May 10, 2009

Post date: May 10, 2009 7:15:07 PM

May 10 (Sunday - Late) - Update to JC McKenna Middle School Questions

It's been another peaceful Sunday. If you're ever in Kampala know that Sunday is a great day to explore the city. It's very quiet with very little traffic and only the tourest shops are open. You can really enjoy the beauty and serenity. On the way back from Kibiri today on was on a boda boda and we were riding behind a big truck full of laborers coming from or going to somewhere. One of them gave me the peace sign and said God bless America -- go Obama. I gave him a peace sign back and several of the workers laughed and smiled and gave me a peace sign. There was a matatu driver immediately on my right (it's like Boston here --- if there is pavement or something similar to it then it's considered a traffic lane) and he gave me a peace sign too. My heart swelled - some part of them knew I was American and I was here growing peace. I have shared with you that it's not uncommen for Ugandan adults to have some ill feelings towards Westerners. I have experienced for myself that many Westerners are rude and arrogant. I will add right now that there is generally a different sentiment towards Westerners from the United States. I have met more US Citizens on this trip then I have met on any of my three previous trip combined, and I will tell you that I am proud to be an American and I will say again that I feel much grattitude towards the Amercans that I have met here. God bless America -- go Obama!

Some exciting news from Stephanie, aside from getting engaged. She just returned from Kenya where she is funding for a school to be built. Yes, she is only 22 years old and she has managed to raise $3000 and be smart enough to find a self sustaining school that is going to except her microfinance support to build themselves a school so they don't have to pay rent for a bunch of crummy buildings and barely have enough cash to pay their teachers. BTW, administrators at this school don't get paid when cash flow won't support it. The exciting news is that they are going to build with Interlocking Stablized Soil Blocks (ISSBs) using techology from Techonolgy for Tomorrow (www.t4tafrica.com). She was really tentative about the idea a few weeks ago because the foundation is currenly being laid. She figured the school board had already made commitments and she didn't want to confuse things by bringing in new options. However, the school board considered her proposal, investigated the technology, and decided to go with it. Hooray for the trees, hooray for the swamps, hooray for the environment, hooray for the brilliance of Dr Moses Musaazi, and hooray for saving at least 40% in building costs. YEAH!

More exciting news -- Eka is starting to get better cash flow on her architecture jobs. People are paying her -- even giving her extra for her incredible work. I'll tell you she is amazing. I watched her design a house in less than an hour. She works that Computer Aided Design (CAD) program of hers faster than I work in Excel. I watched her play free cell, mine sweeper, and hearts on the computer and she moves with lightening speed. I told her that I when I was younger I used to be as fast as her. She laughed. I told her that really I was --- she laughed again. Hey -- I really used to be fast. I still am by most standards. - - - Eka just told me she can barely use Excel -- so there. ;o)

Now, without further delay, here is an email to Tajali with updated information concerning questions from JC McKenna Middle School:

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From: Kevin Lockwood [mailto:kevin@cgpp.org]

Sent: Sunday, May 10, 2009 10:17 PM

To: 'Tajali Tolan'

Subject: Letters and Peace Banner from Kibiri P7 Class for JC MCKenna

I met with Herman today and his wife Angela did a Journey process with me. She went in really deep – especially for a culture that I see is so very polite and rarely expresses discontent with anything --- the La Fontaine gang excluded – lol.

Herman met with Edith (The Headmaster) last week and she has tasked him with teaching all of the other teachers what he has learned from our time together to the other teachers. Therefore – he was happy to accept our banner from the 1^st grade in Evansville. He will be delivering it to the upper level P4 class after I leave. The P4s, like the rest of the children in the country, are currently on vacation. I have special permission to be working with the P7s right now. Herman, Angela, and I all agreed that the English comprehension for P1 through P3 is too low to try and connect with an American classroom. The sheer numbers in those classes adds additional challenges. This is congruent with previous conversations I’ve had on this subject with other people in Uganda. I anticipate the P4s will write a group letter and create a banner which we will receive sometime over the summer. You can decide whether it will work easier to deliver these to the children that have moved to 2^nd grade or to the 1^st grade teacher in Evansville.

