Preliminary Thoughts about Haiti

I wrote this post before I went to Haiti after the devastating earthquake there in 2010. I was very burned out and very tired and struggling with the death of my father and hating my job. I was reprimanded for it at work but I no longer work there so I'm publishing it again (for whatever that is worth).


Haiti is a tough country and the earthquake has taken an already poor country that was devastated and made it even worse. What I see in Haiti is the worst poverty I've encountered - it was true when I worked at JSI and hadn't seen much of the world and its true now that I've been to some of the worst places in the world. I went with the nurse outreach workers on Thursday to a little shack in the median of the national highway where an old woman who was naked with a broken hip from the earthquake who has lost her reasoning takes care of a little severely malnourished girl. We bought them out for the Therapeutic Feeding Centre. It was one of the worst places to live I've ever seen. The passing giant 18 wheeler trucks were constantly honking as they went by, the rush of their wind caused the bed sheets that served as her wall to fly in and dust covered their meager belongings. The heat and the noise was unbearable. The floor was muddy and the old grandmother sat on a piece of cardboard and the 2 year old girl just sat their listlessly as we tried to examine her. I've been to India, Congo, Zimbabwe, Darfur, Somali border of Ethiopia, Guatemala, Liberia, and other hotspots and I don't think I've ever seen as much misery as I see here.

Of course, life goes on for those with money as well. The markets are booming and people are selling things. In the guest house that I was in by the Caribbean in Carrefours, men paid prostitutes to have sex with them in the ocean in front of our patio and music, beer, and good times flowed on their side of the wall and if you hadn't seen the collapsed building in front of the entrance to our compound, you
wouldn't know that anything was different from 2000 when I first came here.

I had a rough night last night. I'm in one of the expat houses and in this job, I am of course, the constant new person in the room. It's exhausting always being newly introduced to people and trying to be social and not a burden on the teams. I think Haiti must be affecting me more than I realized and a couple of beers unleashed some real sadness. But it was also partially due to the expat team here- I know that we have to be able to laugh at everything and the humanitarian aid workers of the world have a dark side but some of them take this world weary attitude too far. There was one woman in particular who had a cynical opinion about everything. But there are other colleagues who are proud of our work and fight to make us different from the others and to really stand in solidarity with the people of Haiti. Like anywhere else, with large groups of people, you get a mix.

I was talking with someone about a friend who killed himself a few weeks ago over a cultural issue in his country. I was trying to point out how fucked up the situation was with the arranged marriage and everyone jumped in with their opinions and attitudes and cynical beliefs - none of them knowing what a great person he was and I just couldn't take it - especially since I also lost a close friend of the family to suicide just a few months after my father died. Sometimes, our hardened "been there seen that" attitude really pisses me off. Why are we humanitarians if not to feel like humans?

Everyone here believes that someone has the right to die -which I believe too- but my point was that I wondered if he knew how loved he was and how it would impact people who barely knew him, if he would find life worth living. we believe that the little baby and the grandmother living in the median of the highway have the right to live -even though where they live degrades their human dignity, yet we accept without blinking when a talented and loving and warm colleague kills himself. Was it not mental health issues? Or a cruel and hopeless culture and society? Why were they not as outraged as I was? Or is it just a defensive measure taken to insulate themselves from the horrors around us?

I know I'm the "delicate flower" here (as my father used to tease me) and I sometimes think this was a bad choice for a career as I seem to be unable to block out the sadness and misery sometimes.

Bullies at work

I wrote this post on March 5, 2010 about Bullies at work. I got reprimanded by my supervisor but I don't work there anymore so I've decided to publish it again.


I"m heading to Haiti on Monday. I've been wanting to go since the earthquake as I used to work there before and had many friends there (who thankfully survived the earthquake). I"m a little apprehensive about it as the level of violence and destruction is supposed to be intense. People who have been there lately have warned me that its difficult to accept. I hope that our security regulations won't keep me from seeing Gerald and Guy-Claude, friends of mine from when I worked at JSI and Refugees International.

I was also invited this week to speak at the London School of Tropical Medicine and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine this week - I love public speaking and was excited about the opportunities to talk to the students. It is hard to stay an optimist and feel like I'm working to change the world in this current job - you'll see why in a minute. But teaching and talking to students who are still optimistic and interested in trying to make a change gives me hope and renews my own commitment to change.

This week, we were going through the mind numbingly ridiculous process of trying to reach an agreement about saying something about what is happening in Haiti between five sections of my NGO, all their attendant folk who advise the different sections, and all the people in the field in Haiti who are trying to make our operations work while also pushing this deformed enormous beast that is the organization into agreement. We simply wanted to make a statement about paying attention to health care in the Haiti reconstruction process. We've been there for over 19 years, we run some of the only hospitals in the slums, and we have been responding to the earthquake 24 hours a day as well as dealing with having staff kidnapped last week. It's high stress for the people in the field and our organizational culture in the headquarters doesn't help at all.

The way that people speak to each other and the disrespect that we have to endure as we give our opinions on the best things to focus on in this supposedly simple statement insures that nothing ever comes out of it. And indeed after a whole week of commenting on papers and heated emails and pressure - they canceled the whole thing. It's maddening. I really wonder why I bother. Nothing feels worse than to realize that everything you do is for naught and my chosen way to try to help the people of Haiti (advocacy) is not working. At least I'll be able to do some trainings on sexual violence while I'm there. But even that, doesn't always matter because we have such high staff turnover and if a manager decides that it's not really a priority in that country, then it doesn't happen.

But I really felt like shit on Friday after a week of pretty fun teaching and discussions in London and Liverpool with my colleagues in the UK who I really like and esteem a lot. it was fun traveling to Liverpool and meeting the northern UK people who were so funny and nice and real. Thursday afternoon, I was helping lead a session on using international law in advocacy, this character who has a ton of power in the organization sent me a text message and asked me to jump into the discussion immediately but respond only to him on email as soon as possible. I was trying to manage the web mail between breaks while teaching and accidentally cc'd the head of mission. I texted him immediately after to say that I had made a mistake. But I woke upon Friday morning to receive an email saying - when I fucking tell you to not cc anyone then you fucking do it. I was pretty calm about it and told him to chill out and that cursing at me was inappropriate. No response from him. He's one of the most powerful people in the organization so people accept this from him.

Then when I got to work, I went down to speak to someone else to clarify a date for a training and the guy flew off the handle at me and started shouting at me in front of everyone in the office. He's a notorious bully and has bullied a lot of his subordinates in the past. He's yelled at me before and has a hair trigger but never in front of a group of people before. Normally, I argue back with him and get him to calm down so we can resolve it immediately. I decided this time I didn't have to take it anymore so I yelled at him back and said "YOU DO NOT TALK TO ME LIKE THIS." The HR person who was sitting near him when it went down came up to my desk and asked me to file a report -which I have to say is unusual at my organization. We do not have a culture of accountability and people can make racist comments, use profanity at meetings, and generally act like sexist assholes. So I filed the complaint and cc'd the Director General. He came up to speak to me about it and assured me that he takes it seriously and will do something about it. I said I would be satisfied with an apology.

But you know where I work, its usually the person who files a complaint who gets in trouble or who is blamed for things. So who know what is going to happen. At this point I don't care. I am not going to accept to work in a hostile work environment and if I cant stand up to the bullies, how can I expect others to do it? But if I had to live with these guys afterwards? I don't know what I would do. And that's the situation for many of the people that we work with - in the field, you have to share a house and work with them with the only consolation being that you only work for about 9 months and can go home at the end.

Being able to go home and have a life outside of these stupid petty arguments and issues is the only thing that keeps me sane. I don't know how much longer I can keep doing it though. I don't want to start accepting this culture and I'm not sure I have the heart or stomach to change it.

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!

