A letter from Ingrid Reneau in South Sudan
Jan 25, 2012
Peace like a river in my soul….
Peaceful Nile River
It’s a hot, sultry afternoon in Juba, but I wouldn’t know it as I sit here in the UNHCR section of the Across Juba Office, where the a/c is humming peacefully right above me and across from the table where I’m sitting. I arrived this morning from Nairobi at 9, and left the airport an hour and 15 minutes later! It was packed with all the early morning commuters to Juba, waiting and waiting and waiting to see, through the large open window that opens out to the airfield, our luggage hand-lifted onto the conveyor belt, through the huge security machine, then hand-lifted onto the counter top and passed from one commuter to the next, all of us like sardines, around the rim of the counter, wiggling and jostling for a better position, waving and pointing and hollering, “That’s my luggage! That’s mine! Please, pass here,” to have someone say, “OK, it's coming, it's coming," only to watch as other hands take it off and put it on the floor, alongside the over 100 other pieces of luggage, large, small boxes, and the ubiquitous over-large, overstuffed, brightly colored, plastic handbags used by the South Sudanese, all scattered about as if overthrown from a capsized ferry.
This is Juba—busy! This is Juba—waiting and negotiating even where and how to walk across the floor to the door to exit. This is the Juba that makes my spirit sing within, “How Great thou art” even as I feel smaller and smaller amidst the encircling throng of African, South Sudanese, Chinese, Japanese, European and American aid workers, humanitarian, Christian and other religious servers, business men and entrepreneurs, Juba locals, first comers and other natives, all here at the Juba airport to greet this new day through this quickly aging system.
Yet the system changes to meet the times: upon entering the small room where we used to line up in long lines to register, there is now a man at the door, handing out to each of us a small South Sudanese registration card; then, it's still on to the huge security machine we‘re ordered, for our hand luggage to be scanned, then onto to the newly, clearly marked area saying, "VISA” or “Alien Registration.” I go to “Alien Registration,” for I have my travel permit, which expires in March 2012, which I got from the South Sudan Embassy in December. I know I don’t need a visa yet, so boldly I go to the desk, all smiles, utterly relaxed, knowing this will be over in a minute; but, noooo…the uniformed immigration officer looks at me, at my passport, then at my permit, and says, “You must get visa!” I look at him, still smiling, like he wasn’t talking to me, for my travel permit was still very much valid, thank you very much. “Visa! You need Visa,” he booms to me, and this time I do speak: “But I have my permit; see it does not expire till March." “You must get Visa; permit not good; it not valid; just cancelled.” And with that, he passed my passport over to the uniformed officer sitting in front of the VISA section of the counter, and I had to move there then, realizing now, in truth, I was going to have to get a visa, and it would cost me.
And then I knew why, just prior to leaving home this morning, I’d heard within the encouragement to take an additional $100 with me to the airport. At first I’d not wanted to do so because I had only a few American dollars left, but I heard the insistence within to take additional monies, and the second time I listened and dug around in my little locked suitcase in the closet and took my last $100 and put it in my money belt, belted up round my waist, and made for the door. I figured I must have received that heads-up because I’d need it for the extra weight in my luggage, as I was carrying in a new laptop for a colleague in Juba, some notebooks for the training, some Harriet Kepo Memorials for YTTC, and my own few clothes, plus some power snacks of raisins, sunflower seeds, digestive biscuits, crystal light packs (to combat the heat), and breakfast muesli, Milo, raspberry and pomegranate tea, small powdered milk pack and a small bowl, spoon and cup. I was determined to save a bit this time too by providing for my own, healthy breakfast.
But when I checked it with Jet Link, my luggage weight was OK, so I’d thought, “Well, I guess I’ll be needing it for something else,” not realizing that something else was awaiting me at the Juba airport! Ah, South Sudan! Ah, Juba! Full of surprises, changes, and a constant unfolding of what all post-independence South Sudan will continue to look like in the flesh.
So, I’m here in Juba, awaiting Prof Mac of PC(USA) Trinity Presbytery Education Committee and his two colleagues, Bill and Terri Walker, to join me and three other Across Education staff (Lucy Aceng of Boma Location, John Majak Manyol of Adol Location and Nyikwec Pakwan of Across / UNHCR Integrated Response Refugee Program—all teacher trainers) in a big book literacy training workshop. I’m here a couple days early to follow up in person the invitations we’d extended last December, and to ensure that all will be in place for their arrival and for the workshop, which will be held at the Juba Across compound on Monday, Jan 30. Then, on Tuesday, Jan 31, we will have a demonstration of this method at the local Juba Model Pre-School. We’ve invited some GoSS Education directors and their deputies, as well as Education Reps from SPEC & PCOS, and a couple others to the demonstration. As it is scorching hot here now and as GoSS directors and others here in Juba can be very selective about what they lend their eyes and ears to, I ask you to please pray with me, with us, for those we invited to attend, and for a rewarding training and demonstration, both for Mac and his colleagues, for me and my colleagues and, most important, for the children and schools of South Sudan.
This training is the pilot for a larger proposed project of “training of trainers,” where those trained will train other trainers and so on until all Across trainers are trained in this methodology, and then we can train others outside of Across as well. The hope is that this early literacy method will become a mainstay in the South Sudan teacher training curriculum, and also that this method, although devised for children, will adapt to a usage by adult learners and be used in adult literacy training as well.
Thanks so much for praying us through this workshop, and for a similar workshop that will take place at YTTC, Feb. 1–3. Along with Mac and his colleagues, I return to Nairobi on the evening of Feb. 3, when the airport is bound to be less packed than it was when I arrived—?
In a newly independent nation such as South Sudan, where illiteracy is around 73 percent, it is our combined ardent hope that this literacy method will be mainstreamed into the South Sudan curriculum for all literacy trainings for children and for adults. We are so thankful to Jah [Jehovah] for Mac and his colleagues bringing this training to us at Across.
Thanks to each of you for praying with me for our hope to become a reality, and for the learning of the people of South Sudan to be greatly enhanced and enriched through the use of this method in its schools and Alternative Education programs.
All for Jah’s utmost glory,
Ingrid
The 2012 Presbyterian Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 94
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