Trials and tribulations

 Dear all,

As I write I have just had an email from a kind donor giving an ad-hoc donation in addition to his monthly one.  It could not be better timed.  I am really struggling with fundraising at the moment.  In spite of appeals, there has been very little increase in monthly donations.  Our monthly running costs are a great deal higher than the monthly donations.  Previously the Gift Aid donations, especially on building work and the sponsorship of the deaf children, made up for this shortfall, so that we have always been able to pay our teachers at the end of the month, but not this time.  

We have reached a point where (if it were not for this inspired donor) there would be no funds to pay our teachers and cooks in December.  We had to make use of money intended for building work for the November payment.  

We had an emergency meeting of our Parent Teacher Association at which it was decided that we have no alternative but to start charging school fees.  This goes against the entire mission of the school, which is intended for the most poverty-stricken families who cannot afford school fees.  The sum agreed per child was 10,000 SSP per term, which is around £20, and is intended only for salaries, not for other costs.  This is less than other local schools but is still a huge sum for our particular target group.  Also, most of our pupils have brothers and sisters in the school, so that the family might have to pay three or four times as much.  I have softened the pill as much as possible by saying that they are welcome to pay in instalments and that in cases where there is no possibility of paying, to come and see me.

Our teachers are very unsettled, as I am unable to tell them how much they will be paid this month.  I fear that we could lose some teachers.  It will not be possible to re-advertise when we are so uncertain financially.  At the agreed rate of 10,000 SSP per child, all teachers and cooks will inevitably face a pay cut, at a time of rapidly rising inflation and just before Christmas.

Assuming that all parents are able to pay the new school fees, there will still be other costs, such as chalk and stationery, any necessary repairs, firewood and soap.  Of these costs, firewood is the biggest expense and is necessary for cooking the food which we receive from the World Food Program.  Our newly elected SMT has recommended that we ask families to send their children with firewood – another burden for poor families.  The children are very gamely coming armed with sticks.

Right now, we are avoiding teaching in the afternoons, so that pupils and teachers can eat at home, which is impacting on teaching time.  This is intended to give our teachers a chance to earn something in the afternoons.  

Cece Primary School has been the only non-fee-paying school in South Sudan and is very much needed.  A walk through Nimule during school time demonstrates the huge number of children who do not get the chance of an education because of poverty. 

If you can help with monthly donations, please contact me on rebeccamallinson1@gmail.com (not the old hotmail address, which was irretrievably hacked some time ago).  I will then send you a gift aid form.  Please do pass this message on to any other people who might be able to assist us.  Any suggestions of how to proceed are more than welcome.

Update on the school

Cece Primary School has been growing steadily since 2015, when we started with only 60 children all at the same beginner level in a loaned building.  We now have classes from Pre-primary up to Primary 7 on our own school site.  Pre-primary is divided into two classes as the numbers are very large and they are mixed ability.

One classroom on foundations
 meant for four classrooms

We therefore have 9 classes altogether.  However, the number of available classrooms is only 7, as we also need a teachers’ room and a storeroom.  As a result, we have had to adjust the school day so that all classes have the use of a classroom.  To do this, Pre-primary, Primary 1 and Primary 2 are held in the mornings only, ending with lunch.  Two classes, Primary 3 and Primary 4, come at lunchtime and take over the Pre-primary rooms; all their lessons are held in the afternoons with a very cramped timetable to enable all subjects to be covered.  There is no afternoon break because otherwise everyone would have to go home late, in a town with a very unpredictable security situation.  Primary 5, 6 and 7 have a full school day with a morning break and a lunch break.  I would dearly love all pupils to be in school in the morning with lessons extending into the afternoons for all the higher classes, without the need for classrooms to be used for two classes.

From April next year we will have our first Primary 8 class, who will also need a classroom.  Primary 8 is the last year of primary school in South Sudan. 

As you will see from the picture above, we have a block of foundations with only one classroom on it as we do not have the funds to build the remaining classrooms.  The foundations are intended for four classrooms altogether, so once these classrooms are built, we will have a classroom per class.  The cost of building these three classrooms on top of the foundations comes to around £4,500 per classroom. 

To see the problem visually look at the chart below.

B l o c k   1
Pre-primary A AM/ Primary 3 PM	Pre-primary B AM/ Primary 4 PM	Primary 1 AM	Primary 2 AM
B l o c k   2
Primary 5 all day	Primary 6 all day	Primary 7 all day	Teacher’s room
B l o c k   3
Storeroom	Foundations only	Foundations only	Foundations only

Other than this issue of buildings, school is going well.  One of our teachers, Brian, has recently started teaching the older pupils to play volleyball, which is a huge success.  It is hard to tear them away at the end of break time and they continue playing at the end of school.  We are hoping to find another primary school with a volleyball team, so they are able to compete.  UNICEF annually supplies various items to schools, (some more useful than others) including volleyball nets and balls.  Up until now the mounting pile of these has languished in our storeroom because we did not have a teacher who knew how to play this game.  We have 6 volleyball nets, which is definitely surplus to requirements!

