Hello Yaakub

Thanks for your very thoughtful and considerate note. This and your earlier posting has given me a much clearer picture of how your thinking flows especially how ubuntu is 'connected to the heart' and not the colour of the skin. I feel I can now more easily take my curiosity about ubuntu 'off the lead' and see where it leads me.

Coincidently, last night during an MA celebration dinner in Exeter, I was sitting beside a mature student from our 05-07 cohort who hails from Malawi. We got to talking about a possible topic for his dissertation next year. Given he's studying 'leadership' I asked him about ubuntu and was surprised to find he didn't know anything about it! To cut a long and interesting story short, I mentioned the BERA discussions and he got very excited about the possibility of discovering a more African approach to his inquiry. He was also pleased (as was I) that I could offer some initial leads - thanks to the work that you and Barbara did during the November postings. I also discovered that his extended family who live in a single village in Malawi, are related to the Zulus - fleeing northwards when Shaka was in power. Now there's a powerful starting point for his inquiry!

I like your phrase 'confronting that in an invitational way' and would like to live this value more fully in my educative work with others. But I wonder what it is and how I might do it better? If you have the time would you mind offering a few more incisive words on two aspects:

what were the effects on you when you were 'confronted in an invitational way' (as against some other way)?; when hope is offered in an 'invitational' way, what kind of invitational is that?; and what might 'invitational' signal in terms of underlying embodied values?
what was it I did that influenced you to receive what I wrote as 'invitational': how did I 'do' invitational, and what could I have done to have made it more invitational?

Keith