Blogs from South Sudan, Africa

The British Foreign Office had “gone ballistic”, Philip said, and refused to recognise any “kangaroo court” judgement. They had a jet on standby in London to fly some lawyers down to contest the Sudanese People Liberation Army ("SPLA" aka "the rebels") if they wanted to take this all the way and use this situation to gain some sort of political leverage. He further added that since the British were one of the biggest “supporters” of the rebels, they would be wise not to bite the hand that feeds them. The immediate bad news, however, was that Philip had not actually returned to rescue us. The Foreign Office had told him to bluff the rebels out by putting pressure on them, and this meant that we would stay in their custody until they either let us go ... read more

We had a busy morning, which was good because it kept our minds off the prospect of saying good bye to so many people we met this trip and previous ones. Today we again spent time with "old" friends Diantha Hodges, a missionary whom my church helps support, Libby Dearing, the creator of Grace Home for Children, and Drs. Lynn and Sharon Fogleman, the husband and wife team who are the recipients of most of the eyeglasses I brought (some were left behind in Terekeka). Along with a team of twelve volunteers from Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church (the home church of Michael Slaughter, the author of "Christmas Is Not Your Birthday" and several other thought provoking books), we did a health screening of 130 nursery school students at Dar es Salaam UMC school in Yei. In ... read more

Today Karen, Ellen and I completed our plan for sharing our experience with teachers at Terekeka and Yei compounds. Because some of the teachers here in Yei attended the workshop I did in February, we retooled our presentation so that the first part was a review of strategies described then to a more participatory approach with those from last year helping those who were not there. This is one of the principles of cooperative learning--having students (in this case, the teachers) explain in their words what the teacher just said. We did nine Kagan strategies and six active learning strategies, and then demonstrated the use of eight graphic organizers. Having substituted in several of their classes yesterday really helped because we were able to tell how we had actually used some of those strategies and organizers ... read more

When Ellen, Karen and I made plans for this adventure, our only limit was that Karen could only be away from work for two weeks. So we divided up our time, planning to do classroom observations, teacher training and then follow up for one week in Harvesters at Terekeka and the following week at Harvesters in Yei. In early October we learned that the school in Yei was having exams this week, so we couldn't do any observations. Since I was kinda sorta the one in charge of the training phase, I panicked! What would we possibly do here in Yei for three days? So I frantically sent emails, numerous times, to the contacts that I had here and stressed, stressed, stressed! Then, lo and behold, Ellen, who was already in South Sudan, sent me an ... read more

Do you remember all the stories in the Bible about planting seeds and getting a good harvest? This morning Karen and I saw some of the seeds that were planted on Saturday begin to sprout. While Ellen spent the morning with the 2 and 3 year olds that she cared for this past month, Karen and I observed three teachers teach the baby class (the preschool hours are 9-11, and the teachers rotate to the three groups for 40 minutes each, teaching reading, writing, and numbers). In the first class that we observed, the teacher had a pair of students model a strategy called "rally coach," in which one student has a problem to solve and the other coaches him/her to get the answer. This was done on a very basic level by one student holding ... read more