Dave Eggers’s trip report from southern Sudan
A brief note about this account: After returning from Sudan, I tried for many weeks to make something artful from the notes and recordings I made during this most recent trip. I tried and struggled and half-started, and meanwhile too many weeks have come and gone and I felt I was being silly and precious. The important thing, I realize, is to produce some account of the trip, with useful information for those interested in the work of Valentino’s foundation (and others like it), and to do it quickly. So below I’ve tried to be lucid and to provide the information that might be edifying to those interested with the state of education in Northern Bahr al-Ghazal, and with Valentino’s work in his hometown. Because the information below ranges from the nuts-and-bolts of the educational tasks ahead in the region, to more general reportage about Valentino’s and my recent travels, the reader is encouraged to skip around as much as desired. — D.E.
BACK TO MARIAL BAI
Getting to Marial Bai, in southern Sudan, from California, takes essentially four days. There are direct flights from San Francisco to London — that’s 14 hours. From London to Nairobi is another 10 hours. Once in Nairobi, there is an eight-hour layover before the next flight, this one to Lokichoggio, the ramshackle staging ground for flights into southern Sudan during the country’s 21-year civil war.
The flight from Lokichoggio into southern Sudan doesn’t leave until the next morning, so most travelers stay overnight at a place called TrackMark, a shockingly well-tended compound of single-person huts, each of them with electricity, a bathroom, a shower, even air-conditioning. And a swimming pool. The compound has a swimming pool. A nice swimming pool. This sort of thing is so incongruous in the desert of northwest Kenya that even dipping your toe in it just doesn’t seem right.
There are small-craft flights that leave from Loki early in the morning and which stop four times in southern Sudan — in Juba, the new capital of the south; in Rumbek, the old capital; in Wau, a medium-sized town, growing with the return of thousands of southerners who had emigrated north during the war; and then Aweil, the capital of Northern Bahr al-Ghazal state in southern Sudan.
The last time Valentino and I went to Sudan, in 2003, we were virtual stowaways on an aid flight; we sat in the cargo hold of a plane that was unloading bicycles, food, and building materials in the Nuba Mountains. Now that the war between the government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) is over, commercial flights go in and out of southern Sudan with regularity and ease. The last time we flew, it was the dry season, the country was scorched and pale, and fires cut across the landscape below. When we landed, our aircraft was met on each airstrip by international inspectors — Scandinavian adventurers driving white Jeeps and wearing wraparound sunglasses — charged with ensuring that no weapons were being smuggled via ostensible aid flights.
This time, the war is over, and it’s the rainy season; the earth below is unspeakably green. When landing in Aweil, my plane is met by Valentino and Rebecca Coolidge, a friend of the Foundation who has much experience working in Sudan and accompanied us on this trip. It is late July, and Valentino and Rebecca have been in Sudan for about three weeks. They seem well-rested and happy and have even secured a car and driver. The airport in Aweil is well-maintained and guarded by southern Sudanese troops. When we land, family members greet the other passengers, and a few pickup trucks approach the airstrip to gather luggage.
A lot has changed in four years. Far too much to measure.
THE PROJECT THUS FAR
On the way to the UN compound, where we’ll be staying for a few days in Aweil, Valentino and Rebecca fill me in on what’s happened so far. All the news thus far is good, and they’re thoroughly optimistic about the work they’ve come to do: the building of an educational complex in Marial Bai, Valentino’s hometown. They have been meeting with the chiefs in Marial Bai, with the parents and teachers there, and with officials of many stripes and levels in Aweil, the state capital, and so far all indicators are positive: everyone has offered help; no one has offered resistance.
It should be noted that Valentino and Rebecca came to listen first, act second, and as we drive through the busy and mud-soaked main street of Aweil, they report that the conversation from all quarters has been open and candid and productive. And because Valentino and Rebecca came with open ears and a flexible agenda, they’ve already benefited from the input of the educators and chiefs in Marial Bai. Though the Foundation was formed with the purpose of beginning with a primary school in Marial Bai, it’s become clear that what’s needed more urgently is a secondary school. Right now there is a decent and functioning primary school in Marial Bai, but there is very little education available to older students. There are scant facilities, and worse, there are very few teachers who can teach advanced students. In fact, there are very few teachers who have themselves completed secondary school. So the challenge will be at least two-pronged: to serve those students who want to continue past primary school, and to train the teachers who will eventually teach them.
