choices

Five years ago this month, I was living in Rwanda. My sister had just left for the US on the same plane as my boss, and I was truly on my own in Africa for the first time. Days later, my friend and coworker D.'s husband died. He was 35, and he died of pneumonia. 35 year old men do not just die of pneumonia, not anywhere, not even in Africa. It's not such a different place than here. He died of AIDS, and we all knew it, although we none of us said it.

I have written before about his wake, how I sat on the floor in their bedroom, holding D. while she cried, while his body lay on the bed behind, a bandage wrapped around his head to keep his jaw closed. How I felt honored to be a woman among women where women handle the weight of death, and how I wanted to cry, "I'm not old enough for this!" I may not have written this part before, but that night when I slept in my own bed in my hotel, the Auberge Beausejour where I always stayed in Kigali from the first night I spent in the country, I woke up in the dark afraid to turn over, afraid that I might fight a dead body there next to me in the bed.

I got an email from D. today. She asks if I've forgotten about her, and if I can send some money. She had meningitis and was in the hospital for a month. It's from the "syndrome" she says, and I know. She hasn't had a job since I closed the country program for the organization I worked for in Rwanda. Jobs are hard to find, and she doesn't have many qualifications.

I don't know what to say. How can I say that I fall behind every month myself, that I'm more in debt than I was last month or two months ago, that I owe more money to two banks than she has ever or will ever see? How can I say that I need this money for organic milk and a nice interview suit when she has four kids who need food and school with an unemployed mom and no dad? How can I say that I bought new contacts this month and I thought longingly of a trip to Africa, that I went to Ethiopia for the month that she was in the hospital with meningitis?

I can't, and so I never answered last time she emailed, probably the last time I wrote about this. I stayed silent, and I didn't act. She is desperate, and I am... well, I feel helpless, but the truth is that I am not helpless. I make choices, and if I am completely honest, I have chosen to spend my money, what little I make, in a thousand different ways these last months, and none of them helped her. Not at all.

off again

I do this every single week: I get on a later schedule on the weekend and I go to bed far too late on Sunday night, resulting in starting the week exhausted. Every single week I vow to get up earlier on Sunday morning so I can go to sleep earlier, and every single week I fail. It's just impossible to get up at 7 on a Sunday. Not possible.

homecoming

I ate myself sick on Liberian food, mixing greens and rice together with a spoon while an elderly white woman nearby said, too loudly, "This is so hot. I like spicy food, but I can't even eat this." Colors swirled around me, women in sparkling headties and men in embroidered shirts. I sat out the Grand March, but joined the dance floor under the ceiling fans when the unstructured dancing started, to West African music. After a while, I requisitioned a baby, and bounced him gently to the beat of the music. I leaned down and smelled his silky black curls, and ate yet another bit of toasted coconut ball. The woman sitting next to me told me about her daughter, running around with a thousand little braids, and how the girl's father is Liberian, how she's glad that she can know this part of her but she wouldn't let her visit, not until she's grown. I drank three glasses of water in a row, and finally surrendered the baby to walk home in the cooling air, wishing to go back two years in time, or forward, and be back in Liberia.

abdication of principles

I have reached a new low. So low that I don't even want to admit it. So low that I hardly dare mention it for fear that my dad will make fun of me incessantly for the rest of my life, even though he's since been converted by evidence of the terribleness perpetrated by this place I am about to mention.

Back story: I wear contacts. I do not wear glasses. I have glasses, and they are dandy to have for such occasions as fire alarms in the middle of the night (here in Gone West) or pee breaks in a pit latrine in the middle of the night (back in Southern Sudan) or I don't really know what else because that's all I've used them for. I didn't have them on any other Africa trips. I just went blindly about in the dark. But I don't wear my glasses in real life, because they make me dizzy and I misjudge distances and they give me a headache, all of which I consider to be bad things.

Unfortunately, I am on my last set of contacts. I am on my last set of contacts and panic is setting in because they may tear and I can't get any more because I don't have health insurance and I don't have money and I borrowed money from my parents for the contacts but my prescription has expired, which means a $300 visit to the cheap eye place. Why do you even NEED a prescription for contacts? It's a racket.

So I have made a terrible concession. I looked up the W@lm@rt Vision Center, and I'm calling it tomorrow. Patronizing W@lm@rt goes against all of my principles. I feel dirty.

But yos, I am dead broke. It's this or blindness.

...

I was walking along today, talking to myself, as one does, (WHAT? you know you do it, too) and I caught myself saying to myself, "Is that tomorrow or next tomorrow?" Yeah, no one says that here. It's a Sudanism. Amused.

some people think it's a good thing

Okay. I'm bored. I mean, I'm not BORED, but I'm a little bored. It's just... everything works here, you know? The biggest excitement I've had lately is schedule changes on the train. No one leap up and get too excited here. The other day, my train stopped because there was a mechanical problem with the train ahead of us and I walked the rest of the way to work. But how is this even a story? If I'd just stayed on the stupid train for five more minutes, they would have fixed it all and I would have gotten to work, probably still on time.

Our car slid off the road into a swamp when we were racing for a plane because our airstrip was too muddy for the Caravan to land once in Southern Sudan.

That was a story worth telling. And I told it, here. But oh, sob, weep. My train was delayed. They fixed it. Big deal.

The problem is that there are safety nets. I'm not big on super scary things. People think I am, because I travel to places like Tiny Little Town, and Liberia. But I would die before I bungee jumped or sky dove. (I say this, but I would probably do it. I would fret and worry, and then I would get over it and jump and love it. So I take that back.) I don't like super scary things, but I get so bored when everything works. I actually love places that have ditches too deep to be safe all along the side of the road. I love places where you get stranded ten hours from nowhere, with no cell coverage and no one to call even if you had it, and you have to hitch rides with random lorry drivers. Everything runs so smoothly here, and it's so very boring.

all the cool people are in Southern Sudan

I've been missing Rwanda a lot lately. It may be the weather, these lovely, sunny 80 degree F days like every day was in Rwanda, or it may be the concept of staying in one place for a while, the panic that I have to tamp back at the idea that this, here, is it, is home. I miss the turquoise waters of Lake Kivu stretching in front of me every morning, and the walks down the little path where tiny boys herding huge cows greeted me shyly. "Amakuru?"

I miss the road through the mountains from Kigali to Kibuye, on which I knew - I still know - every curve. I knew which curves required slowing down and which you could take at full speed. I knew where the trucks were likely to pull out on the other side of blind corners, straining and groaning to get up to speed on the hills. I knew where I had to turn off my a/c in order to keep power in my own baby Land Cruiser. I knew where I had space enough to pass even though I couldn't see around the next curve. I knew how the buses and trucks would take the inside of the curve, even if that meant driving in the wrong lane. If you don't think you are going to die at least once on the drive to Kigali, I used to tell people, then watch out for the way back, because your brush with death is still coming. I can close my eyes and drive that road: up the long hill out of Kigali, through the streets of Gitarama filled with pink-suited prisoners, over the bridge into Ntara ya Kibuye, past the waterfall, next to gleaming inlets of the lake, and finally around one last blind curve to the roundabout in Kibuye. I am aching to drive it again.

In the park where I sit most evenings, a group of African men from all over the continent play football (by which I mean soccer, oh US Americans). If I ignore the perfect green grass and the white guys playing frisbee in the background, if I close my eyes and listen only to their voices, I could be back, somewhere in Africa. When I walk home afterwards, though an apparent utopia of grass and flowers, swingsets and bikes left tumbled on the front walk, I feel a bit of a jolt to be in this place instead of that.

A week or two ago, I was reading through my posts from Southern Sudan last fall. I realized that a year ago, I was getting ready to go to Southern Sudan, where I was miserable. To be fair, it was not all the fault of Southern Sudan (despite the HOT, which I have discussed in unending detail). I didn't really give it a chance, because I was so tired of leavings and arrivings. I wanted to be and to belong. So here I am, attempting to be and belong. Africa doesn't come up here unless I bring it up, usually, and entire days and weeks can go by with the people I meet never knowing that I am anything but a new lawyer who recently moved to Gone West. I have to accept, I suppose, that this place, this country, will forever be only part of me.

It seems lately that the authors of every international blog I read have up and moved to Southern Sudan. When they write about how difficult the place is, I can only grimace and nod my head in agreement. And yet, as they point out, there are people and beauty and joy there, too. I miss even that Tiny Little Town in Southern Sudan, even the mornings where I was sweating before I even got lotion on my face (lotion+ sweat = disgusting).

One of these bloggers posted a photo that I saw this morning: my favorite little bird in Southern Sudan (see this post). It's from the back, but you can see the little red blush-spot on its cheek. I smiled and, for a moment, I could be both parts of me.

observe:

Since I have to go to bed immediately, I shall here place, instead of the long post I have been composing in my head, the following inane observation:

I think they have started adding rosemary to my favorite salad dressing.

The end.

(Aren't you glad you stuck around for that?)

bird brain

Some days, for various reasons, I need to exit work through a set of double glass doors. They lock these doors at five p.m. and one has to go through a smaller side door, a fact which I am incapable of remembering. Today I crashed directly into the glass doors a mere fraction of a second after someone said, "The doors are locked!" because she knew, as everyone does now, that I would run into the glass doors. "Don't mind me!" I said, retreating through the smaller side door, "I'm like a bird slamming my head against a window! I never learn!"

some title

So! It's Sunday again. I have no idea how that happened. I just woke up and there it was. I don't know what happened to those days in between, either. I'm pretty sure they happened... yes, I can go through and find at least one memory per day, so they did happen. I have just been blog and internet lazy. In my defense, the weather has been lovely, and every evening I face the internet v. walk dilemma and generally choose the walk. Because it's pretty out there! Unfortunately, I still feel as if something is sitting on my chest when I spend too much time in unfiltered air.

