Filed under: Sudan | Tags: Despair, Growth, Hatred, Life, Poverty, Self-image, South Sudan, Struggle, War
this post is a challenge …
i am now out of south sudan, back in lokichoggio, kenya (barely) …
the previous 7 weeks have been … profound … in my life … and i feel like to help you understand what i have … lived, i need to show you pieces of my journey, for to speak to you now, from the destination, would undermine the journey … just as a photo-finish can never accurately encapsulate a race …
with that in mind, i set out to type up my personal journal … i planned to pull excerpts from it that could offer something of a window into my mind and my heart as i struggled to come to terms with the sudan … and myself …
but the time just was not there, and now it is 1:15am in Loki, and with a mountain left to climb (proverbial this time), a borrowed laptop with a screwy space-bar and a non-functional USB port (to access the first 20 pages, already typed on my USB key) … i am forced to settle for a view from the finish line …
i am not the same person i was 50 days ago when i fearfully boarded successively smaller UN World Food Programme flights on successively more desolate airstrips in the middle a country which has known only 12 years of peace since 1955 …
what changed me ??? … how am i different ???
it was not the things i saw … or heard … or experienced …
it was …
the dissonance between my reaction to the experience … and my image of myself as ‘good’ … that came crashing down on top of me like a sudden tropical downpour … and left me broken in the mud …
through the sickness and the heat and the insects and the frustration and the boredom and the severe culture shock that comes with being in a place that is UTTERLY UNIMAGINABLE for someone who has never been there … i was stretched and i was beaten … physically, emotionally, spiritually …
enter … the dinka …
one day i saw a little boy with TB … his arms and legs were as big around as my middle fingers … his belly swollen and tears in his eyes … i cried for him … and for the dozens of other little boys and girls just like him who i saw every day collecting water from the same muddy puddles they bathed in … i saw him, and i cried … but i did not break …
one day i sat and listened to stories of the innocent in a land of war … one after another, after another speak with blank faces of standing strong and brave in the face of attacks, but being beaten into submission by famine and starvation … they flee with nothing … their families die … they are treated as animals and slaves by their arab masters … but they live … and start over … in a land called Darfur … stability again becomes war and genocide … they flee with nothing … their families die … but now … without blankets, or pots to cook with, or cans to carry water, or even a roof to keep out the rain … they gather food from the trees … and areHAPPY because they are free … they have peace … i heard them … and i hurt in my soul … but i did not break …
i could say that the i believe that the Dinka are a beautiful and wonderful culture … but that would be a lie …
“lazy, greedy and corrupt”
these are not my words … though i would not for a moment disagree with them …
these are the words of an American who I got to know during my first 24 hours in sudan … i wrote in my journal how “i hate to stereotype, but he seems to fit the quintessential American, ignorant, supremacist mold to a tee” because he just “didn’t understand how beautiful cultural diversity can be when you get to know it” … i read those words of mine last night and i laughed at the irony …
how ignorant of ME … to judge HIM … when i … knew … nothing …
over the following 7 weeks, i came to know the culture for myself … i spent much of my time with various Kenyan and Ugandan ex-pats working for international NGO’s, the UN and local organizations operated by westerners … the favorite past-time of ex-pats in south sudan is complaining about south sudan … every complaint breaks down to the Dinka …
unanimously …
lazy … greedy … corrupt …
seeing starving children suffer and die made me weep, but it did not break me … hearing stories of unimaginable pain made me mourn, but it did not break me …
i was told (NOT asked) every day, 100 times a day, by the same people every day … “KA-WA-JA! YOU GIVE ME 1 POUND!”
“YOU GIVE ME SWEET!”
“YOU GIVE ME MONEY”
“YOU GIVE ME FOOTBALL”
“YOU GIVE ME 1POUND”
“YOU GIVE ME ONE POUND”
“YOU GIVE ME ONE POUND”
… day after day after day … people who sit around and do nothing all day … who individually have cattle wealth worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, which they are unwilling to use to feed their families or send their children to school … because cattle are used to buy wives … demand that i give them money … give their children money … day after day after day …
“i’m sorry i can’t” becomes “i can’t” becomes “no” becomes “NO” becomes “NO!!!” …
and one day … before me stands a starving child … the fact that his father does not feed him is not his fault … he is hungry … he is dirty … his clothes are old and torn and his only possession is a toy top made from a coke bottle cap with a bic pen lid stuck through it …
and i hate him …
“please, hungry” …
“NO!!! … how many times do i have to tell you??? … WHAT is the MATTER with YOU???|
am i kind ???
am i caring ???
am i good ???
