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!

Whining

Dripping with mangoes

I write blog posts mostly when something funny happens to me, and I want other people to laugh with me about it. And also for the accolades. Bring on the accolades. But I do think that sometimes I paint a picture of myself that is not entirely accurate—what some people will do for accolades! The things I write about really happen, and they are funny, and I usually found them funny in the actual moment, which is why I thought to write about it in a later moment, but there are plenty of times when I am not in the mood to laugh about anything. And I’m cranky and whiny and bratty.  

I’m afraid that ‘cranky’ might actually be my natural state. I do not wake up in the morning with charitable feelings towards my fellow human beings. In fact, if fellow human beings have started thumping their loud music before 7am, I have been known to label them as things that you have to spell using all those weird symbol keys (if your grandmother reads your blog). If I can go for a long hard run, I can usually pump up the endorphins and come back happier. The difference endorphins make to my life and the lives of people who have to be around me is huge.

If I put all of that sugar in my
tea, it might make me sweeter.
Or diabetic.

For example, one non-run morning, I slept a little later (which should have made me happy because sleeping late is always good) and then went about my normal morning routine to come out and meet people under the mango tree and get started working.

“Good morning, my sister!” Lexon calls out cheerfully. And I hate him. Because, seriously, who DOES that? Who just greets someone with a smile that early in the morning? What kind of monster is he really?

The next day, after running, I go about my normal routine and come out to greet everyone with a joke, pertinent to each person, and a jaunty salute to Monday as he opens the gate for me. Life is beautiful. People are wonderful. I’m so lucky to be me.

See what a difference endorphins make for me? Here’s the problem though: I am getting old, and my knees and feet are falling apart. If I run everyday, I hurt myself and then have to take off many days to recover from the injury (dark dangerous days for everyone around me). My biggest issue these days is that I am ripping up my feet. I have blood blisters under several toe nails and I have sheared the top layer of skin off of both of my feet. Putting on shoes is painful. Then when I start running, I forget about the pain until I get home and my bloody socks are stuck to my feet. Then I wash quickly and forget to put on bandaids (even though I LOVE bandaids!) and my sores get infected.  And my parents are now SURE I might have to get my feet amputated.

“There was this guy we know,” texts my mom, “on Kalimantan, who got a small scratch on his foot and it got infected and they were only BARELY able to save the leg. They almost had to amputate it. You need to get to a doctor NOW. Seriously, how soon can you get to a doctor? Also, are you drinking enough water? Studies have shown that drinking enough water has cured diseases that people didn’t even know that they had, whereas people who don’t drink enough water frequently die horrible deaths and/or have their legs amputated.” (It’s a paraphrase of our conversation, but if there is one thing that my mother knows, it is that all illnesses are caused by not drinking enough water.)

Running with Dionn and Ovua. I ended up carrying
two notebooks, a pen, and a 1.5L water bottle (full)
but we all made it.

Anyway, no other morning athletic activity can provide me with the same level of life-saving endorphins as running can, and my old body is trying to reject this sport. Maybe if I do amputate my legs, I can then attach some bionic limbs that won’t wear out and I can run all the time everywhere without shoes. It’s a thought.

For now, you should know that my blog posts are also useful to me in that I sometimes go back and read them to remind me that the children that stole my solar-charging battery panel from my back porch are also cute little fatherless urchins that I love to play with.  The women that break our fence to come get water definitely do not need it as much as my friend Lajanti, but they probably need it more than I do, since I stocked up on water the last time it rained.  And the morning/midnight music lovers---No. They are horrible. They played an ABBA song.  I still hate them. Despicable people.

Some horrible kids who wanted
their photo taken.

