The Road Less Travelled--spelled with 2 'l's because it's still correct, Ms. Searcy who marked off for that when I memorized that dumb poem in 9th grade (I hold grudges to the GRAVE.)

Hyena tracks

I was trying to figure out what it is about traveling anywhere, near or far, in South Sudan that pretty much guarantees a good story. Is it the potential for seeing interesting animals? We have a lot of squirrels here and as someone who grew up in a squirrel-less country, I think they’re cool. We also followed hyena footprints a couple of times, but I still haven’t seen one for sure yet. But I don't think it's the animals. Is it the possibility of being in a vehicle that breaks down in the middle of the jungle? Maybe, but that happens so much it’s less memorable. I think it’s the thrill of the road conditions-slippery-sandy and dusty in the dry season, and sticky-slippy muddy in the rainy season. If you are on a motorcycle, you will fall over lots of time. I am going to blame the road and not Repent, even though he does love to look around for people he knows so that he can wave at them, occasionally failing to notice a pot-hole. We’ve yet to fall over because of that, though. Usually it’s because the front tire gets stuck in the mud and the back tire keeps trying to go forward and it’s not as easy as you think to pop a wheelie on a motorcycle with two people balancing on the brink of a pot-hole the size of a bathtub in a fancy hotel.  

Scratched-up legs

Our record of falls in one trip is 4 (or maybe 5?). The first two falls happened in real-life slow motion, giving me enough time to fling myself ungracefully off the back of the bike, stumbling to my feet without landing on my face in the mud.  The third time trying to do that, my boot got caught on the kick-stand and I ended up hanging there while Repent tried to pull the bike back up and I screamed at him to wait a minute before I did fall on my face in the mud. But the time that I burnt my leg on the knalpot (isn’t that such a better word that ‘muffler’?) was when I was squatting down digging mud out of the front tire guard (is that what the metal thing over the wheel that keeps it attached to the bike is called? It is now.) with my bare hands and a stick I found on the ground. It took about 20 minutes to get enough mud out so that the wheel would turn again. The fourth time we fell, Repent said, “Well, we’re here!” And I said, “Yup. This looks like a good place for a hand-pump. Let’s GPS.” And we really were basically at our destination, but since we still had to turn around and go back, we weren’t so crazy about perfect accuracy at this point. Especially since the drillers just need to get in the basic vicinity and choose the specific location later. 

After an hour of digging

 Even in cars, one is not safe from the perils of the road. We borrowed a car from a friend to go out to a village that was a bit farther away than we wanted to travel by bike. Just as we finished our work and were turning around to go home, torrential rains began to pour out of the sky. We decided that dropping off the village leader at his nearby home would be the kind thing to do, since he and several friends had come with us to show us the exact preferred hand pump location of the community. As we turned down the lane into his home, we sank down in the mud and stuck. The driver helpfully spun the wheels several times, trying to force our way out, but as I learned that time I got stuck in the snow in Philly, that doesn’t actually work and it might actually make things worse. Our passengers immediately jumped out of the car, completely defeating the purpose of driving them to their homes so that they wouldn’t get wet, grabbed their shovels and began to dig us out. It cost us 2 hours and it cost them 2 fully-grown cornstalks. Eventually, after digging a hole nearly half the size of the Grand Canyon and stuffing rocks and tree trunks under the back wheels, with the help of all the men pushing from the back and a burst of Earth-polluting black smoke from over-worked tires, we got out. And I would like to mention, that it only took me one extra-helpful young mailman to get me out of my snow bank. Clearly snow is not as powerful as mud.

Push!

