Very Good Advice

It's been one week since my last confession, erm, blog.

And the week has been life changing, and yet, to be honest, more of the same. More stories of abuse, rape, poverty, disease. But also, more joyful kids, and such hope and inspiration from the people we've met. The communities we're working in are devastating - while they may not necessarily be as physically poor as those in Malawi or Uganda (the real Africa, as many people say here) the social issues are so terrible that conditions here are amongst the worst in the world.

But amongst the devastation is a sense of hope. There really is. Perhaps not on a societal level - you really do have the feeling that the problem is unsolvable. But on the individual level, I believe there is a great sense of potential and optimism. It is about reaching one child at a time, like the parable of the man throwing starfish back into the ocean. You can't save them all. But maybe you can save one. And that one makes all the difference.

Let me tell you about Advice. I met Advice in an extremely rural village, approximately 50 km from the Mozambique border. The village was poor. Poorer than poor. And so remote that it's more common to see lions wander through town than white people. The vast majority of the population has no work. HIV is rampant. And the majority of the population is Mozambiquan, which means that without South African ID, they can't apply for government subsistence grants. They can't work. They can go to school, but they can't graduate with a diploma, should they even get that far.

Advice came up to me at the Care Point to introduce himself. He said he was so interested in speaking with people from different places, and he wanted to know all about Canada. His English was very good, and he looked smart in his school uniform of crisp white shirt and pressed black trousers. While the other boys had untucked their shirts and loosened or removed their green school ties, Advice's tie was still tight to the collar, and he wore a wool scarf with European panache. I wish I had thought to take a picture of him.

He told me that he was 17 and in Grade 12, which is a feat in itself in these communities. He said he wanted to be a lawyer and go to University in Joburg next year. While many of the kids have unrealistically lofty ambitions ("I want to be a doctor!" says many a kid who can barely count past fifteen), Advice struck me as a kid who could actually do it. I told him that I worked with lawyers in Canada, and he asked me very intelligent questions about the Canadian legal system - frankly, questions that were beyond me.

We had an excellent conversation, and the whole time we were talking I kept thinking: Yes! This kid is something special. This kid has a bright future. I asked him about his practical opportunities to go to school, and he said that he was applying for scholarships, and was hoping he would get in to his first choice school. For a couple of minutes, I felt like was talking with a bright Canadian kid - a kid who has every opportunity in the world at his feet.

Talking with Advice (what a wonderful lawyerly name) gave me such hope. Not for all of these kids, unfortunately. The situation is too dire for that. But hope for individuals like Advice who might have the potential to break the cycle of poverty and abuse.

I'm determined that I'm going to stay in touch with Advice. And I'd love to connect him with a Canadian lawyer or two to be pen-pals as well. And rest assured, as soon as I hear via the Hands network that this kid has gotten into university, I'll be coming knocking on your door. Poverty should not put a complete stop to ambition. And a little bit from here and there can go a long way.

I'll keep you posted.

It Takes A Village To Raise A Child

Such a cliche, but it's true. And that's the kind of work that Hands is trying to do.

It's taken me awhile to figure out how Hands works - it's not as straightforward or as tangible as building schools or digging wells. When I see the people and the communities we're working in, my first thought is that they need food and shelter and medical attention. And I feel powerless because we're here just to hang out and play. It seems totally bizarre.

But slowly, over the last week - which has felt more like a month - I've come to see what Hands actually does. And it's amazing.

Hands at Work's mandate is to work with the poorest of the poor. This is the way it was explained to us:

You have some kind of conflict zone - let's say Goma in the DRC. The UN sends troops in to secure the area, and they set up a hub with running water, electricity and internet. And they're able to help the people in the immediate area by securing some kind of peace - uneasy though it may be. And when they're able, other NGOs come in - groups like the Red Cross, and Doctor's Without Borders, and the WHO - and because it's safer, and the infrastructure is already there, they set up camp right next to the UN. Which means they can all service the area within, say, a two-hour radius of the UN headquarters.

But what about the people who are within a three-hour radius? Or four, or five? The need is still great - perhaps even greater, because the other NGOs aren't able to access these areas. That's where Hands at Work goes.

Hands works in these remote areas, attempting to heal the fractured communities, and most importantly, make them self-sustainable in the long term. The issues are complex - malnutrition, poverty, rape, disease, lack of education, lack of jobs, broken families, absent fathers. AIDS has ravished these communities - killing off nearly an entire generation of people between the ages of 30 and 50. There is an eerie shortage of people my age.

Children are left without parents, young teens are raising large families with no source - or unfortunately, one source - of income, and Gogos (grannies) are tasked with raising second, and sometimes third, families when they don't have the energy or the resources to do so. Abuse and rape is so rampant, it feels like there isn't anyone in these communities who doesn't encounter it on a frequent basis.

So - the need is so very, very great. But Hands at Work doesn't just come in and hand out blankets and food, they work with the local churches and local community leaders to build community-based organizations, grassroots movements to help the people take care of their own.

Hands helps put the infrastructure in place for locals to provide care for their own communities. On a practical level, this is what it looks like:

Hands identifies a community that needs help. Hands workers walk through these communities and talk to the locals about who is already reaching out and going the extra mile - perhaps taking in orphans or sharing resources with their neighbours. There is always somebody in these communities who is a helper - what a testament to human generosity.

