Ingenuity

It is always a painful time of decisions when we consider what we will take into South Sudan.  The weight and volume are very important and we try to maximize impact with what we bring in.  (I truly overdid it this time with only three sets of underwear though!)

Each shipment of medicine's costs are more than doubled by the cost of transport to the remote corner of Northern Bahr el-Gazal.  Soccer balls and volleyballs are leaped upon when we unpack them and disappear really fast.  Are they put away for the big occasions of soccer tournaments?  Do they just burst fast because of the thorn bushes?  (The more we know about South Sudan the more we know we don't know.  Every question seems to have as many answers as the number of people you ask - a bit like asking Italians for a pizza recipe!)  I'll take more soccer balls next time.  More games, more shoes, more clothes.  In fact I'll probably pay more to take another bag.

It was truly disappointing to discover that two boxes of malaria medicine had 'disappeared' somewhere between Marial Bai and Akuak Rak.  Hard to imagine how $1,500 worth of medicines could just disappear in that place.  It seems likely that a bunch of people must know something about it.  Transportation of, or hiding, large boxes, couldn't be done easily.  We are praying that God will use that medicine for good.

One afternoon as we sat drinking tea we noticed a frenzy of activity as a group of small boys scrambled for what looked like a large envelope on the ground.  Another older boy tossed another 'envelope' out and the original group broke up and tore off towards the second missile.  After the dust settled we realized that the older chap had gone into the clinic storage and found some surgical gloves (much thicker than the ordinary gloves used daily in the clinic).  The tossed envelopes were the sealed sterile packages of pairs of gloves. The younger boys blow these up and then use old clothing wrapped around the inflated glove to make a decent ball.  The original horror of seeing surgical gloves being taken for mere balls was displaced by admiration and the realization that surgery of any kind was highly unlikely.

Surprise!

Organizing photos today I was reminded of my TJMax super special plastic watch that I bought in the December promotions.  I normally wear a watch with metal strap and didn't want to take that to the heat of South Sudan.  When I was doing some Christmas shopping I noticed some of those 'slap' watches on sale.I felt rather smug about how quickly this particular $5 purchase would amortize itself.

Our first night in our rather shabby 'hotel' I noticed that my watch was gone.  I thought back through the day and when I had last noticed it.  I must have lost it during our walk in the government sector.  In all probability one of the children who swarmed me to look at the instant digital image of themselves got it.  Generally a rush of small hands come at the camera and each wants a chance to see his image so magically conjured up.  I wouldn't have noticed another pull on my watch, and, in fact, perhaps the lucky individual didn't even intend to take it, but found his grip fastened on the loose band that released so easily.  Imagine Bert and my entertainment when we looked carefully at our photos on a large screen.  It is a white plastic watch with a small pink face.

Was I being dared to spot it?  I think perhaps that two in this image knew something was up. :)  

Keeping small children clean

Small children are on the backs of older siblings, tied to the backs of their mothers or crawling in the dust.  Some of them have only a ragged T shirt on, some little shorts and singlet, and a few are completely naked.  There are so many mundane puzzles as I reflect on the complications of a day with my own small children.  I never went anywhere without that diaper bag and a change of clothes.  It took weeks of fairly intensive toilet training to persuade each child that going without a nappy was better than the earlier set up.  I have never seen a mother or older sibling in Sudan (or India for that matter) with soiled clothing because a small child had 'an accident.'  I have never smelled dry urine (or worse) on a mother or older sibling.  I have never seen a small child with fecal matter stuck to him.  Virtually all the patients at the little clinic in Akuak Rak had symptoms of dehydration, so perhaps tiny guys are also dehydrated and actually need to pee less, but it still seems somewhat miraculous that all of those body functions are dealt with so efficiently and invisibly.  I still have vivid memory of leaving one of mine for a moment without the standard one year-old padding: I had removed a sodden diaper in one room and literally headed into the next room to pull a fresh one out.  By the time I had returned there were horrible brown tracks on the white carpet where my one year old had rolled his walker toy through his fresh poop.  I think the Sudanese women could teach us a few things.

