Leaving Sudan

November 9 turned out to be my last class with the Toposa women. Anna and I had shopped quite a bit the day before for tomatoes, onions, rice and beans, tobacco, etc. We had to hire two Toposa girls to help us carry our wares back to Anna's home more than a mile away in the noonday heat. The next day the man who said he would drive us and our gear to Nacipo could not make it. So, we got everything together and paid a Toposa woman who was going to attend the class to help port our things to the village about two miles away. It was hot but bearable. Christine lives near Nacipo and we met her along the way. I was the only one who did not carry anything on my head.

65 women participated, not counting small children and the chief and his retinue; we met under two large nadapal trees. I taught them through interpreters (English to Arabic to Toposa) about whip worms and round worms and pin worms and the damage they can do to someone's intestines. We showed pictures since there was no blackboard (too difficult to carry). They seemed impressed and said that most of them and their children had suffered from worms in the past year or so. We handed out the vegetable seeds I had brought from Nairobi. When we had the question period after the presentation, one of the women thought it would be helpful if a large tukul was built to accommodate the number of women coming to these health promotion classes. It would be placed centrally. I said we would consider this but that they would have to build it themselves. They said they would build it but would need to buy poles and wire to bind the sticks and thatch together. I believe we will do this since the chief was there and said he was not against the idea. It shouldn't cost too much. I left early and walked back to the compound and Anna and Christine showed the women how to cook rice and beans. They said the women were most grateful.

Three days later we were to go to Loolim. I sent Anna and Christine there but because the tribesman who said he would tell the women of the upcoming class failed to do so, only 25 or so women attended. They were most enthusiastic and I know they will get word of a tukul to be built in Nacipo and they will want one too and their village is much larger than Nacipo.

I had already said good-bye to the St. Bahkita school girls at their end-of-year party which was quite an event. Many speeches and tribal dancing and recitations followed by an excellent meal. The goats were prepared in three or four different ways and I ate a little of each. Afterwards there was a dance with the Comboni Boys' 8th graders. You must realize that the "boys" are in their late teens and twentys and the girls are mid to late teens. There was a full moon and the night was magical.

On November 22, The Maryknoll sisters, Madeline and Theresa, prepared a Thanksgiving Day meal because I was to leave the next day. It consisted of a luscious tuna casserole with dried vegetables and pumpkin pudding. After dinner we sang "America the Beautiful." During my year here in Narus I always had breakfast with them and ate lunch and supper with the Ugandan sisters. All have been most gracious and helpful to me.

Two days before I left Narus, I went on a three-hour hiking tour with Anna; we visited four villages and one small cattle camp tucked away behind a hill. Several Toposa families from near Nadapal had come to live there and set up an interim camp. There were cattle, goats and six or so camels. They slaughter the camels and sell the meat in Narus. I also saw women hanging out goat meat to dry and 7 and 8 year old girls balancing water containers on their heads as they headed from the bore hole to their village. Anna knew everyone except the people in the cattle camp.

I said so-long to the sisters and the compound personnel as I loaded up my two suitcases and a duffle bag full of memorabilia the Toposa women had given to me - a pipe, two beaded arm bands a four inch thick beaded waist band, two herding sticks taped together and a beaded goatskin skirt I had bought. Sister Susan Clare had already left for Uganda and Sister Edvine, Headmistress and Sister Agnes, Pre-Unit teacher remained. Sr. Agnes came with me to Loki where I took a plane to Nairobi.
I hope to return next spring and stay until June. I left the educating of the Toposa to Christine and Anna who are far more able than I and who understand the needs of the women. They will carry on the Toposa Women's Health Promotion Project while I am gone.

Now I am in Nairobi seeing some of the friends I have made here and taking care of odds and ends. Will fly out on Dec. 20 and get into San Franciso on Dec. 21 where my friends will collect me.

The Kenyan Sisters of Mercy in Nairobi have been most hospitable and patient with my many comings and goings as I used their convent as my base when I was in town. I am grateful to them and to all the sisters at the Diocese of Torit Compound for their patience with me as I struggled with customs and culture and food and scorpions.

I will take a several month hiatus and give some fund raising talks while at home.

I am deeply grateful to you who have read this blog and to others who have emailed me words of support and for all your prayers which kept me focused on the St. Bakhita school girls, on the Toposa and on the God in whose loving gaze all this makes sense.

