August 12: First Day of Training

Wednesday’s highlights:
23 Shilluks turned out this morning; all but one or two of them were there by starting time, with the others arriving soon afterward. Their high level of education compared to most of the other groups I’ve trained in this methodology had a significant impact in two ways: 1) We didn’t need to have anyone translate my English, and 2) They caught on to the theory in record time. Both of these factors played into the fact that we are moving through the training material in record time. We are now planning to finish in two days instead of three. In other news, my backache went away after a night of sleep. Read on for more details.

Some of the workshop participants

To my surprise—see yesterday’s blog entry—we had a strong Shilluk turnout this morning. 24 were promised and 23 showed up, all but a few of them arriving before our 9am start and the others soon after. So it seems that my pessimism was misplaced in this instance. (I did learn later in the day, however, that a number of those who were supposed to be present were not, while some of those in attendance were ones other than those I was expecting.)

There were several topics that needed to be presented during this week’s training phase which were not ready at the start of the day, and that delayed proceedings on a couple of occasions, but in general, we moved very rapidly through the training material. The participants’ high level of education in combination with their ability to understand my English meant that I did not have to explain as much or as long as I normally do. We are now planning to complete the training tomorrow, so that everyone can have Friday to work at their jobs before showing up on Monday for two weeks of collecting words.

As I alluded to above, some of the people who were designated to fill key positions did not show up, so the group decided at the end of the day today that they would see who turned up tomorrow, and those who don’t show will be replaced by others who have been present for the training. So we won’t know until tomorrow just how many people we’ll have for each of the crucial roles.

Lunch today was ugali (like corn “toh” from Burkina Faso) and spaghetti. A mixture of raw tomato and cucumber chunks was served as a side, with a banana for dessert. I ate quite a lot of spaghetti for lunch, so I went light for my supper, preparing a double serving of green beans and onions, and a plain two-egg omelet.

I had trouble sleeping again last night. I fell asleep relatively early, but awoke an hour later and couldn’t fall asleep again until about 2:00 in the morning. My back was still sore, even though the pain had diminished compared to what I had been experiencing earlier in the day. Finally I got the idea to take one of the acetaminophen I had brought along for headaches, to see if that would help the pain at all. It did seem to, some 20-30 minutes later, so I felt like I was able to relax more, and I finally drifted off to sleep again. I woke up a bit after 6:30, and discovered that my back was virtually pain-free. That was a welcome relief all through the day.

One of the more controversial topics of the day was the one about which form of the verb should be used when people want to write down a verb during the word collection next week. Here are a couple of pictures of Leoma Gilley and Otto Gwado, as they explained how to pick the right one in each case.

Leoma Gilley

Otto Gwado

Twong Yolong

This is Twong Yolong, our workshop’s Coordinator. He seems to be regarded as the most highly esteemed elder of the Shilluk community, as he is the one who is asked to make the important speeches and announcements. In this photo, he was announcing the role that each person would play next week during the word collection.