Here is a picture of almost all the girls at the school.
Hello from Kenya! I'm here for a few weeks on holidays before heading back to South Sudan for the second term of school. If you think going to South Sudan is difficult, try leaving!
(If you don't want to try leaving, please feel free to skip this next, long, run-on adventure).
Wed, Aug 1st, 7:30 am- The four foreign teachers begin our departure by Land Cruiser from Marial Bai to Aweil to catch a flight to Juba. We were supposed to leave at 6:30 am but the driver slept in (check-in is at 8 am). The bumpy road is manageable in anticipation of the final destination to come; 9:30 am- we arrive at the airstrip only to discover the plane was overbooked and our seats have already been given away. Somehow, I am not surprised; 10:30 am- we arrive at the ticket office in the town of Aweil and get our date of departure changed to Friday; 11 am- Valentino calls about a biology teacher's conference that will be happening in Uganda starting on Monday. He wants to send one of the South Sudanese teachers. We try to book another ticket, but Friday's flight is full. One of us is asked to give up his/her ticket. As the only person without family to visit, I say I can wait until Monday. We try to book a ticket for Monday- the flight is already full; 11:30 am- Valentino calls and says he can book me on the United Nations flight for Monday. We go ahead and try to change my Friday ticket into the name of the South Sudanese teacher... we find out that the lady who changed our tickets earlier made a mistake. Friday's flight is completely booked and so none of us will be allowed to fly until the next Wednesday; 12 noon- we refund all of our tickets and decide that we're going to drive to Juba instead. It turns out that driving will cost us twice as much as flying because of the cost of fuel. Being that Juba is an 18 hour drive from Marial Bai on dirt roads that have never been maintained after years of heavy rains and overloaded transports, we decide to sleep in Aweil to shave off 2 hours the next day. The driver still has to go back to Marial Bai to pick up the South Sudanese teacher. To save money, we find a $20 USD night hotel with walls made out of bristol board; Thurs, Aug 2nd, 7 am- After bathing in the pit latrine, I am “refreshed?” and ready to go- they were going to leave at 5 am from Marial Bai; 8:30 am- we finally get picked up in Aweil. No time for breakfast now; 11:30 am- first stop- breakfast in Wau (beans, chapati and coffee). I am surprised to see a paved road through this city; we also see that they're paving their airstrip- one of the reasons the flights are backed up in Aweil; One of the teachers is nautious so I move to the very back of the Land Cruiser to give her room to lie down. With all the bouncing, I still manage to catch some sleep. I am told I even slept while we drove through the forest of man-eating lions (I'm not even joking!); 2 pm- second stop for gas and water in Tonj- I am warned not to take pictures here and notice that people aren't as excited about seeing a “khawaja”. Valentino texts and says he's booked tickets for us from Rumbek into Nairobi. It is raining and the roads are getting worse- I hit my head on the ceiling a couple of times; 5:30 pm- we arrive in Rumbek, Lake State. From the windows of our vehicle, I see men with short skirts and shaved heads marked with a circular scar/tattoo. I'm told these are the “real Dinka”- stay out of their way. We go to confirm our tickets, but the office is already closed. We're told the office opens at 8 am the next day. We find a $10 USD per night hotel much nicer than the one in Aweil (a room with actual brick walls and a single bed) but the teacher next to me discovers her bed is full of bed bugs; Friday, Aug 3rd, 7:45 am- we arrive at the ticket office. The driver and two teachers still need to drive to Juba to catch flights that afternoon into Uganda; 8:30 am- we go searching for the man who works in the ticket office; 9 am- we find him and confirm our flights. The driver leaves with the teachers for Uganda. They end up missing their flights out of Juba and fly into Uganda on Saturday instead. We catch a flight from Rumbek at noon into Lockichoggio (northern Kenya) and connect from there into Nairobi around 5 pm. It's rush-hour traffic, but I get dropped off at my hotel at 6:30 pm, dirty, weary and cold (the flight was air-conditioned and Nairobi is in it's cold season... man, I'm going to die when I get back into Canada in January)... The reality of running water, electricity, internet access, fruits and vegetables begins to set in. The challenges of Marial Bai drift away and I feel like I've stepped through a wardrobe into another world. Was Marial Bai all just a dream?
