Ken’s love affair with Africa began in 1975 when he visited Kenya and Ethiopia through Canadian Crossroads International.
Our family of six went to Botswana to learn and expand our vision of life and the world, to travel, and hopefully, to contribute a little to the people of Botswana. We received a gift: to view our western way of life from the outside. We can never say, “Let’s just look after our own marginalized people, and let the rest of the world take care of its own.” Local became global and global became local. Ken and Carol shared one Field Staff Officer position. While Ken was Regional Representative for ECSA (East Central and Southern Africa) and travelling extensively throughout the region, Carol stayed somewhat closer to Botswana. The places we’ve seen and the people we’ve met and worked with have enriched us beyond measure. Carol noticed that Ken didn’t stop smiling all the time we were in Botswana. We were deeply affected by the neighbouring Republic of South Africa, where the apartheid system was in full force. At the same time, liberation forces in the countries adjoining South Africa were gathering strength, and CUSO had its own Liberation Program in support. As we attended CUSO planning meetings in the ECSA Region, we were moved and inspired to meet leaders of the various liberation organizations working to achieve majority rule in the white-led countries of South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia). If we’d stayed in Canada, our teenage children would have entered fully into a peer-centred life. Life in Botswana offered family-centred opportunities: lurching on the sand track in the Toyota Land Cruiser through the Kgalagadi—encountering Basarwa, giving desert folk lifts, dazzled by springbok, wildebeest, flamingoes, and zebras. And most important of all: visiting CUSOBOTs. Our teenagers transcended the inevitable discomfort, moving beyond it to profound experience. So began an experience that changed the direction of our years that followed. Son Dave’s master’s thesis on Energy Technology in Third World Villages says in part: “This dissertation is dedicated to my parents…Without their commitment to development which took the family to Africa for two years in the 70s, this whole thing would never have occurred to me.” It’s humbling to learn that comfort, education and relative wealth does not put us ahead of people of wisdom, resilience, poverty, and kindness. Who learned more from whom is the question.
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Add a ReflectionWhat was the lasting impact of the CUSO Botswana experience on the rest of your life? How did it change you? How did it affect your values, beliefs, actions? Your thoughts on the meaning of the experience are important to all of us and to Cuso International (200 words max). Email your reflection to: Archives
June 2019
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