+Dawn+at+the+Ranch+IV.jpg)
Just a quick email to let you know that we arrived safely in Dar es Salaam on the 11th.
Having an absolutly amazing experience! Reminds me a lot of the South Pacific, although the people and animals are a little different. I think some of the Canadians are rightfully getting sick of hearing me say "in the South Pacific...." The food, people and environment in UVIKIUTA - where we are right now - is beautiful. We're leaving for a three-week work-camp in Lindi early tomorrow morning (until Jan. 2). We'll be working on building a school in the mornings and teaching children sports and English in the afternoons when it's hotter. Apparently there's a 99% Muslim population there, and I'[m looking forward to wearing one of those long white robes. The heat is often quite nice, although it's sometimes too much. Some of the Canadians are really suffering from it. Went to the beach and museum a couple of days ago. Showers are with buckets, we fetch our water, laundry is by hand, and toilets are squatts, but we're pretty well used to that by now. Usually wake up around 5 am to the sound of cocks crowing, dogs howling, secatas chirping, and Muslims being called to prayer from a local minaret, and we go to bed in the dormatories under our mosquito nets around 9:30 pm. I'm at an internet cafe now with Sean, Edith, Andrea, Suzan and Rahel. We transfered on a pair of cramed (by deffinition) daladalas. As Sarah says, "a glass of water can become full, but a daladala can't." Getting used to being called "mzungu" (white person), but Sally (who's Asian) is having a harder time with that. Internet is cheap here (1000 tsh an hour), when I can get to it. The place where we are is owned by a friend of Rahel's, so she re-impursed my time when my email wouldn't come up. Don't know how much I'll be able to email in Lindi. Anyways, lots happening, and when there isn't we stay entertained by watching the monkeys or playing with the little boys (Alpha and Ima). I'll try to get you an official Missive on schedule, but that depends on whether or not there's easy computer access in Lindi. My Kiswahili is really improoving. Love to hear from you!
Rafiki yako,
Bradley
December 15, 2009
December 7, 2009
Missive #6: Tutaonana Canada!
December 7th, 2009
Mambo, Bonjour, and Hello!
At the beginning of November, Norbert and I attended the official opening of our work placement, the Camp Kawartha Environment Centre, one of the most sustainable buildings in Canada. There was harp and cello entertainment by one of the host mothers, and many recognizable faces from the camp and various community organizations. Bob, Ann, and Colleen Gainey, of the Gainey Foundation, were there as some of the biggest donors of the project. After hearing many of her aristocratic seniors stumbling over a fresh vocabulary of environmental lingo in an attempt to sound natural and accustomed to it, the younger of the Gaineys commented that it was good to see so many “old fogies” finally talking so passionately about the environment.
I was sick with a cough for the first part of the month, and lay listening to an audio book of “Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, a very interesting, entertaining, and enlightening book. I had caught the audio book bug and continued by listening to Cornelius Tacticus’ “Histories” of the decline of the Roman Empire, and Shakespeare’s “All’s Well That Ends Well”.
A few members of our group went swimming on the weekend, and kept the lifegaurds very busy. Tegemeo was treading water in the deep end of the pool, but he was doing so below the surface, and a lifegaurd dove in and hauled him out. Following that we had a swimming race, and Sally ran into the pool wall, breaking her nose and spraining a finger. Sean and Julie took her to the hospital, and the survivors slid on the slide some more and gave the Tanzanians swimming lessons.
On November 10th our Educational Activity Day group delivered its second EAD. This one was on Media and Communications, and I presented a giant interactive timeline of communications technologies from 4000 BC to the present. Jackson told us about recent global news issues, Deborah talked about the Environment Media Agency, Sally showed a variety of ads encouraging environmental stewardship and Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”, and Colin took us to a Chex TV news station. The same evening Wendy took Jackson and I to Trent for a lecture by the author of “The Prisoner of Tehran”, a woman who, as a teenager in Iran during the Islamic Revolution, had been imprisoned, tortured, and forced to marry one of her torturer before he was assassinated, she was bribed out of prison, and further bribed for a passport to Canada. She stressed that her life before the Revolution was the same as any young person in any Western country, and that she could not explain what her experience was really like to someone who had not themselves experienced it. Romeo Delaire, the Canadian general of the UN forces in Rwanda, was giving a lecture at the same time just downstairs.
The next day Jackson and I got up at 5 am and met with our group at The Bridge by 6 to catch our bus to Ottawa for Remembrance Day. We drove for three and a half hours as the sun rose through the tangled screen of naked trees. It broadened the horizon, silhouetting farmhouses in the orange glow. It reflected on the silver-grey crispness of the frost that coated the landscape, and coaxed a soft mist to blanket the icy stillness of the lakes. As we neared Ottawa we struck a traffic jam of cars which could have held five people each but only held one, and after breaking through that we got lost and found ourselves en route to Montreal, but we were soon reoriented with the help of Edith’s boyfriend on my cell phone. We were dropped off on a busy downtown corner and walked through the crowds, past the cars of ambassadors from many countries (including Tanzania) to the ceremony by the War Memorial. We craned our necks over the crowd as Charles, Prince of Wales, placed a wreath on the Memorial, poems and prayers were read, O Canada was sung, The Last Post was played, canons were fired, and a formation of F-16s roared overhead. Following the parade, we made our way over to the Fountain of the Eternal Flame in front of Parliament Hill where we were due to meet Mom and Dad and the Ottawa – Kenya CWY team. As I approached the fountain Mom ambushed me with a hug from behind. I introduced her and Dad to the team, and we met the Ottawa – Kenya team. The other team had a very different vibe from ours and had some very different experiences. They were going to Kimende in Kenya, the same place that my friend Dylan had gone, and their two supervisors, Rahab of KENVO and Ann-Marie of CWY both remembered Dylan from their days as participants. Mom, Dad, Jackson and I ate lunch on the steps of Parliament Hill, and we went on a tour of the buildings with our team. After going up the Peace Tower, Jackson and the others went to the War Museum and the Museum of Civilization, and Mom, Dad and I took the bus to their house. I hugged Clouseau, Mom gave me a tour of the house’s renovations, I ambushed Harry as he arrived home from school, and showed them pictures that I’d taken since seeing them at Thanksgiving. Dad drove me back to the Terry Fox statue in front of Parliament Hill where we met with the team in the evening. We all said good-bye to him, and walked off to our bus. On the bus ride back to Peterborough I asked Saomu to tell me about Islam, which led to a civil and very interesting three-way conversation, although it held under lying controversy for Jackson, who was sitting with us, and the other Catholic Tanzanians.
The next day we painted signs, planned, tried on traditional Tanzanian clothes, and solicited for silent auction donations for our Farewell Party and fundraiser that we will have in December. That weekend ten of us volunteered at the Kawartha Turtle Trauma Centre’s Walk-o-thon fundraiser. JP’s parents came to town, and part of the group went out to dinner and bowling with them. Norbert, who had never bowled before, was the triumphant and elegant star of the night. On Sunday, after going to Church with Jackson, I went to a local SCA archery practice. It was a lot of fun to socialize with the local SCA branch and to shoot again, although my finger callouses complained for days about my making them pull a heavier bow than my own after months without practice. Pain and lack of practice aside, I was not unhappy with my shooting and it was enjoyable to do again. Unfortunately the Canton’s fencers were reportedly very busy and were unable to come out.
The next EAD was on local government, and were given a tour of City Hall by the city clerk, then had a question and answer period with the mayor of Peterborough. The following evening some of our group attended a lecture by a native of Peterborough who had travelled to many developing countries to study the plight of women and slum-dwellers. The lecture was about the situation of women in Afghanistan, and was interesting to compare with the one that Jackson, Wendy and I had gone to earlier by the Iranian lady. After the lecture Colin, Andrea and I went to the “Dancing Blueberries” to share a giant waffle covered in ice cream, bananas and fudge sauce and a conversation about our experiences and impressions about the program past and to come. Stopping and thinking in retrospect, we truly have had some experiences and learned a lot of valuable lessons, many the hard way, and we’re not even halfway through...
On the weekend I enjoyed a visit with my Peruvian friends Pepe and Renee, having a wonderful conversation despite my minimal Spanish. I also went to a very interesting lecture by a professor from Trent, the head of archaeological excavations at the site of Minanha, an ancient Mayan city-state. The lecture described the Mayan Empire’s collapse and explained the reasons for it, drawing blatant parallels with our own civilization. That evening Wendy took Hoyse, Jackson and I to a Bah’ai feast of speech at a community member’s house in the country. It was very interesting and there were many kind sociable people there.
The following EAD was postponed due to some shocking, sobering news: Saomu had left the program. She had run away and left a note. This shocked us all deeply, and had serious ramifications for our group, CWY and UVIKIUTA, and many of us were in tears.
The following day, after we’d started to rally our surprised thoughts, we celebrated Scott’s birthday with cake and a movie at Rahel and Andrea’s place. On the way over,
The next day we took the Tanzanians skating for their first time. Frank, who’d roller-skated before, took to the ice like a master, and by the end of the hour most of them where skating impressively. I myself, previously a cripple on ice, surprised myself with how well I managed to fake it, and was even able to offer Jackson some pointers. Some of the Canadians, especially Scott, Sean and MJ, were amazing skaters who showered the rest of us with ice. We had races between the experienced, the intermediate, and the beginners who raced in teams pushing the two hockey nets for balance.
Being Scott’s birthday, we went to Rahel and Andrea’s that evening for a party. On the way over, a big truck with a dark man in it went by us and honked as Jackson waved. “Do you know him?” I asked Jackson, and Jackson explained to me that he didn’t, but he knew that the man was from Africa, and the man obviously knew the same of Jackson. Such was not the case, he explained, of Canadians of African decent, but only of people who were born and raised on the continent: they just know in a simple way that cannot be explained. I was intrigued. At the party we had cake and watched a Quebecois comedy. The next day was our last day of work, which we celebrated with a movie and game night at Sean and Suzan’s.
On Monday, and the next Tuesday, we had our last EADs. The second was headed by Jackson and I, and was concerning “Being Human”, spirituality and religion. It was December 1st, and the first snow had fallen during the night. It was only a little, but it blew Jackson’s mind! We arrived at the EAD venue early and stockpiled an arsenal of snowballs with which we ambushed the others as they arrived in an epic but decisive battle. For the EAD had presentations, an activity around the First Nations Medicine Wheel, a guided meditation, and a talk by Wendy on the Bah’ai faith.
The next day was the first of our debriefing period, and we engaged in a large discussion on everyone’s thoughts and concerns, using Sean’s water-bottle as our talking stick. We also took part in filming at Trent for a CWY promotional video, which involved – among other crazy things – running across a bridge screaming. Amazing how many passers by one recognizes immediately before one is asked to do such a thing. In any case, it was fun and we apparently did well despite our initial lack of enthusiasm.
After our next day of debriefing, Sarah, MJ, Edith and I gathered at Hoyse’s place to prepare the Tanzanian feast for our Farewell Party the following day. Although strength is apparently not considered to be a trait to be complemented on for Tanzanian women, I gained a great respect for them. MJ and I allied against the giant and solid head of cabbage that we had to chop, and a bowl of stubborn chipati dough which took a lot of time and muscle to chew a wad of, let alone knead a bowl of. The cooking was only a small part of the preparations which we had been engaging in since our Welcoming Party – gathering food and silent auction donations, rehearsing performances, booking the venue, planning, promoting, designing and printing invitations, thank you cards, sponsor names, programs, and more. Besides thanking our work placements and host families and saying good-bye, we were also holding the party to raise funds for the Yatima Group Trust Fund, a grass-roots orphanage near Chamazi, and the Kawartha Turtle Trauma Centre, a hospital for highly endangered turtle species in Peterborough. On the day of the event, December 4th, we arrived at 10 a.m. at our venue, a nice hall behind a United Church called Third Space. We spent the entire day arranging and decorating tables, cooking and heating food, rehearsing our performances, setting out the silent auction, and hanging the Tanzanian flag, CWY and Thank You Peterborough banners, 50/50 draw and silent auction signs, and sponsor names. Things went the Tanzanian way: there was a notable lack of urgency, but everything was prepared. The work that we’d been doing all day was all resolved just as the first guests began arriving. Many people, probably around a hundred arrived between 6 and 7 when Sally and Frank, our MCs, got things under way. After welcoming and speeches about the organizations we were fundraising for, it was dinner time and everyone enjoyed a massive delicious feast of Tanzanian and donated food. After that Julie and Hoyse spoke about CWY and UVIKIUTA, and I routed Sean from dish washing duty to come back stage in time for our performance. We played Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold”, I singing and playing rythm on guitar and Sean taking away the searing guitar solos. It went, surprisingly, even better than the rehearsals and was very well received. It was then Sally’s turn to do an amazing Chinese plate dance, followed by a good-bye song by all of the Tanzanians together. After that we all made our way to the changing rooms while Julie read out the auction and draw winners, and we changed into traditional Tanzanian clothes for a cultural fashion show. While changing into our traditional masaai toga-like clothing in the boy’s changing room, Jackson and Norbert started singing and dancing a masaai song. It was simple, requiring only gutteral throat sounds and stomping to accompany the words sung by Jackson, so we decided to make space for it in the program. After the fashion show, amusingly MCed by Sean and Rahel, we all sang a song in Kiswahili (“Wewe, ni nani jama?”), then gave thank you cards, framed pictures, and hugs to our host families and work placements. The event was then concluded, having gone surprizingly well. After adding it all up, we’d raised almost $1100 for the two organizations. The guests left, but the rest of us washed dishes and cleaned up ‘til about 11:30 pm.
The next afternoon I volunteered with tagging for the YWCA’s Crossroads shelter, then went to the Santa Claus parade on George St. The parade was impressive, but my outer appendages were not so impressed by the cold, so I headed over to Sean’s place for our group Christmas party for the warmth of the fire and Andrea’s hot chocolate and apple cider. We had a party as stereotypical as possible for the experience of the Tanzanians, including cutting and baking shortbread, building a gingerbread house (which was condemned soon after construction), watching National Lampoon’s “Christmas Vacation”, listening to Sean reciting “Twas the Night Before Christmas”, and eating a feast of leftovers from the previous day’s party which was much less stereotypical (mostly Italian and Tanzanian food). The Tanzanians did get to experience a turkey dinner, though, when we went to Hoyse's Lutheran Church on Sunday. We attended the service, and the Tanzanians sang a few songs for the congregation, then had a huge dinner as the reception. The minister called us all forward to be blessed for our trip.
Today, Monday the 7th, was our last group gathering, and it has snowed heavily. We talked about health, travel and flight issues, then made our own seperate tracks through the snow to fulfill our pre-departure needs. The cashier at the drug store raised her eye-brows at the two bottles of sunscreen that I was purchasing.
So tomorrow we have the day off to resolve our packing and other priorities, then at 3 pm on Wednesday we are off to catch our evening flight from Toronto. Hopefully the snow-storm coming in from the Maritimes won’t amount to anything flight-delaying. We’ll then be off to Hethro Airport in London, then to Dar es Salaam. I’ll try to send out a quick email when we arrive on Thursday or Friday, but don’t count on my ability to do so – no news will probably be good news. This is it!!!
Remember to check out mambopress.blogspot.com for pictures and articles by other members of the group! Let me know if there’s any suggestions that you might have to make these letters more interesting or accessible, and I’ll see what I can do. According to the Tanzanians, internet access is not an issue in Tanzania so the Missives will continue. Looking forward to hearing from you!
Wewe rafiki,
Bradley Clements
Peterborough, On.
Mambo, Bonjour, and Hello!
At the beginning of November, Norbert and I attended the official opening of our work placement, the Camp Kawartha Environment Centre, one of the most sustainable buildings in Canada. There was harp and cello entertainment by one of the host mothers, and many recognizable faces from the camp and various community organizations. Bob, Ann, and Colleen Gainey, of the Gainey Foundation, were there as some of the biggest donors of the project. After hearing many of her aristocratic seniors stumbling over a fresh vocabulary of environmental lingo in an attempt to sound natural and accustomed to it, the younger of the Gaineys commented that it was good to see so many “old fogies” finally talking so passionately about the environment.
I was sick with a cough for the first part of the month, and lay listening to an audio book of “Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, a very interesting, entertaining, and enlightening book. I had caught the audio book bug and continued by listening to Cornelius Tacticus’ “Histories” of the decline of the Roman Empire, and Shakespeare’s “All’s Well That Ends Well”.
A few members of our group went swimming on the weekend, and kept the lifegaurds very busy. Tegemeo was treading water in the deep end of the pool, but he was doing so below the surface, and a lifegaurd dove in and hauled him out. Following that we had a swimming race, and Sally ran into the pool wall, breaking her nose and spraining a finger. Sean and Julie took her to the hospital, and the survivors slid on the slide some more and gave the Tanzanians swimming lessons.
On November 10th our Educational Activity Day group delivered its second EAD. This one was on Media and Communications, and I presented a giant interactive timeline of communications technologies from 4000 BC to the present. Jackson told us about recent global news issues, Deborah talked about the Environment Media Agency, Sally showed a variety of ads encouraging environmental stewardship and Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”, and Colin took us to a Chex TV news station. The same evening Wendy took Jackson and I to Trent for a lecture by the author of “The Prisoner of Tehran”, a woman who, as a teenager in Iran during the Islamic Revolution, had been imprisoned, tortured, and forced to marry one of her torturer before he was assassinated, she was bribed out of prison, and further bribed for a passport to Canada. She stressed that her life before the Revolution was the same as any young person in any Western country, and that she could not explain what her experience was really like to someone who had not themselves experienced it. Romeo Delaire, the Canadian general of the UN forces in Rwanda, was giving a lecture at the same time just downstairs.
