Winging It, Out of Control

With the Chief

The other day I had some unexpected visitors stop by. The chief of Miltou, a village south of here that can take hours or days to get to depending on the road conditions, and his assistant to the chief and a local teacher of Arabic came to speak with me. I remember this area. We did 5 wells in the area. One was for a community of refugees who had fled fighting in Central African Republic. One of the women giving a testimony about how the well impacted her life said, “We have not been accepted by the local community here because we come from a different tribe. We have been neglected by everyone. No one has thought of us, but today God has remembered us.” I would like to note here that while I do believe that God was behind this, the local chief is the one who told us to give one of the bore holes to their community, and that was a generous gesture. I do acknowledge that the refugees have felt rejected, neglected, and alone. Their access to water is a huge encouragement to them.

So the chief and his entourage stopped by, and I braced myself for the usual requests for schools, hospitals, etc, and while we did discuss their need for medical facilities in the area, that was not what they came by for. “We just wanted to say thank you! We knew we needed to stop by your office and thank you for your help while we are in N’Djamena. There is a notable improvement in our lives after the water project. We have clean water to drink. It tastes good. Thank you!”

Me, Assistant to the Chief, Arabic Teacher, Nesie, Chief

A refugee woman from CAR in front her new pump

I have had people thank us before for our projects. I’ve had communities send letters and I’ve had visits. It’s not rare that it happens, but it isn’t the norm. So it is appreciated when it does. And it does encourage the team and me when we are struggling. But on the flip side, I had to go to visit a government office today, a task that I usually avoid when possible. As usual, said official started off nice, but he was looking for a chance to prove how powerful he was, trying to find a way to insult my colleague and make him nervous that we hadn’t followed rules the guy just made up on the spot. This type of thing often happens in government meetings. I tend to lose my temper internally, say something heated in return, then recognize that I have lost my temper and the continued presence of our work in Chad is becoming precarious, and then focus the rest of my attention on not rolling my eyes, fixing my smile in place and talking until the situation calms down, the guy gets annoyed by my stumbling French, and he ends the meeting.

Posing for Claire in my new culturally appropriate work outfit

I’m trying to focus on the people who are grateful for what we are doing and the fact that we are actually making a difference here even if we didn’t follow a “developmental” protocol made up by a government official so he could get more money from us. On the other hand, the people who are doing their jobs for financial and personal gain, while pretending to care about their countrymen are not unique to Chad. I know plenty of them in other countries, and I have admitted here that my motivations in doing my work are not entirely or even always mostly about helping others—I really do like the adventure of life out here. I’ve never pretended I’m making a big sacrifice for staying here, but I do think that the more that I know what the needs are and the more I know what helps and hurts, the less I want to do anything else. For me, it would be a waste of the weird excitement God has given me for living in the hard and/or dangerous places. It would be a waste of the hard-earned knowledge I’ve gained through stupid mistakes I’ve made.

Here is a stupid mistake I made recently: I got up at 3am to drive Leif to the airport. When I got home,
I noticed that I had been wearing two different shoes. A few hours later, I drove 100km to Dourbali.

Last week I spent a couple days in Dourbali with Pastor Moussa, face to face with some of my mistakes. He reminded me about how our water project started. From my side, I had gotten a call from the Head Office in the US giving me the go ahead for a few trial bore holes in Chad. I knew about Pastor Moussa and I had met him before and heard about his work. A Swiss missionary had also called me and mentioned I should look into doing a well for him if I could. He gave me his phone number. I had a certain number of wells that I could do, and his area fell in the region where we were working so I called him up. We agreed when I would go visit, and from my side, that was the beginning of our project with him.

Right after I smashed my phone, right before driving 100km to Dourbali

From Pastor Moussa’s side, he had recently moved to that area, with a heart to serve the nomad community in the area. He had the taxi driver drop him off on his land by a big tree. That was all that was there. The taxi driver thought he was crazy. He and his family started setting up camp. This was their new home. But it was not an easy place. The nearest water source was in town. They had to buy the water from local merchants. But they didn’t have a consistent source of income, so this was difficult.  One day he was at the end of his rope, begging God for help, begging Him to provide for the needs of his family, specifically water. And a few hours later, I called him. 