Hands then approaches these natural helpers and encourages them to bring in their friends to create a grassroots group of volunteers who will help feed children and give them a safe place to gather and play, and who will also visit the children at their homes to ensure they're being taken care of. These local volunteers are called care workers, in Hands parlance, and they give their own time and energy to work with the kids in their community. They set up care points, which serve as feeding centres, playgrounds and safe havens for the kids. The care workers are trained to become de facto social workers in these communities.

The volunteers - known as "mamas" - are supported by administrative service centres, which are manned by folks who work to find the resources for the care points. In some instances, these resources are financial, often international donors. But Hands believes strongly that money is only an easy answer - and in the long term, it's not the best answer (What happens when the money runs out? It always does.). So the service centre workers liaise with local governments, churches and leaders to try to do even more with what they already have.

The service centres are then supported by regional support teams, who work both in the communities and beyond, searching for resources and support. Much of the work is political, and it also involves appealing to international organizations and churches to provide short-term and long-term support, in the way of donations and volunteer man-power.

Hands started out in South Africa roughly 15 years ago, and in that time has spread to 61 communities in eight different countries across Africa.

What I really like about Hands is that they look for the need in these communities and they fill it, whatever it may be. They don't dictate what the need is - they work with the local people and empower them to solve the problems locally. As well, they work to remove barriers on the political and financial level as well. So much about the work that Hands does is about empowerment and healing - physical, yes, but perhaps even more importantly, emotional and spiritual.

The people we're working with have received so very little love in their lives. You can see it in the neediness of the children, and in the shuttered look in the eyes of the volunteers. The children need to receive love, encouragement and inspiration, and the care workers need to learn how to give it to them (in many instances, they've grown up without love themselves, so while they may want to give it to the children, they have no idea how).

So a big part of our job, as short-term Hands volunteers, is to model how to love children. We are here to play with the kids, to hug and cuddle them, to talk with the teens, to listen, to provide support and encouragement. And to lend a hand wherever they need it - in the garden, fetching water, cleaning dishes. Whatever is needed from us at any given time.

I admit I still have a hard time with the idea that we can't do something more tangible. It seems like such cold comfort to show up at a care point, play with some kids for a couple of hours, and then go home to our comfortable digs at the Hands hub. The day we spent gardening and painting tires for playground equipment was one of the more rewarding days, because we could directly see the impact of our work.

Hands work is slow, tentative, but incredibly powerful. The only correlation I have in my own life is adjudicating at music festivals - and I get the same kind of joy being with these kids as I do from working with North American kids on perfecting some element of drama or singing. It's connection on a deeply personal level, and that's what I want more than anything in my life. It is having a powerfully transformative affect on me.

As for what impact we're having on the kids and people here, I don't know. Two weeks seems too short a space of time. But perhaps we're doing more than we'll ever know.

For instance, one of our volunteers, Daphne (my roomie, in fact) was here 13 years ago. She wrote one of the young men she met that time a card, because he had touched her, and she wanted to give him some further encouragement. He was 19 at the time.

Now he is 32 and working full-time with Hands. And he proudly showed Daphne that he had kept her card all that time. Her small gesture had been profoundly meaningful in his life.

We never know what impact we have on other people. And that is the Hands way.

How can you help Hands? Check out their website for more info. Yes, they want money, and you can pay $20/month to help support a child. But they als

o want volunteers and advocates. Feel free to contact me if you want to know more.

Boys 2 Men: The plight of boys, and why they are the change South Africa needs

James* is a pretty remarkable kid.

He's shy at first, uncertain around strangers, but it doesn't take him long to warm up. I first saw him hanging out with one of the other boys, Colin. They were watching us paint  old tires that are used as makeshift playground equipment, and they quietly discussed what was probably a ridiculous sight - seven white women of varying ages and sizes, prone on the ground with the smelliest paint in Africa, attempting - and failing at - creative paint jobs on these tires.

They held back until they saw me painting blue and green stripes on the last tire, and they finally got the courage to come over and chat. Mostly, they wanted to dip their fingers in the toxic-smelling paint, but they did their best to impress with their big smiles and few words of English - "green!" "blue!" "yuck!" - I was making progressively more and more of a mess of my tire, and they could tell. Every time I dripped paint where I didn't want it, one of them would say something to the other, and they'd laugh, probably at my expense. They cheerfully dipped their hands in the paint cans before I could stop them, and they enjoyed colouring the dust around our feet.

In short, James and Colin are pretty much regular eleven-year-olds.

Except that James' story is nothing short of horrific. An orphan, both parents have been gone for most of his life. He's bounced around from one relative to the next, finally settling with aging grandparents who are out of their depth with the houseful of kids they find themselves caring for. His grandfather is abusive, his grandmother impatient, and he goes hungry a lot of the time because the family is too big for the meagre income his grandfather brings in.

When the community support workers at Hands first met James, he was barely making eye contact with anyone. He always hung back, reserved, very shy. It took a long time to get his story out of him.

On top of the regular daily physical abuse, James told the support workers that one day, he had been playing with two friends, both slightly older than him. Somehow, the play took a dark turn, and he was raped, twice by both boys. When he got home, he was beaten because he was late.

James had nowhere to go. He stopped going to school. Nobody thought to look for him. He was a lost boy.

But he found his way to a Care Point, which is a feeding centre and safe place for the kids to go during the day. And he found himself a care worker, who is a volunteer "mama" - someone who will look out for him, who will visit him at home and make sure that he gets enough to eat and is taken care of.

