A World Away

I have been one bad, bad, BAD blogger of late and instead have been devoting all my waking hours to deciphering convoluted readings from my political science course packs or trying to make sense of the Millennium Development Goal tracking websites (both enterprises are futile I do not recommend attempting either). So I apologize that I allowed such silly diversions to distract me from my beloved blog. I mean, it's just school right? Right.

And wrong. This semester I'm getting to enjoy something I like to call "school+" like school on steroids.

One of my professors this semester is the somewhat famous Stephen Lewis. He runs the ... wait for it, Stephen Lewis Foundation in Africa that tries to combat the spread of HIV and provide services to those infected and the orphans that AIDS has left behind. He was Canada's envoy to the UN for a while, he sat in the provincial legislature in Ontario etc etc etc. All in all he's a well-informed, international humanitarian BADASS!

This past Monday Mr. Lewis was not present at the beginning of lecture. Why was this you may wonder. Is Stephen in a manicure appointment? Hungover? (no wait, that's my excuse) Watching back episodes of Jersey Shore?

Oh no, these are human type excuses. Super people, like Stephen Lewis, have super human excuses for missing things. In this case Stephen Lewis was flying back to Canada from the Democratic Republic of the Congo where he was present at the opening celebrations for the 'City of Joy' a housing community for survivors of the vicious rape campaign that has been waged in the DRC for a number of years. This is of course what I did with my weekend too, I just took an earlier flight.

Lewis shows up about twenty minutes late. He comes straight from the airport with cumbersome wheeled luggage in tow as evidence. He has been travelling for the last 30 hours plus but didn't go home to nap he came to class and when he stepped up to the podium he didn't miss a beat.

This new city of Joy has been built next to something called the Pansy Hospital, this is home to the only doctor in DRC capable of repairing the horrific damage done by the brutally violent rapes committed in the ongoing civil conflict. Lewis told us about women having entire clips of ammunition fired into their vaginas. And another woman whose brother was killed in front of her after he refused to have sex with her, her three children were killed also and she was gang raped. It's almost impossible to put the horror into words, it's even hard to write about them now.

But the opening of the city of Joy was anything but sorrowful. There was singing, dancing, a performance of the Vagina Monologues in French. The opening of the city of Joy was joyful.

And sitting in this giant lecture hall in the belching urban core of downtown Toronto I am lucky enough to get the tiniest taste of that joy. It makes you realize we're not just lucky here in Canada, we're STUPID LUCKY!

Those assignments that are due next week? Important but not life threatening. Stressing about how my ass looks in my jeans when they're fresh out of the dryer? Understandable but really quite silly. The Canadian passport that sits in a basket on my desk? Absolutely friggin' priceless. Having a charming-maverick-humanitarian-badass as a professor? One of the greatest gifts I can imagine.

On a lighter note the view below is from the rooftop lounge at the Thompson Hotel. I was enjoying a couple of beverages in their downstairs lounge with some hot lady friends of mine a couple of weeks ago. We were ready to move on to another spot so we asked the desk people if they could recommend a nice martini/wine bar nearby.

"Is it just the three of you?" She asked, trying to suss out if there were any masculine clingers using us a bait to gain entree.

"Yes."

She had a couple of words with the steroid-inflated goon wearing an earpiece who was guarding the elevators with his equally goon-ish partner and - whisk! - there we are strutting around a dead-sexy low-lit lounge with this spectacular view of the city.

Sometimes it's nice to be VIP, even if it's only for one night.