Our pupils ready to start marching 
to the Girl Child Day venue.

We took part in the town’s Girl Child Day celebrations last week.  Girl Child Day is considered a very important day in South Sudan for promoting the importance of educating girls.  Our school agreed to participate in the main event by producing a song and also a Madi traditional dance.  It went very well indeed, with the head of the local government praising our school’s dancing in the final speech.  He invited me to visit the next day so the town council could make a contribution towards future dancing celebrations.  The amount was around $30, which will be used to buy costumes or drums. 

In order to participate in this outside event, we had the perennial problem of supplying uniforms to participants.  Many pupils had outgrown their uniforms and we have new pupils as well.  Nataline, one of our pre-primary teachers, is also a qualified tailor, so she worked hard to produce new uniforms for the participants as we did not have enough material or funds to provide uniforms for all.  Fortunately, there was enough leftover material from the tailoring session last year, so it was just a matter of paying her for her work.  She was being assisted by another tailor, who is a member of the clan who donated our school land.  In order to economize, we always ask those who have outgrown their uniforms to bring them back, so they can be passed on to smaller pupils; however, we cannot do this with the biggest pupils for obvious reasons.  The uniform material is costly, but very good quality.  It does not wear out easily and is colour-fast, which makes passing it on feasible.

After school volleyball practice
with Teacher Brian

So that the boys didn’t feel excluded, we organized an internal boys’ event in school on the same day as Girl Child Day.  Our school does not have the same problem of lack of girls as many other schools.  I think the main reason for this is that we do not charge school fees.  In a poor family, boys are generally prioritized if there is not enough money for all children to attend school.  Currently we have 185 pupils, of whom 91 are girls and 94 are boys.  We started the year with 276 pupils but lost a lot of pupils of both sexes in May and July due to the unrest mentioned in a previous post, in which many families fled to Uganda and have so far not returned.

We are expecting one of our teachers, Mohammed Hafish, to return to us in November after nearly three years away on a teacher training course.  I have been told that he has been an outstanding student.  Our pupils remember him with great affection and have often asked, “When is Teacher Mohammed coming back?”  The course should have ended after two years but was disrupted by Covid.  The teacher training college is run by Solidarity with South Sudan and is the best in the country.  We are fortunate that places at Solidarity are fully funded by their own donors.

Another development has been the addition of a debating session to the weekly timetable for Primary 5, 6 and 7.  We try to make the subjects topical, provocative and interesting.  Last week the motion for debate was ‘Polygamy is better than monogamy’.  Polygamy is the norm here, so this is very relevant.  Almost all our pupils are opposed to it.  They have firsthand experience of the difficulties between wives, cruelty to each others’ children, enhanced HIV infection and lack of money as a result of producing ridiculous numbers of children.  The ‘proposers’ struggled but managed to produce some points.

Your help in donating towards our school is very much appreciated.  I feel very happy to be able to report so many successes, especially in assisting such needy children to get an education, which is their only way out of extreme poverty.

This building of classrooms is our greatest challenge at the moment.  Is anyone able to help, or to point us in the direction of likely donors? 

We also have the costs of paying for the uniforms, which are much needed too, not to mention the ongoing monthly salaries of teachers and cooks.  I know these are less glamourous than physical structures, but a school without teachers cannot exist.

South Sudan’s exchange rate to the dollar is improving incrementally over two months up to 15^th November so that we will be in a favourable position (the rate will soon be double what it was in August).  It therefore seems a good time to help us and to get value for money.  If you can help, please contact me on rebeccamallinson1@gmail.com.

School exam statistics over the years

Cece Primary School is a school for pupils from families with HIV, disabilities and orphans.  These are the most stigmatized and marginalized sector of society in Nimule.  The school opened in June 2015 with only one level, Primary 1, divided into two groups.  From then on each year has seen new classes.  In 2016 a nursery class and Primary 2 were added.  In 2017 Primary 3 started.  In 2018 Primary 4 followed, and so on.  Currently we have our first Primary 7 class.  Next year (2023) will be our first year as a full primary school, with a Primary 8 class.

There are no statistics on the first two years (2015 and 2016) because the computer and backup drive were stolen in 2016. 

