Sylvia's Journal

Sita completed her assignment in Sharm el Sheik and is now resting and recuperating in Dahab, another exoctic place that Axel checked out on the web. The place is described as a mix of ” Hippie and Bedouin styles developed over several decades.” He thought that sounded just like our house. She will feel right at home.

I woke up with most of my large muscle groups in pain and a troubled gait that is pointing me back to the physical therapist. It is because I danced last night, quite vigorously. I can’t help myself when I hear the Latin music that our disc-jockey Christian played. During the day Christian unobtrusively cleans our counters and puts our coffee cups away at MSH but in the night he transforms into a great disc jockey. The party came at the end of a long day to celebrate our collective accomplishments, good team work and the talent of a multitude of people.

The streaming in of our Nepali colleagues did not quite work out the way we had hoped. Not so good sound quality compounded Nepali-english accents that are hard to understand under the best of circumstances. The heartwarming stories did not quite make it into the ears of our audience. Thomas and I were disappointed. We could have done an old fashioned powerpoint with us talking and pretty pictures but we had resisted. It had been a gamble that we had lost.

We listened to other presentations, traditional and experiential, that conveyed their messages a bit better. Nevertheless, in the end they all formed a nice coherent whole about empowerment and people moving out of their victim role into that of agents of change (for better health).

The war fuzzy feeling engendered by these accomplishments and all that altruism stood in sharp contrast to an article I read during some down time about China’s stealth invasion of Africa (Fast Company, June issue) in which Richard Behar describes what is generally referred to as the Great Chinese Take Out. Where we are practically hanging ourselves by our rules on how to work with and for the Africans, the Chinese have none of these qualms. We see dirt poor countries that need our help and use one year workplans to do that; they see their own raw resource limitations 50 years hence and poverty as an opportunity to extract riches for mere handouts to a greedy and easy-to-please elite. Our short term but uplifting interventions suddenly seem very naïve. I usually preach a message of hopefulness but reading the article was not good for my soul and usually positive outlook. I finished reading the article about what is going on in Mozambique and then had to put the magazine away. It was time to dance the salsa and forget about these weightier things.

I discovered that Tessa had decided to head back to Canada and her lonely Steve on Wednesday morning. It brought a premature end to the partying as I wanted to see her for dinner one last time. On my way home Tessa informed me that plans had changed as her best friend was in need of her company to help her through a rough spot. This included dinner; I ended up joining Axel and Joe at one of my favorite restaurants in Manchester (Cala’s) where I arrived just in time to finish Joe’s fries and use them to mop up Axel’s plate. A sake-soaked plate of PEI mussels and a third of a sugary dessert completed that meal. It was Joe’s treat.