Update after a long silence

Dear all,

I have been forced to neglect updating this blog for several months because of lack of internet for my computer in Nimule.  I have only been able to keep up with emails on my phone; anything needing a real keyboard has had to wait until now, when I am in Uganda. It has been very frustrating, but that is the way life is in a country with very poor infrastructure.

The new temporary classrooms.

Firstly, a big thank you to those of you who have remembered the school and the deaf children despite my lack of contact.  We managed to build two temporary classrooms out of bamboo poles and free up space in the room where the construction materials are kept, so that we have classrooms for all pupils.  We were also able to buy ten 3-seater desks, greatly alleviating the pressure on seating arrangements.  These desks are now in our Primary 4 class (see photo).

The new desks in situ.

Our Primary 8 class (the first in our school’s short history) got off to a good start and I am hoping that they will do well in their Primary Leaving Exams at the end of the school year.  There are only eleven pupils in the class, so they get quite a lot of teacher attention.  The PLE is crucial, as getting a pass mark makes all the difference between being allowed to proceed to secondary school or not.  I have decided that rather than starting a whole new building programme, which is unrealistic at the moment, I will look for a local secondary school willing to accept them at a reduced rate and then look for help for individual pupils.

We once again had problems with late information from the Ministry of Education, which caused us and all other schools, to be completely in the dark about term dates.  We were therefore taken by surprise by the need to produce exam papers for end of term exams with almost no notice.  The timescale was unrealistic, so we ended up putting exam questions on the boards, and buying lined A4 paper for their answers.  It was all rather messy.

The next priority in the way of expenses is for construction of shelving.  We have a lot of books, but nowhere to put them.  We really need our textbooks to be in a more organized and accessible fashion than they are at the moment.

Just before the end of term, two teachers left us, so we are going to start the new term next week with two new faces, one for lower primary and the other for nursery.  We have recruited several new teachers in the space of four months, some replacing those who left and others adding to our number to cater for Primary 8.  We now have 15 teachers altogether, including myself.  This is part of a general problem in South Sudan of instability caused by poverty and war.  It affects the pupils too, who also have a high turnover as families move around due to their personal circumstances.

I am now in Uganda, and have visited the deaf children in Mbale to check that they are doing well and to pay their school fees and for other necessities.  The oldest primary school pupil, Alice, is due to start secondary school next year so she is doing her PLE this year.  I was told that she is the top deaf student in the school and that the school is confident that she will do well.  I did not see her because she was away as a member of a school sports team who are competing at a national-level competition.  Her two followers in the year behind, Lillian and Paul, are also high achievers.  Aluma, who is in the next class down is also bright, but struggles with his health.  As well as being deaf, he is epileptic, for which he has medication, and he also has a paralysed right hand and leg.  All of these problems are due to meningitis.  The younger pupils are also doing well at their different stages.  I barely recognized Jackline, who has just completed her first term at school.  She is so happy and wreathed with smiles.  When I brought her to the school last term, she was very tearful and had no means of communication at all, not even a basic homemade sign language.  Now she is signing away with the best of them, and the school says she is a fast learner.

Classrooms at Lira.

On my way back, I visited a deaf secondary school in a town called Lira.  Lira is closer to South Sudan than Mbale, so that pupils will be able to go home for all school holidays.  The school seems fine, and has electricity which enables them to have a computer lab.  Their Director of Studies boasted that a lot of their pupils go on to have nursing or other medical careers, as well as teaching.  The reason for looking at this school is that the school where Alau went has not been satisfactory.  In the end Alau has left and come back to Nimule, where I have found a local secondary school with small classes where he can have a sign language interpreter.  Alau’s ambition is to be a teacher for the deaf at Cece Primary School.  This is still a long term plan because he will need to do special educational needs training after completing secondary school.  I want to thank Alau’s sponsor so much for his willingness to continue to assist him.

From left to right: Bernard's mother, Mary, Alfred
(headteacher), fellow blind teacher and Bernard.

Today I paid the school fees for Alafi and Joel, who attend school in Gulu.  They are both doing well.  My next stop on the way back to South Sudan, will be at Firefly, the blind school, where I will pay Bernard and Mary’s school fees.  Their first term at Firefly was difficult, especially for Mary, who had not been taught any self-care skills at all at home.  It is very common for disabled children in South Sudan to be neglected, sometimes even to the point of no medical treatment for curable illnesses.  This has been the case with Mary and also some of the deaf children.  It is even harder for blind children because they are unable to copy the actions of others, such as tooth-brushing, dressing or using the toilet.  Bernard is in the lead at the moment academically, but hopefully Mary will catch up.  In spite of her difficulties, when she returned to Nimule for the holidays, I asked her how she was finding school, her response was, ‘When can I go back?’  That seems a good sign.