tell me why, then, do i despise the oppressed for being broken ??? … hate the impoverished for being poor ??? …
stretched and beaten by homesickness and by malaria and by 50 degrees celsius and no comfort and no recreation and no luxury … i was weakened …
and weakened… i was broken …by myself …
through the darkest days of my life i wrote and i thought and i fought to come to terms with me … with who i am … with who i am not… how does a ‘good’ person become upset with a starving child who is begging for food ??? … CAN a person who treats those who suffer with contempt be considered good? kind? caring? …
what…does that make me ???
and it’s funny … one morning i came out my door and some kids were running by … the same kids who, with no conception of privacy, everyday peer in my windows whenever i am inside and demand sweets and money … they ran by … and i smiled …
because … they are children …
and in spite of everything in their world … war and poverty and disease that you can not even fathom … they laugh … and they run … and they play …
they are children … and when i stopped ACTING like a ka-wa-ja (white man) in that moment … and started acting like their friend … like their brother … i realized in way i never had before … that while cultures may be oppressed or may oppress … may thrive or struggle to survive … children are children … people are people … and we really are all the same …
i didnt hate them … though i may have been weak and took it out on them …
i hated their culture … for the kind of people it created … people who have been forced to rely on aid to survive for so long that they are unwilling and unable to help themselves … people who think that a woman is a possession to be owned and who should only stop working to give birth … people who think that teaching kids to raise cattle is more important than teaching them how to read … people who think dogs deserve to be kicked and stoned to death whenever possible … who believe that foreigners who come to help should be grateful to be allowed the opportuniy to help such high and noble men …
but cultures change … peace brings outside influence … and slowly the old ways are broken while new norms emerge in their place … and the people change with them …
like me …
sudan taught me that growth and rebirth are always possible, but only when the walls are torn down and you are willing and rebuild anew from the rubble …
my sense of self was bloody and broken … the deepest darkness of my life followed … and rebuilding my image of myself as worthy as a human being was the greatest struggle of my life …
but the easy path is never the most rewarding … and i have never felt more in love with humanity, stronger, happier or more confident than i do right now …
when i told Father Bernhard of how important my time in Sudan was, and how i never could have uncovered and defeated my own demons if i had listened to everyone and not gone there … he said … in his typical fashion “you know, of course, if you don’t cross the river, you will never know what is on the other side.” Could you say it better?
this was just one of my sudan experiences … i could go on …but it is 3:32am, and tomorrow is a pretty big day … i have to gorge on food and sit by a pool and go hang out with some friends at local NGOs before I start the long journey back to Nairobi …
apparently everyone is worried that i am dead if i don’t post … so this is an “i’m not dead (yet), keep your greedy hands off my stuff” post …
i am in the UN compound in Malual Akon, South Sudan … i am doing great and, as usual, am 50% excited to be moving on and 50% sad to be leaving … i fly out on a world food programme flight on the morning of June 4th … i should be in Loki, Kenya around noon, and plan to stay at the most expensive hotel in town, which has what i am sure is the only pool 1000 km in any direction …
they also have unlimited high speed … so i will sit there for an hour or so and do what i can to catch ya’ll up on what’s been going on …
until then … i am friggin splendid … though i miss home … and the guns at night have started to play tricks on my imagination … so it goes …
peace and love …
arg … this is going to be freaking impossible … SOOOOOOO much has happened and there is SOOOOOO much to say … when i am back in loki, i will find a way to give a more complete update …
until then, here is a point form list of just what the hell i have been doing/thinking/whatever … this is going to be all over the map, so don’t expect coherence …
- i am staying in a catholic parish with 3 priests … a kenyan, a ugandan and a eastern sudanese … the kenyans is this wonderful old guy named father bernard (beh-nad) who speaks very slowly and calmly without making any sense whatsoever until he gets to the point, at which time his wisdom slaps you in the face … the ugandan is a young guy named father wilfred who may have one of the greatest personalities of anyone i have ever met … he is funny without trying … and enjoys drinking quite a lot … which i can’t really blame him for … you should try living here … the sudanese is father sebasitian … he speaks english … sort of … he talks a mishmash of 3 languages faster than anyone i have ever heard, with much swinging of the arms and contorting of the facial muscles … and then just starts laughing right from the depths of his belly … i laugh with him, cuz he is hilarious … though i am not sure i have really understood anything he has ever said …
- it is hot here … HOOOOOT here … days are rarely under 40C and often above 50C … nights rarely get below 35C … which makes sleeping … challenging …
- the wildlife is majestic and truly something to behold … my most frequent companions are: bats, snakes, lizards, frogs, scorpions, giant beetles, giant moths, giant spiders, giant other insects i don’t even recognize … and tiny silent mosquitos .. and flies …
