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.