Lord Jim of Dilling - Diplomat Magazine

Di spatches|sudaners. Although set in beautiful countryside,Kortala itself is fairly barren, with strawhuts, dilapidated shops, some rough stonebuildings, wandering animals, no electricityand several broken hand-poweredwater pumps. In other words, it’s a normalSudanese village of several hundred,perhaps a thousand, people of the Nubatribe who are dependent on the crops thatsurround it.Lt. Sutherland and one of our languageassistants, Alnoor Haloof, had becomefriends over the duration of our tour. Alnooris a bright, educated and articulateman and a local historian, whom our teamcould not do without. Upon arrival in hishome of Kortala, Alnoor took Janan ona walkabout and apparently one of theirdestinations was the girls’ school. Youshould immediately rid your mind of thepicture of a Canadian school. Think insteadof three classrooms for 200 girls. Oneis under a large tree, the second in a strawtukol and the third is in a one-room buildingof rough stone, all within a spear’sthrow of each other. And know as well,that no government representative, NGOor UN organization has visited the villagein 60 years to help with their educationalneeds. This young Canadian officer doeswhat every Canadian military memberdoes while on deployment. He asks whathe can do to help.“I’m not a doctor or teacher,” he saysto Alnoor, “but there must be somethingI can do.”“School supplies are desperatelyneeded,” replies Alnoor. And so it began.It began as a request from Janan tohis family back in Canada for help topurchase school supplies for the Kortalagirls school. Then it started to grow – andgrow.The Canadians raised more than $10,000and, a few weeks later, Janan realized thathis project has gone beyond the schoolsupplies level. The word had spread backhome and the money kept coming in. Everybodyknows the good man that Jananis and that was reason enough to donate.Again he asked the question of Alnoor,“What should I do?”Alnoor replied, “Build a school.” Sothey did.While maintaining his job as a militaryobserver, and doing it better than most,young Lt. Sutherland oversaw the constructionof two classrooms and an officeto be built onto the existing one-roomstone school house in faraway Kortala, afour-hour-plus off-road drive in an SUV. Ifhe needed information, or needed to pass24“We give them painfully little. It hurts to watch their gratitude.”Lieutenant (Navy) Janan Sutherland ‘is one reason to be proud of the Canadian Forces.”some information on, he’d make a cellularcall to a neighbouring village and a relativeof Alnoor’s would drive the messageto phoneless Kortala. Lt. Sunderland’steam consulted school elders, drew upplans, hired an itinerant stone mason, orderedsupplies and planned celebrations.There were at least three major obstacles.It was at this point summer andJanan was deploying back to Canada atthe end of October. Managing a projectfrom a distance was difficult. And, mostimportantly, harvest season is about to begin.That meant all the men folk, tractorsand wagons would be out in the fields toreap sorghum. Still, the villagers realizedthat the education of their young womenis of paramount importance and were determinedto find a way around the issue.In the villages and farm areas of theSudan, tractors are of immense valueand importance. Families will share themand also use them as their ‘go-to-village’vehicle, as having both a car and a tractoris unheard of. It was quite commonto see whole families riding on a tractor,all laughing and falling about and strugglingto hold on as father veered thevehicle around the huge potholes of thenon-roads. These important tractors andtheir wagons would be needed to makethe two-day drive down to Dilling to pickup the special construction supplies notavailable near Kortala.The issue then became how not to disruptthe harvest work. In this country, noSPRING 09 | APR–JUN