v5#3

I occasionally find myself in that uncertain, hazy space between asleep and awake asking myself, "Where am I?". It's this strange moment which I find both exciting and disconcerting at the same time, when in the next instant it will be revealed if I'm in a hotel in Africa, or on a bamboo mat in Thailand, or perhaps on my couch in Canada. It's not really so much of a conscious thought as it is this feeling that my neurons have not quite fully booted up and connected me with all my peripherals (eyes, ears, nose, etc).

I once in while get a similar sensation when I'm driving, when I'm turning on to a new street and for a very very brief second, my instincts fail me and won't tell me whether I'm supposed be moving to the left side of the road or the right side. Again, it's not so much that I'm thinking about it, usually that stuff is hard-wired, no thinking required, but I guess I've done enough driving in former British colonies to establish two competing driving patterns.

The thing is, there seems to be less and less to tell my senses that one place is different from the next. Cell phones are everywhere, internet is well, not everywhere but many places, satellite TV, fast food, big name shoe brands, large volume retail stores. I might hear the same music in London as I hear in Kilimanjaro, or Port au Prince. This is not to say that every place is the same. There is still this huge and amazing diversity of culture, language, food, music, sometimes just a few kilometres apart in some regions. It's just that there's this superimposed layer of globalized meta-culture (am I using this word properly?) that one seems to encounter everywhere one turns now.

Someone will have to tell me whether this is a good thing or a bad thing for the global community. Myself, I'm just trying to stay out of on-coming traffic, or rolling out of bed face first into some random piece of furniture.

Fast food--Thai style

v5#2

I want to apologize in advance for this blog entry, because I know it's going to be all over the place. I just got back from my first, around-the-world trip: Burundi, Tanzania, Thailand, USA, then home again. Someone pointed out to me at some point during the trip that by travelling that way (eastward), I have actually gained a day, and am now one day younger, technically speaking than when I left Toronto on Jan 3. I was in Kenya, three times, but just transiting through the Nairobi airport, so I didn't really get a sense for how things are going there. I do know that in both Burundi and Tanzania, it was a major topic of conversation, and as a major trade and political partner, the strife there has a significant effect on the region.

I think for me the most intense portion of the trip was Burundi. I've been preparing for that visit, planning, researching, reading, reflecting, and to be quite honest, working up the emotional energy just to be there for many months now. As many of you likely know, the recent history of Burundi is very similar to that of Rwanda, only on a slightly smaller scale. For a reasonably succinct summary of Burundian history see the US. State Dept website at http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2821.htm or for a more personal account, read the book This Voice in My Heart by Gilbert Tuhabonye http://www.amazon.com/This-Voice-Heart-Survivors-Forgiveness/dp/0060817518. I also had the chance to visit a memorial built to remember the loss of several hundred school children. Part of the building where they were burned has been preserved and built into the memorial, and as you might imagine, visiting such a site is a profound and difficult experience. Such recent and brutal memories factor into much that is happening in Burundi today, and many organizations who are trying to re-establish basic political and economic stability face issues of peace and reconciliation daily in the communities where they work.

The photo is of part of the memorial, where every year, parents meet and bring flowers. Next to this part of the memorial is the building itself, although I could not bring myself to take a picture.