I was beginning to get worried that there was something more wrong with me than allergies (like lung cancer! hypochondria, again) because shouldn't springlike-ness be over by now? Shouldn't allergies by over? By July? But then I overheard a conversation in which random people downtown were discussing how a mere two weeks ago their allergies got to the worst point they had ever been and they were forced to seek prescription medication for the first time. So perhaps this is just the penalty one pays for the drawn-out winter/spring that never ends. Although it appears to have finally ended. HALF WAY THROUGH JULY. I never thought I would make favorable comparisons to Michigan, but! I have. I have actually caught myself saying longing things about how Michigan weather is beautiful starting in May.

In other news, since I have nothing interesting to say, I will inform you that I have become obsessed with the library. This may be another reason why you never hear from me. Every time I hear about a book I want to read, I just log into the website and request that it be put on hold, and then I prance over there on my lunch hour and pick it up! It's brilliant. Now I have lots of interesting books, and I read them, and the internet is boring by comparison. Even my internet. So. See you in a few weeks.

(I'm kidding. I hope.)

three little stories

We meant to come back into town to watch fireworks from the top of my building, but the fire took a long time to start, which is what happens when you try to make it using a bow and a spindle, and so the s'mores were not ready until nearly 9:30 and the fireworks started at 10-ish. So we did what any logical people would do: we fired up the bucket truck and, one at a time, we rode to the top of the arc of the bucket and watched all the fireworks in a 360 degree span. When it was my turn, I rode up tremulously, clinging to the edge of the bucket, afraid of mechanical malfunctions sending me tumbling 55 feet to the ground. I don't mind heights, but falling is a fear. At the top, after only seconds, I called down, "Hello? Hello? I would like to come down now," but when the bucket touched down on the cab of the truck, I asked to be sent back up, now confident that it would hold. I stood 55 feet up in the air, dangling in a little bucket, turning around and around to watch a row of fireworks to the north and the sky lighting up like lightning to the east where the fireworks were just beyond a hill, and the sporadic flashes to the west and south.

...

Three little girls had a lemonade stand on a corner. I was half a block away when they started calling, "Lemonade!" The little boy a few feet in front of me, running back to join them, said, "I KNOW there is lemonade."

"Not you!" they called. "Her! Lemonade!"

I bought a big glass of strawberry lemonade for 50 cents, and wished them good luck with their sales. "Thank you for choosing ***, ***, and ***'s lemonade!" one called after me, as if my lemonade stand options were numerous.

...

A man stood at the front door of a big old house, holding open the screen door and talking to the dog just inside the glass door behind. "Prince William! Tell them that I'm here! Tell them that I'm here! Bark! Just bark, so they know I'm here!"

It took me a few minutes, walking by, to figure out what he was saying, and that he was actually begging the dog to bark (that "Prince William" part threw me off).

Finally he started barking himself. "Bark! Arf! Arf! Bark! Bark so they know I'm here! Arf! Arf!" and finally the dog responded with a high-pitched yapping "Erf! Erf! ErfErfErfErf!"

neither here nor there

I feel a little bit frantic about activities lately, like I have to do every one that pops up, because I'm never sure, what with the having of about four friends, total, when the next opportunity will offer itself. I'm actually a tiny smidge glad, though, that my friend who is downtown at a big event didn't call me back after I returned her call. I know that I should want to go; her new boyfriend is bringing his friends and meeting boys is, after all, the Point of Life. But I'm tired. Amazing how exhausting it is to be left taskless, and, too, I stayed out too late last night living the life of a girl in the city: sharing four appetizers for dinner with a friend and then meandering back toward the train, stopping at a pub and a "nice" sports bar on the way just because the sun wasn't gone yet and the air was so perfect for sitting at an outside table.

It's brilliant to be sitting outside in the summer in Gone West. This is why I moved here, this chance to have friends and to know, as you sit outside with them, that they will not be leaving, and neither will you. Not unless something goes terribly wrong. I miss sitting outside at night in Africa: in Kibuye, in Monrovia, even in Tiny Little Town in Southern Sudan. I don't miss knowing that the people I sat with would be a part of my life only for a short time, maybe even a only a day or two. I don't like what that did to me.

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July, and I almost wish to be in Michigan, just long enough to sit on my parents' back deck and eat a spicy black bean burger with cheese and maybe hold the baby nephew I've never seen. Instead I'm going out to the K. house, where I've been taken in as child number 3, where everything feels familiar and US-Dutch.

I am split into a million different places. Sometimes I'm afraid that I'll wake up and it will be ten years from now and I'll be living in the suburbs with 2.1 children and a husband who doesn't ever want to leave this country. And sometimes I'm afraid that I won't even last here until next spring.

bumbling lawyerly-like

I was wearing my (only decent pair) of black trousers today. They are a little bit wide-legged and I was wearing them with flats and a jacket that tied around the middle. I felt pretty good about this outfit until I was sluffing my way down a hallway and realized that what with the flats and the tied jacket, the clothes I was wearing felt suspiciously like pajamas. With slippers. I have confidence, from looking at my reflection in doors as I passed them, that I looked a bit more put together than that, but there was a moment of panic.

I am one of those people who we could kindly call overthinkers. Less charitable titles might include UTTERLY INSANE. For example, I am incapable of sending out a job-search related email without writing, editing, saving as a draft, re-reading, re-editing, pondering, re-reading, suddenly sending with a mental promise to never think of it again, opening the sent folder to read it one more time, and then being terrified every time I open my email thereafter IN CASE THE PERSON ANSWERED. You don't even want to know what out of the office auto-replies do to me, because they are toooooo soooooon! Too soon! This whole process often results in late bedtimes, because of just too much pondering when I've vowed to send out an email that night. I can't figure out if this whole thing occurs because 1. I have a tinge of perfectionism, 2. I lack self-confidence, or 3. I haven't quite figured out how to act like a lawyer yet. Or maybe a bit of each.

to remember

The weather said "occasional thunderstorms," so I checked the sky to the west, which was clear. When I stepped outside, though, it was apparent that the wind was blowing from the south and then the north and every which direction. In the park where I lay in the grass watching the ultimate frisbee game, the fat drops of rain began to fall so loudly into the maple tree that I looked around for the horse I thought must be nearby. I took refuge under the tree, feeling only a few of the drops, as the frisbee game continued and the softball diamond turned dark with water. Something gold glinted in the grass and I picked it up: a souvenir bookmark from San Fransisco, its heart-shaped charm slightly damaged as if it had been stepped on. I ceremonially placed it, standing upright, into a small hollow in the tree, heart facing out.

A souvenir is, in French, a memory. One of the most beautiful things I have heard is someone, speaking French, talking of souvenirs. When my head adds in the English layer, it seems so much more concrete than the English: a memory you can hold in your hands. "Je me souviens..."

discovering

I have gotten sucked into a full day marathon of America's Next Top Model Season 6. Unfortunately, I am starting to feel sick from too much tv. Perhaps I should get out of the house.

I went to a garden party on Friday night, except it wasn't pretty paths and flickering tiki lights so much as it was Bob Marley covers and bad beer kegs. Okay, it was a kegger. In a jungle back yard. By daylight, the yard was disappointing. The paths were bare and the bridges patched together. When the world became dark, finally, late into the night here so far north of the Equator in June, the bare ground disappeared and the bridges lit by candles were magical little connections to another world. There was nothing to drink but beer, and I hate beer, and after the consumption of a few too many salt-and-pepper chips (new discovery. amazing), I was ragingly thirsty. At 7-Eleven, I mixed all six flavors of Slurpee to create a mixture that I staunchly defended when people made fun of it, but was actually just as syrupy sweet disgusting as one can possibly imagine. Back in the garden, we thought about s'mores, and how we didn't have any, and then we grilled Double Stuf Oreos instead. This is actually a brilliant idea. The filling melts into a glaze that tastes suspiciously like it should be on an angel food cake. Delicious.

Wait. Are there Olympics again already? Why on earth do they come so often these days? The four year span was much, much more exciting, due to all the anticipation. Every two years is sort of, well, eh.

multiple choice:

Question: It is 100 degrees F outside, and with the afternoon sun banking this direction, keeping the blinds closed is no longer enough to prevent roastage inside the apartment. Do you:

a. Open the windows and use the $11.99 fan from T@rget, even though there is only one window and no real possibility of air circulation?

b. Turn on the airconditioning?

c. Open the door to the hallway, allowing the building's airconditioning to waft into your apartment?

Hint: You are extremely broke. Which one costs YOU the least? Which one causes passing stranger neighbors to look at you oddly? Pick that one.

some things just make me super happy:

(note: I didn't write this. It's from this website: James Dobson Doesn't Speak for Me)

James Dobson doesn't speak for me.