If you can help with monthly donations towards teacher salaries, sponsorship for the disabled children, or fundraising for shelves, please contact me on rebeccamallinson1@gmail.com and I will send you a gift aid form.  Please do pass this message on to any other people who might be able to assist us. 

The new school year has a bumpy start

Dear all,

A very belated Happy New Year to you all.

Here in Nimule, we have been having plenty of challenges but are on a much more even keel than when I wrote last.  I am very grateful for the donations which came in response to my last blog post.  As you will see below, your donations came at an opportune time.

We have three excellent new teachers who replaced some who were unable to continue with us for various reasons.  Classes continued after the Christmas break, although we were still pressed for space, with two classes having to share classrooms.  Our teacher, Mohammed, who we sent away just before Covid to do a teacher training course is now back with us, to the delight of the pupils who remember him with great affection.  He passed his course ‘top of the school’ and has been given the chance to go for further studies to Belgium in October.  This is disappointing for us, but a wonderful opportunity for him.

In December we changed to a new School Management Committee, which has meant that I needed to organize training for them and myself in our responsibilities.  This was done through Drop in the Bucket, who gave us a day-long training.  The great thing is that the SMC will be able to support the school with advice and practical help.

We have received a large supply of national curriculum textbooks from the Ministry of Education for classes from Primary 4 to Primary 8.  This is a great windfall, as there has been a huge shortage in the whole town.  In some cases, there has been only one textbook for a whole class, so that only the teacher has been able to use it.  If textbooks go missing, it has been a matter of going to other schools to beg from them, knowing that we are all in the same position.

With the help of your donations, we were able to pay our teachers in December and January, for which a heartfelt thank you.

All seemed to be ticking along well, when there was a completely unexpected decision from the Ministry of Education that all schools were to close one week later (on 27^th January) and reopen for the new academic year on 6^th February, with only a week’s turnaround time.  Originally the school year was supposed to end on 24^th March, so no school has been able to finish their year’s teaching.  The system in South Sudan is to hold end of year exams to determine pupil promotion to the next level, but there was no time for that this time.  Instead, we were advised to make use of term 2 exam results to promote our pupils.  I believe the decision was taken to bring South Sudan into line with the other East African Community countries.

From our own school’s point of view, we are going to have our first Primary 8 class, which is the final year of primary education here in South Sudan.  If pupils do not pass their Primary Leaving Examination, they will not be allowed to go to secondary school, so this is a crucial year for them.  Knowing this, we have been preparing our Primary 6 and 7 classes with simulated papers.  We are about to interview more teachers and will hopefully employ two new teachers, so that we have enough to cater for the new class.

The basic framework of the classrooms.  The walls
will be made of bamboo poles and the roof will
be made of metal sheets.

There were already problems of not enough classrooms.  With Primary 8 about to start, we now need three classrooms in a very short period of time and with very limited funds.  We looked for quotations for making two temporary classrooms out of bamboo poles and with corrugated metal roofing.  Most contractors, knowing that there was a ‘white woman’ in charge, gave exorbitant estimates which would have created a palace.  Luckily, our guard recommended a much more reasonable contractor who is now making the classrooms out of bamboo poles.  The third classroom will be a room which is currently used as a storeroom.  We are going to clean it out and put the materials behind a screen.  That room can then be used for a small class.  Registrations start next week, so time is not on our side. 

Desks of the type we want to make.

The next problem looming on the horizon is the need for new desks due to an increase in the number of classes and classrooms.  We are going to begin the school year by making do with mats for the youngest class, as there is currently no budget for desks due to the construction work on the classrooms.  We have received one quotation so far, which is for the equivalent of nearly £70 per three-seater desk.  That is not including transport, which is often a similar amount to the cost price.  I hope to find a better price elsewhere as we will need at least 10 or 15 desks.  It is not possible to buy readymade furniture here.

Like South Sudan, the Ugandan school year starts on 6^th February, so I really have my hands full at the moment.  As a result, I am in the midst of making two trips to Uganda taking a couple of blind children to one school and the deaf children to another one at a much greater distance near a town called Mbale, near the border with Kenya.  I have warned the headteacher in Mbale that we will be several days late.  There is another couple of deaf children who go to school in Gulu, who will be taken back by their parents.  I have just paid their school fees while in Uganda on the first trip.

Mary and Bernard held by the two blind teachers.  
Bernard's mother is on the left.

