Wet Arrived

Last week I quoted some health statistics from a development report, based on research carried out in 2009, recently released by the European Commission in Brussels. In that same report, here are some comments about education. 

‘Education indicators in Southern Sudan are amongst the lowest in the world and the vast majority of children and youth from the south have not received any formal schooling. Less than 50% of all children receive 5 years of primary education and whilst 1.3 million are enrolled, it is estimated that only 1.9% will complete primary education… Decades of conflict and under-investment in education have left Southern Sudan with a lack of qualified and trained teachers and learning spaces. Whilst resilience in the sector was supported by the mobilisation of volunteer teachers and recruitment of demobilised soldiers into the teaching service, the legacy was such that in 2003, up to 90% of teachers had no formal teaching qualifications and had limited educational qualifications.’ 

A major focus of the work of Solidarity with Southern Sudan is the delivery of teacher training for primary school teachers. There is an urgent need, not only for more schools and more teachers, but for basic training of the current teachers. Our present focus has been on in-service but we are building facilities at both Yambio and Malakal that will enable us to begin pre-service education in 2012. 

The wet season has well and truly arrived but life and activity don’t stop in Southern Sudan. This is a country where one simply accepts there are difficulties and keeps moving forward – maybe not by the best paths but by wet paths, the only ones for the present!  To get to the church for mass the past couple of mornings, I have had to wade through water and mud in my ‘Wellingtons’. In Australia we often use the word ‘gumboots’, rather than ‘Wellingtons’. I have always presumed ‘gumboots’ describe boots made from rubbery gum but I came across another possible origin of the word. I know some Americans use the word ‘gumbo’, to describe a stew, thickened by okra, but, apparently, ‘gumbo’ is also used to describe ‘a silty soil that turns very sticky and muddy when it becomes wet and is found throughout the central United States’. Well, that description certainly also describes the sort of ground we have here in Malakal and ‘gumboots’ are good for going anywhere there is ‘gumbo’. 

Nearby to our house is a military camp. To see the mud around the tukuls and the children edging their way through the ooze seems a terrible situation – to my eyes; but the people accept, adapt and seem as happy as anyone else.  Even if our circumstances may seem miserable our response does not have to be misery. We can control our response whereas we often have little control over the circumstances. We can act the way we want to feel and soon that is how we will feel. The wet and the mud are inconveniences but they also bring the great positives of new growth and cooler temperatures. Our gardens have sprung into life and the grass is shooting up uncontrollably. Both the mother and the wife of the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell (1847 – 1922), were deaf. He wrote:

“When one door closes another door opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.” 

Very good advice that, not to dwell on what we might have had, or may have lost, but to look forward to what we can now gain. Solutions always come from the open doors, not the ones that are closed. Problems can be transformed into opportunities by adopting a positive attitude. We are here to create more opportunity, not to dwell on regret for past misfortune. How we can open the door to a better life for the people of Southern Sudan is our focus.              

Br Bill