A Moment of Hope

                I was getting frustrated with my 4^th and 5^th grade classes as I tried for several weeks to teach them about nouns and verbs with very little progress.  Aware that some have difficulty with my English and that the style of education is different here, I had them write down the definitions and told them to memorize them.  A few days later, when still no one volunteered to repeat the definitions back to me, I thought, “this is ridiculous.  Am I wasting my time?  Do they just not want to learn?”  Then I pointed out to several students exactly where it was written in their notebooks, and asked them to simply read the definition to the class.  They all just stared blankly at me.  “I guess this one’s too shy,” I thought.  “That one’s too stubborn.  This one’s trying to be funny.” Etc.  Then it hit me like a ton of bricks:  Oh my gosh.  They. Can’t. Read.   Another SLM had off-handedly suggested this possibility previously, but I’d rejected it because a) I couldn’t imagine 5^th graders being illiterate, and b) quite frankly, I just didn’t want it to be true.  But the problem couldn’t be overlooked anymore.

            Suddenly it all made sense – why the teachers read their exam questions to the students one by one, why it takes the kids forever to copy something from the board because they look up after writing each individual letter, and why I see “opus7.r” on a paper instead of “verb”.  After being confronted with the ugly truth, I gave them an alphabet quiz, and almost no one was able to write it correctly in both uppercase and lowercase letters.  So I’ve scrapped my plans for the year, and we will start with A-B-C handwriting, then move on to the sounds of letters, basic reading, and recitation writing.

           Why is this a moment of hope?  Because despite myself, I was finally able to see the problem clearly, and I have the chance to try to fix it.  I am in the unique position of teaching a class we created (English Composition) which is not a government requirement; therefore, I can do whatever I want.  It’s going to be a huge challenge – I know how to tutor one kid in reading with full-on personal attention, but 68 in a class?! – but I know that it’s a God-given gift to have this opportunity.  Imagine how much easier it would be to study if they could actually read and understand their notes.  Maybe even a few kids will stay in school longer.  From here, I can see the light dawning for the rest of their education.  Nothing, absolutely nothing, is more critical than literacy.  Please pray for me that I can help them get a better grasp on that this year (so far, I feel highly incompetent).  For now, there are no books here (and no money to buy them even if there were), but maybe someday that will change and these people will get the chance to fall in love with literature the way I did when I learned how to read.  A whole world of possibilities will hopefully open soon for my 5^th graders, starting with The Cat in the Hat.

PS:  If anyone has any ideas/tactics that come to mind, please send them my way (seymour.caitlin@gmail.com).  I can use all the help I can get!  (Keep in mind the only resources I have are a blackboard & chalk and the dirt outside).

Spiritual Growth

The past two months have been jam-packed with spiritual experiences that have fostered growth both in the breadth of my faith and it’s depth.  Here are three of them.

Penance:

For Lent this year, I prayed the Litany of Humility 3 times a day and slept on the floor instead of in my bed.  The former focused my efforts to possess the quality of humility, and pushed me to see all challenges as gifts sent to help me in my journey.  The latter was my best Lenten sacrifice yet.  As I lay down at night, I actually thought about Christ on the cross.  I was reminded each night that my own slight discomforts in life are (obviously) nothing compared to his suffering, which he did for me, so I have no right to grumble, ever.  Then I read a prayer that put a lot into perspective: “Christ our Redeemer, let us share in your passion by works of penance; let us attain the glory of your resurrection.”  Ooooooh that’s why we do penance: to join Jesus in what he did for us and hopefully grow closer to Heaven through it.  *Mind blown*

There’s Something About Mary:

