Life Down the Rutted Red Road

Category: Life

Why not?!

A bride’s hands decorated with henna.

I am not married. I never have been.

In Sudanese eyes this is a rather incomprehensible thing. And, they are not particularly subtle about it. I almost make it a game to see how many minutes it will take after I have met someone new to get to the series of questions:

“Do you have any children?” No

“Do you have a husband?” No

“Why not?!”

The average is probably a generous ten minutes.

Everyone gets married. They even have polygamy which ensures that since men are more likely to die in battle (or from doing something stupid) the surplus women will still be able to have husbands. It is assumed in their language. You are either a girl or a married woman – there is no word for an unmarried woman. And the root word for a woman without a man is related to the word for suffering.

And so, out of their love and care for me they have offered, many times, to resolve my terrible suffering. I have had brothers offered to me, once even while the future sister-in-law who was kindly volunteering him was literally in the midst of pushing out her baby. Sister, how about we focus on you having this baby and talk about that later.

I have had sons offered to me, even if they still happen to be in primary school. Umm, I am older than I look.

I have had husbands offered to me by their existing wives, often after said wife had just delivered a baby and I had managed to stop the baby crying. In such circumstance I wasn’t sure how much they wanted a co-wife and how much they just wanted a baby minder. Sorry being a co-wife is in my ‘never going there and if I do start to think about it please take me to the mental asylum’ basket.

I have had men offer themselves, or more often the case, simply state, “I will take you to be my wife”. Probably the most original line I had thrown at me occurred one time as I walked into town past a group of youths lounging near the bridge. “Sister, where are you going?” a young man called out, “your husband is sitting right here”. I almost stopped to congratulate him on his clever line. Almost.

Even if they don’t have a handy relative to offer to me that does not stop the discussion from proceeding to the “why not?” part. Particularly when they learn that I am not even booked, though it did take me a while to work out that means to be promised to someone.

Over time I have used a variety of explanations for my marital deficiency. If the question came up at work, I often responded with “men are too much work” or “I am too busy”. They agreed with the fact of these statements, but not their validity as excuses, for, of course, I could just pay them to do my household work.

In some other settings I would declare that “I am too expensive” or “my father doesn’t like cows”, cows being the usual dowry payment made to the family of the girl. I didn’t tell them that my father prefers sheep which are, in their eyes, much cheaper and inferior animals. But then they would declare they would pay whatever was required. If I added, “okay, but my father is too far away to negotiate said matter”, they would remind me that though they may live in mud huts with no running water they do have cell phones.

If I was in a more spiritual setting I sometimes responded with “God is enough” or “I am waiting for God to bring me someone”. Though I was discouraged from the later answer when one lady’s retort was, “God is bringing them, but you are refusing”. Well, yes, I am. Have you seen the last five who asked me?

And though sometimes the questions annoy me and sometimes they just make me laugh, they do reveal what my interrogators values.

Relationships. Family. Children.

In the country of my birth, often one of the first questions on meeting someone is “what do you do?” Yes, family is important, but often the sense of identity and worth is more enmeshed with what job you have or where you live or what you own or even how you spend your free time. There can still be that awkward pause when it is revealed that the person doesn’t have a significant other, which information may have been extracted by a delicate enquiry such as, “who do you live with?” or just deduced from general questions about hobbies. But even this awkwardness is brushed over by the reassurances that at least you have a great job, home etc. Now there are those unfortunate enough to have neither relationship nor job, but as this just gives more time for chillin’ at the beach often not too much sympathy is aroused.

But back to those questions from my neighbours and the man selling me sugar and the woman I am examining at the health clinic, questions that by my cultural lens are rude inquisitions into something that is none-of-your-business-thank-you-very-much, they are really just asking “what is your identity?” For to them relationships are what defines who they are, their identity and their worth. And is this not a better definition than a job title or post code or the latest trophy purchase?

So how am I to respond to their questions? If I choose to embrace their value of relationships, I can no longer skirt their questions with excuses of busyness and work, anchoring my importance in the “great work” that I am doing. I must wrestle with my own sense of identity. But without work to hide behind this can be a fearsome thing. They are waving in my face the insecurities that come with my single status. Who am I if I am not a wife? If I am not a mother? Why have I not been chosen or become the beloved of another? Is it some failure or lack in me? It is easy to start to think that I am not worthy. That I have failed. That I have not been enough of something.

