07.28.2010: Kit Ke Tok

Wednesday began quite comically.  I was taking my bath in our corrugated metal stall out behind the huts (duel poka), the sun was coming up, and I was watching the clouds pass overhead while I splashed chilly water on myself.  To say that baths in Sudan are less than luxurious is quite the understatement, but having any clean water running over my body was a blessing, so I happily poured water from the jerry can into my small cup, and then onto myself.  I stood to begin rinsing my hair, and suddenly I noticed movement through the crack above the door…there was Goi and his little brother, just standing there staring at the shower stall.  I ducked down quickly, praying that they hadn’t seen any skin.  Knowing that they were still there, I had to squat down to finish rinsing.

At that point, I was really struck by the humor of the situation.  There I was squatting naked in a tin shower stall, with only a cup and a jerry can from which to bathe, with the open sky above me.  Like a crazy person, I started giggling to myself at what I was willing to do to go love on the Sudanese (and I know that our bath was luxurious compared to how the Sudanese bathe and compared to how many hard-core missionaries bathe).  My morning bath kind of set the tone for the rest of the day, as well.

Kit ke tok.  To laugh heartily.

It was also the day that I realized that I was no longer falling in love with Sudan…I was head over heels in love with the people, the culture, and the land!!

Snapshot of Wednesday:
-Over-exposed bath time
-Bible duel gora…I told my final story, “Fall of Babylon”
-Played yit with Bil, Kim, and Simon Dwoth
-Video tour of our compound
-More yit and a lot of conversation
-Learned how to properly click, though I’m pretty sure I still don’t do it right…it’s okay, effort is appreciated!

Sora Time! 

During the Bible school that morning, I ran outside quickly to get a few pictures of John Chuol’s daughter.  A former Aid Sudan team member formed a bond with her, and Andrew and Peter wanted to take a few pictures so that she could see John’s daughter now.  She is beautiful…

I didn’t take any other pictures in the school that day.  I was busy telling my story and walking through it, and then we had some other pressing things to discuss that day.  There was also some strange commotion during the last hour of our session.  Andrew was trying to explain where the school is headed and what will happen between July and October, when another team returns.  It was really important stuff, but all of the sudden a storm blew up and the thunder was really loud and distracting.  Jengmer received a couple phone calls, and the students were very distracted.  We went from calm and progressing to complete chaos in a matter of minutes.  Our team leaders compared the situation to one that happened in another village…we were under spiritual attack.  The saying goes that you know you’re doing the Lord’s work when you meet resistance.  So we did.  Our leaders decided it would be best if, instead of continuing, we just stopped and prayed together.  So we spent the last thirty minutes in a “random” prayer time…and through that we were able to leave encouraged and united.

Following the school on Wednesday, many of our team members weren’t feeling top-notch, so several people took naps.  I was still feeling alright (except for my really sore throat that I awoke with that day), so I decided to spend more time with the Sudanese.  I went over to their side of the compound and started a game of yit.  I shot a short video of their game of yit.  It is a two-player game, but I never once saw fewer than four people giving their opinions on the game strategy.  Here, Bil is winning, and Kim and Simon are fussing over how Kim should move (p.s. if you lose a game, the expression is, “I have one donkey”)…

Bil, Kim, Simon, and Jengmer…

Bil (pronounced Beel) Chuol and I.  Bil is 26 or 25 years old (he knows that he was born in 1984, but he’s not sure exactly when), and he is married to a 19 year old woman named Nyamuoch.  They have two children together and they live in Gambella, Ethiopia where Bil attends school.

Bil, Kim, myself, and Simon (note the difference in personal space…I’m squashed)…

Kim (pronounced Keem) Dothoal and I.  Kim is somewhere around 24 or 23 years old, and he is married to Nyabol and has a son, Bhan.  Kim also lives in Gambella, where he attends high school (I want to insert that I am so encouraged by these Sudanese guys for sticking with their educations even when they have families, kids, and few resources!).

Simon Dwoth (Dwoth literally means “remainder” and it is the name given to a second twin.  The first twin is always named Bwoth, which literally means “to lead”) and I.  The hand-shaking was Simon’s idea…

Goi and I (I definitely wanted to bring him home with me…he’s so sweet!)…

Kim and I playing with some self-portraiture…

Then I handed my camera back to Jengmer…

And then I handed my camera to Kim, and this was the result…

While I was over talking to them, we had some fun conversations about our skin.  Our team was definitely not the first team of kawajas that has been through that region, but to have a white woman sitting there with them, allowing them to analyze her skin likely doesn’t happen often.  There were a few things that were really strange to them about my white skin:

-You can see my veins through the skin in my wrists

-I have freckles

-I have hairy arms

-I was sunburned and peeling…Kim said, “Your skin coming off! Is harmful?” I had to have Jengmer explain to them how white people burn, blister, and peel because of the sun.

