Non-Original Thoughts

Same place New job

2009-07-26T05:38:00.001-06:00

Greetings to you all,

Let me talk a little about the last few months and then talk a little about some recent changes.

I arrived in Ethiopia in February after one and half years in Kurmuk, Sudan. On my way to Ethiopia I had a great time visiting BioSand filter projects in Kinango (near to Mombasa in Kenya) and Kamwenge (Uganda). It was great to get to visit Samaritans in other countries and see the excellent work they've been doing. Both projects grew exponentially in the past few years. Robinson and Stephen were great tour guides and I came away super impressed with the quality of their projects.

First off in Ethiopia I spent some time in Gambella writing a proposal. Its is so fun to travel the region and get to know its different zones and districts/woredas (in 10 days I visited Jikawo, Lare, Itang, Gambella, Abobo and Gog woredas in the Nuer and Anuak zones). Ethiopia is a fascinating country with quite diverse peoples and Gambella is one of the most interesting regions.

In March I began working with Kale Heywet Church (KHC) on their BioSand filter project (household water program). They have an excellent history with BioSand having implemented over 11,000 filters over the last 10 years. I've had the privilege of working closely with Tsegaye of Kale Heywet on many things over the last few months. In March and April I did a review of their programing including a survey that took me to every project site they had worked in Tigray, Southern Nations, Nationalities, and people's and Oromia (map of Ethiopia's regions). The survey included filters from every phase including some that were over 10 years old, still providing clean water for households. The houses in Tigray wow'd me with their beautiful rock structures and well thought out architecture. I've seen my share of rural houses in Africa, but I've never seen such well built rural homes (sans cement). There are many other unique homes in Ethiopia especially in SNNPR, some with tiered living quarters and others with massive grass homes. Unlike most African countries I've visited, many of the rural homes have cows living in a separate partition inside the house.

The review of KHC programming led to a major CIDA proposal that I worked on with Tsegaye and the team at Samaritan's Purse in Canada. We are still awaiting the results of our submission but we hope approval will be granted by the beginning of October.

In May I went back to Canada for my brother Philip's wedding (photos). It was great to come back for a couple of weeks to see everyone. Phil and I have a shared a lot of years of life so it was so fun to be at the day. Also it was great time to catch up with people I had not seen for a while.

I've recently taken the position of OFDA manager for Samaritan's Purse in Ethiopia (OFDA or the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance is the office within the United States Agency for International Development that coordinates U.S. government emergency assistance overseas). The program I'm responsible for is mostly water (WASH) and veterinary and has entered its second year. It takes place in Somali (in the far east of the country) & Gambella (in the far west). Included will be newly constructed wells and water point rehabilitation as well as animal vaccination and treatment. For me, its the perfect mix of a bunch of stuff I enjoy and other things I am looking foward to. I'm based out of Addis Ababa (the capital of Ethiopia) but spending a lot of time in the field as well. Also, I'm continuing to work with Kale Heywet part time as well.

I appreciate very much those of you who have continued to pray for me. If you would like to pray for me, here are some praise and prayer points:

1. Praise for the Lord's provision and for bringing me to this new work.

2. The task is large. Please prayer for wisdom and strength.

3. Pray that I continue to grow closer each day in my walk with the Lord.

4. Pray for Ethiopia as we enter the hunger season (for example in Gambella much of the maize crop has been destroyed by drought).

...posting from Addis

2009-03-14T08:57:00.001-06:00

Hey all, here's an entry I wrote almost a month ago and didn't get around to posting. For a while my computer was basically busted. I'm in Addis at this point. I will update sooner than later with something more substantive.

Entry from 22 Feb:

Just to give you all an update, I'm no longer in Sudan. I miss all those guys over there, but I've enjoyed so far the change-up. I'm now in Gambella which is about 250 km's almost directly south of Kurmuk.

…on staying the night in Punydo

Two days ago I woke up in the dark sweating. The night before we'd decided night out in Punydo, a village about a 2 hours drive from Gambella town. Punydo could give Kurmuk a run for its money in the heat department. It's so hot and sticky. It's a good thing too because there was no covering sheet on my bed, so I didn't even get cold. All the places where we would normally stay were quite booked up, but we found a bar with some rooms in the back. I squeezed through the door which was falling off its hinges, lockless. There was no window or light either (at least one that worked). Sleeping was quite the task, as the TV outside the room competed in volume with the stereo system pumping out standards from Kinshasa & Addis. And every once in a while, loud voices would rise above both with curses probably in more than 1 or 2 languages. I woke up, the main noise had stopped, replaced by workers cleaning up. No shower in the morning, but lots of work to get to. But first breakfast…

…on meeting the chief in Pumolli

We parked in the catholic compound and started off through the tall grass on a small path. After about 20min's of walking we came upon a river and made our way to a sand bar. It'd been a long day and now it was finally time to get my shower. There is something about swimming in the fresh water lakes and streams of Africa that's unique. It reminded me of the first time I dove into inviting waters of Lake Malawi in 2006. The water's so warm and relaxing. I waded out. Across the river was a village, in some ways like many I've visited. Children playing in the shallows in the river. A woman washing her clothes. Above her higher up the bank a group of teenagers laughing at a nearly naked white man across the river. Further back a group of men sitting around a clay pot sipping out of 4 reed straws local brew (probably from distilled from maize). The vegetation is lush, with mango & papaya trees shading small grass and mud dwellings. At one point a group of boys decide to swim out to see what's going on at our side of the river. I swim out to reach them, but as we reach each other, they suddenly lose their nerve and swim straight back across all the while being taken farther down stream.

I think I can be forgiven for thinking for a minute of this as the iconic village, a sort of eden.

And yet when the boat finally reaches and we hitch a ride across and sit with the chief, our conversation seems to linger in the gaps. The fault mostly with me, for my questions… No latrines, no soap, no safe water, fleeing from floods every year. A summary is easy to come up with, but it only hits the surface. Understanding is going to take much longer.

...on a Saturday morning in Gambella town

Saturday morning, I'm expecting a more relaxed day, still working but not as many kilometers. @ 7:15am (or 1:15 as we say in Amharic time) someone knocks on my door with a phone call. The town water supply has been down for a week. I've really taken no notice of it. This happens all the time in Kurmuk, but this isn't Kurmuk anymore. The phone call informs me that there will be an emergency meeting @ the health bureau to discuss the problem beginning at 7:30am. I get up and expecting Africa-time arrive at 8:15am. I'm not the first one there, but neither am I the last. We divide the town up for PUR and WaterGuard distribution. For the morning we do assessment, and for the afternoon we do the distribution. By 5:30pm we're all done the weekend has officially begun.

New Look

2008-12-30T10:06:00.003-06:00

A new year's coming, so i figured it was time to make a small change. So I went down to the market and sat down at the barber's place. I didn't tell him what I was looking for or anything. I figured he could figure out what would work. And I think he did.

Christmas Greetings

2008-12-26T09:42:00.005-06:00

Jesus: My Kingdom is not an earthly kingdom. If it were, my followers would fight to keep me from being handed over to the Jewish leaders. But my Kingdom is not of this world.

Pilate: So you are a king?

Jesus: You say I am a king. Actually, I was born and came into the world to testify to the truth. All who love the truth recognize that what I say is true.

(John 18:36-37)

Listening to: Summer by Jon Foreman

Merry Christmas to all,

Its now my 3rd consecutive Christmas in Africa. I miss being with my friends and family in Canada, but each Christmas has brought super rich experiences. Last year I was chilling on Nungwi beach on the isle of Zanzibar. Two years ago James and I began climbing Mt Melange on Christmas day.

This Christmas I spent in the field in Sudan with the Uduks of Chali El-Fiel (map). The Uduk people have a fascinating history. They've fled so many times from so many different places in Sudan and western Ethiopia its difficult to keep it all straight. In 1987 they left their homeland and after being forced back and forth between Sudan (though not returning to their home area) and Ethiopia a few times before they finally were able to settle into Bonga Refugee Camp in 1993 until the end of the war (in Gambela, Ethiopia: map). Anthropologist Wendy James who worked extensively with the Uduk gives a great brief recent history of Uduk trials and travels during the last war.

Since the CPA was signed in 2005, They've been coming back to Blue Nile State to settle in their original areas (including Chali and Sumari). The Bonga camp was closed this last May as the final Uduk returned home. I've enjoyed working with a number of Uduks in Kurmuk who've helped me with the water project. Many of them know some english and its been a priviledge to get to know them better.

SIM (Serving in Mission now, but originally Sudan Interior Mission) began missionary work amoung the Uduk in Chali in 1938. In 1964 they were kicked out of Sudan, but began working with the Uduk again in 1993 in Bonga. The (Summary of the SIM work with the Uduk)

I've travelled a bit in Africa and often I've been approached with the hope of getting to Canada (I found this especially in Malawi). That very rarely happens here in Kurmuk. People here know what its like to live away from their homeland and they appreciate the opportunity to come home. There really seems to be a commitment to rebuild, to be part of something new. I really sense a strong Uduk and Sudanese identity from the guys I've been living and working alongside. They may have felt a little like strangers in their own land at first, but there is optimism and hope. I think it parrellels a little bit the story of the people of Israel to Egypt and then back to the promised land. I was sitting with Pastor Yoram yesterday in his home area and he was mentioning how things were similar to how they were in 1987 with the exception that trees had grown up everywhere. It is interesting to note how many trees are between 15-20 yrs old.

Christmas in Chali was an amazing event. These people really know how to do Christmas. We arrived Christmas eve. It was great to be welcomed by the church as well as Tohru and Claire who'd travelled up all the way from Yabus (see here for their account of Christmas in Chali). After hauling a little bit of water, I arrived in time for some supper and to hear the caroling begin. It lasted all night. They travelled far and wide arriving at my tukul at about 5am singing a song in English. Afterwards my tukul mate (Musa, turn-boy extraordinaire) and I came out to see all the action. They were lighting small piles of grass all over to try to get warm (it was super cold). The christmas service was really well attended with many people sitting outside because the temporary shelter couldn't hold them all. In the afternoon a Christmas Pageant was held. The acting and costumes were superb. It was a great Christmas!

(See here for photos of our Christmas)

fire again in kurmuk

2008-12-01T05:25:00.001-06:00

I’ve been meaning to write something for some time (especially re: my holidays in Equatorial Guinea), but I will skip all those post ideas to go to the present. On the 28th of November we experienced an epic fire that torched a good portion of our compound here in Kurmuk. There is extensive damage but thankfully there were no injuries.

The fire came from the north-east. It raced up the nearby hill and then as the wind shifted came raging back towards our compound. The wind gusted as it came approached the edge of our compound and jumped the fire guard setting the fence ablaze. It moved along one of the fences torching our main store room (housing most of our tools and vehicle parts), blowing up over 50 ‘empty’ drums of fuel and collapsing the car park canopy. Our doctor suffered the largest personal loss as his whole mud hut with all his belongings (except for one small bag) went up in flames. It all happened so devastatingly fast and the damage was so severe. We were all in a bit of a state of shock.

The community here has been great to us. Many of the leaders here have visited us. The other NGO’s have also offered tons of help. GOAL has helped us out with fuel and WFP has lent us some tools. We appreciate all the support we’re received.

PHOTOS FROM 28 NOVEMBER

DRC

2008-11-02T09:25:00.005-06:00

Here's a poem that Aaron brought to my attention. I think its brilliant.

Refugees

Bent under burdens which sometimes

can be seen and sometimes can't,

they trudge through mud or desert sands,

hunched, hungry,

silent men in heavy jackets,

dressed for all four season,

old women with crumpled faces,

clutching something - a child, the family

lamp, the last loaf of bread?

It could be Bosnia today,

Poland in September '39, France

eight months later, Germany in '45,

Somalia, Afghanistan, Egypt.

There's always a wagon or at least a wheelbarrow

full of treasures (a quilt, a silver cup,

the fading scent of home),

a car out of gas marooned in a ditch,

a horse (soon left behind), snow, a lot of snow,

too much snow, too much sun, too much rain,

and always that special slouch

as if leaning toward another, better planet,

with less ambitious generals,

less snow, less wind, fewer cannons,

less History (alas, there's no

such planet, just that slouch).

Shuffling their feet,

they move slowly, very slowly

toward the country of nowhere,

and the city of no one

on the river of never.

By Adam Zagajewski (from the book "Without End: New and Selected Poems")

I guess this is a good reminder to pray for the people of Democratic Republic of Congo tonight as things explode around them once more (see pictures from BBC of the crisis).

Helpful News Link: Crisis bites for Refugees

Marta

2008-10-30T10:36:00.001-06:00

there is no title to explain...

2008-10-27T08:57:00.005-06:00

I have no idea how to approach this. The last couple of days I've been a little flabbergasted by the whole situation of the life. The story below is really sad and hard. I don't quite know how to wrap my mind around it all or how exactly to react. Let me just present the very sad sequence of events as it has been narrated to me over the past few days.

I've had a couple of guys work for me for well over a year doing education and follow-up. As many of our filters are being chiefly operated by women, when I came back I felt that it would be important to add some women to the team. Lady Educators would help explain the filter and converse convincingly in the problems of water and thus add more credibility to our follow-up visits. I interviewed a number of ladies at a local school. I'd hoped to hire a lady fluent in written and oral Arabic, knowledgeable in English, good working within the community (well respected etc.) and with high capacity. I may have said it here before but capacity is low, and none of the people I interviewed came close to meeting all of those qualifications. Still, there were some that were smart and teachable, so Gorshi and I chose one that had risen to the top. Lets call her Marta. She's 17 years old.

We subsequently hired another lady, did about a week of training and sent them off to do follow-up on the filters alongside the two guys who have been with me from day 1.

All this to come to the story.

Marta has been working with us now for a little less than a month. Last week on Tuesday, we were waiting for her at the arranged meeting place and she didn't show. When we went to her house, the mother told us there had been a dispute between her and Marta, and she hadn't come home the last night.

The next morning, I decided to try and track her down and figure out when she could start working again. I went up to her school, but she wasn't there.

A few days later I finally heard some of the story. She had been seeing a man (I'm not sure what that means here exactly), and he had been showering her with gifts. And she had accepted these gifts though she apparently had no intention of marrying him.

As Paris explained to me this afternoon, it can work like this: A man can give gifts to a woman. But these gifts aren't exactly free gifts. There are often certain unwritten strings attached to these gifts. These gifts often start small and slowly grow as a relationship continues. And these gifts are also accounted for and remembered by the man as things move along. When its time to dowry, he tells the family the amount he has already put forward toward the purchase of his new wife. To refuse marriage at this point would mean also returning all the already given gifts that make up some of the dowry. The problem is much of these gifts has been long spent, so the girl finds herself easily pushed towards marriage.

I've no idea how widespread the above practise is here in Kurmuk, but it appears that some version of the above was being played out in the case of Marta. The man decided it was time to bring things to conclusion. He visited Marta's mother and discussed his desire for marriage. He gave the mother a very large sum of money as a dowry.

Later, Marta told her mother she had no intention of marrying this guy and ran away to the JIU (Joint Integrated Units) camp in Zariba where she hid. The man got wind of her disappearance and took a car and found her there. Now get this: He brought her back to Kurmuk and took her directly to the police and locked her in jail for about three days.

That brings me to today. I had heard she had been released and so I brought Gorshi and Paris and we went looking for her. We first checked at her mother's house but were told by the young child at the gate that she was now living at her new house with her new husband.

At her house, Gorshi went and talked to the man (now her husband) about the situation and Paris and I stayed and talked to Marta. It was somehow an awkward conversation, but after a few minutes of small talk she told me she wasn't happy to be married to this man. She told me she had already been beaten by his other wife yesterday. I've heard it said a hundred times here, but this time when she said "here, the life is hard", I felt it was somehow true. She also said that her new husband had promised to fly her to another country for further education and that if he reneged on this promise she would divorce him. I met the husband minutes later and greeted him. Gorshi also joined us and told us it had been decided (read new husband had decided) she would not be returning to work. And so we left.

Back in the car, my first question for Gorshi and Paris was: "Did the man (the husband) act correctly in how he had handled this situation?"

They answered emphatically that he had acted properly. They did say though that love could make a guy go to some pretty exceptional extremes.

Tomorrow I'll return to bring Marta her final paycheck.

Updating some past entries

2008-10-12T09:59:00.001-06:00

A few of the things I've written about in the past while deserve an update:

#1 The hospital roof that was blown off by the storm is now on the way to completion. At this point the roof has been replaced and there is only the ceiling to finish. This is a good thing because surgeries this week were difficult. In this climate if you’re operating without a fan under a hot light everyone sweats. And when this sweat drips off a surgeon’s brow it’s a problem.

#2 The food situation in the isolated areas of Kurmuk Locality is still an issue. The good news is that a month on (yes, things move slowly even when you feel like they need to move quick) there has now been a shipment of food sent down to Balila. About a week ago Aaron, Dr. Atar, Marriane (GOAL) & Daniel (GOAL) set off by quad to try to reach some of the other affected areas (near to Chali) to do some assessment. They got just past Demansur and were turned back by a swamp and raging river. During Eid-fitr (a week and a bit ago), Paris (one of our BSF guys) walked down to Chali (50-60 km’s) to see his wife and new child. He told me there is still major hunger going on. People are suffering.

Caption

2008-10-12T09:43:00.002-06:00

This comes from a T-shirt I saw recently. I wrote it down to be sure of the wording:

K-King

Models who make it

Special thanks to fatting.

I've no idea what this means. Any ideas?

the way forward.

