GoEd Africa, '08; Rwanda
the best Thanksgiving I have ever had in my life.
thanks, Lord. thanks for two families.
thanks, Lord. thanks for two families.
Little Ones
taught puppy--so unruly, so ferocious--
to actually sit and fetch the rag today.
still biting people with her sharp, puppy teeth, but
smalls steps,
profound victories.
to actually sit and fetch the rag today.
still biting people with her sharp, puppy teeth, but
smalls steps,
profound victories.
Introduction to a Crash Course
Since Dwight's arrival, he's the one who's responsible for imparting-zee-knowledge to the students so my duties have decreased substantially to an advisory kind. But on the side of all of that, I'm working on putting flesh to an idea.
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That's my thought umbrella.
When the interns met to brainstorm about alumni engagement, I felt that FH was failing at creating opportunities for alumni to get involved occupationally. Two big concerns at this point in life is "do I want to do that marriage thing?" and/or "what in the world am I going to do for a living and how am I going to do it?" After such a transformative semester, many students would kill for a paying position with them. FH, why aren't you creating jobs for kids who want them?? And then I began thinking about how frustrating it was for me as a recent graduate in international studies (and other graduates of the theoretical disciplines: cultural studies, int'l relations, sociology, Ed, Philosophy, Art) to feel completely underqualified for every job position in my field because all any of us have been ever been taught to do is, well, study.
You want me manage day-to-day accounting, case loads, and liaison between offices while I secure you $$$$$ of funds from outside donors on my lunch??
Er. How about a 8-page paper? Damn. I should have been a nurse.
And that's the chasm: (thanks, Microsoft Paint)
Why don't our colleges give us practical skills after four years of selling our souls to loan companies? We can't get the job we want because we don't have the experience and the skills we need be a competitive candidate. Not everyone could get to FH's conferences (too far, too soon, not enough money) so how could GoEd impart its transformation in occupations and equip us to do the development work it needs help doing?! So my idea was to marry the two. What if GoEd offered a "crash" course for J-term or May-Term that is worth college credit and is focused on practical application on what every NGO is looking for in regards to ground-level positions?
Every other non-profit job on the internet is looking for a grant writer. Um, where are you supposed to learn that? What if we taught it? What if we offered something even more? What if colleges made it possible for their students to get certification in Disaster Relief? Organic Community Gardening? Advocacy? Non-Profit Marketing/Communications? What if there was a course in refugee/victim trauma? What if there was a practicum in Social Media? Public Relations? Non-Profit Fundraising? Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL or TESOL)? Half of the practicum applications on the Mekong and Africa Programs were teaching English or advertising positions.
Why not create young adults who know what they're doing when they get there?
GoEd could conscript an outside an expert in these fields to be the director of the course and offer it at its affiliate schools simultaneously. A batch of interns would help launch a three to four week intensive class and be there to assist the professor when it started. At the end of the curriculum, Food for the Hungry could advertise it's openings and opportunities to a population that now had the aptitude to fulfill those responsibilities. It would be a way for returning GoEd alum to feel like FH was interested in their career development and that someone trusted their visionary minds to further the work that's being done for the poor around the world. It'd also be a way for students who had never heard of GoEd or FH, to hear about its opportunities. But above all, everyone involved would now have a practical skill (hopefully) delivered in the transformational way that Food for the Hungry is so good at.
Anyway.
I'm trying to add tissue to the bone. I'd like to see this one walk around.
+002.JPG)
That's my thought umbrella.When the interns met to brainstorm about alumni engagement, I felt that FH was failing at creating opportunities for alumni to get involved occupationally. Two big concerns at this point in life is "do I want to do that marriage thing?" and/or "what in the world am I going to do for a living and how am I going to do it?" After such a transformative semester, many students would kill for a paying position with them. FH, why aren't you creating jobs for kids who want them?? And then I began thinking about how frustrating it was for me as a recent graduate in international studies (and other graduates of the theoretical disciplines: cultural studies, int'l relations, sociology, Ed, Philosophy, Art) to feel completely underqualified for every job position in my field because all any of us have been ever been taught to do is, well, study.
