It's funny the things that get you ... and the things that don't, when you walk this part of this kind of journey. One morning before Christmas I was in the post office. One letter to mail. There was the usual post office humdrum and conversation (comforting really ...), the rotating rack of greeting cards, the smell of newsprint, the reassuring presence of people just like me, waiting in line. Normal life.
A poster of coming holiday stamps was up and my eyes sifted through them thinking which ones I might like to use this year. Such a regular, routine activity. Yet after 2 + years of constant change and nothing dependable from season to season or year to year, for that matter, it's a deliciously conventional feeling ... like, 'wow, my life may approach some semblance of normalcy, and I can think about doing normal things at normal times again!'
So I let myself sift through the stamps and think about the Christmas cards I might actually send this year. Charlie Brown. The icon of Mary and her babe that I've chosen many a time ... Some rather unimpressive colored snowflakes, I thought, for a set of stamps. A silhouette of three men on camels in a desert and one shining star.
And there it was, a tidal wave so strong and frightening that I was surprised my whole body didn't topple from the impact and my heart stop from the crushing weight of its coming. I fought back the rush of tears and the sickening nausea of memory in the pit of my stomach. The wrenching reality of my inner world, contained in the dispassionate illusion of such a strikingly ordinary skin - a reality so out of place in this little mailroom. How many of us walk around like this? Plain as pudding to the eye, and carrying worlds of story, glory, and sorrow barely beneath that thin veneer?
I looked away from the three wise men and the reminder of the dry desert-like Christmases that I have spent in Mundri. The reminder of celebrations with friends, feasting together in the sun, singing Christmas carols by candlelight under a wide sky and a thousand stars just like that little stamp. The nights we watched The Nativity Story, and chuckled over the conversations of those three magi as they crossed the desert, and the night at Miri-Kalanga when we showed it on the big screen for the whole community, sitting in the dusty clearing, and everyone clapped and cheered when baby Jesus was born and the camera zoomed in on his little body held up for all to see.
I pushed it down as hard as I could, this glacier that barely fits inside me. This sea of faces and sensations and emotions that could wreck me and kill me in a matter of moments.
It was my turn at the counter. I got my stamp, handed over my money, said something to the clerk about having a nice day, peeled the little square from its backing and stuck it on, turning to leave.
The past three days I was in Jersey for one of the several jobs I currently juggle. I work from morning until night, immersed in my tasks, and with no time to think outside of present reality. In some ways it is a welcome relief - until here and there, a reminder stabs itself through the backdrop of my comings and goings:
-the pop-up on my phone of another email from teammates about who they managed to get through to today and what they heard. More gunfire. Gunships from Juba. Drinking from the river. Malaria. Rain. Hunger.
-the look of the sun on the grass that grows wild by the inlet on my morning walks. It waves in the breeze like the grass just beyond my little Sudanese hobbit hole window desk - the one that someone has now ransacked. And somewhere in the middle of that trashed heap, my grandma's little old tin of buttons. One of my last few reminders of her.
-my bare feet as I stand in the dust of a baseball diamond, waiting for an eight year-old to throw me his ball ... the visceral knowledge of home through my feet and in the dust ...
-the feel and sight and sound of our latrine as I describe it to the kids who have only ever known a toilet, in the middle of a 'funny Africa story' (which they now beg me for on a daily basis) ... and the way my mind wanders our compound and imagines it strewn with papers from our looted homes, all the pieces of our Sudanese lives blowing away on the fickle wind.
I was at the park last week and a friend tied his son's stick onto the back of his bicycle with a bungee cord. Suddenly and without warning, I was there in the dust and sun and heat, with my turquoise bicycle, my rubber tire cord in hand, winding it about my cargo and the bike rack just like the South Sudanese taught me to. I can now confidently tie anything onto a bicycle. Small, large, awkwardly shaped, you name it. And it won't fall off. (That's a veritable skill, mind you).
And I realize that this place, these people, are written into me.
Carved into my flesh.
Woven into the pathways of my brain.
Laced, knotted, and entwined into the sensibilities of my heart.