But in the interest of full disclosure, before you give me accolades for my adventurous life, you should know that I’ve had a terrible attitude this week towards everyone. I’m selfish and mean about people sneaking into my compound to get water and ignoring me when I tell them not to break our fence. I wish for a return of war to our marketplace just on the off chance that someone’s boom-blasting loud-speaker gets cut into shrapnel by…other shrapnel.  And I have actually had a few moments of wishing I could trade mangos for gummy worms. And this week, I didn’t want the ladies taking our water.  I didn’t want to play soccer with the urchins. I didn’t want to wave back at the children screaming “howareyouhowareyouhowareyou” at me.  I didn’t want to live in a house with no water and only one blinking light and eat the same thing over and over again.  I didn’t want to hear the same music everlastingly blaring over the damn loudspeakers.  I didn’t want to talk to another community that gets mad at me for not being able to drill for water before December. I didn’t want to be here at all.  I wanted to be on a plane that will take me to the place in the world where a blue-eyed nephew can ask me to read him the story of “Poopy and the Bees” while a brown-eyed nephew tells me that he loves me “all the way out of the universe.” So basically, I want both the sisters, their men, all their progeny (the Blues and the Browns, I call them), and my parents to be all in the same place so I can easily visit them all together. And that place should be in Indonesia because I also want there to be ayam bakar and martabak in that place.  But that won’t happen because Indonesia is inconveniently located and airplane tickets cost too much.

Repent cuts up mangoes
for me because I'm not very good
at it, and I am a princess.
And because he is the nicest guy
in all of Mundri and Greater Equatoria.

Anyway, there you have it. The Truth will out: I am a cranky, snobby, selfish war-mongering person who doesn’t fully appreciate mangoes as they deserve to be appreciated.  They say honesty is good for the soul (I think they do anyway), but is it? I hope you can find it in yourself to love me anyway, and never smile at me before 11:00am on non-running days.

And the moral of this story is that there isn’t one. I’m still cranky because it’s still this week that I’m writing this. 

And don’t worry about the accolades—I don’t really deserve them anyway.  Not this week for sure, and probably still not by the time I actually get to post this.

Clearly I am miserable. And my life is horrible.
Don't smile at me.

Completely Preventable Adventures

 

This post is once again about the road over-traveled and under-maintained. Juba to Mundri is never a fun trip unless you can go by private car. I could have. But I decided not to call my drilling friends because I thought, “Really, what are the odds that they would be driving through Mundri on the same day as I will be?” It turns out that the odds were really high for that, and I could have traveled in luxury, and remembering this fact—that a simple phone call could have saved me a lot of pain and discomfort.—was not an encouragement to my soul. Truthfully, I will do almost anything to get out of having to make a phone call to someone, and I always procrastinate calling people, which often has a detrimental effect on my work. Sorry, People I Work For.  Currently, there are at least 2 important phone calls I was supposed to make last week that I have found brilliant reasons to put off until this week. Now that it’s this week, it has suddenly come to my attention that next week might actually be a more appropriate time for these calls. I keep trying to remind myself of the lesson I should have learned from my Juba-Mundri trip, but I’ve had so much practice ignoring my inner Responsible voice. Anyway, as always, the trip had some very entertaining moments, which I will share with you. However, if you really want to be able to truly understand what I went through on this trip, you need to go roll around in the dirt until you have grit in the creases of your ears, and then, still fully-clothed in dirt, go sit in a sauna for 12+ hours. If you can somehow arrange for that sauna to be situated next to a construction site that is busy using dynamite for whatever construction sites use dynamite for, so that you are consistently being bounced around, that would help with the accuracy of the simulation. And make sure you are squeezed between the door and a large man. If the Pringles you spent way too much money on in the store happen to spill out all over the muddy floor—DO NOT PANIC. Eat them anyway because, for real, Pringles.  You probably might not get some horrible floor to foot to Pringle to mouth disease and die.

Note: I have no photos of this trip, but please enjoy some photos from my recent time in Khartoum, sprinkled throughout.

Can you tell me what the English on this says? I can't read it, but I remember it being really funny to me somehow. The Arabic part isn't funny, so it must have been the English.

