Thank You Gift

The other day one of my neighbours came by with a gift: homegrown local cucumbers. She is the mom of a girl I helped for several months by treating a sore she had on her leg.

These local cucumbers look somewhat different from the North American version, and they have a lot of rind and not as much flesh. They're pretty good peeled with some vinaigrette. However, my teammate Laurie recently served me some cut up and fried in olive oil with with garlic and salt. They were really tender and tasted almost like zucchini--really delicious! Quite a culinary discovery and something new to add to our cooking repertoire here. :-)

My teammates and I often receive gifts during the growing season as our neighbours share with us the fruit of their labours, sometimes to thank us for help we've give them, sometimes simply as a token of friendship and appreciation.  So touching.

I'm Back

As many of you readers know, I was away from South Sudan the past few months visiting friends, family and supporting partners in Canada and the U.S. I got back to the village yesterday and plan to get back to more regular blogging now. I flew up from Juba, the capital of SS, to the capital town of our state, which is about 33 km south of where I live (but takes over an hour to drive because the roads are in pretty bad shape), on the plane shown above, a refurbished Russian plane flown by a local company. It takes an hour and 40 minutes to fly up here from Juba.

Waiting for luggage to arrive

The three-wheeled vehicles in the forefront are the local taxis. There are always a lot of them gathered when the plane comes in, hoping to have clients to take into town a few km away.

House Building Part 2: Walls

While women are preparing the grass bundles for the roof of a new hut, men work on the walls. I've seen two ways in which walls are built: using mud, and using bricks made out of mud. The mud used is kind of like clay, it is very hard when it dries.

This picture shows the basic process for making non-brick mud walls: preparation (foreground) and wall building (back left).

The man preparing the mud mixes the sandy soil with water, initially using a hoe. The mud needs to be a certain consistency, not too wet, not too dry.

Next, the mud is "kneaded" and patted into balls that can easily be carried over to the building site.










 

The fellow building the walls breaks off pieces of the mud balls and applies them, layer by layer. You can see the lighter layer at the base of the wall. He let that dry for a day or two before adding another layer.

When I took the pictures he was working on the sides of the wall.

I also shot the following video footage of both of these men working. (The giggles and voices you'll hear in the first part are those of some kids who had gathered around me--it's hard to pull out my camera and not attract at least a few onlookers!)

By the way, this photo shows the finished walls that were being built above. The family ended up not putting a thatched roof on the hut, probably for lack of ability (finances, or time and energy) to get the wood and grass required.

They made a roof using a tarp covered with grass mats, with a few wooden supports and bamboo matting on the ends for additional support.




To make walls of brick, the Dinka mix mud and put it into wooden molds to shape it (unfortunately I don't have any photos of this process). The wet bricks are then laid out on the ground to dry. The photo below shows dried bricks stacked up waiting to be used, and the base of the walls begun.

Men laying bricks. The bricks are not always laid in the most careful, level way. However, the walls will be covered with a layer of mud to add durability so the uneven layers won't show.






Below, another example of walls-in-progress. These ones have been done with much more precision.

House Building Part 1: "Dutting"

Ever since I first came to Aweil I have been fascinated by the Dinka huts. They are such a typical sight in the landscape here. I love how God has endowed people in every part of the globe with the ingenuity and creativity to build houses from the materials available to them. One thing that fascinates and impresses me about the Dinka huts is how they are built. It's quite a process, with both men and women involved, each gender having specific tasks to do.

Homes are built during the dry season, usually between January and April, when people have time since they're not working in the fields. 

This is the first of a series of posts on how the huts are built. One of the first things that is done is the preparation of the roof thatching. This involves the preparation of hundreds (or I'm sure sometimes thousands) of bundles of grass.

First, tall grasses like the ones in the back of this photo need to be collected; either the future home owners (usually the woman or women of the house) find them in the countryside and cut them or they buy them in these huge bundles in the market.

Next, little bunches of grass are tied into bundles, a process for which the Dinka word is "dut." Dutting is one of the tasks done exclusively by women, and it's very time consuming and repetitive. Sometimes women are hired to do this for people building a house. The little bundles are tied with strips of a certain kind of grass that are wet when tied on and then dry to become even tighter.

Many women spend hours and hours dutting in preparation for the thatching of a roof

This is my friend Aluel sitting in her yard dutting bundles for the roof of her one of her family's huts that needed replacing. Sometimes only the roof of a hut needs to be replaced, the walls are still good. (In case you're wondering, the goat is drinking the water that the grass "ties" for the bundles are soaking in. :-) Here is a video I made to show how dutting is done.

Oodles of bundles!

Tetherbottle

It always amazes me to see kids in my area playing the same or very similar games to what kids in my home country of Canada and/or elsewhere in the world play.  How do these kinds of things become so global? At any rate, boys in my village enjoy playing a locally adapted version of tetherball. Instead of a ball, they use a bottle with water that has some soap powder in it to make it white (I presume because this is easier to see than clear water).

Here's a little video I shot of two boys playing.

Health Training

Ten days ago we had a day of health training for 17 ladies from seven of our partner churches. The training centred around water, so essential for life and health. Most of the teaching was done by Pastor Kerubino, whom I have been helping to equip as a health teacher for the churches. The training took place in one of the Cush Christian School classrooms.

Plenary session to start off the day

Kerubino using a bottle with strategically-placed holes to show
how diarrhea and vomiting drain the body of water

Ladies made their own demonstration bottles and practiced using them

Another lady demonstrating

The ladies also practiced showing others how to make rehydration drink

Small group discussion

Closing the day with prayer

Late afternoon lunch

Eating with some of my health group ladies & Kerubino

Thursdays at SP

You may have noticed that I usually do blog posts on Thursday. I think I've mentioned this before, but almost every Thursday, late afternoon, some of our team members head over to the Samaritan's Purse base in a nearby town (about a 20-minute drive).

We have gotten to know some of the SP staff and they graciously let us come and use their satellite internet, which is much faster than the dial-up access we have via our cell phone network. I have given up trying to do blog posts on the dial-up.

(Should I also mention that often this is the only time in a week that I go anywhere in the car? Hmm...what does it mean about my life when an outing to SP is a nice change of scenery?!)

Yours truly with Joseph and Vince in the background

We settle down in various places. Usually we're all very focused on the things we need to get done in the precious 2 1/2 or 3 hours we have at SP.  Not much chatting (except on Skype).

Daniel

Scott

Laurie on Skype out in the parking lot, near the satellite dish

The folks that work at the base usually play volleyball on Thursday nights, and some of my team members enjoy playing, which is why we started coming on this particular day.