tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62906690984555547302024-02-19T07:36:50.291-08:00The Course Of UnderstandingFive Years.
Four Continents.
One Search For The Human Race.calebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15385366765861509339noreply@blogger.comBlogger54125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6290669098455554730.post-4877414984088002322011-11-19T18:47:00.000-08:002011-11-19T18:47:37.147-08:00Recollection Shelf #1: The India Angel<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">I'm going to start a series about my Recollection Shelf.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is an area on my bookshelf where I keep random mementoes of my travels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It helps keep me tied to who I’ve been and what I’ve done, and I still need that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each item has a story behind it, and no story is without significance if told the right way!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So when nothing else is going on here in Germany (like this week, study study study!) I’ll tell the story of one of these items.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This week:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><u>The India Angel</u></span></span><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA0HDurBfFTUhk6kCrlAXY7wRPoUDZX9LQzbcP_JI1v6tQq1g7AAf1qs9u6-pJspNJxbIM-W0MfzYIkfM-9GdiEWp_c_xRfGML7wx63-apOvTTl5HVBtrECR2FjUqu6974D-a8FLtLytC-/s1600/IMG_1258-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="531" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA0HDurBfFTUhk6kCrlAXY7wRPoUDZX9LQzbcP_JI1v6tQq1g7AAf1qs9u6-pJspNJxbIM-W0MfzYIkfM-9GdiEWp_c_xRfGML7wx63-apOvTTl5HVBtrECR2FjUqu6974D-a8FLtLytC-/s640/IMG_1258-1.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">My Recollection Shelf</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: small;"> For a long time I believed that exhaustion, stress, frustration, or panic were all “mind over matter” problems, that I could always talk myself out of them and stay in control. After two months in a rural orphanage in India, I’d stopped believing that… or at least I had to realize that when my mind had reached its limits, it couldn’t overcome even the smallest thing. It was time to leave.</span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why this experience was so intense and impossible for me to bear any longer is very difficult to explain, and it would take much longer than the story I intend to tell here, the simple and stunning events of my last night which somehow reached into my shell-shocked soul and became a memory that will stay with me all my life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijFsotpvJQO-f_9Xr5CACLMY3zQ7scvgW01tvzglpxfFW4F9xMyJ-n1CG5M99Q-FQKOBayp2Zxz3Dogi8wS5RX0r4PxopH1xflcKGrDNT2q-zXx6TlM2VO2NOsCIQd0sXEy_7QPjxWLAXK/s1600/IMG_9974-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijFsotpvJQO-f_9Xr5CACLMY3zQ7scvgW01tvzglpxfFW4F9xMyJ-n1CG5M99Q-FQKOBayp2Zxz3Dogi8wS5RX0r4PxopH1xflcKGrDNT2q-zXx6TlM2VO2NOsCIQd0sXEy_7QPjxWLAXK/s400/IMG_9974-1.jpg" width="216" /></span></a><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was an old man who lived at the orphanage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No one seemed to know where he came from, or why he was here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After a couple weeks I asked about him, and Vinod, the director, told me “He just came one day, and he stayed.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“What’s his name?” I asked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Vinod looked surprised.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Everyone just calls him old man,” he answered, and that was that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Old Man couldn’t speak much, and when he did it was in the coarse, too loud voice of the nearly senile.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He seemed to have assigned himself the job of sweeping the dusty grounds every day, and afterwards he would sit on a log outside the main building and occasionally yell and the children or me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It took several weeks before I realized that one or two of the words he was yelling were English (at least in origin), but there was no question of trying to communicate… not only because of language problems, but more because I was already overwhelmed by the barrage of communication failures on every level and I’d started rejecting any extra effort that seemed futile from the start.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, for two months, I ignored him, like everyone else, and I focused all my energy on keeping myself sane amidst the flood of frustrations, noise, alienation, loneliness, and anger. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On my last night I was sitting outside my hut with a few other volunteers, talking about the situation in which we found ourselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was sad to leave the children who were sweet (despite the fact that they’d nearly driven me insane), and I was disturbed by the way the experience was ending.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still, not much was in my mind but getting away and getting some peace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So when Old Man shuffled across the yard towards where we sat, I nearly started smiling and nodding him away even before the inarticulate screeches began.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He stopped in front of me, looked into my eyes, and said loudly, gravelly, but shockingly clearly: “My….name….is….<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Mallappa <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Kamati</span></span>.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was take so off guard that I immediately stood up and shook his hand, as if we’d just met and not spend the last two months “together.” But he wasn’t done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“This..” he waved his hand unsteadily toward the schoolhouse I’d been building that stood shrouded in the dark,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Thank….you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I…. am….. protestant …..Christian.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My eyes must have widened to their limit at this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was inconceivable!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’d not met a single protestant in a year!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But there’s no way he could have known what this meant to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I exclaimed “You are?!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am protestant Christian!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He looked up at me again, smiled, and slowly reached out his frail arm to shake my hand again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those were the only three sentences he said, and looking back I can’t imagine how anyone could have packed more meaning into so few words, meaning that touched me deeply.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I suddenly had a thought, and motioned to him to wait there while I went into my hut.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t know what put it into my head, but it’s a testament to the many tangled emotions I was dealing with.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I suddenly thought of my cross, which used to be nearly a part of me (I wore it every day for over 10 years), which I’d stopped wearing several months before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m not entirely sure why… it was a combination of things: in Japan realizing that it meant almost nothing at all (or meant something completely different than I intended), while travelling in poor countries for the first time I realized I still had more questions than answers, and meeting people from so many different places I realized I was being held to represent idea or assumptions that were no part of the reason why I wore it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But mostly, I felt that something in me was changing, and putting away this symbol of my identity left me feeling like <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a blank-slate with no bias between me and the new world I had jumped into.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I still carried the cross with me for many months of travel, and I think I assumed I’d be ready to put it back on at some point.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I knew this was an opportunity to do something better, and maybe, in some small way, make up for all my personal failures which were all suddenly embodied by one lonely old man whom I’d deliberately dismissed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I came out of the hut with the necklace in my hand, and I carefully put it over his head and laid the cross on his chest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He held it in his hand and looked at it, then looked up at me and smiled, not widely but deeply. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He nodded several times, slowly turned around, and shuffled away into the dark.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I never saw him again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s always someone watching in India.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No small part of my daily stress was from the complete lack of privacy, from locking my door only to find a line of eyes peering intently at me through the whicker weave, to fleeing to the hills for some solitude only to attract the attention of half the village children who then sit down nearby to get in a good long stare at the foreigner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So until this moment I didn’t even realize that several of the orphanage children had been sitting nearby watching us for quite some time, and one especially had taken careful note of the exchange between Mr. Kamati and me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“You wait,” he told me, and ran off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was Depu, one of my unabashedly favorites at the orphanage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You could immediately tell from his eyes that he was bright and sharp, and you could tell from a few days with him that somewhere in his dog-eat-dog environment he’d picked up an instinct of decency and empathy for others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He wasn’t perfect, far from it, but he was the only one I felt I could “count on.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNywYUIqwVnpPfNX3hXMpxOsprHhokQ21W39Sjk054r21jrLFCc_obBilvvTUBnU7knxg5sQ9HtLz_0ErtNv_p2WlB5ePiuYNFyf4gnC2pmsvNc1weD_PIJs_MWMe7hOuHBYox3TH0r8B_/s1600/IMG_2149-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="322" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNywYUIqwVnpPfNX3hXMpxOsprHhokQ21W39Sjk054r21jrLFCc_obBilvvTUBnU7knxg5sQ9HtLz_0ErtNv_p2WlB5ePiuYNFyf4gnC2pmsvNc1weD_PIJs_MWMe7hOuHBYox3TH0r8B_/s400/IMG_2149-1.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Depu came running back, and taking my hand he pressed into it a small, shiny, beautiful angel strung on a piece of string.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He closed my hand around it and said very matter-of-factly, “You Christian, me Hindu.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Depu, where did you get this?!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Girl in Goa,” he smiled back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That made sense; a few weeks earlier we’d all made a trip to the nearby state of Goa, the only Christian state in India, and we’d stayed with a friend of Vinod who had two daughters, one of them Depu’s age.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m sure she liked him, and maybe he liked her. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This angel had been a parting gift from her that he’d keep in the weeks since, probably the only possession he could call his own besides his clothes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I didn’t think of all that at the time, I only felt the weight and power of the gift, that it was from the heart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And even if I’d realized at the time what this angel might have meant to him I still would have accepted it; after all, Depu’s gift was prompted by seeing that a possession can be made more valuable by giving it away than by keeping it close.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We all have the power to imbue objects with great significance, and in no way more than giving it away in an act of love and selflessness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Somehow Depu understood that, and I never would have denied him the poetry of that moment.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I left the next morning, walking over the fields as the last sunrise lit up the orphanage behind me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If nothing else came of those two months, one thing definitely changed:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I went from carrying a cross in my backpack, to wearing an angel around my neck.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This angel immediately symbolized more things than I can list here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But more than anything else it symbolizes my snatched-from-the-flames hope, the hope that even faced with all the divisions of culture, language, religion, stress, anger, and the limitations of our humanity that none of us escape, that even through all that people can still reach out and touch another human being… almost like an angel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div></span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><img height="79" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA0HDurBfFTUhk6kCrlAXY7wRPoUDZX9LQzbcP_JI1v6tQq1g7AAf1qs9u6-pJspNJxbIM-W0MfzYIkfM-9GdiEWp_c_xRfGML7wx63-apOvTTl5HVBtrECR2FjUqu6974D-a8FLtLytC-/s640/IMG_1258-1.jpg" style="filter: alpha(opacity=30); left: 317px; mozopacity: 0.3; opacity: 0.3; position: absolute; top: 117px; visibility: hidden;" width="96" /> </span><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><img height="79" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA0HDurBfFTUhk6kCrlAXY7wRPoUDZX9LQzbcP_JI1v6tQq1g7AAf1qs9u6-pJspNJxbIM-W0MfzYIkfM-9GdiEWp_c_xRfGML7wx63-apOvTTl5HVBtrECR2FjUqu6974D-a8FLtLytC-/s200/IMG_1258-1.jpg" style="filter: alpha(opacity=30); left: 478px; mozopacity: 0.3; opacity: 0.3; position: absolute; top: 150px; visibility: hidden;" width="96" /> </span><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><img height="77" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNywYUIqwVnpPfNX3hXMpxOsprHhokQ21W39Sjk054r21jrLFCc_obBilvvTUBnU7knxg5sQ9HtLz_0ErtNv_p2WlB5ePiuYNFyf4gnC2pmsvNc1weD_PIJs_MWMe7hOuHBYox3TH0r8B_/s400/IMG_2149-1.jpg" style="filter: alpha(opacity=30); left: 562px; mozopacity: 0.3; opacity: 0.3; position: absolute; top: 2275px; visibility: hidden;" width="96" /></span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>calebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15385366765861509339noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6290669098455554730.post-90931981642473087922011-11-12T11:35:00.000-08:002011-11-14T11:54:45.534-08:00Making Dream(er)s Work<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.” -Winston Churchill</span> </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: black;"> I’ve been thinking about work lately. No, not a in the sense of a job, and not in the sense of “function,” but about general old-fashioned, nose-to-the-grindstone, roll-up-your-sleeves work. I know this isn’t a crowd-pleasing subject, but it’s a recurring theme for me, usually popping up again whenever I have to do something I don’t want to do. See, the problem is I’m a dreamer. And what is a dreamer but someone who wants to be somewhere else, or be doing something else, or thinking something else… what were we talking about? Ah right, work. Well, suddenly my life is full of it. That sounds whiny and childish, and just let me say that it IS, because the point is I’ve gotten lazy in the last few years. My travels have not been all fun and games, and much of it has been difficult and uncomfortable, but it’s been rare that I’ve absolutely had to do something I absolutely don’t feel like doing. And it shows. Sure I still can (and do) spend 14 hours on weekend days in the deserted library, but would you like to know how much of that time is spent staring out the window, or dozing on the table, or clicking “refresh” on facebook?.... No, I don’t want to know either.<br />
The above quote from Churchill has been firmly stuck in my head ever since I read it six months ago, knowing that I was coming up on a period in life when my determination and aspirations would be truly put to the test. “Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.” It’s a different perspective than what you usually hear in our instant-success, skilless-stardom, inalienable-right-to-the-spotlight generation. I guess I’d actually accepted the message that “dreams” or “full potential” are things that would HAPPEN to me, sooner or later, or if I’m lucky enough, or if that’s my destiny, and I’d always been led to believe that it is my destiny, by sports commercials, or by the manifest-destiny version of my religion, or the unconditional assertion of my parents that I could do whatever I want to do… I don’t think they realized that already Spiderman, Michel Jordan, and Bono had decided that what I wanted to do was take over the world one fan at a time…… now what was I talking about? <br />
It’s hard to find anyone talking about hard work anymore… at least, anyone we can take seriously. Most of them are too old, or too old-fashioned, or look too much like an English bulldog (I wonder which category this blog post will get me thrown into?….). In fact this IS a faint-hearted new world, where hard work is NOT necessary for the most glorious success on offer. There are other ways, and why not hope for that? The plan to do our best has changed to the hope of being given-a-shot, to a chance of being “discovered,” to waiting for our god-given 15 minutes to arrive. And I’m ranting because this is about me, because I bought it, I believed Walt Disney when he said "If you can dream it, you can do it." I believed R Kelly when he sang “If I just believe it, there's nothing to it! I believe I can fly!” I believed Obama when he chanted “Yes We CAN” full-stop. The strange thing is that all of these people (some more than others) WORKED, and worked HARD, to get where they got. But no one wants to hear about that, it’s such a downer. <br />
It’s the word “continuous” that makes this quote so Churchillian, so ballsy. That’s what really hooked me. I keep waiting for it to end, you know, to finally reach my potential and be DONE with all this stress and effort and WORK. Listening to Rusty Berkus who said: “There comes that mysterious meeting in life when someone acknowledges who we are and what we can be, igniting the circuits of our highest potential,” I’ve been waiting for someone to acknowledge me and spark my potential; it’s like magic that adults can believe in, too. I’ve been counting on my intelligence to get me to the top, while I watch some sit-coms and wait to “arrive.” After all, why should I exhaust myself when so many people get their dreams dropped in their laps? Why should I read 100s of dull pages a week, study foreign languages, develop my writing, or exercise my body, when one lottery ticket, one TV camera, one viral youtube video could make all that irrelevant?<br />
I guess the important difference is the 21st century’s division between “success” and the “potential” Churchill was talking about. Potential is about what we CAN achieve, not what luck we stumble upon. I honestly think that if I can fulfill my potential on a day-to-day basis, then I won’t care if anyone else knows about it. I think so, at least. It’s up for internal debate… But in any case that unlocking of potential will now require luck (which can give me what I want but not in the way I want it), not intelligence or strength (which gives me potential but no substance), and not dreams (which gives me ideas but no reality)…. It will require effort. Continuous effort, because as soon as I stop, as soon as I’m distracted for a moment, my potential sprints ahead of me and leaves me clicking on facebook and watching leaves fall off the trees. Endless work. <br />
