Double Christmas Miracle

Some months ago in Kororak, we completed the construction of a small clinic. There was at this time a meager clinical service there. Following the completion of the clinic, medical service in Kororak came to a halt do to complete lack of medicine. This was very disheartening as easily treated problems such as malaria and worms take a serious toll on the children of the area. Pregnancy complications are also a very common problem. Taking people on emergency trips to faraway clinics has been a second job for our compound staff ever since I arrived in Moro.

The people of Kororak have started an initiative to improve their school, which is in a very poor state, structurally. They have raised tuition and hired new teachers, and hope to hire yet more. Their goal is to not only improve the level of education and increase enrollment, but to replace the buildings as well. Along with my former teammate, Andy Scheer, I was eager to be involved in the project. The budget for the new buildings, humble as they will be, is well outside the means of the Kororak community. My hope that the building phase would be started before my departure was fading.

I approached a medical NGO in Lewere called German Emerency Doctors–Cap Anamur in Germany. The most hope they could give us was that when their director next visited, they would tell him about the situation in Moro, and they would see what he had to say. Meanwhile, we were waiting for permission from Samaritan’s Purse to seek outside funding for the school construction. A surprise visit was indeed made by the GED staff to Kororak, and many encouraging things were said. Months went by waiting for word from higher up regarding the school. Pastor Morris and I began to openly wonder what would happen if I, as the last SP member involved in both projects, were to leave Moro before either was started in earnest.

Christmas Eve, 2008, I was the recipient of an email from Samaritan’s Purse leadership informing me that the Kororak Primary School was not only a valid project, but was also fully funded. The next evening I was having a Christmas dinner when I was told by a member of the German Emergency Doctors that the Kororak clinic had “the green light.”

I’m calling it the Double Christmas Miracle. I’m happy.

Bike Thievery

How easy is it to steal a bicycle these days?  Apparently so easy that one has to steal 2,396 of them before anyone gets suspicious.  Read article.

As further evidence, below is a video made by 2 brothers, in which one of them steals his own bike, multiple times, during peak A.M. rush hour, using increasingly conspicuous methods.

Somehow the apocalypse is related to all of this, but I’m not sure how.

Property Of

I want to encourage us all to think twice about wearing shirts which espouse them to be property of some clothing company’s athletic department. Your Old Navy shirt is not Property of Old Navy Athletic Department. Old Navy does not have an athletic department–at least not the kind which claims property of the muted toned heavy sweatshirts with monochromatic labels they somehow convince adult Americans to purchase.

While I’m on the subject, why do these sweatshirts and T-shirts usually claim to be xxl on the front, when they often clearly are not that size? What am I missing?

And why does almost every purveyor of casual apparel in the USA offer this design from time to time? I can only see three scenarios that explain the phenomenon.
1. The graphic design department runs out of ideas, and after a long weekend they panic on Monday. They panic, that is, until they realize that they haven’t issued a run of “Property of ____ Athletic Department XXL” for the past six months. And heaven knows they saw at least seventeen of the last issue still being worn at Chili’s last Tuesday.
2. The CEOs of these companies like to look out the darkly tinted windows of their limosines from time to time to see people willfully wearing the phrase “Property of (insert company)” on their chests.
3. Somewhere in the corporate headquarters of each company that somehow manages to sell this kind of apparel, there is a room that only a cadre of the most powerful people in the corporation know about. In that room is a bank of computers. The purpose of those machines is to monitor surveillance footage from cameras across the world. Using image recognition techniques, they count the appearance of “property of…” clothing against the total count of people. This gives a rough but usable average of the intelligience quotient of their consumers.

Most strange of all to me, is that I never actually see these shirts on the rack. I know for certain I have never seen one actually purchased. And yet they make up a startling percentage of shirts that I see. Where are they coming from?

Toby – 07.20.08

Jesus owns this guy.

