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the wonderful kids

i have been anxiously waiting to write this post for months now!

it is my huge pleasure to introduce to you all, the wonderful kids with etfl! for the past while, i have been working with a team of incredible volunteers to bring in this new group of liberian children into the etfl family.

http://eattofeedliberians.com/wonderful_kids.html

they are a group of kids affected and infected by hiv/aids. since 2007, two very good liberian friends have been working to support these children through micro businesses and spare change. these kids lacked the necessary nutritional, medical and emotional support needed for children living in the shadow of a difficult illness that is heavily stigmatized in buduburam. they worked their hardest to provide for them but at times, the resources just simply are not there.

this year, etfl realized that they were in a spot where they could commit to these kids and women with financial support. a few volunteers headed over this summer to help develop this program and a lot of stress and hard work later, we're off! it is exciting, challenging, nerve wracking and bitter sweet.

when starting this program, we had hoped to be able to put the hiv+ kids on ARVs. we thought there were only a couple of them and that we would be able to match them with locals who could ensure adherence and internationals who could provide financial support. it is so so so so so important that once kids get on arvs, they do not stop. if they stop, the medications are not only ineffective but the kids can build up a resistance to them.

mid summer, i got a phone call from one of the volunteers in camp letting me know that they had finished testing the kids and that the majority of them were positive. it was too many kids to be able to manage. while we could probably get the financial support, administration and supervision is so far beyond our capacity and the capacities of the women in ghana who care for them. with a group that has such a flexible future, putting the kids on medications without knowing where they will be in a few months, how serious their parents are and so many other things could make it worse more than better.

i struggled with this decision, but not nearly as much as the volunteers in ghana did... and probably still are. i wish i could be in so many places at once.

at the end of the day though, i think we have made the responsible choice. it is so important not to overstretch yourself in this situation, and to promise only what you know you can deliver. we will now devote so much time to finding organizations who have the capacities and resources that we do not, to hopefully care for as many of these kids as possible.

i hate that this job has me make these decisions between impossible A and impossible B. i mean, i love it, but howwww is that a discussion that even has to happen. it makes me particularly sick that i had to think about that decision while sitting in cottage country with friends and beer, a trip to central america on the horizon and - relatively speaking - all the opportunity in the world.

ARG.

prime real estate

today (and tomorrow), i have the best office in the world... or at least, its up there. my office in san jose closed for the rest of the week and, realizing how much i'd be wasting my time in an apparently fantastic country, i decided to relocate to the west coast for a few days. with wifi and my laptop, i'm pretty portable.

so. i'm in manuel antonio. its touristy but, you can see why. its where jungle meets beach over giant cliffs. who wouldn't want to come? who wouldn't want to develop fabulous real estate that i want to buy? who wouldn't want to tempt me with fantastic hotels that jet out openly over cliffs? san jose and kitchener will be tough after this. people at the hostel keep saying how crappy it is that i have to be tied to my laptop here but, not so bad. at this point, i'm feeling somewhat at capacity for tourist activities. i'm pretty thrilled if i can have really good espresso.

last week was when i realized how down i'd let myself get in san jose. working 9-5 was good, but not exciting. missing home and friends, i found myself with a pre-bisco style countdown to sept 30th... dumb. a month is no time and i'm going to be tied to all of that forever. so, i headed off to a volcano.

volcano was pretty but, lacked lava. well, apparently we saw lava but honestly, more like a rock slide. i guess at night it is more impressive but of course, we only saw fireflies by the hundred (arguably prettier than red hot lava... but not as impressive to talk about). met an australian guy who was hitting a similar point of being tired of traveling. not an easy thing to own up to when its been such a huge and defining point of your life but... it was good to talk about. and gave me that final gust to really take advantage of my last little while. so, i went and belayed myself down some waterfalls before my busride back to the city. it is about as beautiful as you could dream belaying down tropical wateralls could be. pictures with a crappy waterproof camera don't come close to capturing it. sad.

wouldn't you know it that the australian guy saw real lava the night i left.

went reluctantly back to san jose and my host-mom's strange dependency on hotdogs and bologna in meals for two days... work still good, and is getting hectic. with such little time left i'm feeling a bit pressed and seem to be working stupidly long hours to make the most of it all. it will be nice to have this project wrapped up so i can turn my head to new ones.

anyway. on tuesday as i frantically typed and multitasked with facebook chat, skype, and 5 billion word and outlook documents, evelyn mentioned that we'd be closed. one more thing to think about. the beach, recommended by other travelers, was an obvious choice. today was just as productive but i managed to get in a walk through the jungle and a (delicious) local espresso. and a few bags of coffee to bring home.

this weekend... apparently its whale season so i'll try to see some of those. or maybe just sprawling on the beach trying to get a final bit of sun before a long canadian winter. oh the choices.

two weeks til home (i have a less aggressive countdown still going...). i wonder if my sheets at home will smell as aggressively of bounce sheets as my ones at this hostel do. if this place has bedbugs they've certainly fooled me with super potent cleaning products. and i'm spreading all my too-traveled clothes out on them so that they smell as nice too.

subwaycostarica.com

i have been meaning to write this post for a week now. my second SOS outreach trip wrapped up last weekend and ive spent the past week working in san jose at our costa rican partner's office (reto juvenil internacional). its felt a lot like how i remember coming off canoe trip did... so many things you want to do but somehow its been a week and ive only just now made my way down to subway (to find they offer avocados as a sandwich topping!!!). that is to say nothing of the more productive things on my to do list. anyway. hopefully with a few more cups of folgers coffee (a crime that a costa rican house has folgers coffee, i know), that pattern will change.

but. backtrack to namaldi, costa rica. after leaving the laurier sos nicaragua trip, i made my way down to costa rica (while watching porn on a very public bus. google benny benassi's unedited satisfaction and picture watching that on an 8 hour greyhound trip). i was met at the bus by padre fabio who goes down in the books as one of the strangest characters ive ever met. while my drive from san jose to namaldi with could probably get an entire blog, it was a lot like taking a namibian train. a 200km drive took us 6 hours. luckily, its well documented because we stopped the car at every opportunity for a picture ever. even better was that since we took the back roads rather than the straight highway, we had a lot of awkward stand alone photo ops. we did make it eventually though, and i certainly know costa rica, including its agricultural university, better because of it. every cloud?

