The Amazing Race Comes to Bushenyi!

A new group of Health and Agriculture trainees arrived in Uganda two months ago. Like my Education cohort did, they completed their “Boot Camp” and have moved on to stay with host families for intensive language training. The Southwest group, about 9 volunteers in total who will be placed in the Runyankore/Rukiga language region, is staying in Bushenyi Town, not too far from me and Kris. They attend language classes in town six days a week and every Friday, Kris has arranged for them to compete in…The Amazing Race: Uganda! If you’re not familiar with The Amazing Race, it’s reality TV show where teams of two race around the world to complete various tasks in different countries. It also turns out to be a great concept to adapt for language learning.

Part of Peace Corps language training is known as “community experience." This involves the trainees being set free in the local area in which they are staying and told to use the language tasks that they have been learning. They are supposed to practice greeting, ordering food, haggling, finding transportation, and, of course, talking up the Peace Corps with whomever they can find. It sounds fairly simple but in reality, as any language teacher knows, that's a monumental assignment for a student, especially when they're an adult. The uncertainty, fear, and exhaustion of being in a new culture coupled with attending classes eight hours a day, six days a week means that most students are too reluctant, too nervous, or just plain too tired to take their own initiative to practice their new language in a real-world context. 

One way to combat this is to give learners more specific assignments to complete. Creating guidelines and a safe, predetermined space to practice mitigates a lot of the anxiety adult learners can feel. After all, when you’re speaking a brand new language to native speakers, you really do feel like a child again a lot of the time! Add this idea to the fact that, when you’re American, you will naturally turn these tasks into a competition, and The Amazing Race: Uganda is born. The prize? Homemade baked goods, of course, from a selection of the six I’m able to make here. There are few things a Peace Corps trainee dreams about more than food (sorry, friends and family – they still love you).

So, each week, Kris has been traveling around Bushenyi Town and speaking to our Ugandan friends, asking them to provide tasks and interact with the trainees in local language as part of the Amazing Race. In a fringe benefit that we weren't expecting, the locals have absolutely been loving it. It means a lot to them to see foreigners really making an effort to get to know who they are while caring so obviously about their language and their culture. Plus, it’s funny to see a bunch of Americans running around frantically, trying desperately to remember the word for bananas.

This week, the race came to our trading center and schools! Kris set up tasks around the area and I waited at my primary school while Kris “released” the teams five minutes apart in Bushenyi Town. They had to travel by public transportation to our trading center, complete four tasks and one detour, and then travel back again.

The first clue:

You have to haggle for almost everything here, including transport, so 10,000 shillings can go fast if you're not good at bargaining!

Second clue:

Those might have been our clothes that the trainees were washing...

Third clue:

Immaculate has actually seen the Amazing Race, so she was super excited!

After talking to Immaculate, the trainees were given a fourth clue directing them to my primary school. Upon arriving, they had to enter the Primary One or Primary Two classroom and be taught a song by the pupils and teacher. My headteacher and deputy headteacher were there to greet them when they arrived, bemusedly shaking hands and directing the sweaty Americans to the correct classroom block. 

Each class presented its own challenges and advantages. Hope, the P1 teacher, was very strict about pronunciation, but she had written down the song for the trainees and allowed them to sit in the back with the class. 

Rebecca, the P2 teacher, was less strict about pronunciation, but she wouldn't let the trainees write anything down and made them stand in front of the class to learn the words.

Such good sports!

It is a simple song that the teachers sing with the little ones when it's time to practice handwriting: 

Kampandiike gye

Kampandiike gye

Kampandiike kurungi

Ndyaba karaani!

Let me write well

Let me write well

Let me write so very well

I will be a secretary!

Its length didn't make it any less difficult to sing in front of a class, however! But with the promise of baked goods on the line, the trainees performed beautifully.

Receiving their next clue from the primary school secretary.

The last clue involved a trip to the banana stand clear at the other end of the trading center. The volunteers had to haggle the price down to a reasonable 2,000 shillings and hope that they had enough left out of their 10,000 shillings to make it back to Bushenyi Town!

The set aside items might also have been from our grocery list...

It all ended up in a sprint to the finish line between two of the four teams, with one victoriously claiming their prizes of no-bake cookies and coffee cake. Hopefully, however, everyone also left with a better understanding of how to navigate around Uganda, a greater proficiency in Runyankore, increased confidence, and some good, albeit ridiculous, memories. 

"That was fun, but it wasn't fun."

- JJ from the Amazing Race