Getting Started

The Anglican church

The maize field belonging to the church

We arrived but this was the first part of the process and things move slowly.  Having come from Khartoum, Medani is a pleasant sight.   There are trees!  And we saw some grass!  Our temporary apartment block is a couple of hundred yards from the River Nile which is lined by green parks with swings and slides for children and seating areas for relaxing.  Across the road are rows of tea ladies and juice bars and people sit around chatting and relaxing with friends.  It has a real seaside feel and is very pleasant.

We took a little walk around early evening the day after we arrived and found an Anglican church.  We had a look around and met the Bishop and had a good chat with him about his visits to England and the work they were doing here.  He showed us around the place which consists of a few small buildings one of which houses five computers.  I am quite excited about this as it is an opportunity to teach skills and English at the same time and so my brain starts doing somersaults thinking about what I can do here.  However, what hit me like a bolt was seeing blackboards fixed to various points on the outside of the buildings with seats arranged under nearby trees.  These informal outside classrooms are where young people come for English lessons after they have been at school or university.  They hang around the church because they know that this is where they can learn and practice their English.  They come because they need to and the Church meets that need.

Makeshift Classroom

Jessica was an SVP volunteer in Wad Medani before us and she had given us the names of some people from an English School that she volunteered at and we asked the Bishop if he knew them.  Of course he did and so Rose came over when she finished teaching and took us to the English Institute.  We met Doris, a German woman married to a Sudanese man and had lived all over Africa but came to settle here when her husband retired.   (My description does not do justice to this very interesting woman who has done some amazing stuff)  We met James as well; both he and Rose run the little English Language Institute.  It had a lovely atmosphere, like an oasis of calm.

We then met up with Christine who is doing her 3^rd year of her language degree in Sudan and is due back to the UK next week.  We all went along to Nile street, ate pizza and drank tea.

In fact this is all we seem to do all day.  We go over to the Ministry of Education, sit around and drink tea and chat, hand over a piece of paper.  Then we go somewhere else and do the same.  Patience, patience.