Herod lives
Humphrey, Marj
HEROD LIVES THE STORY FROM SUDAN MARJ HUMPHREY Last year, in Nimule, a village in southern Sudan, Christmas burst upon me with a joy unlike any I have ever experienced. Its memory still...
...One parishioner and his wife proudly bore their newborn child to the altar They became our Holy Family We heard the Nativity Gospel read and translated into different languages for each tribe, we heard how Jesus was born in exile, too, to parents far from home Then the Offertory began From the back of the church, fourteen girls, resplendent in colorful cloth, began to sing, and then slowly move toward the altar in an intncate dance, strewing flower petals on all of us along the way Our girls, my possessive heart cned, swelling with an unexpected maternal pnde They had kept their dance a secret from us, their gift, practiced clandestinely for days They blushed and beamed afterwards as we heaped our praises on them for their beautiful offenng...
...Sudden noises evoked startled responses Every far-off sound of an engine brought terrified silence, and activity would cease as everyone listened intently...
...Everyone fled to the nearest bunker, ditch, or whatever low spot could be found Although the village had not been bombed since March, the Antinov made a cruel habit of appeanng unexpectedly two or three times a week, striking sickening fear into everyone I had never before experienced a bomber directly overhead...
...Shortly after Chnstmas I had to return to Nairobi, Kenya, for several months of administrative duties...
...As night descended, the crowd grew quiet, and one by one each person placed the end of a stick into the paschal candle to carry a bit of the Light home with them...
...It is ternfying The moment when it flies directly overhead, the plane seems to hang there, indefinitely, the seconds are elongated, suspended for what seems like an hour...
...But last December, it had been blessedly quiet in Nimule...
...Half-heartedly and preoccupied, I picked up the readings for the day, Jesus on the road to Emmaus: '"Are you the only one who has not heard of the events of the last two days?' they asked him, their eyes downcast 'He was the one we thought could save us....'" Two days later, I again boarded a small plane for Nairobi...
...I grew nauseous, lightheaded...
...But they were all singing their hearts out with joy over the birth of the Savior We settled on stools or on mats on the ground, and Mass began...
...People had been arnving for hours, walking and singing in eager anticipation We were to begin by processing behind the cross, decorated with the only festive matenal available—streamers of blue toilet paper As we began to file around the church, singing to the beat of the drums, I suddenly saw those around me differently They were all people I had grown accustomed to seeing in vanous places throughout the days, but never before had I seen them with such a cumulative view Now I found myself surrounded by broken bodies: limbs distorted from polio, limbs misshapen from untreated and poorly healed fractures, stumps that are the feet of the lepers, young amputees with legs lost to bullets or land mines, and one man crawling along the ground with his hands, dragging his twisted, useless legs behind...
...They had bad news...
...A few weeks before, the "dry season offensive" had begun in earnest some 100 kilometers away...
...Some were orphans, others were sent by family for safety and the hope of some education They lived in a mudbnck house next to ours on the mission compound, and we became family I loved walking home from the clinic each afternoon, passing their house as they sat out on straw mats sorting nee or chopping onions for dinner...
...So fear always increases in southern Sudan in the dry season But it had intensified over the last three years The SPLA itself had splintered into factional groups along tribal lines, causing a new wave of fear and terror that left in its wake a dispirMARJ HUMPHREY is a physician assistant who has worked with the Maryknoll Mission Association of the Faithful in Kenya and Sudan ited, demoralized population, now in constant flight from both northern bombs and southern tnbal slaughter...
...They left me shocked and stunned, as they have left the entire world As I wnte now, in the second week of Advent, 650,000 people are reported to be displaced in southern Sudan and another 400,000 have fled to neighbonng countnes...
...In Nimule, there will be little singing this Christmas...
...According to reports from London, 15,000 members of Khartoum's Popular Defense Force, joined by Islamic militants from Afghanistan and Tunisia, have launched this year's "final offensive" against what they call the "cross-worshiping" South Aid agencies say that the new offensive could create hundreds of thousands of new refugees in the Horn of Africa...
