Billy returns to South Sudan and the Vocational Training College he founded
In 2003, Billy Smyth from St John’s Parish, Moira, and his wife Jenny took the courageous decision to take their young family from the relative security of Uganda to live in Yei, southern Sudan, which was two years into a ceasefire.
Now Billy will once again leave his home to spend time in Yei as he tries to help the people there to rebuild their lives, just months after another fragile ceasefire.
Billy, now retired, and Jenny, Mission Director of CMS Ireland, were the first Anglican mission partners to move into Sudan following the 2003 ceasefire.
A former maintenance fitter in Belvoir Park Hospital, Billy’s first calling with CMS Ireland was to the Church of Uganda in 1994. Here he met Jenny, a mission partner with CMS England, and the couple married in 1996.
Billy worked in Kiwoko Hospital, 50 miles north of Kampala, and Jenny was an occupational therapy tutor in Malarga Hospital in the capital. After their wedding Billy moved to Mengo Hospital in Kampala.
CMS Ireland asked them to go to Arua in northern Uganda to work with Sudanese refugees in the West Nile Ecumenical Training Centre, and the couple moved there in 2001 after coming home for the birth of their daughter Abigail. Today, Arua is once again the site of vast refugee camps, housing thousands of South Sudanese who fled their homes in the most recent civil war.
Billy taught carpentry, building and vehicle maintenance to Sudanese refugees and occasionally they would have to travel into Sudan to visit the diocese.
The West Nile Training Centre was set up at the request of the Bishop of Yei. The ferocity of the war meant it had to be located over the Ugandan border.
When a ceasefire was signed in 2001, Bishop Hilary felt the time was right to relocate the Training Centre in Yei. Billy and Jenny answered his call after the birth of their son Caleb in 2003, moving into a basic house.
In 2007, when Billy and Jenny returned to live in Moira, the centre had 55 staff, including teachers and carpenters. The students were mostly young Sudanese men, refugees returning home or demobilised soldiers.
Women could also learn new skills at the centre. Under the micra–enterprise scheme local women received small loans to set up businesses ranging from tea shops to basket weaving.
When Billy and Jenny returned home, CMS Mission Partners John and Poppy Spens took their place in Yei and oversaw the continued development of the VTC under local leadership.
The 2005 Peace Agreement led to independence for South Sudan in 2011 but sadly, civil war broke out in December 2013 and the work at VTC had to be suspended.
Billy has now been invited by Bishop Hilary to go to Yei and look into the possibility of reopening the VTC. Bishop Hilary’s vision is to offer hope to young people through vocational training opportunities and he sees this as a vital ingredient in establishing the current fragile peace process.
Billy will also take part in the Peace Conference planned for February 8–10. He said this follow–up conference will be as important as the work he will be doing at the VTC.
While he can prepare for addressing the conference in Yei, Billy cannot prepare so well for his return to the VTC, as he doesn’t know what to expect.
“I am told that everything is still there, but it will not be quite as we left in 2007. A big part of my work was to source funding. Over the past few years, to cover costs, there was a tendency to sell off equipment. The local economy has collapsed, so we cannot expect new students to pay fees. The place will need a huge cash injection.”
“My priority will be to work out budgets, what the costs will be per student. Hundreds of young people are waiting.
“When we were there in 2005, we helped families relocate back in Yei as we were able to give the fathers jobs, and they brought their families home with them. I find it really, really difficult to see these people back in refugee camps. For some of them they have been refugees three times round.”
As to his hopes for the future. Billy said it depends on your degree of optimism. “Bishop Hilary says the peace agreement is working, yet others are setting up a five–year plan for clinics in the camps,” he said.
He described conditions in the refugee camps as ‘dire.’
“The UN is really overwhelmed by the need. Schools are functioning but how well is a different matter. We visited a school at the edge of one of the camps in October. There were 400 pupils and only three classrooms.”
“Reopening the VTC may be a drop in the ocean but it could be quite a significant drop,” Billy said. “It may be that this will not be my last trip. I may have ongoing involvement with the centre through short visits in the coming years.”
Billy will leave for Yei on January 31, travelling via Amsterdam, Kigali in Rwanda and Entebbe, and following the conference and his work at the VTC, will return home on February 24.
Connor Diocese has been in partnership with the Diocese of Yei, South Sudan, since 2007.With thanks to Karen Bushby