The change in him has been slow, incremental at best. But you can see his natural curiosity and friendliness start to shine. He was one of about a dozen kids who attempted to braid my hair, and he stroked my head gently and said "Red hair!" I asked him if he had ever seen red hair before, and he looked at me as if I was from Mars. And when the children dance and sing - which they do every day - James is completely absorbed by the music and claps and grins so broadly, you can tell he is passionate about it.

Unfortunately, in these communities, James' story is not unusual. Which is, in an extreme understatement, problematic. For it's up to James' generation of boys, and the young men slightly older than him, to turn these communities around. Reaching them is key.

Right now, many - if not most - of the social problems facing these communities lie in the hands of men. Rape is a huge issue. Enormous. The vast majority of these children will have been sexually assaulted - or sexualized far too early - by the time they reach age eighteen. At the hands of men.

Another issue is alcohol abuse. The need for escape is not surprising, but alcoholism amongst men is a major problem.

AIDS has killed a significant portion of the parents of these kids. In some communities, infection rate is as high as 40 per cent amongst adults over 30. The problem largely stems from men leaving the communities to work in the mines in Joburg, where they frequently visit prostitutes and bring the infection home to their families. Promiscuity is culturally acceptable in the men - not the women - and protected sex is nearly unheard of. It's a macho culture, and nothing is going to get in the way of a man's pleasure.

So the problems compound. Absent fathers, no role models, little work, alcoholism, disease, abuse, rape. I find myself looking suspiciously at every man I see, and rightly or wrongly, I'm scared and angry. The situation feels almost hopeless, and my heart breaks for boys like James. It seems like they don't even have a chance.

Except that there is hope. Today we met a group of young men who are part of a youth group run by Betwell, an amazing young man who has recently started working with some of Hands' youth. Betwell is oh-so-quiet, but he has a winning smile and a groundedness that clearly appeals to these boys. He has a core group of six or seven boys - 16 or 17 year-olds - who love to sing, and who are more interested in playing drama games than kicking around a soccer ball. Clearly, they are boys after my own heart.

There are a couple boys in the group who are charismatic leaders. They radiate warmth, and they are clearly well-respected by the other kids. They led us in song, and they sang several tributes to Nelson Mandela, in honour of Mandela's birthday today. One of them - Fortune - gave a stirring speech about how Mandela was his hero, and how they must follow in Mandela's footprints every day.

These boys helped serve food to all of the other kids - traditionally women's work - and they gathered the kids together to decide how they were going to spend their 67 minutes toward helping others - a Mandela day tradition.

So it was good to learn that there are some great young men out there. We hear about so many of the problems, it was nice today to see some of the men who are working on the solution - men like Betwell and the other amazing workers at Hands, and these young boys who are clearly leaders amongst the next generation. Here's hoping they can stay strong, and stay leaders, and be the role models these kids so desperately need.

There is hope.


*not his real name

Why Toddlers Freak Me Out... and how I learned to play with kids

I'm not really a "kiddie" kind of person.

I'm an only child, and I didn't particularly like kids even when I was one. I don't know what to say to a kid until they're eleven or twelve - and even then, pretty much only if they're a drama geek. Then I like them. I'm actually quite terrified of toddlers. Frankly, a lot of times kids pretty much freak me out - especially when they're in groups. Babies I like, because you can cuddle them like cats - and I love cats - and then you can hand them back to their parents when they make noise or a bad smell.

So I never dreamed that today I would be loving every minute of chasing a horde of four-year-olds around a dusty field, threatening to tickle them and make them shriek with laughter. I'm the last person who would usually ever pick up and hug a tiny child I don't know - especially one with a runny nose and sticky fingers and dirty clothes. And little kids don't usually fight to sit on my lap and study my hands and play with my finger nails, nor do they grab me by the hand and pull me into clapping games and high fives.

But today, they did.

We visited what they call a "creche," which is basically a kindergarten, play school and day care all rolled into one. We were greeted by around thirty kids under five, and they had us running and playing the minute we got out of the car.

Before I came to Africa, I had this vision of the kind of person I wanted to be around all these kids. I was thinking an Angelina Jolie-type person who selflessly hugs hungry babies, all the while looking fabulous in designer sunglasses. I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to pull it off, and that instead, I'd awkwardly pat the kids on their shoulders and say, "Have a nice day," and "aren't you cute," and stare distantly into space because I simply wouldn't know what to say or do.

And I don't know what to say or do, but somehow, instinct takes over, and we're playing tag and tickles and having cuddles and singing songs before I even think about it.

It's a profound thing that happens when you remove the burden of speech from the  communication equation. The little kids we visited today were between the ages of two and five, and while they are learning English, they have very little. So all of the communication had to be non-verbal, which takes my natural reticence to touch and my desire to preserve body space and throws it out the window.

I was amazed at how much we were able to communicate, and how much it didn't matter if we didn't exactly understand each other, big smiles were all we really needed.

And it helped me understand my toddler fear. I have a great need to communicate, to understand, and to be understood. Toddlers are scary to me because their needs are growing in complexity, beyond their communication skills. I so often don't understand what they're trying to say to me and they don't understand me, and we have the classic failure to communicate. Which frustrates me and breaks my heart a little.

I think what I don't realize with little kids at home is that I'm assuming all of the communication is verbal - because that's my primary means of communication. I'm a talker, not a hugger.

