Welcome to Lohutok

I am writing to you from my new home at the base of Lohutok village. The last week has been pretty hectic so this week’s blog will probably be a little longer than last weeks. The day after writing last weeks blog I departed for Torit, South Sudan with a missionary couple to visit the South Sudan AIM Headquarters where all of the missionaries in South Sudan were meeting for a couple of days. The plane to Torit was tiny, it was six seated and the back seat where I was sitting was pretty cramped. It was great fun for the first hour or so until I got a little uncomfortable. The noise of it all was so loud that you needed to put on ear covers and couldn’t really have too much of a conversation with anyone. The airstrip at Torit was pretty good in comparison to some of the others I’ve seen; it was a dirt strip where the locals have their football games. On arrival, I had been expecting to have to go through some kind of security check to get visas and stuff, but there was no airport or any officials. The AIM compound was right next to the strip and as soon as I got off some of the missionaries were waiting to take my bags into the house. Later that day I went into the town to sort out paperwork and was taken to a decorated cargo container where the immigration office was. I now have a South Sudan pass for 3 months because South Sudan doesn’t yet do visas. It was at Torit that I met Cath Bezold (I think you can find her testimony on youtube but I’m not sure) a South African Missionary that will be working with me in Lohutok from time to time. All of the guys there were really nice and whilst for them it was a retreat from all the work they’ve been doing, I was keen to get going and do something, but hearing them talking about different problems out here will probably help me out over the next couple of months. Whilst staying there I was sleeping outside in a tent alongside some other guys. It was during the second night that the biggest storm I’ve ever seen hit at about 1 in the morning. According to the locals it was the biggest they’d seen in a decade. Two trees on the compound were ripped out of the ground and the tents we were staying in were battered. I abandoned the tent about 15 minutes into the storm as the sides had decided to no longer be waterproof and my mattress was turning into a sponge for the rain. I ended up sleeping on the living room floor sharing a mattress with another missionary. The next morning I must have had about 15 new bites, but was grateful to be dry. We spent the morning repairing the compound and drying stuff out (I don’t seem to be doing too well with the weather so far). On Monday myself, Cath, 3 guys working for Cath and a local pastor called Tito set off for Lohutok. Cath was somewhat worried about the road checks, as she has had bad experiences with them as they can sometimes be drunk and/or demand money. However, everything went very smoothly, except for the roads, which are extremely bumpy, people weave across the road choosing whichever path looks best. I arrived in Lohutok just in time for Lunch. I am staying with a South African/German family called the Matusiks; there are 5 young children (4 girls and a boy). They work for a German missionary organization called Diguna who have close links with AIM. Diguna set up their own large compounds and try to be self sufficient opposed to AIM who normally try to live among the locals, therefore the compound here grows a lot of food and has a big workshop full of vehicles including a number of motorbikes belonging to Stephan Matusik. Stephan is a pretty impressive guy; he has served as a South African Paratrooper, speaks four languages and seems full of stories. However, after two days of being here he left with his family as they are attending a Diguna conference for two weeks. I am living in a small house on their compound with two other guys, a 16 year old American called Elijah and a 22 year German bike mechanic called Adam, who are helping Stephan out here. The setups quite nice, but I’m beginning to get bored with the same staple foods, although we did make pizza last night as a treat. I started teaching in the school yesterday; the secondary school has 3 classes each of which has roughly 15 or so students. I am teaching all 3 physics and maths, they are a long way behind. The students who have been there for about two and a half years have only completed roughly a terms worth of work and from my lessons yesterday I’m uncertain whether they’ve understood what they have been taught. On the whole, I think my first day of teaching went fairly well and there are signs of real promise from the first class who are all of a younger age (the older classes range from 17 to about 60). I am just happy that I didn’t break down at all. The one thing which did strike me as extremely impressive was the speed of the arithmetic’s, they have no calculators and therefore have had lots of practice with calculating sums in their head, so I would say something like, “ therefore the answer is 2600 times 0.48” and in a matter of seconds one of them would shout out, “1248.” It’ll be interesting to see how they handle logarithms and other mathematical problems without calculators if we get to them. At the moment the school is pretty stretched for teachers, there are about 6 of us and pretty much everyone is taking two subjects regardless of whether they are their strong suits. I haven’t yet been up into the village itself (the school is also at the base) as I haven’t yet had reason to do so although I hope to venture there at some point. The villagers are very friendly and wherever you go there are greetings of “hello teacher,” or “mung,” which is the local word for hello and seems to be repeated over and over when you meet someone. One big plus is that beside our compound there is a rough football field and every night all of the guys from the village come and play and people come and watch, so far I’ve played the once and did alright, but my lack of Lohutok vocabulary was a hindrance. I hope that it’ll be a useful way to get to know all the guys here.

I am now off to meet my language helper, Joshua, for an hour so.  So, as they say here: homo bino (thank you very much) for reading.

Chris

-Saturday 1^st October

the plane to Torit

The runway

The guys cutting up one of the fallen trees

the wet and broken tents

view of the mountain on which Lohutok is situated from the compound.

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