A New Journey

After 28 plane rides, 8 road trips, 4 boat rides, 1 electric bike and countless tuk-tuks, I land safely back in San Francisco to begin “normal” life again. And as all of you can attest to, life in America is anything but normal. Everything seems slightly out of sorts - I can’t figure out why everyone is so busy or why there is so much packaging on all of my food when I go to the supermarket or how everything is so clean and tidy and the air is crystal clear, yet we shower everyday? But I am sure in just a few weeks time, this will all seem normal to me.

But hopefully driving a car won’t seem normal, I’m buying an electric scooter. Or waking up, rolling over and grabbing my blackberry will never seem normal again. And my new job will prove to be as inspiring and exciting and un-normal as the last months have been – I’m counting on it. And if not, well, I’ll just keep searching until I find something that is...and I will never lose gratitude for having that "choice."

Thanks again for coming on this journey with me, many of you have asked for more photos so here you go.

New Venue, Same Village

Modern times in the West have often been accused of breaking up our families and villages. With the increase in walmarts, mobility, suburbanization and the “self” many have commented that we no longer walk down the street to meet with our butcher or walk across the street to chat with our neighbor and we spend more time on cell phones or at the gym than with our loved ones having a real connection.

Perhaps there is some truth there. In my travels through villages without all of these modern accoutrements, they do seem to have a more obvious connection to each other – spending extra time chatting with the banana seller at the market, visiting at the temple, living under one roof with three sometimes four generations.

But maybe its just the obviousness of the connection? An old friend of mine who lives in Denver received a call a few weeks ago that all of us hope we never receive. His wife, pregnant with their second child, found out she had just tested positive for either stage 3 or 4 diffuse large b-cell lymphoma. He jumped on the next plane back to Denver from Washington D.C. with the emotional support of strangers along the way. As a seasoned writer, he decided to start a blog – so he didn’t have to relay the same nightmares over and over, so friends and family could have a venue to share their support, so they could connect.

The writing is beautiful - raw and real, comments spanning the globe from family, friends, friends of friends, complete strangers. And maybe its not the local butcher or chatting with out neighbor across the street, but the same village energy is there. In the face of tragedy and grief there is love and support and rebuilding….the village may be destroyed by war or drought or persecution or injustice, but across the world the village comes together to rebuild.

Same-Same (But Different)

In Southeast Asia, “same-same” is a common response to most westerners. Answering questions like “what time do you close” or “is there a better room” or “thank you.” And as far as I can tell, it means “yes” and “no” and “yes…but no, but I hope you don’t find out that yes meant no.”

During my e-mail exchange with the Room to Read team in Cambodia, I tried to get numerous questions answered before I arrived. What were their current needs? Did they have Internet? Do they want training on the software I donated a year ago? How many teachers? Did they want me to do something similar to India’s training? Most of the responses were essentially “same-same.”

After a few days with Ratana, and numerous conversations in broken English (as I don’t know Khmer), I discovered a few more things. Ratana has a degree in information technology and his job includes computer maintenance for all 22 computer labs (over 500 computers), computer teaching, computer security, network maintenance, pretty much – you name it, he does it. It took me a few more days to realize the software I donated had disappeared (all he had was one CD of the 500 or so donated), there was absolutely no Internet in the schools, only a few of the teachers knew English and the primary curriculum was Microsoft Word and Excel basics as that is all they can teach in 6 months for 2 hours a week when the students are 3 to a computer. Oh, and the teachers were already trained in Microsoft Word and Excel.

I was at a loss, and so was Ratana. As I said before, volunteering can be hit or miss. And this was a miss. Ratana decided that the teachers needed a refresher on Word and Excel and hoped to do an introduction to PowerPoint. More pressing though was training in computer security, maintenance and networking. These teachers were the computer teachers, the English teachers, sometimes the math teachers and also the IT folks. You know, the one you call when the screen turns blue? In Cambodia, the “IT guy” doesn’t exist. Its up to Ratana and the teachers to keep everything humming. And I was not their girl (or guy or whatever).

And so Ratana and I spent a week together and all he got out of it was some PowerPoint training, that he probably could have done himself. And I got the rest – inspiration from Ratana’s cheerful approach to our obvious mismatch, meeting incredible teachers, dinner at a local restaurant I never could have found, conversations on what it was like to be the first person in his family to finish school and go to university and not be a farmer.

But hopefully he got something too. Meeting his 4th Westerner. Understanding women can lead. Seeing a vision after computer literacy, when a computer becomes a teaching tool, not the teaching objective. Hopefully.

