THE 5th EDITION OF THE TURKANA TOURISM & CULTURAL FESTIVAL

Turkana University College was among the stakeholders invited to the 5th Edition of the Turkana Tourism & Cultural Festival, held from 14th-17th August,2019 at Lodwar, Turkana County, christened ” Tobogolure -Welcome back Home” at Ekalees Cultural Centre.

The theme for this year’s festival “Celebrating our Cultural Heritage for Tourism, Peace and Regional Development”. 
The event show cased an array of the Turkana’s virgin and diverse cultural heritage ranging from traditional dances performances, beauty, lifestyle, traditional attire and regalia, songs and narrations, traditional cuisine, artifacts. This auspicious event has continued to positively transform the lives and the socio-economic development of Turkana since inception.
Turkana University College was privileged to interact with the RT. Hon. Former Prime minister Raila Odinga, Governor Nanok, Hon. Junet, Hon. Orengo and general public during the exhibition. The former prime minister had an opportunity to learn more about the university as well as signing the visitor’s book.

Partnership between Saide’s African Storybook and Turkana University College

The South African Institute of Distance Education (Saide) key implementation strategy is collaboration with others who are working to uplift living standards of communities. In this regard, Saide works with a number of institutions such as universities, schools as well as education ministries at local and national levels. One of these is Turkana University College (TUC) which seeks to be a preferred learning institution for transformation of lives and service to humanity. TUC holds the view that education, training and research are major tools in sustainable development of humanity, science and technology in a global environment. As an academic institution in Turkana County, TUC wishes to be a centre of learning for the community around and the source of motivation for children and youth of Turkana so that they can aspire and embrace education for development.

Because TUC and Saide are both interested in promoting education, partnership between them to promote early literacy in Turkana County through supporting the development and use of storybooks in the languages of Kenya, namely, Ng’aturkana, Kiswahili and English, was initiated through a Memorandum of Understanding in 2019. One of the elements of the agreement was for Saide’s African Storybook team to run a workshop at TUC with a select number of TUC students on translation of children’s storybooks from English to Ng’aturkana. These would be added to the digital collection of high quality stories from Turkana County for use by children in the County.

This was realised on 19^th September through the diligent organisation of Mr Edward Lokidor, a Kiswahili lecturer at the college (Standing) and Dorcas Wepukhulu, the Kenya-based Partner Development Coordinator for African Storybook initiative.

During the workshop, 17 students worked in pairs to translate at least one story using special translation templates. A total of 18 stories suitable for use in early grades were translated. Saide values quality and so the translated stories were checked and reviewed by Prof Thomas Ekamais, the Principal of TUC. Now all the 18 are available and can be accessed on the website in Ng’aturkana.

Students translating stories at the computer lab.

Saide appreciates and values its partners and so all the students received certificates indicating the story title in English and Ng’aturkana. Each story has the name of the student who translated it. All the stories will eventually have TUC’s institutional logo at the back.

Below are some of the stories:

CERTIFICATE AWARDING CEREMONY