There and Back Again

The five early returnees are safely in Kampala; in fact, they were there before Vasco and I got back to Lui.

That's not the Juba scoop I wanted to lead with, but I'm sure it's the most important piece of news for many of you reading this blog.

Now, Juba. Our journey to Juba in an old Toyota 12 passenger van took five hours. We were exhausted, dehydrated, and covered in a fine dusting of red dirt when we arrived. We got to the Sahara Resort, where we may or may not have had reservations, and found that it looked nothing like its picture online. Nothing. Nothing at all. Luckily (or not?) they did have room for us, so we doubled up into four rooms -- Vasco and Joe, Robert and Nancy, Tammy and me, and Emily. Most of us didn't find electricity or running water in our rooms when we got there. That shouldn't have been a big deal after almost two weeks in Lui, but in the presence of a TV, an air conditioner, a flush toilet, and a shower, it was a crushing blow. After a while everyone had power and water, though, and we were happy to wash before we gathered for lunch. We ate well and spent a comfortable night before going to the airport this morning to get all of the above except Vasco and me onto the plane. Then Vasco and I came back, not in the promised bus, but in a "special hire" Toyota Land Cruiser with air conditioning.

The land southeast of Lui, in Central Equatoria, is a bit different from the area around Lui and Mundri. There are far fewer, and much shorter, trees, and much more tall grass. The hills have more round, black, rocky outcropping. We saw Chinese surveyors working between Ronkon (I think) and Juba. We spent quite a while at one of the checkpoints having our passports and visas examined. (On the way back, in a new Land Cruiser with tinted windows, we were waved through without even much slowing down.) The bridges mostly have no railings, and in one river we saw the rusted-out shell of an SUV, left over from an accident that killed two people.

The hotel was more expensive than anything I have ever personally paid for in the United States, but it was identical, for all practical purposes, to what I pay 30 USD per night for in Egypt. Apparently that's a matter of supply and demand in Juba -- lots of UN, government, NGO, and business people, few hotel rooms. Christina's cooking in Lui will stand up to what we paid about 20 USD each for in Juba any day of the week. Some of us were hoping for gin and tonic, in an ironic salute to our colonialist forebears (aside from liking g&t), but the hotel had neither tonic nor limes. Most of the roads in Juba are dirt; we traversed one paved road and two roundabouts. Sadly, we did not see the Nile. There was no ice cream at the hotel or the shops across the road from it. Gas cost 1.5 SDG/liter.

Vasco and I had to make a choice about how to get back. The bus turned out not to be going till tomorrow. To wait for it, we'd have had to pay for two rooms for another night. There was a matatu going today, but it was leaving between 8 and 9 a.m., which would mean that we wouldn't be able to see our friends off at the airport, and we really wanted Vasco there to help navigate if necessary. The only other choice was to hire a car, at a very high price. That's what we did, partly because it was still going to be significantly cheaper than staying another night, and partly because Vasco's wife is in the hospital (yes, Lui hospital, which is up and running despite the usual absence of doctors) and we didn't want to keep him away from her any longer than necessary. The negotiations for the price of our trip turned out to be very frustrating. A middleman promised us a certain price inclusive of gas and any other fees. The driver he'd engaged, with the Land Cruiser, left for a bit with a promise to return for us, and then the middleman told us he wasn't coming back and connected us with the driver of a Nissan Sentra, totally the wrong car for the ride. That price, in conversation with the middleman, started out lower but rose to equal that of the Land Cruiser. The driver of the Sentra eventually agreed to the arranged price plus the price of gas. I said no. Eventually Vasco and I got him to agree to pay the gas himself out of the arranged price. Then the first driver came back and told us to get in the Land Cruiser. At this point I had given the Sentra driver the first part of the money -- he'd asked for it all up front, but I said he'd get the balance when Vasco and I were safely in Lui. So the two drivers argued for a while, with the middleman, about who'd be driving us. Finally the Land Cruiser driver won out, and the Sentra driver gave him my large bill, but then he insisted that we pay for the gas in addition to that agreed price. We said no, and he argued, but finally I said, "OK, then, we will take the Sentra because this driver has agreed to the middleman's price." So then the Land Cruiser guy, a Kenyan named Collins, decided he could live with it too. Vasco and I were proud of ourselves for pulling it off, but we ended up giving him kind of a big tip because he had a flat on the road and then lost most of the tread off his spare, and he didn't harangue us for more money but was just solicitous for our safety. I will just say alhamdulillah for all the Egyptian cab drivers who gave me the experience of haggling about ride prices so that the Juba experience wasn't too overwhelming. I guess the moral of the story is to avoid middlemen.

Juba is a funny mix of looks-like-Lui and looks-like-Cairo. I feel like I can extrapolate from Juba what Khartoum must be like. Someday I hope to see it.