- the food is the same every day … and when i say the food is the same everyday … i mean the food is the same … everyday … everyday … everyday … at first i was all “oh yeah, i like rice and beans, i can eat these everyday” … but then … you know … rice and beans twice a day for a month .. and you don’t really enjoy rice and beans so much anymore …
- we also eat goat … though it’s more of a special occasion food … i have now killed a goat … and prepared it to eat … and cooked it over an open fire … and have consumed every part of the goat imaginable, including the brain, spinal cord, lung, intestines, colon, tail, heart, etc … and also made soup from the skull and hoofs … most of it is not bad … though i found the spleen to be a little on the mushy side …
- we have power for 2 hours a day … sometimes … water is a bit more reliable, though recently a bat fell into the pipe and died, so we had none for a few days … i have not looked at a tv or read a newspaper or magazine in a month … or talked on the phone, except a 3 minute call to ma and pa each week … i feel like i am on another planet …
- while i frequently enjoy the sounds of random gunfire as i am going to sleep at night, today is a national holiday (SPLA Day) … so everyone who has a gun (which is everyone) took the occasion last night to fire them off into the air … all night long … its strange … going to sleep to the sound of machine gun fire …
- i have very little to do most of the time … getting anything accomplished is pretty much impossible and takes at least 2 weeks longer than you plan … i have thus turned the whole event into something of a spiritual awakening … i have started meditating everyday … i have read almost the entire old testament from cover to cover, and should be finished the new testament before i leave (it is worthy of note that I am not really a Christian, and hope to read the major works of at least 3 more major religions before I depart africa) … and i take long walks out into the middle of nowhere … sit under random trees for an hour at a time, and think and watch and listen … it’s really amazing what you see when you just STOP … these walks are by far the hi-light of my day … though to be honest, the ‘hilight of my day’ competition is not exactly full of olympic calibre competitors at this point in my life …
- funny story … i just found out that the area i go walking to is very close to where the SPLA keeps their tanks … good to know … i see a lot of soldiers everyday, and one told me in a language i don’t understand that if he saw me again tomorrow he would beat me with his gun … i think … he didn’t look very happy anyway … living in a country with no law really makes you feel … vulnerable … and for that reason more than any i am looking forward to leaving … as i walked away from him, i felt truly violated … i also was treatened with a spear one day … though i think it was less of a threat than a ‘hey look i have a spear and i can stab you if i want’ …
- i spend my time reading, walking and hanging out with a group of medical workers at the compound next to ours … they are also mostly from kenya and uganda and are fun and funny and as hospitable as is to be expected from such lovely cultures … i have managed to accomplish about 1/2 of my assigned tasks … and should get the rest done by the end of this week …
- one of these tasks took me to see what i was afraid of seeing …
- the people … the people … they are … hmmmmm … the people are … the culture is called the dinka … and they are … put it this way … i think that father wilfred, who enjoys a few too many drinks a little too often … deals with the challenges of this culture with significantly more grace and dignity than i myself could possibly claim … they are an interesting people …
- the men frequently have many wives … some men have as many as 60+ … the women work … all day … no matter where i go i see these graceful women carrying water and preparing food … they are not educated though … most have never been to school … the men … sit under trees and play games and drink … all day … so matter where i go, i never see men doing any real work … but this is unfair of me … i am being simplistic and over-judgemental towards an extremely complex culture … a culture which has truly suffered under 20 years of war … they have nothing … literally nothing … most of these people have never seen a television or ridden in a car … can you imagine that ??? … in 2005 when the UN IOM first came here, they did not have any idea what money was …
so that’s some of it … am i enjoying myself ??? … not really … i am today, as i have just beaten malaria, i think, which was about as unpleasant as anything i have ever experienced before … but on the whole … it is not an experience to be ‘enjoyed’ …
everyday is a challenge … everyday is full of frustration … there is no such thing as comfort … but like i said … it has been spiritual … it has been a month spent with myself … under difficult circumstances, and through it i have come to know ME in a way i never have before … i have seen some of the deamons living deep within my soul and learned that i can overcome some of them … i have learned to forgive to seek understanding in the face of frustration … i have seen death and misery and hopelessness and learned a little about what they are … and a lot about what they are not …
my ride has just come, so i must go in a hurry …
i am healthy in spite of bacterial infection and malaria … i am happy in spite of many of the darkest days of my life … and i am living my life each and every day … and loving it …
thanks to everyone for your support … i have never missed my home so much as i have over the past 4 weeks … if i know you, i have probably thought about you in the past month and smiled … thanks for being part of my life … just knowing you, whoever you are, has made me better …
i would seriously consider killing somebody right now and going to jail for the rest of my life for one bowl of Kraft Dinner … oh sweet mercy …
