I'm in Nyamlell using the internet today. Here's my Dinka phrase book! (My computer takes a picture in reverse so the words are all backwards...)
Bang! I've been blasted back to Marial Bai! It's been 4 weeks since I arrived after the holidays I spent in Kenya. There was no opportunity to warm up to the realities of life here. It all came immediately crashing in.
It began with the chaos in the travel arrangements- I had to be escorted to the plane to Juba out of Nairobi as it prepared for take-off because the person who was supposed to bring my plane ticket to the airport the same morning slept in and came at the last minute. Stepping off the plane in Juba, I stepped into a wall of heat and humidity. My $100 USD per night hotel had a toilet that would not flush and a shower that only dripped water out of the faucet at waist height. It also had no mosquito net and so the mosquitos feasted on foreign blood.
For the next day's flight from Juba to Aweil, I did not want to repeat the same mad dash. The Ugandan and Kenyan teachers travelling with me and I were some of the first to arrive at the airport to confirm our tickets and have our luggage weighed. Then we waited for the airport doors to be opened... and we waited... and we waited. In the meantime, another 3 flights' worth of people began showing up and having their luggage weighed. This airport is tiny with only four doors at its entrance. As soon as you walk in the door of the airport, you need to pass your luggage through an electronic scanner and then you check-in. Culturally, Africans are not accustomed to waiting in lines. Whoever skillfully budges his way to the front gets served first. So, if you can imagine, as soon as the airport officials finally decided to open their four doors, the hundreds of people waiting with their luggage became a mob that had to be physically held back while the first few in the front were allowed to enter. By some miracle, I managed to be among the first hundred to enter even with my travel pack loaded on my back and while carrying an extra box of goods for the school out in front. With the chaos in the airport as people trampled in, it felt like another miracle that both pieces of luggage arrived safely in Aweil.
In Aweil we tried calling our colleagues in Marial Bai to see if they had left to come and pick us up- no network. We waited in suspense, but thankfully not for long. After warm greetings, we were updated on events at the school. Although there wasn't much new to say, the death count within the families of those we knew made it feel like we had been gone for years- malaria from mosquito bites, rabies from dog bites, people struck by lightening... sisters, brothers, children... it's not the kind of news we're accustomed to in Canada but for them, it is just the reality of life.
Arriving at the school in Marial Bai, it was impossible to miss the fact that the school really is in the bush. Our compound was overgrown with thick grass, my garden a thicket of weeds, the tuckles full of dust, spider webs and paths of dirt up the walls made by the termites. Even one of the bookcases in the library that I left neatly cleaned and organized with books became the home of a giant beehive... ironically, the Bibles beneath the hive were dripping with honey. There was such a wind and rain storm our first night in Marial Bai that the thin branches sewn around the skirts of the roofs of our tuckles (that were brand new in April) finally fell apart. It turns out that, in this case, the string that was used for the sewing is to blame. Normally the women make their own string out of grass but for some reason, the women we hired used the plastic string available in the market. The rain, sun and wind made it fall apart.
It took me two weekends (17 hours) to uproot all the weeds in my garden. On the last day, one of the grade 12 boys offered to help me and I had him re-stake my tomato plants before turning to the weeding. Two days later, we had another rain storm that lasted all night. When we woke up, our compound was a lake; my garden, a swamp. It took almost the entire week for the water to subside. In the meantime, basically everything died. Today, two weeks later, the garden looks pathetically brown and limp. More tragically, in that same rainstorm, one of the tuckles of our neighbours caved in injuring a mother and killing a child- another death to add to the count. The wailing and mourning the next day shared by the community was heart quenching.
