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Sudan School Honors Fallen USAID Staff
FrontLines - April 2010
By Rebecca Dobbins and Angela Stephens
Two years after USAID staff
members John Granville and
Abdelrahman Abbas Rahama
were murdered in Khartoum,
the Granville-Abbas Girls’
Secondary School was dedicated
in Kurmuk, Sudan. It is the first
girls’ secondary school in Blue
Nile state.
The dedication took place
March 8 on International
Women’s Day to highlight the
importance of educating girls.
The school can accommodate
120 students and serves as a
model for girls’ education in the
region. Besides classrooms, it
has a library, theater, cafeteria,
dormitories, and teacher offices.
Students will have Internet
access and computer training.
The school is part of USAID
support for Sudan’s primary and
secondary education for boys
and girls.
Blue Nile state is one of
three areas that received special
consideration in the 2005
Comprehensive Peace Agreement
(CPA) that ended Sudan’s long
and bloody north-south civil war.
Due to their location along the
divide between northern and
southern Sudan, the Three
Areas of Abyei, Blue Nile, and
Southern Kordofan were heavily
affected by fighting during the
war, which displaced huge numbers
of people.
In negotiations over the CPA,
citizens of these areas were
guaranteed special political
processes to determine their
future—a process of “popular
consultation” for Blue Nile and
Southern Kordofan, and for
Abyei, a referendum scheduled
for January 2011 that will allow
citizens to decide whether they
will be part of northern or southern
Sudan.
The governor of Blue Nile
state, Malik Agar, has agreed
to provide teacher salaries and
other operational costs of the
Granville-Abbas school.
Agar met Granville when he
lived in Kurmuk and worked as
a USAID democracy and governance
officer. Granville’s work
included helping to distribute
thousands of solar-powered
radios in southern Sudan and the
Three Areas to inform citizens of
their rights and help them prepare
for elections.
A local music group celebrates at the opening of the Granville-Abbas Girls’ Secondary School in Kurmuk, Blue Nile state, Sudan.
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At the school dedication ceremony,
Agar said that when a
friend asked Granville to explain
the five ways to eliminate poverty
and achieve the Millennium
Development Goals, Granville
replied that there was only
one answer to that question—
educating women.
Ka Vang, who represented
the Granville family at the
event, said, “I know that today
John is looking down on us all
and is both honored and humbled
that this secondary school
for girls has been built in his
and A.R.’s [Abdelrahman’s]
memory.”
Rahama was born in Juba,
Sudan, and began his USAID
career in 2004 as one of the original
members of the USAID
Disaster Assistance Response
Team for Darfur, after which he
was hired as a chauffeur for the
USAID office in Khartoum. His
widow, young son, and brother
attended the dedication.
Born near Buffalo, N.Y.,
Granville served as a Peace
Corps Volunteer in Cameroon
from 1997 to 1999 and subsequently
received a Fulbright
fellowship to conduct independent
research in the country. He
and Rahama were killed in
Khartoum on Jan. 1, 2008, by
four gunmen who last year were
found guilty of the murders by a
Sudanese court.
Establishment of a girls’
secondary school in Kurmuk
addresses a critical gap in
Sudan’s educational infrastructure.
Some Kurmuk residents
who fled to Ethiopia during
Sudan’s civil war were able
to receive basic schooling at
refugee camps. However, they
were often unable to continue
their studies after returning
home, where the schools were
reduced to rubble during the
war. The Granville-Abbas
Girls’ Secondary School now
provides the opportunity for
more girls to continue their
education. .
★
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by the Bureau for Legislative and Public Affairs
U.S. Agency for International Development
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