...Khartoum's troops had broken through another stronghold and were now dangerously close to the three large refugee camps an hour north of us...
...By 5 p.m a large crowd had gathered and excitement was mounting There were to be sixty baptisms at the Vigil, mostly infants and children, but several adults as well...
...Sometimes the sound turned out to be only a far-off lorry approaching on the road...
...Little Nyambiling was in a refugee camp in Uganda...
...I asked "How can there be no story''" And she began to tell us the news that hadjust begun reaching the wires, the news of another African country not so far away ..Rwanda...
...It was in this atmosphere that Holy Week arrived Plans were made for the Easter Vigil...
...I left on one of the small relief flights amidst hearty good-bys and promises to return as soon as I could, little Nyambiling asking if she could come with me n March 1, 1994, the village of Nimule was bombed, heralding a new season of terror...
...I hoped for each of them that their next road would be to Emmaus...
...The horrifying stones of Rwanda continued to unfold as the weeks went by and I sat numbly at my desk in Nairobi...
...The camps would have to be evacuated immediately, and we should prepare for a massive movement of refugees through our area as they headed toward a clearing fifteen miles to the east of us which was hastily being prepared as a camp We, ourselves, should be on evacuation alert, ready for departure at a moment's notice...
...I recall hearing a government official on the BBC respond to Dr...
...The crowd at the clinic screamed and women frantically searched and grabbed for their children out playing...
...They were recently well-documented by Gaspar Biro, UN Special Rapporteur, whose scathing report cited widespread torture, disappearances, killing, slave-trading, and trafficking in children...
...What1...
...Many of them had started treatment before, but had never been able to stay in one place long enough to complete the six- to ninemonth course of medication needed for a cure A small school for girls had opened, run by an extraordinary Ugandan nun who had been forced to relocate it through repeated evacuations Fourteen girls arrived over the course of a few weeks when word got out that the school had been reopened in Nimule...
...sometimes it was a relief flight bringing goods But sometimes the distinct, low, gnnding drone of Khartoum's Antinov bomber became unmistakable, and then, even before the plane could be seen, people panicked...
...For the past twelve years, the annual dry season has meant the time when the northern-based Islamic government in Khartoum has been able to deploy its ground troops against the renegade South There, black African Christian and animist southerners, via the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), have battled the imposition of the strict Islamic shana law by the northern, predominantly Arabic government Khartoum, backed by both Iran and Iraq, sees a victory over the South as part of a holy war intended to Islanucize all of sub-Saharan Africa The Khartoum government's human rights abuses are legion...
...When I did it was to a village I barely recognized The buildings were the same, but the people were not The girls were gone, sent away for their own safety...
...The clinic was packed, but those we couldn't see one day returned patiently the next The number of TB patients under treatment reached 500...
...But wouldn't such a large crowd be easily visible to the Antinov should it pass over1...
...The SPLA army began a kasha—forced conscnption of all able-bodied males They pulled the men out 9 of their beds at night, took them to the rebel barracks, and beat them into submission...
...I acknowledged the introduction but I was preoccupied As the plane taxied the open field that was the airstrip, I couldn't get the grim, overwhelming image of what I hadjust seen and was leaving behind out of my head Then the plane ascended, veered sharply, and rapidly left Sudan behind As it did so, I heard the reporter mumble to anyone who was listening, "Do you believe what you have just seen''" We all silently shook our heads...
...They earned their children and their few possessions—a chicken, a half-bag of grain, a cooking pot, a sheet of plastic tarp for shelter...
...As I boarded the six-seater, I was briefly introduced to a young woman passenger whose name I recognized, she was the BBC reporter whose fine reports from Sudan I had often heard...
...Over the next few days, we witnessed a massive, awesome human event: Thousands of Sudanese, walking m eene silence and looking straight ahead...
...Tension was palpable...
...Teen-aged boys were not exempt The men and boys took to hiding in the bush at night...
...Or perhaps it was that I had not expected such joy amidst such uncertainty and sorrow But for me, the Word was made Flesh December came with its usual stifling summer heat, made more oppressive by the proximity of the Nile Sudan, the largest country in Africa, means "swamp," so named because of vast marshy areas that are impassable during the rainy season But this was the dry season, and with it an ominous fear settles over southern Sudan...
