Lucy Opens Fire

(none) 56

2011-05-06T01:56:00.004-04:00

The idea of empire.

2010-12-02T13:32:00.002-05:00

Storm clouds (Kampala City Terror)

2010-07-17T03:43:00.011-04:00

"Love may not always triumph, but it keeps us human . . . . Perhaps it is the only antidote. And there are times when remaining human is the only victory possible."

-Chris Hedges, War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning

After visiting Uganda twice in 2009 and having spent most of that time mulling around Kampala I have often told people wary about traveling to the Continent that Uganda, Kampala specifically, is a good first stop to make to get their feet wet.

Unlike neighboring East African capitals, Kampala is a city shrouded by seeming safety. We would often stay out on the town until all hours of the night, something that would be exceedingly more difficult to manage in neighboring Nairobi where the streets shutdown at sundown to anybody who isn't a thug, thief or general and legitimate hardass.

Despite the occasional story of robbery or attempted hijacking (one violent story of the kidnapping and rape of an American expat I remember would be an outlier on the graph), most of the unfortunate stories from Kampala's vault consisted of minor theft and threats - things that happen in any major urban center in any part of the world. It seemed that the most dangerous aspect of the average life of the Kampala expat would be the traffic, especially when on the back of a boda boda (the vulture-like motorcycle taxis that during heavy traffic are your only reasonable way to get anywhere).

All told, getting tossed off the back of a motorbike is probably still your greatest danger should you choose to use such transport, but it's not what your going to be thinking about - not after the World Cup suicide bombings of a rugby club and an Ethiopian restaurant that left over 70 dead earlier this month.

Somali group, and al-Qaeda affiliate, al-Shabaab have claimed responsibility for the attacks. There have been warnings of such an action for several years but in the end there's not much you can do to stop someone who with a bomb strapped to their stomach.

On al-Shabaab and why; the safety of Kampala:

The stability and safety of Kampala, some might say, has been shattered, but really it seems to me that it's always been teetering on a knife edge. Uganda is a country with a history of violence, from the terror reign of Idi Amin to the child abductions and warmongering of Joseph Kony. Today, despite the reasonably stable but largely corrupt two-decade rule of Yoweri Museveni, the nation sits in the midst of some of the most volatile conflicts of the last quarter-century - Rwanda, DR Congo, Sudan, Somalia. And last year's tribal riots in Kampala were what many are calling a precursor to the 2011 Ugandan presidential elections where Museveni will step down and someone new will fill the power void. Now add to this the gnawing fear of repeat terror attacks from Islamist extremist groups.

As soon as the bombings happened I received e-mails from friends with stories of their experiences and notices that they were alright. The most chilling of these came from a medical professional who was called to one of the scenes and described some savage details of what they saw. I sat around a bonfire in a friend's backyard in Winnipeg as these messages came into my Blackberry.

Nobody I knew was at either of the locations that were targeted, although the Ethiopian restaurant that was hit is literally just up the hill from where I stayed when I was there and a place I have visited before. Seeing pictures debris, overturned tables and chairs, and bloodshed is a little different when it's a place you recognize.

The next day tweets and status updates all had a common thread: It is a sad day in KLA.

At the end of my days in Kampala I would often sit with a drink and a cigarette and watch storm clouds gather on the horizon towards Lake Victoria. Maybe it was the times of year I was there but I rarely saw it storm in Kampala itself. It seemed the clouds would build into thunderheads and rumble to themselves but keep their distance from the city.

Once I began to learn a little more about to socio-political state of Uganda I always thought the storm clouds a fitting analogy - you could see them, perilous, in the distance, but you rarely felt their effects. You know the danger is there but when you see it enough times without getting wet you forget about what they can do.

Kampala got wet on Sunday, July, 11th, and I wonder how long it will be before the next storm hits.

With tried and tired peace but unwavering love from Winnipeg, Canada, where one can't possibly begin to understand.

BIG BIG LOVE (ruffian country now)

2010-06-06T01:21:00.003-04:00

We're in ruffian country now.

Well. We. I know I am. Maybe you are too. Can you hear your heart humming in your ears like a nuclear weapon?

How about the frostbite on your internal organs? Didn't think frost could bite there? You just haven't been to ruffian country yet.

It's a place where the marauders and the medieval, the undead and the unkempt, the pirates and peaceniks converge and show off their teeth and tough skins and unabashed abilities to swoon, swagger and sabotage. It's not, as is it is oft portrayed, a platform of hope but rather a diving board situated above a bed of nails.

Still, if you got the wits and the know-how (read: you've been around these parts for sometime, have broken a few bones - other people's and your own - but have still managed to somehow compose a serenade while fighting off a Kraken with a Bic lighter drunk in your underwear in middle of the road), and if you have the BIG BIG LOVE, you just might be alright.

And we're all alright, okay, alright.

You can't always tell who has it and who doesn't. BIG BIG LOVE isn't something that's always apparent. You'll know it when you see it, though, especially in ruffian country. When the towers are falling, the waters are rising, the earth is opening up, and the monsters of the skies and beasts of the deep are attacking, it's the BIG BIG LOVE that shines through.

Peace.

Blitzkrieg style

2010-06-06T00:51:00.003-04:00

Weeks ago there was some personal turmoil that really got to the bottom of me. When people say things about you that expand on the truth to make a hurricane out of a drizzle with the intent of damaging your reputation, it can be a frustrating ordeal.

It's become apparent that when you stick around in a place for long enough and get to know enough people, shit is going to go down. I'd even go as far to say that if it doesn't, you haven't really been living. You can't make headway without - purposefully or not - losing touch, falling short, or breaking hearts. There's just not enough time in the day to make sure everybody is happy. Sometimes you need to cultivate your own happiness.

At this point, though, it's like throwing stones at a tank anyway. We're on a roll, blitzkrieg style.

Still, I needed some space to figure out what I was doing with myself. It was one of those first nice weeks in Winnipeg after the snow has left, the streets have dried up, and it's finally agreeable to be outside again without goose-down armor plating.

I biked up a hill, sat, and watched the rest of world enjoy itself. Bikes, blades, boards, talking, gossiping, making plans for the coming summer, running - the sound of shoes slapping pavement is one my favorites (along with rain on a tin roof, the rapid clicking of a ratchet, and loons at nighttime).

In the distance in a park across the way there was a guy playing fetch with his dog. It looked like a Husky-Labrador cross, or something of the sorts - the kind of dog I will invariably own, befriend, and trust my life to one day. I have long had an adoration for big dogs.

I watched as he tossed a tennis ball and the dog ran like hell was chasing him and dutifully brought the ball back so he could go for another round. Then the owner tossed the ball when the dog wasn't looking. He stood there pointing across the field to where the ball at gone and although I couldn't hear what he was saying I'm pretty sure it would've been word-for-word: "Go get it!", spoken with excitement, several times.

"Go get it! It's over there! Go get it!"

The dog paced back and forth, wagging his tail, hopping up and down, probably thinking something along the lines of, Pleasepleaseplease, Jesus, just throw it already, pleasepleaseplease, completely unaware that it was already gone.

I've seen this happen many times with many dogs and it's absolutely amusing. I wonder, though, how many times we get thrown a ball when we're not looking and stand there waiting for someone to do something for us when it's already been done.

Maybe worse, though, is the times we chase a ball that's not even there.

Everybody loves Tom.

2010-05-30T13:49:00.000-04:00

Ninjas or Pirates?

2010-05-30T13:48:00.000-04:00

Word (The space between)

2010-02-07T13:29:00.006-05:00

It's words just like these ones, symbols of language and culture and being, strung together and given meaning through our shared bank of knowledge.

Letters make words and words make paragraphs but once you've mastered that it's all about

spacing

and doing more with less.

Five well spaced words on a napkin say more than a thousand bad ones crafted to fill page B17. Indeed, it's the spaces between the words and lines that say more than the words themselves ever will. The words are the frame and the vehicle but it's the delivery, the emotion behind, and the spaces between that make up the masterpiece.

The empty spaces are what make you feel at home and make you want to be anywhere but. They make you feel like nothing in the world can touch you because you are, by all means, better than every other hack out there.

Nobody can touch you.

It's the space behind the words that make you believe you can be Dylan or Kennedy or Mahatma. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise, because you can be all those people.

You can be anything you want.

What's read between the lines is the fog, the words the rocks, and the delivery is the lighthouse that brings the Titanic back from the bottom of the Atlantic. Master the spaces and you can raise things from the dead by merely thinkng about them.

The empty spaces are what make you yell and cry and feel and understand. Because that's what it's all about - creating something that somebody else will understand the way you want them to understand it. Perception is a fickle endeavour but when done right, it means the world.

And you mean the world to me.

It's also a power thing. Ten dollar words make for expensive speeches. Keep it simple and how it's said and how it's spaced will say the rest. The person who can entice you with a simple sentence that makes you think beyond what is actually said has all the power over someone who takes an explanation, a backstory, and an 8-point five-year plan to mean what they say.

And I mean what I say.

It's the spaces between the words, the quiet lull, the misdirection and simple truth, that can make you come in your pants.

Now that's power.

Word.

Deerhorn

2010-02-02T00:53:00.013-05:00

The Fire
It was one of those watershed moments where you and everything you know is swallowed, shaken, and spit out on some foreign shore. I didn't know it at the time but losing Deerhorn would start a chain of events that would drastically change the next twelve months of my life.

Tinderbox conditions and an unexpected wind shift brought a forest fire down on top of us in the middle of the night. We received no warning from Saskatchewan Resources.

It was a fire that had been burning for over a week and would continue to burn for another two. Earlier that day I had seen it burning like hell had opened up about 40 miles to the north of our camp and heading due east. Worth keeping a close eye on but not necessarily something to be overly concerned about.