So that’s the way of it, that's how dreams come true. I would like to believe that Disney, Kelly, and Obama aren’t sugar-coating reality, but truth is rarely so comfortable or easy to live with. Churchill speaks with the cold, hard, sharp ring of truth: there is no rest for those who want to live fully, no easy way for those who aren’t satisfied with dreams alone, there is no finish line but the final one. So if that’s possible, if I’m even capable of that anymore, only one question remains: is it worth it? I’ve put a lot of thought into that…. and I have no idea. I think the only way to be sure is to ask Churchill himself.</span>calebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15385366765861509339noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6290669098455554730.post-31088237291332994202011-11-05T19:34:00.000-07:002011-11-05T19:34:30.495-07:00Is I Where?<span style="font-size: large;">In A Nutshell:</span><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7DOaQMcRkglTbfI4DLIWmMLfnV3s0KiqYEiHJdb35ESmk3zJjdiCmF8ul3Qqye3D4IGvBBApfC-H4Fdg14EQ_daZC3Fph9tKwnmSqi7zkPt82JumFvzpP_f4jUsP1YfQtcSisSWOzO33V/s1600/SANY1097-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">The purpose of this post is simple, to knock this blog out of its seven-month coma, to explain my past absence, to establish the present, and chart the future. Explanation of absence: Tanzania, Kenya, Turkey, France, Germany, France, South Korea, France, Germany. As for the present: I’m one month into an MA program in Modern Global History at Jacob’s University in Bremen, Germany. As for the future, I plan to post something (SOMETHING, I say) here once a week. That’s the nuts and bolts! If you’re honestly interested in all the confused personal details (especially about the last seven months) then read on! </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><u>I'm Back!</u></span></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> A few months ago a student in Korea asked me “Please to tell, is I where?” I immediately recognized that this is exactly the question I’ve been trying to ask myself for months, but hadn’t been able to find the words. I’m still trying to find the answer.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Since my last post: </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">2 Foot Injuries.</div>5 homes established and abandoned in 4 countries.<br />
5 times reunited and separated from Celine. <br />
7 different planes. <br />
29 different beds. <br />
250+ official/bureaucratic emails.<br />
28,000 miles (more than the circumference of the equator).<br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> In what seems like the blink of an eye I’ve gone from sitting crippled and alone in vast African wildernesses, to settling into luxury a Korean bullet-train, picnicking under the Eiffel Tower, eating squirming tentacles under faux-bamboo, days and days of jet-lag, languages like a soup in my head, intimate candle-lit dinner with the woman I love. I’d be a fool to try to summarize it… so here it goes.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><u><span style="font-size: large;">1. Out Of Africa:</span></u><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2RqUXgr0xC4-6pzTbqyOh-vLSCqMjZgxVqoJQBiGAilE6IFChyphenhyphen6nulfSpvfl0SrNAhb3LlobHny120rbK9e4s9Q2-hr_Ifk74JDR1iQXiRp0SXkE-9kwr4ypvnhG6ZkYAd2H44EdfOkrP/s1600/IMG_5868.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="263" ida="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2RqUXgr0xC4-6pzTbqyOh-vLSCqMjZgxVqoJQBiGAilE6IFChyphenhyphen6nulfSpvfl0SrNAhb3LlobHny120rbK9e4s9Q2-hr_Ifk74JDR1iQXiRp0SXkE-9kwr4ypvnhG6ZkYAd2H44EdfOkrP/s400/IMG_5868.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> The last thing I had to do in Africa was my Pilgrimage to Ol-Doinyo Lengai, The Mountain of God. Everything was perfect, terrifying, and thrilling, except for my choice of shoes. Two days into the trek, miles from even the smallest drivable-track, I had baseball-sized blisters and was barely able to stand. I had to be rescued by a friend from the city, and I was eventually driven out crippled, dehydrated, helplessly enchanted with the wildness I’d walked into with my own two feet, and completely humiliated that my feet got me just far enough to leave me stranded. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN6pZLyrydcHwYhE2NggHl-EJTUTKDILT5GnrM3bXI_ESOnPCuwB-3OszKHNuTu_2J8-QidMms3ECz2gUo3G2FtGtVw2aVRya6KynsHmzRS2SueQuRvL8HbkFKV-ejKt-bkBe5J1LCcG5s/s1600/SANY0077-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="152" ida="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN6pZLyrydcHwYhE2NggHl-EJTUTKDILT5GnrM3bXI_ESOnPCuwB-3OszKHNuTu_2J8-QidMms3ECz2gUo3G2FtGtVw2aVRya6KynsHmzRS2SueQuRvL8HbkFKV-ejKt-bkBe5J1LCcG5s/s200/SANY0077-1.jpg" width="200" /></a> By the time I could walk again it was time to fly out and close my time in Africa… and in some ways to close the time of world-travel I’d planned out five years previously. About Africa, a couple months later I wrote my academic mentor Jaime O’Neill this:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiozi09kbcvJ0gwqB1rANtgr5YhyphenhyphenTsdBKpp1QbpsEqDlknJpf6v8n19T0i4qKTlSmdbjW-ZQWQZYWuOTKuS_5AufsyYuzxo8ULef1qOqQC_FkQTR7NvgB-ww-bGIBkopLL4mWJctdle2NBJ/s1600/IMG_5874.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" ida="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiozi09kbcvJ0gwqB1rANtgr5YhyphenhyphenTsdBKpp1QbpsEqDlknJpf6v8n19T0i4qKTlSmdbjW-ZQWQZYWuOTKuS_5AufsyYuzxo8ULef1qOqQC_FkQTR7NvgB-ww-bGIBkopLL4mWJctdle2NBJ/s320/IMG_5874.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">“The most I can say about Africa is that it's a REAL place, with all the power and thrill and horror that entails. For the first time in all my travels I stepped onto completely unrestricted places, places where I could do anything that I had the strength to do, and anything could be done to me if I didn't have the strength to stop it. If nothing else, there's a forceful blow of truth in places like that, and you realize how much is artificial... and how grateful one can be for some artifice! Even in the worst moments I loved my time there. I think the only thing I really require out of life is to FEEL alive, and Africa is the kind of place where you cannot escape the bracing grip of life, until you're dead. And I mean that in the completely non-morbid pragmatic way of the Africans themselves.”</span></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> I miss it, in many ways, and The Mountain of God still lies in the distant dark behind my eyes. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><u><span style="font-size: large;">2. Reunion</span> </u></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja9i9uyyqjIVRwWD12scXLwPQ1lYloYhVpWIpjn2IPjptwwX7DzX8a9FO9cYE_Fu24C5I87LwQhNqqxlJcVJHaAmn4WZiShayglADUOr1UrLtBYeQIACSfHEMEqCY1pQ4BCf6owFBskbXW/s1600/IMG_6877.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="211" ida="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja9i9uyyqjIVRwWD12scXLwPQ1lYloYhVpWIpjn2IPjptwwX7DzX8a9FO9cYE_Fu24C5I87LwQhNqqxlJcVJHaAmn4WZiShayglADUOr1UrLtBYeQIACSfHEMEqCY1pQ4BCf6owFBskbXW/s320/IMG_6877.jpg" width="320" /></a> From Nairobi I flew to Istanbul to meet Celine, after seven months apart. It was a powerful moment, but the strangest this was how normal it felt. Even in that exotic city straddling Asia and Europe and separate from both, as soon as she was by my side, I felt at home, at peace. Celine completes me in a way I didn’t know was possible, and every time we part I feel like she’s taken a bigger and bigger piece of me away with her. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFplk83mHSeruWsiBxepWc4yrSTAtQmY72LnIeMjWjAuO8eZJhjEukerjGCD-JvZ8AIaeAKG__FlTFTwgYn1TesVysKQYcUJD4IimM6ZdTK4MwAwEz2vWj8cDXc9nRq194koWtg8rvvT4_/s1600/IMG_7105-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="175" ida="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFplk83mHSeruWsiBxepWc4yrSTAtQmY72LnIeMjWjAuO8eZJhjEukerjGCD-JvZ8AIaeAKG__FlTFTwgYn1TesVysKQYcUJD4IimM6ZdTK4MwAwEz2vWj8cDXc9nRq194koWtg8rvvT4_/s200/IMG_7105-1.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNGeAVO4oVxkPPF-SqgX7WKbzTeGeyDpJ0Up3gCtf6_2g4iG3mR-OdSV07WkoR4v9KtaF2i-jje3VUiK_3Otofe7WNMh93i-iS5dpnshBfRkrI952PQLmkql9DGWPgNXbZ-yqo7XNKYZ9U/s1600/IMG_0974.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" ida="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNGeAVO4oVxkPPF-SqgX7WKbzTeGeyDpJ0Up3gCtf6_2g4iG3mR-OdSV07WkoR4v9KtaF2i-jje3VUiK_3Otofe7WNMh93i-iS5dpnshBfRkrI952PQLmkql9DGWPgNXbZ-yqo7XNKYZ9U/s320/IMG_0974.jpg" width="212" /></a> </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> After Istanbul we flew to France, where we got to stay together for two months (the longest time we’ve been in the same country during our 15 month relationship), and I met her family, food, and culture. During this time I spent 5-8 hours a day hunting for and applying to summer jobs in Korea, America, UK, Germany, Thailand, and Japan, sorting through nearly 300 English-taught MA programs in Germany, and gathering in the scraps of paper that prove my life from all corners of the world. I rarely went a day without communicating with three continents, but I rarely went outside. Other than that, it was all about getting to know Celine. During this time I wrote my Grandma: <span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiktL4xvLcB_kBLKIRvt4ksoDrwIinq8Qbtg73dkMUzj3f2iOSsokFWn2KU6irdFIMcju16hSz_ZD3QkPVE-7-oM9zqHrrv0wlpLqFr3avEjvacWXwiZqP9zQuWR3yR78refa4Of4JdKIXL/s1600/IMG_8357-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" ida="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiktL4xvLcB_kBLKIRvt4ksoDrwIinq8Qbtg73dkMUzj3f2iOSsokFWn2KU6irdFIMcju16hSz_ZD3QkPVE-7-oM9zqHrrv0wlpLqFr3avEjvacWXwiZqP9zQuWR3yR78refa4Of4JdKIXL/s320/IMG_8357-1.jpg" width="164" /></a> “Every day I'm stunned anew by some new evidence of how well we fit. Of course I knew about all the big things before we got together, and all the essential things checked out perfectly... I never counted on her pacing when she talks on the phone, or blowing her nose very loudly, or disliking deep water, or being fascinated by swords, or being messy... LIKE ME! :-) She's so easy to be with, so laid-back and rational about what is and isn't a big deal, so ready to talk about anything.” </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> In April my parent arrived in France for a visit, and we spent a whirl-wind three weeks in Paris and all over “Celine’s France,” covering the main sites in her current state Alsace and her home-state Lorraine. Then it was time for my whirl-wind tour of German Universities, hitchhiking and couchsurfing through 9 cities in two weeks. I met amazing strangers and wonderful old friends, and I got excited about studying in Germany. </div>I returned to Celine just in time to catch a flight to South Korea, where I’d landed a job that fit my needs perfectly…<br />
<br />
<u><span style="font-size: large;">3. Asia Redux: South Korea</span></u><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjZ14u1o2ONva__BpfYt4IuwCTupzK3K2LYln8F7BHMQiv5GMKOWw0ViE5O_1M8ZDkLd-YcoBj0a2FmOhEsbN_6jjOhFCz4ljvsTEKuiOfG8QWfX6wGDXZdmCdtmI6UFMI2y8abBw04GiM/s1600/Image00014.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" ida="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjZ14u1o2ONva__BpfYt4IuwCTupzK3K2LYln8F7BHMQiv5GMKOWw0ViE5O_1M8ZDkLd-YcoBj0a2FmOhEsbN_6jjOhFCz4ljvsTEKuiOfG8QWfX6wGDXZdmCdtmI6UFMI2y8abBw04GiM/s200/Image00014.jpg" width="200" /></a><br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNJkixeCZ-jXhekgr1Iq_nYgl2zRu2upQak0kiVX7vNZu5AJUbFXSybvSR_NgjAlCao3zmfGHmWZazkHoCKbdr4TIjl7apIFrsR2AUrG1A2hE9lm3_5tEL4m8dJ9OTiscHYJKUW-Qb6AhY/s1600/2011-08-05_00069.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" ida="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNJkixeCZ-jXhekgr1Iq_nYgl2zRu2upQak0kiVX7vNZu5AJUbFXSybvSR_NgjAlCao3zmfGHmWZazkHoCKbdr4TIjl7apIFrsR2AUrG1A2hE9lm3_5tEL4m8dJ9OTiscHYJKUW-Qb6AhY/s320/2011-08-05_00069.jpg" width="320" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7DOaQMcRkglTbfI4DLIWmMLfnV3s0KiqYEiHJdb35ESmk3zJjdiCmF8ul3Qqye3D4IGvBBApfC-H4Fdg14EQ_daZC3Fph9tKwnmSqi7zkPt82JumFvzpP_f4jUsP1YfQtcSisSWOzO33V/s1600/SANY1097-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" ida="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7DOaQMcRkglTbfI4DLIWmMLfnV3s0KiqYEiHJdb35ESmk3zJjdiCmF8ul3Qqye3D4IGvBBApfC-H4Fdg14EQ_daZC3Fph9tKwnmSqi7zkPt82JumFvzpP_f4jUsP1YfQtcSisSWOzO33V/s200/SANY1097-1.jpg" width="200" /></a> I’m going to burn for this (Koreans nurture an intense dislike of the Japanese), but the conclusion that stuck in my head is “South Korea is exactly like Japan… only less so.” It’s smaller, less intense, less foreign, less mono-lingual (easier to find an English speaker in Korea any day), less socially-exclusive, less expensive. I greatly enjoyed my time there, for one simple reason: the Korean people. My students all warmly welcomed me as a friend almost from day-one, and I’ve never spent such a short time in a place and been so sad to leave. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> Besides the visit of two close Czech friends and Celine during my final month (I think I used every word I know (doesn’t take long) in Czech, French, Japanese, and Korean in a week!), I traveled very little, explored very little, studied very little. This was the closed I’ve ever come to a “working holiday,” and I needed the down-time. The inactivity (along with surviving on spaghetti and sandwiches) allowed me to save nearly $3000 in a summer, which was essential for the next stage of the plan. </div><br />
<u><span style="font-size: large;">4. À Nouveau en France</span></u><br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_fSHOf7w0MqlktGvDjzg7_mh9DV7MrohnrAPcEXsed9vAk-r4Xgvc3QxmTW-IJJIfntSSvvy4E0AJK-QuqVKYqsNXUSb7WDAtdLZizphwMunizkkXNX8DwID5xIP3vZk6MWN7UYVwHKUv/s1600/SANY8432-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" ida="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_fSHOf7w0MqlktGvDjzg7_mh9DV7MrohnrAPcEXsed9vAk-r4Xgvc3QxmTW-IJJIfntSSvvy4E0AJK-QuqVKYqsNXUSb7WDAtdLZizphwMunizkkXNX8DwID5xIP3vZk6MWN7UYVwHKUv/s320/SANY8432-1.jpg" width="320" /></a> I flew back to spend another session of jet-lag and double reverse-culture shock (white people everywhere!!! Speaking French!!!!!) with Celine in her new home near Mulhouse. During this time I again spent hours daily on the computer, this time looking for a flat in Bremen. Between her work and mine we discovered a mutual dormant love of retro computer games, a shared talent for breaking glass objects, and shocking signs that she might succeed in teaching me to cook! All too soon it was again time to put a national boundary between us.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
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</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><u><span style="font-size: large;">5. Hallo Deutschland!</span></u></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmY6lxTAjy2FkdIMdxHrL7naoj2__zZSgr2MpBukcMiT6bfdJK6EdQ8zBdpWHqH9XYgi2xDWID5t6hX7NCSR0V4mljnRHa-4m9EC7FqV4kNPWjpod2GkLHjvS5CYla7L8eoMtwJr1JOkgb/s1600/SANY1202-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="216" ida="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmY6lxTAjy2FkdIMdxHrL7naoj2__zZSgr2MpBukcMiT6bfdJK6EdQ8zBdpWHqH9XYgi2xDWID5t6hX7NCSR0V4mljnRHa-4m9EC7FqV4kNPWjpod2GkLHjvS5CYla7L8eoMtwJr1JOkgb/s320/SANY1202-1.jpg" width="320" /></a> I didn’t mention that while in Korea the acceptance letters came in, and with much hemming and hawing I chose Modern Global History at Jacobs University for a variety reasons. I’ve now been in Bremen for exactly a month, and already immersed in another life. I’m comfortable and engaged here, not to mention over-my-head busy, and I rarely have time to reflect back or look very far ahead. When I do look back, it’s strangely unsettling to try decide where I’m actually coming from, and when I look forward it makes me as panicky as excited. The Challenge is not over, not by a long shot.</div> For a long time I’ve been aware that life is about priorities, and somehow that’s always gotten me through. But I’ve known for many months now that I would have to face too many Number One Priorities during this chapter of life: <br />
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-Priority Number One: <strong>School</strong>. It is a master’s program, and it is serious. The program could be more intense, but I’ve been out of school for years and the readings and presentations already keep me in the library more than out of it. If I don’t make this my Number One Priority I’ll fall behind immediately.<br />
-Priority Number One: <strong>Learn French</strong>. Celine speaks perfect English, but I’m never going to feel fully comfortable about our life together until I can actually speak with her parents and not feel like a baby when I’m in her country. I’m taking a French class and trying <br />
(often failing) to spend an hour a day on it. If I don’t make this my Top Priority I’ll fail in the most important element of my future. <br />
-Priority Number One: <strong>Part-Time Job</strong>. If I don’t find a job soon then all these other plans might not matter. Savings from Korea got me here and give me a buffer for a few months, but I always knew this was something of a leap of faith. I counted on getting a job on campus but didn’t realize that my program starts a month later than all other students at Jacobs… Not speaking a word of German makes other opportunities frighteningly limited. I’m applying to language schools and international bars. No luck so far and this is Priority Numero Uno.<br />
-Should-Be Priority Number One: <strong>Study German</strong>. I can survive without speaking German here, but I hate the thought of spending two years here and not learning a good bit of the language. I can’t make myself give up entirely (nor find time to really start). <br />
-Should-Be Priority Number One: <strong>Writing</strong>. The only career goal I really get excited about is writing. And however much it’s obvious to you that 6 months without practice leaves its mark, you can be sure it’s more obvious to me. I’m determined to post something here every week. <br />
-Should-Be Priority Number One: <strong>Website</strong>. More and more people (many of them friends of friends) have asked me for advice about living abroad. I realized that the main ways most young Americas do it is by studying abroad, teaching English, being a missionary, volunteering, or long-term travel. I’ve done all of those in several countries. In fact, living abroad is the only thing I feel legitimately knowledgeable about. I’ve gotten the idea to create a website called “How To Go Abroad.” It would take a great deal of work, but it could be awesome. When? I’ve no idea. <br />
-A Close-Second Priority (aka: Never Going To Happen): <strong>Exercise</strong>. I haven’t exercised for months, and I feel myself getting weaker. Must… move…. my….lazy….. <br />
-A Close-Third Priority (aka shouldn’t give it time but will anyway): <strong>Socialization</strong>. My classmates and flat-mates are awesome people and I want to spent time with them. And let’s face it, I need a social life. <br />
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<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> There’s not enough time in the day to do half of this, even if I was absolutely efficient, which I’m not. The problem is deciding what to give up when all of it is either essential, or extremely important. Something tells me the next two years in Bremen will fly by. </div><br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><u><span style="font-size: x-large;">6. La Vie Internationale,</span> <span style="font-size: large;">Mezinárodního života,</span> Des Internationalen Lebens, <span style="font-size: x-small;">국제 생활, Uluslararası Yaşam, </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">国際的な生活, Maisha Ya Kimataifa....</span></u></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> It’s never far from my mind that I’m living a life that is far beyond my own wildest dreams, with all the awe and struggle that comes with it. On one hand, everything has gone off without a hitch. Months of research and work produced a workable compromise between reality and the ideal, and then hammered out the details. I did spend the summer working in South Korea, I was accepted to MA programs in German. It has all worked out exactly as I wanted. So why does that make me nervous?... </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja9i9uyyqjIVRwWD12scXLwPQ1lYloYhVpWIpjn2IPjptwwX7DzX8a9FO9cYE_Fu24C5I87LwQhNqqxlJcVJHaAmn4WZiShayglADUOr1UrLtBYeQIACSfHEMEqCY1pQ4BCf6owFBskbXW/s1600/IMG_6877.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp7rf8SyOd0ggZ581drldQz9EboMjaGgnZKGocmDjLCTrK-7-npfqZkTPNCJL-ENcs3hLvTjbnGItdfpfqwZ1Pe6AMd9qheU4uZV7jopuU_KpXuxjfCkUCxwgO79h2ocLX5IDY6lfzJqmJ/s1600/IMG_8375.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a> On the other hand, I often feel that things have spun completely out of control, and I seriously wonder how long I can keep my grip. In the last five years I’ve lived in eight countries, and I’ve gone from spending a full year there (USA, CZ, Japan), to six months in the next three (South East Asia, India, Tanzania), to three months at a time (France, South Korea). My mind has started doing funny things to me, taking strange things for granted (often wrongly), and getting stuck on things that should be normal. “Listen to that chanting loud-speaker…Is it time for Muslim evening prayer already?”… “No, Caleb, you’re in Korea, and that’s the loud-speaker on the vegetable delivery cart.” “Not again! Those kids are giggling at me just because I’m a foreigner.” “No, wait, you’re in Germany and everyone is white here. They don’t know you’re a foreigner.” “Did I just start speaking Japanese to the Korean shop-owner, Germany to the father of my French girlfriend, and Czech to my Serbian classmate?” “Yes, yes you did.” At this point I’ve stopped wondering whether I’m experiencing jet lag, culture shock, reverse culture shock, inverted culture fatigue, or maybe just fatigue… they’re all crushed up against each other and lying in a snarled heap, as are the mountains of paperwork I’ve had to do for each step. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp7rf8SyOd0ggZ581drldQz9EboMjaGgnZKGocmDjLCTrK-7-npfqZkTPNCJL-ENcs3hLvTjbnGItdfpfqwZ1Pe6AMd9qheU4uZV7jopuU_KpXuxjfCkUCxwgO79h2ocLX5IDY6lfzJqmJ/s1600/IMG_8375.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" ida="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp7rf8SyOd0ggZ581drldQz9EboMjaGgnZKGocmDjLCTrK-7-npfqZkTPNCJL-ENcs3hLvTjbnGItdfpfqwZ1Pe6AMd9qheU4uZV7jopuU_KpXuxjfCkUCxwgO79h2ocLX5IDY6lfzJqmJ/s400/IMG_8375.jpg" width="400" /></a> But this is a confusion that has been slowly bubbling up for many months, and the need for a bit more stability has led me on a topsy-turvy ride to the here and now: looking forward to two years in the same place, happy to be on the same continent as my girlfriend. It’s still a foreign country, and I’m still 100s of miles from the person I want to be with, but the Merry-Go-Round comes to a stop very very slowly, and I’ll take it with gratitude, since I was getting pretty dizzy. As I slowly make my way around the plastic Unicorns and Zebras and carefully step off this ride, will I finally stumble out of the Circus, or be sick on my shoes, or get pushed onto a real roller-coaster? Your guess is as good as mine. </div><br />
