Thursday, March 27, 2008

Job Search, take 3

I have finally settled on a job that starts Monday. I know you are all holding your breath to see how long it will last, but I am really looking forward to it. I quit the local garden centre I have been working at this week. It wasn't a bad job at all, and although the pay was not the best, it is a nice distance by bike and the staff are very friendly. One lady in particular was especially friendly and I would have liked to have stayed if not just to work along side her. However, I was hired with the understanding that is was a temporary job to get them through the busy season and that as soon as I found something more permanent I would be leaving. They may not have banked on it only taking a week to find something permanent but that is how it goes. I love working outdoors but will have to go to the thrift store to get some more work clothes. As I write this post it is snowing. Yes, snowing! The hillside outside the house is covered with Spring daffodils and yet we are still in Canada and winter has not had its last word yet. Hopefully this is it.

So the newest job is also at a Garden Centre, way out in Sidney, a good 35 minutes drive so no biking for me. It pays slightly more an hour than my last job, but has a more ECHO-feel about it. They are quite picky about who they hire and they operate very much like a family owned business, with the employees making up the family. They are more of a specialty place and focus on rare and unusual varieties of plants, including a number of native species. While they do mostly retail sales, they also supply to landscapers and do a fair bit of their own propagation. Last week, the day after my interview, I spent 4 hours grafting dogwood and Japanese maple as a special project for the owner. I think this was the hook. I have never been pursued for employment as I have by this nursery.

As I said in an earlier post, the circumstances around this job are equally as 'designed' as the last one. During the two days I was working for the golf course, I ordered plants for a project there from Russell nursery. A few days after quitting the nursery owner called me to find out if I had received the plants they delivered. I then told him that I am sure they received them but that I was no longer working there so wasn't sure. He asked me why I quit as he knew I had only just started. After explaining my life to him he invited me out for an interview that afternoon. The rest is the history of job number three.

I officially start job number three on Monday and will be spending the week dividing bamboo. As we were talking about nursery propagation techniques last week in my interview we hit on the subject of bamboo and I asked him what he used to do their divisions. The tools they use are far from easy so I suggested using a reciprocating saw. He jumped on the idea and so next week I start a new job with a new pair of work gloves, multiple layers of clothing including long-johns and a brand new reciprocating saw, hopefully in pink. (Do they even come in pink?)

The other beautiful thing about the job is that they close down the week before Christmas until the end of January. So I guess I will get to go to C.A.R. for Christmas after all. God is good!

Helping the Cause

I found an old note yesterday written by a friend who gave funds for Gamboula school kids and it said "Happy to help the cause". The note got me thinkng about what is the cause? The cause is helping the suffering, the hungry, widows and orphans. But it is so much more than a cause. The cause is real people, with real feelings of sorrow, hopelessness and joy. With our highly digitalized age of e-mail and cell phones it seems that we can stay far more connected than ever before but also be so disconnected at the same time. I hadn't realized it until the last few weeks of living in Canada. For the last six years I have been living a highly relational life. On the ECHO farm when you want to talk to someone or find out how someone is you walk over to their house, or stop and chat on the way to work or out by the pond fishing for supper. In Gamboula there are no phones or e-mail. You walk down to your friends house to see how they are. There is no phoning first to see if it is a good time or not. The face to face encounter keeps us real, keeps us humble, keeps us involved. When you look into the eyes of your friends it is much harder to forget their humanness.

I started a new job last week (I quit yesterday as I found something more permanent). I have been working at a local garden centre this week and in the get to know your colleague encounters I always mention where I have lived the last 5 or 6 years. There are three general reactions. The first reaction is the 'that's nice, but I have no idea what you are really talking about and let's not talk about it again', the second reaction is 'oh my god, I could never live there and weren't you scared for your life all the time!' and the third is ' that is so interesting, please tell me more'. I totally understand the first reaction as most people have absolutely no frame of reference for what I am talking about, or feel some kind of guilt for one reason or another. The second reaction makes me laugh because it is the same reaction members of my family have had and it is usually from a seriously misinformed individual. However, it also makes me very sad when I realize that people with the reaction of 'oh my god I could never live there' have not ever thought that people just like themselves actually do live there. The 'cause' is seeing that real people, born with the same potential as ourselves live in the places where we would never want to live. They are PEOPLE whose race does not preclude them from feeling pain, suffering, hopelessness and fear just as we would if we were dropped into the same situation. Recognizing the reality of life in other places, even in the back alleys of the places we call home, is uncomfortable, challenging and propels us into action.

Let yourself know the reality and be propelled into action.

Thank-you to the people (you know who you are) who in your recognition of the human spirit have taken a keen interest in the people with whom we work and love. Your interest, questions and kindness keep my memories alive, keep me accountable to the faith I profess and remind me that we are not alone in helping the cause.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Job Search, take 2

If I ever had fears that I wouldn't find a job in Victoria, they have now been formally set aside. Now my only worry is which job do I accept. Not such a bad problem to have I suppose.