Family Time

My parents always put a strong focus on “family time.” Turning the TV off, playing a game, eating a sit down dinner together. It drove me nuts when I was younger.

But now I love it. And there is nothing like family time in Southeast Asia to get to know my mother in a whole new way. With our family and work and friends and holiday preparations literally a world away – for better or for worse – our layers seem to melt away. And it’s definitely for better.

I don’t think I will forget the image of her driving in Cambodian rush hour on an electric moped with hundreds of Khmer motorists swarming around her. Or her question, in all seriousness “do you think the Khmers thought the world was round or flat during the Angkor period?” Or her response to the hundreds of peddlers who call out “Hello Madame!” Her response was always, even 50 times a day an enthusiastic “Hello!”

And I could learn all over again what it was like to have five brothers. Or her favorite age of raising children. Or how to be married for almost 40 years.

No Trickle-Down the Road

All three Room to Read computer labs I visited in Siem Reap lost their electricity while I was there – despite the fact that all of the hotels in the area were humming with air conditioning and satellite TV. So I decided to meet with my hotel manager to ask if he would consider putting a program together to ask tourists to donate to a generator for the schools, and the hotel would match it.

“You see, tourists will want to give. Many tourists come and want to help Cambodia, you could ask them to donate to the school to buy a generator,” I tried to cajole him out of the blank stare.

“Yes, yes. Schools are dark at night without a generator but no problem during the day,” blank stare now moving to confusion.

“Yes sir. But it is important to have the computers work in the day when the students are there.”

“Angkor High School has computers?” confusion now moves to doubt. The government doesn’t provide computers, they have it slated on their agenda for 2010 – in the meantime its up to the NGOs to provide them, and from what I can tell, only Room to Read does.

“Yes, that is what I said earlier. That is why a generator is most important. More up-time for the computers will give students more access and thus increase their employability for you –”

“I don’t think Angkor High School has computers.”

I tried to invite him to come to the high school with me, adding “If you have a program for schools, your hotel will be set apart. You see, I don’t have loyalty to your hotel. I will go to other hotels. But if I know you are giving to the community and helping by a generator, I will recommend you to other Americans. You can put the program on your web-site and let travel agents know and –“

“You want to help us redo our web-site?”

I knew this couldn’t be that much of a language barrier, so after ten more minutes I gave up and thanked him for his time.

Later that evening over dinner I relayed the conversation to Ratana, the Room to Read Computer Director. He was most amused.

“What did he say in response?” Ratana asked.

I tried to do my best to explain the concept of “giving me a run around.”

Ratana laughed, “Yes that is what I thought. I don’t think the hotel or business help. This is up to government to do.”

But the government isn’t doing it. And the students at Hunsen Wat Svay High School, who now have 3 months of computer training with four to a computer (as the 3,512 students – only 815 are female – all need a turn), who’s province is declared the poorest in Cambodia where families subsist on less than $1 per day, won’t have the skills to work in the fancy hotels that line their streets.

Healing, Cambodia Style

I think I’ve chatted with a couple hundred Cambodians so far – combining my school visits and teacher trainings and tuk-tuk rides and moto rides and just walking down the street. Every single one has a wide smile, kind words, and most want to know what I think of Cambodia.

And I respond, “Cambodia is so beautiful. The people are so beautiful.” And they beam with pride, making them even more beautiful. Which is so hard for me to understand. I would be pissed and angry and resentful at the whole karma wheel spinning me off in the wrong direction for the last few decades. But there is no bitterness in our conversations, just pride.

My guide book tells me that of the 13 million Cambodians, 96% are Buddhists, 50,000 are monks and 30 are psychiatrists. Maybe there is something to this? This may sound a little brangelinesque, but come here. This place is incredible.

Rebuilding

If I was born a few years earlier in Phnom Penh, Cambodia instead of Texas, USA, my life may have gone something like this…

When I was born, fire would come down from the sky onto surrounding villages from American secret forces trying to attack the Viet Cong who had moved into Cambodia. Maybe my family survived. A few years later the Khmer Rouge would begin to control Cambodia, declaring it “Year 0.” We would be forced out of our home into work camps in the country side as the Khmer Rouge instituted a Marxist agrarian nation. So would all of our neighbors as Phnom Penh was reduced from 1 million to 60,000 citizens in a few months. In a little bit of time, I would be separated from my family, my parents would not survive; as a lawyer and a teacher, they, along with the doctors, would be the first to be executed. I would be brainwashed into fighting for the Khmer Rouge as children were the “start of the nation” and properly equipped with military training.

