25-Sep-08

25-Sep-08

Not much new has been going on! We lost power through the whole town again, and we haven’t had access to the inter-web in over 48 hours (I’m writing this off-line). We’ve still got no water. But life is lovely.

No water? I don’t have to wait in line at the well for hours; our day security guard does it for us. He fills up our jerry-cans and bikes the heavy load home. No power? I bat my eyes at my bosses and they turn on the generator at work; I charge my laptop and can use it in the evenings at home, by the light of my oil lantern. No internet? Oh please. 95% of the world isn’t addicted to their e-mail like I am.

Look at the way the lighting jags across the entire sky! Hear the thunder rolling off of the mountains of South Sudan! See the rainbow arc through the clouds as the earth prepares for the storm! Life is lovely.

J showed me a new shortcut home last night (from the office to our compound), which he discovered a while ago. (I’d been wondering how J often left for work after me yet arrived at work before me!) It was a great path, through backfields and dirt roads. I got to greet many new toddlers and children.

As we drove past an IDP camp two days ago, Patricia told us a story. There were chronic fires in a couple of the camps several years ago, all beginning on the thatch roofs of the same few people. These people were accused as arsonists and persecuted as witches until the common denominator between them all was discovered: they were all near-sighted. When their eyes got tired, they would lay their glasses on the roofs of their huts, where things are often put to rest. Unfortunately, these lenses would magnify the sunlight into a super-hot pinprick on the dried-grass roofs. In the close proximity of life in the camps, a fire on one roof means a fire on many. Thus, people were sensitized to not rest their reading glasses on roofs anymore, and the persecution, as well as the fires, stopped.