a PDF copy here

10 Years On – Journal of the First Trip to Lui, April-May 2003
It was thanks to the Church of St. Michael and St.
George that the Diocese of Missouri connected with
Bishop Bullen Dolli and the Diocese of Lui. After Bishop
Bullen visited the church in the summer of 2002, curate
Rob Price led a team to visit Lui in the spring of 2003.
The team, below, with Bishop Bullen in Nairobi: From
left, back row [Sudanese woman – maybe wife of
Ambrose Kayanga?]; Debbie Smith, wife of the Bishop
of Missouri and from St. Timothy’s; Sarah Stanage from
the WUSTL campus ministry; Steve Davis from St.
Michael and St. George; The Rt. Rev. Bullen Dolli,
Bishop of Lui; The Rev. Rob Price, curate at St. Michael
and St. George & team leader. Front row: the Rev.
Peggy Harris, deacon from St. Andrew’s, Des Moines;
Tammy King from St. Michael and St. George. At right,
the famous Lui Laro tree.
April 24, 2003 – St. Louis
Left home at 10:30 for a 1:35 flight. Getting through check-in and baggage
screening took about half an hour. Big Rubbermaid tubs no problem on
KLM/Northwest. Peggy and I bought some aspirin and candy then went to the
gate. First flight delayed till 2:00. Out of Detroit @ 5:40, so that should be OK.
Steve says he feels like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. P & I aren’t
nervous. Sarah hasn’t been sleeping because of her allergies. I guess I used up
all my adrenaline & anxiety on Arabic this week, because I am perfectly calm
about this.
April 25, 2003 – Amsterdam
Europe! The signage is in English as well as in Dutch, but almost nobody is
walking about speaking English. Too cool! And those who are speaking it are
mostly Brits or BE-types. It’s so wonderful to be off American soil after so many
years. [This was my first trip ever outside North America.] I love Holland; it’s a
beautiful country with a lot of water. Nobody is walking around in facemasks
because of SARS.
4 pm, same day, from the plane
I see Africa and the Sahara, and I am happy. But now I’m thinking, What are we
doing? Why am I here?
5:45 pm
The incongruity of watching Harry Potter as we fly over the North African desert
is incredible. With just over an hour of flight left today, the long journey to Africa is
nearly over. Tomorrow the charter into Lui... As we near Nairobi, I find it harder to
read or study. I think our whole team has slept through most of this flight, but I did
see the Alps – amazing! – and the Sahara.
I have to prepare my self-intro.
My name is Debbie, and I’m the wife of the bishop of Missouri. In the
name of our Lord Jesus Christ, I bring you greetings from Bishop Wayne
and from the people of the Diocese of Missouri, especially my
congregation, St. Timothy’s in Creve Coeur. I have come to Sudan to
witness the powerful faith of your people.
I hope I can do this in Arabic. [In the event, not all that many people in Lui spoke
Arabic.]
11:17 pm, same day, Nairobi
We got into Nairobi without difficulty. Bishop Bullen met us at the airport.
Customs guy wanted to know what was in our boxes – I told him clothing &
toiletries. He wanted to know if we were going to Khartoum – I said no – visiting
church friends here, used clothing etc. for them... Church was the magic word.
Long drive in heavy traffic to the
Methodist Guest House – very
nice place, private rooms
w/bathrooms. Compline,
debriefing, bed. [This is the
view from my window, I think –
not the guest house.]
April 26, 2003, 10 am [translated from my student Arabic]
We are going to Sudan in a very small plane. The pilot is Mike from New Jersey.
He works for Good Samaritan in Nairobi. Nairobi is beautiful from the air. The
weather is cloudy and it isn’t hot. We are going to Lokachokkio and then on to
Mundri, where it is extremely hot.
Bishop Bullen isn’t going with us because he has a “visa problem.” He will come
after us. We are saying prayers and hoping that God will protect us.
Nakuru – large city north of Nairobi that we flew over
Notes for English class: (1) Talk about how we have to
teach English in the US – no translation, etc – and
generally our experience with refugee women – ergo not
sure what this population wants/needs. (2) Ask for a selfintro in English & a writing sample of what you want to
learn.
