Spoiled for Normal

In response

2010-09-06T18:54:00.000-07:00

I recently was asked to reply to a series of questions from someone struggling with how to work in partnership with Congolese to do development in the DRC. They were tough questions and ones that are asked often. I thought I would share my responses on my blog in hopes that it would start a conversation.

I was glad to have been asked these questions. I am generally saddened that in far too many cases, Africans have borne the brunt of far too many development ‘experiments’ that have left them worse off than before. Some people say that something is better than nothing, but after seeing this in action, I think nothing is often better than something

1. What is your opinion of NGOs in the US working in the DRC (or for that matter, CAR)?

This is a very complex question. After working in the CAR, studying Central Africa from a Human Security perspective and working and traveling in East Africa, there are many good things that NGOs are involved in and many negative impacts from NGOs working in Africa. CAR and DRC are so underdeveloped it is very tempting for NGOs to step in and take over local development, particularly where we see little local development happening. I think the more NGOs step in to ‘fire up’ development in Central Africa the more we actually depress local efforts at development.

I think one of the common mistakes is choosing to work in a community and choosing what we will do in that community before being invited into the community and before consulting with the community (and I mean people representing all groups within the community-the elderly, men, women, children, different religious groups, etc.). If the community is not an integral part of identifying their needs and the possible solutions to meet those needs, including identifying how they can contribute to those solutions, then the ownership value is dangerously low. By this I mean that people are more likely to see this as a foreign project and not a local one, since the initiative and ideas and funding come from the foreigner. In the short term it is much easier to do what we think is best, in the long run it is much better for the health of a community to discover this for themselves. As we all know, problem solving and capacity building are NOT skills that Central African children learn in school and neither are they encouraged to be independent thinkers in the church or society. In order for good development to take place this must be reversed.

I think one of the things that we, as NGO workers and people with a heart to serve, must remember is that what we have to offer a community (and indeed what a community might actually need) may not be what the community wants or puts priority on. If we engage a community in identifying their needs and potential solutions are we willing to move on to another community if their perceived need is not something we are prepared or equipped to help them with?

2. Do you think it is actually possible for a foreigner to work effectively in Congo through an NGO? or does the white skin already limit one's ability to get past the "money" trap that most NGOs find themselves in relation to Congolese communities?

I have seen several good examples of foreigners working with local NGOs, particularly NGOs that were established by locals in the community, in other words, not the original idea of a foreigner (such as ours in CAR). A great organization to see this working well is MCC (Mennonite Central Committee). Their foreigners work alongside local NGOs and help build the capacity of the NGO (i.e. how to write reports, do project evaluations, use computers, apply for funding, be seen as legit in the greater NGO world, accounting, etc.). A great place to start in a community is working with local NGOs to build up their ability to function and not working directly on a project of the NGO ourselves. It is often a sacrifice on behalf of the foreigner, especially for those of us who love being on the ground and doing something, as we build up the skills of others to do what we would really like to be doing ourselves. I think it is possible to not fall into the money trap, over time, but I think it is very difficult to get out of the trap once you are already in it unless you take a substantial break from doing what you are doing. I also think that we gain credibility if we can spend more time associating and socializing outside of work with local people, lowering our standard of living and making an effort to be a little less foreigner. I say this generally speaking as I have no idea how you or others live in Congo.

3. What are the factors that would predict the most success in working in partnership WITH Congolese rather than being the outsider / foreigner (even if I speak Lingala) initiator with money creating dependency rather than self-sufficiency? Is it even possible to experience true PARTNERSHIP when the NGO has the money which already makes the relationship unbalanced? How does one create true partnership among equals in these kinds of situations?

As I said above, part of the idea of partnership is that each side brings something to the table. In building a school for example, while tole costs money, mud and sand for the bricks and labour can come from the community or be arranged by the NGO. When the foreigner foots the bill for the entire project, paying for the labour, sand, etc, this is not a partnership. We have to be prepared to say no and leave it at that, until the other side comes around...it is not easy, but it can work. I almost think secular NGOs have an easier time of it because they lack the guilt that Central Africans can put on foreigners for leaving “God’s people” out in the cold. It is harder to lay a guilt trip on an atheist (I think).

As I said above, when a US NGO comes into a community and works with a local partner to identify problems and potential solutions and THEN puts a plan together for how to implement the solution, a better partnership can be created. It isn’t until the solution is proposed that we go ‘looking’ for outside sources of funding. Even if the money is already in hand (in the US NGO’s coffers), it is a good exercise for the local NGO to go through the steps of applying for this funding through writing up a project proposal, complete with budgets, monitoring and evaluation criteria, etc. It is through this process that we build the capacity of the NGO and increase their sustainability to apply for funding on their own when we are no longer around to help. This process takes time and can be frustrating for everyone, but I think it is worth it and can help the US side understand the limitations of the group they are working with; where they need more training and possibly, that they are not serious about partnering. In Uganda and Kenya, many people form NGOs in order to make money for themselves and not out of doing something for the greater good of their community.

4. Do you think money should ever be part of the equation upfront or when establishing a relationship with a local Congolese community, is it better to be clear that money is not an incentive for problem-solving together about how to meet needs and maximize local assets?

I think money is secondary and not a good incentive for working together. The idea is that together you will problem solve to meet local needs, and part of that is looking for sources of money that could be from local initiatives or from outside.

5. If you were going to start working in a community in Congo through education and having already established a presence at the school by supporting teachers' salaries and bringing supplies annually for the school, but really having any idea about the broader community of parents whose children attend the school, where would you even start?

That is a tough question because you have already started in the community on the pretence that you are there to provide material goods and money. What is the school doing for you or for themselves to earn income to eventually sustain their own school? Do the children pay any fees at all or do the parents provide farm goods in exchange for supplies or tuition? Do you see the community as “too poor” to contribute? Do you bring in American supplies or do you buy the supplies in Kinshasa so as to not produce a dependence on US goods that are perceived as superior to those available locally?

Two excellent books that may give you guidance on this are “When Charity Destroys Dignity” by Glenn Schwartz and “When Helping Hurts” by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert. The latter has become required reading by our mission, New Mission Systems International (www.nmsi.org).

If it was me, I would try to distance myself from being those foreigner’s who support the school and try and be different foreigner’s who want to work with the community. Are you responsible for the oversight of those funds and supplies or do you have someone else that could do this to help reinvent yourselves?

