Kampala, Uganda - Images of Africa

I write in the lounge of the Entebbe Airport, awaiting the first of three flights that will bring me home tomorrow afternoon, God willing. This is a trip of firsts and lasts. It was my first visit to both Sudan and Uganda (it’s been a while since all of my stops on a trip were new-to-me countries). But it is also my last international trip with Overseas Council, as I prepare to transition full-time in March. Although I know that I will remain very much a part of the networks that have nourished and taught me in recent years and will continue to interact with my OCI colleagues, there is something deeply bittersweet for me in such a moment.

Africa remains for me a part of the world where I feel my understanding is minimal. Each time I visit this wildly diverse and deeply beautiful continent, I feel as though I understand a bit more. Yet I go away with more riddles as well. There is, I often say, a bit of my heart in many parts of this big world. But there is something increasingly special to me about Africa. Lions and tigers, safaris, hungry children, Table Mountain, the pyramids, Masaai tribesmen… all of these are overplayed stereotypes of Africa (though are all rooted in some form of reality). But the following are some abiding images of Africa for me.

Light bulbs in roadside shops – Thoughts of Africa always conjure up for me the thousands of small shops that line African roads, usually lit at night by a single light bulb or two, or perhaps a candle or gas lamp when the power is out. I’ll never forget a street like this in Bangui where candles flickered in the breeze of the dark night. Evening life thrives around these shops, as the flow of humanity moves by.

Pedestrians – Coming from a pedestrian-challenged nation like the US, I can’t help but remark at the sheer quantity of humanity moving on foot along every kind of African road, from highways to city streets to country roads. On crowded city streets, they flow along with the traffic (and occasionally a donkey cart or a herd of goats). I enjoy the adventure of joining these flowing rivers of people sometimes.

Hand-made furniture along the roads – Perhaps “hand-made” is the wrong term, for this furniture seems to be constructed with tools in hundreds of little workshops that dot stretches of roads in Africa, ranging from sofas to highly carved and elaborate bedroom furniture. Some of it features remarkable workmanship.

Charcoal smoke – I often say that many countries have distinctive smells. In Russia or Ukraine, one need not go too far to find the smell of dill and/or garlic. The smell of masala spices hangs on the air of India. In Africa, although the spices differ, charcoal (or sometimes wood) smoke always seems to hang on the horizon, bearing witness to thousands (or millions) of meals being cooked.

Peanuts – from peanut-laced soups in West Africa to peanut sauces in East Africa and greens cooked with peanut sauce in southern Africa, “groundnuts” are a feature that seems to unite highly diverse African cuisines.

Social time – I don’t know the right word to capture this, but I am always admire the time that Africans find to talk, whether men chatting along the side of a country road in Nigeria, young men gathered on the street here in Kampala, or ladies sharing a cup of tea on the streets of Khartoum. Africans do things together. There’s always time for a chat. There’s always time for a friend.

Khartoum - the lighter side of life

Today was a very full day that included more heart-wrenching stories about the deconstruction of a country, living with the results of economic turmoil that makes anything we experience in America pale by comparison, and a visit to the library of a theological school that included a multi-volume set of Bobsy Twins books, a run of Good Housekeeping from the 1990s and some used coloring books (alongside a smattering of commentaries and theological readers). Although I can’t help laughing to myself as I write that, I don’t say it to be funny. It’s actually a very poignant reminder of how dedicated and talented people struggle to do good work in exceedingly trying and under resourced circumstances. I have an even deeper respect for the Sudanese today.

But I do want to focus a bit more on the lighter side of life, on food. Food, of course, is hardly a light matter in much of the world, where the amount and type of chile added to a dish, the type of soy sauce used, or the provenance of mushrooms can generate sharp disagreements and conversations. Sudanese, I am told, have only in recent times and only in urban areas adopted differentiated rooms for living, dining, and sleeping. A traditional home (again, so I am told), has low benches in most rooms where people sit, where food can be brought in, and where people can snooze after eating. Food is served much as it is in Ethiopia and other parts of Africa and the Middle East on large, communal plates with some kind of meat and accompanying fresh vegetables, dipping sauces, bread, and salads. Today’s fare was served at a huge open-air market on the very outskirts of western Khartoum, alongside a huge donkey market. The meat available is on display on hooks in front of the restaurant. We sat in a kind of open patio area on the aforementioned low benches (complete with napping pillows!) and were served grilled lamb, puffy fresh Middle Eastern bread, tomato and peanut salad, fiery green chile sauce, along with fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, and carrots. And arugula. I’ve not yet had a meal in Sudan that didn’t include fresh arugula in some form. Apparently it accompanies most things here, adding a peppery, fresh bite. Everyone digs into the common plate, using the bread to pinch a bit of this or that, or merely using fingers to dip meet in sauce, etc. A good time was had by all.

