To Sudan and Back

We visited WHM's Mundri, South Sudan team this week, catching a ride on a MAF shuttle on Thursday that took us first through Arua and then Yei, and a ride back on an AIM-AIR charter whose pilot turned out to be a father of classmates of both Caleb and Luke. Though the time was short the visit was rich, so it will be hard to encapsulate in a blog post.

Sudan = vast, bright, dry winds, crackling teak leaves, ebony skin, tall thin Africans, heat, space. You can practically see the Uganda/Sudan border from the air, because once you fly over it the population density plummets. For most of the way from Yei to Mundri there is no sign of human touch at all. No roads, no huts or villages, no paths or tracks, no electric lines, not even a goat or cow, just endless plains and a winding, slow marshy river twisting northward. Then near Mundri the world comes to life again with swept dust compounds dotted with four or five neat square thatch tukuls, a radius of farm, and then more space, a spindly line of tan path creating a web between the scattered homesteads.

Mundri = stifled bustle, a growing town, much changed in the two plus years since my first visit or even the one plus years since Scott's. Shimmering afternoon heat, a growing line of shops, more boreholes, pumps, jerry cans, vehicles, trucks, women selling cabbages and corn and lentils, flies buzzing around mounds of cassava, cooking oil doled out in one-cup increments in recycled plastic water bottles. A completed bridge spanning the river we had first crossed by boat. Enclaves of plastic chairs along the main road as hotels/restaurants proliferate, even though most are little more than a simple wooden counter, a tea kettle on coals, a tray of cups. Soldiers in camouflage, striding, sitting, manning check points. As dusk falls generators rumble to life all over the town, glowing lights under the huge expanse of stars.

WHM Community = creative carving out of a loving life in a hard place. They are renting a small but serviceable "modern" cement house right in the thick of the warrens of town compounds, a family of five in the cramped oven of the house with four single women living in two satellite structures, a large safari tent and a typical Sudanese mud/thatch tukul. The perimeter of the yard is fenced (as many others are too), so the effect is one of privacy and space in spite of having other huts abutting all sides. We were thankful to be assigned a small camping tent where the four of us could all stretch out our mattresses by putting one side-ways. It is dry season, and the evening breeze brings cool relief until the night turns pleasantly chilly. We slept well outdoors while the Massos baked in their house. MUCH QUIETER than our town Nyahuka!

1. 

WHM Community to Come, soon = building site, biking in a pod of onjodek ya kanisa (or something like that meaning foreign non-manual laborers who are connected to the church . . called out by happy waving kids all along the way) the 2 1/2 km west of town to view the new WHM compound where Michael is building housing for the team in cooperation with the Episcopal Church of Sudan. This mutual project already has an impressive office-block completed, and the bishop's house and the Masso's are up to the ring beams, neighbors, while the community eating/dining area and one of the single women's small homes are under roof. Creative designs, culturally appropriate, a central larger round house for the group to cook and dine in, surrounded by separate sleeping quarters. All requiring tremendous inputs of labor and perseverance and funds, cement and supplies trucked days away from Uganda, the future slowly emerging from the construction-site rubble, a home and ministry center created out of partnership.

Schools = emerging. Several of the team teach in the slowly resurrecting Bishop Ngalamu Bible college, a post-war post-apocalyptic compound which was once a fine college-level center of learning and is now a nearly deserted shell where a dozen or more lay pastors are embarking upon English and Bible and Community Development. A hopeful expectation is in the air, that an Australian branch of the Anglican communion will rehabilitate the entire campus. Other team-mates teach, and teach teachers, at the church's primary school. While our team prayed for money to rehab this crumbling hardly-a-school-at-all . . . Oxfam arrived and built three spiff classroom blocks. Still with over 700 kids and 16 teachers, even 9 rooms is grossly inadequate. Overflow pours into the old ruins, and under the trees. And lastly the local government secondary school, where one team member braves her way through high school physics instruction. Only three classrooms are inhabitable. The theme: opportunity, rebuilding, eagerness for education, but need in every direction far greater than can be quickly met.

Boreholes = water, life, lines of waiting jerry cans at every tap, never at rest, always pumping and flowing, drawing the life-sustaining moisture from the ground for a growing population as people return to their newly peaceful homeland. We tour, this one fixed by Michael and Christine, this one with a new solar pump. This is why God sent the Massos, and why the Moru were so grateful that they came.

