Beauty and pain: What 6 days in a developing country can teach us about humanity

How much can you learn about a place in a week?

The skeptics among us may say "very little." When we visit a foreign place, we're strangers popping in to have a look, grab a bite, get a feel, and be on our way.

We fly by like a plane taking off, where we have a few minutes to see things before we can't see things anymore. We experience the place in a flash. And while we can see some of its history, we can't experience it.

While it may be true you can't learn a lot about a place in a week, you can learn something. The looks you take are still snapshots of that present reality. The feelings you have are real, too, as the events in that place leave you happy or sad. And the people you meet are the real teachers. Land, birds, and buildings speak a little, but your hosts speak a lot.

If you observe your hosts, if you listen to their words and even more, their hearts, you can learn enough about a place to change the way you see the world.

A visit to South Sudan

We were on a mission. Not a dangerous one, though from the world’s perspective, the destination was dubious.

Our team of seven Americans headed out for a week to visit a seminary in Kajo Keji, South Sudan. To us in the West, that sounds like a place in Africa and not much else. After all, the entire continent is omitted from our news unless something catastrophic happens there. Sadly, sometimes that doesn't even get coverage.

What to know about South Sudan

Before leaving for our trip, we were briefed on this country. South Sudan is the youngest country in the world, gaining its independence in 2011.

While it's a blessing to be free, freedom comes at a cost, as the South Sudanese know all too well. Sudan, the country South Sudan freed itself from, has been rife with conflict for decades. They've experienced ethnic, religious, and political struggles that have resulted in displacement, war, and genocide.

While South Sudan has become its own proud nation, conflict and tensions persist. It's been through its own tussles for political power, strife among ethnicities, and a civil war that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands and displaced even more.

Today, South Sudan is the poorest country in the world according to GDP, and has the world’s worst access to healthcare.

And while the nation is technically at peace, it's not a place one just goes to. It has a Level 4 travel advisory, which suggests the nation's instability makes it problematic for foreign visitors. If one found themselves in a bad spot, it might be hard for our homeland to do much about it.

This was the backdrop of the dubious destination. South Sudan was a place you probably wouldn't visit unless someone told you to go there. Thankfully, we had a trustworthy partner organization that informed us of all the great things about South Sudan you wouldn't find on Wikipedia.

The beauty of a lush African landscape

Whatever ignorant notions I had of the country beforehand were quickly dispelled once we arrived. I had been gearing up for sweltering sun, relentless mosquitoes, and dry, dusty lands, because that's just what to expect of equatorial Africa, right?

Instead, we were greeted with one of the most beautiful places any of us had seen. It was wet season, which meant the weather was cooler than where I'd come from. The land was the opposite of dry dullness. It was fertile and green, verdant and vibrant.

As we drove along the red clay road toward Kajo Keji, we passed plots of farmland growing cassava and maize. Further off the road stood tall fruit trees of mango, lemons, and papaya. Further still were rolling hills and valleys that comprised the African bush, the raw wild seemingly undisturbed by modern civilization.

The country's striking landscape was further accentuated when we arrived in Kajo Keji. It was the golden hour and the African sun was setting in the way you've seen in the nature shows. The bright, orange sphere looked bigger there, and its rays cast a mesmerizing glow on a large church building while painting the clouds it nestled in pink.

All I knew of South Sudan was formed in an hour of observation. All I knew was what its nature had told me, that it was one of the world’s most serene places. But one can only know so much about a place in an hour.

Who were its people? How did they see it?

The beauty of a loving African people

To feel welcome in a foreign place is no small thing. There’s apprehension in leaving what you know, with all its familiar faces, and going somewhere you’re the outsider.

What will people think of me?

How will I come off to them?

What will it take to move from strangers to friends?

Some places in the world are so big, when you arrive you’re barely noticed. You might as well be a car or a lamppost. Other places are so insular, when you arrive you’re unappreciated. You might as well be a mosquito, some unwanted creature occupying their space.

But in this tiny town of Kajo Keji, we were greeted as favored guests. The moment we stepped off the bus, we were met with warm handshakes and loving smiles. There is a difference between being noticed and being seen, between crossing someone's path and someone approaching you. As foreigners in Kajo Keji, we were always seen and lovingly approached. Our hosts wanted to know us.

As the week progressed, we went from strangers to friends. We shared meals, we learned and even laughed about the others' cultural norms. We sang aloud and danced to drums, we got to know about each other's families, passions, and sorrows.

The country was beautiful, and more beautiful still were its countrymen.

Pain in the past and in the midst

Joyful people have a way of sheltering you from their pain. It's usually not purposeful, but simply the outpouring of their optimistic spirit that outshines the shadows.

It also takes time to build trust to share pain. Life’s hardest moments aren’t divulged to just anyone, but hearing is earned over time.

Before we arrived, we knew something about South Sudan's painful history. But news articles and secondhand accounts only tell the tale so well. While the land's beauty was apparent when we arrived, there were signs of hardship. As we drove through town, we observed the odd assortment of buildings that flanked the road.

Some buildings were active, with a storefront, items on display, a roof over top, and people managing it. Next to it were piles of bricks, waiting to be used. The bricks sat in front of building foundations without roofs, remnants of the recent war responsible for their demolition. We Americans had arrived a few years late to see that.

We missed the images of trucks and armed soldiers sweeping through town, of townspeople hastily evacuating to the border. We missed the political and ethnic conflicts that resulted in shootings, even massacres, of innocent and peace-loving civilians. We missed how the destruction and displacement led to a humanitarian crisis, where poverty, famine, and sickness became a reality, and the norm.

Sadly our South Sudanese brothers and sisters hadn't missed it, but lived it. As our week with them progressed, they shared more of their stories. Of course, revisiting tragic things isn't pleasant. Some were understandably guarded about what to disclose. Some mentioned the sad things without the details. Perhaps, they wanted us to know the truth, but also wanted to focus on their present joy.

In walking with these people in this place, one couldn't ignore the juxtaposition of their magnificent home and spirit with their experience of being buffeted by the darkness of the world.

How do we sit with this contradiction? How do we make sense of a world so compelling, yet so cruel?

From pleasure to pain to...?

The British theologian and author C.S. Lewis experienced his own share of pleasure and pain in life. He was a decorated professor and one of the most respected writers of his time.

He also had the joy of marrying his love, Joy Davidman Gresham, only to lose her to cancer three years later. He wrote about joy and suffering, beauty and pain, in his classic book "The Problem of Pain." In it he writes:

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

This begs the question: What is a deaf world being roused to?

The response to pain

Every human experiences beauty and pain in varying degrees. When suffering comes, the megaphone of pain is clear, yet also frustratingly unhelpful. Without hope or beauty in the present or the future, we're roused to despair. We can disappear into the darkness.

Yet some, who've experienced the beauty of life and been crushed by its pain, are roused to look for the beauty again. It may not come naturally, or immediately, but the human heart is destined to hope that beauty can be restored. That a lovely landscape, with its scars, can become Edenic again. That a beautiful people, with all their tragedy, can be healed and restored.

The hope for beauty

When we witness the joy of people who've experienced significant hardship, we’re moved to understand that beauty can have the final say. That in some complicated, slow-moving, profound way, the beauty of the world and its people is being restored.

As humans, we share the paradoxical experience of beauty and pain. We can learn a little from those who know it deeply, who joyfully pursue the return to beauty, and even help to restore it in others.

This is the life lesson a group of South Sudanese Christians is teaching the world.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.