Maybe I would make it, only to possibly starve to death. In 1978 the Vietnamese invasion fortunately ended the Khmer Rouge genocide of its own people, but unfortunately caused a massive famine for a few years.

And the next twenty or so years would be questionable. I missed all of my education as there was not schooling at that time, so I would probably end up as a farmer’s wife with some children who hopefully survived the dismal birth rate…I wouldn’t know if the civil war ever really ended as there has been political unrest up until the end of the century...

In some ways, Pol Pot did get his wish. Cambodia is starting over, not at “Year 0,” but at year 20 or 1997. They missed the Asian economic boom of the 80’s and 90’s that accelerated their neighbors standard of living. An entire generation is missing, the Khmer Rouge murdered about 2 million Khmers – approximately 20% of the population. And those who did live had no education, and their children had an inept education as the Khmer Rouge killed all of the teachers and destroyed the curriculum.

In my training class of 15 teachers almost everyone is under 30 with a few over 50 and just one teacher who is 40.

“I feel very, very luck. I do not die from Pol Pot. I do not die from no food. All of my friends, no families, no food and no school. But me, I have school before. Now I have good job teaching mathematics and computers and wife and children. We have hope. Khmer very strong people.”

Mom Goes to Nam.

I remember having some apprehension after my initial exclamation “Of course!” when my mother asked me if she could join me for a few weeks in Vietnam. The last time we shared every meal, moment and sleep for longer than a few hours was when I was about 8 weeks old.

Her interest was mostly driven by how much Vietnam influenced her life path. Her husband was drafted in 1969 during his junior year of college and instead of going to Vietnam, he decided to take his only other legal option, a longer (safer) path – enlist in the Air Force, finish college and law school, and ultimately enlist for five years. My mother and my first flight was aboard an Air Force plane to Istanbul, I was six weeks old and we would stay for two years.

And here we were a few decades later landing together in Ho Chi Minh. We hired a tour guide, Khai, to take us to the Cu Chi tunnels where 16,000 Vietnamese lived underground in a 250 kilometer network of tunnels located at the end of the Ho Chi Minh trail. Khai greeted us in the morning with a brief history on Vietnam…

“Vietnam is very strong country. One thousand years of Chinese occupancy, one hundred year of French occupancy, twenty year of America occupancy and we won. Now we are free. Vietnam War against Americans very devastating. Many, many American’s die. Very sad. 58,128 American men die. 58,128 American wives and girlfriends with no husband or boyfriend. 58,128 families with no son. 58,128 children with no father. And Vietnam sad too. 3 million civilian Vietnamese killed, 1 million North Vietnamese soldiers killed, ½ million South Vietnamese soldiers killed.”

More than ten percent of their population killed? I can’t believe these people even let us off the plane, let alone welcome us with huge smiles? Khai assures us later on in the day that many Vietnamese welcome the Americans – the American dollar combined with 65% of the population being under 30 helps. But he does push my mother a little…

“Does America not learn from Vietnam War? Why America not leave Iraq? Have they forgotten American soldier deaths? Vietnamese civilian deaths? Why memory so short?”

I found it unduly flattering that he thought our fearless leader even had a memory, I guess Bush does have some good PR folks out there still.

Until We Meet Again.

My last day in India was the perfect synopsis of my time here – yoga to the dawn over Mumbai, a visit to the Nilanda Institute who educate Indian students with learning disabilities, an almost equal amount of time spent battling traffic to try and buy a few last minute gifts, and a walk around India at the park nearby.

The park is India – thousands of Muslims, Hindis, Parsis, Christians, all walking and playing and chatting in perfect harmony. I circle the 2 km walking path with the Indians and my emotions swirl and swim along with me…laughing with the boys trying to play a cricket match over crowded benches, envy for the two close friends walking together and missing mine, reverent to the frail woman walking with her care-taker, amazed at the number of joggers who are wearing saris, nostalgic for the proud Indian father who walks by with a “Michigan Dad” t-shirt, hopeful for the children who swarm me when I give away the last of my pencils, tearful for the small girl carrying a baby more than ½ her own size, anger at the boy who pushes the weaker brother, but mostly love for this country and everything it has shared with me.

On to Vietnam…

IIT's Bid to Improve Indian Education

We entered the gates and left behind India’s street noise, and actually, India. I could have been at Stanford.

“There are over 300 deer here, every professor and student lives on campus, it’s about creating an environment for learning,” Hari told me, the Vice President of Development for Congruent, one company who is helping us build the Curriki platform.

