A New Head Teacher 1/30/07

Eve Yamoi Merin had just come from lecturing on Child Rights at an international forum when I met her in Nairobi, but she is as down to earth as anyone in Kenya. A round faced woman with a hearty smile and a knowing shine in her eye, Eve sat patiently waiting in the cafe where I was meant to meet her a half hour earlier than I actually did, a common occurence here. We were sitting down together because she was one of the few educated, Maasai women with school administrator experience I had even heard of. A District Education Officer named Lashao accompanied me to the interview and did most of the questioning that day. I took careful notes, mindful of butting my American head in to a local process. When we did speak I recognized her ease with ideas, gentle leadership skills, and heart for her people: the Maasai. Within a half hour of our conversation, I was certain I wanted to hire her as Oloile's head mistress. The other Staff of Hope folks had already given their blessing. This consensus was bolstered by Eve's own commitment to the school, which was made obvious in her willingness to move a couple hours away from her two sons and husband to take on the responsibilities of a budding school. On Sunday afternoon Tyson and I met Eve as she stepped off her Matatu, a small van used as public transport, and made our way to a local guest house. We talked over tea about our similar convictions about the educational needs of girls in the Maasai community. A few hours later we continued the conversation at the school grounds as she met some of the staff, who came by to say hi, eventhough it was a weekend afternoon. She shared a hope that we might build her a small living quarters so she might stay on the school premises. I agreed to the idea immediately. And yesterday I saw her skill with the parents as the first year students lined up all day to register for the new term at this new school. When she gathered the staff after the longday, she assured them she would treat them as equals and made thempromise to call her "Head Teacher" instead of Head Mistress, for she found the later old fashioned and too authoritarian.

Because of Eve and a thousand other reasons I have hope for Oloile.

Kimana by night 1/23/07

Kilimanjaro watches over the Oloile Secondary school and the village of Kimana, but she is unnoticed like a housewife whose beauty has been forgotten. But when I first saw the mountain this morning, with its flat white capped top, she stole my breath like a first kiss. In the afternoon the peak hides behind cloud cover and at night she disappears, replaced by the other wonder of this place: the stars.

Traveling the rough road two nights ago on the trek from Nairobi to Kimana, we bottomed out in the van, pounding the dark dirt with a jolt. A few miles later we stopped to find the engine spewing oil like afaucet that had been left on at full force. Needless to mention, there is no AAA in Kenya. We called and waited for local help to arrive. Two hours later, we were rescued by our friends in Kimana, who towed us with a large truck and a jerry rigged hitch. But as I waited in the bush with my companions, the star filled sky held my attention without distraction. It was as if I had never really seen the nights sky before. I mean to say that what passes for stars anywhere else I have been is a cheap imitation, as close to the real thing as a plastic statue of liberty is to the actual structure. The detail and multitude of light available to the naked eye...is...ineffable.

After the four hour tow, we arrived in Kimana at about 3am. My first impressions of the village would have to wait til morning. In truth they are barely forming even now, but I can share one.

Each morning I wake up to roosters, dogs, goats, and cows all making their favorite morning noises. Water is warmed for me and I bathe in awood enclosure similar to a fitting room at a retail store, except of course it is outside and under an African sky. That warm wash is a great gift and so is the fresh chai made of cows milk that is given tome three times daily with plates of home made food. All of these treats come by the hard working hands of women. Mama Nasieku, the wife and mother of the house I am living in, her sisterRahab, and mother in law Eunice, serve me in ways that I do not deserve. In fact, I wouldn't survive here without what they provide me: food, water, and clean clothes. It is hard as an American man to receive. In fact most of what is done for me as an American is challenging to take in. I am here at a post office at the expense of friends who drove me. The midnight tow took the help of seven village men. Each journey I take to the school requires a ride in the family's only car, indeed one of the few in the community.

At the same time, I feel like I am surprisingly able to contribute here. I am learning the great value of listening and have taken notes on each person I have met and the important school related conversations I have had. Progress is being made in the beauracratic process entailed in creating a school. I am learning the system rapidly, partaking in official meetings and seeing things happen.