Kanuk Range in the Tunkana District
11 am
Martin [at left, the AIDS education for Mundri-Lui
Dioceses and our main minder for the visit] says we can
go to Mundri, where there is a market and they have
Sudanese and Ugandan money. There is no problem with
the army.
The Kenyan landscape is very beautiful.
1 pm
We saw Kakuma Refugee Camp from the plane, and we went to Lokachokkio.
[Some of our luggage was left at Loki because after refueling the plane was
overweight. When our big Rubbermaid bins arrived in Lui later, some of the gifts
we had brought for people had been stolen; what I remember is nail polish,
though I’m not sure why we thought we should take that.]The Nile River from the
airplane... The weather is very hot now.
Sunday, April...
The women’s hair is cropped very short, and they all have watches [I don’t think I
meant just the women have watches] and do things at specific times. Some wear
headscarves.
The tukuls are labeled with our names and the meal schedule posted on the
canteen door.
Women: all dresses/skirts & sandals or flipflops, lots of rubber flipflops
There were over 5000 in church this morning at the Moru service. Communion
was like cereal squares & Kool Aid.
The thunderstorms are frequent & violent.
Anyhow, the English service was recognizably Anglican but not in quite the same
order. People came up to the rail w/their offering randomly during the offertory &
for communion. After church we stood in a receiving line & shook hands
endlessly.
4/28 7:30 pm
We had a wonderful day today. Yesterday was very “day 2” – everyone cranky.
Today we went to Mundri and Kotubi by Land Rover & boat. We met the
commissioner of Mundri District/County (SPLA says county). Saw SPLA soldiers.
We met Bishop Eliazar of Mundri & his wife Phoebe, who made us a lunch of rice
& beef stew, but she had grape pop and bottled water. The toilet in Kotubi
actually had a seat!!!!
AK-47
4/29/03
Sarah & Rob – HIV/AIDS & Scripture
15 participants at the beginning.
Sarah begins, eliciting what students already know. They contribute that HIV is
transmitted by sexual intercourse and razorblades/needles. One woman says
something that Jeffery discounts. Jeffery is doing a lot of interpolating.
Sarah says
HIV/AIDS is a virus
that is particularly
difficult because it
attacks your
immune system. It
can take 10 years
from infection to
symptoms. A
person can look
fine but have HIV.
[Goes on to
describe symptoms,
progression, and transmission of the disease. What I didn’t write down but
remember is that we played a game that addressed the insidious spread of HIV
and maybe the stigma of it too. The photo is from the game.]
5/1/03
[I wrote in Arabic that I hadn’t really written since Saturday and wanted to catch
up.]
Saturday 4/26 we arrived safely in Lui.
Several clergy were standing by to
greet us. The plane had to unload and
take off again very quickly, because
South Sudan is a war zone and a
plane is a target. The “airport” was a
dirt landing strip. There were 2
Samaritan’s Purse trucks and drivers
waiting for us. After greetings and
unloading, we drove into Lui – a trip of
about 20-30 minutes over very rough
dirt roads. Along the road were many
women and children who waved and stared. The women carried bundles on their
heads, mostly mangoes wrapped in big cloths.
When we got to the town, a huge
crowd was waiting. They greeted us
with drumming and singing, and we all
processed to the cathedral. The
children were fascinated by us and all
crowded around to shake our white
hands.
In the cathedral was a lot more
singing, then Jeffery, the diocesan
secretary and a priest, gave a speech
in Moru, which Martin, the HIV/AIDS
coordinator for the twin dioceses of Mundri and Lui, translated for us. Jeffery
called us each up in turn to greet the people. After more singing and prayers, we
went to the diocesan compound behind a fence beside the cathedral.
The compound consists of 6 tukuls, a strip
of two “toilets” and two “baths,” a cooking
shelter, a fire/water/socializing shelter, and
a big termite hill. The largest tukul is our
common room. [Later we learned to call it
the payat, pictured here.] It has a table and
about 12 plastic armchairs. Our meals and
tea will be served here. One tukul is the
center for laundry and killing chickens etc.
Peggy and Tammy share a tukul, Sarah
and I share one, and Steve and Rob have private tukuls.
By now it’s late afternoon. We are all quite tired, but we set up our stuff. In the
tukuls we find two bedframes with foam mattresses, pillows, sheets, and
mosquito netting. We are served tea in the common room and then dinner at 8:
rice, beef in broth, and fresh mangoes. (It’s mango season here and they are
plentiful.) We did compline and fell into bed.
