Tomorrow, we begin our Wash’Em training workshop with NRC and its partners here in Sudan. Our final checks have included making sure that we have all the required materials printed and getting the handouts translated into Arabic. To make sure we did not lose track of what we had prepared and how many copies we needed, we created a colour-coded checklist. In many ways it has felt like packing for a journey – all the printed materials packed in envelopes corresponding to the lesson number. The checklist tells us which documents still need to be translated, proof-read, or printed out – much like a packing list. For those planning similar training workshops, I am attaching the file with this post. You will see that I have numbered the handouts to match the lesson number. I am looking forward to sharing this five-day journey with the Sudanese team.
Preparing materials in Arabic has made me rethink how I learnt to read and write moving across the page from left to right. Moving text around the screen in Arabic means I must start my highlighting from the other end of the sentence that I am used to. I must admit it took me a while to “re-learn” what had become so ingrained I don’t think about it. This experience made me think about how there can be moments in our life when we do need to re-learn something. I can imagine that populations affected by crisis around the world have had to re-learn a lot amidst changing circumstances and environments. Through the pandemic we have all had to re-learn ways of living. What have you had to re-learn recently? And how do you think this experience of “re-learning” could be applied in hand-washing in humanitarian settings?