Bests and Worsts

While sitting in a little bungalow in Kerala reflecting on the sad state of my recent manicure, I decided to reflect on some of the best and worst things that I've learned while traveling these past 15 years. In no particular order:

Best Manicure and Pedicure: Boston Day Spa in Addis Ababa, 2009:  My manicure lasted for almost two weeks – a lifelong record! I was served hot tea, had a massage chair, and nice ambience. Not too expensive either!

Honorable Mentions: Washington DC, 2003 - 2007: The pedicure place across the street from my house on 18th and T streets was reliable and fast and not too expensive. Downside: Constantly trying to make you feel bad and insist that you needed facial waxing.

Singapore, December 2009: In a mall somewhere with Suzie. I have never had such shiny toe nails. And they lasted almost two months.

Worst Mani/Pedi:
(Three-way Tie Amsterdam/Mexico City/Delhi)
Near Nieuwmarkt, Amsterdam, 1999:  They scrubbed my foot so hard they cut it open and I bled, and poured such hot water on my feet that they scalded me. I could barely walk afterwards.

Zona Rosa, Mexico City, Mexico, 2005: Again, the pedicurist believed that my right big toe just needed a good digging to get the nail bed to right itself (it’s never been the same since I dropped an ice bucket on it at Garibaldi’s in South Carolina). Not only did it hurt like hell and bleed, I got an infection and had to lance it with a needle and a match in Guanajuato a week later.

Defence Colony, Delhi, India, January 2010: I could still see through the nail polish after two lackluster coats of varnish and the lady painted over my cuticles. On the way home from the salon, it began to chip.

Best Journey in a foreign country: Train from Fort Cochin to Alleppy, India, January 2010.Inside: chai salesmen, sleeping business men in the bunks above me, and an ambience unchanged from the 1920s. Outside: Water buffalos and green palm trees and canals and bridges.

Drive from Port Elizabeth to Cape town, South Africa, October 2003Most spectacular sunset ever seen somewhere  between Mpmulenga and Knyssna, riding along the Garden Route, riding an ostrich for the amusement of German tourists in Outhoorn, drinking a Castle beer at Ronnie’s Sex Shoppe in the Klein Karoo, crossing the Drakenberg Mountains, coming down into Cape Town to see Table Mountain.

Riverboat ride north of Bangkok, April 2002.Trees so filled with fireflies that they seemed to glow and levitate, heavy smell of dark brown water of South East Asia, green jungle on every side.

Worst Journey in a foreign country: Car ride from Nyala to Kass, South Darfur, Sudan, October 2004We were shot at and it broke out a window. Old pimped out hoopty that we rented broke down and the Janjaweed helped us get back on the road. Lots of tales about bandits that got all the cars on either side of us but not us. Potholes. Tense and frightening. Two weeks later we heard a woman from USAID was shot at the same point we were at. She lost her eye.

Motorcycle Ride from Sigiriya to Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka, September 2005Styrofoam helmet, aching back from too many books in my backpack, scared out of my mind by the weaving and dodging traffic, screaming buses and 18 wheelers. “A supposedly fun thing I’ll never do again”

Car ride from Port-au-Prince to Gonaives, Haiti and Gonaives to Cap Haitien, Haiti: February 2005A backbreaking trip across the moonscape of a devastated land, it took four hours to go about 60 miles.  The 2nd part of the journey was over an extremely treacherous mountain pass with no guard rails, potholes and people in every treacherous hairpin turn. Afterwards, the driver informed me  about the brake problems in our car.

Best meals in foreign countries:Side of the road from Boguila to Bangui, Central African Republic, March 2007A piece of freshly caught fish grilled over a charcoal flame with hot peri peri powder and tomatoes and onions, washed down with a cold coke, eaten with fingers. It might have been made better by the fact that I was on a 10 hour land rover trip squashed in the front seat with another person and with a big barrel that reeked of oil behind me.

Beirut, Lebanon, August 2006:
Everywhere we went, we would get some sort of street food and it was ALL divine - from zataar filled croissants to labneh to zataar pizzas with fresh goats cheese on them to the Arabic and Italian ice cream parlours where we conducted our meetings. At night, we went to divine little bars and drank "Malcom Lowry's" and ate fresh Ceasar salads prepared by beautiful men while listening to the latest lounge music. All war zones should be so gorgeous.

Le Quartier Francais, Franschhoek, South Africa, October 2003: Freshly caught salmon trout grilled and served on a plank of wood accompanied by a divine South African Sauvignon Blanc by the glass in a beautiful old French Huguenot farmhouse overlooking a vineyard. Downside: My traveling companion had a stomach virus and couldn’t even eat her broth although she tried valiantly.

Califa del Leon in the Colonia Condesa neighborhood, Mexico City, Mexico, May 2006: My first Taco al Pastor - roasted pork served with cilantro and pineapple on a fresh tortilla. All you can eat until you can’t eat anymore. Washed down with a cold beer and eaten on the street corner in a beautiful neighborhood in Mexico City on my first night there.

Camel Market, Khartoum, Sudan, December 2005:Freshly slaughtered lamb purchased and then brought to Sudanese women who stir fried it over charcoal briquettes with salt and pepper -served with a leafy green like arugula, tomato salad, freshly baked bread, and peanut sauce. Washed down with lukewarm plastic bags of water while sitting on plastic garden chairs and swatting flies away in the mid day heat of Sudan. Sometimes the setting isn’t that important.

Malabar House, Fort Cochin, Kerala, India, January 2010: Seafood Uttalpillum (?) – a spicy mix of freshly caught Sea bar, tiger prawns, and squid cooked in a spicy tomato curry sauce with tapioca mashed potatoes served with sparkling water and a Kingfisher beer in the courtyard of the Malabar House next to a Sitar and tambla concert under a full moon. I sat under a mango tree next to a pool of water.

Somewhere outside of Saint Johann in Pongau, Austria, May 1998: I fell off the meat wagon and was trying to get back on. My boyfriend at the time wanted to stop at a famous place for Frankfurters dipped in mustard and grated horseradish. Even though I was a vegetarian, I couldn’t resist. It was delectable and I’ve never looked back since.

Pave d'Auge in Beauvron-en-Ange, Normandy, France, July 2009: A Michelin 1 star – foie gras,  a chilled red Sancerre, divine fish, vintage calvados, exquisite service

Castelmuzio, Tuscany, Italy, August 2009:
My first taste of pecorino cheese dipped in truffle honey served with a Vino Nobile. To die for! Eaten in a small little apartment overlooking the hills of Tuscany, an olive grove, and the abbey from an English Patient.

The Royal Thai restaurant at the Cinnamon Lake Hotel in Colombo, Sri Lanka, September 2005:Thai Seafood Green Curry with Joel. “Make it how it should be made” he answered in response to do you want it spicy. We sweated and ate and sweated and ate until we almost passed out and had to stagger back to our hotel rooms. We came back the next night for more.

Hotel La Cayenne, Les Cayes, Haïti, 2001-2003 :
Poisson au gross el or Lambi Kreyol for dinner. Served with a big boiled plantain and spicy rice and beans and cold Prestige beer. Or Spaghetti with avocado and hot sauce for breakfast. Something about that hotel and the food brings back good memories.

Little restaurant near a great small Fado joint in Alfama, Lisbon, Portugal, February 2008:Grilled sardines, a bottle of vinho verde. Divine!

Worst Meals in a Foreign land:
Saclipea, Liberia, December 2004:Boiled cow head with hard rice in eaten out of a communal bowl with five Liberians and a Congolese. “That white woman can’t eat that hard rice!”

ICRC party in Nyala, Darfur, October 2004: Ate nothing but rancid “La Vache Qui Rit” cheese and sandy bread for three weeks, came to a party at the ICRC rooftop and lined up for the barbecue. My mouth was literally watering. The par-cooked goat meat that I swallowed almost without chewing was bad. I had to decide whether to make myself vomit then or hope for the best. I hoped for the best and got food poisoning. That’s when I learned about Oral Rehydration Salts thanks to my friend Mamie and the MSF clinic.

