Still Alive

With my friend Nadji's grandkids

It’s been a while since I’ve written. I haven’t really been in the mood to document my life these days, though I can happily report that I am seeing the Lord do really good things through our work, and that is exciting and encouraging.

So a quick “so far in 2020” update on my life: I got the new Director for Neverthirst and our new Chief of Programs (or I always forget what his title is, but he’s the Boss) out to visit our programs in Africa. After a smooth and fulfilling visit to projects run in Uganda, a country where education and infrastructure seem rampant compared to the wilderness of Chad, I was a bit nervous to bring them over to the Wild West(er) Part of  Africa. But I’m happy to report that they LOOOOOOOOVED it (their words), in spite of, or perhaps because of, the challenges of working here. We ate a lot of camel meat, rode camels, spoke with many communities, pastors and government officials, and were gifted many goats and chickens, which we donated back to whomever was with us at the time. Most importantly, they saw how huge the need is out here and how big the hearts are of the local pastors and churches who want to help in the name of Jesus. So they’re all in for Chad, and that makes me happy, in spite of the fact that I just attended a packed meeting with a government official I will not name who really desperately wants to make life difficult for everyone who is working here trying to make life less difficult for his people. These are the little things that get to you sometimes, but if it were easy, would it be as fun? Maybe not? Of course long pointless meetings are not fun either…

Matt and Jason visiting an biosand filter home in Uganda-
excellent project.

Photographing the drilling team in Uganda-
also an excellent project.

And I got to see a wonderful friend and faithful prayer partner for the first time since South Sudan!

Then we get to Chad and I realized I forgot to tell Matt
to bring passport photos because I always have them and I assume everyone else does.
So I took him to get passport photos--Chadian style.

Second day in Chad--flat tire. Yeah, that's about right.

Free chicken!

The weapon in the car of our friend who helped us get a rental car.
He said he shoots those metal balls to defend against thieves.
Another welcome to Chad!

Joe also loves camel meat and bones!

The woman in the nomad village who really impacted
Jason and Matt when she showed us the water she and her family have to drink.

Also in 2020, I took a nice little break from life to adventure with a wonderful friend who showed how much she loved me by last-minute planning a trip with me when she is NOT a last minute person. But we had a wonderful time because she is a wonderful person. Also the beach was there.

And work marches on…thanks to Jason and his love of documents and organisation (with an ‘s’ because he’s Australian), I have lots of documents and I am way more organized (with a ‘z’ because autocorrect doesn't want me to be pretentious).

Moussa's hôtel des milles étoiles at sunset

This past week, in pursuit of documents and planning, I took a 10+ hour car trip, bumping along the sandy roads, down down down to the riverside in a small town few people know about, including our driver hired so I wouldn't have to drive. I was hoping to camp out with the guys outside of  the church, but because I’m female, propriety dictated that I pitch my mosquito net tent inside the storage room in the pastor’s house. “Don’t worry,” he said, “it’s only hot now, but later around 2am it will be really cold and you will prefer to be inside.” Personally, I think it would have been nice to have slept on a folded up rug on the sand like our driver did, but I threw down a sleeping bag on top of a yoga mat on a hard brick floor, and managed to sleep until 4:45 when the rural world gets up with the sun to sweep, start the cook fire, pump water for the day, and make the nasara feel bad for being so lazy. I meant to take photos, but I forgot. The house also had a walled off area (no door) for showering and peeing, but if your toilet needs are more than “Number 1” you are requested to find a private place behind a bush outside of the compound for that.

When you're on a 10 hour drive through the bush and you run into people you know!

Nesie and I were there two nights and one full day, which was a very full day, actually. We met in the morning with the pastors who had come in to hear about our project and learn how to follow our application process to find villages where the need is highest. Since the need is high everywhere, we have to find ways to prioritize. It’s never very fun doing that.

Telling the pastors how to fill out the applications.

We also had a bit of time to hear from the pastors about their work and pray for each other. It’s in these moments when I am sometimes overwhelmed with how truly impressive these guys are. You know that bit in The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis when the narrator sees a woman who is really being celebrated and admired and he asks the guide to Heaven who she is? He thinks he knows who she is because she is clearly an extra-impressive person, so surely she was famous on earth too. The guide says, “She is one of the great ones. You have heard that fame in this country and fame on Earth are two quite different things.” He goes on to tell why this woman who was an unknown during her life is being celebrated for her faithfulness and the way she lived her life and how many people she influenced for good. I think about this a lot when I meet certain people out here and see their faithfulness and their joy in spite of the difficulties that they face on a daily basis. They are out here fighting for others, and you will hear about them someday. Here’s a sneak peak:

Some pretty wonderful men there.