He doesn't speak for me when he uses religion as a wedge to divide;

He doesn't speak for me when he speaks as the final arbiter on the meaning of the Bible;

James Dobson doesn't speak for me when he uses the beliefs of others as a line of attack;

He doesn't speak for me when he denigrates his neighbor's views when they don't line up with his;

He doesn't speak for me when he seeks to confine the values of my faith to two or three issues alone;

What does speak for me is David's psalm celebrating how good and pleasant it is when we come together in unity;

Micah speaks for me in reminding us that the Lord requires us to act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with Him;

The prophet Isaiah speaks for me in his call for all to come and reason together and also to seek justice, encourage the oppressed and to defend the cause of the vulnerable;

The book of Nehemiah speaks for me in its example to work with our neighbors, not against them, to restore what was broken in our communities;

The book of Matthew speaks for me in saying to bless those that curse you and pray for those who persecute you;

The words of the apostle Paul speak for me in saying that words spoken and deeds done without love amount to nothing.

The apostle John speaks for me in reminding us of Jesus' command to love one another. The world will know His disciples by that love.

These words speak for me. But when James Dobson attacks Barack Obama, James Dobson doesn't speak for me.

(www.jamesdobsondoesntspeakforme.com)

slobbery

I have given myself permission not to wash dishes. Or clothes. Or surfaces. Just for the week. Every morning, I wash a bowl for my cereal, and then I throw it back in the sink. The good part is that I soak them thoroughly, so they are easy to wash the next morning. Today I bought the cheap trouser socks from W@lgreens so that I don't have to do laundry tonight. (Also, I was running out. For serious. These things disappear when you put them in the washer. It's bizarre.) The counter is covered with crumbs and packaging.

Guess how much I care?

Bingo.

I am doing far more interesting things instead. Mostly, I'm going for long walks in the golden evening light. Also some job search-like things. But mostly, the walks. To this park, where people are playing soccer and frisbee and softball and kickball, and I'm tempted to ask if I can join, any one of them. I might, soon, when there is no job search-like thing urgently awaiting me at home.

...

This morning on the bus, which was packed, a man from Southern Sudan was standing next to my seat. I wanted to greet him, but it took me four blocks to remember the Nuer greetings that flew out so quickly nine months ago. "Male. Male midiit. Male migwa." And he was Dinka, not Nuer, and I've never figured out if the greetings are the same. So I kept quiet, and I looked down at his cheap plastic African sandals, and I wished I had said something, wished I was brave enough to say hello, but it was my stop, and I still wasn't sure what to say. "Hi, I've been to your country! No time to talk!" It's awkward.

I was listening to music on the way to work today and when I fished Wilbur out of my bag at the end of the day, he was still playing away, battery half dead. Oops.

bonbons and stately old homes

Weell. I am doing a bit of eating of the bonbons. It's positively annoying not to be able to be mad at someone when you end things with them. I can't be mad because the ending conversation was so very honest and gentle from both ends (honest and gentle! my mantras!). Also full of affection, which is not one of my mantras because you can't force affection, but it's a nice addition. Plus, you know, I haven't even lived here that long, so it's hard to be at a point of being COMPLETELY DEVASTATED when you haven't known a person that long. So fine. I have another friend, and he is a really great guy. Life is bittersweet right now.

There is this neighborhood not far from my building that makes me crave, I don't know, grassy yards and open staircases and comfy sofas and tire swings dangling from big trees. I ambled through it today and it was practically inspiration to plop myself into a well-paying, soul-deadening lawyer job so that I can buy one of those rambling old houses surrounded by ancient oak trees. At the same time, I saw photos online yesterday of the project I worked on in Liberia two years ago, and I can still hear a part of me screaming, "You are in the wrong place! You should have been there!" So yes. Once a third culture kid, always torn between continents. Life is bittersweet right now.

regression

For many weeks or months, I seemed to have lost the ability to sleep for more than eight and a half hours at a time. This was, of course, very handy, since time spent sleeping, while the most deliciously comfortable part of the day, is also more utilitarian than anything and it's nice when the buzzing of the alarm clock occurs at approximately the same time your body is thinking about waking up. I have, however, regressed. I slept for 10 hours last night and woke up at 12:49. That would be p.m. (Yes, I'm aware that the beginning of the problem was the fact that I didn't get to sleep until 3 a.m. But this is what weekends are for! They are for mojitos after work with a colleague and a short nap and taking the train out to a friend's house and wandering aimlessly around the grocery store looking for blue dye for a t-shirt and eating second helpings of strawberry shortcake and ice cream and smoking apple-flavored tobacco in the hookah while drinking margaritas and getting locked out of my building because the unlocking mechanism stopped working. See? Fun!) Unfortunately, the big project of weeks of yore plumb tuckered me out and seems to have regressified me right back to my post-law school days when I routinely slept 10 or 12 hours a night. That or the schistosomiasis is back. Heh heh.

The other day, my coworker A. and I (she happens to be from Liberia! Yay!) went shopping at lunch time. We wandered through the bag section of the store because my bag-o-everything that I carry to work every day is falling apart but we had picked the wrong store, so our bag shopping went more like, "This bag is nice... [gasp, fainting]. Or not. It is $456." Then we found the shoe section, which was an unfair level of temptation, especially since they had the ever-revered clearance racks. There was a pair of sparkly shoes there in my size and I started doing that annoying thing I do wherein one thing reminds me of another and suddenly I'm saying "There's no place like home. There's no place like home." and clicking my heels together in the middle of M@cy's as if my black flats have suddenly turned into ruby slippers. The problem is that I messed up the heel clicking and clicked my ankle bones together instead and yelled out in pain and went staggering hunched over in agony all around the shoe section. I am, in fact, a highly trained professional!

On the plus side, I did manage to persuade A. to spend too much of her meager salary (I know the meager-ness of which I speak; I have the same salary) on some silvery sandals with braided straps up the side. So that was an accomplishment.

daily events

I am giddy with excitement about my new black dress trousers, arrived today from a N0rdst0m's store in another city (this city was plumb out of the size I needed). Friday was the last straw for the old pair, when my friend E. looked at me from the back and said, "You could fit another entire butt in there." Also, they had faded to a funny shade of brown.

In other news, I need to not watch true-life murder mysteries on television. I might not sleep tonight. Chills. I used to think I wanted to work in criminal law, but I've recently become a wimp. The benefit of doing almost any other kind of law is that I can live in a house without feeling like I have a target on my back all the time.

I have become super boring. I live in the US and I work every day. Who knew I would love it?

in pieces

We played chess in the sun. I squinted into it and asked, "What does this castle piece do? Can it move backwards?" N. got to checkmate in a few moves, and then to checkmate again, while I stared blankly at the board. I haven't played chess since I learned in the Netherlands when I was 8. Then I wandered in circles around the pool, talking on the phone to my dad on Father's Day. The grass was soft and cool under my feet. I miss having a yard.

...

A week or two ago, an older-wiser person drew a picture of a mountain on its side, wide end on the left and point toward the right, like this: >. Only much bigger. Then he started writing things along the line of the mountain. "First Job." "Second Job."

"Your options decrease with every job you take," he said.

This is, I hardly need say, not what I wanted to be picturing as I look for a real live permanent job in Gone West. LIMITED OPTIONS?? Comforting. Not to put any pressure on the first job you find or anything.

...

I hate interviews. I get so nervous before them, even before informational interviews, that I shut down and say, "I don't even WANT this job [or to be a lawyer, or whatever]." And then, inevitably, I am energized and exhilarated by them and I want to skip down the sidewalk. For good or ill, there are a lot of them coming.

hate/love

I'm sort of starting to hate the internet. More specifically, blogs. I turn on my computer and suddenly five hours have passed and I have a blazing headache and I haven't even checked my email yet. I might just have to turn off the blogs. So far I've been avoiding the whole thing by just not turning my computer on, which works too but starts to annoy people who have sent me emails. There has to be some middle ground, but blogs are this cycle of addiction that just will not let up. If the computer is on, I'm reading them. Help.

On the other hand, something that is making me very happy right now: short-sleeved sweatshirts. I'm sure I am about six years too old for them, but they make me so extremely happy. I am that person who is always, always cold. What could be better than a short-sleeved shirt that is also warm? This is a most brilliant invention. Someone should have thought of it fifteen years ago. (Side note: I was wearing my new short-sleeved sweatshirt while shopping sale racks for work clothes, and I asked the sales girl, who was younger than me, thus the girl-part, if I was too old for them. She said, "I hate it when people think things are too young for them! It's casual and you look cute." So there.)

Also, beautiful weather. Blue sky, finally, and warm. I love blue sky. When I used to work at a respite program for kids, we each said a thanks before meals and it was essentially guaranteed that if it was sunny, I would be thankful for that. This one girl, who I think was 11 or 12 at the time, got to the point where she would say, "The sky is blue today, M! Are you thankful?"

on the bright side

I'm tired and discouraged and having one of those days where everything you do turns wrong but you have to keep faking being okay and competent. And then I got a text message that said, "Remember at least you aren't using a latrine and a flashlight."

Eight months ago I was living in a place where it was too hot to go into the pit latrine during the day and I was too scared to go at night. And now I have a real toilet and I can stumble to it in the night without even really waking up.

So there is that.

words, words, and more words

I feel like I'm on day two of my weekend already, because day one was punctuated by a long and luxurious three hour nap. Hm, nap. I actually deliberately got out of bed at a reasonable hour with the promise to myself of a long nap later, after a Very Exciting Civic Event that was taking place right in front of my apartment building. Unfortunately, I ate a frosted and sprinkled donut and a frosted and sprinkled cookie in affiliation with the Very Exciting Civic Event and the fact that my stomach is no longer 15 years old revealed itself in a rather unpleasant overstuffed feeling. So then I HAD to take that nap.

