In Search of Captain Morgan

My journey to Malawi begins in Ottawa. There I met about 24 fellow credit union-ers who, like myself, were about to travel to 1 of 3 countries in Africa to work with local credit unions by providing advice and guidance to support the growth of their system as part of the Management Coaching program with the Canadian Cooperative Association. Myself, I’m heading to Malawi, a tiny land-locked country in central Africa, with my team of 6. The rest are heading to Uganda in the East and Ghana in the West. In 2 weeks we’ll reconvene in London and it’s hard to conceive now how much will happen and how our lives will be changed because of this experience.

But back to Ottawa…. We spent 3 days in our National Capital, and they were… well… FREEZING!!! Now don’t get me wrong. The orientation to the Canadian Cooperative Association, meeting with CIDA and receiving intercultural communication training was all super-helpful in preparation for the trip, but what I will remember the most was the cold, and in particular one night and the search for Captain Morgan.

So who is Captain Morgan? And no, not the spiced rum… Captain Morgan is the grandfather of Heidi, from Interior Savings Credit Union. He was a working with the First Aid unit (i.e. Red Cross) in the WW2 battle of Hong Kong, which took place in Dec. 1941 and ended with the Crown colony surrendering to Japan on Christmas day. Heidi’s grandfather was captured and was detained as a prisoner of war for 5 years. He survived to be released (only because a broken ankle prevented him from participating in an escape attempt that resulted in the capture and execution of his fellow prisoners) but spent years recovering from the experience. Recently a memorial of this battle was resurrected in Ottawa, and Heidi wanted to find her grandfather's name on the wall, and Blake (my partner in this project from Omista Credit Union in Moncton) & I decided to help.

I have a fairly good sense of direction and can read maps well… but I’m bad at gauging distance. I swear the first half of the walk was way faster than the second half… but maybe it was because it got dark and therefore MUCH colder. We knew the intersection we were heading too, but once there weren’t sure where the actual monument was. Turns out Ottawa folks don’t know their memorials either, after 3 or 4 people shrugged us off we found a couple of young guys who gave us great directions, for the completely wrong monument. Fortunately it was so cold that we decided to duck into the DFAIT building (old City Hall, fantastic building) under the guise of asking for directions… and they pointed us back the other way. At last we found the wall – a 6ft black marble wall off to the side with a Chinese symbol resembling a thunderbolt… we had seen that we had originally thought was some kind of electrical transformer! We bravely ventured off the sidewalk and being highly motivated by the fact I was standing in 30 cm of snow wearing only sneakers, I managed to find his name on it in less than 10 seconds. Heidi was elated, it was one of her life dreams to find this momunment.

So Captain Morgan was found, and it was time to find warmth… Indian Food here we come!