Front yards and public spaces

I have been thinking about my garden a LOT lately, probably too much.  It is my currently preferred distraction.  Instead of reading and writing at my computer while developing some serious upper-back pain, I can be outside getting my hands dirty, building garden beds and planting seeds that will grow into beautiful and healthy plants that my family and I can eat.  I love that.

My spouse and I are debating about the front yard. I have big plans.  She has legitimate reservations.  My plans include eliminating grass (which, frankly, isn't so much grass as it is weeds) and replacing it with fruit trees, flowering plants, and a patio.  Her reservations are primarily aesthetic (whatever we do needs to look nice) and economic (whatever we do needs to add value to the lot so that it is not an impediment when it comes time to sell). 

Part of my motivation for the big plan is rooted in my urge for more public life. Here's the backstory:)

We live on a quiet St. Paul suburban street, and our front yard is maybe 40' by 30'.  When we moved here in 1998, there were two older ash trees in the front, but most of the area was grass. We have slowly been removing the grass.   One ash tree came down in 2002 because it was dying, and the other ash tree came down in 2008 for the same reason. This left a large chunk of chewed-up yard that we addressed by spreading mulch and wood chips over the blighted area (it's not much, but it kept the weeds down).

In addition, the middle of the front yard kept flowering with crab grass, and no matter what we did, we couldn't get the stuff to die.  We removed the sod, dug down 6"-12", and found . . . chunks of asphalt?!  We think that the current sod was placed on top of driveway asphalt waste.  Fabulous - our own private brownfield.  After we removed the sod from the center of the yard, we added some compost and mulch, bordered it with recycle planks from a deck remodeling that we had done recently, and planted two apple trees: a Macintosh and a Harrelson.  Last year, the Harrelson produced enough apples that we ate four pies, and my son grabbed an apple on his way to school for all of September and a big part of October. 

This is what the yard looks like now (photos taken from the roof of my house looking south). 

I have big plans for the rest of the front yard.  I want to remove the sod between the apple tree bed and the maple-and-lilac bed; I want to place another apple tree - maybe a Honeycrisp? - to the south of this new bed, and I want to place another apple tree (or maybe an apricot tree) to the southeast of the current bed, and I would encircle both trees with the current garden beds to create one large garden bed with four fruit trees, a large lilac bush, and a beautiful maple tree. We could plant lovely native plants, some flowering plants, tomatoes, pumpkins, squash, zucchini, . . . whatever we like.  I would like to create a stone patio between the house and the apple tree bed, complete with comfortable chairs and a fire stand.

I won't disclose the nature of my spousal negotiations except to say that this is not a done deal, and that I will have to be persuasive.  It's a good debate, and I respect her position.  I know she respects mine, too.

So what does this have to do with a web site that professes to be about civic engagement?  Quite a bit, actually.

Dennis Donovan, the national organizer for Public Achievement, likes to talk about how our houses and landscape architecture have changed the way that we interact with one another.  His words inform my thinking about my own front yard.  In fact, I'd like to think that my landscaping efforts are an example of trying to return to something that was once fairly common: the front yard as a public space.

 

Today, at least in the suburb where I live, most of the action is in the backyard.  My 1970s split-level home is a perfect example of this.  The backyard is big enough for a full-size volleyball court (and we take advantage of this every summer), and there is still room left over for five 4' X 8' garden beds along the back fence.  Attached to the second floor of the house is a deck overlooking the backyard.  When we are on the deck, we barbecue, read, listen to a baseball game on the radio, enjoy the sun, and watch whatever is happening in the backyard, but it is essentially a private endeavor. Even the interior of our house orients itself to the backyard: the dining room and living room windows both face north and the backyard. No one accidentally wanders into our backyard, and if they did, I would be suspicious or surprised.  The backyard is a private space.  Granted, I will speak with my neighbors over the back fence.  Often, this is when both of us are outside, working in the yard.  That's pleasant and arguably public, but it is a very small public sphere.