finally reached namaldi to find an entirely different trip than the one i left in nicaragua. this trip - an open trip - was subscribed to by a big range of people with some connection or support for sos, plus greg. the community itself had a lot more going on as well... including a bar with an alleged swimming pool, that was never actually full, running water and, if you could hold it, a flush toilet. a few nights before i got there the group and the community had also held a bingo fundraiser that lasted 6 hours in a packed classroom to fundraise for the school. oh and, apparently some chinese church donated a kareoke machine? ohhhhh foreign aid.

my gut reactions to this community were a good reminder of how desensitized i think i've come to "this part" of the world. also a reminder of how i set priorities and define 'poverty'... and, upon further thought... how wrong i can be. reminded me a lot of my initial reaction to people having cell phones and how i immediately thought, oh. you're fine. tvs now illicit that same reaction, and i'm not sure its fair. there are a lot of tvs in this country. i think it might be a sign of value more than wealth...

but tvs aside, this community, the school in particular, is a blend of indigenous and non-indigenous populations. the school offers a bilingual education so it means that kids from surrounding communities walk really far to take advantage. apparently the government formed curriculum does an alright job of preserving indigenous culture while embracing modernity (... english). id be curious to see what that blend looks like. after two years in buduburam, where government doesn't exist, its a funny transition/lesson in social services. its nice working where teachers are standardized and paid by the government. and where if you have a dining centre, you get government funds to sustain it. and more buildings can mean more grants.

where i have questions is around the transition from us to government. does this mean that once x amount of projects are built, projects that the government hasn't got the capacity to do, we're done and its the community/governments responsibility? it feels too tidy to be true. has my degree and time in ghana made me too paranoid to believe in something simple? what about what gets taught? how it gets taught? who teaches it? why they teach it? what materials are used? don't people want my (completely) unqualified and idealistic opinion on those things? doesn't every one want to sit and circles and discuss? i feel like ive been taught to micromanage and, in thinking about it, it makes such little sense. is building the schools and leaving the blend between local and international collaboration? i have anxiety just thinking about that.

why hasn't someone written a manual. shame a manual could never exist.

while im in san jose, im working with reto to figure out what a long term commitment looks like. to them, they see it as working with a bunch of different but connected communities to build up education in the region. the indigenous population in this area is huge, and lacks access to education. most kids won't attend because it could mean up to 3 hours of walking, one way... river crossings not included. plus, this area sees a seasonal migration of workers across the panama border. build up services too much on one side, and everyone floods over/doesn't leave. thus, our project in silico creek, panama with mcgill in august. as i sat in the office looking at what different indigenous communities had, and where projects could go, i felt a lot like i was playing a version of risk or monopoly.

anyway. as i reread this i feel like i sound to skeptical about the work i/we do. to be clear... i do. a lot. as much as any jaded skeptic can. what i love most is that in the communities we work with with reto, the teaching foundations are there first. the communities have government-certified teachers who move from urban areas to help with these kids. they're teaching outside, in chicken coops, or wherever. they've shown that the infrastructure isn't the most important part but of course, a roof and blackboard always helps... not just logistically but for building a sense of pride and respect for the emerging education system.

greg and i did a bunch of interviews for this informational outreach video that we're building for SOS and i got the chance to sit down with one of the teachers (for too short a time... damn reoccurring theme in my life) and talk about why he travels so far from his home and comforts to teach in some pretty difficult conditions. his answers (you'll have to watch the video!) and other comments while making that video keep me inspired to do this work.

its just that this month in san jose i'm picking apart each community, what we've done there, why, how it could continue, and what could be next. i'm also navigating some particularly tricky buduburam mazes which as some friends, family and spanish teachers will know, keep me perpetually on the edge of nervous breakdowns. all of this completely chips away at my confidence in asking the 'right' questions, making the 'right' decisions and starting the 'right' paths. as someone who loves shades of grey and veers away from right or wrong questions, decisions and paths, this is a very... intimidating? exciting? nerve racking? challenging? so many adjectives.... environment to be in.

but. its a fun one. and its one that pushes me to learn more (including spanish), talk more, explore more and all those other things. with a sister starting university, a dog turning one and friends having ridiculous bar nights at home, it gets really annoying to be constantly away. its pretty excellent that i can be excited about monday morning and work starting up for the week again. lame? workaholic?

i don't feel like i ever paint a very good picture of what i'm actually doing here. so.. to quickly sum up. i'm in san jose until the end of september, learning about reto, partner communities, and learning about the central american university atmosphere. im also going to visit a few of the communities we have/might work in over the next while which i'm really excited for. and then, come sept 30, its back to canada for me. for real this time. holy smokes. SOS is working to get a big blog thing going and i'll be writing there as well... probably more tied to what i'm doing, than the random thoughts that pass through my head.

oh and. this is my 100th blog post. do bloggers get a present for that?

and. happy birthday mom. outlook just notified me that i was 15 minutes overdue in that task.

rocks.

i can now confirm that there are many rocks in the community of san marcos, nicaragua. i feel as thought i have seen, hit and ate a lot of them. there are also a few that will stay with me probably for awhile, since they're permanently lodged in my skin.

i'm back in a city (granada... the spanish colonialist turned tourist dream destination) to regroup quickly after the past few days in the mountains with the outreach SOS trip from laurier. the past few days, capped off with a final night out with the group, has left me zombie like today. but, i'll try to figure out what has happened.

these outreach trips brought up a surprising amount of skepticism with friends when i started talking about this job with SOS. people wondered why foreign students with no building experience were spending money to go down and do a job that a local could probably do better. i completely saw where they were coming from and agreed on some of the arguments, which left me nervous for what i'd find when i actually went on one of these trips. however, after a few days, i have (almost) nothing but positive things to say.

