This is risky, publicly thanking people. I'm not going to use last names. I also don't want to exclude people so if you feel left out after reading this, message me and I'll fix it. During the turbulence of the last year I've had friends both new and old really make a difference and help me get through everything. I'm so thankful in general to have you in my life and for the things listed below. I'm making an effort to going in chronological orders. Thank you: Shannon and Lenny: For hosting me whenever I come to Halifax and particularly when I came last new years. You're so generous it's incredible. Alex Ke: For putting up with me as your room mate for more than two years and for being there for one on one hang outs and most of the group activities outlined below. Claire: For being my emergency contact person while I was away and for baring the responsibility for the sealed envelope. I'm always so very happy when we get to spend tme together. David and Lise: For proposing and letting me store most of my worldly possessions in your storage space while I was gone, and for accompanying me to the hospital when I cut my finger. I really enjoy the time we spend together still and in motion. The 12 people who helped me move things into David and Lise's storage area: Thanks again! The people who came to my going away party and who wrote me letters to take on my trip: Thanks for the send-off and I promise I haven't forgotten to write you back! Alex Ko: For being a stellar room mate and confidant in Bukavu. Karen D: For including me in ultimate Frisbee and sharing with me over tea. Sandra: For baking cakes with me and coming to visit me in Ottawa. Anja: For being my confidant, for offering me drives, sharing meals together and asking Reiner to listen to my cough. You'll always be my Bukavu Mom! Mom: For housing me in May, for coming to Ottawa during medical house arrest, for our trip to Kingston and for continuing to answer the phone despite my continued bad news. Karen C: For your life long friendship, for asking me to be your maid of honour and for keeping me company in Ottawa. Helena and JF: Thank you for letting me stay with you twice while I was re-establishing myself in Ottawa. It was a joy to spend time with you both watching Ms. Fisher and playing with your daughters. Brian S: For driving me and my things from Mississauga to Ottawa, helping me move, coming up for my Birthday and generally being wonderful! Adam: For being part of the first moving group AND showing up to help me move into my new place after a hard day of work AND for hanging out with me while I was on in home isolation. I really appreciate that you put up with my teasing and hair ruffles. Your long term friendship has really meant a lot to me. Kyle: I'm pretty sure you're solely responsible for me not losing my mind this year. Thanks for your unwavering support and company. Jarz: For being there when I've needed you most and for bringing me the replacement flower pot and flower while I was on medical house arrest. Aunt Miriam: Thank you for helping me while I was on medical house arrest with meals, drives and groceries you greatly relieved my fears and were a wonderful source of support. Nigel: For your phone calls and for our adventure in Rimouski! Sara: Also for your phone calls and your visits to Ottawa. Everyone who visited me during medical house arrest: Thanks for taking the risk to come to see me. You ensured that I didn't lose my mind and remained properly fed. Mathilde: For being a great office mate and sharing in the struggle. Becca: For helping me pick up household furnishings, for letting me use your drill and for putting up with crabby summer Kirsten. Stephane: For being willing to eat ice cream with me when it counts. Channing: For jumping head first into our friendship and reliably being there. My other friends in Guelph, KW, Toronto, Mississauga, Ottawa and Halifax who are ready to spend time together every time I arrive and who have taken the time to share encouraging words. On the off and horrifying chance that they have found this blog I'd also like to express my gratitude to my current and my former supervisor. To my former supervisor for pushing me to write the best thesis possible and my new supervisor for being so supportive and sticking with me through this transition. Although most of them can't read in English I'm also so grateful to my research participants for sharing with me, learning with me and inspiring me.
