chez shea

Have a Peanut Butter Christmas!

2008-12-24T10:17:00.002-04:00

Hi folks. Yes, I know, I suck. So, instead of writing pages and pages of fascinating Ghanaian insights for Christmas to make up for my long months of silence, let me instead wow you with my new technological capabilities.

I give you: How to Make Peanut Butter, Ghana-style!
(or go to YouTube and search for 'shea peanut butter')

Watch my exploits as I follow a peanut from a seed, into a plant, into a squashed nut that I like to put on my toast.

It's delicious!

Happy Holidays,

What am I doing here?

2008-06-11T08:22:00.002-03:00

In the most literal sense imaginable (I’ll get philosophical later, I promise).

I’ve slipped back into my bad non-posting habits lately, so to repent, and to get back into the swing of things, I thought I might actually tell everyone what it is I do here. (Props to the University of Manitoba EWB Chapter for getting my rear in gear!)

Agriculture as a Business.

The vision:

Farmers’ incomes are increased on a sustainable basis through an agriculture as a business program that strengthens farmers’ capacity and creates an environment that enables farmers to take a business approach to farming.

In other words: Increasing household well-being by helping farmers put more money in their pockets.

So. Let’s leave aside for a moment all of the burning questions that you have (or more accurately, all the burning questions that I have) about economic development and how much it actually works for the poor, and talk about what this Agric as a Business business actually looks like on the ground, so that we’ve got some context.

I am working with the Ghana Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Upper East Region, and I am working with agricultural extension agents to deliver a farmer group development program to farmer groups around the region. From now until August, nine extension agents (with me tagging along) will conduct a series of 3 group development meetings with two or so farmer groups each. The topics cover meetings, projects/teamwork, and finances – the building blocks of a strong group – but the real focus is on approach. It’s about training extension agents in facilitation techniques, so they can get the farmer groups not just to participate, but to own their own group development, and take positive action for their own advancement.

I’m currently scaling up this particular tool, but it’s only the beginning, the groundwork laid before the real Agric as a Business fun starts. I don’t know what will happen after August, but it will involve some more intensive work with the most motivated farmer groups. Two more excellent Engineers Without Borders long-term volunteers are working on developing curriculum for more advanced farmer groups, which generally means embarking on some type of project together. And when you’re talking about helping a farmer group with a slightly ambitious project (or even not-so-ambitious project), it generally means loans. Which is a huge minefield of good and bad development practices.

The biggest problem with the loan business (and with other NGO offers of support to farmer groups) is that pesky culture of dependency that can develop, until very few farmer groups believe that they can accomplish anything without outside help…which leads to many farmer groups lying dormant until the next NGO blows through town, escorted by their local extension agent.

So, the question keeping me up at night is: how can we avoid being ‘that next NGO’? How can we, as outsiders, help a farmer group learn that it can stand on its own, and then help it to do so? I feel like it’s a delicate high-wire act we’re doing here, but it does, at least, explain our enthusiasm for business practices.

Because, put simply, this is our goal:

To help farmers make the shift from being treated like – and feeling like – a VICTIM needing constant assistance, to becoming a PLAYER, providing for their families through the agricultural sector.

...and now try caring about all this development and empowerment nonsense when the rains are almost a month late in coming and everyone around you is hungry.

Black Star

2008-04-08T15:01:00.004-03:00

Hello there! I've tried to make up for my month-long silence with 4 blog posts and plenty of pictures. I'd love to hear your comments, if you get a chance, and feel free to tell me what you'd like to hear about! I promise to get in a lot more about my work, but for today, I wanted to introduce you to my world.

And my world is called the Black Star. BEHOLD!

WANTED FOR MURDER

2008-04-08T14:52:00.002-03:00

Name: Shea Loewen
Age: 23
Nationality: Canadian
Last known hideout: Zuarungu, Ghana

In the early evening of March 22, 2008, a mass murder was reported in the town of Tongo, in the Upper East Region of Ghana. Misters Guin E. Foul and Local Pole-Tree were among the victims. Photographic evidence shows that the victims had their throats cut with a kitchen knife then had their outer layer removed before being disemboweled and dismembered. Police suspect that Shea Loewen and her accomplices disposed of the bodies by grilling them with some choice spices, then ingesting them, perhaps inviting some unsuspecting guests to consume the remains. When police arrived on the scene, only a small pile of internal organs remained to identify the victims, as even the bones had been devoured.

If anyone has any information on the current whereabouts of Ms. Loewen, or of her accomplices, Ms. Lewis and Ms. Justa, please contact the Ghanaian police department closest to you. Police believe that this hideous crime was only the first in a series of killings planned by the suspect as she takes advantage of her new surroundings to fuel her homicidal tendencies.

Ethnographic research shows that traditional practices in her new surroundings involve ritual sacrifice, conducted openly and nonchalantly in the family compound. We plead with household leaders to curtail these activities while Ms. Loewen is still on the loose.

Happy Birthday Ghana!

2008-04-08T14:42:00.004-03:00

March 6 was a very big day for me, and apparently for Ghana as well. She (He? It?) turned 51 years old on my first full day in the Upper East Region. Sarah Lewis, person extraordinaire, took me under her wing that day and threw me into the celebrations going on in her adoptive home town of Tongo.

First, the obligatory morning visit to the local pub for some fresh brewed pitou, accompanied by Sarah’s host father Patrick. Who knew local alcohol could be so tasty?

Then, on to the main event! Schools all across the district of Talensi-Nabdam descended upon Tongo to march around proudly in front of a random local politician.

It was a LOT of children, standing around all day in the hot sun, inventing new ways of marching with a bit of attitude.

Everyone was marching, from the military…

To the local hairdressers and barbers school, proclaiming interesting philosophies on their placards.

But of course, this is Tongo, home to a happy mishmash of modern and traditional, and no official ceremony can avoid being crashed by male Talensi dancers! (see: a future posting on the Gologo festival for more details on them)

As for me, I ended Ghana’s birthday with some quality party time spent with Sarah and her (and now also my) friends, Justa, Priscilla and Eugene.

I love birthdays!

(Except, of course, when it's your own birthday, and everyone celebrates by pouring their drink on your head.)

Dry Season Gardening Revisited

2008-04-08T14:31:00.004-03:00

Last month, I promised you photo documentation of my first excursion into dry season gardening. Without further ado, here we go!

This is what the land looks like right now in the area surrounding Tamale.

But, by digging down into the ground in this one area….

Enough water can be found to turn that dry land into this:

And if only this abandoned dam was still full of water…

Then the water table would be higher and more reliable, and that green space would extend even further, with even more farmers supporting their households off of these vegetables.

In moving to the Upper East Region, I saw that the issue of forgotten dam projects was shockingly widespread. A well-functioning dam can make a huge difference to a community, since this large body of water can do everything from quenching livestock’s thirst to raising the water table enough to allow dry season gardening across a wide area. Sadly, it’s mostly lack of follow-through on behalf of non-governmental organizations and local institutions that leave these dams half-finished or falling into disrepair. This man here is from Zanlerigu, where a partially complete dam means that he can grow a few onions.

This Zanlerigu vegetable farmer group is my first official farmer group, passed on to me by Sarah Lewis. In my first meeting with this hard-working gang, they asked me if I was willing to work as hard as Sarah to help them. They also asked me if I would marry all of them.

Behold, my new husbands!

There are so many issues facing them, from the dam to their vulnerability to the fluctuating price of onions and tomatoes, to transport difficulties, and much more. In the next 12 months, I’ll be meeting dozens of other groups facing similar and varying challenges, and it will be my job to help them identify opportunities to improve their situations.

Oh yes, and I believe that last time, I also promised you photo documentation of my fulfilling my life’s goal of swathing myself in green at all times.

I’m so happy here.

Ghana-riffic!

2008-03-04T14:25:00.004-04:00

As I enter my second week here in

Ghana

, training time is coming to a close. Tomorrow I’ll be in a tro-tro (local mini-bus), heading for the Upper East Region of Ghana, but for now I’m enjoying my last day in Tamale, the capital of the Northern Region and general hub of action in the north.

It’s scorching hot and dusty right now, in the months just before the rainy season, with the hazy sky meeting urban dirt kicked up by passing motorbikes. I feel sweaty and grimy, but utterly and completely happy: Ghana is agreeing with me.

Every day of our in-country training, my fellow volunteers and I have been sent out on some adventure or fact-finding mission, with the idea that we’ll learn best and fastest through first-hand interactions in a bustling market, rather than in another round of workshops and sessions.

A scavenger hunt took up our first day, with five eager, jet-lagged Canadians descending upon Tamale to find things like ‘a traditional cure for diarrhea – bonus points if it also cures all of malaria, arthritis, erectile dysfunction, piles, etc’. My focus for the day was on local cloth, wandering in and out of fabric stalls in the market, comparing prices and seeing which fabric came from China, and which was locally made. The result? Well, as people who know me well can attest, one of my life’s ambitions is to be able to clothe myself entirely in green as much as humanly possible. Which is why Ghana and I are going to get along! (Expect photo documentation soon.)

Other days have been packed with information that I’ve barely had time to process, and on topics that I’m looking forward to learning a lot more about. One full day was spent trying to understand why most Ghanaians prefer eating imported rice than their own, locally produced rice, and learning that most people surveyed would eat local rice if it was packaged like imported rice, and processed to remove troublesome stones. I barely scratched the surface of this topic, before going out on my first field visit to learn about dry-season vegetable farming. I’m going to learn a lot more about this topic in the coming months, and for now I really wanted to leave you with some pictures, but tragically that will have to wait for a better internet connection. So, instead, I'll just leave you with some questions to ponder:

What constraints are these farmers facing? What ill-fated development project has reduced the size of these farmers’ cultivatable land for vegetable farming? What does vegetable farming look like in the first place? Until next time…

Amsterdam

2008-02-25T07:10:00.002-04:00

Simply in order to set a precedent for posting more than once a month, I'm feeling moved to use my extra couple minutes in the layover town of Amsterdam to quickly get a post in.

