On the Road - First Week in Akobo

I think the easiest way to do this will be to just post my journal, maybe once a week, for now. The newest will be on top.  Later, maybe not so often.  We will see...Enjoy and keep those emails coming!

Journal

12/23/11

IT IS GOOD NEWS TODAY!  Everyone is scurrying around all excited because the hospital is going to reopen.  They will be cleaning all day today to make sure it is clean when the patients start to arrive tomorrow. They received the word last night and the phones were buzzing and voices were filled with excitement.  I heard Dr. W call to have it announced on the radio.  I thought that was a little strange, bt I am discovering technology is as important here as at home.  Only at breakfast I learned “announce it on the radio” means someone will take a pa horn – like the band leaders use at the football games – and walk up and down the roads shouting it out for people to hear. 

I am going to be very glad there is a veranda on it, because I haven’t seen any shade.  I tried to get them to build it closer to the river where it would get good shade and the breeze, but they had a good point – the bank is falling in, so it wouldn’t take long for my house to go with it.  I checked it several times today.  Most of the afternoon, it sat in the direct sun, which with a zinc roof will be very hot.  But, by five, the area was covered in shade and there appeared to be a good breeze coming from the river.  I will have to start checking it and see where the best breeze and most shade comes through during the day so that I know which direction to face it.

It has been a pretty quiet day for me.  Everyone is busy getting ready for Christmas, but I did have fun going to the market.  It was nice to get out on the road and greet people.  Some of the children are still very afraid and cry when they see me, but we are getting to know each other.  I loved the little girl who ran screaming behind her mother’s back and very tentatively would peek her head out, only to scream and go running back again.  Before she was finished, she finally reached out one tiny little finger and touched the end of mine.

Not everyone was so afraid, I had many laughs and many greetings along the way.  And the sense of “home” as I stopped and played ball with the boys on the road and took pictures of the children.  When I went by the church tonight, Rev. Peter said “I heard you went to the market today”  “Yes, and I even bought something”.  Everyone gathered around laughed and he smiled and said “Good, that is very good”.  I thought he might not be happy because I went by myself, but he seemed pleased.  The more I get out the more people I will meet and the less afraid they will be.  It will make my job much easier when I get started.

Tonight, I am sitting in my room, thinking what a good day it has been.  I am listening to the sounds of the people gearing up for the Christmas celebration.  There is much singing and chanting and drumming in the air tonight.  It is a real sense of celebration.  Tonight as I watched the sun go down I watched the people with boxes and suitcases, travelers, begin to arrive to spend the holiday with their friends and families.  Much like we do.

I am excited for tomorrow to come.  It is indeed going to be a celebration.  It begins at the church at 12:30 with prayers.  At 1 we will begin to march through the town and come back to the church at 4:30 for more prayers.  Then everyone will disappear until 8:30 when they will come to the church and sing and pray until 12:30 to welcome the little Christ child.  Then we will all disappear again.  But at 8:00 sharp!  Sunday morning we will again come to the church to worship and pray and sing.

It sounds like it is going to be a spectacular couple of days!

12/22/11 Reality

I don’t really have a place that is “mine’ yet, but I will soon.  I have finally gone through my boxes and rearranged my room so it is more livable.  I can use the table for an office, and sometimes I can get the internet there, but, hopefully, most of my time will begin to be spent in the church compound.

These first few days have been busy days of getting settled, meeting and greeting people and learning my way around. It wil be many days of being still and knowing that God is in charge here and my job is to wait and listen and learn.  I read a prayer that really makes a lot of sense to me in this time and in this place. It is from the book “Leadership Prayers” by Richard Kreigbaum.  “…though we may not all look at reality in the same way, help us see the same reality and agree on its meaning for us, whether we like it or not.  …  somehow God, in all our difference and despite all the informational vagaries, give us a shared reality, a similar idea of how thing truly are for us. …”

That is what this time of waiting and listening is all about.  It is about learning to put aside my western eyes and learning to see through Nuer eyes, so, together, we can begin to blend our two realities into a shared reality that is pleasing to God.

