[23] roads

Maasai Men, Longido, Tanzania (2005)

I went for a walk on Friday down along the river. At one point, the sidewalk makes a long swoop out away from the water, and the path along the water is an ancient almost-brick, with bumps and gaps all over. It's hard to walk on, even in good shoes (which I was not wearing). At the beginning of the path, there was a pine tree losing needles all over the path, and the pine smell was just exactly like the spot, high up in the mountains, where we kept the big, imported goats that my organization brought to Rwanda.

Near Otis Spot, Buchanan, Liberia (2006) 

I thought about a picture I have of the road to that spot, of the way the light shone through the pine trees and the eucalyptus, and of the rich smell of the needles and leaves when the sun warms them.

The Road to the Goats, Itabire, Rwanda (2003)

I take pictures of roads and paths. I love the idea of remembering how I got somewhere, not just what I found at the end. Back when we spent hours in bookstores "studying" in college, T. and I discovered a book called The Journey is the Destination, by Dan Eldon, who grew up in Kenya and died in Somalia. I've never owned it, but I know that she has, and that she ends up giving it away over and over. I love the photos and art, but I think the title is still my favorite part.

Tiny Little Town, Southern Sudan (2007)

[22] music

I came across this video today, of Brenda Fassie in South Africa, and it reminded me of one of the things that I miss most about Africa, a side of the continent that I'm not sure the missionaries I grew up with in Liberia ever quite saw. Sure, they went to five hour church services and yes, people danced at celebrations. But there is nothing quite like a concert or a dance club in Africa. I don't mean a rally or a revival, I mean real, popular music. I am a tavern or coffee shop girl in the US, but in Africa, I go out, and I dance. I suck at it, but I dance. The music has rhythm enough to keep even me looking relatively un-stupid, and people of all ages get out on the floor. 

My favorite part of this video is the crowd just behind the nice tables, all dressed up and dancing. It reminds me of a Rwandese woman, a friend of a friend I'd just met, putting her hands on my hips and showing me how to dance, back in Rwanda. My entire unself-conscious dancing career dates back to that night. (I am still awful, but I have reached the point where people actually tell me that I look "cute." They claim this is a compliment, but I find it patronizing. In a good way.)

[21] cows

I don't know why, but I always seem to end up in cow places. (Although, now that I use my actual brain, this is not that odd considering that most if not all of East Africa is cow country and I've spent quite a few of my adult Africa years in East Africa. Anyway.) I don't mind cows, usually. I can plow my way through them. I can swat at them with a stick. 

Rusenyi, Rwanda (2003)

I appreciate the fact that cows provide lots of milk and meat for a great many people of the world. And hey! I love milk, despite my vegan roommate S. in law school who insisted that milk is full of pus because cows are milked so frequently and painfully. "Yum," I would say, as she stared in disgust at my bowl of cereal and milk. Slurp. 

But seriously. Sometimes one can overdose on cows. 

When you can't drive your (emergency radio and ventilator equipped) vehicle on the only road through town, for example.

Tiny Little Town, Southern Sudan (2007)

Or when they block your way to the (overheated, dirty) pit latrine.

 

Tiny Little Town, Southern Sudan (2007)

I don't think I miss cows. Nope. I don't.

[20] seriously brilliant

I hadn't noticed it sneaking up on me, but it came. The days got shorter and shorter - it's dark when I wake up and dark when I leave work - and there are no longer sunny lunch hours in the park. Even noon is gloomy and rainy, and I hide from the sky under my cheerful blue umbrella. 

My mood did the same. Soon it was gloomy more often than not, and I could rarely get myself off my couch to go to evening events. They seemed like a good idea during the day, but then the sun set before I'd even left the office and I gave up on going anywhere in the evening dark and cold. Little things seemed bigger than necessary, and brought on tears. 

Then my friend J. gave me a mood light. I used it yesterday morning for the first time. I sat in front of the blue glow for 30 minutes, trying not to look in its direction but not look directly at it so as to blind myself. 

It's actually sort of shocking. I can't make any blanket statements yet, because I have only used the thing for two days and it could simply be a fluke, but it is actually difficult to feel unhappy after sitting in front of that light. I think about things that would have made me sad three days ago, and I just don't feel it. I'm still happy. Happy skippy happy. 

The little rows of blue lights apparently work like the sun, through your eyes and into your brain, ramping up the production of dopamine or serotonin or some lovely brain chemical. J. warned me not to use it for too long. "You'll feel giddy," he said. So far, no giddy, but lots of happy. This light therapy thing is brilliant. Just seriously brilliant.

[20] little things

You know you are no longer in Africa when you leave the sugar open overnight, and in the morning? 

No ants. 

Weird.

[19] in which i try to fix myself, but the world is the problem

"What is that white blur?" I asked, leaning forward. "Is it a problem?"

"That's your heart," the x-ray technician said. "In people like you, who are tall and thin" - side note: this guy is my favorite! person! ever! love him! - "the heart is low down and near the center of the chest."

I finally got around to going to a doctor for the fact that I feel like someone is sitting on my chest. The conversation went like this, "Well, it started right after I got back from Ethiopia, which also coincided with starting to work in an old building. And I've had bronchitis a few times. And I test positive for tb, and my friend in Liberia had it when we were little, but I took INH for nine months in 2002. Oh, and I had schistosomiasis, as of last year. And malaria. And I was treated five times for amoebas. And the only other time I've felt like this in my life is when the harmattan would - do you know the harmattan? It's when the sand from the Sahara gets caught up into the atmosphere and blows over Sub-Saharan Africa. I used to feel this way then, like I couldn't quite fill my lungs up." That would be par-tic-u-late matter, my friends. Dust.

Good news: nothing bad on the x-ray, and my lung capacity is above average for my age and height (yessssssssss - I have no idea how this happened. I've been boycotting exercise recently out of sheer laziness). Bad news: my chest is perfectly shaped for air-trapping, and apparently I'm allergic to Gone West. It's always convenient to be allergic to your new hometown.

[18] short due to computer problems

Things are oddly messed up in internet world. No google products are loading on my computer, which results in a lot of half-loaded screens.

Here is a little story:

Not long before we evacuated from Liberia, we went to a Fourth of July in February party at the Voice of America station. (I think the Fourth of July was held in February in Liberia so as to avoid the rainy season.) There were games and prizes. There was food. I, being a nerdy child, spent a great deal of the day memorizing all the verses of the the Star-Spangled Banner and the Battle Hymn of the Republic (apparently I am a scary old white Southerner at heart). ("I have seen him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps, they have builded him an altar on the evening dews and damps..." - this was almost 19 years ago and I still remember the silly song.)

I fared less well at the games. My little brother and sister each won something in the races and games. I won nothing. I have never been very athletic. I was discouraged.

A little later, I was crawling around under a big bush/tree thing, and I found something. A golf ball! I was thrilled. A. and R. might win races, but I was a FINDER. I could FIND things. (Keep in mind that this whole event was taking place NEXT TO A GOLF COURSE.)

I had a little basket from somewhere or something, and I joyfully put my golf ball into it. This is what the picture from that day shows: A. and R. are holding their ribbons for winning races. I am just as proudly holding up my little basket with a golf ball in it.

[17] rich

I have not yet turned the heat on in my apartment.

Well, that's a lie. I turned it on for about one hour one night. And then I turned it back off and it hasn't come back on. It's not yet really cold enough to need it, not when I have a white cotton gabi from Ethiopia and a down throw and a good sweatshirt. I'm sort of tempted, though, never to turn it on. I'm not sure if it will be tolerable in here, but I live in an apartment building, so I can mooch a little bit of heat from the neighbors.

I have a heating pad, and I have a real mattress now. (It is, by the way, astounding how much easier it is to stay warm when you sleep on a real mattress than on an air mattress. I underestimated how much heat I was losing to that air. I'm delighting in sleeping in this cushy, cozy, warm, real mattress. Even if it's the wrong size for my bed frame. Oops.)

