Taking You to Church--Again. Mundri-style.

Bishop swearing in the new lay-readers.
Esther is second from left.

Superbowl Sunday is a thing, I’m pretty sure. Because one time while I was in college, Joanna and I went to the store on Sunday after church and it was way crowded with people buying stuff and talking about football. Anyway, I’m also sort of sure that Superbowl Sunday happened on the same day that I spent 5 hours in church in Mundri. For real. I left my house at 9:30am and didn’t get back home until after 4:00pm, having eaten nothing but Holy Communion all day.  But thank YOU all for posting all about your favorite Superbowl party snacks all over the internet. Even though, no, I was not looking at Facebook on my phone for most of the service. I did occasionally sneak a peak to check the time. I was really curious.  At least I got to Communion before they ran out of bread—but don’t worry: the loaves multiplied. Vaida has one of those extra-large grandma purses. You know, the kind that is usually filled with peppermints and other hard candy that no one actually wants to eat unless you are in church? But they don’t have peppermints here, and probably they would never make it to the bottom recesses of the Grandma purse here, because kids don’t get much candy here and they will eat any of it as soon as it gets in their little hands. Anyway, Vaida had a package of “glucose biscuits” in her purse for her son or grandson or whoever. When she noticed the bread running low, she grabbed it and handed it up to be the Body of Christ, broken for our sins. And I think it was just as good as Coke and pound cake that I had for the Lord’s Supper as a kid one time in Indonesia (Best church day ever).

If you are doing math on the times I included in that first paragraph, my first question to you is “Why do you really care that much?” But my second question to you is not a question, it’s just the answer to your question about how I got 5 hours out of 9:30-4:00. The answer is that I spent 5 hours of that 6.5 hour time period in church. The other 1.5 hours were spent walking to/from church and a quick trip to the market to pick up some food. I went home and called the khawajas to tell them that I couldn’t make it to khawaja church because 5 hours was all the organized church time that I had in me for the day. They understood.

The gang walking home from church

But truthfully, I really like church in Mundri. Yes, I prefer the “short” 2-3 hour services at my church because I just really like our music and the enthusiasm of our congregation for participation in worship. I love that that we have to wait for the dust to settle before we can see the preacher standing a few meters in front of us on our “stage” because the dancing kicked up our dirt floor into a cloud (asthmatics coming to visit our church, please bring an extra inhaler or two and a face mask). Also, our children’s choir is top notch. They have moves, Guys. For real.  They dance in to the front of the church. Then one lucky star kid yells to the congregation that they will be singing one song in Arabic and please listen nicely. Then they sing and dance the song, and then they dance their way out again.  

I also like Sunday Testimonies, an open invitation to the audience to share with everyone something important from their week, though when I've given testimonies, they are usually just intra-Church greetings. Other people’s testimonies are more exciting. One time a guy called out one of the pastors for drinking too much, while the khawaja-raised-in-Asia writhed in an agony of embarrassing public confrontation, but the pastor just calmly stood up and asked for prayer to help out with that. Another time a lady shared how she had been bathing when a snake (very poisonous one) slithered across her foot and she prayed that it would go away without killing her, and it did! Often, though, it’s people coming up and sharing their dreams and what they think God was telling them through that. The other night I had a dream that I was walking with Marian and she had one of the twins attached to her and was walking right into on-coming traffic, and I said, “Hey-why don’t you just wait for that bus to go BEFORE you cross the street?” But she was in a hurry to get to her new house (or wherever we were going) and also she was trying to lose me on the way because she didn’t want me to go with her. And then I said, “Fine. I don’t  care about your new house anyway. But you really should be more careful crossing streets.” Or something like that because when I woke up wondering why I was mad at Marian for some reason, the edges of the dream got fuzzy and then I just made up the rest of that, but I definitely remember her stepping in front of that bus. Seriously, Marian—look both way before crossing the street. But that isn’t really the kind of testimony that people share on Sundays, it’s just that it popped in my mind when we were talking about dreams and I thought I should make sure that Marian is not endangering her life and the life of one of her children (the others were probably home safe with Josh, but you never know what Josh was doing—maybe walking into on-coming traffic is just a Frizzell thing). Because you never know when a shiny red double-decker is coming down the street right at you, and those guys won't stop for pedestrians.