A moment of stillness

One of the profound differences in my observations between my first visit two years ago and this January was the increase in the bird life of the region.  Last time we had seen virtually only birds of prey and heard no bird song.  This time we saw lots of marabou and had several sightings of the beautiful Abyssinian roller and haven't yet identified a couple of others. (We are hopeful that Felix's well informed naturalist teacher, Mr. Atwood, is going to label them for us.) It seems as though life is being restored to this land after so many decades of death and destruction.  The brilliant blue flash of the roller, like the sight of crops growing in the dry season, brought huge hope.

Bert and William had a few moments together under one of the mango trees and as I photographed them I noticed a bird in the tree left of Bert and as I turned back to the family compound I snapped a series of pictures of the Abyssinian roller who seemed a local now.

Googic walk about

William was at the end of his South Sudan stay and had masses of loose ends to tie up and many people to say farewell to.  We walked a loop of the village with him.  Of course, William knows everyone and they all know him.  Like so many of the Lost Boys who have been settled in the Western world, William bears the weight of knowing that many look to him for inspiration, connections, financial help and advocacy.  Any visitor from the outside feels a bit of this and we certainly sympathize deeply with what must be a paralyzing difficulty of choosing how to use limited resources to help whom in what way.  William always offered others time to be heard and frequently the pleasure of one of their complex greetings with smiles and laughter.  The greeting reminded me of one of those handshakes that Felix occasionally tries to teach me.  Right hands shake, right hands pat the other's left shoulder, right hands shake, right hands pat the other's left shoulder...done together with repeated inquiries of 'How are you?' and replies of 'Fine! Fine!'  It seemed that the repetitions increased the more joyous the reunion.

In one spot the young mother was grinding her grain with the long pestle and the mortar which stands higher than the knee.  It is a whole body movement with graceful rhythm and considerable strength and flexibility. William and I asked to try.  The pestle is surprisingly heavy and aiming it correctly, or more properly, positioning oneself properly to wield it, was really difficult.  I was reminded of how one can pitch a baseball using only the arm, but good pitching has to be done with the whole body.  My attempts were so pathetic that those watching fell about with laughter.  It apparently made good copy as the next day meeting others for the first time they burst into laughter and mimicked my feeble efforts afresh.

Googic's copy of Agor

One of the very exciting parts of our trip was seeing the gardens that the Gugic community had started copying much of what Agor had done but without any of the technical assistance and support.  It isn't quite as big, the fence isn't quite as sturdy, the ground doesn't look as well tilled, and the beds are less well defined, but the Gugic people, too, were harvesting greens months ahead of others.  It was so encouraging to witness this spontaneous initiative.  They didn't have the advantage of oxplows and don't have any water pump to make the watering easier, but they have more food than others because of their efforts.

I asked William's younger brother, Kawaja, whether they were considering expanding the garden and selling some of the produce at the local market.  He looked at me as though I was crazy.   Did I realize how much work that had been?  Did I consider how long it took to fell all the trees to make the fence alone?  That was a little discouraging.  I asked why their community didn't speak to the Bridge program in Aweil and ask for some assistance.  Kawaja was the first of several locals to tell me that the Bridge program was being wound up.  (This was a possibility, but in fact the program has been extended.)  I will keep praying that various parties will connect so that initiatives of this kind are encouraged and supported.  

Gugic (Goo-gich)

Gugic is the village where William Deng's family have their 'compound' and land.  One of William's brothers is a fine tukul builder and one tukul  was specifically built for William as a 'guest room.'  Incredibly we, who had brought our tent in the full expectation of sleeping in it, still hadn't spent a night in it and now we had beds in a beautifully crafted tukul.  The bricks, the walls and the foundation for the grass roof is all done by men while the laying of the roof is assigned to women.  The 'storage' space and the photo of William with the Seattle backdrop shouldn't be overlooked.

The walls come within about 12 inches of the overhanging roof and there are usually two or perhaps 3 or 4 small triangular windows or ventilation holes in the walls.  In contrast to a tent with a zip, one has to be willing to share the space with fleet footed enterprising rodents and if the door isn't blocked during the night, a stray dog or goat is likely to come sniffing for some tasty morsel, or at least some extra warmth.  At the orphanage later we found blackboards served double duty as door barriers for the nights.

One night I did wake to some fairly agitated rustling.  Discretion won out over valor and it wasn't until two days later when I had to repack our bags that I found I must have left a bag slightly unzipped and had attracted a rodent to investigate.  The Trader Jo's bags of fruit leather destined for the orphans had been sampled!

