Here I am with one of the nursery beds in my vegetable garden.
Greetings! The VAD Landcruiser is fixed up and back after its crash on the way here a couple of months ago. One of the teachers is heading to Aweil tomorrow to top up the school’s food supply… I’m going to tag along to spend the day using the internet. YIPPEE!
[They say a picture is worth a thousand words- if you don’t want to read the next 2500 words, please do check out my pictures!!]
The seasons have changed in Marial Bai. I arrived in the middle of March during the dry season (I was certain my skin was going to crack). By the middle of April, the air became humid (and my hair became nice and curly). Finally, in the middle of May, the humidity broke and the rainy season entered like a lion with hail to boot. Much to the students’ surprise, the welcome sight of ice and coldness beckoned me and while the rest of the students hid and watched, shivering, I enjoyed getting totally soaked. Since that day, it has rained almost every two to three days. When it rains here, it pours, although the crazy lightening and earth-shaking thunder have yet to arrive. Thankfully it rains mostly in the evening so as not to interfere with classes during the day (the school’s roofs are made of tin). The rain has, however, begun to make quite a mess of the roads. Even the teacher’s compound becomes a lake immediately after it rains. I’m glad I brought my rubber boots! And while the rain cools things off temporarily, the build-up of heat and humidity between rains is crazy! It makes me laugh when students greet me because they often ask, “why are you so hot?” If you know what I’m like in Canada, students there always ask, “why are you so cold?” I still think I prefer the heat to the cold (except at night when the risk of rain forces me to sleep inside and I’m dripping with sweat. I’ve even started doing hot yoga in my room around 5:30 pm and find the heat sufficient for all the postures.).
The change in seasons is also changing the landscape and community activities. The once brown desert is now almost completely green with grass. Every family has cultivated a section of land- sustenance farming. The primary crops are sorghum, maize, groundnuts, pumpkin and sesame. Eunice and I also decided to plant a vegetable garden in the corner of our compound. I was the duty teacher last week and so was able to take advantage of students who were breaking the rules, punishing them by having them put the poles up for a fence around our plot and dig up the land. The corner of the compound that we chose had been used, primarily, as a dumping ground. So Eunice and I had our work cut out for us sifting through the soil to take out all the garbage- tin and aluminum cans, broken plastic dishware, clothing, bones, batteries- you name it! Next we created a nursery for onions, tomatoes and kale. We planted some watermelon too. I can’t tell you how much I miss fruits and vegetables. The work will be well worth the wait. Actually, I mentioned to one visitor to the school how much I missed fruits and vegetables and when he got home to Juba (the capital city of South Sudan), he shipped me a box of pineapples and a bag of passion fruit and had them delivered from Aweil to the school. What a treat! Every morning for two weeks I cut up one of the pineapples for breakfast with the other teachers. One afternoon we used the passion fruit to make fresh juice…yummy! Another tasty treat I’ve been enjoying is fresh coffee. I bought some raw beans from the market and asked a student to teach me how to roast them. They fry them with ginger which gives the coffee some zip. We took the roasted beans to the neighbor’s house to borrow their mortar and pestle and then I pounded the coffee. Such a wonderful aroma… Starbucks in Marial Bai!!
The green landscape has also increased the presence and danger of snakes. One morning we cancelled classes and divided the entire school compound by class into individual plots, 8 m by 8 m. Each student is responsible to keep his square clean of garbage and long grass. So far, two male students have been bitten by snakes. Thankfully, neither were serious bites- only one had to go to the clinic for painkillers as the half of his body on the side he was bitten became numb with pain. There is a variety of snakes here- some more dangerous than others. I think I’ve now seen them all- green, black, grey, brown, patterned. I have no idea what species they are, but I have included pictures. I have even helped to kill one by throwing bricks at its head. One Sunday morning while I was doing laundry, some girls approached laughing and greeting me. They stopped suddenly and started squealing- a green snake was ten feet in front of me. Two nights ago I was finishing my supper when the teacher seated across from me told me not to move. I looked down and a grey snake (one of the most dangerous), was less than a foot away from my shoes. Lucky for me, I always sit with my feet up. Again, one night in my room I saw something small crawling on the floor. Thinking it was one of the millipedes that I see all the time (they’re harmless), I stepped on it and slid it towards the door. To my surprise, instead of curling up in a ball as this insect usually does, it started slithering away like a snake. I looked closer- it was a baby snake!! After taking its picture, it took several squishes with my foot to finally kill it. Snakes… (shakes head in disapproval). I don’t know if it’s something I will ever really get used to. Another common visitor to my room at night is a bat. I don’t mind it so much because it helps eliminate some of the moths that are flitting around. The bat always poops in the same place, conveniently, right next to my garbage. Now I just need to trap some dragon flies to deal with the many mosquitoes singing their songs in my tuckle… no malaria yet (despite the many itchy bites)!
