Gotta luv the hat.


Plastering a wall at the hospital.


Mixing Cement.


Fire near the compound.


This is a little disconcerting when your fences and roof is made of grass.

Walking Too Proud

When I was visiting my family in Uganda a little over a month ago I watched several movies with my sister Audrey. Among the movies we watched was The Four Feathers. It stars Heath Ledger and is about a young British officer who journeys to Sudan in an epic attempt to rescue his friends, who have gone there to advance the British Empire against the Muslim Mahdi insurgency. In recent weeks, there is one scene from the movie which has been frequently on my mind. In the scene the character played by Heath Ledger decides to hand himself over to the Mahdi in an attempt to rescue his friend. His Sudanese friend tries to dissuade him from the task and as he walks away comments, “You English walk too proudly on the earth”. Later, starving in prison and nearly dead, Ledger scoffs at himself and cries, “I’m not too proud now..I’m not too proud now.”
As I have gone about my work, the line, you English walk too proudly on the earth, has come back to me over and over. In western education we are ingrained with the ideology that the principles on which our cultures and nations are built are successful and thus also superior. We walk proudly on the earth because our forefathers spoke on behalf of freedom and equality. We take for granted the blessings we enjoy and are angered when we encounter hardship, thinking that somehow we do not deserve the pain and troubles faced by most of the world. We look at the wealth we have amassed, at the expense of poorer peoples and nations, and we believe that it entitles us to direct the actions of those people. We have the answers to the world’s problems and so much time, technology and resources to come up with more problems that we hire people to listen to them. We are proud, so proud.
Sudan is a humbling place. It is a nation turned upside down by countless wars and famines, but a nation proud in its own right. The answers here are not the same as the answers elsewhere. I came here determined to learn a thing or two; things about myself and things about Africa, but it did not take long before I was walking proudly on the black cotton soil that is prevalent here. I have ideas of how things should be done and how to go about doing them and like the well-educated American that I am I set out to do them my way. Walking proud does not last long here. The soil itself can swallow up that pride like it swallows up vehicles after the rains. My way has proved over and over again to be the wrong way. Men and women who have lived through war have insights, resilience, determination and a humbleness about life that is humbling at all levels. I have much to learn and I would like to say that I’m not too proud now, but I know that I have a lot humbling still in store for me – the ground may swallow me yet!
Life is a gift that is given to us by God. In the west we often think that it is a gift we are entitled to, but we are not. It is a gift and as such has not been earned and cannot be bought. Far too often I take for granted what I have been given and walk around proudly on this earth when God himself did not walk proudly on the earth, but humbly, dressed in our feeble flesh.
Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus. (Phil. 2:5)
“It is not great men who change the world, but weak men in the hand of a great God.”