Our first stop this day is at the Ministry of Education for Northern Bahr al-Ghazal. It’s located in a gated compound in the center of the town, a messy and bustling place built on red-clay. Valentino and Rebecca have been to the Ministry before, of course, so today we’re following up with a few of the officials who have been out of town during previous visits. We meet with Akok Ngor, the Acting Director of Education for the state, and Teresa Ayen Mawein, Director for Gender, Equity and Social Change, and in both cases the news is at once deeply distressing — there are seemingly countless issues to deal with, and they’re changing daily — and somehow encouraging, in that the officials in charge are hyper-aware of every statistic, every obstacle and every tool available to them.
The problem is, there are very few tools available to them.
THE PRIMARY ISSUES
Teresa and Akok and the other directors, in separate meetings with us, enumerated some of the major issues they’re dealing with. This list is no doubt incomplete, but it’s a good primer.
Starting from Scratch: Since the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement has been tasked with governing southern Sudan. But converting a rebel force into a governing body is not done overnight. During the twenty-odd years of civil war, there was no effective or consistent system of education in southern Sudan. For all intents and purposes, systematic education was at a standstill. Now the Government of Southern Sudan (GOSS) has to build a functioning educational system largely from scratch.
English, Not Arabic: Traditionally, primary and secondary education in southern Sudan was conducted in Arabic, that being the language of the ruling class of Sudan. Now that southern Sudan is largely independent, the GOSS is replacing the entire system with English-only instruction. This plan, while universally understood as correct, will require the replacement of countless Arabic textbooks and workbooks with their English equivalents. It must be done, but the cost is astronomical. Add to that the fact that most of those returning from the north speak Arabic, not English. How to teach English to Arabic speakers while also teaching math, science and history in this new language? Ideally, the teachers for such students speak Arabic, English and Dinka (among other regional languages). Finding such teachers is exceedingly difficult.
Returnees: Since the CPA, tens of thousands of southern Sudanese who spent the war years in northern Sudan have returned to their hometowns. Their arrival, though welcome, has put an incredible strain on the already overwhelmed school system. And with every passing year, as the quality of life in southern Sudan improves, thousands more return. It’s not unusual in many schools to find 180 or more students per classroom. The trend is phenomenal, of course, in that it underlines how much faith the southern Sudanese have in education, but at the same time, there simply are not facilities, money, or instructors to adequately serve these students.
Instructors: Again and again, administrators lamented the lack of well-trained teachers at their disposal. The teacher shortage is extreme at the primary level, and catastrophic at the secondary level. There are simply too few would-be teachers with secondary educations, given the fact that there were no functioning schools for twenty years. That leaves one obvious option — the importation (even if temporarily) of well-trained teachers from other countries, especially Kenya and Uganda. This solution is impeded by harsh economic realities: the GOSS cannot pay the salaries that such teachers would need to leave their existing jobs.
Teacher Colleges: Those who are serious about improving education in southern Sudan are talking about training the teachers as quickly as possible. Existing teachers need to be trained to teach effectively in English, and the brightest among them need to be trained to teach at the secondary level.
Alternative Education: Akok Ngor noted the added problem of just how to educate groups of students who arrive at school with drastically different levels of education thus far. In many cases, students will arrive for their first-ever day of school at age 12. What grade should they be placed in? Among what other students? And what teacher can handle a class where the first-graders might be anywhere from age 8 to 15?
SOME PHOTOS OF AWEIL AND ACCOMPANYING EXPLANATIONS
During our time in Aweil, there was a great deal of activity in town. Below we see two pictures of GOSS soldiers working out by jogging through the town’s main thoroughfare. A week hence, the town would celebrate the life of John Garang, the late SPLA leader, on the second anniversary of his death.
We spent some time at a local bank in Aweil – one of two in operation there. Below is the exchange-rate sign posted outside the lobby. Earlier this year, in accordance with the CPA, the Government of Sudan introduced a new national currency, the Sudanese pound. The previous currency, the Sudanese dinar, was viewed by many people in the south as part of the north’s program of “Arabisation.” The new currency is designed to reflect the New Sudan’s unity and vision for a peaceful future.
While waiting for our U.S. dollars to be changed into Sudanese pounds, the Deputy Minister of Agriculture for Northern Bahr al-Ghazal happened by. Valentino stepped in for a picture with the minister:
One of the many celebratory and inspirational signs erected throughout the city since the signing of the CPA:
In Aweil we visited the compound, formerly owned by relatives of Valentino, where he and his father spent time during the early days of the civil war. In one of the photos in the series below, Valentino points out where he and other children hid during raids by the Sudanese army. The hole in the sheet-metal door that Valentino is pointing to was caused by a Kalashnikov when Sudanese army soldiers fired on the compound, c. 1986.
