Lobster in a Bucket

Christ School Opportunity

Opportunity at Christ School

Since I arrived in BGO, I have been very open to the idea of teaching at the secondary school where much of my team works. The other night the headmaster, Kevin Barkovitch asked my to think about teaching a computer class at Christ starting with the new school-year this February. I’m excited about the opportunity to teach, but especially to have the opportunity to teach technology. I’ll probably just be covering the basics of word processing, spreadsheets and the Internet. However, technology has a very interesting effect on people here.

People here are about 15 years behind the information age. As consumers, in many respects, there just into the middle of the Reagan administration. Everyone has heard of computers, and many have seen them, but almost no one knows what they’re for. Many of the wireless technologies that we all are beginning to take for granted have huge potential to improve Africa. In Uganda the construction of land line information systems is difficult through the rugged terrain, and needs a lot on site upkeep in these same areas.

Whenever I use the Internet in BGO I get a lot of attention. I have to use it outside in a relatively busy area of the mission property in order to get a wireless signal. A second ago, an 80 year old cattle herder was looking over my shoulder as I laughed at something humorous I was reading. He was trying to scrutinize the page to see what was so funny, but I'm fairly sure that his inability to converse with me in English carries over into English's written form.

He was still interested though. His interest is magnified into hunger by kids that are in secondary school. My hope is that if I get to teach technology to Christ School kids, I will be able to turn their desire to learn computers, to get an education, to get a good job, to leave the district, into an understanding of my faith. Many of the kids are professing Christians, but like many missions contexts involving rich American's in the Third World, there are suspicions that there supposed faith is out of a desire to not disagree with us.