After a bumpy landing on the dusty strip at Torit, the missionary stepped out into the blistering heat and was quickly waved through by a guard proudly wearing a T‑shirt given to him by Bishop Paride Taban. It felt like a familiar welcome, and by evening the missionary was sat under the guava trees with the bishop and a few local priests, sipping tea and listening to stories of long journeys, close calls, and the quiet courage that had carried Paride through years of war. Nothing fancy—just warm laughter, simple hospitality, and the sense that, once again, he’d arrived exactly where he was meant to be.
The church in Yambio is packed with people; everybody has come today. But then, today is a special occasion. It is nearly six months since Holy Mass was last celebrated here. Then, as the SPLA approached, many people who had government jobs and also the priests fled from the force of arms to the Central African Republic or Zaïre. The expatriates, including myself, had been the first to leave. Only the common folk, who possessed nothing and therefore had nothing to lose, stayed behind. Many of them had hid in the forest. No one knew what this liberation by the SPLA entailed. Here in Yambio it was not so bad; nobody was killed. In other places it was quite different.
The people gave us a warm welcome when we arrived here a few days ago and we spent two long days listening to them. They told us about the ransacking by the retreating government troops. Some of the Arab traders had booby-trapped their shops before joining the fleeing government troops. Then there was the frightening waiting for the liberators, the SPLA, about whom such terrifying stories had been told. The looting of the Arab-owned shops by the SPLA and the civilians had ended in a fight over the spoils. The people got into a fuddle of excitement and looted everything, including the mission and the bishop’s house. Then came the sobering up: ‘What have we done?’ They told us of their disappointment that the priests had fled. No, they did not offer this as justification for looting the mission, but without the priests and their bishop and the civil servants, the town was given over to mob rule. Nobody knew in which direction to go. Families were disrupted. Half a family fled to Zaïre and the other half was too late to get away and had stayed in Yambio. They showed us the bishop’s ransacked house. In the room that had once been mine, there was a cupboard forced open, papers strewn all over. They had not taken my breviary, but it was left to be eaten by ants.
It is a few days since Bishop Paride Taban, Matthew Samusa, a Sudanese priest, and I arrived here. Over the radio several pleas for help had been sent to us in Torit. Last year this area was my field of work, and so Bishop Paride thought I was the man to go and find out in what way the churches could help in the district. I am not much of a hero; I did not know whether it would be possible to get here. In Maridi heavy fighting was still going on, and I would have to go through that town in order to reach Yambio. The bishop saw my doubts and, after consulting his vicar-general, offered to come with me. With him, I would dare to try. It happens often that he gives me the courage to venture on roads I would not try alone.
Over a week ago we set out from Torit in a Toyota Landcruiser. Some people told us the journey was impossible. Bishop Paride answered: ‘We can only say it is impossible when we have tried. No one has tried so far.’
The first days through North Uganda were not without problems, but we made progress every day. It was only at Rosiulu, a small town between Yei and Maridi, that the real problems began. When we approached this small town, SPLA soldiers shouted at us to get off the road as quickly as possible. As I steered to the side of the road, our car was completely covered with branches by the soldiers. When we got out of the car we saw a bomber circling overhead and we ran for cover into the bush. When we heard the plane departing we left our cover and the soldiers congratulated us for arriving safely in Rosiulu. Now we had a chance to look around. There was a big army camp of grass huts along the road. The soldiers, poorly dressed but well armed, explained that the battle for Maridi was in full swing. The government had been trying to bomb them the last few days. At the same time the government was trying to supply its troops in Maridi from the air. Planes dropped food and ammunition in Maridi for the government troops and with their bombs they tried to bombard SPLA positions.
A young commander receives us. Yes, he does know Bishop Paride Taban. Everybody in South Sudan seems to know him. Yes, he had heard on the radio that we were on our way and he thinks our intention to visit the church in Yambio is very praiseworthy. Still this man looks worried, as if he would have been much happier if we had not come. He is responsible for our safety. He asks us to give him some time, and meanwhile to be his guests. We are given a captain’s quarters: a grass roof, a bed made from a few sticks in the ground, with a contraption that looks like a mattress made from papyrus reeds. The food is very simple, although they probably offer us the best they have.
