Contrasts

We have been in Torit now for nearly 5 weeks.  The weather was very hot and dry for a few days giving us a taste of what is to come in the dry season but it is cooler again now.  We are settling into a bit more of a routine now. Working from about 08.45 until 13.00, then having lunch and returning to the office from 14.00 to 17.00.  There isn’t any power or Internet access available over the lunchtime period.  It looks as if we will have to stay in the guest house (see below) for the immediate future although basic when compared with home, it has water and electricity from 18.00 until 23.00 most evenings. 

Eastern Equatoria State Guesthouse

Torit Meeting Point (where we eat)

I’ve been mainly office based in the State Ministry of Education, my role is to provide advice on anything from leadership, management and planning to teacher training, HR and finance systems. The work I’ve done to date has mainly centred on planning and advising on job descriptions.  I made one school visit last week (see below).  The schools fall into 3 main categories, government, community or private.  This is a very new government school, only established in February this year and currently has 610 children on role in the main school and 110 in the pre-school.  The school has a number of challenges including not having enough classrooms for all the children, insufficient desks and textbooks, teachers not turning up to work, not being able to retain pupils until the end of their primary education particularly girls, the community using the toilet and water resources during the day, no electricity or boundary fence.   Sometimes there isn’t even chalk to write on the blackboard.  Teachers often have to go into the market to buy the chalk!  There is very little funding made available to the schools other than for teachers’ salaries.  Funding is generally very limited due to the austerity measures imposed by the government due to the cessation of oil exports.  Parents are able to make a small termly contribution to their children’s schools education.  Children start primary school aged 6 (Primary 1) and finish in Primary 8. Pre-school children come aged 3 years.  The system works in a similar way to the grade system in the USA with children promoted or held back at the end of the school year depending on whether or not they pass their end of year exams in November.  If a child is promoted each year they finish their primary education aged 13 years.

Dumak Primary School, Torit

We had the opportunity last Saturday to visit the new hotel that is being built in Torit.  This just gives a picture of what the future might hold.  The hotel is a short drive from where the locals get their water either from the river or from boreholes.

The old and the new

This week’s personal highlights include showering with a frog which then spent time in my room, finding a huge moth in the loo, seeing newly born kittens (minutes old) and seeing the spider below which incidentally is harmless believe it or not!  Monday was announced as a bank holiday as the Speaker of the National Assembly came to visit the town and speak to State Ministers and senior officers.  The photograph shows school children going to greet him.

School children at the Speaker’s visit

Some local wildlife

In Juba and on the road to Torit

First Impressions

It seems amazing that we have been in Torit for over a week.  It is much quieter here after the hustle and bustle of the capital Juba.  There is an overwhelming sense that there is a huge amount to do here and that the country faces many challenges.  There is an urgent need for so much - roads, sanitation, clean water, improvements in education, health and police services.  The inequalities are massive compared with home and will take years to overcome.  Comparatively everything is very expensive.  The people are amazing, very friendly and really don’t know what to make of us!  I guess we are the talk of the town!

We are still trying to sort out our permanent accommodation and are hoping that we can move into some tented full board accommodation at Caritas, a partner agency mainly working on infrastructure projects.  At the moment we are still in a local guesthouse and although basic in terms of amenities, it is okay and has wall-to-wall live Premier League Football on the television on Saturdays and Sundays as does the more upmarket Hotel Torit!  We are managing to get food okay - breakfast at a small local Ugandan café run by health workers working on a project here, lunch with bread and some fruit (bananas, watermelon and avocado, the latter being amazing) from the market and in the evenings we have either go back to the Ugandan café or go to Hotel Torit where the food is expensive but good. We can also get Tusker, Kenyan beer, Guinness Export and red wine from South Africa.

The area around Torit is very flat.  The soil is very fertile but not extensively farmed.  The potential in this part of South Sudan is vast.  The main crop is groundnuts. The foliage is very green and luscious.  To the south the horizon is dominated by the Imatong Mountains, the highest peak being over 10,000ft.  On the way from Juba to Torit we passed several unusual rock formations probably of volcanic origin (see photo).  The largest birds seen so far include heron, kite and vulture.  There are a myriad of more brightly coloured smaller birds and butterflies.  The weather is very changeable at the moment – it is the wet season which lasts until October.  One day it can be hot and dry, another cooler with heavy rain and thunderstorms which can be really spectacular, reminiscent of holidays in France!

Apologies for being so mundane!