Traveling

After nearly missing our AIM flight out of Mundri when our plans for a ride to the airstrip didn’t materialize, Christine and I spent a hurried day in Kampala and then traveled with Kim and Larissa over to Jinja for our team planning retreat.

Jinja is a quiet and lush city and is one of the sources of the Nile river. When I moved to Bundibugyo a little over 6 years ago, I traveled to Jinja for a planning retreat several weeks after I arrived. So, it felt surprisingly familiar to have my first journey out of Mundri be for a restful and encouraging team gathering in Jinja where we prayed for the upcoming year and planned for ways to partner with our community and with one another. Michael and Karen did a great job shepherding our team and helping us prepare for the work we will continue doing.

And, Kim came back for the States with the most amazing gifts from my family and some sweet friends (many thanks Erin and Becca!); plus I got mail (thanks Talitha and Erica!), so I am feeling re-connected and cared for. If you see new t-shirts in my photos, or if I quote new books, or talk about watching new movies or snacking on yummy goodies; it is all because of these amazing gifts.

In my new t-shirt, I get to head to Lake Mburo for a couple of days with Christine and Anna. It should be a fun time to see wildlife, swim, and reflect on these first months in Mundri. Then, it will be back to the zoo of Kampala to try and sort out some big problems with my bank account before returning to Mundri at the end of the week. Hopefully, the rest of seeing zebras won’t evaporate in the heat of trying to figure out why a large chunk of money is missing from my account here.

Hard to believe I’m going to spend a couple of days near a pool, while many of my friends on the East Coast of the US are drenched with snow. It’s interesting to be in such a different place from last year while at the same time feeling like I’ve come full circle from where I was 6 years ago.  Glad for tastes of both change and familiarity in life.

Coming home Wednesday night, I was greeted by a children’s choir walking down the road, singing in celebration of the coming ECS church cavanda that was coming to Mundri. People came from all over Sudan for this four-day convention, giving our small town something of a Woodstock feel as people set up camp wherever they could.

There was singing, preaching, laughter, prayers, and dancing. People came together to worship and celebrate, to hear from the Bible, and to ask God to work within the community of the church and throughout Southern Sudan.

Now I am on to a different type of gathering as my WHM team spends a week in Uganda planning and praying about our next year in Mundri. And even though it is a much smaller gathering, we pray similarly for the grace of God to be at work in the community of the church and throughout Southern Sudan. Please join us in praying.

Studying language continues to feel both delightful and impossible by turns, as I try to become familiar with sounds and rhythms of Moru and even a little Arabic. I have continued to enjoy the time spent with new friends as I stumble over words and phrases.

Of course, it really is a one step forward, two steps back process, and it is easier for me to focus on the places I fall short than to see any language acquisition. Language allows us to build and deepen relationships, so for now, the process of learning to communicate is helping me connect with people more than any words I can say.

I have continued meeting with my initial language helper Queen, who has been kind and encouraging and has drawn me into the life of her family and neighbors. I also have another girl named Wilhima helping me with language, and she has been a great friend to me. Sadly, she is heading back to Arua to begin a computer course and wait for her Secondary School exam results. I said goodbye to her today over cookies and Tang, and probably won’t see her again until June. I am grateful for her friendship and her generosity in teaching me a little Moru.

Finally, Acacia and I have missed our teammate Larissa, who spent the holiday with her family in the US. Larissa has been studying Arabic, and so in an effort to surprise her (shhh), we went together to practice our very small Arabic with some of Larissa’s friends, who were also sad she was gone.

There were some very entertaining conversations, especially a “Who’s on First” type of situation when our teacher kept saying, “When, Acacia??” and we kept saying “When what?” and he kept saying “When where?” This continued until we realized that the Arabic word for “Where” sounds remarkably similar to the English word “when.” Oops.

So, these are the settings of my study: inside of Queen’s grass-thatched piat; in front of an older building on Bishop Ngalamu’s campus; or beside a small restaurant, sipping hot coffee as Acacia drinks sweetened milk. Laughter, confusion, sometimes even a little communication are all a part of the process. Generous hospitality is offered in every location. And, I am changing through the forced dependence of being a learner, the kindness of strangers who become friends, and the beauty of connections in spite of many differences.

