Community Engagement

Part of the Cross Cultural Practicum class is an experiential learning project called Community Engagement. This task is an opportunity for students to get involved and connect with their living context in ways that interest them.  Students living on campus participate in any number of on-campus activities, including fellowships, worship teams, sports teams etc.  Homestay students typically invest in their immediate neighborhood.  Below is a glimpse into some of the ways that students are engaging their communities. Take a look!

Liz:

I've done two things for community engagement.  There is a group of young girls who live in my neighborhood.  Sometimes we hang out, paint nails, laugh and talk about life.

 My other activity is working on my neighbor's farm.  In this picture I'm tilling the soil in preparation to plant matooke (a staple food of this area).

Jocelyn:

For campus engagement, I have been attending the Honor's College fellowship. Every Wednesday morning we meet for an hour to pray, study scripture, worship, and eat breakfast together. This has been a great opportunity to get to know Ugandan students and learn more about what Christian faith looks like in this context.

Halie:

For my community engagement my mom has been teaching me how to use the tailoring machine (sewing machine) which is much more difficult than it seems. At this point I was learning to fix a torn dress for my little sister, Peace. I will be learning how to make purses, wallets, clothes, and necklaces in the coming weeks.

Noa:

I decided to join the chapel choir because I used to be a part of gospel choir at my home university, and wanted to continue singing.  It has been fun praising God with new friends, and

getting to know them.

Alum Post: Phil Wilmot

I am a part of that small demographic of USP alumni that has a deep long-term commitment to Uganda, but this is the result of an unexpected accident.

In August 2009, I joined dozens of North American young adult strangers on a plane destined for Entebbe.  I suppose we all arrived well-packed with our own assumptions.  My biggest assumption, which retrospectively seems predictable for a self-focused, militantly single male in his late teens, was that I would return to Pennsylvania a more mature, more focused, and more qualified version of myself.  To achieve this, I would have to make the most of my experiences, and this would necessitate a degree of risk and discomfort.  I wasn’t alone.  Most of us were eager to take in everything around us.

During orientation, Mark made the suggestion that it would feel natural for all the USP students to sit together at the dining hall.  My stubborn entrepreneurial spirit kicked in, and I challenged myself to sit with people I didn’t know – not every day, but at least some.

On one of these particular days I sat down at a table with some quiet UCU students.  By this time, I hadn’t realized that raising one’s eyebrows was a response in the affirmative, so engaging these individuals in conversation became frustrating.  I thought they were giving me the silent treatment.

Thankfully, I was soon relieved from my awkward interactions when a friendly young woman sat down across from me and began asking me about my studies.  We talked about her Development Studies classes, and that’s pretty much all I remember about our conversation.  Actually, the next few weeks after that encounter are kind of a blur too.  All I remember is sitting across from this kind lady at the DH, eating from our respective plates, and then so quickly sitting right besides her as she heaped spoonfuls of her own lunch on to my dish.  (How could I possibly have eaten that much?, I wonder as I sit in our tiny apartment in this food desert called Harrisburg, PA, writing this reflection with nothing but a block of cheese, some old apple juice, and an almost-empty bottle of ketchup in the fridge.)

Anyway, the point is that my expectations were far from accurate.  If you would have told 19-year-old Phil that 23-year-old Phil would be married to a Langi woman he met at the DH, caring for his one-year-old daughter and working full-time for no pay while preparing a long-term homestead in Northern Uganda, he wouldn’t have believed you for a second.

Many of my expectations and assumptions were shattered and reshaped during my USP semester, but the reshaping is what is important.  When we dwell on the phase of shattering – that dissonant collision between one’s present worldview and the reality that stands before him, we can easily grow discouraged, cynical, tired, hopeless.  That moment is deeply spiritual and eternally important.  It helps us understand our identity, our niche in the world.  But unless we move beyond the shattering to the phase of reshaping, we have wished a ton of fruitless pain upon ourselves.

