Soeur Josephine: 1 - Sudanese war Lords: 0

I recently heard on the radio that, a few years ago, during a very serious famine (partly due to the civil war) in the Sudan, millions of US dollars of relief money intended to feed the starving many, was actually used by rebels to buy arms for their cause. A more immoral story would be hard to come by and yet this is not a one off African scenario.
Diametrically opposite on that spectrum of food access fairness is the attitude and actions of one confident but self-effacing nun: Soeur Josephine.
Today I spend my last day in these magic Southern hills. I have locked the cottage, bid farewell to Papa Jacinthe and his family, said goodbye to Baptiste. I am going to sleep over at the Muganza Health Centre, where Soeur Josephine lives. She is expecting me. Standing next to her is a chubby little girl, Josiane, who must be 3 or 4 years old. Josephine introduces me to her.
‘She was starving to death, her brother died of hunger a little while ago in hospital. They could not save him and he was begging them to stop trying feeding him. I said to myself ‘Non!’ not her. She is not going to die, she won’t die. NO, she won’t!!!’
Josiane is not chubby from eating too many sweets but because of malnutrition... Josephine tells me that the little girl is starting to get better but that it was really ‘touch and go’ for a while.
Little Josiane is sucking on a nutritional pack that the government provides for children like her. She needs to suck on about five of them per day to gradually absorb the nutrients that she has been deprived of all her life. There is something peaceful, un-childlike and intense about little Josiane. I spend some time alone with her, I help her unwrap that life-saving food bar, I speak to her in a language that she does not understand but she lets me come into her world. Loudly and cheerfully, I say to her: ‘Yummy, good girl! yummy!! She is indeed enjoying the act of eating. I enjoy watching her eat! Another voice inside me quietly but resolutely invokes: ‘No, little Josiane, you won’t die! You will live! You will! Simply because you are so beautiful and so innocent!!!
Later on I take Josiane in my arms and we watch Soeur Josephine get stuck into her emails... Josiane is fascinated by the computer... from starvation to computer age within a few days, what a journey! I feel some life force coming back to her...
Josephine tells me, matter-of-factly that Little Josiane comes from a family of 10 or 11 children, that her parents aren’t coping at all.
Thank God Josephine copes... I admire her unassuming strength so much; I despise so much the weakness of the Sudanese war lords!!