As mentioned, we have two blind children who are starting school for the first time, at a school called Firefly School for the Blind, which is newly reopening after a long gap since Covid.  They are a boy and a girl, both 7 years old, called Bernard and Mary.  This is the first time either of them has ever been to school and they were very excited beforehand and impatient to arrive.  The school is founded and run by a blind man called Alfred Okello (centre of photo), and is situated around 40 kilometres away from Nimule, in Uganda, which is very convenient as in future the parents will be able to take them to school themselves.  The children will need to learn English and Acholi (the local language of the area), neither of which they know at the moment.  They are from different tribes, one Madi and the other Lotuku, so there will be a lot of language barriers for all concerned.  One thing which I find remarkable here is how quickly everybody (except me) learns new languages, so I am not too worried about this.  

I was warned that school fees for blind children would be more expensive than for the deaf children as they will need special Braille paper and Braille writers, which have to be imported to Uganda, but in fact the fees seem to be a bit less than for the deaf school in Gulu.  The school already has blind-adapted computers, which is a major achievement for a small rural school in Uganda. The costs so far, for the first term, are just over £250 per child.  That includes buying mattresses, mosquito nets, sheets and blankets, which will not need to be bought again as well as the cost of school uniforms.

As mentioned, Alafi and Joel will be taken back to their deaf school in Gulu by their parents.  As I type, I have just paid their school fees and am going back to South Sudan armed with the money for their other expenses, which the parents will use when they bring them to school on Sunday.  The total anticipated expenses are £260 each.

Later in the week, I will make a second trip to Uganda to take the remaining nine deaf children to their schools near Mbale.  I will be leaving the school registration process at Cece Primary School in the hands of our most capable teachers while I spend a week in Mbale.  Among the children going to Mbale will be a 13-year-old deaf girl called Jackline (local spelling), who has never been to school before.   I anticipate costs per term of a similar level to the other two schools.

Sadly, I have had to make the decision to stop taking Assumpta to school.  She has severe learning difficulties as well as being profoundly deaf and has made no progress at all since she started school in 2018 in spite of the best efforts of the school.  She was not very happy at school, watching her schoolmates progressing while she was completely unable to keep up.  She is now 17 years old.  Her mother died last year, and she is now living with extended family.  I am glad to say that she has settled in well with them, but they live a long way from Nimule, in Juba, the capital city of South Sudan.  Her family seem happy with her.  Money for sponsorships is tight, especially with the two blind children and the new deaf girl, so there was really no alternative.  We are really in need of more sponsors for these children.

If you can help with monthly donations towards teacher salaries, sponsorship for the disabled children, or fundraising for desks, please contact me on rebeccamallinson1@gmail.com and I will send you a gift aid form.  Please do pass this message on to any other people who might be able to assist us. 

Trials and tribulations

 Dear all,

As I write I have just had an email from a kind donor giving an ad-hoc donation in addition to his monthly one.  It could not be better timed.  I am really struggling with fundraising at the moment.  In spite of appeals, there has been very little increase in monthly donations.  Our monthly running costs are a great deal higher than the monthly donations.  Previously the Gift Aid donations, especially on building work and the sponsorship of the deaf children, made up for this shortfall, so that we have always been able to pay our teachers at the end of the month, but not this time.  

We have reached a point where (if it were not for this inspired donor) there would be no funds to pay our teachers and cooks in December.  We had to make use of money intended for building work for the November payment.  

We had an emergency meeting of our Parent Teacher Association at which it was decided that we have no alternative but to start charging school fees.  This goes against the entire mission of the school, which is intended for the most poverty-stricken families who cannot afford school fees.  The sum agreed per child was 10,000 SSP per term, which is around £20, and is intended only for salaries, not for other costs.  This is less than other local schools but is still a huge sum for our particular target group.  Also, most of our pupils have brothers and sisters in the school, so that the family might have to pay three or four times as much.  I have softened the pill as much as possible by saying that they are welcome to pay in instalments and that in cases where there is no possibility of paying, to come and see me.

Our teachers are very unsettled, as I am unable to tell them how much they will be paid this month.  I fear that we could lose some teachers.  It will not be possible to re-advertise when we are so uncertain financially.  At the agreed rate of 10,000 SSP per child, all teachers and cooks will inevitably face a pay cut, at a time of rapidly rising inflation and just before Christmas.

Assuming that all parents are able to pay the new school fees, there will still be other costs, such as chalk and stationery, any necessary repairs, firewood and soap.  Of these costs, firewood is the biggest expense and is necessary for cooking the food which we receive from the World Food Program.  Our newly elected SMT has recommended that we ask families to send their children with firewood – another burden for poor families.  The children are very gamely coming armed with sticks.

Right now, we are avoiding teaching in the afternoons, so that pupils and teachers can eat at home, which is impacting on teaching time.  This is intended to give our teachers a chance to earn something in the afternoons.  