2008-10-12T09:33:00.002-06:00

On getting stuck and unstuck

2008-10-12T04:42:00.005-06:00

I would like to show some photos of my last week, but I don't have my camera yet (some of my luggage is still in transit from Nairob). Still, if you could see pictures of my week they would be of muddy roads (for as far as the eye can see), high centred trucks and one broken winch. As I've probably said before, Blue Nile State has large areas of black cotten soil that make travel during the wet season often a near impossibility. This last week I was doing bringing water samples back from Khorbodi, a village about 10 km's outside of Kurmuk town. The funny thing about the wet season is that its in fact really variable. So the week before last I could get to Khorbodi and back without even popping it into to 4 wheel drive. This last week it rained every day in the afternoon. And some days it poured. Each passing tractor chewed up that 10 km's of road even more and passable tracks became somehow unpassable. Still, there's always more to learn when it comes to driving in mud and I'm receiving an education from the school of hard knocks. Before the winch broke, we'd winch ourselves out each time. Thankfully trees line the side of the road for winching on to. Unthankfully, these trees are spiked on every branch. I'm all scraped from slipping the rope around the base of these trees. Inshalla this rain will slow for a time, inshalla that will happen soon.

"I'm not rich"

2008-10-05T02:37:00.002-06:00

Sometimes it feels easy for me to say that I'm not rich. The truth is though, it just might not be true. I know this when I walk out of my door each day. Still, for some confirmation, I checked the Global Rich List. Take a look and see where you rank.

Link courtesy of NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF. See here for his take on it.

Storm Damage

2008-10-01T12:31:00.003-06:00

This afternoon, at the end of our lunch break, a call came through that our hospital roof had been blown off. The roof is pretty heavily damaged on the building that houses our Operation Theatre. We moved everything out. Its rainy season, so we'll have to see if its possible to access the supplies we need to make the necessary repairs. See here for photos.

2008-09-26T08:52:00.003-06:00

A couple of towns 60km's south of Kurmuk town are experiencing some major malnutrition and sickness. We're working on something for this...

At least 69 children dead in Sudan food crisis: UN

Back in Kurmuk

2008-09-04T20:59:00.003-06:00

Greetings to you all,

I've been enjoying Canada a whole bunch the last few months. It was so amazing to be again with my family and friends. I'd been away 14 months, so it was awesome to see meet up and catch with many who'd been praying for me too. The staff as SP-Canada have been a big support for me and in mid June I headed over to Calgary to meet up with them and speak in their chapel.

In July I headed back to Alberta for some checking of trees in a tree planting camp. Before I left I wondered if my February decision was such a good one now that I was back home to go out west back to the bush. But I totally enjoyed and was super happy I went. It was awesome to work with Nate, Tim, Ari and many others once more after a year and a bit away in Africa. Also, for the first time in the bush, I slept in a trailer which was a super nice treat.

In August I went on a family canoe trip to North-western Ontario. All six of us canoed out to a beautiful island and stayed for the weekend. We built out of a tarp and set a huge roaring fire. We heated rocks up and used them for our sauna. The heat was fierce and quick dip in the cold lake shocked the system before heading back for another round of heat.

I had a great visit to America for orientation with SP-Boone. I got to tour Franklin’s office and meet a bunch of great folks. It was my first time in the southern land of the USA (I was in North Carolina) and I enjoyed new friends and sweet ice tea.

I also flew up to Saskatoon to see my grandparents for a bit which was a blessing. Its been a long time since I’d been with them, and it was great to chat again. I also met up with a few of relatives (uncle Dirk, auntie Joe, auntie Wilma, cousin Nolan & Opa & Oma of course) for supper that night and showed them some of the photos I had of my time in Sudan.

Previously, I had been expecting to be heading to Ethiopia in September, but as I continued conversations with the folks at SP, it looked best to head back to Kurmuk Sudan to finish off a few loose ends of the project I’d been involved in previously. I’m signed up for another year. Not sure all where all I’ll be for sure, but am looking forward to what God has in store in this coming year.

So on Sunday, 7 Sept I flew out of Winnipeg (map of my trip) once more across the Altantic through London to Nairobi, Kenya. From there I flew up to Lokichoggio in Northern Kenya. Loki (short for Lokichoggio) used to be a major base for relief aid to Southern Sudan during the war. Since the Peace Agreement (CPA) was signed in 2005 its role has diminished, yet it still is a launching point for many organizations into the south. It’s a fascinating place, with the Turkana people the majority tribe in the area. The landscape of this area is arguably much harsher than many areas of South Sudan. So little rain falls in Loki that our beds in the tents at the ‘rest-house/hotel/resort’ we stay at don’t even have mosquito nets.

So now I’m back in Kurmuk once more. I’ll write more in the coming days of my experiences, but so far, I’m feeling super blessed to be back. People have opened their arms once again to me and I’m appreciating so much. There’s work to be done, so I’ll leave it there for now.

coming back to Wpg for a bit

2008-05-31T05:52:00.004-06:00

First, here's a quick update of my last couple of weeks:
On 22 May I flew out of Kurmuk to Nairobi. The next day (23 May) I flew to Ethiopia. There's talk of starting up a project there and I went to get a sense for it all. Addis is a decent sized city, but I didn't really take too much time to explore it. The next morning (24 May), I flew with Ebeneezer, the PM for the region of Gambela to the the capital city. Ebeneezer is super cool. He in fact worked down in that region with SIM a few years back in a refugee camp called Bonga. This camp basically only housed one small tribe called the Uduk. 70% of my workforce for my project in Kurmuk Sudan consisted of Uduk, so we hit it off right away.

Gambela is located at the western edge of Ethiopia right close to Sudan. In fact many of the tribes in the area share a lot in common with the South Sudanese. The whole area is quite swampy in rainy season. Around Gambela town there was beautiful forest and it was incredibly lush. Also these monkey-gorilla type animals are everywhere. The area reminds me more of Equatorial Guinea than anywhere else that I've stayed in Africa so far. Still, I realize they've entered the rainy season and in the dry season things might look quite different. It was awesome to get out into the villages doing assessments and what-not. In fact the place is relatively close (geographically) to Kurmuk. I even met a Nuer lady who had come from Kurmuk. She told me she remembered me from when I'd brought a filter for her house in Kurmuk. It was nice to speak Arabic with her a little as no one in Gambela seemed to know any and that is still my default language.

On the way back we flew through Asosa (25 May), the closest major ethio town to Kurmuk, and then back up to Addis. The next day we had some meetings and I worked a little on some paper work. I also went out and met with a couple of YWAM missionaries from my home church in Winnipeg. On the way home to my guest house in Addis from the their place I got myself nicely lost. I found some Europeans @ a restaurant and told them a pathetic story of my unability to find the place I'd left all my stuff. They were quite rude, but eventually they called someone from SP and sorted me out so I could walk home and go to sleep.

On 26 May I flew back home to Nairobi (though I've spent no more than one week there ever @ one time, it still feels like a base of sorts for me here). That was 5 days of flying in 6 days yahoo! I've been in Nairobi now for a few days. Not too much to note other than good food and good friends. I had a chance to chat up a couple of the Nuba guys who've been doing surveying east of the nile in south sudan. Their experiences were pretty wild. Last nite, we went for ethio food and ate the raw meat. It was somehow tasty, but this morning...

So, now tonite @ 11:45pm I'll be heading to Winnipeg. Inshalla, I should be back in Wpg 10:27pm Sunday nite. I'll stay in Winnipeg for a week or so and then I'll be heading to Calgary and eventually tree planting (i'm quality checking again this year) for around 20 June. In early August I'll be back in Wpg. I'd love to see all of you faithful readers of my sporadic posts, so feel free to email me or call me in the next couple of days and we'll get together.
peac.e

a couple of things

2008-05-07T04:12:00.002-06:00

on Plane crashes...
The last couple of weeks have seen a couple of plane crashes here in Sudan. In one of them all on board died. Among those were government officials and other important people from the south. Salva Kiir declared 3 days of mourning. (see here and here for SudanTribune articles)
Doro is in Upper Nile south of us here in Kurmuk 100 km's or so. I've never been down there, but SIM has a base and a clinic. A airplane recently crashed as it took off from there. Thankfully there were no fatalities and the injuries were not life threatening. I've ridden in that plane before, but probably won't be riding in it again. (see here for SIM story of crash)
Its precarious, I guess, this whole living thing.

on 6 May morning...
I took a few photos yesterday of my morning and I'd like to share them. Nothing really amazing, but I've been trying to figure out how to link them up with my GPS. As long as you keep you GPS on and with you the whole time and sync the times between the GPS and camera, its possible to figure exactly where each photo was taken. Here is a map & photos of my morning. Also, the photos are geotagged on picasa.

Updating

2008-05-04T01:21:00.002-06:00

Its been a while so I thought I'd give a quick update. The project here I've been working with was for one year and things are winding down now. I've got only got 2 1/2 weeks left in Kurmuk, Sudan and then I'll be making my way home to Canada. Its been a privilege to be out here and I've enjoyed. I'm looking forward to seeing all in Canada!

small travels

2008-03-02T03:40:00.003-06:00

My R&R started a couple of days back and I'm doing a small 10 day trip to Egypt this time to see apart of Africa I've never seen before. So far enjoying the busy streets, eating some 'american food' (McDonald's & Chili's so far), and walking up and down the nile in the evening. My only complaint is the weather, it's crazy cold here. I've been bundled up with all the clothes I've brought and still in every shop the windows are open and I'm freezing. Its like tree planting, the only way to get warm is to walk around town until you've generated some heat to stop shivering. Our hostel we're staying (I'm here w/ 3 other guys from the Church Program in Sudan) @ is pretty sweet, low-budg place. And I've found some extra blankets too.

Fire!

2008-02-07T08:52:00.001-06:00

A wing of the our hospital (Kurmuk Hospital) burned down this afternoon. Its super sad. Did not take long for the whole thing to go up in flames. All that is left is a stone shell. Inside the wing was the lab (which made for some nice explosions), one of our main stores for medical supplies, the maternity area, and out-patient area. Now its basically all gone. To the right there's photos from today.

On a number of things...

2007-12-20T07:34:00.000-06:00

On reported vs. observed:
When I go and interview families for our study (baseline right now), one of the questions is where the youngest child in the family defecates and what (if anything) is done with the feces. Each time the mother says exactly the same thing: The child defecates in the yard and the parent then picks it up and disposes it in the latrine. I was thinking about this the other day as I sat in the truck waiting at our filter construction site. Two children (brothers or cousins it seems) 4 or 5 years came outside their compound and beside our fence squatted to defecate. After completed they dragged their rears on the bare earth to clean them. I saw them there the next day doing the same thing. It’s sometimes difficult to figure what the true practice is exactly.

On repatriation:
Tuesday morning, excitement is in the air. The streets lined in places with families watching and waiting. The day before large lorries full of refugees traveled from the camps in Ethiopia towards Sudan. 612 refugees (from the Uduk tribe) bound for Chali, many returning after 20 years waiting in camps for the war to end. And now for they’re coming home. Many never having lived in Sudan and are returning to home they have only heard about.

We drive down to the Ethio-Sudan border with our guys to see the trucks full of people. There, many have come to welcome the visitors. We walk among the trucks greeting the new arrivals. It’s a hopeful day. (more details)

On latrine digging:
About a month ago I delivered a filter to a home. We were told that they had a latrine (this is a pre-requisite for receiving a filter). We dropped the filter off (with out installing it) and then asked to see their latrine. We were brought to an area and told this is where the latrine is. There was no hole visible, only a pile old grass. The latrine had collapsed a few months earlier (in the rainy season). We told them we’d return once it was completed. They said they would complete the mission that day.

I returned a week later and was impressed to see the project had begun. A latrine-wide hole had been dug – 6 inches deep. I guess they had some problems with tools. UNHCR helped us out on that and we picked up a few big picks from them. We borrowed one to the family and returned a week later to find a hole just than 2 m’s deep dug. The family told us that the borehole had recently dried out and now they were pulling from the hafira (large dugout) and that they needed clean water NOW. They had hit some hard rock/root/clay (the chosen location for the latrine was under one of the biggest Baobab trees around). We asked them to remove all the movable material in the hole and put the top on.

A week later I returned to find the hole cleaned out, but without a top. Yesterday we installed and did education. Today they’re drinking clean water and hopefully very shortly will have a completed latrine once again.

On a book:
In the evenings since my computer screen broke I’ve been doing some reading. I discovered this amazing author a while back named Ryszard Kapuściński. He’s a polish reporter who saw it all happen. The independence right through to the late 90’s. His observations on Africa are fascinating. I would recommend “In the Shadow of the Sun” as a good primer on the continent.

On unloading lorries:
On Sunday our medical supplies were brought in from Khartoum. Four HUGE lorries stacked to the top arrived. Aaron wondered whether they would make it through the gate at the hospital. They thankfully did. Probably about 30 guys showed up to help unload. When they found out the wage that would be paid (which is exactly what people at our compound are paid for a full day of work), they refused. And so 12 of us unloaded them all. It reminded me a lot of unloading reefer in Northern Alberta tree planting. If I hadn’t been a little weak from diarrhea the last few days, I think it would have been easier.

On going to the river:
Water is difficult to find especially now the rains have stopped. This last month I’ve been bringing water from a river a few km’s outside town. The water has been slowly drying up. There is an area of the river where all the NGO and UN vehicles seem to get washed (except UNHCR that has its own Borehole just outside its compound). Also, the UN (UNMIS) has dug themselves a big cistern where large water trucks come each day to fill up for their compound. At different times I’ve gone over to chat with these men who run the trucks and the pumping equipment. All from Pakistan, they speak little English and Arabic. Usually whatever I want to communicate I say in both English and Arabic, but usually I’m reduced to signing wildly with my hands.

Most of the Pakistanis have mustaches and some have large beards. One day I got speaking to one of the guys with a large beard. We obviously connected on a very high level because of this commonality. He finally pointed to my beard and specifically to my moustache that now is more than out of control and said one word: “scissors.”
Usually in sight but far down the river can be seen naked men and children bathing in small pools in the shade. There is also an area where women fetch their water. Depressions are made in the sand some right now up to a half meter (though it will get deeper as the dry season continues). Water materializes in these depressions. The woman carefully clean the crud out of these depressions by shoveling out much of the water and some of the gravel sometimes using the bottom half of a plastic fanta bottle. Then she carefully fills her jerry can cup by cup trying not to catch too much gravel. This area is downstream from the car cleaning area but its always a little of a surprise to me how clear the water looks after moving through the sand.

After filling up 15 jerry cans this way a few times I decided we needed to find a better way to this clean water out more easily. Dr. Mubarak uses a cut off barrel buried in the sand at the farm and decided to try that method too. Paul helped me cut off a barrel bottom and we dug down pulling gravel out as we dug deeper. The biggest problem is always that water causes cave-ins in the sand and the barrel stops this from happening. Now we’re able to use large pails to pull the water out. Everyone’s pulling water from our barrel and that makes me really happy to see.

As we’re at the river, people are continually coming through passing to or from Jorat (the next town over from Kurmuk). They sometimes come over for a drink and then continue on their journey.

I often go the river by myself or with one other person. When I arrive I’m always on the look-out for people that can help us. My deal is simple. Please help me out and we’ll give you a ride into town (probably 2 or 3 km’s). Most of the time there’s a few people that will help us out. I like this reciprocal setup a lot. I never know how it’s going to work out exactly when I go to the river.

On the comings and goings in NGO land:
As you may or may not know, Kurmuk has the UN and a number of NGO’s working in and around it. During the rainy season I got to know most of the vehicles in town. No vehicles came in from outside and none left (the way by road almost completely impassable for 5 months). Staying in Kurmuk over the rainy season were GOAL, Mercy Corps, ROOF, CEAS, DCA, UNHCR, WFP, IRC, UNMIS and us (SP).

When the road opened up in the middle of November, all of sudden, almost over night, the roads became crowded with more vehicles. Huge contingents have arrived from RONCO and MAG (who I think have the coolest slogan) to begin the de-mining season. Big tank-like machines for pulled up right in front of our gate. 20 large canvas tents went up over night next door.

And now most everyone is gone. GOAL, Mercy Corps, CEAS, DCA, RONCO, MAG all have left to celebrate their Christmas / Eid. And soon we’ll be gone too.

Malindi, Malawi and back again...

2007-10-21T03:12:00.000-06:00

I'm back in Kurmuk, but here's a quick summary of my R&R/retreat/malawi.

21-29 Sept.
Headed out from Kurmuk for a week conference in Malindi, Kenya (Turtle Bay Beach Club in Watamu). Such a great experience to enjoy the beach and meet SP people from all over Africa. Enjoyed fun late nites with the Nairobi and South Sudan crew. Went on a trek to find the blue lagoon one afternoon.

