I have been busy teaching, entertaining and visiting ... and now I am home. Before I start preparations for next week's lessons, I will fill in some of the blanks.
My friend Erma is just back from a visit to Kenya so we had a great gossipy visit last weekend. Layla, who sent money off with Erma on this trip, joined us for dinner on Saturday. Layla is 20 and has been raising money for disadvantaged kids to help them get an education since she was a young teenager. I met her when she was fifteen. She has helped to build kitchens and dormitories at the Daisy Centre for kids with disabilities, sent a crippled girl off to have a necessary operation so that she could attend high school as a CHES scholarship girl, and used her funds for a myriad of other small projects. Erma taught in Western Kenya from 2001 - 2003. She made it her business to discover where help was needed, and has been raising money and awareness in her Canadian church and high school ever since her return. She has been back three or four times, each time discovering more projects to help, and so her Kenyan work continues to grow.
Dan, Sarah, Lucas and Remi spent a few days here while I visited Techwood and Scootz. We all enjoyed shaking up our lives a little, and I came home to a clean house, fewer weeds and a mowed lawn, to a stream free of a tree that threatened to block it, and to a clothesline that works like a charm again..
While they worked and played here at the lake, I went off on missions in the Lanark area, and managed to fill my three days in interesting ways.
I walked every day a few times with Kenya and old Charlie and discovered just how friendly Lanark is ... and how beautiful the gardens and river are. Charlie loved his walks and hip-hopped along beside Kenya despite his arthritis.
At the annual Balderson sale I picked up bathing suits that will last me for another few years. In Perth I found a wine cup that smooths out rough wine, and a bar of natural soap that smells good enough to eat. I also attended a great outdoor concert in the rain with a new friend.
Before I left, the boys and I went off to McDonald's Corners where I discovered the nicest Saturday Market I've ever been to. Listening to conversations around me while I drank fair trade coffee, I was reminded of a recent trip to London when I marched against the Iraq War with hordes of little old grey haired ladies and men ... all from the peace protest era. I bought quiches and fudge from little girls raising money for autism, and, when I asked why they were so interested, was told by the younger one that her older sister looked after a little girl who was on the spectrum. I don't think I have ever met nicer kids, and when I told their camera-toting grandfather, he said that it had to be his wife's influence because he was a bad actor. Then I wandered over to talk to a goat lady ... and was reminded of my own experiences with goats ... another tale from the depths of memory.
After eating our way around the market, we drove to the dump where I found books and blouses at the recycling centre, and then visited the woman who bought Techwood's old place. I like her ... and her dogs. She too has a Charlie with the oddest colouring imaginable. He looks ferocious but hides behind her skirts as soon as you speak to him. It took Scootz a few minutes of gentle stroking to convince him to come out from under the desk once we were inside. A friend of his owner described him as a cut and paste dog because his cross breeding has not created a harmonious blend at all. Rather he has a shepherd size and shape, a pit bullish head, some dalmation freckles, a spectacular grey diamond on a white forehead, and his front half is white, the back half dark.
I was glad to get home, but I am very glad I spent a few days with my boys. And it was nice to meet a new friend with whom I have so much in common. Maybe next time I visit he will give me a ride on his Harley.
Last night I made the mistake of retreating from the steady rain into a movie. Have you seen "The Weatherman"? I found it terribly depressing ... good ... but hard to watch the protagonist's repeated failures and unremitting sadness ...
And now I must start work on my lessons for next week. I am teaching Monday, Thursday and Friday this week. Roger, the young Swiss carpenter, will be joined by a handicraft teacher in her early fifties and another younger Swiss woman. I want to work with their common interests and the things they can teach one another. I picked up some second hand books on handicrafts in Lanark ... so I think I will start there.
Have a great week ... and I will try to make more regular appearances than I have lately.
Showing posts with label Africa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Africa. Show all posts
Sunday, 22 August 2010
Friday, 17 July 2009
African Wisdom
This is Good
The story is told of a king in Africa who had a close friend with whom he grew up. The friend had a habit of looking at every situation that ever occurred in his life (positive or negative) and remarking, "This is good!" One day the king and his friend were out on a hunting expedition. The friend would load and prepare the guns for the king. The friend had apparently done something wrong in preparing one of the guns, for after taking the gun from his friend, the king fired it and his thumb was blown off. Examining the situation, the friend remarked as usual, "This is good!" To which the king replied - "No, this is not good!" and proceeded to send his friend to jail.
About a year later, the king was hunting in an area that he should have known to stay clear of. Cannibals captured him and took him to their village. They tied his hands, stacked some wood, set up a stake and bound him to the stake. As they came near to set fire to the wood, they noticed that the king was missing a thumb. Being superstitious, they never ate anyone who was less than whole. So untying the king, they sent him on his way.
As he returned home, he was reminded of the event that had taken his thumb and felt remorse for his treatment of his friend. He went immediately to the jail to speak with his friend. "You were right," he said, "it was good that my thumb was blown off." And he proceeded to tell the friend all that had just happened." And so, I am very sorry for sending you to jail for so long. It was bad for me to do this." "No," his friend replied, "This is good!"
"What do you mean, 'This is good'? How could it be good that I sent my friend to jail for a year?"
"If I had not been in jail, I would have been with you, and not here with you right now."
I have one blog reader who is also a daughter who has believed that everything happens for a reason since she was very young. I am not so sure I believe in the fatalistic part of that but it does seem that everything, good or bad, simply sets me on a different path where I discover more about myself and do some growing. So if the gunk is hitting in the fan in your life, it might help to remember that everything happens for a reason ... even if you create the reason as a result of it.
Thursday, 19 March 2009
Sounding the Alarm
Hii babra , i have lost my through the eye cancer , he has been in the hospital for two weeks . now he is dead. so ai now working on how i can transiport the body for burrial, pass my sorry to gerry and the others . Things has gone crazy for now .bye bye .
I received this email yesterday from a Kenyan friend. He was my askari (house guard) when I lived in Kakamega. His life is very typical of African lives. I knew him as an honest, hard working man who cared deeply about his family, who valued education, who worked very hard, and who cared about the welfare of others.
In the photo, Julius' son is the small boy on the left. The other boy is a neighbour.
When this son was just a toddler Julius came to me for help about his eye. Then it was diagnosed simply as an infection that required hospitalization and drugs. Julius took the boy and his grandmother to the hospital and returned to work. His wife had a new baby girl to look after so she couldn't stay with her son at the hospital. In Africa patients require family members to be there with them because there are not enough staff or resources to ensure that they are kept clean.. Even food must be brought in by the family care giver.
Julius was most concerned about the health of his son's eye because he wanted him to have the education he had been denied through poverty. It was important that he see well.
During my time there, Julius came to me occasionally for small loans which he repaid faithfully. The last loan he needed was for seed to plant his field in corn. I remember writing out a contract for that loan. I gave him the money on the Saturday before his Sunday off. (Askaris get one day off every two weeks) He was to pay me back at a set amount per month. On the Monday morning when he came in to work he brought me the full amount. When I asked why, he said his wife had got a job making school uniforms and he didn't need the money.
I didn't see Julius for three years after I left Kenya. We corresponded and I asked him to check on a child being helped at the Daisy Centre for Handicapped Children. He sent regular reports on this child and on other students I knew who were being helped by ACCES where he was working.
