Mityana College, Kikumbi - John Mecham

Friday January 12, 2007

I woke up early to plan the day’s agenda. I really wanted to be prepared so as to yield a fruitful experience for everybody. I spent over an hour trying to print off everything I wanted to share, but was only able to print off some of the documents. Due to daily power outages, or a limited amount of power delivered to the hotel I was rarely on the computer where I wasn’t interrupted by lack of power.

I was picked up by my host: Emmanuel Ssennoga (School Proprietor & Director) and left for Mityana College, Kiukumbi (MCK) around 9am.

A simplified version of the day’s plan was as follows:

1. Share vision of the College
2. Start listing New, Innovative Ideas each teacher has had – talk about potential obstacles, and how those obstacles can be overcome
3. Compare Current B-Plan with the Recommended (Give them a copy of the recommended b-plan guide, and a copy of a business competition winning plan as an example of a well written plan)
4. Focus on the missing Opportunity Analysis, Marketing Plan, and Financial Plan
5. Hand out a copy of the IDEO process for innovation to each of the teachers
6. Finish off by sharing the Entrepreneurship & Accounting Books

I was only able to get part way into number 4 before it was time to go do additional interviews with students (clients). After I assured the teachers that Emmanuel Ssenoga’s goal for MCK to be the best secondary education available in all of East Africa was possible, I gave them a few examples in the U.S. that supported this possibility. We then started listing each teacher’s best idea and next best idea for improving their respective departments, and began the process of flushing out how possible the ideas were, etc. Up to this point I had already given them a lot of different new ideas, and had encouraged that they come up with new ideas that would differentiate them from the competition. I think one of the most interesting things during this process was that in spite of my efforts to explain and encourage innovation, the teachers would still give ideas that were nothing more than a rehash of what they were already doing. In addition, the ideas were almost never accompanied with how something would be accomplished. For example one teacher said that his idea was to implement a set of rules to instill discipline. Well this had already been done, and had been done for years. There was also no detail as to how he might improve discipline, etc. I hope that the teachers realized that they must think out of the box, and have some idea of how they would then implement those ideas. I think it was o.k. to take the slow road to flushing out these ideas, because it was really important that the ideas originated from the teachers and staff themselves, not from me.

This process took us through our daily snack break which consisted of fruit, eggs and buttered wonder bread, and up to lunch, which was the same as the meal yesterday. Realizing that we were running out of time Emmanuel Ssenoga tried to get me to move along. So I discussed b-plans real briefly and then talked about the 3Ms of opportunity. It was really difficult for them to grasp the importance of the 3Ms. I even questioned the real benefits in going through the Opportunity analysis considering their extremely limited access to the information required to do the analysis quickly. It’s true that they could conduct primary research, but looking at their schedules, do they really have the time to do a good job based on 30 minutes of teaching from me?

Soon it was time to do more interviews. The interviews this time were extremely difficult. Yesterday the students interviewed would only take maybe 1 minute to answer each question, but today, the students were so excruciatingly shy, it would take sometimes 3-4 minutes before an answer would be given to a question. Even then the answers were always questionable themselves. With 4 teachers, the Director and my self all gathered around to ask one student questions, it was probably intimidating, and not the most conducive circumstances for a student to give free, open answers. A Muzungu (me, a whitey) being there defnitely didn’t help the situation. The children realize they don’t speak very good English, and are apprehensive to speak it at all, especially with a Muzungu.

One interview with a former national government employee - John, now a matooke (plantain banana) farmer, and president of another secondary school PTA proved fruitful. What he had to say was filled with personal opinion, something that was near impossible to pull out of the young students.

Father Emmanuel who was responsible for transporting the Mityana students to Kampala that night called Ssennoga to let Emmanuel know that he would be at Enro Hotel any moment. We tried to leave, but John insisted we see his matooke plantation and pig pens. He wouldn’t take “no” for an answer so we went along with it. John being a neighbor to the school means it’s probably a good idea to keep a good relationship with him.

Emmanuel took me back, but first stopped off at the Stanbic Bank so that I could make a withdrawal. When I arrived at the Hotel it just so happened that our ride wasn’t there, and we didn’t leave till about 6pm that night.

When we arrived in Kampala it was apparent that everybody was trying to do their own thing, and that there was a high degree of freedom. There was also no water in the main hotel, and no warm water in the little cottages. Minea, Sarah and I were all put up in the little cottages as a result, but at a discount because of there being no hot water. The plan was to have a group discussion on all the projects, but this never happened. The best we could do is to communicate the wedding festivities that we had been invited to tomorrow. In place of a well organized meeting many went out on the town, and others of us just stayed at the hotel.

I talked with the students that stuck around, and then tried to read Mark Albion’s book –“True to Yourself” before falling asleep under my trusty mosquito net.