Now I am leaving for the beach. Beach! Beach! Too bad it's cold still and the beach will be more of a test of one's will to live in the freezing than an enjoyable beach-like experience. Still, I'm escaping normal life and getting to see some more of Gone West, so I am excited. It's so nice to have a real weekend. Many lawyers do not, and I suspect that when I get a real live permanent job that pays real live permanent money, I will not either. I shall relish them now.

hateful day

am hating of this day. cannot make complete sentences. or use pronouns. just stumbled through door, put on comfy clothes retrieved from floor in entryway, and sat on floor for a while before could find energy to get bonbons to restore self.

this day has been like that screensaver everyone used to have on their computers (i have rediscovered pronouns) in which a seemingly endless stream of asteroids comes flying toward the viewer.

...

now time has passed.

bullet point number one: call from ci.ti.b@nk at 7:00 a.m. that went approximately like this:

person: you are $456 behind in payments.
me: that's nice. i can't pay it.
person: you are out of forbearances.
me: that's nice. i can't pay it.
me: i have to go to work now. [hangs up]

bullet point number two: we are involved in this huge, um, project at work, and all of us involved are getting cran to the key. (that's cranky, if you couldn't tell.) at least two of the four people involved are the sweetest people humanity has ever known, but even they are getting cranky. (i am NOT included in the sweetest people, because while i think i am fairly nice, sweet is not a word i feel applies to me. i like sweet people, but i am not one of them. but i am fairly good at hiding the cranky. i get happier the more things go wrong.) and the project drags on and on, through the fault of outside forces.

bullet point number three: someone asked me to LIE for him/her today. am a lawyer! took an oath not to lie! or even mislead! plus i have a (HUGE) problem with it, and if you knew my job, you would know that lying is not a good thing to make a part of it. plus, hi! lying! so i flatly refused and then said person said desperately, "but what should i do, then?" er... let's see... TELL THE TRUTH.

seriously. this is my life.

had to invite a friend over so as to alleviate utter despair about humanity. fortunately she came with, eh-hem, beverages. law school failed, but gone west might just turn me into an alkie. if i weren't so broke. and tired all the time.

i think i need to get into wine. it is good for you, according to the nytimes. also relaxing. and you don't have to feel funny about drinking it on a work night. which, let's admit, vanilla vodka, coffee liqueur, and jaager shots on a work night? that's sketch. i am sketch, right now.

this is what we call blogging under the influence. sorry, y'all. am now off to a bath and early bed.

girly moment

Why yes, it is June. One might be fooled by the chill in the air and the fact that I'm wearing my winter coat to work, but June it is. I wore a sweater to work today.

Is it bad that my real goal in finding a real live permanent job that pays real live permanent money is not to practice law but so I can buy clothes? One can only make so many combinations of two suit jackets and one jacket-like sweater. Fortunately jobbing does not require a suit every day this week, because when it does I am forced to pretend that NO ONE NOTICES that I'm wearing the same two jackets every day. Will I wear the gray jacket three times this week or the black? Life is so very exciting. Especially when the alternative is to wear it TWICE this week.

I had another jacket, of the expensive pre-law school J.Crew variety, but it has outgrown me. Or I have outshrunk it. Or something. I weigh less now than I did then. Also, as my roomie M. liked to tell me in law school when I complained about the largeness of pre-law school clothes, "You just dress like more of a slut now." I prefer to think of it has having discovered how to buy clothes that fit. And in my defense, suit jackets have gotten shorter and more fitted. Anyway, this old one is a very nice wool jacket, but I look in it as if I'm a ten year old trying on my dad's suit and carrying his briefcase.

(Random side story: I was actually really excited about briefcases when I was about ten. I got one as a birthday present and I used to carry it to school, just like my dad carried his to work. Then there was a war and stuff and we left it behind to come to the US. And then kids in the US carried backpacks on one shoulder and I had to work on being cool, so the briefcase was a non-starter. The last thing I needed was yet another *NERD*DORK*CULTURALLY INEPT AFRICA GIRL* sign on my forehead. I had several already.)

Anyway, when I get a real live job, I'm going to buy new suits. Maybe even some that are not on the $59.99 sale rack at Macy's. Maybe even some that, gasp, FIT. Maybe even a TALL, so the jacket has sleeves that come all the way down to my wrists.

It's going to be brilliant.

(In case, you were wondering, this was, in fact, an entire post about clothes. I'm SUCH a girl today.)

P.S. Speaking of clothes, and clothes that fit, has anyone bought trousers at the G@P lately? What is up with 1. the STRETCHING, so that the trousers that fit you when you buy them are heinously large a day later and 2. the size enlargement, or whatever you call it, that require me to buy clothes that are labeled two sizes smaller - sometimes three - than anywhere else? And what do people who are actually small in stature do? Are they making 00s there now? I love their trousers, and the fact that they come in X-Long (love! love!) but I want to beg them to just let me go back to my regularly scheduled clothing size.

begin story.

I burned my ESOPHAGUS. I overheated my leftover Thai food and then was rushing and I stuffed a big bite into my mouth and it was too hot to chew, so I swallowed. I could feel it burning all the way down and I could feel it burning in my stomach. As a piece of advice: if the food is too hot in your mouth, spit it out. It will hurt even more on the way down. Then I hacked horrifically, causing general alarm. My esophagus still hurts. It feels like heartburn.

End of story.

not this site's normal topic

I was trying to explain, one day, how I feel cheated by the story that modern America - and every adult around me - told me growing up. It was the basic story: boy meets girl, boy asks girl out, boy and girl get married.

It wasn't until this year that I realized the crucial missing pieces. First of all, how do things get from meeting to asking out? And second, how do things get from asking out to marrying? The myth skips over them. I don't even know those pieces in my parents' story.

"So what will you tell your kids some day when you have them?" my friend asked.

I said, "I will tell them that some people find someone to love and some people don't. I will tell them that things will be okay and they can be happy, either way."

Then I thought for a while and I added, "I will also tell them that it's worth loving people. Sometimes you love someone more than they love you. Sometimes the other person loves you more than you love them, and you can't force yourself to love them more. The only thing you can do is be honest and gentle with them. And maybe they won't be honest and gentle with you, so you have to be honest and gentle with yourself. And sometimes that requires the eating of lots of bonbons."

two bits

It's been eleven years since I graduated from high school and seven since I graduated from college. I've made lives for myself, long-term or short-term, in seven cities in five countries on two continents. I have an official card to show that I'm a full-fledged attorney, allowed into courthouses and prisons. And I sometimes still find myself thinking, as life happens, "Don't they know I'm not grown up enough for this?"

...

I love the location of my building. I love that I can walk to everything. I love that my commute is ten minutes on any of two buses or two trains. I love that there is an exercise room. I love that the building smells good. I love the courtyard in the middle. What I don't love? THE IDIOT WHO KEEPS PULLING THE FIRE ALARM IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. People, this is not a frat house. And pulling the fire alarm? By the fifth time, at five a.m., it's no longer funny. I just want to sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Mario

Do you remember Super Mario Bros 3 on Super Nintendo? I loved Super Mario Bros 3. It seems like the soundtrack of the early 90s, that doot-doot-doot-doo when Mario falls into the abyss. Frankly, I would like my life to be like that, just doot-doot-doot-doos when something goes wrong and then eternally popping right back up on the world selection screen, bouncing with excitement at whatever is to come next.

K. pulled out her old Super Nintendo from a box in the garage at 1 a.m. last night and we sat on the living room floor playing it. It came back to me - the jumping, the spinning, the fire power. Except that I'm disastrously bad at it after ten years and some rather strong spiking of the iced chai I was drinking. I fell into the crevices, ran into the ducks, and landed right on the boomerangs that the football player throws. And I've totally forgotten how to fly. But it was fun, in the dark, with the plinky music and the two-dimensional backdrop.

I'm inspired now. I want a Super Nintendo! Perhaps I shall track one down, when I get some money, when I get a real job, when I won't have time to play.

iced coffee in the sun

The weather people predicted thunderstorms yesterday, but the sunshine and 75 degrees persisted until evening. I went to the library, again, and got the nine books that I had put on hold. They filled my backpack to overflowing and I staggered under their weight. I sat outside with the first of books at a coffee shop, drinking an iced toddy, as they call them here, cold brewed coffee with hazelnut syrup. I had asked hopefully at the counter about hazelnut cold brewed coffee, but that exists apparently only in New York. People are snobs about coffee out here, and they don't like them pre-flavored. The sun shone and the train clattered past me.

