One year ago I was on winter break from Union living at my brother's home, just a few miles from the UPS sorting center. I worked the night shift sorting packages for UPS and then the day shift running packages to doors with the same UPS driver I had worked with the previous two years. Stumbling back to my brother's after work, fueled only by Tim Horton's coffee, I wrote too many graduate school apps for my own good, encouraged by Emma in early evening phone calls. Now one year later, I am encouraging her application process and reflecting on a typical day in the life of a volunteer in Uganda...
I wake up to the sun's early morning glow or from the Luganda streaming through my mosquito net, which I'm not sure. It is another day in Uganda, a handful of kilometers beneath the equator. I can easily recall the first days in Africa when the sun did not wrestle me out of bed at dawn and when the Luganda was strange and invoked loneliness. But now, 5 months in, I slip out of bed and into the day easily.
After fetching water I start pouring it onto the cabbages, tomatoes, carrots, and onions that I hope will grow big enough to reach one of the pot-bellied kids lips. I pause to track the sun bubble over the morning clouds; the sun always rises so quickly and I feel lucky when it isn't too cloudy to witness it. This morning, the sun sets the dew covered grass ablaze with glistening. It will be hot - there are few hard and fast weather rules here, but dew and low hanging clouds in the morning means that I will likely be clinging to the shadows during the day. As I wander back to grab my cup for breakfast I catch a glimpse of Fred, our bicycle milk-boy, delivering milk for Susan to boil. Fred seems timeless as he glides down the dusty road. He hooks the day's milk deliveries onto the handlebars of a bicycle that most would conclude had been left by the British Empire missionaries.
I sit down with some paper. The table is permanently coated with a layer of mud from the kids who climb all over it no matter how many times we tell them to get off the emeeza. I tell myself that the mud, now dusting my letter, gives the correspondence an air of authenticity. Often times, Becky or I will have a letter to finish, a thought to record, or when we work with the kids, tests to grade or workbooks to wade through. When neither of us has anything to work on we plot the future, comment on the news, or reminisce about Union, Ugandan kids, or on current projects. The BBC gives us what seems like a small window to the outside world as kids voices, invariably and incessantly, work to evoke some good morning waves or some small talk in Luganda. Sometimes, if we catch the BBC at the right time, it will elegantly paint a picture of American lunacy - sending a reporter to Detroit to use public transportation in America or commenting on just about any environmental topic having to do with the Bush administration. Other times, stark contrasts are painted. Perhaps, "The cholera epidemic following Laurent Nkunda's raid of Goma will likely infect thousands, aids workers have predicted. In the United States, a woman was crushed to death outside a Wal-Mart, trying to shop the day after Thanksgiving." FIll in the first sentence with any number of African reports: Cholera in Zimbabwe, Kony refuses to sign peace deal in Uganda, 9 million starving in Uganda, US food assistance programs and bio-fuels create starvation, Zimbabwe opposition leader ignored by Mugabe. The second sentence is what usually consumes most of the in depth reporting - Bush explaining that we need to continue to concentrate on economic growth, the latest third party report stating that yet another developed economy is slipping into recession, another economic summit, another case of corporate welfare, even if the mismanagement has been obvious (we are bailing out Detroit!).
Past the BBC, these contrasts are even more personal. The four shirts, three shorts, underwear that I folded over the clothesline flap in the breeze as I wash pineapple and bread down with coffee and milk. Peter is in the distance, hiding behind an anthill calling my name in the same shirt he wears everyday. It is a Bugle Boy shirt that proudly declares "Happy Boy" in English as if his parents had expected him to be approached by Mzungus wondering if he is happy. "Are you happy? Oh, you don't speak English - but wait, your shirt, ah, you are happy. Good." The shirt is greenish brown, although I am not sure if that is the original color. Anyways, this is a game we play almost everyday - Peter hides and calls my name, I look up, usually spot him, but pretend not to, and call back to say good morning. Peter always wanders to the clinic in the morning, after we eat breakfast, as he waits for his breakfast at 11AM when they have enough food, or, if not, he waits for his meal at 4PM. Perhaps the only meal of the day and probably just matooke, posho, and beans. Everyday.
There is butane in Kinoni for the first time in a month and we need cooking oil, so I head to the road after BBC and breakfast. The trip is just six kilometers, but sometimes the public taxis can leave you waiting in the hot sun. Today is one of those days when the taxis seem content leaving me to bake - I feel my skin burning for the first time since August, wishing I brought a hat or sunscreen. Much of what Becky and I could want is available in Ddegeya Center, a one kilometer walk from Engeye Health. Coca-Cola is available and requires a 15 minute walk and 30 cents - we really don't rough it as much as we sometimes imply. Anything we could need, except floss, is in Masaka, which is only a 40 minute taxi ride away. I study the dirt shoulder. In Uganda, the sun always seems to beat on you, leaving the roads, or the dirt around people's homes cracked and completely dry. In the rainy season, now over, it is the other extreme, leaving boots and gardens supersaturated. When the taxi pulls up - a mid-sized car - I throw the butane tank in the trunk and climb in the back with five others after making sure that the price is bitanu, 500 shillings or 25 cents. The driver packs me in and then slams the door on my hip. The six of us in the back fuse together and our hips clank like magnets. Any amorphous flesh searches out its own space like jello around fruit. There are four in the front - I've seen as many as 14 people in a car at one time, although there is always debate about whether babies count. On longer trips to Masaka I lose the feeling in my legs and drives can actually be a pretty painful experience. I am usually willing to settle on 2,500 shillings if the car isn't packed on trips to and from Masaka, paying 25 to 33 percent more than I need to. As we leave, I noticed the speedometer does not budge and droops at 0 km/h. Typical.
With no police checkpoints and no stops we are in Kinoni in five minutes. Everyone in Kinoni is hiding from the sun. I walk past the general stores to the gas station that sells butane. The general store across the street is where we get our staples and have built a nice rapport with the saleswoman. 3 kilos of maize flower, 3 kilos of beans, 3 kilos of rice, and a loaf of bread that won't be moldy tomorrow, please. We are the only mzungus in Ddegeya and everyone has learnt our names - Kinoni is larger, but I have never seen another mzungu there, either, so there is some familiarity with us around Kinoni as well. Mzungus are few and far between in this area of Uganda. Last month a child started crying upon seeing me. I understood it as a sympathetic gesture, "What the hell happened to him? Is he sick? Is it contagious? What in God's name is that - arm hair? Why isn't he black? Will he hurt me?" I hide my chest hair for fear that it would be too much, inciting riot or deep uncontrollable sympathy for the mutant. Despite my skin color impairment, I feel somewhat accepted when kids point to my upper arm and declare mzungu and then point to my wrist and declare Buganda, the regional tribe. I stare at my arm, compare it to theirs, and realize that I am a little darker than when I started, a testament to five months along a sunburnt equator.
After the taxi drops off the shoulder-less highway at Ddegeya I peel myself off the man next to me and climb out. Starting down the dirt path I am greeted by an entourage of kids who ask where I have been. I've learned that when I say Congo or Rwanda or Tanzania they don't get the joke; they don't know Congo, Rwanda, or Tanzania. A few steps down the path I feel a soapy hand trying to grab hold of a finger. Aksom. Aksom is a three-year-old goober and since he hasn't wandered to the health clinic in awhile he follows me back to hang out for awhile. He grabs for my backpack since he wants to help carry things. I know it is too heavy, but I throw it on him and watch him stumble with my hand making sure he doesn't hit the dust. We laugh together and he settles on just hanging onto my hand.
When I get to the clinic I un-peal Aksom's fingers and help Becky weed for an hour. Aksom follows "to help." Even though I joke, by the time they are seven they are better at weeding than Becky and I put together. Weeding always make me realize two things: 1. Weeds thrive in the exact conditions you try to create for your crops and 2. everything I do, cook, clean, wash, wear, weed is wrong. Weeding also reminds me of my parents garden and the Union's Octopus Garden. I make a note to self that I am sure to forget - ask about yields in the school garden. We weed in the late morning or early afternoon - something that is forced on us at times when our mornings are consumed at the school or we have other things to do in the evening - Ugandans almost always garden only in the morning and evening. Our technique with the hoe is wrong and kids and adults will sit at the edge of the field, stare at us in disbelief and amusement and sometimes even try to teach us. Even washing or cooking - no matter what you do, it is wrong. I noticed that Dean McEvoy weeded correctly without any prompting - I realize our own insufficient skills might be a product of not only our suburban American roots, but also our generation. Generation Apathy. I could swear that my Grandma wrote in a letter that she ate corn mush (as compared to Uganda's own posho) and that "Ugandans got nothing on us." Maybe the quote was misread or I rearranged it unconsciously to "they got nothing on us," but I know that many of my Grandmother's experiences in the great depression parallel the experiences that I am currently enjoying (if only temporarily) - no power, no automatic washer, no processed foods, no running water, no internet, and, of course, a lot of corn mush. Weeding also always makes me question the idea that a highly developed economy has a lot of service sector work and decreasing agricultural labor (as people urbanize and farming mechanizes, presumably using fossil fuels). It is good for a person to be able to weed their own garden and grow some of their own food.
The day's objective is not weeding, though. Today is a day of chickens. Union College, members of Schenectady and Albany, and students from Yonkers all helped raise money, giving Becky and I the opportunity to obtain and distribute chickens to help families increase protein and income generating opportunities. Today we are building chicken coops. We had initially hoped that the coops would ensure the chickens were kept outdoors, but that is apparently too inviting for theft. The coops are useful, though, since we are using native chickens, which have a tendency to run - the coops will help keep the chickens off the neighbors land when they are not grazing, even if the chickens snuggle up inside the mud huts at night.
