Patience & Perseverance

The Sudanese are a patient people. Many waited in line for several hours, without seating nor water, to vote. Voting was not compulsory. Yet still they waited – and voted, peacefully! Yes the elections have passed without serious incident. Apart from many shops and businesses being closed, life has been pretty much as normal. Of 14 personnel from NGOs who remained in Malakal, we accounted for five of them. Most left Sudan during the elections. 

Now we hope that the announcement of results – winners and losers – will be accepted calmly. The major problem for us is that all traffic between north and south has been halted for ten days. So we are awaiting building supplies from Khartoum that normally would have arrived but have not yet been allowed through. With the wet season approaching, it is a delay we could well have done without. 

We have a huge pit, dug by machine to a depth of 4.5 metres, for a septic tank. But there it sits. The concrete blocks and bricks needed to form the walls, between which reinforced concrete will be poured, are not available anywhere in Malakal and the trucks carrying the materials ordered, have not arrived from Khartoum. The soak pit for the septic has been dug entirely by hand to a depth of 10 metres by 2 metres diameter. An incredible effort of patient perseverance by the three men who subcontracted to dig it! Now we need the bricks to line it. 

I have heard disparaging remarks about the willingness of Sudanese [...]

We don’t and we do

Last Wednesday, one of our teachers in the first year programme, Elizabeth, told Ninet she had endured a terrible toothache for the past ten days. So Ninet rang the dental section of the United Nations and out we drove to ‘Log Base’, the UN compound a few kilometres out of Malakal. The Indian dentist attended immediately to two fillings and told her to come back for work on three root canals…all at no charge. 

Most of the population of Malakal do not have access to dentists. If the people can get to Log Base, they will be assisted for free but it is a daunting proposition for most of them. The capacity of many local people to talk with ‘ex-pats’ let alone pay for any kind of health service is normally very limited, even for teachers. In first world countries we take a lot for granted and expect a lot.   

All of my life I have expected a clean water supply but here I have had to become used to showering and washing my clothes in water containing varying amounts of river colloids. I try to avoid the hours just after pumping when the stirred up water is at its muddiest. We never drink it but the locals do! We go often to the water purification plant near the Nile to fill-up gerry cans of clean water  – for free. We are lucky. Our community in Juba has to buy drinking water. By the way, I can buy a 600ml bottle of water here for about 29 [...]

Survive, Thrive or Fully Alive

The Easter vigil was celebrated with great style here in Malakal. There were approximately two hundred baptisms and confirmations in our parish church and four hundred in the cathedral. There were energetic liturgical dancers and much singing with great rhythm and energy. The church was crammed and there were several hundred more people on seats outside the church with some still standing.  

I entered the church at 6:45am and perspired my way through the next three hours. Was that the conclusion? No we had not yet reached the offertory and the lines of those being baptised and the confirmees still filled the centre aisle. The offertory would not come for another hour. Mercifully by 9:45pm it had become a little cooler and my shirt began to dry out! The ceremony concluded at 11:50am.

 At the Easter vigil, we had all seven readings, not a reduced number as is common in Western countries. I could understand some references, ‘Ibrahim’, ‘Isaac’, ‘hojanna’ and the like but it was not helpful to me that Arabic was used for the entire duration of the service. As it was, I focussed on surviving but the people seemed to thrive and, at times, come fully alive. 

There were some girls doing a liturgical dance – aged about sixteen. I found myself thinking what was it like for them growing up to age eleven in a war zone. How have they found the last five years? 

Here the people welcome us as ‘kawadjas’ who are willing to journey with them. The women, in their distinctively coloured laos [...]