Days of Wine and Roses

Wine, glorious Wine!

Last night I had dinner with some friends in Thailand. They had invited friends of theirs from Vietnam and so we sat around the table, five Americans. We were drinking prosecco as the Taiwanese-American (no, not me, although I was born in Taiwan) stir-fried chicken and wood mushrooms with a delicious ginger and white vinegar sauce and got to know each other. Aside from the fact that we were all Americans, we also share a love for good food and wine.

Now wine in Thailand is marked up immensely - the same stuff I can find in the US for $20 (which is cheap for the US) or in Europe for about 12 euros is usually about the equivalent of $45 or 30 euros. So wine drinking is not something that you do often in Thailand -despite all the wine bars flourishing on Thong Lor. I had been squirreling away bottles of nice wine in my fridge to share with honored guests everytime I come back from abroad. I had four nice bottles from Australia, a Saint-Emillion and two Sancerres, a Albarino, some California cabernet and zinfandel, two french champagnes (a Veuve and a Mumms), and an Oregon pinot Noir. I had a treasured bottle of Brunello as well. I ration it out to "wine worthy" friends. I'm down to four bottles right now. I pulled out a California Cab to take to the dinner since I liked these people and I thought they would appreciate it.

To celebrate the dinner, my male host brought out a bottle of Opus One. He had received it from a Thai friend one night. Now Opus One has an awesome reputation in my memory. When I was working in the restaurants of Columbia, South Carolina, I was learning about wine. My parents had always liked wine but being from Sumter and of limited means, we purchased "good wines" from the grocery store. My mother had a fondness for French wines and my father liked good cheap Italian wines. They had stories of visiting Spumante in Italy and I have a clay jug that they brought back from one of their wine tastings in the 60s. At the time, I thought Chilean wine for $3 was the height of sophistication and I actually drank Ernest and Gallo jug wine (including a memorable night in February 1986).

While working at Garibaldi's in Columbia, and then later Motor Supply Co. Bistro I learned about "good wines" vs "house wines". I learned that it was cheaper to order a bottle of something good than to get five glasses of the house wine at a much larger price. I developed a fondness for french sauvignons and chardonnays but not for the heavily oaked and popular California chardonnays. I liked Poully Fume and Pouilly-fuisse and Fume blanc and pinot grigio and orvieto and dry white wines. But I LOVED red wine. Loved it loved it loved it. Our wine lists included some beautiful cabernets and pinots and zinfandels from the Russian River Valley, the Willamette Valley, the Alexander Valley, Vineyards that still invoke awe and longing (at $40 a bottle much too rich for my blood) include: Stag's Leap, Jordan, Pine Ridge, Silver Oak, Gundlach-Bundschu, Clos du Bois, Clos du Valle, Chateau St. Michelle.

I moved to Washington DC and started graduate school. One year, I got to go to San Francisco for a conference so I scheduled a trip to the wine country where I visited the famous Ravenswood Vinery (No Wimpy Wines!) in Sonoma County and I went to three other vineyards in a fit of happiness and feeling sophisticated. I returned with a poster of the iconic Ravenswood label and a desire to become a wine snob. I was dating an Austrian guy named Michael at the time. He was in the hotel business and worked at the Jefferson Hotel in Washington DC. He had studied wine, of course, as a hotel and restaurant graduate and was interested in the same things as I was - good food, nice hotels, great wine, and traveling. His brother ran a very lovely hotel outside of Vienna in the Burgenland - Austria's wine growing region.

One day his brother asked him to pick up a bottle of Opus One for him to bring back to Austria. I went with him to the MacArthur Boulevard Wine shop which had a good selection. I was shocked to see that the bottle cost about $125 dollars back in 1995. That was a fortune. One day, I thought, one day - I'll have a taste of that fabulous nectar. I'll be rich enough to buy a bottle myself. Michael kindly gave me the promotional poster/corkboard that came with it and it has decorated my kitchens from DC to Amsterdam to Bangkok.

So back to Bangkok, I arrived at my friend's house with my precious bottle of Kendall-Jackson cabernet sauvignon. Not too expensive, admittedly but when you are in the mood for a nice big California Cabernet, its easy to get and tasty. I had brought it back from the US and thought, well I'll bring it to the dinner party. It won't really go with the seafood but we can drink it afterwards.

Imagine my joy when our host pulled out a bottle of Opus One. "I received it as a gift from a Thai graphic designer," he said, "and I thought it would be good to drink it tonight." I was amazed and excited. After much discussion on how to get it to the right temperature (an issue in hot balmy Thailand), we got a glass each of the precious nectar. Oh the nose! and the beautiful dark ruby color...

According to the bottle, it contained "Aromas of black olive and minerals underlie more traditional notes of dark chocolate, cola and espresso. Showing flavors of ripe blueberry, cassis and licorice, this age-worthy wine simultaneously offers a smooth finish and a slight grip of tannin at the close." I have never mastered the art of describing the wine I am drinking in this fashion. I can sometimes get the aromas. Instead I'll just say that I was transported back to the dreams of my younger self. A place where I thought about how my life might turn out... a place of daydreams and hopes and ideals where a bottle of wine would represent "making it in life". 

As I swirled the wine and chatted with the diplomat to my left and the high-powered consultant to my right, enjoying freshly cooked chinese and thai cuisine and discussing United Nations reform and hiking in Bhutan, I breathed in the rich and complex aroma. The grapes had transformed themselves from simple fruit produced in California from the wine legends of Baron Phillipe de Rothschild and Robert Mondavi into the stuff that career fantasies are made of. I felt like an adult. I felt like I was living the life I wanted for myself finally. And the wine was oh so very very sweet.

Another Long Silence

Another long silence from me and some writer's block. It's partially because I've been traveling and had a lot of friends in town since the end of April. I had a rough time in Papua New Guinea but it was good for me - found some things out about myself and came to some good healthy realizations.  And then I got to see a lot of friends and family which is fantastic - my sister came to visit me for two weeks, my friends Clay and Elli came to visit, I saw a friend from Amsterdam - Jim and then one from MSF - Tirana.... all good. I love having guests and I love having people stay with me in my apartment. But when they leave, I get sad and feel lonely. 

