The day after I wrote the last blog I flew to Loki (Northern Kenya) where I usually get picked up and driven to Narus. Instead, Peter, from the diocese compound, picked me up in a taxi and I went to stay in a small hotel. Two days before there had been cattle raiding between the Toposa (South Sudan) and the Turkana (Kenya) and the day before some Toposa tribesmen had shot the number one Turkana warrior, one of his wives and three of their children. All this had taken place in no-man's land between the borders of Kenya and South Sudan. The day I flew in had seen a peaceful demonstration by the Turkana of Loki asking the govt. of Kenya to do something about the situation. That march turned ugly and a riot ensued, Sudanese offices were trashed and looted and stones thrown at all cars with Sudan license plates.
I stayed at the hotel for two nights until the Kenyan Army secured the area and we went in a convoy to S. Sudan. The raiding and fighting continued and carried over to very near our compound. You could hear the gun shots and our little clinic received several tribesmen who had been shot. Five Toposa and 2 Turkana were killed in the surrounding area. The tribesmen brought some of the rustled cattle into Narus, just down the road from us, and were distributing some of the cattle to the various chiefs. Neither the South Sudan nor the Kenyan governments have done much to get control of this situation.
Things have settled down a bit but the Kenyan teachers in both the primary and secondary schools have been unable to return to Narus. This is taking a toll on limited teacher resources. Not all the students have returned either, though most have. I filled in last week but only as a stop gap and reviewed material for three grades in one room. To top it all off, because of the drought, the garden which the girls had dug, planted and tended so carefully had all died for lack of water, even though they had carried water a long distance to water each of their plants. You can get discouraged in a hot minute around here but no one does. They work through it all and do the best they can and so do I.
Sister Angela, the nurse from Kuron Peace Village who was shot last February, and I drove in the truck which still has the bullet hole in the door where she was shot, to the town of Kapoeta, about two hours from Narus. This town had been captured by the govt of North Sudan during the war and wears its scars with pride. We saw the hospital which is operated by the diocese and is running on a skeleton crew and we also saw the two churches which were bombed during the war. (Sister Angela is shown in the picture above, caring for a pregnant woman who had walked 7 days to reach her clinic, given birth under a tree an hour before she got to Kuron, and then nearly died because the placenta had not come out. Sister Angela saved her life.)
The hospital in Kapoeta is clean and well run. It had several wards for new mothers and infants, active TB patients, and then a number of folks suffering from malaria. They even have a lab where they can test for a number of illnesses. I asked about HIV patients and they said they two last year and only one so far this year but they feel there are more out in the community. AIDS is not quite so rampant here as it is elsewhere in Africa because the long civil war isolated the region. Sister had to visit the UN Headquarters and Catholic Relief Services in order to see if they would give her the food she had requested last FEBRUARY. No, they had not even read her letter and proposal but they would get to it and no, they did not have any extra food to give to her to take to her clinic in Kuron, an 8 hour drive away. We finally got a little food from the hospital.
On the way back from Kapoeta Immanuel, our driver, who had been in the army during the war, told us that the main road in Kapoeta had been so heavily mined that they had to build a completely new road around the town. Sister herself can regale you with stories of her work with the Toposa in Kuron. She has 5 girls whom she helped to deliver and who are named after her - each is called Sister Angela. Sister tried to get the mothers to drop the "sister" but has had no success. Angela is very well respected for all she has done and the lives she has saved. The Toposa show their respect by blessing her. One man whose son she saved, covered her freshly washed and ironed white habit with tobacco juice. A woman whom she had helped blessed her with goat dung. The new school, newly painted, was covered in cow dung by the men as a blessing in thanksgiving.
Will begin a new venture this Saturday at the parish hall in Narus. Christine and Anna and I will begin an outreach program to teach the women about basic sanitation, nutrition and health, etc. I will report more on this in October. We will be serving maize porridge with sugar if any of you are interested and can make it to Narus on the 19th of September.
God pops out everywhere here and challenges us to recognize his presence in people and events.
