Tag: puppetry

Wally goes to Kampala

Last week I got to visit Uganda for the first time.

WordPress (in case you didn’t know) is open source software made by a community of thousands of people from across the world. And the members of this community like to come together from time to time at events called WordCamps to connect, network, and learn from one another.

Last week, the Uganda WordPress community hosted the Uganda Website Projects Competition 2024 , a so-called NextGen WordCamp–that is a WordCamp with a twist, not just bringing together people around WordPress, but around a specific topic or use of WordPress–in the capital city, Kampala. This competition is all about equipping young people to use WordPress to solve problems in their communities.

As one of the biggest contributors to the WordPress software, and members of the WordPress community ourselves, Automattic regularly sponsors WordCamps, and this competition was no different. But not only do we sponsor the events. We also try to actually attend, so we can connect with members of the community, learn from them, hear what they need, and chat about our products for WordPress.

I volunteered to help staff this event, and at the last moment the organisers asked if I might be willing to give a talk to the students and other attendees on the day.

Not one to back down from a challenge I said yes. What followed was a hectic week trying to put together a half-hour talk, for a bunch of students ranging from primary school to college-age, from an entirely different cultural background than me, that would hopefully inspire them in some way. I was almost done with the talk when I decided it can be improved by including a puppet (anything is better with a puppet…just compare A Christmas Carol to A Muppet Christmas Carol, for example…and my job title is Puppetmattician, after all).

So Wally went with me to Uganda.

Here’s a live-stream recording of the talk, if you’d like to watch it. I had to trim it a bit for time due to a change in the event schedule, so I’ll post the full version underneath, for posterity and all that.

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I haven’t posted pictures of puppets for a while

Time to remedy that.

Puppets wear baby clothes, which are often more expensive than the the clothes I wear, so when we make puppets clothes are not included. Clothes also contribute greatly towards the character, so we prefer that their owners pick an outfit for their puppets that matches the character they’ve created. (Yes, I do actually hope that the people who buy my puppets take puppetry as seriously as I do. No, I don’t actually think that they do.)

We always ask that people send us a photo of the puppets once they are clothed, but they seldom oblige. This time around, I can show you a pic of the last two we made, fully clothed for a change:

Boy and girl puppets

Their new mom will use them to teach music to little kids, so naturally they are called Mini and Maestro. Cute, huh?

The daughter of friends of ours (technically the mother was my teacher back in primary school, but adulthood has this funny side effect of suddenly putting you on equal footing with people you’d have called “sir” or “ma’am” two decades ago) is studying to become a teacher. She needed a puppet for one of her classes, so she came to the experts. When she saw one of our grandpa puppets she immediately said she wanted one like that, and here he is…

Grandpa puppet

We never did find out how many marks she got for our hard work…

And the other two kiddies led to a referral which produced the sisters:

girl puppets

Why are all these puppets so pale? Beats me. We have a chest full of different colours cloth, and a fabric shop nearby where we can get many more colours, but these are the colours our customers picked. Some people just don’t have any imagination.

If you’re new to the show, you can click here to see some of our other puppets.

If all else fails…build a puppet

Or two.

The girl-puppet was simple enough:

Girl puppet

But for her brother I wanted a specific hairstyle and had no idea how to achieve said hairstyle. They say necessity breeds invention, and so the wife suggested we make a tapestry, like this:

Canvas work tapestry — Yes, I know this is actually called canvas work, but in South Africa it’s considered a type of tapestry.

I spent more time making the hair for one puppet than the total time the wife and I spent assembling them both, but I’m so happy with the end result, the new method for making hair is becoming part of the permanent toolbox:

Boy puppet

It was tough letting these two go for adoption, but I know their new mom will take very good care of them and they’ll bring hours of pleasure to the children she works with every day. That’s why we do this, after all.

It’s a puppet-pocalypse!

I’ve been very lazy with blogging the past couple of weeks. You can probably tell, right? I think it’s because last year this time I was relaxing at the seaside. The feeling lingers.

This year, the wife and I are staying at home for the winter holidays. One, we’ve already been on vacation this year. Two, we don’t have any money to go on vacation. And three, we each have a massive amount of studying to do, which won’t happen if we’re on vacation.

This week, though, we’ve been quite busy. We got roped in to help a local church with a vacation club they’re running for the town’s kids, so we’ve been dusting off our puppetry skills (and rediscovering muscles and joint we had forgotten about).

As this meant getting all our puppets out from the various cupboard where they are usually stored I reckoned it’s the perfect opportunity to photograph them all so I can show you. Previously I’d shown you the puppets we have made on order for other people. Today? Here’s a line-up of our puppets made for personal use:

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