quite a nice feeling. sort of, lighter.. or something.

I just recently deactivated my facebook account. and for those who know me, or have me on facebook... i was all over that. i was legitimately addicted to facebook, and people didnt believe me when i said i quit. now, it's been over a week and i really dont miss it. i really really really dont. it took me a few days to really get it out of my system... the day after i deactivated it, i went to Puvirnituq to see my boyfriend. i dont know if that timing was good or bad, yet somehow, it felt like both. it was bad because usually, when i go there i'll facebook my friends to see what's going on, but this time, being so used to facebook i felt paralyzed without it and ended up staying in the house for the whole 2 days alone with my man, which wasnt awful, but it's always nice to see friends there... the good part was that he doesnt have facebook, and i got to spend a few days just completely ignoring all the bitching, whining, complaining, criticizing, judgemental shit people put out there and i was able to actually relax. it did take me quite a while to figure out alternative things to do with so much free time though. but it was like, a re-introduction to the real world, sort of. i realized i can do something, anything at all... without checking facebook every 5 minutes for a notification. it's weird to think that i havent had the freedom to do that in... 5 years, since i activated my facebook for the first time... it's a really nice feeling.

Schooling the Teachers

Dear New Teachers,

Are you feeling the culture shock yet? Or is your honeymoon phase still lingering?

Regardless, you should understand that this place, whether you’re in the smallest community or the largest, is absolutely one of the most unique and special places in Canada. This place an Inuit homeland. This is the place where our language and our customs prevail; this is the place where you are an outsider. Where you will have to work to gain the respect of your students and the community.
Nothing is going to come easy for you; and I’m telling you this not because I want you to give up or to discourage you. I’m telling you because no one else will, and the simple fact of that is what will discourage you the most. Many have come before you, and many will come after you and that, whether you like it or not is what defines you. You’re just another Qallunaaq in transit. You’re here for the experience, you’re here to take pictures and to have grand stories to tell your friends and family back home. This may not be your motive, but we know that that’s what you’ll end up doing, because in the end, that’s what they all end up doing. People don’t see consistency in you, they cant see a future where you’ll be present; and that makes it hard for people to want to get close to you. It makes it hard for your students to have any respect for you.
Some of you have probably seen this in your classrooms already, but if you haven’t, you’ll know soon enough. I’m sure you have trouble getting your students to behave, to sit still, to listen or to do what you ask. I’m asking you, as a former student of the KSB system to have patience; to be compassionate; to try to understand. Some of your students do not come from the most stable homes, some of your students have families that would rather be on the land, some have very supportive parents and some are in foster care. Regardless, all of them have one thing in common and that’s the knowledge and deep understanding that you’re probably not going to stick around.
I know some of you come up north with this messiah complex and you’ve come to help the Inuit, to educate the next generation and to have been part that movement, but let me tell you now that if this is your motive, you will burn out. Some of you come because it’s the only job you could get, especially right out of school. (Sorry to seem harsh, but that’s true. Let’s be real here) I know because I see the teachers getting younger and younger each year. When I was 16, my secondary 4 teacher was 21 years old; as old as I am now and I am young. He was more of a friend to me than a teacher, but I still managed to learn a lot from him; and then he left, and I never heard from him again. That’s heartbreaking for students and it really does make it harder for them to open up to you. I keep going back to that, but you should really understand that this is one of the major barriers to your success as a teacher, and it’s one of the major barriers to the success of your students.