One other structure I loved was a tiny tukul built as a henhouse that the proud owner allowed me to photograph.  (William had warned us in Aweil that the government had issued a warning that photographs should only be taken with the permission of individuals and we were careful to start with to ask permission everywhere we went.  The further out of the town we got, the more careless we were.)  I didn't work out whether there was a ladder for the chickens or whether they were lifted in each night.

We walked around to visit all of William's neighbors with him.  All the people are so encouraged to meet others from outside.  It is such affirmation that they are not forgotten and that they have value.  Everyone wanted their photo taken and each was delighted with seeing the shot on the camera.  They too have become accustomed to this miracle.

In William's compound it seemed as though there were his stepmother and two sons, a daughter-in-law and a daughter and two little grandsons that William's mother took care of as well.  I had given a lot of thought to gifts ahead of our trip, and tried to balance the need to keep baggage compact and light with things of value to those we'd be seeing.  The soccer ball was a clear success.  The children's books were less obviously popular.  The solar powered light was highly valued and although not much was said about the fruit leather (given before the night visit of the mouse) it disappeared quickly.  The Blink card game, however, was a delightful hit.  The adult young men had a ball with it.

Wish I could have seen this

The glory of seeing green growth in the dry months

One of the distressing things about my 2010 observations in Northern Bahr el Gazal was the lack of agriculture in the dry months.  Virtually no one made the effort to carry water to plants and the majority of the district (and I discovered later, the whole country) waited until the rains to plant.  The country has been dependent on UN food drops for years and a whole generation of people have been almost wiped out so that many farming practices need to be relearned.

This visit, because of Bert's friends within Winrock, we were able to set up an appointment to be introduced to the Winrock Bridge program based in Aweil.  A cheerful and gracious Abebayehu Haile hosted us with a Dinka translator and driver.  The Bridge program is driven by the desire to see good governance implemented in the new nation and they have worked with local communities to bring training and structure.  The hope is that communities will see a need and meet together to formulate potential solutions and work upwards through government channels to petition for support for their idea.  The Bridge folks specifically meet needs for health and water education, and agricultural training.  We saw a granary project (notice the anti rodent shields on the legs!)

 and, at Agor, the model for a dry season garden.  It was balm to my eyes.  I am praying that the idea 'takes.'

This prototype is very close to the river.

We took a lot of pictures because I was so excited!  From a distance all you can see is the vague outline of ragged poles.  When you get closer you can see that it is a carefully erected fence to keep out animals who would love to get their teeth into some succulent greens.  The fence was a prerequisite that the local community had to put in place.  The Bridge program provided some training in how to set up the beds and fertilize, the foot pump and the long hoses up to the vegetable plots, ox plows and training in how to repair them.  All the labor was provided by the community.  Cutting the poles for the fence and setting them up in the dry ground was a lot of work.

The folks harvesting greens January 4, 2012, were, besides feeding their own families great fresh vegetables, taking sacks of the vegetable to market and making a very tidy profit.  At this time of year the local market generally only has garlic, onions and dried okra. The dried beans, dried fish, and tins would all have been schlepped from a distance and available only to those with significant funds.  January 4 evening was the only time we got fresh vegetables to eat and that was because we were staying in the village next to Agor.  It was really thrilling to see so many vegetables growing and ready for harvesting at a time when most folks  were still months from planting seeds.

Abebayehu demonstrated the simplicity of the foot pump which pushed the water up the ten foot bank to the vegetable plots which clearly took a great deal of work out of the daily watering.

In a truly providential coincidence that the model vegetable plot is literally 5 minutes down the road from William Deng's family home so our gracious host of the day was able to drop us off at Gugic (Goo-gich) where we spent the next two days in the Deng compound.

Hallelujah chorus in the Marial Bai Episcopal church, January 6, 2012

This method of getting everyone listening and focused was repeated at almost every meeting we went to.  A little like a dance step: slow, slow, quick, quick, quick.  The first two Hallelujahs are punctuated with three slow claps, and then the last claps are a series of 5 in the same time it took to do the 3 slow ones.  A kind of quintuplet, if that exists, like the triplet we're used to seeing in our music books.

