Munduland: Evacuated to Zaire

On 24th July 1987 Alice and I packed all our remaining possessions into our little Suzuki jeep and together with all the other Wycliffe personnel in Maridi set off for Yambio. Yambio was the only place we could go, as all other routes out of Maridi were closed, but it was really the wrong direction. It was considered safer than Maridi, which is why we went there, but we didn’t plan to stay.

Map of Mundu-land.

Plan A was that we would all cross the border into Zaire and then drive around the problem – crossing back into Sudan at Yei. However none of us had a valid visa for Zaire, or even an exit visa for Sudan. We thought the border officials might have been willing to stretch a point in the circumstances – but this proved not to be the case. Then we thought maybe, since Yambio was further from the area of rebel activity, we might be able to get permission for the plane to land there. Mind you, many of us weren’t all that keen on being airlifted out, as it would have meant leaving most of our few remaining possessions (including the cars) behind in Yambio. We needn’t have worried. We couldn’t get permission for the plane to land in Yambio any more than in Maridi. Eventually, about the beginning of August, the group of SPLA guerrillas in the Maridi area ran out of ammunition and retreated back to the North and East. The road from Maridi to Yei was opened again, so it was decided that we should all drive back to Maridi and on to Juba via Yei. Alice and I decided to part company with the others and stay behind in Yei. For one thing Juba was going to be full of refugees, and accommodation would be very tight, whereas in Yei we could stay in the home of our friends the Watsons, who were on sick leave. For another thing, we had decided that since we would not be allowed to return to Maridi any time soon, we had better move across the border to Aba and set up the Mündü project there. Yei was the best place to cross into Zaire, being only about 30 miles from Aba. We sent our passports to Juba to get Zairean visas, and settled down to wait a few days - or a week or two - for their return.

Two things changed our plans. For one thing our director asked us to consider staying in Yei for a couple of months. Ulla, a young short-termer from Sweden, would like to return to Yei to finish her work on the Keliko language. But Sandy Watson was still recovering from hepatitis, and it wouldn’t be possible to Ulla to stay in Yei on her own. The other thing was that a group of SPLA attacked the government soldiers at the border post between Yei and Aba, and so that road was also closed.

We quite enjoyed our time in Yei. The Watsons’ house was very comfortable, with a garden going down to the Yei River. The road was open to Juba, but cars could only travel in convoy with a military escort. There was usually a convoy 2 or 3 times a week. It was long before the days of e-mail, and I can remember sitting at the window watching the Juba Road anxiously for signs of a convoy coming across the bridge – and hoping our colleagues in Juba had remembered to give our mail to someone coming to Yei. A less pleasant memory is of waking in the night to hear the sound of “big guns” not far away. One thing I had learnt when living in Belfast in the 70s, is that gunfire is usually a lot farther away than you think - but this sounded very near indeed! Alice and I wondered if we should get under our beds. I decided to go and see if Ulla was OK. As I walked down the path to her house, I suddenly thought, “This is probably the stupidest thing I have ever done!” I hastily put my torch out and groped my way onward by the faint light of the stars. I found Ulla sleeping peacefully. It turned out that the noise was the SPLA mounting a rocket attack on the army base a couple of miles away.

Eventually, towards the end of October, the Watsons returned to Yei, and we were free to leave. Only one problem – the road to Aba was still closed. Rumour had it that the SPLA had blown up one of the bridges. Maybe we should try another route – going round by Bazi and Adi. We heard there was a convoy due to leave for Bazi next day, so we hastily packed our stuff back into the car and headed for the main square. By early afternoon we realised that the convoy wouldn’t leave that day – maybe tomorrow. This was repeated four times before we finally left! The convoy proceeded at walking pace so that the foot soldiers at the front could check for land-mines. The convoy was actually heading for Uganda, but we left it at Bazi on the Zaire border. We reached the Africa Inland Mission station at Adi that night and travelled on to Aba next day. We had thought we knew what bad roads were like, living in Sudan, but the roads in Zaire were a revelation to us! Anyway, we eventually reached Aba safely. We left our stuff in store there in the care of our AIM friends and went home for a well-earned holiday, and, in my case, to work on the typesetting of Mündü Genesis.

In January of 1988 Alice and I moved into a house in Aba, kindly made available to us by AIM. On our previous trips to Aba we had already met David Falla, a young Zairean Mündü, who felt the Lord was calling him to translate the Bible into his own language. Falla and I started working on the translation of John’s Gospel – and in fact Falla was the one who translated the first draft of most of the Mündü New Testament.

Alice continued to work on Mündü literacy, and soon found a young Sudanese refugee called Enoka Sebit to work with her. Dominic was still in Maridi, but after a while we got a letter from him, saying he would like to move to Zaire with his family and continue working with us, but had no means of transport. So in the end Alice and I drove through the game park to the Sudanese border, near Maridi, which Dominic and family had crossed by an “unapproved route”. That was quite an adventure too, but I don’t really have time to write about it now.

Aba was just at the very edge of the Mündü area of Zaire. AIM had started working in there in the early years of the 20th century. The Logo people, who lived in the area, responded well to the Gospel and a strong church was founded. But the Mündüs, a much smaller group, were very resistant to the Gospel. They simply didn’t want to hear. When we first brought Mündü Scripture into Zaire, some of the AIM folk (including Tony Wallace of Finaghy Baptist) together with colleagues from the local church, started making regular Sunday evangelistic trips into the Mündü area, using Mündü Mark and the hymnbook we had printed. The Mündüs were so excited to see that their language could actually be written down! They have always been a rather marginalised group, and people from other languages would tell them that Mündü wasn’t really a proper language. One Mündü said to me, “How amazing that two white women would be willing to come all this way, and to live among us and learn our language! Now we see that God really loves us, since He has sent you to us with His Word in our own language.”

The nearest Mündü village was 5 or 6 miles away. No longer could I test the translation by reading to my friends in the village every evening. Instead every week Alice and I and some Mündü friends would pile into our little car and drive to one or two of the nearest villages, where we would hold Bible studies using the recently translated Scriptures. By this time we had a portable computer which would run on solar power, so I was able to print out as many copies as were needed. I would be sitting with my copy and my red pen at the ready to mark any verses that seemed hard to understand. But of course these Bible studies served a dual purpose. As well as testing the translation, they also helped to strengthen the new believers in these villages. As a result of the Sunday evangelistic trips and the Thursday Bible studies about five little churches were founded in Mündü villages during this period. They have not had an easy time – Satan doesn’t give up his territory willingly – and at least one of them has since closed. But others are continuing to hold fast to the faith in spite of the lack of trained pastors. Please pray for these little churches.

Dorothea Jeffrey - 13 July 2005
First published in Irish Baptist Life

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