In South Sudan, there’s a saying: When Elephants fight, the grass gets trampled. More than fifty years of war has kept the young nation from finding its own footing. But an effort by Virginia Tech aims to plant seeds of change there.
South Sudan won independence from the Republic of Sudan in 2011. Much more than the grass was trampled and aid groups came in to help rebuild the region. But lasting change depends on the ability of local people to solve local problems and that means training teachers.
"The world’s newest nation; we’re training the first generation of faculty. It’s exciting," says Kurt Richter, Associate Director of Virginia Tech’s Office of International Research, Education, and Development.
Virginia Tech is overseeing a program hosting 6 faculty members from South Sudan as they pursue PhDs here. But in December 2013 just as the first green shoots of the new nation began to sprout, and Richter was preparing to return to the U.S.," I woke up about 3 or 4’0’clock in the morning to the sound of what I, laid in bed, hoping was thunder."
It was the sound of artillery. Civil war broke out in the newly independent country. Richter was able to make it back to Blacksburg several days later where Flora Lado was already in the midst of her PhD studies in geology and mining. "The worst part of it is, I don't expect my country to go back for war after 3 years of independence. We have been struggling to be independent and now we fight among ourselves as brothers and sisters? That’s really very bad."
Lado followed developments back home by phone and Facebook, but internet in South Sudan is sketchy. It was exam time and the PhD students were determined to continue their studies. Martin Sebit is studying Agriculture, Leadership and Community Education. "We have been fighting for the last 50 years. What do we expect a person who has nothing other than the language of guns to deliver?"
The faculty training project aims to replace the language of guns and violence with the building blocks of a stable society -things like Forestry, Fish and Wildlife, food production and natural resources. Sebit says the doctoral students studying here are not only determined to complete their programs, but also to return to South Sudan when they finish their PhD’s, armed with a way out of the violence that has plagued their country.
"Absolutely are we going back but to change South Sudan will not be an easy task because. We’re here, only 5 or 6 of us. But we will not give up. We will push on to the extent that we are able to because if we don’t do it, no one will do it."
"Whenever peace does occur in a country there’s a period that we call the post conflict period, where it’s fragile," says Richter.
"In a history and economy where the best decision is to go and purchase something from somebody from a different tribe or different religious group instead of shooting at that person or bombing that store; when countries make that flip, choosing economic prosperity over violence, then you’re on the road to peace."
South Sudan faces many challenges on that road. The civil war, sparked by rumors of a military coup is ongoing. Opposition workers there report being threatened and last week the United Nations World Program has suspended some of its work in the country after three aid workers were reported missing.
