kar0ling

"The point of art is not beauty but awareness." I recently heard Milton Glaser say that on CBC radio and I haven't been able to get it out of my head since. It's one of those statements that you understand instantly, as though you've always known it, but find exhilarating in its freshness and appositivity (?). I think I've always had an instinctive, though not explicit, understanding of this awareness principle as applied to story -- both books and movies -- but in visual art I've always been looking for beauty. This accounts for the ambivalence I felt toward art therapy. I know beauty is powerful, but is a bit of pretty really enough to heal? Awareness, however; I see the point in that. And suddenly, with that simple statement, not only do I understand why art is for everyone, why public art leads to public good, but I also see the point of more abstract art. Piet Mondriaan's cubism, I maybe don't quite appreciate yet, but this statement has broug...

My first experience was so painful, that I’m very grateful I had so few proposals of marriage while in Cameroon (probably because I took pains to avoid being in a situation where it could happen again). Nevertheless, I was frustrated, agitated, bewildered, by what on earth possessed these men to propose to a woman they’d just met. Of course, as a white woman, I represent all the fantasies of appealing, prosperous, decadent North America. I represent these things, and I pose a path to attaining them. But... A random woman you've just met? What on earth are you thinking?! I posed this question to the ever-ready-with-a-both-wise-and-cheeky-answer Dan, who replied, “What’s a guy got to lose? The worst you can do is say no. “...but if he never asks, he has no chance of ever receiving a yes.” Thank you, Cameroonian men, for giving me a model for taking risks. When I’m about to let fear of failure or of rejection stop me from trying, I think of those marriage proposals. What’s ...

I met an American nurse who started some AIDS education classes for pastors' wives at a remote Cameroonian seminary. She quickly realized sex education was necessary first for the women to even have a clue what she was talking about. With the help of a fluent Pidgin speaker, she was trying to talk about sexual intercourse and not at all sure her students were understanding. "Do you have a way of saying it other than 'come together'?" she asked. Her translator, a young, unmarried woman, blushed and didn't know how to answer. There was a pause while women in the class conferred, then finally an older woman stood up. "Yes, Ma," she said, in the formal, respectful way. "We just say 'fuck'."

(I can't believe a year has passed since I've returned to Canada. I've now been back for longer than I was out there. But Cameroon has left an indelible mark on my memory, and I still have some stories to share, though I suppose they've gotten rusty, lost some details, and accrued others, in the interim. Not going to stop just yet, though.) Cameroon roadside fast food beats North American drive-thru flat. Suya, affectionately known as "typhoid-on-a-stick, is sliced meat (usually beef or chicken, but it's perhaps best not to ask) doused in spicy sauce, roasted on a spit over a roadside flame. Mmmm. Depending on the location and the vendor, consuming suya may produce anything from a warm glow to fire in the mouth. The typhoid moniker refers to the fact that these tasty treats may have been roasted hours earlier, then loosely wrapped in a dirty piece of stiff paper, and waved under the noses of every passerby in the dusty street, and made available for inspection ...

A personal hypothesis: When a person returns from a short-term cross-cultural exposure (days, weeks, up to three months), they tend to glow with the bright-eyed observation that "people are the same everywhere you go! Isn't it lovely." When a person returns from a longer-stint cultural immersion (year or two), they tend to harbour some frustrations, and think, "good gracious, those people are so different in their thinking! How aggravating." And when you spend a lifetime together, learning and growing, the response is probably more measured. It's not "those" people anymore. We're all the same, yes,.... but, boy, are we ever different. And there's a richness to that.

One of my first nights in the village, trying to fall asleep long after dark, I heard a loud call echoing across the rainforest, a sort of cross between a croak and a trill. A bird seemed like a logical producer of this sound; a large carnivorous bird. I was sure there was a vulture of some sort perched outside my window at the back of the house, screaming into the night. One of the fortunate things about my irrational fears of all things avian is that I'm fairly adept at self-delusion, so, heart in my throat, I convinced myself it was only a...well,....an oversized grasshopper, or crazed frog, or something -- anything -- other than a bird. You can well imagine my relief one morning when Becky asked if I'd heard the hyraxes. "Is that the creature that makes that trilling call?" I asked warily, unsure if I wanted to know. "What is it?" "It's the most interesting creature," she said. "It looks like kind of like a rabbit, but it lives up in a...

It was nearly the end of my time in the village when the subject of Mike's solar panels came up and I asked Dan how they worked. He looked at me with a twinkle in his eye and impishly replied, "You're wondering about Mike's white man magic?" There's a worldview difference in play here. I didn't know what caused Mike's solar panels to reorient to the direction of the sun every morning but I knew there was a very plausible explanation. Perhaps there was a winch on a timer, perhaps it was activated by solar power. Maybe even Simon, the yard worker did it midmorning without my ever noticing him. It never occurred to me there was anything mysterious about the panels' movement, despite the fact it was beyond my comprehension. In a Western mindset, we assume there is a logical explanation for everything. We don't consign things we don't understand to the realm of mystery, magic, and spirit -- we expect that science will sooner or later be able to ...