(Don't worry, from here on, we're back in Marial Bai)
The last month of any term/semester is always the most difficult. There's the pressure of covering enough material plagued by the weariness of brains which are already overloaded and lost planning their holidays. In Canada we have a rule that no field trips or other events that would interfere with classes are permitted the month before exams. I was caught off-guard when July became packed with all sorts of “extra-curricular” activities.
It started with the fence. The students cut down the poles a month earlier and they had been lying in the teachers' compound undisturbed ever since. But we couldn't leave them to get damaged by the rains or possibly stolen while we were away on holidays... So, we cancelled classes one grade at a time and walked around the compound assigning each student two poles to either replace or repair. The land was quite hard in some places and the students working behind the boys' dormitory discovered that the forest had been serving other purposes (what we call number 1 and 2 they call them “short calls” and “long calls”); but once again, the students delivered. You can't help but think, sometimes, that getting out of the classroom for whatever reason is so much more of a reward than anything else. But the fence is still incomplete. Next term the students will have to bring 3 long, thin poles each to nail between the fence posts and complete the barrier.
Next came the school garden. Valentino has a section of land across from the school that can be used to cultivate food for the students. Of course, years of being trampled by man and animal made the plot nearly impossible to plough by hand. A tractor was hired to at least break-up the hardened dirt and then men from the nearby military training area were used to hoe it into smaller pieces. Other men were also hired to cut down thorn trees from the area to build a fence. Once again, grade by grade, we cancelled classes and had the students plant maize first. Locally, planting is done using the “broadcast” method- walking around and throwing the seeds randomly all over the field. We planted a little more technically using a string and stick to create rows and proper spacing- things the students learn about in their agriculture classes. Hopefully this way we'll yield a larger harvest. Before we could plant the groundnuts (peanuts), they needed to be shelled. Desiring that more nuts would end up in the ground than in the students' stomachs, we asked the girls to be responsible for doing all the cracking and the boys to be responsible for the planting. As girls we sat for almost 4 hours trying to finish the entire sack. My fingers were numb. Of course, we did have to taste a few and the girls introduced me to mixing them with kedde kedde (hibiscus tea). It sort of tasted like peanut butter and jam- enjoyable. Now, to keep the boys from eating them during the planting, we doused the seeds with kerosene. This worked for every class except the notorious class of stubborn grade 9's who said that they'd eaten other food that tasted much worse and proceeded to munch on the seeds. If we do reap a harvest, these groundnuts will definitely be a hot commodity! I should mention that we did try cultivating this land with groundnuts in 2010 but to no avail because everything we planted was eaten by the goats. We have already witnessed the goats sabotaging our new fence and so we've had to step security up a notch by having one of our watchmen on guard all day. This is actually what the locals do since the women and children are never far from home.
A week before Independence Day (July 9th) we discovered (by accident) that all foreigners were required to be registered at the immigration office by July 6th. The closest office is in Aweil and so we had to cancel classes for the day to take care of that (there are no substitute teachers here!). Classes were cancelled for the National Holiday and the day afterwards, none of the students showed up. Actually, there were quite a few students who didn't show up for the whole week afterwards... it was an important holiday. The grade 12 students started their exams two days after the holiday and wrote 16 exams over 8 days. The supervision of these exams also required teachers to miss classes. And as much as we were cultivating at the school, many of the students missed classes to cultivate at home. It is not a hobby- the harvest from these crops is what will feed their families for the rest of the year and many of the boys are actually the heads of their households (did I tell you about the time I ran into one of my grade 9 students in the market who told me, over tea, that he was 31 years old with two wives and a daughter?).
So, yah, July was a bit of a write-off in the classroom. Yet, in South Sudan, 30% of your final mark is based on your first term exams and 70% is based on the second term exams. No assignments, projects, quizzes, report, nada. And since the students are taking 9 courses, they write 9 exams in 5 days. Talk about pressure. The average of the top 8 scores will determine whether or not a student is promoted. The passing mark is 40%. We had to write the exams on the blackboards as we could not afford the photocopying for the students. With class sizes between 35 – 45 students, I marked 250 exams in 3 days! They did as expected- about 50% passing and 50% failing. These are EAL students and classroom as well as assessment conditions are unfavourable for them... but they're improving. I expect better results next term. Like everywhere in the world (except China?), the most challenging subject for the students is math and we've learned that, no matter what, for students to pass their national exams, they have to pass math, English and C.R.E. (Christian Religious Education). So even though students can fail these subjects all along the way as long as their overall average is high enough to continue to the next level, in grade 12 they're faced with reality. Tough system. I plan on running regular math workshops next term as well.
