Count Your Blessings #92 – Law and Order

It’s easy to focus on all of the lawlessness and disorder in the UK. All of you have to do is go to the BBC’s UK News pages and you get enough information to believe that things are terrible.

Last night I read the story of John Dau in this months National Geographic. John is one of the “Lost Boys of Sudan”.

I found myself reading the article quite matter-of-factly, it was only at the end that I realised what I had read. Right the way through this piece are details of lawlessness and disorder that I can’t even imagine. Sections like this one:

At dawn we met a woman and her two girls from our village, and we joined them, heading east toward Ethiopia, where we thought we would be safe. My knees were scraped from falling as we ran, my feet were bloody, and I was naked, because I had left the village that way. None of us had taken anything as we fled. No food, no cooking pots. We ate almost nothing—wild roots, a pumpkin from a farmer’s field. At night the mosquitoes would torment us as we tried to sleep.

Then, one day, a group of militia ambushed us. The men grabbed Abraham, forced him to the ground, and began beating him with a stick, telling him to give them money. He had no money, so they took his shirt and left him in the dirt, his back bloody. I felt lucky, because they had not killed Abraham. I do not know why they let him live.

We kept going, now heading southeast to avoid the militia, but on the seventh day, we ran into another militia. Again, they beat Abraham, and this time they beat me, too, over and over on the head with a stick. While they were beating us, they abducted the woman and girls. That was the last time we saw them.

Or like this one:

When we got to Gilo River, it was very full and strong, and we could see crocodiles waiting away from shore. We were gathered there on the riverbank when suddenly Ethiopian rebels attacked, firing on us. I dived into the river and began swimming as hard as I could. Another boy dived almost on top of me, but he could not swim well, and he clutched at me. I tried to help him, but I didn’t have the strength, and the river was forcing us both under. I had to leave him. Somehow, I made it to the other side. We lost about 9,000 boys and a few men that day on the Gilo River. But 18,000 of us, mostly Dinka boys, had made it back to our homeland.

The whole article is full of sections like this; stories of humanities inhumanity.

I am very thankful that this is not the reality in which I live. I am thankful that, for the most part, I live somewhere where there is law and order.