So I was already trying to get on the Land Cruiser I had arranged the day before when I found out that the drilling team was going to Mundri and I could have hitched a ride, if they had known and weren’t already half-way there when I called. This put me in a supremely bad mood.  That mood was not helped when the Land Cruiser I’d arranged to travel with decided to foist me off on a different Land Cruiser because the President was coming to town and the shop it needed to buy stuff from was closed for security reasons. I agreed reluctantly to change to the other Land Cruiser. The driver proceeded to have a very loud argument with the lady sitting in the front seat with her child to kick her into the back because of me. This made me mad because the lady was there first, and also I became the opposite of Rosa Parks, which is not ever what I ever wanted to be, but the guy insisted that I had arranged the ticket first (probably true since I called the afternoon before), and Rules Must Be Observed. Then he showed me my ticket, which had been purchased previously. In the spot for the traveler’s name, he’d just written, “Khawaja.” My mood lifted slightly because—that IS funny. It dropped again later when I had to go re-register with the police because they wanted to check my passport and visas and yell at the driver for his unprofessionalism—“You MUST write the passenger’s name. What is this ‘khawaja’? This is not a good way to do Business.” Though, to be fair, there were no other khawajas anywhere on the premises of the Bus Station.

Finally we were on the road. But we were stopped at the last check point out of Juba by a couple of power-hungry soldiers. “You must all get out and take all of the luggage off the top of your car.” This is not a welcome statement. It takes a long time to get everything tied up nicely on the car. It was already getting late. Untying the luggage, taking it down, inspecting it, packing it up again, heaving it up to the roof, re-tying it—this is a process that takes time. Our driver patiently climbed to the roof anyway. I huffed and rolled my eyes at the soldiers, who took that as an invitation to conversation.

This Sudanese cereal tasted horrible but--GMO free! (Is there a connection?) And yes, I ate it anyway. Anything tastes better with added sugar (also GMO free).

Soldier: “So. Where are you from?”

Me: “America.” (I am pretty good at shutting down unwanted conversations with one-word answers, but this guy was persistent.)

Soldier: “Right. So where in America?”

Me: “Yeah. America.” (Because even when having pointless conversations with soldiers, I really don’t know how to answer that question, and it’s easier to play dumb.)

Soldier: “Yeah, I know, but like where in America? Which state? Canada?”

(In South Sudan, people will make Canada jokes FOR you. Saves so much time.)

Me: “No. Just America.”

The soldier decided to try a new tactic.

“So. Why are you traveling alone? You work with an NGO? You should have a bodyguard.”

Me: “What? Why would I need a bodyguard? I’m totally fine. I always travel this road.”

Soldier, “You might need one. For your children.”

Me: “I don’t have any children.”

Soldier: “Why not? Where is your husband? Are you married?”

Me: “No.”

Soldier: “Why not?!”

And then, inspired by those Oscar-red-carpet female movie stars who are fighting for feminists everywhere by pointing out that there are better questions to ask women than “What are you wearing” and “who did you hair” and “why aren’t you married,” I decided to turn the question back on him.

Me: “Why aren’t YOU married?”

Soldier: “I am. I have 4 wives.”

Me: “Oh.”

(It turns out feminism is only for movie stars.)

Soldier: “You should really get married.”

Me: “Oh yeah? Why?”

Soldier: “Because you’re running out of time.”

(And feminism is dead.)

By this time we were halfway done unloading. The soldier, having made all his important points about the need to travel with a body guard (for the children) and the need to get married (you’re not getting any younger), glanced up at the driver and said, “Ahh. Don’t worry about the rest of the stuff. It’s getting hot now, and you have a Khawaja with you.”

We packed up everything so fast before he could change his mind. Meanwhile the other car with no khawaja and 3x as much stuff secured to its roof, including a wheel barrow, several shovels, 45 jerrycans, tents, pillows, mattresses, and more, was still unloading everything. 

I love it when I can use my Khawaja privilege for the benefit of others. The guy sitting next to me grinned and secretly high-fived me for my white burning skin.

The bottom of this tissue box kept me entertained during a long meeting. Please enjoy! Note: even if you think you've noticed all the funny things about it, read it again, and you will notice even more. But only when you have unlimited time to observe it, like I did, will you really be able to appreciate it.