And that's just it- somehow life here has taken hold of my heart. Despite everything, it feels good to be back. I am finding so much more to enjoy than to despair. Even my garden- while the student was weeding with me, another teacher jokingly gave him an assignment to find the benefits and challenges I faced in this pursuit. I had no problem coming up with many benefits- physically, the labour was a good work-out; mentally, it was refreshing to see the fruits of labour immediately when the labour was through. I also learned a lot about gardening in the climate of South Sudan and the kinds of life within its soils; emotionally, it made me feel close to my parents who both share a passion for gardening; spiritually, I enjoyed the solitude in the garden to sing, reflect and pray. We enjoyed the literal fruits for a few days when I harvested some of the kale leaves and okra; the pumpkins look like they may still survive and there are three gigantic watermelons that have also stayed firm and green. In fact, we feasted on the biggest one of all last weekend since I accidentally broke it from the stem while trying to turn it to keep it from rotting. When I sliced into it, it released the most pleasant aroma- like Bubilicious gum. What a sweet treat.
Another refreshing treat that the villagers are enjoying on a regular basis is the stalks of the sorghum that every family has planted. They eat it like it's sugar cane. First, they peel off the woody stem using their teeth. Inside is a soft, fibrous stalk they they chew on to suck out the sugary water inside. They then spit out the fibres. The streets and gathering places are littered with this waste much like you'd find the shells of sunflower seeds on paths and around benches in parks in Canada.
The regular addition of okra to the meat broth we are served daily has helped with the monotony of the menu. We have even eaten fresh tomatoes on a couple of occasions. Last weekend we ate a pumpkin (chopped up and boiled like potatoes), and the girls showed me where I can buy guava fruit in the market. It reminds me of the days in April and May when mangoes were available- 4 for 25 cents. They make a nice treat on a hot day. I’ve also acquired a clay water pot which has greatly increased my water consumption. It’s nothing like a fridge, but the way that the pot “sweats” keeps the water cool enough to actually be refreshing. Because of all the rain, the water coming out of the wells is quite silty. The water I’m drinking looks like very watered-down milk. It doesn’t taste funny though and it hasn’t made me sick. I learned in Kenya how it’s possible to harvest rain water which, if the materials became available, would really benefit the people here as that water would be much cleaner and more readily available during the dry season.
Now is also the season for harvesting sesame. This is something that I had never seen before. They take the stems with the seed pods, bundle them in sheaths and hang them in the sun to dry. Once the stems are dry, they break off the seed pods and lay them out on the ground to dry. When you walk by every household, you find an area in the centre of their compound that is completely swept free of dirt and dust. Here they lay the heads of sorghum, pods of sesame and sliced pieces of okra to dry. I never saw how they get the sesame seeds out of the pods, but when I went to visit one family, the mother was pounding some of the seeds with her mortar and pestle. At first I thought it was sorghum to make flour, but them the aroma hit me. Like the watermelon, it made my mouth water. She sifted these partially ground seeds to get rid of any remaining pods or other debris. Then she pounded some more until the flour became paste- like fresh peanut butter. She served me a whole plate of it with a glass of hot tea and an entire stalk of sorghum which she peeled and broke into pieces for me (I haven't yet been able to do it myself- the stalk is quite tough!).
My Dinka lessons feel like they have slightly accelerated. One of my grade 9 students brought me a gift from the holiday- a primary student’s Dinka textbook. So I’m learning how to read and write in Dinka as well speak it which is helpful since I’m a visual learner. On top of the textbook, I’ve also found an enthusiastic “teacher” in one of my grade 10 students. He would meet with me every day if I gave him the time! When we do meet, he always quizzes me on our previous sessions and he always throws in a curve ball. It’s motivating! I’ve also been encouraged to find my conversations lengthening with the villagers I visit on the weekends who speak no English at all (such as the woman who shared the sesame paste with me). I’ve finally learned the word for the latrine- “bakana.” It’s not cultural to talk about the bathroom here. Even during class, students ask if they can go for a “short call” or a “long call” as opposed to asking for permission to go to the bathroom.
