Last Leg of a Pitka Matka

July 20, 2006

It looks like we didn’t get those grants to do the work in Ghana, which means we’ll have to find our own means to do so. The upside is that it gives us more freedom and flexibility in choosing this new direction. We have secured a place to live in Accra, the capital, which is very exciting. The place was recommended by Miia’s wonderful friend, David Firang, who is from Ghana and is completing his Ph.D. at University of Toronto. He has been a huge help in connecting us with local projects, people, organizations, and now, accommodations. The lack of funding also forces my mind to the future, to new work, and away from old work, which admittedly is an effort. The work I did was my baby; I was given little more than ideas and built a project from it that served hundreds of people with something valuable at no cost to them. Now it is taking off and there are four full-time staff where once there was just me. It’s going in new and amazing directions. It feels good to know that what I started will continue to flourish. Yet it is hard to be a sideline observer, especially when this particular sideline is so very far away. When we first left Toronto I didn’t think about it much, but now I do. Time to move on, time to think about what to do in Africa.

Fortunately Ben Peterson, ED of Journalists for Human Rights, expressed interest in helping me get connected to Ghanaian media and human rights networks dealing with immigration and emigration issues. I’m now reading a short book on international human migration that is bringing my brain back to these issues (maybe that’s why I’m thinking about the work I did in Toronto?). I have so many story ideas and I hope it’s mainly a matter of interviewing as many people as possible who have opinions and experience with these issues, framing the issues that interest me, writing the stories, and pitching them to Canadian and international media through my current and future contacts. Of course it’s never that simple, especially when working outside one’s home country, in an unfamiliar culture. It will take time and effort and a huge amount of patience, and as before my inspiration will be the many amazing newcomers I worked with in Canada.

July 25, 2006

The scenery is gorgeous from Marjaana’s apartment, which is a short bus ride into downtown Helsinki yet close enough to the cows to smell them. Marjaana has been so kind as to let us stay here, and to take very good care of us, until our Russian visas come in later this week. The goats are out back and Marjaana took us to feed them delicious dandelions while a horse whinnied harshly from the other direction. There is a small swimming pond spitting distance from the back deck. The fields are a day-glow neon green that almost burns the retina stepping off the cool of the silent bus. Our fellow passengers stare at them that dare speak such brazen English in public. I take so many pictures that patient Miia has to beg for the camera and I give her the hawk-eye while she uses it, waiting for my turn to come round again. Everything is so lush, exotic, new, and excites my eyes. Yet I find time to read more voraciously than usual, to write more often. “Funny this need you have to document everything,” Miia observes, coy in her astuteness. I don’t trust my memory, and I want mnemonic assistance, including the kind that reminds me that a tupakka day habit refers to the Finnish word for smoking. My vocab must be over a hundred words by now, not including the 300 English queues that help me remember.

July 26, 2006

Miia’s Finnish star keeps rising. She got a call the other day from a woman who said, “I saw your picture in the paper.”

“Beautiful, isn’t it!” Miia answered, totally unaware that she was talking to the morning show host of a national radio program. The host was charmed of course, and next Miia will be interviewed every morning at 7:30 am.

“Just don’t ever ask me what I’m doing,” Miia advised her. “The answer will always be the same: laying in bed.”

I’m hanging on for the ride, and will be one of the 5 topics of conversation, somewhere between Miia’s philosophy of life and her motivation for giving free English lessons in the little town of Kerimaki.
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We had a great night with cousin Anniina and her boyfriend Mikko last night; they treated us to raclette, i.e. fried baked cheese with copious wine. They are a sweet couple, easygoing enough to lend us their hair clipper – just call me jarhead. They showed us pictures of their trips to the far north Norway tundra with its abundance of bird species and to Italy with its ancient wine villages, both phenomenal visual spectacles. We talked about the importance of family bonding post parental guidance, how the atmosphere changes when not oppressed by other enforcers of etiquette. Of course as adults our parents’ corrections stay with us, but some of us come out of our shells. This isn’t to blame the parents’ good intentions but their shadows don’t always allow the young ones to bloom.
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“I’m proud to be a liberal…who sees things through. Yes, others call this sort of view ‘extreme liberal.’ Not just disliking being oppressed, but disliking oppressing. And, indeed, more than that: disliking oppression everywhere.” –Ter Haar in Pram Toer’s ‘Child of All Nations’

July 28, 2006 – Hirvenkoski (Moose Rapids) Cottage

Finally on our way back to the Kerimaki cottage, stopped about halfway up to see Miia’s other Paris au pair friend, Viivi, and her mother Eeva. Their summer cottage was built by Viivi’s uncle for his mother many years ago. It’s a whale of an old cottage with caverns of family treasure in its ribs. Even the sauna has room for 30. It needs work though and they are hoping to make that investment as soon as fiscally possible. There is a sprawling garden surrounding the building that provides most of our meals.

We visited Viivi’s father, and his father, and the rest at the graveyard. This is a fine Finnish tradition I was warned about and I really love. It keeps the family connected to their members who join the spirits in the sky, or wherever they may be hiding. Though someone may be dead this tradition keeps them alive and part of the family many years after they’ve gone. It’s not so much about mourning; it really is just a visit, and for the newcomer like me a chance to meet the rest of the family, the ones who no longer live at home. And that tradition, coupled with my mother-in-law's kind gifts of retro 80s basketball duds, is how I've come to know my brother-in-law without meeting him in the flesh.