Church = indigenous, wisdom, competence, we spend the evening with the Bishop and his family, highly educated and dedicated people who have left the cities of Nairobi and Kampala to serve their people. Bright-blue clad women in a huge circle, the Mothers Union. New huts being constructed voluntarily for a huge revival conference at the end of the month. An experienced counselor meeting with Bethany to map out their hopes to bring Biblical truth and comfort into war-traumatized lives. Ideas, hope. Resilience, the work of a past century enabling this people-group to re-group and thrive after massive displacement and loss.

Life = relationships, words, tastes. We bike through the villages, greeting, smiling. Bethany and Karen and I sit with a young lady who teaches them Moru, thankful for sticky sweet lemonade in the afternoon's oppressive sunshine. The day ends at Omar's cafe, a semi-circle of plastic chairs, fading orange light, evening chatter, a pile of fluffly pita bread dipped in flavorful pools of lentil, fulful (beans), fried egg or meat, sprinkled with strong onions and salt, as the team practices their recently acquired Arabic. South Sudan, an amalgam of languages. The Bishops's daughter cheerfully explains that she prefers Lugbara, the Ugandan language near her secondary school in Arua, though her family speaks Arabic at home, Moru in town, English in class and with us, and previously Swahili in their Kenya-refugee days.

Peace = fragile. Today marked five years since the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between North and South, a tenuous truce, with rumors of new conflict hovering just below the surface of calm progress and new development. We met an activist for non-violence, who had traveled to India to study Ghandi's principles and wants to bring Christians and Muslims, North and South, Arabic and African cultures, together. Elections loom uneasily on the horizon, slated for March or April, but no one seems convinced they can be pulled off. Uncertainty. Most of the country's wealth lies in oil, deposited inconveniently right along the North-South border, disputed.

Meanwhile a brave little team faithfully lives day to day, learning to talk to people and trying to hear their bruised hearts, stumbling into speech and responsibility. Sweating over bricks and mortar and pipes and power, carving out a survivable space for raising children and hosting friends, aware that the whole country may implode again in a year. Laughing together, singing around a fire under the cool relief of the night sky, dreaming, asking God which of the thousand needs and opportunities are their calling. The flickering light that we pray will grow and push back forces of greed and vengeance and fear. This is where God's people should be, rebuilding the broken civilization and bringing witness to the world. Grateful for our glimpse of it all.

Kampala News

Back to the bustle of the city after two days' drive through flooding Kenya, where drought has been drenched in too-much rain.  The newspapers, the talk, is of corruption, scandals, arresting negligent parents and thieves, mob justice, new districts, political rallies or the lack thereof, Kingdoms, border disputes, property rights, road construction, police conduct, donor-dependence, and football.  Nary a word about the anti-gay bill that is all the REST of the world is focused on about Uganda.  That topic flared and fizzled locally.  The degree of interest abroad is completely disproportionate to the degree of concern here.

Since we read both sides of the story, we've been trying to understand the deeper cultural currents that drive such different responses.  One comes to mind quickly: individual rights versus community integrity.  In the West we are appalled at any attempt to limit individual rights and freedom, for Americans in particular the right to sexual self-expression has few limits, the pursuit of happiness few detractors.  And that goal is realized in an immediate, personal way.  Here, and possibly in many parts of Africa, however, the cohesion of the community trumps any individual's needs or desires.  Lasting good comes in the creation of descendants, who will honor the ancestors, keep the values, strengthen the tribe, hold their place in the world.  Historically, anything perceived as a threat to this was quickly pruned by ostracism, or worse punishment.  Africans treat gay-rights-activists the way Americans treat far-right tele-evangelists, with suspicion and scorn and assurance that their views are marginal and harmful to the society as a whole.  Another issue:  the shifting locus of control.  In the last century cultural power was eroded by the creation of nations and states, and so now it seems the government tries to legislate what used to happen on a clan or tribal level.  So, for instance, the prohibition on exploitation of young girls becomes a law and violators are handed to the court rather than the elders; or parents are liable to be arrested for neglect if their child is malnourished.  Since the western assumptions about what is private and what is public do not always translate, the state becomes the arbitrator of the non-compartmentalized African life.  And a third observation:  after decades and decades of having western values imposed by rulers and then insinuated by the power and money that seeps in and undermines, Africans are wary of yet another attempt to tell them what is right and wrong, what they should think and do.  When the British football premier league coaches complained yesterday that the Africa Cup of Nations should not interrupt their season by calling back African players in January, the papers here today railed against their neo-colonialist imperialistic hubris. And when European countries threaten to cut aid because of a harsh and misguided new law, a substantial portion of the population reacts by saying take-your-money-then-and-leave-us-to-our-values.  I do admire their boldness to be so politically "incorrect".