I took some time over the holidays to reevaluate my goals for my time in South Sudan and so this past month I really focused on starting to implement some of them. One was to do some introductory computer lessons with the grade 12 students. When I was preparing for the first lesson, I asked for a show of hands of the students who had never worked on a computer before. Out of 16, I was surprised to see 12 hands go up! Yes, our first lesson was fun. I mostly had them play around on the desktop to introduce some computer language and the functioning of the mouse… left-click, right-click, double-click, menu, window, drag, highlight, etc. When they finally opened Word and started typing for the very first time, most expressed their happiness and appreciation for the lesson in the few words they pecked out. In our next lesson on Monday, I’ve prepared a text for them to edit in Word changing the font style, justification, correcting spelling mistakes, etc. The school has 9 laptops which is what we’ve been using. I sent two to the market with the 9 batteries and it took a week to get them all charged. I’m thinking about doing these two lessons again with the school prefects. All of the students are definitely eager to learn the technology!
Another thing I wanted to focus on more was helping the girls’ level of literacy. On Friday afternoons I have a special session with them and so far, I’ve just been getting them to read short stories. If you can imagine, the books they are comfortable with reading during this time are at the primary school level while their everyday textbooks and course material are written in English beyond the high school level (even I have to read some passages more than once to get to the heart of the meaning). The girls are loving it! Once they start reading, they don’t stop. Every weekend I’ve allowed them to take one of these books out of the library to continue reading and I think it’s helping them. A side effect of this time we spend together and of the girls having an opportunity to laugh with me when I try to speak Dinka is that the girls are more relaxed in my presence and eager to try to converse with me. I’m really enjoying them.
There are several students who never made it back to school this term for one reason or another, but one piece of news that really shocked me was that one of the girls got married over the holiday. She is 18 years old, was in grade 10... but what makes it really disappointing is that she was one of our top students let alone top girl. It’s difficult to imagine that some of the girls will ever make it through high school since they’re so far behind academically, but this girl was even competing with the boys. There’s a chance that her husband will allow her to go back to school, but the local teachers say it’s unlikely to happen until after she has a baby since the baby, in a sense, seals the marriage. And in reality, if she has a baby, going back to school will be difficult. We only have one married girl who has a daughter who is now in grade 11. While the government jargon is promoting education for girls, it seems like it’s going to take some time for the culture to shift to allow girls this freedom.
One month into the new term, we also had to send 75% of the students home to collect money for the feeding program. Each student was required to pay about $50 USD this term to help share the cost of the lunch and dinner the school provides to the students on a daily basis. Unfortunately, the government of South Sudan withheld the wages of its employees for the past three months and so most of the country has been struggling to make ends meet. Once again, this is a result of the ongoing conflict between the North and the South. The South closed the oil fields to prevent the North from benefitting from them which, of course, affected their own revenue at the same time. If you've been listening to the news, the North and the South have reached some agreements about the border line and the oil fields have been reopened, but the most contested areas remain unresolved. The government recently released a portion of the wages and most of our students are now back at school after missing 1 - 2 weeks of classes.
One morning when I was walking to school, I heard some drumming behind me. I turned to see a man beating a huge drum slung on his front leading a procession of cattle and cattle-herders. The bulls were even decorated with tassels on their horns (like pom poms). I asked one of the grade 12 students who used to be cattle-herder what was going on, and he explained that they were just moving their herd out to graze in the bush to keep them from destroying the sorghum fields in the community. He said that they gather all the cattle together to help minimize the annoyance of mosquitoes within the herd. Once the cattle trample an area in the bush, the mosquitoes move away. They also dry and burn the cow manure to smoke away the mosquitoes. Cattle-herding is another obstacle facing the education of many boys. A family’s cows are their wealth and someone needs to take care of them.