And in some ways, those things are true. I am not enough. I have failed. I am not worthy. But, that is the case for everyone, even those who happen to have a ring on their finger and have supplied a satisfactory number of children.

But, thankfully, my worthiness or ability to assemble the magic constellation of characteristics, whose secret formula I have obviously not worked out yet, is not the basis of all relationships. There is another relationship in which I can anchor my significance.

And so, my answer to the inevitable questions has simply become this: God is my Father. I am his daughter. He is the one making the arrangements. You discuss it with him. But, mind you, I am not agreeing to anything unless he has spoken to me as well.

September 23, 2019
Travelling through the wilderness

I recently travelled through a wilderness. Not one of those New Zealand ‘wildernesses’, where plants still blanket the hills and birds still chatter but the palette is muted shades of brown rather than vibrant greens. A wilderness, wilderness. Where there is sand and rocks. And more sand and more rocks. And a very, very occasional blade of grass in a sheltered crevice. That kind of wilderness. Where as far as the eye can see, which isn’t actually that far as the dust obscures the horizon, there is brown rock. Nothing else.

Although I am normally a green plant and blue water kind of girl, I didn’t mind going through the wilderness. I was in an air-conditioned car. The road had good signposts telling us which way to go. We even had a GPS tracing out our path for us and telling us there was only one hour until our destination, which was back in my preferred green and blue world. I knew where I was, I knew where I was going, and I knew I would soon be out of this wilderness. I could even appreciate its stark beauty, the cool air blowing on me insulating me from its harshness.

Sadly though, that doesn’t seem to be how God normally does wilderness experiences. Instead, when he rescued his people from slavery, the first thing he did was lead them into the wilderness, with the instructions to wait here until I say move. And when he did say move, he didn’t give them the next thirty-day plan. He simply showed them how to get to where they needed to set up their tents for another night. And that was all. Until the next day. When they were hungry, he provided them with the food they needed for that day. They did know their end destination but not the route they would take to get there or how long or how hard it would be until they arrived. They had no air conditioning.

I don’t like that kind of wilderness adventure. I like knowing the plan, because then I can pretend that I am in control. I like knowing what is around the corner, so I can be prepared and then able to help everyone else (and so then they think I’m great). I like being able to take care of things myself instead of being stuck in the middle of nowhere with no water and being in desperate need. I like being able to say I trust God, without actually having to put that into day to day practice.

Though I might like this control and competence, they are not actually good for me. They obstruct the flow of life and so desertification starts creeping into the edges of my soul.

And so sometimes God knocks on my air-conditioned window and calls me out of the car to follow him down not even a track into the wilderness. And he doesn’t tell me where he is taking me or for how long we will be wandering around in this unknown. He simply says trust me.

May 20, 2019
Dry season

It is now the dry season. It has not rained for a couple of months and will not do so for another four months or more. There is still a tinge of green in some plants and some of the animal drinking holes by the side of the road still have some murky water dampening their bases, but that memory of rain is not going to last long. Already children have started digging in dried-up river beds to find water for them and their animals to drink. Dust from the drying earth and ash from post-harvest burn-offs mingles in the air creating spectacular sunrises and sunsets before settling as a red blanket on every surface.

The ground thirsts.

In the mornings I wake up to the sound of the girls chattering as they go to the water point in the not quite dawn light. I hear the particular squeak of the wheelbarrow that our neighbour uses to bring our water. (Males only transport water if they have something to cart it with such as a wheelbarrow or bike or donkey cart. Females carry the 10 or 20 litre containers on their heads. And I, being neither graceful enough nor strong enough to carry it on my head, pay the neighbour boy to bring it). Oh good, maybe he is going early to get water for us. Or maybe not, and we will spend the rest of the day trying to find him as we watch the water in our barrel get lower, using and re-using water so that we still have enough to drink.

In the nights I wake up to my two-year-old neighbour’s cry, “Ana daayir mooya. I want water”. It is the first sentence he learned to speak. It is his most frequent statement. He guzzles from his bottle and goes back to sleep. I peel myself off my foam mattress, to which most of my body water seems to have transferred, and I also take a mouthful or two from my water bottle.

I thirst.

