Back from Africa. Prince is home.

I'm back in Canada. Home sweet home. Land of hot showers, electricity, good roads and moderate temperatures. Back since last week actually, but due to a nasty stomach bug, just now able to catch up on emails, blog, work life & farm life. Internet cafes were not easily available in Monrovia or Accra.

Good news -- Prince is home too.

It took the help of many people, including involvement from Immigration Canada (Ottawa), senior immigration official(s) from CDN High Commission (Ghana) and even good recommendations from the US Embassy in Monrovia to give the accreditation necessary for ACFI.

Adoption is a roller-coaster ride. Lots of emotional highs. Many lows. Lots of smiles, laughter and happy tears. Quite a few dissapointments, anger and frustrations. I always say Adoption is not a single event, rather Adoption is a Journey,... a journey that lasts a lifetime.

Prince is an amazing 7yr old boy. Very natural at music beat. Exceptionally good at sports. I was playing soccer and {NFL-style} football with him, and he was playing at a very high calibre for his age compared to what I was used to for his age. A very curious boy,... flicking light-switches tens of times, just to see what they would do. Leafing through magazines and books like a new world is being discovered to his eyes.

In the orphange, Prince would do his own laundry. Bucket of water, bar of soap, and scrub... He bathes and cleans himself like no other kid I've seen, scrubbing dirt off his skin from head to toe. Very tidy, folding his clothes meticulously and sorting it beside his bunk-bed. He eats and eats -- no surprise I suppose. Once he figured out that 2nd helpings were allowed in his new found world, 2nd and 3rd portions have become the norm. At the orphanage, meat was only served once a year -- on Christmas Day. On his second day with us, Prince took 45 minutes to devour a chicken drumstick, savouring and eathing every last possible morsal of meat, grizzle and marrow. Our skin-less, bone-less, white-meat chicken culture could learn a thing or two....

In all, we visited 3 different orphanages in Liberia. A deaf orphanage with 57 kids in Gardnersville. A large 10+ acres, multi-building orphanage, home to nearly 400 kids age 4-15 in Dixville. And a small orphanage house for older boys, age 15-25, just on the edge of Monrovia.

Out of all, the Deaf Orphanage had the most impact on me. I had learned to sign my name (spelling H-e-n-r-y) in advance, and the kids, craving such emotional attention and communications, clung to me, signed and communicated back to me. They loved to ham it up for the camera and to see themselve on the digital camera LCD screen, squealing with delight when they saw their faces. It touched me deeply...

Cheers!

-=H=-

The man from Ouagadougou

Today I met a man traveling to Ouagadougou. "oo-ga-doo-goo" is the neatest sounding city-name I've seen on this trip so far... It is a city in the neighbouring country of Burkina Faso.

The man was to have traveled to Ouagadougou via Bellview airlines, but the flight was cancelled. Grounded is more like it. Bellview had a recent history of plane crashes and a poor safety record.

We ended up flying Slok Air from Ghana to Liberia.... not that Slok has any better safety record (United Nations personnel had been prohibited from flying on Slok at one point because of the 0.5 safety rating (out of 10)). But we need to get to Liberia badly, so what choice do we have?

-=H=-

P.S. Goat soup and Kenturkey Fried Chicken on the menu last night at the Hometouch Restaurant....

The Mango Tree

BAM! Roll, roll, roll,.... splat! It's 3:00am and I've just been awoken from falling fruit from the Mango tree outside my guest house room. BAM! Roll, roll, splat! Another mango drops out of the tree onto the tin roof.

Arrived here in Accra, Ghana, on Monday late evening,...greeted by a swarm of pan-handlers all looking to carry our baggage to the waiting car for a few USD or local currency (Cedi). "No thankyou" is not something they choose to understand. It's a bit frantic and we are glad when we are in the van with all our luggage and person intact. Thankfully the guest house we are staying at has a secure gated compound and relaxing gardens.

Accra is HOT. 30C is the night-time temperature. Brutal to sleep in that kind of heat. Plus the humidity is ~85%, so everything is clammy, like the bedsheets.

