Learning the Language

Today was the first day of the LAMP course (language acquisition made practical). Now before I get into my day I need to share with you the people that I am taking this course with. Our facilitator is Linda Byler one of my team leaders in South Sudan. There are 6 of us Americans: me, Joelle (a girl from upstate NY who is working in Kampala for 7 months), Matthew (a guy from Lincoln, Nebraska who is working with me in Torit), Jin (a guy from PA, I think, who will be working Kampala), and Mike and Susan (a couple from Mississippi). There are also 3 girls from Germany: Rahel and Sabrina (who are working in Aurora, Uganda) and Miriam (who is working in Gulu, Uganda). There is a girl from Ireland, Louise, who is working in northeastern Uganda. There is also a couple (Nigel and Rowena from the UK) who will be taking over the Matoke Inn sometime in January. Ok, now that you know of everyone…we started the day with prayer and testimonies. Each of us will be sharing our testimonies throughout the next 5 days. Joelle and I shared this morning. Afterwards, we met in the AIM office to watch a few videos on language learning. We are approaching learning the language in a slightly different way. We are taking it beyond the classroom. We will not be allowed to take notes but will need to just listen. We will also learn through interacting with the people and asking them for help. Oh, and I will be initially learning Ugandan and when I get to Sudan I will learn Juba Arabic (It may not really make sense that I’m learning Ugandan first but I’m actually learning how to go about learning a language so that I can apply the techniques when I get to Sudan.)

After our morning session and lunch, we partnered up and went into the villages outside of Kampala to interact with the people. Our task was to listen to and watch the peoples’ interactions with one another and to interact with them ourselves. Our goal was to learn a little of the language. I partnered with Susan and we went into the village of Zzana. We needed to buy some fruit for someone at the inn, so our first interaction was with a woman vending on the side of the road. After buying some pineapple and tomatoes from her, we asked her how to say “thank you”. We were then approached by a man named Julius who helped us with a few more phrases. We talked to several other people and the reception was just so amazing. They were thrilled that we wanted to learn their language. We would go back and forth listening to phrases and repeating after them. They were incredibly patient and laughed with us when we couldn’t say something properly. After an hour we returned to the inn to meet with our individual language partners. During this time we met one-on-one to learn key phrases. We would be recording them on recording devices so that we could practice later on our own time. The phrases we learned today were a greeting for the afternoon, a response to that greeting, a formal goodbye, and thank you. My partner is a Ugandan girl named Doreen. She is 22 and has just finished school. Her older sister works in the AIM office here. She is a very sweet girl and very patient with me. The language is definitely challenging and I get tongue-tied quite often. So a major prayer request right now would be that I would continue to learn the language and apply this new technique of learning so that I may be able to use it in the future. This is what the next few days of our LAMP course will look like.