Francis

One of the things Sarah and I are heavily involved with is language learning. The language spoken in Kampala is called “Luganda” (not Lugandan). It is the language of the tribe called Buganda, which is the biggest tribe in Uganda. Kampala is in the territory of the Buganda tribe, hence, most people speak Luganda.

This is my language tutor.

His name is Francis. He has been at UCF for many years now. God has done an incredible work in his life, which I might have him share his story on this blog at some point. Francis (Sarah calls him “Franky”) is Muganda, which means he is of the tribe of Buganda, which is in Uganda, and thus he grew up speaking Luganda.

I meet with him twice a week for about an hour and he helps me with learning. We are becoming good friends and he is a great teacher. Learning Luganda brings up so many cultural questions and history of Uganda questions, and he patiently answers all of them for me.

Language is a fascinating thing here, as most people are at least bilingual (they know their tribal language and english or another tribal language), and often trilingual (usually Swahili or some other tribal language). It’s not too hard to learn as far as languages go, but there are some definite pronunciation difficulties. It has hardly any parallels to word formation in English. So, learning is slow at first, but we are increasingly convinced of the value of learning the language. Its not immediate, because UCF operates in English (all of its services in English, meetings in English, all attenders speak it), but for to the people in our community, it speaks volumes for a white person to learn and speak Luganda. We look forward to the day when we can speak in conversation, which is still quite a long ways off, but we will get there!