After lunch, we begin to move from Engeye deeper into the village. At the first house we work with a boy called Umaru. We decided to work with kids because the kids can learn a lot from the project, be the main recipients of the protein filled eggs, and perhaps make a little money to help the family, too. Umaru makes us realize this was a great approach as he excitedly helps us build his coop. The coops are truly of Ugandan construction and if John hadn't taught us the Ugandan way, I think the coops might have fallen apart. We plant six 2.5" diameter tree limbs into the hard soil in one of the two locations Umaru had considered for his coop. Umaru is probably not yet ten, but he is more responsible for his age than any American I know. I remember when we had finished and were deciding when to drop the chicken off he told me that he would likely be working in the garden when we came, but we could just drop the chicken off in the coop and he would take care of it from there. So goddamn mature.
We laced reeds to the tree limbs on the four sides and the roof using banana fiber. Most would probably guess that banana fiber (the sinewy fibers in the banana leaf) would seemingly give in to the wind, an angry chicken, or a trip and fall into the coop - and they would be wrong. Banana fiber is strong. The mud huts where most Ddegeyans live are constructed in much the same way. Lace sticks together with banana fiber and then pat it with mud, which bakes and solidifies in the sun. As we lace the final reeds to the coop I take a peak around - Umaru's hut and a mango tree on one side with the other sides surrounded by large, mature banana plants. That is Ddegeya - mud huts and banana trees - and I find it quite rustic and beautiful.
Carrying the chicken to Umaru's house is a sort of unique experience. I had never carried a chicken before. After some chase, squawking, and flapping Richard managed to captured the beast and showed me how to grab it behind the wings (I made sure to wash my hands when I got back to Engeye). It looked uncomfortable, as if someone tied my wrists together and carried me by my elbows. I could feel the chicken's heartbeat as she looked around, confused, unhappy, but resigned to her fate whatever it may have been. Umaru carefully picked up the chicken in my hand weighed it, picked up Becky's chicken, examined them, consulted his mother and decided on the chicken in my hands. Umaru told us that he was happy and we told him we would be back to visit and see how the chicken is doing.
On the walk back I began to construct a mental map with little colored dots popping up. Dots for kids we taught at the health clinic in the morning, dots for the kids we teach or tutor at Bunyere Primary School, dots for the kids who know a little bit more about other cultures because of pen pal programs, dots for the kids who we are helping to build chicken coops for, dots for people who have received vegetable seedings from us, dots for the people we have been able to help in smaller capacities - helping to fix bicycles, helping to carry water, buying something from their store. More, dots for the people who work at the clinic, dots for the people who have used the clinic's affordable services, dots for kids who receive shoes. Future dots for distributing vegetables and seedlings, peanuts, more education, more chickens, information tailored to the community from health surveys, income from crafts projects, clean water after repairing the well. This is a connected community, they are close to one another and they see a problem as a community problem, not an individual problem, and on this mental map it was clear that Engeye was part of the community solution. Engeye touches nearly every home, every dot, in small but important ways.
We get back to Engeye a little before dusk after building two chicken coops from scratch, helping finish another, and checking the progress of the seven other coops. Sophia, the new nursing assistant tries to clap with one hand, a symbol I have learned to mean that I should come there. She pulls up a chair and tells me to sit down and play Matatu, a game that is almost identical to Uno. I realize that, intentionally or not, she is dealing me more cards and, as a result, is winning most of the games. I have sort of come to realize that, in Ludo and Matatu, cheating is acceptable as long as your not caught. I hear Francis and Joseph arguing for what seems like twenty minutes about some English language question. The argument rolls out right in front of me and I have to joke to Joseph, "Yeah, probably best not to ask the native English speaker about an English question." He poses the problem to me and, to Francis' dismay, I side with Joseph. He continues to argue, seemingly ignoring my ruling. The sun sets to my left and, because of the slope the clinic sits on, we only see the silhouettes of the banana plants. Further down the hill, someone probably sees our silhouettes.
I excuse myself so that I can go immerse myself in cold water and scrub the hell out of my feet, tan and constantly caked with a thin but dark layer of dirt. Sophia is not happy despite winning seven games to my two. I have never met a Ugandan who has said, "Okay, we've played enough. Let's quit." They can play for hours. Maybe it's cultural - can you play Sorry or Candyland all afternoon?
I quickly water the vegetable garden and step into the shower. I forgot to fill the shower and put it in the sun so I awkwardly pour a bucket of water onto my head. Becky isn't tall enough to reach the solar shower and everyone else just boils water and puts it in a bucket. I am stubborn and refuse to waste the coal or butane on a hot shower - we are in Uganda - it is 80 degrees everyday and never drops below 65.
I fill in the hour between 7 and 8PM making fun of Best FM, Joseph's favorite station, asking if the song that is playing at the moment is the one song they play for the day. The station is 90 percent ads, 9 percent annoying commentary, and one percent music. If you thought The Edge (or that station in the low 100s that plays guilty pleasure music that we all know Bilal listens to) was bad, you wouldn't be able to tolerate Ugandan FM radio. Sophia asks me what my favorite radio station is and I grumpily tell her that I like the BBC. They laugh, but I have been in music withdrawal, an unexpected side effect of coming here, for five months.
At 8 PM, we have an unspoken ritual. Susan readies the buffet line on the floor, Becky throws the headlamp on her head, and we ease into the kitchen to tear through Susan's delicious food. Tonight it is posho, matooke, and peanut sauce - one of the simpler meals we have. Every week or two, Becky or I will go to the market and pick up as many delicious extras as we can carry - pumpkin, cassava, yam, sweet potato, greens, cabbage, spaghetti, kivuvu (a kind of banana), egg plant, tomatoes, green pepper, carrots, and the list goes on. Generally, dinner is a combination of posho, matooke, and rice with either beans or peanut sauce plus a couple vegetables for good measure. The milk in the morning, the vegetables we buy, and our multivitamins seem like enough - we're not losing hair, getting weak, or rapidly changing body content. I am done with the food shortly after I start and before I know it I tell Susan she has cooked well and goodnight, "Ofumbe nnyo, sula balungi." Even though the routine is unvarying, Susan seems to appreciate our customary meal ending, perhaps because I consciously try to instill sincerity in my eyes when I say it.
Waddling back to our house, waka, room, dorm, bed, or whatever I collect my thoughts some. At times, I hang out in the open air waiting for a shooting star. It's almost a sure bet that I will see one within the first couple minutes. Heat lightning almost always punctuates the northern sky and the moon is generally only visible for half the month. During that time the moon can cast shadows - when it is gone Ddegeya is as dark as you can get. No wonder Africa with population densities far exceeding the US has no bright spots on the "Earth at Night Satellite Photograph - there is no power and few have propane lamps. I climb into bed read a little and blog a little, conserving a little computer battery for later. Then I reflect on the day.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Notes on Culture, Language, Sustainability, the Metastasizing Cancer of the West, and some Rambling
First some quotes:
Standing here, the old man said to me, "Long before these crowded streets here stood my dreaming tree." He'd know where he would sit for hours at a time. Now progress takes away what forever took to find. And now he's falling hard; he feels the falling dark. How he longs to be beneath his dreaming tree.
Conquered fear he'd climb, a moment frozen time when the girl who first he kissed promised him she'd be his. Remember mother's words, "There beneath the tree no matter what the world - you'll always been a baby."
Momma come quick - the dreaming tree has died. The air is growing thick. Fear it cannot hide. The dreaming tree has died.
- Dave Matthews Band, "The Dreaming Tree"
It may seem absurd to believe that a "primitive" culture in the Himalaya has anything to teach our industrialized society. But our search for a future that works keeps spiraling back to an ancient connection between ourselves and the earth, an interconnectedness that ancient cultures have never abandoned.
-Helena Norberg-Hodge from Three Cups of Tea
...Little girls from sweden dream of silver screen quotation
And if you want these kind of dreams it Californication
It's the edge of the world in all of western civilization
The sun may rise in the east, at least it's settled in a final location
It's understood that hollywood sells Californication...
-Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Californication"
The Earth is not dying - it is being killed. And the people killing it have names and addresses.
- U. Utah Phillips
What seems like ages ago, Professor Pease posited the following question:
Here is my question for you. Beyond overt proselytizing, there are many ways to influence local attitudes and culture. I understand you and Becky have a "Prime Directive" that your mission be "accomplished free of the imposition of any foreign social, political or spiritual values." But don't you think that your mere presence somehow affects those around you? The way you treat each other, for instance; the way you dress, talk, read, etc., must have an impact on the students you teach. Do you worry about that? Do you strive to minimize your social influence?
Our Cultural Nudges
I have delayed answering this question because I really don't know all the answers. I think we strive to minimize our impact and respect local customs wherever we can. The fact is that we are very different - we look different, speak different, act different, eat different, and so on. I think the kids take us for what we are - strangers in a strange land.
When John first arrived I thought that he acted so overtly "western" in the way he gets things done, dresses, and thinks that his influence probably did more to influence kids than anything Becky or I did. John dresses casually often donning Nike running shorts and a t-shirt, something that I had not seen on any of the older villagers (besides myself and infrequently Richard) before John's arrival. John whips out a computer or the latest cell phone to get things done, something that we rarely did. John is jovial with all the villagers and you often see smiles pop up when John is around. His interactions are a far cry from the many courtesies and signs of respect that John detests. He hates being called "sabo" (sir) or being kneeled down to, something that is fairly commonplace in rural Ddegeya. I'm not attacking John or saying he should act differently - his practices are based on need. He manages a health care clinic that has him constantly communicating with Americans and shuttling between Masaka and Kampala (and a few months ago the United States). It just seems that John, the Headmistress, politicians in the village are the leaks from the urban to rural areas that nudge cultures.
Becky and I were initially very weird eaters - just ask Dean McEvoy how he handled the tiny piece of yam or posho and you will get a feel for how hard it was to adjust to the massive servings we were initially given. I think I can handle a plate of matooke now, but we still eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner too early (7AM, 1PM, and 8PM instead of 11AM, 2PM, and 10 or 11PM). Our breakfasts are pretty fancy compared to almost every other villagers - fruit, coffee, milk (sometimes) and bread with either peanut butter or butter. Even though we can be a little bit weird, we rarely stray from the normal village staples and our eating is largely hidden away, so influence is minimal.
