sad day

Today is a sad day...Ben is moving out. For those who haven't followed all of the story lines, Ben is the Australian who lives with us and works at ILF. Well I should say worked, as his 6 month contract is up and he is heading back to Melbourne where if he hasn't shipped out again by Feb I hope to catch up with him when I am down there. Ben is a very seasoned Aid worker, this being his 6th stop I believe in war/disaster torn areas over about 7 years. It has been phenomenal to have him here to work with and learn from. He has been a great help long past the adjustment period and has been a huge influence on the growing world view that I am slowly developing the more and more experience I get. Beyond the experiences he's had and shared I have picked up a lot from his work ethic and sense of dedication and passion about a project that he is only a part of for 6 months and was not there for the beginning and will not see the end. As good a project as it is, and as proud as I am to work with it for even just 2 months, he has shown a lot by the effort he puts in to make sure it is as good as can be. That has been a specific influence on me as I came in to the MAPLE project after the start. Though I am here for and having the most influence on the founding and establishment of the organization in an international capacity, which gives me a great deal of ownership, the project at an academic level was around long before I joined. To that same degree the goal of all our time and effort is to establish something that lives on long after I leave U of O in a term and thus I will not see the end of it. However, that doesn't stop us from putting 110%, often more than we probably should, into the work here and getting MAPLE into as good a spot as possible for our return. It is truly sad to see Ben go and loose his daily impact, but hopefully this is not the last I will see of him.
Its been a time of a lots of thinking as with the power troubles there has been a lot of time to sit and ponder. I've moved through the movies in the house and while I can read for a time, I eventually start thinking and it spirals out of control. I've certainly formed a lot of opinions about the people and the policies here as well as those back home and their overlaps and what I can take from that. I have certainly developed an appreciation for living simply and streamlining, which for anyone who has been in my room or the few of you who helped me move out know was not the case before. I knew going into this that it would be a time of personal growth, which most assuredly has happened but I think it happened in a very different way than I ever expected. The poverty truly is the last thing I notice. I think that is because I try and live in the moment I am in, and while i have a very nice cushy life back home, and even here I am much more comfortable than most (as far as the home goes), when you look here most everyone is on the same plane. Well I should say to each other there are different standards but from a Western view everyone is poor, so it doesn't stand out as much, especially having been immersed in it now for a month and a half. There is still so much to learn but it comes from the peoples experiences with the war and any number of things, and almost more touching are their adaptation strategies for dealing with those experiences. What I picked up most is how people the world over are the same when you put them face to face and have a conversation. I say that both about the locals and the people I've met from other organizations from across the world. There is so much strife that is political and religious or territorial, but all of those are on a macro scale, and putting people on a micro level across the table from each other, they are fundamentally the same. The is both the most surprising and the most refreshing and gives me the most hope that if politics can shift from action ideologies into diplomacy that problems can be communicated and worked out. I think that is a thought process one can't (or I couldn't) gain until getting that international view and talking with people from 20 some countries who've been to even more. I think we need to encourage much more international travel and work. Personal opinion at least. I guess I say that I didn't expect to grow in that way, because I expected to see and learn so much from the developing world and I expected to form new views on it, but I wasn't expecting my first world views to be so transformed. This will all be better thought out and added to and more clearly written in one of a few articles I'm writing so if your interested, either look for more later, or by all means hit me up and start a conversation about it. I don't know if I'm properly putting verbiage to all these thoughts, but know that all is good and things are productive and I highly recommend getting out into your world.

FYI

For those of you who don't know there is also a picture site that goes along with my travels that can be found at http://216.139.29.116/cpg1413/index.php?cat=10003 Hope it is equally enjoyable and much as the post here have been, it will be updated whenever possible.