Sunday is market day in Marial Bai which means there are more shops open and people from nearby villages also come by. Boys and girls put on their best outfits to meet and mingle with one another. The shops in the market are mostly housed in grass thatching. Back in January, one evening a spark from someone's fire ended up burning the entire market on one side of the street down. I can't imagine how devastating that would have been. The people have started over, and it's already been rebuilt and thatched but remains just as susceptible to burning as before.
I was up at 6:30 to do my laundry. I washed it close to the well so that I wouldn't have to carry the water far and at 6:30 am to beat the heat of the day. This attempt was much more successful that my first although I scrubbed my knuckles raw. Even my white shirt is white again. :)
It is hot here! Yesterday I finally braved the elements and slept outside. It was just too hot inside my “tukle” (hut). Living here is a true test of survival. Even now, in the dry season, people are suffering from malaria. After the heat of the day, you have to watch your step in the evening for scorpions and snakes. The evenings aren't even so cool, just without the direct heat of the sun. Everyone has been affected by war and people continue to be affected by the fighting at the border. Some of the students' fathers are soldiers. Some of the students come from Unity State where there is conflict much conflict over the oil. The day before our entrance exams, two boys asked to be excused because they found out that three of their brothers were killed the day before. Food is in short supply, especially vegetables. We eat the same meal for every breakfast (small pieces of fried bread), and then the same meal for lunch and supper (boiled flour called “coon” which is used like bread or mashed potatoes; and then a broth with goat meat). The students eat only lentils and coon and for some, that is more than they would be eating at home. I am blessed that right now is mango season and I enjoy one every morning. It costs 25 cents for 5 and so I buy my supply for the week on Sunday while I'm at the market.
Yes, I did say snakes. Within the past week, 6 snakes have been killed. These are not our Manitoban snakes. In fact, the students are quite surprised when I tell them our snakes are not dangerous. The bites from these snakes can kill you. The first was found inside my female colleague's tukle... sitting on her chair under her table!! The next was found in the girl's dormitory; The third in one of the classrooms; The fourth was making it's way inside another colleague's tukle; The fifth was found under a tree in front of the tukle on the right of mine (it was found by accident when we rushed over to kill a scorpion inside the tukle); The sixth looked like it just came out of the tukle to the left of mine. Apparently things only get worse once the rains come! Amazingly, only one student was bitten in the previous school year. Being that the clinic is also a 40 minute walk from the school, he was treated with a “black stone” first. You should google that... apparently it's not a stone at all, but the left femur bone from a cow. They burn up the blood inside of it over the fire and somehow it sucks the venom out of a person who has been bitten. As interesting as it is, I hope I never experience it first hand.
One of the treatments for malaria is a series of injections given over several days in the buttock. There is only one teacher at the school who knows how to administer it and, since he's male, I thought it would be a good idea to learn as well so that I could help inject the female students. So, last weekend, the other female teacher, Eunice, and I went to the clinic early Saturday morning. We explained our goal and waited for a patient to come in to be treated. Finally the health worker called us into his office where he was preparing a plate of needles. We went into a room where a woman was lying with an intravenous in her arm. It turns out there was a bit of a barrier in our communication because of language and he was preparing to show us another type of malaria injection that is given through intravenous. I was nervous to continue watching as I am queasy about these things, but didn't want to interrupt. As he removed the needle from one hand of the patient and prepared the other, he stuck a needle with some blood into the bed. At that moment, I knew I had to leave the room. I touched Eunice's arm to tell her... the next thing I knew, I was surrounded by black people who were carrying me over to the next bed. I was trying to figure out where I was and what happened. When I saw Eunice, I finally remembered that I wanted to tell her I needed to leave the room... and then it clicked, it was already too late! I had just passed out! I burst out laughing while everyone else in the room panicked, even forgetting about the nearby patient who was supposed to be treated. I got scratched up a bit and covered in dirt, but otherwise, things are OK. Unfortunately for the girls, I don't think giving injections will be a good job for me and they might just have to stick with the other teacher!
There are 9 teachers at the school this year including myself. Five are South Sudanese who were educated in Uganda. One is Ugandan. Two are Kenyan. Eunice (one of the Kenyans) and myself are the only women. Moses (one of the S.Sudanese) and myself are the only who remain single. One of the teachers even has two wives. It is difficult for me to imagine them all being away from their spouses and children for such a long period of time but for them it seems quite normal. Even the network here is unreliable and expensive and so phone calls are limited.
