Update from the town we’re in!

Things are going well with the students. They’ve learned quickly, and have done a wonderful job of integrating our students from the underserved schools. No problems or hiccups there at all. Smooth sailing.

On other fronts, Andy is still frantically attempting his, well, attempts. So much is happening. I’ll wait until later to update you on that front.

We leave on Saturday for Gambella. We’re really excited to get there. We’ve decided to stay an extra week. We found that in both Kigoma and Accra, we really could have used an extra week to make the students truly self-sufficient on the computers. Given that they come from no knowledge to working knowledge in five days, we realized that we could really create mentors to spread the wealth if we stayed longer. Also, it could be that we show up with just our two laptops, so we’ll work with the students in groups of six (three on each computer) in one-hour shifts throughout the day. If that happens, we’ll adapt and make it work!

We’re working with Pact Ethiopia on the Gambella project. They are amazing. Both Leslie and Jody from Pact have been so supportive in our “attempts” this week. They do incredible work in the country we’re in, and we are thrilled to be working with them.

They have a program called The Girls’ Empowerment and Management (GEM) Project. Many of the students we’ll work with will be in the same situation as some of the girls from GEM. Leslie and Jody sent us a brochure about GEM, so I thought I’d write down one of the success stories here, so that you’ll get an idea about what we’ll do next week. Since September, 2006, GEM has been implemented by Pact Ethiopia, in collaboration with the Forum on Street Children, and Action for Development.

The document Leslie and Jody gave us is called, “Stories from the Lives of Participants in the Girls’ Empowerment & Management Project.” It was authored by Katy Anis, Pact, April 2007.

This story is titled, “Chol Survives, Thrives, and Becomes a Role Model for Gambella Girls.”

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Chol Gatkek is an empowerment worker with the Girls’ Empowerment and Management Project. Starting out as a refugee in a camp, she has now graduated with a diploma and works to inspire girls to achieve their goals.

She recounts the story of how she got to where she is now. “I was born in Akobo, but when there was fighting, my father had an interest in being a soldier, so we moved to Sudan right after I was born. However, when there was fighting on the Sudan side of the border, we came back here. Later, I spent four years in the refugee camp in Itang until the change of government. Then, all the refugees ran back to Sudan again. This time, I stayed in Sudan only one year because there was no good school there. Here, the border is not such a big deal. People don’t see it as something so far away – they easily go back and forth.

When I was a child, in grade school, I lived with the wife of my uncle. I had to fight with this woman a lot for her to allow me to go to school. She would tell me, “The children have urinated in their clothes. You can’t go to school. You have to stay and wash their clothes.” I would tell her, “No, I must go to school. Even if you were my own mother I would tell you I have to go to school.” Every day was a struggle in that house.

Her hut was very far from the school. If I woke up at 6:00am, I would reach the school by 9:00 or 10:00 and miss all of my morning classes. So, I had to wake up at 4:00 before it was light in order to start walking and reach the school on time.

I did not have any watch in those days. One day I woke up and the sky was bright and I thought, “I am late. I must hurry to school.” As I was walking in the middle of the jungle, the moon suddenly disappeared. I realized it was midnight and I was in the middle of the jungle. It was dark and I could see nothing. I thought to myself, “Maybe this night, I will die.” But I just started moving.

As I was walking through the forest in the dark, I suddenly ran into a group of men. I could not see them and they could not see me. They thought I was an animal and they came to attack me with spears. I cried out, “Wait. Don’t kill me! I am a human being.”

When they realized I was a human, they put down their spears. They reprimanded me, saying, “What are you doing out here in the middle of the jungle?” I told them my story and they said, “You come this distance at this time for education?” Some of them began to cry. Some of them knew my father and so they sat and took counsel. They decided to split the group and some of the men went on, while the other group took me back to my living place.

When I got back, I knocked on the door and my aunt was afraid. She cried out, “Who are you? Who are you?”

“Auntie, it’s me! The moon cheated me.”

“You were supposed to die this night! Don’t you know there are animals that eat children like you?”

I was very afraid that night, but I tried to go back to sleep. But then the sky became brighter and I got up again at 4:00am to make the trek back to school.