The airport experience convinced us all that the way in and out of Lui isn't Juba. It took our travelers a full hour to get through check-in, baggage weighing, and immigration to be ready to go through security screening. Mundri International is much simpler. It was good Vasco was there; a friend of his works in immigration and probably smoothed the way a bit. On the way back to our car, we actually saw Bishop Bismarck of Mundri, who'd come to Juba for a clergy wedding yesterday. This trip has been full of unexpected coincidences like that.

Deb and Dan had some really helpful conversations while I was gone. We're going to be working on parish-t0-parish connections this week -- and going to Lozoh, Advent's sister parish, Sunday for church, as well as each continuing our own projects. I was ready to come back to Lui this morning and really happy to have arrived. Whenever Wayne and I have moved to a new state, I have not quite felt at home till I traveled out and returned back to the new place. I guess Lui has become my home in Sudan, because leaving Western Equatoria and then driving back in past Lunjini school and the familiar houses along the road gave me something like that same sense of comfort.

Christmas 1

We ended up getting a lot done yesterday despite my slightly dubious post. Robert and Tammy saw all the wells and drank from at least one. Most of the rest of us had our first Moru lesson, from Morris, who is an excellent, very organized, teacher. We have real hope of learning at least a smattering of this language.

We also got to visit Mama Margaret's secondary school, which is much improved over the past few years. And we made kind of an unauthorized foray into commercial Lui with a visit to a shop, where we arranged to pick some purchases up later. When we walked back there (by Lunjini), we waited more than two hours for our order, and Vasco followed us down the road... Oops...

Today everyone but me went to the cathedral. I went back to Lui parish, where they all said, "Where is Emily?" I got to show the St. Timothy's videos and answer their questions about our congregation. They are planning to send letters back with me for St. Tim's.

I'll be in Juba Monday and Tuesday, posting if my BlackBerry has email, but I'm not sure that's too likely. Now I'm off, as the bishop and diocesan staff are waiting for a closing meeting.

The Between Times

It feels like we're all a little out of sorts today, stuck between one big thing and the next. It's like this at home, too, between Christmas and New Year's Eve -- what to do now without life's usual routines? The bishop, the dean, and Christina have all gone to Mundri for a meeting of Moru "chiefs" -- all the big people in the area. We all walked to Lunjini School this morning with Gordon, and now Robert, Tammy, and Gordon have gone to see the three wells the Diocese of Missouri paid to have drilled over the past year. They'll be gone about six hours. The five team members returning to Missouri starting Monday have started to turn their faces toward airports, and Dan and Deb and I are maybe wondering how the week without them will shape up. There's quite a bit of "official" stuff to do before Robert leaves, and he has really very little time. So, now that our official task for the day is over, we are just computing, doing laundry, reading, chatting... waiting for something to occur or someone new to show up. Morris is supposed to come after lunch to teach us our first formal Moru lesson, and I'm excited about that.

We are also in kind of a "between" place with our hosts. We have done all the official introductions and greetings, and we have had some important conversations. But we are not going to live here -- in fact, we are all going to go away quite soon -- so moving on to the logical next phase of getting a sense of daily life and having the little random, inconsequential conversations that let you really know people will be difficult if not downright impossible. Emily and I were talking this morning about the problem of ever moving past the "honored guest" stage to see Moru life through a clearer glass, and especially talking about getting past our foreign-eyes' view of their worship and spirituality to have some idea what it's really like to be them. Which of course raises some philosophical questions about how any of us communicate our true selves or our feelings and beliefs, but I am not a philosopher.

Here is perhaps the most important question for today: With Christina in Mundri, what is lunch going to look like? I'm expecting beans and rice, sans flourishes. Thanks to everyone writing comments on this blog; I'm passing messages on to Tammy and Deb, as requested. We are all thirsty for news of home.

Christmas and Boxing Day

We go to church a lot here. In case you ever need to know, "mamatu" means "let us pray," and "Lu mbara para" means "Almighty God." I figured those out myself because I have heard them so much and observed what happens after them. And when you turn toward the altar and stand up and talk, whether you realize it or not you are participating in the Apostle's Creed. The order of service is different from the American BCP, but it's starting to become clear.

Christmas Eve church at the cathedral was simple and short, considering. It was communion and didn't start till midnight. We were all so tired we could hardly stay awake. Electrical lights and media must play a huge part in our usual ability to stay up late!

Yesterday, on Christmas Day, Emily and I went to Lui Parish. We got a ride down there but were lucky enough to walk back. When we arrived, we sat in a grass payat and visited with Sylvester, the pastor in charge, Festus, the archdeacon for Lui archdeaconry, Mama Margaret, who went to translate for Emily's sermon, and Repent, another of the parish's priests. The three men recorded greetings for St. Timothy's then gave us a tour of their 50-acre plant. They have the foundation dug and bricks poured for a new, cruciform, church with office space and a "vestry," which means place to robe, not group of parish deciders. We went to church, which was morning prayer. The church was packed and the service joyous. I got to give a long greeting from St. Tim's, with a presentation of a piece of Christmas stained glass made by Emil Frei, and talk a bit about what we value (I said we value liturgy, catechesis and Bible study, community gatherings, pastoral care, and outreach; I hope that's a fair representation, St. Timmers...) Emily preached a dynamite sermon on the lenses we see through, mentioning the piece of window glass but focusing on the birth of Jesus and the gospel she chose, John 1:1 ff. After that, we sat in the payat some more, drank orange drink, ate a great lunch of beef, goat, chicken, rice, bread, and linya. We finished with something completely new to both of us: steaming fresh sweet milk. It was fabulous. Emily and I had just been plotting a way to make hot cocoa when the milk arrived -- a lot of things in Lui are serendipitous like that. Then we returned to the church, where we were presented with gifts and very kind speeches, and we were supposed to show the videos from St. Timothy's but the laptop's battery had died. So I have to/get to go back to Lui Parish Sunday.

