To the North of the South

Few weeks ago, I have been sent to an assessment visit to Northern Bahr El Ghazal to assist Daniel in collecting information, looking for local partners, establishing connections with the international ones in order to possibly implement a 18 months project that will start in January next year. Ibis would like in fact to expand its activities up to the North where the need for education is great: for example, only in Aweil North County, one of the three counties chosen by the State Ministry of Education as a potential operational area, 65 out of 80 schools are under the trees, do not have qualified teachers as well as trained education officers to inspect and monitor their work. However, the learners’ enrollment is quite high, teachers, who usually do their job on a voluntary basis by being paid in kind by the community, are committed and the education officers are willing to improve their skills. For this reason, Ibis is now writing a proposal that, if accepted by the European Commission, can become a project focusing on the capacity building of all the education stakeholders just mentioned above.

For the time being, here are some of the pictures taken during the hectic days spent in Northern Bahr El Ghazal where we had limited time and a myriad of tasks that somehow we managed to accomplish fully. It was tiresome but exciting to see another part of South Sudan very different from Central Equatoria: geographically flat, culturally arabized, ethnically Dinka.

The Director General of the Ministry of General Education and Instruction of Northern Bahr El Ghazal State read carefully a summary of the project that Ibis would like to implement.

Daniel Wani collects quantitative and qualitative data regarding the status of education in Northern Bahr El Ghazal State that are going to enrich the proposal and will be the base for the design of the activities. 

Nicolò Di Marzo leaves the Ministry in his official car…

The coffee/tea culture of Aweil Town: before starting our morning, drinking a franzai (caffelatte) and eating freshly baked bread was a must.

On our way to Aweil West and Aweil North: Northern Bahr El Ghazal is flat as Denmark but with storks instead of seagulls.

I was trying to take a picture of the under-the-tree-schools...

...but quite a number of learners took over the background…

ConcernWorldwide  has been operating in Northern Bahr El Ghazal since 2001. They hosted us for one night in their extremely nice compound where each tukul is a room. 

I and Daniel prepare the schedule for the next day while enjoying fresh air. 

The Education Officer of Aweil North County stands up proudly in front of his (tiny) office.              
He is the only to work in one, since his colleagues work outdoors due to lack of adequate working places.

The United Nations Humanitarian Hair Service (UNHAS) facilitate the mobility of food, medicines and NGO personnel around South Sudan.  Here Daniel ready to jump in and go back to Juba. 

I am reading V.S. Naipaul’s The Masque of Africa, a travel book centered on the theme of African beliefs. The following lines can describe in better words the South Sudanese landscape that I saw from the plane: “The land was green: not the dark green of primeval forest, but the fresh green of land that had grown things many times over and was still fertile, requiring only rain and sun to burst into new vegetation [….]. I was under the spell of the empty green landscape, which I hadn’t seen before, not in Trinidad, not in India: wide and green and empty”.