Life Down the Rutted Red Road

 

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.

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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.

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.

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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.)

 

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.

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.