Scottish Catholic Observer

One of SCIAF’s partners in the world’s newest nation of South Sudan has told the SCO that the situation in his country is much more optimistic following its declaration of independence earlier this year.

Gulliver Ishmael of the Sudanese Evangelical Mission (SEM) said that the people of South Sudan were ‘very hopeful’ since succession from Sudan and there had been  ‘a good beginning.’

One of the SEM’s main areas of focus is working with the disabled and improving their lives and Mr Ishmael believes that independence has made that struggle easier.

“One of the main things we do is work on building the confidence of people who are disabled so they believe they can contribute and move forward,” he said. “We try to help children back to school, train teachers so they are comfortable having disabled children in their class and set up small businesses so they can support themselves. We are definitely seeing a better working environment now.”

Rocky road to independence

The road to independence for South Sudan has been a long and troubled one, with decades of civil war wracking the region prior to a peace deal in 2005 that led to the succession of South Sudan. The legacy of the war is a brutal one.

“Many people lost limbs to mines, and there are still large numbers of mines in the country, and a lot of our work is with the victims of landmines,” Mr Ishmael said. “Also there are many people who grew up during the war so never had any access to education so we now run adult education classes to help them learn to read and write.”

The SEM, an ecumenical Christian group, formed as a result of the war.

“Many South Sudanese had fled to refugee camps in Kenya and Uganda during the fighting,” Mr Ishmael said. “And the SEM originally worked doing things like sharing Bibles in the camps.”

When the people returned to the homes, the SEM started trying to help people more broadly, he added, as the situation was desperate.

“It’s only recently we have seen any wheelchairs at all in South Sudan,” he said. “People who had no use of their legs would pull themselves about on their arms. We still have to bring wheelchairs in from Kenya so now we are trying to build more in South Sudan itself.”

Independence

Efforts like this have been made easier by increased freedom of movement that has come with independence.

“We are seeing a better working environment,” Mr Ishamel said. “It’s much easier for us to travel to other countries, before it was very difficult to access email and the telephone network would go out all the time. It was very difficult for us to communicate with SCIAF for example but it’s much easier now.”

SEM is using the new freedoms to lobby the South Sudanese government to do more to help disabled people.

“We are trying to lobby the government to have them take on more responsibility in helping disabled people,” he said. “Obviously they have a great many things to deal with but they seem to be willing to listen to us.”

The government does have many challenges to tackle as South Sudan remains a country with many problems, he said.

“The infrastructure is still very bad, many of the roads are terrible and it’s very difficult to reach remote areas,” he said. “But people are very hopeful the new government will make a big difference. Expectations are very high but we are feeling positive.”