Celebrating graduation from adult literacy program is quite different from usual graduations in formal institutions. For adult literacy, the graduates are men and women who have defied age, community ridicule and embarrassment to attain such progress.
In some classes, you could find a mother and her daughters/daughters in law all pursuing knowledge. To this kind of people, there is no little progress. Many times you would visit a class and the joy of some learners being able to carry out mobile transactions on their own means so much to them. The achievements that an ordinary student will overlook are highly cherished.
In one of the classes, we came across a lady by the name Batuli Juma. She is a middle-aged lady and quite respected in the community. She grew up in a Muslim family and when she joined the class about two years ago received the conviction to convert to Christianity. She is still doing so underground for fear of the persecution she is likely to face once she makes her decision public. She shared her story of how they were nurtured to associate everything negative to witchcraft.
For me, even simple sicknesses like common cold will see me looking for a witchdoctor for cure. We grew up believing that modern medicines didn’t have the ability to address the issues we were facing. Our houses were full of spiritual paraphernalia. We were using it against both sicknesses and misfortunes which we interpreted as curses. It was until I joined adult literacy class that slowly my eyes started opening. I came to a realization that not everything happening in my life was purely witchcraft. Now for about two years I’ve not visited any witchdoctor and I’m not intending to visit them again. I also encourage other women in the community to seek medical assistance whenever they are feeling unwell.