a glimpse of another reality

April 3, 2011

Dear friends and family,

I hope this finds you all well.  I haven’t documented my experiences in quite some time, but there is something in what I am experiencing in my first time in Africa that may be worth sharing.

I’ve now spent nearly 3 weeks in the newest country in the world.  As I arrived at the airport in Juba there was a big sign that read, “Welcome Southern Sudan, the 189^th Country in the World.”  I didn’t know if they meant to welcome me or if they actually wanted me to offer some sort of salutation to the country. 

I’ll try to describe a bit of the reality so you can try to picture life here.  Southern Sudan is the size of Spain and France put together.  It has 25km (15 miles) of paved roads in the entire country.  The rest are made of dirt—the color of blood, or dried blood when it rains—and are so rough that 2 hours in the car makes you feel like you got kicked by a horse.  People walk all day long in incredible heat to get from place to place.  Most women never seem to stop working.  Many men never seem to start. 

A new country looks like anything else that is new—it is full of people who know they should be doing something but don’t quite know what to do.  Public offices are piled to the ceilings—literally in the case of the country registration office—with folders and documents.  Police sit in chairs next to intersections watching the world go by, waiting for people to break rules that only they themselves know.  After years of struggling for independence, united against a common enemy, the country now teeters on tearing itself apart, divided along tribal lines while vying for power and land begins 

On a daily basis, I am helping local government and NGO’s set up a conflict early warning and early response system to help prevent the escalation of violence across three counties in one of the 10 states.  I live with 3 colleagues: a woman from Zimbabwe and two men from Kenya and Uganda, respectively.  I meet inspiring individuals deeply committed to transforming their environment and I have bizarre meetings with officials—whom you have to address as “your excellency”—who sit behind huge desks in offices that look like a Hawaiian luau gone awry with recycled plastic and tissue paper everywhere. 

Like most people in the villages, I live in a mud house with a straw roof.  I squat to shit in a hole in the ground.  I watch men as they walk around with bows and arrows, poisoned with snake venom, that they use to kill wild game or people from other tribes for what-seems-like any excuse they can muster: e.g. when others allow their cows to pass through their pastures, whether there are crops or not.  It is a land ravaged by conflict, poverty, and inter-tribal hatred.   In a very real sense (and being very aware of how it may sound) things haven’t changed much since the Bronze Age, except that I see cars every once in a while and I am typing on a computer in the middle of all of it.  In a word, it is wild.

There are nuggets of gold throughout, however.  People smile, wave, and constantly say, “How are you? I am fine” without giving space for me to actually respond to the question.  I see things on a daily basis that make me laugh: e.g. yesterday a pregnant woman walking down the street with a shirt on that read, “I can abstain. How about you?” or a guy pushing a homemade wheelbarrow wearing a Santa Claus hat, even when it was sweltering outside. Before they meet their Maker, I see the chickens and goats that end up on my plate.  Mangos weigh down the trees until branches break.  The government is very open to collaborate with peace-related NGO’s—a nice change from other places I’ve been.  The African sky is gigantic, the clouds some of the most expressive I have ever seen, and the stars are intense.  Finally, meetings, car trips, and everything else begin with prayer.  (It is ironic that in the West and lands of abundance it is at times challenging to find someone who believes in God.  Here, it is impossible to find someone who doesn’t…I guess that when is nothing else to hold onto, the Christ’s robe is what remains.)

Being here is challenging on many levels.  In 11 years of traveling the world, I have never seen an environment that is so menacing.  Everything is hard here.  The dry season brings extreme heat and dust.  The wet season brings a bit cooler weather, but also pandemic malaria and other diseases.  Pretty much everything here can kill you: the water, the food, the mosquitoes, the heat, the bats in the bedroom at night, the scorpions and spiders that are the size of a fist.  It can hit 42 degrees (107) during the day and doesn’t feel much better at night.  Before bed, I take a shower with a shirt and boxers on and then lie completely soaked to enjoy the phenomenon of evaporation for a couple hours before I wake up drenched in my own sweat.  I actually feel dehydrated in the mornings and exhausted—like I spent 8 hours hiking a mountain, not sleeping. 