I feel them when I use my hands. I see their sun etched into the corners of my eyes and forehead every time I look into the mirror. I measure my life by the rhythm of the seasons as they do. By the limes in the market, and the yellowing of the grasses, the ash raining from the sky in December, the tamarind dropping from the trees in January. I breathe in the fresh air and feel strangled when I'm in a room with no open windows. I hack into a pumpkin with a big knife in a way that I never knew how to do before I lived in Sudan. The movement lives in the muscles of my arms and hands the way the movement of walking and riding a bicycle and swinging a bat becomes recorded in the flesh of our bodies - from the first awkward and unsuccessful attempts, until it comes naturally, unconsciously, and without effort or recall.
It is the Moru life. I feel it in my spirit when I sit in church, and if we say 'The Grace' at the end of a service. The Moru words roll off my tongue and I am surrounded immediately by my friends at Miri-Kalanga, or my home-stay family around the fire at night, or the whispered voices of several of us on our beds at the end of prayers in a sleepy tukul before it is light.
Ta i'dwero Yesu Kristo ro, ndi ngalu Lu ro, ndi rumora Tori Alokado ro be, ka'do tro amayibe yao, ago le äduako. Amen.
May the grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all now and forever. Amen.
I never knew these words to be true in such a communal way before I moved to South Sudan - never understood how sweet that grace and love and fellowship would be to me until I made it through seven beautiful and awful years in Mundri. I never imagined how intimately my life could have become intertwined with theirs in a place where I have always, every minute of every day, been the alien, the outsider, and the oddity. White in a sea of black. Stumbling over words where all around me chatter flowed effortlessly. Awkward, hesitant, and halting. Clueless. Confused. Making mistakes. Feeling foolish (and accomplishing it outright plenty a time). Noticed for every difference. Corrected for every native way that I had learned to do something or function. Laughed at (even good-naturedly). Misunderstood. Not understood period. Left out. Ridiculed. Desired for what I stand for and what I have rather than who I am.
I've spent seven years fighting the threads of these things woven through the fabric of every aspect of my daily existence. Spent seven years yearning and grasping for how to build rapport and trust. How to be seen for who I am. How to do something useful in a place where I'm the most un-useful person around. Seven years breaking through stereotypes to be a real human, to be myself - white Ukrainian-American me, at home in rural South Sudan. It was an uphill battle - of belonging, learning, assimilating, desperately trying to understand, forgiving and over-looking offense (or else seething or smarting from the sting of it and trying wretchedly not to retaliate - which would only make me look more ridiculous than I already did).
And seven years I've come under the tutelage, extraordinary perspective, astonishing faith, and utterly shocking generosity of this place and its people. Seven years I have witnessed their patience and perseverance with me; from the first awkward welcome of 'the important white person' who has to sit in a chair with the pastors at the front of the church, to the one who sweats alongside my neighbors under squirming children on a makeshift wooden bench where we assemble like sardines in a hot tin can to sing and listen. Seven years they have housed me and fed me and cared for me when I was sick. Seven years they have shared with me their possessions, their knowledge, their time, their resources, their seeds, their songs, their community, their families. Seven years they have listened to me when my words made no sense, let alone the concepts I so longed to communicate. Seven years they welcomed me into their lives, odd and seemingly useless as I was. Seven years they spent getting to know me and making me a part of them - giving me my Moru name; Känyuwa, making me a member in their church, inviting me into their gardens and businesses, calling me daughter, and sister, and auntie, referring to me as the 'white Moru,' and expecting me to be there on their special days and celebrations - to be the one to make the sheya (fried spiced meat) for everyone on Christmas day.
Seven years has felt like a lifetime, seven lifetimes maybe. And what I spent, sacrificed, and gained - a life's worth of spending, sacrificing, and being made fat.
Seven. Number of completion. Perfection. Wholeness.
Last month marked one year since the door closed on that life. Today I sit and remember it. His choice for me. Death and life separated by so little, two sides of a coin. And yet life-giving in a way that death could never smother.
Today I look at a photo of the very friends I shared the church bench with, gathered for choir practice, waving at me with smiles through Amanda's camera from their obscure and war-torn land somewhere on the other side of the planet. I look at the group at the Diocesan Office: my neighbors, students, mothers, pastor. And I breath a prayer for them. For us.
Because it is not them, and I.
It's 'we'.
Dearest brothers, sisters, mothers, children. For this life, and ever after. Amen.