In the evening, I took the train out to S.'s place to watch a movie. The sun was heading toward setting while the sky filled with clouds coming, oddly, from the east. The light was nearly gone down where I walked, but it lit the tops of the ancient tall pines. Thunder finally rolled across the sky, and a few drops of rain landed in the very same place on my forehead.

warning: hypochondria ahead

A long holiday weekend, but when someone asked me yesterday if I was looking forward to it, I said no. "I don't get paid for holidays, and I have a limited number of friends in this town because I've only been here for a few months, and too many of them are going out of town. I'd rather work." It's true but it's not. By the end of a week, I'm exhausted and worn down. My sore throat builds as the week goes on, and by Friday I'm googling "too many bruises" because I seldom bruise, but I HAVE A BRUISE ON MY HAND LEUKEMIA DYING HYPOCHONDRIA. One. Single. Bruise. The only one anywhere on my body (yes, I checked). In addition to not bruising easily, I am clumsy and I have a high pain threshold, so I run into things a lot. Mostly I don't remember them unless I get a bruise, like this triangular bruise on my hand, which is already almost gone, and then maybe if I think back carefully I remember how I slid into my desk too quickly and caught the corner of the drawer, or slammed the door on myself while trying to slip in with too many things in my hands.

Regardless, I stocked up on Emergen-C and pro-biotic yogurt drinks and have committed to drinking one of each per day because I have concluded that this daily working gig is wearing down my immunity, what with all the not getting to bed on time and dealing with the general public and forgetting to wash my hands because by the time I get a break I'm just too hungry to wait to snarf down those almonds that have to keep me going for three more hours. I can't do that instant hand sanitizer stuff, either, because I don't believe in it. Many a time I wish I did believe in it, particularly on long drives to remote places in Rwanda or Sudan (other option: careful eating of granola bar without removing it from package or touching it with hands). But I disapprove of all that antibacterial, alcohol-based stuff because I think it's killing us as surely as it is the poor innocent bacteria, so I can't be one of those people who keeps it on their desk, not even the smelly yummy kind.

Last week, I found myself comforting a guy who was nervous and sweating about his drug charge by saying, "Some people who come in here have really BIG problems." And the weird thing was that he was comforted, and said, "Yeah, you're right. At least I don't have big problems."

October 31, 2002

One of the things about law is that you are almost always dealing with dates that are over. We all know, of course, that different days mean very different things to each person. Someone had a baby today, we say, and someone lost the person he loved most, on this day when I went to work and sat there doing work things workishly all the working day. In law, though, every date means something. Every day I hear dates. Many of the dates mean little to me, except that I think about how I was in law school at the time, or was just a child. Today, someone mentioned October 31, 2002, and I realized that is the date I arrived in Rwanda for the first time. I waited my first five hour layover in Nairobi - I remember sleeping sitting up with my head on a table in the transit lounge, drooling because I was sleeping so deeply after two sleepless nights on airplanes. I flew for the first time over Lake Victoria and above those green hills of Rwanda. I heard the woman behind me explain to her seatmate that you know you are flying over Rwanda when the houses are built in rows along the road and covered with shiny new metal sheets, because those are the post-genocide reconstruction projects. I remember thinking that first time I landed at Kanombe Airport about the plane that was shot down in 1994 and wondering what it would be like for our plane to take missiles at the end of the runway. We drove through Kigali's streets, and though my bleary exhaustion I thought them far neater and more precise, if a bit dusty, than any African capital I'd seen.

Someone addressed a letter that day, on October 31, 2002, and someone sat in a boring meeting. Someone learned the truth, and someone never woke up after their afternoon nap. Someone fell in love, and I, I met a new home, and no one around me today knew that, that date or that meaning. No one but me, sitting at work, working and remembering.

on the train

I'm on the train, in a corner seat next to the door, next to a man with an art portfolio and a rolled up tube of big papers. I'm looking out the window across the way, enjoying the view from what a friend of mine says is "the slowest joke of a train system in the world," but I love it, the way it trundles along among downtown buildings, stopping at stoplights and running alongside the cars on narrow brick streets like an awkward, oversized bus.

The man asks me about my bag, and I tell him I got it in Rwanda, but I don't encourage him, certainly not enough for the monologue he starts in a faded English accent about merengue, which he seems to think has something to do with Africa, and then about Indian drumming and how he drummed for four Be@tles songs and gardened for Jo.hn Lenn0n and Yok0 0n0 and am I an artist? "No," I said, "an attorney," thinking that if anything should quash the artist connection it would be something as prosaic as law, but it does not, because he finds another connection and he tells me that his daughter is studying law, and that if you give yourself over to God, pure love will find you. "I follow a small Indian religion," he said, "but at heart I'm a Christian and always have been."

I haven't gotten a word in edgewise, or sideways, or any ways for five minutes and I'm watching the stops and wishing that my stop was this one instead of the next one. "You become what you associate with," he tells me, "so if you associate with Harley riders, you will end up wanting to wear black leather, or play an instrument if you associate with musicians. The secret is just to give yourself over to God, and he will give you pure love. It's that simple. We used to know the truth about God, but we've lost it. You can see it in the ancient writings, but we don't understand them anymore."

I haven't looked in his direction since the question about the bag, but now he's apologizing for his beer breath, from drinking beer with his pizza at the street fair, he says, and I don't mention that I know the difference between beer breath and hard alcohol breath, and his is the latter.

"You have a nice aura," he says. "You search for the truth, don't you?"

"This is my stop." I say in return, standing up. "It was nice talking to you."

I ignore him when I hear him say, as I stand up to go to the door, "You are gorgeous," and instead I walk straight ahead, out the door, up the shaded street, and into the quiet of the library.

spring-a-ling-ling

It's warm enough in my apartment to lull me into inertia. I can't quite get out the door, even into the sunshine and beauty, even though I reserved about 15 books on the library website and I can go pick them up just a pleasant little free train ride away.

The weather, the most boring of topics, has skipped from cold to summer in three days. We looked out the window on Wednesday and said, "Today is our only spring," and it was true. By Friday it was summer and 90 degrees. I walked 20 or so blocks in the sun after work to meet some friends, and when I got there they were sitting inside, hiding from the weather in the air conditioning. "We should sit outside!" I said, and they shivered and said, "No, no, it's too hot."

"I would be perfectly happy if the weather was always exactly like this." I said, and they answered, "Then you moved to the wrong place. This is exceptionally hot even for August here."

We sat outside for a late dinner, under an umbrella that we didn't need for rain or sun, and even I, the first person to get cold in any crowd, kept my jacket off, even at midnight. It was that balmy (balmy is a funny word, no? Like barmy, only less British. Both sound funny.)

I slept with the window open, two nights in a row now, and this may or may not correlate directly with the fact that the sore throat I have had since I returned here at the end of March has returned.

I am beginning to suspect, um, how can I say this... seasonal allergies. I have a hard time admitting such a suspicion, because I have so little patience for the concept of seasonal allergies. I mean, yes, I know that many people are very miserable because of them, but that does not answer the fundamental question: WHY? WHY should some people's bodies start fighting off perfectly innocuous things like POLLEN. Pollen which fertilizes other trees and other flowers? WHY? And why should I have started having a throat-closing sensation during spring while I was in college when I had never had it before in 8 years of Michigan springs? Why should it hve been alleviated by two springs in Rwanda (no spring) and three in New York (no trees), and now actually be at a point where I would consider buying medication if only I had money with which to buy it? Hasn't my body fought off enough things in its time? Did I feed it malaria and parasites and every possible type of street food in every country I've ever been in for nothing? Is it so bored that it has to resort to fighting off things that have no spite against me? I have no patience for such bodily betrayal.

Then again, I don't have all that much patience for how my throat feels like I might not be able to get air through it much longer, either.

fake/real

Intention: answer emails, write nice blog post, fix/print resume, go to bed early.

Actuality: go for long walk in beautiful evening, write nice blog post in head and fail to transfer it to screen, fix/print resume, go to bed too late.

Oops.

tall tales

It is light these days by the time my alarm phone goes off at 6:10 a.m. during the week. I can look out the window in the five o'clock hour and tell that the time for getting up is nearing. It is delicious to wake up at 7 a.m. on Sunday, see the light, roll over, and go back to sleep. It will, unfortunately, make it hard to sleep tonight when I have to go to bed early in anticipation of work.

We went out on Friday night, my friend S. from college and my friend E. from bar class and her friend E2 from high school. E2 got back two months ago from two years in Tanzania and Kenya and was craving the post-Africa therapy that is required during reverse culture shock. We spent much of the evening over artichoke dip and steak fries talking about long-delayed stand-up bus rides and aggressive prostitutes in Nairobi nightclubs and THE BEST JUICE EVER, fresh passion fruit juice at Java House (highly addicting). It might possibly have been incredibly boring for S. and E., who have not recently returned from Africa and do not need the reverse culture shock talk therapy. I'm actually less in need of the reverse culture shock talk therapy in recent years than I used to be, just because I've come and gone so many times (except for the part where I go on those rants about HOW MISERABLE EVERYTHING WAS IN SOUTHERN SUDAN EXCEPT THAT OF COURSE I WOULD GO BACK, which I do periodically, sorry to all who've had to listen to one), but that doesn't mean I'm not willing and eager to be a part of the reverse culture shock talk therapy. Yes! Who doesn't want to tell stories about getting pulled over 6 times in five weeks by Liberian police because the car I was driving didn't have a license plate, including the one time they told me I was under arrest and I got angry and started yelling and told them that I had a car and they didn't and how exactly did they expect to get me to the police station under those circumstances, huh?

It's a way better story than the current one about how one of my bank accounts has $39 in it and the other is in the red and people keep saying, "This is why you have credit cards," except that I don't have a credit card and I'm glad I don't have one because then my whole paycheck would be done by the time I got it so I'll just be scavenging food from friends for the next four days until the paycheck shows up. The paycheck which will promptly be used to pay back and close out the overdrawn bank account so I will still be broke ergh how did this happen I have not overdrawn a bank account since college and I even called to find out my balance stupid delay in recording uses of the debit card.