For me, the hard part will be learning to set aside the American mentality that we need to get it done­- now, and the American mentality that work is only successful if you can make the line go higher on the graph.  It is remembering that numbers on a page are not nearly as important as the lives  that are touched and remembering that the results of the work I do in this time and in this place may not ever be seen in my lifetime but in the generations to come.

For me, reality means learning to plant seeds and wait for them to grow. I will have to remember what “Homeless Jesus” used to tell me on a regular basis, “God gives you the seeds to plant.  It is your job to plant them.  It is God’s job to make them grow”.

And the reality of my western eyes is that I have to remember not every seed will grow, and not every seed will be what I expect it to be.  But they are God’s seeds and they will be what He wants them to be.

I am constantly amazed by the commitment of the church to make me feel welcome and their commitment to help me adjust to living here.  Rev. Stephen comes each morning to tell me what the program for the day is. Then he returns during the break from his workshop to come and teach me the language.  The women come also.  The past two days it has been between 5 and 7 women who give up their day to learn and laugh with me. 

10 minutes until 7 pm, this is the perfect time of day.  They sky is a pinkish orange and the land around me is lit with a soft glow.  The South Sudanese colors which are ususally bright anyway take on an extra brilliance this time of day.  The people are beginning the trek home.  There is a hum in the air I don’t quite know how to describe, the hum of chattering voices; some talking softly, some singing, some drums beating in the background, and always the high, excited pitch of the children’s voices.  The air is beginning to fill with the scent of the dinner fires, the crickets are buzzing and the owl over my head is beginning his evening cry.  There is the soft lowing of the cattle as they are herded towards homes down the road.  I don’t know where the goats are that were munching earlier, but they seem to have wandered on home.  The ladies walk by with pots and buckets and bundles of sticks that are longer than they are tall balanced on their heads.  I watch the stream of people heading through the grass as they go towards home of friends.  It is that God time of day, when all is right with the world and it is easy to imagine peace prevails and there is no fear of tribal conflicts or soldiers on the roads or what is waiting in the bush.  It is a time of day that is so difficult to describe, and perhaps I am not supposed to.  Perhaps it is time to be still and know that God is here, and make room in my day for his presence as the daylight fades to darkness.

12/21/2011

Today is the day Michael left and I am alone in this new home for the first time.  It is a very strange feeling.  My eyes are full of tears that won’t fall.  Not sad tears!  Just tears of emotions that have been held inside for a very long time.  They will fall _sometime today and it will be a great cleansing.

I can’t wait for a normal to begin, and yet I am perfectly content, happy and very, very peaceful in this new life that is a series of events and waiting for the next one.  It is going to be a very, very good life if today is any indication of what is to come.

I am surrounded by a church that is committed to making sure that I am well cared for and taken care of.  The women have come every day to visit and to take me to the church for some kind of activity.  Today it is language lessons.

They are going to be very hard taskmasters!  Rev. Stephen Nyok, is a very serious teacher.  He came to pick me during his lunch break and spent most of it helping me learn new words and greetings, when he left, the women took over.  He has a big black board and writes the Nuer word on one side and the English on the other, and let the drills begin.  When he left to go back to his training three or four women took over.  We had a lot of fun laughing at the ways their mouth moves and mine doesn’t, there are some sounds I am just not sure it is going to be possible for me to make. But, we had a lot of fun with me trying.

Like women everywhere, we had to talk about hair.  One lady had to take down my pony tail and play with it.  Before she was done, I had a new hairdo.  I made the motions I was going to cut my hair short like theirs, and it was a resounding chorus of “no, no”.  They don’t have to try and wash this mop of hair leaning over a bucket with bats flying in and out and praying the guys next door didn’t decide to stay out late and come home while I am doing it – highlighted by the silhouette of me in the “shower”!

