This is our good friend, Mark Deng Deng Meyer! As we stopped in front of a mud house, intriguingly built with the floor a foot below the ground surface, Angelo hollered something. In a matter of seconds, Mark – our Mark, the one called Deng Deng Meyer, “previously from Kawangware” – stepped up through the doorway.
I cannot explain the joy I felt in my heart! He unabashedly hugged me. “Deb! Deb, how are you? Deb!”
He hugged Kim, repeating the same question. He then came back to me and repeated the same thing once more. He again repeated it with Kim. He briefly greeted Angelo and Collins and then came back to Kim and me, repeating his greetings over and over. “Deb, how are you? Kim, how are you? Deb! Kim!” It was a very poignant and emotional moment for all three of us! Simultaneously, it was almost comical. I laughed, but at the same time, tears welled up in my eyes.
God had led us to our friend. It had been like finding the proverbial “needle in a haystack”! Indeed, the Lord had gone ahead of us and prepared our way. He had led us to one of possibly only two people (out of 60,000 Sudanese refugees) that knew Mark Deng Deng Meyer!
Mark invited us into the tiny one-room house he shares with Deng Tiok Mel. We each took a seat on one of the two beds. Sitting on a stool was Mark’s stack of “exercise books” and textbooks. It turned out that he schools at Kakuma Boys’ Secondary School twenty kilometers away, and not at one of the schools in the refugee camp.
Angelo explained why he knew Mark. “You see, he just re-entered the camp not long ago, after being in Nairobi for a few years. When he returned, we met briefly. I remember him because I think it’s possible some of his relatives were from my clan in South Sudan.”
It had taken us three hours of zigzagging around the camp to find Mark. Amazingly we’d spent almost $10 on boda boda rides. It was now late, though. We’d been told by more than one person to not be in the camp after 6:00pm for our own safety (the Turkana still occasionally raid the camp). We found different bike taxis and headed to town to find a room, stopping to get our bags first.
Our hotel room had power, but in both the smelly and dirty toilet and in the “bathroom”, we were forced to use a candle. I “showered” and also did my best to wash a few items of clothing in the near dark.
It had been quite hot during the day, and it didn’t let up much at night. I slept with minimal clothes and without a mosquito net or even a sheet over me. Of course, I should have known better! In the morning, my legs were covered, not only with mosquito bites, but a spider bite or two! Somehow during the trip, I also developed a very irritating infected blister of some sort.
(continued below)
No comments:
Post a Comment