It took about a two hours from the sighting of the first flames on the horizon to sitting across the lake from the lodge and watching the fuel tanks explode. Not knowing how much time we had, the staff removed everybody from the site as quickly as we could, telling them to grab their passports and wallets and leave the rest.

Nobody was hurt. We spent the next twelve hours on the lake, dodging heavy smoke and ash as we waited for the skies to clear enough to get a float plane in.

Back at the lodge, after we got everybody in boats and out on the lake, I stayed behind for a while, cutting water lines and trying to hash up some sort of plan to keep things damp enough to snuff out the falling embers. I still didn't believe we were going to lose the camp.

I've never really shown these video clips to anybody.

Getting Lost (Ghosts of Attitti Lake)
There was a magic to Deerhorn.

Simple, rustic, and entirely remote, you would be hardpressed to find anything like it in Canada or anywhere else. Not that there aren't other simple, rustic and remote fishing lodges hidden away in the Canadian backcountry, but there was something about this one. It was the air, the lake, the wildlife, the land - it was special to each person in their own way. There was something haunting about the location, something that got into your bones and your brain and your heart.

It still haunts me.

Below is an open letter to guests and staff I wrote a few days after the fire.

Greetings from Kississing Lake, Manitoba.

It’s been an eventful season.

Kississing’s operations have expanded and shifted, the fish have migrated from east to west, shallow to deep, and new staff members have fallen into our fold like family. I don’t think I’ve ever worked with a more capable staff.

On the other side of the equation, an unusually warm and dry spring turned northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan into a tinderbox during the month of June, amounting in an evacuation of Kississing Lake and the unexpected loss of Deerhorn Lodge on Attitti Lake, Saskatchewan.

Losing Deerhorn, particularly in such a hurried manner, was met with a barrage of feelings and memories from a lot of people. It’s clear that the location meant something different to every person who found themselves in its cradle and I’d like to share a few thoughts of my own.

Deerhorn is a place where you can go and get lost; in the atmosphere, in the fish, in the opportunities. It’s a place where problems are purged by a filter of fresh air and the smiling, experienced faces who are genuinely as excited to be there as you are; guests, staff and guides alike. It’s a place for grand ideas and even grander stories of big fish and true, gritty, northern adventure.

Very few fishing destinations boast the spread of easily accessible lakes that Attitti offers. Far removed from any city, town or outpost, and with nearly a dozen bodies of water at your fingertips, a short portage brings you deeper into the wilderness than most have ever been. Getting lost never felt so good.

Having learned over the winter that I would be spending my summer running the camp on Attitti I was enthralled but a little apprehensive. I had spent three summers on Kississing Lake and was familiar with the ins and outs of how a fishing lodge operates. I was also aware that Deerhorn was quite a bit different than what I had come to know over the previous years.

As soon as I got there, however, I felt myself being pulled into the place. It was like Kississing’s little brother with an attitude problem and I couldn’t get enough of it. I let my mind wander and imagined spending the fall, winter and spring on Attitti and really getting to learn the lake and the bush. Max, one of our guides on Kississing, came over with me to guide Deerhorn for a week at the same time. From the second we stepped off the floats of the plane onto the dock he would not stop talking about the place; where the fishing holes are, where he’d seen caribou and moose, multi-colored bears and pickerel with golden scales . . . stories that only the deep bush can produce. It was clear that Deerhorn has a gravitational energy that sucks people in with such force that you nearly have to physically pry your feet off the dock on the way out.

Attitti Lake is one of those unique natural gems that cannot be replicated. When we lost it to the force of the very nature that we admire and respect, the first thing everyone was thinking, and most were asking, was when was it going to be rebuilt. Although Nature came in with fury it still gave the staff and guests enough warning time to evacuate.

It was as if She was saying, “Get out now because I’m coming in with everything I have.”

If you listened closely enough I swear you could have heard an apology echoing between the roar and the crackle.

Now, with building plans moving along with a ferocious energy that seems to be increasing in velocity daily, there is a constant hum at the camp on Kississing about what Deerhorn will now become. The mass of emails we’ve received from concerned guests sending their regards and questions have filled our inboxes and sparked our imaginations.

Despite the loss, this in an exciting time. This is what Deerhorn was and what it will continue to be: A place for ideas, big and small, and constant movement in any direction but where you currently are. Although the buildings are gone it is as if the energy of the place is still around somewhere inside the hearts and minds of everyone who’s ever been there.

It may well be over a year before we can send boats out on Attitti and the surrounding water again but it is clear that this is only the end of the beginning. Until that time comes we will all appreciate what the location means to so many and wait patiently until we can go and get lost at Deerhorn again.

With kind regards.

Christian Peacemaker Teams presentation and James Loney interview

2010-01-28T07:38:00.014-05:00

Created for a university poster presentation on nonviolent direct action.

Photographs, video, and information from www.cpt.org.

What brought me to present on CPT was an interview I did with James Loney in 2007:

Ex-hostage encourages students to promote peace.

To find out more about Christian Peacemaker Teams visit www.cpt.org.

Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think . . .

2010-01-27T00:22:00.000-05:00

(none) 12

2010-01-24T21:42:00.004-05:00

Dear Christopher Walken,

There's the guy I used to know from grade school. He always smelled like mustard. I see pictures of him now and I can still smell it. He was my best friend and also the only person I've ever thrown a punch at.

I missed.

Intention, action, interpretation, effect. Nobody really knows what we're really thinking but I suppose the good days are those when at least we know what we're thinking, if you catch my drift.

I mean, Wow, dude, say something inspirational will you?

See the thing is, we're still young. You're a fairly old guy, and I say that with all due respect, but you've been around. You've seen things, been places.

People say, Dude, you're young, don't worry about it. Do what you want to do. Travel on your credit card. Go out on Monday night. Chase the girl that doesn't want you anyway. Make those choices and run them into the wall, nobody's going to judge you.

But that's just it, no? Sure, we are the young ones. But soon enough we'll no longer be there. We're not dying anytime soon but we are, indeed, growing older, and at a rapid pace.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'd like to take a swing at a guy and hit him for once. While I'm still young. I think you'd understand.

Sincerely.

For Allison and Janelle: Merry Christmas from Kampala

2010-01-11T12:42:00.001-05:00

Airport chatter and bad weather

2010-01-08T08:28:00.004-05:00

I’m sitting in a coffee shop in London-Heathrow listening in on the din around me. Another flight is cancelled, Obama is talking about airport security on the overhead television, and all the coffee chatter is about the deep freeze that has hit Europe, the connections that have been missed, and the warmer, sandier places people would rather be.

Obama switches back to Blitzer. There’s been another shooting in the United States. Disgruntled factory worker.

Then back to the main story of the last two weeks – the young Nigerian man who almost blew up an airplane over Detroit on Christmas Day. Turns out American intelligence knew about a potential Yemeni-Nigerian threat but a misspelling of Abdulmutallab punched into a database allowed him slip through.

I wonder how many times I’ve averted something potentially disastrous because I took extra care to spell someone’s name correctly

Outside the tarmac is covered in snow. It looks wet and miserable and all I want to do is stand out there in the slop and have a cigarette. Unfortunately I’m trapped in airport limbo; imprisoned in a shopping mall where everything is overpriced, babies cry incessantly, and everybody is eternally pissed off after being awake for 24 hours or more, crammed into flying metal tubes, and then made to take apart their belongings, take off their clothes, and explain why they are indeed just a weary traveler and not another Abdulmutallab with plastic explosives lining their underwear.

Just under five hours before I begin yet another transatlantic jump. I stare at the departures screen, at my ticket stub, and back at the screen. I hope my flight doesn’t get delayed.

I hope someone didn’t misspell my name and blacklist me as a potential terror threat. This trip home is going to be long enough as it is.

I hope it’s as cold and miserable in Canada as it is here so I can stand in it, feel my East African tan fade away, and get back to my old life.

I hope I never really get back to my old life.

I hope you’re enjoying yourself because it’s later than you think. You never know when a pair of explosive Fruit of the Loom’s might have your name on them.

Dear Christopher Walken, from the land of rising tides, we salute you

2010-01-02T04:26:00.006-05:00

Dear Christopher Walken, et al.,

We've been floating on this boat for the better part of two weeks, fueled by smiling faces, secrets revealed, and holiday dance parties. Anchored in a bay with a stunning view of the stars, the sunrise, sunset, and a moon ringed by a cloudy halo, reminding us that indeed there is something beyond our own planet, we've been bobbing to a playlist of our own creation.

Slowly, though, the tide is going back out; we're running out of water. When it happens, when we hit bottom, we'll let down the rope ladders and all climb down and do what we need to do on solid ground for a while. We'll go our seperate ways and continue what we were working on so diligently before we got picked up, radomly, by the HMS Kampala.

At some point the water will come back in, pulled by the the gravity of the very same moon. When you feel your toes start to get wet, find a boat, climb back up the rope ladder, and meet your new shipmates. Even though the chances of us all finding ourselves on the same boat again are minimal, it's still worth entertaining the idea. At the least just know that we've sailed this one to the best of our abilities.

No matter where we end up we'll all be captains, leaders, the ones to pour the first shot and last ones to go bed.

When the tide comes back in, find your vessel and float along, confidently, with reckless abandon, and with arms outstreched to whoever wants to hop onbaord.

Peace, love, and Wow! from the land rising tides,

James

We Three Kings/Christmas in Kampala, or, Batshit Crazy with the Uganda Sexpat Society

2009-12-28T11:20:00.008-05:00

Rough draft, to be edited.

Christmas Eve
This was the beginning of one those spans of several days that is absolutely legendary in the minds of those who were involved. From the outside it would seem madness, a throng of people bumping into each other in a mess of overflowing ashtrays and breakfast beers. From the inside, though, I think we managed to tap into something innately human – our ability to connect, to create, to share, to cry, and to laugh, laugh, laugh.

