Center of Attention (for today anyway)

Journalists, celebrities, government dignitaries, and young professionals who think they’re helping to ‘Save the World’. That’s the people I’m seeing and hearing about being around Juba for the momentous occasion of the South Sudan referendum. In case you’re wondering which category I fall into, it’d be the celebrities – you may remember me from the movie Cast Away with my grizzly beard, or years ago when I was getting mistaken for Chuck Norris and Jesus. Although I am clean shaven and could pass through most circles without being noticed.

Having come to South Sudan first in early 2007 and made my first trip to Juba in March of that year, there are so many changes that I see around me. And to think that those who’d been here even just a year or two earlier have seen and witnessed pretty much double the differences that have occurred in the past 4 years. There are people returning who’d been around before, I’m not the only one who couldn’t stay away. But there are definitely a lot of newcomers who are interested in something the world is taking interest in. The struggles and difficulties that this area has undergone since the colonial days normally take up about a paragraph in an article. Most people don’t know more than just the things like the scary statistics I posted just below or the fact that South Sudan has had nearly five decades of mostly conflict prior to the signing of the CPA in 2005. Isn’t Sudan the country where Darfur is also a common reaction when people hear about Sudan. You may know a few other sound bites here and there which are repeated in the media or books.

I’ve come back to try to help improve things, though really that might be happening in spite of my efforts and energies rather than because of them. In two years I didn’t get to know the language, the people, the culture. Yet, I and others know the potential for disaster from the stories we have heard and from the way individuals share their experiences from the decades of conflict. I eagerly await to mark the beginning of a new era. I trust God will teach me, will work through me, and will bring about positive growth on the micro-level regardless of what happens in the macro.