An Imminent Return

It seems that the older one becomes the faster time passes. I know such a notion is illusory but many people express a similar feeling. Thus, I find myself in the last week of my home leave and will be returning to Southern Sudan, next week, to rejoin our Solidarity with Southern Sudan team. Having previously caught up with many Brothers, family and friends, these past couple of weeks I have been enjoying the company of my sister, brother and their partners, in a holiday house where one looks out the window at a sparkling ocean and golden sand.My sister recently asked me if there is anything special I would like to eat this week before I return to Sudan. There is an abundance of everything here in bewildering variety and diversity. I found myself thinking that even a humble sausage, which it is possible to buy in the capital, Juba, but nowhere else that I have seen in Southern Sudan, can seem very special in some circumstances. For many people in Southern Sudan, simply not to be hungry is special. While here I have been re-examininging some statistics published in 2010 by Southern Sudan Centre for Census, Statistics and Evaluation. All statistics in Southern Sudan are somewhat unreliable because the infrastructure for a reliable, comprehensive mechanism for collecting them simply does not exist; but the best estimates describe a disadvantaged people in a country of continuing need:

The population is a very young one, with 32% under the age of 10, 51% under the age [...]

Culture Comfort

After nineteen months in Southern Sudan, I am back in Australia for a vacation. It is certainly good to catch up with family, confreres and friends. It is comfortable to be in a place where one understands the language, where one looks like everybody else, more or less, and where local knowledge and familiarity make one feel at home. It felt novel to step into a shower and turn on a hot water tap and regulate the water temperature – rather than just accept whatever temperature comes out of the shower rose. Yesterday I used a washing machine and dryer for the first time since I went to Sudan. I had almost forgotten how easy it is to do a lot of washing in a short period of time, quite a change from the hand washing of clothes, often with  less than pure water, in Southern Sudan. Clean water is a wonderful gift. It takes a conscious adjustment to accept that I am again able to drink tap water! The range of available food here seems extraordinary, after Sudan, and the ability to prepare food quickly in a microwave or toaster also makes life easier. But I am also struck by how expensive food and clothing is – and of the dramatic increase on the prices I recall from mid-2009. The range of goods is much greater here than in Southern Sudan but the cost is enormously increased. It costs about $5,000 each year to support one of us in Southern Sudan but that amount [...]

Triumph or Tragedy

This is the last week, of the eight-week programmes, of in-service Teacher Training we are delivering in Yambio, Malakal and Leer. For the first time, we have been able to use our own purpose-built facilities in Malakal and Yambio. Better facilities were provided in Leer, and it really has been a great boost to the quality of what we can deliver. On each site, the teachers received seven hours of instruction each weekday from their SSS tutors. Progress is not always rapid but valuable steps have been taken towards improving the quality of primary education. On each site also, although facilities are still to be completed, a few students lived in. So meals had to be arranged and improvised accommodation made available. Suffice to say the teachers in residence responded very well indeed along with great majority who came to classes each day from their homes. I have been able to visit each of the sites and have been most gratified at the excellent spirit I have observed among the student teachers and the SSS tutors. Given all the uncertainties in Southern Sudan when the programmes began in early February, I think our tutors and the participating teachers can rightly feel that something very valuable has been achieved. Perhaps one could be excused for having a feeling of triumph that all has worked so well. Our programme was interrupted in Malakal when fighting broke out around our compound between rival military forces. Both tutors and the student teachers had to sit it out for several [...]

Children can be Cheated

A recent evaluation report commissioned by the Jesuit Refugee Services in Juba stated: ‘…Key problems that need to be targeted now include the frequent absence of teachers from school, teachers who are present but don’t teach and teachers with limited teaching skills. … Most pupils could neither read nor calculate when they finished their third year of primary education.’  Building schools and giving more children the chance to attend schools is not enough. The children are cheated of their only opportunity to be educated if the teachers in those schools do not teach well. Three years of primary education and most children do not possess basic numeracy and literacy skills. Yet these are not kids of limited ability. Many can communicate already in  several languages. One major problem is that the attendance of many of the children is far better than that of their teachers!  Not that it would be fair to blame the teachers! Most are very poorly paid and sometimes their pay is a month or two delayed in reaching them. So they need to do other work to support their families. The encouraging signs, however, are the large number who generously give up their vacation time to follow our in-service programmes. Solidarity with Southern Sudan is currently delivering the four-year GoSS teacher training curriculum to 176 teachers in three centres – Malakal, Yambio and Leer. An additional 43 teachers are following a Foundation programme in Malakal where they are receiving instruction for eight weeks for 6 periods each day of seventy-minute duration [...]

Who Would Have Thought?

Here I am, a 67 year-old man, who joined the Brothers 49 years ago and now find myself in North West Africa, a continent I had never visited before 2009, living in a religious community of  four members. Having embraced a celibate lifestyle as an eighteen year old and having lived in all male religious communities for 47 years, now I am living with three women, all considerably younger than I am, and I’m feeling virtuous about it! When I left home at that young age, my mother said to me: ‘Promise me that if you are not happy you will come home.’ Neither my mother, nor I, ever thought it would come to this! Hugh Hefner might never believe it but the remarkable thing is that this situation is totally comfortable – and wholly innocent! Mind you, I am confident that those of us in this community have very different values and motivation than that evidenced by the denizens of the Playboy mansion! We mix and interact naturally and easily. Sexuality is simply not an issue. Each of us continues to be who she/he is and it is not greatly different from my years of living in all male communities where each treated the other with mutual respect. We pray together regularly, talk together easily, work together comfortably and we sleep securely – unless the LRA are reported to be in this area! In most of our Solidarity with Southern Sudan communities, we have ensuite rooms but here we share a common bathroom in [...]