30 Sept-8 Oct.
Flew from Nairobi to Lilongwe (the capital of Malawi) to help a little with the BioSand Filter Project for a week. Some may remember that I had the mighty privilege of being there last year helping start a pilot project with the Evangelical Association of Malawi. It felt great to be back. They welcomed me like I was coming home. Two interns from Canada have come out again this year, and it was awesome to get to know them. I met again with the EAM staff and had an unbelievable welcome from everyone including Francis Kasangu who ran across the field and gave me a huge hug. It was all so surreal and amazing.
On Thursday we went out to the villages I'd lived and worked in last year. It was so fun to be out again with the people I'd gotten know, practicing the little Chichewa I know and seeing their pride as they showed me their filters. So fun.
I was looking forward to relaxing for the weekend. The plan was to head up north Friday for the Lake of Stars Music Festival near Nkata Bay. We (the interns, a couple of German guys and me) planned to grab a cheap reliable bus from a local hotel up. Things went somehow bad when this reliable bus opted out and we were left to the shinanigans of more than one possibly unscrupulous taxi operator. We were extremely thankful when Jeff (one of Canadians) pulled the cat out of the hat and hooked us up with a sweet truck/car. It was standard drive and I was the only one who knew how to drive. I did however need to learn how to drive on the left side of the road (I'd never driven in Malawi before or Kenya either). We started off around 9pm for the 5 hour trip to Nkata Bay. We arrived in Mzuzu around 1 or 2am and stopped for gas. We had really difficulty push starting (I've done it a couple of times), but after trying for probably about 40 min's we finally got it started and decided to still make a shot at making it to the coast. We drove for about 40 min's and then found ourselves blocked by a huge semi-trailer blocking the road. It was blocking the road on a steep decline and we would have to turn around and go back up this steep decline to where the detour was (this is what the villagers directed us to do). I prepared to turn around the vechicle and that's when... it stalled. Muskila kabil, problema grande. I then went around trying to find a driver who knew something more about push starting (yeah, its probably around 3am by this time). The semi-drivers that were woken up didn't seem to know anything about anything. Finally when all hope seemed lost a car drove up. A guy was awakened from the back and he happened to be quite the skilled driver. He also had a few that nite. He almost single handedly rallied the troops. About a dozen guys pushed the car back far enough so that we could get a run of it to start the vehicle. We let the vehicle roll down the hill and it started up just in time.

We continued on that night and arrived at Lake of the stars a little after sun-rise. I was exhausted having driven all night. But instead of staying in the campground, I made a deal with the village right next door right on the beach and we stayed there instead. They were good to us and had a watchman always taking really good care. It wasn't the perfect situation though. When we first arrived all we wanted to do was sleep. 20 kids stood 10 feet away and I got that "I'm an animal in a zoo" feeling again. Also ants smaller than the holes in the mosquito tents conspired to invade interrupting even the deepest slumber.

The festival was brilliant. And the beach was so awesome. I really enjoyed crashing in the waves and floating about. Saturday night I got to see my fav. malawian artist Lucius Banda. His show was most excellent. The mostly azungu audience probably didn't catch how political it all really was. Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika of course was one of Lucius' favourite targets as his ever nemesis.

Another act was the The Pete Box, #1 beat box champion from the UK, who's charisma and showmanship combined with brilliant musicianship combined for an awesome show.

Here's another some sum-up of lake of the stars

Pink Eye
The joy of our all night drive was added to by my soar eyes. They had slowly been turning pink over the week. By that friday night I was rubbing them constantly because they were so itchy. I went to an eye doctor in Nairobi who confirmed I have some sort of infection. I came back to Kurmuk and I've been doing my best to treat it. The good news is that the redness. The bad news is that they still itch and feel sortof yucky. In the last week I've been doing pretty good only touching my eyes with my left hand only (its apparently super contagious) and washing my hands more often.

Its been great to be back in Kurmuk once again. Here's a few photos from my adventures and also of my BSFing.

New Photos

2007-09-06T04:16:00.000-06:00

Ever since last year I've been trying to discover an easy way to bulk upload photos online when your internet is sketchy (going on and off-line intermittently and with low upload speeds). Finally I tried Picasa again this last week and have found it to work quite well. It compresses the photos automatically and doesn't give me problems when I'm uploading. So all that to say I've got a few new photos posted online here including my recent trips to Damazine and Zanzibar and also recent filter installations.

albeter

2007-08-10T10:26:00.000-06:00

Not exactly all better, but I've improved a whole bunch since the weekend. I feel really good, and things are definitely on the up. I appreciate all the kind words and especially the prayers that have been said for my health. Thank-you so much. God is good. I was really well taken care over here. I'm now back doing what I'm here to do so its good.
peac.e
david

Typhoid

2007-08-04T08:37:00.001-06:00

Some of late have been posting on my wall (facebook, yes) questions about this. Let me say this first: Typhoid sucks... but not that bad. I only came down with (warning: semi-frank discussion of recent medical history) loose stool just over a week ago. But soon I was having problems sleeping. Finally I talked to our Doctor here in Kurmuk about it and after a couple of more days I went in for my Malaria and Typhoid test. Let me give a quick aside here to all you tropical goers and comers out there: malaria and typhoid give off very similar symptoms (only that malaria happens faster and can sometimes kill you in 48 hours or so). Next time you thing you have malaria and go for a test be sure to get them to check for Typhoid too.

The night before I went for the test I experienced a fever and had this crazy dream where I was driving around on a track. This "race" went on for 5 hours. I found this passage later on:

"Delirium is frequent, frequently calm, but sometimes agitated. This delirium gives to typhoid the nickname of 'nervous fever'." Wikipedia entry on Typhoid

Thankfully I've only missed a small amount of work. Though today I've felt pretty brutal to be honest. My head kills and every bump on the road seems to make it all hurt. Thank-fully tomorrow's my day off so hopefully I can sleep this crazy infection off. No worries though, I'm being well taken care of by the medical team from the Kurmuk Hospital and Dr. John has been giving me great treatment.

photos from vaco

2007-07-29T10:07:00.000-06:00

Zanzibaring Inc. and Damazine (the devine)

2007-07-29T09:39:00.000-06:00

It was a crazy trip. Planned to leave Sunday (July 8), then left Monday @ 4pm. Got about 50 km's out of town and stayed in a sketchy little place for US$2 for a room. Great people though! People in Kenya know english better it seems, than most other countries (ie. Tanzania & Malawi). We were hoping to arrive tuesday in Zanzibar. Zanzibar is a little farther than we had both imagined (both meaning me and my trusty motorcyle driver Tim who captained our 650 honda dirt bike all the way). We hoped to be in Zanzibar tuesday night be ended up arriving thursday morning. Still fun times had. Found a Subway restaurant in Dar es Salaam (that's in Tanzania) - so tasty. Went across by a speed boat ferry to the beautiful island of Zanzibar.

I gained a skill during my time in Zanzibar. I now can say I sort-of know how to drive a motorcycle. I’d never driven a motorcycle before and learning wasn’t without its challenges. We rented the motos from a really funny and friendly guy named Ally Keys whose claim to fame is a small paragraph in the 2004 Lonely Planet Guide which he has laminated and keeps in his back pocket to show people. He doesn’t really have a shop per se, just a sign in the middle of a side street where his people hang around. The sign reads (quoting directly from the Lonely Planet):

ALLY KEYS
RENTS MOTORCYCLE
AND CAR
The main man in town is a colourful
character called ALLY KEYS
+255777411797. He’s not as disreputable
as he looks, and his bikes are safe

Ally realized my lack of motorcycling skills pretty quickly so he pulled my traveling buddy Tim aside and they went to take the driving test for me (without my knowledge). Tim took my Canadian license with him. When they asked whether the Canadian license was a motorcycle one, Tim just pointed under the gender section at the M and there were no problems.

I stalled a fair bit at the beginning. On our way up I stalled right at a police check. I was proud to show him my newly legal license for Zanzibar. And then I kicked on that stupid starter kicker thing for at least 10 minutes. When it finally started I took off as fast as I could. I didn’t see the bus, but thankfully it saw me. It swerved past me nearly ending my trip through Africa for good. Thankfully, after that the trip went smoothly motorcycle wise…

We ended up at the northern tip of Zanzibar, snorkeling, enjoying the white beach and relaxing. On our last night in Zanzibar we heard there was going to be some celebration going down at resort down on the beach. The tide was low so we took our motorcycles and just drove them down right on the beach (which was tons of fun) about 3 kms. We stayed for an hour or 2, saw some cool tricks with fire and cirque solet (sp?) routines. Tim left ahead of me by about a half hour. When I started out I drove about a km when I ran into the coming tide water lapping at the shore wall which was about 3 or 4m’s high. I decided not to risk it and to take the road back instead. I drove back only to find that the wall extended the entire way only higher up the beach. There was little chance I’d get the bike up the steep stairs by myself so finally I found a guy to watch the bike over the night and said I’d come pick it up in the morning. People told me that it was really really long to walk by the road so I decided that I’d try to make it the beach way. There was no moon and it was pretty dark. Things went well until the wall began to block me in against the ocean again. I ended up wading through waves breaking over the top of my belt, my borrowed motorcycle helmet and jacket above my head in one hand while I held my cell in my other hand as a makeshift flashlight. The water kept getting deeper and the wall didn’t look like it was going to end any time soon. I was a little concerned one of these waves was going to drag me into the dark ocean. I decided to climb the wall, but the sharp choral stung my hands and climbing with a motorcycle helmet proved pretty tough. I kept walking and finally found a spot where I could climb up. I walked for a long ways through an unfinished development. Finally I arrived home, got out of my wet clothes, set my alarm for when I thought the low tide would be again and fell asleep. The next morning we successfully retrieved my motorbike and began our journey home to Nairobi.

Our trip back was fairly uneventful though it was refreshing to leave the tourist experience behind and get back to the Africa I know and appreciate.

I arrived back in Kurmuk, Sudan on July 19. It felt really good to be back. I caught my first helicopter ride in Africa with the UN last week to go to a meeting in Damazine. They use some huge helicopters. One of the helicopters that took off while we watched is the biggest helicopter in the world (this is what the pilot told me). It had a huge cargo bay big enough to fit a bunch of vehicles.

Damazine was great. I’m really starting to appreciate that town. I met up a bunch of people. One of guys who knew English pretty well gave me a tour of the local TV station and we sat with him mango drinking juice and watching BBC from their satellite feed.

We were scheduled to get a flight back but we ended up getting bumped. At this point the road is considered basically impassible but it was decided that we’d make a go of it. We headed out into the most muddy 40 km stretch with 2 trucks and 2 tractors. We got stuck many many times, but the tractors faithfully got us out and at some points just dragged us through areas of swamp. We arrived after 6 ½ hours of struggle.

So there’s a quick review of some of my adventures from the last month. I just added Twitter (on the side-bar) and I think I’m going to try to give updates using it from time to time with my cell phone.

R&R travel plans

2007-07-06T06:30:00.000-06:00

I'm now back in Nairobi on Rest and Relaxation for a week. So it looks like I may be able to re-name this blog for the next week "the motorcycle diaries." A friend working in Nuba recently purchased a motorbike. We're hoping to leave sunday and monday on an 'epic journey' traveling to mombasa and then heading south. The plan is to pass into Tanzania (which I've never visited) and then find a ferry that will take us to the tropical paradise called Zanzibar. No idea how its all gonna work, but its gonna be an adventure where-ever we turn up.

surgery, quads and rain

2007-06-27T10:12:00.000-06:00

It’s really been an adventure these last few weeks. I’ve experienced some pretty intense stuff. I’m perfectly safe, but it’s been a ride. One of the more intense experiences was having the opportunity to assist with surgery without anesthesia or pain killers. Suffice to say my 1^st Aid class from St. John’s didn’t prepare me completely for that. Very intense

Since then things have been pretty chill. I’ve been driving the quad bike around recently which has been tons of fun. I may have had some close calls in the past tree planting, but I’ve kept it right side up and unstuck so far. It has been a little tricky learning to ride with an extra person or 2.

The rains have been upon us, but not nearly as intense I had expected. They say in July and August, it can rain for days at a time. It seems like its going to rain all the time (wind, dust, clouds), but most of the time very little if anything falls. We have had a few decent downpours, but nothing like I’ve experienced elsewhere in Africa. I guess we’ll see if Kurmuk really can get close to as bad as the wet back-roads of Northern Alberta.

reflections on it, thats it.

2007-06-02T08:45:00.000-06:00

Wow, Sunday is here (or its tomorrow, but my weekend starts sat. nite). It's been an interesting week. We started our community sensitization and education in a village close to here. There have been some positive outcomes. We have a committee of 8 (4 women, 4 men plus the chief) that has been meeting with us almost daily for the last week. We've gotten to know each other better. They've appeared pretty receptive to the training. I've never done such in-depth training with villagers so its encouraging. It's been really good to finally be where the project will really happen. Logistics, technical details are important, but not the heart of the BSF. Logistically and technically I'm very confident in making the project work. The community responsibility item is always the wild-card, the unpredictable X-Factor.

Trying to do development in a semi-sustainable manor in an area that has seen its share of Relief Aid and straight-out handouts is where things get interesting. On top of that, according to the community, they have heard big promises before from other organizations that didn't materialize. Even during our initial assessment of the village, another NGO interrupted our visit to do their own interviews for an assessment. I have seen in the past that sometimes even a short visit to a village can be interpreted as a promise to help.

Hopefully I haven't spent all the initial good-will a Kawaja (foreigner) tends to get when they enter a village. But right now my good-will bank account seems a little low and trust seems to be wished-for but currently rare commodity. And traversing these seemingly uncharted waters is proving a challenge. Thankfully my PM, an expert in these matters, has arrived from a 2 week visit to Damazin. In six months I'm sure I will laugh (or cry) at my ignorant self, but I'm also pretty sure I still won't list being told "go back to Kurmuk" and "you're wasting our time" as highlights.

wearing pants

2007-05-24T08:25:00.000-06:00

Hey all,
greetings from a refreshingly cool Kurmuk. I'm wearing pants instead of shorts for the first time in a long time.

I just got back yesterday from a trip to Yabus. It was great to connect with the SIMers up there and get a feel for the area. We also did some assessments. From reading through the results from the initial assessments I knew the latrine coverage was poor, but was still surprised by how many used only the bush. I was really impressed though by one lady who had carved herself a stand-plate/hole out of a rock and placed it over 1 iron sheet and some bamboo (I wish I'd taken a picture). There's also definitely need for improved water. Most drinking water is currently coming from the river.

May the 16th at 5am the guns starting going off. No, it wasn't a battle of any sort. It was the annual SPLA Day Celebration. They brought out some of the bigger guns and were shooting them off. We went to the big celebration in the middle of town that afternoon. A soccer game was in process with one of our fellow SP expat staff represented. At half time and at the end of the game, represented tribes danced around the field sometimes performing elaborate warrior-like duals with blunt spears. I went on the field after the game to get a better view. At one point a guy with an AK strapped to his back pounded on drum as dancers bounced and danced a circle around him.

Let me just take 2 seconds here to brag a little on the employees that are helping me with the BSF. I've been truly thrilled with their work ethic and their initiative. They do things well and don't cut corners. I've been given the cream of the crop to work with. They also come up with unique solutions to problems. Today they'd reworked a part of the filter cutting off the labor costs we probably would have had to outsource. Suffice to say, they're brilliant!

I've made efforts to upload photos but its really hit or miss and actually a lot more miss than hit. Text suffices for now.
pea.ce

trip to Damazin

2007-05-13T07:30:00.000-06:00

I went on a trip starting Tuesday of last week up north to Damazin and beyond. We planned to be away for a few days. My goals were to find a workable sand source for the filter medium and to stock up for supplies. It took us about 5 hours of bumping along dirt track to arrive on the small city. A different world for sure than Kurmuk. Tons of donkey wagons clog the streets. 3 wheeled motorcycle/kart’s taxi people back and forth. And unbelievable heat that sucks the energy right out of you. We stayed in a hotel w/ character. A large cement open Koran guarded the entrance. Up a windy staircase, every step a unique shape and height (made it tricky at night when the power was cut) and to our rooms complete with 60’s curtains. There was a shower thankfully though often the water was cut and I’d head out sticking with the sweat I’d generated over the night. We headed up north even further, located the sand we were after and then spent a bunch of days shopping for other supplies and waiting for a lorry to work out.

One story. On our way up to find sand the bushes hug the road on both sides. The tarmac was good so we were going a little under 100km’s/hr. All of sudden out of nowhere a HUGE camel stepped onto the road and began to slowly cross. We ALMOST hit the thing, our driver braking hard and then squeezing by in front of the beast. Those spindly legs… Apparently a few years back someone hit a camel. It fell like a tower of cards and flattened the entire car.

Every night we would go out for food eating the delicious bread with beans or chicken or fish. The food is a joy so far. So tasty. The ubiquitous tea ladies serve up boiling hot glasses of tea at every corner.

One day moved into the next. Finally 6 days after we left Kurmuk it was time to head home. The wind before the rain began before we left Damazin and the dust quickly dirtied my eyes, and coated everything in our vehicle.

We passed near Osama bin Laden’s old place on the way home. Apparently he gave back to the community by building a really nice road in the area a while back.

The last half of the trip is really rough mud. It had not rained for over a week so everything was completely dry. But the rain was threatening. At one point lightening was flashing all around us and some drizzle fell. We were spared the rain and we made it back to Kurmuk thankfully that night.

Big news is that we’ve actually got cell phone service in Kurmuk as of yesterday (my #’s +249 923980345). All for now,

peac.e

first days

2007-04-29T00:44:00.000-06:00

Kurmuk, Sudan. After a bunch of flights in an old DC3 prop plane, we finally taxi'd down on a dirt runway. Its great to be here finally. First impressions are that while this is still Africa its a world away from the Africa I've experienced before. Malawi this is not. The bombed out buildings and rusty upside down tanks are small visual reminders of the past war.

The set-up at the Samaritan's Purse compound on the outskirts of Kurmuk is quite impressive. There's a fully stocked kitchen, an office with wireless internet and a workshop. Beyond that are the tukuls where we live. They are huts with mud walls and grass roofs. My tukul where I was supposed to be staying is close to finished. The carpenter was fired before I arrived because of poor workmanship. When the windows were opened they came crashing to the ground. So I've been trying my hand at carpentry. It's going to be a long battle b/c I definitely don't have skills in carpentry.

I've felt very welcomed. Yesterday I walked down to the town centre where the BSF construction site is. Its right in the main town square. While we were working, big trucks sat in the middle of the square full to the brim of refugees coming from Ethiopia to be repatriated back to Sudan (recent article on that here).

