Yei, Sudan

Martin and I got up at 5:30 for a taxi to the airport this morning, where we thought we were going to meet other muzungu (that's white folks in Swahili) from the US who were going to Yei on the same flight. No one. We got on the plane anyway, imagining that they had already gone, or at least that someone in Yei would be at the airport to meet us. It is because I am an irrepressibly hopeful person that I think such thoughts. Things do not always work out that way, however. This morning's events would have reminded Carolyn of the time a year after we were married when we sold all our possessions, moved to Japan to work in the church there, and when we got to to the airport in Tokyo, looking around for the banners welcoming us, there was nothing. Nor was there anyone. Fortunately, we had a phone number tucked into the wallet, which we called to announce our arrival. Turns out that the letter with our arrival information hadn't arrived. (Carolyn swears I never sent it. She's probably right. Hey, I was 23 years old and irresponsible.)

I had a phone number in my pocket this morning, too. The only problem was, the phone didn't work. Now I have to set the stage just a bit. This was no Narita airport in Tokyo. We're in the middle of the jungle here -- a dirt airstrip, with a little shack for a terminal, enough space for two heavily armed soldiers and about two people at a time. We had to go in first and get our South Sudan visas. I grabbed one muzungu woman just before she got on the plane we had just disembarked and asked her if she knew anything about NESEI. She'd never heard of it, but she did let me use her phone to try to call someone -- unsuccessfully.

Martin and I looked at each other. Most of the 16 or so passengers on our plane had already been whisked away, some on motorcycles, others in various cars. Martin, being an old UNHCR guy, talked to a couple of local guys in a UN vehicle and asked if they could give us a ride into town. We figured we had a better shot of figuring this thing out in town that we did out here in the boonies. We jumped in the back of the truck and off we went down a red dirt road that made Kenya's roads look like a superhighway. Potholes three feet deep. I was sure we would have to get out and push a couple of times, but these guys know all of these holes pretty well and managed to get either through or around all of them without slipping off the side of the road. We tried our best to let them know who and what we were looking for, but none of it rang a bell. I told them I was an Episcopal priest, and the Episcopal Church was very familiar to them, so we agreed if we didn't find anybody else who knew about the school, we could go to the church where there might be someone who had some connection to it.

The drive into town was fascinating, potholes notwithstanding. We drove for several miles through some of the most primitive country I have ever seen. The houses are neat little tukuls (square huts with conical thatched roofs on top). It's the only kind of house I have seen since I have been here, either out in the bush or in town. Very egalitarian. The courtyards around each house are dirt, of course, but swept beautifully. There, amidst the banana palms and the other vegetation, these little homes, all nearly identical, make one of the most picturesque sights I have ever seen. As we got closer to the town, things got more and more busy, with lots of people on the street, shops that were as primitive as the houses, charcoal fires burning in the street. More and more institutional life the farther in toward the center we got. Still, only dirt roads. In fact, I learned today, that in the whole country of Sudan there are only 13 miles of paved roads, all in Khartoum, the capital of the north.

We eventually did end up at the Episcopal Church compound after stopping at several other places for me to jump out and ask people if they knew anything about a new secondary school being built. Turns out that Yei is the seat of the Diocese of Yei -- makes sense. There was a nice man in the health center which the diocese runs who had heard about some people from the school staying at a place nearby called the Crop Training Center (CTC). He drew me a map, and we headed off to find it, which we did in a matter of minutes. When we got to the center, the director of studies told us that yes, indeed, there were people from NESEI staying here, so we breathed a big sigh of relief. Within a few minutes, Anita, one of NESEI's on site people had greeted us (she's a United Methodist woman from Knoxville, Tennessee) -- surprised as she could be that two people had made their way from Entebbe and actually found her. And very apologetic that someone had not met us. She had heard there might be visitors coming, but Robert (her boss) had not confirmed it with her. (Yes, Honey, I had talked with Robert before I came and told him exactly which flight we would be on. In fact, he's the one who told me which flight to take because they would have people coming over on it, too.) It was all fun -- and quite an adventure.

