This is a special posting. For those of you who don't know, fighting has begun again in S Sudan and the fragile peace has been broken. Below is a message my friend, who is a doctor in the south, just wrote to me:
My guys are so bummed - so depressed, so dispirited. We were finally starting to make progress and now - even if there is peace tomorrow, it will never be as good as it was last week. No one can forget. The targeted killings… I've a post paid thuraya (phone) - and every day there are people who come with a tiny piece of waste paper with a telephone number scribbled on it - just a quick call to hear the voice… Most are still alive.
But so many hopes are shattered.
They said, we will not have Christmas this year….
On the home front, yesterday I sat down with Martha (not the real name of the woman who helps us clean in our home). I wanted to pit some dates to make cookies and asked her to help me. For the hour we were together she started talking about her children. Her oldest daughter who is in University got pregnant and isn't coming home for Christmas. Martha is afraid the girl won't finish school and will bring the child to her to raise. Martha is trying to support two other children and a grandson who has HIV/AIDS. (His mother, her daughter, died of AIDS many years ago). Her husband long since left the family. Martha is the sole bread winner and can hardly make ends meet.
Next, two weeks ago her younger daughter age 14 was moving with a bad crowd of people. Martha told the daughter to stop associating with those people and the daughter started yelling and wailing. This upset Joseph, her son who is about 20 and has brain damage from a motor vehicle accident. He picked up a kitchen knife and went after Martha and stabbed her in the chest and back four times. All were superficial but she had to go to the hospital for treatment. The government health workers are striking so she had to go to a private clinic and had to borrow money for the bill. Because of all these problems Martha was unable to sleep and started drinking alcohol. Last week she found herself awakening from a drunken stupor at 4am outside her house. She said she has no one to talk to about her problems. When she talks to her neighbors they laugh at her.
I thanked God that I had asked her to sit down and help me pit the dates. I prescribed some medicine for her pain which will help her sleep at night. I told her if she felt like drinking again to call me and we would talk. I gave her her pay, her Christmas presents and told her we would increase her pay starting next week.I called her this morning and asked her how she slept last night. She said she slept better and her voice sounded less strained.
This morning I wanted to make more Christmas cookies but asked myself how I could do such a superficial thing with S Sudan at war and Martha struggling with such problems. Then the thought occurred to me that I could pray for them while making the cookies. So I started cooking. I wonder why some people must suffer so much and what my role should be in addressing their suffering. At the very least, and perhaps most importantly, I can listen to them. It was the Christmas cookies that led me to sit down with Martha and listen to her. And they gave me the opportunity to pray for those in need. I guess baking Christmas cookies is not such a superficial thing. Thanks to you for listening to me. Merrcy Christmas.
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