Travelling hopefully

Dear all,

This term I have faced some very difficult challenges. Two are particularly serious.  

The first are difficulties caused by new international banking regulations.  I have found my fundraising and personal accounts in the UK blocked as a result.  Unfortunately, £5,000 is sitting in the fundraising account waiting to be sent.  It is proving impossible to sort out the problem from South Sudan.  The bank account website and app are unavailable in South Sudan presumably for security reasons.  Because South Sudan is subject to financial sanctions the powers-that-be are deeply suspicious of any movement of funds in that direction, which could potentially end up in the wrong hands.  I received a phone call from the bank asking me to provide official documentation proving my address in South Sudan.  Unfortunately they will not accept anything without a full first-world style address complete with post code.  These do not exist in the majority of African countries, let alone South Sudan.  As a result I have reached an impasse. Please note that this is my own account, not the Opportunity through Education account.  Your donations go to OTE, who (up until this problem surfaced) sent them on to my fundraising account.  

In the meantime I have been eating into my pension lump sum, which I had intended to use for building the deaf school.  Since the Opportunity through Education £5,000 donation is inaccessible, OTE is now sending money via another account.  I would really appreciate help as my pension lump sum is dwindling and I really need to be able to start the building work for the deaf school.

I plan to make a trip back to England in December and will see if I have any more success in reasoning with the bank face-to-face. 

The other major challenge is that Nimule has changed its status.  It is no longer classified as a town, and has become a municipality.  This means that we now have a mayor.  Unlike most countries, this is not an elected position.  Our mayor has proved to be a very money-minded person, who is using his position to squeeze money out of the local community.  He has his own private militia who accompany him everywhere.  One of his ploys is to categorise as many schools as possible as private school businesses.  He has done this to Liberty Primary School, I suspect because of my white face.  I received a handwritten letter written by the Chief Inspector for Schools on his behalf, demanding a very large, unassessed tax.  I wrote the mayor a letter explaining that Liberty Primary School is not a business and survives on donations sent specifically for the running of the school.  I also explained in my letter that there is an exemption from taxation in South Sudan for all Catholic entities (I am a lay missionary under the Catholic Church).  He summoned me to his office and accused me of insulting him in my letter; it was a perfectly professional letter without a word of abuse in it.  Then he claimed that the word ‘tax’ was a mistake and that the original letter should have said ‘registration fee’.  I believe he was simply trying to find a way around my point about the Catholic Church’s exemption.  In fact, none of it is real taxes, as we would understand them in other countries.  Needless to say, I have not paid and don’t intend to pay.  This is in line with every other Nimule school I know of.  We are all standing together.  

My professional life in the UK was as an administrator.  When I trained as an administrator we were taught that 'if it is not on paper, it does not exist'.  That is my approach.  I responded in writing to the only letter that I have received!

Paling my own troubles into insignificance, the mayor is making himself felt in the town by getting his soldiers to arrest youths.  The idea is to crush the local gangs, but the soldiers are indiscriminate in who they arrest.  Teenagers are going missing.  One sixteen year old boy missed the last two days of term in our school.  When I asked his friends why, I was told that he was arrested at a perfectly peaceful football match where he had been a spectator.  The headteacher and I went to the police station where they had a long list of those arrested.  Frighteningly, his name was not there.

These problems have been causing me to question whether I can still continue.  I decided to consult a visiting priest from the Catholic Diocese.  He reassured me.  He said that the bishop is very excited at the prospect of having a deaf school in his diocese, the only one in the country.  He will speak to the mayor on my behalf to try to give him some understanding of my work in Nimule (which it was clear from my meeting with the mayor, was absent).  He will also contact an organization called Solidarity with South Sudan, which is a coalition of religious congregations from around the world with an interest in developing South Sudan.  They are already active in the fields of agriculture, health, livelihood and teacher training.  The hope is that they will be equally interested in helping with education for the deaf.  If this comes about, it will be a great weight off my shoulders and the school will be far more sustainable over the long term. 