For example, I once held an ethic of rigid celibacy, but the possibility of romantic monogamy shattered my expectations.  I could have lingered indecisively between a former worldview and the possibility of a new one, but that would have resulted only in frustration, isolation, and regret – so I allowed my expectations of relationships to be reshaped.  I guess that metaphor is a bit unfair, because beauty always helps the reshaping process along.  Let’s consider something a bit more messy, something a bit more universally accessible for USP alumni:

I was raised, like many, with the understanding that Christian missionaries and the non-profits and churches they served were creating a fundamentally positive change in the world.  A few missionaries and organizations we visited in Uganda surely shattered this assumption.  At first, I grew bitter.  How could those who claim to practice the same faith as me be so self-righteous?  So racist?  So corrupt?  So condescendingly insensitive?  I think at one point I even made a silent pledge to myself that I wanted to have no association with this madness of international “good-doing,” but as time went on, I allowed my view to be reshaped.  I deliberately sought out people and groups that I felt were “doing it right” – however rare they are – and chose to align myself with their communities and efforts.  (Reminder to fellow USP alumni, especially those currently working in Uganda: You don’t have to become what you hate.  While living in Uganda, American expats in my community have sometimes dissociated themselves from me, and I think it’s because I strongly insisted they give a few chapters of The Primal Vision a chance before continuing their work.  A dose of skepticism and anger can be healthy and appropriate, but just remember you still need someone around who also knows how to talk about the NFL or trashy American TV sitcoms.)

If my expectations prior to USP had been merely shattered, not reshaped, I might not be doing the things I have discovered I love most about life: being married, raising a child, working with a non-profit (Solidarity Uganda), and of course, eating Ugandan food almost every day of the week.  I owe a lot to USP.  My semester helped me dig through my own frustration and doubt, reshaping my bitterness into hope and aspiration.

Can you think of a time your expectations and assumptions were shattered?  Have you allowed them to be reshaped?  How?

Phil Wilmot participated in USP during Fall 2009.  He lives with his wife Suzan Abong and daughter Nadia Aceng in Harrisburg, PA.  Their Uganda homestead is not far from Lira, where Phil is pursuing ordination in the Church of Uganda while Suzan helps facilitate nonviolence trainings around issues of land rights through their organization, Solidarity Uganda (www.solidarityuganda.com).

Rural Homestays...Kapchorwa!

Every semester, USP students participate in a rural homestay.  This semester we traveled to Kapchowa in eastern Uganda, where the students lived with a family for a week.  Each family is different so while the students all experience life in rural Uganda, each has a unique week with different activities and family dynamics.  Below, Kelsey, Laura and Ali, share their experiences:



Kelsey with her host sister. Click here to read her blog!

Laura put together a sweet video!

Ali doing work on rural homestays! Check out her blog!

USP Happenings

There's a lot going on at UCU these days...and its not just homework and classes...

Two weeks ago we had a photo shoot with all the on-campus students and their roommates.  

Florence Hall Represent!

On Valentines Day the homestays students walked into the Quarters (their study room on campus) to a table full of snacks and soda and "All the Single Ladies" playing on our ipad. We had fun relaxing and enjoying each others company for a few minutes...and hey, who doesn't love a brownie with mocha icing?

In the evening on Valentines Day, the on-campus students and friends enjoyed a romantic comedy, popcorn, chocolate and tea. 

Alum Post: Katie Best

From USP to Feeding the World

I sat shaking, a mixture of cold and nerves, under the harsh fluorescent lighting of a mostly empty boardroom. The hard part was over. I had been peppered with questions about my experience, about my thoughts on food insecurity, about how I would rise to the challenges laid out in the job description that quivered in my sweaty palms. As my potential future supervisor exited, two HR representatives entered the room and the mood quickly shifted. They were interested in me. Why I was drawn to this work, how I saw myself fitting in. I took a deep breath and relaxed.

She allowed her eyes to quickly graze over the page, refreshing her memory of who I was, before she confidently stated- "So let me guess, you went to college for one thing and then your semester in Africa changed your mind." Well, when you put it like that, I guess that's how it went. 

