News from Nimule

Dear all,

The new kitchen and newly fixed church

I want to say thank you so much for your support.  We fixed the church building, so it is now no longer slanting and much more secure.  The pastor who uses it at the weekends, is also very grateful.

The porridge meals are going very well.  As explained previously this meal is crucial as families are really struggling to feed their children at home.  The pleasure the children take when eating their porridge is almost tangible.

As you will know from the news, humanitarian aid is drying up.  As one person I cannot do everything, but I do the little that I can.  Below are some individual stories of how some students in particular need are getting individual help.

Peter and Taban at the hotel

I have recently returned from Uganda where I travelled with a ten year old boy called Peter who attends Liberty Primary School.  His father, whose legs are both paralysed, came with us.  The father, Taban, works repairing shoes at the roadside in Nimule and is very poor.  Peter has suffered for years from anaemia and has had a total of nine blood transfusions at the local hospital.  Nimule Hospital is poorly equipped and very short-staffed, so people are often referred on for more specialized care, medication or testing to Uganda.  Peter’s father was unable to afford to take his son.  I offered to take them both to Lacor Hospital on one of my regular trips to Gulu.  We arrived last Tuesday and spent six hours queuing in various departments.  When eventually tested Taban was advised to give Peter a good diet.  However, they (like most people) only eat in the evenings.  I did my best while on this trip to make sure they both ate regularly at least while I was with them.  

There is a new boy in our Primary 8 class called Joseph.  He is a very tall, thin Dinka whose father brought him to Nimule, paid his school fees and then disappeared, leaving him with an unrelated family.  The phrase ‘cuckoo in the nest’ springs to mind.  Joseph’s father is a soldier stationed elsewhere in the country and no doubt bullied the family into taking him in.  The ‘foster’ family has not taken it well.  They are simply not feeding him.  Unknown to me, Joseph was surviving on only the school porridge.  Shortly after arriving, he was absent from school for a whole week.  When he finally staggered into school he was in very poor shape.  I was very shocked.  He explained about the lack of food and also that he had been diagnosed with stomach ulcers.  Stomach ulcers are very common here, as a result of many hours a day on an empty stomach.  I have managed to solve his eating problem.  I paid for the necessary medication for ulcers and asked Ayuel, our headteacher, who lives close by, if he could include Joseph in his family meals, which he is doing.  Every day I am bringing Joseph something to eat for breakfast before classes start.  Then he is taking the school porridge at lunchtime.  Thankfully he is in a much better state now and is studying well.  Our headteacher has been so kind and welcoming to Joseph, for which I am very grateful. 

Another teenager, called Kalamam, is a further example of the grim poverty faced by children here.   Kalaman turned up at my door while I was sitting on the veranda one evening.  He is lame in one leg because of vaccine damage (another very common phenomenon here).  This can be caused either by injecting a vaccine into a nerve or muscle instead of a vein, or by being given vaccines with the wrong interval between shots.  The former is caused by inadequately trained vaccinators.  The latter is common because there has been so much displacement due to the civil war.  One leg is completely bent so that the top of his foot is on the ground, not the sole.  Somehow he limps around.  He doesn’t grumble, but it must be very painful.  I hope at some point to take him to Gulu for medical advice.  He comes from a tribe called the Murle who have suffered very much from all the surrounding tribes, so that many have been killed.  That includes both his parents and all other relatives apart from a younger brother, who was shot and severely wounded and is now under the care of the Red Cross in Juba.  The Red Cross were unable to take Kalamam too because of tight funding.  Kalamam managed to find someone who let him share his mud hut here in Nimule.  He then enrolled himself in a local secondary school even though he had no money for any of the requirements.  His visit to me was to beg for help with school fees and all the other school costs.  He had previously passed his Primary Leaving Certificate in Juba with flying colours, so he really needed help to go to the next level.  His ambition is to become a lawyer.  He is obviously highly intelligent to judge both from his previous exam results and from his conversation.  Eating has also been a great problem and he has got by only through begging.  I decided to enroll him in the same school as my former Primary 8 pupils as a boarding pupil.  That way he now has accommodation, three meals a day as well as lessons. 

Now comes the difficult part of this message.

The past year and a half at Liberty Primary School has only been possible through your help.  My partner in the school, who originally agreed to let me move the former Cece Primary students into the school which she originally established, has been almost completely inactive, demanding school fees and yet never passing the funds back to the school.  I have seen that she is only interested in the school as a personal money-making venture, not as a way to serve the community.  She seems blind to the sufferings of the families she is demanding money from.  I have spoken to her repeatedly about this, but there has been no change.  She now wants to buy the school site for a very large amount of money.  Where that money is to come from, she has been very cagey about.  I don’t want to become involved in any sharp practices.  I have prayed a lot about this and discussed the issue with others in my efforts to find a solution.  The general advice has been to discontinue my part in the school at the end of this academic year.  I can’t see any alternative to that.