My mother-in-law was quite disappointed at Thanksgiving to discover that her old family trick of serving a silverware-free meal (spaghetti and meatballs) fell rather flat as a surprise, since I’ve become quite adept at various modes of eating with my fingers, usually without getting very messy (most cultures in Asia or Africa that avoid utensils have pre- and post-meal hand washings that vary in ceremonial complexity). Our girls have tried it a couple of times with Indian-inspired food, with rather mixed results in terms of avoiding messes.

I love what I do for all kinds of reasons. First and foremost, I love being part of the lives of leaders of competence and character who labor with great perseverance despite varying levels of inadequate resources. I love to encourage. But if I had to name something on the “lighter” side of my work life it is the food. I love the communality of dining in most of the world, where one isn’t forced to choose one thing on the menu, but instead samples a bit of this and that, often in combinations. I actually enjoy not knowing what I’m eating at times. I won’t say that I’ve loved everything I’ve eaten everywhere (baby birds still in the shell were not a hit, and I just can’t understand durian fruit). But few things bring me greater joy than food adventures. Perhaps because few things connect people better than food does.

Again, this could benefit significantly from photos, which were taken, but remain trapped without the properly shaped USB… ugh.

Khartoum part 2 - the separation

All of us are a mishmash of various identities, each formed by a combination of local and national, religious and secular, ethnic and social factors in our lives. Usually, this amalgam of identities lurks beneath the surface, at least as long as conflicts between these identities do not rise up.

Identity struggles are especially acute these days in Sudan. Last July, the southern portion of the country, composed primarily of dark skinned, sub-Saharan African Christians voted to secede from the primarily Arab Muslim north following two bloody civil wars. South Sudan became the world’s newest country. In speaking of “the separation,” most outside accounts stress the difference in the two nations as I have above. While these differences are very real, the situation is not quite so simple. No magic line exists dividing the Arab Muslim north from the African Christian south. There is no perforated line for tearing a country apart. Decades of interaction have seen millions of southerners settle in the more affluent and less war-torn north. Many are the product of mixed marriages. For some, it is not a simple matter to define oneself as truly “northern” or “southern.” I spent time today with a man whose commanding height and dark skin signal a southern identity. Yet he was born in Khartoum to parents who had lived for decades in the north. His first language is Arabic, while he struggles to express himself in the tongue of his tribe. He is a Christian living in a predominantly Muslim north. He and his family now face a choice between claiming citizenship in a new nation they barely know or remaining in a familiar place that presents an uncertain future. The trauma of this “separation” has emerged in almost every conversation here. The nation they once knew that blended north and south – however imperfectly – no longer exists. I can’t help but remember conversations with ethnic Russians in eastern and southern Ukraine or a child of a Belarusian father and a Georgian mother in the years immediately after the fall of the Soviet Union. There’s a reason why some people in the former Soviet Union still refer to themselves jokingly as “Soviet.” Sometimes extinguished identities are the only ones that make sense.

These identity questions are especially strong for northern Sudanese Christians. Before the separation, Christians composed a substantial portion of the overall population of the country. The secession of the predominantly Christian south has left a much smaller and more vulnerable Christian community. Recent government announcements and media content seem to convey the sense that Sudan is now a completely Muslim nation, that Christianity has disappeared. This is far from true. Although statistics are hard to come by, Christian leaders suspect that roughly 5-15% of today’s Sudan remains Christian, with the largest percentage living in the Nuba Mountains along the border with South Sudan and in the Khartoum area. These are distributed among Episcopal, Presbyterian, Coptic, Catholic, Pentecostal, and other communities, among whom there is a surprising and encouraging amount of cooperation. Uncertainties were deepened when the government cancelled the national holiday that had been celebrated at Christmas before the separation. The future is uncertain. Although Sudan retains one of the largest and most dynamic Arabic-speaking churches in the Middle East, it is not yet clear what a (northern) Sudanese Christian identity will look like. Although Christians continue to gather openly for worship and Christian institutions like the seminary I visited today function openly and with government recognition, the future is deeply uncertain. Christian leaders are called upon to exercise great wisdom.

It was deeply encouraging to meet church leaders receiving further training in a Protestant seminary, as well as a number of their teachers. These men and women love their nation and their neighbors. As in most of the world where people of various religions rub shoulders, they coexist and enjoy fellowship with people of other faiths, congratulating them on their religious holidays just as their Muslim friends and neighbors visit them to congratulate Christians at Christmas. This is all part of the rich texture of life together.