We were on our way to meet with Dr. Mangala Sunder Krishnan, the IIT Professor who has spear-headed the IIT open source movement. IIT is the exclusive engineering school where .74% (just under 3,000) of the 350,000 applicants are accepted each year. The rest of the applicants go to second tier engineering schools throughout the country, sometimes schools where the faculty has no direct experience and have been hired on the spot to meet the huge demand for computer degrees.

Mangala said there were two driving forces that brought open source IIT to his attention. The first (and the concern I have heard over and over) was the incredible challenge being faced by today’s famous Indian technology firms, the 300,000 engineering graduates they tried to hire each year were simply not qualified – only 10% were directly employable (see past blog on trust your teachers). They were taught the concepts through rote learning but could not apply nor create with their education. All companies have to invest 6 – 12 months of re-training for these graduates before they get any value out of them. And the challenge appears to be the faculty at the non-IIT universities; they just don’t know how to teach conceptual understanding and application (in addition the Board Exam that gets these students into the university only tests rote learning). So why not take IIT’s famous curriculum and give it to the thousands of engineering universities and faculty to at least give them a jump start in changing the way they teach?

The second driving force was watching the success of his colleagues at MIT – OCW is perhaps the most advanced open source curriculum offering available today. He could leverage the learnings of his MIT colleagues in motivating the hyper-competitive 7 IIT’s throughout India to collaborate and develop their shared curriculum for open source. After 3 years, he has 120 courses in engineering and 600 more planned for math and science over the next year.
Most of my conversations have included major concerns over the future of India due to the “dismal” universities and government education system for primary and higher ed. If you’re interested, perhaps the best read on this is from the Financial Times, the author forecasts a halt to the 7-8% Indian growth and an impending demographic disaster due to the poor infrastructure, healthcare and education system. Perhaps Mangala’s work at IIT will help soften this recession if the seers are correct.

To the Principal's Office.

“Who are you and what do you want,” was my greeting for my first Principal appointment with three of the top schools in Chennai, in fact, in India.

“Ummm..” I stammered, having flashbacks to my own time in the Principal’s office, “Bala set up our meeting, to discuss the Curriki opportunity at PSBB.” Our goal was to try and get these leading schools to load their curriculum so other schools could benefit from their IP.

“Ah yes, so sorry, it is mid year exams and as you can see we are very busy here.”

Which was an understatement. I felt like we were at an Indian market, after 22 people came through her office interrupting our conversation for her signature or her direction on a discipline problem, I stopped counting. I have never seen anything like it, ordered chaos. The Principal managed to give me some clear direction on her opinion of Curriki between her loudspeaker announcement over the microphone to her right and calls with parents on the telephone to her left. Her comments were echoed in my additional meetings that day. First, focus on 8th standard and down, this is where schools have the most flexibility as they don’t have to prepare students for the Board Exam (which decides the rest of the students life, and is the root cause for the criticism of Indian education not promoting application and creativity). All teachers in primary school develop their own activities and worksheets and this is what we should consider putting on Curriki. There must be a certificate of completion for all teachers (this whole certificate, diploma thing is big in India). There should be a contest where Scott McNealy comes and gives an award to the best curriculum developed by a school.

And all of this sounded very positive until I met with a contact of mine that evening who knows all of these principals.

“The Principal of PSBB? She doesn’t make any decisions, it’s the Dean who makes all of the decisions there. You know that computer next to her desk? She doesn’t even know how to turn it on. But I am sure she told you to follow up in a week, in India, we never say no. We just keep giving excuses as “no” is impolite.”

I reflected on my thousands of no’s to shop owners, rickshaw drivers, dinner offers, etc. over the last two months, I must be a very impolite American.

1,084 Documents

“Does that computer hold one thousand eighty-four documents?” asked the restaurant manager at my hotel, pointing at the laptop in front of me.
“Sir?”
“Does that computer hold one thousand eighty-four documents?” he repeated.
“Yes sir, this computer holds one thousand eighty-four documents, and I am sure hundreds of thousands more,” I tried to reply courteously.
“Oh! No, really? That computer holds one hundred thousand eighty four documents?!?”
“Yes sir, computers today can hold all of the documents you have ever created. But I do not understand, why is eighty-four so important?”
“Eighty-four is all of the business documents in the world!”
I spent a few moments trying to grasp if this was some Hindi Vedic astrology number, I finally realized what he was trying to say…

“Yes sir, this computer will hold all of your A4 documents, the standard paper size you use for managing your restaurant.”

