Overwhelmed by Africa

In early October I was counting down the days until my first trip to Africa. On October 18, I would fly to Nairobi for the second Global Anglican Fellowship Conference. Then I would visit South Sudan, including three days in Yida Refugee Camp, the current home to some 68,000 people from Sudan’s Nuba Mountains.

As my departure drew closer, every day brought more excitement. It was the middle of the night that was the problem! I would wake up between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m. overwhelmed by what lay before me.

The vaccinations — one element of dread — hurt less than I thought they would. I needed six, count them, six shots, before I was Africa-ready: yellow fever, meningitis, polio, typhoid fever, Hepatitis A, and tetanus. But they all went in fairly painlessly. The tetanus shot left a bruise approximately 5×3 inches in size which my daughter very compassionately described as looking like a “lichen growing under my arm.”

Malaria pills and mosquito nets. Insect repellent and sunscreen. Warnings to avoid being bitten by any animal — dog, cat, bat (!) — or risk a medivac to South Africa for rabies treatment. The need for constant vigilance regarding the consumption of water. These were just the medical issues that threatened to overwhelm me when I thought about my departure from the United States.

In the wee small hours of insomnia I also worried about traveling alone. Dulles Airport to Amsterdam to Nairobi seemed pretty straightforward. But traveling from Nairobi to Juba after GAFCON2, when almost all the other Anglicans had left the scene, was a bit more daunting. What if I missed my flight? Would there be anyone in Juba to meet me?

Yet far more overwhelming than any threat of disease, or of making the trek to South Sudan alone, was the horror of what had recently taken place with the al-Shabaab jihadist attack on Westgate Shopping Mall. Most mornings the scenario would play out in my head of a similar attack on GAFCON2, or at the Nairobi Hilton. I wasn’t afraid of dying, per se, but knowing the brutal savagery of the Islamists, I wondered about the theological implications of obtaining a cyanide capsule for quick suicide in case of capture.

After one such morning it finally occurred to me that a better use of my insomnia than allowing Satan to feed my imagination with fear and dread was to actually read the Bible and pray. I turned to Psalm 18, and read that the “LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer” when the “cords of death entangled me; the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me.”

This reminded me of the words of a worship song we sing at Church of the Apostles Anglican based on that Psalm:

Oh God I look to You. I won’t be overwhelmed. Give me vision to see things like You do. Oh God I look to You. You’re where my help comes from. Give me wisdom. You know just what to do. I will love you Lord my strength. I will love you Lord my shield. I will love you Lord my rock. Forever all my days I will love you God.

I realized that this was exactly what I needed — to not be overwhelmed! So I repeated the words of that song as a prayer whenever I needed to feel the peace of the Lord. If I woke in the night, I sang those words and went back to sleep. After saying goodbye to my daughter at the airport: Oh God I look to You. I won’t be overwhelmed. Realizing that the young woman who had been very unattractively flossing her teeth while sitting in the airport was now sitting across the aisle from me on the plane: Give me vision to see things like You do.

After that, the trip to Africa did become overwhelming — overwhelming with blessings, love, and joy. I saw God’s beautiful creation from the window seat of a KLM jet. During the Amsterdam layover I met about a dozen GAFCON2 delegates who would be on the same plane with me, including the entire delegation from the Diocese of Cascadia. This was just the beginning of making new friends in Africa.

In Nairobi, my good friends the Rev. John Chol Daau and his wife, Sarah, met me at the airport and helped me get to my hotel. John is the founder of the Good Shepherd Leadership Training Center, and of The Christian Times newspaper, which my parish, Church of the Apostles Anglican, helped to start. The next evening they invited me and a few of our other friends attending GAFCON2 for a delicious meal of Sudanese food prepared by Sarah.