The world is changing more rapidly by the day. Change is challenging for everyone. It seems to me, however, that few have had to face the kind of changes that “the separation” poses for the people of Sudan.

Khartoum, Sudan

Some cities grab you at once with their beauty. Istanbul, Rio de Janeiro, Budapest, Hong Kong, and Cape Town come to mind. Khartoum is certainly not that kind of city. Although the confluence of the Blue Nile and the White Nile is indeed dramatic, it is masked in the dusty chaos of this modern city. There is another kind of city that doesn’t have the immediate romance I describe above, but can grow on someone as they become more familiar with it, discovering its hidden melodies and mysteries. Sao Paulo, Bucharest, Moscow, and Cairo fit in this second category for me. Perhaps Khartoum with its stately colonial buildings, tree-shaded sidewalks, and tea ladies fits there as well.

I visit in the midst of the short Khartoum “winter.” This means dry weather and average highs in the mid 80s Fahrenheit (summer means average highs of 107!). Much like Egypt, Sudan for the most part draws its life from the Nile, with life clustering along the wide banks of the river. Khartoum is not an ancient city in itself, although it lies at the southern edge of the Egyptian/Nile cultural zone with millennia of history. The city sits at the confluence of the Blue Nile (with its origins in Ethiopia) and the White Nile (with its origins in Uganda and Rwanda). The oldest part of Khartoum (a row of government ministries, mostly), faces the Blue Nile right before the confluence.

Since I arrived a bit before my colleague (who joins me today), I spent Sunday morning exploring the city a bit. The owner of my hotel suggested a walk along the Nile Avenue to the National Museum. I had pictured something akin to elegant corniche of Cairo, Alexandria, or Beirut. This wasn’t that. Instead it was a sea of flowing traffic with interrupted sidewalks. As in much of Africa and Asia, pedestrian traffic mixes in along the edges of the traffic.

The National Museum of Sudan contains many individual pieces that would be the centerpiece of a museum in America or Europe, including ancient Neolithic artifacts, Egyptian tombs and art galore, and brilliant artifacts of Nubian and Merotic civilizations that flourished in northern Sudan into the modern era. While the staff are doing their best (admission is about US25 cents), the whole place feels kind of like an artifact itself. At one point, I found myself wishing I’d brought a flashlight…

The highlight for me was the exhibit about “the Christian era,” or Nubian Christianity. While poorly lit and at times labeled in English script small enough to tire the eyes, the frescos presented were amazing. Ancient Nubia, which those who know more than I say is referenced biblically as Kush or Ethiopia (distinct from modern-day Ethiopia) stretched from what is now southern Egypt to the regions just north of present Khartoum. This was a culturally rich region that formed an integral and at times a leading part of Ancient Egypt. Christianity came to the region as early as the fifth century and several Nubian kingdoms adopted Christianity as the official religion in the sixth. Christianity flourished here with influence from both the Egyptian Copts and the Byzantine Orthodox until the late medieval period. Some evidence suggests that missions from this Nubian heartland established Christian communities as far afield as what are now Chad and the Sahel region of West Africa. Small Christian communities continued to function into the eighteenth century, although most churches fell to ruin long before this.

The magnificent paintings from the Cathedral at Faras (near what is now the Sudan-Egypt border) compose the majority of the collection in Khartoum. The paintings were remarkably well preserved under the sand and were excavated by a Polish expedition in the 1960s shortly before the whole area disappeared under Lake Nasser after the construction of the great dam at Aswan. Beyond their beauty, they also raise a number of interesting questions. At least one painting of the nativity draws on both canonical and apocryphal gospels for subject matter. At least two depict the Trinity as a single body with three heads. In short, there are many questions for students of African Christianity and eastern theology. What I find perhaps most interesting is the value of Nubian Christianity in helping to better understand the faith’s extension both eastward and southward from Jerusalem. Until quite recently, standard church history has told of the extension northward and westward, largely ignoring (or certainly dedicating less energy to) the study of the growth and flowering of Christianity east through what is now Iran and Central Asia into China and India and south toward at least Nubia and Ethiopia. The focus has been primarily on the church’s Protestant and Catholic manifestations, with interest in Orthodoxy decreasing after the Great Schism. It is good to see a number of people reframing these historical questions, drawing on rich resources. Certainly, the displays here in Khartoum have an interesting part to play in thinking about truly global Christianity.

Unfortunately, my accompanying photos are “trapped” on my camera without a proper USB cord to transfer them. Attempts to include one from Wikipedia seem thwarted by internet. Perhaps later...