The next day Jackson and I got up at 5 am and met with our group at The Bridge by 6 to catch our bus to Ottawa for Remembrance Day. We drove for three and a half hours as the sun rose through the tangled screen of naked trees. It broadened the horizon, silhouetting farmhouses in the orange glow. It reflected on the silver-grey crispness of the frost that coated the landscape, and coaxed a soft mist to blanket the icy stillness of the lakes. As we neared Ottawa we struck a traffic jam of cars which could have held five people each but only held one, and after breaking through that we got lost and found ourselves en route to Montreal, but we were soon reoriented with the help of Edith’s boyfriend on my cell phone. We were dropped off on a busy downtown corner and walked through the crowds, past the cars of ambassadors from many countries (including Tanzania) to the ceremony by the War Memorial. We craned our necks over the crowd as Charles, Prince of Wales, placed a wreath on the Memorial, poems and prayers were read, O Canada was sung, The Last Post was played, canons were fired, and a formation of F-16s roared overhead. Following the parade, we made our way over to the Fountain of the Eternal Flame in front of Parliament Hill where we were due to meet Mom and Dad and the Ottawa – Kenya CWY team. As I approached the fountain Mom ambushed me with a hug from behind. I introduced her and Dad to the team, and we met the Ottawa – Kenya team. The other team had a very different vibe from ours and had some very different experiences. They were going to Kimende in Kenya, the same place that my friend Dylan had gone, and their two supervisors, Rahab of KENVO and Ann-Marie of CWY both remembered Dylan from their days as participants. Mom, Dad, Jackson and I ate lunch on the steps of Parliament Hill, and we went on a tour of the buildings with our team. After going up the Peace Tower, Jackson and the others went to the War Museum and the Museum of Civilization, and Mom, Dad and I took the bus to their house. I hugged Clouseau, Mom gave me a tour of the house’s renovations, I ambushed Harry as he arrived home from school, and showed them pictures that I’d taken since seeing them at Thanksgiving. Dad drove me back to the Terry Fox statue in front of Parliament Hill where we met with the team in the evening. We all said good-bye to him, and walked off to our bus. On the bus ride back to Peterborough I asked Saomu to tell me about Islam, which led to a civil and very interesting three-way conversation, although it held under lying controversy for Jackson, who was sitting with us, and the other Catholic Tanzanians.
The next day we painted signs, planned, tried on traditional Tanzanian clothes, and solicited for silent auction donations for our Farewell Party and fundraiser that we will have in December. That weekend ten of us volunteered at the Kawartha Turtle Trauma Centre’s Walk-o-thon fundraiser. JP’s parents came to town, and part of the group went out to dinner and bowling with them. Norbert, who had never bowled before, was the triumphant and elegant star of the night. On Sunday, after going to Church with Jackson, I went to a local SCA archery practice. It was a lot of fun to socialize with the local SCA branch and to shoot again, although my finger callouses complained for days about my making them pull a heavier bow than my own after months without practice. Pain and lack of practice aside, I was not unhappy with my shooting and it was enjoyable to do again. Unfortunately the Canton’s fencers were reportedly very busy and were unable to come out.
The next EAD was on local government, and were given a tour of City Hall by the city clerk, then had a question and answer period with the mayor of Peterborough. The following evening some of our group attended a lecture by a native of Peterborough who had travelled to many developing countries to study the plight of women and slum-dwellers. The lecture was about the situation of women in Afghanistan, and was interesting to compare with the one that Jackson, Wendy and I had gone to earlier by the Iranian lady. After the lecture Colin, Andrea and I went to the “Dancing Blueberries” to share a giant waffle covered in ice cream, bananas and fudge sauce and a conversation about our experiences and impressions about the program past and to come. Stopping and thinking in retrospect, we truly have had some experiences and learned a lot of valuable lessons, many the hard way, and we’re not even halfway through...
On the weekend I enjoyed a visit with my Peruvian friends Pepe and Renee, having a wonderful conversation despite my minimal Spanish. I also went to a very interesting lecture by a professor from Trent, the head of archaeological excavations at the site of Minanha, an ancient Mayan city-state. The lecture described the Mayan Empire’s collapse and explained the reasons for it, drawing blatant parallels with our own civilization. That evening Wendy took Hoyse, Jackson and I to a Bah’ai feast of speech at a community member’s house in the country. It was very interesting and there were many kind sociable people there.
The following EAD was postponed due to some shocking, sobering news: Saomu had left the program. She had run away and left a note. This shocked us all deeply, and had serious ramifications for our group, CWY and UVIKIUTA, and many of us were in tears.
The following day, after we’d started to rally our surprised thoughts, we celebrated Scott’s birthday with cake and a movie at Rahel and Andrea’s place. On the way over,
The next day we took the Tanzanians skating for their first time. Frank, who’d roller-skated before, took to the ice like a master, and by the end of the hour most of them where skating impressively. I myself, previously a cripple on ice, surprised myself with how well I managed to fake it, and was even able to offer Jackson some pointers. Some of the Canadians, especially Scott, Sean and MJ, were amazing skaters who showered the rest of us with ice. We had races between the experienced, the intermediate, and the beginners who raced in teams pushing the two hockey nets for balance.
Being Scott’s birthday, we went to Rahel and Andrea’s that evening for a party. On the way over, a big truck with a dark man in it went by us and honked as Jackson waved. “Do you know him?” I asked Jackson, and Jackson explained to me that he didn’t, but he knew that the man was from Africa, and the man obviously knew the same of Jackson. Such was not the case, he explained, of Canadians of African decent, but only of people who were born and raised on the continent: they just know in a simple way that cannot be explained. I was intrigued. At the party we had cake and watched a Quebecois comedy. The next day was our last day of work, which we celebrated with a movie and game night at Sean and Suzan’s.
On Monday, and the next Tuesday, we had our last EADs. The second was headed by Jackson and I, and was concerning “Being Human”, spirituality and religion. It was December 1st, and the first snow had fallen during the night. It was only a little, but it blew Jackson’s mind! We arrived at the EAD venue early and stockpiled an arsenal of snowballs with which we ambushed the others as they arrived in an epic but decisive battle. For the EAD had presentations, an activity around the First Nations Medicine Wheel, a guided meditation, and a talk by Wendy on the Bah’ai faith.
The next day was the first of our debriefing period, and we engaged in a large discussion on everyone’s thoughts and concerns, using Sean’s water-bottle as our talking stick. We also took part in filming at Trent for a CWY promotional video, which involved – among other crazy things – running across a bridge screaming. Amazing how many passers by one recognizes immediately before one is asked to do such a thing. In any case, it was fun and we apparently did well despite our initial lack of enthusiasm.
After our next day of debriefing, Sarah, MJ, Edith and I gathered at Hoyse’s place to prepare the Tanzanian feast for our Farewell Party the following day. Although strength is apparently not considered to be a trait to be complemented on for Tanzanian women, I gained a great respect for them. MJ and I allied against the giant and solid head of cabbage that we had to chop, and a bowl of stubborn chipati dough which took a lot of time and muscle to chew a wad of, let alone knead a bowl of. The cooking was only a small part of the preparations which we had been engaging in since our Welcoming Party – gathering food and silent auction donations, rehearsing performances, booking the venue, planning, promoting, designing and printing invitations, thank you cards, sponsor names, programs, and more. Besides thanking our work placements and host families and saying good-bye, we were also holding the party to raise funds for the Yatima Group Trust Fund, a grass-roots orphanage near Chamazi, and the Kawartha Turtle Trauma Centre, a hospital for highly endangered turtle species in Peterborough. On the day of the event, December 4th, we arrived at 10 a.m. at our venue, a nice hall behind a United Church called Third Space. We spent the entire day arranging and decorating tables, cooking and heating food, rehearsing our performances, setting out the silent auction, and hanging the Tanzanian flag, CWY and Thank You Peterborough banners, 50/50 draw and silent auction signs, and sponsor names. Things went the Tanzanian way: there was a notable lack of urgency, but everything was prepared. The work that we’d been doing all day was all resolved just as the first guests began arriving. Many people, probably around a hundred arrived between 6 and 7 when Sally and Frank, our MCs, got things under way. After welcoming and speeches about the organizations we were fundraising for, it was dinner time and everyone enjoyed a massive delicious feast of Tanzanian and donated food. After that Julie and Hoyse spoke about CWY and UVIKIUTA, and I routed Sean from dish washing duty to come back stage in time for our performance. We played Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold”, I singing and playing rythm on guitar and Sean taking away the searing guitar solos. It went, surprisingly, even better than the rehearsals and was very well received. It was then Sally’s turn to do an amazing Chinese plate dance, followed by a good-bye song by all of the Tanzanians together. After that we all made our way to the changing rooms while Julie read out the auction and draw winners, and we changed into traditional Tanzanian clothes for a cultural fashion show. While changing into our traditional masaai toga-like clothing in the boy’s changing room, Jackson and Norbert started singing and dancing a masaai song. It was simple, requiring only gutteral throat sounds and stomping to accompany the words sung by Jackson, so we decided to make space for it in the program. After the fashion show, amusingly MCed by Sean and Rahel, we all sang a song in Kiswahili (“Wewe, ni nani jama?”), then gave thank you cards, framed pictures, and hugs to our host families and work placements. The event was then concluded, having gone surprizingly well. After adding it all up, we’d raised almost $1100 for the two organizations. The guests left, but the rest of us washed dishes and cleaned up ‘til about 11:30 pm.
The next afternoon I volunteered with tagging for the YWCA’s Crossroads shelter, then went to the Santa Claus parade on George St. The parade was impressive, but my outer appendages were not so impressed by the cold, so I headed over to Sean’s place for our group Christmas party for the warmth of the fire and Andrea’s hot chocolate and apple cider. We had a party as stereotypical as possible for the experience of the Tanzanians, including cutting and baking shortbread, building a gingerbread house (which was condemned soon after construction), watching National Lampoon’s “Christmas Vacation”, listening to Sean reciting “Twas the Night Before Christmas”, and eating a feast of leftovers from the previous day’s party which was much less stereotypical (mostly Italian and Tanzanian food). The Tanzanians did get to experience a turkey dinner, though, when we went to Hoyse's Lutheran Church on Sunday. We attended the service, and the Tanzanians sang a few songs for the congregation, then had a huge dinner as the reception. The minister called us all forward to be blessed for our trip.
Today, Monday the 7th, was our last group gathering, and it has snowed heavily. We talked about health, travel and flight issues, then made our own seperate tracks through the snow to fulfill our pre-departure needs. The cashier at the drug store raised her eye-brows at the two bottles of sunscreen that I was purchasing.
So tomorrow we have the day off to resolve our packing and other priorities, then at 3 pm on Wednesday we are off to catch our evening flight from Toronto. Hopefully the snow-storm coming in from the Maritimes won’t amount to anything flight-delaying. We’ll then be off to Hethro Airport in London, then to Dar es Salaam. I’ll try to send out a quick email when we arrive on Thursday or Friday, but don’t count on my ability to do so – no news will probably be good news. This is it!!!
Remember to check out mambopress.blogspot.com for pictures and articles by other members of the group! Let me know if there’s any suggestions that you might have to make these letters more interesting or accessible, and I’ll see what I can do. According to the Tanzanians, internet access is not an issue in Tanzania so the Missives will continue. Looking forward to hearing from you!
Wewe rafiki,
Bradley Clements
Peterborough, On.
November 2, 2009
Missive #5: Mwenzi wa Kumi
November 2nd, 2009
Mambo, Bonjour, and Hello!
Ah, October! The leaves are changing into their splendid funerary attire and spiralling gracefully down to carpet the side-walks. To the Tanzanian’s horror the temperature is falling with the leaves, and we Canadians are very cruelly informing them that they ain’t seen nothing yet.
Our first Community Activity Day (CAD) was held on the Otanabee River as we paddled around in canoes and kayaks kindly lent to us for free by a local rental place. Tegemeo enthusiastically took to the river in his kayak, and capsized within the first five minutes. We had not set off yet, so we were able to get him and his boat safely back to the dock and the remembrance of the event still brings giggles to some of us. Unfortunately, seeing Tegemeo’s experience, a few of the Tanzanians decided that they were not interested in risking a swim in the Otanabee and stayed ashore. The rest of us paddled upstream to the Hunter St. Bridge, in the shelter of the islands on the way up and zooming along with the current on the way back. I foolishly paddled under a low-hanging tree and and shipped a kayak-load of spiders, some of which fell down the back of my shirt. We continued back down the river to Little Lake where we rafted up and lay talking in our boats before returning to the Silver Bean Café for generous complementary hot drinks.
Our next Educational Activity Day (EAD) was held at the Canadian Canoe Museum where we built kayaks, baked bannock bread, and learned about Canadian history as it was effected by the canoe. That evening Scott, Colin, Frank, Jean-Phillipe and I got together for an epic game of Risk which left Colin the emperor of the world and kept the rest of us talking about it for days after, much to the rest of the group’s exasperation. For our next CAD we visited Green-Up Peterborough, an inspiringly pro-active environmental agency focused on helping Peterborough residents save money and the environment.
I’ve been doing a fair bit of reading, having all too many books on the go: “Heaven’s Mirror”, “Schools and Masters of Fencing”, “The Alchemist”, “The Skystone”, and “A Short History of Nearly Everything”. By the time that Thanksgiving rolled around, “A Short History of Nearly Everything” had taught more about science than twelve consecutive years of curriculum study in the subject, including that there are many things to be thankful for such as the fact that our planet has a liquid outer core which prevents solar radiation from tearing our DNA to shreds. And, as if that weren’t enough to be happy about, Mom and Dad drove down from Ottawa for the weekend. They stayed at a friendly B&B and spent a lot of time with Jackson and I, and Wendy and Randy with whom they got along very well. Jackson and I showed them around town, and went with them to the lift locks and the petroglyphs provincial park. The petroglyphs were amazing to see, images from the undeciphered dreams of native shamans between 1100 and 900 years ago. On Thanksgiving evening we had 11 people and 5 cultures around the dinner table: Randy (Ojibwa), Wendy, her son Thomas, Mom, Dad, myself (Canadians of British Isles decent), Lam, Jiang (eastern China), Jackson, Suzan (Tanzania), and Wendy’s friends Pepe and Renee (Peru). We had a great traditional turkey dinner and pumpkin-pie dessert and enjoyed eachother’s company. The next day Mom and Dad headed back home to Ottawa.
Jackson and my EAD group was the next in line. We focused ours on how human community effects the wildlife community, and went to the Peterborough zoo to see the bobcat, camels, otters, llamas, monkeys (not as big as the ones in Chamazi, according to the Tanzanians), wallabies, emus, a cougar, reindeer, yak, meerkats, boa constrictors, Burmese pythons, and other animals. We then went to Trent for presentations, then to the Camp Kawartha Environment Centre for a tour and a presentation by Jackson and I about eco-villages.
The following Friday was a busy one. The group met at the Trinity United Church at 6:30 am to attend and volunteer at a Person’s Day breakfast, commemorating the anniversary of women achieving the right to vote in Canada. We listened to the many moving speeches by many people, including Renee, our Peruvian friend from Thanksgiving. Many people were interested in CWY and came over to our table to talk with us. After the delicious breakfast we helped to clean up, then walked home to pack for our mid-term camp. In the afternoon we met again at the Lion’s Hall where we were to volunteer at a fundraising dinner for the Jamaican Self-Help organization. When we arrived we were faced with something of a crisis – all of the food that had been ordered to feed the 130-odd paid guests had been prepared that morning and was now cold, and we had only very limited access to the Lion Club’s oven. Worried but undeterred, we set about going to nearby church kitchens to see if we could use one, which we unfortunately could not. Julie took the samosas to her apartment to heat them in her oven, and we managed to heat most of the other things that required it with the Lion’s stove. Apart from that we also set up tables, banners, a silent auction, and the food and beverage serving tables. The Jamaican organization was very greatful to us, as the only other volunteer they had was one girl who was quite drunk at the time. After all of the patrons had arrived and been served and seated, we were able to take a break and have some dinner ourselves, which proved to be very good. No sooner had we finished than the host families who had volunteered to drive us out to Camp Kawartha for the mid-term camp arrived and we headed off.
Although we couldn’t tell until the next morning, the camp was beautifully located on a luminously maple-graced lake shore and had a teepee, a pioneer-style log cabin, and several straw-bale buildings. To top it all off it was the beginning of a very welcome Indian Summer, and we could not have asked for nicer weather for the duration of our stay. We went to claim our beds at the dormitories, and we boys very cruelly pulled an extra bed into the back room, leaving our renound snorer alone and unimpressed in the front room. We ended the evening with hot chocolate and a game of giant chess between Jean-Phillipe and I. The next day we did a little soul-searching regarding our counterpart, host-family, group, work placement, and program relationships. After that we did some team-building and self-developing activities on the climbing wall and high-ropes. On the climbing wall I expected to make it to the third section and made it my goal to get to the fourth, but as it was I ended up going to the very top and ringing the bell. On the high-ropes course we were expected to climb a telephone-pole with staples, and stand on a small platform on the top with our counterpart and another pair. Once there, we had the option of doing a “trust lean”, holding wrists and leaning out from eachother at the top. I had no trouble getting to the top, but took some coaxing to actually stand on the platform which involved hanging onto JP’s hand and pulling myself up. JP was all gung-ho to try a trust lean, but Norbert and I shook our heads frantically and said “No, JP!” When (safely back on terra firma) I contemplated the experience, I realized that I had not been afraid of the hight, of falling, or anything rational at all (we had all had belay teams holding us up), I had merely been afraid of being afraid, of the instinctive fear that my body would have insisted upon had I looked down and shown it how far it was from its accustomed element. This realization gave me the feeling that there was very little that I had reason to be afraid of, because fear is not rational and, even when it is, it does not aid the situation. Although not a by-all and end-all fan of reason, I realized that fear is almost entirely counterable by it if one can hold on to it in the face of fear. I was ultimately only afraid because I had felt that I should be.
After the climbing some of us went to play hockey and a few others went for a hike. The Tanzanians who tried hockey for the first time loved it, and Jackson shot some good goals. That night we played the piano, the Hammond B-3 organ, and another game of Risk, all of which Sean won on no uncertain terms as we drank hot chocolate and ate apple pie. On our final day at the camp we played a team-building game, tested ourselves on how well we knew the group, discussed environmental issues, and had a Kiswahili class. We then packed our stuff, cleaned up the spaces that we had used, and had a group picture taken in the golden autumn leaves by the lake.