Since I last wrote there has been more violence at the border of South Sudan and Kenya such that we had to postpone our flight for five days (border was closed for several days). Now the Kenyan army has 7 outposts in the land the South Sudan Toposa feel is theirs. A few days before we flew in to Loki, hundreds of warriors massed less than a mile from our compound. Things have since cooled somewhat.

While I was in Nairobi I made my retreat at the Passionist Retreat Center in Karen, just outside Nairobi. While attending daily Mass I met Sharon McMillan, a Notre Dame de Namur sister who graduated from Mercy Burl in 1966. She is only the fifth American I have met since January. She and I walked two miles in the rain to her convent where we had a breakfast of Peet's coffee and cornbread. I only mention this because it is not my usual fare.

Did some shopping for the Toposa women's project and bought fifty pounds of colored beads and fishing line, etc. along with close to 100 packets of seeds for them to plant during the next rain. The seeds included secuma wiki (collards) okra, squash, and chard.

The day after we (Sisters Madeline and Theresa and I) returned, St. Bahkita's school threw a good-bye party for the girls (class 8) to which the Comboni Boys school (class 8) was invited. There were two hours of speeches, then a delicious supper followed by dancing under an almost full moon. Truly magical. On the following Monday all class 8 students were driven to Loki in Kenya where they will sit for their exams. The outcome of these exams determines whether or not a student can attend secondary school. You need a score of 250 out of 500 to make the cut off.

If I can get a vehicle Anna and I will go to the village in Loolim to give a class for the women there on Nov. 11 and then back to Nacipo on the 21.

There is not much else to report except that I finally got a ticket home and will arrive on Dec. 21. Don't know yet if I will be returning in the Spring.

Again, I appreciate your emails to me at (in case you forgot) kconnolly40@yahoo.com

God bless you all and your families.

MERCY OUTREACH

Things have calmed down since I last wrote. The drought is in full swing even though we had some rain last week.

Two Saturdays ago we began an outreach program for the Toposa women of the Narus area. Anna Mijji, Lucy and Christine are working with me or more correctly, I with them to educate the women in the areas of health, cleanliness and nutrition. Our first class was held on Sept. 19 in the parish hall. 30 women were present, not counting children. It had poured the night before and was misserably mucky outside and it took 20 minutes just to get to the parish hall from our compound. The lesson was on washing hands before cooking and of course after going to the bathroom. The Toposa go outside the village when they need to go to the bathroom. However, goats and such wander around and get offal on their hooves, etc. and bring it into the tiny villages where toddlers play. They in turn get this on their hands and when their mothers pick them up they get it on themselves and if the mothers forget to wash their hands (they dont wash) it may get into the food and if the person who defecated has diarrhea and/or worms, then the rest of the family may also get this. I mimed this little scenario and the women clapped at the end - probably in relief. We also talked about the advantages of eating greens several times a week. Afterwards we entertained questions and comments such that I will be getting seeds for green leafy vegetables for them to plant when it starts to rain. I also suggested that they use the money they make when they sell firewood for greens once a week. They didn't like that idea. As the women left the parish hall where we had met, we gave each a large bar of soap and a large plastic cup with ground maize, enough for one meal of porridge.

The following Saturday, we met 55 women at the Nacipo primary school. Nacipo is a collection of five villages under one chief. The chief's three wives were present. I did the mime of how to give your family worms and diarrhea but the audience did not clap. This was a far more sophisticated audience. We taught pretty much the same things and had pretty much the same questions afterwards.
We gave out soap and maize but because the weather was good, Anna showed and had the women help her prepare some greens. The younger women took our other large pot and filled it with the leftover maize and made porridge. Between the cabbage and the porridge we fed over 100 people counting children. The chief's #1 wife wondered why her husband received tobacco and the woman did not. Forunately I had one roll left over so I gave it to her and she sniffed it and found it to be adequate. She cut some shavings for herself to chew and gave some to the other women who had brought their pipes. They were a happy contented lot. They suggested that we give them clothes so we thought of buying bolts of good cloth and cutting it into two meter segments and giving them this instead as their clothing is threadbare. I must admit I really enjoy working with these women. They do ALL the work while the men sit under trees all day.