Herman’s upper-level P7 class – the ones I have been working with – will also be accepting a banner. They will be writing letters to JC McKenna and doing a Journey on Monday when I am not there. Then on Tuesday when I meet with them for the last time we will do the peaceful place visualization and make a peace banner. I will bring these all home with me on the 19^th. My inclination in that these letters will go to the Roots and Shoots Peace Club at JC McKenna and hopefully they will have a chance to reply before school ends for the summer. Here is Herman’s address:

Kayemba Herman

P.O. Box 27739

Kampala

Uganda

I asked Herman about the differences in Uniforms. I wasn’t too far off with my explanation. The children have three uniforms. One for academic classes (green), one for gym classes, and on for leisure time during and after school (purple). The green one is for academic classes, and it is the one the children ‘should’ be wearing to school. However, TIA. I would imagine that most parents can only afford two green uniforms and one purple one. I would also guess that the challenge for them can come in when it rains and the clean green uniform doesn’t have a chance to dry. Since Ugandans are very particular about cleanliness they wouldn’t imagine sending their child to school in yesterday’s dirty green uniform – so they send them in their purple leisure time uniform.

I also have more information about school boarding and school meals. Kibiri is a mixed boarding and day school. I thought Edith told me they didn’t board anymore but I must have misunderstood. Parents pay additional fees for the school kitchen to cook breakfast and lunch for the children (also dinner for the boarded students). The funding for these meals is not provided by the government.

Peace and Light,

Kevin

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PS -- Ryan has decided to write a book called Chasing Chickens. I think it's about how some people come to Afica because they think they have to do something to feel fullfilled --- when all they need to do is just be. We have plans of what we think we need to do - but we're just chasing chickens. Just come here and be - just be wherever you are and feel the wholeness in that. Ryan emailed me the opening paragraphs. Make a note of this name, Mr Ryan Schuette. I imagine you'll see it again - the boy can write. He inspires me not to write because I realize that I've been trained to be a techinical writer and I really don't have his type of creative talent. Did I mention he's young enough to be my son -- lol -- he is. Hmmm -- that's not funny.

CHASING CHICKENS - BY RYAN SCHUETTE

It’s 9 p.m. on a Sunday night. I’m sitting idly, at a table under a thatched roof supported by tree-like columns, surrounded by Gordon, a Ugandan man angry about poverty, and Kevin, an American and former defense industry wonk trying to sow the seeds of global peace on small paychecks.

Around me, a tall, lanky Irish man, not quite unlike the tall, lanky marabou storks unique to Uganda, thrashes a soccer ball about the cramped restaurant area we all inhabit, a whir of excitement over a distinguishably smaller object of attention and that faint, freckled skin tone particular to creatures from overcast Belfast. On the other side of the restaurant, I hear the excited exchange of Japanese conversation and irreverent giggling, interrupted only by the muted incursion of a Ugandan waiter newly arrived to attend them.

It is 9 p.m. in Kampala, Uganda. It is May 10, 2009, a benchmark in that I’m entering the final month of my time in this cool, landlocked country, before I board my plane back to the United States. Amidst the cacophony of global life, I try to find a message for this novel, accurately titled but less thoroughly considered for what I want to say. What to say, exactly? After all, it’s not about chasing chickens – or choking them, as Kevin lewdly suggests, following which he grinds on with the hiss and suffocation of barely contained laughter.

It is 6:40 a.m. at a Hilton Hotel in a small town east of Houston, Texas, and I’m seated with my mother and aunt in the breakfast area, done up in the best suit and dress shirt you can buy on a college student’s budget for someone still dependent on a single parent teacher’s salary. It is April 28, 2007, the day of my interview for the prestigious scholarship I hope will whisk me away to Uganda, and I endure thick, unhandsome beads of salty sweat under my silken shirt. I see another interviewee, a young woman with strawberry blonde hair, slender and attractive, poring over a booklet she prepared for her interview. Of the two, one of us will probably make this interview, I think, as I look around to notice seven other interviewees.

It’s 7 p.m. on April 3, 2009, in Sierra Leone, a coastal West African country, and this time the memory I carefully consider is shattered by the mucous-gurgling scream of an infant, no older than six months, throwing herself into wracked fits under the watchful concern of her mother. Like me, the infant is battling malaria, but unlike me, I realize – even as I watch her from my bed, stained as it is with my urine and vomit, my otherwise comfortable view of the television obstructed by plastic tubes that flow with quinine and course into my vein – she may not survive the night. We are soldiers that night, and I feel like I’m about to lose my only friend.

I flash to Kampala on October 30, 2008, and I’m sitting uncomfortably on concrete steps outside a darkened shopping center at 2 a.m., looking up to find the smooth black barrel of an AK-47 rifle staring back at me.