Return from Uganda 12/5/06

Spending a Tuesday night sunset on a hammock made of tree branches and listening to the sounds of Lake Victoria, of Uganda, of Africa was one of the sweetest moments of my life. The sounds were a cacophony of bugs, birds, and frogs.Three lively dogs were my company. Our abode this last week in Kampala was a cozy luxury, a retreat for sure. Our friend Leslie was hosting us in her guest cottage, something out of a fairytale- two small bedrooms, lots of light, wooden and wicker furniture and an outlook over the lake. The main house had a screened in veranda on the second floor with a view like I have never seen. For our last three days, we lived like the privileged Westerners we are.

As a kid I collected Adventure Men, plastic action figures like GI Joes, who wore adventure clothes and came with kayaks, tents and backpacks. I wanted to be one of them. Pretended it. When we went camping as a family I would jump into shorts with extra pockets, hooks, Velcro, and snaps to be an adventurer myself. Night and day during the last two weeks in Uganda I got to dress like an adventure man again. I wore hiking pants and packable shoes, durable, lived in button downs, and a head lamp around my neck. I smelled of unwashed clothes and deepwoods bug spray, but I felt more fresh and alive than I do most days here in New York.

Though it takes more work to make it through a day, and simple things like running water and electricity, things we take for granted, are often missing, days in Uganda are experienced in hyper reality. Every sense is heightened. Life is a bit more on the edge and ordinary comings and goings felt like adventures. Riding the back of a boda boda forty five minutes on a dirt road into the bush, eating rice and beans at a table full of men who were dipping meat in broth with their bare hands, or trekking in the dark to meet the night commuting kids, ordinary events in our time there, were intensified by the senses, made overwhelmingly extraordinary. Walking between huts in IDP camps with cameras in hand and dozens of children tailing us, we saw and heard horrors we were incapable of taking in. You step back emotionally, unable to process what is coming at you. It is all too much. But that onslaught of experiences is also so full that one cannot help but want to live everyday so deeply.

I realize that two weeks in a place is a honeymoon not real life. Over time, the amazement would rub thin and the annoyances of corrupt government and dangerous roads would frustrate like flies in your food. But nonetheless, Chris and I spoke endlessly about ways to stay and places to come back to. And I think we will return, sooner rather than later and remain past the easy days.

We were white outsiders in Uganda, and I have to mention white because that was all most people knew of us when they stared. We were constantly on display. Our every step, glance, and word were watched as if entertainment. They laughed at us, asked money of us, wanted to meet us, and sometimes looked to take advantage of us. Whatever the scenario, we were very much aware at all times that we were the"Mzungo". Things are not equal in the world. We are by virtue of birth and nationality rich; they are, upon the same merits, poor. The realization is stunning. Returning to New York City, in the midst of the holiday hub-bub, the African world we just came from feels totally other, separate. Coming out onto Park Avenue from the subway, I am reminded of something I read while on the trip, Mountains Beyond Mountains, the biography ofPaul Farmer, a doctor to the poor in Haiti. Upon returning to the U.S., Farmer is asked the same question by a friend, "Doesn't this feel likea different world?" He responds somewhat sarcastically, "The polite thing to say would be, 'You're right. It's a parallel universe. There really is no relation between the massive accumulation of wealth in one part of the world and the abject misery of another.'"

Critical Thinking 11/27/06

Critical thinking is not a part of the curriculum here I am told, and though I have not been to enough schools to report on teaching first hand, I trust what I have heard because I see it play itself out.Teachers ask a question and students respond as if reciting a catechism. You answer the question asked, nothing beyond. When you ask someone on the street if he knows how to get to Roma restaurant, for instance, he will likely reply, "yes", and it is not until you ask,"how do you get to Roma restaurant?" that you will get anything resembling directions. Sometimes, we joke, you have to ask the same question in six or seven different ways.

Thinking creatively, outside of the box, is not valued. When we asked kids at a Sunday afternoon HIV program to play with us on camera by acting like different kinds of animals, they simply mimicked one another. It did not matter that the first child was asked to be an elephant the second child, who was asked to be a grass hopper, would act just like the first. I can assume that it stems from a number of causes, but one of them I am sure is colonialism. Under British rule, it was advantageous for the white people in power to create an educational system based on call and response, recitation, and wrote memory. Critical thinking would lead to questioning authority, and that could shake the empire's tight grip. The problem arises when the satellite colony gains its freedom.The children who were taught not to question become leaders, businessmen, and farmers who are not skilled at problem solving. They know what to answer when asked, but are not sure what to ask on their own.

