Today is Tomorrow

​Author: Caroline Kurtz
Publisher: Catalyst Press
Reviewer: Hazel Makuzeni
If you would like to get a better understanding of the complexities of a civil war, its destruction, human suffering, power struggles, peace restoration and reconciliation – this is one of the books to get your hands on. Not only does the author gives a genuinely personal examination of South Sudan at war; she also shares her family’s upheaval as she comes to terms with her own humility, strength and weaknesses. How she saved her sanity, in the face of such adversity and tragedy, is beyond me.

Even though an American, the author, Caroline Kurtz had lived in Africa almost half her life. Her parents worked in Ethiopia for twenty-three years since her father got a letter from the Presbyterian Church headquarters in the US asking if he could go to Ethiopia to be a missionary. She was four when they arrived. She was raised there and fluent in Amharic. She was ten when her parents put her alone on the plane to fly to boarding school in Addis Ababa. And was fifteen when she attended high school in Egypt. She met her husband Mark there – both high school juniors and both children of Presbyterians working in SW Ethiopia.
The year was 1996 when she and Mark relocated to Nairobi, Kenya, leaving their daughter Miriam in college in the US. Their supervisors in Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) had presented them with an opportunity to work for four years in Nairobi with the South Sudanese there. She, as the Women’s Development Advisor, and Mark their Financial Advisor in charge of setting up the Presbyterian Church of Sudan’s head office budget. This was testing their faith to the limit as both had no major experiences when it came to their assignments. Caroline had never organised development projects before, but she was sure there would be something she could do to empower South Sudanese women. She had studied community organising. Mark could only arm himself with a basic accounting course in preparation. Previously, both had thrived in Ethiopia working for six years in an Addis Ababa girl’s school. Nothing prepared her though for a civil war chaos she would encounter, even though her parents raised her for hardship in Africa in pursuit of making the world a better place.  Their move to Kenya also included their two young sons, Kenny (eight at the time) and Jesse (a teen). An elite international school was waiting to welcome the boys.
Also, in 1996 the government of Sudan had signed a cease-fire with Commander Riek Machar, a Nuer warlord in South Sudan. Millions have been killed and displaced in South Sudan during the decades long civil war. The Sudan government had bombed rebels in the South remorselessly. The Southern commanders had fought each other and civilians were casualties. Crops were burned to ashes, cattle slaughtered and famine rife.
 Caroline and Mark were enthusiastic. “Everyone was hopeful about the future – UN staff, Nuers. How do humans do that, even facing odds laid out as clearly before us as the odds of success in South Sudan?” she asks. Idealism perhaps. She attended the UN’s aid worker orientation course and felt excited and empowered. She studied her notebook of Nuer vocabulary words. The Nuers are cattle people; their Southern neighbours are the Dinkas. She could be in South Sudan up to a third of every month.
In the book Caroline describes her life in the village of Waat, a compound where she would live for the first time in South Sudan. She was the only American for hundreds of miles around. The village was dense with heat, and with bare necessities. All it offered grew out of the ground, mostly the sorghum people ate all the time. The Red Cross had recently drilled a new well. She was hosted by the village pastor and his assistant. Her refuge at night was her burgundy tent. Elder Guy Lual, a church leader from Nairobi, was also there. She also met Nyang – he went to university in Cairo but returned to Waat with so much optimism. He wanted to rebuild classrooms, to teach adult education and children to read. He had come back to be Education Director for the province. Caroline had brought with her two big treadle sewing machines; she wanted to help the women live few of their dreams. The women wanted her to stay and teach them to read.
As with all best intentions, everything started out good. The Sudanese pastors in Nairobi welcomed Mark with open arms. He negotiated a new office for them. The Presbyterians were donating money for South Sudan and Mark was there to track the money, to see if it was being used to help the suffering people. It soon emerged that was not the case. Bank statements and receipts were not forthcoming. The money was not making its way out of Nairobi for development in South Sudan. Church leaders were spending the money from grants to support their families living in Nairobi instead.  Mark grew disheartened. The author admits at this time they should have sought help immediately. “He was feeling increasingly humiliated. The air in our house got heavier and heavier. Mark hardly ever smiled,” she says. They’ve been married for twenty-three years by the time she went to Waat. Mark was let go; told to take a break from his assignment. He was in despair.
Caroline was facing her own struggles. After getting back from Waat, she had written a grant for sewing machines and sewing lessons for South Sudan women. After the grant came, Mark informed her that the pastors were using the money to pay salary. There was no money for her to travel into South Sudan, or for anything to do with women’s development. She was now also aground at home.
 This was just the beginning to the complex humanitarian crises she experienced first hand in South Sudan. In her journey she got to teach young Nuer men for weeks at a time in the harsh, “god-forsaken” Kakuma refugee camp. She taught women to crochet in Nyal – a village where all traces of the 20th century had been erased. In 1998, she got a new assignment as a logistical organiser for an upcoming peace conference. She now had a full-time job and office space. This was a turning point for her. As she says; the most important and hope-inspiring work she did in all her years in Africa.  Through this work, she became part of a peace intervention team in a close-in conflict. South Sudanese tribes were fighting each other in the middle of their big war against the government of North Sudan. The Wunlit Peace Conference of 1999 paved the way to reconciliation between the communities. The Dinkas and Nuers had to make peace with each other to have any hope of winning the war for independence from the North.  ​