 My most recent road-trip was much longer and also one that I’m not sure is worth the story I got out of it. Traveling from Mundri to Juba by car is never a luxurious experience, but it does not have to be physically painful—it usually is, but it does not have to be. This time I was hopeful that it wouldn’t be, but I hadn’t even left Parking (which is what bus stations are called here—maybe because all the broken down busses are parked there waiting to be fixed never?) before I realized that was not going to be the case. I squished into my corner by the window (permanently closed one, sadly), and then the bus owner came over to insist that I pay for my bag. He said, “This isn’t an airplane! You have to pay!” I didn’t want to feed his idea that one must pay for one’s bag, so I didn’t point out the fact that airplanes are the original pay-for-your-bag transportation. I was ready to fight, so I started yelling and gesturing and being dramatic (that's how you do it here), and the people in the car were all supporting me. But then I also texted a foreign friend who’d previously traveled all over in these little car-busses if she’d had to pay for her backpack when traveling, and she said that she did. I STILL think that I shouldn’t have to pay, especially when there was NOTHING ELSE in the back of the car, but I agreed to pay 5 pounds (they were asking for 10) so that we could just go. The guy agreed because I think he realized that he was about to lose the fight otherwise. Then, as we were about to drive away, he stopped the car again to try to stuff a 4^th guy in the back seat (made for 2.5 people maximum and the new passenger was not a small man). The guy sitting directly behind me was told to move over, but he was also squished against the door, and said, “Where?” Then he dramatically stuck his butt up on the window sill and said, “Do you want me to sit here?!!” (I told you that being dramatic is an important part of arguments in South Sudan.) And after more yelling and screaming about how we ALWAYS fit 4 people in the back, the owner gave up. I was so proud of Window Butt for sticking to his guns and winning the argument. It didn’t help because later down the road they managed to fit another skinny guy in there with them and another not-skinny lady in our seat with us (she kindly dropped her bags on my feet), but they did allow them to put other larger bags in the back FOR FREE! Jerks.  Also, they squeezed one more man (not small) on a little fold down table in between the driver and passenger seats in the front. They whipped the little fringey dashboard cover off, folded it a few times, and voila! instant seat. I spent the trip waiting for it to break, but it was surprisingly strong. The guy sitting there said to me, “To get to Juba you must be willing for suffering!” He was not wrong. As we pulled out of Mundri, the car radio blasted a song with the refrain, “Maasaalaama ya duniya!!” (Goodbye, World!), which I found a bit ominous.

Comfy seat

 I won’t bore you with many more details (thought I SHOULD because I was bored by them), but the rest of the trip passed, with one small detour to fix the shocks, in relative monotony—the Ethiopian guy in the back kept having to stop and throw up. Everyone else in the car gave him various remedies to help suppress his gag reflex. Then they all blamed him for not taking their advice (eating lemons, smelling lemons, going back in time and taking medicine before the trip, which he SHOULD have done), and deciding his misery was not worth their compassion because it was so clearly preventable—LEMONS ALWAYS WORK!

Additionally there were some amusing khawaja moments:

Mom and adorable son Sammy were sitting by me (before leaving Parking). Mom had to rearrange her bags, so she plopped Sammy on the seat by me and said, “Just sit here and look at the foreigner while I fix this.” (Khawaja=instant entertainment for children of all ages) Sammy obliged her, and continued to spend the majority of the trip just looking at me. By the end of the 8+ hours, he was used to my creepiness and allowed himself to be placed in my lap so I could play with him and protect his head from being bashed into the wall as we bumped along.

Sammy!

Also, front-middle-seat-guy who incorrectly estimated my weight to be 75 kilos (seriously? I must have succeeded in becoming fat—that’s almost 170 pounds, and I’m only about 5’4’’ and don't ask why he was estimating my weight because it's a long not-interesting story) informed me about how he used to be so terrified of  ‘people like me’ when he was a kid. “Whenever they would come to give vaccinations, I would run and hide in the bush. Nobody could find me.” While I actually think most children have this reaction to people who come to give vaccinations, he went on, “You know the people that have those kind of eyes – like yours! Bluuuuuue ones---they were scariest! You know, if you’ve only seen people like us and then you see someone like you—it is really terrifying!” Noted. Let’s all move on now because it's starting to hurt my feelings when cute kids scream and cry when I smile at them.