During the conference, the blessings continued. The Anglican Church of Kenya, under the leadership of the Most Reverend Eliud Wabukala, Archbishop and Primate, took very good care of all 1358 of us at the conference. The terrific staff and security at All Saints Cathedral kept us safe, but even beyond that, the presence of the Lord,  and the anointing of the Holy Spirit were evident at every gathering.

My transition from Kenya to South Sudan also went smoothly. The night before I flew to Juba I was invited to spend the night with the Chancey family in Karen. Matt Chancey works at the Persecution Project Foundation, a long-time ally in advocacy for Sudan. It was wonderful to finally meet him and Jennie and nine of their ten charming children in person! Matt and Jennie took me out for a spectacular dinner at the Talisman restaurant, and Matt introduced me to, Charles, a  terrific taxi driver who is a brother in Christ for my trip back to the airport. If you needs a good driver for Nairobi, Charles is your man.

Arriving in Juba, I started to panic. The airport is crazy! There are no orderly lines for anything. For someone who is on the OCD side, that is a nightmare. As I jostled for position to present my visa, my friend the Rev. Samuel Galuak Marial, the Principal of Bishop Gwynne College was suddenly standing by my side! Samuel had invited me to stay at Bishop Gwynne while I was in Juba. He persuaded the authorities to let him through the barrier to meet me. On the other side of the barrier I  saw my friends Angelos Agok and Ambassador Deng Deng Nhial. They had also come to greet me.

“Welcome home, sister!” Angelos exclaimed. And it did feel like home. Juba was a new experience, but it was full of old friends who are now in leadership roles in their own nation, like my friend government minister Jehan Deng. Jehan flew from Bor, the capital of Jonglei State where she is a minister, to Juba to spend some time with me.

With all its madness, as hotels and other businesses spring up in seemingly every spare inch of land, Juba is free! It is not the Juba that was a garrison town of the National Islamic Front. It is now a town where children walk in peace to school every day, sharply dressed in their uniforms. It is a town full of churches, and the churches are all full. (Embracing religious freedom, it also offers mosques. I was reminded of this when the call to prayer woke me around 5:00 a.m.)

I traveled to Yida Refugee Camp on the Samaritan’s Purse plane, arranged by the wonderful Samaritan’s Purse staff in Juba. We flew over The Sudd, South Sudan’s enormous swamp formed by the White Nile. At 22,000 square miles, it is one of the world’s largest wetlands. Yida itself, in Unity State, is at the northern end of The Sudd, just south of the border between Sudan and South Sudan. I spent three days there, seeing Samaritan’s Purse in action and meeting some of the camp’s 68,000 refugees — forced to flee by the genocidal Khartoum regime’s efforts to purge all of the black, African Nuba people from their homeland.

If anyone has a right to be overwhelmed by their circumstances, it is the Nuba (and the people of Blue Nile State, Darfur, and of South Sudan). Now undergoing the second genocide in their lifetime, the Nuba lost hundreds of thousands of their people during the first such extermination campaign by Khartoum. They have watched while the U.S. government intervened in Egypt, in Libya, and now in Syria, all on behalf of radical Islamists, while allowing Khartoum to perpetrate genocide. But at Yida there are signs of human flourishing and even the sound of laughter.

No one wants to live in a refugee camp, but the Nuba have created a strong community at this one. Even while mourning their family members and friends killed by the Government of Sudan, these capable farmers grow millet and melons, simsim (sesame) and tomatoes, and even flower gardens in the camp. When the United Nations would not provide seeds, attempting to pressure the Nuba to leave Yida and move to another camp further away from the border, the Nuba acquired their own seeds. When the U.N. would not provide teachers or books for the tens of thousands of Nuba children in the camp, the Nuba found their own teachers amongst them, and resort to lessons written in the dirt. They intend for their young people to be educated when they return someday to their life in the Nuba Mountains.

Overwhelming? Yes. I have returned home after my time in Africa full of stories of both vast needs and humble longings. And I have returned home with stories of endurance, joy, and triumph in the face of truly overwhelming circumstances. I will try to tell these stories.