A photo from Pastor Moussa's Facebook of his family setting up camp their first day in Dourbali,
captioned simply "It takes courage to be a missionary."

There is much more to the story, including bits and pieces that I can’t really share on the Internet, but an important thing is that after we had done 12 wells in the area, I realized that we had several problems. All but 4 of these wells are in areas where the water table is quite low. This means that a hand pump will be too heavy to pump. Women and children will have to work in pairs to push the handle down and the pumps break down often because they are not made to work at water levels that deep. I did not realize this would be the case. I didn’t know I needed to ask that question. I’d been to the village. I’d seen hand pumps in other parts of the village that were working. I assumed it would be fine to do more, but I should have done more research to find that the reason most people get their water from the water merchants is that they have dug very deep bore holes and installed generator-powered pumps designed for these depths. But I just assumed they were a bunch of greedy jerks in it for a quick buck. I might still be right about that, but I could also be wrong. I’ve not actually spoken with them. I’ve never seen them around to talk to them. But I do know that a large number of people in the area, especially nomads, do not have the money to buy water. So they search for free options—easily breakable hand pumps and open ponds full of diseases.

Chatting with Victor, Pastor Moussa, and Benjamin about our project.
Victor is our indispensable solar pump expert who came in from Kenya to help us. 

Pastor Moussa's dog who loved me because I pet her and fed her some of my dinner.
I woke up in the middle of the night when I felt someone come and lie down by my bed.
In the morning I saw that it was the happy dog!

So we figured out a way to install solar-powered submersible pumps that will run for free on the powerful, nearly always present Chadian sun. But we had another problem: in Pastor Moussa’s pump and the pump nearest his house, there was a high iron content, making the water red and bad-tasting (health-wise it isn’t really a bit deal, but it does not encourage water consumption, which is important in a hot sweaty climate). That did not stop Leif from coming up with some ideas for filtration systems. We had a fun time looking up youtube videos of iron filtration systems and I read a few scholarly articles about oxidation of iron. Then people told me that if we had drilled to the deepest level where the merchants drilled, we would have hit the clean water without the iron contamination. And I was frustrated with myself again because they sounded so sure. And they are possibly right, but I started to pray about the water in that well.

Pastor Moussa on top of his water tower, smiling of course!

Fast-forward to this week when speaking with my solar pump installation team about the work in Dourbali. They showed me photos of the water at Pastor Moussa’s house running clear. Victor said, “There’s no more iron. The water tastes great.”

“What happened?” I said. “I thought the water was iron contaminated?” He said, “No, I think it was just a reaction with the galvanized pipes. But we had to remove them and install PVC pipes. Also, with solar pumps, there isn’t as much water just sitting in the hole reacting to the galvanized metal so with the PVC pipes and the solar pump, the water is now clean and iron-free.” So was it the water depth as the people said that caused the iron contamination or was it the galvanized pipes or was it something else? I don’t know. Not all the pumps had iron issues, but all of the pumps had galvanized pipes installed. But the water is clean and clear now. And I will check carefully for iron contamination in future projects because I read all those articles, and now I want to see if it’s possible to invent a low-cost filtration system that uses oxygen in the air to get rid of iron in the water and now I don’t get to/have to experiment in Dourbali.

The children at Pastor Moussa's house with the clean water!

The point that I am trying to make is that I am really screwing up here as I wing it. And if I were in this on my own, this whole thing would be a disaster. And these days as I’m realizing that I can’t do things on my own (and I never could even though I thought I could), I’m grateful that I’m not in control, and I’m not on my own. God had this plan for Dourbali way before I came into the picture. He led Pastor Moussa there. Pastor Moussa was praying for water. My “winging it” system was totally usable by God, thankfully. But now that I’m paying attention a bit more, it’s a lot more fun for me and a tiny bit less stressful. I can mess up small things, but the Big thing is going to go through no matter what I screw up. But it’s also good to learn from my mistakes—do more research before drilling!! Hanging out and having fun with people is great, but ask more and better questions!! When driving through mud, put the car in second gear and L2 and keep the acceleration steady. If the car gets stuck in 4WD, put it in reverse while pounding on the clutch and whispering bad words to yourself QUIETLY because people will sometimes ask you to translate English words you use that they’ve never heard before and that can be awkward.