What I did notice one day is that we are responsible for tiny differences. The kids use their Christian names around us and respond to our pronunciations of them. We don't hit the kids, which I think is part of the reason that the kids run all over us at times. They are tiny and tiny people can be tough to deal with, but when their parents are around or there is a threat of going home the kids snap to attention. One member of the Engeye clan once told me that Ugandan children listen with their butts - a cultural component we have failed to adhere to (although sometimes I think it would be convenient). We are also fairly willing to let the kids hang off us and grab a finger, which is something that I have not seen very often in the village - to be honest sometimes I have to pry kids, one at a time, off my limbs and it can be tough to keep them from grabbing my shirt. So maybe we are a bit more willing to be physical with the kids, having them give us high fives, try to punch my hand, run with them, pick them up and spin them around, have them try to push me or grab something from me, etc. I dress in shorts, whereas most villagers are in khaki pants, even while working in the blazing sun. This along with a lot of the clothes seemingly being shipped in as second-hand American clothes likely influences the dress of children, whom dress more casually than their parents. Perhaps most striking is that, even though I live fairly simply, I can buy something at will. Becky and I can celebrate monthly Ugandan milestones with a Coke or a beer (recall a long time ago one "affluent" boy celebrated his birthday with a coke, only). I have more clothes out on the line drying than some families have in total. I have a legal pad, a notebook, and looseleaf paper to write on when a thought crosses my mind or when I need to make a list to buy more stuff. I have stuff, which can be quite seductive, I imagine, to a four year old villager who celebrates the car he models out of a banana fiber, plastic bottle that he probably got from the Engeye trash pit, and four coke tops.
There are probably a million influences that I don't see or realize. I think that our impact is partially minimized because we don't speak their language and they don't speak ours. There is definitely a small risk that they will pick up broken Luganda from us, but I think they laugh at us enough so that I can be sure that they know that we just don't know Luganda. There is also the risk that they pick up on English bits, like when a swarm of kids run toward me, "Here comes trouble" I mutter, sometimes jokingly. At school I dress somewhat casually - a nice shirt and shorts, but I teach physical education along with mathematics.
So, in all, I think there are influences, but I'm not sure if they are positive or negative. Not beating the kids when they forget a protractor is probably reasonable, but spreading Luganda slang by accident should probably be avoided. Influencing kids to start referring to one another by their Christian name is something that is probably a form of cultural erosion. Most of the changes in culture cannot be attributed to Becky and I: Coca Cola ads dot the highway, cellphones are commonplace in the village, villagers use steel roofing instead of grass, and villagers with radios rock out to the latest hits. Much of this change radiates from the large towns and cities where the Buganda culture is even more drained - women don't kneel in the cities when greeting you or use the Buganda triple handshake or wear traditional outfits (western business suits are the rule). So the influence is from relatives who have migrated from the village. The roots of this cultural dislocation are likely rooted in western business culture of today, the English missionaries of yesteryear (Things Fall Apart is a nice fictional history of that unfolding), and Mid-East traders of the past. At one point the Buganda (the largest tribe in Uganda) wore traditional middle-eastern long white robes with black business jackets.
Global Cultural Nudges, Trends
This cultural progression, erosion, or evolution (however you may feel about it) is part of an important trend - westernification. In the 1830s, Charles Darwin, upon discovering the Fuegians in South America stated that: Their language does not deserve to be called articulate." When they were researched by Thomas Bridges, Bridges' incomplete dictionary had 32,340 entries, comparable to Japanese and certainly more words than a well-read English speaker. Similar languages all over South America were likely equally complex, highly evolved to the needs of the population (mamihlapinatapai, for example, means that two people are looking at each other hoping the other will do something they want, but not wanting to do it themselves), but were wiped out as primitive or barbaric (implying inferiority in a time period where people rationalized the eradication of cultures with Darwin's mantra "Survival of the Fittest").
Today, there are 362 critically endangered animal species and 438 critically endangered languages with fewer than 50 native speakers (Blessed Unrest, Paul Hawken, 94). In just the Americas there are 6,800 languages that are intertwined with cultures (94). As language dies, culture, at least in part, evaporates with it. According to Paul Hawken in Blessed Unrest cultures are disappearing at a rate of 30 per year (94). This information was more than enough for me to realize that, despite the importance of English, our students would know the Lugandan alphabet and numbers alongside the English system. Luganda has interesting cultural quirks and although it is not endangered at the moment it is being marginalized - the national language is English and when I stumble over a few words to greet a villager, I am told that I am good at Luganda because it is such a simple language. English is considered the gold standard, even though most Ugandans natively speak Luganda or one of the related languages. The same is true of cultural practices, English speaking Ugandans have started sentences time and again, "When the primitive people..." or "In this area they still live primitively..." These practices marginalize a language and culture that are symbiotically intertwined. I noticed that there is no word for "need" and that "to want," "to like," and "to enjoy" are the same verb (at times causing some confusion). There are several words for banana and a word for each species of banana in a culture where bananas are so important. Languages are tailored to cultures, which evolve with place. "Despite language preciousness, one perishes on average every two weeks" (Hawken, 94).
Globalizing
"Extinction of species and cultures is driven by globalization, the pursuit of progress through resource extraction and economic expansion" (Hawken, 102). Uganda is no different - they adopt English to speed up connections to the west, strive to increase cash crop exports (one Ugandan told me that the name for coffee means to be beaten, because the British-imposed government used to beat those who did not grow coffee, vanilla, bananas or other cash crops), and explore their country for oil. Globalization pushes the western way of life, western values (relative to Americans, few drink coffee), and English language in the name of progress. I recently picked up The Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thomas Friedmann over Confessions of an Economic Hitman and other similar (although most more formal) books to get a taste of the other side of the globalization spectrum...
Progress Needs Metrics
A Western bias about belonging to a superior culture is only valid if we use selective yardsticks. Rather than assuming that people want to surrender to Western values (and overlooking the impossibility of everyone's jumping onto the bandwagon of rampant materialism, given planetary constraints), we would be wiser to consider the loss of language as yet another indicator of the worldwide collapse of ecosystems, as well as a byproduct of the cultural hegemony that represses or punishes those who continue to use local language (Hawken, 95).
If we measure Western culture by how it treated people of different ethnicity and race, it is anathema. If we judge by the treatment of its own people, it is an embarrassment. And if we calibrate American superiority by its treatment of the environment, the United States is one of the least intelligent civilizations in the history of the planet. English, when scientific and technical terms are taken into account, has more than 3 million words. 'Brilliant' is hardly sufficient to describe such an achievement. But how do you describe an American administration that will spend $1 trillion on winning a war for Iraqi oil while refusing to allocate any funds to reduce dependency on oil? ... To invert Trevor-Roper's logic, indigenous cultures may show us an image of a future by which we can escape our present. If a culture does not become like us, it may not be a failure but a gift to what is now an uncertain future. (Hawken, 99).
By allowing our multinationals to continue to squeeze out the indigenous (or semi-indigenous? in Ddegeya) peoples of the world in the name of "progress" we are "placing our cultural eggs in one basket." There is no doubt that western medication saves lives in the short term (although Zinn points out that the Americas, before the Europeans, were had more advanced medications and a diet so varied and vast that almost no one went hungry, unlike Europeans), but western culture seems to steamroll the values that indigenous peoples often hold over the long term - sustainability in place, regard for the environment, regard for those around you. Western culture, almost by definition, cannot continue indefinitely, yet we are erasing the cultures and, in turn, the ecosystems beneath their feet that were previously oasis' of sustainability. We are destroying the planet by sweeping away the people that can live on land indefinitely, subsequently raping lands of resources, and then instilling western culture that churns through limited resources. Hawken ends his chapter, quite fittingly (no religious connotations intended):
Jesus was very clear about who will inherit the earth; so, too, are most indigenous people (114).
Standing here, the old man said to me, "Long before these crowded streets here stood my dreaming tree." He'd know where he would sit for hours at a time. Now progress takes away what forever took to find. And now he's falling hard; he feels the falling dark. How he longs to be beneath his dreaming tree.
Conquered fear he'd climb, a moment frozen time when the girl who first he kissed promised him she'd be his. Remember mother's words, "There beneath the tree no matter what the world - you'll always been a baby."
Momma come quick - the dreaming tree has died. The air is growing thick. Fear it cannot hide. The dreaming tree has died.
- Dave Matthews Band, "The Dreaming Tree"
It may seem absurd to believe that a "primitive" culture in the Himalaya has anything to teach our industrialized society. But our search for a future that works keeps spiraling back to an ancient connection between ourselves and the earth, an interconnectedness that ancient cultures have never abandoned.
-Helena Norberg-Hodge from Three Cups of Tea
...Little girls from sweden dream of silver screen quotation
And if you want these kind of dreams it Californication
It's the edge of the world in all of western civilization
The sun may rise in the east, at least it's settled in a final location
It's understood that hollywood sells Californication...
-Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Californication"
The Earth is not dying - it is being killed. And the people killing it have names and addresses.
- U. Utah Phillips
What seems like ages ago, Professor Pease posited the following question:
Here is my question for you. Beyond overt proselytizing, there are many ways to influence local attitudes and culture. I understand you and Becky have a "Prime Directive" that your mission be "accomplished free of the imposition of any foreign social, political or spiritual values." But don't you think that your mere presence somehow affects those around you? The way you treat each other, for instance; the way you dress, talk, read, etc., must have an impact on the students you teach. Do you worry about that? Do you strive to minimize your social influence?
Our Cultural Nudges
I have delayed answering this question because I really don't know all the answers. I think we strive to minimize our impact and respect local customs wherever we can. The fact is that we are very different - we look different, speak different, act different, eat different, and so on. I think the kids take us for what we are - strangers in a strange land.