Tomorrow its the 4th of July - America's Independence Day - somehow this is making me homesick. Last year at this time, I had been in Bangkok for less than six months and I was able to pull together a 4th of July barbecue with about 20 people. This year, I know 2 people in town. Everyone else has either moved or is gone. That feels pretty sad.  But that is the nature of this transitory field I'm in and a big city like Bangkok. I can go out and meet people but I am sometimes overwhelmed by trying to make new friends. And social media feels like a crutch sometimes - I can stay in touch with my friends from all over the world but sometimes there is no substitute for just sitting across from someone and chatting. About nothing - about everything - and laughing. Or crying. As need be.

I'm now a consultant which means I work from home which I both love and is making me a little nuts. I love the freedom of not having to put on my "happy face" and go to the office but I miss copy machines and printers and inane chit chat in the hallway! I try to create routines so I am out and about but I get thrown off when I travel.

So two things happened this past week that threw me a bit... I had a big break through in therapy which is scary and exciting but leaves me feeling weak and scared.

And then when things were getting okay, I had the misfortune of seeing a terrible accident. In my apartment building, we have a big swimming pool on the 3rd floor. My balcony looks down on it. I like to come out on the balcony and treat it like my living room. I also like looking over the rail down at any swimmers below. I woke up from a nap on Sunday and saw a bunch of people down on the deck below - many in uniform and almost all of them Thai. At first I thought they were having some sort of ceremony or meeting. Then as I looked at the pool, I noticed a wheelchair lying in the shallow end. I had a horrible feeling about this and remembered this old 91 year old lovely American woman I met when I toured the building back in February of last year. I hope she's okay, I thought. And then my eye caught something else in the pool - her body, floating in the opposite corner facedown. It was such a horrible shock. And the police were all there investigating it but there was nothing anyone could do. And her body stayed there in the pool for over an hour. I have always been kind of sensitive and emotional. And this week I have been feeling even more so than ever. I was overcome by horror and sadness about this horrible lonely death. She was old. Yes. She was going to die eventually. But how terrible for everyone involved.

So... anyway, not feeling like I'm very bouncy or good company right now. But I think things are on the up for me. I'm going to Europe for a month and will get to spend some more time in Paris, a city that I have always loved. I'll see friends in Amsterdam, Berlin, and Hamburg. And then I get to come back to the tropics and live in Asia. So I know that my life is good... I'm grateful for the freedom, the love I have from people around the world, and for being able to live in such a delicious culinary world capitol. And I'll get through this rough patch.

This is meandering but I wanted to put something out there. Hopefully my next post will be about my exploits in Papua New Guinea, seeing my old friend in Ho Chi Minh City, and meeting fabulous French men in Paris. We'll see. xoxox

Christmas in the Tropics

It feels weird! It's warm and sunny out. There are christmas trees and glitz everywhere. I can't bring myself to buy a tree because I'll be gone for most of the holiday season. But I put on the Christmas tunes last night and drank some red wine.... I have zero motivation to buy gifts, write Christmas cards or decorate a tree. In fact, I mostly feel like this right now thanks to my unsuccessful visit to Sweden.

More observations from Bangkok

I've officially been in Bangkok for 24 days. Well, I haven't had as much time to write as I had hoped - this city can be rather overwhelming and my hotel where I was staying was on a loud, busy, and chaotic shopping street (Thanon Petchburi) and after negotiating traffic or walking through the streets, I was normally reluctant to head back out. I was also having trouble sleeping - what with the noise, the air conditioning, and the very high pillows that they had on offer. I also struggled a bit with the air quality here - there is a lot of smog and I had throat and chest problems for the first few weeks.

Finding an apartment here was much easier than it was in Amsterdam - there are estate agents who will find tons of places fro you and show you around - they are paid by the apartment buildings not you, so they are not as biased as the ones in Amsterdam (who wanted to charge you a month's rent to help you and therefore only wanted to show you the most expensive apartments around). So after about 4 days of apartment hunting - I narrowed it down to where I wanted to live. I wanted someplace quiet (that crazy street was getting to me) and I wanted someplace that was vibrant enough that I could walk outside and find street food, massages, bars, and grocery stores. Sukhumvit Soi 13 seems to be the place! I can take a tuk tuk or a motorcycle taxi or walk 15 minutes to the end of my street and there is the sky train (Nana stop) and everything you could want from Indian/Bangladeshi food, German beer halls, department stores, McDonald's, Starbucks, tailor shops, teak shops, Thai iced tea stands, fresh fruit vendors, Australian bars, the CHIC hotel, the Trendy hotel, Seven-Elevens, and an expat grocery store. Meanwhile at my end of the soi, the khlong goes past and I can cut through an abandonded building to the pier and catch the taxi up to the main shopping area where I used to live where I can also transfer to the boat to my office.

My apartment is huge - I'm going to install ceiling fans because although its temperate right now, it gets stuffy. I have humongous bedrooms with king sized beds and three bathrooms with showers and tubs all for less than my apartment in Amsterdam. I could have spent less but my job is reimbursing my housing so i won't pay anything for this apartment and I do love having houseguests.

