A Little Life Perspective

So I had a life-changing dinner the other night. The food was excellent but it was the company that made the night memorable. I work with lots of interesting people and one of the real joys of my time here in Khartoum has been working with such a diverse group of folks. One of my fellow teachers is a guy about my age from Eritrea named Daniel. Since the school year is coming to an end, he tried to get some of the teachers together for dinner last Saturday night. As tends to happen with these things, lots of people said they would like to come but then couldn’t actually come for one reason or another. Anyways, it ended up being just me, Daniel, and another teacher named Linda. A little background on Linda: she is originally from southern Sudan but left when she was young and spent most of her time growing up in America. She is now an American citizen and if you spoke with her, she sounds like an American.

We enjoyed a very good meal at an Ethiopian restaurant (there are a lot of Ethiopian restaurants in Khartoum and the food is incredible) and then had a pleasant conversation after the meal over some delicious coffee. Anyways, we started talking about why we came to Sudan and that’s when things got really interesting. Thank God Daniel asked me first because I would have felt silly answering that question after hearing their stories. After telling them how I wanted to experience a different culture and really challenge myself by coming to Sudan, I asked Daniel the same question. If you’re not up on Eritrean politics, the country has a brutal recent history. After a 30 year war with Ethiopia, they finally achieved their independence in the late 90s. However, the new military leadership imposed an authoritarian government. While the people of this war-torn country lived in extreme poverty with little opportunity, the president created a law that prevented Eritreans from leaving the country. Also, every Eritrean male is drafted into the army after finishing high school. Back to Daniel’s story, he got very good grades in high school so he got a deferral from the army to attend college. After finishing university, he was then forced the join the army. He was serving with the Eritrean army near the Sudanese border and he decided along with some friends that they had had enough and were going to escape. They were familiar with the patrols in the area so one night they took off with what food and water they could carry and headed for the border. They travelled by night and rested/hid during the day because the border patrols are authorized to shoot to kill any Eritreans trying to cross the border. After three days of walking through the mountains, they made it through to the Sudanese desert and eventually found their way to a refugee camp. He was given refugee status and came to Khartoum to look for work. It took him some time to find work but then Cambridge basically hired him on a probationary status and he has been working there for almost a year. He is only making $300 a month (which made me feel pretty guilty since I make 4 times that) but when we said he should try to get more money, he said that what he was making was a blessing. This really hit home with me. He said he was only making about $10 a month in the Eritrean army so this was obviously a huge upgrade. He also went on to talk about how his goal is to go to America to get his Master’s degree in environmental science, but since he is a refugee and left Eritrea illegally, it is very hard to get the proper documentation. It was very powerful to hear how grateful he was for everything he had and how hopeful he was for his future even though he has every reason not to be.

Linda’s story is no less amazing. As I said earlier, she was born in southern Sudan. If you’re not familiar with recent Sudanese history, there was a terrible civil war between northern and southern Sudan that just ended in 2005 (I say ended, the two sides signed a Comprehensive Peace Agreement but there is still some fighting in the south). When she was six years old, Linda’s grandmother decided to take Linda and try to escape their increasingly violent surroundings. So they set off on foot for what would be quite a journey. Linda said they walked for three months from village to village avoiding the gunshots and armed groups of men. They eventually made it to the Ethiopian border and after spending some time in Addis Ababa and reuniting with her siblings and mother, they immigrated to the US. She didn’t give a lot of details about their journey and we didn’t push her for them since I’m sure that’s a painful time for her. Anyways, she was obviously so grateful just to be alive and to have the opportunity to grow up in America. She graduated from the University of Florida and is now taking online courses for a Master’s degree. Now that the war has ended, she wants to go back to southern Sudan and help rebuild that part of the country.

As you can imagine, I was blown away by both of these stories. To be honest, I really didn’t say much for the rest of the night because I just couldn’t believe what I heard. What could I say? “Yeah, I come from a wealthy, upper-middle class family and I never felt real danger or wanted for anything in my entire life.” I have experienced these feelings of guilt before when I’ve travelled to developing countries but I have also realized that feeling guilty for what you have isn’t really the proper response. I’ve realized that we have no control over where we are born or into what situation we are born. We can only be thankful for what we have, help those that are less fortunate than us and live our lives to the fullest. What this evening did help me realize was that a lot of the problems we complain about in the west are really quite trivial and unimportant. While we worry about the price of gas or the traffic on the way home, there are people in the world struggling to survive in the face of war and poverty. Hearing Linda and Daniel’s stories just gave me a human reminder of this fact and made me realize that I can never give God enough thanks for the many blessings in my life.