This coming year Ramadan will fall at the border between the dry and wet seasons. Maybe the rains will come on time and we will dance in the water that marks the end of the hottest time of year. (Okay, maybe only the khawajaat are crazy enough to dance in the rain – the Sudani are too worried about getting their clothes dirty and having to carry water to wash them). Or maybe the men and women will sit in the dry, dusty 45° heat and not swallow a drop of water from dawn to dusk. I get to ten in the morning and already the thirst drives me to drink another cup or two of water. And yet, out of discipline, out of devotion, or pressure or pride they do not.

There is a problem with the water points. This one’s pump has stopped working. For that one the people have delayed in bringing the diesel to run the generator-powered pump. The queues grow. Children spend their days waiting at the water point for their jerrycan to get to the front of the queue. The chatter in the early morning becomes desperate questions about where to find water.

They thirst.

———————————————–

There was one time where for three days they travelled in the desert without finding water. When they did find it, it was bitter. Another time they were directed to camp in a new place, but when they arrived there was no water: no spring, no wells, not even a dried-up river bed. And they were not just a few: 600,000 men plus women and children and animals. Even if they only used water for drinking and walked around with cloths in their noses to block out the smell of unwashed bodies and clothes – that is still a lot of water and a very long queue of jerrycans. They cried out against their leader, “You have brought us to this place to die of thirst!” They grumbled. They complained. They even wished to return to the place where they had toiled under the lash of whips.

From our comfortable West where water always comes out of the tap and a single flush of the toilet is 20 litres down the drain, we role our eyes at their grumbling and want to point out that they got free food for 40 years – so what were they complaining about.

And yet here I sit in my bit of shade (oh shade, it is such a wonderful thing) with my drink bottle sitting next to where I write, and I wonder that they waited three days. I would be complaining after a couple of hours.

We thirst. We cry out.

And the leader was told, “Go strike that rock”. And he struck the Rock and water flowed out from that place that had been struck.

And they were satisfied.

January 11, 2019
Food Lines

During the wet season, all the roads to this region are impassable due to the rains. When the supplies that were brought in by truck during the dry season are finished, the only way for fresh supplies to come in is by air. With close to 100,000 refugees in the area dependent on monthly rations, this adds up to a lot of food.

So, for several months children’s shouts of joy rise from throughout the camp as the back of a low flying cargo plane opens and white or orange sacks of food fall through the air. The children climb onto roofs and termite mounds and up trees – anywhere that gives them a better view – and often they count down the four or five drops each plane makes before it heads back to the capital. And maybe these drops start to erase for them the memories of the fear that came when planes would circle their homes and the bombs would fall. Now it is life, not death coming from the back of a plane. They shout with joy and then get back to playing in the dirt.

From the fifteenth of each month their parents, or maybe the aunt or grandmother they have been sent to stay with, will join in long lines outside towering tarp warehouses, waiting to receive these rations from the sky. Every month their wallet sized ration cards are punched, and they are given sorghum, which is then taken to small diesel fed taahuunas to be ground into flour, and they may also receive oil or beans or lentils. If they want to eat something else, they can try and sell their rations to buy something from the market or they are reliant on what food they grow on the swamp come sun-baked plains that surround them. But there may not be much of this left after the harsh climate, natural pests and other people have taken what they have laboured to grow – for after all it is not their land.

Maybe that is why the adults do not shout for joy when they see the food fall from the sky, or when they hoist another 50kg bag of sorghum up onto their heads. They are grateful – this food keeps their children out of the severely malnourished category. It is one of the reasons that many walked for days to reach this place. But each time their card is punched it is a reminder of the label that brings them shame and grief: refugee. In this place they are people holding their hands out for assistance, unable to provide enough for their families. Even more, here they are people removed from their land. It is not just the fruit trees and the peaks and valleys and slightly cooler temperatures of their home land that they long for – though they do often speak of these – but the grief is being removed from the land of their ancestors, the place where they know who they are and where they belong. Here they fight to hold onto who they are through songs and dances that go on into the nights and their rituals of coffee, new babies and harvest. But as they live here on dust plains they fear that their children, who are forgetting the fear of planes, will also forget their identity as the people of jebel, of the mountains.

And so, each month as they walk away from the line of people with food that will last, if they stretch it just right, until the next food line, maybe they stoop just a little bit lower.

