"I'm so happy" were the first words I wrote in my journal today.
Even if it wasn't that spectacular, my day could not have gone any better. I felt like a really big help.
So, a lot of what I wrote in my last post was not necessarily incorrect, just not exactly practised the same way in Chisasibi. The sweat lodge, for example, varies a great deal from place to place for how it is done, but it is apparently far more intense than anyone had expected. Wish I could've gone! As for the pipe ceremony, here (or at least in Jack's house,) women do smoke from the pipe. I couldn't participate though, so I can't really describe it, or give great detail of how I felt before and after. The ideas, however, are consistent for the most part though.
So pardon me for using internet sources, for they tend to generalize all native practises into one group, as if they are all the same. They're not, by the way. One Cree settlement's practises may vary a great deal. Just like your traditions may vary a great deal from your mother's mother's way of living.
I don't believe that I have mentioned that we have a visitor with us this week, staying with us! Her name is Andre-Anne, "the most beautiful woman I've ever met" (from Norman, which I have yet to blog about...) and I think what I love most about her is how great of a listener she is! She is also very productive and helpful all the time. We were talking about the Katimavik bursary that is no longer available, for example, and she informed me of a few opportunities to make money as a Katimavik alumni doing work from home, and promotional stuff. I'm DEFINITELY down.She mentioned that she would definitely recommend me for any job with Katimavik because I seem to have a really "mature" perspective of Katimavik.
"Merci," I said.
"Well," she said, "matter-of-factly, it's the truth" she replied in her lovely English accent.
Today, she had to talk to us about our competencies, the community, work, and how everything functions in the house in general. She's here to give the Katimavik office a better idea of how we all work, but also, to be sure that we get the best opportunity we possibly can. Thus, it helps that she's such a great listener!
It was really nice talking about the group dynamic especially because I feel like we're all really close, we get along really well, we respect each other and it all just seems to run fairly "swimmingly," I said. (Chris sort of made fun of me for using that word, but it works.)
We all said that we work pretty well together and we have small things to improve, but when we asked for Andre-Ann's perspective, she was more optimistic than I thought. Honest too.
She's seen quite a few Katimavik groups and usually there's at least one or two that are left out of the group. Then she continued to say that she wrote in her notes that she thought that she thinks they could actually use our group for a Katimavik promotional video. Thus, we are the examples of Katimavik. What an honour.
As lame as it is, I started to tear up, because I remembered what I went through in CELP and how terrible our group dynamic was, how that took a lot away from what I found to be a beautiful opportunity and, I smiled. It felt really great to know that I'm a part of that.
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