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!

A Carnival, a Piece of Meat, a Punchline: Me (January 2007)

Having just survived the climb up and back down a termite-riddled, rickety lookout structure and having my breath taken clean away by the stunning view of Mt. Kenya’s silhouette in the misty dawn, I feel like it’s time for Chapter 4 – my last from Wajee. Today will be my last day here, and will be a busy one when it starts, trying to get as much done as possible.

I warn you all now, this one is a long one because I’ve had a jam-packed weekend and many stories to share!

Now where did I leave off? So on Friday last, Jagi arrived late at night. Everyone had been hustling all day to sparkle up the place for his arrival, but it was darkest night when he pulled up so we had to wait until the next day to see his reaction to all the improvements. (He was thrilled – by both the physical improvements and the infrastructure we’d put in place… this has to be the first time anyone has ever said the following sentence to me: “the auditors will just love what you’ve done here!” Wish I’d had a tape recorder for that one!)

The next morning Jagi took Flora and me on a day of touring the local sights and attractions that cemented forever my utter love of this part of the world, and he was the most passionate and knowledgeable guide you could hope for.

The routes to get to each of the local attractions are adventures in themselves and ideally would be done by mountain bike or on foot – but we had many places to see in one short day so took his Land Rover. Now, in paved and sterile little Vancouver, a Land Rover is no more than a big phallic symbol for a weak male ego – but in Africa, it just makes good sense. We passed a truck (a ‘lorry’, in the Kenyan terminology which takes its sensibilities from the UK, owing to its colonial past) coming down a steep hill and I feared it would lose its brakes and go hurtling into a stream never to be extracted! On either side as we barreled and bounced past were cows, goats, sheep, children, chickens, geese, and here and there women laying colourful laundry out to dry in a field. Then from the forest on one side emerged two traditional Kikuyu women, faces painted, walking with heavy burdens on their backs as women here often do. As they walked and talked, they were all the time busily weaving their colourful traditional baskets (I bought two such baskets at the Mihuti Market recently – they are gorgeous and are made from grass fibres on the vertical and re-used brightly coloured plastic bags on the horizontal weave).

First to Jajara Falls (meaning “rocky” falls in the local tribal language of Kikuyu). Hiking along a narrow trail, pushing through tall grasses with sharp edges, thorn bushes, fragrant herbs… crushed underfoot, they release a spicy green aroma with each step. Steep slopes, sometimes dry and crumbly and giving way, sometimes muddy and slippery. Rushing water louder as we approach, fresh cool moist air breaking the blasting heat of the midday sun, blessedly. Sweat trickles, tickly-prickly down the back! At last, a lovely cool perch on a rock by the falls, the soft mist soothing our burning skin.

Next, Igutha – which boasts both a waterfall and an organic coffee plantation/factory. Rows and rows of glossy dark green coffee plants with berries growing redder, soon to be picked and peeled and sorted. The water sorts the beans, how clever and simple! Low grade floats, higher grades sink – fascinating devices and special channels sift them into three distinct grades, and into chambers where they are washed and drained. Then to long, long drying racks in open fields, where they are sorted by hand and sun-dried. Off to market next go these happy beans, to be priced according to grade and shipped to roasters in North America and Europe who turn them into the shiny brown goodness that we grind up and make into our cappuccinos and espressos! Here, where the coffee grows and where people sweat and toil to sort and separate and husk the beans, they get only Nescafe instant packets… from the lowest of all the grades! Such a shame, that the growers never taste the highest quality product but instead export it all. Do we taste their sweat and labour when we sip our morning coffees, I wonder? Do we taste the red African earth and the rich rains, the yellow sun that dries this product and burns into the shoulders of those who pick through it for us, bean by bean? I think when I come home, I will taste all those things in my coffee forever. (And I’ll try to buy Organic, Fair Trade coffee as much as possible, too!)

