The Nile

By: John Jefferson

The Nile

Despite the many challenges they face, the people of Sudan, and I’m speaking of those who identify as Sub-Saharan Africans, have a spirit that refuses to yield to the forces that have tried to remove, enslave and kill them over the centuries.  Without fail one often finds moments when the pain, suffering, corruption, inhumanity, injustice and bitter striving vanishes and you are made to feel like you just stepped into eternity and are seeing things as God ordained them to be, not as Man has caused them turn out through his evil devices.  I had just such a moment on the Nile River returning from the Nuba Mountains.  Our Land Cruiser had just had a second tire blow out.  One which had it occurred a few hours earlier deep in the bush, would have landed us in big trouble.  As it happened, there was a military base not far from where we were so some of the team went to get help.  After waiting an hour or so, a couple of us, at my insistence, followed the trail of a few of the women we had seen passing by with containers to be filled with water.  We left the dry roadside as the sun was beginning to settle on the horizon and walked along the dusty trail.  As we approached the river, the ground yielded more plants and grasses giving way to a lush flora and an inviting breeze tinged with the smell and taste of algae and moisture as the oppressive heat began to vanish.

Behind us lay a dazzling sunset complete with beams of light shooting through the gathering cumulus clouds set against a bucolic backdrop of animal cries, rustic huts, and an exploding tapestry of color.  Before us lay the Nile, an ancient snake winding its way through mountains, grasslands, and heath. 

Immediately a calm came over me as we came upon two ladies who were ending their day fishing at the river’s edge.  One had just caught a small fish, and with a childish grin turned toward us as she spoke to her companion in a bubbly sounding dialect that seemed to bounce past my ears and over the ripples of the Nile itself.  They posed for a picture and shared the moment with us, one of peace beside the cool waters and amidst the lush green reeds and grasses of the sandy banks.  As the sun disappeared, they gathered their meager possessions; plastic buckets, ragged shawls, bamboo poles, and began to make their trek back to their mud huts.  You could see from their faces and the way they walked they had led hard lives, by our standards at least.  We know they have seen war, famine, disease, and experienced oppression of one sort or another.  Yet, in the moment we shared with them none of that was apparent.  It was like a cool drink of living water passing right through us, reviving our spirits after a long hot journey. 

One of our cell phones rang, the rest of the team that had busied themselves in finding a solution to the tire problem, had resolved it and were looking for us so we could continue our journey to Malakal before nightfall.  Fall it did, but we eventually wound up back at the shores of the Nile, although a different Nile.  The blackness that now enveloped us could not hide the fact that it was not the place of the two ladies fishing along the river’s edge, but the place of transport, commerce, and human industry on the outskirts of the northern most major city in the Republic of South Sudan.  As we moved across it I thought briefly of the two friends I made and the moment I shared with them.  Once again Sudan had challenged my belief that I could really understand or define her, and once again, she won.