Sunday 4/27/03
Did I mention that the toilets are simple holes in the ground?
We got up and bathed. We got water in a tub from the barrel over the fire (hot)
and the water jug nearby (cold).
The English service is at 9 am. The service is adapted from the C of E,
recognizably our liturgy. We meet many people, including Karin, a Canadian
nurse at SP, and we give the chair/director doc of SP the medical supplies we
brought. After church, there’s a long receiving line. We stand around in the yard
for a while and try to go back to our compound but it’s time for Moru church. It’s
basically the same except by the end there were over 5000 people there.
Communion took a long time. They used pinkish koolaidish for “wine” and
something like cereal squares for “bread.” All the girls are wearing very clean
fancy dresses, as are the women. The women do not wear slacks. The men wear
jeans or khakis and sport shirts. Many wear rubber flipflops. The women have
cropped hair or cornrows or headscarves.
After the receiving line we have lunch – more of the same from last night. At
announcements, Jeffery had announced what our teaching would be. I learned
that I’d be teaching pedagogy for English teachers K-12 [not actually English
language as I’d been led to believe]; Sarah learned that she’d be teaching AIDS
& Scripture [not just HIV/AIDS science and awareness]. So we wring our hands
about the teaching.
Then we return to church to meet leaders of the archdeaconry of Lui. We give our
gifts of clergy shirts and vestments to the clergy and headscarves to Mama
Jennifer, the leader of the mother’s union. Rob presents the clergy gifts, I the
headscarves.
We return briefly to the common room then go at 3:45 to a 3:00 meeting with
diocesan youth. Actually I didn’t go – I sat in the common room and talked with
Margaret, deacon and headmistress of the secondary school. She filled me in on
what the teachers would need. She’s been to 3 different teacher training courses
and knows a lot more about pedagogy than I do.
Dinner was yet more beef and rice. We all suffered “Day 2 Syndrome” and were
cranky. [Some missioners said we should have done more preparatory
teambuilding before we left Missouri.]
Monday 4/28/03
Today we were supposed to go to
Mundri and Kutubi. They are
across the River Yei, and there is
no bridge. We were to leave at 10,
but we didn’t get to leave until
12:30 because the SP car wasn’t
available. Supposedly we weren’t
going to cross the river because no
car was available there. We went to see the bombed-out bridge and the boat,
and lo and behold, Bishop Eliazar of Mundri was on the other side of the
riverbank when we reached the boat. So we crossed.
At the bridge we met a man who showed us his
bow and arrows. He was on a bike. There were
people swimming and fishing. Because the
bridge had been blown up by the GOS and the
SPLA didn’t want to rebuild it, we had to cross
the wide Yei by boat. It was an old tin rowboat
with room for maybe 8 plus the “oarsman.”
There was a
rope strung
across the
river, and he
hauled us
across hand
over hand.
When we reached the Mundri side, the
bishop and some of his people greeted us and welcomed us. Bishop Eliazar is
also the Dean of the Episcopal Province of Sudan. He seems to spend most of
his time in Uganda.
Mundri town is his see city, but it is also the location of an SPLA garrison, so it
took a lot of fire during the war, and almost everyone fled and settled in the new
town of Kotubi some 12 km up the road. Today the SPLM commissioner was
reopening his office in Mundri after being in Kotubi in order to encourage
movement back to Mundri. [In hindsight, I
think he was the county commissioner, not
SPLA.]
We visited the commissioner (left), but he
didn’t ask for our papers. He welcomed us
and told us about Mundri, the bridge, and
hopes for peace.
Everyone here talks about how things will be “if peace comes.” After various
formalities with the commissioner (attended by SPLA guards w/ AK-47s), we took
some photos and headed for Kotubi.
There we were greeted with the conventional singing and clapping, and we met
Bishop Eliazar’s wife Phoebe. She was wearing loafers and had longer braided
hair. After the usual speechifying and singing and praying, we were served lunch
(3:30ish) – rice, beef in broth, and rolls – with the big treat of grape soda and
bottled water. When we decided we had to use the bathroom, we were thrilled to
find a box seat over the hole!