Instead, from next year I am going to focus on the disabled children in Uganda, those who have already moved on to secondary level in Nimule and the new school for the deaf.  I feel terrible about abandoning the current pupils at Liberty and of course I will do my best to support them in any way I can.

I am currently preparing to start the deaf school.  I have formed a management team consisting of one pastor, the local Catholic parish priest and the headteacher of the secondary school my former pupils and Kalamam are attending.  These members come from different tribes (Nuba, Madi and Acholi), which is something experience has shown me to be very important in the environment in which I am working.  We have devised a vision and mission statement.  The motto will be ‘Rise Up’.  I have taken this phrase from Jesus, when he raised up Jairus’s daughter (Luke 8:54).  It seems very appropriate to a school which hopefully will give deaf children who have been totally isolated a chance to live a more normal life.  My daughter has designed a logo for the school.

Building work is going to start very soon in the grounds of a local government school, with permission of the municipal council.  This new chapter in my time in Nimule will see deaf children in the local area gain an education for the first time.  Pending permission from the local diocese, I am hoping to call the school the Pope Francis School for the Deaf.  My reason for this name is that Pope Francis was very concerned throughout his papacy for the difficulties of South Sudan and also for the most marginalized people.  The school will not be an officially Catholic school, but open to all who are deaf.

I do hope you will be willing to support this change of direction.

Thank you once again for all your help and support.

Please feel free to contact me on rebeccamallinson1@gmail.com.  I am always happy to answer any questions or give more detail.

 

Achievements and Challenges

Dear all,

I think it is time for an update.

The most important piece of news from the school is that we finally received the Primary Leavers exam results.  Last year’s Primary 8 did spectacularly well, even beating the previous year’s class, who were already scraping along the top locally. The average score in 2023 was 367 and in 2024 it was 411. These marks are out of 500.  I have now placed them all in secondary school.  As the problem of late issuing of exam results was a nationwide issue, the secondary headteacher made adjustments to the academic year to cater for the new Senior 1 pupils, so that they started school in late April and will have very little holiday this year in order to catch up on the curriculum for their year group.  Thankfully, the long wait did not faze the students too much.

The church interior in better days.  There are now
a lot of holes in the walls and the room is leaning.

There was a very heavy wind a few weeks ago which is causing the church building we use for classes to lean.  It was very poorly constructed in the first place, made of dried mud and bamboo poles on a poorly constructed wooden framework.  We share the use of this building with a local evangelical church, who have no money to do anything.  Rather than allow the building to collapse on top of our Primary 7 and Primary 8 classes, I agreed that we would assist.  Some new poles are going to be put inside to act as pillars to rectify the leaning structure.  The walls need repair and the part of the roof is flapping loudly whenever there is a bit of wind.  I hope you will agree that this is a way of supporting the school’s neighbours as well as keeping our children safe.  The work will cost around £630 including labour.  I am lucky to have a very good builder, who can be trusted to do a good job.

The major challenge at the school is absenteeism by older pupils, who have far too much responsibility outside school.  This is because of extreme poverty.  An example of this is one of our Primary 8 pupils, who I shall call John, who was absent for a whole week with no explanation.  It was far from a one-off incident.  Eventually I threatened that if his parent did not come to see me, I would demote him to Primary 7 as he is losing too many lessons.  His aunt came and explained that John’s father is dead and his mother remarried, leaving her children behind.  This is a culturally acceptable situation here.  The aunt now cares for the children, but sometimes needs to go away to Juba.  When that happens, John is in charge.  The week that John was absent, he had to work to provide food for the younger children and himself in his aunt’s absence.  I have no solution to this type of problem.  Social services does not exist here.  As time goes on and poverty gets worse, this scenario is becoming ever more common.  I don’t know where it will end, but it does affect the academic progress of a good number of pupils.

Other than that, the first term went smoothly.  It is now the holidays.  Apart from the PLE exam results, the other major achievement was, of course, the advent of porridge.  We are still bathing in the luxury of being able to feed our children.  Thank you all so much.

End of term 1 for Alice, Lillian, Aluma and Paul 
(left to right)

I collected the deaf secondary students from school two weeks ago.  They seem happy and their first term results are very encouraging, especially Lillian, who got ‘outstanding’ for several subjects.  My main worry had been Aluma, because of his multiple disabilities, but he seems to have settled well, with no major fits.

This week I visited the deaf primary students and paid for next term’s needs.  They are doing well.