Cece Primary School has been the only non-fee-paying school in South Sudan and is very much needed.  A walk through Nimule during school time demonstrates the huge number of children who do not get the chance of an education because of poverty. 

If you can help with monthly donations, please contact me on rebeccamallinson1@gmail.com (not the old hotmail address, which was irretrievably hacked some time ago).  I will then send you a gift aid form.  Please do pass this message on to any other people who might be able to assist us.  Any suggestions of how to proceed are more than welcome.

Update on the school

Cece Primary School has been growing steadily since 2015, when we started with only 60 children all at the same beginner level in a loaned building.  We now have classes from Pre-primary up to Primary 7 on our own school site.  Pre-primary is divided into two classes as the numbers are very large and they are mixed ability.

One classroom on foundations
 meant for four classrooms

We therefore have 9 classes altogether.  However, the number of available classrooms is only 7, as we also need a teachers’ room and a storeroom.  As a result, we have had to adjust the school day so that all classes have the use of a classroom.  To do this, Pre-primary, Primary 1 and Primary 2 are held in the mornings only, ending with lunch.  Two classes, Primary 3 and Primary 4, come at lunchtime and take over the Pre-primary rooms; all their lessons are held in the afternoons with a very cramped timetable to enable all subjects to be covered.  There is no afternoon break because otherwise everyone would have to go home late, in a town with a very unpredictable security situation.  Primary 5, 6 and 7 have a full school day with a morning break and a lunch break.  I would dearly love all pupils to be in school in the morning with lessons extending into the afternoons for all the higher classes, without the need for classrooms to be used for two classes.

From April next year we will have our first Primary 8 class, who will also need a classroom.  Primary 8 is the last year of primary school in South Sudan. 

As you will see from the picture above, we have a block of foundations with only one classroom on it as we do not have the funds to build the remaining classrooms.  The foundations are intended for four classrooms altogether, so once these classrooms are built, we will have a classroom per class.  The cost of building these three classrooms on top of the foundations comes to around £4,500 per classroom. 

To see the problem visually look at the chart below.

B l o c k   1
Pre-primary A AM/ Primary 3 PM	Pre-primary B AM/ Primary 4 PM	Primary 1 AM	Primary 2 AM
B l o c k   2
Primary 5 all day	Primary 6 all day	Primary 7 all day	Teacher’s room
B l o c k   3
Storeroom	Foundations only	Foundations only	Foundations only

Other than this issue of buildings, school is going well.  One of our teachers, Brian, has recently started teaching the older pupils to play volleyball, which is a huge success.  It is hard to tear them away at the end of break time and they continue playing at the end of school.  We are hoping to find another primary school with a volleyball team, so they are able to compete.  UNICEF annually supplies various items to schools, (some more useful than others) including volleyball nets and balls.  Up until now the mounting pile of these has languished in our storeroom because we did not have a teacher who knew how to play this game.  We have 6 volleyball nets, which is definitely surplus to requirements!

Our pupils ready to start marching 
to the Girl Child Day venue.

We took part in the town’s Girl Child Day celebrations last week.  Girl Child Day is considered a very important day in South Sudan for promoting the importance of educating girls.  Our school agreed to participate in the main event by producing a song and also a Madi traditional dance.  It went very well indeed, with the head of the local government praising our school’s dancing in the final speech.  He invited me to visit the next day so the town council could make a contribution towards future dancing celebrations.  The amount was around $30, which will be used to buy costumes or drums. 

In order to participate in this outside event, we had the perennial problem of supplying uniforms to participants.  Many pupils had outgrown their uniforms and we have new pupils as well.  Nataline, one of our pre-primary teachers, is also a qualified tailor, so she worked hard to produce new uniforms for the participants as we did not have enough material or funds to provide uniforms for all.  Fortunately, there was enough leftover material from the tailoring session last year, so it was just a matter of paying her for her work.  She was being assisted by another tailor, who is a member of the clan who donated our school land.  In order to economize, we always ask those who have outgrown their uniforms to bring them back, so they can be passed on to smaller pupils; however, we cannot do this with the biggest pupils for obvious reasons.  The uniform material is costly, but very good quality.  It does not wear out easily and is colour-fast, which makes passing it on feasible.

After school volleyball practice
with Teacher Brian

So that the boys didn’t feel excluded, we organized an internal boys’ event in school on the same day as Girl Child Day.  Our school does not have the same problem of lack of girls as many other schools.  I think the main reason for this is that we do not charge school fees.  In a poor family, boys are generally prioritized if there is not enough money for all children to attend school.  Currently we have 185 pupils, of whom 91 are girls and 94 are boys.  We started the year with 276 pupils but lost a lot of pupils of both sexes in May and July due to the unrest mentioned in a previous post, in which many families fled to Uganda and have so far not returned.