The first half of our journey was uneventful. We made it to the lunch-time-break town where cars and busses and trucks MUST always stop (I always hold on to a vague hope that just once we can make it through without having to have a 30-45 minute break, but it’s never happened). While there, another soldier decided to ask me where I was headed. “Mundri,” I said laconically. “Ah,” he said, “You’re almost there. You’ll be there in another hour.”

It’s about 40 or so miles to Mundri from Janbo, but this is South Sudan roads, and 40 miles on South Sudan roads is like 200 miles on paved roads elsewhere.  So I said, “It will take AT LEAST another two hours.” Little did either of us know that it would actually take another 7 and a half hours.

Shooting guns in celebration at crowded weddings is not a bad idea because gravity only applies to apples.

A little ways down from Janbo, there was a horrible crunching noise and we fishtailed through the sand to an abrupt stop in the middle of the road. The men piled out with all the tools and got busy. We were back on the road for a little while before there was a repeat of the situation. This time I got out to see what was happening (Note: I now had nothing else to do since I had finished my book that the Frizzes kindly gave to me for my birthday—Ungifted, by Gordon Korman, Canadian genius, so I had nothing else to do.) I helped the guys unscrew the bolts on the tire (they were really impressed) and then watched as they chopped off a bit of rope and used it to tie the tire tightly to the bar connecting it with the other tire, which also secured a spinning thing in the middle that must have some important role in making a car move forward.

The guy turned to me and said, “See? This will totally work. The car won’t break down again.”

I said, “Uh-huh. You really expect me to believe that you actually fixed this car with a bit of rope?” Truthfully, there was much hope in my heart because I love a good “fixed the car with rope” story, but there is something in me that has to be cynical, and I gave him the “raised eyebrow look of skepticism.”

He said, “No really. Believe me. This is Africa. We Africans know these things. These are things that Khawajas don’t know, but we know them.”

And of course, when the car broke down again 15 minutes later, I couldn’t resist. “Tell me again about what Africans know about fixing cars with rope?” I said, because I am a horrible person of minimal self-control. In the Book of Three, Eilonwy tells Taran that “Saying ‘I told you so’ is like putting worms on someone’s head,” and she was my childhood hero, but I couldn’t resist.  Fortunately, my traveling companion had a good sense of humor and we laughed together before we both got out again to re-tie the car. I mean, it DID work for 30 minutes, and there was nothing else for it.

Look at the shoes my friend made me wear with her thobe to  the wedding!

Meanwhile, we stopped passing trucks and cars asking for tools, water, various items we needed. It was a party. Guess who else stopped to check on us? The wheelbarrow car that had been detained unnecessarily in Juba, not having a sun-sensitive khawaja to illicit sympathy in the hearts of inspecting soldiers. The driver said, “Hey—I remember you! We’ve totally traveled to and from Juba together before in the past.” Me: “Yeah, I remember. Want to squeeze all of us into your car and take us on to Mundri?” Sorry, Khawaja (Remind me someday to tell you the story of “Sorry, Khawaja.” The drilling team told me the story originally, and it made me laugh for 20 minutes. And then for the rest of the day, if I happened to think about it, I would start laughing again, which meant that throughout the long trip we were making, periodically I would burst into laughter for seemingly no reason at all. But there was a reason—Sorry Khawaja.)

Finally, it was dark. Our driver had given up hope and was just sitting by the side of the road. I was trying to call Repent to tell him to hire a car to come pick us all up, and I would pay, but the phone network was really bad. I would get a tiny bit of signal, call, hear his voice, and then lose the connection. And then, along comes a rickety old short-tired van.

“Hello, friends!” said the driver. “Are you going to Mundri? I’ve just been in Janbo picking up some bamboo. Hop in, and I’ll take you with me.”

We hopped. We piled everything in the van, waved goodbye to our exhausted driver and the man who offered to stay back with him, and left.

“Make yourself comfortable, my guests! I’ll have you home soon,” said the driver, our new best friend. And he would have, but he also stopped another time to check on another stranded car and offer his mechanical assistance. We finally made it home by 10:30pm. Repent greeted me, smiling, “I cleaned your whole house for you. Here’s some food and water too.”