In March, I did Saint Louis de Montfort’s program of Total Consecration to Mary.  It is the most intense form of Marian devotion there is, and represents a complete dedication or commitment to the Mother of God.  Following de Montfort’s writings, I prayed special prayers for a period of 33 days, and at the end I offered myself to Mary.  The day that I made my consecration (promise) was the Feast of the Annunciation, the day when the Angel Gabriel told Mary she would bear the Son of God and she answered, “YES!”.  Starting with the day I accepted the invitation to come to South Sudan, this entire year has been a journey of my own Fiat (saying “yes” to the call of Christ).  From that time on, I have increasingly yearned to be more like Our Lady in every way.  Never in my life have I wanted anything so fully and so desperately.  This is not a desire that comes from me; it is too strong and too pure.  It must be God’s wish.  It is a serious struggle because of the vast chasm that exists between my own sinful nature and her perfection.   She is patient, I am not; she is simple, I am needlessly complex; she is pure, I am stained; she is humble, I am proud; she is noble, I am selfish; the list goes on ad infinitum.  I am unable to articulate the gravity of the effect that Consecration has had on me, but in short, I am Changed, and belong now to Mary.  Everything I do and am is through her.  Or at least, it’s supposed to be.  I fail a hundred times a day, a thousand even, to live up to my promise, but I am trying.  Through her immaculate graces, I hope to become closer to Jesus, the ultimate end.  At the end of de Montfort’s program, the consecrated person is supposed to attach a chain to his/her ankle to symbolize that he/she has become a willing slave of Mary.  But there are no chain anklets here in Maridi, so I made one out of blue and while paperclips.  I like it this way – it’s simple, just like her.  The best part about the paperclips?  The kids ask about it, and I get to try to draw them closer to our Mother too.

Taking It to the Next Level:

I found myself on a spiritual plateau for a few weeks, which was a deeply upsetting contrast to the steep upwards slope of my faith life since my first day in Africa.  Then a special night-prayer reinvigorated my life.  What I realized was this: I wasn’t being involved in my faith; I just wanted things.  They were good things I wanted, sure (for Christ to light up my heart, to become like Mary, to help the children foster a relationship with Jesus, humility, humility, humility), but still, I was just kind of sitting around expecting God to come along and hand me spiritual gems to add to my collection like He's been doing for the past seven months.  So now it seems I’ve stepped into the next phase, in which I actively engage Jesus and push for my growth.  I think it will be even more rewarding than before.  It’s like the difference between fishing and hunting.  I’ll get fed either way (and since I was starving for a long time, that’s a pretty good deal), but the meal will taste a lot better if I put some extra effort in (says the carnivore who hates seafood).

The Spirit of the Poor

The following is my account of an event that has profoundly affected both me and Grace (my mission partner).  She blogs about it at http://africaslittleflowers.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-least-of-these.html

                I was sitting on the porch chatting with Grace one afternoon, “wasting” time I “should” have been spending on one of the 879,304 things on my to-do list.  But for some reason,  I was uncharacteristically calm and no more able to pull away from the porch than the Earth can pull away from the Sun, though I was unable to figure out why I was so compelled to remain.  Then an angel walked into my life.

                A young woman waved to us from the path beside our home, then paused and as a second thought, slowly made her way over to the gated entrance.  Grace brought her in and sat her down, which made me curious enough to join them.  I gave the young woman the once-over, and suddenly my whole world stopped and proceeded in slow-motion.  The first thing I noticed was her face.  It was caked in dried mud.  There was forgotten drool on her chin.  Her mouth hung half-open as if she had started to say something but reconsidered.  Her body was contorted to accommodate the paralysis of an arm and leg, and her soiled clothes hung off her emaciated body.  Despite all of this, she was mesmerizingly beautiful.  Then she spoke.  Her voice surprised me – it was young, high-pitched, and angelically sweet.  Like the most beautiful music the world’s ever heard, ringing from a tattered-looking record-player with a broken needle.  Grace was conversing with her in Zande, and the woman informed us that she was “sick”.  She lifted her skirt to reveal an absolutely horrifying wound from what looked like a fire burn, which covered her leg knee-to-heel, and another one on her thigh.

Watching their conversation, I was in awe of my partner.  She spoke softly, delicately touching the woman’s knee, in a tone I’d never before heard anywhere – a gentle tone saturated with compassion, tenderness, patience, mercy, and Love.  Their eyes were locked on one another, and they clearly saw each other.  They were connected in such a way that I almost felt my presence to be intrusive.  It struck me that I was witnessing a sort of human miracle, the kind we are capable of creating ourselves but rarely have the wherewithal to do so.  Then Grace went inside to retrieve the necessary medical supplies to assist the woman – her name was Nazenty – and the two of us were left alone for a moment.

