After more than two years I was finally given an ‘Acholi name’: Lakica (one who is merciful) – I’ll take that! What a lovely name 🙂
Dan’s Acholi name is Olara (meaning ‘saved’ as in ‘I saved/helped’ somebody).
Jody
This week we started recording The Fun of Phonics songs at a local recording studio – exciting! It was a little bit of a slow start: me calling some local friends and friends of friends to help with the recording. My ‘big idea’ was to have a morning rehearsal with everyone at church and then go to the studio in the afternoon. We started gathering ‘slowly’ on Friday morning, then Rachel (my incredible intern from CVAP) and I started teaching the songs. Perspective: Rachel and I had spent a considerably long time over the past couple of weeks writing standardised notation for these songs. There were some long mornings in local coffee shops singing about goats, fish, monkeys, etc, and singing over and over until we hit the right pitch and could get it on paper. We wanted to do this first before Teacher Catherine would then transcribe this into local notation for our revised teaching manuals.
So… we spent the morning at church practising, it took me a lot of effort to track down a drum, the local harps were readily available and then finally in the afternoon we went to the studio. Isaac, from my church, works at PACTA – a recording studio which is part of a community based organised working with alcoholics. Long story short – Isaac is amazing! He put down the melody first on the computer after Rachel, Catherine and I sang to him – he was incredible! Taking minutes to note down each song (rather than our hours!). We should have gone straight to the studio and just took directions from him – why on earth did I think I knew any better?
So after two days, we are part-way through the recording. It is taking a lot longer than I anticipated, however I am quite excited with what the end product will sound like.
In a little over a month, schools all over the world will be celebrating International Literac
y Day (September 8). I am quite excited that the World Literacy Foundation has decided to partner with me and try and raise funds for the phonics project I am working on here in Uganda. The foundation has written an article about the work I am doing here and is raising funds online. You can find the article by going to the World Literacy Foundation’s website and checking out the ‘Our Projects‘ page – the phonics project is the first one listed on the page.
Alternatively, you can click here to go straight to the article. 
It would be lovely if you read the article and also quite awesome if you felt like you wanted to support the project by making a donation for the resources.
Thanks World Literacy Foundation!
This is our first lot of students to complete the agricultural course we have offered. We are really proud of the current bunch of students and hope this not only inspires them to continue growing and starting up a little business, but also inspire new students to come and start the course in August.
Dan
A couple of days ago, an English friend of mine, who has spent a long time in Uganda, said one of the things he loves about this country is the unexpected – not knowing what is going to happen each day… this is so true!
Let me just share some of the unexpected for me from the past week…
While staying in a local family’s house in Kampala I had the joy of welcoming bed bugs/fleas to my body and now after returning home, Dan and I spent a good half day dousing all my travel belongings in hot water and then washing them. Now that’s a first!
I was truly blessed to visit the wonderful and much talked about ‘The Bridge Primary Resource Centre’ in Wobulenzi where my intern, Rachel, and I trained some 50 primary teachers from the local area. These teachers were eager to learn, engaged, enthusiastic and loved learning new skills.
On the final day of training I wasn’t feeling so great (coming down with a flu – those bed bugs possibly sucked out my energy!) so intern Rachel stepped up and was like a steam train and totally carried me through the training! I feel so honoured to have such an incredible intern from Concordia Volunteer Abroad Program who is just as passionate about teaching teachers the skills to teach reading that I am. Check out Rachel in action leading one of our new phonics songs in Wobulenzi.
One of the other beautiful things about Uganda is the different ways teachers appreciate children in class, different clapping rhythms, etc. We were surprised that in this particular area teachers’ didn’t know ‘Salamander’ – a common clapping rhythm where the recipient must do a little dance to the beat of the clap. Once Rachel and I introduced this one, they couldn’t get enough Salamanders! See the teachers and The Bridge staff receiving our Salamander on the last day.
Finally, one of the Serve Direct volunteers gave a beautiful, yet powerful 
speech to finish the training and presented me with a poster of a quote from Nelson Mandela. Extremely touched (and holding back tears) I accepted the generous gift. Although a little tired and possibly needing more energy, I am excited to be serving God through education and empowering teachers here in Uganda.
You are good for nothing. You were born poor. You will die poor. There is no hope for you.
This is what a primary school teacher said to Davis Samuel when he was in year 5. At the time he was paying for his school fees by leaving the house at 5am to tend people’s gardens before schools. And then do an afternoon shift each evening since his parents could not pay for his school fees.
Davis met this same teacher recently when he was running a professional development course for school teachers and had some of his published books with him. That very teacher came up to him, recognised him, hugged him and shed tears.
Davis is now the national director for the Association of Christian Schools in Uganda. He has such a beautiful, gentle spirit and such a big vision for Ugandan education. I am currently staying with him and his lovely family in Kampala and it is a privilege to work alongside him.
Meet Okema Cirlo Stafford. To us, he is known as Okema. This is one of the hardest workers I have met! We have had to dig up a lot of concrete recently, and as we do not have a jack-hammer it all had to be done by a metal crowbar. We pounded on this concrete until our joints were convulsing. I, personally, had a lot of trouble holding a cup to my mouth afterwards because I was shaking so much. That might seem like just another day for some of us, but when you realise that he is 66, you start to appreciate how amazing he is for his age. To give you a little background to his days, he is a grounds maintenance ‘man’ and our security guard. Okema works seven days a week, 12 hour shifts (day shift one week, night shift the next week). He has to do this because there is no pension here and he has a wife and nine children.
Fantastic picture taken by a friend of ours here.
Big thanks to Matt Adams for this wonderful photo which captures the essence of Gulu really well. Gulu is far from the most beautiful place in the world, but on its day…
This week we started filming! We are making a phonics DVD as a teaching resource for local schools. It will include examples of good phonics lessons in local schools, as well as phonics songs, and guides on how to pronounce the sounds and sound and read words. Teachers have been asking for this resource for a long time, so it is wonderful to finally start to produce it! We were filming at Mercy’s Village Primary School today, a school I have been working with for about a year – I love visiting this school!
This week we celebrated Heroes Day in Uganda, you can celebrate any hero on the day you want to. Last year Australian Irene Gleeson was honoured as a ‘National Hero’ here in Uganda by president Musevini – possibly many Australians have heard of the wonderful work Irene Gleeson did during the war years up here in the north and what wonderful work is still happening under her charity (click here for their website). I had the privilege this week of travelling to Kitgum (our neighbouring district) to visit the Irene Gleeson Foundation and train their primary school teachers. Although this is a school run by a charity, there is still a big need for teacher training and to work closely with teachers to lift the standards of reading and writing. My intern, Rachel, and I discovered this when we did a couple of experiment/demonstration lessons with P1 and P4 children during the training at the school. The teachers, however, were extremely enthusiastic and eager to learn new teaching methods. They said this was one area they really wanted help on. I hope to return next term to see how the teachers are getting on…
A demonstration lesson with P1.
Jody and Rachel giving a demonstration phonics lesson during a training session with teachers at The Irene Gleeson Foundation’s primary school.
A teacher practising some of what she has learnt during a training session.
Dan and Jodes... in Gulu, Uganda 