Under a Tree

One of the goals of this blog is to make a record of my impressions and thoughts, no matter how naive they may be.  Of course, I greatly welcome your impressions of how naive I am in saying what I am saying.  I welcome you telling me that what I am writing is right out to lunch.  One of the fascinating things to me about Connectivist Education is how deeply it invites us all to fail and unlearn.

For example, a couple of days ago I got to sit in the shade under a large maple tree in my yard for about a half an hour.  I don't come from a culture that particularly prizes time spent meditating (napping?) under trees.  But there is something about the shade and trunk and life-line of a tree that gives you crazy ideas, if you just listen.

One of my greatest fears, as I have already written about, is that I will inadvertently be a part of introducing some infrastructure to Kibombomene that is not sustainable in the long-run; or that I will introduce something that will irreparably alter their culture and make it more like mine.  I don't want that.  The maple reminded me of the maples that stood in impossibly sprawling groves near Kitigan Zibi of the Algonquins.  And I was thinking about how the Awazibi syrup folks use modern techniques to harvest the maple syrup, but they're still harvesting syrup, as they've done since, roughly, the last ice age.  And though I never talked to any of the company's workers, I think they're likely just as happy that they have rubber hoses and electric pumps.  And it validated for me a little bit the notion of using technology and modern techniques to bring a world of information to this village that wants accessible education so badly.

The second meditation that I had was about greetings.  Kim told me that the greeting customs in Kibo are something to get used to — that every greeting is a long one, and nuanced, and heart-felt, and that one needs to clear an hour to walk for five minutes in case there are people about.  For the past week, Goderich has been like that; it has been wonderful.  For us, it took the devastation of an f3 tornado (I love my FU f3 T-shirt, you can order some if you want, by the way) to shake people into this sort of momentary awareness of each other.  I hope it sticks in some small way.  And I think it was good training, from what Kim says, for what I am going to see in Kibo.

Tempest

A short post here.  Inasmuch as I want to focus this journal on the impending trip to Kibombomene, it is still my journal and I cannot possibly write right now without mentioning my hometown.  I am from Goderich.  Perhaps you've heard of it.

I get lost when I walk in my hometown at night; much of it I cannot recognize.  Other parts are more like a dream, where I can identify everything but something is off-colour.  I used to do historical architectural walking tours in this town, and many of my way-points are gone.

The relevance to the Kibo project is that I had hoped to rally support for the cause (moral or otherwise) from folks locally in the coming weeks, but all of the local efforts will now necessarily be put into disaster relief.  This is as it should be, and I'm not complaining.  Friends of mine lost their houses; some lost their businesses.  Many people are out of work, their work having been utterly destroyed.  To have my ideas fade to the background in advance of my departure is such a small thing to have lost.

Now I am trying to do what I can, as we all are, and the rallying has been terrific.  So many of my Goderich friends live elsewhere now and wish they were back, but there is really nothing to be done at this point.  Electrical wires and busted gas mains are everywhere, and many of the old buildings could be on the verge of collapse.

All of it makes me feel like this is a strange time to be leaving Goderich.  We will not be rebuilt by the time I go; we may never be fully rebuilt.  I have not changed my plans, and I am not questioning them.  But I thought that it was important for the sake of posterity to note that though I go across the world unattached to commitments that require me as an individual, I am not coming without a strong sense of original place.  My hometown, of which I have always been so proud, is forever changed.

Note my last entry ("When?") on impermanence and my mistrust of plans.  One more reason why I believe as I do, and I'd really challenge anyone to defy me.

Forgive me if this is not the most eloquent entry — like everyone in this town, I am in shock and very tired.

When?

Late November, God willing.

Two things about that.

Late November

Which is about as spontaneous as one can really be for a trip like this.  I have to send paperwork to Zambia, which must be processed and sent back to me, so I can apply to the Zambian consulate for a visa, which then needs to be sent back to me before I can go.  Then there is the non-trivial matter of intersecting the right plane ticket with the right amount of money in the bank...

But importantly, I am leaving behind a job that suits me very well — curriculum coordinator at Virtual High School.  I've very much made this job my own, and have endeavoured these past two years to shape our teaching and writing to reflect excellent research and state of the art pedagogical best practices.  Steve, my boss and good friend, and I agreed that we would be able to make the transition into new staff as smooth as possible if I stayed for long enough to help with training folks to replace me over a couple of months.  I believe strongly in what we are doing at Virtual High School, and I want to be able to provide this service.

The implications of deciding to leave my niche job, and the way in which it is viewed by people who love me, is the subject of further reflection.  Stay tuned.

God Willing

I learned along time ago that it is a dangerous folly for one to define oneself by hopes and plans and ideas about the future.  I didn't need to have that proposition violently reinforced these past years.  The lesson was quite lost on me.  All that happened was a stoking of my indignant belief that whatever else may or may not be true of God, or whatever it is that orders and disorders the universe, planning makes that force furious.  I suspect that there is nothing more evil and assured of retribution that we can do in this life than to set our hopes on someday, and there is nothing more good and right and true than now, and every experience in my life backs me up.

