Our security guard was weeping uncontrollably when he reported to work late in the afternoon at our regional office in Jongeli, South Sudan.   25-year old Rick Luk Chu had been working for IMA World Health, a faith based organization, for over two years, guarding the vehicles, barrels of fuel, and medical supplies kept in a lean-to next to the office.  His young wife and two children remained back in his home village, a 4-5 day walk across the marshy plains.  He tried to get home and see them at least twice a year.    This time there would be no family to go home to.

There has been fierce fighting this past month in the area where Rick’s family lives; fighting between rival tribes over cattle.   In a horrific episode ten days ago a group of Himu tribesmen went into Rick Luk Chu’s village and with guns and machetes, killed every living adult and adolescent, and took the younger children away.   Rick’s wife was amongst the 640 persons killed as reported by the United Nations in an area I had visited just 2 weeks earlier.  His two children, ages 1 and 2 were amongst those abducted and taken away.   There was an aspect almost inhuman about Rick’s cries that day in response to violent acts, equally inhuman.

Cows are what the tribes have been fighting over for decades, and cattle theft triggered this massacre.   No cows were hurt in the attack; the marauding tribesmen valuing cattle more than people

Despite our counsel to the contrary….Rick left yesterday to start a long journey across a harsh and near impassible terrain to find his wife’s body to bury and search for his children.

South Sudan is a new country for Ann and me and we find ourselves having to relearn everything in this mid-life stage of our lives: new languages, new culture, new foods, new challenges.   What is sadly familiar though is the cycle of senseless violence of one people against another, largely based on ethnicity and in this case in retribution for cattle-rustling.   Cows in this culture are one of the few commodities that persons can use to trade or barter.  Cows are needed to buy land, to marry, and for food security for tomorrow for those fortunate enough to own one.  The dream for most people in this land is simply food for the day and shelter at night.  Oh, how we live in a different world in America.

The massacre of 640 persons over a herd of cattle is a sober reminder that we are in a different land.  How can we impact a culture where men, women, and children are callously slaughtered while livestock and babies are taken away by a neighboring tribe?    For the moment we are busy setting up clinics, delivering medicine, training nursing assistants to fill in for  doctors, and designing a sustainable health care system; so busy that we forget to look at the culture around us and see the forest from the trees.
                                                                                      

 I think of Rick walking across the swampy grasslands for the next 5 days in search of his wife’s body to offer her a decent burial and then risk his very life to find his two children.  It puts the things I worry about in their proper place…and causes me to ask the God who called us here what we can hope to accomplish in the time he has allotted.  I do not know the answer to many of these questions, but I know that none of these events escape his awareness.  Likewise I know not what closure Rick will find by his journey, but I do know, as the psalmist tells us, that God will comfort those who mourn and even more, turn our mourning one day into joy. For Rick Luk Chu, that may be the promise that helps him to face his tomorrows.

 Thank you for supporting the World Mission Offering!

 Bill & Ann Clemmer

International Ministries

South Sudan