Hidden Hazards

Early this week one of the Comboni Sisters from Nzara was driving a carload of people to a gathering in another town, Maridi. Unfortunately she lost control of the vehicle and slid off the gravel road. The solid, four-wheel drive vehicle was badly damaged but no-one was seriously hurt. Here the red gravel is commonly called ‘marrom’, although I can’t find the word in a dictionary and am not sure how to spell it. It is easy to slide on such a road, especially if there are any corrugations or soft patches. The day before this accident, I had driven from Juba to Riimenze, a trip of just over seven hours on unsealed roads. I always say a prayer of thanksgiving after a safe arrival. It is ironic that the really bad roads with massive ditches, too deep to be called potholes, are the safest sections because they force one to go very slowly! The better made sections invite faster driving – and more chance of misadventure! Here in Southern Sudan, I don’t have to worry about hitting an unexpected kangaroo but I have run over two snakes recently, I think. Maybe they took last second evasive action but I surmise I was a lethal hazard to them!The check points on the road are also a hazard. Most of those people on duty at a check point just remove the barrier and wave cars through but occasionally one meets someone who is a bit officious. The recent trip back cost me two packets of cigarettes [...]

Uncertain Times

The referendum has taken place and there is little uncertainty about the result. Although it will be sometime before official results are announced, several states, including Western Equatoria, where I am at present, have announced results close to 99% in favour of secession. Here, in this small region of Riimenze, 671 voted for secession and only 8 for unity. By contrast, the Southern Sudan Referendum Committee (SSRC) states that only 58% of voters in North Sudan opted for secession.The SSRC website stated on 21st January that out of the 3,932,588 people inside and outside the country that registered for voting, an overwhelming number, 3,138,803 had chosen secession while 44,518 voted in favor of unity. Those figures were based on the processing of 100% of the votes in North Sudan and 83.4% of the votes in the South. To that date, 5,972 blank votes had been cast and 7,745 invalid ones had been excluded from calculations. The further requirement that 60 percent of those registered must vote had been easily exceeded by last Wednesday, the fourth day of voting. Fortunately in most places the situation has remained stable and peaceful. There have been few reports of violence and any that have occurred has been given customary prominence by the media. Certainly the country has been no less stable than normal and Southern Sudan has survived the referendum with more calm than most anticipated. Many shops remain closed, however, with no indication of when, and if, they will re-open. In Yambio we have noted extraordinary jumps in [...]

Omar and Omens

In an AAP report following the visit of Sudan President Omar Al-Bashir to Juba, the capital of Southern Sudan, on Tuesday, 4th January, it stated:

“I personally will be sad if Sudan splits. But at the same time I will be happy if we have peace in Sudan between the two sides,” Bashir said in a speech to senior southern officials broadcast live on state television. “I am going to celebrate your decision, even if your decision is secession.” He had earlier been greeted by southern leader Salva Kiir on his arrival at Juba airport…Around 500 people gathered outside the airport, shouting slogans for separation such as “no to unity”, and waving southern flags, but the atmosphere was festive.

I was one of the 500, but not intentionally. Fr Joseph took me to the airport just before 8:00am for a 9:30am flight to Juba. The route was lined with police and armed soldiers and several police queried us on our way to the airport. At one stage we were blocked and I got out of the vehicle and began to walk but shortly after, Fr Joseph, having charmed his way past yet another interrogating constable, picked me up again. I did walk the last three hundred metres only to find no-one was being admitted to the terminal and no flights were departing. So there we sat, or stood, about 150 people, until 11:30am. Flights resumed after President Omar Al-Bashir arrived and moved off in his escorted convoy. My flight took off just after 2:00pm.Yes there were people [...]

Faith or Foolishness

Tomorrow, I shall be back in Southern Sudan. At a recent meeting a question was asked about the security and safety of our members during the time of the referendum.  Similar questions have been directed to me outside of the meeting by others interested in our work in Sudan and once or twice there has been almost a suggestion that it may be foolish for us to be in Sudan at this time of uncertainty.My reply has been that those of us living and working in Southern Sudan assess it to be a situation where there is some risk and it is inevitable that there will be varying degrees of anxiety about this. None of us are seeking to be martyrs for the cause but, nevertheless, we have assessed the risk and believe the right decision is for us is to stay. Most NGO personnel left the country during the election. We stayed. In fact many of the missionaries stayed right through the war years and the Church has great credibility in the eyes of the people because the Church, by the presence of both expatriate and local, priests and religious, stood in solidarity with the people during those devastating years. SSS has taken care to establish a clear policy decision. Any individual SSS member who wishes to leave the country during this time of [...]

Plotting Our Path

Over the past few months our management team in Southern Sudan has worked together to produce a draft Strategic Plan for the consideration of the Solidarity with Southern Sudan Board that meets in Rome next month. The Plan is as comprehensive as we can make it and, although written with conciseness in mind, covers some 40 pages plus another 27 pages of Appendices. Yet given the unpredictability we face in Southern Sudan, I think maybe we need a different word to describe this document – maybe a ‘chart’ or a ‘plot’. I’ll settle for the word ‘plot’ but minus most of the sinister overtones this word might suggest. To me the word ’plan’ suggests a reasonable confidence in how and where we are going to achieve our goals in orderly fashion. The uncertainties here, however, are abundant and it almost seems an overstatement to call it a ‘plan’. Rather we are attempting to plot our way through a minefield of possibilities beyond our control. This is a country of developing infrastructure where government ‘forward planning’ is commonly no more than last minute planning. It has just been announced that registrations for the referendum will be extended for another week and there will be extra public holidays to make it easier for officials to register. Late changes of this kind are common in Southern Sudan. There is usually minimum prior notice and key calendar events affecting us such school dates are simply not announced well in advance. There is no postal service in Southern [...]