RIDE OF UP COUNTRY

For the last three weeks I have in the village, working at least ten hours a day to deliver what my bosses called “quality work”, or else, no mergers for me. This is my second time of coming to this part of the country. I was here, if I can remember quiet well – about seven months ago after I had just finished uni and came to do career hawking in my country; a place where I have just graduated from the school of job lobbying, taking under graduate degree in job rejection, majoring in job experience. Life in the village is way a shatter: where something modern is visualizes in cars with NGO logos, rusted aerials of Zain and MTN and the people with new clothes are the only signs of development.

And, the beneficiaries that we interact with travel far distance of two days footing to come to the centers where we serve them. Some would be rude when they don’t understand whilst others would be polite and begs our pardons. They don’t say “sorry”, because to some of them, and I have seen from my community though, sorry means a sign of disrespect. So the next time you tell your village champions sorry when you don’t understands, make sure you are ready to have a reasonable explanation – tell them your intention beyond “sorry”. Just that.

I was reading a blog post, which I had asked more than five people who were online to view the link and paste the content to my Whats’App because the internet is never reliable to make me Google anything like the Khartoum’s Peace Accord or what share of the substance that our MPs have finally start smoking these days because had read it almost in three times on Radio Tamazuj and Eye Radio that there is never going to be any parliamentary budget presentation until the salary arrears are cleared.

The site is belongs to this popular Kenyan blogger: His name Biko Zulu. He was narrating a story about a young boy he has helped and how he has involved different partners to help Ken get out of his village to Egerton University. This made me think of a school deep in Ariath County, in Lol State. St. Denis Comboni. A three structures-based roof-thatched learning institute: kitchen, staffroom and then a store. “What do they keep in that house?” I asked myself when I sat with the laptop that was threatening me with 17% power insufficient. The other added physical structure was a rusted-roof old Church. It must have been build twenty or thirty years when Christianity was penetrating religion into this region, leaving the marks everywhere “she” goes. By the way, most people in this region are Peter, Santino, and George. So just know that most of the Christians in this part of the country are Catholics.

I was working on seven beneficiaries to receive minimal amount of what most of our suited guys drink in one hour when they’re chilling with active drinkers back in Juba.

“How long have you been teaching?” I was with someone from the ministry. A lady. She is a lovely lady. She is between fifty-four and fifty-five. Throughout our work, she has been interested in female teachers than male teachers.

“I have been teaching for the last ten years,” she said.

I don’t quite remember her name but I think it must have been one of those Abuks, Awiens or anything common that people in that region baptizes their daughters.

“And you don’t have any other female teacher,” my feminine mother asked.

“We don’t have. Most of the women don’t really take up teaching jobs because the home chores are vests on their shoulders.” Such responses don’t really entice my “field mother”, for whatever case. One thing that really impressed her was that, at least there was a female principal in this school. Though it was from dust, at least she has been heading six other men in the pay sheet and they all response to her when she growls.

I was rushing to insert the details to the computer so that the payment isn’t interrupted because once I leave that place; I never wish to come back very soon, because my heart was heartbroken. Sad!

I was born in the village, where there were no lights to confirm my first reactions to the world and good hospitals, where there were no first aid kits; so when you get a gully wound, they will chew a leave of a specific tree and the liquid substance is put on the bleeding wound. I might have the refuge status on me, and most of those kids that were raised in the camp; but there is a feeling from being home. The rare generosity that you get when you’re offered a cup of water by a stranger because you have come to work for them – which you could have never earn in the refugee camp when you walk into someone’s rakuba, thinking you will be given a sheer attitude because you’re a Junubi. Sometime when we get a goat slaughtered, fortune of its ribs waiting to travel into tiny resized stomachs of malnourished city dwellers. I’ve been questioning myself whether they’re not doing too much.

“Hah!” My friend hissed. “This is what they enjoy,” he says. “They love giving without expecting,” he says.

“But they have absolutely nothing,” I would also keep reminding him. Giving the least they have to the visitors, I have always found it like a burden that we have been shouldering them. They have bigger things to handle: school for the kids, lack of modern basic needs like medications, etc, etc.

So I thought of this. Before we beat our chests harder in public and call ourselves sons and daughters of the land, we need to see deep inside the port, where people like the pupils from St. Denis Comboni use tree shades as classrooms because they have the quest for studies but lacks a modern classroom. A sky blue plastic table, with one side broken leg, and a hand made chair. There was water offered, just like in other schools but what cup can a school afford to serve us water? The principal went inside, draw water from the pot and then she cordially extends her hands to serve my boss in a small metallic plate.

When we were stepping out of our car, I had been asking myself a lot of questions: what’s keeping this school’s teachers not to attend to their farming rather than just waiting government’s quarterly pay salaries and funny European bureaucratic incentives ditch in the pockets of agencies? No sign about the government grants that always littered to the schools after 90% of it is squandered.

Just like those posts Bahsir’s rogue regime ruling in Sudan, the school has one of those portable chalkboard which I saw the teachers caring them to their roof-thatched staff room. We were working on a payroll, and then I was told; that – it was someone’s class that I’m sited in. Just see the picture above – a standard five, or four, or three’s classroom. I have forgotten that one too, but they had told me. We stopped the work earlier that evening, sat on my two meters’ hotel room in Nyamalel – thinking of how many lessons could each class be taking when most of them share a chalkboard yet the school is dismissed at least by twelve noon? How committed are the teachers to leave their farms and report to class instead and by the end of the three months, receive less than fifty dollars as their government’s paycheck? And lastly, what is the school performance in the national examination level? These questions stung me like a bee.

Sometimes I do question every public office in this country for not taking things that matters to us very seriously. But again, it all begins with us; the people that need better things for ourselves. Few weeks ago, when I was working on this same project in Juba, I had found mud made classrooms with broken chairs at Gorom Primary School. It’s easy to blame it all on politics, but again, there are better schools that have better facilities than others; which, they have made a good use of their learning environment. So maybe the school materials that are found in the market used by tea makers should be monitored. Maybe if the charity organizations in the country are really honest with their plans, then they should plan to device a mechanism to make sure that their resources are handed to the right people and they have been use for their intended purpose. Neither Gorom Primary School in Luri County nor St. Denis in Ariath County, there are so many schools around the country where kids study under the tree or lacking even a mere pit latrine.

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We are back again. I would like to appreaciate each one of you who have been reading from this site. We’re growing our number and I am happy.

If you’re in Juba and would want to join our chatroom where we shall be doing book reading and review, kindly inbox me on Facebook (Zack Mayu) or Twitter @zack_mayul. Thank you.