culture

Dear Friends,
Greetings! I have some stories and other things I've been holding for the blog until I felt better, maybe now is the time.

I found out today that there are eight generators in Malakal. One of them is working. Presumably the technicians for the seven that are not were Northerners who returned to the North. The generator in my part of town just happens to be working and this is why we have power most nights. The cost of fuel may have to do with shorter hours of power.

I had previously blogged about a man who had shared that many men from the south of Sudan were able to make the trek to refugee camps elsewhere and earn an education by the sweat of their brows and their muscle power, doing work that most women are not able to do. I asked him if he had ever thought about taking his sister with her and supporting her so that we too could receive an education. He told me that the trek out of the south was trecherous and dangerous and girls were not allowed to go. I could read between the lines of what he was saying. Conditions were completely uncertain and girls/women would have been vulnerable to rape and kidnap and murder. I now understand, and told him so, why there were the Lost Boys of Sudan and NOT the Lost Girls and Boys of Sudan.

Another student shared with me that the relative with whom he is staying in order to attend the Nile Theological College is a man with two wives and many children. He said at one point the man had 40 children staying with him. I have heard of and read of situations like this before. This man has the advantage of living on a large plot of land in a town. There are schools available. Many many places in our world are so rural that there simply are not teachers to serve. Either there aren't enough students to make it feasible to pay a teacher, or, as with doctors and other professionals, the living conditions are simply too challenging and no teacher will go there. At any rate, this man invited his relatives to send their children to live with him so that they could attend school.

I had a picture in my mind of my two children and how every morning before school I put breakfast on the table for them and when they got home from school they had a snack and talked about how their days had gone. Clearly 40 children are not going to get that particular kind of love and attention. They ARE going to get something that chances are none of their parents got. A chance to learn to read and write, and something about the world beyond their little village. And maybe someday they can pay forward and do the same thing for other relatives.

It is heartbreaking sometimes how slow the progress and yet how deeply meaningful the progress.

The last story is one told me by the student who is living with so many other young people in order to make his way through college. He said, "maybe when you get home you will write a book." I told him I already am.

He said that there was a man who got a good theological education, perhaps at the Nile Theological College. The church wanted to appoint him to a post in a small and remote area who was in need of a good pastor. This man decided that he had a good education and he deserved more than to be in a little nothing place. So he joined the army and after a number of years had been promoted and had made a name for himself. No he was a big man around town. So he decided it was time to get married. I of course in the midst of my student telling the story am thinking, oh, so he found a woman to marry.....NO he married 40 women.

Why I thought he would have been happy with one I don't know......The end of the story (I won't go into my various emotional and other kind of reactions/responses to this) is that when he died "they" of course had a fancy schmancy funeral for him based on his hugeness in reputation, etc., And there were at least twenty little children there sobbing for their father.

The moral of the story, and the reason my student told it to me, was that this man was all about HIM. I pray that he thought about his wives and children and their fates after death but with his eyes on himself I am not believing that. My prayer is that God stepped in and provided for all of those widows and all of those children. I think that is not easy for a widow with a child/children to find another spouse. In this culture being without a spouse is no easy thing at all. It is a sentence to perpetual poverty.
Blessings,
Debbie