Drinking the Cup

bus rides, street food, and a thousand paper cranes.

2011-03-06T22:12:00.001-08:00

our time in phnom penh came to a close, and with one last scrumptious breakfast at java, a cafe that caters to ex-pats and serves up absolutely delectable food while doubling as an art gallery, we headed off to the bus station to find the chariot that would whisk us away northwest. after fighting the mad dash to get on the bus, we snuggled down for the five or six hour ride.

arriving in battambang, i was struck by the relative clean and quiet of this fast-growing city, compared to the smog-laden haze of phnom penh. the paved main road wound through sleepy neighborhoods, the residents understandably hiding inside from the heat of the day, before depositing us, dusty and travel-worn, at the jesuit center. a seeming oasis of closely-clustered buildings peeking out from behind grand, green trees organized along a central, dirt road - i breathed deeply for what felt to be the first time in a long time.

being sunday afternoon, we had time to wander. meg gave me the grand tour of the various buildings, describing their individual purpose, creating in my mind a complex infrastructure of community services offered to everyone but especially targeted at the marginalized - children victims of polio or land mines, the elderly, and women. i marveled at the scope and breadth of work as well as the pervading sense of calm, peace, community. i can see how people come to visit and end up staying...

and here i am, sitting in the office meg shares with her staff at the women's health program. taking a break from chopping large, shiny sheets of what seems to be wrapping paper into squares small enough for origami folding. tomorrow is international women's day, and there will be a grand event here at the center. an estimated 200 women are converging from surrounding communities and villages to celebrate being a woman, standing for women's rights, and protecting women's health. we will share the task tomorrow of folding the individual birds, and i feel so blessed to be able to throw my wishes in with these wonderful women.

motos, tuk-tuks, and passionfruit rum

2011-03-04T17:53:00.000-08:00

i'm in cambodia!

after a long, but relatively uneventful flight, i have safely arrived in phnom penh, cambodia, and into the open arms of my dear friend, meg. since she picked me up, we have been galavanting around the city, although the word galavanting might belie the relatively slow pace at which the excessive heat and humidity force us to move.

the afternoon after i arrived, we unceremoniously dumped my things at our guesthouse before heading off to a japanese salon where meg had made appointments to get our hairs cut. such a surreal experience - sitting in this ultra-polished, quiet salon, faced with my japanese hair dresser and her khmer translator. everything i said, filtered through this girl and then filtered back. the constant hovering presence of the assistants was certainly unnerving, but probably not a better introduction to cambodian customer service. although, meg assures me that invariably, when you actually need someone, there is no one to be found!

newly coiffed, we stepped back into the city streets, grabbed a moto, and headed off to the riverfront and grabbed a couple of fruit shakes. after a dinner of indian food (i'm in cambodia, i know, but meg assures me all i'll be able to eat in battambang is khmer food, so we're expanding out horizons while here), we headed off to the apartment of her friend for a little get together. seeing a bit of meg's life here is such a wonderful gift.

yesterday was more focused on sight-seeing. we started off in the big market, where i bought some wonderful fabric, and then we scooted over to a cafe near the tuol sleng genocide museum where we relaxed under the bougainvillea. after i felt a little less faint from the overwhelming heat, we entered tuol sleng, what used to be a primary school that under the khmer rouge (or democratic kampuchea, as it called itself), was turned into a prison, torture center, and site of execution for political prisoners. of the 20,000 people on record for staying there over the 3 years or so it was in use, only 7 survived. a place of horrific human brutality, definitely worth seeing, but so, so difficult at the same time. the energy itself in that place was so oppressive, so deeply saddening...

we capped the day off with a tour of some of the riverside bars, tasting an insanely delicious passionfruit rum made locally. the the sun tucked away for the day and the cool tendrils of the riverside breeze, it was an absolutely gorgeous way to end the day.

this is LA

2010-10-04T13:01:00.000-07:00

yesterday, i had one of the most bizarrely wonderful experiences with the city of LA. after sharing lunch in culver city park with my date, we headed over to the museum of jurassic technology on venice blvd. i hesitate to even write about this because it was several hours of indescribable wonder, disbelief, and fascination that i know i will ultimately fail to communicate with due justice. still, such a place deserves a nod, for sure.

opened in 1988, this is a museum dedicated to the rare, the improbable, and the curiously unbelievable. the introductory slide show indicates that the museum was opened with the intention of carrying on the great tradition of the saints' relics held in the great cathedrals and jacket pockets of itinerant street peddlers.

the items on exhibit ranged from an apricot seed with a tableau supposedly carved into it (i never could make out the figures), a series of memorial portraits commemorating the deceased dogs of the Soviet space program, a display of the logic alphabet, interactive media recounting the history of cat's cradle, and a significant portion on two individuals, Madalena Daley, a Romanian opera singer who suffered from short term memory loss, and Professor Sonnabend, a son of a German bridge-builder, whose groundbreaking research on experience, memory, and the act of forgetting was unknowingly influenced by Ms. Daley as they both spent a sleepless night at Iguazu Falls in Argentina. so, so, so bizarre.

when we finally dragged ourselves away, we decided to detox with a cup of tea and some art at Royal T, a tokyo-style cafe and art gallery nearby. only that as we drove up to the place, a gaggle of korean girls decked out in full make-up and traditional han-boks were streaming out the door. taking that in stride, we entered to the scene of approximately eleven young ladies dressed in black polyester french maid costumes with platform heels practicing what seemed to be a hip-hope routine. inside the cafe.

dumbfounded, confused beyond belief, and loving every minute of it, i ordered by yuzu sencha green tea and spent a moment realizing that this is LA.

reflections on a welcome conundrum

2010-07-27T21:27:00.000-07:00

i'm back in LA after yet another wonderful visit with my sister, my brother-in-law, and my darling baby niece. i can't believe i haven't written about the little bundle of joy (literally!) that stumbled into my life almost four months ago exactly...

writer's block: the hum of the electrical lines outside my bedroom window coupled with the steady whir of freeway traffic and the smell of incense wafting from the stick i put up a few minutes ago lull my over-tired body and mind to a state of numb as i conjure images of the family i have so recently left behind once again. my sister's face. my brother-in-law's laugh. my grandmother's accented speech. my mother's gentle hands. my father's bear hugs. and the topic of my post, my adorable, so-elusively-beautiful-beyond-description niece.

how do i conjure for you the feeling of my niece's two perfectly round hemispheres of cheeks cupped in each of my palms? what words adequately communicate the mildly repulsive yet alluring scent of soured milk that swathes her by the end of the day? can you imagine the utter bliss of burying your face into the unadulterated neck of a baby? especially one filling the air with a joy-filled cacophony of coos and shrieks. or who wants to take a stab at conveying the feeling of absolute empowerment when one's clownish antics and ridiculously huge grin are rewarded with a whole-body smile?

spending time with her, love is so blatantly obvious, so banally natural. i don't think i ever stood a chance against those large, blue eyes or that tiny fist when both first clapped hold of me almost three months ago. and suddenly, the dreams of traveling widely or living abroad that i have kept alive by spoon-feeding them adventure travel novels and late-night web searches, wane pale when placed in competition with the chunky monkey i call my niece.

aside from all the overly-dramatic inner turmoil of dreams torn assunder, the simple reality is that, for the time being, happiness means looking at her photos, recalling the sound of her laugh, and ticking off one by one the days until i see her again.

sacred spaces

2010-07-06T09:24:00.000-07:00

saturday i left work exhausted. sunday i left work frustrated. yesterday i left work in love.

with my job. with life. with the darling (new) family i had cared for that day. mom is french. dad is from argentina. they met in switzerland while getting their phDs. they have a new baby girl. and they are in love. with each other. with her. how do you describe the feeling you get while watching a new mother watch her baby? how lucky am i to be welcomed into such a sacred moment and space?

piquillo peppers and kiwi blokes

2010-06-27T12:14:00.000-07:00

all this past week i have been contemplating an conundrum. invited to a dinner party and told i could bring an appetizer, i struggled over what to bring. requisites: tasty, vegetarian, exciting, and easy to make ahead/transport. i thought about pita chips and hummus, but alas i have no food processor and felt that since i had the whole day (minus the hours spent watching the terribly disappointing defeat of the us world cup team), i could probably do better than the buy-and-serve route.

i thought about little tartlets, a new dish that would challenge my culinary skills, but everything used puff pastry, which - while delicious - kind of defeated the health kick i was aiming at. sushi, summer rolls, salads - none of the multitude of recipes i skimmed through seemed to meet all of my criteria. then i found a recipe for stuffed piquillo peppers. aha! at last something that might actually work.

piquillo is spanish for "bird's beak," and these deep red peppers have a little pinched end that gives them their name. the great thing is that you can generally only get them roasted and jarred, which is exactly how you want them for this recipe. and really it couldn't be simpler.

warm some goat cheese to room temperature. while that's warming up, drain and pat dry the piquillo peppers, checking the insides for any remaining seeds. then, scoop a teaspoonful or so of the cheese and gently stuff the peppers. plate and serve. i found it helpful to sometimes tear a vertical slice the side of the larger peppers and then wrap the edges around the cheese, securing with a toothpick, since stuffing them full of cheese would have entirely used up my little goat cheese log! you can either serve these cold or warm, broiling them in the oven for a few minutes with a little olive oil drizzled on top.

in the end, this is such a versatile recipe! the peppers have a slightly smoky flavor from being roasted, and the goat cheese can be mixed with a variety of flavors. my goat cheese was infused with honey, but you could easily use other flavors like fresh cilantro, cumin, or roasted garlic. yum!

and what a lovely evening it was, as well. hosted in honor of four kiwi blokes who are headed south on motor bikes with a goal of reaching cape horn at the tip of south america, the conversation was lively, the company lovely, and the food excellent. how lovely it would be to leave work and go on such a grand adventure! i wish them all the best, and plan on following them on their website/blog. Check it out!

the making of apricot jam

2010-06-10T10:55:00.000-07:00

last night, per a conversation with a friend, i was reinvigorated to get back into my blog. going forward, i want to expand on my normal philosophically-based musings and include more stories from work, things i'm learning, and recipes that i'm eating. there are so many wonderful things in life, and i think having a dedicated space to record them can only help me realize and appreciate them in a whole new way.

so, on that note, a new outlook, a new format, and a new topic for today: kitchen conquests.

yesterday, i was over at josselyn's house and a long-awaited dream came to pass. we made apricot jam.

now, while this may seem relatively inconsequential, the six little jars we got out of the process were the realization of a dream i've had for almost three years, ever since tasting amazing apricot jam while visiting lisbee and her family at their cabin in eastern washington. apricots are one of those strikingly seasonal fruits, so fragile, and yet so absolutely good when ripe and ready to eat. to be able to capture that burst of summer in a jar seemed like an appropriate challenge for a wednesday afternoon, and so we set upon our quest.

first, the perfect recipe. there are many variations, as one might imagine. all include apricots, of course, but there the similarity ended - how much sugar? what about adding extra ingredients like apricot kernels or lemon juice? and don't get me started on the raging pectin debate. after much searching, one recipe stood out from amongst the rest. first it comes from an 80-something-year-old in france. france - it has to be good, right? plus there was an additional philosophy behind this recipe, the author explained: do as little as possible to the fruit. i love that, and the simplicity of the recipe was striking:

3 pounds (1-1/2 kg) apricots, pitted and quartered
3 cups (600g) granulated sugar

1. Place the apricots and the sugar in a non-reactive pan or bowl, stir, cover and let macerate for at least 12 hours.

2. Transfer the fruit and sugar to a large, heavy saucepan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce the heat so the mixture is boiling merrily and cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat and ladle the jam into sterilized canning jars, leaving 1/4-inch headroom. Seal according to the jar manufacturer's instructions.

Yields about 10 cups (2-½ liters) [SIDE NOTE: we only got 6 cups from this recipe]

From: On Rue Tatin, Cooking School in France with Susan Herrmann Loomis

the apricots were sliced and macerating (isn't that a great word?) by 10pm on tuesday night, and by morning the kitchen was filled with a slight apricot-y scent, at which time i realized i probably should have refrigerated the covered bowl overnight. sliding it into the bottom shelf of the fridge a bit late, perhaps, i set off on my bike to yoga. all in all, i think they had macerated (!) for probably seventeen hours by the time we used them that afternoon.

after procuring the half-pint jars (side note: apparently no grocery stores in los angeles carry canning jars any longer. i visited three different ones where sales clerks of various ages looked at me in puzzlement and told me they haven't carried canning jars in years. "who does that any more?" was one particularly special comment...the crisis was averted by a charming little hardware store near josselyn's house), we cleaned them and began heating them in a large pot on the stove.

then we made the jam.

i can't describe how wonderfully alchemistic (is that a word?) it is to make something like jam. into the pot went huge chunks of apricots and a really sugary syrup. after 10 minutes of a gentle boil, out came thick, tart, bright apricot jam. oh. my. goodness. this stuff is good. (a note on cooking the jam: we probably left it on higher heat longer than necessary, noted by the excessive amount of foam that kept threatening to spill over the edge of our pot. once it comes to a rolling boil, i'm pretty sure you can turn the heat down and keep it bubbling/thickening but not producing as much foam. as it thickens, the foam will die down as well. and really 10 minutes, while a seemingly short amount of time, is perfect)

pulling the jars out of the hot water, we ladled the jam into each one. a jelly funnel would be ideal, but we used a rolled up silpat (silicone baking mat) which worked perfectly. if you have those flexible cutting mats, i bet that would work, too. on went the lid and the ring (which had been cleaned and sitting in hot-but-not-boiling water).

now, we flipped our jars over while they cooled because that's how my dad does it at home, but i could never find the rationale for this online. maybe flipping the jars over keeps the heat closer to the lid and facilitates a better seal? whatever the reason, after the jars had cooled to a safe handling temperature, we flipped them back right-side up to be rewarded by the merry little pings of our jars sealing themselves shut.

supposedly a properly sealed jar can last two years in a dry, cool pantry. i'm thinking it will be gone long before then...

especially if i keep having breakfast like this morning - fresh blueberry scone (a future post, for sure) with apricot jam and a apple-berry yogurt parfait.

you should come over for breakfast.

it's the little things

2010-03-14T20:29:00.000-07:00

typically, when you talk to a nurse about pee, he or she will automatically think about how 12 hour shifts and busy schedules and multiple patients with equally multiple and diverse needs often keep you from being able to pee. sometimes the few moments of peace and quiet in the restroom are ones that i relish, especially on the busiest of days. today, however, i started to think about pee in a different way.

for almost all of our postpartum moms, going to the bathroom is a little bit of a production. what with the pain of a possible abdominal incision or an extremely sore bottom that just let a baby pass through, whether its getting out of bed or sitting down on the toilet, it's never very easy. today i had a patient for whom it was virtually impossible. i got her as she was gearing up for her fourth attempt to pee independently. three times the foley catheter had been placed in her bladder, and three times it had been taken out followed by six torturous hours waiting, feeling the need to go but completely unable to do so.

and so it was a day of back and forth - watching and waiting, expectantly anticipating the most mundane of things, and celebrating the smallest of achievements. at the end of the day, i'm exhausted but so very thankful. i don't often think to name my own bodily functions among my list of blessings, and yet what a lovely gift for which to be truly thankful.

match up: RBC vs. dotting i's and crossing t's

2010-01-26T08:37:00.000-08:00

i'm seven weeks into my new job, and i'm already amazed at how different each day of work is now, as compared to those first few weeks on my unit, wondering what the heck i was doing masquerading as an actual nurse. now my days have routines and i can stay more or less organized despite discharging two patients by eleven am and admitting another. charting is still, more than anything else, the bane of my existence. More than confidence in direct patient care, the electronic charting system somehow manages to trip me up more than anything else. i forget to chart a med or the urinary output of my postoperative patient or the feedings and diapers of one of my babies. sometimes i've recorded it in one place but forgot the other two places where you have to document the same information. more than anything else i forget to document my teaching.

in my nursing orientation class for all new employees be they new grads or experienced nurses, the instructor addressed us newly graduated nurses and said something along the lines of - our focus here at the hospital is to provide relationship-based care. we know you will be more task-oriented at first, but we look forward to when you can step away from the tasks and really focus on your relationships with your patients. my personal experience, on the other hand, is that what i do better than anything else is seek to build relationships with my patients. sometimes to the fault of my hospital-required "tasks." vital signs must be taken every 4 or 8 hours, depending on the patient's status. but what about that time my patient was in the neonatal intensive care unit, squeezing in every possible minute with her baby who has taken a surprising turn for the worse? or what about when, as i'm on my way to administered a timed antibiotic to one patient, i stop in one of my other patient's rooms, only to find her in tears about these new and unexpected stresses of motherhood? how do i advocate for my teenage patient, who has no real home to go to and a history of abuse in her relationship with the baby's father but loves her child to pieces and desperately wants to keep her, while still accomplishing the necessary steps of involving social work and the department of child and family services?

these are my new, daily quandries. i still puzzle over how quickly to push an IV med i've never given before and how to interpret certain lab values, but as these things - relatively black and white - become more familiar and more clear, it's the deeper shades of gray that continue to challenge me in my nursing practice. technically i'm on probation until the end of may at which time my performance will be reviewed and my employment extended or terminated, i guess. kind of an eerie feeling of big brother, or this case, big sister watching over you. i know my charting is being reviewed regularly, and i find it interesting that despite all of the emphasis on patient satisfaction and relationship-based care that ultimately, what i'm being graded on in large part are the tasks.

one last note: because hooking my computer into the internet isn't the easiest thing at my apartment, i've been writing more in my journal than online, but i hope to break that habit a bit and make more of an effort to share with you here more of my stories both from inside the hospital and from the outside as they unfold.

Finding Emmanuel

2009-12-20T09:44:00.000-08:00

So last night was my first real night out in LA since I moved. I've been to happy hour once with my roommate and her friends and then out for dinner for my roommate's birthday, but definitely the first out-to-a-bar-solely-for-drinks-and-socialness since the big move and the start of my job. My coworker Lauren and I headed down to Manhattan Beach to meet up with a few people I had met at a holiday party last weekend.

As we were driving down from the hospital (oh yes, we worked a 12 that day) to the south bay area, everything seemed perfectly natural. And yet, as I was sitting there sipping my fat tire, looking across the table at Lauren and next to me at Josh, our local guide to the dive bars of Manhattan Beach and my connect person from the weekend before who had graciously invited us out, I couldn't help but feel a little...whelmed by the situation. I say "whelmed" because I wasn't overwhelmed - struck down by the situation or paralyzed by any particular emotion - but definitely impacted.

Huh, I thought. I guess this is what the social part of life looks like now. And it's not a negative or really even a positive statement. It just is. For all intents and purposes, I pretty much avoided the college drinking/social scene until my senior year.

You see, I'm a collector of good conversations. I love stories. Human connections are what keeps me going from day to day. It's part of why I love being a nurse. I love hearing about my patients, their lives, their hopes and fears. I'm not opposed to alcohol. I love a good beer or a great glass of wine and i'll never turn down champagne, but while bars are great places to chill out, have a few laughs, and generally unwind, I crave the intimacy of a few close friends over for dinner.

Perhaps what I'm really trying to say is that I'm getting tired of small talk. When you're always the new person, when you're constantly meeting people and not meeting up with people, the same information - the interesting facts and important details - get recycled over and over like stale air in a plane. And when everything stays on a surface level, there's a heartbeat of intensity that is missing, leaving me feeling slightly dried out and those human connections - such a force of life - slightly dead.

From my childhood, from my years in college and my summers in various places, I should understand by now that community-building takes time. In fact, the larger the group, the longer it takes. The five or six of us volunteering in Sierra Leone fell into community quickly - the intensity of our experiences as well as the shared life and ample free time when we were restricted to our house easily facilitated strong bonds of friendship. In a city like LA, where you many only see any given person once a week at most, community is harder to construct. It feels rather like trying to cling to a handful of sand in the shallows of a beach while the tide whips in and out around you, prying the small grains from between your fingers. Let up at all, and everything's gone in an instant.

It seems a bit dramatic to throw in a line like "it's times like these that define our lives," but I can't help but feel the little bit of a challenge, the push to hold on tighter despite the pull of the sea - these tides of work, material culture, comfort. How much do I really care about community, deep and enriching? How long and how hard am I willing to fight for it? How far am I willing to go for it? How much traffic will I wait in to get to it?

Good questions all, and as I sit here on my couch, meditating on Sufjan Stevens' christmas albums, I ultimately find a core of inner peace, a center of perfect community that is forever closer than my breath and stronger to hold me together than fingers made of steel. Emmanuel, God with us.

coming to christmas

2009-12-12T15:36:00.000-08:00

it's a rainy day in the city of angels. after a week of work (more about that later), i was all ready for a day off. plans for an afternoon in the park, maybe an outdoor cup of coffee or stroll on the beach. and now rain. it's funny how quickly i've adjusted to the general sunniness of southern california. i didn't even look out my window this morning and was absolutely shocked when i stepped out of my apartment to find wet. very, very wet.

but as it turned out, a rainy day was exactly what i needed. after a walk to trader joe's which left me thoroughly wet, i warmed up with hot tea and a warm oven, baking up a batch of christmas cookies - ginger oatmeal with fresh cranberries. yum. let's just say my apartment smells heavenly right about now. with over the rhine's snow angel record playing on permanent repeat, i feel a little closer to christmas, despite the distance from anything i am used to around the holidays. when i was away from home in boston, it was still easy to get into the holiday spirit with snow on the ground and huge decorations in store windows downtown. not to mention enough garland and holly on the campus buildings to dress a whole neighborhood. but here, it's been a bit different. very few homes are decorated, very few christmas trees make their way into shop windows. at work, we have one lone, artificial tree at the end of the hallway.

work, by the way, is going well. really well, actually. i am consistently floored by the warmth, encouragement, and support i have received as a new employee and a newly graduated nurse from the other staff members. my patients have all been lovely - all with their own quirks, of course. i find more than anything else, though, that the authority, decisiveness, and responsibility of the nurse that at first was so overwhelming and seemingly far off is becoming more and more a part of who i am at work, and i'm enjoying this new role quite a bit.

other things are coming slowly, a church community, a few choice hang-out spots. i am still exploring, and in a city like LA, there's quite a lot of exploring to do. :)

in case i don't happen to write again before the holidays, merry christmas! i really love this time of year, and while it might look a bit different this year, i still believe there is plenty of light, love, and laughter to be had and shared. many holiday blessings for your christmas and new year - i've got some twinkle lights to hang!

thanks.

2009-11-22T19:28:00.000-08:00

tomorrow will mark one week in la-la land (as my mother calls it). i’d like to say that i have fit into this city like a hand into a glove, but that would be glossing everything over a little too much. actually, when you think about it, i’ve never had a pair of gloves that really fit all that well, so maybe that cliché is relatively close to the truth. because, you see, the reality is that there are many things i love – my apartment is in a great neighborhood, i can walk to trader joe’s, my roommate and her friends have been more than welcoming, and my job promises to be everything i could hope for and more. but there are also a lot of things that take getting used to. some things, like the way of driving and general direction-sense, i will have to adjust to. other things, like the ever-present emphasis on image and external appearances, i feel creeping in to my train of thought and will have to work extra hard to stay comfortably un-l.a.

as we near thanksgiving, i am absolutely floored with gratitude. my job, my apartment, a roommate who is pleasant and helpful, parents who take off two weeks of work to come with me, who have provided so indescribably much for me in not only the past few days and months, but in my whole lifetime as well.

i’m always a little uncomfortable with the idea of thinking of those “less fortunate” in order to bolster your attitude of gratitude. it feels like i'm taking advantage of those who are caught under systems of oppression, recognizing their need but then sitting back and saying something along the lines of “thank thee, o god, that i am not like other men.” if i’m not mistaken that jewish priest wasn’t exactly the hero of that particular parable. i suppose, then, that true thanksgiving should lead us to recognize that what we have is actually a gift – one that wasn’t necessarily meant to stay in our sole possession. if everything we have is god’s, then everything we have – down to our time, energy, and ideas – really belong to everyone around us, god’s children.

of course, this quickly gets more complicated, especially in a city like l.a. where the homeless population is significant and omnipresent. extend that out to those individuals who make conscious choices to do drugs, abstain from psychiatric medications, willfully commit crimes. are they god’s children, too? there’s a fear that if i open my arms too wide, i’ll lose myself in the process. but isn’t that exactly what christ did?

after all, what's box unpacking and picture hanging without a healthy dose of soul-challenging theology. :)

what we do with them

2009-11-03T19:29:00.001-08:00

jet lag isn't completely gone. but each day is filled with its little victories - this morning i woke up at 6:30 am. definitely a bit improvement on the 5:15 am-on-the-dot wake up i've been living with for the past few days. i'm still tired earlier than normal, but my days have been steady enough to also play a part in my exhaustion.

i'm moving to california. i imagine this doesn't come as a shock to anybody in particular, and i of all people should know this. but i think perhaps there are many layers of realization and many levels of knowledge. mentally, i've been organizing this whole cross-country shenanigan since i graduated in may. first it was to be a month early and now, finally, four months later, it's really happening. plans, details, little bits and pieces of information flow freely from my mouth with an ease and confidence that don't betray the moments of sheer panic that periodically stab through my heart.

you see, it's not just that i'm moving to california. i moved to boston four years ago to attend bc, and i've moved for summers to various locations around the country and the world. my whole life has been a grand sequence of moves. it's what this particular move means. it means my bed comes with me, and my room for the last six years that was always my haven, my sure sign that i was home from the stresses of school, will change. it means i live somewhere else and come home to visit my parents, not the other way around. it means i have responsibility, a job with expectations of me, an apartment, an income, a budget.

in those moments of breathless terror, it's much easier to hunker down and simply wait for the feeling to pass - much easier than looking up and seeing the harsh and gaunt realities we lump together under the ambiguous name of "life." loneliness, isolation, frustration, embarrassment, steep learning curves, and awkward moments stand before me. the cousins of transition, they try to hide among their brighter and more exciting siblings - exhilaration, discovery, adventure, surprise - yet their negative energy casts a pall over everything creating an atmosphere of dread, worry, and concern.

they say misery loves company, and i'm hoping that will prove to be true. if i square my shoulders, stare these clinging fears in the face and consciously choose against them, do you think they might just leave in order to find someone else who might join their un-merry band? one thing i think i've sorted out about life (from what i've known of it so far) is that they never stray too far. i used to think there was one perfect serendipity, one ultimate destination for each person where these morose fellows were banned once and for all by the infinite positivity born out of total fulfillment. well, when put in those terms, i guess that would be my best working definition of heaven...

but for now, for this life and this earth and this set of broken people, i imagine life sort of like one of the last scenes from a beautiful mind. In answer to a question as to whether or not his psychotic hallucinations persist despite the many years since his diagnosis and multiple forms of treatment, john nash, played by russell crowe, answers that they are always there, he has simply learned to ignore them. meanwhile behind him, you see the man and child - his consistent hallucinations - standing. silent. these feelings of overwhelming despair are with us every day, in the ebb and flow of emotions that float beneath the surface of our seemingly rational minds. they, like nash's illusory friends, will always be there. it's about what we chose to do with them.

there and back again, a traveling story

2009-10-26T23:39:00.000-07:00

i'm back in oegstgeest once again. crazy to think that the in-between has held nijmegen, frankfurt, prague, brussels, aalst, ghent, brugges, and antwerp. but, the beauty of it all is that nothing has felt rushed or contrived, and it has been a joy to discover once again the natural rhythm that traveling is for me. the dynamic of arriving, discovery, and learning that manifests itself in the exponential growth in familiarity with the city streets, transportation, language, and people.

in brussels, oom ad, tante mareijke, oma, and myself met up in one of the central parking garages before filling our afternoon with the royal museum of art, the grote markt, and mannekin pis with a healthy dose of walking around and picture-taking sprinkled in. then it was off to our hotel in aalst, about a half hour drive away. we were treated to an elaborate dinner in the hotel restaurant as a part of our booking package, and while i enjoyed it, the late hour left much to be desired. one thing i really haven't adjusted to is the generally late hour of eating here in holland, and europe as a whole. five on the dot goverened so much of my life while on board ship, and while i recognize that's a bit too early, eating your main course at nine is just a bit too late. :)

still, we all survived (obviously), and were up and ready to take on brugges the next day. and take it on we did. parking near the center once again, we roamed through the streets despite the misty rain and managed to squeeze in the grote markt (there seems to be one in every belgian city), the belfry, nearly every chocolate or lace shop, the stadshuis, and the beguinage, which i learned is a place for elder, unmarried women to live in community in a consecrated life something like a step lower than full consecration as a nun. good to see there's hope for community living at every age :)

the next day was ghent and while the weather was much lovelier, the day itself seemed to drag on. maybe it was another heavy meal the evening before or the late hour of sleep, but i started the day somewhere hanging narrowly above exhausted. that plus the fact that over 70% of the historic city is covered in tarpaulins and under restoration kind of marred the fairytale like atmosphere the city normally has. still, we had a fine time walking about and spent quite a lot of time admiring the polyptych by hubert and jan van eyck that sits in st. bavo's church on the (surprise, surprise) grote markt.

the last morning, we parted ways at the hotel and birgit, merlijn, oma, and myself headed back to oegstgeest via a short stop in antwerp while oom ad and tante mareijke spent some time in aalst and also stopped over in leeuwen on their way back to nijmegen.

all in all, plenty of coffee drunk and cobblestones walked and history learned to satisfy even the hardest of history buffs, and for me it was quite, quite satisfactory. back in oegstgeest, though, i'm already missing oom ad's precise english and slow rhythm of speech that easily marks him for a teacher.