The trip back was uneventful, though on the Mundri side we saw so many SPLA
and far more vehicles than here in Lui.
Martin smashed his finger hitching a ride with an SPLA wagon. Steve had a good
talk with a doctor from Uganda in the bishop’s entourage.
Tuesday, 4/29/03
Last night we learned the schedule for our presentations:
10-11:30 session
tea break
11:45-1 session
1-2 break
2-3:30 session
tea break
4-5 session if needed
Rob also found out that his scripture presentation was a team effort re AIDS with
Sarah, so he was in a bit of a hurry to think it out. I told him this was justice. [a
reaction to finding out I was teaching pedagogy, not language, I think]
Monday we had “the women’s revolt” about the bathing method Rob had
imposed on us. We didn’t want to use the cup to pour water over us and leave
clean water for the next person; we wanted to take only as much as we needed
and use it all as we see fit. And so we have done henceforth.
We got beans and rice for supper on Monday!
So Tuesday we all set off for the “parish house,” a tukul by the cathedral (Fraser
Memorial Cathedral). There were about 15 people at first – maybe 20 or so
overall. They did a great job.
At dinner we got chicken in broth and the traditional sourdough spongy flatbread,
kissera. Soaked in broth, it was great. We remembered to say compline, and
Martin joined us.
Between the presentation and dinner, we went to the market. There are many
shops behind chicken wire, and merchants mostly of food in the middle of the
commons without shops per se. [Near the market were the tailors. It was
interesting to us at the time that men had sewing machines and women didn’t. I
have not seen these guys since 2003, although
I admit I wasn’t looking for them. But I note with
interest that they had sewing machines, which
later Deb Goldfeder helped the Mothers’ Union
acquire.]
Exchange rate: $20 = 30,000 Ugandan
shillings. $1 = 500 Sudanese pounds,
but they don’t use these.
I want to go back for some fabric, and we
are going to buy Moru Bibles from Morris,
the archdeacon in the cathedral
bookshop [pictured at right, to the left of
Scopas, both of whom worked on
finishing up the translation of the Moru
Bible after Canon Ezra died]. We’ll keep
one and give the rest to people here – 30
Bibles for $20. [On a later trip, Morris told
me that it’s
better for
people to
collect the
firewood to
make a
couple of pounds and buy their own Bible. At left, Rob
in the bookstore.]
Wednesday 4/30/03
Peggy and I presented at the
secondary school to 34 primary
and secondary teachers. We did
learning styles and how we read
texts with students and write
papers. It went well – several
teachers asked that we come back
for a longer course.
Thursday 5/1/03
Tammy and Steve are
presenting on women’s
and youth leadership at
Lunjini Primary School.
It’s 1.5 km from the
cathedral – quite a hike.
Steve has [some health
issues] but is keeping his
sunny outlook. We are
going to buy baskets
from the Mothers’ Union
this afternoon. I spoke
Arabic with some
women! [Back then, the
MU had a big tukul-style
building at Lunjini
School. I think it’s a
classroom now.]
That catches me up – now some topics:
Scopas, Martin, Jeffery, Peter. The Moru language. The ideas for projects and
commerce. Martin’s stories of his family and a GOS general who converted. Then
I really have to work on my sermon for Sunday.
Violet Nabia & Susanna Kadimala – the girls who serve us every meal
5/2/03
Today we visited Wiroh in Lui Archdeaconry and Wandi in Wandi Archdeaconry.
In Wiroh, between Lanyi and Wandi (?), we were met with singing and a
procession, and met Scopas’s mother and sister, Mama Jean Nyango Wajo and
Tabita. There was a police/SPLA? checkpoint at Lanyi – Ambrose spoke with the
guard and we went on.
Then we went to Wandi, and Sarah preached
very well. As always we were wonderfully
welcomed, fed tea and bread and boiled eggs
before the prayer service, and chicken and
kissera and asida (a porridge made from maize
and cassava flours). The tea was hibiscus and
tasted like Red Zinger.
“The Mothers’ Union is like yeast for transforming our society.” Jeffery. They
inculcate Christian values in the family and the culture.
The big excitement was the
return trip. We left in sunshine
but returned in rain over a road
with lots of potholes and hills –
wadi part of the way. Twice we
had to get out of the Land
Cruiser – first to lay branches
on a hill so the car would go up, then to allow Simon (our Kenyan Baptist-pastor
driver from SP) to right the car, which had almost rolled, and go up through a
swampy area.