Christmas Eve began on the back of a 100cc motorcycle with a case of beer on my lap, limping up a hill to the house of two of Matt’s friends for Christmas Eve dinner, a group reading of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, and a viewing of Love Actually. The house was gorgeous, expansive, the backyard sloping down in terraces, offering one of those peaceful nighttime views of Kampala from the top of one of the city’s seven major hills. These views allow for the big picture. On the street, Kampala can be a circus, twisting and turning in exhaust pipes, hawkers and peddlers, and broken pavement reverberating the heat of the hustle and bustle. From the top, however, especially at night, the view is beautiful, the city lights spelling words and drawing pictures you see once but then get lost when you try and find them a second time. I envy those who can come home at the end of the day and sit poolside and have the big picture presented to them, the noises of the everyday still audible but floating and faded, as if far, far away.

The film viewing, I think, hit the inside of a lot of our chests. Many of those present weren’t there because they wanted to be. Not because they didn’t want to be there, in that moment, with those people, but if they had had a choice they would be somewhere else, with family, in England, in Tennessee, in wherever home might be. Instead, because of work or finances or unexpected life happenings, they were stranded in Kampala.

Others had memories brought back of relationships past, relationships budding, and relationships ruined. This is the first Christmas, some realized, that they would be alone. For others, this was their first Christmas together. It was that classic nostalgia that holidays offer; painful, beautiful, longing for something that was and something that you’ve never had that you wish you could.

Subdued and melancholic turned into rowdiness as a group of us shifted out of the privacy of the home to the public arena of lionhearted celebration. Stumbling carols were sung spontaneously as tequila shots were passed around until the bar shut down.

Christmas, however, had but just finished its prologue.

The next chapter opens with We Three Kings – the name given to myself and my two exceedingly tall compatriots – sitting on the roof rack of Land Rover with a handful of US Marines. The air was refreshingly cold as Kampala whizzed by beneath us and for a second I wished it would snow, just a few flakes, for old time’s sake.

The night ended and dawn began at another house at which we would be spending Christmas Day. We Three Kings proceeded to continue the party on the patio, taking turns playing songs from our personal collections that meant something to us, explaining as we went where the song came from and the context behind it. As the sun came up we reached a several moments of truth, of sharing, and of friendship that would rival most.

It was one of those moments where through the haze everything seems connected somehow, when you’re talking about something so incredibly sad you can’t properly put it into words and then out of nowhere it starts raining, as if the sky itself is crying over your loss.

And you too begin to cry, because there’s nothing left to hold back.

Christmas Day
The night bled into the day, We Three Kings falling asleep long after the sun already came up to the sound of roosters crowing at our ~~broken~~ mending hearts. The rest of the day was a blur, trying desperately to get our bodies to recover, as we helped prepare the turkey that was slaughtered the day before. Mostly, though, coffee and Kahlua led to lazing about and watching movies as more and more people bled into the house to join us for the evening festivities.

For a few minutes, while half asleep on the couch, I saw dinosaurs a la Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, except they were wearing Santa hats.

The food was incredible and amply fed the thirty or so of us that were there. The community feeling and the meal brought out the illusion that Christmas was really happening, here, in East Africa, despite there being no snow and none my own family present. We created our own family for a day.

What happened next takes place over the span of forty-eight hours, much of which melts together like the wax of a candle that has been burning for hours. Many more were included in the fold of We Three Kings, feeding off our established delusion. Games of questions, truth or dare, would you rather, guessing the equations that make up the lives of the people who you have just met. Nothing was held back, secrets spilled, inadequacies confronted; embarrassing, invigorating, seducing. Things were said that made you squirm, made you think, made you realize that being human truly is an incredible experience, that a group of seemingly random individuals could find themselves together, far away from what any of us would call home, and bond together as such.

And between the incessant sex talk and increasingly nauseating Christopher Walken impressions, we found blinking moments of truth laid bare. These moments, I think, came at different times for each of us, but we all wanted them bottled so we could save them for harsher times.

Three nights later I finally found my way back to my own bed and slept soundly for the first time in almost a week. Christmas in Kampala has come and gone with 2010 bearing down upon us like a nuclear weapon stamped with a word of simple juxtaposition

LIFE

(none)

2009-12-15T17:26:00.004-05:00

We are young and exceptionally blessed and there is no reason to feel the way we do or do the things we do the way we do them.

There is no reason not to do something exceptional, day after day after day.

You know you're in Africa when . . .

Yesterday I was hammering down on the last of my university assignments at Matt's apartment. I stepped out onto the balcony for some fresh air and saw the apartment building guard dog racing around the field in the next lot. He was charging back and forth frantically, smashing through the bushes like nothing could touch him.

Next, he starts fiercely rummaging through a particularly thick patch of tall grass and emerges with a large object in his mouth and trots, rather proudly, back through the gate into the apartment yard.

From where I was standing on the second floor I couldn't quite tell what he had snagged but whatever it was it looked like it had once been alive. I decided it was a bird, although it didn't really look like such, and was rather impressed that he had been able to bag a bird like that.

A few minutes later, as I was leaving the yard to head up town, I decided to pay the dog a visit on his stoop to further inspect what exactly it was he had found.

It was a severed goat head.

Mefloquine dreams

I'm standing over the dog on his stoop and he's chewing on the goat head, as he had been earlier that day. Except now there's something attached to head and is covered by a garbage bag.

I reach down and pull away the plastic to reveal a human torso stitched to the goat head with disproportionate and mismatched limbs sewed into the places where the arms and legs should have been.

Gotta love the pills.

Uganda Journal #2: Longitudes and latitudes

2009-12-13T14:49:00.005-05:00

December 13, 2009
00°18′49″N 32°34′52″E

Uganda is very much a Christian country, a striking byproduct of European colonialism. In Namuwongo, however, because of the large influx of Sudanese refugees, there is a local mosque and the accompanying five-times-daily call to prayer. When called, many of the dogs here howl out their response and it reminds me of the sled dogs in Churchill who would howl back at the air raid siren that was sounded by the town every night to signal curfew.

I got my bags back after a lengthy ordeal at the Entebbe airport, including having to wait for half an hour to get a security pass which nobody ever checked. At least when I finally got to my luggage I found them under secure lockdown and all my shit was in order. Picking up a paper today, I'm glad I got them when I did - yesterday there was a fire at airport, something about aviation fuel tanks exploding, and I can only imagine the process it would have been trying to get my stuff back after something like that.

My driver on the way back insisted on taking some backward-ass route into Namuwongo due to the midday "jam". This basically consisted of climbing to the top of one of Kampala's seven major hills and coasting down the most decrepit roads available. We're talking potholes the size of small craters and water-carved ravines that rival the Grand Canyon. On a few occasions the car may as well have been right sideways with me smashed against the door and my driver trying to explain to me where we were and why this was a good idea. I don't think I'd ever even think about driving a vehicle here unless it was a 150cc motorcycle or something with some serious clearance and four-wheel drive. Any road that hasn't fallen apart is marked with speed bumps that would give a Land Rover a hard time.

Friday night
After work Matt and I headed to the gym and then proceeded to indulge in more pressing matters - most importantly a five dollar bottle of whiskey I found at the corner store. Half a bottle of what smelled like gasoline but didn't taste so bad after two or three half-and-halfs later, we headed out on bodas (motorcycle taxis) to meet up with Ian.

Ian is a doctor friend of ours who we met the last time I was around who we really only met one night at the bar because he, like both Matt and myself, is unreasonably tall.

Dinner was good and the beer hit the spot after the rough gas-whiskey mixture I had subjected us to. Matt and Ian knew of this party being thrown by a friend of a friend just up the road from the restaurant, and we decided to make our way over there to continue our evening, but not before securing another bottle of whiskey.

You'd think finding such a thing on a Friday night in downtown Kampala wouldn't be so hard, but it was. An hour and a harsh bargain later we end up at this Italian guy's house, bottle of Johnnie Walker Red in hand. Ian grabbed the Walker, split it into three tall glasses, and we proceeded to mingle with the crowd.

Everybody there was young and highly professional - aid workers, engineers, IT guys, medical professionals, doctors, lawyers, foreign service personnel from the world over - and the alcohol was flowing like milk and honey in Israel. It didn't take long to make young and highly professional friends and at some point throughout the night I ended up with my foot stuck in a tub full of ice with three other guys for nearly an hour in a competition to see who could keep it in the longest. Apparently somebody had money down on the bearded Canadian - me - winning the game so I wasn't about to pull out and shame my country. These things are important.

By 2:30 the party had mostly wound down and it just myself, Ian, Matt, and two ladies hanging out on a set of couches that had somehow found their way into the backyard. After a few more beers and an in depth discussion about the merits of ___________, we got those less mobile ready to move again and hit a cab to Bubbles where we played a variety of dancing-drinking games until they closed down the bar and the sun was nearly on its way up.

Another successful night in the KLA.

PS. Power surge fried the power cable to my laptop the other day. Some seemingly very capable Indian computer techs dudes are working on it but without a way to recharge my battery, blogging might be a little more difficult.

Uganda Journal #1: Uganda redux

2009-12-09T08:28:00.002-05:00

I will try and post regularly throughout this next month in East Africa. I am also keeping a personal journal. At times I will post those entries (or edited versions of such), which will be marked as Uganda Journal Numbers, as this one is.

December 9, 2009. Kampala.

Got into Kampala last night. Barely made my connection in London Heathrow and so what I figured might happen, did happen – my bags are still in London. In all the international flights I've taken in the past five years this is the first time this is happened, so I figure I was due. There’s not another flight for a couple days so I’ll have to make do with the one spare t-shirt I had in my carry on. At least I have my laptop and most of my university notes so I can make some headway on my schoolwork in the mean time.

Matt picked me up from the airport but of course it took me longer to get out of the baggage area because it took a while to file the paperwork for my lost bags. Our taxi driver, Charles, the same guy who drove us in last time, then insisted on finding “pressure” for the tires. This took some time at 12:30 at night – fully functional gas stations are a tough find at any time of day - and only prolonged the trip in from Entebbe to Kampala.

