Having Fun

Hi Everyone!  It seems like I always write these posts when I’m on the run these days.  I have been reminded every minute of every day how much I absolutely love being in this place. Being here stirs something in me.  I'm not sure how to even explain it.   Things have been crazy, there isn’t a free centimetre in our work space with all the drawings, computers and calculators, but I so love being a part of this process of designing and creating and seeing potential where there is nothing. 

I should explain our situation a bit better.  Although we are designing a secondary school for Amazima Ministries, we are staying at an babies and children’s home called Good Shepherd’s Fold.  I have loved being in this place of raw beauty.  Our work space is on a veranda with an incredible view, and there is a babies home a few hundred metres away!  The other civil and I went and hung out with the babies for an hour yesterday and it was so much fun.  They stole my heart for sure. 

One thing I love about a project like this is being a part of an engineering community in the middle of Africa.  Figuring out how 10 people with very structured personalities can function and work well together in a culture where that type of personality is not always an asset.   And yet still figuring out how to complete an inordinate amount of work in the space of a week.  I love and thrive on that challenge. This being my 9^th eMi project (how is that even possible), I’ve been finding that I’m still learning so very much, however, I’ve also been finding that I’ve become much more confident in my abilities to design water and sanitation systems in this part of the world. I’ve been so enjoying working with the other civil who I also worked with in Haiti.

I’ve also been enjoying the somewhat cultural discussions between the members of our team (United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Northern Ireland and Nigeria).  Especially this one from last night:

E (United States): Do you cook with a lot of herbs (pronounces it “erb”) in Australia?

P: I’ve never even heard of that, what is it?

E: You mean you’ve never hear of an “erb”?

P: No, spell it.

E: H E R B

P: Oh, you mean like a herb (pronounces the hard h).  Yeah I totally know what those are I’ve just can’t understand your English.

Do you want to hear something crazy?  I met someone in the middle of Jinja the other day from Blumenort, Manitoba.  How is that even possible?

Anyway if the internet is fast enough I’ll leave you with some pictures of those little ones who have enlarged my capacity to love.  Aren’t they sweet?

 Viola loves cuddles:)

 Me & Viola

 Miracle.  I scared the living daylights out of her by trying to play peek a boo.

 Auguring holes for percolation testing.

 David and Tom perform a DCP to test the bearing capacity of the soil

The Day I met Katie Davis

Guys I have like 2 minutes to write this so it will have to be quick.  I arrived in Uganda safely and it is so very good to be back in this place that holds so much of my heart.  I love my team, we are from 7 different countries and I'm the lone Canadian.  We’ve definitely been having fun together so far.  It’s going to be a crazy busy week we started into work already taking a walk about of the site, looking at site plans and hearing the vision of the ministry.

I got to meet Katie Davis and four of her daughters yesterday.  I had read her book “Kisses from Katie” which I highly recommend if you haven’t read it.  It was a New York Times best seller.  Although she is not that well known in Canada, this girl is a rock star in the US.  She has had a lot of publicity but is so down to earth.  Katie has such a heart for Uganda, is articulate and well spoken and has a vision for her ministry.  Just a few reasons why her ministry has been so successful and been able to do so much. Although we’ll mainly be working with her operations manager rather than Katie herself since she is very busy with 13 daughters and the director of the ministry, I’m looking forward to seeing more of the heart and vision of this ministry.

We are staying at a lovely orphanage 5 minutes from the site.  They tell us we can drink the water straight out of the tap, but the lot of us cynical engineers are waiting until we do the water quality tests.

Today I'll be doing soil testing out at the Amazima site and I think it will be a lot of fun!

Anyway, must go, since internet is so bad and there is much work to do, I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to blog this next week, but I’ll try to keep you all up to date.

 We went to Gaba Church in Kampala.  Check out the size of that fan!  It kept the place so cool.

 Rock anyone?

Katie Davis explains her vision for the site.

Late night ponderings

It's late and I should be in bed, but instead I'm up pondering.  I close my eyes and see a land far far away and I hear the laughter of children I love. My inbox holds a letter from one of those children.  He writes me from the heat of Uganda all the way over to where I can see my frosty breath in late Canadian fall.  I love the stark contrasts his careful printing remind me of. This boy, he tells me how much he loves me and I feel his words right to the centre of my soul.  I love him back and I miss him every single day I'm not there.

I sat today, in a boardroom listening to the Texas drawl of a this guy who tells us about geosynthetics.  And I wonder how they would have worked on the drainage ditch I designed in Haiti.  My head is here, but my heart is in lands far off.  I treasure the way the things I learn here can be transferred to the other ends of the earth.