Most Monotonous Diets in foreign lands:
Everything at our hotel in Pretoria, South Africa, March 2004:
All you can eat buffet. You had to fight off hordes of German tourists to get to the food and then it was bland, over cooked, and sauced with what seemed to be paste. Terrible in its nothingness particularly compared to what I knew South Africa was capable of.

Traveling through Kinshasa, North Kivu, South Kivu and Ituri, DRC , May 2005: Almost every day we ate beef brochette, pommes frites, and a beer. By the end of three weeks, I was dying for vegetables and was pretty convinced that I had “trigger finger” from gout.

The MSF Cafeteria, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 2007-2010:Every day you have your choice of dried out breads, processed mystery meats and cheeses packaged in plastic wrap or odd salads such as canned beans, celery, canned corn, and olives in mayonnaise or red peppers, canned black olives, fake tofu/feta, celery, and raw onions swimming in olive oil with no vinegar. Deep fried cutlets that when cut open are made of spaghetti. Soups that are either grey or brown and taste vaguely like paste or canned beef flavor. Buttermilk or milk to drink. “But it’s free!”

Worst book to read in a war zone:
David Rieff’s Bed for the Night in Darfur in 2004. Will kill any sense of hopefulness that you might have and replace it with despair.

Best Book to read in Haiti before the earthquake:
The Comedians by Graham Greene. I was reading it all night and woke up in La Cayenne hotel to open my door to the blinding bright Caribbean light. Outside was a Haitian man in mirror shades, a red speedo, with a big gun. I thought it was the tonton macoute. I closed the door and splashed water on my face. When I reopened the door, he was still there. Turns out President Aristide was coming to the hotel and he was in the advance body guard team.

2nd best book to read in Haiti before the earthquake:
The Comte de Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas – French. Rackish. Dumas was rumored to have black blood. Keeps you endlessly entertained and is long enough that you don’t have to carry another one around with you.

Best Song to enter a war zone to:
“Rock the Casbah” by the Clash. I listened to this as I drove overland from Syria to Beirut during the August 2006 Israel-Hezbollah clash.

Best song to dance to in a refugee camp in Sudan:
“African Queen” by 2Face Idiba  – at the Bulls eye night club in Kakuma Refugee Camp near Lokichoggio, Kenya.

Song I’ve heard on every continent that I’ve traveled to:
"Aisha" by Khaled. Sung live in a nightclub in Cairo, innumerous car radios in Beirut, on an iPod at a Save the Children party in Darfur, at the nightclub in Honduras, at a house party in Papua New Guinea, at a hotel party in Mumbai, India.

Books I didn’t like about places I’ve been to:
The Catastrophist, Kinshasa, Congo. All I remember is that the author kept describing the so called irresistible woman as having extremely thin hair. What woman wants to be described by a man who is obsessed with her as having thinning hair? Why did that even occur to the author as a way to describe the heroine? There was something in there about someone spitting in someone’s face. Everyone was annoying and I wanted everyone to die by the end of it.

The God of Small Things, Kerala, India. At this point, I don't know why I didn't like it but I recall not liking it.

 Books I did like about places I’ve been to:
Anil’s ghost in Sri Lanka
The English Patient in Tuscany, Italy
The Comedians, Haiti
The Heart of the Matter, Sierra Leone
Country of my Skull, South Africa
Berlin by Anthony Beevor, Berlin, Germany

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????

Mother India

I haven't enjoyed India very much on this trip. I was extremely reluctant to return for a number of reasons - some professional and some personal. It seemed like a cruel twist of fate that I should be back in India almost at the year anniversary of my father's death - again alone on holiday without anyone that I love nearby.

But some friends here have got me thinking - maybe India (or fate or karma) is trying to tell you something. Maybe I need to go away for a week alone to think about everything. I've been in such a bad place for the past year - not quite myself - alternating between manic and depressed, reckless and overly cautious, emotional and deadened.

So - if fate doesn't conspire against me, I'm going to try to go to Kerala for a few days -floating on the backwaters, getting ayurvedic massage, maybe taking a cooking course before I ead up to Manipur for a field visit. Let's see what happens. Maybe I just need to entrust myself to fate and let it all flow. Stop trying to be the master of my own destiny.

Dreams

I'm in shitty dirty dusty Delhi in the same hotel as I was in a year ago when I came here to do a training. They are conducting all night construction outside my window. But somehow, I fell asleep at a reasonable hour despite the big wedding celebration going on below as well.

I was in the midst of a long and convuluted John Le Carre influenced dream about spies and red light districts and schoolyard friends. And then, like a boxer punching through a screen, a very clear and intense picture of my father. My father in his schoolyard in Iowa at the family reunion that we went to in July. I could see him exactly in his green plaid flannel shirt. Thin like he was in the last years of his life but smiling with his glasses on.

I'm now wide awake. Right before he died when I was in Udaipur alone, I awoke in the middle of the night -an odd event as I normally sleep like a log all night long. I awoke with aterrible retching feeling like i was going to vomit. I brought the bucket into my bedroom and put it next to my bed like my parents used to do for me. But then I went back to sleep. About 2 hours later, I woke up seconds before my phone rang with my sister on the other end to tell me my father had just died.

Now when I wake up like this, I"m afraid it means something else really bad is going to happen. I've been plagued with fear since the Haiti earthquake -afraid to hear more bad news. I am wishing to get there. My humanitarian emergency organization has no use for me. I want to help the people of Haiti rather than lying here in a lonely hotel room in India feeling helpless again.

Sneeuw!

I'm over the winter weather already. I enjoyed the snow when Alyson and Calvin were here because it made staying home cozy and nice. It was the holiday season so we drank, ate cookies, cooked, watched movies nonstop, and it felt fun.

This weekend, I think I plunged into winter hibernation. After an adventuresome Friday night out (drinks, dinner, and 3D IMAX extravaganza followed by walk in the snow along the Amstel river), I think all my get up and go disappeared.

I've been watching hearty Dutch people strap on the skates and hit the canals. I've seen the snow come and go all day for two days. I've made turkey soup. I've read a book. I've watched old movies thanks to the BBC. I've played with the cat. I've napped. If I had an oven, I would have baked bread. I'm preparing myself to knit and practice my flute. I've reached the end of the internet.

It's time to make a move. I either have to take up winter weather sports, take up meditation, or hit a tropical area.

Frog in a pot of water

While I was in our project in the highlands of PNG, I was "evacuated" with staff by a 10 seat prop plane that was chartered to fly in, pick us up, and deliver us back to the capitol. It was actually quite emotional - after a meeting where the management informed the national staff why we were leaving and everyone hugged goodbye, we rolled out of the compound in a convoy of white landrovers to the airstrip followed about ten minutes later by crying staff - I felt like I was in an episode of M*A*S*H. My colleagues were worried about leaving patients and colleagues behind and wondered if they would ever return. Despite the fact that I had only been there three days, I was emotional too and even felt some tears in my eyes when we took off down the old dirt runway.

A little background:
In the area where we work in the highlands, its extremely violent and neglected. The people there still wear traditional clothing often and they conduct elaborate tribal wars. Because of the violence, there's been almost no one working there for years. We run a project focused on sexual violence, domestic violence, and surgery for violent injuries. For the past few weeks, there's been a bunch of drunk men with seriously big machetes (one was like 3 feet long!) breaking into the hospital and shouting death threats at the staff. Since we are a neutral agency, we don't use armed guards so all we can do when they come in is lock ourselves in the compound.

Since the authorities woudn't do anything about security, management decided to "send a signal"by evacuating the staff. The community was so pissed off at the authorities for problems in the past that they sent 20 people to kill the CEO with machetes and spears three months ago. So security is a big issue. But the people in PNG are very emotional - it was hard to communicate what the "signal"was that we were sending...
the community was also incensed that we were leaving so they staged a demonstration outside the hospital threatening to burn the place down. Which we were afraid they might do. So as we were packing up on Tuesday night for our 11am evacuation flight, we heard gunshots from right outside of our "doublewide" trailor (or prefab house as its called in PNG) where we were staying. The radio handsets that we are all required to carry with us everywhere went off and we were told that we had to hunker down.

