On Sunday, July 5, I watched an elderly Toposa woman wearing tattered clothing filled with holes, go up at the offertory and put some money into the collection box. She was the poor widow with the mite.
I visited the homes of two Toposa Kindergarten girls I had worked with when I helped the Kindergarten teacher last Spring. They live in a very poor section of Narus in small one room homes made of mud brick and with thatch for roofs. They sleep on mats on the floor. The girls wear ragged soiled clothes to school and a neighbor had suggested I get them something nice to wear to school so I bought each a nice dress. One girl came to Sunday Mass in it a week or two later with her brother in tow to show me her dress. By then it was dirty and starting to show signs of wear. The other girl wound up wearing her dress to school the day that the girls received their report cards. She placed 7th in a class of 110. I gave her a large bar of soap and a book of African folk tales and then showed her how to wash herself and her clothes. This girl lives with her mother and sibs as her father lives in Juba with his other wives.
During the summer term I began to work with the girls' football (soccer) team. They are a scrappy lot and enjoy running around and kicking up a lot of dust in the hot equatorial afternoons. They even let me be a goalie when they were short one goalie. I blocked three shots and let one go through. Not bad for the old girl.
Class 8 girls debated class 8 of the Comboni Boys School. The topic was that technology has had a deleterious effect on society. The girls were all for technology and won the debate. The boys spoke English better than the girls but the girls had far more cogent arguments for technology than the boys had against it. One of the boys said that technology was bad because it made it unnecessary for men to have more than one wife but that men needed more than one wife! Then it took the judges almost one hour to give out the results of the debate as they spent that time explaining how a team that loses should behave. At that point I knew the girls had won and that the boys' egos needed to be soothed in advance.
Trivia: Did you know there are two different fruit trees in the compound called "brother's heart" and "sister's heart?" Brother's is a larger fruit and both are delicious.
A couple of weeks ago 9 of the school's goats were slaughtered for the 830 girls to eat for lunch. They cook every part of the goat except the head, hooves and skin. The girls eat it, entrails and all, and are grateful for it. We ate the liver at the convent.
Sr. Marilyn came to Narus on July 10 to my great joy! She came bearing many gifts, among which was an electronic book reader, the Amazon Kindle. The device can hold 1,000 complete books. Sr. Edvine, head mistress, is using it and will see if it can be adequately recharged using a solar recharging device. If so, then Mercy Beyond Borders will order enough to supply the upper grade girls.
I took Sr. Marilyn to see the clinic near our compound, run by the Diocese of Torit. There was a man who had been shot in the leg during a cattle raid lying on the porch because he did not want to be indoors. There was also a four year old boy who had fallen into the cooking fire on the floor of his hut and had sustained some bad burns to his torso, leg and foot. We were assured that both would be all right.
Sisters Marilyn and Judy received the royal treatment both from the Sisters of Mercy in Nairobi and the communities here in Narus. Maybe some of that will rub off on me by association. They are excellent ambassadors of what the teachers, the church and the country of South Sudan are trying to do to help their people.
Remember us in your prayer.