6. We are thinking about adapting a 4-H model at this local community / school outside of Kinshasa and plan to focus on training teachers and volunteer mentors (e.g. mothers and fathers of children who attend the school) rather than providing 4-H training directly to the children. What do you think about the adaptation of western models to DRC settings? What factors are important to make that adaptation successful?

1. The people have to want it!

2. If they design the program themselves, or at least, are integral to the design of the program, it will be much more successful than anyone of us designing it.

3. Meet with interested teachers, parents, community members, some older children and eager farmers and present a skeleton of the kind of program you are thinking about. Do it in a focus group-type setting, laying ground rules for the meeting so that everyone knows that no idea is stupid or crazy, that everyone gets a say and that the goal, over several meetings, is to come up with a program that they want. Involving the beneficiaries in the planning process is a vital step in partnering and acceptance with the community. It will seem un-natural at first as meetings in Central Africa rarely have such a diverse and open atmosphere. However, foreigners often ask Africans to do things that seem crazy and counter-cultural so you can use this to your benefit. After an hour or two people start to feel comfortable. I used this process during my Master’s research in Gamboula and had a very successful outcome planning for the future of a program.

What is something worth?

2010-03-25T10:53:00.001-07:00

I had an interesting discussion with our Central African director yesterday. There is a phenomenon that takes places in the market place here, as in other countries, where by the colour of your skin determines the price you will pay. Call it the ‘foreigner’s tax’ or the ‘price of being white’, the foreigner will always pay more than the local, even when the foreigner knows the local price. This drives Benoit crazy, as I realized during our discussion. The fault, however, is not necessarily the merchants, as much as it is the fault of the foreigner. We are too soft, we don’t fight for the ‘right’ price and we are easily swayed by compassion. Or perhaps we should pay more; we have more money than most people we meet and perhaps it is part of our community service, our way of showing compassion. After all, how does one put a value to an avocado, a bolt of fabric or kilogram of fish?

Here is the catch though. What I pay, out of my apparent abundance of cash, will eventually come back to bite me, or at least the programs that we set up as foreigners, with the eventual desire to leave in the hands of the locals. Let me give an example. If a local NGO is established with the help of an American, and the American is the current director of the NGO and all of the funding comes from America, it looks, for all intents and purposes, as an American NGO. And, I suppose, it is in most senses. So when the NGO needs to buy building materials, or seeds or any other number of things, the American pays the foreigner price, which, the American concedes, he can afford. The long term goal of the NGO, however, is for it to become entirely run by Central Africans, including finding local sources of funding or self-funding through various enterprises of the NGO. The NGO though, has been set up for budgetary failure because it failed to assert itself as a local NGO from the start. The community has accepted that the NGO will pay higher than normal wages for labour and will pay more for any goods it needs to purchase. This will affect the NGO’s ability to serve the community as it will have fewer funds available for its activities as they get eaten up in other expenditures. Out of our compassion we have made it more difficult for those we sought to help in the first place.

I am convinced that if we spent more time thinking about the consequences of our actions and less time getting down to the business of doing, we would be able to foresee how some of our decisions can bring about more harm than good. If we do not learn from the mistakes of the past how can we expect anything different in the future?

A Central African’s perspective on how help can hinder

2010-03-12T11:33:00.000-08:00

Part One

Médecins San Frontier versus the Nutrition Garden; relief versus development; malnutrition emergency or chronic underdevelopment; short term thinking or long term sustainability; compassion or suffering; helping or hindering. These are the dichotomies of development, these are the questions we struggle with, and the struggle becomes even greater when you see the skin and bones of a malnourished child laid out in front of you. To those of us looking in from the outside, the ‘malnutrition crisis’ that was brought to MSF’s attention this past summer in Southern CAR was indeed a crisis. However, to those daily working with the hungry and malnourished, the increased number of malnourished patients was a surge above normal, but not so unusual as to be termed a crisis. Every time I visit the nutrition centre I am pained by what I see. Children who have no more meat on their bones than the starving children whose pictures we saw during the Ethiopian famine. But there is no famine here. Looking around at the dry season landscape in Gamboula, everything is lush and green, gardens are full of manioc and there is meat in the markets to buy.

The major sources of malnutrition and hunger in the area include chronic underdevelopment, changes in lifestyle among the Fulani who have been displaced and are undergoing drastic livelihood changes, the downfall of the diamond industry (people moved from farming to artisanal diamond mining, leaving them extremely vulnerable to changes in diamond demand with no sure food supply to fall back on) and the breakdown of the family. Given this context, hunger is not the result of a natural disaster, the immediate effect of armed conflict or climate change (droughts or flooding). So given the situation, is relief a viable option?

Nadege, the nutrition garden supervisor, related a story to me about the months that MSF was helping with the nutrition emergency in Gamboula. Last September, after conducting food security surveys around the area, MSF and Action Contre la Faim (ACF) declared a nutrition emergency in southwest CAR and set up emergency feeding centres. One of these centres was established in Gamboula and people were brought from all over the region for treatment here. MSF, a very compassion driven organization, specializes in emergency medical relief, including the treatment of malnourished children. In four days to a week, they can rehabilitate a child swollen with kwashiorkor, one of the most severe forms of malnutrition. The treatment consists of a variety of ‘chemicals’ as they are termed here in Gamboula. Essentially, specially formulated milk formulas, vitamins, protein powders and the like. Things not available in the local market anywhere, but therapeutic foods designed specifically for the quick treatment of malnutrition. The staff of MSF are very good at what they do, but one must ask if their methods are the most appropriate for the Gamboula context.

Unfortunately, the children treated by MSF, while they did recover, went right back to their homes, to the very setting that landed them in the feeding centre in the first place. In the week they were at the hospital, nothing changed in thier families’ ability to feed itself or access nutritious food. In addition, they learned little while staying with MSF to help change the family situation. We are thankful to MSF, however, as they did an excellent job of giving additional training to the nutrition centre staff and as a result the centre has changed some of its practices. With the help of donors, the centre has increased the amount of milk powder available which has, in turn, allowed the staff to feed children a nutritious porridge 4 times a day and a protein rich milk 6 times a day, including a feeding at two in the morning!

I did want to share Nadege’s perspective on one of the results of MSF’s time in Gamboula. She says, during a child’s stay with MSF everything is done for them. There are staff to sweep the floors of all the tents, to wash the laundry, to cook and serve meals to the parents and the children, to do the dishes afterwards and to even wash the children if the parents are too tired. Essentially, as Nadege saw it, there was someone hired to look after all of the patients needs, not too unlike North American hospitals. On top of this, the treatment is free, MSF provides or pays for transport to and from its clinic and provides some rations for the continued treatment at home.