Went to the Canadian High Commission (Embassy) on Tuesday and ran into some major road-blocks. Prnce's medical forms have not arrived and have been traced to still sitting with the doctor in Liberia. Furthermore, the CDN Immigration office does not recognize the ACFI operated orphanage in Monrovia as an accredited organization, and first needs to perform a review of ACFI. These are major issues to overcome quickly if we have any hope of bringing Prince home with us.

On Friday (Jan 6/06) we travel from Accra to Monrovia via Slok Air. All local carriers here have a less than stellar reputation, but we've chosen the best we can. Tentatively we will spend 5-7 days in Liberia, depending upon if we bring Prince back with us or not, and depending upon what additional medical or visa work may need to be done back in Ghana.

Blogging will be brief until I return. Internet cafes are hard to find, and the priority has been to do whatever necessary to bring Prince home. I have pictures and diary, and will endeavor to blog more upon my return.

Cheers!

-=H=-

Ken and I leave for Africa today...

Together we have packed 4 large hockey bags of supplies. Plus our own SMALL personal bags, we are hauling over 200 lbs of stuff...

Our flight route is from Vancouver to Heathrow. Overnight in London, UK. Then continue on directly to Accra, Ghana. Accra is the location of the nearest (and only) Canadian Embassy in West Africa. This is where we must process the Immigration and Visa paperwork to bring "Ethan" back to Canada. Accra reads to be a semi-modern city with pleasantries like electricity, Internet, TV and a Taco Bell at the University of Ghana campus. The Lonely Planet describes Ghana as having "the friendliest people in West Africa." We are staying at the GILLBT Accra Guest House.

After a few days in Accra, we then take a local flight from Accra to Monrovia, Liberia. In Monrovia and surrounding area, we are to be escorted and continually with people from ACFI. Foreigners stand out bigtime and may be targets, so don't be unescorted outside of the ACFI compound is the recurring message. To contrast Ghana, the Lonely Planet describes Liberia as "...no place to go for a beach holiday" due to "sporadic looting as well as bursts of shooting in pockets of the country". Things are reportedly gradually improving and the recent November 2005 election of Africa's first female president offers hope for peace and rebuilding.

While in Monrovia, we alternate our time between the ACFI headquarters, and the Daniel Hoover Orphanage in Dixville. The two places are supposedly only 15 minutes apart, but the trip can take up to 2 hours because of poor road conditions. This map shows the locations. There is another Orphanage for Deaf children nearby which we'll be visiting. ~450 children from ages 2-19 are at the Dixville orphanage, and another ~40 at the Deaf orphanage.

After ~4 days in Monrovia, it's back to Accra, WITH Ethan (yeah!), and the Canadian High Commission to finalize the adoption. **IF** things go as planned, and the CDN Embassy in Ghana does what they are supposed to do in a timely manner, then we'll be back in Canada on January 16, 2006.

Weather in Accra is 32C, cooling (?) to 24C at night. Humidity is +80%. Monrovia is a similar 29C, same humidity, with intermittent heavy showers.

I plan to take photos and will blog as the availaibility of Internet Cafes permits. Other pictures and stories are (and will be) posted at http://www.wilsenack.com/Africa/ upon my return.

Cheers!

-=H=-

P.S. Happy New Year!!! Cheers to a wonderful 2006.

So why are you going to Africa?

"So why are you going to Liberia?", people ask me.

"It's a tourist mecca, don't yah know. A real travel hot-spot ", I say.

... "No really. Why?"

The real reason is to make a difference in the life of one child. One family... In reality, adopting a child from a Liberian orphanage impacts the lives of many people,... the whole "village" in essence.

Certainly the most direct benefit is to the life of one child, one "Prince", giving that child a chance for a life that he would other-wise never have. This alone is reason enough.

***** "One hundred years from now, It will not matter what kind of car I drove, What kind of house I lived in, Or how much money I had in the bank, But the world may be a better place because I made a difference in a child's life." --- Author Unknown *****

However the family and "village" aspect is equally as strong. When you bring an adopted child into a family and community, particularly when that child is from a war-torn, international, poor country, you also dramatically affect all those people who come into contact with that child. Their world, their culture, and their values are impacted. Their eyes open wide to the broader world out there and their lives change. Forever.

I like to believe that these eye-opening changes and cultural impacts are educational, enriching and ultimately breed awareness, tolerance and peace. It does for me. And I hope for others and future generations as well.