What your window looks like after you drive through mud

What your face looks like while you're waiting for your colleagues to buy the watermelons already,
after you've had only a small amount of sleep two nights in a row and have driven all over the countryside.

Goats blocking our road! Can't go over them (too bad),
can't go through them, gonna have to herd them to one side
so you can go around them.

And now the Final Discussion. 

It’s toilet paper. Also it’s “new improved” so I guess the previous version of this toilet paper was just called “Discussion.” I’m also appreciating the lone camel silhouetted against the sunset. Possibly he is waiting for you to finish the Final Discussion so you can get back on and keep riding into said sunset…if your phone is charging and you need something to do in the bathroom, this toilet paper is for you.

Joe loves having company in the car when we are driving to work.
Denis and Jack are in from Uganda and Kenya to help us out in the office.
We are so grateful. We are loving us some East Africa here in Chad right now,
even if Denis and Jack say that I spoil Joe. Of course I do! Look at his face!

The Old Old Story Part 2

And so.....

This is sunrise the next day, but pretend it is sunset
to set the mood.

There might have been about 100 of us, trekking through the jungle when gunshots rang out right beside us. We didn’t stop to look if they were firing at us. We all ran for it. I followed Repent, clutching his baby and trying not to lose him in the chaotic crowd splitting off in different directions. Ahead I saw a little boy about 3 years old screaming in terror for his  mother. I turned and asked others if they knew where his mother was, and no one did. Everyone just ran around him while he stood there sobbing. I shifted Halina, grabbed his hand and told him to come with me, “I got you. You’re tough, keep running.” It speaks to his terror of being alone that he took the scary khawaja’s hand.  When we got farther away from the fighting, another lady not carrying a baby took the boy and later that night when we stopped at a compound on the way to our camp, we found people who recognized him and were able to get him back to his family.

By the time we made it to camp, a little clearing with a few raised rocks in it that Repent had known about for some reason, our group had shrunk down to less than 50 and we had run about 4 miles up and down, over rivers, and through a stinging ant bed. The ant bed happened towards the end when it was starting to get dark and we could hear fighting behind us so we were moving fast and not watching our feet. Suddenly we felt stinging biting all over our feet. We took our shoes off and ran, swatting at our legs. But these are ants with little pinchers and they hold on. I didn’t get all of them off until later that night when I was sitting down and able to pull them off. I even found one attached to my shoe the next day.

Men on patrol with bows and arrows

That night we made camp with the help of people’s flashlights—we threw down some sleeping mats and blocked off the path with branches and sticks to make it look like we weren’t back there. Meanwhile groups of young Moru men had organized themselves into patrols—one guy with a gun with several guys with bows and arrows—and they were walking around making sure the refugees hiding in the jungle were OK. The ladies handed out the food and then we ate and went to sleep in a big pile. I slept on a rock and covered up with a piece of cloth that a nice lady named Esther leant me. She walked to her family 30 miles away in another town the next day, but she let me keep the cloth. It was very good to have it because it was freezing that night (not literally) and sleeping on a rock is not comfortable. And I don’t think that I slept much that night either. I mostly lay there, listening to people talk loudly on their cell phones (technology makes it a lot harder for people to hide in the jungle, I think) and the sounds of fighting down in town. I texted people, read ridiculous articles on my phone about how rebel groups hundreds of miles of terrible roads away from us had claimed victory in our town and the boss and I made plans for me to leave the next day.

Waking up and brushing teeth with sticks

I woke up early the next morning, as did everyone, and after a quick drink of water, I said my goodbyes and walked back to town with Repent. At Repent’s house, he packed up a few things, including an old solar panel with a few wires coming off it, which later came in handy to charge his phone battery by tying the wires to the battery with a rubber band.  While we were at his house, the SPLA secretary came by with a patrol group and he told me there was again no way I could get across the river to the airstrip. “The bridge is dangerous, “ he told me, “ And the river is too high to cross anywhere else.”

The road MAF tried
to land on

So I called MAF to let them know, and we started making plans to land on our new road if MAF would give permission. We walked back to our camp to drop off Repent’s solar panel and then we headed towards the road at a town called Janga. Once arriving in Janga, several miles away, we headed to the road to get some specific info about it for MAF—does it slope, are there obstructions on either side, any potholes? Then we had to go get permission from the Commissioner to have a plane land on the road.

