Well, I apparently got lazy, sorry for the delay. After arriving at my new home I put a lot of work in trying to keep construction and maintenance in line, as seen by the pictures in my last post. Things went well enough for a while, but then I started having trouble with the Head Master (principal).
Here is sorta kinda the short break down of how things went more or less. Fr. Tony is the director of the school. He is an American Jesuit, lives at the school, does nearly all the fundraising single handed, does his best to continue to interact with the students, tries to keep construction on track, makes plans for where the school is going and keeps a record of where it has been. In short, Ocer is his vision and its life is his mission. Without Fr. Tony at the helm, Ocer would never have become a reality and would surely crash upon the rocks should he leave.
Sailing along with my ship analogy, we have Fr. Jim, Fr. Tony's first mate so to say. Fr. Jim is the technical man. He reviews designs, plans infrastructure, orders materials, hires workers, and ultimately make most of the spending decisions. Unfortunately he is not here all the time. He has to divide his efforts between this building project and another one in Kenya. So, I have become a fill in more or less for Fr. Jim when he isn't around. I spend a lot of time trying to inspect the buildings (though I really have no idea what I'm doing and what real authority I have) and fighting fires. I fix water mains, repair doors, fix engines, install solar panels, repair lights and other such odds and ends. Endless work, but enjoyable for the most part. Especially since Francis, a young local guy, is learning to do all this stuff as my apprentice. He is sharp and hard working.
Now here is the major kicker. While Fr. Tony and Fr. Jim are more or less the sail and rudder of the ship, they don't get to choose all of there crew. The school administration is chosen by the provincial, head Jesuit of the region. This is where we get a lot of trouble. The provincial doesn't see any of the day to day activities and doesn't have any grasp of the awesome and amazing vision that Fr. Tony has for the school. Nor does he see the fantastic potential of what Ocer could be. He basis his decision for school administration on something else. I can speculate as to what, but in the end it doesn't matter.
So the school ends up with a Head Master and Deputy Head Master who are Jesuit brothers, as well educated as East Africa can provide and have no idea the incredible potential they have in there hands. They grew up in the East African education system, that is all they know and that is all they are willing to work with. Ocer receives 5 or so volunteers each summer, college students who are on there way to teaching degrees, or we even get people who are professional teachers from the states willing to volunteer for a year or more and they are not allowed to teach any classes. I would imagine this is because the HM doesn't understand their teaching style, but more importantly he doesn't control them directly. So it is better to not have them teach.
The end result is this. Eight million U.S. dollar and counting have been put towards Ocer Campion Jesuit College and as of the time I left, March 2012, the students were not receiving any better an education than the public schools 5 miles down the road. While at Ocer I was still teaching at one of the public schools (Trinity College) and I can tell you that if you took the top 80 sophomores from Trinity and put them against the 80 sophomores from Ocer, it would be a wash.
How can this be?!?! Ocer has more resources, they are private so they don't have to follow the inane Ugandan curriculum and they get to choose the best and the brightest students from all over the region and yet they can't even out perform Trinity, a mediocre public school? Simple, the HM, the administration, the teachers aren't using the resources well. They are simply meeting the status quo that they grew up with. The Ugandan curriculum is still used, school funds are used to buy uniforms instead of books, "teaching" still means copying verbatim on the chalk board from the teachers notes (notes that he or she made when in high school), "learning" still means copying verbatim from the chalk board into the students notes.
If the East African education system is so good, I ponder to the HM, then why is it that the Jesuits are needed to come in and reform it? Why is it no one comes to Africa for higher education? Well, that was my mistake. Challenging the African big man, just as I wound up doing in Padibe, got me nowhere. All it got me was an enemy. So after suffering through the misery of watching the HM and other school administrators take something beautiful and turn it into shit for a couple of months, I lost heart. I couldn't do it. Fr. Tony and Fr. Jim have a level of serenity and peace that I can't imagine. It makes me cry sometimes to think how little vision the HM has and how that will so easily destroy the vision Fr. Tony and Fr. Jim have.
This came to a head when the HM told Francis, not asked but told him, to cut up a $200+ door in the dormitory so that the students could be served food from behind the door like prisoners. "Why?" might you ask. Well, because the students, as kids do, get to goofing around waiting to be served their beans and as it happens some of them got bumped into the pot and burned themselves. Now, instead of reprimanding the students for horsing around and instead of assigning a teacher or other faculty to supervise, the HM would rather have $200+ of infrastructure altered so that our students could be fed like prisoners, from behind bars. I lost it. In no uncertain terms I told him he was foolish and that he has no authority over the infrastructure of the school. If he wants something changed then he must go through me. He is not to order Francis around as Francis is under my payroll, not his. Well, I just picked a fight that I couldn't win. If for no other reason than because I was leaving soon and the HM was there to stay. So I said enough is enough. I spent the next week or so doing what I could to help Georg, a Jesuit volunteer from Germany, learn everything he would need to replace me. I called it quits lest I find a stout ruler and give the HM a traditional Jesuit education.
The next week, I went to KLA to finish my close of service procedures then got on a plane for Thailand. I was sad, but so relieved. I wouldn't have to lay in bed at night fuming over how asinine people are and how little I could do about it.