So - some random things that have gone through my head since moving here:

• The beautiful wats (temples) are sprinkled throughout the city - gold is everywhere.
• It's surprisingly green but not green enough. The air quality would improve and the noise would improve if all of those skyscrapers and buildings were required to have green roofs. How lovely it would be.
• The food is fantastic - but yet you can still find bad food. The backpacker's paradise - Khao San road has the worst food I've tried yet. Its also more expensive than even the giant shopping malls. 
• Thai culture probably has more to it than shopping and eating but I haven't discovered it yet.
• People are friendly and cheerful. It's a pleasant change from Amsterdam to walk down the street and greet and smile at people. Many of the working class people in Amsterdam were cheerful and friendly (all the market dudes and small shop keepers) but its hard to be cheerful and smile when you are cycling through hurricane force winds and rain to get to work in the dark. 
• Tuk Tuks and motorcycle taxis tend to rip off foreigners - they are supposed to be cheaper than the air conditioned taxis but inevitably they end up quoting me much higher prices... so I take the taxis. But I'd rather take the motorcycle. That is until I remember my trip through Sri Lanka (see "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again")
• There are more english language books here than there were in Amsterdam... I am going to go to the Khao San Road tomorrow and stock up. The backpackers trade them in and I'm sure I can get some good deals. 
• Its good to have friends visit you. I just had a fantastic Friday night and Sunday brunch with my friend Patrick and his partner. Awaiting my friend Olga to arrive at my apartment in an hour for dinner. I feel lonely sometimes but mostly happy to be still in touch with beautiful friends from around the world through the internet! 

Fit for duty

I'll be heading back to work in the next few weeks. I am a little nervous but ready to jump back into the fray! I'm looking forward to new challenges and figuring out what's happened while I've been gone. But some lessons learned from this time off -

* I have to maintain a healthy work-life balance. I like my life in Amsterdam and have made some new friends and deepened friendships with other. I have to make sure life is not just about my job.

* I have to try to stay focused on my own objectives - there are things I want to accomplish in my career, things I want to accomplish for myself - giving everything leaves me with not much left over for myself. I don't want to do that again.

* I've got to make sure I keep my eye on what is important - trying to help survivors of gender-based violence - not worrying about the state of affairs internally in my organization. I've only got so much energy - I'd rather spend it on survivors and empowering women around the world!

Humanitarians aka Mercenaries, Missionaries, and Mad Men: Part Two

(I left this post lingering unpublished from my return from my sick leave. It was written in October 2010. I'm in a different place now but I think I'll post it anyway.)

Well I've finally decided... I'm in it to win it (to paraphrase Hillary Clinton). I'm not giving up on humanitarian aid yet. A couple of things have convinced me...

1. Helping a friend apply for a training course, I was reading her writing sample. I got pretty excited about it and had lots of ideas on how to beef it up. I want to turn this writing sample into a joint paper on how quality of care can be as important a humanitarian principle as neutrality or independence.  I feel like I have something to say again... I want to write some papers for publication and I want to make an impact on this crazy profession again. I think I'm getting ready to find my voice, which has been lost for a while. 

2. I don't feel so alone anymore. With so many of my friends in the same exact organization are burned out right now and struggling.... I realize that its not just me. Sitting in the misery and depths of burn-out, I felt like a crazy person. I was the only one who was so angry and outraged. I was so exhausted and tired of fighting all the time. I was sensitive and impacted by everything. I felt like my skin had been scraped off and there was nothing protecting me anymore. But the more I get out of that state and talk to others, I realize that it is normal to struggle in abnormal situations. I need to take much much better care of myself nowadays. I have to learn to prioritize keeping myself healthy and de-stressed. I'm never going to change my passions and personality but I can change some bad habits.

3. Opportunities are presenting themselves to me. I've been stuck wondering what to do... but just by stopping for a little bit and ceasing to try to find the answer for everything and MAKE things happen, I've suddenly been shown a few different ways I can move forward. And a few little glimpses of a changed life that could make me happy and content. And they are all still related to being a humanitarian worker -I am not going to have to drastically change my identity. I have a better idea of who I can be in my career but I realize my career is not the most important thing to me anymore.

4. Discovering how wonderful and supportive my friends and family are. While I'm dealing with burnout, I'm not depressed. I've struggled with depression in the past. I'm just plain ole damn exhausted. And my friends who check in on me, call me up, meet me for picnics, take me to Poland, and listen to my frequent crazed thoughts about this and that are my lifeline. No man is an island. But I've felt like an island for a while - but thanks to my sister, my friends, and even random new strangers that I meet at after football celebrations and talk to - I realize that there is a lot of love and good things out there. I'm building back up my batteries.  You gotta have a good network to survive this life. 

So what have I learned in my downtime? 

Humanitarian agencies can be dangerous places to work. While my friends who don't work in the business don't really get why its different than other bad organizations,  the ones who do understand that its a toxic soup of poor management, nepotism, severe power politics, and a never ending supply of idealistic volunteers who will always step forward to accept the abuse. I think its the idealism thats the worst part of it.... over and over again, I've had to end conversations with people i've just met about where I work. I'm out on stress leave and when people hear where i work, they can't believe it. I don't want to tell them about it. I believe my organization is one of the best providers of humanitarian assistance in the world. I don't want to kill off charitable contributions! A lot of the stress is brought on by my own inability to make boundaries, draw lines, say no, and protect myself. The good people outweigh the bad but sadly the good ones have to leave after a while to protect their sanity. They often return but always trying to warn the rest of us about how bad it can be.  But the abusers of power, the corrupt people, the incompetent, and the (frankly) insane are tolerated here because "they really care about women and children" or because "you don't know what they were capable of doing back in (historic crisis)". Idealists all, we tolerate abuse and poor working conditions on the belief that those who are there must be good people just like we hope we are.

A friend once told me, when I was on a quixiotic quest to improve DDR programs in West Africa by becoming a donor,  that going to work for the World Bank would kill me. "That beast is too big to poison from within" - he said poetically (he's a pretty poetic and philosophical guy and the one to take with you if you get harrassed by the cops in Kinshasa... he can sweet talk his way anywhere!). I'm an idealist and I always think that I can improve things and contribute to the bigger good. I want to give away all my good ideas and work in teams and I believe deeply that consensus and participatory decision-making are the ways to go. But the place I work right now doesn't work that way. That beast might be too big to poison from within. 

So I have to find my own way - I don't want to leave. I still have things to accomplish here. I am going to have to fight to keep working there - I have also learned to find the other thinkers like me and stick by them. It's too tempting to get pulled into the clique but as my beloved graduate school professor once told me, "As an anthropologist, you are always going to be the gadfly". I want change and I want to improve the world to assist the most vulnerable women and children out there - that's not going to happen by being coopted by power or by shutting up when the going gets tough. I believe in what I do and I know there are others out there that do as well - I find them every time I go to the field or meet a new colleague (usually the depressed looking ones lurking by the copy machine).  To use a cliche - its a marathon not a sprint so I have to change tactics and build up new stamina. I need to start ignoring the crazies and focusing on the good folk.

