Tuesday, May 29, 2007


100 posts along the road

When I started this blog back in the summer of 2005 it was intended to put a spotlight on my experiences in Mozambique and allow me to describe how this new land and new work environment were impacting me…both for the better and the worse!! Now that my time in Mozambique is over, and I find myself back in Canada working at the MEDA head office in Waterloo, I feel as if I am going through a bit of an identity crisis, both in terms of the direction my life is taking as well as how I want to use this online journal. I have enjoyed keeping this blog as it has provided me with an avenue for which I could describe my life in Mozambique for my friends and family scattered amongst the globe.

I admit that I have often been lazy in updating this blog, especially since my return to Canada three months ago. Perhaps I feel that my “less than exotic” life in Kitchner-Waterloo does not provide me with enough interesting material to keep an online journal that people would be inclined to read. Or maybe I feel that it is time that this blog naturally evolve into something else, some other forum for me to post my thoughts and interact with the global village in which we find ourselves. This has yet to be determined as my emotional and inspirational levels are in need of major stimulation these days.

I miss my life and our work in Mozambique. I have been in Canada for three months now but I still don’t feel fully “at home” here. It’s as if my spirit is still hovering somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, yearning for distant lands, while my body tries to carve out a new existence here in Canada. I find that my heart aches to be back in the field working directly with people as opposed to sitting behind my desk pounding away at a keyboard in an industrial office park. I have some exciting projects awaiting me on the horizon over the coming months but they seem so distant and my motivation is lacking in the meantime.

This will be my 103rd blog posting. When I returned to Canada to begin my work at the MEDA office, I drove my car from my parents house in Winnipeg east down the Trans-Canada Highway to Waterloo. This journey took me over the Great Lakes and through the towns of Kenora, Thunder Bay, Wawa, Sault Ste. Marie and Parry Sound. The scenery is breathtaking, especially during the winter months. Over Lake Superior I couldn’t help but notice the number of wooden posts that stood out on the highway side. They seemed to be about a hundred in number and I thought that those posts were like the ones on my Mozambican blog, each representing a significant experience that brought this Canadian boy from his childhood home in Manitoba to his present home in Southern Ontario. These posts each mark a path, both through the rocks and trees of the Canadian Shield as well as through the streets and shorelines of Mozambique.

So it is at this 103rd post that I feel “Jared’s Mozambican Adventure” will come to an appropriate end. The events from this past year and a half have had a tremendous effect on me and the memories will last with me forever. I will continue to explore the re-manifestation of my writing and will certainly keep you posted regarding these new directions.

Wishing you all peace, joy and compassion!!

Jared

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

just like terry fox - a damned quitter...

6:26 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

...and national hero (terry, not jared) - who did more in just one summer running than most will do in their lifetime... just thought I'd make sure people didn't get all leviticus on me!

6:28 p.m.  
Blogger emilia said...

hi jared,

my name´s emily and i just moved to maputo from baltimore, before that dc, originally from texas. like half the other foreigners here i'm doing hiv-aids work too, i'm a public health student.

i´m writing cause i saw your blog and was wondering whether you found a regular church congregation here that you liked? i've been going to a very leftie ecumenical church in washington dc with a lot of mennonites and i really enjoy their style of worship and reflection, but not surprisingly it doesn´t look like there´s a mennonite congregation in maputo. i´m originally presbyterian and gonna visit the presbyerian church tomorrow, and i went to a baptist church with my mozambican coworker last week, which was nice, but i needed a little more meat in the message and was curious if you had any recommendations. or maybe you know a group of younguns who get together and do a bible study or reflection every so often or something? alternately, if there were one or two churches you just visited once that you thought were especially cool (i read in your blog one you went to with your shangana-speaking friend?) that would be interesting too. the list in the maputo phone book is way long to know where to start!

thanks, and hope you´re adjusting well to being back in canada, and finding a different set of joys and interchanges now that you are back home -


best,
emily holman
eholman@jhsph.edu

7:22 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

a sad demise for a blog well written!

7:57 a.m.  

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