The layoffs, the pregnancy and the chaos that ensued

Hola my dear friends. I know its been two weeks and ya'll must have been very sad that I didn't write anything but it wasn't due to lack of events happening, it was actually because too much was happening. So fasten your seat belts for a very interesting thousand or so word entry.
So in the past weeks, Steffen the former Op Manager has left, Fred my deputy, his contract is not going to be renewed for next year, the compound manager Chol was also let go (he warned me that if I don't pay him the monthly health benefits that I had already paid him for the month again, I would be very sorry) and Mike the assistant compound manager is in jail for allegedly impregnating a 15-16 year old girl.
So essentially I am as Kasis (my favorite Isuzu truck driver) says 5 in 1 these days. This means that I am supposed to somehow get the compound day to day stuff taken care of, make sure that the millions of dollars of inventory is accounted for, do payroll, load the trucks with bamboo sticks etc etc, and oh yeah do my own job as well :)
Lets begin with the layoff story of Chol. Chol is this hot headed yet very respectful (well most of the time) local Rumbek Dinka (Dinka's the biggest tribe in South Sudan and Dinkas are known to be very short tempered people). Chol has had problems with other staff in the past and been responsible for creating some uncomfortable scenes over the years. Last year I heard he locked the Op Manager out of the compound just because he got into an argument with him and well he's the local guy and so the Operation Manager was not allowed back into his own compound until the police was called. And two week ago when Steffen sat with him to tell him about an incident from the past, he told Steffen to "shuttup". I talked to Steffen afterwards and Steffen was like "yeah, don't worry about it, it went really well, at least he didn't lock us up in our own compound again".
So my task was to tell Chol that we could not renew his contract and that he had to give up all of his stuff and leave the compound. We were going to pay him through the month and thats was going to be it. Now managers and HR people think they have a tough job doing that back in the US, imagine being in South Sudan having to do deal with this. Anyways, Chol was pretty cooperative until I paid him the remainder of what we owed him. At that point he's like i'm 50 USD short, "you didn't pay me the medical money for this month". I told him, "Chol you took out that money as an advance, which means that you can't have it again. It's medical allowance, it has to be once a month". But that somehow wasn't registering through to him. He kept on saying "you, you watchout, gimi my money, give it now and gimi a recommendation letter". Well personally it was just ticking me off, but I kept on telling myself that it wasn't about me and that I should deal with this situation in a calm, collected manner. So instead of getting beaten up in front of my staff, I took him in the room on the side and told him that I will pay him the 50 USD but he will have to leave right away without a recommendation letter. Well luckily that did get through to him and he told me to call him when the letter was done.
"Call him", I should call him when his recommendation letter is written. A letter that I dont' want to write by the way. Its a letter that recommends you if you done a good job, for cryin out loud. You can't demand it. Well that's what it should be right, not in South Sudan. It seems like people are entitled to everything here, and its not just the people, its every living creature.
The dogs, the sheep, the cows, especially the cows. Nothing, I mean nothing will move out of your way on the road. The sheep just sit right in the middle of the road sometimes, the mama sheep feeding the baby sheep, in the middle of the road, wallahi, I'm not kidding.
And God forbid if you hit a goat, well it'll be over 200 SDG = 80 USD. If you hit a cow, well you better be ready to shell out some serious dow. A good bull is going for around 500 USD here. I'm thinking of getting in the bull business myself. The Dinka's love to adorn the shaped horns of the bulls with ornaments.
So moving on the other interesting thing of the last two weeks. Mike my assistant compound manager is in jail. His crime you ask? Well a very common one here in the Dinka world. There are two things that you don't mess with a Dinka on. Yeah you guessed em, their cows and their women. Off course this is East Africa so people have many a wives, but its not uncommon for men to sleep with the wives of other men. And everything is kosher unless you are caught. That is what my friends happened to poor Mike.
Sitting on a friday evening having dinner with his family, a pickup full of police officers/SPLA - army people came to his house, picked him up, beat the crap out of him and threw him in jail. Usually how this process works is that if you elope with someones wife, you have to pay the family 7 cows or whatever the judge decides. Now if she gets pregnant well its more cows. And if its rape well then its even more cows and also jail time.
Now I went and met Mike in prison, he was his usual extremely quiet self. He showed me his beating wounds which I promptly reported to the visiting UNMIS (UN mission in Sudan) inspectors who were luckily in the jail at that time. They told me that they can't do shit anyway but they will report it to their seniors. Now Mike claims that this is all horse shit, they're doing this because he's a Choibet Dinka and not an Agar Dinka and hence they're giving him a hard time and all. His decision is on the six of this month, hope it goes well cause I do not want to layoff another kid right now.
to be contd