19 mins
‘Come down and heal our land’
MEDITATION
IF you had been born in one of the southern States of Sudan then, but for a relatively peaceful period between 1972 and 1983, you would not have known life without war.
It is painful to read the history of Sudan, it is a description of one agonising period of life after another. A United Nations publication entitled ‘Sudanese Trade in Black Ivory’ documents the terrible effects of the slave trade which it says: “dates back centuries in history but took an aggressive shape in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when Sudan saw intensive exploitation of humans as a commodity for domestic use and export………… Caravans crossed the desert, followed the Nile or crossed the Red Sea carrying their human cargo……… for both domestic use and export.”
This trade in people continued into the 20th and 21st centuries when, during the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983 to 2005), people were forced into slavery and taken to work elsewhere in North Africa and other parts of the world. If you had been born in one of the southern States of Sudan then you might never have known freedom or freedom from misery.
Then in July 2011, following a referendum in which almost 99% of the population voted for independence, the southern States of Sudan South became the youngest nation on earth when the Republic of South Sudan was born. It was born in a fanfare of hope and expectation; the slogan was Hope for a New Nation and the greatest hope was that the people would know freedom and war would be a thing of the past. However, by December 2013 this hope lay shattered in a thousand pieces as this new nation was plunged into ethnic and tribal violence. No one knows how many people have lost their lives; millions have been displaced fleeing for their lives to refugee camps within and outwith the country and ethnic violence seems to be unstoppable.
The Church of Scotland has been doing some remarkable work in South Sudan, helping to train Church leaders in the healing of trauma and in the ways of mediation and reconciliation. Through this work some of us have made deep friendships with women and men whose everyday circumstances are almost incomprehensibly awful.
At the time of writing this piece I have just received a letter from one of our friends. Oruzo is a remarkable man – in a land of little educational opportunity he speaks many languages, in a deeply corrupt environment he is man of extraordinary integrity and surrounded by deadly wickedness he holds firmly to his faith. What makes his letter so difficult to read is that it is written in the form of an agonising lamentation.
Lamentation is a form of writing which is as old as writing itself. Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures the ancient prophets record their songs of grief and sadness and sorrow. These poems express the frantic despair of individuals and communities. The detail of the atrocities described in Oruzo’s lament could not be published in columns of Life and Work, but what is so sad is that he lays the blame for what is happening to his family and community at his own door – as if God is punishing them for some unreported sin.
“in a deeply corrupt environment he is man of extraordinary integrity and surrounded by deadly wickedness he holds firmly to his faith.
However, having seen the situation in South Sudan at first hand and having done the history, I can tell you that the lamentation must be shared by each one of us and by the whole of the international community which seems to stand by, mute, in one of the most dreadful forgotten wars in history.
Lamentation should not be forgotten as a deeply significant expression of prayer. Orozo’s lamentation ends with the words: “it is enough, Lord, come down and heal our land”. What we need to remember is that we have a part to play in answering Oruzo’s prayer.
This article appears in the September 2018 Issue of Life and Work
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This article appears in the September 2018 Issue of Life and Work