first. they're no party or picnic. the work was hard! and maybe harder than some of the trip participants thought they were signing on for. we had to dig the foundation of the school so that in the event of another earthquake hitting this community, our work won't be undone. fun part was discovering that the land we were building on was made up of a lot of really unbreakable rock that we had to chip away at, bit by bit for days. its almost finished. anyone who knows me, and my athletic abilities, can imagine how hilarious it would have been to watch me heave this giant metal pole up and down at a rock willing it to break. other tasks, like moving thousands of rocks from point a to point b, weren't any more physically relaxing.

another big concern was that this would be the worst example of development tourism i'd seen yet. again, happily surprised. the guys on the trip really impressed me with how thoughtful and aware they were of their role in the community. they didn't barge in waving answers and judgements about rural life. they made the best effort they could to interact with the community and to go above and beyond the building of the school with english classes, constructive and sustainable projects etc. don't know what kind of monsters i was bracing myself for but i didn't find them...

as for locals, and taking work they could do and benefit from. i think/hope i'll always be a skeptic on this one. but, i'm a more optimistic skeptic right now.

first and most simply, its a shit ton of work that extra hands certainly won't hurt. and, there is also the argument that its not like if the volunteers didn't come, that their $1500 would go to paying locals and the projects. it would probably just stay in canada, with them.

then, there is the lack of local availability. they may not be living the life of excessive luxury, but they certainly work hard each day. after the initial thrill of us being there wore off, the "crowds" (pretty small community) went away and people went back to their daily grind. i'm not sure that people had the spare time to come and put up a school...

there is of course also the learning that comes for both the volunteers coming in and the community that lives there. i hoep that this is an overarching positive learning experience for everyone. i hope that its true that our presence helps inspire people about a world they don't know exists (many have never left this really tiny mountain community). i hope that even though there are language barriers, business students from laurier are able to see alternative forms of knowledge and recognize the value in them. i think many did. listening to them describe the locals changed so dramatically over 5 days. but i guess only time will tell. time, revisits and of course, more spanish. i can't even begin to describe how badly i wish i was not only 200% fluent in spanish but was also from central america. interacting with a community that hasn't seen canadians before is tough to do. there is a lot of hesitation on both our parts and after these first few days, we were finally getting somewhere. then of course, i had to leave. storrryyy of my life.

that defense being said, i hope that peopel continue to challenge me. i've really valued those conversations so far.....

what else. i got to do a few community visits to potential and past SOS projects with our partner organizations. a few big (a high school for a region that doesn't have school past gr. 5 at this point) and a few small (bridges so that kids attending a school don't get washed away by a river or stuck at school/home when it rises). they all need to be explored more before we figure out if they're the right fits for all the players but, there are a lot of really excellent people weighing in on the development an execution of hte projects, so i'm excited to have those conversations.

annnd final thought on the trip. it was interesting looking at the perceptions that people come into these trips with.. about rural life... about where things might go with a school... and generally how people adapt to a really rural community (like, no water, electricity or cell reception rural). this group of volunteers came from really different backgrounds and views than i've been used to (didn't go through the global development studies conditioning) and how that changes responses and approaches from what i would do was cool - and at times frustrating and hilarious - to see. i can't help but realize how low a priority hand sanitizer is for me relative to others.

so. next game plan. tonight i continue to eat all the foods i've been missing... i think i've had my pizza and ice cream fill so its onto something new. food in the community was good but basic and a bit of variety today has been fun. then, a big sleep, and another big sleep on a giant bus ride down to costa rica. tomorrow night i seem to be checked into a nunnery (not my doing..) and then its off to namaldi, costa rica to meet up with another SOS trip that is wrapping up their second week, and then to FINALLY start work! its been pretty much a year of traveling for me as of this month (this time last year i was ending my adventure in east africa... crazy). i had no idea what i was going to do next week, let alone post backpacking or in the next year. i don't think i saw anything about the past year coming. the surprised and questioning faces of the guys on the laurier trip made me see just how much literal and figurative ground i've covered. it makes my head hurt.

the rural move

tonight i say goodbye to spanish verbs, shakira and cobblestone roads.

the laurier outreach trip is currently en route to managua and late tonight, we make a hilarious mountain drive to a village called ocalca to start building a school and vegetable garden for the community. yet another change of pace for me.

will be sad to leave matagalpa. the past 10 days have been calmer than usual for me. i haven't packed a bag or ran once. i think its been like 4 months since that last happened.

i'm hardly fluent at this point but, poco a poco. ive really enjoyed the lessons so far and today, understood a full story read outloud start to finish. when we did this last week and i was supposed to retell the story, i told a completely different one. my host family and i can actually have conversations as well. and, best of all, i can speak in more than one tense (mas o menos).

i'll be doing this rural learning thing for the next while. will be so nice to be removed from internet and life. i feel like a cop out traveler when i go on wifi at spanish school and like things on facebook.

sorry about a dull post. expecting a bit more excitement when i finish these building projects end of august.

shakira.

the past month has had a lot of travel in it and, especially because i'm totally surrounded in spanish, i find myself looking for any kind of similarity. somehow, the biggest constant in my life right now is......... shakira. who would have thought that waka waka would be the most familiar thing in my life.

i have yet to meet a kid that doesn't know all the moves and most of the lyrics to waka waka. i'm betting adults, myself included, don't let on to as much as they know.

right now i'm living in matagalpa, nicaragua where torrential downpours (3 today) compete with shakira (1 play today) in frequency.... its also the coffee capital of the country (hooray!). i'm trying desperately to learn spanish this week before my actual job in central america starts. so far, ive surprised myself with how much french i remember, and have surprised nicaraguans with my english/french/spanish accent. esta es muy curioso.

its frustrating as hell not speaking the language. i am staying with a grandmother and grand daughter and take spanish lessons all day so i'm pretty much entirely immersed. cool experience and what not... lots of learning... but really frustrating. i came down here with pretty generic knowledge of nicaraguan history and politics and already am being bombarded with new perspectives and details. it drives me nuts that i can't absorb more, and that classes haven't made me fluent overnight. thankfully there is an american girl who has been here twice now and can fill me in on what i'd miss out on otherwise. there are so many spanish lessons in my future..........

howweeevvver. poco a poco. managed to hold up (understand? not really contribute) a conversation about homosexuality in nicaragua which was pretty interesting, especially given how psychotically catholic this country is. still wish i could contribute more than basic statements about homosexuality and the gay pride week in toronto.