We rode a school bus to a lovely log cabin on a natural piece of land for a presentation about Amnesty International. Our Amnesty member hosts we extremely hospitable and kind, and led us on a beautiful hike through the forest to a series of lakes. Some of the group went canoeing, and the rest of us hiked further. We came across a small lake that was covered in a thin layer of ice. I pointed this out to the Tanzanians who didn’t understand and looked at me as though I was crazy until I threw a pebble out which bounced musically along the surface. The reaction was one of amazement, and they made sport of throwing stones of increasing size out onto the ice until we had to tell them to stop: for the health of the lake and the road. After the refreshing hike we returned to the cabin for a phenomenal multi-lesagnia dinner, followed by an equally amazing desert. Having eaten our fill, and feeling very much obliged to our generous hosts, we all introduced ourselves and our involvement in CWY and were shown a promotional video about Amnesty International. The stories that we heard were humbling and moving. We finished with a short discussion and question period, then took the bus back to Peterborough and returned to our host-homes. One counter-part pair was involved in a car accident on the way home that night, but fortunately no one was hurt.
The very next day Norbert and I went back to Camp Kawartha again for work to help Jen, our supervisor, to make wooden signs to recognize the donors who had helped with the environment centre. We spent the morning routering, sawing, sanding, and varnishing, then, after a lunch of our leftover weekend dinners, we went canoeing out on the windy lake. What a way to end a day of work!
The next day we met at the Stedler House for silk-screening and book-art workshops, as training for a Free Market that we would be volunteering for at Trent. The idea of the Free Market is that one person’s garbage is another’s treasure, so people drop off stuff that they don’t want and pick up stuff that they do and are not expected to pay in any way. This is obviously good, socially speaking, but is also beneficial in terms of the environment and human rights as less waste is going to landfills, less resources need to be extracted from the earth, and less sweat-shop labour is required. Where the art comes in is that, even if something isn’t as good as new, it can still be given new life and great meaning by personalizing it. At Trent we taught silk-screening workshops, painted and did lettering on a big donation bin, set up wares from the free market, and gave away “Green Boxes” of products to help insulate and weather-proof housing.
On Saturday our entire team came together at Sean and Suzan’s for a big road hockey tournament, complete with banners, noise makers, the “Kombe Kup”, and, to quote Sean’s promotion, “the steamiest of cocoas”. We had a blast, playing for hours and calling “Gari!” to clear the road whenever a car approached. After the tournament our team won the “Kombe Kup” by one point. Scott was nominated as the “most valuable player,” Norbert as the “most improved”, and Deborah as the “most enthusiastic”. After dinner we all went to Sarah and MJ’s place to carve jack-’o-lanterns and roast the pumpkin seeds.
On Sunday the Tanzanians went to Hoyse’s church and spent the day with the minister and his family touring Peterborough and going canoeing, some of the Canadians went swimming at a wellness centre, others went apple-picking at an orchard, and I was anticipating going to an archery practice with a local SCA branch. My body, however, had decided that I had made it do too much over the past few days and that it was going to be sick. Wendy was very nurturing and miraculously cured me with sympathy, a light lunch, a long conversation, and a naturopathic tea which left me feeling fine by the afternoon.
After work on Wednesday our team took a bus to Fleming College for a lecture that Steven Lewis was giving concerning sustainability. He came over before the Ojibwa drummers opened the event, and chatted with Sarah and Suzan (who had her headphones in). He was a very good speaker, charismatic and vehement, and could be very funny at will. He painted the reality of climate change as it related to all fronts, from social to medical, political, scientific, ethnographic, demographic, agricultural, discrimination and more, as it applied to all areas of the world. He poured praise on individuals who took efforts to reduce their individual environmental impact, but stressed that it was simply not enough and that governments and corporations need to be severely pressured. When one Sierra Club member in the audience voiced his frustrations about the lack of action after a massive protest that they had held on Parliament Hill on the weekend, Mr. Lewis looked at his watch and said, “excuse me: today is Wednesday...” but told the questioner to keep at it and to send him an email if he failed to get a response after another 60 or 70 attempts. After he had finished the speech, in which he had acknowledged our CWY team’s presence, he was given a long standing ovation after which he asked for some water. Someone came down with a plastic bottle of water, which he humorously refused: “Come on... Do you really expect me to accept that, after all that I’ve been saying here?” We all went down and chatted with him, and Colin gave him a giant cookie that Andrea had baked for him and a letter from Micheal reminding him of his promise to visit for lunch sometime. We had our pictures taken with him and he told us that he was going to Dar es Salaam in December, at the same time as us.
The following day we all volunteered at the United Way Soupfest, a big delicious fundraiser at the Trinity United Church. We decorated, served, bussed, washed dishes, cleaned up, and enjoyed a vast variety of amazing soups from many local restaurants. I was surprised how many people that I recognized there, many of whom I could call by name, and it felt good to think that I had come to know the community to that extent. To sober the enjoyment of the event, one of the other volunteers said some discriminatory things to JP and called him a “Frenchie”, which hurt his feelings. He had the applaudable courage, however, to confront the man later and told him to respect Quebec.
On Halloween our group met at the parking lot of the Price choppers grocery store along with many other youth, mainly from Trent. We were gathered to go “Trick-or-Eating”: to go from house to house, in costume, asking not for candy but for food to be donated to the Kawartha Food Exchange. We were all very surprised by eachother’s costumes, some of which were quite impressive. To the team’s general amusement, Jackson and I dressed up as eachother and wore very convincing masks made from enlarged photographs glued to cardboard. It was rather disconcerting to everyone, including ourselves! We trick-or-eated for a couple of hours, after which our group of five had gathered an entire shopping cart of food. The whole team then went to Colin and Tegemeo’s place for a Halloween party that there host parent were putting on. There were very many people crammed into the little house, and none were alowed in without a costume. We partook in apple-bobbing, dancing, and a costume contest. The costume contest finalists included Max the King of the Wild Things, a unicorn, and Andrea from our team who was dressed all in black as an iPod commercial. The competition was palpable, and the judges who could not decide by costume had to judge by their dancing skills, and the unicorn just barely squeezed by for his break-dancing capabilities. The Tanzanians, who’d never tried it before, were very gung-ho about the apple bobbing, and Jackson dove in enthusiastically with his whole head and shoulders. We were up very late, but thanks to the time change it was only 1:23 am by the time we got home and went to bed.
I realized, too late, that there were some important things that I neglected to mention about our Tanzanian counterparts in my last Missive. Firstly, they are all members of UVIKIUTA, a Tanzanian grass-roots organization focused on young people. Through it, young people from all over the country are involved with volunteer work camps in other parts of Tanzania, often in collaboration with foreign youth groups. The founding members, including our project supervisor Hoyse, were youth fed up with their restricted lives in the city who moved out of Dar es Salaam and founded a community near Chamazi, where our exchange will be. There they created an eco-village and raised money by offering services, selling flowers that they grew and milk and meat from cattle that they raised. The project has flourished, despite the difficult early days when they lacked enough food and electricity when they were considered to be crazy for their efforts.
Jackson and some of the other Tanzanians had a similarly difficult beginning to this exchange. While we Canadians had to raise $2500, attend conferences, and take questionnaires and interviews, the UVIKIUTA members were going through a gruelling two-week selection camp. The two weeks were without rest: getting up early from bed, having a limited time to shower in limited showers, being on time for everything, writing essays, presenting, exercising, physical labour, surprise schedule changes (sometimes in the middle of the night) and a zero-tolerance on broken rules. The competition was high as there were many people running. Jackson told me that he was very surprised to be selected, as he had been one of the youngest contestants with poorer English, but selected he was. After that he had to convince his disgruntled family, who believed that he should be going strait to university, that his choice was right: “God choose that I musti to go to the Canada”, he would say, “why that? I don’t know why God choose that, but musti to do what God choose. Yes.” Many of the Tanzanians came to Canada hoping find access to post-secondary education and scholarships. Jackson, who’s father had had an accident which prevented him from continuing his job, was funded for secondary school by his aunt in Arusha, and he is now under pressure from his mother to find scholarships to fund his further education. Norbert has related to me his dislike of the style of university education in his home country, saying that there is only theory and no field work, and that a Tanzanian education is not as marketable as a Canadian one. He has been very active in organizing information and lectures about Canadian education, scholarships and programs for international students for his team mates.
Whew! I can’t believe that there is just over a month left of this half of the exchange! It’s as though I woke up one day and realized that two months had simply disappeared. They have been rewarding though, and I know that the month to come will be quite a busy one... Stay tuned for that!
Wewe rafiki,
Bradley Clements
Peterborough, Ontario
P.S: Thanks so much to those of you who have sent me letters and emails in the past while – it’s wonderful to hear from you all!
Mambo, Bonjour, and Hello!
Ah, October! The leaves are changing into their splendid funerary attire and spiralling gracefully down to carpet the side-walks. To the Tanzanian’s horror the temperature is falling with the leaves, and we Canadians are very cruelly informing them that they ain’t seen nothing yet.
Our first Community Activity Day (CAD) was held on the Otanabee River as we paddled around in canoes and kayaks kindly lent to us for free by a local rental place. Tegemeo enthusiastically took to the river in his kayak, and capsized within the first five minutes. We had not set off yet, so we were able to get him and his boat safely back to the dock and the remembrance of the event still brings giggles to some of us. Unfortunately, seeing Tegemeo’s experience, a few of the Tanzanians decided that they were not interested in risking a swim in the Otanabee and stayed ashore. The rest of us paddled upstream to the Hunter St. Bridge, in the shelter of the islands on the way up and zooming along with the current on the way back. I foolishly paddled under a low-hanging tree and and shipped a kayak-load of spiders, some of which fell down the back of my shirt. We continued back down the river to Little Lake where we rafted up and lay talking in our boats before returning to the Silver Bean Café for generous complementary hot drinks.
Our next Educational Activity Day (EAD) was held at the Canadian Canoe Museum where we built kayaks, baked bannock bread, and learned about Canadian history as it was effected by the canoe. That evening Scott, Colin, Frank, Jean-Phillipe and I got together for an epic game of Risk which left Colin the emperor of the world and kept the rest of us talking about it for days after, much to the rest of the group’s exasperation. For our next CAD we visited Green-Up Peterborough, an inspiringly pro-active environmental agency focused on helping Peterborough residents save money and the environment.
I’ve been doing a fair bit of reading, having all too many books on the go: “Heaven’s Mirror”, “Schools and Masters of Fencing”, “The Alchemist”, “The Skystone”, and “A Short History of Nearly Everything”. By the time that Thanksgiving rolled around, “A Short History of Nearly Everything” had taught more about science than twelve consecutive years of curriculum study in the subject, including that there are many things to be thankful for such as the fact that our planet has a liquid outer core which prevents solar radiation from tearing our DNA to shreds. And, as if that weren’t enough to be happy about, Mom and Dad drove down from Ottawa for the weekend. They stayed at a friendly B&B and spent a lot of time with Jackson and I, and Wendy and Randy with whom they got along very well. Jackson and I showed them around town, and went with them to the lift locks and the petroglyphs provincial park. The petroglyphs were amazing to see, images from the undeciphered dreams of native shamans between 1100 and 900 years ago. On Thanksgiving evening we had 11 people and 5 cultures around the dinner table: Randy (Ojibwa), Wendy, her son Thomas, Mom, Dad, myself (Canadians of British Isles decent), Lam, Jiang (eastern China), Jackson, Suzan (Tanzania), and Wendy’s friends Pepe and Renee (Peru). We had a great traditional turkey dinner and pumpkin-pie dessert and enjoyed eachother’s company. The next day Mom and Dad headed back home to Ottawa.
Jackson and my EAD group was the next in line. We focused ours on how human community effects the wildlife community, and went to the Peterborough zoo to see the bobcat, camels, otters, llamas, monkeys (not as big as the ones in Chamazi, according to the Tanzanians), wallabies, emus, a cougar, reindeer, yak, meerkats, boa constrictors, Burmese pythons, and other animals. We then went to Trent for presentations, then to the Camp Kawartha Environment Centre for a tour and a presentation by Jackson and I about eco-villages.
The following Friday was a busy one. The group met at the Trinity United Church at 6:30 am to attend and volunteer at a Person’s Day breakfast, commemorating the anniversary of women achieving the right to vote in Canada. We listened to the many moving speeches by many people, including Renee, our Peruvian friend from Thanksgiving. Many people were interested in CWY and came over to our table to talk with us. After the delicious breakfast we helped to clean up, then walked home to pack for our mid-term camp. In the afternoon we met again at the Lion’s Hall where we were to volunteer at a fundraising dinner for the Jamaican Self-Help organization. When we arrived we were faced with something of a crisis – all of the food that had been ordered to feed the 130-odd paid guests had been prepared that morning and was now cold, and we had only very limited access to the Lion Club’s oven. Worried but undeterred, we set about going to nearby church kitchens to see if we could use one, which we unfortunately could not. Julie took the samosas to her apartment to heat them in her oven, and we managed to heat most of the other things that required it with the Lion’s stove. Apart from that we also set up tables, banners, a silent auction, and the food and beverage serving tables. The Jamaican organization was very greatful to us, as the only other volunteer they had was one girl who was quite drunk at the time. After all of the patrons had arrived and been served and seated, we were able to take a break and have some dinner ourselves, which proved to be very good. No sooner had we finished than the host families who had volunteered to drive us out to Camp Kawartha for the mid-term camp arrived and we headed off.
Although we couldn’t tell until the next morning, the camp was beautifully located on a luminously maple-graced lake shore and had a teepee, a pioneer-style log cabin, and several straw-bale buildings. To top it all off it was the beginning of a very welcome Indian Summer, and we could not have asked for nicer weather for the duration of our stay. We went to claim our beds at the dormitories, and we boys very cruelly pulled an extra bed into the back room, leaving our renound snorer alone and unimpressed in the front room. We ended the evening with hot chocolate and a game of giant chess between Jean-Phillipe and I. The next day we did a little soul-searching regarding our counterpart, host-family, group, work placement, and program relationships. After that we did some team-building and self-developing activities on the climbing wall and high-ropes. On the climbing wall I expected to make it to the third section and made it my goal to get to the fourth, but as it was I ended up going to the very top and ringing the bell. On the high-ropes course we were expected to climb a telephone-pole with staples, and stand on a small platform on the top with our counterpart and another pair. Once there, we had the option of doing a “trust lean”, holding wrists and leaning out from eachother at the top. I had no trouble getting to the top, but took some coaxing to actually stand on the platform which involved hanging onto JP’s hand and pulling myself up. JP was all gung-ho to try a trust lean, but Norbert and I shook our heads frantically and said “No, JP!” When (safely back on terra firma) I contemplated the experience, I realized that I had not been afraid of the hight, of falling, or anything rational at all (we had all had belay teams holding us up), I had merely been afraid of being afraid, of the instinctive fear that my body would have insisted upon had I looked down and shown it how far it was from its accustomed element. This realization gave me the feeling that there was very little that I had reason to be afraid of, because fear is not rational and, even when it is, it does not aid the situation. Although not a by-all and end-all fan of reason, I realized that fear is almost entirely counterable by it if one can hold on to it in the face of fear. I was ultimately only afraid because I had felt that I should be.
After the climbing some of us went to play hockey and a few others went for a hike. The Tanzanians who tried hockey for the first time loved it, and Jackson shot some good goals. That night we played the piano, the Hammond B-3 organ, and another game of Risk, all of which Sean won on no uncertain terms as we drank hot chocolate and ate apple pie. On our final day at the camp we played a team-building game, tested ourselves on how well we knew the group, discussed environmental issues, and had a Kiswahili class. We then packed our stuff, cleaned up the spaces that we had used, and had a group picture taken in the golden autumn leaves by the lake.
We rode a school bus to a lovely log cabin on a natural piece of land for a presentation about Amnesty International. Our Amnesty member hosts we extremely hospitable and kind, and led us on a beautiful hike through the forest to a series of lakes. Some of the group went canoeing, and the rest of us hiked further. We came across a small lake that was covered in a thin layer of ice. I pointed this out to the Tanzanians who didn’t understand and looked at me as though I was crazy until I threw a pebble out which bounced musically along the surface. The reaction was one of amazement, and they made sport of throwing stones of increasing size out onto the ice until we had to tell them to stop: for the health of the lake and the road. After the refreshing hike we returned to the cabin for a phenomenal multi-lesagnia dinner, followed by an equally amazing desert. Having eaten our fill, and feeling very much obliged to our generous hosts, we all introduced ourselves and our involvement in CWY and were shown a promotional video about Amnesty International. The stories that we heard were humbling and moving. We finished with a short discussion and question period, then took the bus back to Peterborough and returned to our host-homes. One counter-part pair was involved in a car accident on the way home that night, but fortunately no one was hurt.
The very next day Norbert and I went back to Camp Kawartha again for work to help Jen, our supervisor, to make wooden signs to recognize the donors who had helped with the environment centre. We spent the morning routering, sawing, sanding, and varnishing, then, after a lunch of our leftover weekend dinners, we went canoeing out on the windy lake. What a way to end a day of work!
The next day we met at the Stedler House for silk-screening and book-art workshops, as training for a Free Market that we would be volunteering for at Trent. The idea of the Free Market is that one person’s garbage is another’s treasure, so people drop off stuff that they don’t want and pick up stuff that they do and are not expected to pay in any way. This is obviously good, socially speaking, but is also beneficial in terms of the environment and human rights as less waste is going to landfills, less resources need to be extracted from the earth, and less sweat-shop labour is required. Where the art comes in is that, even if something isn’t as good as new, it can still be given new life and great meaning by personalizing it. At Trent we taught silk-screening workshops, painted and did lettering on a big donation bin, set up wares from the free market, and gave away “Green Boxes” of products to help insulate and weather-proof housing.
On Saturday our entire team came together at Sean and Suzan’s for a big road hockey tournament, complete with banners, noise makers, the “Kombe Kup”, and, to quote Sean’s promotion, “the steamiest of cocoas”. We had a blast, playing for hours and calling “Gari!” to clear the road whenever a car approached. After the tournament our team won the “Kombe Kup” by one point. Scott was nominated as the “most valuable player,” Norbert as the “most improved”, and Deborah as the “most enthusiastic”. After dinner we all went to Sarah and MJ’s place to carve jack-’o-lanterns and roast the pumpkin seeds.