Here, being a talker is useless, and it's the hugs that matter. I have to remember that with kids at home.

Because I didn't feel the need to communicate verbally with these kids today, I was freed from a huge sense of responsibility. I didn't have to awkwardly fill silence with conversation. I didn't feel pressure to discern unfamiliar syllables and turn them into words. I was able to just be present with the kids, in the moment, and engage with them on their level. I didn't need to communicate anything more complex than my interest in them, that I cared about them, and that in that moment, that I loved them.

It was far more of a gift to me than it was to them.

Because they taught me how to play with children. I did not know how to do that before today.

And We Think We Have a Rape Culture...

I don't even know where to start.

So, I'll start with Fortunate.

Fortunate has the biggest smile I've ever seen. First thing she says when we meet her is "With me, you have to have energy. You have to keep up."

And she is right. Fortunate is a going concern. A big laugh, a big bosom, and a huge heart, Fortunate is a community support worker with Hands at Work. It's her job to advocate for the children in several small, poor (poorest of poor) villages. She coordinates volunteer care workers within these communities to act as surrogate moms for kids who are orphans or who need some extra support. She is a "Mama" to everyone, and a force to be reckoned with.

And it's a good thing she has a lot of energy, because she has a big job to do. In the community we visited today, she and the community volunteers (about ten other women) are responsible for around 80 kids, which means feeding them, giving them a safe place to play, talking to them and tending to their physical needs and caring for them emotionally and spiritually. And that's just a snippet of her job.

Fortunate and I are exactly the same age, but our lives couldn't be more different. Fortunate's mom was a teacher (well, ok, that part's the same), but when her parents got married, her father forced her mother to quit her job "because he was the man, it was his job to take care of the family." He went to Joburg to work in the mines, and Fortunate's mom stayed home with the four kids.

When Fortunate was eight, her second brother died and her father left the family. Suddenly, they had no financial support, and her mother couldn't get a teaching job after so much time. So the best she could do was find a job that took her out of the house every evening, and since Fortunate, at eight, was too young to stay home alone with her siblings, they were sent to stay with a neighbour every night.

And every night, Fortunate was raped by the neighbour's husband.

When Fortunate told her mother what was happening, her mother grew angry with her. She now understands that her mother was simply at a loss - she didn't have anyone else who would take the children in, and it was easier to ignore the horrible situation than make waves. But Fortunate was raped nearly every night for three years.

When Fortunate was twelve, she and her brothers were sent to live with an uncle, where again she was repeatedly raped by her slightly older cousin. The boy threatened to kill her if she told anyone, and he also threatened to withhold food to her younger brothers if she didn't comply. She came to think of the rape as her way of taking care of her siblings, of ensuring they had food to eat.

Fortunate seems ill-named. And yet, somehow, miraculously, today, she is one of the most joyful people I've ever met. She has a phenomenal singing voice, and an inner power I can't even fathom.

She confessed that she has had very dark days. Contemplated suicide frequently, was always angry. Could never trust men.

Her work with Hands and the community volunteers has been healing for her, and she gets a lot of empowerment from helping the people in her community.

But sometimes her work hits too close. She told us how one day, a child confessed to her that she too had been raped in similar circumstances. "I just slammed the door," she said. "Right in her face. It was too much."

Unfortunately, rape is a common occurrence in the children's lives here. In these kinds of communities, one in four men admit to raping - and that's just the men who cop to it. Everyone is vulnerable - women, girls, boys and babies. It is still a folk belief here that raping a baby will cure AIDS. And to rape is a passage of manhood here - the comparison was drawn between the boys here urging each other to rape the way teens push limits with alcohol and cigarettes at home.

We visited a Care Point today, which is a safe place for the kids to gather and play, and where they're fed at least once a day. In many instances, it may be the only meal the kids eat. I met a lovely fourteen-year-old girl named Vania, who almost immediately took my hand and said, "I want to be your friend." So we chatted about school and books and what she wants to be when she grows up (a teacher). She was quiet, but enthralled by my phone, and she wanted to know about every picture I had taken. I showed her the pictures of London and San Francisco, and when I told her about Canada, she was very curious about what it would be like to be in the snow. A few other teen girls joined us, all of them quiet, reticent, yet so wanting to talk, so needing of attention. We smiled a lot, awkwardly talked about the weather, our favourite colours, stories we like, boys, and nail polish.

Vania gave me a big hug when it was time to go, and said she was looking forward to us coming back - on Wednesday. She followed our van for a little while, waving with a big smile.

It wasn't until we got half way home that I let myself think about what she and her friends might be going home to.

Hopefully they are more fortunate than Fortunate was.

First Impressions

The flight from London to Johannesburg is long. Eleven hours or thereabouts. But it's actually much faster than your brain adjusts to the adventure of it all.

My first glimpse of Johannesburg from the air was of a sprawling city - pretty typical, tall buildings in a downtown core, neat rows of streets, houses, malls, industrial core. And the airport is clean, modern, and a no-man's land. You don't believe you're anywhere other than Heathrow or Toronto or Barcelona.

The first indication you're somewhere else is when you're accosted by shoe-shine lads who won't take no for an answer.

"I"m going into the bush," I say, when a young man urgently presses the need to shine my boots.

"The animals will like them better if they're shiny," he says. "Please, only 20 Rand."

He seems so desperate, but I pass him by. I've been to Morocco and Mexico. It feels the same.