South Sudanese people really are the best.

Roger slept in my pillow while I was gone. He missed me. He also resented it when I kicked him out, but I don't think either of us would be very comfortable with this continued arrangement.

Post script to the story:

I went for a run the next morning, on the Mundri-Maridi road. Several of the trucks that I passed by waved and smiled at me, “Ah—you made it to Mundri!” They recognized me from passing me the day before on the Juba-Mundri road. Most truck drivers will spend the night in Mundri, stock up on food and then head on to Maridi or Yambio or wherever. It was so fun for them to see a friend from the day before, and let’s just be honest—you don’t see many white women squatted down by a car, screwing in bolts and yelling at passing trucks to stop and let us borrow a wrench. They knew it was me.

This truck is from a while back on a field visit with Repent. It was broken down by the side of the road, but I read the mudflap, so as we passed by I yelled helpfully to the guys working on it, "Just be determined! That's all it's about!" They were a bit confused, but it worked because I saw them on our way back, putting along, and I stopped to get this photo. That is the wisdom of Mudflaps.

Sometimes I Write About Serious Stuff

JJ (BF from different island), me, and Kristen,
after a night of hard-partying probably, since I still
look hung over.

When I was in sixth grade, Kristen and I were BFBD (Best Friends by Default). This is a thing that happens when you are the only girls in your class in a small international school. But for us, it worked out great that year. Together we learned so much—how to ruin chocolate chip cookies by dumping an entire bottle of vanilla essence into the dough (because if a little is good, so is a lot—you would think anyway), how to write “DUS” (‘Don’t UnderStand’) as an answer to weird workbook questions that didn’t make sense, how to make more paper footballs than any of the boys and win the contest (there were more of them, but we had more passion and I have a debilitating strain of extreme competitiveness and I’m pretty sure Kristen has one too).  And then, people don’t tell you this, but memories of sixth grade antics can often stay with you for life. Kristen had a phobia of anyone, especially a boy, seeing her walking towards the bathroom because he might be able to guess why she was going there. I don’t know why she thought that was so embarrassing because actually we often went to the bathroom just to hang out and not be in class. (Sixth grade me was not the model of motivated academic integrity that I became in later years.) But this post is not actually about sixth grade. It’s just that the other day I was thinking about how Kristen and I would pretend to be going to our lockers or staring off over the balcony if someone came out into the hall while we were heading towards the bathroom.  A couple weeks ago, while I was doing some village site selections, I was thinking of that because I kept having to obviously leave the meeting to use the facilities, which in this case were the various scrawny trees that were far enough from the main path to provide a modicum of privacy. But not too far because whatever it was I ate wanted to be free of me.

Sneaking out of this meeting while sitting in the front:
not easy. But I pretending to be taking photos.
I think I fooled everyone.

Side note: when you work in places like I do, you become less sensitive to talking about topics like this. If you are sensitive, you might want to skip this post, but I’ll try to use as many euphemisms as I can come up with (and I’ve had a lot of practice, so I’m pretty good at it), and hopefully you’ll be fine. But still, this post is not about sixth grade me, and it’s also not about diarrhea.

As I was squatted down, leaning against a tree, with dead dry grass poking me in places that grass should never be found, I had two thoughts. The first was “WHY didn’t I just take a sick day today?” and the second was “This is where most people in this area have to go every time they need to do this, and since these people are drinking water from a mudhole, they are probably in this situation a lot.” This was not the first time I’ve had that thought, but it’s always more real to me when I’m squatting in the bushes.  And I always feel thankful again for my bathroom—be it ever so humble, it’s attached to my house, and I love it. No more being accosted by drunk guys at the outhouse. No more putting on rubber boots before trekking through knee high grass potentially hiding a deadly snake on the walk to the outhouse. But definitely haunted by plenty of lizards, mosquitos, crickets, spiders, and an occasional cockroach. I still love it. Do you love your bathroom as much as you should?

Guava leaf tea--natural
remedy for diarrhea,
thanks Mom and Internet.

