Malaquan for Me

“ You going to grow in that rocky place?”

That was the most common question I heard when I started purchasing supplies for my small garden.

The children and neighbors laughed at me as I began chipping at the small plot of cleared earth with a pick ax (come on, you would have laughed too). They laughed as I collected dried grass, manure, and kitchen waste from around the compound and piled it near my hopeful square.

But then it started to take form and others joined in. They removed stones bigger than some of our children and made my pile grow taller than me.

Of course, when it was finally time to plant everyone had an opinion of what I should grow. I had imagined it as my garden with all the things I would want to grow and eat. A perfect little kitchen garden. Here was my second lesson in how nothing in Africa is mine (I’m not sure how many dozens of lessons I’ve had since then, but I’m still not getting it). Everything is communal, everyone gets a say, and so it was determined that I would grow okra and malaquan (sour greens) in all four of my small beds.

Water had to be pumped and brought in 20L jerry cans from the well about 150M away. I paid my child laborers with “Cornerstone Shillings” and promises of okra.

We ended up growing enough greens for all the children to eat several times - that is more than enough to feed 70 people once a week for four weeks. I even had two people come by from the community to see if they could buy my malaquan – booya!

Okra it turns out will produce, produce, produce. Even after we stopped watering and were letting the pods dry to collect the next seed, small determined blossoms would arrive on the stalks, letting our young girls cook and enjoy the small pods all through the dry season.

The first garden has been dug up and we are preparing to plant again as the rains come this month. I now have teams of kids 16 and older starting their own gardens, all part of our new “self-sufficiency” program for young adults at the home and no one has said to me “we can’t grow here.”

Recipe for Malaquan (I’ve never actually made it, just eaten it):

Oil

Malquan – Sour leafy green grown by the Acholi tribe in East Africa (substitute: any leafy weed, add lemon)

Sweet Potatoes

Groundnut and/or roasted sesame

Salt

Over an open fire roast sesame and/or groundnuts in oil. Remove from heat and grind nuts into a fine butter with a stone. Sauté Malaquan with oil, add nut butter. Serve over boiled sweet potatoes

.

The Death of Johnny Cash

What do you say about a monkey who died? On February 22, we found one
of our monkeys, Johnny Cash, dead in his cage and the other monkey,
June Cash, standing by the corpse in a bewildered state.
I liked Johnny, but I wouldn't say we had a close personal
relationship. Instead, I'll leave it to others to share about Johnny.
The following was said by the mourners gathered around the funeral
pyre (because we had to burn the body, because it would have been
super gross to bury it. And yes, someone did sing 'Ring of Fire' at
Johnny Cash's funeral pyre. And yes, it was me):
"Why Johnny Cash? Why not Simba [our dog]? Simba deserves to die." -
Lawa Joyce, our head cook
"Johnny Cash bit children and scared them. Johnny Cash bit me and
scared me." - Dorothy Mandera, 7-years-old
"I am not sad that Johnny Cash died." - Kasara Lamwaka, 12-years old
(who, nonetheless teared up a little bit)
And then there was 13-year-old Amacha Emmanuel, the happiest and most
resilient child at Cornerstone. In my 6 months here I have seen Amacha
deviate from happiness one time (when he got angry and bit another
boy). Other than that, he has an ever-present smile and cheery
disposition. Perhaps it was because of his unflappability (read, the
fact that he never screamed and ran away when a monkey came near him)
that he and Johnny Cash had developed a special bond. Johnny climbed
all over Amacha, and Amacha just laughed.
As the fire was burning down, I realized I hadn't seen Amacha and went
to see if he was alright. I found him in his bedroom, lying on his bed
and drawing a picture. He seemed a little quiet but otherwise fine, so
I asked him if he had heard the news. He looked at me, nodded, and
broke into his trademark grin, and I realized: no, he hasn't.
I told him, and his face was crossed with a look of pain and shock.
The knowledge settled over him, and he began to sob. His body shook,
he wiped tears away again and again first with his hands then with his
t-shirt, and he kept trying to make himself stop and failing. Before I
knew it, I was crying with him.
And I asked myself why, because I thought Johnny Cash was alright, but
I had no special affection for him. And I realized: Johnny was
Amacha's friend, and more than that Johnny gave Amacha the opportunity
to feel like he was good at something special - when every other child
fled, Amacha stayed; when Johnny was acting like a crazy monkey,
Amacha could calm him down. Johnny made Amacha's life more full, and
Amacha did the same for Johnny. Amacha has other talents and
abilities, other ways that he feels special now - but it's distinctly
possible that being the monkey tamer was the first time he was able to
feel that, and now it's gone. Amacha will move on, but that's
something to grieve.

