Living in a place of war...part 2.

Living in a place of war...part 2.

Now, as strange as it sounds, sitting here in a nice cozy home with tea in hand, back in the USA, I have become quite accustomed to gunshots. I grew up with, and still have, a father that loves guns. He has all kinds of them. I also grew up in a culture where hunting is popular, even though I never partook. Every deer season I could see the young, middle-aged, and older men and women scouring the fields and forests in search of a coveted deer, preferably with big horns. I am used to the sounds of the hunters’ guns.

Living in South Sudan, I see guns all the time, as in every single day. Soldiers, police men and women, and what seems to be random people traveling down the road on the back of a boda boda (motorcycle), all with guns clearly in tow. Uniformed and plane clothed. Men and women. Young and old. Guns are a part of life in South Sudan. The most common of these guns, is by far, I believe, the AK-47. It is the standard issued weapon of choice. I don’t remember how I first reacted or felt when I came to South Sudan and saw guns everywhere, but after five years of constantly being around them, I almost never gave a second thought to seeing them. I often questioned how all these guns entered into South Sudan, and how so many civilians owned guns, but my thoughts on that are reserved for another time.

Hearing the single shot of an AK-47 was not unusual. In fact, most people had the slightest of reactions, something so subtle and unseen by those that are not familiar with such a culture that you could easily miss it. Whenever a gunshot was heard, immediately people would freeze, very momentarily, a few seconds at most, straining to hear a second shot. As long as no second shot was fired immediately, people kept on moving and carrying on as if nothing had happened. My reaction had develop into the same.

Over the course of five years in South Sudan, I heard gunshots multiple times. Only on rare occasion did I hear more than a single gunshot, and even then, it was always less than five shots. I had NEVER heard what I was hearing on this night – big guns, way more powerful than just AK-47s, repetitive back and forth fire, and VERY close to my house, as in so close you could see the light from the guns as they fired.

Since the beginning of the current war in South Sudan, which began in December 2013, and has left upwards of 50,000 dead and nearly 2 million displaced, the tensions in South Sudan have been high and have been palpably felt in Mundri. All of 2014 felt like a roller coaster of emotions and tensions and fear and relief and angst amongst the Moru community where I live. My own emotions wax and wane, but usually are not too labile and are relatively constant with some degree of variation. But the stability and mentality of the local culture was all over the place as fear dominated much of the people for much of the time. Growing national insecurity, local tribal tensions fueled by cattle raiding and crop destruction, and ‘incidents’ happening closer all the time to Mundri dominated much of local conversation. Stories evolved. Rumors flew. Fear increased. Then over time, things would gradually calm down, but somehow, to me, as an external observer yet internal dweller within the community, each time tensions rose in the community they would inevitably go back down, but never quite back to the baseline level to which they were prior. So with each incident, and rumor, and death, the baseline tension of the community was slowly being elevated. As a person that feels deeply and has an indwelling ability to empathize with people, even across cultures, I was feeling the weight that the community bared. Much of 2014 was a ‘wait and see’ test of time, praying that tensions would diffuse and life would somehow get back to normal, that the national war would stop, and that security in Mundri would at least return to its prior to 2014 state, though I recognize that even that level of security was not so great.

So how did I evaluate situations? How did I know when to be concerned and when to not worry? A few years experience and close ties to the community were crucial. I would make the recommendation that individuals prone to anxiety may want to cross South Sudan off their places to visit list. Life in South Sudan is not for the faint-of-hearted, but it is a good life, and was a blessed life for me.

...to be continued...