Speaking of class sizes, I have one proud accomplishment- I am the head teacher of one of the grade 9 classes and I finally learned their names, all 46 of them. Their names are not like ours. There is no such thing as a surname- mostly the names recall the family tree through the fathers and they all seem to be different combinations of the same names. This means learning only the first name is not enough... William Wol, William Atak, Peter Atak, Peter Piol, Martin Atak, Martin Piol... it's really the repetition that makes them so difficult to learn. But in learning the names, I've also increased my Dinka vocabulary- Deng = rain; Arou = turtle; Achak = woodtick; Noon = grass; Nhial = sky... other names are the colors of cows: Mabior = white; Malual = red; Marial = black and white... other names speak of the suffering of the people: Dhieu = cry (when the mother previously miscarried); Alithiec = don't ask (when babies have been previously born, named and died). The English names are given to the children when they are baptized. Of course, the students all wanted to know my “Christian” name. I tried to explain that I don't have one which confused the students and made me embarrassed of some of the church practises introduced by missionaries. One night when I was helping at the evening prep, the students went ahead and named me Mary Jennifer which made me laugh. Most have decided that my Dinka name should be Abuk (pronounced “a book”). It feels good that they want me to be a part of their community in this way. I feel especially blessed when I'm out and about in the community and I hear “Jenpar” instead of “khawaja.” And I am starting to be able to have simple conversations. I even taught our neighbouring children the song “head and shoulders knees and toes” in Dinka. Oh yes, my new favourite Dinka word is the one used to mean toes = “mieth choke” which means, literally, "the foot's children". I love it! Unfortunately, the language learning is going much slower than I had hoped but the students keep encouraging me (and quizzing me).
One thing that is showing progress is my garden which I faithfully tackle every Sat and Sun morning from 7 am (sunrise) to 1 pm (lunchtime). Continuing with the junkyard theme, I raised the grass covering the nursery beds using broken beds turned upside down. The grass is necessary to guard against the hot sun, lessen the impact of the hard rain and retain the moisture. By the time I finished digging up the entire area and covering it with manure, the plants were ready to be transplanted. The rains have been less frequent and so it was a bit of work pumping buckets of water from the well and watering each plant cup by cup. There must be at least 100 kale, 30 tomatoes and 50 onions. I hired our watchman to stake the tomatoes and keep down the weeds while I'm away and I gave our water-boy a bit of money to water the plants should the rains continue to be scarce. As much as I'm looking forward to the harvest, physically and mentally, the garden has already been a successful project in my mind.
Other news- the wife of one of the South Sudanese teachers had a baby girl the day before we left for Kenya. I wanted to get a picture before I left and so we broke some of the cultural rules. When the wife first has the baby, she stays at her mother's home and the husband is only allowed to visit in the dark- after sunset and before sunrise (there seem to be many taboos such as this which even the locals cannot explain). We got permission to come a little earlier to take a few snaps. On a sadder note, two nearby communities were attacked by man-eating hyenas which left many wounded and several dead including the brother of one of our students. Although I've been told in the past that hyenas can attack people, even the locals were caught off-guard by the event as they say it's been years since such a thing happened. They suspect witchcraft may have been involved and I also suspect that the peace within South Sudan has allowed some of the wildlife to slowly begin migrating back into the area. I learned that during the war, Congo created some kind of fence to prevent the wildlife from migrating back into South Sudan to keep them from getting killed. The fence has now become an area of contestation as the South Sudanese want the animals back but Congo knows that wildlife can also be a source of revenue through tourism. Earlier in the term, the sister of one of our students was also attacked by a hippopotamus when she was washing at the river! As I said in the beginning of this post, sometimes life here seems almost unbelievable.
So now I am in Kenya on holidays which I will post more about before I return to South Sudan at the end of the month. It's time to relax, reflect and recharge before heading into term two. I know the hill down from here is going to fly by quicker than the hill up to here and I want to make the most of the few months which remain. I wanted to take a moment to thank the African staff and students at Daniel McIntyre Collegiate- the school where I work in Winnipeg- for dedicating the funds they raised at an African event they hosted in my absence to Marial Bai Secondary School. Your support inspired me and will go a long way in continuing the development of the school. I'm so proud of you for the obstacles you've had to overcome in living and studying in a foreign language and country and I want to continue to challenge you to find ways to give back to your own communities abroad.