I am getting more and more happy/nervous/freaked out. I keep imagining little scenes, imagining that taxi ride from the airport as you're staring out at all the new scenery, bewildered and exhausted. That first meeting with my new boss, shaking hands and trying to make a good impression. Riding a motorcycle out to a new community, wearing a ridiculously big, white, face-eating helmet that I was forced to cram into my bag to bring with me to Ghana. The first big cultural blunder, when everyone around me starts laughing and pointing and I remind myself about the joys of self-deprecation.

My time's run out here at the internet kiosk, but the actual adventures are just around the corner... W00t! W00t!

T minus 7 hours…

2008-02-24T16:20:00.002-04:00

Well, folks:

It’s that time again – countdown time. In a few hours I’ll be on a plane, heading towards the biggest adventure of my life. The butterflies are starting, the thrill of anticipation is slowly taking over… it’s time to leave town. It’s time to try and do something in the world.

What’s that, you ask? The short answer is that I’ve joined up with Engineers Without Borders, and they’re shipping me off to Ghana, to work for the Ministry of Food and Agriculture in the Upper East Region of the country. The long answer is very long and a bit unknown to me right now, so I’d recommend checking back every few weeks or so, because that long answer is going to take about a year to explain!

To start it off: the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) in Ghana and Engineers Without Borders (EWB) have been working together for a few years now. In the past year, EWB volunteers in the three northern regions of Ghana (of which the Upper East Region is the most north-easterly…ahem) have worked with the Ministry to develop a plan. A poverty reduction plan. Called Agriculture as a Business. Which I will be helping to implement.

Now, the beauty of this idea is that it is not completely defined, and with no rigidly adhered-to requirements - it’s still in the pilot stage, still being figured out. The main goal is to help poor farmers increase their incomes on a sustainable basis, providing rural households with more options and more security. There are lots of methods being tried out, which I’ll talk about as I get involved.

What I’d rather talk about right now is the pre-departure training that Engineers Without Borders offers to its Overseas Volunteer Staff – you have never seen anything like this before! Almost six full weeks of intensity and awesomeness that I cannot begin to describe, living in a house with 10 other future volunteers and attending sessions with them every day, debating development topics until our heads were spinning, late into the night… I was feeling very doubtful and nervous about going overseas again and working in this crazy field of development, now I’ve gone and found this community of people who think critically and question often, and yet are all about action. Now, I’m good to go. And, coincidentally, it’s time to go!

Meet our new gymnastic team, with our fantabulous pre-departure facilitator, Levi, cheering us on:

Merry Merry Humbug!

2006-12-21T11:23:00.000-04:00

I’m sorry, faithful readers – I suck. But, in my defense, when life gets really exciting, blogs and the internet café are the first things to get forgotten.

So, now I’ve got quite the month to recap! I suppose after such a long silence, I should make this another marathon of a journal entry. Let’s see how I do…

I don’t even know where to start. This last month has been packed full of the highest highs, and (a) lowest low. I suppose I’ll get the terrible news over with quickly, and then I can move on to make the rest of this entry ridiculously upbeat and full of big adventures.

Less than a month ago, my coworker, Bongani, committed suicide. Bongani, who I saw every day, and who occaisionally danced foolishly around the office, and who I lent money to once to go to the hospital, and who was kind, and hardworking, and slightly mysterious because you never knew what he was thinking. Bongani – 25 years old, with a steady job, a 3-year-old daughter, a hard worker, a kind man... swallowed a bunch of weevil tablets on a Saturday morning, after leaving work on Friday with no indication that anything was wrong.

Why? The Times of Swaziland had a bunch of theories on their front-page news story, AIDS COUNSELLOR COMMITS SUICIDE! It’s a devastating thing that a guy trained in counselling and surrounded by other good, caring counsellors, did not seek help before taking this decision. However, apparently it’s also good copy – a sensational news story.

But really – WHY? I don’t know. Most likely is that something happened with his girlfriend, apparently. Plus there are a bunch of other theories that would be slanderous to mention here. Whatever it was, it happened, and everyone here is left picking up the pieces.

You’d think that this thing would have devastated the TASC office, since it’s a pretty small office, under constant pressure and stress, which helps the employees to become closer to one another, I think. And it did…but everything had to go on, you know? In the face of this thing, what motivates the rest of us to keep on going afterwards? In Swaziland, I think the answer has become – long experience. If a person spends their entire life experiencing loss – loss of parents, friends, family, coworkers, children, to AIDS or poverty or suicide – how can it not become simply a matter of course? Today it is a co-worker. Tomorrow it might be your uncle. Or your father. Or your daughter. Who knows? Everyone’s affected so no one gets full sympathy. In a Canadian workplace, this kind of event would stop everyone in their tracks. Grief counselling, mental health days off, events postponed… Here it just means more work for the rest of them, starting one minute after they heard the news. Instead of having days off, people on vacation now had to come in to work. The board meeting was still on, and now I just see a routine as usual, marred by the occasional jolt when a piece of work hits a snag and someone exclaims about how this was so much easier when Bongani was here.

For my own efforts at coping, circumstance sent me the perfect counsellor to help me deal. For two weeks, I had a phenomenal new roommate named Joanne, who was here to help TASC think about restructuring themselves (so exciting!). This brilliant and intuitive woman quickly became my favourite person ever, and at that exact moment in time, she was nearly a perfect presence to balance me out, to hold me back from going over the edge, and to offer me wisdom that I could not reach on my own…and to remind me that I have wisdom of my own, and that I should use it.

Because, for me, I have never lived in the wake of personal loss. And I couldn’t handle it, combined with the uncertainty of my life, and the utter despair that death and suicide bring to each contemplation. Because there’s that other person that you knew, and he didn’t think that any of this could be his, and he decided that anything would be better than this life, even death. And so now, my thoughts and actions are in defiance of Bongani’s death, they are in violent reaction against it. My goals, my dreams, my ambitions, my own small struggles and insecurities and fears…I am clinging on to them now, in an affirmation that I exist, and that the future exists, and that it can be okay. Good, even – beautiful.

Cultural information time:

A Swazi funeral happens between 5am and 7am, but is generally very short and just held at the graveyard. Beforehand, however, most people gather for a night vigil in a tent set up in the family’s yard. They stay up all night, praying and singing and telling stories, before the sun rises and the funeral happens.

Now, for me, this information is still second-hand, because I did not go to Bongani’s funeral. I did not sit up all night and listen to the sounds of mourning in a foreign language. No, it was a difficult decision, but instead of mourning death, I decided to celebrate life in the biggest way I could manage, because that is the most important thing. So, I went to Mozambique.

Maputo – wow. A seaside metropolis, or so it seemed to this Manzini resident. Positively bursting with life, bustling with people and cars and buildings and clothing hanging out of apartment windows and fruit sellers and everything-else sellers and garbage all over the streets, and pollution mixed with a whiff of the sea, and Portuguese flavour co-opted by Africa, but with with a pinch of Thailand, Lebanon, India and everywhere else also grabbed and thrown into the mix. I loved it, I adored it from the moment I saw it.

I found myself in this bustling new place with a gang of six other people collected from all over the world, all of them up for as much fun as we could squeeze into a weekend.

It was scorching hot and muggy the entire time we were there, which made finding a pool a big highlight of the day. As the sun set, eating chips and playing cards as we dried off, we may or may not have decided to pool our money and purchase a massive tube of beer. No, not a pitcher – a massively tall tube, filled with beer, with a spigot on the bottom. It was a slightly hilarious sight.

The rowdiness and life-celebration didn’t stop from there on out – We went to this one street, which was the local hangout full of restaurants of all descriptions, and also a totally sketchy amusement park! We ate a massive amount of food, and I had a Portuguese speciality called steak with egg and chips. Such a delicacy. Then the foosball and pool table action took over, before we moved on to … DUN DUN DUNNN!! The bumper cars! Or, as they call them in Australia, Dodge ‘em cars. It reminded me of a particularly traumatic time in Cuba and the muy peligroso bumper cars in Santa Clara, recuerde? This time, no one broke any limbs.

We were then in for a cultural experience, as we went walking down the street and were inevitably stopped by the police. They wanted to see our passports, which they argued we were legally obliged to carry around, yes, even to the bars. One of our crew could speak Portuguese, which was spectacularly helpful throughout the weekend, and especially here. However, he couldn’t get them off of us, seeing as how Mozambican police officers aren’t paid a living wage and have to make their money off things like tourist bribes. So, as everyone disagreed over what to do, Sam eventually just paid them the bribe. Some had wanted to go back to the guest house to get the passports and show them to the police, just to deny them the money, but the party called, and it really wasn’t that much money. So the police escorted us the rest of the way, to make sure that the other dozen police officers we spotted didn’t also hit us up for the same thing. Because they totally would have.

And then we arrived at the party that would see us through to the end of the night. It was a bar stretched across two alleyways and the bar itself, stylish and new and carpeted, with 80s music just pumping. See, we had arrived for an 80s music party. In Mozambique.

