Abukloi means "We Can" in Dinka. We manage a secondary school and vocational training center in Rumbek, South Sudan, that provides essential skills and training for regional Southern Sudanese. This facility will also serve as a community center for the Rumbek community, providing a central place to come together and work at rebuilding their country and their lives. Abukloi is a non-governmental organization based in Virginia, USA. www.Abukloi.org
Monday, October 7, 2013
Abukloi Starts Classes
Hi from another sunny terribly hot humid day in Rumbek. Teaching went fine today, I believe the students began to understand me today. They actually opened to the correct chapter. Hooray! Agriculture is a trip to teach, since they have no farm equipment except for the very old tools (hoe and slashers). They have Nomadic Pastoral farms which means nobody owns the land and the cattle roam all around and eat wherever they wish. Nomadic farming as the textbook says is seldom done today, but in Rumbek it is the main type of farming. Today I tried to explain Horticulture. You should have been a fly on the wall. If we just had pictures of farms and equipment etc. it would make teaching much easier, as the students have very little experience with the modern world. I think the closes to the United States is the Rap music they all listen to. Beyonce (spelling may be wrong) is a big hit here, even some posters of her smiling face. So long for now, hope we can figure out how to fix our generator so we can have a couple hours of electricity tonight, which enables to see when we are bathing our of cold water pans. Talk to you all soon. So Long from Rumbek, Bev and Marg.
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Yay! For students understanding you - boo for terribly hot and humid. I guess those wet sheets would just be wet sheets - ugh! When I was studying multi-cultural ed in Flagstaff, one of the things that stuck in my brain was an anecdote about biased test questions. The Navajo children on the reservation saw boats being transported by cars and trucks heading to Lake Powell all the time - so when they had a question that asked them to circle where a boat belonged, they circled the road. Wrong answer, but not in their experience. Few of them ever went to the lake to see a boat on water... It's hard to teach foreign concepts without background knowledge or context. Can we try to gather/print off pictures of modern world stuff? Like farming? And send them to you?
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