Compare this with the Gamboula Baptist hospital. There is one staff person on duty at any one time. Patients’ families are responsible for sweeping out the rooms and keeping things clean, for doing laundry and dishes, for preparing meals, porridge and milk for the children and are required to take turns going to the nutrition garden to collect food from Nadege to prepare. Nadege remarked that several of the patients that were treated by MSF, on their return home, fell back into severe malnutrition, and once MSF was gone, they came to the Gamboula hospital for treatment. The women complained severely and said that when they were with MSF they did not have to do anything, but at the nutrition centre they had to do all kinds of things. Nadege said she had many women refuse to come to the garden to work or even collect greens to cook for themselves to eat. Nadege asked the women, “when you leave the hospital and go home, will someone be there to do all these things for you?” Their reply, obviously was no, and slowly they realized the importance of the learning that was going on in both the nutrition centre and garden. If nothing changes at home, the same conditions will result in sick children or their eventual death.

So this leads me to ask, when does our ‘helping’ lead to our ‘hindering’ of development? When we give freely from a heart of compassion, for very good and noble reasons, like the risk of the death of a child, are we possibly causing more harm than good in the long run? Is relief given in a non-emergency situation a hindrance to development rather than a leg-up to development? If we always see people as poor and unable to provide for themselves, does this also help create the conditions for poverty? When we make excuses for people’s actions, or believe that because of cultural norms certain practices will never take root, are we not laying hope aside and giving up prematurely?

Hunger in Eden

2010-02-08T21:22:00.000-08:00

The BBC published this set of photos recently which helps visually explain why there is hunger in SW CAR despite the conditions for productive agriculture. I will be heading to CAR shortly to help get the new CEFA project up and running. CEFA, or Centre d'Experimentation et de Formation Agricole will be an experimentation and demonstration farm that will help people in south west CAR to be more productive farmers. We will also be demonstrating and training people in the production of more nutritious crops such as legumes, vegetables and peanuts.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8476107.stm

(The men in the first photo are nurses from the Gamboula Hospital health outreach team.)

CAR becomes tourist destination for January 2010

2009-12-26T09:11:00.001-08:00

The Central African Republic has more going for it than malnutrition and conflict. Even more than elephants and gorillas. It will be spoiled this year with an event not to be seen again until 3043. Curious?

The first significant astronomical event of the year takes place on 15 January, when an annular eclipse occurs over Africa, Asia and the Indian Ocean. An annular eclipse is one in which the Moon does not completely obscure the Sun and a thin ring of sunlight remains visible. Annular eclipses occur when the Moon is at its farthest point from the Earth. It can be seen in Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Maldives, south-eastern India, Sri Lanka, Burma, and central China, and will last between eight and 11 minutes, depending on location. This duration will not be exceeded again until the year 3043.

Check out the UK Independent for the rest of the article.

The Gamboula Nutrition Garden: An overview

2009-12-21T11:01:00.000-08:00

I thought I would share this article I wrote to give everyone a better picture of what the Nutrition Garden is all about. This program, supported by individuals in Canada and the United States, was also the subject of my Master’s thesis. If you have any questions or comments, please send them to me at spoiledfornormal@gmail.com.

Case study of the Gamboula Nutrition Garden, Central African Republic

1. Background

The social impacts of the current crisis in the Central African Republic have been felt the hardest by women and children. The lack of health care, clean water and sanitation contributes to and exacerbates malnutrition among children. There is 38% global chronic malnutrition in the country, with which numerous long-term effects have been associated. Forty-three percent of the population, or 1.6 million people, are currently food insecure in CAR to date. This is not due to lack of land as only 4.4% of the arable land in CAR is currently in use. Rather, evidence points to the lack of variety in the diet coupled with the current insecurities in the country and the effects of the global economic crisis for the high level of food insecurity.

In an effort to help stem some of the underlying causes of malnutrition, Evangelical Covenant missionary Roy Danforth started a large fruit tree orchard behind the Gamboula II Eglise Evangélique Baptiste (EEB) hospital in 1998. The fruits produced were intended to provide food for the nutrition centre as well as provide an opportunity for hospital patients to become acquainted with new fruits introduced through a large scale agroforestry program in the area. In 2006, a nutrition garden was added to the orchard and the Women and Children Gardening for Health (WCGH) program was started.

The WCGH program is hosted by the Gamboula Nutrition Centre, a ministry of the EEB hospital in Gamboula, CAR. The hospital receives minimal outside funding and is based on a user-fee system. The nutrition centre charges patients per room and for other medical charges such as medicines, intravenous supplies or blood transfusions. All of the food is provided free and is supplied by the nutrition garden, by the World Food Program or via donations from expatriates living in the area. The nutrition centre treats, on average, one hundred children per year, though this figure is expected to be much higher for 2009. The physical effects of malnutrition, such as marasmus, kwashiorkor and chronic undernourishment, are treatable through remediation in the hospital’s nutrition centre. However, many families return to the same farming practices and the same lack of variety in the diet that contributed to the malnutrition in their family in the first place.

Gamboula is a town of around 5,000 people situated twenty-five kilometres from the border of Cameroon and thus in close proximity to thousands of Fulani refugees who fled from recent violence in the north. Gamboula itself is also host to hundreds of Fulani IDP’s and people of several other Bantu tribes. The primary occupation of the people in the region is subsistence farming, particularly after the closure of a large tobacco company that employed nearly five hundred people, as well as the closure of a large forestry camp in the nearby town of Bamba. Gamboula is situated on the main access road between the capital city of Cameroon, Yaoundé, and the capital of CAR, Bangui.

2. Purpose of the WCGH program

The WCGH program and the nutrition garden are uniquely situated to help children and their caregivers recover from severe malnutrition as well as provide training to caregivers to prevent the recurrence of malnutrition. The WCGH program serves two main functions. The nutrition garden provides food for the nutrition centre as a means to meet the immediate dietary needs of the children in the centre. In the nutrition centre, nutritious food is good medicine. In addition to introducing healthy foods into their diets, the garden also serves as a model for teaching mothers gardening techniques so that they and their families can begin or improve upon their own gardens and remain healthy. The WCGH program provides a machete, vegetable seeds, fruit tree seedlings and other planting material to each woman who completes ten hours of work/training in the nutrition garden.

