vicsvoices

VOICES FROM OVER THERE

Renee Bernard presently serving in Mabamba, Tanzania recently wrote:

As well as teaching, I have what they call "societies" or extra-curricular clubs that I am involved in. I head the drama and dance clubs. Hopefully the passion that I have for dance and drama will make up for my lack of teaching experience in these areas. Forty-three students have signed up for the dance club. I also have two plays going, including an attempt at "The Sound of Music." The girls may not be expert actresses, but they will master the songs in no time, so it is bound to be a success. Last Tuesday we were shaken awake by an earthquake. It seemed to last a long time (20 seconds is a long time when your bed is shaking). It was only later that night that we heard on the BBC news that Morocco had been hit with a violent quake. We believe that we felt that exact same one, although it is hard to fathom, considering the sheer distance between Morocco and us. One of the Sisters with whom I live fell down while checking the dormitories and knocked out a front tooth. Luckily there are dentists in Tanzania, but probably just a dozen of them in the entire country. However, seeing a dentist when one lives in the bush is a bit of an ordeal. First you must travel at least six hours on mud roads. Then you have to pray that enough power is being generated in the town that day for the dentist to actually use his/her tools. Sister Pierrette is fine now but she needs to do it all over again in another month to get a permanent tooth!

From Matthew Cyr (VICS volunteer in Kiribati 1998-2000)

I have just returned again from Kiribati under the sponsorship of Queen's University as part of my master's degree. It was wonderful being back again, despite the fact I was arrested at the airport because my visa had not been sent to Bonriki from Bairiki! (Four hours in "jail" sharing stories with the police about fishing and life in general wasn't exactly the roughest experience, but definitely not quite the same warm welcome as my first time round!) All was quickly sorted out. The work went well. I worked with an Australian and local crew on the first two islets of North Tarawa for a few weeks -- before getting to my work on Bonriki and Buota -- searching for fresh water. Totally different work this time round compared to my last experience, but no less amazing! This time I got involved in very different aspects of the community, including deal negotiations and translating in the village maneaba. I also went back to Taborio about three times, to very warm welcomes, and it was great seeing many of my old students who are now so much bigger! I saw some old friends, which was very awesome. I am now pouring over the data and writing up the thesis that I am hoping to finish sometime by late summer or early fall at latest. One of the things I felt the school system was in greatest need of was the support of overseas schools and governments to provide scholarships abroad for students completing Form 6 or 7. I feel that this overseas experience for more students might provide the country with better tools to critically assess what western values it chooses to embrace and which ones it might be more selective about. I looked into that here at Queen's only to find that this school only gives full scholarships to four international students per year -- highly competitive! This is not very promising considering how many students apply here! I think it might be a little easier at other universities, but haven't checked them out yet. I am totally willing to brainstorm and work with others on this.

From Mary Martin (VICS volunteer presently serving in Nepal) we hear:

Yes, greetings from this land where waiting has become a fine art, where even I am getting better at it. Sometimes I am blessed with vibrant glimpses of the fruit of my waiting. I spent this past weekend running a training workshop for Nepali physios who will be clinical supervisors, mentoring our physio students in their clinical placements. There were over 30 physios, most with 10 to 15 years of experience, all keen to move the profession this next step forward. Most were graduates of the course that I started while I was here in 1983. As I watched our first physio grad move amongst his colleagues, so confident and skilled, I thought back to 1985, when he was our first and our only official graduate, after I had been here teaching for 2 years. And now he has just returned from doing his masters in Physio in Australia.
Ganga and Keshori's lives are also those of waiting. Keshori has just returned home after nearly three months in Anandaban Leprosy Hospital, waiting for his foot wound to heal. His foot injury was one that would never happen to us. One night he was lying on the floor in the house and he dozed off. A rat came and ate part of his foot! No sensation, no pain, no warning system. How blessed we are to be able to feel pain and thus be protected. The physio course continues to take huge chunks of my time, as we prepare to send the students out on their first clinical placements. Much tea drinking (an important Nepali traditional custom) and waiting seems to be a prerequisite to getting an agreement signed with a hospital to allow our students in. I have now signed three memoranda of agreement; ten to go! Waiting;a very time consuming business. I am sure that it must be good for the soul (it has to be good for something!). My friend Bishnu (the man who has had polio and cannot walk but who is now making wheelchairs) was overjoyed the other day as he gave me his phone number. He had waited 11 years to get a phone line!