From left to right: Jackline, Jennifer, Alafi,
Vibrant and Joel

In the meantime I am once more in Uganda visiting my primary level deaf students.  They are doing well.  I have been watching them play with hearing children without any communication difficulties, which was good to see.  The youngest, Alafi, was previously quite difficult to manage, but he has improved a lot.  The costs for next term have been very high and I have had to say ‘no’ to a number of things which I have funded in the past, for example, ingredients for making shortbread biscuits to be used as snacks during the next term and replacement items of clothing.  This has been necessary, because with that £5,000 shortfall (even though I hope to get it back eventually), I am having to squeeze my budget.  I have to bear in mind that I still need to pay the fees for the secondary deaf students, the two blind children and those in Nimule who were in my former Primary 8 classes, but are now at secondary school.  I can do it, but there will not be much left over for the running of Liberty for the final school term or for the building work.

P8 class waits for their first mock exam.

Schools closed for the end of term holidays last week in South Sudan.  We held our usual exams.  79% passed, which is an improvement on the first term exams’ 60% pass rate.  Hopefully we will go out on a high note at the end of the school year.  Our Primary 8 class did their mock exams and came out feeling confident, but we do not have their results yet.  

One of our problems last term was a cholera outbreak in the town.  More than one teacher was affected, either directly or because of the need to nurse sick relatives in the isolation unit, which caused problems with timetabling lessons.  We are being ultra-strict about hand-washing, with buckets of water and soap stationed strategically next to the toilets and near the kitchen, where pupils queue for their porridge.  Plumbing does not exist in Nimule.  There was a cholera vaccination campaign which started in the midst of the outbreak.  Cases are now going down.

Another problem has been targeting of our school by gangs of boys.  These are boys of around 10 to 14 years old.  Due to rampant rises in the cost of living a lot of children are now out of school.  These boys have a tendency to get together to make mischief.  We have had several incidents of our pupils being attacked on the way home from school, but the worst incident has been a child who came with a sharp knife and attempted to stab one of our pupils in the school grounds.  Thankfully he was spotted by a teacher, who took immediate action.  We took the boy to the police station, and his grandfather was called.  The grandfather, who is a local chief, was furious.  He pulled rank and insisted that the boy went home to be kept in solitary confinement in his family compound.  According to the grandfather this was the fourth incident of its type.  The issue of gangs is extremely concerning as you will see from the link to this article from Crux.  In the article, the bishop does not mention the huge school dropout rate caused by ever-increasing school fees, or the constant prioritization of girls and marginalization of boys by NGOs.  This leads to a lot of resentment among boys.  In my school we address this by celebrating 'Boy Child Day' as well as Girl Child Day.  It makes a very big difference to our relationship with our boys.

While visiting the deaf students in Uganda, I am also getting the opportunity to see Alau, who is doing his informal teacher training here.  The school is delighted with him.  They are finding him a keen student and very helpful outside school hours too, for example, the overseeing of the boys’ dormitory.  In two weeks’ time he is going to attend a conference for deaf people in the Kampala area, where he is hoping to do some networking and find ways to assist the new school.  This is through his own initiative.  He has now received his Senior 4 exam results (from the exams of November 2024) and I am very happy to say that he passed.

The two blind children, Bernard and Mary, are making good progress.  Bernard has been elected as a class monitor!  He does this entirely by voice recognition as he cannot see.  His main responsibility is to write down the names of any class members he hears speaking in the local language rather than English.  He tells me that he loves reading and writing, which he does using Braille.  Mary is making far more progress than last year.  She has the additional hurdle of foetal alcohol syndrome, which impedes her.

I have to admit that I felt very crushed by the two major challenges mentioned earlier, but I am dusting myself off and ‘travelling hopefully’.  I am continuing preparations for the deaf school.  

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