Renee Salandy (cropped)Renee Salandy
 

Report on 34th World Affairs Seminar, Carroll University, Waukesha, WI.

 

Travelling had never seemed so exciting to me as I arrived at the airport in Trinidad eyes aglow and bubbling with eagerness to board the plane to our adventurous one week experience. My peers Aliyah and Ruisa had just arrived and we all met up at our departure gate and patiently awaited our ticket out.

 

The plane ride was long, but pleasantly accommodated us with fair enough comfort to doze off until we arrived at our first destination ,  George Bush International Airport. On entrance the airport was stunning and a quick contrast to what we had home in Trinidad.  With only a short time to stop off in each airport, we made sure we checked all our flight documents and put them in order and  awaited our connecting flight to Chicago. Once in Chicago, we were swiftly collected to be  on our way to the university. On arrival, we were warmly welcomed by some of the main WAS staff in the WAS office and we were given a short briefing on what the rules were and where we were going next. After turning in our medicines and other necessary documents, we were all off to bed, anxious to start the new day.

 

The first  day began with a delicious array of breakfast items to choose from in the Main Hall where all the participants of the seminar were seated. Just having arrived quite late the previous night, I hadn’t had time to make any other friends as yet so I sat having breakfast with my roommate Shauna who chatted with me about her life in Wisconsin and how she had come to hear about the World Affairs Seminar. After breakfast there was an optional Worship Service where Shauna and I went back to our room and exchanged tidbits about our hometowns while unpacking our clothes into the armoires. Subsequently, we were scheduled to attend an activity in our ‘Small Group’ which was basically a division of all the participants into a groups A-T governed by a counselor. My counselor Claire, was a laid back youth, very strongly opinionated and commanding. I had been placed in the small group F and it was roughly 10 to 12 of us. Everyday we would meet in the morning periods to complete the assigned group activity together, and that morning the activity was to complete a sheet that touched on our individual leadership strengths and which in particular which we would like to develop over the week. I personally thought that this was a brilliant start as it said with promise to me that The World Affairs Seminar staff and counselors really took an interest in each of our leadership potentials and used it as a tool to create the learning schedule to fit each of our preferences.  After getting to know more about each other and our personal leadership goals, we broke our small groups and attended our first lecture in the Main dining hall which was Mr. Robert Ricigliano who spoke about Negotiation and Problem-Solving Skills and the importance of the Internal and External voices and censoring our thoughts. We then indulged in dinner and ventured to the Shattuck Auditorium, a beautiful one at that, to listen to Mr. Fred de Sam Lazaro of the PBS News hour deliver his lecture on ‘Making the Foreign Less Foreign’.  His presentation was fairly interactive and graphic as it showed video clips of issues that were causing destitution, illness and death in various areas of the world. After his presentation, Mr. de Sam Lazaro invited the participants to pose any questions they had for him and we all were open to listen and ask anything that was related to the topic of sustainability or anything that he had mentioned in his speech.  When the Q&A session was concluded, we were allowed open recreation from 8:15 p.m. till our mandatory roll call and curfew floor meetings at 10:30.  During ‘open rec’ as our counselors called it, we were allowed to explore the university campus and myself, Ruisa and Rebecca, a Canadian girl that we had become friends with earlier that day, decided to attend karaoke in the famous P.I.T. of the campus and also attend a basketball game that the Carroll University was hosting in its Ganfield Gymnasium. To end off a great first night, we ventured back to our respective dorm rooms to attend the floor meetings and then to the warm cozy beds for our nighttime snooze.

 

Day two began early with breakfast being served between 8 and 9 a.m. then off to our small groups to complete the ‘Can you map it?’ activity. This involved the members in the group looking for the manufacturing basics of a product and how it travels from country to country in order to reach us in the retail stores. My group, looking specifically at the production of Nike tennis shoes, researched the countries that Nike had based their production plants in and also the trail of travel the products would have to take to end up in the retail stores located across the globe. It was shown that the shoes were created in processes and many different countries were involved in the packaging and distribution of  these Nike shoes such as Botswana, Mexico, Australia, China, The United States and many more. After highlighting these areas on a map, we broke for lunch and  we were  then invited to join a bigger group where we were meant to discuss our findings and present our maps to the counselors. After that activity, we gathered in the Shattuck Auditorium for journalist, Mr. Robert Neuwirth’s presentation entitled “Tales from the Global Scrap Heap” where he spoke about different cities in the world that suffered from extreme poverty and destitution. He made reference to his novel “Shadow Cities” which was available for sale and book signing after his presentation and he also showed video clips of squatter sites in Nairobi, India, Rio de Janeiro and Istanbul. His presentation in particular was captivating and interesting because it portrayed images that  one did not usually see and he dissected them thoroughly and interestingly. After his presentation, we had dinner and we were then offered a choice of  3 documentaries that would be showing that night. I chose to watch the documentary entitled “ Milking the rhino” which all in all was a very interesting but sad documentary which exaggerated  on the  effects of a drought in two of the oldest cattle cultures, Namibia and Kenya. The video  shows that while some environmentalists think that conservation is important within the communities, the cattle and land cannot survive during the drought and  cattle were falling dead every single day. It was hard to watch but important for us to understand that the cultural change that these countries would undergo is completely necessary for development in the Massai tribes. After the documentary was our usual recreation time and floor meetings.

