Tough Times Don't Last, Tough People Do

          My experience in this program has not only been a learning experience for me, but it has also been an experience that has been instrumental in me looking at my generation differently. I used to be very cynical so when I looked at global problems such as climate change or broader problems such as poverty, I did not have a lot of hope for the future. Now, I have hope. This is not only because of my thirteen peers in this program but also looking at fellow students differently. We have a lot ahead of us in the future and school is a time to ensure that growth not only happens, but it happens in a positive manner that benefits many people.

Throughout my time at the University of Waterloo I have continually been humbled. In class, I am always amazed at the level of articulate answers and questions that some of the students have. Over time, I have had responses that I am proud of but being humbled never stops. There always seems to be another student that is more successful, smarter and more confident than me. I have started to use this as a challenge but these students are also my friends and I am proud of their accomplishments. My time in university has given me a good view of this generation and I am proud to say that I have hope that we are able leaders to solve future Canadian and global problems. My personal growth is challenged by these students and friends and all of the lessons I have learned along the way will be tested in Kenya.

The funny thing about personal growth is that it is tested in small ways every day. It might be a paper, work or stressful relationships but in each of us is a way out. There is a saying I have always really loved, “tough times don’t last, but tough people do”. It is an element of personal growth that I think we should all follow. We never get out of these times alone; it is our relationships that we build with others that help us get out and move on. Living in my new home in Kenya will be very different. I won’t have the same comforts that I have in Canada, both in terms of material things but also the friends and family I know I can rely on. All this means in Kenya is that I will try to be as open as possible and hope to build similar relationships in my new home. One of these places that I will attempt this is the organization I will be working for, Education for Life.

I will be volunteering in the slums of Kariobangi in Nairobi, Kenya for Education for Life, an organization that focuses on providing education to youth that grow up in slums and especially those that are neglected because they have AIDS. This deadly disease is an epidemic across the world but especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. Kenya has 1.5 million people living with the disease, the world’s fifth largest figure according to the CIA World Factbook (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ke.html). This organization is dedicated to combat this disease and is a grassroots, sustainable organization that is trying to change things on the ground, one kid at a time. Across the developing world, education is seen as the way out. If a kid is bright, he can get away from the slums, go to a proper school and hopefully get a job that could in turn lift his family out of poverty. With the world’s 86^th largest economy in terms of purchasing power parity, Kenya is in the middle of the pack for global economic power yet has large amounts of inequality, both in Nairobi and Mombasa but in the smaller cities and towns as well. The problems that exist in Kenya cannot be fixed with one solution; they will take time, patience and hard work by millions of citizens to overcome. The only way to do it is support the organizations that are working to make the country a better place and convince others to do the same. I think that Education for Life is one of these organizations and I believe that they are believers of the mantra “tough times do not last, but tough people do”. They fix what they can and do not let the substantial problems of their country get them down. I hope to fight through the tough times on this trip and help, in whatever way I can, to ensure that tough times won’t last for the friends I will make.

The Screams of Future Generations

I went to a talk by Romeo Dallaire on Friday at which he emphasized the importance of our generation and the need for us to lead. He told a story about a specific five year old boy in Rwanda who he saved from being killed when he was the UN General in charge of Rwanda during the genocide. This five year old boy was like his own son back home and any other five year old boy… innocent. That boy, based on the timeline of Rwanda, is now roughly the same age as me, as is Romeo Dallaire’s son. But don’t you think those two took different paths? And are that Rwandans’ friends that are the same age much worse off than the guys that I went to school with? This is because the world is not made up of the innocent and the guilty. We all have shades of grey in us, nothing is black and white.

I agree that our generation is extremely important, but haven’t leaders been trumpeting the importance of the next generation for decades? Isn’t this bit getting a bit stale? This type of view is, to me, really easy to fall back on; we are doing okay, the leaders today are just using the same old political rhetoric as always. But that is a dangerous way of thinking. We can either sit on our haunches and do nothing or we can do what the leaders of all past generations did and try to make the world a better place. Some were successful, some were not. Some were greedy; others were altruistic and died penniless. But each of us needs to strive to be the best that we can be for ourselves and our communities to become leaders.

Dallaire’s message for the university students in the audience was simple: shape the future. He also stressed that we, as citizens of the middle power of Canada, have a responsibility to protect the less fortunate in the world, whether in our own country or others in the world. To which I add that we need to connect with them and hear their stories before we protect them.

