Where the Sun Shines

Since 2003 I have worked with Canada World Youth and Change for Children in many places throughout Africa and Latin America. This website has served as a medium to share my experiences, to tell my stories from "the field". This year (2010) I will be returning to Mozambique to work as a project supervisor again with Canada World Youth.

Monday, March 28, 2005

Bowling for Ali

Last week my dear sister Ali departed and left Eritrea.Her last week was a lot of fun. We visited all the fair trade gift shops and bought different souvenirs. We went out for lunch with my work-mates at the Blue Nile for some of her last Ingera for some time. It was a great lunch, as since everyone is fasting this days due to Lent, there is the most amazing vegetarian food, and to boot, we can now use the excuse we're fasting when offered meat, and that response is usually respected whereas the excuse I dont eat meat usually is met with strange looks and questions. And as a little farewell gift I took ALi to one of Asmara's finest restaurants -Roof Garden- for the East Indian Buffet- really its not much compared to Punjab Sweets or Bombay palace back home in Edmonton, but its Indian nevertheless. Finally, we had a little farewell party at Asmara's bowling alley- which was a hoot! The pins and balls are manually put in place through the efforts of a young boy at the end of the lane, as the machinery that once did the job no longer works. The place looks straight out the 1950s, as the decor has not changed, only aged since it was built. We ordered some Asmara beer and did a couple games, as some friends dropped by to bid Ali farewell. I actually won the last game, getting a strike every second round(the uneven flooring really worked to my advantage).

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Traditional Birth Attendants

All last week with work I had to get up super early and be at work by 7am, as everyday we drove out to a Sarajeka, a village an hour’s drive outside Asmara. In Sarajeka NUEW was organizing a 6d participatory workshop for traditional birth attendants. My job in Sarajeka was to film and document the workshops. A Danish NGO has funded this training and has requested the workshops be captured on film, so they provided us a budget to produce the film, and yours truly is responsible for the finished product. Its a little tricky filming as the workshops are completely in Tigrinya, so knowing what exactly to capture has been a little tough. In any case, next week, after we film the same workshop held this week in Tsada Christian, one of my colleagues will be working with me to go through the footage, to translate and assist me to select the best scenes for our 10 minute video report. From what I understand of the workshops they seem pretty interesting. The first couple days are spent discussing women’s reproductive health topics: pregnancy, child birth, and delivery. The women are asked to do role play and act out scenarios they have experienced in their work as traditional birth attendants (midwives). The next couple days they discussed in detail STDs, HIV/AIDS, and contraceptives. Finally on the last day they went over the male and female anatomy and discussed the consequences of FGM (female genital cutting) a widely practiced tradition in most villages throughout Eritrea.

Monday, March 14, 2005

Nearly Stranded in Senafe

Last weekend me and Ali decided to travel to Senafe which is quite a distance from Asmara located in the UN security zone just 25km from the Ethiopian border. We got a travel permit to go there but didn’t manage to get the historical permits you need to actually visit the interesting historical sites located in the area around Senafe. Regardless we decided to go anyways. It was one heck of a journey. We got to the bus station around 10am, but didn’t actually leave Asmara till 12noon, as in Eritrea you must wait until the bus is completely full till you leave! We got to Adi Keyh at 5pm and decided to get off as the trip was becoming a little unbearable and so we thought we’d find a hotel, dinner and do the last leg of the trip the next day. The next day we did the last hour of the trip, after numerous military checkpoints and finally got to Senafe. It was worth the trip, as Senafe is a beautiful town with remarkable mountains, hills, valleys, and people. We headed out to see the only historical site you can visit on foot ( a mere 2km walk from the town) its called Metera- the remains of an ancient city which had a one time thousands of years ago been the starting point for underground paths to Addis, Axium or Quaito. As we didn’t have the proper forms it took a bit of negotiating but in the end we got to see the site. We then tried to make it back to the bus station in order to catch the last bus to Asmara, but were unsuccessful, as we arrived 10 minutes too late.We were told that if another bus were to fill up we would go, but otherwise we would have to stay the night and take the bus back tomorrow. As I had an important meeting today(Monday) in Asmara I had to be back, so we decided to hitch-hike. One water truck, one military truck, and one Italian filled SUV later in the end we thankfully made it back to Asmara before 8pm. It was close but we were nearly stranded in Senafe…

Saturday, March 12, 2005

Happy Belated Women's Day!

The weekend Ali arrived we traveled to Massawa and took a trip to the Dhalak Islands. The trip was amazing, we had a full group of 15 people from many different countries. The snorkeling was amazing, I LOVE snorkeling and I even saw a shark!!!
After the trip we came back to Asmara, I worked Monday, and then we were off to Keren with my work to celebrate women’s day. There were similar celebrations going on throughout the country. My work really organized a great celebration recogizing the amazing efforts of women throughout the country. Early that day we started off at the women's training centre,where there was some dancing, singing and drumming,later that was followed by Ali's first coffee ceremony. After we had a great vegetarian lunch(due to Lent everyone is fasting- which means great veggie food). Then we headed to the stadium where groups of women and girls were marching to, carrying slogans of equality and women’s rights. There the stadium was packed with women, and there were all sorts of activities- more dancing and singing, a tug of war, a track race, and an awards ceremony for girls' with best academic standing.In short it was a great women's day spent with great, inspiring women!

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Keeping Busy!

Over the last week I have kept extremely busy with work everyday and with a number of different social engagements pretty much every night and all last weekend, which included hosting a major cocktail party, attending a French gallery opening, dancing at salsa night at the Intercontinental Hotel, attempting yoga, my regular aerobics classes, an Oscars party, a farewell BBQ, the screening of Hotel Rwanda at Cinema Roma, and a full course gourmet vegetarian dinner. So to sum up - life here lately has been a lot fun and pretty busy. Things are just going to continue to pick up as my sister, Ali, arrives tomorrow night, and will be here for the next three weeks. She is bringing her jewelry-making supplies and will hopefully run a couple jewerly making workshops with the women here and at the youth organization where the other 2 Canadian interns are working. Moreover, she is bringing me an external hard drive and some video editing equipment so I can soon start editing from my laptop here at the office. So I am hoping to start a short film on the situation of FGM (Female Genital Mutilation)in Eritrea. It is a major problem here (89% prevalence rate), and is an area in which NUEW has been doing a lot of work educating women about its consequences and alternatives.