There was a time when the dominant orientation of a house and yard was the front yard and the street.  Front porches faced the street.  Flower gardens and shade or fruit trees dominated front yards.  One can still see this orientation in much of older portions of St. Paul and Minneapolis and in some of the newer, smaller sub-divisions in our neighborhood.  This orientation means that people are in the front yard.  This promotes interacting with neighbors who are also outside, working in their yards or walking down the street. This has happened to me repeatedly since we started working in the front yard a few years ago.  People will stop as they walk by and comment on the yard.  Teen-agers who normally ignore the middle-aged guy in the split-level at the end of the block (that's me) say "hello" when they see me hunched over a tomatoe plant.  The new young couple down the street who walk their dogs have said "hello" many times, and I suspect that in the not-too-distant future, they'll stop and we'll talk.  Drivers slow their cars when I work near the curb (ever seen The World According to Garp, the sledgehammer scene? If you have children, and you live on a street, then you can appreciate Robin Williams' character's response to speeding cars). Unlike the backyard, it wouldn't surprise me if interested people wandered into my front yard to have a chat while I was working.  When I am done gardening in the front yard, I will relax on the stone patio, admiring my handiwork and watching the world go by my house.  In public.

This argument for more public life, coming from an admitted introvert, is surprising even to me.  I think that when we are in the front yard, and we can see others and be seen by others, it adds a layer of humanity to what we do.  It reminds us that we live not by ourselves in our homes but that we live amongst others.  This makes us think and behave differently. We become more conscientious about how we live our lives amongst others.  I think that's a good thing.

How do you use your front yard?  How much do you encounter your neighbors?  Is the notion of your front yard as a public space something that appeals to you, or do you prefer to keep your home and yard private, not public?

A Public Achievement Coach's Reflection

I read with interest the By the People's recent posting, which is the reflection of a college student coaching a Public Achievement team in Milledgeville, Georgia (USA).  John Fogelman's story is a good one, not rose-colored but truthful in its assessment of public work as hard work, work that changes coaches as well as team members.

I think all Public Achievement coaches will be interested in this story, but I want to invite my Georgian and Azeri friends in particular (as well as the Public Achievement crew at MCTC) to read John Fogelman's "Ups and Downs of Public Work" posting. Please comment there to let John and others know what you think.

Mingachevir's PA Team "Charitable Youth" Wins National Azerbaijan Award

Through the email listserv created by Shukufe Nacafova, I was informed that the Public Achievement team Charitable Youth, mentored by teacher Gulnaz Hajiyeva and college student Elvin Aliyev in Mingachevir, Azerbaijan, recently received a national award in Baku for their ecological project to keep the River Kura clean and pure.  I am hoping that Gulnaz, Elvin or their team will comment and let us know more about the project.  (In a comment on the Shutterfly web site, Gulnaz writes that the team won a silver medal at the event.)

However, what I appreciate about this team is that they have taken their public work to a new degree and level of public-ness, first by pursuing the national award (which, in and of itself, is a meaningful way to add meaning to a Public Achievement team's public work) and then by winning the award.  Gulnaz writes that the local television station has given air time to describe the team's accomplishments and that many people who did not know about Public Achievement are now asking many questions.  This is a great way to spread interest in Public Achievement., which in turn I hope spreads enthusiasm for young people and civic agency.  I applaud the team members of Charitable Youth and their mentor Gulnaz Hajiyeva!

With Gulnaz's permission, I have uploaded a series of photographs to my Shutterfly site, which you can view at http://michaelkuhne.shutterfly.com/

As usual, I invite you to comment, either here or on the Shutterfly site.

Like many, I have been touched, both by the outpouring of emotion over the death of Poland's political elite this past weekend and by the stability of the Polish people and their new government in light of this tragedy.  I will be writing a posting about this in the days to come.

Until then, be well.

Georgia and Azerbaijan - Concluding Thoughts

Map Photo by lyndonK2's photostream
Flickr Creative Commons

It's Thursday, 8 April, and I spent part of this morning reading a New York Times article titled, "An Insurgency Evolves in the Caucasus Region as Wounds Fester," which describes the resurgence of violence in Chechnya, Dagestan, and Ingushetia, all resistant Russian states just over the Caucasus mountains from Georgia and Azerbaijan.  While tracking down the link to that article, I found another NYTimes article about the unrest in Kyrgyzstan, a Central Asian country just across the Caspian Sea from Azerbaijan.  Almost daily since I returned to the US a week ago, I have been reminded of how tenuous normalcy and daily routine can be for the people of the Caucasus region, and I think about the people that I met and the lives that they lead, and I hope nothing but the best for all of them.

