Last e-Journal from Africa? (August 2008)

Hamjambo, mabibi na mabwana? (a Kiswahili greeting... "how are you, ladies and gentlemen?")

I imagine this to be my last open letter "from the field" for some time, as I turn my energies towards being here in Kenya, and perhaps to writing a book in the near future.

I wanted at the very least to follow up from my last bulletin, though, before turning entirely inward into novel-writing, to update you on Amos Wright and his family, the Liberian refugees I wrote to you about in late June. With the support of the friends and family who responded to my request for donations, we were able to send Amos enough money for his wife and children to make the journey home to Liberia, overland from Ghana. They are now settling into their "homeland", which the children have never seen as they were born in refugee camps, and are in the process of setting up house near Amos's mother – who eagerly awaits her son's return to join the family this October… I don't know how to properly thank everyone who reached out to help, but Amos puts it this way in the open email letter of thanks he sent for me to share with you:

"Dear All You Lovely People,

My children, wife and I are so proud that you have been a source of our joy and smiles in our extremely challenging times. We still don't know how we could have counted ourselves in the number of returning refugees had you not stretched out your blessed hands of concern to help us overcome one of our main challenges.

Thank you so much for every penny that you donated to help facilitate the repatriation of my family."

As I said in my June letter, Amos became a friend of mine in Ghana, where we both attended a Non-Violent Communication (NVC) intensive 6 day workshop. His incredible story, from Liberian security forces to Sierra Leone as a refugee and then to Ghana, gives you some idea of the depth of character and shining heart that Amos possesses, but it's hard to put into words... I hope that at least some of you get to meet this incredible person one day. I've attached two pictures of him and his family, which he sent along with his thank you message I excerpted above. After our NVC course, Amos and I were paired up as "empathy buddies", and we talk or chat online each week, offering each other support and listening in our day to day challenges and joys.

It's hard to compare my "challenges" with those of a refugee who lives on fifteen dollars a month and dedicates his time to mediating conflict and building peace, mostly as a volunteer… but I have to admit I've encountered a few in my time in Africa. And yet, separating out the difficulties and the joys is artificial and skims over the richly woven tapestry of experience here. Somehow the frustrations and the laughter and the stumbles and the dancing all jumble into one brightly coloured garment that I wear with wonder, feeling both at home and very much alien in this land of red earth and rain and wildness.

Alien. Although I've spent a great deal of my life feeling quietly out of place, like I have a secret cave in my heart full of strangeness, an awkward and unlovable gawky self that lives just beneath my skin and always threatens to be revealed, there's really nothing to make you feel "other" like being a visible minority, which I never was in Canada. Skin colour. All the layers of history that are twisted into the stories people tell each other, and themselves, about what a person's colour means or doesn't mean… it's a lot of baggage, a lot of walls that get in the way of just being a human being, interacting with other human beings, wanting to learn and grow in mind and spirit. I am WHITE here, glaringly white in a way I never knew before, when I had no colour label attached to my self image. Mzungu, foreigner. "Hey white lady, come here." In any crowd I pass through, there are a range of reactions.... laughter, stares, or feigned indifference and heads turning deliberately away. I am absolutely alien here, and alien with a particular shade of skin that has over a century of ugly and patronizing history attached to it. So it is that most of my first encounters with new people in public take place through veils -- adulation mingled with fear and shame, or deeply buried anger and envy coated shallowly with starchy politeness. I am studying Swahili, and the more I learn, the more aware I become of what is said about me as I move through the streets of Nairobi. I face my discomfort directly, when I have the energy, by striking up a conversation with whoever it is I'm having this experience with, trying to make a genuine connection that cuts through all the veils. Sometimes it works, and something in each of us shifts and softens and I feel a warmth spreading out from the centre of my heart that lasts all day, just for sheer joy of having connected to a fellow being in such trying circumstances. Sometimes it doesn't work, and I leave with a kernel of sadness in my heart, hoping that in some way in my life I will see at least the beginnings of a world where everyone can just be, can connect as human beings without fixating on the surface features that are different. I can't fix the power dynamics that are attached to skin colour almost everywhere in the world – except within myself. So I just continue on my way, feeling the joys and sorrows of connecting and of failing to connect, across the barriers.

At home. In other ways, Africa has embraced me like a long-lost child. Somehow, Africa peels away the layers of my defenses and reveals my own "orphaned-ness" to me… then she pulls me to the bosom of her red earth and tells me stay... you are home. I have been adopted by at least four families in four countries of West Africa, and a few here in the East as well. It's the irony of my time Africa – the parts I have seen, at least, from North to East to West and back again – that life seems so much more vibrant and intense with the constant spectre of death and danger in the wings. Life is uncertain. It is loud and bright, a mishmash of colour and sound and smell, it has teeth, and it doesn't stop for any individual. It's a wild, deep and rushing river, deadly yet teeming with life. You swim fiercely, or it rushes past you and spits you out on the bank for something to devour.

The stark contrasts here are even sharper because I find myself thrust from one end of the spectrum to the other almost every second day – it can leave a girl's head and heart spinning, leaving aside altogether the confusion of deciding what to wear each morning!

At the UN compound in the Gigiri area of Nairobi, I exist in a bubble of Westernized cosmopolitan privilege. Exotic, but a bubble nonetheless… in the Cafeteria, I can sip a cappuccino under swaying hibiscus hedges, watching shocking yellow birds dart down from the branches and steal beakfuls of unmistakably Kenyan, molasses-scented sugar from bowls of it left unattended on tables. The occasional troop of monkeys saunters by and peers in office windows, while inside the long multistory buildings, thousands of people from across the globe surf the internet, chat in all flavours of lilting English and French and a multiplicity of other tongues, and hold meeting upon endless meeting to decide what protocol to follow in this or that situation.

My home, in a sheltered neighbourhood near Gigiri, is another oasis. Our landlord is a German fellow who came to Kenya over 15 years ago and sensibly decided never to leave. He has the mellowed expatriate glow, the easy smile of a Northern European who has relaxed and expanded into the looser, less regulated world of Africa… but he's still German, and the place runs like clockwork. My tiny cottage is hooked up to an automatic backup generator, so my lights barely flicker while millions of others in the wider Nairobi area lose power and regain it at random intervals. I have hot water on command, water pressure that makes it a real shower, and a lusciously vine-embraced garden that is my own little pool of tranquility.

Having recently learned to drive (yep, it only took me twice the usual 16 years… but I did it!), I no longer have to suffer the freakishly unsafe yet occasionally thrilling matatu experience… a tooth-rattling public transit treat that I typically pay twice the going rate for, owing to my white skin. Driving in Nairobi, however, even in the comfort of one's own car, has its hairy side. For instance, the fact that "road rules" are on paper only and the reality is the simple jungle law of eat or be eaten. Or that most vehicles are ill-maintained, if they are maintained at all (I have personally witnessed an old scarred matatu being "repaired" by its driver at the roadside, with what appeared suspiciously like a fork, and having some of its loose innards tied back together with a rag). Or that most drivers are not "licensed" in any sense of that word that would mean a damn thing in Canada…

Of course, I did choose the most upside down and backward way possible of learning to drive. For anyone wishing to duplicate my recipe of Driver's License Madness, follow these simple instructions: Wait until age 32. Move to a foreign country where they drive on the left side. Choose a city that is to all intents and purposes a giant overgrown village where there are no street numbers, only landmarks, and all the motorways twist like anacondas mating. A city with potholed and poorly marked roads, little if any street-lighting, and just a lot of general motor vehicle insanity. Learn to drive on a hulking, diesel SUV without power steering. Manual transmission of course. Oh, and yes, last but not least… let this SUV be an imported car with the steering wheel on the… left side of the car, doh! Take lessons with local who speaks to you partly in Swahili and partly in English, and who frequently mixes up "left" and "right". Go for driving "exam", fill out endless forms, visit three government offices to pay "fees" and voila! You have yourself a bona fide Kenyan driver's license... and you can drive pretty much anything, anywhere if you can do this!

Anyway, somehow I have indeed mastered the art of driving, and am now as free as anyone else with a vehicle to screech along Uhuru Highway at 70KPH one minute, then crawl at 2KPH through a roundabout shortly thereafter while traffic cops mysteriously stand beside the automated traffic lights and give opposite signals, waving cars to "come on, hurry" through a red light and then to stop for green…. Well, small mercies -- at least here people are not honking continuously as they do in Bombay, where the traffic experience is taken to an entirely new plane of madness with the cacophony of millions of drivers hooting all day... and this goes on from 5AM to 11PM without a moment's cessation.