Eastern University was the perfect fit for me. I had been gravely passionate about social justice issues for most of my life; I just hadn't yet been able to define them as problems of social justice. Eastern helped me to do that. I was fiercely loyal to our campus IJM chapter and had great aspirations to clothe the homeless, rescue the sexually abused, and save the AIDS orphans. I was so hell-bent on saving every broken person in the world, that it was impossible for me to actually channel my energy into something that was productive and helpful. 

Then naively and optimistically, I boarded that fateful plane to Entebbe.  

Although I look back on my time in Uganda with romantic, nostalgic memories of running at sunset on that red dirt track, teaching my host family nieces and nephews how to play "Patty Cake" and listening to President Obama's inaugural address over the static of a Ugandan radio, if I'm being truly honest with myself- Uganda was hard. Daily, I was witnessing people in dire poverty. I was witnessing the aftermath of years of corrupt government. It was not always easy, but it was always necessary.

The defining moment came to me as I sat in the DH with my plate of rice and cowpeas before me.  On this particular day, I sat fork in hand, and watched three small children rifling through the garbage for handfuls of uneaten rice and beans to add to the filthy plastic bags they held in their dirt-caked hands. It was something I would have never seen in the U.S. And it was something that fundamentally changed me. I became angry: Angry that I lived in a world where 25,000 children die every single day of malnutrition and related diseases, angry that any child would have to dig through trash for hopes of a full belly. I had found my fight.

Upon my return to the States, I devoted huge amounts of time and energy to researching global food insecurity. I learned about the dangers of conventionally-raised meat and the potential for a plant-based diet to help in feeding the world. I learned about domestic hunger and the correlation between obesity and malnutrition in my own country. I spent a year with AmeriCorps volunteering at a community garden initiative. I spent a year in a Master’s of Food Studies program learning more about barriers to food access and examining the role of food in religion and faith-based communities. I worked for the USDA, forming relationships with local growers and understanding more about the sacrifice and hard labor that agriculture requires. 

And today, after the interview four months ago in that harshly lit boardroom, I spend 40 hours a week with my local food bank, helping food insecure folks in a 20-county area not only access food, but access fresh food. In a country where hunger, obesity and disease are grimly juxtaposed against a flood of wealth and affluence, I get to enable an impoverished breast cancer survivor to obtain the fresh fruits and vegetables she was prescribed by her doctor. I get to introduce urban youth to unfamiliar foods like eggplants, pomegranates and beets. I help in eliminating the need for hard-working families to have to choose between feeding their children and heating their homes.

I help to make sure no one is overlooked. I help to alleviate hunger in my community. I help to make sure every belly is full.

I have never loved a 9-to-5 as much as I love my job now. And the honest-to-goodness truth is that I don't know that I ever would have discovered the work that makes me come alive, had I not stepped aboard that plane five years ago. I have dreams of one day returning to adopt a beautiful Ugandan baby, and to introduce my husband to my East African “home.” But if I am never able to return, I feel confident that what I learned in Mukono has already left its imprint on my heart.

Alum Post: Jordan McGurran

USP staff, 2012

August is warm, but not too hot in Uganda, or at least that was how I felt when I stepped off the plane in early August 2011 into the hot fragrance of Entebbe Airport. Getting off the plane brought back many memories for me from my treasured time in Uganda in 2009.  I slowly worked my way through the non-resident line to get the visa, bought the tourist visa, and then waited for my bags in at the quickly moving carousel located in the middle of the airport. With my bags in tow, I begin to walk out of the glass doors towards the bay where the mob of drivers wait to find the people they are meant to drive to the next destination. I did not see anyone I knew as I entered the room, but as I walked out of waiting area’s large glass doors, I glimpsed a vaguely familiar face, Rachel, and I went back in to the bay area to meet her. She greeted me with a laugh and a hug and told me she had not quite recognized me as I walked past. I found out she was with the other program associate, Julie, who I greeted with the sort of awkwardness that says “I do not know you now, but I know we will be working together closely very soon”. Then we grabbed my bags loaded them onto Kayemba Samuel/Simon’s large gray van and started the journey to UCU, and the larger journey of my time as the USP Program Associate.  My name is Jordan McGurran and I was the USP Program Associate for 2011-2012.