You want me manage day-to-day accounting, case loads, and liaison between offices while I secure you $$$$$ of funds from outside donors on my lunch??
Er. How about a 8-page paper? Damn. I should have been a nurse.
And that's the chasm: (thanks, Microsoft Paint)
Why don't our colleges give us practical skills after four years of selling our souls to loan companies? We can't get the job we want because we don't have the experience and the skills we need be a competitive candidate. Not everyone could get to FH's conferences (too far, too soon, not enough money) so how could GoEd impart its transformation in occupations and equip us to do the development work it needs help doing?! So my idea was to marry the two. What if GoEd offered a "crash" course for J-term or May-Term that is worth college credit and is focused on practical application on what every NGO is looking for in regards to ground-level positions?Every other non-profit job on the internet is looking for a grant writer. Um, where are you supposed to learn that? What if we taught it? What if we offered something even more? What if colleges made it possible for their students to get certification in Disaster Relief? Organic Community Gardening? Advocacy? Non-Profit Marketing/Communications? What if there was a course in refugee/victim trauma? What if there was a practicum in Social Media? Public Relations? Non-Profit Fundraising? Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL or TESOL)? Half of the practicum applications on the Mekong and Africa Programs were teaching English or advertising positions.
Why not create young adults who know what they're doing when they get there?
GoEd could conscript an outside an expert in these fields to be the director of the course and offer it at its affiliate schools simultaneously. A batch of interns would help launch a three to four week intensive class and be there to assist the professor when it started. At the end of the curriculum, Food for the Hungry could advertise it's openings and opportunities to a population that now had the aptitude to fulfill those responsibilities. It would be a way for returning GoEd alum to feel like FH was interested in their career development and that someone trusted their visionary minds to further the work that's being done for the poor around the world. It'd also be a way for students who had never heard of GoEd or FH, to hear about its opportunities. But above all, everyone involved would now have a practical skill (hopefully) delivered in the transformational way that Food for the Hungry is so good at.
Anyway.
I'm trying to add tissue to the bone. I'd like to see this one walk around.
Weaving Your Own Fabric
is magic. I can't understand it at all.
Gander: the girls practicing the human loom for their Thai Culture & Arts class.
We Have Only Just Begun
Our research begins tomorrow, I can't even believe it. Already! The time! Has flown!
After all that work, Dwight has pushed through all the essentials and tomorrow we will throw their interpreters and voice recorders at them to accomplish the capstone of the course: qualitative research.
They'll leave tomorrow at 8am and have 2 and 1/2 hours to research 4 people individually about the their income, their expenses, their relationships within the community, and their dreams for themselves. In sociology we call it a baseline but what we're doing is akin to taking a photograph. We ask about their income to see if children selling flowers is actually a substantial part of what they make. If it is and it's unfair to the children, the Church of Christ of Thailand can possibly consult about the issue. We ask about their relationships because if it turns out that all of their bonds are within the community, it means they are isolating themselves in a way that won't achieve the things they say they want for themselves. We ask about their dreams to see through their eyes, not ours for them, and provide information that could help set them on their way.
This stuff is important because it's actually for somebody. It helps.
It's not like the research paper you do in school where you're nervous because someone's going to grade your being with an ink letter of the alphabet. The presentation to the community is not like a presentation you make in front of a bunch of suburban undergrads who are measuring your abilities against their own. If you do this well, it has an impact on how an organization can make its interaction with a community more meaningful to them. The leaders want to know where they can improve and provide. To present to them is to honor the people you have spent the whole semester learning about.
I've learned so much from Dwight Jackson having taken the class a second time and the ability to problem solve with him behind the scenes. The man spoke my higher educational aspirations into existence, who does that? I spent a whole afternoon researching "Development Anthropology" and it encapsulated everything I've been trying to say for the past two years in a grad school program I've been searching for but never satisfied with. I wasn't even giddy; it was more like, "well, duh, of course this is what you should get your masters in."