From 2017 until 2018 the pass and failure statistics were close, but progressively improved, ending in a good pass rate (60% in 2017 and 73% in 2018).  These results reflect the fact that all pupils were at the early stages of learning at that time.

From 2019 the pass rate has always exceeded the failure rate for the school as a whole.  

In 2020 the school was closed during the first term and did not reopen until the next academic year due to Covid.  Therefore there are no exam statistics and the pupils completely missed out on their education for over one year.  Some pupils dropped out.

In spite of the missing year of schooling, pupils still had their best ever exam pass rates for a first term exam at the end of the first term of 2021.  They were helped by the fact that they repeated the previous year, without being promoted.  This was necessary as they had attended only a few weeks of school at the time of closure.

The first term of 2022 has been a very difficult one, with two major closures due to a poor security situation.  The number of pupils sitting the exam was fewer than normal as many pupils have not returned after fleeing to Uganda – 166 were present out of a school roll of 276.  Even so, for the first time in the school’s history, the 1st term exam results are identical to the end of year results for 2021 instead of falling back. 

Challenges

Pupils revising

Because of the unstable situation of South Sudan, we have always faced a high pupil turnover, with new pupils joining and old ones leaving.  As most newcomers are coming from schools which have very low standards, especially in literacy, this has led to a policy of giving entrance exams to pupils applying for places at the higher levels (Primary 4 and above).  The vast majority of applicants fail with results of 0% to 5% as they are completely unable to read the exam papers.  It is sad to have to turn them away, but we lack the resources to provide extra help at such a late stage.  If we accepted them, they would be far too far behind their classmates to catch up.  If they were small children, we would place them in low classes, but most are in their late teens.

Another challenge is high teacher turnover and few trained teachers.  We are constantly having to interview new teachers, who interview well and then turn out to be incompetent.  A particular difficulty is recruitment of maths teachers, as mathematics is a general weakness in South Sudan.  The same applies to teachers of literacy.

Conclusion

These steadily improving results have been made possible because of a school policy of ensuring that pupils are in the right class according to their current learning levels.  Where pupils are unable to cope they are put into a lower class so that they can get a solid foundation.  If they are too advanced for their current class, they are promoted so that they can be challenged and will not disrupt the teaching of others in the class through boredom.

The exam papers are produced by the subject teachers for each class and are supposed to reflect what our pupils have been taught.

Literacy is taken very seriously.  A method called Jolly Phonics is used, which is very suitable for a learning environment with few materials.

Classes are no larger than 35, and in several cases in the upper school, from 10 to 20.  This allows teachers to give more time to their students than in other local schools.  The low numbers in the upper school are due to pupils leaving and there being very few suitable pupils to replace them, as mentioned previously.

Next year we will have our first Primary Leaving Examination (PLE) for our Primary 8 class.  That will be our first national exam class, and will show clearly whether or not we are really doing as well as we think we are.  In South Sudan it is not possible to go to secondary school without passing the PLE first, so it is really crucial for the future education of our pupils that they pass.  It is planned to start a secondary department in our school compound to cater for our former primary students.

 

Progress of our sponsored children

Dear all,

I have just returned from Uganda where I have been visiting the deaf children to pay their school fees.  The previous two academic years (2000 and 2001) were heavily affected by Covid so that the fees were considerably less than 2022, in which schools have remained open. Some of the funds were used to pay Alau who (as you will see below) helped our deaf children to continue learning during that time, as well as for general school funds - much needed at that time.

Opportunity through Education are just finishing their financial year and have given me an update on finances.  I am glad to say that the money received for sponsorship is just enough at the moment, but with little to spare.  

I have been forewarned that school fees at Budadiri (where most of the children go to school) will be going up from next year due to inflation.  Once I know the amounts I will be able to inform sponsors.  Currently, children are being supported with £650 per year each, which includes transport, uniform, living necessities as well as school fees.  It is a real bargain, especially when you realise how much individual care they receive.

Budadiri children:
From left to right: Vibrant (far left), Aluma (left
back), Assumpta (front left), Paul (back middle),
Lillian (front middle), Lillian (right) and Alice (far right)

Here is an update on the children.  They are, of course, very much individuals, and two have health problems in addition to their deafness.  For all these young people, this schooling is their only opportunity to access education as there are no schools for the deaf in South Sudan, and most are poor almost to the point of destitution.  Without the chance of learning sign language, being educated and gaining qualifications they face a life of extreme isolation, prejudice in local society and in some cases lack of care within their own families.  This became very clear during the time when the schools in Uganda were shut down due to Covid. 

Assumpta, Alau and Joel already have sponsorship.  There are also two kind donors who pay large lump sums as a general fund towards the costs of all the children.  Thank you so much to all of you.

Alau teaching Alice last year.