nice thing about being 95% surrounded in spanish is that i don't have the opportunity to rely on the translator. despite being a mute, i still get to (have to?) maintain a lot of independence. as much as i look forward to my days of having a woman work with me in part as a translator, having to figure this all out on my own is... an experience...?

anyway. this coming weekend my spanish days end when the laurier outreach trip gets to nicaragua. we move to a really small village to build a school... they'll be there for 2 weeks, i'll be there for a week before i move to meet up with another SOS trip in costa rica. excited for english conversation again but its really good to have such a huge challenge that i can focus all of my energy on.

oh, and an aside? nicaraguan food is fantastic. big staples include cheese, beans and coffee... and a bit of chocolate and cinnamon.

adios africa

i've wound up back in joburg for a few hours today before i fly (back up the continent) to senegal and over to canada. i'm hoping that i can somehow process the past 2 weeks and the next 2 months while i'm here, and take a bath.

i don't really know where to begin with buduburam. UNHCR has recently launched another resettlement/repatriation push that has created an environment very similar to when i got there the first time in 2008. nobody really knows what the future has in store, and everyone is hoping to leave. the usual feelings of limbo seem intensified and i exist somewhere within it all, trying to think in my long term that exists independent of liberia.

the feeding program continues to move along, and i move along in a roller coaster like way with it. much of the 2 weeks was spent alternating between being incredibly proud about what we've accomplished and are able to provide, and being incredibly frustrated that i haven't been able to do or see more. half the time i think that providing these staples is the best that i can do given that i am not part of the community and that i cannot create structural change on my own... other half, i wonder why i perpetuate ideas about foreigners coming in and giving out food and making themselves feel good (and terrible), and whether just giving out food makes any difference at all in the bigger picture. of course at the end of the day, the individual stories from families that struggle to eat each day remind me that of course its relevant and important... but, the roller coaster ride continues.

the school that the program operates out of continues to need love. the 8 months that the teachers were not paid for (before ETFL began paying them) made some pretty serious dents on the quality of education provided. i hoped that salaries would start to make small improvements, and i think they have, but there is a long road ahead. many teachers left and the new ones that replaced them are committed but under qualified. so. changing that is a new priority that i think the group of international volunteers are going to try to work with to the best of their abilities. i think the plan is to start by getting the basics into the school, namely the updated ghanaian curriculum. and paper. and anything to hang in the classrooms so they're not so bare (no kindergarten class should be without colour). then, provided a real effort comes from the teachers to show that they are committed to improvement, we begin exploring teacher training seminars from both within liberian, ghanaian and maybe international communities. its frustrating again because everyone is in such limbo and expects to leave but, based on how this panned out in 2008, i think we've still got a lot of time ahead of us in buduburam... i'll probably hang on until the bitter end.

i also spent a lot of time working with international volunteers keen to help etfl set up its second feeding program for a small group of kids. basically, 2 friends in camp have been supporting a group of 37 kids affected by HIV for the past 2 years. while its incredibly fortunate that the majority of them are not positive, the status of their parents makes for some pretty enormous hurdles in their lives. the 2 liberian friends have been caring for these kids with whatever money they can collect, and not only provide them with food but a social support system as well. we're still flushing out details so, more to come on this later. its very exciting though!

what else from ghana. lot of old friends still around, but slightly more grown up and full of relatively positive news. of course "its not easy" on camp and its always going to be hard to have days full of stories that leave me wondering how anything makes sense. as a devs student with post-modern thinking engrained in me, i've always tried to look at the camp as a part of the world where things are different, not weird. but honestly. life is quite simply messed up, and is maybe more confusing each time i enter that picture. its not a criticism of the people, beliefs, cultures or what have you, its quite simply that protracted refugee situations seem to be one of the most twisted and incomprehensible things ive managed to come across in my limited experience. an international volunteer who had traveled a lot in central america said that i might be disappointed (not the right word.. but i can't think of the appropriate one) there because while people are dealt pretty shitty hands, its nothing on this. i guess we'll see soon enough.

this month is my 12th month in 'africa'. does that make it an appropriate time to leave the continent for a while? either way. its back to canada tonight and then on to more adventures in central america for august/september. hooo-rah.

...ghana

its nice to have 'lindsay in ghana' as relevant again.

i made it back... finally. with more hatred for ghana immigration than ever before. but, more excitement and love for buduburam as well so, it balances out?

things are hectic and i don't think ive processed anything. so, here's a jumbled list of my thoughts about being back.

- being here makes sense. and feels really comfortable.

- i run a lot. and sweat a lot. and joburg is really cold. i feel like i'm this grimy and frantic whirlwind going around the camp while people tell me how cold it is.

- 1.5 weeks is no time at all. and i wish i was moving back here for longer

- it is really strange being here with other volunteers and i surprisingly miss being here alone. i really miss living on my own and having my own house rules.

- i really love watching other volunteers learn and explore (lame as that sounds). although i wish i could give them the coles notes to what i think of the place without influencing how they see it.

- prosper and eduardo are nutters in the same class at school. their teacher must hate them and their lives. they're really smart though and have even more rhymes to sing off to me.

- more old friends have come back to camp from liberia... which is excellent for me... unnerving for them and their country.

- there are a lot of babies that were born since i left 6 months ago, and i didn't know any of the women were pregnant. one named their kid lindsay. not sure how to handle it...

- i have a job coming up that i have to prep for and balance with this life that has immediately felt like i never left.

- the black stars made their return to accra today while i was celebrating the return of my passport with a ghana visa over a 2for1 pizza with AB. it was a less than enthusiastic return. i don't think everyone's hearts have mended from that defeat (actually).

- 'yeys' 'ohs' and 'aaaalriggh' are still in full force. and so are some excellent sense of humours and ways of stringing words together.

