A Day in Duk Payuel

When I woke up the next morning and looked outside it was beautiful! I went into the other sectioned off area of John's hut, his was bigger than most people's, and found him, his wife Martha and their beautiful little girl sitting eating breakfast, beans, tomatoes, bread and some kind of meat that I stayed away from.  I said, "good morning" and sat down to eat with them.  John told me that he was going to take me to see his clinic and then we were going to see a concert.  The next day I had to leave so I wanted to enjoy myself today as much as possible.  We got dressed and walked to his clinic.  First he gave me a tour of all the rooms and different features that they had and introduced me to the staff.  Then we went to go see the children.  It was amazing even though all of them were sick or hurt in some way they were all the happiest kids I had ever seen.  Most of the kids ran up to me, but others hung back because they were shy.  We played games with them for about an hour and then it was time to say good bye.  They all hugged both of us and said thank you and goodbye.  We left and went back to Johns hut to get his wife and daughter so that we could go to the field by their house with them.  We packed a lunch, ate it and played with their daughter until John said, "the concert will be starting soon, we should leave now so we wont be late."  We walked a very long way but finally made it to the place where the concert was.  John had told me that this man Lam Tungwar was a very good rapper who was a fellow lost boy with John, but other than that I didn't know anything about what I was about to experience.  When it started I was surprised at how much like he sounded like the rap from home except for his clear Sudanese accent.  It was so much fun! I loved most of the songs, but a few were a little too intense for me.  I don'd normally like rap, but Lam had something special about how he sang.  We danced and swayed to the beat until the very last song.  When it was over and we were walking home John scooped up some red dirt from the ground, put it in a jar and handed it to me.  "For you" he said.  I took it and I knew this was his way of giving me something to remember my visit with him.  We got back and I said a sad good bye to Martha, because I would be leaving early the next morning and I didn't want to have to wake her.  All in all it was one of the best, most fun trips I had been on.