 Neverthirst is not constructing bathrooms in South Sudan. Maybe someday we will be at that point. We are still currently at the point of dealing with clean water. I usually think this is the right thing to focus on because—you need clean water to drink for survival. But did you know that clean water by itself only takes care of about 30% of all water-borne/water-related diseases? I heard that statistic somewhere, and I don’t currently have the internet on to check its veracity, but it’s possible that it is at least close to accurate.  Hand-washing and good sanitation techniques take care of most of the rest of the diseases, and probably that hand sanitizer gel stuff gets everything else. I haven’t confirmed that, but Westerners love that stuff like it is the mother of their children.   My friend and colleague here has recently tried to get me to use it on all of my cuts so they won’t get infected and give me another staph infection.

I don’t really have a point here. I’m not trying to make you feel guilty for what you have—that isn’t going to change the reality of what people don’t have here. And it also won’t change their situation for you to realize the blessing of what you have and be thankful for it (but I think you should do that anyway). And frankly, your life might not ultimately be that much better than the lives of my friends in South Sudan. In fact, it is possible that your life could be worse.  Having a lot of great stuff doesn’t make you happier than everyone else or we would never hear about anti-depressants and suicides in Hollywood. 

I guess I just wanted to share some stories with you and let you think about them. Because these are real people who have situations in their lives that are hard. I’m going to tell you a few of their difficulties, but also remember that these are real people who are more than just the sum of their hardships, just as you are more than the sum of yours.

So here is my friend Edward. He is a village elder in Kyara (pronounced ‘Chara’). He’s blind. During our meeting about drilling a hand pump in his village, he said, “It is so difficult for us to have water, that I don’t want to wash my clothes often. You see these clothes that I’m wearing [they were full of holes]? I have nice clothes! I do, but I don’t want to wear them because then I couldn’t wash them because we don’t have enough water.” Note: my life is a million times easier than his life, but our pump was broken, and for a long time I was trying to conserve the water in our tank, so I dispensed with many watery tasks because I just didn’t want to waste water on trivial things. So I get where he is coming from. His situation was worse, so he prioritized even more.

Edward

Below somewhere is a photo of my new friend Lajanti. I was following up on an application for water. I noticed a hand pump about a mile away. (The location where we were was on a small hill so we could see all around, where the other pumps were.) I thought, “This situation doesn’t seem too bad.” But Rejoice, the woman living in the home where we were visiting said, “The well has a low yield." [Repent confirmed this, as it is the pump that is drilled outside of his church.] "We can pump for a while, but then we have to wait for the water to come back. Also, there are so many people using the pump that you have to wait in line for an hour or more sometimes. For me, if I want water, I have to get up at five." [It’s still pitch black at 5:00am in South Sudan, and there are no streetlights or other lights at all—it’s great for stargazing, but not so much for doing anything in the wee hours of the morning.] "Then I can go down to the pump and fill up my jerrycans. If I don’t go then, I won’t be able to get water for my family. I just won’t. People start queuing up as soon as it’s light and I won’t be able to sit there and wait until my turn.”

While I was at Rejoice’s house, I saw Lajanti coming by. I saw she had two jerrycans with her, so I knew that she was going down to get water. I decided to talk to her to hear about her water situation. I wanted to know what her opinion of the pump there was because sometimes people will tell you completely different things. Lajanti said, “Oh, I don’t live here. I live way back up there in the forest.”

Lajanti

 “How long does it take you to get here?” I asked.

Laughter from both Rejoice and Lajanti. “Oh, a long time,” she said.

“A very long time!” said Rejoice. “It’s so far, she will have to stop and rest sometimes on the way. Maybe it will take about two hours to get here.”

“So you have two jerrycans,” I point out obviously, “Do you carry them both on your head?”

“No,” says Lajanti. “We can’t do that. I bring my jerrycans to Rejoice’s house. Then I leave one here. I go down to the hand-pump and fill up one jerrycan. I bring it back here to leave with Rejoice where it will be safe. Then I go down to fill up the other jerrycan. Then I take one jerrycan home with me. Then I come back here and get the other jerrycan.”

