Monday, January 7, 2008
Liz helping Sudan school girls with new uniforms
"Waiting in line"
The little girl is startled when I gently turn her shoulders around and begin to tie the two long sashes on her brand new dress. She has just pulled the lime green gingham frock over her head and judging by the way her arms are at first locked across her chest this is one of the nicest gifts she has ever received. She is not at all concerned that it is too big. With a language barrier between us, the girl does not understand what I am doing and doesn't let down her guard until she is sure I am not trying to take the dress away. Her name is Mary and she is one of the younger students at the Kunyuk School for Girls in the village of Akon, Sudan. MY SISTER'S KEEPER, our small grassroots organization in Boston, helped the village create this school and we have committed to support it in any way we can. Right now nearly a thousand girls are attending classrooms under the trees. They have waited nearly a year for their school uniforms. People here spend a lot of time waiting.
Gloria (White-Hammond) and I ordered the fabric for the dresses in Nairobi after our last visit to Akon nine months earlier. Two months passed before the two dozen bolts of material could be placed on a plane with a pilot willing to fly them free of charge into Sudan. Several more weeks passed before instructions reached the group of seamstresses in another village, who would create the thousand uniforms. Four more months passed before the seamstresses were finished putting together half of the order on their hand cranked sewing machines. Several weeks of torrential rains flooded the roads making overland shipment of the dresses impossible. By the time they were delivered to the girls, more than eight months had passed, and we were making another visit to the village.
Nothing moves fast in this isolated region of Sudan. There are no phones, roads, or any other infrastructure. The people in the village of Akon, like most southern Sudanese are very patient. They have to be. The northern government's genocidal war against them that resulted in the deaths of 2 million and the displacement of 4 million lasted more than 2 decades. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement to end that war, finally hammered out in 2004, has yet to be fully implemented. Girls' education, one of the many priorities in the post war south is, for most villages, is many funds and years away.
The eight women who make up the core of MY SISTER'S KEEPER humanitarian initiative in Sudan are working hard to keep our promise to build the girls' school. Construction of the eight classroom Kunyuk School for Girls is slated to begin in February of 2008 but we too have learned some hard lessons about waiting. There have been delays caused by weather, shipping snafus, bogged down international communications and the overall slower pulse of the African rhythm. International travelers often joke about African time. It is always fluid. A meeting scheduled at noon may not start until three. A plane scheduled to land at eight in the morning may not be spotted in the air before noon. A day's delay can easily turn into a week. The weather plays a big role in slowing things down. Most days the temperature soars past 100 degrees. It is a dry and stifling heat that sucks the energy right out of your body. Nature here forces you to adhere to many rules that you might not consider back home in America. The Sudanese people respect nature. They live by it, listen to it and learn from it, especially its many harsh lessons on waiting. Most work can only be done when weather allows. There is little travel during the rainy season. Killer droughts and flooding stop everything but nothing lasts forever. Everything passes in time. When we began our work here, we naively believed that we were what we said we were...religious activists charging over the hills of Lokichokio ready to "carpe diem: seize the day!" We started out holding on to the part of our faith that assures us that we can do anything, skimming over the part that reminds us we too must wait. In the years that we have returned to this land, building relationships and learning from these people, we have also learned a little about the secret of waiting.
Those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength...
The Prophet Isaiah's observation defines waiting as hoping, assuming an air of expectancy. Perhaps that is what nature confirms for the people in the village of Akon; this season may be miserable, but there is always the hope, the expectation that the next season may bring relief. In the meantime, one must learn to wait with patience and dignity. And in absorbing that reality, there is more time to appreciate the grace of this moment.
As more girls line up to get their sashes tied, I become more aware of the moment that Grace has created right before my eyes. We will have to wait on construction on the school to begin. And some of us will have to wait for more dresses to arrive. But let me do this. Let me touch as many girls as I can touch right now. Let me be less anxious about what has not yet happened and more committed to doing what I can do right now! I can tie each sash as beautifully and with as much care and love as I have. I can pay special attention to those who won't get dresses. I can take their picture. I can give everything I have right now. My most important job 'while we wait' is to be present in this moment. Here is a place where every moment counts.
Liz Walker © 2007
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