Dan and Jodes… in Gulu, Uganda

Last Thursday and Friday we had a blast working with 30 Day Care and K1 teachers (teachers of 2-4 year-olds) from various different nursery schools in Gulu. Over two afternoons we led teachers through 10 different stations focusing on how to make and use play dough; how to make paint and different painting activities; puppet making; storytelling; letter formation and sound identification; weaving; independent play; cutting skills; and a creative gluing and sticking station. We, as well as the teachers, had a great time doing it. We received really positive feedback and are now planning to adapt the training for K2 teachers this week (teachers of 4-5 year-olds).

Teacher Catherine demonstrating using local resources to develop fine gross motor skills.

Nursery teachers making play dough balls.

Nursery teachers making a sunflower with pegs and cardboard to practise developing fine gross motor skills.

Nursery teachers putting ‘washing’ on the line using pegs – under the direction of Teacher Catherine at her fine gross motor skills station.

A nursery teacher practising letter formation skills led by Teach Caroline.

Nursery teachers practising cutting skills for young children.

Nursery teachers practising letter formation and sound identification activities for their classrooms.

Nursery teachers exploring with paint.

Teacher Jody, with her paint smock on, teaching nursery teachers how to make paint from local resources.

A nursery teacher working on her artwork.

Teacher Abby (Peace Corps volunteer) teaching nursery teaches about ideas for storytelling in the classroom.

Teacher Katie (right, with Peace Corps) demonstrating how to develop fine gross motor skills with locally made play dough.

A possible typo which turned into one embarrassing mistake for this Ugandan newspaper. ‘Uganda’s crime’ should be ‘Ugandan Cranes’ – the national team.

Today we embark on a new adventure: new training for Day Care and K1 teachers (teachers of 2-4 year olds) in Gulu. There will be a team of 5 of us facilitating: myself, two passionate US Peace Corps volunteers (Abby and Katie) working with me and my two invaluable Ugandan teachers (Caroline and Catherine). We are all pretty excited about it! I guess the inspiration came from being frustrated and deflated walking into a K1 nursery classroom and seeing 50 or more 3-year-olds sitting behind a desk copying from the chalkboard and repeating after the teacher (even though the curriculum states differently). Over the holidays we have been planning and scheming, making resources and now the paint is made, play dough is ready, plastic scissors have been sourced, local weaving looms made out of papyrus mats and puppets made out of cardboard. Yesterday during a phonics training session Catherine was reminding the Day Care/K1 teachers to come: ‘you won’t get anything like this in the country, I can assure you that.’

The longer I am here the more I believe we need to focus on younger children and the skills we need to help them develop. Creativity, problem solving, critical thinking and literacy development beings with these young ones.

Let the fun begin!

We celebrated Myron’s second birthday today with a trip to a children’s playground which recently opened in Gulu (awesome!); ice cream; a swim at a local hotel and lashed out on a cupcake! Happy birthday Myron! Myron has blessed us in so many ways and we are so excited to have him as a central part of our family. It is absolutely incredible how well this little superstar has settled in. We look forward to many more birthdays, and years of fun, laughter, growing and learning with you Myron – next year we might have a bigger cake 🙂

Last night we went out with some visitors to a local restaurant. Whilst there we saw four volunteers from the children’s home where Myron stayed before us. It was lovely for them to see each other. The volunteers’ faces beamed when they saw Myron, gave him beautiful greetings and were intrigued to find out if he had stopped crying now and was sleeping better. We gave a brief glowing report on his progress; but I think Myron ‘spoke’ for himself by running around the compound, chasing chickens, helping the waiters clean the tables, pointing out stars to those around him; playing with his finger puppets; and pointing out any nouns that he knew around the compound. During one interaction with three volunteers two of them emphatically said ‘remember us Myron; don’t forget about us will you’. On hearing this, the third volunteer at the end of the table said: ‘No, we don’t want you to remember us. We want you to forget about us, forget about where you came from and have a happy new life where you are. You forget about us.’ Strong words…

Last night I was able to catch up with a good Acholi friend of ours who had just been released from prison. Ironically, he’s one of the most trustworthy friends we have here. His phone constantly interrupted our conversation; well-wishers were calling him to welcome him back.

