Some random pieces of news you may find interesting or just help you procrastinate. The first is a British minister who decided to spend her holiday vacation volunteering within my organzation SCORE. The next is write ups on all the canadian sport volunteers who were part of my team this year placed around africa and carribean. My own write up makes me look like pretty good, all lies though, including the water polo bit, it actually was university Intertube waterpolo intramural league, we lost everygame but one. The last was a tv show that interviewed me about interprofessional health care. Last year in uni I helped co-found my schools first interprofessional health care association - many have no idea what that means exactly, so if interested, please check out
http://www.commonwealthgames.ca/site/index_e.aspx?DetailID=1291
http://www.4shared.com/dir/460939/37d0f619/IHA_-_A_Channel.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/14/njowell14.xml
The extra pics
The big one above is a collage norweigan sport volunteer made of our General Orientation back in July, click on the smaller pic bellow and zoom in for the whole view. The other mozambiquan pics are from Jonothon site, who i travelled with in Moz. He bought a brand new huge camera and has been taking great pics of his own travels in Namibia, check out his site on the links portion of this site
As for now, I am a busy guy, and have been mostly working everyday since I got here. Things will hopefully slow down a bit come april, y’oh april…ugh. I’m in a big city now so I have alot more time on the internet and will try to email many of you in the comiing weeks,
The quote is from my colleague Mandla. The currency is Kwacha, and you won’t buy things for less than a few thousand Kwacha. 100 Canadian dollars is approx…375 000 kwacha! But oddly enough, it is actually very expensive here.
What is Zambia like?
I came off the plane having absolutely no expectations, or even a picture in my mind of what zambia looked like, or the capital Lusaka where I would be living for the next year. I thought “south africa was not the africa tv told me about…but zambias gotta be the real africa” Turns out Lusaka is much smaller than I had thought, and full of conveniences that I’d never thought I’d have, such as:
• A movie theatre with relatively new movies (is The Departed still new back home?)
• A Bowling arena, with upstairs salsa lessons on Wednesday???
• Subway, i’ve found three already (there are no subways in south africa, don’t know why)
• An Irish Pub
• An asian population (I also had the wacky idea that there were no asian people living anywhere in Africa, that is wrong – I don’t know how long they’ve been here, but there are certainly Asians all around southern africa, in the cities mostly)
In the past two days I’ve met some big names aswell I’m happy to brag about-
• The Dean of Physical Education of University of Toronto
• Program Coordinator of HIV/AIDS Initiative- Africa from the U of T’s Faculty of Medicine
• The General Secretary of the National Sport Council of Zambia
• The Zambian national basketball team (I told Mandla there was no way I could play ball against that intramural team that I saw practicing…oh…the national team, right)
The Mecca of NGOs
This place is a zoo, full of non-government organizations – I’d say packed. And yes, I’m working for just another one you could say, but damn, Lusaka is busting with them. Everyone wants to help out, but everyone has their own objectives, points of view and the biggest point – money. Lots of people are doing the exact same thing, and most do not work together directly, but some do. Some organizations have the same goals, get their money indirectly from the same source, work in the same area, but when it collaboration, the stakeholders need results from their NGO – therefore confusion and separate work.
Well that’s a simplified answer to a complex reality and I have only been here for a week and can’t fully judge yet. So after 6 months i’ll comment again about how it really is. 6 months…looks like I’m back in Halifax for vacation… May
Southern Africa is huge, and budget travel is readily available if you’re willing to sacrifice your human spirit. Theres plenty of combis (van like taxis) that will take you just about everywhere for cheap - a 12 hour ride can cost something like $30 canadian dollars, with cheap in country flights running just a bit more. But, budget travel in africa, is not like elsewhere, at best it is exhaustingly uncomfortable. The usual scenario is myself stuffed in the back between to big mommas both with 2 crying babies each in behind usual taxi drunk in a oven size vehicle, while the taxi driver roams around the streets/villages for a countless hours because there is a micrometer of space available where he thinks he can cram one more soul into. and then theres the roads, the heat, the highest car accident rate in the world…but hey, when you got a good combi, they usually blast the best big beat african songs all night, as loud as possible.
lets see…the past 30 days approx.
- 5 countries (South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Mozambique, Zambia (leave tomorrow)
- 2 train rides
- 4 flights (as of tomorrow)
- 15 Combi Rides (least being an 30 mins drive, most being 3 hours, max being 13 hours)
- 4 times Hitched
- 6 Buses
- 1 time I got to drive truck for 5 hours because my driver was sleepy
Happy Holidaze and New Years what what
Before i start, it may seem to you that you wished you were in the places I visited, but remember, while I was laying on the beach, I did miss my good friends and family back home, the snow (althought i hear there isn’t any back home) , the annual polar bear dip, and the days of just doing nothing, laying on my couch and watching a movie with equaly bored friends. I did miss those.
I started off the trip meeting up with fellow volunteer Thomas in Jeffrys Bay, one of the most famous surf spots in south africa for some serious downtime. Next we ventured to the big city life of Durban to spend Christmas, with hot beaches and bbq with other volunteers Jonothon and Lena. Body boarding, sun burning, it was hot, and even hotter with the amount of spicy indian food I was eating (durban has about 1/3 indian population with wicked delicious food). We enjoyed chilling out and our first cricket game, which turned out not much of a game, but really jsut a picnic time for people to enjoy the holiday sun with cool beers. Myself, Lena and Jonothon left for Mozambique to meet up with other canadian friends in Tofo along the coast, north of the Maputo.
Mozambique - como esta?
Fascinating country - the Portuguese captured this country way back in the day and the people are completely influenced by such European culture and language. The capital Maputo is unlike every other big city in southern africa as there are plenty of european style cafes along the streets - Spanish music playing at the clubs - and buildings that have a mid 20th century spanish feel to them, but with 21st century African wear and tear. in the 60s, the country had their independence and almost all the Portuguese left. Then came civil war which crushed most of the infrastructure in the country leaving it one of the poorest in the world. With the war ending only 10 years ago - there is plenty of growth, and a mountain of challenges. I spent most my time in Tofo, a remote resort beach town where most rich white south african call home for the holidaze. There are a few backpackers and camping sites, but soon int he next few years there will be massive hotels and condos lining the beach, but for now, it was full, but the beaches are so big it seemed untouched at times. just a stones throw away from the resorts are what the real Mozambique looks like, delicious mango, pineapple, and coconut trees surrounding the villages made up of straw huts - see pics. Mangos need to make a comeback in Canada.
From there it was back to Jo’burg (Johannesburg) and then to Cape town. I will be leaving tomorrow for Zambia to start my new position as Zambia team leader - and am almost as confused as yourself as what exactly I will be doing.
till next time, enjoy the snow, go skiing, play hockey, have fun, ack I forgot my sun screen today,