Every now and then the commander visits us; the government troops are trying to escape from Maridi and he does not want us to run into them. For a moment we consider returning to Uganda and trying to reach Yambio through Zaïre. I see from the commander’s face that it is a bad idea; he starts talking in Arabic to the bishop. Later I hear that on no account would he have let us go back along the road as I might betray their position. But he also tells us that he has been in touch with Dr John Garang himself, the chairman of the liberation movement, who has promised to find a way through for us.
For two days we live next to the ammunition bunkers while the bombers circle over our heads. It makes me restive and a bit nervous, but Paride is quite calmly practising a kind of ‘palaver’ apostolate among the soldiers. They talk about their families at home, they talk about this war; the soldiers are excited about capturing Maridi one of these days, but the bishop doubts whether there is a military solution to this war. He fully understands they want to win the war, but are they not forgetting to win the people as well?
Then, as evening falls, the commander comes to inform us that we can continue our journey to Yambio. A lorry with soldiers will drive ahead of us. The soldiers explain that I must keep exactly to the lorry’s tracks, even when the road gets bad. A few days ago a Land Rover ran into a mine. The lorry driver knows this road and thinks he can pick a way through the mines, although one never can be certain. I am at the wheel and feel very uncertain. When Paride Taban notices this, he says: ‘If a mistake is going to be made here, it had better be made by a Sudanese’. He offers to do the driving and I let him. Very calmly he follows the lorry in front of us. It is a road with many obstacles: we get stuck in a river, but manage to get out. Several times we leave the main track and we follow a path through the bush. In the distance, near Maridi, we hear an occasional gunshot.
Then, on a sharp tree-stump, the lorry gets a blow-out; it sounds like a shot in the night. From the bushes there is shooting all around us. The soldiers on the lorry have their guns at the ready, but do not return fire. We have put out the lights and use a flashlight to mount the spare tyre. The firing is getting closer; I think of the fleeing government troops, and I am scared. I feel the fear right in my bowels. Now I understand how the expression, ‘It scares the living shit out of him’, came into the English language.
Bishop Paride Taban stands beside the car, quiet, but very much on the alert. The firing must be from the SPLA, he thinks, otherwise the soldiers who are with us would be much more frightened. The soldiers whisper as they discuss the situation, and when the firing is on top of us they begin to sing loudly one of the SPLA military songs. The bullets cease singing around us and the attackers smile as they appear from the shrubs. Yes, they had not been sure whether these were their own troops or the enemy’s. They smile even more when told that they scared the wits out of that white man, me. A bit sheepishly I smile too. Fortunately, at Maridi it has been made clear that it is we who are coming, and not the enemy. Again we switch our lights off and we wait.
Then there is a radio message from Dr Garang himself. ‘In a couple of minutes, I’m going to chase these rats into their holes, and then you start driving. The government troops will have no time to fire at you, but whatever happens, keep driving.’ The bishop nods; he has driven at the front before. But that he is not quite at ease is clear from the fact that he shakes hands with me and says: ‘Garang’s guns cannot protect us in the end; let’s put our trust in the Lord’.
Suddenly a tremendous bombardment bursts out over Maridi and I can well imagine that every government soldier runs for safety into the shelters, having no time to fire at us. I would have liked to run into a dugout myself, but we are already on our way. The bishop follows the slithery track of the lorry. He cannot resist a smile when he sees me duck when another shell explodes over Maridi. I really wonder where he finds his strength and courage. It takes us more than half an hour to get through and around Maridi, protected by the shelling that goes on over our heads.
