The Weekend Saboteur!

What is with this guy? Should I be taking it personally that he would rather spend every free moment passed out in bed than enjoying the sunny weekend with his wife? His wife that has waited patiently all week for him to finally have some time off? And then he goes and gets SICK! Again!

Ok all joking aside, poor Brent -again! His nasty cold from last weekend (complete with high fever) cleared up just in time for him to work Tuesday and Wednesday, then on Thursday I got a call in the afternoon that his coworkers were taking him to the doctor because his left eye was swollen, red, weeping and it was painful to look at light. He was given drops, pills and sent home with no specific diagnosis (seeing as he is not covered by medical insurance until June 1, they took him to a little back-alley Dr near his work - not really the best area of town for state-of-the-art opthomology clinics). Ever the trooper, he did a full 8am-7:30pm workday yesterday, so that by today (Saturday, aka WEEKEND) he is now in even more pain and feels the need to just rest and heal, likely all the way till Monday when he will go back to work!

For those of you that were wondering, it does not seem to fit the usual diagnosis of conjunctivitis (aka "pink-eye") either, as there is no yellow or green discharge, just clear tears, and enough swelling to make it look like someone punched him (no bar fights recently that I've been witness to...). So, according to webMD, we're self-diagnosing Iritis, or Sinusitis that has moved from his cold to affect his eye. Don't worry though, we'll get a proper opthomoligist's opinion (once our health insurance kicks in tomorrow) before self-treating!

We did manage a little (perhaps ill-advised) outing last night with our friends Jan (who works with another refugee agency in town) and her husband Don (who's from Uganda!) to our first Diego beach!

Due to Brent having to work late, we only made it there for our picnic dinner after the sun had set, but the photos should give you some idea of what we can look forward to when we break down and buy a car so that we can head there on the hot summer weekends (um, that is if my hubby can stay healthy for one!).

The other (daytime) photo is of my first glimpse of the ocean when I went to an appointment in the wealthy neighbourhood of La Jolla (which was almost very embarrassing when I didn't realise that it was a Spanish name, and was going around pronouncing it in its Anglicised form rather than the correct: la Hoya!).

Last, but not least, this week marked the birthdays of both my "little" brother Mat, who turned the big 2-1 (I said he should have been down here for a real celebration), and my mom, who's birthday is today! She's turning 29...again :-) Happy Birthday to you two!

Love to all from "the Southern Saskatchewan" (my analogy for people who think I've moved far away from Victoria... distance-wise, we're only as far as my mom's home province, and still in the same time zone!)

Starting a new life and the state of our apartment

Greetings again from southern California,

Last night I had the surprise opportunity to accompany Brent and one of his caseworkers to the airport. Rather than a visiting dignitary or returning colleague, our presence at the airport was to meet and welcome a new resident of the US - a young Somali refugee. It was a great chance for me to see one of the major activities Brent has been involved in over the last two weeks, and a chance to meet one of his colleagues, a sweet, talkative older Somali woman called Amina, who has quickly endeared herself to Brent by making him a daily cup of the spiced, fragrant Somali tea friends used to make for us in the settlement.

We arrived a little after 8pm, and as the boy's arrival time approached, Amina scanned the arrivals for Somali-looking passengers with the characteristic International Organisation for Migration (IOM) sticker and bag, while telling us stories of her arrival mishaps over her career with IRC (including planes delayed until 2am - made worse by her 1hr return commute - and a refugee that, instead of coming downstairs to the arrivals lounge, instead saw the McDonalds in the terminal and was finally found there, eating, 2hrs after her plane had landed!). As the boy's arrival time came and went, Amina set off to get security clearance to go upstairs to see if he could be found waiting there (perhaps in the McDonalds), and Brent and I sat down to ironically bump into another colleague of his, Kasra, who helped us vet apartments before we arrived. Amina returned with news that the plane had been delayed, and wouldn't be coming in until 9:25. Finally, at 9:45 we were standing at the bottom of the escalator when Amina said "he's the one". 6' tall and thinner than a rail, in layers of sweatshirts with too-short arms, and the zipped-off hood of an old parka over his head (such a common sight in the refugee camps), Abdul came down the escalator. He quickly told Amina that he had phoned his family upstairs because he was lost, so she called to let them know we had found him. He was from Dadaab - one of the largest refugee camps in Africa. His family was resettled last year but he was found to have TB, and had to complete treatment before being allowed to join his family. He looked about 15, but could have been anywhere from 13-20. His eyes were deeply sunken and he looked a mixture of terrified, tired, and he told Amina, very hungry. I can only imagine all the thoughts running through his head as he stepped out of the airport and into the cool night air, hemmed in by the glowing skyscrapers of downtown San Diego. It was a precious moment to be witness to, and a good reminder that our move to this city is small beans compared to some!

