I thought I was going to pay next term’s school fees for all the deaf children and take the two new boys to school but the situation changed without warning.
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| Alafi and Joel (left to right) waiting for Covid results before we intended to travel. |
On Friday I went to the local hospital with the two families of Joel and Alafi (who were supposed to start deaf school in Gulu on 7th June) for our Covid tests and certificates, ready to travel on Sunday. Alafi is a new deaf child, while Joel started very briefly last year before Covid closed the schools. Unfortunately, on Saturday we heard the news that no Primary 1 children were allowed to go to school due to a surge in Covid cases in Uganda. I had to phone the two families and inform them. They were very disappointed, understandably.
I still needed to go to Uganda to pay
the school fees for the other deaf children who were in Mbale, so I left South
Sudan on Sunday morning, clutching my Covid certificate and hiding behind a
facemask. I travelled as far as Gulu
uneventfully and on Monday morning boarded a long distance bus to Mbale. After about an hour’s journey I had two phone
calls within minutes of each other. Both
calls were from orphans whose schools had just locked down for 42 days without
notice. They were in need of funds to get
back home to Nimule. It was very
fortunate that the bus was going to have a break at a town where I could send
money to them both. This alerted me to
check with the schools in Mbale. Like
all other educational institutes across Uganda, they were also closing
down. So, my ‘fee paying’ expedition was
turned into a picking-up-the-children expedition. I spent the rest of the bus journey phoning
families and assuring them that I would bring their children home.
Normally the two boys who attend the
deaf secondary school travel by themselves to the primary school ready for me
to fetch them. However, this time I
arrived at the primary school in the afternoon only to find that one of the two
secondary students had gone back to his secondary school (about 40 kms away)
for something he’d forgotten. I had to
call his headteacher and ask for him to return immediately ready to travel early the
next day, Tuesday. Fortunately he
reappeared in time.
Early on Tuesday morning we left in a
small minibus for Mbale, where I would look for transport to Gulu. I worried that we would face difficulties as
every boarding student in the country would be desperately looking for
transport at the same time and the costs of transport would go up. However, we were very fortunate. Our driver, seeing me with eight students, realized
that we would struggle, so he suggested asking a friend of his to take us all
the way to Gulu in his minibus. As
predicted, the costs were considerably higher than those I’d paid the previous
day (80,000 shillings each instead of the 50,000 I’d paid for myself coming to
Mbale), but at least we didn’t have to face the mayhem of the bus station and
were able to travel all together.
We stayed overnight in Gulu and then
I put two of the students in vehicles going in different directions, before
getting another privately hired minibus for myself and the remaining students
to go to the border with Nimule.
Surprisingly, this time the cost was a bit cheaper than my fare on the
way to Gulu – 40,000 each instead of 60,000 when I was travelling alone. At the border we said goodbye to Aluma and
Alice who were both being taken to the refugee camp by their families instead
of crossing to South Sudan.
We made it back with a day to spare
before the Ugandan government had said that they would stop public transport
from making long distance journeys.
Thankfully, unlike March 2020, the border between Uganda and South Sudan
was open, so we had no difficulties crossing. It has since closed.
It was a trip that turned out very
differently from the one I had planned, but at least I was able to fetch everyone in a timely
fashion and the children arrived safely at their destinations. I hope very much that the Ugandan government
allows their educational institutes to reopen after the 42 days they have
announced, instead of creating another dead year. Alau, the eldest, is supposed to start his
final year before the equivalent of GCSEs in August. It would be a terrible pity if this is
delayed.