Thanksgiving in Gulu

When it rains in Gulu, and it does rain everyday, the red clay roads turn to gush. Your shoes slip, sink, and stick to the stuff. When the mud dries on your clothes they are speckled in bright brown dots. Shoes are caked with clay.

When the sun shines in Gulu, and it does shine everyday, everything is in hyper color. The whites of walls glare back like the albedo of snow. Leaves, grasses and palms are aggressively green. The purple, orange, pink, red, turquoise, and yellow uniforms of school children light up like neon under the sun's gaze. Each school yard is its own hue in the spectrum, because every school has a different colored uniform; the brighter the better it seems. The sun intensifies the darkness of skin and the sparkle of sweat. And it burns my fair face and neck.

In a five hour period yesterday I was both scorched and soaked. The paradoxes of Uganda are plentiful.

Thanksgiving rushed up on us. In the preceding three days we had run from place to place at a fast clip, what they call "rebel speed" here.We visited a house for former child prostitutes, made dinner with our new friends in Kampala, rode the rough road to Gulu, stopping at aschool twenty miles down a dirt road and our first IDP camp, sat with a high court judge in her chambers, documented a woman's adoption hopes at an orphanage, played theatre games with former street children, met the family of a former Prime Minister who are now displaced in their own country, interviewed the administrator of a child soldier rehabilitation center, and everywhere filmed kids eating, singing, and gathering water. Getting from place to place is also a part of the story. Boda Bodas, motor scooter taxis, are the way around here. Riding on the back of them is a hoot, and haggling over whether you are going to pay the driver 500 shillings (27 cents) or 700 shillings (35 cents) can be feirce. Not getting riped off as a Mzungo (foreigner) is quite a challenge, especially since trickery is a prided cultural skill here. On the fifteen kilometer trip to an IDP camp yesterday with our contact Francis, we rode the backs of boda bodas, but because the drivers left instead of waiting for us there, on the way home we rode the backs of bicycles, the poor man's taxi. The entire return was uphill.

In the whirlwind of running around the most apparent constant has been the generosity of the Ugandan people. As tis ever common away from wealth, what people lack in tangibles like housing, electricity, paved roads, and running water, they compensate for in intangibles, time with family, religious devotion, and good conversation.

Though Ugandans are resilient, constantly smiling people, they unfortunately have to cope daily with dirty, disease infested water, malaria spreading mosquitoes, poor schools, life stealing roads, and the threat of continued violence from a messy, goalless rebellion. No one has been able to explain the war, and everyone has tried, but I thank God the conflict is at rest for now. The more questions we ask about it the more we know that we simply do not know. Every confident explanation someone posits is spiced with a bias, and the conflicting points of view we have heard make having a solid opinion nearly impossible. Everyone is praying though that the peace talks stick and the displaced people may return home.

The work at hand is preparing for that return, which with the structures that are in place now, could be disastrous. After living for 15 years in a hut with three square feet of yard squished next to 30,000 other IDP residents, it is hard to imagine that starting life again, with the building, planting, and animal raising that that involves, will be simple. Now put more than a million people in that scenario and send them home at once and you can begin to guess where the complications are. How will they get there? What materials will they build new homes with? Will they have safe water when they get there? Seed to plant? Schools to attend? Police forces to provide security? And the hopeful answers to any of those questions require funding, good implementation, and reliable governance.

The biggest challenge is that the real change must come from withinUganda. I mean that NGO's and foreign donors may assist in setting up the resources and the security, and they must, but the people here will need at some point to own their own futures. Ugandans will be the farmers, teachers, doctors, law makers, police officers, and soldiers of Uganda and the fate of the country relies more on their ownership than anything else. The charity of wealthy nations is essential, more than is known, but the true welfare of the future here will be in the hands of its people. Thankfully I meet local folks everyday who are giving every bit of themselves to that end. I doubt that all the sweat and heart they put into their neighbors will ever transform all that needs to be renewed in this place. Good, motivated, educated Ugandans are trying though, and that is what we were thankful for at the table set with fresh turkey, mashed potatoes and apple crisp yesterday.

First Morning Impressions 11/20/06

Through the cracked open bamboo gate of our ex-pat filled hostel, I see cars pushing along the rainy road, people riding bicycles, walking with wheel barrels or standing under umbrellas to stay dry during this rainy morning of Uganda's rainy season. The mud parking lot that stretches out between me and the fence is packed red clay, the same hue of all the dirty cars. But everything around me is fantastically green, thriving, smelling of life.

