Further Adventures in Nairobi and in Juba.

Blog

December 20, 2012

When I told my students in Malakal that I was coming to the Mennonite Guest House in Nairobi for Christmas they asked if there would be many Americans here.  I said I didn’t know.  What I am finding is that there are a wide variety of nationalities, it is very international here.  I love this as it is what I have been used to in the past years from 2005 and on as my world has enlarged through global travel and living.

I was remembering today that I presided over Communion at the last chapel worship of the semester in November.  It was a very powerful act for me, God working through me, and others (especially students) were aware of this as well.    I have to admit I was a bit amused when several of the students seemed surprised at the authority with which I read the Communion liturgy.  I have, after all, been ordained for ten years.  There is a reason I am ordained – yes indeed, God has called me to this and my church community through ordination has recognized this call.

I found out today what Boxing Day is.  It is December 26, the day after Christmas, and is celebrated in Canada and the United Kingdom; perhaps all of the countries that are connected with the UK or Great Britain celebrate it.  It differs from the Boxer Rebellion that took place in China.  The name originates from the boxes that were used to put Christmas presents in. 

January 1, 2013

I intended to do a very consistent job of blogging while I was on Christmas Break in Nairobi.  Clearly this did not happen.

I often find that so very many things may happen in one day, or even in one moment, that I am temporarily overwhelmed and unable to process what has happened quickly enough to get it set out for public perusal.  I will often jot small notes to myself as to what I want to share with you, my readers, and yet sometimes it takes a good bit of time to get to the point of sharing with you even with those memory jolts available.

So many things happen in Africa that we would not consider in the United States.  Perhaps that is one of the big lessons for me in all of this life here.  At the Kenya Commercial Bank in Malakal, South Sudan, for instance, my new passport was not duly noted nor the new photograph questioned.  I was able to make my withdrawal of USD from the bank with no questions.  When I went to a KCB in Nairobi however it was a totally other matter.  I was very embarrassed when the line behind me had to wait for at least ten minutes while, I gathered, my new photo in my new passport were verified.  I was told that upon my return to Malakal I should have the new passport recorded in the bank’s records.  I have been to the KCB in Malakal several times since my return in September of 2012 from the states, why had no one said anything to me before I was in Nairobi holding up a long line because of a technicality?  That is the kind of thing that happens in Africa.

At the Mennonite Guest House I found a lovely international community.  It was wonderful having meals cooked for me, clean up taken care of for me, an indoor bathroom attached to my bedroom and real coffee served to me five times a day – three meals and two tea times except that since I am an American I prefer coffee to teaJ

Coming back to South Sudan has been a jolt and going to Malakal tomorrow will be more of a jolt.  I am sitting in my room at the Episcopal Guest House enjoying the luxury of a ceiling fan and being able to charge my cell phone and computer and Kindle.  They must be fully charged for the trip back to Malakal as there has been no power there since I left December 16^th and there is no prospect for power returning anytime in the near future. 

The two Ugandan women who do most of the work here at the Guest House are currently on Christmas break and I suspect have gone to Uganda to regain some sanity and perspective.  In their absence very little is being done that they themselves do.  This morning I had to find someone to boil water so that I could have instant coffee.  When they are here by 7:30 in the morning, the water, the coffee, sugar, milk powder, margarine, rolls and jam have appeared outside under a tent set up with plastic tables and chairs.  This morning I found another guest who pointed me across the street to purchase a chapatti made in front of my very eyes with egg and a great deal of oil….it was really good, and I was very hungry! 

Yesterday I made my way to the Kush Airlines office and was able to purchase my ticket back to Malakal, thanks be to God who went ahead of me and found someone who I know who will be on the same flight and is willing to share some of her baggage allowance with me.  I have 40 kilos and am only allowed 20.  Between us I will hopefully only have to pay for 10 extra kilos.  Kilos x 2.2 bring up the pounds….in other words, 1 kilo equals 2.2 pounds.  So If I have 10 extra kilos it means that I have 22 extra pounds that I am taking back with me.  Peanut butter, nutella, a stainless steel skillet to help with cooking on charcoal, and other food essentials make up most of the weight. 

I was also able to find some beautiful African fabric to take back to Malakal with me.  There is a good tailor in the small town and I will be able to have some traditional African outfits sewn for me.  That supports both the store in Nairobi and the tailor in Malakal and of course the factory somewhere in the world….Africa or possibly China.  AND I get beautiful clothes that I feel lovely in….I was also able to support women in Nairobi who make jewelry to support themselves and sell it at the Mennonite Guest House.  It is hung on two boards in the house and I had great fun selecting pieces that would go with my new fabrics and also gifts for women at home in the states.

Blessings,

Debbie

A picture at the Mennonite Guest House and a Picture of Me on Christmas.

Dental Luck in Nairobi.