3. Size and composition

The nutrition garden is approximately twelve acres in size and consists of seven acres of fruit trees and five acres of vegetable gardens and field crops. The fruit tree portion of the garden was planted in 1998 and the fruit is consumed by the nutrition centre while the seeds are saved for use in the fruit tree nursery of the Gamboula Agroforestry Program. Space for vegetable gardens and field crops was added in late 2005. Vegetable gardening is the main dry season activity while field crops such as beans, improved cassava, yam, sweet potato, peanuts, egusi melon, Fulani potato and corn are the focus of the rainy season.

4. Program Activities

Training – The WCGH program currently supports one full-time staff person who is responsible for the oversight of the garden, food production and training of the women from the nutrition centre. Women whose children are hospitalized are encouraged to work in the garden three days a week, during which time their ‘work’ is actually hands-on training combined with direct lessons. Each woman who completes ten hours of training is given a machete, vegetable seeds and fruit tree seedlings to take home.

Food production – All food produced in the nutrition garden is given to the nutrition centre. The nutrition centre relies on the food produced in the garden in order to care for the children in the centre. Without the garden the centre is at risk of closing due to lack of funds to purchase food. Excess food is given to the caregivers of the children, often women who are also malnourished and other children who are staying at the hospital with them. There is no food service at the hospital beyond what the nutrition garden provides. The nutrition centre staff teach women how to prepare crops introduced through the nutrition garden in culturally appropriate and palatable ways to aid in the adoption of these crops in the home garden.

Follow-up – Following up with women once they return home is essential to their success in incorporating what they have learned while participating in the WCGH program. Each woman is visited three times in the first year after leaving the hospital, in conjunction with the three growing seasons in the region.

Materials distribution – Each woman that participates in the WCGH program, completing ten hours of hands on training in the nutrition garden receives a machete, as well as vegetable seeds and fruit tree seedlings, according to her needs. Approximately half the caregivers attending to children in the nutrition centre participate in the WCGH program. Fruit trees were recently added to the list of materials that women could request to take home with them after hearing accounts of women taking seeds home from fruits they had eaten in the nutrition centre. Some women, whose children have a long stay in the hospital, some as long as three months, plant seeds in plastic sacks, placing them outside their rooms to grow. Many of the most popular fruit tree species seeds do not travel well, thus the decision to provide seedlings of fruit trees rather than seeds. The most sought after fruit trees in the nutrition garden include jackfruit, carambola, Madagascar plum, oil palm, breadfruit and canistel.

Experimentation – Within the space available in the nutrition garden, we undertake experiments in new gardening techniques as well as variety trials of species we would like to make available to the program’s beneficiaries. Experiments to date have included trial plots of inter-planted crops including papaya and pineapple; bananas, plantain, sweet potato and taro; vetiver mulch on vegetable beds; and yam cultivation. Variety trials included seventeen varieties of beans collected from Kenya, six cowpea varieties provided by ECHO as well as trials of other beans varieties gleaned from local markets, Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo. While performing experiments in a demonstration/production garden is not ideal, as visitors may mistake trial crops for successful introductions, they do help promote the idea of local experimentation. Experiments planned for the future include trying different methods of seed preservation and storage and Moringa production and processing.

‘Serial staffing’ – Funding is by far the biggest limiting factor to the activities carried out in the nutrition garden. Currently, the program budget can only support two full time staff people, one sentry and funds to hire temporary labour when needed. The senior staff person is responsible for planning all of the garden’s activities, conducting follow-up, vegetable and fruit collection for the nutrition centre and training the women who participate in the WCGH program from the nutrition centre. In place of a second full-time staff person, the program hires women on a weekly rotation. In other words, each week one woman is hired to work for one week for a set salary to do various labour tasks in the garden under the oversight of the garden supervisor. Women who request work in the nutrition garden are added to a growing list of names. Each week, the first person on the list is notified of her up-coming week of work and she has the option at the end of the week to put her name back on the list, at the bottom. When this system was started the project already had a list of fifty-three women requesting work. This process, called ‘serial staffing’, meets several needs of the nutrition garden. First, it fills a need for temporary, unskilled labour in the nutrition garden, freeing the supervisor to conduct training or follow-up activities. Second, it helps the project fulfill its mandate of teaching women about adding variety to the families’ diet through gardening by exposing many more women from the community to the activities and crops of the nutrition garden. Through their week of work women are exposed to the various training activities, crops and techniques that they may not otherwise have the opportunity to see. Third, serial staffing helps take the pressure off of the Central African staff to hire friends or relatives for a single full-time position, spreading the opportunity for work among more than fifty women in the community each year. It also allows the permanent staff the opportunity to observe who they may want to hire in the future based on their skill and work ethic displayed during their week of work in the garden.

Large tasks are accomplished by hiring groups of women to perform certain jobs on contract, with a set lump sum agreed upon for the work. The project most often hires women’s groups from local churches who are raising funds in order to attend or host conferences. Most often this task work is used for clearing fields for planting, making large amounts of compost or for weeding in the fruit tree orchard. Most recently, the project has started to include a training component in the task work, taking one hour in the beginning of the work project to teach on composting, tree planting or other important topics.

5. Challenges

Seed production is by far the biggest challenge for the nutrition garden. Many of the plants grown in the garden originate from seeds collected on trips throughout the Central African Republic and the Congo as well as seed sent from ECHO. These seeds are essentially irreplaceable and great care is taken in the nutrition garden to ensure that each time these crops are planted, a certain number of plants are set aside for seed collection rather than food production. However, crops set aside for seed collection are often harvested for food by hospital patients or their families out of desperation and hunger. The nutrition garden is often visited by people other than those connected to the nutrition centre and crops are often stolen, including those set aside for seed. The nutrition garden collects seed in order to replant in the garden as well as to distribute to WCGH participants.

In an effort to protect and preserve the garden’s valuable and often rare seeds, the project has started to engage local farmers in contract growing. Seeds are given to local farmers who are known to be good growers, with the understanding that the nutrition garden will buy whatever seed the farmer produces at a predetermined price. So far, contract growing has been tried for growing certain varieties of beans not available in local markets as well as some vegetables that are not common in local gardens. Issues of seed quality have yet to be addressed and standards will need to be put in place if the scale of contract growing for the nutrition garden grows. Along with seed production, the nutrition garden struggles with seed storage. Methods for seed storage gleaned from ECHO will be addressed in the coming year.