It's been a while since I heard gunshots... in DC, it wasn't that unusual but in Amsterdam, if I hear that sound, I assume its a car backfiring. I've grown accustomed to peace - even though I work in war zones. On the Ethiopia-Somalia border, I saw men running around with automatic weapons but I don't recall hearing shots.

I was staying with a psychologist and a doctor in the prefab house and we had all been chatting as we packed so we all went into the hallway and sat on the floor while our unarmed guards went out to investigate. Then there was another gunshot from closer to our house. We realized that we had the door to our house still wide open but were too afraid to run past all the windows to close it. So we decided to crawl into the shower and sat there for thirty minutes until we got the all clear. Since the UK doctor was listening to Kelly Clarkson whle she was packing, we had to continue to listen to it while we sat there wondering what was going on. So I got to contemplate the fact that I might be killed by a crazy drunk man while sitting in a shower of a doublewide lstening to Kelly Clarkson. Not exactly how I thought I would check out.

In the end, it it was all fairly uneventful. Supposedly the police were "checking their weapons" or one of the drunk dudes that has been harrassing the hospital was in an altercation with another guy and someone pulled a gun. Everyone seemed to think it was fairly uneventful and we had some laughs about sitting in the shower later on. But now that I think about it, I feel more like the frog in the pot of water that doesn't know how hot its gotten until its boiled. The violence in Papua New Guinea is so pervasive that it's hard to see it. The people are so sweet and friendly and nice but there is a potent brew of an unfamiliar culture based on payback and revenge and home brew that gets angry men drunk faster.

Sometimes I think about the risks that I take in my line of work. In general, I have a higher than normal tolerance for risk, I suppose. But sometimes I think that I have become immune to thinking about danger which is a bit scary. I wasn't really scared when we were crouched on the floor, I stayed calm and we thought of options. I remember being scared in Lebanon when the bombing started and I realized I had no idea what to do if the building I was in was bombed. Preparation has always helped me feel calm - if I know what I'm supposed to do, I can just go on auto pilot. But in PNG, I felt scared in the nightclub in Lae but not in the hospital compound in Tari.

Friday night in Papua New Guinea

“I shot the sheriff but I swear it was in self defense“

Went out to the Yacht club in Lae which is filled with fat old white Australian men sitting drinking numerous draft beers and getting drunk. We go because the drinks are cheap and there is a breeze from the sea. Three women, a woman from India, a woman from Germany, and I sit gossiping about work, gossiping about men, talking about our lives – an unusual sight in Papua New Guinea – there is no man there to protect us, to hover over us, to tell us what to do. So the Papuan women are intrigued and always come to talk to us. One comes over – she’s lovely, dressed well, very drunk. She starts off telling us about how she is being forced to do things she doesn’t want to do  - things that she wishes she wasn’t doing. We’re concerned and waiting to hear what is going on. But she instead talks about being unable to get pregnant, about having irregular periods, about being unable to conceive and how sad she feels because she has the money because she’s married to a white man, to go to a local clinic and get a d&c.  I still wonder what she’s trying to tell us. We encourage her to visit us at the sexual violence clinic. She says she works near by and has heard about us. We never mention the word Sexual Violence.

She leaves and we all look at each other – we were thinking the same thing. We start talking about leaving pamphlets in the bathroom so the women who work here and the women married to expat men can read them in private and know where to go for help.

Anyway, its Friday night. The other women have been working for five days straight treating about 25 women who have been brutally beaten by their husbands, raped by strangers, and have brought in their children who have been sexually molested. I’m tired because my brain has been stretched to its limit by an American doctor who wants everyting NOW and challenges me. I am happily tired. Rather have this than ridiculous office politics. We’re drinking gin and tonics and looking at the mountains  that meet the Pacific ocean and the big moon. The mental health counselor tells us about a karaoke night nearby at a place called the Melanesian Inn. Supposedly the nurse and the logistician got pissed and sang “Bohemian Rhapsody” there, completely unaware that a video was playing behind them of women in bikinis holding bananas and riding elephants seductively.

We’ve got to see it. We’ve got to go there! I have to see a karaoke place where women hold bananas suggestively. I always forget what they are really like. So we drive over in our big white humanitarian Jeep, I hope out of the back in my pink sundress, clambering down the back step with my gold strappy sandals.  We walk in – 15 kina charge! Outrageous (that’s almost 3 dollars! And beers are only 1 dollar 50). But they wave us in – three single women! We walk in to an intense punch of the scent of cigarette smoke, body odor, and what smells like barely disguised sexual frustration and anger. I’m suddenly aware of the vulnerable position we are in. I’m not used to it. In my countries, in general, I can wear skimpy sundresses to bars and dance and talk to men, and no one is going to drag me off into the bushes and rape me. I’m a little nervous, I hve to admit. I feel vulnerable with four gin and tonics in me and nothing between me and my modesty but a cotton sundress. I didn’t dress provocatively – it was so hot and humid so I wore the dress because it’s lighter than cargo pants and a tshirt.

We are the only non  Papuans in the place. The music is nice but the man are DRUNK and the women start to cluster towards us. They are all prostitutes. It’s been my experience that prostitutes tend to be the nicest women in the world (with the exception of those on 13th Street NW in DC in 1996 but that’s another story). These Papuan women who are almost certainly on the game come and sit with us – eager to talk to women and chat with us and find out what is going on. “Me no savvy English, me talk talk pidgin” says one. One, who is smoking a small cigar keeps kissing my hand and smiling at me. They are funny and nice. We order a round of drinks.

Suddenly a band strikes up – keyboard, bass guitar, guitar, drummer, and two singers. They are singing John Fogerty’s Centerfield. “Put me in coach, I’m ready to play!”- we get up and dance. The music is surpsingly good. A very short mideget like man comes up to dance with us – he dances in ecstasy with his hands in the air, maintaining a safe distance. One of the prostitutes begins to grind against me. To Centerfield! I dance away. The woman who has lived here six months is laughing hysterically looking at our faces as we find ourselves danced against the wall by the female prostitutes. The band begins to play “I saw her Standing there” by the Beatles. We keep dancing. Some men come up and dance too close – a security guard eases on up and puts their arms on the men and whispers in their ear – the men back off. I wish they had that service in the US. Dutch men are so cold, they never dance too close.

We  feel protected – we dance and sing as the band moves into Bob Marley – I shot the Sheriff – an ironic song given the violence in Papua New Guinea. But an awesome version! The singer has a great voice. And then into … of course… no party is complete without it – “No Woman No Cry”. But still the female prostitute is kissing my friends arms and grinding against me. We decide to take a break to have another beer. And then! The Drifters! The music of my youth in South Carolina – at Camp Saint Christopher, at the Swan Lake Dance competitions, at Myrtle Beach – at school dances. I have to dance to this. The other girls don’t want to dance so I find myself on a dance floor with two prostitutes and four men, dancing and trying to shag to “Under the Boardwalk” . I twist and turn and try to spin the prostitute but she seems unable to follow my guidance and keeps trying to grind. So I sing – UNDER THE BOARDWALK – DOWN BY THE SEA- UNDER THE BOARDWALK- ….

A man starts screaming – two men carry him out on their shoulders as he twists and thrashes about. The men start circling closer and closer. The guards are eyeing us nervously. A giant huge man with hands twice the size of me comes up to talk tome. He’s a local Rugby player. He won’t admit it at first and when I ask him what he does, he says, he’ll tell me later insinuating all kinds of things. He has great dimples. It’s midnight.  Another drunk falls over a stool and lands on the floor. The prostitutes are gathering again –their betel nut stained teeth shining against their dark skin in the black light. The smell of unwashed and sweaty skin is overwhelming and the fans aren’t helping ventilate – just pushing the smell closer and closer to me. I’m getting nervous again – so we leave.

