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)....

On the hunt for Mexican food in Amsterdam

I reviewed a Tex-Mex restaurant on my "food blog", Bleu Cheese and Red Wine.....

On the Hunt for Mexican Food in Amsterdam

Humanitarian aid worker pick up lines

A blog that I read, Tales from the Hood ran a little blog post about "pick up lines" for Aid workers.

Some of their offerings included:

“Guess we’d better test these reproductive health kits ourselves….”

“Your pipeline is soooo big!”

“Don’t worry: I can do distribution all night long.”

“Care to join me for a needs assessment?”

“Is that a Thuraya in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?”

“Damn, the electricity is out. Looks like the only thing we have is the spark between us….”

“I have a warehouse of expiring condoms…”

“This one time, on the Jalalabad road….”

Taxi driver showed girl his driving license and said, “See? It says here that I’m authorized to transport dangerous cargo. That would be you!” *wink, wink*

That makes me laugh because on my first trip to Darfur in 2004 after a couple of pretty raucous parties, someone started a list of "sure fire ways to get laid in Darfur" but rather than punny- they relied more on the context and the fact that a natural response to being around death and dying is to embrace the very act which creates life. A lot of aid workers are young - really young! Sometimes it feels more like fraternity parties than the office parties of Washington DC. Work hard, play hard is the motto and there's a reason that if you want a stable marriage, you have to leave the field.

I remember a few of the lines on the top ten list but I wish I had written them down:

"You wouldn't believe what I saw today. I"ve got a bottle of "liquor" from the African Union mission. Wanna get drunk?"
"I am scared to sleep alone after the security event - can you just hold me for a while? "

But a favorite from an impromptu dance party in Haiti in March -(while listening to Aisha, the ubiquitous song played in almost every setting I've ever been to) "DAMN, why can't I be French and in [name of my org] France and make love to this song every weekend?"

And it also reminds me of some lines used on me too... but those, well, I'll tell you those in private. ;^)

Best of 2010 to date

Here's a few of my photos from my life in 2010 to date. I traveled to India - Delhi/Taj Mahal/Manipur/Kerala, Turkey- Istanbul and the roman ruins near Selcuk, the post-earthquake devastation of Haiti -Port-au-Prince and Carrefour, Edinburgh Scotland, a nice trip with my sister to Charleston South Carolina, and a bike ride with friends through the Tulip Fields of Holland.

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?

Rape in Haiti

If you want to read the post about Rape in Haiti, please go here.

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.