It is good to be human

Some of our children used some wild flowers to
 make the local equivalent of daisy chains to bind
themselves together.  (Before the schools closed
or social distancing came into our lives.)

I have been so sad to hear the news of what is happening in the US and my own country.  We seem to have become barbarians.  First the misery of Brexit, with its racist undertones.  Then Coronavirus to stop people interacting and lose human contact.  Maybe this is what has driven people mad.  Now riots based on the whole racist debate and bringing up all sorts of recent and historical grudges.  Do we all hate each other so much?

I come from London, which has been a cosmopolitan city right back to Roman times.  Throughout my school days and my adult life I have been part of a multi-ethnic society, with friends and work colleagues from all over the world.  Yes, I know there have always been problems of racism, but I have always believed that the more educated the person, the less narrow-minded they are likely to be.  This is certainly true in my own family, where there is a massive class and education gap between my father’s and my mother’s side of the family.  For example, my paternal grandmother finished school at 11 years old to help support her desperately poor family.  I loved her dearly, but even as a small child I was deeply shocked by some of her racist statements.  My mother’s side of the family was well-travelled, well-educated and used to other cultures and did not tend to make that sort of judgement.

Tribalism and racism come from the same narrow mindset of ‘them’ and ‘us’.  This is why I jointly founded a primary school in South Sudan, a country with huge problems of tribalism, extreme poverty and illiteracy.  My co-founders are all from the local Madi tribe, but are relatively well-educated.  They understand the importance of bringing peace to the country and of development to combat poverty.  That is why they asked me to help them start a school for the poorest and most marginalized children in the local community.

At Cece Primary School we have children from fifteen different tribes, some of which have a long history of enmity and genocide between them.  When we hold parents meetings, we almost always have tearful mothers from internally displaced tribes thanking us profusely for accepting their children in our school even though they are from elsewhere in the country and fled to Nimule to escape war.

Here is a short poem, written as a class exercise by some of our pupils for African Child Day two years ago which seems very appropriate right now.

We are all one colour, give us love,
We are all one colour give us peace.
No more fighting, no more war,
No more tribalism.
Children of Africa,
The future of Africa.
Do – Not – Kill – Us!!

I think the whole world needs to learn from our children at the moment.  Otherwise humanity will destroy itself.

Below is a quote from Henri Nouwen, “Caring for the Whole Person”.  I seem to be reading a lot of Nouwen at the moment!

One of the greatest human spiritual tasks is to embrace all of humanity, to allow your heart to be a marketplace of humanity, to allow your interior life to reflect the pains and the joys of people not only from Africa and Ireland and Yugoslavia and Russia, but also from people who lived in the fourteenth century and will live many centuries forward.  Somehow, if you discover that your little life is part of the journey of humanity and that you have the privilege to be part of that, your interior life shifts.  You lose a lot of fear and something really happens to you.  Enormous joy can come into your life.  It can give you a strong sense of solidarity with the human race, with the human condition.  It is good to be human. 

I never thought I could be a fundraiser

I have been going through the school’s finances over the years since we began and can only gasp with astonishment at how far we have come.  In 2015 we started very small, with 60 children in a loaned building.  Now we have 247 children in our own purpose-built school and a regular income, which is generally fairly stable.  All this has been done through your help.  First, friends and relatives, then churches and charities started to help too.  The circle has widened through personal contact, not through NGO lobbying.  Most remarkably as I have very little opportunity to visit the UK, almost all my contact has been over the internet, which is very unreliable here in South Sudan.

Our girls' football team just before
winning their first ever match last November.

Cece Primary School owes its continued existence to all of you who have donated to the school and encouraged me to persevere.  I have always had a great antipathy to money, which has made me a most unlikely fundraiser and makes the results all the more surprising.

It is true that right now we are on hold and the school is shut.  The deaf children have also had to return home.  However, eventually this will change.  We will go back and with great relief get cracking again to help our children out of the grinding poverty of their backgrounds, hopefully changing the mindsets of the local community along the way so that children are no longer treated as the lowest thing that crawls, but as valued members of their families. 