-My hair sheds

-I had mosquito and fly bites all over my legs…apparently the number of bites was strange because Bil said, “You leave your net open at night?”

After a while, I went back to eat dinner with the team, but soon after dinner Mandy and I went back to join the Sudanese for more pictures, discussions, and some Nuer songs.

Yieen bia loc jok ineey? Kim wrote this down for me, but when I asked what it said he could not translate it to English (his English wasn’t as good as Bil’s, so many times we just said “Okay” to each other because there was no way to explain ourselves).  Anyway, Buay was super awesome and translated it for me.  It says, “When are you coming back?“

Did that bring tears to my eyes when I learned what it means? Yes.

Mandy brought a few books over with her, which the Sudanese loved!  Here the boys are looking at pictures in Emma’s War and an atlas…

Mandy was showing Goi the world atlas.  She showed him where he lives in Sudan, and where we come from in America.  I think he really enjoyed that, and it was so neat watching them look at how far away we live from each other, but to be sitting outside of our mud huts together in Sudan!

Following that morning’s incident in the bath, I decided that I needed to make sure the shower accommodations were well documented.  Here was our bath stall, which is actually really nice compared to most other baths in Sudan (and this was super clean compared to the rainy days)…

This is Kang Deng and I.  The Nilotic Sudanese tribes (Dinka and Nuer) are some of the tallest people in the world.  Many of the Sudanese that I met were tall, but Kang was the tallest Sudanese man I met! In this picture, he is kind of slouching and I am standing very straight, yet he is still more than a full foot taller than me…

And Mandy is even shorter than me…

These next two pictures are funny because Simon told me not to take them! Men do not carry things on their heads…women do that.  So, when I saw Simon stroll onto our compound with this full jerry can on his head, I ran into my hut and grabbed my camera.  As I was running out to get the shot, he was laughing, but saying, “No, no, no, no!!” As I was taking this picture, the other Sudanese guys on our compound were laughing at him, too.  Busted…

I’ll leave you with this ah-MAZ-ing Nasir sunset…

Highs:

-Being able to laugh at myself in the most absurd situations!

-Sharing more Bible stories with our students, and spending much time in Nuer and English prayer over the future of the school and the future of Southern Sudan

-Breaking down barriers by sitting and talking with the Sudanese.  Even in their broken English and my really limited, shaky Nuer, we had a really great time discussing our cultures, our skin, families/marriage, and other random things.

-Talking with Mandy that night about our desire to return to Sudan.  She hopes to go back in a medical capacity and I hope to go back in an educational capacity, but we share a passion for the people and a longing to go back for a much longer stay!

Lows:

-The realization that we would be leaving in only two days really began to set in at that point.  I began to really struggling with how much I love Sudan and how much I would miss it and everyone I had met.  Sadness is not really a strong enough word to describe how I had already started to feel.  I wrote in my journal that night, I am definitely struggling with leaving in less than two days.  I have just barely begun to learn the culture and the people…I love the Sudanese more deeply than ever before…I am definitely leaving a huge chunk of my heart here.

Lessons God Taught Me:

-When you are truly seeking God and carrying out His work, you will meet resistance.  I had experienced it before I left for Sudan through the many people who tried to dissuade me, and we experienced it as a team in our mud hut school that day.  Instead of being afraid or giving up, however, I learned that the only way to continue on His path is to stop where you are and pray.  Pray for strength, pray for courage, and pray for protection.  Also, be excited just as Andrew, Peter, and Kerry were, because it means that the work you are doing for His kingdom is awesome!

-True, servant-love is SO powerful.  Our notion of love here is most often romantic, but Christ-like love is gritty, challenging, and oh so beautiful.  To go to Sudan and to love people who are so very different from myself, who have been through so many struggles, and who cannot love me back was one of the most amazing experiences of my life (and by love me back, I mean that they cannot hop on a plane and fly to America and become my best friends).  The more love I gave away, the more I had to give.  The Nuer do not even have a word for love…the closest word in their vocabulary is nhok, which literally means “agreement.”  Whether or not there was a word for it, the love I felt there among the people was very real and overwhelming, and I feel so blessed that I was able to experience that kind of unrequited love in my life.