On Sunday the Tanzanians went to Hoyse’s church and spent the day with the minister and his family touring Peterborough and going canoeing, some of the Canadians went swimming at a wellness centre, others went apple-picking at an orchard, and I was anticipating going to an archery practice with a local SCA branch. My body, however, had decided that I had made it do too much over the past few days and that it was going to be sick. Wendy was very nurturing and miraculously cured me with sympathy, a light lunch, a long conversation, and a naturopathic tea which left me feeling fine by the afternoon.
After work on Wednesday our team took a bus to Fleming College for a lecture that Steven Lewis was giving concerning sustainability. He came over before the Ojibwa drummers opened the event, and chatted with Sarah and Suzan (who had her headphones in). He was a very good speaker, charismatic and vehement, and could be very funny at will. He painted the reality of climate change as it related to all fronts, from social to medical, political, scientific, ethnographic, demographic, agricultural, discrimination and more, as it applied to all areas of the world. He poured praise on individuals who took efforts to reduce their individual environmental impact, but stressed that it was simply not enough and that governments and corporations need to be severely pressured. When one Sierra Club member in the audience voiced his frustrations about the lack of action after a massive protest that they had held on Parliament Hill on the weekend, Mr. Lewis looked at his watch and said, “excuse me: today is Wednesday...” but told the questioner to keep at it and to send him an email if he failed to get a response after another 60 or 70 attempts. After he had finished the speech, in which he had acknowledged our CWY team’s presence, he was given a long standing ovation after which he asked for some water. Someone came down with a plastic bottle of water, which he humorously refused: “Come on... Do you really expect me to accept that, after all that I’ve been saying here?” We all went down and chatted with him, and Colin gave him a giant cookie that Andrea had baked for him and a letter from Micheal reminding him of his promise to visit for lunch sometime. We had our pictures taken with him and he told us that he was going to Dar es Salaam in December, at the same time as us.
The following day we all volunteered at the United Way Soupfest, a big delicious fundraiser at the Trinity United Church. We decorated, served, bussed, washed dishes, cleaned up, and enjoyed a vast variety of amazing soups from many local restaurants. I was surprised how many people that I recognized there, many of whom I could call by name, and it felt good to think that I had come to know the community to that extent. To sober the enjoyment of the event, one of the other volunteers said some discriminatory things to JP and called him a “Frenchie”, which hurt his feelings. He had the applaudable courage, however, to confront the man later and told him to respect Quebec.
On Halloween our group met at the parking lot of the Price choppers grocery store along with many other youth, mainly from Trent. We were gathered to go “Trick-or-Eating”: to go from house to house, in costume, asking not for candy but for food to be donated to the Kawartha Food Exchange. We were all very surprised by eachother’s costumes, some of which were quite impressive. To the team’s general amusement, Jackson and I dressed up as eachother and wore very convincing masks made from enlarged photographs glued to cardboard. It was rather disconcerting to everyone, including ourselves! We trick-or-eated for a couple of hours, after which our group of five had gathered an entire shopping cart of food. The whole team then went to Colin and Tegemeo’s place for a Halloween party that there host parent were putting on. There were very many people crammed into the little house, and none were alowed in without a costume. We partook in apple-bobbing, dancing, and a costume contest. The costume contest finalists included Max the King of the Wild Things, a unicorn, and Andrea from our team who was dressed all in black as an iPod commercial. The competition was palpable, and the judges who could not decide by costume had to judge by their dancing skills, and the unicorn just barely squeezed by for his break-dancing capabilities. The Tanzanians, who’d never tried it before, were very gung-ho about the apple bobbing, and Jackson dove in enthusiastically with his whole head and shoulders. We were up very late, but thanks to the time change it was only 1:23 am by the time we got home and went to bed.
I realized, too late, that there were some important things that I neglected to mention about our Tanzanian counterparts in my last Missive. Firstly, they are all members of UVIKIUTA, a Tanzanian grass-roots organization focused on young people. Through it, young people from all over the country are involved with volunteer work camps in other parts of Tanzania, often in collaboration with foreign youth groups. The founding members, including our project supervisor Hoyse, were youth fed up with their restricted lives in the city who moved out of Dar es Salaam and founded a community near Chamazi, where our exchange will be. There they created an eco-village and raised money by offering services, selling flowers that they grew and milk and meat from cattle that they raised. The project has flourished, despite the difficult early days when they lacked enough food and electricity when they were considered to be crazy for their efforts.
Jackson and some of the other Tanzanians had a similarly difficult beginning to this exchange. While we Canadians had to raise $2500, attend conferences, and take questionnaires and interviews, the UVIKIUTA members were going through a gruelling two-week selection camp. The two weeks were without rest: getting up early from bed, having a limited time to shower in limited showers, being on time for everything, writing essays, presenting, exercising, physical labour, surprise schedule changes (sometimes in the middle of the night) and a zero-tolerance on broken rules. The competition was high as there were many people running. Jackson told me that he was very surprised to be selected, as he had been one of the youngest contestants with poorer English, but selected he was. After that he had to convince his disgruntled family, who believed that he should be going strait to university, that his choice was right: “God choose that I musti to go to the Canada”, he would say, “why that? I don’t know why God choose that, but musti to do what God choose. Yes.” Many of the Tanzanians came to Canada hoping find access to post-secondary education and scholarships. Jackson, who’s father had had an accident which prevented him from continuing his job, was funded for secondary school by his aunt in Arusha, and he is now under pressure from his mother to find scholarships to fund his further education. Norbert has related to me his dislike of the style of university education in his home country, saying that there is only theory and no field work, and that a Tanzanian education is not as marketable as a Canadian one. He has been very active in organizing information and lectures about Canadian education, scholarships and programs for international students for his team mates.
Whew! I can’t believe that there is just over a month left of this half of the exchange! It’s as though I woke up one day and realized that two months had simply disappeared. They have been rewarding though, and I know that the month to come will be quite a busy one... Stay tuned for that!
Wewe rafiki,
Bradley Clements
Peterborough, Ontario
P.S: Thanks so much to those of you who have sent me letters and emails in the past while – it’s wonderful to hear from you all!
October 1, 2009
Missive #4: New Beginnings
September 30th, 2009
Hello, Bonjour, & Mambo to everyone!
Here it is – what we’ve all been waiting for – the beginning of my Canada World Youth exchange! I am now in Peterborough with my CWY team, and here is the story of that...
After having arrived at the family’s house in Ottawa in the beginning of September, I stayed for long enough to, unpack, re-pack, visit the National Art Gallery, spend some time with the family, pelt Harry with his nerf-guns, and draw a huge reproduction of a full-page manuscript illumination from the Book of Kells on Dad’s chalkboard-painted door – about a week. After that I said goodbye to Mom, Harry and Clouseau, and Dad and I drove down to Toronto to witness the exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). We stayed at a neat little hostel in downtown with a restaurant in the cellar, a gigantic cathedral on one side and the Toronto stock-exchange on the other. Spending a full day at the ROM, we viewed the 2000 year-old (and over) gospels from Qumran, on the coast of the Dead Sea, and their accompanying artifacts. Seeing inscribed bricks from the original Temple Mount of Jerusalem juxtaposed with extremely fragile and ancient relics including not only parchment, but also papyrus, linen fabric, palm-leaf basketry, and improbably thin woolen nets from the time of Christ was a revelatory experience. After spending many hours marvelling over the scrolls (even my stomach clock was too distracted to tell the time until I got out of the exhibit at around 3 o’clock) we had a quick lunch at a hotdog-stand (where my Dad, Ray John, met a co-world-domination-conspirator Ray Von), and rushed back to view other amazing exhibits of medieval and Renaissance arms, armour, statues and furniture. Having arrived right at opening time in the morning, we ended our day at the museum rushing through rooms of Cypriot terra-cotta model chariots, busts of Thusidides and Herodotus, Corinthian helms, and Alexandrian tetradrachmas as we were being called out for closing time. Dad and I enjoyed a very nice last dinner together at a friendly and inexpensive Thai restaurant (I believe it was ‘Golden Thai’, for future reference), and spent a last night at the hostel.
The following morning, on the 9th hour of the 9th day of the 9th month of the 2009th year of the Gregorian calender, I was sitting cross-legged outside of the Toronto Canada World Youth office with my backpack, violin case, and 50 lbs. suitcase. I was soon admitted into the office, and my fellow CWY participants began to arrive. Scott, a Katimavik alumni of London, Ontario; Andrea, from a small town north of Toronto but who had lived in such far-flung parts of Canada as the Yukon; and Edith, a professional English/French/Spanish translator from Gatinau, Quebec (who’s impressive linguistic skills would make her one of the most valuable members of our team) all arrived at the office, and we went for a stroll around Chinatown and the Kensington Market. We caught a big school bus, with our facilitator, Liz, to the airport to pick up our remaining Canadian participants. There we met Colin, a journalist from Prince Edward Island; Marie-Josee (called MJ), a sporty and fun-loving citizen du Montreal; Sean, a humorous guy from Winnipeg; Sally, from New Brunswick, although born in Melasia; and Jean-Phillipe, a fellow fencer from Quebec, all of whom had flown in. It was interesting to note that all but two of us were of different signs of the zodiac, and we varied in more ways than that. At 19 years old, I was the youngest of all of the Canadians, the rest of whom had done university and were in their twenties. We drove out and met our Canadian Project Supervisor – Julie Pyon – at a peaceful, secluded former convent school outside of Hamilton, where we would spend our orientation week. We inhabited our dormitories, gathered for sessions and games, and by the time we retired for dinner we had melded into an inseparable family. We were the only group spending the night in the big, dark building full of statues and broadly-framed paintings, and several of the boys reported the sounds of mysterious piano-playing and large numbers of people moving down the hallways when none were there...
The following day was the one we’d been awaiting – the day our Tanzanian counterparts would arrive. After breakfast we gathered in the craft room to design and paint a banner to welcome them, which said on it: “Welcome! Karibu! Bienvenue!” The paint was mostly dry when an urgent whisper called “Quick, they’re here!” and we all rushed out the front steps bearing the banner. Laughter, greetings and welcomes filled the air as the two groups intermingled for the first time, and I piped “Habari za safari?” as I shook the Tanzanian’s hands, to which they replied with a smiling “Nzuri.” Having introduced ourselves to Suzan, Jackson, Saome, Frank, Deborah, Tegemeo, Sarah, Norbert, Rahel, and their supervisor Hoyse, we helped them lug their bags to the dormitories, then headed out to the field to toss Sean’s football and frizz-bee between us.
It is hard to describe a group of friends in analytical terms, but considering that I am planning an education in anthropology I should probably give it a whirl. The Tanzanian team consisted of well-educated youth, mostly in their twenties and mostly Catholic, but with two members being younger and one a Muslim. There were several from Arusha, in the northern part of the country (near Kilimanjaro), one from the north west (near the Rwanda/Uganda borders), one from Zanzibar, and some from the Dar es Salaam area. I had heard from a friend who had been in a CWY exchange and had a Tanzanian counterpart who had poor English. When I mentioned my friend’s experience to Frank he raised his eyebrows and said “so I suppose you expected us all to be that way, did you?” Many of the group were fluent in English, although a few required an English speaker to slow down slightly, and often added an “i” to the end of many of their words. They are very often laughing, smiling or singing, and when asked about their values, the first things that they list are love, respect, manners, and equality.
Time warped during the camp – I will not go into the details which were delightful for us but probably tedious to a reader, but it seemed as though we’d been there and known eachother for as many years as it was in days (although we were not, by any means, bored). Being asked to consider and discuss things that were very deep down in the vaults of our identity which seldom saw the light of day, and to bring them amongst a group was a very enlightening, self-discovering and bonding experience. It established a sense of trusting and connection between us, allowing us to be very honest and open with one another without invoking judgement or offence. But then, I guess a drowning person will cling to what ever he can reach.
On the evening of the Tanzanian’s second day at the camp came the much anticipated moment: the pairing of the counterparts. After dinner we were all called into the main meeting room and were blindfolded and jostled about by our supervisors. Liz struck up some party music on her computer and we could hear Julie and Hoyse murmuring “Is that right?” and “Are we ready?” before we were told, on the count of three, to whip off our blindfolds and turn around. When I turned I found myself facing Jackson Mushi from Mount Kilimanjaro, the youngest member of our group at 18 years old, and we made incomprehensible sounds of joy, hugged twice, and said “Mambo Kaka!” Down the line everyone was laughing, shouting and hugging: Andrea was paired with Rahel, Colin with Tegemeo, Edith with Saome, Frank with Scott, MJ with Sarah, Sean with Suzan, Deborah with Sally, and Jean-Phillipe with Norbert. After spending most of the evening getting to know our counterparts more personally, we all got together for an evening snack and Sally taught us a loud table-clapping game, Sean showed us a cup-clapping game (clap-clap, tippy-tap, clap bang boom...), and MJ and JP did swing dancing between the tables. MJ introduced us to “The Game” which was lost every time it was thought of, and everyone conspired unsuspecting methods of making others loose. The boys retired to bed at quarter to ten, and the snoring chorus began on the hour with a virtuosic duet performing in perfect counterpoint, accompanied by an occasional crescendo from the harmony section. The rest of us were laughing to hard to get much sleep...
We wrapped up our final day of with a big game of soccer (football to the Tanzanians) in which we found that – although we had some fine Canadian players – the Tanzanian boys were unrivalled. We left the camp the following afternoon on a school bus for Peterborough, to meet the host families with whom we would stay for the next three months. We arrived at a Peterborough bed-and-breakfast where the families were gathered in the garden to meet us. When we were ready we arranged ourselves into a long line and filed out into the garden singing and clapping:
“Jambo, jambo bwana.
Habari gani, nzuri sana.
Wageni, mwakeribishwa
Tanzania yetu, hakuna matata...”
After shaking the hands of all of the host families, we presented ourselves in counterpart pairs for selection. Each family had been given a drawing that we had done of an animal (Jackson and I had drawn a “Mamba”, a crocodile), and we had to go forward and imitate our animal until our family recognized us. We were soon claimed by a smiling silver-haired lady, Wendy, who was an ESL teacher. After introducing ourselves and biding a surprisingly difficult good-bye to our team-mates who we would see again in two days, Jackson and I hauled our luggage out to Wendy’s car and she drove us to her house. There her husband Randy, a native Ojibwa artist, came down the steps of the 100 year-old heritage house to meet us and help us with our bags. Inside we met Jiang, a Chinese exchange student at Trent who was staying there, and Sam, the cat. Our room had a bunk-bed, which pleasantly reminded Jackson of boarding school, and one of Randy’s paintings on the wall. Wendy and Randy took us for a drive in their car out to the Ojibwa reserve to see Randy’s childhood home and some of his relatives. Randy, who shared his name with one of my Dad’s brothers, had a brother named Ricky, the name of my Dad’s other brother. I had dreamed of having a host family with a lute, but had hopes of finding one with a guitar, and Randy had a compromise between the two: a very nice twelve-string Seagull guitar.
The following day we had free to explore the town, and Jackson and I walked a long ways. Our group met back together the following day at “The Bridge” youth centre and related our experiences and began our week-long Community Orientation Camp. Among other things, we prepared for our volunteer work placements, Educational Activity Days (EADs), and established some committees to help with the running of the exchange, of which I found myself on the Communications and the Morale committees. At the end of the week we were told our work placements for the following six months, and I received my first choice of the Camp Kawartha Environment Centre at Trent, along with my workplace counterpart, Norbert. Coincidentally, Norbert’s counterpart, JP, was paired with Jackson at the Brock St. Mission homeless shelter. On Norbert's and my first day, his host mom drove us out to Trent (and I learned that she was a former SCA member) and dropped us off at the Environment Centre. When our supervisor, Jen, arrived she gave us a tour of the 100% energy-efficient naturally built building. It is mostly straw-bale built, but used several materials for demonstration purposes. Part of the roof is thatched, part is a living or “green” roof, and the rest is galvanized metal for the collection of rainwater. The grey-water is filtered though a series of conventional filters an then into a garden of detoxifying plants, and the toilets are composting. The whole building is passive-solar designed, and receives additional heating from solar-powered under-floor hot-water tubes. Being an education centre, Norbert and I had the job of designing school-group programs and displays, and this we have been working on, three days a week at the library, planning an interactive Grade 3 program about seeds.
On our free time we got together with the whole group, going to public music concerts, roasting marshmallows over a fire in Colin and Tegemeo’s host family’s back yard, watching movies and playing board games. On our first weekend, Wendy drove the whole group out to Randy’s reserve in her school bus for an equinoxal pow-wow. After she’d explained all of the dos and don’ts surrounding the ritual dancing, we walked down and sat on the edge of the dancing ring. At the centre of the pow-wow grounds was a shelter for the drummers and singers who were beating out their powerful music, and in the open ring around it danced the dancers in all of their regalia. There were eagle dancers with extraordinary fans of feathers on their backs, buffalo dancers with horns and painted faces, healing jingle-dancers with brass bells sewn to their dresses, and fancy-shawl dancers who reminded us of the ultimate life-giving importance of women. Seeing the costumed warriors spinning around the ring to the beat of the Big Drum brought us back to the essence of the North American spirit. On one dance, when “all tribes” were invited to come dance, I entered the circle through the prescribed gate and danced around the ring with the dancers.
The following Thursday, on our first Community Activity Day, we travelled on a school bus through the beautiful pastoral landscape to volunteer on an organic farm. There we were greeted by a large, black, loud “ombwa simba” (lion-dog) and Mike and Tera, the farmers of the land. They gave us a tour of their green-houses, vegetable fields, horse and cattle pastures, and wild medicinal plants. They explained to us about farm life and of how they farm in a traditional, environmentally friendly manner. On top of being fully organic, they also use horses to draw their tills and other implements and do their harvesting by hand. We got down to work harvesting beans, onions, pumpkins, squash, and potatoes, and hauled our substantial pickings up to the barn. After a day of enjoyably hard work we said goodbye to our hosts and returned to Peterborough, all cradling our incredibly huge zuccinis that we had picked for ourselves.
A week or so after our arrival, another Chinese exchange student arrived at Randy and Wendy’s: Lam (or Ray) from Makaow. His English was somewhat limited, and after meeting him Jackson did a little dance and said “Now I’m not the only one learning English!” The house now had four cultures in it: two Chinese, two descendants of the British Isles, a Tanzanian and an Ojibwa. It was fun to have Lam, Jackson and I all in the kitchen doing dishes: Jackson would be asking Lam how to say something in Chinese, Lam asking me how to say something in English, and I asking Jackson how to say it in Kiswahili.