Through your help the teachers and cooks continue to be paid.  This will help motivate them to remain loyal to our school rather than finding permanent work elsewhere, which is very important in this difficult time when prices are escalating and food is scarce.  It is also very important that when schools finally reopen, our teachers are able and ready to teach again.  All our staff will also maintain a positive attitude to the school.

Our deaf children on their way home after the
closure of their schools due to Coronavirus.

I can remember in 2013, when Pope Francis had recently taken office, he spoke out against NGOs (including Catholic ones) who broadcast money for their projects from on high with a motivation of publicizing their own greatness.  I have seen for myself here in South Sudan, how short-term their vision can be and how difficult it can be for local people to access the much publicized help.  A lot of the funds get lost along the way due to bureaucratic processes, lack of supervision and corruption.  The money the NGOs give is taken from across the world, often without the expressed wish of those paying, as it comes from governments using their people’s taxes.  There is no care for the individual, just a lot of faceless numbers, with an occasional very sad ‘human story’ to give a feel-good feeling.  It is all about how many millions of children across the world receive this, that or the other.  On the surface it looks humanitarian, but there is a lack of love and care.  The help given is rarely of a type to bring South Sudan into a position of helping itself, but of continuing dependency.

A prime example of this cynical approach is the Girls Education South Sudan (GESS) project, funded by the EU and UKAID.  We are told that the purpose of this project is to encourage teenage girls to remain in education and avoid early marriage.  This is a serious issue in South Sudanese society, driven by poor quality, expensive education, the greed of families for large bride-prices, and the misery of teenage girls in insupportable family circumstances where they are frequently beaten and expected to work like slaves from morning to night.  At school these girls under-perform because they are always late, dog-tired and miserable.  Not surprisingly, a lot of these girls run away or look for a man to take them away from their home situation.  The result is very high teenage pregnancy rates and girls jumping out of the pan and into the fire by becoming neglected or battered wives of polygamous men. 

GESS believes that giving a small sum of money to each girl from Primary 5 upwards will encourage them to remain in school.  Is that really the answer to the situation I have described?  How can it be?  It just makes GESS feel able to report the huge number of girls reached.  The amount of money is only 2,200 SSP per girl, around $8.  It will maybe buy some stationery and a couple of packs of sanitary pads.  That money is nothing compared to school fees or bride-price, so will not motivate parents to keep the girls in school.  The answer to the problem is not money but society change, which is much harder to achieve. 

The problems of teenage girls are addressed at Cece Primary School by setting up a girls’ protection workshop, with a supervising female teacher and peer mentors.  These mentors raise any problems faced by the girls so that the school can talk to parents and local chiefs to help address the individual girl’s situation.  This approach does not take money.  Instead it takes a view that each child matters.  When we show love to our children they will respond, even if not immediately.

I recently read a book called A Spirituality of Fundraising by Henri Nouwen.  I wanted to know how Henri Nouwen could possibly see fundraising as something that has a religious aspect.  Ever since starting the school I have been very worried by talking about or dealing with money; I try to live a religious life and feared the financial side as bringing me down.  I can strongly recommend this book.  When I read it, I realized that without knowing it, I was in fact already following some of Nouwen’s recommendations.  I am now going further by talking to you about the role of supporters as Nouwen sees it, and as I see it too.

Nouwen’s philosophy of fundraising is to create a community of supporters and recipients all in relationship with each other.  In religious terms, each donor or supporter and each recipient should be valued for themselves as children of God’s Kingdom.  The community (in this case, the children, their families and the school staff) is God’s Kingdom on earth.  By donating or interacting in any other way, supporters become part of that Kingdom.  It is supposed to be a community of love.  The fundraiser is a go-between facilitating that community.

I know that some of you are not religious and may find this post difficult.  I apologise if you are offended.  In previous posts I have tried not to rub people’s noses in my religious views while at the same time being honest about the motivation for my work here, whether with the school or the deaf children.