I sit in class and I love every minute.
The tragedy is that in some eyes it's just another class, just another A, just another thing to do to get your piece of paper. They come late and skip out quickly and I can't help but feeling a little offended. I want to write: "this is about other people" in red white-board marker because it is about other people, more than foreign romances, and songthaew rides, and clothes. If anything, it's to help them do the things they want to do better. If you want to "help" people, you actually have to learn what questions to ask first and what things to avoid. The class teaches you how to evaluate your progress as an employee, or manager, or innovator. I'd leave it there for days to soak into skin, to make it hit the heart. Maybe this is how some math teachers feel about middle school students who ignore the material and doodle in class. For the rest of their lives, they're going to have the hardest time knowing how much paint to buy, how much change to get/give, and what interest rates are going to wreck their credit forever.
After all that work, Dwight has pushed through all the essentials and tomorrow we will throw their interpreters and voice recorders at them to accomplish the capstone of the course: qualitative research.
They'll leave tomorrow at 8am and have 2 and 1/2 hours to research 4 people individually about the their income, their expenses, their relationships within the community, and their dreams for themselves. In sociology we call it a baseline but what we're doing is akin to taking a photograph. We ask about their income to see if children selling flowers is actually a substantial part of what they make. If it is and it's unfair to the children, the Church of Christ of Thailand can possibly consult about the issue. We ask about their relationships because if it turns out that all of their bonds are within the community, it means they are isolating themselves in a way that won't achieve the things they say they want for themselves. We ask about their dreams to see through their eyes, not ours for them, and provide information that could help set them on their way.
This stuff is important because it's actually for somebody. It helps.
It's not like the research paper you do in school where you're nervous because someone's going to grade your being with an ink letter of the alphabet. The presentation to the community is not like a presentation you make in front of a bunch of suburban undergrads who are measuring your abilities against their own. If you do this well, it has an impact on how an organization can make its interaction with a community more meaningful to them. The leaders want to know where they can improve and provide. To present to them is to honor the people you have spent the whole semester learning about.
I've learned so much from Dwight Jackson having taken the class a second time and the ability to problem solve with him behind the scenes. The man spoke my higher educational aspirations into existence, who does that? I spent a whole afternoon researching "Development Anthropology" and it encapsulated everything I've been trying to say for the past two years in a grad school program I've been searching for but never satisfied with. I wasn't even giddy; it was more like, "well, duh, of course this is what you should get your masters in."
I sit in class and I love every minute.
The tragedy is that in some eyes it's just another class, just another A, just another thing to do to get your piece of paper. They come late and skip out quickly and I can't help but feeling a little offended. I want to write: "this is about other people" in red white-board marker because it is about other people, more than foreign romances, and songthaew rides, and clothes. If anything, it's to help them do the things they want to do better. If you want to "help" people, you actually have to learn what questions to ask first and what things to avoid. The class teaches you how to evaluate your progress as an employee, or manager, or innovator. I'd leave it there for days to soak into skin, to make it hit the heart. Maybe this is how some math teachers feel about middle school students who ignore the material and doodle in class. For the rest of their lives, they're going to have the hardest time knowing how much paint to buy, how much change to get/give, and what interest rates are going to wreck their credit forever.
The Quest to Blog and Other Such Happenings
I have friends in the digital world who have enough guts to participate in NaNoWriMo (national novel writing month) and are plugging out their first drafts of fiction for fun. Donald Miller, however, doesn't think writing is fun at all, but that's okay, he still manages to write books.
They said it feels almost awful in the beginning, like an kissing with dentures, or like your each of your letter keys are gigantic lily pads, or like being a toddler with a mind to drive cars but barred to taking their first steps to the coffee table instead but as they keep going, it becomes easier. Less painful, more exciting. One friend has chapters by now.
pft.