Speaking of our move - I think we`re finally ready to show some photographic evidence that I do have A domestic bone in my body! Here are some before and after photos of our place, and even Brent will admit that I was left to do most of it while he was at work.

Talk to you all again soon!

Love,

Jen and Brent

"Developed" Country Adjustments

Well folks, it had to come.

Moving always has its ups and downs. There's the excitement of a new and sometimes exotic place, mixed with the regret of leaving the familiarity and comfort of where you were. Writing from my relocations to Ghana or Uganda, or during my travels in Africa and Asia, there were significant cultural and logistical differences to "home" that required some adjusting to. Many of you heard about the bus rides with chickens and goats, the gastronomic adventures, and the forays with wild animals. There were power outages, lynch mobs and underpaid authority figures to reckon with, but over the past few years, Brent and I began to "get used" as the Ugandans would say, to how to live, and even thrive, under these new sets of rules. I dislike over generalisations, but there seem to be currents of similarity that unite high-context cultures, that differ from low-context cultures (for more info on what the heck I'm talking about, see http://www.via-web.de/273.html, or google "high context cultures"). While we have been back in wealthy, western, low-context North America for nearly a year, I think the reverse adjustment was buffeted by the overwhelming familiarity of home. Now that we're in a new place, I'm aware of differences I hadn't noticed as starkly in Victoria, and my need to adjust to them.

Now, some aspects of re-adjusting to living in North America are wonderful! Daily cappuccinos (if you can afford them); timely, reliable transport; gyms, parks and a multitude of other ways to stay active; shopping options galore (see photo of my new sunglasses), and the variety of affordable international cuisine being some of them. However, the following aspects of life in a "developed", wealthy, western country have been less easy to adjust to...

1) Can I have my money please?

We'd heard about the US mortgage crisis, but since we don't own property I didn't think it affected us. Then we tried to buy groceries the other day and our new debit card was denied. As it turns out, the state of the US economy has generated a colossal number of fraudulent cheque writers, and as a result, many US banks, including ours, now put every cheque deposited on hold anywhere from 10 days to 8 weeks! Ouch!

2) Ugandan pedestrian rules

In Uganda the rules of the road are simple: the right of way goes to the biggest vehicle. Now while I was initially quite impressed with San Diegan drivers for courteously allowing merging traffic into their lane, I was more taken aback when stepping out on a crosswalk nearly got me flattened! So we've concluded that it's just these weird walking folk (i.e. pedestrians) that have the last right of way.

3) Begging Mr. Fix-It

In high-context cultures waiting becomes a way of life, sometimes elevated to the duration of an art form. But returning back to relatively punctual North America, I found my expectations switching back to minutes rather than hours or hours rather than days. So when we alerted our property manager to our inability to get into our mailbox, and a rather major privacy issue in our shower (which was also a security issue, and a reason that I won't elaborate until tomorrow when it's fixed), I thought they would have it fixed the next day...maybe two days if they were busy. Not the close to TWO WEEKS we've been waiting! And where in Uganda we could have just paid someone to get it done, here that gets into liability issues. Until the manager called today promising it would be done tomorrow, I was ready to fight liability with liability and resort to the American mantra of - let's SUE!