One pastor was a mechanic and a successful businessman. He earned a lot of money and instead of spending it on himself or his family, he and his wife spent a month fasting and praying about what to do with it. He felt the Lord called him to go to seminary. At seminary he was called to be a missionary. He finished his studies as a pastor and missionary and went to this remote town where he saw a need for schools for the children around him. He started teaching the children at the school and then went to get a degree in education. Soon he was noticed by the local government and asked to be the director of a local government school. He is doing this, but he is also working to start schools in all of the churches in the area (open to students of any religion) to make sure that children who can’t travel far to the government school still have a chance to learn to read and write.

Church school blackboard. Local village children are taught by the pastor.

Another pastor was up for a chance for a good job also in the education sector. He passed the exam and was told by the person in charge of the test to go find his name on the list because he had been accepted! He went to go see the list, and his name wasn’t on it. He checked with the administration at the main office—his name was not on the list. Someone had taken his name off and replaced it with the name of their friends and relatives and he didn’t get the job he worked for and earned. As he told the story, I found myself getting angry—injustice, unfairness, cheating—it really gets to us middle children. But he told the story without malice. “God had something else for me,“ he said. “I trained to be a missionary and I’ve been serving the Lord all over and it has been exciting.”

Church instrument--turns out it is more for rhythm than melody.
Very cool sound. Really spices up the Chantes de Victoire

Another pastor has been working with nomads all over Chad, and he said, “I’m basically a nomad myself. I travel all over.” When asked if he had any prayer requests, he said, “Well, I’m really trying to learn a new tribal language. If I learn it, I can speak to 3 unreached tribes in this area. They have been really interested in the Gospel, but we haven’t been able to communicate much.” The man is probably in his mid-50’s and this is his eleventh (11^th!) language. How many 50 year old men at church have you ever heard ask for prayer to learn their 11^th language so they could share the Good News with people who have never heard it before? I feel like our prayer lists tend to be sickness related.  We should pray for sick people for sure (now as much as ever), but not one of the 10 people who asked for prayer that day asked for protection or deliverance from illness. One guy did ask for protection from hippos and snakes when he is fishing though…

Speaking one of his 11 languages.

So those are some of the great ones! People giving their lives to serve others in relative obscurity, though now the 2 people who read my blog will know about them. It’s pretty cool to work with people like this. They know the water needs in the area so well, and they know that clean water is not enough to change lives forever. Just like Jesus telling the Samaritan woman, “whoever drinks from this water will get thirsty again, but whoever drinks from the water of Life that I give will never be thirsty again,” we want to help people get access to the Water that quenches thirst for eternity.

River near the pastor's house at sunrise.

Side note: when Westerners read that story of the Samaritan woman at the well, do we talk about 2 cultures that had been at odds coming together through water? Because Nesie pointed that out—Jews and Samaritans speaking kindly to each other, listening to each other, sharing a resource. He reminded everyone that we can use water to bring reconciliation between estranged tribes and communities too. It was a reminder to me as well about the relevance of the Bible across cultures and times. There is no specific language you have to learn to speak with God. There are no rules and regulations tied to a specific location or time zone that you have to keep. There is no superior culture that everyone should strive to attain at some point. To all who are thirsty, let them come and drink from the water of Life.

A few other photos from recent days, if you want to keep scrolling down:

Two of the best people ever to walk the face of the earth,
neither of which know how to take a photo without smiling with their whole face.

Moussa photographing his food--nowhere is safe from the food photographers!

I gave him the bag so that he could carry a bunch of stuff he had accumulated.
He proved that he is actually a normal guy because he was going to refuse since it looked too girly.
Then he decided that he would keep it in honor of women's day, and he now uses it all the time.

Nadji broke his foot! I went to visit him and hang out with his grandkids
(first photo on the blog)

Took them for a short ride in the car.
It was the BEST. Day. Ever.
It's nice when kids are easy to please.
And also adorable. The one in my lap definitely knows his power, though-
he gets what he wants because he is irresistible.