Driving in was a surreal experience, partly because my reality was blurred having been in airports and airplanes for over 24 hours. Mostly, however, it was strange because it was so familiar. Having spent three months here earlier this year, Kampala is a place that is not quite home but is engrained in my consciousness as places I recognize. Other such places include Berlin and Hanover in Germany, Bangkok in Thailand, and Ottawa, Churchill, and Kississing Lake in Canada. Returning to any of those places would I would imagine would inhibit a similar feeling. I say they are not quite home but somehow they are all as a part of who I am as Winnipeg is.

I woke up this morning to the caw-caw of birds and the sound of pavement being swept by a straw broom. Despite my exhaustion I only slept four hours. That, I’ve found over the years, is an odd byproduct of jetlag and lengthy travel – being tired but not being able to sleep. It’s just about 9am here in Kampala and I’m sitting in Matt’s apartment with a freshly cracked beer and craving a cheeseburger.

I am going to use these next few days to accomplish a few things.

1. Probably most importantly, get my luggage back. I’m not going to get very far without it.

2. Finish my responsibilities from my university life in Canada – one politics exam, one paper on conflict and culture, one letter of recommendation for a professor seeking tenure, and half of an article for a peace journal newsletter. The most trying part of this most likely be finding a solid enough internet connection to successfully send Word files.

3. Rekindle old connections and meet old friends and coworkers.

4. Spend as much time as I can with Matt. It’s become apparent that after all the two of us have been through, both working in the remote fishing lodge industry in northern Manitoba and here in East Africa, he is my closest friend. I would take a bullet for him without batting an eye and recent circumstances in his life have left him, as I would imagine such happenings would leave any person, feeling lost and unsure about what life is about. I sincerely hope that over the course of the next few weeks we will both be able to come to at least a basic understanding of why, in the general sense, we are here.

5. Develop a game plan for the next four weeks. It will most likely be some time before I make my way back to East Africa and I want to take in as much as I can here. Initially, I imagine this will involve a few good weekends out in Kampala, some hands on work with Uganda Hands for Hope in the Namuwongo Slum, and some travel in the region – potentially to Gulu in northern Uganda and south to Rwanda.

There is also the question of how I want to document the next month in terms of writing, video, and photographs. I purchased a camcorder before I left Canada as well as a number of disposable cameras I plan on giving to a select few people in Namuwongo, should they agree, in an effort to document their daily experiences from their own eyes. Last time around I created a promotional video for Hands and I wonder if an updated version of such could be done again. I have a few ideas, including creating a series of shorter videos that could be posted to YouTube, both on the programs facilitated by Hands and on whatever adventures ensue in the coming weeks. There is also the question of journaling (always something I plan to do when I travel but rarely carry out throughout the duration of a trip) and the prospect of developing a feature article for the student newspaper at University of Winnipeg.

Today I am going to try and knock off as much of my school work as possible. We’re meeting up with some people tonight, and probably for the next three or four nights, so I would like to get as caught up as I can before things get busy. I think I can get everything but the take home exam done today, although the conflict paper I might hang on to for a day or two so I can reread and edit. I might make my way down to Bubbles, an Irish pub and expat hangout, this afternoon to use their internet.

I need a shower.

Peace and love from Kampala,

James

The penny drops - Looking at the education process

2009-12-02T19:07:00.008-05:00

I was reminded today of the importance of the education process and the possibility it has to uniquely shape individual lives.

To close a course on conflict and culture my professor asked the class, as a closing ritual (ritual being one of the key topics we covered during the term), to bring one half page designed in such a way through words, drawings, pictures, or symbols on a theme the class developed earlier in the week: Breaking Barriers Through Change. How you wanted to represent the topic was up to student.

Today, the class spent an hour, our chairs arranged in a circle, presenting our designs and explaining what they meant. It was evident that for many of us the class had struck a certain chord and had changed our perceptions of the world around us. It was a borderline emotional experience and an incredible testament to the professor's ability to facilitate a class to the point where it takes on a life of its own. The half pages were taken from us at the end of class and will be returned tomorrow, compiled as booklets for everybody to take home.

It was not typical way to close a university course.

"I'm not going to talk very much," the professor said. "It's more important at this point that you do."

Those who are accustomed to the usual class setting where the dissemination of knowledge from one mouth to many notebooks is the norm may feel uncomfortable with something like that and might call it unprofessional.

I call it unconventional, but innovative.

I have less notes from this class than from any other I've ever taken but yet I feel like I have learned much more. There are concepts here that I will take with me for the rest of my life. It is hard to argue that there is far more merit in genuinely gained knowledge than in a three-inch binder full of hastily scribbled notes.

Also, this is a class where I know everybody's name and at least a little bit about them. This occurred through class discussion and in-class group work assignments. There a few other classes I have where I can say I've been able to meet everybody in the room. Here I have 25 acquaintances I didn't have before.

The point here is that we need to rethink how we educate ourselves. Too much time is spent talking about grades, papers, and exams, and excuses for why you got a B instead an A. Not enough time is spent actually learning from each other, teaching each other, and genuinely grasping concepts and ideas that you did not have a handle on before.

Earlier in the semester the class talked about "The moment when the penny drops", that "Aha!" moment where you find get it. These are moments of revelation and excitement. They can be daunting as you quickly realize what you believed for so long needs to be changed and that you are entering new mental, emotional, and academic territory.

In short, today ended up being a general discussion of those moments and by the end of the hour there may as well have been a pile of pennies in the middle of the room.

University needs these moments of sharing, community, and reflection. University needs these classes that educate you in such a way that you can take what you studied in class and apply it to the world outside. University needs these kinds of professors who can breathe life in a classroom and elicit knowledge, not simply divulge it, allowing their students to genuinely understand.

University should be about breaking barriers.

I believe the barriers we need to be breaking are of our own construction and the changes we should be experiencing must come from within ourselves. If, by the end of the semester, there isn't a pile of pennies on the floor, you may have to ask yourself, What are we really doing here in the first place?

(none)

2009-11-26T02:33:00.005-05:00

In the fray of what we do as humans there are breaks in the madness. The waves stop coming in, the sands settle for once, and the water becomes clear. These are moments where you can stand on the beach and look out on an ocean that is completely tranquil, the reflection of the sky as bright as the heavens themselves.

These moments come few and far between, as I would argue they should come, and when they do they should be taken advantage of.

They are quiet moments of introspection and creativity, clear thinking and compartmentalization. They breed concepts, plans of action beyond your means, ideas much bigger than yourself.

Indeed, for these brief seconds you are bigger than yourself.

Hold them, nurture them. Write them down and tack them to your wall, above you desk, your mirror, your bedroom door, so you never forget them. When it stares you down once you've sobered up and entered back into the reality, don't let it fade.

Keep it. Allow yourself to be bigger than yourself. There's nothing keeping you from it except yourself.

Remember the ocean, and its unpredicability.

Remember the calm when the squall hits.

Humanitarianism and the politics of hope

2009-11-14T18:28:00.010-05:00

This comes a little late but still worth posting.

James Orbinksi on humanitarianism.
Speaking at the University of Manitoba, October 28, 2009.

James Orbinski is one of those people that make you feel small when you're in the same room with them. He's reached a certain echelon of success and realm of understanding about the world that I've never really been delusional enough to think about reaching myself.

Currently a professor of politics and medicine at the University of Toronto, Orbinski has spent much of his professional career working as a medical doctor in some of the world's most volatile and forgotten locations, including being on the ground during the 1993 Rwandan genocide. Working with Médecins Sans Frontières in the late 90s, he was president of the organization in 1999 when they received the Nobel Peace Prize.

Speaking on the relationship of politics and humanitarianism, Orbinksi ended the question-and-answer period with a stirring words of advice to any of those looking to get into the field of humanitarian aid.

The politics he describes is not one of power acquisition but rather that of creating a platform for discussion and debate. I remember making that parallel distinction while taking a first year politics class years ago. It's something that gets lost in the modern day media flurry and the idea that politics is the same as a scramble for power.

"Real change," he said, "Will come from the politics of real debate that gives new points of reference."

Humanitarianism, he said, is more about the realization of equality than furthering a savior-like agenda.

"When one sees the other as equal, humanitarianism is not about compassion, it's about solidarity . . . the willingness to see the dignity of the other."

In the beginning and the end and at every point of every project it means a wholly collaborative approach and pointed confrontation with indifference, power, and the politics of the day. In this way, humanitarianism is itself political as it deals with the engagement of people and creating that platform for discussion and action.

He used the example of genocide as a political crime. As far as philosophy and religion can go, alone they cannot prevent such atrocities. As a political crime it has political answers.

"Ideas have always been more powerful than economies or armies and are essential."

Orbinski went on to distinguish hope from optimism. These ideas that need to infiltrate our political arenas both locally and internationally need to come from ideas of hope.

Hope, he said, is more about knowing you are making the right choice and is a powerful force the fuels the move for change. Optimism, on the other hand, is knowing that there is a reasonable chance of a certain outcome. In the face of modern global forces, being optimistic is not always possible. There is always, however, room to be hopeful.

At the end of the day, whatever humanitarianism tries to do will be imperfect because it is, at its roots, human, and human beings are inherently imperfect.

"With success comes failure . . . Humanitarianism is an imperfect project and is most imperfect when it delusions itself to think it's perfect."

So where does this put us? Why should we even try to work at these problems when the mountains we need to climb are seemingly insurmountable?

Orbinski on apathy: "I just get up and do whatever I'm going to do. I'm not interested in people who aren't interested. I don't feel responsible for those who choose to be apathetic. The train is moving . . . get on board or get out of the way."

"Wanting to do good is good . . . but it's not good enough," he said.

