Expertise:BSing. I would say sleeping, but that's highly unoriginal, even though in my case it would be true. You should see me on airplanes, in chapel, in class, in the middle of a good sermon....you name it and I'll sleep through it. I even fell asleep standing up once, but lacking the talent of a horse, I fell over. I also can't whinney or eat only hay. Them horses are pretty amazing. Occupation:Unemployed/Between Jobs Industry:Engineering
When you're living in close quarters with constant companions, you've got to be creative in chipping out some alone time. So I've gotten into the habit of pulling occasional all-nighters on the porch. It's still and quiet, and I can get a lot more work done, especially with fewer people hogging the bandwidth. Tonight is one of those nights.
Just a few minutes ago, as I was sitting in the dark, typing away on my laptop and listening to the frogs and crickets, I was seized with a pressing need to make a trip to the outhouse. I set down my laptop and walked down the porch to the little brick path.
Suddenly, I noticed a man standing on the other side of the bamboo fence, watching me.
I jumped.
I sure hope he's the guard, I thought. I'd hate to have to scare off an intruder right now. I have to go to the bathroom. "I am the security guard," he said. "I am making the rounds." Good, I thought. Hmm...I wonder how long he's been standing there? I wonder what all I did in the time that he was standing there. Did I pick my nose? If I did, no big deal. People here pick their noses all the time. Did I pass gas? Oh, I think I did. How loud was it? Passing gas is shameful here. I wonder if he heard. Dang it. Oh no. I'm wearing shorts. I wonder if he can see my knees. I bet he can. I bet he heard me pass gas and he can see my knees. Dang it. Oh well. I really have to go to the bathroom.
"Thank you," I said with a smile. "Good night!" And I continued down the little brick path to the outhouse.
There's a TV centrally located on our compound under a thatched-roof banda. Mostly the Europeans and South Africans commandeer it to watch rugby or cricket or some other not cool sport (i.e. not baseball.) Occasionally I'll join them for part of a game, but generally I listen to their cries of joy and agony from our porch.
Last week I took my laptop over to the banda to pick up the better wireless internet there. Pirates of the Caribbean 2 was on TV. One of the Sudanese workers from our compound came and sat down, staring wide-eyed at the computer-generated characters. He was particularly fascinated by the giant octopus creature attacking a ship. After that scene, any time there was any dialogue or non-action sequences, he would interrupt and say, "That animal! It is still in the water! It will attack them!"
Another man came and sat next to him, equally mesmerized by what he was seeing. After a moment, he turned to me and asked, "Is this movie from America?" When I said it was, he turned back to the screen, shook his head in amazement and said, "In America, you have magicians!"
They both sat on the edge of their seats, open-mouthed through the rest of the movie, which I wasn't watching cause I was too busy watching them.
In order to maintain my commitment to xanga shallowness and
to have a URL I can distribute without readers having access to all the dumb
stuff I wrote in my sleep-deprived college career, I have made a for-realzies
blog about the whole Sudan stuff I've been up to lately. Here it is: http://spoilsofvictory.wordpress.com/.
We just got back from church for the first time since returning
from Nairobi. I really like our church here. It meets out in the bush on wooden
benches under a lulu tree, surrounded by brush and palm trees.
This week, we arrived after the singing was underway. A
young man with ash smeared across his face beat out the rhythm on a goat-skin
drum. I tried to sit down on a bench next to some young girls, but was
quickly ushered to a seat of honor on one of the plastic lawn chairs. Scrawny dogs
covered in flies and open sores ran around our feet, while child after child
squeezed onto the wooden benches. Many dress only in an over-sized T-shirt that
drapes down off one shoulder and shows off their black and white beaded
necklaces. Children lug around their infant siblings on their hips, often struggling
to keep ahold of a baby over half their size.
Church pews
The church leader, Sunday, stood and led the congregation in
several songs, pacing around and narrowly avoiding tripping over a bare-bottomed toddler in
a pink hoodie with Mini Mouse ears, who was crawling in the dirt. Sunday tried
to quiet the children, and asked that they carry the crying babies aside so the
service wouldn’t be disturbed. One young boy was particularly distressed
because every time he stood up to remove his whimpering baby sister, his pants
would fall down. Then he tried to wipe his sister’s nose with his hand and
ended up with snot all over his fingers. He slung some of it to the ground, wiped
a bit of it on the heel of his foot, and walked over to the lulu tree to clean
the rest off on the bark.
A woman gave testimony about the goodness of God, with her shirt
pulled down to give easy access to one of the two babies on her lap. Meanwhile,
a fight had broken out among the dogs, and the sound of snarling eclipsed the sounds
of the service. Sunday walked over to the bush, grabbed a couple of sticks and chucked
them at the dogs. The dogs yelped, tucked their tails, and ran off to continue their
fight a little further down the path. As Sunday teaches, he often gestures with
one hand and carries bits of twigs in the other to throw at dogs. He is an expressive
story teller with very good aim.