I was surprised to find that there are only 16 of the original 90 grade 9 students remaining. They are now in grade 12 and will finish school this year. This has been a heated topic since I got here. The Sudanese education system only goes until grade 11 at which point the students write national exams for 8 subjects. The students who pass are eligible to go to university. The new South Sudanese system that our school has been following since 2009 follows a different curriculum which includes grade 12. Much to our surprise, there has been discussion about whether grade 12 national exams will be set this year or whether students will still be expected to follow the old Sudanese system. If the exams are set, there has been discussion about whether the South Sudanese universities will recognize them. Crazy! We feel we have some confirmation about having grade 12 national exams this year and so we are moving forward with this curriculum. The students will be expected to write in November.
The first week of April we administered entrance exams for our newcomer students. We can only accommodate a limited number of students, and so we base registration on results on an English and math test. Out of 140 students who sat for the grade 9 exam, we have accepted 90- two classes of 45 each. Due to a shortage of teachers for the demand of the students, I will be teaching grade 9 geography, grade 9 biology, and grade 10 chemistry. I began some of these classes last week and am really enjoying it. We will officially begin on Monday. Students have needed time to gather their school supplies and fees and have been slow in coming. They will pay 200 pounds ($60) for the lunch program (and supper for the boarders), 100 pound for their uniform ($30) and 50 pounds for their registration ($15). Each student also needed to bring a “jaray,” a tool that will be used to help keep the compound clean from grass to help keep out the scorpions and snakes. In total there are approximately 200 students.
In getting ready for school we repainted the chalkboards and put up curtains in the staff office (so necessary to block the dust and rain); I cleaned out the science lab, and yesterday I spent most of the day with four students cleaning the books and getting the library ready. I left my schedule free every afternoon so that students may come and have access to the few books that we have. I am trying to entice my students to get out of their textbooks and explore some of the other books that we, as volunteers, brought in the past. I think I can convince them first to look at the science books and then hope to adventure into the storybooks with them. They are very dedicated to memorizing their textbooks to pass their exams!
The students are also involved in getting the school ready. The latrines that we built in 2010 were destroyed by the rains in 2011. While we wait for a shipment of cement from Kenya, we had the students help building temporary latrines. Any punishment at school during the first few weeks of classes required students to go to the bush and bring back poles for the walls. Then, one Saturday morning, we asked the boarders to come with the school's tools to dig holes for the poles to make walls for a latrine and shower.
Another thing we've been doing to prepare for the rainy season is to have the roofs of our tukles re-thatched. Wow! This was quite the process! Six women worked 12 hours a day for three days on one hut removing all the old grass, making bundles of the new grass, and then doing the actual thatching. In the end, each tukle has cost about 900 pounds- 400 for materials ($110), 500 for labour ($130- you can do the math to figure out how much each woman got paid per hour). Life is especially hard on the women which shows in how quickly they age. It is interesting showing pictures of my family to the locals and hearing their disbelief that my parents stopped having children without any sons or that my dad married a woman who already had children from another man, or even for them to find out my age and know that I am still unmarried and without children. We have one female student in grade 12 who was actually a refugee in Australia for some time. In total there are 33 female students. Only 1 legitimately passed the entrance exam, but the school makes an exception for girls. Their chores keep them from their studies. Unfortunately, it seems that most of these will not make it without being married off or becoming pregnant. A daughter brings wealth to her family when they receive the bride price and so it is hard for their families to be convinced that education is worthwhile.
I have met up with almost everyone that I knew previously here. I don't feel much like a stranger but am still shy to be in places like the market where you can feel the curious stares of everyone. I recognize some of the children I used to play with, but am not sure that they recognize me. Other children still run away screaming and crying- I am the only white person in town and imagine that I look quite sickly. Actually, one of the female students at the school is albino and so the community is taking a bit to warm up to her too. She is outgoing and so I think she's going to be OK. It's more the sun that worries me for her- I can't imagine that her skin is even more sensitive than mine knowing how careful even I need to be.
I have started my Dinka lessons using the students as my teachers. I brought along my voice recorder which allows me to listen repeatedly to the same phrases. It's going much slower than I'd like, but it's coming.
If you made it this far in my post, thank you for persevering!! I hope to have received updates from you as well. Be sure to check out the page with the pictures as I plan to post an assortment and pictures often say things that words cannot. To end, I want to ensure everyone that I feel completely safe where I am despite what you may be reading or hearing in the news. But definitely keep South Sudan and the school in your prayers- I'm reading a lot about the history of Sudan and things are even more complicated than I thought. My prayer is that this school will play a part in the nation's peace.