And so, relieved, we find ourselves on the road to Yambio. ‘This is your home’, says Paride, ‘You know the way here better than me’, and leaves me to do the driving; he refreshes himself with a few sips of water, and we continue our trip through the night to Yambio. I tell him that never in all my years in Africa have I been so scared as in the past few hours. He says something about not being able to do anything about fear: one must respect it. I ask him if he is never afraid. He does not give a direct answer. He just looks ahead. Maybe he thinks I should not ask things like that, but he lays his hand on my shoulder and allows me to share some of what goes on in his mind. Like every African he loves life. ‘Life is a very precious gift. If you grasp it or hold on to it with all your might, you will crush it. Hold it loosely in your hands, grateful for the gift, not in a forced manner. Oh, it’s true that it may slip away from you, but then at least you have not been the one to crush it.’
I ask him if he is reminding me of the Bible which also says something about he who tries to save his life, will lose it. It makes him laugh, but he thinks it interesting that Christ confirms what he has discovered, and what so many Africans know. Life is not just in our own hands. Then he sits back in his seat and five minutes later I notice that he has gently fallen asleep.
All that happened a few days ago. Now we stand face to face with the well-filled church in Yambio. The soldiers have come too. Paride starts his sermon. Almost timidly he thanks everyone for the warm welcome. He explains that we have not come with a carload of promises. ‘We have come to share God with you.’ A high-ranking soldier looks disappointed. Maybe he had expected something else. Earlier, the SPLA had requested medicine, seeds, school materials and lots of emergency relief. Paride speaks of making room in your heart for love. He tells them that he is well aware of all that happened here, and he does not gloss over it. He talks of making up with each other and forgiving each other. He can do this, because everyone knows that he has forgiven the SPLA, who held him prisoner. He does not only speak of those that werekilled, but of all the kinds of death caused by the war. All the sorrow and grief caused to people, the robberies, the broken relationships, all the suffering that cannot beundone: all these Paride calls ‘corpses’. The corpses should not be left lying around; they must be buried. ‘We bury our dead with respect and we don’t forget them’, he adds.
He descends from the sanctuary into the church aisles, stands among the people and explains that now the time has come for them to be strong, to stick together, to stand firm. All timidity has disappeared from his person, he is a stalwart figure in their midst as he explains what he means by being strong: often people do not know what strength they need. They throw a ball on the hard floor or against a wall and it bounces back into their faces. They throw harder and the ball bounces above their heads. Frustrated, they take a stone and throw it: the stone breaks or the floor breaks, or both. Is that the sort of strength we need to build up a new life? Paride thinks it is not and neither do the people who see about them the ruins that resulted from a fight to the finish. No, he does not believe in the ‘as strong as iron’ or ‘as hard as a rock’ approach. I am wondering what soft and strong image, at once yielding, soft and strong, he will come up with. The people too are hanging on his lips. ‘We must be as strong as what?’ he muses, and after a pregnant pause he answers his own question: ‘I think we must be as strong as cotton wool!’ The people here grow the cotton from which cotton wool is made, not what they would consider the most obvious symbol of strength. But for right repeats we must be as strong as cotton wool. Throw a ball into a heap of cotton fluff and it will not bounce back into your face; throw a stone and a stone will not break, neither will the floor.’ And he goes on about the fluff of the cotton plant they all know. Not far from here, in Znara, there was more for many years a thriving cotton industry. When the cotton ball is spun, you can make the strongest rope for binding things together. Didn’t they once make canvas in Nzara strong enough to hold off the heaviest rain? Some people nod in recognition. The bishop explains that, just like cotton wool, people too have great potential. Bishop Paride asks a lot from his people, he asked them to be spun and be woven together. He asked them to be as strong as cotton wool.
It is very quiet in the church and within me too, when he brings his sermon to an end with a prayer by Bishop Zubeir of Khartoum, who comes from this area: Lord, you became human in our midst; don’t let us be turned into stones’.
The next episode finds the missionary on the move again, heading deeper into a land that feels both familiar and entirely unpredictable. Rumours of trouble ahead flicker through the villages, but he keeps going, guided more by instinct than certainty. Along the way he meets a few unexpected allies—people with stories that tug him forward as much as the road itself. Something is waiting for him out there, though he can’t quite name it yet. And as he walks, he knows this new episode will test him in ways he hasn’t imagined.