With the cows coming out to the bush, a new pest has been introduced to the school- tse tse flies (horse flies). They’re huge and they hurt! I’ve been bitten twice now while teaching. I have also finally experienced a snake joining me on my way into the classroom. This was only a green one- not poisonous- but it was enough to stir the students as some retreated further into the classroom while others came out with bricks to try to kill it. Approaching my tukle one evening, there was a black snake waiting for me at my door. These ones are poisonous and I let out a bit of a squeal. To my surprise, our new dorm matron came over with her stick and started jabbing it- no fear! Even as it persisted and slithered towards her, she kept her cool and eventually it died. That same night, a brown one crossed my path on my way back from the girls’ dorms and the watchman came over and killed it after I shouted. I AM brave in their eyes when it comes to frogs. I don’t know why, but the locals will not touch them and will squirm if you bring one close. So, I’ve been the hero by catching them and throwing them out of the staff room. They’re exactly the same as the ones we caught as kids back home. Another discovery in the staff room- we have a couple of plastic shelving units and one day I saw a mouse sitting in one of the drawers. I carefully pulled out the drawer and took it outside to set the mouse loose. When I went to bring the drawer back into the staffroom, I looked inside a roll of packing tape and found a paper nest with baby mice! They looked like plastic; their eyes hadn’t even opened yet. Unfortunately for the mice, I couldn’t let them reside in our office and so I relocated the nest next to the bush close to our school.
Yes, we have had some changes in staff this term. The female Kenyan teacher was unable to return to South Sudan and so we had to find a new dorm matron and English and CRE teacher. The dorm matron that we’ve hired doesn’t speak a word of English which, again, is motivation for me to keep pursuing my Dinka lessons. We interviewed and tested three applicants for the teaching position- two were South Sudanese who had recently finished high school in Uganda; one was a South Sudanese who recently sat for his Sudan certificate (which goes up to grade 11). All had some volunteer experience in local primary schools but the one we hired also had been to a workshop training teachers and so we thought he would be the best qualified to jump into the middle of the school-year. This means that I’m no longer not just the only “khawaja” (white person), but also the only female amongst 9 men. May this encourage our female students as they go against their cultural norms! The new teacher lasted one week and then went home to be admitted in the clinic with malaria. I learned something new about malaria- it is transferred by the mosquito from one human to another. Because of this, our policy in boarding is for students to go home if they’re too sick to come to school.
As always, if you've made it this far through my post, thank you for your time in sharing these experiences with me! I've added pictures to the "photos" page as well. I will stop here but hope to make it back to the internet again in another month's time.
Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian family and friends!
Jennifer.
Bang! I've been blasted back to Marial Bai! It's been 4 weeks since I arrived after the holidays I spent in Kenya. There was no opportunity to warm up to the realities of life here. It all came immediately crashing in.
It began with the chaos in the travel arrangements- I had to be escorted to the plane to Juba out of Nairobi as it prepared for take-off because the person who was supposed to bring my plane ticket to the airport the same morning slept in and came at the last minute. Stepping off the plane in Juba, I stepped into a wall of heat and humidity. My $100 USD per night hotel had a toilet that would not flush and a shower that only dripped water out of the faucet at waist height. It also had no mosquito net and so the mosquitos feasted on foreign blood.
For the next day's flight from Juba to Aweil, I did not want to repeat the same mad dash. The Ugandan and Kenyan teachers travelling with me and I were some of the first to arrive at the airport to confirm our tickets and have our luggage weighed. Then we waited for the airport doors to be opened... and we waited... and we waited. In the meantime, another 3 flights' worth of people began showing up and having their luggage weighed. This airport is tiny with only four doors at its entrance. As soon as you walk in the door of the airport, you need to pass your luggage through an electronic scanner and then you check-in. Culturally, Africans are not accustomed to waiting in lines. Whoever skillfully budges his way to the front gets served first. So, if you can imagine, as soon as the airport officials finally decided to open their four doors, the hundreds of people waiting with their luggage became a mob that had to be physically held back while the first few in the front were allowed to enter. By some miracle, I managed to be among the first hundred to enter even with my travel pack loaded on my back and while carrying an extra box of goods for the school out in front. With the chaos in the airport as people trampled in, it felt like another miracle that both pieces of luggage arrived safely in Aweil.
In Aweil we tried calling our colleagues in Marial Bai to see if they had left to come and pick us up- no network. We waited in suspense, but thankfully not for long. After warm greetings, we were updated on events at the school. Although there wasn't much new to say, the death count within the families of those we knew made it feel like we had been gone for years- malaria from mosquito bites, rabies from dog bites, people struck by lightening... sisters, brothers, children... it's not the kind of news we're accustomed to in Canada but for them, it is just the reality of life.