Today we went to the longest service in recorded history, we think. It was a four-hour ordination. The good news is that much of it was translated into Arabic, so I got some listening practice. But the thing about Arabic is that whenever you start to sneak up on it and understand, it turns around and bites you: The translator (the chancellor of the diocese) spoke so fast that it took a long time before I even realized it was Arabic, and longer before I started teasing out some of what he said. But the sermon translator (sermon kudos to Robert, who has a wonderful "voice" for Lui) spoke more slowly and I had fun evaluating the way he translated words like "polity" and "servanthood." We were all entranced by the role the chancellor played in carrying out the canonical aspects of ordination. With luck, Joe is right now across the room from me writing about the ordination, because I spent four hours there and don't want to think about it anymore right now.

Something I left out about yesterday: We walked past Mama Margaret's compound, and she invited us in to sit down. She is a very generous hostess; she fed us the first candy we've had here except for the sesame halawa I bought in the market and also some dates. Her brother Peter, a retired university plant science professor, told us a lot about the history of the Moru people. Did you know that the Dinka and Moru peoples used to be one Episcopal diocese, the Diocese of Rumbek? (Well, we think it was Rumbek, but you should google it to be sure before quoting me!) He also told us a bit about the conflicts among tribes. Then last night, when we sat in a big circle in the dark, under the glorious stars of Lui, Bishop Bullen had us asking him some other questions, and we got the opinions of him and some other officials from Juba about a variety of things like the upcoming census.

So... upcoming things to be excited about: a walk to Luinjini school tomorrow, our first formal Moru lesson tomorrow, Lui parish Sunday, and a trip to Juba Monday! Emily, Joe, Robert, Nancy, and Tammy are starting home via Juba Monday, and Vasco and I are going to accompany them so I can get a little taste of Juba too. (That's where my Arabic could conceivably be really helpful, but don't hold your breath.) We are all staying in a hotel overnight, and then Vasco and I are taking a bus back to Lui!! If you have ever been to Lui, you can imagine how daily bus service to Juba changes it. And after that, who knows?

Christmas didn't feel like Christmas, and I have to admit I miss my family a lot. But with our team split up yesterday in four different parishes for Christmas, my family at about the same time at the cathedral in St. Louis, and my parish community at St. Timothy's, I have never felt more strongly the impact of the words before the sanctus in the eucharist -- with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven -- or the image of Christians as the body of Christ.

Christmas Eve

We are just kind of hanging out today, waiting for the 11 p.m. Christmas Eve service at Fraser Cathedral. The cooks in our compound are roasting a whole cow for the Christmas feast. We aren't sure how we feel about that...

Dan, Joe, and Emily taught homiletics this morning. I caught them on film doing an awesome job. I was especially impressed by how many and how thoughtful the questions from the ordinands were. Tammy and I spent some time under the mango tree chatting with Gordon about other Moru friends. Jeffreys, the diocesan secretary from the 2003 and 2004 trips, is now working in Kampala for ITAM (we think that's the acronym and that it stands for "it takes a miracle"). Martin, the HIV/AIDS coordinator who shepherded our 2003 trip, died last year and is buried in Mundri.

Then we sat with Bishop Bullen for a while and arranged for Moru lessons with Morris, the archdeacon of Lui archdeaconry and one of the Bible translators. We talked a bit about what he wants us to do on the next trip to Lui, but he still wants to talk with the Lui leadership about that. In the process, he mentioned that there may be some upgrading to the local schools soon, which could result in students from outside coming to Lui.

Totally changing the subject, Christina is really an awesome cook. Last night we had a dish made from eggplant and peanut butter that was quite amazing. That's the third, each very different, dish we've had from eggplant, and even our non-eggplant-lovers have loved her eggplant. Last night we also had fried chicken. But, in the food department, an equally surprising thing has been that we've found what amounts to doughnuts in the market, and we've started eating them as an appetizer every evening. Last night we rolled them in sugar because we know that lard is most nutritious when chemically bound to sucrose. We are also systematically scouring the market for chocolate, which has eluded us so far. The market, for those of you who've been to Lui, is vastly expanded. You can buy lots of plastic stuff, clothing, all kinds of food, and other things we haven't yet discovered, I'm sure. The market now extends down the road to Mundri, too.

