As you walk the first few paces away from the primary school buildings along the narrow dirt trail to Luonyaker, the sound of the children playing in the school quickly starts to fade. The the conversations of the pupils who are escorting you home become the main distraction from the chatter of the scattered birds and the incidental noises of the forest. The red dust trail first leads from home to home and then on into the patchy forest. The pupils track the driest course with some paths still thigh high in water. In the passing homes, you see the harvest displayed to dry, laid out on the handmade mud platforms at the centres of the homesteads. Sorhgum's head of small, brown berries, the yellow of the maize and the small green circles of okra paints a hope-filled pattern beneath the sun. For now, food is more than enough to eat and storing this collection will sustain the family until this time next year. As we walk further, children donate the sugar cane to us that they've acquired along the way. It is too sweet to ask if it was scrumped.
Things To Pray For
A Future
Marol Academy Secondary School will open after the four month holidays on the 1st April 2013. For its pupils, this is the only opportunity for secondary education. Walking over three hours each way, each day, one of the few local church leaders is coming to Marol to gain his first post primary education. Pupils like him make the school worth growing. Yet, for the last two years, the secondary school has been reliant on the sacrificial nurturing of Gordon and Joyce. Please pray that God will provide the next leader(s) to direct the studies at this school at least for the first few months of the next academic year. Marol is a unique environment and not a predictable calling. Yet, God has provided again and again for this school. There is a real need to start asking God to provide once more. Please also ask God if you know anyone he might be asking to serve here.
Football
As the ground slightly slopes away to the school from the teachers' tukals (thatched huts) and you wander towards the hand pump, a clearer area of dry, hard earth marks the Marol Academy football pitch. All without shoes to prevent any unfair advantage, the pupils run for hours up and down the pitch chasing the ball of this worldwide game. Now, come Saturday afternoons, the volunteer Kenyan teachers also join the match. Having gathered the pupils and played the match, the afternoon ends with a Bible passage and some prayers. Through football the children of Marol are gaining a new taste of God's promises to them.
Floods
Having been drenched in torrents of water since the end of May and with land fully saturated, much of South Sudan is now submerged by floods. Although the land seems perfectly flat and without boundaries, rain seems to unpredictably focus its distribution on certain villages. This year Marol received more water than elders remember having fallen for twenty years. As you walk the 6km from the market in Luonyaker to Marol, the road slowly changes from sand to a knee-high swamp. Fields of groundnuts have been flooded to ruin and the road to Marol became impassable to all vehicles. Further south in Unity State, floods have displaced whole villages from their homes.
Feasting
With perfectly perpendicular postures, the young girls walk their routine path from home to the water pump. Yet, at this time of year, their journey too is accompanied by sugar cane. They tear off the skin and munch the sugar from the long canes as they walk along. Little children carry bundles of this sweet bounty. With the promise of the sorghum harvest close behind, the munching of the cane signals a happy time of year. Friend even donate handfuls of maize from their seemingly plentiful stocks. Thank God for the harvest that has come.
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