Still a Vagabond!

Well, I finally got my bed situation straightened out; therefore, I will have a place to sleep when I move into my house. Yet the power has still not been turned on in my house. I am still staying at another guest house. It will be a huge relief when I have my own place so that I can settle down and rest. Hopefully that will come soon because living out of a suitcase and moving from house to house is getting old. Since of end of June I have not spent more than one week in the same physical space. For the past two months, I have been a vagabond (sort of in a privileged way); therefore, I am really looking forward to actually settling down.

Work is continuing to go well though. I am going to Mapalo today to start my observation period of schools. At the same time, I am starting to develop a long term plan for teacher training and starting to work out the logistics of that process. On Friday, we have a big meeting with a group of community school leaders to discuss policy initiatives that we want to pursue. These leaders will be from some other community schools with whom I will not be directly working but with whom we we partner in other endeavors. Basically, they are within the network that we run. I will be giving a short presentation on my brief observations of schools and readings of Zambian education policy. Evidently nobody has read through the policy manuals that I have; therefore, my job is to throw out ideas and let the leaders use their experience to decide on the actions. Even though taking a back seat from the leadership standpoint of the initiatives is hard for me, it is a much better system in the long run. The leaders in the communities need to be leading these efforts. They need to be at the forefront and need to have ownership of the movement. Our job is to help them with the process and to encourage them along the way. That does not mean that we don’t provide leadership. It means that our leadership is in the form of support and strengthening. I will be sure to write a blog soon about the specific policy measures that I am recommending, but that is it for now. Hopefully, I will post more pictures of Mapalo and the community after I visit today. Peace!