School and after-school life have been going well. In May we held elections for our team of school prefects (must be a British thing). It’s much like a student council, except with far more defined roles- head boy and head girl (like the president), sports prefect, environmental prefect, entertainment prefect, food prefect, library prefect, academic prefect, dormitory prefect, time-keeper… students wrote letters to the teacher in charge applying for the position they desired; after a brief interview, these students were then free to campaign which they did using posters and spokespeople. We had a formal day of campaigning where students presented speeches they had prepared to the entire student body. Afterwards, the student body had the opportunity to pose questions to the candidates. Finally, on election day, students lined up outside the library and each was given a voting card to write down the name of their students of choice for each contested position (without the convenience of a photocopier, the teachers spent the afternoon copying 250 ballots). The count was made and announced on the same day and the team began its work the following week. We rely on them a lot to maintain the flow of the school day, making sure students are doing what they’re supposed to be doing. I like the system.
The truck finally arrived from Nairobi with the school uniforms, textbooks and solar lamps among other things. So, the library prefect and I devised a system for the students to be able to borrow textbooks overnight during the week. The students are grateful for the textbooks and have even started digging into the other fiction and non-fiction books that volunteers brought to Marial Bai in previous years. A big chunk of the donations I received this year and in the past was spent on these books- so thank you again for your contributions! Another teacher and I devised a system for the students to use the solar lamps for their evening preps. With no electricity in the compound, relying on flashlights is really impractical for the students because the cost of batteries is so high and yet light is so important for safety and studying. It’s neat to see the rooms lit up. Of course, light attracts insects… the day after it rains, for example, tons of flying white ants swarm the light. They’re harmless… and tasty (or so I’m told). The teachers from Uganda and Kenya were telling me stories about catching the ants and eating them as children. The students at the school confirmed that they also eat them. To my surprise, yesterday when I went to the kitchen for some sugar, there was a whole plate of them fried up for exactly that purpose. I haven’t tried them… yet.
For a while, a road construction company was also living in the teacher compound with us. (Ironically, the road to our compound is now too bad to travel on… their vehicles kept getting stuck and so they’ve been forced to move elsewhere). They helped us out one day by leveling our field to make a soccer pitch. It has already been put to good use! If you can imagine, we have enough skillful soccer players to make a team in every class- grade 9, 10, 11 and 12- so we set up a tournament between classes to make a final cut for our school team. Every Mon, Wed and Fri for a few weeks, students and community members gathered in our field to watch. We even hooked up a mini sound-system and had a couple of student commentators for each game. There were definitely some exciting matches- each team was equally competitive. In the end, the grade 11s took the trophy- a live goat to be slaughtered at a time of their choosing. Everyone’s favorite food here is nyama choma- roast meat. One night while Valentino was in town, he treated us to some strips of beef and we converted a wheelbarrow into a BBQ to roast it. I don’t remember the last time I ate so much meat… otherwise, I’ve stuck to the daily lunch and dinner diet of rice and beans.
Another big project that has involved all the students is the re-construction of our school fence. It makes me laugh while I’m teaching when some cattle or sheep walk past the classroom window or a motorcycle cuts through the middle of the school compound. The fence has acquired some holes over the years. We cancelled classes one day and students were sent into the forest to bring back two poles each. I can’t remember hearing a single complaint. It wasn’t easy work, and the students had to beg for axes from the community, but I was proud of the way they all did it. In the meantime, we hired a couple of local men to fix the fence with thorns around the girls’ dormitories. (I didn’t mention earlier how Eunice and I managed to fence our garden… cutting down thorns was not appealing and so we made use of the “junkyard” next to our garden. There were broken metal beds amongst the waist and so we turned them up on their sides all around our garden, leaning on the poles the students put in place. It doesn’t look great, but I think it will work to keep out the goats, cows and dogs).