4) The poor here

After her first visit to Canada my former Ghanaian boss said, "the poor in Canada are much poorer than the poor in Africa, because they are alone. If you are poor in Africa, people don't blame you for being poor. In Canada, society shuns you." Working next door to Our Place downtown, I witnessed Victoria's intertwined mental health, substance abuse and homelessness issues daily, so I'm not sure why it is hitting me so hard in San Diego. But it is. Brent and I ventured downtown for the first time this weekend, and juxtaposed against stunning architecture, the ever-present palm fronds, and boutique stores, was the frequent smell of urine, and more than a few people living off the refuse of the rich. It was amazing how close and stark the disparity is in the richest country on earth.

5) Health Care?

Undoubtedly intertwined with #4, I am now living in the land of health-care-for-purchase. It's a strange concept for a Canadian, as I realised staring at a billboard of a kid with his arm in a cast, asking whether your health insurance would pay for that. Huh? Not get a cast when you break an arm because your health insurance doesn't pay for it? What?! I felt like I'd walked into an Orwellian future where something we take for granted has been bought out by big business. In a way, that's what happened for Americans a long time ago. Brent and I sat down to choose his/our benefit package last night and calculated that for basic health, vision and dental (of which his employer still pays around 60%), we'll be looking at premiums of between $350 and $400 a month! The worst part is that if/when we need medical care, we'll still be responsible for up to 50% of the cost. And Canadians have no idea of what health care really costs. The majority of (minuscule) expenses we have for health care are still so heavily subsidized by the government that the equivalent here would involve adding a lot of zero's. If you can handle Michael Moore's one-sided documentaries, see Sicko.

Well this wasn't meant to be a gripe fest, I am really liking San Diego! But it's also good to realise that sometimes a "developing" country's idiosyncrasies can seem comforting, and a sunny, beautiful city in the wealthiest country in the world still has its issues ;-)

To end on a happy note, here are some photos of SD's Gaslamp District, Horton Mall (no relation to Timmy), and the San Diegan skyline (complete with airplane landing).

Take care,

Jen

Resettlement, Markets and Sickies

Greeting everyone,

We just received some wonderful news: Bagira, one of our very best friends in Kyaka II refugee camp is being resettled to Canada!

(He is in the white shirt in the photo -it's better not to show his face until he's resettled)

When I met Bagira, IMC's Community Educator Supervisor, I knew immediately (like when I first met John), that I was meeting an extraordinary human being. He was very bright, but also very humble, with a kind face and a gentle voice. He was involved with every community activity in Kyaka. In his native DRC he had worked for an NGO, and was deeply committed to improving the lives and situations of those around him. His fluency in English, French, Kiswahili, and Kinyarwanda put him in high demand as a translator for meetings and events throughout the settlement, so he was often rushing from one meeting to where he had been summoned across camp to help with another. He was a passionate supporter of women's equality (some concepts he could articulate better than I), and worked tirelessly for IMC's anti-gender based violence and HIV/AIDS campaigns. He also spent hours of his free time inventing and researching energy-saving alternatives to the environmentally degradative means by which the refugees had to cook in Kyaka. When we left, he was busy researching a system of using the methane from cow manure to generate electricity for refugee houses in the settlement!

Bagira's wife Jose, is my age, very intelligent; a sweet, independent soul. But she wasn't afraid to stand up for her rights, and took on the camp authorities more than once when they were not responding to security threats or life-threatening illnesses affecting her family. I had a lot of admiration and respect for Jose, and was overjoyed when she was successful in gaining the one scholarship offered in Kyaka to pursue post-secondary studies. They have four beautiful children to whom the world has not always been kind. I can't think of a better family to be offered a new life in Canada. I will keep you all posted as to where in Canada Bagira and his family will be resettled, and hopefully some of you will be able to meet them, as you did John :-)

Before we got that fabulous news, I was busy playing maid/caregiver/nurse to my sick husband!