back in oegstgeest, we have a few more items on the agenda including a trip today in the car with birgit and merlijn as well as some last minute shopping for the essential dutch food groups: cheese and stroopwafels. tomorrow is oma's birthday and we will have a small get-together here at birgit's house for some of oma's friends and family before going out to dinner with the boys as a happy birthday/tot ziens treat. then thursday morning early will find oma and myself in schiphol, boarding a plane for the us-of-a.

definitely enough left to be done and experienced, but my traveling eyes are turning homeward once again...

dutch

2009-10-22T12:24:00.000-07:00

kind of crazy to be blogging twice in one day, but seeing that i will definitely be away from the computer while we're in belgium, i figured i could load all of you family and friends up with an extra comment or two on my adventures thus far.

today - just to give a quick update - oom ad and tante mareijke returned from their friend's party around noon, and we hopped in the car around one, headed toward appeldorn (obviously something to do with apples at one point in history or another). there we met up with andor, monique, and their two children ivo and annika for some honest-to-goodness dutch pannekoeken. some people eat pannekoeken and say they are just like french crepes. it is the closest thing one might compare them to, but for the dutch it's a dish all its own (mine, if you're curious, was kaas, tomaaten, en ui and i'm still full full nearly six hours later).

which brings me to the theme of this particular entry: dutch.

every evening, around nine pm or so, i am absolutely exhausted. as i reflect on my days, there's no stupendous expenditure of energy that would warrant such tiredness, and a comment from marte, on our trip, made it all so clear to me. she asked if being around dutch all the time made me tired, and suddenly, i realized it did!

i find myself in a very unique situation. commonly, as most dutch people speak english, an english-speaker making painful attempts at dutch is quickly rescued by the gracious conversation partner(s), and english becomes the language of choice. it is not uncommon for expats to live years within the country and never learn a word of dutch beyond the basics of ''hello,'' ''goodbye,'' and ''thank you.'' i, on the other hand, find myself surrounded by family that have somehow come under the impression that i speak dutch. interesting. before leaving, oma swore up and down that it would be only english and that she herself would personally intervene in any and every conversation necessary to be sure that i was included. i'm not sure what is more surprising, her promise or that i believed her.

but, of course, that's not practical in the least, especially with shakier english-speakers like tante mareijke. so? so i have been spending a very quiet trip. :)

a friend once dared me that i could not be silent for ten minutes straight, and while that was many, many years ago, and i have since come to value the merits of quiet observation, these past weeks have taken it to a whole new level. i find myself appreciating, once again, the powerful communication inherent to body language, tone of voice, facial expressions, and gesticulations. also, i am amazed at the incredible language-learning potential in complete immersion. with dutch swirling around me almost constantly, i find myself noticing sentence patterns and commonly used words that then become intuitively understood by mere repetition.

like the word maar which is the conjunction ''but.'' from hearing time and time again that drawing out of the word and emphasis unique to the introduction of a contradiction in the voices of birgit and oma in the first days here, i taught it to myself (and confirmed it later on, of course). now oma and i have a pattern - i listen throughout the day and then mentally hold onto a few words i think i have figured out or some that completely mystify me and we go over them in the evening. as i write them all down in my moleskin journal, i realize how much my vocabulary has grown.

five year old annika still has me beat (she can count all the way to thirty!), but slowly but surely i'm getting a little closer every day. and here is the pinch - in view of my mental energy, i'm quite looking forward to englespraten but in light of the progress i've made in just a few weeks, i'm already missing those words i might have learned in the months to come. misschien een dag...

more on prague

2009-10-22T01:40:00.000-07:00

oom ad and tante mareijke are off to a small birthday party for a friend in their athletic club, and oma is comfortably sorting through clothes for belgium with all of her hairs neatly dried and combed into place. here in the little garret office that has become my home, i have a few minutes to myself for some further writing on prague, as promised.

first, our host kate. always ready for a laugh and a huge conversationalist, both marte and myself felt right at home the moment we walked up to the looming mass of grey concrete and brick that is her apartment building and she popped her head out of her window to shout a ''hello'' to us down below. with convertible couches, a designated storage space, room in the refrigerator, and our own copy of the house key, it was challenging to not feel instantly at home, and of course we did. sheets, blankets, pillows - everything was provided, and with a cup of tea in hand we sat down for a long, get-to-know-you chat. she works for an it company, and had recently been to the us for a conference. we chatted about boston, new york, san diego, jon stewart, and stephen colbert for the large part of that first night.

in the following days, we say kate at least once or twice. usually she was just getting up when we were heading out the door (since her company is based in the us, she has a large amount of flexibility with her hours, usually working some from home and going into work after lunch) but we also often caught her in the evenings as well. she was always interested to hear how our days were turning out and quick to offer us advice and guidance as well as her wonderfully outspoken opinions!

we found her through the couchsurfing online community, and it was an awesome experience. everyone who doesn't yet know about it should check it out at www.couchsurfing.org

one of the biggest advantages was her insight into the culture of the county and the aftermath of communism, which i mentioned before. i realized, as kate was talking one morning, that the czech republic was the first post-communist country i had visited, and i was at times surprised and at other times not to see how prominent the fingerprints of that time still exist, exactly twenty years later. for one, there seemed to be very little nationalism, in terms of pride in the country's history and even awareness of the sort of stories we heard on walking tours and in the guide books. kate explained that soviet education was more about the greater soviet union with an emphasis on communist themes rather than the individualism of then czechoslovakia versus romania, ukraine, bulgaria, etc. similarly, people themselves rarely speak out in public, often avert their eyes on streets and in trams, and only the younger generation, born after the fall of communism really display that gregarious impudence characteristic of youth.

another thing quite shocking to hear is that, growing up, kate was taught in school that jews did not exist. under a completely areligious government policy, judaism and other faiths were taught as sort of relics of the past rather than active influences. she knew about franz kafka, the famous czech writer, but only recently learned he was jewish. when we made a point to visit the memorial of the czechoslovak jews who died in world war ii, she sort of regarded us with a look of quizzical bemusement.

no facet of life has been unaffected, it seems. while people got married very early under communism because having a family moved you higher on the housing list, now most people delay marriage until their late twenties or early thirties because there is greater access to other things like traveling, work, university, etc. the first mortgages are appearing and many people cannot afford to buy homes or flats because their salaries haven't changed that much but the prices set by private industry have. so many fascinating tidbits that cracked open a whole new aspect of czech life and culture.

i definitely didn't see everything - sometimes because of the weather, other times because we didn't want to pay the cost of admission, and in the end, because four days really isn't enough. still, as i said to both marte and kate, i think we both saw enough to know that we would very much like to come back...

op de fiets redux

2009-10-21T03:35:00.000-07:00

just back from a looong (read: 2.5 hr) bicycle ride with my great uncle, Ad. i love that when dutch people talk about bicycles, it's always by the full name or just "cycle" - it kind of highlights the quaintness of dutch "cycling." bike somehow always brings to mind harleys and the like, and you have to sort out for yourself which one, based on the surrounding details in the story. but with cycling you kind of know right away there are no overweight men with doo-rags and leather jackets involved.

dutch bicycles are different from the general american ones, anyways. they are usually more relaxed but with narrow tires, sort of a cross between a beach cruiser and a road bike. my old red bicycle from my time at bc would fit in just perfectly on the dutch fietspad. i have yet to see a bicycle with more than three gears, and with 60% of the country reclaimed from the sea, you rarely need to shift at all.

in any case, it was an absolutely wonderful ride as we passed along the dike off the vaal river and in between the little family farms and country homes.

yesterday was quite lovely also. we went first to the museum in nijmegen and saw an exhibit of some illuminated manuscripts from the mid 15th century. they belonged to catherine of kleve who resided in nijmegen at that time. the various pages normally live in new york and london, but they were specially reunited on home turf for the celebration of the city's anniversary. i have read a few different novels recently that involved medieval manuscripts and their illuminators, but i realized i had never really seen one in person. the miniatures were absolutely incredible to behold in person, and i'm very glad we went. you do go a bit bug-eyed, however, after several rooms of squinting in the dim light used to preserve the pages.

after that we did a bit of shopping in nijmegen center before hopping on a bus to bring us back to the house. for dinner, we hopped in a car and went to ''oriental palace'' where there was a chinese buffet and a rijstafel especially for oma. she hit up one of the young men working there as an entertainer, hoping to brush up on her indonesian, but unfortunately he was from the philippines and happened to only speak english and dutch.

when we arrived back at the house, i was able to show off my pictures of prague via oom ad's computer cable. i already miss the city and our wonderful host.

today is already half done, and i have very little idea of anything else on the agenda, but the sun is shining and the high is 15 degrees celsius, which is a lovely jump up from the 2 degree weather in prague, so i'm as happy as can be! for the meantime, i believe lunch is calling my name.

praha

2009-10-20T02:27:00.000-07:00

i'm sorry to have left everyone in the dark for the past week - my little routine of morning blogging was interrupted on wednesday with a rushed morning, a whirlwind of sightseeing (including nordvijk, an art program for physically and mentally disabled adults in leiden, the apple orchard where leon works, and lunch somewhere in between). then i hopped on an afternoon train to come to nijmegen, the first of many legs of travel on my prague adventures. here's a quick rundown:

thursday: early morning drive across the border to catch a german train, somehow manage a train transfer all in german, arrive in frankfurt and meet up with marte, a dear friend, kindred spirit, and erstwhile traveling companion. walk for a bit around frankfurt and do the necessary catching up before boarding a bus to the hahn airport, two hours outside of frankfurt. catch a plane, land in prague, catch a bus, metro, and tram. arrive at our host's flat, chit-chat until 1 am, and sleep.

friday: walking tour of prague. we hit up an awesome free walking tour/stand up comedy show hosted by the ever-entertaining isaac from (in his words) a small village north of mexico known to some people as los angeles. gotta love it. somehow manage to see all the major sights in the old town in the midst of freezing temperatures and drizzly rain. honestly, some parts were completely blurred out by the pressing realization that i could no longer feel my toes and the constant contemplation of the feasibility of buying a winter coat from h&m. still we survived and warmed up over a delicious meal in a quaint cellar restaurant serving up a delicious czech beer. funny story about that later.

saturday: the rain seemed to hold off, so in the morning we headed up to the castle complex on the east side of the vltava river that overlooks the old town. a recommendation from a local on the tram directed us to a little pocket park with an amazing view of both the castle and the old city. (look for pictures once i'm stateside). we wandered around the castle, heard the 27 loreto bells, and ate our sandwiches on a park bench while discussing the communion of saints. awesome. in the afternoon we trekked over to the old town again and decided to splurge on some ballet tickets for swan lake. when in prague, right? we ended the day at a really wonderful little cafe recommended to us by our ever-hospitable host, kate. soup, original pilsner, and a shared piece of seasonal pear cake was just what the doctor ordered to banish the autumn chill.

sunday: mass in st. james' church in the old town followed by a cup of hot chocolate at a nearby cafe. marte opted for mulled wine which was also delicious. then as the sun broke through the clouds, we chose to wander for a while and soak up the art nouveau architecture of the old town center. heading over to the jewish quarter, we spent some serious time of contemplation at the memorial to the czechoslovak jews who died in the concentration camps of wwii and the children of terezin ghetto whose drawings survive today. more about that later, too. we took a quick respite from the cold in a truly unique teahouse (also more to come), before heading off to the ballet!

monday: last day in prague. we hit up the vycherad cemetery and church, the john lennon graffiti wall, and the remaining synagogues in the jewish quarter before meeting up with kate for a drink at the same awesome cafe which was conveniently near her work. our last few hours were spent chatting about our various lives, hopes, dreams, and the laughter of strangers-cum-friends. picked up our bags from her office and then repeated traveling process in reverse to bring me to nijmegen at four minutes past 8 this morning.

so, so much more to say, but a museum here in nijmegen is calling (or maybe it's just Oom Ad's voice downstairs...)

delft

2009-10-13T00:30:00.000-07:00

yesterday, we had a leisurely morning here in oegstgeest. birgit ran some errands, and i posted on the blog. (today is off to a similar start if you couldn't tell!). soon enough we bundled into birgit's car, hoping the sunshine would hold out as we drove off to delft. birgit has an old schoolmate there who runs a catering service and cooking school, so luckily we got an ideal parking space in the center of town but not before driving to the house where oma grew up - still looking, of course, the same as it always did. birgit knocked on the door, no one was at home, so we unfortunately did not get a good peek inside. we did, however, get to meet up with oma's old hairdresser, still in his shop, still cutting hair.

it was remarkable, in a way, to stand there and watch these old friends connecting with each other. perhaps they saw each other only two years ago when oma last visited, but the last time she really lived in holland, she was only 19. he maybe looked a little worse for the wear of life, but had a darling smile and that same impish glint in his eyes that my opa had. maybe there's something to dutch men... :)

another observation about the dutch: life is lived with no hesitation or reservation. two minutes after meeting this older man again, the conversation launched into obama, the nobel peace prize, american and dutch healthcare, and immigration. there seems to be, in everyone i have met, a universal interest in the opinion of others and, of course, strong opinions on the behalf of the asker who is not hesitant to share them, either. still, i so appreciate that sort of direct, blunt, and open way of talking. i don't know if i ever would have put it that way, and in many ways our family is much more american, but still, there is an honesty and openness unique to our extended family that i have always really valued but never was able to put my finger on exactly.

after coffee with birgit's friend marcel, we were off to delft, walking along the cobblestone streets through multitudes of exclamations and memories from oma. "this used to be the best music shop!"she told us in dutch as we passed what is now a fancy electronics store, and so forth. the museum birgit wanted to take us to was closed, since it was monday, but we found a nice alternative in a little tea shop and cafe that was serving some traditional dutch foods that were on oma's list of "things to eat." she had her flees kroketjes while birgit and i split the vegetable ones and a salad.

delft is a lovely place, much smaller than amsterdam, obviously, but twice as beautiful. for me, much more manageable!

birgit is back, and i have to dry oma's hair. today: den haag and the peace palace as well as some errands in the market at oegstgeest. tonight i have the opportunity to meet up with a friend from my time abroad, eva, who lives right now in delft. such fun!

amsterdam, etc.

2009-10-12T01:19:00.000-07:00

After a later-than expected awakening, breakfast was a noisy but happy affair in the house yesterday morning. Dutch and English flew back and forth over bread, tea, cheese, jam, eggs, and leftover vegetables from the night before (in accordance with Birgit's new paleo diet). After we all had our fill - and the boys had a good laugh out of my eating vla for breakfast - we trundled off to the Leiden central station where we hopped on a train for Amsterdam.

I took to staring out the window while the younger boys regaled Frank with their boating adventures in scouts the day before. At least, I'm pretty sure that's what they were talking about. It was all in Dutch, so I can never be quite positive, but the handful of words I picked out and the wild gesturing were enough to piece the basics together.

We arrived in Amsterdam under ominously cloudy skies. Still, determined to see the city, we took off down one of many streets we would walk over the course of the next three hours. Later, when Merlijn would ask me what we had done and what I had seen, I didn't quite know what to tell her. Come to find out, we walked basically the entirity of downtown Amsterdam without my ever really realizing it!

Near noontime, we stopped at a cafe in Leidspleine. Funny story: we all ordered a different coffee. A large carmel latte for Frank, a medium Americano for me, and a medium "bambino" (a latte but with chocolate milk, so basically a mocha) for Koen. Leon said he didn't want anything. We get our drinks and sit outside. I asked Leon again if he was sure he didn't want anything, and he intimated he didn't want to spend his money on coffee. When Koen told him it was paid for with money Birgit had given Frank that morning, Leon nearly fell out of his chair. As the three of us nearly fell out of ours in laughter (especially Koen), Leon tramped inside to get himself his own "bambino."

Walking around, I recognized again the tall, narrow houses, rising above tha canals. The odd, outward slant of the buildings - for lifting furniture to the top floors - reminding me of a sort of surrealist painting. We saw the myriad of people who are drawn to Amsterdam, from the eccentric to the tourist, all traipsing about the same narrow streets. Amsterdam is unique in its diversity, and it was wonderful to be back in it.

In the afternoon, we met Merlijn, Birgit, and Oma back at Amsterdam Centraal before walking to a small museum. It's called Onze Lieve op de Solder, Our Lord of the Attic. Apparently, when Catholicism was banned in Holland during the 16th century, Catholic parishes moved into hiding. This one was the largest and best preserved, built in the attic space of three buildings. Walking through this narrow house, maintained in the style and furnishing of the 16th century, you climb up one last set of stairs and come up into a long, thin church obviously stretching back much further than the space of the house you were just in. Clever space-saving devices were built into the structure of the alter and the galleries, and the place has become a museum dedicated not only to this chapel but also of Catholic regalia specific to Holland. It was definitely impressive.

Following that, we made our way over to the newer part of Amsterdam and the modern construction that encamps the old city. A brand new concert hall has opened there, near the discovery science museum, and we sat in their lounge for a coffee (again). Then it was off to Merlijn's for dinner.

Definitely a fun, full day, and more to come. The boys are off to school and the sun is shining for the first time since we arrived. I think a visit to Delft is in the air...

Day 1 - An adventure with Oma

2009-10-11T09:12:00.000-07:00

Goeiemorgen!

We arrived safely at Schiphol a bit late - our flight was delayed coming out of London, and while we made up a significant amount of time in the air, there was thick fog over Amsterdam. We landed close to 9:30, and Birgit, Leon, and Koen were there to greet us. Oh my word, those boys have shot up into the sky! Frank was waiting at the house and of course we all sat
down for a cup of coffee and a long chat. :)

Then I helped Oma unpack her things while the younger boys got ready for scouts. A quick lunch and they were on their way, then the four of us headed over to Leiden to the market to get vegetables and fish for dinner - Oma and Birgit in the car and Frank and I op de fiets! One problem that became very clear very soon is that my legs are strikingly shorter than those of my Dutch family! I took Birgit's bike, but could really only reach the pedals with my tip-toes. Once I was on, I managed all right, but let's just say getting on and off were a completely different problem in and of themselves. By the end of the day (45 ride each way), I had mastered my own technique leaving Frank close to speechless with laughter. Well, I don't mind being the butt of a joke or two - especially around here, between Dutch honesty and my family's humor, I guess I should get used to it. :)

Last night Birgit made a lovely dinner and then we basically were all in bed by 10. I'm told by Birgit this morning that Oma practically fell asleep sitting up on her bed, but that she and Frank kindly tucked her in. I'm glad because I was fast asleep upstairs!

Today we are headed into Amsterdam to meet up with Merlijn. The boys and I will take the train and have some time in the city by ourselves while Oma and Birgit have coffee at Merlijn's apartment. Then we will meet the three ladies in the city for a bit of a tour around before heading back to Merlijn's for dinner.

The rest of the time will have to sort itself out. I know Delft is definitely on the schedule before I head over to Nijmegen on Wednesday. One awesome piece of good news - our host in Prague confirmed that we could stay with her in her flat, so everything should be set in that regard. Awesome!

The love of Oma, Birgit, the boys, and myself to all of you!

Have a Happy Sunday!

Much love,
elle

further musings on community

2009-10-07T06:24:00.000-07:00

i knew a month had gone by since i last wrote. i didn't realize it had been a month on top of a month!

fall has settled - somewhat - over east texas, and as temperatures have dropped, i find my defenses against missing boston, college life, and the community i had there falling as well. i miss it. i miss gearing up for the life is good pumpkin festival. i miss the row of maples on the opposite side of conte forum that are always the first to turn - a shocking red that almost seems to mock the gathering of gray cloudy skies.

i'm leaving for holland in a day or two, and as i pulled out fall clothes to pack for my time there, it was like revisiting old friends. my well-worn corduroys, jewel-tone sweaters, and huge scarves bring me that simple joy, like catching a glimpse of someone dear to you from across a crowded room or train station - the eagerness of anticipated reunion. moving to southern california doesn't afford many fall moments as far as i can surmise, and so this brief re-visiting of my fall wardrobe is a particular treat.

each item reminds me of boston. when i wore that sweater to that persons birthday party, or when i practically lived in those cords through finals week - connections to people and a place, neither of which are foreseeably in my future in the same, living-with, tangible way. i have spent a lot of time alone these past few months. it's almost been like a long, extended version of the silent retreat i attended at the beginning of the year. not as intensely focused or overtly spiritual, but an ongoing process of revisiting the vulnerability, timidity, and doubt of loneliness. nouwen talks about transforming, through grace, our loneliness into powerful solitude, recognizing god's infinite omnipresence and the reality that our connectedness with others, no matter how deep, can never bring about the full self-realization that comes from our connectedness with god.

as i have physically (although not necessarily mentally, spiritually, or emotionally) stepped out of my community at boston college, i have come to more fully realize how particularly special that gift was and is. it's going to take a heck of a lot of time, energy, emotion, and investment to build such a community again. as well as an equal amount of those things to maintain the community that will always be very dear to me. in some ways it's the both/and of liberation theology. i can maintain my connection to an extemporaneous community while investing myself in the community of my here and now.

at least i hope so :)

food.

2009-08-16T15:50:00.000-07:00

i'm curled up on the couch in my room at the guest house, eating my favorite combo (yogurt + fruit + cereal = perfection in endless variety), and reading recipe blogs. food is so awesome. we've had a mixed relationship, and only recently i have really come to love, embrace, and savor the beauty of food. apples. eggplant. tomatoes. peaches. swiss chard. bok choy. black beans. red beans. rice. not to mention cheeses. cherries. and always, chocolate.

each ingredient in a recipe brings its own unique flavor. mixing and matching them takes your tastebuds from one continent to another. like cilantro and its progeny, cumin - so essential to cuisine in latin america, southeast asia, and north africa. go figure.

the best thing, though, is how food so quickly becomes more than just food. a meal prepared for friends becomes the foundation for community-building. friendships are forged through food - whether that's grabbing lunch with a co-worker or grabbing a donut in the parish hall after church. food - it's collection, preaparation, and service - plays a central role in every culture on earth, past or present, and it's hard to deny that mystical bond in the kitchen, as i slice onions like countless women and men have sliced onions, since onions were first discovered/cultivated/eaten.

baking bread is like that, too. there's a slow magic to how the dough rises, a sort of intoxicating goodness in the smell of yeast, and again that connectedness to others through the moment of floury, arm-exhausted satisfaction of finally getting your loaf in the oven.

for the past few weeks, the readings in mass have been from luke's gospel - the section on jesus as the bread of life. it can't be more aptly timed, as the book take this bread by sara miles sort of fell into my lap a week or so ago, thanks to my mom. the book is an intimate look inside the moment/journey of conversion that this irreverent, gay, activist female experiences. it is beautiful in its raw emotion, and part of my soul as well as my intellect resonate strongly with her words. for one of the first times in my life, i realize how absolutely fortunate i am to have been raised with the eucharist. sara's sheer, enthralling hunger for christ's body, despite the way christian faith flies in the face of everything she previously held as truth, challenges me deeply.

i'm still chewing on this (terrible pun, i apologize, but i couldn't resist!), and hopefully will unpack more as i continue reading, but in the meantime, i've got some banana bread to make...

gratitude

2009-08-03T19:47:00.000-07:00

sometimes i get into these funny places where i feel like there are really important things to say - i am drawn back to my blog - but i'm not quite sure what that/those thing(s) is/are. other times, there are things that have just been said so many times that it feels somewhat inane to reiterate them. i'm drifting toward the latter as i realize how often in the last two days i have communicated the same basic message: my job is challenging. there are things i really don't like. there are things that i do like. in the end i'm thankful for the lessons i'm learning.

the funny thing is, no matter how many times i've said it, i don't really feel that thankful. when i woke up at six this morning and had to drive into tyler to pick up supplies for the week, drag a huge cart overloaded with things like bagels and toilet paper up the hill in the sam's parking lot, and when i came back, hot and sweaty, only to encounter the monday/first of the month administrative work piling up on my desk - i wasn't feeling that inner hum of harmony and peace that wells up from a deep place of gratitude. i was hungry, hot, frustrated, and flusterpated (which is kind of like flustered + frustrated + exasperated - imagine a hen that has just moments before been booted across chicken yard). very far from grateful.

as much as i idealize a life of contentment and wish it upon myself, i wonder if that's really in my cards, or - an even bigger question - if it really should be.

my flusterpatedness (now we're really stretching the word) is somehow good and right when raised by stories and newsitems on the violation of women's right in the war zones of the eastern congo, or palestinian children being kicked out of their homes in jerusalem, or the older woman in our church in assisted living with few to no visitors. there are many un-right things in this world crying out to be righted. the blazing temperatures in the pacific northwest are the silent screams of a planet stretched beyond its resources. the border tensions and huge volume of illegal immigration speak to a shattered economy, the fallout of poor trade policies advantaging large corporations at the cost of human decency.

st. ignatius of loyola teaches, in his spiritual exercises, that the sin of the world is all connected - and kind of original butterfly effect. we, as humans, are all tied together, even through our failings. my selfishness and pride contribute to the greater sin of the world by acting as stumbling blocks for those around me. when i exhibit prejudice and biases i contribute to those larger prejudices that lead to situations of gender disempowerment or ethnic disenfranchisement. when all i can see is my own needs and desires, i take part in the greater self-centeredness that forgets the elderly, poor, and marginalized.

contentment is a valid goal, but only if it leads me into a deeper awareness of the others around me. too often contentment can fall into complacency. i don't think god calls us to live apathetically - jesus' example points to something quite different. still, as i journey through indignation and righteous anger at the ills of the world, i must continue to battle against the impatience, lack of faith, pride, and selfishness that warp my ability to see others around me and to order myself rightly among them.

because, ultimately, when i put it all into perspective, gratitude comes.

when life gives you strawberries...

2009-07-26T17:21:00.000-07:00

last week wednesday, one of the staffers here received a donation of flat upon flat of strawberries. with over eight pounds of strawberries, what is one to do? make jam, of course. so, as a family, we set about doing just that. fruit, sugar, lemon juice, and pectin? check. sterilized jars? check. lids on tight? check. then all we could do was sit back and wait for it to gel. as my mom and i watched "so you think you can dance" in the living room, we began to hear the tinkling pops of the lids sealing down on all the jars.

earlier that day, i was thinking back to one of my favorite books, animal, vegetable, miracle by barbara kingsolver, and the inspiration that it was for me to embrace real food, and make a commitment to extend those values important to me down to the foods i choose to eat. last winter, it was rather difficult, and on a tight college budget, it's hard to reconcile spending a few dollars more on locally-grown knobbly root vegetables, when all i really wanted was a huge spinach salad. compromises were made, and i found new joy in sweet potatoes, squashes, and onions.

part of my plans for moving into my grand new life included getting a bread machine, food dehydrator, and a huge pot. armed with these things, and an avid frequenter of the farmers' markets that promised to abound in southern california, i would enjoy local food, befriend local farmers, and move my diet to a more sustainable bent. visions of making dried fruit and dried tomatoes, canning huge jars of tomato sauce, freezing parboiled produce, and enjoying it all with fresh bread every week.

some of those dreams, like others, i've had to lay aside for the time being. fortunately, i live in the heart of east texas farming country, and although no trendy farm stands dot the road like they do in new england, plenty of folks have booths up in their lawns, vending the fruits of their backyard labors. our garden is overflowing with zucchini, tomatoes, and formerly green beans (the heat finally got to them), and as we begin turning things over, i'm pushing my parents toward a fall garden with potatoes, onions, and winter squash.

granted, i am far from being a home-grown food expert - our strawberry jam never quite gelled. it still has that bright summer strawberry taste, but we'll have to settle for a thin strawberry spread. my handful of experiences with gardening aren't much to go on, when i think of it, but i am excited for the adventure of learning more, of spending some quality time with my dirt, wherever i am, to learn about its needs, cultivate its health, and support the growth of food for me, and of course for others. because, in the end, what i'm most looking forward to is having friends and neighbors over, feeding them with the food of my garden, and celebrating the goodness of this life.

strawberry spread, anyone?

life lessons in sunset with bob dylan

2009-07-14T19:00:00.000-07:00

i must say, nothing more particularly puts me in the mood to write on my blog than a sunset. tonight, as i was driving back to my new residence after a lovely dinner at home, the big, fat, texas sun was setting directly behind me - not the fiery red that speaks to the immense heat we have been getting recently, but the soft orange glow behind and dusky grey-blue of twilight ahead. another day done.

one particularly great thing about inheriting your brother's car while he is away is that the driver's armrest storage bin comes loaded with awesome music. when you're in a music funk as i currently am (feeling like i'm listening to the same ten songs over and over again), it's such a treat to pop a random, unmarked disc into the dash and wait in that delicious anticipation of what will come. not all of it i love, but one treasure i discovered just this evening is the bob dylan greatest hits collection he had stashed there.

rolling down my windows, celebrating the breaking of the heat, watching the purple sky creep from in front of me to behind, and listening to "blowing in the wind," i was very happy. so happy in fact that the first thing i had to do is grab my computer, brew a quick pot of tea, and come sit outside in the rocking chair to write this down....

and be met by ravenous mosquitoes. let's just say i'm going inside fairly shortly.

isn't it funny how life moves in such predictable ups and downs? nothing is really as romantic as "they" would make it out to be, and the perfect moments have to be ended sooner or later. but still, i'll take the mosquitoes if that means i get a few more perfect sunsets.

balloons'll be glowing...