Humanitarians aka Mercenaries, Missionaries, and Mad Men: Part One

Me on my first trip to West Africa in October 2003

I've been doing a lot of thinking about what to do with myself and my career the past few weeks. I just exchanged emails with my former boss at Refugees International to ask him for advise and he said "For better or for worse, you are an international humanitarian/human rights worker" (and I could hear his tone - deal with it!) I do love the field and the work but I was very close to losing my belief in it a few weeks ago due to the non-stop stress this job entails.

First of all, this field is filled with crazy people! The current wisdom is that all you find is Mercenaries, missionaries, or madmen (or misfits, depending on who you ask). I've certainly encountered them all - from the jungles of West Africa to the cities of the Middle East.  And am I one of them? I certainly was close to becoming a misfit five weeks ago when I found myself telling stories of Haiti and freaking out my "civilian"  friends. We're adrenaline junkies, I think, with ill-developed senses of danger, and willing to take risks that many others from our families and friends wouldn't do. My family were always aghast that I was EXCITED to go to war zones and help out.

But where else would I work if I wasn't an aid worker? Before I went into development and humanitarian work, I worked in the restaurant business (with two very very short sojourns for a mortgage company and a retail store and a longer one in a healthfood store). I always knew I wanted to "help" in some way. My heros growing up were Wonder Woman and Florence Nightingale (I was always Batgirl when we played make-believe because I thought her motorcycle was cooler than Wonder Woman's plane though)!

As I figured out what I wanted to do with my life in college, I tried on three courses of study: Journalism (which I quickly dropped because it was boring),  Pre-Medicine (which I dropped because I hated studying for chemistry and math), and International Studies (where I thrived). I turned the Journalism interest into an English Language minor because I loved to read and write poetry - but international studies fascinated me. Latin American wars of independence, ethnic conflict in Africa, The Soviet Union, and nuclear war - (after all it was the 80s). I ended up following the Soviet Union the most due to a charismatic professor, Gordon Smith, and fantasies of moving to Moscow and fighting the cold war, I guess. But studying these things didn't give me a clue about what I could do with my life.

After college, I went to work in the restaurant biz as a bartender. Restaurants are filled with even crazier people than humanitarian agencies - both the staff and the customers. When I was 21 years old, I managed my first restaurant and I had to make schedules around people's rehab, parole hearings, and keep them from the drugs during the work hours and clean up the sex after work. I don't even remember going to bed for two years because I stayed out drinking every night and just passed out every night.  But at least I wasn't bored out of my mind like I was in the bank or the "Joyful Alternative", the hippie clothing shop I worked in. I yearned to leave South Carolina and see the world but I was broke and not sure how to do it.

Having been born in Taiwan and growing up in Belgium to a military family, I knew I wanted to travel the world and I knew that I was fascinated and appalled by war. The military was not an option for me so I thought about the Peace Corps. When I worked in a health food store dishing out advice on herbs, vitamins, macrobiotic food, and organic vegetables, I became aware of alternative medicines, indigenous rights, and anti-corporate anger. This pushed me into women's health as I was always finding young women who couldn't afford birth control or abortions coming to me to get herbs to miscarry. I became radicalized.  I wanted to work on women's health in Latin America.  The Peace Corps wanted to send me to do fish farming in Africa. I passed on the Peace Corps.

I moved to DC and went to grad school... I was finally on track.

A blog that I love, Tales from the Hood, wrote recently about how Americans understand humanitarianism and human rights. How we focus on our rights, the rights of others, and look at things from a rights-based perspective.  I am typical of this approach - I started out in the field of development by working with grassroots organizations to defend human rights in Latin America at Witness for Peace and then the National Coordinating Office on Displaced in Guatemala. I wanted to be a human rights defender and I loved working on the issue of economic justice for women in Guatemala and Nicaragua. The erosion of the advances that women had made in the Sandinistas and in the refugee camps under the new economic reforms was my rallying cry. Women's rights are human rights!

Through a series of weird missteps, I took a detour into large scale USAID funded health and development and began to learn about Africa.  I focused on reproductive health and sexual health and gender issues. While I was junior and naive, I had a lot of opportunity to see from the inside how ineffectual the USAID development model was and how the money all came rolling back to the US through the use of highly paid consultants, business class flights, and US only rules for purchasing cars, computers, etc. I struggled to implement a sophisticated computer driven health information system in Haiti where they probably would have been better off with pencils and papers and calculators. Through a wonderful Haitian colleague who was 20 years my senior, I learned a lot about the Haitian people and how decision-making went down.

Throughout it, I felt that my role was to use my privileged status as an American to move forward the goals of the people in countries less fortunate than my own. From time to time, I would become deeply aware of the injustices in my own country - lack of access to health care, poverty in the deep south and on the Native American reservations, inner city violence, and the like and fret over why I chose to work outside the country. But I also knew, selfishly, that I wanted to experience the world and meet people from places I would never venture just on 'holiday'.

I was determined to work on the issue of gender-based violence and help women and children around the world who suffered from this violence.  Whether through development or relief work, I didn't really care but I struggled to carve out a niche working on this. The advent of the Bush Administration made me realize that I couldn't stomach US style development and I went into what I thought was the more principled field of humanitarian work.

So where do I stand now? Six years of 'humanitarianism'  - three from a US advocacy based perspective, three from a European operational perspective. I've been to West Africa, Haiti, Sri Lanka, Sudan, the Congo, Somali region, Zimbabwe, Lebanon and Colombia.

I've been disgusted at the industry - because that's what it is, an industry. I've been repulsed by the selfishness and paternalistic and racist attitudes of some "humanitarian" workers. I've been annoyed by the lack of thoughtfulness, integrity and intelligence in program design. I hate how they treat us, the workers, like cogs in a machine, to be replaced when we wear out.

