Literacy Teacher Training

This past week I led a four-day long Dinka literacy teacher training. The five participants, four men and one woman, were from four of my team's partner churches. They want to see people in the churches learn to read so that they can read the Dinka New Testament and also enjoy the other benefits of being able to read and write. The majority of the people in the churches are women and almost all are illiterate.

Peter Lual

One of the men who participated in the training, Peter Lual, teaches children to read in Dinka at Cush Christian School.



In the fall of 2013, I began training Lual to teach literacy using a primer that I got from SIL - South Sudan. He has grown much in his teaching skills during the past year, and I asked him to help me train these new teachers.

It would have been very difficult for me to do the training without him! He demonstrated how to teach the lessons and helped with many other things.

In the picture on the right, Lual is giving some feedback to one of the trainees

In addition to lots of practice preparing the blackboard and teaching lessons, the trainees worked on improving their printing and becoming familiar with the content of the literacy primer.

The five participants "bonded" during the four days. Here they are on day four having a good laugh about something one of them had said.

We had a little closing ceremony, during which my team leader Vince presented each participant with a certificate and prayed for them all.

The participants and I

Caroling Dinka Style

As I wrote in my recent post, the Parot Community Church has the tradition of hosting a meal for the community during the holiday season. I don't know if any of you readers wondered how the church has the means to provide this meal, but if you're interested to know, read on!

The "fund raising" is done by a choir of church women and children who go around the village singing and dancing at people's homes. I like to think of it as caroling, Dinka style. It's also kind of like street musicians going from home to home. Most people seem to enjoy having the choir stop at their home; some join right in with the singing and dancing.

Most of the people who are visited by the choir contribute small amounts of money; others give sorghum (grain) or other things that can be used for the meal. This year they raised 850 South Sudanese pounds (equivalent to about $150 at the current exchange rate), which is quite a bit of money for here. They also received several gifts of food, particularly sorghum.

I don't have any decent pictures of the choir, but I do have two videos that will give you an idea of what their singing and dancing are like. The first video is below and shows the choir at the Wards' house on Christmas Day in addition to some short clips of them walking in village and "performing" at another house.

The choir walks around the village visiting the homes of church people and other friends, relatives and neighbours. They usually spend a few hours per day doing this for the five to seven days before the meal. The composition of the group varies from one day to the next. There is a small core of a few regular women and kids, and then others join in as they are able.

One day my teammates and I decided to join the choir and do some caroling, North American style.  It was a very fun experience. We walked around with the group for a few hours. They would do a few numbers in Dinka, and then we would sing a stanza or two from a few English Christmas carols. People were rather surprised to see us but seemed to enjoy our very strange sounding (to them) songs.

Unfortunately I don't have any photos of this. I wanted to just enjoy the experience and not have a camera be the focus of attention, as it often is when I bring it out. We were enough of an attraction without a camera. :-) It's not often that our neighbours see that many of us "khawaja" (white people) out walking together. The number of kids in the choir swelled quite a bit that day as many wanted to walk along with us. Some of the older kids who are at school and can speak and read some English tried to read along on our carol sheets and they joined in when they could. A mini cross-cultural experience for them!

This second video shows the choir doing a dance step that is currently very popular for youth choirs to do as they sing.

Dead Puff Adder

At 8:00 a.m. a few mornings ago the Ward children came to my door with something they were excited to show me--a dead puff adder that their parents had killed.

This one is 32" long and apparently one of the fatter ones that the Wards have seen.

Around  9:30 the previous evening, the older of the Ward boys was in bed but not asleep. He heard something rustling through some dead leaves on the ground just outside his window.

He called out to his parents and said he had heard something rustling outside. His dad, Vince, rushed out with a flashlight and spotted a puff adder (easily recognizable by its markings) coming towards him along the side of the house.

(This picture shows the side of the house the next morning. You can see the dead puff adder and the trail that he made the night before coming from the dead leaves further back. The boys' bedroom window is just above the leaves.)

Vince called his wife Julie and, after quickly securing the dog, who was outside on the other side of the house, she came rushing with a shovel in one hand and a Dinka hoe (a long stick with a small flat blade at the end of it) in the other. 

Julie pinned down the snake with the hoe, but only caught the side of him and he managed to wiggle away. Before he could get very far, she pinned his neck down firmly with the hoe then used the shovel to sever it.

Vince was holding the light--a very important role since it was dark and we don't have any outdoor lighting.

According to Wikipedia, puff adders are the most common snakes in Africa. 

We kill about 4 or 5 a year on average on our compound. (I probably shouldn't say "we," though! I have never killed one and have never even seen a live one.)

The puff adder's beautiful markings are quite distinctive.





You may have been surprised to see that the path left by the snake was quite straight. 

They primarily move in a caterpillar fashion, using the broad scales on their bellies and aided by their own weight for traction. 

However, when agitated, puff adders can resort to a typical serpentine movement and move with surprising speed.

In the photo above, Julie is holding the puff adder's mouth open to show its fangs. 

We always thank God and rejoice when we kill a puff adder because they are quite deadly. They are responsible for more fatalities than any other African snake. This is due to several factors, including its wide distribution, common occurrence, potent venom that is produced in large amounts, long fangs, and their habit of basking by footpaths and sitting quietly when approached.