The most important thing is my pure joy at the electricity bill. I paid $60 a month all last winter, which was fine. It was tolerable. But then, over the summer, I discovered how low the bill could go if I didn't use any climate control. A $19 electricity bill is pretty addicting.

Not that I don't spend that other $41 almost instantaneously on other things.

Yesterday I read an article about the difficulties of buying groceries in the "food deserts" of cities, and I realized just how privileged I am. I am broke every month, sure, but I still buy fresh vegetables and I eat a big salad almost every day. I still buy ice cream bonbons and hummus and healthy cereal. I still buy - this, this is the privilege of wealth - organic milk.

No, I can't fly to Africa when I want. But I can buy food that keeps me healthy. With my new health insurance, I can go to the doctor when I feel sick. I can get to one or another grocery store within ten minutes walking or ten minutes by train. I can heat my apartment, if I choose. I can buy myself lunch when I have nothing interesting left in the fridge. Every once in a while, it strikes me just how privileged I am.

[16] grace

When I flew back to Gone West last month, I took the train into town with my two suitcases and my bookshelf-in-a-box. I sat in front of a wheelchair space, because that's where there was room to prop up my two suitcases and my long, skinny box. All the way home, I leaned forward and held the box into place, so it wouldn't fall across the aisle or on my head.

A man in a wheelchair got on the train and I looked about frantically for a place to move all my stuff (there are, after all, announcements made at every stop telling you that you must give up those seats for seniors and people with disabilities) . "Oh, no," he said, "it's fine. You don't have to move. I'm fine right here." He put himself on the opposite side, next to the door.

One stop before mine, I got up and laboriously moved each piece of luggage in front of the door. When the train stopped at my stop, I jumped out and pulled everything out, one piece at a time. The man in the wheelchair spun one of the suitcases and pushed it out the door for me.

Grace.

(P.S. Happy birthday, Oma!)

[15] sleeping arrangements

After several unsuccessful attempts to refill my air mattress, I resigned myself to the fact that it had a hole in it. Somewhere. Now, I could try to find this hole, but an air mattress is a pretty large inflatable object, as I told the guy at Aer0bed when I called,

"I think it has a hole in it, but I don't have a swimming pool to dunk it into."

"What we suggest you do," he told me, "is fill a spray bottle with water and a little dish soap, and spray it on the mattress, one section at a time, and then press gently on that section to see if anything bubbles out from the mattress."

... (Well! Isn't THAT helpful? Isn't that how you want to spend your evening?)

"I don't think I have room for that, either." I said. (My apartment is a little bit bigger than a standard hotel room. The kind with two beds, only I have just one, which leaves room for the kitchen.)

"Well," he said, sounding annoyed, "I guess you'll have to send us a copy of your receipt then, to show that you actually did buy it within the last year, and then I can authorize a return."

Why yes, that would be very nice, considering that I did nothing to this mattress between the night it was full and the day it started leaking. There is no way it could have been punctured. It just started seeping, as far as I can tell. Shouldn't it last more than a year? I bought the most expensive one! I hate replacing things out that can continue to be useful, but for that price, this air mattress seems like something that should last more than a year. It just does.

In addition to the eventual replacement of the warrantied air mattress (should they decide to honor the warranty - that phone call did not sound encouraging), I have inherited a mattress from S.'s parents. Now I can sleep in a real bed, for the first time in this apartment. For the last week or so, I've been sleeping on my 1kea couch that flips out into a bed. It's not too terribly uncomfortable, but it does make the apartment veeery crowded, and it's oddly hot. I wake up sweaty several times a night. I guess this is the penalty one pays for a foam mattress without a mattress pad.

(Side note: when I was very little after we first moved to Liberia, I used to sleep on a foam mattress all the time. To hear my parents tell it, they got very tired of picking up a dripping-wet-with-sweat baby every morning, so they bought water beds when we came home on furlough. I spent most of my childhood sleeping in a water bed, which was the perfect antidote to the heat in Liberia. When I had malaria, though, even that was not cool enough. I remember lying flat on the cement floor, trying to soak up the cool as my body burned with fever.)

[14] things forgotten, part 4

Only big cities in Africa can sustain a market every day. Smaller towns hold them once or twice a week. My little town of Kibuye, in Rwanda, has (had, at least) a tiny daily market in the center of town every day, with a few vegetables and a stall for meat, but it holds its real market on Fridays. The real market is held on the sandy beach of the bay closest to town.

Boats, large wooden ones with motors and little dugout canoes with a single paddle, come over from Congo and from the islands in the middle of Lake Kivu. They carry people and animals and vegetables. The pineapple from Congo are rumored to be the best around, and a few merchants sell red palm oil from the far side of Congo, where the trees carry those little red berries.

The market is crowded with industrious boys who offer to carry your bags and wash your car. Every week, I had to choose two or three for the tasks, and the two in this photo (plus the one below with the cloth) were my favorites. After a few months of weekly bag-carrying, we knew one another well enough that I would give them each a few hundred francs and instructions to look for passion fruit or pineapple ("maracuja?"* "ananas?") and they would disappear for a few minutes, only to return with either the requested fruit or an apologetic, "maracuja, no," as they handed back my francs.

You can't quite buy everything in this market, but you can get staples like "Irish" (potatoes), sugar, and flour in the open center. You can get goats up on the hill behind the photo. You can get tomatoes, onions, and green pepper in the stalls around the edge. You can get batteries, flipflops, and padlocks in the stalls by the water. You can get bananas in piles down by the water.

You can get second hand clothes along the upper road, or beautiful cloth at the stall down in the corner. You can even get it sewn up right outside, by a man with a treadle sewing machine carried laboriously from his normal shop in town.

I tried to go to the market every week. I walked sometimes, and paid the boys to carry my plastic bags home up the hill and down again, offering them a cold Fanta on my patio after they set everything in the kitchen. I took the Prado sometimes, and inched slowly down through the crowd so as not to hit the wandering children or the slow-wobbling bicycles.

I bartered, sometimes, and sometimes not. My friends who worked for volunteer organizations would be annoyed later, complaining about the price of tomatoes rising to 100 francs (20 cents) per kilo (from 80 francs - which no one ever had change for anyway, since the smallest bill is 100 and the coins are rare), but I didn't see the point of complaining about spreading a little wealth around. Anyway, my bag-carrying assistants would nod or shake their heads at the price, letting me know that yes, 100 francs was the new price or no, it was the muzungu price, keep talking.

* I just looked up maracuja in my French-English dictionary** because I'm unsure of the spelling, and apparently this is not a word that appears in Quebecois French, because it's not there. When I look it up in the English-to-French section, it appears as "fruit de la passion." Helpful.

** I also found, in my French-English dictionary, the following list:
UGANDA: gum, financial papers, card for D's car, laptop, reports from 3 partners, shillings, USD.
My life is so boring now in comparison.

[13] %(*&^ movies

I intended to stop for a drink after work with a few girls from work. I suggested the place I always suggest, which I suggest because of the amazing soft pretzels with cheese fondue, with which I am obsessed, and my suggestion was accepted. I left work a few minutes early because I had to make a stop on the way, and eagerly headed to the pub.

Closed.

Not just closed but, to add insult to injury, closed for the filming of a movie. If there is anything I thought I had escaped when I escaped New York City, it is movies filming in the exact locations where I want to live my life. Ethiopian restaurant just south of Houston? Prevented due to movie filming. Playground where the babysittees loved to play? Banned due to movie filming. Walking one block down the street to the grocery store? Again, blocked due to movie filming. It's all exciting the first five or six times, and then it just starts to get old. Are there no other coffee shops in Manhattan they can use for movies? For that matter, are there no other pubs in Gone West?