A LOST BOYS PROPHECY COMES TRUE, FOR BETTER AND WORSE
For many years it has been predicted that the Lost Boys, the 15,000 or so young men who trekked from their homes to Ethiopia and later to Kakuma, would become integral to the building of a new southern Sudan. Because so many of them had been educated in Ethiopia and (for far longer) in Kenya, with the more advanced Kenyan system of primary and secondary education, they were a formidable legion of young people, fluent in English, Kiswahili, Arabic (in many cases among other languages, too) and perhaps more worldly than any large group of southern Sudanese in history. While so many of their age-mates were struggling to survive during the war, those who were (relatively) safe in the camps were receiving a more or less steady education.
The problem is that a good portion of these educated young men and women now live abroad — in the United States, Canada, Australia and elsewhere. And very few of them have expressed interest in returning to Sudan to live. Many of the men come back to look for love; routinely they return to seek potential spouses in Kakuma and in their hometowns. But still, they almost invariably return to the lives they lead in the West.
And this is both a source of pride and a source of frustration for the nascent government of southern Sudan.
When Valentino and I were in Africa in 2003, after visiting Marial Bai we visited Kakuma. When we landed at the Lokichoggio airport, we were picked up by a driver from Kakuma, and in the car was a man named Victor Deng, who Valentino knew from their journey to Ethiopia. Victor, about five years Valentino’s senior, had been his catechist during those dark days, and was a minister when we met that day en route to Kakuma. He and Valentino caught up during the hour-long drive, and when we arrived at the camp, they parted ways. It didn’t seem likely we would ever see Victor again.
But then we did.
He was practically running the Northern Bhar al-Ghazal region. By the time I arrived in Aweil, Valentino had already made contact with Victor, having realized that his old friend was serving as the acting Deputy Governor of Northern Bhar al-Ghazal. This was one of the most important positions anyone could hold in the region, and the region is very lucky to have a man like Victor Deng. At 32, he’s probably the youngest official in the GOSS with a comparable amount of power. At any given time of day, a dozen people wait outside his office for his attention to matters big and small. A good deal of them are looking for jobs, favors, loans.
We meet him in the courtyard behind his building. He’s a loose-limbed 6’6”, with an exceedingly thoughtful way about him — he’s more of the philosopher than you would expect for someone with such a massive amount of day-to-day duties. Most of his time is occupied with the business of rebuilding the region, overseeing infrastructure, and helping to resettle the thousands of returnees. The boundaries of Aweil grow daily with the makeshift shelters of the returning families. There are, he says, about 100,000 returnees — also known as internally displaced people, or IDPs — in the state of Northern Bahr al-Ghazal, with tens of thousands more expected during the dry season.
When I ask him what the single greatest challenge facing Aweil and the GOSS is, he does not hesitate. “Expats,” he says.
I assume he’s talking about the thousands of young educated Sudanese living abroad, and ask a follow-up question about this issue. He seems confused and we soon discover that he did not say “Ex-pats.” He said “experts.” And by that he means engineers, architects, agricultural scientists, doctors, accountants — highly-trained professionals in dozens of fields. Given the incredible toll the war took, the number of southern Sudanese with technical training or advanced degrees is very small, and a significant percentage of those are the same ex-pats who are living abroad.
So to get roads built, bridges designed, it takes a lot of help from neighboring countries, foreign firms — and this costs money. Money that in most cases the GOSS cannot spare. Already the GOSS is spending an incredible amount of money — most of its budget — on salaries. By one estimate, the GOSS is employing 80 percent of the salaried men and women in southern Sudan. “We have a massive public service sector,” he says. “And after the CPA, the salaries tripled.”
Below, some photos of our meeting. We’ll see Victor again later in the trip.
THE UN COMPOUND
By late July, Valentino and Rebecca had been traveling between Aweil and Marial Bai for a month or so. Aweil is a far larger town, and there are people and goods here —not to mention the region’s most reliable bank — that cannot be found in the deeply rural Marial Bai. When they stay in Aweil, they’ve been staying at the UN compound.