Henry (our Finance Director) and I crashed a wedding.
As a Kenyan, he was disappointed that they didn't dance as they do in Kenya.
He said: at my wedding, we danced SERIOUSLY.

It was a packed house, celebrating the marriage of a man who
lost his wife suddenly a few years ago and was left with small children.
God blessed him with a new wife who loves his kids and will serve alongside him in the church here.
There was a lot of rejoicing for this couple.

Wedding selfie from Claire and me!

The Kenyans teach the mzungu to make East African chapatis!

Oh they are soooo good.

They have layers!

And I made mango cobbler (that's cinnamon on the top, not burned bits).
It doesn't look as tasty as the chapatis, but Henry liked it anyway.

Birthday and Other Types of Traveling

Already my traveling life is blurring, and I’m barely a third of the way in. I like traveling, and I like being in the field, so these are good things. I also like long road trips. But sometimes my life decisions are tiring.

 

On my birthday in the past, I’ve enjoyed taking time off and going on adventures. Number 30 was in Spain, 31 in Hungary, 32 just back from Nepal, making Mexican food for the office in N’Djamena (they liked it). This year I didn’t get a chance to plan an adventure, as I was informed early on that the donors were coming on that day. Naturally, I then informed them that it would be my birthday. With the generous openness natural to most Americans (really that is our reputation out here, I don’t know who thinks THEY hate us—we are much more lovable than most of the French), he offered to bring me a present. “What do you want from the US?” I asked him for a tub of that icing that you can buy in the supermarket. Simple, small, hopefully with funfetti. But I’ve noticed that men often smile and nod like they are hearing the words that are coming out of my mouth, though they have already made their own decision. He brought me Starbucks coffee and lotion. I’m sure that any other 33 year old woman would have been very happy with that, but I’ve already been open and honest about the maturity level of my taste buds, and I never drink coffee by choice. But they redeemed themselves by giving me a box of Little Debbie Valentine’s Day chocolate cakes, which fits into my nutritional system.

Gibraltar on my 30th.

Budapest on the 31st-same scarf, which was
stolen by the SPLA a few months later.

Driving face

The rest of the day was mostly uneventful, though I did drive from Massaguet to Bitkine (about 400km). I dodged potholes masterfully this time and punctured no tires. I did, however, hit one speed bump full on, and after that people kept jokingly reminding me of all the up-coming bumps. Then, after Tamadji took back the wheel, he immediately pinged a goat, and he became the brunt of everyone’s new jokes. He also never relinquished the driver’s seat to me again, but I think that was because he didn’t want to be squished in the front middle seat, straddling the shifter. It was an awkward position that I accepted because being the smallest, I was really the only one who fit there, though Tamadji managed to squeeze in and take over half the driver’s seat while I was driving. I think T didn’t love my driving style. He gave me a few pointers like, “When you’re going around the holes in the road, why don’t you slow down?” and “You can wait for the animals to go by instead of honking at them until they move faster.” Sadly, for the goat he offed, he didn’t take his own advice in this. I also got a tiny bit defensive and asked him how long he’d had his driver’s license. “Fourteen years,” he said. “I’ve had mine for 15,” I remarked casually. Of course, we won’t talk about the years living abroad when I drove at most once or twice when forced. The point is, I don’t need your middle-passenger’s-seat driving. If I don’t want to downshift to 4^th to get around the potholes, hold on to your door handles, there will be swerving, but as long as there are at least 2 points of contact between the car wheels and the ground, we’re probably good. I have not yet flipped a car. And I definitely got us to Bitkine in time to see the view in my favorite Chadian town.

Remember how I can never leave Bitkine area without chickens?
This time we brought a goat (and chickens too).

 Donor trips can be exhausting because managing expectations is hard, but I successfully treated a dehydrated donor (“drink ALL the water”-I’m basically a doctor), I crashed a wedding (I danced, I ululated, I took photos and gave the bride who I’d never met before money), I lectured little children standing in the road soliciting money from passing cars about road safety, I climbed up the water tower ladder in a dress, I read the book Marian sent me on Kindle while everyone else was watching the Jesus Film, and generally, it was a good trip.

Wedding crasher!!!!

She wanted to take a serious selfie.

Little girls showing me the clay toys they made.
I almost bought the tea set for my teapot-collecting grandmother,
but I was squished in the seat and was afraid they'd break on the road.

