LETTER HOME: In the World’s Newest Country – Alex Magnin ’07

“It’s a land perfect only for vultures.” That is my first thought as we descend to a clay airstrip near Bentiu town, maintained by an oil company and 35 miles from the newest border of the world’s newest country, South Sudan. A Land Cruiser drives us fast to Leer, two hours southeast on a dirt road. The car’s bulletproof glass has a spiderweb crack, the

center right between the driver’s eyes. I’ve learned that violence here is like the heat, fixed to nothing but felt everywhere: a spear under a bed; a Kalashnikov leaning in a corner; boxed ammunition stacked higher than a house; six parallel scars across the forehead of each man, cut so deep they’re said to leave marks on the skull. It’s the violence of 40 years of civil war, 100 years of colonial war, 1,000 years of tribal war. After a few days I stop talking about the 130-degree

afternoons. It’s part of the place. I am here to help bring social media to

South Sudan. I am with Every Person Has A Story, a two-year-old nonprofit that gives students around the world the tools to tell their stories, as well as an audience to make

those stories heard. In our bags are 60 digi- tal cameras, batteries, memory cards, lesson plans, printers, a laptop, and a desktop. Back home, 20,000 monthly viewers on Facebook, Twitter, and www.ephas.org see daily images by orphans in Rwanda, child landmine vic- tims in Cambodia, refugees in Kenya, and tent-city dwellers in Haiti.

The basic idea is that an opportunity many of us take for granted—to snap a picture, post it to the Web, share our lives for thou- sands to see—is unavailable to those whose lives most need sharing. Social media can create personal connections on a global scale. In a picture, we can be moved by someone else’s beauty, or the mundanity of their lives, or their love for one another, and this connection irrevocably makes them a fellow and not just a fact. It’s a connection that expands our conscious moral horizon, a connection that can inspire us to create a better world.

I am teaching photography classes to groups of 20 students at a time. The bright- est is Peter Choul. He is 17 years old but looks 13. He speaks near-perfect English,

something I haven’t heard from any of the adults I’ve met here, much less from chil- dren. He has become our unofficial transla- tor and our ambassador.

Yesterday, Peter came to the compound after class. He had the look of dragging himself along, like a grade-school child confessing to his still-anonymous crime. I thought of how we can accept fates and still be terrified. Our rational brain has trapped our heart in a box and is now exerting tre- mendous energy to keep it there. Peter slumped in a yard chair while our guide, Mach, told us that Peter’s father was killed in the war; that Peter is a very clever boy but has no means to continue his education, to leave this town, and make his family’s life better. Could we pay to send him to school in Nairobi? Peter had the expression of a man facing a firing squad: as if his hopes and dreams stood waiting to be ripped to shreds in a volley of “No” and “We wish we could but” and “There are many smart boys in the world.” By the time he left, it was past evening. I went to my bed, lay face down, and cried.

South Sudan is so flat, and there are few trees, and each compound is divided by head-high cornstalk fences—so rarely do I see more than 70 feet in any direction. At night, the sky is so big it feels like the curve of the earth has tightened and the whole world is small, maybe only a few miles across, or maybe so small it could sit atop the con- struction of the new World Trade Center, like a giant golf ball on a tee stuck into downtown Manhattan. Seeing this place, I’m reminded that our world falls short of perfection, sure, but much worse is that it falls short of a moral minimum: that if you give everything, you will get something, no matter what.

And tonight, over the cornstalk-fence hori- zon of my small earth, I hear children laugh- ing, a sing-song game, drums in the distance. I think of Peter Choul. Hope and happiness should be a part of this place, like the cool nighttime dew: fixed to everything, and felt everywhere. UPFRONT