On Sunday Jackson went to church and I went with Wendy to an interesting Bah’ai meeting, enjoying the drive through the breath-taking Kawartha scenery. The following Tuesday was our first EAD, organized by Andrea’s team, called the FARCES after the acronym of their combined names. Their EAD was on architecture, and we had a very interesting tour of the downtown area, learning about Peterborough’s unique history and buildings. The second part was held in a very nice heritage house, where we talked about Tanzanian and environmentally friendly architecture. It being Frank’s birthday, Sally, Andrea, Sean, Edith and Saomu went shopping after the EAD, then went to Sean and Suzan’s place to cook a gigantic Chinese birthday feast. Sally was the Iron Chef, and the rest of us her minions as we chopped, baked, wrapped, washed, fried and mixed as directed, and eventually it all came deliciously together. We were a bit worried when Frank, who was tired after the EAD and a long walk to Walmart, decided that he didn’t want to come, but we convinced him that he unfortunately had no choice. After the meal we partook in the Tanzanian tradition of singing as the birthday boy fed us each a piece of cake.
I’ve just finished today’s work with Norbert, but I’m running out of time on the library computer and the power keeps going out in the mild early-autumn storm that we’re experiencing, so I’d better wrap this up. When I began this letter, in the beginning of September, I was in a place of complete insecurity. I was leaving everything, everyone, and every place that I knew behind me, and nakedly entering something new and mysterious. Now, at the end of the month, it is surprising how thoroughly and quickly (so says the calendar...) I have become adapted into something so different from anything that I have experienced before.
If you’d like to be in touch, you can send an e-mail, or a letter to 544 Aylmer St. N., Peterborough, ON., K9H 3W7 within the next couple of months. And what is in store for next month? Work, EADs, Hallowe’en, and... who knows what else? You’ll just have to stay tuned and see!
Your Friend,
Bradley Clements
CWY Volunteer
Peterborough, ON.
September 6, 2009
Ottawa Pictures
Dad painted the door into the garage with chalkboard paint - and I illuminated the door with a manuscript from the Book of Kells!
Mom (Stella), Dad (Raymond), Harry and I (Bradley) infront of the house in Barrhaven.September 2, 2009
Cross-Canada Trip Pictures
One of the Rockey Mountains over Kicking Horse Pass
Observing the Drumheller Badlands
Fossilized Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton
The Hollidays together at Ken's place in North Battleford, Saskatchewan. From left to right: Lenn Holliday, Bradley Clements, Ray, Stella Holliday, Kirk Jones, Allie (bellow), Rob Holliday, Seth Jones (bellow), Harry Clements, and Joanna Jones (picture by Ken Holliday).
Missive #3: On the Road!
September 2, 2009
Hey everybody!
“Is it not a fine thing for two Roman consuls [Cicero and Pliny the Younger]…to employ their leisure in arranging and dressing up a pretty missive, in order to gain a reputation for a good knowledge of the language of their nurse? …If the deeds of Xenophon and Caesar had not far surpassed their eloquence, I do not believe they would ever have written them down. They sought to recommend not their sayings but their doings.”
Michel de Montaigne (1533-92)
Well, so far I well deserve the scorn of Monsieur Montaigne, for I have done much more saying than doing. That should be amended herein!
I had just put dinner in the oven on July 30th when a knock came at the door and Bill and Maureen with Sam and Ellie rolled in with their luggage, having just returned from China. Once the baggage was through the door and we had exchanged hugs and greetings – exhausted as they were after 26 hours of travel – they retold their many amazing adventures to me over dinner. The next day – which was a continuation of a procession of beautiful sunny days – was Bill’s birthday and we went for a swim in Beaver Lake and a party at Derek and Joanne’s place. Migrating up to Derek’s studio, he put on a vinyl record of the Yard Birds and we joined in enthusiastically on drum kit, tambourine, and electric and resonator guitars.
I spent the beginning of August studying Kiswahili, learning some new classical guitar repertoire, and honing my rapier lunge. Nonetheless, after months of hectic school-work, fundraising, and preparing and packing for my trip, it seemed like I had finally reached the still-point at which there was little left to do. All of my projects were finished or packed, I lacked time to start any new ones, and I was getting antsy for movement. I was on the road soon enough, though: on the first Wednesday of August I caught city buses and the giant new ferry to Vancouver to meet up with Mom, Dad and Harry who had driven across Canada to visit in BC for the Summer holidays. I waited for them in the foyer of the Vancouver Art Gallery where Dad was viewing the show of Rembrandt, Vermeer, and other Baroque art. When they walked into the foyer they didn’t notice me until I was right in front of them and Harry leaped in the air and did a little scream, seeing me for the first time since Christmas. We drove through Vancouver and Stanley Park, then headed for the Horseshoe Bay ferry, Dad pointing out scenes from his childhood all along. Once there, we parked in the ferry line-up and I pushed Harry on the swings in the park. We had fish and chips at Troll’s Restaurant under the cedar sign that Dad had carved and painted when he had lived here, for Garry Troll, the owner. On the ferry to Langdale Harry clasped to my arm and unceasingly read me my driving manual despite my efforts to shake him off.
Once there we drove to Gran’s co-housing village where I slept two nights on her garden porch. During our stay, Dad and I helped to clean up Gran’s garden, Harry drug me off to play many games of ping-pong and bocce at the village Common House, and I looked at Gran’s collection of the family’s books, many of which bore beautiful but deteriorating bindings dating to the 1800’s. We met Gran’s friend Sally who lived a couple of doors down and planned to host a pair of Canada World Youth participants in September. She owned a viola and cello which her uncle had hand-crafted, both of which were beautiful to the eye and the ear, and we played together.
After a nice stay with Gran we drove to Madiera Park where we met with one of Mom’s cousins, Pat, who had lived in the same childhood neighbourhood, and his wife, Marie, on their powerboat. Uncle John brought the Carlisle over from Garden Bay and rafted up to visit. Uncle Rick and three-year-old cousin Alice came over with Lilly the spaniel as we were leaving and invited us to a BBQ party at a friend’s place to watch the hot-rod and classic car parade. Harry and I took turns keeping an eye on little Alice who had a great time swinging twenty feet in the air on the long tire swing, jumping on the trampoline, and sliding on the slide. When the parade began everybody sat on the curb and watched the huge variety of cars roll by. The younger boys made a sign which read “Burn Out!” and yelled “Lay rubber!” and pumped their fists for the drivers to honk their horns. A few drivers were happy to oblige and screeched by in a cloud of tire smoke leaving a black trail behind them on the road. Afterwards, as we drove back to Rick and Lisa’s, many people still on the roadside gave us the thumbs up or exclaimed “What the hell is that thing on that car?” in reference to Dad’s stream-lined plywood luggage rack that he had made for the roof-racks and decorated with hot-rod flames.
Rick and I slept aboard the Orythia, and in the gray-misted west-coast the morning I disturbed a huge blue heron out of a tree. I went to visit my great-aunt Shendra down the road and had an enjoyable visit. Back at Rick’s place, Alice was in one of her many pretty dresses and wanted to jump off of the dock, but daddy Rick told her to stop showing off and wait until she had her bathing-suit on. Once they both did, Rick did back-flips off of the dock and Alice copied him and swam around to the ladder, without the aid of a life-jacket, while laughing and spouting jets of water at Dad. Uncle John brought the Carlisle around to Bargain Harbour and rafted to the Orythia, braving the heavy seas and 30 knot winds that blew outside but which were completely cut out within the bay. We all visited and had dinner together.
The next day Rick, Alice, Lilly, and the lot of us, drove up to the cabin which Uncle Rick is building in Lund. Mom, Dad and I visited with our Aunt Rosemary and her husband Jeff in Powell River, while the others went swimming. At the cabin Mom and I made dinner and we all went for a trail-run through the forest. Alice had a great time in her jogging stroller as Rick barrelled along over the rough path, but she soon wanted to use her own legs to prove that what boys who are from four- to nineteen-times her age can do, she can do at least as well. She ran along and, although she fell often, she was always back on her feet and at it again without a complaint. We reached the trail end and rested on the rocky bluff looking out over Savary Island.
We slept the night in the cabin, and drove back to Powell River the next day to catch the ferry to Comox on Vancouver Island, and drive to Port McNiell to catch another ferry to Alert Bay on Cormorant Island to visit our friend Dorothy. Dorothy was a magnificent hostess for the three days that we stayed, feasted, conversed, hiked, and visited with her and other friends around the island, old and new. We also visited with our good friends Jamie and Vicki Taylor and their grand-daughter Amethyst. Harry and I helped the boy next door to Jamie to put up a zip-line between the trees, which was great fun for those light enough to ride it until the block became to hot with friction to use.
On the 13th of August we bid farewell to our friends and drove back down island, catching the ferry that Jamie was First Mate aboard. Entirely unannounced, we stopped in to say hello to Dad’s friends Pat and Beverly. Having tried and failed to contact us three days previous, and having just returned and being just about to leave again for holidays, they were very surprised to see Dad’s face peering through their glass door after years without contact. They had some very nice antique furniture, vinyl records, and books. Most of the books dated to the 18th and early 19th Centuries, as well as a 16th Century bible. Continuing down we stopped in Cowichan to visit our Aunty Bobby who was very happy to visit with us. We descended the Malahat as darkness thickened and arrived at Bill and Maureen’s place around 10 pm. During my time away my official driver’s license card and graduation certificate had arrived in the mail.
The ensuing days consisted of much visiting. Harry played golf every day with Bill. On Friday, as Mom and I were going about town running errands we ran across our friend Andrea. On Saturday Dad drew me as I shot my final practice at the Victoria Bowmen archery range, after which we went out for lunch with Mom’s step-aunts and uncles, Norman, Doreen, Marion, and Roy. From there we went to visit life-long friends Eric and Susan and their children Terrence and Eleanor, before going back to Bill and Maureen’s for a somewhat impromptu party. Many of our closest friends from the Victoria area came and contributed to the potluck feast. When we were finished discussing history, philosophy and periodic tables with Eric, Allison taught Alex and I to play “Killer Bunnies”, and Harry and Angus soon joined us in the very imaginative and giggle-inducing card game. Barry and Angus took turns on the guitar and keyboard, I played guitar and violin, and Dad got some drums together and we swung “I’ve Got Rhythm” and some other fun tunes. The following day was my final fencing practice before leaving, so I challenged all comers and faced all six of those who arrived one after another for two and a half hours. By the end I was drenched in sweat, but it was fun!
Ken, Peggy, Kenny and Will, our sailing friends from S/V Zeeotter whom we had met in Fiji, drove up from their home in Washington to see us. After meeting them at the M/V Coho dock we toured Fisherman’s Wharf, our old neighborhood from our days on Silent Sound, then went to camp at Aunty Mary’s ranch in Goldstream. For three days Ken, Rob, and I played guitars, Harry and Carter golfed, us kids hiked, trampolined, and swung on swings, while we all camped out and enjoyed eachother’s company. Mom, Dad, Bill and I went to Herman’s Jazz Club for Noah Becker’s birthday jam. The music was from a broad range, and was all very, very fine. As we left Noah, who had been Mom and Dad’s best man at their wedding, asked everyone to give a hand to his friend, a great artist, who was returning to Ottawa! The next day the former Silent Sounders and Zeeotters all congregated aboard S/V Greybeard for a meal with Humphrey and his many usual guests.
The time finally came for us to bid farewell to Victoria. We said goodbye to Aunty Mary, Matthew, Carter, Ken, Peggy, Kenny and Will, then drove to Bill and Maureen’s place to pack the last of my stuff into and onto the car. We miraculously succeeded, with my backpack between my feet, and my guitar and violin cases forming a wall in the demilitarized zone between Harry and I in the back seat, then drove to Deep Cove to visit with our friends Fran and Helen. As expected, we didn’t fit on the 5 o’clock sailing to Tsawwassen from Swartz Bay, but we caught the next ferry at 6. As the ferry pulled away from Vancouver Island, I left behind my archery club, spiritual community, SCA branch, and many other family and close friends.
After spending the night at Dad’s very hospitable cousin Shelley’s place in Vancouver, we drove up into the mountains where the slopes were inhabited by pine trees and the clouds were low over us. During our stay at Grumpa and Nana’s in Princeton there was a traditional music festival which we very much enjoyed. The festival kicked off with a Celtic street dance on Friday night which my poor calves (having just recovered from my last fencing practice) protested for days after the tip-toe springing dances, but the fun was, again, worth it. Between dances a man came up and introduced himself to Mom and I, saying that he had been sworn as a Canadian at a citizenship ceremony which Mom had administrated and I had played guitar at! Mom recalled the thank-you card that he had sent. For the following days Mom, Nana and I listened to the back-to-back performances of Celtic, country, ballads, shanties, clog and morris dancing, and other traditional music, dancing and story-telling. Saying goodbye to Grumpa and Nana, we got in our high-piled car and drove through the smooth rolling Okanogan scenery like an Arabian caravan camel en route to Mecca.
Reaching our friend's Jim and Chris' place in Kelowna, we stayed there two nights. Jim drove Dad and I out to the airport to see his beautifully home-constructed little yellow aircraft. After our stay we continued on, and the sharp gray crags that stood sentinel over Kicking Horse Pass looked down from above us as the Rocky Mountains bore us over their backs. As we drove along the highway, passing road workers and century-old railway-tracks, I looked into the valleys far below and wondered at the perseverance that the first pioneers into this region must have had. Stopping at a gas station to fuel up, we found a tanker truck filling the station which had run dry. Apparently many stations had due to a tornado, and the tanker had to come from Vancouver. Once there was gas, it ran very slowly, at less than a letre per minute. We left the sun in British Columbia as we descended down the slope into the Prairies, and we opted to spend the night in a Calgary motel which smelt of cigarette smoke rather than drive till midnight and set up camp in our destination of Drumheller. The car gave us a little scare the next day, when it refused to start after we had stopped for breakfast, but Mom got it going just as Dad was going to phone for help.
Continuing on to Drumheller, we sank below the sedimentary layers of the pre-historic valley and model dinosaurs began appearing on the sidewalks as we entered the town. We drove to the Royal Tyrrell Museum, Canada's only museum dedicated to palaeontology, which houses dinosaur finds from Alberta and the world. Having visited the museum during my dinosaur-craze era sixteen years ago, a few of the exhibits were vaguely recognizable. Although my craze was long over, it was still fascinating and Harry loved it too.
We set up tent at a campsite, apparently next to a river although there was a fence and dike between us and it. Mom, Dad and I went for a short hike up into the Badlands, the mystical desert of hard, rolling hills. The next morning we set off across the province, driving through vast fields of wheat and canola and past the emotionless mechanical arms of oil-well pumps. We stopped at a lookout over Horse-Thief Valley, and Harry fell in love with the local gopher community who scampered up to eat nuts and raisins out of his hand. As he broke pieces off of a cookie to feed one, it grabbed the whole cookie and ran off to sit next to it's burrow, holding it between its two paws and taking bites out of it in a hilariously human-like fashion. We made it to our cousin Ken's place in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, and he put us up in his beautiful cabin on Jackfish Lake where we roasted marshmallows, swam in the lake, and visited. Finding avid golfers in one another, Harry and Ken hit it off and went golfing together the following morning. We went to the Fort Battleford National Park, where the Northwest Mounted Police had a fort during the 1800's. We witnessed a re-enactment of a rifle drill in the stockade, and went on a guided tour of the surviving fort buildings. We then returned to Ken's place where a minor Holliday family reunion was underway. Ken's son, Rob, daughter, Joanna and her family, and brother, Lenn, were there and I much enjoyed meeting everyone. Having always been very interested in history and genealogy, I loved meeting Lenn who had done extensive research of the Holliday family going back to the late 1700's.
After a wonderful stay in Battleford, we continued across Saskatchewan, camping the night in Manitoba. The roads on the prairies are so flat and straight that people joke that if you fall asleep on the highway you won't crash, you'll just run out of gas! When we entered Ontario the scenery became much more interesting, with low hills, young forests, and many beautiful little lakes and rivers. We sited a wolf, a coyote, a porcupine, two moose, some snakes and many birds of prey. One campsite that we stayed at had an ominous statue at its gate of a giant mosquito bearing away a camper for dinner. In actuality the mozzies were of an average size, but they made up in numbers for what they lacked in individual size. As Mom had only learned after booking her holidays that Harry's school began a full week before Labour Day, we were in a bit more of a rush to get back than we would have been. For that reason we drove long and hard the next two days and stayed at a hotel to avoid camp set-up and take-down time, and he only missed the first day of school.
Arriving at the house in Ottawa, we found the front lawn well maintained and the garden growing well, as our neighbour, Greg, had been looking after Clouseau and the house. Going through the front door, I whistled for Clouseau and a loud meow was heard from up the stairs. He came down and seemed very happy to see us.
So the next week or so I'll be working on college preparation stuff for next year, and doing last minute shopping, packing and preparation for my Canada World Youth exchange. I'll be off to Toronto on the 9th for the CWY orientation camp, so I am on the brink of yet another brand new experience! Crossing 6000 kilometers of Canada with my family was the perfect re-connective and self-discovering experience, and I finally feel that I have a sufficient connection to my country to be an ambassador to it. Mom, Dad, Harry and I need to thank all of our amazing family and friends across Canada who have hosted us and made us welcome in their homes and communities – I am honoured to know so many wonderful people!
For those of you who have long been wondering, I have been told where in Tanzania I will be going in December: a rural community called Chamazi located 25 km south of Tanzania’s largest city, Dar es Salaam. I have also been informed that I am the recipient of a $1000 entrance award to Camosun College when I return to study there in 2010. As I said, the Ontario half of my CWY exchange begins on September 9th, and you will receive all the news of that in my next Missive. This letter grows too long: it must go to the barber's with my beard!
Your Friend,
Bradley A. Clements
Ottawa, Ontario
August 24, 2009
BC Pictures
Pictures from our trip through BC
John Ingraham's whale carving outside Dorothy's house in Alert Bay
Fencing at my final practice in Seagirt
Banquo Folk Ensemble at the Princeton Traditional Music Festival
July 30, 2009
Missive #2: Bachlorship 101
July 30, 2009
Hello everyone!