A tall, stately man wearing a cowboy hat came by on his
bicycle. He stopped long enough to greet us, propose to me, and stand gracefully
surveying the proceedings, while an elderly woman in a lime green dress lept
up and down as she led the congregation in worship. After he passed on, I was
told that he was the chief of the area. I wondered if it was taboo to reject a
chief’s marriage proposal in front of a large crowd of his constituents, but
shrugged the thought off. If publicly turning down important men’s advances
was that offensive, all four of us girls would probably have been kicked out
of the country by now.
Two young men wondered up, and one hung the AK-47 he was
carrying on a palm frond before taking a seat. Sunday motioned for him to take
the gun elsewhere. The young man went back, got the gun, and carried it over to
hide it in the bushes—where it was incidentally closer to the congregation and
within reach of the children.
Sunday teaching
I listened to Sunday telling the story of Cain and Abel, trying
to keep my eyes trained on him, as I felt the eyes of the children around me (and
some of the unmarried men across from me) all focused on my white face. A whiff of unwashed animal came wafting up from
below my chair, indicating that one of the timid, sickly dogs had taken refuge
there.
As soon as the service was over, we were instantly
surrounded by a sea of faces and outstretched hands waiting to greet us.
Attentions were soon turned to the bush, however, where two boys were having a
noisy altercation. I wondered if it would help to throw bits of sticks at
them.Some older boys stepped in to
defuse the situation.
We walked back up the path to where the Land Cruiser was
parked, finding it already encircled by a crowd of people begging for a ride
into town. We’ve learned from past experience that we have to set a specific
limit to the number of people we carry back with us. If not, everyone tries to
pile it at the same time. One week, I was a little slow getting in and the
vehicle filled up to the brim. They almost had to leave me behind in the bush
that day.
This week, we agreed to allow three passengers. A woman slid
in the backseat with her infant and several bags of goods to sell in the
market. A young man got in next. A boy who had just gone through initiation and
still had the leaves wrapped around his freshly-cut forehead scars tried to
crawl in next to him, but the older boy shoved him out and slammed the door. We headed off through the bush (with only 2.5 passengers), until our path
intersected the bumpy dirt road into town.
The market
When we had driven past the road block where the soldiers always stop the big lorries but let us pass with a wave, we pulled over in the market to let the passengers
out. I hopped out to open the door for the young mother. (People who aren’t
used to riding in vehicles often have difficulties with contraptions like locks
and door handles.) She handed me her baby to hold while she slid down off the
seat and unloaded her bags from the vehicle. I jiggled the child and spoke to
it reassuringly, since it seemed a little concerned about being in the arms of
a strange foreigner. The mother looked back at me, smiled, and said “your child” in Dinka. She chuckled
heartily at the thought of the little ebony-skinned cutey really being my
offspring, thentook the child from me
and thanked us for the ride.
I crawled back up into the Land Cruiser, trying to be as
modest as I could wearing a skirt. As we rode back home to our compound, I
couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for all the suckers out there who don’t
live in Southern Sudan and go to church under a lulu tree.
The time to depart for evening language class is fast
approaching, and once again I’m seized with the nagging temptation to blow it off and spend the evening sprawled
out in the hammock, listening to the chirping of tropical birds and the bellowing of long-horned cattle grazing on the other side of the bamboo fence.
This is almost as bad as college…only in college I would just give into the
temptation to skip, because less was at stake.
Left: in the hammock, Right: cows across the fence
Yesterday evening’s class consisted of a long two hours of
conjugating the sentence “I beat the child,” interrupted when another of our teachers stopped by to show us a
gourd used for storing milk out in the cattle camps. One of the Catholic
fathers in our class asked him if it would be safe for him to drink the milk or
if it would make him sick. Our teacher assured him that it was safe and
sanitary, thanks to the calf urine
they add to the milk.
Some days we’re lucky and class is cancelled for various
reasons…heavy rain, random national holiday, the teacher getting diarrhea, etc.
On one of these blessed days, as Whitney and I rode back home on our bicycles,
some boys were cutting grass outside of the compound with machete-like
grass-cutty tools. They saw us riding and started to chase us, yelling “I cut your neck!” I kept riding at the
same pace. “That’s not very nice!” I called back cheerfully, because I was in a
good mood, and I was pretty sure they were joking. Then when we got home, we
stood in the yard and threw rocks at the giant termite mound. That was a good
day.
Our yard - the mound is in the bottom left corner, in front of the outhouse
A group of Chinese workers have been repairing the road to
our compound for the past several weeks. The ride down the dirt road is now
smooth like a dream. One morning after a particularly heavy rain, we were
trudging through the mud on the way to class, when a long line of the construction
vehicles passed us. We noticed the man in the passenger’s seat of the first
vehicle had out a very large camera and was taking pictures of something along
the road. Looking around, we realize there was nothing around to photograph…except
for the three white girls walking through the mud. I gave a little obliging
wave for the camera and kept on trudging. The next vehicle passed, and the man
in that vehicle started snapping pictures of us as well. And then the next….
Like our friend Erica says, “Wanna know
what it feels like to be a movie star? Move to Africa!”
Left: Road to our compound, Right: Chinese road workers
A few days later, we got our revenge. As we walked by the
area where they were doing the construction, we whipped out our cameras and
started snapping pictures of them. Turn about’s fair play, or as the Dinka
saying goes: “Were we not all nursed by
our mothers?” Yeah…some sayings don’t translate all that well.
