Friday, December 12, 2008
An Update
A long time gone
I have time to write a quick note to say that we are alive, well, slightly overworked and a little bit cold. All in all, we are very well, though we miss our friends around the globe dearly and are especially missing you since it is now two years since we left CAR and one year since we left Florida. I don’t think I will ever know a time when I am not leaving someone loved behind.
Darren has finished classes for the semester and has two exams to write before Christmas. He loves his studies and every week sees more and more how he is being equipped for our eventual return overseas. He is picking up lots of hours at the hospital as well as weekend work at MEC. He returns to school in January and is set to graduate in May 2010 along with me.
I continue to work at MEC (Mountain Equipment Coop) in the cycling department while continuing with my online studies. I have completed nine courses so far and have three more to go before I start my year of thesis work. Time has been flying by. We are hoping that next year, when I am finished classes, we will have a little more time to enjoy the beautiful West Coast. For now, we catch ourselves gazing out the window as we long to be outside but papers and assignments keep us chained to our computers. But this we know will also pass...
Spring will be another busy time as I prepare for field work and Darren balances five computer science courses and work at the hospital. I will be leaving for Uganda in mid-April along with the rest of my class for a three week practical course assessing human security in various regions of Uganda. I have gained a lot of knew knowledge in the field of food security and am so thankful that I have been able to take this time out for valuable studies. Following my time in Uganda I will hopefully be meeting up with Darren in Cameroon for a trip to Gamboula, CAR where I hope to start my thesis work. I will either be looking at food security in the Congo or in CAR and will let you know the details as they firm up. We hope Darren will be able to spend at least two weeks in CAR getting reacquainted with friends and helping fix all the computer problems he can in those few weeks. I will stay in CAR until the end of June and return to North America in July to complete research and start the endless task of writing. It is a good thing I love writing.
It is threatening to snow today which makes it feel a lot more like Christmas. Things will be very simple for us as Darren is working straight through Christmas, including the 25th, at the hospital so it will be very quiet around the house.
As for CAR, the nutrition garden continues to serve the community and outlying areas, as well as a large number of Fulani refugees from the violence up north. The agroforestry program was closed down this September and 10 employees were laid off due to funding shortages from a combination of factors including the truck accident this summer. Eloi, our chauffeur and my dear brother, will be in court this Monday (most likely) and we will see what the outcome will be. Please pray for all parties involved, for an end to government corruption and for a fair trial. Also, as I write this, CAR is involved in an all inclusive political dialogue in an effort to end the violence in the northern regions of the country. Insecurity in the country has affected one quarter of the population and has led to awful levels of infant/child/mother mortality, hunger and rape. I have been studying the situation in more and more detail as part of my studies and it is heartbreaking. I am more convinced than ever to continue my studies and return to CAR as soon as possible.
To follow the situation in CAR go to http://hdptcar.net
Blessings and Peace be on you,
Ange
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
'Do More Good'
The quote below nicely sums up why we want to be present in conflict zones, normally the last place on earth anyone would want to be. Maybe this will help clarify why I have chosen the field of human security and peacebuilding.
"By being present in conflict zones, international organisations can protect civilians and help prevent abuses. Although such contributions alone will not bring CAR out of its crisis, they help to create the breathing-space needed to put peace and stability back on the agenda. Indeed, by helping people to meet their most immediate needs, humanitarians are creating a chance for tension to dissipate, people to come together and stability and development to take root" (Lanzer, T., 2008).
Lanzer, T. (2008). 'Do more good' in the Central African Republic. Accessed October 21, 2008 from ReliefWeb: http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/VDUX-7KLSAG?OpenDocument
"By being present in conflict zones, international organisations can protect civilians and help prevent abuses. Although such contributions alone will not bring CAR out of its crisis, they help to create the breathing-space needed to put peace and stability back on the agenda. Indeed, by helping people to meet their most immediate needs, humanitarians are creating a chance for tension to dissipate, people to come together and stability and development to take root" (Lanzer, T., 2008).
Lanzer, T. (2008). 'Do more good' in the Central African Republic. Accessed October 21, 2008 from ReliefWeb: http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/VDUX-7KLSAG?OpenDocument
Monday, September 22, 2008
Mama Maggi
Our dear mother, aunt and friend Mama Maggi died this morning after a long illness. While she never had any children of her own she has been a mother to many, including me. She was a graceful, gentle women, dedicated to her family, church and patients. Her life brought us blessing and may her death bring us strength and humility.
