Excited!

I love the feeling of a natural 'high' - butterflies in the tummy, a bit of nervousness perhaps, a bit of an addictive side to the activity. I know people who get a natural 'high' and an adrenaline rush from wind surfing, or skiing, or crafting, or photography, or Nintendo Wee...

Call me crazy, but I get the best 'high' from teaching and group meetings. Am I alone in this? I hope not! I've returned today from an amazing weekend in Texas for the CTC Spring Meeting. At various points I was passionate, anxious, nervous, inspired, challenged, engaged - and, as the weekend wore on, exhausted, distracted, frustrated. Just like any good sportaholic, though, I'm investing a lot of my time & money - it's superfun - and I'm hooked!

I have for many years appreciated the famous Margaret Mead quote: "Never doubt that a group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world - indeed, it is the only thing that ever has". It seems that I've found a group like that, again (like WUSC at UBC - good ole days!).

My next thought is - I'd like to create or join a similar group here in Vancouver. A group of people motivated by a common purpose, planning to 'save the world'. Perhaps we could plan a fundraiser? Or an awareness-raising event? Or maybe start with happy hour gatherings - ?

Woohoo...!

Mali

Bananas for All - fiction

I decided that this holiday, I would begin to write about some of my experiences in Africa. This is fiction, pieced together from experiences in Nigeria.

I have since decided that publishing first-draft material - even if only online - is not really a good idea.

Check back later for what I'm better at - thoughts & non-fiction...

CTC Meeting in Texas

I had an incredibly exhausting but also very inspiring weekend in Austin, Texas! The trip down was the red-eye of all red-eye flights... leaving 6:30pm from Vancouver, I arrived in Austin at 8:15 am after stops in LA and Houston. The whole weekend was spent battling exhaustion...

But the amazing group of people at CTC were enough to reinspire me. I was amazed and inspired by the passion of this small group of people who have worked hard to build an organisation out of their desire to work in solidarity with a community in Kenya - Maai Mahiu.

Immediately upon returning, I took my Leadership 12 students today to visit two amazing people. Rex Weyler was the founder of Greenpeace; a fascinating man, he welcomed myself, another teacher, and my 14 students into his home and entertained us with stories, advice, anecdotes... he focused on the challenge of "how does an organisation sustain creativity?" He also talked of the importance of having FUN - without fun, an activity is just not sustainable.

We then met Sam Sullivan, the outgoing mayor of Vancouver. In his last 2 weeks of office, he is frustrated at having been unable to run as mayor again this term. He passed on some interesting gems, though - and I quite appreciated his sense of humour. He spoke long and eloquently of the importance of a strong civil service.

The common thread here seemed to be the significance of non-governmental bodies in leading the change of the future. An apt conclusion, after a weekend spent with CTC!

Change Gears

I feel my perspective has changed, recently.

I feel like a car with an automatic transmission. I recognise from the ticking & whirring in my life that something has shifted; I am moving at a different speed, my reactions have changed, and my rpm has slowed slightly. Whether that shift was up, or down, it's hard to tell - but it's definitely changing, and might just change again.

These days I have been thinking about several things:
- the fine balance between carefully prepared lessons & a 'present', other-aware, engaged teacher
- the difficulty of being as good a teacher as I want to be, while teaching full-time
- the need for my students to empathise with & understand the humanity in folks of different backgrounds than their own
- the terrible, omnipresent images of 'sad kids in Africa' - !!!
- my own perceptions of the world and how much they remain a product of my environment, despite my best intentions
- whether or not it is useful - in a social justice sense - to encourage in students a sense of giving for 'charity', 'philanthropy' I guess it is
- whether this whole attempt to build up a 'friendship link' is futile... if it is not acheiving the goal of changing students perspectives, why continue
- how I can measure and/or quantify (for my own sake & that of others) the impact of this kind of program.

Several streams of thought centre around the purpose and philosophical groundwork for the program I have been putting my heart & soul into for the past year - the Rafiki Link. I told someone about six months ago that I'd put 100% into it for at least a year, and then take stock again to see what I think. I suppose I'm half-way through that year, a good time to stop & think.

So far, my idea has been to separate between CHARITY and PARTNERSHIP

CHARITY would include:
- "spare change" given
- giving as a luxury expense
- no connection between giving & lifestyle
- recipients as 'other'
- easy switch from one 'good cause' to another
- no connection to lived experience, or daily life

PARTNERSHIP would include:
- a significant portion of time/resources/energy given
- giving as a part of living
- "live simply so that others may simply live" - connection to lifestyle
- recipients as brothers/sisters
- build a relationship with a place/org/idea, and build that relationship through good & bad
- the partnership makes a contribution to lived experience & daily life

I'll stop there, in the middle of the flow of thoughts, to enjoy Hallowe'en!