On Mercy Day, 09-24-09, I was stung by a scorpion who had gotten into my unzipped suitcase. The pain was worse than an acute appendicitis or muscle spasms which cause you to be taken by ambulance to the hospital. The interesting part was how you are treated: half folk medicine and half modern medicine. I went to the Maryknoll convent where Sisters Theresa and Madeline wiped my finger and a straight edge razor with a sterilizing agent and then Theresa made a fair cut next to the sting and squeezed my finger until it was bleeding freely. Then she placed a black stone on it and taped the stone securely. The thought is that the stone will suction out the poison with the blood. Psychologically I felt good but I was still in agony. Fortunately, Charles, the clinic director, came to the convent compound and gave me two pain shots and I was good to go by the next morning.

I'll be going to Nairobi on Oct. 7 to make a retreat and buy some things for this new project. Will be back in South Sudan around the 25th of Oct. or so. I do not know when I will be returning to the states. Am having an awful time getting my return ticket changed and I started the process in early Sept.

Owls wait for full moon light,
while in my room I hide,
Terrors burrowed in the thatch,
God, let them stay outside.

Chanting down the path come they,
leading cattle home.
Toposa herdsmen sticks in hand,
cattle never roam.

YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN!

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.

OUTREACH

There is nothing new under the sun as is reported in Ecclesiates. The Toposa have been herding cattle and living off the land for thousands of years and they do tend to humor our poor efforts to "improve" their lot. What they may not see clearly is that global warming is having a serious effect on growing crops and may be causing water shortages, all of which will affect their culture. This is not to mention the encroachment of modern towns and technology which is creeping closer and closer to their villages and is already having an effect on the children.

With all this in mind, I began to meet with the paramount chief of all the Toposa who live in and around Narus and then with a lesser chief in an outlying village within a half hour walk from my compound. We still have two or three more chiefs to meet with and get their permission to visit their villages and speak with the women about nutrition, sanitation and health issues. When I and Christine, a social worker who is employed by the Torit Diocese, met with the chiefs, their priorities were food, water, and health. I was encouraged in this work since our goals are so similar. I did tell them that we could not dig a borehole for one of the villages which is running out of water and whose women have to walk a long distance just to get the water twice a day.

Christine and I arrived at the village of the lesser chief about an hour or so before sunset to see an elderly blind woman in rags picking her way across the village enclosure with a stick to tap on the ground. We were met by women and children. One of the women attempted to pull my dress up and off me before someone told me that she wanted it. We did a little negotiation and I told her I was too fair to wear just a beaded goatskin around my waist and beads on my neck.

The chief was ill with a cold but he came out to see us. He was tall and fine boned, about 45 years old. He, along with most of the village men, dress in western clothing while the women and girls wear traditional attire. Toward the end of the visit he told me his daughter was ill and had been bled the day before. I asked him to bring her over and so he called to her and she came. She is four years old and was wearing beads around her waist. Her stomach protruded but was soft to the touch. She had ten small cuts about one and one half inches long on her back. Cutting is the Toposa way of relieving pain and hopefully, curing a sick person. She also had a runny nose. I thought she might have pneumonia as she complained of aching all over. I told the chief to bring her and himself into the clinic the next day to get a diagnosis and some medicine. Since I left for Nairobi the next morning I do not know if this happened but I had clued in the medical director to expect them.

I spent several days of my holiday in Jinja, Uganda, just over the Kenyan border visiting a Holy Cross sister, MaryLou Wahler. She took me on a tour of Lake Victoria, Bujagali Falls and showed me where the Nile begins its 4,000 mile trek to the Mediterranian Sea. MaryLou has lived in Uganda for 27 years and no matter where we went she knew someone. I stayed with her in the convent where the postulants live. There are four of them, 2 of whom are from Kenya. They grow all kinds of fruits and vegetables, including Jack fruit, a putrid smelling fruit which is quite large. Uganda is lush and green with paved roads, electricity 24/7, and full of various kinds of food including Nile Perch and Talapia. It is a stark contrast to South Sudan. I must admit I did fantasize about applying for a transfer.

I leave tomorrow for Loki where I will stay overnight and be picked up the next day and taken to Narus. School begins on Sept. 3.

Do I miss Burlingame, my family and frieds? You bet I do! Hope to be home around Christmas time.

(Hot) Summer Musings

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.