Bill and Maureen having left for China, I have been looking after the house alone for the past month. This has been my first experience of living alone for any period of time and, school being done and all, it hasn’t been as difficult as anticipated. Thanks to the experience that Maureen gave me earlier, cooking has become an enjoyable necessity. I spent the first week of July coaching archery to a summer camp of handicapped children with Helena at the range. One day consisted of three classes between 10 am and 3 pm, totaling to about sixty kids! Despite the many hours spent searching for arrows lost in the shoulder-high jungle of thistles which have sprung up on the berm, I can’t complain: I’m helping the archery club, the kids and their organizations, and Helena who - having been an archery coach for around 30 years with world champions and universities - has given me a great deal of education. I’m also gaining important teaching experience myself doing something I love to do out in beautiful weather…. oh yeah, and getting paid!
On Canada Day I decided that I needed a bit of exercise, so I walked from Bill and Maureen’s place in Esquimalt around the harbour to Fisherman’s Wharf to visit some friends, then continued down Dallas Road to Beacon Hill Park where I listened to a jazz band performing. After the major concerts in front of the Legislature (including the World music group Pacifica), I watched the show of fireworks over the harbour. Walking back along Government Street, I ran into the ever-popular marimba busking-band and joined the throng of dancers who had made the street impassable. Eventually prying myself away from the joyful music and enthusiastic revelers, I walked back to Esquimalt and crashed into bed at half past midnight.
I must admit, however, that there are times when anyone can feel down, especially when there are several planets in retrograde. I was feeling somewhat touchy and resentful for a period, fed up by the greed and corruption of modern Western society and the lack of good Classical music on the CBC. When I begin to feel this way, there is but one fool-proof therapy: to submerge myself in history. To this end I went to the Royal BC Museum where an exhibit of some of the world’s most amazing artifacts from the British Museum was being displayed. I spent a total of about eight and a half hours over three days in the exhibit, marveling over the sarcophagi of Egyptian pharaohs, an ancient Corinthian helm, a collection of the Lewis chessmen, a fully articulated steel model of a Japanese dragon, and many hundreds of equally breath-taking artifacts from around the world and throughout history. Staring into the eyes of a bust of Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher, I recalled one of his sayings: “Very little is needed to have a happy life.” How true, Marcus!
I organized a fun-shoot at the Victoria Bowmen to help raise funds for Canada World Youth. Thanks to a great turn out of friends, including club members, SCA friends, and a teacher from SIDES, we had a great time shooting balloons, model animals and targets, and raised $130 in the process! The Friday music get-togethers were less well-attended, but Barry on guitar and keyboard and I on the violin and guitar had a great time fooling around with Celtic fiddle tunes, Gospel improvisations, pop songs, and a continuing list of unpredictable music. Between these events, many book sales (which raised about $1300), and kind donations from friends, family, my archery club, and the Lion’s Club of Esquimalt, I have reached my fundraising goal of $2500! Unfortunately I must close the Carlisle Avenue Bindery, so I can’t take any more book orders until after my exchange.
I’ve had many trips to the doctor’s, dentist’s, pharmacist’s, and optometrist’s offices for pre-trip check-ups, booster vaccinations, prescriptions, and my first filling in one of my adult teeth. I also finally got around to applying for my learner’s driver’s license, which I passed easily save the eye exam. As anticipated, my distance vision was not sufficient to drive, so I’ll have to get a new pair of glasses.
Mimi ninasoma Kiswahili! Yes, I am studying Swahili, Tanzania’s national language. I may not yet be able to string together a very impressive sentence, but I’m attempting to build a basic foundation which I can work up from once I get into the program. I should also set about oiling my very rusty French, as I will be expected to use it during the Canadian half of my exchange. Peter, our very kind, charitable, and community-oriented neighbor, got me into volunteering with the Rainbow Kitchen and Garden at St. Savior’s Anglican Church, a place where hundreds of homeless and low-income people can come to eat. I provided live music and helped with clean-up – it is quite enjoyable, and it is worth it for the thanks and the quantities of food that I am sent home with! In the free time that I have, I’ve been reading “The Expedition of Cyrus”, a thrilling 2400 year-old eye-witness account of the most amazing adventure story ever written. It is by Xenophon of Athens, an orator, philosopher, student of Socrates, and general of an army of Greek mercenaries that had to literally fight its way out of the center of the vast and hostile Persian Empire. A must-read if you are a fan of real-life adventure stories, or are just a history geek like me! I have also just finished listened to an audio-book of Virgil’s “Aenied” and Homer’s “Iliad”, and started listening to “Medea” by Euripides, reading parts of the Gnostic Bible and Dead Sea Scrolls, “North of South: An African Journey” by Shiva Niapaul, and a book of the complete works of Michel de Montaigne, the first essayist, who wrote during the French Renaissance. I enjoyed a performance of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night”, set in the 1920’s, on the grounds of Camosun College. On July 25th my fencing instructor and his girlfriend and I drove to an SCA event at Camp Bernard for the testing of a gallant candidate. The candidate was tested in many of the things that make up the Society for Creative Anachronism, of which we saw dancing, armor inspection, fencing, archery, and battle commanding. It was especially fun to have a rapier-oriented event, rather than heavy fighting, to give us fencers a chance to try some really fun and creative battle scenarios. Following that I went to the Luminara lantern festival, in which the element’s light-show far out-shone our feeble lantern art: the sunset dyed the overcast sky a luminous peach while lightening flashed behind a vertical rainbow, sending incredibly long peals of thunder rolling across the heavens.
That’s the news for this month! Bill and Maureen return today. Next week I will be catching the ferry to Pender Harbour and to meet and travel across Canada by road with Mom, Dad and Harry: a trip which I shall tell you of in my next Missive! Remember that if you’ve lost or missed any of my Missives, you can find them – along with many other letters, stories, and essays – archived on my blog, bradleyclements.blogspot.com.
Hope you’re all having a great summer, and I hope to continue to hear from you!
Your friend,
Bradley Clements
CWY Volunteer
Victoria, BC
Sponsored by the Lion’s Club of Esquimalt, the Victoria Bowmen Association, and his many beloved friends and family!
Hello everyone!
Bill and Maureen having left for China, I have been looking after the house alone for the past month. This has been my first experience of living alone for any period of time and, school being done and all, it hasn’t been as difficult as anticipated. Thanks to the experience that Maureen gave me earlier, cooking has become an enjoyable necessity. I spent the first week of July coaching archery to a summer camp of handicapped children with Helena at the range. One day consisted of three classes between 10 am and 3 pm, totaling to about sixty kids! Despite the many hours spent searching for arrows lost in the shoulder-high jungle of thistles which have sprung up on the berm, I can’t complain: I’m helping the archery club, the kids and their organizations, and Helena who - having been an archery coach for around 30 years with world champions and universities - has given me a great deal of education. I’m also gaining important teaching experience myself doing something I love to do out in beautiful weather…. oh yeah, and getting paid!
On Canada Day I decided that I needed a bit of exercise, so I walked from Bill and Maureen’s place in Esquimalt around the harbour to Fisherman’s Wharf to visit some friends, then continued down Dallas Road to Beacon Hill Park where I listened to a jazz band performing. After the major concerts in front of the Legislature (including the World music group Pacifica), I watched the show of fireworks over the harbour. Walking back along Government Street, I ran into the ever-popular marimba busking-band and joined the throng of dancers who had made the street impassable. Eventually prying myself away from the joyful music and enthusiastic revelers, I walked back to Esquimalt and crashed into bed at half past midnight.
I must admit, however, that there are times when anyone can feel down, especially when there are several planets in retrograde. I was feeling somewhat touchy and resentful for a period, fed up by the greed and corruption of modern Western society and the lack of good Classical music on the CBC. When I begin to feel this way, there is but one fool-proof therapy: to submerge myself in history. To this end I went to the Royal BC Museum where an exhibit of some of the world’s most amazing artifacts from the British Museum was being displayed. I spent a total of about eight and a half hours over three days in the exhibit, marveling over the sarcophagi of Egyptian pharaohs, an ancient Corinthian helm, a collection of the Lewis chessmen, a fully articulated steel model of a Japanese dragon, and many hundreds of equally breath-taking artifacts from around the world and throughout history. Staring into the eyes of a bust of Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher, I recalled one of his sayings: “Very little is needed to have a happy life.” How true, Marcus!
I organized a fun-shoot at the Victoria Bowmen to help raise funds for Canada World Youth. Thanks to a great turn out of friends, including club members, SCA friends, and a teacher from SIDES, we had a great time shooting balloons, model animals and targets, and raised $130 in the process! The Friday music get-togethers were less well-attended, but Barry on guitar and keyboard and I on the violin and guitar had a great time fooling around with Celtic fiddle tunes, Gospel improvisations, pop songs, and a continuing list of unpredictable music. Between these events, many book sales (which raised about $1300), and kind donations from friends, family, my archery club, and the Lion’s Club of Esquimalt, I have reached my fundraising goal of $2500! Unfortunately I must close the Carlisle Avenue Bindery, so I can’t take any more book orders until after my exchange.
I’ve had many trips to the doctor’s, dentist’s, pharmacist’s, and optometrist’s offices for pre-trip check-ups, booster vaccinations, prescriptions, and my first filling in one of my adult teeth. I also finally got around to applying for my learner’s driver’s license, which I passed easily save the eye exam. As anticipated, my distance vision was not sufficient to drive, so I’ll have to get a new pair of glasses.
Mimi ninasoma Kiswahili! Yes, I am studying Swahili, Tanzania’s national language. I may not yet be able to string together a very impressive sentence, but I’m attempting to build a basic foundation which I can work up from once I get into the program. I should also set about oiling my very rusty French, as I will be expected to use it during the Canadian half of my exchange. Peter, our very kind, charitable, and community-oriented neighbor, got me into volunteering with the Rainbow Kitchen and Garden at St. Savior’s Anglican Church, a place where hundreds of homeless and low-income people can come to eat. I provided live music and helped with clean-up – it is quite enjoyable, and it is worth it for the thanks and the quantities of food that I am sent home with! In the free time that I have, I’ve been reading “The Expedition of Cyrus”, a thrilling 2400 year-old eye-witness account of the most amazing adventure story ever written. It is by Xenophon of Athens, an orator, philosopher, student of Socrates, and general of an army of Greek mercenaries that had to literally fight its way out of the center of the vast and hostile Persian Empire. A must-read if you are a fan of real-life adventure stories, or are just a history geek like me! I have also just finished listened to an audio-book of Virgil’s “Aenied” and Homer’s “Iliad”, and started listening to “Medea” by Euripides, reading parts of the Gnostic Bible and Dead Sea Scrolls, “North of South: An African Journey” by Shiva Niapaul, and a book of the complete works of Michel de Montaigne, the first essayist, who wrote during the French Renaissance. I enjoyed a performance of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night”, set in the 1920’s, on the grounds of Camosun College. On July 25th my fencing instructor and his girlfriend and I drove to an SCA event at Camp Bernard for the testing of a gallant candidate. The candidate was tested in many of the things that make up the Society for Creative Anachronism, of which we saw dancing, armor inspection, fencing, archery, and battle commanding. It was especially fun to have a rapier-oriented event, rather than heavy fighting, to give us fencers a chance to try some really fun and creative battle scenarios. Following that I went to the Luminara lantern festival, in which the element’s light-show far out-shone our feeble lantern art: the sunset dyed the overcast sky a luminous peach while lightening flashed behind a vertical rainbow, sending incredibly long peals of thunder rolling across the heavens.
That’s the news for this month! Bill and Maureen return today. Next week I will be catching the ferry to Pender Harbour and to meet and travel across Canada by road with Mom, Dad and Harry: a trip which I shall tell you of in my next Missive! Remember that if you’ve lost or missed any of my Missives, you can find them – along with many other letters, stories, and essays – archived on my blog, bradleyclements.blogspot.com.
Hope you’re all having a great summer, and I hope to continue to hear from you!
Your friend,
Bradley Clements
CWY Volunteer
Victoria, BC
Sponsored by the Lion’s Club of Esquimalt, the Victoria Bowmen Association, and his many beloved friends and family!
July 4, 2009
Missive #1: Graduation and beyond!
Monday, June 28th, 2009
Hello everyone!
As you have probably heard, I have recently been accepted for a Canada World Youth (CWY) exchange between Ontario and Tanzania. The program will consist of full-time environmental volunteer work with a group of 18 youth and two adult supervisors - half from Tanzania, half from all across Canada. I will be paired with a Tanzanian counterpart with whom I’ll be living, and together we’ll be staying with a host family in a community in both Peterborough, Ontario, and in a village in Tanzania. My preparations are already underway, including sorting out travel documents, studying Swahili (the primary language of my exchange country), and engaging in an intensive campaign to raise $2500 for CWY. So far I have been blown away by the friendship, generosity and enthusiasm that so many of my friends and family have offered, and with their much appreciated help I have already come to about 70% of my goal within less than one month! I have raised a great deal of funds selling hand-made books, so Bill and Maureen’s suite where I am staying has been converted into a bindery of sorts. Many tireless hours have been spent stooped over stacks of paper to be cut, folded, pierced, sewn, covered, wrapped, and pressed. What I had been expecting to be the hard part, though – selling the books – hasn’t actually been so bad. Already this has been and immensely educational experience which will be especially valuable if I ever end up doing anything like this as a business.
So, many of you have been wondering how and why I came to be involved in Canada World Youth. I’ve been wondering that a bit myself, but I’ll explain to the best of my discernment. My interest in international volunteer aid organizations was first sparked in the South Pacific where I saw volunteers with such organizations as the Peace Corps working, especially in Vanuatu. Having been disgusted by many of the examples of - often pointless, sometimes harmful - “aid”, I was pleased to see that there were organizations which actually intermingled with the local society and worked for them and in accordance with them. Upon returning to Canada I went looking for a similar Canadian organization in which I might be able to participate, and I didn’t have to look far! My family’s one-time acquaintances, now good friends, Bill and Maureen have a son named Dylan who was away in Kenya on a CWY exchange when we returned from our trip. His experience seemed a good one, and he introduced CWY to me. After my family moved to Ottawa for Mom’s work, I began staying with Bill and Maureen. Last Fall we acted as host family to a pair of CWY participants, Melissa and Yulia, in a Victoria/Ukraine volunteer exchange, so I gained some experience of life in the CWY. Finding what I had seen to be important and meaningful, I applied for the program. However, it didn’t remain at the fore of my plans and was washed away by school and prospects of college/university. Thus I was surprised one morning to check my e-mail and find that I had been accepted. I hummed and hawed over it for a couple of days, then decided to accept and haven’t looked back since!
Apart from my preparation work for Canada World Youth, I am also just finishing my grade 12 schooling through SIDES (the South Island Distance Education School) with whom I have been studying since we returned from our trip in 2005. I’ve also been playing in the last of the school year’s Strings program, which I attend at Esquimalt High School. At the Strings Finale concert I was given a commemorative music folder. Grumpa and Nana attended our “Bach to the Beach” picnic/concert at Willows Beach, and I had the opportunity to visit with them and George Wood while they were in town. Allison (my girlfriend) invited me to the Esq. High grad dinner and dance at the Empress Hotel, so I got the experience of a genuine graduation celebration despite being home-schooled! We sat at a table with two of Allison’s friends and their boyfriends, one of whom had been my best friend in grade 3 and who I had not seen in ten years, or had contact with for at least seven… Weird synchronicities are everywhere!
My own graduation ceremony was on the 24th, and although my parents could not make it I was by no means alone: my Gran, Uncle John, Aunty Mary, Carter, Allison, Bill and Maureen all came, some of my closest family and friends. Despite a bit of adventure getting to the ceremony, involving my mixing up of the names of Cadboro and Cordova Bay, it was a great experience to see some of the amazing, diverse students who were graduating through SIDES. The teachers and everyone at SIDES deserve my deepest thanks for guiding me cheerfully, thoughtfully, and wisely through the quagmires of high school, for allowing me the ability to catch up for much lost school time during my travels, and for giving me an option outside of the physical school system. You are all amazing!
As for the rest of the family, they’re doing well in Ottawa. Harry’s enjoying scouts and baseball, and has a website called http://kiwibirds.webs.com/. Dad has his studio in working order and is creating art once again, which can be seen on his new blog http://clementsgallery.blogspot.com/. Mom is working in Citizenship Case Management in Ottawa, and has been on a work exchange to Trinidad. She has been offered another to Siri Lanka, but she has had to turn it down because the three of them will be traveling here to BC in August. Uncle John was in Vancouver General Hospital for surgery on his fractured neck, which went much better than anticipated. He is recovering rapidly and we are thankful for the many prayers that he has received! Silent Sound (yes, I still regard her as part of the family, even though she now has a new owner) is off for a new media-covered adventure over the Northwest Passage this summer, captained by her new owner Cameron Dueck. Their voyage can be traced on Cameron’s website, http://www.openpassageexpedition.com/index.html, where you can find information, live tracking, pictures, the latest up-dates of the expedition, and more.
So that’s the news up to now! Bill and Maureen left for China this morning where they will be traveling and visiting with Dylan who is there studying Mandarin at Shanghai University. I’ll be staying here in Victoria looking after the house and continuing with my fundraising and other preparations for my trip. There will be a funshoot at the Victoria Bowmen archery range on July 11th from 10:30 am till noon, by donation ($5 - $15 suggested) in support of CWY and my exchange. Everyone is welcome regardless of age, membership, and skill. There will be coaches to introduce you to the sport if you are new to it. Also, on each Friday in July, from 2 – 3:30 pm, I will be hosting a fun music session at Bill and Maureen’s place for the young and young at heart. All are welcome, regardless of age and experience (young children should be supervised) with a donation of $5 or more which shall go towards CWY. If you’re in the Victoria area and are interested in either of these events, just let me know and I’ll get you the details.
