Humanize the Earth!

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.