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Back to School
It has been confirmed from a number of sources that summer is over. I can hardly believe it as I am not really sure summer ever began, but as a scientist, I must believe the facts.
The fact is, our summer started with three weeks of intensive classes at Royal Roads University where I officially jumped into graduate student life (which actually means no life). I officially have five courses behind me and another eight or so to go by next May. My first year will culminate with a three week course in Uganda in early April after which we are let loose to start our thesis work. Even though summer was elusive this year, I have thoroughly enjoyed the classes I have taken so far and that, my friends, is why I haven't written a blog post in more than two months. My class work is so interesting and engaging that all of my creative energy has been used in writing papers. That and the fact that hardly anything worth writing about has occurred since I spend most of my time glued to the computer.
Darren has survived a summer of graveyard shifts and is now awake during day-light hours like the rest of us. I have officially reclaimed the bedroom as my study space now that it isn't used as a day-time sleeping sanctuary. Darren starts classes on Wednesday and along with studying maps, statistics and computers, he will be working two shifts a week at the hospital and a few shifts a week at our local Mountain Equipment Coop (MEC). The very MEC where I have been employed for the past 3 months. Our motto has been and remains, "Why work for different companies when you can work for the same one!". We work in different areas (me in cycling, Darren in backstock) but now we will both be tempted to buy outdoor gear we don't really need at really good prices. Darren also survived a summer of Ultimate with no major injuries and he is looking forward to the Fall season.
For me it is more of the same. I will be spending most of my time between work and study with a short break in October to attend NMSI's triennial conference in Bulgaria and Greece. My roommate during the conference, Jen, came up to visit us this August, during which time I did catch a glimpse of summer and spent a day in the lake and a night in a tree fort.
I suppose I should also mention that I did pass my motorcycle license exam and am now speeding (slightly faster than a scooter) down the roads of Victoria. It is far more fun than driving a car and less energy required than cycling, though I still ride my bike to work most days (too cheap to pay for motorcycle parking).
As for news following the accident, I talked to Clarisse this morning and her brother is able to stand but not walk. There is still one bone that has not healed but standing is good. Really good. Roy is now in Gamboula and the judicial aspects of the accident are in full swing. We are praying for a favorable outcome and for calm hearts and minds for all involved. We are especially praying for a righteous judge (there has got to be at least one in all of CAR) to hear the case. The nutrition centre is swamped with children (mostly refugee children of the Fulani) and the garden continues to help as it can. The nutrition garden is hopefully going to be the subject of my thesis work so stay tuned for more details.
It is also back to school time in CAR and we have sent the first wave of school fees off to our student in the capital. This is his final year of school so we are praying for wisdom and a good work ethic for him. We will be sending funds for the Gamboula kids shortly and anyone interested in helping is invited to email us or send a cheque as per the instructions on the side bar of this page. The peace process in the CAR has stalled (and is slipping backwards) so we are praying for peace in a renewed way.
All for now,
Ange
The fact is, our summer started with three weeks of intensive classes at Royal Roads University where I officially jumped into graduate student life (which actually means no life). I officially have five courses behind me and another eight or so to go by next May. My first year will culminate with a three week course in Uganda in early April after which we are let loose to start our thesis work. Even though summer was elusive this year, I have thoroughly enjoyed the classes I have taken so far and that, my friends, is why I haven't written a blog post in more than two months. My class work is so interesting and engaging that all of my creative energy has been used in writing papers. That and the fact that hardly anything worth writing about has occurred since I spend most of my time glued to the computer.
Darren has survived a summer of graveyard shifts and is now awake during day-light hours like the rest of us. I have officially reclaimed the bedroom as my study space now that it isn't used as a day-time sleeping sanctuary. Darren starts classes on Wednesday and along with studying maps, statistics and computers, he will be working two shifts a week at the hospital and a few shifts a week at our local Mountain Equipment Coop (MEC). The very MEC where I have been employed for the past 3 months. Our motto has been and remains, "Why work for different companies when you can work for the same one!". We work in different areas (me in cycling, Darren in backstock) but now we will both be tempted to buy outdoor gear we don't really need at really good prices. Darren also survived a summer of Ultimate with no major injuries and he is looking forward to the Fall season.
