Dan and Jodes… in Gulu, Uganda

Dan just got off the phone from one of his mates in Gulu wishing him Merry Christmas. Dan asked him: have you got presents for everyone? He replied: yes, I got gweno (chicken), I got rice and I have sodas. Christmas is almost in Gulu!

Although we have escaped Santa (he’s not going to be appearing this year, we will be standing in his place), we still have a tree (well… a branch), we popped up our locally made stockings, we have prepared crackers, and the presents are wrapped.

Other expat friends have commented that it doesn’t ‘feel’ like Christmas, more in reference to celebrating Christmas without snow and no fireplace. For us, well, it does ‘feel’ like our Christmas from home. Even though we can’t walk in and out of the air-conditioned living room (don’t need to in a grass-thatched hut), it’s still hot outside, there’s cold beer in the fridge, a decorated tree in the living room, Christmas playlist on request and presents wrapped in actual Christmas wrapping paper (note easy to come by here). This is Myron’s second Christmas with us. Last year he was quite young and the morning was a wipe-out after he cut his eyelid on the coffee table. We have much higher expectations for tomorrow morning.

Myron doesn’t really understand a lot about Christmas Day or its meaning as yet (naturally). At bedtime he thought it was his birthday tomorrow 🙂 We have been trying to encourage him to be involved in the gift buying for others (much to his disappointment that nothing we have bought with him has been for him)… we are not sure he is actually expecting anything for himself! He will certainly be pleasantly surprised.

Today we had a lovely Christmas Eve lunch with our dear friend and colleague Catherine – she cooked up a local feast (of course!) Followed by a beautiful evening with our Kiwi mates at our favourite local coffee shop.

We are looking forward to Christmas lunch tomorrow with friends (an assortment of 15 adults from six different nations).

However you plan to celebrate Christmas this year, we hope you have a wonderful festive season!

With much love,

Dan, Jodes & Myron xxx

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This is potentially the most important post we will write all year.

READ for Life, our new organisation, is expanding quite rapidly. Expanding in work and scope, rather than revenue. We currently employ three Ugandan teachers and next year would like to employ another, to focus primarily on nursery schools and co-teach in our nursery teacher’s training college we are opening.

Traditionally, child sponsorship is a popular form of giving, particularly to developing communities. However I am asking for a different type of support: not to support one child in their education, but to support teacher trainers to support hundreds of teachers, and in turn thousands of children.

What we at READ for Life are trying to do is to support the teachers in these schools. We specialise in teacher training. We train and mentor local teachers to improve the quality of their teaching, which should transfer to the classroom and improve children’s education outcomes.

We are actively working with hundreds of teachers in about 70 local nursery and primary schools in Gulu area. But our work doesn’t stop in Gulu, we have teachers travelling from across the country from different districts to attend our training and we have had requests to travel to other districts but we are limited by our manpower and resources.

We’ve watched our teachers improve and we have seen the results on paper. In one government school we trained this year: P3 (about year 2 level) pupils were reading an average of 6 words per minute at the end of term one (before training). We trained teachers at the start of term 2, they implemented, we followed them up, then at the end of term 2 that same class was reading an average of 27 words per minute. One term later they are now reading at 38 words per minute. And that’s just after working with them for two terms! Local teachers’ ability to teach literacy is improving and children are getting better at reading and writing – it really is exciting!

We need about £6,500 (AUS$11,400) to pay four teacher trainers for one year. That includes their wages and transport costs for them to travel from school to school in the Gulu area for trainings and observations.

If 36 people donated £15 a month (AUS$26) then we would have enough to fund staff wages for the year.

We already have three great Ugandan teachers and I have my eye on a fantastic nursery teacher who is willing to come on board. She just finished her school year and wants to volunteer with us until I can “cook something up for her”. I told her I’m cooking!

Please consider carefully if you would be willing to come on board and support us in this journey. You won’t be able to pin that picture up of a particular sponsor child on your fridge; however I will happily send you photos of our teacher trainers, the teachers they are working with, and in turn the children they are teaching.

I have updated our donations page so you can make donations directly to our work with READ for Life.

Tax deductible donations can be made from the UK, US, Australia, EU, and donations can also be received from New Zealand (not tax deductible though).