So a casual view from the ground would be that there are major rifts in cultural understanding here, as international opinion condemns Uganda, and Uganda seems mostly to have moved on to more pressing concerns like whether there will be enough food to eat, and whether districts will embezzle money for health, and whether elections will be free and fair.  And that leaves a vacuum for religious leaders to fill, to  come to grips with an African Christian view which refuses to condone extramarital sexual arrangements, while loving, welcoming, and forgiving the humans who are involved in them.  Perhaps only God can fully do that.

Contentment

A little in this world will content a Christian for his passage, but all the world, and ten thousand times more, will not content a Christian for his portion.

This is one "pearl" of wisdom from a little book published in 1648 by Jeremiah Burroughs, and passed on in 2009 by Barb Ryan.  It is so packed with wise and rich truth I'm only taking a few pages at a time.  The quote above is contained in Burrough's paradox that we should be simultaneously satisfied with little and yet not satisfied with much, that we need next to nothing as pilgrims passing through this world, but we hunger for more than the entire world can offer as the home towards which we press, for we will be content with nothing less than God Himself.

And in this morning's Bible reading, God's word to Abram, before he had the land or the heir which he had been promised:  Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield, you exceedingly great reward.  Abram had noted the lack of offspring in his life, and in spite of his wandering by faith, he wondered. A settled home, a full family, these were things he must have longed for, even expected.  But God wanted him to grasp the reality of the greater reward, so in Genesis 15 He comes in darkness and horror, fire and smoke, words and presence.  To Abram, He declares, "I am" what you really need, not real estate or babies.

Day two post-family-split-again . . . not as hard as the first, or second, or third (Luke), or fourth (both Luke and Caleb) time.  But each hug goodbye and yearning memory of wholeness feels like a small death.  And the weeks, days left for us as a family of six tick down, too fast, the unsettled sense that home and vision and hope will slip soon as the pilgrimage takes an unseen bend.  So we pray for Presence, and we turn to the lessons of Burroghs, to be content with this season on the journey and its losses, and yet to not let ourselves ever be content with less than the Goal.

I'd rather be scared to death . . .

. . than bored to death, reads Caleb and Luke's new T-shirt. As their mom, I'd rather that death not be part of the sentence at all . . . but I understand the drive for boys at that age in particular to feel the thrill of pushing the limits. Grandparents send generous Christmas-money, and we encourage spending it on an activity or trip rather then an object. A couple of weeks before Christmas we had a little family meeting: what in Uganda have you never done that you'd really like to do? I was thinking in terms of hikes or camping .. . But Caleb had no hesitation: bungee jump the Nile. And of course if Caleb was going to do it, Luke would too. We checked the age limits: over 13. That meant both could qualify. So after leaving Julius Monday and family behind, we stopped off for the night in Kampala and then headed east again the next morning, to Jinja, where the Nile river begins its cross-continental northward journey, a riot of rapids in a gorge with steep banks. An Australian rafting company called Adrift has set up a bungee-jump from a platform 44 meters (about 125 feet) over the surface of the river.

A very confidence-inspiring burly young Australian man named Jack then took them to the top of this massive steel tower, and with assistance of a Ugandan whose name I did not catch, took a turn wrapping towels and a seat-belt-strapping-sort of tie around their ankles. No harness. Nervous mom was told how secure this binding system is . . but as I watched Caleb I felt like he was the sacrificial lamb being bound for the slaughter. Each boy then hopped with their tied feet to the edge of the platform, and dove off.

Soaring, endlessly, down, into the gorge. It was terrifying to watch. Luke was heavy enough to dunk in the river at the bottom (his choice) but Caleb only touched the water with his finger tips, which meant that when the elastic cord pulled him back up he flew, arms out, to almost half the height again. Both said it was an adrenaline rush but totally awesome, a free fall and a flight, completely worth it.