We were some of the first people to arrive at the club, and we were the absolute last ones to leave, as the sun was rising. In the interim, we crossed between the two alleyways, which were pumping out 80s songs of varying quality. We just danced the night away, like crazy. I lost myself in the (bad) music completely, remembering the funeral vigil happening at that very moment and vowing to live and breathe this moment that I was living here, right now, dancing like there was nobody watching, dancing with a huge smile on my face, singing along to any lyrics, even if I didn’t know them. And I did, and it was perfect.

The entire advenure in Maputo, Mozambique was spectacular, and even more so because of what I was missing back home. When we once again reached the border with Swaziland, in amongst the mountains, the sun was setting. The view was so spectacular that we stopped, and got out to just gaze and soak in the beauty of it all. And in the car on the way home, sprawled out in the back, staring out at the view, grooving to U2, getting back to Swaziland just as dark fell.

Other adventures to write home about…

So, on Friday, December 1st (how weird is it to be sitting here in a pool of my own sweat in December?), I went down to Sibovu with my two favourite coworkers, to participate in the crazy World AIDS Day antics going on in this medium-sized village.

This was a big Peace Corps event, with twelve Peace Corps-ers and over two hundred youth doing the march. While TASC did a marathon of VCT (Voluntary Counselling and Testing), I hung out with a gang of Americans, helped out where I could, and watched a bunch of performances, including a really cool traditional dance – the reed dance.

So, the march started and everyone went walking to Cana, the stop for the night. I marvelled that they got so many people to want to do this, and put aside my massive doubts about the ethical nature of making people test in order to walk. It was a controversial thing to do, but they got a good gang of youth out – youth that wanted to know their HIV status, and to celebrate the knowing of it.

Back in November, another awesome thing I did was to go to a Take Back the Night march. It was the first ever event of its kind in Swaziland, as a kick-off to 16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women. About 80 people watched some dances, and then walked around the town at dusk carrying candles and singing, walking rhythmically and almost joyously. It was really great, and totally encouraging, as well… even though we had to end it early so everyone could get home before the real darkness hit, because the night still needs to really be taken back here in Manzini.

Sorry, what was that? You wanted to know if I actually ever did any work? Oh yeah, plenty of that, too. In fact, the most exciting part of my first three months of my internship occurred last week. No, I’m not talking about the three days I spent printing hundred-page manuals page. By. Page. Or photocopying the same manuals page. By. Page. I’m talking about the successful implementation of The Youth Peer Education Workshop in Luhlokohla/Ngculwini, Swaziland!

Finally, the purpose of my time here had arrived. For five days, I hung out in a small, hot room in this rural community with 20 young people who had gathered to learn about all things HIV-related, and to gain the life skills they would need in order to live healthy, responsible lives and to be advocates among their peers. It was phenomenal. A rotating selection of TASC counsellors facilitated session after session over the course of the week, and I watched this group of youth transform from slightly confused, hesitant individuals into a motivated, dedicated, informed team. On the last day, we had a big graduation ceremony with the village headman, TASC management, and a reporter from Channel S who filmed the whole thing for the nightly news. The youth talked about their dedication to make healthy choices and to share their knowledge with their peers, and I felt all warm and glowy inside. Of course, they tended to focus rather heavily on the abstinence side of HIV prevention, even though the workshop covered the whole range of ABCs (Abstinence, Be Faithful, and Correct and Consistent Condom Use), but that’s Swaziland for you.

The language barrier was once again a frustrating obstacle, as I spent most of my time sitting in the corner and listening to the still-incomprehensible siSwati, but I triumphed in the end by getting my coworker to translate my final speech into siSwati and delivering it phonetically to big applause. Go me! (I’m taking siSwati classes now, so I’m slowly, slowly getting better).

(The new Luhlokohla Youth Peer Educators!)

Finally, though, let me tell one last story of adventure and insanity before signing off and going on holiday. This last tale occurs in… the Drakensberg Mountains.

Two weekends ago, myself and my three favourite foreign volunteers picked up and drove off to go hiking in the beautiful, rugged Drakensberg mountains, in South Africa on the border of Lesotho. It wasn’t the best planned of adventures, which, in my opinion, is the best way to have an adventure – unexpectedly.

The consequences of our poor planning were felt almost immediately, as we found ourselves driving in the dark towards a border crossing that had closed two hours previously. Other borders were an hour or two up dirt roads that we couldn’t manage in our tiny car, and so we ended up by convincing the guards to let us pitch up our tents right there, two feet from the border fence!

(Breakfast at the border post!)

We made it to Cathedral Peak by late afternoon the next day, and spent some time figuring out that there was no information booth, and no rangers at either of the two hotels to help us find out where to go. Strange, and also disturbing. It meant that we made the stupid decision to try to trek out right then, just before nightfall, with rain threatening. Smart with a capital S-M-R-T.

The view was stunning, by the way – absolutely gorgeous, whenever you could get a peek through the clouds at the escarpments. However, of course, it started pouring rain about 20 minutes into the walk. The downpour was accompanied by quite nearby lightning and thunder, which made us very uncertain about what to do next. We ended up turning back, almost to the fancy hotel, but stopped short at their soccer pitch. The moment we arrived at the soft, short grass, the rain suddenly stopped and a spectacular sunset lit up the sky, with shifting colours that I couldn’t have dreamed of. We pitched up right there, and tried to see if we had any dry stuff left at all (answer: not really).

The next morning, we dried out a little bit, before starting on the route we had mapped out for ourselves. And oh man, what a hike. I have never hiked like this, I can guarantee. First, we got a bit lost in the myriad trails around the hotel… and then came the Climb. Two kilometers almost straight up the mountain, scrambling up rocks with a big pack on my back, with occaisional rain to make the path nice and slippery. By the time we reached the top at Mushroom Rock, I was done for – these prairie legs have never climbed so high in their lives! But this was just the beginning, because we were there at 3pm, scarfing a fast lunch and realizing that we had a ways to go along the ridge of the mountain, and a storm was closing in on us fast. There was shelter waiting for us at the end – a cave – but nothing between here and there. Nothing to do but set out and hope for the best...

And we got the worst. The moment we started hiking along the grassy knolls, the wind nearly knocked us over with its force, and the lightning closed in, along with the clouds, which were swooping in amongst the mountains with spectacular speed and grace. But the worst was the rain. It came at us horizontally, moving so fast in the cold air that at one point, it actually did turn into hail. It was completely insane, and Shea Loewen neglected to bring her rain jacket. Leaning into the wind, the rain and cold and wind cut right through my meager long-sleeved shirt in seconds and I was left, frozen to the bone, with my arms up to protect my head from the pelting rain. I can’t even say how long we walked like this, but it was a long time – almost long enough for any hint of fun to wear off, but not quite!

We were going downhill on our last leg, and our exhausted limbs managed to stay underneath us as we slid down and managed to find the turnoff…to our cave! Hallelujah!

This overhang and shallow cave-ish spot was paradise to us – shelter! We were very proud of ourselves for making it there, and I got no end of grief for not bringing a damn rainjacket – I was appropriately abashed, and made the appropriate amount of denigrating jokes on myself.

We were slightly recovered the next morning, and we had to be back home that night, so we tried to be all speedy, and of course failed, and left mid-morning, resigned to getting wet once again. It was all downhill, and scarily slippery, but we managed a two-hour hike that was at least warmer and less windy than the previous afternoon. In fact, it was positively scenic. Still, we were all very happy to get back to the car, and even happier to get on the road back home. Oh Drakensberg – you are beautiful, but you are also one of the most challenging and unpredictable things I’ve yet come up against. Good work!

Alright, now it’s time to go and pack, because my next adventure is right around the corner. In an effort to avoid all Christmassy things altogether, I’m going back to Mozambique for my two and a half weeks of holiday. I am going to sit on a beach in the middle of nowhere with a gang of similarly-minded Scrooges, and let my first family-less Christmas pass me by, hopefully without too much trauma. I’ll be incommunicado for the next little while, without my precious laptop to keep me company – I think it’ll be good for me!

Of course, for all family and friends who are reading this, you know that my escapist Christmas plan is just a clever ruse – you know I’m missing you like crazy already, and that I can’t even imagine what the holidays are going to be like without you. I’m pretty lucky to have so many fabulous people in my life – fabulous people who are also kind, and patient enough to still remember me when I get home. You make this whole wanderlust thing very difficult on me – thank you.

Enough holiday sappiness for you? Well, it’s more than enough for me, so it’s time to go and buy a snorkel. It’s not Christmas without a snorkel!

Sanibonani bonkhosi!

2006-11-17T11:22:00.000-04:00

Hey hey! I’m back on the blog train. I’m all over this modern technology, actually – I mean, just today I got this newfangled device called a television. It gets one whole channel! I’m not lying, I actually really am excited about the whole thing.

I know you could hardly believe it possible, but there’s also been a couple more things in my life lately that have been even more exciting than television. I know, it’s crazy but true. For example, I’ve had a string of fantastic weekend adventures in my continued exploration of this part of the world.

Two weekends ago, I woke up on a Saturday morning due to my Australian neighbours knocking on my door, reminding me that the previous night, we had spontaneously decided to go camping. So, we packed up and headed off on a road trip to Mahamba Gorge.

It was a perfect, beautiful location. It took us a while to find it, as we didn’t actually know exactly where it was, but we managed to get there around an hour before sunset. Drunken parties of Swazis were just breaking up, and we were the only people that had arrived to camp that night.

We looked around at the rocky terrain, and went down to the river and gazed upstream at the gorge, and we spotted the perfect campsite. A spit of sand, jutting out into the river at the nearest bend, calling us in. Trouble was, it was on the other side of the river! Did we give up? Did we settle for a more convenient location? Of course not! We gathered our gear on our heads and we forded that river. In muddy, fast(ish)-moving water up to my chest, I pushed across that thing, my bag on my head, laughing the whole way. The entire staff of the place came out to watch us accomplish this, as the sun was setting. But we made it, and agreed that everything is so much sweeter for the amount of effort it takes to get it.