This morning Dan brought out Christmas cards from home that warmed our hearts and almost made us cry. Thank you, Anne!

We are at a place now that some of you will probably recognize from your own experience of this type of mission: We have settled into a daily routine and are pretty comfortable with washing, eating, and so forth. Dan's plan for daily reflection and compline is serving us well -- we are getting what we need psychically and spiritually, and we have coalesced as a team. Nancy came with books of carols and brought them out a couple of days ago, which has added a much needed dimension -- it's hard to always be listening to others singing and never get to sing ourselves. As far as what we're doing missionwise, we have moments of sheer joy and fulfillment, when we see immediate fruits of our time here and feel our relationships deepening, and others when we can't get past the scripted greetings and formalities and feel that we never will. We see great hope among the Moru people as women rise from illiteracy, and great sorrow as mothers lose their babies in utero or motorcycle accidents rip legs to shred. It's a great time and place to be singing "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" because at the end of the day, the only thing I'm sure of is that God is with us.

P.S. Since yesterday with the Mothers' Union, when I felt a bit frustrated by the lack of depth in the conversation between us and the Moru women, the women have started addressing me in Arabic. So I am hopeful that, rather than being a disappointment, that meeting will end up being the genesis of some real, unmediated conversations. Inshallah.

Random Bits

New news:

Deb has learned some startling and tragic statistics about the rising HIV/AIDS rate here in Lui. HIV/AIDS was almost nonexistent in 2003 when I first came to Lui; it had risen to 10 percent or so by 2005; now, at least for pregnant women, Deb has heard that the rate is 50 percent.

My "80 Moru churches in Khartoum" statistic yesterday had to be wrong. The other listeners agreed with me that Francis said 80, but we think he meant 8. Apologies for misleading you.

We have our assignments for Christmas day church: Robert and Nancy will go to Midah, Joe and Tammy to Kediba, Dan and Deb to Wandi, and Emily and I to Lui Parish. I'm excited to be able to take video greetings from St. Timothy's to Lui Parish in person. Emily and I have worked out a deal whereby I'll do greetings from St. Tim's and she'll preach -- playing to our strengths!

Emily has gotten to preach twice now. Today she preached a wonderful encouraging sermon to the Lui Mothers' Union about the way women are always carrying God with them. Among her examples, besides the BVM of course, were the women of Southern Sudan during the war years, when the women were the ones who preserved the church. The mamas were very excited to have such a young ordained woman among them, and they also pointed extensively to Tammy as an attorney for an example of what women can do if they get an education. Their own illiteracy is a grave concern for them.

During the Mothers' Union meeting, we were also able to present the certificate from UTO about the grant for the Kediba grinding mill. I gave a little talk about blue boxes all over America and the kinds of things the church does with that money, then announced the grant and gave Mama Jenifa the certificate. She made a very nice speech back, and all the women were very pleased about the grinding mill.

Edward, who visited Missouri with Bishop Bullen in 2005, came to see us in our payat (big eating tukul) today. He is now working for the International Bible Society checking translations from Greek and Hebrew into African languages. He is back in Moru land right now because after his brother's death, there was no one to finish paying the dowry price to the brother's wife's family except Edward, and he is going to Lakamadi to settle the matter.

It's a different world here.

Going Deeper in Conversation

It's not yet very late on Monday -- about 3 p.m. -- but it's been a very productive day already. Joe and Emily spent some excellent time with the young people, about which you can probably read on luinotes, and Dan and Robert spend equally valuable time with the ordinands whose ordination we'll attend on the 26th. Dan said that the ordinands asked challenging and insightful questions, and he seemed pumped from the exchange. Deb G went to the hospital for an official meeting with Peter, the hospital administrator.

Meanwhile, back in our compound, Nancy, Tammy, and I spent the morning in some fairly deep conversations. I'll report on these with subheads so you can pick what you want to read of what's going to be a rather long post (compared to what, right?).

Madiba Church of Lui Parish
Francis Wajo Bayuwa, the pastor of Madiba Church, one of the five congregations of Lui Parish, sat with us and spoke about his work in the church and what the place is like. It only opened in May of 2008,when Francis came down from his church in Khartoum. When it opened, Madiba Church had 250 people; it runs 150 or so every Sunday now and had 210 this past Sunday (Advent 4 to us). Francis shares his work with five ordained lay leaders (3 women and 2 men) who distribute the cup at communion, join him in visiting shut-ins with communion, and teach catechism and confirmation classes. There are also two Mothers' Union leaders who are denoted by special badges. The church does practice infant baptism with parents making the baptismal promises, but the norm seems to be baptism at age 12 plus, after catechesis. Baptism is at the church entrance because you can't enter the church until you are a Christian. Then there is further teaching in the parish before confirmation by the bishop. Besides these official classes, the church offers continuing Bible study classes and preparation for lay ministry. Francis is modeling his work at Madiba on the church he left in Khartoum (one of 80 Moru parishes in Khartoum!), where he had a school with primary, secondary, and adult education. The school at Madiba up to now goes through grade 5, but he hopes to add up to grade 8 and adult education soon. When Francis visits parishioners, he takes with him a lay leader and an additional woman. I asked him what percentage of his people can read and write, and he said he doesn't know yet, but he will be visiting everyone and doing something of a census to get to know the needs and capacity of the congregation.