Whew!  What a day!  In the dentist's office for 3 hours....got a cleaning, x-rays, oral evaluation.....the female dentist (loved that it was a woman!) and I decided on three teeth for crowns.  Two of the teeth had pieces of tooth missing so instead of wasting money on fillings I am just going for the crown....the other one, well, let's just say I am very happy that I am going to have a porcelein tooth of one color to replace it.

Got back to the Mennonite Guest House and was enjoying another awesome Cadbury milk chocolate bar and one of the temporaries came out.  Had to go to reception....borrowed the cell phone and called the dental office, the front desk ordered a taxi for me and off I went to get the temp glued back in. 

While I was there I heard that I was absolutely the last person whose order was taken for crowns being done before the Christmas break in the labs.  As the dentist said, God was with me on that one.  I felt really bad though as there was a young boy who had fractured a tooth and she couldn't find a lab to do a crown for him.

She usually sends the ceramic work to South Africa because apparently the labs there do a "better" job of the crowns than the local labs in Nairobi.  We had a long discussion about this.  As it turns out it is all the better that I am just thrilled to be getting old, discolored teeth with way too many fillings replaced, I don't have a need to have a million dollar look.  She said that folks in Nairobi are very particular.  I apparently am not.  Since all of the South Africa labs were already closed for the Christmas break I rejoiced that I am not!

In between all of these trips to the shopping mall where the dental offices are the only thing on the 4th floor I was the only person who enjoyed the scrumptious lunch that the cooks cooked up here at the Guest House.  Did they read my mind that my most favorite thing in the whole world is mashed potatoes?  Now if they come up with macaroni and cheese before I leave I will know that they read minds!  Anyhow, wonderful salad, scrumptious Mexican bean dish and the chef shared the receipie when I asked for it!!!  The excellent garlic bread again.  All I can say is, wow.  It is going to be hard to go back to my South Sudan cooking. 

I have definitely lost weight again from being in Malakal for three months.  My clothes are hanging on me.  I am planning to find African fabric here in Nairobi to take back with me to Malakal.  I have been introduced to a good tailor there and I want to have more of the wonderful African clothes made for me.  I like to support the local economy (both in Nairobi and in Malakal) and these African clothes are creative and interesting to boot!
Blessings,
Debbie

Friday the 7^th of December, 2012

We have little slugs here in South Sudan.  At least they aren’t big ones! 

The finals for my two classes are done, the grades turned in and a semester finished.  I can now turn for a while to my own research proposal reading and packing for Nairobi.  I like the rhythm in teaching, the rhythm of the academic year.  There is closure to things; unlike with, for instance,  housework.

Someday the doctoral work will be done and then the end of a semester will signal time for myself….to read whatever I want, to travel for pure joy, etc. 

Today was the last “breakfast” at the college until next February when the Concentrated Course will begin.  We had lentils and wheat berries cooked together.  The food here is without imagination, of a very humble nature.  The point of the food is to be filling and provide nutrition.  This is the kind of diet that causes me to ponder:  “Eat to live, don’t live to eat, in order that others may live also.”  With food like this one has no desire to live to eat for the eating does not provide a satisfaction besides the filling of the belly.  I imagine that it is something like this in refugee camps.

For the next week I will be putting together my own meals.  I am finding that the solar oven, or cooker, is indeed very helpful.  I can do soups or grains in it easily.  One ambitious day I actually did both a lunch and a dinner.  The problem with dinner is that I have to eat it quite early as the only way to keep the food warm is to wrap the entire cooker in a blanket and I don’t have one appropriate for that. 

While in Nairobi I will be stocking up on food; interesting food that is easy to cook to get a little bit of variety into my diet here. 

I am also looking forward to eating meals at the Guest House where I will be staying, and to eating meals out in restaurants!  Pizza is at the top of my list. 

Blessings,

Debbie

December 11, 2012

I experienced graft this morning in a government office.  I was asked to pay 100 South Sudanese Pounds for a paper giving me permission to leave Malakal and the officer would not give me a receipt.  The Principal, who had accompanied me to the security office, said he wouldn’t give me a receipt because it was illegal for him to ask me for payment.

Government officials are not paid well and the pay is often late.  The supervisors of some officials tell them that they can take money from people to help make up for the lack of salary.  So that is what this man was doing!

In the past week or so I have had pieces of the truth about dowry come to my attention and today a whole has come from the pieces.  During the Civil War many men were off flighting and were not marrying.  Once the Civil War (this was a war between the northern and southern parts of the whole country of Sudan which is now Sudan and South Sudan as well as fighting between tribes in the south) had been terminated by the Peace Agreement of 2005 the men who returned from fighting wanted to get married.  There was little money in the country and dowry became extremely expensive, 150 to 200 cattle.  Without dowry a man could not marry.

Cattle rustling has become a major problem and it is now growing in violence.  Women and children are not only being kidnapped but also murdered with impunity. 