My next flight is a quick commuter, low-flying so you can really see the countryside. And Joburg's neat streets soon give way to disordered jumbles of tin, and you start to see the problems.

But once the ramshackle townships are past, you see the unmistakeable signs of European inhabitance. Straight roads, patchwork fields, neat farms, hedgerows and borders of trees. It could be Canada. And the dirt is so red, it could be Prince Edward Island.

From the air, the European influence on the land is strong. The African presence is more subtle, pretty much non-existent, from the air anyway. Perhaps, like with our own First Nations communities, that's partly the point. Perhaps Africans don't need to make their mark the way individualistic Europeans do. Or perhaps they haven't been given the opportunity.

Finally on the ground at Kruger International Airport in Nelspruit,  I meet Jen who drives me to the Hands at Work village, just outside of White River. Originally from the UK, she and her husband have been living here for four years, and she loves it. "So much room for my three boys to run around. They are more South African now. It's a good life for them," she says.

First look on the ground at the extremely cute Kruger Airport - perfectly geared to safari tourists.

The area is lush, pretty, with red rutted roads and tall trees and hills. Jen shows me to my room, where I'll be bunking in with Daphne, the Australian lady who later tells me she's 73. I don't believe her. She looks 50.

I meet Erin and Judy and Michelle, the other Canadians, and Kayley who is 18 and from England. Tomorrow we'll meet our last team member, Jaclyn, who has been working in the area for some time.

I still don't have a clear sense of what we'll be doing. It all remains to be seen. All I can do now is sleep. I've been mostly awake for more than 30 hours, and I will sleep like the dead.

Me, after 30 hours of travel.

The work starts on Monday.

Two Kinds of Fire In the Sky: Or, I'm glad to be grounded for awhile

I am very glad to be done with flying, for the next three and a half weeks, anyway.

I arrived at the airport early, sacrificing my last precious hours in London because there was an issue with my online check in and they couldn't guarantee me a seat. So after talking to a ticket agent on the phone who told me I was flying stand-by on a packed flight (despite having booked months in advance), I got to Heathrow in some panic.

I found British Airways' most charming agent to help me:

"You're not asking me anything," he says, after I explain my situation.

"I'm asking if I can get a seat on this plane," I say.

"Why wouldn't you?" he says, staring blankly at me and his keyboard.

I say, "Because the ticket agent on the phone told me there was an issue with the reservation."

He says, "I still don't know what you're asking me."

"CAN I GET A SEAT ON THIS PLANE?" I say, enunciating carefully.

He types three words and hands me my boarding pass. "Yes, here."

"Thank you," I say with a sunny smile I don't feel.

So, I got a seat on the plane, which is all very well for a couple of hours, waiting in Heathrow, until the departure information boards freeze. There is a sudden flurry of activity from airport staff, and much hushed conversation. A post from my friend on Facebook confirms the strange behaviour. There is a plane on fire somewhere at Heathrow and all of the runways are shut down.

Suddenly it's a flashback of SFO. But in this instance, fortunately no one was on board Ethiopian Air's 787 Dreamliner, the fire was quickly put out, and the runways were open again within the hour.

But it still meant hundreds of delays - we were delayed by about an hour and a half, but we made up for it in the air.

In the air, I had a lovely chat with a young Norwegian girl, Ana, who was headed to Cape Town, also to volunteer. She was a bit nervous, as she had never been so far away on her own before. I confessed I was too, and we bonded over shared love of Facebook and murder mysteries, and the fact we both come from winter climates.

"Our winter is very long," she says. "Seven months, so very cold." I told her I could relate.

"I really love winter," she says. "I love being in the cold, you feel so alive."

She was worried though, that younger kids in her town weren't making the most of the beautiful outdoors year-round. "Can you believe that I work with thirteen-year-old kids, and many of them don't know the difference between trees with leaves and trees with needles? They need to get out more."

I told her how car-centric our communities are in Edmonton, how we feel the need to inure ourselves from the weather. She admitted they had a similar problem, although people still gathered in the town square for coffee, no matter the weather. And to watch the northern lights.

"We have northern lights viewing parties," she says. "The town turns out the the centre lights, and we all bring blankets and watch the sky dance. It's wonderful."

How about it, Edmonton?

Spoiler Alert: There Are Tears

Today is my fifth wedding anniversary.

I am married to the most superlative man. The kind of man who, when I announce out of the blue that I would like to go to Africa, says not just "why?" or "ok" but "that sounds amazing, and I am proud of you."

So here I am sitting in a restaurant in Terminal 5 at Heathrow, trying to weep inconspicuously because it's my fifth anniversary and I miss my husband.

I didn't actually expect to miss him. That sounds terrible. What I mean is I didn't expect to miss him so completely. I mean, we have Skype, Facebook, email, texting - we've been in fairly constant communication since I left, and as an independent female (hear me roar), I figured I'd be fine.

And I am fine - but sitting in a familiar restaurant, where we just were together a few weeks ago, and eating the dessert he absolutely loved, I'm having a hard time holding it together.

Side note: I've made something of a career crying in public. Every year, I adjudicate music festivals, and I often choke up when I see a kid doing something extraordinary, and I always cry during curtain calls and parades and concerts and fireworks. I cry a lot, publicly - probably more than the normal person - and I should be used to it, and it should be ok to express emotion in a public setting. Why isn't it? Our emotions are part of our humanity. Why can't we be free to express them? Why does it make other people uncomfortable? Why do we care so much?

