Greetings from South Sudan,

I’m sorry that these blogs don’t come at a consistent rate, I am writing them when I have enough to talk about and when the time is available. I should probably start of where I left the last one, with the medical mission. The trip to the village went smoothly (not physically) as there were no checkpoints along the way; the Government has made checkpoints illegal, yet the news doesn’t seem to have reached the guys out here. The team consisted of Dr. Hopper, Steve, my 2 housemates and myself. We stayed on the Church compound in the Village almost the whole time. Whilst Dr. Hopper would see the locals we would do the pharmacy for the medication he prescribed. The most common things we gave out were Medication for Malaria, Worms and painkillers for back and Neck problems in women.  You normally see pictures in the Oxfam pamphlets and other things of women carrying stuff on their heads but I never realized how heavy it was, the stuff weighs about 35kg and they have to walk with it for miles every day. I offered to help a woman the other day on my way to school by taking her load on my head, about 200m later there was sweat pouring down my face and I couldn’t go any further, the women thought it was very funny. You’ll probably all remember that Cheryl Cole recently got Malaria and the tabloids made a big deal out of it, but sensible people said it wasn’t that serious, in light of that guess how many children died of Malaria in this village in the last year. The truth of the matter is I don’t know, but in the week I was at this village 5 children died of Malaria, a little higher than normal, but that’s still pretty crazy. The problem is that even though there are medical stations, the Malaria will develop so quickly in infants that there is no time to save them. Life for Women and children isn’t that much fun. Dr. Hopper’s work out here undoubtedly makes a big difference and he was an inspiring guy to work with. He returned to America last week, however due to new laws about flights he had to be rushed to Kenya to catch his flight. The government has imposed that all flights to and from South Sudan must go through Juba, which will make work out here a lot more difficult for all missionaries, so any prayers that the government will become more lenient would be appreciated.

Moving onto more cheerful news, I have found a new language helper, his name is Jamus. Jamus is one of the students in my third class; he is 22 and has one wife and two children. He is the smiliest guy you have ever met and holds your hand when you walk with him (it’s a sign of friendship out here). I thank you for all your prayers and hope that I will begin to improve in the language again.

It is now the last week of school and the students have exams all week before breaking up (The school year starts in January so this will be like their summer holiday). I am hopeful that there will be some improvement in their grades, but I am trying not to get my hopes up too much. We are trying to get a goat for school Christmas lunch; as long as I don’t get the brains (a delicacy) I am happy. After school finishes I have 7 weeks “off” during which I will be working for Steve doing construction work on the compound and around the place. There are now a couple of roosters on the compound and Steve reckons one of them will be fat enough for Christmas Lunch. There is some concern about how well the school will run next year, we will have another class coming in from the primary school, however we have no more classrooms and are already in need of more teachers. So any prayers that things will be sorted out would be very helpful.

As Christmas approaches the dry season is starting and the heat is now reaching the high 30’s. All of the green mountains will soon be parched, not because of the heat, but because the villagers burn the greenery for animistic reasons (they have been advised many times by missionaries not to do it). So I am making the most of the beautiful scenery whilst it lasts. 

I wish you all the best wherever you are and thank you for reading,

Yours in Christ,

Chris.

Treats from Torit (Torits) 

S3

Dr Hopper

The Medical Trip

Dr Hopper and Steve

The women I tried to help

Settled

Hi there,

Thanks for taking the time to visit my blog. Time is flying by pretty quickly and I am now well settled out here in Sudan. Tomorrow I am setting out to a distant village to help a medical team that has been staying here for a week. They have been doing daily visits to neighboring villages but the one we are going to tomorrow is a distance away and will involve camping for three days. The tribe there is supposedly steeped in animistic beliefs about spirits. I’m quite excited to go and will tell you all about it next time. This trip does mean I will be missing two days of teaching but the headmaster, Joshua, is keen for me to go. The teaching is now going very well and I thank you for any prayers, the first class are becoming more talkative and now that I am covering topics that I have taught them from the beginning things are getting easier. Both the second and third class have also are becoming easier to teach which perhaps means I am getting better at teaching. Either way things at the school are going well, during the lunchtime devotionals I have begun to teach about some of the great men in the bible and the distinctive characteristics that are born of their faith as most of the school is made up of men. Last week I spoke on Abrahams willingness to sacrifice Isaac for God and today I spoke on Noahs obedience to God in building the ark, both talks seemed to catch the attention of some students whilst others seem to use the time for a nap.

