summer

Everyone asks you what you are going to do now that you have graduated.  Normally I joke around and say that I don't know. To be honest, I've never been much of a long-term planner... and it's starting to show.  I always have to know what I'm doing today, or tomorrow, but after that, I like the mystery.  

  

side note: there really is something to keeping the 

path of life unwritten or perhaps writing ten different

 ways that your life could end up. Sure it can be

 scary sometimes but more in a

 "sky-driving-is-so-scary-but-such-an-adrenaline-rush" 

kind of way. 

So while I may not know exactly what my future looks like six months from now, I do know how I'll be spending the next three months of my life... and that is what I'm going to tell you about ... not so you can be insanely jealous (though it's understandable if you are), but so that you can understand what this summer is really supposed to be: the period of finest development, perfection, or beauty previous to any decline. (let's face it, once you hit 25, it all starts to go downhill! [insert eye rolls from anyone older than 40 reading this])

This summer, before my big-kid-life is forced to start, I will get to spend it refining my development, my perfection, and my beauty (all both inside and out) in three of the greatest places on earth: WASHINGTON DC, NEW YORK CITY, and AFRICA!

Granted, I'll only be in DC for two days but I'm hoping those days will bring clarity into what my future looks like three months from now (thank you Beyond BYU 2012).  As for my weekend in NYC...... let's be honest, I just want to play with my fabulous sister! 

The majority of my summer will be spent back in Africa-- Uganda to be exact. I'll be with twenty or so other students and two professors researching everything from ethnicity to micro-saving to child soldiers.   We'll go to Rwanda to visit the Genocide Memorials there; we'll go on a safari; a couple of students and I are even hoping to go to the Refugee camps in the West. It is going to be an INCREDIBLE three months!

 

Now to get serious. I feel like I need to explain why I am going to Uganda this summer. I feel I like I owe an explanation to those people that I'm leaving-- a wonderful boy whose name rhymes with "boa", my friends and family, (heck! I even owe BYU an explanation for putting off graduation!).   

So why am I going? Because.....because....  Have you ever had something that touched you so deeply that it made an imprint on your very soul? your very eternal being?  Well, I have.  And her name is Africa. For reasons I cannot begin to comprehend, Africa is able to reach the deepest part of my soul-- the part that is normally reserved for God alone. 

Maybe it is because it was the conflict in Darfur that I first learned the power of loving strangers as children of God.  Rwanda taught me about strength and charity. Countless others have taught me about about the miracle of forgiveness.  Last summer, Ghana showed me how to hope for a better world, how to have faith.  And Uganda? My beautiful Uganda? Uganda will teach me patience. Uganda will prepare me for the future.  Uganda will steal my heart. Uganda will push me emotionally, spiritually, mentally, academically farther than I've even been... and because of that, Uganda will be the best thing that has ever happened to me. This summer will be the best thing that has ever happened to me.

 

Forty

 Ladies and Gents!  Say hello to the future me! Her name is CiCi (because for some reason, I think I"ll be going by that name when I'm old) and she's forty years old.

I know I know.... pretty awesome huh?  I mean, my hair is still short (I think I've fully converted to the pixie cut) and my sense of style is still ROCKING!  

Now, you may be thinking "why on earth did Corrine spend 40 minutes drawing this ugly stick figure on the computer?"  

Well.... the answer will come in story-form.  A girl at church said one Sunday that she created a "super" version of herself (aka her totally awesome future self) and whenever she is thinking about what she needs to work on, or where she needs to go next, she remembers this "SUPER WOMAN" and it helps giver her direction.  Needless to say, this really struck a cord with a girl who is getting ready to graduate from college with really no idea what she's going to do for the next year of her life.  

So... I went home that every day and created "SUPER CORRINE", my awesome forty year old self  and I wish to share her with you..... maybe for accountability or maybe just so y'all can make a mental note to be jealous of me in 16 years :)

So here goes nothing.  I want to be......

        .......a doctor (a phD doctor.. not the medical kind)

.......fluent in Español

....................a kind, patient, loving mother to who knows how many children!

........an avid book reader

........a missionary

...............a supportive "still-madly-in-love-with-my-husband" wife

...............a person who always sees the good in others

......... a world traveler (aka my passport is running out of room!)

............ a gospel scholar

.......... a person who never speaks guile

.............. a garderner

.................... empathetic and not afraid to show it

................. a researcher 

...... a master sewer

................ a shepherd, finding those who are lost

............. self-reliant

............ able to crochet/knit more than one pattern

................ still be crazy enough to think that I am changing the world

So there you have it friends... okay so I didn't write down everything but that's only because I didn't want you to be stuck reading this blog forever! So this is just part of who I want to be; in fact, I think this is who I really am... I just forget sometimes. 

E.E. Cummings once said: "It takes courage to grow up and be who you really are" 

I think I'm starting to see what he means...... 