As we walk up to our driver with his humanitarian logo embossed vest and our giant white SUV, he tells us there is still a fight going on – the man who was thrown out of the bar! We can’t resist. We have to go look. There are five security guards still watching. We climb in to the car and head home at midnight – one more hour before curfew but it feels prudent to go home now. Just another Friday night in Lae, Papua New Guinea.

More shopping in Singapore

Turtles for sale in a bucket in the seafood section - not for pets!

The "Smoking Kills" folks in Singapore are strict - photos of people in advanced stages of cancer and miscarried fetuses!

Frogs for sale in the seafood section too. Those legs look pretty small

Fresh crabs!!!! So nice!

And of course, Jackie Chan herbal shampoo.

Shopping in Singapore

I've always said, you can tell a lot about a country by the flavors of potato chips it sells. Pringles in particular is very adapt to adjusting to the local market.

In Holland you get a lot of Indonesian spices (reflecting their former colony). In France, you get Roast Chicken with Thyme. In England, Vinegar and Salt, Cheddar Cheese, or Worcestershire sauce. In the US, Nacho cheese, buffalo wings and blue cheese, or barbecue.


This is what I saw in Singapore

Deli

Sunday evenings

On a trip to Devon with my friend Naomi, I recently met her brother-in-law, a singer songwriter named Chris Bond (pictured above surfing in Devon). He has a beautiful song called "Our Roots" that I really love. I have been having a bit of a rough time last week - too much stress and anxiety at work, dark winter afternoons, not enough exercise and fresh air, too much alcohol - so one day, when I was home recovering from a cold I couldn't shake, I listened to this song over and over again which soothed me. He has a refrain that says "its no good for our soul" (although it might say its no good for us all!) but I like the first interpretation better.

My good friend Willy got me out of the house this afternoon and took me rowing on the Amstel. The sky was a pewter gray and the leaves that still clung to the trees were a dark gold. It's a beautiful palette and peaceful to be so close to the water. We went by houseboats, called in on a friend of hers painting in his studio, practiced my rowing techniques, and then cycled back home into the city. As we cycled by, we had the uniquely Dutch experience of 20 men in velvet pantaloons and blackface rollerblading past us. Yes, its Sinterklaas time!

So after a healthy afternoon, on a Sunday evening (one of my favorite times of the week), I'm trying to do a few things this evening that are good for the soul.

• Listening to Billie Holiday, Louis Jordan, Chet Baker, Blossom Dearie, Ella Fitzgerald, Van Morrison, Buena Vista Social Club and other music that reminds me of home
  
• Cooking with organic vegetables - tonight wild mushrooms called "pied de mouton" and freshly made linguini
• Drinking tea while wearing a cardigan and slippers.
• Snuggling with Simon, the fuzzy Siamese, who purrs contentedly on my lap
• Making little snacks of freshly baked Rosemary foccacia and pieces of Elstar apples.
• Reading a good book while curled up on the couch under a blanket.

Tomorrow, I'll face the office again. But now, I'm recharging my batteries, replenishing my soul.

Grief

"Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break." ~William Shakespeare


When my mother died in 1997, I was 29 years old and in graduate school. I was dating a man named Michael and living in Washington DC in a group house with three other women. I had a persian cat named Dante and I worked part time at Witness for Peace, a grassroots Latin American human rights organization.

Why my father died in 2009, I was 41 years old and had been working full time for twelve years. I am not seriously involved with anyone romantically and I live in Amsterdam, the Netherlands alone in an apartment in the Oost. I have a siamese cat named Simon and I work for Medecins Sans Frontieres, a medical humanitarian organization.

So a few things have changed - but not that much. Grief has caught me unprepared. I thought I could handle it- after all, he had been struggling healthwise and whenever he became ill, he would remind me that he had had a very good life and was tired and didn't want to live forever. I spent three weeks with him at Christmas, cooking him anything he liked to eat, and chatting with him, and taking him to doctor's appointments. We cooked spaghetti together and drank champagne on New Years Day. We had a wonderful time. I left in January, expecting to see him in April.

It's been eight and a half months since he died suddenly. I miss him dreadfully and as the Christmas season sneaks up and the year anniversary of the last time I saw him, the sadness becomes overwhelming sometimes. I feel unmoored by grief. Things I took for granted are gone. I don't have a 'home' anymore except for this rented apartment. Alyson and I are attempting to sell our childhood home and I haven't been back to South Carolina since March after the funeral. My landlady and I had a minor dispute about the use of the guestroom a few weeks ago and I felt a huge sense of violation of my privacy. I just wanted to go home and I don't have one that is mine anymore. I was enraged and overwhelmed by my anger.

When I travel to new countries now, I become overwhelmed by the fact that I can't call my father before I leave and when I get home to tell him about it. He always wanted to know what the beer was like. There's noone now, really, to worry if I arrive safely or if I return okay. My sister and friends care, I suppose, but its an empty feeling to know that the parents who always fretted over my safety and wouldn't let me drive to a Duran Duran show are no longer there to worry about me anymore. I cry now at departures because there is noone to wish me off and I cry at arrivals because there is noone there to welcome me home. Airports which before had been so incredibly exciting and dull at the same time are now emotional.

Sometimes the emotions are so raw that they feel unmanageable. I do not know if I can describe this feeling that sits on my chest like a heavy millstone. So for comfort, I turn to the words of others to assure myself I'm not crazy and that this is a human experience.

" The deep pain that is felt at the death of every friendly soul arises from the feeling that there is in every individual something which is inexpressible, peculiar to him alone, and is, therefore, absolutely and irretrievably lost."  ~Arthur Schopenhauer

"I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they'll 'say something about it' or not. I hate if they do, and if they don't."
— C.S. Lewis (A Grief Observed)
 
"Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe their husband is about to return and need his shoes."

— Joan Didion (The Year of Magical Thinking)

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in."

— C.S. Lewis

"As long as I kept moving, my grief streamed out behind me like a swimmer's long hair in water. I knew the weight was there but it didn't touch me. Only when I stopped did the slick, dark stuff of it come floating around my face, catching my arms and throat till I began to drown. So I just didn't stop."

— Barbara Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible)

Haunted By Halloween

Haunted by Halloween

By ROBERTSON DAVIES

TORONTO -- Halloween deserves a house cleaning. Our strongly superstitious age needs Halloween, but cannot do anything with it in its present degenerate form.
Halloween has been thrust too much into the hands of children. Dressing children as ghosts and witches, and sending them out on the night of Oct. 31 to demand tribute from the neighbors, or perhaps to proffer collection boxes for a variety of more or less worthy charities, is contrary to the deeper meaning of Halloween. The old festival is not childish, nor associated with good works and community spirit.
The deeper meaning? What lingers today is a foggy recollection of the great Celtic festival of the Death of the Year. The Celts divided their year into the growing months and the resting months. The former began on the first of May with the Feast of Beltane, where the returning sun was welcomed by huge bonfires on the hills. The latter started after the harvest had been gathered. The waning of the sun was marked by the Feast of Samhain, a two-day affair, celebrated after sundown on Halloween and on All Saints' Day, Nov. 1.
It was the Christian Church, of course, that instituted the feast of All Saints. The church was crafty about adapting pagan celebrations to its own purposes, and when it set about its methodical substitution of Christianity for the old Celtic religion, it carefully noted that at Samhain the Celts remembered their ancestors and their heroes, and did them honor in a number of ceremonies, including, so the missionaries said (but the evidence of missionaries must always be carefully weighed), human sacrifice. How logical, then, that the old feast should serve the new faith and be-come a time when the saints were recalled on Nov. 1 and all the other faithful dead on the day that followed, called All Souls'?
If we were to take a new look at Halloween, what might we do? Surely revive the custom of giving some respectful heed to our forbears.
We of North America are not so likely to do this as are the peoples of the rest of the globe. Is it because of our driving ambition to do better than our parents? Like it or not, to reach middle age with less money or less prestige than our father had is somewhat to lose face. Stupid of course, when put like that, but who is prepared to argue that we are not stupid in several important ways?
Nevertheless, our forbears are deserving of tribute for one indisputable reason, if for no other: without them we should not be here. Let us recognize that we are not the ultimate triumph but rather we are beads on a string. Let us behave with decency to the beads that were strung before us, and hope modestly that the beads that come after us will not hold us of no account merely because we are dead.
Today and tomorrow are the proper days for such reflection. It need not detain us for more than a few minutes, but it should be sincere. A few gentle thoughts or even -- I hardly know how to put it without moving you to indignation or laughter -- a brief prayer would not come amiss, and might turn your thoughts in a fruitful direction.
There have always been people who give no regard to their forbears, and it was they who were thought in the days of the old Celtic religion to suffer on Halloween. That was the night when the spirits of the neglected or affronted dead took vengeance on their unworthy descendants. They were on the rampage as bats and owls, ghosts and bogles, and they were not always careful where their vengeance fell. To be out on Halloween was to run great risk of physical or psychological harm, for it was then that the underworld of chaos and death settled old scores.
Wise folk, long after Christianity ousted the Old Religion, kept indoors on the night of Samhain and followed tradition by trying to foresee the future. There are still people who remember bobbing for apples at Halloween parties. It is a method of divination now turned into a game. My father recalled that when he was a boy in rural Wales, girls used to drop molten lead into cold water on Halloween because the lead would surely take the form of the first letter of their true love's name and if it did so he would marry them.
Fortunes were told by "scrying," which was to see images in a basin of water (later a crystal). Soul cakes -- rather than shortbread -- were baked and given to the children who went "souling" from door to door -- the beginning of the modern trick-or-treat. By the 19th century, we can presume, it was safe to go outdoors.