When I visited Julius and his family in 2006, the children were happy and healthy and Julius had built a small house on his tiny plot of land. He was working the night shift as an askari and farming by day. His wife was expecting their third child. He introduced me to his neighbours and to their oldest son who was a bright boy who was getting ready to enter high school.Julius was encouraging him and was prepared to help him financially. I left thinking that life was good for Julius and his family.
Over the course of the last two years, Julius lost his job, the new baby died soon after her birth, his wife was killed in a traffic accident, and now this tragedy has befallen his family.
Julius has, with help from Canada (Sound the Alarm), managed to pay the costs for two years of schooling for his young neighbour, and he has somehow cobbled together enough money to bury his infant daughter and his wife and to pay the medical costs associated with his son's eye cancer. All this on a plot of land perhaps 1 acre in size. He stays in touch regularly but seldom asks for anything except help with the school fees.
My experience in Africa is with people like Julius, people who are decent and hard working, people who care about others. They are without exception people who don't give up when life becomes overwhelming and who stretch out their hands to help others whenever they can.
I know there are the scammers from Nigeria but the Africans I know are people like Julius whose lives are fraught with misfortune but who keep on following their own hard working, decent paths.
A Rwandan man I met on this last trip told me that if you pull one African out of a well he has fallen into, he will emerge with 100 others hanging onto him. If you push one African into that well, he will drag 100 along with him.
Sound the Alarm is having a benefit concert at the Black Sheep Inn later this month. Layla and her organization are helping educate young Africans like Julius' neighbour. They have provided funds to improve the lives of children at the Daisy Centre. They have made it possible for a man who makes jewellery to board his teenaged daughter at school so that she will be safer than the girls who must walk long distances in the dark to school. They are helping people like Julius pull children out of the well. I will be attending that concert. I hope to see some of you there too.
Sunday, 1 February 2009
Just a Ramble on Systems
In the Kenyan news today:
"The Nakuru Municipal Council's fire engine arrived at the scene more than an hour after the explosion," said the newspaper, adding that Molo itself has no fire engine.
And I was so surprised when the same thing happened in Kakamega in 2002 or 3 ...
A fire broke out in the employee housing of the guest house which shared our entry lane. I was the first person besides our askari (guard) not living in the tiny shacks to notice the fire (up even then at 2 a.m.and startled by the light dancing outside my high window). I roused everyone in our house and, in our nightgowns, we fought the fire until our plastic pails melted into colanders sprouting water. We knew we could not save the houses but we were trying to prevent the fire from spreading to our building which was hot to the touch.
A crowd gathered at the gate, and told us we were fighting a losing battle. We didn't give up. I phoned again for help.
A fire truck finally arrived hours later. It had been dispatched by the Mumias Sugar factory. When they tried to access the well on the guest house property the technology failed. (They had already been refused water from the Kakamega source.)
I was astounded that there was no public fire protection, but of course I shouldn't have been; almost everything practical in every country I have been in in Africa is done by the people themselves.
Just as garbage is burned because there is no waste disposal system, and roads remain pitted by cavernous holes because there is no roads department, so too fires are extinguished by the people themselves or not at all.
That is not to say there is a dearth of bureaucracy. No indeed. Bureaucracy flourishes there ... and is an impenetrable morass requiring hours, sometimes days, of waiting. It helps to always travel with a novel and a journal in your backpack. I haven't dealt with all of them but the post office, the courts, the police station, the office that dispenses documents like visas and replacement ID all operate with vaying degrees of inefficiency fueled for years by bribery. After the fire, we ( a Kenyan friend who lost everything in the fire and I) refused to pay a bribe, and spent days in the local police station watching policemen sharpen pencils and drink tea.)
In contrast the hospitals which are so short of medical personnel and all supplies that they require patients to come with family members to ensure that they are bathed and fed, are models of efficiency.
The schools too are remarkably competent given the obstacles they face. And believe me, navigating their intricacies is an experience, especially if you are representing children without money.
But it is the purely practical things that just don't get done at all unless individual people do them.
And Africa is not unique. I saw tenants in Mongolia who were repairing sidewalks because it would not have been done otherwise.
I guess the only time we here in Canada experience a bit of that particular Third World reality is when a strike disables our buses or snow plows and we are forced to rely on ourselves and our neighbours.
Living out here in my hermitage I am getting used to the idea that I have to arrange road plowing and maintenance and I have now realized that the only way my garbage will get collected is if I make sure the road is easily passable. I know that I have to rely on myself for water and sewage disposal, and I have to walk a half kilometre to get my mail. There is no regular public transportation here. All of this is awkward, expensive and time consuming but I find it easier to deal with those realities than with the failures of the medical system here in the Outaouais.
On the topic of my procrastination:
The file is proving too big for dial-up. I am going to have to re-think how I post it.
"The Nakuru Municipal Council's fire engine arrived at the scene more than an hour after the explosion," said the newspaper, adding that Molo itself has no fire engine.
And I was so surprised when the same thing happened in Kakamega in 2002 or 3 ...
A fire broke out in the employee housing of the guest house which shared our entry lane. I was the first person besides our askari (guard) not living in the tiny shacks to notice the fire (up even then at 2 a.m.and startled by the light dancing outside my high window). I roused everyone in our house and, in our nightgowns, we fought the fire until our plastic pails melted into colanders sprouting water. We knew we could not save the houses but we were trying to prevent the fire from spreading to our building which was hot to the touch.
A crowd gathered at the gate, and told us we were fighting a losing battle. We didn't give up. I phoned again for help.
A fire truck finally arrived hours later. It had been dispatched by the Mumias Sugar factory. When they tried to access the well on the guest house property the technology failed. (They had already been refused water from the Kakamega source.)
I was astounded that there was no public fire protection, but of course I shouldn't have been; almost everything practical in every country I have been in in Africa is done by the people themselves.
Just as garbage is burned because there is no waste disposal system, and roads remain pitted by cavernous holes because there is no roads department, so too fires are extinguished by the people themselves or not at all.
That is not to say there is a dearth of bureaucracy. No indeed. Bureaucracy flourishes there ... and is an impenetrable morass requiring hours, sometimes days, of waiting. It helps to always travel with a novel and a journal in your backpack. I haven't dealt with all of them but the post office, the courts, the police station, the office that dispenses documents like visas and replacement ID all operate with vaying degrees of inefficiency fueled for years by bribery. After the fire, we ( a Kenyan friend who lost everything in the fire and I) refused to pay a bribe, and spent days in the local police station watching policemen sharpen pencils and drink tea.)
In contrast the hospitals which are so short of medical personnel and all supplies that they require patients to come with family members to ensure that they are bathed and fed, are models of efficiency.
The schools too are remarkably competent given the obstacles they face. And believe me, navigating their intricacies is an experience, especially if you are representing children without money.
But it is the purely practical things that just don't get done at all unless individual people do them.
And Africa is not unique. I saw tenants in Mongolia who were repairing sidewalks because it would not have been done otherwise.
I guess the only time we here in Canada experience a bit of that particular Third World reality is when a strike disables our buses or snow plows and we are forced to rely on ourselves and our neighbours.
