Uganda Read This!: Acoli Folktales

I love traditions. Just ask my dad. Every holiday that rolled around I would beg for us to do something that reminded me of the year before… Dying Easter eggs, going to Disneyland for Thanksgiving, or going to Starbucks for Peppermint Hot Chocolate and driving around looking for Christmas lights. Luckily, Daddy always obliged. I think having my sisters back me up was what always got him and my mom to agree, even given the fact that their kids are in their twenties.

Traditions date back hundreds of years and include everything from dances and songs to food and folktales. In Uganda these traditions are unique to the tribes and help identify who is who. When I lived in the Southwest, I fell in love with their traditional dances, of which the rhythm of the music came from the pounding of their feet and clapping of their hands. When I moved up North, I fell in love with their songs and the unique sounds they make that are near impossible for a foreigner to replicate.

For many of the children who board at school, they are unable to participate in these traditions and thus lose a sense of self and their tribe. Furthermore these stories have been lost due to the 20-year war that took place up North and displaced many of the families. One of the Peace Corps Volunteers in Kitgum, Mark, noticed this as he works at a secondary school where all 800 students stay throughout the terms until the long December break.

To best highlight this issue, he had students write down stories they remembered hearing as young children and then had other students illustrate these stories. After the stories and pictures were collected, Mark assembled them into a bound book and presented it as Acoli Folktales: Preserving Culture and Promoting Literacy. I attended the kickoff event at the school where local officials came to give their words of appreciation on the project and the children received their certificates of participation. As one of the stories was read aloud by its student author, you could see him standing proud and his face lit up with accomplishment.

Some of the folktales were comparable to the stories we heard as young children from our parents, including the turtle and the hare. Told with some minor adjustments, the morals were still the same halfway across the world.

As the program concluded the space turned into an art gallery, with the framed pictures lining the walls. Mark’s hipster playlist played in the background as guests viewed each picture that made up the stories of their past.