This will be my last posting devoted primarily to Georgia and Azerbaijan.  I have written about Public Achievement and Theatre of the Oppressed.  I have written about my eye-opening trip to Ganja and Mingachevir, Azerbaijan, as well as Public Achievement site visits to Mtshketa, Gori, and Borjumi in Georgia.  I also wrote about passport and visa anxiety, as well as my jet-lagged staggers around Tblisi the first couple of days, entries that don't really warrant back-links:)

I want to devote today's posting to some of the incidental encounters that have stayed with me.

A day trip to Mingachevir from Ganja in fog so thick I could not see more than a 100 meters - the clouds lifting in Mingachevir - driving to the reservoir, the sun warming our backs, our faces - Lale and Gulshen running here and there with the wonder and enthusiasm of children - looking over the water to the mountains and thinking it looked not unlike water and mountains I'd seen elsewhere (the Ozarks, fall 2009; the Black Hills of South Dakota; mountain lakes in Colorado).

Visiting Vali Huseynov's classroom in Ganja - participating in an English conversation class with Azir, Rabim, Zaaur, and Aynur with a map of the Midwest spread on a table, me ranting about Lake Superior, the farm land where I was born, the Twin Cities and the Mississippi River - Vali's generosity, hospitality, and protective spirit, him asking if I wanted to see "both sides" of Ganja, and me eagerly acquiescing - discussing his Fulbright college plans for the US, knowing that Boston University was his first choice but selfishly hoping he'd select the University of Iowa:)

Look as Esmira's smile.  Look at Edgar's smile.

Me, a bit anxious about crossing the border from Azerbaijan into Georgia with the none-too-friendly Azeri border guards - a middle-aged woman with a nasty cough and a long pea green overcoat uses sign language to say, "Follow me.  I'll stay with you" - she waits with me while the border guards laugh at my passport photo, while an Azeri border guard in broken English tells me that he trained in Texas; she walks with me the one kilometer dirt-and-occasional pavement path to the Georgian checkpoints.  I smile and wish that I had taken the bloody time to learn how to say "Thank you - thank you so very much!" in Azeri.

Charles Merrill, the son of the man who created Merrill-Lynch, good and dear friend to Julie Boudreaux of MTO (the group that sponsored my trip), sitting on a wall in Borjumi with Kurban Said's Ali and Nino in his hand - Charles, who started progressive schools in Boston and St. Louis, author of numerous books, now an abstract watercolorist (there's a framed painting that survived the checked baggage flights home that's waiting to be hung somewhere in my living room) - Charles, who at 89 years of age is still fascinated by the world around him, and me hoping I can be that curious and open when I am his age, inshallah; Charles, whose self-deprecating sense of humor can light up a room.  Charles and Julie walking arm-in-arm in Gori, all of us a bit thunderstruck by the hometown monuments to the Man of Steel, Josef Stalin.

Rodami Tsomaia, translator of the mono-language trainer, me.  She, fluent in Georgian, Russian, English, and who knows what else.  Me, smiling the first time she completes a thought of mine without me saying anything.  Me, speaking with someone after a workshop session and waiting for Rodami to translate, even though she was nowhere to be seen and I was speaking to a fellow English speaker.  Wondering if she would like to study in the USA, knowing that she could,  and the responsibility that comes with that.

Salty soup broth (just the way I like it), meat filled dumplings, garlic oil, and chives.  Large steamed noodle dumplings filled with salty broth (just the way I like it) and ground meat, eaten best with a loud slurping noise.  Khatchapuri (cheese pie) and kata (flat bread stuffed with spinach), sour yoghurt drink to wash it down.  Eating while walking the Tblisi streets.  Raw bacon served at breakfast, and Ala telling me that "you don't know what's good!"  Bread baked in outdoor, round, concrete ovens, eaten hot and fresh, like school children on an outing.

Sitting on Main Street in Ganja, and feeling two strong feelings: one that I stand out like a tree in the prairie, that it couldn't be much more obvious if I were wearing the redwhiteblue USA flag around my shoulders AND two that the small town streets looked like the small town streets back home: could be Alexandria, or Sauk Centre, or Mora, or Duluth, or just about anywhere.

Sitting in an airport and wondering how the Twins finished the spring exhibition baseball season and thumbing my wallet schedule.
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Looking at photographs of my family when I felt just a little bit alone.

Wondering when I can return.