When John first arrived I thought that he acted so overtly "western" in the way he gets things done, dresses, and thinks that his influence probably did more to influence kids than anything Becky or I did. John dresses casually often donning Nike running shorts and a t-shirt, something that I had not seen on any of the older villagers (besides myself and infrequently Richard) before John's arrival. John whips out a computer or the latest cell phone to get things done, something that we rarely did. John is jovial with all the villagers and you often see smiles pop up when John is around. His interactions are a far cry from the many courtesies and signs of respect that John detests. He hates being called "sabo" (sir) or being kneeled down to, something that is fairly commonplace in rural Ddegeya. I'm not attacking John or saying he should act differently - his practices are based on need. He manages a health care clinic that has him constantly communicating with Americans and shuttling between Masaka and Kampala (and a few months ago the United States). It just seems that John, the Headmistress, politicians in the village are the leaks from the urban to rural areas that nudge cultures.
Becky and I were initially very weird eaters - just ask Dean McEvoy how he handled the tiny piece of yam or posho and you will get a feel for how hard it was to adjust to the massive servings we were initially given. I think I can handle a plate of matooke now, but we still eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner too early (7AM, 1PM, and 8PM instead of 11AM, 2PM, and 10 or 11PM). Our breakfasts are pretty fancy compared to almost every other villagers - fruit, coffee, milk (sometimes) and bread with either peanut butter or butter. Even though we can be a little bit weird, we rarely stray from the normal village staples and our eating is largely hidden away, so influence is minimal.
What I did notice one day is that we are responsible for tiny differences. The kids use their Christian names around us and respond to our pronunciations of them. We don't hit the kids, which I think is part of the reason that the kids run all over us at times. They are tiny and tiny people can be tough to deal with, but when their parents are around or there is a threat of going home the kids snap to attention. One member of the Engeye clan once told me that Ugandan children listen with their butts - a cultural component we have failed to adhere to (although sometimes I think it would be convenient). We are also fairly willing to let the kids hang off us and grab a finger, which is something that I have not seen very often in the village - to be honest sometimes I have to pry kids, one at a time, off my limbs and it can be tough to keep them from grabbing my shirt. So maybe we are a bit more willing to be physical with the kids, having them give us high fives, try to punch my hand, run with them, pick them up and spin them around, have them try to push me or grab something from me, etc. I dress in shorts, whereas most villagers are in khaki pants, even while working in the blazing sun. This along with a lot of the clothes seemingly being shipped in as second-hand American clothes likely influences the dress of children, whom dress more casually than their parents. Perhaps most striking is that, even though I live fairly simply, I can buy something at will. Becky and I can celebrate monthly Ugandan milestones with a Coke or a beer (recall a long time ago one "affluent" boy celebrated his birthday with a coke, only). I have more clothes out on the line drying than some families have in total. I have a legal pad, a notebook, and looseleaf paper to write on when a thought crosses my mind or when I need to make a list to buy more stuff. I have stuff, which can be quite seductive, I imagine, to a four year old villager who celebrates the car he models out of a banana fiber, plastic bottle that he probably got from the Engeye trash pit, and four coke tops.
There are probably a million influences that I don't see or realize. I think that our impact is partially minimized because we don't speak their language and they don't speak ours. There is definitely a small risk that they will pick up broken Luganda from us, but I think they laugh at us enough so that I can be sure that they know that we just don't know Luganda. There is also the risk that they pick up on English bits, like when a swarm of kids run toward me, "Here comes trouble" I mutter, sometimes jokingly. At school I dress somewhat casually - a nice shirt and shorts, but I teach physical education along with mathematics.
So, in all, I think there are influences, but I'm not sure if they are positive or negative. Not beating the kids when they forget a protractor is probably reasonable, but spreading Luganda slang by accident should probably be avoided. Influencing kids to start referring to one another by their Christian name is something that is probably a form of cultural erosion. Most of the changes in culture cannot be attributed to Becky and I: Coca Cola ads dot the highway, cellphones are commonplace in the village, villagers use steel roofing instead of grass, and villagers with radios rock out to the latest hits. Much of this change radiates from the large towns and cities where the Buganda culture is even more drained - women don't kneel in the cities when greeting you or use the Buganda triple handshake or wear traditional outfits (western business suits are the rule). So the influence is from relatives who have migrated from the village. The roots of this cultural dislocation are likely rooted in western business culture of today, the English missionaries of yesteryear (Things Fall Apart is a nice fictional history of that unfolding), and Mid-East traders of the past. At one point the Buganda (the largest tribe in Uganda) wore traditional middle-eastern long white robes with black business jackets.
Global Cultural Nudges, Trends
This cultural progression, erosion, or evolution (however you may feel about it) is part of an important trend - westernification. In the 1830s, Charles Darwin, upon discovering the Fuegians in South America stated that: Their language does not deserve to be called articulate." When they were researched by Thomas Bridges, Bridges' incomplete dictionary had 32,340 entries, comparable to Japanese and certainly more words than a well-read English speaker. Similar languages all over South America were likely equally complex, highly evolved to the needs of the population (mamihlapinatapai, for example, means that two people are looking at each other hoping the other will do something they want, but not wanting to do it themselves), but were wiped out as primitive or barbaric (implying inferiority in a time period where people rationalized the eradication of cultures with Darwin's mantra "Survival of the Fittest").
Today, there are 362 critically endangered animal species and 438 critically endangered languages with fewer than 50 native speakers (Blessed Unrest, Paul Hawken, 94). In just the Americas there are 6,800 languages that are intertwined with cultures (94). As language dies, culture, at least in part, evaporates with it. According to Paul Hawken in Blessed Unrest cultures are disappearing at a rate of 30 per year (94). This information was more than enough for me to realize that, despite the importance of English, our students would know the Lugandan alphabet and numbers alongside the English system. Luganda has interesting cultural quirks and although it is not endangered at the moment it is being marginalized - the national language is English and when I stumble over a few words to greet a villager, I am told that I am good at Luganda because it is such a simple language. English is considered the gold standard, even though most Ugandans natively speak Luganda or one of the related languages. The same is true of cultural practices, English speaking Ugandans have started sentences time and again, "When the primitive people..." or "In this area they still live primitively..." These practices marginalize a language and culture that are symbiotically intertwined. I noticed that there is no word for "need" and that "to want," "to like," and "to enjoy" are the same verb (at times causing some confusion). There are several words for banana and a word for each species of banana in a culture where bananas are so important. Languages are tailored to cultures, which evolve with place. "Despite language preciousness, one perishes on average every two weeks" (Hawken, 94).
Globalizing
"Extinction of species and cultures is driven by globalization, the pursuit of progress through resource extraction and economic expansion" (Hawken, 102). Uganda is no different - they adopt English to speed up connections to the west, strive to increase cash crop exports (one Ugandan told me that the name for coffee means to be beaten, because the British-imposed government used to beat those who did not grow coffee, vanilla, bananas or other cash crops), and explore their country for oil. Globalization pushes the western way of life, western values (relative to Americans, few drink coffee), and English language in the name of progress. I recently picked up The Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thomas Friedmann over Confessions of an Economic Hitman and other similar (although most more formal) books to get a taste of the other side of the globalization spectrum...
Progress Needs Metrics
A Western bias about belonging to a superior culture is only valid if we use selective yardsticks. Rather than assuming that people want to surrender to Western values (and overlooking the impossibility of everyone's jumping onto the bandwagon of rampant materialism, given planetary constraints), we would be wiser to consider the loss of language as yet another indicator of the worldwide collapse of ecosystems, as well as a byproduct of the cultural hegemony that represses or punishes those who continue to use local language (Hawken, 95).
If we measure Western culture by how it treated people of different ethnicity and race, it is anathema. If we judge by the treatment of its own people, it is an embarrassment. And if we calibrate American superiority by its treatment of the environment, the United States is one of the least intelligent civilizations in the history of the planet. English, when scientific and technical terms are taken into account, has more than 3 million words. 'Brilliant' is hardly sufficient to describe such an achievement. But how do you describe an American administration that will spend $1 trillion on winning a war for Iraqi oil while refusing to allocate any funds to reduce dependency on oil? ... To invert Trevor-Roper's logic, indigenous cultures may show us an image of a future by which we can escape our present. If a culture does not become like us, it may not be a failure but a gift to what is now an uncertain future. (Hawken, 99).
By allowing our multinationals to continue to squeeze out the indigenous (or semi-indigenous? in Ddegeya) peoples of the world in the name of "progress" we are "placing our cultural eggs in one basket." There is no doubt that western medication saves lives in the short term (although Zinn points out that the Americas, before the Europeans, were had more advanced medications and a diet so varied and vast that almost no one went hungry, unlike Europeans), but western culture seems to steamroll the values that indigenous peoples often hold over the long term - sustainability in place, regard for the environment, regard for those around you. Western culture, almost by definition, cannot continue indefinitely, yet we are erasing the cultures and, in turn, the ecosystems beneath their feet that were previously oasis' of sustainability. We are destroying the planet by sweeping away the people that can live on land indefinitely, subsequently raping lands of resources, and then instilling western culture that churns through limited resources. Hawken ends his chapter, quite fittingly (no religious connotations intended):
Jesus was very clear about who will inherit the earth; so, too, are most indigenous people (114).
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Stuff
Uploading pictures right now. Uganda Pictures. Actually spending the afternoon doing it - sacrificing time at the Botannical Gardens so you all can see some of Ddegeya! (Actually I will have plenty of time tomorrow). Pictures are confusing, because the first ones are from the early part of stay and these ones are the most recent (the next set will be somewhere in the middle). Probably doesn't matter too much since the weather looks exactly the same and you all probably don't care if the picture was taken in August or December. So enjoy.
Also changed the graph in my population post. Embarassing. Downright, goddamn embarassing...
Becky has successfully met up with her family - it was nice to see them all, so I imagine she was ecstatic last night. I got a text from her at 3AM and hypothesized that it was Family Board Game Night in the Boma Guest House in Entebbe. FUN TIMES. (Actually I think the rents went to bed early and Becky and her brother exchanged stories). Hudson met up with them, so I got to see him, too, which made me smile too much. Seeing Dave on Tuesday. Camera broke so I sent an e-mail to my technical support team in the US (Bilal) soliciting advice. I actually thought I should probably pay Bilal an annual fee - maybe $10 - for all the times I've called him lost while driving (he mapquests for me) or with a technical physics/computer question seeking his advice. He is a great service - way better than OnStar...