Anyway, I'm off on my great adventure today, and I actually wish I was headed home.

That's just a piece of me. The lonely piece and the freaked out piece.

The other pieces are excited, honoured, thrilled, and chomping at the bit. I'm doing something today I've always wanted to do, and I realize how much freedom, independence and adventure mean to me.

And I'm grateful to have a partner who supports me in all of the above.

Ok. Enough schmaltz. Next report will be from the road, and completely schmaltz-free. Promise.

Out of Africa

Ack! Tomorrow is the day!

This time tomorrow I'll be on an overnight flight to Johannesburg, leaving comfort and familiarity behind. No big deal. Except AAAACCCK.

I'd be way more stressed out if I hadn't just taken my anti-anxiety sleeping meds, but despite the floatiness of the pharmaceuticals I've ingested, to say I'm feeling a tad nervous is a massive understatement.

What the hell am I doing?!

I'm excited about this next leg of the journey, the actual adventure part, but I'm also pretty damn terrified.

I'll write about what I'm expecting in Africa when I'm more coherent, because right now I'm pretty much just an emotional lump in a druggy fog.

But suffice it to say, "Shit. It's happening."

Eeep.

Top Life Lessons that Travel Teaches

To me, travel is a great university. Now, I'm a big fan of regular universities too, but I love travel because it teaches us so much about how to get along in this world, whether we're at home or afar. Of course, travel expands our horizons, introduces us to new cultures and different ways of doing things. But more importantly, I think travel reminds us how to be good global citizens - and teaches us lessons about living, whether you're one mile or 10,000 miles from home.

So, from the economy cabin on United flight 901 SFO to London Heathrow, here are the top things I've learned - and continue to be taught - by travel.

1. Accept the unexpected.

I'm a planner, and I don't handle change well. Which is ironic, given the fact that my chosen profession is all about embracing the new, moving from one project to the next. I've had a lot of practice with change, and yet it still completely freaks me out. But travel teaches that change crops up unexpectedly all the time. Transit strike? Change of plan. Canceled plane? Another change of plan. But the lesson learned is that change simply presents a new challenge. A problem to be solved, which keeps us on our toes and makes our lives interesting. I would slit my wrists if nothing ever changed. I think we all would. And by embracing the unexpected in life, we open ourselves up to new adventures.

2. Always be nice.

There are three times in your life when you shouldn't be nice: if you're being raped, robbed, or attacked. Then you should fight like bloody murder (and even then, only depending on the circumstances). But if your life, or the life of someone around you isn't being threatened, then chill out, cool the engines and be nice. Offer assistance, say please and thank you. Smile a lot. Follow local customs, learn the polite words. Flying into a temper only upsets yourself and the people around you and makes the problem worse. So do as your mother taught you, and be kind, thoughtful, generous and patient.

This is hard-won advice, as I almost took on a group of twelve tourists when they butted in front of us in line at the Vatican last month. Assholes are everywhere. Don't be one of them.

3. You have no control.

You can't fly the plane for the pilot. You can't make the line go faster, or the train wait for you at the station.

This is one I have trouble with, because I really like to think that I have some kind of ability to affect my destiny, and while we can line things up to *hopefully* work the way we want them to, we are always at the whim of others and the will of the universe. But once you accept that, life actually becomes much easier. It's really, really hard to do - but that's where travel can be a very good training ground, as this way of thinking becomes very concrete when you're flying at 37 000 feet. There truly is nothing that you can do, so might as well sit back and enjoy the ride.

4. Trust other people.

When you're traveling, you absolutely have to rely on the good will of others. And the farther you travel out of your comfort zone, the more you need to trust the local people and the people you're traveling with. We live in such a climate of distrust in North America that this lesson is pretty tough. I'm not saying you need to take unnecessary risks - like you probably shouldn't pick up hitchhikers or trust that the man who is hovering too close at the train station isn't up to no good. But I do think we need to give people the benefit of the doubt, give them the opportunity to help, and they very likely will. We put our trust in people all the time without really appreciating it - we trust the chef to fully cook the chicken, and our mechanic to not screw with our brakes. So I think making a more conscious effort to be trusting - and trustworthy - makes us better citizens.

5. Remember that everywhere you are is somebody's home.

So don't litter, don't be noisy, follow local rules and always be respectful.

I think it goes further than this, though, and this one has particular resonance for me. I live in Edmonton, Alberta. To me, it's a fantastic city filled with wonderful people. It's got an amazing arts scene, a top research university, great economy, opportunities galore for entrepreneurs, and is gorgeous to look at. But not everybody feels this way. Lots of people see it as a blue collar town, a bit rough around the edges, with long, cold, terrible winters. A couple of years ago, it had the highest murder rate in Canada, earning it the unfortunate moniker, Dedmonton.

But I absolutely hate it when people say bad things about my town. It actually pains me somewhere around my heart, and I've gotten to be pretty sensitive about it. So I can imagine other people feel that way too about their own home towns. So wherever you are, I think you need to be mindful that somebody lives there and probably loves it. Even if it's a scorching featureless desert, it's still somebody's passion. And the world looks much better when you look for the good in a place, rather than just seeing what might be an unattractive (to us) surface.

