Humanize the Earth!

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.