2009-07-12T18:34:00.000-07:00

how do you begin to describe the bewitching simplicity of light and air and color? despite the oppressive heat that has settled on and around east texas, my family packed into our car yesterday afternoon and headed over to longview for the great texas balloon race. ever since we moved to the area six years ago, i've seen images on the local news of these great blobs of hot air bobbing about in the clear blue sky or glowing like a series of giant night lights in the dark. i've wanted to go for some time, but this year - being back at home for summer for the first time since i left for college - we actually went.

after a bit of an adventure getting to the grounds, sorting out the lay of the land, and grabbing a mint limeade, we settled on a bit of grass not too far from where the trucks and gondolas were assembled. country western music wafted through the late summer heat, and i enjoyed some top notch people-watching before the first sign of movement drew our attention to the field. directly in front of us, a balloon crew began to spread out a giant mass of fabric. it looked as though several pots of bright paint had been dumped on the dry, browning grass.

before we knew it, one and then two balloons slowly filled with air, the sound of their burners overtaking the twangy guitar. if i could put into words how absolutely breathtaking it was to watch this billowing mass of colored silk not only take shape against the setting sun but then rise into the sky, drifting away on an unseen wind. so utterly simple and yet so utterly full of mystery.

but as the sun began to set, any sense of exhileration from the previous display was overwhelmed by the unimaginable. as night fell, and darkness took over, countless balloons, in huge long rows, began to fill. the orbs of color, beautiful enough in the daylight, were unsurpassingly magical at night. i've included a picture, taken by someone else, because there are absolutely no way of describing it all.

walking amidst them, as they twinkled on and off, i was overtaken by an indescribable feeling. the closest thing i can tie it to is bliss. absolute utter peace borne out of true pleasure and all-encompassing awe. i felt like a child again, caught up in the wonder of the unimaginable made real right before my eyes.

lord knows where i will be this time next year, but i'm crossing my fingers to make my way back to the east texas regional airport and the balloons that have stolen my heart and imagination.

joy: lost and found

2009-07-01T14:25:00.000-07:00

i remember watching the movie hook as a kid. it was one of about 200 or so titles that the caribbean mercy had accumulated over the years from various donations. in nine years of sailing, we cycled through a lot of them.

one of the characters in the movie, a lost boy - and of course i can't remember his name - had lost his marbles. i'm sure if i watched it again now, i'd pick up on the irony that such a predicament was supposed to cast over his character, but as a child, i just remember feeling really sorry that he had lost his favorite toys. the scene where he finally gets them back was one of my favorites, that and when julia roberts as tinkerbell (who would have pegged that one?) gives robin williams as peter pan a good talking to or the imaginary food fight turned real.

in any case, i've felt a bit like that lost boy these past few weeks. the process of adjusting to this new in-between i find myself in was interrupted by a wonderful ten days spent in seattle with some of my closest friends from college. while enitrely blissful, i wrapped myself in the ignorance of how challenging this change might be for me, weaving a delightful cocoon that blocked the hurt and disappointment from my emotional field.

coming back to texas, it was a whirlwind of a few days before i found myself sitting in this office with an entirely new set of day-to-day responsibilities and realities. instead of falling into step alongside other new nurses eager to start their own careers, with the impossible dynamism of youth, my colleagues are much different. caught between high school students working the coffee shop counter as a summer job and the older professionals who fill the ranks of finance and accounting. instead of dealing with patients, i deal with hotel guests and hungry customers.

somewhere in there, i got bogged down. somewhere in there, i lost my marbles. i lost my joy. more deeply, i lost the ability to see potential in my new coworkers as peers, worthy of an honest conversation and a level of friendship. i was so busy looking back on the life i thought i would be leading right about now that i lost sight of people like janet and joyce - beautiful older women who work happily to serve those around them. i lost my vision for their inspiration, their example, and the (many) lessons i could learn from them and others like them.

i don't begin to profess that i have "found my marbles." at least not fully. i'm beginning to see that they were lost, and they are worth the effort of finding. there will still be days when i am frustrated, overwhelmed, and absolutely ready to throw in the towel. but i'm beginning to realize also that perhaps this is my life. it's time to live it.

allergies

2009-06-25T13:49:00.001-07:00

summer is here, and hopefully that means a chance for more frequent blogging. i feel as though my once-a-month trend during the school year sadly left much unsaid - there are so many adventures and questions and thoughts that would have benefited from a much more thorough vetting than simply my mind or the ears of my roommates.

i've started a bit of a job. yesterday was my first full day, and well into day two, i'm (maybe) beginning to get a little bit of a feel for things. i'm working as the interim manager for a coffee shop and guest house at the ioc, where both my parents work and my brother as well. it's a bit of a family affair, i suppose.

i've always had these rather idyllic imaginings of running an inn or a bed and breakfast. i imagined hosting guests, decorating rooms, making beds and healthful breakfasts, turning down sheets. mostly the joys of hosting and feeding friendly faces, sharing in the joy of someone else's holiday-making cheer. i, however, did not include in these visions any semblance of the immensity of number-crunching, supply-sorting, order-figuring, and general volume of data consisting of those infarious numbers whom i so displease. especially the numbers proceeded by dollar signs.

i suppose i should have, but who said dreams should be tied to reality? i, even in the past 48 hours, have come to a deeper appreciation of how non-business oriented i am. the concepts of profit margins and bottom lines leave me feeling squeezed of air. maybe i'm allergic to capitalism? a few months ago, i showed the first sign of this strange ailment. when i initially accepted my position at ucla, i realized that i would have to buy a car in order to survive in the city. a creeping feeling of dread overcame me then, at times all-encompassing but soon ebbing into a faint throb in the back of my head.

while in my senior practicum rotation in labor and delivery, we had a client who desperately needed iv penicillin to treat an infection threatening both her life and the life of her baby. she was allergic, and alternative therapies were tried. when they proved ineffective, the medical doctors recommended a desensitization trial - she would be exposed to 1/1000th of the typical dose and gradually transitioned to higher and higher dosages. such a procedure has been documented through clinical research to almost eliminate the risk of allergic reaction. it was successful for her as well.

if i really am allergic to capitalism, is there any desensitization process for me?

as i try to sort that one out, i'm happy to be working. period. i find it a special blessing, however, to be working with such lovely people and in an environment and position that promise to continue to challenge me in new and unexpected ways each day.

adventuring

2009-06-23T07:55:00.000-07:00

yesterday, my brother and i were driving from houston back to our home in van after a visit with my grandmother and the dentist. after somehow managing the zoo that is houston's highway system and the animals that make up its drivers, we were well on our way to home. about two hours into our four hour drive, we both noticed a strong sulfur smell - the beautiful rotting egg stench that is so unmistakable. as we made our way through the highway interchange and accelerated, the smell disappeared, and we both chalked it up to the construction site we had just passed.

within the next hour or so, the smell had returned a few more times, and we began to suspect that the stench was actually emanating from somewhere in our car. interesting. so we pulled off at a rest area less than an hour from our house, popped the hood, and found our battery spewing steam and some sort of liquid that was turning the black plastic shield around it white. lovely. i'm not much of a mechanic - i'm actually not anything close to resembling a mechanic - but i do know that batteries are not supposed to get so hot that they spew things left and right. it was so bent out of shape, that once we had turned the car off, it was impossible to start it again. it was done, and out in the texas heat of late afternoon, so were we.

we put a quick call into my dad who thankfully was able to run out to us with a new car battery. while we waited for him to arrive, we were approached by all sorts of visitors. men of various ages, occupations, and sizes of beer bellies all offered their help and particular opinion on the cause of our car trouble. "well tha's jus too bad..." was one of my favorites - the man uttering these words of condolence somehow managed to speak around a mouthful of chew, his baseball cap crushed down upon his head. shortly thereafter, he returned to mowing the grass on the property, riding around in his white undershirt and jean overalls.

another favorite was on of the rest area staff who proferred the suggestion that everything could be traced back to the fact that the car was a saturn. "ya always git trouble with them saturns. man i could tell you all sortsa stories 'bout my saturn couple years back." thanks for the advice.

all in all, though, it was only a minor blip in the trip, and we enjoyed the free wi-fi and air conditioning of the rest area information center. i whiled the moments away catching up on email, puzzling crosswords, and searching for new job postings online.

as i was searching the same hospital websites for the umpteenth time, looking for something new i guess, i was thinking about the men, their offers of help, their opinions, their advice. it reminded me of that day, a few weeks ago, when i got a call from my job - there's no money in the budget for hiring right now, can you wait until november? i was in the texas hill country with my extended family. as people started trickling back from the mall and the lazy river and wherever else they had gone for the day, the word went around, and i started hearing all sorts of plans and ideas and thoughts and opinions from aunts and uncles and cousins. incredibly, everyone knew someone at some health center or outpatient clinic or had heard that somebody-or-other was hiring nurses. then came the consternation - nursing is the recession-proof career! but there's a nursing shortage, how can it be that so few hospitals are hiring?

at the time, as i was processing my next steps and adjusting to the fact that the life that had seemd to fall so easily into my lap was now perhaps indefinitely postponed, i didn't exactly welcome these conversations. i thought that if i could just sit down long enough and think hard enough, i could puzzle out my next move - like the crossword puzzles i love. but sometimes with crossword puzzles, you need someone else's eyes, someone else's knowledge and experience.

i am learning that there are definitely times in life when the same principle holds true. i might go so far as to say not even times, but that life itself is better when lived with other people. relationships with family and friends of all ages help define the boundaries and edges of who we are. rene descartes said "i think, therefore i am." i would say, given my recent experiences, "i am loved, therefore i am." not just by a creator god who is continually revealed in new and different ways, but by family, friends, strangers even, who form a fabric of support capable of handling any of life's unexpected bumps and breakdowns along the way.

we'll just have to see where this "way" goes...

awareness

2009-05-16T05:51:00.000-07:00

today marks my third-to-last morning in college. my third-to-last morning sitting at my computer with my cup of coffee, amidst the clutter of books and papers, phones and snackfoods that consistently inhabit our kitchen table. my third-to-last morning when i can sit in the relative silence of sleeping roommates and sleeping next-door neighbors, spy the sunlight streaming through the window in our living room, and contemplate the wonders of the day.

this day is pretty straight forward: rehearsal for baccalaureate mass, laundry, packing up the rest of my odds and ends, meeting my family for dinner after their flight into boston, and then a late evening catch-up with friends.

i rub my still-sore feet and wonder if the mild ringing in my ears is ever going to go away. last night was our "commencement ball" - a prom of sorts for graduating seniors, except with the addition of a cash bar and ridiculously short dresses. still, despite the general air of debauchery, i had an amazing time with my roommates and my dearest friends from these past four years. the music was good, and we danced the night away, much the chagrin of my toes today.

the dynamic of boston college has never ceased to amaze me. i marvel at the contrast between libraries filled to capacity during finals, burgeoning alternative spring break service trip programs, and the cut-loose, let-go attitude of thursday, friday, and saturday nights. i am blessed to be surrounded by a group of like-minded people who also wonder at the statements made by a university purportedly committed to social justice that throws down thousands and thousands of dollars for a senior week shindig. meanwhile, every department of the university including financial aid have had to cut 2% of their budget due to the economic downturn.

i really did enjoy myself, and i am thankful to those individuals on the senior week committee who i'm sure put in hours of time and energy to coordinate these social events. i loved having somewhere different to go with my good friends, a space and time to dress up, step out, and celebrate the significance of graduation from college. still, one image in particular rankles me even now.

yesterday afternoon, my roommates and i hitched a ride on a trolley - the transportation of choice as it turns out for bc students to travel about the city and bar-hop before arriving at the dance. we had opted out, eyeing the price tag and determining that a $1.70 t ride would equally suffice. however, upon arriving in the public garden for pictures, we ran into a group of aquaintences who had extra room and more than graciously offered us a spot.

as we toured around town, the crackling, distorted music blared from the speakers, assailing passersby through the trolley's open sides. down all sorts of side streets and back alleys we rode, the driver kicking in the hydraulics every once in awhile to the great pleasure of all on board. as we were finally making our way to the sheraton hotel where the ball was being held, we drove through the heart of boston's downtown. as we passed amidst the skyscrapers of boston's financial district, i turned to look out the window only to be confronted with the sight of one of boston's many homeless individuals. unable to stand for whatever reason, this man was scooting along the gum-stained sidewalk in torn, cut-off jeans and a grungy button-up cotton shirt. as i looked down at the dress i had borrowed to wear that night, the clear nail polish on my clean fingers, and felt my freshly washed, curled hair teased by the breeze, the contrast disgusted me.

as i move to los angeles next year, one of the only things i can really count on is the continuation of this struggle. the tight rope of appreciating those opportunities given to you while holding them critically is one that challenges me continually. similar to any balancing act, the only way to broach anything remotely reminiscent of success is to remain persistently aware. aware of oneself, aware of the vibrating hum beneath your feet, aware of the swaying motions demanding the ultimate flexibility.

life update along an easter parallel

2009-04-19T05:04:00.000-07:00

goodness. it's amazing how time has a slippery habit of getting away from you, particularly when you use things like blogs to keep track.

a lot has happened in my life since i last wrote, and those happenings have radically reshaped my vision for the rest of this semester and at least the next year of my life. i have been out to seattle, a mountaintop, and the farthest reaches of my positivity and faith and back again in the two months or so since I last wrote here. In the course of discerning my next step after college, I have gone from a vision of my life as a rugged outdoorswoman hiking the olympias in seattle to a tree-hugging, beach-loving, community building member of the ocean beach neighborhood of san diego, before settling (or really having my life settled) in the dynamicly overwhelming metropolis of los angeles.

not to draw an over-religious analogy, but in the spirit of easter, which i celebrated on the side of mt. greylock in western massachusetts, i can detect a striking parallel to to story of christ's final sacrifice and victory so central to the christian faith. the process of watching, waiting, hoping, praying otherwise known as "discernment" here at bc - patiently and unpatiently pushing for the future to unroll itself in front of you like the vivid carpets that prevail all over morocco - is not unsimilar in my experience to the dark and fretful hours in the garden of gethsemane.

granted, the unknown and fear i faced in this process is no where near the magnitude of that facing jesus as he prayed both sweat, tears, and blood. however, the moments of overwhelming terror, apprehension, and doubt that i experienced offered me a unique moment to appreciate more fully, in the weeks of lent, those long pre-dawn hours when christ felt utterly alone.

yet despite the tortuous journey, i have come to the other side - i have a job in labor and delivery at ucla medical center in west la; i have been blessed quite unexpectedly with a roommate that i know, love, and trust; i have found via the internet parishes with great potential granting me a vision of what my life could potentially look like. in the end (although really this continues to be an ongoing process), i am stepping into a dawn of promise, claiming the resurrection in my own life.

yesterday morning, i found myself at st. mary's chapel for 8 am mass. the priest spoke about how we, as evidenced by our physical presence, might all classify ourselves as "morning people." more importantly, he pointed out, is that we as christians identify ourselves as the morning people we are called to be, the dawn of salvation, liberation, and glory that we are promised and that we have promised to make real for all people on this earth.

the last weeks of classes, final exams, and graduation all loom ahead, and it is still quite easy to fall into the pit of despair that dictates all life ends after college, new graduates condemned to an abyss of lonliness and eternal separation from friends and those collegiate "good times." however, as the sun streams through my window even now, i claim the dawn, the resurrection, the hope and joy that proclaim this is the first step, one of many steps, along a path of discovery, growth, challenge, and peace.

sparkling unknown

2009-02-14T05:32:00.001-08:00

until the beginning of this week, if you had asked me what my plans were for next year, i would have rattled off to you my vision of working on the labor and delivery unit at the university of washington medical center in seattle, living in a community of jesuit volunteers, deferring my school loans for a year, and generally celebrating my transition from college student to real world player.

a lot of that came crashing down around my shoulders on tuesday when the nurse recruiter with whom i had been in contact wrote to say that the labor and delivery nurse managers were now officially sure that they would not be hiring new grads into their department. in fact, they were over-hired and would most likely not be hiring anyone into their department, much let a newly graduated nurse still wet behind the ears, so to speak.

suddenly, the prospect that i may not be working in labor and delivery next year, that i may not be in seattle, that i may not be doing jesuit volunteer corp became real for the first time. all of these beautifully-crafted plans, so in line with who i feel god has called me to be in the world, were turning into smoke and drifting away from my grasp.

taking a step back, it's really not all that dramatic. there is another hospital in seattle which is a really good option for labor and delivery and where i know someone on the floor who might be able to maximize on networking. also, i had a tentative job offer for the unit at UCLA medical center, and while LA would perhaps be one of the last places i could imagine myself living, i recognize that there are positive aspects, too - like my brother being there for school and a close proximity to the ocean.

this whole process of "taking a step back," though, has threatened to rob me of my balance. my confidence in my skills, my background, and my experience here at boston college felt suddenly threatened, and with that, my confidence in my own self, my confidence in my ability to discern a plan and a vision for the future from the murky leadings of god's still, small voice within my deepest desires. i told a friend that i never really picked up on juggling when in third grade my teacher thought it would be an important skill to learn and spent the entire afternoon trying to teach us. juggling might have come in handy now, as i widen my scope to include hospitals up and down the west coast as well as some closer to home as well.

so where does that leave me? somewhere close to square one, definitely. but also, it leaves me in the midst of that uneasy, in-between place we like to call the palm of god's hand. i've often thought of it as a place of deep peace and rest, and that is in many ways god's deepest desire for us. but sometimes, god calls us to be uncomfortable, to step outside of our plans and realize that they were always god's.

practically speaking, it leaves me with a much larger number of applications to fill out, reference letters to collect, and the generally sparkling unknown to face. i've got a new stage of life coming, and it's time to celebrate...

adjustments

2009-01-15T03:59:00.000-08:00

waking up this morning, i half-stumbled through our darkened dorm apartment and flipped on the light of the bathroom. my vision was blurry before the wonderful invention of contact lenses slipped into my eyes, but even they didn't help that much. my head was still swimming a little bit. trying to sort out if i felt ill or what was even going on, i felt my hand grasped by a familiar but unwelcome friend: fatigue.

she's my morning companion more often than not here at school, and the beginning of this semester is not that different. i have to push by her to clamber into the shower and fight her with cold water and coffee in order to start my day. she disappears for awhile but not before sucker-punching me and leaving behind dark circles under my eyes. she'll be back, she says, in the afternoon.

early mornings heading out to clinical placements are a common thread of my college experience. if you polled the nursing students here at bc at least, i think you would find that the overwhelming majority, if not all, of the soon-to-be nurses would tell you that the hardest part is the early mornings. and the late nights studying.

now, i wasn't studying last night, as school only began yesterday. in fact i was watching bc lose terribly to wake forest in basketball. still it was a blast to sit and yell and cling to that desperate hope that in the last minute and a half of the game we would surge forward fourteen points! (it obviously didn't happen). so i have no complaints if i'm a little groggy today.

but it's harder this morning. i spent the week before school being engaged in a five-day silent retreat out in a beautiful rural property out west of here. the forest reserve dipped down to the charles river, all blanketed in a thick carpet of pristine snow. i haven't seen so much natural beauty in a long time. the silence itself, while at times intimidating and overwhelming, became another friend. one like those dear to me at a distance, reaching out, a mutual longing to be together again, curbed by a tacit acknowledgment that things just can't be like that right now.

it's unfortunate that i have to adjust my expectations of things like sleep or time with god when the semester begins. but in many ways it is like a long-distance relationship. god is still present, we just touch base for a few moments everyday instead of lounging in each other's presence for hours on end, sharing whispered secrets and inside jokes.

i struggle to not be disappointed as i let that vision of god go for a time. i feel the freedom from god to be present here, to seek god in the dear friends in my life and the classes i take. but part of me protests against the separation. isn't there another way, my soul cries. but then the rejoinder simply comes: why so downcast, o my soul? the lord is marvelous indeed.

2008-12-08T14:13:00.000-08:00

there's a little pen-and-ink drawing that sits by my computer on my desk, nestled between clay cups reminding me of the oppressed dalit in india, framed photographs of family and friends, and little wooden animals from west africa. it's such a simple thing, taking up only half of a quarter sheet of paper (which, i suppose would technically be an eighth of a sheet for those who might be counting).

amidst the clutter of pits of paper, books, nursing manuals, and yellow sticky notes, it catches the light of the lamp and reflects it back with the shining white brightness of industrially produced office paper. it's not much, but then i suppose it would never claim to be - the casual doodling of a dear friend. and yet even in its infinite simplicity, it holds so much. the memory of my friend linked to the memories of countless adventures galavanting in a country halfway around the world.

i wonder if god sometimes looks at us that way: look at that simple little thing, so small and individual in the clutter of the world, and yet such a profound reminder. a reminder of the infinite love which motivated the life, death, and resurrection of my son. a reminder of a time when we walked together in the garden such a very long time ago.

i'd like to think so...

an ever-present struggle

2008-11-04T16:46:00.000-08:00

in this post-modern time, i look at the countless women who have gone before me and who have risked it all so that i could enjoy the rights and privileges that i do now. today is election tuesday, and women all over this country have the right to vote because lucretia mott and susan b. anthony laid aside all facets of social respectability to make the cause for gender equality one which could no longer be ignored.

and as i look around, increasingly frustrated by the blatant inequalities which still lurk in the dark corners of corporate america and the shadows of the public mentality, i feel driven to espouse an extremism which often leads to my own separation and isolation from the mainstream. feminism - just the very word evokes images of staunch (and really quite ugly) women, unsmiling in sepia-toned photographs; bra-burners whose long hair hangs severely parted and held away from their faces by thin leather cords; and extremists who nit-pick over word choice and scan media images with a fine-toothed comb.

my experience abroad in morocco opened my eyes to the subtle shades of grey encompassed within that word, "feminist." having previously considered myself part of the complacent middle-ground - caught somewhere between the far left and right, i suddenly found myself on the outskirts of social thought. my basic assumption that a woman can do and should be able to do anything that a man traditionally has done, my fundamental inheritance from all those staunch women and bra-burners, placed me in the camp of feminist extremism.

coming back to my own culture, my eyes are even more sensitive to those inequalities present here, and i have begun to feel more and more comfortable carrying that title: feminist. i believe in women. i believe in their rights. i believe in their beauty. and i affirm the divine and splendid within women, just as i affirm the divine and splendid in any human being.

but here's the struggle for me: how do i reconcile this burgeoning affiliation to the feminist movement with my deep desire for the "traditional" domesticity. how can i deny the pleasure that rose within me as i fixed the dress of one roommate, did the hair of another before they went out this evening, and then turned to set bread to rise for the dinner i am cooking tomorrow?

perhaps more pertinent is this question: why do i feel like the two are mutually exclusive...

cycling through

2008-10-26T07:09:00.001-07:00

it almost seems as thougth "so long sweet life" would have been the more appropriate blog title, or at the very least, "so long sweet blog." i was, to be perfectly honest, a little shocked and awed to see that my last post was the 17th of august. now, as we round up to the end of october - with the leaves in shocking shades of reds and yellows and several bare branches reminding us of what is to come, august seems so very far away.

i'm halfway finished with the first semester of my senior year, and my feelings/perspective/outlook seems to flow through a repetitive progression which is quickly becoming a sort of weekly, or sometimes daily, routine. first there is the feeling of being overwhelmed - swamped with the sheer volume of work which much be accomplished in a single day, knowing that there are so many people with whom i have yet to connect but for whom i do care a great deal. then comes the feelings of being so "done" with college and with bc. ready to be a full-fledged member of the world, not trapped within the bc bubble where a false sense of maturity threatens to take hold of you at every turn. finished with the parties where people who really don't actually know each other get drunk so as to feel comfortable bumping into each other in a vague attempt to fulfill a deep need for human contact and interaction. but, low and behold, the last stage settles in - deep appreciation gilded with a tinge of nostalgia.

boston and boston college have been my home for that last four years almost - longer than any other stable place. i will miss my haunts - the coffee shops, the bookstores, the quirky independent theatres. i will miss the proximity to others that college affords, particularly when they are others who have won places in your heart by challenging you to something greater than anything you thought you could be.

biking back from the grocery store yesterday, i had an amelie moment. (amelie is a wonderful french film which follows the life of a whimsical girl who sees the beauty in small things and decides to lead her life motivated by the goal of helping others only to end up helping herself - it's one of my favorites. if you haven't seen it, watch it.) i was turning past the reservoir where there is a walking circuit, and i noticed a little elderly woman walking and suddenly raise her hand in greeting, a broad smile brightening her face. when i looked to where she was looking, i saw an equally little and equally elderly old man. dressed in a black overcoat and a scully cap, wating patiently at the end of the path.

i sped forward from where she was, feeling the weight of garbanzo beans, eggplant, cucumbers, and tomatoes pulling on my shoulders through the straps of my backpack. as i reached him, he turned to watch me pass. we made eye contact, and i smiled at him.

it was only a moment, and while my head raced on with the imaginations of who those individuals were - what their life has been and is now, my heart sang with the singular power of love. and while i know these experiences aren't limited to boston or chestnut hill, there is something uniquely boston about them, and that is what i'll miss.

so long, sweet summer

2008-08-17T15:05:00.000-07:00

i feel like the "end of summer" cliche has been so overdone in many ways. just the words themselves conjure images of john travolta and olivia newton john crooning on the beach of some hollywood set and the melodies of countless pop songs float through my brain like an oddly composed summer medley.

but the end of my summer is approaching, and as ends of things are natural places for reflection, i have found myself thinking more and more this past week about the journey of my past year, much less the summer. i've been to africa and back. twice. i have learned to read and write a new language, smoked hookah for the first time, trekked through the atlas mountains, wandered the streets of paris, and spent the night in the middle of the mojave desert with a handful of friends and a myriad of stars as my companions. i have gotten a solid look at my future life as a full-time nurse (and i'm excited for it) as well as the beauty of living, just living and working - without papers or deadlines or exams to stress you out of your mind.

this year has also brought me face to face with the extreme hardships of poverty, and the tenuous place of receiving hospitality when you know that your host cannot possibly afford it. i have held an infant as it passed away, and held his mother when all was said and done. i have laughed until i couldn't breathe, and i have cried until i thought no more tears could possibly come. i have felt achingly lonely, and i have experienced the joy of being completely, deeply, and fully surrounded by human love. i have had my heart shattered, and i have learned how to live and love through it.

i have been taught a few basics of moroccan cooking, and some of the complexities of global development, environmental protection, and food justice. i have come to realize that there are freedoms present within this country of america for women and minorities that do not come so easily in other places, and i am still learning how to appreciate this state which issues my passport and this ambiguous thing we call "citizenship."

i have experienced boston fall, morocco winter, paris spring, and california summer.

needless to say, as i sit here and let these memories bubble up within my consciousness, i am bowed over by the diversity, and humbled by overwhelming gratitude. in so many ways, i am different from the lauren elizabeth fadely who, this time last year, was sitting at a coffee shop in east texas, only just beginning to fully process a summer spent in freetown, sierra leone.

and then, when i think about where i might be this time next year and all the settling and firming up of these subtle changes combined with new ones, i can't even see yet...well, i get a little overwhelmed - one of those mixtures of antsy excitement with a dash of deep dread, if you know what i mean.

all this to say - the point finally - is that while it's easy to get caught up in the varied myriad of memories, i seek to simply hold them, draw them into me, and look forward - with eyes clear and calm - toward the future.

camp reflections

2008-08-02T20:20:00.000-07:00

its a cloudy, chilly night in san diego, and i'm back in the little blue house on oliphant street after a roller-coaster week out of the blue.

within the first week or so of being here, the chance to work as a counselor at a church camp in northern california. time went by, and with no response from the coordinator, the whole prospect got conveniently shelved somewhere behind putting in a garden, biking to the grocery store, and all the other random tidbits of life.

two wednesdays ago, however, the phone rang, plans were laid, and suddenly saturday morning at 6 am, heidi and i found ourselves waiting around on the point loma campus ready to load up and move out. the destination: eureka, ca and the blue slide mid-high teen church camp. fifteen hours of driving later, which included an hour and a half of circling sacramento thanks to an unexpected highway closure and an overnight stay in yuba city at the home of one of the most hospitable older couples i've ever met, we found ourselves at the edge of the pacific northwest - the palms replaced by pines, the cliffs and waves replaced by mountains and rivers, and the cloudless skies filled with the low, grey clouds that make greens that much greener and the blues that much bluer.

monday morning came, staff met, campers arrived, and camp ensued. stories upon stories could be told about the girls in my cabin (hailey, elizabeth, mariah, sarah, haley, and laura) or the awesome kids on my red team (sam, natalie, thomas, jordan, allison, kendra, and kaitlin) or the staff who, daily, exemplified god's unfailing love. days filled with dodgeball, arts and crafts, archery, swimming in the river, chapel times, and campfires.

but what i wanted to write about tonight, as i catch up on emails and stream the results from "so you think you can dance" on heidi's computer, was how incredibly touched i was by the reality of the lives of my campers. smack in the middle of humboldt county - a center of alcoholism, methamphetamine abuse, and marijuana use - the kids represented at camp were riddled with the after effects of these destructive habits, torn to pieces by abandonment, divorce, and the painful wounds they cause. out of the six girls in my cabin, not one of them did not carry the scars of the hate, anger, and despair embodied within parental fighting, divorce, peer rejection and the even more powerfully impactful abandonment and the foster system.

in reaching out to these little ones, proclaiming god's unconditional love and his everlasting faithfulness, the conventional words of comfort turned to ash in my mouth, and the tears shed in private were bitter, indeed. but in living through that challenge, i discovered buried somewhere deep within, a steel-like fiber of strength that i didn't even really know existed.

and now, as night has fallen a state's length away from my little dears and the episode currently streaming comes to an end, with the idea of catching up on some much-needed sleep looms to the forefront of my mind, all i can do is to surrender those lives to the creator which breathed them into being and remind my ownself of the words i offered them so often: god is faithful.

true living, thai, and tree-hugging

2008-07-22T13:34:00.002-07:00

it's funny how much life can change in any given amount of time.

i arrived in san diego a little over a week ago now, and my whole world has revolved and evolved into the amazing existence i'm living now, centered around the little blue house at 3033 oliphant st, and the six lovely ladies that live here. reuniting with heidi, one of my oldest and dearest friends, has - of course - been richly rewarding, but i have unexpectedly entered into a deep and beautiful community which has, in so many ways, opened its arms to me in a way i never could have imagined.

the doors to the house are always open, and the cool ocean breeze sweeps through, carrying the ethno-indie music which always seems to be on throughout the entire house. the kitchen is open and wide, inviting excited conversation around bubbling pots of vegetarian goodness. motivated by social justice, solidarity, and sustainability, the lifestyles of the mighty little women of this new home have been hugely inspiring as i take time to dig down deep and reexamine my own choices and the power i have to create within myself a living witness to the values i have long proclaimed by mouth.

days previously filled with either the frustrating meaninglessness of lounging in the sun and hours of food network and discovery channel or the long hours of hospital shifts are now consumed by simple activities which leave me every day feeling more and more alive: painting; reading; cycling down to the pier, the coffee shop, or the beach; hiking through the glories that sounthern california's nature has to offer; and hopefully soon volunteering with the homeless women's ministry in downtown.

i can't remember a time in my past when i had this much freedom with my time and lived it with this degree of intentionality, and as i look forward to the future, which i have also been doing a lot of, i wonder if i'll ever have this luxury of unbelievably open summer days. but even as the foreshadows of anxiety regarding the overly dramatized "loss of youth and joy" that comes with graduation and my first real job or the year of difficult schooling that i first must overcome to even get to that place, i brush the dark tendrils away and realize that joy is not localized to a certain place or a certain group of people, but to a perspective and a life that is lived openly - something which translates to all situations although the trappings may change from place to place.

in the meantime - when i'm not philosophizing about life, because it really isn't the only thing i do despite the tendency of my blogging to be bent upon it - i'm content to enjoy the random moments that make life, life. like my impromptu thai lesson in the car today, when i changed the language on my friend's garmin, a gps direction-giver and way-finder. here is what i learned:

liang tsai = turn left
liang wa = turn right

or like the discussion that marte (one of the housemates) and i shared about the complexities of the label "organic" and the importance of "locally produced" in the quest for community sustainability as well as the general social justice implications of food and nutrition, courtesy of the book, animal, vegetable, miracle.

one can only hope that my amazing college roommates will be able to forgive me for returning to boston after a semester abroad and a summer in california as a "crazy hippie," but in the meantime, i'm loving san diego.

san diego here i come...