For me it is more of the same. I will be spending most of my time between work and study with a short break in October to attend NMSI's triennial conference in Bulgaria and Greece. My roommate during the conference, Jen, came up to visit us this August, during which time I did catch a glimpse of summer and spent a day in the lake and a night in a tree fort.
I suppose I should also mention that I did pass my motorcycle license exam and am now speeding (slightly faster than a scooter) down the roads of Victoria. It is far more fun than driving a car and less energy required than cycling, though I still ride my bike to work most days (too cheap to pay for motorcycle parking).
As for news following the accident, I talked to Clarisse this morning and her brother is able to stand but not walk. There is still one bone that has not healed but standing is good. Really good. Roy is now in Gamboula and the judicial aspects of the accident are in full swing. We are praying for a favorable outcome and for calm hearts and minds for all involved. We are especially praying for a righteous judge (there has got to be at least one in all of CAR) to hear the case. The nutrition centre is swamped with children (mostly refugee children of the Fulani) and the garden continues to help as it can. The nutrition garden is hopefully going to be the subject of my thesis work so stay tuned for more details.
It is also back to school time in CAR and we have sent the first wave of school fees off to our student in the capital. This is his final year of school so we are praying for wisdom and a good work ethic for him. We will be sending funds for the Gamboula kids shortly and anyone interested in helping is invited to email us or send a cheque as per the instructions on the side bar of this page. The peace process in the CAR has stalled (and is slipping backwards) so we are praying for peace in a renewed way.
All for now,
Ange
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
An update on grad school
I have survived the three week intensive start to my graduate studies at Royal Roads! It was actually a fantastic three weeks and while the classes are over I am stil in the midst of writing a paper for one of the classes. I am now into the first of my on-line classes, which I will be doing until November, when the next 3 week intensive starts. I thought that people might be interested to know what types of subjects I am studying and what the discussion looks like. As most of you know I have a particular interest in food security and the following brief essay is taken from my latest contribution to the class discussion on development and social policy.
"I am very interested in the topic of food security. One of the main accomplishments from my time in the Central African Republic was establishing a nutrition garden at the main hospital where we lived. The hospital has a nutrition centre where malnourished children are rehabilitated, sometimes treated for other conditions like TB or malaria, and then are sent home. Many of the kids come in too late for treatment and die at the centre, others come and go as food availability back home does not change, and others improve remarkably and continue with relatively healthy lives. The garden was designed to help mothers learn about the variety of foods it is possible to grow in that area, how to grow them and how to prepare them in a way that maximizes their family nutrition and fits in to normal food consumption patterns in the region. The garden has been running for two and half years now and has been very successful. Seeds from the garden are free to any of the mothers when their children are released from the hospital.
How does this relate to food aid? Before the garden, the nutrition centre relied 100% on products donated from the World Food Program (WFP). They would receive corn flour, yellow split peas, sugar, oil and salt. Of these, yellow split pea was the only protein supplement the children received as meat is very expensive and harder and harder to come by in the region. YELLOW SPLIT PEA DOES NOT GROW IN CAR. Even if it did grow, the product received was not plantable as the seeds were split and therefore damaged. Hundreds of mothers came to see this product dumped from China and the saviour of their children's health and they could not provide it for themselves. The garden has been doing trials of other beans that are suitable for the region and we hope to be able to one day replace the reliance on WFP peas with our own home grown beans one day.
What is holding this process back is that the peas from WFP come free, which is very attractive to a hospital that receives very little outside aid and cannot afford to run the centre without it. Using locally produced beans would require paying for them, so for now, the hospital is unable or unwilling to do it. The garden is run on about $150 a month, all from outside aid coming from the US and Canada.
It makes much more sense for the WFP to buy locally produced beans and then distribute those free of charge, if they must, to the various feeding programs that they support. At least then, when someone puts a few uncooked seeds in their pocket, there is a chance that something even more helpful will grow out of it.
