Countdown: four

Another quick update.

We've been doing training since Wednesday and it's been pretty good so far. I've been able to meet and hang out with all of the other interns and I can certainly see some great friendships building already.

The training has been alright. I try not to talk about Uganda too much but there are many ways that I've been able to relate what we're learning to my experience there last summer. We've talked about the similarities and differences between culture quite a bit. To me, it just seems like common sense. We have to know how to deal with people that may not agree with us whether we're in Canada or Malawi or Chile or Australia.

Assumptions

I was thinking about this last night and I realized that although some of the training that we've been going through seems a bit redundant, I really need to be careful that I don't go to Malawi with pre-conceived notions about how it will be because I've been to an African country already.

This time around, I may not be as shocked at the amount of clothing people wear in extreme heat or if I see two men holding hands, but Malawi IS a different country. There will likely be many differences between Uganda and Malawi (as is between Canada and the United States, for example) so I'll try to keep that in mind and not create more generalizations than perhaps someone may have that has never been to an African country.

Visiting other countries

During one of our training sessions today, a new thought sparked inside me. We've been talking about some difficulties that we might have while working in Malawi. I began to recall some moments in Uganda (there I go again, relating this upcoming trip to last summer) where I felt like an outsider. This was often made apparent to me through the kids we worked with. They would make playful jabs at us for how we talk by plugging their nose. They treated us as a bunch of Westerners that gave away some soccer balls and then returned home feeling good about ourselves, and rightly so.

Then I thought about immigrants, visitors, and refugees coming into Canada. How do we take part in making them feel like outsiders?

BUT! Despite all of this, we are somehow encouraging and happy when people leave their own countries to explore a "new world". There seems to be a collective respect for anyone who travels (whether that anyone is a Canadian going to Malawi or a Malawian going to Canada).

I haven't completed these thoughts quite yet. They are a working progress. I just thought it was interesting that as Canadians, we place value in travelling to other countries but when people from different countries visit Canada, we don't necessarily treat them the same way that we hope our brothers, mothers and friends are treated by locals when they travel.

Hopefully that made sense.

Four days until I leave for Malawi!!