Returning Home with a New Appreciation

I have now spent 8 weeks of my life living in Africa.  I have been totally blown away by the experience.  It is a place I never thought I would visit in my lifetime!  I witnessed the birth of a country, saw the vast deserts of the Sahara, the Alps, Mediterranean Sea, Mount Kilimanjaro out of the aircraft window, but the most important was to be able to experience the people and culture of South Sudan.  It has been a extremely rewarding experience to be a minority for the first time in my life.  I receive stares, discrimination, and was even confronted a number of times.  I saw first hand, the effects of  malnourished and impoverished people.  In a small way, I felt like by doing my job, I was able help aid some of these people.  

African society is extremely different than western society.  Many countries in Africa are still trying to find their path to success.  I hope for the people of these countries, they find peace, stop corruption and most important take care of the underprivileged. 

As I witnessed the lead up to South Sudan’s independence, I saw a country that was building, cleaning up garbage, and generally improving its way of life for its citizens.  A month and a half later, I see a country who is still building, but the garbage is starting to pile up again, people are getting lazy, and the country is under a major fuel shortage.  This will hamper further development. 

So as I write this, I am sitting in Nairobi, Kenya with only 22 hours till I am seeing my wife and daughter at the gate of Toronto Airport.  I defiantly am returning home a different person and have a new appreciation for what we have in western society.  But I am still looking forward to returning in 2 months to that continent they call Africa.  

24 Hours to go!!!!!!

Only 24 hours remain until I board the airplane to depart back to western society!!  I am looking forward to many things, but the main one is to see my girls!  Two months from now, I start this all over again!

End is getting near.

I am trying not to get my hopes up to high, but I have been told that most likely I will be coming home this week.  That means in 4 days, I will be boarding an aircraft to return to Canada.  I am extremely excited to go home but have valued this experience. In 2 months it all starts over!  I will most likely be back to Juba.

Canada is larger than Newfoundland!

As I continue my tour around the school with “Pimp Daddy Principal”, I see a number of other classes.  He shows me a P6 class who welcomes me with the now familiar “GOOD MORNING MY GUEST, WELCOME TO MRS. JONES P6 CLASS.  YOU ARE WELCOME MY GUEST”.  The teacher recognizes that I’m not from around Juba, and asks me to tell the class where I am from.  She is in the middle of teaching geography.  I tell her I am from Canada, so she pulls down a roll up map that is on the wall.  The roll up map is torn and only shows Newfoundland, and a tiny part of eastern United States.  I end up drawing a crude representation of Canada on the board for them.  The map is so old, it still has the eastern block countries as USSR, and many African countries are named incorrectly with improper boarder locations.  The children do not have atlas or text books in the class but madly take notes.  I talk for a few minutes to the class about Canada, and the children ask a few questions.  They did understand it is cold there, but thought I snowed year around.  There big concern was what kids in Canada did when there was snow on the ground.  No child in this class has ever seen snow and only some have seen pictures of it.

I continue my tour, as I go by the window of a class room of P2 children (Grade 2), I see a kid stand up and peek out the window.  One kid says a term I have come very familiar with “Kawaja” (name for the white man).  Three other kids rush over to see the “Kawaja”.  The teacher quickly comes over and gives the instigator a swat on the back of the head.  Everyone quickly returns to their seats. 

Back to school

A couple of days ago I managed with some help from a local contact I have to get into school.  I wanted for the benefit of my wife’s class see how the children are educated in South Sudan.  The school I went to was a middle class school that taught 230 children from primary grade 1-8.

I never was a big fan of school, but here I go back!  I walked through a metal gate into the school yard.  The classrooms form a U shape around the courtyard which is their playground.  I sit down with the principal who is dressed like a pimp.  He is sporting a silk pink suit, with a white shirt and white shoes, a hat and a cain.  

Each student pays 600 SDP ($200 USD) per semester, they get a month to 5 weeks off between semesters and there are 3 semesters per year.   School is South Sudan is not government funded or regulated.  It is a privilege to go to school and many children do not get the chance.  At the moment there is no standard curriculum but the Ministry of Education Southern Sudan is working on it and will be implemented shortly.  

The walls of the school are made out of mud and branches.  This is a process that is used on many local buildings.  The branches act as rebar would in cement and a mixture of mud is used as cement.  There are no glass windows and no door but just an open hole in the wall.

Pimp Daddy Principal toured me into some of the older grades first.  P6-P8 (grade 6-8).  There are not as many students in these grades due to the country being at war during this time.  They are learning about science and living things.  The teacher is drawing on a wall that is painted as a black board and the students are madly writing notes.

I go into P5 class and the roar almost frightens me!  “GOOD MORNING MY GUEST.  WELCOME TO MR. SMITHS P5 CLASS.  YOUR ARE WELCOME MY GUEST!” they chant in unison.  These children are disciplined similar to military children.  Children at schools wear uniforms.  This helps diminish the classes and one can not easily tell who is rich and poor.  The teacher is just teaching the children how to count money using real life props from his pocket.  They count by 5‘s, 10’s, 25’s, and 50’s.  There are probably 45 kids in this class with one teacher.  The desks are wood tables with cheap plastic lawn furniture for chairs.

To be continued tomorrow!

I'll be back!

Sorry I have not written much the last week.  Work some times gets in the way of blogging.  I still don't have a date that I am due home, and am only getting busier by the day.  When I get a chance, I'll sit down and write some of my experiences about my last week.

Rainy Season

Rainy season is defiantly just getting going.  Every day this week it has rained, there are many days the sky is grey.  The mango trees are starting to bloom and the drainage ditches are overflowing every morning.  Locals here in Juba say this has been a very dry rainy season, usually there is torrential downpours and the Nile swells up past its banks, but the weather has changed.

Every time it rains here the water just runs off the soil and to lower ground.  The soil here is very sandy and doesn’t tend to absorb the water easily.  So to keep the vegetation green you need frequent rain, not heavy rains.  I am only a country to the west of where a great famine is occurring and I am sure they are wishing for even some of the light constant rains we have received.  Lets hope mother nature will allow some rain to start falling in Somalia and Eastern Kenya to help these regions to grow their food and start to rehabilitate the lands.