I was thinking today, how, us girls, are really all the same.  The girls I met in India, whether young or grown, they all wanted the same thing.  To know if they were beautiful.  I want to know that too.  I and every single other female I have ever known.  We want to know if we are thought of as beautiful.  To be known deeply and to be loved for what people see in the very depths of our soul, if we allow them to see it.  A girl I sponsor in Dominican Republic?  She tells me that she has never felt so special because I have told her she is beautiful.  You see, how we are so very different, yet so much the same?  Can I be someone who sees and embraces those differences, throws myself headlong into another culture and at the end of the day stand beside them and tell them I too understand what it means to be human.  Even though there is much that separates us, this kinship, holds us together.  They are part of me, some of them they know this.  The children in India, their wide eyes when they saw I remembered their names?  Now that is priceless.  I bring them home with me, they echo in my thoughts.

One Final Update

I wanted to write one final update about my time in India.  I am back in Canada now, I have been for a day and a half.  Perhaps this would have been more effective if I had written it while I was still actually there, but my final days in India were busy, so this will have to do.

The last few days at SNCH were filled with working alongside the construction team, trying to sort out materials and make sure they understood the tasks at hand before we left. I also had several opportunities to play with the kids which was wonderful.  I learned to play cricket and an Indian game called Piet-too (or something).  I kept on saying it wrong, and every time I would say it the kids would say "No, Didi, No" and proceed to say it louder.  By the end they were all out yelling the name of it and I still wasn't saying it correctly so we decided to just start playing the game whether I could say it or not.  It was a fun and crazy game that kind of resembled dodge ball but you had to come build a rock tower in the middle without getting hit by the ball.

As I reflect on my time in India I am so thankful for everything those precious children taught me.  Shanti Niketan means "House of Peace" and it truly was a place of refuge. They have challenges, just as every single ministry I have been to does.  But at the end of the day, they love each other and I was so inspired by what is being done there.

The last day in Delhi, we had our closing meeting and afterwards had some time to go craft shopping.  In the evening, the staff, interns and long term volunteers from the eMi office met and had supper together which was great.  I had a blast with them, and it was so nice to be able to spend time with people who see the world in much the same way that I do, as those kind of people are rare once I return home.

Returning home was weird, and re-entry hit me harder and faster than I was expecting.  It was weird to me to be in the Toronto Airport and to hear people speaking English instead of Hindi.  Driving down Portage Avenue once I returned back to Winnipeg, everything seemed so linear, the street signs so well thought out and the traffic so orderly.  Yesterday, going into the grocery store, the very same grocery store that I have gone to every week for the past 5 years was almost sensory overload.  I just stood in the middle of the aisle in shock for a few minutes.  I was only gone for 15 days, I'm not sure how this is all such a surprise.  It may have only been 15 days, but it may as well have been 15 years, as I seem to have forgot what life here is like and feelings of disconnect are sure to be present in the coming days.

Thank you for following my adventures. 

Until Next Time,

Jaimee

 These kids taught me to stand with arms wide open and accept whatever life throws my way.

 Minu and Sherel

 Sometimes you just gotta dance like no one's watching.

 Surveying tank levels on the roof of the girls dorm.

 Playing the game which I cannot say correctly.

 This one was so happy to see me!

The beauty of Canadian fall has me rapt in awe.  Wilson likes the leaves.

Just call me a professional. . . tribal dancer

I know that you have probably all been waiting with great anticipation to hear how the dancing went. To sum it up, it went absolutely fantastic.  We worked all day yesterday on engineering stuff and then had a short rehearsal in the afternoon.  About half an hour before the program was set to begin, the girls all came up to our room and told us to report down to their dorm for costume and make up.  In no time at all we had 10 girls hovering over us, doing our hair, putting on make up and fitting our costumes and talking to each other in super fast Hindi to try and decide the best combination of make up/costume/jewellery. It was so much fun.  They wanted us to wear about a million bangles each and they chose some huge green earrings for me to wear. 

The kids were all so excited that we were actually dancing in this program.  As we were walking from the girls dorm to the school we met the construction team.  Great first impression hey?  I was just hoping they would take our engineering skills seriously after seeing us in such crazy outfits.  And to make it even more hilarious, the army decided to show up as well.  Since the home is next to a military base, and the people there have been really good to the home, they decided to pay a friendly visit earlier in the afternoon.  If the high ranking generals didn’t think we were crazy enough then, I’m sure they really thought we were off our rockers when they saw us prancing around campus in costumes. They decided to come volunteer to dig up some flower beds at the same time as the program.  Thankfully they left before our performance.

One of my teammates has some amazing action photos of us dancing.  I'll post them when I get them from him probably not for another few days.  Internet has been really spotty and slow as well, so I might not be able to post them until I'm back to the eMi office.