Driving has managed to increase the speed at which I jerk back and forth between worlds, because just a turn to the left instead of right in some areas can take you suddenly from wealth and privilege and high gated compounds, into jumbles of street stalls with piles of fruit and vegetables, old women in billowing skirts bent double carrying firewood on their long treks home, hustlers meandering along between the loosely formed "lanes" of traffic hawking everything from maps to magazines to pillows, people with missing limbs shuffling somehow along dirty sidewalks and begging for change… pulsing innards of Nairobi, where in some places a million people live on a piece of land equivalent in size to one golf course, under leaking tin roofs and on dirt floors that become mud in the rains, and where going to the toilet at the wrong time of day might mean being raped, so most folks go in a bucket and fling it out the window into the "street", such as it is.

For all the horrors that life in a slum brings with it, though, the communities within them are intensely tight knit and in some ways are like villages, only without the support of productive land that can feed and "employ" those living on it as it would in the countryside. My visits to Kibera, the largest slum in Africa, have been some of the most enjoyable experiences of my time here, the times I felt safest, most welcome, and most fully able to connect to the people I was meeting in a meaningful way. Some of the work that youth groups in the slums are doing – and I am excited that the project I'm working on here means I get to work directly with these amazing groups – is phenomenal. On the smallest scale, groups of young people growing up in slums are organizing to provide services like waste collection, recycling and sanitation, that their own government seems unwilling to provide to these economically poorer areas, and often are using the small profits not for themselves but to support other community ventures, like schools.

The work I'm doing with Environmental Youth Alliance, in our contract with UN-HABITAT, means getting to interact directly with these groups and learn from them, while also providing the support and capacity building to help them expand their revenue generating projects so that they can become a source of decent livelihood for the group as well as increase the impact of the social good that they are doing with their work. It is about as rewarding as I can imagine work being…

I've left so many stories untold, so many funny moments just jotted down in bullet point form and left for "my book", whenever it may be born. If this is indeed the last update from the field, then I thank you all for coming along for this journey since I began documenting it in January 2007... wow, that long ago!

World Refugee Day 2008 (June 2008)

I am working on a few overdue chapters of my adventures here -- all about the mysteries of bananas that taste like potatoes, meeting Chairman Mao (OK, his full name is Norbert Mao) in Northern Uganda, intestinal malaise (parts 1 through 3 of a gurgling, groaning saga), random English on T-Shirts ("gettin' Lucky in Kentucky!") and signs ("no hooting!"), discovering my inner domestic diva (banana bread, anyone?), melting in Ghana and freezing in Kenya, and the strange, sometimes amusing flattery of being avidly courted through the wacky medium of text messages (which are THE way to keep in touch in Africa!). Not to mention the frustrations, heartbreak and occasional real joys of trying, however challenging the circumstances within and without at times, to be the change I wish to see in this world.

But those tales can wait a few more days or weeks, possibly years (time being rather elastic here)... I have a more important story to tell you today, and a request. While I'm not an ambassador (yet! *wink*), and I can't hope to compete with the exquisite Angelina Jolie, who as goodwill ambassador to the UN's refugee agency helped make a film to honour and highlight the realities of the millions upon millions of refugees in our world today, displaced by violence and disaster (check it out at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/2162983/Angelina-Jolie-films-UN-video-for-refugee-day.html),

I am doing something on a much smaller scale...

Though I'm only beginning to wrap my head around the structures and policies that fail to address - and sometimes may worsen - the problems of these huge numbers of refugees, I have made a personal pledge to make a difference in the lives of one family of refugees as my contribution on World Refugee Day. I would like to help send my friend and fellow peacebuilder, Amos Deeahn Wright, his wife and children, and their bed and personal effects back home to Liberia, a country now in the hopeful phases of post-conflict reconstruction, where I am quite certain he will become one of his homeland's powerful voices for peace. It's also a birthday present to Amos, who celebrates his special day tomorrow, June 21st, on the summer solstice... I've pledged the first $200 towards the one thousand dollars they need in order to relocate -- in other words, I'm covering one family member. While UNHCR will pay for Amos himself to return home, they make no allowance for family or belongings, and each person will cost him $200 to transport by truck overland across West Africa, as will their combined effects. This is a burden beyond imagining for a family with nearly no income, who live in a camp and wake up every day facing the challenge of finding enough food, let alone try to save funds for an international journey. I dearly want to help him meet his goal of returning his family, together, back home by this July, and I'm asking you to join me in extending help to the Wrights, if you share my desire to make a meaningful, personal contribution on World Refugee Day. If everyone I am sending this to contributes as little as the cost of a movie or a meal this very week, then the Wright family could be home by early next month and beginning their new life in now-peaceful Liberia. If you'd like to join in, the easiest way to get the funds over here is to send them to my PayPal account. I am currently working with Amos to try to get him on PayPal as well, in the hope that if it works, I can then transfer the total amount to him easily, and will let you know when it's done if you prefer to transfer it directly to him (bear with us, though, things take FOREVER sometimes in Africa).

Whether you are in a position to help or not, whether you feel moved to do so or not, I would like you to get to know Amos, because he's someone I wish we could send all around the world to share his brilliance and bigheartedness with all of humanity. I met Amos in Ghana, where I attended a week long intensive training in Non Violent Communication (check out www.cnvc.org, and www.nonviolentcommunication.com). The NVC trainers who came to Africa as part of a summit for the African Alliance for Peace offered the course free to a wide array of locals, most of whom would never have the financial means to attend such a training. Amos heard about it through his volunteer work with Mediators without Borders, and we were more than blessed to have his presence in our group.

One of the assistant trainers in the NVC workshop, Donna Carter of California, was blogging about her experience, her way of sharing her adventure with friends and supporters back home. I quote a segment of her writings here about Amos, because they really capture his spirit and his story beautifully:

{ He talks with a syncopated yet measured, rich baritone. The very rhythm of Amos Deeahn Wright's careful speech mirrors the consideration he brings, not only to each word, but also to each person he encounters in his mission – to use mediation and nonviolent communication to build a foundation of peace in Liberia.

The ready smile that seizes Amos' entire face at any moment delights me and belies the challenges this man has experienced after escaping from war in his home country of Liberia when he was 25. He has lived as a refugee ever since, almost two decades.

Amos was with the Liberian security forces escort for President Samuel Doe on the day rebels captured Doe in 1990 during guerrilla warfare. Rebels eventually tortured and assassinated Doe, cutting off his ear in a video aired on television.

"I saw no safety in going back to Liberia," said Amos... He sneaked aboard a Ghanaian cargo ship and escaped to Ghana. There, he found himself in a refugee camp, young, without a country, and without financial means.

Money is limited; however, Amos has an abundance of guile, perseverance and enthusiasm. He saw himself at a crossroads. He opted to change his direction in life from soldier to peace-builder.

"When I got here I thought on the moment of transformation that the war was a result of the failure of the generation before me to accept a platform that we would enjoy as Liberian youth," he said. "On the contrary, we experienced war at the time we were supposed to be decision-makers of the country. So I can use my stay in Ghana to change the future of Liberia by going into peace-making activities."

In the refugee camp he became a classroom teacher, which each month pays 15 Ghana cedis, the equivalent of $15 U.S. dollars. The West Africa Dispute Resolution Center (WADREC) trained him as a mediator. He began volunteering as a mediator in the Ghanian courts. }

(Excerpted from May 22, 2008 entry at: http://www.donna-in-ghana.blogspot.com/ -- I encourage any of you interested in NVC or the Ghana event from Donna's viewpoint to read more!)

In honour of World Refugee Day, I send you greetings from Africa, and I share my hopes and dreams for a more peaceful, just world in the years ahead. And my heartfelt request to help me help Amos and the Wright family repatriate to Liberia to help build a strong and lasting peace there...

Hello from Acholi-Land (May 2008)

Kopa-ngo, friends! (Now you say "Ko-peh! -- there you go, speaking Acholi!)

This is, I think but can't entirely guarantee, going to be a short hello from the field... short because access to internet here is sketchy and I may not have time for more, and a hello so you all know I'm alive! Also I think that being here includes the responsibility to share some news from "live, on location" in Gulu, one of the districts at the heart of the LRA-conflict territory, where for years children were stolen in the night, sometimes even forced to kill their own parents as they went, taken into the bush and drugged, armed, trained and indoctrinated as child soldiers.... I had heard about this conflict for years, and wondered about its roots. Being here I think I am beginning to understand it better, now that I can actually hear from the people who've lived through it. I am utterly amazed by the resiliency, kindness and hospitality of the Acholi people, who have suffered nearly unimaginable horrors from all sides in the last few decades, and yet are committed to healing and reconciliation and moving forward with their lives in peace.

