[OTTAWA] Up at 6h30, I managed to get out the door by 7h15 to catch the 8h00 bus to Ottawa. I have 4 meetings scheduled with people I’ve only spoken with over the phone and a dinner and sleepover with Rory and Ronaye, friends of mine who live nicely snug between the Rideau Canal and the Rideau River.
I got off the bus at Ottawa University and walked to my first meeting with Rachel Vincent and Erin Simpson at the Nobel Women’s Initiative‘s modest offices on Slater street. Their space belies the clout of the organization that represents 50% of all women Nobel laureates in the prize’s 107-year history. The Nobel Women’s Initiative was established in 2006 by sister Nobel Peace Laureates Jody Williams (1997), Shirin Ebadi (2003), Wangari Maathai (2004), Rigoberta Menchú Tum (1992), Betty Williams (1976) and Mairead Corrigan Maguire (1976).
source: Nobel Women's Initiative
They recently lead a delegation to Thailand (including the Thai-Burma border) Ethiopia, South Sudan, and Chad from July 21 to August 6, 2008. The delegation was led by Jody Williams, Wangari Maathai and Mia Farrow and included Dr. Sima Samar (UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Sudan), Qing Zhang (Chinese Labour Activist) and Reverend Gloria White-Hammond (co-founder of My Sister’s Keeper, a humanitarian women’s group that partners with women in Sudan).
Rachel and Erin were very generous in providing me with contacts they made while in South Sudan, like women from the US-based Sudanese diaspora organization Sisterhood for Peace, or Sudanese Women’s Empowerment for Peace (SuWEP) which played an important role in the development of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement. The also gave me a dozen maps of South Sudan that show many development data, including, locations of wells and schools, road construction, tribal distribution, etc. Anyone who knows me realizes how much I love receiving such a gift of maps considering I used to make maps myself.
Afterward, I sat in a café for a good 3 hours with Hamid Ayoub, a 41-year-old Sudanese man from El Obeid, 
North Kordofan who has been living in Ottawa since 2001. Hamid has a Bachelor of Arts degree in From the College of Fine and Applied Arts from Sudan University of Science and Technology. Not willing to do military service to fight in a civil-war he actively denounced, he was forced to flee his country, leaving his wife and kids behind.
Hamid began a one-year to refuge himself from Sudan after in 2000 by heading westward from Khartoum to the border with Chad. He crossed into Chad to continue his journey which brought him to Canada. The need to distance himself from his homeland, Hamid passed through Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria and Niger before arriving in Canada where he sought and received refugee status.
He now teaches young immigrants in the Ottawa region to express their relationship with their new city through painting at the Ottawa Community Immigrant Services Organization (OCISO). Hamid has ‘landed immigrant’ status and has since been joined by his wife and children. He has exhibited his work in The National Art Gallery of Canada, The Museum of Civilization in Hull, and is now preparing for a January 2009 solo exhibit at Ottawa’s Heartwood Gallery, 153 Chaple Street.
None of these meetings would have been possible without the help of JP Melville who is consultant at the The Coalition of New Canadians for Arts and Culture (CNCAC), an organization that supports the diverse interests of immigrant and refugee individuals and community groups who want to be actively engaged in arts and culture in Canada. It was JP who led me to the others I met in Ottawa. On a side note, JP and the above-mentioned Rachel are getting married in two weeks. I swear, I had nothing to do with it!
Unfortunately, I did not get the opportunity to meet with Tony Lovink, who is now writing his PhD dissertation about the religious and ethnic adaptations of the thousands of South Sudanese refugee families in Canada, and their diasporic linkages. I will call him from Montréal for a lengthy telephone conversation in the hope of being able to meet the next time I’m in Ottawa.