I will be trying to keep you in the loop with Missives such as this one roughly every month. I will also be posting these Missives, as well as photos and other updates on my blog, http://bradleyclements.blogspot.com/. My e-mail address is svsilentsound[at]gmail[dot]com, and my mailing address (until the end of August) is 1225, Carlisle Ave., Victoria, B.C., V9A 5C7. I’d love to hear from you! Also, I am still working to raise the $750 remaining before the end of July, so please let me know if you would care to contribute to CWY. I am gratefully accepting donations: a tax-receipt and a personal postcard from Tanzania will be sent to everyone who contributes $20 or more. The books are still on sale, between $10 and $35 – they make great gifts, journals, sketch-books, note-books, etc. Thanks for your support!
Your friend,
Bradley Clements
CWY Ontario/Tanzania Volunteer
Victoria, Canada
Hello everyone!
As you have probably heard, I have recently been accepted for a Canada World Youth (CWY) exchange between Ontario and Tanzania. The program will consist of full-time environmental volunteer work with a group of 18 youth and two adult supervisors - half from Tanzania, half from all across Canada. I will be paired with a Tanzanian counterpart with whom I’ll be living, and together we’ll be staying with a host family in a community in both Peterborough, Ontario, and in a village in Tanzania. My preparations are already underway, including sorting out travel documents, studying Swahili (the primary language of my exchange country), and engaging in an intensive campaign to raise $2500 for CWY. So far I have been blown away by the friendship, generosity and enthusiasm that so many of my friends and family have offered, and with their much appreciated help I have already come to about 70% of my goal within less than one month! I have raised a great deal of funds selling hand-made books, so Bill and Maureen’s suite where I am staying has been converted into a bindery of sorts. Many tireless hours have been spent stooped over stacks of paper to be cut, folded, pierced, sewn, covered, wrapped, and pressed. What I had been expecting to be the hard part, though – selling the books – hasn’t actually been so bad. Already this has been and immensely educational experience which will be especially valuable if I ever end up doing anything like this as a business.
So, many of you have been wondering how and why I came to be involved in Canada World Youth. I’ve been wondering that a bit myself, but I’ll explain to the best of my discernment. My interest in international volunteer aid organizations was first sparked in the South Pacific where I saw volunteers with such organizations as the Peace Corps working, especially in Vanuatu. Having been disgusted by many of the examples of - often pointless, sometimes harmful - “aid”, I was pleased to see that there were organizations which actually intermingled with the local society and worked for them and in accordance with them. Upon returning to Canada I went looking for a similar Canadian organization in which I might be able to participate, and I didn’t have to look far! My family’s one-time acquaintances, now good friends, Bill and Maureen have a son named Dylan who was away in Kenya on a CWY exchange when we returned from our trip. His experience seemed a good one, and he introduced CWY to me. After my family moved to Ottawa for Mom’s work, I began staying with Bill and Maureen. Last Fall we acted as host family to a pair of CWY participants, Melissa and Yulia, in a Victoria/Ukraine volunteer exchange, so I gained some experience of life in the CWY. Finding what I had seen to be important and meaningful, I applied for the program. However, it didn’t remain at the fore of my plans and was washed away by school and prospects of college/university. Thus I was surprised one morning to check my e-mail and find that I had been accepted. I hummed and hawed over it for a couple of days, then decided to accept and haven’t looked back since!
Apart from my preparation work for Canada World Youth, I am also just finishing my grade 12 schooling through SIDES (the South Island Distance Education School) with whom I have been studying since we returned from our trip in 2005. I’ve also been playing in the last of the school year’s Strings program, which I attend at Esquimalt High School. At the Strings Finale concert I was given a commemorative music folder. Grumpa and Nana attended our “Bach to the Beach” picnic/concert at Willows Beach, and I had the opportunity to visit with them and George Wood while they were in town. Allison (my girlfriend) invited me to the Esq. High grad dinner and dance at the Empress Hotel, so I got the experience of a genuine graduation celebration despite being home-schooled! We sat at a table with two of Allison’s friends and their boyfriends, one of whom had been my best friend in grade 3 and who I had not seen in ten years, or had contact with for at least seven… Weird synchronicities are everywhere!
My own graduation ceremony was on the 24th, and although my parents could not make it I was by no means alone: my Gran, Uncle John, Aunty Mary, Carter, Allison, Bill and Maureen all came, some of my closest family and friends. Despite a bit of adventure getting to the ceremony, involving my mixing up of the names of Cadboro and Cordova Bay, it was a great experience to see some of the amazing, diverse students who were graduating through SIDES. The teachers and everyone at SIDES deserve my deepest thanks for guiding me cheerfully, thoughtfully, and wisely through the quagmires of high school, for allowing me the ability to catch up for much lost school time during my travels, and for giving me an option outside of the physical school system. You are all amazing!
As for the rest of the family, they’re doing well in Ottawa. Harry’s enjoying scouts and baseball, and has a website called http://kiwibirds.webs.com/. Dad has his studio in working order and is creating art once again, which can be seen on his new blog http://clementsgallery.blogspot.com/. Mom is working in Citizenship Case Management in Ottawa, and has been on a work exchange to Trinidad. She has been offered another to Siri Lanka, but she has had to turn it down because the three of them will be traveling here to BC in August. Uncle John was in Vancouver General Hospital for surgery on his fractured neck, which went much better than anticipated. He is recovering rapidly and we are thankful for the many prayers that he has received! Silent Sound (yes, I still regard her as part of the family, even though she now has a new owner) is off for a new media-covered adventure over the Northwest Passage this summer, captained by her new owner Cameron Dueck. Their voyage can be traced on Cameron’s website, http://www.openpassageexpedition.com/index.html, where you can find information, live tracking, pictures, the latest up-dates of the expedition, and more.
So that’s the news up to now! Bill and Maureen left for China this morning where they will be traveling and visiting with Dylan who is there studying Mandarin at Shanghai University. I’ll be staying here in Victoria looking after the house and continuing with my fundraising and other preparations for my trip. There will be a funshoot at the Victoria Bowmen archery range on July 11th from 10:30 am till noon, by donation ($5 - $15 suggested) in support of CWY and my exchange. Everyone is welcome regardless of age, membership, and skill. There will be coaches to introduce you to the sport if you are new to it. Also, on each Friday in July, from 2 – 3:30 pm, I will be hosting a fun music session at Bill and Maureen’s place for the young and young at heart. All are welcome, regardless of age and experience (young children should be supervised) with a donation of $5 or more which shall go towards CWY. If you’re in the Victoria area and are interested in either of these events, just let me know and I’ll get you the details.
I will be trying to keep you in the loop with Missives such as this one roughly every month. I will also be posting these Missives, as well as photos and other updates on my blog, http://bradleyclements.blogspot.com/. My e-mail address is svsilentsound[at]gmail[dot]com, and my mailing address (until the end of August) is 1225, Carlisle Ave., Victoria, B.C., V9A 5C7. I’d love to hear from you! Also, I am still working to raise the $750 remaining before the end of July, so please let me know if you would care to contribute to CWY. I am gratefully accepting donations: a tax-receipt and a personal postcard from Tanzania will be sent to everyone who contributes $20 or more. The books are still on sale, between $10 and $35 – they make great gifts, journals, sketch-books, note-books, etc. Thanks for your support!
Your friend,
Bradley Clements
CWY Ontario/Tanzania Volunteer
Victoria, Canada
June 24, 2009
Essays
This is an essay that I composed for my personalized Comparative Civilizations 12 course. My appologies, the images which you see reference to in the citations are not featured in this post.
RENAISSANCE: REKINDELING THE PAST; SPARKING THE FUTURE
An Illustrated Essay by Bradley A. Clements
The word “Renaissance”, meaning a re-birth or re-vitalization, was first used to describe the Italian Renaissance of the 15th and 16th Centuries in Europe. The word has since come to be most commonly associated with any period of great cultural, intellectual, scientific and social prosperity arising from a suddenly renewed interest in the past. Under this definition it can be said that many notable renaissances have occurred around the world throughout the course of history, bearing comparable characteristics in their nature, rise, and aftermath.
While the word may have been first used in the context of the Italian Renaissance, the concept of a renaissance is far older. The first discernable periods of renaissance may be said to have been in the mid to late 700’s and 800’s A.D., with the emergence of the Carolingian, Macedonian, and Islamic Renaissances. However, it would seem that in ancient times the world lived in a virtually constant state of renaissance, of flourishing culture looking back at the past. Rather than only during the great state of revolution that were the later renaissances, ancient peoples always looked for identity and justification from the past. For example, conquerors often claimed a symbolic – if not actual – lineage from a previous notable general, as King Pyrus of Epirus who, in his war against the Romans in defense of the Tarentines, proclaimed himself a “latter day Alexander the Great” (1). Alexander the Great of Macedon, conqueror of the Persians, had in turn claimed a symbolic succession from Agamemnon of Mycenae who had led the Greek invasion of Ilium. The ancient value of heritage seems only to have been broken by occasional periods of revolution. The reinstatement of the traditional Egyptian polytheistic religion by Pharaoh Tutankhamun in 1336 B.C. after the Amarna Period of Akhenaten’s reign (2), the Athenian Golden Age brought about by Pericles in 448 B.C. after the two sackings of the city during the Persian Wars (3), or Augustus Caesar’s era of cultural excellence in the Roman Empire from 27 B.C to 14 A.D. following the Roman Civil War (4), could all be said to have been cultural and political renaissances. They were, however, merely returning to norms which had not been long dormant, and which had certainly not been forgotten.
Through an observation of some of the many renaissances of history, it can be seen that the genesis of a renaissance hinges very much around politics, often backed by a newly invigorated economy, inspiration from the outside world, and new innovations in communications technology. It must be realized, though, that these components merely act as the match which lights the fuse of a pre-existing creative culture.
The Islamic Golden Age of circa 700 – 1200/1600, as an example, was a renaissance which began and flourished under the encouragement of the Abbasid Caliphate. The caliphate supported the founding of many centers of learning, including the world’s oldest universities and the largest libraries which the world had ever seen, many of which were open to the public. In these places the texts of the ancient Iraqis, Romans, Chinese, Indians, Persians, Greeks, Byzantines, and North Africans were archived, translated into Arabic, and studied passionately. Due to the impressive size, wealth, and power of the Islamic Empire, commerce flourished and soon replaced warfare (5). With this new development the Empire became stable, prosperous, and the cross-roads of the world. These conditions provided an ideal breeding-ground for art and learning, with a broad base of wealthy patrons and available inspiration. Despite all other catalysts, the explosion of learning could not have become as wide-spread as it did without one new piece of communications technology: paper. Knowledge of the secrets of papermaking was revealed by Chinese prisoners in 751 A.D. (6), and allowed for a much easier, transportable, and more affordable medium to communicate information and ideas.
The Islamic Golden Age provides a fine example, and is nearly stereotypical when speaking of the birth of a renaissance. The Carolingian Renaissance, during Charlemagne’s reign of the Frankish Empire from 771 to 814 A.D. (7), was similarly inspired by the monarch and made possible by the stability of the empire which he had forged (5). The Italian Renaissance itself was based largely upon a stable commerce-based economy which empowered the arising middle class to give their patronage to the arts; based upon new innovations in communications technology, most notably in the form of the printing press; and based upon the competitive encouragement of political and religious leaders, perhaps the most famous example being the Medicis. The Elizabethan Era, England’s cultural renaissance during the rule of Queen Elizabeth I from 1558 to 1603, has come to be known by the name of the monarch who inspired it. The First Hawaiian Renaissance, from 1874 to 1891, came about due to the interests of traditional Hawaiian culture held by King Kalakaua (8), and more recent attempts to bring about renaissances, such as the Urban Renaissance in the United Kingdom (9), have been driven largely by government incentives.
Although many very diverse renaissances have occurred throughout history, they can all be defined as renaissances by specific characteristics of their nature which they hold in common. Note that many field-specific renaissances have happened over the course of history, such as the revival of Greek, Gothic and Tudor architecture and classical styles of painting and literature, but these cannot rightly be considered to be renaissances in the application of the term to an era of history in general. The most notable aspect of a substantial renaissance is in the arts and learning, often followed closely by science, religion, and many other attributes of society. While cultural developments occurred to varying degrees in different renaissances, the areas of development were often essentially the same.
As an example, the Italian Renaissance is recognized as one of the most remarkable periods in all of art history. More artists are recorded to have worked during the Renaissance than during any other period in European history (5), and innumerable striking and innovative works were created. But a few examples of works of art include the largest masonry dome ever erected, Brunelleschi’s Duomo in Florence (10); the Mona Lisa, the renowned portrait by Leonardo da Vinci, and the riveting Statue of David by Michelangelo. Revival of the classical ideals of realism and humanism led to studies in form and the discovery of perspective in the visual arts. Musical experimentation with the use of polyphony, discovered during the 12th Century Renaissance, resulted in awe inspiring motets by such composers as Josquin Desprez, Thomas Tallis, Orlando Gibbons, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, and Claudio Monteverdi, becoming the basis for all of Western Classical music (11). Literature reached new bounds. New works, such as Miguel de Cervantes’ ‘Don Quixote’, were created building upon the form of the novel which had been experimented with by the ancient Greeks, and the novella which had been the form of Giovanni Boccaccio’s 14th Century work, ‘The Decameron’. Poets and playwrights, such as William Shakespeare, made popular their antiquarian forms of literature. They perfected the use of rhyme and rhythm which had been resurrected during the 12th Century Renaissance, and the form of the sonnet which had been invented by Giacomo da Lentini in the 13th Century and immortalized by Francesco Petrarca in the 14th Century (12). Even the “lesser” arts, such as the martial arts, were revolutionized. The rapier evolved, a long thin sword adapted to the ancient Roman style of swordplay which was based upon thrusting. This new style of fencing took Europe by storm with many competing schools springing up across the continent, such as those of Capo Ferro, Agrippa, and Morrozzo. Not only were these many art forms growing and changing tremendously, they were also experiencing a demand that may not have been seen before or since. “Renaissance Men”, as they were called, although members of both genders were deserving of the name, were idealistic individuals which a passionate interest in a myriad of fields. Members of all of the courts of Europe were expected to fulfill these standards and be accomplished in all of the arts, as well as be courteous, tasteful, philosophical, and honorable, as outlined in such works as ‘The Book of the Courtier’ by Baldassare Castiglione.
New breakthroughs were made in the sciences of medicine, astronomy, mathematics, alchemy, and physics, despite the disapproval of the Catholic Church. Humanism led to a greater desire to find explanations through logic, science, and reasoning, rather than through the blind faith of the Church which had more or less governed Europe’s thinking for the past millennium. New philosophies emerged which criticized the Church to varying degrees. This eventually led to the Reformation which saw the rise of counter-Catholic dioceses such as the Lutheran Church and Calvinism, interpretations of Christianity which sought the original striped-down version of the religion.
The conclusion of a renaissance can be as abrupt or as gradual as its rising. An observation of the tendencies of various renaissances can lead us to believe that the more substantial the renaissance the more prolonged its outward transition and the more enduring its legacy. Historians still differ in opinion as to when between 1200 and 1600 A.D. the great Islamic Golden Age can be said to have ended (5). Only circa dates can be given for the period of the Italian Renaissance, partially because it ended at different times in different parts of Europe, but also because it melded so seamlessly into the Baroque. Other renaissances seem only to have endured under their protectorate, such as the Elizabethan, Hawaiian, and Carolingian renaissances, all of which ended with the reign of the monarch who initiated them. This is likely to have more to do with the surrounding circumstances than with the content of the renaissance, but it is notable.
Renaissances being periods of such cultural potency, it is not surprising to see that their legacies are long-enduring indeed. The 12th Century Renaissance, while little known today, saw the rise of today’s judicial and educational systems (13). In true renaissance nature, these innovations were inspired by the ancient Romans and Arabs, but were re-introduced and re-interpreted by the Renaissance scholars in a way which has made them immortal. The architecture of the 12th Century, the science and mathematics of the Greeks and Arabs, the religion that was first championed by Charlemagne in the Carolingian Era and the branches of it which emerged from the Reformation, the art of Michelangelo, the inventions of Da Vinci, the philosophies of Socrates, the language of Shakespeare, the politics of Castiglione and Machiavelli: the products of renaissances surround us each and every day.
One could say that history is a pendulum which is eternally swinging from extreme to extreme. Using this analogy, the centre of the swing is the Renaissance: the place that is in balance between the two worlds of faith and reason, nature and order, past and future. The Renaissance is the place of looking back and moving forward. In the words of one who lived during a renaissance, John of Salisbury in his ‘Metalogicon’ of 1159 A.D. (13):
“Our own generation enjoys the legacy bequeathed to it by that which preceded it. We frequently know more, not because we have moved ahead by our own natural ability, but because we are supported by the menial strength of others, and possess riches that we have inherited from our forefathers. Bernard of Clairvaux used to compare us to punt dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants. He pointed out that we see more and farther than our predecessors, not because we have keener vision or greater height, but because we are lifted up and borne aloft on their gigantic stature.”
Reference Citations
1. Garland, R. Close Encounters. Lecture from series: The Integrated History of Ancient Greece and Rome. http://www.torrentreactor.net/torrents/2655216/The-Integrated-History-of-Ancient-Greece-and-Rome.
2. Akhenaten. Egyptology Online. 2008. http://www.egyptologyonline.com/akhenaten1.htm.
3. Age of Pericles. Wikipedia. April 21, 2009. http://en.wikipedia/wiki/Age_of_Pericles.
4. History of Augustus Caesar. http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=aa09.
5. Walker, R. 1998. World Civilizations: A Comparative Study. p. 213-216, p. 260-286, p. 333-335. Oxford University Press, Don Mills.
6. What was the Islamic Golden Age? Wise Geek. 2009. http://www.wisegeek.com/what-was-the-islamic-golden-age.htm.
7. Charlemagne and the Carolingian Renaissance. The History Guide. October 11, 2006. http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture20b.html.
8. King Kalakaua. Aloha-Hawaii.com 2004. http://www.aloha-hawaii.com/hawaii/king+kalakaua/.
9. Urban Renaissance. Wikipedia. September 18, 2008. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_renaissance.
10. Florence Cathedral. Wikipedia. April 16, 2009. http://en.wikipedia/wiki/Florence_Cathedral.
11. Holister, Robert. “Viderunt Omnes”, Lecture.
12. Italian (Petrarchan) sonnet. Wikipedia. April 22, 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet#Italian_.28Petrarchan.29_sonnet.