In the North here, millions of people were displaced and have lived, in some cases, for up to 20years in "temporary" Internally Displaced Persons camps. That is like being a refugee with fewer rights, because the international community via the UN/Red Cross do not have jurisdiction and influence over your wellbeing and access to resources. Your own government does. If, as in this case, your government is slanted rather heavily to a tribe or ethnic group other than your own, and that same government receives oodles of money from international aid and donations to "take care of you" but isn't held accountable by those donors for resolving the underlying conflict that displaced you (in which that same government is also guilty of atrocities), well... you could be in that hut without clean water or a place to grow your own food, and living off rations, for a long time. It isn't just unsanitary and harsh, it also erodes all the longstanding traditions and community ties and processes that kept your way of life together and thriving -- children are born and raised not knowing how to grow food, and when one day you get to "go home" to your village (or what is left of it), two generations of people may have ended up with strongly learned-dependency behaviours towards food and support, and have little in the way of education or practical skills for normal village life. In a nutshell, being an IDP sucks. Being one of a huge number of IDPs for 20 years sucks worse.

And what about the LRA, you say, who are at the centre of this displacing conflict? What you read and see reported in the media about the LRA conflict is filtered through a Western lens to the point that unless you are here and talk to the Acholi people, or hear about their situation from someone who has done so, you can't really wrap your head around it. Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army has, it is true, wreaked havoc under his insane leadership (although he has only very, very rarely been seen in person and spoken to by outsiders, he is widely believed by the Western medical system to suffer from hereditary schizophrenia -- which in local traditional terminology, to many, means he hears and interacts with the spirit world in a direct way, while normal folks don't). What few if any outside media report accurately on is how this fits into the longstanding grievance on the part of the Acholi people generally, who are a minority tribe in Uganda but whose numbers are huge across the border in Sudan (the contiguous group of Acholi people covers an area of land straddling this border -- yet another happy legacy of old white military men carving up former colonies with no regard to ethnic or other relationships amongst the actual inhabitants of these new "countries").

The Acholi were favoured for military, police and similar roles by colonial masters in what is now Uganda, being a traditionally "warrior" culture. Upon the withdrawal of colonial powers, this left them a resented minority in their new country -- in an analogous way to the minority Tutsi in Rwanda who had held positions of favour under the Belgian rulers, then were turned upon by the Hutu majority who'd been left behind by comparison. Conflict naturally ensued in both cases. Here, the result was that the Acholi among others were driven out of their homes and lands, and badly mistreated by the new "powers that be" in their newly formed independent country. Joseph Kony, an Acholi, is the nephew of a (now dead) female spiritual and military leader who founded a resistance movement against the Southern-Ugandan-dominated government. Her group was a proponent of the Acholi people establishing their own homeland and running it themselves along religious lines (most are Catholic but with a heavy influence of local, traditional spirituality). Kony began his leadership as a continuation of this movement, and like his aunt who "talked directly with spirits", he believes that God communicates directly to him -- unfortunately, at the same time as he advocates for "rule according to the 10 Commandments" [in itself, a troubling proposition], he proceeds to break most of them daily and has killed and tortured many, many people, including his own Acholi tribesfolk. The fact remains, however, that when he set out, he went into the bush as the head of a resistance movement declared to be directly on behalf of the Acholi, and was blessed by their elders -- this blessing has not been rescinded, and the current attempts to negotiate a peace treaty and have him sign it and come to justice are confounded by the insistence of the international community on enforcing ICC (International Criminal Court) indictments against him, of which some Acholi people do not approve. The Acholi population has suffered from all sides these past 20 years as the LRA and the Government forces fight each other and they are abused and trodden upon by both. Each side claims the other is entirely in the wrong and must surrender. Without going into all the painful layers of detail, the Sudanese government (based in Khartoum, the North part of Sudan) for its own reasons has allowed the LRA safe haven within its borders, and has armed and supported its struggle (and has long denied doing so).

At this point, with many lives lost, people crippled, and violence and trauma inflicted widely, the LRA is largely in retreat or hiding, and the peace process has been patiently and painstakingly helped along by the international community -- but at this critical point of concluding it and putting the official seal on the peace that has been slowly returning to this region and these people, Western cultural blindness among other things is getting in the way of successful resolution.

The Acholi are pressing for restorative justice according to the traditional "Mato-oput" system. Almost every traditional community in Africa has its own version of this, and it works very, very differently from "justice" as Western legal systems use that word. In my own opinion, most Western justice systems, being retributive and focused on punishment alone, are hopelessly ineffective and have a great deal to learn from traditional, reconciliation-based means. Laying the word "guilty" on someone and cutting them out of society for a number of years (supposedly equivalent to the damage of their crime somehow) heals no one and nothing. It does not bring peace, or forgiveness, and it does not compensate for the loss to the whole of society in any meaningful way. Mato-oput, like Gacaja in Rwanda and other such systems (such as the one that used to resolve the differences in Darfur between the settled farmers and the nomads, before the Khartoum-based Sudanese gov't began arming the northern-based nomads, who now simply raid and kill the southern sedentary farmers' villages instead of resolving land and resource-based conflicts on the tribe to tribe level), works very differently. In past, before external meddling and influence began arming and supporting one group over another, upsetting the balance of power and creating the much-hyped criss situations that CNN splashes about here and there, restorative justice along these traditional lines was the means for restoring harmony at every level, within the tribe or inter-tribally. It involves the whole community on both sides of an issue coming together under the guidance of their chiefs, elders or leaders, collectively clearing up the matter through total truth-telling, and then reaching consensus on how the loss or injury will be compensated -- community to community, as a whole. No matter how insane Kony is and how atrocious his crimes, getting him to sign a peace deal and disarm, and come out of the bush, will be nearly impossible until all sides agree to create a reconciliation-based process of justice for all parties to take part in. Attempting to apply the black and white, right and wrong, guilty and innocent logic of the ICC will just fail the Acholi people yet again...

In the meantime, young women and men and children have been returning in large numbers from the bush and are being rehabilitated by a variety of organizations here in Gulu. Yesterday, I visited St. Monica's Convent, where former abductees (usually now teenaged or in their early 20's), and children born in the bush to child soldiers, are healing and starting new lives. One young woman sat with us and told us her story. As she talked of being taken at age 15, forced to carry outrageously heavy burdens of food and water, plus her gun (and later, her child as well, conceived through one of the many rapes she endured as the sex slave of the male soldiers), we were gradually joined by a large group of children ranging in age from about 2 - 18. Each Sunday, they come together at the St. Monica grounds to sing, play and learn. One of the friends I'm here with, Isabel, had her guitar with her, and when the whole group of about 80 kids and youths had gathered in a circle with us, under a towering and shade-giving fruit tree, we all sang together, teaching each other songs in Spanish, English and Acholi. Later they divided up into boys and girls, and the girls played volleyball (the older girls carrying little ones on their backs, tied with long swathes of cotton) while the boys played soccer. Some of these children were abducted, others were born to soldiers and abductees in the bush and came out when their parents (who were also children) managed to ecape. One small girl of about 4 years old caught my eye as seeming different than the others. She had a protruding belly and a sort of squashed face, and she seemed to isolate herself from others and often hit those who came near her. One of the young women who lives at St. Monica's and had recently completed her vocational training in hotel and restaurant service, whispered to me that this little girl is Kony's child, according to sources in the bush. The mother is no longer alive. As I watched this odd little girl, I wondered what she had experienced from birth to the time she left the bush, whether the hereditary schizophrenia -- if that is indeed the correct diagnosis for Kony -- would affect her, and whether she would go through her whole existence being pointed at and and whispered about, and what her future held. It was, to say the least, a strange moment.

With that, I'll sign off. I'll be back to Kampala in the next few days and meeting with all sorts of NGO's and organizations there gathering information and contacts for an urban-youth resource centre project I'm helping with. Soon after that I'll be back in Nairobi and near the UN. But I hope that life will bring me back to Gulu and other parts of the North of Uganda again, and not too far in the future, to learn more of the Acholi language and hear more of their incredible stories of strength, survival and healing.

With love from Africa, I wish you all happy trails wherever you are!

Update from East Africa (April 2008)

I've relocated for at least the next 6-8 months or so to Kenya... no, please do not believe what you see on CNN (in general, actually). The entire country is not aflame.

After an intensely challenging time of painful upheaveal and struggle on almost every front in my life in 2007 in which I tripped over my own enthusiasm and did not take enough time to mourn some deep losses... well, I began 2008 with the realization that I had to start from the ground up and get re-centred, and that meant I needed to shut up and start following all my own good advice. So following the motto of whoever it was who said "90% of success is just showing up", I just showed up -- in India for a while, then in New Zealand for a long and wonderful rest with my family there, and I began doing sensible things like eating simply, sleeping enough each night, and enjoying daily hugs.

