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.

Saharan Adventures: In between spaces.

I have a love/hate relationship with airports. Over the past several years I've spent an awful lot of time in them. Long layovers, delays, dealing with airline staff and finding terminals and gates. When I am in an airport I feel like I am in a holding pattern, not here, not there in the inbetween spaces. Most of the time I find this frustrating as I would rather be here or there and the inbetween is an inconvenience, something to be endured but not enjoyed. Sometimes though, that holding pattern, the inbetween is exactly what I need.

After two weeks in the feild in Mali- two weeks of interesting people, of eating chicken everyday at least once a day, and working long days - I took the bumpy 6 hour drive from San back to Bamako on Wednesday. Bamako is a sprawling city on the banks of the Niger river with streets packed with motorcycles, land cruisers and taxis fighting for position with pedestrians darting in and out trying to get from one side of the busy streets to the other. The air in Bamako is heavier than in San, more humidity and it has been raining there more than in the Segou Region where I spent the last two weeks. I didn't get to spend much time in the capital but it was an intriguing city that both attracted and repelled. I spent some time in meetings and had dinner with a collegue from Switzerland on Wednesday before heading to the airport on Thursday morning.

After going through security I found myself back in the inbetween space of the departures terminal. The international airport in Bamako has only one gate with a duty free shop and a small cafe where you can buy french pasteries and coffee. I only had enough CFA left to buy a small bottle of water but since there is no AC in the terminal it was an important purchase. My flight was slightly delayed so I found myself sitting in the same plastic seats you find in airports all over the world staring out the window at the UN planes (the blue helments arrived in country on Sunday. We passed several UN transport vehicles on the road to Bamako heading north) and at the Sahel stretching out behind the runway. This time the holding pattern was a welcome moment to collect my thoughts and to think and to clear my mind. Maybe it seems weird, but as much as I am looking forward to what is coming over the next couple of days in Mauritania I needed that hour to adjust and to prepare and to relax. The inbetween space, not in Mali, not in Mauritania, neither here nor there.

Flying into Nouakchott was almost like landing on the moon. The landscape below, becoming clearer the closer the plane came to the tarmac, seemed alien and strange and like nothing I've ever seen before. The flowing white sand interspersed with rockier red soil, the Sahel giving way the to Sahara. The buildings rising up, the same colour as the ground, everything bleached white by the sun. The heat when you get off the plane hits you in the face, almost physically knocking you back but their is releif in the breeze that blows off the Atlantic Ocean only a few kilometers away. Nouakchott is a quieter city, smaller and more reserved than Bamako. Women walking in their colourful hijabs, men in their long white robes. Both Mali and Mauritania are Muslim Republics but Mali is more permissive, if that is the right word. Christians are not allowed to prostelatize in Mali but churches are plentiful and well attended. In Mauritania I am told there are only two churches in the capital but they are forbidden to mark themselves with signs and it is illegal for a Mauritanian citizen to frequent them. The city is dotted with the spires of Mosques and you can hear the call to prayer echoing in the streets at dawn.

I am in the hotel in Nouakchott having a rare day off since the office is closed here on Friday. Tomorrow morning I'll be leaving early for the 8 hour drive through the desert to Kiffa. Even now in the hotel with the AC running and a tv playing american movies with arabic subtitles I feel like I am in a continuation of that inbetween space of the airport. Tomorrow things pick up again and the adventures and work continue. For now I am taking the time to rest up and finish some reports and to prepare for the upcoming meetings. I'm not here, not there. A holding pattern in the inbetween space.

Sahelian Adventures: A few pictures

Here are a few pictures of my time so far in San, Mali. The connection is a little slow so you only get a small taste :)


The moon above my Hotel in San, Mali




The rain is coming!

Keeping me company while I work

Sahelian Adventures: the Scenic Route

We had a workshop in a community today, the last day of a two day participatory exercise with various project stakeholders. It is a bit of a drive from where we are staying in San, off the tar roads and out into the bush. The workshop went well and it was a really interesting experience although we had to end early because it was threatening to rain. So we all piled into the vehicles and left the project office to head back to San.

Our driver, Charles, likes to drive fast and is a little competitive, preferring to be the first to arrive places (in my head I hear Rowan Atkinson saying “Is a Race!”). So this afternoon on our way back to San he decided to take a short cut. Instead of following the other vehicles that had left before us he turned off the road onto a little track. It was not a main road, but it looked fairly well used and was clearly visible in the red soil. After a little while the track became a trail and at one point we lost it entirely. We were driving through the middle of open bush with no sense of where the road was. I had the sense that we were in a scene from a Discovery Channel documentary, on safari or maybe trying to find some mysterious and elusive creature in some unexplored territory. At one point we pulled up to a house in the middle of nowhere, much to the surprise of the family who lives there, and had to ask for directions. We found the track again and it meandered here and there past farmer’s fields and baobab trees, our Land Rover barreling along sending goats, piglets and chickens scrambling in all directions. At one point it took us right through the center of a little settlement and we had to drive around a well. Some women who were pounding millet into flour had to move their huge mortars to make way as we drove past. We kept following this track, but it soon narrowed back into a trail and then as it wound its way through thicker bushes and trees it became a bit of a river so that the Land Rover was fish tailing and hydroplaning through the bush, splashing water up over the hood. We were laughing and joking that we were taking the ‘scenic route,’ but all the while I was so sure that we were going to get stuck in the mud. The Land Rover had turned into a kind of boat and we had so much mud stuck to our tires that even when we were not driving through the water it felt like we were slipping and sliding in all directions. We did get a little stuck at one point but Charles was able to get us out without resorting to us pushing the vehicle with us up to our knees in red mud. Finally, just as it started raining we found our way back to the road and made our way back to San. Oddly enough, even after our off-roading scenic detour we were among the first vehicles back.