Bob, nor Matt, nor Bilal, nor Adam, nor Emma has answered the riddle. It has been like 3.5 months. So I will repose it for everyone: I have 12 coins. One of the coins weighs slightly more or less than the other 11. Using a balance (the one with two sides) just three times, tell me which coin is different and whether it weighs more or less.
Also changed the graph in my population post. Embarassing. Downright, goddamn embarassing...
Becky has successfully met up with her family - it was nice to see them all, so I imagine she was ecstatic last night. I got a text from her at 3AM and hypothesized that it was Family Board Game Night in the Boma Guest House in Entebbe. FUN TIMES. (Actually I think the rents went to bed early and Becky and her brother exchanged stories). Hudson met up with them, so I got to see him, too, which made me smile too much. Seeing Dave on Tuesday. Camera broke so I sent an e-mail to my technical support team in the US (Bilal) soliciting advice. I actually thought I should probably pay Bilal an annual fee - maybe $10 - for all the times I've called him lost while driving (he mapquests for me) or with a technical physics/computer question seeking his advice. He is a great service - way better than OnStar...
Bob, nor Matt, nor Bilal, nor Adam, nor Emma has answered the riddle. It has been like 3.5 months. So I will repose it for everyone: I have 12 coins. One of the coins weighs slightly more or less than the other 11. Using a balance (the one with two sides) just three times, tell me which coin is different and whether it weighs more or less.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
December Pointers
Dean McEvoy visited the last couple weeks and I am anxiously awaiting his comments, which I will post on the blog sometime in the next couple weeks. He had a pretty incredible stay getting to see a lot more of the village than Becky and I saw in our first month.
This week we have been building chicken coops and giving out chickens to kids to help them get enough protein and, perhaps, generate some income for their family. Also weeding the peanut field, again, as we have been told it will help keep away the squirrel that has been attacking our peanuts. I know - squirrels in Africa, who would have thought. I think the blood pressure stuff will have to be put on hold because the nursing assistant has been sick and John had to take care of a lot of other stuff, so we will look at blood pressure and water later. Richard and I fixed the inverter, giving us power and reliable, bright lights for the first time since we left the United States. There may even be enough power for us to charge computers and inundate you with more blogs. After pouring through two manuals as nighttime reading and re-learning circuits, I realized that there is a switch missing in the old inverter. Single, tiny switch that kept us from power is back, which makes us all very happy (the other inverter could run a couple cell phone chargers or a couple 15 W light bulbs.
So blogs. The next blog (Christmas Eve - Happy Birthday Evan) will hopefully talk about some of my thoughts about culture and the west and scrape the surface of a question Professor Pease asked a couple months ago. The following blog (New Year's Eve) will be "A Day in the Life" blog in my attempt to give you a little more detailed picture about a typical day (I think Becky's blog is mostly daily matters as she describes it, but I lack in this department). I think I will try to give a better picture of Ddegeya in blogs to come...
I will be visiting Dave Shulman, another Minerva Fellow, working in Malawi for Partners in Health next week (December 23 - January 4). There Dave will show me a little bit of Africa Malawi style and I will get to help him out in some of his work for PIH if all goes well. Really looking forward to spending birthday, Christmas, and the New Year with Dave. Won't be bringing the computer so I have posted blogs already.
One last thing. I would love to hear what you all want to hear about on the blog - more rants like the Christmas Eve blog? More about Ddegeya? More about the Physics Department? Something else? Coffe production in Ddegeya? Anything - just name it. At the very least I'll reply with a comment, but perhaps it will make a good blog.
Merry Christmas, Happy Festivus, Happy New Year, etc. Talk to you all in a couple weeks.
This week we have been building chicken coops and giving out chickens to kids to help them get enough protein and, perhaps, generate some income for their family. Also weeding the peanut field, again, as we have been told it will help keep away the squirrel that has been attacking our peanuts. I know - squirrels in Africa, who would have thought. I think the blood pressure stuff will have to be put on hold because the nursing assistant has been sick and John had to take care of a lot of other stuff, so we will look at blood pressure and water later. Richard and I fixed the inverter, giving us power and reliable, bright lights for the first time since we left the United States. There may even be enough power for us to charge computers and inundate you with more blogs. After pouring through two manuals as nighttime reading and re-learning circuits, I realized that there is a switch missing in the old inverter. Single, tiny switch that kept us from power is back, which makes us all very happy (the other inverter could run a couple cell phone chargers or a couple 15 W light bulbs.
So blogs. The next blog (Christmas Eve - Happy Birthday Evan) will hopefully talk about some of my thoughts about culture and the west and scrape the surface of a question Professor Pease asked a couple months ago. The following blog (New Year's Eve) will be "A Day in the Life" blog in my attempt to give you a little more detailed picture about a typical day (I think Becky's blog is mostly daily matters as she describes it, but I lack in this department). I think I will try to give a better picture of Ddegeya in blogs to come...
I will be visiting Dave Shulman, another Minerva Fellow, working in Malawi for Partners in Health next week (December 23 - January 4). There Dave will show me a little bit of Africa Malawi style and I will get to help him out in some of his work for PIH if all goes well. Really looking forward to spending birthday, Christmas, and the New Year with Dave. Won't be bringing the computer so I have posted blogs already.
One last thing. I would love to hear what you all want to hear about on the blog - more rants like the Christmas Eve blog? More about Ddegeya? More about the Physics Department? Something else? Coffe production in Ddegeya? Anything - just name it. At the very least I'll reply with a comment, but perhaps it will make a good blog.
Merry Christmas, Happy Festivus, Happy New Year, etc. Talk to you all in a couple weeks.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Reflecting
Now is a pretty good point to stop, take a couple breaths, and reflect after a little over four months in Uganda.
Coming to Uganda was a tough decision for me. I was at a point where I was hearing back from graduate schools in Physics, Atmospheric Sciences, and Geosciences. I had contemplated applying to the Peace Corps and started an application for Teach For America, but decided that two years from graduate school would be too long - I have already forgotten what an indefinite integral is. Minerva Fellows came at the perfect moment to give me a tough time in making my decision. It is a great program. It is nine months, nothing to sneeze at, but short enough where I felt I would be comfortable coming back to hard math and physics. Its goal is to help students innovate and help those in need, something that I think we would all jump at if given the opportunity. It is all paid for - from food to flights. But I have had a long-term goal of working in policy, research, and in academia as a teacher. I wanted to help those in power navigate us out of the climate crisis or at least help salvage what is left of the Earth. These are immediate crises. I decided that this was my only opportunity for a long time to do something like this and I needed to to take advantage of the fellowship; a PhD is somewhere around 5 - 7 years and I think taking a break in the middle might be frowned on in some places.
Some of the chief negatives to this program, pointed out to me by one of my mentors at Union, my family, and others were that I have no professional skills that stand out in the face of the problems these people face (a B.S. in Physics); I don't speak their language; I could potentially make a bigger impact in academia or environmental policy; I might get malaria or some other unpleasant ailment; there are people suffering in America; and if I went to Uganda, I may never come back to graduate studies. I think at one point Bilal and I, in a late night study session, drew the pluses and minus on a dry-erase board in the Physics Department. Some people told me a year off from school helped them get as far as they have others told me that they couldn't imagine a year off.
I came. In the end, I needed a "breakdown" from the life I lived and loved back at Union College.
Upon arriving at the backpackers on July 30 I remember asking myself what I had gotten myself into. It really was only a fleeting doubt, but my return to Kampala was so different from those second thoughts. Returning to Kampala and retracing my journey with Dean McEvoy, I see how beautiful parts of the city are. On arriving I just saw shacks, dirt, and poorly lit streets with well-dressed pedestrians as we rolled into Uganda that first night. Kampala is a city unlike any I have seen in America. It was intimidating. Upon arriving in the village concerns mounted. People spoke less English than I expected; there was no power to charge my computer, a tool which fueled and assisted my every move at Union; internet was fleeting and slow; I had no boss and no 9 to 5 job which I could complete and immediately gather a feeling of accomplishment; I had few resources to work with - no seed money, no books, and no real understanding of health needs in Africa; and it was true - I had few skills that were vital to these people's lives.
The first month and a half Becky and I puttered around finding odd projects to help little by little. We did a lot of work on the road, we dug a lot of dirt to help in constructing the new laboratory, we worked at the primary school before they went on "spring break," we planted a garden of peanuts and vegetables, and we stacked bricks. Small things that were important to Engeye, but not all that revolutionary.
When John came back, he helped us implement a program working with kids in the morning (we refer to i to people, without any real introduction, as "the morning program"). We had seen many kids who didn't go to school - they couldn't afford school fees, it was too long away from a younger sibling, or they were too young to warrant first grade (parents want to make sure the kid will get the most out of school). We worked with these kids on the patio of the clinic first, then in the incomplete laboratory, and on the lawn when construction was in progress. The first day was hard, the second day was easier. It got less difficult as we became okay teachers, little by little. Our days were filled nearly from sunrise to sunset between the primary school, working with kids at the clinic, maintaining the garden (no small task we found), and tutoring kids. We were content - we had the satisfaction of being busy, at least.
After a few weeks, some of the criticisms of this program haunted me. There are few metrics in how effective you are - I was a fairly major component of the P6 class, but I felt uncomfortable asking to give exams - homework was tough to give because they usually did assignments in their notebooks (I did give homework once, though, hopefully more next term). The kids in the morning were tougher to evaluate - have I achieved nothing if the two year olds do not know 1 - 10 in Luganda? I did some hard calculations: John estimates there are 10,000 people, ~50 percent of people are 0 - 14 years old, I interact with 350 kids if you count the Physical Education classes the headmistress has me teaching: I effect only 7 percent of kids in the village at best. And what is the long term value of my interactions? I wasn't getting the struggling students to grasp the material much better if at all, the kids in the morning might come out of the week mastering a puzzle, a song, or 1 - 10, and the vegetables weren't exactly thriving (weeds, which thrive under the same conditions we try to create for cabbages - water, sunlight, and fertile soil - are a constant enemy).