Although all my neighbours are refugees, I am here by choice. When the food rations were late this last month, as maybe potholes or breakdowns or red tape caused the trucks to be delayed on the now-open roads, I did not go hungry as some of my neighbours did. I could go to the market and buy more food. If this place gets too much for me or I just get tired of not having indoor plumbing, I can hop on a plane and leave. I am not dependent on the whims of international politics or the generosity of nations who to many of my neighbours are simply a name they cannot read under the ‘Donated By’ stamp on their sacks of food.

Yet the other day I stood in a line holding out my hands, waiting to receive. I, too, am in need. On my right and left were women whose backs are probably sore from carrying their rations home this week (though considering the loads they normally carry possibly not) and whose fingers are so calloused they can pick up burning coals. And yet we stood together in our need. We held our hands out to receive a little bit of bread. A ritual started to remember a people who suffered in a country not their own. A ceremony deepened when someone broke bread and shared it among his friends, knowing it would be his body that would be broken for their sake the next day. A reminder, refugee or not, that without food there is no life, and yet to truly live we do not just need this bit of bread in our hands, this sack of sorghum on our heads, we need something more.

We stood not just as recipients of a well-dressed donor in an air-conditioned office writing a cheque for those people in a far-away land who are dirty and needy and broken. We stood as recipients of the King who became a refugee and a citizen of an oppressed people. The king who suffered so that our identity is not just refugee or foreign khawaja but children of the king who belong at a table in a land that will be ours. There we will sit at the table together and share the bread and we will know unfettered joy.

Until then, I will keep holding out my hands, waiting to receive what I need, and having received I will turn and sit once more amongst these people who, yes, for now are refugees, but who are also so much more than that.

February 5, 2018
Harvest

It is harvest time. The paths are once again widening as the ground nuts that were planted all around them are pulled up, the children eagerly cracking open the brown shells to snack on the white flesh (and sometimes just getting impatient and eating the brown shells as well). The white and red sorghum heads wave heavy in the air and most days someone comes to the gate and asks if we want to buy a pumpkin. Cucumbers are sold four for 5 cents in the market and drum beats pulsate through the dusk as people celebrate the new moon of harvest.

And each week at the front of church a pile is made of produce that people have harvested from their gardens.

This past Sunday when the sermon was much shorter and the announcements longer than usual I gradually realised something different must be going on. (The problem with only understanding maybe fifty percent of what is being said is that there is a tendency to be a bit slow on the uptake.) After church everyone filed out like usual, and then they went to one of the houses on the compound and started bringing out vegetables and placing them in a row beside the church.

As I looked, I realised they had gathered together every item of food that is grown here. There was a red bouquet of sorghum heads, the main stable which is ground into flour and then cooked in a variety of ways, along with some yellow heads of maize and some millet. The millet is mainly grown to be a hedge around gardens but some people do harvest whatever the birds have not already eaten. There were the vegetables: tomatoes, eggplants, cucumber, okra, the marrow like umyong, red beans and pumpkin. Other than the cucumber which they often eat like an apple or cut up in pieces and serve with some salt, everything else they cook. That we make salad is not quite normal. There were the cash crops of ground nuts and sesame, which I am very grateful for as they are my main form of snacks and they are a key way for people to get some cash. For sweetness there was a long stick of sugarcane and a bundle of the red kerikede hibiscus flowers that is used to make tea and the only fruit that is grown here, watermelon. The watermelon they had probably weighed more the one-year olds who were making faces at me from the safety of their mother’s arms.

Once all the produce was in a row suitable enough to placate the grandmothers who hovered and the church leaders, a person was assigned to each one. Standing in a line they first held up their item of food and waved it around while they sang. And then the pastor took the items one by one, sang a refrain that included the name of the item, and then handed it back. The children squealed as water and then sand was thrown into the air, some flicking onto their skin.

And then it was done. Food offered up with thankfulness, blessing sought. Time to enjoy a feast.

We sat down in groups, from the young children to the elders of the church. A large silver tray was placed in the middle of each group containing a plate of pumpkin sauce and one of beans with kisra (a thin wrap-like stable made from fermented sorghum) nestled around it. Breaking off pieces of kisra we dipped them into the sauce with our right hands and ate. Sharing the fellowship of the offering together.

