Catching a breath

Where did February go? It feels like the month has just started and now it's going to end in 3 days. I'm not the biggest fan of Reading Week. Sure, I enjoyed it in my 1B term, thinking that it's the most awesome thing that we get to have a whole week off. But now that I'm in my last term, I don't appreciate it so much anymore. It makes no sense to me. It totally disrupted my momentum, decreased my productivity, squished all my midterms right before and right after the "break". It feels so unnecessary, considering that a few years back, the Faculty of Math and Engineering only had Reading DAYS (Thurs and Fri), so half the people on campus were off for a week and the other half stuck in classes. It's the weirdest thing to have one whole week off in the middle of what I already consider a very short term. If anyone know the history of how the concept of Reading Week started, please tell me. If there's a point to this, why aren't there a break like this in Fall & Spring term? If I had a choice, I'd rather start the term a week later, or end the term a week earlier. But that's just me. At least I got one thing done over the break - wisdom teeth extractions! Not fun.

Now that the break is over, it's time to get back to business! I feel so behind in everything. So it's list time.

Housekeeping:

• Fixed my teeth and made sure I won't need more dental work this summer
• 1st WUSC deadline Feb 20 (send copy of passport, medical form, signed contract)
• 2nd WUSC deadline Mar 13 (proof of insurance, short bio, a photo, document checklist)
• Confirm the health insurance stuff
• Book immunization appointment (Mar 20)
• Submit remaining donations to Elyse
• Apply for travel bursaries
• Follow up with WUSC re: living expenses
• Submit Intend to Graduate form

To-do's:

• Blog about the book I just finished (Me to We)
• Post research about Somarelang Tikologo
• Post research about Botswana
• Attend Innovation & Sustainable Community Change workshop on Mar 3 hosted by SIG @ Waterloo
  
• Start looking into the Setswana langauge (find an online dictionary & print important stuff)
• Prepare for final presentation on Mar 26
  
• Video project (details TBD)
  
• Read Getting to Maybe by Frances Westley and End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs
• Re-read Race Against Time by Stephen Lewis
• OH, and study for my other 4 courses - 2 labs, 2 midterms, 4 finals (almost forgot, ha!)

That's it for now! March looks like it will be a busy month, but I am thoroughly enjoying every moment of it.

My frustrations about my frustrations

I struggled for a long time whether or not to post this entry, partly because it is not something I am particularly proud of, and mostly because it makes me feel extremely vulnerable. In the end, I decided I would post because I felt it was important for me to share with you my experience on this journey - that is, both the good and the bad. And all I ask for is a listening ear, a caring heart, and an open mind.

As mentioned in one of my previous posts, I have started volunteering at The Working Centre helping out with the Computer Basics course. When I say basic, I mean basic. This past Tuesday they had their 5th lesson (of 8 in total), and they were learning how to cut/copy & paste from one folder to another folder. I have been with them for the last 3 lessons, and seeing them progress has been the biggest joy and satisfaction I get from being there. Last week before they left, they made sure I would be going again the following week. I even thought I found a new passion in teaching, as I did not grow up thinking that I wanted to be a teacher nor did I think I was good enough to teach anything.

Things started to change this week. A lady was having the hardest time doing the tasks. The exercise was simply to copy a file from My Documents, find her folder (which was saved under C:/), and paste it there. I spent about half an hour practicing with her, drawing trees and arrows and everything I can think of to explain to her: "No, your folder is not under My Documents. It's somewhere else.", and "No, you don't click File --> New when you want to copy & paste something.You go to Edit --> Copy/Paste".

I asked her to write steps down, then follow the steps as she tried to copy & paste again. She refused, and I  felt frustrated. I was already getting impatient when she didn't know where her folder was, because we've gone over that extensively in the last 3 weeks. Then I felt irritated when none of my explanations seemed to make any sense to her. Finally my heart sank when she just gave up. I felt mad - not because she didn't understand how to do something, but because I felt like she didn't care enough. I wanted to just say, "Well if you want to learn how to use this thing, you need to try harder. Don't give up. I can help you. "

Ok I didn't actually say that. At the end of the class she still asked me as usual whether I would be there the following week. I told her I wouldn't be because I was going home for reading week. She seemed disappointed. As soon as she turned around, I couldn't hide my emotions anymore. I couldn't believe I almost lost my patience whereas the last thing she needed was another person getting frustrated at her. I felt horrible. All I wanted was for her to do well.

