Revisions and Refinements

I thought that I should describe a little more in-depth one particular event that I found especially humorous at the hospital on Friday. Anyone visiting the hospital here must bring some sort of paper so that the hospital staff can write notes on the person’s medical condition. I purchased an exercise book like the ones that the children use for school from a vendor across the dirt road from the hospital for 200 shillings (approx. $.10). After “checking in” at the hospital, I sat down for less than a minute and then was sent to a room to meet w/ someone whom I think had the title “medical attendant,” seemingly skipping in line the other people who were waiting (apparently the medical community of Sudan is also fascinated by the opportunity to practice on a kawaaja). I went into a dimly lit room where the medical attendant was waiting for me. He either had a small beach ball under his shirt or the most perfectly round belly I had ever seen. I wanted to rub it but refrained, as he was a very serious man who probably would not have believed me if I told him it was a sign of good luck in America. I described for him my symptoms, and he wrote them down in my little book. He asked me if I was eating well, and I said that I had probably lost 5-7 kilos since arriving in Sudan a couple weeks earlier. He then diagnosed me w/ anorexia and jotted it down in my book. I started to laugh but refrained as, again, he was a very serious man.

I think that I have finally recovered from my non-malarial illness. After leaving the hospital on Friday, I felt better, but that night a worse fever returned along w/ the chills. I went to bed early again that night and woke up in the night w/ my shirt and sheets completely soaked, drenched w/ sweat from me sweating out my fever. Saturday morning my fever and chills were gone, but my stomach was questionable. I spent most of Saturday and Sunday being nauseas and unable to eat. I guess it’s good that I only had one or two symptoms at a time. Having them all at once would have been really miserable.

I thought that I should temper or at least better explain my comment in the last entry about “bad theology.” First, I should say that I hear less than ¼ of what the kids say in morning devotion. When the kids are speaking to a group, they are so soft-spoken, especially when speaking in English, that one would have to place one’s ear approximately a centimeter away from the speakers’ lips to be able to hear them. Combine that w/ the fact that I don’t have particularly good hearing (a hereditary trait), and I am often left in the dark as to what is going on. However, that being said, a theme that seems to pop up in a lot of these sessions is something akin to a salvation by works. I often hear things along the lines of “Do good things, and God will reward you; do bad things, and bad things will happen to you.” While this may be a useful lesson when trying to manage 50+ kids and also teach them a moral education, I think it can become dangerously close to bypassing the gospel of grace. I just want to make sure that the kids understand Ephesians 2:8-9, which says that we are saved by grace through faith, not by works, so that no one can boast.

I have been thinking about what my next major project will be for the children’s home and have potentially settled on agriculture. I would like to set aside a small plot of land in the compound for a garden that the kids could help maintain. As my very limited experience w/ crop agriculture is confined to the harvesting of tobacco and I doubt the children’s home staff would be interested in growing that cash crop, this is an area where I will first have to expand my knowledge. I have also thought about trying to plant some tress around the compound for shade and fruit as the compound seems to be singularly devoid of any trees. They have apparently tried planting trees in the past but had limited success partially due to animals eating or trampling the young trees. We will probably have to fence off the trees in some way to encourage their survival.

Some people gave me money before I left America for me to use for the children here to meet needs that I came across, and I was finally able to make my first purchase w/ these funds. As in most every country besides the United States, the kids here play soccer (very incorrectly called “football”) almost exclusively. Their current soccer ball was in sad shape, tattered and worn and able to be inflated only about half as much as it should be. When one of the staff members, Akera, went to Gulu, Uganda this week to take Emmanuel, one of the older kids, to be enrolled in high school there, I gave him some money to buy a couple new soccer balls for the kids because the ones sold in the Nimule market were apparently of insufficient quality. I wish I could find some “American” footballs to indoctrinate them on the superiority of “real” football.