- i don't think i've slept in a long time. maybe thats why i can't figure anything out and feel like that even though i couldn't have more to talk about and more to be excited about, i can just barely get a blog post together.

better blog next time. whenever next time is. so much to do. so many people to see. so much spice that needs to be put in my body. and right now, so many buckets of cold water that need to be dumped on me.

oh and. the feeding program and hope foundation are doing really really well. i couldn't be more proud of what everyone has accomplished. time to grow?

hooray!

employed and planning

i've had a lot of quarter life crises in joburg. blame it on the aggressive cement topped with electric fences and other people who have a job and more purpose. its led to frantic job applications that feel like stabs in the dark and don't pan out.

a few weeks back in zambia a friend forwarded on yet another call for applications, but this time for an organization called students offering support based out of waterloo (www.studentsofferingsupport.ca). basically, the organization runs exam-prep classes at campuses around canada and the fee charged is put towards building school projects around south and central america.

they were looking for a director of international outreach to help run their building projects in the field and help co-ordinate volunteers and university chapters around canada, and then some more. they've been wickedly successful with the exam prep courses and are now pulling in more money than they know what to do with so... they need help spending it. i read this job description on a public computer thinking man, that would be cool but i haven't got anything to apply. then, walking home i realized i'd been lugging my damn laptop around and that i had a few hours to go back to the internet cafe and try my luck against 130+ other candidates.

after an intense interview process that i was more anxious and excited about than i think even i knew, i found out earlier this week that i got the job! i haven't been far from cloud nine since. i continue to find myself breaking out into random uncontrollable smiles despite being very much lost somewhere in joburg suburbs (stamps are a VERY difficult thing to locate and have now accounted for almost 5 hours of lost walking... although maybe thats the result of a poor but overly confident sense of direction on my part).

so. now i re-group, again, and make new plans for a very long time given how the past year has gone. i'm still going to ghana because i've invested so much money in a hellish process. i'll be there until the middle of july with the new volunteers before i fly all the way back to south africa only to turn around to fly all the way up to senegal and then, across and HOME for the 19th of july! go figure. home for 2ish weeks to get sorted with SOS in waterloo and then, south america for 3ish months!

i'm obviously pretty stoked about south america. never been before and am really keen to take spanish beyond random descriptions of pirates and teddy bears (thank you stu and SPAN010 for those helpful skills). i'll be going around with some of SOS's volunteer outreach trips and figuring out how they work for a few weeks and then, when they all go back home, i stay on conducting needs assessments and figuring out where schools can be built and maintained! i'm the first person to really take on this role so think there is a lot that i could do with it. greg seems keen to trust me and my judgement, so i suppose this will be a very good test of what i think i know.

in the job interview, i was asked if this was my dream job. it kind of is. i was anticipating YEARS of bitch work filing papers for interesting organizations before i could actually move onto a job that i was excited about! nice change of plans.

now, for the most long-term plan ever. for the next YEAR i'll be based in waterloo working with SOS. there will likely be return trips to south/central america throughout the year but, much to my mom's delight, it looks like KW will once again be my home base. i think i've had enough time away to actually get excited about going back to friends and family. i certainly needed 4 years of uni and a year of traveling to get to this point but, this all feels right.

and, this by no means spells the end of ETFL. it wasn't ever a project i seriously thought about pursuing as a full time career. i don't think my model really works for that. it will continue to be a project - that i need help with - and being based in kitchener will make that much easier... so there we go. a year(+) of my life planned.

i don't think i've ever said go figure as much as i have this week. partly from this job, partly because i'm currently watching michaels new cleaning lady, nelly, iron cotton tshirts and socks. she is nothing if not thorough. she'd have a field day in my room of crumpled cotton things that have been "packed" in anticipation of ghana for 2 weeks now.

a click for $10 000

so, dan safayeni just nominated me as someone who 'makes canada great' in MS Office's competition. we BADLY need you to 'like us' (the little liberia story) on this link:

http://www.makecanadagreat.ca/Gallery-All.aspx

with enough votes, we get entered to win $10 000, which would be huge for us. a few weeks ago we passed our $20 000 fundraised mark. this prize would take care of a year's worth of work. with one click. from you. sooooo. go here:

http://www.makecanadagreat.ca/Gallery-All.aspx

click that you like me. little liberia: lindsay's initiative. GO DO IT NOW!

we only have one day to get as many votes as possible. closes the night of tuesday june 22.

get going. hurry up. quit wasting time reading my blog. i'm really not that interesting when up against $10 000.

whyyyyyyyyy ghana, whyyyy?

i'm currently sitting in joburg as close to the heater as possible while avoiding burns, flipping around two coins i have on a piece of string from egypt. the first of these coins went on when i got to egypt a few months ago. the second went on 3 weeks later when i finally got myself sorted to leave egypt for ghana. i am wondering what two symbolic things i'll make for my south africa version of this blessed debacle. the rand doesn't come with coins with holes so, i'll have to keep my eyes open for something else.

i was hoping to be on my way to the airport on the flashy gautrain right about now but, that would be a silly idea. instead, i'm wrapping my head around being here until next saturday. hooray? and, joburg during world cup isn't nearly as friendly to exploring as egypt was so, its not looking like a particularly exciting or inspiring week.

i threw myself a pretty solid pity party this morning... complaining about spending more money, about waiting more time, about being stuck in the suburbs with a tourist-infested mall as my main place to explore, about the cold, and just about anything else i could dream up. i began flipping through facebook looking at what friends and family were doing, wishing that i could be home with them and wondering why i seem to make things so freakin difficult for myself.

my mope-fest was interrupted by a nocturnal friend who was hanging around facebook chat as well. i couldn't be more happy for his nocturnal tendencies because it helped put my incredibly lucky life, which i have nothing to honestly complain about, into perspective.

so, revising my pity party... i have to spend more money that i don't feel i have, but really do and can make back when i come home. i have to spend more time in a country that the world is watching, and feeling the excitement (albeit damped excitement after bafana's last game) of a country that pulls together for one sport. not only that, but i'm stuck in an area of the country where most people dream of living. exploring opportunities may be limited today but, i've also just come back from a huge exploration of southern africa so maybe a boring week is in order. and, while i'm not with friends and family at home, there are some here... and those at home have been around to talk with online and listen to me complain about nothing worthwhile. i suppose i'm lucky afterall.

