Men's literacy programme - waiting expectantly

Sitting at Entebbe airport waiting for to start the journey home.

Time for one more blog to tell you about a few Acholi guys I met yesterday when I called in to the community to pick up the orders that had been placed for beads, bowls, bags and more.

There were 7 of them – 1 was the local elder, and the others are all linked to the ladies cooperative that we work with in some way; all 7 of them are signed up to be students on the men’s literacy group when it starts in January.

They had come to find me as they wanted to tell me how much they are looking forward to learning to read and write, and what it means to them to have another chance at education.

None of them have done much formal education – the Lords Resistance Army made sure of that. I didn’t like to probe too deep due to chatting to them as a group, but from what I know of the community, and their ages, chances are they spent their formative years running from the LRA, or being forced to be child soldiers. Many will have seen horrific stuff in the past, and a lot of the more recent years will have been spent trying to put that behind them, find a way back into the community, and find a way to forgive themselves as well as those who caused such trauma to them.

They each told me a bit about their life – married, how many children, whether they have any work. Of the 7 men, one had 3 children, one had 4, and the others had at least 6 each – that’s a lot of mouths to feed when you don’t have any money – but I’ll not go down the family planning v poverty survival discussion route now.

In all cases, the wife is the main earner in the family – making beads and other paper products for selling at markets, to tourists and to teams. Some of the guys help with rolling beads to increase the money earned, one of them works at the stone quarry, and one of them makes metal pots with his brothers.

What was lovely was hearing that all of them have been inspired to want to learn to read and write as a result of seeing their children, who don’t go to school, getting the chance to learn from visits by CRED teams. The excitement of the children in this new world of letters and numbers has reawakened something in the guys, and they now want to get ahead and improve their chances of getting a job.

I’m looking forward to visiting the programme when I am back in Uganda next year, and sitting with the same guys who by then will be able to write their names, rather than just do an x on a piece of paper. Another lovely ripple effect from the impact of the teams, and a bi-product that we hadn’t dreamed of.