Lino Madut Angok

The first photo is of Lino Madut Angok, who used to be a student in Sud Academy but has since changed schools with the help of Kellee Jacobs and contacts she has in Canada. Profiles of Lino and four other students who have just left Sud Academy to finish their last year of high school at Riruta Central School can be found on Kellee Jacobs’ blog. Kellee has been actively working with Sud Academy during a volunteer stage there and has written about it on her blog.

Lino carries around the accompanying double-sided letter to inform people of his situation and his history to help get support wherever possible. He showed it to me while visiting him at his new school and allowed me to post it here. It is apparantly a common practice for these boys (men) to always have such a letter to use when needed.

The following portraits are of the student leaders from the Sud Academy whom I asked to point out the badges they wear that represent their leadership role at the school. Although there wasn’t enough time to speak with each of the following students individually about their personal stories that brought them here as refugees, these portraits provide a glimpse into their respective personalities, their shared histories and the perseverance that will carry them forward.

Maduok Magok, Assistant Head Boy

Philip Manyok, Debate Chairman Primary

Daniel Deng Yel, Head Boy

Deng Maduok Deng, Deputy Chairman Duties

David Deng Yel, Time Keeper

Rose Aweng, Office Girl

Augustino Agoth, Prefect

Mayom Madjieu, Treasurer, Student Union

Peter Jok, Deputy Debate Chairman Secondary

Joseph Deng, Chairman Duties/Deputy Information Officer Student Union

Achieng Alice, Assistant Prefect

Kuol Bol Kuol, Advisor Student Union

Reich Maluak Abraham, Chairman Student Union

David Laak, Deputy Chairman, Student Union

Nyang Makuach Wol, Information Officer Student Union

Peter Mariak Akeen, Secretary Student Union

Tina Gon, Treasurer Student Union

Rimond Ayii Kiir, Prefect

Gregory Dut, Deputy School Captain

Wol Makuach, Prefect

Abraham Mawut Achuil, Assistant Environment Prefect

Dangan Pap, Deputy Advisor Student Union

Linet Naliaka, Prefect

Machar Biar Dau, School Captain

In the offices of Sudan Radio Service in Nairobi, Kenya. (February 2009)

While in Nairobi, I made contact with Southern Sudan as it expresses itself in exile, taking refuge from the past while building for the future. One of the first visits was to the offices of the Sudan Radio Service (SRS). This organisation is Southern Sudan’s first independent broadcast provider of news and information about Southern Sudan. It is broadcast on various FM and shortwave signals. Their first broadcast was made on July 30, 2003, 1 1/2 years before the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the Khartoum-based Government of Sudan and the southern-based Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). SRS broadcasts in English, Arabic and eight Sudanese ethnic languages, and focuses exclusively on Issues and events in Sudan.

I met with John Tanza, the radio station’s Deputy Chief of Party (a title that reflects the primary funder of SRS: USAID). We discussed possible collaborations between me and SRS correspondents based in Southern Sudan. We decided that I should meet with SRS journalists that work from areas I visit to collaborate on stories of common interest.

Dan Eiffe in his Sudan Mirror office in Nairobi, Kenya. (February 2009)

In fact, we have planned that I hook up with Martin Siba, the SRS Wau Bureau Producer. I will be going to Wau after Juba on Wednesday, March 4 for a few days before continuing onward to Aweil, Warrap and Abyei.

Another place I went to visit are the Sudan Mirror. The paper’s publisher and founder, Dan Eiffe (photo) invited me into his office and told me stories of when he was a young Irish priest in South Africa and later in Southern Sudan. He told me that in June 1998 he stood in the US Congress and said to the congressmen and women during his testimony, “Southern Sudan is apartheid at its worst. Apartheid is a tea party in comparison to what happens in Southern Sudan.” Below is an audio interview I did with Dan Eiffe in February 2009.

Outside the modest grounds of Sud Academy in Nairobi, Kenya (February 2009)

Southern Sudanese refugees left Sudan during the civil war in numbers of about one million. This does not include the internally displaced people (IDPs) that rang from 4.5 to 5 million people. Many refugees ended up in Kenya and among these are the students of Sud Academy, a primary / secondary school based in a poor neighbourhood of Nairobi.

Partial funding for Sud Academy comes from Canadian Aid for South Sudan (CASS), through which I learnt of the school and who gave me contact with, Kellee Jacobs a Canadian volunteer who bfought me to the school. She wrote The Right to Education – Sud Academy’s Case Study. I’ve posted more photos from the school here.

My flight from Europe to Africa, was supposed to include me, the white caucasian, bathing happily in a sea of black Africans. Swahili was to dominate the conversational soundscape with other African languages floating among the seats of those returning passengers with connecting flights to Addis Ababa, Kampala, or Dar es Salaam. But on this flight, pale-skinned Europeans dominated the landscape with English, German, Dutch and French languages competing for dominance. There were no more that 5% African representation on the second segment of the flight! I hope it’s because East Africans choose to fly on an African airlines like Kenya Airways, Ethiopian Airlines or Air Tanzania but I couldn’t prevent myself from wondering if there are more people living in Africa who travel on foot as refugees or internally displaced people than the number who fly overseas to other continents! So even before arriving, I felt colonial; that unwanted inheritance.