But I've been inspired by truly wonderful people - 25 year old nurses struggling to do the best with limited resources for their abandoned and stigmatized patients, business men and former soldiers who have left behind comfortable lives to work side by side with mechanics, truck drivers, and office workers all over the world who treat them as trusted buddies, and smart creative crazy people who don't take no for an answer.  I can't imagine my life not being involved in this world as much as I sometimes hate it. So here I am, burned out from non stop travel to Somalia-Ethiopia border, the highlands of Papua New Guinea, the border of Myanmar-India, and post-earthquake Haiti in less than six months while weathering the death of my beloved father and assorted family stress.

Next up: Where do I go from here?  (This is the part where I solicit ideas and strength from the three people who read this blog)....

This and that

Just an update on what is going on since my posts from Haiti - I removed the posts due to concerns from the place where I work - I will be looking at them again and seeing if I can repost them after editing them as I do not like the idea of being censored about writing about what I feel.

What's been going on since January 2010:
While preparing to return to India around the anniversary of my father's death, the Haiti earthquake struck. As I had worked in Haiti for a few years in the past, I was really horrified but luckily, the people I care about there were fine. I worked hard to get there to try to help with the earthquake.

Tried to relax a bit in India and went to visit Kerala - it was lovely. Traveled to Manipur, a conflict ridden area of India between Bangladesh and Myanmar. Made some new friends. Had my heart broken when one of them died.

Traveled to Haiti - very intense and media impacted conflict - funniest memory, sitting between the Scientologists and the Mexican Coast Guard in the UN cafeteria and hoping for sitings of Sean Penn and his machete and gun walking around the Petionville Golf Club like the Sheriff of an old western town.

Difficult trip back to South Carolina - my first one since my father's funeral. Good to see Alyson, friends from home, and the kitties. So sad to learn that George, my dad's cat is very sick and won't be with us much longer. Wish I would have hugged him more.

Volcano eruptions closing European airspace meant that I got to spend more time with my friend Rick who was stranded here - we went cycling in the tulip fields and had a great time

Skipped Queen's Day this year and went to Edinburgh to see the town - hiked on Arthur's Seat, ate too many oysters, drank whisky, and had a grand old time

Am taking some time off to recuperate from two very hard years - my father's sickness and death, the crappy economy that has impacted my sister, nonstop travel to some of the world's crappiest places, working on sexual violence in conflict in a not very supportive world, and spending all my time doing ANYTHING but looking after myself has taken its toll.  I'm going to be in Amsterdam for a few months trying to re-center myself.

I've been thinking of taking up some new physical activity - rowing/hiking/climbing/tango/tennis/karate/salsa.... any recommendations?

A few of my favorite things: A photo show

Here's a collection of some of my favorite things from photos through the years including fields of flowers, cows, farmer's markets books, tea, and hotdogs!

Eat, Pray, Love?

Have I been subconsciously impacted by Eat, pray, Love? I was making folders to organize my holiday plans in Istanbul and India when I noticed I had four holiday destination folders: Iowa, India, Istanbul, and Italy. If Elizabeth Gilbert went to Italy to eat, India to pray, and Indonesia to love - what have I got? Iowa for family, Italy to eat, India to mourn, and Istanbul to breathe? Have I got a book deal here somehow????

Remembering what's important

It's Thursday night on a beautiful sunny summer evening in Amsterdam. My neighbors are outside barbecuing and I can hear them from my bedroom window. I'm listening to Django Reinhardt and trying on dresses. I just got my hair cut. I'm making peace with my life - trying to obey my horoscope and see the beauty everywhere. Enjoying the sun on my face as I cycle home. Ignoring the scar from my fall in Colombia on my knee as I try on neglected sandals and high heels from DC. When I open my email to find a note from my sister in South Carolina. She's got old letters and my mother's old diary which I gave her after I found it in my mother's bedside table. My sister scanned in a letter that she found that I wrote to my mother when I was so young offering to start doing the cooking and washing around the house if I could start washing my own hair.

Suddenly all the ridiculous self imposed stress from work and the petty dramas which make up my every day life seem so small and far away. And I miss my family. I miss those who knew me when I was 8 years old and thought cooking with my mother was the coolest thing in the world. Hanging out with my dad when he walked down the street to pick up the Sunday papers. Riding bikes with my sister around the neighborhood and putting the cat into ridiculous costumes.

Sometimes I love my life - so "glamorous" living in Amsterdam, hanging out with fabulous and beautiful women, drinking wine in the park, and traveling to dangerous lands to try to help people. But right now I would trade it all just to come home again to 2 Warren Court, Sumter South Carolina and eat my dad's potato salad and catch up on the gossip of the court with him and just be home. Home Home Home. Where I often felt 14 years old and ridiculous but always loved and accepted.

Thunder and Lightening

There was an amazing thunderstorm in Amsterdam last night. The whole sky was lit up with lightening and the thunder made my house shake and the cat hide under the covers. It was truly impressive in its force. It makes one aware of our tenuous position on this flat little spit of land that reaches out into the sea.

I love thunderstorms - especially heat lightening on a hot hot summer night in South Carolina. But this one kept me up for hours and I couldn't get to sleep. My mind kept racing around the different worries that I have and rather than being comforted by the overwhelming power of the storm and my reminder of how insignificant I am in the face of nature, I instead was plagued with incredibly realistic dreams about my worries.

Getting through the Day pt 1

"What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it."

— Gabriel García Márquez

"Surely every one realizes, at some point along the way, that he is capable of living a far better life than the one he has chosen."
-- Henry Miller

New Year's Resolutions

Well its a bit late for New Year's resolutions as we are 11 days into the new year but as this is the last day of my vacation, I'm officially counting the new year as starting tomorrow.

1. Treasure every moment I have with my family. It's killing me to leave South Carolina but my father is doing better and is fairly healthy right now. So I leave with a more calm state of mind than I had in September. I'm looking forward to the big family reunion in Iowa in July.

