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July 10, 2005
Greetings
Greetings from Kurmuk, Sudan. We hope this note finds you all doing well. We miss and think of you often and wonder how you are. I (Chris) want to write two or three emails a day, but Bev encourages me to summarize some things. We don't want you to get tired of us! Prayer requests are at the bottom.
Kurmuk sits at right on the Ethiopian border about 11 degrees north of the equator. The town is of some importance because it was strongly defended by the SPLA during the civil war. Hardly anyone who lives here now was originally from here. Kurmuk was once a nice town with rows of brick buildings and electrical lines on power poles. Now, it's rebuilding. It's a government center and a garrison town.
When the sun comes up, you begin to hear several things. The first thing is that the roosters all over town, who have been waiting all night for this moment, go crazy exercising their vocal chords. Our compound's rooster roams around crowing for a good thirty minutes, causing all of us to think unchristian thoughts about him. He is scheduled for the stew next Thursday I hear, so I suppose we'll let him go until then.
The other thing you hear is the army trainees doing drills and excersing. That's ok, because they sing quite a bit.
Is it hot here? No, not really hot but it seems like it to us. Today at lunch it was about 87 deg F and quite humid because it has rained a lot. We got here on July 7, and it had rained for two days before. The road from the airstrip was like one foot thick with black muck. We wore barn boots (gumboots) around for two days because everything stuck to our hiking shoes. The sun ("shemish" in Arabic) was out yesterday and today also, so we've switched to sandals.
Speaking of sandals, all but two of our boxes got here - unfortunately one contained Bev's sandals. But Jen Gresham came to her rescue with a pair of pink Wal-Mart sandals. It really helps to have air moving around your feet to keep them cool.
It's not really hot yet, and it's the rainy season here. Sudan is completely green and growing! The corn is about 2 feet high, and the mountain (jebul Kurmuk = Mt. Kurmuk) is covered in vegetation. Before, a guy told me you would not see a single green thing anywhere. The hot season of March and April really killed off everything. But now the grass is growing enough to be cut.
Three guys are working to pull grass in the field behind our tukul. They pile it up and throw it over the 7ft high grass fence. Peanuts and watermelons and okra are coming up. We thought it was bare field but Brian explained that the Sudanese don't plant orderly rows like we do, they just pick a good place and plant some seeds. It comes up fairly random.
Agriculture is an area where there can be a lot of advancement. We (the Samaritan's Purse project) have two guys working in that area. One guy, Dr. Mubarak, is known locally as the donkey man because he is introducing a donkey program with carts. The Sudanese here don't use animals for labor; they just do it all by muscle power. His donkeys are starting to be seen around.
Just now, we made some improvements to the latrine (choo in Swahili) by putting screen around some of the openings. The toilet seat was broken, but a new one is on order. Brian and Bev and I worked together and got it done quickly using a staple gun and nails. Also, we cleared some small trees away from the side of our tukul and filled a hole that some animal (probably a mouse) was living in. All around us are peanuts (groundnuts) and tomatoes.
There is a lot of cooperation among NGO's here (Non-Government Organizations). There are two folks with USAID staying on the SP (Samaritan's Purse) compound and we are also tight with the GOAL people (it's an Irish NGO). Five or six of us went to GOAL last night for a "ynamachoma" barbecue. They cooked a tasty goat on the coals. It was great tasting.
The barbecue was really a celebration. The BIG news here is that the SPLA chairman John Garang was sworn in as vice-president of Sudan yesterday. The peace agreement of January led to a redesign of the government to include the southern rebel group as a formal part of the government. It was a big, big thing. At dawn this morning, the army was up singing songs and running through town. People came out and were yelling and shouting.
We went to one of the two churches in town today, the Unity church. It's quite unique because all different denominations and tribes go there and exist peacefully. It is having an impact on the community to see all the different flavors of Christians getting along. I [Chris] and Brian were invited to a meeting after church. It was quite an honor, and luckily I kept my mouth shut. When we emerged from the meeting two hours later, it became apparent that I lacked the background to understand what was going on - lots of history there. Suffice it to say that they were calling a new pastor and deciding how to govern the church. Most of the eligible men are soldiers in the army and might be called away at any minute.
So, prayer requests: First, wisdom to understand how we fit in to the picture here in Kurmuk. Everyone is so happy to have us and are so welcoming and encouraging, but to do our jobs we have to consider the complex mix of NGO's, civic authorities, churches, church organizations, church coalitions, friends, neighbors, and other religions. We look like $$$ to most folks, and the last thing we want to do is create some non-sustainable projects that collapse without us here. Still, southern Blue Nile state is in such poor shape that most of the work here is in the category of "relief" not "development".
Second, we are looking for Arabic language tutors for Bev and I. Please pray that we find tutors that understand the different dialects of Arabic spoken here.
Published at July 10, 2005 07:36 AM