Well. That story is not so fun. Bring on the Africa tales!

anecdote

Shockingly busy days; feeling quiet by evening.

At the train stop, a man riding by on a bike handed me a ticket and said, "Don't waste your money. Use this." Over his shoulder, he called, "It's good!"

I was on my way to Trader Joe's and I usually use one ticket to go there and back because they are calculated by time, not distance. I took the ticket and I got on the train and then I sat looking at it closely. That star? Did that mean the ticket was only for someone with a reduced fare ID? That 08:52? Was that a.m. or p.m.?

On the way back, I bought my own ticket. The machine spit out two gold dollars and a silver one. I put them in my left pocket and the ticket in my right. I tore up the old ticket - I didn't want anyone else to get into trouble - and poked it in between the St@rbucks cups sticking out of the trash can.

beddy bye

It is 8:04 p.m. Do you know where your children are?

They still run that thing on the 10 p.m. news. Have you noticed? (The news is at TEN p.m. out here instead of ELEVEN. How weird is that?)

I know where I am, and that is about to head to bed. I thought I had escaped the flu that was going around but no, I just got it after everyone else and have spent the week feeling sick in approximately every part of one's body that can be sick: stomach, joints, throat, head. It's fun, I assure you. Fun!

Yesterday I made the mistake of thinking I felt okay (thank you, copious amounts of ibuprofen) and played wiffle ball in the yard at my friend's parents house. I rocked the wiffle ball, thank you very much. It was sunny and beautiful and I was wearing my lapa wrap-skirt that my mom and I made from African cloth last summer and I was barefoot in the beautiful green grass and airplanes flew over and how could I not play? And then the ibuprofen wore off and the fever and throat pain came rushing back and I went to bed at 8 p.m., like I'm about to do again.

It's been a really long time since I went to bed before it was dark. It's oddly satisfying.

completing

That post this morning didn't go where I intended it to go. It just sort of trailed off. I intended to say something about how during the week, when I'm riding the bus in the morning and rushing about at work and coming home exhausted to my beloved little apartment, I can think of no place in the world I would rather be than right here, right now, but that sometimes on the weekend, when I'm a little tired and a little sick and sleeping for twelve hours at a time and then meandering about doing laundry and dishes and reading the blogs of people who are in places like Rwanda, then I miss that life I always thought was going to be mine.

I was going to say that, and also that adding almond essence to my tea was an excellent idea.

unrelated

During a break in things yesterday, I read parts of a BBC article on the plane crash in Southern Sudan aloud to a friend. "Shocked?" I said at the end. "How can they say Southern Sudanese are shocked at the plane crash? I'm not shocked. Do you know what those planes are? They are single-engine Cessnas flown by Kenyan pilots who are forced to fly 16 hours a day without a break and who send text messages by satellite phone while in the air, or they are Antonovs flown by Russian pilots who are still drunk from the night before and who are beginning their drinking again while in the air. How is anyone shocked when they crash? I flew on about 20 of them and I was always shocked when we didn't crash."

...

Every morning, I take the bus to work. The bus stop is a block over, and I stand next to the covered booth in my tights and heels and wait for the bus. Sometimes one bus comes first, sometimes another. One morning I had just turned the corner when the bus came by and I would have missed it had the driver not known me and my bright blue KLM flight attendant coat and stopped a block early for me. "Isn't it nice when your bus driver knows you?" she asked as she opened the doors for me. I'm beginning to recognize people: the older black man in a suit and a camel coat, the young Asian girl with the skinny jeans, the middle-aged white guy with the floppy hair and the black overcoat. One of my colleagues complained about the bus, how there are so many strange people who take it, how it's better to drive, even though you have to pay for parking, but my buses are filled with people on their way to work and school, people just like me. We all sit in the sunlight as the bus goes down that hill and over that bridge, listening to our music and playing our sudoku and staring out our windows.

I like riding the bus in the morning. It like the time it gives me to wake up. I like the people. I like the fact that I'm not using any more fuel than would be used anyway. I like watching the city go by. I like walking from the bus stop to work, under the rapidly greening trees.

anger

I was in the exercise room, doing the elliptical. There were a couple of guys in there, so the tv was tuned to a basketball game, which is fine. I like basketball. The Celtics were playing the Hawks, which is fine. I like green. I was also listening to Wilbur, the iPod that replaced the fallen Wallace. All was well.

I noticed on the screen that there was a shot of particularly beautiful city that was clearly somewhere not in the West. There were closely crowded, open-windowed, two- and three-story brick buildings surrounded by a ring of blue mountains. "Oooh." I thought, as the scene changed to an aerial shot of a crowded market street. "I need to travel again." The camera zoomed in on a man, maybe Indonesian or Filipino, riding his bike down the street. I was feeling all warm and fuzzy and travel-happy.

And then I heard the voice-over. I had Wilbur's ear buds in my ears, so I didn't catch it exactly, but it went something like this:

"When you need to find the enemy...
The best way is already to be watching them."

I almost threw Wilbur at the tv, but it would have hurt him.

Do you know what this was an advertisement for? THE AIR FORCE. The freaking US AIR FORCE is advertising themselves by portraying entire cities and perfectly normal people going about their perfectly normal business as THE ENEMY. Not only that, but they chose THE BROWN PEOPLE.

There is something very, very wrong, and I am going to rant. I have been holding off on the rant, but I can no longer do so when the US Government is advocating racism so utterly blatantly.

People have been way too nice to white people in this country. Barack Obama's speech on race? Way too nice. This is a country whose government thinks it is okay to label anyone non-white as the enemy ON NATIONAL TELEVISION. This is a country in which a white seminarian who I heard preach a few weeks ago said, "When I worked at Target, I was told that you can't use racial profiling, even though it's more likely that minorities will be stealing," and I was the only person in the (all-white) congregation who was irate. This is a country in which white people don't have to notice when things are racist, because they can live their lives in happy little oblivion and say, "But *I'm* not racist. I have black friends!" Guess what, people? I PROMISE you that you have said something racist to your black friends, and your Hispanic friends, and your Asian friends, and your multiracial friends. I know that I have, and I know that I have wanted to beat myself for those stupid things I've said - the ones I realized, anyway - every day since.

White people in this country are NOT innocent. Oh, sure, some of us can point out that our ancestors came here only 50 years ago, or 100. But you know what? My grandparents, when they came here in 1950, could start a business and make money from the consolidated wealth of white America, an America that would not have hired a black man, or a Latino man with an accent, the way they would hire my white, accented Pops. We are NOT INNOCENT.

I miss the days when the difference between Republicans and Democrats was fiscal policy. I almost even miss the days when the difference was abortion. I still voted Democrat then (in my eighth grade Christian school class, I was one of TWO students who voted Democrat in our mock election in 1992 and our teacher said, "Wow, George Bush wishes this were reality"), but I almost miss the days when abortion was the big issue and I could just tell people, "Fine, waste your vote on abortion." Now? Now I am angry. I am angry at a political system that thinks it is okay to claim that Barack Obama got where he was because of race (because no WHITE MAN has ever been elected president?). I am angry at a political system in which people think torture and war are okay, because of "the enemy." I am starting to believe that Republicans want to kill the rest of the world and I have to say, I like the rest of the world and the rest of the world is made up of real people living lives just as real as any of ours here, so this makes me furious.

When I used to fly back and forth to Rwanda, I ended up in a lot of random conversations in airports. One time when I was flying through Detroit, a woman sitting next to me on the floor, waiting for long-delayed flights in the middle of December said to me, "Africa? Aren't they all terrorists over there?"

So fine. Be angry with Obama for claiming that there is xenophobia in rural America. People? There is. There is xenophobia and racism all across this country. When are we going to grow up enough to admit it and do something to change it?

dreamland

I think washing my hair is a waste of time. Actually, I think washing myself in general is a waste of time. Obviously I DO it, because it's socially required and I like feeling clean and it's nice not to have people cringe at my entry into a room, but I think it's a waste of time. I also think peeing is a waste of time, and cutting my fingernails. And that's about it. Just those things.

So the point is that I try to wash my hair as seldom as possible. When I was studying for the bar, that was every three or four days, and ditto when I was in Ethiopia. Now, what with working and the requirement of professional appearances, I end up washing it every other day, a fact that I find most annoying. Think of all the time I could save if I washed it less often. The problem is that by the third or fourth day, I need to put it up, and putting it up generally means, for me, pigtails. I have too round a face for a ponytail or whatever it is you normal-faced people do. Pigtails, or braided pigtails, are not professional. They just aren't.

I woke up several times last night in the middle of strange dreams about Southern Sudan and Liberia, and somehow I started thinking about how I only washed my hair every five or six days in Southern Sudan, and how often, in the morning, when I went over to the barrel-on-a-pole that served as our outdoor shower, there would be only a trickle of water and I would have to suspend my plans for hairwashing. I would go ask the cooks about the water. "Moya?" I would ask hopefully. "Ma-afi," they would say sadly, dragging out the aaaa sound. "Maaaaafi." No water for you.

