A letter from Nancy Smith-Mather in South Sudan
April 2013
Why Return to South Sudan?
In the lights, camera and action of our four-minute CNN interview, I missed the opportunity to explain something important to me. I left out the reason why I am excited to return to South Sudan, the reason I look forward to getting back to a place I left in such a hurry.
When making the decision to return, we knew the daily difficulties of living in South Sudan. I was keenly aware, however, that I did not know life as a parent to a young child in South Sudan. In the midst of what I knew and what I would discover in time persisted a pull to the place that cries loudly of the need for more miracles.
I will always think of our son’s birth story as a miracle that unfolded in front of my eyes. Jordan Eman arrived seven weeks early, three days before my flight back to the U.S., and he took his first breath in the country considered the worst place in the world to have a baby. In South Sudan “90 percent of women give birth away from formal medical facilities and without the help of professionally trained assistants,”[i] yet Jordan was born in a new hospital that opened the first month of our pregnancy. In South Sudan 25 percent of children “die from common, often preventable childhood illnesses before they reach their fifth birthday,”[ii] yet Jordan overcame a premature birth and difficulties breathing and maintaining his body temperature with the help of the only incubator in town and a makeshift breathing device. I cannot pretend to understand or try to explain why God intervenes to sustain life in some situations and not others, yet I know that God intervened in Jordan’s life.
His entrance into the world connected me in a unique way to the other mothers in the small hospital called Bet Eman (Juba Arabic for “House of Hope”). The morning after I gave birth, I took a slow walk to the patients' pit latrine located behind the hospital. I will never forget the interactions with the women and children on the walkway on my first exit from the delivery room.
For the children, there was the usual excitement of interacting with a foreigner. For the mothers, I spoke with them for the first time as a mother myself. For all, there seemed to be something special in the air, because they knew I had given birth on South Sudanese soil. I was the first American they knew with that privilege.
On the day that followed, however, I felt an enormous chasm dividing me from the patients waiting on the wooden benches in front of the hospital. As I glanced at these women, my son was packed in the back of a land cruiser headed to a plane preparing to evacuate us to a neonatal ICU unit in Nairobi, Kenya. It was difficult to look at the patients that day, knowing that most likely their children lacked the opportunity to get the care that Jordan would receive outside the country.
The strong feeling of “connection with” and the intense hurt of “separation from” the mothers surrounding me birthed the longing in my heart to return. Between the deep desire for loving, human relationships and the reality of the great inequity in our world, I felt God’s Spirit pushing me forward, allowing me to follow the hope of making a difference. By grace the door re-opened for me and my husband to continue to work alongside South Sudanese for stability, and by extension development, in their nation.
When I practiced the interview in my head, before walking onto the CNN set, I rehearsed an explanation of the close relationship between peace and development. When a community is peaceful, development can thrive. When conflicts are resolved, then hospitals, schools, and institutions are able to flourish. Peace and development pave the way for babies, every single one a miracle, to receive the care they need, to breathe, to be warm, and to cuddle up in a parent’s loving arms.
As a new mother I find myself continuously engaged in conversations about babies. Experienced mothers ask me, “Have you ever loved anything so much?” or “Have you ever loved anything so instantly?” and they explain: “It is difficult to believe, but the love gets stronger and stronger.” The love in my heart for my son feels overwhelming at times, and I have to pause and thank God for his little life. And as I watch South Sudanese mothers interacting with their babies, I am convinced their hearts are also overflowing with love, gratitude and joy.
The word miracle may be defined in various ways. I see miracles when the Holy Spirit creates anew in our midst; when God breathes life into the nostrils of a human being; when Jesus reaches His hand toward an ailing person and restores life. God our Creator, I ask for more such miracles. May we, Your people, work together to make the world peaceful and loving, a world able to embrace and sustain life more fully. Amen.
Thank you to all our supporters whose generosity makes our work in South Sudan possible! Thank you to the many people who heard the news about Jordan’s birth and lifted our family in prayer. We truly felt your powerful prayers surrounding us. Thank you for living out this call with us; your presence in this journey strengthens us. Thank you.
Nancy Smith-Mather
The 2013 Presbyterian Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 103
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[i] IRIN News http://www.irinnews.org/Report/95900/SOUTH-SUDAN-The-biggest-threat-to-a-woman-s-life
[ii] International Medical Corps https://internationalmedicalcorps.org/sslpage.aspx?pid=1737