Seriously though, poor Brent. He's been working non-stop for two weeks, and then on our first real weekend (a 3-day one!), spikes a fever and is confined to bed. His bed-riddenness also happens to coincide with our first blue-sky day all week. And in contrast to last weekend where we were made to schlep a futon, microwave, TV and a week's groceries around Hillcrest in 40 degree heat, Saturday's sunshine came at a balmy 19 degrees. So I went for a run in the park.

It's now Sunday, and he's feeling a bit better, so we're going to try to hit up the Farmer's Market again, and I'll try to snap a few tourist shots in the process. Unfortuantely, the weather has decided to empathise with a pang of missing Victoria last week, and has clouded over again to remind me of home - aww!

Till next time folks!

Love,

Jen and (slowly healing) Brent

Settling in to #9

Hello Again,

Well, the first one worked, and I even got e-mails saying people liked it! So, off we go with post #2:

Life here continues to be grand (with the one major exception of missing home so much), as we get more settled, and start familiarising ourselves with our new community. I realised yesterday morning that this is each of our 9th move to a new city or country (not including moves within cities and moves back home so many times), so we're reasonably used to the process of getting out and quickly finding the basics like friends, housing, work, groceries and sushi. We're now at the stage where we're progressing from a general awareness of where we live, where Brent works, where to get money, and some good places to get groceries, to learning which roads we prefer to take to town, which places are good for lunch, bus schedules, better places to get groceries, and even finding a few friends!

Two of our new friends Jan and Don, took us on Sunday morning to the Hillcrest Farmer's Market. It was a sweltering morning -the heat wave was giving the thermometers a last push upwards, but the fruit was shaded in tightly rowed stands, and the heat just made the fresh-picked strawberries, oranges and grapefruit that much more fragrant. My favourite though, were the peaches! Many of the farms had free samples, and the fresh slices of white peach were to die for. They were so ripe and I bought so many in my excitement that by the time we got them home half of them were squished beyond recognition - I'll have to remember a little restraint next time!

Brent has been working long hours this week as he continues to get more familiar with his office and his role within it, a process he is really enjoying, though I think he is feeling a bit bogged-down by the day-to-day admin tasks when he feels the need to be focusing on the strategic planning for which he was hired. Luckily, he seems to be liking the team that he is working with, so that makes everything easier.

Meanwhile, in addition to my newly acquired domestic duties (those who know me will be laughing, I know - but wait till I post photos of the inside of this apartment!) I have started looking into volunteer opportunities with a number of agencies in San Diego, though I am still hoping that my main volunteering will be in the IRC office. My other main endeavour over the coming months will be to learn Spanish! I have researched some language programs here, and will hopefully be starting a series of back-to-back courses to take me from Beginner through to Intermediate High over the next 3-4 months!

Well there's always more to write, but I will save that for tomorrow. The heat wave finally broke, so we're back to precious cool weather, and hopefully a good night's sleep!

Adios mes amis (sorry, the language courses need to at least begin before I can write it all en Espanol!)

Jen

The Virgin Post

Hello please?

Is anyone out there?

As the title might have led you to believe, this is in fact my very first attempt at this phenomenon known as "blogging" (who came up with that ridiculous name?). At the moment, it looks like I'm just writing an e-mail, but soon I hope that this will be transformed into something that looks like my friend Cat's blog (www.catincairo.blogspot.com) though not black (I preferred black, but Cat's is black and I don't want people to think I'm just copying her), and with a few less camels. Though we do have the zoo down the road...

So, yes, Brent and I are indeed writing from San Diego, California! Well, I'm writing... he's at work, which is a fairly common theme of late, hence another reason for me to start a blog! Now while you may not think that this is as exciting or exotic a locale as we've been in the past, San Diego is certainly a foreign setting to a Canadian (a somewhat unwelcome one), and a small-town Vermont boy (who tends to forget that he is actually a California native, and from a larger city than this!).

After a midnight arrival, we woke to be assaulted by the bright sunshine, prolific palm trees, planes zooming overhead (the airport is virtually downtown, so when you arrive you feel like you're living on a runway), and high-speed freeways zigzagging across town. However, there was no time to hide under the covers, Brent had to be at work in 48hrs, during which we had to rent a car, figure out the city, find a lawyer, and lease an apartment that we could move into in 72hrs when the moving truck would arrive from B.C.!