Alau is the only pupil at secondary level.  His school is near Mbale.  Apart from the last two listed below, all the others are attending a primary school in the mountains of Mount Elgon, a very beautiful area close to Mbale.  They are very close to the border with Kenya.  It is a very long journey, so these children have to remain at school throughout the academic year.  They are very well cared for and this works well as they are all very isolated at home due to lack of sign language in their home environments.  Alau joins the younger ones during school holidays.  The last two, Joel and Alafi, are at a school in Gulu which is much closer to South Sudan.  This is because their parents are particularly keen to be near at hand.

Unlike the UK where children go to different class levels according to age, in both South Sudan and Uganda children go to classes according to educational level.  Some children start school very late because of financial circumstances, and many never go to school.  In the case of all these deaf children, their disability made it impossible to go to school until the opportunity came.  The same situation affects most children at Cece Primary School.

Alau, 22 years old
Alau was born deaf.  The reason he is still at school at 22 years old is that there was a three year gap in his education after primary school, in which he had no sponsorship and no possibility of going on to secondary school.  He is just about to sit his Senior 4, which is the equivalent of GCSEs.  He is very nervous because he wants to be able to go on to Senior 5 and 6, which is the A’ level stage.  His ambition is to be a teacher for the deaf in South Sudan.  The plan is that after completing school he will go on to a specialist teacher training college for a two year course.  He has told me that he wants to do this because he has seen so many in his position who have no chance in life at all.  As mentioned earlier, during Covid, he assisted at Cece Primary School and it was very clear that he has a real gift for teaching.  After qualifying, I am very much hoping that he will join my school staff and we will be able to start a unit for deaf children.  This will be a great achievement if it happens as it will be the only school for deaf children in South Sudan.  During the long Christmas holidays, if staying with family in Nimule, Alau works in the local transport hub loading vehicles to help support his family.  Sometimes he goes to the refugee camp in Uganda to stay with his mother and assists his brother with his small business there.  He is somebody who likes to be busy.

Alice, 17 years old
Alice is the oldest of the girls and was born deaf.  She is an orphan who was cared for by her grandmother until recently.  Her grandmother has always been very supportive of her but is a subsistence farmer, living far from help.  More recently Alice has been staying with one of her uncles sometimes in Nimule and sometimes in the refugee camp in Uganda.  She is in the penultimate year of primary school and is doing very well.  Next year she will sit the PLE (Primary Leaving Exam).  I am hoping she will then go on to secondary school.  The school is confident that she will do well enough to do so.  She is a very hardworking and responsible girl.  She is a changed person from when I first met her in 2018.  At that time she was constantly sad, but now she is sociable and smiles a lot.  She is very keen on sport and takes part in inter-school competitions.

Lillian, 16 years old
Lillian’s father is dead and she lives with his ‘co-wife’ (her father was polygamous) because her mother is mentally ill.  Unusually for co-wives in the local culture, her step-mother is very kind to her and has always done her best for her.  In 2016, when fighting was very fierce in the family’s home area of Magwi, the family fled to a refugee camp in Uganda.  There Lillian fell seriously ill with meningitis and nearly died.  Her deafness is the lasting result.  Lillian’s step-mother could not afford medical care for her in Uganda and decided to bring the family back to live in Nimule, where there is a hospital which does not charge patients.  She enrolled Lillian in Cece Primary School, where I first met her.  Without teachers trained in special needs it was impossible educate her properly and she became very bored.  I therefore suggested to the co-wife that I take her to school in Uganda.  This was gratefully accepted. 

She is doing very well academically and is now in Primary 5.  She is good at sports and takes part in inter-school contests.  She can still remember some words in the Acholi language, but cannot hear herself speak.  Lillian is a bit of a ‘go-getter’, which can be a bit difficult when it comes to buying necessities for her.  I try to be even-handed with all the children, but she is always trying to point out the most expensive and flashy shoes etc.  I don’t let her get away with it.

Paul, 16 years old
Paul is also a former Cece Primary School student.  He was born deaf.  His mother is dead and he lives with his elderly, disabled father and his siblings.  Because of grinding poverty, Paul and his brother (also a pupil at Cece) polished people’s shoes by the roadside to make a living for the whole family outside school hours.  Like Lillian, he is in Primary 5 and doing very well.  He loves sports and takes part in inter-school contests.  He is growing very fast and has needed new shoes and uniform several times since he started at deaf school.

Aluma, 17 years old
Aluma is the son of an HIV counsellor.  His deafness is due to meningitis.  The same illness has caused paralysis of his right arm and semi-paralysis of one leg, so that he limps.  He also has epilepsy quite severely.  Last term he had to be hospitalized for five days due to severe fits.  He is in Primary 4 but is struggling a bit because of his illness.  The school is taking very good care of him and makes sure he has extra food, including milk from the school cows, because he has lost a lot of weight. In spite of all his problems he is usually a very cheerful character. 