Is anyone still with me? I’ll end my post summing up a couple of mini excursions I had in and around Marial Bai. My first excursion was with the principal of a nearby elementary school. It began with a tour of a retournee settlement close to our school. This is for Southerners who had been displaced in the North during the war but are now- some by choice, others by force- returning to establish their lives back in the South. Speaking of North-South relations, the battle rages on along the border and we are only weeks away from South Sudan’s first year anniversary (July 9th). The environmental prefect (who used to come to me every morning to get my keys to open the school office so that the students could get the brooms to sweep) disappeared for three weeks. When he came back this past Friday, he explained that he had been away for his brother’s funeral- his brother had been a student in Khartoum (the capital city of the North) and within the school, there was some fighting- Northerners against Southerners- he was murdered. Death is so commonplace here- everyone has lost someone to either war, sickness or miscarriage. There’s even a name, Atak, which is given to a boy if he is born after his mother has had several miscarriages.
After the retournee settlement, we were going to head far enough away to require the use of bicycles. James, the principal, found a bike for me to use. We just had to pick it up from the market. On the way to the market, he carried me on the back of his bicycle (which is very common here… and for those of you who are getting ideas in your head, James already has three wives…). One look at the bicycle, I knew there was going to be a problem- it was a “boy bike” with a middle bar that was much too high for me to be able to fall forward on and the seat itself was as high as my waist. I asked if the seat could be lowered and we tried but to no avail. I was trying to explain that the bike was too big for me but James was convinced my problem was that I just didn’t know how to ride. So, he grabbed some kid in the market to show me how to do it. What he didn’t understand is that I don’t have Dinka-long legs, I have Nicholson-short legs. I finally was able to get myself going and was just able to reach the peddles (metal bars) with the very tips of my toes on the down swings. One hour of peddling and my bum was dying (with the bruises to prove it). I finally had to get off my bike and give up. So, we walked with the bikes until he found a couple of people who could ride them back to the market for us. We spent the rest of the day on foot and boy did we walk… hour after hour. It felt good. Our journey ended at a funeral of the father of one my grade 9 students. From there we were able to find a ride back to the market. The dry river that we had crossed by foot became an obstacle for the Landcruiser. We crossed at the wrong point and not even ten meters in, we totally sank into the sand. I had to laugh as I remembered that every other excursion I’ve been on in South Sudan has involved getting stuck. I thought, as usual, it was going to mean another long walk, but somehow, after an hour of digging and pushing, we got out.
My second excursion was with a student to visit his family one Sunday in a village near the route of my previous excursion. This second adventure was after the truck arrived and so I was able to take a bike with at least the seat lowered. I still had to jump off on the side every time we stopped because of the middle bar. After a wonderful afternoon and delicious lunch, we noticed some clouds forming in the sky and decided we’d better head back. Well, we didn’t make it far before it started to pour. We sat inside a pharmacy for a couple of hours and watched as the road became a river. My student was awkwardly perplexed with what he was supposed to do with me. I told him not to worry, I would be fine with whatever he decided. He said, “we need to walk.” So, off came the shoes and I spent the next two hours walking barefoot back to Marial Bai. Thankfully, another boy was able to push, and even at times carry, my bike for me. People smile when they see a Khawaja (foreigner) in town; they chuckle when they see me walking instead of in a vehicle; they laugh when they see me on a bike… they were overjoyed to see me walking barefoot, covered in mud, in the rain just like them. I’ve never had so many enthusiastic greetings! (Oh! That reminds me- I had a new experience greeting a child yesterday on my way to the market. After shaking my hand, the child stopped, pulled his fingers to his nose, and smelled them! Yup- not too many white people in town!)