I believe that all of you, our supporters, are passionate about helping the children of our school and also the deaf children going to school in Uganda.  Let us work together.  I know that the distance is huge between the UK and South Sudan, but let us feel our closeness in spirit.

Love is something very thin on the ground in both the UK and in South Sudan right now.  Please continue to help our mission to our children to be a light in the darkness of racism, isolationism, corruption and abuse all of which affect both our countries.

Limbo

Here in Nimule we continue in limbo, waiting for the end of the Covid-19 crisis.  We are fortunate in that there are very few confirmed cases in the whole country – only 5, and no deaths so far.  For a change it is good to be at the bottom of the league tables.  I am very thankful for that as there are also very poor medical facilities to deal with even normal health problems, let alone an epidemic of any kind.

The main hazard for Covid-19 is seen as the truck drivers who bring supplies from other African countries such as Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, which all have far higher rates of infection than South Sudan.  All these pass through our town on their way to Juba.  Our main road is the only tarmac road in the country, so it is a very important artery into the country.  The border is completely closed apart from these trucks.

Due to the awareness of the risk of these travelling drivers spreading the contagion, they are tested at every border they come to.  They are also no longer allowed to have any co-driver with them, at least travelling through South Sudan.  That must surely carry a risk of over-tiredness and resulting accidents, although I have not seen any proof of that.

Over the past two days, the testing has become yet more rigorous and long-winded so that the queue of trucks for the border is now huge and goes right through the whole town, passing my own home.  The drivers need to eat, so they have no choice but to buy food from the local fast food stalls, which must create a risk of infection as there is little access to face masks here.  One of the food stalls is in the foreground of the photo on the right.

This is not the first time truck drivers have suffered to carry out their jobs.  During the height of the war, when all the neighbouring towns to Nimule had been destroyed, the soldiers were looting and removing everything from the desolate homes, schools, shops and churches.  They then flagged down passing trucks, and forced the truck drivers at gun point to carry the loot to Nimule to be sold in the streets.  My heart used to bleed for them, as I watched the stolen goods unloaded.

Now they are risking their lives again to carry food and other necessities to South Sudan, with all the local people fearful and sometimes even downright hostile towards them as potential carriers of Covid-19.

For those who pray, please pray for these drivers and their families who rely on this dangerous work for survival.

What are we doing at this difficult time?

Our school started during the civil war in 2015 and has managed to grow and develop throughout five years of war with your generous support.  Even at one point in 2016 when all other primary schools closed completely, we kept going.  I am very proud of that record.  The war is now officially over, but are we going to be beaten by Coronavirus?  I sincerely hope not.  We are determined to keep going, even though at the moment we have no way of teaching. 

Tailor cutting our school shirts.

Our teacher-in-training Mohammed has come back to Nimule with course-work and a project to carry out, under the supervision of his course tutors, who are in touch with him through Facebook.  As part of this, he has just started an agriculture project for a handful of our school children in our school compound.  Ten is the maximum number for any gathering according to the government so we are being very careful not go over this number.

In the first two weeks that our school has been on hold, I have typed up all our exam papers ready for the end of term.  It now seems likely that we will have to adjust so that the exams are held whenever we are finally allowed to go back to normal.

Our new kitchen

Uniforms have been made for those children without uniforms, but we cannot distribute them yet.  The new kitchen is ready, but nobody will be cooking in it for a while.

I have done a major clear-out of our school storeroom and it is now far more organized than previously.

Rather than sitting twiddling my thumbs and going slowly off my rocker, I am starting to do some ad-hoc teaching of the young children who live in my home compound.  I have some resources which are not used at school as they are not suitable for large numbers.  The first morning, for instance, I taught the children to play dominoes.  Their number recognition is very poor, so this was a big challenge for them, especially as I was teaching them in English, not their mother tongue.  The lessons can continue indefinitely as they have a lot to learn! 

The children do some colouring and practise
writing the letter S at the same time.

We continue to plan for our building work, but at the moment cannot access the funds.  It would be very helpful if people can help us to fundraise even so, so that once things return to normal we will be able to get cracking. 