Our next stop was fascinating. A local farmer blessed with particular ingenuity, Joseph Mwengi, has for many years now run his home on bio-gas. He has one cow, and its poop provides for all his family’s energy needs! Its stall is behind the house, on a ledge about 12 feet up from his garden/farm out the back. Its droppings are channeled into a deep cylindrical hole with a domed thingy on top that sort of floats on the manure sludge (yeah, ew, I know – but you know what? Not much of a smell!) – and by natural compression the methane is forced up a pipe that leads back into the house. They use the methane for lamps in each room and for the kitchen stove. He has created a variety of special portable clay ovens, which have small holes into which pipes send the methane. Voila! Perfect gas burners for each and every cooking task. And by the light of the lamps he has schooled all his very bright and ambitious children. His daughter, Purity, welcomed us and gave us a tour of their amazing home, and let us sign their guest book. It was filling up gradually with wonderful encouraging words left by tourists from all corners of the globe. The Mwengi farm is becoming rather an attraction in the area for visitors both Kenyan and international – it is a model of sustainable living, requiring no charcoal which is the standard energy source in Kenya, and it could be applied to many households. Apparently, last year, a German couple visited and were so amazed that they have been trying to get Jagi to find out the exact specs of how this bio-gas plant works, so that they can secure development funding to expand it. Potentially the farmer could sell the excess gas produced, and/or go into business setting up similar rigs at other homes. This same clever farmer has also solved his water problems by building the most extraordinary well/pump system that I can’t begin to describe… luckily I took pictures! It is made of an old tire, some tubes, some scrap wood, rope and some bicycle parts. He turns a handle and up comes water for his farm – or household – on demand.

Our last stop of the day was in Mukurwe-ini, the nearest town centre to Wajee (‘town’ meaning a few blocks of shops amid mostly fields and trees, of course). Along the way, we saw a lorry buying milk from farmers carrying big metal pails of the stuff. This milk lorry has a regular weekly route in the region, and dairy farmers – who have been given very high quality stainless steel sealed pails to put their milk in for sale – come and wait at the stops to have their product purchased by this collection service. It then takes the milk to Mukurwe-ini to a very modern processing station (which we visited), where it is tested, chilled and then put into tankers and sent on to larger towns and factories, where it is highly prized for cheese and yogurt making. The reason this milk supply is so safe and sought-after is that these farmers have been trained extensively by Canadians through an initiative called “Farmers Helping Farmers”. The Canadian farmers visit the Kenyan dairy farms and teach good animal care and hygienic practices, give free veterinary advice and care, and so on. They also co-funded the new high-quality lab/processing plant in Mukurwe-ini. Since the farmers profit so much from their milk sales, and know that the testing is very accurate, they are rewarded for following good practices as they would be ‘blacklisted’ if they sold watered down or contaminated milk. Thus a win-win situation that rewards honesty and good farming practices! There are apparently yogurt-making seminars at the plant regularly, too, for anyone wishing to expand from just selling milk to selling other products.

It was a long day… and then a long Saturday night! At first, it was quiet, and our happy little family of Wajee staff gathered at the campfire circle and watched the video “Beautiful People”, a humourous documentary about the Namib desert. As we watched, we sampled “amaroula”, a special cream liqueur made from the fruit of the maroula tree, which is native to Namibia, appropriately enough. It was particularly funny because part of this movie shows how the animals gorge on the fermenting maroula fruit, which have extremely high sugar and yeast content at the end of the growing season when they fall in masses to the ground. This gets the animals drunk as all hell, and they weave and wobble and roll around like clowns – elephants, gazelles, baboons, meerkats, wildebeests, all absolutely hammered, walking into trees and tripping on their own feet/hooves/paws/etc. … and then the next morning, ha! Animals with hangovers, if you can imagine that. It’s unreal to see these monkeys holding their poor aching heads, looking sad and sorry and wondering what happened last night. Amaroula, the human-made drink from this fruit, is actually a lot like Bailey’s, a bit more chocolatey. Very creamy. A nice sipping drink for movie-watching!

After the movie, quite a few local patrons descended on the bar so I went to bed and let them carouse on without me. They carried on all night! I hardly slept what with all their ruckus, and was horrified to find the next day that one of them – apparently the local ne’er-do-well, does this a lot – was STILL at the bar drinking beer, while poor Edna in her typical politeness had literally stayed up ALL night serving him drinks. Of course the watchmen were there to keep an eye out, but really. I told Flora to consider instituting this new crazy thing called “closing time” that we invented in Canada.

