. Others have been deprived of their daily bread because of austerity measures.

So if you still want to linger around the world by keeping your heart active and warm, you hit the road jogging, jaywalking, or just take a leisurely walk to see how ordinary citizens are coping without oil money. If you want to live a monsignor's life, you will need some ear plugs to filter the deafening noise that comes from all directions like the wind.

There is noise everywhere, I tell you. There is music the whole day and evening, gunshots at night and Bilal and Mading Ngor to wake you up at dawn. Our markets can only be described as mad houses. No wonder we are always irritated because the maddening noise is shaking the nuts in our heads out of joint.

The first characters you meet on a Saturday morning as you walk around are pairs of unwashed legs reeling out or into makeshift bars that lack ventilation, where humans share space with mosquitoes, cockroaches and rats. There are no set rules in these bars that operate until the drinkers cannot lift a bottle to their swollen lips. You are free to spit all over the place. You can puff cigarette smoke into a person's face and he will think it is blessed church incense.

After midnight the only single customer still blinking in that bar may be the only person sitting with a standing bottle in front of him on a wobbly wooden stool, keeping him company is a bleached barmaid who has not shaved the jungle in her armpits for months is dazed behind the counter, bobbing her head left and right to blaring reggae music. If such a barmaid is lucky to live long like her grandma she will have to beg for a transplant of eardrums.

Bar tenders know a thing or two about the power of music. Loud music can actually make you drunk if you don't know. Before you can even order the legendary 'one-for-the-road' you are already belly-up, drooling on the dusty floor of the so-called bar.

As you walk up the dirt road that dissects the main Gu'dele market, you spot the mother of all garbage dumps next to where some buxom women sell dry fish. These women's noses might have lost their sense of smell. Do you think they can tell the difference between the smell of rotten fish and the rot emanating from the garbage? They are busy waving and slapping flies and cajoling customers with wicked smiles.

While you are still shaking your head at the sight of the garbage mountain, a huge truck the colour of Fanta orange pulls near the garbage dump which is very pregnant with empty plastic bottles, banana rinds, leftover food, polythene bags, solid human waste, maggots, and all manner of rot you can imagine in this miserable city. The new orange truck has a Juba City Council logo pasted on the front door. No one is excited to see the truck which is one of the ten trucks recently touted by the chiefs at City Council as the wonder machines that will keep our city clean and green forever. But as we say in Juba, "wele!"

By Jehovah it took two hours for the truck to feed on the rubbish at Gu'dele market and it was as if no truck came there. And before you could say Lokonga, the garbage dump had grown again like Samson's hair. The volunteers who hauled the garbage to feed into the truck through a slit visibly looked like people on a hunger strike. Maybe they were already intoxicated with the horrible smell of the garbage?

At this point you are intoxicated yourself as if you have been smoking rolls of bangi all morning. All you do is to pretend like everybody else that we have not seen any trucks that are supposed to rid the city of garbage. You are convinced like the market women that Juba is lively when it chokes with dirt. We can live side by side with the garbage the way have lived, tolerate the stench, and build skyscrapers from garbage. White tourists are fed up gazing at birds and wild animals at game parks in East Africa. They can now flock to Juba to see and take pictures of garbage dumps. Our garbage dumps can make habitat people stinking rich researching on filth.