Previously, the missionary and his companions arrived in Lafon hoping to free Father Joseph Okello, only to find that peace needed a gentler touch than any of them expected. Bishop Taban brought Joseph and Commander William together without turning either man into a loser, and Joseph agreed to remain for one more week before leaving safely for Nairobi. After a shared feast and a warm farewell, the visitors flew away humbled by what they had seen, while the missionary was left wondering whether true peacemaking began by refusing to see another person as an enemy.
Together with some Sudanese friends I am sitting in the dark under the beautiful star spangled sky in Yambio (southern Sudan). It is quiet; the sounds of the African evening, the crickets and the muffled beat of drums in the distance belong to that silence. We drink freshly made orange juice; oranges are ripe at this time. I have tried to tell my friends how I fared since we sat here together last year. I remember it was the time of the mango harvest and that we were eating them together. There is something peaceful about the evening and my friends, too, radiate a certain calmness and contentment. The recent harvest was good: without much outside help they had even been able to feed the more than 50,000 refugees who had returned from Congo. Sudan now seems a safer place than Congo. Those refugees have begun to set up their own gardens. Shortly the hospital in Yambio will start its activities again. It all sounds very hopeful, even though the rays of light are not as many as the stars.
Suddenly there is the sound of gunshots and people screaming. Frightened, we listen to that cruel disturbance of the calmness. Father Justin gets up and goes towards the noise. The screaming stops. We only hear a man carrying on a bit. Some ten minutes later a gun is fired empty. Uncertain we stand together, not knowing what to do. Fortunately Justin soon returns. A drunken Dinka soldier, not hailing from this area, had fired at a few people.
Thank God no one was hit! Justin tells us he had hidden behind a tree, had tried to strike up a conversation with the gunman and had asked him to hand over the gun. The drunken soldier refused but eventually emptied the gun, firing into the air. Then he had been taken home by some bystanders. In the nick of time a minor tribal war had been prevented. There is not much left of our peaceful evening.
The incident loosens up the tongues. Instead of positive stories I am now told how many things keep going wrong. People fulminate at soldiers of other tribes, even though it is just as often soldiers of the local tribe who have deserted who make the neighbourhood unsafe. The situation in Sudan has not improved much since my visit last year. As a result of the good harvest and the cease-fire proclaimed by the government to allow the aid organizations the opportunity to take food to the victims of hunger in Bahr el Ghazal, there are not many deaths from starvation at this moment, but the next hunger period is already very near. But the cease-fire does not imply that the government has stopped bombing civilian targets: even the hospital at Yei was bombed three times. Angry and gloomy, my friends wonder when it will be Yambio’s turn to get hit again. Some of them want anti-aircraft guns; the tone of the conversation turns aggressive. I am told of the rumour that the government uses the cease-fire to regroup its troops and provide them with arms. Why does the international community not do anything? Why do they only make a move when dying babies are shown on television? Their reproach implies fear and powerlessness. Will it never stop? Is the situation really hopeless? On the one hand there is a conference going on to bring about peace between the Nuer and the Dinka, and at the same time a small war has started again between the SPLA and the local Didinga. The soldiers, too, are fed up with the long war without payment; some have become common robbers.
I hear that Bishop Paride Taban is trying to mediate in the latest clash in his diocese. He went into the mountains to talk to the local people who had sought refuge there, and accompanied by a few leaders he came down to discuss matters with the SPLA. Some in my company think he is too soft: he ought to take a more assertive stance by pressing charges against these abuses.
A few days later I have a talk with the bishop in Lokichokio. He is here for the annual diocesan meeting. It was decided to hold the meeting here in Kenya because the presence of so many cars in Sudan might provoke an aerial bombardment. Paride Taban has great hopes that the conflict between the local population and the SPLA will soon be settled. He talks about his plans to gather a group of people from the educational sector and health services and to train them in trauma counselling. Children have been traumatized by the war, and the mothers too have suffered serious emotional damage. The children, but also the mothers, should be helped in coming to terms with their traumatic experiences. Peace must begin from below, says Paride Taban; people must be taught to keep the peace with themselves and with each other. He tells me about the many problems in his diocese, but nevertheless keeps a positive view of things. I ask him if he is being realistic. After all, he too knows all the negative stories that I have heard these last few days. Surely he will not deny that they are true. Tomorrow he has to address the people working in his diocese. Is he going to tell them things are not so bad after all, and that all is well with Sudan?
No, he has no intention to say that all is well. But he is not quite sure yet what he does want to tell. He has been thinking about it, though. ‘No man is wise by himself’, he says. ‘It is good to share one’s ideas with someone else. By discussing them with others one can sharpen them somewhat’. Whilst thinking aloud about his speech for tomorrow he asks me to be his whetstone.
‘Look’ he says, ‘people are often like flies: they look for dirt, and the more refuse has been collected the happier they seem to be. They fly from one pile of dung to the other. That is how they spread disease and infirmity and foul up the entire community. Some people become blind, others deaf or fall victim to another illness. Thus people may even cause each other’s death. If no one warns them they might even go after a corpse being taken away for burial. They might be buried together with that corpse.’
Now there are people who want to make a clean sweep of all those flies. Not an easy thing to do! I remember going for a picnic once with a group of youngsters years ago. While walking through the forest we came to an open space and one lad said: ‘Look, what a nice open spot! We can picnic and even camp here. Come and have a look, there is not a single fly about. It is the nicest place you can imagine.’ However another boy said: ‘That may well be so, but we will have to relieve ourselves somewhere and you bet there will be flies then’. Paride Taban cannot hide a faint smile at this thought. He is too much of an African not to know there is no world without flies. Of course, one must try to keep one’s house and surroundings clean to limit the number of flies as much as possible, but they will always keep coming.
Then he continues his story.
‘Fortunately there are not only flies, there are also bees. Do I know how bees live?’ he wonders. I tell him that to me bees are a symbol of hard work, the busy bee. That sounds quite reasonable to him. He is not against hard work, but it is not the first thing that comes to his mind when he thinks about bees. ‘Bees are quite different from flies’, he says. ‘In fact bees only look for what is good for themselves, nectar and pollen. You might even call them selfish. But the beautiful thing about it is that they do not keep it to themselves only, it is for the benefit of the entire colony. They even show each other the way to the tasty nectar in the flowers. Together they collect sufficient to feed on, not only then, but they also make provisions for the time when flowers are hard to find. In Sudan we are now in the dry season: there are not many flowers now. Still, there will be a time when they blossom forth again and the bees will perform their special job then. That special job does not only consist of collecting nectar. More important may well be that during their activities they carry the pollen from one flower to the other. Thus the bees pollinate the plants and the trees, which in their turn can bear fruit.’
He looks at me to see if I have anything to add to this. No, I have nothing to add. The choice is ours: are we going to work like flies or bees! That is the question he will put to his people tomorrow. I have promised him to put this question also to my own people. When we sat there together silently for a moment, I dared to think again that peace is possible.