On the road last night from Entebe Airport to Kampala the story was of another kind. Twenty minutes into our drive, the wild stream of cars slowed then stopped. Denis, our new acquaintance and Taxi driver, looked over at me and said, "oh what's this?...an accident." We crawled along with the rest of the traffic rubber necking its way around the scene. The crowd near the mangled vehicles was frenetic. On the ground a man laid bloody and dead, arms splayed left and right, his face and body spotted in bright red. "Oh he is way dead," chuckledDenis, not in a mean way, just in a Ugandan way. I have never seen a body crushed under a car before, but the loss of life seemed ordinary to our driver. "He was probably drinking. They come to Entebe on their motorcycles, get drunk and ride home." The explanation didn't make it easier to understand the crumpled steel of the van meshed with flesh and motorcycle metal.

The road wound on toward the capital, light after light sliding across our misted wind shield. We sped past motor scooters and countless walkers making their way in the dark along the small shoulder of the busy road. It felt dangerous to drive so fast with unlit bicycles and pedestrians so close by. And it is. We made our way through a sobriety check point, manned by police with Ak-47's slung over their shoulders.They tow the car and jail the driver if he is found to be drunk here. But the attempts at deterrence did not prevent the other death we saw further up the road, a teenage boy presumably hit my a passing car,"knocked" as Denis called it. His family, or the people I imagined to be his family, was gathered over him. The responsible vehicle was nowhere in sight and neither were the police. Loss of life must be familiar on that road. "People don't value life here'" admitted Denis in a sad tone. But the deaths on the road from the airport didn't seem to affect him either.

I have only been here a day, not even 24 hours, and yet I can tell that this is a place where the grotesque and the lovely, the horrific and the wonderful coexist. How else can I explain the warm feelings I have this morning surrounded by smiling people in the rain. Or the obvious vibrancy of the natural world here coupled with the life stealing road from Entebe.

One Month since

It has been one month since I flew out from Nairobi- one month to the date. I haven't written since, but I feel prodded this morning. I've got a slight cold and just want to sit and read and write.

Returning, wading through the days of nebulous "where am I's?", wondering what is next, vacillating between wanting to engage old friends and my career here in New York and being terrified of letting that life become normal again, hanging on to the village and my friends there because fondness and romanticism are first cousins of absence, perceiving the world daily in a different way than I did 3 months ago, a year ago, or ten years ago, and knowing that my view ten years from now will be just as transformed.... And even though these gerund thoughts are not all the result of my 10 weeks in Kimana (my mind has been shifting in spurts for years), the trip has been a catalyst for some sort of redirection. God alone knows the bearing.

This post cross cultural experience I am having is in no way unique. Anyone who has immersed himself in another land, wanders back in a daze of questions. I know that. And maybe in some way it is why I went. I am certainly a sucker for intense situations, because they foster thought, gear shifts, a new way of seeing. I like being shaken up. But a month on the return side, I am still gathering myself, bit by bit, putting the parts back in place to see where I am now that the dust is settling, though my bags and shoes are literally still covered in it.

I feel a bit tossed about, tugged at and torn, not in a sad or even conflicted way, but in the sense that my mind and heart have been expanded to make room for another community in a place far away. I think about them, dream about them, worry about them, and generally miss them. So I am tugged at by a longing to hang out with these new friends, torn because I know I have to reengage here, and tossed about because life here is different now in some ways.

My activity this last month has mirrored these feelings. I have yet to watch TV, see a movie, or a play. I have not said hi to everyone I should be saying hello to. Instead, I have retreated mostly to friends, both here and on the phone, who have also worked in Africa and know the story without being told. I have spent hours, lots of hours, editing footage to create a short film following the day of one Oloile student named Damaris. And even though it is imperfect, less than great even, I have loved the creative outlet and the story it tells. I have been on the phone weekly with the school to take its pulse and monitor its well being, and have been raising money to stock a library. So my actions are still pointed toward East Africa. But I am also teaching a neat course at a school in East Harlem, planning for a summer class in North Carolina, tutoring some students for the SAT's this weekend, and thinking about projects to audition for. So I am looking both ways. And mostly looking for vehicles to connect both continents in my vocation.