Photo Essay: Last Chance for Education
5,763 students are currently attending the LWF Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) in the South Sudanese refugee camps of Ajuong Thok, Unity State and Gendrassa, Batil and Kaya, Upper Nile State. For years they have not been able to regularly attend school because of the fighting in their home country, Sudan.
In their young lives, they have witnessed conflict, some of them have lost family members. They hope for peace and to return home. They dream of becoming doctors, teachers, engineers and even minister of gender affairs. The ALP, funded by ECHO is the first step to make these dreams come true, by giving them an opportunity to catch up on the education they missed.
Photos: LWF/ C. Kästner
4 March 2015
Faiza and her family in front of her home in Yusuf Batil refugee camp, Maban. The 16 year old is attending level 3 and one of the few girls in her class. Her mother supports her daughter’s education.
Nikola Junuboi wants to become a doctor, so he can help his two brothers who have a physical disability. He is wearing a traditional necklace for protection. “It keeps me safe,” he says. “When someone shoots at me, the bullet will miss”.
Fadina (left) lost her mother in the Kordofan conflict. At the age of 16, she is the head of the household. In the morning she cooks, washes and sends her younger siblings to school, in the afternoon she leaves them with a neighbor so she can attend the ALP classes. Fadina wants to become a minister for gender affairs in the Nuba Mountains.
When Mobarak fled the fighting in the Nuba Mountains, his parents remained behind. “Schools and hospitals were destroyed," he says. “So we have come here to learn, to get what will benefit us in the future”. Mobarak loves social studies, maths and science. He hopes that science will teach him skills towards becoming a doctor.
Many students learn under difficult circumstances. In this school in Yusuf Batil Camp, Maban, the classrooms are not finished yet. Flooding in the rainy season and fighting during the dry season often delay the trucks brining school supplies.
Even though the classrooms are not finished in the Mabanese camps, students turn up for classes, sitting on oil cans and benches made of tree stumps.
The Nuba refugees in Ajuong Thok camp are especially keen on education. Renewed fighting and aerial bombings have destroyed schools and hospitals in the Nuba Mountains and triggered a new influx of refugees into South Sudan. The schools are a reason for the refugees to choose this camp over another.
Malachi Farouk Aballah is the ALP head teacher in Napata school, Ajuong Thok. He was a teacher already in the Nuba mountains, before the conflict forced him to flee. His main worry is to find enough qualified teachers for his many students, his hope is to educate the generation that will one day return and rebuild his home.