6. Conclusion

The Gamboula Nutrition Garden and its Women and Children Gardening for Health Program, is an example of how agricultural development can effectively intersect with relief. The WCGH program profits from the ‘captive audience’ of women tending to their malnourished children to introduce nutritious foods to their diet, expose women to greater diversity in the diet and garden as well as valuable nutrition training, all in an effort to prevent their subsequent children from becoming malnourished. In many cases desperation leads to opportunity. The same opportunities for intersecting development with relief exist in IDP or refugee camps, hospitals or schools. Given the right setting, projects similar to the Gamboula Nutrition Garden may be appropriate.

WCGH is a project of NMSI (www.nmsi.org) and CEFA (a non-denominational, non-for-profit organization registered in the Central African Republic).

The LRA in the CAR

2009-12-20T16:18:00.000-08:00

The LRA in the CAR. When will it end?

World Food Day

2009-10-16T13:14:00.000-07:00

Today is World Food Day, October 16, 2009. I challenge each of you to remember those who struggle to feed their families with each bite that you take today. There is enough food in the world to feed EVERYONE, but not everyone has equal access to the world's abundance. Should we be consuming too much when others cannot consume enough?

Spoiled with bikes

2009-09-26T15:50:00.000-07:00

Darren and I became a four bike family today. That is to say that we both bought new bikes after attending a warehouse sale this morning. We did our research, showed up early and took our picks out for a test ride. I have wanted a mountain bike for some time now and have put off this extravagant purchase thinking that one bike was plenty for one person to own. Well, I have changed my mind and am looking forward to taking on some of Victoria's easier mountain bike trails. I am open for suggestions and riding partners but I warn you that I am quite a conservative rider and don't favor trails with jumps, stumps and other face breaking obstacles. Darren also bought a new mountain bike as this is definitely a team sport for us and with the long walk finished we are on to our next recreational accomplishment, learning to ride off road. We are also confident that these bikes will be traveling with us to our next overseas destination so we can ride out to fields instead of walking. It is a more efficient means of transportation than your feet and fun too!

Malnutrition in CAR

2009-09-21T19:52:00.000-07:00

Please watch this video to understand how the nutrition garden program is helping to get at the structural causes of malnutrition in CAR. We are aiming to help increase variety in the diet.

Ultra-marathons equal ultra-blisters

2009-09-20T19:15:00.000-07:00

I have a habit of setting goals. I am not alone in this although some of my goals may put me in a category unto myself. Before I reached the age of twenty-five I wanted to roast a turkey. I thought this would somehow prove my leap into adulthood and domesticity. I count the goal as having been achieved even though, technically, I roasted a chicken instead of a turkey. I figure one is just a smaller version of the other. The grand occasion was the celebration of Canadian Thanksgiving while living in Florida. There weren't a whole lot of Canadians to celebrate with so a chicken was all that was called for.

My other goals have included cooking a roast beef, walking a marathon and getting a tattoo, before turning thirty-five. You can laugh, it's okay. I have roasted the beef and now walked/ran a marathon. Now all that is left is that tattoo....

Yesterday Darren and I walked an ultra-marathon in eight hours and fifty-three minutes. We ran across the 42 km marathon mark in amazement that we could actually run, and then continued on to finish the 56 km course, running our way across the finish line (thank God it was a downhill). I am thankful that Darren decided to join me on this goal setting adventure as it would have been boring without him and it is always fun achieving goals with him. He has been my sous-chef for my domestic milestones and my athletics partner for the crazy "what was I thinking" adventures. While he may hold my hand during the tattoo event I dare say he won't be getting his own. Don't worry, the tattoo will not be the normal head-turning variety. You may not even notice it is there it will be so small. I have another couple of years before my personal deadline passes and I won't be upset if I decide against it in the end. I am a pain wimp after all and I may not be able to decide on the what, where and when. But it is fun to think about.

As for my other goals in life, finishing my Master's is certainly one of them and blog writing is difficult to fit into the schedule, unless of course you want to read my thesis, chapter by chapter....I didn't think so.

Falling on cows

2009-09-12T18:23:00.000-07:00

I wrote this last week but didn't get a chance to post it:

It turns out that when most people fall they put their palms out flat as they try and break their fall. This usually results in a clean break across the wrist. If you are smart, you don't put your hands out at all, rather you aim to fall on to the side of your body not breaking anything. If you are my dad, you fall from a twelve foot ladder while picking apples, not by any fault of his own (except for the fact that he picking apples in a field on a ladder with cows). The cows, in their eagerness to have Dad's apples, knocked over his ladder which caused him to land on a cow, bounce to the ground, fracturing his wrist with the palm side up leading to surgery, pins and metal plates. My Dad doesn't do well with hospitals and doctors so he is likely harassing nurses while he overnights in the hospital. Fortunatley his wife is also a nurse so he has plenty of at-home care if she can chain him inside while there are more apples to pick, juice to be made and things to preserve. On the up side, Dad was quite talkative last night owing to the shock so we had a great conversation that he probably doesn't remember.

I had a close encounter with the four-wheeled kind on my way home from work yesterday. I was side swiped by a car doing a sleepy California stop at the intersection between the Galloping Goose trail and a busy downtown cross-street. The car had the stop sign and I had the right of way but he was too 'something' to see me. He was visibly shaken, pulled over to see if I was alright, which I was, and I was too sympathetic to his shakeness to tell him what I thought of his driving skills. I was just glad to be upright and owing to his shocked look I don't imagine he will make the same mistake while stopped at the Goose trail anytime soon.

So what can I say? Be careful picking apples around cows, don't challenge a car while on a bike as the cars usually win and keep your fork, there's pie for dessert.

Got hacked

2009-09-09T11:17:00.000-07:00

I am sorry to say that my Google account was hacked into last night and a promotional-type spam sent to everyone on my address list. If you received a spamish message from my account I sincerely apologize. I have changed my password and hope that this solves the issue. Darren figures that the hacker used names from my blog that appear frequently and that this is how they got my password. So I have a different password, a really, really out of the normal secret one. So don't even try to guess it....

