Local Fruit: Tuk

We have quite a few African fan palm trees (Borassus aethiopum) in our village. The Dinka name for this tree is "tuk" (rhymes with "kook").

This kind of palm doesn't produce well-known fruit like coconuts or dates, but it does produce a fruit that is greatly appreciated by folks here, especially children.

The tuk fruit is ripe this time of year and kids at Cush Christian School often bring it to eat before school or at recess.

The fruit is very fibrous and has a large pit in the middle. It eaten by chewing and sucking on the fibres until all the flavour is out of them, then spitting them out.

I haven't tried tuk, partly because it has a strong odour that I find quite unpleasant. The students are not supposed to bring a tuk into the classroom because of this.

If a child has snuck one in and hidden it in his or her desk, the odour gives it away. As soon as I smell it, I'm on the hunt to find it and have it taken out ASAP!

Fruit Tasting

Last week we had visitors from one of our partner organizations. The plane that picked them up flew in from Uganda and the pilot kindly brought us some fruit which we can't get in our area. I received half a dozen oranges and apples as well as a pineapple.

I decided to share the fruit with the kids in my class. They know the names of these fruits and have seen them in pictures, but none of them had seen them in real life.

My assistant teacher, Pastor Kerubino, took the pictures I'll share here. The lighting wasn't great but they give an idea of the fun we had.

The "fruit tasting" was a surprise. First I had the kids all go outside and wash their hands. Then I had them gather round me at a table at the front of the class. They had no idea what I was going to do. I started taking things out of a big bag. It was great to see their reactions when I brought out an orange, then an apple, then a big knife. I cut the fruit in half and showed the kids the seeds inside.

Then I bought out the pineapple. Pineapples have such a unique shape that the kids recognized it right away and several burst out laughing. I had them touch it to feel the sharp little spiny bits, then I cut it up and gave them each a piece. Some were a little hesitant to try it, and all were extremely interested to see the reaction of the first ones who tasted it. There was a lot of laughter (and relief?!) when the first tasters gave it the "thumbs up."

I then gave the kids pieces of apple and orange that I had cut up at home that morning. In the picture below, the kids to my right are bending forward to see the reaction of the first kids who tasted the apple. It was declared just as tasty as the pineapple, and they also really like the orange. Overall, it was a really fun experience.

Sleeping Outside

This time of year daytime temperatures are quite high and it doesn't cool down much at night. This can make it quite difficult to sleep, so many (most?!) of my neighbours carry their beds or mats outside and sleep there. Even if there's not much of a breeze, it beats sleeping in a hut with almost no ventilation.

One morning this week I snapped the picture above of a yard that I pass each day on my way to school. The beds hadn't yet been taken inside for the day. You can see a few metal beds, a wooden bed (just beyond the red metal bed in the forefront) and a mat on the ground. These are the three typical things my neighbours sleep on.

Metal beds are somewhat of a luxury. Most people use wooden beds instead, or simply sleep on a mat on the ground (if there is a bed, it's usually an adult and a baby or small child/children who sleep on it, and older children sleep on a mat).

People here don't have box springs on their beds. For both the metal and the wooden beds, a grid of plastic string is "woven" across the metal or wooden frame to make the support for the mattress to be put on or for people to lie on. (This picture is of the string grid on a metal bed frame I have on my porch, supported by bricks, for people to sit on.) The string grid is usually very firm at first, but it wears out and can get really saggy.

The mattresses here are foam, of varying densities depending on the money people have available. Some of them get soft very quickly and don't offer much support.

Many people don't have money for a mattress so simply sleep on the string grid, usually with a sheet or cloth of some kind on it to make it more comfortable.

The yard photo above also shows the three main kinds of houses in my area: the traditional hut (back left), the mud/cement brick "modern" house with tin roof (back centre) and the grass mat shack (back right).

Magnificent Mahogany

There's a beautiful African mahogany tree in the centre of Parot, the village where I live. It dwarfs all the other trees for quite a distance, and it stays green all year round. It's so refreshing to see such a huge mass of green during this very dry time of year!

The main road (not an official one, but a very well used path/track) from several outlying villages to nearby Wanyjok market passes through Parot next to the tree. So there is a regular flow of people and vehicles going by this spot. Also, the Parot well is near the tree--you can see it on the far right in the photo above.

Some people have tables set up under the tree to sell things like roasted groundnuts, cookies, tea and sugar. It's a pretty good location since so many people pass by every day.

Recent Parot Church Baptisms

One Lord's Day last month there were 35 baptisms at our local church. Six adults were baptized after professing faith in Christ and 29 children of believers were also baptized.

The roof of the church is made of grass mats that are in bad shape and let in quite a bit of sun. So sorry about the quality of the pictures taken in the church--I know it's hard to see the people well.

In the picture below, Pastor John Alou is talking with the parents who want to have the children baptized, having them affirm their own faith in Christ and their commitment to raise their children in the faith and teach them of their need to make a personal confession of faith.

Here's a short video of this:

The oldest person baptized was a white-haired man (you don't see too many of those around here!) who recently confessed faith in Christ. He's on the left in this picture, being baptized by Pastor Alou.

Another of the baptisms.

Freshly baptized mom and baby.

It was a particular joy to me that grandma Nyibol was baptized along with the little granddaughter she is raising, Awut, and a grandson whom she is also now raising. They are shown on the right in the picture below.



Nyibol is a very courageous, determined woman. Her teenage daughter-in-law died in October, shortly after giving birth to Awut. Then in December one of Nyibol's adult daughters, who was eight or nine months pregnant, died, leaving little Luka without a mother. So Nyibol decided to take on the responsibility of raising Luka in addition to Awut.

Nyibol has been attending the Parot church since coming to live in the village in November. She has been really touched by the care shown to her by women from the church and has benefited greatly from the worship and preaching. She made a profession of faith and requested to be baptized.

Colouring

The kids in my class, even the teens, love colouring. I think it's safe to say that almost none of them had even heard of crayons before coming to Cush Christian School.












They have worksheets that they fill out as part of each lesson, using crayons for certain parts and a pencil for others. If we finish a little early, they enjoy having time to do more colouring of the lessons they've completed.



The crayons are set out in containers, sorted according to colour, at the front of the room. The kids come up and take crayons as they need them.

The day I took these pictures these two girls had decided to write down a song that was on the blackboard instead of colouring.

The Walk to School

It's now been four days since I began a new adventure in my career--serving for a season as a teacher at Cush Christian School (CCS). The school year here starts in February and ends late November/early December.

I teach the equivalent of grade 1, assisted by a local teacher, and have a class of 32 students ranging in age from (approximately) 6 to 16. No doubt I'll be posting pictures of them during the months to come, but for today, I'd like to share a few from the 12-minute walk I take every morning from my house to the school.



I leave home around 7:30, just as the sun is rising. The past days there have been quite a few clouds and the sunrises have been lovely. What a treat to enjoy the changing sky as I walk. The sun rises (and sets) quite quickly here because we're not too far north (relatively speaking) of the equator.

Most of the children who attend CCS come from my village, so I'm usually walking behind, in front of or among some of them.



I love how the four small boys in the picture above have their arms around each other's shoulders.



Almost there!

The kids I was behind have arrived, and I'm almost at the gate. The school is the building with the blue roof. It is located on the same property as Weer Bei radio station and Crossroads Training Centre, two other very important aspects of my team's work.