Not the happiest post, but I got some more thoughts on my African life coming.
Here is sorta kinda the short break down of how things went more or less. Fr. Tony is the director of the school. He is an American Jesuit, lives at the school, does nearly all the fundraising single handed, does his best to continue to interact with the students, tries to keep construction on track, makes plans for where the school is going and keeps a record of where it has been. In short, Ocer is his vision and its life is his mission. Without Fr. Tony at the helm, Ocer would never have become a reality and would surely crash upon the rocks should he leave.
Sailing along with my ship analogy, we have Fr. Jim, Fr. Tony's first mate so to say. Fr. Jim is the technical man. He reviews designs, plans infrastructure, orders materials, hires workers, and ultimately make most of the spending decisions. Unfortunately he is not here all the time. He has to divide his efforts between this building project and another one in Kenya. So, I have become a fill in more or less for Fr. Jim when he isn't around. I spend a lot of time trying to inspect the buildings (though I really have no idea what I'm doing and what real authority I have) and fighting fires. I fix water mains, repair doors, fix engines, install solar panels, repair lights and other such odds and ends. Endless work, but enjoyable for the most part. Especially since Francis, a young local guy, is learning to do all this stuff as my apprentice. He is sharp and hard working.
Now here is the major kicker. While Fr. Tony and Fr. Jim are more or less the sail and rudder of the ship, they don't get to choose all of there crew. The school administration is chosen by the provincial, head Jesuit of the region. This is where we get a lot of trouble. The provincial doesn't see any of the day to day activities and doesn't have any grasp of the awesome and amazing vision that Fr. Tony has for the school. Nor does he see the fantastic potential of what Ocer could be. He basis his decision for school administration on something else. I can speculate as to what, but in the end it doesn't matter.
So the school ends up with a Head Master and Deputy Head Master who are Jesuit brothers, as well educated as East Africa can provide and have no idea the incredible potential they have in there hands. They grew up in the East African education system, that is all they know and that is all they are willing to work with. Ocer receives 5 or so volunteers each summer, college students who are on there way to teaching degrees, or we even get people who are professional teachers from the states willing to volunteer for a year or more and they are not allowed to teach any classes. I would imagine this is because the HM doesn't understand their teaching style, but more importantly he doesn't control them directly. So it is better to not have them teach.
The end result is this. Eight million U.S. dollar and counting have been put towards Ocer Campion Jesuit College and as of the time I left, March 2012, the students were not receiving any better an education than the public schools 5 miles down the road. While at Ocer I was still teaching at one of the public schools (Trinity College) and I can tell you that if you took the top 80 sophomores from Trinity and put them against the 80 sophomores from Ocer, it would be a wash.
How can this be?!?! Ocer has more resources, they are private so they don't have to follow the inane Ugandan curriculum and they get to choose the best and the brightest students from all over the region and yet they can't even out perform Trinity, a mediocre public school? Simple, the HM, the administration, the teachers aren't using the resources well. They are simply meeting the status quo that they grew up with. The Ugandan curriculum is still used, school funds are used to buy uniforms instead of books, "teaching" still means copying verbatim on the chalk board from the teachers notes (notes that he or she made when in high school), "learning" still means copying verbatim from the chalk board into the students notes.
If the East African education system is so good, I ponder to the HM, then why is it that the Jesuits are needed to come in and reform it? Why is it no one comes to Africa for higher education? Well, that was my mistake. Challenging the African big man, just as I wound up doing in Padibe, got me nowhere. All it got me was an enemy. So after suffering through the misery of watching the HM and other school administrators take something beautiful and turn it into shit for a couple of months, I lost heart. I couldn't do it. Fr. Tony and Fr. Jim have a level of serenity and peace that I can't imagine. It makes me cry sometimes to think how little vision the HM has and how that will so easily destroy the vision Fr. Tony and Fr. Jim have.
This came to a head when the HM told Francis, not asked but told him, to cut up a $200+ door in the dormitory so that the students could be served food from behind the door like prisoners. "Why?" might you ask. Well, because the students, as kids do, get to goofing around waiting to be served their beans and as it happens some of them got bumped into the pot and burned themselves. Now, instead of reprimanding the students for horsing around and instead of assigning a teacher or other faculty to supervise, the HM would rather have $200+ of infrastructure altered so that our students could be fed like prisoners, from behind bars. I lost it. In no uncertain terms I told him he was foolish and that he has no authority over the infrastructure of the school. If he wants something changed then he must go through me. He is not to order Francis around as Francis is under my payroll, not his. Well, I just picked a fight that I couldn't win. If for no other reason than because I was leaving soon and the HM was there to stay. So I said enough is enough. I spent the next week or so doing what I could to help Georg, a Jesuit volunteer from Germany, learn everything he would need to replace me. I called it quits lest I find a stout ruler and give the HM a traditional Jesuit education.
The next week, I went to KLA to finish my close of service procedures then got on a plane for Thailand. I was sad, but so relieved. I wouldn't have to lay in bed at night fuming over how asinine people are and how little I could do about it.
Not the happiest post, but I got some more thoughts on my African life coming.
