The Latest News

« Back

Jim Mathieu ’56

Dr. Jim Mathieu, emeritus professor of sociology at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and his wife, Barbara, share a new passion and mission in their retirement: to educate the children of rural, war-torn South Sudan.

It is a place that few outsiders ever see. In this isolated part of northwestern South Sudan, where there are two seasons, one wet and one dry, there is little infrastructure of any kind. No roads. No electricity. No running water except for what can be pumped by hand from a few simple bore wells.

Their journey to Marol began when the couple came to know Jok Madut Jok, a professor and colleague of Jim’s at Loyola Marymount. Like so many Sudanese nationals who were fortunate to build new lives outside Sudan, Jok was drawn back to his homeland. As an educator, Jok was deeply disturbed by what he found there—his own extended family and an entire village in dire need of education.

“Jok, who I met as a professor at Loyola Marymount, came to Barbara and me with the idea to open a school in his home village of Marol,” Jim said.

Jok returned to Los Angeles, sold his home and moved into the Mathieu’s home. The proceeds of the sale of Jok’s home provided the seed money to build Marol School, which opened on May 7, 2008. The Mathieu’s partnered with their housemate to establish The Marol Academy, a 501(c)(3), non-profit organization dedicated to supporting sustainable education in South Sudan. The organization’s first project was the Marol primary school.

“The Sudanese would rather have books than food,” Jim said. “The school library is the pride of the village. Even now a used Dodge Ram truck donated by the Mathieu’s is filled with books, 100 pairs of flip flops, a telescope and other supplies waiting for a driver to make the long trek from Mombasa to Marol.”

The Marol School is nothing short of a miracle. Fraught by genocidal conflicts from 1956 to 2005 between the Arabic north and the Christian, Muslim and Animist south, South Sudan’s inhabitants suffered. Millions were killed. Millions more were displaced. Untold numbers of children were orphaned, or captured and forcibly conscripted into the North’s army. Schools and churches were bombed. Villages burned and wells poisoned. In the last two decades of the war between North and South Sudan over two million people were known to have been killed in the fighting, or as a result of forced starvation and preventable diseases.

A comprehensive peace agreement was signed in January 2005. In the south they began to rebuild. They began to farm and raise cattle. Children, most of whom were illiterate, began to attend class in bombed out schools and under trees, wherever there was shelter. Six years of peace ensued; after which southern Sudan decided by referendum to secede from the north and become the independent nation of South Sudan.

In countless tiny villages like Marol, it seemed the peace would hold. But in 2012, armed conflict between the new nation and North Sudan resumed. Today, the sound of North Sudan’s Antonov bombers can again be heard flying over the villages of the Nuba Mountains. But while Marol remains relatively untouched by the conflict, insecurity in the village and at the school grows. Educational services in most areas surrounding the village of Marol remain poor or non-existent.

The Marol Academy organization was established in the fall of 2007, with Marol School welcoming its first 300 students in May 2008. Today, more than 600 students are enrolled at Marol School. The school has a hand pump and bore well to provide safe, clean drinking water to the village and the surrounding communities.

“Because of this one well, guinea worm disease has all but been eliminated,” Barbara Mathieu said.

The Marol School was initially open for girls only, but as space became available boys began to enroll. Some boys walk 12 miles each way to come to school. Girls, for security reasons, cannot walk that far. Initially, Marol School operated solely as a primary school. However, to meet the needs of its young graduates, a secondary curriculum was implemented to provide training and opportunities in the area of community health work.

Today, three classroom blocks containing three classrooms each, one bore well and three latrines accommodate 18 teachers and 600 boys and girls. Without electricity, the school operates during daylight hours only, and only during the rainy season from April to December when the children and their families arrive home from the cattle camps.

The Mathieu’s who had planned to travel to Marol in April 2011, but could not because of unrest in Egypt, are making plans to visit the school in April 2013. Meanwhile, they are working with their three sons and two grandsons to raise funds to build a makeshift kitchen at the school, so the women who prepare lunch for Marol School’s students can do so under shelter and no longer in the school yard.

Jim Mathieu graduated from Grove City College in 1956 with a bachelor’s degree in sociology. In 1959, he graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary with a master’s of divinity. He moved to the Los Angeles area in 1959 and earned a Ph.D. in 1972 from the University of Southern California. From 1975 to 1976, Jim was in Zambia on a Fulbright scholarship. He returned to Zambia and Lesotho to teach, again on a Fulbright from 1988 to 1989. Jim lives in Los Angeles with his wife Barbara, an anthropologist and president of the Marol Academy.

This article was featured in the Winter 2013 issue of the GeDUNK magazine.


You May Also Like:

Contact Info

100 Campus Drive
Grove City, PA 16127

P. 724-458-2000
Alumni Relations Office
100 Campus Drive
Grove City, PA  16127

P. 888-GCC-GRAD (422-4723)
F. 724-458-3334
E. alumni@gcc.edu