13. The 12th Century Renaissance. The History Guide. October 11, 2006. http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture26b.html.
Image Sources*
Michelangelo. The Creation of Adam. Sistine Chapel. http://www.success.co.il/knowledge/images/image-michelangelo-god-creates-man.html.
Anonymous A. Venus de Milo. http://www.mlahanas.da/Greeks/Arts/VenusMilo2.jpg.
Anonymous B. Arabesque. http://krsparks.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/frieze.jpg.
Raphael. The School of Athens. http://tomgpalmer.com/wp-content/uploads/legacy-images/School%20of%20Athens2.jpg.
Anonymous C. Stained glass cathedral window. www.fpcokc.org/aboutus/
* in order of presentation.
Bibliography
The 12th Century Renaissance. The History Guide. October 11, 2006. http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture26b.html.
Age of Pericles. Wikipedia. April 21, 2009. http://en.wikipedia/wiki/Age_of_Pericles.
Akhenaten. Egyptology Online. 2008. http://www.egyptologyonline.com/akhenaten1.htm.
Anonymous A. Venus de Milo. http://www.mlahanas.da/Greeks/Arts/VenusMilo2.jpg.
Anonymous B. Arabesque. http://krsparks.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/frieze.jpg.
Anonymous C. Stained glass cathedral window. www.fpcokc.org/aboutus/
Castiglione, Baldassare. The Book of the Courtier. Trans. George Bull. London, England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1967.
Charlemagne and the Carolingian Renaissance. The History Guide. October 11, 2006. http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture20b.html.
Florence Cathedral. Wikipedia. April 16, 2009. http://en.wikipedia/wiki/Florence_Cathedral.
Garland, R. Close Encounters. Lecture from series: The Integrated History of Ancient Greece and Rome. http://www.torrentreactor.net/torrents/2655216/The-Integrated-History-of-Ancient-Greece-and-Rome.
The Greco-Persian Wars. Classical Ideals. July, 2006. http://www.classicalideals.com/Greco-Persian%20Wars.htm.
Harlem Renaissance. World Book Reference Center. April 24, 2009. http://www.worldbookonline.com/wb/article?id=ar246340&st=harlem+renaissance.
Herodotus. Histories. Trans. A. de Selincourt. New York: Penguin Classics 1972.
Hindu Renaissance. Encyclopaedia Britannica. April 24, 2009. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/266310/Hindu-Renaissance.
History of Augustus Caesar. http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=aa09.
Holister, Robert. Lecture. Viderunt Omnes. November, 2008.
Homer, translated by Robert Fagles. The Iliad. Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1998.
Italian (Petrarchan) sonnet. Wikipedia. April 22, 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet#Italian_.28Petrarchan.29_sonnet.
King Kalakaua. Aloha-Hawaii.com 2004. http://www.aloha-hawaii.com/hawaii/king+kalakaua/.
Michelangelo. The Creation of Adam. Sistine Chapel. http://www.success.co.il/knowledge/images/image-michelangelo-god-creates-man.html.
Morgan, Michael Hamilton. Lost History: The Enduring Legacy of Muslim Scientists, Thinkers, and Artists. Washington, United States of America: National Geographic Society, 2007.
Raphael. The School of Athens. http://tomgpalmer.com/wp-content/uploads/legacy-images/School%20of%20Athens2.jpg.
Urban Renaissance. Wikipedia. September 18, 2008. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_renaissance.
Walker, R. 1998. World Civilizations: A Comparative Study. p. 213-216, p. 260-286, p. 333-335. Oxford University Press, Don Mills.
What was the Islamic Golden Age? Wise Geek. 2009. http://www.wisegeek.com/what-was-the-islamic-golden-age.htm.
RENAISSANCE: REKINDELING THE PAST; SPARKING THE FUTURE
An Illustrated Essay by Bradley A. Clements
The word “Renaissance”, meaning a re-birth or re-vitalization, was first used to describe the Italian Renaissance of the 15th and 16th Centuries in Europe. The word has since come to be most commonly associated with any period of great cultural, intellectual, scientific and social prosperity arising from a suddenly renewed interest in the past. Under this definition it can be said that many notable renaissances have occurred around the world throughout the course of history, bearing comparable characteristics in their nature, rise, and aftermath.
While the word may have been first used in the context of the Italian Renaissance, the concept of a renaissance is far older. The first discernable periods of renaissance may be said to have been in the mid to late 700’s and 800’s A.D., with the emergence of the Carolingian, Macedonian, and Islamic Renaissances. However, it would seem that in ancient times the world lived in a virtually constant state of renaissance, of flourishing culture looking back at the past. Rather than only during the great state of revolution that were the later renaissances, ancient peoples always looked for identity and justification from the past. For example, conquerors often claimed a symbolic – if not actual – lineage from a previous notable general, as King Pyrus of Epirus who, in his war against the Romans in defense of the Tarentines, proclaimed himself a “latter day Alexander the Great” (1). Alexander the Great of Macedon, conqueror of the Persians, had in turn claimed a symbolic succession from Agamemnon of Mycenae who had led the Greek invasion of Ilium. The ancient value of heritage seems only to have been broken by occasional periods of revolution. The reinstatement of the traditional Egyptian polytheistic religion by Pharaoh Tutankhamun in 1336 B.C. after the Amarna Period of Akhenaten’s reign (2), the Athenian Golden Age brought about by Pericles in 448 B.C. after the two sackings of the city during the Persian Wars (3), or Augustus Caesar’s era of cultural excellence in the Roman Empire from 27 B.C to 14 A.D. following the Roman Civil War (4), could all be said to have been cultural and political renaissances. They were, however, merely returning to norms which had not been long dormant, and which had certainly not been forgotten.
Through an observation of some of the many renaissances of history, it can be seen that the genesis of a renaissance hinges very much around politics, often backed by a newly invigorated economy, inspiration from the outside world, and new innovations in communications technology. It must be realized, though, that these components merely act as the match which lights the fuse of a pre-existing creative culture.
The Islamic Golden Age of circa 700 – 1200/1600, as an example, was a renaissance which began and flourished under the encouragement of the Abbasid Caliphate. The caliphate supported the founding of many centers of learning, including the world’s oldest universities and the largest libraries which the world had ever seen, many of which were open to the public. In these places the texts of the ancient Iraqis, Romans, Chinese, Indians, Persians, Greeks, Byzantines, and North Africans were archived, translated into Arabic, and studied passionately. Due to the impressive size, wealth, and power of the Islamic Empire, commerce flourished and soon replaced warfare (5). With this new development the Empire became stable, prosperous, and the cross-roads of the world. These conditions provided an ideal breeding-ground for art and learning, with a broad base of wealthy patrons and available inspiration. Despite all other catalysts, the explosion of learning could not have become as wide-spread as it did without one new piece of communications technology: paper. Knowledge of the secrets of papermaking was revealed by Chinese prisoners in 751 A.D. (6), and allowed for a much easier, transportable, and more affordable medium to communicate information and ideas.
The Islamic Golden Age provides a fine example, and is nearly stereotypical when speaking of the birth of a renaissance. The Carolingian Renaissance, during Charlemagne’s reign of the Frankish Empire from 771 to 814 A.D. (7), was similarly inspired by the monarch and made possible by the stability of the empire which he had forged (5). The Italian Renaissance itself was based largely upon a stable commerce-based economy which empowered the arising middle class to give their patronage to the arts; based upon new innovations in communications technology, most notably in the form of the printing press; and based upon the competitive encouragement of political and religious leaders, perhaps the most famous example being the Medicis. The Elizabethan Era, England’s cultural renaissance during the rule of Queen Elizabeth I from 1558 to 1603, has come to be known by the name of the monarch who inspired it. The First Hawaiian Renaissance, from 1874 to 1891, came about due to the interests of traditional Hawaiian culture held by King Kalakaua (8), and more recent attempts to bring about renaissances, such as the Urban Renaissance in the United Kingdom (9), have been driven largely by government incentives.
Although many very diverse renaissances have occurred throughout history, they can all be defined as renaissances by specific characteristics of their nature which they hold in common. Note that many field-specific renaissances have happened over the course of history, such as the revival of Greek, Gothic and Tudor architecture and classical styles of painting and literature, but these cannot rightly be considered to be renaissances in the application of the term to an era of history in general. The most notable aspect of a substantial renaissance is in the arts and learning, often followed closely by science, religion, and many other attributes of society. While cultural developments occurred to varying degrees in different renaissances, the areas of development were often essentially the same.
As an example, the Italian Renaissance is recognized as one of the most remarkable periods in all of art history. More artists are recorded to have worked during the Renaissance than during any other period in European history (5), and innumerable striking and innovative works were created. But a few examples of works of art include the largest masonry dome ever erected, Brunelleschi’s Duomo in Florence (10); the Mona Lisa, the renowned portrait by Leonardo da Vinci, and the riveting Statue of David by Michelangelo. Revival of the classical ideals of realism and humanism led to studies in form and the discovery of perspective in the visual arts. Musical experimentation with the use of polyphony, discovered during the 12th Century Renaissance, resulted in awe inspiring motets by such composers as Josquin Desprez, Thomas Tallis, Orlando Gibbons, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, and Claudio Monteverdi, becoming the basis for all of Western Classical music (11). Literature reached new bounds. New works, such as Miguel de Cervantes’ ‘Don Quixote’, were created building upon the form of the novel which had been experimented with by the ancient Greeks, and the novella which had been the form of Giovanni Boccaccio’s 14th Century work, ‘The Decameron’. Poets and playwrights, such as William Shakespeare, made popular their antiquarian forms of literature. They perfected the use of rhyme and rhythm which had been resurrected during the 12th Century Renaissance, and the form of the sonnet which had been invented by Giacomo da Lentini in the 13th Century and immortalized by Francesco Petrarca in the 14th Century (12). Even the “lesser” arts, such as the martial arts, were revolutionized. The rapier evolved, a long thin sword adapted to the ancient Roman style of swordplay which was based upon thrusting. This new style of fencing took Europe by storm with many competing schools springing up across the continent, such as those of Capo Ferro, Agrippa, and Morrozzo. Not only were these many art forms growing and changing tremendously, they were also experiencing a demand that may not have been seen before or since. “Renaissance Men”, as they were called, although members of both genders were deserving of the name, were idealistic individuals which a passionate interest in a myriad of fields. Members of all of the courts of Europe were expected to fulfill these standards and be accomplished in all of the arts, as well as be courteous, tasteful, philosophical, and honorable, as outlined in such works as ‘The Book of the Courtier’ by Baldassare Castiglione.
New breakthroughs were made in the sciences of medicine, astronomy, mathematics, alchemy, and physics, despite the disapproval of the Catholic Church. Humanism led to a greater desire to find explanations through logic, science, and reasoning, rather than through the blind faith of the Church which had more or less governed Europe’s thinking for the past millennium. New philosophies emerged which criticized the Church to varying degrees. This eventually led to the Reformation which saw the rise of counter-Catholic dioceses such as the Lutheran Church and Calvinism, interpretations of Christianity which sought the original striped-down version of the religion.
The conclusion of a renaissance can be as abrupt or as gradual as its rising. An observation of the tendencies of various renaissances can lead us to believe that the more substantial the renaissance the more prolonged its outward transition and the more enduring its legacy. Historians still differ in opinion as to when between 1200 and 1600 A.D. the great Islamic Golden Age can be said to have ended (5). Only circa dates can be given for the period of the Italian Renaissance, partially because it ended at different times in different parts of Europe, but also because it melded so seamlessly into the Baroque. Other renaissances seem only to have endured under their protectorate, such as the Elizabethan, Hawaiian, and Carolingian renaissances, all of which ended with the reign of the monarch who initiated them. This is likely to have more to do with the surrounding circumstances than with the content of the renaissance, but it is notable.
Renaissances being periods of such cultural potency, it is not surprising to see that their legacies are long-enduring indeed. The 12th Century Renaissance, while little known today, saw the rise of today’s judicial and educational systems (13). In true renaissance nature, these innovations were inspired by the ancient Romans and Arabs, but were re-introduced and re-interpreted by the Renaissance scholars in a way which has made them immortal. The architecture of the 12th Century, the science and mathematics of the Greeks and Arabs, the religion that was first championed by Charlemagne in the Carolingian Era and the branches of it which emerged from the Reformation, the art of Michelangelo, the inventions of Da Vinci, the philosophies of Socrates, the language of Shakespeare, the politics of Castiglione and Machiavelli: the products of renaissances surround us each and every day.
One could say that history is a pendulum which is eternally swinging from extreme to extreme. Using this analogy, the centre of the swing is the Renaissance: the place that is in balance between the two worlds of faith and reason, nature and order, past and future. The Renaissance is the place of looking back and moving forward. In the words of one who lived during a renaissance, John of Salisbury in his ‘Metalogicon’ of 1159 A.D. (13):
“Our own generation enjoys the legacy bequeathed to it by that which preceded it. We frequently know more, not because we have moved ahead by our own natural ability, but because we are supported by the menial strength of others, and possess riches that we have inherited from our forefathers. Bernard of Clairvaux used to compare us to punt dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants. He pointed out that we see more and farther than our predecessors, not because we have keener vision or greater height, but because we are lifted up and borne aloft on their gigantic stature.”
Reference Citations
1. Garland, R. Close Encounters. Lecture from series: The Integrated History of Ancient Greece and Rome. http://www.torrentreactor.net/torrents/2655216/The-Integrated-History-of-Ancient-Greece-and-Rome.
2. Akhenaten. Egyptology Online. 2008. http://www.egyptologyonline.com/akhenaten1.htm.
3. Age of Pericles. Wikipedia. April 21, 2009. http://en.wikipedia/wiki/Age_of_Pericles.
4. History of Augustus Caesar. http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=aa09.
5. Walker, R. 1998. World Civilizations: A Comparative Study. p. 213-216, p. 260-286, p. 333-335. Oxford University Press, Don Mills.
6. What was the Islamic Golden Age? Wise Geek. 2009. http://www.wisegeek.com/what-was-the-islamic-golden-age.htm.
7. Charlemagne and the Carolingian Renaissance. The History Guide. October 11, 2006. http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture20b.html.
8. King Kalakaua. Aloha-Hawaii.com 2004. http://www.aloha-hawaii.com/hawaii/king+kalakaua/.
9. Urban Renaissance. Wikipedia. September 18, 2008. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_renaissance.
10. Florence Cathedral. Wikipedia. April 16, 2009. http://en.wikipedia/wiki/Florence_Cathedral.
11. Holister, Robert. “Viderunt Omnes”, Lecture.
12. Italian (Petrarchan) sonnet. Wikipedia. April 22, 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet#Italian_.28Petrarchan.29_sonnet.
13. The 12th Century Renaissance. The History Guide. October 11, 2006. http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture26b.html.
Image Sources*
Michelangelo. The Creation of Adam. Sistine Chapel. http://www.success.co.il/knowledge/images/image-michelangelo-god-creates-man.html.
Anonymous A. Venus de Milo. http://www.mlahanas.da/Greeks/Arts/VenusMilo2.jpg.
Anonymous B. Arabesque. http://krsparks.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/frieze.jpg.
Raphael. The School of Athens. http://tomgpalmer.com/wp-content/uploads/legacy-images/School%20of%20Athens2.jpg.
Anonymous C. Stained glass cathedral window. www.fpcokc.org/aboutus/
* in order of presentation.
Bibliography
The 12th Century Renaissance. The History Guide. October 11, 2006. http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture26b.html.
Age of Pericles. Wikipedia. April 21, 2009. http://en.wikipedia/wiki/Age_of_Pericles.
Akhenaten. Egyptology Online. 2008. http://www.egyptologyonline.com/akhenaten1.htm.
Anonymous A. Venus de Milo. http://www.mlahanas.da/Greeks/Arts/VenusMilo2.jpg.
Anonymous B. Arabesque. http://krsparks.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/frieze.jpg.
Anonymous C. Stained glass cathedral window. www.fpcokc.org/aboutus/
Castiglione, Baldassare. The Book of the Courtier. Trans. George Bull. London, England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1967.
Charlemagne and the Carolingian Renaissance. The History Guide. October 11, 2006. http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture20b.html.
Florence Cathedral. Wikipedia. April 16, 2009. http://en.wikipedia/wiki/Florence_Cathedral.
Garland, R. Close Encounters. Lecture from series: The Integrated History of Ancient Greece and Rome. http://www.torrentreactor.net/torrents/2655216/The-Integrated-History-of-Ancient-Greece-and-Rome.
The Greco-Persian Wars. Classical Ideals. July, 2006. http://www.classicalideals.com/Greco-Persian%20Wars.htm.
Harlem Renaissance. World Book Reference Center. April 24, 2009. http://www.worldbookonline.com/wb/article?id=ar246340&st=harlem+renaissance.
Herodotus. Histories. Trans. A. de Selincourt. New York: Penguin Classics 1972.
Hindu Renaissance. Encyclopaedia Britannica. April 24, 2009. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/266310/Hindu-Renaissance.
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Homer, translated by Robert Fagles. The Iliad. Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1998.
Italian (Petrarchan) sonnet. Wikipedia. April 22, 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet#Italian_.28Petrarchan.29_sonnet.
King Kalakaua. Aloha-Hawaii.com 2004. http://www.aloha-hawaii.com/hawaii/king+kalakaua/.
Michelangelo. The Creation of Adam. Sistine Chapel. http://www.success.co.il/knowledge/images/image-michelangelo-god-creates-man.html.
Morgan, Michael Hamilton. Lost History: The Enduring Legacy of Muslim Scientists, Thinkers, and Artists. Washington, United States of America: National Geographic Society, 2007.
Raphael. The School of Athens. http://tomgpalmer.com/wp-content/uploads/legacy-images/School%20of%20Athens2.jpg.
Urban Renaissance. Wikipedia. September 18, 2008. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_renaissance.
Walker, R. 1998. World Civilizations: A Comparative Study. p. 213-216, p. 260-286, p. 333-335. Oxford University Press, Don Mills.
What was the Islamic Golden Age? Wise Geek. 2009. http://www.wisegeek.com/what-was-the-islamic-golden-age.htm.
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