Rebuilding Hope

Rebuilding Hope is now on Technorati! Click below to add it to your favorites.

Technorati Profile

What does it take to get closure?

   This was, for all of us, a big journey. Most blogs written from the saddle like this one just kind of stop. Though I can't provide closure for myself entirely, and expect that may be true for the others - the experience is still running through us - I feel some need to say goodbye or at least "See you later" to those who have followed our journey from afar.

  We are all five at Kenyatta airport (as far as I know; I'll know in a few minutes) ready to fly off the continent of Africa. We carry myriad experiences with us. I want simply to express my gratitude for everyone who helped make this possible.

  Thank you for your interest, your faith, your loving concern, and your openness to the possibilities we carry within us for a better world.

- David

Messages

Achol (not her real name) tried to discreetly wipe her tears away as she stared at the lcd screen on my video camera. As the tears kept flowing, however, it became impossible for her to hide them. We were sitting in a mud hud with iron sheeting roof, typical of the housing in Kakuma camp. Achol was watching a message from her son, Ajak.  Ajak hadn't seen his mother for twenty years, he told me, since he fled Sudan as a young boy. He learned that she arrived in Kakuma camp only after he left, in 2001, to resettle in Tucson, AZ, where I met him at Koor's house before leaving on the trip.

The Curse of Boundaries

   "I was cursed to be born Sudanese," Pagan Amum once told me wryly "A good friend of mine was born in a village near the Uganda border where they didn't even know exactly where the boundary lay. He was cursed to be born Ugandan."

   His irony bears explaining. Pagan Amum is Secretary General of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement. He loves Sudan, and he has fought most of his adult life for a free Sudan that is for all Sudanese, regardless of race and gender and region - not just for the Arab power-brokers who rule from Khartoum. He was referring to the artifice of boundaries that causes some of us to be born as 'Haves' and others of us to be born as 'Have Nots' - some of us to be born into the throes of civil war or starvation; others to be born among the small percentage of the world's inhabitants who enjoy peace and prosperity.

   He went on to refer to the Colonial borders that demarcate Africa into the "fictional" entities we call nations. And he voiced the dream of a pan-Africa, in which a democratized Sudan might help democratize the continent.

Ethiopians, part two

(please read Ethiopians part one if you haven't yet....)

There are three options available for refugees, Y., F. and S. explained to David and me, as we sat on the wooden benches. Repatriation to the country of origin, integration into the host country, or resettlement into a third country. Repatriation wasn't possible in their case, they said. They would face political persecution, perhaps torture, or worse. Kenya, the country hosting them as refugees, is not willing to offer them integration into the country. And, with their situation as it is, they're not currently elligible for third-country resettlement.

Tolerance for Risk

   There was no armed convoy leaving Kakuma for Lokichokio this morning, so we left the sprawling refugee camp the way we had arrived - by taxi.  The harrowing drive along the two-lane blacktop began. Garang, who has the longest legs, was in the front passenger seat, and the other four of us were crowded into the narrow back seat, as the taxi driver sped past Turkana tribespeople herding goats or carrying loads of firewood on their heads, increasing his speed whenever he could to 140 kph along the straightaways and negotiating the occasional S-curves with the aplomb of a professional racecar driver, knowing that our safety lay in speed.

   To drive at any less than maniacal speed on this section of highway is to court banditry.

Ethiopian refugees: a side story

A man wearing a green, yellow and red knitted cap with the words "End Racism" greeted us as we walked through the Ethiopia market in Kakuma Refugee Camp. (Kakuma was established to house the influx of Sudanese refugees escaping from camps in Ethiopia in 1991, but since has sheltered refugees from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, DRC, Burundi, and Tanzania--exact breakdown in next post)

"Come in, come in!" the man ushered us warmly into his hut, built of mud with a corrogated tin roof, right on the 'main road' (made of dirt) passing through 'Ethiopia'.

"So this is your home?" Garang asked.
S. (name not revealed for his protection) practically snorted. "Home? This is not a home. It's a prison."

Kakuma Camp

   Our charter flight out of Juba was delayed by a day, as it could not take off from Malekal owing to muddy airstrip. (Appropriately, by temporary e-mail address is rainysuday@yahoo.com) We did make it out Sunday morning, though, in time to settle in at the International Rescue Committee guest quarters where we were delighted to find actual beds, privacy (one to a room) and flush toilets - our first experience with these luxuries in the month we've been traveling.

   Kakuma is a warren of mud huts topped with corrugated metal.

What it is like "on the ground"

   We did get to speak to Salva Kiir, President of South Sudan and, under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, Vice President of the Government of National Unity. He, like Pagan Amum, Secretary General of the SPLM, was optimistic about the transformation of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement from a liberation movement to a political party and its ability to bring home a victory in the scheduled 2008 elections.

   Meeting with President Kiir and  Pagan Amum all happened in the last hour of our officials time in Juba. It was intense, and I'm sure we'll both write more about it. But for now, in response to a request form my sister, a few words about how we get by "on the ground."

Optimism and reality

"Without optimism, I have no right to call myself a freedom fighter," Pagan Amum, the Secretary General of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement told us.  "This optimism is not calculated, it's organic.  Optimism, coupled with action, is what makes a revolutionary."