We relocated to another place, which was fine, although pretzel-less and therefore inherently disappointing. But it was delightful to sit and chat with some very pleasant company. It's been a long time since I laughed until I couldn't sit up straight, but I did tonight. I certainly did tonight.

[12] conk conk conk/here and now

There are really very few things in the world that make me want to burst into tears as instantaneously as getting conked on the head. I stood up on the bus today and conked my head on the mirror right above me, and the guy sitting next to me asked, "Are you okay?" I wanted to say, "No, I just hit my head on the mirror and it really hurt. How could I be okay?" and start crying, but bursting out crying on a crowded bus is really only acceptable until the age of about 6 or so, so I smothered my bursting and just said, "Kind of." I miss being little enough to cry loudly when things HURT, like it HURTS when you catch a hard object on the flat of your head.

(I also miss foot-stomping. Wasn't foot-stomping fun? I can do grown-up and it even feels more natural now to hold back on the foot-stomping, but some days I miss being little and having fewer internal censors.)

...

I spent hours today looking through photos on my computer. I wanted to change the background on the desktop. It has been Rwanda and Liberia, but never Tanzania or Sudan or Ethiopia. I am feeling further and further from being able to go to the places my heart craves, and so it seemed appropriate to choose one from somewhere different. Anyway, the Rwanda photos especially were all too brilliant and colorful (see examples here). I needed something to match the constant rain outside, the inertia of days whose light is gone by 5 p.m.

I chose this photo of barren mountains in dry season outside Lalibela, Ethiopia. I took it from the back of a mule on my way up to a cliff church. It is not bright and colorful, this photo, but there is beauty in the starkness, and a great span of sky, and it seemed right to acknowledge the most recent visit I made to Africa, to a whole new country that I barely began to know.

[11] things forgotten, part 3

Around Kilometer Marker 38 (or is it 48? I think it's 48.) on the drive from Gitarama to Kibuye, there is a waterfall, just a single cascade of water next to a scenic turnoff.



The valley beyond is beautiful, though, even in dry season, when all the squares of crop-land are empty.



This boy plays his stringed instrument for anyone who stops, in hopes of amafaranga (francs) or some other gift.


I so rarely stopped. I was only 20 kilometers from home, and I wanted to get there.

[11] cars and trucks

I have a bizarre fascination with knowing the makes of cars. Not all cars. I used to be primarily interested in minivans and SUVs as a teenager, for some reason. Not that I wanted one, or that we owned either one, just that I wanted to be able to identify all of them. It still bothers me when someone says something about "that Chevy Astro," when it was clearly a Ford Windstar.

Now I am primarily interested in the types of vehicles used in Africa. Not the little Corollas and Coronas, but the trucks and SUVs. There is a big difference, should you care to notice, between even the engine sound of a Nissan Patrol and a Land Cruiser.

The first thing I thought when I saw this article: Terrorised in Congo, was not the natural reaction, "Oh, how horrible for the IRC workers." It was, "Those are not Toyota Land Cruisers in that picture. They are Mitsubishi Pajeros."

The second thought was, "At least they have the right license plates." I am also bizarrely fascinated with license plates. It bothers me in those movies allegedly set in certain countries, like Hotel Rwanda, when the license plates are wrong. Fortunately, those NK license plates are, in fact, license plates from North Kivu Province in Congo.

I need some help.

(P.S. I wrote this all after seeing the photo and before reading the story, which is actually quite scary. I have the natural reaction now.)

[10] things forgotten, part 2

Another thing I had nearly forgotten about the Rwanda years is the drive to Kampala. I drove that road five or six times in my two years (I also flew a couple of times). At the beginning, I always made the trip with my colleague D., but by the end I drove it alone or with a few friends.

The drive from Kigali to the border with Uganda is all tight curves through green mountains, like most driving in Rwanda. The road runs along a valley, and the hills rising in front are round and full. Uganda begins the same way - the southwestern corner of Uganda is all rugged deep-green mountains blending into the volcanoes it shares with Rwanda and Congo. The mountains ease into rolling pale green hills studded with cattle, and then flatten to dry plains covered in thorn trees, with long, flat, empty roads where you can open up and see how fast a Prado really will go. And then, before Masaka, the bulrushes creep closer and closer to the road as things get wet again near Lake Victoria.

Don't ask me about the Masaka - Kampala section of the road. It's all a blur at the end of a long day of driving. When I drove up with S. and E., in the left-hand drive Prado on the left-hand side of the road, having driven all day, I got snappy by the end. Driving that road is difficult, especially when your driver's seat is over by the curb and you can't see how far your bumper extends on the side where passing vehicles are cutting too close. In Rwanda, a drive to and from Kigali was not complete unless you thought you were going to die at least once. The drive to Kampala is far worse. The tar road in Uganda is crumbling at the edge, making it too narrow for cars to pass one another in some places, and you share it with enormous vehicles: buses and lorries overloaded with people and goods. These big vehicles stay in the middle of the road. They do not give way for anyone. The only thing you can do is keep your eyes on the edge of the road and stay as far off the edge as possible without losing control in the crumble. If you dare look at that huge intercountry bus, or that lorry piled high with sacks of grain, passing three inches from your inner bumper, you will lose your sh1t.

I mean that literally.

The towns in Southern Uganda are short rows of colorful shops set back a dusty span from the road. They would flash past, except that each town has huge speed bumps before and after, and a few in the center of town for good measure. Humps, they call them, and if you drive with a Kenyan friend or colleague, you will hear the joke that they call them "sleeping policemen" in Kenya. (You will possibly hear this joke multiple times, depending on the particular colleague.) The humps in Uganda are gargantuan. Not even the largest of lorries can take them at full speed. Little cars inch over them as if up and over a hill.

My colleague D. had particular stopping points in each major town: the hotel up on the hill in Kabale if you are already tired enough to need chai after two hours of driving plus the border crossing, the hotel next to the lake in Mbarara when you are desperate for lunch, the rest area at the turn in Masaka for some samosas midafternoon. He knew people at each of them, and every stop was prolonged while he greeted them. He would talk, and I would wander off to look at the view, or to watch the music videos on the tv, or, in Masaka, to carefully hold up the legs of my trousers while I used the porcelain squatty-potties.

On my own, I rebelled, and I stopped in a tiny town in the middle of hours of nothing to buy a Ugandan sim card (to get a Ugandan phone number) for my mobile. The man behind the counter in the tiny green (I think it was green) shop looked up at me, the unexpected white girl, in surprise.

"I could live here," I would think, every time I drove through the light green hills. "Maybe I could buy some land, and some cows, and run a little school. I want to move here, and own a house."

Several police officers flagged me down on an unpopulated stretch of road. "Where are you going alone?" the nearest one asked, from under his helmet. "And why?" They ignored the sheets of paper I had painstakingly procured from multiple offices on each side of the border, permission to take the Prado out of one country and into another. "Why must you go alone? A woman, driving alone? It's good that you drive, you a woman, but not that you go alone."

I smiled, and drove on.

[9] things forgotten, part 1

(Pre-P.S. It is November again, and I, along with many cool people whose blogs can be found by clicking on the last word of this sentence, am writing something every day during NaBloPoMo.)

Many, many are the times that I wish I had a blog when I lived in Rwanda. There is so much that I have forgotten because I never wrote it down.

My friend S.'s car has no dashboard lights and last night, as I was designated-drivering her to her house and wondering aloud on the highway just how fast we were going since I could not see the speedometer, she told me that there is something wrong with the wiring, not the fuses, and I remembered how my Prado's electrical system went batty a couple of times. I was driving through Gitarama once, on my way to Kigali, when the fuel gauge suddenly plummeted. I had two tanks on the Prado, so I flipped the tanks, and the second one plummeted, too. I assumed that the car was leaking fuel (which, when I think about it, is silly - it's unlikely that BOTH tanks would start leaking at the same time on a perfectly smooth tar road), and turned around and went back to the nearest petrol station, where I added some diesel to the tank, which was not, in fact, empty.