Being a foreigner in church is usually interesting. I’m not the only foreigner in my church anymore. There is a nice man from Uganda who also attends, though he doesn’t seem to stand out as much as me for some reason. He is working on the Amadi road, but he drives in for services. His name is Innocent, and I really like him. Sometimes they have English translations for him. Sometimes they just make sure he sits next to someone who can tell him what is going on. Before he started coming, they would always ask at the beginning of the service, “Is there anyone here who does not understand Arabic?” The first few times I attended, several people would turn around and look pointedly at me, and then the others around them who remembered my first attendance and self-introduction in Arabic, would wave them off saying, “No, no, she’s fine.” But even though people know me there now, and my pastor sees me as an official member of the church, who can be called upon to participate in church fund-raising games and answer questions about hand pump applications, there are always a few newbies who stare. I try not to take photos in church (though I’ve taken a few videos of the children’s choir, which I will try to post*), so here is a picture of me showing you the face of a young boy sitting in the row in front of me in church last week. Even though I didn’t get his photo, this is an exact replication of his expression. Trust me, I am a professional.

So I tried to be reassuring and I gave him this face:

He responded to me with this face:

And then I turned the other way to look out the window at the kids climbing trees and thought about how fun it would be to be out there too. But at least church was shady and I had my little batik fan—thanks, Mom. The fan keeps me from missing you too much because it makes me feel like I am you and then how can I miss you if you are right there sitting in my chair, fanning yourself and waving at all the small children?

Finally, I’m including a self-portrait of myself after the 5 hour church service. Just so you know—taking a selfie in church is rarely acceptable behavior, and butt selfies are never appropriate no matter how good you think you look in yoga pants. So that’s why I drew a picture of me and my post-sitting-on-a-log-bench-for-5-hours body. The skirt fabric stuck to my rear because—artistic license is a thing that trumps reality, and basically that is the shape that my butt took for the rest of the day.  Once again—you can totally tell that my dad is a professionally trained artist who studied under the masters in Florence, Italy.

Yes, I wrote this on the back of my notes
from a mostly-useless OCHA meeting because
I was running out of paper and it is important to conserve trees.
This portrait is Saving the Earth.
And somehow this drawing turned out Jules Feiffer-esque, all chinless and pointy-nosed,
so it looks like those multiple readings of the Phantom Tollbooth paid off after all.

*I tried. I failed. Maybe I can get them to go on Facebook somehow.

Planning Ahead Life

For me, planning a day in advance is planning ahead—and technically, you see, I’m right about that. But when I wake up one morning and say, I am going to do x and y tomorrow, and then on Tomorrow I only do x or even 0.5x, I can say to myself, “Well, Self, you should have been a better planner and it is your fault that you didn’t accomplish everything, so think about that and do better next time.” And then after my inner Responsible Self nicely chastises my inner Regular Self, I feel better about it, and I can move on with my life. But there are some days when Responsible Self takes over my whole body for a brief moment and plans everything so fast. My Responsible Self is not so chill and laid back as Regular Self. Responsible Self gets really annoyed when her plans don’t work out. This is because she tried so hard and planned so well and still hit zero for three tasks on Monday and only one for three tasks on Wednesday. She feels like the world is falling into pieces around her. If she didn’t have Regular Self’s resilient sense of humor, she would never survive here in South Sudan. Life can be really stressful for her.

This week’s plan was brought to you by Responsible Self, but Regular Self is the one who is making it to the end. Responsible Self started to feel doubts on Monday morning when her scheduled morning run was interrupted by a phone call informing her that they needed to leave at 8 instead of 9 to complete the day’s tasks. Since it was already 7:30 and she was still a mile away from home, she agreed, but knew that the other colleagues would undoubtedly still arrive at 9:00am, as she had asked them specifically to arrive at 8:00am (isn’t she such a good planner? Ready for any and all contingencies!). Still, diligently, she kicked it that last mile and was home in record time and showered and ready by a little after 8.  But no one was there—not even those requesting an ETD of 8am. It was a bad omen.

