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Ugandan children’s fiction offers much potential for cultural and global learning. Due to their multi-layered nature, folktales are relevant for students at different language and age levels. Because of their characteristic discourse structures such as repetitive plots, binary opposites, sets of stock characters and formulae, they are easy to understand. Folktales published for children often also make use of simple language and include contextualising illustrations. Thus, they are accessible to students with a low level of language proficiency. Still, some of their deeper meanings can only be understood by older readers. Thus, they provide a rich resource for the foreign language classroom.

Furthermore, folktales treat universal themes and have many analogies across geographical and cultural boundaries. Therefore, readers can easily relate to them:

Obwohl es nicht Fuchs und Rabe, sondern Leopard, Moskito und Krokodil sind, die hier törichtes oder schlaues Verhalten an den Tag legen, moralische Grundwerte bestätigen oder als ‘Trickster’ außer Kraft setzen, stellen sich beim Lesen schnell Bezüge zur eigenen Kultur ein. [Although it is not the fox and the raven but the leopard, mosquito and crocodile who act in a foolish or clever manner, confirm moral values or suspend them as ‘trickster’ figures, connections to one’s own culture may quickly be made while reading.] (Schulze-Engler, 1993, p. 7; my translation)

According to Fayose “[l]iterature helps children towards a fuller understanding of the common bonds of humanity” (1995, p. 4).

Still, folktales also give insights into cultural particularities and perspectives different from ‘self’. Whereas children in Uganda are quite familiar with folktales from the West (e.g. “Snow White” or “Cinderella”; see Chapter 4.2), rarely do children in the Global North get exposed to folktales by African writers. Making Ugandan folktales accessible also to young people in the West thus introduces them to a counter-discourse. As Bosma (1992, p. 15) observes, “[i]f you truly wish to understand the people of the world, you must read their stories – the stories handed down from generation to generation”.

Folktales, however, also require critical reading. In the opinion of Magos (2012, p. 195), “no one can dispute the existence of strong stereotypes as a characteristic of their content”. Stereotypes that are portrayed in the tales may be used as starting points to discuss processes of ‘othering’.

The analysis of stereotypes for the ‘other’ which are conveyed through folktales may help students understand the causes and means through which stereotypes are formed, and reflect on those stereotypes which affect, often subconsciously, their views and attitudes. Through such a procedure, folktale stereotypes can function as an effective teaching tool for the identification and combating of stereotypes. (Ibid., p. 196)

Moreover, Ugandan children’s fiction in a realistic mode promises to be productive in the context of cultural and global learning in the EFL classroom. Many issues of growing up are universal but young people in Uganda also encounter joys and challenges particular to their situation. Reading about young people from different backgrounds, from urban and rural areas, boys and girls with different aspirations and dreams, enables students in Germany to get a broader picture of adolescence in an African country. The Ugandan writer and editor Julius Ocwinyo points out in an interview that he believes reading Ugandan children’s fiction provides children in Germany with counter-representations of what they usually read:

I think, it would give them [children in Germany, my note] an insight in what the world here is like but also in what we are interested in, what our concerns are and also what we actually like to read about. I find it particularly annoying that in the West there is no balance in the presentation of African countries. I have travelled outside the country and one of the first questions I have always been asked is ‘Where you live, are there a lot of elephants and lions?’ I have never seen a lion myself. In many Western children’s books about Africa, however, Africa is presented like that. A lot of things are wrong, actually.1

Many of the Ugandan narratives deal with topics that are frequently referred to as ‘global’ in foreign language didactics (see Chapter 2.8): HIV/AIDS, gender issues and child soldiers. Usually students are exposed to information on these topics only from Western perspectives. In the news, students are, for example, confronted with reports about the devastating effects of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in African countries and the use of children in wars in Africa. Rarely, however, do they hear from those people who are affected by the epidemic or war directly. The fiction that has been selected for integration in this study addresses these topics from a Ugandan perspective. It answers questions children in Uganda are interested in and shows how young people in Uganda deal with these issues. Furthermore, the variety of different texts illustrates that there is also no homogenous Ugandan discourse but that it is multifaceted instead. With reference to one of the so called ‘global topics’, HIV/AIDS, Downing (2005, p. 29) remarks that

AIDS is one reason the West pays attention to Africa, but that attention is in the form of rescuing, not learning. The West doesn’t seem to realize that there are African discourses of AIDS fundamentally different from the Western discourses.

Reading Ugandan fiction on topics such as HIV/AIDS, child soldiers and gender issues may contribute to a shift of focus and hence foster students’ learning process.