...We cheered and thanked God: A cloud cover meant little likelihood of the bomber The atmosphere remained tense, but slowly people began to arrive...
...We awoke to gathering storm clouds...
...Holy Saturday brought its own miracle...
...D 10...
...This time there were no hearty good-bys, no promises of return...
...It would have to be held on Holy Saturday afternoon, since it was not safe for people to be out at night...
...As the baptismal waters began to flow, drumming, singing, and dancing took over and the excitement reached a fever pitch Two women fell to the ground, and several men rushed forward and began a ntual-like waving of their hands over their heads- "They can feel the evil going out of them, and the men are helping to hasten the evil spirits' departures," I was told...
...With chilling calm, he likened Biro to Salman Rushdie, and promised that Biro would be held responsible for his insults to Islam...
...my body shook And the response never lessened with each repeat expenence With the increase in military activity, however, a new kind of terror was added...
...Everyone knew the bombing was a "softening up" for the ground offensive that would follow I was able to return to Nimule just before Holy Week...
...And now there is no story here," she said...
...Its memory still unleashes in me the same set of physical responses I felt at the time, pounding heart, a burning fullness of eyes and throat akin to sorrow, a restlessness and excitement that beg for release Perhaps I was just caught up with the celebratory crowd in Nimule...
...In fact, at the small medical clinic where I worked we had settled into a routine that gave a thin veneer of normalcy The population, which had fled the bloody infighting and bombings several times over the previous two years (some of them having traversed the huge country on foot, to Ethiopia and back again) had finally been able to settle somewhat Food and medicines were getting through with some regularity...
...The rest of the Mass was ajoyous, even raucous celebration of victory over evil...
...Sometimes they would 8 show me their lessons for the day, and sometimes Rachel or Lucy would work with me on the Arabic phrases I was trying to learn for my clinic work In the midst of it all was Nyambiling, a five-year-old orphan girl who had captured everyone's heart—including my own She had been sent to the mission a year earlier by her ailing grandmother who could no longer care for her Her father had been killed, her mother had died of TB in one of the refugee camps, and TB had racked Nyambihng's own small body But now she was a healthy, mischievous, enterprising httle survivor, and very much our belle of the ball1 The older girls, ranging in age from seven to fourteen years, protected and cared for her as if she were their own School was out for the Chnstmas holidays Each afternoon the girls would come to our house and take turns opening the appropnate little "door" for that date on the African Advent calendar They delighted in each small picture, usually an animal, fruit, or flower One night just before Chnstmas, we got out a miniature paper Christmas tree, eighteen inches high, a fnend had sent us from the States It had tiny ornaments, and six colored lights that twinkled with the aid of an AA battery...
...After Mass the children, adorned in traditional dress, performed dances and played games...
...but if they were discovered and tried to escape, they were shot m the leg By May, ten-year-olds were being taken to the front, and two of the workers at the clinic had their ten- and eleven-year-old sons abducted at night from home...
...I can still see the glowing ends of the sticks in the dark, starless night, scattering into the bush like a thousand fireflies aster morning dawned sunny and bright and the festive mood continued...
...I wondered if I would ever see any of these people again and where they would all end up...
...Always, they walked at night, out of fear of the bomber, each new wave visible from the mission only in the grey, predawn light...
...But then, into the middle of it all, came an official UN Landrover...
...Biro's report...
...What began as a trickle became a stream, then a mighty river: 30,000 people, walking barefoot and silent down a winding, hilly road, past the mission to somewhere beyond...
...Most of the bombs landed in empty fields, but a twelve-year-old girl gathenng firewood was killed I was not there when it happened...
...On Easter Tuesday, the second morning of the evacuation, I returned to my room feeling frustrated and helpless...
...Some of us laughed at its tackiness, but the girls loved that tree, and each put an ornament on as we explained to them our American custom Chnstmas Eve came, a beautiful starlit night, perfect for the outdoor Mass...
Vol. 121 • December 1994 • No. 22