I don’t have to continue down the path of that story. Basically, Responsible Self was let down hard. Regular Self mostly survived, though Responsible Self tried to take her down too.  So the moral of the story is, as usual, never ever plan ahead.

And here are a few other South Sudan moments, so that you can see that it’s basically worth it to live here even if planning doesn’t work in this climate:

Clockwise from top left: origami,shredded sugarcane,
happy mother with clean water from a new well,
fishing the soccer ball out of the trash pit, my once-blue sandals.

Since I’ve been back, my local urchin posse has been most excited to see me. I see their little heads pop up over my windowsill, expectant eyes wide and ready for adventure. Almost inevitably this happens just when I have finally sat down to eat something.  Sometimes I kick them out but usually I go out and play for a bit because they are the urchiest urchins and it is really hard to resist them—this pack of kids that lives with a handful of their mothers, a tough matriarch of a grandma and an adorable tiny old great grandma. Their grandfather sits under the tree all day long listening to BBC news on the radio and perfecting his refined English. The various and sundry mostly nonexistent fathers are almost never around to take any notice of anyone or provide any sort of noteworthy contribution towards their lives. There are plenty of fathers like that around here, but I’m choosing to put in a photo of Repent cuddling his boys, whom he has missed while they have been staying at their grandma’s house since Christmas because—she makes the best food. Of course.

Because they are the best, even if this photo is not.
And Repent loves his babies.

The urchins and I do lots of origami and make paper airplanes and also play a lot of soccer. Once we kicked the ball into the trash pit/bathroom hole and we dug it out with a long bamboo pole to which I duct-taped an old plastic bag. It took us 30 minutes of fishing, but we got it back. And we don't think about the festering germs it was soaking up down there because that's not fun. Our other activities include me fixing sandals with safety pins and me trading candy canes for sweet potatoes. I was also recently commissioned to make “Thank You” signs for our donors. I decided to delegate this task to my posse because they love coloring and also, if I made the signs by myself it would look like kids made them and so if I let them help me make them then kids actually DID make them, and it is more honest that way. But I did learn never EVER to leave them alone with the signs and the markers. I was baking a sweet potato cake and I popped out for 2 minutes. When I came back the sign looked like this:

Imagine it turned horizontally and held up by some cute kids.
Charming, right? Does spelling really matter? Letters are so pretty.

Of course, I didn’t notice anything until I handed the sign to the village to hold up for the donors and tried to read what I wrote. “That’s weird, “ I thought. “I don’t remember writing all the way to the edge of the paper. Also, why is there an ‘s’ at the end of ‘foundation’?” Then I figured it out and used the other sign which I didn’t like as much because Wani was a little too obsessed with the brown crayon but Oguna had used multiple colors on the other sign. Also—I had helped him color that sign, and I’m pretty sure I colored in the extra “H” that he added in there and had no idea because I am not the most observant of people.

But this week wasn’t a total bust. I got in some good hours on the back of the motorcycle which has given me the glow of someone who consistently goes to fry herself at the tanning salon without actually having to fry myself at the tanning salon. I even double suncreened and reapplied and everything (I put some on Ruben, Repent's youngest son, and he thought it was the most hilarious thing in the world). You know how all those magazines say that if you spend so much time in the sun, you will wrinkle up and look like you’re 50 by the time you’re 30? Well, I’m almost 31 and I currently have the complexion of a pubescent boy who hasn’t yet started shaving but will soon—that’s thanks to my pores constantly being clogged by sand, but anyway, maybe by the time I’m 50, I’ll actually look like I’m 50. I think that would be pretty cool. Looking one’s age is a very underrated quality, I think. Just look your age already, People—why not? It saves others lots of confusion. I would be glad to write a magazine article about that concept for anyone who is interested.