That’s when I noticed her eyes.  Dark brown, but not as black as most of the people’s here, with tiny specks of a lighter color around her pupils.  A thought popped into my head: “her soul is so bright it shines right through her eyes.”  A odd thing to think when meeting a stranger.  But what captured me most wasn’t the color of her eyes, it was the way she looked at me.  Or rather I should say the way she looked into me.  I was completely speechless, even thoughtless, as she took account of my soul.  Then Grace began cleaning her wounds, which included slowly ripping off hardened pieces of charred-black skin.  Nazenty didn’t even blink.  “Does she feel pain?” I wondered.  She was absent-mindedly scanning our surroundings, acknowledging things but not spending any more time than that on them.  It looked (or felt) like a spiritual being was simply taking stock with mild interest of how things are on Earth.  I stared into her face, and time stood still.  She looked through me as I sat next to her.  She seemed to me neither bothered nor grateful, but rather like she was patiently allowing us the privilege of tending to her and being with her.  And what a privilege it truly was.  I came to Africa to serve the poor and destitute, and here was the embodiment of that mission right in front of me.  The whole scene suggested I was standing on holy ground.

Before Nazenty left, Grace instructed her to come to the hospital the next day to continue getting care for her wounds (and some medicine for the awful infection), but somehow I felt that the words were useless.  I knew I would never see Nazenty again.  I felt my heart cry silent tears as I watched her hobble away, from sadness or gratitude or something else, I’m not sure.  All I know is that I was Changed by this, and will never be quite the same again.

---

A few days after this all happened, I think I have at least some clarity:  God had kept me from running off chasing to-do-list tasks so that I could meet Nazenty.  She had come so that we could serve her.  What a profound gift!  A story that comes to mind is that of a modern woman whom Jesus tells in a dream that he will visit the following day.  She is so busy preparing for the arrival of the King of Kings that she rejects and sends away three impoverished men who come knocking at her door looking for a bit of compassion.  When the woman, disappointed that he never showed up, asks Jesus why he mislead her, Jesus says, “But I did come to you.  Three times in fact.  And you sent me away each time.”  I never want to be that woman.  Whether Nazenty was an angel he sent or Christ himself, I will never know.  What I do know is that if I search for the rest of my life for a better experience to humble me, I won’t find one.

You Know You're In South Sudan When...

1) The kids affectionately call you Sister

2) Young children come to church alone in the dark (at 6:45am) for daily mass before school

3) Mass is occasionally interrupted by goats chasing each other through the church

4) You realize that donated clothes do actually make it to Africa

5) Kids bring you mangoes every day and try to trade them for balloons

6) You have bananas both as small as 4 inches and as long as 1 ½ feet

7) You have a blast playing Throw The Rock As Far As You Can with little kids for over an hour (it really is the simple things in life that are the best)

8) The kids’ favorite “toys” are motorbike tires, sticks with pieces of metal on the end, and cars made out of scrap metal or beer cans

     

9) It takes several hours to hand-wash your laundry, and your clothes still don’t come out particularly clean

10) Babies’ stomachs are distended from malnutrition, and “Sister, I’m hungry” is a sadly common phrase

11) You are horrified to hear someone beating and/or drowning a baby… then realize the noise is just a goat

12) The boys make bricks throughout their entire summer holidays, on the weekends, after school, and occasionally during school hours, and try to sell them in hopes of being able to earn money for their school fees

13) The kids have a very limited number of belongings, and when things rip or break (like their shoes), they just tie them back together.  They also make what they can’t afford to buy, like shoes made out of a car tire

   

14) Your goats make too much noise for one of the priests to sleep, so one by one you turn them into dinner

15) The Sisters BOSS UP on a daily basis

16) A baby owl shows up on your doorstep at the convent (because you are awesome and live in a convent) and you name her Olivia and become best friends.  Then you find her two brothers and become a Mama to all three.

