Teacher Training and Accordians

On Saturday morning, Grace and I took a little walk down the street. It was amazing to be able to walk down a street without breaking a sweat!

That street felt so much like Uganda or Kenya, and not at all like Sudan. People were speaking good English, they were brown and round, rather than black and angular, there were no plastic bottles on the street, and there were no children squatting in the open spaces! There are actually latrines and pit toilets all over the place like this one:
After our little walk, it was time to go over to the teacher training school that is run by the NGO that we were staying with. I was so impressed with that place! We had a few minutes before the closing ceremony to chat with the acting principal and the NGO team leader, who is very much involved in what's happening there. I feel like I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but at least I'm getting my little speech on the wonders of mother tongue education perfected :) The guys there think it's a great idea to do mother tongue education... but they, like everyone else, aren't doing anything to implement any sort of mother tongue stuff. But they seemed very open to having some help with it, if we were able to give them some consultation on it. If only we had even one more literacy person here... there are SO many opportunities to work!

We were then ushered into the closing ceremony for the head teachers' in-service training. Of course, we were ushered to the front of the room, and sat facing the participants. As we were sitting down, dear old team leader whispered to me that he would give me a few minutes to address the participants in the course.

Good thing I had already given a closing ceremony speech at our own teacher training a few weeks ago. So I had a few ideas in the back of my mind of what sort of thing to say. Imagine, me, standing up in a room full or 50 people, giving an impromtu speech. How far I have come... And then, to top it all off, I was asked to shake hands as the participants were given their little plastic bags full of school supplies as their graduation gifts, even though I had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the training program there!

The funniest part was the guest of honor - typical behaviour. He sat through the whole thing reading his newspaper and looking thoroughly bored. Then he stood up and picked his nose while giving a speech. He did give a pretty impressive speech, though, and in talking with him afterwards, was a really nice guy.

We spent the rest of the afternoon at the Internet cafe and taking a walk down the road - felt like I was in a beautiful green, lush village. That's another thing I realized I miss a lot - just going for a walk to enjoy some creation - there were so many amazing plants and green things growing along the road, no cars, no garbage, no stinky smells. Grace even had a few goats to chase.

But the funniest thing was when we passed by the Anglican cathedral (shown below). Sitting outside in the shade of the church was a group of young people, gathered around the ACCORDIAN singing away. Yes, I did say an accordian. And they weren't playing "On Top of Old Smokey".