The Mothers' Union
Mama Jenifa, the diocesan Mothers' Union leader, and Mama Margaret,the diocesan Mothers' Union worker, sat with Tammy, Nancy, and me for an hour or more talking of the Mothers' Union in general and what we will do tomorrow when we join their regular Tuesday morning fellowship. Mama Jenifa began by mentioning that she can't forget a previous visit from Missouri when the women who came spoke about a bird dropping one seed in an empty spot on the ground and how the seed took root and grew into a productive plant. The women of Lui were like that, she says, after the war, when they had nothing and couldn't think what to do. But now they have grown and produced a lot. Mama Margaret brought us up to date on 5 years of the Lui grinding mill (now broken and perhaps not reparable), the chicken house they've just built, and the craft and sewing shop. For the most part they seem to be plowing their profits back into their shared resources,planting teak and buying a cow and two sewing machines. (Deb G brought them two machines as well, and the Lund, Sweden, church partners gave them three.) They also make the school uniforms for the girls' secondary school and Luinjini school, selling at a much lower cost to the poor and orphaned than the market price. The challenges they face are illiteracy, fuel, and lack of transport. Mama Margaret and Diocesan Secretary Vasco opened an adult class for literacy. They started with 15 students, but numbers have dwindled as time has passed. I had to smile at that since dwindling student commitment is one of the biggest challenges I face as GED coordinator for an adult ed agency.

The Mothers' Union meets every Tuesday for fellowship, with a sermon, Bible study, prayers, and sharing of their concerns and difficulties. They workers visit families who are bereaved or who havea new baby. Tomorrow the five women of our mission team will go to this meeting. Emily is to preach; the mamas are excited about her because she is newly ordained and such a young women, and they think she will be a good visual message to their women. Then the rest of us will share our stories as women in the church, and the women of Lui will tell us about themselves, and we will all have time to share with each other and ask questions. We are very excited about this opportunity!

While we had Margaret and Jenifa, we asked about buying a grinding mill and getting it set up in Kediba. They know a priest who knows all about where to buy a mill and what kind, so we hope to get more info soon. And the women of Lui will help the MU in Kediba with setup and accounting practices. Since Emily and I were supposed to do that, we were relieved to pass on the task to some people with actual expertise in this area. The mill house has its poles up and its iron sheets bought, but there is still a lot of work to do (and pay for) before it's ready for the mill.

The SSRRC
After the MU, a woman named Helen from the South Sudan Resource and Rehabilitation Commission visited us and talked about NGOs here and also about her life in the bush during the war, food drops from the UN's World Food Programme, and the reliance on God by the people of Lui. These are really Nancy and Emily's stories, though, so I'll leave the telling to them.

Lunch
Every day we have rice and beans plus for lunch and dinner. Sometimes the plus is bean leaves,sometimes a meat stew -- last night it was ground beef and potato hash, yum! -- sometimes papaya or bananas or mango. Today it was eggplant. We were asking Christina, who is in charge of taking care of us (yes, Christina the priest), what it was before we tried it. We had to use Arabic to figure it out. It was absolutely fabulous, the best eggplant I've ever had in my life, and I really do like eggplant. We fell into a conversation in a combination of Arabic, Moru, and English, about various foods and whether we have them in America. Christina also was trying to find out what we'd be willing to eat; she was surprised to learn that we're OK with okra. Then the team's conversation degenerated into longing recitals of chocolate, ice cream, hot wings, and other food wishes. We finished lunch today with bananas and crunchy mangoes, a different variety from the ones we get in the U.S., texture somewhere between a peach and an apple, but yummy.

Arabic
If you are wondering how my Arabic is working out here, I have to say we talk about Arabic more than we talk it. Everywhere I'm told that some don't like the language and refuse to use it, but those are usually people who speak it and think it's great to have the additional shared second language. In Mundri the Archbishop was speaking Arabic some of the time because he doesn't speak Moru and some of the people don't speak English. Today I asked Mama Jenifa if she would speak Arabic so I could listen and Mama Margaret could translate from that rather than Moru, and she said she could, but she could say what she wanted better in Moru. So that's what she did. Mostly Arabic so far has been a bridge when Morus don't have the English for something specific they want to say.

The Cell Phone
I don't remember if I wrote that my Zain sim card works if we take my phone up the hill just past the secondary school in Lui, even though the tower is in Mundri. MTN is supposed to be coming in with towers in Mundri and Lainye in a couple of months, so we may easily have cell service for our trip in May. Note to future travelers: if you buy a new cell phone, make sure it can be unlocked! It's much cheaper to call the U.S. on an African cell -- 4 Sudanese pounds have bought at least 10 or 15 minutes of talk. (That's 2 USD.) By the way, our satellite phone is working again now, so some of us will be calling home tonight. (Our tonight, your this afternoon.)