Then I dreamed about the airport hotel in Liberia, the one that is now an overgrown ruin, and the river that runs behind it. In my dream, someone had built a new hotel next door, and there were families in canoes watching hawks and catching fish in the river, like some friends of ours did on one of the last occasions we stayed there before the war. In my dream, one person caught a six foot tall eel-like fish with a flattened beak-like mouth, and I thought it might be a duck-billed platypus because it could breath on land, and I got out my laptop to google it, sitting on the top of the cement wall by the river at the hotel across from Robertsfield.

Places are swirling strangely in my head.

cheating

Last night I played darts with my friend S. and her brother N. in one of those smoky bars that leave smoke seeping out of your pores for days, even if you never held a cigarette. S. knows what she's doing, and N. used to be the darts champion of his neighborhood bar in Korea (they gave him his own set of darts, kept in a shot glass behind the counter for him), and I, they tell me, throw a dart like one would throw a baseball, with too much arm. I think it's necessary just to tell you upfront that I lost. I didn't lose that badly, but that was mostly the result of the fact that I took some extra "practice" rounds while S. was in the bathroom and when I accidentally hit a triple 15 and an 18, exactly what I needed, N. let me put them on the board. (Shhhhhh!) I'm a total feminist and stuff, but sometimes it's nice to be the wimpy girl who can't throw. And therefore is allowed to cheat.

evening ramble

I am sitting around feeling all accomplished of a Friday evening, because this week I managed to do two long-dreaded things: call my student loan company (hate, hate) and change some things on my mobile phone plan. Except I don't think we call them mo-bile phones here. Do we? The rest of the world does. Anyway. My cell phone plan. I now have the correct address in there, the correct credit card number in there, and a text messaging plan that saves me a frighteningly large amount of money. I have never been a big texter, until this month, when I started working all day long in an office, which makes it hard to answer my phone. Now I text all the time, because this is how you communicate in 3.2 seconds while running up the stairs in heels. While simultaneously eating lunch. No time for calling, so vital information must be passed as quickly as possible. I've been intending to get a texting plan for a week or two, but didn't get around to it until today, by which time I had rung up a total of 301 text messages since the 10th. At twenty cents each, that is... $60. Seriously impressive wastage of money. Good thing they retroactivated it, or I would have cried when I got the bill. Really, truly. I am not pulling in an extra $60 a month (no! that was half a month!) for texting these days.

So, um...

um...

The weather is nice!

Yes, I am that boring these days.

Oh, funny story. Sadly, to get funny stories I have to harken back to my traveling days of March, although I was reminded of it by the fact that my sister was just telling me about how people steal things from hotels. She works at a hotel.

I was on a plane from London to Rome to Addis Ababa and the guy sitting across the aisle from me was 1. clearly Ethiopian (language, etc.), and 2. clearly crazy. He demonstrated point two by praying loudly and nonsensically and by variously proclaiming to the flight attendant and me (despite my headphones and not looking at him) that he 1. is Portuguese because he loves Mozambique, 2. loves Ethiopian Airlines, and 3. STEALS A BLANKET FROM THE PLANE EVERY TIME HE FLIES ON ETHIOPIAN AIRLINES. Does it seem smart to tell a flight attendant on Ethiopian Airlines that, essentially, you have stolen and probably plan to steal numerous blankets? Does it?

Now I shall go find something fun to do.

Memo

To: Cashier

Yes, I did check for "breakage among [my] little eggs."

Please never say that again.

Thank you.

random segue into a travelogue

Cheap thrills, people. I'm all about the cheap thrills right now. I expended all my money and more going to Ethiopia. (Hi, Mom and Dad! I have not forgotten the $1000 I owe you! Happy Birthday, Mom!) Currently, I am relegated to tea on the couch as a happening Tuesday evening activity. Total cost: approximately 9 cents. This is fun! Come to think of it, it's still better than last week's Tuesday evening activity: the joyous doing of the taxes. One good thing I have to say about having a real live 8-5 job is that when it's over, it's over. I can come home and watch Jon & Kate Plus Eight (WHAT? YOU KNOW YOU DO THAT, TOO. Or you wish you could) and go to bed. Technically, I should be doing the elliptical at night, but I work in a building with seven floors, any of which I might have to be on at any time, and I refuse to take the elevator, so if I don't feel like the elliptical of an evening, well, shoot me. Plus I do all those stairs in heels, which I think gets me extra stair-climbing points. Or something.

Actually, sitting and drinking tea is not that fundamentally different from what I prefer to do anywhere in the world. When I was in Ethiopia? Basically all I did was wander around looking for the nearest place to sit and drink a macchiato. The guidebook was all, "Awassa is great! You can see hippos! And other cool things!" and I walked along the lake and then I was tired and I got a drink and sat by the water with my drink, until a bird poo'd on me, mostly missing me, and then I got fed up with the lake and walked into town until I found a cafe, and then I drank a macchiato and ate cake. For lunch. I talked to the hippo boat people, but they wanted $15 for the ride, even though there were already four people in the boat, and they would not bargain, and I have seen hippos before, hippos galore, so I sat and drank my Sprite instead. And then my macchiato. And that cake. And possibly ate some ice cream. That part of the gorging is all a little vague.

Here is a photo of a macchiato:

Man, those things are delicious. Also, one of the best things about Ethiopia is that every tiny little town has an espresso machine and can produce these delicious little delicacies (am I repeating myself here?). This particular macchiato was not in Awassa, however, even though Awassa was my favorite town in Ethiopia. It was in Gorgora, a little town on the north shore of Lake Tana, for those in the know and to whom the phrase "north shore of Lake Tana" has any meaning.

In addition to seeking out coffee, I sought out juice. It's sort of embarrassing how much of my time in Ethiopia I spent in cafes, but I shall excuse it by claiming that this is the best way to see a country, like, a country for reals. Not just the tourist part. This is pineapple juice. Pineapple juice is often, if good and fresh, a little too sweet. In Gonder, though, the cafe I liked best would give me a lime or lemon to squeeze into it. Serious, serious bliss.

And, just for fun, here is a picture of MY BUTT. I know, very juvenile. But I don't post face pictures here, so what is left?

That's in Gonder. Castles, etc.

(P.S. Ethiopia pictures are up on facebook. Fie-nail-ee.)

on a changeable saturday afternoon

I miss that stomach that I had back when I was a teenager, the one that could eat Nacho Cheesier Doritos and drink Mountain Dew for breakfast in the back seat of a fifteen-passenger van at the beginning of the drive to a service project. Now I drink a mug of mint hot chocolate (as I just did) and I'm slightly queasy by the end (as I now am). I can pinpoint when it happened: that summer in Liberia. I started the summer with a teenager's impermeable stomach and I ended it with an adult's stomach that prompts that oft-repeated warning, "You'll get sick if you eat all that sugar!" This is, frankly, not true for kids. They can eat all the sugar in the city and still feel fine. I, however, no longer can.

...

My friend R., up from Berkeley, and I walked down to a breakfast place this morning. She had eggs and potatoes with strange spiral fiddlehead ferns (she had heard of them, I had not) and I had a Belgian waffle. We drank coffee and talked about the million things people who were college floor-mates ten years ago have to catch up on. It was sunny when we left and a few blocks later it started hailing on us, although most of the sky was still perfect blue. We laughed at the insanity that is spring in the Pacific Northwest, and stopped at a little store full of items that someone from various parts of Asia might miss if they came to the US: tea bowls, little plastic storage containers, noodles of a million sorts, mochi frozen and not, strips of spiced fish, little pink Hello Kitty purses. I bought incense sticks and she bought mango gummy candy that she passed out to me on the walk home. I tried to eat it slowly, but I ended up chomping it.

(apparently) weekly recap

Somehow, I forgot to file my tax returns prior to April 15. Well, I didn't forget. I remembered that they were due, but I couldn't open Adobe documents on my computer because of some classic computer idiocy and I spent my weekend in a somewhat stuporous state of joy over having (ding ding!) ** passed the bar exam** (we can talk about it now) and also it was sunny and beautiful that weekend and I managed to coerce someone with a car into leaving the city to go hiking in prettiness, so I was forced to work on taxes during my lunch hour on April 15, annoying surrounding colleagues with statements about how Michigan has no RIGHT to my money, seeing as how I made it all in New York and/or Southern Sudan, and then when I got home that night I had to remove all Adobe products (failures, all of them) from my computer and re-install them, and then it was 9:30 p.m. before I finished the forms for the feds, MI, and NY (partial year residencies: disastrous). So I opened up the handy little trip planning device on the public transportation website and betook myself, at 10:00 p.m., in the constant sprinkle, back downtown to drop my tax forms in the mailbox outside the central post office, where items mailed before midnight would get an April 15 stamp.

As I was standing at the homeward bus stop at 10:30 p.m., a creepy short little middle-aged man passed me and said hello. I nodded back (at this point, I didn't know that he was creepy; he looked normal). Then he asked me my name in a leering tone and I utilized the world-tested strategy of glancing at him and then away in utter disinterest as if he was the most boring specimen of humanity ever to pass before my eyes. (You would be shocked. This strategy of finding the person utterly boring works even in the parts of the world where "leave me alone" apparently means "please try to stick your hand up my shirt in a public place." It's brilliant.)

Slightly relatedly, I have started to notice that I say the word hello to people exactly like my dad does. People are mad friendly out here, and while hiking on Saturday, we routinely said hi to people passing us up or down. I found myself not saying hi but saying "hello," in exactly my dad's vocal cadence. It was like it was not even my own mouth speaking. Freaky.