 

On Tuesday, after breakfast, we had a very interesting and enjoyable small group session where we were using items that had been put into recycling bins and garbage cans to create pieces of art. My group, all being very creative, made an array of items such as carboard flip flops, handbags, collages, stuffed toy pencil holders, wallets and other items. The lesson was important. It said to us, that ‘One man’s trash is another man’s treasure’ and we should make use of things in a better manner and sustain the environment by not purging the earth of its natural substances to make man-made items that we use and then dispose of inappropriately or unnecessarily. After lunch we listened to Mr. Peter Sawyer who spoke about “ Walking the tightrope to Sustainability;  Creating solutions in constrained times’ and Mr. Rick White who spoke about Electricity and Transitioning to Sustainability. For me, the most interesting part of these two speakers’ presentations were their way of answering questions. At the end of their speeches, the WAS participants were allowed to go up to the microphones provided and ask questions. In my opinion, it was interesting to hear different cultural experiences coming out from these participants because even though we are all dealing with similar problems in our places of residence, each participant had different details and ideas and Mr. Sawyer and Mr. Rick’s presentations were the most interactive and had the best feedback from both participants and speakers. After their speeches, we had dinner and were then broken up into “break out sessions’’ which we were put in based on choices we had made a previous night. My break out session leader was Mr. Derek Green who spoke about Food Co-operatives how they work to benefit and conserve food and money amongst people.  He began speaking on his childhood, and that he had grown up in a home where they grew everything that they ate and raised their own cows and chickens to eat from.  He talked about how delicious the food he had at home was and how he couldn’t understand why food outside didn’t taste half as good as what he was fed at home. He then enlightened our small group of the process of making some of our favourite foods and how much artificial substance there is in fast and frozen food items that we buy to consume. He then spoke a bit about what food co-operatives are and why they were sustainable and a better choice than buying food out or cooking food singly. He explained that there are different types of co-operatives and he shared with us a little bit about his own and he showed us their blog page and gave us tips to joining food co-operatives and becoming vegetarian or vegan. One lasting point that he made was that if human beings continue to consume the way we are now, the food that we have will not sustain to fill billions of people in the future and the poverty statistics will only increase.  After the discussion, we were invited to ask final questions and were then off to recreation, role call and bed. 

 

Wednesday was pretty interesting as we all attended our scheduled field trips in different groups than the ones we were put into. This allowed us to exercise our social skills and meet some of the other participants that may not have necessarily been in our groups, dorm floors, or socializing circles. My group attended the Urban Ecology center- Riverside, where we were greeted warmly and given a brief history of the ecology center and its purpose. Afterward, we were further split into a group of two and my group was taken to weed plants that were invasive species to the ecology center.  It was a very fulfilling experience as we all worked together and got down into it. It reminded me that hard work, manual labour especially, keeps one humble and the beauty of the earth and land there was breathtaking and worth every second we spent manicuring it.  After about an two hours, we prepared t had to leave as the drive back to the university was about 45 minutes. For the remainder of Wednesday, we only had to debrief our field trips with everyone in the Shattuck Auditorium and were then free to relax and socialise until the talent show that evening. The talent show itself was fantastic and showcased the brilliant capabilities of many of the WAS participants. Many of them sang, danced, played the piano and other instruments and basically showed their passion for the arts. One performance that really made me proud was a monologue that was performed by the two Anguillan girls Chelsey and Senegal, who we had made friends with earlier on in the week. It was heartwarming to see them represent our Caribbean with its beautiful dialogue telling about the different islands. We could all see the interest and amazement in the other participants’ faces as they listened and learned. 

 

Thursday was a fairly easy-going day as well as we had breakfast and then listened to Mr. Mark Hannafin who gave insight on ‘Conflict, Development and Sustainability’  and later on having a debriefing session in our small groups about handling conflicts and  making a conflict free world. We paused for lunch and then continued our debriefing and then headed to the Stackner Ballroom where our ‘Garbage to Art’ items were set up for display and the closing group celebrations and remarks were made. We formally discussed the weeks events as a large group and the counselors had prepared as a special treat for us, a picture slideshow of all the things we had done over the week. We then proceeded to dinner and afterward the air became thick with excitement for the much anticipated ‘ Global Night of Music’ dance. The dance was really the cherry to the desert as we got to mingle freely as youth and express ourselves to music we knew and loved. It was enjoyable also because we were able to see our counselors as youth as well and see their fun  and free sides as we all enjoyed one another’s company. Finally we had our floor meetings and sadly our individual goodbyes as we were carded to leave a mere two hours after the dance ended. Exhausted but excited to travel again and return home, freshly stuck with an overwhelming amount of knowledge and eagerness. We eventually left and were back on our way to Trinidad to be with our friends, family and loved ones.

 

CONCLUSION

 

All in all the trip was a perfect experience for me as I was able to meet new people from different corners of the globe from as far as South Korea and China to as close as the Cayman Islands. It brought as all together to have ‘ Peace through understanding’ and to realise that WE are the future and we will have to see some changes through in order to perpetuate the human race. It was educational, not only on an scholastic and humanitarian level, but it was also culturally educational as we learnt a lot about numerous cultures and practices and how the same issues that affect us affect others in various other parts of the world. I learned to communicate better and bond with people and also I was glad to share my own experience and culture with others and I think they were all glad to receive it as well. I am extremely appreciative of the Rotary club for affording me such a priceless experience and would be more than happy to extend my knowledge and relate my experience to anyone that will participate in the future.