Using Theatre of the Oppressed as a Public Achievement Learning Tool

I became familiar with Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) approximately the same time that I became familiar with Public Achievement (1998 - 2000), so in my mind, these two pedagogies (and I call them that because for me they have always been about different ways of teaching and learning) frequently compliment one another.  Along with a number of colleagues from the Courageous Conversations Theatre of the Oppressed group at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, we began analyzing how we could use TO to enrich and deepen the work of Public Achievement (PA).

The training in Georgia was the first time where I could build TO into PA training over a period of time longer than a quick one-hour workshop.  Over the course of three days, the participants enjoyed a series of TO games and exercises (those interested in a great introduction to TO games and exercises should read Augusto Boal's Games for Actors and Non-Actors; those interested in the theoretical underpinnings of TO should read Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed).  These included the circle and the plus-sign, the three greetings, the basic image, Colombian Hypnosis (multiple variations), push-and-pull, stop-walk, Image Theatre, the images-in-transition, and a truncated version of the Rainbow of Desire.  For the sake of this posting, however, I will limit my discussion to just a few of these games and exercises.

Colombian Hypnosis and Push-and-Pull   Colombian Hypnosis and its variant push-and-pull have always been two of my favorite games.  Colombian Hypnosis asks one person to be the hypnotist by placing her hand six inches from the face of the person being hyponized.  The hypnotist then moves her hand and the hypnotized must follow, keeping his face six inches from the hypnotist's hand.  The two never touch (although you'll notice that Shahnaz to the left "cheated" just slightly:)).  Variations add additional people to the activity, increase the distance between the hypnotist and hypnotized, or play with different postures.   These first two photographs show a chain of people involved

in Colombian Hypnosis.  We used Colombian Hypnosis as an introduction to the Public Achievement roles of mentoring and mentor coordinating.  I wanted them to see how they used their bodies to analyze what it means to "mentor" or "lead" or "facilitate," what it means to "be in control" or "to follow."  In the discussion that followed the activity, participants spoke of forms of resistance to roles, of how working together made the activity "more beautiful," of how hard it was to both follow and lead at the same time.

A variation of Colombian Hypnosis is push-and-pull.  To the right, you see Maia doing this exercise with Badri (or at least Badri's hands and forearms:)).  I was struck by how assertive, even aggressive, some of the participants were.  When demonstrating with Shahnaz, she almost pushed me to the ground before grabbing my wrists and pulling me up!  I had done this game maybe 50 times before this, and that had never happened (even when I played with Nickia Jensen, who is someone to be reckoned with:)).  During the discussion, the participants talked about the ambiguous roles prompted by the game (who is following? leading? who has the power?  what does it mean to exercise power?).  It was good stuff.

The Images-in-Transition
Another exercise that we used was the Images-in-Transition to introduce a discussion of the Public Achievement core concept of power.  Briefly, people form small groups and create two body sculpture/images: one depicting powerlessness and another depicting powerfulness.  I will let you determine which is which in these photographs:)  The groups then form their "powerlessness" image and, over the course of thirty seconds, morph the image into the same "powerfulness" image.  We had to do this exercise twice to get it right.  The first time, all four groups were done after five seconds.  I tried explaining the reasoning behind
moving slowly: that change normally takes time, that I am asking them to self-consciously and critically feel the change, that - frankly - it is more fun to do this exercise slowly (an entire book could be written on the subversive nature of fun - actually, it probably already has been).  When we did it again, the images were very powerful indeed.  I saw the look of surprise and awe on a number of the participants' faces.  I was so moved that I had to work hard to keep from tearing up (yeah, I'm a softy - so kill me).  The discussion about the exercise was rich, and this led seamlessly into the core concept discussion of power.

Rainbow of Desire  The participants over the three days were so willing to engage in TO exercises that they inspired me to lead an exercise I had never done before; in fact, I had only learned of the exercise Rainbow of Desire  from Nickia Jensen the week before I left.  In short, one person volunteers to describe briefly a long-term problem that they would like to overcome.  That person recognizes the need to overcome the problem, has perhaps even tried to solve the problem, but has been unsuccessful in doing so.  The person on the far right is the volunteer Jeyhun, whose problem is that he Facebooks five hours per day.Jeyhun then describes what he desires when he is on Facebook: for him, it was both recognition and praise.  Two more volunteers came to the front and strike poses.  Above right, Vali (far left) is Praise, and Elvin is Recognition.

Then, Jeyhun describes what fears keep him from solving the problem: he says that it is Indifference of others to him (portrayed by Salome, photo left, middle character) and Rejection (portrayed by Asia, far right).