Did I not speak earlier of this as a strongly superstitious age? Who can deny it, when fortune tellers of all sorts prosper as they have not done in 50 years, as sophisticated young business people resort to them, within a few yards of the great Market of Phantoms, Wall Street itself? Has there ever been such a brisk trade in crystals and tarot cards? Have wizards ever advertised so unequivocally in the very best publications?
There are laws almost everywhere against witchcraft but how often are they invoked? There are covens of liberated women who let it be known that they are witches but are anxious to have it understood that they are White Witches, who do no harm and simply get together to invoke the Great Mother, the supreme Nature Goddess, and eat a few vegetarian dishes. Their attitude shows the cast of mind that has gelded and trivialized Halloween.
The Great Mother, who is said to have anticipated the reign of the Great Father by several millennia, was, like Nature, not unremittingly benevolent. She had -- or should I say has -- an eerie, nasty side, and the rout of evil spirits on Halloween was only one of her ways of letting it be known. She had three natures -- Virgin, Consort and Hag; the Hag was rough and, in the form of children got up as witches, still makes a farcical appearance on Halloween.
What might we profitably do on Halloween? Look backward, and consider those who went before us. The road ahead is inevitably dark, but to see where we have been may offer unexpected hints about who we are, and where we should be heading. Triviality about the past leads certainly toward a trivial future.
Robertson Davies is author of, most recently, "The Lyre of Orpheus."

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Writer's Block

I've been suffering from writer's block. I suppose its not unusual, after all, I'm still struggling to accept my father's death and work and its accompanying dramas seem to suck up all the time and energy I have. However, here's a short run-down of all the things I'd like to write about or post but haven't had the energy to do yet.

My trip to Tuscany and the fabulous food
My trip to Normandy with my sister to visit the D Day sites - very thought provoking, particularly since I then went on a course on International Humanitarian Law in Brussels immediately after.
The use of anthropologists in Human Terrain Teams in Afghanistan
The encroaching winter time - it's 7am and the sun isn't up yet. I'm not sure if I'm prepared for this!
The rest of the photos from my trip to the midwest. Espescially the Corn Palace in South Dakota and my speeding ticket in Nebraska.
My love for pre-WWII espionage novels

Anyway, I'll try to carve out some time and inspiration.

Still bewildered in Holland

Even though I've been here two years and four months, I still find things that bewilder me from time to time. Tonight I went shopping for sheets and new pillows because my sister is coming to visit and she's a pillow snob. I went to the Bijenkorf because its a swanky department store and I was feeling flush with cash and wanting to splurge on some high thread count sheets.

When I go there, I realized they don't have single, double, queen, california king and king... they have 90 cm, 200 cm, 220 cm lengths and different widths! I have no idea what length and width my double bed is. I tried to describe it by saying things like "It's for two people and its longer than normal." Hmmm. Then I bought some pillows. They are square - not rectangular. The bed set that I bought has a duvet cover and two pillow cases but no fitted sheets.

It's really humbling to be an idiot asking silly questions as an adult. But on a brighter side - I'm so Dutch acclimatized, I rode home with two duvet sets, two giant pillows, a box of wine glasses, my purse and extra raincoat all packed on my bicycle without a single accident. I didn't risk listening to my iPod during the time but I did think about it.

Tuscany Adventures

Gay Pride Parade

Saturday, August 1 will be the Gay Pride Canal Parade in Amsterdam. My friend Alec will be joining me from the US and we'll go and watch 10 Dutch American couples be married by the Mayor of Amsterdam. There's tons of events going on. The Yoga for men logo caught my eye so I thought I would share it with you all. Enjoy!

Ted Gose

I was devastated to hear that a very dear friend, no family member, died this weekend. Some of you may remember Ted Gose, the man who donated his house to host my father's funeral luncheon. He died this weekend. My heart goes out to his 16 year old son, Art, who I've known his entire life and his wife, Barb, and his daughters and step-son.

Ted (or Teddy Bear as my father and mother liked to call him) was a wonderful man. Warm, funny, smart, and endearing. He had the biggest heart in the world. My parents lived across the street from him for almost 20 years and thought of him as the son they never had. The photo above is from a dinner we had at Angel's - a mexican restaurant in Sumter that my father loved. Ted arranged for them to donate food for my father's funeral. Ted and Barb always dropped by and took my dad out or checked in on him to see how he was doing. He was there to give me advice when I needed it and to help out whenever we asked.

I loved Ted very dearly. I will miss him. My heart breaks. Its just too much. The world will be a much sadder and lonelier place without him.

Road Trip 2009: Of South Dakota and Corn Palaces

Neither Alyson nor I had ever been to South Dakota or Nebraska. We had gone to Iowa as young girls with my father, I had been to Minnesota for a wedding after college. Since we were flying into Omaha, we thought we couldn't miss the opportunity to see South Dakota too. Unfortunately, we were trying to conserve Alyson's vacation time so we missed the cousins big trip to the Badlands and didn't have time to stop at Laura Ingalls Wilder's homestead spot that was about 2 hours off the highway but I have a feeling that we'll try to return to South Dakota. Home of Tom Brokaw, Cheryl Ladd, and Tom Daschle!

 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 

Road Trip 2009: Surprisingly beautiful Nebraska

My only real interaction with Nebraska in the past has been awe at the power of the 80s Cornhusker football team, reading "My Antonia" and Little House on the prairie books, and my friend Linda who was from there. I had a vague image in my mind of long flat boring countryside. Boy was I wrong, I found Nebraska beautiful. I would even go back although I'm still smarting from my speeding ticket from Norfolk, Nebraska. At least the police officer was polite! And talk about good service, the folks at the rental car agency were about the nicest people I've ever met in my life!

Enjoy some photos from my road trip with Alyson.

The Pie Auction Video

4th of July in George Iowa, part 2: The Pie Auction

The Pie Auction

What could be more small town and quaint than a pie auction? I had visions of the Andy Griffith Show in my head. Some dear old Aunt Bee laboring over her peach pie but being beat out by the hot new spinster teacher in town so the men banding together to purchase Auntie Bee's pie for an inflated price. I had big plans to purchase a rhubarb pie in honor of my Dad who loved rhubarb pie above everything. It was going to be one of the highlights of the 4th of July weekend in the Midwest.