In terms of working in the developing world we need to realize that labour is everywhere. Going on a trip overseas to help build a school or dig a well doesn't make any sense, he said. They're building their own schools and digging their own wells. What there is a shortage of, however, is highly skilled individuals.

"What skills do have or can you get?" he asked the audience. "What are you bringing to the party?"

He was adamant about students sucking their university experience dry and learning as much as they possible can.

"Become an expert at something," Orbinski said, "Don't waste this precious opportunity."

The most important thing future humanitarian workers, development practitioners, politicians, can do right now, he said, is gain skills. The world needs medical professionals and engineers more than anything else.

Second, he said, learn a second language. And a third. And a forth.

Third, gain practical experience. That can either be at home or abroad but the most important thing is to apply what you're learning in class to the outside world. Every bit of experience, he explained, gives you a little bit of wisdom. Before long, all those bits begin to add up.

Last, cultivate humility. "You are not the answer," he said, "You are part of it."

The most successful humanitarian endeavors will be those that have found a way to "achieve good outcomes in imperfect (read: human) situations."

I left the session feeling both inspired and as if I had just been scolded by a parent. Where do I fit into this scheme? Where do my skills lie and what skills should I be trying to obtain? Am I really part of the solution here? Are you?

Video: Born of War

2009-10-24T01:36:00.004-04:00

Here's a video from photojournalist Kevin Van Paassen focusing on Congolese child soldiers. It features an interview from War Child Canada founder and director Samantha Nutt. A year ago I had the opportunity to see Dr. Nutt speak. Having worked for almost a decade and a half as a medical doctor in warzones around the world she is a powerful voice of experience and knowledge.

"Now's the time for us to invest in Africa. It's long overdue. It's at a critical point and we can't continue to ignore it at the expense of other conflicts." -Samantha Nutt

Less familiar than home

2009-10-12T15:08:00.008-04:00

"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

This city is home.

Or, at least it's familiar. Does being familiar with a location make it home? I'm not sure anymore.

I've spent so much time away it's been hard to get properly reacquainted with Winnipeg. The snow helps and acts as a blanket of normalcy but still there's something missing here. It's almost as if I need to start this whole thing over again. The setting is the same but the narrative has been altered.

They say when you travel, when you go away and come home, you "find yourself" or at least come back with a fresh view of things. For a lot of reasons I think that is legitimate and for a lot of reasons I think it's just the traveler wanting it to happen because that's what they've been told should happen. So they force it and pretend to be changed, to be experienced, wiser, a world traveler. Most of the time it's just pretension (read: bullshit).

They also say that when you travel you take the best of you - what's in your head and in your heart - with you and leave the worst - your physical belongings - behind. But it's also just as possible that you'll lose your head and your heart somewhere out there.

I think I've just come and gone so many times now that I can't make heads or tails of what I'm supposed to be. All those miles and handshakes and pictures and passport stamps and I still can't explain to anybody what the fuck it is I do. Or want to do.

From the other night: "So you're going to university but you don't know what you want to be?"

It was a borderline accusation.

The question always catches me off guard. I really should prepare a standard two sentence answer and keep it in my wallet.

I've had a hard time concentrating. I've had a hard time doing anything, really. The summer has been slipping into winter faster than anyone would reasonably wish for and I've done little more than watch it happen with a drink in my hand.

The other day while neglecting my studies I spent some time reading old posts on a now defunct blog of mine. Some of it is alright, some is dribble, a lot of it I barely remember writing. I used to write a lot, though, as if I used to be able to make sense of the things around me.

And that's what writing is, really. Making sense of the audible, the tangible, and the perceived surroundings. Maybe it's time to start writing again.

Glenny on International Organized Crime

2009-09-17T11:43:00.005-04:00

Misha Glenny, author of McMafia (2008), talks about international organized crime, a topic that, joined at the hip with gray marketing and conflict profiteering, I believe to be one the most important aspects of the modern world order.

A quote from anthropologist Carolyn Nordstrom on black and gray market systems: "These systems are not invisible because of any intrinsic nature of their own, but because of an unwillingness to see them . . . . This unwillingness to see into the shadows may in part be due to the degree to which the extra-state and extra-legal are woven into the fabric of everyday life and formal institutions." -Shadows of War (2004)

Nationalism, Uganda, and further reading

2009-09-15T17:16:00.005-04:00

On the flight out of Entebbe, Uganda - 40km west of Kampala and home to the international airport - I sat beside a forty-something Ugandan business man. We were on our way to Dubai; me on to Toronto, he to France for a meeting. We got to talking.

He asked what I was doing in his country. I told him a little bit about Hands and what the project does in the Namuwongo slum. He said he'd lived in Kampala his whole life and didn't know the slum was there. I told him nearly 8000 people ~~live~~ survive there. He was taken aback.

It's a common thing; he wasn't the first Ugandan I met that was unaware.

Passing through Kampala you would never see the slum in Namuwongo. It's tucked between a railroad track and a swamp and you'd have no reason to go there. I spent pretty much every day in and out of that slum during my three months there so I like to think I, and whoever else has spent time working with Uganda Hands for Hope, has a different experience in Kampala than most. Even the many of the city locals.

Of course I think of my own city and how much time I've spent in it's own impoverished areas. The answer is, of course, not much. I often ride my bike through the North End community of Winnipeg but to be honest I often peddle faster. We don't know our own cities.

The other thing I took from this conversation - again something I had come across earlier during my stay - was that Ugandans lack a national identity. When you ask a Ugandan who they are they will more often than not identify themselves with their tribal background. They'll say, "I'm Acholi," for example, before they'll say, "I'm Ugandan," if they make that distinction at all.

What I often found is that they would often throw in a punchline about how so-and-so from so-and-so tribe was a thief, liar, cheat, and so forth. In three months it became apparent to me that even though outwardly Uganda was stable and forward moving, just below the surface simmers something anything but stable.

My airplane buddy let me know he was quite concerned about this and that he could foresee future violence surrounding tribal distinction, rights, and downright ignorance. Akin to racism, tribalism can be a moving, terrible and violent force. He was especially concerned about a future election where Yoweri Museveni - Uganda's president since 1986 - was not on the ballot.

Last week Kampala hit the international headlines when the city was brought to a standstill by rioters. A scheduled visit to Kampala by a traditional Bugandan king was being snuffed by the government and the king's supporters were unhappy about this. It's not comforting knowing that just a little shove is what it took to knock things over the edge.

The BBC reports that over 20 people were killed but I'd imagine the count could be much higher. Shooting e-mails back and forth with a few of my friends in Kampala I was glad to know that they were all safe but they gave eery reports of how streets that you could usually barely navigate during rush hour were empty. Then there were stories of breakneck vehicle chases and last ditch attempts to avoid malicious rioters. Kampala roads are hard enough to traverse on the best of days - indeed, those unfamiliar would think a normal traffic day would constitute the word 'riot' - never mind when the whole place is actually going to hell.

Things seem to have quieted down but my friend, and office manager at Hands, Matt Fast, is worried that things could get heavy again. It's an uncomfortable calm.

In the wake of the riots the use of microblogging (read: Twitter) has emerged an a topic of interest. It's free and easy and microposts can be sent via text message from a cell phone, one gadget most Ugandans of any social standing have access to.

Turns out a few Ugandans took it upon themselves to post daily events and what they were experiencing on the ground. Microblogging in this way is an incredibly powerful news and communication tool.

For an example of such, check out Solomon King's Twitter page.

For more on the Kampala riots microblogging: Asynchronous Info, Disjointed Data and Crisis Reporting.

For a more in depth look at the riots read this: Uganda - All Things Fall Apart . . . Again.

Man, Nature, God and the Inbetween

2009-07-20T00:29:00.005-04:00

Rebuilding a dock is an animal experience.

It's wet, cold, involves a whole lot of ingenuity and, when all else fails, the brute force of a bull moose.

Tearing apart the old sections involves a lot of time in the water pulling apart the cribbing sections with a pry bar and moving rock piles with your hands.

Building the new sections takes much of the same. You build as much as you can outside the water but there's still things that need to happen that have you wet and wishing you had gills.

You need to find tall, straight spruce trees for the extensions. Cut them down, skin the bark, drag them to the shore, tow them with a boat to the project site, cut them again to size, and hammer them together. Then you trim and shim and do all manner of chainsaw acrobatics to get your new supports as level as possible. You drive spikes through the logs and pin down your planks with nails, all the while keeping things straight, square and sturdy.

If you do it right the foundation will last twenty years, granted the ice doesn't wreck havoc in spring.

The old pieces get pulled up on shore. Some gets cut up for firewood, others, either because they're too rotten or too full of nails, get hauled to a burn pile.

This is where I ended up tonight, burning the old dock.

Piled high like a log house, the flames shot up twenty feet into the air. A fire like this is one that should be shared but instead I was selfish and sat there on my own. The heat burned through my work pants and a storm cell created its own light show across the lake.

Embers shot upwards, like souls leaving Earth and trying to reach Heaven. Many exploded into the night sky and disappeared into the air. Others arced back into the ground, heavy from the baggage that life thrust upon them.

Some souls make it, some don't.

The lightning circus moved closer and before long the storm was right above me, as if the fire I lit had called in. But even as the rain came down the fire was too hot to be extinguished.

There's something about a controlled fire. It's a sign of humanity, of safety, of man conquering the elements, a light in the darkness.

And as I sat there swatting mosquitoes and watching the destiny of a million burning souls, I felt like there was nowhere I'd rather be.

Indeed, if God came back tonight and said it was time to go I'd stare Him straight in the face and say,

"Sorry, man, I'm not done here yet."

Sisters

2009-06-06T00:44:00.004-04:00

Yesterday we had a guest at the lodge do something extremely inappropriate to one of our waitresses in the middle of the dining room.

For two hours after I heard about the incident I was on the brink of knocking the guy on the head, loading him in a boat, driving his drunk ass across the lake and dragging him so far into the bush that he'd never be able to find his way back.