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<img height="64" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiozi09kbcvJ0gwqB1rANtgr5YhyphenhyphenTsdBKpp1QbpsEqDlknJpf6v8n19T0i4qKTlSmdbjW-ZQWQZYWuOTKuS_5AufsyYuzxo8ULef1qOqQC_FkQTR7NvgB-ww-bGIBkopLL4mWJctdle2NBJ/s320/IMG_5874.jpg" style="filter: alpha(opacity=30); left: 500px; mozopacity: 0.3; opacity: 0.3; position: absolute; top: 776px; visibility: hidden;" width="96" /><img height="73" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN6pZLyrydcHwYhE2NggHl-EJTUTKDILT5GnrM3bXI_ESOnPCuwB-3OszKHNuTu_2J8-QidMms3ECz2gUo3G2FtGtVw2aVRya6KynsHmzRS2SueQuRvL8HbkFKV-ejKt-bkBe5J1LCcG5s/s200/SANY0077-1.jpg" style="filter: alpha(opacity=30); left: 562px; mozopacity: 0.3; opacity: 0.3; position: absolute; top: 628px; visibility: hidden;" width="96" /><img height="72" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7DOaQMcRkglTbfI4DLIWmMLfnV3s0KiqYEiHJdb35ESmk3zJjdiCmF8ul3Qqye3D4IGvBBApfC-H4Fdg14EQ_daZC3Fph9tKwnmSqi7zkPt82JumFvzpP_f4jUsP1YfQtcSisSWOzO33V/s200/SANY1097-1.jpg" style="filter: alpha(opacity=30); left: 189px; mozopacity: 0.3; opacity: 0.3; position: absolute; top: 134px; visibility: hidden;" width="96" /><img height="96" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiktL4xvLcB_kBLKIRvt4ksoDrwIinq8Qbtg73dkMUzj3f2iOSsokFWn2KU6irdFIMcju16hSz_ZD3QkPVE-7-oM9zqHrrv0wlpLqFr3avEjvacWXwiZqP9zQuWR3yR78refa4Of4JdKIXL/s200/IMG_8357-1.jpg" style="filter: alpha(opacity=30); left: 626px; mozopacity: 0.3; opacity: 0.3; position: absolute; top: 1670px; visibility: hidden;" width="49" /><img height="64" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp7rf8SyOd0ggZ581drldQz9EboMjaGgnZKGocmDjLCTrK-7-npfqZkTPNCJL-ENcs3hLvTjbnGItdfpfqwZ1Pe6AMd9qheU4uZV7jopuU_KpXuxjfCkUCxwgO79h2ocLX5IDY6lfzJqmJ/s200/IMG_8375.jpg" style="filter: alpha(opacity=30); left: 572px; mozopacity: 0.3; opacity: 0.3; position: absolute; top: 3713px; visibility: hidden;" width="96" />calebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15385366765861509339noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6290669098455554730.post-23887410171262536742011-01-30T13:54:00.009-08:002011-01-30T14:13:13.715-08:00Flabbergasted<link href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5Cvisitor%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml" rel="File-List"></link> It’s been a while since I’ve been truly flabbergasted. That word sounds funnier than its real meaning, which is a shame when it fits a particularly unhumorous situation. In any case, chuckle-worthy or not, that’s exactly what I was a couple days ago as I took a few minutes to assess this moment of my life in the big picture: flabbergasted. Be careful about exploring the big picture unless you’re ready to take a good, <u>long </u>look… more often than not, it’s really big. Some might say TOO big… <br />
<div class="MsoNormal"> Can you tell it’s late at night and I’m not really sure what I’m trying to say? That’s exactly the point, though. Because while I was sitting and thinking, and sitting and thinking, all about my last three weeks in Africa, how much I had to do and how fast it would go, how fast it had already gone, and how fast it was coming at me (“it” being time, of course, not an albatross or something silly like that) I realized that I have only been focusing on my time in Africa ending and the next chapter with the girl of my dreams beginning, and not what any of that means. I flashed back to another moment, when I was sitting and thinking… thinking how to explain to my parents my wild idea about heading off into the wild blue yonder and living in East Asia, India, and Africa for the next 2-3 years. After 30 minutes of breathless and scattered explanation, they leaned back, looked at each other, and said “sounds great, go for it!” That was four and a half years ago, and it all seemed so dreamlike, so far away, even when I was right in the thick of it. But for the first time it now hits me that in three weeks that plan, every step of it and more, will be finished. The path I’ve been walking on for years has come to its conclusion, and I have absolutely no idea how I feel about that, except for one word: Flabbergasted. </div><div class="MsoNormal"> What I do know is how I expect the next month to feel… and the closest I can come to describing it forces me to use “tornado” as an adjective. The next month with be <u>extremely</u> tornadoy! The week in front of me <u>must</u> produce a first draft of my survey report. This project has taken up most of my working hours (a motley collection of sporadic lengths of time, I confess) in the last four months, and the database of results </div><div class="MsoNormal">alone has taken four people working most of the last three weeks to complete. Now it’s time to start churning out charts, graphs, and ideally lots of intelligent words to explain the charts and graphs, with very little time to do all that churning. </div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ndelilio and Sig translate tirelessly</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kirsten dives into data-entry!</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8EK8oqkeByDl4AaGAs5LvqhGwUf9ftzlY1sZ36bMqchf4LCCPA61IpjxBeu5P51RUdKuELGUoII06OBXb8pwF9g4l-CaHWqoT_8CVlAruaeuQUwBYZt2EprPZIwlahUeGbCnRTa1wgFCg/s1600/Image00005.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8EK8oqkeByDl4AaGAs5LvqhGwUf9ftzlY1sZ36bMqchf4LCCPA61IpjxBeu5P51RUdKuELGUoII06OBXb8pwF9g4l-CaHWqoT_8CVlAruaeuQUwBYZt2EprPZIwlahUeGbCnRTa1wgFCg/s200/Image00005.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jacob crunches the unrurly numbers </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ4tAdn7KexwJFXmyQGtyIkZFbYMOHTe2MqCmD_SoY2oLhuZDshCSmmu-VYVIoOYrn5_ZwNzaxmQam5dWNMIz75OuB9bVaLqjXViPGa1Ew574YNTjXtHXCqQqzbSJQgrnrX2ej4h1vavZI/s1600/Image00003.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ4tAdn7KexwJFXmyQGtyIkZFbYMOHTe2MqCmD_SoY2oLhuZDshCSmmu-VYVIoOYrn5_ZwNzaxmQam5dWNMIz75OuB9bVaLqjXViPGa1Ew574YNTjXtHXCqQqzbSJQgrnrX2ej4h1vavZI/s200/Image00003.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I run about waving large stacks of paper...</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgowUJ-QR-mCSuhmYc44v7tWntpoOYrYffPP6JDY2x5vbNqOMCkWashS1lfHQeBVHMJxXr7bCmxAyX7-fyVQXNhTNL7juic9oEStShaFAxE96s80ULqPz2-9fbJTMXPj6tIDE30Vl2E2-YX/s1600/Image00004.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgowUJ-QR-mCSuhmYc44v7tWntpoOYrYffPP6JDY2x5vbNqOMCkWashS1lfHQeBVHMJxXr7bCmxAyX7-fyVQXNhTNL7juic9oEStShaFAxE96s80ULqPz2-9fbJTMXPj6tIDE30Vl2E2-YX/s200/Image00004.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">...and twitching nervously whenever<br />
piles of data rear their...stacks.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> </td></tr>
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The following week (Feb 5-12) I intended to set out on my long-planned trek. No, not up Kilimanjaro ($1000+ is a wee bit out of my price range after 18 months of gallivanting), and not even through any national parks or any place that a tourist has heard of ($100 per day is still out of my price range). But I was determined to find something to match to my Buddhist pilgrimage in Japan and Hindu Pilgrimage in India, so when I heard about a large volcano in the wilderness north of the Serengeti which the Maasai call<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIIZdoWAMsNz8pphp9G4NTP3iR_TO4W537_WKxO6kb8hak2Nvk3DsWgi2_sLPPObi3P-o6fLYDjy9nkGbqmK611uSMIVT4WH1x0MTTsVlwf99RTcYbDeZwcagY7c_qqtQdRQdfquoEE31j/s1600/280px-Oldoinyolengai.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIIZdoWAMsNz8pphp9G4NTP3iR_TO4W537_WKxO6kb8hak2Nvk3DsWgi2_sLPPObi3P-o6fLYDjy9nkGbqmK611uSMIVT4WH1x0MTTsVlwf99RTcYbDeZwcagY7c_qqtQdRQdfquoEE31j/s1600/280px-Oldoinyolengai.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ol Doinyo Lengai - The Mountain of God</td></tr>
</tbody></table>“<a href="http://oldoinyolengai.pbworks.com/w/page/33191422/Ol-Doinyo-Lengai,-The-Mountain-of-God">The Mountain of God</a>,”I knew I had to go there. And it’s only 150 km from Arusha, why not walk there? Okay, 150km across sun-baked wilderness, where water is scarce, people are scarcer, roads are nonexistent, and animals are not scarce enough for comfort… but hey, who wouldn’t call that fun?! Yes, I’m nervous about this one, it will not be easy, and I’m not in good enough shape for it. And I hope to end 5 days of walking at a massive volcano, and still have the energy to spend a day climbing up to its steaming bubbling peak. The guys I work with at Pamoja have found a guide for me, a local guy they refer to as “Bushman,” who lives “about 15 km off a path that is about 50 km past the middle of nowhere” where he lives traditionally as a hunter-gatherer (seems it’s not unlikely that I might get to sample antelope that was killed by an arrow while on my trek). He’s agreed to guide me, though he lives on the other side of Arusha and doesn’t know the area around the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">Mountain</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">God</st1:placename></st1:place>: “But Bushman,” says Jeremy, my director, on the phone with him, “won’t you get lost?” “I CAN’T GET LOST” he thundered back. At least I’ll be in very confident hands! And I know what the first words of my chapter about the experience will be!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgACwWz-VrxtBTM9UreKD_5HuzaBKxuMvEX5lHpDLn6pn-vxiPEpeQGgEZs3FgVFcAgoG1kWBkaerFrIYidQR6MTUR-znTTb29TWeWfcZbuQ8OmvoXL08mP56Q8V1IJyCdsKwos9bePu8TW/s1600/Image00001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgACwWz-VrxtBTM9UreKD_5HuzaBKxuMvEX5lHpDLn6pn-vxiPEpeQGgEZs3FgVFcAgoG1kWBkaerFrIYidQR6MTUR-znTTb29TWeWfcZbuQ8OmvoXL08mP56Q8V1IJyCdsKwos9bePu8TW/s200/Image00001.jpg" width="178" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The next chapter...<br />
Need I say more? </td></tr>
</tbody></table> When/if I return from that trek, I’ll have 5 days left in Arusha to tie up loose ends, maybe try to fit in an actual safari (unlikely, which means I will have spent 6 months in east Africa without seeing a single lion), maybe visit a few more schools to do some meta-surveys (“80% of your friends want to meet Obama, why do you think that is?”), do some last minute shopping, then bussing up to Nairobi and flying out on the 20<sup>th</sup> to Istanbul. Celine will meet me there the next day, and then I’ll have 5 days in a new exotic city to do nothing but walk old streets, eat good food, and be with the woman I’ve been falling more in love with every day for the last 7 months. Enough said. </div><div class="MsoNormal"> After that we fly to France, and I try to understand the notion of slowing down a bit… while I work on finishing the Tanzanian survey report, getting a summer job in Korea, applying to universities in Germany, learning French, and continuing to spend real time with my girlfriend that’s not interrupted by power-outages or time-differences. Hmm, maybe “slowing down” won’t be that slower… </div><div class="MsoNormal"> If you want to know the plan from there, it surprisingly hasn’t changed since my most recent “<a href="http://courseofunderstanding.blogspot.com/2010/11/new-plan-or-catch-me-if-you-can-part.html">THE PLAN</a>” post. </div><div class="MsoNormal"> I realize this post isn’t that interesting, but I haven’t been able to pull together anything more interesting in the last month, and probably won’t have time to post much in the month of February. Never fear (and don’t go away!), I’ll be back in force in March, if not before, with tales of Maasai volcanoes, Turkish rendezvous, and French cuisine! Until then, thank you all for your messages, interest, and friendship! I’m constantly reminded that the best and most intrinsic part of this amazing life I’m leading is you, each of you reading this now. You so often leave me flabbergasted! I’ll see you on the other side of here-and-now! </div>calebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15385366765861509339noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6290669098455554730.post-56588885159580775502011-01-13T10:50:00.000-08:002011-01-13T10:50:34.810-08:00The Wild West<div style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">My best stories almost always go untold because I wait until I have the time to tell them properly.. and that never happens! One of the main stories of my recent trip to West Tanzania is quite a yarn, and my girlfriend wanted to know what I'd gone through as soon as possible, so I summarized it for her as quickly as I could... and then realized that it's not half bad, so I'm just going to post it unpolished here, and leave it at that! Enjoy! </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4icsPRCQVyP68esyAhzvlhLD3pL75-qDFkN8DPDXFPMAW7G1Fc_ODUw5pl81c-OtJ4Ieb3KqG1hhVYuipy7kd0kJFlxDDlbZW6FkQMdUAjmUyERtNMjsD8mx3cQ77vP_oVi3c5i8ipISH/s1600/Image00034.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4icsPRCQVyP68esyAhzvlhLD3pL75-qDFkN8DPDXFPMAW7G1Fc_ODUw5pl81c-OtJ4Ieb3KqG1hhVYuipy7kd0kJFlxDDlbZW6FkQMdUAjmUyERtNMjsD8mx3cQ77vP_oVi3c5i8ipISH/s200/Image00034.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hitching a ride with some<br />
truckers, SLOWLY transporting<br />
a massive amount of beer to Kigoma<br />
for New Years Day.</td></tr>
</tbody></table> So the most exhausting thing physically I already told you, sitting on buses or trucks for 12-18 hours a day, on roads you wouldn't believe! Even Greg (French traveler, MUCH more experienced than me) was aghast at these roads, I don't think I'd like to WALK on them! From Kigali in the north, to Mbeya in south Tanz, covering over 1600 km ( 1000 miles), by bus, truck, and boat, the AVERAGE speed was about 19 km/hour (12 m/h). It's not just about sitting and waiting, it's about holding on to not fall off your seat! It's so bumpy (and the vehicles have no shock-absorbers) that usually my teeth hurt at the end of the day. Often the bus was jumping too much to even eat! Imagine that for 15-18 hours a day... </div></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNXQ1CZ3_RiXTE8BnAEoDXmP4JBBrrFAbbLxS0DLuTQ0sLuUBTVVikqXa08Y60CXnqTtXZAvVAvpRlPi8qLDjZ4PIugWU7zvDM-1PnygElY1OR172zE4ePgfvyg7F7gdyy_OGDk6JBhqW2/s1600/Image00036.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNXQ1CZ3_RiXTE8BnAEoDXmP4JBBrrFAbbLxS0DLuTQ0sLuUBTVVikqXa08Y60CXnqTtXZAvVAvpRlPi8qLDjZ4PIugWU7zvDM-1PnygElY1OR172zE4ePgfvyg7F7gdyy_OGDk6JBhqW2/s320/Image00036.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Always a sense that anything<br />
could happen...</td></tr>
</tbody></table>So THAT'S pretty exhausting! Mentally the greatest stress was that in Kasanga (the village at the Tanz end of lake Tanganyika), where you can see Tanzania, Zambia, and Democratic Republic of the Congo at once, we stayed with the wrong person (or maybe the right person, it's still hard to know!). This realization came very slowly, and it was rather scary when the truth finally pounced on us! We'd heard about criminal activity in the area: there were raids from the DRC into Zambia, all kinds of violence in DRC (happening just over the mountains we could see across the lake), and on the ferry we heard from some foreigners who decided to not leave the ferry in Kasanga because their friend claims he got kidnapped and held for ransom in Kasanga. It's a tiny VILLAGE, but so far from anywhere (by boat, road, or even plane, you'd need two days to get there from anywhere on the map); this IS the Wild West, for sure! Nothing is stable or certain. Well, you never know what information to believe around here, even from westerners (all the locals assured us it was safe (also not true), so we decided to believe the middle-ground and be very careful). We were careful, and maybe it helped.... or maybe not... </div></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwbfdSw3pZwJLm4uInBbJ8a-7Yd_wL_nTKZs6FVk4qnYgWe_29iUg5whfaNJBc-Kyh2AZ6M33QiBzc5yy3VQonNZ9_VcTqW2W8SB4A0x72z_uR067Kabrn-LokB544a6pfPVPcGDSaW4Qm/s1600/Image00030.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwbfdSw3pZwJLm4uInBbJ8a-7Yd_wL_nTKZs6FVk4qnYgWe_29iUg5whfaNJBc-Kyh2AZ6M33QiBzc5yy3VQonNZ9_VcTqW2W8SB4A0x72z_uR067Kabrn-LokB544a6pfPVPcGDSaW4Qm/s320/Image00030.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">We're not in Kansas anymore!</td></tr>
</tbody></table> It's more rural than anything I've seen, and Greg and I were both looking at each other like "what have we done!". Still, it's a little like Eden; no electricity, happy children playing in the dirt and NOT begging, bare-chested women doing laundry in the lake, just a few huts, fishing boats, and the lake shore... </div></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil0beugW9Zh1NH1Jg4Dy8lQuaoC8EHD_bYL588jlfFiPNFXYVmG2yaju3InySPZOb2vYExXf3hy2OzH6qdqHozrEYDzYXXcsV3cUbMDbKiJSf8WpPCreZVyZ74uy_DTR0yF72_0P7rMaN0/s1600/Image00056.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil0beugW9Zh1NH1Jg4Dy8lQuaoC8EHD_bYL588jlfFiPNFXYVmG2yaju3InySPZOb2vYExXf3hy2OzH6qdqHozrEYDzYXXcsV3cUbMDbKiJSf8WpPCreZVyZ74uy_DTR0yF72_0P7rMaN0/s200/Image00056.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Beachside at the hotel</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Anyway, this hotel on the beach about two km away from the docks was the only decent place, though the owner had a particular "Indian" attitude I didn't like (If Indians think they have any authority they'll make it very clear that they don't need to waste their time with you, like they're the most important person on earth. This guy had a little of that attitude). He had a very nice new speed boat that we thought could get us to the falls the next day, pretty nice facilities... strangely we noticed in the guestbook that this nice "beach resort" had had about 80 guests in two years... how could it possibly survive?! </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Well, I didn't think too hard about it because I was focused on how to get to the falls in one day and then as far as possible out of town the next day. I'd spent nearly a week just to get here, and though it was more about the journey that did not mean I was going to let the destination slip away! However, within four days I needed to get back to Arusha, so we only had one shot at the falls and it was not going to be easy. They're in the middle of nowhere, on the other side of the Zambian border, either an hour by car and four hours on foot, or two hours by boat and two hours on foot, one way. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTZnQYAYo-u3ZSzrXTZJInTj1C9rct_roBOisAhh-hN8HrvX5RBul6iStGrchzBNXnJyFMkRKyoeVC-SZYBWLcWodnEz8DPSGKQnVDC3OuHezzaSMBnQNRwdr3Qnm1o2aiSXoWYXaOWTwp/s1600/Image00006.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTZnQYAYo-u3ZSzrXTZJInTj1C9rct_roBOisAhh-hN8HrvX5RBul6iStGrchzBNXnJyFMkRKyoeVC-SZYBWLcWodnEz8DPSGKQnVDC3OuHezzaSMBnQNRwdr3Qnm1o2aiSXoWYXaOWTwp/s200/Image00006.jpg" width="132" /></a>So, especially because I was pretending to be Russian (you have to sign your nationality into everything, and an American and French would be good targets, so I was Russian and Greg was Greek) I got into the role and did some very strong negotiations with the owner guy (Oscar was his name, but EVERYONE called him "Boss"). About accommodation prices (really expensive, considering it takes two days minimum to get there from ANYWHERE and the place was empty. I ended up paying $5 to pitch my own tent on the sand; at least better than the $12 he wanted!), and about renting the boat for the trip (from about $85 down to $60). The next day when he sent his speed boat off for his Indian friends (who run a trucking business... remember this), and our replacement boat was 90 minutes late, I was especially hard on him and pushed him a lot to fix the situation.. which is pretty normal; NOTHING gets done here unless you MAKE it happen, but because I was Russian I was a bit more direct than usual, and I didn't notice that his reactions to it were a little different than usual.. Russians don't care. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">So Oscar finally recruited a passing fishing boat to take us (we were NOT pleased to see that one of the crew members was assigned to perpetually bailing out the leaky boat with a cup!), and I noticed that the HUGE muscular fishermen were standing with their heads down, nodding submissively to the orders of this short, fat balding man... strange. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeEWWU5i0J95Z7V4wJVFeYTn7BYliKvzfmUDrrIFduv8E0t1hXjFGs3SxNfQ0cQZtX0TOHRpmHW0SZ8OwBERE0ZtXHqfAiexFSkvFQrRbnIrfsdPw2eaEelGB8m670G4U_ATXvyszrmaPK/s1600/Image00013.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeEWWU5i0J95Z7V4wJVFeYTn7BYliKvzfmUDrrIFduv8E0t1hXjFGs3SxNfQ0cQZtX0TOHRpmHW0SZ8OwBERE0ZtXHqfAiexFSkvFQrRbnIrfsdPw2eaEelGB8m670G4U_ATXvyszrmaPK/s320/Image00013.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Now we're sailing!</td></tr>
