Rough and Rocky Journey

I do this every time, start out with good intentions but then fizzle out. We have been back from Sudan for a couple of weeks now but no blog. Normally this would depress me enough that I wouldn't write but here I am. Actually I got pretty beat up on the trip and I think I am suffering because of it.

As I said in the last blog that we bought a motor bike for the work in Sudan. I insisted on delivering it myself, at least to the border. Of course my wife was against the idea because she felt a 61 year old man with an artificial hip shouldn't be doing such things. I told her the doctor just said "No skydiving!" She turned out to be right. The bike was a Honda Baja 250 and sat too high for me. I could touch the ground with my toes so I thought it was okay. You have to experience the road, I can't describe it in any way that you would get a true understanding of what it is like. Needless to say I fell many times and for some reason it was always on my artificial hip. With God's help we got the bike to Sudan. I promised not to ride it again, I guess an old guy has to give up sometime.

Our time in Magwi was very profitable. This first year is a time of getting settled and trying to figure out where we want to be involved. Like everything else in Southern Sudan it is a slow process. We've spent time with people at all levels of government and some local communities also. Everyone needs help but we are not able to help them all so we are looking for those places and groups where we will have the greatest impact given our time, personnel, and finances.

At present we identified four sectors we want to get started in; women's development, community health, church development, and education. Our focus will be on people development which tries to bring knowledge, skills, and some capital investment. Our philosopy of development is derived from two schools of thought; Participatory Development and Asset Based Development.

One of the first place we are going to take action is with a community library/reading room. There are no books for students or teachers so we will begin to bring them from Uganda and the U.S. It is also our idea to use the room for discipleship and small group meetings. If we get the people we could use the room for tutoring and ESL training. One other benefit is that it will give us a great presence in the community.

We had plenty of time to talk about other needs, such as how do we spend more time on the ground in Sudan. This will mean having better facilities at our Resource Center. Now we have two huts and an outhouse/shower combination. The ladies have to cook wherever they can find room and that usually means outside. Not good in the rainy season which is nine months of the year. Our goal is to have two permenant buildings built by the end of March 2009. This will allow us to house about eight people.

Our trip back to Adjumani was uneventful but tiring. I will try to post some pictures of the trip this next week.

Jeff