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Here are a few things I’ve come to learn and realize in the last week:
1. Ujamaa is like a boat which my project is trying to board. Every now and then a bit more of my project latches onto the side, clinging for dear life as the Ujamaa boat slowly putters along. Often these pieces are forgotten and slowly fall off. Maybe the sides of the vessel have been polished too well, but I think its because the crew doesn't care to exert the effort to pull them fully on board.
2. I’ve found that in life, around other people, you spend most of your time butting heads, doubting them, assuming things, questioning others, and eventually allowing them some of your trust. The trust is often misplaced, which makes you continue all the previously mentioned activities. Doing work in management in a foreign culture has really exposed me to those feelings, as they have been constantly present.
3. The most stressful thing in life, which is something you can’t avoid, is making choices. Sometimes they’re made for you, but usually you have to pull together your brain, heart, and guessing facilities to make them – and you can never be sure if you were 100% right. In foreign environments choices become harder. You don’t know the lay of the land. You end up making choices instinctually – especially when trying to figure out prices.
4. Meetings where all issues are addressed and flushed out are invaluable. I few times it happens, filling you with a sense of accomplishment. Here, it rarely happens. The meeting style (which I will describe in detail in a later post) causes that failure.
5. In Kenya, grading is public and often negative. Reading out loud and passing out of grades and comments is common. The students are not that ashamed, but it can’t be good for motivating improvement. They defended themselves, opened discussions on their marks, are happy for each other. In the end, it has been accepted.
6. Energizers for a learning environment are amazing tools. At the learning program run last week an energizer ranged from short dance to team activity to just yelling “put your hands in the air” and “put your hands on the ground”. There were so many I can’t even remember them all. The group always responded, and was more attentive for the next short while. It explains the incredible effectiveness of the “clap, clap, clap clap clap…clap clap” that my dad’s used in 4th grade, which remains drilled into my head.
There is lots more that I learn and realize, so there will be more to come! That’s all I can think of for now. Just some food for though…
Friday, November 28, 2008
Monday, November 17, 2008
Tuesday was Documentation Day...
Tuesday was Documentation Day. The main component that drives my project is documentation. All the Community Mobilizers (CMs) were there (the ones who could make it) to dive into improving the way they document their work. Throughout planning, implementing, and observing the workshop, I learned more than I could have imagined.
I spent some time structuring the workshop with the trainer that we contracted for the workshop. We brainstormed, we came up with activity ideas, and we made room for all priorities to be met. Doing that planning was seriously inspirational. Thorough exhausting of ideas excites me, it motivates me to work hard on expanding those ideas and getting others on board. Others I know can agree that working with others in a constructive manner is uplifting. It also gave me my first experience as a teacher making lesson plans. I never doubted you Mom and Dad, but this furthered my respect for how much work planning and preparing for education is! In the next couple weeks I compiled numerous documents and went through many hurdles to get them perfected and produced. In the end, the day came around and I was still essentially blind to what I would be doing.
The day’s morning session was not run by me. The consultant trainer, Eunice, works heavily with guilt and negativity. She told everybody that they didn’t know stuff, that they were doing things wrong, etc, etc. It was hard for me to listen to and accept. She did not work constructively. The psychology of adult education is unique and teaching adults requires a much different approach. Adults are more aware and are less susceptible to chastising. I frequently wanted to intervene, get her more on track, and stop her from ruining the afternoon session.
The afternoon session, run by me, started again with Eunice telling everyone they were wrong wrong wrong! I intervened and asked if we could use the current activity to segway into my session. A good decision, but a rough start. The afternoon session follows lunch. I had to start by handing out papers and explaining them. Together, food and lecture very effectively put everyone to sleep. A shout for an energizer (I’ll explain the use of energizers in my next post) led to a fantastic activity with some singing and dancing that woke up everybody. That also gave me time to reflect, to understand the work ahead of me, to prioritize, and to direct myself.
My session was on the format of reporting the CMs produce and the system of documentation Ujamaa will be following. The fieldwork done is Ujamaa’s foundation – conveying it effectively is central to everything related to Monitoring, Evaluation, and Accountability.
Coming out of the energizer, I quickly brushed over the documents again, going through set formats of reports that we conceptualized. I led that into a discussion. I tried to bring out the ineffectiveness of broad language. They are all culprits of reporting with broad language, with terms such as “capacity building” and “village meeting” dominating reports. Can people get any real information from those terms? No! We discussed the importance of going a few levels deeper – what did you build capacity in, what did you hold a meeting on, who was the meeting/training aimed at? It was quite a wall to break down. There is a long way to go to really expand that language. Working in development causes you to rethink many assumptions. These people I work with are intelligent and aware, but there are some basic skills they lack. Bringing those out and fighting with ingrained practices was quite a learning process.
Earlier they had written a report in a group. I had them reform the groups and try to use our discussion and the formats I had given them to rewrite the report. That activity legitimated my entire project. They asked a million questions about: what do you mean by expectations, what sort of agenda was there, is this title effective, what were my challenges? Flushing out the requirements for each section of the report format seemed to incur a step towards reporting enlightenment. The morning talked about data collection and analysis. Discussing the new report each group had furthered the realizations and understanding of what each section contained, where to put thoughts, what thoughts to include. It tied together all we had talked about for the whole day.
There process was not easy to get through and I doubted myself from the start. My workshop session was my first teaching experience where the material I presented was new and my own. It was liberating, but brought on huge insecurities. I loved it.