 I guess Charles won the race afterall.

Sahelian Adventures: A picture of San, Mali

Today I was driving in a Land Rover today over packed red roads through a rural area of Mali, West Africa. The sun streaming through the plumes of red dust being tossed up by the Helix truck in front of us gave the flat, dry landscape an almost dreamy quality as if I was looking at a sepia coloured photograph. The countryside is dotted by huge baobab trees, freshly plowed fields and scrawny bushes and donkeys, cows, horses, pigs, goats and sheep that give the impression that someone has randomly strewn about pieces from a child’s farm playset. The rainy season only has just started but there are already a few places where we had to drive through water and in a few weeks these places will be largely inaccessible.

Now I am sitting outside under a porch listening as the wind picks up and brushes through the leaves of the mango and moringa trees in the courtyard. You can tell the rain is coming because the wind picks up suddenly and there is a lot of dust in the air and the birds start to get very noisy right before the rain starts to fall. For now it is not raining very hard; for all the thunder and wind only a very few drops actually fall to the ground. It may be raining harder somewhere else, but for this area, so desperate for rain, the ground will have wait for a good drink for another few days. I have been told the rains are a bit late this year, and while no one expects another food crisis and most indications are that this year should be a good harvest, there is a still some anxiety in the voices of the people as they look at the mostly cloudless skies and then back at their still bare fields.

I wanted to have a few pictures to add to this post but the connection is not fast enough today. Hopefully sometime soon.

A la prochaine!

Saharan Adventures

I'm back! I have this horrible habit of just dropping my blog as soon as I set foot back on Canadian soil. I have this perception, true or not, that my life in Canada is not very interesting, especially compared to dinner with Hippos on Lake Tanganyika. Some interesting things have happened since my last post. I came home, got aclimatized to Canadian winter, watched lots of Hockey (the NHL lockout was just waiting for me to come home!), tried to work on my thesis (fail) and then got a new job. Now I am working for World Vision Canada as the Regional Program Officer for West Africa. It is a short term position while the real RPO is working for a different WV office for a year. But it is a job, and I really really like it, so I'll take it, even if it does mean more uncertainty and being unable to plan for more than a few months at a time. More on that another time maybe.

Which leads me to this post. As part of my job I help to support Canadian funded programs in Mali, Mauritania, Chad and Niger. Today I am leaving for a three week trip to Mali and then to Mauritania. I'm excited because this is an area of Africa I've never been. I have images of rolling sand dunes, nomads on camels and sweltering heat. We'll see how these images match up with the real thing.

These are very different contexts than those I've worked in before. Both countries are Muslim republics, both countries stradle the Sahel and the Sahara and struggle with producing enough food. the coup in Mali last year and the following conflict and security issues have added to challenges people face. I have always been facinated by Mali and Timbuktu has been on my list of places to see for a long time. Timbuktu was a center of trade and learning dating back to the 13th century. It holds a certain mystery and allure, with its secrets and insights into a different time and culture. Unfortunately I won't be able to see Timbuktu because of the precarious security situation in that area. It is sad because the rebels have destroyed large parts of the ancient city that has stood as an icon on the continent for hundreds of years. I will be staying in the South of Mali, well away from where the French army is working with Malian forces to weed out the islamist rebels who have been causing so much trouble. While there is always risk when you travel overseas I've been assured that the security situation in the areas where I'll be going is safe and calm. So those of you who tend to worry, I will be safe but maybe you shouldn't read the news about Mali for the next couple of weeks just for your own peace of mind!

After Mali I get to fly from Bamako to Nouakchott, Mauritania. I'm really looking forward to this as well. Mauritania is not exactly your typical beach destination, even if it is on the Atlantic Ocean. It does have plenty of sand though....

These are not pleasure trips or vacations. I'll be working a lot and it will be exhausting and probably uncomfortable. I know that I'm going to witness levels of poverty that I haven't seen before. I'm going to struggle with our work, the difficulties people face and trying to figure out how we can help. I'll also have to accept (again) that we can't do everything for everyone. Bathrooms and showers are going to be few and far between and I am leaving my ergonomic pillow behind.  Regardless, I'm looking forward to driving through the Sahara, sleeping under the stars in rural Mauritania, eating goat and couscous with my hands, seeing the laughing, smiling faces of the children World Vision works with and to meet the staff who work hard for the wellbeing of children, families and their communities where we work.
Allons-y!