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Gulu, Uganda open space conference notes

I haven’t quite decided how to organize my notes from the conference in Gulu. I’m thinking maybe general notes in this post with links to the notes about each day, backdated for their respective date. We’ll see how it goes. :-)

• 120+ people, 95% African (Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Zambia)
• About 20% of the people did not speak English well enough to feel comfortable participating in English
• three days (typical open space conference I go to has people arriving the night before, then 2.5 days and leaving that final day, so 3 nights - this one everyone arrived to the conference in time for lunch and we opened the space and had one session that first day, then did two full days and a half day+, spent a fourth night and left the place the following morning)
• breakfast/lunch and water were provided by the organizers
• The venue was outdoors, with the main circle taking place in an open (no walls) thatched-roof structure. Breakouts were under old UNICEF tents or in the shade of other thatched-roof structures, or in a brick building that usually serves as a night commuter dorm.
• Gulu is in Acholiland, which is currently under a ceasefire (expires this week) while peace talks are trying to settle 21 years of war.
• The circle itself was a bit chaotic, with people filling the center sitting on the floor on grass woven mats. There was usually a 2nd row of some kind as well, just outside the thatch-structure, under shade of a neighboring tent or building.
• Very interesting flocking effect I hadn’t really seen before. Each time-slot had 10+ sessions posted on the agenda but typically had between three and five sessions actually take place. The bigger sessions kept getting bigger and not only physically crowded out where other sessions were to happen, but were such a big “draw” that even conveners of other sessions didn’t try to go to their own session.
• Sessions were documented on flip-chart paper which was then posted inside the internet cafe space where all could go read. I never actually saw these, kept forgetting. I was told these were posted online by participants (Day 1) (very incomplete partial session notes).
• My day-specific notes:
  • Day 1 + hospital experience
  • Day 2
  • Day 3
  • Day 4

Overall impressions:

• The decision to have “Acholli-day,” where only the people of that tribe set the agenda went remarkably smoothly, with no complaints. People were totally fine with focusing locally (in Gulu) when giving no other options. This led immediately into the “gift” process which was surprisingly (to me) non-contentious and with very high energy.
• There was a lot of talk throughout the week about the responsibility of governments or others not present. There were also pleas for outside help, but these invariably led to people talking about what “we” can do. Very interesting cross-pollination among Africans from different places/circumstances.
• Logistics: The organizing team did an amazing job of coordinating transportation and lodging in this fairly remote place. Their very hard work greatly simplified the lives of attendees. I’m not sure the event could’ve happened at all if those details had been left to attendees. At the very least, days would’ve been lost dealing with these details.

Gulu, Uganda Open Space - Day 4

This post was typed on 2Mar, but back-dated to appear on its day of the conference.

Gulu, Uganda Open Space - Day 4 (Thursday)