Teak plantation: Teak will mature for poles in 8
years, but leave it for 15 to yield timber.
There are sesame and sorghum planted to make
use of the land between teak trees. They have 5
feddans of teak now but in 10 years they’ll have 2030 feddans. 1 feddan = 60x70 meters.
5/3/03
We aren’t going to Lakamadi today after all because Reed, the SP logistician,
won’t send his driver and car over the road. So at Buagyi, Peggy will preach and I
will speak afterward as the wife of the bishop of MO. So I still have to write a talk
– which will become a sermon if Peggy gets sick. Today Tammy and Rob are
sick with the stomach crud. So far Peggy, Sarah, and I are OK. [More about my
own digestion and what I was taking for it, Imodium and Cipro, because the
Barnes Travel Clinic told me to do that, though neither Rob nor Sarah thought
that was the right thing to do.]
We are about to be off for the agricultural sites. I’m not sure what our objective is,
but bumping around the countryside is always fun.
With 6 Moru men sitting beside me in the
Land Cruiser – laughing really hard and
talking Arabic -- I am having a reality check
on this whole experience. I feel intimidated
and I’m grateful for Rob and Steve.
The Mothers’ Union Grinding Mill – owned by
Mothers’ Union. They employ a
manager/operator, James Bassion. The women
keep track of the grain brought in and the money earned. The smaller mill was
the first bought and is used if the larger one breaks down.
The bishop’s house – built by missionaries;
when they left, the church retained it. It was
cracked and torn down but is being rebuilt.
Tallest ruins – kitchen. Stack – cistern for
collecting water. Taller teaks by bishop’s
house. Rob says SMSG is funding rebuilding.
Jeffery doesn’t seem aware.
Postlunch – visit to the church’s Lanyi teak
plantation. Taller teak, a lulu tree with a
fruit that is very sweet and has a seed with
wonderful oil [shea, I think], and another
tree with a fruit that becomes black when
ripe.
On to Lanyi parish where we met the
deacon Charles and took pictures of the
pastor’s children.
Early evening – Martin took Steve, Peggy,
and me to see the cave that’s used as a
bomb shelter. I took some pics of the cave
and the village, some of kids. I showed
them the screen with their pictures as I
finished and they were fascinated.
Solidarity has been the theme of this trip –
we came for solidarity but we’ve had team
solidarity and team women’s solidarity and
talked of solidarity for the women of Lui.
5/4
We went to Buagyi for church today. The church has paintings of religious
scenes all over it. Peggy preached very well. We had communion and I thought
of Wayne and the kids and all my friends taking communion at home. After the
service was over, I gave my
talk on the oneness of the
body of Christ with greetings
from Wayne and the ECS.
On the way home we
stopped in Doro and Lanyi
to meet and greet, and I had
to talk again. Lanyi sends
greetings to our diocese –
youth to youth, women to
women.
Peter is a nurse. He supervises the TB and leprosy uni @ SP. There are 65 TB
cases in the ward now and over 200 leprosy cases being treated as outpatients.
Drugs come from WHO. Malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia, and skin disease are the
biggest problems of kids here.
5/5
Martin Luxton John Koroni [full name of our main minder]
AM – visit to SP hospital. Dr.
Warren Cooper took us on a
tour after chapel. At chapel
we sang from the Juba
Arabic/English youth
songbook, Rob preached on
Jesus’s healing ministry, a
nursing student presented
on child immunizations, and Dr. Cooper explained the new
charting system and had it translated into Moru and Dinka.
He does most possible surgeries – sends out nearly
nobody – and is building a new ward. They have two
military surplus generators that power batteries that run the hospital but also
another generator.
11-12:30 Debriefing
Present: Jeffery (the diocesan secretary), Rob, Sosthen (the diocesan treasurer
and hospital chaplain), Steve, Tammy, Joseph (provost), Morris (archdeacon),
Peggy, me, Jennifer (MU), Sylvester (pastor in Lui), Margaret (MU)
Sosthen opened with prayer and Ephesians 2:19 ff.