Although our close friend had been in prison for three and a half months (112 days – that rolled off his tongue); his conversation topics dwelled on the positive. How grateful and happy he was that his work colleagues had accepted him back into his workplace so willingly. How appreciative he was of the many friends, students and colleagues who had visited him, bringing a saucepan, soap, cooking oil and food. And how he was pleased of positive improvements made in his workplace since he left.

Our mate is a professional teacher, married with four young children. What was his crime? Loitering, or known by locals as being out at night. In early October he loaned his bicycle to a friend. The bicycle wasn’t returned and at 10pm one evening a friend called for him to come quick because he found his bicycle which someone had stolen. He quickly went on his way to retrieve it. One does not want to be stopped by police walking late at night in Gulu in the lead up to Christmas. When he appeared in court the police statement had changed to him being accused of attempting to overthrow the government. In his words to me: the police wanted some quick Christmas cash. He had 40,000 shillings in his wallet (about £9/$15) when he handed over his wallet and an empty wallet when it was returned to him on release.

Life in a prison in Uganda is quite different to what you could imagine; and strikingly contrasting from our more familiar countries. He stayed in the main prison for one month; then was transferred to the ‘prison farm’ for a little over two months. Conditions were worse in the main prison where about 2,500 inmates crowded in both old and new blocks. You sleep on the bare cement floor, sardines lined up with no room to roll over. ‘What if you need to roll over?’ I ask. ‘Well then you say to your ‘co’ it’s time to move and you both roll together’. ‘Were you beaten?’ ‘Eh! I was beaten seriously!’ He was thankful for a ‘promotion’ as a leadership position amongst inmates to the prison farm where he worked long days out on the land.

Several times during our conversation he told me how healthy he was; it was almost as though he was proud to leave prison healthy. He also quoted Scripture to me, how our life is planned, even things we could not imagine could happen. I am humbled during our discourse. I can see Christ in his life. I can see his incredible ability to take the positives out of negative situations and endure. He has encouraged and challenged me.

After yesterday’s exciting news about the court care order, we went out to celebrate by eating ice cream. Myron decided to make up his own little game with his spoon. This boy sure loves to laugh! Had to share:

And here is Myron watching a video of this on the phone. Even then, the excitement was just too much!

We got a phone call this morning to say that we had an appointment with the magistrate on Friday at 8am for the signing of the court order (for us to be official foster parents of Myron). We were pleased that a time and date had been set; however not too long later we got a phone call from our lawyer’s office to say that we should go right now to the magistrate. So we did. Apparently our lawyer said that Friday was too long to wait and had contacted the magistrate to organise for the prompt meeting. We waited a while until she returned from lunch and low and behold, we now have the official court order! We are so excited that it is now official! Myron was certainly chatty during the very official meeting, mostly naming nouns he could see around the room.

Some of you may notice that we have changed Myron’s Acholi name from ‘Otukene’ to ‘Kimara’. He was given the name Otukene in the children’s home which means ‘grew from nowhere’; we thought ‘Kimara’ was much more fitting – meaning one who is loved.

Today’s prayer from Timothy Keller is our devotional reading:

Lord, keep me from being either naive about human evil, self-righteous about it, or cynical before it. Don’t let me ever get used to injustice or, worse, become complicit in it. That takes constant vigilance and reflection about how I am living. Keep me loving what you love and hating what you hate. Amen.

Sadly, we are used to injustice in Gulu. But challenged to pray for change…

Update of our dealings with the probation officer in trying to get the official care order for Myron:

I visited Tuesday last week to meet the probation officer who said I should have come in on the previous Thursday because her colleague who I n
eeded to see was in. She apparently told him to call me, but he
said he didn’t have any phone credit to do so. She then said he would be in the following Thursday (two days ago). So we all turned up on Thursday, waited for an hour and a half and the probation officer finally rings her colleague who we need to see and he said he would be there 9am sharp the next day and we should meet him then. No apology of course (not that we expect one). 9am sharp I go in with Myron; again we wait for over two hours. At this point the actual probation officer is getting a little embarrassed so she started to say that she could fill the form out and her colleague could just sign it. I replied what a great idea! Unfortunately, she couldn’t find the forms she needed to fill out so we have to wait again…

Dan