2008-07-11T09:44:00.002-07:00

i'm sitting in a little coffee shop near my apartment once again - for the last time as far as i can see. but the feeling is bittersweet, unsurprsingly, as most transitions are.

in the past few weeks, i have fallen in love again with nursing. working full-time, one-on-one with great nurses in what will most likely soon rise to be the best hospital in the country (currently ranked 3rd), i awoke to that first passion that motivated me to choose nursing in the first place. the same one that had been stifled and squished almost into non-being by hours upon hours of oppressive lectures and a whole forest's worth of papers carefully explaining my nursing diagnoses and care plans, which i recently discovered, much my chagrin, you never really use in hospital nursing. i connected with countless patients, learned more than i can even describe, and most importantly discovered that i have something to contribute, bridging the gap between new-grad and seasoned nurse and charge nurse and doctors.

i interviewed and was accepted for a position and suddenly the reality of my impending independence and true adulthood has come crashing into my view. but i'm tacitly side-stepping these thoughts of total life overhaul and turning to san diego, displacing the swarming horde of what-ifs that for now at least are politely knocking at the edge of my mind.

on tap for my time near the border: decorating heidi's new space on less than a dime; volunteering with catholic charities; odd jobs around town; climbs and hikes in the nearby hills and parks; and hours upon hours of deep, soul-searching conversations. with all of the tumble of events that have blown my little life from here to there, i'm looking forward whole-heartedly to a few weeks of centered contemplation with a dear friend whose life journey has been inextricably woven into mine.

change is good...

transitioning, etc.

2008-06-17T09:09:00.002-07:00

so i'm rounding up on three weeks being here in sunny los angeles - although to be perfectly honest, i've pretty much stuck to the west side of the city (westwood, santa monica, venice...), and i've just finished up my neonatal intensive care unit rotation. next week i start in pediatrics.

sometimes, when i think about just how much my life has changed in the last month, i almost have to laugh. a month ago, i had just left morocco - it's beautifully complicated culture that challenged me to step up every single day and embrace the differences in life that make humanity the beautiful conglomeration that it is. i was in paris with my roommate lauren sharing gorgeous days wandering the city of light and love, experiencing it from the ground level - walking everywhere, people watching, and just living without really a care in the world. and now i'm here, smack in the middle of westwood - that ucla bubble right next to beverly hills and the sunset strip - how did that happen?

my apartment is insanely nice completely furnished including a large kitchenette, a super comfy bed, and a leather couch. upstairs, on the roof, one can easily find the little pool and deck chairs for relatively private sunning any time of the day surrounded by high rises and the constant honking and beeping of traffic.

the hospital is only a five minute walk away making the morning commute ideal, and i wonder if i'm being spoiled for anything else after graduation...

work itself has been amazing. the ucla staff definitely deserve their ranking as the third best in the nation, and as a student, i have felt almost instantly welcomed on to the healthcare team - a sensation relatively lacking in my east-coast hospital experiences on clinical days. i've shared tender and intimate moments with my patients and their families. i've cried - at the birth of one infant and the tragic death of another. i've jumped into this experience with both feet, and i don't regret it for one moment.

but that same longing for something, somewhere else is still there. as i sit in the middle of this concrete jungle, surrounded by all of the cute little coffee shops and restaurants i could ever ask for, i long for something...something else.

it's hard to put it into words. part of it is the community from which i have been separated for quite some time. the last time i really felt this kind of loneliness (the kind when you're surrounded by heaps of people, but just not really known by anyone) was my freshman year at university. part of it is just a chafing at my environment. in a neighborhood that exists mainly to serve the ucla student population, the streets are full of people single-mindedly going about their days. i don't really know how to explain it, and at the risk of sounding like a huge hippie, i miss the earth. after spending the semester in rural morocco, whiling away spare time hiking across the countryside, overwhelmed by the grandeur of rugged mountains and stony desert plains and expansive fields of tender, green wheat, i feel constrained by the man-made structures around me. the few green spaces i have found seem all too engineered, carefully plotted and planned to be both economical and aesthetically pleasing.

in a place which prides itself on a freedom of mind and spirit, a liberality that extends to all areas of life, i feel oddly boxed-in - as if that freedom really looks like this and acts like that and everything else just doesn't quite fit in.

in the end, all of this essentially leaves with this odd sense of yearning, but for what, i haven't quite figured out. for friends? family? freedom? faith? i'm not exactly sure. but i'm looking forward, in some ways, to the journey i'm on to figure it out.

something i've been learning...

2008-06-14T10:34:00.002-07:00

here's a brief synopsis of what i've been learning about these past few days - hopefully will find time for more of a concrete update sometime in here soon...

open your squeezed-shut eyes and see
just who i have called you to be

the one inside you
waiting to wake,
and be freed from these fears
and dream

the one whose thoughts i know,
whose heartstrings play my song
with echoes
of a soul-wrenching beauty

open your squeezed-shut eyes and see
just the one i've created you to be

your highest dreams
birds soaring 'cross the seas
your darkest fears
buried sheol deep
are known
you're mine and me

open your squeezed-shut eyes and see
just the love i know you to be

then you shall be radiant
at what you see;
your heart shall throb and overflow -
come, rest in me

leaving on a jet plane redux

2008-05-29T09:31:00.001-07:00

from yesterday:

i had every intention of writing an entry about home sometime after my plane touched down here at dallas-fort worth international airport six days ago. but somehow, as it has a tendency to do, time went on, and now i’m here again – gate e37 – waiting for the plane that will carry me to los angeles and the next chapter of my life.

this morning when i woke up, the weight of leaving immediately settled on my shoulders, like the misty fog which shrouded our little house, a holdover from the heavy grey thunderclouds which dumped inches of rain on east texas yesterday. i spent the morning semi-frantically stuffing items of clothing and papers forgotten until the last minute into the one bag which i am allowed under the new baggage policy. some things have changed since i left the united states in january. all of my clothes, neatly rolled, were laid into my blue hiker’s pack, and i was amazed once again how well everything fit – some things haven’t changed.

before i knew it, though, it was time to leave, and i took one last good look around the home i was so excited to get to less than a week ago. when my plane from london touched down, i had jumped from my seat, jockeying for a space in the aisle before power-walking through the carpeted hallways of dfw, waiting fifteen or twenty foot-tapping minutes in agonizing anticipation, and finally throwing myself into the arms of my awaiting family.

an hour and a half later, over a series of massive texas highways, we arrived at that same house which i found myself leaving so quickly: the open kitchen, exhorting its inhabitants to “live well, laugh often, love much,” before blending seamlessly into our living room and my bedroom beyond, where it is neatly tucked next to the bathroom, with it’s green towels and red bicycles, and my parents bedroom in soothing lavender and deep purples. i’ve never been one to associate “home” with a specific place, and yet this little country house on the corner of mulberry and michigan has carved a little hole in my heart. maybe more because of the memories that we have made as a family there. maybe because it’s the first house, in the traditional sense of the word, that i have real memories of. regardless of the particulars, this space of peace and tranquility is also a place where i am deeply and truly known, and after a semester of wandering half a world away, that’s a really lovely feeling.

so here we are. all of that is to be left until i have another four or five days at the other end of my summer, in august, and i find myself wondering what in the world possessed me to accept this internship at ucla medical center. but even in the time it takes to write that sentence, i remember again my love of adventure, the exhilaration of change, and the promise of something new. my independent streak wells up within me, and i smile...

waking up

2008-05-15T01:56:00.002-07:00

after crashing late last night, i was awoken (far too early) to my roommate's frenzied packing efforts. over the course of yesterday, boxes and bins and bags had appeared out of nowhere, been filled with something, laid in a somewhat scattered fashion around our room, forming a sort of low fort-like wall around my roommate's bed and unpacked possessions. this morning the last of it was thrown in. the shifting and slamming of boxes on our bare linoleum tile floor was my first sound for the day, and it spelled out an ominous reminder.

i remember when i came home from sierra leone, i felt as though i had passed from a sort of dream back into reality, or perhaps fallen from reality into sleep. whichever the case may be, my life in van, texas, boston, massachusetts, or wherever seemed completely disconnected from the two and a half months i had spent living in the little house on a hill in freetown, sierra leone.

as i sit now, surrounded by my packed bags and the last, sad-looking vestiges of my life here in morocco, i can't help but brace for the same feeling. but how does that work, exactly? the roots i have put down here are larger and stronger. five months worth of shared homework headaches and cultural fumbles and travelling adventures aren't as easily shifted to the side. modern technologies like email, skype, blogging, and facebook definitely make the separation easier - but you and i both know that however convenient, those forms of communication are nothing compared to the real face-to-face contact and experience of living life with any one particular person.

to be perfectly honest, the chances of seeing any of the other foreign exchange students is relatively high. concentrated, for the most, on the highly academic northeast corner of the country, travels for long weekends or big events is entirely feasible. but for the girls here, the moroccan students, with whom i have found a special connection...i feel helpless in predicting the future. and while i am so excited looking forward to the crazy, rootless life i have ahead of me in 2008, i can't help but yearn for that security of knowing that things can just stay the way they are.

i've also written before about the sucking, popping sensation of breaking bonds with people, pulling up roots, and saying goodbye, and i can't help but feel that again, so strongly, now.

friendly faces and countless adventures await me, as well as that long and beautiful process of unpacking this experience and realizing the fullness of how these past five months have wrought in me a unique change. i cannot complain, and yet...

i guess i just don't want to wake up.

home in essouira

2008-05-05T10:58:00.005-07:00

so it's been a little while since i last wrote, and as i sit down to my computer once again, i realize that my two or three week absence is related to a few different things. first, after returning from spring break, i literally buried myself under a pile of books and worked on final projects and papers - a tactic which came in quite handy as finals approach and i actually have very little work left to do. second, i think i've hit a little bit of that dry spell. let me explain.

if you've made any change in your life (in this case, my location) for an extended period of time, you get to a point where the things that were so new and exciting and different and exhilerating and overwhelming at first have calmly blended into everyday life. it's a wonderful moment when you realize that seeing women in the hijab or taking a grand taxi ride or the crumbling medina of a city doesn't really register on your radar. so despite life perhaps feeling a little less exciting and despite the sensation that there really isn't anything to write about, i rejoice in reaching this point in my time here in morocco - it's become normal. it's almost become home.

this past week especially emphasized that fact for me. with a long weekend beginning on thursday, eva and i weighed our options and decided that, having faithfully attended all of our classes thus far, we could take the first half of the week off, relatively guilt-free, and explore more of morocco's south. a series of misadventures (including miscommunication over bus times and 42/105 degree heat) brought us to essaouira several days earlier than we had anticipated. it's been the happiest mistake of my time here thus far.

a unesco world heritage site and the backdrop for orson well's othello, the medina of essaouira is, like most medinas in morocco, a beautiful mix of crumbling decrepitness blended with functional livability. the upswing of european tourism has led to the refurbishment of many of the medina's riads, and we (for much cheaper than we ever imagined) found ourselves in a beautiful little apartment tucked away between the sea wall and the twisting allys and hanuts (corner shops) of a functional residential community.

i awoke every morning this past week to a veritable symphony of sound. the steady bass line of the crashing surf overlaid with the chatter of childrens' voices punctuated by birdsong and the occasional moto roaring down the narrow lanes. this was the morocco i had dreamed of experiencing and, suddenly, the idea of life here didn't seem so far away.

by the end of the week, i had developed little connections with the people in our community, little tendrils of relationship that - if given time and attention - could easily have turned into roots. the green grocer whose fair prices and smiles had drawn us to his stall in the first place. the ancient spice man whose hunched back and pristine white prayer cap placed precariously on his head made a distinguished and almost sacred space out of his heaps of brightly colored spices and herbs, delicately meteing out one dirham worths of cumin, ginger, cinnamon, and so forth. the corner bakery where a dirham bought you a round, rough loaf fresh from the oven. and the hanut owner who was the only store open early enough to pick up some breakfast eggs but who won my heart with his patient indulgence of my broken arabic.

rolling out on the grumbling ctm bus on saturday evening was definitely a sad moment, but i left with the calm assurance that i will make it back to 'souira some day. hopefully not too far away...

as i got back to the university and began the long and arduous process of sifting through a week's worth of emails and facebook messages and world news - i realized that there is an important part of home that i have been missing, too. it's the connections that i already have; those roots tying my heart with those of the one's i love that have been stretched almost to the breaking by distance and difference and non-existent communication. my brother graduated high school on saturday, and all i could manage was a quick message on his cell phone answering machine. maybe i'm ready to go after all.

whatever the case may be, i'm happy to have the memory of essouira fresh on my heart and mind as i get ready to leave this country that has so patiently and graciously hosted me these past few months (one bag is packed already), and i'm happy, too, to have something worth talking about to share with all of you...

tarmilat

2008-04-17T14:24:00.000-07:00

so after having this blog for several years now, and using picasa for my pictures for almost a year, the two worlds have finally combined! here's a picture from my recent excursion to the little town of tarmilat, which lies just beyond the freshly painted roads and neatly manicured lawns of ifrane.

here, the community survives in houses built of stones, wrestled from the earth, and neatly stacked, one on the other, with rusted sheets of corrugated tin weighted down by used tires for a roof.

as the sun set and the cold, icy wind began to whip up from the north, i ruefully re-wrapped my arms around myself, and wondered why i had decided against that second sweater, now obliviously enjoying its snug home at the end of my bed. but then i look around me once again, and i see the weather-beated faces of the men, women, and children of tarmilat that never really get to leave the cold and who may not have the luxury of a second sweater they can choose to leave at home.

laughter rings out from somewhere, and we are ushered down to one of the stone buildings at the base of the rocky outcrop of a hill where we had been watching the sun set. before it gets too late, the women want to show us their looms, the ancient set-ups which produce the lifeblood of this small but stubbornly thriving community. a dimly lit room, warmed by a charcoal brazier - the workshop smells of sheep and sheeps' wool, and one look at the works in progress there tells the story of the hurculean effort that goes into a single rug or carpet.

stepping out again into the growing dusk, i stop for a moment and watch the daily happenings which continue around me, the work that has to be done whether or not twelve or so white foreigners have descended upon tarmilat. cows appear out of nowhere, and grudgingly - with much protestation - make their way into their byre for the night. minutes later, a crowd of sheep follow suit. as the last light fades, the women around me, with their multi-colored aprons and veils, seem more like hardy desert flowers, buffetted by the breeze, rather than young mothers and old grandmothers whose lives have been marked by the tell-tale pain and suffering that are the cousins of poverty.

but things are looking up for this little village. a relationship with the little church community at al akhawayn and other support has given them a market for their beautiful handiwork, and as we sat, eating our ftour meal of spiced coffee, dates, boiled eggs, shbekia (a honeyed pastry-like knot of deliciousness), and harira (a thick chickpea, tomato, lentil soup), we were told that the lights overhead (which were flickering a bit toward the end) were powered by the solar panel that the community bought together with their first proceeds. a small school has also been built, and there are plans galore of future uses for their growing profits.

at the end of the evening, as we navigated our way down the rocky hill under the light of a nearly full moon, i was relieved to see the university van and it's promise of warmth. climbing quickly inside, i said a quick "thank you and goodbye" to our gracious hosts and set about getting feeling back into my toes. a few minutes later, after arriving back to the university and making my way to my room, i sat on my bed with my second sweater around my shoulders, more than a little bit aware of my many blessings, and more than a little bit guilty to have allowed myself to forget them before.

finding the limit in fes

2008-04-08T07:33:00.002-07:00

i've hit a bit of a wall; i'm not going to lie. i've reached that point where i'm beginning to become quite fatigued of handing over this life of mine to the grand "intercultural experience" otherwise known as "studying abroad," or, for me, "morocco." particularly as i sit in this tiny dorm room on this tiny campus in this tiny town so far removed from morocco proper, feeling a little more than queasy again from the cafeteria food.

i feel as though i'm suffocating under this culture a little bit, too. this past weekend after spending friday night glorying in the beauty of moroccan nature, camping in a sort of open-mouthed cave on a nearby hillside, and enjoying the scrubbing, steaming, exfoliating goodness of the hammam in fes, i was really on a high. i felt cleaner than i ever had in my life and a brief stop at a nearby patisserie to indulge in a raspberry-passion fruit tart with a hint of dark chocolate left me in legitimate feminine ecstasy.

we turned to the old medina to meet up with some guy friends, and that blissful moment suddently came crashing down around my ears - the pristine, crystalline beauty shattered about my feet. and perhaps i still haven't quite recovered...

all entrances to the medina, except for one small side gate, had been blocked off because of a festival that night celebrating the 1200th anniversary of the city of fes. getting separated from the other three girls in our group, shadea and i found ourselves suddenly in the midst of a writhing, tumultuous mass of warm, sweating bodies all pushing in opposite directions - some trying to get out, others trying to get in, and us - caught in the middle, simply trying to stay standing and in one piece. the story of the people crushed to death when the crowd rushed the football stadium somewhere in europe, i clung to shadea's hand and the swarm of people pushed from behind - somehow thinking that would be the most effective means of moving forward despite the fact that those in front weren't going anywhere.

and then the guy popped up behind me - the embodiement of all that i hate about morocco. without warning he was standing there, plying offers of "berber massage" in his high, accented voice dripping with inuendo and physical desire. in the next moment his hand was on my wrist, and then he was stroking my hand. without even thinking, i tore my arm from his grasp and responded with a blow to his chest (rather weak, i'm afraid) and a warning to "go away" sounding awfully high and sharp to my own ears - all my arabic, of course, choosing that exact moment to flee my mind.

and in the next moment he was gone, some kind angel of a man intervening and placing himself between myself and him - i don't even remember much of the rest, except that we managed to escape the worst of the crowd in the next few minutes. as the adrenaline faded from my veins, my heart beat slowed, but i was still shaking when we finally made it to the guys' hotel terrace ten minutes later - that moment of feminine ecstasy long gone, stolen away by the assault of a society still in the throes of the gender struggle.

i never have really considered myself a feminist, but since coming to this place i have begun to question my own perspective, and to be thankful for my own country. for my independence there, especially. the worst part about it, though, is that i'm getting tired of fighting, of having those conversations with my moroccan friends here, of having to arm myself everytime i walk out of the door. as i look at the women in the streets in the towns i visit, i wonder if i have any right, then, to judge them for failing to stand up to the system so long ago.

and yet there are still so many things that i love about this country, and when i say i've hit the wall in some ways, i can say in the same breath that i know i will miss this country, i will miss its people, i will miss those deeply challenging conversations and the constant invitation to abandon your plans and embrace the grace and beauty of flexibility and all of the unknown adventures that she offers.

so i take a deep breath. find that center of love and peace. and choose to bring that to the world i'm living in. because, the truth is, i'm a bit ashamed that i hit that man - that i responded to his negativity with anger, hatred, loathing, and violence. i shouldn't have given him the time of day. and maybe that's the thought of moroccan women. maybe they're just biding their time until that day when the mantle of oppression has cracked enough that they can throw it off in one fell swoop and stand victorious, celebrating the success of their patience, their endurance, and their silent protest.

i really hope so...

today

2008-04-02T09:34:00.002-07:00

interesting event of the day: buying chicken. from a butcher. in another language. let's just say there was a lot of gesturing, broken arabic, broken french, smiling, and nodding involved. i really think the guy must have thought that i, ally, and eva were all fairly comical, especially when we all jumped when he whacked off the chicken's head with a meat cleaver. oh morocco...

frustration

2008-04-01T11:50:00.003-07:00

i am frustrated. inside and out. you know the kind: that gnawing, eating-at-your-soul that makes you want to scream at the top of your lungs, jump up and down, and shake someone.

hard.

it has grown inside of me this whole semester as i push and pull and tug at my english conversation group members, practically begging them to talk, to engage, to have an opinion, to think. and the response is always the same: blank - that blank stare reflecting a blank mind that's so depressing i want to call the whole thing off.

this week, ally and i prepared a collection of protest music: billie holiday, bob marley, U2, the beatles, ani difranco, the decemberists...music crossing time and theme and genre; music inspired by an event, a social concern, or an idea like redemption. i've thrown racism, politics, religion, foreign affairs, abortion, stem cell research, family, gender roles, relationships at them.

blank.

i don't know how much more of this i can take...

food: body, heart, mind, and soul

2008-03-30T15:48:00.003-07:00

i'm back in my room once again after a weekend of travelling, staring at this little blinking cursor - starkly black against the bright white screen - wondering what exactly to say.

it's not writer's block, per se...it's just that there are so many little facets to this past weekend that i'm not exactly sure where to start.

this past weekend i travelled with shadea (an exchange student from last semester) to chefchaouen, a picturesque town of blue and white nestled in the hillside of the rif mountains and more generally known the world over for its excellent hash and weed. it also happens to be the hometown of one of my good friends here, sarrah. it also happens to be shadea's favorite town in morocco, so when i heard that she was going there and that she was staying with the elmomoudis (or something like that), i tagged along.

to put it simply - this weekend was food. for every part of me, really.

the (many) amazing meals put together by sarrah's mom and their nanny/friend/household help/older sister, khalisa were incredible. from the fresh strawberries just coming into season to the addictive jben, a sort of fresh country cheese, to the perfectly cooked fish served with lentils and newly baked bread - it was all so wonderful, and a delightful escape from the tastebud-tiring fare of the on-campus restaurant.

sarrah's three younger sisters, hagar, marawa, and rema, were food for my heart. i didn't even realize how much i miss my little cousins until i entered the apartment and heard the girlish banter so typical of two little girls, aged eight and nine. hagar, a distant fifteen and extremely studious, provided a sort of calm in the middle of the storming younger ones who incessantly demanded shadea and i come up with all sorts of new gymnastic games which we could play in the family salon. that is, when we didn't have the television tuned to the music stations and were all dancing to the latest tunes out of egypt and lebanon.

needless to say, the non-stop arabic that flew around me, mixed with a heavy helping of french and spanish was definitely food for my mind. my little notebook is slowly expanding as pages and pages are filled with my new arabic words. like: jlbana (peas), aHsan (better), guli (eat!), and tawezzan (balance).

my travel time with shadea, from the long bus ride from fez to chaouen (pronounced shaowin) to the final taxi ride back to ifrane from fez today, was a series of twisting conversations. some of those beautifully deep ones where mind and mind, heart and heart meet and just are, laid bare before each other. a common practice with my friends and college community back home, i had been sorely lacking that same level of engagement here at al akhawayn where i find, more often than not, a crowd of young people too concerned with how best to make it from day to day by doing the smallest amount of work rather than a body of students hungering after truth and ready to embrace the tough questions that are blatantly staring them in the face amidst the poverty and dejection of the very neighborhoods of ifrane if only they would open their eyes. our conversations and that fundamental connection between two people which only serves to underscore your shared humanity was food for my soul - one i didn't even realize i was hungry for.

not to mention the beauty of chefchaouen itself, which is definitely beyond description. something about how the light of the setting sun is captured in the blue-washed walls of the buildings which crowd the old medina...

well, let's just say i'm already dreaming of going back.

there and back again, a nomad's story

2008-03-23T16:17:00.002-07:00

a quick once-over my life would lead one to think that a rootless life - living in place after place consistently finding new homes and recycling the concept of community - is in my blood. a review of the past few weeks since i last wrote here would only confirm it.

here is a list of the places i have been since last writing: ifrane, meknes, casablanca, boston, charlotte, dallas, new york, midelt, rich, amellago, goulmima, ourzazate, marrakesh, safi, rabat, and back to ifrane. in fact, so much has happened that i hardly know where to start...

i travelled in a sort of whirling-dervish manner to the united states now just over two weeks ago. after a few days spent in boston, prepping for my truman interview and soaking up the glory of reconnecting with friends and eating such wonderful things as spinach and hummus, i jetted down to dallas. less than forty-eight hours later, i was jetting back to morocco. there are many tales to tell of my journey - stories of the people i met along the way and the craziness that is just so typical of travel. suffice it to say that my over-all feeling from the trip was that it was just too easy. too easy to cross so many lines of culture, language, development... a brief seven hour trans-atlantic flight brought be across the huge gap between the world i live in know and the world to which i will soon return. the world is so small...

coming back was definitely a crash landing of sorts, battling jet-lag and a nasty chest cold i dove back into an aui campus gearing up for the spring break holiday and cramming for midterms to get there. i jumped back into the middle of it, and three midterms later got to breathe the communal sigh of relief that was whistling through the campus, like the warm southern winds that had brought sunshine and warmth just in time for my return.

and then suddenly there was spring break and the loosely set itenerary of trekking and travel set up with ally and camille before i had left. again, many, many stories to tell, but i'll just put the highlights here - one per day:

saturday: arriving in the little town of amellago at the head of the tode'ghrost gorge and a sunset tour of the community agricultural co-op led by our gracious gite owner, moha 'ousri (or maybe it was his younger brother, hamed...)

sunday: our grand 17 km trek through the gorge itself, and then our surprise encounter with the amazigh (berber) poet, taos 'umar which led to an impromptu private concert of his politically charged and incredibly moving poetry (berber poetry is traditionally sung with or without accompaniment)

monday: morning bike ride through the goulmima palmerie and ksbah with our gite proprietor who i took to calling jedd (grandpa) hassan because of his incredibly generous and warm nature

tuesday: the epitome of flexibilty. travelled most of the day (after tactfully avoiding an offer of four thousand camels in exchange for camille's hand in marriage) intending to spend the night in another mountain town of taddert only to end up in marrakesh instead (there was some confusion when we wanted to get off, and then it was too late to make it back to the little sleepy town we had hoped for)

wednesday: waking up on a rooftop terrace in marrakesh to the bustling sounds of the medina below, spending the day hopping from garden to cafe to garden to cafe in various parts of the city, and topping it off with a delicious italian meal with an adorable elderly waiter who was more than happy to let us practice our arabic

thursday: awoken by rain and the creeping damp of rooftop exposure, it ended up beautifully sunny with the pleasant surprise of meeting up with eva and her boyfriend (visiting from holland) for lunch and an afternoon stroll through the souk (market). follow that up with a cup o tea in a terrace cafe and then a late night train to safi during which our compartment-mates offered us to stay with them in mohammedia with the promise of finding us good husbands...

friday: wandering through the potteries of safi, climbing the ramparts of the portuguese qsar, and generally enjoying the sea breezes as well as long conversations in arabic (with me only getting every other word) with a couple of the younger artisans over a cup of coffee in the ville nouvelle (that was after taking a picture with the giant tajine in the center of town...)

saturday: getting lost in various quartiers of rabat, wandering about all parts of the city new and old, and the easter vigil service at the cathedral downtown - a melange of cultures and languages including french (predominantly), spanish, english, and various sub-saharan african languages.

today: easter morning mass (in english), more travel, and then the joys of reconnecting with friends and hearing stories upon stories as everyone returns from their various adventures. when i saw the gates of al akhawayn, mixed emotions welled up inside: torn between the joys that being in this place brings and the tedium of this (at times) ridiculous bubble. as i sit at my computer and look at my bed next to me, i'm very happy and thankful. it's a definite upgrade from the over-stuffed mattresses, thin cots, and iron springs which have all graced my dreams this past week or so. but when i think about that vigor and life that sings in my blood at the thought of new places and new people and the limitless of adventure that travel can bring and how all of that is dulled here, like a colored photograph washed out by poor exposure, i sort of ache again for that open road.

but maybe it's true what they say. maybe you can't wander forever...

we'll always have paris...

