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Sudanese bishop takes aid from Virginia to war-torn homeland

Andudu Adam Elnail, left, is an Anglican bishop from Sudan who now lives in Harrisonburg. Mike Deaton, right, is the president of the nonprofit they founded to send aid to Elnail's homeland.
Randi B. Hagi
Andudu Adam Elnail, left, is an Anglican bishop from Sudan who now lives in Harrisonburg. Mike Deaton, right, is a retired professor and the president of the nonprofit he and Elnail founded.

An Anglican bishop in Harrisonburg regularly returns to his homeland in Sudan to help his people during an ongoing civil war. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi spoke with him and filed this report.

Bishop Andudu Adam Elnail has several rules of thumb when traveling into the Nuba Mountains. Don't drive with your headlights on at night. Smear something dark over the body of a white car. Be on the lookout for bomber aircraft that can follow the dust trails kicked up on dirt roads.

ANDUDU ELNAIL: If you travel, you never know what will happen.

Sudan was already in a humanitarian crisis before the current civil war broke out in April 2023. The Council on Foreign Relations reports that since then, nine million people have been displaced and many areas of the country are on the brink of famine. And the war has crippled the in-country operations of many aid organizations.

ELNAIL: Many had died, and they're still going on dying, and many there fled to the Nuba Mountains. … We had thousands of people … emigrate to the Nuba Mountains, so the situation of food is difficult. People are hungry. Particularly those who are coming from other cities.

Elnail is no stranger to conflict. He first came to America in 2011 seeking medical care for an illness. While here, Elnail was warned by a chancellor in his diocese that he had been targeted by then-president Omar al-Bashir. (Al-Bashir ruled Sudan for 30 years. He still faces charges of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court.)

Elnail told me he was granted asylum to stay in the U.S., and four years later, his family joined him. He earned a master's degree in conflict transformation from Eastern Mennonite University. Mike Deaton, a member of The Church of the Incarnation, noticed the tall Sudanese family attending services and started talking to Elnail about his life and his trips back home.

MIKE DEATON: Even though he was targeted for assassination, he was going back.

Deaton and other American congregants were interested in helping Elnail address the many challenges his people faced. They traveled to Sudan with him in 2020.

A photo of the ruins of Grace Secondary School and old machine gun shells as seen in 2020. Deaton told WMRA the school was destroyed by the Sudanese government in 2016.
Mike Deaton
A photo of the ruins of Grace Secondary School and old machine gun shells as seen in 2020. Deaton told WMRA the school was destroyed by Sudan in 2016. Human Rights Watch previously reported that the government attacked civilians and conducted indiscriminate bombing campaigns in this region of southern Kordofan that year.

DEATON: He made it very clear his first priority was education. The schools had been destroyed – particularly Grace Secondary School – destroyed by the government of Sudan. We visited the rubble. We saw machine gun shells everywhere … and Bishop Andudu said, "I want to rebuild this school."

Elnail showed them the ways that decades of unrest had shaped people's lives.

ELNAIL: Because, the first war … we lost a generation in education. That's why education is very important and it's a priority. … So we dug the foxholes around the school. I showed Mike, when anything happens, the children can run if you are able to hide in these foxholes. So it was difficult, but we are determined – life has to go on.

DEATON: There, in the classes, what they'll call a primary school, would be like our elementary school, you may see a 45-year-old woman in class, and that's because she was part of that generation that never got to go to school.

Together, they started a nonprofit called Pax Dei for Nuba. They rebuilt a secondary school and paid the teachers' salaries. They funded peacebuilding and mediation workshops that Elnail led for warring tribes. Recently, Elnail returned from a six-month trip where he saw how hungry the war had left people in the Nuba Mountains. Food shortages have been exacerbated by the many displaced seeking refuge there. The World Food Programme reports that more than half of the country's population is now facing crisis levels of hunger.

ELNAIL: We have no capacity to feed the people who are coming. Even, people will come into your house – literally, into your house – and we have to give them, also, what we have to share with them. … The crops sesame and sorghum, and chicken and goats.

Deaton said that, without Elnail's know-how, their organization would not be able to get aid to Sudan, as many others have been prevented from doing. They've sent more than $650,000 in humanitarian aid and funding for the local diocese in the past four years. About a third of that has been donated since the outbreak of the most recent civil war.

DEATON: You fly into Juba, South Sudan … because if you had a Sudanese visa, then the government would know that he's coming and he would be targeted. … We travel across the border from a refugee camp in a truck. … He's known at all the checkpoints, and because he is from there and he's well known, when he has resources to do things, he can get those things done.

Grace Secondary students pictured in 2021 attending classes in a temporary hut in, built with a grant from Pax Dei for Nuba.
Andudu Adam Elnail
Grace Secondary students pictured in 2021 attending classes in a temporary hut in, built with a grant from Pax Dei for Nuba.

Leaders of aid organizations have decried the lack of international attention on this humanitarian crisis. Elnail shares their heartache.

ELNAIL: We want this news to be spread for the people to know what is going on, and also to be able to give us support … or put pressure on the governments to bring peace. … If some of these strong countries, if they can try to mediate between them or give them some directions, I think that peace will come. But if we are left alone, we will be killing each other for several decades and decades. Also, if there is humanitarian [aid] that can be given to the people, that would be very helpful. And also the churches to pray for the situation in Sudan.

Pax Dei for Nuba is holding a fundraiser with Sudanese Food and live music on July 30th at A Bowl of Good in Harrisonburg.

Randi B. Hagi first joined the WMRA team in 2019 as a freelance reporter. Her work has been featured on NPR and other NPR member stations; in The Harrisonburg Citizen, where she previously served as the assistant editor;The Mennonite; Mennonite World Review; and Eastern Mennonite University's Crossroads magazine.