6. Focus on the task at hand, and worry about tomorrow another day.

Driving on a twelve lane highway in an unfamiliar city can be overwhelming, especially if you're looking at the big picture. Interchange after interchange, high speed and no GPS is about the most terrifying driving you'll face. But instead if you focus entirely on the task at hand - keeping  the speed limit and staying in your lane, the task becomes easy and doable.
I have high anxiety. So high, that I sometimes have trouble focusing on simple tasks because I am amped up about a perceived biggie for later in the week. Often, it's about something I have very little control over, which makes the anxiety even worse. But I found if you can break down large tasks into small simple one, and stay focused, the anxiety goes away, and the task gets accomplished in its own time.

And driving in a strange city becomes remarkably doable and fun.

So those are some of the things I've learned, but this list is far from complete. What are some of your favorite lessons from the road?

And randomly, just for fun, here is a photo  of the Golden Gate Bridge. Just because. Happy traveling, everyone, both at home and afar.

A Traveler's Worst Nightmare

So today I missed a plane crash by fifteen minutes.

Yikes is all I can say.

I was at (well, near) San Francisco airport this morning, dropping off Mustang Sally -  which was a whole other source of sadness, but it pales in great comparison to what happened only fifteen minutes later, about a quarter of a mile away.

You may or may not have seen the news reports - needless to say it's been big news here in San Francisco - but to quickly rehash, a 777 from Shanghai crash-landed on the runway at SFO. Two people died, more than a hundred people were injured. You can read more about it here. The wreckage looks terrifying. Amazingly, more than a hundred people walked away with very minor injuries, so there is at least some comfort there.

I was blissfully unaware, on a car-ride to Point Reyes with my friends, Nancy and Andreas. It wasn't until we stopped for lunch an hour away that we saw the news. Horrifying. And the fact that we were so close by - well, it hits home just a little harder, that "There but for the grace of God" feeling. I've had a pit in my stomach all day - I can't stop thinking about it - what it must have felt like to be on board. And particularly since I'm going to be spending 42 hours on planes in the next 4 weeks, it's not what I want to be thinking about right now. I know all the statistics, and I understand what a rare occurrence a plane crash is - but I'm rattled all the same. I'd like to have some kind of philosophical viewpoint about it, but I can't look at it in any other way right now. And I'm too absorbed by the practical details of my next flight to give it any other context.

As for my next flight, I'm supposed to leave SFO in 36 hours. I'm on hold with United as we speak, trying to figure out if I should re-route and fly out of LAX instead, which will mean renting another car and driving to LA tomorrow, instead of exploring San Fran. They've already re-opened two runways here at SFO, which is pretty amazing, given that the airport was closed for hours this afternoon, and more than 300 flights were canceled. You can only imagine the chaos in the airport, as travelers try to rebook flights and figure out alternate plans. I'm very lucky that I don't leave until Monday.

If I leave on Monday. That remains to be seen.

In the meantime, could you, would you, please send some good thoughts and healing vibes to the folks who were injured? It's flakey, but at least it's something.

UPDATE: Fortunately I made it on to my Monday flight, and everything went as per usual. Truly amazing how fast they can get an entire airport up and running again after a major disaster. And aside from the countless news trucks parked out front, everything was completely normal.

May the Fourth Be With You

It's the Fourth of July and I'm in Sonoma. Quarter to nine at night and it's still 30 degrees, with the warmest wind. I'm in a big open field, waiting for fireworks, and the fire department is spraying the dry grass with water in preparation. All around me are families, boys tossing around footballs, flirting with girls. There are little kids flying kites, and moms and dads keeping watchful eyes on toddlers who are running around and falling down all over the place. Most of the guys have open beers, and because it's Sonoma, there's no shortage of wine glasses too. Some picnickers are fancy - with chilled bottles of Chardonnay in silver wine coolers, others are drinking their red wine out of repurposed Gatorade bottles.

There are American flags everywhere - on T-shirts, on cars, as hair accessories - on people and on dogs. And fashion is a distinctly red, white and blue affair - one woman in front of me even dyed her hair to match. And there is a low level chant behind me: "Red, White, Blue! Red, White, Blue."

It's a fantastic setting for fireworks, and I love watching the happy family groups around me. All day I've been struck by what a family holiday the fourth is. It's about love of home - both on the micro and macro scale. I appreciate their unabashed pride in this country. As Canadians, we're so quiet about our patriotism. While I secretly, smugly believe that I live in the best country in the world, I would hardly ever say it out loud. Somehow it feels like it would be impolite or immodest, heaven forbid. But here, the patriotism, today and everyday, is just so open, so out there, and I respect that. And I love that all around me, I hear different accents - from all over the States, Mexico, Europe. I hear German behind me, and it does feel like a gathering place - whether for the huddled masses, or for tourists, I'm not sure.

A word about independence: it seems appropriate on today of all days to celebrate independent travel. I love traveling on my own, and I think everyone should take a solo trip at least once in their lives. Being on your own, you experience the people, the culture differently. I think you're actually more immersed in it, because you don't have your partner or group as a buffer. And your receptors are entirely set on input instead of output, and in today's busy world that's a remarkably rare occurrence.

I also love the simplicity of being on my own. There are no negotiations, no compromises, no one else's schedules and agendas or preferences or hunger to consider. That's not to say I don't love traveling with my husband or with friends, but it's different.

I'm also grateful to be living in a time and place where, as a woman, solo travel is safe, possible and widely done. I have received nothing but positive attention so far, and everyone I've met has been friendly and welcoming.