The harvest service was also combined with remembrance of Martin Luther and the start of the Reformation in a German town some 500 years ago. It seemed rather surreal sitting in our grass and tarp roofed church listening to this story. Ten minutes earlier the church had been sweating and pulsating with song and the high-pitched undulating calls of the women, as the congregation, even the grandmothers, danced, hiking their toobs back into place as they bobbed up and down to the rhythm pounded out on the stretched-skin drums, with their movements directed by marching whistles and augmented by tin-oil-containers-turned-shakers. And then they sat and listened to the story of some white man in a country they have never seen and possibly never heard of, who wrote something in a language that they do not know, who argued with staid men in fancy cloaks who worshipped in grand cathedrals. And I do not think he had drums in his church service.

And yet, though these worlds are so far removed from each other, it was through the convictions and actions of this man and others like him, that the women now sitting next to me swathed in their colourful toobs and feeding their babies are able to listen to the Word, read in Arabic, English and Otoro (one of their tribal languages). They hear about a nation, maybe even older than theirs, that was told to offer to YHWH the firstborn and the firstfruits. And they dance with joy because they know that even if the harvest is not as plentiful as they want, even if the war continues and they have to stay in this refugee settlement, even if some nights their bellies go hungry, the firstborn has been offered up and accepted for them and they have been invited to the one feast that really counts.

On that day we will join the firstborn at the feasting table and hands that are black and white and scarred through the middle will dip into the plate together.

The harvest will truly have come.

(And there will be no germs.)

October 26, 2017
Jebena

Jebena is the name of a little silver pot with a spout that goes up at 45 degree angle.

I am sure there are proper ones made out of silver but the ones they use here are made out of some semi-metal substance that appears spray painted silver. But high or low quality it is what must be used to pour coffee into the little black and white china cups that are placed on a round silver tray and shared among the guests. And its name is taken and used for the whole process.

Come to Jebena

And the women come. Clapping their hands at the entrance to the compound they wait to be invited in. Their long colourful gauzy tuups flutter in the wind and the babies wiggle in their arms. Hands reach to pat shoulders and then grasp hands in welcome. Voices overlap one another in enthusiastic greetings.

Even if they just live on the other side of the tarp fence and shared charcoal in the morning or wandered through on multiple occasions to find their children or as it is the shortest route to the water hole. This is different.

This is the time for Jebena.

The rough wooden frames strung with ropes that serve as beds are brought out, draped in a sheet and offered to the women to sit on. The babies get passed around and cooed at to see who can get the best smile.

The stove has been fanned until the charcoals are glowing. The coffee beans clatter as they are poured onto a small frypan and stirred around until they turn from white-grey to a dark brown.

A glowing charcoal is removed from the stove and placed in a small brazier with some cinnamon or other bark, blowing fragrance over the women and helping keep the flies away.

And then one of the women will take the mortar and pestle. And first some dried ginger and then some cardamom seeds, and then the roasted coffee beans are crushed to powder. But, this is not just utilitarian pounding. The pestle bangs against the side and the base, becoming a beat that calls the hands of the others to join in the rhythm and then someone will start a song. And they will continue weaving their melodies until they have a smooth powder – or someone has an interesting story to tell.

Welcome to Jebena.

Water is boiled with cloves and the ground coffee and spices added in forming a thick dark liquid. The dark liquid is transferred into the jebena. Sugar is spooned into the tiny cups, taking up nearly half the volume and then the coffee poured through a strainer with more spices until the liquid grazes the brim of the cup.

Cups are passed around and emptied amidst chatter and laughter and the crunching on roasted ground nuts. As the cups are emptied they are refilled. Once there are only the dregs left in the pot more water is added and then cups filled up again. This is the time to relax, to tell stories, to laugh, to be.

This is Jebena.

These women are refugees. Bombs falling from airplanes and fleeing homes and living in a land not their own: that is part of their stories. But this holding of a fragile cup, the shushing of the babies, this roasting and pounding of beans, the laughter over a story being told, this pouring of steaming liquid over crushed spices and herbs, the blending of voices in song, and the sweetness of (a lot of) sugar: they have also made this their lives.

This little cup of Jebena.

“Come for Jebena” they call to me. Ah, let me drape my tuup and I will come.

