The South Sudanese Children Who Dream in Hebrew in Uganda's Capital - Israel News

The South Sudanese children who dream in Hebrew in Ugandaʼs capital - Israel News - Haaretz.
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Students participating in the Come True project, March 14, 2018. Credit: Uzi Dann
The South Sudanese Children Who

Dream in Hebrew in Uganda’s Capita
After being deported to South Sudan, these kids now attend a
private school in Kampala funded by an Israeli organization
By Uzi Dann | Mar 23, 2018
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● 'Some of the greatest crimes against humanity in our time were committed in Sinai'
● Israel's big lie revealed: Deported asylum seekers in Uganda lament broken promises and a grim future
● Deportation day looms for African refugees in Israel
Rami Gudovitch zips around from yard to classroom to dining room

to the school entrance, not resting for a moment. He has come to
visit “his” kids and it’s hard to say who is more excited, he or they.
The other adults are interested to see that this time, he’s brought
along his wife and two-year-old son, but the schoolchildren only
have eyes for Rami.
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He hugs them, asks how they are, remembers every name, inquires
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The South Sudanese children who dream in Hebrew in Ugandaʼs capital - Israel News - Haaretz.com 03/06/2019, 22*43
about this one’s sister and that one’s mother, knows who is excelling
in school and who has made great progress, takes pictures and has
his picture taken as he showers the children with encouragement
and love that is completely reciprocated.
In the past weeks, much has been written in this newspaper about
the hardships that asylum seekers who are deported from Israel face
upon arrival in Uganda, without proper documents or security,
vulnerable to arrest at any time.
But the Trinity Boarding School, located in Bukoto township in the

country’s capital Kampala, where Gudovitch is visiting, is the
complete opposite.
By chance, my scheduled visit fell during the week that Gudovitch

was here. The school buildings are simple but very well-kept and
gleam with cleanliness. The children wear school uniforms. There
are no air conditioners and the classrooms are crowded, but the kids
are disciplined. They raise their hands and are polite. There are
definitely things to envy.
South Sudanese teens who were expelled from Israel with their families and now participate in the Come True project, March 14, 2018. Credit: Uzi Dann
These are the children of South Sudanese asylum seekers. They were
deported there from Israel with their families in 2012, when their
country gained independence – only to quickly descend into civil
war. The South Sudanese kids at the school, “Rami’s kids,” are part
of the Come True project, which was created by the Become
organization.
Gudovitch, who for years volunteered with the children of asylum

seekers in Tel Aviv, and attorney Lea Miller-Forshtat, whose son’s
classmate and best friend, a Sudanese boy named Wai, was
deported with his family, kept in touch with the families and tried to
help them. South Sudan may have obtained independence, but even
before it fell into chaos, the conditions in many areas, including
education, were terrible.
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The initiative they began was initially meant to give the children
deported from Israel the chance for a good education, which they
had in Israel but could not get in their young country. The Ugandan
capital was chosen as the base for project Come True. The original
idea was to obtain funding so that the kids could attend the
boarding school and return to their parents in South Sudan during
school vacations.
But it soon became apparent that the latter would not be possible.
At the end of 2013, when the first school year ended and 40 of the
children were back in South Sudan during the school break, civil
war broke out. The situation in Juba, the capital city, and
throughout the country went from difficult to untenable. Now, says
Miller-Forshtat, “We no longer transport children from Uganda to
South Sudan, only in the other direction.”
Missing Israeli food
Today, thanks to Come True, 170 children of various ages are in six
schools in Uganda and Kenya (the majority are at Trinity in
Kampala). Estimates vary as to the total number of children who
have been deported from Israel, but Gudovitch says that about half
are now being educated through the project. He adds that if funding
were available, he could immediately bring in another 23 children.
Jade in class at the boarding school in Ugana, March 14, 2018. Credit: Uzi Dann
With the exception of the Jacob, a Darfuri refugee also deported

from Israel who works as the project manager, all the people
involved Come True are volunteers. But the school is private, with
high-level studies, and the teachers earn a salary. The organization
essentially looks after these children 365 days a year, taking care of
everything from food and lodging to education and medical care.
It costs approximately a hundred dollars per month per child, or

$1,200 a year. All the money comes from donations, many of them
from Israel. Donors can also “adopt” a child and provide him or her
with ongoing support.
During one recess break, I sat beside the school basketball court and
spoke with five older students: Deng, Patrice, Jade, Joyce and
Daniel. The first four are 16 and 17 years old, and Daniel is a little
younger. All are in their final year of school, and all speak Hebrew,
some without an accent. The five were deported six years ago, when
they were between the ages of 9 and 11; prior to that, they had lived
in Israel for years. For some, their earliest memories are of life in
Arad, Be’er Sheva, Eilat or Tel Aviv.
All have warm memories of Israel and don’t understand why their
lives had to be turned upside down and why their families had to be
broken up. They talk about the terrible situation in South Sudan,
and they miss their parents. Some haven’t seen their parents for
three years – and not all have a father and a mother. Some of their
parents are in South Sudan, others in refugee camps in northern
Uganda or Kenya. Some have parents in Egypt or other places.
These girls and boys know that they are a lot better off than their
friends in South Sudan – “Children our age and younger are
basically fighting in the streets,” says Deng – but they also have
strong recollections of Israel: their friends, school, the life they had
there. Joyce, smiling, says she still misses Israeli food.
Deng and Daniel. Credit: Uzi Dann
Jade is generally shy and doesn’t talk unless she’s asked a question,
but she speaks with longing about everything Israeli. Patrice
remembers all the places her family lived: Arad, Eilat, Be’er Sheva
and Jerusalem. Joyce says she came to Israel “as a little girl, when I
was just three. It was my home.”
17-year-old Deng is the most vocal in the group, and speaks in fluent
Hebrew. He and his family lived in Arad and Be’er Sheva for many
years. He says that in Juba, they had nothing, and there was no
school for him to attend. He knows he’s lucky to be part of the Come
True project, but he still doesn’t understand why he was deported
from Israel, which was his home, when the situation in his country
is so dangerous.
“I’m South Sudanese, I don’t disown my country. I’m also a little