And when I arrived at Parking in Juba and told the driver that it was not fair of him to charge me money and no one else and that he should stop discriminating against foreigners, I was immediately surrounded by a curious flock of young Juban men, shocked at a foreigner speaking Arabic (it’s really rare in Juba) who said, “Wow! You are not a khawaja! You are a South Sudanese. You speak Arabic like us!” Take THAT, front-middle-seat guy…though I will cut him some slack because his seat had to have been the WORST and that would make anyone overestimate someone’s weight and insult her eyes.

The other travel moment of interest was my contingency planning in the event of being hijacked and/or swept down the Luri River in an attempt to cross over into Juba. Recently, some children were found murdered in that area, a crime blamed on Dinka (as everyone here blames them for everything). Additionally, a friend of mine had been hijacked at the Luri River, just a few months before. At gunpoint the men demanded 25,000 South Sudanese Pounds (about 6,500USD) from my friend who only had 50. They also took his laptop, phone, bag, and two books on sanitation, which he had been using to teach from in Amadi for us that week. I hope those guys make use of that information.

Right now, for me, one of the worst things would be to lose my computer and/or phone. So I put the phone and some money and credit cards in a small wallet and hid them on my person. The plan was that IF we got hijacked, I could find a way to keep that hidden while they took all the rest of my stuff. Also, I left my South Sudanese money in the bag, but put my north Sudanese money in the hidden wallet to avoid suspicions that I didn’t have any money with me (Side note: to me, traveling means sorting through all your currencies to choose the ones that you will most likely use. This trip they are Sudanese, Ugandan, Euros, US Dollars and South Sudanese pounds). We were not hijacked and I got to keep all my money and stuff. Yay!

Repent crossing not-the-Luri River

Then there was the issue of the Luri River. It’s rainy season. That river has a current and it can get too high to drive through and the bridge is broken. A guy in Lui (where we stopped to get the shocks fixed on our car—absolutely pointless, as I’m sure they were broken again during the trip) told me, “I bet the Luri River is so full that you’ll have to spend the night there and wait for it to go down.” I really didn’t want this to happen because there is no place there to spend the night, it’s in a rather dangerous area, and I already had a headache (only 15 miles into the trip), and I just wanted to be in Juba with semi-regular electricity and semi-present internet and mostly-edible pizza.  I also decided to plan for if our car was swept down the river or started to sink when we got to the middle of the river (this happened to Leif once in Kenya—they climbed out the window and swam across). Since our windows were closed, I planned to hoist myself out through the sun roof, grab baby Sammy, jump down to open the car door (which only opened from the outside) and help swim everyone to safety (totally did that once in Yemen at the beach). It would have worked, but fortunately I put my best prayer warriors on the job (Mom and Dad via text message), making sure they were properly motivated by all the possible danger to their daughter, and they did their job and the river wasn’t too bad. I later returned their favor by Facebook messaging the guy they were supposed to pick up from the airport when they were stuck in traffic in Jakarta while I was sitting in my hotel room in South Sudan—that is the world that we live in. It’s NBD to text someone in South Sudan to post on someone’s Facebook who is currently in Jakarta Internatonal Airport to tell him to wait at KFC because his ride is stuck in Ramadan traffic.

In conclusion, the trip was long, bumpy, painful, very bumpy, and slow. How long does it take YOU to drive 110 miles? I bet it would take you 8+ hours too if you had to dodge potholes the size of houses and bob down water-rippled roads without breaking all the windows in your car. And I do not recommend it as a fun pastime, but hey—stories…they can sometimes be worth the pain…though in this case, maybe not…

I love this hilarious photo of Repent's way
to dump water out of his boots
(see above photo of the moment before the bike slipped into the river).
I think it would win awards if my finger hadn't gotten in the frame.

Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder (and also some stuff about Dinkas, Mundaris, and Zandes)

Charity, learning how to take a selfie,
or as Marian and I call it 'a long-arm shot.'
Also pictured, most of beautiful Faith's head and
Jona photo-bombing us in his Neverthirst hat.