I have heard a very sad story of staff laid off in Kenya by major employers such as Kenya Airways, in complete breach of their rights as employees.  We have no intention of treating our staff like that, so it is important that we continue to pay them throughout this crisis.  Comfortingly, most (but not all) of them are able to grow food themselves and the weather is rainy, however it will be some time before there is anything to harvest.  Making sure our staff, teachers, cooks and guards are not forgotten is also a good way to ensure their loyalty to the school.

I am happy to send gift aid forms to anyone who is able to help with the construction costs of the new classroom block, or with regular donations so that we can pay staff salaries regularly.  My email address is rebeccamallinson1@hotmail.co.uk. 

It is also possible to make donations online through Virgin Money Giving.  Please be aware that it is necessary to put ‘Cece Primary School’ in the comments box, as Opportunity through Education also collects funds for other causes.  Virgin Giving charges a hefty admin fee on large donations, so please send direct to Opportunity through Education if you are considering sending £1,000 or over.

We have peace at last!

After six and a half years of civil war, South Sudan has declared peace and has sworn in a new ‘unity’ government, which is now just over a month old.  It is called a unity government because it consists of all the warring parties from the conflict.  It remains to be seen how well this will work, but at least at the moment, hopes are high.  This is causing a lot of refugees to return home, including trained teachers.

In a recent post, I described the difficulties we have faced with teachers.  I am happy to say that we have recently appointed several new teachers to replace those who have left.  The majority of the new teachers are trained and have considerable experience teaching in Uganda.  One is newly trained on a similar course to the Solidarity with South Sudan one, where Mohammed is studying.  This influx of teachers has transformed the teaching experience for the children. 

Coupled with the arrival of the new teachers, we have received a delivery of new textbooks using the New South Sudan Curriculum from the Ministry of Education.  They are very much better than the old books, but at the moment are only for Primary 1, 3 and 5.  We have been promised that the books for Primary 2, 4 and 6 will arrive, but we don’t know exactly when yet.  The new books include more interesting lessons with hands-on activities.  The only difficulty now is the need to find enough scissors, colours and a regular supply of paper and other stationery for the classes.

Another piece of good news is that HUMAES (our local partner NGO) has started a pilot project in our school to help our older girls with their particular child protection issues.  These difficulties have been mentioned in a previous post.  They have organized our girls of 12 years old or older by class, with a peer mentor in each class and overseen by one of our teachers.  The whole group meets once a week in the lunch hour and learns about various important issues affecting them, such as bodily hygiene, menstruation, sexual abuse, draconian punishment etc.  If a girl is suffering any sort of abuse at home, she can discuss the problem with the teacher-in-charge or the peer mentor in her class.  In less serious cases, the teacher will talk to the girl’s family and try to resolve the problem.  If necessary, the neighbours and local chief will be called to work together to provide back-up.  So far we have had one case, which was peacefully resolved with the help of the neighbours.  This is not a model which I can imagine being successful in Europe, but in a tribal society (where there is no concept of nuclear families) it is an acceptable approach.

Several weeks ago, gale force winds struck Nimule.  Our school kitchen collapsed completely, so that our poor cooks were left cooking in the blazing sun.  By contrast, one day we had heavy rain throughout the school day, so that the cooks were completely unable to provide food for the children.  We have just rebuilt the kitchen using the old foundations and leftover building blocks from previous construction work.  The new kitchen is now finished.    

This emergency building work caused us to raid the funds allocated for other things, particularly money intended for uniforms for our new children.  However, we have recently received some donations which are enabling the tailors to start work, while the school is not operating.

Several donors have quite spontaneously sent large donations.  Thank you so much for thinking of our school and helping us so much.  This money will be used to start on the construction of our last classroom block, which will complete the primary school classrooms.  The only problem is that the border with Uganda is now closed so we cannot access building materials.  This means that an immediate start is not possible.