making me feel more guilty was talking with this nocturnal friend about what i wanted to see happen back in the camp, and how i could possibly go around helping friends who recently asked me why god put them on this earth if it was only to suffer. that kind of question, asked by kids younger than me, is something worth complaining about. another week in parkhurst is not.

what ultimately frustrates me about these visa complications is that not only are they avoidable with a bit of thought and planning (a lesson i have still not fully learned). further, the the money i have to spend on stupid technicalities and bureaucratic hoops could be so much more effectively used in the camp... i think... although, in past trips giving away money has acted as a quick solution to get people to stop talking about what was wrong. maybe a total lack of money on my part will force me to get even more creative with solutions that are possibly more lasting then, here is $20. $20 isn't creative, it doesn't address the problem and it arguably helps me (and the incredible sense of guilt i feel while i sit in my house having 3 meals a day) more than it helps the recipient.

oh also. its world refugee day tomorrow and i wish so badly i was spending it with refugees rather than in a nice suburb of joburg making superficial nods to the plight of refugees worldwide.

annnnd this now concludes the end of my pity party and the beginning of a week devoted to internet research on how to make - for lack of a better saying - the world a better place. tall order for 7 days eh?

so, liberians that read this... see you NEXT saturday. sorry for the false hope. friends/family that read this... thanks for listening to me mope and making me feel missed. ETFL supporters that read this... give me your ideas for how to make this world a better place and work that i could be doing this week (no pressure).

oh and, new blog feature: sign up for ETFL's newsletter (look top right of the blog) if you're not on the list already!

annnnnnnd, go.

sanity restored

seems a bunch of people were questioning my sanity after that last post... to say nothing of what my mom thought. hindsight yeah, not the best thought out plan but it made for excellent stories, a good tan and a whole lot of character. that being said, after more overnight busses and trains than i thought i could do, i'm back in joburg listening to an obnoxious amount of vuvuzelas signaling world cup kick off.

hitching slowed down considerably after namibia. sore backs, sore feet and long distances cramped that style which was probably for the best. instead, we began opting for the worlds slowest trains. somehow, it took us almost 12 hours to travel less than 400km from the coast to windhoek. then later, 15 hours to travel about 400km from victoria falls to bulawayo, zimbabwe. luckily, its super cheap, is a nights accommodation and is certainly an adventure. zim train was definitely a highlight, largely because we prepared ourselves with pizza and beer after days of eating stupid nutrific bars (something you'd normally soak in milk to avoid drying out your mouth and to give it flavour... without it, i imagine it is what hamsters eat).

zimbabwe, despite being freakishly cold at night when you're not prepared for winter in a tent, was somewhere i'd been hoping to visit since doing an aggressive amount of research on it a few years back. obviously i'd love to spend more time there to really get a feel for the place but that wasn't this trip.

instead, i got a chance to see a few of the major towns, as well as these really cool ruins that show pre-colonial development of an african society... shame the portuguese came in and crushed that all. i actually had no idea these ruins even existed (south of masvingo) and they ended up being a really nice note to finish the trip on. of course, so was the 100 trillion dollar bill that we picked up while listening to the guy describe how the bank across the street used to light it all on fire for lack of a better idea. with the USD/rand around, these bills are now being sold to tourists for more than they were ever worth (which still, isn't much). for now, it feels a bit like a ghost town from the 60s full of more whites than i ever imagined, bits of hope, no peanut butter but loads of imported fruit (including avocados, that i'd long been without in SA!).

i feel like that was sort of a weird description of zimbabwe but, it really is a strange place.

anyway. exhausted, i'm now catching up on real life in joburg. real coffee, hot showers, warm clothes and warm food aside, ETFL's to do list has grown over the past month and i'm keen to get moving on it. the traveling has been nice but i couldn't be more excited to sit down today with unlimited internet and get things sorted before another whirlwind takes off...

flipflop hitch hiking

change of plans. rather than kicking around zambia - which turns out, id on't like nearly as much as i thought i would - i'm in namibia. i've been hitch hiking from north to south, which turns out, is not easy. botswana hitching was way easier than we thought, and it probably built up too much confidence in our ability to get around. however, thanks to pickup trucks and tour busses, we're alive and out of one of the 'most remote places in africa'.

what i love about hitching is the giant highs and lows you get... and they probably best sum up what we've been up to.

high: you can drive close to the kalahari if you beg someone to let you sit on the top of their truck for 2 hours while he drives to the gate.

low: without your own car, and the money to back it up, you can't actually get into the kalahari.

high: a kenyan that lives in botswana who drives to the DRC via zambia every 2 weeks and picks us up from (another) gas station and not only doesn't want money for petrol but buys us lunch!

low: 15 hour minibus rides (overnight) through northern namibia that stop at every gas station en route and play the same 5 songs over and over again.

high: being picked up at 530 am from a gas station in a northern namibian town that nobody ever goes to, and being driven exactly where you want to go.

low: finding out that the guy who picks you up is a bad singer who loves singing and honking at small birds on the road that are kilometers away.

high: the kaokoveld. one of the most remote places in africa...

low: realizing 100 km into the kaokoveld that nobody drives there, that you have no water, and that your cracker diet really dries up your waterless mouth.

bigger low: realizing that you're not 2km away from the nearest town, but 50km. and that there is no water for the next 50 km and you have 3 gulps each.

bigger low: thinking that while you're sleeping on a bed of rocks on the side of a road, that the car that drove by has stopped and is planning to rob you blind.

high: realizing, after you burried your valuables under rocks away from your tent, that the car drove away and never came back.

low: waking up with the sorest body in the world and a gigantic hill to hike up in front of you... and with no water. and food that only dries your mouth further. and flipflops on your feet that make sure you feel every rock you step on.

bigger high: having a german tour bus pass you and give you 6 bottles of water.

biggest high of my week: hearing the reverse sounds of the german bus as it decides that it will rescue you from the kaokoveld afterall and drive you really far... saving your life.

low: saying goodbye to the german tour bus and being left in a very unforgiving desert.

low: making horrible instant coffee in a water bottle on the side of the road to lift spirits and curb hunger, while realizing that you hate the game 20 questions.

high: being picked up by a colorado school trip from the middle of the desert after every other tourist drives by pretending they can't see you.