 “Shower” is a term I use very lightly.  It is a concrete room with a small window at the top, about 3 feet square with blue sheet tacked up about a quarter of the way from the top and hangs a little over half way down, just about knee level on me.  It opens to the hall where all the water barrels are stored and is a straight shot to the meeting area where everyone gathers beginning early in the morning.  I have figured out a system though.  I wait at night until I can see the light is out in the rooms around me.  Then I take my little bucket, my towel and pj’s and head down the hall.  I prop my light on one of the water barrels and start scooping until I have enough for my “shower”.  Then, I wave the curtain to make sure all the bats are out and my “shower” can begin with dumping cans of cold water over me.  The rest you can figure out!   That’s ok, it won’t be long now until I have my new house.  Rev. Stephen says they will show me the place tomorrow.

Now, I know I will have the mornings free and he will come in the afternoons.  That will help me plan my day better.

There is just something special about singing with the women here.  In the middle of my lessons we stop and worship and praise God through song.  The sing slowly so they can teach me.  Today it was “Rejoice, rejoice, I say stop and always rejoice”, that is the English words they taught along with the Nuer words.  I forget that worshipping and praising God is much more serious here than at home.  I always wonder why. I don’t know if it is because we have so much that we take God for granted and they have so little that everything is a blessing from God and they remember to give thanks for it.  I don’t know.  That is something that always puzzles me.  Perhaps I will never understand.

I guess I really haven’t said much about what I am eating and what is available in the market.  When we went on Saturday, we saw a few onions, some garlic they were selling by the clove, and one stand had a few cherry tomatoes.  I saw a handful of potatoes in another.  Definitely not the overflowing blankets of food I found in Dembi. 

I am paying 100 pounds per week for three meals a day.  That is the equivalent of about $37.  Breakfast is a cup of tea and a piece of bread.  Big pieces, not like our loaf bread – more like a small French bread flattened out.  Lunch is usually rice, pasta with tomato sauce, chapatti bread and brown lentils. Dinner is usually the same with either fish or chicken added.  We were all excited that we had pumpkin, eggplant and a tomato and onion salad yesterday along with some fresh tilapia. MMMMM!!  It truly was a feast and the biggest meal since we arrived on Friday.  I feel very fortunate that the food I brought I am not having to use yet except for breaking a couple of packets down into snacks the first few days to supplement what I was eating.  Now I am adjusting to the fewer calories and don’t seem to need them except for the Tang and milk I try to drink most days.  However, I can find “orangee” and mango in the market along with powder milk.  All are very expensive, but so is getting sick.

Most of the visitors left today, only one remains.  That left four of us for dinner tonight – Dr. Wubechet, Dr. Carlos, Kabora, the girl working on a nutrition survey and me.  It was a lot quieter than previous nights when we had Regena and Dr. Itillio here.  Dr. Itillio is this firey, passionate, bundle of energy and enthusiasm from Peru, now living in Washington DC.  I really should start keeping a list of all the countries I meet people from,  tonight there were four around our table – the US, Ethiopia, Kenya and DR Congo – two doctors, a nutritionist, and me.

After dinner, Dr. Carlos and I had a long discussion about all the very tough decisions people in this part of the world must make.  All of them are separated from their families.  All of them are making sacrifices that we can’t even begin to imagine.  Dr. C is working here so he can support his family and pay the rent while his wife continues here medical school.  He has two children and I could see the pain on his face as he talked about how hard it is to leave them all behind.

I could see the pain in his face as he discussed the closing of the hospital and the uncertainty of when it will open again.  In the US, if a hospital is closed all the patients being cared for are carefully placed in other hospitals or released for home treatment.  But, provisions are made for their care.  Here, when they closed the hospital, the patients were taken to the yard until they could be transported or claimed by family members. Some of them died.  More are dying because the hospital remains closed and they can’t receive the proper treatment.  It is frustrating to the doctors who come here to heal, sacrificing their families.  It is hard for the community that now only has a few clinics for treatment.  It is hard to hear the stories and see the pain on the faces of those committed to being here to care for the people.

There are many hard decisions in life and I have seen and heard some tough ones already.  I wonder what is in store in the coming days…

It is amazing to me – I am going to pray I don’t fall in the pit latrine in the dark, take a bath in a bucket and go fill my water bottle in a filter that has already been boiled, but yet, I can have internet, while I type by candlelight.  Amazing!!