Meeting up with Old Friends

Today was my first day in the department. I walked the long way, passed the music department so that I could stop in and say hi. I also greeted the Dean at the School of Psychology and Dr. Adupo, Dean of Arts and Sciences.

Most of the morning was consumed with a departmental meeting and then a very big luncheon. Lunch – pineapples, ground nuts, beans, rice, potatoes, bananas. YUM!

James is the new head of department and he chaired the meeting. The department has faced challenges lately, but they are once again feeling optimistic about making some progress with their goals. We spent a little bit of time talking about their needs and articulating goals for my visit. I will be giving a University wide lecture on research publishing next Wednesday. Otherwise we have not programmed out next week, but we did pencil together a schedule for this week. One thing I have learned through my work here is that flexibility with schedules is the norm. Tomorrow morning I will meet the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs. After that, I will be meeting with the research team and anyone else who wants to learn a bit about doing research.

The afternoons have been designated as an opportunity for me to work one-on-one with faculty and staff. This afternoon that put me in contact with someone I had not met before – David. David is a part-time professor who only joined Kyambogo University this past semester. He has quite a lot of research experience and was very interesting. He will be moving to a department in a new university called Busitema University on the border with Kenya. He has not heard of action research, but his work definitely fits that approach in style. He said that in the 2000 following the passage of the universal primary education act in Uganda, there were some new schools opening for what Americans tend to think of as the middle grades. These schools were located at a distance from where children lived and so their parents would take them to the city and get an apartment for them to live in while going to this middle grades school. David was interested in studying the effects of living out of the family for these youngsters. He found that it was a disaster in terms of safety, sexual exploitation and all myriad of other problems, particularly bad for girls. The education result was high drop-out. David labored over what to do with these terrible findings and concluded that he should start a boarding school for girls in the area. He proudly talked about some of the girls who succeeded in earning their O levels and some even went on to become teachers. This school is still going.

His more recent research interests include examining the effects of the war on displaced families. He is interested in the resiliency and resolution of war-effects for people as they move into peace. Anyone interested in this kind of project should contact me so I can put you in contact with him.

Another project David is contemplating involves a problem at the border. Young people, men I believe, have dropped out of school to take odd, nefarious jobs on the border. David is interested in studying this group. He is interested in figuring out ways to address the challenges associated with these drop out decisions because he is, of course, interested in seeing changes in this phenomena. We spent quite a bit of time talking about how one might go about such a study.

Today at the meeting, I was able to spend a few moments talking with Mr. Okumu, former Department Chair, and friend. You can see him foregrounded in the picture below. I absolutely love the way Mr. Okumu talks, but I cannot at all express what it is like. It is not just the words, though he is quite eloquent. He has a poetic sense of humor and a bright smile. It was nice to see him.