Sending you warm wishes from Atiaba

Hello to all of you: We have not been able to post the blog for a while due to limited email access. June is going fast because we have the school full and we are busy with classes and activities. Here is what we were doing in May with some of our impressions and descriptions of the area and the Dinka people.

May 2 – I will begin this today and see how far I get or how often I will add on until I can post this blog. It is late afternoon on Friday afternoon, and it has been a wonderfully coolish and cloudy day with relief from the heat. This was a big day for us because we had orientation for half of the freshman student body, and it went very well. We admitted students who had documentation of their primary 8 grades because they completed 8th grade before this year. We are still waiting for the scores of the March 2008 8th grade exam to determine the remainder of students who will be admitted. There is now some competition for the sixty spots in this first class, and so their grade on this exam ranks them for admittance.

MEET SOME OF THE STUDENTS - The student body is shaping up to be students with the youngest at age 16 and the oldest at 37. For Jim and me personally, the mission lies with providing this second chance opportunity for these older students who urgently desire an education. Many of the men graduated from primary 8 and because of no opportunity for further schooling or paid employment, became unpaid pastors or primary teachers who teach children under a big tree with a blackboard as their only teaching aid. They are intelligent, mature, polite, and very likeable. There is also a big group of students who are in their twenties and got a late start in primary school. They are eager and of high spirits and greet us with enthusiastic handshakes and big smiles. Then there are our three young women in their late teens. In terms of this culture it is unusual that they are not already married and that their fathers value education enough to allow them to go to secondary school. Most Dinka women are illiterate. There is much work to do each day in the home, and girls are trained to do this work rather than go to school. Our students are named Angelina, Deborah, and Mary. Mary received her primary education in a refugee camp in Kenya. Distance is a problem for most students who live a two or three hour walk from school when they come “by footing” as they explain to me. Only about half have bikes. We are trying to be wise and compassionate in dealing with these challenges and appreciate your prayers as we begin.

BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN – How I enjoyed being in front of students again. We all gave a short lesson, and it was great to be thinking like an educator again and have the interaction with the students. Jim is teaching physics because it was what was left. He doesn’t even want to calculate how many years ago that he had a college physics class, but I think that he will do a good job, and I predict that he will find it satisfying. I had the last lesson of the day and as I said good bye to the students and wished them well, they requested that I close in prayer. As a past public school teacher who always needed to be aware of the separation of church and state, I found this to be an amazing moment and gladly complied with their wish.

MAY 4 – Today is the 34th birthday of Cleous, one of our Ugandan teachers. Jim and I surprised him by arranging a dinner for him. We have a construction crew from Kenya on site, and they are good company and we share in the same pantry. They roasted a goat for the dinner and we did a huge pot of—yes, what else—beans. Friends from Uganda at a nearby NGO joined us and contributed sodas, so it was a feast. We put school tables together in the book room and ate by lantern light. Cleous revealed that this was his first real birthday party, making the occasion truly special.

ABOUT OUR KENYA FRIENDS - Hope for Humanity is building teachers’ quarters on site which will be quite nice and will replace our classrooms as bedrooms. The construction team is from Kenya and they are very congenial guys. When the building is done, it will seem very luxurious. We will have two real showers and will have to abandon Jim’s creation of an orange tarp and a solar shower bag. The building will be able to house about ten to twelve teachers, so that the staff can grow as the classes are added.

MAY 14 – I have had enough lessons with the students to know where instruction needs to begin. Since the students have not had the benefit of an abundance of print they are what we would consider behind in reading and writing. We have been writing paragraphs this week, and already I see a big improvement in expressing themselves.

May 21st – A team of eight arrived from Virginia to spend a week with us and help in any way that they can. We have integrated them into our school day so that the team and students have a chance to get acquainted. Of course, the students love the interruption in the school routine. The team shot lots of video and pictures for Hope for Humanity, and the students liked being the stars. It was a great R and R for us to have Americans here for conversation, encouragement and laughter. Team if you are reading this, thanks so much for coming and sharing so much with us.

DRUM ROLL PLEASE – The P8 exam list of results are out and Jim picked them up today. Wow! We can now determine the second half of the freshman class in a fair, unbiased way. We will need to be creative in catching the second half up with the first. Finally, we are totally launched.

THIS AND THAT - Several of you ask me questions in emails, and so I will try to share some things about life here in Southern Sudan………………………….

THE DINKA WOMEN – The well referred to as a bore hole is just outside the school gate. I love to go to the well because of the interaction with the women and children there. It is men who come into the school compound to greet us and visit, but women rarely come. I have to place myself where they are and the well is the perfect place. They do not know English because that is part of the education they do not get, but I know some things to say in Dinka. They were at first surprised at my fetching water, white skin and all, and my joining them in this task is a bond. When it is my turn to pump water into my jerry can, which by the way the pumping is incredible for underarm flab, they laugh and joke with me. There are many styles to pumping including jumping up and down. I try them all. Going to the well is a social activity and women often go together—a great escape from the tukul, I would imagine. When they have filled their jerry cans, one helps the other to pick up the jerry can and hoist it up on her head where she had placed a coiled rag of fabric to create a flat area for the can. The woman left has to struggle to get her can up to her head, because her partner can’t help here since she now has a jerry can of water balanced on her head. This is where I come in, and I pick up the jerry can and with unbelievable effort hoist it up for her to her head. No matter how often I help, I am amazed at the weight of that big can of water. “Mary, Mary.” they yell and wave good bye and glide gracefully off with perfect posture, the heavy jerry cans on their heads. They remind me of Paris runway models.