Living out here in my hermitage I am getting used to the idea that I have to arrange road plowing and maintenance and I have now realized that the only way my garbage will get collected is if I make sure the road is easily passable. I know that I have to rely on myself for water and sewage disposal, and I have to walk a half kilometre to get my mail. There is no regular public transportation here. All of this is awkward, expensive and time consuming but I find it easier to deal with those realities than with the failures of the medical system here in the Outaouais.
On the topic of my procrastination:
The file is proving too big for dial-up. I am going to have to re-think how I post it.
Sunday, 25 January 2009
Words Do Matter or The Silver Tongues of Black People
We were talking last evening about Obama, the orator. Orators stand out in our world because they are so rare. How many can you count in your life time? Martin Luther King? Bishop Desmond Tutu? Pierre Elliot Trudeau? Winston Churchill? I am hard pressed to think of others offhand.
But when I was in Africa, I attended many many formal opening and closing ceremonies, all marked by speech after speech after speech. Some of those very long speeches were soporific, but not as many as you would imagine.
When I travel I also attend more church services than I usually do, and the pastors I listened to in the African countries, Kenya and Uganda, and on the Bahamian island of Eleuthera were all orators who could grab their listeners by the throat and hold their attention.
The best speaker I have ever heard was an old man who was Secretary General of the All Africa Teachers' Organization. His name was Tom Bediako. He was well-loved and the teachers called him Uncle Tom ... in a complimentary way.
Tom would listen to all the speakers who spoke before he did and then he would extemporaneously create his own speech by weaving together the most important points of all the speeches that had gone before. It was magical to listen to him. Everyone in the room was reminded of what had been said that day. And every speaker knew that his words had made an impression, not once, but twice.
Africans have deep roots in an oral tradition and there are still many uneducated Africans who rely on the spoken word, on story, to learn what is going on. Even if they can read, the printed word is often not available or very expensive. As a result, oratory flourishes there, just as it did in the American South among the slaves who were forbidden to read.
Barack Obama comes from a rich tradition of oratory and he uses it skilfully to express the ideas gleaned from his personal education, erudition and principles.
But when I was in Africa, I attended many many formal opening and closing ceremonies, all marked by speech after speech after speech. Some of those very long speeches were soporific, but not as many as you would imagine.
When I travel I also attend more church services than I usually do, and the pastors I listened to in the African countries, Kenya and Uganda, and on the Bahamian island of Eleuthera were all orators who could grab their listeners by the throat and hold their attention.
The best speaker I have ever heard was an old man who was Secretary General of the All Africa Teachers' Organization. His name was Tom Bediako. He was well-loved and the teachers called him Uncle Tom ... in a complimentary way.
Tom would listen to all the speakers who spoke before he did and then he would extemporaneously create his own speech by weaving together the most important points of all the speeches that had gone before. It was magical to listen to him. Everyone in the room was reminded of what had been said that day. And every speaker knew that his words had made an impression, not once, but twice.
Africans have deep roots in an oral tradition and there are still many uneducated Africans who rely on the spoken word, on story, to learn what is going on. Even if they can read, the printed word is often not available or very expensive. As a result, oratory flourishes there, just as it did in the American South among the slaves who were forbidden to read.
Barack Obama comes from a rich tradition of oratory and he uses it skilfully to express the ideas gleaned from his personal education, erudition and principles.
Wednesday, 10 September 2008
Outhouses Around the World
I didn't receive a single response to my Alice in Wonderland outhouse story ... so I thought perhaps I would tell you an outhouse story from Africa.
In Kenya, there are two kinds of traditional toilets: the long drop and the pit latrine. The long drop requires a very deep hole and is the nicer of the options because the contents are further away from your bottom. The more common pit latrine is really just a ditch covered by a board on which one balances to do what must be done. Flush toilets are rarities and plumbers are unaccustomed to them, so they usually malfunction regularly, making the traditional solutions more palatable in the long run. Unless of course you happen to be old or infirm.
My first story is about the grandfather of one of the employees at ACCES. Anna phoned me to say that she would not be coming to work because her grandfather had fallen into the pit. All morning my mind kept returning to the awful scene. Imagine drowning in feces.
Then, at 11 she called to say she would be in that afternoon.
"What about your grandfather?" I asked.
"He's fine," she replied. "The villagers managed to get him out."
My mind still continues to play with the concept of NOT drowning in feces. Imagine having to help him out. Imagine going under for the third time.
I'd rather play in the imaginary world of Alice ...
In the Mongolian countryside the toilet facilities are even more primitive and less sanitary. I have a story from there too. Let me know if you would like me to tell you that one.
In Kenya, there are two kinds of traditional toilets: the long drop and the pit latrine. The long drop requires a very deep hole and is the nicer of the options because the contents are further away from your bottom. The more common pit latrine is really just a ditch covered by a board on which one balances to do what must be done. Flush toilets are rarities and plumbers are unaccustomed to them, so they usually malfunction regularly, making the traditional solutions more palatable in the long run. Unless of course you happen to be old or infirm.
My first story is about the grandfather of one of the employees at ACCES. Anna phoned me to say that she would not be coming to work because her grandfather had fallen into the pit. All morning my mind kept returning to the awful scene. Imagine drowning in feces.
Then, at 11 she called to say she would be in that afternoon.
"What about your grandfather?" I asked.
"He's fine," she replied. "The villagers managed to get him out."
My mind still continues to play with the concept of NOT drowning in feces. Imagine having to help him out. Imagine going under for the third time.
I'd rather play in the imaginary world of Alice ...
In the Mongolian countryside the toilet facilities are even more primitive and less sanitary. I have a story from there too. Let me know if you would like me to tell you that one.
Saturday, 28 June 2008
The Hermit Leaves the Lake ... Test Run ...
Such excitement! We delivered the laptop to Tammy and then I dropped Kenya at Marta's and went to the Amakhozi show.
I was expecting more African faces ... but then the tickets were very expensive. (Thank goodness mine came as a gift!) The price didn't stop rather large families from buying tickets, and a large contingent of mentally and physically handicapped people were there. One of the charities had likely donated the tickets ... and a good thing, too, because they were a wonderfully enthusiastic audience. Only the middle section was filled. Perhaps a dozen or so of the the other 2/3 of the seats were taken. Despite all that, the enthusiasm of the players was contagious.
The costumes were usually brightly coloured and often wonderful. Monkeys with round pink and blue bums cavorted on a trampoline. There were grasshoppers whose wings were made of fragments of thin fabric held together with ropes so that they flowed realistically. The bigger- than-life zebra puppets carried by dancing players were my favourites. Their heads were realistic, but the bodies were made of thin filmy fabric with the stripes merely suggested. There were many elaborately sculpted head dresses. Lots of bright reds and yellows, the colours I associate with Africa.
Other things of note: the ten foot tall stilted men; the cheerful black dancer in an massive beehive head piece who was able to portray great indignation; and everyone's ability to get the whole audience rhythmically clapping with the djembe drums.
I think the thing that impressed me most, possibly because I am a sucker for metaphor, was the subtle way they created effects and made you suspend disbelief. In particular was a night scene in which only the fluorescence was visible; and a stormy night at sea in which a juggler almost made me see the wind-tossed waves. A juggling pair were able to create an aura of silence amidst choral music, and had slowed everything onstage down to slow motion, creating the illusion that the storm had passed.
It was a good show. If I were to judge it against Cirque du Soleil, I would put it halfway between the first and last shows I saw them perform. What this one sometimes lacked in polish it more than made up for it in personality and humanity.
