Reflections

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a lot of things. Let me try and get some of them out. Bear with me!

First, my current position will come to an end on December 20^th and it won’t be renewed. My position is covering for someone else who was working for another office for a year and he has decided to stay there. They are reposting my position but they have changed the qualifications which means that I’m not qualified for the job I’m currently doing. This is frustrating and discouraging and while I understand that the direction of the organization is changing and so they are trying to hire the “right” people, I feel like I should be the “right” person. It is frustrating but I don’t have any bad feelings about my organization or my boss. I am trying to see this as an opportunity and a good learning experience.

So this leaves me in a familiar place of having to figure out what is next. I have been here before and I have learned over and over again that God is faithful. I really want to know what the plan is, what the big picture is and what my life will look like 5 years from now. Even thought I've been here before, I want control, security and to Know.

My small group back in Halifax talked about how our lives are a little like those connect-the-dots pictures you find in colouring books for kids. God knows what the picture looks like, but we only get to see the next dot.

The Psalmist talks about the Word of God being a light to his path and a lamp to his feet. I was reminded recently that he wouldn’t need a light or a lamp if he could see the path clearly in front of him.

Martin Luther King Jr. is quoted as saying that “faith is taking the first step even when you can’t see the whole staircase.”

Part of me actually loves this. It might mean that I should get my head checked but part of me likes the variety and the unknown and new places and new things. Every time I’ve found myself in this position the next thing has always been great. Last time I was here I ended up in Burundi, and while that was hard it was also great. The time before that I ended up in Halifax doing my Masters. Also hard, but great. So I know that whatever is next, God has a plan and it may be hard but it will be great. A new place, (city, workplace, country who knows!), new people and a new challenge. Exploring a new place, settling into a new apartment and learning a new job. All of this is exciting and challenging and makes me happy and I enjoy it.

But part of me hates this. Part of me would like to stay in one place and be able to have routines and traditions. I watch my friends buying houses and having kids and settling into the rhythm of their lives and I get jealous. I would love to set down roots, have my own space that I can decorate and actually unpack all the boxes that are currently hiding in random places in my parents’ house and know that I will get to stay there and that my things will stay where I put them and I won’t have to pack them and move again. I want to have a vegetable garden and grow things and maybe can things knowing that I will be around to eat the things that I can. I want to connect with people and build new relationshipos. The idea of roots, of belonging to a place is so attractive to me.

I don’t know if I’ll ever figure out how to balance these sides of me but I don’t think I’m ready to choose one side over the other. In the meantime, I’ll continue to have faith that whatever is next will be great, even if it is hard. I’ll continue to take the next steps, remembering that God knows where the staircase is heading even when I don’t. I’ll remind myself that I don’t need to belong to a place, because I belong to Christ.

Long Over Due: Pictures

I keep meaning to post pictures from my trip earlier this summer to Mali and Mauritania. The internet connection was always too slow to post them while I was there. I am always happy to talk about my trip and the work that World Vision is doing, so please let me know if you have questions! Enjoy the pictures and if you want to know more about what WV is doing or if you want to sponsor a child in Mali or Mauritania go to www.worldvision.ca!

I got to meet colleagues from other offices inclugin Swtizerland and New Zealand at the workshop in Mali



Baobab tree in the distance on a hot sunny day in San, Mali

Hot and dry outside of San, Mali

Celebrations in a village in Mali

Eating lunch together on the road in Mauritania. Roasted Sheep in a communal plate. We ate it sitting under a tent in a town called Aleg.

I got to attend a community celebration for the completion of a water project in Mauritania. A water tower and solar pump provides clean, running water to 5 villages and a school.

The miracle of clean water steps outside of people's homes. People used to travel up to 5 km with donkeys and buckets to get water that was contaminated and often made their children sick.

A windy day in the Sahel, in Mauritania

I bought some fabric from this women's association in Mauritania

Preparing the fabric before it gets dyed.

Meeting with some of the volunteers in a community in Mauritania

Saharan Adventures: Story time

I am spending my last night in Mauritania in much the same way as I spent the first; listening to the call to prayer over a loudspeaker. Tonight I am in Bogue, a small town right on the Senegal River instead of in the captial city of Nouakchott. Today was the first day of Ramadan. I am staying in a 'eco tourist auberge' which really just means there isn't any running water. Aside from that it is a nice enough place and I am sitting outside in the breeze looking at the stars. Tomorrow I leave Bogue very early and drive 4 hours to Nouakchott for a series of meetings before boarding the plane. I spent today in a whirlwind tour of two of our community programs meeting with a women's association, watching a skit and dance troup by a girl's association, and seeing various other projects like health centers, nutrition monitoring centers, gardens and schools buildings. It was a busy day made all the more tiring by the 45 degree heat and the sun beating down on our heads as we examined latrine buidings for schools and the different plants in the gardens. It was a really good day and I have the pictures to prove it, but sadly I have no idea where I packed my SD card reader so you don't get to see any of them.