2008-03-02T14:34:00.003-08:00

so while i didn't see rick's cafe (which i hear is an overly-touristed place in any case), i did spend the weekend in casablanca, within the more-than-words-can-communicate gracious hospitality of karim and his parents.

here's a brief layout of our weekend:

friday:
leave ifrane and aui in the late afternoon
arrive in casablanca around 7:30 pm
meet karim's parents
drop off our bags
eat at a charming little italian restaurant named "luigi's" which just so happened to have a hummer with new york state plates on it - we're not in kansas any more :)

saturday:
sleep in a little
breakfast with the fam
tour of hassan II mosque (the only way non-muslims are allowed inside)
some sitting and reading in the sun on the seawall while karim ran errands and picked up eva
lunch with karim's family - really a feast consisting of a variety of salads, pastilla (a spanish-inspired dish of chicken and spices and nuts and honey in between layers of a special kind of pastry dough), and tagine
HENNA! - truly the highlight of the weekend - will definitely post some pictures of the beautiful artwork adorning my hands and forearms as soon as my camera battery recharges...
shopping (a football jersey of my favorite moroccan player and a pair of moroccan slippers)
coffee at a really chic japanese-inspired cafe that karim took us to
driving around the city at night
late night return to the house where we were greeted by a still-warm tureen of harira (a kind of soup), bread, cheese, and dates

today:
late morning departure from the house after some grocery shopping in the nearby marche
lunch out at a gorgeous restaurant called "la sqala" which is a renovated riad in the old medina which put us back late to ifrane, but definitely worth it
unpacking
gearing up for the crazy week ahead

casa is by far the largest city in morocco, and this weekend was different for me in that way to be sure. the past few trips have been to smaller citadels which can be easily navigated with one or two sights, a handful of recommended hostels, and a decent number of cheap eateries. casa, however, is really a teeming center of commerce and culture. many of the places that we drove through combined with the proliferation of french bilboards, shops, and signs made me think more often than not that we had travelled much further than the three and a half hours or so from our mountain perch of al akhawayn.

but this weekend was something else for me as well.

last week, in english conversation group, several of the students asked me how i had found morocco and moroccan people thus far. and it was kind of hard to say. i mean, i haven't had any really negative encounters, to be sure - but at the same time, i have met with more than a little of what could be called...resistence, or maybe distance - than i would have expected, and definitely more than would allow me to say that people have been outright friendly. there's always the feeling, compounded perhaps by french colonialism and religious tension and misunderstanding, that there exists a distinct and impermeable line between you (the foreigner) and the other (moroccan). this weekend, all of that disappeared.

i found myself carefully stitched into the fabric of life of a upper-middle class moroccan family. we sat on the couch together and watched television (albeit in french or arabic). karim's father practiced his english, while we in turn practiced our arabic, laughing the whole way through. we were introduced to extended family, shown pictures of weddings and cousins along with the standard baby pictures, welcomed with open arms, and sent away laden with gifts both material and immaterial. i left with henna on my arms and a jellaba in my bag, but with a heart full of a mother's love and a father's gentle teasing as well as promises for a swift return.

to put it another way: whenever i end up in a new place for any amount of time, i generally find myself mentally wandering down a checklist of sorts. one of the questions i ask myself is whether or not i could see myself living there in the future. before this weekend, i really would have said no. the cultural gap is large, and traversing the fields of language, custom, and religion on a daily basis has been exhausting, particularly when travelling away from the campus. but now, after seeing life from the other side, and experiencing the warmth and hospitality that can be found there, i have changed my mind.

at one point, after jason and i had finished our tour of the hassan II mosque, when we were sitting on the sea wall, i looked up from the book i was reading to find a young mom and her toddler son sitting just a meter or so away. she was pointing out different things, and he was watching the seagulls and the breaking waves with great joy, clapping wildly in response to the white foamy water below. i imagined their lives - pictured them emerging from a small but comfortable apartment similar to the one we had just spent the night in, and i realized that that life wasn't so terribly far away nor so incredibly difficult to imagine. not that i'm about to run off and have children just so that i can visit the ocean with them...but it made the country, the people, and that life somehow much closer and much more...real.

it's all in the little things

2008-02-26T13:05:00.004-08:00

you might think that after travelling hundres of miles (24 pages away from boston in the atlas, a dear friend pointed out to me once), one would find themselves in a world hugely and startlingly different. the kind of difference that blows you out of the water and into culture shock - that oh-so-elusive state of...what?...denial? depression? some epehmeral thing we are warned about in orientation to be on our guard against as though it was more like one the of the stray dogs which wander about downtown ifrane rather than the relatively normal stage of human adjustment and adaptation that it is.

there have been differences here, to be sure. there are the obvious things like language and food and the more blantant aspects of culture like music and the bisou-bisou greeting and the omnipresent islam, easily found in phrases like ensha'allah (meaning "God willing") which can be tacked onto to just about any statement or 'hemdulillah (meaning "thanks be to God"), but you settle into those fairly quickly, or at least reconcile yourself to the fact that they're just that - different - and their not going anywhere, so you had best get used to them. pretty soon you don't really notice it anymore and you find yourself craving a bowl of b'sara (kind of like split pea soup but made with butter beans and lots of garlic) or tapping your foot to the beat of the chaabi music that is on in the taxis or reaching for a phrase only to find something in arabic coming out as really the only expression that quite grasps what you're trying to say.

i have taken a job as facilitator for the mandatory english conversation groups for all incoming students whose scores on the toefl placed them into the language centre in order to fully prepare them for integration into the all-english academic environment of aui. in these groups i find myself among young men and women - most only a year or so younger that me, if that even - and the forum becomes open for the airing of all sorts of inner sevles and life stories. like the young freshman who sat across from me this evening and didn't realize that i could easily discern the cracks running through his facade of tough guy/mr. independent as he shared how his life has changed in coming to school - the boy inside frozen in bewilderment upon returning home to parents who had moved on and begun a new life of sorts over his first semester of university. of the older graduate student who, in broken but earnest english, shared the agony of hearing his father claim to love his older brother - more successful in terms of profits and dividends - more than him.

i treasure these moments beyond my ability to communicate with words. it's been harder than i thought it would be, to dive beneath the surface of my moroccan peers and classmates. who are the people behind the meticulously maintained appearances - who really is that girl that comes to my 8 am class with every hair in place, make-up skillfully applied, and dressed in the latest fashions she bought in paris last fall, complete from her louis vuitton purse to her patent leather high heels, which must just naturally grow from her feet, because i've never seen anyone walk in heels so well. so i collect these moments of humanity out of my day, and these two and a half hours of english conversation every day, like picking daisies out of a field, a bit of a saving grace, reality and humanity at the center again, despite of the distance and the culture and everything.

it just goes to prove again that it's all in the little things...

one of those days...

2008-02-20T05:19:00.002-08:00

have you ever had one of those days where you feel like there's so much potential - so many potential moments, potential things to learn, potential conversations to be had, potential moments to be lived - that you feel as though you would break out of your skin? the potential energy inside of you is stirring, and you feel the need to sing or shout or run or dance. instead, i sit and watch the sunshine stream through my window as i study arabic and political anthropology and current events and write emails and notes and letters, wishing with all of my heart that i could capture everyone in this one perfect moment, uniting them with me here and now, in this moment - transcending time and distance.

maybe this feeling is provoked by a stunningly clear blue sky after a week or so of rain and drizzle. or maybe it's the joy of getting things accomplished. or maybe it's the shot of espresso that i had an hour or so ago...

taza, tummy bugs, and truman

2008-02-18T01:24:00.002-08:00

so, in keeping with the theme, this was an eventful weekend. after some run-around to nail down plans, eva, jason, and i headed out friday morning: destination taza, a relatively small city that's unique place in the valley between the middle atlas to the south and the rif mountains to the north have given it a rich history of essentially being trampled subsequently as various forces have invaded morocco from the east. tricked out in our hiking gear, we embarked in high spirits ready to catch a grand taxi to fez, a petit taxi to the train station, a train to taza, and a petit taxi to our hotel in the old part of the city, which sits two kilometers up a pretty steep hill from the ville nouvelle (new city) below.

upon arriving in taza, we went about settling into our room: a glaringly pink hotel that despite blinding you in the sun, had a genuinely friendly feel to it. the shuttered windows and doors opened inward to the sunny courtyard, giving everything an open and fresh feeling. fairly quickly we realized that our origional mission (mission spelunk - so named for the cave exploring we were hoping to do) had become two-fold. added now was "mission communication," as we struggled through our few words of arabic, and our handful more of words and phrases in french. here, away from the hustle and bustle of the big cities, the average person didn't really speak french, which didn't bode well for us. in the end, we didn't matter much, and survived fairly well, laughing our way through misspeakings and blunders of all kinds. although, i must say, it was really enjoyable struggling through and forcing ourselves to stretch our little language muscles.

friday afternoon and evening were spent pretty much bumming around the city, wandering in the markets, and having random conversations with people. i quickly learned the immeasurable value of the phrase, enshah'allah, which - loosely translated - means "god willing." as random residents of taza encouraged us to come back later and visit their restaurant or stay at their hotel or have lunch with their family living in a village only a few kilometers away, enshah'allah, a common phrase to be spoken here, quickly found its way into my vocabulary.

after being joined by tony late friday evening, we headed for bed in order to get up early saturday morning to tackly our main mission: mission spelunk.

saturday was a really enjoyable day, although it was also the day that turned abruptly downhill for me at the end. after grabbing a quick breakfast of harcha, a cornbread-type food served with honey, jam, or laughing cow cheese, and a cup of coffee, we headed out via grand taxi to the gouffre de friouato (frewato, as it's also known). by the time we arrived at the caves, i wasn't feeling the hottest, but after sitting for a bit while the bartering was underway for our admission and our guide, i was feeling better. so into the earth we went. 520 steps down (a kilometer of steps, we were told) and another kilometer or so into the earth - a magically different universe. damp, cold, and completely blac save for the few sqare feets illuminated by our torches (flashlights). i had to laugh to myself at the thought of what this cave would be like in the hands of a western tourist board: brightly lit, carefully partitioned off with a constructed walkway guarded by shiny silver railings double and triple certified to bear a certain amount of weight, neatly laid out with informative signs that offered the latest research on how stalactites and stalagmites were formed with gentle admonitions on the impact of humanity on this earth followed by a friendly reminder to recycle or global warming will get you!

instead i found myself crawling around on hands and knees as our billy-goat of a guide ran back and forth in front of us, laughingly encouraging us along, spouting of randon facts in his cheerful mixture of arabic, french, spanish, and english. my favorite part was at the salle des draperies, a point about a quarter of the way through the known part of the cave and our turning-back point. it was a big, empty, echo-ey chamber whose true granduer was carefully hidden by the inky blackness only penetrated by our weak pin-points of light as we crossed and crisscrossed the stony vault with our beams. at one point we shut off our lights, and sang into the dark, struck by the beauty of our returning echoes as if the cave itself joined in the song, adding undertones of centuries of age and wisdom. the moment was broken a few seconds later by the erruption of beat-boxing from jason and tony and a strobe-light effect from the torch of our guide. we all laughed together and then turned around to face the 520 steps back up.

the rest of the day was spent journeying back to taza, a mixture of walking, hitch-hiking, chatting with people, picture-taking, with a brief off-road hiking adventure as we ventured to explore the cascades, waterfall, in that area.

upon returning to our hotel, to make a long story short, i started feeling worse and worse, generally exhausted, nauseous, headachy, and as though some small creature was alternatively performing somersaults in my stomach and tying it into a series of small knots. not the best feeling ever, to say the least! i essentially crashed for the night, surrounded by my phone, water, and some various foods to tempt my appetite, curled up in my sleeping bag. everyone was so great about it - really considerate - and i was so touched when they came back early after dinner, and chose to chill with me in the room, playing cards and drinking a few beers, while i dozed in and out of sleep, alternatively getting up to throw up. thankfully, i stopped throwing up half-way through the night, managed to catch some genuine hours of sleep, as was back to 85 or 90% in time to travel back to campus sunday morning.

sunday itself was fairly uneventful - a rainy, cold day that made you wish for a fireplace, a good book, and a cup of tea. the only special thing to note, is that, upon returning to my computer and checking in with the rest of the world, i found an email congratulating me on moving on to the next round of competition for the truman scholarship - a u.s. federal aid competition that provides a scholarship for graduate studies. so stay tuned as i sort out everything with that...

midelt

2008-02-10T09:48:00.000-08:00

wow. where do you even begin? do you start with the four hour bus ride/adventure from azrou to midelt? or do you describe the absolutely breathtaking image of the eastern atlas colored hues of purple and gold by the setting sun as you pulled into town? or how about the feeling of being accosted as you stepped off of the bus into the frigid night air - "please, please! english? francais? i know a verry nice 'otel - fameelee run!" - and the overwhelming relief of encountering a lovely police officer/angel in uniform.

how about how we whiled away the hours of the night sitting in the parlor/restaurant of the little pension we found with our berber family-proprietors and played endless rounds of scum (the card game) over a grand thiere full to the top with steaming mint tea goodness. or perhaps i should describe the little hostel itself, tiled from floor to ceiling in various shades of blue - cheerful, clean, cool, and best of all, very cheap - a mental note for future expiditions.

or should i start with our saturday adventure. the morning spent with the trappist monks who inhabit the only contemplative monastery in all of north africa, how we met one of the two monks that survived the abduction and killing of seven brothers from a now-closed monastery of the same order in algeria in 1996 - the most precious of old men, with stunning blue eyes, a thick, grey wool sweater covering his cassock and giving him a positively grandpa-like appearance. frere jean-pierre is his name, and perhaps it is enough to say that i feel as though i have spent a few moments in the company of a living saint.

or maybe you would be more interested to hear about the french sisters whose company we graced for several hours as we waited for the taxi to take us to tatouine. sisters monique (the veiled one who was full of life and funny quips about herself and those around her), theresa (the quite one who came in last and simply smiled), marie (the one who lives in tatouine and gave us the names of hassna and cherif who we should meet), and lucille (who welcomed us in, and particularly encouraged me on my profession of nurse - being one herself in past years). showing up at their door unannounced, these little ones of god welcomed us in with open arms, providing tea and coffee and cookies, a clean restroom, a comfortable place to sit and talk, and endless perspective about morocco (all in french - quite good practice for my comprehension), given the fact that the majority of them had been in the country for twenty years or more. needless to say, i didn't want to leave...

or perhaps the best bit of all is the stories of haddu and hassna - the berber women who welcomed us with open arms and showed us the meaning of true berber hospitality.

haddu was, for all intents and purposes, a mistake. our driver didn't exactly know where tatouine was, so he ended up dropping us off quite in the middle of nowhere. we noticed a small earthen home not too far away, so we headed in that direction to get directions. it seemed to be deserted, but after standing outside for a little bit, wondering (outloud) what we were to do, a woman surrounded by four little children, suddenly appeared. 'aji, 'aji! "come, come!" she called out, waving us into her dimly lit home. we found ourselves being led down an open corridor of sorts connected on both ends to the bright outdoors with several rooms attached forming the square building we had noted from outside. ushering us into one of the rooms, we found a cookpot, a squat, round table, and several flat woven carpets on the floor. before we knew it (literally) we were face to face with the family meal - honestly, probably their only meal for the day - and we were guests. i think we all reddened simultaneously, as we were floored by the generosity of this little housewife. it didn't matter that the tagine was mostly broth, or that the little bits of meat that she picked out and offered to us were mostly fat - i was utterly overwhelmed by the generosity of the woman across from me. we could barely communicate, by the way. she spoke berber, only a little bit of derija arabic (the moroccan colloquial dialect), and essentially no french. but her smile said a thousand words, and hopefully our offerings of bread, cheese, and clementines (our picnic lunch) sufficed to tell of our endless gratitude.

not much further down the road, we encountered hassna, the woman sister marie had told us about. in her home, too, we were keeled over by the warmth extended to us. we shared a second lunch of sorts: mint tea, bread, peanuts, almonds, cookies, and fried egg. i couldn't believe it, and was more than embarrassed to be taking so much from someone who obviously had so little. but in morocco, personal pride and dignity - especially among the berbers - is not something to be toyed with. so we dug-in, and hopefully ate enough not to offend while still leaving plenty for the rest of the household.

hassna spoke french, so we communicated mostly through camille (one of the exchange students here who is french herself). hassna regaled us with stories about the sisters, their contribution to the village, the dam, and their hope for electricity to power the little tv that they had set up in the corner as well as the bare light bulb that hung by a thin wire from the center of the ceiling. her small, ruddy face had the appearance of tanned leather, with several well-worn creases - laugh lines which fanned out from the corners of her eyes, creating a stunning appearance of both wisdom and beauty. when it came time for us to leave, she walked with us awhile (on her way to collect the cow for the evening), and demanded to know why in the world we had thought to get a hotel room in midelt for the weekend, when we should have known that we were more than welcome at her home. we smiled and thanked her profusely, appeasing her maternal nature with promises of le prochain - next time. i certainly hope that there will be...

after a few weekends of bumming about big and semi-big cities, wandering through markets and feeling as though money was simply draining out of my pocket with no real purpose and with no real enriching return, i treasure my jewel of a weekend. several students, when hearing about my plans to go to midelt, turned up their noses a bit at the prospect. "there's nothing in midelt," was their reply. i agree - the town itself is merely a crossroads and a pit stop for buses on their way south to er-rachidia or marrekesh. but just outside the city there are gorgeous mountains, and the heart of morocco - its beautiful people, both by adoption and by birth.

ashes to ashes

2008-02-08T04:27:00.000-08:00

white-washed walls enclose the tiny space, illumined by four wrought iron sconces and one lone candle. music is reverberating about these walls, sent from the jet black piano, bouncing about, before settling on the ears of all those contained here. those that slowly but surely, one by one, file to the front of the room (only a few steps away) to bow their heads and receive this sign of human humility.

the small woman on my left catches my eye, we share a glance - a smile. the myriad of fine lines which crease her rosy face close together like a chorus of clapping hands, celebrating the clear blue eyes which shine from her face with overwhelming joy. she's french and speaks very little english. i'm english and speak practically no french, yet somehow, in that moment - we speak volumes. i see in her face the love and joy of god that i hope to reflect in my own. the excitement of this holy season, the anticipation of the lessons we will learn and the ways in which our lives will grow and be enriched by this coming time of self-sacrifice, penance, and simplicity. but more than that we share the joy of each other's company. two souls sitting side by side, no words between them, yet in perfect communion within the structure of the mass being said by that little white-headed fransiscan brother only a yard or so away, just beyond that row of people right in front of us. in morocco.

i wonder if, when she was my age, forty or fifty years ago, if she would ever have thought that she would be in this place, sharing this space at this point in time with a young, american girl and all of the other dozen or so people. i doubt it - but i have a feeling that in her mind there was no where else she would rather be. at least that's how i felt...

meknes and mountain air

2008-02-03T08:58:00.000-08:00

it's the 3rd of february, and i can't believe that i have been here in morocco for a little over two weeks. the sheer difference of so many aspects of my life here draws me into that all-too-common feeling of "i've always been here." i'm beginning to find myself in the rhythm of morccan life here on campus: the two-kiss greeting, which by the way, i apologize in advance for when i return because it's already become habit after only two weeks!, the food, the language - words are slowly starting to creep into my vocabulary.

this weekend i went to meknes with tony, eva, jason, and sanae. we headed there on friday, early in the afternoon, checked into a budget hotel in the ville nouvelle, and then headed off to the medina to get lost in the old market and little alleyways. we came upon the place el-hadim as the sun was beginning to dip behind the old adobe walls turning everything various shades of rose and dusty gold. the little stands selling freshly sqeezed juice and roasted-meat sandwiches were busy as families turned out in droves to stoll up and down the avenues, make some last minute purchases, and watch their kids kick footballs around in the square.

we sat for a while with a cup of tea soaking up the last rays of sun, and i realized how absolutely fortunate i am to be in such a place - both physically, socially, economically, whatever - where i am able to have the experiences that i'm having. especially as i saw all of the people (the ones who weren't leisurely strolling) rushing from place to place. i wondered how hard they must have to work in order to just make it from day to day. it's probably the most uncomfortable part of being a "tourist" - essentially taking leisure at someone else's expense, even if you compensate them with money. it's just...weird.

anyway, we toured around for a bit, and then headed back to the ville nouvelle where we ended up camping out, so to speak, at a really lovely little restaurant called "le pub" where we sampled a local wine (meknes is the wine-producing capital of morocco, by the way). it was really lovely, and altogether just a really enjoyable evening: sitting, talking, accompanied by friends, laughing, and just enjoying life in general. particularly the dutch couple that joined us halfway through the evening, and the fact that around 11 pm we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by women that, by all likelihood, were hookers. well, that part was actually a bit depressing - but definitely a side i haven't seen much of in ifrane, although i'm told it exists here, too.

the next morning we got a slow and later start, stopping off at a cafe for a croissant washed down by thick espresso - delightful. then it was back to the medina where we repeatedly set off with the best intentions of making it someplace, repeatedly got lost, and repeatedly enjoyed it. each attempt interspersed with either a short sit and cup of tea in the plaza, a bite to eat, or a trip over to the mausoleum of moulay ismail - a moroccan historical figure who was the one that made meknes the imperial city it is today.

after a little bit we headed back, quite satisfied with our conquest of that little ancient town. one thing, though, is that it was so remarkable the difference of being down in the valley, breathing in the smog and dust which clogged the air and then getting out of the grand taxi back in ifrane. i could finally take a good, deep breath - and it felt so good. i definitely feel blessed, in a way then, to be studying here as opposed to in casa or rabat, despite ifrane being such a small town.

anyways, just random notes from the journey. i'm off in a bit to church over at the chaplain's home, and then tomorrow homework and reading and getting ready for the week. next weekend...who knows?!

a beautiful weekend

2008-01-27T08:19:00.000-08:00

so this has been a ridiculously packed weekend.

yesterday, a group of us met up for an early breakfast and a day trip into fes. after trekking down to the grand taxi stand on the backside of the marche, piling into said grand taxi, and staring out of the window for an hour as the landscape of morocco whizzed by, we found ourselves on the side of a bustling fassi street, surrounded by heaps of people all extremely confident of their destination and the appropriate directions. we, on the other hand, gathered together to pore over our lonely planet guides and sort out the way to fes-el-bali, the old city whose walls contain the world-famous medina. needless to say, after a few moments time, everything was mzien (good), and off we went!

there are countless stories i could tell from my day there - like how we ended up in the middle of a residential neighborhood and took to a little bit of moutain-climbing to make our way back to bab bou j'loud or what the medina was like or about the pickpocket we encountered (and walked away with all of our possessions) - but the truth is, it's more than a little daunting to try to record all of that her. simply said, you must experience it for yourself - the winding corridors of vendor stalls with their propietors hanging out in the path eager to catch your eye and lure you inside - the way the adobe walls change colors with the shifting sun - the families who begin to come out at dusk to slowly walk the plaza and have a sit on the steps - the smells of roasted meat, candied nuts, and mint tea...it was truly wonderful in many respects.

today, again, was a bit of an adventure. a small group of us - tony, eva, stiv, ghassan, sanae, and myself - set out before the crack of dawn to walk the 20 or so kilometers from aui to azrou, the town next door. we had bought fruit and cheese and peanut butter and all sorts of things the evening before on our way back from fez, and armed with these things, our water, some money, and our cameras - we embarked on our walking adventure. we wandered through the countryside, stopping here and there for some breathtaking photos (check out my online album: http://picasaweb.google.com/lauren.fadely). all told, it took us about five hours, and worth every second of it.

now back in my room, and looking forward to the beginning of the week, one thing that stands out to me from both days of adventuring are the kids that i encountered. i really love kids, and they are easily my favorite part of any place that i go. there's something universal about children and their willingness to simply be themselves and accept others as themselves. i encountered some really wonderful kids in fes yesterday - like the group of thirty or so first graders who suddenly appeared out of nowhere and filled the little allyway i was walking in, surrounding me and those around me with their smiling and open faces. "bonjour!" "asalaam!" rang out in a chorus of voices as little hands raised themselves for high-fives and handshakes. or like the little girl, mounia, who i met today on the walk.

we came upon a group of boys of all ages playing football in a little pitch on the side of the road. stiv and tony stopped off to play for a while, and i found myself next to this little girl - not more than seven or eight - the only girl amongst this swarm of boys and delegated to the sidelines as the rest of them played with their makeshift football. i offered her a clementine from my bag, and she returned the favor with a wonderful smile. je m'appelle elle, i said. nothing - french was out. siimtii elle, i tried instead with the help of sanae. there - that was it. mounia, she replied. zwiin, i said in return - pretty. she flashed me her little white smile once again, and then one last time again as i waved b'asalaama when we later continued on our journey.

i would trade all of the silver and gold of fes for that beautiful little girl in a heartbeat. lets just say she made my weekend...

classes started and mosques visited

2008-01-25T13:41:00.000-08:00

yesterday was my first day of classes, and here's the brief run-down:

8.00 - islamic civilisation - started off with a bang of sorts. time rolled around, and i was in class and then so was the professor...but no one else. we waited (and stared at each other or, actually tried not to stare at each other) for a few minutes before he threw a tantrum of sorts and cancelled class. extra hour and a half to run over to the library and check emails...

11.00 - arabic i for beginners - in a nutshell: the most fun i've had in class in a very long time. i have a little moroccan professor named abrihim, and he's the cutest, most adorable little old man i have ever met. in our first class we covered some basic greetings and learned to read and write the six vowel sounds and the three basic consonants. at the end of the lesson, we has our first complete word: bab which means "door" in english - practical, huh? i have to say, though, there's nothing more exhilerating than to see so clearly knowledge enter and take root in your mind.

14.00 - political anthropology - a relatively intense professor, but not anything out of the norm for bc. the class will be relatively easy work-wise, only five short papers, and a mandatory field trip to volubilis, the ancient roman city in morocco - how cool is that? what is political anthropology, you ask? it's apparently the study of the development of political structures, and particularly the aspects of the communities out of which they were born. i think it will be a really enlightening class...