Arriving at the school in Marial Bai, it was impossible to miss the fact that the school really is in the bush. Our compound was overgrown with thick grass, my garden a thicket of weeds, the tuckles full of dust, spider webs and paths of dirt up the walls made by the termites. Even one of the bookcases in the library that I left neatly cleaned and organized with books became the home of a giant beehive... ironically, the Bibles beneath the hive were dripping with honey. There was such a wind and rain storm our first night in Marial Bai that the thin branches sewn around the skirts of the roofs of our tuckles (that were brand new in April) finally fell apart. It turns out that, in this case, the string that was used for the sewing is to blame. Normally the women make their own string out of grass but for some reason, the women we hired used the plastic string available in the market. The rain, sun and wind made it fall apart.
It took me two weekends (17 hours) to uproot all the weeds in my garden. On the last day, one of the grade 12 boys offered to help me and I had him re-stake my tomato plants before turning to the weeding. Two days later, we had another rain storm that lasted all night. When we woke up, our compound was a lake; my garden, a swamp. It took almost the entire week for the water to subside. In the meantime, basically everything died. Today, two weeks later, the garden looks pathetically brown and limp. More tragically, in that same rainstorm, one of the tuckles of our neighbours caved in injuring a mother and killing a child- another death to add to the count. The wailing and mourning the next day shared by the community was heart quenching.
And that's just it- somehow life here has taken hold of my heart. Despite everything, it feels good to be back. I am finding so much more to enjoy than to despair. Even my garden- while the student was weeding with me, another teacher jokingly gave him an assignment to find the benefits and challenges I faced in this pursuit. I had no problem coming up with many benefits- physically, the labour was a good work-out; mentally, it was refreshing to see the fruits of labour immediately when the labour was through. I also learned a lot about gardening in the climate of South Sudan and the kinds of life within its soils; emotionally, it made me feel close to my parents who both share a passion for gardening; spiritually, I enjoyed the solitude in the garden to sing, reflect and pray. We enjoyed the literal fruits for a few days when I harvested some of the kale leaves and okra; the pumpkins look like they may still survive and there are three gigantic watermelons that have also stayed firm and green. In fact, we feasted on the biggest one of all last weekend since I accidentally broke it from the stem while trying to turn it to keep it from rotting. When I sliced into it, it released the most pleasant aroma- like Bubilicious gum. What a sweet treat.
Another refreshing treat that the villagers are enjoying on a regular basis is the stalks of the sorghum that every family has planted. They eat it like it's sugar cane. First, they peel off the woody stem using their teeth. Inside is a soft, fibrous stalk they they chew on to suck out the sugary water inside. They then spit out the fibres. The streets and gathering places are littered with this waste much like you'd find the shells of sunflower seeds on paths and around benches in parks in Canada.
The regular addition of okra to the meat broth we are served daily has helped with the monotony of the menu. We have even eaten fresh tomatoes on a couple of occasions. Last weekend we ate a pumpkin (chopped up and boiled like potatoes), and the girls showed me where I can buy guava fruit in the market. It reminds me of the days in April and May when mangoes were available- 4 for 25 cents. They make a nice treat on a hot day. I’ve also acquired a clay water pot which has greatly increased my water consumption. It’s nothing like a fridge, but the way that the pot “sweats” keeps the water cool enough to actually be refreshing. Because of all the rain, the water coming out of the wells is quite silty. The water I’m drinking looks like very watered-down milk. It doesn’t taste funny though and it hasn’t made me sick. I learned in Kenya how it’s possible to harvest rain water which, if the materials became available, would really benefit the people here as that water would be much cleaner and more readily available during the dry season.
