Malaria Free

We had a new boy join the compound this week, or, more correctly, an old boy returned. Alafi and his older brother lived at the children’s home for about six months a year or so ago. Their mother had been killed in an attack on a nearby village by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), and at the time of the attack, their father went into hiding in the bush, has not been heard from since, and is presumed dead. Alafi and his older brother later “escaped” from the compound and traveled to a refugee camp near Kampala, where their uncle had told them there would be a place for them. He deceived them. Their uncle was a drunk who had no intentions of taking care of them or providing for them. Alafi returned to the children’s home this week carrying all of his worldly possessions in a sack on his back. It is a rather amazing concept to think of a 10-year-old boy showing at your doorstep w/ everything he owns in a little sack, w/ no parents and no place to call home. Unfortunately, his story is the story of many of the kids here.

There is a large hill (mountain for the Floridians reading) next to the compound that has intrigued me since I first arrived here. One morning this week I decided to hike it. Matt Kynes was not w/ me so there was no land speed record that we had to beat, which was a good thing for this pale, frail kawaaja. It took about 30-40 minutes to get to the top, but the view was spectacular. Probably the best I had seen since Cinque Terre. I could see the Nile River snaking its way near Nimule and fog-covered hills bumping across the terrain that were hidden from our view from the compound. There is a radio tower at the top of the hill w/ a small camp at its base. A man named Martine was there “guarding” the tower. He was friendly and asked me (ordered me?) to sign a checkpoint book stating the time and date and my purpose for coming. He also asked me to take a picture of him. I guess he wanted someone to know he was there. I imagine it’s a solitary existence at the top of the hill. There was a radio chattering what seemed to be BBC News in the distance. At least he will be up-to-date on the current events in far away lands.

Ross has asked me to help lead the Bible studies for the older kids on Wednesday nights. I want to do some sort of Alpha course or overview of Christian principles for them as I am sometimes a little concerned by what I hear during morning devotions or similar study times. I try not to be critical or judgmental, but a lot of what I hear sounds like pretty bad theology.

When I woke up on Thursday, I did not feel well. I was extremely fatigued. I pretty much stayed in bed all day. I felt better when I woke up on Friday, but I was again really tired after going to morning devotion. When I also developed a mild fever, I decided to go to the hospital to get checked for malaria. It was an interesting experience. They pricked my finger and did blood work. The tests were negative for malaria. They gave me a prescription for painkillers and a B vitamin complex. All this for a whopping total of zero shillings. Maybe socialized medicine isn’t so bad after all.

Since I didn’t have malaria, to determine what was wrong, I went to Dr. House for a differential diagnosis and, after dismissing Dr. Foreman’s ubiquitous suggestion of vasculitis, he determined that my illness was caused by a combination of not sleeping well (it’s hard to fall asleep sometimes in the steam cooker), dehydration (despite drinking 3-4 liters of water per day), and not eating well (I’ve shed about a pound per day since arriving in Sudan). I will have to work on fixing these problems in the coming weeks.

The Smiling Kawaaja

It is a strange thing being a white person (“kawaaja”) in Sudan. There aren’t many of us here. Besides Ross, I have seen about three other white people since we got to Nimule about a week and a half ago. This makes the few of us who are here into something of local celebrities. While I walk along the road during my daily trips to the Catholic diocese to download from the internet, small kids often (always?) see me and yell out, “Kawaaja!” I turn to them, smile, and wave, and they laugh and say, “How are you?” I respond, “I’m good. How are you?” Finally, they say, “I’m fine.” That’s about as far as the conversation can go as that’s about all the English that they know. Sometimes, just to throw them off, instead of asking “How are you?” I ask, “Ita kweys?” which is the Juba Arabic version of “Are you well?” They answer, “Ai,” (“Yes”) which is again about as far as the conversation can go as that’s about all the Arabic I know.

The kids also love to run up to me and shake my hand. Sometimes I feel like a politician or the pope walking down the road, having dozens of children run up to me to shake my hand and have me “bless” them. The curiosity of the Sudanese people is not confined to the children, though. The adults will usually stop and stare as I go by. On one of my trips, an older lady in the distance saw me walking, and she stopped and waved. When I smiled and waved back, she sprinted to the road, knelt to the ground, and held my hand. I wasn’t quite sure how to respond and wondered if she thought my shadow passing over here would heal her.

The faux-celebrity status was very uncomfortable to me, especially at first, but I am trying to take it in stride. I don’t enjoy usually being the center of attention but don’t have much of a choice here, so I figure I might as well make the best of it. I figure that I may be one of the few kawaaja that many of these people will come in contact w/, so I should try to make a good impression as much as I can.