Next, Jeyhun has discussions with his Fears and his Desires.  At one point, Recognition has a discussion with Rejection (an editorial aside: Asia was absolutely fabulous and indomitable as Rejection!).  In many ways, this exercise was the most fascinating one for the participants, but it was also my least successful facilitation.  I was trying to use the exercise to introduce the Public Achievement core concepts, how the core concepts are merely abstractions until we give them meaning.  Only because the participants were so engaged and analytical (not because of any adept facilitation on my part) did this exercise work well.  I am glad that I did this, however, because it taught me much about the potential for this exercise.  I thank Asia, Salome, Jeyhun, Elvin, Vali, and the participants for being my teachers.

I don't mean to argue that Theatre of the Oppressed is some magical tool to help train Public Achievement concepts.  Instead, this training has reawakened in me a line of thought that connects creativity with democracy.  For the emerging democracies of Azerbaijan and the Republic of Georgia, after 80 years of rule by the Soviet Union, I argue that building a democracy is ultimately a creative act, one that asks citizens to think and behave differently.  For the still-young democracy of the United States, I argue that keeping democracy vibrant requires powerful acts of creativity to contest media-packaged and consumerist-driven models of democracy.  If democracy is going to survive and thrive, it requires the citizen's creativity.  For me, then, Theatre of the Oppressed is a useful tool in this effort.  What might it be for others?  Music and song?  Drawing, painting?  Architecure?  Landscaping, gardening?  Sculpture?  Dance?  Think about it.  I know that I am.

I owe a debt of gratitude to Ben Fink and Nickia Jensen for their bright minds and insightful analysis regarding the use of TO within PA, and I also must recognize Chaka Mkali and Dennis Hopkins (D-hop), Minneapolis community organizers at Hope Community, for helping me think about TO within the larger community organizing world.  Finally, Sonja Kuftinec at the University of Minnesota has been a wonderful teacher - her criticism and analysis has helped to make the Courageous Conversations work better.

I welcome all comments, but I am especially interested in the TO communities' response to this work.  What do you think?

Tomorrow, Thursday, 8 April, I will write my final posting about the work in Azerbaijan and Georgia.  It will be mostly a traveler's/tourist's impressionistic rendering of what I enjoyed.  Then, folks, I really need to "return" to the work here, not least being filing my taxes, which are due 15 April!  

Comparing and Contrasting Public Achievement USA and Caucacus Versions

On April 2, Nickia Jensen, a great PA team member and PA coach in her own right, commented on this blog, asking, "I am wondering how you see/think of the connections between the PA you see there and the PA you see in the US. Are they the same structure? What can we learn from the way that PA is done in other countries that we can apply to PA in the US?  These are great questions.  After all, the primary reason for the trip was to train Public Achievement mentors/coaches.  (I include a brief description of the Public Achievement photographs at the bottom of this posting.)

Briefly for the non-PA crowd, Public Achievement is a democracy movement intended to teach people the skills (public work, acting from a position of self-interest, working from positions of relational power)) and attitudes (freedom, free spaces, diversity of ideas)  necessary to be active citizens.  PA incorporates the best of community organizing principles (relational power, understanding public v. private, working in the spaces between the World As It Is and the World As It Should Be).  Those interested can read more at the Public Achievement web site.  Those interested about community organizing can read more at the Gamaliel Foundation or the Industrial Areas Foundation web sites, the two community organizations that I know best.  (Don't let the anti-community organizing rhetoric that Sarah Palin and the Fox News crowd likes to exercise fool you: good community organizing has been and continues to transform people's lives in constructive ways that make a democracy deeper and richer.)

Description  Public Achievement in Georgia takes place primarily in Internally Displaced People's (IDP) settlements.  These are people displaced by the Russian encroachments in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.  Many of us remember the brief and devastating battle between Russian and Georgian troops in 2008, but there is a longer history; many of the IDP settlements we visited had people who had lived as IDPs since the chaotic early days of independence from the Soviet Union (1991-1993).  Many of the Public Achievement teams in Georgia tend to be young and middle-aged adults, and the mentors, too, tend to be young or middle-aged adults.  In Azerbaijan, much of the Public Achievement work takes place in education settings.  Most of the mentors/coaches are teachers or recent college graduates.  (I encourage more knowledgeable readers to add corrective information in the comment section.)  Follow these links to learn a bit more about the Georgian and Azerbaijan PA teams.