Jean Pierre, Herve, and The Author.

I had one day at home before jumping back in the car again to visit an orphanage needing a water system in the southern part of the country. I was pretty excited about this, having never been to the south. As a general rule, I tend to like the southern parts of the countries where I’ve lived—south coast of Java=yes, southern Yemen=set them free from the evil dahabashis, southern India=masala dosa (though I didn’t actually go there while I was in India, YES to their food), and so on. I really enjoyed visiting Koumra with the wonderful Jean Pierre of whom Emelie said, “He’s so nice you would think he was American and not French.” He was born in Bitkine.

Jean Pierre showing us the moringa he is growing,
packaging, and distributing to malnourished women and children.
Look up moringa online to see how great it is.

At the maternal health center playing with a recovering malnourished baby

I also had fun traveling with Herve. Someday, if you ever have the chance to travel with Herve, here are some things that you can expect from the trip:

1.     He will bring more than enough water bottles. This is a good thing, as I’ve been on trips with others who do not bring enough. Herve jokes that he is a camel, but camels only drink about once a month. Of course, then they drink 200-500 liters, and he probably averages about that amount per month too.

2.     He will throw the water bottles out of the window. Don’t freak out about this. It isn’t littering. The water bottles will be picked up and used. Usually you can see people run to pick them up as you speed away.

3.     He will bring music. This is mostly good, except I want to take this moment to complain about francophone Africa. Everywhere else in Africa and Asia you only have to listen to some of Celine Dion’s English songs. Here you listen to those AND her French stuff. There is no escape. At least ABBA only sang in English and Herve doesn’t know who they are. DO NOT ENLIGHTEN HIM.

4.     He will stop and buy all the weird fruits and oils being sold by the side of the road. He will buy you some too, even if you tell him that you don’t want them.

Chadian sesame snack

Did you know that this is how cashews grow?
The fruit is not my favorite, and sadly, you
can't just eat the cashew right off the top like that.
You have to cook it somehow.

5.     He will talk about how the French are the root of all evil in francophone Africa.

6.     He will lecture you about getting married. Or maybe just me. We started out with a lovely conversation where he told me that I was one of the strongest women he knows. “And,” he said, “I know a lot of strong women. I have 5 older sisters and my wife is also a strong woman. But you are the strongest. And I like your simple direct leadership style. You are honest and open. That’s a good thing.” After all of these compliments, I was feeling pretty good about myself until a while later when he said, “You know why you don’t have a man? Because you are too strong. You need to be a little weaker so that the man thinks he can come in and help you.” “What if I don’t need him to come help me?” “He wants to think that he can,” he said. “You have to give him an opening.” I clearly don’t know how to do this, but he didn’t accept my protests that I am not going to change who I am to catch a man. The problem is that I haven’t accepted that my life will be meaningless if I never have any kids. And as my window of opportunity is shrinking, he is becoming more and more concerned about me. Therefore, he will spend several hours lecturing me about “openness” and “God’s plan for me to get married” and “your babies will be so cute” and “I know if you actually wanted to get married, you could get married. Why don’t you want to be married? Just find a man and get married.” And then we reminisced about the time that he told me that men are like mangos, and you just have to pick a good one that you can reach. And then we stopped and bought a lot of mangos.

7.     And he will share stories about his time as a child soldier that will haunt you for the rest of your life, even though a few of the stories will be kind of funny. But you’ll start to figure out where his deep animosity for the current regime and their European allies stems from.

At any rate, we had fun. The car suffered but kept going like the Little Engine that Could. She is an amazing car that can withstand Amanda’s and Herve’s driving (though he didn’t let me drive because he believes in traditional masculine chivalry).

I have a few more trips planned this up-coming month, but for now, I’m enjoying the comforts of home. And the giant box of gummy crocodiles and other assorted candies that my friends, who know who I really am, gave me for my birthday.

Showing off the new pants I got from Denis (though it looks kind of like a pregnancy shot)
And the mango pie I made for Djibrine's birthday.

Either I'm trying to convince him to try the pie,
or I'm trying to get him to explain to me why the car is still making that noise.

