Chapter 6

I was miserable, really, really miserable for the next two and one half years. I kept my promise to God. No man, except hubby, graced my bed.

My life was a whirlwind. I continued working. I usually left home Monday morning to drive to wherever my job was that week, usually several hours away. I worked until Thursday and then drove home Thursday night. I also completed course work for a degree in accounting and passed the test to become a certified public accountant. I could now audit the accounts of the organizations I worked for. I raised my fee from 200 dollars to 300 dollars per day for new customers and I found plenty of takers. Soon, I was making about 3,000 dollars per month, more money than my husband. With our combined incomes we were prosperous by small town Kansas standards. We both drove good cars now and I satisfied my husband's most fervent wish, a 40 inch screen television – the largest then available -- for Christmas.

Fridays through Sundays were inviolate, devoted to family and church. I ran the Sunday school, I served as President of the Women's Missionary Group, I visited the sick, I went to funerals, and I counseled the youth. The only thing I rebelled against was sponsoring a group of teenagers who wanted to form a group devoted to abstaining from sex and protesting abortion.

Rachel went away to college and Stephen showed, at last, signs of independence. To his father's delight he was a good high school football player and he developed the jock attitude that I had deplored and secretly envied when I was in high school. I gave him a lecture on birth control and safe sex. He was surprised that his mother knew about those things.

I took satisfaction that my children were becoming responsible human beings, but I had only two other bright spots in my life. One was Carrie, who I continued to see every few months. My second pleasure was writing my secret diary. I wanted to remember my romantic and sexual adventures and I recorded them, each and every one of them – good, bad, and middling – in explicit detail. I wrote in the third person, trying to look outside myself and describe my encounters objectively but capturing the thrills, passions, and disappointments of my sex life. My total of sexual partners came to seventeen men and one woman. I defined sex broadly to include the oral sex I enjoyed with my high school boy friend and the three men who had fucked me that night I had been too drunk to object. (Hey, I'm an accountant. I like numbers and precision.)

A problem, however, was what to do with my diary. I couldn't hide in the locked drawer of my sewing machine where I kept my smutty novels or anywhere else in the house. What if I died and my husband or children found it? I found my answer in the church. A niche in the wall of the office in the basement worked. I changed names and dates in the diary and wrote the material as if it were fiction – as I am doing here.

With the graduation of my son from high school, I felt liberated. My promise to God was fulfilled, my penance over. But liberated for what? After the graduation, I went to Kansas City and Sue and I celebrated my forty-first birthday. We went out on the town and I had a drink and a man. But only one of each.

The nagging question never left me. What do I do with the rest of my life? The answer I could not even have imagined.

I was working in Omaha for the same Christian charity that had sent me to Greece. I noticed on the bulletin board an announcement saying the charity needed people to work in Sudan to distribute food. I was reading the advertisement when the Director walked by. "Interested?" she asked.

"Oh, no," I answered. "I've never travelled. Except for that trip with you to Greece."

"You'd be good. Think about it." she said, and continued on her way. I thought about it the rest of the day. Sudan? I barely knew where it was. I looked at an atlas. It was a large country in the middle of Africa.

The next day I walked into the Director's office and said, "I'd like to learn more about that job in Sudan."

She raised an eyebrow. "Is your husband also interested?"

"No."

She raised the other eyebrow. "I'll ask the head of the project to telephone you. He's in Washington."

A few hours later I received a telephone call from John Bright, the Vice President for International affairs for the Christian Mission to Sudan (CMS) – which is the name I will call the charity. "Let me tell you a little about our project," he began. "Sudan, as you know" -- actually, I didn't know -- "is suffering from a civil war between the northern part of the country which is Islamic and Arab and the southern part which is black African and largely Christian. Millions of people in the south have been displaced from their homes by the war and are in danger of starvation. Are you with me, so far?"

"I am."

"The United Nations has mounted a major food aid operation in the south. The base for the operation is in Lokichogio, a little town near the border with Sudan. Every day, transport aircraft take off from Loki and deliver food, medicine, and other emergency goods to airports carved out of the bush and scattered all over southern Sudan. They airdrop food in places where it's too dangerous to land."