Assumpta, 16 years old
Assumpta was the first of the deaf children to come to my notice.  She was originally a pupil at Cece Primary School.  Like Lillian and Aluma, her deafness is due to meningitis.  Over time it has become obvious that she is intellectually disabled as well as deaf.  She really struggles academically and remains at a very low level.  However, she is very good at handicrafts, in which she is encouraged at school in the hope that she may later make a living with her hands.  Her father died when she was a baby and her mother really struggled to make ends meet by growing vegetables and collecting firewood to sell.  Misfortune has struck.  A few weeks ago her mother died of a stroke, leaving Assumpta completely without parents.  According to local culture a decision was made at the funeral for Assumpta to become the responsibility of one of her uncles.  I am praying that he will treat her well.  I had the task of breaking the news to Assumpta, with the assistance of a sign language interpreter.  She took it remarkably well.  I showed her a photo of her uncle and she appeared to recognize him and accept that she would be staying with him at the end of the school year.  I gave her a photo of herself with her mother as a keepsake.

Jennifer, 12 years old
Jennifer is the newest of the deaf brigade and is the youngest girl.  She became deaf due to a quinine overdose.  She is quite shy but is learning sign language fast and doing well academically.  As she only joined the school last term she is in Primary 1.

Vibrant, 10 years old
Vibrant is the youngest of the children at Budadiri.  He became deaf because of an overdose of quinine.  He is very bright and well settled at school.  He has picked up sign language very fast and signs so quickly that his hands are almost a blur, which makes it hard for those who are not fluent in sign language to follow him.  He has whisked up to Primary 3 within one year.  His parents both work for NGOs in Torit, the capital of the state where Nimule is, but very difficult to reach because of poor roads.  Much to my surprise his mother went to visit him at school last term.  She had been worrying about him as he is so far from home.  The headteacher gave her a guided tour and spent a lot of time talking to her.  She was completely overcome by the excellence of the school and called me afterwards to express her thanks. She said that she had never seen a school like it.

Joel, 12 years old
Like Vibrant, Joel became deaf because of a medication overdose.  He is attending the deaf school in Gulu.  He is doing well at school and is in Primary 3.  His mother is a widow and Joel is her youngest child.  Understandably, she could not accept that he would be away for almost a full year at a time, as is the case with all the previously mentioned children, which is why he is attending a closer school. 

Alafi, 8 years old
Alafi originally went to Cece Primary School where he was in the nursery class.  He was very hard to manage and continues to be quite a live wire at his new school.  He is attending the same school in Gulu as Joel.  He is in Primary 2 and is doing well.  The reason for attending the school at Gulu is the same as for Joel.  Like Jennifer and Vibrant, he is still in his first year at school, so I don’t have very much to say yet.

New sponsors are very much welcomed as I am hoping to assist another deaf child at the beginning of the next academic year and there are also two blind children who are in need of school from next year. If you are able to assist with funding (or fundraising) for any of these children I would be very grateful.  Please feel free to circulate this email to anyone you think might be interested.  My email address is rebeccamallinson1@hotmail.co.uk.  

Independence Day South Sudan style

On Monday 11^th July there was a public holiday to celebrate South Sudan’s independence.  Therefore there was no school.  The actual anniversary falls on the 9^th, but as the 9^th was a Saturday this year, the public holiday was shifted to Monday.  I had scheduled to hold a teachers meeting that day to make arrangements and set deadlines for writing exam papers for the end of term exams which are supposed to start on 1^st August.  My intention was to hold the meeting without interrupting the education of our pupils. 

On Sunday, the chief of Anzara was shot dead at a high-level security meeting right next to the local police station by some people who were standing nearby.  The police called on the military police to assist and some were arrested, including the perpetrator.  The chief’s funeral was to be held on Monday.  This incident has caused a general escalation of unrest.

Early on Monday morning I was told that there had been more raiding of animals in Mogali with two people shot dead and one abducted.  In protest, the local youth put the bodies in the middle of the road and started burning tyres. 

As the time of the teachers’ meeting approached there were suddenly gunshots in our own local area.  I started phoning all the teachers asking them not to come after all.  I spent the day in our home compound, unable to go out because it was too dangerous. 

By Tuesday more shootings had occurred, so it became clear that school had to be cancelled until the situation calmed down again.  I walked to the school to fetch textbooks, so that I could compose some exam papers for my students.  I also collected textbooks for another teacher who lives close to me so that he could do the same. 