Often coming home can be a greater culture shock than heading overseas in the first place. Part of coming home is the feeling of being overwhelmed and sometimes we just let things slide until we somehow get things together. That was certainly part of it for Rosemarie Meidenger (VICS volunteer in Kiribati 1999-2001). This year Rosemarie sent out her 2003 Christmas letter along with the one that she prepared but never sent in 2001, her first Christmas back. This is part of what she wrote in 2001:

I returned home in April 2001 after spending two years and two months teaching on the tropical island of Tarawa, in the country of Kiribati, in the Central Pacific - about halfway between Hawaii and Australia, east of Papua New Guinea. It was a marvelous experience for me, living a very simple lifestyle (electricity for two hours a day, collecting and boiling rain water for drinking and cooking, traveling by local outrigger canoe) among beautiful, hospitable people in their Kiribati culture. It is a culture in transition between the traditional way of life based on fishing and cutting the coconut, and a more modern way of life brought to the islands by Christian missionaries, cargo ships and the pressure on youth to get an education so that they can get jobs, increasingly in other parts of the world, mainly Fiji, Australia and New Zealand.
I taught in a Catholic boarding school in the village of Taborio right on the ocean. Of course every village is pretty much right on the ocean because the islands are very small - look this way and you see the beautiful turquoise lagoon contained by coral reef; look that way and you see the beautiful turquoise of the Pacific Ocean. The teaching (English in forms one to six, equivalent to junior and senior high school here) was such a rewarding and pleasurable experience - students who are fun loving, respectful, desperately wanting to learn, and with whom I virtually spent 24 hours a day. I fell back in love with teaching there. Music and dance (both traditional and sort of modern) are major part of their lives; music and dance are at the heart of the culture. There was a lot of laughter and joy in our lives. It makes me sad, however, to see the changes that are being caused by western ways. Kiribati culture is definitely being threatened by the emphasis on money, western clothing and now television. Same old, same old - even through it is still a developing country. The cash economy has only been part of their lives for about 50 years, and I visited islands where you can still trade with coconuts, not money.
The people of Kiribati are warm, hospitable and accepting of others. I learned so much from them and appreciate totally what they gave to me. As I said to the students when I left, I will thank my God each time I think of them (and that will be forever) and when I think of them my heart is filled with joy. - Amen.

Rosemary added the following:

As I re-read this letter in February, 2004, I know that I have omitted the times of experiencing and feeling anger, disillusionment, tediousness and - and - , but I know that this letter is true, and I feel frequently overwhelming waves of nostalgia and desire to revisit Kiribati.

Heather Wilde (VICS volunteer presently serving in Mabamba, Tanzania) writes:

I arrived in Tanzania one whole year ago, in January 2003. It seems like such a short time ago, but here I am. It is January again, and I am looking forward to starting my second year of teaching. For the past week students have been finding their way back to school. For each of the 380 girls attending our school, their journey back to Mabamba is a unique and individual story of time, money and energy, endurance and tenacity to locate buses, taxis, lorries, bicycles, rides with family
or friends, or long walks, sometimes for several days to reach the school. They started arriving on January 12th and still today (Sunday the 18th) a small and frightened girl was sitting with her father and younger sister outside the principal's office waiting to go through the receiving process. The father was dressed in very dirty and ragged clothes. He was barefoot and carried nothing but a long stick to help him walk. The little girl had a small suitcase, a washbasin and a laundry bucket. None of them spoke enough English to get through the registration without an interpreter. But the father was so proud to be here. His daughter had faced tough competition to gain a place in a very prestigious school. He held his head high, his eyes overflowed with pride and joy at the chance his little girl was being given. It melted my heart to see such yearning for an education, and to know that maybe, just maybe that this was the key that would lift this family out of poverty and onto a better path for the next generation. This father didn't have all of the money required for the first term of school fees but he promised to deliver the rest before the term was up. He was so sincere that we know that it will be so. It is moments such as these that are my greatest reward.