A final thought about independence: to me it means freedom. Freedom of thought, belief, freedom to love who you choose, freedom to marry who you want. It's a happy time to be in California - a bit more than a week since the abolition of Prop 8, and I see grinning couples of all stripes all around me. It's a happy place.


Oooh fireworks! Gotta go. Happy Independence Day.

The High Road

The Pacific Coast Highway between Carmel and Santa Barbara is pretty much the perfect road. If you like winding, narrow, slow, hilly, cliffy and terrifying, it is Plato's ideal. If you like straight, flat and fast, you're going to hate it.

But if you're like me, the PCH is one of those drives you have to do at least once - although I can't imagine how those views could ever get old. It's the only road to Big Sur, but it's not really about going anywhere, it's just about the driving - it exemplifies the "it's the journey, not the destination" maxim. There are lookout points round every other bend, and you make friends with the other drivers as you all stop, and look, and marvel, and take each others' pictures.

Misty morning on the PCH

I left Carmel around 10 am, and as Mustang Sally and I climbed into the hills, we rolled into a surprisingly white world. Fog and mist and mizzle left us blind to the views, and for awhile, it felt more like Christmas than July in California. But the best part of the fog was that it made you focus on the sounds, and even above the rush of wind - yes, I had the top down - you could hear the crashing waves a hundred feet or more below.

I drove in fog most of the way to Big Sur, but just before it, the clouds cleared, and - wahhhh - the ocean appeared, roiling and beating the rocks below.

I had been following a Harley most of the way, and right before Big Sur he turned down a single track road that said 'beach access.' Assuming that bikers always know the best hidden routes, I decided to follow him. The road was barely wide enough for Sally, and panic set in when  headlights appeared in the other direction. It was the first of several subtle negotiations as Sally and I eased our way the few miles - straight down - to Pfeiffer Beach.


But it was all worth it. At the bottom of the road, there was a narrow path that opened out onto a sheltered beach. Enough people not to be lonely, but far from crowded, there were surfers and sunbathers and kids running in - and out - of the cold water. I walked around enough to get my feet wet and sandy, and sat for awhile on some rocks, passing the time of day with the seagulls.

Surfer Dude at Pfeiffer Beach

Doorway to the Pacific? ~ Pfeiffer Beach

I joined up with my biker friend - Mike from Detroit - as we both headed up the beach to leave. He seemed amazed that I had come "all the way from Canada" even though he had ridden his bike more than 2000 miles to get here. He said he recognized my accent because he watched a lot of HGTV - a channel loved by bikers and non-bikers alike, apparently - and he said, "Canada makes the best reality tv shows." Dubious honour, perhaps, but I'll take it.

Near John Little State Reserve

Back up on the PCH, the road hangs over cliffs that are, in romance-novel parlance, "perilous," and the twisty-turning lasts for about three hours, until, mercifully, the path straightens out and you can fly, free, on a fast road for the first time. For awhile the road heads east, and seaside villages turn into scruffy Old West towns, and then you climb through hills of grapevines and olive groves, and when you feel like you can't drive for one more minute, you reach Santa Barbara, a gorgeous bougainvillea town with white Spanish buildings and a wide beach, and amazing cliff-clinging houses, each more expensive than the next. It's a perfect Californian city, at the end of a perfect Californian road.

Who can ask for more than that?

Mustang Sally

San Francisco to Carmel:

I'm frankly amazed that people are willing to rent me a car. Not that I'm a terrible driver, or a criminal, or under 25, but the whole process of handing over the keys of an expensive piece of machinery to a complete stranger seems, well, vaguely irresponsible. I feel like I'm getting away with something not quite legal, which makes it that much more fun.

Today the rental process went absolutely in my favor. Budget-conscious, I months ago reserved the cheapest car I could find, at the cheapest off-airport lot. It took a mini-train, a bus and a shuttle to get there, and when I finally made it, I found they had given away the last of the super-tiny-compact-economy cars they had.

And so, like a genie granting wishes, they offered me two choices: an X-Trail SUV and a sweet silver Mustang convertible.

You can guess which car I chose.

So today I had the pleasure of getting my hair very messy, driving with the top down like a real Californian. Except that I'm pretty sure the real Californians were protecting their hair in Jaguars and BMWs, as I saw very few convertibles with the tops down. But it fulfilled in me the teenaged dream of blasting tunes on the highway in an open car.

I love to drive. To qualify, I love to drive alone. Whenever I have a passenger I'm either distracted by conversation, or self-conscious, convinced I'm going to do something stupid like cut off a cop. It has happened. I make a better passenger, really, when it's more than just me. Ask my husband.

But when I drive by myself, everything unwinds. It's meditative. My brain, usually ridiculously busy, focuses on the task at hand, and I can belt to the tunes and nobody's listening. When I'm driving alone, every song is in my key, and I sound fantastic. I slow my thoughts down to the pace of the scenery outside, and the best roads are slow and curvy and hilly, with huge open vistas around the bend.

Today's drive did not disappoint. The Cabrillo highway, south from San Francisco to Carmel is perfect: cliffs with waves pounding below, tufted hills, strawberry fields and tall trees - I couldn't tell you what kinds - and fruit stands every few miles.

Being from Canada, I forget the joy of counting in miles. Even though I grew up with kilometres, I convert to miles in my head. I'm that in-between generation that is neither comfortable with metric nor imperial, and so I count distance in minutes and hours instead.

Here, the distances are short, and the hours shorter.

I can't wait for tomorrow.