Touch a heart, change a life in South Sudan. I did. So can you

On the 18-hour flight to South Sudan, I asked myself, “Why am I going to this war-torn country? Don’t we have plenty of problems in Central Florida that I can work on for a college summer internship?” Then I was flooded with an incredible joy when the faith-based organization I interned with this summer tapped a wellspring of hope.

***

Just across the northern Ugandan border, in Nimule, South Sudan, stands a band of armed guards at the port of entry. Mud huts and the small homes of large families surround them. Trash is littered everywhere. Scrawny children, displaced victims of South Sudan’s civil war, scurry past me.

The village is loud and full of commotion. Evidence of South Sudan’s tumultuous history of violence and poverty is strewn in every direction.

Farther up the bumpy Juba-Nimule road, I pass through neat, green-painted fencing, leaving the trash-filled street at the gate. I arrive at my destination, the Leadership Academy of South Sudan^[1]. I feel the tight, welcoming community embrace — men and women, boys and girls, all dancing and singing.

Johnny Evans Johnny Evans in South Sudan. Johnny Evans in South Sudan. (Johnny Evans)

Once inside the academy, I meet Harriet. Like me, she’s 20. We pull up chairs to sit underneath a pavilion in the cool shade. Harriet dives headfirst into her life story — sharing how she struggled with brain damage as a child, the result of some horrendous but unspecified injury — telling me that her father was killed by the South Sudanese government in the brutal civil war.

Then her voice cracks and she tears up as she recounts her mother’s struggle and eventual death from disease, and that her sister abandoned the shattered family to live as a prostitute.

Then, in a blink, her story pivots to redemption and hope. The Leadership Academy offers refuge from the war, and points her toward a hope-filled future.

Harriet will not have to endure the reality that consumed her sister. She is grateful.

***

The Leadership Academy of South Sudan is a life-giving — indeed, life-altering — sanctuary. The school equips and empowers South Sudan’s brightest students with a rigorous academic and spiritual curriculum. The buildings are sturdy and beautifully designed; the classrooms are full of students taking courses at a university level.

Most important, it’s a place where students can feel safe.

“If it wasn’t for the Leadership Academy, I would be involved in guerrilla-style warfare right now,” one student told me.

***

I owe my summer experience at LASS, the school’s acronym, through its partnership with and the guidance of Cornerstone Development Africa. Cornerstone has decades of expertise working in East Africa and its mission “to rise up future leaders with a shared vision of positively transforming their communities and nations — as an outgrowth of their own personal transformation.”

I bear witness to the transformation of Harriet and the young man who could have been in battle.

Through them, I’ve been transformed, too.

Johnny Evans, 20, of Winter Springs is an economics major at Davidson College in North Carolina. He’s a 2015 graduate of Trinity Prep High School.

References

1. ^{^} Leadership Academy of South Sudan (cornerstoneschoolsafrica.org)