By the time I got to Kigali, the entire truck had gone insane. Not only was the fuel gauge vacillating wildly between empty and full, the lights on the dashboard were not working, nor the radio. In addition, the blinkers did not work (the headlights did, fortunately), and the horn did not work. These dual losses were a near-disaster in a country where blinkers (they are called indicators in East Africa) and horns are the primary method of communicating with the cars, people, and animals with whom one shares the road. Car wants to pass you? Indicator, on the curb side if it's okay for them to pass; on the inside if not okay for them to pass. Person or animal darting in front of you? One little hoot of the horn will do it.

I generally drove with my right hand over the horn when it wasn't in use shifting gears. One or two little hoots to politely alert someone that I was coming, sustained hoots to warn that death was imminent. Without the horn, I felt totally vulnerable, especially driving in Kigali-ville. I took the back way out to a restaurant that night, 'round past the Ministries and up the back side of the central hill, hoping for fewer pedestrians who I could not warn of my passing.

The Toyota dealership (on speed-dial in my phone by the end of my two years) fixed things the next morning. Whew.

[8] unsustainable living arrangments

So... remember how I have been sleeping on an air mattress for ten months?

That air mattress is, um, deflating. Throughout the day, I have been hearing it crackle, and I just went over there and put my hand on it, and the whole thing is considerably lower than it ought to be.

I am about to go investigate - I hope that the cap is somehow joggled off or something. If it has a hole in it, I am in so much trouble. What will I sleep on?

[7]b - I can't resist today's election post

I cannot imagine reading the news, looking at the jubilant faces, and not being moved. I am still crying daily with joy.

I have made it clear on here that I don't like the current presidential administration. I've been realizing, in the last few days, that one of the things that bothered me most was that I didn't feel heard. I didn't feel like anything I said or did - or even anything that an entire coalition of people said or did - would make any difference. That absolute certainty that I saw in the outgoing president, that he is right, that everyone else is wrong, terrifies me. I feel the same way about James Dobson. I am scared of anyone who claims that he or she has the one single answer or, worse, the truth of what God wants.

Because here's the thing: what if you invoked the name of God to justify your policies, but you were wrong? Who could tell you that you were wrong? To whom would you listen? And how would you ever know? Because I have very different opinions about the heart of God than this on-the-way-out president or, in fact, many of my family members.

I am willing to accept that I may be wrong. I don't think I'm wrong, of course. I hold these opinions for a reason; I have thought them through and they make sense to me. But I am willing to accept that I may be wrong. I am willing to listen when someone tells me that they reached a different conclusion and gives me the reasons why.

What I am not willing to do is be dismissed for having my opinions. I am not willing to accept having my opinions silenced. I am not willing to stop thinking because a pastor says this or a leader says that.

And what I hope more than anything for the next four years, what I hope for all of us and for our new President, is that the unity to which he calls us will mean that we can hear one another without anger, without defensiveness, without dismissal. What I see, on the faces of US Americans and on the faces of people around the world as they greet this new Presidency, is hope that this time, this time, even our contributions, even our ideas will be welcomed. We may still have different conclusions, we will not all be satisfied with the outcome of every discussion. But if we can open ourselves to different reasons and ideas, we might actually be one nation again.

We have been dividing ourselves long enough.

[7] field trips

When I was little, I went to school in a house. Every school year, a teacher or two would come out from North America and teach a group of us with US American curriculum. Five, ten, however many of us there were in town that year who did not fit into Liberian schooling or LAMCO schooling, sat at desks our dads made (I had the coolest one) and worked on whatever grade level we needed.

We went on the most interesting field trips.

One year, we went for a ride on a tugboat in the harbor. I sat at the front of the tugboat on a metal post that looked something like an H. I sat on the crossbar of the H and pretended I was riding a horse as the tugboat tugged up and down in the waves. (I was a little horse-obsessed at the time.) If I recall correctly, this tugboat actually did not TUG boats. It pushed them. Years later, in 2000 and again in 2006, I saw this tugboat, or one very like it, beached and broken at the edge of the same harbor.

broken LAMCO tugboat

One year, we went to a Chinese restaurant, where we learned to make spring rolls and the woman who owned the restaurant wrote our names in Chinese characters on the backs of menus.

One year, we went to a pig slaughterhouse.

For crafts, we tie-dyed. No, I mean real tie-dying, like they do in West Africa. Not silly rainbow-colored blotches, but tie-dying with designs and purpose.

A man came to show us how to weave traditional Liberian baskets. We sat in the carport watching him entwine the grasses and form a sturdy round base, then build up the sides. We all took a turn, clumsily.

Can I just say that I think I had one of the most interesting childhoods ever?

[6] wide open future

Someday, I'm going to stop writing about this election.
Someday, I'm going to stop crying every time
I see a picture of the Obama family on that stage,
or hear the President-Elect speak.

A friend said to me today,
"For the first time in eight years,
I feel like I have a president."

I am living with the vastness of possibility these last few days.
Anything seems possible this week.
We could cure cancer, or AIDS. Cancer and AIDS.
We could end war.
We could end hunger.
We could end pollution, and reverse global warming.
We could save lives.
We could heal hearts.

Oh, I know.

I am too idealistic, and I will be disappointed
100 times
in the next four years.
I know that.

I'm just overwhelmed at the idea of a President who says,
"We need change."
(We do need that.)
A President who says,
"I will listen to you, especially when we disagree."
(We need that, too.)

I've been disillusioned, these last eight years.
In 2004, I could not imagine
that anyone would think
another four years of the same
was a good idea.
War.
Torture.
Environmental destruction.

I was disappointed,
and I've been disappointed,
every day since.

But I'm coming alive again.
I'm daring to hope.
The future is wide open,
and anything is possible.

...

"This is our time,
to put our people back to work
and open doors of opportunity for our kids;
to restore prosperity
and promote the cause of peace;
to reclaim the American dream
and reaffirm that fundamental truth,
that, out of many, we are one;
that while we breathe, we hope.
And where we are met with cynicism
and doubts
and those who tell us that we can't,
we will respond with that timeless creed
that sums up the spirit of a people:
Yes, we can."

~ President-Elect Barack Obama, 4 Nov. 2008

[5] we did it

I didn't cry last night in the first excitement, but give me the Yes, We Can music video or a slideshow of people all over the world reacting to the news of President-elect Obama's victory, and I cry over and over again. The little part of me that thought that the Republican establishment would still steal it away by fraud or deceit (witness: Florida - 2000, Ohio - 2004) is finally starting to rest.

"We did it." I keep thinking, "We did it." Even though I personally did very little, nothing but believe and cast one single vote and write a few posts here that most likely changed no one's mind, because most people have pretty strong opinions about things like this.

We did it - we elected a black man to the highest office in our country, not another old white man.

We did it - we elected a president who calls us to unity, instead of a man whose campaign told us that we were not "real Americans" if we disagreed with him.

We did it - we elected a president who reminds us to hope when things look difficult.

We did it - we elected a president who has lived overseas and seen the world, and who will govern, of course, for this country, but also for everyone else.

They told us that we were too young, that we were too inexperienced, that we were too hopeful. They told us that our candidate was the wrong color. But we did it.

One man cannot change everything, but this man can change some things, and for the first time in eight years, I can believe that the changes our President brings will make things better.

We did it once, yesterday. We have four years to do what we can.

"Yes, we can to justice and equality.
Yes, we can to opportunity and prosperity.
Yes, we can heal this nation
Yes, we can repair this world.

Yes, we can.

We know the battle ahead will be long,
but always remember
that no matter what obstacles stand in our way
nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices
calling for change.