</tbody></table> The 90 minute boat ride in the sun and the two hour hike UP through the hills was exhausting (though beautiful), and expensive! $60 is close to the average salary for a MONTH in this region! Oscar told us we'd also have to pay 5,000 shillings ($3) each as entry to the waterfall as well.. We were both reaching the limits of affordability, especially since I had no access to cash until I got back to Arusha and was running very low (in the end I arrived in Arusha with about $30 left!). So, money was tight.. so when we finally arrived at the gate for the waterfall (in the middle of freakin' nowhere!!) and saw the sign saying "entry $15 per person" (we didn't know at the time they'd try to charge for our guide also!! $45 after the major headache and expense of getting there!!) we were not pleased. </div><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgASndl23z3jNMlpQ7k8h2EDkM4A-7QdiTWxZU4qfnTyR6yaqAwQRZ-ST5RXRi4bpNvziAnfd84DOipZYJ-ibkO6UmlA4dVOCnFFLOUngadkrmh2lB380XG9wOjKkrObGt2G3oxRG8MqMcI/s1600/Image00011.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgASndl23z3jNMlpQ7k8h2EDkM4A-7QdiTWxZU4qfnTyR6yaqAwQRZ-ST5RXRi4bpNvziAnfd84DOipZYJ-ibkO6UmlA4dVOCnFFLOUngadkrmh2lB380XG9wOjKkrObGt2G3oxRG8MqMcI/s320/Image00011.jpg" width="212" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kalambo Falls! Finally!</td></tr>
</tbody></table> <div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">BUT, no one was at the gate, it was new years day and a saturday, so we thought we might get lucky, and hurried past and down to the waterfall!! And there it was!! and SO amazing! We ignored the villagers washing their clothes in the river and started taking pictures, enjoying the success of our plans (for me made two months ago!). After 10 minutes when we tried to move higher up the trail one of the shirtless villages came to us, and said we must pay him the entry fee... THEN it got interesting. He demanded $45 dollars, we refused, he got angry, we got more angry, I was stupid and tried to move up the trail ignoring him, he got more angry and violent, I got more stupid and tried to intimidate him (works in India and sometimes in Tanz, but we were in Zambia now and the different character was clear). This guy did NOT like being challenged! I've never seen a Tanzanian get truly aggressive, but a few miles over the border was enough to make a big difference. He was pretty wild.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div> <div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">So, we kept trying to leave, he refused to let us leave, even grabbing our bags to stop us. He was screaming and flailing his fists so wildly for a while I was ready for him to attack us ( i would have been worried without our HUGE fisherman guide standing calmly and stable at our sides, with arms crossed and muscles bulging. With him there I wasn’t much worried about a fight, so we just held to our position. But he physically stopped us from walking away, and even though after a while it was clear he wouldn’t try to punch us (this probably would get him into trouble), the only way we could get away would be to fight him, which we were also of course not going to do. Stalemate! Then when he sent a boy to the village to call several men from there it got more interesting, everyone shouting and shaking fists and looking like murder. I actually got some of it on film, and it’s amazing and very frightening (more than being there!). </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">This went on for about an hour, with no end in sight. We tried EVRYTHING, and used every argument, constantly trying to just start some kind of negotiations (offering 5,000 shillings like we’d been told, making the case that he didn‘t tell us the price immediately, and when he did we tried to leave, that it was entrapment, etc.). Nothing, they all still talked like they were going to kill us, eat us, and then turn us over to the police to be beaten, killed, and eaten again. It got very tiring after a while. It was like arguing with a brick wall that is screaming at you and shaking its fist under your nose...</div>Greg did heroic work trying to resolve the issue and calm him down, and was just beginning to get a little success until suddenly the guard seem to think of something...<br />
“Look, sometimes people are coming with note from that man..”<br />
Greg: “what?” <br />
“From the Big Boss, they come from him. You know? You have note?” <br />
Greg: “Big Boss?”<br />
“Yes yes, where you are staying?” <br />
Greg: “In Kasanga, a guesthouse” <br />
“Yes, that place! you stay with Big Boss?” <br />
Greg: “What, Oscar?<br />
“Yes Oscar! He’s my friend!” <br />
Me: “He’s not a good friend! He told us 5,000 shillings for the waterfall, he’s made this problem for you!”<br />
And suddenly, he transformed. It was like an angry demon mask was ripped off and an innocent baby face was put on. Seriously, Celine, I’ve never seen such a transformation ever. It still gives me chills thinking about it. <br />
“Oh, no problem my friend! If you say this from beginning, I give you right price!!”<br />
Did it seem like he was shaking a little bit?<br />
“What?!” <br />
“Come come, I show you all view point, please welcome!”<br />
“NOW we can see it for 5,000?!”<br />
“Yes of course! Please come! You know, you must tell me you are coming from Big Boss at first time, and no problems!” And he took Greg’s hand, put it around his own shoulder like his best friend in the world, and pulled him back to the gate. <br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNvmVilNZlMoLaPU8n_kh2cQtgMEOCEH4S1pNK0fbYWTAMq64UUO9lrZffXzfOVoQpaKZcakBF9B8BgdksqfltGgmomzlYeiKAb02p6RIbI_UaPPTwNry3bNwMw5m28EmX77bsqr5vhice/s1600/Image00012.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNvmVilNZlMoLaPU8n_kh2cQtgMEOCEH4S1pNK0fbYWTAMq64UUO9lrZffXzfOVoQpaKZcakBF9B8BgdksqfltGgmomzlYeiKAb02p6RIbI_UaPPTwNry3bNwMw5m28EmX77bsqr5vhice/s320/Image00012.jpg" width="212" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Back to the Falls!<br />
This time under the <br />
protection of the <br />
Big Boss!</td></tr>
</tbody></table> And in a second he became the best tour guide ever. He brought us back to the waterfall, he gave us fruit that was probably his lunch, he took us to extra views of the waterfall off the trail, he told us all about the history, he virtually laid down over puddles and had us walk over his body!! And Greg and I were officially in shock. All because we’d said one name....</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">And then it all made sense. In the tri-border region, with no control on the lake between borders, a sharp businessman has a shiny speedboat and control over a swarm of fishing boats... running a nice hotel with no guests... with enough power and influence to make a government employee 100 km away in ANOTHER COUNTRY tremble and talk quietly about “The Big Boss”... yes, we were staying with the mafia smuggler of the entire region. If there was any serious crime going on in the region (and that’s not a question, it IS the Wild West) we’d knocked on its front door and demanded to come in, at half price.. It was a scary moment, and I’ll never forget when the guard parted with us: “so, paying 5 is correct please” Me: “okay, you mean 5 dollars, 5,000 shillings, Zambian money?” “Oh, all okay sir!” (the difference is at least double). So we paid 5,000 each, and signed his book.. Then he looked each of us straight in the eye, one at a time, and almost whimpering said “and please, no need to speak about our discussion, yes? Please say nothing, okay? Yes? Please.” I don’t know what he was afraid of losing, but this big, strong, confident (and 20 minutes ago FURIOUS) man was terrified. Terrified that he’d insulted guests of the Big Boss, who lives farther away then he’d probably ever traveled, in a different country. THAT’S the man we were staying with.</div><br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj0j_sd2jiU64t3QymG0-PF_YuFEf-huMQzEk2uv-frLv4gFZT4oAcCpntZ0-EieMSC0BKQRk7tZ170uXwccAUSJIQCBTRy1PVUNn0ujLITg_8kd_yUyNan2FSQ4msO0hcmRA6opFEb9KD/s1600/Image00016.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: left; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj0j_sd2jiU64t3QymG0-PF_YuFEf-huMQzEk2uv-frLv4gFZT4oAcCpntZ0-EieMSC0BKQRk7tZ170uXwccAUSJIQCBTRy1PVUNn0ujLITg_8kd_yUyNan2FSQ4msO0hcmRA6opFEb9KD/s320/Image00016.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The dark peaks of the DR Congo were never far <br />
from our sight or our thoughts.. I'd rather walk into<br />
North Korea than over those mountains.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>That evening, we had a nice chat with Oscar, while his 2 year old daughter slept on his lap and he told us about the “many very good possibilities for business here!” Turns out he’d spend two years in DRC searching for “ornamental fish” to export. Right, THAT’S what you do in DRC! Nice export cover, though! He said that ministers from Dar es Salam come to visit him in Kasanga, one was his partner in the hotel (the empty hotel... politics and crime are rarely separated here, and major criminals can’t survive without partnering with powerful politicians)... Fortunately, he seemed to like us, and of course he had no reason to ruin the tiny trickle of tourism in the region by foreigners having bad experiences and reporting it unsafe, so he was eager to please us, even cooking our dinners when the cook had to go to the village! </div>Still, that was VERY emotionally and mentally stressful, and I realized how careless I’d been to assume I knew how things worked in these places. The whole way back from the waterfall Greg regaled me with stories from his 10 years living and working in South East Asia, about westerners who refuse to play the game of bribery, or to submit to social hierarchy, or who try to throw weight around in a context where it means nothing... none of these stories ended well... considering our fight with the guard would have happened regardless, maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing we’d stumbled under the roof of the Big Boss...<br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">So many other things on that trip, like being left at 11:30pm in the middle of a dangerous border town on the Zambian border, and having to stay at an obvious whore-house in a very insecure room... </div><br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhndOhWe7fos4x2DkXuKzReqM60u3_EsUdN1vmUhKzDl0TnshgW833J4g6tmKzg3V2mp4R_45Nq_hDnLfSLOwzt462rhPZmyHQfFm11_RTO_6heoO2682r9i0ir0RbxS0ArnXu-NY242JyW/s1600/Image00058.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhndOhWe7fos4x2DkXuKzReqM60u3_EsUdN1vmUhKzDl0TnshgW833J4g6tmKzg3V2mp4R_45Nq_hDnLfSLOwzt462rhPZmyHQfFm11_RTO_6heoO2682r9i0ir0RbxS0ArnXu-NY242JyW/s320/Image00058.jpg" width="320" /></a>...or spending two nights on a 100 year old ferry going to the same unchanged villages, and being “attacked” by motorboats FULL of screaming people in the middle of the night all trying to catch the racing ferry and climb aboard... </div><br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">...or taking a decrepit mini-bus packed with people and chickens in a FLOOD of a storm, and the insane driver racing over the turns until suddenly there’s an explosion and he starts to hydroplane straight into a 2 meter (6 ft) ditch, dodging just in time and skidding 20 meters (60ft) down the road, were we can’t start the engine and wait in the storm for other buses to take 1 or 2 of us at a time (if we‘d crashed off the road, I THINK I would have survived, but the people in front of me had about a 10% chance... In the same storm Greg‘s bus went into a ditch, but it was a big bus so everyone was okay, and some foreigners on the ferry said their bus tipped over on a turn and they had to climb out the side windows... NO ONE knows how to drive here, especially in the rain!)...<br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVAlFNxqHk89Cbgr-kKu7lXMc8kW7sMBfmS41d_kFU424cz_J5uSg4OVqUvqa6az-G7GsOWIWM2rxH2BlvGQJqlPttRMTIQj9aYhTQ6v6vZD2_vKU3iXbajB_zzedIEPr_exGdSiN6PYSE/s1600/Image00022.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVAlFNxqHk89Cbgr-kKu7lXMc8kW7sMBfmS41d_kFU424cz_J5uSg4OVqUvqa6az-G7GsOWIWM2rxH2BlvGQJqlPttRMTIQj9aYhTQ6v6vZD2_vKU3iXbajB_zzedIEPr_exGdSiN6PYSE/s320/Image00022.jpg" width="320" /></a>...or exploring into caves in Rwanda with candles, where in 1994 thousands of people hid during the genocide and were trapped there and slaughtered, and we found the bones to prove it, just laying there where they fell 16 years ago</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">.... and many other things! It was a challenging, rewarding, exhausting trip, and some of the most adventurous and actually a little dangerous situations I’d ever been in! </div></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">But those stories WILL have to wait, because I’m still catching up on sleep, and have a full day of work tomorrow!! Good night for now my Love!</div><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>calebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15385366765861509339noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6290669098455554730.post-61222821636619850862011-01-08T04:53:00.000-08:002011-01-08T04:59:05.552-08:00Rwanda<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhj9lQS0S7sZblroT79xgZpPZ-SBBU5Qi_eVHAFsVJM8pGBEUdH8ZO9hGbS8ETWRcCC5kZB9Ur-KR8oYpMqbsfxlwYF0eNT1RB8PHEasv3Xvae5wwEnFY9TfBxRUb4KwVSwYMErnggZpnf/s1600/Image00002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="133" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhj9lQS0S7sZblroT79xgZpPZ-SBBU5Qi_eVHAFsVJM8pGBEUdH8ZO9hGbS8ETWRcCC5kZB9Ur-KR8oYpMqbsfxlwYF0eNT1RB8PHEasv3Xvae5wwEnFY9TfBxRUb4KwVSwYMErnggZpnf/s200/Image00002.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Broken skulls of victims bear testimony</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">It all just... shattered. It's like an earthquake: the fissure is there, and it will stir, it will open, it must be fed. We've built our world on a fissure, dividing "us" and "them," defining our existence by the side and height and strength of where WE stand. Today we're trying to build a house for all, a happy home for humanity where we ignore the cracking and creaking in the basement. Sometimes, the chasm must open. In Rwanda, the walls, doors, windows, curtains, locks, and ceiling of civilization were swallowed in an instant... tearing down with it all rules, morality, relationships, ideas, and histories, except for the laws of hate, the instincts of the beasts, and the blood pooling on the trembling earth. </div><br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">There were eight million people in Rwanda that day... in 100 days, one million of them were dead. It took Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, or Mao years to kill their millions... but they used bullets, gas chambers, detention zones; they had... a system, a system to separate the killers and the killed. How could anything make these murderers of millions look humanitarian? </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Machetes, and hammers, and sharpened stakes. Neighbor hacking neighbor, pastors burning children, protectors raping the dying. Rivers were stopped, streets flowed red, and screams were slaughtered by laughter for 100 days. All face to face, all done by hand, while the hunted beseech the hunters by name. 16 years ago. I was 12.</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgQ5DJZlX1yvCEzv8A_TKNAOhhpSJy-ZvXLhL1CQAT-GNnufh2-1m9veCGQhoQNPPHPxDrMJpu9udQJS42EsjZY_lgWDep271o9GvS-SgckH9dcM-UuYU_glA8DeKIYzxiLnD80b9DWLnQ/s1600/Image00003.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgQ5DJZlX1yvCEzv8A_TKNAOhhpSJy-ZvXLhL1CQAT-GNnufh2-1m9veCGQhoQNPPHPxDrMJpu9udQJS42EsjZY_lgWDep271o9GvS-SgckH9dcM-UuYU_glA8DeKIYzxiLnD80b9DWLnQ/s320/Image00003.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bodies from a mass grave containing <br />
250,000 victims, many children from <br />
the nearby school. They've been preserved <br />
for display at the Huye Genocide Memorial.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">And now I'm here, drifting through the florescent green hills, quiet villages, past little rivers and terraced slopes... Such a beautiful place, organized to fine detail, smiles and humility written across every face. It’s clean enough to be called sterile, its streets wide and smooth, and safety is assured by police on every corner. Today, Rwanda is eager to please (a little too eager?) and racing to join a higher stage (a little to quickly?)... It's very hard to see the young ghosts of the blood-washed past walking over the well-paved streets, pleasant hills, and spotless front porches. Where have they gone, so far beyond the world of today? Does it matter, if they've been put to rest? Does it matter, in a shiny new world for all?</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisKctPT1yAzT03VOqGpNiTSgp2OQjczqU26En0R1Q1QPvJtrz9RSB8MJdWfREi__hdKPrCy9zDnkpqcLVhFeXHHFF5ZBCGD5DXm_stu4gCPohQAgltP3aU7MZsn5ZNhDbX2oP53ABGB5sL/s1600/Image00044.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisKctPT1yAzT03VOqGpNiTSgp2OQjczqU26En0R1Q1QPvJtrz9RSB8MJdWfREi__hdKPrCy9zDnkpqcLVhFeXHHFF5ZBCGD5DXm_stu4gCPohQAgltP3aU7MZsn5ZNhDbX2oP53ABGB5sL/s320/Image00044.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Leaving a mysterious place of mist and low light.<br />
<br />
<br />
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>calebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15385366765861509339noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6290669098455554730.post-44684257035105067142011-01-07T07:45:00.000-08:002011-01-07T07:45:50.164-08:00Straight from my Notebook: Lake TanganyikaMy God, it's glorious. To be woken by swahili laughs, to step out into a world of sea and sky. Blue is separated only by soaring peaks of green and a thin necklace of gold on the quiet coast. Village huts glide by with distant curiosity; our own curiosity flashes happily back at them, reaching out to touch the gold and green. But we are sailing, softly, through a world of sky and sea. Through Swahili Laughs. Through the Glory of God. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp8yJdvUcFH39ZY3r6ZGNb9XdCzL0BAxOtHnfsYH6ZWQnuYx9Yc8nxAJk6PkxwRVI5hbWJM9j_sPZW0jjGOxNXvCC9GePmTD6glLdRZyjvA5H448WnNm6i0S7kToZkr7QEzhy-p1IHEb07/s1600/Image00001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp8yJdvUcFH39ZY3r6ZGNb9XdCzL0BAxOtHnfsYH6ZWQnuYx9Yc8nxAJk6PkxwRVI5hbWJM9j_sPZW0jjGOxNXvCC9GePmTD6glLdRZyjvA5H448WnNm6i0S7kToZkr7QEzhy-p1IHEb07/s320/Image00001.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>calebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15385366765861509339noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6290669098455554730.post-52189808393891462022011-01-06T13:30:00.000-08:002011-01-06T13:30:48.087-08:00"To The West" trip, By the Numbers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPEvt22SVz-PeZV9jxK6hJFsxI-poN0rx4mVg6K61eiQHtAxJtbkXZqTcOVDZilrSS8Nq5gQaPcAUfYdcwaiPVFzrTU49wGtdREgaP8YMLqmAjMNkKcEXW7YLESP_WYzqWOxS2137O-2dN/s1600/Image00001-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPEvt22SVz-PeZV9jxK6hJFsxI-poN0rx4mVg6K61eiQHtAxJtbkXZqTcOVDZilrSS8Nq5gQaPcAUfYdcwaiPVFzrTU49wGtdREgaP8YMLqmAjMNkKcEXW7YLESP_WYzqWOxS2137O-2dN/s320/Image00001-1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">- 22 days, 3 countries, 13 different beds, approx 4500 km (2800 miles) covered. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">- Over 100 hours on buses, trucks, and motorcycles. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">- Over 45 hours spent on boats of various sizes.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">- 250 meters (820 feet): free-fall height of Kalambo Falls</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">- 250,000: number of victims buried at the Kigali's Genocide Memorial. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">- 500 km (310 mile): length of Tanzanian section of Lake Tanganyika, the longest lake in the world. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">- Rwandan caves explored (by candle-light): 6 (out of 35) </div>- Most expensive lodging: $20, Kigali, Rwanda. Cheapest lodging: $2, Kibondo, Tanzania. <br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">- $500/ 1hr: price of chilling with the mountain gorillas... didn't go. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">- Price of one large beer at Hotel des milles collins (Hotel Rwanda): $6</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">- Price of same beer at local restaurant: $1 </div>- 10: types of African beer tested <br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">- Total price of trip $750</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja9D9xf0ABhg4Lb9PyVGQRm4BwCr5_IZuHfEaS0IpesKDzr4NYBMN3Nks4Fl9ZA6yLYuVx_AWsvG_HrbpzSDpPrtGU16t7K5zYNHgwe-ocDe5irRtYyZmOdiWtR_Hw4-aDhPjFF9sEVKGc/s1600/Image00001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja9D9xf0ABhg4Lb9PyVGQRm4BwCr5_IZuHfEaS0IpesKDzr4NYBMN3Nks4Fl9ZA6yLYuVx_AWsvG_HrbpzSDpPrtGU16t7K5zYNHgwe-ocDe5irRtYyZmOdiWtR_Hw4-aDhPjFF9sEVKGc/s320/Image00001.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>calebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15385366765861509339noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6290669098455554730.post-3002658155491058872010-12-10T12:39:00.000-08:002010-12-10T12:39:16.866-08:00A Bad NightAs you will quickly notice, the upcoming world-shaking transformation of this site... has not come yet. In a few days I will be leaving town for a few weeks, to Rwanda and Lake Tanganyika, so please bare with me and stretch your breathless anticipation to January. Some of you might have other things on your mind in the meantime anyway, maybe. For now, I will continue my aimless literary experimentation in yet another format: the 100 word story. The following story is true, every unfortunate word. <br />