I will be teaching Apologetics this coming semester.  The basic meaning of Apologetics is the defense of the faith and explaining the hope that is within us.  One of the first questions I will be asking my class this coming term is, “What does it mean to you to be a Christian?”  What kind of faith are we defending?  If Christians are involved with murder and kidnapping in order to marry then we must really examine, what has this to do with Christianity?  If I am a Christian can I engage in these behaviors?  What would Jesus do?

Blessings,

Debbie

December 11, 2012

I wonder if feet shrink?  I am losing weight because of the lack of food here in Malakal and the lack of variety and I am noticing that my Birkenstock sandals seem to be larger on my feet….

Such a feeling of relaxation has come with the ending of the academic semester!  I still have tons to do:  packing for Juba and Nairobi, planning two classes and continuing my own reading for my doctoral thesis proposal, and yet I feel as though a great burden has been lifted.  This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it!

I have a new househelper (housekeeper) with me today.  She is cheerful with helps a great deal already!  I have three weeks of laundry and a house that hasn’t been swept in three weeks for her to deal with.  I don’t have the right touch for a floor that has dust on it all the time even when it has just been swept.  People who have lived with these conditions all of their lives have learned how to deal with them and somehow things look fresh even when the reality is that they are not!

Blessings,

Debbie

December 18, 2012

Left Juba this morning and am in another reality now.  The touchdown on the plane into Nairobi late this morning brought back memories….Nairobi was my first port of entry into Africa three years ago in 2009.  This was the first continent where I saw dirt coming in to land….

It was clear even from the airport that Nairobi is a major urban metropolis, much, much larger and more developed than Juba.  It is really quite a good thing that after Malakal I had two days in Juba before coming here.   That time in Juba gave me a bit of space to process leaving Malakal and adjusting to modernity.  Coming into Nairobi I realized:

There is an enormous difference between the smallness of a little town, or village, like Malakal and the impersonal secularization that I could sense in Nairobi.  Life feels more out of control in a large city, a city that is spread out and actually has outskirts.  Malakal is much more self contained and the sameness is one of the characteristics for small.

Of course Kenya is a different country and that may account for some of what I am seeing as different, as “other”, it may not be only the sizes of Malakal, Juba and Nairobi, respectively.

I remember when I went to China being thankful that I had had experience in the Middle East first.  The culture of the Middle East is vastly different from the United States, and yet it is much more familiar than the culture of China which was so very different that having had an in between experience was helpful.  That is what Juba was on this journey between Malakal and Nairobi.  Juba was my Middle East.

Having arrived at this compound I am filled with amazement.  It is huge.  And it is green.  I thought a friend had told me that it had a garden.  No, it IS a garden.  Somehow it makes me think of the Swiss Family Robinson.  I don’t know, it is just so odd to me to think that something this green exists when my soul is dying of thirst in the heat and brownness of Malakal.

There are huge trees here, big enough for children’s swings to hang out of them.  One of the joys this afternoon was seeing a brother swinging his sister on one of them.  There is grass everywhere, and the folks who thought through how to minister to weary missionaries have put tables and chairs all about on the lawn so that we can sit out and enjoy the green and rest. 

My room is wonderful.  Not like a Hilton.  A big bed with four pillows.  I am so thankful not to have been given a single, twin bed.  Those things are quite horrid for anyone who is used to sleeping in a large bed.  There is no mosquito net.  I am taking this to mean that mosquitos are not a problem here.  Wow!  No wonder the room looked so normal to me when I first saw it!

The desk is piled with my books now, even though I also brought my Kindle.  I have reading to do for the Research Proposal for my thesis through UNISA (The University of South Africa).  I also have lots of shopping to do, primarily for groceries to take back with me to Malakal.  Peanut butter, nutella and coffee top the list.  Tomorrow I have a dentist appointment, the next day I must go to the South Sudan Embassy to purchase a new visa for the one that will expire that day so that I have a valid one when I return to Juba on the 30^th of December. 

I have now had two Cadbury bars!  I hadn’t had chocolate in three and a half months! 

Dinner was amazing.  I was drinking the filtered water and suddenly realized that it was cold and that was why I was feeling so satisfied. 

Tomatoes and avacados!  SALAD!!!  Actual lettuce.  Green beans.  Tremendous garlic bread.  Real coffee with real milk.  Okay, this place is a treasure for a starving missionary.  How am I going to go back into the desert after this?  Literally, Malakal is a desert.  Which wouldn’t be so bad if there was power.  With power there could be refrigeration and cold water. 

The Guest House is going to bring Diet Coke in for me so I can purchase it at the front desk!  There is a frig for guests so tomorrow after my dentist appointment I am going to see if I can find yogurt to bring back and place in said frig.

And I plan to try and spend the afternoon outside in the quiet and green.

