AFRECS E-Blast: March 21

Message from our President

Why I Haven’t “Left”
by Phil Darrow

Reflecting on why I have not left behind my engagement with the Sudans (a play on the title of Marc Nikkel’s book Why Haven’t You Left?), I find it ironic that I have not been able to visit my friends there since 2018. It seems that the pandemic is just one more reason why it is not easy to maintain the relationships I formed there, beginning with my first visit in 2008.

There are lots of other reasons. If the arc of the moral universe is in fact bending slowly towards justice, that is hard to see in the Sudans, except for back-and-forth vibrations. Soon after we all celebrated peace at last, and the independence of South Sudan, after many years of civil war, violent conflict erupted again in the new nation. Conflict has continued since in various forms and intensities, despite numerous “peace agreements” and the efforts of neighboring states and the larger international community to promote peacemaking and development. Sudan has also seen continued violence, both at its edges and in its urban centers after regime changes.

This conflict, instability, and the repeated frustration and setback they cause to the efforts of friends there to do a bit of good wrench my heart. Yet there remains that friendship, the opportunity to do a bit of good, and the inspiration that comes out of the hearts of friends who keep working towards a better future “in spite of.”

In spite of violence. In spite of losing, in a single rampage, church facilities that took years of painstaking effort to build. In spite of the threat to any new endeavor posed by potential violence. In spite of political circumstances that perpetuate conflict and put so much of the future beyond individual control.

Agricultural and forest land belonging to the Episcopal Church of South Sudan is used for income-producing crops, including these panicles of drought-resistant sorghum grown in the Diocese of Renk. In the U.S., sorghum is cultivated in the Great Plains, Arizona, and California. Photo courtesy of Phil Darrow

Amidst all this, a bishop starts a school for 50 orphans in a camp for displaced persons and builds it into an academy for 500 students who score at the top of national tests.  Another organizes groups of women and youth into co-ops with both vocational and trauma-healing training, creating an economy and keeping youth out of militias. Other courageous church leaders fly in to the centers of conflict and help strike local accords, protecting the women and children who are so often the victims.

I have never had to face such challenges directly, but I am quite certain that it is doing me good to be sharing a bit of the challenging journey of my friends in the Sudans. They are, after all, my neighbors, and I bask in the glow of the love that shines out of them.

Philip H. Darrow is a lawyer for KB Home and has been a member of the Board of AFRECS since 2008. He and his wife Robin are members of Church of the Ascension in Denver, Colorado.

Convening the Commanders:  A Peace-Building Workshop in Detail
by Frederick E. Gilbert

Because of exemplary cooperation among state, military, and church leaders of the troubled State of Amadi in the West Equatoria region of South Sudan, a peacebuilding and trauma healing workshop held in late 2019 worked well and was successful.

Canon Sylvester Thomas Kambaya, former pastor of the English-speaking congregation and Dean of Khartoum’s All Saints Cathedral, was the lead facilitator of the workshop.  Kambaya is president of Education for Peace Foundation, which he has registered as a South Sudan non-governmental organization. The event took place October 31 – November 4, 2019.

I recently reread Kambaya’s report. I found some parts quite compelling and sometimes moving. Most of the military participants were generals from both government-organized and SPLM-IO forces, while the civilian officials from Amadi State were also quite high-ranking. I was particularly struck by how the initial atmosphere of tension gave way to mixed seating and social interaction. Distrust gave way to openness and frankness in the offering of emotional confessions.

The workshop was carried out under the leadership and management of the Education and Peace Foundation, in collaboration with the dioceses of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan’s Internal Province of Amadi.  They used a textbook titled Healing the Wounds of Trauma: How the Church Can Help (expanded edition 2016), published in 2013 by the American Bible Society.
The total cost – brace yourselves! –  was $3,850!  (It seems that the costs shown on p. 19 of the report were adjusted upward by $850.  It seems likely that substantial amounts of support may have been furnished in kind rather than money.)