Introductions
Rob’s statement on why we came: solidarity, one in Christ, build up the church,
identify ways we can continue to help, bring back stories of faith
Jeffery: Diocese of Lui – Mission statement from Matthew 28: 19-20. Western
Equatoria, Mundri County. Diocese covers 8500 sq km. We saw less than ¼ of it.
Approximate population per 1983 census = 80,000. 85-90% Anglican. Others:
Catholic, Seventh Day Adventist, Sudan Pentecostal. 6 rural archdeaconries. 17
parishes. 5 subparishes. 116 preaching centers. 54 pastors. 70 male lay readers,
75 female. 409 male evangelists, 297 female. 55 youth leaders. Annual
evangelism even reached 3644 last year. 2002: 14 marriages, 178 burials, f2756
confirmed, 632 baptized, 538 first promises, 576 second promises.
PM –
The farewell tea party was
amazing. First the Sunday
School children danced in
and sang, then other groups
of youth. They were so alive
and energetic and talented.
Everyone from Jeffery to the
Buma administrator made
speeches and they were all
about the gratitude to us for
coming into a war zone to
show our love for them. Rob
and I had to speak. Jeffery
talked about the idea that
America is Sudan’s best friend, that Jack Danforth kept us safe here, that we
should give greetings to Senate Majority Leader Frist, who once was here. And
we should pressure our government to bring peace in Sudan (but without military
action). The Sunday School kids gave us each a basket, and the MU gave us all
baskets too. [In the photo, the man in the center is Ramsey, one of the other
bishop candidates in 2011, and the man to his right is Sylvester, the pastor at Lui
Parish.]
[We saw lots of this instrument played at the
farewell party, but I’ve never seen it since
then.]
5/6
It’s about 9:45. The trucks are coming for us at 10, supposedly, and we are
expecting the plane at noon – a DC-3 this time, instead of a Caravan.
On the plane – First we stopped
at Akot Airport in Rumbek
County to let off some other
passengers and cargo. It’s Dinka
land here, Akot Payam. Now we
are en route to Loki on our
luxury DC-3. Being served a
sandwich, an orange, and Krest
Bitter Lemon soda. It feels like a
betrayal of my people in Lui to
eat this American lunch while
flying over Sudan. I don’t relish it – I almost want kissera and dikdik, tired as I got
of kissera. ... I want to stay and help.
9:48 pm
We’re safely in the Methodist Guest House and have been since about 6 or so.
To enter Kenya we had to send our luggage through X-ray then go to
immigration. They tried to make us buy new visas but I pointed out that we
already had multiple entry visas so once again we just needed to fill out entry
cards. ... We had dinner in the dining room here, then we took turns phoning
home & have just been hanging out in our rooms. I’m sure we used a horrific
amount of water flushing and showering. My fingernails are almost clean, but my
feet still stink. I am sort of tan. I felt a certain culture shock in Loki when there
were lots of planes and cars and traffic. But 45+ years of electricity and running
water quickly displaced my sense of belonging in Lui.
Tomorrow we are meeting
for breakfast at 7:30; Rob
is going to the bank with
Ambrose at 9; then we are
going shopping for the
morning, lunching at the
Fairview, and being
entertained at Ambrose’s
house at 4 pm. It will be
very interesting to see the
Nairobi Moru community
after 10 days in Lui.
I think the two main reasons I’ve been so sad to leave Lui – not that I wrote about
this – are that depending on people for your life makes you feel close to them
quickly, and that I actually felt useful there.
Jeffery says 2 million dead is an underestimation. This was right in the late
1980s, but there’s been a scorched earth policy around the oil fields and bombing
of people gathered to receive relief food – especially in the Nuba Mountains and
far south. He says 3.5 million dead – 30% from gunfire, the rest from famine and
disease. The UN doesn’t have access to many parts of the country where people
are hiding in the bush or the mountains, especially in Eastern Equatoria. But
sometimes the GOS shuts down an airport in the south for the UN.
1/29/2013
Ten years later, through the lens of 5 more trips to Lui, I’m amazed that I didn’t
write about the things from the 2003 trip that most stand out in my mind. First, the
“satellite” phone we had wasn’t a REAL sat phone, and it didn’t work from Lui. So
our families and the people of our diocese had no word from us the whole time
we were in Sudan. That was a far cry from the Thuraya, Internet, and cell
coverage teams enjoy now.
