By Chaya Erika Go
January 18-22 was a week for many things:
There was the Africa Awareness Conference Week, a hearty celebration of the continent and a campaign to further increase its presence in our campus. There was poetry, music, storytelling, fruitful conversations, and (oh so) much dancing! After all it is nice to be reminded, and as a Canadian archaeologist from SFU side-commented to a bevy of usherettes, that “We all came from Africa. ..It’s just that I faded out along the way.”
It was also Islam Awareness Week and I got a ticket to the lecture by Dr Jamal Badawi, a scholar on the Holy Qur’an. I was thrilled to learn that ‘jihad’, which in Arabic literally means ‘to exert maximum effort, to strive’, alludes more to an internal battle rather than an actual bloodbath (and true enough it is much harder to fight against one’s own anger than to smash your enemy’s head!). I got goosebumps at the revelation and remembered Mahatma Gandhi. But the debate on pacifism aside, the talk was a refreshing call to re-examine our many misperceptions of the faith.
The week also saw an overwhelming surge of support for Haiti across campus. It was indeed, and continues to be, an expression of com-passion. Seated in the Frederick Wood Theatre for the Help Hear Haiti event, I felt unusually patriotic to be part of UBC (kudos to our fellow students, faculty members and president!). Though struggling with devastating losses and a profound sense of helplessness, many of us still choose to be very much involved on and off-field, ready to engage with the complexities of the crisis.
This week blew me away –it was intense with festivities and grief alike– and I woke up on a Saturday needing to wrap my heart and head around all of it. And I was brought back to the slam poet Shane Koyczan and his piece “This Is My Voice” which we gave a standing ovation to at the UBC Student Leadership Conference. Perhaps his lines sum up this week pretty well –the difficulty of most situations but also the tremendous encouragement we give one another. And I’d like to think that on Sikiliza, the last cultural night of the Africa Awareness Week, some of us danced hard keeping the rest of the troubled world in sincere remembrance.