Just because you had a really difficult year doesn't mean there were not any bright spots right? Here are some of the reasons that 2016 wasn't totally unbearable. In January of last year the night before I left on my trip I had a going away party in Ottawa and about 30 people came despite the fact that there was a snow storm which was pretty wonderful. On top of that about 20 people wrote me letters that I brought with me and read throughout my trip. Some of them were really funny, some contained beautiful art and others reminded me of close friendships. What a joy. There are some pretty amazing things to share about Bukavu too. Bukavu is naturally beautiful with trees, hills, flowers and a lake which is great when it's not exploding (which is like 99.999% of the time) (this isn't a joke, look up exploding lakes). The temperature was always perfect and I greatly enjoyed kayaking on Lake Kivu and playing ultimate frisbee over the weekends while most of you were suffering through a Canadian Winter. Being in Bukavu also let me develop friendships with some pretty special people. The first set of friendships were with other expats, with whom I was able to develop much closer bonds with in comparison to my other trips to the African continent. This led to baking parties, tea parties and chats and drinking at a bar called Wendy's which is literally a shack on the side of the road in the nice part of town (I really wish I had taken a picture of it). The second set of friendships was made with some incredibly brave Congolese colleagues who shared their city, work and lives with me who remain very close to my heart. During my research I also got to meet some amazing Congolese people who are risking their comfort and sometimes lives to promote human rights and peace. This is done through trainings, radio shows, workshops, direct livelihoods support and medical interventions and advocacy campaigns. I feel that the mere existence of these organisations and their staff in such difficult circumstances is reason enough on its own for both the Congolese and the World to believe that peace is possible. I'm really looking forward to being able to write about these amazing contributions in my thesis. I also occasionally got to help while I was in Bukavu. It brought me great pleasure to pay for medical treatment for a baby in my neighbourhood who had a hot iron fall on her face, and for choir uniforms for her older sisters. I also found some enjoyment out of teaching the staff at the organisations that I was working with some English and I learned that language instruction is hard. Beyond the DRC I also had some other great opportunities to travel. I spent the better part of a week in Kigali where I enjoyed restaurants, shopping, seeing the legislative buildings, vising the Genocide Memorial and more. It was also a great pleasure to return to Kampala and visit old friends, go salsa dancing, go swimming, eat cake and go to a comedy show while I was in the region. I also went to conferences in Halifax and Washington DC where my research received much positive feedback. In Halifax I enjoyed visiting friends and being by the Ocean and in Washington I visited the national mall, the Woodley Park Zoo and the craft Smithsonian. I even managed to fit in time for some conferencing and enjoyed learning about other people's work.... Oh and last but not least I also visited Quebec City and Rimouski where I took in natural and heritage sites and got to spend time with my friend Nigel! Such adventures! As for things on the professional side, although I don't think I'll be seeking a reference from my summer employer, my efforts in the position ultimately led to four women from conflict affected countries receiving visas to come to Canada and receive mentorship from the organisation. I also had an opportunity to meet these women whose program I helped to design which was super. Further, although finding a clear path to finishing my thesis was a struggle, I now have a very clear idea where to take my research once I finish my Ph.D. and I see continued opportunities to contribute to research on both peacebuilding and the DRC if I so choose. I'm also ultimately satisfied with the breakup with my thesis supervisor. Throughout the process I felt like my needs were prioritized, my relationship with my new supervisor is going really well AND I'm feeling much less stressed. Last but not least since I've come home I've also found great joy in spending time with my friends, in a way I don't remember experiencing before. It's a really nice feeling which I can't easily capture in text form. Come back tomorrow and find out just why I've been so grateful for these friendships.
