Homestay

3 Women, 2 Scorpions and 1 more Verena

After having finally arrived in Sudan on the 13th of February, Catrin and I did one week of LAMP (language acquisition made practical) and then went on our homestays with a Sudanese family. My family lives a bit outside Torit on a compound that encompasses about 10 houses - all related to each other. It was a challenging and exciting week!! My family didn’t know any English and I only had my rusty bits of Arabic to fend with, so communicating was a bit difficult – as you can imagine. However, I feel like my Arabic has quadrupled during that week. Now, let me tell you more about my heading: I slept with Jasmin and Mary in the mud hut, two Sudanese women. One night, there was a sudden commotion in the room as Jasmin saw a scorpion crawling out behind the wardrobe. Sure enough, where one is there is another also, and the next two hours were spent trying to kill these two without getting stung (a scorpion sting is not fatal, but it hurts like it would be, so people don’t like them!). Anyway, the first night of homestay, we went visiting a compound nearby, where the woman (Mary) had just had a baby. Mary is a lovely woman and has now become my language helper for the time being. At the end of the evening and after much marvelling at the newborn baby, Mary suddenly looked up at me and said: “It is a blessing that you have come to my house today. I will name my daughter after you.” So now there is one more Verena in Torit – Mary will probably never know, what a gift and blessing she gave to!!!

Tales of Travel in Sudan

These past days I’ve spent in a place called Magwe, about 3 hours from Torit in the ‘bush,’ at a women’s conference of the Africa Inland Church. We had about 30 women attending from all over Eastern Equatoria and I enjoyed the opportunity of getting to know the women better and to see how and what is taught at these conferences. I have to confess that I still find ‘dried fish’ and ‘greens’ (the local vegetable) hard to digest, but God helped me eat and safe face . On the way back to Torit on Sunday, my tyre changing skills were really put to a test, as I accidentally drove over a little tree stump hidden in a bunch of flowers on the road. The first tyre burst and I had to change the tyre then. Unfortunately, the second tyre already had a little puncture in it and I had to stop again after an hour. I called the Torit base and the Nobles came out with another spare tyre and a pump - praise God for satphones as I would have been stuck there for quite a while otherwise with 6 women and two children in the car... Well, in Sudan, you can’t just call the AAA to pick you up by the roadside – at least, I now know pretty well how to change tyres :-)