AIC Luther Secondary School

Here is the outside of Luther Secondary School. At one end there is a teacher's lounge, then Senior 1,2, and 3's classrooms. Then, where senior 4 is supposed to be, is the faculty eating place. Currently, all of the s-4s are in Uganda preparing for their UNAB Exam.
2.) The Kitchen
3.) Senior 3 students (6)
4.) Senior 2 Students (about 10)
5.) Senior 1 students (about 20)
I want to add a picture of the cooks cooking outside the kitchen, but when I was taking the pictures, the cooks had already gone home.

So, What's it like at school? Well, I'll tell you. First, I have been given S 1-3 History of Africa (S1&2 East A. and S3 S.A.); and I teach English S1-3. Recently, because the Headmaster did not return to Ikotos after break, we had to appoint a new headmaster. The teachers and the regional director wanted me to be the H.M., but after much convincing, I got them to appoint someone else. So, Job, who is from Kenya and felt a call from God to teach here after teaching many refugees who are from here, is now the H.M.. Me? I'm now the treasurer of sorts. Those who know me will laugh at this, but I'm basically the school's accountant. Since none of the other teachers (except Job) can be trusted with the school's money, I have to hold onto it with dear life and fight back those who want to use it for wasteful things.
The best thing about being the treasurer is that I get to have a stamp. In the New Sudan, having a stamp is VERY important-- and easy to get. Any person here in the market can make you your own special stamp, and if you have a stamp on any docuement, its as good as if it came from the late John Guarang himself. And having a stamp to call your own makes you to be a big person in society. :)

The students, after a slow trickle over the past month, I believe have all come. Students come from all over the surrounding area from off the mountains. When you see the pictures of the mountains, you would not believe that there are several villages sprawling across the mountain ranges. Here, in Ikotos, we are in the valley and are considered to be a major town. Having a main road and even a market. Ikotos also has a lot of NGO bases, so it is considered to be rich because of all the relief given here (LWF,CRS,NCA,UNHCR,etc.). So, the students have to wait for an NGO or some other type of vehicle, maybe even SPLA, to give them a ride into town from their village. The roads here are also really bad, so a 20k trip could take several hours or up to 2 days if the vehicle gets stuck in a mud hole. Currently, we are awaiting the CRS food bags for the students' lunches, which is on a vehicle stuck about 100ks up the road, coming from Kenya. As of now, we have run out of food and so the students have to either go home for lunch, or in some cases, there is no food at home, so they hunger until dinner when they are able to go to somebody's house, or the woman who they are staying with comes in from the fields and cooks for them.
The problem I have in the classroom here is that the students are used to the teacher copying straight from the book onto the chalkboard. Most of the teachers don't even know the subject in which they are teaching and for sure all of them are not qualified (except Job). So, If I am to first lecture and then copy key facts onto the board, they accuse me of witholding information from them. For my senior 3 class, one student was becomming cross with me and so I wrote a word on the board "plagarism." I said "Do you know what that means?" It means to copy words from a text illegally. Here it reads on the first page 'copyright' that means it is illegal to copy the exact words from the book. Now if you want to actually learn the subject, let me continue." He hasn't bothered me since then-- I think I made my point clear. I told the students that I have noticed the blank looks on their faces when I ask them a question. I told them that is what happens when you copy notes and don't understand what you're writing (You see, I did review with them of what they learned last term and nobody knew anything unless they read from their notes).
After that hurdle, now things are moving along better. My S-3s are doing essay drills in English and learning about the Bantu migration in Southern Africa for History (thank you Dr.Maxon from WVU). For English, I have one book for all of S 1-4. It is to prepare them for the exam they will take in Uganda at the end of S-4. So, of course then the S-1s are at the very beginning of the book, learning how to construct a sentence, the S-2s are learning puncuation, and the S-3s are towards the end of the book learning how to construct a sentence (oh, I mean, write essays) ;).
All in all, I love laughing with the students, getting to know their stories, and watching them learn and ask questions. They also enjoy teaching me Juba Arabic and laugh at me as I go back and forth between English and Arabic. The students are great and really want to learn-- its just unfortunate that they are not able to receive a better education.
The ages in the classroom vary, because of the war, there are some S-3 students who are as old as me and have a wife/husband and a kid at home. So, in one class you can have a 14yr old and a 26yr old together. Some of the primary students are as old as the secondary students. That is one of the casualties of war-- education.