Many babies here scream in terror at my face (I get it, but it can be hurtful).
Baby Jenfer is one of the memorable ones who held our her arms and gave
the scary khawaja a big hug.  I will love her forever.

And that goes for the man who proposed marriage to me in the following conversation:

Potential Hubs: “Hey—where is your husband? Why don’t you marry me?”

Me: “I think you are too young for me. I’m old.”

P.H.: “No way—how old are you?”

Me: “31”

P.H.: “Well I’m 37!”

Me: “Or you’re a liar…”

P.H.’s friend: “Of course he is old enough—look at his beard!”

(Note: the little bit on fuzz on his chin might qualify him for Mundri’s premiere hipster club, but I don’t think it proves his manhood or advanced age.)

Me: “So how many wives do you already have?”

P.H.: “Just one. Come see how she lives. You will beg to marry me then.”

Me: “Um…no. I will be the only wife. I’m an American girl. It’s a thing with most of us [it was just not the time to talk about Mormons]. And also, it was the way God planned with Adam and Eve. There was none of this Adam and Eve and Ruta and Lusi and Mary. And also, you would not like the food that I cook.”

Note: that morning I had eaten nasi goreng for breakfast, which I made all by myself and ate straight out of the pan because if it’s OK for bachelors, it is also OK for bachelorettes, and I have no running water in my house right now so I’m cutting down on unnecessary luxury tasks like washing dishes and cleaning the bathroom floor. My nasi goreng involves lots of sheta/cabe/hot pepper and people here just can't take it usually.

Then I proceeded to successfully extricate myself from the conversation, telling them that if they wanted my phone number, they would have to ask Repent for it. And while he is a really nice guy who would probably just give it to them because why not? But he is also kind of a big dude, and he was farther away so they couldn’t see that he is always smiling. They didn’t follow me.

And so it goes. Another partially successful week concluded. And when one of the drillers tried to comfort me with a “This is Africa—nothing happens like you plan!” I got huffy and defensive for Asia and said, “It’s not ONLY Africa that messes up your plans, you know. Asia can do that too. It’s not always all about Africa. Africa ALWAYS tries to steal Asia’s thunder. And anyway Indonesians even have a saying for events not starting on time. It’s called jam karet, or rubber time. There aren’t any sayings like that here.” And he thought that was the greatest thing he ever heard and carefully wrote down “jam karet” into his little notebook so that he can remember it forever and have something important to talk about with all the Indonesian people he meets out here.  

And Responsible Self found herself cheered up by being able to teach some bahasa to a true lover of Asian culture and language.  And she has not developed an actual plan for next week beyond her usual stand-by—“Let’s wing it.”

And by the time I actually get internet good enough to post this on the blog, I will have been winging it for several weeks probably. Yeah…this is the life. Own it, Irresponsible Me.

One more because seriously--that face is too cute.(Ruben's face, not the dirt-covered white photo-bomber in the side). 

Home Sweet Home South Sudan

I’ve been back in South Sudan for a week and a half now. About 1/3 of that time has been spent in Juba and 1/3 in Mundri and 5/3 has been spent traveling between and around Mundri and Juba.

These thirds of my life have included the following events:

·      One (1) motorcycle wipe-out with Repent into the sand (plus several more close calls—riding in sand is hard).

·      Sustained one (1) small side of the knee scrape due to aforementioned wipe-out.

·      Had one (1) moment of thanks for lack of paved roads in South Sudan, which I later recanted on one (1) or more (++++) of the to/from Juba journeys.

·      One (1) giant black spider crawled up my leg while I was showering, carefully persevering water since our pump is broken. My eyes were closed and I thought gravity had started working backwards and sending water droplets up my leg instead of down. I looked to see if that was the case, and screamed and swore (I’m sorry, Mom, but I’m honest) and shook my leg and jumped around (dangerous in a slippery bathroom with buckets all over catching extra water).

·      Killed one (1) giant spider and washed it down the drain.

