The colours of life

I had a fascinating conversation with John Njendahayo the other day about colours. It turns out that as far as he is concerned, he only knows the colours red, black and white. He can see all colours, so isn’t colour-blind  at all, he just doesn’t know their names.

This was a really intriguing concept for me, as John isn’t exactly uneducated. He started in a rural primary school in Uganda, but then moved to the city and got ‘spotted’ by a local headmistress of a ‘slum’ primary school for his academic potential, and as a result was funded through the rest of primary school (which goes up to the equivalent of our year 8 or 9 at secondary school).

Another turn of fortune led to him getting sponsored to attend a boarding school in Wales, and as a result he got educated through to passing his A levels. And if you bear in mind that John is Rwandan by birth, and his brothers were fighting for the Tutsis in the Rwandan genocide at the time of John sitting his A levels, then his academic prowess is even more clear.

John returned to Uganda after he had completed a degree at Liverpool John Moore University, and continues to be involved in bringing an educated mind to all the work he is doing, including developing sustainable energy solutions for a range of users.

So, for John to not know his colours was, in my mind, quite odd to say the least.

We chatted on and gradually the reasons became clear for this significant gap in his knowledge.

Having grown up in the country and started his education at a rural primary school, the resources available to the teachers were minimal – black and white text books, blackboard and white chalk, and a red pen for marking. Thus John learnt red, black and white.

What about all the colours around him in the countryside – the green of the leaves on the tea plantation, the colours of the flowers, the school uniform colours etc? Apparently it was all just referred to by name, or by location, and not by colour. And if a flower was described by colour, it was also described as ‘the third one from the left’ or ‘the middle one at the back’ or ‘the one on the tall tree’ etc – never just by it’s colour. And thus John grew up not knowing the names of the colours that were all around him.

As our conversation continued, we discussed how he hadn’t picked up the names of colours later on in his education – when he was in Wales or at University: “I didn’t do subjects that happened to require that knowledge, and like before, there never happened to be a need to identify anything just by colour. Everything had a name, or some other form of description that I could identify with, and so I just never had the need to learn”.

Apparently this particular gap in knowledge is quite common among those who have grown up with a rural education. The resources used are still very much black, white and red, and if the parents don’t know the colours then they can’t pass the knowledge on to their children.

Some have had to learn due to the work they do eg the Acholi ladies who make beads and jewellery have a very good knowledge of colours – they even know the difference between maroon and mauve – but they have had to learn that in order to be able to be successful in their business.

Obviously there are ways round it, eg John has taken to using a camera to photograph items that he wishes to purchase in a particular colour, or to order paint etc. He doesn’t feel confident to just ask for an item based on the colour name alone, and if he can’t physically pick it out, but has to order it, then he always shows the salesperson a photo of the item to ensure he gets the right one.

For many others, they just get by, seeing colours but not naming them. I guess it would be worse to know the existence of so many colours and not be able to see them, but it still feels like a bit of a shame to be deprived of that aspect of descriptive language.

A fascinating extra insight into life over here, and for me three points to take away:

1.     How fortunate we are to have such a colourful education system in the UK, with so many vibrant and stimulating resources available to us, and our children, as they learn

2.     When working with children from these more deprived education systems, don’t assume that a basic concept like colours is known

3.     Don’t ask John to buy you anything based on colour description alone – who knows what he might come back with!

(and yes, John has approved the posting of all aspects of this blog!!)

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