City On A Hill

So, apologies on the fact that the Sudan essays have been slow in coming. It's much easier to blog about the Austin music scene than it is to try and gather all my thoughts about our trip to Sudan and formulate them into a few condensed commentaries.

But, for my first one...

I was thinking that if you only read one thing about my trip, then what I want to share about the most is our introduction to the boarding school that William and Eunice Laku are going to open, called City On A Hill. After almost 50 years of civil war, Northern and Southern Sudan signed a peace treaty in 2005, and since then refugees have been returning to reestablish their homelands and villages. One of the greatest needs has been for education – schools for the thousands of Sudanese children who will be the next generation of leaders for their country. Currently there are not enough government schools to meet the population of children, and the government schools that do exist are painfully under-resourced. Although primary education is compulsory for all children, in practice Southern Sudanese children have the least access to primary school in the world. According to the Government of Southern Sudan's Minister of Education, less than 25 percent of an estimated 2.2 million school-age children are enrolled in primary school. A 2006 UNICEF report found only 2,163 primary schools existed to serve a region with a population of approximately 7.5 million. And of those schools that do exist, less than 20% are housed in permanent structures, only 31% of all learning spaces have a toilet or latrine, and only 26% have any chairs or desks. There is also a severe shortage of teachers, with an adult illiteracy rate of more than 75 percent according to 2004 estimates. We saw some of this turmoil first hand as during the time that we were in Nagishot, the government school nearby had been temporarily closed down because there was not enough food available to feed any lunches to the students. So students were waiting at home for the radio news that would announce that they could again return to classes. (We heard when we were leaving that the announcement had come, and that the school would reopen the following week.)

And so in part to provide education to the youth in Nagishot, the Lakus have a vision for building the City on a Hill school -- and despite significant obstacles, they are already pushing ahead to get the project underway. There is no road to get materials to the site (right now almost all supplies are delivered via plane) and no well to provide water (currently water has to be drawn from a creek and then carried in jerrycans up to homes and buildings.) And yet, the Didinga have already started building classrooms and a latrine and a prayer chapel – all with faith that as they start doing what they can, then the rest of the supplies and resources will come.

I said "in part to provide education" – because education alone is not the only reason the Lakus are building the school. They also hope that City On A Hill will be a transforming agent of peace, bringing unity and hope to their land. This will happen because not only will the school be established for Didinga children, it will also be open to kids from the neighboring tribes. These tribes have a history of fighting with each other, particularly when the wars displaced indigenous communities and forced various groups to relocate onto land already occupied by other tribes. In a sad struggle that pitted refugees against their fellow countrymen, violence then ensued as tribesman fought to secure land needed for farming and cattle. The Lakus want to change this aggressive history by bringing children from rivaling tribes to live together at the boarding school --- not merely learning English and math together, but also playing together, learning each others' cultures, and building friendships together. They would also hear the Gospel together – hopefully gaining an understanding that as much as Christ died to reconcile us to God, He also died to reconcile us to each other. Perhaps then the future leaders of Sudan will be united in taking on the challenges of their country as brothers, no longer divided by needless hatred and alienation.

While we were in Nagishot, our team contributed in small but tangible ways to assisting the school. We hauled bricks from the kiln to the building site (with no roads, this meant literally walking on foot via narrow, muddy paths), we carried fresh-cut lumber from the forest to be cut & shaped into desks, and we spent hours prayer walking around the campus, interceding for all the many needs. All of us who went on the short-term trip were also invited to return again to be a part of the long-term work that will be needed to see the school come to completion. Perhaps as teachers, or nurses, or dorm guardians – we've been welcomed to join with the Didinga community in this incredible work. I'm not sure yet that I'll ever be going back for a longer stint, but I do know with certainty that this project holds so much promise and that I want to be supportive of the school regardless of whether I'm in Sudan or America. As things continue to develop, there will likely be many ways that those of you reading this can be involved in the creation of City on a Hill too. Currently some of my teammates are working on establishing a non-profit or NGO to manage the state-side operations of fundraising and providing supplies. There are also plans for developing curriculum and serving in numerous capacities on the front-lines in Sudan. If you think that this effort is something you'd be interested in learning more about, then let me know and I'll keep you updated as more details develop.

Free Ben Harper Concert = Emily Loves Austin

Yesterday was the Nike+ Human Race 10K – an event of superb mass-marketing that involved 25 major cities all around the world hosting races in the name of uniting humanity. Kinda wish I'd known about this earlier, 'cause I've been feeling that as an official Austinite it's now my duty to train for some sort of city-wide athletic competition, most likely some kind of long-distance running since right now the other two ever-popular triathlon events of biking and swimming don't seem appealing to me at all. And though I didn't run in it, props to the more than 14,000 people who flooded downtown to take part. That means (according to the guy with the mic last night) that Austin had more participants than either Chicago or New York, and just under Los Angeles. Plus, Austin was the 2nd fastest city in the world. I knew I picked a cool city to move to.

Even more exciting though was the post-race entertainment. I'd written earlier about how Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals were headlining the concert, and that supposedly only race participants could attend. I decided to take my chances though, figuring that as long as the show was outdoors, then surely I could find a way to get in. And indeed, the stage was set up at Congress & 11^th in front of the Capitol, and the one small sign stating "Racers Only" was doing absolutely nothing to keep outsiders from entering inside the guardrails (as if standing outside the guardrails would have been very far away anyways.) So to my complete delight, I found myself about 6 rows from the stage for a totally free Ben Harper concert – so great! Even though the show wasn't that long, Ben definitely lived up to his reputation for putting on a stellar live performance – steering away from his more mellow tunes to do mostly intense, upbeat numbers (though personally I love his mellow acoustic stuff the best.) Personal favorites were "Into the Colors", a cover of Bill Wither's "Use Me Up", and "Black Rain" (appropriate since thoughts were definitely with New Orleans.) He closed with "My Own Two Hands", which had everyone dancing with raised arms for a pretty inspiring ending.

The only thing I could possibly complain about was that the majority of the people at the concert HAD actually ran the 10K, so the amount of B.O. was pretty horrible at times, and making my way through the crowd meant touching way too many sweat-drenched t-shirts. But, I couldn't hate too much given the fact that they'd just ran for 6 miles straight while I had been sitting in the AC… plus, being Austin, most of the B.O. was hidden by an even more prevalent smell of weed. All in all, it left me feeling quite a bit of affection for Austin for making such an event possible. A conversation later in the night would again have me missing Jazzfest and brass bands and all the beautiful music of New Orleans, but, nonetheless, the ATX is definitely growing me :)