Not for the coffee, though I will drink it, but because I too need this Jebena. I need to learn to savour the process and not just the outcome. To receive and not just to give. To value ritual, instead of just efficiency. To delight in being with others and not just in being useful. To learn to love and to live life even in the midst of hard. And to be filled again with wonder that the One who has invited me to the feast at the end of it all has also invited me to join in the preparation.

Ginger. Cardamom. Sugar. Laughter. Singing. Neighbours. Coffee. Being. Love.

Jebena.

August 9, 2017
Let protocol be observed

On Saturday I attended the graduation ceremony for the local health training institute. I was cordially invited by one of the graduating midwives who now works for us. I knew I should attend to support the institution and the graduates, though my enthusiasm for attending was dimmed a little by seeing that a whole series of speeches were listed to occur from 10am to 1pm. And having a little experience of events like this and African time, I anticipated that the event could use up most of my day off. However, my strong sense of responsibility and a small amount of cultural curiosity resulted in my sitting, the only white face in probably 400 people: gowned graduates, current students in their blue uniforms, proud family members and the important ‘big’ people on the plush couches facing us up the front.

I had arrived on time, knowing the likelihood of it actually starting as scheduled was rather slim, but I did not want to arrive after the big people and create any more of a spectacle than my white skin would already create. I need not have worried. No one else was there, other than some current students who were still washing the dust off the chairs. I did not just want to stand there and watch them work, so I asked if I could join in. They did look at me a bit strange, but I was given a cloth and was allowed to do the last couple of chairs. The girls did speak to me afterwards so I must not have completely upset the order of things.

After the chairs were clean I was escorted to an area of chairs labelled for NGOs. I sat and waited for someone else to turn up so I was not the only one sitting down in a sea of chairs, while the security guards, with their guns clutched in front of them, looked on. Other guests did slowly dribble in, and, finally, an hour after it was due to start, the sound of the local marching band could be heard. The band came into view with their brass instruments, blue uniforms with gold embroidery and tassles; followed by the important guests, graduates and current students.

Being a high context culture, the bigger something is, the more formal it is. And graduating is a big thing. So, there was present the newly elected governor sitting in the robes given for a doctorate. Next to him was the newly appointed minister of health also in graduating robes, the deputy mayor, another minister, the principal of the institution and a few other important people.

After the singing of the school song by a select choir (during which I was glad that I do not have perfect pitch), the speeches began. Now, it is my understanding, that in beginning a speech, you must acknowledge all of the important people. Individually. For every speech. There were quite a few important people. There were quite a few speeches. I was practising my attentive face.

However, after a couple of speeches that followed this protocol, some of the students put on an item. And all they had to say was, “Let protocol be observed” and then they could just go on with whatever they were doing. Without having to mention every important person by name! And this happened several times.

I was excited. Not only might there be a hope that the programme would finish before the middle of the afternoon, but I had learned some magic words. Words that can be said that allow you to show proper respect, while allowing you to just get on with what you need to do.

The speeches continued and the certificates were handed out. Family members and friends ran screaming to their graduating ones and draped tinsel and embroidered sheets around their necks. Huge smiles with glistening white teeth were flashed before cameras.

My smile was also on my face. The ceremony finished at 1. The speeches were actually not that boring. I got to see some happy graduates. I was given free bottles of Sprite and water.

And I learnt that there are some magic words that enable you to skip the boring bits.

Now if only I could learn those magic words at hospital and in relationships.

Though, I have a sneaking suspicion, that sometimes you just have to do the hard boring work.

March 10, 2016
On Fire

Now is the time of karanga. The season where it does not rain for months, so that the dust in the air obscures the mountains and the heat shrivels the grass and leaves. It is also the season of fire, but not as in billboards with those arrows pointed to “very high fire risk” and news bulletins of out of control bush fires. Fire season as in “what shall we burn tonight?”

The other evening we decided to burn. There was a thick blanket of fallen teak leaves (most leaves at least the size of a large dinner plate) near the area where my three year old neighbour has a tyre-swing. Her mother does not like snakes. Snakes like fallen teak leaves.

Have matches, will burn. Bye bye snakes. Happy mother, happy child.