The George, Iowa pie auction was held behind the elementary school by the baseball field right after a musical performance and before the fireworks. There was a small amusement park set up in the parking lot with a ring toss and bingo. You could buy ice cream and popcorn at the concessions stand. I arrived with my sister and my cousin Catherine prepared to bid for a pie.

Imagine my shock and horror to learn that the opening bid for these 109 home made pies was $100! The first pie went for almost $300!!!! This was no small town Southern sleepy pie auction. These Iowa farmers were rich! They auctioned 109 pies with the cheapest one going for $125. And they auctioned them like a true hog auction complete with fast talking auctioneer, spotters, and a loudspeaker placed somewhere over my head. It went on for at least an hour and a half. I couldn't even get in on the action for what sounded like a gross pie - sour cream and raisin. That one still was out of my range at $125.

I realized I had been laboring under a misconception of what small towns were like. Being rural and being a farmer does not necessarily mean being poor, I have learned. Years of living in the south and being subjected to "we're going to lose the family farm" movies form Hollywood lead me to believe that in the midst of the economic crisis that was to be rivaling the Great Depression that a small town pie auction to support the school would be an affordable deal. I know that George, Iowa suffered greatly during the last Great Depression. Signs in the museum spoke about "one of the many single men who drifted into town searching for work" and my father spoke about times being lean. But with the age of government subsidies for farms and a heavy reliance on genetically modified seeds, modern technology, and intense fertilizer - the Iowa farm looks mighty prosperous compared to the meager efforts I've seen in South America, Africa, and Asia.

So while in many ways, the 4th of July celebrations in Iowa were as stereotypical and patriotic and fun as I had expected, I learned an important lesson thanks to the pie auction. I think I may now be opposed to farming subsidies for US farmers.

UPDATE:
I suppose I was struck deaf by the garbled loudspeaker next to my ears at the pie auction. My cousin Linda has informed me that the video shows the pie being auctioned at $50. It was hard to keep track as 109 pies were auctioned and I was just anxiously awaiting the fireworks. But the first pie and several others did go for $300. Most of the purchasers were local businesses.

For those who feel that I maligned the good people of George, Iowa by saying how surprised I was that the town was prosperous, I apologize. I very much enjoyed my visit to George and found very pleasant people there. I was surprised at the wealth in a town of about 1000 people but I invite you to compare and contrast it to the farm towns that I've visited in South Carolina where grinding poverty is a visible way of life. The recession has hit my hometowns of Columbia and Sumter, SC hard and the effect is visible with for sale signs and foreclosure signs all over town and the line around the Salvation Army stretched around the block.

As for not supporting farm subsidies - I also invite me to send me info to educate me to your point of view. While the analogy of the pie auction and the wealth of the US farmer may be a clumsy one, I'm still not sure that farm subsidies are the way to go. Feel free to post links in the comments section.

4th of July in George, Iowa, part 1: The Parade

In honor of my father, my sister and I went to George Iowa for the 125th anniversary of the town, my father's hometown and birthplace. I"m going to post a series of videos, photos, and remembrances of that weekend.

The Fourth of July Parade:
You can't have a fourth of July parade without men in funny hats driving souped up little cars. This is one of the best examples I've seen.

Vacation - all I ever wanted!

"Vacation, all I ever wanted! Vacation - had to get away!" The Go-Gos

So its the first official day of my much anticipated vacation. When I planned it, I was in the midst of manic whirl of work, emotional turmoil, and lack of sleep. So it is a bit jam packed with activities and not necessarily all that restful but still - vacation!

I flew from Amsterdam to New York City yesterday - seasoned traveler that I am, I think its indicative of my mental state and the chaos I've been living in that I somehow got lost on the way to the airport. I go to Schiphol about once a month, at least, and I somehow managed to get lost. Granted, I shared a bottle of Prosecco, a bottle of sauvignon blanc, and some port with friends at a sunlit cafe in Amsterdam the night before so I was a little hungover but to get lost!? I blame it on my friend Jennifer who gave me a shortcut through the Amsterdam Zuid station to Schiphol from my house. Of course, it wasn't her that misdirected me, instead it was my hungover brain that made me misremember that and head to the Amstel station instead. I had to backtrack and that made me lose thirty minutes as I hemmed and hawed over whether to take the metro or a train. Then I missed the train to the airport and hadto wait another 20 minutes but hopped onto the wrong one. I caught my mistake and finally made it to the airport with only 45 minutes before departure. Luckily, I have an "elite status" with KLM so can check in with business class and cut the cue. Some seasoned traveler I am!

After an uneventful flight where I watched "the Watchmen" and "He's Just Not that Into you" along with a bloody Mary at the recommendation of my friend Mireille, I slept a bit and began to unwind a little. I zipped through immigration and customs at JFK arriving outside the airport about 30 minutes after I landed. Then I decided to brave the New York subway system to get to Harlem, where I'm staying with friends. After an uneventful ride, I arrived at Alka's house to a cold beer, good food, catching up and gossip. Slowly, the tension is starting to melt away.

So what's my crazy agenda like? Friday and Saturday - wedding festivities for Brian and Kevin in Brooklyn. I anticipate dancing like mad and laughing hysterically with my date and best friend, Alec. Sunday after a sumptuous brunch, we intend to drive back to DC where I'll stay catching up with old friends until Thursday.

Thursday morning, I fly to Omaha, Nebraska where I meet my sister and we rent a car and drive to George, Iowa.
for a family reunion. It's the 125th anniversary of my father's hometown and Alyson and I are trekking out there to honor him.

After 4th of July fun including: a street dance, duck race, tractor pull, and pie auction. Americana!!! I have made a special iPod mix to get me prepared for my immersion into my roots and to entertain my sister who is feeling a bit cynical about it all. She remembers our trip to Iowa as being filled with pig farms, corn, and 18 wheelers. I don't see why that is a problem but to cheer her up, we plan a side trip to the Corn Palace in South Dakota when we drive back to Omaha (even though its a bit out of the way). We are accepting other road trip destinations as well. Giant balls of twine?

On Monday morning, I return to DC and hop on a train to Chester Country, Pennsylvania where my good friends Rick and Cat will wine and dine me as we sit on their porch, drink great beer, grill out, perhaps walk around and look at the cows in their rural community, and reminisce. Their kids are gone to grandmas that week which means I'll miss them but it also means the adults don't have to be responsible and not stay up too late drinking for fear of children bouncing on beds in the morning!

On Wednesday, I return to JFK where I fly to Paris.

In Paris, I pick up a rental car and drive to Honfleur in Normandie where I will meet up with my old friend William and his fiancee. We'll spend a few days there drinking calvados, norman cuisine, touring the countryside and fattening up and then I take the train back to Amsterdam.

A bit whirlwind but sure to be fun as it encompasses some of the things I love the most: my family, my friends, road trips, and good cuisine.

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

In Memory

Easter often coincides with the anniversary of my mother's death - April 11, 1997. I was in graduate school in George Washington University in Washington DC just finishing my comprehensive exams. My mother had been struggling with ovarian cancer for about 2 years and had taken a turn for the worse but my father had hidden it from me so I could focus on school. All I remember from that frantic flight home to see her before she died was how beautiful the weather was. April 11 often coincides with the most beautiful part of the South Carolina spring at my childhood home in Sumter. The azaleas are a riot of coral, purple, hot pink, and red with some white blossoms tucked in for contrast. The tulips that I bought long ago in Amsterdam are bobbing in the breeze and the dogwood trees and wisteria are in an ecstasy of bloom. Even my father's prized lilac bushes that were specifically bred to survive the hot Southern summer produce fragrant purple flowers.



Last year I was in South Carolina nursing my father back to health after he had surgery for a broken arm. We spent the day quietly at the hospital, reflecting on how much we missed her but not talking too much. We're not a family that talks about our emotions freely. I took photos of the garden in Sumter realizing somehow that I wouldn't spend another Easter there.