To my understanding, I am in an unique situation among the USP Program Associates/Assistants (PAs) in that I was not an alum of the program prior to taking up the position; I came to USP not knowing any of the staff (except having meet Rachel Robinson once) and having only been to UCU once before (my  experience in Uganda prior to my USP position was from Wheaton College’s Human Needs and Global Resources Program (HNGR) which was also how I was connected to Rachel; her father was the Director of the HNGR Program during my time at Wheaton). The PAs typically have large shoes to fill as the staff often rhapsodize about the great deeds and antics of the previous year’s PAs;  the comparisons with both your predecessors and your co-PA can be slightly wearing, but little by little day by day PAs build their own presence and reputation.  The weariness of the process was doubly so for me as I was a newcomer to USP, so I was not sure how I could fit in well with the USP organization, but overtime I found a place in the mix of it all and I grew confident and I begin to flourish as my time in USP continued.

As PAs, we start our time excited and nervous about the impeding student arrival. From prepping for student arrival by organizing phone and supplies chests to preparing med-kits and student databases, the beginning of the Fall semesters seems to be a wild rush of anticipation. The semester itself can seem like a race with this or that situation, activity, event, etc., calling your attention from preparing rides for practicums, to doing homestay visits, to this student having malaria or that other student who never answers her phone.  By the end of our time, when we are buying the schistosomiasis medicine for student who went swimming in Lake Victoria and ensuring the meals are ready at Mary Reparatrix , we enter into the lull of good-byes, reflection, and plans for the future.

Julie and Jordan restocking medkits 

 As PAs, we go through small pains throughout the semester - sometimes there is too little sleep, sometimes there is difficulty with students, sometimes you are trying to figure out where you fit in it all – student/staff/friend/authority/etc., and sometimes you are trying to figure out how to make people like you.  But the enjoyments trump the pains. I am not sure if USP students know this (maybe they do), but it is incredibly fun to work at USP. Despite the small pains, the busy schedule, the lack of sleep, etc.,  it is simply great to play our role at USP.  We usually end up at the end of the semester hoping against hope that maybe Mark will say that “Yes, you can come back next year and work with again as the PA”.  But then when we get older, and maybe wiser, we can look back and think that it might have been wise for him to allow us to pursue something else the next year and to use the skills and experiences we learned for other endeavors of life (maybe). But whatever happens, I think we end up valuing our time with staff and students in the midst of the great program call USP.

These posts are about how USP has shaped us, and well, for me, there is a lot to say:

Vocation: I found USP vocationally orienting and solidifying.  USP solidified both my interest in working in the future within study abroad education as well as my interest to aid Christian disciples to pursue human flourishing  in ways that are full of faith, hope, and love rather than ways that exacerbate sinful structures and practices in the world.  USP also gave me the opportunity to continue to live in the context I love: Uganda.

Forgiveness:  I grew stronger in my understanding of the power of forgiveness and the knowledge that my shriveled soul does not often tap into the possibilities available for forgiveness through the Gospel. This, for me, was shaped most through the experiences we have in Rwanda.

Presence: "Africans believe that presence is the debt they owe one another" (John Taylor, The Primal Vision, pg 135); the omnipresent idea of “Presence” is of course important as I think about my time with USP; I have learned as I progress in my life that presence is a hard and difficult orientation of self, but a necessary skill for Christian living.

Enjoyment in work: I have learned that the best place to work is a place in which you both enjoy what you are doing as well as enjoy your colleagues.  

Professional skills: USP provided me my first venue to gain post-college professional skills. I gained skills as a teaching assistant, administrative assistant, and resident assistant.

Intercultural skills: Intercultural awareness and cultural hybridity were important parts of my life at USP as I lived betwixt and between the life of a Ugandan and an American.  USP gave me a deeper chance to delve into this topic both in a personal as well as an academic sense (including opportunities to pull out my Ugandan English accent, which is fairly good I might add).