Sitting high above the Nile, with my feet dangling over the platform, watching them jump and disappear, their choice, trusting the skill of someone else, the stretching cord that would allow them to fall but not die . . . a parable of parenthood. Letting go, trusting the cord formed over a decade and a half of love and nurture to hold them safely, respecting their courage to jump into the abyss. Sorrow and pride and loss and hope all in one intense moment of goodbye. Better scared than bored.

2009, out with a bang

From Sipi Falls we took a well-worth-it detour north into Karamoja, the savannah of NE Uganda where cattle-herding, nomadic, historically-violent tribes make their home, as well as a group of OPC missionaries.  One family was our pastor in Virginia before we left for Uganda, and the other family, couple, and assorted singles we have come to know and respect over our years here.  This is a brave and dedicated group, content with small inroads into an ancient culture so different from the rest of Uganda let alone from us, a culture with strength and beauty but marked too often by alcoholism, rape, suspicion, envy, war with raiding rivals from Kenya, and resistance to outsiders.  They have labored to organize agriculture in a way that provides jobs in the chronic poverty, built a clinic that offers high quality and compassionate medical care, preached and taught.  They are writing booklets in the Karamojong language, which helps preserve and dignify the local dialect.  They are good people and faithful servants of God .. but mostly we went just because we really like the missionary team and wanted to spend our New Years' Eve with them.  Between our three families we have 14 kids between the ages of 10 and 20 . . . a pretty fun group.  There was lots of hearty food and drink, a very long game of coming up with songs containing certain obscure words or phrases, and at midnight a showering of confetti from a chinese-made party tube under a full moon while we toasted the New Year.  And after everyone went to bed, we spent the first hour of 2010 with our good friends talking and praying for each other.  A blessed way to end a tough year, and see in one that will stretch us with its transitions and challenges.  God is good.

More thrills

From the bungee jump (see below) we continued eastward to Mt. Elgon National Park, on the Kenya border, a massive spreading extinct volcano with countless ridges, crevices, acres and acres of dripping rainforest and flowing streams. Through providence and persistence we ended up booking cabins in the park for two nights, bargain prices and so hard to find out about that no one else was staying there in spite of making the reservation very late. The road was barely marked, a narrow slithering mud track that climbed the lower mountainside, past huts and cows and cabbage-gardens, until it ended in a wall of dense forest at the park gate. Four mud-huts huddled in a line in the narrow strip between the road and a stream, we had been in the car most of the day, light was fading, everyone was hungry, and we were resigned that this was to be our cheap accommodation, AT the park but not IN it, watched by the ubiquitous handful of curious kids. But the park ranger opened the gate and instructed us to proceed up the track another two hundred meters. And we found ourselves in lovely rustic pine cabins, surrounded by forest, quiet and peaceful. My original plan (prior to the family meeting in which my kids voted on thrill-adventures rather than endurance-adventures) had been to camp and hike in the park, but we didn't have enough days to reach the peak, so we settled on the cabins and a day hike. We were VERY GLAD as unseasonable el-Nino rain has drenched East Africa, and we were snuggled beneath warm blankets in an actual bed, reading books while rain pounded on the tin roof. It was a perfect total get-away, nothing but birds and mist and shy monkeys, rustling trees. The staff cooked us hot Ugandan food, and we played games and read aloud our annual Christmas kids-book.

We did venture out on a day-hike to a waterfall, just as the sun finally made an appearance, we climbed over slick rocks to stand behind the sheet of falling foam, getting drenched by the spray. The trail took us later to a high ridge, where we could glimpse the peaks of Mt. Elgon as the clouds miraculously parted, leaving us under a shockingly blue sky. Fantastic wild flowers, some bamboo, a troop of blue monkeys and black-and-white colobus. Our guide took us to a cave which I was not so eager to enter, given the whole Marburg-bat-cave connection. He did not buy into that science, and when I expressed relief that no bats were hanging around in sight, he promptly knocked his walking stick echoing into the recesses and a huge fruit bat swooped over our heads.