You’ve probably heard before the state that Education in Nunavik is in. You probably know that we have one of the highest dropout rates in Canada. I’m not writing this to blame teachers exclusively; these circumstances are just a consequence of our history, which is incredibly complex, especially regarding education. But no matter what, the role you play is absolutely vital to our communities and our future. I’m asking you to not take that lightly. You are educating the next generation of doctors, lawyers, politicians and artists, the next generation of hunters, seamstresses, mothers and fathers.
Parents are everything in the education of their children. If they do not have a good impression of education, as many parents and grandparents in Nunavik do, the future of education is pretty bleak. You have to work to give your students, and their parents a good, solid opinion of education. It’s a huge job, but as a teacher, it’s one of your responsibilities.
Let’s go back to that little friend of yours, the filter that you face, one that has defeated many of your predecessors: culture shock (dun dun dunnnnn). I know you had that presentation at your orientation, but still too many of you still succumb to this inevitable force. I’m not entirely sure what it is you’re told.. but the simple fact is that many of you will not have the tools to deal with it properly. One of the major aspects of that is cross-cultural communication (or miscommunication). You are coming from a place where values, concepts and ideas of education, communication, priorities and worldview are vastly different from those of Nunavik. Your students live by our rules of social interaction, and you live by yours. If you’re brave enough to step out of our comfort zone and step into our social norms, I promise you that life will get easier, your job will get easier, you will gain respect and hopefully succeed up here; because the values you have in education very often clash with ours. You expect competition, and quick responses, when Inuit kids are taught to listen and watch and truly understand before they answer a question or attempt a task. A lot of the time in Inuit culture, asking questions is not acceptable, you watch and you watch and you watch ‘til you know. The way in which people interact is different in Inuit culture; people call out what they see, people are blunt and people make jokes. You will be the target of people’s jokes, but don’t take that personally at all. It’s just the way it is, I promise you that life will be much easier and more fun if you can just go along with it. Another things that’s worlds apart from the southern way of being is the concept of personal space. People will touch you, your students will touch you. You are most certainly allowed to have your boundaries, but clearly state them to people because they wont know, and try not to be startled or react abruptly when someone does make physical contact. Just say nicely that you’re not comfortable with it because that’s not the way it is where you come from; but also you should understand that shaking hands is a very important aspect of Inuit culture, it’s a welcoming gesture and everyone, from the smallest child to the oldest elder does it. So when you meet new people, shake their hands, even if they’re small children or even babies.
Anyway, I just felt the need to communicate this to you. I hope you understand and let this help you in your journey and profession. Thank you for taking on this job, thank you for taking the responsibility of educating our students and feel free to contact me if you have any questions or you just want to talk to someone. Your worst enemy up here is yourself, you can sink into yourself and grind gears and do your work to get it over with, or you can put yourself out there, make friends, visit people, try the food, imitate the language and just have fun. Life in Nunavik is fun, people are fun so go out and have FUN! Try as much as you can to not isolate yourself from the community, try to make friends with local people and most of all, avoid cliques where you only interact with other qallunaat, because as I’ve seen many times before, it’s a recipe for failure and disaster. It’s what people expect you to do, and once you meet that expectation, you will lose a lot of respect from the people. Remember that this is Inuit territory and you are a visitor.