Similarities  The similarities are many.  The Public Achievement process (Issue-Problem-Project/Action) is the same as the USA model.  The basic requirements for any Public Achievement project/action are the same: it must be legal, non-violent, and contribute to the common wealth or public good.  PA teams are formed the same way around the individual team members' interests.  I noted similar learning outcomes between PA USA and PA Caucacus: the team members spoke of the "honor" that they felt when they did their public work, as well as the power that they experienced; the mentor/coaches spoke of a new-found respect for the team members as individuals, how it positively morphed the relationships they had with team members, and how it made their career lives richer and deeper.

 Differences  1) The difference that I most immediately noticed involves subtle semantic variations.  In the Caucacus, a PA coach is a PA mentor because coach doesn't have the same connotations, while mentoring captures best the type of relationship the Caucacus want to encourage.  Instead of Issue - Problem - Project the Caucacus use Issue - Problem - Action, and while I never asked anyone directly about the difference, my sense is that project is more static while action is more dynamic.  The biggest difference, however, is how people understand leading, leader, and leadership.  I won't repeat myself here: you can read about the hornet's nest I batted around in the 28 March posting titled "The Workshop is Finished."

2) On the one hand, the Georgia PA actions/projects are much larger in scope and scale and reflect the urgency of the teams involved: running water, playgrounds, employment, building safety.  The school-based projects, on the other hand, look very much like the PA actions/projects that I see in the USA: classroom-focused or school-building focused (with notable exceptions in Mingachevir, where PA teams conducted ethnographic-style studies to learn more about the history of their city or worked with local health officials to rid a school of mice and the accompanying threat of dysentery).  Seeing this reminded me of how frustrating I often am with the PA issue conventions in the USA.  Too often, especially with the college-based or school-based issues, teams are selecting unnecessarily parochial issues that are tame and too frequently not central to the hearts and minds of the teams' individual members.  Is it the foucaldian discipline of school settings that often drain the teams of more inspired selections?  What role does the instructor/coach coordinator/coach play in this (and I am thinking in particular about how I want to change the way that I address issue development in my own PA environments)?  Is it fear of failure or fear of success?  I don't know.  I do know, however, that this trip has jolted me awake when it comes to issue development.

3)  There seems to be more willingness to collaborate and share the learning in the Caucasus.  This inference is probably colored by my experience with really talented mentors, but I have worked with talented coaches in the USA and Northern Ireland, and I didn't get this sense of wanting to learn from each other.  This might be a by-product of US rugged individualism and Soviet-style inspired cooperation, but I think it is more complex than that.  I know that as a PA coach and coach coordinator, I want to structure learning environments where team members and coaches can genuinely and authentically learn from one another.  (I'll try to remember to write about this sometime in the fall when I'll have my first chance to act on this analysis.)

What can USA PA learn?  I was humbled by the seriousness of the work in Georgia and Azerbaijan.  Nobody is "playing at democracy."  Because both countries are nascent democracies, this group of citizens is establishing a baseline for what it means to be a citizen in a new democracy.  Older citizens are learning from younger citizens, and the young are learning from the more seasoned (this, from a guy who's 51 years old:)).  I am wondering how I can co-create environments wherein this can of seriousness can rise to the surface.  If I don't, then my concern is that I will only contribute to the growing cynicism that many people experience.  I have to keep asking myself how to make the work more real. 

I am writing an evaluative report for Julie and Ala at the Educational Society for Malopolska (MTO) and the folks at the Center for Democracy and Citizenship.  I'll share a link in a future blog posting for those who are interested in a more formal and thorough evaluation.

First two photographs:  Ganja PS 39 classrooms.
Third photograph: Aufto's kitchen in Borjumi (after he worked with others to remodel over 20 kitchens in the Borjumi IDP sanatorium, he worked with others to remodel his own)
Fourth and fifth photographs: Khaka's PA team member Dadto and the field that the team will turn into a soccer field and playground for the IDP settlement between Mshkteka and Gori.
Fifth photograph:  Gori IDP settlement, and the PA staircase.

The Workshop Is Finished

So much for writing everyday.  None of us had wireless for the past three days, and there was one computer with an ethernet connection.  Two-thirds of the participants are 30 years old or younger.  Figure it out for yourselves: there was no way that I was going to get to that computer!