I went to hang out with a lovely gorgeous friend of mine the other day. She really is beautiful, and I think that deep down in her heart she knows it. Certainly all the boys around here know it, and I’ve been with her when she laughingly refused a proposal of marriage from one of them. She told him she would only marry an educated man, and if he went back to school and got his degree (high school diploma), then she would consider him. She’s got a pretty intense list of qualifications for her future husband besides education and the fact that he must be taller than her (she’s quite tall). First, he should be an Equatorian (she's Moru, a Western Equatorian tribe)--no Dinkas need apply for her hand. She also refuses Mundari, another nomadic tribe that lives in Western Equatoria (Side note: I think they're awesome. They're so tall and strong, and they have cool looking cows and they wear native clothing with pride--short dresses for the men, which they totally pull off, and colorful cloths draped across the shoulder for the women. Also, they're badass. You don't mess with them. Our governor is Mundari and even the President is scared of him). Charity refuses them because Morus aren't fans of the nomadic pastoralist tribes, especially the Dinka, but also Zandes (Another side note - here is a Moru racist joke Repent told me that I laughed at because I have been here too long: when do you see a Dinka cow that is fat? If it has been eating Moru gardens). Zandes are Equatorians too, but they’ve had a little historical feud going on for centuries, since the Zandes were warriors and cannibals and they once came to try to eat some Morus.  The Morus, as the story goes, were ready for them. Though they are mostly peaceful people, they can defend their own when the time comes (they will shoot any Dinka cow in their gardens with their bow and arrows, and that is no joke). They all climbed up on top of a nearby rock mountain, taking food and water as needed and proceeded to set the jungle below on fire. The Zandes ran away in terror as the Morus threw rocks at them off the mountain. Of course, I’ve never heard the story from the Zande point of view, and maybe they were just trying to pass through innocently when they were attacked by fire and rocks, but it is an exciting story that rather catches the imagination.

The "Eat Fire Rocks, Zandes!" Moutain

Also, we are currently (when I’m writing this, not when I’m posting this) under threat of Dinka attack, as a nomadic Dinka tribe has moved into our area with all their presumably stolen cattle. The governor said they had to go as they are refusing to build fences for their cattle, and the Moru farmers are not cool with Dinka cows eating their crops. The UN has been called in to mediate, but people are ready to defend themselves and their tribe as need be if the Dinkas violently insist on staying. Esther said, “I’ll whack them with my garden hoe if they come attack me.” Repent prefers his machete. I’m thinking that it is not likely that anything will happen, as our local government is pretty tough. But you can see why Charity, my beautiful friend, has some tribal prejudices.  It’s kind of amusing, as whenever she is in Juba or elsewhere, she is often mistaken for a Dinka woman, with Dinka men paying her fare on the bus because she is “one of their women.” They don’t always believe her when she tries to set them straight.  To her great regret, she is tall, slim and dark--basic characteristics of Dinka women. If she were ever in the US or Europe, it would take two minutes for her to be spotted and made into a supermodel. She wants to be a lawyer, though, and I think as a career, that’s a bit more useful. Modeling is a career that, the longer you do it, the worse you are at it, whereas other professions tend to offer better opportunities and greater knowledge the longer you work at them.

Jona, Charity, and Faith-serious siblings

 Charity and I talked of many things: why I’m not married, what kind of guy I would be willing to marry, why I haven’t accepted the proposals of several local boys, whether or not I have someone in America or Uganda or Europe or wherever who I want to marry. She is very focused on my marriage. She keeps having dreams that I’m married or having a baby, and she predicted my wedding will happen before the end of the year. I appreciate the thought, but I’m pretty sure there isn’t enough time left in the year for that. But I had just told her that I was 30, and I think she is worried about my old age.  She said, “You have a baby face and you look really young. I thought you were only 25.” I lost 5 years in that guess, but a few days before Baby had said that he’d thought I was 35, so it all evens out in the end. I wasn’t offended by Baby’s guess either because I recently found out that he is 28, and I would have sworn to you that he wasn’t more than 15.