Now is also the season for harvesting sesame. This is something that I had never seen before. They take the stems with the seed pods, bundle them in sheaths and hang them in the sun to dry. Once the stems are dry, they break off the seed pods and lay them out on the ground to dry. When you walk by every household, you find an area in the centre of their compound that is completely swept free of dirt and dust. Here they lay the heads of sorghum, pods of sesame and sliced pieces of okra to dry. I never saw how they get the sesame seeds out of the pods, but when I went to visit one family, the mother was pounding some of the seeds with her mortar and pestle. At first I thought it was sorghum to make flour, but them the aroma hit me. Like the watermelon, it made my mouth water. She sifted these partially ground seeds to get rid of any remaining pods or other debris. Then she pounded some more until the flour became paste- like fresh peanut butter. She served me a whole plate of it with a glass of hot tea and an entire stalk of sorghum which she peeled and broke into pieces for me (I haven't yet been able to do it myself- the stalk is quite tough!).
My Dinka lessons feel like they have slightly accelerated. One of my grade 9 students brought me a gift from the holiday- a primary student’s Dinka textbook. So I’m learning how to read and write in Dinka as well speak it which is helpful since I’m a visual learner. On top of the textbook, I’ve also found an enthusiastic “teacher” in one of my grade 10 students. He would meet with me every day if I gave him the time! When we do meet, he always quizzes me on our previous sessions and he always throws in a curve ball. It’s motivating! I’ve also been encouraged to find my conversations lengthening with the villagers I visit on the weekends who speak no English at all (such as the woman who shared the sesame paste with me). I’ve finally learned the word for the latrine- “bakana.” It’s not cultural to talk about the bathroom here. Even during class, students ask if they can go for a “short call” or a “long call” as opposed to asking for permission to go to the bathroom.
I took some time over the holidays to reevaluate my goals for my time in South Sudan and so this past month I really focused on starting to implement some of them. One was to do some introductory computer lessons with the grade 12 students. When I was preparing for the first lesson, I asked for a show of hands of the students who had never worked on a computer before. Out of 16, I was surprised to see 12 hands go up! Yes, our first lesson was fun. I mostly had them play around on the desktop to introduce some computer language and the functioning of the mouse… left-click, right-click, double-click, menu, window, drag, highlight, etc. When they finally opened Word and started typing for the very first time, most expressed their happiness and appreciation for the lesson in the few words they pecked out. In our next lesson on Monday, I’ve prepared a text for them to edit in Word changing the font style, justification, correcting spelling mistakes, etc. The school has 9 laptops which is what we’ve been using. I sent two to the market with the 9 batteries and it took a week to get them all charged. I’m thinking about doing these two lessons again with the school prefects. All of the students are definitely eager to learn the technology!
Another thing I wanted to focus on more was helping the girls’ level of literacy. On Friday afternoons I have a special session with them and so far, I’ve just been getting them to read short stories. If you can imagine, the books they are comfortable with reading during this time are at the primary school level while their everyday textbooks and course material are written in English beyond the high school level (even I have to read some passages more than once to get to the heart of the meaning). The girls are loving it! Once they start reading, they don’t stop. Every weekend I’ve allowed them to take one of these books out of the library to continue reading and I think it’s helping them. A side effect of this time we spend together and of the girls having an opportunity to laugh with me when I try to speak Dinka is that the girls are more relaxed in my presence and eager to try to converse with me. I’m really enjoying them.
There are several students who never made it back to school this term for one reason or another, but one piece of news that really shocked me was that one of the girls got married over the holiday. She is 18 years old, was in grade 10... but what makes it really disappointing is that she was one of our top students let alone top girl. It’s difficult to imagine that some of the girls will ever make it through high school since they’re so far behind academically, but this girl was even competing with the boys. There’s a chance that her husband will allow her to go back to school, but the local teachers say it’s unlikely to happen until after she has a baby since the baby, in a sense, seals the marriage. And in reality, if she has a baby, going back to school will be difficult. We only have one married girl who has a daughter who is now in grade 11. While the government jargon is promoting education for girls, it seems like it’s going to take some time for the culture to shift to allow girls this freedom.