17) A six-foot-long cobra also shows up at your doorstep and you have to chase it up a tree and kill it with rocks and sticks 

  

18) You freak out with excitement when new solar panels come and you are able to turn on the lights for the first time

19) You almost have a heart attack when you find out you can also use the fridge

20) At any given time, there are 20 kids around you engaged in kung fu reenactments

  

21) Football (soccer) is king

22) Kids’ wounds get seriously infected because are often unable to keep them clean/bandaged (thank God Gracie is here to nurse them back to health)

23) People pass around babies to whoever is willing to hold them (it really does “take a village to raise a child”)

24) You get to teach the Mamas in the community how to read and write

25) Women breastfeed everywhere and occasionally ‘forget’ to re-clothe themselves when they’re finished

26) People carry everything on their heads

     

27) A 10am meeting starts at 12:30 – “Africa time”

28) You use a tractor to take the kids places

29) You share the road with cars, motorbikes, pedestrians, dogs, goats, and cattle

    

30) You have to close the school for two weeks so the UN can de-mine your land

31) You have a steady stream of VIPs visiting you (Bishop,  Ministers of Education & Interior, Governor of the state, UN delegates, etc.)  because the work the Salesians are doing is vital to the community

32) The kids cultivate land that your community lets them use to help feed themselves

33) Hair plaiting (braiding) is a long and sometimes painful community affair, but absolutely necessary to do on a regular basis

  

34) Products have rip-off brand names like Adidona (Adidas), Cool Cola (Coke), Nice Cola, and Converge (Converse)

35) In a given day, students ask you to give them your pen 3,871 times

36) Ashes on Ash Wednesday are white

37) People love to dance, dance, and dance some more

38) The best conversations take place at the water-pump that the whole community shares… but you don’t understand any of it because you don’t speak Zande, the local tribal language

39) You get to be a part of major projects from their very beginnings – a new convent, new hospital, new great hall, and new school

40) Two people are buried in your front yard because you built your convent on land previously owned by villagers, and people sometimes bury their relatives next to their houses (and obviously, desecrating a grave is not kosher in the Christian faith)

41) The children provide a wonderful example of simple, exuberant love for Jesus

And the last way you know you’re in South Sudan is…
 You live a life that is happy, joyous, full of love, and intimately connected to Christ, and wouldn’t change a single moment of it for all the riches in the world.

Reality Check

Recently, I've gotten some reality checks and harsh reminders that have me taking stock of some basic differences between my world and my students’.  Little by little, I am starting to see deeper into the actualities of their lives and into my own as well.

Events:  1) I was walking on the school playground and stepped on something sharp.  I looked down to find an inch and a half worth of a bullet.  I picked it up and exclaimed, “is this what I think it is?!”  One boy turned and nonchalantly confirmed its identity the way I might say, “you’re holding a pen.”

2) We've canceled school for the next two weeks because the land we're expanding into has to be de-mined and we can't have any curious kids running around.  We also accidentally cultivated on land that hasn't been de-mined yet (only through the grace of God did we not meet with disaster).

Reminder:  The war was fought here, on the ground I stand on every day.  On the land of these kids’ homes.  They have been exposed to war on a very personal level, and in fact, their whole lives have been shaped by it.  It’s very sobering to know that they have known such violence so close up.

Event:  During oratory, I noticed a small, sad boy sitting by himself.  I asked if he would play a game with me and he reluctantly agreed.  We played cards for a while and he started to come out of his funk.  When a third kid joined us, I taught them Go Fish (my American attention span, or rather lack thereof, means I am constantly introducing new games).  The sad boy became happy and both loved the new game.  We spent time together, just sharing our lives with each other.  More boys joined and it was all smiles until the end of oratory.

Reminder:  What does it mean to be an SLM?  It means I am here to be the body of God’s spirit on Earth, to see Christ in the faces of the kids, and to serve Jesus in the little ones under my care.  Every morning, I read St. Theresa of Avila’s poem/prayer “Christ Has No Body” to center myself and remind me of these things.  God has given me this incredible opportunity to be here in Africa not to make grand plans, not to enact big change, not to DO anything.  He has put me here so that I may BE with the children.  He has put me here to simply sit in His love and to invite others to sit in His love with me.  He has also put me here to learn about love from those who know it the best: children.  What a gift to be an SLM instead of a regular volunteer.