I cleaned my room instead.

The girls here may as well be my sisters.

New Republican Foreign Affairs Attack Ad

2009-05-01T23:28:00.002-04:00

Looking at poverty: Hans Rosling

2009-04-29T14:47:00.003-04:00

Really interesting discussion on poverty and how to view global development.

"My experience from twenty years of Africa is that the seemingly impossible is possible. Africa's not done bad. In fifty years they've gone from a pre-medieval situation to a very decent 100-year-ago Europe with a functioning national state. I would say Sub-Saharan Africa has done best in the world in the last fifty years."

He uses an analogy of his neighbor who is familiar with 200 types of wine. Rosling says he only knows two - red and white. But the same neighbor only knows two types of countries - developed and undeveloped - while Rosling says he knows 200.

"We have to know a little bit more about the world," he says.

I would agree that oversimplification is one the major problems of development thinking.

As Rosling says, It's one thing to survive in poverty. It's another thing entirely to get out of it.

I'd go one step further and say, It's one thing for all of us to live in a world that includes poverty - which we've learned how to do quite well. It's another thing to eliminate poverty altogether and just live.

Stewart vs. May

2009-04-29T13:27:00.006-04:00

Last night Jon Stewart interviewed/debated Cliff May of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who defends the select use of waterboarding. At the end, May discloses that it had been "the best discussion conversation I've had on this subject anywhere . . . because it's the most honest, the most open."

Although Stewart lampoons the debate in the edited cut of the interview, it's still great commentary on the torture debate of the last twelve months.

American internet users can watching the full interview at The Daily Show website here.

Right now, Canadians can only get the edited-for-time interview here.

May's response to the Daily Show experience here.

Uniter Comments March 25, 2009

2009-03-26T07:44:00.004-04:00

"There are no slumdog millionaires here - but don't feel guilty about it"

The Uniter is the official student newspaper of the University of Winnipeg and is published by Mouseland Press.

Hookers, animals, and a photograph of a man carrying many matresses

2009-03-07T07:43:00.009-05:00

Al's Bar, Kampala, Uganda. Saturday, 3:30am. Hotdogs.

It happened when she sat down beside me and kissed me on the cheek. I had been saying it for a few weeks but this was a watershed moment.

I need to get out of this city.

She was slurring and reeked of booze and I just wanted her hands off of me. She promptly informed me that I had never experienced a sex machine like her. I promptly informed her that she needed fuck off immediately.

I have no patience for Kampala hookers.

Al's Bar is a dive. It's also teeming with prostitutes. For some reason Lonely Planet lists it as a place to go. I've never been there earlier than 3am and by that time the atmosphere has usually begun to evolve from mild lewdness to no-holds-barred, crotch-grabbing crassness.

We go for the hotdogs.

This is the end of week five in Africa, a benchmark in that my trip is half over. Although the primary reason of me coming here was to volunteer with Uganda Hands for Hope, I know that if I don't get out and travel the region some I'll be leaving shortchanged.

The things I've seen and the people I've met in Kampala have been both fabulous and disheartening. It's a different kind of travel experience than what I'm accustomed to. Usually I don't stay in one place for very long, a week at the most, never mind living and working in one city for more than a month. It's refreshing to really get to know a place but at the same time it wrecks the traveller's soul to know that there's so much more within reach that is being left untouched.

Some of my most dear ~~travel~~ life experiences have involved animals. Living with sled dogs and snorkelling with beluga whales in Churchill. Scuba diving with reef sharks, trigger fish, and barracuda in the Gulf of Thailand. Coming face to face wild moose and black bears in northern Saskatchewan backcountry.

This is Africa, man. I think it's time to see some animals.

Of course it need't take a hooker to have me realize that. And of course you can be assaulted by a hooker anywhere. But there was something irreverently repulsive about this one that knocked the dominos over.

Although I'm here on a voluntary basis, I feel a great deal of obligation to Hands for Hope. It's tough not to get attached to some of the stories that come into our office every day. But a volunteer is a volunteer and truthfully I might not last the week.

I'm looking forward to a cramped, sweaty busride to somewhere - preferably in the direction of these guys.

T.I.A.

James.

Those people

2009-03-02T07:40:00.011-05:00

Four weeks in Uganda and I haven't left Kampala. The weeks are filled with field work and sweaty data entry, the weekends a blur of alcohol. Among the expats, everybody's got a rambling story, an explanation why, and a heart to break. It's the New York of East Africa and at some level every mzungu who stumbles into this city gets stuck here, or at least ends up leaving a piece of them behind. Welcome to the KLA.

Working in the slum is a bit like walking into a prayer service carrying a bucket of marbles on your head. Even if you don't drop the bucket, which you inevitably will, you're still going to make a scene. You walk in there and you're surrounded by 8000 of the poorest people on the planet. We're talking absolute poverty poor, households surviving on less than a dollar a day, people who have never gone to school, have never had a real job, and have experienced some of the worst things mankind has ever produced - war, rape, genocide, and the shit end of transnational exploitation. Forgotten by the rest of the world that is apparently more of a global community than it's ever been, they sit here sweltering under tin roofs held up by mud walls that are one heavy rain away from falling over completely.

You walk among them and you feel like a bastard. You're the one doing the exploitation now, taking their pictures, pretending you feel their plight. The thousands of kids who just wander around the slum all day, the kids who would love to go to school but can't, they congregate and follow. They touch you and then run away and giggle. Some strut with you, as if touching white skin gives them some kind of street cred they didn't have before. The little ones shout mzungu, mzungu. Some of them cry because their older siblings have told them that the white people will come and take them away.

Many of the women smile and wave, especially those whose lives have been touched by us. Touching lives is something I say with humility and with an air of reciprocity because our interactions here are human ones and they go both ways. We're impacting each other on a daily basis.

Some of the men are cordial and gracious. They stop and shake your hand. Others assume you're from America so some of them shout out Obama! The more cheeky let out a McCain!

Others still, yell at you or mock you by asking for money or telling you that you could never endure what they've endured. Go fuck yourself White Man, is what I imagine is running through their heads. I can't blame them. In any case, the drinking holes where local brew is served - it looks like porridge and smells like a rotten variety of such - are places to avoid if you can.

Before I left Canada I had people use such language as, So you can think you can go there and help those people?

Those people.

How about us. Help us.

We're all in this together and poverty on this scale should be of concern to everybody else in the developed and globalized world. If we really are that connected as global citizens perhaps there should be a greater emphasis on helping our global neighbors.

It's what Jesus would want. Or something.

We call it field work. As if we're archaeologists uncovering some kind of artifact. Put on your sunblock and bug repellent, go out there with your canteen full, your safari vest pocketed and your hat brimmed wide. Export some knowledge, will you. Tell them what they need to know.

It's a social science, this development work. And like any science, you've got formulas, theories, and methods of deduction. Guess and check is a good one. Only with development you're dealing with peoples lives, not trying to figure out how heavy Pluto would be in Earth pounds. Or whether not Pluto should actually count as a planet or just a big rock. Often though, especially in the academic world, development dialogue can be just as pointless.

My answer to the question/statement: So you think you can go there and help those people? was a scripted, Well no, not necessarily, but I think I can go and at least see something new and try and understand it for myself. Of course once you get here there's very little that makes sense.

Aid work is not pretty and aid dollars are not baskets of hope and change. It's a dirty, difficult, disaster of a transaction and very few aid organizations, governmental or otherwise, actually have it even partway figured out. If they do, they're most likely cornered by their donors, political realities and the frustration of dealing in undeveloped locations hampered by corruption and a severe lack of urgency, ingenuity and competence. Everything takes forever to happen here, even simple tasks such as cashing a money order or checking your e-mail.

This might be where a small organization such as the one I'm ~~working~~ volunteering for is somewhat of a shining light. Not that we have expedited bank accounts or broadband internet, but at least we can spend our money properly. All of our donors are small, most of them individual people. We have a staff of less than ten, all of whom either get allowances from a separate organization or don't get paid at all. All of our donations go directly to our own programs tailor-made for the local slum, which right now is either child sponsorship - paying for school fees for vulnerable children - or microfinance schemes - lending small amounts of money to households to either start up or enhance a small business so they can hopefully begin supporting themselves financially.

These are good projects administered by good people for good people - those people. Cheers to those of you who have gotten involved with what we do here.

Kampala contestant weighs in

2009-02-24T12:44:00.007-05:00

How to pass time when stuck in Kampala through a series of competitions:

a) Grab the first reasonable mzungu you meet.
b) Buy him/her at least two liters of Nile Special.
c) Propose one of the following feats of strength, sleaze, stupidity and/or insanity:

1. Challenge your new best friend to a tap water drinking competition. No bottles, no boiling. You'll know your friend is cheating if the water in their glass is clear. The first person to quit due to illness loses.

2. Go to Al's Bar and/or Capitol Pub. The competitor to walk out the door with the most ladies of the night wins. Getting rufied is an automatic default.

3. Go to the far east end of the Old Taxi Park. First to the far west end by touching only the tops of taxi vans is the winner. Bonus points for the contestant who buys an MTN airtime card from the roof of a taxi van and is able to sell it before reaching the other side.

4. Sleep without a mosquito net and without any malaria medication. First to contract malaria loses.

5. Each contestant gets USh 20,000. Go to Owino Market. Each contestant must buy an outfit for the other contestant. Don said outfit. Go to Bubbles on a rugby night and a pick a fight with the largest bloke in the bar. There is no winner here.

6. Pick up a boda boda driver on Kampala Road. First contestant to the Sudanese border with the same boda boda driver they started with, wins. Bonus points for posting pictures of yourself with Janjaweed warriors on Facebook.

7. Back to Owino. Find a witch doctor stand. Pick up various magic paraphernalia and start casting spells on the vendor and take lots of pictures. First contestant to have a voodoo doll made in their honor, wins.