After many days and trips to the Catholic diocese, I finally finished downloading Microsoft Access. I was so excited to have a unique project to work on for the children that I immediately got started putting together the database that I had been asked to create. Thankfully, my Access knowledge came back to me much more easily than I had expected, and the database has now been designed and built and is ready to be transferred to one of the office computers and to have the kids’ information begin to be input. I will probably work on inputting some of the kids’ information and on fine-tuning the database to be as useful as possible, but I imagine that I will soon move on to my next project of redesigning the accounting system here to make it simpler for the staff to use and more accurate for reporting purposes.

One of the recent additions to the children’s home has been a new pet monkey. For some time, the kids have had one monkey, named Johnny Cash. Well, now Johnny has a little friend, whom I named June Carter. We weren’t sure that June was a female monkey, so I thought if it were actually male, we could call it Jude Carter. When she first came, we kept June tied up so that she wouldn’t run away. She cried nonstop (One constant of life here is that there is ALWAYS someone, be it monkey or child, crying. I have quickly become highly desensitized to it and only respond when the volume and pitch indicate a high probability of imminent death or serious injury/maiming. The interval between cries is also very important. If they have enough time and presence of mind to get a full set of lungs, there’s no major issue.). Her cries rhythmically alternated between those of a deranged cat and a wild banshee. June now shares a large cage w/ Johnny Cash. At first Johnny was afraid of June, but now he is very friendly w/ her, if you get my drift. We may have to give the kids the “monkeys and the bees” talk sometime soon. 

Taking Soda

Our baggage arrived on Monday on a truck w/ the materials for the new building for the children. The suitcases were in sad shape, caked w/ dirt from the roads between Kampala and Nimule, but it was what was inside the suitcases that mattered: clothes, toiletries, beef jerky and also lots of medicine, toys, and games for the kids.

I took a shower that night for the first time w/ soap and shampoo. It was probably the best shower I’ve ever taken. The logistics of the operation are pretty simple. You pour water from a jug into a small basin, pour the water on you, lather up, and repeat the rinse process. There are lots of little creatures in the shower w/ you. The other night there was a very large and menacing looking spider in the shower w/ me. We made a mutual agreement not to try to kill the other. When I went to the shower the next day, he was still there. I broke our pact.

One of the things I am working on right now is building a database of all the kids’ information for the children’s home to use for administrative purposes and also to help them try to set up a sponsorship program. My computer does not have Microsoft Access, so I have to download a copy online. The bank next to the compound has not been letting us use their internet, so I have to travel to the other side of the village to steal wi-fi from the UN. I sit in a dirt alley between a hotel used by the Catholic Diocese of Torit and a razor-wire-topped brick wall that borders the UN compound and connect there. The file is very large and the internet connection very slow, so it takes a long time to download the program. I go each day and download as much as I can before my battery runs out. After three days, I currently have about 55% downloaded.

Unfortunately, Ross has been really busy working on some reporting stuff, so I have not had a chance to talk w/ him about some of the kids’ stories. Hopefully, I will have some more to share soon. The language barrier has been a little greater than I had expected, but I am finding ways to connect w/ the kids and love on them.

One final note, the other night we had a celebration w/ dancing and singing. We even bought Cokes for the kids so that they could “take soda.” There was a strange part of the program where one kid sang a song and several others did backup dancing and singing. If the performer or his backups did an especially good job, the other kids would go to them and put bottle caps in their pockets. Apparently, it’s like putting money in a street performer’s jar, but since they don’t have money, they use bottle caps. After it’s over, they return the bottle caps and repeat the process w/ new performers. It was fun to watch, and the kids loved it. Also, at one point, most of the dancing evolved (devolved?) into group dancing, by which I mean line dancing, by which I mean the Electric Slide, by which I mean absolutely hilarious. I had no idea it had made such inroads into the equatorial states of Africa. Apparently, it’s not just for 90’s middle school dances and current weddings where a middle-aged man who’s made too many trips to the open bar bribes the DJ to play it. Who knew?

Sweatin' to the Oldies

We arrived in Nimule on Thursday afternoon after a great adventure. We flew from Entebbe to Moyo, Uganda in a plane that was by far the smallest I had ever flown in. A pilot friend in Virginia had a less than stellar opinion of our airline company, and I was even less confident due to the fairly strong downpour during our takeoff. Thankfully, there were no problems, and we landed an hour or so later on a dirt strip in Moyo. There was one small building next to the airstrip w/ a desk and a few chairs inside. Surrounding this nondescript shack were several tukuls (huts) and a handful of locals who came out to see the great bird land. The next leg of our journey was an hour-long car ride through northern Uganda. We passed into Sudan at the bank of the Nile River. We then paid a local boat owner to take us down the river to Nimule. When we arrived at the dock, we got a couple of local boys to take us on their boda-bodas (motorcycles) to the children’s home, our home for the foreseeable future.

