Sunday, September 6

I’ve been feeling sick all day, as have a number of other people in the group, but I’m trying to remember to keep hydrated. [Edit: I was all better the next day] Hopefully I’ll be feeling better soon. I’m taking advantage of the fact that we haven’t started the homestay yet to hole up in my room and rest, because I know once I’m living with a family I’ll have to do my best to stay active and engaged even when I want some alone time. Apparently, the homestay parents don’t really understand that sick students want to be alone and don’t want to eat much. Instead the mothers think they should cook a huge meal “to help them heal!” – A sweet gesture, but not exactly what I’m looking for at the moment, thanks.

We had our first Acholi language lesson today, which was very amusing. We mostly learned about the background of the Acholi people, and some phonetics. The style of teaching here is so different from the US: it’s very slow-paced, and the teachers go over things again and again and again, but by the time they finally do move on, you’ve got that concept nailed. It’s like they don’t expect the students to write anything down, but rather to memorize it on the spot. I know this is similar to the sort of “rote memorization” strategies of teaching that colonizers imported into the schools they set up, and I had heard that these methods were still used in many parts of Africa, including Uganda. I just imagined that it was only used for small children or something; I didn’t really expect that I would be taught this way.

The funniest part of the Acholi class was when the professor tried to teach us how to say basic English sounds, as though we didn’t know how to speak English. It ended up being quite a lesson in communication barriers, even in English.

The Ugandans have a very strong accent, and have difficulty understanding our American accents (they are especially tripped up by “r” sounds – not unlike most Bostonians). I had noticed that Stephanie, one of the academic directors spoke with a bit of an accent especially when talking to Africans, but I didn’t realize that she was doing it intentionally. When the teacher was trying to teach us the sounds of the vowels in Acholi, I finally understood that we should all be speaking with an accent to make it easier to understand. He had written the vowels, an Acholi word using that vowel, and an English word with the same sound. The problem was that the way he then had us pronounce these sounds did not match up AT ALL with the sounds in the example English words (for instance: “bin” is pronounced “been” (and means “come”), but the English example was “pit”). These English examples made sense to him, because they were the correct sounds in Ugandan English, not American English.

Similarly, we’ve run into a lot of problems with getting answers to questions. We spent a good half an hour trying to find out what percentage of students move from primary to secondary school, on average (“well, the ratio of teachers to students is supposed to be 1:45, but sometimes there are only seven classrooms and 1,500 students, so then you would have classes outside” “Ok, so then how big would the next year be?” “Well, you have to pass the exam. You can’t move on if you do not pass” etc…) We also get a lot of contradictory answers (“Are soccer jerseys popular here?” “No. Yes.”) or non-answers (“Which one of these dresses is your favorite?” “Yes”)

Part of the problem is just the accent and the speed with which we talk, but as Malena pointed out, it’s also because we tend to give long explanations for why we’re asking the question before we ask them, and when we finally do get around to asking a question, we don’t really make it clear with our intonation. It just sort of runs into what we’ve been saying. Apparently, we need to learn how to speak with an Africa accent, and ask very basic questions.

The other thing we did today was a “drop off,” which is a standard part of SIT programs and their “experiential learning” model. It’s supposed to help us learn about local culture and develop our research skills at once. We were set loose in small groups to wander around Gulu and find out about an aspect of the local culture (my group was assigned to look at fashion), buy cheap lunch, and buy an object relating to our topic. It was easy to get people to talk to us, but such a challenge to figure out what questions to ask, how to phrase them, and what to do with the information given. Sometimes it felt like we were trying to find deeper meaning where there wasn’t any (like when we asked if there was a time to wear long skirts and a time to wear short skirts and the woman just asked, “Well what do you like?”).

On our way back to meet up with the rest of the group, two young schoolgirls (I’d say about 9 years old) wearing their best dresses were walking down the same street in the market as us, eyeing us warily and clearly trying to decide whether or not to try out their English on us. Finally one did say hi, and talked to us for a few minutes. She promised us that we could get to where we were going by walking down a narrow dirt road to the left, and wandered off. We were clearly in a residential area, essentially walking through peoples’ backyards and attracting plenty of stares, and suddenly we realized a brick wall stood between us and where we needed to be. The locals cried out “Muzungu!” (white person!) “Wrong way! Wrong way!” One of us ended up asking if we could climb over the wall, which they considered and then agreed to hesitantly. As we hoisted ourselves up on the chest-high wall, they seemed to realize what these strangers were doing, and the screams (literally) of laughter continued for a good five minutes after we got over to the other side.

Otherwise, not much to report. Gulu is lovely, if dusty, and even has a small stock of nutella! The inconsistent water and electricity has been surprisingly frustrating for many of the other people in the group. I mean, yes, it definitely is annoying when the toilet doesn’t flush when you’re sick, or when the power suddenly goes off while you’re in the shower, but I’m still surprised at how big of a deal it is for some people. I really thought that everyone would be prepared to be “roughing it” on this program – they do warn us that we will be in rural areas… We just need to be a bit more flexible.