The blind children are also doing well.  I am especially happy about Mary, who has fetal alcohol syndrome.  She is repeating Primary 1 and is doing far better this time around.  Bernard has been a high achiever from day one last year, and continues on that course.

Alau, the eldest of my deaf contingent, has just finished his first term as a trainee teacher for the deaf at the deaf primary school.  The reason for taking this approach is that we have still not received his Senior 4 exam results.  Rather than holding him up for many months, it seemed more sensible to find an alternative training for him.  The school are very happy with him.  He is a keen student and makes sure he asks if he is uncertain of anything.  He is earning some extra money by teaching ‘remedial’ classes.  (I know – politically correct language does not exist here.)  Every Sunday he travels 25 kms from the school to Mbale to attend a deaf church, together with former friends from his old secondary school, so he is also getting some social and spiritual life.

The new civil war rumbles on in other parts of South Sudan, but is not affecting us directly.  The staff and I all take the attitude that we will be alert for news, but keep going in the meantime.  It would be a terrible shame to let our pupils down by closing unnecessarily.

Please feel free to contact me on rebeccamallinson1@gmail.com.  I am always happy to answer any questions or give more detail.

Feeding the One Hundred and Eighty

Dear all,

Firstly I would like to say a big thank you to all who have sent donations or recently increased their donations.

The very first porridge is cooked

As you will know from my last blog, a charity called St Francis and St Clare came forward to build a kitchen for Liberty Primary School.  The kitchen was completed two weeks ago but the concrete floor needed to dry before we could start.  The following weekend I, another teacher and the cooks got started on buying all the necessary equipment.  Cooking started two days ago.  The children and staff are all so happy.  We have two cooks, one of whom was a cook previously at Liberty (before my time there) and the other is a former teacher from Cece Primary School.  They are doing a great job.  The porridge is delicious and ready on time. 

In South Sudan a cook’s work is far harder than in more developed countries.  It involves chopping up firewood, taking the whole sorghum grain to a local grinding mill on their heads and fetching water in jerricans from the nearest borehole (which luckily is right next to our school compound), before they can even begin to cook.  We are all very appreciative both of the donors and of our hardworking cooks. 

Some of our upper school
pupils with their porridge

The only difficulty now is because of the current situation of the country, which you may have seen on the news.  It looks very much as though we are heading back to full-scale civil war.  There was a very bad incident last week not many kilometres from Nimule in which local villagers were attacked by soldiers.  This is causing a lot of fear.  As firewood comes from isolated areas, it is hard to find people willing to go and fetch it in case of attack.  This has left us making frequent trips to buy small quantities at the local market until we can find a better solution - perhaps somebody selling firewood from a different direction.  Electricity or gas are not options here.

Finally being able to feed our children is a very great achievement, and couldn’t come at a better time.  Life is really desperate for most families.  After last year’s complete lack of school meals, it is so wonderful.

We are now heading towards the end of term exams, and yet our previous year’s candidate class are still out of school due to their results not yet being released.  So far they have missed almost a whole term of secondary school, which is very unfortunate.  As mentioned before, the examiners were paid part of their delayed salaries to get them started on marking the papers.  I suspect that they are sitting on the papers in the hope of getting another salary instalment.  I need to be ready to pay their secondary school fees as soon as the exam results are released.

Government paid teachers were recently paid a paltry amount of backdated salaries.  They were told that it was the salary for January 2024, amounting to 50,000 South Sudan Pounds each, which is the equivalent of around £6.50 at current rates.  To add insult to injury, there was a reduction made of 2,000 SSP for administration costs per teacher.  They are owed for well over a year now.  I am so thankful that our teachers (including some who are officially government paid) are able to receive decent salaries, paid on time thanks to you.  No other school in Nimule is paying regularly or as much.  A teacher's monthly salary in Liberty is around £60, which is a living wage here.  The cooks are paid around £40 a month.  We have 15 teachers and 2 cooks.  

Once the school holidays start I will be visiting the deaf children in Uganda to pay for next term’s school fees and requirements.  This is quite a costly exercise.  If you are sponsoring a child (or would like to do so) please help.  The costs last term came to an average of £250 per child.  Not all the children have sponsors, so some of the funds always end up coming from the school budget.  Please get in touch if you would like to sponsor a child.

Our new kitchen

Please keep South Sudan in prayer.  As I said previously, the situation is very precarious and it is impossible to know whether families will remain in Nimule or flee across the border.  If they leave, they will find the various refugee settlements closing down, so they might not get the help they have come to expect whenever tensions have escalated in the past.  The world is becoming very unwelcoming to refugees.  They are between the devil and the deep blue sea – do they stay and risk possible death, or flee and find the refugee settlements closed?  The last time we were directly affected, we were the only primary school to remain open in Nimule, although with very few pupils and Nimule was livable although difficult.  I hope to do the same again if at all possible.  In the meantime, it is a matter of giving the children as much education as we can.  It may be all they will get.