After the show I drove to Marta's to spend the night. We ate and took the dogs for a walk, and then went to bed. On my pillow was the short story she had written for me for my birthday: "Vancouver Can Wait". I love it.
Saturday morning was fun. A good breakfast and then a trip to Bruce Pit. I imagined Bruce Pit to be a barren hole in the ground, but it is beautiful. Woods and paths. And the dogs had a ball playing with other dogs and racing around. Kenya met a dachshund who reminded her of the nasty one that bit her nose, but this little guy had no fear of big dogs and they got along fine.
Back at Marta's I discovered the flat tire.
I spent three hours at Canadian Tire. At first we just stayed in the car. I read and Kenya snoozed. Then, after the car went into the shop, I took Kenya for a walk in the rain, and then decided to sit quietly in the waiting room. An old lady objected so we left and sat on the cement floor in a corner of the parking area where we could see my car when it was driven out. As soon as it appeared, Kenya went back in the car and I paid the bill. The old lady's friend apologized, and I was gracious. She had more of a problem than I did. Imagine being afraid of nice dogs, especially nice, quiet, exhausted dogs who just want to collapse like rugs on the floor.
By the time I got home I was ready to collapse on the floor beside her. Just too much excitement for a hermit and her dog.
I was expecting more African faces ... but then the tickets were very expensive. (Thank goodness mine came as a gift!) The price didn't stop rather large families from buying tickets, and a large contingent of mentally and physically handicapped people were there. One of the charities had likely donated the tickets ... and a good thing, too, because they were a wonderfully enthusiastic audience. Only the middle section was filled. Perhaps a dozen or so of the the other 2/3 of the seats were taken. Despite all that, the enthusiasm of the players was contagious.
It was a story, but the sound system or the acoustics in the tent distorted the storytelling voice, so I would be hard pressed to give you the plot line. It didn't really matter though. The strength of the production was the performance itself. In many ways it reminded me of Cirque du Soleil productions. Not quite as slick, but also filled with trapeze performances, jugglers, acrobats, singing, dancing, and infused with colour, beauty, and energy.
The costumes were usually brightly coloured and often wonderful. Monkeys with round pink and blue bums cavorted on a trampoline. There were grasshoppers whose wings were made of fragments of thin fabric held together with ropes so that they flowed realistically. The bigger- than-life zebra puppets carried by dancing players were my favourites. Their heads were realistic, but the bodies were made of thin filmy fabric with the stripes merely suggested. There were many elaborately sculpted head dresses. Lots of bright reds and yellows, the colours I associate with Africa.
Other things of note: the ten foot tall stilted men; the cheerful black dancer in an massive beehive head piece who was able to portray great indignation; and everyone's ability to get the whole audience rhythmically clapping with the djembe drums.
I think the thing that impressed me most, possibly because I am a sucker for metaphor, was the subtle way they created effects and made you suspend disbelief. In particular was a night scene in which only the fluorescence was visible; and a stormy night at sea in which a juggler almost made me see the wind-tossed waves. A juggling pair were able to create an aura of silence amidst choral music, and had slowed everything onstage down to slow motion, creating the illusion that the storm had passed.
It was a good show. If I were to judge it against Cirque du Soleil, I would put it halfway between the first and last shows I saw them perform. What this one sometimes lacked in polish it more than made up for it in personality and humanity.
After the show I drove to Marta's to spend the night. We ate and took the dogs for a walk, and then went to bed. On my pillow was the short story she had written for me for my birthday: "Vancouver Can Wait". I love it.
Saturday morning was fun. A good breakfast and then a trip to Bruce Pit. I imagined Bruce Pit to be a barren hole in the ground, but it is beautiful. Woods and paths. And the dogs had a ball playing with other dogs and racing around. Kenya met a dachshund who reminded her of the nasty one that bit her nose, but this little guy had no fear of big dogs and they got along fine.
Back at Marta's I discovered the flat tire.
I spent three hours at Canadian Tire. At first we just stayed in the car. I read and Kenya snoozed. Then, after the car went into the shop, I took Kenya for a walk in the rain, and then decided to sit quietly in the waiting room. An old lady objected so we left and sat on the cement floor in a corner of the parking area where we could see my car when it was driven out. As soon as it appeared, Kenya went back in the car and I paid the bill. The old lady's friend apologized, and I was gracious. She had more of a problem than I did. Imagine being afraid of nice dogs, especially nice, quiet, exhausted dogs who just want to collapse like rugs on the floor.
By the time I got home I was ready to collapse on the floor beside her. Just too much excitement for a hermit and her dog.
Saturday, 17 May 2008
May 17th ...
May 17th: I was married 51 years ago today. I was 16.
May 17th: Tonight I will be going with Tammy and Carlos to say a final good bye to Anne- Marie, a wonderfully vibrant woman who lived surrounded by art and friends, and died too soon. Tonight's party will be a celebration of a life well lived.
May 17th: Marie confirmed that the photo of Linda in my blog entry a few days ago ( A Morning Fresh with Possibility ) is indeed the Linda who is being helped by Layla's Gala funds. I was hoping it was. She seemed in the short time I spent in her company a couple of years ago to be a peaceful strong young woman.
Yesterday I worked hard physically all day ... vaccuuming, washing all the floors, transplanting lilies ... Kenya and I went to bed at 7. Except for a phone call from Kerry and a couple of times that I listened to the loons and the whipporwill, I slept almost 12 hours. They too seemed more at peace last night.
The second roofer is coming this morning to examine the roof.
And so my day begins.
May 17th: Tonight I will be going with Tammy and Carlos to say a final good bye to Anne- Marie, a wonderfully vibrant woman who lived surrounded by art and friends, and died too soon. Tonight's party will be a celebration of a life well lived.
May 17th: Marie confirmed that the photo of Linda in my blog entry a few days ago ( A Morning Fresh with Possibility ) is indeed the Linda who is being helped by Layla's Gala funds. I was hoping it was. She seemed in the short time I spent in her company a couple of years ago to be a peaceful strong young woman.
Yesterday I worked hard physically all day ... vaccuuming, washing all the floors, transplanting lilies ... Kenya and I went to bed at 7. Except for a phone call from Kerry and a couple of times that I listened to the loons and the whipporwill, I slept almost 12 hours. They too seemed more at peace last night.
The second roofer is coming this morning to examine the roof.
And so my day begins.
Thursday, 15 May 2008
A Morning Fresh with Possibility
I feel good this mid-May morning!
Everywhere the trilliums are glistening with dew, the birds are making the woods a noisy busy place, and one of my plants has burst forth with a flower that is all seed pod. A Canada goose is almost drowning out the birdsong with his honking. My day's plan is to continue to transplant day lilies, and get my knees all muddy again. Calvin says that "if your knees aren't green by the end of the day, you ought to seriously re-examine your life."
Yesterday I had my car in for its spring tune-up. It cost $700 but Grant, the local mechanic, told me that it is a solid little car and I should get 300,000 kilometres out of it. It is 10 ½ years old and has just over half that kilometrage, so the Corolla, Kenya and I may all just make it to the end of my ten years here at the lake.
I got the names of qualified roofers from James up in Kaz and will call them today. While I was there I noticed that the baby finger on James' left hand looked just like mine. I asked him about it and discovered that he'd had his set two years ago at the Hull Hospital. I wonder if the orthopaedic surgeons at that hospital think baby fingers looks better that way!
