The Gypsy has Landed

I know it's been a while since my last post, and to all those who commented and kept on visiting, I really appreciate it!

Not in Kansas anymore!

So, I have landed in Oxford England, far from my tropical home.  Just about as far as you could get in terms of weather, culture and development! I am here to work for Oxfam, so through that I will at least still be in touch with my beloved tropics and life in what some people might call "the majority world" - that is, the parts of the Earth where the majority of the population of our planet live.

Perhaps you have seen this before:

If the world were a village of 100 people:

61 would be Asians, 12 Europeans, 8 North Americans, 5 South American and the Caribbean, 13 would be Africans and 1 would be from Oceania.

20 people own 75% of the entire world income.

80 would live in substandard housing

24 would not have any electricity (And of the 76% that do have electricity, most would only use it for light at night.)

67 would be unable to read.  

Only 1 would have a university education.

50 would be malnourished and 1 dying of starvation.

33 would be without access to a safe water supply.

What always strikes me when I return to Europe or North America is just how much we take for granted the privileges of our every day lives.  We view these things not as a luxury, but as a basic entitlement: housing, running water, education.  In our commercialized world, we buy goods without thinking of whether or not we really NEED them.  In some places people have to count every penny they earn and spend, feeding their families on less than the equivalent of $1 or $2 per day.

Today as I wandered the streets of my new home - exploring, shopping (sweaters! socks!), walking, I can't help but feeling like a stranger in a strange land, or like the children from the Chronicles of Narnia - knowing there is another world out there that most people are completely unaware of.  The challenge for me will be to exist in this world mindfully - and that is where yoga will help me!

Stay tuned for more Yoga Gypsy as I discover the yoga scene in Oxford, become a yoga student again, and keep on reflecting on learning and teaching yoga, as well as development issues, mindful consumerism and a whole lot more.

It's going to be a great 2011 folks!!

~Namaste

PS: Cool bit of trivia - Amsterdam's Schipol airport has a meditation centre! How awesome is that?

8 Goals for Africa

8 Goals For Africa from 8 Goals For Africa on Vimeo.

www.8goalsforafrica.org  Get inspired, people!!

My day job

Like most of us, I have a day job.  In the context of my blog, it's like this other life I never talk about.  Today, reading the fabulous blog of an acquaintance, yoga teacher and development worker Marianne Elliott, I was reminded that maybe, the two can mix...

In my day job, I do communications work for development organizations here in East Timor.  That means anything from advising people how to develop and communicate key messages, to creating the products by which they mean to communicate (posters, brochures, radio programs, videos).  And a lot of random stuff in between.

Doing development work is a study in living contradiction.  In fully comprehending the privilege that is awarded by the randomness of birth.  I was born in Canada, and not in East Timor.  And thus, I had a childhood full of things like toys, amusement parks, camping trips, education, proper nourishment and medical care.  Instead of a childhood of hunger, poverty, hard work, conflict and violence - which is the reality for not all, but many children in East Timor, and many other places in the world.

Living in the midst of that is like being an oasis of wellness in a sea of hardship.  My house may be simple by western standards, but here I am like the fairy-tale princess.  I work alongside national colleagues who earn 1/10th of my salary or less.  I live in the capital city alongside families who tend to their livestock and hop the fence to pick fruit from a tree that grows in my yard, a part of their yearly income on which they deeply depend.  I express sympathy for colleagues when their infant children die of completely preventable and treatable diseases.  I shop amidst the harassment of child and adolescent fruit sellers carrying a stick across their shoulders hanging with mangoes, oranges, passionfruit, their young muscles hardened by carrying their heavy load day-in, day-out.

In East Timor:

• Life expectancy is less than 60 years of age;
• 2 out of 5 children will die before they reach the age of 5;
• The average woman has no access to birth control, and will give birth to between 7 and 9 children in her lifetime; many of them will have their first child before the age of 18;
• Barely half the population have access to clean water or sanitation facilities;
• Nearly half the population live a subsistence life, on less than $1 per day (and in a US dollar economy, yes that's right, this really does not go very far).

I could go on, but these are just numbers, right?  Wrong.  These are my neighbours.  These are my colleagues.  These are my partner's godchild, by all accounts a fairly privileged child living in the capital city, with access to clinics and a hospital, but who died of Tuberculosis just short of his 5th birthday.  Tubercu-bloody-losis.  A totally treatable illness.  But he was never even diagnosed.  A young victim of ignorance, poverty, and underdevelopment.

What can I do about it? Not very much, really.  And I guess that's why I don't blog about it often. My blog is like an escape into this little yoga world, the world that I share with all of you, the way that I find peace.

If you'd like to know a bit more about East Timor, I've put a page on my sidebar that tells a little bit of its story...