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This article appears in the Wilderness issue of Trinity News , the magazine of Trinity Church-St. Paul's Chapel.

Trinity Grants visited several countries in Africa in October 2006. The Rev. Canon James G. Callaway Jr and the Rev. Canon Benjamin Musoke-Lubega recount experiences in southern Sudan and Uganda, two countries seeking a new future after decades at war.

Rebuilding in Sudan

James Callaway: In the press all we hear about is Darfur up in the north, which is of course a humanitarian tragedy. What we don't hear is that, in January of 2005, the Sudanese reached a comprehensive peace agreement that gives administrative separation to the south.

Sudan is an Arab country, but the southern part of Sudan tends to be Christian. In the south, they have been in a civil war for 25 years, a brutal civil war. Yet the Episcopal Church in Sudan is an incredibly strong church, more than nine million people.

Benjamin Musoke-Lubega: I remember a discussion one evening with a Sudanese bishop. He used to be a staff officer for the Church in Sudan development office. Then he went abroad to study. People in England told him, “Why don’t you stay? Why are you going back where they are going to kill you?” But he felt that he had a mission and he did come back. He was consecrated as a bishop in the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp. For me, the touching moment was that he was able to stay with the people who were in camps, either in Uganda or inside the Sudan itself, even when the bombing was going on. I see here a good shepherd who doesn’t abandon the flock and flee.

JC: With the peace agreement, the Sudanese have now had a year and a half of growing stability. The church there is retooling — from survival in a civil war to, now, the task of development, with refugees returning daily. All of a sudden developing a community, instead of ministering to a community at war: these are new skills.

The first role for priests, of course, is as ministers and as gatherers of the communities that the church represents. But then they are going to be putting together projects for funding by the government, for funding by the community, for people on the outside. It’s an evolving role.

BM-L: I think in that society and in those communities right now there is no way you can only be doing pastoral care of Christian ministry. You have to be a social worker because there are people who have been in IDP camps — no schooling, nothing. So a priest or a person who is working at the diocese or in a village may be the only learned person who can read. They can be the interpreter, social worker, the conflict resolver and so forth, because it is a community that has been disturbed because of war.

War in Uganda

BM-L: This is a war which has been going on for maybe the last 20 years. The leader of the Lord's Resistance Army is a self-styled mystic who wants to overthrow the elected government and run the government. In that process young boys and girls have been abducted. I think the government soldiers — who are not well disciplined — have also caused some damage. Most of the people in the Acholi subregion, maybe 80 to 95 percent, are in internally displaced people’s camps.

Visiting that IDP camp was touching, memorable for me. The population was about 41,000 people. It is a huge place. Your eyes could see all these small huts made of grass and then you have a small detachment of the army who are keeping an eye on what is going on.

As we moved in with the bishop, I said, “Bishop, should we go in?” I wasn’t sure how safe it was. The bishop said, “Come on.” He had spent a night in that camp one time. Whenever he goes for visitation to an IDP camp, he stays in the camp so that he can experience what the people are going through. We greeted people, mostly women and children. Most of the few men we saw were drunk. This was about nine or ten in the morning, and this is too early for people to be drunk. There was a lot of trauma, a lot of problems there.

Many of them have small gardens around the camps so they can supplement whatever little they get to eat. The children fend for themselves because their mothers have gone to the gardens. Children, six-years old, eight-years old, take care of their siblings and do all the cleaning. Their parents don't have a way out: if you don't grow your food, there is nothing you can feed your children. There are no schools or the schools are closed. The future for these kids is very bleak.

The bishop asked, “Benjamin, what is the future these kids have in Uganda and the modern world?” That moment, you know, as a parent — I have an eight-year-old, I have a four-year-old — these could be my children. I said, “These children don’t have much.” What kind of citizens of the world are they going to be? I didn’t have an answer for the bishop. It’s a very tough situation. I think the hope is in the end of the conflict, because many people are now going back into their areas. This may be the largest migration of people back home.

The Rev. Canon James G. Callaway Jr. is Trinity Grants deputy for faith formation and education. The Rev. Canon Benjamin Musoke-Lubega is Trinity Grants program associate for the Global South.

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