The Worst English Lesson Ever

Warning: this post contains a censored expletive (repeated several times) and should probably be rated PG-13.  You’ll even know which word I’m censoring. So maybe I should just leave it in, but I won’t.

Come back in time with me to about one month ago.  The scene: a warm Nimule night, just after darkness has fallen.  There’s still a little juice in our solar batteries, so some lights are on, and the children are enjoying running around and playing in the dark.  I’ve just finished eating and am standing awkwardly outside, just kind of standing there. 

*Enter Kasara, the boldest and most generally awesome 12-year-old on the face of the planet, along with the 6 or 7 other kids who follow Kasara everywhere she goes.*

*Kasara and her coterie play kind of unenthusiastically for about 2 minutes, and then…*

Kasara: Se-eth?

Me: Yes, Kasara.

Kasara: What is the meaning of @#%^ing?

Me: (unsure if I’ve heard correctly) Wait, what?

*The children in the background have been listening nonchalantly, for they too want to be enriched with this knowledge of the great English language.  They now join in with Kasara.*

Child 1/Joyce: @#%^ing. What is @#%^ing?

Child 2/Jaclyn: Yes, what is the meaning of @#%^ing?

Me: Well, it kind of depends on the context…

*No, I didn’t actually say that – but it was the first thing I thought.  What really happened was…*

Me: Um, well…in English that’s a really bad thing to say.  You really shouldn’t say it, like ever.

*All the children lower their heads in shame.*

Kasara: Oh. Sorry.

Me: No, you’re not in trouble – you didn’t know what it means and were just asking a question.  But it’s a really bad word.

Child 3/Kamau: What is, @#%^ing?

Me: Yes. Yes, that. Now that you know it’s a bad word, you shouldn’t say it anymore.  If I hear you say it again then you will be in trouble. By the way, where did you hear…that word?

*What I’m really getting at here is, “you didn’t hear me say it, right?” but I can’t be that direct.*

Kasara: *mumbles something about hearing someone say it somewhere in the market*

Me: OK. (sigh of relief) Well, just don’t say it anymore.

If you enjoyed this story, you might also like the one about one child “injecting the anus” of another.  Unfortunately, because it requires an explanatory hand gesture, it has to be told in person.

One Perspective on the Referendum

For weeks now, months really, most people have wanted to know about one thing: the referendum. January 9. The day South Sudan would vote on whether to remain united with the north or to secede and become a sovereign nation (with most indications that they would opt overwhelmingly for the latter). The day that would never come to pass, many feared.

January 9 has represented so many things, so many disparate things: on the one hand, every southerner has looked to it as a future hope and an historic day; on the other hand, they've recognized it as a potential marker of catastrophe and terror.

January 9 has now come and gone - of course the referendum period is actually a week long, so the voting won't officially close until later this week - and one thing I was struck by was a peculiar feature of democracy: at its most basic, it is the repeated act of individuals standing in a line then marking some boxes on a piece of paper. It's a mundane thing really, but the power it contains is staggering.

In America & Western Europe, I think this truth is sometimes lost in the regularity & orderliness of our voting, but in much of the world the powers that be so deeply fear the will of the people that they'll go to remarkable lengths to subvert it. Here in Sudan, there has been justified fear that this vote could lead to a return to civil war. So far that hasn't been the case - though the potential still remains. It is unbelievably difficult to reconcile the image of a snaking line of eager voters with the consequence of widespread destruction.

I imagine someday, Sarah and I will tell some younger generation about being present at the creation of this new nation, and these are the moments I will relay:

·         The elected member of the referendum commission in our state came to Nimule and gave a rousing speech in which be reminded his fellow South Sudanese that, yes, this was a vote about freedom, and yes, he was going to vote for separation, but as a nation they would never find true freedom until they forgave their brothers in the north for the wrongs the south had suffered.