(If you don't want to try leaving, please feel free to skip this next, long, run-on adventure).
Wed, Aug 1st, 7:30 am- The four foreign teachers begin our departure by Land Cruiser from Marial Bai to Aweil to catch a flight to Juba. We were supposed to leave at 6:30 am but the driver slept in (check-in is at 8 am). The bumpy road is manageable in anticipation of the final destination to come; 9:30 am- we arrive at the airstrip only to discover the plane was overbooked and our seats have already been given away. Somehow, I am not surprised; 10:30 am- we arrive at the ticket office in the town of Aweil and get our date of departure changed to Friday; 11 am- Valentino calls about a biology teacher's conference that will be happening in Uganda starting on Monday. He wants to send one of the South Sudanese teachers. We try to book another ticket, but Friday's flight is full. One of us is asked to give up his/her ticket. As the only person without family to visit, I say I can wait until Monday. We try to book a ticket for Monday- the flight is already full; 11:30 am- Valentino calls and says he can book me on the United Nations flight for Monday. We go ahead and try to change my Friday ticket into the name of the South Sudanese teacher... we find out that the lady who changed our tickets earlier made a mistake. Friday's flight is completely booked and so none of us will be allowed to fly until the next Wednesday; 12 noon- we refund all of our tickets and decide that we're going to drive to Juba instead. It turns out that driving will cost us twice as much as flying because of the cost of fuel. Being that Juba is an 18 hour drive from Marial Bai on dirt roads that have never been maintained after years of heavy rains and overloaded transports, we decide to sleep in Aweil to shave off 2 hours the next day. The driver still has to go back to Marial Bai to pick up the South Sudanese teacher. To save money, we find a $20 USD night hotel with walls made out of bristol board; Thurs, Aug 2nd, 7 am- After bathing in the pit latrine, I am “refreshed?” and ready to go- they were going to leave at 5 am from Marial Bai; 8:30 am- we finally get picked up in Aweil. No time for breakfast now; 11:30 am- first stop- breakfast in Wau (beans, chapati and coffee). I am surprised to see a paved road through this city; we also see that they're paving their airstrip- one of the reasons the flights are backed up in Aweil; One of the teachers is nautious so I move to the very back of the Land Cruiser to give her room to lie down. With all the bouncing, I still manage to catch some sleep. I am told I even slept while we drove through the forest of man-eating lions (I'm not even joking!); 2 pm- second stop for gas and water in Tonj- I am warned not to take pictures here and notice that people aren't as excited about seeing a “khawaja”. Valentino texts and says he's booked tickets for us from Rumbek into Nairobi. It is raining and the roads are getting worse- I hit my head on the ceiling a couple of times; 5:30 pm- we arrive in Rumbek, Lake State. From the windows of our vehicle, I see men with short skirts and shaved heads marked with a circular scar/tattoo. I'm told these are the “real Dinka”- stay out of their way. We go to confirm our tickets, but the office is already closed. We're told the office opens at 8 am the next day. We find a $10 USD per night hotel much nicer than the one in Aweil (a room with actual brick walls and a single bed) but the teacher next to me discovers her bed is full of bed bugs; Friday, Aug 3rd, 7:45 am- we arrive at the ticket office. The driver and two teachers still need to drive to Juba to catch flights that afternoon into Uganda; 8:30 am- we go searching for the man who works in the ticket office; 9 am- we find him and confirm our flights. The driver leaves with the teachers for Uganda. They end up missing their flights out of Juba and fly into Uganda on Saturday instead. We catch a flight from Rumbek at noon into Lockichoggio (northern Kenya) and connect from there into Nairobi around 5 pm. It's rush-hour traffic, but I get dropped off at my hotel at 6:30 pm, dirty, weary and cold (the flight was air-conditioned and Nairobi is in it's cold season... man, I'm going to die when I get back into Canada in January)... The reality of running water, electricity, internet access, fruits and vegetables begins to set in. The challenges of Marial Bai drift away and I feel like I've stepped through a wardrobe into another world. Was Marial Bai all just a dream?
(Don't worry, from here on, we're back in Marial Bai)
The last month of any term/semester is always the most difficult. There's the pressure of covering enough material plagued by the weariness of brains which are already overloaded and lost planning their holidays. In Canada we have a rule that no field trips or other events that would interfere with classes are permitted the month before exams. I was caught off-guard when July became packed with all sorts of “extra-curricular” activities.
