Aphoyo was not on purpose, it was a divine event; the day I met Winnie formed the rest of my life. The thing about days like these; the most important days, is that they are followed by mundane, seemingly ordinary necessities, like deciding on a name for our newly formed scholarship fund.
I had picked a name- one night on my cot in Gulu I stayed up late turning the name over and over, I wanted to call our scholarship fund, “The Winnie Project.” The name was dear and precious to me, I could feel the weight of Winnie in my arms every time I said it, “The Winnie Project.”
Ethan and I met with the missions team to ask if they wanted to be involved, I unveiled the name nonchalantly expecting more than a few “awe”s.
They all hated the name.
The journey continued. We came back to the states where Ethan and I were greeted with eager faces who had only caught snippets of our scholarship fund from e-mails and brief phone calls. We told them what we knew so far, but we still lacked a name. I continued to use “The Winnie Project” hoping it would catch on or others would love it and overrule Ethan.
Everyone hated the name.
About a week after returning to the states, my best friend, Haley, took me out to coffee with the goal of getting a few things nailed down about the scholarship fund, but at every turn we kept coming back to the necessity of a name. She had me write every phrase, every word I could think of that had to do with the day I met Winnie; that day that had so formed me. I started out: “Winnie” “Project” (I was still pushing), “Matthew 25:40” “The Least of These” “Clinic” “Babe” and then it even got weird, “Blood everywhere” “Puss everywhere” (can you imagine sponsoring “Puss Everywhere”?) and then “apowo.” Haley stopped me, “What’s that word?” “a-ph-oy-o,” I said, “It means ‘thank you’ in Acholi. That’s all Jennifer said to me when I gave Winnie back to her after that day at clinic.”
“It’s perfect.”
We tinkered with the name, different fonts, different phonetic spellings for the western dialects we were appealing to, and today we have Aphoyo. And a beautiful logo that Haley designed for us.
Aphoyo is thank you: it is thank you from our students to our sponsors, it is thank you from us to our donors who believe in this idea, it is thank you to the amazing people who have offered up their services, time and aid to get us going. It is thank you from me to Winnie; this little one who changed everything.