The church is a lovely new building that Samaritan's Purse helped to fund.

The South Sudan National Anthem

So my recording still isn't very brilliant, but this is one it would have been hard to edit.  The words seem so poignant, and the tune murderously difficult, but neither words nor tune seem to daunt the crowd.  Just a bit different from God Save the Queen.

Oh God!

We praise and glorify you

For your grace on South Sudan

Land of great abundance

Uphold us united in peace and harmony

Oh motherland!

We rise raising flag with the guiding star

And sing songs of freedom with joy

For justice, liberty and prosperity

Shall forevermore reign

Oh great patriots!

Let us stand up in silence and respect

Saluting our martyrs whose blood

Cemented our national foundation

We vow to protect our nation

Oh God, bless South Sudan!

Aweil

school house

Aweil Cathedral

Bishop's House

We learned that to establish a new dioceses for the Episcopal church of South Sudan the people must provide a cathedral, a house for the bishop and a car.  The cathedral and house can be quite modest, but still that seems quite a tall order for such an impoverished nation.

It turns out that Samaritan's Purse has helped build the new Aweil Cathedral.  Bishop Abraham Nhial, Trinity Seminary graduate 2011, is the new bishop.  William Deng had asked permission for us to stay on the Cathedral grounds.  We planned to put up our tent in one of the compound buildings.  Most buildings have open windows or ventilations gaps between walls and roof and unwanted four legged visitors make the zipped up tent very desirable.

After we had  greeted the cathedral staff and dropped our bags by the building designated for our night's repose, we walked back into town to do our shopping.  William knew we had to buy food - it was one thing to sleep in an empty building and quite another to expect food  from our hosts, so the custom was to bring the ingredients and allow the host to cook it for the whole group.

We walked to the Hotel South Sudan which was a rather grim series of small cabins around a large shaded open square.  The square provided a welcome bit of breeze and many locals came here for a drink or a business meeting.  The latrine was slightly nastier than the usual.  The service distinctly unenthusiastic.  When we asked what was for lunch, it was clear we were pushing our luck.  The rest of the team Fran and I were with two years ago spent a memorable night at this hotel when it cost close to $200 a night!!  The price has since dropped to a mere $100, but I would still prefer my tent over that hotel any time.  There were local monkeys scampering about to entertain us and the whitewashed truck made us smile.

We wandered off to find lunch elsewhere.  We ordered and were given a handful of different sized and colored wooden chips which we handed to the cashier and he, having taken our money, handed the chips to a waiter.  No need for written menus or ordering pads.  The sit-down part of the restaurant was a bit like a large tent with trestle tables.  They didn't think we'd fit in the crowd, so when our food arrived they marched us across the road to an abandoned lot with a small hut in it.  The hut had a table and chairs for special clients.  William's enthusiasm to let us try several dishes left us with far too much food.  We stopped a thin young lad and asked him to come and eat with us.  He was cautious, but his hunger won.  He did a magnificent job finishing off everything.

Mid afternoon we found the football field packed with spectators for a match.  Enterprising women had set up around the perimeter with improvised hearth and kettle and sold tea by the cup.

By the time we returned to the Cathedral compound the light was failing and I completely failed to recognize that Bishop Abraham was in the group.  He was another quiet man in a T shirt in the fading light.   I assumed he was one of the men we had been introduced to earlier and I merely couldn't recognize exactly who, and all the names were beginning to tumble together..."I should introduce myself, Bishop Abraham Nhial."  O dear, of course, we should have introduced ourselves.  To heap embarrassment upon us, Abraham invited us to eat with him and then to take his room and not put up our tent in the school house.  We tried to explain that we had thought he was out of town doing pastoral visits and we had set up meetings for the next day with Winrock to view an agricultural project in the area.

Bishop Abraham spoke movingly of his visits to the army men stationed on the border with the North.  He mentioned that they were very touched that he came to visit them and to encourage them when none of their government officials had.  He also spoke of their hunger to read the Bible and their awareness of their need of God and His comfort in such a volatile situation.  It was nice to have several packets of the Gospel of Luke to give the Bishop to pass on.  I hope to find a way to ship a box of Gideon New Testaments to his office in Juba.

