A Loveless Society

It is almost ten years since I arrived in South Sudan, specifically Nimule, a small town close to the border with Uganda.  Life has been very challenging but rewarding as well.  I have done things I never dreamt I could do, such as founding a school, fundraising for the school to the extent that we have always been able to keep going, even if the school is basic.  I have also managed to take a growing number of deaf children to special schools in Uganda.  All this, completely independently of any organisation.  It seems like a miracle to me.

I have always found the way children are treated abhorrent.  They are beaten for the smallest thing, with no love shown to them at all.  Children are dragged up by fellow siblings, while their mothers do nothing for their children.  Their fathers are generally completely out of the picture.  Children are expected to do all sorts of heavy household chores, leaving them tired at school and with no time to do homework.  This is especially a problem for the girls.  As their workload increases, their school work suffers and they end up dropping out of school. There are no kisses, cuddles, stories, songs or even conversation. Whenever I try, after witnessing the caning of children, to intervene I am told that Africans only learn through their buttocks.  Not once in the whole time I have been here has any parent listened to me on this subject.

The result is that a great many of the children are developmentally delayed when they go to school and have completely no idea of how to interact without fighting.  Some even come to school armed with sticks.  They have never been taught how to listen, which makes it very hard to teach them. Only a minority of pupils make steady academic progress.  Other schools continue the beating, taking over from the parents.  It makes me very sad.

One of the most difficult challenges for me personally has been the almost universally accepted view that white skin equals dollars.  I am a religious person who came with very little money of my own and relies completely on fundraising to fulfil my mission.  During these ten years, I have been asked for money almost on a daily basis.  Most of these beggars are visibly prosperous, wearing smart, clean clothes and definitely chubby, even carrying smartphones.  Others are not, but are obviously the worse for drink or drugs.  Except where the need is very clear and my small funds are sufficient, the answer is a polite no.  I explain repeatedly that all the money I get is for the school.  This is not something anybody is willing to understand.

In spite of all these difficulties, I thought I had been accepted and was helping the local people.  I thought at least that those who first told me of the need for a school for the most marginalised children would support me.  Then I started having difficulties even with my fellow founders, who were beginning to make demands which did not fit in with the school mission.  They have orchestrated problems with the owners of the school land, so that the landowners have started making demands which would bring down the school if I agreed to them.  Things have now reached a point where there are actual threats against me.

Through all this, I have been teaching their own children.  Yet, they want privileges which according to them should not be given to the families who are not part of their clan.  They have no shame at all.  I should point out that the clan is rich.  They recently had a funeral on which they lavished huge amounts of money, which would have kept the school going on a very high level.  Instead, they used it on a dead body.

In religious terms, I see a lack of love which is pitiful.  Generations of refugee life has made the local people psychologically very needy and selfish.  They do not care for their children and even try to force me to cane their children at school.  They fritter their money away on completely unnecessary things, while threatening the very school which their children attend, in the hope of more riches for themselves.

Will the school survive this attack?  I really don't know.  I love the children I teach and desperately want to see them succeed in life.  Yet, their fellow countrymen care only for themselves.

Lord have mercy on us all.