It started with the fence. The students cut down the poles a month earlier and they had been lying in the teachers' compound undisturbed ever since. But we couldn't leave them to get damaged by the rains or possibly stolen while we were away on holidays... So, we cancelled classes one grade at a time and walked around the compound assigning each student two poles to either replace or repair. The land was quite hard in some places and the students working behind the boys' dormitory discovered that the forest had been serving other purposes (what we call number 1 and 2 they call them “short calls” and “long calls”); but once again, the students delivered. You can't help but think, sometimes, that getting out of the classroom for whatever reason is so much more of a reward than anything else. But the fence is still incomplete. Next term the students will have to bring 3 long, thin poles each to nail between the fence posts and complete the barrier.
Next came the school garden. Valentino has a section of land across from the school that can be used to cultivate food for the students. Of course, years of being trampled by man and animal made the plot nearly impossible to plough by hand. A tractor was hired to at least break-up the hardened dirt and then men from the nearby military training area were used to hoe it into smaller pieces. Other men were also hired to cut down thorn trees from the area to build a fence. Once again, grade by grade, we cancelled classes and had the students plant maize first. Locally, planting is done using the “broadcast” method- walking around and throwing the seeds randomly all over the field. We planted a little more technically using a string and stick to create rows and proper spacing- things the students learn about in their agriculture classes. Hopefully this way we'll yield a larger harvest. Before we could plant the groundnuts (peanuts), they needed to be shelled. Desiring that more nuts would end up in the ground than in the students' stomachs, we asked the girls to be responsible for doing all the cracking and the boys to be responsible for the planting. As girls we sat for almost 4 hours trying to finish the entire sack. My fingers were numb. Of course, we did have to taste a few and the girls introduced me to mixing them with kedde kedde (hibiscus tea). It sort of tasted like peanut butter and jam- enjoyable. Now, to keep the boys from eating them during the planting, we doused the seeds with kerosene. This worked for every class except the notorious class of stubborn grade 9's who said that they'd eaten other food that tasted much worse and proceeded to munch on the seeds. If we do reap a harvest, these groundnuts will definitely be a hot commodity! I should mention that we did try cultivating this land with groundnuts in 2010 but to no avail because everything we planted was eaten by the goats. We have already witnessed the goats sabotaging our new fence and so we've had to step security up a notch by having one of our watchmen on guard all day. This is actually what the locals do since the women and children are never far from home.
A week before Independence Day (July 9th) we discovered (by accident) that all foreigners were required to be registered at the immigration office by July 6th. The closest office is in Aweil and so we had to cancel classes for the day to take care of that (there are no substitute teachers here!). Classes were cancelled for the National Holiday and the day afterwards, none of the students showed up. Actually, there were quite a few students who didn't show up for the whole week afterwards... it was an important holiday. The grade 12 students started their exams two days after the holiday and wrote 16 exams over 8 days. The supervision of these exams also required teachers to miss classes. And as much as we were cultivating at the school, many of the students missed classes to cultivate at home. It is not a hobby- the harvest from these crops is what will feed their families for the rest of the year and many of the boys are actually the heads of their households (did I tell you about the time I ran into one of my grade 9 students in the market who told me, over tea, that he was 31 years old with two wives and a daughter?).
So, yah, July was a bit of a write-off in the classroom. Yet, in South Sudan, 30% of your final mark is based on your first term exams and 70% is based on the second term exams. No assignments, projects, quizzes, report, nada. And since the students are taking 9 courses, they write 9 exams in 5 days. Talk about pressure. The average of the top 8 scores will determine whether or not a student is promoted. The passing mark is 40%. We had to write the exams on the blackboards as we could not afford the photocopying for the students. With class sizes between 35 – 45 students, I marked 250 exams in 3 days! They did as expected- about 50% passing and 50% failing. These are EAL students and classroom as well as assessment conditions are unfavourable for them... but they're improving. I expect better results next term. Like everywhere in the world (except China?), the most challenging subject for the students is math and we've learned that, no matter what, for students to pass their national exams, they have to pass math, English and C.R.E. (Christian Religious Education). So even though students can fail these subjects all along the way as long as their overall average is high enough to continue to the next level, in grade 12 they're faced with reality. Tough system. I plan on running regular math workshops next term as well.