Second, we were not adequately prepared with
respect to providing our own water. We had a
hand – or foot? – pump to filter it, and we
couldn’t filter it as fast as we wanted to drink it.
Samaritan’s Purse were truly good Samaritans;
they gave us filtered water. Later teams had first
a Katadyn system and then simply bottled water
from the market.
Samaritan’s Purse also invited us to visit
them in their compound, where they
served us homemade brownies and
Coca Cola. Their house actually had
electricity! I was so surprised that what they had there was possible, and I was
grateful to them even though I felt guilty having chocolate and Coke down the
road from so much hunger.
The compound our teams now stay in was SP’s compound back then; the house
is used by the staff for laundry and food storage and so forth, and the lovely
tukuls of SP are where we have stayed
since November of 2010. The guest
compound that was brand new in 2003
had degraded by 2010 to the extent
that nobody wanted us to stay there. I
believe it has at least partly become
Bishop Stephen and Lillian’s compound
now.
Our friend Martin died before my
second trip to Sudan in late 2008; I
don’t know exactly when he died.
Fittingly or ironically for the HIV/AIDS
coordinator, he died of AIDS, which he
had contracted from his Ethiopian wife,
whom he had met in a refugee camp, if I remember correctly.
Jeffery, last I saw him (2010, I think), was working in Mundri for the American
nonprofit Neverthirst, affiliated with or started by – not sure -- a Baptist Church in
Birmingham, Alabama. Deb Goldfeder, Dan Handschy, and I met some of them
in January 2009 when we remained after most of our team left. They had come to
teach discipleship (or something like that) to the Moru people, which we found
odd since we’d been learning that from Christians in Lui ourselves. We were so
surprised to see white people and so identified with our Moru hosts that we forgot
we looked quite a lot like the white “interlopers.”
In Nairobi we visited Bishop Bullen and
Mama Jerusa in their apartment. Jerusa
died in 2005 or 2006, and Bishop Bullen, as
most Missouri Episcopalians probably
know, died in Nairobi in December 2010.
Bishop Stephen was consecrated in June
2011.
The floods in 2012 that affect Bishop Stephen’s home remind me of the 2003
flood that hit Rob’s tukul and forced him and Steve to share after all. Perhaps that
piece of ground is lower and flood prone.
Surprisingly I didn’t write in my journal
about going to see the mosque in Lui.
The army of the government of Sudan
had built it when they were occupying
the area. After the SPLA pushed the
GOS army out, the local people
wanted to tear down the mosque.
Bishop Bullen told me that he told
them no, that the mosque was a house
of God. But, he laughed, only the
mosquitos worship there now. By the
time I returned to Sudan in 2008, the
people had prevailed and the mosque
was gone.
I also didn’t write about the Oxfam workers
stopping by. We’d been in Mundri County
long enough to find these well-fed guys in
their shiny Land Cruiser a bit offensive.
We saw loofahs growing on trees
by the river; I should’ve mentioned
that in my journal. I have always
thought the Morus might harvest
and export them.
I didn’t write about the shell
craters, either, but we saw
plenty of trash-filled holes
where GOS shells had fallen.
Some of them had exploded,
but some, like the one
marked by a branch here,
were unexploded.
Additional Notes from My Journal
Notes on my English teacher sessions:
Discussing a literature passage
Language only grades 1-3
All subjects from grade 4 up
Wants student centered
Problem solving rather than rote
Literature books – how we teach literature, literary vocabulary
7 years primary, 4 years secondary
Using Ugandan syllabus
Feb, Mar, Apr – May off – June, July, Aug – Sept off – Oct, Nov, mid-Dec –
holidays
Notes on the road to Wandi:
Kudi = Scopas’s musical instrument, made of tortoise shell and leather with 5
strings
The Turkish were colonial administrators during the condominium period.
Western white person = kawaja (Arabic)
Moru:
ro = for, of
kayi = grass
nini = aunt
kyibi = leaves /chibi/
tau = chicken
dri = hunt
drii = head
dribi = hair
izaindriro = goat’s meat > iza – indri – ro
iza= beef or meat
indri = goad
ti = cow
tibi = fish
izafauro
izatiro
payam – administrative subdistrict
Additional Photo 1 Building a Tukul