OK, I think this post is quite long enough now. Mid-term exams are coming up in the middle of July and then we have a three-week break in August before the second term begins. I’m sure you’ll hear from me again then! In the meantime, have a safe and wonderful summer!
[They say a picture is worth a thousand words- if you don’t want to read the next 2500 words, please do check out my pictures!!]
The seasons have changed in Marial Bai. I arrived in the middle of March during the dry season (I was certain my skin was going to crack). By the middle of April, the air became humid (and my hair became nice and curly). Finally, in the middle of May, the humidity broke and the rainy season entered like a lion with hail to boot. Much to the students’ surprise, the welcome sight of ice and coldness beckoned me and while the rest of the students hid and watched, shivering, I enjoyed getting totally soaked. Since that day, it has rained almost every two to three days. When it rains here, it pours, although the crazy lightening and earth-shaking thunder have yet to arrive. Thankfully it rains mostly in the evening so as not to interfere with classes during the day (the school’s roofs are made of tin). The rain has, however, begun to make quite a mess of the roads. Even the teacher’s compound becomes a lake immediately after it rains. I’m glad I brought my rubber boots! And while the rain cools things off temporarily, the build-up of heat and humidity between rains is crazy! It makes me laugh when students greet me because they often ask, “why are you so hot?” If you know what I’m like in Canada, students there always ask, “why are you so cold?” I still think I prefer the heat to the cold (except at night when the risk of rain forces me to sleep inside and I’m dripping with sweat. I’ve even started doing hot yoga in my room around 5:30 pm and find the heat sufficient for all the postures.).
The change in seasons is also changing the landscape and community activities. The once brown desert is now almost completely green with grass. Every family has cultivated a section of land- sustenance farming. The primary crops are sorghum, maize, groundnuts, pumpkin and sesame. Eunice and I also decided to plant a vegetable garden in the corner of our compound. I was the duty teacher last week and so was able to take advantage of students who were breaking the rules, punishing them by having them put the poles up for a fence around our plot and dig up the land. The corner of the compound that we chose had been used, primarily, as a dumping ground. So Eunice and I had our work cut out for us sifting through the soil to take out all the garbage- tin and aluminum cans, broken plastic dishware, clothing, bones, batteries- you name it! Next we created a nursery for onions, tomatoes and kale. We planted some watermelon too. I can’t tell you how much I miss fruits and vegetables. The work will be well worth the wait. Actually, I mentioned to one visitor to the school how much I missed fruits and vegetables and when he got home to Juba (the capital city of South Sudan), he shipped me a box of pineapples and a bag of passion fruit and had them delivered from Aweil to the school. What a treat! Every morning for two weeks I cut up one of the pineapples for breakfast with the other teachers. One afternoon we used the passion fruit to make fresh juice…yummy! Another tasty treat I’ve been enjoying is fresh coffee. I bought some raw beans from the market and asked a student to teach me how to roast them. They fry them with ginger which gives the coffee some zip. We took the roasted beans to the neighbor’s house to borrow their mortar and pestle and then I pounded the coffee. Such a wonderful aroma… Starbucks in Marial Bai!!
The green landscape has also increased the presence and danger of snakes. One morning we cancelled classes and divided the entire school compound by class into individual plots, 8 m by 8 m. Each student is responsible to keep his square clean of garbage and long grass. So far, two male students have been bitten by snakes. Thankfully, neither were serious bites- only one had to go to the clinic for painkillers as the half of his body on the side he was bitten became numb with pain. There is a variety of snakes here- some more dangerous than others. I think I’ve now seen them all- green, black, grey, brown, patterned. I have no idea what species they are, but I have included pictures. I have even helped to kill one by throwing bricks at its head. One Sunday morning while I was doing laundry, some girls approached laughing and greeting me. They stopped suddenly and started squealing- a green snake was ten feet in front of me. Two nights ago I was finishing my supper when the teacher seated across from me told me not to move. I looked down and a grey snake (one of the most dangerous), was less than a foot away from my shoes. Lucky for me, I always sit with my feet up. Again, one night in my room I saw something small crawling on the floor. Thinking it was one of the millipedes that I see all the time (they’re harmless), I stepped on it and slid it towards the door. To my surprise, instead of curling up in a ball as this insect usually does, it started slithering away like a snake. I looked closer- it was a baby snake!! After taking its picture, it took several squishes with my foot to finally kill it. Snakes… (shakes head in disapproval). I don’t know if it’s something I will ever really get used to. Another common visitor to my room at night is a bat. I don’t mind it so much because it helps eliminate some of the moths that are flitting around. The bat always poops in the same place, conveniently, right next to my garbage. Now I just need to trap some dragon flies to deal with the many mosquitoes singing their songs in my tuckle… no malaria yet (despite the many itchy bites)!