This is Africa and Other Stereotypes

This is what the translator does while
the doctor is making notes--photos with happy kids

Did you know that Africa is not a country? I hope so because it seems to be something that many people haven’t figured out yet. Those are the people who think life in Africa is grass-roofed mud huts and starving children.  Somewhere Bono is singing and warlords are fighting and a UN convoy full of white saviors is carrying unwanted food generously donated to flood the markets in Africa with cheap grain. Some of that really is my life, and I wish the market midnight music thumpers preferred Bono to Celine Dion, but he hasn’t donated any sunglasses or free digital music to the peoples of Mundri yet, as far as I know.  But even as we fight the stereotypes that malign the lives of the people in the country of Africa, that whole “This is Africa” comment still comes.  Khawajas living in Africa (including myself on rare occasions) say it to encourage ourselves that our lives aren’t inconvenient, just adventurous.  And visiting khawajas say it with awe, a bit of trepidation, and a sigh of relief that they’re going home after a few days. But even Africans from various countries across the continent will say it with a small shrug of apology, a throb of pride and a dash of smugness—“This is Africa, and you weaklings who are not from here will never get it and we will watch you flame out and run home crying, and it will be hilarious.” Rememberthe guys who fixed our tire with a rope and then patted me on the head saying,“You are a khawaja, you don’t know about these things, but we are African. Weknow about these things”? That is one example.

The car. Bars added to hold long pipes. Bars not properly
welded to vehicle. Bars bounce and bang loudly,
making the ride even more exciting.

Anyway, there is a point to this rambling. I had a “This is Africa” day the other day that I will eventually get around to telling you about.  I don’t usually call out Africa on days when things get exciting because I am loyal to my continent Asia, which can also get exciting, and I don’t think Africa should always get the credit for crazy times. And I didn’t call my day a “This is Africa” day either—actually an African friend of mine did. I’m just agreeing for the purpose of this blog post title.

The day started out dreary and rainy—not at all like the day Simba’s dad held him up over the cliff and yelled, “AHHHHHHHH CHI BAMBA!” or whatever it was. The thing was, I had specifically asked God to give me a dry hot day to drive to Karika over notoriously bad roads, so I felt personally affronted by His refusal to grant my wish. I also felt personally affronted that Repent did not show up at 8am, as we agreed, when he had been doing it all week for the other khawajas. Usually, I don’t care if we leave on time. But today we had to get to Karika (a 2 hour drive away) to help with translation for a medical clinic. Along the way, we had some of our own work to do, checking out some hand pumps we drilled in the area, and talking to communities about our up-coming visit. We needed to stop in 4 places AND visit Repent’s mom. We decided that since we had driven the motorcycle the day before to Mbara (a 2+ hour drive on the bike one way), that Repent should have a rest and we would find alternate means of transportation. I agreed to ask someone if I could borrow his car, but I was pretty sure that he would say ‘no’ and we would have to find another way to hitch a ride with someone else. But the guy said ‘yes,’ which meant that I had to drive because Repent doesn’t know how.

Waiting for Repent

Here’s the thing: I do not love driving. As I have said before, I will pretty muchlet anyone else who wants to drive take the wheel, from my 86 year old grandfather, legendary deer murderer, to my 8 months pregnant sister.  I also do not love driving manual transmission because I am lazy and I like to be able to stick one foot up on the dashboard while the other one mans the gas and brake. And finally, there is a huge responsibility that falls on the shoulders of the person who is driving a large expensive piece of equipment like a car, especially if that vehicle is not actually yours. I just knew I was going to be THAT girl—the one that got the car stuck in the mud for a month, thereby securing her reputation as untrustworthy and a terrible driver (since we are talking about stereotypes and women are supposed to be bad drivers). Incidentally I did once get my car stuck in the snow while I was in grad school because I thought that it was just a beautiful myth that one could get stuck in the snow. All I ever knew about snow I learned from cartoons and when I found out that you can’t make a giant snowman by rolling a piece of snow down a hill, I thought that all the other stuff I’d heard about snow (how you can make it into ice cream, squish it into a snowball, get one’s car stuck in a heaps of it that was shoveled off the driveway so as not to get one's car stuck in it, etc) was all part of that beautiful myth. But it is true that one can get one’s car stuck in snow. Fortunately for me, the kindly neighborhood mailman dug me out. Then he asked me out for coffee, and I said yes because seriously, he spent an hour digging my car out, and that was very kind. So I spent an hour having coffee with him and not laughing when he started off our conversation by talking about aliens and the art of spray-painting cars. Anyway, that totally paid off my debt to him.