Sincerely,

Janice Grey
janice17grey@hotmail.com

need discipline

OK, I feel like i'm not taking this seriously anymore, not the blog itself but my writing, i used to love it and it showed, but now it's like i chore (and it shows)... i still want to love it and dammit i will... I'm going to try to write at least once a week (or more probably once a month).. I want to be more disciplined at something.. anything. because that's one thing i definitely lack in my life.

Things Teachers Need to Know about Teaching in the North

The education system in Nunavik has been ineffective for years and years and years. It’s got so many complicated factors, but some of the more significant ones include cross cultural miscommunication between Inuit students and parents and Qallunaaq teachers. This is a problem that can be resolved. Even though it feels like only a few types of people come up north to teach, most often, none of those types can handle the stress of teaching in Nunavik, though there are some great exceptions... and this is from 21 years of going through that school system and interacting with teachers.
One, the freak, generally the outcast type, makes people uncomfortable and keeps himself somewhat distant. I once had a teacher who drew light bulbs during class, he didn’t actually know the level of math he was supposed to be teaching us, so instead we had a lot ‘free drawing time’ where he would draw light bulbs, almost obsessively... with arms, and legs and wheels and just all kinds of weird light bulbs; then he would hang them on the walls. Then there was this one that never looked you in the eye, ever. I know the word freak is a bit harsh, odd, i should say. Then the second type, the runaway. Runaways usually have something they’re hiding from –family reasonability, even crimes. People that needed a change in their life that didn’t include anyone else... and three, the assholes; usually up just to make money, and can sometimes be considered racist. Then there’s newbies, right out of university and into the schools. I like to call them fresh meat. They’re often idealistic and come up north seeking adventure, to spice up their own lives with exotic stories of the far north.
That’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with these types of people. They just happen to be the types that come up north most often. Anyway, regardless of motives, new teachers in the north do have something in common. They are equally unequipped to work in an Inuit school board for Inuit people. Sure, they have their Bachelors and Masters and blah blah blah, but they don’t know how to interact with Inuit, in an Inuit social context. I’m sure they get a lecture on culture shock and recovery, but most often, they are not given the tools to decode cultural miscommunication, and misunderstandings.
I recently went on a volunteer exchange in Ghana, and before we even left Canada, we had to take workshops on cross cultural learning, communication and understanding. We had the analogy of the icebergs. My iceberg was my own culture, and the other was the other culture. It was divided into three sections, the first being the tip of the iceberg, ‘behaviour’, the second part, just below the surface ‘norms’ and the third section, at the very bottom ‘values’. Imagine you, a teacher as one iceberg, and your students as another iceberg. You have your own ways of life, you have your own idea of education and your own methods of teaching, all these things you picked up throughout your own life, within your own society and culture. All these things, you can credit to norms and values that you were taught. Your students have their own ways of living, their own idea of education and their own methods of learning. When you can understand how to see deeper into the iceberg of your students, you might understand why your behaviour and their behaviour collide and how their behaviours are affected by the norms and values in their culture. Why you feel like you’re ineffective, or why you think your students will never learn, it’s hard to see where you’re going wrong when your foundation of understanding can never mesh with that of your students. That’s the problem here, teachers are not given the tools they need to decode and understand cultural differences, and neither are students. This often leads to poor delivery of critical education.
Then there’s that long, tragic history of education in the north, and the idea that educating through the present system is a continual colonization. Though we have the legal means to suite education to our own cultural needs, the present system looks oddly familiar to that of the south. The general relationship between Inuit and Qallunaat was one of inequality and intimidation, especially in local day schools or residential boarding schools. There hasn’t been enough movement on either side to really change that relationship, even when Inuit gained control of their education system. We don’t get enough teachers who are genuinely concerned with the wellbeing of Inuit society; this, in part to the fact that not many Inuit have degrees that could allow them to teach grades above third and fourth -which is directly caused by the poor quality of education they received in elementary and secondary.
Teachers who come up north often cannot handle the circumstances, many leave after a year from being too overwhelmed, mentally and emotionally. I won’t lie, a few have problems with anxiety, even depression. Living up north is unique experience, it can get ugly, it can get dark, but it’s also very full of beauty and spirit. The problem is, many newcomers feel too overwhelmed by the heavy, ugly dark side to really see the beauty, then they go back home and tell people how much they hated the north... it’s a sad phenomenon, but it happens every day. Even as we speak, there’s probably a teacher who has stopped caring, who’s counting the days to go home, who would be happy never to see their students again. Imagine how that makes students feel?
To have someone new every year, to have to go through the same culture shocked roller coaster, at critical periods of your education. I have done a lot of work with young people in Nunavik, and I know there’s so much potential there, so much energy and talent, so much intelligence and curiosity. If only educational activities are executed accordingly, these kids do have the potential to learn and grow. But there’s so much in the way of that happening, so much that can be changed or addressed is going untouched, unmentioned and unresolved.
I’m writing this to try to tell people who want to come teach in the north that they do have an amazing opportunity to help. And to remind present teachers that there’s so much that you could understand about the experience. Because it’s inevitable that we will still depend on Qallunaat teachers for a few more years to come, let’s not gloss over that... We need teachers and we need teachers who care and understand. We need teachers who have the tools to teach cross culturally. We need teachers to understand when its their place to teach and their place to learn, because no matter what... life in the north is a learning experience. Let’s keep that beautiful.

being in nothing...

Coming back...

I Dont even know where to start, there's so many beginnings and so many endings, one right after the other, all at the same time, overlapping, and gaps in between where it feels like nothing is happening at all. Like it's all on pause.. as if right now, there's no traffic on Dorval Avanue, theres no running water in Otuam, there's no sea ice on Ungava Bay and there's no way I'm here right now. I dont know where I am.. well, I'm in Montreal at Wini's.. but i'm just staying here, lying here watching sex in the city, having supper with friends, painting my fingernails.. All of this is happening but im not really there to experience it. I'm watching it all happen, i'm there but i'm not. But at 2 in the morning... there really IS no traffic on dorval avanue, 7am, no running water in Otuam --someone's probably walking home from the well right now, big metal bowl of water on their head. I remember my first week in Otuam, I was helping get water, and the would always give me these little buckets, then i was getting impatient with how long it took the tank to fill so i grabbed the HUGE metal bowl and started carrying it to the well, as if i were capable of carrying that on my head full of water. as if.... my host mother and her freinds all yelled at me... no no no nno... you'll die!... but no, I decided i was going to (try). obviously I failed, but i tried.