School and after-school life have been going well. In May we held elections for our team of school prefects (must be a British thing). It’s much like a student council, except with far more defined roles- head boy and head girl (like the president), sports prefect, environmental prefect, entertainment prefect, food prefect, library prefect, academic prefect, dormitory prefect, time-keeper… students wrote letters to the teacher in charge applying for the position they desired; after a brief interview, these students were then free to campaign which they did using posters and spokespeople. We had a formal day of campaigning where students presented speeches they had prepared to the entire student body. Afterwards, the student body had the opportunity to pose questions to the candidates. Finally, on election day, students lined up outside the library and each was given a voting card to write down the name of their students of choice for each contested position (without the convenience of a photocopier, the teachers spent the afternoon copying 250 ballots). The count was made and announced on the same day and the team began its work the following week. We rely on them a lot to maintain the flow of the school day, making sure students are doing what they’re supposed to be doing. I like the system.
The truck finally arrived from Nairobi with the school uniforms, textbooks and solar lamps among other things. So, the library prefect and I devised a system for the students to be able to borrow textbooks overnight during the week. The students are grateful for the textbooks and have even started digging into the other fiction and non-fiction books that volunteers brought to Marial Bai in previous years. A big chunk of the donations I received this year and in the past was spent on these books- so thank you again for your contributions! Another teacher and I devised a system for the students to use the solar lamps for their evening preps. With no electricity in the compound, relying on flashlights is really impractical for the students because the cost of batteries is so high and yet light is so important for safety and studying. It’s neat to see the rooms lit up. Of course, light attracts insects… the day after it rains, for example, tons of flying white ants swarm the light. They’re harmless… and tasty (or so I’m told). The teachers from Uganda and Kenya were telling me stories about catching the ants and eating them as children. The students at the school confirmed that they also eat them. To my surprise, yesterday when I went to the kitchen for some sugar, there was a whole plate of them fried up for exactly that purpose. I haven’t tried them… yet.
For a while, a road construction company was also living in the teacher compound with us. (Ironically, the road to our compound is now too bad to travel on… their vehicles kept getting stuck and so they’ve been forced to move elsewhere). They helped us out one day by leveling our field to make a soccer pitch. It has already been put to good use! If you can imagine, we have enough skillful soccer players to make a team in every class- grade 9, 10, 11 and 12- so we set up a tournament between classes to make a final cut for our school team. Every Mon, Wed and Fri for a few weeks, students and community members gathered in our field to watch. We even hooked up a mini sound-system and had a couple of student commentators for each game. There were definitely some exciting matches- each team was equally competitive. In the end, the grade 11s took the trophy- a live goat to be slaughtered at a time of their choosing. Everyone’s favorite food here is nyama choma- roast meat. One night while Valentino was in town, he treated us to some strips of beef and we converted a wheelbarrow into a BBQ to roast it. I don’t remember the last time I ate so much meat… otherwise, I’ve stuck to the daily lunch and dinner diet of rice and beans.
Another big project that has involved all the students is the re-construction of our school fence. It makes me laugh while I’m teaching when some cattle or sheep walk past the classroom window or a motorcycle cuts through the middle of the school compound. The fence has acquired some holes over the years. We cancelled classes one day and students were sent into the forest to bring back two poles each. I can’t remember hearing a single complaint. It wasn’t easy work, and the students had to beg for axes from the community, but I was proud of the way they all did it. In the meantime, we hired a couple of local men to fix the fence with thorns around the girls’ dormitories. (I didn’t mention earlier how Eunice and I managed to fence our garden… cutting down thorns was not appealing and so we made use of the “junkyard” next to our garden. There were broken metal beds amongst the waist and so we turned them up on their sides all around our garden, leaning on the poles the students put in place. It doesn’t look great, but I think it will work to keep out the goats, cows and dogs).
