Now What?????

Now What?

I am meeting today with the Head Teacher at Kusami Army Primary School. My intent is to figure out why my young friend Orach Amos keeps getting sent home from school. It has something to do with fees not paid. It is my desire and goal to make sure that Amos does not miss any more days of school in P-6 or P-7 due to fees. I am trying to get a holder of the school supply company in Kampala to but 180 good math notebooks for my Senior 3 students. I am at least considering that there may be an opportunity for me to accompany some Nerinx students to Africa next year. Where would they stay, what would the cost be, and how are they not just tourists? I am considering figuring out ways to bring students to visit Nerinx for a couple of weeks. Again what is the cost, how do I do it?

I guess all of my thoughts are how do I keep the friendship and warmth I feel from the Acholi people and students and how do I continue either helping them or just as important letting them help me become a better person. I really feel after this year in Biloxi we have a model and a tradition that can continue another 10 or 12 years down the road. Where the community of Nerinx helps and is helped by the people of the Back Bay. So how do I get a model started for a Gulu-St. Louis or Awere-Nerinx connection?
And why stop at Nerinx how do I take all that I have learned here, and come up with a presentation that I can take to Cor Jesu and SLUH and Loyola, and St. Raphael’s etc.

Here is where I need your prayers, I think all of this is possible. I think we can end world hunger and extreme poverty by the year 2025. The poople here all want to do better, they all want to do more. They are a friendly and industrious people. How do we find jobs, and industry, and permanent solutions like Micro Loans to help each person get started in a business or a risk they would like to take. But please continue to pray for the people of Northern Uganda, and also pray that I can find real concrete ways to help them. Not superficial things that make me feel good, but concrete steps to make their lives better and their education freer of so so many obstacles.

There are so many Wa nuu (the plural of mu nuu) who want to help and besides the easily adaptable problems of no real western food, not as many showers, and pit latrines, many Westerners have come here and adapted quite nicely. It can be done, and Invisible Children is now taking dramatic steps in turning over many of the important jobs to the Ugandan people.

I would like to end this now with the Acholi words for this can happen or the future will be our success. That would have been really cool, but I don’t know that much Lwo so imagine if you will those words with Lwo resonance.

This is my last Monday in Gulu so this incredible experience is winding down almost too quickly.

Peace,

John