I've been cutting an pasting this heading for so long that I have probably lost all the html language that I so painstakingly tried to memorize. I think this page could use some new designing anyways. Perhaps there will be a new face-lift in the next month. We'll see.

A friend of mine has asked me to start writing in here a little more regularly. She hasn't been the only one. I'm not sure if this has to do with how hard it is to understand my wandering vocal ramblings or that what I have to say is even remotely interesting but whatever, I'm enjoying myself.

I was thinking about how to relate to you my experience in Africa. I think that I am just overwhelmed at how crazy things can (will?) get. I have lived in Canada all my life and I think I have gotten used to the feeling of safety.

Now, it has been awhile since I was a police-trusting, nationalistic, government-believing, repectful, seen-and-not-heard little white girl - although it helps that I appear this way. I have lived in areas of this country where you grow up observing that people in power will more commonly become your enemy than your friend given a sticky situation concerning the wrong mixture of money, race or sex. Nevertheless, there is the dulling perception of calmness here that doesn't seem to exist in North Africa.

Yet,I am also aware that this perception is crumbling in many areas of this part of the world as well and perhaps this is what I was so affected by.
It doesn't matter how open-minded I thought I was, I saw Tunisia as an exotic adventure. I was excited and ready to challenge my tolerence for difference. I expected some difficult situations given my cultural bias against fundamental Islamic traditions and women. However, what I was not ready to challenge was my tolerence for our sameness...
You know that old guy on the street corner that sells little trinkets and dancing dolls that you could just as easily buy in Pharmasave down the street (or have you even noticed him yet)? Multiply him by 6 or 7 and change the age from 50 years old to 20. As well, instead of this old harmless "bum" sitting down looking at the sidewalk, making sure he is the requisite number of metres away from the bank or any other "non-designated transient areas", imagine all these young guys screaming at the top of their lungs to buy their nike trackpants or whatever they have that day.
This is not some exotic Africa of quirky craziness and ancient medina markets, this is any downtown Canadian city with rising tensions and complex desperations.

A professor of mine once told me of a book named Which World (I haven't been able to find it yet so if anyone has suggestions...). From this book, he described scenerios of the world's future. The most optimistic is the techno-saved universe where we are all so smart, we have saved the world from extinction and are now travelling along on our Star-Trek happy lives, showing the rest of the solar-system our rightous non-interference. However, another path which my prof seemed to think we were on, consisted of the building of fences. This image of a large fence is designed to keep out the rest of the world while the top nations protected their possesions and world harvest.
I think the book was mainly geared towards an environmental awakening but you can apply this culturally as well.
I thought there was a difference, a fence, in between me and Africa and sadly, what I found so disturbing is that there isn't. I'm not worried that perhaps my sheltered world will be tainted by the "chaos" of their existence. Instead, I believe I have seen a bit of a foreshadowing. I did not feel calm because it was not calm, it was desperate and we all seem to be moving in this direction. How many people have experienced this in their own communities and decided to build their own "fences"? I can't help but think that all this is doing is adding to the desperation. "If you aren't going to help me I won't help you and we'll all play the survival of the fittest game." Doesn't that scare you? And are you really that sure of your fence?

I certainly don't have the answers but I sure know how I felt and how I feel now when I hear people discussing politics and the "immigration problem". I know it's easy to sit here and yammer on about all this but I do intend on attempting a change, I just don't know how yet.

(So I guess what I meant when I wrote of being bombarded with such a difference, it was a difference in my own perception of me in relation to them. The emotional survival is overwhelming there, yes, but we are so dead here that it almost seems to take the same amount of emotional energy to jolt ourselves out of our fences as well.)
Alas, I am getting obscure and vague here, and just when I am really understanding it all too...
There will be more on this... I need to think some more...