Way to make a person feel lazy.
The least I could do is blog more often.
They said it feels almost awful in the beginning, like an kissing with dentures, or like your each of your letter keys are gigantic lily pads, or like being a toddler with a mind to drive cars but barred to taking their first steps to the coffee table instead but as they keep going, it becomes easier. Less painful, more exciting. One friend has chapters by now.
pft.
Way to make a person feel lazy.
The least I could do is blog more often.
All Hands
Who will help me reap the harvest?I tried to find my one long sleeve shirt that I had been insane enough to bring to Southeast Asia because those were the instructions. Not what I had in mind when I packed my under-packed suitcase but--everyone, Marting instructed--was to wear one to keep grasses from irritating their skin. I grumbled as I searched because it didn't make any sense to me why anyone would want to start harvesting anything at 8am. By nine o'clock the sun starts cooking the residents of Doi Saket and to be out in the field with long sleeves, long jeans, and rags covering any of your exposed face is masochistic.
((folds arms)) not I said, the duck.
The Lahu students had planted an acre of rice to curb the exorbitant cost of commercial rice and the short, lush green that had greeted us on our Thailand arrival was now heavy and golden. Most of them were only used to mountain rice harvesting but they (said Gloria) were excited to try flat ground harvest; to be just like the Thai. The event went up on the white board, set in appointment stone. Friday. 8:30. Rice Harvesting. Be there. Kenny bubbled the night before and the morning of and I continued grumbling. I grew up in the wrong era for this.
The Lahu students had planted an acre of rice to curb the exorbitant cost of commercial rice and the short, lush green that had greeted us on our Thailand arrival was now heavy and golden. Most of them were only used to mountain rice harvesting but they (said Gloria) were excited to try flat ground harvest; to be just like the Thai. The event went up on the white board, set in appointment stone. Friday. 8:30. Rice Harvesting. Be there. Kenny bubbled the night before and the morning of and I continued grumbling. I grew up in the wrong era for this.
Morning of, hot and invariably bothered, the GoEd crew and Bryce headed out to the fields. I grabbed a rag to follow in tow with the harvest professionals and surveyed the labor I could already tell was harder than any cherry picking I'd done. But I picked up my sickle and grabbed each stalk, trying to cut them with ease of our teachers. The Lahu were incredibly supportive (and fast), smiling at us even though we were slowing them down and showed us how to cut more than one stalk at the same time; how to gently stack them in criss-cross piles that would be easy to pick up. I tried cutting more than one stalk but I kept cutting the closest one too long and the farther ones too short, making an uneven mess of my bunches. To add insult to injury, Marting had to come through behind me and cut all the stray grasses that had gotten away from me. Courtesy gave way eventually, and the Lahu began working around us but we were out there together, all of us from everywhere, which we haven't had the luxury of experiencing since the students returned from practicum. Ryan sat in a field and had Burmese suncream applied to his face and we took epic pictures of him in his grass hat.Of anybody, Bryce hung in there best-- till the very, very end--, whereas before the field was cleared, I had wandered away to get water and some shade and found the comforts of non-labor too tempting. I kept encouraging myself by thinking of different fruit harvesting scenarios that I'd be awesome at. Apples had no chance against this kind of industriousness, so between the spaces of my mind justifications, I brought water to the field weary. When I returned to my sickle, I saw the GoEd-ers also abandoning their posts and decided the rice had won against the West. Maybe if it had been early morning the scenario would have been different, but I didn't mind too much. We don't always have to win at everything.
The Plague Of Small Things
It's sick, really.