A poster of coming holiday stamps was up and my eyes sifted through them thinking which ones I might like to use this year. Such a regular, routine activity. Yet after 2 + years of constant change and nothing dependable from season to season or year to year, for that matter, it's a deliciously conventional feeling ... like, 'wow, my life may approach some semblance of normalcy, and I can think about doing normal things at normal times again!'
So I let myself sift through the stamps and think about the Christmas cards I might actually send this year. Charlie Brown. The icon of Mary and her babe that I've chosen many a time ... Some rather unimpressive colored snowflakes, I thought, for a set of stamps. A silhouette of three men on camels in a desert and one shining star.
And there it was, a tidal wave so strong and frightening that I was surprised my whole body didn't topple from the impact and my heart stop from the crushing weight of its coming. I fought back the rush of tears and the sickening nausea of memory in the pit of my stomach. The wrenching reality of my inner world, contained in the dispassionate illusion of such a strikingly ordinary skin - a reality so out of place in this little mailroom. How many of us walk around like this? Plain as pudding to the eye, and carrying worlds of story, glory, and sorrow barely beneath that thin veneer?
I looked away from the three wise men and the reminder of the dry desert-like Christmases that I have spent in Mundri. The reminder of celebrations with friends, feasting together in the sun, singing Christmas carols by candlelight under a wide sky and a thousand stars just like that little stamp. The nights we watched The Nativity Story, and chuckled over the conversations of those three magi as they crossed the desert, and the night at Miri-Kalanga when we showed it on the big screen for the whole community, sitting in the dusty clearing, and everyone clapped and cheered when baby Jesus was born and the camera zoomed in on his little body held up for all to see.
I pushed it down as hard as I could, this glacier that barely fits inside me. This sea of faces and sensations and emotions that could wreck me and kill me in a matter of moments.
It was my turn at the counter. I got my stamp, handed over my money, said something to the clerk about having a nice day, peeled the little square from its backing and stuck it on, turning to leave.
The past three days I was in Jersey for one of the several jobs I currently juggle. I work from morning until night, immersed in my tasks, and with no time to think outside of present reality. In some ways it is a welcome relief - until here and there, a reminder stabs itself through the backdrop of my comings and goings:
-the pop-up on my phone of another email from teammates about who they managed to get through to today and what they heard. More gunfire. Gunships from Juba. Drinking from the river. Malaria. Rain. Hunger.
-the look of the sun on the grass that grows wild by the inlet on my morning walks. It waves in the breeze like the grass just beyond my little Sudanese hobbit hole window desk - the one that someone has now ransacked. And somewhere in the middle of that trashed heap, my grandma's little old tin of buttons. One of my last few reminders of her.
-my bare feet as I stand in the dust of a baseball diamond, waiting for an eight year-old to throw me his ball ... the visceral knowledge of home through my feet and in the dust ...
-the feel and sight and sound of our latrine as I describe it to the kids who have only ever known a toilet, in the middle of a 'funny Africa story' (which they now beg me for on a daily basis) ... and the way my mind wanders our compound and imagines it strewn with papers from our looted homes, all the pieces of our Sudanese lives blowing away on the fickle wind.
I was at the park last week and a friend tied his son's stick onto the back of his bicycle with a bungee cord. Suddenly and without warning, I was there in the dust and sun and heat, with my turquoise bicycle, my rubber tire cord in hand, winding it about my cargo and the bike rack just like the South Sudanese taught me to. I can now confidently tie anything onto a bicycle. Small, large, awkwardly shaped, you name it. And it won't fall off. (That's a veritable skill, mind you).
And I realize that this place, these people, are written into me.
Carved into my flesh.
Woven into the pathways of my brain.
Laced, knotted, and entwined into the sensibilities of my heart.
I feel them when I use my hands. I see their sun etched into the corners of my eyes and forehead every time I look into the mirror. I measure my life by the rhythm of the seasons as they do. By the limes in the market, and the yellowing of the grasses, the ash raining from the sky in December, the tamarind dropping from the trees in January. I breathe in the fresh air and feel strangled when I'm in a room with no open windows. I hack into a pumpkin with a big knife in a way that I never knew how to do before I lived in Sudan. The movement lives in the muscles of my arms and hands the way the movement of walking and riding a bicycle and swinging a bat becomes recorded in the flesh of our bodies - from the first awkward and unsuccessful attempts, until it comes naturally, unconsciously, and without effort or recall.