And together, we will begin the next great chapter
in the American story
with three words that will ring
from coast to coast
from sea to shining sea.

Yes, we can."

~ Barack Obama, 8 Jan 2008

So here it is, once again:

[4]b

There is cheering in the streets here in Gone West, and T. tells me there is cheering in the streets in Detroit.

I knew not whether to laugh or cry when they called the election - too soon! what if they were wrong? - and McCain conceded. Jesse Jackson was crying. Oprah was crying. And Barack Obama, our next President, the man who carries a Kenyan name - the word baraka in Kiswahili means blessings - the man who speaks like a black preacher, the man who brought hope back to US American politics, spoke to the nation.

His speech was humble, and uniting. I wanted to cry with joy, and instead I laughed with relief, that our next president will not be one who tolerates racism and bigotry and division at his rallies, but one who promises that we, together, can make things better.

Yes, we can.

Congratulations, President Obama.

[4] on tenterhooks

Someday, I want to be able to tell my grandkids that I voted for the first black president this country has had.

Someday, I want to hear them say, "Grandma, how was it possible that the country had never had a black president?"

Someday, I want to tell my grandkids that this was the day when things started getting better.

Go blue!

[3] one more day

The rain and cold are setting in. The air last night, in the dark, had the bite of fall. The leaves are plastered flat against the sidewalk.

I'm nervous about the election. I pour over maps on the internet, willing more states to turn blue, even though what is blue already is probably enough.

It gets dark at 5:00 p.m., now, and I keep thinking maybe I should buy one of those full-spectrum lights, although I think an Obama victory tomorrow could carry me through many dark evenings.

I'm arranging a steady stream of activities to keep me from chewing my own fingers to nubs tomorrow night. Free Ben & Jerry's after work. More people to meet later.

"They'll call it by 9 p.m.," my mom tells me, as I rant on and on nervously.

"Eastern time?"

"Yes, Eastern time."

I can make it until 6 my time, right? Maybe?

I dropped my ballot in the box today, bubbled in and sealed and signed.

[2]b - presidents

When I was small in Liberia, we did our grocery shopping at a couple of grocery stores in Buchanan proper, and one in the LAMCO compound. None of the stores were very big; maybe four aisles at the most, but it seems to me, thinking back, that we somehow managed to get quite a few things at them. Okay, not everything. There were some things that had to wait for Harbel or Monrovia: almond butter, Honeycomb cereal, gummy worms - those things were only available in more kwi places. But we had bread and cheese every night, and any town that has cheese is good in my book. (Side note: I doubt that you can buy cheese in Buchanan now. Unless things have changed dramatically in the last two years, since I was there, the town has shrunken down in on itself. There are no longer any real restaurants or supermarkets.)

Sometimes my mom would buy us a treat at the supermarket. Sometimes Smarties (the real chocolate kind, not those little chalky tablets). Sometimes Pastilles (gummy fruity things).

One day, for a reason that I can't remember, my mom had to talk to the Lebanese owner of the LAMCO store, and we were ushered back into his office. While the two of them discussed whatever needed to be discussed, likely the lack of something, I stared up at the photo on the wall. I must have been not far into the world of reading, because I was proud of myself for being able to read the words underneath it for the first time. It wasn't that it was new to me - every office had it. It was a portrait of Samuel K. Doe. I was just excited, for the first time, to be able to read the words, "His Excellency, President Samuel Kanyon Doe." He was the only president I had ever known.

I've lived under a few more presidents since then (four in the US, one in Rwanda, one in Tanzania, one more in Liberia - Ellen! - if you don't count the two weeks I was there while Taylor was president, and one/two-ish in (semi-autonomous) Southern Sudan). As I rode the train today, I passed a small crowd of people waving Obama posters. "Hm," I thought to myself, "even though I no longer live in a place where one is required to put the president's portrait on the walls, I would put his up. I would proudly put his photo up on my very own wall in my very own apartment."

I wonder if it will be hard to get one of those red-white-and-blue shaded pictures of Barack Obama once he wins the election...

(Yes, I just said that out loud. I don't want to jinx it, but I almost start to hope.)

[2] runup to election 08

I'm just going back to this, over and over:

"We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics who will only grow louder and more dissonant in the weeks to come. We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope.

But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope."

~ Barack Obama, New Hampshire, 8 Jan 2008

[1] Halloween

(crystal ball)

I wore my long skirt, made in Yei, in Southern Sudan, and tied an Ethiopian scarf around my head, and people got it, right away, for possibly the first time in my adult costuming life. "Tell me the future! Who's going to win the election?" they said, and I sighed and peered into my (Christmas ornament) crystal ball. "I can't see anything about the election," I said, "the ball is too clouded with my own emotion about it. I can only see things further away from myself." But I didn't like the ball, anyway. Not for fortune-telling. I pulled an old deck of cards out and used those instead, because the numbers give me ideas. "Six means that you are above money, but four means that money is below you. You don't have to strive for it. It will come to you."

The scarf on my head started to itch my forehead, and it felt very, very familiar. When I was little in Liberia, we wore scarves on our head to church, my mom and I, little squares of fabric, and they had to be tied tightly to stay on my slippery white-person little-girl hair. They dug into my head, and they itched. (As a result, in later years, I just ignored that head-covering rule throughout Rwanda and Uganda and Kenya and Tanzania and Liberia and Sudan. I figured my skin made me a weirdo regardless, so my lack of headtie would not the noticeable feature. Educated African women, anyway, who get their hair permed and such, often don't wear headties to church.) My fortune-telling headscarf yesterday wasn't so tight, not like those long-ago Liberia headties, because it was long enough to stay in place. But it still began to itch on my forehead.

I shared the back seat of the car with a robot and a sea captain. The front seat held Hans Solo, a flapper, and a gold-digger, and they dropped me off by the library. A Joker walked past me at the train stop and said, "Don't be afraid" with his wide red mouth. "Oh," I told him, "I'm not."

On the train, four girls were a bee, a devil, Supergirl, and Sigfreud (of Sigfreud and Roy). They tried to take pictures of the Joker, but he turned his back. "Joker!" they called, "Joker, we want to take pictures of you!"

"Some people think I'm Beetlejuice," he said, his back still turned, holding the bar above his head. "I'm not Beetlejuice."

A teal and pink Spiderman got on, and the girls took pictures of themselves with him, instead, until the Joker got jealous and turned back toward them, "Okay," he said, "the Joker is ready for his paparazzi now."

pumpkin

In these orange-golden days of fall, I bake tray after tray of pumpkin muffins. I bring them to parties. I eat them for dinner. I take them to work. Every morning, I give one to my next-cubicle-over friend, and she eats it with her coffee. I never thought I would like pumpkin muffins, but these are full of warm spices and not too sweet and I could eat them all year long.

i am an idiot

So I have been very excited about voting. I have never gotten to actually physically vote. In 2000 I was in Honduras (registered to vote in Michigan) and the absentee ballot never came. I missed the entire Bush-Gore-Bush-Gore-Bush-Gore-Bush-Gore-Nader game. I'm still not completely sure what a hanging chad is. Michigan went Gore, though, so my vote was not missed. In 2004, I did get my absentee ballot while living in New York, and I voted. I was pumped, though, to do it in real life. Then I discovered two things:

1. All voting here is by mail. Dur.
   
2. I accidentally recycled my ballot, because I did not know it was coming in the mail. Double dur.
   

I had to call and request a new one and you would think that the lady taking the requests for replacement ballots would have heard everything, right? But no, she still snorted audibly with laughter when I said, "I need a new ballot because I accidentally recycled my other one."

You cannot tell me I'm the only person who did this.