Event: A boy in my class told me his mouth was hurting.  When he opened for me to see, there was a huge hole from the side of his tooth that went all the way through, essentially cutting two teeth in half.  His entire mouth was one big cavity.

Reality check:  Healthcare here is improving, but it's still a difficult situation.  They don’t have any dentists in South Sudan at all.  People just deal with the pain until the tooth falls out (most of the adults have only a handful left).  In a country where getting enough to eat is a serious problem, extra care for luxuries like teeth can’t afford to be a priority.  I am living with the poorest of the poor.

Event:  As I was working in my office, I got some visitors from P8 (8^th grade – 16 to 20 years old).  One picked up my wireless mouse and asked what it was.  When I told him, he looked at me with an expression that seemed to say, “Oh Sister Cait, you think you’re sooo funny.  'Mouse.'  Ha, ridiculous.  Let’s just call this desk a Zebra, shall we?”

Reality check: They have no idea about the basic components of a computer.  The technology that we Westerners take for granted as the bare minimum to teach even our preschoolers might as well be a space ship to the kids here.  This means that one ticket out of here for these kids lies in having even the most basic, fundamental background in computers.  I hope I can help them with that while I am here.

Event:  Roffina (another P8 girl) walked in as I was tending to my addiction to CNN.com.  When she asked, I told her I was reading the news.  There was silence, then she repeated “the news” as if she were trying out the word for the first time.  “Do you know ‘news’?” I asked.  She shook her head and leaned in closer to the screen.   I explained that people write stories about what’s going on all over the world, and I read them to find out what’s happening.

“Like what?”

“Well, for example, in America [insert summary of news story 1]”

“Oh.  What else?”   [story 2]   “What else?”   [story 3]  What about here in Africa?  What about in *reads screen* Ay-see-aye-ah?  What else?  What else?  What else?  What else?”

This continued until I ran out of things to read to her.

Reality check: She didn’t know the words “news” or “Asia”, and had no concept of being able to know what is happening around the world.  She doesn’t know anything except what’s happened in this tiny village over the course of the last 15 years.  The people here, their world is small.  Really small.  They are ignorant, not because they choose to be but because they do not have the means to be anything except that.  But once she got a tiny taste, Roffina was hungry to know all about the world.  She often reminds me of myself, and this thirst for information is no exception.  The only difference between us is that I’ve always had access to newspapers and tv news broadcasts and the internet, and she’s had… well, nothing.  Only as a result of the places we were born.  This has me asking God, “why?” out of both sadness (for her) and gratitude (for me).

Despite the fact that I live here now, my life and the lives of the people are still worlds apart.  Their paths have been more difficult in many ways, there's no denying that, but does that mean that their lives are worse while mine is better?  I don't think so.  I think they're just different.  And I don't know if my kids would feel the same way because I am still very much an outsider (and perhaps I always will be), but in my view, we're all in this together.  So I'm very grateful to God for continuing to show me what is really at play here in a way and at a pace that I can understand.

Maridi Gets Moving Again

Holidays are over now, which means the pace here in Maridi is quickening.  The children returned to school Jan 28^th from a two-month hiatus, just in time for yet another celebration.   I am so grateful to have school responsibilities now and to be living with & for my kids here in South Sudan.

Teaching:

  Now that school is back in session for the new year, I’m much busier than I’ve been over the last two months.  And for me, busier is better.  I am teaching  English Composition to grades 4-8.  There is no curriculum and no books to work off of, so I’m creating my own course completely from scratch.  This is mostly exciting and a little bit intimidating.  These kids have zero background in writing (I found out today that my 6^th graders don’t know what a sentence is) which means that right now they know nothing, and hopefully by the end of the year they’ll know something.  I will teach them the importance of being prepared for class (and life), organization skills, respect for their resources (notebooks and such), and good study habits in addition to neat handwriting, vocabulary, creative thinking, and solid critical writing.