That same Sunday morning, Judy took me and Flora to her church (Catholic). The service was in Kikuyu so I didn’t understand the words, but the singing was beautiful. The offertory song was so lovely that it made me forget, briefly, the thought that the Vatican hardly needs more gold candlesticks off the backs of Africans earning less than $1000 per year…. Anyway, I don’t know who was more fascinated – me with the lively service, or the congregation with my glaringly white presence. Children popped in and out of pews to peek at me, then hid behind their parents’ knees and giggled. A gorgeous gurgling baby on the lap of the woman next to me was probably the only person small enough not to know that skin colour differences mean anything (or maybe I should say, ‘small enough to know that skin colour differences don’t mean anything’?), so he just smiled toothlessly at me and drooled. Scrumptious little round thing he was, with shiny chubby cheeks and a fetching knitted cap!

As I left, it was like a carnival was passing through. I kept wondering what was going on but apparently I was what was going on! At least 20 children followed me out and down the trails and roads towards Wajee camp. I wished I had some kind of a dance routine to entertain them or something; I felt like a pretty lame show for all that attention! But a handshake and a smile seemed to be enough to make them happy and I obliged. Later after I returned to the office, the two children who deliver milk to Judy every day worked up the courage to come and sit beside me at the computer and introduce themselves (Mary and Justice, 7 and 5 years respectively, sister and brother). Then they stroked my hair like I was some kind of big living doll they wanted to play with. So I gave them a sweet and chatted with them a while, and then they ran home to tell everyone the unbelievable story of this strange, pale, blond, blue-eyed creature they had spoken to!

The attentions I received in Nyeri on Monday were less enjoyable, I have to say. But I should back up. Starting out at 7:30AM on Monday morning, Flora and I journeyed to Mukurwe-ini (a very small town 5k from Wajee), and then on to Nyeri, for a variety of tasks, which took us to no less than the local office of the President (I got a picture with the D.O. and we exchanged business cards. Ooh la la, that’s networking for you!) and then the National Social Security Fund office to register Wajee’s employees (did you know they fingerprint everyone at every government office, every time you register for anything?? All 10 digits, no less!), and to various banks and offices. The experience at each and every office was… a lot of waiting around followed by more waiting around and then some waiting around. Bureaucracy is a bore anywhere in the world, but it’s at its peak here where just about everything is manual and done painstakingly slowly in pen and ink… aaack. Yes, I had a lot of spare time to practice my meditation techniques, that’s for sure!

Well when we were at last ready to go, burdened enormously with supplies we had bought for the camp, we had to make our way down a horrid busy street to the matatu station. Now, Nyeri is hardly Nairobi, but it is most definitely a city with all the attendant madness that can bring in this part of the world. And far from feeling like a vaguely amusing attraction as I did after church, I felt like a piece of meat in a cage being circled by sharks after being pawed, grabbed, and hooted at for three blocks. As we tried to get ourselves and our weighty packages into the right matatu, a man with devil-red eyes, intoxicated in the worst way, made himself obnoxious in his attempts to get me to follow him god-knows-where. So Flora, despite weighing no more than one of my legs I’m sure, went into protective mother bear mode, placed herself squarely in front of me, and drove him away, then took my hand and led me towards our matatu. The unpleasantness was momentarily broken when, as we marched off, I almost become a hackneyed punchline by actually slipping on a papaya peel – and very nearly taking a huge spill! Oh to have had a picture of that Stooge moment! It was really quite limerick-worthy, had I the brains to come up with one (“there was a young girl from BC, harassed by a man in Nyeri; she stepped on a fruit and went down with a hoot, and…” oh, whatever!). Suffice it to say that I have never been so glad to have a local ally with me, nor to finally get into a matatu however dusty and smelly, as I was then.

And the shower, once home again at Wajee, despite being freezing cold, was the best shower I’ve ever had, washing away the grime and ick of Nyeri and returning me to my state of peaceful appreciation that has been the more dominant theme of my trip so far.

The day after tomorrow, I go to Nguruman, for quite a different flavour – Maasai country. It’s a facility that is not even open yet, and has just one caretaker. So I’m having visions of me in the desert, surrounded by wild animals that want to eat or trample me, and one companion who speaks only Swahili whom I imagine to be saying “how are you, welcome to the lodge” when he is really saying “lady, move quickly, there is a wildebeest charging at you from behind”. Should be grand!

Until next time, I send you all big hugs from Africa!