And I'm never going to get to physically go to the polling station and pull a lever. How very annoying.

fall

I was afraid, from all I had heard, that there would be no real fall here, not the sort of clear crisp days that I expect from my years in Michigan. Person after person told me that the rains start in October and continue until May, and I pictured sodden clumps of brown leaves in the gutters.

Instead, these days have been all yellow-gold. The sun shines less harshly than it did a month ago, and the yellow leaves glow in its light. I sit out in the park at lunch without a jacket, soaking up what seems like the last of the sun before we all go into hibernation.

S. and I went rambling yesterday afternoon. We walked and we talked, and we giggled when two cute shirtless guys ran by. We wandered down to the river, low this time of year, and picked our way across to a former island, now stranded in a sea of mud. We sat in the setting sunlight until we got cold and worried about making it back to the car before dark.

On the way back, we clambered up a hill covered in blackberry brambles. Thorns stuck in our jeans so that we were picking them out long after the road opened before us. We walked down a two-track next to a field and I said, "This reminds me of Africa, of Tanzania, where our house was on the edge of the city and I could take walks at sunset into the fields." We walked past a little grove of young trees, and she said, "In China, that would be a forest, those little trees planted in a row. It would be the greenest thing around."

The different parts of the world are not so different. I saw Michigan in the blackberries, Rwanda in the stony paths, Tanzania in the fields.

It was just fully dark when we walked out of the woods. Headlights were flashing by on the highway, and there were just a few cars left in the parking lot. We were relieved that the park gates were still open.

a year ago this month

(Tiny Little Town, Southern Sudan)

I sat in a plastic chair under a tree with three of the blue army, waiting. I’m not sure what the difference is between the blue and the green army, but these wear blue camouflage instead of green. In Rwanda, J. and E. called the variously clothed soldiers the blue army, the green army and the red army, and I fell into the habit of doing the same.

Two of the blue army wore blue berets with silver insignias. The third had Nuer scarring on his forehead and a silver filigreed costume jewelry ring with a huge green oval stone. He had a satellite phone in his pocket that periodically sat alerted. He walked out to the sunshine and answered the phone, but no one was ever on the other end.

They had propped their guns on the ground – two against the tree and one pointing at the tree on its own little kickstand.

They were no older than 20. A younger girl, 15 or 16, sat with them, talking.

We tried to communicate. We exchanged names. One name was very long, although I managed to pick out Hakim and I went with that. Communication failed us after that exchange. They went back to talking amongst themselves. I leaned back and watched the breeze in the leaves. One of them lit a cigarette, then another. The last one held an unlit cigarette in his mouth for a while, dangling in a cigarette holder, before he finally lit it.

The oldest of the three, the most muscular and adult, motioned for my sunglasses on the top of my head. I handed them over to him and he put them on and mimed driving a car, fast, around tight corners. He spun his hand on the imaginary wheel of the car. Then he laughed and handed them back to me.

purses

Random Purse Story Number 1:

One day in Buchanan, Liberia, when I was about, oh, maybe 7 (I don't think I had a baby sister yet), my mom and brother and I got in our Peugeot 504 station wagon to go into town. R. and I sat in the back seat. My mom forgot something, so she ran back into the house to get it, after firmly warning my brother and I to watch her purse lest a rogue should steal it out of the front seat. Rogues were common at the time. "Okay," we nodded, and as soon as she left, I took her purse and hid it in the back seat on the floor. "Mom!" I said when she got back, "Mom! A rogue came by and he just grabbed your purse and ran!"

Sneaky little bugger, wasn't I?

...

Random Purse Story Number 2:

About the same time, also in Liberia, my dad and all the missionary men he worked with went to conference up-country. At some point during this conference, they ate some poo. I mean, they ate some food that was contaminated with poo. Not the poo itself. Not straight, plain poo. One by one, they fell dramatically ill with what appeared to be Hepatitis A (but was NOT, as would become clear only this last summer when one of these same missionary men went back to Liberia, unvaccinated because he thought he had already had Hepatitis A, and came down with Hepatitis A and typhoid at the same time and almost died because what treats one poisons the liver, leading to the current hypothesis that what they all had in 1987 was Hepatitis E or Q or Something). Anyway, in 1987 they all came down with Hepatitis Something. My dad conveniently came down with Hepatitis Something while at still another conference in Nairobi, Kenya. The good news is that they have good hospitals in Nairobi. The bad news is that he was unable to go out and shop for the Kenyan purses that were all the rage amongst missionaries in Liberia at the time. He had to send someone else to do the shopping, and that person failed to buy a kid-sized version of the Kenyan purses that were all the rage amongst missionaries in Liberia at the time. I was devastated.

The funny thing is that when I went back to Kenya in 2000, I didn't even particularly like those purses. I still have yet to own one, despite numerous opportunities.

...

I got a flu shot today and in the silly little conversation with the nurse, I said, "I love vaccines."

"You LOVE them?" she asked, stabbing me with a needle.

"Yes," I said, "they have saved me from so very many diseases."

By her humorless laugh, I doubt she realizes just how true this is in my life. I take every vaccine they will throw my way. Meningitis? Typhoid? Hep A? Flu? Bring it on. The only ones I've been offered and don't have are cholera (my travel nurse says only effective 50% of the time against one strain; not worth it) and rabies (I wanted it, but toooo expensive and you still only have something like 72 hours to get the rest of the post-bite shots).

overuse of the word "love" so that it no longer has meaning

I'm really starting to love my little life here. It surprises me to find that Gone West really is the sort of place where you get invited to spend a Sunday evening peeling apples and canning applesauce in someone's kitchen, just for fun. I had these fantasies when I moved here of dinner parties and hiking and drinks on the terrace. I wanted a social life, in a way that I didn't have the energy for in New York and didn't have the varied people for in Tiny Little Town in South Sudan. And just what part of that has not turned out to be true? None. It's my new reality, and I love it. I'm still working on making enough friends to keep me busy whenever I want to be busy (amuse me, people!), but the ones I have are pretty rocking cool. On Saturday, I went to a party that involved pouring layers of liquor into tiny glasses so that you can actually see the layers. This is surprisingly hard, and what I want to know is: how cool are the people who came up with this plan? So cool. I love them. It's like chemistry class WITHOUT A GRADE. And NO TESTS. I love all my nerdy friends.

I also love my little apartment. I have a bed and a couch and it's all so warm and cozy in red and orange. I finally have a bookshelf (courtesy of my lovely sister and a birthday I just had), and I got around to hanging my fabric map of Africa purchased on the street in Monrovia in front of Abu Jaoudi's and my geometric poop painting from eastern Rwanda. (What? You don't know the geometric poop paintings of eastern Rwanda? They are made by shaping ridges of cow manure on a sheet of plywood, setting it out in the sun to dry, and then painting over it in white and black paint. They actually started as painting on the sides of houses until crazy touristical people came along and wanted to take them home with them. I think. Unfortunately, the place where women actually make them, out on the road that runs from Umutara down to Kibungo, is extremely difficult to find; also no one speaks English. Good thing I know how to say 5000 francs in Kinyarwanda. Or did.

And no, there is no smell of manure. This is what mine looks like:



End parentheses.

And at the risk of getting even sappier, and even though I know one is never supposed to write about one's job, I love my job. Without going into too much detail, because that is always dangerous, for quite a while I had a job that required me to show up every day and go somewhere new and work with new people. It was exhilarating at times, but also sometimes boring and exhausting and I always, always had to be impressing new people. It was like a five month long interview. Now I have a work home and I work with the same people every day and they are fantastic and I am actually competent at my job and I love going to it every morning. It's actually the very same job that I was doing for the previous five months, so the exhilarating part is still there, I just don't have to be making first impressions every day. I belong somewhere.

AND, I have health insurance now. GOOD health insurance. I pay FIVE DOLLARS to go to the doctor and FIVE DOLLARS to get a prescription. Even the pharmacist when I went last week, after she helped me track down my ID number and all, said, "Wow, you have really good health insurance." (Which is exactly what I just said. Aren't you glad I just told a story that added nothing to what I said?)