On our way to the Commissioner’s house, we ran into Jeffreys and Esther and their families. It was so good to see them, but they had not been as organized as Repent and hadn’t eaten anything in the last 15 hours or so. Jeffreys is diabetic and he was not doing well. Esther’s blind mother was lying on the ground, as she’d hurt herself when she had fallen the day before running to the jungle.  When Vaida and Esther got back with some cassava plants they’d dug up, we all had a little food and Jeffreys perked up right away.

Crossing back over the Mori River to Repent's house

While we were sitting there, MAF called to tell us that they’d been denied permission by their organization to land in the road, thinking that it was too dangerous for their pilots and believing that it would be safer to wait out the fighting until I could get to the airstrip. I was actually kind of relieved to hear this news, as that road was packed with people running from Mundri. Having a plane swoop down and take the last khawaja to safety in the outside world, seemed way too white privilege for me to handle at that moment. Though the reality is that I knew that I’d probably get out soon and that is a direct result of my nationality and privileged position as an INGO worker.

 We went down to meet with the Commissioner anyway. He was obviously very busy talking to a million people meeting in his compound and answering a billion phone calls, but he was gracious to meet with us, and he updated us on the situation. What most people in Mundri believe happened is that when the police, Executive Director, and Commissioner went up to investigate the death of the soldiers on Friday morning, some Dinka soldiers in our garrison from town, went up and ambushed them, either thinking that they weren’t taking the deaths of the Dinka soldiers seriously enough or because they were looking for an excuse to cause trouble, being annoyed about the Dinka cattle that was forced out or maybe there was some other reason. Whatever it was, when the other half of the garrison, mostly Western Equatorians, heard that a Western Equatorian was killed, they got mad and turned on the Dinka soldiers. So basically the commander of the garrison just lost control of his men. They ran wild across Mundri fighting each other. I also heard that 3 trucks full of soldiers from Rumbek (seriously, if the names are throwing you off, find a map of South Sudan—clearly you have internet access if you are reading this) came down to join in the fray, also being angry about their cattle being kicked out. And possibly disgruntled Moru youth joined in. I heard a lot about “disgruntled Moru youth” from military people I spoke with later. Odds are high that there were a few involved, though I haven’t personally met any.

Repent and a gun-toting patrol man

So the Commissioner had called for help, and the SPLA (look that up too) had sent troops from Maridi and Juba to come help. They were close by the time we spoke with the Commissioner. We went back to the jungle to wait it out. When they arrived we heard machine guns, tanks, lots of fighting for several hours. We stayed put until just after sunset when it started to rain, and we ran for cover at the house of a friend of Repent’s. The women and children stayed in one small house and the men in another. The children spread out on the floor, with mothers around them to calm them if they woke up during the night (they did), and Maria (an older lady) and myself shared the twin bed in the corner.

By Sunday morning, Mark had come across the number of the Brigadier General who had come in from Juba the day before. This was thanks to a friend in high places, and not my father in Indonesia, as Mark’s stressed out sleep deprived brain initially thought. I called the Brig Gen the next day, and he jovially told me that everyone could go home—no problem. I joyfully passed on this news to Repent who calmly said, “OK. That’s nice. Let’s sit down and have some tea, and then we will look into going home.”

I said, “The General said it was OK! Let’s definitely go!”

He handed me a cup of tea and pulled out a chair. I sat down to drink it and plan what I would do when I got home.

One of our treks to various places

While sipping our tea, we noticed a family with all their stuff, walk by heading home. And then 45 minutes later, we saw them coming back.

“What’s the news?” someone called out.

“The patrol men sent us back. They said it’s still dangerous in town and people are looting the marketplace.”

I stopped planning what I would do when I got home. Instead, I went with Repent to have church out under a neighbor’s mango tree with all the other nearby refugees. It was a lovely service, and I was the only one who got sunburnt.