-=H=-

Liberia (thru the eyes of Google Earth)

This is a birds-eye view of Monrovia, Liberia, and one of the ACFI (African Christians Fellowship International) compounds I will be traveling to in January. The spot is marked on the image.

Any photos I bring back will be posted to http://www.wilsenack.com/Africa/.

The views from Google Earth are spectacular:

Zoomed in: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=monrovia,+liberia&ll=6.291337,-10.790076&spn=0.007132,0.011558&t=k&hl=en

Zoomed out: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=monrovia,+liberia&spn=0.923288,1.638611&t=k&hl=en

Zoomed way out: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=monrovia,+liberia&spn=56.411663,104.871094&t=k&hl=en

-=-=-=-

For more information about Liberian adoptions, see Children Concerned and For the Children.

The World Is Flat (or Around The World in 80 milliseconds)

Ah ha! Finally someone else who agrees with me that the "world is flat".

For years, as a Worldwide IT Telecom Director, I have been advocating that it was impractical and virtually impossible to circumference the earth with high-speed (45Mbps+) network connectivity.

Rather in my view, Eastern Europe is at one end of the flat world, and Asia/India was at the other flat end, with North America being at the 'centre' of the world. From a high-speed networking perspective, Europa and Asia/India do not really connect, except the long-way around the earth through North Ameria. Hence, my "flat-earth" viewpoint.

It's silly really. To circumnavigate the earth from a data networking perspective, it should be ~450mSec, which can be described in 3 segments:

1. ~150mSec from Asia/India to North America.
2. ~150mSec from North America to Europe.
3. ~150mSec from Europe to Asia/India.

However the 3rd segment is not readily available from a high-speed, affordable data networking perspective. Hence to get from Asia/India to Europe, you are realistically looking at 300mSec++ latency, over North America (E.g. the LONG way around the earth) which is brutally slow for most of today's bandwidth-guzzling, latency-sensitive software applications.

The solution? Well, one day scientists will increase the speed-of-light. Until then, the common-sense solution for truly global enterprise organzations is to accept the 'flat-earth' philosophy and design their datacentres and global applications around using North America as the centre of the world, thereby never leaving any major global metropolitan centre from its informaiton source more than ~150mSec away. This is practical advice. This works.

Nevermind all this --- I will always believe in my dream of "80mSec Around the World".

-=H=-

Baby Soother Ornament

This is Logan's baby soother, now tranformed into a Christmas Tree Ornament.... <grin>

-=H=-

My fav christmas gift

Here is a photo of my favorite Christmas gift, as given to me by my 9yr-old son...

12" Elvis (live in Las Vegas) figure...

"Thank you. <lip snarl curl> Thank you very much".

Santa Skiing

Santa skiing --- Now THIS is something I would do. It sums up the holiday spirit with apects of winter sports FUN.

-=H=-

What I'm listening to....

Here's a small sample of the tunes I'm listening to a lot nowadays:

* Great Big Sea - high engergy celtic, newfoundland, irish drinking & sailing tunes
* Cowboy Junkies - blues with emotion that goes right through your soul
* Sheryl Crow - fun, clean, up-beat rock
* Diana Krall - sexy, swooning jazz
* Huey Lewis & The News, Cars, Pat Benatar, Queen - Classic rock n' roll

-=-=-=-

Meaning of Life... Some observations...

Preparing for my upcoming trip to a Liberian Orphange by gathering and preparing supplies, watching the kids open their Christmas presents with happiness and wonder, Santa eating cookies and licorice, laughing at a gift to Mom from Anson Carter, and listening to Billy Gilman sing Christmas carols,....

Hmmm,.... I think I'm beginning to figure out the meaning of life....

-=H=-

Elvis Lives!

Elvis lives, baby. Oh yah. Elvis REALLY lives!

Big Bob, Elvis and the World

"Big Bob" is a pet Quaker Parrot, that as I write, is bobbing up n' down, screeching "peek-a-boo" and "give me a kiss". I've been known to make Elvis appearances, the latest at the summit of 3286m tall Mount Baker.

Canada, Germany, Thailand, India and Liberia all have special meaning to me in this world.

My glass {of life} is always 3/4 full. That's all for now.

-=Elvis=-