This city boy has gotten quite the education over the past two weeks on the lives of (African) cowboys. On my two trips so far for my work on the LWF Kenya/Sudan program’s annual report for 2007, I’ve visited areas where LWF is working with communities who raise cattle and other livestock for a living and where they’re helping them with the challenges they face with their livestock, whether from disease, drought or cattle raiding.
In these parts of Africa, where a family’s wealth is in their cattle, it’s hard for me as a city dweller and as an American to understand this. In my culture, people’s wealth is in their stock portfolio, their house (and their second vacation home), their car(s), electronics and clothes. So where cattle is king, where life revolves around one’s herd, rather than where one will vacation this summer, it’s hard for me to understand how these people live their lives – how a man in a family or a teenage boy can spend his work days (every day, in fact) caring for the cattle or spending time wandering away from home with the herd, going where the grazing land and water is. And it’s strange to me to hear that this wealth – the cattle – figure into a marriage (with the dowry) and can cause great disputes (how many cows is a woman really worth, anyway? I’m going to figure it out for Sarah…). But then again, doesn’t wealth/money in our culture cause great disputes among families too (think of when a rich person dies and what’s revealed in their will)?
Otherwise, besides visiting places and talking to people about their lives and challenges they face, I feel like I’m on a bird safari a bit. The other day, flying up to Panyagor, my first stop on the trip, we followed the Nile River a bit. It was beautiful to look down and see it. The land stretches as far as you can see (and farther) and is brown and dry, but on both sides of the Nile, there is a green strip, so it makes a beautiful green and blue-striped ribbon along a tan landscape. Anyway, Panyagor isn’t very far from the Nile, and the land around here, in parts of the area we’ve been driving in a lot, is swampy. There are lovely lily ponds along the dirt roads between villages, and in these ponds are many interesting water birds – storks and long-legged birds, some big, some small, and some with long black beaks that curve down. As we come along in the big Land Rover, many of them get scared and take off, and you can see them stretch out their long wings and fly, and it’s beautiful to see how graceful they are. Along the dry stretches, I’ve seen a vulture or two feeding on a dead calf carcass. And even in the LWF compound, and in many other places, there are many eagles (I think that’s what they are – they’re brown) that come quite close to people – they’re always sitting on top of the houses. They also soar high up in the air, and you can hear them making their calls, which reminds me of those Wild West scenes on TV shows.
I’m on my way out of here soon, from Panyagor, my first stop in southern Sudan. I always appreciate the comforts of home (or any modern place) when traveling to places like this. On the face of it, this place is very uncomfortable. It’s very hot, so by the end of the day, I’m very sticky, and my net number of mosquito bites seems to never decrease (even sleeping under a mosquito net at night, I still seem to get a few bites), and it’s dusty and dirty. But that’s not enough to stop me from going to places like this. There are too many interesting things to see, and my mind is fed and enriched so much, even if my body isn’t totally comfortable. But, in working for the church or church-related organizations, it’s all about suffering for my Jesus, isn’t it?
In these parts of Africa, where a family’s wealth is in their cattle, it’s hard for me as a city dweller and as an American to understand this. In my culture, people’s wealth is in their stock portfolio, their house (and their second vacation home), their car(s), electronics and clothes. So where cattle is king, where life revolves around one’s herd, rather than where one will vacation this summer, it’s hard for me to understand how these people live their lives – how a man in a family or a teenage boy can spend his work days (every day, in fact) caring for the cattle or spending time wandering away from home with the herd, going where the grazing land and water is. And it’s strange to me to hear that this wealth – the cattle – figure into a marriage (with the dowry) and can cause great disputes (how many cows is a woman really worth, anyway? I’m going to figure it out for Sarah…). But then again, doesn’t wealth/money in our culture cause great disputes among families too (think of when a rich person dies and what’s revealed in their will)?
Otherwise, besides visiting places and talking to people about their lives and challenges they face, I feel like I’m on a bird safari a bit. The other day, flying up to Panyagor, my first stop on the trip, we followed the Nile River a bit. It was beautiful to look down and see it. The land stretches as far as you can see (and farther) and is brown and dry, but on both sides of the Nile, there is a green strip, so it makes a beautiful green and blue-striped ribbon along a tan landscape. Anyway, Panyagor isn’t very far from the Nile, and the land around here, in parts of the area we’ve been driving in a lot, is swampy. There are lovely lily ponds along the dirt roads between villages, and in these ponds are many interesting water birds – storks and long-legged birds, some big, some small, and some with long black beaks that curve down. As we come along in the big Land Rover, many of them get scared and take off, and you can see them stretch out their long wings and fly, and it’s beautiful to see how graceful they are. Along the dry stretches, I’ve seen a vulture or two feeding on a dead calf carcass. And even in the LWF compound, and in many other places, there are many eagles (I think that’s what they are – they’re brown) that come quite close to people – they’re always sitting on top of the houses. They also soar high up in the air, and you can hear them making their calls, which reminds me of those Wild West scenes on TV shows.I’m on my way out of here soon, from Panyagor, my first stop in southern Sudan. I always appreciate the comforts of home (or any modern place) when traveling to places like this. On the face of it, this place is very uncomfortable. It’s very hot, so by the end of the day, I’m very sticky, and my net number of mosquito bites seems to never decrease (even sleeping under a mosquito net at night, I still seem to get a few bites), and it’s dusty and dirty. But that’s not enough to stop me from going to places like this. There are too many interesting things to see, and my mind is fed and enriched so much, even if my body isn’t totally comfortable. But, in working for the church or church-related organizations, it’s all about suffering for my Jesus, isn’t it?
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