We are expecting one of our teachers, Mohammed Hafish, to return to us in November after nearly three years away on a teacher training course.  I have been told that he has been an outstanding student.  Our pupils remember him with great affection and have often asked, “When is Teacher Mohammed coming back?”  The course should have ended after two years but was disrupted by Covid.  The teacher training college is run by Solidarity with South Sudan and is the best in the country.  We are fortunate that places at Solidarity are fully funded by their own donors.

Another development has been the addition of a debating session to the weekly timetable for Primary 5, 6 and 7.  We try to make the subjects topical, provocative and interesting.  Last week the motion for debate was ‘Polygamy is better than monogamy’.  Polygamy is the norm here, so this is very relevant.  Almost all our pupils are opposed to it.  They have firsthand experience of the difficulties between wives, cruelty to each others’ children, enhanced HIV infection and lack of money as a result of producing ridiculous numbers of children.  The ‘proposers’ struggled but managed to produce some points.

Your help in donating towards our school is very much appreciated.  I feel very happy to be able to report so many successes, especially in assisting such needy children to get an education, which is their only way out of extreme poverty.

This building of classrooms is our greatest challenge at the moment.  Is anyone able to help, or to point us in the direction of likely donors? 

We also have the costs of paying for the uniforms, which are much needed too, not to mention the ongoing monthly salaries of teachers and cooks.  I know these are less glamourous than physical structures, but a school without teachers cannot exist.

South Sudan’s exchange rate to the dollar is improving incrementally over two months up to 15^th November so that we will be in a favourable position (the rate will soon be double what it was in August).  It therefore seems a good time to help us and to get value for money.  If you can help, please contact me on rebeccamallinson1@gmail.com.

School exam statistics over the years

Cece Primary School is a school for pupils from families with HIV, disabilities and orphans.  These are the most stigmatized and marginalized sector of society in Nimule.  The school opened in June 2015 with only one level, Primary 1, divided into two groups.  From then on each year has seen new classes.  In 2016 a nursery class and Primary 2 were added.  In 2017 Primary 3 started.  In 2018 Primary 4 followed, and so on.  Currently we have our first Primary 7 class.  Next year (2023) will be our first year as a full primary school, with a Primary 8 class.

There are no statistics on the first two years (2015 and 2016) because the computer and backup drive were stolen in 2016. 

From 2017 until 2018 the pass and failure statistics were close, but progressively improved, ending in a good pass rate (60% in 2017 and 73% in 2018).  These results reflect the fact that all pupils were at the early stages of learning at that time.

From 2019 the pass rate has always exceeded the failure rate for the school as a whole.  

In 2020 the school was closed during the first term and did not reopen until the next academic year due to Covid.  Therefore there are no exam statistics and the pupils completely missed out on their education for over one year.  Some pupils dropped out.

In spite of the missing year of schooling, pupils still had their best ever exam pass rates for a first term exam at the end of the first term of 2021.  They were helped by the fact that they repeated the previous year, without being promoted.  This was necessary as they had attended only a few weeks of school at the time of closure.

The first term of 2022 has been a very difficult one, with two major closures due to a poor security situation.  The number of pupils sitting the exam was fewer than normal as many pupils have not returned after fleeing to Uganda – 166 were present out of a school roll of 276.  Even so, for the first time in the school’s history, the 1st term exam results are identical to the end of year results for 2021 instead of falling back. 

Challenges

Pupils revising

Because of the unstable situation of South Sudan, we have always faced a high pupil turnover, with new pupils joining and old ones leaving.  As most newcomers are coming from schools which have very low standards, especially in literacy, this has led to a policy of giving entrance exams to pupils applying for places at the higher levels (Primary 4 and above).  The vast majority of applicants fail with results of 0% to 5% as they are completely unable to read the exam papers.  It is sad to have to turn them away, but we lack the resources to provide extra help at such a late stage.  If we accepted them, they would be far too far behind their classmates to catch up.  If they were small children, we would place them in low classes, but most are in their late teens.

Another challenge is high teacher turnover and few trained teachers.  We are constantly having to interview new teachers, who interview well and then turn out to be incompetent.  A particular difficulty is recruitment of maths teachers, as mathematics is a general weakness in South Sudan.  The same applies to teachers of literacy.

Conclusion

These steadily improving results have been made possible because of a school policy of ensuring that pupils are in the right class according to their current learning levels.  Where pupils are unable to cope they are put into a lower class so that they can get a solid foundation.  If they are too advanced for their current class, they are promoted so that they can be challenged and will not disrupt the teaching of others in the class through boredom.

The exam papers are produced by the subject teachers for each class and are supposed to reflect what our pupils have been taught.

