‘Lost Boy’ Casts Vote for Independence
I found this today on NPR News and it delights me for a number of reasons. For one thing, I didn’t know David Eggars (you remember him from Zeitoun) had helped with the writing of ‘What Is The What?’. Second, who knew that any of these kids would survive? Survive, write a book, thrive, go back to the Sudan, give to the country – and vote. Every now and then in this sad world you hear a good story. This is one.
January 10, 2011
During Sudan’s civil war, in which some 2 million people died, Valentino Achak Deng fled to Ethiopia on foot. Separated from his family for 17 years, Deng is one of Sudan’s so-called Lost Boys, children who were orphaned or separated from their families during the brutal war.
Now, voting is under way in Southern Sudan in a referendum that is expected to split Africa’s largest country. Among those voting this week are the Lost Boys, including Deng, whose life became a best-selling novel in America and who has returned to his homeland to build a school.
After a peace agreement between north and south, Deng returned to Juba, the capital of Southern Sudan, in 2006. He says when he got there, the place was still a wreck.
“On some of these roads, you could see old war tanks. On some of these roads, in some neighborhoods you could see the bones and skulls of dead people,” he recalls now, driving around Juba.
Now, as Southern Sudan appears headed for independence, Deng is optimistic — and Juba looks a lot better. Paved roads, now lined with hotels and restaurants, arrived for the first time in 2007.
Juba is a booming city, one of incredible contrast: Barefoot women selling piles of gravel by the side of the road sit next to a Toyota dealership.
Peace is spurring investment and consumer demand. Juba’s growth is driven by Southern Sudan’s oil revenue as well aid from foreign governments and nongovernmental organizations.
Deng grew up in a tiny village called Marial Bai. In the 1980s, northern bombers and Arab militias came.
“They bombed Marial Bai, destroyed it, killed everything, burned crops and livestock,” he says.
Deng was there when the fighting came. He says he “ran away with the rest.” He was 9 years old.
Deng joined thousands of Lost Boys, who spent months trekking across Sudan to refugee camps in Ethiopia. His experience is captured in What Is the What, a novel by Dave Eggers, which reads like a modern-day story of Job.
The boys, some naked, march across an unforgiving landscape, facing Arab horsemen, bombing raids, lions and crocodiles.
Deng eventually resettled in the U.S., where he attended college and was mentored and sponsored by ordinary Americans.
In 2007, he returned to start a high school in Marial Bai, where there was none.
“We have 250 students. Our annual budget now stands at about $200,000 because the school is free,” he says.
The school is funded by Deng’s private foundation. He says most donations come from Americans touched by his story and the plight of Southern Sudan.
Deng, now 32, has just cast his vote for independence. He says that for a Sudanese child of war, his life’s journey is almost inconceivable.
“I never imagined I would be the person I am right now,” he says.
The King’s Speech
“The movie is sold out!” my friend exclaimed as she and her husband joined me in the theater. We had really good seats. I had accidentally managed to get there early enough to get seats right in the center, close enough, but not too close. People looked at the seats I was saving for my friend and her husband with envy, and it was all I could do not to make a sign against the ‘evil eye.’ 🙂
Whoda thunk? Who would have thought a movie about an English king with a speech problem would sell out the entire theatre?
Must be word of mouth. The film is really, really good, and takes a personal tragedy and turns it into an inspiration. You wouldn’t think there could be anything funny about tackling such a problem, but the movie has some very very funny moments – the king, George VI, actually CAN speak without a stammer when he is swearing, when he is singing, or when he is very very angry.
His unorthodox speech tutor gives the King a new vision of himself, and helps him find insights into how the problem developed. There are some very moving moments, and some highly inspiring ones, too. All in all, the movie keeps moving, keeps you informed and makes you glad you spent the money on movie tickets.
Santa Lucia / Saint Lucy
Today is the feast day of St. Lucy, or, as I was growing up in Alaska, surrounded by Scandinavian fishermen and their families, Santa Lucia. In Swedish families there is a tradition that the eldest daughter, on Santa Lucia day, wears a wreath of candles and brings her parents coffee and special saffron buns in bed. People always make jokes about someone following her with a bucket of water, but I can imagine there were mishaps – imagine, mixing candles and hair. As you can see in the photo, thought, the candles are tall – at least at the beginning.
Never kid yourselves. Children love blood and gore, and love to be a little bit scared. The Grimm Brothers knew this, and if you have ever read their original stories, the hairs on the back of your neck would rise and you would say to yourself “How can these be stories for children??” Think about it – Hansel and Gretel abandoned by their own parents to starve in the woods? Girls with really mean stepmothers, who treated them unfairly?