  I’m also teaching English reading, writing, and public speaking to the three aspirants a few times per week (aspirants are young men preparing to enter the seminary).  And I’ll start coaching football next week.  This is another area in which the girls have little to no background, which means I have the privilege of building a team from the ground up and introducing to them all of the priceless things sports teaches kids.  I have a few other administrative duties, but the teaching and coaching are by far my favorite and what will take up most of my time.

Ordination:

Last week, we had an ordination here (when someone officially becomes a priest).  There was a Vietnamese deacon who couldn’t be ordained in his home country because of the Communist government, and he chose our little village as the place for his ordination.  What an honor!  It was an amazing sight to witness, a man saying “YES!” to God.  “Yes” to following the Shepherd, and “yes” to leading His sheep.  It was inspiring to say the least, and especially good for our children to see.  I only hope to channel his spirit and willingness in my attempt to guide my students.

Open My Eyes, Lord

Every once and awhile, there comes a moment that makes you stop in your tracks.  A moment that makes you realize how little you know or how much you’ve taken for granted.  A moment that changes the way you see things:

The other day, I was arranging the jumbled, dirty, all-out-of-sorts storage room in the school.  I love to clean, and organizing is fun for me, so I was happy to have the job.  I danced around to Taylor Swift as I sorted through the materials.

                I thought I was being over-carefully “mission-minded” regarding our resources: 

I saved half-used notebooks with scribbled-on covers because there were blank pages; 

I saved partially-destroyed textbooks because there was some readable material inside; 

I saved every filthy waterlogged box because we can use the cardboard…  You get the idea. 

And I had to fight the urge to throw away all of these things that took away from the look of perfection I was striving to create.  I was sure that what I trashed was truly useless garbage. But what happened next has brought serious reflection on my mission here:

***

I brought the garbage outside and told the kids to take whatever they wanted and burn the rest.  When I gave them free reign on the trash can, you would have thought I just told a bunch of 10 year olds I was taking them to Disney World for a month.  I can’t describe their jubilation.  At first I smiled at their simple, almost silly, happiness.  But as I watched them whip through the contents of the bin, checking for hidden treasures, my emotion started to shift.  They shouted with delight as they found what their stupid, careless teacher had discarded: half of a broken crayon, a tiny piece of chalk, a string, the insert to a pen, a bead, part of a balloon, etc. 

There were also some gems too good to be true that (in all their honesty and goodwill) they brought back to me saying, “Sister, this one’s good.”  An alphabet book had to be put back on the shelf, which devastated the child who had found and fought for it.  I took a calendar back before realizing it was from 2012, and when I returned it to the boy, he literally jumped for joy and screamed at the top of his lungs before racing off to show anyone/everyone.  This was a child whose family could not afford him even one new shirt for Christmas.  That old calendar is probably the biggest ‘gift’ he’ll get all year

***

As I looked around at the faces of children in a state of ecstasy over a trash bin, I suddenly found myself intensely saddened. “This is the face of true poverty," I thought to myself.  “It’s not necessarily the grim, despondent expression on a person staring into the lens of a UNICEF camera.  It’s in the over-elation of these children, right here, right now.”  Tears stung my eyes as I stared at my kids proudly holding up their prizes.  I felt a wave of guilt.  I had danced around to cheerful music as I dumped the “useless” items into a pile of things to be burned.  I was happy to get rid of these things.  I had wanted to get rid of so much more.  All of a sudden, I felt disrespectful.  And ignorant.  And a slew of other things I've had trouble sifting through in the days since.

Later, I thought of something I had written down at orientation (in red ink no less) as something to be constantly aware of: “Social analysis: what is really going on here and why?”  I realized that a) I don’t know, and b) I haven’t even really been paying close attention.  Talk about a challenging recognition.

I have always said that what I want most in life is to Understand.  And coming to South Sudan has been the biggest step I've ever taken in that endeavor.  I want God to open my eyes, I mean really open my eyes, to the realities of life here.  But at the same time, I am afraid of what I will see.