The three technicians that work on the BSF actually came back to Sudan about 6 months ago. Tohru did an amazing job of training these guys. They do everything textbook and the filters that result are picture perfect. I did an install at the end of the day to test the sand. As I suspected (from eye-balling), the sand was way too fast (2.6 L/min where it should be 1 L/min). That will be job #1. There's a lot of different fronts I really need to get going on so its a little overwhelming.

On my way back up from the city the kids started calling out as they often do in Africa. They kept calling "yuen, yuen." I assumed that was the word for white person here. It turns out they were actually calling me UN. I enjoy walking around the town greeting people, feeling the staring eyes, getting the feel for a place. I've probably said it before here but you get the best sense of a place on foot. It's not the same if you're in a truck and blow by two ladies letting them breathe the hot dust as they struggle with firewood balanced on a yoke. I'm not sure how many km's they'd sweated, but there were still a few more to go.

Update

2007-04-24T14:12:00.000-06:00

Greetings family & friends,

Here's a quick update on my last few months.

I was in Malawi from October-February implementing a pilot BioSand Water Filter project with Samaritan's Purse. It was such a rich experience. I worked with awesome people at Evangelical Association of Malawi (our partnering) organization and had an amazing partner from Canada (the intense, rock solid accountant from T.O. James Tan). I blogged a bit about it here. In Malawi, I felt things focus a little bit for me and the future. I found it such a joy serving my Saviour in Africa.

After I got back from my internship I spent a few weeks in Calgary enjoying the getting back into Canadian culture. I took a short tour through western Canada visiting Brent and Arlene at Brightwood Ranch and visiting my good friends from tree planting in Saskatoon. It's been so fun to hang with friends and family in Winnipeg.

I'm now heading out with Samaritan's Purse to do another pilot BioSand project this time in the heat of South Sudan. I'm heading out tomorrow morning from Nairobi (where I've been prepping for the last few days) to live and work in Kurmuk which is right on the border with Ethiopia. I'm really excited and looking forward to getting on the ground.

I'd appreciate prayer. Here are a few specific areas of praise & request:
1. Praise for the Lord's provision and direction in this new job in Sudan.
2. Pray that my words and deeds would be full of the love of Christ.
3. Pray for continued personal spiritual growth.
4. Pray that I will have the wisdom to deal with each challenge that arises.

Thanks so much,

David Bock

PS. For more details as time goes I will be posting short thoughts on my blog here.

to be a driver...

2007-04-16T01:50:00.001-06:00

ndimakukonda

2007-03-14T21:12:00.001-06:00

I've been looking for this video for a while. Ndimakukonda (meaning "I love you" in Chichewa) was a major hit in Malawi. It tackles HIV/AIDS Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT). It stars an aid worker from Japan who has since become a household name (Here's an article from a Malawian newspaper about his departure from Malawi last year: http://www.nationmalawi.com/articles.asp?articleID=15477).

To get a great overview of the artist and the story of this song check out this: http://www.theworld.org/?q=node/4481

Prairie driving…

2007-03-06T13:25:00.000-06:00

An excellent debriefing was put on by SP for us interns. We went out to King’s Fold (a retreat centre outside Calgary) for 2 nights. They’ve got a beautiful view of the mountains and a really relaxing set-up. Went walking around in the woods for a few hours, experienced the true cold of this arctic slab called Canada.

That Saturday went skating at Bowness park a neat pond but no sticks allowed. I’ll have to wait until Winnipeg to get my ice hockey fix (if everything’s not melted by then). I’ve really enjoyed hanging with my fellow interns, and getting tons of food in me. I’m definitely getting fattened up. On Friday James and I did a short presentation for the SP staff and then in the afternoon after a short worship service we all scattered into our separate worlds. Definitely will miss them all.

My parents picked me from Calgary on Friday, headed to Brightwood Ranch to see Brent who I hadn’t seen in forever. So good to see the whole family. Now heading east again to see all my good tree planting people in the megatropolis of Saskatoon.

Photorama

2007-02-19T13:59:00.000-06:00

Here's a few photos of my time in Malawi.

...on a jet plane...

2007-02-18T11:04:00.000-06:00

A lot has happened since I wrote here last. I am no longer in the beautiful tropical paradise called Malawi. I have returned to the snowy tundra of this cold country of Canada. Sad to leave Malawi, happy to be back in Canada. I’ve been awake since 12:30pm (I may be a wee bit jet lagged). Photo is of a kid that was super cool. Sadly he unsuccessfully tried to pull his shirt over to hide his huge tummy (sign of issues, malnutrician, worms etc.). Let me re-wind though and talk about my last couple of weeks in Malawi, because they were highlights.

Gerald and Francis are evangelists. They love to share the gospel, to preach, to do alter calls and the like. The Bible studies we’d been doing in Gwani had been experiencing some reduced attendance and we brainstormed about what we should do. Gerald and Francis floated the idea of doing a crusade (I think we call them festivals now in Canada) in the villages we’ve been working in. And we did.

We brought in a big name speaker from Lilongwe (very well respected in the area), booked the Jesus film for the evenings and rented a tent to protect us from the rains (prayer at first was supposed to be our tent but hey… God made rain for reason). Actually, no one normally does crusades during the rainy season. People are usually busy in their fields and the rains usually scatter any gathered crowds. Still, we pushed ahead. And I think in the end it generally was a success. We had smaller crowds during the day (the scheduled 1pm afternoon service starting after 3 on both days), and packed the tent out for the Jesus film in Chichewa (the language franca) in the evenings. Both nights, over 400 showed up. Yes, many hands went up at the alter call, but really I’m more interested to see what happens in the future with the Bible study and the follow-up.

We finished off the installations in Gwani during our final week. It really was the village we worked with for most of the time. At the beginning I thought we’d be done them by end of December, but I was still really excited and happy to continue working with them for all of these months. And what joy as we entered each home, installed the filter and found out more about their families. We asked for prayer requests and then one of us at each home prayed for the family. It was such a great time of commissioning. The highlight came for me in one home where it was noted that the lady of the house (who had given birth to a baby the day we first brought the first filters to Gwani) was storing some charms around her neck to protect herself and her family. Gerald, Francis and Agabu (another recent addition to the BSF team) had a great time of speaking to her and encouraging her to depend on the only true source of power. She asked if someone could pray a prayer of protection for her baby and Gerald joyfully accepted. She ran out of the house to fetch her baby from another room and Gerald then held it in his arms and prayed.

So I’ve said before that the big business in Gwani is booze (of some sort of moon shine variety). This was confirmed at the time of giving prayer requests during an install. The lady of the house requested we pray for success for her and her family in both of their businesses – tobacco growing and beer brewing. As well, we’ve been finding out that the men of Gwani have a lot of love to give (as Francis puts it). I knew there were a few polygamists in Gwani (there always are), but we were all a little surprised to find out how pervasive it all is. When I think of polygamy I think of a man moving a second wife to his compound sometimes with her house separate from the other concubine. Suffice to say, things happen way too quickly to make time for that sort of planning in Gwani. Most of the men seem to be running something on the side. Sometimes they all live in the same general area, but many of these guys have got ladies in different villages. Anyways, I don’t totally understand it all, so I’m going to run a little shy of making any firm value statements here.

On other exciting fronts, I got the opportunity to preach my last day in the village. We took the bicycles out 45 min’s away to a tiny little prayer house. We showed up on time, waited for about an hour and then the service began. I preached with a translator (Gerald). After I finished all I had to say (in about ½ hour), I asked my translator to finish it off. He did. Meaning he preached for another 40 min’s at least, including an alter call, singing a couple of songs and post-commitment counseling. Gerald did a great job so it was all good. God some fanta after that and headed back the station house where we said our final goodbyes.

quick update

2007-01-29T01:44:00.000-06:00

I've been enjoying the last month in the village. Got back on thursday. Photo is of doing some hygiene education (specifically explaining how to make Oral Rehydration Solution from household products) at a prayerhouse wearing my fancy new suit ($25- a steal)
Blink 132
I'm 132 lbs now. How this happened I don't know. I'm not skinny or anything, but I weigh less. I think i started out this internship around 150 or 160 somewhere in there. James and I decided we'd pair down our budget and try to live on what most Malawian's live on. He did the US$.50/day challenge and I did the US$1/day challenge. Somewhere in there we cut out all meat for 2 weeks, and just ate rice, beans and buns. Actually with spices I've grown a new afinity for beans. I also may have worms, I'm not too sure.

Retreat @ Salima
So after I weighed myself we headed out for a retreat at the lake. I chose descent resort with meeting room, restaurant, bar, Satelite TV (in the restaurant), etc. We got a family room for the 5 of us (@ 3500 or $30 / nite). After some hard work on the next proposal we took a swim in the evening in the beautiful lake malawi. Fun times! Even taught Francis a little of the front crawl (doesn't know how to swim). For super that evening had chambo (the delicious & most popular fish from the lake). I ordered spaghetti with my meal because we very rarely get pasta. I was warned by the waiter that fish and pasta makes you get sick. Later that night as I leaned my head over the toilet I flashed back to that moment realizing I had wrongly attributed the waiter's advice to legend. By morning and after many late night trips I was completed. My stomach had only to eat itself and my soar esophagus. I was completely exhausted and spent the day laid out. Thankfully today I've bounced back and feel much better. Makes me wonder how much I weigh now :).

We're on TV!
Actually its not us, but BSF did make CBC highlighting the work of the interns in Kenya.

Schedule 31 Jan - go to the village
14 Feb - come back to Lilongwe (the capital of Malawi)
17 Feb - board plane for Canada
18 Feb - Arrive in Calgary
20 Feb - Debriefing begins in Calgary
2 March - Finish Debrief
3 March - Parents picking me and heading for western Canada tour: Brightwood, Saskatoon, then back to Winnipeg eventually

couple vacation photos

2007-01-02T12:15:00.001-06:00

Photorama (w/ 3 photos)

2007-01-02T08:54:00.000-06:00

a picture of the cows has been requested so here they are. The one on the
left is actually a crazy cow. He (or she?, I'm not sure if female cows can get horns) always would roll around when he got tired. Seeing as the filters weigh a decent amount, this wasn't exact a positive for pull cow.

The other photo is of our team when Sarah was here. I'm working on finding a beard photo to satisfy Karen's request. I've actually grown it and then shaved it off and I'm in the process of returning to a natural state.

concluding the 25th

2007-01-01T11:40:00.001-06:00

& that's where we found ourselves, huddled in the courtyard of the place under a leanto, sleeping with no matress and no thermarest on concrete. And as we longed for some sleep, the party was just getting started. The CCAP retreat that was supposed to be 5 days (but got scaled back to 1 day because of some financing issues (that I of course was invited to help rectify)) was being jammed into one huge day of praying, dancing, singing and eating. 2 bright lights left on 24 hours a day strategically placed above our heads. All 60 of them could see us clearly from their dining hall or as they walked to kitchen right by my head. A little like an sleeping hippo in the zoo.

From my journal that night:

"Basically a whole retreat of young CCAPers now has the opportunity to see how the azungu (white person) sleeps. All my stuff is laid out. Everyone can see me, and I can see everyone."

And that concluded my Christmas for 2006.

25th

2007-01-01T11:18:00.001-06:00

Good service of the liturgy. Though I felt like I was back in Canada at a Catholic or Anglican church.

Set off for Melange Mountain. The local PTC (equivalent of extra foods) was open like any day of the year (many businesses here are owned by muslims), and we stocked up on supplies for our hiking adventure. Transport was not a problem and we were quickly shuffled into a minibus.

on minibuses:

The insides of minibuses are always tight, smelly, tiring and never boring. At every stop hawkers come shoving a hybrid of products in your face enticing you to shell oh so small a price for their goods. The other day someone sold two chickens for $2 each (live of course), the whole transaction taking place through the window with the prize being dropped basically in the lap next to mine. I had my huge backpack with me and it was pretty full, so I tried hard not to squish the ladies dinner. Cold cokes, maize on a stick, fish on a stick, fresh fish, cookies, peaches, mangoes, pineapples, carrots. A regular supermarket right at your window. Becuase prices are often much better than in the city many do their shopping on these long trips.

Sometimes there's beggars at the stops too. Usually a gentle no, and you're gold... that is unless they're drunk and begging. On our way back from Melange the bus took about 20 min's to get moving and this drunk guy kept at us. Luckily we were in the very back of the minibus and really couldn't get to us. It was hot inside so I had the window open. He kept circling the bus with his antics. Each time he circled to my window, I'd close it. He'd knock on it being silly. I'd wait till he'd leave and then get some air again....

So we arrived in Melange without too much hassle. To warm up for our hike we decided to walk up to the base of the mountain. We started hiking around 11:30 in the absolute heat of the day with full packs. 12 km's and 3 or 4 hours later and really exhausted we arrived at the base. After finding out the prices had risen for the mountain (there was fees over fees, though it all summed up to a pretty reasonable rate over our 3 days), we went to look for a room to sleep in. Everything was full (no room in the inn :)), so we camped outside the CCAP hostel/hotel/conference centre for MK250 ($2) per person. It would have been all grand, but none of us had tents (unless you count a misquito fly with frame, but that doesn't really stop the rain). Being Christmas I was pretty surprised things were right booked up. In fact the CCAP (Central Church of Africa Presbyterian) place was actaully full with a youth retreat from the CCAP. They were whooping it up when we got ready to bed down preparing for a day of climbing on the 26th. It all was quite the blast until it started to rain... and pour.

Christmas Holiday Update

2007-01-01T03:41:00.001-06:00

Been a good Christmas holiday season, though quite different from most
holidays I've spent. Liwonde Park was amazing. So many animals
running around it felt a little like a zoo without fences. On our
45min. boat ride into the main lodge we saw 100's of hippos floating
along the mighty Shire river. They're quite the animal. They're much
bigger than I imagined. We saw elephants and waterbucks, warthogs,
crockodiles, tons of empalas and a messload of mammals and birds.

The 24th and 25th of december are special days each year so I thought
I'd give a little more detailed description of mine.

Dec am 24th entry:
I awake in a tent, though that would be a poor descriptor. It's a
safari tent, screened on 3 sides so I can see out. Ridiculously nice.
Basically the size of a large cabin. I can see the Shire river
floating past directly below me. The hippos are making their hippo
grunts, less than 5m's from where I'm sitting. the birds are singing.
What a sweet game park. Beautiful creation thanks to a beautiful and
wonderful God.

After huge buffet breakfast and an uneventful morning boat ride we
take the boat back to Liwonde village dock. We snagged a ride from a
couple of Swedes (one of who was an big wig with the UN working in
Nairobi) to the spot where you catch the buses. We hopped in a bus
heading for Blantyre (the biggest city in Malawi). After passing
Zombe (the old capital of Malawi) we found ourselves in Limbe. I had
forgotten my guidebook in the village so we were moving a little bit
blind. The bus driver told he wouldn't be going to Blantyre but that
he'd make sure we made it. Suffice to say we got a little ripped off
paying MK300 ($2.50) for a trip that should of cost us MK70 ($.50),
but an hour and a big detour later we were finally in Blantyre proper
(Limbe is to Blantyre what St. Pauls is to Minneapolis) and made our
way to Doogles (a backpacker hostel).

We checked into a sketchy looking room and grabbed some grubb. I met
a couple of Canadians coming from Melange Mountain (our next goal) who
highly recommended it. Also met another guy who wanted to do the
mountain named Simeon.

29 years old, Simeon's from Australia. He is what I don't want to be
in 3 years. He's well travelled, had a million and one unbelievable
experiences - but in the end... bitter. He hasn't been home for 2 1/2
years, travelled europe extensively, went to Banff to snowboard last
winter. Now he's taking on Africa. He started in South Africa and
he's aiming for France by summer. He says he's on a pilgrimage of
sorts.
But Africa has imbittered him for some reason. He's been ripped off
to many times. He hates paying azungu (white) prices. He sees greed
in every smile and a catch in every good deed.
I hope he finds what he's looking for, I'm praying he does.

Christmas Eve Evening. Sat around a table by the pool at doogles,
chatting with Simeon and an old Canadian 'conservative' Anglican who
watches fires from the towers in BC for his summers. We retired
early.

Christmas morning got up and headed to a nearby Anglican church for
the 7:30am service.

cont. later...

2006-12-22T01:22:00.000-06:00

rats!

2006-12-22T00:21:00.000-06:00

-not that 80's exclemation when something goes awry.
-a family of rodents that lives with us...
-thats what we call mice.
In Canada, I definately have been the cause a rat or 2's death. Here in my home at Sinumbe TC I'm learning coexistance.
Everywhere. They hop over my feet when I enter a room scurrying for the corner. Each morning we wake up hoping they haven't taken too many chunks out of the mangos, bread or bannanas. I see them scurrying over every inch of counter space on our shelves of food. Our bulk purchase of potatoes seemed like such a good idea only a short few weeks ago. Now we're watching them be eaten slowly but surely by our rodent friends. They've chewed a number of holes through the bag.
The roots of the rats are well known. One locked room in our house which happens to next to my bed contains food used for the church. I hear them in there eating every night. They pop through the crack beneath the door and run by my head as they head on a jaunt through the house.
They run along the floor, climbing one corner of our kitchen/living room and popping through their favourite crack/hole in the wall. Ideas of sealing that crack have been entertained. If this would be my house for the next 4 years instead of the next 4 months, it might be realistic. But our house is a sieve (for rain and rats alike). Any efforts of the sort are quite futile. Traps might kill a few but its like setting up traps in a camping site. Most inadequate.
so we live in relative harmony, a semi-peaceful existence.
just hoping the hanta virus hasn't made it to Malawi :)

*journal entry for Nov 12, 2006.