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12am. Bedtime! Drifting... CLAMOR! Americans. Young. Drunk. Celebrating. Outside my door. LAUGH! Sigh... 2am... Quiet.... SCREAM!! Foreigner? Street. Look! Thai woman. Friend. Drunk. Fighting. "DON'T TOUCH! NO! WHERE MY FRIENDS!" Go! Rescue! "YOU! LEAVE! WALK!" Saved! What? Alley? Friends? No! Inside! Sleeping! Danger! No?! Sigh... Wandering. Stumbling. Carrying. Heavy Thai. 3am. Please, inside! Ok! Carry. Pull. Drag. Upstairs... Inarticulate. Immobile. Collapse. Night-guard: Wide-eyed. Megan: "What the hell?!" Team-Carry! OUF! On bed! SPLUNK! Off bed... OUF! On bed. CLINK! Megan's ring. Search. Vanished. Sigh... Leave. Click. Bedtime! Drifting... KNOCK!!! Night-guard: "Key?" "?" "Listen"... Drumming?... Thai kicking. Inside locked room. 4am. Sigh...calebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15385366765861509339noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6290669098455554730.post-15012356703683543342010-11-30T05:29:00.000-08:002010-11-30T08:26:31.668-08:00Thank You!<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">I guess I'm old fashioned. I've always thought that if I have something to say, and want to engage a wide audience, that the way to do it is to publish a book. I've never put much stock in blogs or webpages; the internet just seems like too loud a room for anyone to be heard clearly. However, getting a book published has become an increasingly impossible task. These days publishers live in a make-or-break world, and have no reason to risk precious time and resources even glancing at the work of another unknown "aspiring writer." Add to this the inevitability of experience, setting out to boldly understand the world, and landing in the dusty footsteps of Socrates: "The more I learn, the more I learn how little I know." I've almost completed the Course of Understanding, at least this one that I set out on almost four years ago. I've lived on four continents, from European capitals to tiny Asian villages, made friends with people from other worlds, and been constantly forced to confront frightening truths about myself. In the end, what can I say? I have no answers, have found no silver bullets, gained no transcendence, achieved nothing but a clear understanding of just how messed up we really are. That is not what I'd hoped to find, not at all, and that is not what most people want to hear. </div><br />
Yet somehow I'm more determined than ever to write. I don't know what, or how, or who will care, but in my darkest moments I'm always reminded that someone somewhere is listening. That's you, you who are reading this now. You who take the time to read my writing, who send me thoughtful and helpful feedback, who express excitement over my future book or even offer to help edit and translate it! You strangers I've met on the road who expressed heartfelt interest in my experiences (strangers no more!), and you who drop me a note just to tell me you admire what I'm doing and how I strive to live. I so thankful for <u>you</u>. Let me be absolutely clear: you are the ONLY thing that keeps me moving forward. Your support, encouragement, and interest are the only things that convince me that the last four years of my life <u>can</u> be turned into something meaningful and useful. This month especially you have encouraged me powerfully, when I needed it most. This blog has received more visitors this month than any two previous months combined (even assuming that all the Tanzanian visits are actually me, which I'm reasonably sure is the case). Yes, I'm easy to please, but that's not the point! Your visits, notes, and comments have reassured me that maybe people could be interested in what I have to say, and maybe all this actually has some sense. For that I thank you deeply. I wouldn't be able to keep the spark alive for long without you. <br />
<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-vhV86I3j_iiz_iqwgsyjeT4cAOkjpu_eNDWaiL9BTtTzS53Sv1GM2CKdb6TjlS9B72pD28fhaf63c3NrpaC3q6cAaaJKjkP485lanwnioKBwvR_6uqQ3aYhLbNrtfR-KTPsRIq-Pqe0W/s1600/SANY0156-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-vhV86I3j_iiz_iqwgsyjeT4cAOkjpu_eNDWaiL9BTtTzS53Sv1GM2CKdb6TjlS9B72pD28fhaf63c3NrpaC3q6cAaaJKjkP485lanwnioKBwvR_6uqQ3aYhLbNrtfR-KTPsRIq-Pqe0W/s400/SANY0156-1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">To build on the success and encouragement of this month, to be more interesting and useful to you, and to reach people I haven't actually met personally, I've decided that I need to move past my habitual moody self-reflections and dry academic theorizing that you've all patiently born with. If all goes as planned, the next week will bring a major and long-overdue transition in my work here, so please stay tuned! If you want to make sure you don't miss out, consider clicking the "follow" button on the right, and otherwise continue looking for announcements on facebook! </div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO6ecbnGM_Vb1SzjOB8uSvtXWCfa6zBmXu114gpJBeSKhV0hPCZmidlRRqHfUo_poqJ5vkb-RpIwy8OFRch21rAcGJhvFv4U9YoqAuEH3huwarQEwBCya2xBHbZ0E9dep_eKtz7O9WIOMS/s1600/SANY0157-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="211" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO6ecbnGM_Vb1SzjOB8uSvtXWCfa6zBmXu114gpJBeSKhV0hPCZmidlRRqHfUo_poqJ5vkb-RpIwy8OFRch21rAcGJhvFv4U9YoqAuEH3huwarQEwBCya2xBHbZ0E9dep_eKtz7O9WIOMS/s320/SANY0157-1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This months' visitor locations </td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Again, thank you. I'm truly constantly humbled by how many amazing people I'm fortunate enough to know, in so many amazing places, and more encouraged by your support than anything else in the world. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div>P.S. My pageview audience today: <br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLRTY-qfEtEGg7J2zvSV5PHuSmfMlYQCEWLEROIhetm958DTTuk0sVRL6-YUsneyDs2hZTTPORCdfOpOZ_CFt8jbg_7LxXJv5w-JX_pe6HDzPxROyMQpZjouuZFtURaXPaj2aTC-yrAygI/s1600/SANY0163-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLRTY-qfEtEGg7J2zvSV5PHuSmfMlYQCEWLEROIhetm958DTTuk0sVRL6-YUsneyDs2hZTTPORCdfOpOZ_CFt8jbg_7LxXJv5w-JX_pe6HDzPxROyMQpZjouuZFtURaXPaj2aTC-yrAygI/s320/SANY0163-1.jpg" width="283" /></a> <br />
</div><br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Paraguay?! <a href="http://www.thedromomaniac.com/">Foster</a>, would you happen to know anything about this?</div></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
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calebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15385366765861509339noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6290669098455554730.post-67019888885333477972010-11-26T12:28:00.000-08:002010-11-26T12:30:49.959-08:00A Billion Wars, part 3<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Continued from <a href="http://courseofunderstanding.blogspot.com/2010/11/billion-cultures.html">Part 1</a> and <a href="http://courseofunderstanding.blogspot.com/2010/11/billion-cultures-part-2-part-1.html">Part 2</a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">The next time you hear someone bemoaning the inevitable uniform flattening of world culture, take a step back and think about all the people you spoke to today, where they’re from, how they think, what they value, where they’re going, and compare it to the likely selection of people you would have interacted with in the same place 50 years ago. Which image seems more “uniform” and “flat”? Diversity is blossoming all around us. But in the end these might be very dark blossoms indeed. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> </div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjln7eYIueK2197ViYOYeZxWlpjJiyPQPL89Jn2DrgPw9TEV03-aL_Q3EAdRlolWzKvdh29xeILBAFvca3se2zVajqrtOwUKCFGm-ANjFX65vgGpFSqEpXQLu4g_f92vUz7KNd-eYr4GztF/s1600/Image00005.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="209" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjln7eYIueK2197ViYOYeZxWlpjJiyPQPL89Jn2DrgPw9TEV03-aL_Q3EAdRlolWzKvdh29xeILBAFvca3se2zVajqrtOwUKCFGm-ANjFX65vgGpFSqEpXQLu4g_f92vUz7KNd-eYr4GztF/s320/Image00005.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Someone sure is thrilled to see tourists...</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Don’t think that my belief in the exponential growth of diversity means I’m suggesting we’re entering a brave new world of tolerance and the breaking down of social walls. While the fabric of cultural identity is being transformed, the foundation of conflict has not budged. Even as the behavior becomes more strained and contrived, we are still determined to see the world from an “us” and “them” perspective. In the past “they” were often a faceless symbol on the other side of the world, and “those damned Russians” and “Remember the Alamo, kill the Mexicans!” was a manageable and natural way to maintain a close-knit society. But suddenly the Mexicans are living next door, the Russian is your landlord, and don’t forget the Indian, Vietnamese, and Iranian who own the nearest shops. Sadly, the fact that “they” suddenly have a face and humanity (although “strange” and “not quite right”) has not bound us together into a world of peace and good will, it has made us all more threatened by the proximity of such foreignness. In a world of increasing contact between vastly different perspectives and lifestyles, the potential for conflict is heightened within a rapidly shrinking psychological space. There will be increased reactions against "them," because "they" are suddenly in our backyards. There will be countless new lines of conflict as the breakdown of cultural, ideological, religious, and ethnic integrity within groups triggers the splintering into smaller and smaller social cells. There will be increased frustration with the "exoticism" we morn, because they‘re “just so weird“ or "refuse to live in the 21st century!" While the demons of conflict, violence, and hate were once often forced to journey from nation to nation or culture to culture, they can now hop lightly from door to door, where a different culture, religion, lifestyle, skin color, and language is already residing! The dry beams of society could so easily ignite into one fiery purge after another, jumping to the slightly stronger side of one social division after another, until - too late! - it becomes clear that everyone is a “them” in one way or another. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT3yaMgLq9CjZa9aot7Kk4No0qg48ui2Dbq4MB_PczKNLCb-nxYuKFDZJGc2a8AnP2U0lFAlC9qSiSSqNZ5GcOOH1jR3BPSXcTwchsYe__RoRL2S2hiiaw9ood0_C9i2alCuZMDFDZoBpw/s1600/Image00006.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT3yaMgLq9CjZa9aot7Kk4No0qg48ui2Dbq4MB_PczKNLCb-nxYuKFDZJGc2a8AnP2U0lFAlC9qSiSSqNZ5GcOOH1jR3BPSXcTwchsYe__RoRL2S2hiiaw9ood0_C9i2alCuZMDFDZoBpw/s320/Image00006.jpg" width="289" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Look at that body language!</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Can’t we all just learn to get along? Certainly we can! Will we? Very questionable, considering the rate and direction we’re going. But my reasons for believing that are part of another story.</div> <br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">However, within these age-old and suddenly imperative problems a possible source of help is emerging. On the forefront of these developments are the people that author Pico Iyer names "The Global Souls." They are raised without a specific national, cultural, or even linguistic identity, and can only consistently consider themselves to be citizens of the world. People like the young girl in the beginning of part two of this post are increasingly common, having a passport from one country, a language from another, a skin color from a third place, and a cultural identity from yet another. They are still rare, yes, but as the boundaries of the world continue to blur, their numbers can only increase. You probably know a few already, although you’ll have to think hard to identify them, as one of their gifts is to blend into whatever social context they’re in. One the inside, however, they know that they belong neither here nor there completely. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> </div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgywFnhlL5fkeOuQxNtzJi45t4k8_JlEfAspRDAp1fnBlbhwnIgxM8xfj9B5xoFTSnu8XtshrJNlpqoJvgc8Uay8kW644QTQIc5OFO44tZXlZtBXlVfIbsGEt9QJlvUphLURHjwHvgagiX3/s1600/Image00003.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgywFnhlL5fkeOuQxNtzJi45t4k8_JlEfAspRDAp1fnBlbhwnIgxM8xfj9B5xoFTSnu8XtshrJNlpqoJvgc8Uay8kW644QTQIc5OFO44tZXlZtBXlVfIbsGEt9QJlvUphLURHjwHvgagiX3/s320/Image00003.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">At least the expectations are clear...<br />
She almost didn't make it out alive.</td></tr>
</tbody></table> Because of their inherent independence from any one identity, these Global Souls present unique possibilities in the evolution of society. As this young girl grows up, with her head in Japan, her papers in Thailand, her soul in Brazil and the Philippines, and perhaps even a toe or two in Portugal and America, let's say there comes a time when Japan enters into conflict with China... or, to make it more interesting, with Brazil. Whose side will she fall on? She certainly won't be pulled along with the mindless “It‘s us or them!” crowd, whichever crowd that may be. Her tendency will most like be the opposite of nationalistic, or judgmental, or even invested. The easiest way is to not take sides at all, and as she's increasingly reminded that Japan is not where she belongs, perhaps she will even leave for another "half-home" in Thailand, or Portugal, or somewhere else entirely. And here is the possibility these Global Souls present. They don’t care. They will not be pulled into "Us vs. Them," because they are always "Them." They will not go with the herd mentality that pulled most Americans into hating the Russians, or most Germans into blaming the Jews, or most Jews into demonizing the Pakistanis. They will see both sides, and often, when forced to choose sides, they will leave. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBMAW4FNudrjvUokC08_P5sX-nXNqNVJlBQhg9JZKS8tds4U0986d20OvWa-sve5Ygo4m5cuvjdZforKFbqIFGyRv0PpH1VYQ5rdsibro5Q4rIhSNv6ho-izwwjMhyphenhyphenF1rEV_3f7aW_JKxB/s1600/Image00004.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBMAW4FNudrjvUokC08_P5sX-nXNqNVJlBQhg9JZKS8tds4U0986d20OvWa-sve5Ygo4m5cuvjdZforKFbqIFGyRv0PpH1VYQ5rdsibro5Q4rIhSNv6ho-izwwjMhyphenhyphenF1rEV_3f7aW_JKxB/s320/Image00004.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Too much culture. We are NOT amused.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">The Global Souls offer an new approach to the increasingly volatile "in-group/out-group" mentality that has thus far defined human society and will eventually destroy us as all the groups are mashed together. In the end it could go one of two ways: The Global Souls can lead us into a different way of seeing the world and each other, a world-view that expects and thrives on strangeness instead of being threatened by it. They are not invested into any of our silly little "in-groups," and therefore don't have to care about our silly conflicts. On the other hand, the fact is that they don't have to care at all, and as the conflicts, fear-mongering, and wall-building continues, they could just as easily check-out, live as untangled lives as they can manage, and watch us destroy ourselves for identities and ideas that they can't quite understand. </div><br />
Future leaders of a bright new tomorrow, or simply not part of problem in a world of a billion little wars? I don’t know, but they have managed to divest themselves of the borders and boundaries that toss most of us against each other, so there’s hope in that at least. <br />
<br />
For myself I am just as susceptible to frustration and knee-jerk reactions against those who are different than me as anyone, if not more so. I’m not writing to reveal the answers, I don’t have any. But we all need to be part of the discussion on this one, to observe, consider, explore, and one by one to discover a way for our billions of new worlds to exist on one shrinking planet. If we fail, as a society, as cultures, as individuals, there can only one alternative. <br />
<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>calebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15385366765861509339noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6290669098455554730.post-34716923820140610432010-11-25T10:04:00.000-08:002010-11-25T11:18:27.704-08:00A Billion Cultures? Part 2 <br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Continued from <a href="http://courseofunderstanding.blogspot.com/2010/11/billion-cultures.html">Part 1</a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVFNDM45A41bonYW3rEDcQbSiNvJbBk5enbAFf2Fs9qZ7J2D6kHu8Rn94WjTA4ThPwQ-JNdq08WaOgqSag6QdL9HWpNPLu_-x9bBYnDDWpCSokL8PsKKuShHkGpurTgRBmHihluE0sKkLi/s1600/Image00003.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVFNDM45A41bonYW3rEDcQbSiNvJbBk5enbAFf2Fs9qZ7J2D6kHu8Rn94WjTA4ThPwQ-JNdq08WaOgqSag6QdL9HWpNPLu_-x9bBYnDDWpCSokL8PsKKuShHkGpurTgRBmHihluE0sKkLi/s200/Image00003.jpg" width="133" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; text-align: center;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Jan is a Czech Catholic </div>Medical student. Probably <br />
not the first person you'd <br />
ask about Muslim merchants<br />
on Zanzibar... but he just<br />
might surprise you.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">The fact is we're concerned about losing the <u>predictability</u> of exoticism. We recently had at least the theoretical guarantee that if we go here and there we will experience this and that, a guarantee that is all but vanished. But even many of the most experienced travelers still take for granted the explosion of (totally unpredictable) diversity and novelty around every human corner. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">When in history could you bump into a young girl born to a Brazilian father (he was part Portuguese) and a Philippine mother (she was part American) who was born in Thailand and raised in Japan? I met this girl, she has blue eyes and dark skin, and could translate for her parents in each of these languages except Thai, the language on the front of her passport. What good does it do to ask "where are you from?" What is her culture? Her native language? Her home? She's something new, maybe unique, a direct product of globalization and impossible perhaps only 50 years ago. Her lifestyle, personal identity, and perspective on the world are bound to be fascinating and as worthy of exploration as any "authentic" pigmy tribe or lost civilization. </div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizmZ2l-ucJjRau230SH3fLl0o9YvnLqzuwiu4eNcM-iMhyphenhyphenwyZXXBPGxEo0wute8qqMxIQqEj4ovbF5aROsAgM1jAYJ4Px3nxVl5VdyaYVJ3cpbVrv4elxXpsRrvVmVfQk-wMpCYDQbC8I6/s1600/Image00004-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="207" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizmZ2l-ucJjRau230SH3fLl0o9YvnLqzuwiu4eNcM-iMhyphenhyphenwyZXXBPGxEo0wute8qqMxIQqEj4ovbF5aROsAgM1jAYJ4Px3nxVl5VdyaYVJ3cpbVrv4elxXpsRrvVmVfQk-wMpCYDQbC8I6/s400/Image00004-1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mario is Spanish, with a fascination for Sikh culture and <br />
fashion, even here in the deserts of Rajasthan. <br />
Anachronistic? Sure! Unique and interesting? I think so!</td></tr>
</tbody></table> When I ask a Dutchman (well, half Spanish and born in America (US passport) but raised in Amsterdam) who has lived his entire adult live in Vietnam what he thinks about the disappearance of tulips in Holland, what sense will it make? The question is based on the assumption that when he tells me he's from Holland, that he is informed and concerned about all things I consider "Dutch." <br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdK4byX_Wewxylw7zJutxftDHIY8lateSiSWuVNdU9yqKOso-_Y2tXiaiZV18YqgdEc3FadC77Acv-g9U2BFpC8byNUL3Y6wSGwwYN7sJNI3s55zR0QgYL_rHiL7sroQ7WsxqCdqot1FPQ/s1600/Image00005.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; height: 191px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 203px;"><img border="0" height="185" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdK4byX_Wewxylw7zJutxftDHIY8lateSiSWuVNdU9yqKOso-_Y2tXiaiZV18YqgdEc3FadC77Acv-g9U2BFpC8byNUL3Y6wSGwwYN7sJNI3s55zR0QgYL_rHiL7sroQ7WsxqCdqot1FPQ/s200/Image00005.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">All over Japan you can see a bizarre <br />
cultural transfusion. It's all about<br />
cartoon characters, yes, but<br />
charaters borrowed from all over<br />
the world, from French Maids to<br />
American High School students.<br />
All imitated and emulated by an<br />