Laundry
And, saving the most mundane for last, today and yesterday most of us have done our laundry. We are kind of in trouble with our caregivers for doing it ourselves, but they are very busy with Christmas and so we followed Deb G's lead and did it ourselves. I have to say I am very bad at this; I kept dropping things in the dirt on my way to the fence to hang them up. Doing laundry means taking one of our "bath" tubs off a table in the "shower," filling it with soap and water, swishing things a bit, doing the same process with rinse water, then wringing as hard as we can. Now I know why I should have been more diligent at the Y over the past few months.

Going to Church in Lui

Today we went to church twice, to the English service at Fraser Cathedral at 9:00 and to the Moru service at 11:00. Both were Morning Prayer; Emily preached at 9 and Robert at 11. Church in Moruland is always fun because of the lively singing and drumming. At the Moru service, a young man and an old woman danced in front of the church, too. Maybe the most distinctive thing is the way the whole congregation processes out and forms a line down which each new person shakes hands with everyone before joining the line.

Archbishop Daniel stopped by with his entourage to see us in Lui before heading back to Juba this afternoon, and his departure from Mundri means that Bishop Bullen is home in Lui. We are very glad for that and look forward to spending some time with him this evening.

Tomorrow Emily and Joe are meeting with the youth of Lui, and Tuesday Emily, Tammy, Nancy, and I are meeting with the Mothers' Union. We'll attend Christmas Eve services at the cathedral and then spread out around the archdeaconries for Christmas.

Day 3

Today, Saturday, 12/20/08, started really early -- at 3 a.m., to be precise, when a newly bereaved woman went shrieking and wailing from the hospital compound around our compound's fence and down the road. At first I lay under my mosquito net frozen in shock, and gradually her repetitious chant grew more distant, but when it got louder again, I got up and latched the door. Later I was ashamed of myself for wanting to protect myself and Tammy more than I wanted to help a sister in distress.

We all had to get up early so we could shower and eat in time to travel to Mundri for the big celebration: a 6-hour extravaganza to dedicate the new offices of the diocese there. We rode in a big van with some of our Moru friends, including Christina and Francis, priests of Lui Parish. When we arrived, we sat in the payat (big tukul for eating) with Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul, his wife Deborah, and Mama Salome, the president of the Mothers' Union for the whole of ECS. The Archbishop immediately brought up his speech at Lambeth and emphasized to us that he has never said he wants to sever ECS's relationship with TEC, and that his words were those of Sudan, not his personal views. He talked with me a bit about his dreams for Sudan; he is anxious to spread an understanding of stewardship and to keep education in the hands of the church. Health and clean water remain priorities.

The dedication started at the office and involved lots of processing and singing and praying. I was outside, but the clergy were inside, so maybe another team member will write about that part. Then we rested for a while and drank some Fanta or Coke. After that we went down to the cathedral, where Bishop Bismarck spoke about the projects of the diocese, the treasurer gave a full and transparent report of contributions and expenses, and the archbishop gave a speech about his dreams and projects. Bishop Bullen also got to speak as he is the head of the cluster. After that, we at a big meal with lots of meat, linya (porridge-like stuff that goes under stew), and rice. It was a great day of visiting with old and new friends, and the pomp and circumstance surrounding the dedication of an office gave us a clue what a big deal office space is here!

We were happy to have something to do today after mostly hanging out yesterday -- to some large extent we seem to be a team of Marthas. Tomorrow Bishop Bullen returns to Lui as soon as the archbishop leaves Mundri. We will be glad to have him with us to put into action the plans Vasco has hinted at.

Here in Lui

All eight of us have arrived safely in Lui. We flew in on Missionary Air Fellowship's Cessna Caravan with Laura the pilot yesterday, arriving about noon. On the way, we stopped off at Arua, Uganda, to refuel, and I was stunned to discover that I had BlackBerry email there from MTN (and cell phone service), even though T-Mobile doesn't have B'Berry email in Kampala! Stunned and thrilled, I should say.

We hit the dirt runway at Mundri airfield to be greeted by Bishop Bullen, Vasco, the diocesan secretary, several military guys making sure the incoming flight was legit, a World Harvest missionary named Mike, and various Morus who'd come to see us in. Mike and his family live in Mundri now and are expecting a full team of teachers and engineers after the first of the year; they have ambitious plans in Mundri. We loaded ourselves and our luggage into the Mundri diocese's Toyota Land Cruiser (I think) and the car of the West Mundri County commissioner and head for Mundri, which is the larger town across the Yei River from Lui.

Mundri has expanded into a thriving metropolis compared to the shell of a town it was in2003, when the bombings had sent its people down the road to a new town. We saw a bank, a cell tower, and two gas stations in Mundri! In fact, we bought a sim card in Mundri because we are told that if we climb a hill in Lui we can hit the tower. Someone of you lucky readers may be the recipient of our test call, if this works at all. Having cell phone access in Lui will change everything...