Vacation Plan Links

2006-12-21T13:15:00.000-06:00

Our Safari is here on sat: http://www.wilderness-safaris.com/camps/camps.jsp?map_id=2567
We're going hiking at mount melange(hopefully 24, 25, 26 dec):
At some point we're going to hit up lake malawi too.

how to move a 140 kg filter

2006-12-21T09:57:00.000-06:00

Everythings pilot, first ever here in Malawi for BSF. Members of Gwani had been coming each day to help build their filter. From day 1, we always said that the deal was they would come help with construction, attend community meetings, help construct our site and also be responsible for transport. Evidently something was missed in communication. Efforts to shift the responsibility of the transportation of filters to the NGO, us were coming fast and furious. The original plan in september had been to rent a lorry and bring the filters out. But once we realized ox carts were used all over the village, the responsibility was put onto the villagers in part to add ownership. It could have been foreseen that this would be a problem for Gwani. This little village has only 20 households, a broken ox cart and no oxen. Someone I guess stole the oxen a while back. It all came to a head meeting day with the whole village. We were told in no uncertain terms that there was no possible way they could take the responsibility of bringing the filters. We left them arguing and discussing and went back to Sinumbe TC.

The next morning at the crack of dawn, no earlier later than 5:30am, Gwani arrived with an ox cart to pick up their filters. And what a thrill to ride alongside as we entered Gwani with filters sitting snuggly in the ox cart. Where there's a will I guess there's a way, but I was so proud Gwani and the villagers that day and so happy to have them as our partner in this deal.

Christmas Vaco...

2006-12-20T11:38:00.000-06:00

Time to see a little of this part of the world now that we've got a few days off. We've visited a few missionary friends in Selima and now are preparing to head out to Liwonde Park to hopefully see elephants and hippos and hike the great Mulange Mountain. Been a good month. Finally finished rainwater harvesting. It took many months of scheming and planning and then finally one big day of team effort to get it done. Hopefully the tank will be full by the time we get back to Sinumbe TC.
Will speak on filter transport next time...

Introducing our Pilot village for our Pilot Project: Gwani

2006-12-03T04:28:00.000-06:00

As with most relationships, at first the other party appears to be everything one could ever hope for. Then, after time passes, things begin wearing on the other person. Masks and appearances begin to fall away and we are left with something very different than with what we started.

In our first introduction to the 20 household village of Gwani we were met by the old chief (who is there for wisdom) and his appointed successor, chief elect Jailos. Jailos turned out to be one of our biggest supporters mobilizing people to come in October to make a shelter for construction and being over-all very helpful.

At our first community meeting we asked the chief to stand up and random guy, about 20 years old got up and said a few words welcoming us to the community. He later claimed to be the true successor to Chief Gwani.

To kick off our first community (ever in the history of BSF Malawi) we decided to do a community project with the villagers. They were to choose a project in the village that we would benefit them. The wells were chosen to be built up and covered. We would bring a bag of cement for the protecting of each well and the village would to choose 5 labours for each of the three wells. To up the ante, and without any forethought, prizes were offered up for the ‘winning team’ who created the nicest well. Regret was felt later for my lack of consultation on this extra twist.

At the time of inspection it was found that the pails, rope and covers bought specifically for the project were suspiciously absent from 2 of the 3 competing wells. The remaining well was closest to the home or Jailos where we had dropped off all of the supplies to begin with. Things began to unravel at the community meeting when the issue of the incomplete wells was brought to the floor. Jailos released the items and was plenty embarrassed. Within a few days he ‘stepped down’ from his role as ‘acting chief’ and told us to bring our questions to another person now to be considered chief, the daughter of Group Village Headman Sinumbe.

Confusion has continued from there and it can only be said that leadership problems and family squabbles have been present in Gwani. Over the course of one month, four people have made separate claims to chieftainship in this 20 household village. People have begun to call me Chief Gwani and it appears I have about as a good a chance as anyone at taking the role.

awake @ 3am, raining

2006-12-02T07:01:00.000-06:00

"... in my mosquito net that is in this crazy house. Rusty tin acts a sieve. Been raining for 1.5 hrs & rain beginning to soak my sheets, blanket and mattress. Beginning to get soaked. Getting up to do some reading. This is a repeat of planting 2003..."
(taken from my journal from 25 nov, 2006)

James had it way worse than me. His bed right soaked, he spent the entire early Sunday morning sitting in a chair because there was not a big enough dry enough spot in the house that would facilitate lying down. I read most of the Malawi guide book for about 3 hrs and planned our Christmas vacation out and then lay down for a few hours before church.

The rain continued with fair bit of intensity for quite some time and church began about 2 hours late with poor attendance.

NGOing

2006-12-02T06:17:00.000-06:00

Here's a quick riff:

Development: what we claim to do, transformational, sustainable, what we hope for, dream of, talk in training about, call our work as such, have large conferences to discuss, strive for, reducing vulrabilities and increasing capabilities, progressive permenant God intended change, wax eloquent, takes time without much $ being spent, results often intangible, cash goes to the development workers and employees instead of the people, downright messy, takes guts, grassroots, takes more time than anyone has...

Service delivery: what we end up doing, sells the papers, makes for good photo ops, gets the money out of donor's pockets, the default that comes out of failed development, takes only the time we're given, relief, spoils beneficiaries for future development, excellent results (short term) and well financed, gets the money generally to the people in need, makes for a sweet and tidy final report...

BioSand in the news

2006-12-02T00:43:00.000-06:00

A couple of links including my fellow malawi intern James riffing on water being the 1st step:
http://www.samaritanspurse.ca/ourwork/water/feature-internship.aspx
Video starring James: http://www.samaritanspurse.ca/video/CTV_0919.BSF.wmv

Also if you would like to know follow a fellow intern in Kenya who both knows how to write and has a ratio of brilliant thoughts to posts verging on topping a million see here: http://on-to-africa.blogspot.com/index.html

And for kicks here's the malawi gov't website with Bingu front and center: http://www.malawi.gov.mw/

For maps of where our village is located first check out this map: http://www.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&z=10&ll=-13.974716,33.530273&spn=0.581029,0.881653&om=1
We live closest to Namitete on this map. Here's a quick sum of where we live: Sinumbe Trading Center, Group Village Sinumbe, Traditional Authority Kololo, Lilongwe District. To get to the village where we live, we drive 45 min on highway to Msundwe which is located before Namitete. Take a right turn after Msundwe and then its about 15 km's on dirt road. The villages we pass are Chibungo, Sante, Sani and then finally arrive at Sinumbe TC where Chiwe CCAP (the Presbyterian church we live and work with) headquarters is located.

comments on comments

2006-12-01T14:03:00.000-06:00

2 worlds regarding the left photo: laundry day.

So I just figured out none of the comments anyone has been trying to post have been posted thanks to some filters that were on the comment section. I had assumed people hadn't been leaving comments but was pleasently surprised to read tons of great thoughts and insites. So thanks to you all. And I've turned off the filters so feel free to drop a line.

Now that I'm basically in the village, i'll be posting mainly at the end/beggining of each month. For these times out of the village I'm staying in the bronze rooms at Korea Garden Lodge. For questions on the weather in Malawi, see here.

loving the tobacco...

2006-11-30T10:01:00.000-06:00

...planting... that is. Joined the lung cancer industry @ least for a couple of hours a few saturdays back. Aries (actually Elias, but the "E" has an "A" sound and L's and R's are interchangeable) picked me (actually picked me up, but that's how we say it over here) and we rode over together on our bikes (which I should add have been a big dissapointment, big time lemons). Aries lives next door to CCAP stationhouse where I live. He lives with his uncle who is the richest man in Sinumbe TC. They've got a generator and charge our cell phones free of charge. I've gone over a couple of times and watched TV which is quite the treat being in the village.

Back to the tobacco. Arrived at the field, there were about 10 of us planting including the big boss (Aries' uncle). Its like an excellent planter's dream. The farmer's field of preplanting expectations. A group moved ahead of us tilling mounds to put the plants. The tobacco plants pulled that morning from the nursery were dropped on each of these mounds. Each plant very close to the size of the pine seedlings we planting in Northern BC & Alberta (though the roots are shorter). We divided into 2 groups and then homo plant style, started planting. Basically a tree planter's cream show. Planted the plants 2 ft apart by stabbing a hand into the soft earth, opening the hole tucking the plant in (straight of course) and then firmly closing the hole with a fist or open hand. After, running loose dirt with the other hand over the root collar to prevent drying out. I only stayed for 2 hours but I think I held my own. And Aries said my quality was pretty descent too so good news :), (I'm sure >95%). It felt really natural and fun though of course tiring. 2 cold cokes were brought out to me in the field on the bosses order and though I felt sorta stupid being treated differently than the other 9 workers, I was grateful and downed them both. And workers I worked alongside were getting MK70 ($0.50) for the days work. Seeing as the cokes are normally MK35 cold I think I got off pretty good for only 2 hours work. They ended up working at least 8 or 9 hours. I was asked by Aries in the course of conversation in front of everyone whether I thought that was fair. How do you answer that sort of question? So I didn't and headed home. $0.50 = 5 trees....

trying my hand at negotiation

2006-10-16T00:02:00.000-06:00

Not a lot to report in these parts. Had some fun bargaining the other day to try to get our mold out of the airport. We arrived at the shipping docks and immediately a guy welcomed us at the car door ready to help us clear our package. Limbi thought maybe the airport authority was just really helpful. I knew there was something more to the story. So it became apparent after a time that a clearing agent would be important for the clearing our package. I grabbed a couple of loitering clearing agents cell numbers before we left the docks. We drove over to an office of our clearing agent to figure out all the paper work. We entered an office with 5 staff. Our agent began to discuss how much everything would cost and finally got to his bottom line. I explained that before he would put his number down on the paper he should know that we would be getting competitive quotes. I explained what I meant, that as I trusted him, I also trusted his competitors and expected good service wherever I would go. I wanted to point out I thought of these services as basically a commodity. He finished the quote and then I grabbed Limbi’s phone to compare with his competitors. It didn’t take long to realize that his competitors could do better. I brought back my research at presented it. He pointed out that he had an office and a business card. I pointed out that I wasn’t sure if I wanted to pay for his office or his business card or for the secretary in the corner to do nothing but sit and watch (well I said everything but the last part). At this point I became more and more animated. Quickly his price dropped. Still we left the office feeling the price was a little high. So in summary, I went to town on the guy, and he still took me to the cleaners. Luckily today we found a different clearing agent who dropped the price even further.

Hoping to stay our 1^st night in Chiwe (actually Sinumbe) this week.

Peac.e

well & wedding

2006-10-10T00:01:00.000-06:00

Friday, October 6^th, 2006

Went Assessing again today, this time to Chibungu.

One well we saw stood out. It was in the lowest spot in the area, and the water was very close to the surface. When the rains delay, people come from all around the area to draw water from this well. At some points in the past, people have had to queue all night waiting for the well to refill with water. I’m going to attempt to post a photo on the blog, but let’s just say that basically the water is completely unprotected (it looks like animals have easy access to drink straight from the well) and the water is murky with grass floating on the surface. In the photo our interviewer stands with his clipboard with a large crowd of kids jostling for position behind him. Water quality and scarcity issues.

Saturday, October 7^th, 2006

Went to a wedding today, 1^st one in Malawi. We were told the actual ceremony would start at 9 sharp. Most weddings in Canada start at least ten minutes late, so we shouldn’t have been surprised when the ringer bearer started down the aisle at 9:45. We actually never have met the bride nor groom but we knew the guy organizing it and he was kind enough to invite us. Malawians definitely know how to celebrate that’s for sure. The service was actually performed by an American who drawled so heavily that even I could barely understand him. Half-way through Dr. Francis (the director of the Evangelical Association of Malawi, the organization we’re working with) got up and got someone to interpret for him into Chichewa. It was quite funny to watch him to try to make the switch to using an interpreter (everyone had a good laugh when he went on and on and on without stopping for the 1^st bit). Today’s wedding occurred at the African Bible College between 2 graduates. Both are children of pastors (one Presbyterian, the other Baptist).

After the ceremony we headed down to the local 7-11 (yes there is a store called that, and we’re disappointed to report that they have no slurpee machine nor immediate plans to install one). Speaking of store names, favourite one I’ve seen recently: “Work like a slave to be like a chief” (seen on a sign in one of the villages). Near 7-11 got ourselves some pizza, most brilliant of pizzas.

On Coke: I’m an addict. Eric (a friend of mine who recently spent some time in Ghana) talked a lot about how addictive the stuff is in Africa on his blog (link found at left somewhere). I love the stuff, and fanta and sobo too. Yesterday, ate a piece of bread in the morning and some tea and then didn’t eat until 4pm at which time we chowed down on some biscuits (cookies) and a coke. Coke, I can truthfully say, has the power to fill an empty stomach. I love the stuff. And it’s cheaper than free (as they say). 35K or $.30 for a 300ml glass bottle. And that’s for a cold coke from the fridge. After having 3 or 4 cokes a day, and putting 2 or 3 heaping spoonfuls of sugar in my twice or thrice daily serving of tea, I have to say sugar & coke has become a friend.

Slogan of the day:

“Don’t kill the dream because we believe in it”

-on TVM (Malawi Television) in an ad advertising a theatre play in Blantyre.

Back to the wedding reception. Went on for about 2 or 3 hours. The set-up: in a gym chairs set-up auditorium style with seating as well on the back bleachers. On the stage was seating for the wedding party. The program contained speeches, gifts, cake-cutting (all in Chichewa though someone helped by explaining to us what was going on). The main event though was the blessing of the couple. Let me attempt to describe. First of all, because of past hyper-inflation, the bank has stopped raising the printed denominations of bills. So basically in CA$’s we’ve got a 1 cent coin, 4 cent bill, 9 cent bill, 18 cent bill, 45 cent bill, 85 cent bill, $1.70 bill, and largest bill being the $4.25 bill (keep in mind I’m doing a rough exchange rate translation). People were told it was time to give, the DJ started up the music, and people began dancing towards the front, resulting in a huge sea of people dancing at the front, each holding a wack of 4 cent bills. And then they’d put them in the bucket in a large display one at a time. Some would throw them in the air and after the ushers would go and collect the resulting cash off the floor. At one point the groom said a poem to proclaim his love to his new wife. To show their appreciation people ran up and started tossing money in the air right above his head. With people going up multiple times and smaller denomination bills being preferred (I’m guessing pretty much only 4-cent bills), it was obvious that people would run out of small bills. So, to facilitate a longer giving time, a large table was set up to change money into smaller denominations. Bills from the each giving time were cycled back to the table where they were sorted and then exchanged from larger bills. Pretty intense system.

Village Assessing

2006-10-05T23:58:00.000-06:00

So today we went out to Liwinga to do an assessment of the village. We met the village including the headmen and a crowd of kids who followed us everywhere.

So it’s dusty here in the dry season. Let’s just say my eyes were stinging like crazy every time the wind blew. And those were times we were sitting inside.

My filter explanation didn’t go as well as yesterday. Our translator did well, but Chichewa is his second language too. His English was great so that helped things from our end.

In some ways these day trips are wetting my appetite for being in the village. Its nice to see people and try to communicate a little, but I’d like it better if we could live alongside sooner than later.

On the way to Liwinga we spent some time in Chiwe. I saw an ax being raised high above a fence near by and heard the sound of chopping. I headed over to investigate. Quite the ax, hand-made it appeared w/ a heavy duty wood ball at one end. And held high above a mother’s head and brought down again as she cut the fuel for the lunch meal. I watched for a time, greeting the pastor’s wife and some of the others inside the yard. I then asked if I could attempt chopping wood. I’ve chopped a few logs in my day, and from watching realized the ax was sharp. A perfect moment to show my axing skills. Well, suffice to say, said ‘axing skills’ were not up to par. My aim was horrible. And realize there was no chopping block. I dropped the ax straight into the sand a few too many times and began to cheat by lowering the swing. The lady’s aim was unbelievable, could of gone head to head w/ my supervisor from planting Nate any day.

Our time in Liwinga was a little crazy. Almost what I’d assume it’d be like to be a politician. Even for a day I’m not sure if being a celebrity is what its all cracked up to be. Some sort of new normalcy needs to result at least I’m hoping.

We took a look at the sources of water today. Got to one well, someone threw a bucket and after bit of maneuvering up came the water. Turbidity was the 1^st thought on inspection. I asked if they ever let the dirt in the water settle. The response was in the negative. On top of that, to prove things as such, a bunch of the children started drinking straight out of the rusty pail.

CIDANSINA

2006-10-02T00:10:00.000-06:00

Friday, September 29, 2006

So I received my 1^st cell phn ever today. If you want my number, you can call me for it. How one calls Malawi I do not know, but apparently it does not cost me to receive calls. Tomorrow we will try to collect our 1^st supplies for the village.

We headed over the CA embassy yesterday to register and touch base. We met a few CA ppl looking to run internships in Malawi. Then after we left the main embassy, we realized CIDA’s (Canadian International Development Agency) office was in the same building. We just happen to be getting a fair amount of cash from the agency. So if we needed an excuse to call on them, we had it. Ushered into the head guy’s office, we had a nice chat about theories and practices of development. We met his family and then he sent us off warning us as everyone always does about getting killed (apparently vehicle fatalities are per vehicle in Malawi the highest in Africa). For the record, the mini-buses I’ve ridden on have been absolute luxury (and semi-pristine examples of safety) compared to the vehicles for transport I experienced in Equatorial Guinea.

