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A 10-week sabbatical proved an education for Mahurangi College principal David Macleod, when he witnessed schooling for the least and most privileged children in the world.
After spending five weeks in one of the world’s poorest countries, South Sudan, David travelled to Canada, where he found schools even better equipped than they are in New Zealand.
Although there were next to non-existent facilities in in South Sudan, David found students bright-eyed and eager to learn. Whereas in Canada he found students disinterested, poorly motivated and contributing to a youth mental health crisis.
“The Canadian kids just had a dullness in their eyes by comparison,” he says.
David travelled to South Sudan to visit his son Jono and daughter-in-law Destinee – both doctors who work at a clinic in Tonj.
Jono Macleod travels to remote villages to conduct clinics in the bush. “South Sudan is a challenging environment on many levels.”
He says South Sudan is emerging from decades of war when most schools and hospitals were destroyed.
Children bring their own chairs to school to meet in bombed-out classrooms or under large trees in remote villages connected by dirt tracks. Typically, there are 50 children to a class.
The government has insisted that all schooling is in English, which is the third or fourth language for most students and even teachers struggle to learn it.
“Often schools don’t have toilets and if they did have a toilet, it was not anything I would want to go near,” David recalls.
Despite the challenges, David says the South Sudanese kids have a thirst for knowledge.
“Their eyes were open, there was a sharpness about them and a desperation to learn.”
David speculates that the apathy among Canadian students, which he found to a greater extent than in New Zealand, likely reflects a higher level of material well-being and less exposure to the outdoors, due to freezing weather.
He says the solution is probably to engender a greater sense of gratitude.
“We spend far too much time getting depressed about what’s wrong with our world. We have got it better than any generation that has ever existed on the planet, yet we are less grateful for what we have got,” he says.
David found the same poverty of facilities at the clinic where Jono and Destinee work as he did in South Sudan’s schools.
A maternity ward with eight beds accommodated more than 20 children and their mothers.
“I could not take photos there. There was nakedness and sickness and people close to dying,” he says.
A new 22-bed maternity ward has recently been built, largely by Kiwi volunteers. However, the new ward has overtaxed the clinic’s diesel and solar-powered generators.
Jono and Destinee, who formerly lived in Algies Bay, have established a Givealittle page to raise $120,000 for another generator.
David says South Sudan is a challenging environment on many levels. A poor diet saw him lose 4 kilos, snakes and scorpions are a constant hazard, the heat is oppressive and security is tenuous.
Despite the difficulties, David says his son and daughter-in-law remain positive.
“They are full of laughter and joy, yet they are working from dawn to dusk and are on call 24 hours a day,” he says.
“They feel a strong sense of call – a call that God has placed on their life that this is what they are meant to be doing.”
To support a new solar-powered generator for the clinic in Tonj, visit givealittle.co.nz and search for Solar Power for Hospital in South Sudan.