I thought that I would describe for you the physical conditions of South Sudan. Imagine yourself in a sauna. For those of you who went to UF, imagine being mid-field at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in the middle of a Gainesville afternoon during Summer A or B. You cannot shower or shave. You have no soap, shampoo, toothpaste, deodorant, or sunscreen. This continues for four straight days. During this time, you remain fully clothed w/ a short sleeve shirt and long pants. You have only one change of clothes. Hopefully by now I have dispelled any romantic visions of missions work in Africa. It certainly caught me by surprise. Because of the exorbitant cost of bringing our suitcases with us, we were separated from our luggage in Kampala.  It was planned that Pastor Juma would bring our suitcases to Nimule on Friday, but “due to unfortheen thircumtanthes” (about five people reading this will get that reference), his trip has been delayed until Monday. Hopefully, Pastor Juma will arrive by then, and I will be able to enjoy the meager creature comforts I packed that now seem like a care package sent directly from heaven.

I want to tell you about the kids who make up the children’s home here. I thought I would start by telling you the story of Mori Luka. Mori Luka was one of the first kids to join the children’s home. When the missionaries came to Nimule to begin laying the foundation for the children’s home, Mori Luka wandered by one day. His arms were bandaged but had not been redressed. When one of the missionaries took off the bandages to clean his wounds, the stench was overwhelming. After investigating Mori’s situation, they learned that he did have parents who were living, but they were alcoholics who paid little attention to Mori and his needs. He would usually wander around the village by himself. Mori suffers from epilepsy and often has seizures. It is believed that at some point he had a seizure and fell into an open fire, causing the burns on his arms that were later bandaged.

As he was used to wandering around the village on his own and not being a part of a community structure, Mori had difficulties when he first moved to the children’s home. He would often leave the compound w/o telling anyone and be gone for long periods of time. He would even defecate out in the open, b/c it seemed to him a perfectly natural thing to do. With love and attention from the Cornerstone staff and by being a part of a family unit w/ many brothers and sisters, Mori has made great progress. He still has seizures, but they are less frequent and less violent. He attends school and speaks Arabic well. He moves slower than the other kids and sometimes has difficulty understanding what is going on around him, but he is a sweet kid who knows that he is home and surrounded by people who love him.

It struck me the other night that God loves Mori, despite his infirmities and difficulties, just as much as He loves the other kids here and as much as He loves me. This shouldn’t come as a surprise when you think about it. Even though some may say that Mori’s works are inadequate compared to others’, the Bible says that all of our righteous acts are filthy rags. We have all fallen short of the glory of God.

One final word: God bless Coca-Cola and its worldwide supply chain. May its kingdom never end. 

Arrival

Three flights and many miles and hours after leaving Washington, D.C. on Monday, we touched down in Entebbe, Uganda last night. It was dark when we arrived, so I wasn’t able to get a good view from the sky. All of our luggage arrived on time in the right place, but it was a little lighter than what we had packed. Someone stole some Skittles and M&M’s that we had packed in a cooler for the kids. We haven’t done a thorough investigation yet, but hopefully that’s all that was taken. I hope that at least the Skittle bag was full of nothing but purple Skittles, which are not fit for human consumption.

Today we took a short drive into Kampala, the capital of Uganda, to complete a few tasks. Ross is meeting w/ Juma John, the pastor of the church in Nimule, and w/ Lawrence, the engineer of the new building project for the children’s home. Juma has been in Kampala to purchase supplies for the building. The project has been ongoing for the past three years. The money has been raised for the building, but it has been a challenge to nail down strict deadlines for progress (in some ways, Africa is not so different from the States…). We are also meeting w/ a student who used to live at the children’s home in Nimule. He was an exceptional student, so Ross’s family provided the funds for him to attend a better school in Uganda. He has a good chance at attending university next year. Finally, we are dropping off our luggage w/ Juma for him to take w/ him back to Sudan on the ground as it would cost more for us to pay for the extra weight on our flight.

I want to thank everyone who has supported the children’s home thus far w/ your donations and prayers. We had several suitcases full of medical supplies, toys, and candy (minus the aforementioned Skittles and M&M’s) for the kids. Hopefully, over the next few weeks, I can write less about daily itineraries and more about the lives of the kids that you are helping.

As I was sitting on one of our flights today, I started thinking about how different these kids’ lives and experiences are from mine. In their short time on earth, many of them have experienced more pain and suffering than I may ever see. Their poverty-stricken childhoods are completely different from my middle-class upbringing in the United States. In the eyes of the world, one could say that we have nothing in common. We do however share one very strong common bond: a savior. One thing that always strikes me on overseas trips is how big God is: bigger than the boxes I try to put Him in, bigger than my Christian ghetto, bigger than the whole United States.

I also thought about one thing that has continually popped up in the stories I’ve heard from the people who have spent time w/ the kids in Nimule, and that is their joy despite their suffering. Ross talked about how incredible that was to him when he first visited the children’s home, before he knew Jesus, before he had agreed to become director of the children’s home, even before the children’s home formally existed. These kids and the community have joyful lives that we Americans try to buy or self-medicate to possess but still can’t quite grasp. I’m interested in discovering this joy for myself.