I am happy to send gift aid forms to anyone is able to help with the construction costs of the new classroom block, or with regular donations so that we can buy school necessities and pay staff salaries regularly.  My email address is rebeccamallinson1@hotmail.co.uk. 

It is also possible to make donations online through Virgin Money Giving.  Please be aware that it is necessary to put ‘Cece Primary School’ in the comments box, as Opportunity through Education also collects funds for other causes.  Virgin Giving charges a hefty admin fee on large donations, so please send direct to Opportunity through Education if you are considering sending £1,000 or over.

Impact of the Coronavirus precautions

I am very sorry to see on the news how badly Europe is affected by the Coronavirus.  Coronavirus has not reached us, so everything seems very unreal.  However, the Coronavirus precautions are impacting us very severely. 

On Wednesday last week, I heard that all schools in Uganda were being closed as from Friday.  I needed to go to Uganda to fetch the deaf children from Mbale.  However, my passport was not with me as I keep it securely locked in the desk of a friendly pastor.  When I called him asking for my passport, he told me he was in Kampala until Friday.  I was therefore unable to leave immediately as intended.  I had to call the children’s school and explain that I could not fetch them until later.  Fortunately they were very understanding and helpful. 

In fact, this delay proved to be a Godsend, as I had a severe cold, cough and temperature at the time.  If I had left that Wednesday I would almost certainly have been detained in quarantine for two weeks (as has happened to some other people).  The pastor returned on Friday as promised and I left Nimule in a good state of health.  The journey takes two days, so I and the children only started the return journey on Sunday.  When we reached the border on Monday morning, I found the Ugandan Immigration Department closed and crowds of desperate people waiting outside.  I did not know if we would be able to cross at all. 

I called the father of one of the children to tell him our situation.  He said that as well as his home in Nimule, he also has a home in Elegu.  Nimule is a divided town, with part of the town (called Elegu) on the Ugandan side of the border.  He called his older son to find us and take us to his home for lunch.  If we were unable to cross to Nimule-proper, he offered for the children to sleep there overnight while I stayed in a hotel. 

In the event, we heard an announcement that the border would reopen at 2pm, so we came back ready to cross.  We waited for two hours, some of it in the pouring rain.  At nearly 4pm there was a sudden announcement that all South Sudanese nationals could pass.  I asked for advice, as I am not South Sudanese but needed to accompany our South Sudanese children.  The border officials kindly allowed me to go with the rest of the crowd.  There was no stamping of passports, which was a bit of a worry, but we all had our temperatures taken as we were hurried across the border.  Once in South Sudan, we piled onto motorbike taxis and headed for home. 

Since that day, the border has been entirely closed to all apart from long distance lorries, so we arrived home in the nick of time.  I tried to return to the border the next day to get my passport stamped, but was turned back, with the advice just to take things easy and come back when I heard that the border had reopened.  I have heard that many people are stranded on both sides of the border, desperately pleading to be let through.  Security officials have responded by beating people.  Some have swum across the river to get home, braving the crocodiles.

I arrived back to find that in my absence the South Sudanese government had closed all schools for at least one month.  They have also closed the churches and banned all public gatherings including funeral ceremonies.  So Cece Primary School is not open right now.  

We are not wasting time though we can't teach right now.  As it is coming towards the end of term exams, so I have asked our teachers to work on exam papers, in case we are able to reopen before the end of term.  I am also taking advantage of the non-teaching time to do a thorough clean-up of our school storeroom.  Uniforms are being made for the new children, which will be a good welcome back for those currently without uniform.

The presidential decree initiating the school closures expects that if the crisis has passed, schools will reopen after one month.  Let us hope that this is correct.

Teaching the teachers

Teachers are very hard to come by in South Sudan.  In Nimule, there was a huge drain of qualified teachers to the refugee camps in Uganda early on in the current civil war.  They were enticed by the high pay offered by a major international NGO.  There is no sign that they are going to come back in the foreseeable future. 