8. Steal a police uniform. Find a roving pickup truck full of police officers and hop in the back. Tell them your showing up for your first day of work and that you want to make a good first impression, and can you please have an AK so you have feel like part of the team. First to end up behind bars, loses.

Happy competing!

Uniter Comments January 29, 2009

2009-01-29T19:52:00.004-05:00

"A Canada you can believe in"

The Uniter is the official student newspaper of the University of Winnipeg and is published by Mouseland Press.

On the eve of an inauguration

2009-01-20T02:24:00.002-05:00

The air in the District is thick with anticipation, everybody breathing heavy energy and on the brink of hugging, kissing, dancing. We're all standing, stomping our feet in the cold, for another few hours until the President-elect will set us in motion towards our new existence. An existence where racial barriers have been shattered and where the screwtop neoliberal gears of the last eight years have at least grinded enough to slow down for a while. An existence where politics as once again shifted from a topdown powergrab to an honest discussion amongst the electorate, the people's government, the real voice of a nation and a planet that is hurting and confused.

All the hope is there, the excitement is there, now we're just waiting for it happen. The change. Even though we know that this far from an instant fix and that there are certain dirty aspects of American policy, particularly foreign policy, that will remain, at least we have a starting point.

We welcome a new agenda from an articulate, intelligent, unprecedented new leader who has reminded us repeatedly over the last few days that he is, indeed, just one man and that what we have been told is possible is only so with the sacrifice and the dedication of a population, not only an administration. It's Politics 2.0 and it's gone wiki. We're all involved and tomorrow it begins for real.

From Washington, DC.

Shipwreck

2008-12-15T17:44:00.008-05:00

A sailor of sorts returns to his city where everyone he knows has never even seen the coast. At sea, where he was at home, he did great things. He survived storms and waves larger than the ambitions of kings, swallowed salt water and spit fire, carried mountains on his shoulders and beat the odds with brute force, knife-like cunning, and knapsack full of dumb luck.

But back in the city, all these attributes wither. His stories fall on deaf ears and his skills disappear into social norms and traffic laws, mundane realities of the urbane populous. Wilderness and survival mean nothing here. You could let yourself fade away here because what you know means nothing. Physical strength, mental fortitude, endurance, instinct . . . is lost. It's not needed. The nine to five and the four to close take over, pay day could never come sooner, and when you're done, the television takes over the rest.

Shipwrecks mean nothing here. They aren't real. They're a plot line for a miniseries for an army of couch surfers who have no idea what it feels like to slam into a rock with a boat, miles from home. To be driving along, lost in your own thoughts, and all of sudden be pitched from the back of your boat to the front, to hear the shredding of aluminum and the insane noises of distress an outboard motor makes when it strikes rock, a hundred pounds of rotating horse power flipping up and down, in and out of the water, and then smashing again and again, your only way of getting home destroying itself on the invisible reef beneath you.

The viewers don't know what its like. Boat sinking, a hundred yards from shore, water temperatures barely above freezing, nothing but thick bush and rugged ridges for miles.

They don't know what it's like to be actually, truly, fucked.

But that's okay. They're good people, they're old friends. Room after room of them, party after party. Reintroductions are pleasant, smiles on all faces, but he still feels like an outsider. He doesn't belong, there are very few commonalities here.

Buildings tower high above, icons of wealth, shopping malls spread outward like someone spilled the development bucket and forgot to clean up the mess, billboards telling you how to be human.

But what happens, though, when being human isn't enough. What happens when you need to be more than human, when you need grow fangs or fur or fins?

What happens when the shipwreck is real?

To the dogs (or whoever)

2008-11-19T22:06:00.008-05:00

As my term as dog handler extraordinaire is rapidly coming to an end I'm having a hard time coming to terms with heading back south. Five months on the lake working a remote fly-in fishing lodge and now two months working with sled dogs in an isolated community has left me feeling at home in the open wilderness and more of an outsider than ever to the big city lights.

Will the city take me back? Or do I even belong there?

Indeed I have struggled for some time over whether or not I actually have a place I'd call home at all anymore.

Working and living with nineteen dogs nearly twenty-four hours a day for 60 days has no doubt hurt my social skills but at the same time expanded my knowledge and respect for the animal world. The integrity of some of those dogs rivals that of many people I know.

Sleeping at the dog yard has allowed me to become attached to the dogs in a way I wouldn't have been able to otherwise. Watching the dogs run, and running them myself, and seeing them come back to the yard happy has been incredibly rewarding after working with them so closely. There are few bad moods a happy dog can't reverse.

I've watched them get into shape and adapt to the colder temperatures. I've been able to see certain dogs grow and learn, younger dogs coming up the ranks, learning from the older residents. These dogs are athletes and they love to run. And so they will run.

I'm sad to leave this motley crew of sled dogs and I do hope that I will be able to come back to visit before long. Each dog has its own personality and I liken them to a high school class room. You've got you jocks and your bullies, the class clown at the back of the room, your shy ones and your pretty ones, some who just don't fit in, some who are friends with everyone, and others who you know will go somewhere someday just by watching their intelligence and the way they handle themselves and others.

Some of my best friends in this town are in that dog yard.

By leaving here I feel like I'm trading lives, returning to the inane problems of life in the city. Back to the place where wolves and bears don't matter but cellphones do; where you don't need to know how to use a gun or drive off road but you better know how to navigate a shopping mall; where you dress for looks not for survival. All of the clothes I own right now are useless in that life. They're torn, stained, faded, and that's not acceptable. I've forgotten what it's like to wear clean clothes.

I slept in town for the first time in weeks last night. Too, I had forgotten how comfortable it was sleeping in a heated house, being able to sleep through the entire night without getting up to put more wood in the stove or run gas out to the generator or throw your boots and pants on and stumble outside with a spotlight and a rifle to find all the dogs were barking at was a curious fox.

It feels cushy, spoiled, too easy, not having to wake up early to buck wood or break trail, to be warm, to be dry, to be clean. I suppose I'll even end up trimming the beard before long.

Leaving this behind I feel that I'm cheating myself, like I'm quitting right when things are starting to get heavy. Initially I had dreams of weathering the winter up here and building my own kayak and paddling back south in the spring. Even now I've been looking at ways to continue this northern adventure. There a dogsled operators all over Canada, I'm sure I would be able to find myself a job with one of them.

At the same time I've found that it is best to leave something knowing you will miss it rather than leave because you want out. I know that the new year will bring another season at the lake and a fresh shelf of experiences and stories.

Until then, the next adventure has already been planned, and there is much preparation needed.

To the dogs, or whoever, thank you. I'll see you around.

Change that is happening

2008-11-04T16:48:00.004-05:00

Eight years ago I began to grow into my own politics with the 2000 presidential election. I didn't understand it, I didn't know the players, or what they stood for. I thought George Bush seemed like a cool dude, someone I'd like to kick back and watch a football game with. And he is.

I was 14.

Enter September 11th, Afghanistan, Iraq, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, the Patriot Act, wiretapping, torture legislation, Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and enough lies and misleading policies ands statements to legitimize a push for impeachment.

I grew into a news junkie. Add to this the backdrop of university education and the emergence of the Internet. Statistics, swing states, political platforms, the Left and the Right, became part of my every day discussion. I turned off the TV except to watch the news and the Daily Show and became hooked on watching back episodes of The West Wing.

But us liberals, we were always on the outside. George Bush returned for a second term and although I could never really find myself rallying behind John Kerry, I fell flat on my face for a week.

At least the satire will be good, I concluded. It was all I could do to joke but couldn't help but hang my head at the death, destruction and global unease that the Bush administration would continue to bring.

Now, eight years after my introduction to the greatest political show on earth, I'm watching and reading what's happening south of my border. Further north than I have ever been in my life, the town has ground to a virtual standstill due to blizzard conditions that, according to the weatherman, won't be letting up until tomorrow. So far, the power and Internet are still up and I'm locked into election coverage.

I find it hard to believe that Barack Obama, a man I've been following since his extremely popular speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention, is on the cusp of becoming the next president of the United States. A man so different than his predecessor and so in line with my own politics that I often think it must be too good to be true. Yet, millions are out on the streets of America today to vote for this man who has risen from obscurity to one of the most heavily scrutinized people on the planet. He exudes confidence and dignity. In recent weeks he has appeared presidential in all respects and for the first time since my political awakening, the candidate I have been behind since the beginning may actually declare victory.

I only hope that I am right in believing in this man.

Edge of the world

2008-11-01T12:39:00.004-04:00

We're standing on the rim of the ocean with the waves crashing in front of us like aquatic freight trains hellbent on plowing themselves into the rocky coast. The wind is pushing so hard I brace myself against the stones and hold my hand up against my eyes to block the snow whipping around us in what I imagine is the same way electrons whip around inside an atom.

With the lights of the town visible as a blurred glow behind us, I squint and I swear I can see the edge of the world.

The edge of the world, where gallant naval vessels helmed by bleary eyed sailors venture and fall right off into nothing; where giant beasts clad in claws and fur and teeth breath out clouds of frost; where brave souls go and return changed, if they return at all.

We come here to learn and to grow and to live. Standing here, the foolish imagine themselves heroes, while the apt realize they are mere pygmies among giants.

Surivival and a Metis musher, or, Listening to what she says

2008-10-23T09:55:00.005-04:00

He grew up in a place – physically, mentally, emotionally – that most everybody I grew up with would not understand. He talks of families broken like west coast upper crust, alcohol fueled gunfights and storybook wilderness adventure. In one man you find the history of a people created by the continental smashing together of polar opposite cultures – Old and New, Outsider and Native, Explorer and Explored.

There is a wealth of knowledge here, a way of survival that is dying with every resounding thump of the beating heart of the modern world.