East Africans wouldn't go near a puppy if you paid them. Most Ugandans are indifferent to domesticated animals but Thais on, the other hand, find creatures you can't resist and try sell them to you. They even go as far to put dresses on baby bunnies. (O_O) Dear...god.
freaking baby bunnies of doom at Loi Kratong:
mutt puppies for sale by the Mae Ping River:
but we have found a way to resist the temptation. The Lahu have found a suitable adversary for free:
She was chasing children at a Lahu-Thai wedding everyone was attending on the compound and she (bit me incessantly with her sharp, puppy teeth and) passed out on my lap for the rest of the ceremony. She has no name because she doesn't belong to us, but it still doesn't keep us from referring to her as "ours".
East Africans wouldn't go near a puppy if you paid them. Most Ugandans are indifferent to domesticated animals but Thais on, the other hand, find creatures you can't resist and try sell them to you. They even go as far to put dresses on baby bunnies. (O_O) Dear...god.
freaking baby bunnies of doom at Loi Kratong:
mutt puppies for sale by the Mae Ping River:
but we have found a way to resist the temptation. The Lahu have found a suitable adversary for free:
She was chasing children at a Lahu-Thai wedding everyone was attending on the compound and she (bit me incessantly with her sharp, puppy teeth and) passed out on my lap for the rest of the ceremony. She has no name because she doesn't belong to us, but it still doesn't keep us from referring to her as "ours".
Taking a Measuring Stick To Spirit
How do you measure the things I've done? The guest speaker I've arranged has showed up and brought colleagues, the articles I've researched has been individually bound for the students' convenience, and I'm there in class to help refine the snags the students can't foresee for their research. However, I don't have any "Before and After" pictures.
How does something like helping the marginalized be measured? The students haven't built any houses, or any schools, or any medical clinics. We haven't picked up any bibles and thrown their words at people. No souls have run down to the altar, giving up surrendering their everlasting souls, because they don't need saving, they're devout Christians already; Christians trying to be Christians within a Buddhist country, people within a minority body just trying to be treated like everyone else. We could assign issues for the students to break open, but those things take lifetimes. Social change happens in slow time, not microwave speed. And even if the ethnic minorities have opportunities they didn't have before, does that increase the likelihood of well-being in the deep sense? Will citizenship erase the impression of all the clients you've slept with--that smell? Is more cars, bigger houses on bigger land, cuter clothes like the Thai society that is obsessed with status mean goodness? Surely, prosperity has to be more than material possessions.
How do we know that the students are successes? They haven't built the type of community we would have liked them to. Actually most of the time, they spend their time apart, in dyads and units, staging disappearing acts for days at a time, and only saying hello to each other before classes. There are only five of them. And to classes some of them come late and with breakfast while the teacher is speaking and leave the semester early to start their vacations. But in class, they are challenged to think differently about the way things work or learn things for the very first time. But will they set up women care centers when they leave? Probably not, if some egotism of youth doesn't change. Will they draft proposals or conduct research or get a law degree to advocate systems, probably not if they don't continue to push themselves to excellence, if they don't pay attention in class, if they don't dedicate themselves to hard things in a serious way but that's today. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next year, who knows.
but even if they don't, will the semester they spent here still matter? Is all the sacrifices people have made to get here and be their aids mean anything in the long-run?
It is modernization that has got us thinking like factories. Products! We measure growth by taking a yardstick to something tangible.
but surely there must be more. We, as a country, have the most objects in the world, for some eschelons of society, the most opportunities of all, the most tangible things to count and measure and praise and unfortunately still find ourselves in dire need of shalom.
My time here, instead, will maybe be measured by my ability to have been shalom here to people--which is harder to put a stethoscope to, perhaps, but to be known for that is far too humbling and more than satisfying. (clicks tongue) But even this measure makes me kind of sad. I don't know if I have been able to be that person this time around. There might have been far too much egotism.