While setting up the tents, we became entranced by this sunset happening all around us, at the colours lighting up the hills and mountains around the campsite, and discovered that there was an echo. And so we sat down to make our dinner, and by that point night had fallen, but not really because it was a full moon. Whenever it would peek out from behind the cloud cover, the whole place would just light right up – we hardly needed flashlights. It was rather mystical, really.

The next day was spectacular. We forded the river back to the other side, and went on a hike on a route that had hardly been established there yet, as it was slightly dangerous. We hiked along the side of the mountain that overlooked our campsite, until we got to the gorge itself and looked down on an impressive fall straight down to the river. Then, of course, we climbed all the way to the top of the mountain, scrambling up rocks and more rocks…and some more rocks. I cursed my prairie legs as well as the superiour fitness of my companions, but the summit was beautiful, and the 360 degree view of Swaziland and South Africa could not be beaten, and can hardly even be described. It was amazing.

This past weekend, I finally left the tiny country of Swaziland for the exciting coastline of South Africa! It was one of those adventures where everything just worked out.

Our adventure started off with a three hour wait inside a kombi, as it slowly, slowly filled up with people bound for Durban. See, here there are no official departure times for transport – a kombi, or van, simply waits until it’s full before heading off to its chosen destination. It makes a weird kind of economical sense, but did result in our being dropped off at a gas station in a rather seedy town after dark. Luckily though, we ultimately managed to make it to our final destination of Saint Lucia.

This was a beautiful little seaside town, pretty heavily oriented towards tourism but peaceful enough. The best thing about it was that it was safe enough to walk around at night – what a novelty!

My Australian and American friends and I decided to go on a boat ride down the swampy nearby river the next day, where hippo and crocodile viewing was supposed to be prime. It was terribly exciting, since this was the first time in my life I’d ever seen a hippo, let alone dozens of them! It was so great that I just couldn’t stop snapping crappy photos of everything. (Once again, I will make a feeble attempt to attach said photos). There were packs of hippos, with small baby hippos and their cute yawns, and enormous male hippos lying on top of also-enormous female hippos (it was mating season). There were also a bunch of crocodiles, basking in the shade, so still that you wondered if they were fake, until they sneakily slipped into the water. There were also spectacular birds – there was a fish eagle that was so huge, its wingspan was about as big as the tree it landed in. There were also storks that were pecking for fish, looking so comical that I had trouble believing they were real. And finally, there was a massive, colourful crane that we got right up close to. Oh, and a mango forest that just looked spooky. Yeah, it was pretty much awesome.

There was also a nearby beautiful abandoned beach, with the long-missed ocean crashing onto the shore. Unfortunately, it was about to start storming, so there was no swimming, but the view, and the sky, were quite dramatic. The signs reading ‘Don’t feed the crocodiles!’ were also quite dramatic.

We were staying at a backpackerZ hostel (seriously), and met some rather interesting people, as you do when you end up on such random adventures. For instance, in our hostel’s backyard, some local guys were sitting around a massive fire – the type of guys who were going to cook steaks over the open fire after a hard day’s spear-fishing and fighting off dolphins for their catch. Seriously.

Among other exciting things in my life, it’s possible that I now get the concept of yoga. It might take me a few more lessons, but a couple days ago I went and undertook such activities as standing on my head, and I must say, I rather liked it.

And now for a chance of pace, I need to derail this lovely post in the same way that my day is often derailed:

Sometimes I’m just sitting at work and doing my thing, and thinking about South African adventures and doing some tedious office work, and then I casually ask my coworker what they’re doing this weekend, and then my world cracks a little bit and I remember about everything else. And I just don’t know what to do, other than say ‘I’m sorry’. Sorry for what? ‘Hey sisi, what’re you doing this weekend?’ ‘Oh, I’ve got another funeral to go to – my cousin.’ This is after last weekend’s funeral for her husband’s brother. This cousin joins his wife, who died last year, and leaves six orphaned children with very little money.

It’s the everyday-ness of the thing that gets me. It’s office conversation, it’s a response to the mundane question of weekend activities…and it’s almost always AIDS.

This week I completely unexpectedly ended up at a rather exciting conference – Unicef’s Annual Programme Review. This was a look back on the first year of their five-year plan that they had created with the Government of Swaziland. It was pretty hilarious, especially because of how the place was marginally swanky and involved a nice buffet lunch and coordinated decorations and monogrammed pens and whatnot. I was a bit star struck in the beginning, soaking up this world of organizations that all come together to debate issues and work on projects that are more or less intertwined.

There were so many people there from all sorts of NGOs, and from the government. I saw the Acting Prime Minister, and dozens of other important people and less important people, all doing development work in relation to children and AIDS. It was absolutely fascinating, seeing everying that people were doing, hearing about all of their initiatives and the yearly round-up of results and new goals and challenges. All these diverse people, working towards a pretty similar goal, but not quite.

On the second morning, the conference started off with a children’s play. These amazingly talented young kids did a play about an orphaned girl and the traumas that she went through. We watched as she went through terrible physical, emotional and finally sexual abuse, followed by messages of hope. I was really moved, but the really fascinating thing happened afterwards, when the discussion amongst all these development and government workers got heated as they talked about their reactions to this play.

Everyone had a different opinion, but a good chunk of people were saying that they had been offended by this play. Children don’t know about these issues, they said, and it’s outrageous that they should be made to portray these atrocities onstage. Children don’t know anything.

In a Unicef meeting! I was sitting next to the man who had directed the children in the play, who pointed out that it was the children who had come up with the subjects in the play – he had only helped them stage it. This is what they go through, he emphasized – this is what happens, and what we have to prevent.

It’s all just so messed up, and I just don’t know what to do, what to think. On one hand, all the presentations of the Unicef representatives were encouraging – hundreds of Neighbourhood Care Points, thousands of children helped through this initiative or that initiative. I was looking directly at the tangible work that Stephen Lewis was talking so encouragingly about in his Massey Lectures: This was Unicef’s poorly named yet ambitious campaign, Unite for Children, Unite Against AIDS! All these people, working more or less together, and making a difference in their chosen fields. This is where change happens, with networks of caring people, no matter what their differences in beliefs.
But on the other hand, there are the two combined realities that go beyond this exciting review of good work done. There’s the fact that this work only reaches a small percentage of kids, and it doesn’t reach them holistically yet, leaving all these orphans and vulnerable children still in the throes of unimaginable misery. The reality that the children were portraying in their play is still a reality, all over Swaziland. And, there’s also the fact that these programs will continue to reach only certain children, until the international community starts choking up some serious cash.

Multilateralism is so hard. Maybe I should think of going down the benevolent dictator road – it’d be quite efficient.

As you can see, I’m at a point where I don’t know the answers to my own questions, and the only thing left is to get up every day, and do my best, and learn as much as I can, and just take life as it comes. The best thing I can do for myself is to never stop asking myself these questions – that is how I can make a difference. Never get comfortable, never stop wondering, never stop going completely crazy as I try to understand the world around me.

And never stop having fun, either.

Photographic Hallelujahs

2006-11-09T10:51:00.000-04:00

HALLELUJAH! I can't believe this worked. Behold! The view from my window! Can you stand the excitement?

Behold again! Swaziland as seen from atop a mountain near Mbabane. Not bad, eh?

And finally, behold me holding a gratuitously cute child named Namvuselelo, with her grandmother (gogo) looking on, hoping that I don't steal her. This is my first visit to Ngculwini, the community I'll be seeing a lot more of over the next few months. However, the youth group will probably be slightly older...

Go photos!

And go South Africa, because that's where I'll be tomorrow. Woot!

2006-11-09T10:43:00.000-04:00

Hi folks – sorry about the long, long wait for this entry! I’ve actually been attempting to post it for going on two weeks now, but when loading the blogger.com homepage takes 30 minutes alone, well, the process becomes not only costly, but excruciatingly tedious. And I’ve got a whole lot of better things to do with my time, luckily – things I will now talk about in extensive detail, to make up for the long silence. The post is about almost two weeks out of date, but I'll remedy that next time I've got an hour to spare in the internet cafe...

I’ve now been here over a month, and I am still loving everything that’s come my way. I’ve had piles of small adventures, and my learning curve continues to be exponential. This week I’ve finally had a chance to sit down and just do some office work after a full month of going out and visiting communities, and it’s been a good rest. Unfortunately, now I’ll be spending a lot more time in the office, and I’m pretty sure it’ll get old fast. But, instead of talking about what the future holds, let me talk about some of my recent adventures, adding in a bunch of detail in a sort of apology to everyone who feels a little hurt because I haven’t managed to email them yet. (I really am sorry about that – the inconceivable slowness of my internet connection is, well, inconceivable. Have I mentioned that yet?)

Since my last posting, I’ve had another three weeks of driving out to a new community a day, in search of youth activities and youth groups that are interested in HIV/AIDS peer education. Each day has continued to be an inundation of new sights and sounds, faithfully translated for me by David, in addition to the piles of work he already does. I’ve met a huge range of people who are involved in youth work across Swaziland, including some truly phenomenal young people who are working against all odds to organize activities in their area, and to motivate their peers.

In fact, there’s a ray of sunshiney hope on the horizon in regards to my work. Ngculwini, a place 15 minutes outside Manzini, has some seriously dedicated older peer educators that organized a meeting of the youth of the community within the first two weeks of me working for TASC. They invited David and I to come and talk to them, to ask them what they would want out of a workshop, and to see what kind of enthusiasm there is for a youth group.