Amazingly, Brent made it to work, I found us an apartment and we signed the lease 15min before the movers arrived at our new address. One week later we had cell phones, gym memberships, a land line, cable, internet, half a dozen pieces of new furniture, a window-box garden, and a somewhat stocked pantry. Tomorrow is our two-week anniversary, and while I'm still not ready to post interior photos of our apartment, (they'll be coming once we can get the mountain of cardboard boxes out of the living room), I think we're settling in pretty well!

It helps to be living in the best neighbourhood in SD of course. Hillcrest, as our friendly bank teller put it, is the "Gay Mecca of San Diego" (caveat: this is not meant to have any reference to Islam!). While we have many gay friends (some of whom I hope are reading this), this is the first time either of us have lived in a neighbourhood where sexual preferences are roughly equal - what a refreshing change!

Finally, one of the transitions of moving to a new place is often to look to confirm previously-held generalisations (i.e. stereotypes). These often provide some shallow comfort in the adjustment process before one is ready to accept the extreme complexity of human beings, and admit that no generalisation is absolute to any group, be that a nation, culture, ethnicity, race, or sexuality. So knowing and expecting this, we have started recognising some of our stereotypes of living in southern California, and/or of living in a majority gay community:

Stereotype 1. Urban/Suburban Southern California has been built around the automobile.

The common response of San Diegans to learning that we don't have a car (yet) is to: a) laugh, or b) remind us that we are in San Diego.

Stereotype 2. Gay neighbourhoods (or a community home to an open majority of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and families) are: very friendly, ueber-trendy, reasonably well-off, health-conscious and politically progressive.

Hillcrest, by means of justification, is a mix of upscale condos, beautiful little character homes, and has more fancy wine bars, boutique stores, European cafes, and exotic restaurants than you can shake a stick at! And our neighbours have been extremely friendly! E.g. we went to a garage sale on the weekend where the owner offered us mimosas, then borrowed a friend's truck, drove us home (via another garage sale for us to pick up a microwave), and helped us carry our new purchases inside!

Stereotype 3. "Everyone" gets work done.

I am referring of course to the cosmetic variety... While standing in line at a drug store on our first morning, a young couple in front of me started discussing the woman's recent Botox injections. When who should walk over, but the guy's friend -Mr. Botox! Mr. B had just opened up a new Botox clinic and was offering it for much less than the $900 the woman had paid for hers! Much networking and future wrinkle-less scheming ensued. Unfortunately, in addition to a general prevalence of blonder hair, darker tans, rounder breasts, and smoother skin, we also find San Diegans who are a bit too addicted to their plastic (or toxin) FYI - it is very difficult to maintain eye contact with someone who's face looks like it's got saran-wrap stretched over half of it.

Stereotype 4. Californians are obsessed with little dogs.

Whether it's model-esque women teetering in heels, with over sized shades, and Gucci bags with little furry heads poking out of their thousand-dollar Burberry purses, or the plethora of little dogs outfitted to match their flamboyant owners parading through Hillcrest, San Diego is a heaven for pampered pint-sized pooches. In Hillcrest alone there are more doggy beauty parlors than gyms!

Stereotype 5. California loooooves yoga!

While I have yet to check out San Fransisco or LA's yoga scenes, San Diego (and Hillcrest in particular) seem plastered with yoga studios, yoga fashion, and eclectic Buddhist decor with not-so-enlightened price tags! Perhaps the astronomic expense to practice yoga is supposed to lead practitioners into Buddha's fasting-induced enlightenment?

Well that's all from me for now (sheesh this got long - I'll try to keep future posts a bit more modest in length) - time to go see if this posting stuff really works!

Till next time,

Jen

p.s. Now that I've told you so much about here, I better include some photos for those of you who haven't seen them on facebook yet...

p.p.s Ok, I tried with the photos, and no matter how many times I fix the spacing it never works out right on the preview screen - I give up!