Education East Africa Foundation

Eisa Mahanna School

The Eisa Mahanna School for children with disabilities is located in Elgezira Aba, a large island in the White Nile, about 300 kilometres south of the capital Khartoum. The little school is named after the father of psychologist Hanadi Eisa.

As secretary of state for the Sudanese Ministry of Education in the 1980s, he set up more than a hundred additional schools in the country, but did not manage to get his own son, who had a brain defect and could not talk, educated.

When her father retired in the year 2000, Hanadi promised him that she would make sure children like her brother could go to school, no matter how much time it would take her.

She spent years searching in vain for opportunities to establish a school with funds from parents of children with disabilities in Elgezira Aba. ‘Many parents saw no point in schooling these children,’ she told Rianne, co-founder of the Education East Africa Foundation, who visited the school in 2022.

In 2009, Hanadi was allowed to use vacant teachers’ residences at Imam Elmahdi University free of charge because “a ghost lived in them”. That did not stop her from having the building refurbished, at her own expense. ‘My entire salary went into it,’ she laughs.  

When the classes were ready, the transport problem remained to be solved. ‘I then asked the university if I could use one of the old vans that were rusting away there,’ she recounts. ‘The local police chief was willing to refurbish the van. I myself bought glass, new wheels and tyres.’

Although parents of children with mental disabilities often prefer to keep their children at home out of shame, Hanadi managed to start with one class. ‘But after a while, the university wanted the van back.’

Hanadi then decided to arrange for a school herself. The psychologist left for Saudi Arabia to work there. After nine years, she had saved up enough to buy a piece of land and start construction work. She received no compensation from the state. ‘They informed me bluntly here that I should just buy the land myself. That’s what I did, in the name of our foundation.’ Thanks to a donation from Saudi Arabia, she was able to successfully round off construction of the classrooms.

The Eisa Mahanna school opened its doors in 2019. The headmistress, on secondment, receives a salary from the Ministry of Education. The other teachers, all qualified, work there voluntarily. They also visit families in the neighbourhood where they know a child with a disability lives, to persuade the parents to send him or her to school.

The school offers free education to some 30 students with physical and mental disabilities. Volunteer Zahra recounts how much they enjoy the classes and how much they have changed. ‘Most of them came to school quite timid, not used to attention being paid to them. And now look at them, proud to go to school like all other children.’

The older pupils have learnt a lot and two of them even found work, one as a rope bed braider, the other is assisting a carpenter. A mosque nearby gives one of them the chance to take turns calling for prayer. The only pupil with a purely physical disability is being prepared for the national exams for the blind.

The children’s transport is paid for by the Education East Africa Foundation. Unfortunately, the foundation does not have enough money to increase the budget for transport, which would also allow children from more remote places to attend the school. Under the motto ‘every little bit helps’, the foundation therefore hopes to interest more monthly or one-off donors. So new donors who can spare a monthly or one-off amount are more than welcome!