So yes. Love, lovety, love. Can I use this word any more often? Are you gagging on the sickly sweetness of this post yet? Go right ahead. Gag. GAG.

LoR

All that is gold does not glitter
Not all those who wander are lost
The old that is strong does not wither
Deep roots are not reached by the frost

From the ashes a fire shall be woken
A light from the shadows shall spring
Renewed shall be blade that was broken
The crownless again shall be king

~JRR Tolkien

after this, i am taking a break from politics

I really need to stop writing about politics. I read an article in the New York Times this morning that pointed out the fact that, this time around, Obama supporters genuinely believe that the country will topple off a precipice into disaster if McCain is elected, and McCain supporters genuinely believe that the country will topple off a precipice into disaster if Obama is elected. I am guilty of a bit of that myself, to be honest. I actually do think the country will topple into disaster if McCain is elected. I predict economic chaos, the rise of international terrorism, additional unnecessary wars, and fewer and fewer people able to access health care, if McCain gets elected.

I asked my friend I. in Canada if she would marry me if McCain got elected, so I could have Canadian citizenship (this is apparently something white people do - threaten to move to Canada if their candidate loses an election - but why not? it's a beautiful big country right north of us, and they aren't bothering with these silly fights about abortion and gay marriage while the country descends into nightmare).

Unfortunately, I. wants to marry a man. The good news is that I want to marry a man, too, so I was not too devastated that my first proposal ever was rejected.

Anyway, it was a joke. I would not give up my US citizenship. My grandparents and great-grandparents came too far and gave up too much for me to toss aside my citizenship like that. While there are many things I would change about this country, it is the country of my birth. It is one of my several heritages. There are few things as safe and comforting to me as a Dutch family dinner on a Sunday afternoon. At my friend S.'s parents house here in Gone West, I feel the same homecoming as when I walk on a red dirt road somewhere in Liberia, or when I fly over the glowing leaves of Michigan's remaining forest land, or when I curl up next to the fire at C. and D.'s house in the Netherlands.

This is the beautiful thing about this country: we all come from something. I come from farm country in the Netherlands and a college town in Michigan and a bustling port city in Liberia. My good friend from law school comes from a sharecropping family on the border between Texas and Arkansas. I read yesterday about a school in Wyoming that teaches kids in Arapaho.

We all come from somewhere, and it's no surprise that we disagree. I am as guilty as anyone of getting angry sometimes, but less and less as I become more confident of what I believe, politically. It is not a reaction to anyone else's politics: I simply know what I think.

And in the end, I know that it will not be such a disaster if McCain gets elected. Sure, I'll be unhappy. It may be hard to get out of bed the next morning to face a world of more of the same Bushie-ness. But we all come from somewhere and there is enough healthy disagreement to keep us all accountable, if we can listen to each other.

old white men

Four years ago, during the Bushie/Kerry election, my friend K. and I joked that we wanted to make t-shirts that said, "I'm so sick of old white men," due to the fact that there we were, another election, another set of old white men as our only options. After I thought about it, I realized that this could be taken the wrong way, so it's probably a good thing that we didn't ever make them.

But it made me think.

The Christmas after that election, I got in a little, er, discussion, shall we say, with some relatives. One relative said that the country was in so much better a condition 200 years ago - more focused on God, more moral. I could only gape at him and finally I said, "Yeah, for rich white men it was better! It wasn't better for anyone black. They were slaves. And it certainly wasn't better for women."

I don't think things were better in this country 200 years ago. I think some things were better, perhaps, and some things were worse. For anyone concerned about the moral heart of the country, I point out that slavery was supremely immoral, and it was a fatal flaw in the moral heart of the nation just as surely as anything happening now. To get all Biblical on you, oppression is the one sin that God hates, as the Bible says over and over. I can't imagine he was all that happy with this country in 1804 given the slavery thing. This country was a brilliant place to live in 1804, sure, if you were white. And rich. And male. And if you didn't mind the fact that thousands of people were enslaved.

A few weeks ago, this old white men thing came up again. I was talking with a friend about issues of race and gender, and I told her this story. Why, we wondered, do white men get so defensive when the situations of women and people of color improve even a little?

I can only conclude that it seems to white men like a zero sum game. If people of color are less oppressed, white men lose power. If women gain power, white men lose it. It makes sense, in a way, because if other people are no longer under your control, you feel like you have less power. You feel like you are losing control. It's not really a tenable power, though. Keeping the power to control other people... well, I don't have that much sympathy. I'm sick of old white men, and I'm sick of them clinging to power.

permanency

In my little old Michigan, we do not have a DMV. We have a Secretary of State, and we go there for licenses to drive, etc. I have had a Michigan driver's license since the day after I turned 16 (I turned 16 on a Sunday) and a driving permit for 10 months before that. Everywhere I've lived for the last 14 years, I've been a Michigan driver.

No longer. My Michigan license expired on my birthday, October 1, and it didn't quite seem right to renew it, since I no longer live there. (Don't think I didn't think about just renewing it in Michigan - there was some serious emotional attachment going on there.)

But no. I got a little driver's manual and I studied the rules of the road and I went to the DMV and I waited in a crowded waiting room for them to call number B75 and I sat at a computer answering questions with photos that seemed to involve an inordinate number of cars made in about 1983, and they took away my Michigan license, never to be seen again, and today in the mail I got a brand new New State Driver's License.

It looks like I might actually be here to stay.

those highlighted words down below are a link; click on them.

Conversation ~ 1 year ago:

Person I know: You are wearing trousers! Trousers are not permitted here.

Me: [dumbfounded stare]

Person: No, the commissioner has said that trousers are not permitted. Women are not permitted to wear trousers.

Me: That is not possible. I am going to wear trousers. Even the commissioner cannot prevent me from wearing trousers.

Person: Those trousers will maybe be okay. They are not too tight.

Me: [spluttering]

...

Check this: South Sudanese Women Arrested for Tight Trousers.

an open letter to my no-longer-favorite airline

Dear Northwest Airlines,

I was shocked to discover, upon investigating your website, that you now charge for checked luggage. I was aware that some airlines have started to do so, but disappointed that you have joined them. Furthermore, you offer the following in the FAQs:

...

1. Why is Northwest changing its luggage policy and charging for each piece of checked luggage for travel in North America?

Northwest is better aligning its costs to transport luggage for each passenger.

...

Are you kidding me? This is the most ridiculous nonsensical sentence I've ever read. It has no meaning, other than, "we love screwing people over." (No, really, read it again. It has no meaning. I HATE it when people think that big words substitute for meaning.) I have been an increasingly frustrated customer for the last several years - I used to love you, and then I didn't love you anymore, and now I sort of despise you. Today, I am already irate, and I haven't even gotten on my flight yet. I remind myself once again that you are teetering on the edge of being an airline I swear never to fly again.

(American Airlines! Remember me? I swore off you after flights to/from Jamaica in which the bathrooms had pee dribbling out the door on ALL THREE PLANES and we had no time to make our connection in Miami and I almost died of hunger because I didn't have exact-change-only-please-$5 for a snack box? Remember how I hate you and will never fly you again? I do not miss you!)

(Kenya Airways! I miss you! I miss those delicious wheat rolls you serve for breakfast and the way the flight attendants smile at me and don't act like they hate me for existing. Also those lovely red and green blankets that I've never stolen because I want you to stay in business but I want one so. badly. Northwest could learn something from you. I have never felt like flight attendants so resented my existence - any passenger's existence - until my last few flights on Northwest.)

So, NWA, we are on shaky ground. Someday soon, I am going to get a well-paying lawyerly job and you know what? I will pay extra to avoid you. I'd rather ride the city bus belching exhaust all the way across the country than be treated like utter scum as your employees treat all customers.