But to come back to South Sudan and driving and mud—one can also get deeply stuck in the mud. And the last time I’d been on the road to Karika, we’d had to turn back because there was a giant hole in one side of the road and a truck stuck on the other side of the road.

“How long have you been stuck here?” kindly inquired Moga of the EAM drilling team.

“36 days,” said the sad truck driver stuck in the ground like Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel.

A true life portrait of a
truck driver in Karika.

So between snow, alien-loving mailmen, and Mike Mulligan in the hole, I was nervous about driving the road to Karika. And it did not help my fragile nerves that Repent was late.

We finally hit the road around 9am, bouncing, banging, splashing.  I had initially put my seatbelt on because I heard that story about how Princess Diana would be alive today if she had worn hers, and her driver was probably way more skilled at his job than I am at mine and I’m also very princess-like. But every time I hit a bump, the seatbelt locked and 5 bumps in (approximately 28 seconds in the drive) I decided that the risk of me choking to death on the seatbelt was greater than the risk of me crashing into reckless paparazzi, and took it off. Then I had to suffer through a minute of seatbelt alarm bells, but I won the battle of wills with the car’s inner safety monitor (a useless little prig, just like safety monitors almost always are).  Then whenever I hit a bump, I would fly up in the air with my short little leg stumps kicking the air, flailing around, trying to find the clutch. In this manner we managed to reach our destination at the medical clinic in Karika.

Kid with malaria who fell asleep in my
arms while the doc was getting his stats.
I tried to wake him up to make him
drink, but he was comfy.

I could probably tell you a lot of stories about translating for medical clinics, but it has all melted into a blur of “What sickness is troubling you? Do you have diarrhea? Have you been vomiting? Do you have fever and night sweats?” By the end of 10 days, I was tired and delirious and falling asleep to the rhythm of “her chest pain is worse when she is eating but she is not having diarrhea only headaches and night sweats” and dreaming of translations from English to Juba Arabic and back again. The last day my translation skills involved me telling someone to go ahead and drink the water bottle the doctor gave you because she put blood in it and it will help you. Of course, I meant ‘medicine’ and not ‘blood’ and was alerted to that fact by the look of horror in the patient’s eyes. Anyway, I’m pretty sure that I can diagnose malaria, reflux, UTIs and migraines now. But I didn’t get to do any of the exciting stuff like digging spiders out of children’s ears or drilling a tiny hole through a toenail to drain out pus. So we will move on back to the driving part of the story.

Bonus photo: Malaria boy's bro and sister wanted to take
a fun photo with the khawaja to celebrate this occasion,
and because if your brother is miserable, that is always hilarious.
Siblings are the worst.

New baby

I had always planned to leave the clinic early because Repent and I had to do some of our own work on the way back.  Repent’s mother came by for her visit to the doctors and then we agreed to take her home. I thought that would be a quick “drop off and hug goodbye” scenario, but I was wrong. She had cooked food for her boy and we also had to come see the new grandbaby (Repent’s niece). We oohed and ahhed an appropriate amount of time and then she served us up a nice meal of bugs and blob. I ate a small amount as quickly as possible and then spent the rest of my energy telling Repent to hurry because we had to get back on the road! He is good at ignoring me, though, so he just finished calmly, hugged his mother, and headed back to the car.

“Wait,” called Mama. She ran out of her house carrying an opaque jar full of something. “Here. You take this honey. You are not married and you are like a daughter to me. So this is for you.”

Quick reader poll: Does that speech plus the gift mean that

Tasty bugs. Said my nephew:
"I would NEVER eat that."
I ate it.

A)   She feels sorry for me for being unmarried at my advanced age, so here’s some honey to make me feel better?

Or

B)   She is concerned that I am unmarried so here is some honey that will help me catch a man?

 Anyway, it is really good honey with hardly any bug pieces in it at all.

We started to head back to get our work done, but had to stop off back at the clinic to pick up something and drop it somewhere else. Then when we got to Somewhere Else, we had to go back to the clinic for something else and then back and this repeated several times until I yelled at Lexon, “I AM NOT A DRIVER AND WE HAVE THIS CAR BECAUSE WE HAVE WORK TO DO FOR REAL AND WE HAVE TO DO IT BEFORE DARK.” That worked when I promised to go back to the clinic one more time to tell the head nurse that she had to shut down NOW and get on the road because it is a dangerous road to drive on because mud, inclement weather, Dinkas and their car had no headlights. I also told a few other people while Lexon squeezed my hand gratefully for helping him out by yelling at khawajas, something he felt bad doing because they were his guests (also, he doesn’t really yell at people much, but yelling is one of my skillz).

