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How dangerous is it for Sioux Falls groups to fly into South Sudan with African friends from this community to dig wells, construct schools and create hope in that Third World country?

We talked a lot about that here at the Argus Leader before my supervisors allowed me to travel over with Sioux Falls probation officer David Jal this past February on a project to dig a well in his native village.

There is a lot of killing going on along the Sudan-South Sudan border, fueled mainly by arguments over oil and land ownership. There is unrest among various tribes in South Sudan as well that has resulted in cattle being stolen and people being slaughtered.

The situation is unnerving enough that one Sioux Falls group has put its plan to construct a church in Nasir, South Sudan, on hold.

“With the security problems over there right now, I don’t think our church wants to get involved with starting something that someone might come in and bomb,” group member Roger Quam says. “So we’re going to wait and watch.”

When we first started discussing the possibility of a project on the South Dakota-South Sudan connection, Argus Leader Media publisher Randell Beck had many questions about potentially sending an employee into harm’s way. He wanted a lot of assurances and, obviously, so did I.

So I started reaching out to U.S. State Department officials who work with and in South Sudan, guys with names such as G. Bart Stokes and Zach Harkenrider. They pointed out State Department updates that were suggesting no travel to that country because of the violence. They weren’t about to encourage me to go over.

That was disheartening because I knew groups from Sioux Falls were traveling back and forth to build schools and library centers in South Sudan. One effort, led by Lisa Marie Johnson of Mary’s Project in Sioux Falls and a local Southern Sudanese man, Atem Juowei, had gone over right before Christmas.

Jal assured me that he wasn’t about to take anyone into danger’s way and reiterated again and again that his daily discussions with relatives and government officials near his village along the Khor Wakow River in eastern South Sudan indicated that it was not dangerous. 


At some point, Sen. John Thune’s office put me in touch with another guy with State Department ties who had expertise on South Sudan. His name is Colin Thomas-Jensen, and he lifted my spirits when he reached out to his people on the ground in eastern South Sudan on my behalf.

“What they tell me is, near that border, given the relationship with South Sudan and Ethiopia, the last thing South Sudan wants is problems in proximity to the border,” Thomas-Jensen told me. “That possibly puts it in a safer place.”

Buoyed by that news, I reported what I heard and started getting my international travel shots and inoculations. Go ahead and buy the plane ticket, Beck and my editors told me. That was sometime around Christmas.

During the next month, a friend of mine in Thune’s office sent me a series of stories about unrest and violence in South Sudan as if to say, “Have you really thought this through?” Every time my father heard something on FOX News or CNN about people being killed in fighting in South Sudan, I got a phone call and the disbelief of a parent who couldn’t understand why I would want to go through with this.

At one point, when Beck saw a particularly troubling article on the unrest in east Africa, I think management was thinking seriously of pulling the plug on this adventure just days before we were due to fly out. But I ran all those worries by Jal and Thomas-Jensen, and again, they answered those concerns.

On Jan. 30, Jal, myself and Le Mars, Iowa, truck driver Joel Hirschman flew off to Africa. We didn’t return until Feb. 25.

You might argue today, based on the fact that I’m back at the Argus Leader and writing this post, that we made the right decision. Or you might argue that given the ongoing violence and fighting in South Sudan, maybe we were just lucky.

In either case, I don’t question the decision by Quam and his group to wait.

“If God wants a church over there,” Quam told me, “he’ll get it built.”

Source: http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNHoD9jJFzBEr2yiV1_cJErsmEdWXw&url=http://www.borglobe.com/25.html?m7:post=assessing-the-danger-of-traveling-to-south-sudan