While at the school I decided to visit a pastor friend of mine, who lives nearby.  His name is Pastor Abraham.  He had had a very difficult night; all seven of his goats had been stolen as well as his solar panel, which he had left outside by mistake.  His family had spent the whole night cowering inside while he and a teenage boy stood guard.  In spite of that, when I visited everyone seemed in good spirits.  They had been foraging for greens to eat as they had run out of food, and were busy cleaning them.  Normally the pastor’s wife has a stall in the market, but the market was completely closed due to the situation, leaving no means of earning money or buying food.

Later on I started work on my exam papers, which at least gave me some activity.  I contacted as many as possible of our teachers to ask them to do the same.  In some cases it was clear that they were no longer in South Sudan because their phone numbers would not go through.

I am hoping against hope that we can reopen the school next week, but so far not a day is going by without some sporadic shooting.  It is incredibly frustrating to try to run a school which keeps having to close down as people flee or simply fear to send their children out of their home compounds. 

We opened the school in April, only to be ordered to close again until May, after only one week of teaching.  Then we reopened in May and had to close again because of the local insecurity after only a few days.  We congratulated ourselves on being able to stay open for the whole of June, and now find ourselves closed again because of insecurity.  Each time, the majority of families take their children to Uganda and then take a long time to return, so that when we reopen there are very few pupils or teachers.  The reason for the slow return is the high cost of transport as well as distrust of the situation.  Families have to find means to travel back having spent everything they had on fleeing.

I feel very sad for our children because their education is so disrupted.  It may well cause some to drop out of school altogether, as happened when Covid struck.  More left when we closed down in May.  I look at our older children, who are getting closer to the end of primary school all the time.  They are very, very keen to learn, but everything seems to be stacked against them. 

There were no celebrations for Independence Day in Nimule, but that was no surprise.  The local government does not have money and the local people are too fed up to feel much like celebrating in any case, even without the current crisis.  In the time I have been here the lack of celebration has always been the norm.  Almost every year there are problems around the time of Independence Day, but usually it is banditry on the road between Nimule and Juba.  This year is the first time Nimule has been so directly affected.

Pastor Abraham said to me that we must constantly remind people of how the Hebrew prophets kept reminding their people that when they behaved badly, God punished them.  When they behaved well, God rewarded them.  Cause and effect.

Please keep us in prayer, particularly for a change of heart of those who are destroying their country. 

Adjusting to the unpredictable

Trucks of cattle leave Nimule

In the past few weeks there has been major disruption in Nimule and its surrounding area.  This has been largely due to cattle raiding by tribes who have followed internally displaced people (IDPs), who are cattle keepers, to our area.  The result has been a lot of killings of both cattle keepers and local people as well as the theft of cattle.  Thankfully the national and state governments sent representatives to calm the situation down and hold meetings with the locals and the IDPs.  They have left extra soldiers to patrol to stop any more disturbances.  The cattle keepers have been ordered to remove their cattle back to their traditional tribal area.  They are doing so, piling the cattle into trucks.

To make matters worse, some people (I suspect they are local gangs) have having what I can only call a murder spree, killing people with either knives or guns.  The killings have been totally random and usually take place in the evenings or overnight.

Younger children playing with duplo

To cut a long story short, the effect of these happenings has been to close the schools and send a lot of people fleeing to Uganda, where they are being refused admission to the refugee camps and sent away.  As from Monday we have reopened although the majority of children are missing.  We have truncated our school hours so that we are only open during the mornings to try to avoid security issues.  It seems from everything I hear that the perpetrators are all late sleepers – at work in the late evenings and overnight but resting in the mornings.

Last week I and some fellow teachers went through all our extra-curricular games and put together a good supply of jigsaws and various games for literacy and numeracy.  Those children who are attending are having a rare chance to learn through play, and the teachers are learning at the same time how to teach by non-formal methods.  It is very hard to get South Sudanese teachers to use anything but 'talk and chalk' methods, so this is a whole new experience for them.  

Stenciling

I am so glad to have been able to reopen.  It must have been very tough on the children at home to have been living in such an atmosphere of fear, so it is good to take their minds off their troubles a bit.  Since Monday we have divided the children between two classrooms, by age.  The small children have wooden blocks, duplo, simple jigsaws, jenga and outdoor play.  The older children have more complicated games such as Scrabble and a lovely 250-piece jigsaw map of the world.  All ages are enjoying dominos.  For the older children we are having slightly more formal lessons in music (learning the recorder) and painting with stencils.  

Some other schools are also reopening, so hopefully those who have gone to Uganda will hear from their relatives and come back.  Then we will be able to resume normal lessons.