I started feeling somewhat useless - I teach kids things that, on a daily basis, are largely useless or at least negligible. Do they really need to know that sound is a type of energy? Or that the "I run" but "he runs"? Maybe my mentor was right - I'm not a nurse, this is a waste of money - a $2000 plane ticket could have paid two Ugandans (and pay them relatively well) to do a much better job of what I was trying to achieve.
I got a letter from a former boss reminding me to look at the daily successes - Taye counts to ten in English, Akosum doesn't play with rusty nails because he is listening intently to a story, Waswa learns to love school when we mix writing with pictures, Nabuma gets a little bit better at phonetics because of a silly story I have her recopy in her blue book, Joan learns to wrap her stubborn little fingers around a blue pen (her stubborn fingers refused a black pen). Reading Three Cups of Tea helped me see that, even if I am not the best teacher, education is the key to these children's future. I realized that we were interacting with these kids in ways that they are never normally interacted with and that we might be inspiring the next village nurse, doctor, or perhaps, at least, teaching the next store owner how to add, subtract, and multiply. It is too easy to think about Joan, two years old, sitting in front of herself by herself, patiently waiting for her siblings to finish school or her parents to finish work.
My plane ticket may have been better spent on two Ugandans, but I think I will certainly inject the expenses of my stay into Ddegeya by April - my major quantitative goal (I have a slew of qualitative goals). I wanted this fellowship to at least be a zero sum game. I think I will come out ahead.
I planted trees in October, I think sometime around when Re-Tree Schenectady is in action. I realized that was the best way to look at it. The Cassuarinas I planted will fix nitrogen into the soil, act as windbreakers, perhaps provide a shady hide away on the edge of the property, but their value - who knows? I think John told me they cost 2000 shillings or roughly a dollar. I will never know the value of my interaction with Sumayiya and her freakishly long fingers, or the hourly value that could be assigned to tutoring Pross as we frustrate each other with English or Math problem after math problem, or the gains made by Joan as she glued popsicle sticks together in between running away from my strict, glaring eyes. I planted seeds and I am hoping that a handful germinate.
I am content with my work now - I am definitely making a positive difference, no doubt. I've realized that the value of my work is not easily assessed and I cannot compare the critical educational work here in Uganda with the acute needs of assessing and addressing climate change. I have realized that education will need to be a part of whatever I do and wherever I go. Teaching is probably among the most important and undervalued professions.
The doubt I had, I believe, was important and healthy. I see other volunteers who work in private schools teaching English or doing largely menial tasks for NGOs with little reflection on what could be of "higher value." I don't in any way mean to demean these people - I have done my fair share of menial work here and elsewhere and it ends up that even menial work is important, but it is important to try to find the work that is of greater value. I am still looking for that higher value work and I am constantly working to improve. That's the best I can do: try to make what seems like insignificant work significant to one or two and keep improving. So Dean McEvoy (who visited last week) probably came away thinking that I only have criticisms, but I am so critical because this is a program that I believe in and I want it get better and better.
As Jon Hill says:
Good works are achieved through persistence and understanding. Understanding will come with time but without persistence I will never understand what needs to be done because it is through success and failure that I will learn. My good intentions will not always produce good results. I’m fine with that. Hopefully I will do more good than bad while continuing to increase the probability of good works by gaining a greater understanding of the people, history, language and culture of Cambodia.
Breakdown
Jack Johnson
I hope this whole train breaks down.
Then I could take a walk around, see what there is to see.
Time is just a melody with all the people in the street walking fast as their feet can take them, I might just roll through the town.
And though my windows got a view where the frame I'm looking through seem to have no concern for now.
So I need this whole train to break down.
Oh please, just let me please break down.
I need this whole train to break down.
Oh please, just let me please break down.
I want to break on down, but I can't stop now.
Let me break on down. [Chorus]
Well this engine screams out loud. Centipede gonna crawl westbound.
So I don't even make a sound 'cause it's gonna sting me when I leave this town.
And all the people in the street that I'll never get to meet if these tracks don't bend somehow.
And I got no time that I got to get where I don't need to be.
[Chorus]
But you can't stop nothing if you've got no control of the thoughts in your mind that you kept and you know.
You don't know nothing, but you don't need to know the wisdoms in the trees not the glass windows.
You can't stop wishing if you don't let go the things that you find that you lose and you know.
You keep on rolling, put the moment on hold, the frame's too bright so pull the blind down low.
[Chorus]
Coming to Uganda was a tough decision for me. I was at a point where I was hearing back from graduate schools in Physics, Atmospheric Sciences, and Geosciences. I had contemplated applying to the Peace Corps and started an application for Teach For America, but decided that two years from graduate school would be too long - I have already forgotten what an indefinite integral is. Minerva Fellows came at the perfect moment to give me a tough time in making my decision. It is a great program. It is nine months, nothing to sneeze at, but short enough where I felt I would be comfortable coming back to hard math and physics. Its goal is to help students innovate and help those in need, something that I think we would all jump at if given the opportunity. It is all paid for - from food to flights. But I have had a long-term goal of working in policy, research, and in academia as a teacher. I wanted to help those in power navigate us out of the climate crisis or at least help salvage what is left of the Earth. These are immediate crises. I decided that this was my only opportunity for a long time to do something like this and I needed to to take advantage of the fellowship; a PhD is somewhere around 5 - 7 years and I think taking a break in the middle might be frowned on in some places.
Some of the chief negatives to this program, pointed out to me by one of my mentors at Union, my family, and others were that I have no professional skills that stand out in the face of the problems these people face (a B.S. in Physics); I don't speak their language; I could potentially make a bigger impact in academia or environmental policy; I might get malaria or some other unpleasant ailment; there are people suffering in America; and if I went to Uganda, I may never come back to graduate studies. I think at one point Bilal and I, in a late night study session, drew the pluses and minus on a dry-erase board in the Physics Department. Some people told me a year off from school helped them get as far as they have others told me that they couldn't imagine a year off.
I came. In the end, I needed a "breakdown" from the life I lived and loved back at Union College.
Upon arriving at the backpackers on July 30 I remember asking myself what I had gotten myself into. It really was only a fleeting doubt, but my return to Kampala was so different from those second thoughts. Returning to Kampala and retracing my journey with Dean McEvoy, I see how beautiful parts of the city are. On arriving I just saw shacks, dirt, and poorly lit streets with well-dressed pedestrians as we rolled into Uganda that first night. Kampala is a city unlike any I have seen in America. It was intimidating. Upon arriving in the village concerns mounted. People spoke less English than I expected; there was no power to charge my computer, a tool which fueled and assisted my every move at Union; internet was fleeting and slow; I had no boss and no 9 to 5 job which I could complete and immediately gather a feeling of accomplishment; I had few resources to work with - no seed money, no books, and no real understanding of health needs in Africa; and it was true - I had few skills that were vital to these people's lives.
The first month and a half Becky and I puttered around finding odd projects to help little by little. We did a lot of work on the road, we dug a lot of dirt to help in constructing the new laboratory, we worked at the primary school before they went on "spring break," we planted a garden of peanuts and vegetables, and we stacked bricks. Small things that were important to Engeye, but not all that revolutionary.
When John came back, he helped us implement a program working with kids in the morning (we refer to i to people, without any real introduction, as "the morning program"). We had seen many kids who didn't go to school - they couldn't afford school fees, it was too long away from a younger sibling, or they were too young to warrant first grade (parents want to make sure the kid will get the most out of school). We worked with these kids on the patio of the clinic first, then in the incomplete laboratory, and on the lawn when construction was in progress. The first day was hard, the second day was easier. It got less difficult as we became okay teachers, little by little. Our days were filled nearly from sunrise to sunset between the primary school, working with kids at the clinic, maintaining the garden (no small task we found), and tutoring kids. We were content - we had the satisfaction of being busy, at least.
After a few weeks, some of the criticisms of this program haunted me. There are few metrics in how effective you are - I was a fairly major component of the P6 class, but I felt uncomfortable asking to give exams - homework was tough to give because they usually did assignments in their notebooks (I did give homework once, though, hopefully more next term). The kids in the morning were tougher to evaluate - have I achieved nothing if the two year olds do not know 1 - 10 in Luganda? I did some hard calculations: John estimates there are 10,000 people, ~50 percent of people are 0 - 14 years old, I interact with 350 kids if you count the Physical Education classes the headmistress has me teaching: I effect only 7 percent of kids in the village at best. And what is the long term value of my interactions? I wasn't getting the struggling students to grasp the material much better if at all, the kids in the morning might come out of the week mastering a puzzle, a song, or 1 - 10, and the vegetables weren't exactly thriving (weeds, which thrive under the same conditions we try to create for cabbages - water, sunlight, and fertile soil - are a constant enemy).
I started feeling somewhat useless - I teach kids things that, on a daily basis, are largely useless or at least negligible. Do they really need to know that sound is a type of energy? Or that the "I run" but "he runs"? Maybe my mentor was right - I'm not a nurse, this is a waste of money - a $2000 plane ticket could have paid two Ugandans (and pay them relatively well) to do a much better job of what I was trying to achieve.
I got a letter from a former boss reminding me to look at the daily successes - Taye counts to ten in English, Akosum doesn't play with rusty nails because he is listening intently to a story, Waswa learns to love school when we mix writing with pictures, Nabuma gets a little bit better at phonetics because of a silly story I have her recopy in her blue book, Joan learns to wrap her stubborn little fingers around a blue pen (her stubborn fingers refused a black pen). Reading Three Cups of Tea helped me see that, even if I am not the best teacher, education is the key to these children's future. I realized that we were interacting with these kids in ways that they are never normally interacted with and that we might be inspiring the next village nurse, doctor, or perhaps, at least, teaching the next store owner how to add, subtract, and multiply. It is too easy to think about Joan, two years old, sitting in front of herself by herself, patiently waiting for her siblings to finish school or her parents to finish work.