Repent's mother, grandmother and
youngest child-3 generations of beautiful

 Charity’s other comment on my personal appearance was to tell me that I have gotten a lot skinnier. As one who grew up in skinny cultures where slimness was a sign of beauty (yes, even in Indonesia, they really don’t mean it as a compliment when they tell you that you are fat—not anymore anyway), I was slightly gratified by this because I had recently decided that I was eating way too much of Esther’s lovely white bread and that it was showing in my middle-aged tummy roll. But she was actually worried about my declining beauty. She mentioned the wife of her cousin, describing her as ‘a fat lady who is very beautiful.’ (Not, as we would say in the US-- "She is fat BUT beautiful [as much as it is possible to be beautiful and fat]," which is the opposite of "she is slim and pretty [nothing else needs to be implied in un-said brackets].") And she is not convinced that her slim willowy body would land her a modeling contract in our skinny-obsessed culture.

My BFF Yunis who thinks she is
smiling too big in this photo-
I think she's gorgeous

The day after my girl-talk-time with Charity, Repent and I were hanging out, waiting for the rain to stop so that we could go out and work. He was foraging in my kitchen for something to eat (it is rare that one finds success in such a venture, sadly). He was going to eat some left-over rolls that Esther made, but he decided that they had gone bad. Things seem to go bad more quickly during the rainy season.

Future beautiful woman Sugeeri,
showing me how to play
jacks with rocks--she's awesome,
I'm…not.

“Why didn’t you eat them already?” he asked.

“I thought Baby would eat them. “ I said. “I guess he doesn’t like the bread anymore.”

“You should tell Esther to make less so that they don’t go bad.”

“She DID make less. I just didn’t eat them all this time.”

“Why not?”

“Because if I eat them all I will become so fat,” I told him.

“Good," he said. “You need to become fatter. That will make you more beautiful.”

Esther came in about this time and agreed with him (“You really are too small, Amanda”) while I laughed at them both.

Friends in the market saw me heading out and asked where I was going.
"To get mandaazi (donuts) from my friend."
"Good. Eat them all so you can become fat and beautiful and get a man."
This conversation really happened. But it was in Arabic.

Esther is not only gorgeous, she is kind,
generous, talented, resourceful,
and I'm sure if she ever tried she could
bench-press more than you and kick your ass
with her garden hoe. Here she is cooking
cassava over our 4th of July slash-and-burn bonfire

The fact is that neither excessively skinny people nor excessively fat people are healthy images of beauty, though the larger women here, who would be considered fatties in the US, are most likely 10x as strong and fit as any yoga-pants-wearing gym-going twig who spends her life working out and eating gluten-free, non-GMO, Paleo, low-carb, fat free, organic free range food. I am definitely not healthier for eating lots of white bread, which I cover in sugar, jelly or honey because I love sugar in all of its forms (only gluten-free sugar, though). I also would not be healthier if I somehow found the willpower to starve myself. Well, anyway, I’m sure I will live my life being average stumpy-plump in the US and average under-fed in South Sudan, but if I were to choose a side, I think it would be more fun to be a beautiful fat lady in South Sudan, because, like I said, I really really love sugar.  And who would not love a beauty regimen that includes eating copious amounts of soft, chewy on the inside, slightly crusted on the outside, bread rolls, hot out of a coal oven?

Coal oven. Whenever I get it to work successfully, I feel so proud.
It doesn't happen often.

See how adorable they are?

You already know that I think that Joy, Repent's wife, is
one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen in my life.
Even when she's miserable-sick lying on a mat under the mango tree,
still loving on her mini-Repent daughter.

Ati is the one in the flowery shirt, and I'm the one in red-
in case you couldn't tell the difference,
because we are sisters.

I am not often serious, but here is a serious moment. Ati is my ideal of feminine beauty.