This was just the beginning of our day today. We were here by about 11 am at the center, and soon we were off seeing the town, stopping first for some lunch at the Green Mango. (I had what they told me was chicken, but it didn't taste -- or look -- like chicken back home. It was some larger kind of fowl, gamier and tougher.) Anita took us all over town, including back to the Episcopal Church compound, where the bishops of the Episcopal Church of Sudan just happened to be meeting. I talked briefly with the Bishop of Rumbeck, offering greetings from the church back home. They were all there for a course on business management for non-business people. I won't bore all the non-Episcopalian readers of this with all the gory details about the state of relations between the Church in Sudan and the American Episcopal Church (or the internal politics among the bishops in Sudan for that matter). Suffice it to say that our relations are strained at best at the present time, even though some individual dioceses, both here and at home, have managed to stay in relationship with one another. I am here on a strictly private visit (not an official one), but I did want to take advantage of the opportunity to pass our greetings along. We visited several programs that the church runs here -- vocational training programs, the health center, etc. Very impressive indeed.

Lauren is another staff person on site. She's the 4WD-driving recent UVM grad who got involved with NESEI through one of the Lost Boys of Sudan whom she knew in college. She has been very involved in work in the developing world in other countries and is getting ready to start graduate school at NYU in the fall. She took us to the market, and made lots of other stops on her round of activity to get the school ready to open next week. Drives almost just like the locals, and is doing a great job of learning to speak both the local Arabic and the local tribal language.

On our walk around town with Anita, we met one of the local priests of the Episcopal Church. Rev. Mathaya Hakim Samuel is an elderly man who served here as the Provost of the Cathedral. He is about 4' 8", but with a ten foot tall personality. He invited us into his home and shared with us some of his concerns, particularly about the women in the community. Many of them have recently returned from refugee camps, some as recently as the last few months. This town became a ghost town during the civil war, and people only began coming back after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005. Many of the women, he told us, are widows whose husbands died in the struggle. Some of their sons were carried away to fight and have never been heard from again. There is a lot of depression (PTSD related), and he shared with us his desire to develop a ministry to them which would give them basic skills in setting goals, looking to the future, and gaining some business knowledge so that they could begin to put their lives back together and make a future for themselves. He envisions a 3-month training course that would be community-based, while still giving the church an opportunity to reach out to them with the gospel. Three women, one of them his wife, sat in the room with us as he spoke. I prayed with them before we left, and assured him that I would be praying with him about his vision.

We passed an elementary school run by the Episcopal Church. They were just getting out of class as we were passing by. The children were just beautiful, all in their uniforms, and all eager to get their pictures taken as they one-by-one began to peel off to the huts that were their homes alonside the road. At one point in the afternoon we stopped by the local telecom business for Anita to buy some phone time. Martin walked in the courtyard of the place, was looking around. A Sudanese guy who worked there saw him, looked at him, and came down and said to him, "I've seen you somewhere." As they talked, it didn't take long to realize that he had been one of the 15,000 Lost Boys, and of course he had known Martin at Kakuma. Just amazing. So we had to tell him, of course, that we had been at Kakuma only a couple of days ago. He wanted to hear all about it. He and Martin had a lot of fun reconnecting and exchanged phone numbers and email addresses.

Can you believe that out here in the middle of the south Sudan jungle, people have email and phones? They do. There are a couple of internet cafes in town, and many, many people carry cell phones. Thatched-roof huts ain't what they used to be.

I could go on. The day started off looking a little iffy. Turned out to be yet another gift from God in so many ways. I guess that's probably one of the things I'm really experiencing on this whole African adventure. I'm learning to be open to what presents itself, without expectations and without anxiety, and finding every single experience I have to be such an amazing, wonder-full, spirit-filled, experience. I hope I can remember to be that way when I get back home.

Tomorrow we go to see the school!