A town’s help has changed people’s lives halfway across the world, writes Claire Knox
Father Peter Kunen has spent almost two months volunteering in dusty, dry villages of South Sudan, a landscape seared into his memory.
The former Sudan refugee, now parish priest of Ballan’s historic bluestone St John’s Anglican church, spent his childhood in a quiet village.
He says the government-led militia was demolishing South Sudan, fostering ethnic and religious divides between the Arab-Muslim north and African-Christian south.
His father was jailed and killed, and then the militia came for him.
He fled to the borders of Ethiopia and Kenya, where he spent 10 years in a refugee camp before finding asylum in Australia seven years ago. Last Boxing Day, he and others from the African Christian Kush Aid Program of Australia raised vital funds for a return trip to Sudan to help rebuild communities after decades of war.
As part of the seven-week trip, Father Kunen helped establish schools, businesses, sustainable agriculture and life-saving water pumps in villages around the country.
“It was my third time back,” he says.
“The smiles on their faces were unbelievable. The impact a small thing like having clean water can have is amazing.”
“It’s changed the whole way of life for a lot of these people. The water they were drinking was making them ill previously; they were contracting a lot of illnesses.
“It’s something here in Australia we take for granted.”
Father Kunen said several men in the villages were taught how to use the water and educated on water sanitation.
He says the trip could not have gone ahead without the generosity of the Ballan community that helped raise funds for it.
“I would like to go back regularly and volunteer, to make this a regular thing.”
