Ministry Blog
Hope for the Children of Southern Sudan
Elephant Land - Blog 4
December 17, 2009
ELEPHANT LAND BLOG 4
Today I want to write about the beautiful colors here. Like most places, green is prevalent, with myriads of shades—the dark, dusty color of mango leaves, the medium to light green grass, the sort of smoky green-blue of the distant mountains—and one, very bright green snake! We saw him on the campus of one of the children’s homes, called Harvesters. That’s the first live one we’ve seen since coming here five months ago. The dark green teak leaves are absolutely humongous—and when the wind blows, they sound like raindrops or clapping hands. There are green oranges, grapefruit, tangerines, avocados, several varieties of greens to eat, and some bananas are green—we think they are plantains, because you have to cook them. The people in Uganda call the cooked ones “matoki.” It’s one of their staples.
But there are many other colors here. The soils are three: sandy, well—sand; a very rich, dark soil that grows fruit and vegetables without fertilizer, and a red clay from which they make oven-dried bricks, and also use as a gravelly road topper (or to fill in mud holes). The prevalence of that red soil—called “marram,,” is why the land for our house was filled with crater-like holes, and had to be graded by a front-end loader. We’re going to have to hire the big bulldozer, though, to finish the one side that is swampy.
The flowers here are a veritable rainbow. There is a bush that has golden, spiky flowers that look like dandy lions; there is a more yellow, larger flower; there are some that are small and lavender; and others that are royal purple; there are beautiful morning glories, whose outer leaves are the palest lavender, and whose throats are deep purple. Sometimes when we drive to an out-of-town village, we see ponds with pretty water lilies. At first, I thought they were white. But then I saw one closer, and they are like the morning glories, the palest, lightest lavender-pink. In the courtyard of the New Tokyo Hotel (a restaurant that never heard of oriental food!), there are two trees I love. One is a good-sized red poinsettia, probably 8-9 feet tall; and a breathtaking frangipane, with white and yellow blossoms that exude a wonderful fragrance. At CTC—Crop Training Center where we stayed for 7 weeks—they have beautiful caladium, those large, green leaves with spots and streaks of white, purple and pink. I hope to move some to the side of our small house, as well as put some at the big house. In Liberia our whole driveway was lined on both sides with them.
We also see very strangely beautiful roosters. There is one we observed as we walked from CTC to UMCOR. It had just about every color in its feathers: white, cream, red, orange, black, brown and a shimmery blue-black. There is a family of four gray donkeys that wanders around town, as well as sheep and goats every possible combination of black, brown, tawny and white. It’s interesting: the goats seem to be very solitary animals, but the sheep (whose coats are curlier, and have hornless heads) always go around in little groups. It makes me think of Jesus’ parable of the Sheep and the Goats (Matthew 25:31 ff). We, as God’s sheep, need the company and encouragement of one another; but people in the world—the goats—can be very solitary individuals, who usually wind up in trouble. As Isaiah said, “All we like sheep…(ch. 53)
Enjoy your colors, friends! Grace and Peace, Phyllis Hankins
