Drowning Bees

I'm watching bees drown in my tea. Sitting outside with my computer in my lap under a white tent the bees swarm, buzz, and eventually their lust for water kills them. When the rains stop, the bees come out in full force looking for every bit of moisture they can steal. Shifting the bodies of drowned bees out of your tea is an inconvenience but not one any greater than the hee-hawing of donkeys outside the tent at 3am, the flutter of a couple hens beneath your feet, the bugs that swarm continuously around your body, walking 50 yards from your tent to the latrine, or the dozen frogs that join you for a bucket bath.

Going for a run outside of the camp, it struck me odd at how similar and different this run is from my familiar trails in North Carolina. My legs still get tired, my weak ankle still shifts, my breath still gets heavy. Even my mind is the same. During the run, my mind wanders to my family and friends. I start day dreaming of the future, of the things I could do, of the places I could go, of the challenges I could take on. Then I resolve for the thousandth time to work on contentment. I still check my watch to see if I'm going any faster than before. My thoughts wander to whatever boy I like that month before I transition into the usual accompanying internal power woman rant reminding myself that boys are dumb and I am invincible. I stutter verses I know. I pray throughout the run but in pieces. Pieces of prayer are lifted up in broken sentences on whatever person or topic is taking its turn in my head. I try to recite that old piece from MacBeth I used to know. At the end of the run, my mind is blank at last. Focusing on breathing and finishing.

I do not remember a run I ever regretted taking. I remember many that I didn't feel like taking at the start.

Some things are different though. To start, it's South Sudan. I'm running on a narrow foot trail. The rains are over and the grasses reach my shoulders. They are beginning to dry out and it won't be long before women, in all stages of age, pregnancy, nursing, and health, come to cut down these grasses to sell in the market. These dried grasses are used to make roofs and walls. The soil is black cotton soil which is nasty stuff. In the rains it becomes mud thick as concrete. In the dry season, it cracks and makes an uneven surface. The cracks are deep and ugly. It is difficult to run on this soil because of the continually changing surface. It's more like hopping from one piece of broken ground to another.

I feel wild and powerfully alone. 

The tall grasses slash at my uncovered calves. I return to find scratches to add to the myriad of new scars I have on my legs. I hear a bunch of kids ahead of me yelling the warning, "khawaja! khawaja!" They are telling each other that a foreigner is coming. A dozen 10 year old boys run past me smiling and laughing. They are coming from the river and holding their catches of a day. As they run past me playfully I do the kwawaja thing and jump at them smiling and laughing. They all scatter and scream with laughter. The kids around here find yelling jumping khawajas pretending to scare and chase them as eternally hilarious. I wonder if it's a stereotype really that beneficial for either party.

Back on the main road, some women laugh at me and pretend to join me as they hold up their long colorful wraps. I pass a bunch of women and children at a well - everyone freezes and stops to stare. An old man wearing a long white traditional Muslim gown and carrying his cane, starts to run with me shouting things in Arabic I don't understand. I laugh and encourage him along even pretending to race.

On this run, I think about the things I can't say in my formal writings. I can't say that sometimes I hate this place and sometimes I hate the people. Angry fire burns in me as I see once again a dozen men sitting lazily under a tree drinking tea and watching a little barefoot girl struggle barefoot with jerry cans of water at least twice as heavy as her own weight.

Although there are many admirable exceptions, in general, I find the men in this country to be largely useless. A jobless man who cannot feed any of his three wives and dozen children, sits under a tree all day taking tea. He expects that his pregnant wife will continue to go into the woods to cut trees and shape them into bundles of wood that can be sold. He expects that she will bear him children  until she physically cannot bear anymore. He expects that she build the home, make the money, grow the food, hand wash his clothes, care for the children, bring him tea under the tree, and have dinner for him when he wants. After all, he bought her, so he owns her and her duty is to serve him.

Miscarriages are common among these women - at every stage of pregnancy or nursing (and they are always in one state or the other) they perform heavy manual labor most American men will never even attempt.

The men don't understand that beating your wife, even it is because she spoke to another man, is still violence against women. A recent campaign to discourage violence against women by a local NGO was laughed at by many of the local men. They said that wasn't an issue in Maban - beating your wife if she deserves it isn't violence. After all, he bought her.

I want to spew anger and punch the dozenth policeman who tries to make up a reason to get money from the foreigners. The policemen are the last people I would want to meet while in trouble - in fact they are often the ones causing the trouble. Extortion and bribery are as common a means of salary as anything else. There is nothing more frightening in an evening than to be stopped at a checkpoint by policemen or soldiers claiming authority. Every time I see an AK-47, which is maybe half a dozen times  a day, I think about how easily I could die. Bang. The end.

Men who are scarcely more than thugs drive around Juba in Hummers. They didn't earn this money. It came from money embezzled from taxes and foreign aid packages.

I stood in line at a little corner market and watched as a big soldier handed his heavy full bags to a little girl. She shuffled her feet as she struggled to keep the bags above the ground. He didn't notice as pulled out another cigarette and walked ahead of her empty handed.

These are things that make me hate these people, well, these men. I burn angrier every time I see it. And in the meantime, the little girl carrying groceries will be sold in a few years for a dozen cows that are given to her father. She will be the next in a long line of women bearing children until her life is eventually broken enough by work to end. While the soldiers smoke their cigarettes, another child dies, another woman is beaten, another boy is taught that multiple wives means he's a big man, another girl is kept from school, and another year passes.

The National Bank makes different rules than the Ministry of Labor. One issues a circular saying the national currency is the pound and the pound must be used to pay salaries. Another issues a circular saying that all salaries must be paid in USD. The government continually makes up new and conflicting laws. Local commissioners set up checkpoints and taxes on NGOs while the national government says such things are illegal. The local governments do everything they can to  get every dime from the NGOs who work in their counties providing free services to their citizens. A local government official says all refugee employees in the hospital must be fired immediately and replaced with local employees. There is no thought given to the fact that firing all of the qualified refugee medical staff and replacing them with local staff untrained in medicine would force the hospital to shut down.  A local official arrests all of the staff distributing free UN food to refugees and refuses to release them until the UN food is given to him, personally, to manage. There's no doubt he intends to make a nice profit from this food.

The South Sudan representative to the UN voted for giving Palestine observer status in the UN. Most of the South Sudan population doesn't know or care. But in an interview he essentially said, "I don't know why it's such a big deal. France voted for it also." Regardless of Palestine, he seems forgot that his people has been fighting everything Palestine represents for generations and has consistently argued against its formation. Maybe he was the uneducated nephew of a former guerrilla general who is now the minister of something.

After a year here, these are the things that make me just vicious with frustration. To be fair, there are good people trying really hard to turn this country around. There are honest men who are good to their wives. There are women who insist on learning to read. The children are eternally happy.

Our work here literally and undeniably saves lives. That in itself is enough of a reason to keep working.

I don't really hate it. I love it also. There is hope it just sometimes grows a little dim and sometimes I grow a little tired.

Kind of like the bees in my tea. They are drowning in the very thing that sustains them.