Au Revoir

Greetings to all!

My name is Amélie, and I am from Québec, Canada. I will be working with Dominic at CAFRA’s Regional Secretariat from September to November. We will help to rebuild their Website and make it more accessible and user-friendly for both people working on it and people visiting it. We have already set up their internal network, with which they will be able to exchange files without using diskettes or printing paper copies. I will also be doing translation between English and French since my studies are within that field of languages. So that is some examples of what we will work on with CAFRA.

Prior to coming to Trinidad and Tobago, we spent three months having classes on Web designing, which comprised basic HTML coding, dynamic Website setup and graphic formatting. We also had a Political Sciences class on the evolution of the world order, as well as numerous workshops on specific issues, such as the environment, Eastern Europe, the FTAA, etc. We also had to organize fundraising activities, which not only help pay a little for the trip, but also to sensitize people around us to what we were going to do and the reasons we had decided to embark ourselves on such a journey. We were 16 boys and girls that started the program last June, with different profesional and personal backgrounds, and got together to form a rather efficient team. When everyone left for their respective destination (ranging from Brazil to South Africa, passing by Georgia and Jamaica, to name just a few), we all had the impression that we were leaving behind a second family... Which is great since having spent three months together on a full-time basis, a lot, good or bad, could have had happened. So I can say that for me, this experience has been up to now very challenging, but also very gratifying. It allowed me to meet with people that had different stories making up their "life luggage", and I felt privileged to be a part of this adventure.

Before I started this internship with Alternatives, I had spent six months travelling in Latin America, discovering another world than the one I was used to live in and brushing up my Spanish. The first three months, I visited Ecuador and Peru, with a small hop to Bolivia, doing treks around the rainforrests, mountains and archeological sites. I met people from different backgrounds, from different regions, and heard different stories on these people’s situation. For the last three months, I flew over to Costa Rica to go volunteer on an organic farm, Finca La Flor de Paraiso, to participate in the daily chores. We had to care the animals (goats, sheeps, horses, hens and geese) and look after the different gardens and fields. This organisation acts also as an environmental school that aims to sensitize people, either foreigners or Costa Ricans, on such issues as health hazards related to chemical agriculture, mass agriculture in a context of globalization, etc. People working on that farm were very friendly, open-minded and eager to share what they had with others, so I felt again as I had found another family, Costa Rican this time.

To wrap it up, I would simply like to say that I am happy to be visiting Trinidad and Tobago, as it is totally new for me, and also to be working with an organization that has participating for so long in helping making things change for the better.

Au plaisir, Amélie Baillargeon

Bonjour,

My name is Dominic, and I am still wondering why Alternatives has chosen me to come here, in Trinidad and Tobago. To begin with, I am a francophone, and even though I had a few English classes already, I had never really spoken it. Also, I had never travelled out of my country; therefore, it was impossible to anticipate how I would react to different customs than mine. And the most funny part of it was that I could not even locate Trinidad and Tobago on a map. But one thing is for sure, I am very happy I was picked to come here. After a month, I already know that the knowledge I was lacking will soon be replaced with a great experience. And I hope that my coming to CAFRA’s Regional Secretariate will be as beneficial for them as it will be for me.

The way to be the most useful will be, for me, to become the most unuseful for CAFRA. By saying so, I mean that as a computer technician and as a person who has good knowledge in this domain, I will not keep it for me to make my presence critical for the functionning of the office. On the contrary, I will gladly share what I have acquired during my training and give CAFRA’s employees simple tools to use for managing and updating their Website all by themselves. To make it possible, Amélie and I have already set up a network that will allow all the computers to share a single Internet connection. My next goal is to create a new image for the Website, and to link it to an updating tool as simple to use as a word processor. We will also prepare sufficient reference documents for them to be independent.

However, three months is a very short period of time to attain this ideal. Thus, it is certain that not everything will be perfect when we will leave at the end of November. And also, I wish for future interns to be as lucky as we are and come here to continue the work and friendships we will have started.

Au revoir, Dominic Gaboury