15.30 - history and culture of the berber people - oh my goodness...professor peyron, of this class, might actually be in a dead heat race for my favorite professor, and it's a tough match. a lovely, ramblingly loquacious english chap whose provencal french father gave him that...whatever it is that makes french things french. the opening lecture consisted of eighty or so black and white photographs of his early travels in the middle and high atlas in the 1960's and his encounters with the amazigh (berber) people there that would spark a life-long process of learning berber language, studying and documenting their history and culture, and translating and commenting on berber epic poetry. my kind of guy, for sure. who else would say, "ah, here we are. some bucolic scenes of a similar vein..."

and i'm done with class! i rush over to the morocco-guinea football match, only to be tortured to death by the lack of the lead player from tuesday's match, soufiane alloudi. we could barely hold it together against the guinean defensive players who made me think i was watching american football by the way they rampaged the field. a painfully close 3-2 loss...

and today? today i spent the morning sorting out my silly bankcard who had frozen itself because it forgot that i had told it (the bank, actually, not the card itself) that i was going to be in morocco and that i was planning to use it from time to time. i mixed a little of my homework into the process, and then met up with eva and a moroccan student, sara, who had offered to host us for friday prayer at the mosque on campus.

i won't go into detail this time around, but let me just say that it was a beautiful, peaceful, enlightening experience. i sat silently in the back of the women's section, listening to the droning sound of the imam's arabic voice exhorting the students to a good and proper life, and watched the scarved and silent figures around me. there was no doubt of the devotion evident in their faces, and i was moved to see the love i feel for my lord and savior echoed in these women and their prayerful attendence to allah. as i have said to many people many times before, i do not ascribe to the thought that there is really only one mountain and many paths to the top - that seems to me to devalue, in a way, everyone's journey. but in the same breath, i acknowledge the reality that my finiteness does not allow me to possibly comprehend the mysterious designs of my heavenly father, and therefore i will not dare to assume a throne of judgement lest i be placed in front of it myself. what does all of this mean, exactly? i'm not even sure i know, but i do know that i had a really wonderful lunch (couscous and vegetable tajine) with this gracious student afterward in which we were both exceedingly open about our own faiths and our own prejudices, and it was a beautiful thing.

the afternoon brought a trip to neighboring azrou and my first taste of what morocco may actually be like once one leaves the european-villa-ed hamlet of ifrane, and that little amuse bouche puts me in a very good place for the experience of fes tomorrow...

football matches and footsore

2008-01-22T10:04:00.000-08:00

i saw my first moroccan football match the other day. the africa cup of nations is currently underway, and the day before yesterday the campus was abuzz with red and green as the moroccan team geared up to face namibia at the stadium in ghana. one of the academic buildings (where many of the orientation lectures were held) was opened up, and the large screen and projector were put to good use as over a hundred students crammed in to the auditorium to cheer on their team. i've never experienced anything like it, and let's just say i absolutely cannot wait until the next football match in a few days' time. i'm not sure who we'll (because obviously i'm rooting for morocco) be playing - but it's bound to be an intensely energetic experience. from everyone jumping up and cheering wildly at every goal, to yelling shuk-pa (essentially "in the net" or "goal") repeatedly as the players neared their target. i'll definitely have to get in on all of the various songs for each of the players, most definitely upheld as prominent social figures - today i even saw a young student here whose hair had been cut to mimic one of the more prominent players, chamarkh. get excited...

last night, the orientation leaders had organized a sort of treasure hunt that would let the new students not only mix and mingle but also learn their way around campus. a hint given by one of the leaders would take you to a building where you would have to answer a questions about the university correctly before receiving another hint that would take you to another location, twelve steps in all. two other international students and myself joined up with three moroccan freshman girls: selma, nahjwa, and sahfa. what basically ensued was about an hour of running pell-mell all over campus, becoming completely winded on more than one occasion, and me really regretting my choice of black flats for shoes. but it really was so much fun, and although we missed winning by legitimately five seconds, it was well worth it.

today there was a group outing organized to take all the new students to michlifen, a ski area about an hour or so away from her, higher up in the middle atlas. it hasn't snowed here in a few weeks, so there was basically only a few patches of ice - probably not the best conditions for me to learn downhill skiing for the first time! i opted for a nice hike instead - heading up one of the dry ski slopes with a few of the international students. really gorgeous views. not having spent a whole lot of time in mountainous areas before, i still can't get over how absolutely clear the sky is, and the air in general, for that matter.

i've put the first of my pictures (all essentially from the trip today) up on picasa. the link is:

http://picasaweb.google.com/lauren.fadely in the album titled asalaam alaykum - check it out!

looking forward to the next few days, and my first travel adventure this weekend...

first adjustments and a reflection on growth

2008-01-19T10:01:00.000-08:00

well, this is different.
i opened my web-browser and everything's in arabic. earlier today i got a new sim card for my phone, and now it is all in french. i don't know how to change either of them back, so i suppose the learning has begun!
so i have arrived, safe, sound, in one piece, with all my luggage.
things i have adjusted well to so far: the time difference (6 hours later than home), the altitude (5000 feet above sea level), the new faces (i think i have all the names of the other international students down), and the food (had a fantastic lunch during my excursion into downtown ifrane earlier today).
things still on my list of adjustments: language (the french here is much more difficult to understand and i'm completely lost in arabic), my room (i havne't quite figured out how to turn the heater on, so last night i slept in three layers of clothes, two blankets, and my sleeping bag), the culture (infinitely more complex than french and arabic put together!).
but, all in all, i must say i've had a really lovely day. i just have to shake myself every once in a while and remind myself that i'm actually doing this - that i'll be here for the next four months. that by the end of the semester that guy at the lunch counter in town will probably know my name and we might actually have a conversation without the facilitation of hatim or any of the other moroccan students. more than anything, with the well-coordinated orientation throwing me flashbacks of freshman year, i have to keep reminding myself that this is my experience for the taking, that god has placed me here for a purpose, and that i'm actually an adult in the middle of all of this, not some seventeen-year-old kid wandering on the bc campus full of dreamy fantasies of college, my own abilities, and life in general. now - a few years older - those fantasies haven't necessarily gone away, i still love to get mentally lost among the labarynthine choices and options and opportunities that lay in front of me. but i feel much...deeper - much more grounded, and while my head, to some extent, may find its way into the clouds from time to time, my feet are more than on the ground, they are oak tree-like, rooted, deeply and thickly. firmly attached and balanced by a foundation of faith, family, and friends.
i know that i will need that foundation, that rooting, as i stretch tall and grow wide in morocco; hopefully bearing fruit and blessing those here. i'm very much on the 'honeymoon' high of this relationship with morocco, its people, culture, and language, and i know there will be times of hardship and discontent, but i also look forward to that time of harmony which is in store with faithful persistence.

oh, and if you're reading this, then i guess you know i figured out which arabic button means 'post' :)

a flat tire, wal-mart, and love

2008-01-14T12:19:00.000-08:00

i spent a good part of the day on friday out and about with shanna. we stopped first at rockwell’s, a local coffee shop, which perhaps isn’t so spectacular in the grand scheme of things but has won a special place in my heart with its free wireless, friendly staff, and generally quiet environment. being virtually internet-less at home has only succeeded in elevating the status of rockwell’s in my mind.

we decided to leave rockwell’s after some time in order to grab a bite to eat for a late lunch. after getting into the car, however, shanna realized that her left front tire had gone somewhat flat – or was at least lower than normal. so we made our next stop at the wal-mart service station next door. it was there that we met the couple.

they had pulled into the service station after us, and i only vaguely saw them through the semi-tinted windshield of their extra wide nineteen ninety-something oldsmobile. they appeared in the waiting room shortly after we had sat down, and i was completely struck by them.

for starters, neither of them looked particularly well. the husband was obviously suffering the ravages of some significant illness. surgical scars had altered his face, the skin of which was unnaturally reddened and peeling. blinded in his right eye by a milky-blue opacity, he kept his face lowered, revealing the thin mousy, brownish grey hair which had fallen out in patches. his wife was aged as well, worn by years of work and worry, but still with a round, friendly face. her silver hair was carefully curled and coifed, and she looked the picture of east texas in her flowery button down shirt and khaki pleated pants rising well above her navel.

looking up when they entered, i was naturally drawn to the man – torn between a deep curiosity to determine his condition, scanning his physical appearance from head to toe, making a quick assessment, and rifling through the roladex of possible diagnoses drilled into my head from semesters of nursing classes. in the tug-of-war which often characterizes human thought, i was also acutely aware that my stare might easily be misunderstood, and in the end i averted my gaze to the contents of the purse i held in my lap. not, however, before i saw this little old man bend over to speak and wave to a little blond darling of a girl, bouncing through her adventure of a day in pink and pigtails.

needless to say, both husband and wife ended up sitting only a few seats away in the generally cramped wal-mart service center waiting room. and, in typical east texas fashion, the four of us soon fell into conversation. we started off discussing the merits of the serviceman who had taken our keys and driven our cars away in a rather concerning manner, took a turn around the weather, and passed through stories from the holidays. after a few minutes of companionable silence (when once again the contents of my purse became objects of my intense interest), the woman’s voice once again broke into my train of thought.

“we’ll have been married forty-six years tomorrow,” she stated, with a glowing hint of pride in her voice – like the golden glow that remains after the sun has just dipped below the horizon.

“congratulations,” i replied, and once again i fell into my bad habit of staring. as i heard her describing their wedding day those many years ago, i saw them transformed into and young girl and her beau – healthy, dashing, and strong, a product of the iron-red earth. barely adults, they rushed headlong into marriage, intoxicated by love in all of its glory. married by a minister that almost didn’t make it to the church, they spent their wedding night in a freezing motel.

“i think you turned off the heat,” the husband had interjected, with his crooked half-smile, which i imagine had been broad and full in better days. “i think you just wanted to cuddle more.”

his wife had just replied with a girlish laugh, and i saw in her eyes the man her husband used to be and the overwhelming love for who he still is – the man she married all those years ago. it was beautiful, and in that moment, they were beautiful, too.

our names were called shortly thereafter, and shanna and i continued on to a late lunch and then to the rest of our day. i don’t know what happened to that couple, or how they celebrated their forty-six years of marriage on saturday, but i would like to think that it was a lovely day for both of them and that, more than anything, they were able to confirm the deep and everlasting love which bound them in marriage – the most intoxicating of foretastes of the unconditional and indescribable love that is our father god...

a funny family christmas

2007-12-24T08:45:00.000-08:00

the best part about christmas, for me, is the inevitable family reunion. my extended family on my mother's side is all pretty close, although we only really get to see everyone once a year at the holiday get-together. everyone travels in from all over texas, and we hole away with a number of good bottles of wine and enough food to feed a small country.

as i have gotten older, i have started to notice and appreciate the idisyncracies that make my family so incredibly unique.

uncle peter: a towering blonde image of a dutchman, my uncle peter is the oldest of the five kids, and perhaps the most colorful character in the bunch. a photographer who lives in austin with my aunt ann and my cousins cole and willa, uncle peter rambles through the world with unpretentious abandon, be that walking around the house in yard in his t-shirt and boxers or taking a dip in the backyard pool in the balmy 50 degree weather that graced houston two days ago. with a distinct laugh and an enormous smile, uncle peter can always be called upon to liven up the conversation, and it was unsurprising to look over later in the evening and see him surrounded by all the guy cousins, doubled over with laughter and uncle peter gesticulating wildly to emphasize his imaginative story.

aunt irene: the first thing i always notice about my aunt irene is the white perfection of her beautifully straight teeth. her smile is enormous as well, and in it you can see each and every tooth. a dental hygienist who also lives in austin with my uncle clark - and mom to my cousins kimberly, wes, and brittney - aunt irene is a veritable fashion plate. although she is the second oldest of the five kids, she has always amazed me by the youth and vibrancy of her wardrobe. the best part, though, is that her heart and her hugs are as huge as her smile, and no matter how long it has been, i can always count on her fierce loyalty and love.

uncle frank: francis maria staats is the middle child in my mom's family, and it shows. the picture of diplomacy and grace, uncle frank lives in houston, and he and his wife sharon hosted the first night of our staats family reunion. the ever-gracious host, uncle frank is imperturbable (spelling?), and it's a characteristic of his that never ceases to amaze me amid the hubub of frenetic activity that is omnipresent whenever we all get together - we are nearly 36 people, after all. he laughs and jokes with us older nieces and nephews, and he's always interested in whatever is going on in our lives, but he is at his best with the youngest ones - just the sweetest of dad's and the most devoted of uncles.

aunt monique: powerhouse. that's basically my aunt monique in a word. tall, thin, and beautiful in her strength and vitality, aunt monique is the most energetic woman i know as well as loyal and dependable to the extreme. she's a physical therapist, and her and my uncle steve have recently started fostering special needs kids - in august, they adopted angelina and jeremiah joseph, the two newest members of our ever-growing family. to watch both aunt monique and uncle steve with the kids is inspiring, simply put. but nieke-nieke (as we all affectionately call her) is particularly amazing. every moment with her kiddos is a pt session - because both nina and j.j. need a lot of extra love.

i feel as if i've only just scratched the surface, but the reality is that every person in my family is a blessing to me, and i felt as though i needed to appreciate them in that, even if only in this small way.

this christmas has been different. as someone who usually begins getting excited for christmas in august, i found myself struggling come mid-december to really focus on the fact that christmas was fast approaching. i thought that finishing finals and coming home would help to jump-start that holiday spirit, and in some ways it has, but in many ways, it's still off. well, maybe "off" is a strong word; it's just been...different.

we're not at home this year, opting to spend the holidays with my oma down here in houston so that she won't be alone, as my opa died only a few days before christmas two years ago. and i'm continuing to discover how much my time in sierra leone has changed me and grown me. gifts have also been different, as we have chosen as a family to focus on actual needs instead of pouring money out on other things that are maybe less than necessary. these aspects, perhaps combined with others that i haven't yet realized, make for an altogether funny feeling - an alteration on the normal carefree christmas spirit that has characterized past holidays.

but at the root of it all, i am - more than anything else - deeply and truly thankful for those blessings which i can count that aren't wrappable or under a tree: the love of my family, food and laughter and warmth and free time, peace and goodwill for mankind, the grace of this advent season, and the overwhelming joy of christmas.

it's going to be a lovely christmas after all...

flying and falling

2007-12-22T09:02:00.000-08:00

from a few days ago:

how do i describe this feeling? i have thrown myself into the great unknown, far and deep and wide, and i have fallen. my bruised and broken heart mourns the loss not that which necessarily was but that which could have been. question after question float lazily yet persistently through my head. they plague me, even now, and i find solace in the words of others shrouded in their plaintive voices – others have been here before. because the truth is, from time to time, we all are called upon to jump, and we do – no matter the bleakest of consequences – because it is so exhilarating to fly, if even for only a moment.

the birth, life, and death of a relationship is a key point of interest. unmarked by most, except the people most intimately involved, it happens all the time – so inherently common to our human condition, and yet always taking us by surprise. so funny.

there’s no real point to this today. my head’s too fuzzy to try to make sense, and for now i kind of like just being in this moment, in this feeling. in all that it is, it is new, and that in and of itself makes it noteworthy. it’s another thread in this rich fabric of life; it’s the bitter end of a vibrant and intoxicating drink, one of which we are invited to take in to the fullest.

the name of this blog is called drinking the cup – it’s a concept i ran across in henri nouwen’s book, can you drink the cup? which is, i can truly say, a book that changed my life. the perspective on life and living which nouwen outlines in that short, simple reflection is one which i have striven to adopt in all things, and today is no different.

the overwhelming truth is that i am loved, deeply and wholly and fully and purely, by the God that not only crafted my very self but continually holds me into being with his love every moment of every day. i feel the pulsing beat of that love within me now, and it brings me to tears, ones that heal and plant seeds of joy. my battered heart beats in time within me also, and will continue to do so. i don’t doubt that at all. and with time i suppose this will become another chapter in my life, and i’m okay with that...

three days ‘til christmas...

continuation on a theme:

2007-11-18T12:23:00.000-08:00

in continuation with what i wrote yesterday, i stumbled across this which i wrote just a few weekends ago:

the leaves have all fallen off of the tree in front of my dorm. well, almost. closer inspection reveals a handful of the bright-yellow ones still clinging to the branches, despite the wind and cold. i can't blame them - this year hasn't been very fair. it was certainly warm enough for long enough to make anyone believe that winter may just not come this year.

but the weather has snapped cold, and i have virtually moved from skirts to sweaters.

the leaf flutters again. all his brothers and sisters lie scattered on the ground - yellow spots on the newly laid black asphalt. one more gust of wind...he's given up. winter's come.

winter means holidays. thanksgiving is coming soon. frost on the ground - warm, rich, moist kitchen air draws everyone there. laughter bubbles up and bounces around the rafters: little globes of colored glass clashing with the dark wooden beams and tinkling into a myriad of pieces.

tradition. family. community. these are the things which i am thankful for. the things which ground my heart when the november breezes blow. it's the hand that you grasp in the wind and rain. as cold as yours but warmer now for the touch.

it's the steady, pulsing rhythm which lays the bass line for the music of life - now allegro, now andante, now legato, but always there. it's the feeling of a mug held in your hands, the warmth bleeding into your fingers like a watercolor left out in the rain.

it's the faces whose lines and contours you know so well, yet whose constant animation keeps you entrhalled - plugged into every moment. it's a celebration of life, and it's beautiful. after all, life is beautiful, why shouldn't its party be as well?

life is beautiful in the wonder of experiencing a new thing. it is beautiful in the icy fingers of wind which work their way past your scarf and tickle the back of your neck. it's beautiful in the way light enters the world every morning and makes everything new. it's beautiful in the heart-wrenching sounds of music - a voice carried so high it breaks - a note held so perfectly long and perfectly pure it makes you cry.

life is beautiful in its sorrows, too. beautiful in its raw humanity - beautiful in the way that it touches your heart - beautiful in the way we are all connected.

sometimes do you feel so alive that you could die?

it's christmastime in the city...

2007-11-17T11:08:00.000-08:00

if anyone ever asked me what i love so much about the holidays, i would have to think about it for a little bit. you see, there are so many things that i love about thanksgiving, christmas, and new year's. one, the fact that they come all together and that it's a holiday season. it gives you plenty of time to get all excited and really into it.

other things i love:

* the smells: absolutely nothing beats the smells of the holidays/beginning of winter. the cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and allspice mixed with the fallen leaves, woodsmoke, and the iciness of the air that is almost a smell in and of itself.

* the feeling of having your middle all warm from the inside and out as you sit in a fuzzy hoody and drink a cup of tea while your toes, fingertips, nose, and ears stay a bit chilled.

* how everything has this strange mix of slowing down and speeding up. nature slows down as the trees fall asleep and the ground hardens up while people linger in coffee shops and in their friends' homes. but then again everything speeds up as squirrels and birds make their last dash for winter stores and those same people rush from one warm spot to another or engage in the holiday hustle and bustle of getting everything done and everyone seen.

* how happy everyone is. in new england, you pass people all the time, walking from one place to the next, and yet it's rare to ever make eye contact with one of these people much less exchange words. but in the holiday season, starting now - sometime the week or two before thanksgiving, something changes. today three people said hello to me as i walked to and from my dorm. a christmas miracle :)

* how you can take a moment to just sit back and appreciate life. and i mean life in its fullest. the good, the not-so-good. the people that make your life worth living. the ones that challenge you and encourage you and who throw their point of view into the mix every day, giving you new eyes through which to see the world. it's absolutely amazing.

there are so many other things - the smiles on peoples' faces, the wonder in the eyes of every little child i come across, the traditions, the music, the food, the laughter, the fun, the first snow (hopefully!), the family, the community, the one time where everyone will wish for peace on earth and really, really mean it...

while i don't ascribe to the fact that we haven't even had thanksgiving and most stores already have their christmas trees up are are playing the usualy medley of non-descript carols and christmas-y songs, i do love the holidays. because, you see, christmas and thanksgiving and all that come with it are so much more than santa claus and rudolph and presents and jack frost. it's about people and taking time out of the year to celebrate the fact that we are all people who need people, to thank them for who they are, and to welcome again the savior whose wonderful and amazing life made us all realize how beautiful life can really be within the mysterious majesty of god's infinite and indescribable love.

so to everyone out there, happy, happy thanksgiving and christmas. peace on earth...

happy to be human

2007-10-20T17:13:00.000-07:00

sometimes you just have days where you feel so happy to be a human being. today was one of those days.

lisbee, lauren, brittany, bridget, and i went into boston today - to hit up all of the fall festivities which all hit on the same weekend in october: specifically the head of the charles regatta and the life is good pumpking festival.

there's just something about milling about in swarms of people that can sometimes strike you as oddly comforting. particularly when you have little moments of connection. i had a lot of those today.

* the guy handing out free samples of starbuck's coffee at the head of the charles, who was probably having the best day ever as the most popular person for that particular day...

* the fitting room attendant who could only laugh as we attempted to dress each other in the most hideous formal dresses we could find in the macy's formal section (you would be surprised how many there were!)...

* the mom at the pumpkin festival who could only join us in chuckling over the antics of her three year old daughter who preferred much more to walk over the rows of pumpkins forming the pumpkin maze rather than walking in the corridors and pathways they formed...

* the grad student from boston university squeezed next to me on the train home who happened to be from texas (as noted by her james avery ring)...

and then there were the moments where you just meet eyes with someone, and it's such a beautiful moment. how often do we really look someone in the eye? even in conversation with our closest friends, it's still fairly rare to make and hold eye contact for very long. and yet when you do - when it's an adorable old woman swaying with the motion of the train, firmly grasping the bar with one hand and the edge of her oversized cream-colored cardigan with the other, who meets your eyes and responds to your smile in kind, smiling so much her eyes disappear underneath a field of wrinkles - your heart can't help but sing at the common-ness of our humanity. of the wonder of the god who loves us all into being every moment of every day and connects us in such a deep and profound way.

i'm home now, but my heart still burns with life, a life so much better shared with those around me - the ones upon whom i rely so strongly and the ones that the world would label stranger but who so much more deserves to be brother or sister...

kayak on campus

2007-10-02T20:21:00.000-07:00

so i was waiting outside my 3 pm class this afternoon - flipping through the pages that i hadn't read, hoping (as one generally does) that somehow i would be able to glean the contents of those leaves with a simple glance and that i wouldn't make a fool of myself in class discussion.

now i have to take a step back. there's a class that meets in the same room, right before my class which always runs right up to 3 o'clock, and i have never known what class it is. sometimes you walk into a classroom and you see notes scribbled all over the board and you can sort of figure out what you're dealing with, but this professor apparently never writes anything down, making my curiosity unmistakably peaked.

so, back to the hallway...

suddenly, the door opened and out poked the tip of a paddle, followed shortly thereafter by a student - a guy my age or a little older. he set the paddle against the wall, re-entered the classroom and closed the door behind him. absolutely perplexed and obviously intrigued, i cautiously returned to the flipping pages, keeping one eye overtly on the classroom door.

a few minutes later it opened again. this time the first thing that greeted my view was a blue plastic conical object which, a split second later, i realized was the nose to a bright blue kayak. the same guy carried out this kayak, placed it in the middle of the hall, and began to matter-of-factly stow the paddle in its special compartment. after getting over my sheer surprise, i saw that this guy was actually wearing swimming trunks instead of shorts, and these crazy water shoes instead of sandals - they looked like a cross between barney the dinosaur's feet and the toe socks i used to get for christmas and treasured beyond anything else.

so completely tickled, i had to ask the guy what on earth was going on. public speaking, he replied. he had just given a speech for his class on kayaking, and the kayak was his visual aid. with that, he hoisted the kayak to his shoulder and set off down the hall.

it was all so matter-of-fact. of course there's a kayak wandering around my campus, isn't there one on yours?

13 hours

2007-09-18T18:54:00.000-07:00

some days are just long. today was one of those days. i left my room at a quarter to nine this morning, and i'm just getting back at a quarter to ten tonight. thirteen hours. lovely.

actually, to be perfectly honest - i don't mind the long days. sometimes i prefer them. i feel as though i have accomplished something, i don't get sucked into watching mindless television, and i really enjoy coming back to the room and my roommates - like coming home after a long day of work.

so what filled my day? all beautiful things, really. i had my maternal/child health nursing theory class from 9-12, which is has continued to be the highlight of my week this semester. then i had a break for lunch (tuna sandwich - wonderful). then i met up with one of my bosses - the project coordinator for a research initiative that i help out with. it's focused on maternal/infant bonding and communication in mothers with post-partum depression. absolutely incredible project to be on. the work can for sure get tedious (who really adores data entry?), but just knowing what i'm working on/toward is so incredibly exciting, and the people are so great.

then i was off to my theology class: ethics in international relations. so interesting - definitely over my head a good 85% of the time, but really engaging and pushing me toward greater awareness and real critical thinking. not just the analytical thinking of high school or some of my underclassman classes, but real critical thinking which demands that i personally engage in the material being discussed. today we talked about inter-religious dialogue and its role in international communication. like i said: so interesting. that class lasted until five, and then i headed off to babysit.

after quite the rigamarole to find a babysitting job (including going out for an interview which i never made because i got on the right bus only to find that it was taking the wrong route and ending up in the middle of nowhere) - i stumbled across a family right near campus with three adorable boys, an equally adorable mother, and beautiful, healthy, organized home. tonight was my first night, and i got acquainted with the boys and their habits while they ate dinner, did some homework (the oldest is in second grade), read story books, and went to bed. they are 7, 5, and 18 months - and i realized over the course of the evening how much of a blessing it is to get off campus and into a home, especially a home with kids. i loved every minute of it.

so now i am back in my room and have in one sense very little to show for my day except for sheer exhaustion, but in another sense i was blessed with many beautiful moments - where i was encouraged again and again that my heart's beat lies in maternal/infant care, where i was challenged academically and personally to look again at how i view the world, where i was able to catch up with a superior that is quickly becoming a friend, where i held a baby in my arms as he drifted off to sleep...

i can't think of a better way to spend 13 hours of any given day.

the scale of suffering

2007-09-16T05:11:00.000-07:00

for about a week now, i have been meaning to post on my blog - talk about the first week of classes, my roommates, the transition, etc. but i'm glad, in a sense, that i'm such a procrastinator because thursday was my first day of clinical rotation for the semester, and it was such an amazing experience.

on thursdays i am at a hospital here in boston on a medical intermediate care unit - we generally have strictly medical patients who present with end-stage heart disease, post-stroke, renal failure, or end-stage liver disease, waiting for a transplant. they are very, very sick people often on upwards of twenty-five different medications for all of the complications and complexities of their diseases.

my patient on thursday was one such patient. she is fifty-five years old and dying from lung cancer. she's been fighting the cancer for a few years now, but then a few weeks ago, everything was complicated by a massive stroke which left the left side of her body paralyzed. when i saw her, she was continuing to have many issues including a decreasing mental stability. she was seeing people in the corners of the room or standing above her chair - people who she hated or people that had hurt her or random strangers. it was relatively overwhelming, to be sure - especially because i haven't taken the psych nursing class (that's next fall), but i was definitely blessed to have the help of another girl in my clinical group.

i was just so struck by the fragility of our human lives. i saw her lying there, staring off into the corner, the left side of her body completely useless to her, and i imagined what she would have been like only a few weeks ago. she was young and vital, completely bowled over by a series of severe and crippling diseases. seeing her and caring for her didn't make me never want to get old or never want to be in the hospital - maybe that's still the adolescent sense of invincibility in me - but it did make me take a minute and fully appreciate what a blessing my mind and my daily functionality is. i did yoga on friday with my roommate, and i'm still incredibly stiff and sore, but at least i can still move, at least i can still determine reality from hallucination...

it was difficult, in a way, to be in the hospital state-side again - to see everything that is made available for these patients, and then to think back to my own experience or to read the blogs of my friends still in sierra leone and hear about the struggles with equipment and medication and even more fundamental things like electricity and water...but, in the end, i have to enter into the suffering of the person i am with. i couldn't deny that woman the support, respect, and love that she needed just because she happened to have access to top notch healthcare.

suffering and pain cannot be measured on some absolute scale...

my heart was singing

2007-09-01T08:42:00.000-07:00

yesterday i took a trip to the grocery store, and it was absolutely lovely. i rode the t out with lisbee who was headed down to new york for the weekend, and we were both sitting next to each other when a young mom and her three children came on the train. a little boy, noah, jumped on first – probably six or seven years old. following him was a little girl, leila, who i would guess was just a few years younger than her brother, perhaps four or five. then came mom pushing the youngest in a stroller – a bright-eyed, super friendly toddler with just a small tuft of hair crowning her chubby, round face.

the next thing i know, leila is standing in front of me: ‘can i have a seat, please?’ her small face was full of all sincerity, completely ignorant of how rude or odd that question might come across if asked by an adult yet in full faith that because she asked, her question would be answered in the way she wished. i quickly hopped up from my seat and stood nearby, holding on to the bar and swaying with the train’s sometimes gentle, sometimes jerky motion. the trees and brownstones passed by, and lisbee and i fought outright smiles to hear this little girl have a conversation with her brother while the mother stood there and the toddler smiled away.

sitting here and thinking about that moment, i am struck by the raw innocence which i encountered that morning. a living example of what it means to approach the father with child-like (not childish) faith. i think i might have to name my daughter leila someday...

the grocery store itself was wonderful. i’ve been going more an more to trader joe’s a really inexpensive co-op, mostly organic little place which has spotty selection but always great, healthy food. it was so exhilarating to have my list and my little basket and walk the aisles again picking the things i need from the shelves. i love grocery shopping. i love buying produce and seeing all of its potential. i think of all the ways i’m going to prepare it, and i get so excited. i also purchased canvas grocery bags yesterday – to take a page from my sister – and it was so absolutely lovely to walk out of that grocery store, my two bags full to the brim with promise and potential, feeling one with the earth and god’s creation and his people. my heart was singing...

communication, perspective, and blogging continued

2007-08-23T11:02:00.000-07:00

communication is a funny thing. i never thought that when i left sierra leone that my ability to communicate via internet and e-mail would so dramatically decline. i never thought the internet at the team house and the fistula centre – admittedly up and down – would be more reliable and generally faster than the internet at my house in van, texas. it has been wonderful to have my phone back – to hear the voices of the ones i love. despite that it’s taken quite a bit to not get frustrated at my internet-less state.

that said, i write this as we drive to beaumont, texas to move my brother into university there. he’s enrolled in the texas academy for leadership in the humanities, talh for short. it’s an accelerated high school program in which high school juniors and seniors enroll as full time students at lamar university, live on campus, and lead the life of a college student while all of their class credit counts to finish high school requirements as well. it’s a small program with a dedicated staff allowing for a smoother transition into college life. my sister went through the same program, and i would have as well if we had not moved that same year from the ship to the small east texas town of van. too many changes at once.

i want to keep writing here as i go back to school and continue along this adventure of life. my first plan was to use this blog as a tool over the summer to stay in touch with those far away and as a processing tool to deal with the many experiences i knew i would face. but i’ve been learning that life and its happenings can be almost anything you want it to be with a simple adjustment of perspective. having a blog forced me to keep my eyes open when i hit the doldrums of my summer in freetown and felt that i had perhaps written about everything worth writing about. but i was so wrong. peeling back the layers of preconceived ideas about what’s worth mentioning, i discovered a myriad of little things which each deserved its own mention: a look shared between two patients on the ward which, though silent, said so much; the little girl in the poda-poda wearing a wig that made her look twice her age, sitting on her father’s lap and swaying to the reggae music blasting through us and out the windows; the overwhelming feeling that hit me every time i sat down with one of the ladies for my study and recorded bits and pieces of her rich and textured life. but the pattern of life’s weaving is just as complex and detailed in east texas or in boston as in freetown. i just need to open my eyes, change my lenses – any number of cliches could be inserted here. :)

that’s all i wanted to say really. that and thank you to all of you who have been faithful readers. it’s much more fun to write knowing that you’re writing for someone not just the nameless void of cyberspace. i head back to bc on friday, and the adventure continues...

a turtle in east texas

2007-08-15T13:18:00.001-07:00

home.

it’s such a fickle, flexible word.

i was talking to christa the other day, and she said that if she could pick one animal to describe her, it would be a monkey. i think my animal would have to be a turtle. someone that takes her home everywhere she goes. i realized that today when, as we pulled into the parking lot, i told my mother something about, “that’s just like home.” home being sierra leone. but sierra leone isn’t my home anymore. i have left that place, and i have taken my home with me.

but can east texas be my home for these few short days? i suppose it must be because i am here. funny logic, i guess.

but i am in east texas. that is for sure. i had the funniest experience the first day i got in. having sat empty for a month, our house and the refrigerator in it were empty. so i ran out to the grocery store. i was so excited, really, to be driving again – to go to a supermarket and know exactly what you were going to find there. it was my first real thing to do, having landed only a few hours earlier.

as i was checking out, an elderly woman came walking into the store holding a remote control in her hand. ‘ah need to git sum bat’tries fer this here ree-mote,’ she announced to know one in particular. ‘but ah cain’t git the back thingy off.’ the store manager appeared from behind one of the shelves, greeted her by name – apparently an old friend, and ushered her over to the display of energizer batteries while he took the remote to sort out the back. i smiled to myself and then turned my attention back to the cashier who was asking for my membership discount card.

a few minutes later, after everything had been sacked and reloaded into my cart, one of the clerks appeared to take my trolley out to the car. at brookshire’s you can never take your own bags to the car. he was a young guy, and we chatted about the weather. a dry spell has hit here leading to several weeks of temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. somehow it came out that i had been in sierra leone, and he asked if i was from teen mania. no – mercy ships. he had heard of us, and knew several people that worked up at the ioc. by that time everything had been loaded into the back of the car, and i was pulling out my keys and sunglasses. he turned to go, wishing me a nice day, but then he turned back. “is there anything i can be prayin’ for – for you or for sierra leone?” i looked from his clear, honest eyes, to the metal cross he wore on a leather cord around his neck. yes, i thought before answering, i’m back in east texas...

rain and re-entry

2007-08-12T13:14:00.000-07:00

whenever i told anyone that my flight out of sierra leone was on the tenth of august, the reply was generally the same: the moment of thought, the widening eyes, then the same comment, ‘the day before the elections.’ no one ever said to me, ‘oh, the rainy season.’ but, in the end, it wasn’t the looming elections or campaigning or little skirmishes in the streets which made my journey out of sierra leone the adventure that it was. it was simply the rain.