Such terrible things have happened in Africa.
But some of the most heart rending and uplifting stories also originate there.
Yesterday Marie sent me a letter about a young girl, and asked if Layla's Gala money might be able to help her. Layla immediately responded and said that the $1500 raised at the Gala and whatever money is raised at Philemon's fashion show (likely another $400) may be used to help Linda.
I saw a girl today who I think some of the funds for Daisy might help. She is a student at Mukumu Girls High School. When she was in primary school she fell while carrying water and broke her Right lower leg. Her grandmother refused to take her to the hospital -saying she was just trying to get out of going toschool. When she finally did get treatment she had osteomylitis in the leg. She spent four years (yes 4) at Kakamega General Hospital because her family said she was dead and refused to consider taking her home. A Social Worker at the hospital finally helped her go to Daisy to complete her primary education.
She passed well and was taken at Mukumu. She has been taken today as a CHES student (they had extra money)but she has a very badly contracted leg and must use crutches to get around.
Because of the infection in the bone she has a huge open wound on her shin from knee to ankle which must hurt like hell.
Now comes the good part. She is number one in a class of 386. To top it off she is a cheerful smiling girl who helps others by encouraging them when they get down! I would like to send her to Kijabe Hospital near Nairobi - they are a mission hospital specializing in orthopedics and they might be able to help her. They have a staff of doctors from the USA and other countries who come for short periods. They are not that expensive but we have no source of money for this kind of thing. Do you think some of the Daisy money could go for this? I can't think of a more deserving person to spend it on.
Kakamega Hospital is a forbidding grey building with minimal facilities. Outside its gates the coffin makers line the road. It is a place in which to die - a terrible place for a young girl to spend 4 years.
The Daisy Centre is a cheerful boarding school for disabled children and AIDS orphans in Kakamega.
CHES is a Canadian organization which sends very bright poor girls to high school in a couple of places. They have an office in Kakamega and another in Tanzania. They provide all fees, boarding costs, school uniforms and books for the girls. It is not easy to get acceptance by CHES. They are deluged with requests at the beginning of each school year. Only the very best candidates can be accepted and provided with the four years of high school education. If they are successful they are then given ACCES scholarships to continue their education.
Everywhere the trilliums are glistening with dew, the birds are making the woods a noisy busy place, and one of my plants has burst forth with a flower that is all seed pod. A Canada goose is almost drowning out the birdsong with his honking. My day's plan is to continue to transplant day lilies, and get my knees all muddy again. Calvin says that "if your knees aren't green by the end of the day, you ought to seriously re-examine your life."
Yesterday I had my car in for its spring tune-up. It cost $700 but Grant, the local mechanic, told me that it is a solid little car and I should get 300,000 kilometres out of it. It is 10 ½ years old and has just over half that kilometrage, so the Corolla, Kenya and I may all just make it to the end of my ten years here at the lake.
I got the names of qualified roofers from James up in Kaz and will call them today. While I was there I noticed that the baby finger on James' left hand looked just like mine. I asked him about it and discovered that he'd had his set two years ago at the Hull Hospital. I wonder if the orthopaedic surgeons at that hospital think baby fingers looks better that way!
Last night I fell asleep listening to the rain on the tin roof and my bed became Avonlea. I was certainly glad that watching Anne of Green Gables had been a stronger influence than watching The Last King of Scotland. It was much calmer spending the night in Avonlea than it would have been in Idi Amin's Uganda. 300,000 people were slaughtered during his rule. The movie made clear that his political opposition was wiped out, but when I was in Uganda learning to whitewater kayak, my friend Tim told me that he got rid of anyone who was educated because he feared them. Tim lost his school teacher father during that period.
Such terrible things have happened in Africa.
But some of the most heart rending and uplifting stories also originate there.
Yesterday Marie sent me a letter about a young girl, and asked if Layla's Gala money might be able to help her. Layla immediately responded and said that the $1500 raised at the Gala and whatever money is raised at Philemon's fashion show (likely another $400) may be used to help Linda.
I found a Daisy photo of a girl called Linda. I wonder if she is the same Linda.
Here is Marie's letter, and Linda's story:
I saw a girl today who I think some of the funds for Daisy might help. She is a student at Mukumu Girls High School. When she was in primary school she fell while carrying water and broke her Right lower leg. Her grandmother refused to take her to the hospital -saying she was just trying to get out of going toschool. When she finally did get treatment she had osteomylitis in the leg. She spent four years (yes 4) at Kakamega General Hospital because her family said she was dead and refused to consider taking her home. A Social Worker at the hospital finally helped her go to Daisy to complete her primary education.
She passed well and was taken at Mukumu. She has been taken today as a CHES student (they had extra money)but she has a very badly contracted leg and must use crutches to get around.
Because of the infection in the bone she has a huge open wound on her shin from knee to ankle which must hurt like hell.
Now comes the good part. She is number one in a class of 386. To top it off she is a cheerful smiling girl who helps others by encouraging them when they get down! I would like to send her to Kijabe Hospital near Nairobi - they are a mission hospital specializing in orthopedics and they might be able to help her. They have a staff of doctors from the USA and other countries who come for short periods. They are not that expensive but we have no source of money for this kind of thing. Do you think some of the Daisy money could go for this? I can't think of a more deserving person to spend it on.
Just a small endnote:
Kakamega Hospital is a forbidding grey building with minimal facilities. Outside its gates the coffin makers line the road. It is a place in which to die - a terrible place for a young girl to spend 4 years.
The Daisy Centre is a cheerful boarding school for disabled children and AIDS orphans in Kakamega.
CHES is a Canadian organization which sends very bright poor girls to high school in a couple of places. They have an office in Kakamega and another in Tanzania. They provide all fees, boarding costs, school uniforms and books for the girls. It is not easy to get acceptance by CHES. They are deluged with requests at the beginning of each school year. Only the very best candidates can be accepted and provided with the four years of high school education. If they are successful they are then given ACCES scholarships to continue their education.
Thursday, 1 May 2008
3 Reasons the Dream Tarnished ...
1. Organizations, by their very nature, cannot help but become bureaucratic and impersonal eventually. The ones connected with the developing world often began as idealistic and pure ... and ... if not terribly efficient ... at least honest and caring. It seems that when they become bigger, slicker and more efficient, they lose their integrity.
2. People who spend a long time in the developing world do not become Malawian or Kenyan or Namibian ... but they change. Too many develop a love-hate relationship with the place and people. They love the fact that they can live extremely well on a Canadian salary, stipend or pension. They are the people who hire servants. They could not live in this style at home, of course, but they tend to forget that they are just ordinary folk, and begin to look down on the people around them. There are definite perks for whites in the developing world, not the least of which is respect whether merited or not, and this can lead to some ugly things.
3. I guess what bothers me most is that the ex-patriot communities I have seen in my travels become almost incestuous in nature. They become hotbeds of gossip and rumour, and much of what passses for conversation is based on ingrained ideas of we and they. I think their lives are so limited that they thrive on gossip ... anything to liven things up. And they are willing to believe the worst of everyone, not only those with black skins.
I wrote about this as a result of receiving more emails from Kenyan friends, and this led to my thinking about my last stay in Kenya when I found it necessary to distance myself as much as possible from the ex-pat community and from the Canadian-based organizations.