Once, as a child, I heard her referred to as 'homely', and I remember being shocked by that description. I'd never once thought about what she looked like, but I'd loved her and thought she was beautiful. By objective human standards, you might not think that. But if you know her, all you will see is Beautiful because that's what she is--loving, kind, caring, generous, so fun to be with always. In spite of hardships and betrayals from people who should have had her back, she still trusts the Lord with her future and loves everyone around her unselfishly. By age 19-20, when I first met her, she had already achieved the height of beauty, which she has kept with her 20+ years later. If I ever have a daughter, I will name her after Ati, and tell her to aspire to that kind of beauty, which doesn't need to diet or put on weight or use extra-whitening toothpaste or deodorant (I'm talking to you, China!) or clarifying shampoo or "hair treatment" or have plastic surgery. It transcends fashion, age, and even culture. I doubt I'll ever be as beautiful as her in my lifetime, but it's good to have something to aspire to.

Last side note: my tall small sister wrote a lot of serious stuff about Beauty here (or somewhere there). She's a Writer so she can be serious without being annoying. Also, she puts on photos of her cute kids. Seriousness is worth it with a picture of those cute faces.

Working Relatively Not Hard At All

Today (the day that I’m writing this, not the day that I’m posting it) I went for an 8 mile run because it’s Saturday and that’s what I do for fun on Saturdays. Basically, I think of a place farther down the road that I haven’t had time to run to in the past, and I run there and back. It’s fun. Or I guess you just have to be there. When I got home I ate breakfast and went out to my garden to work.

A family garden work day-they flipped over their
garden hoes and balanced on the handle
while taking a break to eat peanuts and cookies.
I did it too and it was surprisingly uncomfortable.

In Mundri, Saturdays are the days to work in the gardens. Up and down the road as I ran, I saw lots of people walking out to their gardens, hoes and other gardening tools over their shoulders. Unlike many people here who have to walk a ways to their gardens, outside of town in more affordable areas, my garden is right behind my kitchen. Also, unlike everyone else’s gardens, mine is about 3 meters by 4 meters. So it’s quite manageable for a new gardener who has recently realized that, while it is fun to play in the dirt, hack at things with my hoe, bury seeds, it’s not really fun to pull weeds. First I thought it was because I didn’t know what was weeds and what was not weeds. But today I realized that it was because I don’t like pulling up the weeds and seeing how few of the seeds I planted actually grew. Today I was re-planting parts of my garden that didn’t grow because we didn’t have enough rain after I planted the first seeds and they never grew. Yes, I could have watered them, but that would have involved hauling jerrycans of water from our well, and I didn’t feel like it because it’s rainy season, and it’s going to rain eventually.  So I did the replanting.

My lovely garden surrounded by uncut grass jungle

I worked in my garden for nearly 3 hours. After finishing up in the garden, I was covered in dirt, because I believe in doing everything as enthusiastically as possible. I had to shower before going to the market to buy food, And, as I usually do on sunny days when I think there will be a good chance of them drying, I washed my clothes with run off water from my shower. Since I recently moved my clothesline because of people fixing our fence, I had to carry a bucket of wet clothes across to the other side of the compound. And, in fact, our compound is quite big, much larger than my garden. I won’t attempt a guess at square meterage because that would take too much brain power, and I don’t feel like it. But it is definitely big enough that the guys who cut it with slashy stick thingies never finish cutting it. There is always a jungle of grass over most of it. Long grass is annoying here because it is almost always wet and full of bugs and you can’t tell if there are snakes hiding under there waiting to kill you. I think snakes are interesting, and I wouldn’t mind seeing one or two, but not when they are close enough to kill me, because there are other, less painful ways to die.

My drinking water-I fill up
bottles several times a week

The large yellow jerrycan got on
my shoulder and the kitchen pots
filled up with water.

So I carted my laundry over to the line, which I’d re-hung behind our kitchen and hung out my clothes. After that, since there is no water in our kitchen tank right now, I went back to the other side of the compound with a jerrycan to get water from our storage barrel. I was super-proud of myself for getting it up to my shoulder and carrying it back to the kitchen, where I planned to use it later to wash dishes. With practice, maybe someday I can get it on my head.

After all that, I went to the market to buy food. I got eggs, tomatoes, cumin and a  green pepper. This is the first time I’ve seen green peppers that actually looked edible. And it was a good pepper. I scrambled some eggs and when I finally sat down to eat lunch it was 2:35pm. And sitting down felt amazing and luxurious.