At long last, I have begun to feel my energy returning -- and with it, the reactivation of my nearly-dormant writing muscle! After my long, long silence, I've finally resurfaced. I feel the resurgence of my usual "tales from the road" writings coming soon...

So here I am at the UN Office in Nairobi (UNON), and about to undertake a half-year project working with my extraordinary friend and (by mutual adoption agreement) brother, Karun. I'm halfway through my MA in Human Security and Peacebuilding but have chosen for personal reasons to take 2008 off and to go back and complete the second half of the intensive curriculum from Jan-Jun 2009 instead. 2008 is being reserved for adventures and new experiences in my chosen "second career" field of peacebuilding, humanitarian work, and international development.

I promise a much more colourful (and also possibly irreverent and rambling) tale soon to catch you up on my travels in such far-flung locales as Nelson, BC, Colorado Springs, CO, India, and New Zealand. The traffic in Mumbai alone is worth one whole email.

If any of you intrepid explorers out there have been contemplating a vacation to Africa, then let me be the first to encourage you to come to Kenya... you could not pick a better time for great deals at some of East Africa's most wonderful locations, and seriously, the place ain't going up in smoke, don't buy into that media hype.

I would really like also to send out a broad-spectrum, but heartfelt, thank you to all of you who have extended your support morally, financially and materially to my undertakings as Fundraising Coordinator with my MA class at RRU for "Blueprint for Peace", our student-founded organization working in partnership with students in Uganda to assist internally displaced-persons in the North of that war-torn country. Speaking of Uganda -- with the reports of the LRA leader signing a peace agreement, I am praying for long-overdue demilitarization and the rebuilding of torn lives there and invite you all to give a moment's thought and prayer to the same...

Becoming an Aunt, Getting a Cab Ride with David Suzuki... (December 2007)

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy (Upcoming) Solstice, and Happy Birthday Cameron Ross Hatch, age 0.

Newly welcomed to motherhood is my best friend, Alannah, who produced baby Cameron Ross on December 14th at 2:57AM. Per her usual effortless grace, Alannah did this in her own entirely extraordinary fashion. After being told it was time to induce (her family tends to carry babies too long, and though he was "early", he was a good 7lbs already and there were complicating factors to him staying inside) and beginning that procedure, she was sent home to wait for contractions. She took a nap. The hospital called -- "Mrs. Hatch, are you having contractions?" " No, but my back kind of hurts." "Those are contractions. Please come back NOW." "Okay."

So off they go to the hospital, where she remains at three centimeters for what seems like an eternity and then says you know what, I need a hot shower. So she stands in the hot shower for about 45 minutes, while her extraordinarily calm husband Kevin (who normally faints in high heat but decided it would be important to hold up through this) sprays her back with steaming water. And ta-da, to the shock of everyone on the ward, she steps out of the shower and she's suddenly ready to go! She then endures twelve minutes of heavy labour, from "push" to "it's a boy!". 12 solid minutes, people. She should write a manual.

And so there I was at Womens' Hospital, on December 15th, saying hello to my baby nephew/Godson Cameron, and thinking how amazing it is that this woman I've known since she was six years old has just brought a new life into the world and is calm, beautiful and serene about it all. I have a lifetime of memories with her. We've starred in wee productions of Wizard of Oz twice together -- first time, age 7 or so, she was a Munchkin and I was Ms. Gulch -- second time, perhaps in revenge since neither of us were happy with being cast that way in Grade 2, we took over the Drama Department by sheer force of will, transcribed the script from the movie ourselves, cast everyone by authoritarian decree (based on Heaven Knows what authority, as Grade 11 girls), and I was Dorothy to her Scarecrow. We still know all the words, frighteningly enough, though our voices are rustier now. Sad, really -- because I can really belt out Somewhere Over the Rainbow when I'm warmed up! I once planned on a life on the stage and a singing career -- few others than Alannah know that about me! We used to answer to each other's names in high school interchangeably. Although very little about the details of our appearance is truly similar on close inspection, we are often asked if we're sisters... I guess when you've been around someone that long and can finish each other's thoughts, and you both have blondish curly hair, it just feels like we're family. Which we are, in spirit. Our bond has lasted 26 years, and counting.

Now there's a whole lifetime ahead of new memories waiting to happen, with Cameron -- who seems to have inherited his parents' mildness of character. He sleeps peacefully, makes lovely little squeaky noises, he's rosy pink, and he hardly cries at all. And Auntie Melanda gets to spend First Christmas (which for years has been my mother and I joining Alannah's clan for a combined family celebration) with Baby Cameron!!!

The day after my visit with Cameron, I attended a Masquerade. The annual party of my favourite hotel of all time, the Pinnacle, was, true to tradition, its "best one ever". Kudos to the new HR team who took over after I left... and the always-stellar coordinating committee... it was a real delight for me witness things just getting better and better, rolling into the future and into new and more wonderful directions than I would ever have imagined or been able to do myself. The best part was all the hugs and hellos from people I miss so much.

The best part of the story of Masquerade night actually came before the mask was even put on... with my hair in a whopping updo and shivering in my evening dress, I stood outside my apartment at 4:30PM waiting for the cab to take me to MAC for my makeup and mask affair. It never came.... A cab pulled up across the street a few doors down, and slowly the people who had called for the cab got in. They turned around and pulled up beside me (I was hopping in agitation at this point) and the window rolled down in the dark... where are you headed? Downtown... so are we, please get in. So I did, into the front seat which was free. The cab driver said I was listed as a "no show" on the computer (though my cab had never arrived and I'd been standing in the street since the minute I called) and the woman in the back said "we saw you waiting earlier, and so we were worried when we got in our cab and you were still there." Then the unmistakeable voice of the man behind me said softly "Tara, where are we going exactly tonight?" At which point I recognized his voice and said " Mr. Suzuki, I am a member of your organization and I'd like to thank you two for all that you do." Ten minutes of chatting with two of the people whose work and ethic I most admire... what a Christmas Gift! About my MA, about Royal Roads (their new CEO at the David Suzuki Foundation is also somone newly appointed to a high position at my University), about peacework and such... and there you have it. I now "know" some of my most amazing neighbours. Who knows if it means I'll get to see them again, but a cab ride to remember nonetheless!

Well it's skiing time again! It's been years and the Snow Gods are angry with me for turning my back upon them. So it is that serendipity strikes, and two of my dearest classmates in my MA program have insisted I visit them for ski holidays! First to Nelson, BC, for New Year's, and then to Denver, CO in January. I cannot complain. Obviously 2008 is shaping up to be a year of short trips here and there. New Zealand to see family in Feb/March (with a planned stopover in Hawaii on the return trip to hike Haleakala Canyon with Dad!), then Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Kenya in April/May to do development work with my class and wander East Africa with friends.... But the long trip (which may or may not turn out to be a trip at all), the 6 month field work project I must do sometime between May 08 and May 09, is still up in the air, a huge question mark. Will it find me traipsing BC researching aboriginal community development tourism? Will it find me in Costa Rica working with Quakers? Will it take me to Africa or will Africa just be the shorter visit with the class and some travel around with friends for now? I don't know. I keep wanting to have a roadmap and all the answers, and Heaven knows I have bushels of enthusiasm for all these possibilities but only one body and one life, to do one thing at a time with!

Doing things in the right order, with patience, has simply never been a strong suit of mine. (Why crawl, asked Baby Melanda. None of these big people are down here on their hands and knees, so stuff that! And so she walked, at 8.5 months. Anyone vaguely familiar with the normal stages of brain development will realize that this explains much of my oddity, which is, sadly, irreversible. Nor will it come as a suprise that shortly after hauling myself up on two feet and glaring haughtily at anyone who dared to laugh at my wobbly efforts, I began speaking in mostly whole sentences.)

Thus it was that this year in May -- since I never really learn -- I gave myself all of 48 hours between leaving my home, all my structure, and the companionship of the family friends and family of my work place, and beginning university and taking the first step into this huge unknown void. I've been reeling all summer, running on fumes of enthusiasm, and just thanking my own lucky unconscious foresight that I moved back in with my mother for the year. (Seeing as she has the greatest vested interest, genetically and otherwise, in my survivial. Kind of a pitstop on the racetrack of my life, a tire and oil change...) But a Gala, fundraising, letting go of and grieving a whole chapter of my life, and suddenly I find myself ready to just sleep all Winter. So if you find me crawling on the floor and speaking only in single words soon, you'll know I'm attempting to relearn how to slow down and do things the correct way and avoid burnout. Just watch you don't trip on me, and wish me luck as you walk by, won't you?).