Is anyone still with me? I’ll end my post summing up a couple of mini excursions I had in and around Marial Bai. My first excursion was with the principal of a nearby elementary school. It began with a tour of a retournee settlement close to our school. This is for Southerners who had been displaced in the North during the war but are now- some by choice, others by force- returning to establish their lives back in the South. Speaking of North-South relations, the battle rages on along the border and we are only weeks away from South Sudan’s first year anniversary (July 9th). The environmental prefect (who used to come to me every morning to get my keys to open the school office so that the students could get the brooms to sweep) disappeared for three weeks. When he came back this past Friday, he explained that he had been away for his brother’s funeral- his brother had been a student in Khartoum (the capital city of the North) and within the school, there was some fighting- Northerners against Southerners- he was murdered. Death is so commonplace here- everyone has lost someone to either war, sickness or miscarriage. There’s even a name, Atak, which is given to a boy if he is born after his mother has had several miscarriages.
After the retournee settlement, we were going to head far enough away to require the use of bicycles. James, the principal, found a bike for me to use. We just had to pick it up from the market. On the way to the market, he carried me on the back of his bicycle (which is very common here… and for those of you who are getting ideas in your head, James already has three wives…). One look at the bicycle, I knew there was going to be a problem- it was a “boy bike” with a middle bar that was much too high for me to be able to fall forward on and the seat itself was as high as my waist. I asked if the seat could be lowered and we tried but to no avail. I was trying to explain that the bike was too big for me but James was convinced my problem was that I just didn’t know how to ride. So, he grabbed some kid in the market to show me how to do it. What he didn’t understand is that I don’t have Dinka-long legs, I have Nicholson-short legs. I finally was able to get myself going and was just able to reach the peddles (metal bars) with the very tips of my toes on the down swings. One hour of peddling and my bum was dying (with the bruises to prove it). I finally had to get off my bike and give up. So, we walked with the bikes until he found a couple of people who could ride them back to the market for us. We spent the rest of the day on foot and boy did we walk… hour after hour. It felt good. Our journey ended at a funeral of the father of one my grade 9 students. From there we were able to find a ride back to the market. The dry river that we had crossed by foot became an obstacle for the Landcruiser. We crossed at the wrong point and not even ten meters in, we totally sank into the sand. I had to laugh as I remembered that every other excursion I’ve been on in South Sudan has involved getting stuck. I thought, as usual, it was going to mean another long walk, but somehow, after an hour of digging and pushing, we got out.
My second excursion was with a student to visit his family one Sunday in a village near the route of my previous excursion. This second adventure was after the truck arrived and so I was able to take a bike with at least the seat lowered. I still had to jump off on the side every time we stopped because of the middle bar. After a wonderful afternoon and delicious lunch, we noticed some clouds forming in the sky and decided we’d better head back. Well, we didn’t make it far before it started to pour. We sat inside a pharmacy for a couple of hours and watched as the road became a river. My student was awkwardly perplexed with what he was supposed to do with me. I told him not to worry, I would be fine with whatever he decided. He said, “we need to walk.” So, off came the shoes and I spent the next two hours walking barefoot back to Marial Bai. Thankfully, another boy was able to push, and even at times carry, my bike for me. People smile when they see a Khawaja (foreigner) in town; they chuckle when they see me walking instead of in a vehicle; they laugh when they see me on a bike… they were overjoyed to see me walking barefoot, covered in mud, in the rain just like them. I’ve never had so many enthusiastic greetings! (Oh! That reminds me- I had a new experience greeting a child yesterday on my way to the market. After shaking my hand, the child stopped, pulled his fingers to his nose, and smelled them! Yup- not too many white people in town!)
OK, I think this post is quite long enough now. Mid-term exams are coming up in the middle of July and then we have a three-week break in August before the second term begins. I’m sure you’ll hear from me again then! In the meantime, have a safe and wonderful summer!