At the beginning of last week, my roommate Jennifer, Shawn Tyler, and I drove up to Nimule, Sudan, where Messiah Theological Institute, based here in Mbale, has an extension school. There are three Kenyan men, David, Kennedy, and Martin, who work as missionaries in Nimule. David and Kennedy work on church planting and discipleship in Nimule and the surrounding areas. Martin is an eyeglass technician who organizes and runs outreach clinics in rural areas.
The purpose of the trip was primarily for Shawn to teach a Bible course at MTI-Sudan. Jennifer and I accompanied him to encourage the missionaries and so that we could see the work there and report back on it. When we left we honestly weren’t sure what we’d be doing.
After an eight-hour drive, we arrived at the Ugandan side of the border, where Kennedy met us to help with immigration. Kennedy greeted all of the officials by name—a huge plus in dealing with East African bureaucracy. We made it through the Ugandan border with no difficulties. Then we drove ten or fifteen minutes further before we reached South Sudan.
The area between the two borders is a political no-man’s land. When the fighting in South Sudan was at its worst, Uganda pulled back its borders to create a buffer zone from the turmoil. Now, years later, there’s still a stretch of land that neither side wants to claim.
That was the first sign we saw of the region’s lingering unease.
The second sign was desolation. Kennedy told us that only in the last two years have people begun moving back to the Nimule area. Before that, the town was nearly empty. To us, the town looked like it still was empty. A few shops, a few people on bicycles … but mostly, nothing was there.
The mission station is outside the town a few kilometers. As we drove through, we saw the typical East African village sites—little huts with thatched roofs, women carrying babies on their backs, goats munching on grass. But where were the maize fields? The vegetable gardens? The signs of people at work? Dennis explained that many of the people now living in Nimule have spent their whole adult lives in refugee camps. They don’t know how to farm or raise crops, because they’re accustomed to living on handouts. So even now that their homeland is peaceful again, they aren’t able to fend for themselves.
So for the most part, what we saw and did in Sudan is … not much. There’s not much to see, and not much to do. What we did was listen, learn, and ponder.
To fill our time, Jennifer and I played with the kids at the nursery school that meets on the church compound. We sang VBS songs like “Wrapped Up Tied Up Tangled Up”, taught them to sign “Jesus Loves Me”, attempted to play Duck Duck Goose, and of course took lots of pictures. (Jennifer is posting them on her blog at: http://www.xanga.com/jenruth_21)
We took pictures for ID cards for the MTI-Nimule students. I tried to help prepare dinner one afternoon, but my cabbage-cutting skills are distinctly under par. We sat and talked the women, but Swahili was the only language we had in common, and none of us spoke just a ton of that.
Please pray for South Sudan. The UN’s World Food Program and Refugee Councils still have a strong presence in the Nimule area. The Sudanese people are managing to survive right now because of emergency aid from those sorts of organization. But what the people of South Sudan need more than aid is practical education to help them get back on their feet. The work that people like David and Kennedy and Martin are doing is fantastic, but so much more is needed.