Another funny thing: for the first time in a long time, I am perfectly happy to be where I am. I love my apartment, I love my job, I love my friends (old and new), I love the spring blossoms on the trees, I love dressing in a suit and clicky heels, I love how nice people are, I love riding public transportation, I love all the people my age in this city, I love being done with studying, I love the glimpses of summer coming, I love exploring this state. This is a really good place for me.

I have had this conversation too many times.

Scene: karaoke bar, 2:15 a.m. Someone is singing a horribly sappy song about love and heartbreak and I turn around to stare at the screen to catch the true horror of the words. When I look back, my friend is singing along mockingly.

"Do you KNOW this song?" I ask.

"Of course. Everyone knows this song."

"Not me. I don't know this song." I say.

"How can you NOT KNOW this song?"

"Well," I ask, "is it from the 80s?"

"Of course."

"I missed the 80s."

thorn

I don't have a car, so I take the bus and the train everywhere, at least until my bike gets tuned up. Today I had a meeting in another town down the way, which was the first time I had seen any town in this state but this one. I could have borrowed a car, but the bus stops right in front of my work and relieves me from paying for parking. I took the afternoon off and caught a bus along a winding road through forests of trees draped in vines and along a bluff above a river. I began to see why this area is considered so beautiful. (What I've seen prior to this... well, a city is a city is a city.) On the way home, pondering all that I had learned during said meeting, I noticed that my finger hurt, on the side. When I looked, I saw that I had another thorn.

The thorns, which I have been taking out of my skin since four weeks ago in Gonder, attacked as I was climbing that mountain that I previously described. My choices were 1. grab thorn bushes, or 2. fall off the side of a mountain. 1. was a fairly natural choice, but those thorns are still working their way to the surface of my skin an entire month later.

i interrupt my early night of sleep for this broadcast

I'm not quite sure who it was that authorized letting me loose on the world, but I think my release upon the earth was negligent and should be revoked. Also, that person should lose their loosing license. This morning I mailed two checks to pay two bills. At some point during the day, I realized that I forgot to seal the envelopes. Nice work, that. Anyone want to steal my identity? Anyone? Anyone? Here, HAVE IT.

I'm working a normal person schedule right now, and I'm blown away by how exhausted I am all the time. I have no idea how people live this way. And really, seriously, I have no idea how they manage to do anything but work. I can't. I get up at 6 a.m. and ride the bus to work and work all day and come home and fall over with exhaustion, scarcely to move again until 6 a.m. the next day. (Part of this may have something to do with the fact that, as recently I figured out, I need to bring more food with me during the day and just forget completely about that nice idea of a hot meal when I get home. I am just way too tired and hungry to cook when I get home so I eat whatever I can find and then I still have a hypoglycemia headache all evening from the extreme dip in blood sugar that occurred approximately between 4 and 6 p.m. Might as well resign myself to some years of eating all cold food.)

I was talking to another lawyer (ha! I just said another! lawyer! no, the bar results are not out. don't ask me about them. I'll fill you in if/when I want to talk about it). Anyway, I was talking to another lawyer today, who had done some international work prior to settling in Gone West, and he talked about feeling like there was a ceiling in international work that he could not break through unless he had some practical legal experience first. "See!" I wanted to say, "That's what I meant! THAT is what I MEANT." Only of course he had no idea what I meant because he hasn't been listening to me rant for the last few months about how I need U.S. legal experience even if (when) I want to work overseas again. Mostly, I like to tell people that I felt like I needed to work in the US for a while to understand my own legal system before (if ever) I go tell other countries what to do with theirs, that I felt like it would be arrogant, right out of law school (okay, ever), to presume to tell other countries what to do with their legal systems. (Many, if not most international legal positions, even INTERNSHIPS, involve some sort of advising/consulting.) But I have to admit, having some US legal experience will be good for me and my CV, as well.

plane obsession

I spent my entire Saturday morning watching videos online of planes landing at scary airports. While I am quite possibly the only person reading this who is this obsessed with airplanes (must get a decent job so I can afford to learn to fly), I love this video of the landing at Tegucigalpa's Toncontin Airport in Honduras. The plane flies in through the mountains, turns 180 degrees at the end of the runway, and is on the ground before the turn is actually finished. Every time I've flown in there (um, three times?), I have sat on the left side of the plane - the side that points down during the 180 degree turn, and therefore stares at the ground coming up toward you, sideways and really fast. Rumor had it that the pilots were required to fly down in an empty plane and practice for a while before they could actually land. Rumor also has it that 757s are the biggest planes that are allowed to fly in there for fear of bigger ones being unable to stop by the end of the runway, the second (?) shortest international runway in the world.

utter confusion

When I worked in Tanzania, we rode dalla-dallas every day, little 16 or so seat minibuses that were filled with as many people as could sit in the seats, stand hunched over in the aisle, squish onto the bump over the engine, or hang out the door. We never did know the word for the guy who called the destinations ("'Jirojirojiro!") and took the money, so we called him the bus pimp. He's pimping out the destination and trying to attract customers.

Bus pimps in every country call out the names of their destinations quickly and the words always run together. As it turns out, this makes the words, "Mexico" and "Meskel" sound identical. It also turns out that there are both a Mexico Square and a Meskel Square in Addis. It further turns out that even someone who speaks English will not understand a US American who tries to distinguish between the two. This is how I ended up, on my second day in Ethiopia, being kicked out of a minibus by numerous people, all proclaiming loudly that, YES, this was Mexko Square, get out of the BUS already, we need to go.

I had absolutely no idea where I was. I could have been in another country for all I knew. (The day before, it had taken so long to get to my friends' house that I started wondering if I was going to end up back in Sudan - clearly not, because Ethiopia is a very large country, but I was beginning to wonder). And I was decidedly not at any square. I know a square when I see one, and I was not at a square, but on a normal road, with shops and a sidewalk and a petrol station (fine, a gas station. I find it nearly impossible to think in American English while in other countries). I had never seen Meskel Square before in my life, but on the map, it was big, and where I was standing, at MEXICO Quasi-Square-That-Is-Not-a-Square, there was nothing resembling what I knew Meskel Square had to be.

I found my way, of course. After ducking into two internet cafes to surreptitiously check the guidebook and walking the length of the road linking the two "squares", I finally came upon a 14 lane wide road (un-be-leee-vable in Africa) and an amphitheatre that looked much more like my vision of Meskel Square. Which it was. And there was an International Women's Day ceremony going on, UNIFEM and rallying cries and all. Note to self: in the future, when coming from the west in Addis, ask for Bole Road, not Meskel Square. I am fairly certain that I recall reading that Meskel Square used to be called something else, possibly until very recently, and it seems clear that the new name has not yet sunk into the collective consciousness.

beginning to recap

I realized that I've been not posting because I was trying to figure out how much to say - or not - about the whole Ethiopian men thing. I am tempted to spill out a ream of stories so that it's clear that I'm not just stereotyping Ethiopian men, but I think I'm not going to tell the worst of them for fear of descending into ranting or tedium. Just realize that when I tell a story and you think, "Hm, she seems a little on edge about Ethiopian men," there are very good reasons behind that, like constant, threatening harassment. We will just leave it at this: although there were no attempts at actual physical touching, the verbal harassment, particularly the language used, was such that I did not feel safe walking on the street at high noon in several towns I visited.

Moving on.

On the day I arrived in Addis Ababa, I took a taxi around the Ring Road to the empty house of some Ethiopian friends of mine who live in Rwanda. It was quite probably the oldest car in which I have ever sat, and it was missing such things as head rests and seatbelts (not that the seatbelts had been removed, but that the car was old enough to have never had them). The car puttered up hills very, very slowly, and when we finally got to the top of the hill, we sat in the car in the sun waiting for the person to come with the key. I didn't have a phone, so the taxi driver waited with me (and then proceeded to attempt to overcharge dramatically me despite severe bargaining, but that's unimportant). I was so incredibly delighted to be in Africa, sitting in the sun, warming myself after a cold, stressful winter.

When I opened the back door to get something out of my bag, I slammed it on my hand and scrapped up two fingers but good. Then I sort of looked at them without caring. I scoff at injuries. Blood was oozing out between my pinkie and ring finger. I shrugged and kept my hand away from anything light colored. I thought vaguely about the fact that some people might say that it's important to clean injuries that happen in new parts of Africa, where the diseases might be different than the ones my body is accustomed to fighting off, but I am generally completely unconcerned about minor diseases like infections and stomach problems (other than that fifteen-month long one. seriously. ice cream from the street carts in Liberia - particularly that one at Harbel - was a serious mistake.). I never did bother to clean that door-inflicted wound, and it healed just fine.

Later, I walked down the hill looking for internet. I passed little girls in school uniforms who giggled behind their hands at me, and a grove of eucalyptus trees that smelled like mountains. The two men and one woman staffing a tiny corner shop full of children's clothes but empty of customers (I don't know how customers would have fit, anyway) gave me suggestions about internet places. I took a minibus down the Ring Road and then back up it, paying minute amounts of birr (one, two) each time. I sat on the balcony and watched the sun set over a city lighting up for the evening.

I went to sleep under a quilt under a ceiling that was occupied by rats. I had been warned about the rats in the ceiling, but I didn't much care after 36 hours on planes. I listened to them scuffling around. I took a melatonin to convince my body that it really was nighttime. And then I slept in a real, non-moving bed.