Back before all the romantic literature on zombies and vampires, we children would stand out in the bus stop (in winter, the sun barely rises during the long Alaskan winters) and tell each other stories of the saints in the bible. Many of them died horrible deaths, and this one ended “and then they took her eyes out of her head, and she was still alive!!!!” I don’t remember ever hearing the miracle of the restoration of her sight, in fact, I thought she was killed, martyred, but here is her story, for those who want to know what Santa Lucia’s day is all about.
LUCY
VIRGIN AND MARTYR, abt. 304
The early Roman lists of martyrs commemorate Lucy, virgin and martyr, on 13 December, and her name, with that of Agatha, appears in the Roman Liturgy as an example of those who have gone before us, in whose company we join in giving thanks and praise to God. Aside from this, little is known of her, except that she lived in Syracuse in Sicily, and probably died around 304. Her name, which means “light,” probably accounts for the story that her eyes were put out and her eyesight miraculously restored, and may be connected with the fact that her feast occurs near the time when (in the Northern Hemisphere) the nights are longest.
In Sweden and elsewhere, the day is observed by having one of the daughters of the house dress in a white robe with a crown of lighted candles and go singing from room to room (presumably followed by an adult with a fire extinguisher) early in the morning when it is still dark to awaken the other family members and to offer them St. Lucy’s Cakes and hot coffee.
Ember Wednesday (of the winter season) is defined as the Wednesday after Lucy’s Day. (An equivalent definition would be: the Wednesday preceding the last Sunday before Christmas.)
The above in dark type is from The Lectionary which publishes daily readings and these stories of the Saints put together by James Kiefer.
“I’m The Present!”
As we were puffing away in one of the partners-exercises in Water Aerobics, my friend mentioned he would be heading up to Atlanta for the next couple weeks to visit children and grandchildren.
“Are you driving?” I asked between huffing and puffing.
“Nope, flying.” His answers were a lot shorter.
“You taking presents?” I asked, trying to keep my mind off my aching limbs.
“I AM the present!” he responded, and we both laughed.
When I was a kid, my favorite present was getting the small wrapped hotel soaps my Dad would bring back from his trips. To this day, I still like soaps!
It’s Easy To Tell a Spy
This story interests me because I grew up in Cold War America, and when I was going to high school in Germany, we were surrounded by propaganda urging us always to be careful about anything we said, in public or even in private.
“It’s easy to tell a spy” the public service announcements would go, and show someone in a cafe, or in line waiting for a bus, or in the library giving out information on where her husband or father was deployed or when such and such a unit was going to the border, and a nefarious person writing it down to send back to their leaders, always the dreaded Russians.
They’re back. Did they ever go away?
NEW YORK -Nine people charged with operating as Russian spies entrenched in American suburbia were making long-shot bids to be released from jail pending trial Thursday, even as authorities scoured a Mediterranean island for an alleged co-conspirator who disappeared after he was granted bail.
Hearings were set for federal courts in Boston, New York and Alexandria, Va., for all but one of the 10 people arrested over the weekend by federal authorities in the United States.
Police searched airports, ports and yacht marinas Thursday to find an 11th person who was arrested in Cyprus but disappeared after a judge there freed him on $32,500 bail. The man, who had gone by the name Christopher Metsos, failed to show up Wednesday for a required meeting with police.
Authorities also examined surveillance video from crossing points on the war-divided island, fearing the suspect might have slipped into the breakaway north, a diplomatic no-man’s-land that’s recognized only by Turkey and has no extradition treaties.
In the U.S., Donald Heathfield and Tracey Foley, of Cambridge, Mass., were scheduled to appear Thursday at a federal court in Boston. Mikhail Semenko, Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills, all of Arlington, Va., were set for a hearing before Magistrate Judge Theresa Buchanan in U.S. District Court in Alexandria. Defendants Richard Murphy, Cynthia Murphy, Juan Lazaro and Vicky Pelaez were to go before a judge in New York.
All have been charged with being foreign agents. Officials said the suspects will all eventually be transferred to New York, where the charges were filed.
Not due in court Thursday was Russian beauty Anna Chapman, the alleged spy whose heavy presence on the Internet and New York party scene has made her a tabloid sensation. She was previously ordered held without bail.
Eight of the suspects were accused by prosectuors of being foreign-born, husband-and-wife teams who were supposed to be Americanizing themselves and gradually developing ties to policymaking circles in the U.S.
Most were living under assumed identities, according to the FBI. Their true names and citizenship remain unknown, but several are suspected of being Russians by birth.
Heathfield claimed to be a Canadian but was using a birth certificate of a deceased Canadian boy, agents said in a court filing. His wife, Tracey Foley, purported to be from Canada, too, but investigators said they searched a family safe deposit box found photographs taken of her when she was in her 20s that had been developed by a Soviet film company.
