Working Relatively Not Hard At All

Today (the day that I’m writing this, not the day that I’m posting it) I went for an 8 mile run because it’s Saturday and that’s what I do for fun on Saturdays. Basically, I think of a place farther down the road that I haven’t had time to run to in the past, and I run there and back. It’s fun. Or I guess you just have to be there. When I got home I ate breakfast and went out to my garden to work.

A family garden work day-they flipped over their
garden hoes and balanced on the handle
while taking a break to eat peanuts and cookies.
I did it too and it was surprisingly uncomfortable.

In Mundri, Saturdays are the days to work in the gardens. Up and down the road as I ran, I saw lots of people walking out to their gardens, hoes and other gardening tools over their shoulders. Unlike many people here who have to walk a ways to their gardens, outside of town in more affordable areas, my garden is right behind my kitchen. Also, unlike everyone else’s gardens, mine is about 3 meters by 4 meters. So it’s quite manageable for a new gardener who has recently realized that, while it is fun to play in the dirt, hack at things with my hoe, bury seeds, it’s not really fun to pull weeds. First I thought it was because I didn’t know what was weeds and what was not weeds. But today I realized that it was because I don’t like pulling up the weeds and seeing how few of the seeds I planted actually grew. Today I was re-planting parts of my garden that didn’t grow because we didn’t have enough rain after I planted the first seeds and they never grew. Yes, I could have watered them, but that would have involved hauling jerrycans of water from our well, and I didn’t feel like it because it’s rainy season, and it’s going to rain eventually.  So I did the replanting.

My lovely garden surrounded by uncut grass jungle

I worked in my garden for nearly 3 hours. After finishing up in the garden, I was covered in dirt, because I believe in doing everything as enthusiastically as possible. I had to shower before going to the market to buy food, And, as I usually do on sunny days when I think there will be a good chance of them drying, I washed my clothes with run off water from my shower. Since I recently moved my clothesline because of people fixing our fence, I had to carry a bucket of wet clothes across to the other side of the compound. And, in fact, our compound is quite big, much larger than my garden. I won’t attempt a guess at square meterage because that would take too much brain power, and I don’t feel like it. But it is definitely big enough that the guys who cut it with slashy stick thingies never finish cutting it. There is always a jungle of grass over most of it. Long grass is annoying here because it is almost always wet and full of bugs and you can’t tell if there are snakes hiding under there waiting to kill you. I think snakes are interesting, and I wouldn’t mind seeing one or two, but not when they are close enough to kill me, because there are other, less painful ways to die.

My drinking water-I fill up
bottles several times a week

The large yellow jerrycan got on
my shoulder and the kitchen pots
filled up with water.

So I carted my laundry over to the line, which I’d re-hung behind our kitchen and hung out my clothes. After that, since there is no water in our kitchen tank right now, I went back to the other side of the compound with a jerrycan to get water from our storage barrel. I was super-proud of myself for getting it up to my shoulder and carrying it back to the kitchen, where I planned to use it later to wash dishes. With practice, maybe someday I can get it on my head.

After all that, I went to the market to buy food. I got eggs, tomatoes, cumin and a  green pepper. This is the first time I’ve seen green peppers that actually looked edible. And it was a good pepper. I scrambled some eggs and when I finally sat down to eat lunch it was 2:35pm. And sitting down felt amazing and luxurious.

Before

After

After lunch, I used the water that I had hauled to wash all the dishes out on the back porch. A lot had accumulated, and in typical man-fashion, no one else had attempted or offered to do dishes that THEY had eaten off of as well, so I washed them all myself—woman-fashion. When I had finished, it started raining, so I put out my bucket to catch water off the roof so that I could wash dishes again later. The rain also meant that my plan to go visit Repent’s house so that I could see his mother, who is there helping while Joy is sick, was off. So I decided to take the rest of the day off, feeling so pleased with my awesome toughness.

I told you all of this because I am bragging about how tough I am. I could also tell you about days when I ran 6 miles in the morning and then rode a motorcycle into the jungle until the road ended and then walked two miles in and two miles out from a village where we had to get GPS points.  At this particular village, while Repent was using our demon iPad to try to get the village info (the iPad doesn’t react well to heat and often starts writing startling things in our forms that HQ in the States are going to read with great consternation), I was sitting on a log bench (remember those? They are not comfy benches), enjoying the view. A man with his bow and arrows slung over his should came by. He saw me and stopped to stare. I asked him what he was hunting, but he didn’t understand, as I asked in Arabic and not Moru. But he came over and sat next to me and never took his eyes off of me. It was awkward so I looked over at Repent and asked if he needed any help. Just before we got up to leave, I felt a tiny poke on my arm. I guess the guy just needed to make sure I was solid and not a ghastly ghostly apparition.

Me with Esther in Repent's compound (they're neighbors),
looking white and with a spot on my skirt where
my friend's baby peed on me. It was fine though--
I knew I was about to get way dirtier than that.

Really, my life is quite active, and I love that, and sometimes it makes me think I’m awesome. Then when I’m walking 2 miles up to the internet place, having run 6 miles that morning and walked 2 miles in the jungle, I pass a lady and her daughter on the road. They are carrying large, full sacks on their heads. They tell me they are coming from Okari and going to the market in Mundri—5 miles. They are going to sell stuff, buy stuff and walk home—10 miles round-trip with heavy sack on their heads. The next day Repent and I stop the motorcycle to say ‘hi’ to some of his friends walking down the road. He tells me later that they are walking to Mundri—9 miles away. They are barefoot and carrying a small child. Their mother is sick at the hospital in Lui, 15 miles away from Mundri.

I said, “So they’ll stay the night and then drive
to Lui tomorrow?”

Repent said, “Maybe. If they don’t have money for a car, they’ll probably walk to Lui.”

I said, “WALK TO LUI?! THEY ARE GOING TO WALK ALL THE WAY TO LUI?” (Barefoot!)

This is the road they were walking on

Repent said, “Yeah. It’s not a big deal. I’ve done it myself.”

I said, “You walk there, stay the night and then walk home the next day?”

Repent, “Usually. But once I walked there and back in a day. I just left really early.”

That is a marathon+, people.

This not-to-be-sold-or-exchanged bag of sorghum from the US,
was sold and exchanged until Repent bought it in our market,
and it is an example of a huge thing that women carry on their heads
here. But Repent carried it on the back of his brother's motorcycle.
Thanks for your tax dollars, America!

In conclusion, I am a pansy. Though, I do think it would be really fun to walk 30 miles round-trip one day just to see if I could do it, but barefoot and carrying a baby? And probably the barefoot, baby-carrying ladies had already carried several 20 pound jerrycans full of water to their homes over distances I can’t guess. I’ve talked to women here who are walking 7 miles one way to get water for their families. This is why I do what I do, but can we just stop a minute and RESPECT the people, ladies especially, of South Sudan who are amazingly strong? For real.

Respect. Do it.

And someday I will carry a jerrycan of water on my lazy lumpy head.

(For all Americans reading this, you owe a debt of gratitude to Repent and the British colonizers for all the distances in this post being given in miles. I just take his word for it on estimated distances.)

And here are two more photos of women at work--first, shaking the wings off the termites they caught in the jungle and second, weaving grass into mats.

I love how the little girl is making her
own basket while her grandmother weaves the mat