Intercultural Wisdom: I have recently been reading an account of the missionary-anthropologist Maurice Leenhardt called Person and Myth.  In the book there is a quote which I repeat here in a modified version to reveal the essence of the statement:

When a person has been living for two or three years among other peoples he is sure to be fully convinced that he knows all about them; when he has been ten years or so amongst them, if he be an observant man, he finds that he knows very little about them, and so begins to learn.

-        L. Fison, missionary in Fiji

USP helped me realize that for all the knowledge I did have about the context there is a lot more for me to learn that is deeper, less obvious, more rare; I appreciated being around people, such as Mark and Abby, who had lived for a substantially longer time that I had in Uganda, as I had a sympathetic audience to share some of my ideas and impressions of the context.   Wisdom concerning intercultural living comes, in part, in the knowledge that humility is needed and an understanding that a short time in the context provides a powerful glimpse but likely not a full picture of what is happening around you.

Reflection: USP provided me the continued opportunity to examine how to live in the multicultural world as a disciple where global and local connect in complex ways.  We are shaped to continue to ask ourselves: “how do Faith and Action connect as we live in this beautiful creation that is also a deeply fallen world?”

                  So there you have it, USP helped me learn about vocation, forgiveness, presence, enjoyment in work, professional skills, intercultural skills, intercultural wisdom, and reflection. What a great program, huh?

Whether dealing with the protocol of Ahabwe Jones, the playful antics of Rachel Robinson, the dry humor of Gwyn Jones, the wise efficiency plans of Mark Bartels, the positivity of Julie Darcey, the insightful stories from Shankule Philo, the teasing of Koma Lydia, the laughter of Ndagire Brendah, the popularity of Margaret Opol, or the intense demeanor of Mujuni Vincent, USP was a great place to work and a great time in my life. It was not without its bumps and bruises along the way, of course, but such is the way of life I think, the difficulties only make that which is most worthy all the more vibrant and poignant.

Currently, I am working on a Masters in Evaluation Studies (think monitoring and evaluation) at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.  My topical concentrations are in the evaluation of international development  programs and study abroad programs  as well as non-profit management and teaching. I still think about my time at USP regularly as I live here in Minneapolis; this reflection is not just about the Mukono balmy weather versus the Minneapolis “polar vortex” ,  but about all the fun I had, the skills I learned, what I learned about Uganda, and the people I shared life with.

So if you are considering applying to spend a semester with the USP, know that it is a great program and it is worth pursuing; if you are an alum/na of the program, continue to spread the word about the great program that is USP.  I am thankful to God for my time at USP and how I was shaped to be a better disciple through my work with the program. 

Jordan and Rachel making Kale salad with an Nsenene garnish for Iron Chef Mukono!

GULU

This past weekend USP took a trip to Gulu in Northern Uganda.   We learned about the history and current 'goings-on' of northern Uganda through three different organizations that we visited.  GWED-G (Gulu Women Economic Development & Globalization) is a grass-roots organization working for "peace building and human rights concerns of WOMEN and people who are returning or have returned to their local communities after displacement." They have an incredible number of projects including human rights education, HIV prevention and maternal health and psychosocial support for war victims.

The second organization is called The Recreation Project.  Their mission is to "inspire youth to overcome fear and patterns of war through active healing experiences."  The organization is nestled in a forest in Gulu stocked with ropes, pulleys and climbing walls.  All of these tools are utilized in team building exercises 

Finally, we visited Amani Ya Juu, a women's sewing cooperative where women deeply affected by the war are able to process their experiences together while also learning to sew and supporting their families through the sale of the beautiful products they make. 

The students (all 18) had a great time in Gulu...but don't just take my word for it.  Here's what students had to say:

"The Recreation Project 

challenged me and helped me 

to overcome a fear."

 "The whole trip was amazing.  

I learned a lot plus 

it was a great re-union 

with USP people."

"I enjoyed seeing a new part of the country."

"Hearing from the women at Amani really opened my eyes to just how powerful having hope is." -Abby

                                                                       

"The incredible juxtapositions of the ladies at Amani are the things that struck me.  I will remember their horrid experiences, but more than that, their strength and resilience." - Tita