I recently read a book written by Dorothy Lowe, who lived in Mundri from 1959-1964. Though our life situations were very different, her stories carried some remarkable similarities to my own. She too, grew frustrated with weevil-infested flour, and missed fresh veggies, and struggled to learn Moru, and was sometimes lonely, and through it all, found God faithful.

It is an ordinary day in Mundri, and I’m not in my best mood…Most of the time, I count it a privilege to be here, but not today… Even if Mundri is still our place, today I am feeling trapped and terribly frustrated. In my thinking, I go over all this so often, round and round, what I want for myself and what is best for the Christian church of Sudan…

I sit down in the stillness, out of the glare of the sun and under the high thatched roof. The alabaster cross with the map of the world below it reminds me that…the church of Sudan, the worldwide church belong to the great multitude of saints from every country, every age, and I belong too. This is our place. Yes, this is God’s place for us. Even if it is  not an easy or comfortable life at this point, perhaps only for this one day I know it is where God has put me…My time need never be wasted time. Each day is to be lived for itself and will add to how I am in the future. For however long we stay here, I will no longer telescope my life by undervaluing the present. ‘This is the day that that Lord has made; I will rejoice and be glad in it.’

-Dorothy Lowe in Don’t Bother to Unpack: Sudan 1959-1964

I’ve started running a few mornings a week in order to enjoy the cooler air and quieter time of day. Heading out of my gate before the sun has quite shown up, I am greeted by the cloud of dust stirred up by early morning sweepers, cleaning their compounds in their own attempts to beat the heat. It almost gives me the feeling of running through a smoke machine or something, which is helpful when I want to picture myself as some sort of focused, intense runner, instead of the lazy jogger I actually am. My plodding feet kick up their own clouds of dust, giving me an appearance not unlike Pig Pen in Charlie Brown.

My loop takes me past a couple of schools, where I sometimes see a nightwatchman waking up and coming out to brush his teeth by chewing on a lantana branch. Roosters crow in the background, and goats run across my path, while birds circle overhead. I pass a few people, and sometimes see A. on her way to collect water. She is one of the first people I met in the market, who always remembers my name and always offers me a smile.

Other than that, it is me and my thoughts, and sometimes a running playlist that I took from Becky a couple of years ago (perhaps I should get some new music). Waking up, moving through the community, waiting for the sun to appear on the horizon.

Last week, I was out on the morning of the eclipse. Of course, I wasn’t keeping up with the movement of stars and moons, and so was not expecting anything out of the ordinary. And all of a sudden, I looked up, and there was the sun with a large sliver hidden, eclipsed by the moon. The sun was a huge orange crescent on the horizon, and for a moment I was confused about whether it was the sun or moon. After the initial confusion, I was amazed, and kept craning my neck to make sure I was actually seeing what I thought I was seeing. It was a privilege to see it.

The morning was a beautiful image of how much surprise and even reversal of things can be hidden in the normalcy of life. Looking up to see the sun, always beautiful but usually predictable, and being surprised at the newness I saw as I watched it rise over the horizon. And then, the fun of making it home, and heading outside with the Massos and Christine, pointing out the eclipse to one another over steaming coffee and warnings to not look too directly or too long. Glory breaks into a normal morning, bringing surprise and beauty, and bringing us together to enjoy it.

With little media connection, except what I get from the BBC homepage when I connect to the internet, I am sure I have missed many of the images of the earthquake in Haiti. And yet, the little I’ve seen is overwhelming with its pictures of death, destruction, and displacement. I’m embarrassed to admit that most of what I know about Haiti is from reading Mountains Beyond Mountains. Hearing about such tragedy in a place that is so far away leaves me feeling both helpless and discouraged. Being here, it is easy for me to feel insulated and disconnected from major events in the world. But even in my disconnectedness, I’m praying for Haiti and looking for stories of grace and restoration to come out of the rubble of all that is shaken and shattered there.