We went to the Mundri commisioner's office, where he welcomed us warmly and Robert introduced us all. After that, we headed for the cathedral grounds, where we met Bishop Bismarck and the standing commmittee of his diocese. Once again Robert introduced us, but this time he gave me the opportunity to extend Wayne's greetings to the diocese of Mundri. This is a set speech that goes like this: "I bring you the greetings of my husband Wayne, the bishop of Missouri, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." That's probably too short; I should start off with something like Grace and Peace to you in the name of our Lord and Saviour... We were shepherded off to a tukul for water and soft drinks (a new treat since 2003, and while we were there, Mike went to the bank to get some Sudanese pounds for Robert and to buy us a couple of Mundri sim cards.

After all that, we drove to Lui. We were amazed by how smooth the dirt road is now, how much traffic is on it, and how fast it's going. The traffic is mostly motorcycles and large trucks; Mike pointed out that these improvements have the downside of dramatically increasing fatal traffic accidents. Lui itself is much expanded and livelier than in 2003. The market is much bigger and there are many more vehicles. The diocese has built a new 4-room guesthouse, a computer office and office for the Mothers' Union, and some storage buildings. I have seen one of the wells we've drilled and the women and children clustered around it -- when I get back, I'll put a photo here. For now, to see photos and get other perspectives, check out our team's official blog at http://luinotes.blogspot.com/.

So far we've eaten rice, beans, and meat at lunch, the same for dinner with the addition of bean leaves at dinner, and lovely rolls with tea and/or Moru coffee for breakfast. One of the ladies made Deb some Moru peanut butter and honey, which she is kindly sharing. By the way, I should say that Deb is in her element greeting friends made during her six-months' stay here in 2006; everyone is happy to see her, greets her as "daughter of the Moru," and helps her catch up on all the news. Dan and Joe, our first-timers, seem to have adjusted to Moru life just fine. Dan is out meeting people right now, Joe is working with Robert on technology issues. Emily and Tammy are off talking with women or blowing bubbles with children. This trip most of us have private rooms; Robert and Nancy have a tukul of their own, and Tammy and I are sharing a room because one of the tukuls didn't meet the Moru standards, but that's good because it means we have easy access to all the things we brought to share. (The IKEA collapsible shelves are working out great, Susan!)

Today we expect Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul to stop by to greet us on his way to Mundri, where we will see him again tomorrow, God willing, because we are all going to the dedication of the new office space of the Mundri diocese. Bishop Bullen is in Mundri for a cluster committee meeting of which he is in charge.

Note to families: We are having some issues making calls on our satellite phone, but mostly we are able to use Vasco's phone. If you get a call and nobody is there, be patient and we'll try again. The satellite number we have given you should still work for incoming calls.

We are all grateful to be here, thankful for our safety and comfort and the kind hospitality of our Moru hosts. I'm especially aware that I can't be my usual self-sufficient self but must rely on friends and strangers, trusting that I'm in God's hands. There's a particular grace to that... Thank you to all who are holding us in your thoughts and prayers.

A Day in Kampala

Yesterday I got a taste of Uganda, and it's a wonderful place. I saw a lot of it from the back of a "special hire" car (i.e., taxi), as Robert and I went to the Sumadhura well drilling company to discuss the next three wells the Diocese of Missouri will fund in the Diocese of Lui. Sumadhura is in the Port Bell area of Luzira, which seems to be a suburb of Kampala; anyhow Port Bell is right on Lake Victoria and quite beautiful. Kampala in general has lots of flowering trees and vegetation; Nancy and I identified hibiscus, but other than that, we are not so much up on tropical flowers. Houses of the well-off have their own water tanks and are surrounded by decorative but protective fences. The curbs around town are black and white striped, and the roads are anything but straight. A lot of the architecture is brick or stucco with Spanish-tile roofs.

We came back from Port Bell for lunch at the guest house. It was traditional Ugandan food and quite delicious. We had stewed goat or chicken, rice, sweet potatoes (not orange -- white, but with a taste similar to our sweet potatoes), a mix of spinach and some other stewed vegetables, whole plantains, and peanut sauce, which is usually served over mashed plantains. Here they call peanuts 'g-nuts,' which I think is short for groundnuts. We ended up sharing lunch with Emmanuel Sserwadda, who's the TEC partnership officer for Africa, a native of Uganda, who happens to be here too.

After lunch, we went to the Missionary Air Fellowship office to finalize arrangements for the flight into Sudan, and we went to see their guesthouse, which is lovely. Then we went downtown, where we visited several shops to get a feel for prices in Kampala, and to the bank, where I typed the largest number I have ever put into an ATM -- because $1.00 is a bit less than 2000 Ugandan shillings these days. Eventually we wandered to a hotel for dinner, and I will admit we had pizza, but only as researchers investigating the Ugandan take on this favorite from home! It was pretty good, but the ground meat on the "Foreigner Pizza" needed salt.