The worst part of this is, this is not something uncommon that I experience. I come across a lot of people in my life, whether they are people I am extremely close with or just someone I happen to know, whom I feel should simply care more. I get bothered and all I want to say is, "Stop sitting there and complain. Do something about it!", or "What do you mean you don't care? Why don't you care?" Although most of the time I'm able to pull myself back and behave how a good friend should behave, I am having an extremely hard time coming to terms with myself. It makes me want to throw something at them. It makes me feel responsible. It makes me question myself, "Should I care less?"

A mentor told me this, "You can't help someone unless they want to be helped." But am I supposed to just sit there and watch, pretend nothing is wrong and just not do anything? To be honest, I don't have this quite figured out yet. I don't know how this post is going to sound to people. Some of you are going to think that I don't need to care about other people's business, not everyone is going to agree with me, and that's okay. Just writing this post already makes me feel very emotional. I care, and I have a feeling that my encounters this summer are going to be even more challenging for me.

Stand By Me

My last post was a little depressing, but seeing this video made me feel better. Sit back, and let the music take you around the world.

playingforchange.com is a movement created to inspire, connect, and bring peace to the world through music. I plan to watch the documentary film "Playing for Change: Peace Through Music" over Reading Week..for stories of "hope, struggle, perseverance, joy, and celebration".

Our world since 1960

Maybe I am just dumb - as I was doing research on my host country, Botswana, I didn't really understand what the statistics mean when I saw numbers like 3 millions of people infected with HIV  or an economic growth rate of 9% per annum. I mean, I know the definitions, but like, what do they really mean? I know the HIV/AIDS epidemic has had a huge impact on many sub-Saharan Africa countries - but how and what exactly was the impact? I needed something to put those numbers into perspective.

All my Google search results returned with the same kind of numbers, until I came across Wayne Miranda's blog and found a link to Gapminder , a non-profit venture that has developed a software to display development statistics and indicators in graphs and animations.

After watching Hans Rosling's presentation on TED about "the myths of the third world", I started playing with Gapminder's online software . The default indicators were already set for me - income per person on the x-axis, and life expectancy at birth on the y-axis. I clicked "Play" at the bottom, and watched these colorful bubbles moved from the bottom left corner to the top right corner as the timeline scrolled from 1800 to 2007. (Each bubble represents a country, the color represents the region, and the size represents population.)

I was more interested in knowing how our world has changed in the last 50 years, so I went back and paused at every 10 years since 1960 to take a closer look at the bubbles. In 1960, we had the European countries and North America sitting at the far right, China (big red bubble) and India (big light blue bubble) were still down at the bottom left.



By 1980, there were more bubbles clustering in the middle. Everybody was getting healthier and wealthier in general. The most significant change was the China and India bubbles jump on the Y-axis. In 20 years, the average life expectancy in China went from 30 years old to 65 years old, and the size of the bubble got even bigger!



As the timeline passed year 1985, the African bubbles in blue all of a sudden started falling very dramatically, while the rest of the countries continue to move towards the top right. The graph below shows what our world looked like in 2007. All countries advancing, with only African countries stuck at the bottom half of the graph.



Just to further illustrate what I meant by falling, I picked out the data of 3 countries  - Republic of Botswana, Republic of Chile, and Republic of Korea, to construct the following "motion chart" in Google Spreadsheet. Chile and Republic of Korea have been categorized as peer countries to Botswana by Standards & Poor (S&P), a credit rating and risk evulation agency used by businesses and foreign investors, due to the countries' similar macroeconomic policies and political stabilities.

The 3 countries were in relatively similar development state in terms of Income per Person and Life Expectancy at birth in 1960. They were almost growing at the same rate. By 1987, Botswana has surpassed Chile and had a higher income per person. That's also the year when Republic of Korea really took off. Click play on the graph below to see the rest of the story. (Change the Colors setting to "Unique Colors", Size to "Population", check the boxes of all 3 countries as well as the "Trails" box, then click play and watch what happens. Uncheck the "Trails" box to watch a replay of the freefall.)


I don't know if I'm making the right comparisons here. But it's disturbing to think what Botswana could have been without the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Still having the 2nd highest infected rate in the world, how is the country facing this? I will keep sharing as I find out more over the next few months.

I encourage all of you to check out Gapminder. There are 148 different indicators that you can play with by clicking on the axis names, anything from Environment, Health, Technology, Education, Family sizes....go see it for yourself.

"Believing in a Borderless World" - Dr. Heinzl

On Thursday, I attended the speech by Dr. Richard Heinzl, the founder of Doctors Without Borders Canada . The event was held in Fed Hall and was organized by UW International Health Development Association (UWIHDA ). I have thoroughly enjoyed Dr. Heinzl's speech - he's truly one amazing story-teller. Although it's impossible for me to re-tell all his stories, I would still like to share with you some of the insights he shared with us that evening...

