Schools - diaries

January 2008 - Peoples names

Peace and quiet are over and the children are home for the holidays.

Surprise, surprise I’m really happy to have them back. The house when I’m on my own is far too quiet.

This time our house mum is Prossy, or Mama Faith.

This naming business is very complicated ……….
Mama Faith means ‘mother of Faith’, her daughter. Fred calls his wife Mama Stephen (Stephen being their eldest child), and everyone else calls her that too. I once asked Fred “What did you call her before Stephen was born?”
“I don’t think I called her anything!”
She calls him, ‘Tata Stephen’. (Father of Stephen). To be more respectful she is called Muchala Fred (wife of Fred)

It is very rude to call people only by their name, so I am always Aunty Liz, even to grown-ups, or Madam Liz to people who don’t know me very well. Sometimes lads call me, ‘Mummy’, which rather surprised me at first.

You don’t have to remember people’s names, which is wonderful.
You call men ‘Ssebo’ (sir) and women ‘nyabo’ (madam) even if you know them well. Otherwise you can call them by their profession – ‘Good morning Engineer’, or by their region of origin, which is less polite, ‘Hey Acholi’.

If you are a twin you are called certain names to denote male or female, first-born, or second-born.
If you are the mother or father of twins, you become Nalongo or Salongo.
As twins are common, there are many called Nalongo and Salongo, so it gets very confusing. If there are two or three sets of twins in one family then everyone is confused.

Some things sound rude to us. Children are often ‘Hey, boy’, or, ‘You girl’.

People usually have two names, one European and one African. They are usually known by their African names, but in HUG house, most of our children are known by their European names, except Namusisi Lydia who is always Namusisi.

I don’t know why.

Neither name is a surname so you never know who is related to whom. You only know which region they come from.

Information between UK schools and HUG in Uganda will be monitored:

Education Officer
Michael O'Kane
email: islandsschools@yahoo.co.uk