Back to school

Dear all,

Since I last wrote, I am now back in Africa.  I travelled through Uganda to South Sudan, narrowly avoiding the Ugandan elections as I arrived in South Sudan just before they began.  What I had not expected was that the Ugandan government would impose a complete media and network blackout for around a week, starting just beforehand.  This hampered communication across the country, so that it was impossible to communicate with anyone in Uganda. The Salesians in Palabek were completely incommunicado so that I was unable to organize my move there.  Even once communication became possible it took weeks for the rector of the Salesians to be able to communicate with his staff and get things up and running again. 

The positive result was that I ended up with plenty of time to hand over to Samuel and visit the two schools in Nimule where my pupils have transferred, Kings Way Academy for the secondary students, and Queensland Primary School for the most needy of my primary students.  I paid all the necessary costs of the secondary school, but ran short when it came to the primary school, although I covered the essentials. 

School in South Sudan began at the beginning of February.  Originally Ugandan schools were due to start at the same time, but the Ugandan government announced that due to the elections schools were to start a week later on 10^th February.  Why this was necessary is beyond me, seeing that the elections were held on 15^th January and all polling was over.  What do schoolchildren have to do with politics?

The South Sudan primary leaving exam results for last year’s primary schools have not yet been released, so first year secondary students are left at home waiting, unable to attend school yet.  Last year, our students had to wait up until April.  The Ministry of Education has promised that it will be quicker this year, but who knows?  Marking only started nationally last week. 

I moved to Palabek at the beginning of February.  It was hard to leave Nimule, where I have lived for over twelve years and have established many friendships.  There are no amenities such as easy public transport, banks and shops in Palabek, so a lot of adjustment is needed. I am still finding my feet here. 

The journey from Palabek to Gulu, which is necessary in order to get funds for all my students in Nimule and the deaf and blind students, is not at all easy.  It involves taking a ‘taxi’ filled beyond capacity with passengers and huge amounts of goods.  The taxi only sets out when completely full with the passengers crushed together and vast amounts of luggage tied to the roof and on people’s knees.  It travels slowly and carefully for 145 kilometres along very rutted tracks to Gulu, stopping along the way to offload and reload.  If the taxi leaves at 8am, it may reach Gulu around lunchtime.  On the way back it is worse because such care is needed by the driver in the pitch-black night.  Last week I made the mistake of taking an afternoon taxi back to Palabek.  It left at around 5pm (I had waited for the taxi to fill up since 3pm) and arrived at 11pm.  There was no onward transport, but fortunately a member of the Salesians came with a motorbike and took me back to the school.  He said that sometimes the taxi doesn’t arrive until 1am.  Never again.  In future if I need to go to Gulu, I will stay overnight and return the next morning.  This description is of travel in the dry season.  In the rainy season, which is immanent, the roads will become as slippery as an ice rink with mud and journeys will become even longer.  Last year on a visit to Palabek I experienced the vehicle being stuck in deep mud for ages, while we unloaded everything and all the passengers pushed until we eventually got out of the mud, covered in mud ourselves.

Some of the deaf students about to travel to school.

Last Saturday Samuel collected all the deaf students, both primary and secondary and escorted them from Nimule to Gulu to meet up with me.  As mentioned in my last post, the primary students were transferring to a new school in Lira to make things easier for Samuel.  He told me that they were clearly delighted to see each other again, exchanging big hugs when they met up and signing a lot to each other.  Life during the holidays is very isolated for these children, who have no means of communication with their families.  My original plan had been to start a deaf school in Nimule.  If that had been possible, we would have taught the families to communicate in sign language.  If only.

I withdrew funds and we spent the afternoon buying all the necessary school requirements at the excellent local market.  I had already partially paid their school fees through a bank on a previous trip.  As with Queensland Primary School in Nimule, the rest is reliant on more funds arriving.  I booked a ‘private hire’ taxi to take all nine students, supervised by Sam, and all their luggage direct to school in Lira early on Sunday morning.  Fortunately for them the road to Lira is paved, unlike the road to Palabek.  Private hire sounds very luxurious but in fact it is very reasonable.  To take ten people complete with five large metal boxes, five mattresses and all their personal belongings and stationery in backpacks and carrier bags 110 kilometres costs a little over £50.  It is a great deal more practical than carrying all the luggage to a bus station, taking a bus to the centre of Lira and then finding means to go to Nancy School for the Deaf, which is about 5 kilometres outside the town.

The two blind students have travelled to their school in Gulu with their parents.  All their school fees and requirements have been paid for.  Bernard and Mary did extremely well at school last year, and I still haven’t got over the joy of witnessing their progress when they returned to Nimule last December.

It is great to have got almost all the students back to school.  As mentioned, it remains to complete their outstanding school fees.  It also remains to see last year’s primary students go to secondary school, which cannot happen until their leaving exam results are released.  I think another £1,500 will cover everything.

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