Before his phone went dead-
trekking through the teak

The rest of the day was spent entertaining children, which is what I’d been doing the whole time. The other ladies did not need or want me trying to help out with their efficient system of cooking and cleaning, but the children did like me making origami frogs and birds and paper planes and teaching them how to whistle on a piece of grass and how to play various Korean slapping games. That afternoon we went out to get water from the nearby pond to carry back for bathing. Then we sat around and drank ginger coffee and talked about everything happening in Mundri. By this time my phone was permanently off to save the last 10% of the battery for the call to MAF to tell them I was on the way to the airstrip. They were planning to come early the next day, and I was planning to be escorted there by the military (they offered!), but if I didn’t confirm that I was on my way to the airstrip, they weren’t going to send the plane. So my phone was off, and it was a cloudy rainy day so Repent’s little solar charger wasn’t going to work, and I heard later that there were a few people (Mark, Mom) a bit worried about our lack of communication. But we were fine. Others like Damari’s daughter Nadia were not. She had gone back to her house to find that every single thing she owned was stolen from her compound—her clothes (she had what she was wearing when she fled), her cooking utensils, and even her jerrycans for collecting water.

My friend Siti who also lost everything

“Can she buy those things again?” I asked stupidly.

“How? She has no money. She was crying so much on the phone when she called me,” Damari said. (I gave her some of the money I had with me, but if the market was closed, I knew it wouldn’t mean much.)

That night I let the kids watch Despicable Me on the ipad because I didn’t need that battery, and they thought it was great until it started raining and we all ran inside and went to bed.

The next morning Repent and I got up and walked through thigh-high wet grass to the Commissioner’s house where I had arranged to meet the Brig Gen to drive to the airstrip. We got to his house, but he wasn’t there because he’d stayed in town with the military men. There was a group of young men with bows and arrows and guns keeping an eye out. After we had sat for a while and I used some precious battery power to call the General (“Oh yeah, right. I’ll come now), the men came and told us they thought we should leave because it wasn’t safe there anymore. I never found out if anything happened there, but we left quickly, walking down the main road towards town. Repent whispered to me, “Don’t call anyone while we are walking here. People are watching us.” We walked fast and silently towards town. Just as we got to the main road, we saw the General’s car coming towards us. We hopped in, and as we drove and I called MAF to tell them I was on the way, I looked out the window to see the damage to Mundri. The doors of almost every store in the market were ripped off and trash covered the ground where looters had chugged soda and eaten cookies and thrown down the wrappers before carrying the rest off with them.

Neverthirst pump being used by IDPs

Even though I’d thought I was going straight to the airstrip and had informed MAF of that, the driver took me to the Commissioner’s office because I had to talk to him and the Brig Gen and the Commander. We discussed the events of the last few days, speculated on the perpetrators (“Out of control soldiers,” suggested me. “Disgruntled Moru youth,” said the Commander. ), and he told  me how he was ambushed in Lui on his way to Mundri and had to fight his way through. After a quick photo, we finally went to the airstrip escorted by the Red Berets, the most elite force in the SPLA. I felt important. They lined up on either side of the airstrip until the plane landed, picked me up, and I left.

While it was not easy to leave Mundri in an uncertain state, it was the right thing to do, as food and other resources were scare, and I was one of the few people who could actually leave. Also, Repent was going to split his focus on to me from the millions of other people he was responsible for, no matter what I said. He was responsible for his children, his sister’s kids, his brother’s kids, and his cousin had dropped his kids off at Repent’s while he was his father’s funeral in another town. We had a lot of kids with us.

Red beret

People leaving home with their most
important belongings

It seems unfair that I can just hop countries to shop in places where I can buy what I need. Even though I only got out with the clothes on my back and a bag full of electronics, I was able to buy some clothes in Uganda to get me by and many kind and generous people in the US helped me buy lots of other stuff I “needed” for American life once I got back to the US. My friends who lost everything won’t be able to do that, even though the market is slowly opening again.

I love that even though I’ve barely had my new passport a year, the lady in Qatar who checked it said, “Wow. You have used this a lot!” But I hate that I have used it to leave behind people I love in a tough situation.

I am glad that I had the opportunity to be with friends sleeping on rocks and brushing my teeth with sticks and sharing a communal water cup, but I’m also glad to be sleeping by myself in a comfortable bed, having my own toothbrush, and taking hot showers in my sister’s house. I love my nieces and nephews, but I miss my friends in South Sudan too. I’m also glad that whenever I call, I hear that things are improving there, but I know there is a long way to go, and I won’t be useful there for quite some time.