In addition, I have never seen death so close.  The Civil war (1983-2005) left 2,000,000 in its wake—or 253 people killed per day for 22 years straight.  The ones who survived are not in the best of shape.  Since I have been here, I have seen multiple funeral processions and have met many people whose sister, brother, or aunt had recently passed away.  I went with my colleague to the burial preparations of his grandmother.  Women sat around the body—which was wrapped up and covered by a mosquito net—wailing, singing, playing simple music on simple homemade drums.  The men took turns digging the grave in dirt so hard it made much of those foundations I excavated in Tijuana look like warm butter.  During the ceremony, I leaned over to ask my colleague how old she was.  He looked at me with grieving eyes and said, “130.”

Bewildered, I asked my other colleague, “Is that possible?”  He said, “Of course; 3 of my grandparents were over 105.  Before mass-produced food, they ate pure things from the earth, killed their own animals, and lived with relatively little stress.”  I thought about my friend from Uganda whose father is currently 108 and the head of 5 generations (i.e. his grandchildren have grandchildren) spanning literally thousands of human beings.  I realized that people here could very well live to 130 and the world would never know since, unfortunately, the world seems to care little for who lives or dies or how old they are in places like Southern Sudan.  It truly is a glimpse of another reality.

To finish, I’ll share one recent inspiring encounter.  It continues to hold true in my experiences that in the most barren lands, one finds the biggest trees.  Last week, while training 12 people in a very remote training center, I spent time with the founder: a simple, unassuming Ethiopian man by the name of Dr. Legassi.  He has lived in political exile for the last 40 years for working against repressive regimes in his home country and now trains local farmers how to grow crops in a sustainable way while coexisting with cattle keepers (one of the biggest conflicts here).  He asked me where I was from.  When I said Montana, he said, “Oh, I’ve never been there.”  As I looked around where we were, I thought, “big surprise.”  Then he said, “but, I’ve been to 42 states.”  I think my jaw dropped a bit.  Then he continued, “and, I’ve been to every country in Europe except Albania…I think 114 countries in all.”  He told me that while doing his Phd in Sweden, he shined shoes at the Sheraton Hotel to make money.  In 1984, the prince of Saudi Arabia visited, rented 3 floors for his entourage, and asked for a shine one day.  When Dr. Legassi finished, the prince wrote him a check.  They bid farewell.  Then, Dr. Legassi looked at the check to discover that the prince paid him $28,000usd.  He used it to buy an apartment, travel the world, and in the end, to settle down with his wife in one of the most troubled countries in the world to assemble a community of gentle people, committed to building something beautiful together.  He’s nearly 70 years old and walks up to 50 miles deep into the bush to find farmers to train who can then go out and demonstrate another way of being.  He is one of the most humble and joyful people I have ever met.  I hope his witness can be a source of inspiration for you as it has for me.

To end, all in all, it is good to be here.  I have found that as I get older, the tentacles of comfort and security reach out in stronger ways and represent the two greatest challenges to my own inner growth and fulfillment.  Southern Sudan is a shocking experience, driving me quite far from either of these things.  It is teaching me a great deal, though nothing more important than the fact that suffering brings either liberation when surrendered to or more suffering when attempts are made to avoid it.   It is fitting that I should again feel the sense of awe I felt so many years ago in El Salvador, especially as I begin to transition away from the war-torn trenches of the world to focus on some other dreams with Fernanda (who’s in the West Bank with Medicines Sans Fronteirs [Doctors without Borders] doing some amazing work as a trauma psychologist treating Palestinians affected by the conflict).  We are happy. 

All is well.  In Sudan, as in elsewhere else, life is; death is; in between we celebrate.  A good friend of mine recently said, “Life is about doing what we can, not about being overwhelmed by what we cant.” 

I wish you all strength in doing what you can.  Thank you for your presence in my life.

In peace,

Robert Rivers

Mundri, Western Equitoria