Reflecting back on a couple of journeys ...

I am in a reflective mood lately.  All this looking back ... and forward ... has led me to start cleaning up.  My house.  My office.  My files.  In doing the file cleanup, I discovered some writing that I did a while ago.  Always interesting to take a peek at where the mindset was at a given point in time.  And to reflect on what has changed in our personal lives and the lives of those people and places that we care about ... 

I found this piece on another blog that I had wanted to launch, but which is now going to be used as a place to store some of my favourite photos.  As I delete the posts, I'll bring some excepts back here.  Some of my ramblings had already been cross-posted at the time that I wrote them. Some were deleted from this space because I felt at the time that I didn't want to contaminate a space that had originally been dedicated to some light, amusing (hopefully) chatter about a few trips away from my land-locked Canadian home.  But seriously, I am only one person, and my personal journey over the last few years has driven home the notion that my blog has to reflect me.  Every facet of me.  So my dear reader, you are stuck with every part of my thinking, all in one spot.  The "Chronicles" can only stay online, if I bring all my reflections to one place.  I've never been good at compartmentalizing how I feel about what I see in the world around me.  You may not agree or like what I write, and that is more than OK by me.  At the end of the day, what I value most is authenticity, and I bring my values with me everywhere I go.  That, I think is what was missing from some of my posts and why I grew so lethargic about further posting.  I had been stuck in the notion that I had to be somehow less authentic to encourage a readership.  At the end of the day, it occurred to me that I never did start this blog to amass a readership!  So if you are still with me, great!  If not, thanks for following along for the time that you did!

The is an excerpt from my musings over some changes that were happening (and continue to happen) on my favourite island "home."


From July 19, 2011:

"At heart, I am a person who cannot separate her values and beliefs from how she lives her day-to-day life. At times, my desire to be "part of the solution" instead of "part of the problem" is often misperceived by others, and ultimately garners me more enemies than friends. But that is OK, because I am proud of my social justice-oriented, feminist, sometimes (ok, often) long-winded "observations" of the world around me ..."

"Maybe I flatter myself that my stories have entertained people ... but that was my desire when I posted (some of my travel) tales ..."

" ... but I must admit, it (my 2011 visit to St. Kitts) was an interesting trip. I have remained silent, not knowing how to describe my experience this time. Well, I wasn't so silent on a certain travel forum, and I also kept a detailed journal of my trip. So, I'll say this much for now: The Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis is changing. Rapidly. I became aware of the spike in crime a couple of years ago, and had hoped at the time, that it was just a temporary glitch in the island's history. But, things seem to be escalating on the crime front. Oh, perhaps on the surface the twin island paradise may still seem like a relatively "undiscovered" couple of pearls on a delicate chain of small islands in the West Indies, but many of us know the other side: crime is rampant, developers are carving up the landscape and the cost of living is skyrocketing.

With each return visit, I become more achingly aware that I can no longer be naive enough to keep coming back here gushing over the serenity, beauty and bounty, when I keep being confronted with and conflicted by the truth. Yes, I have seen the seamy underbelly of the beast and I don't like it one bit. That doesn't mean I am not going back, however. It just means that I am not one of those travellers who can bury her head in the sand, and just go sailing, sunning and eating her way through a visit to the islands. Most of the crime is youth-gang related and, as such, most of it doesn't really impact tourists. And that is why I feel so conflicted. The week that I was in St. Kitts there were three murders. One of the victims was the son of the Commissioner of Police. How's that for a message to the cops? Since, most of my social work career has been in direct practice with youth, and I was working while I was visiting, I couldn't escape the parallels between what is going on in the Federation, and my own experiences with disaffected youth.

How powerless it makes me feel to see the marginalized youth of the Federation embrace American-style criminality, and gangster rules of respect, while well-meaning (?) business people keep saying things like "well, at least the tourists aren't being shot!" Seriously? Like one life is worth more than another. Hmmm, well, I have more to say, but I will leave things right here for now.

This year of graduate studies in social work, has led my down an interesting path. I realize now that I am not a clinical practitioner at heart, but a community practitioner. I feel passionate about the all the issues that are affecting various communities with which I am involved, and now that I have stepped outside of the box, I am not sure that I can step back in and simply go about my daily life as I did when I first began to question how I was operationalizing my social work education.  So, as I move forward in my newly re-jigged career, I will likely feel like posting lots of thoughts about social justice, sustainable development and the state of my favourite travel destinations.

I hope some of you will take this journey with me, and help me figure out where I am going with all this reflecting and writing."