And in this way, I made it through school.

I wanted to continue on to Grade 7 and 8, but they required me to know Amharic and I did not know it at that time. I wrote to my father telling him, “Father, I am jobless. I must come to where you are.

He wrote me a letter saying, “Stay there. I will bring your mother to you.” He sold all of his cattle to pay for the journey and the food, and he brought my mother to me. She then took me to a refugee camp. My father was later killed. When we got to the refugee camp, we had a chance to improve our economic situation because we got free food and school.

Then my fate changed.

When I was in Grade 8, I was employed by Save the Children Sweden as a Girls’ Education Mobilizer. There were many children who were living alone as heads of household there. Save the Children would look after these children. So they came to visit me and brought jerry cans and saucepans. After they spoke with me, they said, “We want you to work with us.” So they employed me.

They found that there was a high dropout rate in the schools and they wanted to know why. So I conducted home visits. We found that people did not get food. We also found that menstruating girls did not have any kind of sanitary materials. They had only one pair of underwear and after five minutes it would become full and they would change it with another sheet or some cloth, while they tried to wash the first one. The girls would stay five days in their house without going to school and would deceive people saying they were sick. So after this, we distributed eight pieces of cloth and four pairs of underwear to each girl. We also tried to reduce their workload. And then we would do follow up with them.

During that time, I was working, going to school, and taking care of a household. Just before my Grade 8 exams, my boss came and told me, “If you feel like working, fine. But take this time to study for the exams. You choose your own schedule.” I studied very hard and when exam time came, I was the first girl to get a score of 95 out of 100! My boss was surprised and told me, “I knew you would do well, but I was never expecting this!” After that, because of my results, I was awarded a scholarship to study from Grade 9 to 12.

I enjoyed working for Girls’ Empowerment. Even after I left, I would come back on school breaks and work for the project. I would also go back work as a translator doing interviews with refugees going to America for resettlement. If they paid me $10 a day, I could earn $70 in one week. That helped my economic situation.

Chol speaks Nuer, Anyuwak, English, Amharic, and Arabic fluently and goes back and forth between these languages constantly, even in one conversation. She says, “I can also understand Ndinka, but I respond in Arabic. I learned all of these languages while I was a child in the refugee camp. There were many different tribes learning together. I interacted with all of them.”

After I finished Grade 12, I was not able to get a scholarship to continue my education. So I became married and had a child. Three years later, I succeeded in getting a scholarship to pursue a diploma in the area of Community Development and Leadership at the Adventist College in Shashemene. It was so difficult to get that diploma! My child was in the care of a relative and he was always getting sick. When you hear your child is in the hospital, you do not feel good. I was always asking the dean if I could visit my child and he would refuse. But then I would cry each week, and he would find a way to allow me to go.

I was one of only two indigenous girls in the program to receive scholarship and I was the only mother. I asked the dean to consider my case, provide me a room in the school compound and allow me to manage the scholarship money myself, rather than having the money going through the school. And in that way, I supported myself to complete my diploma. Now my goal is to go to university.

I have always enjoyed working with Girls’ Empowerment. “She is my product,” Chol points to Nyobong, the intern at her side. Nyobong was in Grade 3 when Chol first began mentoring her as an 8th grader. Nyobong has now moved on to completing her own diploma. Part of Nyobong’s practicum is to work as an intern where she shadows Chol’s empowerment work, helping to distribute scholarships, conduct field visits, and translate and computerize text.

As Chol sits in front of a group of 9th grade Anyuwak and Nuer girls, she tells the story of how she survived war, the death of her parents, and getting a diploma while caring for her child. The girls sit with eyes locked, in wrapped attention. When Chol gets to the intense moments in her pursuit of education, the girls spontaneously break into clapping!

Later, when one of these girls speaks of a vision of her future, she says, “When I think of my future vision, I imagine myself like the staff in this program, standing in front of other people, talking to them and advising them what to do and how to plan their futures.” Chol continues to work as a strong and capable indigenous woman, serving as a role model and making a path for other girls like her to rise to success.



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More from Gambella next week…where we are going to meet many more girls like Chol!

Erik