Learning alongside my students

After Easter I began teaching five Standard 4 students (fourth grade) in science. They are between the ages of 13 – 17. They are older because their parents may finally have gotten the resources to send them to school and/or to be able to manage without them at home. These students are delightful and became even more so as we got to know each other. I took them on walks to the immense dry riverbed near the school where they looked for geodes and quartz. It didn’t take long for them to surpass their teacher in being able to spot a potential geode (a rock that when broken open has beautiful crystalline formations inside). The quartz indicates gold; later I was told that there is plenty of gold in South Sudan but no waterpower to extract it. Now we are looking at the various phases of the moon with my 7x35 binoculars. You can see the craters distinctly.

Lest you think this is a one-way education, they have taught me WHEN to plant, HOW to turn over the soil, and WHAT grows well here. They have planted sorghum, greens, beans and groundnuts. All the plants are up and should be harvested in June. The girls have also shown me what plants are medicinal, what plants I can pick and eat right from the tree or bush, the signs that indicate if it will rain, and how to shell groundnuts. The rains began March 30th and have been frequent enough to make the crops grow well, thank God. Last year was not as good.

Sr. Agnes, a Ugandan sister, and I met with some parish women last Sunday and discussed what the village folks feel is needed in the way of information on nutrition, sanitation, health care needs, AIDS prevention, etc. Now I need to locate two or three women to train who speak both English and Toposa and/or Arabic. They will accompany me into the bush to speak with women in various villages about the topics most important to them.

Last week one of the schoolgirls killed the resident 39-inch long Savannah Monitor Lizard. It had been eating all our duck eggs. However, it is survived by several of its progeny who live in a large hole in the backyard of the Maryknoll convent.

I pray in the Maryknoll backyard where I can see the acacias (thorn trees), neem trees (medicinal) and the nadapal trees (most shady). There are mountains to the South, East and West of us. These are the “everlasting hills” which were here before Abraham and Moses. This is also the land where humans first began to walk upright. We are 200 miles as the crow flies from Lake Turkana where the Leakeys found so many fossil skulls and bones on their various expeditions. It is humbling just to be living here.

This is all the news that is fit to print, as they say. Please feel free to drop by. Lots of hospitality here.