Making a splash in South Sudan: Local students saving lives in remote African villages

Sugar-Salem science teacher Sharee Barton’s junior high students share Thon Yak’s story about growing up in South Sudan. Their goal is to help build five wells to provide clean water access to 120,000 people.| Courtesy Sharee Barton

SUGAR CITY — Pure water is flowing for the first time in the remote village of Katchuat, South Sudan, after young people in eastern Idaho teamed up to help transform lives in one of the poorest nations on Earth.

Sugar-Salem Junior High students in science teacher Sharee Barton’s Geo-Inquiry class set a goal to help construct and drill five hand-pump wells. The class is partnering with a vetted-African nonprofit — Give Education a Priority Organization — and local Idaho donors to fund the wells, which cost $15,000 each.

Since Dec. 8, three wells have been constructed and paid for, thanks in large part to an anonymous contributor. The students are hoping to raise enough funds so that 120,000 people in the Thiik community will have access to fresh water.

Now the students are turning to the community for help to finish their collective project.

“We’re seeking funding for the last two wells,” Barton told EastIdahoNews.com.

The campaign has a personal connection, as Brigham Young University-Idaho’s sole student from South Sudan, freshman Yon John Thak, shared personal stories of hardship and persecution with the class.

Thon Yak’s story

Yak’s mother suffers from typhoid fever, brucellosis and ulcers — diseases he directly attributes to contaminated water.

As recently as December, women and children in the remote village of Katchuat, South Sudan, traveled three to four hours on foot with a jerry can to find water from a mud puddle or borehole.

“Sometimes you go and get a long queue, you know, just waiting in the line,” 21-year-old Yak said. “You just have to wait until your time comes to be able to go and get the water.”

Adults and children alike drink the dirty, polluted water directly because no wood exists to light a fire, heat or purify it.

People in Katchuat, South Sudan, traveled for hours each day to collect dirty, contaminated water to stay alive. | Courtesy Daniel Magit

Yak’s mother worked as a chef at a healthcare compound in their hometown but lost her job when the compound was raided, burned to the ground and never rebuilt.

She picked up farming to provide food for her family. They survived on maize flour, okra and some other vegetables.

“Growing up we could always have, like, one meal a day, and it was pretty normal,” Yak said. “Sometimes you don’t even get to have that one meal a day because things were not really good.”

Watch our full interview with Thon Yak above. | David Pace, EastIdahoNews.com

His father died after breaking his jaw in the military with no access to medical treatment when Yak was six years old.

Each school day Yak would leave at 3 a.m. — walking three hours to attend classes in a nearby village. He would dodge venomous snakes, lions and hyenas on the way. Several of his friends died from snakebites, he told EastIdahoNews.com.

“I have had the ambition of wanting to go to school and be the first graduate in my family,” Yak said. “This is one of the things that has fueled my determination to be able to come to where I am today — having the thought of wanting to change the background that I come from and wanting to provide something better for my family.”

As the oldest of seven siblings — most of whom want to attend school but can’t because of lack of funds for tuition — he wants to open up opportunities for them as well.

Being a member of the Dinga tribe, the ruling tribe in South Sudan, also presents obstacles. With more than 60 tribes in the country, young male teenagers are often targeted by other tribes for their potential to grow up and become warriors. Girls are often arranged in child marriages.

“In some places, I can’t go because I am not from that tribe, and I would be killed,” Yak said.

Surviving an abduction

At 15, having completed St. Daniel Comboni Primary School, Yak determined to seek additional educational opportunities by setting off on his own to live in a refugee camp in Uganda.

He was kidnapped en route, when their driver bypassed a Ugandan border reception checkpoint trying to cross into the country.

“The driver wanted to take us somewhere where they can just try to demand payment for us,” he said. “So, eventually, we got arrested by the police.”

After two days in custody, Yak and his fellow refugees were rescued by a United Nations refugee director.

Thon Yak has his photo taken for the first time in his life at a refugee camp in Uganda. | Courtesy Thon Yak

Yak resided in multiple camps — in the Tika and Maji Refugee Camps in Uganda and Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya.

Finally, he met a sponsor from California, who was willing to pay for his education in the United States.

Yak began his studies at BYU-Idaho in April, where he is majoring in cybersecurity. He hopes to be able to work internationally and purchase a home for his family in Africa in the future.

Transforming reading into reality

Upon hearing his story, a classroom of students at Sugar-Salem Junior High decided to do more than just help Yak’s family. They wanted to construct the first of four or five wells near Yak’s home city.

EastIdahoNews.com spoke with several students at the end of last trimester before they found out the first well had been constructed.

“He just has such an inspiring story — how different it is from our lives, and how lucky we are,” said seventh-grader Jane Chappell.

Led by Barton, an experienced science educator who’s completed an Antarctic expedition as a Grosvenor Teacher Fellow, the Geo-Inquiry class started this school year reading “A Long Walk to Water,” which is based on the story of the “Lost Boys of Sudan” — 20,000 young boys who fled their homeland during a civil war in 1987.

In South Sudan, “one out of 10 children die before their fifth birthday,” Barton said.

Watch our full interview above with National Geographic Educator Sharee Barton. Barton is retiring, and this Geo-Inquiry class is the capstone of 37 years of teaching. | David Pace, EastIdahoNews.com

After researching more about the dire water scarcity faced in that region, the class held a pickleball tournament to raise funds to construct a well to help the South Sudanese.

“We have (comparatively) tons of water here, like a lot of snowmelt and a giant aquifer here,” says seventh-grader Alexis Banta. “People in South Sudan don’t really have that kind of water, so we’d just like to bring a lot of water to them and bring a well in South Sudan to them.”

Sugar-Salem students organized a pickleball tournament and other fundraisers, earning $6,000 for the well. | Courtesy Sharee Barton

Working as a team, the students created a website, IdahotoSouthSudan.weebly.com, put together seven YouTube videos, organized a pickleball tournament and sought out donations, raising $6,000 to build a well in Yak’s hometown.

Through Yak, the students met Daniel Madit, director of the Give Education Priority Organization and Yak’s distant relative, whose nonprofit “educates vulnerable children, enhances food security and drills wells to provide clean, drinking water,” its website states.

Give Education Priority Organization has rented a water rig, drilled deep into the South Sudanese soil, and erected four reliable, hand pump wells in the Katchuat region.

To date, with help from a generous, anonymous local benefactor, the students’ efforts have raised enough funds for three of the wells.

Meanwhile, because the rig is in the area, a fourth well has been dug, and plans exist for construction of a much-needed fifth well if funding can be secured.

“Even though we’re just kids, we can make a difference — a real, big difference,” Banta said, “and that can just change a lot of lives everywhere.”

Give Education Priority Organization Director Daniel Madit (center) smiles with the water rig in the background, flanked by villagers from Katchuat, South Sudan, at the site of a new well. | Courtesy Daniel Madit

Help build a a well

The Sugar-Salem Junior High students are seeking additional donations to help pay for the last two wells in South Sudan.

The wells are placed strategically and geographically so that all 120,000 people in the Thiik community can reach a well within a two hour walk each day.

A GoFundMe has been set up to help with the class project. You can donate and learn more here or contact Sharee Barton at [email protected].

“We aren’t doing ‘school work’ — we are doing ‘real work!’” Barton said with a smile.