Literacy is taken very seriously.  A method called Jolly Phonics is used, which is very suitable for a learning environment with few materials.

Classes are no larger than 35, and in several cases in the upper school, from 10 to 20.  This allows teachers to give more time to their students than in other local schools.  The low numbers in the upper school are due to pupils leaving and there being very few suitable pupils to replace them, as mentioned previously.

Next year we will have our first Primary Leaving Examination (PLE) for our Primary 8 class.  That will be our first national exam class, and will show clearly whether or not we are really doing as well as we think we are.  In South Sudan it is not possible to go to secondary school without passing the PLE first, so it is really crucial for the future education of our pupils that they pass.  It is planned to start a secondary department in our school compound to cater for our former primary students.

 

Progress of our sponsored children

Dear all,

I have just returned from Uganda where I have been visiting the deaf children to pay their school fees.  The previous two academic years (2000 and 2001) were heavily affected by Covid so that the fees were considerably less than 2022, in which schools have remained open. Some of the funds were used to pay Alau who (as you will see below) helped our deaf children to continue learning during that time, as well as for general school funds - much needed at that time.

Opportunity through Education are just finishing their financial year and have given me an update on finances.  I am glad to say that the money received for sponsorship is just enough at the moment, but with little to spare.  

I have been forewarned that school fees at Budadiri (where most of the children go to school) will be going up from next year due to inflation.  Once I know the amounts I will be able to inform sponsors.  Currently, children are being supported with £650 per year each, which includes transport, uniform, living necessities as well as school fees.  It is a real bargain, especially when you realise how much individual care they receive.

Budadiri children:
From left to right: Vibrant (far left), Aluma (left
back), Assumpta (front left), Paul (back middle),
Lillian (front middle), Lillian (right) and Alice (far right)

Here is an update on the children.  They are, of course, very much individuals, and two have health problems in addition to their deafness.  For all these young people, this schooling is their only opportunity to access education as there are no schools for the deaf in South Sudan, and most are poor almost to the point of destitution.  Without the chance of learning sign language, being educated and gaining qualifications they face a life of extreme isolation, prejudice in local society and in some cases lack of care within their own families.  This became very clear during the time when the schools in Uganda were shut down due to Covid. 

Assumpta, Alau and Joel already have sponsorship.  There are also two kind donors who pay large lump sums as a general fund towards the costs of all the children.  Thank you so much to all of you.

Alau teaching Alice last year.

Alau is the only pupil at secondary level.  His school is near Mbale.  Apart from the last two listed below, all the others are attending a primary school in the mountains of Mount Elgon, a very beautiful area close to Mbale.  They are very close to the border with Kenya.  It is a very long journey, so these children have to remain at school throughout the academic year.  They are very well cared for and this works well as they are all very isolated at home due to lack of sign language in their home environments.  Alau joins the younger ones during school holidays.  The last two, Joel and Alafi, are at a school in Gulu which is much closer to South Sudan.  This is because their parents are particularly keen to be near at hand.

Unlike the UK where children go to different class levels according to age, in both South Sudan and Uganda children go to classes according to educational level.  Some children start school very late because of financial circumstances, and many never go to school.  In the case of all these deaf children, their disability made it impossible to go to school until the opportunity came.  The same situation affects most children at Cece Primary School.

Alau, 22 years old
Alau was born deaf.  The reason he is still at school at 22 years old is that there was a three year gap in his education after primary school, in which he had no sponsorship and no possibility of going on to secondary school.  He is just about to sit his Senior 4, which is the equivalent of GCSEs.  He is very nervous because he wants to be able to go on to Senior 5 and 6, which is the A’ level stage.  His ambition is to be a teacher for the deaf in South Sudan.  The plan is that after completing school he will go on to a specialist teacher training college for a two year course.  He has told me that he wants to do this because he has seen so many in his position who have no chance in life at all.  As mentioned earlier, during Covid, he assisted at Cece Primary School and it was very clear that he has a real gift for teaching.  After qualifying, I am very much hoping that he will join my school staff and we will be able to start a unit for deaf children.  This will be a great achievement if it happens as it will be the only school for deaf children in South Sudan.  During the long Christmas holidays, if staying with family in Nimule, Alau works in the local transport hub loading vehicles to help support his family.  Sometimes he goes to the refugee camp in Uganda to stay with his mother and assists his brother with his small business there.  He is somebody who likes to be busy.