This was a Very Big Deal, for this was our first meeting with a group of youth that will, if everything goes okay, turn out to be The youth group that I will spend all my time with for the next five months. Yes, this random collection of people aged 13-27 appears to have the interest and desire to become a youth group, and get trained in peer education. Hurrah! However, as everyone here cautions, nothing is ever set in stone, ever. Absolutely anything could happen, and oftentimes, it does.

On the other hand, though, we’ve now been to two meetings in Ngculwini, and they’ve already organized themselves to the extent that they have a chairperson, a vice-chair and a secretary. This coming Saturday, they just might have some impressive turnout to a youth group meeting being run by the youth, and on the youth’s terms. Okay, now I’ve gone and jinxed it.

Looking over my last posting, it occurs to me that I’ve only been writing about my work. Of course, the work is the most interesting, and the most important thing, and it’ll still be the bulk of this posting, but I should also mention my extracurricular life here in Swaziland, now that it’s getting going.

One of the best things that has happened this month has been my accumulation of friends and contacts across Swaziland, the type of people that know everything that’s happening in the country and are game for anything. I made a decision early on that in my quest to make new friends and have new experiences, I was going to do anything that anyone suggested. This decision has gotten me into some rather hilarious situations, situations that should destroy any lingering perceptions of Swaziland as a completely poor and rural country. I realize that most of my stories perpetuate that stereotype, so now it’s time to get glamourous(ish).

During one English girl’s going away party, I managed a bacon and egg (and steak and mushroom) breakfast before adjourning to a driving range to drink cider and hit golf balls. Yes, golf balls. There was a squash-playing incident at the Manzini Club, as well, not to mention an excursion out to the Ezulwini valley to go to a yoga class! And now, just yesterday I’ve met up with a group of people in Mbabane who play Ultimate Frisbee every week. I’ve also completely lost my mind and gone running at 6am, and by now I’ve joined a gym and regularly show up there at ungodly hours of the morning. Of course, this was nothing compared to my greatest folly, when I decided to run a marathon. You know, just for a laugh.

I know, I know, I’m completely insane. I’m utterly mad. I, who have only just started working out again in the last week, just up and decided to do a marathon. 21 kilometers. In 3 hours. For fun. I was going to walk it, but unfortunately, it turned out that absolutely everyone was running the marathon, except for myself and two Australian volunteers. We became a bit of a laughingstock all along the way, as people called at us to hurry up, or to wonder what the hell we were doing. About two hours into the marathon, I decided to start running. Which was insane. And after all that, I made it in three hours…and five minutes. Tragic! After that, my body hated me for about a week.

I’ve done all these things with a phenomenal group of Australian volunteers, people from all walks of life that have given up two years of that life in order to be here in Swaziland. I felt so lucky to be able to hang out with such a diverse gang. I’m by far the youngest, of course, since AVI is a rather professional organization that recruits people of any age, unlike the Peace Corps. But, I don’t really mind because I’ve been brought up to be friends with anybody, of any age, and to enjoy the different perspectives that age brings. For instance, these are some of the most fun women to sit down with and engage in some solid ‘girl-talk’ action.

Most recently, these women have enticed me to go on a hike near Mbabane, to look at spring flowers and also to admire Sibebe, the second-highest rock in the world (next to Ayer’s Rock in Australia). This was after having a Halloween party with a group of people from the Peace Corps – another group of phenomenal people who have dedicated two years of their life to volunteer work, this time in very rural areas. Now there’s a group of people that can speak siSwati! And now, this weekend I ended up going camping, where our chosen campsite required us to forge a river with all our gear on our head, just to get there (We made sure there weren’t any crocodiles around). This was the best adventure yet, due to the stunning location and magnificent hikes up a mountain, looking down across Swaziland and South Africa, or else looking into Mahamba Gorge.

And yes, I realize that these adventures with other foreigners are not exactly the most successful way to integrate into a new culture, however…well, this is a long debate that I haven’t fully resolved with myself. Every situation is different, and being a foreigner in an urban Swazi context is not so foreign of a life as it could be. I have access to a number of familiar activities, activities that Swazis and foreigners participate in – like the gym! I’m still negotiating this thing, but there is a basic rule that like-minded people enjoy each others’ company, and the people I have met so far have been fascinating. Now I just have to expand that idea, and meet some more Swazi friends. Like yesterday, when I had my neighbours over for tea.

A couple weeks ago, I took action and learned how to cook pap, the staple dish of Swaziland. My Director’s daughter, Zodwa, taught me how to cook this thing. I had a great time in the kitchen, for Zodwa is 21 years old and at secretarial school, and she takes care of the house while Thandi works her hours of overtime at TASC. Zodwa kept holding the pot with her bare hands, and I kept exclaiming, how can you do that!? She responded simply, I am a woman. I shut up then, and found a new respect for the toughness that comes from being a woman in Swaziland – you have to work hard, and without any appreciation whatsoever. With such a massive gender imbalance in Swaziland, where women are pretty much considered minors under the law, and have so little power of choice in anything, it’s so easy to have pity, but harder to have respect for these women who keep everything running, barely noticed by those in power. They are the ones who look after the children, the sick, the dying, in between the cooking and cleaning, and yes, the hoeing of the fields. They are the ones that recognize the importance of getting tested for HIV, even if they can’t do anything about it afterwards.

I had this tiny moment of intense clarity while hanging out with some girls my age in one community last week. One girl suddenly grabbed my hand and started poking at it, and then they all started pulling and poking at it at once and marvelling to each other in siSwati. At first, I naturally assumed that it was the freckles, because it’s always the freckles. But no – it was the inside of my hand, the soft, uncalloused palms of my hands that have seen very few hard days’ work, that interested them. Their hands were not like this. They vaguely lost interest in me or had other things to do after that, and I contemplated learning how to hoe the fields.

That was quite a tangent. What I meant to say was, I ate the pap that Zodwa and I made, and it was tasty. I ate it with ligusha, a substance that looks like slime, or toxic waste, and completely freaked me out. However, in the interests of being game for anything, I picked up a piece of pap, mashed it into a scoop of sorts using my right hand, and picked up and ate a pile of ligusha. And…it was tasty! As it turns out, it’s actually okra, and if you boil okra enough, it turns into that type of slime. I can’t say I’m going to learn how to make that dish, but it was an accomplishment nonetheless.

Of course, a couple days later I bravely (or is that stupidly?) decided to have a dinner party, where I utterly failed to cook pap, on two attempts. Through a collective effort, the dinner was saved through the use of rice and soya sauce, but it was a near miss. Tragically, the eating of Swazi staple food might not be an attainable goal for me, seeing as how I now can’t cook either meat or pap. So it’s back to chickpea curries until mango season arrives…

Going back to my adventures at TASC, in the last few weeks I’ve spent quite a bit of time accompanying David on home visits. TASC has a program that involves providing food to elderly women that can’t manage on their own, bogogo that are generally looking after their orphaned grandchildren as well. Each one had a different story to tell, but here’s my favourite:

We first went to this gogo’s place on the way to the community of Mahlabatsini, but she wasn’t there, and all her stuff was gone. The three structures there barely fit the requirements for being proper shelter, and it was about ten feet away from a dam construction project that was remapping the entire area. David was worried that she had died or something, but instead, it turned out that she had been relocated! The dam project actually provided for the people they had to displace, and they built her a whole new place to live. They counted the structures at her place, and then built her the same amount, but using cement, and installing windows, and giving her an outhouse, even. She, in contrast to the other gogo we’d visited earlier that day, was very, very happy, sitting amongst her three new one-room houses, less than a kilometer away from her old home.

In my travels, I’ve received about three marriage proposals a week, on average. They are generally followed by a quiz on my skills at hoeing fields and milking cows and obeying my husband. These conversations are the most out-there reactions to my strange white skin. However, this isn’t just me – the most important topic in rural areas, I have found, is marriage. It is a very serious subject for everyone – especially for a woman running a support group in Phuzamoya, who will soon be marrying my uncle. This is of course a joke, however this woman has such energy and force of spirit, I’m a bit worried that she might just manage it!

No, actually, the most hilarious reactions to my presence generally come from the children. Once I was standing in a school compound waiting to talk to the headmaster, and simply by standing there I managed to disrupt every single one of the classes, as the kids hung out of windows and doors trying to get a glimpse at me. Apparently these kids probably only saw an umlungu once a year or so, so it was a matter of some excitement!

While that’s fun for the kids, my skin also has another consequence – expectations. If I’m here, then I must be bringing something, or offering something concrete to help.

While I was talking to the headmaster and another teacher at this same school, I knew that their idea of what to do with the workshop idea was not something that would work for TASC. So then, I was faced with two people asking me when I would be coming to talk to the school about HIV, while I tried to let them down gently, feeling horrible about myself. I’ve taught exchange participants on this very topic – the power dynamics that exist outside of your attempts to do good, that make everything just slightly twisted, and much harder to just interact. I am an umlungu, and even if I don’t care and wish I could just make it go away, it matters, and it affects every interaction.

The trick is to find a way to be effective within the existing and unchanging structures. For example: as an umlungu, everyone in these villages stares at me shamelessly and watches everything I do. Therefore, I must be on my best behaviour at all times, and be very friendly, and say sawubona to everyone, and wave at the kids for as long as they want to wave at me. I must be respectful, and not stand up in the presence of my male elders, and I must have a sense of humour when I try to speak siSwati and I get it all wrong and a crowd of women start laughing at me. I must make it so they are laughing with me.