otherwise mono-cultural society. </td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Even I, who fit pretty well into the American "box," can't deliver an explanation of the latest Hollywood movie, US election, war, fashion innovation, or newest slang. I constantly disappoint people who are excited to speak to an "American," who haven't realized that these definitions are breaking down. However, if you want to talk about chopsticks, the Ganges River, wildebeest migrations, or the Velvet Revolution, I'm your man. For the place(s) I come from, the languages I speak, the things I know about, and the things I'm interested in, I'm pretty confident in saying I'm unique too, a product of globalization, certainly not impossible 50 years ago, but very unlikely. Sure, something is being lost as the world mixes together, but something unprecedented and exciting is being gained. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> </div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVufzgmCcX60lKZ7_xBiwKXn6ZGi-WUMG7yDNo-1K50UC_1TvvPneKwCs-18VIOgHvkaN0JQrkEbxMeWS6-AlhlNGemVGnNnsFYaocyaQuQXyLJktJWMzc5CCC_WuPHht4O9ALPhxGJ5ew/s1600/Image00002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="157" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVufzgmCcX60lKZ7_xBiwKXn6ZGi-WUMG7yDNo-1K50UC_1TvvPneKwCs-18VIOgHvkaN0JQrkEbxMeWS6-AlhlNGemVGnNnsFYaocyaQuQXyLJktJWMzc5CCC_WuPHht4O9ALPhxGJ5ew/s200/Image00002.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me with my Japanese "bride" at<br />
our "wedding" with 400 of our <br />
closest Indian "friends." <br />
Some experiences leave you <br />
changed forever.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">This complexity is slowly permeating society on the level of individuals. Of course the degree of access still varies dramatically, but even 50 years ago a Maasai was a Maasai was a Maasai. Today a "Maasai" could be a pastoralist in the wilderness with a spear and shuka unchanged from a 1000 year ago, or a bowtied waiter in a restaurant, or an international businessman in a three piece suit. Asking him if he's Maasai guarantees nothing else about his lifestyle, you have to explore <u>him</u>. While this is certainly a pity for the integrity of the cultural "box," it means that every individual is becoming a world unto themselves, a culture to be explored, an "exotic" with new thoughts and ideas and experiences.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> <br />
(Tomorrow: Part 3: A Billion Wars?)<br />
<br />
</div><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>calebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15385366765861509339noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6290669098455554730.post-23601052608039351482010-11-24T15:12:00.000-08:002010-11-24T15:12:58.085-08:00A Billion Cultures?<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuaBbH3pjGxibmbBommPEoYsmwoNuzzsRV4wujW-J74d-UBVWQiiG1QL53_9dFCekjNaw1X7TbJlZZi3OZTxNvAJ-rBtamweV2WwnJkHAeuLfny01-kPTENfDpNHBljUP7JfoN09iBM6uE/s1600/SANY5863-1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuaBbH3pjGxibmbBommPEoYsmwoNuzzsRV4wujW-J74d-UBVWQiiG1QL53_9dFCekjNaw1X7TbJlZZi3OZTxNvAJ-rBtamweV2WwnJkHAeuLfny01-kPTENfDpNHBljUP7JfoN09iBM6uE/s320/SANY5863-1.JPG" width="164" /></a>These days everyone is talking about globalization. The economists warn us about staggering levels of inter-dependence (aka "mutually assured destruction"), while politicians promote the rise of democracy (whether you like it or not), linguists hail the inevitable doom of all languages except The One (need to negotiate with an Indian in Tanzania for a "Free Tibet" t-shirt sewn in China and printed in Mexico? English!), travelers discuss how small the world has become ("you can be anywhere in the world in 24 hours!"), inventers plan the next barrier-breaking paradigm shift in technology ("hand-held transporters, man. It's gonna be huge!"), sociologist examine the infusion of Levis, McDonalds, and Bruce Willis into the core of every culture ("It seems, ladies and gentlemen, that Rammstein was right. We all live in America"), and Google brings everyone and everything just one click away ("Google, making stalking a celebrity on the other side of the world a little bit easier"). It's easy to sit at home and be flooded with pictures of Chinese children in Mickey Mouse hats, East Africans huts covered with Bollywood posters, Americans in line for the next Pokemon, and people everywhere discarding their Kimonos, Saris, Burkas, and Shukas to grab "well worn style" jeans, spagetti string tops, and high heels. It’s easy to feel that something valuable is being lost forever. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGzqivPxuUqT208hT_zwGUArnUK40L-lvjyUEfxNDpbyrB9tPQeoJ0BzjoVAnvbh14XXXjyaIPMxmyQHmPE5BxnvxOnoZKrslZ23MYXTEn3YL8vl_5F6unzPSXLoAiDqCWAw9R3QKeaM2_/s1600/IMG_3309-1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGzqivPxuUqT208hT_zwGUArnUK40L-lvjyUEfxNDpbyrB9tPQeoJ0BzjoVAnvbh14XXXjyaIPMxmyQHmPE5BxnvxOnoZKrslZ23MYXTEn3YL8vl_5F6unzPSXLoAiDqCWAw9R3QKeaM2_/s320/IMG_3309-1.JPG" width="218" /></a></div><br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">And it is, I don’t deny it, but there’s another side to all this, one that few people notice or mention. For the most part, all of these unprecedented changes are taking place very much on the macro level, or superficially. On an individual and personal level - the level on which one human being interacts with another - we are all fast becoming more complicated, unique, and "exotic" than anything that has ever existed. The individualization of complexity launches the quantity of “uniqueness” and “exoticism” from hundreds of cultures into the realm of billions of individuals. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Until very recently, all the people in the world have mostly fit into one of a few hundred boxes. Each box carried a relatively uniform checklist: America = English = Christian = White-skinned = Independent = Jeans = Hamburger = Cowboy, etc. Japan = Japanese = Buddhist = Narrow-Eyed = Introverted = Kimono = Sushi = Samurai, etc. Indian = Hindi = Hindu = Dark-haired = Outgoing = Sari = Curry = Guru, etc. These were (and still are) the boxes, and of course there were always exceptions and broad misconceptions in these views, but often when people talk about the loss of diversity in the world they're talking about going to Japan and seeing lines out the door at McDonalds and Starbucks, or to Thailand and seeing everyone in jeans, or to America and finding noticeable social dependence. The various categories within each "box" were always strongly linked together, and you could make an assumption about all categories by knowing the answer to one, usually "Where are you from?" "India." "Oh, I love curry!" "Japan." "Oh, I love flower arranging!" "America." "Ah, Wild West!!" </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUZcFntn32j7e6UNh0IS_qUGlKT6O8uM7DzbHcVQAgbPCSAqkeDzoXPCvrPpQ7ulkd_ZoU35aUNA0z4WIl9d1UU3uuzhA8yxq8p61lxN3J7fAgv-NQ561tvKXsDQgdfC1R7v8oTtayEVrL/s1600/SANY0437-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; height: 236px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; width: 312px;"><img border="0" height="252" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUZcFntn32j7e6UNh0IS_qUGlKT6O8uM7DzbHcVQAgbPCSAqkeDzoXPCvrPpQ7ulkd_ZoU35aUNA0z4WIl9d1UU3uuzhA8yxq8p61lxN3J7fAgv-NQ561tvKXsDQgdfC1R7v8oTtayEVrL/s320/SANY0437-2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Rapidly these beloved cultural icons have become diffused, marginalized, replaced, or relocated (How long will it take to hear "You're from America? I love Sushi!" "You're from Japan? Oh I love McDonalds!" "You're from India? I love IT!"?). A few dozen years ago all you needed to know was where someone was from, and you had them in a box, a box containing tens or hundreds of millions of people. But within the space of a generation things have become much more complicated. As I still ask people "Where are you from" as a first grasp at a handle, I notice a growing number of people who have to pause before answering to understand exactly what I'm asking, and which category (no longer a package deal) I'm trying to determine. It's clear that the walls of those cultural and national boxes are cracking and crumbling, and something unprecedented is emerging... </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">To Be Continued... <span lang="EN">Mañana</span>! </div>calebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15385366765861509339noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6290669098455554730.post-5541177792633077112010-11-16T10:52:00.000-08:002011-03-30T13:59:08.507-07:00ScarsI do have a few scars, actually. You can't lead my kind of life for long without getting marked by the experience... No, wait, that's a lie. It's what I want you to believe, the mold I press myself into by any means necessary. It's remarkable how one moment, one look into a stranger's eyes, can turn all the lies I tell myself on their head, and confront me with the simple cold truth. The truth is I carry a few scratches, the marks of a couple stupid moments, and one or two well-anesthetized operations. These are not the necessary price of living in India or Africa, they are the price of displacement, the feeling that I must somehow prove I'm someone I'm not. Each of these breaks in my skin started with great expectations, the hope for some permanent mark of suffering and endurance in an otherwise comfortable and soft existence. At some point every man (meaning every man in my culture and my generation, at least) finds himself playing "scar wars," topping each other with stories of passage through pain and blood, proudly proven by the scars stamped onto flesh like footsteps through wet concrete. It's embarrassing to bring only stories without scars, like passage through snow; no less real but fleeting, unquantifiable, impossible to be sure it ever really happened. <br />
<br />
Western society has achieved something that no species or other group of people has ever achieved, a result of effort greater than any ever expended. Not the construction of the Great Wall or the Pyramids, the conquest of lost civilizations, nor any religious fervor to transform humanity, none have been as single-minded, exhaustive, and successful as the western world's resolve to be comfortable. Have we so quickly become ashamed of ourselves that we must prove we still feel pain, or is life so empty without hardship that we take such pride in every sign that our blood was spilt? I don't know, but I know this need digs deep into me. Somehow I feel a lack of pain and hardship to be a lack of masculinity, and an absence of scars stands as a negation of the challenging life I try to live, a betrayal of my claims of adventure and difficulty. What would she say about that, the woman sitting across from me on this ancient dusty bus? <br />
<br />
The scars I do have are mostly from India, living in a village and collecting firewood from a thorny forest daily. There was no escape from scratches, even cuts, but my body heals quickly and well, as it’s intended to do. I knew none of these would leave the faintest mark, leaving me with no silent proof of what a difficult experience I was surviving. Months later I remember telling a friend “Yes, you see my arms? Here, and here? Most of my scars are from India.” And that was all I needed to prove I’d done something real and brave. I didn’t explain that the children I was living with carried wounds that would reveal mine to be what they are, scratches. I didn’t point out that after two months I was free to leave that perilously thorny environment and head to the beach, which I did. And I certainly didn’t say that I was “scared by the experience” only because I’d meticulously picked away at the scabs of every scratch and scrape for weeks, with the sole purpose of making sure that my body would prove I live the kind of life I claim to live. That’s not an easy thing to confess, by the way. But I’m trying hard to not protect myself behind my usual mask of honesty. Truthfully, this behavior is insane, and shameful in a much more real way than the shame that provoked it... and yet I don’t expect to be committed to an asylum for these confessions. It’s not enough of a deviation from our culture, and I believe there are more than a few people reading this who can understand and even relate to this behavior, this insanity. Why?<br />
<br />
Why was this never a question I asked myself until today, stuffed into a stifling rattling African bus across from a middle-aged village woman? She’s Maasai, as evidenced by the stretched holes in her earlobes that would easily accommodate my big toe... should there ever be a need for such unlikely acrobatics. Her head is shaven beyond the mere suggestion that hair every existed there, and small bits of metal hang from her ears, nose, and neck. She is wrapped up in the bright and multi-colored fabrics that somehow defy the African dust, and left bare against these happy colors are her thick, dark arms. My God, her arms. <br />
<br />
As hollow as my experience may be, I do know something about scars, or at least what it takes to create one. The ones I'd reopened again and again, trying so hard to turn them into something impressive, had still eventually faded to almost nothing, and now it needs a certain light to even know they're there. So when I saw her arms, more covered than not with dark, deep, eternal marks, I could at least begin to read the story there. Burns, long thick ones from boiling water, and small sharp ones from brushing against red-hot pots, were scattered thickly from shoulder to fingertips. Dark shadows of holes from pointed sticks in the night, short marks from the edge of knives or razors - is that a jagged saw cut across her hand? - and a half-circle left by angry teeth - could it be human? - draw the eyes from one dim window of tragedy to the next. A fine network of straight angles across her left shoulder might mean broken window glass or jagged metal scraps, and a mesh of lines covering her right arm like a sleeve speaks of hurried passage through thorns or a daily journey pressed close to barbed-wire fences. Over every new inch I could almost feel the pain, see the blood, smell the melting flesh, and hear the cries of shock, fear, agony, and despair. And I was filled with a shame so intense I wanted to cover myself and hide.<br />
<br />
And then, after a long time, I looked into her face. You expect scars like these to go deep, and I mean deeper than flesh. You expect to see a haunted shadow of recognition that pain will come again, or a bright purity of acceptance. You expect to see an impact; how could trauma such as this not shape one's whole understanding of life? But somehow, inexplicably, it wasn't there. Except for her neck and shoulders, I could find nothing that connected this woman's face to her arms. Her face was smooth, unwrinkled and unblemished, without the spark of a smile or the cringe of concern. I could not see any clear sign of the shy timidity common in Japan or the smiling confidence of Americans, not the blank emptiness in Indian stares nor the eager cheerfulness of many Africans. There was no clear sign of wisdom or stupidity, no clue whether she is haunted or cheerful, an expression not engaged with the world around her but not particularly disinterested either. She was just, simply, human. Just living her life, same as me, lives absolutely, completely, unfathomably different. <br />
<br />
I cannot imagine what those scars, real scars, would do to me. Should I ever survive such experiences I know I'd loose all desire to display them or speak about them. It would change me, that kind of life, that kind of pain on a regular inescapable basis. For her, they mean nothing, not good or bad, not significant or remarkable or shameful, it’s just life, her life, her real life. <br />
<br />
I do have a few scars, actually. My scars are in my mind, the result of conflict between pride and guilt, confusion and certainty, the conflict of a culture that values everything and nothing, that demands self-construction and despises it, that despises self-destruction and glorifies it. I find myself crying out desperately "Look at me, I am real!" And I try to prove it with yet another construction. Her scars are on her body, the result of living real life in the real world, no more no less. Looking at her scars - looking at her life - I don't envy her, not at all. And truthfully, seemingly, hopefully, she doesn't envy me. <br />
<br />
“Make no mistake, my friend, we are all scared and scarred. The only difference between us is what we choose to do with it.”calebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15385366765861509339noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6290669098455554730.post-40369241009854186272010-11-13T11:49:00.000-08:002010-11-13T11:49:15.380-08:00The New Plan! (Or Catch Me If You Can, part III)<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> Over a year ago I posted a plan for the following year (if you’re interested in knowing if things went according to plan, see for yourself! http://discoverthepenguinsworld.blogspot.com/2009/06/plan-in-its-current-form.html) Now it’s time for a new plan! </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK0oVtbn96xXWzchqlqRdSTeKs8gpFVXJ7ZQQ5_3dyl5_zBL_gbAz6cX3DRp8ywY-viz7XK4kZpRoOG3UUoL19HHMkSYR4BFF6brPahAXp3VkeSzgjPqSuNxXz9liEY4BnXXWJfruQYQAm/s1600/DSCN3112.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; height: 175px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; width: 195px;"><img border="0" height="182" px="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK0oVtbn96xXWzchqlqRdSTeKs8gpFVXJ7ZQQ5_3dyl5_zBL_gbAz6cX3DRp8ywY-viz7XK4kZpRoOG3UUoL19HHMkSYR4BFF6brPahAXp3VkeSzgjPqSuNxXz9liEY4BnXXWJfruQYQAm/s200/DSCN3112.JPG" width="200" /></a>The new center of gravity, unexpectedly and wonderfully, is Cèline, a wonderful French friend I’ve recently fallen completely in love with (it seems she‘s also managed to fall in love with me, so it works out well)! Her job as a history teacher has her tied to France for a couple of years at least, so perhaps it’s more accurate to say that France has surprisingly become the new center of gravity. Unfortunately France, along with almost all the countries of the EU, has recently made it very difficult for an American to live in their country. In short the process requires getting hired, for which your employer must prove that no European citizen can do the job instead, THEN returning to the states and waiting for the application to go through, which can take 3-6 months, and carries no guarantee of success. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> The exception is Germany, which allows Americans to arrive, look for a job, and start working while paperwork goes through, and then stay, easy as pie. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> That’s enough background to give the context of the plan, but each of these steps is the result of massive research, consideration, negotiations, twists, retwists, sub-plots, and puzzle-piece-pounding that has gotten the plan to the feasible state it’s in now. If you want to know more about motivations, rationalizations or even vague justifications or recommendations, just leave a comment! </div><br />
<u>-Present -Feb 2011</u>: Finish my projects and travels in East Africa. <br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><u>-March -May 2011</u>: Return to Europe to spend time with Cèline, visit possible work/study locations in </div>France, CZ (can’t hurt to ask!), and mainly Universities and Language Schools in Western Germany.<br />
<u>-June-August 2011</u>: Fly to South Korea and teach at an intensive English summer camp to save some money. <br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><u>-September 2011</u>: Return to Europe to prepare to start with the best opportunity that present itself before the summer, which will most likely be...</div><u>-October 2011- May 2012</u>: ... studying at one of Germany’s many Master’s Programs taught in English, ideally in something along the lines of “Intercultural Communication” or “International Media.” <br />
During the first year Celine will still be in France and we’ll be trying to visit often, though after the first three months I won’t technically be allowed to LEGALLY enter France...<br />
<u>-June - August 2012</u>: Possible summer travel or work, depending.<br />
-<u>September 2012 - May 2013</u>: There’s a strong chance that Celine will be able to transfer to Germany to join me, hopefully at least in the same city, for my second and final year of studies. <br />
<u>-June 2013 - 2015</u>: Then Celine will be free to transfer to another continent for a few years, and we both want to experience living in a foreign culture together, so we’re eager to take advantage of this! The location for that hasn’t been discussed in any detail, but the sky’s the limit (literally, in fact, I don’t think the moon holds much appeal). <br />
<br />
That’s what’s next in the life of Caleb! Drop me a comment, and please catch me if you can!!calebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15385366765861509339noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6290669098455554730.post-66830801811257376782010-11-03T10:21:00.000-07:002010-11-03T10:24:46.742-07:00Historic Tanzanian ElectionsToday in major urban centers across Tanzania an historic political revolution is being vocally celebrated. The results of yesterday’s election were announced to waiting crowds in the capital Dar Es Salam, major tourist centers such as Moshi and Arusha, and other cities such as Musoma, revealing that these cities will send members of the young opposition party Chadema to parliament. This news represents the first cracks in the hold of the ruling party CCM, which has held nearly 100% of major government positions since independence in 1964.