• Morning news today was again very late. Days 2 & 3 had an hour scheduled for morning news so starting 45 minutes late was no problem. Today, we had no such buffer, so everything simply got pushed back by a late start.
• We went right into a panel discussion where each of the proposal champions from the previous day gave a brief summary of their proposals and then we opened things up for questions.
• The champions included 5 of the 7 strongest English-speakers from the Acholli community.
• Very few questions were used to satisfy curiosities about points not addressed in the proposals. Most of the questions were used to express opinions, sometimes in question form.
• There were two poultry-raising proposals, one soap-making, one water, and one savings-led microfinance. All pretty amazing on only $5000. All 3 mzungus were in the microfinance group, but I have no idea if that fact was known by the larger body, or if that different kind of education had any affect on the proposal’s quality.
• Only the Acholli people voted. This amounted to more than half the conference, as it turned out. More than 65% voted for the microfinance.
• The plan coming into the day was to do the panel from 9:00-10, a re-opening for “future” and a session from 10-12 and then closing circle from 12-1. After the panel, it was 12:00. We decided to push back the end of the conference, which I’m not sure any participant even noticed.
• The re-opening asked people to issue invitations (post topics, but not on the wall, just hold the paper where they are and convene the session by walking with the paper when we all disburse) for any conversations that still need to take place about how we work together as we all leave this place. What else needs to be planned or decided?
• After about 45 minutes I left the session that I convened. I was feeling that it was over and feeling like the closing circle ought to begin, to keep closer to our pre-arranged ending time.
• When it’s not over, it’s not over. Not only were the other conversations not done, the session I had left was also apparently not done. No worries. I just continue to ring, feeling calm and peaceful and knowing that when they’re ready to wrap up, they will. I love the bells for their gentleness. A more perceptive facilitator might’ve known without ringing that it wasn’t yet time for the closing, and my lack of perception didn’t hurt a bit. The bells might’ve even served to re-focus a group on their task, knowing that time is now (seemingly) very short.
• Eventually the “poof” did happen and we passed the bells for the closing. In a group of 120, this takes quite a bit of time, and people seemed to enjoy. I used a technique I learned from Kaliya Hamlin where I announced before passing that people could pass without speaking, and that the bells would go around the circle twice, with those speaking the first time asked to pass, and those passing the first time invited again to speak, if they wish. I really like this second chance and several people responded to that chance and did speak the second time around.

Gulu, Uganda Open Space - Day 3

This post was typed on 27Feb, but back-dated to appear on its day of the conference.

Gulu, Uganda Open Space - Day 3 (Wednesday)

• During morning news today, we invited only the Acholi people to set the agenda for 2 timeslots this morning.  Acholiland is where the conference is taking place and the topics posted by Acholi people (many non-English speakers) seemed to be crowded out during days 1 & 2 and this afternoon needs to focus here (see below), so we went against all of my open space instincts to ask only certain people to post topics.
• More than 16 topics were posted in the 2 timeslots.  I again had to scramble to add breakout spaces to the agenda-wall, as on day 1.
• Roughly half (or a bit less) of the posted topics actually happened, but those that did seemed very lively, with attendees from everyone very interested in Acholi-specific issues.
• A field-trip to an Internally Displaced Persons camp around lunch-time pushed back the afternoon a couple of hours.  “Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.”
• The Omidyar Network had pledged $5000 to the Gulu community, in a manner to be decided by conference participants.  Christina talked over various ways this might be done with some of us and then decided to split people into five groups, with each one making a proposal, to be voted on by the Acholli members.  Given the language issues, the groups were chosen by color, rather than numbers or names.  The three non-black participants all ended up in the black group. :-)
• Since the IDP camp trip pushed back the afternoon, time was very short.  Because “When it’s not over, it’s not over,” we simply pushed back evening news and let the proposal-writing come to it’s natural conclusion.  Evening news began with the presentation of the 5 proposals.  Guessing from the length of the shadows, we finished at least an hour later than usual and scheduled.
• That evening was Peace Tiles with 200+ Night Commuter children.  In the dark.  Wow.  The headlights from a car was the only light and yet there was fairly organized chaos for hours as these kids cut and glued and painted and created.  Some kids created true works of art while others were just facinated with layering color after color of paint on the whole tile.  One feeling I had watching these kids was of kittens, the way they all pile up and lay on top of one another, with very close physical contact among all of them.

Gulu, Uganda Open Space - Day 2

This post was typed on 27Feb, but back-dated to appear on its day of the conference.

Gulu, Uganda Open Space - Day 2 (Tuesday)

• R was quite sick on the airplane over to Uganda and after the bus ride yesterday, skipped the opening day to rest. We ended up taking her to the hospital in the evening. That’ll be a whole post of it’s own, but in short, we both spent the night in the hospital. I expected to get picked up between 8 and 9am so I could have breakfast and do morning news at 9am. R was discharged about 9:15 and no pickup yet. And I had no phone numbers to call to even find out when the ride was coming. Shortly after 9:30 G arrived to drive us! I just kept thinking to myself, “Whenever is starts is the right time,” and “If I’m missed, maybe they’ll send someone to get me,” and “They can certainly do morning news without me, or even just skip it and start right in on sessions.”
• Turns out I wasn’t missed. Breakfast had been late and they weren’t quite ready for morning news yet when I arrived. All was well.
• The rest of the day went as per usual, morning news, two sessions, lunch, two more sessions, evening news.