So far, I think this has been working. For example, during my second week, I went to Matsanjeni with David and Kumbirayi from Zimbabwe. It was Very Far Away – so far that we hit the border with South Africa and then turned to find the distant community. In the village meeting, I obeyed the cultural rules of not speaking unless spoken to, but immediately, I was the focus of attention at this meeting. Everyone demanded to know whether or not I had a Swazi name yet – you see, every umlungu must have a proper Swazi name, just as most Swazis have both a Swazi and an Anglicized name. There at that meeting, the order of business of the moment was the choosing of my name, which was: Sipesihle.

So, hello, my name is Sipesihle. Or: libito lami nginguSipesihle. It means ‘a beautiful gift’. I’m a beautiful gift! I laughed along with the thirty villagers as I tried to pronounce the strange ‘hl’ sound, and then we left the meeting after some words from David. I was very happy to be a ‘real Swazi’ now, however I felt again the twinge of discomfort at being considered a ‘gift’ to a community that, in all likelihood, was too far away to ever visit again.

Furthering this train of thought, I encountered new practical challenges to my freshly-minted university ideas when I visited the community of Ekudzeni. As the others counselled and tested a range of people with their own stories to tell, I hung out with the women who were around the site. It was a very complicated time, and one of the most difficult set of interactions I’ve faced. It was generally pleasant, with marriage jokes and siSwati lessons and surface questions – I even got to hold a baby whose name was also Sipesihle. However, Sipesihle’s mother soon turned from friendly to pleading – couldn’t I get her some fabric to make clothes out of? Didn’t I have any baby clothes? What about money for fences? It was very difficult to respond, because in asking these things of me, this woman was inviting in the entire swirl of development issues and development debates of the past few decades and then disregarding them, and hoping that I would disregard them, as well, and just give her some damn baby clothes. I…couldn’t let go of all of the conflicting opinions I hold in my head about the response that a nice foreign volunteer should give to this sort of request, and so my responses were always confused, and never satisfactory to either party. I tried to explain about being poor myself, but I don’t like that argument because it just isn’t true. I tried to ask about ways that she could obtain cloth through her own efforts, but she just understood that, well, that’s what she was doing – she can obtain cloth by asking me!

But – I am committed to sustainable development, to capacity-building, and NOT to dependency-building. That is the roadblock that every foreign volunteer faces, because we’ve learned these fresh new concepts about capacity building, but we’re entering an arena where people have had things just handed to them for the past few decades – handed to them by foreigners, by umlungu, and so that’s what so many have come to expect. If I am here, I must be bringing things with me. Even the most committed to capacity- building are also inclined to bring things with them, making it even harder for the next volunteer, and the next. Because the torturous question always is, what’s wrong with giving people what they need to survive, and make a life for themselves? Surely there can’t be anything wrong with that…can there?

And in many cases there can’t: just look at TASC’s program of providing food to elderly bogogo. Sometimes people just don’t have food. Discuss.

Once I spent an afternoon at this massive sugarcane plantation, where Kumbirayi and David tested the migrant workers and I talked to people and ate huge sticks of sugarcane. It was yet another intense place to be. The men and women who were not on the fields were sitting around their joined-up shacks and drinking sorghum beer, a substance that you brew for three days over a fire and then drink. They were tough folk, mostly Mozambican and accustomed to hard work out in the fields. They were mostly single, or had left their wife at home, and they worked in this place for most of the year. And they were probably nearly all HIV-positive.

AIDS hits the working population the hardest, and the migrant worker population is almost right up there with truckers and prostitutes as a high-risk category for infection. Until recently, almost everyone who actually got up the courage to test at this plantation was testing postitive. Recently, it’s gotten better with targeted education and awareness and testing from TASC and other organizations. But the fact remains that a large percentage of the workers at this plantation were sick or dying, and a number of them were on ARVs. They get sick at the plantation, and they can’t work, and so they die there, whether they’ve tested or not. And so the plantation owner takes care of their bodies: If they’re Swazi, they’ve got a graveyard right behind the fields, and if they’re foreign, their bodies go home through the embassy.

But the good thing with travelling with David is, there’s always that glimmer of hope. His work makes a difference, and that is beautiful. There was a group of men at the plantation who were all HIV-positive, and they wanted to start a support group. There are very few support groups in Swaziland, because so many people are afraid of coming out of the AIDS closet, so to speak, but here, at this place, they wanted to start one.

I’ve seen the support group issue raised a number of times over the past month, either by a group of people that wanted more information, or by an existing support group that was floundering. On one occasion, however, we came across an amazing group, meeting at a clinic on the top of a wind-swept mountain (literally – there were a few roofs missing).

There are only maybe ten groups like this in all of Swaziland: A group of HIV-positive people, mostly women, sitting around and telling their stories to one another in a supportive environment. The group had 42 members, with about a third of them present, and they were involved in a huge range of activities to support themselves, like planting a garden and raising pigs and more. I could see David’s face – he had never been in a meeting like this before, and he was asking a lot of questions, and by the end, he had gotten a couple members of the group to agree to come out with him and meet some of the people he had been talking to earlier in the month, the people who wanted to start their own support groups. Energy, and hope, and motivation – beautiful!

Another day, I visited the St Philip’s area, and met the Red Cross workers who looked after all of the local people who had AIDS, and whose CD4 counts were low enough to make them eligible for taking ARVs. They delivered food parcels and had weekly meetings, to make sure people had the support and encouragement to keep on taking the drugs…

…which was proven to be a phenomenally important task when we visited our first home. There was a woman there, who was on ARVs, and who was having trouble finding the motivation to continue taking them, since so many of the other people in the area had decided to stop. Also, she was losing weight for no reason, which worried her, as it’s a sign of advancing AIDS. As David talked to her, and listened to her worries, and as I despaired of ever learning enough siSwati to be able to understand people’s situations directly from their own mouths, I thought about the treatment side of HIV/AIDS. Once your CD4 count is low, ARVs are pretty much your only hope of prolonging your life, and getting healthy enough to keep functioning. Well, that combined with proper food and exercise and whatnot. Also, the Swazi government provides them for free, once you’re eligible. And yet, only a tiny percentage of eligible people are taking these free drugs. True, you have to remember to take them at specific times of day, for pretty much the rest of your life, and you have to believe in them enough to commit to them, but…we’re talking about saving your own life here, at least for a little longer.

As we were leaving this woman’s house, a couple things happened in very quick succession, and my reading audience is invited to react to my reaction in whatever way they want. The mother looked at me and said (translated), ‘I just want to be healed’. Uncomprehendingly, I turned sympathetically to go and her son looked at me and said, ‘I want to go to school, please.’ And as we were driving away and as David was translating these two things for me, I heard the background song on the radio, with Eminem rapping, “…the moment you want it you better never let it go/You only get one shot/Do not miss your chance to go/Cause opportunity comes once in a lifetime…” And I just sat there in silence, and couldn’t handle it, because this mother and son did not get ‘one shot’. They got no shots. Opportunity has never come, and this mother’s life is almost over, and her kid does not have the chance to go to school. And so I shed a tear, because that’s all I could do for them.

That moment was very powerful, and only later did I remember to reawaken the ironic side of myself. I can generally see the irony in anything, and lately I’ve completely forgotten about it. But this was an EMINEM analogy, for goodness sakes!

I do feel a twinge of concern, that these blog entries may start sounding like a World Vision commercial, with my heart breaking all over the place with people’s personal stories. But the thing is, I don’t really care about that, because no matter how much I want to attach the word ‘cliché’ to the stories I hear and the things I see and write about, I just… can’t. The people I meet are living and breathing, and they have these unchanging lives, and to me it is real, and immediate, and in my face a lot of the time. I sit here and I try to process it according to my life and my perceptions, using my educated, analytic brain, but no matter what larger truths or big-picture analyses I can come up with, it can’t touch the people I’ve met, not really. And so, I will continue to try to write unselfconsciously, and won’t feel bad for caring, even if I haven’t quite gotten the hang of writing about it effectively yet.

Hmmm, I seem to have written a seven and a half page blog entry. Well, seeing as how it’ll probably have to sustain you for another couple weeks, I’ll save the apologies and instead, I’ll beg everyone to send me an email and to tell me how their life is going. Messages from home can really light up a day when you’re far away, and even the most mundane details are very welcome. As a bribe, I will once again attempt to attach photos to this posting. My hopes are really not very high.

Week one is done and I’m having fun

2006-10-09T11:57:00.000-03:00

I have survived my first week at The Aids Information and Support Centre, and my first week in Swaziland. No – more than that – I’ve had a wonderful time this last week! I want to use really enthusiastic words that I’m familiar with, like I had a blast, I loved it, it was fun… but they’re not quite the words I’m looking for. This was a Very Intense week, filled with so many new experiences and encounters with people from all walks of life, that I’m still processing it all as I move into week number two. It wasn’t all happy and fun, but that doesn’t really matter, because it was…it was…well, I’ll try to write about how it was, and maybe you can draw your own conclusions.

(** Caution: the following entry is in danger of becoming quite lengthy and lacking the expected humour. Proceed with caution.**)

Just before I started writing this, I was watching the sunset. I had heard that in Africa, the sun sets very fast. It does…or maybe I just have never taken the time to watch how the sun sets in Winnipeg, or Halifax. Here, I sit out on my balcony, and watch the red-and-orange sun go down, over the mountains in the distance. Yeah, I have a balcony. I have a sixth-floor apartment that is really big and comfortable, and I have it all to myself. It’s kind of hilarious, but I like it so far. My view out of my apartment is spectacular and mundane and I love it. I’ve got a big parking lot to look at, and then a Manzini street with people and cars and shops, and then, in the distance, hills and mountains. It’s these hills and mountains that I love, that I fix on. They are beautiful and foreign and promising. They tell me that life here will be good.