My last blog was about food in Kenya and I referenced a guide book to write it, The Rough Guide to Kenya. This reference caught the attention of the book’s author, Richard Trillo, who lives in London yet was reading and commenting on my blog because of the power of the internet. It is amazing how connected we can be, how I will be able to easily mail and call my family and friends while across the world in Kenya, how Obama can be taking a tour of Rio de Janiero and be receiving updates on Libya at the same time. We overlook the power of the internet because our generation grew up with it but the connections it can foster can cause great change. Imagine if you had a pen pal that you sent an email out to every week, but instead of sending letters to the United States or Great Britain, you were sending emails to Ghana or Mozambique. We could learn about the world, learn about poverty and ways to help those most in need. Wouldn’t this be a better way to use the advances in communications technology then sending videos of talking cats to friends (something I am quite guilty of)? We need to use our increasing technological knowledge to make the world better, not be sucked into a fake one.

In the movie The 11^th Hour, a line that really hit me was regarding “the screams of future generations, asking us to change”. I am trying to make sure that I try my hardest to fix these problems because I do not want to feel that I did nothing to change the world for the better. That is why what Dallaire was saying is so important. He is an extremely influential figure: a retired Lieutenant General in charge of UN operations in Rwanda, he twice ignored direct orders to leave with his troops from Rwanda to safety during the genocide because he had a moral duty to protect as many innocent lives as he could. He is also a Senator working in Ottawa right now to serve Canada, trying to make the government work smoothly. And he is telling our generation that we need to shape the future because his generation will not be around much longer. Among our generation are the leaders of tomorrow and if we strive to solve global problems and live in a better world, then we need to start working now on coming together to cooperate. I personally do not want to sit back in fifty years and know that I did not listen to the screams of future generations about global problems, from the poverty and the environment, and know that those are my children that will be harmed. So I will listen to what everyone has to say this summer and try to find out the best way to connect with everyone I meet and find out ways to help fix global problems and protect the many vulnerable and innocent people on the planet.

Food and Globalization

        A lot of my classmates have been writing blogs lately about the differences between Canada and their new, adopted country. Something as simple as eye contact can have major differences between the two countries and this emphasizes how much we should know before we go. Therefore, I will try to do a little research into the differences on the life sustaining substances of food between Kenya and Canada. All I really know is the simple, “they don’t have as much”. What are the differences between our two countries? How does as simple of an item as food become a major factor in globalization’s negative aftermath?

         The first indication of Kenya’s difference from the globalized food culture we have in Canada is the emphasis that they put on not wasting food and sharing with what you have. This contrasts the Western, individualistic sense of food as made for every individual person. This is why approximately one third of Western food is wasted. It is apparent in the restaurants that we eat at, where leftovers are tossed without a second thought, or at home when we forget to use the sour cream that needlessly goes bad. I have worked at a couple different grocery stores for five years and I have become desensitized to the amount of food that we throw out because it goes bad, hundreds of dollars of good food that is tossed daily. I could not see this happening in Kenya because they need the food that much more and would ensure that they take better care of such an important resource.

          Sharing whatever you have is also against the Western view, where everything comes in individual, bite size containers. We are not happy with people that constantly get food from others, calling them moochers or various other, less polite names. We also generally do not trust others with handling our food unless they use stringent procedures like chain restaurants would. Would you trust someone if they gave you a wrapped sandwich on the side of the road? Maybe you would, maybe you wouldn’t but in Kenya the idea of sharing food is much more commonplace and acceptable. Everyone needs help once in a while and this manifests itself in how people share with each other. Both lack of waste and the sharing that happens in Kenya is different from Canada and they are cultural changes that we would benefit from.

           What of the food I eat there? A guidebook I have been reading, The Rough Guide to Kenya, which is oddly quite thorough, mentions that Kenya does not have a standard national dish; most of the unique food is served on the coast and comes from Arabic traditions. The staple foods of potatoes, rice and ugali (cornmeal porridge) are mixed in with chicken, goat, beef or vegetable stew and several vegetables including beans and spinach. A Kenyan snack: apparently roasted termites are quite tasty (let’s see how courageous I am). Along with Arabic influence on the coast, there is also Indian influence in Nairobi and Mombasa, the two major cities, in much of their restaurants and day to day meals. Kenya has varieties of game meats and bountiful fresh fruit including coconuts and passion fruit that will make my stay more enjoyable because I want to experience real culture, not watered down Kenyan culture, accessible to Americans.

