LEVELING THE PLAYING FIELD

LEVELING THE PLAYING FIELD

Last October, not long after I began teaching at Maranatha Mizigo several days a week, I noticed that every day a small group of men spent a few hours digging on the grassy playground area between the primary school and the boy’s dormitory.

Curious, I asked some teachers what was happening.  “We don’t know.  They might be building something.  Maybe you can ask someone, maybe Daddy (Patrick), and find out for us.”

So I asked and found out that they were leveling the playing field.

This large grassy area, now owned and fenced by Maranatha schools, had long been used as a futbol (soccer) field by several schools, as well as by neighborhood children, both for practice and for competitive games.

The field had originally been partially leveled using a bulldozer, but it was definitely far from level.  The whole area was covered with potholes, and the entire east side was several feet lower than the west side. Although all teams playing on the field might appear to be affected equally by the disparity, this factor frequently made huge and significant differences in both the scores and strategies of games.

Every week for two months I noticed the tedious but steady progress.  First, the problem areas were defined.  Next each area was dug into large pieces.  The large pieces were then raked into small pieces, leveled, and joined together. Finally, in December, new grass was planted to be ready when the next soccer season began in February.

Today, in the summer of 2013, the improved field is used every day by hundreds of children for futbol and other games.  It is still far from perfectly level, but it makes for a much better game both for teams and for all the individual players.

Leveling the playing field can help in all areas of life, in all parts of the world.  It is in some ways similar to what we call equal opportunity, but it is not quite the same.  The more level the playing field is, the better the game is for everyone.  

Both Uganda and the USA have some large disparities between the personal resources of the rich and the poor.  Uganda has a lofty national goal of having over fifty percent of the population belong to “the middle class” a few years from now.  In America we are already there, but differences between the extremes in the USA continue to increase.  

Children in Uganda and elsewhere learn to read and to use computers and smartphones, just like children in the USA do.  Both groups can learn more easily, and can build a better world for all of us, when their basic needs for food, shelter, health, and love are met at an early age.  And children in all countries sometimes need help from others to make, and to keep, this playing field level.

   

FRIENDS

FRIENDS

“You need to come play futbol with us,” says Gladys, Senior 4, age 18, about 5’9”, well over 200 pounds, backed by twenty girls and a half-dozen boys.

“Now?” I say, looking at my sandals, standing on the road outside the fence by the girl’s dormitory.

“Yes!  I will play you first.”

Futbol that day last September turned out to be taking turns trying to kick a soccer ball through the other person’s goal, two bricks on end about two meters apart, about ten meters between goals, best score out of five tries.

Short version:  Gladys wins, 3-2.

They are amazed that I can score at all.  So am I.

I tell Gladys, “I am glad you won.”

Everyone yells, “Why?”

I say, “Because you would have something really wrong with you if you couldn’t beat a 69-year-old Muzungu of my size (4’11”, 119 pounds).”

They all laugh, and the conversation begins.

“You can’t be 69.”  

I will be 70 when I come next year.

“What is your favorite food?” 

Apples and chocolate.

“Do you have a cellphone?” 

Yes, an iPhone.

“Is it true that Americans wear their clothes two times and then buy new ones?  

You saw me wear this same skirt and shirt when I was here last spring.

“You will have to learn our names.” 

I will learn four today.

“We will give you this rock: it has four corners, so you can remember us . . . Gladys, Tasha, Bett, Shamine . . . We are your friends now.” 

Webale.

Tasha

THE ETERNAL RETURN

Coming home . . .

A wonderful feeling that I experienced again last month.

Anticipation building . . . passing familiar landmarks as we come closer and closer to Mityana . . . now we are turning off the main road into Mizigo village . . . and all at once we are at Patrick and Eva’s house.  I am home again.

And life, and conversation, picks up, just like with good friends everywhere, right where we left off . . . a day ago . . .  a month ago . . . five years ago . . . six months ago . . .

Last fall, on my second visit to Uganda, after I had been here about two weeks, I wrote a friend, trying to describe what I was feeling.

“Hard to believe that I've already been here two weeks.  In some ways it seems as though I've always been here, a strange feeling, not deja vu but similar.  In other ways, every day is fresh and new, full of excitement and promise, similar to this summer at home.  Nice to remember that this feeling is how life should be for all of us.”

In December when I returned home to beautiful  “Catalpa Gardens” in Pascagoula, Mississippi, I experienced these same feelings, but, of course, I was expecting to.  After all, I was returning to family, friends, homestead, homeland.

But how and why do we feel this same way half-way around the world, in a place we have barely (or even never) seen or experienced?  John Denver describes it well in “Rocky Mountain High”:  “He was born in the summer of his 27th year, comin’ home to a place he’d never been before. . .”

During my more than twenty years as “the Utopian’s wife,” married to futurist Ernest Vlahos, I heard him talk many times about his version of the concept of the eternal return, one of the experiences that people seem to seek in their quest for a better life: a desire for both novelty and a sense of place . . . a sense of belonging, as well as a sense of  purpose, in life. Many of us have experienced this feeling of return, often from an early age, when visiting grandparents or vacationing in familiar favorite places.  

In promoting his Utopian vision of the Resort Circle, a worldwide network of intentional small-village leisure communities that even poor people could afford and enjoy, helping themselves and others, which he had been writing and talking about since the early 1970’s, Ernest would say, “Tomorrow you will live the leisure lifestyle that the rich enjoy today. You will want, and have, a second home.”

I never dreamed I might actually experience this feeling one day. (The wives of Utopians are, of necessity, wrapped in a protective cloak of skepticism.)

Mityana, Uganda, heaven on earth?  Practice, perhaps, for that day when we shall all meet again.