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doing a worthy job. It requirednegotiating with governmental heads throughout the region, and it could put him across from them in tense negotiations over human rights reforms in the judiciary sector, or make it necessary to poke around in the worst prisons imaginable and stare into the faces of the walking cadavers held there.
It was the right time in his life to make this journey. A few months earlier, his fiancée back home had called off their planned wedding. He wasn’t happy about it but had to admit she might have done right by both of them—trooping around Africa was never going to be her cup of tea.
This made it a lot easier to put himself through all the necessary steps before making the journey to Africa. Once his life there actually began, he was relieved to be without the sort of strong emotional ties that would have put up distractions in the new job.
As for family back at home, they weren’t thrilled with his choice of assignment, but nobody seriously questioned his motives. He was grateful for that. Instead they promised to visit as soon as possible and see his new hometown of Nairobi, Kenya, for themselves.
He was struck by how good it felt to be alone, in terms of not causing anyone at home to worry. It seemed obvious that it would be completely unreasonable to expect to find a woman who could understand what he was doing and accept his need to be in that place.
When it came to personal time, it was all too clear that work like his was destined to be an individual sport.
CHAPTER SIX
Jessica:
My truncated stay at the Childers orphanage in South Sudan was like being awakened by a plunge into freezing water. My senses had never been so overwhelmed. The experience didn’t change my overall goals, but it completely realigned my approach. I pulled back to work out a new strategy designed to actually allow me to be of service while also avoiding a pointless death there.
I had done a summer teaching gig in Honduras, but nothing there prepared me for the normalized psychosis in Africa. The stark impact of every one of those boys and girls was enough to stop me in my tracks. Their expressions, the very flesh of their faces, had been carved by conflict. They were already old hands at drug addiction, sexual sadism, the uses of wartime weaponry, and the receiving or inflicting of savage outbursts of violence. They were “child” soldiers only in the counting of their years.
The impact on my neophyte self was profound. Humbling, to say the least. We even had to flee the area before it was known whether any of the children had been kidnapped again by the LRA fighters, or if any were still in hiding. The shock left me cowed into silence, not by fear, but by the vague sense of having been rebukedby circumstance for showing up unprepared. What did I think I was doing?
While our rickety plane sputtered into the air, I considered the miseries visited upon those children and the fact that we were so powerless to give meaningful help. I was barely out of rifle range and already anger was bringing back my natural stubbornness.
If you grew up as a nice girl or you know someone who did, then you realize that nice girls the world over are mostly sweet, good-natured, nonconfrontational, and quietly cooperative in most things. People like having nice girls around because their rough edges have been filed down and sanded smooth.
But if you are one of the nice girls in question, there is only one weapon of social resistance available to you, and it is the trait of quiet resolve. Yes, some people call it stubbornness. I’ve never been the loud and rowdy type, and I don’t believe anyone thinks of me as confrontational. But I can plant my feet and root them to the ground.
That’s how one does the nice girl thing without resorting to life as a wimp. Our failure at the orphanage really turned up the heat on what I continue to call quiet resolve, in spite of those who might describe me as being stubborn enough to teach
It was the right time in his life to make this journey. A few months earlier, his fiancée back home had called off their planned wedding. He wasn’t happy about it but had to admit she might have done right by both of them—trooping around Africa was never going to be her cup of tea.
This made it a lot easier to put himself through all the necessary steps before making the journey to Africa. Once his life there actually began, he was relieved to be without the sort of strong emotional ties that would have put up distractions in the new job.
As for family back at home, they weren’t thrilled with his choice of assignment, but nobody seriously questioned his motives. He was grateful for that. Instead they promised to visit as soon as possible and see his new hometown of Nairobi, Kenya, for themselves.
He was struck by how good it felt to be alone, in terms of not causing anyone at home to worry. It seemed obvious that it would be completely unreasonable to expect to find a woman who could understand what he was doing and accept his need to be in that place.
When it came to personal time, it was all too clear that work like his was destined to be an individual sport.
CHAPTER SIX
Jessica:
My truncated stay at the Childers orphanage in South Sudan was like being awakened by a plunge into freezing water. My senses had never been so overwhelmed. The experience didn’t change my overall goals, but it completely realigned my approach. I pulled back to work out a new strategy designed to actually allow me to be of service while also avoiding a pointless death there.
I had done a summer teaching gig in Honduras, but nothing there prepared me for the normalized psychosis in Africa. The stark impact of every one of those boys and girls was enough to stop me in my tracks. Their expressions, the very flesh of their faces, had been carved by conflict. They were already old hands at drug addiction, sexual sadism, the uses of wartime weaponry, and the receiving or inflicting of savage outbursts of violence. They were “child” soldiers only in the counting of their years.
The impact on my neophyte self was profound. Humbling, to say the least. We even had to flee the area before it was known whether any of the children had been kidnapped again by the LRA fighters, or if any were still in hiding. The shock left me cowed into silence, not by fear, but by the vague sense of having been rebukedby circumstance for showing up unprepared. What did I think I was doing?
While our rickety plane sputtered into the air, I considered the miseries visited upon those children and the fact that we were so powerless to give meaningful help. I was barely out of rifle range and already anger was bringing back my natural stubbornness.
If you grew up as a nice girl or you know someone who did, then you realize that nice girls the world over are mostly sweet, good-natured, nonconfrontational, and quietly cooperative in most things. People like having nice girls around because their rough edges have been filed down and sanded smooth.
But if you are one of the nice girls in question, there is only one weapon of social resistance available to you, and it is the trait of quiet resolve. Yes, some people call it stubbornness. I’ve never been the loud and rowdy type, and I don’t believe anyone thinks of me as confrontational. But I can plant my feet and root them to the ground.
That’s how one does the nice girl thing without resorting to life as a wimp. Our failure at the orphanage really turned up the heat on what I continue to call quiet resolve, in spite of those who might describe me as being stubborn enough to teach
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