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The unmarked, unpaved streets of Juba, the capital of South Sudan, can be tough for an outsider to navigate.

By the time I found the house of Peter Adwok Nyaba, the country's former minister of health, it was already 5 o'clock. The sun was dangerously low on the horizon. I had less than an hour to interview Adwok and get back to my hotel before the city-wide curfew — imposed when the violence began three weeks before — took effect. After 6, there would be no one on the streets except myself and soldiers.

But Adwok invited me to sit down on the couch in his study; he seemed to be in no rush. He insisted I refresh myself with a chilled soda that his wife, Abuk Payiti, had brought in on a tray. While I drank, Adwok rubbed the stump of his left leg, which he'd lost fighting in the long civil war against Sudan. Like other war heroes of the struggle, Adwok had been given his post in the new government after South Sudan won its independence in 2011.

But five months ago, the president sacked Adwok and all his fellow ministers for alleged disloyalty. And now, resting against the wall beside his aluminum crutches was a small rolling suitcase he'd packed for prison.

He told me he'd recently received a call.

"They will come for me," he said. At least, that's what the police inspector general on the phone informed him.

"I am one of the people who should be arrested," he said he was told.

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