As dry season heats up, there has been a lot of burning. People have been burning dry grass and leaves to clear land, so there is often ash in the air, and, in the evening, impressive fires glow in surrounding compounds. Though these fires are big and a bit scary, they seem well tended and under control.

In contrast, a fuel stop between town and the church office recently caught fire. It seems that a large container holding smaller barrels of fuel caught fire while a young man was inside filling a jerrican that he planned to use to put fuel into a waiting vehicle. He turned around to see the doorway filled with flame, and he had to tumble out, incurring severe abdominal and arm burns in the process. Though he was the only one physically injured, the owner of the fuel station also suffered a huge loss when a large portion of his resources went up in smoke.

Christine and I happened to bike by as the container was burning. The heat and hunger of the fire was scary to witness. The flames seemed almost alive, eager to swallow up anything that came too close.

I’ve been thinking this week about how any loss can make you question the certainty and stability of everything. The man’s loss of his fuel, the boys loss (at least for the moment) of health and strength-these are two small examples off how quickly things are lost here, and how lack of resources that I’m used to, like fire-fighters and flame-retardant fabric, means that losses seem multiplied.

The Myhres visited us here last week, bringing much needed encouragement, laughter, snack food, and books. The left me with Dave Eggers A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. This book is the memoir of a guy in his early 20s, so be warned that it contains some rough language, interesting perspectives on women, and some crude references to bodily functions. But, I am a fan of Eggers writing in general (and What is the What particularly), and I find it interesting to learn about Eggers’ own life experience that must, in some way, have influenced his decision to write about the experience of a boy from Southern Sudan. And, AHWOSG has already made me laugh out loud several times, so bonus points for that.

Early in the book, Eggers describes sitting in his mother’s hospital room, awake in the middle of the night, as his brother and sister sleep nearby and his mother is losing her battle with cancer. He says, “I sit in the taut pleather chair in the corner and watch her and the light blue suction machine. The light-blue suction machine, working rhythmically, seems fake, a stage prop. I sink into the chair and lean back. The ceiling swimming. It is milky, stuccoed in sweeping half-circles, and the half-circles are moving, turning slowly, the ceiling shifting like water. The ceiling has depth or-the ceiling is moving forward and back. Or the walls are not solid. The room is maybe not real. I am on a set.”

I can relate to that exhausted, everything around me seems to be swimming, type of feeling. And even more, how the major events of life, the times when you assume you should feel and experience things deeply, can seem more like a set than reality, making hard to feel anything at all. Loss makes the solid assumptions of life, like the walls of Eggers’ hospital room, seem moving and milky, and maybe not real.

As I get glimpses of loss here in Mundri, and experience my own small losses, I feel the instability of things I assumed were true about faith, the world, and myself. And this is both hard and good as it drives me to look for stability not in the walls around me or in the assumptions I make, but in the One who says He is a strong tower. As everything around me seems to change, expand, and move, I long to know Jesus as the One He has promised to be: a rock of stability and a place of refuge in the midst of the fires and deaths and losses of life.

Until this week, I have used “mud” primarily as a noun, as in, “I just got mud on my feet.” But, “mud” became a little more active for me as I spent part of Wednesday mudding a new structure that will be used to house visitors for a church convention in Mundri at the end of the month.

Midmorning, I met up with my language teacher, neighbors, and friends from church who were all working to turn bare bamboo poles into solid walls and create a building out of sticks, stones, and dirt.

First, we gathered rocks and broken bits of bricks to lay between the poles that formed the frame of the house. Then, large containers of water were brought and mixed into the dirt floor to create piles of mud. Next, we stood inside, mixing the mud to the right consistency and beginning to put it onto the walls. In a move that, if properly executed, combined flicking, pushing, and smearing, the walls gradually began to take shape. The whole process was filled with shouts of joy, spontaneous songs, and lots of laughter.

By the end of the day, walls were up, taken directly from the ground. A home existed where there wasn’t one before. And, I had new respect for the process of making a mud house.