2. More connections with friends - I really enjoyed seeing some old friends on this last trip. Talking for hours seemed like we had never NOT been in touch. It's good to connect and it reminds me that human interaction is what its all about. It's not about making money, accumulating things, or even accumulating more countries on my "Where I've Traveled" list. It's about authentic human connections that make you laugh, cry, and think.

3. Less time on the internet. I've become addicted to reading blogs. I guess its the same as when I read magazines a bunch but with blogs, there's so much information coming at you all day long that I have to do something about it. I'm going to try to limit myself to 2 hours a day.

4. Being more active. My body is aging every day and while I feel like I'm still 16, the creaking in my knees when I squat down to fix the pilot light or the aches in my shoulders after raking the yard are reminders that I'm not. I have to appreciate my body and staying active will keep me younger longer!

5. Continuing 2008's resolution to be more creative. I started a painting class in 2008 which I love. I'm going to really hunker down and work on writing. I have an idea for a novel based on my experiences in West Africa. Also, some travel stories that I never really wrote down anywhere. More photography. More cooking. More viewing of art.

6. Less toxicity in my life. I have to start ignoring all the people who make me crazy. There are toxic people and organizations in this world. They suck up your time and energy. "That which does not destroy me makes me stronger" used to be my motto but phew - I'm tired of the struggle, constantly struggling to not be destroyed. It's not a challenge anymore to deliberately face off in battle with the destructive elements of the world. I am going to minimize the things which make me crazy and maximize the things I enjoy. If this means less prestige, less status, or being more isolated, so be it. At least I'll have more energy to focus on creativity, my family, and my close friends. "Living well is the best revenge" can be my new motto.

Banishing a Bad Mood

Have you ever just been overtaken by irritation, anger, snappishness and the like? I once walked into my friend Alec's office and noticed that he seemed like he was in a bad mood. I said "I sense an air of pissiness about you" and it sent him into a totally terrible mood. Today, I don't know what happened - I had a great weekend seeing my friend Dumiak at the Dusseldorf Christmas market and chatting with my friend Jen over dinner. It's Monday morning. I woke up late, I rushed to work, I couldn't get motivated to do anything and suddenly - I was in a bad mood. Every email is infuriating me. Every minute late people are to talk to me is a minute too much (coming from someone who is chronically late, this is rich).

I don't want to talk to anyone. I don't want to be bothered. I want to sit on the couch and knit or pet Simon. I want to lay in bed and sleep. I certainly don't want to struggle with my colleagues at work and attend meetings and push along my dreary work. It's an uphill struggle every day anyway, and it doesn't help when a bad mood has perched itself on my shoulders and is threatening to make me lose my temper and say or do something I might regret. I still have four hours left in the day and numerous minefields to avoid.

So - according to the internet, here are some ways to banish my bad mood. I would appreciate any readers sending suggestions of their own as well.

Step 1: Decode Your Mood
Sometimes you know exactly what’s upsetting you. Or do you? Figure out what’s wrong.

Step 2: Calm Down
Start by taking a few deep breaths to get your emotions under control. Then choose one or more of the following techniques to help clear your mind.

Focus on Breathing
Take 10 deep breaths. Breathing may help restore the balance between the parasympathetic (or restorative) and sympathetic (fight-or-flight) nervous systems, buffering your body’s natural reaction to stressful situations.

Make a Pie Chart
Draw a circle and create slices of a pie chart to represent all the things that are upsetting you. Include everything you can think of, even if it’s as mundane as the nonstop rain outside. The act of presenting your concerns visually clarifies things making the problems easier to identify and therefore to manage.

Find a Quiet Place
Ideally, go someplace where you can have privacy to shut down the stimulation to your brain. If you’re at a busy place, like your office or a restaurant, he suggests, head to the bathroom and take a few minutes for yourself. If you’re at home, go to your bedroom or a place that feels comforting.

Distract Yourself
Read a favorite funny website, play with your dog, fold laundry, or wash dishes for a few minutes. Diversions allow your emotions to calm down. And because your brain keeps processing the problem even when you’re not consciously thinking about it, you’ll be better able to deal with the issue once you return to it.

Get Some Exercise
If possible, go out for a brisk walk, or do some stretches or yoga poses. Just 10 minutes of an active and distracting activity breaks the flow of rumination and lifts people’s moods. This leads them to think more clearly.

Blow Off Steam
Call a patient friend. Be sure to tell her you’re not trying to fix anything — you just want a listener. Talking through your concerns makes them seem more manageable. But once you’ve vented, it’s important to let it go.

Step 3: Create a Strategy
Talk to a Problem-Solver
People often think they should be able to handle problems on their own, and they don’t want to burden others. But it’s easier to strategize with support. Discuss things you can do to feel better as well as fix the problem.

Make a List
It should include things that will make you feel better, like sending flowers to your husband, calling Dad’s doctor to discuss his progress, or going to the gym at lunchtime. Lists force you to structure your concerns and help you move into problem-solving mode. Number the items in the order that you want to accomplish them.

Visualize Your Ideal
Take a few minutes to close your eyes and picture what you want in the moment, as if it’s actually happening. This visualization technique is basically a form of rehearsal. For instance, after you and your sister argue, imagine the two of you having a great time over dinner at your favorite restaurant. The memories of the fight will be replaced by a positive picture of harmony and fun.

Culture Clash

After almost six weeks in South Carolina, being back in Amsterdam has been a bit of a shock. First of all, it was about 98 degrees when I left Charlotte on September 7th and it was about 62 when I got here on September 11th. It's full on autumn. The trees are changing colors. Everyone is wearing scarves. I wake up cold everymorning - which I did in SC but that was because the air conditioning was on too high.

And then I am having a bit of a culture clash trying to readjust to some of the Dutch things that I had forgotten about. I met up with my friends Susannah, Naomi, and Emma for drinks and Jamaican food. Afterwards we went out with her friends and ended up in a Blues band. When I tried to tell the bassplayer that I enjoyed the show he cursed at me in Dutch and told me that he was on break. I got elbowed in the Albert Heijn. I was almost run over by a taxi as I rode my bike.

