The Tortoise and the Hare

In South Sudan there are innumerable bank holidays for all sorts of occasions, including such events as World Refugee Day, World AIDS Day, International Women’s Day, Girl Child Day and more understandable ones such as Independence Day and Muslim and Christian festivals.  Education is much disrupted as a result.  To make matters worse, schools rely on the local Education Office informing them of these days.  This rarely happens before the previous day and even then not all schools are informed.  Some get the information secondhand and distorted.

A prime example happened this week.  I met one of our teachers in the street after school on Monday and was told that the next day was a public holiday for Eid.  He had received the information from a teacher at another school.  Exercising all due caution I said that I would discuss it with the school management committee.  Once I had passed the news on, it was decided to go to a bar in the evening to watch the news on tv to see if it was true.  Few people own private televisions in Nimule.  It turned out that our teacher was misinformed; the holiday was to be on Wednesday.

We duly opened the school as usual on Tuesday and were among very few schools which were open that day.  The school was closed on Wednesday for the official Eid holiday, as were all other schools.  We opened again on Thursday, again, almost alone among Nimule schools.  The reason this time was that it was Girl Child Day.  We took the view that as there was no official celebration of this event in Nimule this year, there was no reason to close.

This coming Saturday is Independence Day for South Sudan and it is likely, but not definite, that schools will be closed again on Monday.

All this comes in the midst of a severe financial crisis.  Government teachers, who are very inadequately paid in any case, have not been paid at all since February.  They are leaving the profession in their droves, leaving classes untaught.  Teachers are currently taking strike action, although where the money will be found is anybody’s business.  Teachers are not alone as the Government has no money in its coffers for any purposes.  Even the official Independence Day celebrations are completely cancelled this year.

Thankfully Cece Primary School does not have any government teachers.  Our teachers are all paid regularly through your kind donations.  As a result, our children are being taught most of the time. 

For the last period on Fridays we always have a whole school session consisting of stories and songs.  Last Friday I told the children the story of the Tortoise and the Hare.  At the end I asked the children if they wanted to be the tortoise or the hare.  They were unanimous that they wanted to be the tortoise.

I pointed out that our school is called ‘Cece’.  In the local Madi language ‘Cece’ literally means ‘Slowly, slowly’, or ‘Little by little’ in English.  With motivated and conscientious teachers and not too many days off school, our children will do very much better than their peers at other schools.  We truly are the tortoises.

That said, the financial crisis is causing prices to escalate ever higher and our teachers’ pay seriously needs to be increased.  Please can I ask once again for your regular, monthly assistance with this?

Donations to the school should be made through the Sean Devereux Children’s Fund, who are able to claim Gift Aid on the school’s behalf, which means we can reclaim 25% on top of donations made by UK tax-payers.  Please email me on rebeccamallinson1@hotmail.co.uk so I can email you the Gift Aid form.  This applies whether or not you are a UK tax-payer. 

A small monthly donation will help a lot with our day to day running costs of staff wages, feeding, pencils etc. Larger lump sums will go towards construction costs for our new school.

Any additional money will not be wasted as our school is running on a shoestring and there are many other needs, such as chalk, exercise books, stationery and food.