It’s on the outskirts of the town, and the compound, like all such compounds, looks a little like the yard of a rural American packrat. Nothing is thrown away, no rusted and stripped car discarded. Everything is kept there, in various states of repair or disrepair. The garbage is dumped in one corner of the compound, not far from the tent where some guests are asked to stay. There are various tents, from the weekend camping variety to the sturdier army kind. We slept in tents not far enough away from the food-and-TV tent, which was loud until late, given they were inclined toward showing the Nigerian versions of, say, Indecent Proposal and Deal or No Deal. The former was more absurd and operatic than the American original; the latter was startlingly faithful to the original, complete with a host presumably trying to be the Nigerian Howie Mandel, something for which the world might not be ready.
A PARADE OF STUDENTS
The second day we were all in Aweil, we saw a massive parade making its way through the muddy streets of the downtown area. This was National Girls’ Education Day, a demonstration of youth commitment to education. The parade consisted of huge groups of students from various schools and nearby towns, all in school uniforms, marching with banners proclaiming the importance of entering and staying in school.
It was a very inspiring sight.
While Valentino and I watched the parade, no less than twenty young men approached him, recognizing him from Kakuma and even before. Men of Valentino’s generation are everywhere, and have naturally come to bigger cities like Aweil. Almost invariably, they’re working for the Government of Southern Sudan (GOSS). In most cases, they’re teaching.
While we watched the parade, one of the guys noted that this parade has been taking place every year for three years or so, and every year it gets bigger. We must have seen about 10,000 kids walk through the town and congregate in Aweil’s parade grounds. The only sad part of it all was watching those kids of school age who were not in the parade, and thus not in school.
Rebecca and I watched one young man, maybe 12 years old, standing on the side of the road, watching from a face and posture that betrayed his mixed feelings about what he was seeing. He was a traveling merchant, selling flashlights in neat plastic containers that he had slung over his shoulder. He was already an adult in many ways, making money, free from the confines of a classroom, but then again, was that what he wanted? It was unclear who he was working for, and what prevented him from going to school, but in any case, he stood there, biting his lower lip, watching the thousands of uniformed boys and girls pass by, and it was not difficult to imagine that he was weighing his options. A year or two before, boys like him — free from school, working in the market — were the majority, but now the ratio had tipped, and he was more of a rarity.
And so the point of such a parade is imminently clear: It’s a show of strength, a sign of where the youth of Sudan are heading. It was a brilliant idea, and it would be a cynic who would doubt that they converted a lot of young people that day. Even if their parents wanted them to work, a distinct possibility (and necessity) for many families, the tide is shifting. School is everything now. Everything to everyone.
TO MARIAL BAI
Victor Deng has provided us with a SUV and a driver for our time in and around Aweil, and it’s a very new thing to be making the drive between Aweil and Marial Bai, and to be able to do it with the speed and relative ease possible this time around.
For the drive, we pick up Akol Yel, an old friend of Valentino’s, another Lost Boy who now lives in Seattle. His English is exceptional, and his Americanization is evident first in his clothing; he wears baggy jeans and a bike-messenger bag across his chest. When we pick him up outside the Ministry of Agriculture, he’s with his new wife, a beautiful woman named Mary dressed far too formally for such a drive, and she gets into the car, too. As she does, two other guys, friends of Akol’s, get in the far back of the truck. There will be eight of us heading to Marial Bai together.
The main factor affecting the quality of this drive, a change which just occurred in the last few months or so, is the construction of a massive road that will connect Marial Bai to Aweil, and Aweil to parts north and northwest (and eventually to Khartoum). This road someday soon will be able to bring a dizzying array of goods, medicine, construction materials and people to parts of the South that were previously far more isolated.
This road is a real road, and it’s a huge road. It looks like it’s about six lanes wide, and it’s being built by a Khartoum-based firm called Eyat Roads and Bridges Company with great speed and professionalism. We drove down the road going about 50 MPH in many stretches, a feat unheard of in the small, winding and massively uneven dirt/mud roads that otherwise connect the towns of the South. When they eventually pave this highway, it will be as momentous to the South as was the transcontinental railroad to previously remote areas of frontier America.
All along this road are huge trees, completely uprooted, set aside just ouside the shoulder, drying in the sun. We passed enterprising men and women who were chopping up the branches of these trees, to sell as firewood in deforested Aweil, but for the most part the road was empty. Periodically there was a settlment on one side or the other — either a village that stood there before the road cut through, or a new group of homes that have gone up to take advantage of the proximity to the passing of people and goods. We even passed a few (former) homes that had the misfortune of sitting in the middle of the road, and had not yet been mowed down.