Monday and Tuesday were hard at work. I tried to keep my head down on Monday and just work but the organization's debate culture was alive and well and I soon found myself arguing over things I really don't care about. Back to just trying to make it through the day.

Monday night I cut Simon's claws and I cut one too close and he bled ALL OVER the apartment. I have bloody paw prints on everything. I didn't sleep at all because I was trying to stem the bleeding. I ended up having to dip his paw in flour after all my attempts to bandage it failed. Bandaging a cats foot is not as easy as one would think. One big shake and bandages fly off. He's fine now and I'm still traumatized.

So - let's see. I've been back since Thursday night and I've been a wreck. Hm. Let's hope things get better. Today's plan of attack includes eating a lot of chocolate, buying cheap flowers to brighten up the apartment (pink dahlias and white chrysanthemums), listening to cheerful music loudly (including Laid by James, Barracuda by Heart, Wonderboy by Tenacious D and Dancing Queen by Abba), and watching Mad Men (a show I became obsessed with in the States). Going to bed early and going for walks at lunchtime to eat soup seem to help too.

Nostalgia

Nostalgia: a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life, to one's home or homeland, or to one's family and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time.

Alyson and I spent the day today in our house in Sumter, trying to make sure anything valuable is put away or brought to Columbia. It was in the 90s and it was hot and dusty. I came across some boxes of photos that I haven't seen in ages. I sat through and thumbed through them tonight and I am going to try to scan some of them electronically in the next few days and post them here. Our beautiful house in Sumter was the setting for so many of them and so many fabulous memories.

* Prom photos from 1982 (Mike), 1983 (Kenny), and 1984 (Mortie) - Mostly posed by the stairs in the living room. My hair stayed remarkably small considering it was the 80s but I have a dress copied from Princess Diana's wedding dress that my mother labored over and sewed for me. Usually she sewed in the sunroom and there was nothing she couldn't make - EXCEPT a bathing suit. We tried that several times and it never quite worked out right. I wish I had paid more attention to the sewing. I can cut out the pattern (my job) but could never thread the bobbin.

* Band uniform photos. I think these should be burned. Posed by the sunroom in the living room. At least I didn't wear braces like Alyson but I do see some monster zits on my face. Alyson also has piano recital photos. I played flute and piccolo - don't see any photos from symphonic band - just marching band.

* Photos of me and my friends from high school and college - rugby shirts, t shirts with sayings, dropped waist dresses, lots of teal. Playing cards, playing scrabble, playing drinking games in the den, draping ourselves across cars in the driveway, and posing in front of the front door in Sumter.

* The house after Hurricane Hugo - my favorite dogwood tree ripped up by the roots, the roof in shambles. Photos of Alyson and I playing in that tree. I remember pretending I was a gymnast in the Olympics.

* Gatherings with Grandma Sis and British relatives when they came to visit in the back yard (before its renovation into a Charleston gated garden) and on the side sunporch patio before we realized it was way too hot to ever sit there in the sun in the summer.

* Dinner with the Winsteads, the British Wives' Club, and other friends of my parents. Usually in the dining room. Often, Alyson and I were banned from the grownup parties and sent upstairs. We would try to wheedle ice cream out of our parents by sending notes down tied to the cat's collar.

* Christmas presents opened and displayed - usually done in the living room with a tree in the sunroom or living room and all of us in bathrobes in front of the fireplace in the living room.

Two sides of South Carolina

Last night, I met up with an old friend with whom I worked at a restaurant (Motor Supply Company) and a health food store (Rosewood Market) in South Carolina in the early 90s, right after college. It was great catching up with her but it was also really interesting to walk down memory lane a bit. I was a bit early to meet with her and didn't have anything to read with me so decided to walk around Five Points to look at my old haunts. Frighteningly enough, in one of the restaurants I worked, I saw two waiters who worked there when I worked there (from 1989- 1993) and in a bar that I also worked, I saw two of the regulars that always hung out there.

My friend and I went to see a band called Grey Egg, composed of some of the people who work at Rosewood Market. The lead singer is a Women's Studies professor at USC too, I think. There were lots of familiar faces in the band and in the audience. It shed a different perspective on the familiar faces I had seen in my old haunts. It reminded me of how out of step I often felt while living in South Carolina. Whereas in DC, what you do for a living identifies who you are as a person, in South Carolina - what you do for a living can be your passion but it can also be the economic way that you feed yourself while you pursue your real passion. So many of the people I knew in SC when I lived here were musicians, artists, writers, and just creative people. The restaurant business was how we all made our living and some of us branched off to working in the macrobiotic deli or organic produce department of the local healthfood store. But in general, we were all in our early 20s, staying up all night drinking and talking and dancing and bouncing around. In the morning, we shook off our hangovers and went to work to serve rich beautiful people their chicken salad croissant or their macrobiotic special of the day.

But there were also people who had hopped off the consumerist capitalist machine that drives the day to day American life. Many of my old friends who are in their 40s now and still performing in bands and being creative and living their life without fretting about how the next step in their life will impact their career climb like I am. It was a welcome reminder that the South and the US is not so bad after the past three weeks where I pass the same chain restaurants every day on my way up and down the highway to the hospital and the rehab facility to visit my father. I haven't walked further than down the hallway to the vending machine to get a coke since I got here!

Then this morning, while I was emailing at work about responding to the Sudanese press about confidentiality for rape survivors, I got an essay from a friend written by a homeschooled child about her day taking care of her Evangelical family. Its pretty easy in the secular world that I travel in to forget just how important religion is to many people in the US. The South has always been considered the Bible Belt. I have a lot of respect for people of faith - I have several friends who are religious, attend church regularly, and I also worked for a faith-based organization, Witness for Peace when I first left graduate school. Since I've been back in South Carolina for the past three weeks, I've witnessed our presidential candidates go to the largest Evangelical church in the US to pass a test of fire about their beliefs so they can woo the religious vote. Every day when I walk through the lobby of the Palmetto Heart Hospital to visit my father, I pass piles of New Testaments on the tables in the lounge. While there is the politically correct "Meditation Centre" in the hospital - presumably to cater to the ever growing population of Hindus and Muslims living in Columbia - all the literature and sign up lists were from Southern Baptist ministers. My father had at least four visitors of devout African-American women ministers coming by to visit him. Many of the cashiers, security guards, and nursing technicians wish me a "blessed day" when I talk to them. There are hundreds of churches in various old buildings all over town. I pass the "Church of the Spiritual Guidance" in what appears to be an old insurance company building on the corner of Main and Sunset every day.