Your can find descriptions of how the workshop unfolded on pp. 9-14 of the report. The workshop’s impact is described on pages 14-18. Pages 20-21 of the report show the workshop agenda for each day and the presenters for each. There were roughly 120 attendees, of whom 90 or so were participants. Originally planned for some 80 generals from government, SPLM-IO, and other forces, the participation widened to include high-ranking Amadi State government officials, the Archbishop of the Province of Amadi Stephen Dokolo, and bishops from each of the ECSS Dioceses of the Province, plus bodyguards and catering staff.

Page 18 lays out work that remains to be done in Amadi State and adjacent areas of West Equatoria.

We are providing this summary assessment of the EPF report and the link to the full report because most of us have never had access to such an informative account of the challenges and rewards of peace-building efforts.

Fritz Gilbert is a founding member of the Board of AFRECS and for seven years directed the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Sudan mission and its regional office for West and Central Africa in Ivory Coast. Since retiring in 1994 from USAID, he directed for two years the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning System. Fritz and his wife Jane are members of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, Annandale, Virginia.

Two New Key Leaders for Episcopal Church of South Sudan
by Richard J. Jones

After working as South Sudan Country Director for African Leadership Reconciliation Ministries (ALARM), a relief agency based in South Sudan and headquartered in Dallas, Texas, the Reverend Canon Peter Garang Deng has assumed the task of coordinating, with limited internet capacity,  the work of 90 dioceses spread across the  Texas-sized territory of South Sudan. Recently elected by a churchwide Synod and working alongside the Archbishop of South Sudan, Garang has set out, in his words, “to teach the cost of discipleship”.  While his five children and wife remain in Nairobi, he works from a desk in Juba, the capital. “I hope to promote shared information,” Garang said in a recent international telephone call with overseas partners.  “Material assistance should serve to bring the weak up to the level of the strong. Different ethnic groups must be treated equally.” Graduating from a Bible school in Kenya and ordained in 1999 in the Episcopal Church of Sudan, Garang taught at Bishop Gwynne Theological College in Juba and the Bible school at Malek in the Diocese of Bor. Along with peacemaking, one of his priorities is to continue uniting the existing dozen theological colleges of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan into a multi-campus, multidisciplinary university.

The new Provincial Secretary, Peter Garang Deng, addresses an audience in the Episcopal Church of South Sudan. Photo courtesy of Daniel Karanja

A newly appointed administrator for the South Sudan Relief and Development Agency (SSUDRA), Mr. Light Wilson Aqwana, now reports to Peter Garang.  Salary for this key post is supported by the Diocese of Salisbury and by Christian Aid. The function of SSUDRA is to distribute material relief aid and provide training for economic development. When the Province has in the past not succeeded in providing coordination, material assistance to the ECSS from overseas charities and international organizations has more often been transferred by friends and supporters directly to projects of individual dioceses and schools.

Peacemaking remains the ongoing work of local churches when communal violence erupts, but Garang hopes to see a Province-wide commission on justice, peace, and reconciliation reconstituted to support courageous local efforts.  “There could be a role for our peacemaking elders, such as Bishops Paride Taban and Nathaniel Garang, or Canon Sylvester Thomas Kambaya.  Certainly for active Bishops like Samuel Enosa Peni of Yambio, and Moses Bol Deng of Wau, but it is not easy to bring them together or to offer them a platform.”

Based in the northern Republic of Sudan’s capital in Khartoum is Canon Musa Abujam, Peter Garang’s longer-serving counterpart for the Episcopal Church of Sudan.

Abujam serves the five dioceses in the Republic of Sudan, where the long-serving Archbishop Ezekiel Kondo Kuku has announced his retirement.  One task of both these provincial secretaries, north and south, is to keep up with the travel of their respective archbishops. This week Archbishop Arama was returning from Mombasa. Both archbishops are expected at a meeting of Anglican Communion Primates in England at the end of March.

Canon Garang’s work in South Sudan was with ALARM ( https://alarm-inc.org), gathering African church leaders to learn from past experiences like the Rwanadan genocide  and to cultivate practices of servant leadership. The current leader of ALARM is Celestin Mesukura, a Rwandan.