I did ask someone to take video, however, I don't think they understood my instructions on how to film, and unfortunately all we ended up with was a short video of the floor and someone's arm pit.  We are trying to find out if anyone on the construction team took a video of us.  Hopefully they did.  The Canadians on the team kept on commenting on how they couldn't believe a bunch of engineers and architects could dance like that.  Tyler and my finale performance went really well too.  I think I have found a new appreciation for shaking my hips to Indian music.

I think the hardest part of leaving this place, will be the fact that I have been so much a part of it.  This morning I spoke at the kids morning meeting and when they announced me to come up, they told me they were so grateful I was speaking because I was part of their family.  It is kind of ironic, that I love this place so much, yet being here and loving this, also reminds me of the diversity of this world and how much I also love so many people in Uganda which in so many ways is so very different.

That's all for now.  Stay tuned for some action photos,

Jaimee

Getting ready for the big performance

 Don't we look authentic?

Performance Night

Besides being a busy work day today and getting ready for the construction team's arrival this afternoon, we have our big dance performance tonight.  Last night we had practice in front of the kids.  They loved it and thought it was uproarious. When we finished the dance, the kids erupted in rowdy applause.  I don't think we would have received a louder ovation if we had put on an Olympic winning performance.

I am still very much enjoying my time here and have been having fun both working and interacting with the people. 

I'm sorry if my blog posts haven't been incredibly deep or theological lately.  Even just getting through the day sometimes takes a lot of mental exercise in a different culture, so I find my writing is much less in depth than when I write things at home.

There are so many things I am thankful for. I am so very thankful for simply being here, because it almost didn't happen.  It is such a gift.  And for Himalayan mountains, the laughter of children, seeing the girl's faces absolutely light up when they see me around campus and hear them say "Didi Jaimee!", connecting with old friends and making new ones, Indian food, Bambi the St. Bernard, kids that dance with joy and so very many other things.

Anyway, I will let you all know how the big debut performance goes tonight.  Myself and the other civil intern Tyler perform the big finale at the end of the dance and I get to do these really fun spins which the kids loved last night.  The dance also involves some shaking of the hips which is always fun too.

I'll try and upload a couple videos so you can meet some of these people I love.  I wish you could be here on this journey with me.

Until next time,

Jaimee

Sherel.  She loves to sing and dance and is such a sweetheart.

Dancing!

Today was a fantastic day.  We went to a rockin church service this morning with the kids.  I don't remember it being so lively last year and it was kind of surprising to me, because this culture is much more reserved than the places I have been in Africa.  But it was so much fun.

After lunch we went down to the school and the kids taught us a traditional Himachal dance.  It was soooooo much fun.  I think I probably enjoyed it the most out of anyone on the team, however, I know everyone else had fun too.  The kids also thought it was hilarious and they had so much fun teaching us to dance. I have never got to dance on an eMi project before, but it was the funnest thing ever.

Tonight they told us it was one of the staff members birthday so we went down to the school for singing and a dance performance.  After all the dancing was completed they told us they had a special request for us to perform our dance. I was so excited!  Unfortunately about 10 seconds into the dance, the music went off and wouldn't work again, however, the kids absolutely loved it, and we are on the roster for a performance tomorrow. There is even talk of costumes. And since it is free style I have to think of some good variations to the moves I'm doing before tomorrow.  A bunch of engineers doing a traditional cultural dance?  I'm sure we don't look at all ridiculous.  The construction team is going to have a hard time outdoing us with our mad dancing skills.

I have been having a lot of fun interacting with my team and have been reminded how much I love laughter.

After church today I came back and played hide and seek with some of the younger girls and then after that was finished, went up to the rooftop and talked with one of the older girls.  It was so nice.  She asked me to write her a page in her journal.  Something to encourage her when life was hard.  It was such a special moment.  I love writing meaningful words to people.

People often tell me I have an exciting life and experience many adventures.  Which is true I suppose.  However, experiencing these kinds of things also takes risk.  The risk of letting people in.  I have let the people here in fully and completely and that is risky business. To hand that much of yourself over sometimes makes for hard times and makes transitioning back to life at home incredibly difficult.  I also know that only being here for a short time is vastly different than being somewhere long term.  The sometimes messiness of cross cultural relationships is not always easy, but so very worth the effort.

The jury is still out on posting a video of our dancing tonight.  Hopefully by tomorrow, I'll have the majority of votes in favour of posting it.  Leave a comment if you want to see the video and I'll pass along your vote.

Until next time,

Jaimee

 At our dance practice this afternoon.

 Matthew, our project leader briefs us on the dance practice.

 Getting details ready for the construction team that is soon arriving.

 The backhoe made it's way straight up the mountain to prepare a spot for the new water tank.

 Me & Nemcha.

The kids singing at church.  Do you recognize the song?