·         The buses that arrived in our town (and probably dozens of others throughout the south) each morning of the week leading up to the referendum and departed each evening. On the buses, optimistic volunteers from the southern capital Juba were coming to circulate throughout the town and mobilize people to vote.

·         A visit from two of those volunteers, who came to our compound to instruct people on "how to vote." Not which way to vote, mind you, but instructions on the actual process of voting. "For 50 years we haven't voted," one of the volunteers pointed out to me. "So the people need to know what to do."

·         The trucks with giant speakers in their beds that circulated through our town from 8am-11pm every day blaring music and reminding people that, really, they should vote for separation.

·         The women running across an open field early on the morning of the 9th, racing to be the first person in line to vote.

·         The hundreds of people standing in a line that wound through that same field as they waited in line for the poll to open, and the line growing longer and longer and longer.

·         The open-palmed hand (like a traffic cop would use to tell you to stop) that represented separation. In a country where so many of the voters are illiterate, the choices have to have a visual representation. Thus, two bands gripping each other in a handshake equaled unity, and the single open palm equaled separation.

·         On the 9th, people greeted each other not by shaking hands - as they normally would - but by slapping high 5's with their open palms.

·         That evening, in the midst of a country likely coming apart, our friend and colleague Akera and his fiancée Mary were united in marriage. It was a strategic decision on their parts - with a bride price still commonly practiced and often exploited to milk the groom out of everything possible, Mary's family hadn't agreed to the union. But there's another way to get married: the woman simply sneaks away, and shortly thereafter the family receives a letter from the man informing them of her whereabouts, explaining that she won't be returning. He puts some money in the envelope too, and it's understood that they're married. Akera & Mary figured that in the excitement of the referendum, it might take a while for her family to notice her absence. They won't have an official wedding until later, but we gathered together to bless them and hear their commitment to each other (and to drink soda - always to drink soda).

There's still a long way to go in this process - votes to be cast and counted, lots of details to work out, founding documents that will likely need to be completed. There's still a lot that could go horribly wrong. But - increasingly - there's a lot of reason to hope. 

The Old Man and the Referendum

Old men are a rare sight around here - a seventy-year-old must have
survived no fewer than four major wars, two likely as a combatant and
two likely as a refugee. The old man that shows up at our compound now
from time to time, even considering the scarcity of the elderly, is a
sight to behold.
I don't know his name; it seems no one does except him because
everyone refers to him either as The Mose (which means old man) or The
Old Man. Even when he introduces himself by name, the name slips
immediately from the hearer's ears. There are men here in their 30s
and 40s who remember the old man from their youth, men who consider
him like an uncle or a mentor, who never refer to him by name but
speak of him reverentially.
His head is bald save for a tuft of brittle white hair above either
ear, and he wears enormous bifocals as thick as glass bottle bottoms
with a frame often held together by electrical tape. He requires the
use of a cane to walk, his left leg always held completely straight -
and even then he is only capable of a few short steps at a time. He
smiles often, revealing a mouth that is well on its way to
toothlessness.
When he opens his mouth to speak, though, he speaks with a crisp
patrician diction whose unparalleled enunciation catches the ear. He
was likely educated in a British system, long before conflict took
hold of his country and rendered harsh judgment on the educational
infrastructure.
I have heard him speak because he has taken to moving from town to
town and from church to church within each town to stand before as
many congregations as he can every Sunday until the referendum to
plead for peace. Dressed in gray flannel trousers, an open collar
shirt, and a navy blazer, he pushes himself up on his cane and turns
to his audience. He has three pages of notes written in a clear hand,
and before he speaks he begs the assistance of the pastor and declares
without shame that he can't actually see what he has written, so the
pastor will have to feed him his lines.
The first line reads, "Tell them their God is with them."
The pastor whispers to him, "Tell them their God is with them."
The old man's voice resounds, "Your God is with you!"
It continues on like this for three or four lines, but then something
happens. The prompts from the pastor act as a spark and enkindle the
passion inside him, and he begins to string together line after line
of rhetoric about the value of peace in times of conflict, about the
democratic process, about the role of citizens, about the many things
that the South Sudanese have to be grateful for. There is a
translator, as there always is in official meetings in a country where
the people speak dozens of different languages, and this translator
struggles to keep up with the old man as he speaks, but the old man
never falters and from time to time corrects the translator with a
more apt turn of phrase.
He closes by reminding the people that they had another opportunity
for freedom fifty years ago, an opportunity that was squandered by
rampant fear-mongering andgreedy tribal chieftains who colluded to
sell their birthright. He calls to their attention the tragic number
of lives lost because of that folly, and he asks that those lives
would be the payment rendered for this generation to taste freedom.
Then he thanks the people, and - with every bone in his appendages
quavering - lowers himself back into his chair.
Later he'll ride as a passenger on a motorcycle - one hand clutching
his cane the other holding on to the bike - to the next church or a
radio station or anywhere that he can speak his message. Late in the
evening he'll eat with his hosts if food is offered, and he'll wait
for someone to offer him a ride home. He might not be noticed for
several hours because he sits with great contentment, but in time
someone will say, "Get the motorcycle keys, so I can take The Old Man
home," and into the night he'll disappear.