First driving selfie by Repent. He's learning.

Finally we get on down the road. Remembering my vow to help out stranded travelers any time I have a car, in honor of the people who have helped me out when I’m stranded, I was a very generous driver, and kept offering to take people on down the road. Repent did not love this, but he agreed to let me stop to pick up pedestrians because we stopped right by some boys selling a petrified leg of goat that he wanted to buy.

Road to a hand pump. Note the mangos and the angle of the car.
Authentic. It's just like you were there with us.

We kept heading down the road—me, Repent, Leg of Goat, passengers, and 3 mangoes, which Repent cut up for us to eat while driving. I only dropped one piece in the floor, but I ate it anyway after Repent fished it back up for me. Dirt is full of healthy minerals here.

He's a fast learner.

Finally we dropped everyone off and had finished all our work stops but one near to Mundri. We decided to have fun and take some videos of us in the car. *Calm down, Mom.* Repent did all the videography, I was carefully driving with hands at “10 and on the shifter thingo.”  We were laughing at something in one of the videos, when I noticed a strange hissing sound. I shushed Repent and the video to make sure of the sound, and we decided to stop and try to determine the source of the sound. Fortunately, it turned out to be quite easy, which was convenient because while I did take autoshop in high school, another one of my skillz is to trick teachers into letting students watch videos during class, and we spent most our time watching old VHS tapes (yes, whatever, I’m older than you) of Junkyard Wars. That was pretty legit because our other class-time option was working on junk cars that weren’t likely to ever transport people or objects ever again. 

Repent was mesmerized by the sight a a girl changing a tire.

But it turns out I had punctured a tire probably by hitting a hidden rock in one of the deep mud ponds I’d driven through. But guess what—my dad taught me how to change a tire a long time ago (thanks, Dad!), and yes, it’s pretty intuitive, but maybe not for people who haven’t grown up with cars. While I was climbing around the back of the truck unscrewing the spare tire, Repent was digging around behind the Leg of Goat looking for the jack. He found it, and the hook to turn it, but he didn’t find the handle that screws on to the hook, allowing you to turn the hook and raise the jack. If you have never changed the tire on a Land Cruiser truck, you may have no idea what I’m talking about, and that doesn’t matter at all. But once I’d finally heaved the tire over the side to Repent, I found him hunched over under the car trying to turn the jack with his fingers. I laughed at him, and he went off to find a tree to pee on while I found the other piece and jacked up the car and then started unscrewing the bolts. He came back in time to finish turning the jack (he was so excited to learn how) and then film me changing the rest of the tire. Girl power! But then I did use a little boy power to let him heave the flat tire up into the back of the truck. I maintain that I could have done this if I had been alone and had to do it, but I know how sensitive men are about being involved in stereotypical “man’s work,” so I wanted to include him.

I took this photo (I've had years of practice),
but I love two things about it the most:
1. Repent's face
2. Repent turning the jack with his fingers.

Oh Repent...

I could totally have lifted that tire in the
air with one arm.

We made it back to Mundri just before dark, covered in mud and car goo. I was met by the medical team buying ingredients to make a mango pie, which I’d told them I had done in the past. Since it was one of the ladies’ birthdays, they wanted to make it to surprise here, but since I am the only one with an oven that doesn’t run on coals that they didn’t know how to light, I was going to be the one to make it anyway. So I buckled down for some stereotypical women’s work, baked that pie AND some brownies too. And it was a happy birthday for the 4 people who managed to stay awake for the pie. And as for me, I got accolades, which you know is something I like, and the only reason why I ever cook for other people.

So there you go—late start, rain storms, muddy roads, leg of goat, free truck rides, punctured tire, mango pie. This is Africa. Or anyway -- this is Mundri-to-Karika, Mundri West County, Western Equatoria State, South Sudan, Africa, Planet Earth.

Francis, Enoch and Data eating mango cobbler because
I was too tired after the birthday pie for a photo.
And  the cobbler recipe is courtesy of Emily Genius Seymour.
She texted it to me while waiting for her son to be born.
She is that awesome.

EMILY IS THE GREATEST IN THE WORLD!