Rebecca's Eye View

The past few days I have been going to school, preparing materials for the children for a restart of school.  I have been joined by four to five teachers each day, which is encouraging.  We have sorted out coloured pencils and crayons, jigsaws, dominos, recorders and various literacy and numeracy games.  I have brought powdered paints from home.   Unfortunately the only paint brushes available are much too big for any delicate work.   I envisage that we will be doing finger or hand painting and maybe making stencils.   We have a ridiculously large number of sports team tabards given to us by Plan International and UNICEF over the years (we are never consulted about what is actually needed by these big NGOs).   Some of the tabards will be used as aprons while painting.   Painting is a real innovation here, so we will see how it goes. My major concern is the pupils in the highest classes, because they are getting closer to the end of primary sch...

After a day in which nothing seemed to happen yesterday I decided to text all teachers and ask them to come back to school today.  There was very little response.  It seems that most have run away to Uganda.  However, I went to the school this morning.  I found our school guard busy digging a long trench in order to plant trees around the school perimeter.   We have attempted to plant trees many times in the past, with almost no success largely because of the cattle who sweep through the compound.   However, if all is carried out according to the State Governor’s instructions, this may be a thing of the past.   Who knows? A few pupils were arriving at our neighbouring school, which is a good sign, although none came to Cece.   Three teachers came, for which I am very grateful.   We have decided to keep coming to school each morning.   Hopefully we will be seen by local families and word will spread that the teachers are waiting for t...

Today the meeting mentioned yesterday finally happened.  I went along, but it consisted of numerous, lengthy speeches from large numbers of those in authority in each community.  All the speeches were in Arabic and I was left completely in the dark.  In the end I gave up and went home.  Finally the meeting ended and Charles, my partner in the school was able to enlighten me.  It seems that the final version of events (which I reported on 15 th ) is the closest to the truth. People from Mugali were asked to go back to their homes and were told that there will be enhanced security for them in future.   The Dinkas were given a deadline of July to remove all their cattle and return them to their home areas around Bor.   It was emphasized that this does not mean that all Dinkas have to leave.   They are (as individuals) free to live anywhere in their home country.   What is not acceptable is to move to another tribal area as a whole community. ...

Yesterday we were discussing more about the permutations of the current cattle raiding situation.  According to the new version, the problem started because of Dinka Internally Displaced People (IDPs) coming to the Nimule area, including Melijo IDP camp in the 1980s.  These were mainly women and children fleeing the war in their own areas.  At first there were few problems, but eventually the local people realized that the IDPs were settling in instead of returning to their traditional areas, often leaving the original inhabitants homeless when they returned from the camps in Uganda.  Then their menfolk and cattle started to move in too.  That caused a lot of problems because of the roaming nature of the men and their huge herds of cattle, completely trampling and destroying any crops in their path.  In spite of appeals to the government for the cattle to be removed, this situation has continued up until now.  Then, in the past few weeks, cattle raider...

Yesterday there were more deaths in the town, but I don’t know the number.  The local authorities have now ensured that police and soldiers are patrolling twenty four hours a day.  They have told owners of local businesses (including Pascalina) that they can open but to close by 4pm each day.  Pascalina is going to do this very cautiously, keeping the majority of her stock inside. I am very thankful to our local government officials, both in the town council office and the police and soldiers.   They have not been paid for many months by the national government and yet they remain at their posts, and are putting their lives in danger the whole time at the moment.   I noticed a similar sense of responsibility in the County Health Department during the time of Covid.   The lack of pay for government employees is an ongoing situation and hasn’t changed since I arrived in 2013.   The pay is rarely made up later, leaving people in all government-paid posi...

I am very thankful to God that I am sleeping particularly well at the moment.  I am working in the HUMAES office, hearing occasional pieces of information about what is going on.  Since this current situation started the border with Uganda has been closed to people trying to flee.  In other words, anybody with luggage is turned back.  As from today the military have taken over from the normal immigration staff and police.  This is most likely because of fears that people desperate to cross will fight with guns. I have been told that the hospital staff are too scared to work so that there is no service at Nimule Hospital.   What happens to those who are giving birth, especially those with HIV who need specialist care during labour?   What happens to anyone wounded or seriously ill?  

I slept well.  When I woke I decided that although I had asked the teachers to come at 10 o’clock, I would go at my usual time to ask children to go back home.  Pascalina told me that police had stayed on our veranda all night and that things had been quiet.  However she did not open her shop.  Things were also quiet on my way to school.  As I had expected very few children had come, but I sent those who came back home.  Then I sat for a while doing a few administrative tasks.  The men who were plastering our classrooms were working, but I could see that the cooks who should have been at the school to cook lunch for them had not come.  I was told later on that the workmen went home.  I walked home, again without incident.  HUMAES continued to work in their office so I joined them. Police and soldiers were out in numbers, trying to keep the town secure.   In the late afternoon, HUMAES heard that two policemen had been shot dead ver...

Wednesday started as a normal school day, although some teachers reported hearing gunshots in the early morning.  Slightly fewer children than normal attended school.  Later in the morning more gunshots were heard.  Several children were fetched from school by their families.  We continued to teach, although some teachers were starting to get nervous.  I was not too worried because guns are a fairly regular feature of life in Nimule.  By lunchtime we were starting to get some news.   A place called Melijo, where there is a village and a large camp for internally displaced people, had been attacked and many people killed including women and children.   Their bodies had been transported to Nimule Hospital.   Huge numbers of cattle had been stolen.   According to rumour, the perpetrators were heading in the direction of Nimule, a distance of 20 kilometres or so along very rough paths. Currently our school is operating in two shifts beca...

This is a new blog, which is simply putting my thoughts about the situation in Nimule, South Sudan, down in memoir form.  The current sudden deterioration of the situation and the lack of news about it has galvanised me to put my observations down.  My other blog, Living in Nimule , sticks completely to my work in South Sudan and Uganda for disadvantaged children.   Cece Primary School was opened against a background of civil war, however it has rarely affected us directly.   I think the government forces were supposed to protect the only tarmacked road in the country, which leads from Uganda to Juba, the capital city.   Without supplies coming through Uganda, there would be no petrol, and a lot of commodities produced outside South Sudan (which means most things) would be unavailable.   There is a barracks right at the border. In June 2016, a year after we founded Cece Primary School, there was a great escalation in the civil war in towns to the nor...