"Whenever I hear people list off the things on my bio, I just need to say that I did not do this all by myself. I had so many people who backed me along the way. And this is going to be important for all of you. When I was in med school at McMaster, we weren't forced to take anatomy lab and all that. We were encouraged to investigate further into our own areas of interests. So that's how I got to go to Uganda as an elective course. When I arrived and met the MSF doctors for the first time, they looked nothing like the doctors you see back home. They don't wear long lab coats with funny things around their necks. They were drinking and partying, and I thought to myself immediately, boy, I have found my career. The important thing here is, you need mentors in your life. These are people who already are who you want to be. And these people also have had their own mentors, so they would love to give back, tell you their experiences, and help you get to where you want to be."

"I remember as a teenager, I would ask my parents why South Africa was the way it was. I would ask why people couldn't vote, but my parents couldn't really give me an answer, so I thought South Africa was never going to change, but it did. The little town I worked at in Cambodia - they have pretty much given up on the the whole town because there was just no way to get to it. But we figured it out eventually. Then we started building the health care infrastructure for the people. Things do change, you just need to follow your passion and keep going. You should WANT to keep going, if you don't, maybe you are on the wrong path to begin wth. If you don't feel the risks, I can almost guarantee you that you aren't pushing hard enough."

"Technology has really changed the way we work in the field. Some people argue that there are more pressing needs in the development field that have to be addressed before we can start worrying about technologies. But that's not true. Of course we cannot email food, or we cannot run a software and all the people who are sick will be saved, but it has helped us tremendously by letting us communicate with the outside world when we are on the field. Being able to make phone calls through satellite means we can order supplies when we run low, being able to send emails mean we can tap into our colleague's expertise back in North America when we couldn't determine something at the field clinic. These are not things we used to be able to do back in the days.."

"Not everyone will be able to go overseas. And you will have to decide for yourself how you want to be involved. I guess the best way is to really educate yourself, be aware of what's going on in the world, become the professional you want to be, then determine how you want to contribute. For the ones who do have the opportunity to go overseas, it will do two things for you: 1) It will give you the experience so later on if you do want to join one of these bigger organizations to do humanitarian work, they will be able to see that you've done it before and you were fine..they will know you can handle it..and 2) You will also see for yourself that yes, this is really something I want to do..this is something I can handle, and now I'm more committed.."

If you're interested in reading more of Dr. Heinzl's stories, you can find them in his new book "Cambodia Calling ".

Botswana, Environment, Awareness

I really want to learn how to articulate my thoughts better - especially when people ask me what I'm doing this summer. I find that I'm either too brief with my answer that people won't remember what I said, or I give way too much background information that people reply me with an "Oh...that's cool." I guess it's like when someone asks you how your weekend was, they aren't really expecting anything other than "It was great! Yours?" It throws them off when you answer something else.

Since I haven't officially announced the placement I have been matched with, I thought it'd be good to practice right here on my blog what and how I want to tell people. So here we go.

Next time someone asks me what I'll be doing this summer, I want them to know 3 things:

1. I am going to Botswana, which is the country sitting right above South Africa.
2. I am working with an NGO that promotes environmental protection.
3. I will be assisting with all fundraising and PR activities with a goal to raise more public awareness. 

I hope that is brief enough, yet provide the right amount for information to prompt people to ask further questions. Afterall, I want it to turn into a larger conversation where I might be able to get insights from them or just to get to people interested in what I'm doing.

I assume this person I'm talking to will now ask, "Oh wow, how long will you be going for?" So I want them to walk away knowing 3 more things: 

1. I'm doing this through a program called Beyond Borders, which is a year-long program that requires us to take courses during the year before going onto this volunteer placement in the summer for 3 months. 
2. This NGO is running a lot of cool projects, such as an Eco-School, an Eco-Park, and they have the country's only recycling center! Protecting natural resources is crucial for the country's growth and development. 
3. If you're interested, I can give you the link of my blog where I will be posting about the work I will be doing with this organization and all the stories from this summer. 

To summarize, I have 3 things I want people to remember about my coming summer:
Botswana, Environment, Awareness 

And if they're really cool people and I connect with them, then there are 3 more things I want them to know:
Beyond Borders, cool projects, my blog.

If I can keep these 6 points in my head, then I can make sure I give a fairly consistent message every time.

I would love to hear any feedback on how I can further improve. I'm not very good at this, but I'm learning.

Oh, and I promise the next few posts will have more pictures and other fun stuff. I was told that people don't like reading long wordy posts.