Yes, a post from Canada

Call it strange, call it what you will; I thought it only appropriate to continue the adventures online. A few folks have been faithfully reading, which is fun; and there is definitely something to be said for the mental health benefits of a weekly or biweekly summary of my comings and goings. A bit of a weekly report to an invisible boss, a check-in with the internal higher-ups, a retelling of one version of the story of my life. And perhaps a few of my Kenyan friends might just be interested to learn a tad more about life in Canada...!

So here's a few photos of something very important to me - outdoor adventure. This is Garibaldi Lake... we hiked about 4 hours, mostly uphill, and then slept in a very soggy tent all night long. No, nobody paid us to do this. Yes, we actually do consider this fun. Yes, my legs are SORE!!

Smoke & Smiles

'Nimepotea' as they say here - it means I've been 'lost' as in I haven't ben seen, not as in I don't know which direction I'm going ;-). Suffice it to say that the Teachers Without Borders workshops have gone very well!! I've kept them (and myself!) very busy, holding workshops with secondary teachers & then visiting various schools in the district to followup. They're now on safari for a bit - giving me a chance to breathe a bit, remember that I do live here, and catch up on other projects.

And so on to today! I went to Maai Mahiu Secondary for the closing ceremony, and managed to arranged some of the students into the shape of 150 = as in C150K, our Canada/Kenya celebration this year.

We're testing a fuel-efficient stove, manufactured in Nairobi, to calculate exactly how much less fuel is used by the stove. From that we can figure out how much carbon is offset, and then feel justified to continue pursuing a formal carbon offsets arrangement in collaboration with a local carbon offset expert.

Photos - of the fuel efficient stove; of Rocky (environmental coordinator) chopping wood to uniform sizes; of Baba Shiro and Rocky weighing the still-burning wood to determine how much was consumed;

The young girl in one of these photos - Shiro - was great fun, and ended up playing a good oldfashioned game of 'pass' in the moments when we got bored of (literally) watching the pot boiling!

A Few Thoughts

Every week I write, I begin with something like “so much has happened this week”. Somewhere in the process, I end up deleting the first few lines and come up with something a tad more insightful.

This week, I’ll leave it at that – so much has happened. My desire to write about ‘work’ volunteer activities – the Rafiki Link, Teachers Without Borders trip, CTC Education programs, etc – decreases the more work I do during the day. And the last few weeks have been filled with meetings, deliberations, and long long hours spent sitting in front of a computer screen, compiling proposals etc. Last weekend I took time away and worked a record 30 hours from Friday night to Sunday morning – a significant achievement even for a veteran workaholic!

So rather than tell tales of what I’ve done – I’ll describe two recent conversations recently – to give a bit of a flavour of the ideas which have been coming up in recent discussions.

COMMUNITY OWNERSHIP

This evening, I came back late from meeting the new Teachers Without Borders arrivals (who thus far seem Terrific, yes that’s right with a capital T). I arrived to the first rainstorm I’ve seen in months – yes, real rain! And mud! Not having a jacket, I ducked into the closest restaurant (Cheers, appropriately enough) and take a tasty meal of peas in soup and chapo – chapati, cut up in uneven squares.

After I eat, a familiar man calls me over – I think oh shoot, what’s his name again? I have forgotten twice already, let me write it down now so as not to forget again – Jau (which means a large calf, not quite a heifer). The Chief of Maai Mahiu is taking a Tusker with some friends… and they want to discuss CTC with me, though I insist that I can speak best only to the education programs. A man in the group, Kifarafara (it means ‘big highway’ in Kikuyu), brings up the topic of Sustainability. The beer he’s taken increases his passion for this important topic.

His comment is that he doesn’t want CTC’s programs – especially the centre for disabled children, which has benefited a previously unrecognized group in the community – to fade away after a few years, as projects started by other organisations have. The eternal development challenge: how to have outsiders assist and participate in a process of positive change, rather than merely foisting a ‘project’ on passive ‘recipients’.

He proposes that CTC host a ‘baraza’ – an information / training event, to talk about the long-term sustainability of programs such as the disabled childrens’ centre. He throws his arms wide to indicate the numbers of people who would be involved in the event…

Synergy, I think! Alison – director of CTC here – has been talking about ‘barazas’ from a model from Uganda. And Paul Leringato, recent visitor from Laikipia in central Kenya, is a perfect model of building community ownership into such programs.

I’m going to end there for today. Short, especially after such a long time; I’ll promise an update & photos soon.

Mali