To this end, Canada has made some progress. We recently untied our food aid so that rather than maintaining quotas of how much food aid must be in the form of Canadian grown food, aid agencies can ask Canada for cash instead. This is not the case in the US however. Read the following article to get an idea of how dramatically tied US food aid is to US producers and US transport companies. It is very shameful, and yet, they are looking out for their own citizens which is what governments tend to do, is it not?
http://www.worldpress.org/Americas/3139.cfm
As one who has been on the receiving end of food aid and shipping containers full of donated items, I have seen their harmful, rather than helpful, attributes. Take for example, the donation of used clothing in emergencies. While to North Americans it seems like an altogether generous thing to do to send our things over to people who have no things, what we are really doing is relieving ourselves of guilt while destroying local markets. Do we really think that there is nothing whatsoever in the places where our generosity is destined? By sending large amounts of anything, we are putting small businessmen, who earn a living and contribute to their communities, out of business. Why pay for a new dress when you can get one for free from the charity down the road. The amount that is spent in shipping our generosity around the world could be used to buy the same amount or more from local suppliers, thereby boosting the local economy, not creating jealousies by having some people walking around in 'American' flip flops while the unlucky ones are still wearing the 'local' ones, and not setting the aid worker up as provider of free stuff from America.
I know there is another side to this argument too. What do we do with our over-consumption, if we can't give it to 'poor people'? Won't we un-naturally boost an economy only to have it fall when we leave? By raising the demand for local food won't we skew the price and upset local production and consumption patterns?"
"I am very interested in the topic of food security. One of the main accomplishments from my time in the Central African Republic was establishing a nutrition garden at the main hospital where we lived. The hospital has a nutrition centre where malnourished children are rehabilitated, sometimes treated for other conditions like TB or malaria, and then are sent home. Many of the kids come in too late for treatment and die at the centre, others come and go as food availability back home does not change, and others improve remarkably and continue with relatively healthy lives. The garden was designed to help mothers learn about the variety of foods it is possible to grow in that area, how to grow them and how to prepare them in a way that maximizes their family nutrition and fits in to normal food consumption patterns in the region. The garden has been running for two and half years now and has been very successful. Seeds from the garden are free to any of the mothers when their children are released from the hospital.
How does this relate to food aid? Before the garden, the nutrition centre relied 100% on products donated from the World Food Program (WFP). They would receive corn flour, yellow split peas, sugar, oil and salt. Of these, yellow split pea was the only protein supplement the children received as meat is very expensive and harder and harder to come by in the region. YELLOW SPLIT PEA DOES NOT GROW IN CAR. Even if it did grow, the product received was not plantable as the seeds were split and therefore damaged. Hundreds of mothers came to see this product dumped from China and the saviour of their children's health and they could not provide it for themselves. The garden has been doing trials of other beans that are suitable for the region and we hope to be able to one day replace the reliance on WFP peas with our own home grown beans one day.
What is holding this process back is that the peas from WFP come free, which is very attractive to a hospital that receives very little outside aid and cannot afford to run the centre without it. Using locally produced beans would require paying for them, so for now, the hospital is unable or unwilling to do it. The garden is run on about $150 a month, all from outside aid coming from the US and Canada.
It makes much more sense for the WFP to buy locally produced beans and then distribute those free of charge, if they must, to the various feeding programs that they support. At least then, when someone puts a few uncooked seeds in their pocket, there is a chance that something even more helpful will grow out of it.
To this end, Canada has made some progress. We recently untied our food aid so that rather than maintaining quotas of how much food aid must be in the form of Canadian grown food, aid agencies can ask Canada for cash instead. This is not the case in the US however. Read the following article to get an idea of how dramatically tied US food aid is to US producers and US transport companies. It is very shameful, and yet, they are looking out for their own citizens which is what governments tend to do, is it not?
http://www.worldpress.org
As one who has been on the receiving end of food aid and shipping containers full of donated items, I have seen their harmful, rather than helpful, attributes. Take for example, the donation of used clothing in emergencies. While to North Americans it seems like an altogether generous thing to do to send our things over to people who have no things, what we are really doing is relieving ourselves of guilt while destroying local markets. Do we really think that there is nothing whatsoever in the places where our generosity is destined? By sending large amounts of anything, we are putting small businessmen, who earn a living and contribute to their communities, out of business. Why pay for a new dress when you can get one for free from the charity down the road. The amount that is spent in shipping our generosity around the world could be used to buy the same amount or more from local suppliers, thereby boosting the local economy, not creating jealousies by having some people walking around in 'American' flip flops while the unlucky ones are still wearing the 'local' ones, and not setting the aid worker up as provider of free stuff from America.
I know there is another side to this argument too. What do we do with our over-consumption, if we can't give it to 'poor people'? Won't we un-naturally boost an economy only to have it fall when we leave? By raising the demand for local food won't we skew the price and upset local production and consumption patterns?"
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