One month into the new term, we also had to send 75% of the students home to collect money for the feeding program. Each student was required to pay about $50 USD this term to help share the cost of the lunch and dinner the school provides to the students on a daily basis. Unfortunately, the government of South Sudan withheld the wages of its employees for the past three months and so most of the country has been struggling to make ends meet. Once again, this is a result of the ongoing conflict between the North and the South. The South closed the oil fields to prevent the North from benefitting from them which, of course, affected their own revenue at the same time. If you've been listening to the news, the North and the South have reached some agreements about the border line and the oil fields have been reopened, but the most contested areas remain unresolved. The government recently released a portion of the wages and most of our students are now back at school after missing 1 - 2 weeks of classes.
One morning when I was walking to school, I heard some drumming behind me. I turned to see a man beating a huge drum slung on his front leading a procession of cattle and cattle-herders. The bulls were even decorated with tassels on their horns (like pom poms). I asked one of the grade 12 students who used to be cattle-herder what was going on, and he explained that they were just moving their herd out to graze in the bush to keep them from destroying the sorghum fields in the community. He said that they gather all the cattle together to help minimize the annoyance of mosquitoes within the herd. Once the cattle trample an area in the bush, the mosquitoes move away. They also dry and burn the cow manure to smoke away the mosquitoes. Cattle-herding is another obstacle facing the education of many boys. A family’s cows are their wealth and someone needs to take care of them.
With the cows coming out to the bush, a new pest has been introduced to the school- tse tse flies (horse flies). They’re huge and they hurt! I’ve been bitten twice now while teaching. I have also finally experienced a snake joining me on my way into the classroom. This was only a green one- not poisonous- but it was enough to stir the students as some retreated further into the classroom while others came out with bricks to try to kill it. Approaching my tukle one evening, there was a black snake waiting for me at my door. These ones are poisonous and I let out a bit of a squeal. To my surprise, our new dorm matron came over with her stick and started jabbing it- no fear! Even as it persisted and slithered towards her, she kept her cool and eventually it died. That same night, a brown one crossed my path on my way back from the girls’ dorms and the watchman came over and killed it after I shouted. I AM brave in their eyes when it comes to frogs. I don’t know why, but the locals will not touch them and will squirm if you bring one close. So, I’ve been the hero by catching them and throwing them out of the staff room. They’re exactly the same as the ones we caught as kids back home. Another discovery in the staff room- we have a couple of plastic shelving units and one day I saw a mouse sitting in one of the drawers. I carefully pulled out the drawer and took it outside to set the mouse loose. When I went to bring the drawer back into the staffroom, I looked inside a roll of packing tape and found a paper nest with baby mice! They looked like plastic; their eyes hadn’t even opened yet. Unfortunately for the mice, I couldn’t let them reside in our office and so I relocated the nest next to the bush close to our school.
Yes, we have had some changes in staff this term. The female Kenyan teacher was unable to return to South Sudan and so we had to find a new dorm matron and English and CRE teacher. The dorm matron that we’ve hired doesn’t speak a word of English which, again, is motivation for me to keep pursuing my Dinka lessons. We interviewed and tested three applicants for the teaching position- two were South Sudanese who had recently finished high school in Uganda; one was a South Sudanese who recently sat for his Sudan certificate (which goes up to grade 11). All had some volunteer experience in local primary schools but the one we hired also had been to a workshop training teachers and so we thought he would be the best qualified to jump into the middle of the school-year. This means that I’m no longer not just the only “khawaja” (white person), but also the only female amongst 9 men. May this encourage our female students as they go against their cultural norms! The new teacher lasted one week and then went home to be admitted in the clinic with malaria. I learned something new about malaria- it is transferred by the mosquito from one human to another. Because of this, our policy in boarding is for students to go home if they’re too sick to come to school.
As always, if you've made it this far through my post, thank you for your time in sharing these experiences with me! I've added pictures to the "photos" page as well. I will stop here but hope to make it back to the internet again in another month's time.
Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian family and friends!
Jennifer.