Lodwar – Solo In South Sudan

The beginning of the end…

Monday morning last was a special morning in Narus. It was the last time the three of us would be together in Narus.

We returned from Riwoto on Sunday evening thankfully to find a much recovered Fr.Tim. I made the fundamental mistake of presenting a number of sports sections to Tim on my return. With the stronger Internet connection in Riwoto I was able to get the Irish Times sports sections from the last few weeks. And that was it…we had lost him.

I had my suspicions that he might have prepared a special supper forus. It was out last night and John Marren was staying. Tim didn’t disappoint! He had cooked a piece of bacon and made his now world famous chocolate custard and jelly (I’m normally in charge of making the jelly!). The custard is so sweet that I actually get a toothache from the smell of it!!! So we feasted!

The following morning the group gathered to leave and we took some pictures under the trees although we all seemed to be staring into the sun!

This is John Joe, Tim and I on our last morning in Narus together. They’ve left me at home minding the parish while they attend a meeting in Lodwar. John Joe will return with John Marren tomorrow and I will see Tim in Nairobi next week. Despite knowing that I would see all three again, I still had a good cry when I waved them off and the parish house felt a whole lot emptier without them.

The absence of Tim and John Joe means that there is no priest in Narus to say mass. Brother Eugene was more than a little disturbed when I told him I would do it assuring him that I knew all the words. I forget that sarcasm is sometimes (almost always) lost in Africa!

This picture is important. It shows Caroline, Samuel and Jacob, all from Riwoto with me, Tim and John Joe. The young girl in front wearing the yellow t-shirtis a Toposa school girl who up until recently was attending school in Loki.

Her brothers came to Loki to take her from school. It as decided that her bride price was more important than her being able to read and write and so they took her from school and returned her to her village to start the process of finding her a husband.

My understanding of what happened next is that she came to Fr. Tim and asked that she be able to attend St. Bakhita but it was clear that it was more likely she would be taken again from a school close to her village. So, she was returned to school in Loki with Tims support and mediation.

While a girl is deemed old enough to be married as soon as she has her first period, it is against the law to take a girl under the age of 18 from school to marry her off. It is a law that is almost unenforceable but the threat of prosecution still hangs in the air.

So now, she is safely back in school where she should be.

My life in Narus

I realise that I haven’t shared much information about my life as it is in Narus. I live in a compound with two priests; Fr. Tim Galvin and Fr. John Joe Garvey from Millstreet in Co. Cork. We have quickly settled into a routine and after just a week we have our own “inside” jokes which to me is the mark of an easy friendship.

Both are excellent company and our conversations at meal times range from the intellectual to the ridiculous.

We rise each morning at about 6am. Fr. Tim says mass at the church and Fr. John Joe says mass at the small chapel on our compound. I normally attend mass with John Joe in the chapel and we are joined by the Nuns and Brothers who also share the compound but live more or less separately to us.

Once mass is over, we three meet for breakfast prepared by our cook Alina. My father will be delighted to hear that we have porridge every morning. The only positive things I can say about porridge is that each bowl brings me one bowl closer to the last one I’ll ever have to eat! Although, I will admit that it helps greatly with my malaria tablet which seems to be almost impossible to swallow.

We then continue about our daily lives. I spend time with my Standard 8 girls in St. Bakhita Girls Primary School. They are desperate for extra tuition and I am very happy to spend as much time as possible with them. They are candidates for State exams this year and maths is a notoriously weak subject for girls in South Sudan so I am proud that they are willing to work so hard. Some of the girls show great potential.

I meet my two Kiltegan Fathers again for lunch after which we hide away from the heat of the day. It gets incredibly hot here – often exceeding 35 degrees Celsius. We study and prepare for our classes. I return to school for extra tuition and I will soon start my classes in Toposa too.

Sometimes, I will accompany Tim as he inspects the work at the St. Bakhita secondary school or visits with parishioners. I really enjoy our late afternoon strolls, no one knows more about Narus or the people here than Tim. It is also very humbling to see the work that he has done here and what has been achieved.

I have made some new friends too and so sometimes in the late afternoon i will spend time with them. Anna Grace is an economics teacher in the secondary school. She is from the Karamajong tribe in Uganda. Her story is incredible and maybe in time and ith her permission I will be able to share that story.

