11th May 2022

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 because we do not have enough classrooms for all classes to be in school at the same time.  The morning classes left and, at my insistence, we started our afternoon classes.  Some teachers said that we really needed to close the school at once, but I did not want to start a panic among the children.  We reached a compromise that we would close at break time, which we did. 

The general atmosphere in Nimule is of tribalism and suspicion of other tribes.  Shortly before we went home I was teaching our Primary 7 class.  We used to have several Dinkas in this class but there are now only two, a girl and a boy.  There is a lot of prejudice against Dinkas in our local area because they are cattle keepers who traditionally carry out cattle raiding of their neighbouring tribes.  They are also in government as the President is a Dinka.  Another reason the Dinka tribe is feared by the Madi is because they are seen as warriors, while the Madi are smallholder crop-growers.  Normally we do not hear tribal abuse in our school and it is against our school rules.  When the news of what was happening started to circulate, a girl immediately said that the Dinka boy must protect us all.  The poor boy buried his head in his hands.  I announced that I was the one to protect everybody is anybody came to the school, doing a comic mime to demonstrate my bravery.

Before closing I went from class to class, praying with the children for peace in the community and for their safety.  Then I dismissed them.  After locking the school I walked home uneventfully.

Later in the afternoon I sat, as I often do, on the veranda of my friend Paskalina’s small shop watching the world go by.  Suddenly people started running, including some colleagues from HUMAES, the partner organization for the school.  They told us that ‘youths’ were throwing stones at people.  We hurriedly packed all the goods of the shop inside and bolted the door.  We were in the nick of time, as the boys’ stones were hitting the door of the shop.  I call them boys, because they were only in their early teens, not even full grown.  We also secured all other entrances to our compound and then sat inside the compound listening.  Gifty, a young woman living in the compound went to a local borehole to fetch water.  She came running back because there was a battle going on close to the borehole between the ‘youths’ and the police. 

I considered whether we should open the school the next day or not.  I was very reluctant to let the mob win and for our children’s education to suffer.  On the other hand, I did not want to put anyone in real danger.  I called the head teacher of our neighbouring school and asked what he was planning to do.  He had decided to open at 10 am after assessing the situation first.  I decided to do the same, so I texted all our teachers to let them know.