Juan Lazaro had said he was born in Uraguay and was a citizen of Peru; he was secretly recorded by the FBI talking about a childhood in Siberia, according to court documents.
Two, Chapman and Mikhail Semenko, were Russians who didn’t attempt to hide their national origin, FBI agents said, but they had a similar mission: blend in, network and learn what they could.
Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague said the U.K. was investigating whether Foley might have used a forged British passport. The British spy agency MI5 is also investigating the extent to which Foley and Chapman had links to London, and will likely seek to find out whether either attempted to recruit British officials as informants.
There is evidence that at least some of the alleged agents had success cultivating contacts in the business, academic and political worlds.
The criminal complaint alleges that either Heathfield or Foley sent messages to Moscow talking about turnover at the CIA that was supposedly “received in private conversation” with a former congressional aide. Other messages described Heathfield establishing contact with a former high ranking U.S. national security official, and with a U.S. researcher who worked on bunker-busting nuclear warheads.
Moscow thanked Cynthia Murphy for having passed along “very useful” information about the global gold market and instructed her to strengthen ties with students and professors at Columbia University’s business school, where she was getting a degree, according to the FBI.
Among other things, the Russians wanted “detailed personal data and character traits w. preliminary conclusions about their potential to be recruited by Service,” according to one intercepted message.
Clare Lopez, senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy and a professor at the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security and a former operations officer for the CIA, said the alleged plotters might have someday been able to produce valuable information, if left in place long enough.
“Their value is not just in acquiring classified information,” she said. “There’s a lot that goes on that’s not simply stealing secrets and sending them back to Moscow.”
Metsos was charged with supplying funds to the other members of the ring.
Cypriot Justice Minister Loucas Louca on Thursday admitted that a judge’s decision to release him on bail “may have been mistaken” and said authorities were examining leads on his possible whereabouts.
“We have some information and we hope that we will arrest him soon,” Louca told reporters, without elaborating.
Cyprus has for decades been a hotbed of espionage intrigue as spies converge on the eastern Mediterranean island at the crossroads of Europe, Africa and Asia.
More recently, former CIA agent Harold Nicholson, in prison for espionage, recruited his 24-year-old son Nathaniel to meet with Russian agents in cities around the world from 2006 to 2008 to collect money owed by his former handlers. One of those cities was the Cypriot capital, Nicosia.
Sorting Through Our Lives
At lunch, on our anniversary, AdventureMan and I played a game, a game we call “the top three”. He started it. “What are your top three thrills in our life together?” he asked . . .
We came up with contenders, debated relative merits, but agreed on #1 – the birth of our son. Then there were the top three vacations, the top three surprises, etc. It’s always fun; and together remember things you wouldn’t remember on your own.
Every now and then you get a glimpse of what makes life worthwhile, and you are additionally blessed by knowing how happy you are at the time you are happy.
One of those days was today.
Yesterday, we went by to see our son and his wife and our little adorable grandson had a cough.
“Do you need for us to take care of him tomorrow?” we asked.
Oh! If we could take care of him in the morning, that would be wonderful! And so, promptly at 0730, we were at their doorstep, and our morning passed – oh, happily! – taking care of our adorable grandson. He has a bad cough, but he is on the mend, and we had some fun.
He loves his jumpy-thing, which we call a Johnny Jump-Up, but it isn’t, it’s like calling all tissues “Kleenex” or all copies a “Xerox”:
He has discovered his hands and feet; I love watching him, it’s pure motion, every leg and every arm going at once:
Well, he can’t talk yet, not clearly, so he blows bubbles to tell us how much he loves us:
“Oh!” exclaims AdventureMan, “You have to take a picture of him while he is sleeping, he is so beautiful.”
LOL! I had swaddled him, and he tried to tell me I had done it wrong, but I didn’t listen. When I went back 10 minutes later, he was still squalling AND he was no longer swaddled. I re-swaddled, this time, doing it right and tight, and before I even put him in his crib, he was sound asleep.
He did manage somehow to get one arm out:
On the way home, we picked up some roasting chickens for dinner, to roast with fresh rosemary and basil from our own garden. Yummm. AdventureMan will deliver one to our son and his wife around dinner time.
We are happy AND we know it. It’s a great day in Pensacola.
OOops! Ops!
The silence tipped him off.
He had just finished referring to his study as “The Command Center.”
The silence continued, then I broke it, quietly asking “and just whom would you be commanding?”
“Ummm. . . err . . . Ops Center! Operations Center!” he corrected himself.
We both laughed.
We’ve been married 37 years. 🙂
AdventureMan Cooks a Florida Bouillabaisse
One of AdventureMan’s retirement dreams was to have time to cook. There have been two times in our lives together when he has had the time – one, when our son was born and he learned Chinese cooking so he could stir-fry while I held the squalling baby (he had colic, and squalled from about four in the afternoon to eleven at night. Do you know how long every single minute is when you are holding an inconsolable baby?)