The original was much longer and more detailed ... but also rambling ... not ready for publication.
2. People who spend a long time in the developing world do not become Malawian or Kenyan or Namibian ... but they change. Too many develop a love-hate relationship with the place and people. They love the fact that they can live extremely well on a Canadian salary, stipend or pension. They are the people who hire servants. They could not live in this style at home, of course, but they tend to forget that they are just ordinary folk, and begin to look down on the people around them. There are definite perks for whites in the developing world, not the least of which is respect whether merited or not, and this can lead to some ugly things.
3. I guess what bothers me most is that the ex-patriot communities I have seen in my travels become almost incestuous in nature. They become hotbeds of gossip and rumour, and much of what passses for conversation is based on ingrained ideas of we and they. I think their lives are so limited that they thrive on gossip ... anything to liven things up. And they are willing to believe the worst of everyone, not only those with black skins.
I wrote about this as a result of receiving more emails from Kenyan friends, and this led to my thinking about my last stay in Kenya when I found it necessary to distance myself as much as possible from the ex-pat community and from the Canadian-based organizations.
The original was much longer and more detailed ... but also rambling ... not ready for publication.
Friday, 25 April 2008
a voice from the past ...
Everlyne just got in touch after a long silence.
It was Everlyne who was the biggest help to me as I attempted to help desperate high school students get their high school education. She combined a big heart, a wise head and great practicality, and, as a result, performed what seemed to me to be miracles.
She was diagnosed as HIV+ while pregnant with her second child and dismissed by the Canadian NGO she had worked for since graduation from college. The reason given: excessive absenteeism. Most people I know, who were connected with this NGO when I was, were, like me, horrified that a Canadian organization which espoused the right beliefs about living positively, would do this to a longtime employee.
The last time I saw Everlyne, the organization was harassing her and making her life hell. She and many other good people were frightened for their jobs. While I was visiting Kenya two years ago, Jeff, an older man looking after two orphaned baby grand daughters, was fired in his last year before retirement. Two other old friends of mine, Virginia and Julius, were fearful that they would be next. The new administration seemed to fear the employees who had been around since the inception of the NGO.
When I saw the heading of the email, I was afraid that something terrible had occurred, but ... Everlyne had good news!
Here is what she wrote:
Dear Bar, Greetings from Kakamega. I am fine together with the children. I wish to let you know that I got a job with an NGO dealing with street children. They do support them those who are at the age of going to school to pursue education. You had a dream and may be if you team up with this group you can realize yur dream. The main donors are from Uk and we have a lady who is in charge of fund raising who is very sharp and smart. Please let me know if you get this mail so that I can give yu more information about the organization. Thanks Ever
NB I met Jeff yesterday. He told me the little girls have gone to school now.
People who don't know Africans often think that the odds facing them are too great for any successful outcomes , but the one great truth I learned in Africa is that the people are indomitable. There is hope for the continent.
Imagine! She remembered my dream ... when I had almost forgotten it. I will definitely follow this up.
Monday, 7 April 2008
Portrayals of Conflict in Africa
Blood Diamond and A Long Way Gone, both set in war-torn Sierra Leone, and What is the What, set in Sudan, portray the reality of countries torn apart by civil war, and all show what happens to the children when adults lose their tenuous hold on civility.
I was more touched by the film and the memoir set in Sierra Leone, not because they deal with child soldiers instead of displaced boys, but rather because they were stronger pieces of film and literature than What is the What.
The film, Blood Diamond, shows the complexity of the conflict. This is not simply an attempt to seize power by a revolutionary front. The interests of diamond dealers fed by the developed world's hunger for cheap diamonds complicate the struggle. Journalists hungry for adventure and acclaim play into the mess that Sierra Leone has become. The good people of Sierra Leone, the ones who just want to do their jobs and look after their families, are trampled in the process. Children are turned into killers by the revolutionaries. Families are driven from their homes into sprawling overcrowded refugee camps enclosed by barbed wire.
Both books are written in the first person. Both narrators are young African men who have survived civil war in their countries. There the similarity ends.
The memoir, A Long Way Gone, by one of the reclaimed lost boy soldiers, is written simply and movingly by a young man who has faced his own heart of darkness and writes honestly about the whole experience of loss, terror, and survival by any means. He was one of the lucky ones, saved by the UN, given the chance to complete his education. It helps that he is also a talented writer .. not a clever writer, but a good one, an honest straightforward one, who tells his story naturally and clearly.
What is the What, on the other hand, is written by an American writer. He has taken the story of one of the lost boys of Sudan and produced a book that jars because the voice of the narrator has been lost. The writer has played with literary devices so that the voice of the boy, the voice of Sudan, has disappeared. I found myself paying attention to the writing rather than to the story of a lost boy.
Africa is a continent in which the oral tradition, story telling, is still alive and part of the culture. The written literature reflects that tradition. It was part of A Long Way Gone; it was not part of What is the What.
The traditional telling of stories is chronological. Film techniques, like flashbacks, and literary techniques like the use of stream of consciousness, and insertion of other genres into the writing are all legitimately part of western writing which has evolved because of the things it has encountered as it grew. They are not part of the African tradition. African literature will evolve in its own way.
Blood Diamond is not written in the African tradition either, but it makes no claim to be from the perspective of a lost boy, a child soldier, or a Sierra Leonian. It is what it is: an outsider's view of a complex war.
Non-African writers can write about Africa, just as non-native writers can write about indigenous people, but we cannot appropriate their voices. It just doesn't work. And when we try, we reveal our arrogance.
I was more touched by the film and the memoir set in Sierra Leone, not because they deal with child soldiers instead of displaced boys, but rather because they were stronger pieces of film and literature than What is the What.
The film, Blood Diamond, shows the complexity of the conflict. This is not simply an attempt to seize power by a revolutionary front. The interests of diamond dealers fed by the developed world's hunger for cheap diamonds complicate the struggle. Journalists hungry for adventure and acclaim play into the mess that Sierra Leone has become. The good people of Sierra Leone, the ones who just want to do their jobs and look after their families, are trampled in the process. Children are turned into killers by the revolutionaries. Families are driven from their homes into sprawling overcrowded refugee camps enclosed by barbed wire.
Both books are written in the first person. Both narrators are young African men who have survived civil war in their countries. There the similarity ends.
The memoir, A Long Way Gone, by one of the reclaimed lost boy soldiers, is written simply and movingly by a young man who has faced his own heart of darkness and writes honestly about the whole experience of loss, terror, and survival by any means. He was one of the lucky ones, saved by the UN, given the chance to complete his education. It helps that he is also a talented writer .. not a clever writer, but a good one, an honest straightforward one, who tells his story naturally and clearly.
What is the What, on the other hand, is written by an American writer. He has taken the story of one of the lost boys of Sudan and produced a book that jars because the voice of the narrator has been lost. The writer has played with literary devices so that the voice of the boy, the voice of Sudan, has disappeared. I found myself paying attention to the writing rather than to the story of a lost boy.
Africa is a continent in which the oral tradition, story telling, is still alive and part of the culture. The written literature reflects that tradition. It was part of A Long Way Gone; it was not part of What is the What.