Why am I even talking about jobs, you may ask? Don't I already have a great one at a golf course? I did, but now I don't. I quit at lunch time on day two. While I know this is totally out of character for me, I did it and I feel sooo much better for having done so. It ends up that while I can weed and mow with the best of them, there was a whole lot more landscape design and actual knowledge about the plants required than I was prepared for. Doing the golf course job well and doing my masters at the same time seemed next to impossible or at least panic attack provoking. Had I been looking for a career position in horticulture this would have been an awesome position. However, I am not looking for a new career. I already have one that I am quite happy with and have taken a short break from in order to enhance by way of further study. Which leaves me wondering, what next?

I have applied for several different jobs, most at local nurseries (which still leaves me with the problem of not actually knowing much about local plant species, this not being the tropics) who pay very little and are kind enough to inform me before the interview even starts that I am highly over-qualified for the position and "Oh, by the way, what are your salary expectations?" To which I respond, "LOW". I am a realist and I realize that in this field none of us are out to get rich, and if we are then we are seriously misled! I just need to pay the rent and have time to study. So for now, I am working at a local garden centre until I find a more suitable job. I have been offered an equally low paying job at another garden centre, however, it appears to be more promising, is full time and they won't let me go at the end of the busy season. In fact, they may even send me on a cruise. If I do take this job I will tell you all about the serendipitous circumstances of getting it. Oddly enough, it is all tied into the golf course.

I talked to Clarisse on Saturday and she is well. I do miss her and I long to be back in Central Africa where I feel so much more at home. I feel rather lost here and wish I had people down the street to drop in on. We have been spoiled for the last 6 years but I believe it is possible to find that again, we just have to look in the right places. Maybe spoiled is the wrong word. Maybe it is just that we have lived what life can be and so we long for that again.

I will stop babbling. Our life isn't that dull I suppose. We do live with 10 llamas after all!





I took all my braids out just to look 'normal' for the golf course job, only to quit two days later. I did wash it before I started so, no!, I did not go to work looking like this. Despite the volume, I did lose quite a bit of hair in the process.


During Roy's visit last week we spent an evening doing tourist duty and Roy found an RCMP to have his picture taken with.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Another Stop on the Journey


We are at another stop on the journey, and this one has us back in Victoria, where we were both privileged to grow up. Darren is attending the University of Victoria and is completing a double major in computer science and geography. This will give him what he needs to work in 'Geoinformatics', which is well beyond what I can explain and given what I saw of his math homework, it is way beyond most of the people that I know.

Darren rides to and from school everyday and is doing at least 20km a day, so he is in great shape. Roy and I went to watch him play ultimate the other night and as luck would have it they were short players so both Roy and I had to jump in, saving the team and giving them their second win (just like Vancouver days). Actually, I don't think I did much more than take up space on the field, but that must count for something! Darren is busy most evenings with homework and studying so I am looking forward to starting my courses in May so I won't be pestering Darren with, "I'm bored" statements all the time. Actually, I have plenty of my own things to work on and books to read.

I start a new job tomorrow in the least likely of places. Okay, maybe not THE least likely place, since I am not working in a mall, a fancy office building, or serving in a restaurant, but I am working at Canada's oldest golf course! Yes, I have been hired as the head horticulturalist at a members only golf club in Victoria. Why did they hire me, you may ask. I don't know. But the superintendent is a very nice man, who is very flexible, so I can work in this position all through my schooling, taking the time off I need for my residency periods (3 weeks in May, November and April), the hours are flexible and the setting is the gorgeous Victoria seaside.

What is quite cool is the way I got the job. No, it's not what you are thinking. I didn't bribe them, or use some other method picked up from my time overseas. The week we arrived in Victoria back in December we were introduced to a lady at church who had a suite for rent. The suite is 750 sq. ft. attached to their house and is on a 5 acre llama farm. Yep, those large, camel like creatures that don't make a sound but spit if they don't like you! There are ten of them and they are quite fun to stare at through the bedroom window. Anyway, so when we went to go look at the suite, we knew we wanted it right away. It backs up onto a large park and a golf course under construction. Though it feels quite rural we are only minutes from Langford, the town where I grew up and a fast growing suburb of Victoria. Even at that, we are still only ten minutes drive from Victoria. Our landlady, who I'll call Sue, was telling us about the former tenant, a fellow horticulturalist, and she thought maybe her job was vacant. So she put me together with her former tenant, we talked and the day before I left for CAR I applied for her job. Sue agreed to hold the suite for us until I got back in mid-February, (God bless Sue), which was amazing since it is very hard to find a place to rent here, and the price is much lower than what others are finding here.

While I was in CAR, the golf course guy, let's call him Steve, called Darren wanting to interview me. He agreed for me to call him from CAR and I had my first interview with him from on top of a hill behind our house in Gamboula in order to get good reception. He asked me to call him when I returned to Canada so I did, had another interview out at the course, and I start work tomorrow as the head horticulturalist. Granted I haven't worked in the temperate zone for 6 years, haven't used power tools for a while, don't remember the names of plants or the seasons (yes, we have four seasons here), I am willing to put my best foot forward. As a good friend reminded me today, just take everyday as a day to do your best, work your hardest and find someone to bless. In no time at all, the journey will have you somewhere else and someone will be all the better for your time in Victoria. Maybe that someone will even be me!
Our new home. We are above the garage.