Happy Easter to all our readers. After a few weeks of break, we are back on our journey. In previous episode, the missionary had arrived back in Nzara to find the place still breathing because of one quiet man who never left; while others fled and the bush swallowed the villages, Angelo stayed put, kept the doors locked but the faith open, led prayers, buried what mattered, and held the place together with patience rather than noise, so that when the priest and sisters finally returned, tired and unsure, they walked into a mission that had not died at all, only waited—proof that sometimes the journey carries on even when the traveller is gone.
Moudie is his name. It means ‘Don’t boast’, or ‘Remain humble’. In many parts of Africa names play a peculiar role; people become what they are called. That is the case with Moudie and he is proud of the fact that he is not the boasting type, more of a humble man. He might be humble but that does not mean he is shy.
It is not very common here in Sudan for people to comment on the priest’s homily. It is not common among the Azande that they comment or give compliments at all, at least not in the subject’s presence. But this morning Moudie told me after Mass that he agreed with what I had said in the homily. Maybe Moudie did not intend to make a compliment but just wanted to state that he and I agreed. We had read Mark, chapter 8, where Christ tells his disciples about his impending suffering and death. Peter won’t hear of it, but Christ tells him more or less, ‘You devil, get behind me, accept that cross as I accept it!’ As Christians we have to accept the cross, and I had said something along these lines. And Moudie, who should not boast, comes and tells me that he fully agrees with me. But then, he has had his portion of hardship and suffering in his little more than thirty years.
He was born in the early sixties, not far from the border of Zaïre. It was wartime in South Sudan, the time of the first civil war, the Anya-nya, in which Moudie’s people played an important role. Because of that, the government persecuted them and many people had to flee. Before he was five years old, Moudie became a refugee in Zaïre. Yes, Moudie remembers how he and his mother lived in Camp Seven and that later he went to school in Camp Eight. He was taught French, but does not remember much of the language except merci beaucoup, thank you very much. After all, that goes along fairly well with being humble, and he is a grateful human being.
In 1973, after the Addis Ababa agreement, he returned to Sudan, the country about which his father had told him all these years. Luckily for him, a school was soon started not far from his home village. It had been difficult for Moudie to say goodbye to the school in Zaïre. From a very early age he had been very keen to learn. It is said here in Sudan, ‘A human being without education is like an animal without a hide’. For his secondary education he travelled all the way to Juba. It was quite a distance from home, but he wanted to try his luck. He was hungry for a secondary education. Even today he tells his pupils, ‘Knowledge is like a garden; if it is not cultivated it cannot be harvested’. But he was not the only one who was looking for schooling in Juba, and his marks from the bush school of his village meant very little in the admission procedure of the Comboni secondary school. He was not admitted to the boys’ school, but there were evening classes in one of the secondary schools for girls, and Moudie attended. Few students of these classes passed the secondary examination, but Moudie was highly motivated and studied night and day. He passed the examination. No, Moudie is not proud of it; that would be against his name, but he explains to me that you have to make the most of the opportunities which come your way.
Moudie came home with a certificate of secondary education. He had struggled for it, but that did not mean that he would keep his riches to himself. He intended to share what he knew with the people in his village, Ezo. He wanted to become a teacher, but the government did not give him a job in a government school. There were too few schools in any case. At the request of the parents, Moudie started his own establishment, a ‘self-help’ school, he called it. You cannot wait for a government to help if it is quite clear that it is uninterested. One often gets the impression that the government wants to keep the people in the south ignorant. With another teacher, the help of the parents and a little help from the church, he got things going.
His efforts did not go unnoticed: an Irish missionary who visited his school and heard Moudie talk about education, about development and the role of the church, offered him a place in a course for teaching religion. Moudie accepted it gratefully. I got to know Moudie in 1988 when he had just completed that course. Yes, he had returned to his self-help school, but now he could also assist the catechists, many of whom had very little education. With them and the parents of the schoolchildren, he started to build a church in his village, and he would come and pester me for school equipment and seeds for the school gardens. He also wanted zinc sheets for the roof of the church. Moudie will tell you that the right approach for him is integral development, which means getting the necessary co-operation from the people for the growth of the community. Moudie does not make distinctions, as we often do, between what is a social, pastoral, economic or religious problem. He thinks that these distinctions are not real. He has become the leader of the village, and the people accept his leadership all the more readily because he does not boast about it.
In 1990 he saw the government troops routed by the SPLA. They passed his school, and many of the local people were fleeing too. On his way to the Central African Republic, one of the priests had stopped and told Moudie that the SPLA were coming, and that he had better run. But Moudie could not leave his school behind to be looted. Whilst others were fleeing, Moudie and some of the parents packed all the school equipment into boxes and with some of the boys carried them into the forest. He was still packing when the SPLA were only six kilometres away. Naturally, the teacher had heard about the SPLA soldiers’ looting, but he also knew that they were unpaid. When Moudie tells me about it later, he points out that he is simply explaining the circumstances rather than justifying their actions.