Bedtime Stories

Lately we've taken to the time-honored tradition of reading bedtime stories to our younger children every night. We have this great edition of Peter Pan that has illustrations on every page, and it's already a familiar story because they've seen the movie, so the kids absolutely love it and have taken to the time-honored tradition of pleading for just one more chapter every night.

Sunday night, after promising to come read to them, I went into the office where we keep the book and was unable to find it. Unable to face the kids with no story, I made a snap decision that we would make up our own stories together. I asked one child to pick an animal, another to give the animal a name, and a third to come up with a description of the animal. At various junctures in the story, I would pause and ask them, "what do you think happened next?" and whatever they said became what happened next.

Without further ado, I present to you the story of "Tima, the Zebra who Urinated Inside":

Once upon a time, there was a zebra named Tima, but Tima wasn't like other zebras: Tima had a magic tongue, and when her tongue touched water it would turn the water into milk. Tima was so lucky because she always got to drink lots of milk.

One day, Tima drank a big barrel full of milk, and drinking all the milk made her so tired at she went into her house and fell asleep. While Tima was asleep, the clever hare came and put a lock on her door so that she couldn't get out. When Tima woke, she found she was locked in...and what was worse, she had to urinate.

Tima called out, "help me please. I'm locked in my house, and I have to urinate!" But no one came, so she waited, but still she had to urinate so badly that she called for help again and again no one came. Now Tima was beginning to have a pain in her stomach from needing to urinate, and she knew that if she didn't urinate soon she might explode. She decided she would have to urinate inside.

So she did, but then she found she had a new problem: once she started urinating she couldn't stop. Soon the urine was up to her ankle, and she was still urinating! She called for help again, "will someone please come open the door?" but still no one came, and now the urine was reaching to her knee. She kept calling for help, and no one kept coming, and the urine kept rising higher and higher - to her waist, then to her shoulders, and soon she was swimming to keep her head above the urine.

And then Tima remembered her magic tongue. If she could turn water into milk, maybe she could do the same thing with urine. She thought, 'should I touch my tongue to the urine?' and because she was about to drown, she decided she had to. So she stuck out her tongue and touched it to the urine, but of course the urine didn't turn into milk, because only water turns into milk. But you know what the urine did turn into? Soda!

Tima remembered that she had a bunch of bottles in her house, so she dove into the soda, found the bottles, and began to fill them up. Then she took the bottles of soda and sold them.

And to this day, every time Tima urinates, she does it into a bottle and touches her tongue to the urine to turn it to soda. And now Tima is a very rich zebra.

The End

Massive Failure: Who is Responsible?

(Sorry, loyal readers, I have been forbidden from posting video of the bull butchery for fear of crazy animal rights groups boycotting our site. Instead you're getting another post about education)

I know that nearly all of our posts are about the triumphs and travails of running a home for at-risk children, so I probably should remind you - as I often have to remind myself - we're not actually here to run a children's home.

My most recent, and one of the most forceful, reminders of why I am here came a few days ago as I was going through a filing cabinet trying to figure out which files I could move into storage to make room for some new files (I know, life in Africa is so thrilling). One of the files I came across was full of school results from last school year for our kids (the school year here mirrors the calendar year). Of course I was intrigued, and of course I pulled the file out and began going through it.