Alice, 17 years old
Alice is the oldest of the girls and was born deaf.  She is an orphan who was cared for by her grandmother until recently.  Her grandmother has always been very supportive of her but is a subsistence farmer, living far from help.  More recently Alice has been staying with one of her uncles sometimes in Nimule and sometimes in the refugee camp in Uganda.  She is in the penultimate year of primary school and is doing very well.  Next year she will sit the PLE (Primary Leaving Exam).  I am hoping she will then go on to secondary school.  The school is confident that she will do well enough to do so.  She is a very hardworking and responsible girl.  She is a changed person from when I first met her in 2018.  At that time she was constantly sad, but now she is sociable and smiles a lot.  She is very keen on sport and takes part in inter-school competitions.

Lillian, 16 years old
Lillian’s father is dead and she lives with his ‘co-wife’ (her father was polygamous) because her mother is mentally ill.  Unusually for co-wives in the local culture, her step-mother is very kind to her and has always done her best for her.  In 2016, when fighting was very fierce in the family’s home area of Magwi, the family fled to a refugee camp in Uganda.  There Lillian fell seriously ill with meningitis and nearly died.  Her deafness is the lasting result.  Lillian’s step-mother could not afford medical care for her in Uganda and decided to bring the family back to live in Nimule, where there is a hospital which does not charge patients.  She enrolled Lillian in Cece Primary School, where I first met her.  Without teachers trained in special needs it was impossible educate her properly and she became very bored.  I therefore suggested to the co-wife that I take her to school in Uganda.  This was gratefully accepted. 

She is doing very well academically and is now in Primary 5.  She is good at sports and takes part in inter-school contests.  She can still remember some words in the Acholi language, but cannot hear herself speak.  Lillian is a bit of a ‘go-getter’, which can be a bit difficult when it comes to buying necessities for her.  I try to be even-handed with all the children, but she is always trying to point out the most expensive and flashy shoes etc.  I don’t let her get away with it.

Paul, 16 years old
Paul is also a former Cece Primary School student.  He was born deaf.  His mother is dead and he lives with his elderly, disabled father and his siblings.  Because of grinding poverty, Paul and his brother (also a pupil at Cece) polished people’s shoes by the roadside to make a living for the whole family outside school hours.  Like Lillian, he is in Primary 5 and doing very well.  He loves sports and takes part in inter-school contests.  He is growing very fast and has needed new shoes and uniform several times since he started at deaf school.

Aluma, 17 years old
Aluma is the son of an HIV counsellor.  His deafness is due to meningitis.  The same illness has caused paralysis of his right arm and semi-paralysis of one leg, so that he limps.  He also has epilepsy quite severely.  Last term he had to be hospitalized for five days due to severe fits.  He is in Primary 4 but is struggling a bit because of his illness.  The school is taking very good care of him and makes sure he has extra food, including milk from the school cows, because he has lost a lot of weight. In spite of all his problems he is usually a very cheerful character. 

Assumpta, 16 years old
Assumpta was the first of the deaf children to come to my notice.  She was originally a pupil at Cece Primary School.  Like Lillian and Aluma, her deafness is due to meningitis.  Over time it has become obvious that she is intellectually disabled as well as deaf.  She really struggles academically and remains at a very low level.  However, she is very good at handicrafts, in which she is encouraged at school in the hope that she may later make a living with her hands.  Her father died when she was a baby and her mother really struggled to make ends meet by growing vegetables and collecting firewood to sell.  Misfortune has struck.  A few weeks ago her mother died of a stroke, leaving Assumpta completely without parents.  According to local culture a decision was made at the funeral for Assumpta to become the responsibility of one of her uncles.  I am praying that he will treat her well.  I had the task of breaking the news to Assumpta, with the assistance of a sign language interpreter.  She took it remarkably well.  I showed her a photo of her uncle and she appeared to recognize him and accept that she would be staying with him at the end of the school year.  I gave her a photo of herself with her mother as a keepsake.

Jennifer, 12 years old
Jennifer is the newest of the deaf brigade and is the youngest girl.  She became deaf due to a quinine overdose.  She is quite shy but is learning sign language fast and doing well academically.  As she only joined the school last term she is in Primary 1.

Vibrant, 10 years old
Vibrant is the youngest of the children at Budadiri.  He became deaf because of an overdose of quinine.  He is very bright and well settled at school.  He has picked up sign language very fast and signs so quickly that his hands are almost a blur, which makes it hard for those who are not fluent in sign language to follow him.  He has whisked up to Primary 3 within one year.  His parents both work for NGOs in Torit, the capital of the state where Nimule is, but very difficult to reach because of poor roads.  Much to my surprise his mother went to visit him at school last term.  She had been worrying about him as he is so far from home.  The headteacher gave her a guided tour and spent a lot of time talking to her.  She was completely overcome by the excellence of the school and called me afterwards to express her thanks. She said that she had never seen a school like it.