then when i was in toronto, in my hotel... i went into the bathtub and turned the tap on.. it was hot. I took a hot shower. A Shower, with a shower hose (or whatever that thing that drips water in called).. it rained on me... no flash floods, no hard labour, no cold shock. and then again the next day i took a shower.. so now i take showers. I dont need my dettol or my small purple pail.

but anyway, I've been sick a lot.. I cant eat anything without it coming back up. Has anyone else experienced this after 3 months in a tropical place? but maybe its just needing time for my body to adjust.. I'm supposed to stay in Montreal for the week and go to toronto for the weekend for a couple more CWY debriefings, but i just need to go home. So tomorrow Im going home. When i first went to Ghana I hated it. I was hot, sweaty, smelly, irritable and hungry, all I wanted was a cup of coffee, an air conditioned room (or at least wintertime), and a SHOWER... none of those things materialised in Ghana. But theyre here now. In ghana, my feet were dirty, so dirty they actually looked tan, i was hot and sweating like a motherfucker and it took me forever to get used to having kids follow me around in the streets. Now in Canada, I look at someones kid sideways and they freak out, mama bears all over the place, apparently I'm really menacing looking. Now in Canada, my feet are wet and cold from the slushy sidewalks, my shoes stained with salt, instead of shit. I'm cold, I have been cold since i got off the plane in toronto. What kind of Inuk am i? how do i expect to survive when i go back up north?

Umm.... anyway. I'm ok. I just dont know what i'm doing anymore.

To Ghana Men... you know the ones..

"Obruni koko, what is your name?
Are you from US? Germany?"
No, I'm from Canada, call me Abena
"Abena, all the beautiful girls, they come from Canada"

"Girl You shaped like a bottle of coke, I love your teasing bones"
Like coke? I'd be a hard habit to break... I know.
"Baby girl you got a phone?"

I got a phone. I'll give you my number, it's MTN
054-fuck-you-very-much
Call me sometime, maybe we can do lunch..

Then you'll take me home to meet your mom

"Ma this my wife
Ma this the girl who changed my life
I'm gonna buy a ring for her"

A ring?
Thanks, but you can put that on my middle finger

I'm flattered by your complements
But boy, dont touch me, let go of my fucking wrist
I dont need you to hold my hand
I have a boyfriend, a fiance and a husband.

"But you can still be my lover girl"
No. You have no chance in the world.
No chance in hell no chance on earth

I'd peel the skin off my own legs,
before i'd be your 'lover girl'
Just the though of all of that
makes my fingers want to curl
and clench my fists and...
and...
and...

Sorry! Are you bleeding? Poor baby.

landmarks

So, our time in Otuam is soon coming to an end. By February 27, we'll be back on Canadian soil... I'm so so ecited to go back home... yet I dont want to leave this place... this amazing place. It's so nice to walk down the road or through the paths and see fammilliar faces, people who dont call me Obruni any more. "Abena!".. or... "Araba!"... or even "Janiii... atisaine?!"...:) 'E-ye'

it's going to be strange going back to Canada, especially for my first few weeks back i'll be in the city. From the bush in Ghana to the concrete jungle. The cold city streets are so far from anything i could even imagine. Not only the cold, but just.. back to the grids, to the world of squares and sharp corners. "How do i get to this place?" will have such a different kind of answer over there than it would here. "So, if you go up Maple street to the corner of George, there's a CIBC there. Turn right four blocks and you'll see it on the other side of the road" as opposed to "Ok, go down that path just off the Mosque, then you'll see the well... go left on that path thats more up the hill, past the pink house with the blue bird painted on. You know the one with the mango tree over there? There's usually an old man sitting on the bench, just keep going straight and you'll see my house"...

God I'll miss this place. I'm gonna miss walking by the well, greeting all the people collecting their daily water. I'll miss the puppies that live at the pink house, and the old man on the bench. I love Ghana.

Can I tell you something?

'You can keep a secret right?

Yea, you can trust me.

ok............'