10 August, 04:02 – awake to the sound of pounding rain rattling the windows outside. surprised to be hearing the rain over the generator, only to pleasantly realize that npa has come to 12 lumley road.

07:29 – ride to work for the last time. note the angry waves off of lumley beach.

09:13 – leave for bliss bakery. get relatively wet despite the nice young guy ferrying people from their cars under a giant beach umbrella.

10:37 – return to work. find that lumley roundabout has turned into a river.

11:56 – phone the helicopter and hovercraft. both are operating their 14:00 services.

12:10 – decide to try for the 14:30 helicopter rather than wait and potentially miss the 18:30 flight. the frenzy begins.

13:07 – grab a sandwich in terri’s apartment. begin goodbyes.

13:25 – tear off a massive piece of plastic with stefani to cover my rucksack. followed by a hilarious attempt to cover said rucksack.

13:45 – load into the 287

13:46 – realize the 287 won’t start

13:48 – load into the land cruiser

13:49 – last hug. last wave.

13:58 – arrive at the heliport. can barely make out the helicopter through the rain and wind. assured the helicopter will go on time. yeah, right.

15:32 – assured the helicopter will go by 16:00.

17:14 – load everything back into the land cruiser

17:18 – arrive at the hovercraft terminal

19:21 – hovercraft departs aberdeen. we were finally on our way as the rain still fell, although the dull roar had calmed to a steady trickle.

departing lungi airport deserves a separate post all its own. quite the experience, i can assure you, full of things like manually propelling the luggage conveyor belt, having to personally assure that your bags make it through the security check and on the carousel headed to the plane, and having your bags searched and a package of peanuts removed while the water was allowed to stay.

once on the plane, things went well. i was sitting next to a lovely elderly sierra leonean woman headed to the uk to help her daughter-in-law who just birthed her third child. three under four – i’m sure grandmum’s help was appreciated. at one point, the nameless woman leaned over to me and asked me in her quiet, whispery voice, ‘are you a believer?’ ‘yes, i am,’ i replied, with an equal measure of the solemnity the woman conveyed. ‘well, that is wonderful,’ was her final statement before returning to her book entitled ‘seven kingdom principles.’

seven hours later, we arrived in london, and the past thirty-six hours or so have been lovely. although, i must say i miss sierra leone terribly. i missed sierra leone when i went to say ‘tenki, ya’ to the immigration officer and then again to the girl behind the ticket counter at the train station and again in the store today. i missed sierra leone when i had to go back to the bathroom, remembering that we do, in fact, have enough water to flush the toilet every time. i missed sierra leone when i thought of the wonderful teammates i have left behind, and how i wish i could share the blessings of these past few days with them. stefani – i went to starbucks for you (twice!) :D i keep finding myself practicing krio in my head as has been my habit these past few months. i keep thinking about what everyone is doing back in 12 lumley road.

tomorrow is monday. tomorrow i will finish my journey and return to my house, to my room, to my life in the united states. tomorrow morning someone else will feed charles’s coffee addiction in the office. someone else will clap and sing in morning devotions. someone else will sit and pray with the women going in for surgery. someone else now somewhere else.

262,800

2007-08-07T02:29:00.000-07:00

from this moment, i have seventy-three hours left in

sierra leone

. what those seventy three hours will bring, i have no idea. but that is four thousand three hundred and eighty minutes. that’s two hundred sixty-two thousand, eight hundred seconds. 262,800 moments – 262,800 more chances for 262,800 memories. it seems like a lot, but it isn’t enough.

being so close to the end lends itself naturally to times of reflection. but i’m trying my best to fight that urge because every moment i spend living in the past i miss a moment in the present. i’m also trying my hardest to avoid planning the future because, again, those are precious moments that i won’t get back. living in the present has always been one of my greatest challenges. my tendency is to be a forward-looker, a plan-aheader and i have followed this instinct for many years. but i have to say that being in africa rather forces you to live moment-by-moment. like when we woke up yesterday morning and the generator had gone off. you learn to adapt, light candles, boil water, etc. and when the generator would not turn on again last night, the adventure continued, including taking apart, repairing, and putting back together again several kerosine lanterns. no worries, all my camping friends, i now know quite a bit about kerosine lanterns. :)

you make plans here, but you hold them loosely. like my eight o’clock appointment who still has yet to come at 9:10. at restaurants its probably the best plan to select three good options from the menu in the common event that they do not have what you first ordered. like yesterday – at ramada’s beach bar, christa and i stopped in for a drink on our way back home from the centre. the situation went something like this:

- we have soft drink, juice, star beer...

- what juice do you have?

- we have mango, pineapple, guava...

- i’ll have mango

- okay, no problem

(several minutes later, the waitress returns bearing guava juice)

- we have no mango juice

- guava is fine. :)

you really become used to it, and you hardly even notice anymore when it happens. or, you notice it, but you stop being surprised.

so what do the next now 261, 900 moments have in store for me? i’m not sure, but i’m excited...

the planned day v. the actual day

2007-08-04T11:22:00.000-07:00

i am slowly but surely running out of creative ways to begin my blog-posts – not that how i have been starting them has been particularly creative. how many times have i started my posts with ‘it’s been a busy day’ or ‘it’s raining’? :)

i think i’m finally caught up on rest, though. i went to bed early last night, and woke up on my own accord at five thirty, so i guess i had gotten enough sleep at that point. you know, i just have to say, i love weekends. i love weekdays as well, but i love that on a weekend, i can get up, pad around – make a whole pot of tea instead of just a cup, and spend the whole morning drinking it. i love that i can choose not to take a shower and wear my most comfortable clothes.

i’m leaving in about half an hour to head down to lumley beach to see the sierra leonean amputee sports club (football team) practice. they usually scrimmage for a bit, and then maybe play a short game if the weather is nice. it looks as though the rain may hold off, which would be so wonderful. the past few days have been much less wet than before, but you never know. stefani is coming with me, and after we’re going to walk up to bliss patisserie – a little lebanese-owned restaurant where they sell coffee, pastries, and food. it’s a heavenly little oasis – one of the only places out that i’ve found that serves proper coffee – everywhere else is hot water and instant nescafe. not bad, but somehow fails to hit the spot when you want a good cup of coffee. :) then this afternoon, we have our long-awaited cooking lesson with abdul. a full day, but i’m looking forward to it all! it’s crazy that it’s my last weekend. at dinner last night, someone asked me what i particularly wanted to do on my last weekend, and i nearly fell out of my seat – i hadn’t even realized that i won’t have another saturday or sunday in sierra leone. not for a long time, at least. so weird....

i just wanted to jot a quick note about my day on thursday. stefani and went out with to new steps at waterloo. they send out mobile health teams every day to a few different sites on a kind of rotating schedule. as it was thursday, we headed out to rokupa – a village in between the outskirts of freetown and waterloo. after picking up vaccines from a local clinic, we headed out and set up shop outside a blacksmith’s shop. it’s operated by a man named pa mustafa, and it’s operated entirely by polio victims. pa mustafa is a victim of polio himself. so incredible to see – this extremely muscular man whose body suddenly shrivels up below the waist. a super friendly man, though. i wished that i could stay and chat with him a while, but we had plenty of patients waiting. i was afraid that i would end up spending the day just observing – so i spoke to the nurse, helen, telling her that i was a nursing student and more than happy to help. ‘nor worry, laurence,’ she said. ‘we get plenty work for you to do,’ and she was right! i ended up being in charge of all the well-baby checks. i weighed all the under-fives in our little hanging scale, charted their growth, and immunized the ones who were due for an opv and pentavalin.

it was absolute madness. i hunkered down to my task around ten am, and the next time i looked up, it was three. there was a seemingly endless stream of mothers with babies of various ages – the majority of which receiving their vaccines out of order or at a time other than the recommended age specified on their vaccination record.

every child should receive at birth bcg (against tuberculosis) and their first opv (against polio). then at six weeks it’s the first dpt/hep – a combined vaccine against diptheria and hepatitis – and the second opv. these two are to be repeated twice more at ten and fourteen weeks. then at nine months, the vaccines are completed with one yellow fever and one measles vaccine. out of the fifteen children i saw, i think one was on schedule. two were over the age of two. the vaccines themselves were out of date, and we didn’t have alcohol swabs to cleanse the injection site. the sharps container was nearly full when i began, making proper disposal of the syringes difficult. the cotton, when i retrieved it from the container, was swarming with ants. all in a day’s work, i suppose. it was a really eye-opening experience to the realities of a community clinic in a developing country. at the fistula centre and the opc, we are extremely spoiled in our accessibility to materials and medicines, and even they are not as nearly well stocked as almost any clinic in america. i was becoming extremely frustrated with it all, but then i saw the mothers standing in line, clutching their infants with a look of mixed anxiety and awe. i realized that to them i – childless, husband-less, younger, and less life-worn – was an authority figure. the weight of their expectation and trust was overwhelming. and so i did my very best possible by all of my tiny patients. i laughed with the mothers and with the crowd of little kids who gasped every time i uncapped a needle. it was an amazing experience – but absolutely exhausting. it has taken me until today to really overcome the aching tired which set in thursday afternoon.

- - - - - - - -

that was what i wrote this morning, intending to post from bliss, but they apparently do not have internet, so i've had to wait until now.

as always, the day ended up a bit differently than planned. in fact stefani and i were just commenting on how our time in sierra leone has definitely taught us both to hold all plans loosely - with the expectation that something will change or end up differently.

we made it to the beach right on time, only to find no football players. thinking we may be a bit early, stefani, christa, and myself spent some time just walking on the beach. we happened to pass one of the football players - the team's striker, and he told us that the coach had just phoned him to say that practice will be cancelled for the month of august - rain, elections, lack of funds, all combined to make meeting on a weekly basis too much of a hassle. so, fortunately, stefani has some pictures from when we went last time (when i had forgotten my camera), and i'll hopefully get those uploaded soon.

our time at bliss was good - but also different than we had expected. they did not have wireless internet, and i had packed everything up this morning, but not my adapter to plug my computer in. i totally didn't even think of it, completely forgetting that the restaurant would obviously have the different plugs. so i managed to get a fair bit of work done before my battery died, which was great.

the cooking lesson went really well - but again a bit different. abdul had done so much prep work that everything came together within forty-five minutes. :) i determined that i really liked eating with my hands, that fufu is good if a bit bland, and that okra soup is relatively easy to make if you have all of the right ingredients. i also determined that i do not particularly like palm oil, and i was reminded that africans generally have a much higher tolerance for the tiny hot peppers that you put in.

and this afternoon/evening has been a quiet one. it was a beautiful, clear day, and the rain has just begun to fall again. tomorrow's agenda: church one last time at st. luke's, a quick trip over to the clinic, and the beach (if the weather allows!)

more later...

roots redux

2007-08-01T09:01:00.000-07:00

this morning, i started writing my final report today for my advanced study grant. at lunch, i had a deep conversation with terri about moving on from this time and this place. this afternoon one of the nurses who i won’t see again due to shift scheduling said goodbye to me. i’ve started to get this creepy-crawly feeling like goosebumps on the inside. when i think of leaving, my stomach knot and unknots itself in rapid succession – an altogether unpleasant experience.

this is how leaving always is for me – even if i have only been in that place for a short while. here is an excerpt of something i wrote over a year ago when i was leaving to return to school after christmas break. i stumbled across it the other day, and it’s funny how it still rings true:

the human tendency to put down roots. the most insidious part of this tendency is the fact that we don’t realize that we have put down roots until we have to tear them up. we tie strings from our hearts to people, places, special times, or significant others. then when the time comes to move, the only alternative is to rip away, breaking all of our bonds like a hot air balloon snapping its moorings, like ripping up the hair on our arm or leg when removing a band-aid, or like pulling up a plant by its stem.

as the pulling begins, there is a moment of greatest resistance, and if the pull is strong enough for long enough, the lines begin to break. it’s a kind of sucking pop which sickens the heart and yet is strangely satisfied in its own right.

some ties are harder than others to break, and generally the harder the break, the harder the hurt...

it’s a healthy pain, though. just like a tree or grapevine, our heartstrings must be pruned in order to be more fruitful and grow more strongly. the funny thing is that i don’t regret putting down roots, and i won’t hesitate to put roots down again. part of the reason why i won’t hesitate again is because i won’t know that i’m doing it. and ignorance is bliss.

sunshine and joy

2007-07-31T15:05:00.000-07:00

i would say today was a fairly productive day.

i got up in the morning, and really had no idea what to expect. yesterday had been relatively slow, and rather heartbreaking. i was in the opc with guido when we had to tell a mother that her two week son, born with spina bifida, would not survive. it was mind-numbingly painful to see the face of this mother as she sat, cradling her convulsing infant realizing that she must begin to say goodbye just as she had begun to say hello. i was pretty shattered by the whole experience, and i was still a bit off this morning. but i had a good cry and the prayed for joy. sunshine and joy were my two prayers for today. and i would have to say they were answered.

the day broke to heavy rain, and as it was still going strong when we piled into the land cruiser this morning, it looked as though we would have our sixth straight day of rain. but by the time we arrived at the clinic, it had stopped, and by ten the sun had begun to beat down on the soggy earth. i quickly took advantage of the moment and walked down with christa to the lumley beach arts and crafts market, was obviously mobbed by shop keepers who haven’t sold anything in ages, but managed to get some good deals on a few things i had on my list before heading home. after being relatively chilled the past few days, it kind of felt good to sweat a bit on the walk back. sunshine.

upon getting back, i heard that there was a lady who i could interview waiting out in the courtyard. so i rushed over with my book, only to find that she was here for a consultation after receiving surgery somewhere else, and that she didn’t qualify for my study. but then, there was another woman there (who i had assumed was the first lady’s traveling companion) who apparently is a former patient, and one of the women whose homes i had visited in all of my searching. so i got my interview after all...

after lunch, i sat on the ward for a bit to cover for the nurses while they had a staff meeting. some of the girls have been teaching my fullah, one of the eighteen tribal languages of sierra leone, and when i was teasing her about how i was about to lose my teacher (she goes home tomorrow), she sat me down and began in earnest to teach me all the basic things she deemed i needed to know. so now i have a half sheet of paper that holds all the fullah words for the parts of the body, basic foods, formal and informal greetings, and the numbers one to ten. it was great! they all laughed when i read the words back to them – astonished that their language could be so perfectly captured on paper. i laughed so hard with them. joy.

sunshine and joy...

rain and a weekend ramble

2007-07-28T01:42:00.000-07:00

well, i awoke this morning to the third consecutive day of rain. it ebbs and flows, ranging from a drizzle to a downpour reminiscent of a hurricane (with winds to match), but it never really stops. but one blessing out of it all is how cool it has been. yesterday i had to bundle up with a sweater and a woven blanket i had bought at the market. last night i was downright cold. it's been fun, though, getting caught in the rain and then warming back up again with a cup of tea or hot chocolate. not exactly what i had in mind when i packed for my time here in west africa!

in two weeks exactly, i will be landing in london, and sierra leone will be far behind me. then all i will have is the memories in my heart, the pictures and video clips on my computer, and the various things i have picked up along the way: two calabash (a type of gourd) bowls, a few strings of beads, a blanket, and some wooden animals. it's a rather depressing thought, actually. but with change always comes growth, and i am beginning to look forward with great anticipation to the coming semester. i have some really wonderful classes ahead of me, a family of loving friends, and many adventures in store.

the one thing that i am probably looking forward to with the most is the independence of being at school. any feminists which feel that american women are oppressed by the male race really should step out of the box a bit and come to sierra leone. it's not so very awful at least on the surface. but when i hear that our women (who are advised to remain sexually abstinent for six months in order to heal fully) can't go back to their husbands right away because they will be forced into sexual intercourse, or about husbands who leave their wives because they having children and take any children she has had with him, or about the beatings and violence - i begin to see a glimmer of what i have been so blessed as not to experience.

for me here, it only becomes evident as a vague feeling of discomfort. it comes in the calls of 'hey white girl' from across the street, in the winks of the male passersby, in that indescribable look of ownership and hunger in so many of the faces of the young men i have met along the road which speaks so clearly: you are a woman and i can do whatever i like with you. you are white and therefore you are an especially exotic toy. generally, i brush it off. but the hardest to endure is when it's a couple walking together and the husband or boyfriend blatantly flirts with me while his wife/girlfriend is standing right there. she stands there, eyes cast to the ground. glancing up, our eyes catch and i see a brief flicker of something. pain, anger, sorrow, despair? i can't be sure. but my heart aches as i continue along the way. i have begun to take a perverse pleasure in completely ignoring all the men i meet along my walks, acknowledging the women only. these greetings are often met by surprise and, just maybe, a smile.

don't get me wrong, not every relationship is like that. i have seen husbands come to the clinic faithfully to visit their wives. sitting with them and touching them when no one else outside the hospital will. i have seen women so strong and forceful that you almost fear for their husband at home. i have seen women who know that they have a value independent of who they are married to, how many children they have, or how much they sell at market. but i also live in freetown, and i know that the rest of sierra leone - the real sierra leone - is much different.

honestly, i'm not sure where i am going with all of this, but these are the ramblings that fill my mind on these rainy, rainy days. i think that time will bring equality to sierra leone. already i see women beginning to question the status quo - the result of the efforts of countless men and women working for a handful of ngos over the years, as well as the efforts of many a pastor and politician. as the elections approach, i wonder honestly what will happen. i wonder if the special strengths and skills of the sierra leonean women will be embraced or once again placed on the back of a shelf somewhere. in neighboring liberia, the presidency of her excellency ellen sirleaf-johnson is a wonderful example of what african women have to offer. my times in the kitchen at the clinic, helping with cooking and picking out bits and pieces of the Krio chatter, have taught me that i certainly couldn't measure up to these bold, courageous, and altogether amazing women...

in more general news, things at the clinic are small-small. the rains and the upcoming election have slowed our steady stream of patients to an ever dwindling trickle. we'll be down to one ward on monday - thirteen patients altogher, i think. but as all the girls that i have become so close to leave to go home, it makes my own departure that much easier.

a full head

2007-07-26T08:37:00.000-07:00

it's funny. the thing which i have treasured most about my time so far in sierra leone, is how my head has been perfectly empty. life and my particular role therein was relatively simple. actually almost non-existent. all i have really had to do was be sure to wake up and get out to transport on time. but things have been different today. it's not that i have been particularly busier or that my day has looked that different from any other day. but for the first time in nearly two months, i had to make a to-do list.

for those of you who know me from school, you know that i operate on a perpetual cycle of to-do lists. i love the feeling of getting everything that's swirling about down in such a concrete way - on paper, on the computer, on my calendar, in my day-planner. for some reason, seeing everything neatly bulleted and organized makes me feel as though it can all get done. since arriving in sierra leone, i have not had to make a single one. until today.

very little of the list has to do with life here, actually. it's all focused on things i need to do before i go, things i need to do when i get home, and a few things that have to be done before the weekend or before the end of the day. i greet this first of many transitions back to my former life with a mixture of pleasure and dread. in a way, it's like returning to a long-lost friend. in another way, i didn't particularly miss that buzzing feeling in my head of countless thoughts which consistently refuse to be tied down.

but it really isn't so bad as it sounds. when i think of many of the aspects of school which lie in front of me - the relationships, the activities, the excitement, the adventure, the lessons to be learned. it really is wonderful. and if i have to heighten my stress level a bit, and take on a bit more responsibility, then so be it...

from yesterday

2007-07-25T03:40:00.000-07:00

it’s such a surprise. today i am sitting on my bed in my room typing by the filtered light of late afternoon, and it’s only five thirty. we all left the centre by five, which hasn’t happened since i came back from liberia. it actually makes little difference whether we get back by five thirty or six thirty. there’s always something to do at the centre, and we don’t get power here until after dinner. but it is nice to have a bit of time to unwind before sitting down to eat. and it gives me a proper time to sit and update my blog!

it’s amazing how you start the day with no real plans or to-do list, and the day fills itself up. today i came to work with nothing really on my plate. three former patients were tentatively scheduled to come for a visit and chat with me, but the torrential rain, which started last night and ended up continuing until about two or three this afternoon, made those prospects fairly slim. but then i got to work, and everything sorted itself out. there were discharge cards which had to be made, operative reports which had to be filed, the admin office to clear out and clean, patients to talk to, toenails to paint, and before i knew it, it was ten to four. then one of my participants ended up showing up, and i had a wonderful little interview with her.

so now i’m here, and i’m looking forward to a long evening with my book. terri has loaned me ‘the devil that danced on the water,’ which is the autobiography/memoir of a woman who grew up in sierra leone during the tumultuous times of siaka stevens. her father was actually the finance minister and the right-hand man to the promising apc leader-turned tyrant. i’m only half-way through, and i really have no idea what’s coming next. but it’s written in such a nice way – a series of short stories and memories – that i can really pick it up for any amount of time, short or long. i highly recommend it. :)

it was, in the end, a simple day. so many things now just fall into place, and only every once in a while do i wake up out of myself and the reality of where i am and what i am doing hits me. i am so incredibly blessed to be where i am. it’s like a mantra which flows within me throughout the day: i am blessed. i am blessed. i am blessed. when i make a patient laugh by my unreserved attempts to speak fullah. i am blessed. when i get to sit with and touch a patient who hasn’t felt human touch for years because of her fistula. i am blessed. when i greet the staff by name and hear my name returned. i am blessed. when i sit in the growing dark of the falling dusk and hear the sounds of the freetown suburbs – so different from the suburbs of home. i am blessed...

sunday report

2007-07-23T02:11:00.000-07:00

sunday was a lovely day. it started off well enough: i woke up to rain. it was absolutely lovely. and even better than that was that it had cleared away by the time i headed out to church. i greatly enjoyed my walk to the wilberforce barracks, and though i was later than i usually am, i didn’t really miss very much.

the mass itself was really lovely. i’ve struggled in the past, with the language and cultural barriers, to really get spiritual nourishment out of the services at st. luke’s. yesterday, however, there was a visiting priest, on his way to magburkah village outside of makeni town, and he was just the most lovely priest. usually the sunday sermon becomes an opportunity to speak as loudly and as creatively as possible into the microphone. the catholic church much less than other churches, but it still tends to happen. sermons wander from one idea to the other spontaneously flowing out of the preachers’ mouths, but this priest was different. he spoke clearly and succinctly to the heart of the message in today’s gospel. he was reserved yet passionate about what he talked about. the message focused on the gospel of matthew, where jesus says, ‘my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’

his main message is that your burdens become lighter when carried with love. he told a hilarious story which illustrated his point. during the war, he was traveling from makeni and came to a river which he had to cross. boats were there, but they wouldn’t pull right into the shore but stay a few feet away in the water. upon arriving, he noticed a couple waiting there as well. it was a small, small man, he said, and a big, fat woman, nearly five times her husband’s size. ‘she mus’ be one hundred an’ feefty kilos.’ the wife was dressed fine, fine from head to foot. she didn’t want to wade out into the water, so her husband offered to carry her out. the priest watched in amazement as he easily picked up his enormous wife ‘as if she were a piece of bread.’ the next week, on his way back to makeni, the priest came across the same man. this time he was traveling alone. the priest was completely amazed, then, to see the man struggling to pick up a fifty kilo bag of rice which he had with him. in fact, in the end, the man had to have another man help him hoist the fifty kilos of rice into the boat. when the priest asked him why he couldn’t carry the rice after he had carried his fat wife easily, the man replied that he didn’t love the rice like he loved his wife. the church was laughing so hard, but i think everyone received the message as well.

on the way out of church, i ran into a father and son who i had met briefly two weeks before. we were walking in the same direction, so we walked together for a bit. he introduced himself as mr. kargbo, and his son is james. he is a corporal in the national army, and his young son has just graduated to class one. they were on their way to mr. kargbo’s mothers home where james stays during the week. mr. kargbo’s wife died in april of this year. she apparently miscarried and proceeded to hemorrhage. they weren’t able to get to the hospital in time. it was really very sad, but then we moved on to talk of his work, my work, the election, and his predictions of the probability of violence. he thinks that it will be, in the end, quite peaceful ‘by the grace of god,’ which was encouraging to hear. it was just so lovely to know that i now know someone in the church, and as we parted ways at mamba point roundabout, we promised to look for each other next week.

upon getting back to the house, i grabbed a quick lunch and then began cooking for dinner. it actually all turned out really well. i had made up an enchilada-type sauce the night before which i mixed into the tinned chicken. making the tortillas really was the largest effort, but they turned out quite well, which made it all worth it. everyone enjoyed it (or so they said), and i thought it was quite good as well, although i personally thought that it was a bit bland for mexican food. but, in the end, i would count it as a success, and i think that stefani was blessed by it, which was the whole point. :)

i crashed around ten, and didn’t wake up until ten to six this morning. now i’m at work, and we’ll just have to see what the day brings!

weekend update

2007-07-21T14:55:00.000-07:00

another weekend is halfway gone, and i can hardly believe it. i'm one week closer to leaving this place, with its amazing highs, desperate lows, and plenty-plenty mediocrity in between. there have for sure been enough days that were just hum-drum, but then i wake up every morning and realize that i'm in freetown, sierra leone! i'm doing what i want to do, and it's such a blessing. the biggest surprise this summer has been the amazing-ness of the people i have been so blessed to meet. people working in all sorts of non-profits and ngos that have such incredible visions for the future and passions for their work.

on friday, i got to go with stefani and geraldine (one of her co-workers) to see various places doing physio work. we stopped by the military hospital in the wilberforce barracks, right next to where i go to church; handicap international, which, having been handed over to the ministry of health, is now called the national rehabilitation centre; and emergency, a hospital run by an italian ngo. at emergency i met a really neat swiss nurse who has worked for quite some time in afghanistan, in the northern bit of the country, where emergency actually opened the first official maternity centre. michaela, the nurse, was telling me how incredible it was to be providing healthcare for and celebrating the lives of women who had never stepped foot into a formal healthcare facility or doctor's office ever before. just being able to value these women as they participated in the great mystery of life...there is a seed growing within me, and i already feel the gentle tugging of my next big adventure. :)

today, we hosted an emotional awareness workshop for the nursing staff at the centre. i actually didn't participate very much. stefani and i spent most of the morning on lumley beach, watching the scrimmages of the single leg amputee sports club, a football (soccer) team which is comprised of all amputees. they are so absolutely incredible, and it was such an honor to watch these men defying the fate which had been handed out to them during the civil war. they are all absolutely determined to still have life on their own terms!

then we spent the rest of the day on the ward with the patients so that the nurses on duty could participate as well. it was a quiet afternoon on the ward, and the women passed their time rolling balls of wool that they will receive next week, and i worked on putting some thoughts together for the bible study that i'm leading next week. another person in the group was scheduled, but something came up and some things shifted, and i was willing. it really was a beautiful day for that sort of thing. there was a good breeze blowing the whole day, especially on the beach, and the rain came right in the middle of the day to cool everything off. it was absolutely glorious to sit in the courtyard in between the wards and just read...

there was a funny moment, when we stopped by freetown supermarket on the way home. as we pulled up, we noticed how busy it was. the wee, small parking lot in front of the store front was jam-packed with cars. upon going inside, we realized that the store was also full of people. it was the most white people that i have seen in one place in such a long time! i was completely overwhelmed. especially by hearing english. i had just forgotten how to interact with a white stranger. one older english chap whom i had passed a few times in the aisles finally addressed me, "how are you, ma'am?" and i was so totally taken aback. i think i ended up mumbling something like, "hello, thank you," and scurrying past. getting back in the car after a few minutes, i thought back on that encounter and felt like a complete idiot. but then i had to laugh at myself. you know you're in africa when...

but it was a good day, and i think it will be a good weekend. monday is stefani's birthday, so we are making dinner for her tomorrow night. i've kind of spear-headed the whole thing, and decided to make her some of the good tex-mex she has been missing ever since leaving east texas. so on the menu for tomorrow is: tortilla chips, pico de gallo, guacamole, enchiladas suizas (although we are renaming them enchiladas salone), black beans, and mexican rice. only we are in west africa, so we've had to be creative with some of the recipes. how do you make salsa verde, for example, without green chiles or tomatillos? how do you make enchiladas without tortillas? i'll let you know how it goes! :)

rainy weather and teary eyes

2007-07-18T14:24:00.000-07:00

i woke up today to pouring rain. not just the drizzly stuff which normally comes and goes during the day, but a real cats and dogs downpour. it’s funny because, once again, the weather kind of fit my mood. today was gladi-gladi day, except no one was going home dry. at their discharge education time, they were given the option of not having the ceremonial celebration, but they all wanted to. whether to celebrate their time here or to simply keep up appearances, i do not know. but we sat there, sang our songs, presented the girls, and prayed over them. but we dispersed very simply without the traditional singing and procession around the courtyard. it was, all in all, very sad.

then they all went and gathered their things, and the tears started to flow. first seray, then me, then isatu. we all stood rather awkwardly by the door, crying and pretending not to cry. you see, crying isn’t really popular here, but until today i didn’t really understand why. apparently for some people here, crying because of hardship, etc. is essentially a statement of distrust and unfaith in god. also, there is always someone who has had it worse than you, and to cry is disrespectful to that person’s experience. it was definitely hard to stand and listen to person after person berate seray in front of me for being emotional. i tried my best to force the tears away, and, as a result, have had that headachy feeling all day.