So the end of November, yes, God willing, and I acknowledge that I would go tomorrow if I could and if it wouldn't negatively affect others, but I am resisting all temptation to look forward to the journey.  It will happen.  Or, due to an unimaginable circumstance, it won't.  I have no ambition to be either disillusioned or disappointed, so I am doing what I do best, which is focussing on today.  A part of today involves getting the paperwork in order, and it involves doing a little writing and reflecting so that folks know what I am up to.  It involves leaving VHS in good shape for my departure.  It involves making sure I see as many of the people that I want to see as I can do.  It involves saving money at every turn, which is a new trick for me.  Those are all things that I can do today, but they are in service of today, because this preparation exercise itself is interesting and fulfilling and amusing.  The today I have spent, which I shaped as I did because I was inspired by something I saw on the horizon, was still itself fully today.  I am not living and will not live for the future.

Having said all that, I will licentiously contradict myself by restating something that I told a good friend earlier this evening.  If you consider it deeply, though, you will see that it is no true contradiction, and it is this: that I am more relaxed than I have been in a while because I see an end in sight; and it's making me panic a little bit, and it's making me scared a little bit, and it's making me grieve a little bit, and I'm just a little bit lost without those sick muses urging me on.

Where?

Blogs have evolved into splendidly crafted works of literature.  They tend to be reputable primary or secondary sources used by scholars, industrialists, plutocrats and politicians to stay on top of things.  They are what the New York Times was fifty years ago.

And I'll try, I really will. But the fact of the matter is that the beauty of writing a journal that chronicles a journey is in re-reading it, and watching the evolution.  I want to read this post in a year and think to myself, "but how naive I was back then!"

I know very little about where I am going.  More information than what I will tell you is likely available, but the thing is, I don't feel the need to know much more than what follows.  I will tell you more when I am there.

Kibombomene is about fifty kilometres east of Solwezi, which is a city of about 60 000 people within a two days' walk of the border with DR Congo.  Kibo is in the Northwest Province, and about a six hour drive from Lusaka; or so I hear.

Sustenance agriculture is the name of the game in that part of the world.  The people have food and a lot of it, but that is the limit of what they have, really.  They are poor by most standards because there is no economy.  Other areas of the world are rich but the people starve.  This is a small slice of the insanity that I hope to wrap my head around in the next couple of years.

The area is heavily forested, with some land cleared for agriculture.  The food crops have been named for me, but they are mostly not names that I recognize, and I have forgotten all of them.  I suspect I will learn them quickly enough.

Zambia itself is a relatively stable country, even though it is one of the world's poorest.  SWSC has had an excellent working relationship with the Zambian government and all indicators are that this relationship will continue.  Zambia is also a member of SACMEQ, an education consortium for southern and eastern African nations; its government is serious about helping its people and ensuring that they have access to resources.

Beyond that, I know very little about the geography of where I will be heading.  I'm at peace with that.

Over the past month, I have lost track of the number of people who have asked me if I would be near any civil violence, or near the drought.  I have quickly forgotten that a year ago, I would have asked similar questions.  We might intellectually know that Africa is a very enormous continent, but it is so often described as one homogeneous political entity, isn't it?

One of the great appeals of this project is that, because the Zambian government and people are supportive in many ways, we will be able to help the people of Kibombomene achieve forward momentum as they see fit.  It does decrease the prospects for a cool story later on about my life being in some sort of danger, which is unfortunate, but for the sake of the project, the location is perfect.

Why?

Stop trying to 'save' Africa, wrote Uzodinma Iweala in the Washington Post in 2007, to headline a deeply rational and at once impassioned plea to notice how "Africans... are used as props in the West's fantasy of itself". He points out that condescending headlines like "Can Blair save Africa from poverty?" smack of the heyday of colonialism, when European powers decided that Africa would benefit from their take on "civilization".

I bring this up because whenever I tell someone that I'm going to Africa, I seldom so much as take a breath before adding, "This isn't a 'Save Africa' project. The people of Kibombomene do not need to be saved. They certainly don't need to be saved by me".

Upon telling people of my impending journey, I get a range of responses, but none so wise as a question from my Great Aunt Jan: "Do they want you over there?"

This is the question that everyone should be asking first.

Why African Charity?

There is a phenomenon called "Western Guilt" that I am altogether lacking. There were grave injustices carried out through Africa during the colonial periods, but I didn't perpetrate them. I feel no connection to them, and I take no responsibility for them. I have a clear conscience.

However, it is true that decisions that some people have made, without my consent, have detrimentally affected other people, and it just so happens by cosmic accident that those decisions have resulted in more opportunities for me and fewer opportunities others. I'm not guilty, but I'm not thankful. I'm going to try to take whatever extra opportunity I have through no fault of my own, and share it with people who don't have it through no fault of their own. And ironically enough, because of Western privilege (I call this a "Western opportunity surplus"), I can.