I myself went to many religious "teen activities" growing up in South Carolina. I have very vivid memories of one particular "teen activity". They told us that we were going to watch a movie and there would be free popcorn (I'm a sucker for popcorn). Instead, it was a movie about the apocalypse and the rapture and how all of us secular non believers would be left on hell on earth. A particularly striking scene was a guillotine that the nonbelievers were executed at. The condemned was forced to wait for the blade face up and the point of view of the camera was of the condemned's view of the blade slicing down upon them. Then after freaking us all out (I was 12), they invited us to come up to the altar and embrace Jesus as our saviour. I hid in the bathroom until it was over.

In many ways, the Netherlands is not so very different from South Carolina. There are free spirited thinkers who resist the capitalist imperative and there are strongly religious conservatives co-existing side by side in both places. The conservatives in Holland aren't a part of the accepted script about Dutch tolerance and the free thinking artists and leftists of South Carolina aren't part of the accepted script about life in the Bible Belt.

Sitting on the banks of Lake Victoria

I'm sitting at Gately-on-the-Nile's computer in a lovely colonial villa overlooking Lake Victoria in Uganda. After four days in a sumptious resort on Lake Victoria in Kampala at a conference, I then took a 10 hour car ride up to the North to Kitgum, Uganda - near the border with Sudan. Coincidentally, this was the site of my last mission for Refugees International in November 2006. After a long and grueling trip back to Kampala and a "Nile Special" night out on the town, I'm reveling in the tranquility and beauty of Jinja.

It was interesting to see the difference in Northern Uganda. Gulu has exploded into a typical NGO/UN town. Crowded and expensive - now the most expensive city in Northern Uganda - a sad side effect of Jan Egeland's forceful drive to turn the world's attention to Northern Uganda's forgotten crisis. The IDP camps in Kitgum, the most vulnerable of the counties, I would argue, are not as crowded, yet still shocking to see- a blight on the beautiful landscape. People have moved out but the team spoke of a tension in the National staff that is more palpable than before. Everyone is convinced that the LRA are back in town. Just hiding in the tall green grass waiting to abduct children, kill civilians, and wreak havoc.

I spent the night in Madi Opei, a camp about 1 hour north of Kitgum town where my organization runs a medical clinic with the ministry of health. It was so great to be back in the "bush" and sleeping in a mud tukul with bucket baths under the stars. Alyson, my sister, probably doubts our blood relationshiop when I send her emails telling her how happy I am to talk to the chickens in the morning when I walk to the outdoor shower. I love tucking myself under mosquito netting and seeing geckos run around on the walls. She belives that the Holiday Inn is roughing it. The Uganda team is funny and competent. The National Staff (I don't know why we segregate them) intensely committed and hardworking. I did what I was hired to do. Yet it wasn't the fulfilling experience that I had hoped for. I don't know why.

I guess my mind was clouded with concerns and fear for my father and sister moving in together in the midst of all of it. My father fell in April and broke his arm. His slow recovery prompted Alyson and I to decide that it would be better for him and bring us more peace of mind, if he weren't living alone anymore. Luckily, he agreed. I was able to find them a beautiful house in Columbia to move in. Unfortunately, right as Alyson was packing to move herself, she fell and broke her leg. My leave time had been mostly depleted by my five weeks in Sumter caring for my father as he recovered from surgery. It's been unbelievably frustrating and scary to be a six hour time difference away, hovering by the computer hoping for news from home.

My unexpected trip to the north of Uganda has been enlightening. I"m finally doing the work that my org supposedly wants me to do. I'm good at it. I like it. But it feels strangely unfulfilling when I long to be at home with my family. Work isn't enough anymore. At the conference, I made contact with old friends and put out the word that I'm looking for work. I think I need to be closer. I can always move back to Europe, right? I hope so. Either way, living in a city that I like is no substitute for being there for my family.

I met up with another section of my org's crew last night in Kampala. I was staying in my sections house in a suburb of Kampala all alone - six bedrooms and me! I have no telephone, I had no idea where I was, and was a bit frustrated and lonely. We went out for Thai food and then dancing at the expat hotspot. It was a faux Irish bar called Bubbles O' Malley or some such thing. Really gross. It was fun and exciting when I did it in Sierra Leone. In Uganda, the fact that I'm at LEAST 10 years older than all the silly aid workers and missionaries (?!) dancing with the beautiful young Ugandans out on the prowl made me sad. The old, desperate looking men dancing with young beautiful Ugandans disgusted me as it always does. Am I this person? I love to dance and it was fun laughing and talking with the Spanish section. I felt much more a part of the crowd than I usually do in the dire Eik and Linde where conversation is so forced and boring. Ops this, Ops that. Where is the joie de vivre for our jobs? I feel like headquarters is a refuge for grim, loveless, workaholics determined to wring some sort of meaning out a life in the field.

In the field, however, the joie de vivre is there. The laughing. The mixture of a motley group of people. But not in this bar. In Bubbles O'Malley (where the waiters wear tshirts that declare them Craic dealers), the stench of desperation sticks to the older people. For the young and hedonistic, risking it all on the battlefield and dancing it off in the capitol seems appropriate. Yet I prefer to go to bed at nine with my book most nights now. Not the party girl I used to be.

Anyway, I am enjoying the good food, the beauty of the setting, and the books I have snagged from the org's bookshelves. I can't be that different from my fellow co-workers if we all like to read the same things, can I? But for some reason, the fit is not there.