G-Star Raw

Passing briefly through a place significantly different than your usual surroundings offers a unique chance to pick up on cultural trends. Brief contact with a culture in action is much like a cross section view of a whale–the unusual perspective offers details you might miss in the sweep of the whole. In the dim and dreary delirium that makes up most of my international flying, these unexpected sights and sounds seem to me to make up the leitmotif of the experience. The motifs of course being sleeplessness, greasy forehead, and frustration at being coralled. Being told where to go by chrome poles and extensible nylon bands makes me feel less than human.

In December of 2005, for example, the leitmotif in Europe was boots. Absolutely everywhere I went, the boots were simply everywhere you looked. In those days, if one were not wearing boots, one could hardly call oneself a lady. The airlines had actually developed a “boot scanner” to allow women to pass through security without removing their variously tight and bulky footwear. I have not seen it in use since then. Perhaps we are past the pinnacle of the boot in Europe.

I only bring this up because my most recent trip from East Africa to the US and back was the first time one of these leitmotifs spanned two continents. The fad in question this time is the phrase “G-Star Raw”, particularly printed on a piece of clothing.

The hip hop thug pastiche is well entrenched in all but the most remote places in Africa. As such, I was not surprised at all when I started seeing shirts and hats emblazoned with “G-Star Raw”. None of these messages suggested whether the wearer were claiming that they themselves were a raw g-star, or whether g-stars were simply inherently raw. What is for certain is that white, bold Gothic lettering is the preferred means to transmit such a message.

I suppose it was the moment that I saw a Dutch toddler wearing a jumper proudly emblazoned with this phrase that I knew something touching the universal heart of mankind was happening. In my worldview, fashion trends are not generally shared between Sudanese men and the smallest children of Holland. With my awareness newly awakened to the globe-spanning presence of “G-Star Raw” I began to see it everywhere. Did I actually see a woman’s purse with this message, or did I imagine it? I cannot reliably say one way or the other.

What does this mean? Has the finger I always keep on the pulse of world fashion lost it’s place? Every appearance of the mysterious phrase crashed like a battering ram on the now seeming-fragile surface of my sense of commonhood of man. What is it that Europe and Africa know about G-Star Raw that I do not?

- Toby 07.19.08

Ups and Downs

I should probaby, for the sake of my dear mother’s heart, report here that I am definitely returning to normal from my recent bout with malaria. I have to admit this time that it was a truly awful experience. I have usually tried, in the past, not to sensationalize the many downsides of life in Africa. My previous experience with plasmodium falciporum was that it flared up quickly and with terrible intensity, only to immediately fold under the application of appropriate salvos of drug. It would seem that not all strains of malaria are created equal. I am now on day 7 of a slow decline from the peak of this recent attack.

Two Sundays ago I was treated to one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen anywhere. It was decided that we should spend the day hiking the mountains of Alebu in search of watery caves which were widely reported to exist up there. Having not found them on two previous excursions, we sought out the help of two Sudanese friends–a Mr. Juju and Mr. Mangusto.

I have mentioned previously that the mountains of Moro are simply loaded with amazing spectacles of balanced rock. They are absolutely everywhere you look as you hike. It was one of these arrangements which had an extra feature which fascinated me so.

The day had been excellent for climbing and we had refreshed ourselves in various cracks in the great rocks full of cool water. Mangusto had guided us without the least hint toward the final spectacle high on the mountain. As we unwittingly approached it, Mangusto rushed ahead and disappeared. We began to hear a strange musical sound.

Mangusto had led us to a truly gigantic boulder which was perched on three small stone faces. Two of the faces are compressed in such a way that when you strike them, they sing out with distinctly musical sounds. In fact, striking them in different places yields different notes. The faces had dozens of pockets worn into them by thousands of strikes. Mangusto assured us that people had been playing this gigantic instrument for, “very, very long.”

I’m guessing that estimate could mean anything from hundreds to thousands of years. I felt that I was in the presence of a still-active ancient African artifact.