Why is it that health insurance companies and airlines are the two industries that get away with treating their customers as if they hate us, as if the money we pay is not quite good enough to earn us customer service?

Sincerely,

A (former) (unappreciated) Passenger

moving up in the world

Let us shift our focus to a topic that we can all safely agree on: isn't it delicious to sleep up off the floor?

I realize that this is completely cultural. There is no real need to sleep on a sleeping surface that is raised off the floor. Here, at least; in other parts of the world there is the malaria mosquito, which lives within 18 inches of the ground, not to be confused with the cow mosquitoes in Southern Sudan that bit me through my jeans and through any gap in my raincoat and on my face, the only exposed part of my body. Those were some mammoth, vicious mosquitoes. (I call them cow mosquitoes because I was told that they could bite cows through their hide. See: mammoth, vicious, above.) Malaria mosquitoes, though, live close to the ground, so a raised bed would help.

One of the reasons why I survive well in developing countries is that I can tolerate a great deal. Discomfort, inconvenience, delay. I don't really mind them. As long as I am warm and there is prospect of some food at some point in the future, I can put up with most inconveniences. This is fantastic when I'm living in Rwanda and we are waiting for four hours on the top of a mountain for someone to come show us some possible goat stables. It's great when I'm using a pit latrine in Southern Sudan. It's perfect when that bed in Ethiopia doesn't really look or smell too clean. (I draw the line at cockroaches, though. I don't like cockroaches.)

It's not so great when I'm living in Gone West. In fact, it has gotten downright embarrassing. The other day when the topic somehow came up in a group setting, that I was sleeping on an air mattress on the floor nine months after I moved into this apartment, a male friend said, "Wow. You've been sleeping on an air mattress on the floor even longer than I did. And I thought I was bad."

This is not okay. I cannot be more of a slacker than a boy. A boy! You know how they are! Boys have two beers and a package of hot dogs in their fridge! Boys haven't cleaned their sinks since they moved in! Boys think a microwave is the only cooking implement one needs! (I just thought of some more examples, but it turns out they are all also true of my half-together apartment, like the books on the floor instead of on a shelf and the shower curtain still just the clear liner - but I did this on purpose so the bathroom would not look so crowded. It's not like I have roommates. No one here but me. A clear shower curtain is just fine.)

I am apparently living more haphazardly than boys. This is just not acceptable.

So yesterday I sighed and coughed up the money for a bed frame. I had to buy the kind with wooden slats because I have an odd aversion to box springs, especially the cheap kind, because they sound like cardboard every time you turn over and it wakes me up every time. Plus a mattress + box spring is so bulky. The rest of the world does not do this. They sleep on a mattress alone like proper human beings. It's so much more streamlined.

Then I forced a friend to spend two hours putting together this 1ke@ monstrosity. I love 1ke@ until I try to put the stuff together. The golf-elbow arm has not recovered. There is aching. There is paining.

But, whatever. I slept up off the floor on a real bed frame last night, for the first time in nine months in my apartment.

Too bad I still have an air mattress in the bed frame.

Baby steps.

(Just don't ask when I'm finally going to get around to hanging something - anything - on the walls. Sigh.)

politics

It will come as no surprise to readers here that I am a Democrat. (I know! You are shocked! I have said nothing, NOTHING about how awful I think the current administration is and how huge an Obama supporter I am! OBAMA 08!)

Eh-hem.

A better question is how I managed to become a Democrat. Or, more properly phrased, why I have never ever been a Republican. Because I grew up with the Republicans, oh yes, I did. I was surrounded by them. In seventh grade, when Mr. DK had us do a mock vote (it was Clinton v. Bushie Sr. at the time), I was one of two people in our class of 32 who voted Democrat. Mr. DK cracked, "Bush wishes this was reality." (Good news! Bushie lost that year.)

We were expected to be good little Republicans. We were expected to be against abortion and welfare and to vote against them reflexively.

It never really worked for me. I think in the beginning I was a Democrat partly because one formative person in my life (who shall remain anonymous here) was a Democrat, and partly out of sheer obstinacy. ("You want me to be a Republican? Fine, I'll be a Democrat." - I always wanted to be rebellious but I was just too much of a rule-follower, so I had to do it in quieter ways.)

When I started really thinking about it later, I just could not accept the lines that Republicans fed me. For example, I could not believe that voting against abortion was more important than voting for foreign aid (something more than the 0.03% or whatever of the national budget we give now). Even given the assumption that life begins at conception, I could never accept, having grown up in Africa, that the life of a three-day old zygote was MORE important than the life of a child whose mother had to watch him starve to death in Africa, or the life of a child who was killed by a bomb paid for by my taxes. Equally important, I could accept, but I could not accept the focus on one at the expense of the other, and I could not accept that I was supposed to ignore one of them with my vote.

I also never could accept that welfare was a bad thing. I lived in the inner city, as close as AZO gets to inner city, anyway, and I just did not see that mythical "welfare mother" abusing the system. I saw desperate people who needed some help. If I have to choose between a government that uses my tax dollars to provide a safe environment for the children of single mothers without skills or a government that uses even more of my tax dollars (and a lot of money borrowed from China) to fight untenable wars in multiple countries, I am going to choose the government with a good social welfare system every time.

Later, I learned that it was all more complicated than I was told growing up. The rates of abortions are identical in countries with legal and illegal abortion. Abortion is not cheap or simple; women don't get abortions because they are a fun thing to do. Women get abortions because they feel like they have no other choice. Even if abortion is illegal in the US, they will continue to feel like they have no other choice. The rate of abortion in this country will not change. You know what will change if abortion is outlawed? The number of women who die while they are having abortions. Making abortion illegal will result in more death, not less. What actually does help in reducing the number of abortions is having more of a safety net for women in desperate situations. Like, oh, I don't know, welfare. Universal health care. Which is exactly what Democrats favor. This is why rates of abortion are lower under Democratic administrations than under Republican ones. You want to save unborn babies? Vote for the candidate who will provide the best safety net to pregnant women who do not have money, help or health insurance.

As long as outlawing abortion is the only issue for so many voters, Republican politicians are free to do whatever they want on all the other issues. They are free to deregulate everything to the point that even the average consumer (let alone anyone vulnerable because of youth, age or poverty) is at the whim of very large, anonymous corporations concerned only with the bottom line. They are free to shift the tax burden from the rich to the middle class and use the money to fund a horrific war based on false premises like, "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction." I'm really tired of knowing that my tax dollars kill people.

Republican politicians will never get rid of abortion, because then they will lose their core constituency. People will start thinking about other issues.

As I said a few weeks ago, I have a lot of respect for conservatives who have thought through their policies and remain convinced that deregulation and free trade will help the most people in the long term. I just happen to disagree. Deregulation, as we have seen, results in huge monopolies who will do anything for money. If we don't trust our government to do a better job with health care than the current huge monopolies who spend all their time trying not to give their customers the services they paid for, then we should be improving the government, not simply turning everything over to the big companies and giving them permission to screw people over even more completely in search of even more money than they already make. This is what accountability is all about.

The fact is that you will find very few Republican US Americans overseas. It just doesn't last once you start seeing the rest of the world as real people. The world is too complicated to vote only, reflexively on the issue of abortion. We are all too interconnected. The world, and this country, needs us to hold our leaders accountable for far more than their views on one single issue.

Now is the time to expect more from our government.

aching

I miss Africa in my bones.

(Because of this, right now.)

(I am not doing that thing where people are like, "And the country of Africa..." - THANK YOU, GEORGE IDIOT BUSH. It's just that I miss too many countries, too many bits of too many places over too many years on that huge continent. And I don't have time to list all the swirling memories in my head. The banality of grocery shopping awaits me.)