Today for lunch there were only three of us eating. Since it is Ramadan most of the staff are fasting but one of the staff here is Rwandan (and also not muslim) and another of the staff is pregnant. So we three ate together around a common plate as we sat cross legged on the floor. I really like the way people eat together here. There is something really hospitable and special about the routine. It starts with washing hands. There is a plastic container with water, shaped like a mix between a watering can and a kettle, and a basin with a bar of soap. You use the soap and water to wash your hands but it is awkward to both pour the water and wash your hands so you need someone to help you. It is this really nice little ritual of helping each other wash your hands; it reminds me of Jesus washing his disciples feet. Once everyone has washed their hands you gather around the common plate. Often it is a plate of just meat but thankfully today's plate was different. There was corn mixed with tuna (surprisingly yummy) gratted carrots, olives, fries, tomatoes and chicken. You grab a piece of bread and use it to pick up the rest of the food with your hands. Someone who has a lot of trouble with germs would probably not enjoy this process but I managed to ignore this for the most part. I like the communal part of the meal and the sharing and conversation. After everyone is finished eating you go through the ritual of washing hands once again, helping each other and passing the watering-can-kettle around in a circle.

Since I can't share any of my pictures yet, I'll end with a story.

There once were two men who lived in the same small village. One day one of the men (I wasn't clear on the how or why...) turned into a goat. When the sun set he turned back into a man. The two friends decided that this was an opportunity. So the next day the goat-man turned into a goat and his friend took him to the nearby town to the market and sold him to a man from a neighbouring village . That night, as soon as the sun set the goat-man turned back into a man and escaped from the man who had bought him. The next day the goat-man turned back into a goat and his friend took him back to the market. The same man who had bought the goat-man the day before was back again, since the goat that he had bought had escaped. So he bought another goat. That night his goat turned back into a man and escaped. Day after day the man bought a goat at the market and night after night his goat escaped.  The goat-man and his friend thought this was a great game and they were getting rich without having to do anything.
One day, a short time later, the goat-man and his friend were back in the market and the man from the neighbouring village came by. He bought the goat-man (again) and once he had handed over the money he pulled out a knife.
"What are doing with that knife dear sir?" asked the goat-man's friend.
"My friend, every day I buy a goat, but every night it escapes. This time I will slaughter it now so that it does not have a chance to escape!" explained the man from the neighbouring village.
"But it is better to wait until tomorrow to kill it." said the goat-man's friend."Really I think you should wait until tomorrow."
"But if I wait until tomorrow, I will have no goat to kill since all of my goats have escaped!" said the man lifting up the knife.
And so the goat-man's friend had to decide whether to let his friend the goat-man be slaughtered and eaten, or to admit to the other man their schemes in order to save his friends life.

This story was told to me twice and one time he let his friend die, and the other he admited the truth.
The End.

Saharan Adventures: Nearing the end

I've spent the last couple of days visiting different projects and meeting community members and sponsored children. It has been a whirlwind trip with a lot of driving. There is a good road between Nouakchott and Kiffa, but once you get off that road to get to the communities where we work, the trips get interesting. All of a sudden the road just sort of stops and you find yourself following well worn tracks in the sand. In some places even those disappear and you're just driving through fields and sand dunes. In some places it is what I imagine the Paris-Dakar Rally to be like. I have spent a lot of the past couple of days being thrown around the back seat of a Land Cruiser and I have the bruises to prove it. Eventually we reach our destinations, small towns in the middle of nowhere built where there is water at least part of the year. These towns don't make any sense right now at the end of the dry season, but I am told that ones the rains come the landscape changes completely, from dry and dusty to lush green grasslands and rivers cutting off communities from each other. From the towns where we have our project offices we go out into the surrounding communities, tiny villages seperated by kilometers of sand and dried out river beds. I was priviledged to be able to meet some of the community members and to celebrate with them the completion of a water system that provides clean water to 5 villages and the school they share. A beautiful old woman, back bent and skin wrinkled grasped my hand with surprising strength as she told me about the difference these water taps made to the health of their children. I was humbled to be invited into the home of one of the families, served sweetened milk and tea and told that this was my home, that I should feel free to visit it anytime. I sat with a shy girl sponsored through our project and when I asked why she was so quiet, found out that I was the first white person that she, or even her mother, had ever seen in real life.

This country is at once beautiful, desperate, magnetic and repulsive. The landscape is varied, from rolling sand dunes dotted with Nime trees and thorny bushes, to flat expanses of rocky nothingness. There is a string of mountains that crosses Mauritania reminding me of pictures I've seen of the grand canyon. These mountains hide valleys full of date palms and sand dunes, an oasis pitcuresque and exotic. The towns are teaming with people, selling and buying, donkey carts loaded with people and products, the streets bustling and full of garbage. The outlying areas seem sparsely populated with tents and small houses in little clusters in the middle of nowhere, seemingly deserted. Small herds of cows, camels, sheep and goats dot the landscape, crossing the roads and causing some heart stopping moments in the Land Cruiser. There are empty burned out car frames along the side of the roads, stripped of anything that could possibly be of value and left to rot, looking every bit like a decaying carcass in the hot desert sun. When the wind picks up it carries sand through the air like a cloud, getting in your eyes and nose. When I get to wherever I am staying at the end of the day I am always surprised by the amount of sand in my ears.

I only have two more days here. Part of me is sad that this adventure is almost over. The heat doesn't seem quite so oppressive, and the people are warm and welcoming. I am learning a lot and the work is going well. I have spent the past week speaking only French and I am pleased with how effortless that has been most of the time. However, a bigger part of me is really looking forward to heading back to Canada and to being out of the sweltering sun, back in the more reasonable temperatures of a Canadian summer.