         While the Rough Guide says that McDonalds is still not found in Kenya, I will be living in Nairobi where, I am sure if I venture into enough of the rich areas of the huge city, I will be able to find Western culture with enough money spent. I am scared of the impact of the West on Kenya and how much I will be ashamed of the businesses that we do not blink an eye at in Canada and their global ambitions. Too often we do not see these financially driven expansions as the destructive movements that they are. These movements are harmful because they impose our culture on others and the cheapest price might become more important than human values of fairness, community and resourcefulness that Kenya has.

         Maybe food will not be as big of a change as I thought it would be except for the simple fact that I will not have as much. But I hope that when I see the differences In Kenya compared to back home and how Kenyans are still so overjoyed with what they do have, I will change even something as simple as eating habits back home. Our program director continually says that we will be amazed by how happy and grateful Kenyans will be and that is one of the changes I am looking forward to the most. They do not have as much but any group of people that have can eat roasted termites and still be happy are aspirations for all of us as far as I am concerned.

The Lessons of Responsibility

Getting the chance to do a trip like this is not easy. I had to get selected through an interview process, be willing to live in a third world country for three months, lose the income of a summer job, be willing to go through two terms of opening up myself to the world’s problems and be physically, financially, intellectually and emotionally invested in this program and the experience that it will give me. However, this sets up a difficult question: how will I connect with people in Canada about what I see and experience? After all, they will not have the same background, both in education and experience that I will gain in Kenya and have already gained here at the University of Waterloo. The only answer can be is that I will come back and engage others in the experience that I had. I will continue to use this blog to update throughout my trip over the summer, at least once a week. And all the support I have gained because of this blog so far has been a real big help, encouragement that keeps me in a good mood with my head up.  I have had a lot of people tell me that they will live this trip through me. That is what I want to achieve through this blog and through my conversations afterwards. I want you to live this through me.

                This trip has made me a lot more open, I am finding that I want to share what is happening in my life with a lot of different people that I would not normally talk to about myself. And this openness is opening up others as well and I am learning about their volunteer experiences as well. I have heard stories about trips to India, Brazil, various countries in Africa and Southeast Asia, Haiti, even different provinces in Canada and states in the US, all about doing different forms of volunteer development work. All of these stories, from the young and old, are lessons of the global world and I am sure most of these people saw this as a major personal development stage for them. So why is international volunteering this popular? And why do I consider it so important?

                These types of trips are popular because we do get to see things that most people will never be able to see: in general Kenya, wildlife and safaris but also slums, starving children and people dying of AIDS. They will not all be enjoyable sites but as a whole the trip will make an impact on each individual life.  I was drawn to this program because of the global experience it will give me and the knowledge to deal with global problems but also because of the opportunity to develop leadership skills. This leadership that it develops is not immediately obvious: I do not feel that I have become, or will ever become, a John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King. However, it has put me into a leadership role in different clubs I am part of on campus, on my youth hockey team as a coach and it has developed confidence to voice my opinions in classes and talks that I would not have done in the past. I have not even completed the program yet and yet the benefits personally are already palpable. But how do I give back with these benefits? That is where the major lesson I learned today strikes: responsibility.

                Everybody knows that line from Spiderman, “with great power comes great responsibility”. To be honest, it is one of those lines that I hear so often in pop culture that it has never really hit home like it did today. In class, we were talking about leadership and the program and how this is not your run of the mill volunteering trip. We are putting a lot of preparation into this trip and spending our whole summer over there. During this, it dawned on me that with this program comes a responsibility; to share this experience and my lessons from it. Not all of my friends will have the opportunity to experience the developing world and Kenya in particular. Not just safaris and Mount Kilimanjaro but the poverty, the disease, the positivity of the people, all of these global problems that we in Canada can help fix. We are a major part of the problem and I am going overseas to understand this.

The responsibilities that I am placing on myself for this trip? To ensure that I will tell people of this experience, the lessons I learned and ensure that I will change my life to become a better global citizen, as concerned with our brothers and sisters in Kenya and Uganda as I am in Kitchener and Waterloo. I promise to help any who want to live this journey through me over the summer by writing, posting pictures and giving back after because of the responsibilities that come from this opportunity that few get to experience.

I will not take this trip for granted.