I spent some time structuring the workshop with the trainer that we contracted for the workshop. We brainstormed, we came up with activity ideas, and we made room for all priorities to be met. Doing that planning was seriously inspirational. Thorough exhausting of ideas excites me, it motivates me to work hard on expanding those ideas and getting others on board. Others I know can agree that working with others in a constructive manner is uplifting. It also gave me my first experience as a teacher making lesson plans. I never doubted you Mom and Dad, but this furthered my respect for how much work planning and preparing for education is! In the next couple weeks I compiled numerous documents and went through many hurdles to get them perfected and produced. In the end, the day came around and I was still essentially blind to what I would be doing.
The day’s morning session was not run by me. The consultant trainer, Eunice, works heavily with guilt and negativity. She told everybody that they didn’t know stuff, that they were doing things wrong, etc, etc. It was hard for me to listen to and accept. She did not work constructively. The psychology of adult education is unique and teaching adults requires a much different approach. Adults are more aware and are less susceptible to chastising. I frequently wanted to intervene, get her more on track, and stop her from ruining the afternoon session.
The afternoon session, run by me, started again with Eunice telling everyone they were wrong wrong wrong! I intervened and asked if we could use the current activity to segway into my session. A good decision, but a rough start. The afternoon session follows lunch. I had to start by handing out papers and explaining them. Together, food and lecture very effectively put everyone to sleep. A shout for an energizer (I’ll explain the use of energizers in my next post) led to a fantastic activity with some singing and dancing that woke up everybody. That also gave me time to reflect, to understand the work ahead of me, to prioritize, and to direct myself.
My session was on the format of reporting the CMs produce and the system of documentation Ujamaa will be following. The fieldwork done is Ujamaa’s foundation – conveying it effectively is central to everything related to Monitoring, Evaluation, and Accountability.
Coming out of the energizer, I quickly brushed over the documents again, going through set formats of reports that we conceptualized. I led that into a discussion. I tried to bring out the ineffectiveness of broad language. They are all culprits of reporting with broad language, with terms such as “capacity building” and “village meeting” dominating reports. Can people get any real information from those terms? No! We discussed the importance of going a few levels deeper – what did you build capacity in, what did you hold a meeting on, who was the meeting/training aimed at? It was quite a wall to break down. There is a long way to go to really expand that language. Working in development causes you to rethink many assumptions. These people I work with are intelligent and aware, but there are some basic skills they lack. Bringing those out and fighting with ingrained practices was quite a learning process.
Earlier they had written a report in a group. I had them reform the groups and try to use our discussion and the formats I had given them to rewrite the report. That activity legitimated my entire project. They asked a million questions about: what do you mean by expectations, what sort of agenda was there, is this title effective, what were my challenges? Flushing out the requirements for each section of the report format seemed to incur a step towards reporting enlightenment. The morning talked about data collection and analysis. Discussing the new report each group had furthered the realizations and understanding of what each section contained, where to put thoughts, what thoughts to include. It tied together all we had talked about for the whole day.
There process was not easy to get through and I doubted myself from the start. My workshop session was my first teaching experience where the material I presented was new and my own. It was liberating, but brought on huge insecurities. I loved it.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
The Value of a Life
Sitting atop the food chain as humans, we don't see lives as things that begin and end. They have to high a price to be so simple. For myself and my compatriots as members of the Western World, that feeling is even more pronounced.
The other day I was at a meeting in a village way out in the middle of a forest here on the coast of Kenya. I sat in a plastic chair on a dirt patch and listened discuss forming a bee keeper's cooperative. The meeting, being all in Swahili, was a little hard for me to follow, so my gaze wandered to a millipede crawling around on the ground. Millipedes have incredible foot motion, where bunches of their legs move together in a way that creates a wave-like motion. Millions of years of evolution and natural selection made that possible. As the fascinating creature made its way towards the edge of the circle of chairs the meeting had formed, its life, probably incredibly important to itself, became inconsequential.
The man speaking shifted the position of his foot about two inches and when he lifted his foot again, there was the millipede, smashed into the red African dirt. Why was the millipede there? Who decided that it was his time to go? Was that the way it was supposed to happen? Those questions are answered in a million and one ways today as our beliefs evolve, but no matter your belief, the millipede was unlucky. Be it pure coincidence or bad karma, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. In a moment, his all important existence (with perspective) was ended.
Consciousness is a blessing and even more so a burden. As humans we can understand and value our lives beyond pure survival instinct. Each society and each human values life differently, death is death, but sometimes its DEATH. Needless to say, we aren't ants who blindly sacrifice ourselves for the sake of the colony, and we step on ants without considering how they might feel about the usefulness of their existence, but we seldom consider how privileged we are to be alive.
The other day I was at a meeting in a village way out in the middle of a forest here on the coast of Kenya. I sat in a plastic chair on a dirt patch and listened discuss forming a bee keeper's cooperative. The meeting, being all in Swahili, was a little hard for me to follow, so my gaze wandered to a millipede crawling around on the ground. Millipedes have incredible foot motion, where bunches of their legs move together in a way that creates a wave-like motion. Millions of years of evolution and natural selection made that possible. As the fascinating creature made its way towards the edge of the circle of chairs the meeting had formed, its life, probably incredibly important to itself, became inconsequential.
The man speaking shifted the position of his foot about two inches and when he lifted his foot again, there was the millipede, smashed into the red African dirt. Why was the millipede there? Who decided that it was his time to go? Was that the way it was supposed to happen? Those questions are answered in a million and one ways today as our beliefs evolve, but no matter your belief, the millipede was unlucky. Be it pure coincidence or bad karma, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. In a moment, his all important existence (with perspective) was ended.
Consciousness is a blessing and even more so a burden. As humans we can understand and value our lives beyond pure survival instinct. Each society and each human values life differently, death is death, but sometimes its DEATH. Needless to say, we aren't ants who blindly sacrifice ourselves for the sake of the colony, and we step on ants without considering how they might feel about the usefulness of their existence, but we seldom consider how privileged we are to be alive.
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