Today we said a very sad farewell to Poppy and Jajja – Dan’s folks David and Karen Unterrheiner – who came out to visit us for just under three weeks. This was the first time a relative of ours came out to visit since we have been living in Uganda (apart from you Aaron, but we travelled together). During that time it was an honour and privilege to introduce them to many firsts:

• To visit a developing country (first time one of them had left Australia)
• Meeting Myron
• Eating posho, beans, smoked meat, ‘green local veg’, millet bread
• Seeing lions, baboons, monkeys, elephants, giraffes, deer, jackals and many more animals in the wild
• Visit an African school
• Experience Dan’s driving through crazy Kampala

We laughed. We cried. We ate new things with our hands. We challenged each other. We questioned each other. We learnt from each other. We shared the surface of our life here. Just a taste, to make it easier to connect and understand when we next meet on screen.

We will miss you Poppy and Jajja! But we are so blessed that you came to visit!

xxx

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A few weeks’ ago I (Dan) and a local friend (Okello) bought a bull to slaughter with the intention of selling it to make a little profit on Independence Day, which we did.  At the end we made about 250,000 Ugandan shillings (£50 or $AUS90), not much in western terms but an exceptional days work in Ugandan. Afterwards, we sat around the table and discussed the process and decided to try it again. Which we did with similar results. Unfortunately on the third attempt things have turned. We bought two more bulls at the local cattle market, but sadly, in the early hours of last Saturday the cattle were stolen along with Okello’s grandmothers cow! The hoof steps were tracked although they ended about 400mtrs away where they had been loaded onto a truck and driven away.

This was particularly disappointing for Okello’s grandmother. Her cow was a dairy cross. It provided a small income (selling milk) and nutrition (drinking the milk) and was her biggest asset by far! She was so distraught that she called her sister from another district to come and console her and then moved deep into the village onto family land to grieve. She is still there.

We are still hoping that something may turn up although somewhat doubtful…

Dan

Sister Rosalba, head teacher at Mary Immaculate Primary School, and Jody

Whilst going on a jog on the weekend I ran into Sister Rosalba – the head teacher at one of our neighbouring schools, Mary Immaculate Primary School. During the jog I was listening to a Timothy Keller sermon about social justice. As always, it was a challenging word and made me mull over what social justice looks like in Gulu community and how I could try to put a piece of that social justice jigsaw together.

Along the way (and in the middle of my thought process) I ran into Sister. She gave me a lovely embrace and called me her ‘best friend’. She then went on to explain why she said that: “because you don’t give me money, you give me knowledge.” Sister then spoke about how children’s reading had improved so much at her school (it’s true – they are our number one government school in town… at the moment).

She was telling me how P1 children (reception/kindergarten) all want to borrow books and have a new desire and motivation to read. And how her teachers were now more confident in teaching. This was encouragement to my soul.

She then shared how it was her birthday that day – she turned 59!

Some of the children had given her one or two hundred shillings (up to 7c or 4p); a piece of soap and other small items. Sister then told me how she had accepted their small tokens of appreciation; and how it was encouraging to see children learn to be generous. This reminded me of a few New Testament parables and I returned to my musings about social justice. Still don’t have it figured out (probably never will), but happy to be on the journey with people like Sister Rosalba to encourage me along.

We have been living abroad for more or less about 13 years (my flipping goodness!)

And it takes a grandchild, seemingly, to entice parents to come and visit (lol). On Wednesday we picked up Dan’s folks from the airport in Entebbe. It was pretty awesome to see them on this side, rather than on a Skype screen! Looking forward to showing them what our life looks like here. I think we are almost past the jet lag, and now dumping these guys in culture shock – let the fun begin!

Dave and Karen’s first meal in Uganda: on Lake Victoria.

Do you have any 7-year-olds, 9-year-olds, even 11-year-olds near you? What did their weekend look like? In stark contrast, take a look at the weekend timetable for primary children at one of our local primary boarding schools:

Spelling mistakes aside (there’s no intended organ or tissue damage which children write about)… it’s a pretty rough innings with two weekly tests and night lessons on a Saturday.

These long school days which now seem to engulf the weekends have almost become cultural. When performance is not great, what’s the answer? Just more of the same.

We are trying to work with the District Education Office to minimise these ridiculously long school weeks, but these things take time…

Tonight Myron had a pretty darn good time at a friend’s wedding. Katie (a board member and strong advocate of READ for Life) married Tony and asked Myron to take a role in their wedding. Myron officiated the wedding and lapped up the limelight. Watch the youtube clip below to hear him lead them through their Myron-friendly vows:

Some of the READ for Life crew: Jody with Caroline, Cathy, Katie and her groom Tony

Myron getting ready to ‘officiate’ at the wedding.

Myron and daddy before the wedding.