·      Attended one (1) funeral prayer time, which included more than 1 (++++) sermon and/or stand-up comedy routine.  It was not a typical funeral.

·      Rode to church on a four (4)-wheeler. How did YOU get to church last Sunday?

·      One (1) mouse ran across my face one (1) night. He had four (4) feet. I felt them on my cheek.

·      The drilling team killed one (1) mouse in my house, leaving one (1) more.  His days are numbered.

·      Got a new yellow fever card. I have only lost two (2) yellow fever cards in the last year. Current card is now officially stapled into the back of my passport. Try and steal it one more time, KENYA AIRPORT OFFICIALS!

·      Updated my visa.

·      Decided to learn how to cook with cassava/tapioca flour because Paleo recipes exist, whether or not anyone wants them to, and cassava flour is way cheaper here.

Juba Bus Station (aka Parking)

Other important things to note, Jackson loves to go get visas with me. I know, he told me. He said, “It’s so great that you can talk to people in Juba Arabic and Moru. They will always remember you now and they will want to help you.” It’s true. Languages open doors and also can get things done even when government officials put in a full two-hour (2) working day and then go home to recover from it, in spite of telling people to come back after lunch to finish paperwork. Jackson also loves that I can schmooze visa officials. It is a skill I have honed over the decades. I think my parents started us off on it, because I definitely remember being forced into stupid dresses to go to the immigration office in Indonesia for endless fingerprints and name-signing documents. That’s why my signature looks like a squiggle. Comfort and convenience over fear of my identity being stolen any time.

Visa stuff is not bad, but trips between Mundri and Juba always have the potential to be the worst ever.  I mean, you know this, all five (5) of you that read this blog: trips to Mundri/Juba are almost always noteworthy. If I have to suffer, I will make you read about it.

Stop thinking about passing me
and think about the children instead.
But maybe less thinking about the children
and more thinking about basic mechanics
would have made this a better van.

I have lucked out and been able to find people driving to and from that I can hitch rides with, but this time there wasn’t anyone left bring me back to Mundri. I tried to convince Jackson (a Moru) that he really wanted to drive me back to Mundri and say ‘hi’ to all the cool people, but he is not a government official and believes in the importance of actually working at his job. So I had to Mundri Express it. Repent T called the company on my behalf to reserve a front window seat in the Land Cruiser that was scheduled to head back to Mundri.

Once at the bus station in Juba, I sat and waited a bit until Mahmood (the head of the Mundri Express office), asked me to please PLEASE go in the van that was sitting in front of the office, as his land cruiser wouldn’t be ready to go for a while. I said, “That short-tired vehicle? I don’t think that can make it to Mundri.”

“No, no—it is a strong vehicle. It will make it! And it’s leaving now now.  If you don’t go, you will wait much later.”

Our broken van in the middle of what is a rushing
river during rainy season. Tipped over truck behind.

I thought—might as well go now as sit here in the Mundri Express shack and wait for the other bus. But that was not a smart thought.  We did leave the bus station a bit before 10am, but we went and sat at another station for another hour. When we finally got on the road, we broke down 15 minutes outside of Juba, but the guy fixed it really quickly, so I was only slightly worried. Also, I got to take a moment to go pee in the grass, so it wasn’t so bad. Then 15 minutes later we broke down one the Luri River. If it had been rainy season, we would have been swept away in the current. Also, I noted that the driver said, “Oh look at that tipped over truck!” And I was VERY WORRIED at that point because that tipped over truck has been there for a long time.  One (1) who travels that road a lot should definitely know that. At this point, I called Mahmood and said, “I told you so. Now send that other Land Cruiser to pick me up.” He promised to do so, but meanwhile, our car was up and putting along. I checked the speedometer and we didn’t break 20kmh ever. We stopped more than once. Mahmood called and said to the guy, “Just put that khawaja on any other land cruiser that comes by and I’ll pay for it.” I told him, “There are 10 other people in this van!” But he didn’t care about them because I don’t think they actually paid through Mundri Express, but direct to the driver. I don’t like being a diva khawaja, but I also didn’t want to spend the night on the road, and I’m pretty sure that is what happened to everyone who stayed in the van. As it turns out, I didn’t have to play the diva khawaja card. As we were standing out by the side of the road waiting for the car to be fixed again, a car saw my shining, burning white skin and swerved over.