We gather together again form Evening Prayer at about 7pm before sitting for supper together and watching the 8pm news headlines on Al Jazeera, the only channel we get (which frankly is fine by me!). We read and chat about the days events.

The generator goes off at about 9:30pm which leaves us with the less powerful solar lights. At this point I head for bed having decided early on that the safest place to be in the dark in Africa is in my bed with my mosquito net firmly tucked under my mattress!

Soon I will start to help with preparing the classes for confirmation. But that is the typical framework of my day in Narus.

Sent from my iPad

Fr. Tim arrives and we drive across the desert from Lodwar to Lokichoggio

I had not yet met my host for this trip and the Parish Priest of Narus – Fr. Tim Galvin from Brosna in County Kerry – a neighbouring parish to that that in which I grew up. He journeyed for 10 hours to meet me in Lodwar in northern Kenya and to escort Fr. Marren and I safely to Narus in South Sudan. It was a great reunion when he arrived and I was very happy to finally meet him. A little older than my brothers, he has quickly taken the place as my South Sudanese brother!

We spent a very enjoyable evening in Lodwar with Fr. John Callaghan; a delicious supper followed by chocolate and a nice single malt on the veranda while putting the world to rights!

The climate in Lodwar is very different to Nairobi. It is desert and the heat is oppressive. It is dusty and barren. In the morning I attended my first Swahili mass read by Fr. John Callaghan who hails from Charleville. I was the only white person amount a congregation of Turkana women in their beaded finery.

Our plan was to leave immediately after breakfast at about 8am but a puncture scuppered that cunning plan.

So the boys left me to change the tyre (not really but I did help!) and we took off to garage in Lodwar to have the tyre repaired.

At this point our plan to cross the border and make it to Narus in South Sudan was impossible so we decided to briefly stop at a mission outpost before continuing to Lokichogio to spend the night. Fr. Dessie Miller has a mission is in Kalabyei which is between Lodwar and Lokichoggio in Kenya. He has lived in Turkana for 45 years and has a beautiful church in a hill top in the desert. Rather aptly it is named St. Benedicts. The picture below shows Fr. Dessie Miller showing off the first of his beautiful desert roses.

After a delicious lunch of ice cold melon we continued on our way. It was a welcome refreshment as it was 32 degrees in the shade! You can imagine how hot it was in the jeep with the three of us in the front! The terrain was difficult too, not only were the roads almost non-existent but we had to negotiate the wild camels too. They didn’t seem to realise that we had places to go and people to see!

When we finally arrived at Lokichoggio, exhausted from our journey, it was lovely to meet Fr. Tom Laffan. Another limerick man. After some tea, he invited me to join him whilevhe said mass at one of the Turkana villages about 30 minutes drive away. I’m so delighted I joined. I got to see a traditional Turkana village and I think I was one of the very few white people other than Fr. Tom that the villagers had seen since the NGOs left.

The mass was read in Turkana (my second mass if the day and I didn’t understand a word of either!). It was like nothing I had ever seen before. The congregation was almost exclusively women. At that time the men are typically still grazing the livestock.

At the end, Fr. Tom introduced me to the congregation and I was able to take some pictures. I was really taken by the experience if sharing the same sacrament with people so different to me. It showed me that standing before the altar, we are all the same

The journey to Lodwar

John and I left together for the next stage of our journey to Narus on Thursday morning. Joseph drove us to the airport – which sounds like a simple job! It’s not…driving in Nairobi is not for the faint of heart. Joseph got us there safely which was a huge a achievement!

The terminal in Nairobi burned some weeks back so the terminal for domestic departures is the cargo terminal. We arrived and having had a nice cup if tea and a good chat, boarded the flight to Lodwar. The plane had one quick stop to make in Eldoret close to the Ugandan border before continuing to Lodwar.

Lodwar was an eye opener and I definitely felt as though I was really in Africa now.

The plane we arrived in had 37 seats and landed on the runway on time. It was in incredible journey, leaving the metropolis of Nairobi, flying over the Rift Valley, the green lands of Eldoret which looked just like home before reaching the desert. All in just under 2 hours.

This is the arrivals and departures “lounge” at Lodwar. I wish I had taken a picture of the luggage carousel which was really a very big wheel barrow around which a scrum took place!