The real reason we came to Elgon, however, was that our kids' second request after bungee-jumping was to rappel down Sipi Falls. This is a 100-meter (300-ish-foot) water fall nearby, a free-fall of water that spills over a rock lip into a canyon of deep green ferns and flowers. An Italian mountaineer trained some local residents and helped them put in a few rock screws and get harnesses and ropes, and now tourists can rappel over the edge, right beside the falls. The first twenty or so meters one's feet bounce off the crevices of rock, but most of the way you are hanging in the air, with views out into the plains far below, watching the torrent of water rush down beside you and crash into the distant pool at the bottom. More terror mixed with beauty. This time all four kids and I did the descent. The owner of the equipment later said they'd never had someone as young as Jack and Julia go before . . . guess I'm glad I didn't know that before-hand, but they all did great, I'm sure I was the most scared. Scott graciously allowed us to do it and took pictures from a view-point on the side.

Then a strenuous hike back up to the level of the top of the falls. I hope everyone's thrill-deficit has been filled for a while, and we can stick with the really dangerous activities of surviving on road trips . . .

Visit of the Magi

Early Sunday, our family and Scott Will crammed into the truck on a very wise-men like post-Christmas journey. He was heading to the baptism of the baby of a former agricultural extension agent whom he had befriended on a previous trip to Uganda, and we were heading to the baptism of our friend and sponsored medical student Monday Julius' new baby, Kambere Byamungu Christian Rock. We had a long trek, about 6 hours to circle the Rwenzoris from NW to SE, to reach the village surrounding Kagondo Hospital.  The church was packed with about three hundred or more worshipers led by the Bishop of the South Rwenzori Diocese of the Church of Uganda, and we entered as they were giving a special prayer of thanksgiving for Julius' protection from Ebola. He took care of more patients than anyone, and most of them before we knew the nature of the disease, yet he did not contract the infection.  And so two years later, married and a father and back in school, he saw fit to very publicly give thanks.

After the service about two hundred of us walked on a small path to the neighboring compound of Julius' father, a neat cement house perched on the hillside.  There three huge tents draped with festive blue and white chiffon were waiting, an enormous Bible-shaped cake, a sound system, and various choirs.  We feasted on hot sweet ripe matoke and flavorful beans, peculiar tidbits of chicken, crunchy cabbage, cow parts unknown (Julia recognized braided intestines in her take).  Baby Rock made an appearance for cake-cutting and gifts.  Scott gave a short speech, and Julius read Psalm 116:

What shall I render to the LORD for all His benefits toward me?

I will take up the cup of salvation,

And call upon the name of the LORD

Now in the presence of all His people.

We stood in silence to remember the health workers who died in ebola.  And it struck me that without that epidemic, we would not have been there. Julius' character would not have shone.  We would not have come to know him.  Dr. Jonah would not have died, and dozens of generous supporters would not have given the funds which now pay for Julius' medical school.  Perhaps he would not have married the spunky and competent nurse Alice, and had baby Rock. We sat with another of our three med students, Ammon, who also would not have gone back to school.  There is no adding up in God's economy, no visible balance to prove it was all worth it.  We still grieve Jonah.  We still remember those days with a pit of sorrow and regret. 

But Psalm 116 goes on to say:

Precious in the sight of the LORD

Is the death of His saints.

When the magi brought their gifts and homage, innocent children died, in droves.  The Kingdom comes, in blood.  Two years out from ebola, we do not yet see clearly all that God was doing.  But we acknowledge that the losses are being slowly, surely redeemed.  After the party we took a long evening walk, touring the village and the COU hospital with Julius, Ammon, and delightfully a nursing student named Julian who used to be in my Christ School cell group.  Kagondo is the kind of place I feel at home:  crowded wards, TB and leprosy and AIDS, swarms of relatives, white-capped nurses, a monument of making-do with little to serve many.  And decades ahead of our situation in Bundi:  xray, oxygen, power, large lab, chapel, a dairy to make their own nutritious feeds, 8 doctors, full surgical services, space.  So to walk around the grounds with three young people, to watch them catching vision, to dream of what could be . . . this gives us great hope.

Like the Magi, we brought gifts to a baby, but left with the deeply satisfying glimpse of God coming concretely into real lives, and making new that which is broken.

