Celebrating Life After Work

Winter 2013
The Mathieus help
educate children at
the Marol Academy in
South Sudan.
from 1956 to 2005 between the Arabic
north and the Christian, Muslim and
Animist south, South Sudan’s inhabitants
suffered. Millions were killed. Millions
more were displaced. Untold numbers
of children were orphaned, or captured
and forcibly conscripted into the North’s
army. Schools and churches were bombed.
Villages burned and wells poisoned. In the
last two decades of the war between North
and South Sudan, more than two million
people were known to have been killed
in the fighting, or as a result of forced
starvation and preventable diseases.
A comprehensive peace agreement
was signed in January 2005. In the south
they began to rebuild. They began to farm
and raise cattle. Children, most of whom
were illiterate, began to attend class in
bombed out schools and under trees,
wherever there was shelter. Six years of
peace ensued, after which southern Sudan
decided by referendum to secede from the
north and become the independent nation
of South Sudan.
In countless tiny villages like Marol,
it seemed the peace would hold. But in
2012, armed conflict between the new
nation and North Sudan resumed. Today,
the sound of North Sudan’s Antonov
bombers can again be heard flying over
the villages of the Nuba Mountains.
But while Marol remains relatively
untouched by the conflict, insecurity
in the village and at the school grows.
Educational services in most areas
surrounding the village of Marol remain
poor or non-existent.
The Marol Academy organization was
established in the fall of 2007, with Marol
School welcoming its first 300 students in
May 2008. Today, more than 600 students
are enrolled at Marol School. The school
has a hand pump and bore well to provide
safe, clean drinking water to the village
and the surrounding communities.
“Because of this one well, guinea worm
“The Sudanese would
rather have books
than food.”
disease has all but been eliminated,”
Barbara Mathieu said.
The Marol School was initially open for
girls only, but as space became available
boys began to enroll. Some boys walk 12
miles each way to come to school. Girls,
for security reasons, cannot walk that far.
Initially, Marol School operated solely as
a primary school. However, to meet the
needs of its young graduates, a secondary
curriculum was implemented to provide
training and opportunities in the area of
community health work.
Today, three classroom blocks
containing three classrooms each, one bore
well and three latrines accommodate 18
teachers and 600 boys and girls. Without
electricity, the school operates during
daylight hours only, and only during the
rainy season from April to December when
the children and their families arrive home
from the cattle camps.
The Mathieus, who had planned to
travel to Marol in April 2011 but could
not because of unrest in Egypt, are
making plans to visit the school in April
2013. Meanwhile, they are working with
their children and grandchildren to raise
funds to build a makeshift kitchen at the
school, so the women who prepare lunch
for Marol School’s students can do so
under shelter and no longer in the school
yard. ■
Mathieu graduated from Grove
City College with a bachelor’s degree in
sociology. In 1959, he graduated from
Princeton Theological Seminary with
a Master of Divinity. He moved to the
Los Angeles area in 1959 and earned
a Ph.D. in 1972 from the University of
Southern California. From 1975-76,
Mathieu was in Zambia on a Fulbright
scholarship. He returned to Zambia and
Lesotho to teach, again on a Fulbright
from 1988-89.
the G ē D U N K www.gcc.edu | 33