We filled up with Pity Oil before we left. Should have been my first clue.

“Hey, you are from Mundri! You just drilled a well in our village! Get in the car—we’ll take you!” But I still looked like a diva khawaja getting into a better car, even though another guy in the van who also knew the driver also came along for the ride.

Driving the car!

And that’s how I ended up making it back to Mundri yesterday. I even helped out—I drove the car the last 40 miles. It was a right-hand side driver seat for a right-side of the road driving system, but really—I kept the steering wheel in the middle of the road plenty because the point of driving on roads here is not staying in your lane, but finding the least bumpy part of the road. I slid off the road once because of the sand, but was able to drive back onto the road to the great amusement of everyone else in the car. They also found it hilarious that I refused to drive over a crater that needed precariously accurate steering. You know about my hand-eye coordination. I helped drill a well for the guy, but that is not enough to smooth over wrecking his car. It was also really weird to drive a automatic car here. I kept smashing at the floorboards with my left foot, looking for the clutch. I also noticed that in spite of my best efforts, it was REALLY hard to get up over 20kmh. I maxed out at 50kmh on a particularly smoothish stretch, but then the car started fishtailing a bit in the sand, so I slowed down.

And that’s it! I’m back and I made an extensive schedule for next week, of which I hope to accomplish at least 50%. Someone who might be able to fix our pump will come on Monday. Diet Pepsi might still be available in the market here. My computer is almost fully charged. I ran six miles through sand pits this morning with a glorious sunrise in the background.   The market place “music” lovers played Justin Bieber last night and I contemplated committing felony destruction of property, but fortunately my ear plugs and white noise app and surround fan blocked out the11pm-4am music, allowing me to sleep mostly. And no (0) mice ran over my face last night.

American Domestic Travels--killing time in an airport (as usual)

Usually the Nashville airport is bristling with guitars and unrealistic dreams of singer-songwriter glory, but I actually saw my first guitar in Minneapolis.  Maybe it was because I was departing and not paying attention to the arriving flights—the TV was playing CNN and I was reading the subtitles, so maybe that was why I didn’t notice any. But I did notice an unnatural number of people in thin little short-sleeved t-shirts in the dead of winter. I think cohabitating with polar bears has made these people impervious to the cold. They also probably understand about things like slaloming and luging.

Now I’m in the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. When I arrived, I had to walk to the other side of the airport. I think this is because I’m flying to California, and they wanted to cut down on my flight time. Now, instead of a 16-hour flight that I probably would have had, I only have to fly for 4 hours to get there.  I walked in only the sunny spots of the airport to try to warm up because the dang Delta flight opened the door before the tunnel was connected to my plane. My pants froze to my legs. When the pilot said, “It’s 7 degrees outside!” I thought, “No problem. I can do 7 degrees because I’m wearing 2 long-sleeved shirts and a fleece-lined coat.” Then he added, “Fahrenheit.” And I wondered again how this part of the country ever became inhabited. There are places like Hawaii with perfect weather year-round...But still people live here and not there. I don’t understand it.

 

This is a photo of Minneapolis when I arrived.
Ignore that bit about "O Canada photos.com"--Canadians are always
 trying to take credit for everything.

Also, the US is too big. It is annoying to have to fly millions of miles to get to another state. I know that Manifest Destiny was a thing and all, but that’s done. Let’s chop down the US into more manageable chunks and also require my family to live in the same chunk, within an hour’s flight time from each other, because otherwise it’s just too complicated.

And now I will sit here for another 4 hours, waiting for my flight, wishing that I had brought my gloves because my fingers are freezing.  Build a giant fireplace at each gate or turn on your heat, MSP. Also, to the skinny blonde in a tank top walking across the F Concourse: You are an idiot. You deserve to die of frostbite.