In the meantime, a new classroom has been built and one classroom had been plastered before we were forced to shut.  The workmen came back to resume the plastering work yesterday.

Children play on our only remaining
piece of playground equipment.

Feeding two hundred and forty children

Children queue for lunch in 2018

Since I came to Nimule, in 2013, I have seen endless difficulties with school feeding.  The school where I initially worked provided a small plastic cup of very insipid maize porridge to each child at midday, which was paid for by the parents.  It was a fee-paying school.

In the case of Cece Primary School, we have had our ups and downs.  When we first started in 2015, with only 60 children, we were able to afford to make a very nutritious porridge made with millet flour with added sesame paste.  Those were the days!  As numbers grew this became unsustainable.

At one point, a local US-led mission started to provide a full-scale meal of posho (a large dumpling made of maize flour) and stewed beans for every school child in Nimule.  Unfortunately that plan broke down because of the greed of some schools, who enhanced their figures so that they could give food to the families of their teachers as well.  After a warning, which was ignored, the mission cancelled their feeding programme.

Collapse of old kitchen in freak 
weather

We tried to feed our children through donations, but have never been able to manage completely, leaving periods with no school food.  In some cases this has caused children to drop out of school because the poverty of their families is such that they really rely on that meal.

At the beginning of 2019 the World Food Program, with Plan International as their local partners, stepped in to provide school meals.  We were expected to provide a self-contained food store as well as a permanent kitchen, completely without notice.  At that time, neither of these had been built and we had no funds to do so.  Previously we had always stored our food off-site in HUMAES’s store, which was more secure.  Cooking was done in a bamboo shed, which eventually collapsed in a high wind (see picture).  We asked Plan International to deliver the food to HUMAES, pointing out that security was a problem at the school and that several other schools had lost their food to thieves, sometimes at gunpoint.  Plan International refused.  Our inability to instantly provide the desired food store and kitchen meant that Plan International refused to help after an initial three weeks.  We continued to fund food through donations, but it was a very big struggle.  Money we had earmarked for construction work had to be spent on food instead.  Shockingly, I later saw a report in which Plan claimed to have continued feeding our school right through the year and into the Covid year.

Food store while under construction.

During the Covid lockdown we built a new kitchen and food store, so that we would be ready for Plan International if they should come again.  Luckily enough, when school reopened in May 2021, Plan International came back to offer us food again.  This time the food consisted of maize, sorghum, beans and cow peas (which is similar to dhal).  We really basked in the luxury of variety of food.  Predictably enough, this time there was a demand that we construct a firewood store, which we did, and feeding continued throughout the school year.

Cooking 'hobs' in the new kitchen.

Yesterday I called Plan International to ask when they would deliver the next batch of food, as all our food was finished.  I was told that because of the crisis in Ukraine, the donors had decided to pull out of South Sudan and focus on feeding the Ukrainian refugees.  They hadn’t thought to inform the schools.  We are set for another ‘hunger gap’ until we can find a way forward.  We now have 240 pupils, so the need is great.

Please can I ask for regular monthly donations towards food for the school?  Please contact me on rebeccamallinson1@hotmail.co.uk if you would like a gift aid form or have any suggestions of ways in which we can move forward. 

 

A new school year begins - or does it?

We held registrations in the last two weeks of March, ready for the new school year, which began on 4^th April.  Last year the school year began in May.  My understanding was that each year the school year would shift back until it reached its pre-Covid norm of January.

According to the South Sudanese system, pupils move to the next year group using their end-of-year exam results, not according to age.  This is necessary for three main reasons.  One is because there are no resources to give extra help to slow learners.  The second reason is that because of the instability of the country, there is no statutory age for starting school.  Thirdly, families often have no money for school fees and need their children to assist with money-generating activities just in order to survive.  Many children never attend school as a result, but some finally get a chance when the family is more stable. 

Our school is the only one which does not charge school fees in the Nimule area and quite possibly in the whole country.  To give just one example, this year we have an 11 year old girl starting school for the first time.  She is an orphan who previously lived with her grandmother but is now working as a live-in babysitter for one of our teachers, who has promised that she will be allowed to study regularly.  Hopefully we will be able to help her to progress at an accelerated rate, although this will depend on her level of ability.  Across the school the age range is currently from 5 to 18.  Fortunately the majority of those of 17 - 18 years old are fast learners and are in the highest two classes.

After working out who was to be in which class according to the end-of-year results, I found that most classes were full, with the only spaces in nursery, Primary 5 and Primary 7.  Each year since 2015, when the school started, we have added a new class to cater for those at the upper end of the school.  This year is our first year with a Primary 7 class.  Next year will be our first year with a full primary school.  Primary 8 is the final year of primary school in South Sudan and ends with a major national exam called the Primary Leaving Certificate.  Without passing this exam, pupils cannot go to secondary school.

