Cat and rats

I realise that my last few blog posts give an impression that all is doom and gloom here.  There are light moments.

Living in the community I have had to accept some things which would be utterly unacceptable in a western society.  Top of the list is rats.  We are plagued with them.

One day I told my fellow teachers a version of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.  Stories are very rare here and are taken a lot more seriously than in England.  When I described how the rats were enticed away by the magic piping and then the children too, the teachers looked absolutely horrified.  I had to explain that it was not a true story.  In their opinion it is not a suitable story for children!

I am fortunate to have a proper bed.  My friend Pascalina sleeps on a mat on the floor.  The rats creep under her mosquito net and eat the hard skin on her feet.  I brought us both leather sandals when I came back from England last September.  The rats have made very short work of them.  They also eat any dirty laundry they can find, so that I have lost two skirts from my laundry bag.  In spite of the diet of clothes and human flesh, they are also very partial to the sacks of food which are stored in my bedroom.  When not eating they are thundering around all night long as they work off their substantial meals.

Usually there would be locally produced rat poison in the market, but it is no longer there.  Presumably the maker of poison has gone to the refugee camp.

One day a few weeks ago at school, I saw a cluster of children looking at something in the corner.  It turned out to be a tiny and very weak kitten.  I put the kitten in a quiet dark corner of the storeroom and after school I took her home in my bag.  I have named her Cleo, but up until now I still tend to call her ‘Kitten’ or ‘Kitteny’.  She has only one functioning eye, which is perhaps why she was abandoned by her mother.  The other eye is covered in a blue-ish film, so that it looks as though she has one green and one blue eye.  Maybe it is a cataract.  There is nothing I can do about this as there is no vet.  

Right next to our compound is a small dairy.  The owner very kindly lets me take a small amount of boiled milk for my new acquisition free of charge.  Presumably this is because I am a regular customer for their delicious freshly made yogurt.  On the rare occasions that we have meat or fish, I give her a tiny piece.

The first night of Cleo’s residence, the rats scarpered.  However the mewing of the kitten kept me awake instead.  Since then the rats have re-emerged, clearly realising that the kitten is too small to do anything to them.  Cleo now sleeps through the night, while the rats continue their broken feasting. 

One night a small rat died.  The next day I gave it to Cleo.  She was delighted with it, pretending that it was still alive, growling fiercely (or as fiercely as a small kitten can manage) and batting it around before consuming it completely, fur and all.  That is as close as she has come to catching a rat so far.

As soon as I come back from school, she rushes for my legs and starts attacking them.  Her claws and teeth are getting sharper, so this is going to have to stop.  My constant refrain is, “Good cats catch rats, not legs”.  Hopefully it won’t be much longer before she starts to fulfil her vocation as rat-catcher.

Animals here are generally left to be feral, even goats and cows.  Even though eggs and chicken are hugely expensive, poultry are just left to wander freely night and day, at risk of being caught by wild dogs or even humans.  It makes no sense to me in a place where so many people go hungry.

The children from the school are fascinated and often come back with me especially to see the kitten.  It is a completely novel idea here to domesticate a cat.  Perhaps the idea will catch on of domesticating animals.

Full of beans

Sorry for the long gap since I last updated my blog.  The reasons are partly due to extreme busy-ness, but also due to very difficult communication issues in Nimule.

The year has got off to a positive start despite the civil war situation.  There are a lot of new faces replacing children who left for the refugee camps.  Among the new children are several who have serious health conditions such as HIV, Hepatitis B and epilepsy.  We now have a Primary 3 class for the first time.  This time last year we had 90 children, this year we have 104.  The Primary 3 class is very small, which accounts for the only slight increase in numbers.  Altogether there are four classes, Pre-Primary, Primary 1, 2 and 3.  There are seven teachers including myself.

Most of the schools in Nimule are still either closed or barely functioning because of lack of teachers.  A school inspector visited us a few days ago and was delighted to find our school fully operational.  Thank you so much to all who have supported us to make this possible.

South Sudan is in a very difficult situation.  Last year we struggled with the renewed civil war, which affected the school by sending children and teachers rushing for the refugee camps.  We had to recruit new teachers apart from myself and one other.  It also meant that we could not teach the same cohort of children throughout the year, continually having to go back to basics for new children.  Please pray that this year will be more settled so that the children can make real progress.

There is widespread hunger caused by the mass movement of people during the growing and harvesting season and the hyper-inflation which I have mentioned in a previous post.  Central government has pretty much collapsed.  Anybody who would normally be paid by the government has been without pay for months.  This has resulted in looting, particularly by armed soldiers, but also by locals.

In the midst of all this, an American-run mission (Far Reaching Ministries) has started to supply several local schools with the ingredients for a substantial meal each day.  Their feeding programme began a couple of weeks ago and consists of maize flour and beans.  As a result our cooks have stopped cooking porridge and are now producing a break-time meal of posho (a type of maize flour dumpling) with bean stew.  I can’t say that it would be popular in gourmet circles, but it is very filling.

The issue for us is how to stop the children plunging headlong into the saucepans in their desperation for food!  We try to keep the line of children orderly, but they are seriously hungry.  I have heard that many families at other schools are taking advantage of the extra feeding at school to cut back on meals at home for their school-age children so that those who don’t go to school get more to eat.  In England this would be regarded as sheer child cruelty, but here it is understandable to let those who don’t get the chance of a meal at school have something at home.

One problem apparently unforeseen by Far Reaching Ministries is that schools which do not normally provide food have had to employ cooks and buy saucepans, large quantities of firewood, salt, oil and onions.  Other schools have had to ask parents to supply funds in addition to their usual school fees.  This has caused another burden to parents at those schools. 

Another problem has been looting.  It is fortunate that we keep all our school stores in my bedroom as the school is not fenced or guarded.  The cooks carry the day’s supplies to school each morning.  Another school was raided by neighbouring people and all the food for one week was stolen.

Cece Primary School has also been fortunate because we already employed two cooks and have a budget for feeding.  However the budget is no longer adequate.  We have had to buy two extra-large saucepans and all the other food items mentioned, even though we are not buying our usual porridge ingredients at the moment.  Cooking dried beans consumes a lot more firewood than cooking porridge, so cooking costs have risen too.  (Firewood or charcoal are the only fuel available in Nimule.)

We don’t expect FRM to continue their feeding programme in the long term, but it is certainly good for our children while it lasts. 

How is this meal affecting the children?  Unfortunately, after eating, they are literally full of beans and it becomes difficult to teach them.  However, we are not complaining, because it is so important for them to get a decent sized meal each day.

As mentioned, school costs continue to rise now that we have an additional teacher and feeding costs.  A small monthly donation will help a lot with our day to day running costs of staff wages, feeding, pencils and other stationery.

Larger lump sums will go towards construction costs for our new school buildings. Over the Christmas holidays we constructed four lovely big classrooms on the new site.  Unfortunately the funds ran out before we could roof the building.  We also need to construct latrines, kitchen and other necessary buildings.  We have had to halt work until we have sufficient funds to continue. 

Please email me on rebeccamallinson1@hotmail.co.uk so I can send you the Gift Aid form.  This applies whether or not you are a UK tax-payer.  You will need to set up a standing order to the Sean Devereux account, whose details are on the Gift Aid form. 

We hope to have a link for US donors soon.

Please circulate this post as widely as possible.  I have set up a Facebook page for the school.  It can be found by searching for www.facebook.com/nimule.  I try to keep it updated regularly, but this is dependent on internet access, which is sketchy and expensive in Nimule.