The first exam result was for a very clever boy here, kind of the Sudanese Charlie Brown. His aggregate score was 205/400. There at the bottom were the headmaster's comments: "a very good boy. Recommend to promote to p.4 [the next grade]."

The next files were for two more of our boys, one who I know can't read, the other who can not only read but is also a math whiz and recently schooled me in Connect 4 (badly... 2 out of 3 matches... My head was spinning when he finished with me). They finished, respectively, 38th & 39th out of 202 students in their class, one with an aggregate score of 105/400 and the other with 99/400.

Both students failed. At that point I asked one of my colleagues - a former teacher - what the cutoff was for passing. "Fourty percent," he replied. "But if enough students don't reach it, they may drop it as low as twenty." I can only imagine the look on my face, because he took one look at it and said, "You're beginning to understand how terrible things are here." 


Now, if I assume that everyone above the boy who finished 38th passed (which I don't know, but what I'm about to say would hold true even if it wasn't the case), that would still mean that over 80% of a fourth grade class failed.

In the case of failure that stunning, no matter where that failure takes place - whether in a school in Africa or America, for instance - I don't think anyone involved can avoid some of the responsibility. Clearly there's a problem with the system, because even Superman wouldn't be able to effectively teach a classroom of 200; clearly there's a problem with the parents, because no parents should tolerate paying to send their child into a classroom of 200; clearly there's a problem with the teachers, because even in a classroom of 200 kids 160 of them shouldn't score below 25% on their year end exams; clearly there's a problem with the curriculum, because any curriculum that yields such dismal results isn't effective for the population to which it's addressed. Seriously, spread the responsibility around - let no one avoid taking some share of it and doing something to change it the next time around... With one notable exception: the kids themselves. They're in school because they are learning how to learn. If they fail at such an early juncture, then I don't accept that they're failing.

As parents, the directors of this home accepted responsibility for their part and did something: they sent the kids to a different school this year, one that caps class sizes at 65 (yes, still a little high, but progress in the right direction), and already the results are showing. In the second term, my math whiz/Connect 4 General scored a 76/100 on math alone - over 75% of his aggregate score for four subjects in his previous school. He confirmed for me that the new school is better, and the other kids have echoed him. The discipline in their new school is stricter - if students arrive after 8:30 they're sent home - and the teaching is better ("the teachers come every day, and they always have a lesson ready!" a group of boys reported to me). I'm pleased with the improvement.

And I'm still troubled. I'm troubled because I have kids who I see study for hours a day to pass their fifth and sixth grade examinations, only to return with aggregate scores under 100/400. The former school pissed me off because students who were capable weren't learning; the new school doesn't piss me off, it just has a glaring flaw in it that students who have been poorly served in the earlier grades have no opportunity for remediation. I don't want to tell my kids, "don't bother studying - you can't read, so you're going to fail. You may as well go kick around the football."

All of this brings me back to the fact that I'm not here to run a children's home. When we first arrived, I was ready to dive in to educating the children and teaching literacy - I even diligently performed literacy tests with all 60 kids and used the results to break them into small single-gender groups based on ability level. And then the reality of running a children's home slapped me in the face and reminded me, "I'm a gargantuan task that you have to make some progress on first. Let me give you some 80 and 90 hour work weeks so that you don't forget it."

Sarah and I began digging in to the operations of the home. We streamlined the financial system, we hired someone to work as a full time parent, and we rewrote job descriptions for some of the other administrators to better take advantage of their abilities. Last week, we left for the entire week... And nothing fell apart. We realized, "hey, we don't have to solve every problem that comes up. We can and should let our colleagues feel the weight of responsibility for some things, and then they'll contribute to solving problems too."

So now I have overhauled my weekly schedule to include a few blocks of time every week for teaching literacy. I know exactly what I want to do, exactly how I want to do it, I've designed the structure to accommodate it...and I'm terrified to start. It's a lot like the nervous fear that I felt as I stood outside my classroom before going in to teach my first lesson on my first day as a teacher, that fear of the inevitable and the unknown. That, mixed with the fear that as soon as I start this some crisis will arise in the home and I'll be pulled away, leaving my dream abandoned again. Nonetheless, this morning I gathered my resources together to put the finishing touches on my first few lesson plans.