My plane ticket may have been better spent on two Ugandans, but I think I will certainly inject the expenses of my stay into Ddegeya by April - my major quantitative goal (I have a slew of qualitative goals). I wanted this fellowship to at least be a zero sum game. I think I will come out ahead.
I planted trees in October, I think sometime around when Re-Tree Schenectady is in action. I realized that was the best way to look at it. The Cassuarinas I planted will fix nitrogen into the soil, act as windbreakers, perhaps provide a shady hide away on the edge of the property, but their value - who knows? I think John told me they cost 2000 shillings or roughly a dollar. I will never know the value of my interaction with Sumayiya and her freakishly long fingers, or the hourly value that could be assigned to tutoring Pross as we frustrate each other with English or Math problem after math problem, or the gains made by Joan as she glued popsicle sticks together in between running away from my strict, glaring eyes. I planted seeds and I am hoping that a handful germinate.
I am content with my work now - I am definitely making a positive difference, no doubt. I've realized that the value of my work is not easily assessed and I cannot compare the critical educational work here in Uganda with the acute needs of assessing and addressing climate change. I have realized that education will need to be a part of whatever I do and wherever I go. Teaching is probably among the most important and undervalued professions.
The doubt I had, I believe, was important and healthy. I see other volunteers who work in private schools teaching English or doing largely menial tasks for NGOs with little reflection on what could be of "higher value." I don't in any way mean to demean these people - I have done my fair share of menial work here and elsewhere and it ends up that even menial work is important, but it is important to try to find the work that is of greater value. I am still looking for that higher value work and I am constantly working to improve. That's the best I can do: try to make what seems like insignificant work significant to one or two and keep improving. So Dean McEvoy (who visited last week) probably came away thinking that I only have criticisms, but I am so critical because this is a program that I believe in and I want it get better and better.
As Jon Hill says:
Good works are achieved through persistence and understanding. Understanding will come with time but without persistence I will never understand what needs to be done because it is through success and failure that I will learn. My good intentions will not always produce good results. I’m fine with that. Hopefully I will do more good than bad while continuing to increase the probability of good works by gaining a greater understanding of the people, history, language and culture of Cambodia.
Breakdown
Jack Johnson
I hope this whole train breaks down.
Then I could take a walk around, see what there is to see.
Time is just a melody with all the people in the street walking fast as their feet can take them, I might just roll through the town.
And though my windows got a view where the frame I'm looking through seem to have no concern for now.
So I need this whole train to break down.
Oh please, just let me please break down.
I need this whole train to break down.
Oh please, just let me please break down.
I want to break on down, but I can't stop now.
Let me break on down. [Chorus]
Well this engine screams out loud. Centipede gonna crawl westbound.
So I don't even make a sound 'cause it's gonna sting me when I leave this town.
And all the people in the street that I'll never get to meet if these tracks don't bend somehow.
And I got no time that I got to get where I don't need to be.
[Chorus]
But you can't stop nothing if you've got no control of the thoughts in your mind that you kept and you know.
You don't know nothing, but you don't need to know the wisdoms in the trees not the glass windows.
You can't stop wishing if you don't let go the things that you find that you lose and you know.
You keep on rolling, put the moment on hold, the frame's too bright so pull the blind down low.
[Chorus]
Thursday, December 04, 2008
All About Kids
Wow, four months. More. By the time this posts in the next couple weeks we will have eclipsed the 50 percent point. A lot to talk about.
The Draft and Other Football Analogies
So the past few weeks have been exhausting. Kids have been absolutely nuts. It's like they get together in the morning and select six kids who will lose their minds for the day and constantly test my patience. The next day another mix of kids will try creative ways of messing with our heads. It's sort of a game, like football, if they can get in our heads and make us "drop the ball" they get an extra seven points.
Maybe I'm exaggerating (it is still too close to the infamous last Friday to tell). We did have to implement a fourth quarter strategy (we worked with the kids 12 weeks and implemented this in the last three weeks). We broke the kids into three more manageable groups (we actually have tried variations of this "west coast offense" before) - myself, Becky, and another mystery volunteer (we have a volunteer who is afraid of blogs, but we will refer to him/her as Hagar!) taking 8 - 9 kids.
Of course, we had to draft squads, which ended up being a project. I was prepared to draft an all-star group of angel children but Hagar! threw a wrench in the plan; for moral reasons I suppose, she refused to draft a squad. As the chief proponent of the draft, I was left to draft a squad for myself and Hagar!
Anyone who has played backyard/corner field/playground football knows that this is an unfair burden. Hagar! and Becky had obviously missed the ever-important childhood milestone of backyard football. I frantically tried to glance at the piece of paper with all the kids names (we decided it would lead to crying if we lined the kids up and picked them one by one, at least, Becky and Hagar! decided this), remind myself of each kids qualities and assets, and explain the draft method to Becky. There was also the mental barrier - I didn't want to be accused of drafting poorly for Hagar!, but if I made her squad better, it would eventually haunt all of us (the kids rotate). Unfortunately I succumbed to the pressure of the moment and heard complaints for days that I put too many of the youngins on one squad (youngins, 2-3 year olds, could not be grouped on one squad, because they would have employed the "run in 9 different directions strategy and, like kamikazees, destroyed other groups as quickly as possible).
Anyways, despite all my sob stories of the last week, it actually went pretty well. We stayed up late one night and made the kids chapattis (basically fried wheat flour, but Where there is No Doctor says oil is good for kids who likely do not get enough energy from matooke, we rationalized, at least). The kids loved it and told just about everyone and I think it was one of the first times that we heard webale (thank you) echo from all their mouths (you would think the two year olds would thank us for sitting them down and making them repeat "emu, biiri, saatu, ..., one, two, three, ...). We also worked, for four days, on popsicle stick picture frames. A constant mind battle, I tell you. We did one picture frame for each family - families are different sizes, ranging from one to four kids, but each kid wants to decorate more popsicle sticks than every other kid (not the same number, more) and the kids might be content decorating the same number of sticks as the other kids. After the bigger kids threw elbows and stole the other kids popsicle sticks, crayons, food, and, when necessary, pride (taunting knows no cultural boundaries - yes, the boy who wears pink Osh Kosh B'Gosh and cries all the time gets beat on here, too) we let the dust settle and redistributed and punished the heathens when necessary. After several long days the kids had some beautiful picture frames and after a lot of work Becky managed to get a pictures printed for each family. Likely the only picture "mama," "tata," and "jaja" have of the little ones.
Again, I am being too harsh. The kids are disease vectors constantly attacking my hobbled immune system (vitamin C does wonders) and they have been a handful, especially the last couple weeks, but every one of them is a good kid. Some learned more than others (Taye, age two, learned ABCs and 1-20 in both Luganda and English perfectly, but some of the seven year olds can't do it in Luganda), but they each got some positive educational interaction at a time when they really need it. Parents or older sisters got a break for part of the day (sometimes older sisters are kept out of school to care for the younger siblings). The kids got a lot of play time and judging by their insatiable need to run after me, jump on me, punch me, have me chase them, throw or kick balls, help with puzzles, etc. they really needed some playtime with a caring adult. I'm not saying their parent(s) or grandparent(s) don't pay attention to them, but often family sizes are 8+ so the younger kids may not get a lot of attention.
Legends from Primary Six
Teaching primary six was always something that I looked forward to. The kids are generally as well behaved as a classroom of 70 ten to fourteen year olds can be. It was always a struggle, but I think a worthwhile struggle in English and Math. After exhausting full days, kids would drop by the clinic for extra homework and revision. Some of the kids really wanted to learn and do well, even if I speak Russian to them. Part of the reason the last couple weeks were so exhausting was because Becky and I were grading exams during lunch and after school until 11 or 12 at night (we are usually in bed at 9 or 10).
The exams were abysmal. If any external authority looked at them they would judge the kids as terrible failures and the teachers as incompetent (the latter might be true...) and at first I was pretty depressed. One night while grading I finished off the bottom of a bottle of "wine" that had been lingering around from a weekend trip to the Ssese Islands. It didn't help the grades. The kids averaged 33 percent on the first part of a math exam and I would guess the total for the English exam was about the same (the median was slightly lower, which I think means that a couple kids did super bad and most did a little better than average). I concluded that the kids did just as well on the section of the test that I taught and sometimes better (compared to the native teacher), although sometimes I was simply reviewing material.
Looking at the answer keys of the regular teachers I realized that these kids should max out at around 80 percent, the score their instructor usually receives on answer keys. As I've said, some teachers are miraculous, some are not. One teacher insisted that the plural of "broken" is "brokes" (another asked if I studied English in secondary school) and that someone from Rwanda is Rwandanese. How confusing - two teachers telling you two different things in two different languages using different grammatical styles (to put it kindly). Anyways, the results were abysmal by any measure, but given the circumstances of the rural school system here, I was not defeated by the result, but I will try to help some of the kids do better in P7 (they are now on "holiday" for two months).
In all, both P6 and the little kids we work with in the morning are done until February, which is nice. It was a little weird/nostalgic seeing the pre-kindergartners march off with their popsicle stick picture frames (I wondered what Mrs. McDonald's thoughts were on seeing me march off with my twin, Evan 17 years ago) and the P6 kids clean out their desks (I reminisced on my year with Mr. Koshua), but I was happy for a break. I will see them all again soon - April will likely be tougher.
The Future?
Today (December 4) is the much anticipated arrival of Dean McEvoy (I told the kids a man named Tom is coming - they would have trouble with Dean McEvoy and would probably just laugh, "Den Back aba? hahaha"). We are waiting in Kampala Backpackers, which has decided not to offer wireless internet anymore, which means that e-mails to Kent, Dave, etc. will go unanswered for a little longer. We had pizza with a mzungu we met at a restaurant in Kampala, which was really nice and the next few days we will be touring Dean McEvoy around our workplace and the neighboring villages.