We are only too aware of the damage that puff adders can do. No one on our team has been bitten by one, but we have had neighbours die of their bites, and almost a year ago our beloved watchdog Bullet died of one.

The black tongue is quite long when pulled out. 

By the way, the Wards plan to skin the puff adder and dry the skin. It will be a beautiful souvenir for them to take back to Canada in a few months.

Parot Church New Year's Meal

Each year the Parot church hosts a meal for the whole community sometime during the Christmas/New Year's season. This year it took place on New Year's Day. Ladies from the church started cooking in the early afternoon, and people arrived mid-late afternoon. There was a short church service at 4:30, and the meal was served around 6:00.

My teammates and I went over around 4:00. The video below shows a little walk around the church grounds while people were waiting for the meal to be ready.

Here are a bunch of photos and one more video showing various aspects of the event.

In the forefront of the picture above is the cooking area, and the church building is in the background. It's made out of woven grass mats attached to a wooden and bamboo frame.

The meal consisted of "kuin," a very stiff porridge made of sorghum flour, served with three different kinds of "kadang" (sauces).

People break off a piece of kuin and then dip it in kadang and eat it.

 

The sauce that the woman above is making has macaroni and chunks of meat in it. The woman on the right is making kuin. It takes quite a bit of strength to stir as it gets thicker and thicker, which is one reason why the Dinka women have strong arm muscles! Here's a little video that shows what I mean:

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the church grounds, a group of girls were making tea to serve to the people waiting.

Dinka women often keep busy with their hands while they're waiting and chatting. Here, some are shelling peanuts, while the woman in the pink dress is braiding rope from long grasses.

Some of the kids were enjoying the long, dangling branches of a big tree on the property. They had fun swinging from them.

Next are a few pictures of the church service of praise and prayer, which was focused on thanking God for bringing us through the past year and praying for the new year. Last year was a very difficult year for the country and it was so bleak at the beginning of the year, but by the end the situation had improved quite a bit.  Pastor John Alou, shown in the picture below, led the service, but there were a few other pastors and church leaders who had been invited to participate as well.

Above: Church leader and preacher Luka Wol reading Scripture; Below: Pastor Karlo, who gave the message during the service.

                           

Once the food was cooked, the ladies began serving it on huge platters. 

In Dinka culture, particularly in group gatherings like this, men and women eat separately.

The men ate inside the church. Their meal, shown above and on the right, was a little more fancy in honour of the invited guests. Instead of kuin to dip into the sauces, there were pieces of a very thin crepe-like bread called "kisera" made by the church women, as well as some round flatbreads purchased in the market.

Some latecomers arrived after everyone else had eaten. Fortunately there was still some food left, and the women serving made up another platter.

After the meal, some of the kids had fun playing with the church drums. I'll close this post with the little cutie below who was enjoying her brother's drum playing.

Brrr!

We have been experiencing some of the lowest temperatures ever in our area. On Saturday, two days ago, it was 12 C (54 F) in the early morning. We had never seen it so cold. We weren't surprised, though, because we had sure been feeling it. Then today it was even colder, 8 C  (46 F)! We've had strong, cool winds, too. And it's not been warming up much during the day, only to 24 or 25 C (mid 70s F).

January is usually the coldest month of the year here, but the lowest temperatures we had previously experienced were 16 or 17 C (low 60s F). Even this seems quite cold to us and our neighbours.

You might be laughing at this point that the Wards and I, winter-loving Canadians--and supposedly hardy missionaries to boot ;-) --are finding it cold, particularly since many of you reading this are experiencing true winter cold right now. Well, let me seek to justify our "wimpiness" somewhat. :-)

We live in houses with no insulation, lots of places where drafts come in, and no solid windows, only screens. Even though we have metal window shutters we can close, they also leave gaps where cold air can come in.

Ward kids bundled up against the early morning chill

In addition, we don't have many warm clothes or heavy blankets, since we don't usually need them. We have been going to bed wearing several layers, and covering ourselves as best we can with the few light blankets we have and layers of sheets.

Our situation is at worst a little unpleasant and at best rather amusing. However, many of our neighbours live in shacks made of woven grass mats which don't provide much protection against the cold or wind. And they have even fewer clothes and coverings options than us. And much less experience with cold.

Their solution to the current weather is to hunker down inside their homes, whether they be grass shacks or traditional huts, with a small fire going to provide some heat, and not venture outside until about 11 a.m., when the temperature has warmed up some.

My teammate Julie and I went out on our usual 7:30 a.m. Saturday morning prayer walk and found our village practically deserted. We saw a total of four people, whereas normally we see a few dozen. We realized it was kind of like a "snow day" in North America, where most things shut down.

Church services started late yesterday morning because people wanted to wait until it got warmer to come out. One pastor was so surprised at the weather, almost incredulous; he said he had never experienced such cold in his life!

Happy New Year!

Thanks so much for reading my blog this past year. I look forward to sharing more snippets and snaps of life in South Sudan during the months to come. Warm New Year's greetings to you, and peace, joy and every blessing in Christ in 2015!