When we moved to South Sudan, I was 12. Since I was the oldest in my family, I had the most friends in the United States, was the most invested in sports, and, besides our parents, best knew what I was leaving behind. I felt keenly how much I was losing.

In South Sudan, I had the hardest time making new friends, and was much more hesitant than my younger siblings to dive into the culture. But after two or three years of traveling back and forth from Africa to the United States, the goodbyes got easier, and, even though it was sad to leave one place, I could look forward to where we were going as well.

Hardships

Even though it got easier to start really living in the new culture, there were still parts of the culture that made it very difficult for me to fit in. Most of my friends were either forced to get married or already had kids. Besides that, so much of the household work falls to women and girls, like the laundry, cooking, getting water, cleaning, taking care of the kids, and bringing home the money. This isn’t true of everyone, but it’s largely true. This meant most of my friends were always working if they weren’t at school (if they went to school). I learned that the best way to hang out with them was to help them work: go to the well for water, cook with them, or work for them if they were employed by my parents.

Learning Contentment

No one in South Sudan has very much. Some don’t even eat every day; yet they seem much happier than most people in the United States. They build their own toys out of old clothes, mud, plastic bags, or whatever they can find. They play with their little plastic bottle dolls with just as much joy on their faces as anyone with a normal doll I’ve seen.

The community is amazing because you don’t schedule times to hang out; you just walk over to each other’s houses and hang out if they are home, or go to someone else’s if they aren’t. The girls there love braiding each other’s hair, which I also enjoyed. My friends and I would go for walks to other villages, in the forest, or just around to other people’s houses. Those are some of my favorite memories. The contentment found in creation and the joy the people had was a beautiful thing I wish we saw more in Western culture.

Caring for Others

Where we lived in South Sudan doesn’t have hospitals, not the kind you would think of anyway. They are more like places where the “doctor” (who probably didn’t go to school) assumes you have either malaria or tuberculosis, and gives you an injection that might or might not have the treatment for the sickness that you might or might not have. Thus, a lot of people came to our house every day asking for help. Whether it was for bandages, ibuprofen, food, or just charging their phones, we had people at our gate almost all day every day. Honestly, even after five years, it could still be really annoying.

We didn’t say yes all the time, especially in the middle of the school day, but we tried to help as much as we could when we could. It fueled my intrigue to pursue nursing, because we had many incidents where my mom couldn’t handle the sick/injured person, so I would help my dad. We also had two of the three cars in our entire village and were often called on to take people to the hospital, sometimes in the middle of the night. It wasn’t always fun, but it was an amazing way to share the gospel and the love of Christ to our neighbors. We saw many of them start coming to church. We were able to minister to others every day and didn’t even have to go out into the village to do it.

Returning

It has been so fun being able to come back and reconnect with all my friends in the U.S., getting to play sports again, and go to family parties that we always missed. But I also miss my friends in South Sudan. I miss the community, and I miss being able to feel like I’m serving God every day. It helps me to try to look harder for ways to serve Him here, whether it’s caring for a friend, helping the church, or just trying to be a Christlike example to those around me. It feels different, and it is, but it’s still serving God, and we are called to serve Him at all times and in all that we do, no matter where we are.