This year, I had hoped to go to England to visit my mother and grandmother's grave. My mother was cremated and my father had half of her ashes placed in the grave of her mother and half kept in a marble box in South Carolina for the inevitable time when he would die and they would be comingled. We traveled to Stratton Saint Margaret, the village where my mother grew up in Wiltshire (now a part of Greater Swindon) and had a small ceremony there for her with her family who were unable to come to the funeral in South Carolina. 1998 was the last time I saw my Uncle Roy, my Aunt Pearl, and my cousins Francis and Rob.

I just couldn't get it together. I returned home from Colombia on April 8 and had to try to get the ticket and everything sorted by the 10th and my jet lag, unorganized finances, and the complex Dutch and UK train systems on line defeated me. So I stayed home this weekend. It was lovely in Amsterdam today. The weather was warm and balmy. The tree leaves are starting to bloom. The daffodils are out. My friend Naomi gave me a bouquet of daffodils (the favorite flowers of both my mother and I) which I placed in my favorite blue pitcher that my mother and father brought back from a vacation in Italy before Alyson and I were born. I went to the butcher shop and bought a lamb shoulder and to the market where I bought some peas and some mint. I have rosemary growing on my balcony.

I'll honor my mother's memory by cooking today. She taught me how to cook when I was about 10 years old. She was a great cook even though she didn't enjoy it like my father and I do. In previous years, I've always tried to cook something special on the anniversary of her death so as to be bonded in memory of all those Christmases and Thanksgivings and Easters cooking in our kitchen in Sumter with my mother (and then my father). Although I am not in her kitchen today, the skills that she taught me (it's all in the timing! hunger is the best sauce!) will stay with me. I'll always be with her when I cook.

The Guerrilla disease

I haven’t worked in Latin America (proper) since 1997 when I worked with Witness for Peace and NCOORD looking at issues in Nicaragua and Guatemala and this trip to Colombia marks my return to the context. In 1999 I lived in Guatemala for a little while mostly to study Spanish (and drink beer, and dance meringue, and go to movies with my friend Jamie). I always wanted to return to work here but there are so many capable locals who can do the work that they don’t really need many folks from the US to come down. On top of that, the US has played such an active role in many of the conflicts (overthrowing the Chilean government, supporting the Argentine dictators, overthrowing the Guatemalan socialist leader, Arbenz on behalf of the United Fruit Company, waging war in Panama, Nicaragua and El Salvador, and our continuous attempts to over throw Castro in Cuba) that American do-gooders aren’t that welcome. In particular, Colombia has “suffered” from particular attention by the US government. Our insatiable appetite for cocaine has made the route from the coca fields from Coca right up the Central American peninsula quite dangerous. There’s money to be made there and the overlap between political battles between the government of Colombia waging a war against terror against left wing guerrillas with the aid of “paramilitary” groups combined with the money to be made in a land grab to run cocaine, grow bananas, pineapples, avocados, coffee, and tobacco has made life hard for the peasants (indigenous people, people of African descent, and mixed “mestiza” population) who work the land and try to scratch out a living. The US government spends a lot of money arming the government of Colombia to “fight narco-traffickers and terrorists” with little to show for the 1.7 million USD dollars per day that the US Government gives to the army but the longest running civil war in the world and the most internally displaced people in the world (an IDP is a “refugee” who has not crossed an internationally recognized border).

In fact the US influence here is so strong that I’m supposed to pretend I am Dutch or any other nationality besides American. I’m an attractive target for political guerrillas to trade with the Colombia government and I can put the teams here in danger because the patients will fear that I’m a spy from the government and the paramilitaries. While my experience in Lebanon with Hezbollah taught me that its better not to lie as they usually know already what nationality you are, I’ve resolved to say “I live in Amsterdam, the Netheralnds” and “I flew here from Holland” – all of which is true. It’s hard though because my Spanish isn’t great nd we’re not supposed to speak English in front of strangers including in bars or restaurants or in the clinic in front of patients. I mostly stand around listening eagerly and hoping to catch a few words. My dormant Spanish has made a creaky comeback and I can chat to an extent as long as the other person doesn’t speak too quickly. My vocabulary is good by my grammar sucks. I mostly limit myself to banal observations about how hot it is or how delicous the frijoles I'm eating are.

After 10 years of focusing primarily on Africa with some focus on Haiti, Nepal, and Sri Lanka – I’ve finally made it back to South America. I’m learning a lot here. Many of the issues that plague the people of Latin America also plague the people of Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and the poor in North America… in particular, the disease of the poor are the ones that have the most restrictions on how you can treat them. One that I found particularly interesting is Leishmaniasis also known as Kala Azar. It appears to be a larvae from a but that when you are bit, injects parasites into your blood and you have wounds that won’t heal on your legs and arms and you can get parasites in your spleen, liver, and bone marrow. The bugs that carry this disease in Colombia live in rotted wood. In Colombia, we mostly treat women and children with this disease because they are the ones who are gathering wood or water and going out into the jungle the most. However, in many of the mountainous areas of Colombia, there are also a high number of Leishmaniasis cases.

The disease is very stigmatized and known as the Guerrilla disease. Therefore the government requires mandatory reporting of anyone who has this disease (violating their right to privacy) and strictly controls access to the medicine used to treat it. As we see mostly women and children, we are trying to lobby the government to drop this stigmatizing treatment of these patients and let us treat them so they can go on with their lives. While I have seen access to healthcare controlled for certain ethnic populations (poorly staffed and run health clinics for the Acholi in Uganda or the Ogadenis in Ethiopia), this is one of the first times I’ve encountered a disease linked to political issues.

The Lipstick Jungle

On my first day in Bogota (a Sunday), I sat watching television with the head of mission here. Every other commercial was for a fat burning pill or a special halter that lifted your breasts up high so you could have better cleavage. It made some of the back braces I’ve seen seem comfortable. My traveling companion is Colombian and we had a discussion about the different standards that Colombian people have about their physical appearance versus the European and Norte Americanos who come down here. Colombian women favor close fitting stretchy clothes (really, no matter what their body shape is) and wear skinny spaghetti strap tops and skin tight leggings. They always seem to have long painted nails, immaculately done hair and makeup. It’s quite different here than the normal humanitarian crisis where the fashion du jour is baggy linen pants, tee shirts with the company logo, bandanas, hiking boots or tevas, and shapeless faded clothes. It’s sometimes difficult to tell if I’m at a Grateful Dead show or a humanitarian emergency.

She was outraged by the expatriates that seem to see it as a political statement to never bathe, to wear clothes filled with holes, and wild unkempt hair and beards. “It’s disrespectful to the people who make an effort to look clean and tidy no matter what their status.” I agree with her. I’ve heard (mostly men) make proud comments at meetings about how they won’t wear a suit or be dictated to by others. “We don’t wear suits! We come in looking like we have come straight from the field!” they tell me as they sit on tables rather than chairs and stomp around headquarter in downtown sophisticated Amsterdam in hiking boots, pants that zip off to turn into shorts, with crazed looking hair and beards.

The expats in Colombia still wear the “uniform” of faded tee shirt, linen pants, and sandals but the national staff here normally prefer to wear tight jeans, sexy tops, and the shapeless open logo’d vest over the top that can be quickly shed at closing time. The hair is immaculate and the make up is on. I think its starting to rub off at least on the female staff. I found this quote in a report from head quarters to the field.

“Colombia is a favourable country for different kind of (plastic) surgeries. For ex-pats this has shown to be attractive. However, as every surgery has its risk, it is recommended to undergo any elective surgery after the mission and not during holidays. “

Already I feel super frumpy in my baggy linens and tee shirt. I have taken care to wash my hear and apply product and makeup each morning but still the national staff seem to regard me with a sad and patronizing look for my inability to look like I’m on my way to a disco in 100 degree weather with 100% humidity in the middle of the jungle. My preference for organic fabrics and loose fitting clothes is at odds with the polyesther stretch outfits and short shorts here. At least I’m wearing lipstick and mascara!