One thing that has now been started in the school is debating, Ellen (a fellow missionary teacher) and Joshua had started it a week ago and I volunteered to help out, so last Friday we had the first proper debate on whether or not girls should be given an education. The responses of students were interesting with the school be split 50/50 with arguments ranging from it’s a waste of money because the women will be making babies by about 16 to it being a human right to get an education. I think that debating will help these students to think things through instead of just sticking to their old traditions for the sake of it.

I am now beginning to help Steve out with the Sunday evening bible study for the young men, we are studying the basics of faith; it is going well although sometimes I am uncertain whether they understand everything. To those of you reading this who are not Christians, I appreciate that a lot of this will sound either odd or alien. If this is the case, I would encourage you to look into the basics of the Christian faith, for to not explore the possibility of God is stupid. I would not call the R.E lessons we are given in school a proper exploration of faith either (the R.E teacher reading this will have to forgive me), rather I would advise reading something like C. S. Lewis’s book, “mere Christianity,” which as he says himself is not written to convert anyone to his own position, but was written to explain and defend the Christian faith to an unbelieving person. 

Moving onto things unrelated to faith, this past weekend I was in Torit, a village roughly 50km away which takes about 3.5 hours to get to due to the condition of the roads, for a break from work. I went with my fellow housemate Elijah, as he needed to get a Visa. He has been in Lohutok for 6 months but has never had a visa, partly because he is a minor and didn't think he would need one and also because there are no airports, just airstrips, also what with this being a new country he was uncertain about the whole visa situation. Anyway, we arrived in Torit and went to the makeshift immigration office and ten minutes later were about to leave with a visa when the man noticed Elijah had flown out of America 6 months ago. From there on we were charged a high fee, chosen by the men in the office. Whilst Elijah was sitting there, I had to go and get the money for these men. About two hours later Elijah was free to go and his fee paid. The day wasn’t a complete waste though as I managed to get chicken for lunch at Hotel Torit, which is like the Hotel Rwanda of Sudan and buy a crate of blackcurrant and pineapple Fanta (soda)!  

I would ask for any prayers regarding the Medical trip over the next 4 days, the Sunday evening bible study and also that I could find a new language helper/teacher as my last one has gone to university in Juba and hence my local dialect isn’t progressing.

Thank you for reading,

Yours in Christ,

Chris.

p.s. I think that if you enter your e-mail into the little bar (it might say e-mail address) under the header, you will be automatically e-mailed when I upload a post.

Adjusting to life in Sudan

Greetings all,

First of all I would like to apologize for the delay between my last post and this one, the internet was down for over a week and this is the first chance I have had to get down to writing everything that has happened since the last post.

A good place to start would probably be to tell you how the teaching in the secondary school has been going. I should first of all mention that I got the age range of my students wrong in a previous post. It was sometime last week I was talking with another teacher about the older students and she revealed that my oldest student was in fact 58; I suppose his walking stick propped against the wall should have been a clue.  She also revealed to me that out of the 40 or so students in the second and third classes only a handful weren’t married and quite a few had children. The next lesson I taught after learning all this was a little more intimidating than when I had taken my first class. The one thing that is noticeable however is how keen some of the older students are to learn even if an education may not benefit them too much at their current ages. It makes me realize how much we in the west take our educations for granted, these guys didn’t have the opportunity to learn at a young age but had to endure the wars that have burdened Sudan for the past 50 years. The lands to the sides of the roads from Torit (the closest town) to Lohutok still have numerous mines on them which people keep clear of and guns are a common sight, when I walk to school in the morning I will greet local farmers and shepherds walking out to work with AK-47’s slung over their shoulders which they carry in case of cattle-raiders or for hunting. The fact that the older students received very little education in their youth makes teaching the second and third class slow and difficult at times, not to mention their first language isn’t English so certain words such as simultaneous (as in simultaneous equations) have to be explained which proves tricky. However, they are all eager and very bubbly so even though the lessons prove testing I enjoy them. In comparison, the first class are the polar opposite, they are nearly all beneath 18 and quick to learn, but are not so keen and are silent for the majority of the lesson. A few of them model themselves on western rappers and will come in a lot like our teenagers with their trousers falling off their bums and big studs in their ears. Their attitudes make teaching the first class quite difficult at times. However, they all play football on the field in the evening and when I play with them we get along really well so I pray that I could enthuse them to learn and get to know them better. Any prayers for the second and third classes and patience in teaching them would be appreciated as well as prayers that the first class teaching will improve.