FASHION – I am ever fascinated with what women wear. Here I am with my drip-dry-wicking-fabric-beige-go-with-anything-skirt like a drab little bird, while they are decked out like magnificent parrots. There are no color rules for them, except brightness is the best, and no concern with stripes and prints mixed together. The women favor delicate fabric and silky things, which doesn’t seem to go with their environment of dirt floor tukuls, charcoal cooking fires, mud, and dust, and much hard work, but the contrast of the clothes they like to wear and their environments makes them look especially elegant. They also like sleepwear, but do not think of it as sleepwear, so it is not surprising to see women walking around in a nightgown. They also like to tie a length of fabric on one shoulder and draped under the other arm with the fabric falling around them like a one armed jumper. This fabric might be a printed bedsheet or a piece of chiffon. Sometimes they wear big prints styled in traditional African ways. Hot pink, red, royal blue, and bright yellow dazzle the eye. Hair is kept very short because of the heat and often is covered with a scarf of some kind. Footwear is flip flops, often falling apart. In their own family compounds women sometimes do not wear a top. This seems to be such a practical solution to the heat and the challenges of laundry, and people in Africa are wonderfully comfortable with their bodies. The sum of it all is that they look quite wonderful in their own unique way.

CHILDREN – They are very beloved and parenthood is a serious matter. Children run naked until about five or six and babies never wear diapers. They are incredibly beautiful. Big families are the norm here and siblings take care of younger siblings as a matter of course, and it seems like the most natural thing in the world. These big brothers and sisters who are often not more than seven or eight, carry wee ones around on their hips as they go about their day. The little one totally adore and depend on their sibling and are so comfortable that they are often seen napping in arms of their brother or sister. I have never ever seen the older ones tease or neglect their duty, or seem to resent their assignment. In our Western thinking, we would never impose such long term babysitting chores on our older children, but it is clearly survival for the mother, who has much to do for her family every day and needs the help of all her children. There are no toys—not one. The children play in groups with whatever there is—mud puddles, sticks, dirt, rocks—and I don’t think they are ever bored. The little ones like when we kawajas or white people wave at them, and when they spot us there is a chorus of “hellohellohellohello” sang as one continuous, joyful word that never fails to make me smile.
Boys by eight or so wear big shirts and nothing else. They are usually barefoot and the big shirt fall off one shoulder because of the skinny body underneath. The shirts are torn and stained from the vigorous play and work that they do. Boys roam around together seeming to have the best possible guy-type childhood in the bush and herding cattle and swimming in the river. Girls wear dresses and some are quite fancy, especially to church. Judging by the holes and ragged lace, they are handed down through many girls. These too big dresses are never buttoned and sashes ignored to stream by their sides rather than tie in a bow in the back. The girls have their hair very short—almost not there-- which make their features more noticeable. When they greet me in their torn dresses with their big brown eyes, high cheek bones, and wide smiles, I think of them as tattered princesses. Without many mirrors, they are totally unaware how lovely they look.

MEN – Men operate in their own society, but as a white female from the United States I have been allowed to be included in their conversations. While women are at home with their children and in the company of other females, men meet for philosophical discussions in the market place. It appears that they keep no specific hours and come and go as they wish. There is a great problem of under employment here or no jobs at all, and keeping cattle or cultivating garden plots do not take all their time. Tasks for the family welfare are gender specific with men being ridiculed if caught preparing food. Yet in conversations with men, I found them to be very proud of their wives and children, and they feel a responsibility to take care of them. Coming from a Western culture, Jim and I have to be very careful not to project our world values and beliefs about gender onto them. It seems the safest to reserve judgment and just be observers.

LIVING IN A NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC PICTURE – It often strikes me as I see the sunset filtered through the leaves of huge mahogany trees, watch people thatch the roofs of their tukuls for rainy season, or see teenaged boys herding large humped back bulls down the dirt road that I have stepped into an issue of National Geographic. I feel like I am soaking up sights that I will always remember vividly. Jim and I are also aware that in a few more decades the scenes that we are witnessing will be much different than these. We are watching a society in transition as the agrarian way of life is challenged by the need for jobs, goods, services, and roads. As charming as the simple life is, there are many challenges of clean water, education, infant mortality, and a life expectancy of 47. Jim took some villagers out in the bush so that they could buy grass bundles for their roofs and said that there he witnessed a lifestyle even more primitive than that of the nearby village. Children showed signs of malnutrition and scarcity of food was evident. The longer we are here the more aware we are of how difficult things can be for people.
THE CHALLENGES FOR US HERE IN SOUTHERN SUDAN – Awareness and the beginning of understanding this community’s needs can feel overwhelming sometimes, and it also means we must constantly discern the urgency and necessity of the many requests for help by the local people. Maintaining healthy, functional relationships is what we are striving to develop. We are seen as rich because we are from America, and because we have so many things here at the school including one of the few vehicles in the village. There is a tension to living in a culture so very different from yours—an alertness that is necessary to understand and to react to others appropriately. That process is both exciting and tiring. We look into the faces of the earnest young men who are our students and we listen to them express the hopes they have for getting through Hope and Resurrection Secondary School, and we begin to realize the magnitude of what they dream. We hope and pray that we can provide some of the foundation that they need. Being in Africa is a humbling experience and in truth we offer so little in the face of so much need.
Sending you our love and prayers for a lovely spring. Thank you so much for all the encouraging emails…………………
Mary and Jim