Commissioner James, unwashed white girl,
Brig. Gen Mobil and Commander Okout

My friends haven’t lost hope. They are ready to get things back to normal. They are working hard in their gardens and on their homes. It is not easy, but they are resilient. Still, I hope that one day recovering from war won’t be second nature to them because they won’t be having to constantly recover from war. I want to see development and good things happen in Mundri. Maybe I won’t be a part of that. Maybe I will. They don’t really need me. None of the people I was with lost hope. They trusted the Lord to help them, and they never doubted His sovereignty over everything. And they helped each other and took care of the lonely foreigner and if you want to help them, check out Neverthirst’s website.

This has been very long and not very funny, but if you read it, I guess you wanted to know the story. Thanks to those who called and emailed and posted on Facebook. I appreciate the thoughts and prayers and I hope that even though I’m out now for the time being, you won’t forget about the people of Mundri.

 And now some photos of me entertaining children:

Braiding my very dirty hair

Check-in call time and photo session

Korean slapping games in South Sudan

This photo is from the iPad.
See--I didn't only waste my phone battery!

Movie night

Christmas

It's kind of sad, but here it is:

I was going to write about some of the funnier moments that happened this week, and there were several, but I just wanted to take a moment to do something out of character and be serious. First, I will explain that I love Christmas. I start listening to Christmas music the day after Thanksgiving every year. But this year, whether it was the fact that my Thanksgiving meal was eggs and hot peppers with Somali bread or the fact that I am in a dusty desert surrounded by refugees living in tiny huts or the fact that I couldn’t decide where I was going to spend Christmas--whatever the reason, I didn’t want to listen to Christmas music. I was not depressed or sad to be missing Christmas…I wasn’t thinking about Christmas at all. And I love Christmas…so it was strange for me. I tried to listen to Christmas music but turned it off after one song. But this last week, maybe because of the nearness of Christmas in Indonesia (ticket prices finally decided for me), I started listening again. And then I started singing along. And all week I have heard over and over again the words from the second verse of “Oh Holy Night” (a song that is resurrected and murdered by various divas and divos without fail every Christmas): Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother, and in His name all oppression shall cease!

This week I’m grieving the oppression I see around me. I am especially hurting over the fate of a little boy I recently came to love. Khaled’s story touched my heart right away when I first met him. He’s an Oromo, a minority Ethiopian ethnic group that has been persecuted in Ethiopia and sometimes is allowed refugee status in Yemen if their story is horrific enough. Khaled’s parents are divorced and both remarried. Neither new family wants him, and he has been passed along in the camp foster system from family to family, all Somali, who don’t want him either because he makes trouble and runs away. Finally, after trying every foster family in the camp and the orphanage in Aden, Khaled decided he wanted to work in the village. This week I found out that he has been working in the village, but that he is living with a man who is sexually abusing him. I wanted to run in and get him out. I pestered my boss and the social counselors who all told me that we can’t deal with this, a different NGO is in charge of protection. I know that NGO won’t do anything. And I don’t know what else I can do. Khaled’s story is common here.



Every day I am approached by refugees asking for assistance who don’t yet know that I’m only in charge of gardens and small business loans. These people are desperately seeking help for medical procedures that can’t be done in the camp. Some of them want food for their children since the rations they received were full of worms. Others just want a blanket because it’s gotten cold here at night and they are worried about the health of their families. These people left everything they knew hoping for a better life, and frankly, in many cases, it’s worse here in the middle of nowhere in an unknown land far from family and friends.

So where is my hope? What am I even doing here? I keep asking myself that because it’s about time to renew my contract, and I find myself wanting to run away again to start a new adventure somewhere else. I am afraid, knowing that I can’t change lives, and I can’t bring the light of Jesus to this place. I am the only believer here. What can I do? I know that I can’t do anything, but I know that Jesus can. And I know that it is true that in His name all oppression will cease. It may not be right now, but that time is coming because He came and fought for us and won. And this Christmas, in beautiful green and rainy Indonesia, I will celebrate the end of oppression and suffering that will come even here in the dusty and dry Yemeni desert where 13,000 Somali refugees are hoping for it. Please pray for me, my precious Somali refugee friends, and the volatile country of Yemen where we all live. Pray for the light of Jesus to come to this place to break the chains of slavery, violence, suffering, and abuse.

But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid! I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.”