Cap Top Fun

I've recently noticed boys at school playing with a toy I hadn't seen before: a top made from a pen cap inserted in a bottle cap. The boys make a pointed tip on the pen cap using fire. They spin the top by flicking the pen cap between their thumb and middle finger. It looks easy but despite many tries I have yet to set one of these tops spinning.





There are a few boys who often play with tops like this. I enjoy watching them and seeing the fun they have with this simple toy. Yesterday I watched and filmed Garang (L) and Aluong (R).

One of the tricks they do with the top is making it spin on their own hand and then sliding it on to someone else's hand. At the end of the video below, Garang does this with me.

                       

      

Seen on the Way to School

A few pictures from my walk to school the other morning. 

Most of my neighbours are in the process of tilling their soil and planting. They usually work kneeling using a hoe with a small flat blade.

Naming Ceremony

My new short-term teammates and I arrived safe and sound in Parot yesterday afternoon. This afternoon a few of the ladies that I know best from our local church came over to give Dinka names to the two short-termers who are here for the first time, Myra (L) and Bridget (R).  

Myra and Bridget will be teaching at Cush Christian School. Each of the five ladies who came has children at the school, and they are grateful for these young volunteers who will be helping their children learn.

All visitors are given Dinka names because they are so much easier for our local friends to remember and pronounce than most Western names.

Also, having a Dinka name integrates new people immediately into the family and clan relationships that are foundational to community life.

One lady (with Myra in the picture above) suggested that Myra be given the name of one of her nieces, who is like a daughter to her, Nyibol Kur. The other ladies agreed.

Then another lady (shaking Bridget's hand in the picture to the right) said she wanted to name Bridget after her daughter, Akual Bol. This also met the approval of the other women.

After that, the ladies had a short time of prayer to thank God for Nyibol Kur and Akual Bol and ask for his blessing on their time here.

Update from Uganda

After being away from South Sudan since early March on a short home assignment, I'm heading back tomorrow. I'm currently in Lubowa, Uganda, which is a suburb of Kampala. Near where I'm staying there are some great views of the hills around Lubowa, so striking with their mix of dark green trees and reddy-orange roofs.

The past few days I've welcomed four short-term volunteers from the U.S. who will be serving with my team during the next months. We've been busy purchasing and packing supplies to take in to SS  on a Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) flight tomorrow. Today one of my new teammates and I went to deliver our freight to the MAF compound at the Kajjansi Airfield, which is just south of Lubowa. Here are a few of the scenes along the way. You will notice a banana theme--there were lots of them for sale. :-)

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Our 500 kilos of freight included personal luggage, boxes of groceries and toilet paper--can't get the latter in our area!

The MAF Uganda office building at the airfield.

End-of-Year Class Pix

The 2016 school year at Cush Christian School, where I teach, ended on November 23rd (school runs from early February to late November). This year I began with a class of 30, but four left and three went on to the next class during the first few months, so for most of the year I had 23 pupils. They ranged in age from 8-17, 12 boys and 11 girls. Here they are (except for a boy who was absent).

Here they are again with me and my junior teacher Achol (back row, far right). Achol, who is 16, helped me with the class all year. It's hard to find qualified teachers in our area, so we're training up some of our own. 😃

With my junior teacher, Achol

My class was grade 1 level and met only in the mornings (which is the usual school day here). Achol is in grade 4 at our school and does her schoolwork in the afternoon. She's one of the 35 students in our individualized study program. They work at their own pace and are currently in grades 3 to 6. I help with that class each afternoon, administering tests, checking students' work and tutoring.

Achol enjoys teaching and has made progress this year in her confidence before the class, her oral English and her teaching abilities.

Harvesting Sorghum

In late August, I did a post about the crops growing on our compound. Here's what the sorghum looked like a month later, when it was ready to harvest. It can get really tall!

A head of ripe sorghum can contain hundreds of seeds.

According to the U.S. National Sorghum Producers' website, sorghum is among the most efficient crops in conversion of solar energy and use of water. It is a high-energy, nutritious, drought-tolerant crop.

Here, sorghum is the food staple and is used to make a thick porridge that is eaten with a sauce. In Sahelian Africa it is used to make couscous.

The ripe sorghum on our compound was harvested by some of the church ladies, most of whom had helped plant and weed the crop during the preceding months.

The sorghum is harvested by hand. The harvesters pull down the stalks, cutting off the heads, then sometimes trampling the stalks down so they can go further into the field.

The ladies with their harvest, to be used to help the needy in the church.

A few more facts about sorghum:

• In the United States, South America, and Australia grain sorghum has traditionally been used for livestock feed and in a growing number of ethanol plants. 

• Sorghum is also gaining popularity in food products in the U.S. because it is gluten-free. It is an excellent substitute for wheat, rye and barley for those who cannot tolerate gluten. 

My Teammates' Tree

Sorry for the long silence on this blog. The last months of the school year (Sept.-Nov.) were pretty full and tiring, and then I was out on a break in Kenya for a few weeks.

I got back to Parot this week and am here with the Faris family. Our other teammates, Scott and Joseph, are out.

It was a fun surprise to walk into the Farises' house the other day and see a tree, a fifteen-footer reaching right up to the peak of the roof!

It's not exactly your typical Christmas evergreen, but it's festive and a fine place to hang some decorations.

Out in this rural area, people don't "do" Christmas trees or decorations. Christmas/New Year's traditions here include: new clothes; a late-night Christmas Eve service with singing and dancing lasting into the wee hours of Christmas day, then sleeping in the church for what's left of the night; visiting friends and neighbours between Christmas and New Year's Day; and having a big meal at the church sometime during the Christmas-New Year's week.