The national food in Malawi is nsima (ground up maize). It looks a little like porridge (though smoother), but is formed into large lumps. It tastes as maize usually tastes (a little like potato without butter). And it’s decent in taste. I can live off this. The weight you feel in your stomach after a meal is much heavier than rice and it keeps you full for a long time. The method of consuming is derived from the way it should be with food, with ones hands. You grab a lump (quickly, or you’ll burn any feeling out of your finger tips) and drop it into your palm, kneading it until the heat escapes and it becomes a ball. Then you create a depression with your thumb in the middle of the ball and use that depression as a scoop to grab relish or sauce or chicken. Suffice to say, my eating skills are sketchy at best at this point. I am unable to knead my Nsima into anything that even resembles a ball, and my dipping skills leave my hand(s) a sticky mess. Still, I rather like eating with my hands.

to the village

2006-09-28T00:04:00.000-06:00

September 27^th, 2006

Today we visited the village we’ll be staying in for much of our time. We’ve got a good sized house and with a few minor modifications will be perfect. Met the pastor and also some of the committee members. The shocking (it should not have been, but was) was how little English there was in the village. Most appeared to speak only a little and the meetings we were in were 95% Chichewa without translation. So it most definitely is necessary to learn as much as possible in the short time we are here. Our work will depend on it. The pastor and school headmaster welcomed us warmly and showed us around a little while it was still light.

We took a short drive over to a large plain. A dam had been built in 2002 and a decent sized lake remained even after 6 months of dry season. The story behind the dam is a bit cautionary. An aid group came in during famine times in 2002 and used the dam as a work for food (maize) project. The hope was that the water could be used for irrigation and also as a bit of a fish farm. Suffice to say, today, in 2006, little is being done with the water. There is no fish project nor irrigation system nor much of anything. A passerby explained more about the project from 2002. Half way through we found out he had actually been on the committee set up to oversea the project after the aid people left. I’m sure the people who donated the maize and brought in the aid thought there was local participation and that sustainability could be expected.

On the way back just as it began to get dark, we met another truck coming down the road. He let us take the road and pulled off to the side. A little too much so. The red sand was thick in that spot and he got stuck. At least it wasn’t Alberta mud. We tried yanking him w/ a rope we found in the back of the truck, but it broke. Eventually w/ the help of a few passerby’s he was on his way and us on ours.

arrived in Malawi

2006-09-26T08:44:00.000-06:00

Sunday, September 24^th, 2006

It’s been a fun and crazy few days since arriving in Africa. But I’ll go back to the beginning.

We spent 12 hours of layover time in my ancestors’ homeland, the Netherlands. The airport is only a short 15 minutes from the downtown Amsterdam by train. I slept little on the plane, so tiredness and exhaustion were definitely a battle. We walked a large swath of the city, seeing the famous channels and thousands upon thousands of bikes. It’s definitely a beautiful city. I enjoyed just sitting and soaking up the sun on the steps in a big square watching people feed the pigeons, a street musician drum, and street cars and ride around the corner. Amsterdam, like most large cities has its issues. In most cities, they try to hide their issues, but in Amsterdam they showcase them. Suffice to say we did not involve ourselves in all that Amsterdam had to offer.

First song we heard in Africa: Shackles (by Mary Mary), music video playing in the departures lounge on a TV in the corner (Nairobi, Kenya).

We’ve really appreciated getting to know the director of food security for EAM. He has been very kind to us, introducing us to all of the different people in the EAM office and bringing us to church. We will be living with him starting Monday.

On one of our first days, I headed out with James to the local corner store area. It’s been a while since I’ve been shopping in Africa. I don’t know what I expected to feel, but it did not feel like riding a bike after a long winter. It felt more strange and uncomfortable and like we were being watched. They’ve got internet cafés all over the place, though it is a really slow dial-up sort of connection.

On Saturday, we took a walk through Lilongwe, wandering through the markets and streets. I started to get my feet a little bit more, enjoyed practicing “How are you” and “I am fine” in Chichawa (formal language learning starts tomorrow) over and over again with shop keepers. Entrepreneurship is alive and well in Lilongwe, with every shop tender trying different methods to entice me to their shop. A river separates the main free market from a smaller market area. Three large plank bridges crossed the river for shortcuts. But they were not free. These toll bridges were 10 Kwacha (less the $.10) for each crossing. My big find of the day: Strawberries.

So far I’ve had the opportunity to have some good conversations with people. It’s so nice being able to speak English with people right off the bat. I’ve really enjoyed hanging out talking with a guy from Zimbabwe up here working on construction. It’s fun to discuss the life. Someone asked me the other day about the realness of wrestling (WWE / WWF).

Today, we headed up to the local Presbyterian Church for the 7am English Service. The people were very kind and someone even gave us peanuts after the service. There were probably around 500 attending.

Muli bwangi

2006-09-26T08:43:00.000-06:00

Monday, September 25, 2006

I’m still kicking myself, stoked, saying “I’m here in Afreeka” wahoo!!! Went for a walk through the market today looking for a tie, jacket and a towel. Found 2 out of three, so it’s a success. So many unique sights and sounds, and so much to take in. A sea of people flowing and ebbing through the streets, a guy on a bull horn calling people to his shop. This time we had a guide, one of the EAM people. He negotiated a great price for us on the way up by taxi. We got talking about Canada. A friend of his had been up in Toronto for AIDS conference. He had heard the rumor that people in Canada of the same sex do not ‘often’ hold hands.

I’ve really come to appreciate a guy named Charles who’s in charge of mobilization. He has a heart for the local church and desires transformation of hearts and minds, not just programs. He also has a real WEC sort of attitude of missions. Told us we’re using the Jesus method by going to the village, living with people where they’re at.

We had our first Chichawa (the local language) lesson today. Our teacher is awesome. He’s been teaching the language for a while (I think to expats), and moves at a perfect speed and teaches with skill. It looks like there will be very little English once we get to the village, so please pray we catch on quickly.

A couple of Malawi Links

2006-09-18T22:01:00.000-06:00

Here's the weather and also climate info: http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/MIXX0002_c.html
Here's Wikipedia's entry for Malawi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malawi

Prayer Requests

2006-09-18T21:22:00.000-06:00

Here's a few prayer requests for the duration:

Please pray for me as I work in Malawi. Pray for unity with my partner James and also for a harmonious and fruitful relationship with our project manager David. I would appreciate prayer for health and safety in our travels and work. Because Malawi is a new project, wisdom will be especially needed in the many decisions that will need to be made. Please pray God would grow in me a love and appreciation for the people of Malawi and that the love of Jesus would be in all of my interactions. I would also appreciate prayer for my own personal spiritual growth during this six months and that I will stay dependent on the true giver of strength.

Travel Itinery

2006-09-12T16:46:00.000-06:00

Itinery:
19 SEP 06 - TUESDAY
AIR NORTHWEST AIRLINES FLT:1540 ECONOMY FOOD FOR PURCHASE
LV CALGARY INTL AB 1350 EQP: AIRBUS A320
02HR 36MIN
AR MINNEAPOLIS ST PL 1726 NON-STOP
ARRIVE: LINDBERGH TERMINAL REF: NP37JS
AIR NORTHWEST AIRLINES FLT:46 ECONOMY MULTI MEALS
LV MINNEAPOLIS ST PL 1900 EQP: DC-10
DEPART: LINDBERGH TERMINAL 08HR 10MIN

20 SEP 06 - WEDNESDAY
AR AMSTERDAM 1010 NON-STOP
REF: NP37JS
AIR KLM ROYAL DUTCH FLT:4341 ECONOMY
AMSTERDAM-NAIROBI KENYATTA OPERATED BY KENYA AIRWAYS
LV AMSTERDAM 2105 EQP: BOEING 767
08HR 35MIN

21 SEP 06 - THURSDAY
AR NAIROBI KENYATTA 0640 NON-STOP
REF: H28MYD
AIR KLM ROYAL DUTCH FLT:4312 ECONOMY
NAIROBI KENYATTA-LUSAKA OPERATED BY KENYA AIRWAYS
LV NAIROBI KENYATTA 0830 EQP: BOEING 737
04HR 50MIN
AR LILONGWE 1220 1-STOP
REF: H28MYD
VIA LUSAKA

17 FEB 07 - SATURDAY
AIR KLM ROYAL DUTCH FLT:4173 ECONOMY
LILONGWE-LUSAKA OPERATED BY KENYA AIRWAYS
LV LILONGWE 1045 EQP: BOEING 737
04HR 40MIN
AR NAIROBI KENYATTA 1625 1-STOP
REF: H28MYD
VIA LUSAKA
AIR KLM ROYAL DUTCH FLT:566 ECONOMY MULTI MEALS
LV NAIROBI KENYATTA 2245 EQP: BOEING 777
08HR 45MIN

18 FEB 07 - SUNDAY
AR AMSTERDAM 0530 NON-STOP
REF: H28MYD
AIR NORTHWEST AIRLINES FLT:45 ECONOMY MULTI MEALS
LV AMSTERDAM 1315 EQP: AIRBUS A330-300
09HR 05MIN
AR MINNEAPOLIS ST PL 1520 NON-STOP
ARRIVE: LINDBERGH TERMINAL REF: NP37JS
AIR NORTHWEST AIRLINES FLT:1541 ECONOMY FOOD FOR PURCHASE
LV MINNEAPOLIS ST PL 2120 EQP: AIRBUS A319
DEPART: LINDBERGH TERMINAL 03HR 03MIN
AR CALGARY INTL AB 2323 NON-STOP
REF: NP37JS

training up

2006-09-11T20:03:00.000-06:00

I've been really impressed with the training so far. SP has some definate resources and run a really professional show. We just went on a retreat this last weekend (for photos from that and training so far see here) in Canmore. It was tons of fun. I really appreciate the other interns. We're a very diverse bunch but enjoy each other's company. We walked up the to the top of the gondola at banff and then a few of us took the trip down in the gondola. Stayed at Canadian Rockies Chalets while not the being the complete "Moutain getaway" as billed, was still pretty swank.

Went by Chapters today looking for Malawi books. Though chapters lists 77 results on their website for 'Malawi,' not a one turned up in stock. Instead I discovered a book about EG I'm looking forward to reading about the last few years called "The Wonga Coup" (by Adam Roberts).

Update & Prayer Letter

2006-09-11T19:50:00.000-06:00

Many of you probably got this emailed to you, but here it is if you didn't receive it:

Here's a quick update of what I've been up to in the last few months and a look into what I'll be up to in the next bit.

I spent most of March and April in the UK working on Operation World (a prayer book and atlas for each country of the world). I really appreciated my time there. I got to know some amazing people and learned a bunch. One of my first large projects was to work through Christian Post and pull out any articles that would contribute to the knowledge base for Operation World. For a week or so I scrolled through and read a considerable amount of information about the persecution Christians are experiencing daily all over the world. It was incredibly eye opening and gave me the opportunity to pray through my day. Bulstrode, the headquarters where WEC's at was a great place to think, reflect and pray about my future. I came to no certain conclusions, but appreciated my time and was challenged daily by some great speakers that come through. I also had an opportunity to hang out in Northern Ireland for a week, which turned out to be the most excellent of experiences. I was blown away by the friendliness of the people and the hospitality they showed me during my stay.

After my time over the ocean, I returned to the forests and clear cuts of BC and Alberta, checking trees with Folklore (a tree planting company). I've worked with some of the same leadership for a number of years, and really enjoyed working alongside them once again.

During this time, I applied for and got a position as an Intern with Samaritan's Purse. After an August of relaxation I came out to Calgary to train for 3 weeks before the 5 months spent on the field. I've been super impressed with the training I've received so far with Samaritan's Purse.

I'm really excited to announce I'm being sent out to Malawi, Africa (not Maui, Hawaii, though I'm sure that'd be quite nice too). I'll be working in part on installing Bio-Sand Water filters in rural areas. This project is brand new so we'll be providing help with training and sourcing of materials, partnering up with the Evangelical Association of Malawi. I'm teamed up with a fellow intern, James Tan from Toronto. James has a Commerce degree like me, but he also has his masters and a full Chartered Accountant designation. I've appreciated getting to know him so far and look forward to heading out to the field with him.

I would really appreciate for you to partner with me in prayer in the next 6 months as I live and work in Malawi. Here are a couple of things:

Praise for the opportunity to come on board with Samaritan's Purse.

Pray God would grow in me love and appreciation for the people Malawi and the love of Jesus would be in all of my interactions.

Pray for wisdom and strength as I move to meet new challenges.

Pray for protection in all its forms (spiritual, health, security, etc.).

I'll try to keep it updated in the next few months.

Thanks and God bless,

David Bock

Misc...

2006-08-16T01:50:00.000-06:00

Now at home I find myself slipping back into slacker/hang-outer/stay-up-late/sleep-in-late mode. But its been awesome. For a quasi schedule, see here. Also I've been searching for a cheap but good laptop. Its been so good to see all the people I've been missing for the last 4 months.

on web sites that deserve eyeballs...
www.relevant.tv
This site is easy to throw on for a really good variety of videos and music. Check out Leeland's video "Sound Of Melodies". Excellently crafted song IMHO.

www.gapminder.org
Unbelievable way of making world data tangible and fascinating. These 'studies' of poverty, economics, infant mortality and the like are a must for anyone who cares about the majority world.

concluding thoughts planting 2006

2006-08-16T00:08:00.000-06:00

Its been probably one of my better years. I really appreciated the variety of tasks and jobs I got to do this year. I quality checked most days. But other days I'd payplot and sometimes I'd do computer work either working on maps or legends or invoices. I quasi-forman'd a few times too and was a tree runner for one day.

The end of it all was a Marathon of sorts. We travelled back from Slave Lake to Prince George to finish off the final paperwork. I knew there was a lot to accomplish. The first day was spent mostly helping out around folklore (satelite image here) and getting the trucks cleaned and ready to be turned in. After sleeping in until 11am one morning, the computer became my life, with nourishment and sleep taking a back seat. That nite I worked until 2am and awoke to begin the work day at 6am. We feasted that nite on a high end steak meal (I'd never been to a place where they quote everything in dollars with no cents listed). We tested the class of the place with shorts, hoodies, and general planter/slacker clothing and grooming (thankfully in PG money talks).

After a little more work I went to bed at 12am and awoke 'ready to rock' at the insane hour of 3am. As the maps inched out of the printer I slaved. At 8:30pm I took an hour off to liquidate my greyhound ticket (we ended up getting a Calmont truck to take back to Edmonton). I went straight back onto the computer at around 9:30pm and worked until 3am. We then jumped into the truck and drove to Edmonton straight through the nite and then on to Saskatoon arriving at around 6pm on Sunday. A few hours later than planned, but thankfully in one piece. Here's all the photos from Planting 2006.

Also had a wicked awesome reunion with most of the Manitoba planting folk at Justin's place in morden getting quite the hitch in a hummer (reunion photos).

one story...
I have grown to love the four wheeled beast known as a quad. I had no experience as a kid riding them, but I love the challenge of getting through slash, muskeg, wet and logs (well over them anyways) with 6 boxes on the back (or 3 when its sketchy) and 1 on the front. It can be super frusterating, but its nice to switch it up from checking. I was running trees (doing roads and burns) one day for Peter near the end of the season. I was on the way back to the truck to get more boxes driving along a grass covered road w/ a trailer attached. I'd taken the road a few times slowly but with every pass my confidence grew. As my confidence grew, my speed edged up. I noticed a wet spot up a head and slammed on the breaks. The trailer jack-knifed slightly and I suddenly noted that I was too far to the side of the road and was slipping. Suffice to say the whole outfit went over on me into steep ditch (about 5 or 6 feet w/ an almost vertical wall where the road was). I rolled out unhurt w/ out a scratch, congradulating myself on my quick dismount. On further inspection, and different conclusion was reached. I had not rolled out sufficiently to have escaped injury. But in what I believe was divine mercy, the trailer and quad propped themselves up on each other leaving a space for me to roll out. Escaping certain severe injury was quite the experience.
the coda:
The next morning I called Samaritan's Purse to solidy some details. Just before I said goodbye, Jen informed me they had been praying for my safety and that they really didn't want me to experience an injury that would prevent my coming for the internship. Suffice to say, great thankfulness, awe and praise was my appropriate response to a God who ultimately calls the shots and cares.

gracias a dios

2006-07-23T17:05:00.000-06:00

Planting still is going full bore, and should update a little more about that at some point, but I'm excited to say I just got accepted to go on an Internship with Samaritan's Purse from Sep-Feb. Its a water for life internship partially sponsered by the CA government. I don't know which country I'll be going to (There are placements in Asia and Africa) but all I know is that I'll be working inside with community leaders some where in the world to possibly implement a water filtration system or help in some other way. I'm looking forward so much to this opportunity. I'll be in Calgary for a 3 week training program starting aug. 28. Here is a quick overview of where I may be going and what I may be doing. Also Niger has been added to the list, but my lack of French means I'll probably not be going there.

the craziness...

2006-05-26T15:24:00.000-06:00

so last nite was my most expensive night in the bush... well at least coming in to town. Yesterday was our final day of the five day shift and we got ready to come into town last nite. I wasn't able to stay at Claire's because she's out of town. We heard that things were really full in PG, but assumed there'd be room in town at least somewhere. I've never before had trouble finding a room. Suffice to say we arrived and it was pretty biblical. Every motel and hotel (fancy and... not so fancy) was packed to the gills. I got the truck to drop me off at the Ramada knowing a fancy hotel like that would let me use there phone for some marathon calling. I called every Motel in the motel section of the yellow pages in PG. Finally with just about zero options, I found a B&B on edge of PG called the olive tree for a steep $180 for 3 of us. Most people from our camp ended it up sleeping in the trucks, or ditches or partying the night away crashing in stranger's hotel rooms. Turned out the B&B was in one of the swankist areas of PG. The house was really wicked awesome, but a little nicer than we're used to. The couple turned out to be really friendly, here's a photo from their website. They're apart of the assemblies of canada, and actually did an entire motorcycle ride through to all the circle square ranches in Canada a while back.