The second time was when he retired from the military, and spent several months at home, keeping house, taking our son to visit colleges, and serving up some of the most fantastic meals we have ever eaten. (I was working; it was a total role reversal. Kind of fun to shake things up, do things differently in a relationship now and then. 🙂 )
So when he started thumbing through cook books, I started grinning to myself. This man is very talented, and while I am very good at ‘survival cooking’, i.e. getting a meal on the table that will nourish and quell hunger pains, AdventureMan takes cooking to an art form.
First we had to make a trip to the grocery store for some basics. When you set up housekeeping after a (yet another) move, you are missing some of the most basic things – like cayenne pepper, or garlic.
Then – oh heaven! – we visited Maria’s Fresh Seafood Market, heaven on earth for this little old Alaska girl.
Fresh, fresh seafood, and people who know how to cut it. The prices are good. As we entered, a drama began, a woman buying a lot of (something) picked a fight, first with the man serving her and then with the cashier. We were there about half an hour, and during this time, she complained, loudly and vigorously, to anyone who would listen. I think she wanted her purchase comped.
AdventureMan bought what he needed, got it cut mostly how he needed it, and also got a fish head and tail for making stock – a great big grouper! He said as he cooked it up, the head and mouth were sticking out of the pot like “Help me! Help me!” but I wouldn’t know because I was upstairs minding my own business while he worked his magic on the Florida fish bouillabaisse. 🙂
Soon, tantalizing odors drifted upstairs, rich, complex odors, with a hint of sherry . . . it was divine. I had to pop down to let him know how much I was appreciating his efforts.
“Do you think it’s a little too thick?” he asked.
“I think it’s like a fish stew; I think thick is OK. You can add a little more liquid if it seems to need it,” I added, but actually, he is doing just fine without any input from me.
Finally, it was time to eat. AdventureMan dished the concoction into some shellfish soup bowls I found many years ago at that exotic resource store, TJ Maxx (LOL) and dinner was served.
Total YUMMMMMM. Bravo, AdventureMan, Bravo! I am having a lot of fun with your retirement! 🙂
What Matters?
For twelve years, most of my life prior to 1998 was in storage. When we first headed to Saudi Arabia together, then back to Germany for several years, then to the Gulf for several more, we had thought it would be just a few years . . . actually, we didn’t think of any time, we just never expected to pack almost everything we owned for that long.
As we were awaiting our shipment from storage, AdventureMan asked me what mattered most. In the greater scheme of things, what matters most isn’t coming out of storage. What matters most is the lives who have connected with mine over the many years.
But there are a couple things I wanted to see again.
First, when we married, we started saving for our first trip to Africa. We didn’t eat meat. We didn’t go to movies. We saved, and a little after we had been married for a year, we went to Kenya and Tanzania for a month, three weeks on safari and then a week on the beach at a marine reserve, where we could snorkle. During that time, we saved every penny, but out of his lunch money, AdventureMan saved enough to buy me this little candleabra, which I cherish. He bicycled to the shop to pay the $25 per month until it was paid for. It was a total surprise, one of the best surprises I have ever had in my life. I wanted to see it again:
Also during that first year, we were looking for wedding china. We had met and married. We hadn’t gone through a long process, just made a decision and followed through. It seemed so sensible to us at the time. Then we had lots of time to search for just the right china.
It took us forever. We would ‘kind of’ like one or two, but not enough to buy it. Then, one day at the Heidelberg Officer’s Club, we found it. We visited it again three months later, and found we liked it just as much, even more. We also had an income tax refund, so we made our first major purchase together, and, after all these years, we still love it:
It is simple, white, with a little encrustation, and – to us – still as beautiful as the day we bought it. It is made by Reynaud, an old porcelain manufacturer in Limoges, but they were bought out several years ago by Cerelene, and now this pattern, Cheverny, is no longer made. I am registered on several replacement sites, but not a single piece has appeared in all the years I have been registered. One year in Germany, just before we left, we bought four more plates and coffee cups, but the replacements are not the same. The china was thicker, not so refined as the original. And then they stopped making it altogether.
Every piece arrived intact. We have a couple chips – we’ve had the china around 36 years, so a broken piece here and there, a chip from time to time – it’s hard to avoid.
We also have an Ethiopian cross, and some very old cookbooks and etiquette books I have collected – I was happy to see them again, along with some French hunting ducks I found once in the Metz flea market. 🙂 Old friends. By the grace of God, we have come through these 12 long years with only a few chips ourselves, nothing broken, and nothing of great importance missing.
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