bigger high: hurtling down desert roads on the top of a 4x4 as some of hte most incredible landscapes pass you by.

even bigger high: after selling your sister for a horse to luckyboy in uis, namibia (sorry poops-), the school group invites you to tag along with them to camp at some really cool mountain, and feeds you a meal that isn't pb on strange bread,

low: getting really fucking lost at night in those mountains as you try to navigate home from the town's local bar.

low: the smell of probably millions of seals that are not very cute.

low: a weird desert town that is supposed to be more german than germany but feels more like a ghost town with funny architecture and a permanent seal smell.

high: making spaghetti in the ghost town and having a full stomach after a week and a half of really terrible food and being hungry.

its been a really strange week. it gets stranger as i sit in this german town trying to mesh this hitch hiking life with my actual life and put this all together. feels a bit confusing, and just plain weird. tonight we get back on the move across botswana to finally get to zimbabwe (the original point of this whole trip). then south africa. then GHAANNNAA!!!!

swanky things

the past few weeks have been full of life-planning, thanks to my mom's visit over. the two of us had a really nice trip full of leopard cub spotting, waterfall swims, rock art, and the occasional obnoxious tour guide or sunset cruise. it was certainly a different style of traveling, with it being planned and all, but i can see how people are fans of being shipped around without thinking. there were no nightmare bus rides in the middle of the night with friends ready to punch out old women (mozambique was full of that), so thats a perk.

i've decided to cut my time short in SA and head up to ghana for july and august (then, to my mom's excitement, home for the beginning of september). i've got volunteers coming over this summer which i think coudl be a really fantastic opportunity for ETFL, CBW and buduburam so i would like to make sure i can help us take full advantage of that. plus, after having spent a few months watching how other organizations work, i've got a few more ideas for things that we can do in the camp to make the whole thing smoother and more helpful. hopefully that return will make blogs a bit more interesting to read, and less about my travel.

so, with a busy 2 months in ghana on the horizon i'm off to botswana (because its close), zambia (to volunteer, and make myself feel semi-legitimate) and zimbabwe (because its on my bucket list). somehow my time in SA has become really numbered which is too bad but exciting. i think i'm ready to keep moving. months here have really helped me appreciate what we've got going in buduburam and i am excited to go back there with fresh eyes.

the southern africa tour begins (blindly) tomorrow. today though, i'm spending the day in madikwe game reserve at a friend's super swanky lodge getting my act together with wireless internet. going away traveling is a nice break from the project but i get such a huge to-do list in my head that to actually get online and tick things off is arguably more therapeutic than the time away. its also looking like this will be my final taste of luxury travel before getting back to where i belong as a backpacker bouncing around through botswana, hopefully getting to where we want to be.

wish us luck on this last stint (or stunt). we've done a shit packing job cutting all sorts of necessary things. i cut moisturizer for fear of explosion and already i'm annoyed with that call. what will be worse is when we find out that in fact it does rain in africa and the fly of the tent, that we cut since it was too bulky, would really be helpful. we have raincoats though. and a lonely planet. and hopefully, good senses of humour.

being a suck.

i never thought i'd find myself wasting my life away on facebook and whining about winter coming while i was in 'africa'. yet another wonder of johannesburg, i suppose. i'm sorry to anyone that has had to experience me being the biggest suck in the world during the past few days.

got back from mozambique a week ago today. trip was a pretty good time... learned that i certainly don't speak portuguese and should stop telling people i have basic abilities in spanish as well. brushed up on major communist figures while in the capital, maputo, since they name every street after one of them. oddly enough, despite the pride in FRELIMO and the revolution, they have "temporarily" closed the revolution museum... pretty sure they haven't opened it since the 70s. worked out though... instead we got to see some of the mozambican art scene that was actually quite well documented through a few galleries. we lucked out and met a dutch girl working at one and she was good enough to give us an explanation of how art has evolved since the portuguese in the 60s. after checking out maputo's praised bar scene (flashy bars, not great luck with music) and stuffing ourselves with more prawns, mussels, calamari and mystery fish than necessary, we came back to the city.

the idea was to spend 2 days here, saying bye to 2 friends and getting some work done. of course, i have had yet another run in with diplomatic bureaucracy and rather than returning to hlabisa before my mom comes over, i'm stuck waiting for a passport to get fixed up. with the exception of the odd perfect fall day, the weather has been dreary and sucking the life out of me thus all the facebook time. it also keeps sparking quarter-life crises that prompt frantic googling for jobs where i come up short over and over again.

kyle, my buddy in winter (or i guess its only fall) joburg depression, and i will probably make pancakes in the morning as celebration of being total wastes of space. pathetic, i know. then maybe, if its not completely terrible outside, we'll go see the planetarium.

plus side, today SMYLe - the marimba band - had a performance at joburgs fifa stadium. along with watching another knock out performance, i got to wander around the new stadium a bit while they handed out free tickets to all the people who built it. they make it hard in this city not to get excited about the world cup... it forced a temporary break from being a total suck.

this has been a very eeyore entry. suppose i missed the usual winter blahs this year in canada so its only fair that i get stuck with them now.

hlabisa... finally

feeding on the familiarity of malawi, ive left joburg and am living - for a short while - im hlabisa, south africa. it is north east from durban in kwa-zulu natal... really hilly, really green, really far from parkhurst.

parkhurst was, and continues to be, a learning experience. i think ive said this a million times but it was out of my element and showed maybe the future of where i need to take ETFL... its a slightly grey looking future of annual reports, corporate relationships and other things less exciting than field work but its an inevitable part, i suppose.

hlabisa has been more field work which is loads more fun. im only here for a week right now but have gathered a host of ideas that i'll bring back to ghana.

i spend a lot of time kicking around the KZN branch of cotland's orphanage (where i was in joburg for a bit). the area has a good amount of child-headed househoulds and the approach to this is different. there are a series of caregivers who visit the houses regularly, making sure that the children have the supplies they need. the cotlands feeding program goes to these kids specifically, dropping off lunches for them at school (not taking on entire schools). they are lucky enough to have an exit strategy for feeding programs as well... the SA government will absorb schools bit by bit. 2 entire high schools were absorbed this week and now every child there gets a hot meal each day. i will hopefully come back to learn more how the government monitors the schools' progress etc.