He continued. "We're one of the NGOs – that's non-governmental organization in UN-speak – contracted to assist in distributing the food. We need someone to keep track of the food and where it goes. And we have to account for the money the UN gives us for our expenses. You're a CPA, right?"

"Yes, Mr. Bright."

"Call me John. Well, the pay isn't much for a person of your qualifications. Three thousand a month with a year's contract. But we provide a place for you to live. A tent at present."

"A tent?"

"Yes, at the base in Lokichogio. A nice tent with a wooden floor and a cot and electricity. The bathroom and shower are down the way. No hot water – but you won't need it. There's also a inexpensive cafeteria at the compound and some African shops nearby. You'll have a car and driver at your disposal. Oh, and free medical care. Maybe not the best, but free. There are missionary doctors in Loki. You can save money on this job if that's your objective. Are you afraid of flying?"

"No."

"Good, because the job requires a lot of travel inside Sudan to monitor expenses and food. You'll fly transport planes, DC-3s, Antonovs, and the like – and land at dirt strips in the middle of nowhere."

I had no picture in my mind what those airplanes looked like. "What sort of an accounting system do you have, John?" I asked.

He laughed. "Pen and pencil 1.0. One of our objectives is to install information technology to help us monitor food and expenses. I'm told you're an expert at that?"

"Yes." No need to be modest.

"And, we'd like to install a computerized communications system. You've heard of e-mail?"

"Yes, of course. I use it." It was 1991.

"Well, if you have time and we have the money perhaps you can get us on e-mail. Telephone is ruinously expensive and service is lousy."

"Have I scared you away?" John asked.

"No, it sounds ... uh ... exciting." He seemed interested in hiring me. I fought against the sin of pride by reflecting that it's probably not easy to find an accountant to live in a tent in a place called Lokichogio and fly around in Antonovs, whatever those might be.

"The Director there highly recommends you. One point. If we make you a job offer, it will be for you as a single person. We can't accommodate spouses or family in Loki. Is that acceptable to you?"

I knew what he was getting at with that question. Would my husband and children be a problem if I accepted the job? "I'll have to talk to my husband."

"Good. We understand each other. Could you come to Washington for a formal interview? Our nickel for expenses."

"I can," I answered. I was both terrified and terribly interested in what would be a job so far out of my life experience.

"One warning," he said. "Our UN contract prohibits religious proselytizing. You'll be fired and sent home if you do it. I don't want to offend you, but our mission is to feed hungry people, not to tell them about Jesus. This is a secular project. Is that clear?"

"Yes," I said, "It won't be a problem for me." I had the impression that Mr. Bright did not have a high opinion of enthusiastic, evangelical Christians. He seemed to be one of those liberal Christians so deplored by preachers such as my husband.

"I'm sorry to be so blunt, but the person you would replace thought it was more important to distribute bibles than food."

I told my husband only that I was going to Washington to interview for a job. "It must be a big job," he opined.

To make a long story short, I had a great interview in Washington and CMS offered me the job. I also had the opportunity in Washington to visit the Smithsonian museums. In the Air and Space museum, I met a nice man. He was an amateur pilot and he told me about Antonovs and DC-3s while we ate a late supper in bed in my hotel room.

Now, I had to tell my husband. I was determined to go to Sudan. I wasn't seeking his permission; I was going to go. So, when I got home, I steeled myself for the ordeal and asked him to turn off the television so we could talk. He reluctantly complied.

"I accepted a job offer," I announced.

"That's good! Congratulations. What's the job and where is it?"

"It's in Sudan. And my title will be Chief, Food Monitoring and Accountability Section."

"Sudan?" He was suddenly rigid with attention. "Sudan? You mean, in Africa?"

"Yes."

"How long will you be gone?"

"I have a one-year contract."

He was flabbergasted. "But what about me? And the children? You can't leave for a year!"

"It's a good job," I explained. "I've always wanted to be a missionary. This is my chance to be one. That was a lie. I wasn't going to Sudan as a missionary, but I described the job in terms he could understand. "It's just a year. The children are in college and they won't be home much." I kissed him on the cheek. "I love you, but this is something I want to do."

"But ... but ... what will people think?"

"We know several people who've gone overseas to spread the gospel."

"But they weren't gone a year."