Campaigning was especially heated in Arusha, where no opposition party had ever gained a foothold. In front of City Hall growing crowds waited through the night without sleep, encouraging each other by screaming the Chadema campaign chants of “People’s Power” and “Cha-de-ma!” Some were angry at the wait; while other cities had announced results in the morning, the eager crowds in Arusha were left to wait until late into the afternoon. “They must tell us! They must give us power!” said one. “If not it will be like Kenya as soon as possible!” alluring to the political turmoil that resulting from a disputed election in December 2008 in Kenya. But most were peaceful, consistent with a country that has seen little political violence in its history. “If they are not honest, what can we do?” said another. “We are not here to fight, but we want the truth.” Still a strong police present was very visible, fitting the atmosphere of uncertainty and possible change.
When the results of Arusha’s parliamentary election were announced in favor of Chadema’s candidate, Godbless Lema, the crowds exploded into dancing and screaming. The police used hoses and army jeeps to control the crowds, but both sides remained amiable. Within minutes crowds were choking traffic in all major streets in the city center and celebrating vocally.
The national results are less dramatic. CCM’s president, Kikwete, will remain as head of state, and the ruling party will maintain majority control over all major institutions. “It’s the first step, for Chadema,” said a member of the dancing crowd who was proud to be a supporter of Chadema since its humble beginnings. “This is the first time we can win! In next election, in five years, we will see what bigger change we can make! It’s time for a change in Tanzania. Today we can start it!”
Pictures: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=573219&id=768420318&l=c5fc2bc876calebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15385366765861509339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6290669098455554730.post-3621097422218977822010-10-22T05:47:00.000-07:002010-10-22T05:57:44.922-07:00I Get a Haircut - Insignificant Moments of Life AbroadIt’s time for me to get a haircut. I know because I now have to choose between gelling my hair to a concrete-like consistency, or sporting an Afro (which is nowhere near as appropriate in Africa as the name would claim). You’d think that after seven years abroad I’d be used to navigating the various pitfalls of foreign barbers, but I still hate it, and always put it off as long as I can find any excuse to do so. I’ve often thought that my “Bohemian look” in Czech Republic could be attributed less to my desire to “fit in” than my need for a reason to avoid barbers for several years. Sadly, that look didn’t make the cut, and unless I want to go down that slippery slope again it’s time to surrender to The African Haircut. Yes, “The.” If God is merciful there will only be one.
What’s the big deal? I don’t think I’m the only one who gets a little nervous about going for a haircut, even in one’s home country. Just assume that it’s your first time visiting a new hairdresser, you have no information about the hairdresser’s ability, and more importantly imagine that the only communication you can manage is handing him the scissors and saying “go!” Also, to simulate the fact that in many countries there’s absolutely no guarantee or regulation of the skill of any would be “professional,” imagine that he’s blind; for all you know about his skill, he might as well be. Nervous now? “GO!”
I remembered a likely looking barber’s shop on the other side of town, and walked about 45 minutes to find it. You learn to notice certain things and pin them onto your mental map long before you’ll ever need it; there are no yellow pages or services listed online to speak of, and if the need becomes urgent and you don’t know where to look you could wander futilely for hours. In the case of a haircut, for example, you have to spot a place that will cut your hair (many places are gender specific), won’t try to charge you 10 times the proper amount AND will be able to communicate somewhat (which means outside the expensive town center, but not so far that they only speak Ma or some other tribal language). I’d noticed a likely looking place a month ago and it was worth walking across town for it. It was closed. At 1:00 on a Tuesday. I started to develop theories, and then I remembered that my theories didn’t mean a fig. Time to wander!
About 15 minutes later I find another, in a similar area, staffed by a young man, all good signs.
“Habari!” He looks up from his newspaper and goes through the necessary triple-take at the tall white foreigner who’s materialized in his tiny shop.
“Mzuri.” Silence.
“Can you cut my hair?” Pantomiming accompanies.
“Ndeyo, ok.”
“How much?”
I’m not going to elaborate on this for the pages and pages of anecdotal, cultural, and historical evidence that supports this advice, just trust me that you must always Always ALWAYS ask the price first for EVERYTHING. Always.
“Hmm…” He’s going to overcharge me. Whenever someone who sells one thing all day long has to pause for 30 seconds to remember the price, he’s considering how much he can get from you. Sometimes the thing to remember is that that IS the price. The “real price” is not how much the thing costs, it’s how much you’re willing to pay for it. Still, it irks me and most travelers, and a pause like this can often be reason enough to just walk out. I shift my feet.
“1,000 shilling.” $0.70. Or, maybe he was just trying to remember how to say “thousand” in English.
“Ok.” I start to sit down, and remember.
There are always unexpected idiosyncrasies to every element of life in every new place. It doesn’t matter how much experience you have, how many times you’ve gone through it already, or how carefully you try to make no assumptions; some things you will just have to learn the hard way. However, experience and observation CAN teach you what to watch out for. I’d noticed that the local men had two hairstyles: short and none. Neither were my cup of tea.
“Cut, yes? Haircut?” Scissor motions. “Bzzzzzz no.” Sheering motions.
“Ah, um…” He holds up an electric razor and points to his own well-sheered head.
“Scissors? Snip snip?”
“Ah.…”
I still have to remind myself every day that in many cultures across the world it is rude to say “no.” Ever. Sometimes the best you can hope for is someone who won’t say “yes,” meaning “no.” It’s much more common than you might think.
“Oh, ok. Hapana, asanti!” Exit. Wander. Amazing that just a year ago, in the same situation, I would have walked out of that shop 5 minutes later as bald as Bob Hope and glowing like a ball dropped on Time Square.
About 30 minutes later I see a “Hair Cutting Salon.”
“Habari!”
“ah, mzuri!”
“Haircut? No bzzzz, ok?”
“Yes yes, ok.”
“How much?” Always always always ask the price first.
“Two thousand shillings.”
“Ok.”
I show him my desired length, of about 2 centimeters.
“Yes, ok.”
I settle back, then wince slightly when he pulls out a well-loved electric razor. Fortunately, he also has attachments. The three attachments are “short,” “shorter,” and “hair-no-more.”
There’s something I’ve had to learn the hard way, over and over and over again: you must assert yourself, constantly, and the moment that you start being passive about anything you will be taken down a road you don’t want to be on - sometimes literally! I’m passive by nature, and inevitably have relapses every day, which is the main reason I have anything to write about (hey now, I didn‘t say anything GOOD to write about)! The appearance of the razor, the limited size of the attachments, and the compensating smile on the barber’s face all told me very clearly that it was time to walk away. But it was too late, I was stuck. And so, with a passionate Muslim sermon blasting out of the radio in Swahili and the barber nervously humming to himself, the haircut began.
The first thing that was clear was that he had never encountered hair like mine. My hair is thick, thick like a Russian accent, and almost as unruly and unpredictable as the Russian himself. Remember what I said about gelling to a concrete consistency? Usually the prep work involves spraying on lots of water and combing, then scissor snipping through the bulk of the bush, but clearly that’s not the way things are done here. He switched on the razor, and dove in. But if he thought that he would just buzz through, he quickly had to abandon that idea.
The next thing I noticed revealed a fascinating fact about globalization: although technology is becoming so universal that you can see the same modern items from New York City to an Indian mud hut, the creativity in using it is endless: I’d never seen anyone apply lubricant directly to the blades of an electric razor before!
We all do the same things, but we’ll always find different ways to do it. We have to, the world will never be globalized enough to eliminate our need to assert our identity. And the key is that in so many places, there is and will always be only ONE way to skin a cat. Let an African see you doing laundry in the Indian style, or an Indian see you bathing in the Burmese way, and you will either be laughed out of sight or meticulous instructed in what you’ve done terribly wrong, how to do it right, and why the very fabric of time and space has been threatened by your foolishness. Evidently, the way to use an electric razor in Tanzania is to pour lubricant on the blade until it can glide through anything.
It still wasn’t easy, for either of us, but this guy was determined and focused. He could have buzzed and lubricated his way through a brick wall if the price were right. As he charged onward and locks of hair fell around me like angel feathers in a lightning storm (hmm, there’s a new one), I squinted at the mirror trying desperately to assess the sway of the battle without the benefit of my glasses.
After about 15 minutes I reach for my glasses and put them on, then look carefully at the mirror. Whatever face I made the guy thought it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. I tried to be stoic, but I’d already whipped off my glasses so I don’t know if I managed it. In any case, I recognized that I was once again in that familiar situation: caught in a cultural current without a paddle, and I’d have to sit tight until the river took me wherever it wanted to go.
When it seemed like my head couldn’t get any lighter, THEN the scissors came out. On the second snip he nicks me. It’s a good thing I didn’t insist on scissors from the beginning! I’d be sheered AND scarred! I began to get really nervous when he started some “detail work” on my brow, which I know from many disastrous years of cutting my own hair is like trying to defuse a bomb: one false snip and you blow it. Knowing there was really nothing I could do, I decided to not look until it was all over. Being the exhibitionist that I am, I consoled myself by thinking that the worse the haircut the better the story and accompanying picture would be... You can see how desperate my optimism was trying to grasp onto something.
He continued with the detail work for quite a while, sometimes so detailed that it seemed he wasn’t actually cutting anything at all. Well, we’re all guilty of doing “filler work” to seem busy, or to convince a customer that the service is worth the price. After all if you just “get the job done” and it’s all over too quickly... But that’s a different story. Anyway, I’m pretty sure foreigners get this “filler work” stuff most, based on the hope that the silly outsider might not know that a haircut should take 15 minutes and if it takes 45 they’ll pay more. “Sorry, buddy,” I thought, “but my money’s waiting for the moment when I finally put on my glasses and see the face that my friends will have to live with for a month.”
The electric razor comes out again, with a new attachment. It wasn’t a longer one. Either this elaborate process had been carefully and ritually developed over centuries of African hairdressing, or this guy was really bored. And then it got interesting again. I’ve never seen someone use baby powder with an electric razor before!
Using a shaving brush he liberally doused the back of my neck with what smelled very much like baby powder and then went at it with the electric razor again. Douse, shave, repeat. I started to think about probable attrition rates of African electric razors. Might be something to invest in.. and baby powder. Who knows, maybe baby powder is the “fix-all” of Tanzania, like duct tape in America... Now THAT would be a fast haircut! Maybe baby powder is actually more useful, which my barber clearly considered to be obvious as he doused me again. I’ll bet he’d also use it for skinning a cat.
Having been sheered, buzzed, lubricated, snipped nipped and powdered, THEN out came the spray bottle of water and the comb. I could feel there was very little left to comb.
Finally he motions I should put my glasses on, and I look.
“Safi?” he asks.
“Ndiyo, safi sana,” I say. Yes, very good. And it was. Now I just need to find a place that can take about 50% off my ears...
On the other hand, it’s now certain that this WILL be my only African Haircut.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150303880035319&set=a.10150266737500319.525542.768420318&ref=fbx_albumcalebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15385366765861509339noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6290669098455554730.post-18409228909343888582010-10-11T05:50:00.000-07:002010-10-11T05:52:43.601-07:00My Thoughts on Travel, Thus Far...- People don’t understand travel, it’s just like walking around your house... Only it’s someone else's house.
- I remember when I used to believe that travel eliminates prejudices. It turns out the truth can be really ugly!
- When traveling, you are one side of a great game, and every negotiation or exchange of money, thoughts, directions, ideas are one round of it... Only you never know the rules, hold any cards, or learn anything that is valid for more than a few minutes. Those rare times you manage to win, you only know it if the other players decide to tell you, and it’s very hard to believe it was anything but blind luck. We’re the outsiders, like Cubans playing hockey, we’re just going to lose. That is part of the price of travel.
- Travel murders mystery.
- Anywhere you go, no matter how exotic, exciting, or intimidating, you find there people for whom it is daily life, mundane, uninteresting, normal in every sense. The true value of travel it not to adopt to and accept every exotic lifestyle as normal, but to learn that every “normal” is exotic and exciting from the right perspective.
- A famous war-correspondent was asked “which stamp in your passport are you most proud of?” “None, what’s there to be proud of?” Travel is so glamorized: it’s just a matter of going!
- If it’s more important for you to be comfortable than to be stimulated (whether you like it or not!), don’t travel.
-The ideal traveling: Think, go, see, think again, do! Miss a step, and you’re a tourist.
- I used to think travel was about becoming a different person: In Japan you learn to BE Japanese, in India you learn to live like an Indian... Ha! Travel only to enrich who you fundamentally are. If you travel to change who you are, you will smack into the immovable facts of your self like a brick wall. That is, however, probably the fastest way to determine who you really are..
- Real travel is not a break from life, it is life. Do it long enough, and you’ll never stop traveling, even when you stop moving.
- Travel is following: somehow, everywhere, someone already lives there.
- The world never stops moving. Travel is learning to follow its rhythm.calebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15385366765861509339noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6290669098455554730.post-77192053389531102692010-10-11T05:38:00.000-07:002010-10-11T06:16:09.844-07:00What I'm Doing in Tanzania -- or -- Sometimes Things Work OutI remember my carefully detailed plan before going to India: go there, wander around for a month, fall into an interesting project and volunteer for another five months. After all, how hard can it be to find someone to help in India? My lesson from India: It’s hard to help a person. My lesson so far from Tanzania: Sometimes, things work out. My level of proactivity has increased only be the smallest degree, and while comparing India and Tanzania is like comparing mangoes and bananas (trust me on this!), a little proactivism evidently goes a long way.
My miniscule change in approach amounted to contacting a number of NGOs (Non Government Organization) and asking to talk to them about their projects when I was in their area. Telling people you’re writing a book about international involvement has a way of opening doors!
The first project I visited was Pamoja Ministries: Discipleship through Media ( www.pamoja.info/), based a little outside Arusha in Tengeru. Pamoja is a Christian ministry made up of several professional graphic designers, film makers, musicians, etc., and their goal is to provide positive role-models, values, and a psychological infrastructure of hope for the much-ignored children of Tanzania. On the other side they aspire to “bring to best of Africa to Africans” to combat the pattern of successful African musicians and actors signing contracts with western countries and never been heard by their countrymen, which propagated the mentality of “success is found outside my country.” Pamoja creates records and music videos of up-and-coming African artists and tries to demonstrate the possibility of high aspirations without leaving the continent. They also want to address the complete lack of quality TV programs for children that present anything like positive values and ethics (at this point it seems most children get their role models and values from Rappers, corrupt politicians (no joke! They’re successful!), and adult soap-operas).
Within a few minutes of walking onto the compound I was met by Sig Feser, the founder of Pamoja, who’s been in East Africa for decades. “What’s your background?” he asked almost immediately. “Well, my degree is in Social Science, and -” “I think I have a project for you. For a long time we’ve talked about doing a psychological survey of the children of the area. You’re here, you’re trained in social science, God has sent you here for a reason.”
I later remarked to Honza, my traveling companion, that I get a kick how long-term missionaries everywhere talk with the same “God dialect.” His certainty of God’s will certainly surpasses my own, but in any case the idea appealed to me immensely. It sounded like exactly the kind of work I would choose in every country I’d lived in if I had the resources for it, and with the staff and experience of Pamoja to support me...
In the discussions during the weeks that followed the scope of the project consistently sprinted past anything I’d conceived of. I remember the brain-numbing meeting with Jeremy Feser (directing Pamoja while his father Sig is back in Canada), where he said matter-of-factly “So how many children do you think you could interview? How about 5000, could you do that?” “Ubbbllllbbbb?”
The details have been mostly ironed out by now (for the official Project Goals and Timeline click here ( http://courseofunderstanding.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2001-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&updated-max=2002-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=1 ), but it’s still huge. The topics of the survey will be Heroes/Role-models, Hopes, Fears, and Media Access. The ultimate goal is to give Pamoja a solid sense of how children will relate to the characters and messages they put up on screen. “If we someday want to create the Tanzanian “Sesame Street,” we need to know how they’ll respond to the main character being a 14 year old girl, or a business man, or a teacher, for example? Who’s the everyman? Who’s a clear hero character? If they see a snake on the screen will it automatically give a sinister vibe like it would for American kids? Is the father figure a symbol of security or of fear? What’s the picture of an ideal world? Should the “treasure quest” be about a pot of candy or a new school uniform? If we don’t know these things, we are just taking shots in the dark with huge amounts of resources, and we can’t afford to do that. We always have to make certain assumptions in this work; I want to make those assumptions based on as much concrete data as you can possibly generate.”