Survival is the key word here. So many of us do not understand survival, so many of us have very rarely been faced with situations where we would be harmed, or killed, if we ourselves did not take action. When these situations do arise they become great stories of heroism and often front page headlines; incredible stories of survival and luck. But to others, and most definitely to him, such instances are daily occurrences, just another blip on the radar of a life full of blips.

When cold, turn up the thermostat; when tired, go home and take a nap; when hungry, go to the fridge or, worst case, go to the grocery store. Never mind making a fire, building a bed and shelter, or hunting, skinning, butchering and cooking a wild animal. Those things are so far gone, yet so basic, and it is frightening to think most of us would not have the first clue as how to do many of these things.

We’re consumed with our lives, the work week, the school schedule, the news cycle, Facebook updates and weekend plans. Food and shelter are no longer the forefront of our livelihood but the backdrop to the modern life.

Many might label this thinking prehistoric and survivalist. Perhaps those who do not understand the difference between trophy hunting and hunting to consume might label the gun culture that comes along with the lifestyle as uber-conservative. But in this sense, guns – long guns, rifles and shotguns - are used as tools, for hunting food and for protection against dangerous wildlife.

As for prehistoric and survivalist, these ideas are valid. When you see a moose, a bear, or a wolf in the wild for the first time, watch them move, see them navigate, see their size, hear them breath, the first word that might very well come to your mind is prehistoric. What kind of ancient beast is this? How can this be? And very quickly you realize that this is not your home, this is not where you belong, and firearm or not, you are at a great disadvantage because you can’t survive in this wilderness but everything else around you can. You don’t live here, they do.

Mother Nature has her way of humbling the strongest of the strong, through her weather, her animals, her vastness, or any number or combination of these tests of endurance, skill, and flat out chance. Sometimes she gives you a gift and you make it through but it’s finding that little gift where the skill lies. Other times she’s merciless and it’s dumb luck that finds you home safely. And other times still you’ll never make it out.

But this man, he understands. He knows these things, he’s seen these things, he’s been thrown about and brought to his knees by these things countless times. And he’s taught me to be humbled by the wilderness around me I am humbled by him and the patience his life of hardships has engrained in him. He teaches not with words but with actions. Rarely has he told me to do something and when he does I gather he feels awkward. He’d rather I learn on my own, by observing.

Often I have gotten frustrated with his teaching method but now I’m beginning to understand – I have to make my own mistakes. At times it may take longer to learn and it might cause the student to throw his or her arms up in the air more than once, but once learned, it will never be forgotten.

To him, and to the wild around me, I am listening.

Moose in the water

2008-10-02T20:56:00.008-04:00

In preparation for the tourist rush that officially begins this weekend, I've moved out of the house in town to Gerald and Jenafor's cottage at Goose Creek about 10 miles south of town. At first I was a little reluctant to leave to comforts of the house, ie. wireless internet, but the cottage has proved to be a welcome reprieve from the constant ringing of the phone and small town politics. It's a cosy place, with a woodstove and electric heat, a mish mash of building materials, trinkets, and animal furs. We come back to the house for breakfast and dinner anyway, usually spending a couple hours here in the evenings, which gives me some time to check Facebook and the news sites in between running to the hardware store, feeding Thunder and Isobel, and grabbing a few winks on the couch.

We got up early this morning and took a drive down towards the water treatment facility, a road lined with watery brush lush with aquatic plant life; in other words, moose country. Gerald is itching to get his moose this year and we were looking for a potential hunt.

On the way back, having not seen anything but wild chickens and ducks, Gerald proclaimed, "Not today," and picked up speed. A few seconds later we came to a quick stop and he pointed across my lap, out my side of the window.

"There he is."

Sure enough, maybe 250 yards away, stood a massive bull moose. Through the scope on Gerald's 306 I could see the massive rack on its head, and also the grey hairs on his back. He was huge, but he was old. A great trophy kill but not so good for eating: older animals are really tough meat and a moose that large and that old would have passed more for dog food than steaks for the barbeque. Gerald clearly didn't want to take the animal but it was also clear he didn't feel right about anybody else shooting it from the road.

"An animal like that deserves to be hunted," he said, "Not shot from the hood of someone's truck."

He took a couple shots into brush at about a 50 yards, attempted to scare the animal further into the trees beyond. The moose turned its head but didn't seem to care too much about us.

We had to get back to town so we moved on, Gerald talking softly about the giant animal we had just found.

***

We saw a tundra wolf the other night trotting down the road, which was a little disconcerting since it was within a few miles of the dog yard. It was first time I'd seen a wolf like that and I've been thinking about it ever since. Wolf stories run into the near fairy tale land horror stories. One year a wolf was scoping out the dog yard, and even though there was someone staying there, it sat in the trees just beyond where you could see it. It waited there, and watched the person at the yard, and learned the person's routine, when they went out and when they came back in. It waited until a snow storm and until the person in the yard was in the tent and took a dog right then.

Stories like that make them seem unneccesarily evil, like some creature of the night in a child's story book.

***

We got the wood stove in the dog yard tent today. One step closer to me moving in.

Dog yard tent.

Foraging the tundra

2008-09-29T22:06:00.008-04:00

It's a different way of living here.

Half a continent away stock markets are crashing and here I am picking wild cranberries until sundown. Jenafor makes all her own jam, jelly and syrup from the blueberries, tundra berries, crow berries and cranberries they pick in the fall. Gerald shoots a moose every fall as well and the meat lasts through the winter, a good value considering the sky high food prices in this town. The neighbors borrowed the quad the other day and brought us some fresh caribou backstraps which will be dinner tomorrow.

There's something to be said for hunting and gathering food. Out picking cranberries by myself today I found myself focused intensely on the act of foraging as I became more skilled at picking the dark red berries, scraping them off their branches in handfuls, depositing them in my bag. In the two hours I was out on the tundra I only stopped periodically to do a give a look around for a polar bear - there have been a few sited around town the last couple days. Although I didn't have a rifle with me I had a cracker gun - a pistol which shoots a noisy shell - and I didn't wander too far from my quad.

I spent some time down on the beach today, watching the tide go out, and collecting rocks for the fireplace that's going to go in the dog yard tent. It was good to get out on my own for a while, away from the house and away from town.

I'm looking forward to start spending more time with the dogs, getting more comfortable with them, and letting them get more comfortable with me. Gerald says I'll be driving dog sleds by the time he's done with me, a prospect that seemed a little ridiculous at first, but after reading more of Bern Will Brown's dogsled adventures in his Arctic Journal it's become more and more of an exciting opportunity, and therefore a possibility. Dogsledding, I believe, is an activity that takes a breakdown of mental barriers, especially for someone who grew up in a city bent on car culture and away from working animals. Last night I broke down some of that barrier when I began to see dogsledding, with Brown's literary help, in an adventurous light. It's a reliable way of getting places in the north, not to mention environmentally friendly. So mush, woah, gee, and haw, bring on the dogs.

Isobel and Thunder.

Returning to Churchill, and, The things that happen

2008-09-27T23:05:00.009-04:00

Churchill, Manitoba, Canada.

"I've met many people whose lives were more noteworthy than mine. They had great stories to tell, and did tell them, but failed to put them in print. And now they're gone."
-Bern Will Brown, Arctic Journal

Returning to Churchill.

Four days ago.

After a 600 kilometer late night fuel delivery run from Flin Flon to Split Lake - seven barrels of jet-A rocking back and forth in an enclosed van, twenty more on a trailer behind, cigarette in mouth, coffee in hand, rugged gravel road, but thankfully no flat tire - my flight to Churchill left Thompson in the morning. The hour-long flight was felt luxurious - quiet, safe, snacks were served, and I got to read that same day's newspaper, the first time I'd been able to do so after a summer spent in the bush.

The flight was a thank-you gift and was considerably shorter than the 24 hours it would've taken by train - there are no roads to Churchill. Although the thought of a full day to sit, think, and not have to answer to anybody sounded appealing, the free air travel was welcome.

I was greeted at Churchill airport by my new employer and we drove into town to the tune of smalltalk and CBC Radio. That hour in the air was only thing that seperated my summer seasonal job and my fall seasonal job but the change in scenery gave me a breath of fresh air. The last three weeks I had been working in near solitude at a remote fishing lodge, my summer home that is packed with people during the season but becomes lonely come September, and it was good to see a face that wasn't my own in the mirror.

I had travelled to Churchill in July where I had met my new employers and had been offered a job for the fall. I would only accept the offer several weeks later. At the time of my first visit my mind was a jumble having narrowly escaped a forest fire, with over 20 people I was responsible for, just a week before. But the town, and my hosts, had sent me back to work with a fresh outlook. Returning now felt like I was coming back to something I knew well although I had only visited for three days the first time.

This time I'll be here for at least eight weeks and in that time the temperature will drop significantly, the snow will fly, and I may very well be spending more time with animals than humans - particularily a motley crew of sled dogs who I'll be caring for, but also running after moose and running from polar bears, the arctic beast that people from all over the planet come here to see.

The Things That Happen.

There's a pathology to writing down the things that happen to you. It takes you away from the everyday and puts you in a place that allows you to transcend the present. I find a struggle to believe the things that happen to me are of enough worth to spend the time putting them into words. Perhaps that is just the excuse I use not to write, despite being familiar with the overarching power of the written word and the clearmindedness that comes along with it. I tell people to write everything down that happens to them, whether in a private journal or for an audience, but it's a rule I rarely practice myself. I rarely write down anything that is not meant for an audience and maybe the need to have my words bounce off somebody else is one of my faults as a writer. Brown, who spent over fifty years in Canada's Arctic, writes of the people more noteworthy than him who told great stories but failed to write them down and now those stories are lost. If Brown, whose northern exploits are nothing short of exciting, had the same nagging feeling of his life story not being exciting enough to warrant being written down, then clearly I am not alone. But he wrote anyway, in volumes, and has managed to pass down half a century of history and experience to whoever cares to open his Arctic Journal.

Perhaps we shall write.