Midway across the North Atlantic The DC 111 is flying at 913 km/hour (ground speed) at an altitude of 10670 metres. The exterior temperature is -46 degrees Celcius. In 3 hours and 5 minutes it will be 7h36 in Amsterdam. The sun rises on Nairobi but before arriving there, there is still the Sahara Desert to cross.

I used to think the Sahara was untamable with its dunes flowing across the landscape at the mercy of the wind, burying anything it its way. The pyramids at Giza and their guardian Sphinx are prime examples of the desert’s tenacity. I don’t believe that anymore, at least in the short term. During the second leg of the flight over southern Egypt just a few hundred kilometres from the border with Sudan, dark circles blemished the otherwise uniform desert brown. Crop circles in the middle of nowhere at the end of a ribbon road that slices the landscape. But for how long. Long ago, it must have been a resting place for nomadic tribesmen. A converging oasis in the desert to forge alliances and replenish thirsty camels. Some of the circles have already lost the battle with the sand. When will the next wind storm overtake them all and remind us yet again that nature will prevail.

Later, while in Sudanese airspace, the flight crossed paths with the mighty Nile. A glimmering strip of moisture in an otherwise parched sea of sand. I will set foot on the banks of this mythical river once I arrive in Juba on February 26. But first, eight days in Nairobi

I am now comfortably staying at the Miti Mingi Guest House.

On February 16, I catch a KLM flight to Nairobi, Kenya. Fifteen hours of flying with a three-hour stopover in Amsterdam to get a scent of Europe before heading for Sub-Saharan Africa for the first time. Very exciting! Now I have an itinerary to plan out, a budget to establish, a what-to-bring list to determine, people to contact…

This all started with the desire to better understand what happens to a place once 21 years of civil war slips into the past with the signing of a peace agreement. In Sudan that translates with the January 9, 2005 signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the ruling government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M). I introduce this in a previous post.

So from Nairobi Airport, I will take a cab the Miti Mingi bed & breakfast in in the Muthangari neighbourhood of the city. I chose this place because it was referred by a friend of a friend’s friend. And because it is in the same par of town as the Sudan Radio Service (SRS), an “independant media dedicated to peace and development in Sudan” that I will be collaborating with in Nairobi, where it is based, and in Juba where it has journalist correspondents. It is also near the offices of Africa 24 Media, whose directors I will meet with to discuss their work in the African media landscape. As a Africa neophyte, starving for information about the continent mostly abandonned by North American media, A24 covers interesting stories I should have already known about but hadn’t. There may be place for collaboration.

(source: Sud Academy 2008)

While in Nairobi, I will also be visiting Sud Academy, a school established to provide a basic education for the child refugees from Southern Sudan who found themselves in Nairobi after fleeing the civil war. I’ve been in conversation with Jane Roy, who, with her husband—and Canadian Member of Parliament— Glen Pearson, started Canadian Aid for Southern Sudan (CASS).  I will be interviewing Jane Roy before I leave about CASS’ recent trip to Southern Sudan in January 2009. CASS provides funding to Sud Academy and have recently returned from their anual January visit  there. I will be meeting up with Kellee Jacobs, a CASS volunteer at the school. She is keeping a blog, The World as a Stage, about her experiences there.

After about ten days in Nairobi, I fly to Juba, where the journey continues. While in Southern  Sudan, I will visit and write about several United Nations managed projects in the region. I have a contract with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) to write “Stories from the Field” about these projects. In Juba, I expect to visit UNICEF‘s Mine and Unexploded Ordances Risk Education project. I will also meet with SRS journalists, and other media outlets to gain a better understanding in the role the media plays in promoting and maintaining the tenuous peace in Southern Sudan as mandated in the CPA.

I will also be providing radio reports on a weekly basis on CKUT 90.3fm’s weekly Amandla. The pieces may be replayed on the station’s daily Morning After shows (7h00-9h00) and on Vancouver’s Co-op Radio . short video peices will be produced for the National Film Board of Canada’s CitizenShift web portal in the dossier: A Tenuous Peace. I will also write a couple of articles in The Dominion magazine. So stay tuned for lots of mobile journalism in the next three months.

From Juba, the capital of Southern Sudan, I expect to fly north to visit another UNICEF project in Abyei, one of the transitional areas just north the border between Southern Sudan and the rest of the country. The project provides support to basic education in the three transitional areas: Abyei, South Kordofan and Blue Nile states. Via email, we are establishing the itinerary and schedule to get to these project areas. If all goes well, I expect to then go to Aweil in Northern Bahr el Ghazal State, where the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM) runs the Basic Infrastructure and Livelihood Support to Highly Impacted Communities of Return in the area. I am also planning on visiting a World Vision Tonj North Emergency Response and Returnee Assistance Project a bit further south in Warrap State.

So much to do. So little time: ten weeks in all. Come along for the ride.