I just got the digital camera from my parents (thank-you so much!!!) and you can see a couple of new photos here.

I have the funniest story to tell about an unforgettable quitter named shamos (actually spelled seumos), but that will have to wait for another day....

& so it begins...

2006-05-13T21:44:00.000-06:00

Planting, Plotting, Checking... The year has started smoothly, with decent quality and really good production (especially for the beginning of the year). Having 5&2's hasn't hurt our spirits either so far (5 days on, 2 days off). That was the plan, but after 3 days of working the last shift we caught a case of the frozen trees. Our trees are right frozen, so we spent the beginning of our final morning sorting bundles, putting frozen boxes under the shade of the tarp and taking the thawed ones to the block to be planted that day. Most boxes had some frozen bundles and some thawed bundles so it became a giant sorting party.

On Sorting Trees as a Microeconomy: Our method of sorting could of been done many different ways. We could of had some people assigned to make frozen boxes and others assigned to make thawed boxes as in a planned economy. But instead I got to witness first hand the working of the invisible hand. A sort of chaos insued as often does in planting. People made thawed or frozen boxes based on what there was available or as some call it - supply and demand. Yes, some people screwed up, but the system worked for the most part and most efficiently got the job done. There was no dictation of how people should do it, just the drive to get the job done.

Speaking of economics, I would consider planting as one of the most capitalist work environments out there. So it always surprises me how many hippies (and other people to the left of center) this job attracts. And many of these people thrive, enjoying the competition, working harder than they ever would under a socialist or communist system. They see the fruits of capitalism and accept them for themselves while still pretending to reject it as a potentially viable system.

On bugs: Two people from Manitoba (I didn't know them before the season) told me they'd been checking themselves over every night with great care to ensure the removal of any woodticks. For the record, there are no woodticks in BC.

On rookies: There is nothing more funny than watching a clueless rookie wander around doing silly things. And some people have uttered the insult 'dumb rookie' toward many a rook. But truth be told, I love this part of the season where rookies are just learning plant. Yes, it can be painful, but the lessons learned are so tangible and often result in incredible strides in short periods of time.

On legends: Another reason I love this part of the season is for the opportunity to view the birth of legends. Who was there when Michael Jordan shot his first basket? Who showed the Edge how to play his first chord on the guitar? What a joy for Walter Gretzky to teach his son how to shoot on their backyard pond. And what a privilege for Wes to see his young rookie throw 1500 in on his first day only eight short years ago. So while I may only be a quality checker, I enjoy being here for the birth of legends.

One bonus of getting these days off is the opportunity to hit up Westwood MB tommorow. Looking forward to it.

So after a few days of tinkering, we have satelite internet hooked up in camp. It's sweet!! I've been working on getting a wireless network to blanket the camp for a couple of weeks now. And finally yesterday after pushing and pulling and proding we've got that up and running too.

Interesting Link of the day: Scooter's tree planting diary (he's currently Folklore's longest serving Supervisor) of the 2006 planting year.

Quick Update

2006-04-27T13:23:00.000-06:00

I actually was only home for 48 hours, packed in a wirl wind friday afternoon and then took off with Jessica, Philip and Timothy for Saskatoon. Headed over to Ebinaneezer Baptist for church and met a bunch of people from different contacts over the years. We thought there may be some people we'd know, but it was cool when random people said hey that we didn't expect to see. I hitched a ride to Brightwood Ranch with Jess & Nolan. Getting all our gear in the car was quite the challenge (awaiting photo evidence from Nolan). We arrived just in time to Brightwood for steak (famous alberta beef grilled to perfection) and hang out with some true Cowboys. These guys shared with us the joys of roping cattle and riding horse all day. Truly a culture change from Europe.

Uneventful trip up from Edmonton to Prince George. Now looking to make sure I see Benchwarmers, and I'll be set for planting.

going, going...

2006-04-18T17:19:00.000-06:00

00:35 (or 12:35pm) Well I will pack very soon. But first 2 quick items:

I sort of "discovered" a tunnel in the garden here at Bulstrode. It had been well known that there was a passageway, but the door had blocked the entrance for many years and very few (if any) had been through the blocking door. Some movie people came to film some scenes for something and I guess needed to use the secret passageway. I take it they broke down the door (with permission?). I was walking in the garden (yard) yesterday and happened on the hole and there was no door blocking the way. I tried to walk in, but it was way too dark. Later we brought flashlights and explored the passageway and large underground halls. We're still not too sure what it was used for, but speculations have ranged from a bunker to meeting place for some sort of secret society. Suffice to say the mystery remains, but feel free to take a look at the photos for yourself and speculate in the comment sections if you'd like.

Item number two (before I play one last LAN game of UT w/ my co-workers) is a very interesting article on Northern Ireland put out by the economist (kudos to a Canadian friend for the tip). It makes me want to go back to Belfast and learn more. It some ways its the same N. Ireland and some ways very different. No mention of Belfast being the safest large city in the world in this article. Still, definately worth a read. Its well researched and chalk full of stats.

Update: 2:05am and now its really time to go pack :)

London

2006-04-16T06:00:00.000-06:00

Fun trip to London yesterday. Photos can be found here. Its flipping expensive to even get to London from where we're at in Gerrard's Cross. It costed us £9 (CA$19) return.

Flo & Marcus both had a couple of friends come from Germony, so I tagged along with whatever looked fun. When you go to London there are a few sites that are obligatory. So for the 1st couple of hours I banged them off 1,2,3. First off was Buckingham Palace. What a hole. That might be slight hyperbole, but it still is not much to look at other than those cool guys with big fur hats. And as a couple of californian ladies I met on the underground tube put it, they're too skinny and wouldn't really be able to guard anything. Luckily for the queen, there a couple of guys with not bad looking guns standing guard too, though a little more off to the side. Thus began my facination with the interactions between tourists and guys with really big guns.

Next up was 10 Downing Street where I did not meet Tony Blair but did get another super cool photo (exaterating again) of a guy with a big gun. Our subway entrance happened to be right in front of Big Ben so obligatory photo proof was obtained.

Aside on travel: I learned from my time in Belfast to through caution to the wind and talk to random strangers. In London, I had been told, people on the subway look down and don't generally talk to strange people. This may be true in general, but on an Easter saturday in April, there were fewer British Londoners out and about in the city, and instead many tourists and travelers from all over the world. Neatest people I met were 2 Christian Brazilians who had come to London to learn english. They live right in the centre near the Tower Bridge. They were really nice and invited us to their Church. It's too bad I leave in 4 days.

Speaking of the tower bridge, we headed over to the Tower of London. The place was teaming with tourists and people. Noticed a guy decked out in Chicago bulls gear like it was still 1997.

People everywhere. The subway crowded, bumping into people, jostling for position. London is one crowded city.

Camden Town: London's Osbourne Village/Corydon area. Also quite crowded with fair number of people including so-called 'alternative types'. We came accross a street musician who did beet boxing with a mike. He had unbelievable skills and sounded like a 5 piece band. Rythm & News couldn't top this guy.

Speaking of street musicians, I've seen some great acts over here. Walking through the subway the other day I heard "Hurt" (NIN) being played by Johnny Cash from a CD. As I got closer I realized Johnny Cash had come back to life, lost a few years and now looked quite British (if the British look a certain way :)). The rendition was perfect. Unbelievable. I had the tune stuck in my head the rest of the day.

Flo, one of the German volunteers in Bulstrode learned the Canadian national anthem a while back. It cracks me up everytime I hear him sing it. He knows it better than many Canadians. In the middle the underground walking network he broke into a full rendition of the anthom (though he skipped the french). I just had to join him for it.

I met another Canadian that goes to a church that many of the Bulstrode volunteers attend. I was quite impressed to hear that he's 25 and working on his Ph D. in math. I was also excited to hear that he blogs.

For those that are curious below is a quick rundown on my general plan for the next couple of weeks.

Edinbourgh

2006-04-12T12:51:00.000-06:00

Hey all, haven' really updated this thing in a bit, but I'll give you a quick update.

Edinbourgh was a fun trip. To understand our trip better please open up this photo start page in a second window (they start about half-way down the page) and flip through the photos. Jenny, a roommate of my cousins' was out visiting, so we went up together from Bulstrode. We took the bus both ways, 9 1/2 hours each way. And worse, both trips were overnighters. Especially on the way there, we slept very little and my everything hurt. We arrived in Edinbourgh and Maciek met us in the bus station. If you scroll down, you can see a photo of them. I met them randomly in Belfast airport about 3 weeks ago and they invited me to come up to Edinbourgh to visit. We stayed at Kasia's place, about a 20 min. bus ride from the downtown across from a school. She put us up quite nicely in her flat and took us on a tour of the area which included a walk down to the ocean to this sweet pier/rock/dock type thing. The sky was quite surreal as you see in the photos. Our hosts were so good to us the whole weekend.

Had some wicked awesome fish and chips sunday afternoon just off the royal mile in a classic pub. I don't know what kind of fish, but it sure was good and very few bones.

Saturday afternoon we walked around and took photos of the town mostly. The tank was empty by saturday evening. I was exhausted, my stomach in knots and my appetite totally zapped. I felt pretty sick. I went to bed and slept around 10 hours (at least). Woke up encredibly refreshed and rejuvenated.

Sunday was church day. went to church at a really cool evangelical church right on the royal mile called Carrubbers Church. Then after we toured this super old Church. Some of the pillars date back to the 1100's. Thats pretty old I'm going to say. Hung out in a park for part of the afternoon and enjoyed a view of the castle.

In the evening I went to the catholic church with Maciek & Geidre. I understood very little (it was 100% in polish), but the songs were awesome and these 2 wicked guitar players played some sweet tunes. After the palm sunday festivities, we headed for the bus. Waiting for the bus, I made up a new game. When a stranger comes by, one person needs to try to engage them and time how long they can keep it going. Whoever gets the longest time wins. As I attempted to launch this game (no one else seemed interested and my first attempt at playing where I asked a young guy "hey do you have a cigarette" resulted in a record low score of 7 seconds), some guy came and started begging for bus fair. Bus fair isn't cheap. An all day pass is around $5.50. But since it was the end of the day and I didnt' really want to give him cash, i gave him my ticket. After my attempt at charity I realizated that I didn't have any change. I was about hooped because the bus driver won't change bills, and my smallest was $12. So I went on my own begging tour of Edinborgh. Suffice to say, the guy with the sob story did alot better than I. After being rudely rebuffed by a handful of edinborians, I finally realized a single fair could be had for all of $2.10 which I received thankfully from my companions.

Seen in edinburgh in the middle of a bridge over the train tracks: One guy sitting on the side walk passively begging, money on a blanket at his feet. And his hands busily texting someone on his mobile cell phone. its gold!

hasta luego

Oxfording & Bulstroding

2006-04-02T08:46:00.000-06:00

I'm nearing the half-way point of my time here in Bulstrode. It feels a little like I just arrived. The house has been hopping the last few days, there's been a ton of people here for a camp staff retreat and also WEC TREK . They send out about 50 people every year from Bulstrode, quite impressive.

Oxford was pretty sweet. Went up with Aaron, a fellow Canadian and a Frenchman named Daniel. Ok, as you may know I've been experimenting with different photo set-ups. I've tried using flikr (they want me to pay which I refuse to do) and also uploading them directly to the blog (painfully slow). I think I've finally found something I like. It's called Zoto and it rocks! Blaine did a decent test run for me and we concluded its one of the best photo uploading sites out there. You can check out my photos from the Oxford trip as well as some of my photos of my time in Bulstrode so far right here.

Met a guy on the bus from California who had studied in London for the last couple of years. His accent sounded pretty typical British. He had also travelled most of Europe and was planning to go back and work for his dad who was starting a restaurant chain in Cali. He was heading to Oxford for tests seeing if he could make it in. But, he told me, as this point he'd rather go to Cambridge. This guy must have some rich folks and a decent head on his shoulders. Funniest thing about the guy, turns out he's still in high school and has a couple of years left. I never would of been able to tell, he dressed like he already went to Oxford.

Went to church tonite. The preacher is a gifted communicator. To start the sermon he showed a live clip of the 7pm news (basically started his sermon @ 7) and then handed out pages of the newspaper to everyone in the church. He challenged us to pray through the news and did a little media literacy for good measure. I've been thinking a bit about prayer and the news but I really have felt the challenge tonite to pray through the news that I'm working through each day for this job. After reading the umpteen persecution story on Christian Post, I tend to get caloused, and pound through articles. But I need a new attitude... will be a good week.

One more thing: I made Jason's newletter for March
One last thing: I've finally got skype working so please add me. My login name is davidgeorgemichaelbock

where i live

2006-03-28T15:10:00.000-06:00

Here's some wicked-awesome photos of where I live taken by a volunteer working here. I've continued to enjoy the work, though now I'm in the throws of trying to get through mission on Christian Post and its a lot more slow.

Church here: Its awesome. I went to baptist church called Gold Hill near the mission. I've been singing worship songs from the UK (Tim Hughes, Delirou5?) for 15 years and now I get to sing along w/ guys who actually have the right accent :). The singing was sweet and the preaching was phenomenal too. I'm looking forward to attending there during my time here. One thing: preacher refered to a pawn shop, but he had to specify b/c I guess with the accent pawn and porn sound the same. I guess another english oddity.

I played Basketball yesterday in the small gym they've got set up (they call it the sports hall). I ended up playing post which is pretty funny but I tried to play big. I guarded another Canadian and we went head to head w/ me the whole nite. He was a little taller, so it was quite the challenge but I think I almost held my own. Thankfully, there was a German on my team who'd played organized and we did a bunch of give and goes. Sadly we lost anyways.

I can't seem to get my photos to load, but hopefully the problem will be rectified by next week. I'll see about getting some photos of a possible forthcoming Oxford trip this Saturday.

@ WEC Bulstrode

2006-03-24T13:17:00.000-06:00

Well, after all those adventures of my previous posts, I finally made it to WEC Bulstrode just outside of London, England. If you're curious where I'm at, here's an arial view from Google maps. All those buildings are apart of the complex. The buildings are layed out very illogically (in my opinion) and are almost impossible to find your way around. Thankfully, I'm beginining to. It almost appears as if they decided the exterior of the building and then tried to fit the floors in after. The people have been very welcoming here to me, and I'm starting to get to know people.

When I was in Northern Ireland last week, people asked me many times what I'd be doing, and I answered truthly each time that I had no real idea or clue, but I'd be dealing with data. Well it turns out I've got a dream job. I get to read/scan the news every day and grab the bits that would relate to Op. World. Right now I'm mainly reading through the archives of The Christian Post, a christian news site. I've been doing some filing, but mostly reading and scanning. That I'm a little bit of a news junky fits well with this project. Because I'm used to reading whatever is interesting and that sometimes could be off track, I've started a site to track what seems interesting and would like to read later. I'll post a few photos of the talent night tommorow. Cheerio.

more photos of northern ireland

2006-03-21T16:27:00.000-06:00

The Operation world team and me.
3 people I met in the airport living in edenborow. They're working with disabled people there. The two on the right are from Poland and the one on the left is from Spain. Funny story: We're eating in the airport, and they had bought some food and were eating it. I asked if it was good. Before I could say anything one of the girls grabbed a spoon picked up a spoonfull and pretty much shoved it into my mouth. Shocked was I.
Yes, this does resemble 100 fwds you've all received before.
Queens University Hall. I snuck in here (slpped in when someone came out) and took a couple of photos. I guess some people were coming to eat later. The ceiling is actually huge on this place.
Belfast

Inside of one of the catholic churchs
They've got a salad bowl in Belfast too.

more encounters...

2006-03-20T05:31:00.000-06:00

Ok, these photos are in reverse order, so it may be a little confusing. I'll write comments underneath each photo.
photo I saw in the Library. those metal hanger things for the old shipyard dominate the skyline of Belfast.
Caption on the below statue in City Hall. The tours were full on Monday (the day I left), so I took photos in the lobby.
Here's the statue.
Inside city hall. Not much nicer than MB parliment buildings.
Me and Robert with the "White Shadow". His car is infamous in Portadown. One of the only older cars I saw here. Its just beatiful work of art and tends to have a mind of its own. Can be blamed for any and all driving faults.
Me and Brazillian Daniel.
Daniel and Robert looking quite suave.

Workers in front of the Titanic. Me doing my best to blend in.
Berta, one of the Spanish people I met and a little girl. The balls are being blown up in the air.
Another one of the spanish people (forget his hame) holding the suitcase in W5
Me in front of the mall (converted from a church)
The Spaniards (well 4 of them anyways)

Random statue outside the bus station Europa
Random dark photo on the street

Got up early (7:30) friday morning, said goodbye to the great Wallace's. They were super good to me.

I just lost an hours work on here, so I'm sorry if I'm a little less descriptive this time around. Stupid Windows '98 and blogger.com.

St. Patrick's day in Belfast (I like the ring to that, even though the concept as N.A. sees it has been imported back to Ireland). They had a neat parade and celebration (here is the telegraph account), for the 1st time sponsered by the Belfast city council. I was warned that only catholics would be at the parade (why that mattered, or moreover why it was thought that it would matter to me, I do not know). I stood beside a man and his family. He explained a little more of the oppression that they had felt in earlier times and was really proud of the parade. There weren't supposed to be flags but there were tons flying about and only of one type (and here's what the telegraph had to say about that). The concert was headlined by the Bodyrockers (I only could handle 20 min's of them). As for the flag spat, my totally nieve perspective happens to agree with this women's.