Today we are having lunch with Emmanuel and going to the Kampala office of the Episcopal Church of Sudan, then, we hope, to the vendor of grinding mills that the Companion Diocese Committee has been consulting in an effort to implement the grant from UTO. Deb has arrived, as of half an hour ago, and the rest of the mission team should be hanging out in Amsterdam waiting for the last leg of the trip to Kampala. Tomorrow we leave for Lui first thing in the morning -- my next post should actually be from Sudan, if all things technological go well.

Mission

Robert, Nancy, and I arrived in Kampala last night. Getting our luggage took a while, but customs was hassle free, and the driver from the Namirembe Guest House was waiting for us. The drive from Entebbe to Kampala took half an hour or a bit more -- long enough to get a bit of the flavor of this part of Uganda even though it was dark. Lots of people were out in the small shops lining the road, and the buildings are more brick or cement than I expected. It's tropical-lush here, cool (60s at night, 70s by day) but humid. The guest house is typical, I guess, of African church guest houses.

On the plane to Brussels, trying to sleep in order to adjust to the loss of 9 hours but struggling because at home it was only 8 p.m., I was thinking about what we're doing on this trip. We call it a mission trip and ourselves missioners or the mission team. I'm a little uncomfortable with those words because of the history of missionaries in Africa, not to mention the fact that our mission isn't evangelistic in the conventional sense. But we are on a mission, and I've been struggling to articulate for myself what the mission is -- a "mission statement," if you will. For me, ultimately, it's about seeing the God of creation in a new way, it's about the "yours are the hands" prayer of St. Theresa, it's about Matthew 25, it's about more fully experiencing the body of Christ. It's about being open to God through God's people in Lui, and it's about the faith and trust borne of being in the hands of friends and strangers, being less powerful on my own than I ever am at home and therefore realizing ultimately in whose hands I am.

Wheels up!

OK, this is the first test of all the technology I brought and set up - if I email a blog entry from my phone, will it really post properly? I am sitting at Lambert Saint Louis Airport waiting for Robert and Nancy, finally off on this big adventure after a crazy yesterday. .... We are on the plane - powering off!
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Baggage

A fundamental thing about traveling to Southern Sudan is the psychic dissonance implicit in the contrast between what you do to get ready and what you're getting ready for. I imagine the whole mission team has been, like me, up to their eyeballs in trying to pack everything they need for two-plus weeks in Africa without exceeding 15 kilograms, get immunizations for diseases they never thought about before, wind things up at work, and do whatever Christmas-y things are necessary when you won't be home for Christmas. I have spent an unreasonable amount of energy trying to decide what electronics and books to take for maximum efficiency and comfort. Set all that against the simplicity of life in Lui, where people have time to sit under a tree and talk, and much of every day is devoted to finding, hauling, and preparing food and water. In Lui, visitors have little more to do than eat, sleep, talk, and gracefully accept the gift of being taken care of. Luckily there's that long plane ride between getting ready and being there.

I started out intending to write about "things done and left undone," but I never got there.

Back to Lui

I have never blogged before. After years of hiding my journals and periodically ripping them to recyclable shreds, it seems counterintuitive to journal publicly. And besides, the blogs I read online are all so profound, so rich with spiritual insight... What a burden of expectation. But I am off to Lui in Western Equatoria, Sudan, on Sunday as part of a mission team from the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri to visit friends in our companion diocese, the Diocese of Lui in the Episcopal Church of Sudan, and I want to stay in touch with friends and family and also preserve something of the daily experience for myself. So here goes.

The town of Lui and the diocese named after it lie northwest of Juba, the capital of Southern Sudan, and southwest of Rumbek, a regional center. To get there, our team will fly into Kampala, Uganda, on commercial airlines, and then fly to the airstrip nearest to Lui, in nearby Mundri, via MAF, the Missionary Air Fellowship. Eight of us are making the trip -- introductions of the rest of the team later, when I have their permission. Three of us are going as far as Kampala a couple of days before the rest of the team to make arrangements and scout out what resources are available in Uganda. I'm excited to get a little time in a new city.

This page is called "Back to Lui" because I visited Lui in the spring of 2003, when the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement were still engaged in the decades-long civil war that left millions dead and millions more displaced. Of our team of eight, six of us have been to Lui before. I'm expecting big changes in the town since I was there because expansion and development have followed on the heels of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the GOS and the SPLM. In case you're wondering, Darfur is a long way away, as is Khartoum, the historic capital of Sudan and seat of the unified government of Sudan.

Here's a picture of the town of Lui just so you can imagine where we'll be. (Click to enlarge it!) I probably won't be uploading photos from Lui even though I'll be taking lots of them. Notice that the road through Lui is not paved. The town likewise has no running water, no electrical grid, and no cell phone service. The church has a solar-powered computer and satellite-borne Internet access. Extended families live in compounds of several small mud-and-grass houses surrounded by a fence. The Moru people of Lui are farmers, in contrast to the better-known Dinka (think Lost Boys of Sudan) from farther east, who are famous for their large white cattle.

If you have advice, questions, or comments for me or the team, or want to send greetings to any of our Moru friends, please post a comment!