Human Security Gateway - Conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: Political and Profit Interests

2009-09-02T08:10:00.001-07:00

Human Security Gateway - Conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: Political and Profit Interests

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Human Security Gateway - Contention on the Value of

2009-09-02T08:08:00.001-07:00

Human Security Gateway - Contention on the Value of "Human Security"

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Joe

2009-08-23T21:49:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to write and let you all know that after two attempts "Joe" did not pass his exam. He is depressed and anxious about what this means for his future. We realize that he likely did not pass, truly, as all other avenues for failure were dealt with. We are left wondering what do to help Joe. He can try again next summer and if he studies hard this year and acquires a tutor, he may succeed. But the reality is that the odds are against him. However, I have never paid much attention to the odds and in Joe's case a little encouragement may go a long way.

As for me, I appreciate my high school education more than ever before and even more so my chance to attend University. We in Canada, as in many other places, are spoiled by the educational opportunities afforded to us. I hope to never hear a complaint about education in Canada from my own lips given the challenges to simply complete primary school with the ability to read in places like CAR.

Spoiling stero-types

2009-07-10T07:44:00.000-07:00

I have spent the last three nights with a great couple from Missouri. They saw the ocean for the first time a few years ago on a trip to San Diego. They made the trip just to see the sun set over the ocean. I forget how spoiled I am to live surrounded by the ocean. Growing up surrounded by corn and soy bean fields must make the ocean look even more beautiful. Mind you, corn and soy bean fields have a charm of their own, but I must confess that I would choose the Island over Missouri if you gave me the choice.

I forget how the majority of the world stays in one place, never having the chance to venture outside of the state or province they grew up in. I am the first Canadian many people here have ever met. How unfortunate that I am a chameleon as I don’t sound a bit like a Canadian at the moment. I sound more like someone who grew up in a city around here. Hopefully there won’t be a whole new set of stereo-types formed about Canadians because of me.

One of the biggest stereo-types I had to break down was the idea that Africa is a country; everyone is the same and they are all backward. This is an idea I come across all over the place, including in popular media. I once saw a sign advertising an evening with Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian commander in charge of operations during the Rwandan genocide. They said he would be speaking about the country of Africa. Yikes! That is like talking about the country of Asia (which doesn’t exist). I think the ignorance regarding the continent of Africa comes from news media and movies that always refer to Africa rather than the individual countries of which they are reporting on. I have become more aware of making generalizations regarding ‘Africa’, instead referring to the particular country I am speaking about.

I am much more of a believer in cultural exchanges now than I ever was before seeing how many stereo-types we all carry around with us and how wrong so many of them are. In particular I have learned a lot more about the Amish, a group of which I have been particularly curious for quite some time. This is not a generalization of all Amish, but these are my observations of the settlement we were privileged to learn from.

-~900 homes in the settlement interspersed with non-Amish farms/homes.
-The settlement has about 13 schools up to grade 8. Most kids only go to school up to grade 8 and very few go on to public high school.
-Some kids go to public school but not if they can help it.
-Farming is all mechanized for the most part; they regularly apply chemicals and a fertilizer, milking is done in a parlour and the homes are as big and modern as any other.
-The major exception to modernity is that they do not use electricity from the state. They do use hydraulic equipment, generators, propane, battery power, etc. They do not accept any state subsidies. This must come from the strong commitment to a separation of church/state.
-Farming is not necessarily practiced in a sustainable way except that they use horse power. Horses are to the Amish as manioc is to the Central African. We did meet some growers trying no-till farming and another that is doing organic vegetable production. It is a hard road and I hope they succeed.
-They speak a wonderful blend of English and Low German and they have the thickest Indiana accents around.
-The do not have churches but meet in homes, up to 45 people at a time. They are kind, gentle and their children learn German first and English second so it was difficult to speak with the smaller children.
-Culturally they will run into difficulty as far as land is concerned. With so many children it is becoming harder to divide land amongst the kids. One family we met with has 42 acres, passed down from his grandfather and at least 4 boys to divide land amongst. This has led to a push towards vegetable production as you can produce more on a smaller acreage. It is also resulting in a lot more off farm jobs. We met several young Amish women working in the general store. Land is generally expensive or unavailable and the future of farming looks in jeopardy.

I met many kindred spirits here and if I have the privilege to return I will count myself doubly spoiled.

Education up-date

2009-07-10T07:37:00.001-07:00

Just wanted to let everyone know that Joe wrote his BAC exams and he will hear the results on the radio on July 23 (or so they say). If he doesn't pass but gets close,he will have a chance to try again later in the summer. We are hoping and praying he passes. Really hoping he passes. If you would like to know what we decided regarding paying fees for the BAC, you are welcome to email me to find out.

www.spoiledfornormal.gmail.com

Spoiled for a “Normal” Education

2009-06-03T15:50:00.000-07:00

Many of you know that we have been helping Joe*, a member of my Central African family, through school. In English terms, we started helping him in grade ten and he just completed grade twelve. Due to the incredibly poor level of education in this country, we moved Joe from a public school in Berberati to a private school in Bangui, the nation’s capital. This was no small task as, while he had a good family support system in Berberati, he did not know a soul in Bangui. It is like taking a kid from the backwoods of Mississippi and plunking him down in New York City with a small budget to fend for himself. His first year in Bangui was a little rough, but got decidedly better as he learned what it took to live in Bangui (thus we increased his budget), Joe learned to live by a budget (something very few people here or elsewhere know how to do), and he made friends with those who could help tutor him. Students who were fortunate enough to have had several years in a private school were far better off than those coming from public school where you may have one teacher for eighty students and no text books. Imagine doing grade ten, eleven and twelve math without a textbook. Impossible!

Though Joe has technically graduated grade twelve, for which we are very proud indeed, the largest hurdle remains; the baccalaureate certificate. We don’t really have an equivalent to this in Canada, but in the French system it is the evidence that you graduated and are fit to go on to University or to look for a job. It involves taking a very large exam in one of many different ‘series’ depending on which courses you focused on in high school. The series you choose to write determines to some extent what you will go on to study in University. I admit that I do not fully comprehend the system, but I trust that the Central Africans do, even though it is a French imposition.

There are ‘technically’ no fees to write the BAC as I understand it, but nothing ‘technically’ works in this country, so ‘informally’ there are very large fees to write the BAC. It is generally understood that the time of year for writing final exams is the time of year that officials in the Ministry of Education get their ‘Christmas bonuses’ if you catch what I am saying. Even though Joe has gone to a private school in which corruption in minimized, the BAC exams are administered by the State. In order to ensure that your exam is properly marked there is a very large few required, unless of course you happen to have family members in the ministry. At first I thought that this was some way of ‘buying’ your diploma, that regardless of how well you did or didn’t do on the exam you were passed. What I have come to discover is paying a BAC fee doesn’t guarantee you will pass; it only guarantees it will be marked. Of course this is all second hand information from students and parents because you can’t ask ministry officials to tell you the truth, they will only tell you what should happen, but doesn’t.