The other main reason this is a huge project is that nothing of this type has been done on any significant scale in Tanzania, hardly in Africa. Children are almost entirely ignored and not acknowledged as members of society. I’ve been able to find a small handful of studies the survey the views of children, and all but two of them are completely focused on HIV/AIDS or concrete educational issues. Studies of how children here think about the world, what they want, who they aspire to be, what they worry about, has not been touched. No one has done a study like this, period. “I just want us to realize that when this study is finished no one in the world will know more about these issues than the three of us in this room. No one. We will be the foremost experts on the topic, after only a few months of study” said Jacob Mills, another Pamoja member who will be overseeing my work and who (coincidentally?) worked as a professional pollster in the USA.
The plan is to take two (and a half) phases. In the first phase we’ll create a wide variety of questions in a wide variety of styles and ask a number of children around the urban and rural area of Arusha. This is a “test” survey, and we’ll use the data to decide what styles and approaches work, and what specific interesting content we want to pursue. The students will be speaking Swahili, so one of Pamoja’s main commitments is to hire a translator to accompany me. The next phase will involve an extensive refining of the questions and surveying ideally 1000-1200 students from the ages 7-14. Again, huge, because many of these children will be functionally illiterate or will produce gibberish on a paper survey, so it will all have to verbal, one student at a time, over a wide range of urban/rural, economic, and ethnic locations. This part of the process will probably take about three weeks. We’ll then process and analyze the data, and return to a small number of students with very representative or atypical answers and ask “why” to get one step deeper into the factors behind the values and to glean some useful quotations straight from the children’s mouths.
“In the end,” said Jacob, “if we’re willing to share our data - and we are - people are going to want to know about this, because they are desperate for this kind of information... And practically anything you write about the results will be publishable simply by merit of what you’ve done and what you’re talking about.” So the end result will be a paper on the findings for Pamoja to distribute to a wide range of NGOs that could benefit from knowing more about the values of children (hundreds if not thousands of people in the Arusha area alone), and to send for publication to a number of African-issues journals. All very exciting stuff for me! Beyond that there’s the constant sense from everyone I talk to that this is important work and so applicable and valuable for so many areas of developmental work here. I’ve bumped into people in AIDS education, wildlife conservation, agricultural development, poverty alleviation, education improvement, orphanages, hospitals, and churches, and practically every single person has heard what I’m doing and started talking about how they could apply the information in their field of work. Children are the next generation in Tanzania, but no one really knows how they’re motivated, what they want, how they see their place in the world, how they expect the future to be, what role they aspire to play in society when they grow up, etc. I think the significance of thousands of westerners trying to make a sustainable improvement in the lives of the people here without really knowing how those people are thinking and acting is clear. I’m left baffled that nothing like this has been done before, but everyone’s time and resources are taken up by more “immediate” concerns.
During this process I’ve constantly had the feeling that I’m ever so slightly over my head here, but just enough that I’ll barely manage to drink up all the extra water before I drown.. Just where I like to be!
A few days after the first visit to Pamoja I sat down with Lara Warren from Adopt a School, Tanzania.
( www.adoptaschool.info/). Adopt a School is another NGO that uses government statistics to find the worst-performing public schools in the greater Arusha area and then “Adopts” that school, recruiting financers from the West and instituting a five-year process that aims to make the school one of the best performing in the district. It starts with construction (often a school of 250 students has a single dilapidated school room), moves on to creating water supplies on the school grounds (many of these locations are 10 km from the nearest water supply, and students spend several periods carrying the day’s water to school), supplies schoolroom material (pens and notebooks are often non-existent, and one ancient textbook might be shared with an entire class), then tries to address personnel shortages (one school I visited had 250 students in six grades, and four teachers) and teacher-training, etc. There are three elements I most admire about Adopt a School process. First, they carefully screen potential sites for commitment, lack of corruption (it’s rare that a school doesn’t have at least one teacher who uses government school-supplies money to support his alcoholism, and in “biggest problems” surveys students often list “teacher attendance” in the top three) and schools are only adopted when it’s clear that the staff is committed to the needs of the children. A rare thing already; teachers are paid 100,000 Tanzanian Shillings (= $66, or $2 a day), and are often moved to a new school anywhere else in the country every few years. Teachers are not trained in how to teach a class, and most teaching seems to consist of reading out of a textbook while students repeat each sentence or copying it on the blackboard. Little thought is given to effective transfer of information, it’s the students’ responsibility to memorize and the regurgitate the information. Desire to do more than the (very demanding!) bare minimum is very rare. Second, once a school has been selected for adoption, Adopt a School staff meet with the school and village council and ask “what do you need?” “What do we know about what they need,” says Lara, an Oxford Law graduate who is directing the organization in the absence of her Father, Brad Warren, who founded it. “They know what they need. If they say the need water, you can be pretty sure that they need water! If they say chalk, they need chalk. It cuts out a lot of guesswork and cross-cultural misunderstanding that way.” Third, the process of funding and development ruthlessly adheres to the philosophy of “bega kwa bega” (Swahili for “Shoulder to Shoulder”). At the very beginning of the process agreements are made about what the local community can provide, and what Adopt a School will supply. Usually the local community volunteers labor and local resources, Adopt a school funds the more expensive materials. “It’s all clear from the beginning: they do this, we do that. If they stop, we stop... It’s hard, and sometimes we’ve had to completely walk away from projects and lose everything we put into it, but you give too much; it destroys people. That’s what creates nations of beggars and lay-abouts. They’ll have no motivation to maintain and value the facilities and material, and three years later it will be like you were never there. If you can’t get the community to be involved in the project then there’s no point in anyone else being involved either.”
These principles line up with everything I’ve witnessed about how and how not to do development work. The focus on education and the improvement of opportunities for the younger generation also seems like where I’d put my proverbial money. “Brad has always focused on the education of a person. Being a good person is more important than being smart.” Adopt a School seems to be going everything right in the effort to facilitate both better educated students, and simply good and hopeful people. After meeting six different NGOs I asked Honza which one he would fund if he could only choose one, and after much thought he chose Adopt a School, saying that it seems to be making the most difference out of the least resources.
After a couple of hours of chatting about Adopt a School Lara was eager to find a way for me to be involved. Over the next weeks I visited several of their adopted schools with her, and saw first hand the transformation taking place. In the end it was decided that I will live for at least one month in one of these schools, where I would have several goals. The headmaster of the school (where 250 students have four teachers) was desperate for me to stay on immediately. “come, you stay for only two days now, teaching English and sports, it can help up very much!” I took this as a warm welcome and managed to leave, saying I would come back for a longer time if I could. He suggested I take over the English teaching for the entire school, teach basic math (ha!) and lead sports. He also wants me to oversee the construction of new buildings (I’ve already seen several examples of the fact that if you don’t watch laborers carefully, within hours you can guarantee hollow walls, watery cement, and crooked ceilings, and the “extra” material will “disappear”). Lara wants to help the school with their teaching needs, but has other motivations for my involvement: “First of all, I’d like you to keep an eye on everything for me. This is the first school we adopted, it’s pretty far along the process and we’d like it to be a model school, but I need someone inside to tell me what’s really going on. Then I’d like you to observe the teachers. Our newest project is to develop teacher-training programs to improve the awful teaching, but no one with Adopt a School has any teaching experience, so it would be really helpful for you to get a sense of the needs and then help us figure out how to improve it. And also, you’re the first volunteer in this area, so if you could keep a record of your experience and afterward write up a kind of introduction to the culture-shock and experience for now volunteers that would be great!” Again, all right up my alley! And again, just a bit over my head. The school is extremely rural. Really rural. And for anyone who’s seen the pictures of my Indian village you know that really means something. It’s at the end of about 30km of a spider web of jarring dirt “roads,” and has no electricity, running water, or shops anywhere near. The “no electricity” part worries mean, since it pretty much cuts me off from my computer, music, cell phone, camera, etc. But I suppose for a month I’ll survive. The house where I’ll live is pretty nice! It actually has rooms, concrete walls, and a real door!
So there you have it! Man, I thought it would be easier to summarize this! Thanks for your interest, feel free to ask any questions and you can be sure that I’ll update you on significant mile-stones!
For pictures of my Adopt a School visit: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=561383&id=768420318&l=91facbf293calebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15385366765861509339noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6290669098455554730.post-31689365598752385822010-09-21T14:21:00.000-07:002010-09-21T14:22:06.905-07:00One Way Or Another, It’s The Little Things: Part 219-IX Arusha
Hmm, cheese burger! Of course it will be terrible, but there’s only one way to find out!
“You have cheeseburger?”
We’d missed breakfast, spent an hour going through countless restaurants that didn’t serve lunch, it was getting past noon, and we were hungry! The stage was set for another day of the traveler’s eternal game of “battle and surrender.” Dealing with cultural and developmental obstacles is just part daily life - make that minute to minute life - in many places in the world, and if you don‘t learn to deal with nothing going your way, you won‘t last long. But when it concerns something that MUST work out, such as food or lodgings or time-sensitive transport, then things get a bit more personal. It can be anything from life-and-death to “just one of those days,” and as I looked up at our waiter I knew the game was on.
You learn to recognize instantly when things are going to be a little more complicated... which is most of the time for a budget traveler. “You have cheeseburger?” The waiter squints at me with the exact expression usually provoked by someone suddenly squealing "Ekwa Gobbly Goo!"
“Yes?”
“cheeseburger.” I point it out carefully on the menu. “You have?”
“chapati?”
“cheeseburger.. Here.”
“yes. ”
“One cheeseburger please.”
“Yes.”
My experienced traveling companion Steffen has already ordered by pointing to a dish served to the next table and holding up one finger. “One of these.” “Yes.”
My not-so-experienced companion Jan spends the next 10 minutes tearing (almost literally) through the menu.
“Do you have milk?”
“Milk finished.”
“Milk finished. Okay, what about some chicken with rice or vegitables or something, do you have anything like that?”
“chicken finished.”
“Finished. Then I’ll have a hamburger.”
“Burger finished.”
“Of course, then maybe some fish. What kind of fish is it? Is it fresh?”
“Yes?”
“Yes it’s fresh or yes you have?”
“Yes?”
“Fish?”
“Fish finished.”
“Fish finished. So I guess I’ll just have some pastries. You have some pastries there behind the counter, right? What kind do you have?”
“…”
“There, what’s that?”
“chapati?”
“No, no chapati, that one there. The fluffy one.”
“…”
“Here!” Jan gets up and points through the glass. “Give me two of these.”
“yes.”
“And now to drink I’ll take... I suppose if you don’t have milk you don’t have milk tea, right?”
“yes?”
“Milk tea? Do you have it or not?”
“Yes.”
“You have it? How do you have milk tea if you don’t have milk?”
“Milk finished.”
“Yes I know milk’s finished, so how do you have milk tea?”
“Milk finished.”
“I’m almost finished with this restaurant, you know that?”
“Yes?”
Somehow Jan ordered something, all the while with Steffen and myself stiffling our snorts of amusement and bracing ourselves for whatever could (and probably would) go wrong with our orders. But in a few minutes Steffen had his meal, a nice sausage thali, and I had my coke, and there seemed to be some hopeful activity in the kitchen. Jan got his pastries, Steffen was informed that “coffee finished,” Jan that “Fanta finished,” and I waited happily for my cheeseburger.
Both finished eating, I finished drinking, and after another 10 minutes I called over the waiter.
“cheeseburger coming, yes?”
“Yes?”
“cheeseburger.”
“chapati?”
“No, here, look. Cheese-burg-er. Coming?”
“yes.”
“Okay.”
It’s always a good idea to check your watch often in these countries. Once you adapt to “African time” or “Indian time” you can find yourself waiting two hours for something before realizing that it’s never going to happen. I set my timer for 15 minutes.
The time passes quickly. I stand and peer into the kitchen, a risky move but sometimes necessary. I see the cook leaning against a wall, and no cooking in sight. I return to my table and call the waited.
“my cheeseburger?” I point again to cheeseburger on the menu and tap my watch.
“cheeseburger finished.”
“You tell me three times yes and now finished?”
“Yes?”
“Right, great. Bring me three samosa.”
“Samosa. Four?”
“Three.”
“yes.”
Two minutes later four samosa arrive. I eat them hungrily.
The bills shows a predictable attempt to overcharge us by 50%. After a few minutes of obligatory arguing we calculate our own bill, underpay ever so slightly, leave the money on the table, and leave.
Finished, yes?calebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15385366765861509339noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6290669098455554730.post-3375368909176562962010-09-21T14:19:00.000-07:002010-09-21T14:20:54.328-07:00The Hunter Winks15-IX -Yushoto
You don’t meet them often, but there are people who know that living means searching. They’ve developed a certain degree of comfort with the futility of ever ending the search, and just embrace it with the smallest (but necessary) hint of a wink offstage. Knowing they can only search, they keep their eyes and ears open. Every person or piece of information can be essential, or meaningless, or both. A conversation between two such individuals has the tone of two career treasure-hunters, chatting about past experiences and sharing a laugh, always sifting through each word for a clue, a hint, a secret that neither can be sure exists, but is worth being sought anyway, must be sought regardless! A wink, a laugh, a knowing look; these moments rarely take place without deep ripples over the surface of all that follows.calebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15385366765861509339noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6290669098455554730.post-85098144582629309942010-09-21T14:17:00.000-07:002010-09-21T14:19:05.168-07:00A Blue I Never Knew8-IX Kendwa Rocks, Zanzibar
Zanzibar is now little more than the echo of all its name evokes, and apart from the “real African” interior of ubiquitous red dust roads and crumbling villages it exists as a long string of beach resorts walled off from the “Africa” outside, complete with barbwired gates and beefy security guards to ensure that “the outsiders inside” are not disturbed by anything close to reality. Still, sitting in the middle of a perfect tropical paradise, surrounded by honeymooners and flirtatious singles, and especially carefully whispering under your breath the syllables “Zan-za-bar, Zan-za-bar” over and over, can hardly fail to produce something like nostalgia for something too distant to know, and in the writer it time and again brings to the cold blue surface the type of shameless dribble that follows:
Straight from my notebook: A Blue I Never Knew
On Snow-white sands of Zanzibar, a ruby sun slips off the edge of the world, behind gulls and palms and canvas sails; and all is drifting, drifting, drifting away, as I miss you. Heaven’s a mirage without you here to see it, warm sand through my toes all unreal without your hand in mine. I don’t know who you are, or where, or when our eyes will meet, but I love you, I need you, I want you here with me, in Zanzibar.calebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15385366765861509339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6290669098455554730.post-34914784068603078402010-09-02T16:14:00.000-07:002010-09-02T16:16:57.794-07:00Strraight From My Notebook27-VIII Lake Naivasha
“There are few feelings like crouching in the grass on a wide landscape, creeping closer to a grazing Antelope, trying to ignore the distant roaring of the bathing Hippos, when suddenly you catch a glimpse of sharp black and white stripes gliding silently by you, almost close enough to touch; the feeling of being part of it all again, of belonging to a wilder realer world, feeling a little closer to home.”
28-VIII Hell's Gate
“The sounds of the wild drift in on the breeze. The snorting Boar, the rutting Antelope, strange trillings and the snap of a twig as the Zebra pass. Looking out over an ancient gorge full of ghosts of Maasai Warriors and far-from-home Explorers, as stars wink and storms brush over the roof of Creation, and there’s no one else in all the world, a world that has never known loneliness. This is Africa.”
29-VIII Kenya-Tanzania Border
"I’m now on a very bumpy dusty bus from Nairobi to Arusha, jumping and rattling down a red dirt road under the equatorial sun, passing cloud-crowned mountains leaping up from the red Serengeti plains, an occasional hut crowded with goats and color-clad women at a well peek through the thorny umbrella trees and disappear, and sometimes, if you watch carefully, a red-checkered figure almost as tall and thin as his spear treads his slow way over an ancient Maasai hunting path; lives and ages glimmer into sight, then vanish like frightened antelope into the dust and bush."calebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15385366765861509339noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6290669098455554730.post-63834052593372837552010-09-02T16:12:00.001-07:002010-09-02T16:12:46.653-07:00Straight From My Notebook...<meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><meta name="Originator" 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font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">16-VIII<span style=""> </span>Mombasa<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style=""> </span>First impressions of Africa?<span style=""> </span>Looking out the plane window past the runway to warm red hills fading into the morning, a richness in the air, not hot or humid even, just full; full of something else… another world, again, and this one stirred excitement in my chest, like a kind-eyed stranger it wiped away my love-tears and with a wordless wave revealed all the beauty and hope around me.<span style=""> </span>The first words?<span style=""> </span>Not even through the gate, the grinning WC cleaner exclaims “Welcome to Kenya!” with a smile to rival Christmas morning.<span style=""> </span>A subtle request for change?<span style=""> </span>Perhaps, but warm nonetheless.<span style=""> </span>No haggling with the taxi driver, no commission scams in sight.<span style=""> </span>When I finally ask for guest house recommendations he just points out the cheapest and lets me be.<span style=""> </span>Such a friendly guy helps me find my guesthouse, and after initial reservations from the reception my US passport provokes jokes about Obama and “you must take me to America!<span style=""> </span>Problem?<span style=""> </span>You married?”<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style=""> </span>Rest of the day spent sleeping, thinking of what I’ve left behind, walking the streets and enjoying not getting stared at… when people do look here it’s discrete, with a curiosity and creativity that is… human.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style=""> </span>Of course this is Mombasa, the most touristy place that is not Nairobi, but it could not give a better first impression of Kenya.<span style=""> </span>I’m still very pleased Honza is coming, and very curious about this hospital project; I would be quite aimless alone!<span style=""> </span>This first month should be a blast! <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> calebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15385366765861509339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6290669098455554730.post-11215088441798264292010-09-02T15:51:00.000-07:002010-09-02T15:54:38.304-07:00Three Things<div>The first page of my book? Probably not, but it's a start..
I've spent my life searching. It hasn't been a simple search, stubbornly focused on one thing and one thing only. For some years, during my brightest or darkest moments, I strained every muscle to see up past the stars or to peer down at the far boundaries of my soul. I've sought answers of all kinds, hunted meaning and hope and love, and have caught myself countless times chasing after fame, money, success, pleasure, and all those passing things we so dearly want to believe have value. </div> <div> We all pass our days seeking things high and low, like some collective secret hobby. But in the step by step of life, I think we're all hoping and yearning for the Path to lead us through three things: the right place, the right profession, and the right person. Few of us find all three, at least not at the same time, but without at least one fewer still are strong enough to be content anyway, or lazy enough to be indifferent.</div> This is the story of my dance with these three treasures, my personal jewels that only I can light up and that only have light for me. For years I tried to ignore them, wanting to live for something "higher." I really believed I could substitute beauty for belonging, means for meaning, or freedom for love, at least for a time. But as my search drove me on, through strange lands and stranger people, my road kept curving under my feet, leading me back to what I might never find but couldn't live without, leading me home. This is the story of how I slowly, in the hardest way possible, found out what really matters in life, and tried to let go of everything else.calebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15385366765861509339noreply@blogger.com2