Israeli,” he says. “What would I like to happen? To get the most
knowledge and education from Israel that I can, to get a higher
education and one day come back to South Sudan when it is a free
country and a place where it is possible to live with my family and to
make it a better place, using the education I obtained in Israel and
other places.” And yes, this 17-year-old visionary leader also misses
his mother and father.
Remembering just about every name
Gudovitch remembers just about every name, every face and every
problem. Nearly all of the children here are excellent students who
also perform very well on nationwide tests. Gudovitch points out
one boy, Moswato, who used to have serious attention deficit and
concentration issues but is now one of the school’s top students.
As if the war in their country and the separation from their families
wasn’t enough, the children often encounter hostility, both from the
local community and at school – from other children and sometimes
from staff as well. They are, after all, foreigners – and not just any
foreigners. They are easily identified as refugees from South Sudan,
a group that is the object of great hostility in Uganda, so much so
that some Ugandan parents have removed their children from the
school so they wouldn’t have South Sudanese classmates. The
children act in large part like Israeli kids, with all the bravado and
Western-style independence that this entails.
Rami Gudovitch with the children at the Trinity Boarding School, located in Bukoto township in Uganda. Credit: Uzi Dann
“Their freer behavior and desire to express themselves are

misunderstood in the conservative Ugandan education system,”
Gudovitch says.
These two elements – the hostility to strangers and intolerance of

Western behavior – have been the main challenge facing the project
since its inception. The positive side of it, says Gudovitch, “is that
this challenge requires us to develop new ways to promote the
children’s integration into this foreign environment. And these
ways, I believe, can be valuable to any educator or social activist
anywhere in the world who is trying to help integrate refugee
children into their new environment.”
While Uganda is taking in refugees and doing things for them that
no other African country, or any country for that matter, is doing it
doesn’t mean that there is no violence or xenophobia. The country’s
unemployment rate is very high, something which newcomers are
often blamed for. Not long ago, a South Sudanese infant was
murdered in a xenophobic attack by the family’s neighbors.
At recess, the big kids stand around chatting and the younger ones
play. They could have been doing the same at their former schools
back in Israel, if the country had had more patience to see what
would develop in South Sudan. On the other hand, they could have
been living in the midst of war, facing hunger and without any
access to a formal education – such is life in Juba.
Theoretically, children must be at least seven years old to be

accepted by the project, but in reality, says Gudovitch, ”we keep
‘messing up’ and taking in even younger kids from situations of
acute danger, especially if they arrived with their siblings and we
can’t bring ourselves to separate them.” Recently, a child under five
was accepted so he wouldn’t be separated from his three siblings.
On school breaks, the organizations rents space from another

boarding school and organizes a camp with volunteer counselors.
There’s no way of knowing what each day will bring, but it’s pretty
clear that peace, or even any sort of stability, is not going to come to
South Sudan anytime soon. Dozens more children, former Israelis,
are knocking at the door.
Besides helping children who were deported from Israel, Gudovitch

says Come True also aspires “to promote innovative modes of
cooperation between communities, ways to cope, socially and
educationally, with the wave of refugees and migrants flooding the
world. The fact that we’re really working in the field, in cooperation
with the refugee community, gives our activity unique value. We’re
not working ‘for them,’ but rather in complete cooperation, with the
refugee children and their parents, with the Ugandan educators,
with the local community. All of us are full partners in this activity
and striving to better understand one another and go from there.”
Uzi Dann
Haaretz Correspondent
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The South Sudanese children who dream in Hebrew in Ugandaʼs capital - Israel News - Haaretz.

com 03/06/2019, 22*43

The South Sudanese Children Who

65 Tweet Zen Subsc

Rami Gudovitch zips around from yard to classroom to dining room

>> Subscribe for just $1 now

But the Trinity Boarding School, located in Bukoto township in the

By chance, my scheduled visit fell during the week that Gudovitch

Gudovitch, who for years volunteered with the children of asylum

Missing Israeli food

With the exception of the Jacob, a Darfuri refugee also deported

It costs approximately a hundred dollars per month per child, or

Deng and Daniel. Credit: Uzi Dann

“I’m South Sudanese, I don’t disown my country. I’m also a little

Remembering just about every name

“Their freer behavior and desire to express themselves are

These two elements – the hostility to strangers and intolerance of

Theoretically, children must be at least seven years old to be

On school breaks, the organizations rents space from another

Besides helping children who were deported from Israel, Gudovitch

Sort comments by Newest first Expand all

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