When they arrived in Ezo, the SPLA found the village deserted. Moudie and his people were close by, hiding in the forest near the border of Zaïre. They listened and watched from a distance to see what was going to happen. Moudie was among the first who went to have a look at the newcomers openly and meet them. At first the liberation army impressed him. Moudie is small in stature and he had to look up to these tall Dinka people. But he tells me that their being taller did not mean they knew more. Moudie, in his humble way, acted as the spokesman for his people. Soon enough the SPLA had asked him to join the movement, but he had no intention of becoming a soldier. Even when they had said that with his education he would quickly be given stars to wear on his uniform, Moudie had declined the offer. He was not interested in those kinds of stars.
He had told the SPLA recruiters that he was willing to take part in the fight to liberate his people, but that he wanted to fight with his own weapon, and it was a forceful one. At mention of a weapon, the soldiers pricked up their ears. They all had heard how during the sixties, in the first civil war, the Azande made their own guns, heavy guns which could hardly be held by one person, but which could kill an elephant. They were curious to hear about the weapon of this little fellow. When Moudie saw that he had their attention, he gave a little lecture to the SPLA on the importance of education.
Did they not see that the government in Khartoum fought not only with bullets, but with many other weapons as well? Was depriving people in the south of education not a way of suppressing them? The government was only too happy that there were few schools in the area liberated by the SPLA. It was high time to fight back. His weapon of liberation was education. Moudie had talked without fear that day: he had not boasted about himself; he allowed that he was not a highly-qualified teacher. But they all knew that even an ant can harm an elephant.
The soldiers had listened to him and they knew that this small man spoke the truth. Many of them had very little education and their only recourse was to become soldiers. Though many young men were pressed into the armed forces of the SPLA, in the end the SPLA accepted that Moudie should reopen his school. When he brought back his school equipment from the forest they had demanded a share of it for the soldiers. The teacher was wise enough not to resist, and even suggested that one of his colleagues could give literacy classes to the soldiers.
Moudie started to visit other schools and, as most of the priests were still refugees in the Central African Republic, he also visited the neighbouring missions to train the catechists to lead prayer services. A few years ago he asked me for a bicycle. Seeing how much he travelled, I found his request for a bicycle very reasonable. But I wondered whether it would not make the soldiers jealous and get him into trouble as some catechists got into trouble when they tried to hold on to their bicycles? In the end he got his bicycle, and a few months later I inquired how things were going.
At times one has to suffer, Moudie told me. Yes, on one of his long journeys on his bicycle a Dinka soldier had stopped him. He had demanded the bicycle, pointing his gun and saying: ‘I have walked all the way from the border of Ethiopia to liberate you. I have a right to that bicycle!’ Moudie replied that he had never asked the Dinka to come and liberate him. In many ways he had liberated himself with his education. The soldier had become very angry and had threatened to shoot him. But if the bull threatens to throw you, it is better to lie down, and Moudie had been able to hold on to his life and his bicycle by agreeing to give the soldier a ride to the next village.
This was not the only time he had to suffer for sticking to his principles. He spent some days in prison, and he knows what it is to be caned. That was the time when he had not been willing to hand over all the copybooks which he had just received for his schools. He was willing to share what he received, but he had not been happy when he had been ordered to do so. He had said that he had a different commander from whom he took orders. The SPLA commander did not like that. Moudie adds, Maybe I was boasting that time, and you see what happens’. It is not always easy to find the right balance. It is true one should not boast too much, but he also knows the saying, ‘a too-modest man will go hungry’.
Moudie has been staying with us the last few days. He has come to make arrangements for the transport of teak poles for the roof of a church which he has been building with his people. He also wants materials for the secondary school which he has started, very much against my advice. I have my doubts whether we can support two secondary schools in the diocese while this war continues. But Moudie keeps telling me that many young people want education and that we have to start this secondary school. He explains once more that it is not right that the young people must flee to Uganda in order to get an education. Moudie and I have argued a lot over the years, and at times I think that I am making life unnecessarily hard for him. I ask him whether he feels this way.
Moudie does not deny that he suffers because of some of my questioning, but my questioning also helps him to clarify his own ideas. But he adds that he does not believe in just avoiding suffering. That is exactly what he wanted to convey when he told me that he agreed with my homily that morning. For him suffering is part of life. If you are not willing to accept pain, you never will know joy. When you believe that the way Christ was going through life is a good way, you cannot pick only the nice parts, he tells me. If you take the stand that Christ took you are bound to get into difficulties; you even might be crucified. If you support those who are weak, it will be the brutes that are against you. If you do not participate in the corruption, then in the end you will have to face the cane. Moudie gives me a beautiful sermon about the value of the cross in the life of Christians. Some of the things he says would sound hollow if I said them, as I have not experienced the suffering that Moudie has gone through. Perhaps I should have asked Moudie to preach this morning. Even if Moudie means ‘don’t boast’, I think I am proud of the fact that I am working with a man like him. Next time I will ask him to preach.
In the next episode, the mission settles into an uneasy calm and a quiet figure steps forward from the background. While others think they know best, an older wisdom begins to show itself in the most ordinary place—the kitchen. Small habits, shared laughter, and a pair of unexpected loaves start to shift the balance. It’s a gentle turning point, where learning runs both ways and something deeper than bread begins to rise.