Joel, 12 years old
Like Vibrant, Joel became deaf because of a medication overdose.  He is attending the deaf school in Gulu.  He is doing well at school and is in Primary 3.  His mother is a widow and Joel is her youngest child.  Understandably, she could not accept that he would be away for almost a full year at a time, as is the case with all the previously mentioned children, which is why he is attending a closer school. 

Alafi, 8 years old
Alafi originally went to Cece Primary School where he was in the nursery class.  He was very hard to manage and continues to be quite a live wire at his new school.  He is attending the same school in Gulu as Joel.  He is in Primary 2 and is doing well.  The reason for attending the school at Gulu is the same as for Joel.  Like Jennifer and Vibrant, he is still in his first year at school, so I don’t have very much to say yet.

New sponsors are very much welcomed as I am hoping to assist another deaf child at the beginning of the next academic year and there are also two blind children who are in need of school from next year. If you are able to assist with funding (or fundraising) for any of these children I would be very grateful.  Please feel free to circulate this email to anyone you think might be interested.  My email address is rebeccamallinson1@hotmail.co.uk.  

Independence Day South Sudan style

On Monday 11^th July there was a public holiday to celebrate South Sudan’s independence.  Therefore there was no school.  The actual anniversary falls on the 9^th, but as the 9^th was a Saturday this year, the public holiday was shifted to Monday.  I had scheduled to hold a teachers meeting that day to make arrangements and set deadlines for writing exam papers for the end of term exams which are supposed to start on 1^st August.  My intention was to hold the meeting without interrupting the education of our pupils. 

On Sunday, the chief of Anzara was shot dead at a high-level security meeting right next to the local police station by some people who were standing nearby.  The police called on the military police to assist and some were arrested, including the perpetrator.  The chief’s funeral was to be held on Monday.  This incident has caused a general escalation of unrest.

Early on Monday morning I was told that there had been more raiding of animals in Mogali with two people shot dead and one abducted.  In protest, the local youth put the bodies in the middle of the road and started burning tyres. 

As the time of the teachers’ meeting approached there were suddenly gunshots in our own local area.  I started phoning all the teachers asking them not to come after all.  I spent the day in our home compound, unable to go out because it was too dangerous. 

By Tuesday more shootings had occurred, so it became clear that school had to be cancelled until the situation calmed down again.  I walked to the school to fetch textbooks, so that I could compose some exam papers for my students.  I also collected textbooks for another teacher who lives close to me so that he could do the same. 

While at the school I decided to visit a pastor friend of mine, who lives nearby.  His name is Pastor Abraham.  He had had a very difficult night; all seven of his goats had been stolen as well as his solar panel, which he had left outside by mistake.  His family had spent the whole night cowering inside while he and a teenage boy stood guard.  In spite of that, when I visited everyone seemed in good spirits.  They had been foraging for greens to eat as they had run out of food, and were busy cleaning them.  Normally the pastor’s wife has a stall in the market, but the market was completely closed due to the situation, leaving no means of earning money or buying food.

Later on I started work on my exam papers, which at least gave me some activity.  I contacted as many as possible of our teachers to ask them to do the same.  In some cases it was clear that they were no longer in South Sudan because their phone numbers would not go through.

I am hoping against hope that we can reopen the school next week, but so far not a day is going by without some sporadic shooting.  It is incredibly frustrating to try to run a school which keeps having to close down as people flee or simply fear to send their children out of their home compounds. 

We opened the school in April, only to be ordered to close again until May, after only one week of teaching.  Then we reopened in May and had to close again because of the local insecurity after only a few days.  We congratulated ourselves on being able to stay open for the whole of June, and now find ourselves closed again because of insecurity.  Each time, the majority of families take their children to Uganda and then take a long time to return, so that when we reopen there are very few pupils or teachers.  The reason for the slow return is the high cost of transport as well as distrust of the situation.  Families have to find means to travel back having spent everything they had on fleeing.

I feel very sad for our children because their education is so disrupted.  It may well cause some to drop out of school altogether, as happened when Covid struck.  More left when we closed down in May.  I look at our older children, who are getting closer to the end of primary school all the time.  They are very, very keen to learn, but everything seems to be stacked against them. 

There were no celebrations for Independence Day in Nimule, but that was no surprise.  The local government does not have money and the local people are too fed up to feel much like celebrating in any case, even without the current crisis.  In the time I have been here the lack of celebration has always been the norm.  Almost every year there are problems around the time of Independence Day, but usually it is banditry on the road between Nimule and Juba.  This year is the first time Nimule has been so directly affected.

Pastor Abraham said to me that we must constantly remind people of how the Hebrew prophets kept reminding their people that when they behaved badly, God punished them.  When they behaved well, God rewarded them.  Cause and effect.

Please keep us in prayer, particularly for a change of heart of those who are destroying their country.