After that, we will spend a couple weeks finding candidates for a blood pressure study looking at the possibility that Africans suffer from high blood pressure as a result of insufficient water intake (if you had to climb a hill with 44 - 220 pounds of water and then boil it over a wood coal stove, you would think twice about "8 glasses a day" too). [Becky and I buy water from Masaka, although we have been hiking water up the hill again, lately, as the rainy season abruptly ended]. After we identify people with high blood pressure and if they agree to drink a liter of boiled water per day, we will use them in a four week study (probably too short, so we may extend it).
We will also be starting to distribute chickens with the goal of protein and income generation for families. The way we envision this working is that we will build a coop for a kid in the family (age ~8 and up) and have them take charge of the chicken and report back to us on how the chicken is doing. We will provide vaccines or advice when necessary (with Richard and John's help) and visit the family from time to time. Within one year, we will stipulate that the family needs to pass on the same number of chickens it received to another family. It sounds flawless, but so did the Cane Toad in Australia.
I'm also hoping to work with some of the better sixth graders, the ones who will be in seventh grade (P6 seems to be a cut off point for most kids) and have a shot at doing well enough to get into secondary school (these are also the kids that can understand me when I tutor them). I think that they could potentially get 90+ percent on tests with a lot of work. If not in December, I'd like to do this in January.
Then fun. I will be meeting Dave Shulman, another Minerva Fellow, in Malawi. There I will get to see and assist his work at Partners for Health (an incredible health NGO that has changed the way people think about treating impoverished people). I will also tour around Malawi and Zambia for a week and hopefully see a fair bit of territory, culture, and many exotic creatures.
January will be much the same and February we will be back in schools (likely with a much different approach) and working with the little ones, again.
The Draft and Other Football Analogies
So the past few weeks have been exhausting. Kids have been absolutely nuts. It's like they get together in the morning and select six kids who will lose their minds for the day and constantly test my patience. The next day another mix of kids will try creative ways of messing with our heads. It's sort of a game, like football, if they can get in our heads and make us "drop the ball" they get an extra seven points.
Maybe I'm exaggerating (it is still too close to the infamous last Friday to tell). We did have to implement a fourth quarter strategy (we worked with the kids 12 weeks and implemented this in the last three weeks). We broke the kids into three more manageable groups (we actually have tried variations of this "west coast offense" before) - myself, Becky, and another mystery volunteer (we have a volunteer who is afraid of blogs, but we will refer to him/her as Hagar!) taking 8 - 9 kids.
Of course, we had to draft squads, which ended up being a project. I was prepared to draft an all-star group of angel children but Hagar! threw a wrench in the plan; for moral reasons I suppose, she refused to draft a squad. As the chief proponent of the draft, I was left to draft a squad for myself and Hagar!
Anyone who has played backyard/corner field/playground football knows that this is an unfair burden. Hagar! and Becky had obviously missed the ever-important childhood milestone of backyard football. I frantically tried to glance at the piece of paper with all the kids names (we decided it would lead to crying if we lined the kids up and picked them one by one, at least, Becky and Hagar! decided this), remind myself of each kids qualities and assets, and explain the draft method to Becky. There was also the mental barrier - I didn't want to be accused of drafting poorly for Hagar!, but if I made her squad better, it would eventually haunt all of us (the kids rotate). Unfortunately I succumbed to the pressure of the moment and heard complaints for days that I put too many of the youngins on one squad (youngins, 2-3 year olds, could not be grouped on one squad, because they would have employed the "run in 9 different directions strategy and, like kamikazees, destroyed other groups as quickly as possible).
Anyways, despite all my sob stories of the last week, it actually went pretty well. We stayed up late one night and made the kids chapattis (basically fried wheat flour, but Where there is No Doctor says oil is good for kids who likely do not get enough energy from matooke, we rationalized, at least). The kids loved it and told just about everyone and I think it was one of the first times that we heard webale (thank you) echo from all their mouths (you would think the two year olds would thank us for sitting them down and making them repeat "emu, biiri, saatu, ..., one, two, three, ...). We also worked, for four days, on popsicle stick picture frames. A constant mind battle, I tell you. We did one picture frame for each family - families are different sizes, ranging from one to four kids, but each kid wants to decorate more popsicle sticks than every other kid (not the same number, more) and the kids might be content decorating the same number of sticks as the other kids. After the bigger kids threw elbows and stole the other kids popsicle sticks, crayons, food, and, when necessary, pride (taunting knows no cultural boundaries - yes, the boy who wears pink Osh Kosh B'Gosh and cries all the time gets beat on here, too) we let the dust settle and redistributed and punished the heathens when necessary. After several long days the kids had some beautiful picture frames and after a lot of work Becky managed to get a pictures printed for each family. Likely the only picture "mama," "tata," and "jaja" have of the little ones.
Again, I am being too harsh. The kids are disease vectors constantly attacking my hobbled immune system (vitamin C does wonders) and they have been a handful, especially the last couple weeks, but every one of them is a good kid. Some learned more than others (Taye, age two, learned ABCs and 1-20 in both Luganda and English perfectly, but some of the seven year olds can't do it in Luganda), but they each got some positive educational interaction at a time when they really need it. Parents or older sisters got a break for part of the day (sometimes older sisters are kept out of school to care for the younger siblings). The kids got a lot of play time and judging by their insatiable need to run after me, jump on me, punch me, have me chase them, throw or kick balls, help with puzzles, etc. they really needed some playtime with a caring adult. I'm not saying their parent(s) or grandparent(s) don't pay attention to them, but often family sizes are 8+ so the younger kids may not get a lot of attention.
Legends from Primary Six
Teaching primary six was always something that I looked forward to. The kids are generally as well behaved as a classroom of 70 ten to fourteen year olds can be. It was always a struggle, but I think a worthwhile struggle in English and Math. After exhausting full days, kids would drop by the clinic for extra homework and revision. Some of the kids really wanted to learn and do well, even if I speak Russian to them. Part of the reason the last couple weeks were so exhausting was because Becky and I were grading exams during lunch and after school until 11 or 12 at night (we are usually in bed at 9 or 10).
The exams were abysmal. If any external authority looked at them they would judge the kids as terrible failures and the teachers as incompetent (the latter might be true...) and at first I was pretty depressed. One night while grading I finished off the bottom of a bottle of "wine" that had been lingering around from a weekend trip to the Ssese Islands. It didn't help the grades. The kids averaged 33 percent on the first part of a math exam and I would guess the total for the English exam was about the same (the median was slightly lower, which I think means that a couple kids did super bad and most did a little better than average). I concluded that the kids did just as well on the section of the test that I taught and sometimes better (compared to the native teacher), although sometimes I was simply reviewing material.
Looking at the answer keys of the regular teachers I realized that these kids should max out at around 80 percent, the score their instructor usually receives on answer keys. As I've said, some teachers are miraculous, some are not. One teacher insisted that the plural of "broken" is "brokes" (another asked if I studied English in secondary school) and that someone from Rwanda is Rwandanese. How confusing - two teachers telling you two different things in two different languages using different grammatical styles (to put it kindly). Anyways, the results were abysmal by any measure, but given the circumstances of the rural school system here, I was not defeated by the result, but I will try to help some of the kids do better in P7 (they are now on "holiday" for two months).
In all, both P6 and the little kids we work with in the morning are done until February, which is nice. It was a little weird/nostalgic seeing the pre-kindergartners march off with their popsicle stick picture frames (I wondered what Mrs. McDonald's thoughts were on seeing me march off with my twin, Evan 17 years ago) and the P6 kids clean out their desks (I reminisced on my year with Mr. Koshua), but I was happy for a break. I will see them all again soon - April will likely be tougher.
The Future?
Today (December 4) is the much anticipated arrival of Dean McEvoy (I told the kids a man named Tom is coming - they would have trouble with Dean McEvoy and would probably just laugh, "Den Back aba? hahaha"). We are waiting in Kampala Backpackers, which has decided not to offer wireless internet anymore, which means that e-mails to Kent, Dave, etc. will go unanswered for a little longer. We had pizza with a mzungu we met at a restaurant in Kampala, which was really nice and the next few days we will be touring Dean McEvoy around our workplace and the neighboring villages.
After that, we will spend a couple weeks finding candidates for a blood pressure study looking at the possibility that Africans suffer from high blood pressure as a result of insufficient water intake (if you had to climb a hill with 44 - 220 pounds of water and then boil it over a wood coal stove, you would think twice about "8 glasses a day" too). [Becky and I buy water from Masaka, although we have been hiking water up the hill again, lately, as the rainy season abruptly ended]. After we identify people with high blood pressure and if they agree to drink a liter of boiled water per day, we will use them in a four week study (probably too short, so we may extend it).
We will also be starting to distribute chickens with the goal of protein and income generation for families. The way we envision this working is that we will build a coop for a kid in the family (age ~8 and up) and have them take charge of the chicken and report back to us on how the chicken is doing. We will provide vaccines or advice when necessary (with Richard and John's help) and visit the family from time to time. Within one year, we will stipulate that the family needs to pass on the same number of chickens it received to another family. It sounds flawless, but so did the Cane Toad in Australia.
I'm also hoping to work with some of the better sixth graders, the ones who will be in seventh grade (P6 seems to be a cut off point for most kids) and have a shot at doing well enough to get into secondary school (these are also the kids that can understand me when I tutor them). I think that they could potentially get 90+ percent on tests with a lot of work. If not in December, I'd like to do this in January.
Then fun. I will be meeting Dave Shulman, another Minerva Fellow, in Malawi. There I will get to see and assist his work at Partners for Health (an incredible health NGO that has changed the way people think about treating impoverished people). I will also tour around Malawi and Zambia for a week and hopefully see a fair bit of territory, culture, and many exotic creatures.
January will be much the same and February we will be back in schools (likely with a much different approach) and working with the little ones, again.
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