 

.... poverty

"Poverty doesn't exist, sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Poverty is simply the absence of justice. It is like evil, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create poverty. Poverty is the result of what happens when man does not have any love left in his heart for fellow human beings. It is like the cold that comes when there is no heat, or the darkness that comes when there is no light"  (Francis W. Mulwa 2008 Demystifying Participatory Community Development: 10)

When I first read this quote-LOVED IT! (I wish I heard more of it).  Instead I am surrounded by a sea of :
 
   "Well, we just don't have the time to do this or that...."

                                                                                            "Well, what about America?"         

              
                "Well, it's hard to get the funding....."                           

 The LDS Church loves saying "L-O-V-E is really spelled T-I-M-E" when talking about family... why should it be any different for our WORLD FAMILY?? Quite frankly, it shouldn't.  In Paul Collier's book I quote below, he said that the bottom billion people who are stuck in poverty-- not to be confused with the four billion developing and growing out of poverty-- lack attention because it's not "glamorous" or honestly, because the solutions seem "too hard".  Well...... how are we supposed to tell them that?  Oh, I got it: "So.... people of Chad, Laos, Burma, DRC, and many others..... We just don't think you can make it so..... good luck?" I don't know about you but somehow that doesn't quite sit right with me.

"Development is about giving hope to ordinary people that their children will live in a society that has caught up with the rest of the world. Take that hope away and the smart people will use their energies not to develop their society but to escape from it."   (Paul Collier 2006. The Bottom Billion: 12)

So let us take action!  Let us not take the easy road, isn't that what people encourage you to do? (after all, that Robert Frost poem is SO over-quoted and yet... are we taking his advice?). As I study more about development, as I study more about politics, as I spend more time in other countries, it becomes more and more clear to me that knowledge is the door leading people out  of poverty.  And if knowledge is the door, anthropology is the key. Because, quite frankly, studying development hasn't gotten us anywhere closer to helping the bottom billion out of poverty- we need a change.  That change will come from actually studying the real issues-- conflicts, ethnic identity versus national identity, poverty and its affects on people, distribution of power, and even something as simple as daily life, relationships to place, to people, to languages, etc.... 

So that is why I am applying for graduate schools right now.  My hope is to be able to study poverty and its causes..... NOT study development as a discipline but rather, study poverty as a discipline. (I will be going into Anthropology with an emphasis in Development.... just so you know the technical terms).  And what will I do with this knowledge?  Hopefully help policy makers make better policies......

"The US Department of Defense is not going to take advice from that country's Agency for International Development. The British Department of Trade and Industry is not going to listen to the Department for International Development.  To make development policy coherent will require what is termed a 'whole of government' approach. To get this degree of coordination requires heads of government to focus on the problem."  (Paul Collier 2006. The Bottom Billion: 13)

So, I should be able to get them to listen to me right?

..... but ultimately, I hope to help lift EVERYONE out of that poverty that is like the cold with no heat, the darkness without light.  

  

Anyone who wants to join me, feel free.  In fact, I encourage it.

... happiness

Life is good. I don't really have anything to complain about and the past couple of days, I've had this smile on my face that I can't seem to wipe off... Seriously though, I try to not smile and I feel a twitch on the right side of my mouth, just itching to curve upwards.

As I was at the temple this afternoon with my friend Nicole, I was thinking about this strange phenomenon that is going on.  WHY am I so happy?  I mean, like I said, I don't really have anything to complain about but... it just feels like more than that.  THEN, it hit me.... it him me big:

My happiness was contributed to the absence of things (like trials) from my life but rather the addition of a greater thing-- God and his Son, Jesus Christ.  Now, I've been Mormon my whole life, I've served a Mormon Mission, but since this summer, I have grown a lot spiritually (probably more than I ever have in my life)-- I actually read my scriptures every morning, I begin and end each day with a prayer, I go to the temple twice a week... I have brought these two incredible men into my life more than ever before-- and that is what makes me so happy.  I'm sure of it.

So immediately I thought of this song I heard on my mission and I will share it with you-- Truly, following the commandments of God, letting them into your life doesn't just make you happy during trials but it makes you so much happier even when life is going good.

So enjoy and BE HAPPY!

... homesickness....

People always ask me if I want to go back to Ghana. I always answer "Yes, the only question is when"

The summer months of 2011 will forever be known as a life-changing summer. I found a people, a place that seemed so familiar yet so foreign, so understanding yet confusing... and in that place, with those people, I found myself.

Okay, so you might be thinking, "really Corrine? that seems a little dramatic, don't you think?" Well, it may be but you know what? I've finally accepted (after repeated accusations from my sister) that I am a tad bit dramatic.... so, yes, that may be dramatic but it is how I felt.

Now, what do I mean by "I found myself?" Well, finally, the pieces of the puzzle entitled "what will Corrine do after graduation" finally came together. I grew closer to my Savior and my Heavenly Father than I ever have in normal, real life. I found a genre of food that I LOVE! (and most importantly, learned how to cook it). I found that I could be good at compromising, leading, following, and all those other traits that are desirable in a person... with some more tweaking to do, of course.

Michelle, one of my dear sisters that traveled with me, said on our last day in Ghana: "You know, traveling is good for the soul". And I must concur. Traveling was good for my soul, and yet sometimes, I feel like in three short months, Ghana became home-- a place I long to travel back to.