Stay tuned, and so will I, and perhaps by May of 2008 we'll all know where Melanda will be and what she'll be doing next! If I miss another cab on my way to the airport, maybe this time the Dalai Lama will pull up and offer me some kind of job and I'll end up in Tibet.

Why She Rages Against the Dying of the Light (July 2007)

This week I am spending time in Victoria with Paz, my adored professor and the academic head (and founder) of my MA program here at Royal Roads. As I type, I am gazing out the window of the Peace House, the program's cottage/HQ on the University grounds... outside, the peacocks have reproduced and are chaperoning their small fuzzy babies carefully from field to field. A cloudless blue sky floats like a halo over this impossibly peaceful part of our world. The ocean is a few hundred yards from me, visible through the fruit trees and over the ivy-covered "castle" walls that extend around our little village campus.

Meanwhile, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, violence against women by militia and rebel groups, police and civilian men alike is growing like a malignant tumour. Sexual assault of such a horrific nature that it would make us retch to witness it, or want to tear out our eyes, has escalated to the point that it is nearly the norm. In fact, it is an established norm of life in the DRC.

Humans do this: we wear grooves for ourselves and then we lie down in them, we work them day by day until we are in so deep that on either side of us are steep walls and we wonder how we will get out. Or we stop even wondering. Or we are born inside the groove someone else wore before us, and never even lift our heads to notice that there is a landscape above and beyond our particular rut.

Still, while there is breath there is hope. Surely it is no accident that the words for breath and spirit are closely linked in so many languages. Lately, I dream at night of the work of Paolo Freire, educator and liberator, exiled for a time from his native Brazil for his radical approach that allowed oppressed peasants to become not only literate but also critical thinking, questioning, free agents of transformation of their own reality... to actually raise their heads above the walls of the deep rut into which they had been born and to see clearly that it was worn not inevitably, not because some people are simply no more than peasants while others - somehow superior - are in power, but because of systemic inequalities and flagrantly unfair practices (sociocultural habits, or ruts, we might say) had perpetuated their particular circumstances. Oh, the danger of a freed mind. It might ask for better. It might ask why.

Why, for instance, are we always asking about the 'unsustainable' costs of socialized healthcare, welfare and such, and ironically mumbling at the same time about rising personal taxes, but never asking what has happened to tax money that used to be the major source of government income and has dried up over the past 50 years: corporate taxes? Is it really so unquestioably alright and just that our constructed system called neoliberal capitalism should quite logically produce, by the simple rules of its own game (which we define, or fail to control and modify, at our peril), mega transnational corporations that elude nation-state governmental taxes at every turn, enriching the less-than-1% of the world who hold all the shares, at the expense of those governments' abilities to care for their people "sustainably"? Why do we cry foul at every government's corruption scandals, failures, the slow slog of bureaucracy... but fail to take note of these nebulous above-the-state-level megacompanies that suck capital out of states as the consuming public buys their stuff, but then fail to contribute to the public good through normal taxation, thus weakening the ability of governments to act as we'd like them to? And then applaud these corporations when they dole out the barest fraction of their profits to "charity"... or worse, to public institutions starving for tax dollar support, like hospitals, or schools... but with strings of course. There is a very, very big difference between a public institution funded through tax dollars by even a reasonably functional government, and one tied to the agendas and whims of privately donated monies.

This is not, however it may sound, an anti-corporate rant. There are always great leaders, and some corporations will be the ones to evolve beyond the current quagmire and help bring things forward. There are even some companies I genuinely love, for the spirit of kindness and continuous evolution that infuses their way of doing business, and even despite their flaws and the blindness they may have to the current system's inherent pitfalls. Corporations need to change, and some of them, a few, will do it willingly because it is the right thing to do and they are led by wise people. Others won't.

What we need is a united front of humanity and the will to honestly ask why. We need desperately to close the huge chasms through which private wealth collection has slipped. We need to ask ourselves what good it is doing anyone -- the apparently 'wealthy' who live behind high and guarded walls included -- to not only allow but to condone and actively promote the pursuit of more and more and more privately 'owned' capital, stuff, and land.... which ends up in the hands of fewer and fewer and fewer. Why do we persist in our make believe of 'ownership' in this extreme manifestation, why do we persist in our fallacious and self-destructive assumption that the world's many miracles are here for us to use as we see fit without conscience or repercussion? Surely we are here to serve each other and our world, to be part of the world and one of its many miracles.

Nature corrects all errors. We cannot beat her into submission, for on her we depend for breath. For spirit. With every meter we dig into our Mother for metal ores, we may as well be pushing blades into our own skin; every billowing smokestack is a plastic bag we put over our own mouth and nose and choke upon. Will we actually pursue this suicide course to its end? I wonder. We are due for a terrible correction to our maniacal course; Mother Earth and Father Sky surround us, mirrors that show us plainly the consequences of our choices; in the end, if annihilation is truly our collective 'bottoming out' in our addiction to ownership and resource control, then we will perish, physically, as the ultimate correction to our compounding errors. And presumably give ourselves a big shake and talking-to in the world beyond: "we were given Earth and we killed ourselves by abusing her and each other???" D-OH! We will slap our own forehead like Homer, no doubt, as we consider from our non-dimensional vantage-point the irony of it all.

Still, while I breathe, I hope. The answer to every rape, literal or figurative, human or environmental, must lie in some combination of fierce desire to protect and to heal, of asking "why" and honest assessment of the error and habit that have allowed this to happen, of working through to forgiveness, and finally of choosing again - differently, lesson learned. To climb out of these ruts, fill them in with new earth, and walk on an even green field together instead.

Paz is struggling for life. Her cancer has spread, she is in terrible pain. She is irritable, exhausted, and wondering why she has so little patience. She wants to live, to keep doing her work. She won't go gentle into that good night. And I understand. I look out the window of her office cottage here and the fields become transparent to my inner eye. Through them I see other worlds where she has walked: I see her fleeing from Chile after the Pinochet coup (which heralded in an experiment in almost pure neoliberal capitalism, by the way, that was lauded by far-right commentators when it happened... tell that to the sisters and mothers of the disappeared); I see her meeting with ex-LRA militia and abducted children in Northern Uganda, I see her teaching peasants with the Freirian methodology not just to read but to become free and questioning, to awaken. She is a bridge between the actual events and the theories we are studying and our young and sheltered minds. She brings everything to life, even as she is fighting for her own.

We all know we have so little time with her, and that ultimately she alone can make peace with her own end. If ever anyone had 'done enough' in one life, it is surely Paz. Still, as I sit beside her, taking notes and planning for our workshop on Departments of Peace... I know why she rages against the dying of the light.

If you've managed to read this far, friends, please take a moment to offer up a prayer for Peace, and a prayer for Paz. We need them both.

All Hail Athena! (June 2007)

Well here I am at the end of Week 2 of intensive residency with the 26 people who I'll be going on this MA journey with for the next 2 years. My sub-group of 4, the one I'll be working in for the foreseeable future, rocks. We are four amazing women and we have called ourselves (we had to name our groups): ATHENA. Yes, we are wise. And yes, we kick ass. We are the only group who got 30/30 on our group presentation (the one on Tuesday of this week for marks, vs. the one I describe later in this email that we did today). That Tuesday presentation went all the way through economic theories and history, to current world realities of globalization and transnationalization, to the effects and outcomes of the current world political and economic systems. Whew.

On another note, attached is a charming piece of fine art by Jer (if any of you don't know who my friend Jer is or how we connect, see Facebook for details!), which I'm seriously considering putting on business cards in future. [This is a reference to the photo called "Melanda the Builder: Of Peace, which is one of my older profile photos on FB.] And I particularly enjoyed his suggestion that I be absolutely literal about my security brief and put a one sentence statement on a piece of paper and lock it in a box and hand it in.

I am giving this some real thought as I google "India" and peruse CIA, Canadian Government, and various think tank websites for information on India's activities any and all that might relate to security issues that would affect Canada. Certainly the Sikh separatist terrorist groups are the obvious first thought, but as I dig deeper I see movement towards a large Asian trade bloc, and I wonder.... if India joined fully and sorted out its beefs with China (borders, and the are-you-supplying-Pakistan with nuclear stuff question), would the US be even more paranoid than it alread is about an Asian hegemony.... or what if India's current and largely licit poppy production became somehow destablized and illicit (like Afghanistan's is currently), would that make it yet another target for the "War on Drugs" approach of trying to destroy the opium/heroin source? Hmmm... the locked box is looking pretty attractive just now, and not so much for putting my brief in it as for locking myself inside and not coming out.

