A letter from the Rev. Debbie Blane in Sudan
March 7, 2010
Khartoum, North Sudan
Dear Friends,
Greetings to you from the capital of North Sudan.
The temperatures this week are beginning to crawl into the low 100s Fahrenheit and this is supposed to be the month of the dust storms, so I suppose that I can expect even more dust than I have currently on everything to appear very shortly. I am very thankful for swamp coolers that add moisture to the air and indeed cool the air as the fans circulate it round most of the rooms at the college and in homes. When there is electricity.
There are times here in Sudan when I find myself unable to write very much. This isn’t writer’s block and I am not sure that it is culture shock either. I think it has to do with grief for the people who live here and it kind of paralyzes me as I work through my sadness and then to the conclusion that I inevitably reach: Be the best teacher that I can, and be a pastor to those who need a pastor and who are in my direct care.
Last week a mosque across the street from the college was sending a message over its loudspeaker that could be clearly heard inside of the classrooms and probably for several blocks of the city. I could not understand it because it was in Arabic. A colleague told me that the speaker was talking about the laziness of the people from Southern Sudan who have moved to the North and are staying in the North and creating problems for the diligent people in Khartoum. There is a whole lot of baggage behind that statement that I will not address here. What I will say is that the heart of at least one young Southern Sudanese person was pierced by this message. This person was taken back to a very painful time in their life, a time when their childhood was left behind forever as a result of the civil war. I was able to be a pastor and friend to this young person and listen to the pain. There are so many stories of pain in this war-ravaged country. Whether it is the physical ravages of Southern Sudan or the psychological/spiritual/emotional/physical scars of people living in the North, there are stories of pain.
I also experienced heartbreak this past week as I learned of three young men who cannot afford housing in order to attend the Nile Theological College. I know that they are not the only students who are in need here at the college. They are, however, my students and my desire is for them to be able to continue their training as the future leadership of the church in Sudan. My desire for them is for their wounds to be bound up by the Great Healer, Jesus. A way is being sought for them to be able to remain here in Khartoum and at the college, and I pray daily that it will be so.
There are also light moments here. Two weeks ago I was going by bus with a Sudanese family to a Prayer Meeting in a distant part of town. An African man came on the bus with dreadlocks, the long locks of hair that I see occasionally on African Americans at home in the states. I kept thinking, he looks so different from the other men. The African men mostly keep their hair very, very short, and of course I have by now discovered that if an African woman has long hair it is because she has either put extensions on her hair or is wearing a wig. When he got off the bus I asked my friends how his hair was so long. I thought that maybe he was from an African country where men do have long hair. My friends laughed and said, “We think that he has extensions in his air!” So men also wear the extensions! If you have seen the Drew Barrymore movie, “Never Been Kissed,” his hair looked just like the man who was in the surveillance van at the high school the night that the delightful undercover reporter, whom Drew, played blew her own cover. It was a great light moment in this hot and sandy country!
My students are wonderful. For my History of Mission class, I have a class of three and because we are so small, we read together and then discuss what we have read. They have excellent insights, excellent questions, and assure me that they are learning things that will be useful to them in the future. I thank God every day that I am in a position where I cannot only contribute to their learning, but I can also be taught by them.
Christ’s Blessings,
The Reverend Debbie Blane
The 2010 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 47