As happens every year, we were overwhelmed with applicants for school places.  Because of the sheer weight of numbers we always have to be very strict with our school criteria of HIV, disability and orphans.  It makes my heart bleed that we cannot help more families, but we simply lack the capacity.  It is also important not to have classes that are too large to teach.

We are not just paying lip service by putting ‘bums on seats’.  It is very important to me that Cece Primary School should have as high a standard of education as possible.  Literacy is a subject that is not taken seriously in South Sudan.  Teachers are not trained to teach children how to read.  Literacy does not feature in the curriculum textbooks.  Up until now I have been the only person able to teach our children to read.  It has become an increasingly difficult task as the school has expanded.  Thankfully, we have four new teachers who have just joined us, two of whom have taught literacy in Uganda.  Assuming all goes according to plan, we will now be able to teach the lower three classes literacy more efficiently, so that they can go up the school smoothly.

Most of those in the higher classes were taught to read by me when they were new pupils.  They are now fluent readers.  This is unheard-of in any of the other local primary schools.  In order to keep that standard in their classes, and to ensure that they pass their Primary Leaving Certificate exams later on, we set entrance exams for those wanting to enter the school at the higher levels.  This year, all those requesting places in Primary 5 or Primary 7 did entrance exams.  The vast majority failed because they were completely unable to read, making it impossible to accept them.  In the end we were able to admit four pupils to Primary 5, but none to Primary 7.  There was one girl who failed the exam for Primary 7, but did not do too badly, so we have squeezed her into Primary 6.  It upsets me very much that all these pupils have been so badly let down by their country’s schools, but even so, we really cannot admit them to a class where they would be completely unable to cope and there is no space to admit them in the lower classes.

The illiteracy rate in South Sudan is 67%, amongst the highest in the world.  When this figure is broken down, 90% of women are illiterate.  Schools are for the wealthy, but even so are severely sub-standard.  It is very hard to find competent, well-trained teachers.  How will this country ever progress if the situation remains as it is? 

As I write, there are rumblings in the capital city, Juba, of a renewal of fighting between the rival government factions.  War has been the major cause of the extreme poverty of the families we are trying to help.  I am proud to say that our school started in spite of war and has expanded in spite of war.  We will not give up, but do need your help.  We are very fortunate that up until now our immediate area has not been directly affected, except by people fleeing from elsewhere.

Cece Primary School is intended to help the most vulnerable and poverty-stricken children to break out of the cycle of poverty by providing a school without school fees or other burdensome requirements.  The school is also intended to give an example to other schools in South Sudan of what can be achieved on a tight budget.  The school therefore has no ‘frills’.  There are few books and no electricity.  This has a side benefit of making the school less attractive to thieves (of which there are many).

The major need at the moment is for regular donations towards staff salaries.  We now have thirteen teachers and three cooks.  The number of children has risen to 250, 50 of whom are new to the school.  Those who are new will need school uniforms.  We receive food from the World Food Program but still need to buy firewood in order to cook it.  There are of course ongoing administrative and stationery needs too.

I am delighted to say that we are in the process of building a much-needed new classroom with a very generous donation from one of our supporters.  This will certainly help tremendously, as currently we are having to operate in two shifts in order to have enough classrooms. 

Having had our first week of teaching, there was a sudden announcement from the Ministry of Education that all schools had to close again until the beginning of May.  It was very disappointing to have to dismiss all the children so soon after starting the new school year.  The reason really only applied to schools in the capital city, which has been experiencing teacher strikes and student unrest.  Yet another stumbling block in South Sudan's education system.

Jennifer, before leaving Nimule

Saluwa came back to Nimule following her operation and did very well in her end of year exams in spite of all her difficulties.  She is now back in Kampala for a second operation.  I did not have a response to my previous appeal and am in severe need of funds to pay for this operation.  Is anybody able to assist?  In the same trip I have visited the deaf children in their various schools.  I also took a new deaf child, a twelve year old girl called Jennifer so that she could join the school near Mbale.  She was very serious during the journey but very quickly settled in as she was welcomed very warmly by the other children.

Visitors are always welcome!  If there are any teachers out there who would like to take a much-needed break from the UK or elsewhere and join us on a voluntary basis, we would love your assistance.  This would suit a person who is very flexible, healthy and able to manage without mod-cons.

Thank you so much for all your help last year.  I hope you will be able to continue to support us.  Please contact me on rebeccamallinson1@hotmail.co.uk if you would like a gift aid form or have any suggestions of ways in which we can move forward.