Implications

My brother hosts what is (and I don't wish to be told otherwise even in the face of evidence) the biggest and best private Robbie Burns Day party in the City of Windsor.  He has done this for the better part of a decade.  Without elaborating on details that should stay snobbishly exclusive to those of us fortunate enough to be invited, the plan involves preparing a haggis from scratch, watching Scottish film, playing Scottish trivia, singing Scottish folk songs, and drinking just an extraordinary amount and variety of fine single malt.

I mention it because I will not be there for Robbie Burns Day this year.

There is an expectation, I think, that I will lament not being near my family for Christmas, being in Zambia instead, where there is not even a remote chance for a white Christmas.  That expectation has allowed me to focus on Christmas as a sort-of gold standard: if I can get my head around not being here for Christmas, then anything else should be easy.

But the thing is, I don't particularly enjoy Christmas in the same way as others do.  I suspect that I will again in the future, but western notions of Christmas (if this is news) are singularly antithetical (or at least taunting) to umarried independent adult childless men.  It may be an arguable point, but that doesn't change the fact that the Christmas experience for me is no grave loss.
Burns Day is something different.  It is an important tradition, and I will miss it deeply.

Such revelations in no way diminish my anticipation of boarding the plane, my anticipation of meeting the people of Kibombomene, my anticipation of helping the good work of Same World Same Chance to progress, my anticipation of mango time, my anticipation of all that I cannot possibly anticipate at this point.  It is a simple and pure acknowledgement of something that is true about me, that I will miss Robbie Burns Day this year.

And perhaps the greater truth in this statement is that it is important for me to talk about whatever feelings and apprehensions I have, even when there is absolutely no reason to change them or fix them or alter circumstances surrounding them.

And I wonder if that's something that can be generalized.

Under a Tree

One of the goals of this blog is to make a record of my impressions and thoughts, no matter how naive they may be.  Of course, I greatly welcome your impressions of how naive I am in saying what I am saying.  I welcome you telling me that what I am writing is right out to lunch.  One of the fascinating things to me about Connectivist Education is how deeply it invites us all to fail and unlearn.

For example, a couple of days ago I got to sit in the shade under a large maple tree in my yard for about a half an hour.  I don't come from a culture that particularly prizes time spent meditating (napping?) under trees.  But there is something about the shade and trunk and life-line of a tree that gives you crazy ideas, if you just listen.

One of my greatest fears, as I have already written about, is that I will inadvertently be a part of introducing some infrastructure to Kibombomene that is not sustainable in the long-run; or that I will introduce something that will irreparably alter their culture and make it more like mine.  I don't want that.  The maple reminded me of the maples that stood in impossibly sprawling groves near Kitigan Zibi of the Algonquins.  And I was thinking about how the Awazibi syrup folks use modern techniques to harvest the maple syrup, but they're still harvesting syrup, as they've done since, roughly, the last ice age.  And though I never talked to any of the company's workers, I think they're likely just as happy that they have rubber hoses and electric pumps.  And it validated for me a little bit the notion of using technology and modern techniques to bring a world of information to this village that wants accessible education so badly.

The second meditation that I had was about greetings.  Kim told me that the greeting customs in Kibo are something to get used to — that every greeting is a long one, and nuanced, and heart-felt, and that one needs to clear an hour to walk for five minutes in case there are people about.  For the past week, Goderich has been like that; it has been wonderful.  For us, it took the devastation of an f3 tornado (I love my FU f3 T-shirt, you can order some if you want, by the way) to shake people into this sort of momentary awareness of each other.  I hope it sticks in some small way.  And I think it was good training, from what Kim says, for what I am going to see in Kibo.