Last night the Christ School Storytelling Club began . . .
Fifteen brave students and one wonderful staff member joined me to try to figure out what this was all about. Change is always difficult, I would say even more so here than other places. A brand new club is change.
Friday nights bring Clubs at CSB. All of the students are assigned to clubs of their choices where they participate in such activities as technology, science, math, games, drama, and agriculture. In the boarding school environment, with no tvs or radios and few books or games; such a night is a highlight of the student’s lives and an important means to expand on their learning experiences in the classroom in tangible ways, as well as to built staff/student and healthy peer relationships.

The environment on campus at eight pm when we arrived was a busy hum of excitement and anticipation. Students milled and gathered in the meeting areas of the school, undetered by the complete darkness of the night. Lights in the classrooms (solar!) pulled us into our groups and we gathered. My group began with a cultural story from my own culture (Cinderella!!) and moved into an example of a Bible storytelling (Elijah and the false prophets), then on to objectives, plans and vision.
My aim with the storytelling club is to develop a group of students who can read a passage in the Bible and gather it into a story that comes alive, then take it out into the community and share it as a means of evangelism and discipleship. In the process the students will become more and more skilled at reading, understanding and interpreting the Bible for themselves. They’ll also gain a means of community outreach that will work anywhere at anytime, from a high level meeting with community officials (proverbs and sayings are commonly used here as a way to illustrate one’s point) to time around the fire with their families at meals. I hope and pray that we can build the skills they will need as influential individuals, as I help them learn how to partner with church and community leaders to bring their skills into the community in a sustainable and healthy way.
Imagine growing as a child in one of the poorest and most illiterate and malnutrived areas of Uganda, a place of hopelessness and desperation. Then imagine reaching the unreachable; education at the best school around, CSB. Imagine, once you arrive there, growing used to healthy food at every meal, a mattress and a bed of your own, speaking and learning all in English, and a newfound faith or a movement towards faith in the God who provided all of this. Then imagine traveling home to stay with your family during term breaks, once again eating simple, simple meals around a smoky fire, sleeping with many siblings on a mat or mattress on the dirt floor, being sent to dig in the garden or gather water each day, and returning into a nominal Christian, or a Muslim or animistic religious environment.
Many times when our students go out in the community they are considered arrogant, proud, or as I have heard said, “they think they are too big.” This is a direct result of the tremendous cross in cultures, their transition from village child to educated mover and shaker in the community. Once you are educated, it changes everything. Despite how or where you choose to live, you never give that away. Even more so, their faith.
I see storytelling as a means of bridging a little of that distance for both my students and their community. As students attempt to reenter the simplistic world of the more uneducated and particularly children and illiterate adults, they are coming to the level of their people. In a place where knowledge is controlled and distributed to those who are worthy and/or willing to pay, they are reaching past that to share freely with those in need. As they use local dialects they demonstrate that their heart languages remain the same as their people’s, despite their usual use of English for business and friendships. I pray that not only will their words tell of the love of a an all-seeing and all-knowing God, but their very actions will demonstrate that unconditional love.