Gulu, Uganda - Day 1 - Hospital Experience

This post was typed on 2Mar, but back-dated to appear on its day of the trip.

Gulu, Uganda - Day 1 (Monday)

• This morning we took a 5 hour bus ride from Kampala to Gulu on pretty rough roads. R had already had a fever on the airplane coming over and really wasn’t doing well when we arrived that the conference. She spent the afternoon in the motel room rather than attend the opening. As soon as evening news was finished, I left to go check on her. We decided pretty quickly that she needed to see a doctor. So …
• That night George Ovola drove us to the Gulu Independent Hospital around 9 or 10pm after he finished logistics for some conference participants that hadn’t registered.
• The intake proces at the desk took less than 5 minutes and she was in to see the doctor immediately while I paid the fee (about $6).
• The doctor took her vital signs and asked about her condition. He made a very quick diagnosis of ear infection and the beginnings of pneumonia. He asked to admit her and give her intravenous drugs. I was terrified. We asked about the needles and found them to be single-use (disposable). George also arranged for us to have a room with two beds so I could stay with her. By morning her fever was gone!
• To get her chest x-ray in the morning, the nurse led us down a hall and through the female ward (20+ women) to a fairly steep outside ramp to radiology, in another building. Again, very little waiting time for the x-ray to be taken and us to be led back to the room.
• A short time later the nurse came back to tell us R was discharged, where to pay (about $70 for the whole experience), and where to find the pharmacy (in the lobby).
• Overall, it was a very good experience. None of the African staff felt rushed to us the way we feel at medical establishments in the US. There were some mzungu staff we saw in the morning and they did feel rushed. Interesting.

Gulu, Uganda Open Space - Day 1

This post was typed on 27Feb, but back-dated to appear on its day of the conference.

Gulu, Uganda Open Space - Day 1 (Monday)

• The bus from Kampala to Gulu was scheduled to leave at 8am.  We actually got underway between 8:30-9am with more than 50 people on board.
• We arrived in Gulu around 2pm, I think.  By the time we got through lunch and I was making the time-schedule, it seemed unlikely that we’d get a full session in after the opening and before evening news today, so I just made the schedule say we’d start the opening at 3 and the first session at 3:30, thus giving me the opportunity to use Michael’s line, “When you get to your first session, it will be 3:30 for you.”
• More than 60 topics were posted in 5 timeslots for days one and two.  Since we had no walls, we used plywood as the agenda-wall.  There were so many topics, I had to add pieces of wood twice during the agenda-setting.
• In that one time-slot for this day, about 5 of the 11 or 12 posted sessions actually happened.
• Evening news concluded with the bells being passed for each person to give one word about the day.

Praise for Doing Extra

I want to thank Ann, who works at Infection Disease Associates & Travel Medicine in Downers Grove, Illinois. 

I received a Yellow Fever vaccination from them in August of 2000.  Many African countries will not issue an entry visa without proof of Yellow Fever vaccination, so the certification form is quite important.  I’ve lost mine twice since 2000.  This thank you is about this second replacement, which was actually accomplished today, with Ann doing way more than her job requires.

As a result of some personal and personnel issues in their office, they weren’t able to act on the phone messages I’d been leaving intermittantly for the last 3 weeks.  I finally go ahold of Ann yesterday and she agreed to meet me at a train station near her house to hand off the document.  This is really amazing, because their office is quite a bit further outside the city (and not near a train station) and I have no car, so going all the way out there would’ve been a major hardship.  As it was, I was able to ride my bike 3 miles from my house to the Metra, take the bike on the Metra (remembering to bring a rag to wipe it down from the road grime so the conductors would let me on), get off to get the paperwork and ride 3 miles back east to get on the el (our subway system in Chicago), which was necessary because Metra didn’t have another train back inbound for well over an hour.