Why Same World Same Chance?

The founders of SWSC, Kim Hurley and Marissa Izma, are geniuses. Fresh out of university, they showed up in Africa, motivated by a strong passion for service. The long story short is that the people of Kibombomene, a small village about fifty clicks from Solwezi, contacted them with a problem. The nearest high school was inaccessible to most of them. Some of their youth wanted the opportunity to have a secondary level education. Could they help? And they said, "Yeah, I think we can totally do this".

And they helped Kibo to do it, but what's remarkable is how cleverly they did it. In particular, the elements of the project that impressed me the most were:

• The Zambian Board calls the shots. The Canadian Board is instrumental in planning, execution, publicity and fundraising, but at the end of the day this project starts and ends with the people of Kibombomene. They wanted the school, they built it, and they are developing their own infrastructure to maintain it, with a little help from Western opportunity surplus. This is a Zambian project.
• The project is organic. As Western opportunity surpluses have found their way to SWSC, the people of Kimbombomene have been able to build a health clinic, install solar panels for electricity, and start up a cash crop operation. The work evolves as it needs to. Some governments and NGOs are so focussed on targets and timelines and rubrics and goals and success indicators that projects continue in directions long after they have ceased to make sense.
• The infrastructure is sustainable. SWSC isn't setting up cycles of dependency (which are always colonialism in charity clothing); we work to ensure that we are building nothing that will crumble and create a liability someday. Everything is created smartly and purposefully, in a way that is sustainable in the medium and long term. As things get more expensive to maintain, the capacity to grow the economy is augmented. As the school program is expanded, Zambian teachers are recruited to teach.

I see SWSC as a true capacity development project, and I find that to be very exciting.

Why Me?

My experience is in multi-jurisdictional accreditation, connectivist learning, instructional design and curriculum implementation. I have the ability, by teaching and writing with Virtual High School, to live on my own dime in Zambia to help develop the school program in any way that I can. I have no wife, I have no child, I have no house, and all of these 'have nots' are at my phase of life a tremendous opportunity, a great uncommon 'have'. I don't pretend exclusive wisdom or knowledge, and I expect to learn more than I teach, but I can do something, and it would be irresponsible of me not to move on it.

Iweala finished his article by saying that "Africa wants the world to acknowledge that through fair partnerships with other members of the global community, we ourselves are capable of unprecedented growth." I truly believe that SWSC is such a partnership, and I unreservedly offer my service, for what it is worth, to them.

Epiphany

What is your favourite room in the world? I know you have one. It's the one where you feel most at peace, most sheltered, most productive, most engaged in your calling — have you got it? Imagine being transported there magically. And suppose that the room also had access to the internet, to a telephone, to a television — everything you needed to connect to the outside world. And your favourite people could come and go as they please.

Picture the peace of knowing that the room is yours for as long as you want it; the peace of deciding to stay in it forever, secure in the knowledge that you can do so. Taste the perfect food that is brought to you, feel the love that circles you.

Now, walk towards the door. Why, you might ask? You are perfectly happy in this room. But I ask you to indulge me and walk towards the door.

Except, suppose that there is no door. There is no way out.

See, it doesn't matter then how much you love the room or how much it suits you if you can't find a door. Your paradise is nothing but a cage.

Now further suppose that a great muse came into your room and told you of a splendid but frightening world outside, and then promptly twisted and vanished into the mist, leaving you to breathe her in dark silence.

That's where this story begins.

In early July, I was lying in my bed, watching the stars move across my skylight and running in circles around my cage, when finally I saw a little secret passage that I had never known was there. I am an online school administrator, yes, but I started as a teacher and a writer, and I was good at these things. I could do them again.

Teaching and writing online is not enough to live off of in Ontario, but it is more than enough to live in a third world country.

Say Zambia.

I had been on the Same World Same Chance Canadian Board of Directors for six months, trying to get my head around the challenges facing curriculum development in a small school near Solwezi, and I was stumped. It was impossible to do from here. If only there had been a way to afford to go over there for a protracted period of time...

But there was a way. I could teach and I could write from Zambia. I realized this at 3:00 am.

At 3:02, I sent an email to Marissa Izma, SWSC co-founder, and asked, "What if I just came there?"

Since the moment she wrote back and said, "Uh, sure...", I have been dedicated to this purpose.

This blog is meant to chronicle my experience with this adventure. I am starting it now because, as I have discovered in the month past, the very experience of giving up a dream job, material possessions, comforts, aspirations, proximity to friends and family to spend money to volunteer in a third world country, is an experience fraught with excitement and surprise in itself. I want to write about that over the coming months. Then, once I'm over to Zambia, I'll continue this blog to let everyone know how I'm doing.

I'd be thrilled if you joined me here. I have a second blog, Brand New Renaissance, that focuses on the sort of educational revolutions in which I'm interested in.

I don't intend to do this, whatever it is, alone. Come with me.