So we are left in a quandary. Many people have helped Joe get to this final stage of his education and it would be such a shame for him to not receive what he has worked so hard for. If he doesn’t get his BAC this year he can try again next year and the year after that until he finally succeeds, but I worry that each progressing year it gets harder and harder to remember calculus, chemistry and physics. I had a hard enough time during my classes. I would not have been able to right a test on it one year later.

Greasing palms, Christmas bonuses in July, slipping something under the table, it is all just another way of saying CORRUPTION. And I of all people know about corruption, the way it keeps economies going while at the same time keeps them from ever functioning properly. And it is always the ones at the bottom who suffer from it the most. Central African Republic has been labeled worse that a failed state, a “phantom state” by the International Crisis Group, and the more time I spend in Bangui the more I understand why. So given that it is a failed state, that even if we wanted to go through proper channels to avoid corruption, the proper channels don’t exist, I am left wondering what to do. The July bonus for a BAC is around $400 USD. I would love to hear people’s thoughts on this so please comment here or write to me at spoiledfornormal@gmail.com

*I have changed the names of people in order to protect their privacy. I will use the same name throughout so please write me if you want to know who they really are. If I know you, I will tell you.

Spoiled for good gear

2009-04-20T22:06:00.001-07:00

Though I had to leave my job at Mountain Equipment Coop (MEC) to continue on the grad school adventure, I certainly haven’t left MEC behind. As my luxury item on this trip I brought my new GSI insulated coffee press and mug. While I haven’t found any A1 coffee yet, the local Robusta variety still makes a decent cup in the morning. It’s a luxury item because I could make cowboy coffee, the old boil in the pot variety, but I was spoiled for good coffee long ago.

Stay tuned for more SfN gear tips.

Are you spoiled for normal?

2009-04-18T01:24:00.000-07:00

I would like to open up the Spoiled for Normal blog to those with their own stories of being spoiled for normal. Email me your post (not your life story) about your own Spoiled for normal moments and I will post them for others to read, be inspired and find courage.

Send them to spoiledfornormal@gmail.com

Go on living life outside the box!

Home decorating at home and abroad

2009-04-18T01:19:00.000-07:00

I remember attending a church in Florida and feeling completely out of place when having lunch at the pastor’s house the discussion around the table centred on draperies and furnishings, where to buy them, colours and so on. I felt like I would never fit in to such a crowd and that remained one of the reasons we moved on to find another church. There was nothing wrong with this particular church but it was small and I knew I would find a hard time fitting in. Much to my surprise, every church was pretty much the same and I began to realise how not normal I was. Granted I had been living at ECHO for a few months already, but even more so I think my dislike of home decorating comes from the fact that my family never put much emphasis on it. We moved in, hung up a few pictures and we were ‘home’. I can’t ever remember my mom picking out paint or tile or new furniture until I was well into my twenties.

Since venturing out into the adult world I have discovered that most of my peers value what the interior of their homes looks like. They go to great pains to pick out the perfect colour of paint, the right couch, bathroom fixtures and on and on. What I realize is that I enjoy going to their homes, they are beautiful, everything matches and they have a certain amount of pride over the way their homes look. I, on the other hand, enjoy my eclectic, thrown together, pieces gathered from other people’s homes look. I hope people from the home decorating side don’t feel uncomfortable in my home, but I honestly love my random apartment.

These aren’t random thoughts; rather my first few days in Kampala have been met with discussions of paint colours and the refinishing of furniture. The expat homes in Kampala are huge, multi-roomed, with very large living areas and windows. The interiors have imported furniture, window coverings and paint colours beyond the standard white we have in Gamboula. One couple I met on Wednesday took great pains to pick out the colours for the home they were renting. They narrowed the choices down to 13 different colours for all the various rooms in their house.

I am often surprised at how narrow minded I can be. I have this false idea that all people who choose to live in developing countries are just like me. Thank God they are not; how arrogant of me, really. We are who we are, and no matter that you live thousands of miles from what was home, we take our likes and dislikes with us. No matter where I live I will not spend my time and money on interior decorating. I believe I am the exception in this (spoiled for normal) and I apologize for those who enter my home and find eclectic chaos rather than matching earth tones of paint. Perhaps it is because we are too poor to buy paint, but I would like to think it is because this is who I am. I am learning to look interested while ooing and awing over tile choices and paint chips. Somehow I find it hard to find people who want to discuss the latest conflict analysis or favourite mango varieties.

So please don’t take this as an anti-decorating diatribe. Keep the economy going; buy paint, ship furniture, match your pillow shams to your window treatments. Just don’t roll your eyes the next time I bring up how tasty the Glenn mango is and pretend to look interested in the root causes of conflict in CAR.

Is peace simply the absence of war?

2009-02-19T13:53:00.000-08:00

Peace is by no means a new concept in the world but how do we define it? Most often it is defined as the absence of something rather than the presence of some positive thing. Ask anyone on the street to define peace and the likely answer will be something eluding to the absence of war. The following definition of negative and positive peace come from my class notes and I hope it make you think a bit more deeply about peace and what it is we are truly hopign for. Is simply the absence of war or violent conflict what we mean when we plead for world peace or are we asking for something more?

I want more for the world than the absence of war.

Alex Schmid says:
Negative peace is: "The absence of war, organized military hostilities, or direct inter-personal or inter-group violence while the causes of the conflict remain ignored. Some peace researchers, such as J.Galtung, call this a negative peace, because injustice and structural violence are allowed to continue. Peace, positive: the absence of war and direct violence plus the presence of social
justice. It is a concept found in the works of Martin Luther Kind and J. Galtung, indicating the
absence of what Galtung calls structural violence which contributes to reducing the potential
life span of human beings below what it might otherwise be. Under positive peace, there is an
active presence of conflict-management institutions that deal with social conflicts in fair and
non-destructive ways.”

Spoiled for a normal family

2009-01-09T21:33:00.000-08:00

Here we are, the whole family. Normal...not really. Loveable, fun and the best family you could ask for...YES!

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | A prediction that's a safe bet

2009-01-04T16:04:00.000-08:00

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | A prediction that's a safe bet
This is a great article that tells me he is spoiled for normal and laughs/cries about as loud as I do when I see a super yacht in the harbour.