Before

After

After lunch, I used the water that I had hauled to wash all the dishes out on the back porch. A lot had accumulated, and in typical man-fashion, no one else had attempted or offered to do dishes that THEY had eaten off of as well, so I washed them all myself—woman-fashion. When I had finished, it started raining, so I put out my bucket to catch water off the roof so that I could wash dishes again later. The rain also meant that my plan to go visit Repent’s house so that I could see his mother, who is there helping while Joy is sick, was off. So I decided to take the rest of the day off, feeling so pleased with my awesome toughness.

I told you all of this because I am bragging about how tough I am. I could also tell you about days when I ran 6 miles in the morning and then rode a motorcycle into the jungle until the road ended and then walked two miles in and two miles out from a village where we had to get GPS points.  At this particular village, while Repent was using our demon iPad to try to get the village info (the iPad doesn’t react well to heat and often starts writing startling things in our forms that HQ in the States are going to read with great consternation), I was sitting on a log bench (remember those? They are not comfy benches), enjoying the view. A man with his bow and arrows slung over his should came by. He saw me and stopped to stare. I asked him what he was hunting, but he didn’t understand, as I asked in Arabic and not Moru. But he came over and sat next to me and never took his eyes off of me. It was awkward so I looked over at Repent and asked if he needed any help. Just before we got up to leave, I felt a tiny poke on my arm. I guess the guy just needed to make sure I was solid and not a ghastly ghostly apparition.

Me with Esther in Repent's compound (they're neighbors),
looking white and with a spot on my skirt where
my friend's baby peed on me. It was fine though--
I knew I was about to get way dirtier than that.

Really, my life is quite active, and I love that, and sometimes it makes me think I’m awesome. Then when I’m walking 2 miles up to the internet place, having run 6 miles that morning and walked 2 miles in the jungle, I pass a lady and her daughter on the road. They are carrying large, full sacks on their heads. They tell me they are coming from Okari and going to the market in Mundri—5 miles. They are going to sell stuff, buy stuff and walk home—10 miles round-trip with heavy sack on their heads. The next day Repent and I stop the motorcycle to say ‘hi’ to some of his friends walking down the road. He tells me later that they are walking to Mundri—9 miles away. They are barefoot and carrying a small child. Their mother is sick at the hospital in Lui, 15 miles away from Mundri.

I said, “So they’ll stay the night and then drive
to Lui tomorrow?”

Repent said, “Maybe. If they don’t have money for a car, they’ll probably walk to Lui.”

I said, “WALK TO LUI?! THEY ARE GOING TO WALK ALL THE WAY TO LUI?” (Barefoot!)

This is the road they were walking on

Repent said, “Yeah. It’s not a big deal. I’ve done it myself.”

I said, “You walk there, stay the night and then walk home the next day?”

Repent, “Usually. But once I walked there and back in a day. I just left really early.”

That is a marathon+, people.

This not-to-be-sold-or-exchanged bag of sorghum from the US,
was sold and exchanged until Repent bought it in our market,
and it is an example of a huge thing that women carry on their heads
here. But Repent carried it on the back of his brother's motorcycle.
Thanks for your tax dollars, America!

In conclusion, I am a pansy. Though, I do think it would be really fun to walk 30 miles round-trip one day just to see if I could do it, but barefoot and carrying a baby? And probably the barefoot, baby-carrying ladies had already carried several 20 pound jerrycans full of water to their homes over distances I can’t guess. I’ve talked to women here who are walking 7 miles one way to get water for their families. This is why I do what I do, but can we just stop a minute and RESPECT the people, ladies especially, of South Sudan who are amazingly strong? For real.

Respect. Do it.

And someday I will carry a jerrycan of water on my lazy lumpy head.

(For all Americans reading this, you owe a debt of gratitude to Repent and the British colonizers for all the distances in this post being given in miles. I just take his word for it on estimated distances.)

And here are two more photos of women at work--first, shaking the wings off the termites they caught in the jungle and second, weaving grass into mats.

I love how the little girl is making her
own basket while her grandmother weaves the mat