Today I spent a lot of quality time with Aaron, the primary school principal, in school and at home, helping him with his visa and investigating a potential receiving opportunity from a Canadian donor. In addition, I got to sit back and talk with him about the birth of the Nabugoye community and its two schools, Hadassah Primary School and Semei Kakungulu High School, where I have been teaching for the past two weeks. The two schools began in 2003 and 2001, respectively, after Abayudaya students were already getting help from the US (mainly from Kulanu) to send their kids to school. It was decided that, instead of sending these kids to public schools, they could build their own schools, where Jewish kids from different communities in Uganda (and even sometimes elsewhere) could gather for regular education, as well as the study of Hebrew and some Jewish subjects in a Jewish-flavored environment. Aaron told me these new ventures have given even the smallest children, some of whom board, at the primary school the opportunity to meet and go to school with other Jewish children in an unprecedented fashion for Uganda. Both schools, however, have non-Jewish populations--Hadassah's is quite small, but SK's is quite large--about 3/4. He said he is hoping to have more Judaic studies in the future, at least at the primary level. The main problem now seems to be that most of the Jewish education at the school comes from volunteers, which is problematic on a sustainability level and a linguistic level. We talked about this, and he seemed to agree with my suggestion that if a local teacher could be trained to do this (who could teach the kids not only more regularly, but in their own language), this would provide a potential solution to the situation.
Aaron also told me the story which J.J. began, of how after the fall of Amin, he and other young Abayudaya came together to rebuild and regroup the community. For several months, they went from village to village, investigating who had assimilated/converted during the Amin oppression and who hadn't, getting a sense of who was left, as well as having organized activities for the youth. They then set up a committee and the Kibbutz I mentioned earlier and moved to build the Synagogue on Nabugoye Hill, land they had gotten from Semei Kakungulu back in the day (it was made community land). In order to build the synagogue, they told the government is was going to be part of a school, but when the local Christian authority realized this was not the case, they vehemently protested. In the end, after some jail time served by several of the major players (including Aaron...kind of weird considering that he's a jolly, not-hurt-a-fly, play-guitar-to-nursery-kids kinda guy!), the district recognized that is was their land and allowed them to complete what became the Moses Synagogue. And today, Nabugoye and this synagogue serve as the center of the Abayudaya.
P.S. A fun fact to those of you who are or have ever been in high school: classes at SK (and I believe secondary schools all over) can start as early as 6AM, sharp.
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