Please feel free to contact me on rebeccamallinson1@gmail.com.  I am always happy to answer any questions or give more detail.

The New School Year Begins

Dear all,

Group photo at end of last school year celebration

I have now been back in hot, sunny Africa for a month and a half. While in England I met with a good number of donor friends which was a great chance to answer their questions individually. It has been three years since last visiting, so this was a major purpose of my visit. I do appreciate you all so much. Without you, my mission to help all the children whether in deaf or blind schools in Uganda or in school in South Sudan would grind to a halt leaving a lot of children without any chance to continue their education due to their families’ poverty. Thank you so much to those who made donations while I was in the UK and those who continue to assist.

Increasingly, lack of schooling is the trend in South Sudan, as people become ever more desperately poor due to hyperinflation. At the same time school fees have soared to unaffordable levels. Even the more educated people, working in government-paid jobs, have not been paid for around 16 months now. Clearly, none of us are capable of solving the education problems of an entire country, but at least we are able to set an example of what can be done. My mission is fortunate in benefiting from foreign currency donations, which means that the impact of hyperinflation is very much less than on the local population.

As mentioned, civil servants have not been paid for well over a year. This is now impacting on those who did their final exams in November 2024. Last year, the final exam results for secondary pupils were not released until August, leaving leavers unable to provide certificates that they had completed secondary education, and therefore unable to go to further education. This year the problem has widened so that the results of primary leavers are also delayed. The examiners refused to mark until they were paid. The Ministry of Finance has now given them a third of the figure requested, so that marking can begin. This scenario is in spite of the fact that parents across the country paid for the exams at the time of exam registration. Where has that money gone? No prizes for guessing. I am left feeling that the whole education system in South Sudan is grinding to a halt. My P8 class of last year are waiting at home to hear when they will be able to start secondary school, even though teaching is supposed to have started at the beginning of February. Secondary schools across South Sudan have no Senior 1 classes.

The problems caused by the recent wild change of US policy towards humanitarian aid is likely to contribute to the already dire situation. My ‘Rebecca’s eye view’ as a religious person, is that this is the time for alms-giving and volunteering to stand forward. It is very understandable that impersonal giving through internationally-collected taxes, does not bring people any closer to showing real love of neighbour. I shudder when I hear politicians talk about humanitarian aid as though it is all about ‘soft power’ and not leaving space for Russia and China to build their own soft power bases, not about real care. We are apparently living on very different planets.

We are now much closer to having feeding in school. After my plea in my last post, a charity called St Francis and St Clare Charity has very kindly donated £1,500 to build a kitchen. This came completely out of the blue. The Cleary family has also donated towards feeding the children. Please can I ask for an increase in donations so that I can sustainably pay at least one cook and provide the necessary ingredients on a regular basis. Work on the kitchen will start very soon.

The main regular expenses throughout the year are monthly salaries for our teachers and also the termly payments for the deaf and blind pupils in Uganda.

I arrived back a week or so before the beginning of the new school year, and sprang immediately into action. I communicated with the secondary school where my P8 class is to continue their education. I checked on the registrations for Liberty Primary School and the newly secured classrooms (which have been very well done). Ayuel, my headteacher, worked very hard while I was away, supervising the work and communicating with the teachers and education department.

Then I gathered the primary deaf pupils to take them back to school in Uganda, and paid the school fees and travel expenses for the blind children so their parents could take them back to school. Alau accompanied me to the deaf primary school and is now starting his year as a student teacher for the deaf.

I then returned to take the secondary deaf pupils to their school in Lira. I was accompanied by the father of Aluma; Aluma’s health needs made it sensible to ask his father to come and see the school for himself in order to put his fears to rest and talk to the staff personally. Paul will sleep in the next bed to Aluma as they are good friends and Paul is well aware of his needs. The secondary school has a school nurse, as well as matrons for both boys and girls. The original plan was for Aluma to learn tailoring, however, now that the school has assessed him, they believe that he will not be able to do this. Instead they want to teach him to knit sweaters using a knitting machine. The knitting machine will cost around £160. I asked that the machine can be Aluma’s personal property so that it can give him a start when he finishes his course. This was agreed. I have already sent the money, but this has been an unexpected extra expense, so I have robbed the school to do so in the hope that a donor will come forward later on. Paul and Lillian have joined Alice in the academic section and I have been told that they are settling in well.

Once again, a huge thank you for all your generosity. There is no need to wait for years to speak to me or ask about how things are going. My email address is rebeccamallinson1@gmail.com. I am always happy to hear from you.

Rebecca Mallinson