stopover.ca

i just got back Saturday afternoon from Africa, and found out that my grandfather died yesterday (Sunday afternoon) so I will be heading out to Newfoundland on the redeye tonight …

I am back in Freetown, Sierra Leone after spending about 10 days up in a remote area of the country in Kabala. we had a great time working with 4 local students and we brought them through a process theatre production to a complete play on HIV/AIDS. We were able to build the capacity of the local staff and i put together a 2 day workshop for the CAUSE Canada office as well.

Other than the lack of running water, many naked people, no electricity without the generator, the snakes and the ruts in the road large enough to swallow you whole it was a lot like home … in other words it was nothing like home … but i had a fantastic time, met a lot of incredible people, and participated in some truly inspirational work.

i should be home in a few days … depending on some airline issues …

safe and sound.

alhtough not without incident … most of the flight was fine, except the almost cliched leg with air canada into London. suffice to say i recieved the barest splash of vomit from the unfortunate lady beside me, in response to the overpowering scent from the lady behind us using her essential oils (in her words: its natural … so its fine. it was not fine)

anyways, i hit the beach after the final helicopter ride into Freetown … and i was in the guesthouse soon after.

i just ate a cheese/oregano pizza for breakfast and will now see the rest of the town. i am in freetown for a few days and should be able to report until i head up noth … no phone and no electricity…

i head to Sierra Leone this afternoon until the 26th of Nov … i doubt that i will get the chance to update this site over that time … in the meantime, have a great couple weeks!

I just spent the last 7 hours tearing my hair out trying to get ifilm to burn a dvd copy of my HIV/AIDS process theatre project for Sierra Leone (leaving next Thursday…)

i finally finished and was glancing through some archival material i have and once again came across this poem …

An Easy Essay
by Peter Maurin

The world would be better off
if people tried
to become better,
And people would
become better
if they stopped trying
to be better off.

For when everyone tries
to become better off
nobody is better off.
But when everyone tries
to become better
everyone is better off.

Everybody would be rich
if nobody tried
to become richer.
And nobody would be poor
if everybody tried
to be the poorest

And everybody would be
what he ought to be
if everybody tried to be
what he wants
the other fellow to be.

http://www.progress.org/archive/maurin01.htm

just keeps the tension of putting a dvd together in order to assist in curbing the 7% of Sierra Leonians with the HIV/AIDS virus, into a little perspective …

I ran across these two sites a few days ago, think of them as door #1 and door #2.

now the choice is up to you, which door do you want to enter #1, or #2.

its like divine russian roulette

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I just dropped this post on resonate, a list-serve looking at postmodern church issues that I have been enjoying over the last couple of months.

I have recently been thinking about the distinct Canadian voice.

I was just part of a 3 day conversation with the author Leonard Sweet, and he was asked that question … what is one of the negative or limiting Canadian distinctives.

Although the conversation began to range widely, at one point he suggested that Canadians need more heroes. We have a bit of an apathy issue, that could be solved by emulating the others who are larger than life. He suggested that this was a bit of the tallest poppy syndrome – chinese metaphor – meaning that we do not want to separate ourselves from the herd.

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