As for work: I’ve spent a total of one day in TASC’s office, and the rest of the time, I’ve been out in a different rural community each day. This is part of the plan to have me visit all of the communities that TASC works in, in order to assess the youth activities in each place before settling on one place that I will spend all my time in, doing a workshop and follow-up activities with the local youth. For the month of October, this means one community per day, all month, travelling along with the community outreach team. This outreach team does voluntary counselling and testing for rural Swazis that want to get tested for HIV/AIDS but can’t or won’t come into the city for testing. It’s hard, thankless work, but this team (which apparently usually only consists of one very dedicated man) does it every month.

So, on my first day with the team, I got in the outreach truck and we drove in the fog and rain, up dirt roads and two and a half hours away from Manzini. We rolled into New Heaven, and I spent the next hour and a half in a cramped room while David talked to the crowd about HIV/AIDS. At least, I think that was the topic, since it was all in siSwati and I just sat there dumbly while people threw sideways glances at me. I watched as an old grandmother cried after speaking, and counted the amount of women versus the non-existent amount of men. I then stood around completely uselessly as the other three saw each person individually for counseling and testing, for hours. Within that time, I accomplished my goal of meeting with a community leader (the head of the clinic) and talking to him about youth activities in the area. He got enthusiastic, and wanted me to do the workshop with his youth group in a neighbouring community. I was so happy to have found all this positivity on my first day, that it gave me energy to stand around in the freezing cold while staring out at the mist-shrouded community. Yes, it was cold during my first days in Swaziland – I swear! It’s warmed up since, but the nights are still cool.

Sadly, I couldn’t talk to anyone in New Heaven, due to my dismal lack of siSwati, but I came prepared for the next day’s work, to the community of Nyatsini.

David, Thuli, Kumbirayi and I arrived in Nyatsini to find our audience gathered around an impressive tree in the chief’s compound. The men sat under the tree, and the few women sat at a bit of a distance. Thuli, Kumbilei and I joined them, and kind smiles surrounded serious cultural blunders, such as me standing up to introduce myself, instead of kneeling in the presence of the male town elders. But hey, at least I did it in siSwati.

As Kumbilei and Thuli counseled and tested the people that came by, right out there in the open, David sat down with the town elders and translated my questions for me. Due to this kindness, I got my research done, and learned about the complete lack of any youth facilities or youth activities in the community. But what came after was even better. There was a group of women sitting near the truck, and I sat down with them. I pulled out my page of siSwati words and phrases, and attempted to ask them questions. This turned into a solid two hours of socializing with a shifting group of women who took turns reading my page of translations, and telling me incomprehensible things.
Then, they went and got Thabile.

Thabile was fourteen years old, and spoke excellent English – the only person I met who could. She was elated to be talking to me, and wanted to be my friend, and told me about her life and family. She was sitting with her mother (make) and grandmother (gogo), who had been reading my translation paper and laughing with me. She was the youngest of eight children, and had been to school all the way up to Form 1 (Grade 8). Only, now she couldn’t go to school anymore, for a reason that I couldn’t understand in the least. It had something to do with a teacher and her being expelled, and the efforts of her parents and chief were amounting to nothing. I still have no idea what would keep an intelligent young girl out of school. I just know that external circumstances play a much greater role in the matter than personal choice and motivation.

Before leaving, I went with David to see a woman who turned out to be Thabile’s great-aunt. She was sitting curled up in a tiny hut, which we crowded into. David conducted a home visit with her, giving her emotional support and counseling. There, in that hut, he translated for me and told me that this woman was recently unable to walk. Her legs were curled up against her chest, and she was incapable of moving them from that position, for reasons unknown. They are too far from a clinic of any kind, and they don’t have any money and not much to eat. She had ten children, and now she had five, but only one remains at her side, with a son of her own, who sat on the floor and stared at me for the entire time.

After finishing this story, David asked me if I had anything I wanted to ask her. I sat there, completely at a blank, for nothing in my experience had any relation to anything in her experience, and no question, however mundane, could I ask. Even asking the customary ‘unjani?’ felt presumptuous. She is one of the few people to get tested for HIV, and she is negative. I wondered at the amount of sick people, and how many knew it was AIDS, versus how many cases were AIDS without anyone saying so. David didn’t really have a statistic for it, but he visits the bedridden no matter what the diagnosis is.

Ntjanini was Thursday’s visit, and we arrived at a clinic that was clean and looked quite helpful. The only youth that I met was a woman just one year younger than myself, who was the lead peer educator in the community. Siyabonga had finished her schooling five years ago, and had no chance of finding work. When another organization came along two years ago and offered the youth some workshops in peer education (just like I’m about to do), she and 13 others eagerly learned about HIV/AIDS, STIs and other issues concerning youth. For the year that the organization was helping them, everything was good, except that they still had no resources or facilities. Siyabonga talked to anyone she encountered, and intuitively used great techniques to get them to care about HIV/AIDS. However, now the organization is gone, and her peers have stopped caring, and there is little left for her to do. She had a child now, and that has put her efforts on hold, possibly permanently. Her name means ‘thank you everyone’.

In other adventures that day, a male nurse decided he wanted to marry me and started quizzing me on my skills, like whether or not I could hoe the fields. Another nurse in training then took it upon herself to teach me what a good Swazi wife should be like. In jest, I asked something like, would I be allowed to visit my parents? This woman, however, was deadly serious and told me that I would have to ask permission, and if my husband said no, then I couldn’t go. She got very specific, saying things like, if he decides on the day of your departure that you shouldn’t go after all, then you must stay, and your family must wonder where you are. She was so specific and serious that I wondered what her home life was like, and thought that maybe she was trying to tell me about it.

I am learning lessons in the strangest situations. Once when we were driving home, we got stopped by the police for not wearing our seatbelts. I paid the 20 Emalangeni fine, and then promptly got lectured on doing so without attempting to negotiate first. In Africa, I was told, no one just goes and pays – they talk their way out of paying, or pay less, or find some way around the official thing that the police are asking for.

Other sights and sounds rounded out my week. For example, in this place where we couldn’t find anyone to talk to on youth topics, we instead came across a meeting of PLWHAs – people living with HIV/AIDS. They had come together, however they needed training on how to become a proper support group, and David spontaneously gave them the needed information. This is how this man operates – he gives his time way beyond normal capacity, almost beyond human capacity.

Finally, I got to see how an HIV/AIDS test is done. A blood sample is drawn, and the tester drops a bit onto a complex, yet eerily fool-proof disposable strip of cardboard. After fifteen minutes, if the blood has formed one line at one end of the test strip, then the patient is negative. If there’s two lines, then that person is HIV-positive. Simple, yet life-defining.

And now, it’s just about time to do this all over again this week. Each day has been so intense that I feel like it’s been much, much longer than only one week. I still don’t even know how to respond to everything I’ve seen. And yet, I know why I’m here, and I know what I have to do, and it might just be possible that I can do it. We’ll see…

By the way, if you must know, my time here is not all work and no play. There are other important activities that one can find to do, like on a Saturday night, for example.

A group of foreigners I’ve just started to meet couldn’t stop talking about a big concert happening on Saturday, and so I impulsively went and bought a ticket, and got a ride there in the back of a truck. It was amazing. The band’s name was Freshly Ground, a South African band of some renown, and the location was House on Fire, in Malkerns, about half an hour away. Many well-traveled people say that House on Fire is the best place in the world, which is slightly a stretch, but I see their point. It’s almost open-air, with walls that seem like ancient ruins, if not for the colourful bits of glass embedded in everything, even the bathroom walls. It’s a phenomenal location for a concert, and this one was sold out. Freshly Ground had a very funky sound, and the diversity of band members and band instruments really made them special. The dance floor was packed with people, and I danced all night.

Okay, I think it might finally be time to call it quits. There’s no way I can keep up this pace of writing, but on this occaision, I just had to get it all down. But now I can rest my fingers. It’s 10pm, and time to practice a few words of siSwati before bedtime. How easily things become normal, after years of resistance. A 10pm bedtime? I know several people who would laugh heartily at this. (Are you laughing heartily?)

PS. In my dialup internet cafe, I think I've managed to attach photos to this post, but it's possible that this is a rather ambitious statement. If they manage to appear, they are, respectively, the view from my apartment at sunset, Thabile with her mother and grandmother, and the view from the road near Nyatsini. Enjoy!

Swaziland! (now and forever)

2006-09-30T11:35:00.000-03:00

And....I'm here! I'm a bit sweaty and sitting in a random internet cafe, and I'm not sure what time it is, but I do know where I am, and I'm smiling. I've just left my apartment, where I have a balcony with a view of the sunset and the mountains, and I'm wandering around Manzini in search of toothpaste, as I forgot my own in a bed and breakfast in Halifax.

According to my research, I am officially in the Honeymoon Stage of cultural adaptation. Everything is Wonderful, Beautiful, Amazing! I was driven straight to the office upon my arrival yesterday, and was met by smiling faces and words of encouragement. I'll start work at 8am sharp on Monday, and get all oriented to the work I'm about to embark upon.

But for now, the toothpaste search is my highest priority.

Swaziland! (almost)

2006-09-30T11:31:00.000-03:00

Well. Here I am. Almost. I’ve started thinking and writing in very short sentences, or else in thoughts that trail off halfway through… I think it’s because when one is embarking upon something so very large and life-consuming – no, life-defining – one cannot conceive of what lays ahead, no matter the amount of preparation. So, I have a partial vocabulary failure and retreat into my own head, where I try to imagine my new life…in Swaziland!