Anyway, the point of this is: Thanks Ann!

Academy Award for Best Networking

I received (credit for this post title to Lars) this email today (only emails removed, and link formatting changed slightly):

From: Janet Feldman
Date: Fri Feb 16 2007 10:58 AM
Re: O/net Conference: Networking Some Participants (Minciu Sodas, ActALIVE, et al)

Hello Dear All,

This is a networking mail for the Omidyar conference taking place in Gulu, Uganda, from Feb 19-21. I am networking people who contacted me abt it (from postings), and/or who are affiliated with Minciu Sodas, ActALIVE, and O/net. Have a fantastic conference, all!!

I’m delighted to read that Mark Grimes (O/net) will be linking up with Fred Kayiwa (Minciu Sodas). And to report that at least one member of ActALIVE will attend the conference, and represent us there. This is Dennis Kimambo (an O/net member too, who is also affiliated with the Peace Tiles Project).  Others may include Paul Mwirigi and Ron Odhiambo. Lars Hasselblad Torres (Peace Tiles Project), Joy Tang (oneVillage Foundation), and myself will be there in spirit!

Mark, hello and happiest 2007!   I’m hoping that you might give Fred, or post to some among us, the business-template program you mentioned when we last spoke. 

It would be very helpful to a number of us working within Minciu Sodas, and founder/director, Andrius Kulikauskas, including the Kenyan I was originally thinking about when we discuused this–Sam Kongere of Udogo Youth Development in Mbita–who is working on a project proposal including a crafts business and ICTs-equipped learning center, and could benefit greatly from this guidance. 

Others among us in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana, and elsewhere could also benefit, as could the oneVillage Foundation, based in the USA and working in Africa (Joy Tang and Jeff Buderer). OVF is an ActALIVE member, and runs an MS forum called Back To The Root.

For everyone, Mark is a social entrepreneur who has created and worked with a number of humanitarian nonprofits, and is developing , an organization-idea-vision for “doing good”, which involves individuals and groups working together to make the world a better place (can’t get better than that!). has “in house” business models and outside partners, affiliates, and alliances, all working together on this vision. He is also a board member of the Peace Tiles Project.

As to other intros:

1) Christina Jordan is director of Life in Africa Foundation, located in Gulu, Uganda, and the primary organizer/host of the conference.   Immense thanks for everything, Christina!!!

2) Dennis Kimambo of Nakuru, Kenya, is a co-founder of REPACTED, a youth theater troupe which focuses on HIV/AIDS and development issues, and will be representing ActALIVE, a global coalition whose members use the arts to address HIV/AIDS and the MDGs.  I (Janet Feldman) am its founder/director, and I also run the international branch of a Kenyan HIV/AIDS and development nonprofit, KAIPPG.  I am moderator of Holistic Helping at MS, a forum which works towards integrative solutions to issues related to development (HIV/AIDS, poverty, food insecurity, lack of ICTs access).

3) Fred Kayiwa is a Ugandan student who will be representing Minciu Sodas and our various working groups. He is at Holistic Helping and Learning From Each Other

4) David Mutua is the Nairobi-based director of CAWD-Kenya, a branch of CAWD (Charity for African Welfare and Development), located in the UK. Pam McLean is the director, and is moderator of Learning From Each Other, at MS. 

5) Eric Wanjamah (hello Eric!!) is a social worker who is especially interested in helping people in special circumstances, such as those affected by poverty, HIV/AIDS, and war. He has spent time helping in Darfur, Sudan, as has another Kenyan, Moses Kariuki, who will be at the conference, but whose email address I do not have (hope people will meet him!).  Moses works with the Nasir Community Development Agency, an organisation formed by Sudanese who have fled Sudan, as well as friends from Kenya who share the dream.

