I should have been an art teacher-Lilian and Makere College

On Wednesday, my last full day in Africa, I went to Makere college to teach art. “College” in Uganda is like a junior college in the US but without the diminutive standing as second best to a full college or university. College here seems to just be something some people do en route to University. It could be everyone does it, I was unclear. Makere is a premier learning institution in Uganda. It has within it a secondary school (high school), a college, and a full university. The secondary school is run, in part, by the ed school at the college and university. It functions as a training ground for the developing teachers. It is a very cool set up.

The facilities are stunning especially in comparison to the other schools I have been to. This school has minimal signs of detritus and it even has supplies in its classrooms!! The children seem more vibrant even in the same gray and blue uniforms. Somehow, at Makere, it all was less drab. Perhaps it was the fresher paint on the walls, the wider open spaces, the larger size of everything and that there simply was less dust, dirt and grime on everything. Larry drove me in and brought me to the art room where I met Allen (a woman) dressed in bright pink! She was teaching a drawing lesson and invited me to jump right in. I began making rounds with the students-all fifteen ish years old. We were talking perspective and lines, light and dark, shadow and shaping. It was delicious to be reviving an old language of mine. It felt so good, so comfortable like an old pair of shoes. The art room...the smells, the energy, the exhaustion. The frustration of fighting to draw that line just right, the wrestle with translating reality or the imagined on to paper. The intensity of focus and of concentration so deep that nothing could pull you away...I sighed with longing over a chapter of my life long time closed...

I met Madame Jennie, the head art teacher. She told me all the work she was doing and where I could fit in to most of it...if I only I were there longer. I taught her some bead work made from paper I had been playing with as a model for a lesson I could do with a class if there were no supplies other than scraps on hand...we exchanged creative ideas and thoughts for projects to take on.

I reveled in it and for a brief moment I thought...jeez, maybe I should have done this. I truly love it...

With that dancing in the back of my head, Allen escorted me off to the school's art gallery. There, she convinced one of her teachers to take me on a tour off the closed work spaces. All the students art work was on display for grading and so all spaces were closed to visitors. We talked Robert, her professor in applied design (he makes furniture) into taking me in anyway. He and and I walked the vast room. The work was all solidly very good. Technically sound. But then, a piece or two broke out of the ordinary expectations of the assignments and truly soared. Robert and I talked art, what we liked, why, it was beautiful. The works opened up a space for dialogue between us about a whole world which usually takes months of friendship to find one's way too. I loved it!! I had a great time playing art teacher. But then, the best part came...

Allen brought me to the gallery itself. There, we got the see the work currently on display. Since it was mid-installation, the artist herself, Lilian, was there. All the pieces were about HIV and AIDS. As she and I talked, she shared more and more of her story and what the works said to her. Her husband had found he had the disease in the mid 80's. He refused counseling and was in total denial. Lilian herself somehow managed not to contract the HIV virus. Nor did her daughter (now 24). Her husband was sick for years with less than optimal treatment. If only he had connected with someone, if only someone had talked to him about it, counseled him, he could have lived so much longer....Lilian reasoned. Many of her works are about the power of relationships as the highest form of protection against the disease. Relationships between mothers and daughters, the healthy and the ill, parents and children, were all highlighted.

Two pieces in particular elicited lengthy conversations with Lilian, Allen, and the three 20 something art students who were listening in on what the artist had to say. The first was a smooth wooden statue of a thin male body (mid belly to thigh) and an enormous phallus with a copper-plated tip. Lilian sort of giggled as we looked at it. It was fabulously direct and straight forward. Cover it boys, just cover it. I asked the young man we were with what he thought. I am going to make sure I wear a condom, he replied. See, Lilian, it works. Nothing to be embarrassed. I am not embarrassed she said, I just worry I will offend. What if someone sees this and takes more risk by having protected sex (as opposed to no sex at all) and the condom fails, someone gets sick and it is my fault? I reasoned with her that most would be having sex anyway and one might, like this young man, might be reminded/inspired to wear a rubber. The two young women we were with marveled. You could see them wanting to touch the giant penis, but no one dared. It was just so OUT there!! Begging to be touched...it is hard to describe, maybe the pictures will help...

The other work was a series of translucent soap molds of a small army of penises and vaginas. They were filled in various ways with dark red beans. Some at the penis tips, some in the uteruses, some very few, some over loaded...Lilian said this was her favorite.

She talked of how soap is cleansing, yet one can never be clean from this. She talked about the normalness of the beans like the normalness of HIV/AIDS and disease. Then she began speaking my language. She explained... I showed this to some women I work with who are all infected. They loved it!! They felt that it created a space for dialogue around disease. People do not talk about it here so directly. This is very blunt and straightforward. Instead of using pretend words. I asked, What do you call a penis or a vagina? She and the other women there all giggled as they said the Lugandan word for small furry animal. It is the same word for either male or female genitalia. I asked the two 20 year olds. Later when you talk with your moms about this piece of work, how will describe it? One girl jumped in, I will be really proud to tell her about it, tell her I saw this. What words will you use? I asked? The real ones or slang? Real words she said. Again, she talked about being proud to talk with her mom about sex in a way that is honest and straightforward. I was pretty impressed.

I want to make kits, Lilian said. I want the women I work with to make these soap kits so everyone can have a tool for talking about HIV and AIDS. And then the women I work with who have so little can begin earning an income of some kind...

I smell micro-loan waiting to happen...

The idea needs more research...but it has some merit. My one question is...will people buy a soap penis kit? Regardless, I like how she was thinking-teach someone how to fish instead of feeding them yourself.

I left the gallery with a renewed sense of mission. Teaching art would be wonderful and I am sure I would have a good time. But helping someone like Lilian help a community of women to stand more firmly on their own two feet would be way, way better.

I would love being an art teacher, but really, God made me to be a change agent (or maybe a fund raiser...) ;)