The training was eye-opening.  I have done this same type of training - not all in three days, but the individual portions - at least 20 times over the past 10 years, but this was unique (and that's an understatement).  All of the different portions of the training went very well with one exception (more on that later).  The one-to-one training, the one-to-one meetings, the public v. private training, the power training, the core concept discussion, conducting evaluations, teaching issue-problem-action (project) - all of this went very well.  One reason it went so well was because of the Theatre of the Oppressed games and exercises.  Nickia Jensen and Ben Fink provided me with valuable feedback, and their input produced some beautiful learning moments.  The Images in Transition exercise from "powerless" to "powerful" brought tears to my eyes.  The Colombian Hypnosis with multiple people was a perfect way to begin a discussion about coaching (mentoring here).  The Rainbow of Desire exercise - thanks, Nickia! - was a perfect way to introduce the core concepts.  The informal feedback has been very positive from both Julie and Ala, the organizers of the workshop, and the participants, too.  One reason for this is that we ended every half-day with a public evaluation, and the participants were beautifully honest.  They said what confused them and where they wanted more information, and Julie, Ala, and I were able to adjust quickly.  (Dennis, you told me I would have to be "light on my feet," and you were absolutely right.  By the way, you are missed here!)

This morning, on the final day, I really thought that the one training that I had to do would be perfunctory, easy. 

Yeah.  Right.

The training was about the Public Achievement roles of the coach coordinator and the coach.  Coach coordinator went well.  I thought to myself, they have been coaches for awhile, they know what this is.  OMG - all hell broke loose.  I talked about the coach as a type of leader.  "Leader" here has a very particular meaning: one leader and the more followers, the better the leader; the leader tells people what to do; the leader KNOWS what to do.  Ouch!  This is not, of course, what Public Achievement espouses as the coach leadership style.  This happened before lunch.  Julie, Ala, and I huddled quickly, and we hashed a plan.  We went downstairs for lunch, and as I walk into the dining room, a group of seven Georgians are sitting at a table having an animated discussion.  I don't speak a word of Georgian, but my incredible translator was sitting at the table, too.  I politely asked if I could sit and "listen" (meaning Rodami would have to translate the highlights).  Let me tell you, folks - that was a learning experience.  There's something about the Georgian language: I felt like I was in the middle of a good shouting match.  Everyone speaks at the same time - literally, at one point, all six Georgians were speaking at once - and they seem to understand each other perfectly.  They behaved like a choir without a conductor.  On the final note, everyone stopped, sat back, and sighed a breath of satisfaciton.  Poor Rodami had to summarize this maelstrom.  After over 70 years of Soviet rule followed by 20 years of authoritarian leadership, I was told that Leaders in Georgian culture are often seen as the obstacle to what people want.  They helped me see the debate in a different way, and I adjusted.  The session immediately after lunch went much, much better, and we were able to move forward, but there is no way that this would have happened without them teaching me before I could teach them.

Tomorrow, we tour some of the Public Achievement sites.  First, we will visit the ancient capital of Georgia (and once I learn the name, I'll be sure to let you know what it is:)).  Then, we go to Gori, the birthplace of Josef Stalin (fill in your own commentary here).  Then we go to Boshumi, where there is an IDP settlement in an old sanatorium.  The sanatorium is a 15-story concrete tower where 400 IDPs have lived since 1991.  I have heard the horror stories, but tomorrow, I see it.  Then, we return to Tblisi to visit the PA sites here.

Tuesday morning, I leave with the Azeris for Ganja.  I refuse to be involved with my itinerary development (otherwise, I will get caught in the middle of a dogfight in which I have no dog).  Many of the PA sites are in Ganja city, so I know that I will visit there.  The next closest PA site is Mingechevir, a new city of 60,000 created when the Soviet Union damned the Mtkvari River.  That is probably a two-hour drive there, so that will be most of a day.  I'll spend part of Thursday morning in Ganja city before returning on a bus to Tblisi, where I will check into a hotel one block from Freedom Square.  I won't really sleep in the hotel, though, because my flight leaves at 4:00 AM on Friday, which means a taxi will pick me up at 1:15 AM.  I can't tell you how much I am looking forward to the 22-hour return trip.  I really can't:)

I don't know what my Internet connection will be like, but when I have a chance, I'll write more.

If you have questions, please use the "comment" feature, and I'll try to provide some answers.