It was a fun way for me to connect with my church community. Of course, I felt foolish a lot. There was the language barrier, which kept me from getting the jokes or understanding the conversations. Then, there was the fact that everyone seemed to think I couldn’t do anything (People kept saying, “You rest a bit,” after I had done something really hard like move some rocks 15 feet. This may be an indicator that I should do more pushups in an effort to fight off my reputation as a weakling.) And, I did not have a great, or even passable, mudding technique which meant that women had to come behind me, smoothing over and evening out what I had so carefully done.

And yet, standing in a pile of mud, with dirty hands and a lack of capability, what I actually felt was included. Included in the songs and work and the very soil of this place that is different from anything I’ve known before.

Much of my time in Sudan mirrors my day spent mudding a house. Often, I feel like I have little to work with as I seek to add shape to my life here. There are days when my weakness is so clear, when I seem like the least likely candidate for doing what needs to be done. There are days when I pour out time and energy and it seems to just get absorbed like water in the dry ground, not really accomplishing anything.

And yet, I believe that as our team is drawn into life here, as what we pour out is mixed into what is already here, that God is building something, making something new with dirt and sweat, water and clay, prayer and time, listening ears and lifted hands. It will no doubt take many people coming alongside us, and there will be lots of smoothing over and cleaning up, but I hope we are a part of a building that will be solid and strong and full of community. And, I’m glad that getting my hands dirty and my heart filled is a part of the muddy process.

“Hold on to the promise, the stories are true. Jesus makes all things new”

-Andrew Peterson

Happy New Year! The first day of 2010 was lovely, if dusty. There was church, and biking, and dinner at a local Arabic restaurant, and of course, football.

In the late afternoon, I went with one of my neighbors to the football (soccer) field in front our local primary school. I was hoping to see drumming and traditional dancing, which never materialized. But, it seemed appropriate to cheer on a football match on New Year’s Day. I tried, unsuccessfully, to blend in and look like I was a part of things. We purchased gumballs from a kid walking around selling them out of a small bucket. I chomped my gum, greeted a few friends and lots of people I didn’t know, and enjoyed the end of the day at the beginning of a new year.

Fish at Millie’s

Originally uploaded by bethanygrace2

My first Christmas in Southern Sudan was a strange mixture of familiar American traditions and new ways of spending the day. Our team started out with stockings before breakfast. I got many things, including dark chocolate, Doritos, and an apple in my stocking, so I am feeling very loved! Also, Liana and I made me a stocking and a pair of pajama pants out of the same red kitengi cloth, so I was well-matched on Christmas morning. We had a breakfast of egg casserole and Swedish tea ring, with my favorite La Colombe coffee.

After breakfast, we opened some gifts before heading over to church. It was a sweltering day, and the crowded church held in the heat. Though the service was longer (4 hours!) than I’m used to, the sermon was translated into English, which was helpful. The preacher said that because of the birth of Jesus we are no longer primarily citizens of the place of our birth. Instead, we now trace our identities and loyalties the One born in a stable in Bethlehem. The message was particularly directed at those who are from Mundri and very familiar with a life of displacement. But, I also found it encouraging to remember that my home is now hidden in the life of Jesus and that His story helps to make sense of holidays far from family. And, interestingly enough, Bishop Bismark gave an illustration based on his own experience working as a shepherd, which seemed especially appropriate on Christmas. I loved the music, with lots of drums, and women whooping with joy. A couple of times in the middle of the sermon, the song leader burst into a spontaneous song of praise, and people danced their way to the front, shaking gourds and smiling.

After church, we headed home. We were then invited to celebrate with one of our friends named Millie, whose husband had caught two large fish for their Christmas dinner. In the warm light of late afternoon, Christine, Acacia, Liana, and I biked over to Millie’s neighborhood, stopping to visit other friends on the way.

Feasting on fish and linia, sitting with new friends, I was grateful for the kindness poured into my life by the people of Mundri. I’m also thankful for my WHM teammates who have filled my Christmas with love, listening ears, and generous gifts. It was a day that tasted of the hope of Bethlehem, and I am grateful. Mede karamaro amiri: Happy Christmas to you all.