I am also struggling to produce a valid thesis statement for my International Law paper. I have chosen (shock, surprise!), Religious Freedom as my topic, and the question is really "do we need a Convention?". Currently, this is stated in the UN Charter and a few other places (Human Rights, I think) in about one sentence... so the principle exists in some proto form, regardless of how many states have signed on (or not!). There is also a Declaration on this topic gathering dust at the UN which has never come to the General Assembly basically because no states are championing its cause. If it became a Declaration, it might one day become a Convention which states could then sign onto.... is there any point in pushing forward a Declaration on this topic if it is not high enough on anyone's agenda? If it was moved ahead as a declaration and then a Convention followed, what % of states would sign on anyway? On the flipside, how else do we create international customary law (accepted norms by which we can measure the appropriateness of states' actions and behaviours) except this way? Is there a way to turn this on its head and seek examples of where religious freedom and tolerance are working well on a grassroots level within or between states, without any external rules having been applied but solely through local regulation and/or negotiations between governing bodies, and translate those precedents of up into the international scene? Obviously my assumption on which all the rest depends is that the UN Charter and Human Rights actually ARE valid, generally accepted norms (despite the fact that many states, the US in particular amongst the central powerful ones, have never signed on as parties to much of this stuff). It is from this same assumption that other Declarations and Conventions arose and went forward, such as the Rights of the Child (which, by the way, ALBERTA as an independent party under Ralph Klein's government REFUSED to be party to when Canada federally DID accept!!!! Go figure.) But back to Religion - how do we define it safely so that it cannot be interpreted in a way that runs counter to Human Rights, if some fundamentalist wing of any religion decides that women or children are not persons?

I am sunburnt. Today the Athenas took the class outside for some "under the tree learning", giving a nod back towards the roots of pedagogy but also reminding us all that most of the world learns outdoors, without benefit (or hindrance) of pen and paper. We had them work on laying out a whole variety of topics and issues (which we had written on big construction paper circles... ok we did use some pen and paper in our teaching!) on the grass and moving them around while discussing how they connect. Poverty, human trafficking, political unrest, water pollution, fuel accessibility, infant mortality, refugee flows, natural disasters, corruption, food scarcity, internally displaced peoples.... those kinds of fun things! It was amazing the discussion that came out of it and how we worked through the interconnectedness of all things.

I think the main learnings we are taking away from this residency will be essentially the following:

• everything connects to everything, everything, everything!
• perspective and environment as well as individual and collective ideologies shape perception, which creates our reality
• in human-created systems, the observer is also a participant shaping the outcome so social sciences require constant learning, awareness and evolution and cannot be said to be perfect or 'final' since we are both the authors of them and the participants in them and are affected by their outcomes when we let the systems supposedly 'run themselves' (e.g. 'free market', 'neoliberalism'... in practice loosely translated as "rich get richer poor get poorer middle class disappears too bad so sad")
• therefore the only truly humanitarian intervention is actually literally seeing it from the perspective of the group you are trying to help FIRST, then asking "what are your objectives" and sharing knowledge, perspective, technology and so on to help achieve those aims; in turn asking for learnings to apply 'back home'; and leaving when you're asked to rather than causing damage by 'trying to help'
• only by sharing all possible perspectives can we even begin to see the whole picture and "know" anything together... so we had best start now with that sharing and get on with it! Then we can actually begin evolving our systems of governance and interaction, rather than creating static ideologies and systems and then fighting to maintain or overthrow them!

Which only makes me all the more excited to see what comes in the next two years of learning...

The Totem of Resurrection and Other Mysteries (May 2007)

Someone commented that the peacock is a symbol of resurrection and wise vision, and is closely associated with the phoenix (which is already one of my most deeply beloved symbols from mythology; eternal rebirth and recreation). Well, at last I understand that my totem animal has been trying to communicate with me and I was just thinking it made for funny stories to write home about! Now I get it and I'll be more watchful for future peacock "coincidences" in my life!

Sunday. I can hardly believe I have been here a whole week and that it has ONLY been one week. This open letter/email journal is my way of reflecting and deepening the experiences... but I hope you feel free to reflect back to me and share yours as well.

It seems like a long time ago that I sat in the class feeling like I must be the moron they let into the program by accident ("What the hell do I have to bring to this program? They are going to find out I'm clueless any minute now...") The group has gelled, bonds are forming, healthy clashes of viewpoint come out, openness is growing. It is still amusing to see all the interpersonal drama, the dynamics that shift and move as people's assumptions and personalities bounce off each other. Someone is very attached to defending WHY the military does X or Y the way it does; someone feels the need to justify what it's like to work in a particular job and environment that makes it 'impossible' to achieve a certain objective.... it is fascinating.

Yesterday, Saturday, we had an all-day workshop with a Chilean woman who runs a local theatre group called Puente ("bridge"). She works in a style of theatre developed by a fellow Latin American, and now used worldwide in therapeutic work, post-conflict resolution, and political processes, called "Theatre of the Opressed." Oppressed is a word that middle and upper class North Americans are terribly uncomfortable with, as is the word 'victim'. People in many South American countries, on the other hand, have a great deal of experience with overt oppression and victimhood and find it an enormously empowering space in which to change their relationship with oppression, to find their power. So it's interesting right from the start the reactions to even just the name of the theatre!

We started with games of movement. Stand in a circle and see how people arrange themselves... why is there always a gap on either side of the 'instructor'? A power dynamic. Some people stand close, others have wide spaces between them. Then begin pair exercises like mirroring - one person moves and the other is their perfect mirror image; then switch who leads the movement; then see if you can get to there being NO leader but just in-sync mirror image movement on both sides. "Hypnotizer", where you have to keep your nose exactly the same distance from the palm of my hand, so my moving my hand makes you move to follow it... then have large groups of people doing the 'following' and only one person moving his/her palm -- notice that the larger the group, the larger the perccentage of them who cannot actually see the hand of the 'leader' but are taking their cues and following those in front of them. Hmmm!

Then sculpting. Put another person into a particular position - they are 'clay' and do not resist but take the shape given to them and hold it. Then sculpt yourself - walk around and the leader says a word "love", "family", "anger", "generosity", "forest" -- and sculpt yourself instantly into the form that represents that word for you and freeze.

Then in groups, sculpt a scene together to represent a word ("vulnerability", for example), by each self-sculpting and then fitting the self-sculptures into a whole image. An outside group views it and says what words come up for them, then are given the opportunity to 'intervene' in 10 seconds. What do they do? Change people's positions, remove or add people (sculptures)... but the sculptures in the scene must stay 'true' to their character's intentions and needs, so if it feels 'wrong' for them to be interfered with during the intervention, they resist. After the intervention, everyone in the scene (whether intervened with or not) says how they felt about it. What comes out is amazing: "we felt abandoned because she took that person out but left us", "I felt violated and forced to move away from the scene", "I did not know what was going on because the intervention was happening to other people some distance away from me and I was confused." The perceptions of those viewing the scene are coloured by their own biases -- so whether they are right in thinking that this one person or that group need XYZ kind of 'help' is a cloudy matter. The ramifications for going to do humanitarian work in areas where conflict has affected communities and individuals are obvious.

Towards the end of the day we acted out scenes with words and were invited to intervene in any way we wished by saying "stop" at whatever we thought was the critical moment where something could be changed and stepping in either to replace or add a character. At the end of the day it became clear how this type of theatre can be (and is) used to allow people who have experienced oppression to work through the situation again -- to replace themselves in the situation and figure out how they could have done it differently so as not to have experienced oppression but instead to have maintained their dignity. I could see through the day how incredible a tool this could be in humanitarian work to resolve issues for both the aggressors and victims in conflicts...

I have not done it any justice with my words, I know. But it was wonderful. It is great to involve kinesthetic learning as well as the auditory/visual that most of the classroom stuff involves.

Our three concurrent courses are the foundation class, Human Security and Mutual Vulnerability, International Law, and Post Cold-War Conflict. My group is giving a presentation on Tuesday covering the global political economic system, capitalism 'then' and transnational capitalism 'now', the relationship of developed and undeveloped (groups, peoples, states) and the issues this causes for human security (What happens when huge chain outsources work to sweatshops in undeveloped countries? Lower prices, inhuman conditions for those who make the products, loss of jobs in the developed country where the products go, and increased profits for the company. What happens when that company is discovered NOT to be checking 100% of its imported goods for dangerous items in compliance with US security regulations because it would 'lower profits'? Some human security issues, obviously, on all sides of the cycle of developed and un-developed!) My paper for that course is going to be on tourism & human security (I got to choose that topic, might as well start where I have some knowledge!)