the pace out here is slower and faster than joburg. i feel like i spend a lot of time not doing much more than talking... nice thing is that i am removed enough from the program that you get relatively candid descriptions of the positives and negatives of feeding, management and life... that role was one i used to have in the camp but i feel like i have lost it over the past almost two years for good and bad reasons.

ive spent a bit of time learning about the more "manly" projects that they guys have been working on. building roofs, installing water collection things etc. i'm not particularly helpful here beyond weaving grass bracelets for them... but i am hoping to carry back some of these projects to the camp so that i can stop buying water. more on that to come later though..

outside of work ive been hanging around with a few friends who have been fantastic about showing me the ropes. driving around and having mini tailgate parties are huge here, especially on wednesdays. bit uneasy being the only girl that does this but, it wears off. 2 friends also took us to a zulu wedding on the weekend which was pretty cool to watch. driving to it included a quick trip through a game reserve in the back of a pickup full of whisky - a combo that i think could make anyone pretty pleased.

heading up to mozambique tomorrow for a few days before two of the guys go home, then mumsy is coming over to south africa to see what all the hype is about!

lake malawi

just got back from a quick long weekend at lake malawi. how very madonna of me (no, i didn't see her and no, i didn't bring home a baby).

we spent 5 days driving up the coast of the lake, swimming around little beach towns. i forgot how long it had been since i really spent time at a lake- got all nostalgic about canoeing, camping and not showering. i happily got right back into the swing of not washing my hair. i think the guys i travelled with were thrilled.

malawi felt familiar. while i'm sure if i spent a bit of time in one spot i'd see how many differences there are between malawi, ghana and uganda, on the surface it felt like one of my homes. little kids were thrilled to see white people walk by and threw around the thumbs up like it was nobody's business. there were hundreds of vendors selling soap, coke, biscuits and small packets of gin. i followed a pretty strict diet of PB, fresh avocado and fish. i spent most of my time dreaming up more places to visit and thinking about how badly i wish i could scoot over to ghana just for a bit.

after a what seemed like ages of flipping through annual reports (and my time doing that was nothing compared to the months of it the others put up with) it was nice to get back to all of that. there is a bit more to get done before the project is officially finished but it is certainly in the home stretch. this probably stems from how superficial my work has been on the project, but it feels like this report is a stab in the dark. ill be interested to see/hear about the effects of it in the long run.

i'll be in jobuurg for the next week and then am making a move east to a small town called hlabisa. don't know much about it but i hear good things. limited internet access though... not that the blog will notice since i continue to be terrible at updating it.

quick update about ETFL... school in ghana runs year round in 3 terms (sept-dec, jan-apr, may-aug). term 2 is wrapping up next week and i'll bee shooting out a newsletter at the end of april to sum up what has gone on (email lindsay@eattofeedliberians.com if you're not already on the mailing list). i desperately need more people to sign up for the 1+1=7 campaign. its been painfully slow and i'm running out of ideas on how to get people to do it. visit www.eattofeedliberians.com/oneplusone.html to sign up. or email me if you'd rather do one yearly payment. its $60 yearly and without people doing this the third term is going to be a tough one to fund.

other news... the camp was hit with a whopper of a storm the other week and it has really butchered the roof of our pre-primary campus. we're working out repair details and there will be more news there shortly. i'll need hands to help with that as well.

okay! thats all for now. pictures of all the different things mentioned in the newsletter will be up on facebook shortly.

2 weeks deep

i've been lame about blogging mainly because i'm not sure what to write about. life in johannesburg is a lot like any other major city and i'm not sure people want to hear about trips to the movies, malls or bars.

that being said, there are differences. here are a few.

1. south africa has a really cool mix of social projects and corporate investment. this probably all exists at home and i've just been happily/stupidly unaware of it.

i've spent the past few weeks alternating between seeing these social projects (orphanage, feeding project, marimba youth league) and then reading about corporate investments and other markers of sustainability.

companies are roped into social investment through various binding and non-binding agreements here. quota system is enforced pretty heavily, and the GRI research i've been helping with tries to hold companies accountable to principles of sustainability and transparency.

i can't figure out where the line gets drawn between ticking boxes to satisfy requirements and actually taking an interest in the projects but it probably doesn't really matter at the end of the day. corporate funding drives the projects i've interacted with so far. who really cares if the big man in charge gives a crap about a feeding program.

2. johannesburg has all the markings of any other city. i live in gay town. there are a lot of huge malls with all the usual brand name stores. the orphanage i'm working at part time is in a borderline white trash area... constantly relocating people based on race made for funny dynamics there. there are a lot of bars with a lot of different feels and...

3. segregation lives on at night clubs like nothing else. we seem to keep ending up in "black bars" (as one person put it). apparently no white south african would actually go to the places we stumble in on. they also wouldn't pull out the chumpy white guy dance moves that we seem to abuse to no end.

thats all i've got for now-

johannesburg

moved to johannesburg yesterday... officially, i'd been planning this trip for about 2 weeks. i'd been thinking about it for much longer. originally i was going to come down last november but veered off to the camp instead. a few weeks back though, all my ducks got in a row and, here i am.

its been a bizarre 24 hours. beyond different accents, it doesn't feel much like ive left north america. kitchener, sure.. johannesburg is a lot bigger. but we're in a pretty quiet area that at night could easily be mistaken for claremont ave.

go figure.

it feels right though.

before i left, a friend mentioned that i wouldn't be going to africa. i got all annoyed. of course johannesburg is africa. the continent is a place, not an idea, and certainly not a stagnant image of rural lives built around mudhuts and large animals. sure enough though, my first thought when i got off the plane was that i most certainly was not in africa anymore. we touched down in dakar, senegal. that seemed right. this was way off.

what i can tell from the get go is that this is about to challenge every idea and understanding i've come to normalize about the continent. i certainly haven't been visiting this continent for long but my role as an international volunteer in slightly rural settings with a history of IVs coming through certainly paints a certain picture of "the continent". despite all my DEVS teaching against homogenization, i seem to have done just that.

live and learn?