These teachers are not being replaced as there is a lack of training facilities across the country.  To tackle this, the Ministry of Education allows secondary school leavers to teach at primary level.  The South Sudanese curriculum ends at Senior 4, the equivalent of GCSEs, so most teachers are complete novices.  This applies to all primary schools in the whole country, apart from Dinka areas where the required level is even lower. 

Since starting Cece Primary School we have tried on our own to help our teachers to learn how to teach while teaching at the same time.  However, they come with their own school experiences.  They tend to model their behaviour on their former teachers’ behaviour.  This includes corporal punishment, teachers spending most of their time in the teachers’ common room when they are supposed to be teaching, regular lateness and absence while moonlighting at other schools.  Another general issue is absence due to funerals, which are vastly extended and can mean that we don’t see a teacher for several weeks.

One way in which we try to address this behaviour is by expecting our teachers to sign a contract which includes a ban on corporal punishment and taking another job at the same time.  When the contract is broken, the teacher has to leave.  Unfortunately this is a very regular event.  We also deduct pay for absence which is not agreed.  However, this is not working.

It is remarkable that in spite of these problems we still manage to get far better educational results at Cece Primary School than at the other local schools.  I believe this is partly because my own, and the school governing body’s motivation is the education of the children.  To this end we emphasize literacy, which doesn’t even feature in the official South Sudan Curriculum.  Most other schools are run as money-making concerns with little or no care for the children’s education.

We have been racking our brains for a solution, and finally it has arrived.  A few months ago, I heard of an organisation called Solidarity with South Sudan.  This is a Catholic organization which is seeking to stabilize the country through training in various areas, such as sanitation, health and education. 

Our school management team, Mohammed (centre)
and his sister and her child.

about an organization called

I contacted them and asked if they would be able to assist Cece Primary School.  Their response was very positive.  Although they do not intervene in individual schools, they have a teacher training college in a town called Yambio where they have offered us places for two teachers to attend a two year training course.   They suggested that we send two teachers each year, so that our school can gradually achieve a full staff of trained teachers.

However, when they sent me the documentation, including a Code of Conduct that must be signed by all trainees, it became clear that they have exactly the same experience of teacher attitudes, as I have described above.  We thought about each of our teachers and realized that currently only one, a teacher called Mohammed Hafish, would be capable of fulfilling their expectations of finishing the course successfully. 

Mohammed Hafish, our first teacher trainee

Mohammed was educated in Uganda, where he was a refugee.  Ugandan standards are far higher than those in South Sudan.  He is very pro-active and even quietly organized football training and a friendly match without being asked.  Best of all, he is one of the first teachers to arrive each morning and doesn’t have to be pushed into the classroom.  He very ably assisted me with the school registrations in the last two weeks.

Solidarity with South Sudan has accepted him and he is currently on his way to Yambio.  On our part, our school management team has written a contract for him so that he is bound to teach at our school for at least three years on his return, on a higher level of pay than previously to reflect his training. 

Solidarity with South Sudan has their own sponsorship network, so we do not have to pay for his studies or his board and lodging.  Mohammed will however need to buy personal necessities.  We have agreed to pay him a monthly amount equivalent to half his usual salary.  I advised him to open an account in Yambio and keep as much as possible untouched so that he is ready for any unexpected expenses, in case of illness etc. 

As you can see from my description of the teaching environment in South Sudan, we are in urgent need of properly trained teachers in order to raise our teaching levels.  We hope that every year we will be able to send at least one, possibly two teachers, for training for two years.  This will greatly increase our capacity in the long term.  However for the next few years, we will be paying half salaries for teachers who are not present and will need to replace them to keep the school running.

Would anybody be willing to sponsor Mohammed?  

The cost per year will be £160.00.  I am happy to send gift aid forms to anyone interested.  My email address is rebeccamallinson1@hotmail.co.uk.  It is also now possible to make donations online through VirginMoney Giving.  Please be aware that it is necessary to put ‘Cece Primary School’ in the comments box, as Opportunity through Education also collects funds for other causes.  Virgin Giving charges a hefty admin fee on large donations, so please send direct to Opportunity through Education if you are considering sending over £1,000.