sticky

The summer heat has arrived and I like the stickiness you get in the crooks of your elbows. Summer sounds are music: an oscillating fan or sprinkler, with that familiar rythmn, a lawnmower, crickets, or if you're lucky, frogs in the evening. Of course, if you live in downtown Calgary during the Stampede, it's mixed with traffic, sirens, and untalented cover bands playing in tent-bars across the river. In a way, summer is so lovely it becomes almost tragic - the coming and going of heat, swimming, birthdays and barbecues, and it feels like it's almost over. Or that it's ending as I write. Obviously it's because I live where I do and winter falls like a gillotine in October.

I am going to do my best to keep in the moment. Eat as much Canadian-grown fresh fruit as possible. Enjoy the stickness, eat homemade popsicles, get dirty feet, make picnics and sleep on blankets in the park. Go on roadtrips whenever I can.

Martin and I are heading to BC for a short getaway in the Shuswaps, and I am so stoked - we are going to stop at the Enchanted Forest on the way back. This is one of the ultimates of reliving my childhood. It's the closest thing to entering into a living Narnia as one could get. Of course, not even possibly as close, but it holds the same sort of pure, childish enchantment. I couldn't be more happy to be heading out somewhere. It's almost as good as running away. Not quite. But almost.

my feets is cold

The miracle of modern travel has me bounced around rapidly. A weekend drive to the Okanagan for my grandfather's funeral, drive back to Calgary, and 24 hours later I am hopping off a prop plane in northern British Columbia to assist with flood relief and clean up. I have spent quite a bit of time photo-taking, story gathering, helping recruit volunteers to help people clean out their homes. The experience has been intense: visiting people whose house looks perfectly normal from the front, with four feet of stinking river mud in their basement, and every stitch of anything ruined. People throwing away water-logged and ruined family keepsakes and memories in big dumpsters. A stoic old man brushing away the tear running down a wrinkle beside his nose. A guy who fell in a huge sinkhole that opened up right underneath him.

I get to sleep on a creaky single bed in a college dorm room, and am exhausted by 10 p.m. The single bed is luxury, really. It's cold here in Terrace, a stunning location and beautiful surroundings: two converging rivers, lush valley and thick forests, surrounded by blue-black snow-capped mountains. But it's been raining steadily, and for a flip-flop lover, the cold is just too much. I am wishing for the long, sunny days of Alberta . . . I have been in a big learning curve and it's adventuresome being here, and great to be here helping people in real need, but it's not my dream to spend my 25th birthday with cold feet in Terrace. I want a long summer day, a barbecue, Martin and some Stampede fireworks. And maybe a costume birthday party. But we shall see.

At any rate, Terrace has held for me the highlight of my month: going to The Abba Show, Australia's premiere Abba tribute band. It was fantastically funny - especially the part where a guy from the crowd made a "miss grab" at Ana - absolutely hilarious. And the music was actually pretty darn good. I mean, it was Abba after all.

hiatus

I've keep thinking of things that I am unable to articulate very well - vague, fleeting thought or mostly just feeling. I feel almost a bit, well, dumb. People ask me "how was it" and I feel this blank look spreading over my face. What do you say? No, no lions. Favourite country? Oh, definitely the one crippled by war. Did I get sick? No. Was I scared? No, only this feeling of enormity churning in the gut.

I have done quite a bit of writing since my return, and having returned to situations in my life and work as pathetic as they are infuriating, I find my expressions are quite effectively blocked... I sat down with a Liberian man last week to talk of his homeland, which he escaped in the early 90's, and his kind, anguished face streaked with tears as he talked of family and hometown filled me with word-stopping remorse. The only thing I could do was cry with him.

There are a thousand vibrant images in my head, and I am afraid I will forget. Incredible voices of Liberians mid-hymn, the irresistible natural rhythm the possess, the grace of people who have witnessed, endured, and been victimized by horrors that we watch in films. An underwear-clad girl-child shrinking against heavy rain, still standing the empty road with her little pile of green mangoes, eager to sell even one to the passing vehicle. Hands with mangoes, bananas, roasted ears of corn, and water bottles dripping with condensation, all shoved through the open window of the truck - eager. Beggar boys from Koranic schools, red tomato paste cans under arm, trying to collect enough to avoid physical abuse should they return without money. Sitting in a dark, curtained bedroom on the bed of our host - a Senegalese man - a cultural custom reserved as a gesture of honour and respect for a guest. Jumping strong ocean waves hand-in-hand with a four-year-old. Sipping a steaming glass of incredibly sweet tea in the chill blackness of a desert night. The surprising coolness of a mud-walled home. Kids following you, watching you, teasing and sometimes taunting, everywhere we went. A kid frightened to death of me - running away naked on flying little legs, a backward glance over his shoulder, howling with fear.

I sit here and smile, thinking of the other kids laughing as we watched him blaze a trail of dust across the village to his home.

It was an intense, short experience, and writing is good therapy: eases the fear that too much of these precious things will be lost somewhere between unloading my damp, stinking backpack and giving PowerPoint presentations to a group of professionals in business-casual.