It is the Moru life. I feel it in my spirit when I sit in church, and if we say 'The Grace' at the end of a service. The Moru words roll off my tongue and I am surrounded immediately by my friends at Miri-Kalanga, or my home-stay family around the fire at night, or the whispered voices of several of us on our beds at the end of prayers in a sleepy tukul before it is light.
Ta i'dwero Yesu Kristo ro, ndi ngalu Lu ro, ndi rumora Tori Alokado ro be, ka'do tro amayibe yao, ago le äduako. Amen.
May the grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all now and forever. Amen.
I never knew these words to be true in such a communal way before I moved to South Sudan - never understood how sweet that grace and love and fellowship would be to me until I made it through seven beautiful and awful years in Mundri. I never imagined how intimately my life could have become intertwined with theirs in a place where I have always, every minute of every day, been the alien, the outsider, and the oddity. White in a sea of black. Stumbling over words where all around me chatter flowed effortlessly. Awkward, hesitant, and halting. Clueless. Confused. Making mistakes. Feeling foolish (and accomplishing it outright plenty a time). Noticed for every difference. Corrected for every native way that I had learned to do something or function. Laughed at (even good-naturedly). Misunderstood. Not understood period. Left out. Ridiculed. Desired for what I stand for and what I have rather than who I am.
I've spent seven years fighting the threads of these things woven through the fabric of every aspect of my daily existence. Spent seven years yearning and grasping for how to build rapport and trust. How to be seen for who I am. How to do something useful in a place where I'm the most un-useful person around. Seven years breaking through stereotypes to be a real human, to be myself - white Ukrainian-American me, at home in rural South Sudan. It was an uphill battle - of belonging, learning, assimilating, desperately trying to understand, forgiving and over-looking offense (or else seething or smarting from the sting of it and trying wretchedly not to retaliate - which would only make me look more ridiculous than I already did).
And seven years I've come under the tutelage, extraordinary perspective, astonishing faith, and utterly shocking generosity of this place and its people. Seven years I have witnessed their patience and perseverance with me; from the first awkward welcome of 'the important white person' who has to sit in a chair with the pastors at the front of the church, to the one who sweats alongside my neighbors under squirming children on a makeshift wooden bench where we assemble like sardines in a hot tin can to sing and listen. Seven years they have housed me and fed me and cared for me when I was sick. Seven years they have shared with me their possessions, their knowledge, their time, their resources, their seeds, their songs, their community, their families. Seven years they have listened to me when my words made no sense, let alone the concepts I so longed to communicate. Seven years they welcomed me into their lives, odd and seemingly useless as I was. Seven years they spent getting to know me and making me a part of them - giving me my Moru name; Känyuwa, making me a member in their church, inviting me into their gardens and businesses, calling me daughter, and sister, and auntie, referring to me as the 'white Moru,' and expecting me to be there on their special days and celebrations - to be the one to make the sheya (fried spiced meat) for everyone on Christmas day.
Seven years has felt like a lifetime, seven lifetimes maybe. And what I spent, sacrificed, and gained - a life's worth of spending, sacrificing, and being made fat.
Seven. Number of completion. Perfection. Wholeness.
Last month marked one year since the door closed on that life. Today I sit and remember it. His choice for me. Death and life separated by so little, two sides of a coin. And yet life-giving in a way that death could never smother.
Today I look at a photo of the very friends I shared the church bench with, gathered for choir practice, waving at me with smiles through Amanda's camera from their obscure and war-torn land somewhere on the other side of the planet. I look at the group at the Diocesan Office: my neighbors, students, mothers, pastor. And I breath a prayer for them. For us.
Because it is not them, and I.
It's 'we'.
Dearest brothers, sisters, mothers, children. For this life, and ever after. Amen.
Oh Larissa. This is BEAUTIFUL! Praying for you as you continue to walk out this change of season, and the heartache of all that is happening in Mundri making that even heavier. What a beautiful expression of what He does through hard, suffering, and these places of being alien...through stepping out to follow Him into hard places that break our hearts but also re-make them more beautifully. Thank you for the sacred gift of sharing your heart!
ReplyDeleteSo good and so hard!
ReplyDeleteoh, Larissa, written so lovingly yet painfully ... thank you for sharing your heart and the hard stuff.
ReplyDelete