Over the holidays I've been trying hard to make sense of everything that's happened in 2016. Overall I would describe the year as a terrible disaster with some silver linings, which I got through with the help of my friends. So I'm going to write to you about this year in three parts: Stormy Weather; Silver Linings and; Gratitude for Getting By With a Little Help From My Friends. For this first post, please fasten your seat-belts and return your seat to the upright position, we are in for a bumpy ride. In January 2016 I was full of enthusiasm for what I thought would be the first of two hard-fought trips to the DRC. Throughout the month I packed my bags not only for a three month trip but also to leave the beautiful apartment I had been sharing with one of my best friends who was going to be moving in with her boyfriend while I was gone. By the end of the month I had said goodbye to my family and friends and was facing a whole lot of change at once. At the beginning of February I traveled to Bukavu by plane with a colleague with whom I shared some romantic type feelings. The first week in Bukavu was hectic with him being shuttled around by his organisation which was also one of the three organisations I would work with, trying to set up in my new apartment and establishing contact with other peacebuilding organisations. Although nothing notable happened during his presence for the week of my trip his departure hit me really hard. So hard that I spent an entire day crying in bed after he left. I was alone and feeling very exposed in a rural, extremely poor fragile context and wasn't sure where to start. After two weeks he stopped returning my emails without explanation and no, he didn't know about the crying. Personally the trip was very hard. Not having drivers, cooks or security assistance, and working directly with local organisations left me very exposed to daily and more acute stresses. During my trip I watched a woman being beaten with no one to call for help, became very ill with a respiratory infection, was abandoned in a small town without a vehicle or cell phone reception in an area with an active rebel movement and was followed home by an individual who aggressively pressed me for money. On top of this our house cat who brought me some comfort disappeared at the beginning of April leading both to sadness and to an influx of rats in our kitchen. We suspect the cat was trapped and eaten. In the end all of this was manageable. I took things one day at a time and got over it (except for the cat). Instead the things that I've found difficult to cope with were totally unexpected. I, perhaps naively, went to the DRC hoping to come back telling a different story. Not one about how poor, suffering and traumatized the population was, but one of hope which highlighted the commitment of local individuals and communities to bringing peace to their country. While I think I did find the hope I was looking for, which I'll talk about in my silver linings post, this hope was ultimately overshadowed for me by the tragedy that I wintessed in the daily lives of my research participants and the other people around me. Almost all of the staff from the organisations I worked with had experienced loss as a result of the conflict, had witnessed extreme violence and/or had been forcibly displaced for a significant period of time. Despite having some of the more secure jobs available in the province they struggled to feed, clothe, house and educate their families. A lot of them faced violence and threats as part of their job. Yet, the absolute worst part of this was how scared they all were that the country was teetering on the edge of violence and poverty that they had no control over which arrived officially on their doorsteps in the later part of this year. It was even harder to accept. Let me be clear, there is no easy way out for the DRC. At some point the international community will need to step away and let the state actually govern its territory, but doing so will risk organised violence which could worsen what can only already be described as a humanitarian disaster, before the state finds its authority and ability to govern. I came back to Canada in May still planning to return to the DRC but I was sick, very stressed and completely exhausted. I did what I needed to in May. Found a new apartment, fulfilled maid of honour duties and sought treatment for my cough. By June I was feeling optimistic again. I moved, found a wonderful summer job and started dating the colleague mentioned above. My cough was even under control and I got to go to Halifax for a conference. However, it quickly became clear that the job was more stress than I could handle and the relationship ended quickly. By early August my cough was back and you've already read my post about medical house arrest. In mid-August a man who had continually harassed me by phone and email while I was in the DRC was trying to contact me on my Canadian number and via Facebook.By September tensions were rising in the DRC around the elections scheduled for November which were ultimately postponed leading to protests and violence. It was time to face the reality that things were not working out as planned with my thesis. In early September I discussed the possibility of choosing a new context for a second case study for my thesis with my supervisors, we initially selected Colombia. At the same time I was transcribing my interviews from South Kivu and began to realize how much data I had already collected 55 interviews, 35,000 words of field notes. It became clear that if I duplicated my research in another context that I was going to have so much data that it was going to be unmanageable and that I would struggled to finish my Ph.D. I decided to pull the plug on the second case study in early October after a discussion with my co-supervisor led to a suggestion that I select another case. I frantically tried to develop a new plan and did which I presented to my supervisors. They wrote back with five points, four of which were reasonable questions the fifth which implored me to go back to the DRC for the sake of my academic reputation. Again, I put my foot down. I wouldn't be able to go on to be a professor if I were too traumatized to go on working or worse if I was dead anyways. This led to an altercation with my primary supervisor with whom I had, had a difficult relationship from the beginning which ended with her resignation from my committee. Although I feel that it was handled very poorly ultimately I know that this was the best decision for both of us. I too had been trying to decide how to walk away from her supervision for several months. As far as supervisory breakups go this one wasn't so bad. My co-supervisor agreed to continue as my primary supervisor and things have been going much more smoothly ever since. Late November and December have gone more smoothly with some annoying blips around the holidays related to gift giving and yet another relationship gone awry. Overall things seem to be moving in a more positive 2017, but if I learned anything from this year it was to not take anything for granted. Check back tomorrow afternoon for my Silver Linings Post.