In CWY,nothing you do is a secret. No matter how hard you try to keep something under wrapps, chances are, pretty much everyone else in the group already knows about it. I wont get into all the scandelous things we do as a group and as individuals (maybe after the program ends;)... but let's just say no angels came to Ghana this year, at least not to Otuam...... Or Saltpond for that matter.

Anyway.....

You know when you've done something 'bad', or exciting and your first reaction is to want to tell somebody. To give out all the juicy details of how you did _________ with __________ all afternoon and didnt get caught. Or like, when someone is your friend, but something they said really bothered you, you dont want to really confront them so you take your frustrations out by telling someone else. _______ Is my really good friend, but she does this thing that seriously annoys me sometimes.

In group of 18, seperated by nationality and again by personaity, you only really have a few good friends at a time, if at all. Everyone else, you're just kind of nice to... like, pleasant and polite, then all of a sudden it all turns around and everyone is friends with different people again, so the pleasant and polite really works in your favor. If you stop being close with one person (for whatever reason) and you need someone else, people arent going to want to be your friend if you've been a total bitch in the past. Ok, enough of this... what I'm trying to say is..

Here, you feellike you can only trust a few people, so you confide in whoever it is you trust at any given time. you say things like "___________ was being so irritatng today. fuck, she's such a dumbass".... or "I went to ______________ with ___________" and it usually ends with "I trust you not to tell anyone" so you tell that person because you're under the impression thatyou completely trust them with the darkest, most incriminating details of your temporary 6 month life. Then of course, alliances change and trust shifts. Sometimes even if you stop being friends with someone, you can still trust them, but it gets complicated when they trust someone else. Someone you may not necessarily trust...

it's like "________ came to visit me, but _________ dosent know. Dont tell anyone ok?... I can trust you?.. I dont want the whole group talking about it" "Of course you can trust me".....Then it goes "So I was talking to _________ yesterday, she said ___________ came to visit, can you believe it? she told me not to tell anyone, but I'm telling you because i trust you, ok? she'll be really mad if she hears about it" "Oh yea yea, of course you can trust me. Wow, so _____________ really went to visit her? I wonder what they talked about?... probably feelings? haha... weird they hang out.. _______________ wouldnt be happy to hear about it" "I know right!".... Then again and again and again til the story's gone around 9 or even 18 times; sometimes it even comes back to ou completely different.

Anyway... There's no closure to this blog. Just another experience of Canada World Youth, another life lesson to learn, another thing we deal with day to day.

new friends... o_O

We've been in Ghana for just over a month now, and almost everyone has been sick in some way. Wether it be diarhea (I cant spell that word o_O) or something else, each canadian in my group has been ill here, except me. I always boasted about always being fine, I've never had trouble with the food or anything. and then BAM. I get a fucking parasite. Just like that. 4 Days, no appetite, no food, vomit pretty much everything i do consume and not being able to explain to my host mother why. In 4 days, I've lost so much weight that i can feel my ribs, my clothes dont fit proerly and the beads i wear around my waist can come of if im not carful.

I tell my counterpart i threw up, "Are you pregnant?"... "No I'm NOT (*&^%$) pregnant"..."When was the last time you were dewormed?".... "Ummmmmm... NEVER?!"

So I went to the clinic this morning, to ask for deworming treatment (which, needless to say I've never had to do before) and the nurse, who's actually really cool.... new friend of mine -Fred.. helped me. But, I have to say, I'm not sure i trust their judgment completely. They asked if I have malaria (Everything you go to the clinic for, you get treated for malaria. You have a fever = Malaria. Your throat closes up and you cant breathe = Malaria. YOu have an infection on your skin, but you said yes when they asked about headache = Malaria. You test negative for the malaria parasite, you still have malaria. If symptoms persist and the malaria treatment dosent work come back and we'll actually try to figure out what's wrong. Anyway, I insisted that i do not have malaria, and thankfully wasnt given treatment for it. Typhoid however was one of the things i got in my cocktail of treatment... I wasnt sure how to argue against it (esp considering I've been vaccinated against typhoid) so ijust took the pills but never intended to take them. Then I asked my CP to ask the nurse what they were, and then he told her it was for general infection. riiight. ok. I'l TOTALLY take those pills. I did get a deworming treatment tho, which i will take. as much as i talk about wanting to lose weight sometimes, once it actuallyhappens it freaks me out (esp considering the circumstances)....