There was a feeling of dread when I left from Canada: picturing myself as the epitome of rich North American, inquisitive, invasive, notebook in hand, pen scribbling, weak, plump, naive. And I was blessed with the grace of people who treated us with respect, understanding, and conversation. I was humbled by the honour with which we were treated. Who was I? We were shown deference and served the best they had. I felt ashamed.

Senegal, a scape of thick sand, sparse trees, and hazy horizons. My perception of Muslim community in Africa was undone and knit in a completely different way, my desire to better understand Islam lit. In Liberia, my own faith was refreshed, witnessing the visible joy on people's faces, despite war, poverty and injustice. There were endless random experiences: A lecture on having children, in French, from a Senegalese pastor, a beer on the roof of a hotel in the afternoon, a car full to the seat-tops with mangoes, fish guts and animal carcasses hanging at roadside. Walking a former five-star hotel - perched at the top of Monrovia with a wide view of sparkling coast and dim-looking free port - inhabited by women, men, children, the elderly, living in abject poverty. The tile pool filled with refuse, laundry hanging behind the diving board, banana peels and excrement on the deck, and a little girl watching us, squatting in a former hotel room, a tiny smile on her mouth.

I return with a renewed and healthy sense of insignificance. That I am still powerless, useless, hopeless without God. That we've corrupted Eden and live in a world full of our intent and little of it what God intended. And we are still inspired, compelled, driven, spirit-filled creatures. We still seek out hope and justice and peace. The things that were intended for us we all desire. I keep thinking these things, and the story deadlines keep blowing by.

i hate your lies

I should have left work some time ago, butI am tidying up because I like returning to clean living spaces when I come home. Or, the office. Really, I guess work could be considered a "home" - how much time do we spend at work in our lives, anyways? If I liked math I might try to figure it out.

This week has been unbelievable, in the odd, life-throws-curve-balls kind of way. Through strange circumstances I have seen some work relationships crumble before my eyes, and others be built into deeper and beautiful things. I have again witnessed the importance of doing what is right, despite it seeming like the harder road to take, and the crushing results of not choosing to do so. I have thought often about something I do know, but sometimes forget -

poor and foolish choices often wound and destroy others moreso than the chooser.

There is so much freedom in truth! Deceit, or even untruth, is a gnawing beast. Your insides are continually chewed away. Honesty - what release from that inner torment!

So with a completely strange-unhappy-good week behind me, I set my sites on West Africa. We'll be in Senegal for a week, the Liberia. There are all sorts of things I am looking forward to - food distributions with the World Food Program, spending time with children and youth who are being rehabilitated from slavery and abuse during the civil war, agriculture and livestock projects . . . there will be much to pack into a short time.

We go armed with a whole bunch of boy's soccer jerseys and balls, which I look forward to giving away. As I have heard said, for many football is life.

So. Must pack, and help Martin stock the fridge, find a good book to read on the journey, and I will be off. . .

Until May, then.

weird and fun

Today. One of the most interesting days of late. Quite a bit of scrambling around at work to get work done, and at 5 p.m., the word came down: I am going to West Africa. In two weeks.

It's still sinking in, because although it was talked about, I really didn't have my hopes high that it would happen. And now it's a go, so I can let it sink in and get stoked about it. Only one thing I have to wait for: my comrade in journalism and I are waiting for our visas for Liberia. I think there will be enough time for them to process. I hope. They have our passports anyways, so we aren't going to move too quickly without the visa.

So we will be spending a couple of weeks and a bit in two places: Senegal and Liberia. Doing what we love to do - I, to write; she, to shoot photos.

This is definitely a chance-of-a-lifetime for me. Sent as a journalist to places that have such important stories to tell; with an organization I respect; covering things I believe in. I hope I can pull it off. My boss fought the good fight for me to be considered to go despite my detractors (too young, inexperienced, etc.). It's incredible to have someone fight a battle for you; to tell you straight up, "This is what you do. Go and do it!" He definitely has some heart-felt thanks coming his way.

My arms are pretty sore from the concoction of immunizations, and I am about to drink some crazy vaccine to gird me from e-coli and cholera. Now, there are a gazillion things out there that could make you sick, however, I am all for taking what I can get. I really do not want to repeat El Salvador. (The double exodus, baby.) Although, sometimes it's just inevitable.

I wasn't really thinking about the trip a lot tonight though, as I spent the evening volunteering at the Mustard Seed. Martin was working, although he was really mostly a big-haired phantom for a majority of the night. It was pretty basic - get supper, sweep, mop, give out snacks. I gave away a lot of cookies, and I owe my fellow volunteer Mike - a unique guy who has volunteered for hundreds of years - for informing overlyinquisitive or wanderingeyes, "She's taken, you know." Funny guy. So many great people there. A kind and rather peppy greybeard who exhorted Martin's popularity, heart, and work ethics, which I thought was pretty sweet. Not exactly your homeless-man stereotype.

So it was a weird and fun day. Contrasts and loveliness. One reality juxtapositioned with another. The next few weeks are going to be mad.