Annika and I took off for a neighboring village—about 20K’s away—on Saturday and stayed the night there with Pastor Clero’s wife, Eunice. This isn’t the same one I went to before; it’s the other direction and apparently the county seat of Lopitland. That in itself is hilarious. It’s nothing more than one little police building, the unremarkable commissioner’s compound and a brick school that must’ve been wonderful back in its day. Now it’s just the brick shells of the buildings with no tin roofs (probably stolen during the war) and a huge waste of space and reminder of how little education is given around here. Anyway, it was funny riding in, because of the immense disappointment. :)
We wanted to check out the road and the villages on the way and encourage Eunice, who is building a new compound there and is trying to teach the women how to make and sell soap for business.
There’s no church there—just a powerful witchdoctor and rainmaker and the like—so Eunice also wants to start introducing the women to the Gospel. There actually is a “pastor” there, Eunice says, but he’s been so ridiculed and so threatened he’s been rendered ineffective. The two Bible students who didn’t show back up at school this year both live in this village, too. So it’s a dark, dark place.
But it was nice to visit. We talked to people on the way there. We were mobbed as we rode into town. (Mobbed by curious people wanting to shake hands, Mom and Dad. Not men with guns.) We hiked up into the villages and people just went crazy with laughter when they heard these white women speaking their language. We found it to be quite close to our local dialect, which bodes well for our plans to spread out in the future. I can happily report that no little children fell backward off their rock perches upon seeing my white face this time around. I’ll call that progress.
We slept outside on grass mats and propped up on our elbows this morning in time to watch a beautiful sunrise over our Lopit mountain range, before we road back to our place for church. We’ve decided our mountains—the Three Sisters—are the most beautiful in the whole of Lopit. We even dared to tell the people in this other village that.
Anyway, a big thanks again to Hoofprints for the bike, because I can see now even more how useful it will be in our outreach ministries. Steve has scrounged up a handful of bikes from containers in Yei and Loki, but each one is not much to see or use—basically old rusted Murrays or Walmart brand stuff that needs lots and lots of work and aren’t made for the harsh roads and rides out here. In fact, I ended up having to take components off Annika’s bike on the way back this morning; they were broken and getting in the way. But we’re thankful for what we have and I hope we can use them eventually in the way Steve dreams of doing. I don’t know how he’s going to get the other girls on the bikes—they’re not much into riding or vigorous exercise in the hot sun and Annika, the kids’ teacher and the only other one who dares ride with me, leaves in a month—but I’ll be trained and ready when he wants me to go!
This is me on the road to the other village. Those are our mountains in the bike ride. That’s Annika’s bike and her bag—proof to my mother that I didn’t travel to another village alone, which I promised her I wouldn’t do anymore. All that ash is from the Lopeeps (my new word for the Lopit people). They burn the mountains and the fields every dry season, again and again. I don’t know why. All I do know is that it’s ugly. And smelly.
No comments:
Post a Comment