It was painful to talk to him, but I didn't budge an inch. What could he do? Finally, he asked, "Are you leaving me, Rebecca?"

"No, of course not. But I need to do something different and exciting." It helped when I told him the charity would send him 1,500 dollars per month from my salary.

"But what am I going to tell people? Who will replace you as Director of the Sunday school?" Poor hubby! I felt guilty at my selfish decision to leave him and the children, but another year as a preacher's wife and I would go crazy. I had to get away. Even if Sudan was a disaster, I would come home knowing that I had ventured out of Arapaho, Kansas and experienced life on a larger stage.

And, so, I abandoned my family. Temporarily, so I thought.

I arrived in Lokichogio two weeks later on a propeller-driven airliner from Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. Everything I brought with me fit into two medium sized suitcases. The airport was hot and dusty. Half a dozen battered cargo planes, some of them painted in military greens and grays were sitting around the far side of the tarmac. Sacks of grain were being loaded on two of them. African workers clustered in the narrow shade the wings of the airplanes offered. Several small one-engine passenger planes -- four, six, and eight seaters -- were clustered around the terminal, a one room, whitewashed adobe building.

I looked around. The land was flat but several rocky outcrops interrupted the horizon. It was green. The rainy season. Watching the aircraft from a distance were several tall, slender women with intensely black skin and wearing ragged clay-colored cloaks. Each of them wore a dozen metal rings around their throats, stretching their necks to an unnatural length. Most of them carried babies in slings over their shoulders.

An African man from CMS met me on the tarmac with a Toyota Land Cruiser. His name was Joseph. I liked him. He had a big, jolly smile. As we drove by the women he nodded in disapproval, "Turkanas. Very primitive. Bandits and beggars."

The UN compound was adjacent to the airport. A sign outside the gate announced "Operation Lifeline Sudan," the name the UN gave the operation of which I would be a part. The driver parked in front of a thatched roof building with open sides.

We walked into the building. A bulletin board at the entrance posted news and announcements. Under the roof was a reception desk and a cafeteria with steam tables and metal trays and wicker tables and chairs scattered around a cement floor. A book shelf in one corner was crowded with well-worn paperback novels. Like the driver, the African at the reception desk wore a brilliantly white shirt and greeted me with a big smile. "Ah, yes. Mrs. Sanders. We have a very nice place for you to live."

I signed the register. "Should I pay you now?" I asked.

"No. Your NGO will pay."

"This way, madam," the driver said. He carried my bags and kept up a running line of chatter as we walked toward my new home. "This is bar, here," he said, as we left the reception. It was another open-sided thatched roof building with a circular bar surrounded by high chairs and a few tables. Several men were drinking beer and smoking. "Pilots," the driver said. "Canadian, American, Swiss, Swede, Dutch, Russian – many pilots here. Also, expats from forty NGOs and six UN agencies live here."

Before us stretched a long line of tents spaced evenly along wide sandy paths outlined by whitewashed rocks and shaded by a few acacia trees. The sun was intensely bright and hot – although not as hot as Kansas in July. "Shower building for women," said the driver, pointing at a concrete block building with a corrugated metal roof. Beside it was another identical building. "Shower building for men. Sometimes not enough water," he laughed. "Bathrooms there." He pointed to two small buildings.

The driver led me to a tent. "Number 158. You remember number. Easy to get lost. All tents the same."

The tent had a canvas door on the front and eaves that shaded out the rays of the sun. The driver opened the door, handed me the key, and I stepped inside. It was about ten by ten feet in size and had a wooden plank floor. A single bed was against one canvas wall and a chest of drawers against another along with a dressing table and a chair. A bare light bulb hung from the ceiling and a small lamp was on a table beside the bed. I switched on the lamp. No response. "Electricity from six to eleven every night," Joseph said.

The closet was a pole strung between two straps hanging from the ceiling. It was hot in the tent. The driver opened up several mesh windows in the sides and roof. "Very safe here, but you leave money and passport in safe in CMS office."

"Where is the CMS office?"

"Just outside the gate of UN compound. You look for sign."

"Thank you, Joseph. I'll come by the office after I unpack and freshen up a bit."

"Yes, madam. Welcome to Loki."

I had already noticed that I was overdressed for Loki. I was sweating. I was nervous – but I was happy.