I also have to give a 'security brief' on India to our Conflict class, where we are as a group creating a worldwide brief on all major issues that face Canada from a security perspective and where we see these heading in the next 5-15 years. (We learned about the "Intelligence Cycle" and how intelligence officers gather data, select from it, and conduct predictive analyses of the intelligence... but I feel rather underqualifed to now go ahead and apply this to the entire country of India. Oh well, I guess I will learn as I go!)

For International Law, I have to submit a draft outline of a paper on Religioius Freedom under International Law (at least I got to choose my topic there... but Oh God where do I start now that I chose THAT topic? Maybe if the prof is in a humourous mood I can submit it in the form of a prayer.)

The level of discussion, the dialogue, the analytical and critical processes we are going through as a group are exciting beyond my wildest dreams and I feel like my mind is opening out in all directions... like my inner eye is changing shape and orientation to embrace both more breadth and depth.

Last night I allowed myself to collapse into bed at 8PM and sleep for 12 hours... and this morning I finally enjoyed the privilege of visiting my lovely friend (and host) Anna's church for worship and hearing her give an inspired and brilliant sermon. This time of year is the "Pentecost", which I understand is often considered the "birthday of the church" and has to do with Holy Spirit. Both the breath and wind of spirit, which moves in surprising and unpredictable ways, and with the 'catching fire' of the soul that happens when Spirit is present (or when we allow it to be present, I might add!). Wind and fire... which of course work very well with my newly identified totem animal, the peacock/phoenix, which is reborn from its own ashes cyclically. I have not been baptized nor christened nor confirmed (I don't know which of those terms belong to all or some or specific denominaions, either). I wouldn't have known Pentecost from the Pope until today, probably. I am a beginner, a 'toddler' in faith, as my friend Kimberley so sweetly and accurately puts it. But I do know Spirit. And I know that my dear friend Ms. Constantin brings Spirit and Love into her every action and word... that her ability to bring play, humour, kindness and connectedness into her church's community is an inspiration in the truest sense (inspire coming from Latin to breathe... the root word of spirit as well... worth dwelling on a while, not intellectually but reflectively). The United Church, a uniquely Canadian approach, is inclusive -- communion uses grape juice rather than wine so as not to exclude anyone, for example.

Anna's sermon contained a challenge to grow beyond our comfort zones, to really mean it, to catch fire. She asked us in the middle of it to turn to those around us, look them in the eye, and say "you are God's beloved, blessed by the Holy Spirit". And you know what? I absolutely said and meant it. Sweet little elderly and frail Mrs. Cooke beside me reached out and held my hand and said with slightly teary eyes "you are really good at that." And she was right. Imagine what the world would be like if no matter what words we were saying (I am tired. How are you today? What is on the agenda? I have something for you. Would you be willing to stop doing that? Hello.) were said with the Breath of Holy Spirit?

Well, I hope I'm getting closer to that. Because the reason I'm here taking this program is more than to learn (though it IS to learn), and more than to grow and open my perspective (though it IS that too)... I'm here because I'm attempting to BE a prayer for peace in my every thought, word and action... and this is where God led me when I asked for the Universe to guide me on that particular path.

Sending lots of love in all directions!

Peacebuilding (May 2007)

Peacocks AGAIN!

The Universe is telling me something through peacocks, and I just need to figure out what. There are multiple resident peacocks here at Royal Roads, and unsurprisingly, from past experience, one of them has taken a fancy to me. It fans out its tail as I pass by and makes attempts to follow me. Do I have peacock pheromones or something?

Anyway, our day began in the Castle Drawing Room (if you have seen X-Men, you know where I am studying... Xavier's school for Mutants. Appropriately enough.) The setting is astonishingly beautiful, and the drawing room looks out across the gardens to the sea beyond. There is a real quiet here, a green lively stillness that envelops us.

Our lead instructor, the head of this program, is named Paz Buttedahl. Born in Chile in '42, she is one of many girls of that era named Peace, as we learned when we opened the icebreaking with an introduction of ourselves and a telling the story behind our names. It's a lovely way to get to know people -- named for parents, aunts, uncles, friends, events... and last names that were changed several generations back to make it easier to get around in the 'new world' after immigration...

My own name stories are ones I love so it was fun to tell them: First, envision my parents walking along a beach discussing names in Summer 1975. Mother tosses around boys names (Christopher, Aaron), Father insists SHE IS A GIRL. Long silence. Mother notices colour of dusk sky is like Peach Melba and the word "melba" escapes her lips. Seconds later, Father says "Melanda!" and there it ends. There is no other name discussed from that point on, and three months later I am born and given my name. I have often thought "gosh I'm glad I DID turn out as a girl... imagine being a boy named Melanda!". Only to end up in the South Rift Valley in Kenya at age 31 and find that it's quite a common name in the Maasai tribe. FOR BOYS. (As I wrote in another Kenya tale.) As I type just now I am sitting outside at a picnic bench/table and remembering the day. My thoughts are punctuated by peaocks' honking calls.

We were welcomed with a performance on a closed brass drum, apparently something invented by Swiss instrument makers in recent years. Followed by a live telling of a Buddhist fable about the interconnectedness of all things (in which a crow poops on the head of a high Brahman priest and a sleepy watch girl causes the royal elephants to get burnt, and crow genocide erupts until a bodhisattva in crow form visits the king to sort it out. Long story, for another day.)

But don't get the wrong idea -- this is not a granola flake class. The readings list on International Law, Post-Cold-War Conflict, and umpteen trillion articles and government policy papers (some of 300-plus pages) is no picnic and will be working my brain fully. But we also had time to hike the trails down to the dock, listen to a reading (an excerpt from a poem called "Let Your Life Speak" and some of Parker Palmer's writings -- he is an unorthodox and highy successful educator in the US, from what I know) and then do some journalling as we sat in the sun with the sound of splishy water critters below and chattery winged things flying 'round above.

We also did some 'deep listening' in pairs, sitting in silence for 3 minutes while the other person first "unpacked" by telling all about what he or she is leaving behind in coming here. Then about what he or she is bringing along.

I discovered as I spoke that I am in some ways leaving behind a whole life. A beautiful life I have loved immensely. A life well lived. A family of several hundred people I came to know by working with them. A decade of growing into my own skin. And I also learned that I'm taking the heart of that with me, too. The love, friendship, learnings and community -- all are alive and well inside me.

And what will I bring back when these three weeks are done? How will I integrate it into my life? I'm excited to find out, and a bit nervous too. I am just taking the first few steps of my journey of the next whole chapter of my life. But unlike the last time (when I set tentative foot in hotels and thought "I guess I will just work for a while at something, until I am ready to face University again and finish my Latin degree..." and had NO idea where I was headed), this time I have a real sense of my purpose, even if I can only see a few steps ahead. I sense the heart of what I'm aiming for as I go. It is both more comforting, and more exciting, and scarier in some ways, than 10 years ago when I was mostly clueless.

The program outline looks incredible! Our second residency will be here in Victoria again in November, but the 3rd and final one, prior to our 6 month overseas field work placements, will be in Uganda!!!! We go as a group to the University of Makerere, where my friend Flora (with whom I worked at Wajee Nature Park this January) studied. So I will be back in Africa again so soon -- April 2008. Some of the 6 month projects that previous years' students have done look extraordinary, and I'm already tingling with anticipation about where mine might be and what I might do.

The faculty are amazing. They have so much depth of experience and breadth of vision. Some of the instructors have decades of military experience; others are playwrights and human rights activists; others worked in government, NGOs and the UN. They are from all over the world and have so much to share -- but every one of them reemphasizes that RRU is a place for lifelong learning, and that they come to each class to learn as much as to teach.

One of my laughs today came when we did the Myers-Briggs type indicator thing. As usual, I am an INFP (borderline I/E, so severely "N" that I can leap tall facts in a single bound of intuition, rather firmly F, and really terribly P except at work when I have to cultivate some J attributes now and then). [Later note: I am an ENFP, always have been, always will be; I used to get false Introvert readings.] For those of you who have not done this -- DO IT. There are online sites where you can test yourself. Anyway the booklet we were given on types has "Myers Briggs Type Prayers" and mine reads:

"Lord, please help me to finish everything I sta

[Later note: the prayer for an ENFP is: "God,help me to keep my mind on one th -oh look a bird! -ing at a time."]

(Let's see... I know at least 3 INTPs, so here is your prayer: "Lord, help me be less independent, but let me do it my way." And for the multiple ESTJs in my life: "God, help me try not to run everything. But if You need some help, just ask.")

I love it here. I am exactly where I need to be at this moment and I'm grateful for everything I am experiencing. And thank you for reading along so I can feel I'm sharing it with people in my life. Please do send me stories from your corners of the world so I can keep up from here on what you are doing!

