Sunday, and More About Saturday

It is Sunday morning, and today marks the beginning of national elections (to run through Tuesday).Churches were asked to meet, and finish, earlier, so as to provide fewer distractions from voting and to provide fewer assemblies of people who might be “stirred up” to make some kind of trouble. In this area, at least, there seems to be no doubt as to who the main winners will be. Also, we sense absolute no indications of any tensions here.

Southern Sudan is semi-autonomous relative to the northern part of the country. They fought an 18-year civil war, which ended in – I think – 2005, against domination by the Muslim government of Sudan. [The South is predominantly animist and “Christian,” and so is a proper target for Muslim jihad.]

There is always some potential for violence at election time, but we do not expect any here. If there were violence, it would not be directed at us. However, we mainly spend the next couple of days trying to stay out of public places.

We may try to go out past Peloc, to another village. Besides the animals I listed that we saw on Friday, there is also the possibility of seeing hyena, lion, leopard, crocodiles and even elephant and buffalo. Plus all sorts of birds.

Here at out “camp,” we have several beautiful birds. Some are about the size of blackbirds, but with brilliant iridescent blue or green. They have started coming to water that I have put out for them in a half-plastic-bottle near the water spigot. There is also another, much more spectacular, bright blue bird – larger than an American blue jay – that we frequently see. I fear I will have great difficulty getting a decent picture of that one.


There are also skinks and agama (“red head”) lizards here like we had in Nigeria, but the Red Heads seem to reach only about half the size of the Nigerian ones. I have not seen any snakes yet, but I know that they have here a lot of them, including various cobras, both black and green mambas and puff adders.


Yesterday, when we met with the chiefs and with the police commissioner, both said that what this area needed most is a secondary school for the children. They have primary schools, but when a kid completes that, he has no way to go further. They asked us to pray specifically for such a school. Please join us in praying for this.


Also, unless the rains come soon, and strong, there is great potential here for famine. Last year was a bad year, so there are no food reserves to get the people through another one. Please join us in praying for the rains to begin (even if that ends my sleeping under the stars).