Every day before lunch at the school there is a devotional period where we have some singing and a talk from one of the teachers. Since 4 of the 6 teachers are seasoned missionaries the talks are all pretty good. The singing involves a lot of clapping, but the Sudanese peoples voices aren’t quite as good as those of other African nations, but their enthusiasm is normally just as good. The principal of the school deemed that I should have the Wednesday devotional to give talks. Last Wednesday was my first; I chose to speak on pride because although I am by no means the perfect person to be speaking on the topic I thought that the talk might be beneficial to some of the first years.  At the end of the talk a fellow teacher called Ellen Fox said she thought the talk was very good, however, she is the only other person whose first language is English in the school, so whether the students of the School fully understood my talk I am uncertain. I am however grateful for the opportunity to speak to these guys about Gods word.

Since last speaking to you, I have attended the local church twice; both times roughly 25 people have attended, about 4 of those being students from the school. Pastor Tito who had accompanied me to Lohutok from Torit delivered the first week’s sermon. He is about 6ft 3, well built and his enthusiasm for the gospel is a real encouragement. His talk was good, however, last Sunday a visiting Pastor from Juba (the capital of South Sudan) gave a talk on tithes. Throughout the whole sermon I was pulling my hair out as the pastor was preaching prosperity gospel claiming that when we give tithes to God he will multiply our earthly wealth over and over. Later that afternoon I went to the Anglican Inland Church compound to speak to the pastors about the issue. The only pastor present was Tito and after telling him my concerns he informed me that he and the permanent pastor here in Lohutok after the sermon had talked to the visiting pastor about the sermon telling him it was prosperity gospel. Tito informed me that prosperity gospel is currently a big problem in Africa and that he rebukes it whenever he sees it, however sound doctrinal preaching will not be present everywhere due to education levels and the fact pastor training isn’t as thorough as it is in the west, I suppose only time will change that.

Last weekend the governor for the Eastern Equatoria of South Sudan came to visit Lohutok. The whole village turned out to greet him at the meeting place on the road up to Lohutok under a big tree. There was a lot of singing and dancing and some of the guys were dressed up. I didn’t stay for a lot of it as the main duty of the day was talking about what the village needed from the new government and the people here seem to have a way of saying what should be said in a minute in an hour. The senior school requested funding so they could pay teachers and set themselves up more securely instead of depending upon missionaries, however there plea seems unlikely to receive anything substantial. It was interesting to see the seeds of a new government being sown, however, how much this new government will be able to do I am dubious about and pray that no corruption will spring up.  

I have seen a fair bit of wildlife out here in Lohutok already, things like; geckos, lizards, scorpions, bats, snakes, ant mounds and cows (these two are on the football pitch), termites in the house (they make pretty patterned tunnels up the wall out of mud), there are also a lot of interesting insects and butterflies out here, apparently no zoologist (I think that’s the right term) has ever been to look at the wildlife in this region, so it is likely that there are uncategorized insects and small creatures here. I have been told that baboons and monkeys are very common higher up in the mountains, so some time I will have to venture there to have a look.

The two guys I’m living with are proving to be good fun and enjoyable company. Adam took me for a motorbike lesson on the airstrip here last week and I’m hoping to go again soon, but the pair of them are normally quite busy working here on the compound. Elijah and I cut our hair this week, Elijah made a mess of mine so I insisted with the help of Adam on making patterns in the side of his, which he is now rather fond of.  The food is beginning to become slightly monotonous here at the house, but compared to the school meals of just beans or boiled leaves it is gourmet.

I would really appreciate any prayers regarding teaching, but also that I may become more integrated with the villagers as so far I haven’t ventured too far into the village or made too many non-school connections.

Yours in Christ,

Chris

The School

The road up to the School

The Governors visit

Elijah's  Hair

driving on the airstrip