The traditional telling of stories is chronological. Film techniques, like flashbacks, and literary techniques like the use of stream of consciousness, and insertion of other genres into the writing are all legitimately part of western writing which has evolved because of the things it has encountered as it grew. They are not part of the African tradition. African literature will evolve in its own way.
Blood Diamond is not written in the African tradition either, but it makes no claim to be from the perspective of a lost boy, a child soldier, or a Sierra Leonian. It is what it is: an outsider's view of a complex war.
Non-African writers can write about Africa, just as non-native writers can write about indigenous people, but we cannot appropriate their voices. It just doesn't work. And when we try, we reveal our arrogance.
Friday, 22 February 2008
A Bit of a Stew (Coyote Sightings and Poaching)
Yesterday morning it was a pine grosbeak run on the sunflower seed. Yesterday evening it was a call from a worried neighbour telling me to keep the dogs in; that a coyote was heading in my direction.
I looked up coyotes and wasn't really concerned, but did bring Havoc and Kenya in and took them out before bed with Kenya on lead and Havoc close by. Coyotes and dogs just belong to the same species; they don't appear to be a threat to one another. I certainly wasn't as worried about a lone coyote as I was about that lone cougar.
This morning the news headline that caught my attention was about the poaching of health workers from Sub Saharan Africa.
I have strong feelings about this for a couple of reasons, but first some of the statistics noted:
There are now more Malawian doctors practising medicine in Manchester than in Malawi.
The ratio of patients to doctors in Malawi is 1:50,000; in Canada it is 1:500
The first few comments on the story came from sex trade workers advertising for customers and two bigots. Jokester is the one I told you about before. He said:
The only reason anyone who can get out might stay would be for malaria, aids, to get hacked to bits with a machete and/or "necklaced". Doctors and other educated people are targets in the violence that has been going on forever. Most only have one life to live and would prefer to spend it trying to help people that can be helped rather than waste it where there is no hope whatsoever. Only a fool would miss the opportunity to take his family and get out while he can. Why condemn yourself to this?
The other one: ASBOBCT, added this:
Who cares? These people have just as much of a right to move to better their existence as the jigs suffering from AIDS and poverty. Let em do as they please.
I guess what they don't realize is that countries like Malawi end up with a net loss when their Malawian trained doctors leave the country to practise elsewhere. Not only are they left with a terrible shortage of doctors for a population that is faced with terrible health care problems, but there is a big financial loss as well.
Almost all of the African countries heavily subsidize the post secondary education of their best and brightest. In Kenya a year of university costs $400 (less than a year of high school) if the student is "called" to the university. The top 5% get called, and the very top students among those are the medical students. The balance of the cost of educating them is paid by the government (likely foreign aid dollars).
Our Canadian situation can be compared to that in the developing world. We train doctors and nurses at considerable cost to the Canadian tax payer. Then the USA lures our medical practitioners away with salaries they could never earn in Canada. Canada then poaches from the developing world.
The Hull Hospital doctor who made a mess of my right hand was a Haitian.
The doctor at the Gatineau Hospital who saved Sam's life by performing an emergency high forceps delivery on Kerry was from one of the Caribbean islands.
Two examples of poaching in our family alone.
Back in Haiti there is one fewer careless orthopaedic surgeon.
Back on that Caribbean island there is one fewer excellent obstetrician.
We are denuding countries that need their doctors, and we are losing our own to a richer country.
Money talks ...
We can also use the language of money. We should be expecting our Canadian trained doctors to stay in Canada to practise until their debt is paid ... or they should have to come up with the money before they leave the country.
And that should also apply on a provincial level.
Quebec provides the cheapest post secondary education in Canada and cannot afford to pay its doctors as much as richer provinces like Ontario, B.C. and Alberta.
What we see happening internationally is also happening within the political borders of Canada.
If this seems unfair or an infringement on human rights, I will point out that I received a loan/bursary from my Quebec School Board to attend Queen's University back in 1965. I signed a contract agreeing to pay back the money with 5 years service, or be held responsible for the balance. That seemed very fair to me.
I looked up coyotes and wasn't really concerned, but did bring Havoc and Kenya in and took them out before bed with Kenya on lead and Havoc close by. Coyotes and dogs just belong to the same species; they don't appear to be a threat to one another. I certainly wasn't as worried about a lone coyote as I was about that lone cougar.
This morning the news headline that caught my attention was about the poaching of health workers from Sub Saharan Africa.
I have strong feelings about this for a couple of reasons, but first some of the statistics noted:
There are now more Malawian doctors practising medicine in Manchester than in Malawi.
The ratio of patients to doctors in Malawi is 1:50,000; in Canada it is 1:500
The first few comments on the story came from sex trade workers advertising for customers and two bigots. Jokester is the one I told you about before. He said:
The only reason anyone who can get out might stay would be for malaria, aids, to get hacked to bits with a machete and/or "necklaced". Doctors and other educated people are targets in the violence that has been going on forever. Most only have one life to live and would prefer to spend it trying to help people that can be helped rather than waste it where there is no hope whatsoever. Only a fool would miss the opportunity to take his family and get out while he can. Why condemn yourself to this?
The other one: ASBOBCT, added this:
Who cares? These people have just as much of a right to move to better their existence as the jigs suffering from AIDS and poverty. Let em do as they please.
I guess what they don't realize is that countries like Malawi end up with a net loss when their Malawian trained doctors leave the country to practise elsewhere. Not only are they left with a terrible shortage of doctors for a population that is faced with terrible health care problems, but there is a big financial loss as well.
Almost all of the African countries heavily subsidize the post secondary education of their best and brightest. In Kenya a year of university costs $400 (less than a year of high school) if the student is "called" to the university. The top 5% get called, and the very top students among those are the medical students. The balance of the cost of educating them is paid by the government (likely foreign aid dollars).
Our Canadian situation can be compared to that in the developing world. We train doctors and nurses at considerable cost to the Canadian tax payer. Then the USA lures our medical practitioners away with salaries they could never earn in Canada. Canada then poaches from the developing world.
The Hull Hospital doctor who made a mess of my right hand was a Haitian.
The doctor at the Gatineau Hospital who saved Sam's life by performing an emergency high forceps delivery on Kerry was from one of the Caribbean islands.
Two examples of poaching in our family alone.
Back in Haiti there is one fewer careless orthopaedic surgeon.
Back on that Caribbean island there is one fewer excellent obstetrician.
We are denuding countries that need their doctors, and we are losing our own to a richer country.
Money talks ...
We can also use the language of money. We should be expecting our Canadian trained doctors to stay in Canada to practise until their debt is paid ... or they should have to come up with the money before they leave the country.
And that should also apply on a provincial level.
Quebec provides the cheapest post secondary education in Canada and cannot afford to pay its doctors as much as richer provinces like Ontario, B.C. and Alberta.
What we see happening internationally is also happening within the political borders of Canada.
If this seems unfair or an infringement on human rights, I will point out that I received a loan/bursary from my Quebec School Board to attend Queen's University back in 1965. I signed a contract agreeing to pay back the money with 5 years service, or be held responsible for the balance. That seemed very fair to me.
Saturday, 9 February 2008
Two Tough Movies
I've just finished watching two very tough movies: Shake Hands With the Devil; and Hotel Rwanda. The first is Romeo Dallaire's story of his return to Rwanda and to sanity after the genocide which he was unable to prevent. The second is the story of a Hutu hotel manager who protects Tutsis during the genocide in Rwanda.
