Church

Every tribe and tongue and nation is going to be praising God around His throne, and for wanderers like me, we get a chance to see what some of that is like before hand. Of course, many places in Africa and Asia are already practicing for eternal worship with seemingly interminable worship services. In India, church wasn’t actually too long, but that may be because I never quite managed to make it on time. I was never the last one there, though, so that was OK. Here I don’t even get to be the last one there because I have to rely on others to take me to their services, as I’m still learning my way around here, and I don’t have any other mode of transportation.

Repent insisted we leave my house no later than 10:15, although church starts around 11:00 because he is a pastor there, and he has to be early (OK, he wanted to leave at 10:00, I convinced him 10:15, we left at 10:25ish). Of course, when we got there early, we all sat around under a tree together for the next hour, since church didn’t start on time anyway.

The view from under the tree--I took photos while I waited

Church here is held in some kind of building, usually made of mud and straw with small tree trunks propped up on sticks as pews. Usually they are decorated with some kind of tinsel and string and paper flowers, which is, interestingly, the same thing they do in rural India. Another similarity in decorations of Indian and South Sudanese churches: the obligatory picture of stoned, white Jesus presiding over the altar of the church.

Getting the drums ready for church

There are many church traditions that these lovely people definitely inherited from zealous missionaries of the past, but I love that they put their own twist on them, unlike in other places I’ve been (yes, I’m talking about you, my beloved Gereja Baptis Indonesia). The children’s choir wore choir robes, but they also danced in to the church, singing at the top of their lungs, beautiful Moru praise songs (Moru is the main tribe here in Mundri). We collected the offering in those special bags with wooden handles, but one person held the bag at the front while everyone danced up to put their money in it. We also had several loud and long series of announcements (which is usually only about 5 minutes at the end of an American service), and several enthusiastic testimonies followed by clapping, cheering, and ululating. Introduction of guests is also somewhat standard: stand up, say your name, where you’re visiting from, be humiliated in front of hundreds of people, etc.

A blurry photo of the inside of the church-sadly for you guys, the rest of my photos refused to load

This past Sunday, I think that was a bit of a different type of service. I think we might have skipped the main sermon because one lady’s testimony went really long and I think she might have usurped the time. I guess even for Africa, 4 hours is about all you can take, numbing your buns on wooden seats, hoping for a cool breeze to come in the door. When the man came up to talk after the lady, I was afraid he was about to start on his typical 1-2 hour sermon, and I was wearily steeling myself for  another go-round, but he must have noticed the glazed eyes and increasingly loud whispering in the crowd. He spoke about 15 minutes, and then we sang again and then it was over.

My favorite part was when Repent jumped up in the middle of the lady’s testimony with a shaker made out of a gourd (I think) and started singing loudly and jumping around. He was immediately joined by the rest of the church, people coming up to the front or dancing from their seats. I joined in the dance with the children who had all been sitting beside me patting my hair. We jumped up and down for at least 15-20 minutes without stopping. After the first 5 minutes when I realized what we were committed to, I put on my long-distance running endurance face and went for it. I wasn’t even too stiff the next day.

I’m not sure where I’ll be in church next Sunday, but I definitely hope the service includes some jumping. It's great when you can get a work out in church.

Spiders

Many people here have English names, which makes things easier to understand for me, but I always wonder if I should pronounce the name with an African accent or not…the guy I work with the most here is named Repent. I feel like John the Baptist every time I call his name.

Today we had an orgy of spider destruction. It seems that a colony of spiders decided to settle here and occupy every possible corner and cranny of our roof. I mentioned the other day that I’d like to clean them, and Repent took up the challenge—not for me, but because some more foreign guests are coming through tonight. He bulldozed their homes with our horrible ratty broom, while I yelled behind him to squish all the ones escaping down the wall (I guess it’s probably not very John-the-Baptist to be screaming, “Repent! Repent! Kill! Kill! Kill!”).  We made great progress, and we will hopefully eradicate the problem after we buy some bug spray and make sure they never come back.

Of course, I keep having thoughts that maybe tonight these spiders will come back and attack me in my bed to avenge their fallen brothers. That image was not expunged when I picked up some crumpled paper from the floor to throw away and a spider jumped on my shirt. I screamed and jumped around—the normal reaction to having a spider crawling on your person, and caused great joy and hilarity amongst those watching. Naturally (or not, if you’re me), they were picking up the mangled remains of the spiders with their bare hands and throwing them out the door. I doubt I develop the mental strength to turn off the jump-and-scream switch in my brain to allow me to actually touch a spider on purpose. I do not have a phobia of spiders, I can look them in the eyes and smash them with a broom, but they are disgusting and creepy. And I still feel tingles on my legs or back like they are about to start to string up a new home on my body.

(Author’s Note: so far the spiders haven’t attacked, but I have killed a large wasp and cockroach with my new bug spray.)

I don't have any photos of us killing spiders, but here are Repent (red shirt), Yosef (blue hat), and myself (sunglasses), riding in the back of the truck to see what's wrong with one of our wells so we can fix it (which we did today).

WAter Sanitation and Hygiene

We haven’t had electricity or water for the better part of this week. I get by hooking up the generator for a few hours to charge my computer (when we have enough fuel for the generator), and we hired someone to bring us buckets of water from the nearby Yei River. The boy who works here, climbed to the top of my bathroom’s water tower and poured in the water, jerrycan by jerrycan. It took about 20 minutes or so—incidentally, about the amount of time it took me to use most of that water in an attempt to clean the bathroom and shower. Why was I so horribly inconsiderate? Because of the following conversation with our South Sudan country director while we were in the US together:

Someone, maybe Natalie: But you will have showers with running water.

Mark: Well kind of. The water has to be carried up by someone.

Jefferys: Oh no, we have a pump.

There may have been more to that conversation, which clarified that the water that is carried up to the tower is from that pump, but I had heard what I thought I needed to know, and so I didn’t pay attention to the rest of the exchange.  And that came back to bite me when I had no water in my tank for 3 days. After that, everyone lost water, when the solar panel pumping the central water from the town of Mundri to various pumps around the area, was apparently stolen by some enterprising person. Almost a week later, we are still buying water, but I have been very frugal with the water in my shower. I have also had the foresight to put out all my buckets and receptacles every time it rains to catch as much water as I can. I have then used that water for washing as well. I also put a bucket in the shower with me to catch whatever water falls in the moments I have the shower on while rinsing off soap. That’s when I noticed that the water in the bucket is actually the same color as the water in the Yei River. Coming out of the shower it looks nice and water-ish. In the bucket it returns to mud. I only brushed my teeth with it once or twice because I thought, “I’m probably going to get malaria since I decided not to take harsh medications long-term, so maybe I shouldn’t contract a parasite as well.”

(Author’s note: I’ve been writing things down off and on for this week, and I just

found out that I was right about the parasite. The other foreign ladies here who live in a compound not far from here and have internet that they graciously allow me to use, informed me that there is some weird parasite that I will probably contract from my river-water showers. Oh well. Too late to do anything about it now. But at least the visiting foreigners used up all my water and I got some more from a nearby pump.)

My neighbor Scott said, “Is it ironic that Neverthirst is having water problems?”