A Peace and Justice Christmas

2008-12-16T10:28:00.000-08:00

I received this Christmas Carol from Sojourners in my inbox today and thought it appropriate to share with everyone else spoiled for normal Christmas. Have I said how much I'd love a subscription to Sojourners for Christmas?

Have Yourself a Peace and Justice Christmas

Have yourself a peace and justice Christmas,
Set your heart a-right.
Flee the malls and focus on Christ’s guiding light.

Have yourself a peace and justice Christmas,
Give your time a way.
Share God’s love, And serve “the least of these” today.

Here we are, as we pray for peace,
We’ll live simply and give more.
We care for those far and near to us,
Which brings cheer to us, once more.

God brings down
The haughty from high places,
And lifts up the low.
God cares for the hungry and the humble, so –
Forget the stress and let the peace and justice flow!

Am I Who I Want to Be?

2008-09-05T23:03:00.000-07:00

Not yet. No, I am not who I want to be. I still struggle with wanting what I do to matter more than who I am. But it really should be the other way around. After an enlightening conversation with two people near and dear to me, I was once again reminded that the twigs in other peoples' eyes pale in comparison to the log in my own eye. Somebody, please pull the log out of my eye before I take a whole whack of people out with it as I turn around in circles trying to discover what is blocking my view of things!

I met someone today who just adopted a little girl from Ethiopia. Cute as a button. His remark about his visit to Ethiopia was how happy everyone there seemed to be, even though they "had nothing". While vows of poverty are not the solution to a "happy life" (or maybe they are), I think that the lesson to be learned is that who we are is what lends us happiness not what we do or what we earn or what we acquire.

It is late, I'm tired and I have way too many thoughts in my head to process right now. My life remains far from 'normal'.

Motorcycle Mama?!

2008-07-29T14:01:00.000-07:00

Phase one of re-training has been accomplished. I successfully passed by motorcycle road test today and can now freely cruise down the road on my Kawasaki Super Sherpa 250. The rain held off nicely and I only had one demerit although I think it shouldn't count. I signalled leaving a traffic calming circle, which you don't have to do. You only signal when leaving a round-about. What is the difference? I am not sure. I think it just would have been to out of the normal for someone to pass with a perfect score. I know one point doesn't really count.

So now I get to learn how to ride on gravel roads, step two of the education process. In between all this riding I am also spending lots of time on my bike and completing an MA. Yep, I have tons of free time.

Gotta get back to the books.

Creative Education

2008-07-16T12:33:00.000-07:00

A post I wrote for one of my classes. Just goes to show that going beyond normal has benefits.

I wanted to share an example of creative education that I ran into while working in CAR. The pygmy people of CAR suffer great hardship perpetuated on them by the Bantu majority in CAR. Most pygmy children do not attend school for a host of reasons. They generally do not live in close proximity to schools, they do not have the means to pay tuition, they do not have suitable clothing to attend school in (a bigger issue than you would think), they are harassed by other children and parents, and the school calendar year does not match the hunting/gathering calendar. In one area with a large population of Aka pygmy people, NGOs have paid school fees to enable Aka to attend school which to some degree has worked. However, the most creative school we found was in a remote region outside a logging town in an area called Bamba. A Bantu pastor who moved in with a small group of Baka pygmies in order to establish a church saw the overwhelming desire of the parents for their children to attend primary school. The local government was both unable and unwilling to help in this regard so, over time, and with a little help from some expats in acquiring basic school supplies, the pastor established a small school. We first became friends with this school and community in 2005 and as of February 2008, all of the children in the community are learning to read and write, a first step in their education. What I found so remarkable about the school is that the pastor has reversed the school calendar in order to accommodate the lifestyle of this particular group. While the North American model and the Central African model fit, for the most part, the general agricultural calendar whereby planting and harvesting, the two most labour intensive activities, fall during the school break, this is not true for the Bayaka people. Reversing the school calendar to help mitigate absences from school allows for the continuation of children to participate in the traditions of their communities while at the same time giving them opportunity to learn elementary basics such as reading, writing, math and French, helping to earn them a place in the greater society (which they shouldn't have to earn as they are the 'First Nations People of CAR).

The school continues without adequate resources, qualified teachers or levels beyond the basics. The students range from 5 to 18 years old, and number around 15. As news has spread about the school more and more families are migrating from remote forest locations to this burgeoning village. The local sawmill recently donated discarded boards and some machinery which allowed the community to build a larger school and work is underway to help bring clean water to the area. This is an instance where too much outside help could quickly destroy the tremendous local initiative. Globalization is certainly impacting this community; however, its effects can be mitigated so long as creative development is allowed to continue.

Inspiration

2008-07-08T08:36:00.000-07:00

I stumbled upon this little gem while reading an article on the CBC about a group called the Madonna House. The foundress, Catherine Doherty was someone obviously spoiled for normal.

"Catherine Doherty was not a person one could casually meet and then forget. She was a Russian who, in her own words, liked to “comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” Complacency, mediocrity, tepidity — these were associated with those she sometimes referred to as “the walking dead,” people not really alive, although they might be living ‘normal’ lives.

Catherine's love for any given person might take the form of obvious compassion, through humble service, attentive listening and meeting their evident needs. Or her love might take the form of trying, by her words, to ‘shake’ a person from their self-satisfied approach to Christian life. It would still be compassionate love, if less obviously so."

http://www.madonnahouse.org/mandate/introduction.html

2008-06-30T15:46:00.000-07:00

Food for thought.

"Conflict prevented is far more constructive than conflict addressed."

That's me, spoiled for normal.

2008-06-23T20:46:00.000-07:00

Do you wonder what it means to be spoiled for normal? Some people say they are spoiled for normal food once they've tasted French cuisine, or spoiled for normal clothes once they have had something custom fit. Not me though. I have been spoiled for normal life in general. And when I say normal, I guess I am referring to having a 9 to 5 job, with a regular salary and benfits, vacation time and sick leave. I mean a normal house, with a car and a yard and grass to mow. I mean normal kids that play in little league and have sleep overs with their friends.

I have been spoiled for normal ever since I gave up those normal ambitions, left home and started to work for something outside of myself. I have chronicled a lot of this journey already in thebosses.blogspot.com. But I need a fresh start. I need a space beyond the normal to inform, captivate and reinvent normal.

Are you spoiled for normal?