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Racing against time to complete the road before the rainy season. |
“Abyei’s sun scorches the road,
Sweat soaks soldiers’ worker shirts.
Five time zones away, longing for home,
Trading hardship for the nation’s peace.”
Abyei is harsh and unstable, but the most relentless challenge is the climate. On the 25-km Banton-Agok route, temperatures in March often reach 50°C, draining both strength and endurance.
Racing against time on a blazing worksite
Each day for the Engineering Company Rotation 4 of Vietnam starts at 6 a.m. As the sun rises, construction vehicles move out. There are no fixed working hours. Soldiers push through weekends, racing against time in both the rainy season and the sun. They seize every early hour, pushing to complete each meter of road before the heat peaks, only withdrawing to camp when dusk reddens the horizon.
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Quick field meals amidst dust and heat |
Amidst clouds of dust swirling behind each track, mobile boxed meals are hastily unpacked by the roadside, under the scant shade of thorny shrubs. In the furnace-like heat, sweat drenches their backs, and each bite of rice sometimes carries the gritty taste of dust and black clay. Despite exhaustion, they waste no time before returning to work.
Inside the cabins, heat from both the sun and engines turns them into ovens. However, through the dust-covered glass, Major Dang Viet Hung from the Road and Bridge Section remains focused, hands steady on the controls. For these engineers, heat and deprivation are not barriers, but a test of resilience and ingenuity.
Keeping machines alive
Behind the scenes, repair teams fight a constant battle. Along the Banton-Agok route, black clay and fine dust are not only enemies of humans, but also “killers” of machinery. Sticky clay clings to track systems, while dust clogs air filters.
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Steady eyes behind dust-covered glass |
To return rollers, excavators, and dump trucks to operation as quickly as possible, technicians often work around the clock, squeezing under vehicles at any hour. Grease and oil blend with sweat on their field uniforms. With limited spare parts in Abyei, they rely on skilled hands to improvise, weld, reshape, and meticulously clean every component.
Major Pham Van Hoan of the Logistics and Support Section, one of the tireless technicians, shared,: “The machines here are like our comrades. The troops push themselves hard on the site, so whenever a machine “falls ill,” we rush to “treat” it immediately. Some complex faults take all night or even into the next day, but we always push each other to work with maximum urgency. The sooner the machines are fixed, the faster the road opens, and the sooner the people of Abyei will suffer less.”
Five time zones and promise of peace
At night, after the soldiers shed sweat- and dust-soaked uniforms at the end of a long day, these engineers find weak wi-fi signals to call home.
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Seizing every moment, technicians strive to keep machines moving for the next dawn shift. |
Abyei is five hours behind Vietnam. When it is night there, families back home are asleep.
Through a small, pixelated phone screen, First Lieutenant Nguyen Tri Hieu from the Road and Bridge Section smiled warmly at the sight of his young child sleeping soundly. He gave brief words of concern and reminders to his wife in a gentle, loving voice. For him, watching his child sleeping peacefully makes all the hardship fade.
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A shining star in the African night sky: a commitment to peace and the peaceful smiles of children back home |
Under Abyei’s starry sky, the Vietnamese blue beret soldiers understand their mission: building roads is building peace. Contributing their strength to building stability for a distant land is how Vietnamese peacekeepers fulfill a noble mission of protecting the Fatherland early and from afar and ensuring peaceful nights for their Fatherland.
By Hai Yen (from Abyei)
Translated by Mai Huong