I couldn't watch either straight through. I needed sanity breaks.
The Rwandan genocide was one of the greatest crimes in recent history ... yes, of course the atrocities committed by the Hutus against the Tutsis, but just as horrifying, the developed world's failure to act, to believe, to care enough, to see that African deaths are just as important as those of white people.
Three pieces of literature that have helped to clarify the situation for me have been these two films and and the novel, Sunday Afternoon at the Pool in Kigali.
Shortly after that blood bath, a nun from Uganda visited my cottage with a mutual friend, a Malawian. She told me about the rivers running red and clogged by bodies floating downstream, and how her younger brother just "had to see for himself". He was sixteen. He didn't sleep for months after seeing the carnage. On an emotional level I could certainly understand without having to see for myself, even if I had trouble distinguishing intellectually between Hutus and Tutsis. The details were raw and horrifying enough.
On this last trip to Kenya I met two young Rwandans who helped me understand a little more.
One had been a Tutsi child at the time. Every night he would stuff cotton into his nostrils in an attempt to stretch them so that he would look more Hutu than Tutsi ... so that he wouldn't have to face the bullying in school ... so that when the genocide finally occurred he would be indistinguishable.
The other man, half Hutu-half Tutsi, told me about watching his Tutsi mother run away to Uganda leaving the children behind. She was terrified that the machetes would be turned on her next. I guess she hoped that the children might be safe. In this case they survived. In too many cases they did not.
What we are seeing in Kenya is very different, but in both countries, unfair distribution of power is at the root. In Rwanda, the Belgians favoured the Tutsis, likely because they looked more European than the Hutus. When they handed over power to Rwandans, the Hutu majority had built up a tremendous resentment against the Tutsi minority which had been given all the plum positions during the colonial period. In Kenya, the Kikuyu have been the favoured tribe ever since Independence. Jomo Kenyatta did not distribute power or land fairly. In both countries the minority was resented by the majority.
In Rwanda, the Hutu head of state was killed when his plane was shot down right after a peace accord had been signed. Rule of law abruptly disappeared. In such a situation anything can happen. Total disorder and emotions running amok, and a plan already in place to kill off the Tutsis.
Kenya has been a stable country for a long time. In Kenya, tribalism is far more diffuse ... far more tribes for one thing. There has never been a plan to rid Kenya of Kikuyu. In Kenya the anger stems from the fact that the election was not fought or counted fairly. That anger has spilled over from anger with Kibaki to anger against his tribe ... the tribe that has generally been better educated, richer, and more powerful politically. And it is poor young men who can be manipulated who are doing most of the fighting, poor young men who feel they have been cheated all their lives.
I watched these two films trying to get a sense of what must be happening on a far smaller scale (1000, not 800,000 killed), and I wept ... for the Tutsis of Rwanda ... and for Kenyans.
I have been reading comments on Yahoo about the Kenyan news reports that make me want to weep for us here in Canada. One 63 year old man who calls himself the Jokester would like us to ship container loads of machetes to Kenya so that they can finish each other off.
In one scene in Shake Hands With the Devil, Dallaire speaks to Rwandan university students ten years after the genocide, and he says that the western countries believed something very like what the Jokester expressed, and that is why they let Rwanda down in its hour of greatest need. They didn't see black Africans as fully human. That is why the UN ignored Dallaire's pleas for help; why individual countries ignored the news footage that international journalists were sending them.
That was thirteen years ago.
I read the Jokester's comments yesterday and feared that it could happen again, perhaps not in Kenya, but somewhere in Africa. The west might very well turn a blind eye and choose not to help because Africa doesn't matter; because Africans are not as fully human as North Americans or Europeans.
Just how far have we evolved?
I couldn't watch either straight through. I needed sanity breaks.
The Rwandan genocide was one of the greatest crimes in recent history ... yes, of course the atrocities committed by the Hutus against the Tutsis, but just as horrifying, the developed world's failure to act, to believe, to care enough, to see that African deaths are just as important as those of white people.
Three pieces of literature that have helped to clarify the situation for me have been these two films and and the novel, Sunday Afternoon at the Pool in Kigali.
Shortly after that blood bath, a nun from Uganda visited my cottage with a mutual friend, a Malawian. She told me about the rivers running red and clogged by bodies floating downstream, and how her younger brother just "had to see for himself". He was sixteen. He didn't sleep for months after seeing the carnage. On an emotional level I could certainly understand without having to see for myself, even if I had trouble distinguishing intellectually between Hutus and Tutsis. The details were raw and horrifying enough.
On this last trip to Kenya I met two young Rwandans who helped me understand a little more.
One had been a Tutsi child at the time. Every night he would stuff cotton into his nostrils in an attempt to stretch them so that he would look more Hutu than Tutsi ... so that he wouldn't have to face the bullying in school ... so that when the genocide finally occurred he would be indistinguishable.
The other man, half Hutu-half Tutsi, told me about watching his Tutsi mother run away to Uganda leaving the children behind. She was terrified that the machetes would be turned on her next. I guess she hoped that the children might be safe. In this case they survived. In too many cases they did not.
What we are seeing in Kenya is very different, but in both countries, unfair distribution of power is at the root. In Rwanda, the Belgians favoured the Tutsis, likely because they looked more European than the Hutus. When they handed over power to Rwandans, the Hutu majority had built up a tremendous resentment against the Tutsi minority which had been given all the plum positions during the colonial period. In Kenya, the Kikuyu have been the favoured tribe ever since Independence. Jomo Kenyatta did not distribute power or land fairly. In both countries the minority was resented by the majority.
In Rwanda, the Hutu head of state was killed when his plane was shot down right after a peace accord had been signed. Rule of law abruptly disappeared. In such a situation anything can happen. Total disorder and emotions running amok, and a plan already in place to kill off the Tutsis.
Kenya has been a stable country for a long time. In Kenya, tribalism is far more diffuse ... far more tribes for one thing. There has never been a plan to rid Kenya of Kikuyu. In Kenya the anger stems from the fact that the election was not fought or counted fairly. That anger has spilled over from anger with Kibaki to anger against his tribe ... the tribe that has generally been better educated, richer, and more powerful politically. And it is poor young men who can be manipulated who are doing most of the fighting, poor young men who feel they have been cheated all their lives.
I watched these two films trying to get a sense of what must be happening on a far smaller scale (1000, not 800,000 killed), and I wept ... for the Tutsis of Rwanda ... and for Kenyans.
I have been reading comments on Yahoo about the Kenyan news reports that make me want to weep for us here in Canada. One 63 year old man who calls himself the Jokester would like us to ship container loads of machetes to Kenya so that they can finish each other off.
In one scene in Shake Hands With the Devil, Dallaire speaks to Rwandan university students ten years after the genocide, and he says that the western countries believed something very like what the Jokester expressed, and that is why they let Rwanda down in its hour of greatest need. They didn't see black Africans as fully human. That is why the UN ignored Dallaire's pleas for help; why individual countries ignored the news footage that international journalists were sending them.
That was thirteen years ago.
I read the Jokester's comments yesterday and feared that it could happen again, perhaps not in Kenya, but somewhere in Africa. The west might very well turn a blind eye and choose not to help because Africa doesn't matter; because Africans are not as fully human as North Americans or Europeans.
Just how far have we evolved?
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