The effect of this road on the nearby towns and villages is hard to imagine. A trip that previously might have taken weeks by foot or days by car soon might take hours. The array of goods available to towns like Marial Bai will multiply, and the cost of moving these goods, and people, between the two towns, not to mention parts further north and south, will drop dramatically. But one more thing will be easier to transport with such a road: Sudanese Army troops, tanks and other vehicles. This fact was worrying to at least a few of the people we encountered. If tensions mount and there is conflict again between North and South, might we all wonder why Khartoum was so quick and efficient about building this superhighway?
FROM NOW ON, DANCING
For those going to Marial Bai, this highway eventually gives way to a one-lane mud path that slows the car down to 2-3 miles per hour. “No more road,” Valentino says, “from now on, it’s dancing.” The Land Rover will bounce, shimmy, slide and spin helplessly for the next three hours. I take pictures of passing herds of cattle, and Akol takes pictures, too. He’s been back only one other time since he was resettled in the U.S., and is still finding the contrast worth documenting in photos. His Americanization is evident in his tourist-ness, but also in how he (and Mary) handle a strange roadside shakedown.
As we’re driving very slowly on this very muddy road, getting out periodically to push our way out of a deep rut, we encounter a group of kids, about twelve or thirteen years old, who wave the car down. A few of them have shovels and some makeshift tools. Our driver, a no-nonsense young guy impervious to mirth, rolls down his window. One of the young boys, soaking wet and muddy, says something to him, looking inside the car, presumably looking for dignitaries of some kind. (Cars like ours, fairly new and with tinted glass, usually indicate government office-holders.)
When the boy makes his pitch, Akol and Mary immediately fish some Sudanese pounds out of their wallets and purses, and give the boy a few bills. All our windows are rolled up again and we’re on our way. That’s when a few sharp words are exchanged between the driver and Akol. Apparently the boys were pulling a common scam, exacting a toll on passing cars by claiming to be road-crew workers semi-voluntarily improving the roads. Our driver insisted that they were doing no work whatsoever, and that giving them money only encourages them to continue their ruse. The debate expanded, with Valentino taking the driver’s side, thinking that such hucksters shouldn’t be rewarded, and with Mary and Akol finally admitting that as city people, they were unaware of the tricks of these rural roads.
Here’s a picture of Akol (left) talking to another young man he knew in the camps. We had stopped for a bathrooom break in a small town called Wetwill. Wetwill had been a government-held town during the war, and had recently become a home for returnees. The town was along the rail line, and was a staging ground for many murahaleen raids of nearby Dinka villages. There are still burned-out traincars, evidence of the original work of the militias, as protectors of the railways.
Note in the photo below the makeshift shelters, with tarpaulins and other found materials. Note also the man on the immaculate Harley Davidson; he pulled up to much fanfare shortly after we did. It was surely a strange day in the lives of the residents of Wetwill, a previously sleepy town that will change dramatically when the highway is completed; it’s just a few hundred yards from the road.
FINALLY TO MARIAL BAI
The drive took about five hours in all, and when we arrived at the river that separates Marial Bai from Nyamlel, the rain began. A heavy downpour that kept us in the SUV for twenty minutes and in seconds utterly soaked anyone who ventured out. Our driver wanted to turn around and return to Aweil before dark, so eventually we had to come to grips with the reality: that we’d have to leave the dry confines of the car, gather all of our bags, wait under the nearby trees until the rain subsided somewhat, get a canoe ride across the river, then walk the remaining four miles to Marial Bai through the mud and rain. Which is pretty much how it went down.
Mary changed into a more mud-appropriate outfit, we all tried to insulate our electronics against the rain that would seap through all our bags, and we set out. It was a pretty miserable walk, leavened by Valentino and Akol periodically pointing out a particular kind of mud — the Dinka have dozens of words for mud, depending on the consistency and the likelihood you’ll wipe out while traveling through it — and then laughing when someone fell victim.
We finally emerged from the forest around five o’clock, as the rain had exhausted itself and the sky was clearing a bit. We looked beyond pathetic, a procession of seven of us, all soaked and filthy, walking directly through the main market drag of Marial Bai. It was not, Valentino would tell us later, the way the residents of the town expected our group — envoys from the United States, a land of unimaginable wealth — to arrive. We were told later that no westerners had ever emerged from the bush as we had, and that this didn’t exactly instill confidence in those who might doubt (and many might) that we would make good on Valentino’s promise to build an educational complex in the town.
Akol and Mary had another few hours’ walk ahead of them — he’s from a town even more rural than Marial Bai — so we said goodbye and we settled into the International Aid Services compound, cleaned off, and got a deep drink of the sun setting in Marial Bai. Forgive the use of the corny sunset shot, but can we be blamed?
