On Monday 11th, we didn’t do much through the day, but it was David’s 30th birthday and Lisa had planned a little surprise party for him in the evening, so we all went out for dinner (which wasn’t a surprise for him) and met up with half a dozen other friends (that was the surprise).
First we visited a compound called ‘Track Marks’, which is an amazing place. Probably the best way to describe it would be as 4 or 4.5 star country club. Beautifully immaculate, even the dirt surface of the car park was carefully manicured, in stark contrast to the drive to get there. It’s on the edge of the town, well away from the couple of kilometres of tarmac road that run through the middle. The drive to get there was like a genuine off-road 4-wheel track, especially as there had been a heavy fall of rain. It was a bone shaker, with the real possibility of inducing travel sickness!
Since the withdrawal of many of the NGOs from Loki (read about that elsewhere in the blog) Track Marks is really struggling to exist, and the night we were there, there were only a handful of clients, none eating dinner, just getting a beer at the bar. I kind of felt sorry that we hadn’t booked dinner there ourselves, but David and Lisa usually come along on a Sunday afternoon for a swim in the small by luxurious outdoor pool anyway, so they’re doing their bit to give it some business.
When the time was right and Lisa was sure all the friends would be duly assembled for the surprise, we went across the road to the opposition, another country club type place called AfEx (short for African Experience). I still find it culturally challenging that to go literally across the road, we need to stop at one security gate until the guard lets us out, drive 25 metres and then stop at another security gate and wait for a guard to let us it.
David was suitably surprise, humbled and happy to see his friends gathered to help him celebrate. They were all Christian missionaries, one of them also a pilot but with AIM Air, an organisation similar to MAF, transporting various aid agencies in and out of Sudan.
What a multi-cultural lot we were. Obviously there were three Scots there; David’s wife Lisa is Canadian; one of the other couples was a German married to a Brazilian, with a couple of kids; there was another young German bloke who works with them; the ‘elder stateswoman’ of the group (she’s been in Loki since a couple of months after David was born!) was also German; and there was an American couple with a young son, the husband being third generation missionary in the area. Oh, and did I mention that David is Australian.