Will write more soon…

Blessings,

Debbie

Blog

December 1, 2012

I continue to learn how to teach by the teaching itself.  The students have enjoyed doing team work in their tests, group tests if you will.

This is fine and good, it is an important thing to learn how to negotiate, listen and create documents of substance with others.  As I watched how the four different teams worked on their final today I realized that it is also important to make a balance with individual work.

There is at least one individual, perhaps more, than is so very quiet in the class that team work is simply not the best vehicle for him to tested with or learn from.  He needs to draw from his own information and will not do that willingly in a group.

I remember that there are oral learners, visual learners, kinesthetic learners, musical, spatial, etc.  I try to meet at least most of those needs at times during the semester.  I must now remember to balance the needs of the ultra quiet with the abilities of those who enjoy the group work.

Blessings,

Debbie

December 4, 2012

As I awoke this morning to the sound of an animal that I could not identify outside the walls of my home, I realized again how different life here in Malakal is from life in the United States. 

I see animals everyday that I walk outside of my gates.  Not only cats and dogs which are everywhere in the Seattle area, but goats and sheep and cattle.  The babies are so cute as they trot about and make desperate calling noises to their mothers.  I have only lived on a farm once, for a very short time, when I stayed with a friend and her husband in a rural area outside of Seattle.  That time and this is similar in terms of the closeness to nature.  I was not raised being close to animals.  While I am glad of having only two cats calling my yard home here in Malakal, it is gratifying to be experiencing something so different in my life for this season that will be gone from my life when I return home to the United States.

I was invited to a memorial service, they call it a Service of Prayer, here in Malakal on Sunday of this week.  A colleague’s husband had died.  After people shared about his life, prayers were said a sermon preached, food was served.  The women were in one part of the compound and the men in another.  I found myself thinking, “ah, the women’s court.”  As my hostess walked me through the different groupings of men to reach the car that would bring me home after the food was eaten, I found myself a bit unnerved by the tradition that still exists here.  Very unlike a memorial service in the states where the genders would sit together in service and in feasting afterwards.

Blessings,

Debbie

Blog

December 1, 2012

I continue to learn how to teach by the teaching itself.  The students have enjoyed doing team work in their tests, group tests if you will.

This is fine and good, it is an important thing to learn how to negotiate, listen and create documents of substance with others.  As I watched how the four different teams worked on their final today I realized that it is also important to make a balance with individual work.

There is at least one individual, perhaps more, than is so very quiet in the class that team work is simply not the best vehicle for him to tested with or learn from.  He needs to draw from his own information and will not do that willingly in a group.

I remember that there are oral learners, visual learners, kinesthetic learners, musical, spatial, etc.  I try to meet at least most of those needs at times during the semester.  I must now remember to balance the needs of the ultra quiet with the abilities of those who enjoy the group work.

Blessings,

Debbie

Reflections on Life in South Sudan.

Friends,

This morning I looked around at my classroom of South Sudanese students.  Each one of them had Western clothing on.  This bothered me and it did so in particular because these Seniors are having a class picture taken today.

We are in Africa and the students are wearing shirts and ties and the two women have shirts and skirts on, Western style.  When I inquired about this someone said that African clothes are very expensive and that the Western clothing is much cheaper.  So typical.  The colonizer makes it cheaper to buy the imports from the colonizing power than the local goods made from locally sourced materials and created by the indigenous people. 

I found myself just about in tears.

Later I had a discussion with another teacher.  I don’t sleep well at night here in Malakal.  There are many reasons for this, one of them is that the power comes on and then goes off at unpredictable times and often I am awakened by its beginning and its cessation. 

The other teacher asked me if I was tired from cooking.  She asked if I cook on charcoal like the African women who must kneel to stir their pots on the charcoal stoves.  I said I try to avoid using charcoal.  And then I pointed out that I do not have what to me is a normal kitchen.  I don’t have a kitchen sink or a kitchen counter.  I don’t have a refrigerator.  Nothing is normal about my experience of trying to provide food for myself here in Malakal. 

It is difficult to live day in and day out in an environment that is so utterly foreign to my own.  I am essentially camping.  I never did like camping and I don’t enjoy it now. 

I wonder how it was for Jesus?  When he came to an utterly foreign environment how was it for him to live day in and day out?  Was it as hard for him as it is for me?  I’d like to think so. 

Those of us who work and live in South Sudan get to take quarterly R & R’s.  Some of the reason for these times of getting away from the country have to do with being able to experience a sense of normalacy that is closer to what is normal in the United States….at least for me.   It is HARD to live here.  The saving grace is the fact that I believe that my students are gaining knowledge from me that they would not gain in any other way.  And hopefully it is invaluable knowledge.  That is what makes my being here worth the sacrifice for living a totally abnormal life.  Otherwise this sacrifice would be untenable.