When checking in at the hostel I ran into 6 Spaniards working south of the city. We hung out that night and the next day. My Spanish was terrible and their English was almost as bad but they were very welcoming to me. On sat we went to w5 (for who, what, where, when, why). It's basically Touch the Universe but way bigger. The coolest thing was a suitcase full of gyroscopes that when charged made it almost impossible to flip over (photo above).

That night I travelled to Portadown south of Belfast. But not before I took in part of the rugby match (ireland vs. england) in a local pub. When I asked someone the night before if they'd be watching it, their response was pretty straight forward: "of course".

On the train ride I talked with a couple of University guys (one working on his masters of law). It was quite a nice chat. We talked about a bunch of different subjects including the previous conflict. They talked opening, but the coolest thing was that I couldn't figure out what side they were born on. Really cool guys with really good heads on their shoulders.

That night I stayed with a brother and sister. I went to the youth service I'd been told about. It was really cool, reminded me of Meta in the early years. There were about 250 youth and college and career there. For singing, they have an amazing band. But the wild thing is that the band doesn't face the audience, but is off to the side. For the first few songs I wondered if were singing to a CD. Great speaker, and then went out for Chinese. Great atmosphere and people.

Yesterday (Sunday) was one of those days that demonstrates the craziness of life travelling.

8:30am I went for a prayer walk w/ Robert to the Catholic area. He'd done some great work here (they had a had christian centre where they brought both catholic and protestant kids to work w/), but things got messed up. Now they are praying about getting a house or two and starting something again. Some of the Christians who are looking to do this came out to the prayer walk. They're amazing people, full of passion for the area and for what God's going to do. There had been violence and tension during the troubles in this area, so Robert gave me some of the history as we walked through what I would describe as sort of 'the projects' (or low-rent housing). Many of the poles were painted w/ colours designating their 'side'. I didn't bring my camera because I didn't really want to mix motives too much (was I there for site seeing or praying?), but I did come to regret that too... I saw this phrase written across this large wall on the side of the wall in red. The red had run when it was slopped up there, making it look almost blood-like and read "All we need is love."

I went to church with a Robert and a Brazillian named Daniel. Daniel has felt the pull of Africa for many years and would love to serve the persecuted church in Nigeria. His family sent him to Northern Ireland I guess to learn the language, and minister. But his heart has really started to break for the brokenness of this country and is excited about something called 24-7 prayer (I think this is there website, though I can't find the UK chapter).

Anyways, we went to the Presbyterian church. I wish I had brought my camera again. To remember the Winnipeg Jets and the Winnipeg Arena they installed a trough in the washroom :). Brilliant I say!! The church was old and very traditional, including a door at the end of each pew and pastor high above the parishners. Pretty traditional service with an organ etc, quite different then the youth service the night before.

(aside) Close talkers: I've met a couple. The first guy talked so close I could feel the wet of his spit on my face, and my back started to tingle like crazy like the funny bone feels when it hurts. I know in Canada we stand too far away in general so I tried not to back-up at all, but it was wild. The second guy stood so close I couldn't focus my eyes on him, he was so close it was fuzzy, like reading a book to close to your face....

Got a ride into Belfast with Daniel. He took me to 24-3, basically a prayer room set up for St. Patrick's day weekend. Neat idea, with artwork, a boat, an attempt to write the whole bible out, guys playing guitar, etc. I think I've heard of this stuff going down in Canada, but it was my first time seeeing this sort of concept in action. And I met a girl there from Altona of all places. She knew a wack of people from the Valley. She's doing an internship up here in a church in Belfast. It was really fun talking to her. I even told my only southern MB joke and she laughed.

I pretty much had a cruddy day for the rest of the day. Bummed around the hostel, nothing was clicking. I decided to just head up to go to bed or read or something. I started reading for a bit, and saw another guy a few beds over reading too. I got talking with him. He's from Australia, and is on a 4 and half month trip through europe that will end up costing him 22 thousand dollars. He spent the first 2 months snowboarding through Europe and is touring around by himself for the rest. We ended up heading out to a pub together. He had a thousand stories and loved telling them. It was tons of fun. He actually got a ride in a porche from a lady from the ferry to Belfast. We both agreed that people here are amazing.

Later on, we hooked up w/ a couple of guys studying in the Netherlands, one from Canada, the other from Boston. We had a grand time for an hour or so. I got talking to the guy from Boston. He had a faith background, but has drifted. A month or so a go, he got up to see some Spiritual artifacts in Turkey. He described a picture (or sculpture or something) of Mary, but she's laying in the palm of Jesus' hand.

This guy from Boston has been searching and when he heard I was coming up to a Christian Mission, he felt that God had brought me into his path. Not sure what will come of it, but I'm hoping to continue coorespondence with him.

The two guys from the netherlands are gonna totally hook up my new Ausie friend, and he's going to stay at their place when he gets to the Netherlands.

And that's what I mean by the craziness of travelling. Can u believe that all happened in one day?

Yesterday I met some fun people in the airport (photo in next post). They told me they'll put me up in Edenburough. Don't think I'll make it up that way, but would be cool.

WEC's been great so far. I've been able to start working right away which is awesome.

2006-03-16T13:32:00.000-06:00

Eventually found myself in Luton airport (London) with lots of time before my flight. This was a good thing because when got to the gate to check my bags in, the attendant informed me that I was a day late! I had messed up the time changes (basically gone the wrong way on the clock), picked the wrong time (am instead of the pm) and messed myself over very nicely. Having travelled already many miles, and still with many miles to travel before I could sleep, I found myself paying £90 to get a flight to Belfast (the original costed me £20). If there had been a budget for the trip (I only had a total of £200 on me leaving London), I was in danger of stretching it.

Got a bus into Belfast from the International Airport. The bus driver helped me find a hostel on my map (thank-you so much Tim Houck), and dropped all the passengers in the middle of downtown on a street corner at 11pm. The hostel was about 10 blocks away, and this was as close as he was going. I caught up with a couple of girls to see if they were heading toward the hostel as well. They were going to some other hostel and I told them I'd help them locate it if they'd like. They lightly brushed me off. I told them "see you later" (as if we'd ever meet again) and took off down the street in the opposite direction toward my hostel (tough going because no one has bothered to put up any street signs). Checked in, checked my email, an hour later, the two girls showed up just as I was heading to bed. They had been wandering around Belfast for an hour completely lost.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Got my bus tour of Belfast: My brother, tim's photos from the trip being pretty much redundant to anything i could show you. Great tour guide, informative, funny. Initial impressions point to religion being a natural dividing line between unionists and republicans rather than the 'cause' of all the strife. Introduced me to some spots I'm gonna scout tommorow (the 17th) or the day after. Fascinating murals.

Took the train to The Wallaces' Place in Ballymena, North of Belfast. Unbelievably hospitable family, fed me, increadibly welcoming. Enjoyed chatting with Richard. In high school but I can easily admit that he knows more about politics, locally and internationally than I ever will.

Mr. Wallace took me for a tour of the city, showing me the sites and sounds. It's a really nice town, good place to bring up a family. We even went up to the birthplace of Timothy Eaton, a humble farm house (all considering).

Thursday, March 16, 2006
David, (an Irish guy about my age) took me on tour of the country-side. He's involved with the youth and young adults here at the church. He actually finished his seminar w/ Tim Houck a few years back. I remember him coming to Meta a couple of years ago. At the time the idea of the youth from Grant coming to Ireland was first getting hatched. It was great getting to know him. He took me up to the Giant's Causeway. We pounded out the trail in short order. It's the biggest tourist attraction on the northern coast, so there were some tourist-trap-type elements to the gift shops. Anyone up for a handtowel for 6£ (+$12) with a leprecon sewed in.

Aside: Price Parity Theory and law of one price quandries
Burger King Whopper
Winnipeg, Canada: on special right now for CA$1.79 on tuesdays (or is it
wednesday)
Belfast, Northern Ireland: on special right now for £1.99 (+CA$4) anytime
Answer being somewhere between cost of importing lettuce, tomato, maybe bun?; higher
labour costs (£5 min. wage), higher rental costs (even downtown Belfast can't be cheap),
and many other factors (here's a catch-all).

Took me out for Lunch at a great cafe type place and had the traditional ulster fry. Its awesome, though a little greasy. I was starving, so got the large, and couldn't finish it. Its sassage, ham and an egg all cooked up. Then two types of bread (corn and wheat?) are cooked in the remaining grease and soak everything that's left up. Also a tomato fried w/ it (they wanted to get one more food group in I'm guessing).

Went by a decent Christian Bookstore. Very similar to a Hull's, but smaller. I was pretty surprised to realize I knew pretty much all the bands in CD section. Basically seemed a cookie cutter of a North America 'CBA' store. TFK, Starfield (originally from Winnipeg), etc. represented.

Check out this map I found on the wall in my room. I guess Brandon is a major centre.

Heading back to Belfast in the morning. Check Flickr site on side for more photos.

continuing...

2006-03-15T18:21:00.000-06:00

awoke, Went on search to rid me of some of my money. I don't really want to be walking around with 400£ (unsure if the pound sign goes before or after) in Northern Ireland. I went knocking on doors inside bulstrode (it's tought to get to find your way around in the large complex) and eventually deposited my money with the finance department. Understanding British culture will definately be a goal of mine when I get back here.

To get to the airport for my trip to Northern Ireland I took a car, numerous trains, numerous tube trains (i actually have no idea what the difference is), and a bus. I probably around 20 people for directions in the course of trip to the airport. I met a girl on one of the trians that helped me make my next connection who rides horses for a living (i think) show jumping. I first asked her if she rode western or english ha... in england. She show jumps, has 5 horses which she works approx an hour day on each. Fancy that, eh. I found myself in downtown London in the middle of rushhour. Absolutely wild. People were running around like they were on pace to win the Amazing race. My connections worked out great. Its sorta funny to me when the trains are 4 min. apart and people still wip past running for the train. At one point, found myself in King's Cross station (I think that's what its called, could be something else), unbelievable huge cavernous old building.

over the ocean

2006-03-15T14:33:00.000-06:00

Thoughts and experiences on the trip over:

Left Hamilton WEC headquarters on Monday nite, got a ride to the airport ($40, but great company). I have to say I don't regreat for a minute spending the time and money to go to headquarters, its been an excellent experience and the people there are so hospitable and really just 'get it'.
Aside: I hooked up one of the MK's w/ planting, funnily in 3 days.

I haven't been sleeping a ton (packed till pretty late sun nite) and time difference, so i was pretty exhausted before I even stepped on the plane.

Air Canada is ghetto.

The attendants were nice enough, but the aircraft looked like it was last refitted in the 80's some time (ie. arm rests almost falling off, 3-colour projection screens i remember from church in the early 90's, enough room to squeeze a 'little person' into for the seats. Anyways the price was descent, and the food was ok. Sat beside an Investment Advisor from Toronto, though he didn't really want to talk work, so c'est la vi. Slept a total of approx 2 hrs on the plane.

London: Customs a breeze. Took the bus with all my gear out to Bulstrode. By this time I'm exhausted, driver said he would drop me off right at the gate to bulstrode (score, i show up without needing a ¬$30 ride). I dozed off, woke up, walked to the front of the bus to make sure the bus driver remembered I was back there and almost had a heart-attack when i saw we were in the wrong lane, and there was traffic almost upon us... (left not right, eh)

WEC Bulstrode is amazing as everyone has told me at Hamilton WEC. But what surprised me is how rundown some parts of it are (comparitively to how kept up Hamilton WEC is). Jason was surprised I made the trek up w/out a call from the airport, welcomed me, introduced me to the team (everyone was really nice to me). He let me sleep in his place, another 2 hr's sleep with increasingly lucid dreams, I awoke.

skipped spring, straight to summer

2006-03-12T23:03:00.000-06:00

You should note from the last post what we were wearing not alot of winter apparel. The weather here is amazing. Its been May and June weather, where you hardly need even a fleece. I walked somewhere today, I saw guys walking the dog in shorts. Compare Hamiton Temperatures in the past 24 hours to Winnipeg Temperatures. There is no snow here and green is already sprouting.

landed synopsis

2006-03-12T14:13:00.000-06:00

Here's a quick synopsis of the past weekend. I took the plane on friday, guy that sat beside me was a market researcher type guy who works for ipsis reed, and he was editing survey's that were going to be done. Interesting talking to him in light of my phone survey work, told him the tricks of getting low refusal rates (ie. code as a call back so someone else to gets the refusal). Decided air canada is a cruddy airline to get tangled in (ie. no frills whatsoever).

WEC house was really welcoming to me and had saved some food for me to eat. I met some of the candidates and hung a little and began the weekend-long obsession w/ mariokart64. (why they made another mariokart after 64 I don't know, but the game is brilliant)

Sat went to Niagara Falls, which was sweet, having been there about 10 long years ago. Here's a few photos of the exursion. Went with the head missionary of WEC Canada and also a couple nearing retirment who spent a bunch of years in Brazil. They have been really friendly. He's old but surpisingly computer savy and quite the Linux/Firefox/Open Office evangelist. Below is our group (without me who's shooting).

At Niagra falls, I got a little tired of taking photos of the falls (lets face it, you could go to google images and see far better images than the one above), but it was fun watching other people take photos and see people from all over the world.

So here' s few random photos of that:

The guy with glasses looks proud as punch :).

Here's the classic sign shot, that's always funny to me no matter how many times its done:

And that was my Niagara Falls trip.

One of the people I met @ WEC here is pretty funny. She goes door-to-door selling alarm systems for 16 hr days and she loves it. I've never met someone that seems to be always in the selling mode, down to trying to get the clerk at the blockbuster's to buy an alarm system when we went to get a movie. pretty funny. I asked if she felt bad about causing people to be more fearful, and less trusting of their neighbours. Her trump argument that wasted any thots I had the subject was that she had '50 rebuttles all lined up'. ha. Reminds me of survey calling.

Went to church this morning to the church I cashed in on (they supported me big time) when I was last through Hamilton. Turns out things have changed since I was here last in '98. They've moved church buildings, combined and attached up with another church and now have a new name. In fact, I didn't recognize anyone from when I was here last (this would surprise me, but Grant apparently turns over a third of its congregants every 2 yrs or something like that). The church that I went to one time and pretty much wrote off downtown (no one welcomed me, all older ppl) is now the cool church where all the cool ppl go. 'Craziness as they say'.

I'm stoked to go over the ocean and watched "Flight Plan" to prep myself last nite w/ some of the candidates. Going over to Rick & Anita's place for supper. Here's my photo page w/ flickr. I don't know how its gonna work for uploading photos (not enough space for the whole month), but should work ok in the short term.
out,
david b.

going, going

2006-03-12T00:14:00.000-06:00

What follows is an email I sent out on thursday of last week:

Hey Friends and Family,
I graduated recently with my commerce degree (majors in Finance and International Business). I've been looking for employment the last two months and an opportunity came up to help out in London, England. Having prayed and felt peace about this option, I am excited to report that I'm heading out tomorrow to help out with Operation World through WEC. This is the same organization my brother and I went with to Equatorial Guinea, Africa in 1998-2000. I will be there for a about a month (March 20 th-April 19th).
To give you a little background, Operation World is a prayer book and atlas giving facts, prayer requests, and reports for what God is doing for almost every country in the world (see also the 2001 edition for more info).
I\'m excited for the opportunity to help out Jason Mandryk (who head\'s the project) and his team.\n I\'d appreciate prayer for this endeavour. Please pray that God will draw me closer to Him and teach me many things through this experience. I don\'t know exactly what I\'ll be doing but it will probably have some thing to do with managing data and sorting information.\n Please pray I will be effective in whatever task I find myself at. Please pray for a good fit with team while I\'m there and for the whole process of putting this book together. \n\nJust before this time at WEC, I\'m following the lead of my brother Timothy and heading over to Northern Ireland to see the country for a week. Please pray for safe travels in a country that\'s generally safe but has some sketchy parts in its past.\n I hope to see you all soon. \nGod Bless,\n\nDavid Bock\nPS. I\'m planning to go back to the bush (BC & Alberta) as tree checker with \nFolklore leaving around April 25th and returning at the end of July. \nOn 3/11/06, Pembina Valley Bible Camp <pvcamp@mts.net> wrote: \n\n",1]
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I'm excited for the opportunity to help out Jason Mandryk (who head's the project) and his team. I'd appreciate prayer for this endeavour. Please pray that God will draw me closer to Him and teach me many things through this experience. I don't know exactly what I'll be doing but it will probably have some thing to do with managing data and sorting information. Please pray I will be effective in whatever task I find myself at. Please pray for a good fit with team while I'm there and for the whole process of putting this book together.
Just before this time at WEC, I'm following the lead of my brother Timothy and heading over to Northern Ireland to see the country for a week. Please pray for safe travels in a country that's generally safe but has some sketchy parts in its past. I hope to see you all soon.
God Bless,
David Bock
PS. I'm planning to go back to the bush (BC & Alberta) as tree checker with Folklore leaving around April 25th and returning at the end of July.

starting out...

2005-04-13T00:15:00.000-06:00

I'm not to sure how this all works, and most would say I suck it up @ writing. But I endeavor to throw a few words out there. The reason for the name for this blog? Most original thoughts I've had in the past have turned out to be not so original, so I begin with that disclaimer. Some day I'll put a witty quote up there sorta like google's "Stand on the shoulders of giants" ...except I'm not sure how I would be able to climb a giant, nor if I'd be able to balance...maybe he could grab my ankles...