Pat Abbott summarizes 2009

We are off, tomorrow morning very early, beginning the long trip taking the boys back to Kenya.  First stop will be an Ebola-survival-thanksgiving and baptism party for medical student Monday Julius. . . and other adventures along the way to Karamoja where we will bring in the New Year with our former pastor from Virginia Al Tricarico and family, missionaries in Karamoja . . then a weekend at Sunrise Acres in Kenya . . Kijabe and RVA . . Kampala, and a side trip to Mundri South Sudan to see the Massos.  Not sure how often we will post over the next two weeks.  This Christmas season has been meaningful, memorable, and all a Christmas should be, so thankful to have spent it here with our kids, all together at our home once again, and many of our team.  Two highlights of the day:  the kids' choir at church singing 'Jesu abiyawe', 'jesus was born', with such Spirit . . . and later many of us playing round-robin ping pong on a table set up in the shady grass after a fantastic al fresco grill-out Christmas dinner.  Fifteen of our last seventeen Christmases have been in Africa (as were Jesus' first several . . ), so it feels very right to have completed Luke's last pre-college Christmas just where he spent his first one.  

This summary of 2009 comes from an email from Pat, so beautifully put, I am posting it in case we are not on line to say Happy New Years' ourselves: 

A small group of Bajungu (foreigners) brought together by faith in the resurrected son of God: Shared fears, mistakes, misunderstood, separated from family, united to 

see the Kingdom of God come in Bundibugyo. The vision, now my vision through World Harvest Mission, a community of weak people united for God's glory and the world's good. Learning how to pray and believe, "...not my will Father, but your will be done." Learning to wait on God, not passively but actively trusting him not circumstances or relationships, especially when I don't understand. Living in the wilderness and what it has to teach me about myself and God. Desire to seek and know God in the transitions of life rather than fleeing back to slavery. Entrusting two little girls in to the loving arms of my heavenly Father. Learning how to forgive over and over again. Learning a little about boundaries and how to make them. There is only one Savior and I am not him. Themes of grief, sorrow and loss balanced by community, trust, wisdom and joy. 

 Amen.

Merry Christmas from the Myhres in Bundibugyo

"Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men,

and He will dwell with them,

and they shall be His people,

and God Himself will be with them and be their God.

And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes,

there shall be no more death,

nor sorrow,

nor crying.

There shall be no more pain,

for the former things have passed away."

Then He who sat on the throne said,

"Behold, I make all things new."

Rev 21:4,5

Watching with you for the coming of Immanuel, God with us, in new ways this Christmas. . . .

Thanking you for the part you play in wiping away tears and death here in Bundibugyo.. . .

Wishing you a merry celebration of the One who came and is coming.

Much love,

Scott, Jennifer, Luke, Caleb, Julia and Jack

Christmas Eve Slaughter

Christmas Eve has dawned in Bundibugyo, clouded and thick. As the daylight suffused the veil of mist on the mountains, I saw groups of young men walking briskly down the road, machetes in hand, talking loudly.  Since I'm reading Tracy Kidder's Strength in What Remains, about a young Burundian genocide survivor, I felt the chill of reality, of the potential for murder and destruction.  But these men were accompanied by cows.  And they were heading to slaughter them all around the town.  Because Christmas in Bundibugyo is a day for eating meat, Christmas Eve is a day of butchery.  When a few hundred thousand people all try to consume beef on one day, in a place without refrigeration or grocery stores, the blood-spill and dismemberment of beasts is not pretty.

But Christmas is not all pretty, either.  The passages in Isaiah 25 and 65, and Rev 21, put the future glory into the messy context of judgment.  

But you are those who forsake the LORD . . 

Therefore I will number you fort he sword,

And you shall all bow down to the slaughter,

Because when I called, you did not answer;'

When I spoke, you did not hear,

But did evil before My eyes,

And chose that in which I do not delight.

(Is 65:11, 12)

Once again, the culture of Bundibugyo provides a graphic picture.  Throughout the Old Testament, the people of Israel (and other nations) slaughtered animals, to appease the wrath of Justice, acknowledging their wrongs.  Blood had to be shed, for survival, for covering, for measuring the gravity of sin.  Until Christmas, the blood of Mary and that of her infant seeping into the blood of Easter which dripped from the cross.  Because the making of All Things New required a judgement against all things evil, a purging, a sacrifice.  Not of cows, but of God Himself.