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This land is your land, This land is my land,
From Bonavista, to Vancouver Island
From the Arctic Circle to the Great Lakes waters,
This land was made for you and me.
The Travellers
What land do I live in? Are there parts of this land that I do not want? This is the city I live in:
Thirty per cent of residents depend on government assistance. Local food banks deal with more than 3,600 requests a month. The health authority, which last year distributed 1.8 million needles, estimates there are more IV drug users per capita than on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Girls as young as 11 or 12 regularly work the stroll. [The] high incidence of break and enters, car thefts, street robberies and violent assaults has placed the city at the top of Canada's urban crime rankings for nine of the past 10 years.
Canada's worst neighbourhood
We have the highest crime and murder rates in the country. Also, a few months ago, I wrote about the high cost of healthy eating in the province.
One of the most frustrating bits of being in Africa was the constant pull to tourist land. It was my messed up re-entry reverse culture shock. I was so happy to be back yet had a feeling near guilt every time I walked to the gas station for ice cream, took photos of monkeys or checked my email.
Now I'm back and living, you guessed it, in tourist land. I have done nothing to address the social injustices in my own community.
The pull to return to Africa is like a magnet; every fibre of my being longs to be there. But God said wait. Your time is done. But it seems like it would be so easy to go back. And because it seems that way, I wonder if it then becomes the easy way out. (And besides, God said wait.)
Filed at 10:03 PM in gambia , of my soul , social conscience