Speaking of class sizes, I have one proud accomplishment- I am the head teacher of one of the grade 9 classes and I finally learned their names, all 46 of them. Their names are not like ours. There is no such thing as a surname- mostly the names recall the family tree through the fathers and they all seem to be different combinations of the same names. This means learning only the first name is not enough... William Wol, William Atak, Peter Atak, Peter Piol, Martin Atak, Martin Piol... it's really the repetition that makes them so difficult to learn. But in learning the names, I've also increased my Dinka vocabulary- Deng = rain; Arou = turtle; Achak = woodtick; Noon = grass; Nhial = sky... other names are the colors of cows: Mabior = white; Malual = red; Marial = black and white... other names speak of the suffering of the people: Dhieu = cry (when the mother previously miscarried); Alithiec = don't ask (when babies have been previously born, named and died). The English names are given to the children when they are baptized. Of course, the students all wanted to know my “Christian” name. I tried to explain that I don't have one which confused the students and made me embarrassed of some of the church practises introduced by missionaries. One night when I was helping at the evening prep, the students went ahead and named me Mary Jennifer which made me laugh. Most have decided that my Dinka name should be Abuk (pronounced “a book”). It feels good that they want me to be a part of their community in this way. I feel especially blessed when I'm out and about in the community and I hear “Jenpar” instead of “khawaja.” And I am starting to be able to have simple conversations. I even taught our neighbouring children the song “head and shoulders knees and toes” in Dinka. Oh yes, my new favourite Dinka word is the one used to mean toes = “mieth choke” which means, literally, "the foot's children". I love it! Unfortunately, the language learning is going much slower than I had hoped but the students keep encouraging me (and quizzing me).
One thing that is showing progress is my garden which I faithfully tackle every Sat and Sun morning from 7 am (sunrise) to 1 pm (lunchtime). Continuing with the junkyard theme, I raised the grass covering the nursery beds using broken beds turned upside down. The grass is necessary to guard against the hot sun, lessen the impact of the hard rain and retain the moisture. By the time I finished digging up the entire area and covering it with manure, the plants were ready to be transplanted. The rains have been less frequent and so it was a bit of work pumping buckets of water from the well and watering each plant cup by cup. There must be at least 100 kale, 30 tomatoes and 50 onions. I hired our watchman to stake the tomatoes and keep down the weeds while I'm away and I gave our water-boy a bit of money to water the plants should the rains continue to be scarce. As much as I'm looking forward to the harvest, physically and mentally, the garden has already been a successful project in my mind.
Other news- the wife of one of the South Sudanese teachers had a baby girl the day before we left for Kenya. I wanted to get a picture before I left and so we broke some of the cultural rules. When the wife first has the baby, she stays at her mother's home and the husband is only allowed to visit in the dark- after sunset and before sunrise (there seem to be many taboos such as this which even the locals cannot explain). We got permission to come a little earlier to take a few snaps. On a sadder note, two nearby communities were attacked by man-eating hyenas which left many wounded and several dead including the brother of one of our students. Although I've been told in the past that hyenas can attack people, even the locals were caught off-guard by the event as they say it's been years since such a thing happened. They suspect witchcraft may have been involved and I also suspect that the peace within South Sudan has allowed some of the wildlife to slowly begin migrating back into the area. I learned that during the war, Congo created some kind of fence to prevent the wildlife from migrating back into South Sudan to keep them from getting killed. The fence has now become an area of contestation as the South Sudanese want the animals back but Congo knows that wildlife can also be a source of revenue through tourism. Earlier in the term, the sister of one of our students was also attacked by a hippopotamus when she was washing at the river! As I said in the beginning of this post, sometimes life here seems almost unbelievable.
So now I am in Kenya on holidays which I will post more about before I return to South Sudan at the end of the month. It's time to relax, reflect and recharge before heading into term two. I know the hill down from here is going to fly by quicker than the hill up to here and I want to make the most of the few months which remain. I wanted to take a moment to thank the African staff and students at Daniel McIntyre Collegiate- the school where I work in Winnipeg- for dedicating the funds they raised at an African event they hosted in my absence to Marial Bai Secondary School. Your support inspired me and will go a long way in continuing the development of the school. I'm so proud of you for the obstacles you've had to overcome in living and studying in a foreign language and country and I want to continue to challenge you to find ways to give back to your own communities abroad.