In praise of missionaries

Tonj is a war-battered settlement on a river that eventually feeds into the White Nile, in South Sudan. When they are not feuding over livestock, Dinkas from remote cattle camps, dressed in garish jalabiyas, saunter down the dusty main street. For months at a time, tropical deluges turn the surrounding mud hamlets into islands, clogged with papyrus, buzzing with insects and isolated from the world. Last year, Dr Ben Roberts, an eye doctor from Alabama who works as a medical missionary in Africa, arrived in Tonj to perform cataract operations on hundreds of local people, restoring sight to those who live in darkness. News of Dr Roberts’s miracles reached a blind elderly woman named Madhieu, many days walk away. With her daughter leading her by the hand, Madhieu set off for Tonj on foot. They trekked night and day through thick jungle and when at last they arrived they discovered they were too late. The doctor had already moved on. The elderly woman asked if he would ever come back and she was told yes, after about a year.

Madhieu did not have any clear idea of when the eye team might return, but she was determined not to miss the chance of being able to see again. Instead of having her daughter lead her through the jungle all the way back to her village, she decided to wait in Tonj. Here she built a hut and then sat down to wait. Women in Africa are expected to fetch water, carry firewood, tend the fields and do all the cooking, so in the warzone of South Sudan Madhieu’s blindness must have made life difficult. I’ve never met this woman myself, but in the photos I’ve seen of her she has the distinctive figure of a Dinka, like a Giacometti sculpture, and even in old age she looks very tough.