Thieves at the school

I arrived back in Nimule two days ago.  I met with two pieces of bad news.  The first is that due to the rise in Covid cases school opening is again postponed, this time to May.  The second is that thieves have broken into our school, once or possibly twice.

Charles, the director of HUMAES, my partners in the school, and I, went to visit the school yesterday.  We found the door of one classroom open, although nobody had tampered with the lock.  One of the window shutters and a bar from across the window had been removed.  Clearly the thieves had squeezed through the window and then opened the door from the inside. 

An open door awaits us

The guard from the next-door school saw us and came over.  He told us that he had seen the thieves as he was walking back to the school the previous day.  They were carrying a metal window frame, which had been left over when the new windows were put in last year.  He threw stones at the thieves and they ran away leaving the window frame behind.  He took the window frame into his school compound for safekeeping.  Then a woman came, who told us that she knew who the thieves were.  According to her, they are a gang of local young men who have been doing a lot of stealing in the area.  They are homeless drug-users.  They are very dangerous, even to the extent of shooting people who tried to stop them.

Before we left, Charles suggested that we check the kitchen store even though the door seemed to be locked.  The padlock was not damaged.  We opened the door only to find that thieves had got in there too.  A catering size cooking pot had been taken and also several large boxes of soap.  These had all been donated by Plan International at different times.  In their search the thieves had strewn plastic cups and beans all over the floor.  Whether these were the same thieves as those who entered the classroom or not, it is impossible to know.  It seems that they had a master key.  It was a cheap padlock.  We have replaced it now with a much tougher one.

A missing bar is the clue to the thieves
entry method

Do I despair?  No.  Am I sad?  Not particularly.  On the bright side, the damage could have been worse.  If we had had a guard, he could have been killed, as often happens here.  If our school had all mod-cons such as electricity and western-style learning aids, we would attract far more criminals.  In fact this is the first incident since the school started in 2015.  The name of our school, Cece, means ‘slowly, slowly’ in the Madi language.  It has proved to be a wise policy.

Since the closure of schools last March, many young men have formed roving gangs, camping in deserted huts, armed with guns and pangas (the local word for a machete).  Rape incidents are high.  Drug taking is also high.  It is very likely that these youths were school students up until March 2020, now with nothing to do but create mayhem. 

What type of a life can these young men expect?  The answer is ‘nasty, brutish and short’.  I was told that in another incident a young man who specialized in stealing solar panels was spotted by a guard, up a ladder, removing a solar panel.  The guard shot him to death with four bullets.  Rough justice is common here, and most people heartily approve of the guard’s action.  If crimes are reported through official channels, the police expect to be paid to investigate and often take yet more belongings from the crime victims, supposedly as ‘evidence’ but nobody ever gets their belongings back again.

In South Sudan, all the international NGOs prioritise girls’ education.  But what about the boys and young men?  Without education the boys will spoil the lives of the girls through rape, HIV and teenage pregnancy.  Boys very easily become street children, unlike girls, who have more of a role in their families.  These boys will continue the downhill process in which South Sudan collapses through endless violent crime, unless they are helped. 

I strongly believe that boys must be helped at the same time as girls.  All of them need to get back to school urgently.  Without education, there can be no change for the better in South Sudan.  Please God, let school truly restart in May.  Covid is a very lame excuse in South Sudan, as the numbers of cases are tiny compared to most countries in the world.  Official statistics show that just over 100 people have died, and there have only been around 10,000 positive cases so far.  Is it really worth ruining so many lives for that?

In the meantime we need to get a metal worker to weld on a new bar to the window and replace the metal shutter.  We also need to buy a large pot to replace the one stolen.  The soap can wait!