We had a very pleasant evening together.  I was so glad that Bert was there to appreciate all that Abraham shared.  It is so clear that the new bishop has a great heart for the sheep in his fold.

Hunting for John Kudusay

Aweil has quite a maze of market.  It is a vibrant few square blocks with banks, clothing merchants, food stalls, telephone repair, tailors, bike parts and repair, CDs and tapes, batteries, shoes,  restaurants and one (almost two) hotels.  For a price, you can find a lot in Aweil.  We were told that an ordinary fleece/synthetic blanket would cost 120 Sudanese pounds (we got about 3.4 pounds to the $).  Most of the store keepers were Arabs.  When I thought about it, most of the traders in Juba had been Arabs too.

William had his shopping list, and we needed to exchange some money, so we had plenty of time to look at the goods for sale.  A showcase of perfumes caught my attention. "Immensity pour femme," "First Touch pour homme," "Star People by Carlton Anthony, Paris," "Ambiguous," "Adorable pour femme," and "Attitude" no longer seem quite so funny after spending a few minutes walking through Heathrow's duty free last week.  Fragrance makers need something more memorable than Channel No. 5, or O de Lancome, to hook us these days, apparently.

We asked at the music selling spots if they had any John Kudusay.  One chap had a tape recording.  Not the best option, so the salesman kindly pointed Bert to another place that had some music and was the Aweil internet cafe.  Bert went over to the cafe and asked the fellow on duty if they had any John Kudusay.  Communication wasn't great, so he repeated the name.  The man nodded vigorously and pointed behind Bert.  John Kudusay, himself, was seated at the only computer checking his emails.  So Bert laughingly was able to ask the artist directly where we might find his music.  I think we actually had a better chance of finding his music in the expatriate South Sudanese communities than in Aweil.  We ended up buying that one cassette, and since getting home have found far more available on line.

Juba to Aweil

Just after 6a.m. the second of William Deng's friends arrived at the Jajaj Inn and swept us up to drive us to the airport, just a few minutes away.  We weren’t the first ones there and a queue had already formed.  After a 20 minute wait Mr. Kush Air, of the ticket office the day before, arrived and told us all we were queuing in the wrong direction.  He lined us up again and an airport employee dragged a huge old scale out to the front with metallic screeches.  Our bags were weighed and the information passed to Mr. Kush Air.  He calculated our baggage fee and labeled the bags and handed us each a numbered (black Sharpie ringed numbers) boarding pass.  (We guessed this was his way of guaranteeing he didn’t have more passengers than seats, as he had possibly sold more seats than available in the week before. ) We then faced the bottleneck of ‘security’ again.   I walked through the metal detector with my backpack on and observed that no one was actually looking at the monitor for the security belt.   We were then asked to go through a second security point  where security personnel searched our hand luggage and passed us into the waiting room.  The room was charmingly filled with the  well worn living room furniture of several homes and plastic garden chairs.  We had quite a good crowd when our Aweil flight was announced.  Mr. Kush Air was back again and scuttled ahead of us onto the tarmac to collect in the numbered boarding passes.  The Focker, F-50 propeller plane was a bit noisy, but  did its job brilliantly and the pilot landed us smoothly on the single strip in Aweil.  The last flight I'd made over  South Sudan had been in a much smaller plane and we flew closer to the ground and could see far more of the countryside than we were able in the F-50.

The flight's arrival in Aweil's modest 'airport'  (two sheds by a tree) didn't create much attention.  There were half a dozen motorized rickshaw taxis and several vehicles waiting for passengers, as well as passengers for the return flight.  William Deng was patiently waiting for us, and as we have grown used to, he also knew and greeted more than half the passengers on the flight, including James, a Dinka PhD student at Amherst writing about developmental economics, who had flown in for some regional meetings.  James pointed out another fellow passenger, John Kudusay, a well known South Sudanese singer.  He adopted the name 'Kudusay' because when he introduced himself to foreigners they always asked him "Could you say that again, please?"  http://madingaweil.com/MadingAweil.com_John%20Kudusay.mp3  Given Bert's eclectic taste in music and my desire to have Dinka/South Sudanese music for whatever video material I put together, we now had a focus for our stroll through Aweil's market.

As far as we can make out, the rickshaw driver really was using a frying pan for a rearview mirror!