“If you read no other book this year, read this one. Liz Hodgkin goes to one of the riskiest parts of Africa to teach. In her magical letters home, she shows how the world can be made a better place – for all of us.”
MIRIAM MARGOYLES
111 pages. 14 illustrations. Map. ISBN 978-1-9160783-2-1
In 2011, following the independence of South Sudan, Elizabeth Hodgkin – a historian and human rights researcher – taught in a village in the remote Dongotono Mountains, joining South Sudanese colleagues in their struggle to keep the school open as the country pulled back from war. Sometimes there was no food; girl students were pressured into marriage; violent acts were commonplace. Liz Hodgkin’s twelve letters home – joyful, comic and terrifying by turns – are a gripping account of a world where rainmakers, priests and cattle thieves strive to live from day to day, and young people yearn for education and opportunity in a world of danger.
“The rainy season ends as the term ends,” she writes. “Suddenly the grass is dry and scorpions appear in houses. The students set off home, girls with trunks on their heads, boys mostly with backpacks, walking in groups of six or more, for safety. Walking in this season is hard; and the heat dries the mouth up as soon as you drink. Students who are going home to Torit or Juba have to wait for vehicles which may not travel at all.
“But this is Isohe,” she continues, “so we are used to it. A town with no telephone network, with nothing in the market, with roads deep in mud, and a gun crime every fortnight. But with beautiful mountains, a good climate, fertile land, a strong women’s group and the only undamaged church in Equatoria. And our two wondrous, struggling schools.”
Liz Hodgkin worked as a lecturer in the History Department at the University of Khartoum, and as a human rights researcher for Amnesty International, reporting on the Middle East and Africa. From 2012 to 2013 she taught at St Augustine’s School in the village of Isohe, in Eastern Equatoria, South Sudan.
Published 2022
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