How does something like helping the marginalized be measured? The students haven't built any houses, or any schools, or any medical clinics. We haven't picked up any bibles and thrown their words at people. No souls have run down to the altar, giving up surrendering their everlasting souls, because they don't need saving, they're devout Christians already; Christians trying to be Christians within a Buddhist country, people within a minority body just trying to be treated like everyone else. We could assign issues for the students to break open, but those things take lifetimes. Social change happens in slow time, not microwave speed. And even if the ethnic minorities have opportunities they didn't have before, does that increase the likelihood of well-being in the deep sense? Will citizenship erase the impression of all the clients you've slept with--that smell? Is more cars, bigger houses on bigger land, cuter clothes like the Thai society that is obsessed with status mean goodness? Surely, prosperity has to be more than material possessions.
How do we know that the students are successes? They haven't built the type of community we would have liked them to. Actually most of the time, they spend their time apart, in dyads and units, staging disappearing acts for days at a time, and only saying hello to each other before classes. There are only five of them. And to classes some of them come late and with breakfast while the teacher is speaking and leave the semester early to start their vacations. But in class, they are challenged to think differently about the way things work or learn things for the very first time. But will they set up women care centers when they leave? Probably not, if some egotism of youth doesn't change. Will they draft proposals or conduct research or get a law degree to advocate systems, probably not if they don't continue to push themselves to excellence, if they don't pay attention in class, if they don't dedicate themselves to hard things in a serious way but that's today. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next year, who knows.
but even if they don't, will the semester they spent here still matter? Is all the sacrifices people have made to get here and be their aids mean anything in the long-run?
It is modernization that has got us thinking like factories. Products! We measure growth by taking a yardstick to something tangible.
but surely there must be more. We, as a country, have the most objects in the world, for some eschelons of society, the most opportunities of all, the most tangible things to count and measure and praise and unfortunately still find ourselves in dire need of shalom.
My time here, instead, will maybe be measured by my ability to have been shalom here to people--which is harder to put a stethoscope to, perhaps, but to be known for that is far too humbling and more than satisfying. (clicks tongue) But even this measure makes me kind of sad. I don't know if I have been able to be that person this time around. There might have been far too much egotism.
Reflection
When i think back on Cambodia, it reminds me the most of East Africa.
Driving down the road atop a charter bus moving you from Poi Pet [Point A] to Phnom Penh [Point B], my senses pick up almost identical sensations: the same muted muddy blues, greens, and rusted browns dripping down concrete buildings you'd see everywhere outside of Kampala; that same red dust coating the poorly paved highways adjacent to the vast flat flood plain. The same parenting style where guardians go without dressing their babies at all or a few rips in the shirt of a toddler. Street children make their appearance here just like the their other southern neighbor. But instead of huts, there's stilted housing and instead of matooke, there's rice fields, and instead of black skin, there's dark brown skin baked that way by arduous day harvesting labor.
Along the road "People's Party of Cambodia" signs sit attached to an empty building, having a difficult time deciding whether it wants to be proud or ironic.
It's absolutely bizarre how Thailand has managed to be so vastly different from everyone else around here.
if you haven't seen my pictures, they say more words than I can muster right now. We'll go to coffee and talk about the people I met and the places I've seen of the Great Angkor Empire sometime, for sure.
Driving down the road atop a charter bus moving you from Poi Pet [Point A] to Phnom Penh [Point B], my senses pick up almost identical sensations: the same muted muddy blues, greens, and rusted browns dripping down concrete buildings you'd see everywhere outside of Kampala; that same red dust coating the poorly paved highways adjacent to the vast flat flood plain. The same parenting style where guardians go without dressing their babies at all or a few rips in the shirt of a toddler. Street children make their appearance here just like the their other southern neighbor. But instead of huts, there's stilted housing and instead of matooke, there's rice fields, and instead of black skin, there's dark brown skin baked that way by arduous day harvesting labor.
Along the road "People's Party of Cambodia" signs sit attached to an empty building, having a difficult time deciding whether it wants to be proud or ironic.
It's absolutely bizarre how Thailand has managed to be so vastly different from everyone else around here.
if you haven't seen my pictures, they say more words than I can muster right now. We'll go to coffee and talk about the people I met and the places I've seen of the Great Angkor Empire sometime, for sure.