We swept the edges of the leaf carpet so that the leaves were close enough together to catch well, and so that the edge of the pile was demarcated so that, at least in theory, the fire would stop and not set the rest of the compound on fire. After using a match to catch the first leaves, we carried burning leaves to intervals along the carpet to create a row of fire. And soon there was a blaze around 20 metres long and at least 5 metres high. The heat pushed me back and turned my face red. The textured brown waves of leaves became a fine black dress on the ground. And then there were no more leaves to burn and the flames became glowing gold specks on the ground and then simply the aroma of smoke in the air.

Bye bye leaves. Bye bye snakes. Happy mother, happy child.

————

They said it was a bush fire. Maybe it was a burn off that got out of control. Maybe a charcoal stove that got overturned. I do not know. But, I know what her screams sound like as we take the dressings off her arms and legs and try and remove the burned dead skin.

They brought her to us wrapped in a sheet two days after the fire. By then another child had died from the burns. After two weeks of dressings and care I am sure she will live. Will she want to though?

Scarred skin. Arms that will not straighten. Haunted eyes.

————-

Flames mesmerise me. As long as they do not touch me. As long as they do not make me too hot. As long as their smoke does not slink into my lungs. As long as they stay contained within the boundaries I set for them.

I like comfortable, comforting fire.

I like a comfortable, comforting God that stays within the boundaries of my life that I set for him.

But he is an all-consuming fire.

Will I let his fire purify me, to chase away the evil that lurks within, to nourish the ground so that new growth sprouts up? Or will I let it scar me and constrict me?

January 26, 2016
Faithful

The last time I saw him he was pushing his walker with one hand and pulling a wooden trolley with Bibles on it with the other hand. A white bandage was taped to his age-spotted forehead, and a notice on his door proclaimed that he had been sick. It took a few of my increased decibels of “hellos” for him to notice me. Even then he barely paused from his task of stacking the Bibles in the cupboard at the end of the weekly rest-home service.

When he finished his task he looked rather bemused that I was still standing there. He did not recognise me. My statement of, “I’m the speaker from South Sudan who you support” was probably not loud enough for him to comprehend. But his hearing aids did enable him to gather something about Sudan. “Sudan. I have supported that place for many years”. And then I he went back to putting the wooden trolley into place.

When I had last visited him three years earlier, when age had restricted him to a rest home but not yet taken his cognition, he had mentioned that he had been supporting and praying for Sudan since before my parents were born. From his bedside cabinet he had pulled out newsletters he had received over the years and showed them to me. And hearing I was a newby in South Sudan, he had a couple of times a year put some support into my account.

A couple of weeks after my last visit I heard that he had died. A few minutes later I stood up and shared with a group about ‘my work’ in South Sudan.

And it made me think. For now I have the privilege of being in this country. Of using my youth, my energy, my skills to serve. And there is a certain glamour and excitement associated with it (though that can quickly rub off with all the unglamorous things). I get to send out newsletters, to write blog posts, and to be introduced as so and so.

But in the end the question is will I be faithful? On the days when people take advantage of me, when despite my efforts the babies still die, when I still do not understand the culture, when I watch a country destroy itself, will I be faithful? When I can no longer run but require a frame, when my hearing has faded and glasses no longer fix my eyesight, will I still be faithful?

Will one day I be found pushing a wooden trolley?

July 12, 2015
When I’m on leave

I know, I know. I’m starting off a blog about life in South Sudan by talking about life not in South Sudan. The life where you stand in the supermarket aisle trying to work out what to choose, instead of knowing exactly what you are going to have for lunch and dinner: beans and rice. Where you get to squeeze your nephews and read them a story instead of squinting your eyes at just the right angle so the pixels on skype align to something that resembles a face or maybe gloop. Where you get prodded by the doctor and have the plaque on your teeth scratched off by the dentist instead of living with I-hope-nothing-goes-wrong-because-there-is-no-one-in-the-country-who-can-fix-it. Or my preferred state of ignorant bliss.

Or you could make a new website.

Ta-da.

Now, I just actually have to try and keep it up to date. In the previous edition of my website, I did manage to post some things in 2012 and 2013 but sadly 2014 or 2015 did not make a show. I could use the excuse that I’ve been busy, saving lives and all that. There is a war on, you know. And I am in the bush in the middle of Africa.

I almost believe myself.

But, despite these obstacles and means of procrastination I’ll try again this time, because I want others to see and experience a little of what I do everyday – when I’m not on leave.

June 10, 2015