I’m sitting in London Heathrow Airport, in this weird state of limbo, neither at home nor in my new life. Of course, since they’re charging exorbitant rates for me to connect to the internet, I’ll probably post this once I hit Swaziland, but let’s just disregard that. This will now happen with frequency, for one of the details that I do know about my new life is that it will involve dialup access at an internet café.

My flight is boarding now for Johannesburg, time to go soon. My day in the halfway town of London had no wasted moments in it. Indeed, if I hadn’t accidentally snuck through the fast track lane at the security line, I would still be waiting to go through security. You see, I had to meet a girl in Picadilly Circus to talk about Swaziland, and then, of course, I had to go see a West End Musical. Life is short. See random West End musicals when you can.

Hmmm, upon rereading my last post from June, it appears that my last words on this blog were, goodbye Costa Rica, and hello Katimavik! Clearly, the latter has not come to pass. No, instead Canadian Crossroads International made me a better offer, to be a youth peer advocacy trainer in Swaziland, focusing on topics related to HIV/AIDS (insert excessive exclamation points here). I think the approach will require all those facilitation skillz I picked up in Costa Rica and more, but the work, the context, will be completely different to what I’ve known before. I can’t wait.

I’ve known about this internship for a while now, and have had all this time to prepare. I’ve talked to a bunch of people for extended periods of time on every topic, every question, every debate relating to Swaziland, my working environment, and my job. I also had time to go home and see everyone I love for a good (yet perpetually insufficient) amount of time. At one point, I decided that I was impressively prepared for this position.

Silly me. As I finish this posting at the Johannesburg International Airport, hoping my battery doesn’t run out on me, I feel a lot less prepared than I did back in Halifax when everything was an idea. But this is what I love, this is where living is at its most beautiful, its most intense! I dream, I plan, I prepare, I research and think and study and discuss and rethink….and then I do. And no matter what amount of preparation you do, from four years of university to stacks of research papers to detailed conversations about internet politics, nothing prepares you for the doing of the thing. But no matter. It’s time for action, and never has that action seemed more intimidating, more exciting, and never has it seemed more worth it.

Vamos...

2006-06-22T14:12:00.000-03:00

Now that I've remembered again that I have a blog, I'm wondering how to compose my last entry on my adventures in Costa Rica. Wax lyrical? Be hilarious? Uncover global truths for all to stare at and be enlightened?

Ok, not the latter. Traveling is such a sensory bombardment that, at the end of only two months, I can't make any claims to enlightenment. But I can confirm the wonder and beauty that is Costa Rica and Costa Ricans, and that my return to this country was an excellent choice, indeed.

Just...so comfortable, yet totally unpredictable. In my second stay of two months, I could pick up where I left off, and already know things like how to defend myself against my host father/coworker's ruthless teasing. So now, at the end, instead of being slightly in awe of this larger-than-life character like last year, I instead have this solid friend and mentor who will probably help me get jobs in the exchange field for the rest of my life. And on the unpredictable side, well, this is the type of job where the belief that you know everything lasts only as long as it takes for everything to fall apart. Which, by the way, is a very short time frame. So I keep learning.

What's my life been like this past month? Lots of things. A week of site visits by public transport, motion sickness finally breaking my stomach's iron strenth after the umpteenth hour of washed-out, rocky roads on bus or motorcycle. But still, strangely, smiling, because I love it. I love the spontaneous dance party that erupts among staff at this local lodge, and dancing meringue until my shirt is soaked through. In my hiking boots, because that's what I was wearing when the music started. Or attending a surprise party for a woman from a tiny community, never met her but she's overjoyed to see me there and forces upon me a piece of her Garfield cake. Carrying rocks with my participants for their mysterious project purposes. Surprising a former participant, only to have his family feed me and make me stay the night, while he drives me the hour's ride to my next site visit and back, on his motorcycle. Again, with me grinning madly through the mild whiplash. And also, inevitably, days in front of the computer and/or trapped in the outskirts of San Jose. Hours and hours of card games with my six-year-old host sister, until she really is beating me with strategy.

And more, lots more. But harder to verbalize.

Speaking of (nothing at all), I finally have a fixed future - well, at least for the next year. Come October, I will be a Team Leader for Katimavik! It's a ridiculously good job and I'm also ridiculously excited about it - talk about exchange experience! Although, it's actually surprising how enthusiastic I am, considering I've committed myself to a full year in Canada, whereas a month ago all my plans involved Abroad. But (here comes my piece of personal enlightenment for the year), there's nothing wrong with Canada, really, eh?

Ok, since I don't seem to be accomplishing any hilarity, I think I'll go and deal with whatever crises the universe has decided to let me enjoy during my last days in Costa Rica. Adios!

New New Cousin

2006-05-31T16:56:00.000-03:00

Meet Addison Russell Carter Wright, born May 27, and proud sister Daryn:

Everyone together now - and don't pretend you're too cool to do it - Awwww!!
Tragically, I've only got photos to look at, too...

Urban legends are all true

2006-05-27T14:30:00.000-03:00

Dude. Sweeeet.

Thanks for the birthday greetings and the whatnot! The birthday cake situation of two days ago was epic in an urban-legend-come-true kind of way. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Carly, I have photo documentation of the event and can thus prove the existence of such objects.

Pictured above, you can see some of my adopted family and the aforementioned cake.

Below, Mission: Candle Flame Elimination is attempted by yours truly;

the lengthy mission is undertaken by Alice and others;

and finally the battle is ended by Tamya, ten minutes later. Please note the crafty look on the face of the girl in the top right-handish corner - Maya, the culprit, who planted the self-re-lighting candles.

Trick candles! They exist! And they're awesome!

In other news, in the past week I have jet-setted (or more accurately, bounced around in a jeep/bus/taxi pirata -...setted) all over Costa Rica's northern bits. In between bouts of working very hard, I also witnessed breathtaking beauty, like the other side of Volcán Arenal, where the entire mountain is ash and old lava and the top still spews out its plume of smoke, and like the hanging bridges in Bijagua's rainforest, where my participants utterly failed to call the monkeys to us for a photo opportunity.

In fact, Bijagua's so nice, I've gotta add another photo. That's the walk up to Heliconias Lodge, a lodge run almost entirely by past participants of the Environmental Leadership Program. While you look back at the mountains as you drive up, they seem to get bigger as they recede into the distance. Apparently there's some sort of scientific explanation for this. Mostly, it's just cool. Like Costa Rica.

There was also a bit of dancing time in my last week, so I could break out the cumbia and meringue moves, or you know, learn some. I was inspired by all the dancing to buy some actual salsa-type shoes, but upon wearing them out last night, became incapable of walking within the space of about 15 minutes, let alone dancing. Tragico.

That's all from me on this lovely Saturday morning, but as a final parting shot, I'd like to tell everyone about the supreme importance of one upcoming event: June 9, Costa Rica plays Germany in the opening game of the World Cup. There is discussion of giving the kids the morning off school so they can watch the match. No, seriously. Also, I am now equipped for Costa Rica fandom:

Bring it on.

Cumpleaños feliz...

2006-05-25T21:08:00.000-03:00

So, I was sitting here thinking of what profound things to write about my 22nd birthday, and then I realized that I had chocolate cake and a family birthday dinner waiting for me at the house. Therefore, much as I love and miss everyone that is not here with me right now, I must depart and hang with those other people I love - the ones who make me chocolate cake.

Mmmmm.

Dedicación

2006-05-21T12:54:00.000-03:00

Hello world!

So, at the beginning of week #3 in Costa Rica, Carly tells me that it would be a very good idea to, you know, like, actually post something on that blog I started? So, in gratitude for her visit to alleviate the occaisonal boredom that can be life alone on the outskirts of San Jose, and also to make an effort to stay in touch with everyone without ever having to do things like remember to respond to e-mails and the like...I join thy ranks, O blogging community.

It's going to rain soon. Spending the 'winter' - aka the rainy season - in Costa Rica, you develop that feeling in your bones that only the elderly are allowed to have, where you know that rain is coming in approximately 23 minutes. At the moment, rain also generally means a massive thunderstorm...every day...for months. Which can be quite enjoyable, unless you're wandering around San Jose with eight people, and none of you can find the bus, and two of your three collective umbrellas break under the force of the rain. Por ejemplo.

Actually, life is rather lovely at the moment. After two solid weeks of pre-departure and orientation and logistics and existing only for others and not taking a breath (which, by the way, was also fantastically bombastically fun), I have now spent the last week doing things like reading. So revolutionary! So unprecedented in this whole last year of schoolwork! Well, never again. And by never, I mean Never in that youthful sense of not having any idea of what your life will be like tomorrow, let alone Ever, therefore you can make ultimatums like, I'm Never going back to school, when in fact it's quite a probable occurence a few years down the road.

Hm. It appears that when writing blog entries, I become very fond of run-on sentences. I'll have to watch that. Also, I feel like a good blog should have photos. Luckily I forgot my digital camera in Halifax, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Tomorrow marks the day of my first escape from San Jose! Well, other than that excursion to Volcán Irazú where I walked around in a volcanic crater. And that sustainable organic farm with the impressive politics and the even more impressive garden of medicinal herbs and biogas generator. And that cloudforest in Braullio Carillo National Park. But, uh, other than that...it's off a-site-visiting for me, in a renewal of my project supervisordom for the spectacular grandacular Environmental Leadership Program of Costa Rica!

The person, not the restaurant

2006-04-17T22:28:00.000-03:00