“Can anyone steal your documents? Can you see the Internet? Ah, computers are an amazing thing. The happiest day of my life was a few years ago when I was at a small village near here and I saw Bill Gates, or some very important man who works for Bill Gates, give a computer to a poor village girl who won a computer contest. Computers will change India, open us up to the world. What do you think of India? We are having our first boom, we owe everything to computers. Can I sit down with you?”

I did a quick inventory of my desire for some alone time, his friendly face, his questionable sanity, our amusing conversation and figured, what the heck? And so we chatted about India, villages, new opportunities and the country’s future.

“India is very strong now, new opportunities all of the time. All of my children are educated. Do you think China will take us over? No? Yes, you are right, China will not take over India. India will take over China. We will win. If we can fix our villages we will win. You see, in America, people do not understand that life is still very, very bad in the Indian villages. So, in America, in small villages, people should get together for a village meeting and discuss India. They should say, oh, let’s help an Indian village. Let’s supply water and electricity and money for proper housing and education and teachers and schools and uniforms and telephones….please go back and tell America to do this for us. And can you send us computers to use? Computers are the answer.”

Ahem, check?

Exhale.

If you get a chance to come to India, try and make it to Kerala. Although fraught with tourists, thousands of ayurvedic centers, yoga shalas on every corner and street peddlers in between, it makes up for it with beautiful backwaters, delicious food, fresh air and incredible beaches. And it’s a communist state - making its population overall better educated and better off as a result.

I am staying near Lighthouse Beach which is all of the above condensed into a 200 meter beach. But, I’m on the other side of the lighthouse in a $15 room perched above the pounding surf (so loud I have to wear earplugs at night) with access to a secluded beach just out my door. I have a very difficult life right now – waking each morning to walk the labyrinth of walkways to find my yoga teacher - Lino Miele (a hilarious Italian ashtanga yoga teacher here giving a two month yoga retreat), a long brunch (usually at two different restaurants as I want to sample all the food), some writing and reading, lying on the beach, an afternoon massage, a sunset walk, fresh fish for dinner and back again to start it all over. Life is good, except for the lizard droppings left for me on my pillow last night by the lizard fairy…

Never Say Die.

If you’ve ever read Thomas Friedman’s book The World is Flat, you know there is one consistent rule in this very inconsistent place – desire. Every morning when I showed up 30 minutes early to prep for the NGO teachers, all of them were already present. Each evening when I said it was time to shut down and go home, I had to repeat myself four times – their favorite response to my urges to end the day was “Never Say Die.”

After days of teaching Curriki, Kid Pix, LeapFrog, blogging, Google documents and Teaching with the Internet – the teachers asked me for more. And it wasn’t just me, they asked each other for more – more resources, more learnings from their own teaching at NGOs, more focus if people were talking out of turn, more of themselves to share. They loved Curriki because the could access endless learning for their students, and more importantly, now it was their turn to share their own resources with the world – my favorite quote: “I spend hours finding worksheets and activities online and re-purposing them for my students, now I can showcase my own work.”

Most of these teachers are the first to be educated in their family, earn a higher-income than their peers, and are empowered by their NGOs to make change (which is much more common in an NGO than at a government school). And, as a result, they are making different choices. They want to move out of their parents house so they will stop bugging them about marriage, some bought their own car, others are putting themselves through University. All of them know that every piece of knowledge is a stepping stone to a better future.

Generosity Fuels the Momentum

The concept of hanging out in India for a few months and testing if a concept like Curriki can take hold seemed pretty implausible, especially given the diversity of the Indian education system (private schools, government schools, private government schools, NGO schools, International schools and the list goes on...I could stay here until I am 100 and continue learning about the nuances of this system). Fortunately, its not as far-fetched as it seems.

The generosity of our contacts makes this endeavor entirely possible. We meet with our contacts (business associates, friends of friends, founder’s contacts, Board of Director contacts, etc.), they provide us excellent feedback, sometimes consider piloting Curriki, but always gave three or four names to follow up with. And not just after the fact. They pick up their cell phone in the middle of our conversation and ask their own contacts when they could meet with us. My favorite example was meeting with a good friends father who was an Indian Ambassador. Over lunch in Mumbai discussing the Curriki concept, he scheduled a post-lunch meeting for me with a superb contact and tried to confirm a morning meeting for my Executive Director in Delhi. Why don’t Indian trains work this way?

In a way, our experience mirrors the approach of Open Source Curriculum. We introduce the concept to our own community, they take ownership and reach out to their communities, during our conversations their communities adapt and localize the concept to their own needs – be it NGO, private wealthy school, etc. – and the momentum begins.