Mary focuses deeply as she makes another attempt at stitching a straight line across a long strip of fabric. This is her third week in a Samaritan’s Purse tailoring class at a local church in the town of Mankien, South Sudan.
Each week for five weeks she kisses her children and leaves early in the morning for the three-hour walk on the scorched highway to the tailoring lessons taught by our projects team.
The tailoring class is part of our livelihoods program in South Sudan. Our instructors teach people useful skills that can earn an income, such as how to raise livestock, plant kitchen gardens, how to make bread, or, like Mary, how to start a tailoring business—making and altering clothing—in her village.
The students also learn how to manage their money and small businesses to provide income for their families. Even more importantly, they hear life-giving truth from the Word of God.
Today Mary is smiling, and it’s been a long time since she’s done that.
She’s excited because after a very long year of moving from place to place with her children and wondering what would become of them and their future, she has a new skill and source of income.
Ever since she fled with her children from violence in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, she’s had trouble finding food and work in South Sudan. And though they are surviving in a makeshift home, the tailoring class gives her a real opportunity to make money for her children.
When she finishes the stitch she’s working on, she sees that she has made a straight line and her face is gleaming.
In the beginning of her training it was harder than she thought it would be.
“I didn’t know if I’d ever learn how to do it right,” she said.
The standards were high. The instructors wanted them to master all the basics before moving on. As with anyone who has learned how to sew, the progress was painfully slow and small.
At first, they drafted simple straight lines, then learned rounded patterns. All this was done on paper before they tackled the real thing on fabric.
Their training also included learning the subtle workings of the machines themselves—how to speed up and slow down the foot-operated motor, how the needle and thread would behave on a given fabric, how to guide the needle.
“We learned to listen to the machines to understand what they needed. We learned how to add oil to them,” she said. “Then we finally learned to attach the spools to the bobbin and feed the thread to the needle.”
All of this tedious skill building is necessary so that they can return home after five weeks and know how to work as tailors in their own small business. They will know how to design and make clothes, how to repair and alter clothing, and also how to maintain and repair their equipment.
The Samaritan’s Purse instructors are so thorough for another good reason, too—so that people like Mary can pass on the knowledge to others in her village.
The sewing machine Mary is using is the one she will take home with her in a few weeks to set up shop. This will help Mary and her family rebuild their lives. A spiritual foundation is also being laid, as they have the truth of the Gospel taught to them each day.
“We see this as a vehicle for the Word of God,” said Joel, one of our instructors. “We want them to return home so that His Word is in their hearts when they face trials. We want them to tell others about Him, too.”
The trials had been many for Mary and her classmates. Life as they knew it was violently upturned the year before. Mary said they had tried to stay in Khartoum even after the conflict started. Eventually, though, she feared for their lives.
“Our life in Khartoum was very simple,” she said. “I used to buy clothes and slippers from the big market and sell them at a profit. My children were going to school, and we had no significant problems.”
After civil war erupted last April, though, families were faced with difficult choices. “For two weeks, we tried to stay,” Mary said. “We thought it would be a short conflict, but it lasted a long time. There was nowhere to buy food. Many people were killed.”
She and her children ran away from Khartoum carrying what they could. Their journey brought them 700 miles south—traveling in cramped trucks for days, floating in the hulls of packed dugout canoes, then walking many miles on sun cracked highways, before arriving where they live now, about 15 miles from Mankien, where a Samaritan’s Purse base is located. Tens of thousands of displaced families fled here and to other areas of Mayom County, a large district in the northern part of South Sudan.
Mary says the memories of her journey—the horrors they witnessed—are still playing back in her mind day and night. The children have nightmares.
“Many people have not seen people dying. But we have seen this,” she said. “My children have seen this. Our story is a bad story.”
Some people were shot, Mary said, detailing atrocities during their escape. She said others died from hunger, disease, and thirst along the way.
“When someone died on the boat,” she said, “we had to be strong and throw the body into the water. There was no dry place to bury them.”
It was all terror and trauma. The scars are not easily healed.
“When you are somewhere that people can no longer laugh, that is a bad thing,” she said. “I was not sure if we would ever learn to laugh again.”
Tailoring classes have given Mary something better to think about. She said that during her three-hour walks to Mankien each Sunday evening, she thinks about sewing. When she walks home on Fridays to see her children, she thinks about sewing.
Even when she is away from the sewing classes and her machine, she can still hear the hum of the machines and feel her fingers guiding the cloth. She is happy when she sees the faces of her children light up as they see her approaching home. It brings great joy to her heart when they are excited to watch her work.
Could learning a new skill like sewing bring laughter again to her family and village? Of course, it isn’t the sewing alone, but the God-given glimpse of a restored existence that comes from working toward the future.
When Mary returns to her village for good in a few weeks, she will bring the sewing machine with her, along with many sewing supplies. Samaritan’s Purse is giving each of the students their own machine and kit.
She’ll carry many other joys with her besides, such as the many new friends.
The students in the class, all strangers before, are now some of her closest friends. They have grown as tailors together, of course, but they also have connected at the intersection of common stories of suffering.
“The same thing that happened to me happened to others,” Mary said. “And God sustained them and brought them here. And God brought Samaritan’s Purse. We believe this was a blessing from God to help us at the moment that we need it.”
Mary said she didn’t always think of God as taking care of her family. But, the tailoring instructors made a point every day in class and during their meals together to encourage students from the Word of God. This transformed Mary’s thinking.
“The teachers reminded us that it was a blessing from God that we are safe and that we are in this class,” she said. “When we were traveling, sometimes we went four days without food, and the next day there was food. There were missiles and killings, but they did not touch us.”
Mary said the instructors taught from the Bible on forgiveness, including how God forgave us through Jesus’ death on the cross. There is still so much to forgive. Mary is still sorting through all that has happenend, the loss of her family’s stability and innocence.
“The teachers taught us: ‘Don’t embrace the world or the things of this world,’” she said. “They taught us about the kingdom of God.
“When I had those days on the journey from Khartoum to here, I didn’t even call on God. I didn’t think it was God that has prepared the way for us. But through the testimony here from the others, I came to know that God is the one helping each one of us. God sees each one of us on the road. He intervenes.”
As the early morning light filters in through the church windows providing light for Mary’s work—she is creating her first-ever piece of clothing—she reflects on what God has done. And on what He is doing.
“I am thankful to God,” she said. “And I thank God for sending Samaritan’s Purse here. God sent you to help us. Because of this I am learning that I can laugh again. I think that we will have a future.”
Samaritan’s Purse is responding to the crisis in East Africa caused by severe famine, drought, and conflict. We provide food, shelter, safe water, medical care, and other aid. Your gift will help us bring critical resources to the those affected in the name of Jesus Christ.