6) Olivia Mugabirwe is an assistant lecturer at Makerere University (Education Faculty), who also works in youth-related projects, to enhance their participation in community development activities. She is a founder of PeerLink Initiative Uganda (PELI-U), which promotes youth involvement in HIV/AIDS prevention, care, support, and mitigation, as well as sustainable livelihood and environment management activities. PeerLink uses ICTs extensively in its work, and seeks to link “wired” youth (often in urban areas) with “non-wired” youth (mainly in rural areas). A unique aspect of its program is combining a focus on ICTs literacy and access, with HIV/AIDS education and prevention. 

7) Monica Nankoma works with Outside the Dream Foundation , a US-headquartered nonprofit providing education and more for youth affected by HIV/AIDS, poverty, and war in Uganda. She is based in Uganda, and has also worked there with Life in Africa Foundation. 

8) Issa Isihaka is a Tanzanian youth who is working with various organizations such as GYCA, ISCA (International Student Conference on HIV/AIDS), and ARYI. He is involved with issues related to HIV/AIDS, development, environment, ICTs, and education, and has recently attended the World Social Forum in Nairobi.

9) Ted Ernst is with the Humanist Movement, which has a number of projects in African countries.  Recently he and I discovered a common working link to a refugee camp outside Accra, Ghana, called Budaburam. 

10) Paul Mwirigi is an ActALIVE member who is with AIESEC Uganda. AIESEC is the world’s largest student organization, which has a number of programs including an international exchange program. AIESEC Africa is focused in particular on addressing HIV/AIDS through youth leadership and volunteerism. 

11) Ron Odhiambo works with the Sant Egidio Community in Kenya. In addition, he is an artist and playwright, who has created and been performing a play on the Peace Tiles (how to make them and what their purpose is) and has helped to facilitate the making of 3000+ tiles in Kenya. I am also ccing Lars Hasselblad Torres, Peace Tiles Project creator. Both are ActALIVE members. 

12) Ken Chelimo  is an ICTs expert who is working to set up the Kenya Telecentre Network, a branch activity of Telecentre.org and UgaBYTES, a Uganda-based regional telecenter network. Ken has recently set up an information-management system for Regional AIDS Training Network, a regional network based in Nairobi.  Ken is working with a group of nonprofits (including KAIPPG) in Kenya called GRASSUP NOW, who use ICTs to address issues related to sustainable development (sponsored by The Commonwealth of Learning).

13) Mike Wanyama is a Kenyan health advocate, and member of Global Youth Partners Kenya (affiliated with UNFPA). 

14) Abdou Karekooma is a Tanzanian post-grad student who is a long-time peace activist. 

With blessings and “O-ffections” (artistic and otherwise) always, Janet  (Feldman)

Open ID

Do you hate having to remember 50 (or 150) different user ids and passwords for all the different websites you go to? Do you hate that all these different websites, with their different privacy policies, have all this data on you? Well, folks in the Identity Commons are working on user-centric identity to solve these problems, and more. Open ID is one-such solution, and I started experimenting with it yesterday (the other day now that it’s taken me a while to get this posted.

I went to myopenid.com and signed up for tedernst.myopenid.com to be my openid. Since that’s a bit ugly, I decided to see if I could use tedernst.com instead. This page shows how to do that. So now, when I go to livejournal, or wikitravel, I just tell them I’m tedernst.com and don’t have to give any other info.  Their software goes to tedernst.com to see if I’m me, and tedernst.com tells it to look at tedernst.myopenid.com.  Tedernst.myopenid.com then either knows I’m me because I’m already logged in there on this computer or if asks me for my password (wikitravel never sees my password), and tells wikitravel I’m okay.

Cool, huh?

positively!

People doing positive and good things to make our world a more positive place
THE BE POSITIVE DO SOMETHING POSITIVE DAY!