Madam Efficiency Expert and the Sampu Camp Revolution (January 2007)

Sitting in Heathrow a the start of an 8 hour layover (my choice was 2h, which means missing your connection, or 8...), I think I'll take a stab at completing my travel-email-logue.

So having survived the horror of knowing that cobras were lurking all around (this caused me to stick closely to the pathways and check where I stepped quite carefully while walking), and having learned how best to kill a scorpion that has mistakenly assumed it will be your tentmate for the night (with a sturdy shoe, three good whacks usually does it), I was at least a bit better prepared for the daunting task of training half a dozen very tall, very strong, remarkably gorgeous (really, how one tribe has such a high percentage of stunning men is beyond statistical odds and quite unfair) and intimidatingly proud Maasai men and helping them reorganize their camp.

My first day was spent cleaning tents with the young Room Attendant, Joseph. He was so quiet I wondered if he spoke English, but once he warmed up I realized he really was quite fluent. Since cleaning is not usually the domain of males in this culture, I was not surprised to see him taking an upside down and haphazard approach - mop floor, strip beds, clean sink, go get new linens for beds, clean shower, take away old linens, sweep front porch, dust, go get new soaps for bathroom, go back again and get fresh towels... it's easy to sound like an efficiency expert when the miracle you introduce is as simple and effective as A) get all your supplies together first, B) strip the room, C) make beds and add fresh towels, D) clean bathroom all at once and replace soaps, and E) sweep and mop from back to front and zip up tent - the last bit being the real revolution, since you don't then walk all over a floor you just washed! Wow. I was relieved when Joseph grinned at me and said 'much better, I like it' after I made him try it 'my way'.

Upon inspecting the stock room where he went to get his linens and soaps and mop, though, I found it in chaotic disarray. So the next morning I determined to bring a bit of Swiss orderliness to this camp's stock room and save the investors from constantly losing expensive items like linen to weather and bugs. I managed to coax Weweiro, who was hired as the 'Pool Maintenance Guy' and apparently has a tendency to cleave mightily to his job title and resist doing any other jobs (even when the pool can't be used because the generator is out of gas and it can't be filtered!!!), into getting the sheet metal and nails together to put walls around the storage shed, which when I found it was basically an open chicken wire cage with a roof, which means it was a welcome mat for creepy creatures who just loved to inhabit and munch on the camp's valuable supplies. My ability to charm him into doing this managed to impress the rest of the guys, who then watched me closely and with great interest for about half an hour as I dragged item after item out of the clogged shed, all wondering if I was seriously stubborn enough to go through with it despite finding the occasional nasty spider or scorpion. When they saw that I was not backing down, they all suddenly looked at each other and, probably out of shame, since they all had at least a foot of height and certainly a lot of muscle over me, jumped in to help me lift out all the heavy items. I smiled to myself at my small victory. By the end of the day, we had that place in top shape and everyone was looking at me quite differently. They all started calling me 'madam' with a very earnest tone in their voices... madam, could you come and show me the best way to do this? Madam, may I get you some water? Madam, would you like to go on a game drive and see animals tomorrow morning?

The next day was F&B service training with Josphat. Admittedly, it's a camp, and we're not talking plated dinner service or anything. But for people who typically own one single dish per person at home, and for whom that dish might consist of a reused old margarine tub, the logic behind stocking cabinets with plates, side plates, teacups, saucers, serving dishes and so on is not a 'given'. So as odd as it sounds, my first hour was spent explaining how much easier it is if you put the plates in one row from back to front, the teacups in one row from back to front, and so on - as opposed to all the plates at the very back, then all the cups, etc, which of course makes for a lot of reaching every time you set a table. Next was the very amusing lesson about serving women first, refilling women's water and tea and coffee first, and so on. This was met with two very, very arched eyebrows and a slightly cocked-back head, as if to say 'you are an odd, odd bunch of people, you muzungus!'. But actually it led to a most enjoyable discussion about cultural differences in various areas of the world, and what they signify in terms of any given person's status. If I ever go back to Sampu to help them again, I'm going to bring cutlery dividers for their drawers and complete the Food & Beverage service revolution.

In the remainder of my week I managed to have a team meeting with the Game Drivers and Security, to meet with the Chairman and Treasurer, and to oversee a deep-cleaning of all the tents and the creation of par stock lists and procedures for inventory checks. I knew I had won them over completely when, upon my departure, all these 6-foot-plus, regal and strong-spirited men one by one asked me very humbly and beseechingly if I would please stay and be their manager forever. I very nearly cried to have to leave them at that point.

Back in Nairobi I had one more Maasai man to win over: John Kamanga, the director of the camp who works remotely from his African Conservation Company office (he has many projects and this is but one of them). I suspected from the beginning that he did not really think I could do much in a week, and that Faith had just been persistent in arranging this opportunity and he took it as 'oh well, she won't do anything but it won't cost me anything so I'll put up with her'.

I arrived at his office dusty, sweaty, windblown and carrying a pen and some handwritten notes (having had no computer access at Sampu) and found him very busy and distracted. So I sat down and typed up my report and recommendations while he was doing other things, and at the end of the day I delivered all 7 pages of what I'd done, what I recommended, and a SWOT analysis of his project. I was rewarded royally when he, too, said 'this is amazing. When can you come back to do more training with us?'. So obviously I'm already eagerly looking forward to my next vacation in Kenya working at Sampu Camp!!! To borrow a phrase used a lot by the men I worked with in the camp, 'if God shall open the door, may it be so'.

I had a few days left in Nairobi and Faith asked me to give a talk to her Environmental Entrepreneurship Youth Group, telling them my career history, which I did on Friday afternoon. It was great fun to learn what amazing business plans these young Kenyans are putting together, and hear about the variety of internships they are currently working on at various companies.

One of them, Kuria, is just extraordinary - a shining example of the kind of bright young person who can and will shape Africa's future for the better. Since she had a course to do on Saturday morning, she sent him as her delegate to be my escort and professional bargainer at the Marketplace in Nairobi. Wow, can he ever haggle! We took a full sweep walk-through of the market first, just to see what was there ('madam, come here, let me show you...' 'lady, come, I have good prices' 'hey sister, look here' and lots of tugging of my sleeve and pushing) and then we circled back to get the items I wanted. He negotiated locals' rates while I pretended to look like I didn't particularly care if I bought that item or left it behind, to help him persuade the seller. One exasperated stall owner, who had been quite dead set on charging me 'tourist' prices, finally looked at me, sighed, and said 'Your boyfriend here must be a Kikuyu [a Kenyan tribe]. They bargain like hell. You have a good one, I am sure you will be very happily married.' Kuria and I laughed and left with my purchases. It's pretty much always assumed when a Kenyan is seen walking with a mzungu of the opposite sex that they are a couple, for whatever reason.

That afternoon (which I guess is now yesterday afternoon, not so long ago at all), Faith joined us, as did one of her interns, Kirsten, who is working at the UN and also helping her with the entrepreneurship program. Kuria, Kirsten, Faith and I did the truly Kenyan thing and sat sipping Tusker lagers and passionately discussing world politics. We agreed, after many hours of discussion, that our generation is the one that will overhaul the UN and make it a 'real' UN, not the toothless thing that it is now. We will abolish the 'veto' power that makes it possible for powerful nations to be rogue terrorist states that ignore international law, and we will usher in the beginnings of a new era of global humanitarianism. Hurrah and excelsior! We toasted to our current and future aspirations to live lives of service and activism, and then at last it was time to say farewell.

We went our separate ways, Faith as usual escorting me like a guardian angel to my next destination, which sadly was to the airport for goodbyes. And even more sadly, it included a lineup around the airport just to get in (I flew out two days before the BA strike is due, so it was a mad hustle to get out ahead of time.) Having obviously been born under a travel-lucky star, I ended up in line with a delightful expat Kenyan heading back to LA where he lives, and we joked, laughed and assisted each other with all the irksome luggage and security and check in and such procedures which nowadays are fraught with inconvenience. Then when we split to our different seats, lo and behold! I found myself in the same row as the wildly charming English folks who had been 'my' guests at Sampu camp when I was 'managing' it. They regaled me with tales of their adventures upon leaving the camp (flat tires they managed to mend with string and bits of wood, imagine that) and their next stop in Malindi, and I told them all the rest of my adventures after they'd left me at Sampu. So with all that good company, I had no time to be weepy about leaving, and here I find myself, at a comfy Internet Cafe, awaiting my plane home.

And so, friends, I am signing off - the last chapter of my Kenya travel diary ends here... until the next adventure and next email diary, be well!