“Do you do this every day?” I asked.

“Pretty much every day, “ she said. “We don’t have any pumps where I live.”

“So you use only 2 jerrycans of water for your family each day?”

“Oh no. I use only one. The other is for my blind neighbor who can’t get down to the pump to get water. I just want to help him out.”

Readers: Lajanti is a hero. A genuine superhero, who manages to wear her underwear under her clothes and doesn’t need a cape flapping around behind her. (Though she would probably find it very convenient to have super-strength and/or super-speed.) Repent and I are looking into how we can find a way to get water in her area, but it’s not so easy. We don’t have our drilling team back in town until December. Meanwhile, Lajanti never even asked me if I would drill in her area. She just told me her story very simply and honestly. That’s her life. It’s hard, but she is quick to smile and laugh and help out her neighbors. She can’t imagine a life of cars, electricity, supermarkets and washing machines.

I did not take this photo of Samiha, so don't blame me
for the thumb at the top, but I still love this moment.

And meanwhile, away up north in Khartoum, a feminist moment in honor of Women's Day: at a meeting with a potential national partner requesting a funding partnership, a beautiful kickass Sudanese girl spoke up about her work in women’s empowerment in the area. “The men [from her organization] would call me often and say, ‘Are you in the office?’ and I would say, ‘Yes, I’m working.’ And they would say, ‘Where did you get the funds to do your work?’ and I would say, ‘Who is going to give me funds? You are the ones who hired me and the only ones I could get money from anyway.  If you haven’t given me money, then I don’t have any. But just because I don’t have any funds, does not mean that is going to stop me from doing my work.’” And this is what she said to other women she recruited to help her in her work, “We can’t sit around and wait for foreigners to come help us! This is our country and our people, and we need to help each other out!” And she is awesome, and then when the other guy said with typical male condescension, “See how even women can help this organization!” I had to think about rose petals and flying gummy bears to stop myself from yelling, “WHAT?! She is not ‘helping’—she is the ONLY ONE DOING ANYTHING.” Fortunately, thoughts of rose petals and levitating candy are notoriously helpful to people who need to find the strength to keep up the silent ‘nod and smile.’ And fortunately, she is not alone in actively caring for her people and her country regardless of foreign funding. Another good friend of mine is constantly scheming ways to help disabled people here, helping those with new cochlear implants learn how to function in a hearing world and teaching Arabic sign language to university students interested in working with the deaf. “Why don’t you start a school for children with disabilities in your hometown?” I asked Samiha the other day.  “Oh yeah, I already did that. Five blind students just finished high school this last year.” The power of one hard-working woman...

There’s not really a purpose to this post.  And the problem with writing purposelessly is that it is hard to know how to end. I’m not asking you to donate money, though you can if you want: neverthirstwater.org or ias-intl.org (for Sudan), but I thought these stories were important. These people are important. It’s important for us as human being denizens of Planet Earth to care about each other and not live in total ignorance of others and their joys and difficulties and differences.  I think it’s important because I believe each person has been created in the image of God, and that He loves us and wants us to know each other. He doesn’t discriminate or differentiate between us, and one of the first ever recorded statements propounding human equality is in the Bible: There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring according to the promise.” (Galatians 3:28-29). And while this world isn’t perfect and it isn’t going to last forever, God does genuinely care about what happens to us in this world. He cares that we have what we need, and He cares that WE care that others have what THEY need too, though, like I said before, the things that we think we need in our fancy “developed” nations may not be the same things people in other places think they need. Anyway, Lajanti knows this, and she’s helping her blind neighbor get water and my friend Samiha in Khartoum knows this. And I’m sure there are plenty of people all around the world who also know this and help others in various ways, and I know some of them, but I’m really trying to end this post somehow someday, so I’m not going to write them all down. You feel free to write their stories on YOUR blogs though.  And then send me the link so I can read them too, but make sure to do that before next week when I go back to the South and no internet.

Mundri sunrise--this is why you run with your phone.