surprise, surprise, it’s raining again. we had, all in all, six hours of dry weather today. just enough time for some of the bigger puddles to drain a bit before being filled up again for the night. i have to say though that i quite enjoy the rain and rainy days. at home, rainy days can be so dismal. but here, it is such a part of life that most things generally continue on as normal. there is just less noise. the din of music, honking horns, and other vestiges of life are generally dimmed by nature’s music of wind and rain. and i love falling asleep to it at night. plus, it cools everything off so wonderfully. the moments before and after the rain are my favorite. i even donned a little cardigan the other day. a perfectly delicious moment. :)

heartbreak and providence

2007-07-17T12:38:00.000-07:00

i’m sitting in the dark. the rain, whose steady falling creates a musical symphony to the percussion of my typing, has driven all vestiges of the sun from view. it normally gets fairly dark around this time of night – 18:15 or so – but never is it so dark that you must almost grope from room to room. but the dark is actually very nice. a comforting peace after long days full of busy-ness and heartbreak.

that really describes today for me. that and providence. a bit of an oxymoron: heartbreak and providence, but let me explain.

the morning opened up beautifully. following a plan of forty days of prayer for sierra leone and the looming political elections, i opened the morning praying for god to dispel the clouds of corruption from this beautiful country. walking out into sunshine instead of rain was such a blessing to my poor human mind which gropes for signs on which to hang my faith. the first item on the agenda, after opening the admin office, making coffee, and then going to devotions, was to take two of our patients in for hiv testing at connaught, the government hospital. i was thankful for the opportunity to see again the centre that i had visited with harriet and abibatu upon first arriving. the trouble was that the girls spoke limba and fullah respectively and about a drop of krio between them. thankfully, francis, one of the drivers, was taking us, and whether or not either woman was able to understand him, his confident, authoritative manner was easy enough to understand.

the testing went well enough without too much of a wait for the test results. thankfully, both girls were negative! such a praise...while i was in the office, i wished so badly that i could take a picture or maybe just be able to download the experience from my brain to my computer so that i could share it with you all. there are so many memories of sierra leone that are like that. i wish that i had more patience for writing so that i could sit and record every detail faithfully, but it’s not really my personal gifting. ah well... :)

in any case, the trip into town took most of the morning, but we were back to the centre by lunch. the girls were so relieved to be back. apparently when they saw the big land cruiser they had come in, they thought that they were being taken back home, without warning to pack any of their personal belongings and without having surgery!

right as i walked in the door, i saw my friend, seray, laying on her bed. i went over to say hello, but noticed that she was quite out of sorts. when i asked her why she was sad, she finally looked at me and told me that she had woken up wet that morning. completely thunderstruck, i struggled to say anything at all. when i took her hand, we both began to cry. in seray, i have experienced a true understanding of what it means to be afflicted by fistula in sierra leone. we are told how it ostracizes the woman from her community, how devastating it is, how life-changing the surgery can be, but that doesn’t really mean anything. it all stays up in your head and becomes another fact that you spit out in your carefully organized spiel. with seray, it struck right to my heart. i saw the utter devastation in her face, and i couldn’t stand up to it. nothing i can do or say will take that pain away from her. so i didn’t say anything.

when we both settled down a bit, after seray had poured out to me the woes of her journey with this condition and her bitter disappointment, i looked through the doctor’s notes and explained to her what was recorded there, and how there was still hope for full healing and recovery. she understood, and we moved on to other things, namely her education.

i have felt a burden for a while for seray’s education. she is so bright, and she really gets it. after talking with her, she told me that she would like to finish secondary school, but she thinks that it would be better to go to a vocational school instead and learn a trade which she can continue on in. she also told me that she would be coming back to freetown sometime soon. that she would only be visiting kabala for a few weeks. her mother kicked her out of the house when she lost the baby and started leaking urine, and now that her mother is re-married following the sudden death of seray’s father, there are plenty of new little ones to keep her mother occupied.

so i was well on my way to trying to sort out some sort of way that i could set up a trust fund of sorts for her education, when god really landed everything in my lap. when i asked her where in freetown she was staying, she told me that she was in fact going to be living with one of the nurses, fatmata. when i checked with fatmata, and she is, in fact, taking seray in, and she had already begun looking into a vocational school that is right down the street. such a blessing!

heartbreak and providence. you can’t tell me that god doesn’t exist...

quick summary no. 2

2007-07-15T13:17:00.000-07:00

it's sunday evening, and i have a few days to catch you up on. so i'm going to repeat what i've done before and bullet the highlights:

friday - i spent the day at wellington orphanage with stefani and kerri, an australian woman who's been helping out at the centre while her husband is here on work, training the customs anti-trafficking force. we treked up a bit of hill to be greeted by heaps of smiling faces. the kids are going to summer school, so they trickled into the orphanage, and when they had all arrived, we split them into smaller groups. i got the wee ones, some of whom were reading some of whom weren't. so we read the gingerbread man together aloud and worked on reading comprehension by having each one draw his or her own illustrations for the different parts of the story. one girl, fatmata, ended up attaching herself to me. i don't know if there was a minute where i wasn't holding her hand or hugging her as everyone bustled about. i loosened my hold a few times to let her go do other things if she wanted, but she would only grasp my hands tighter. later, we stopped at ramada's beach bar and restaurant for a mango juice on the beach on the way home. i baked some banana bread that evening, and we ended up playing a make-shift version of tabboo, which was particularly humourous with our german pediatrician, guido.
saturday - got up early and did some work on the computer while we had power. then we piled into the car and headed out to river number two beach. spent a beautiful day on the sand. there was an especially neat moment when i was standing in the freshwater of the river where it shallows and bends before joining the ocean. i stood in the water for a time, watching the rain clouds roll down the side of the mountain in front of me. then the rain itself came, and i was struck by the fact that i was completely surrounded by water - above, below, and all around me...but then the rain cleared and it was a beautiful sunny day, and we got to swim a bit in the huge waves.
today - i headed out early with stefani to go to the church in wellington pastored by the man who also heads up the orphanage. one of the associate pastors, Pastor Bull, had just had a baby boy about three weeks ago, and his wife invited us on friday to the naming ceremony and dedication service happening today. we caught a lift with vez and emma who were also headed out in the same direction, which was the first of many unexpected blessings which characterized the day. the service itself was good - longer than the catholic service i'm used to going to, but really not that bad. the worship was really nice, and the community was incredibly welcoming. plus it was fun to see some of the kids from friday. the naming ceremony bit of the service was really fun. the whole church was up out of their seats cheering for this little bit of a baby. his name, if you are interested, is adam shadraq bull. both parents were so proud, especially the papa. it was so sweet to see. we ducked out after the service, but before the extended time of teaching and fellowship, determined to catch public transport back to the team house. three of the orphans walked with us down to the main road and helped us hail the right poda-poda (krio for hither and thither and the cheapest form of public transport). that took us all the way into downtown, stopping on ecowas street. after a bit of confusion and some kind guidance from a female police officer, we finally found the peugot stand (peugot station wagons which operate a bit like taxis but fit more people) and found one heading out to lumley via spur road. while in the car, we got an earful of political talk from one of our fellow passengers. but it was friendly enough, and to be perfectly honest i had a hard time following his many stories so i nodded gravely and he seemed fairly pleased. :) in the afternoon, my housemates went out to the chimpanzee reserve, but i opted out at the last minute. i will miss not seeing the chimps, but i realized that it had been awhile since i had taken a bit of time on the weekend to just sit at the house, read, and journal. and now i'm writing this...

this coming week looks to be a busy one - at least something every day, which is great. hopefully i will also get some progress made on my study. i'm going out one more day into town before things get too crazy and i have a few women on the ward as well that i would like to talk to. everything seems to be going so quickly all of a sudden. i can't believe that it's already 15th july...in a month i'll be home. weird. and i think the weeks will just get faster and faster as they fill up with projects, trips, things to do, and people to see. but i'm determined to not hurry it away by looking too much to the future. rather, i want to focus on the moment and day in front of me.

in doing so right now, i'm realizing how tired i am. :)

up, down, and all around

2007-07-12T14:09:00.001-07:00

today was a busy day. boy, it feels good to say that! i think my biggest struggle since coming to sierra leone has been feeling as though i'm actually contributing anything to this little community. but in the flux of staff coming and going, there are a lot of little gaps, and i have been able to pick up some of slack, and it's been wonderful.

the day started off on a really pleasant note. after devotions with the patients and staff, i reported to the kitchen for my first cooking lesson. thursday's lunch is rice with pumpkin ('punky') sauce, and it's my favorite dish out of the week. aunty evelyn said that it would be fine for me to come to the kitchen and learn. the whole of the domestic staff took on this bumbling white girl as i learned to chop vegetables in my hand, to use a mortar and pestle properly, and how to taste the sauce without burning your hand. i won't bore you with the details of how the sauce is made, but i will be more than happy to cook it for any interested parties upon my return! i was firmly pronounced an african woman, and i had a glimpse of what it would be like to have been born into an african family - the comraderie, the teasing, the community, and the social nature of all parties involved. i definitely felt like a niece of fatu as she directed me about the kitchen, described the steps she was taking, and was steered away from things i wasn't allowed to do. the young guys who came to the back door for a cup of tea and a biscuit could have been my cousins, and the other women in the kitchen my sisters. it was really, really wonderful.

everything was done by eleven o'clock, so i spent the rest of the morning and the early afternoon entering data from my study into the computer. i'm such a mess, and it felt really good to be organized. my time at the computer was broken up by trips out with the ward camera to take pictures ('snaps') of patients for their discharge cards. then guido, a pediatrician from germany, came and found me. there was a girl in the waiting room of the opc (outpatient pediatric clinic) with a substantial maxillo-facial tumor whose picture he wanted me to take for possible referral to the ship in liberia.

mariama is six years old and the little spot on her gums had, in two weeks, blossomed into a massive growth completely distorting the right side of her face. barely able to open her mouth, she had begun to lose weight, and it broke my heart to see this tiny little girl sitting in the doctor's office, her feet dangling off of the floor, with tears streaming down her distended face. coming from up-country, she didn't speak krio, and i was at a complete loss for words to comfort her. i don't know what will happen to her, honestly. as best i can remember, the ship doesn't have a surgeon on board at the moment who specializes in facial tumors. because her tumor has grown so fast, it's really difficult to know how long she'll be able to last before her airway becomes obstructed or she can no longer eat or drink. i will keep you updated if i hear anything else...

in other news, seray, my friend from the ward, is dry! her catheter was pulled today, and when i checked in with her in the early afternoon she hadn't leaked since right after the catheter was pulled. i almost shouted with joy, and seray laughed at me. "yu likah laf," she always tells me (laf = smiling or really any outward sign of happiness). "i do, very much," i told her. "you make me gladi."

i also had the extremely rare treat of speaking with one of my dearest friends from school, meg, by phone today. she has a calling card, and decided to splurge on me. it really made my day. i know it's cliche, but it really was like a long drink of cold water.

then i spent the rest of the early evening researching online. it's funny the more i read about global health policy work and some of these international cooperatives and foundations and initiatives and programs, the less i want anything to do with them. but we'll see, won't we. :)

now my laundry is in the dryer, and i'm wrapping up some things for the day. it really was an up-down-all-around day...

politics and prayers

2007-07-11T15:35:00.000-07:00

today was really a very good day. for the first part, we had power when i woke up. yesterday morning, i had awoken at five to the sound of silence. then the incessant barking and howling of the neighborhood dogs. i’ve never been comfortable with the sound of a dog barking, and when it’s eight or nine of them together, sleep stays quite far.

but this morning was lovely, and i particularly enjoyed sleeping all the way until six. this morning i helped out in the OPC (outpatient pediatric clinic). wednesdays are days for vaccines and referrals, and i was able to help the nurses with some of the vaccinations. i weighed a lot of babies, gave two vaccinations, got peed upon, slobbered upon, and almost pooped upon, and i loved every minute. a five day old baby came in, and he was perhaps one of the most beautiful thing i have ever seen so i didn’t mind when he (nappy-less) peed all over the place. his mom was a first timer, and she was so cute, nearly jumping out of her chair when he sneezed.

i went for lunch with terri and susan to bliss bakery. it was so nice to get out of the compound for a little bit during the day. the apc (all people’s congress) supporters were out en masse all decked out in red. free-for-all campaigning opened on monday, and i have witnessed some sort of political demonstration almost every day this week. today was the day that the apc candidate was announcing his manifesto of campaign promises so almost everyone out today was dressed in red. but the grapevine brought us news of the election’s first casualty. apparently, an apc supporter walked into the slpp (sierra leone people’s party) party headquarters and when he refused to leave began to be beaten. he was beaten to death. we spent out lunch watching knots of red clad people dancing down the street past the plate glass windows on their way into town and could only dream about the state of freetown in a month’s time on the day of the elections.

i spent the afternoon running around a bit more and interviewing a few more women for my study. they had both come back to the centre complaining of stress incontinence, and as we are unable to help them, are about to go home. but i had a chance to talk to them both, which is really such a blessing. especially because my ability to go out and recruit participants will now be severely limited by the demonstrations in town. it was really neat to talk to them both. its interesting. part of my interview comes from a quality of life/stress test questionnaire, and nearly all of my women, whether or not their surgery was successful, have returned similar results. there just isn’t an easy life in sierra leone.

yesterday, i spent the afternoon chatting with one of the patients who has become a very close friend, seray. she’s the only one left who has had a bit of schooling and her english is quite good. it was actually really funny, because we had been carrying on a conversation, and i was getting quite proud of my krio. then seray asked me if i wanted to learn krio. yes, i replied. okay, she said, i will stop talking in english. :) i almost died laughing. but in our conversation, it was very interesting to hear seray speak of sierra leone. ‘it’s a beautiful country,’ she told me. ‘but if i ever get a chance, i will leave it. there are no opportunities here. salone suffers. it suffers because there are no opportunities. no one get job so no one get any money and so all man suffer.’ looking around, sometimes i can’t help but agree. i think of seray in london or new york city. her sister has been. she met a brit and lied to him when he showed an interest in her. she said she didn’t have a husband when she did. he was probably away in the mines or upcountry working somewhere. couples and families often live apart here. her british ‘man’ took her to london, but when he found a love letter to seray’s sister from her proper husband, the brit rejected her and sent her back to sierra leone alone.

yet there is so much potential here. i have met so many people with initiative, high hopes, and even bigger dreams. the elections provide a pivotal moment for positive change and growth. please pray with me for sierra leone...

morning time and prayer...

2007-07-10T01:22:00.001-07:00

mornings at the centre are my favorite times. we arrive from the team house by 7:30 usually. the admin office is usually opened by terri. i dump my stuff into a chair and grab the coffee pot. it's quite a commodity around here, and so it's the first task of the day. that done, i run off to the morning devotions held by some of the staff for the patients. we sing songs in krio, and clap to all different rhythms. i have several favorite songs, one of which i have copied here:

tell ah, tell ah ten-ki
tell papa god tenki
tell ah, tell ah ten-ki
tell papa god tenki

wetin ee do foh me
teh papa god tenki
wetin ee do foh me
teh papa god tenki

the devotional time ends with a time of prayer, and i love to hear prayers in krio. florence, our official/unofficial counselor is a pastor's wife, and she prays with the most fervent spirit. filling her prayers with scripture and thanksgiving. we have begun praying with each of the patients going into surgery that day. today we prayed with a fifteen year old and an eighteen year old, both absolutely petrified with fear. honestly, sometimes i struggle to understand how such things can happen. when i see such young girls, i realize that we are really treating a symptom but not the problem. fistulas are still happening, and frequently.

yet i notice every morning after the devotions and after the times of prayer that one of the most amazing things about prayer is that no matter who or what you are praying for, you always end up feeling better. even with these girls, and the whole country of sierra leone and all its difficulties, there's a peace in my heart and a confidence in god's abundant love. it's the mysterious blessing of prayer...

a quick summary after some delay

2007-07-08T15:02:00.000-07:00

one of my biggest technology-related pet peeves is when you spend a relatively substantial amount of time, energy, and effort into doing something and then your computer flips out and you lose it all. that’s what happened to me on thursday. i had written a really lovely post for this blog that kind of recapped the few days prior and summed up my feelings of the moment. i clicked ‘post’ and then the server could not be found. of course, when i clicked ‘back,’ it didn’t reload the words i had typed. ah well. i can’t really go back and write everything up, because that plus everything that i’ve done since would make for an inordinately long blog post, and that would just be daunting to read all in one go. so i thought that i would just do some bullet points of the daily highlights of the past little bit to (hopefully) help me to stay concise.

wednesday. morning. mercy ministries team trip to an hiv/aids hospice and orphanage in downtown monrovia run by the sisters of charity. met some really lovely liberian nursing students who chatted the morning away while we all cuddled and hugged and did our very best to get these poor little dear ones to smile a little bit. twenty to thirty kids, most hiv positive, one sister and a handful of local volunteers. i never learned the name of the little one i was cuddling, but at the end of two and half hours or so, i finally did coax a smile out of her. really, one of the most gratifying moments of my life. afternoon. tagged along to a meeting with sr. barbara brilliant, alum of bc nursing, one of the only ex-pats to stay in liberia for the duration of the war. absolutely blown away by the impact she has made on that country and the volume of work which she does. really, incredibly inspired.
thursday. woke up. packed. said oodles of goodbyes. couldn’t really eat lunch because my stomach was so twisted. spent some time wondering why goodbyes never get easier no matter how many times you done them. wrote a blog post which was sadly lost. met my traveling companions, kent and oebele. got to know them even better when our flight was delayed two hours or so. arrived in sierra leone. i could barely keep from smiling to see the beautiful hills of the land i have come to love.
friday. came in to work only to be frustrated by the internet. organized some data for the study. headed out in the early afternoon with bas and anna for makeni. drove three and a half hours. arrived in magbenteh village outside of the town, where bas and anna worked in a hospital. was almost mobbed by all of the villagers who were so ecstatic to see them. was often taken for bastiaan’s second wife. a little awkward. :) went for a drink at ibrahim’s, a particularly lovely lebanese man. ended up at the house of action contra la faime (acf), a french ngo. met some of the most open-hearted, hospitable, friendly, easy-going people i’ve ever encountered. had a dinner of fried rice, a nice glass of wine, and played ‘the were-wolves of thiercelieux’ (roughly translated) – the french equivalent of mafia. set up a mosquito net. fell asleep.
saturday. woke up to almost complete silence, a novelty after freetown. took a quick, cold shower that felt absolutely amazing. breakfast of tea, freshly baked bread, fried egg, cake, fried rice, and pineapple. packed up. waited for the rain to end. began a long process of saying goodbyes, to acf, to makeni town, to magbenteh village, and to magbenteh hospital. felt so incredibly privileged to see and participate. got on the road around one in the afternoon. rain, some suspicions of car trouble, a couple of stops for bananas, bread, a little squat behind a gallon drum, and three hours stuck in the middle of a political parade opening the official presidential campaigns equals arriving to the centre a little after seven. after a little food and a second shower, i felt tired but absolutely content.

hopefully i will have a chance to write a bit more about my time in makeni – the wonderful people i met and my reflections upon the whole experience, but for now i will end. it’s getting late, and i’m quite tired. also hopefully the internet will work tomorrow and i will be able to post this up. i think that there is another post that i want to put up that i wrote before i left for monrovia. better late than never, i suppose. :)

a day in the village

2007-07-03T09:17:00.000-07:00

my goal for today was to notice in particular all the little details which really do make up each and every day. and armed with that perspective, i headed out to face the day. so what did i notice? i noticed how riding in the land rover along back country roads was similar to riding a frisky horse. i noticed how the red of the iron-rich earth of the dirt road contrasted so beautifully with the green of the plants and the blue and white of the sky. i noticed how beautiful was the workmanship which placed the mud onto the walls of the huts in the villages we visited and laid the dried palm fronds on the roof. i noticed how the hot items of the liberian market are mosquito nets and tarpaulins. i noticed a unhcr bucket full of rainwater. i noticed the detailed faces of the little children which clung to my legs and my fingers. i noticed the domineering attitude of the young teenage guy who professed his love for me, asking for me to take him to the united states and care for him. i noticed the change in his face when i reminded him of his sisters and brothers who need him to care for them. i noticed the young girl who was nine months pregnant, and i wondered if she has a birthing plan or if she will become a future vvf patient.

you see, i went today with the community health education team to distribute chemically laden mosquito nets. they’ve been working in the area of cheesemanburg, which is made up of a chain of seven or eight villages. today we were in kosoh town, a grouping of seven or eight homes whose inhabitants comprise one extended family. we went into the homes, counted how many people sleep there and proceeded to hang the nets. one for the bed on which this husband and wife sleep. one for the children who sleep on a mat on the floor. two more for the brother’s family in the other room, and one for the grandparents who sleep in the third room. according to jen, the team coordinator, one can really only home that at least by taking the nets out of their plastics and hanging them up that it will be enough to prevent the recipient from taking them down and selling them, which has apparently happened quite a bit in the past. there were heaps of people to hang everything up, so i spent the better part of the day playing with the village children, who were so incredibly cute. i’ve only seen children at the opc, the outpatient pediatric clinic, the one day with sandra and annekoos, and i forgot how much i miss children. i met emmanuel, tony-boy, angel, homer, and infa. they were beautiful children, and i was flattered by their attention. according to one woman in the village, normally they all just cry and run away from the white people. :)

we ran out of nets fairly quickly, though, and were heading back to the ship by a little after twelve noon. we got back to the ship a little after one. climbing out of the car i met ann, jutta, and kate all going out to hopefully meet with a man who had some rabbits to sell for the micro-enterprise project. at their invitation, i climbed out of the one land rover into the next one. we went to one of the local supermarkets and waited for nearly half an hour before we were able to contact him by phone. his car was having trouble, he could meet on friday at the same time. with no real other choice, we abandoned the hope of getting some rabbits and proceeded to cross a few other things off of the to-do list, like placing an order for bamboo so that one of the other women in the program could have the materials to build her rabbit hutch. apparently, once the woman can demonstrate that she had an appropriate hutch built, then she receives the pair of rabbits. anyway, we drove out on the same road which took me nearly a week ago to white plains. it was really fun to recognize something, i must say. :)

and now i am back, once again, on the ship. it’s funny, with all of the wonderful amenities of life available here on board, i must say that i couldn’t help but look a little wishfully at some of the homes that we went in and out of today. they were really beautiful. beautifully constructed, beautifully kept up, beautifully simple. mud floors, mud walls, palm frond and tarpaulin roof, but i found myself wishing for more than half a moment that i could live there, with these people. honestly, i know that this desire is one of theory and born out of the luxury of choice, but still the desire remains, much to my chagrin. maybe someday...

a day with the dental team

2007-07-02T08:55:00.000-07:00

i suppose that i owe every one a blog post, for all of you who are so wonderful to be faithful readers of this little web log. so i have settled down with a lovely cup of darjeeling tea, and i will faithfully record the events of the past few days, and get you updated. :)

the weekend passed uneventfully enough. it rained all day saturday, spoiling plans for a trip to the beach, which i was used to after a few weekends in sierra leone. it was such a blessing, though, to spend the day with power and the light and air conditioning that come with it. yet how quickly thankfulness turns to complaining, as there really was no where on board where i could get warm, and suddenly the blessed ac became a burden as i shivered through the day. last night, at the crew sunday service, the speaker, rob cairncross, spoke on just that.

it's pretty neat. this trip which i thought would be all about my study, and seeing different things and just experiencing the ship and ship-life again, really has become a spiritual retreat of sorts. i've had so much time to just sit and think and read, and it's amazing what little thoughts bubble up to the surface when you give them a moment. i've been reading a lot about prayer, and that has been so incredibly enriching to my day-to-day life. i love waking up the morning to see what the day will bring.

today brought a trip with the dental team. they have established a clinic in one of the areas of a local government hospital, and we set out early in the rain, all very much resigned to the fact that it's the rainy season, and you're just going to get wet. :)

the day seemed as though it was going to be slow, because of the rain, but in the end, it was a fairly full day with everyone just showing up late, delayed by the downpour. i worked mostly on the admin side, pairing up with the woman in charge of admissions paperwork. i sat and watched and then later helped taking medical histories. the pidgin english here is no less fun than krio.

Have you had rhuematic fever?.....Whe' yu small, yu get fevah dat put red spots on yu skeen?
Have you had hepatitis?.....Yu get yellow jaundice or livah diseese?

fun times. :)

there was actually a man that came in who was sierra leonean. he only moved to liberia on 28 June, so he only spoke krio and mende. i don't speak any mende, but we managed to communicate a bit through my broken krio. the poor guy was in an extraordinary amount of pain with some pretty severe swelling near his jaw. he seemed much happier when he left and even gave me a little corner of a smile.

another memorable patient was one of the little children that came through. his name was simeon, and he was from a local orphanage which was taking advantage of having a pediatric dentist on the team. i didn't get to spend much time with him, but his adorable smile warmed my heart in the middle of the morning when i was wondering why i had come. it's the interesting part of mercy ships, or any missions work, really, we all get so used to being understaffed that when you are there to volunteer or help out, no one can really sort out what you could possibly do, although you know there is heaps of work to be done.

but i really can't blame them, because i know that i will be gone tomorrow, and they'll have to shift back to being chronically understaffed...

photos

2007-06-29T06:40:00.000-07:00

you can follow this link to my online photo album:

http://picasaweb.google.com/lauren.fadely/SierraLeone

monrovia, white plains, and memories

2007-06-28T06:07:00.000-07:00

it’s funny to be on a ship again. it’s been four years since i laid foot on a mercy ship, but here i am again, and it feels...good. not the kind of good that makes your stomach bubbly and your heart flutter with excitement, but the kind of good of waking up late on a weekend morning to streaming sunshine and birds singing. it’s a kind of lazy good that says this feels right, but also knows that this moment doesn’t last forever yet can still appreciate the moment for what it is.

the africa mercy is a beautiful ship, but it’s very different from the little ship i called home for so many years. the caribbean mercy was older, much shorter, and thinner with tiered decks that allowed for a lot of outdoor space. the africa mercy is like a floating building, square and full to the edges. there’s very little wood to be found anywhere, but it really is lovely. yesterday my dad told me that we sailed the anastasis for the first time when the ana was twenty-eight years old, and we sailed the afm for the first time when she was twenty-seven. it’s funny then to think of the years ahead of this ship and all of the families that will call it home and the loyalties that it will engender. because that’s really what one feels now, as the anastasis is prepared for her final voyage, the sadness of many goodbyes to many years of memories. what makes us humans so fond of the past, i wonder?

this has been, so far, a nostalgic trip, as i remember life on board the cbm and childhood memories evoked by familiar smells and sounds and other ship-esque things. box milk, fresh bread, food lines, public spaces, the generator’s hum, the gentle listing in port – so many things i didn’t even know i remembered.

then there was our trip yesterday to see the sites of my dad’s childhood, in and around monrovia. we left the ship around midmorning, and drove along a road-turned-river, compliments of the rainy season, to white plains, a retreat center run by the united methodist church, where my dad had spent some holidays and where my grandmother’s heart is buried. after a lot of asking and some backtracking, we met up with the groundskeeper, mr. mo, and he drove with us the rest of the way. we emerged from a small track densely crowded by a hundred shades of green to find a large clearing with several buildings of cinderblock and brick. Walking up the main clearing, flanked by the men’s and women’s dormitories, we came upon a large rectangle of unmarked stone shaded by some young trees. this is karis, mr. mo pointed out, and it was a really special moment. what really struck us the most, throughout our journeying around, was how everyone remembered the name. my dad would only say, i’m jon fadely, the son of tony and karis fadely, and everyone’s eyes would get very big and they would say, ohhhh, and that would be that. everyone remembered or remembered hearing about the young white family from the united states that had lived there thirty years ago, who had pastored the church, and who had taught the choir. in talking with mr. mo, he found out that i was working in sierra leone. “you are in missions like your grandmother,” he said. “thank you for caring about africa.” i nearly cried. it was a beautiful moment.

we also visited the methodist church and the compound in sinkor where my father lived and my grandfather worked. more memories, more friendly and warm greetings from the methodist workers. even though it was raining buckets nearly the whole time, i remember it even now as a beautiful, sunny time.

liberia is, after all, different from sierra leone although they share a border and their west african culture. the first thing i noticed after coming off of the plane was how flat the land here is. freetown, nestled in among the hilly mountains of sierra leone, has a different feel from monrovia which sprawls across a plain. the war here is fresher, and the people are more subdued. the wounds of the war are only just beginning to heal here, it seems. after only a short time in the car with our driver immanuel, who returned to monrovia two years ago after living as a refugee in ghana for six years, the stories began to spill out about the atrocities which he had witnessed and the monumental task of forgiveness and reconciliation which he and others had begun to undertake.

two of his sisters had been raped a killed by a man who Immanuel knew to live in a certain neighborhood. he met the man and became friends with him while the man was unaware of their connection. then, after several months, immanuel took the man aside and told him, “you know the two women you raped and killed in such-and-such place? they were my sisters. i forgive you.” and the man broke down in tears. “it is the only way,” immanuel said. “the way of forgiveness is the only way.”
after we had seen everything that my dad wanted to show us, we were well past lunch time. immanuel offered to drop us off at a nearby hotel restaurant while he ran and grabbed some food from a local vendor. but it seemed to silly, so condescending to have our “driver” drop us off at this swanky restaurant while he ran off to huddle beside some food stand in the rain. but when we offered to have him join us, he grinned sheepishly and said that he doesn’t like western food. so after a brief discussion it was decided that we would go with him, to eat african food.
a few minutes’ drive brought us to the door of daba’s african food restaurant, and we ran inside. once we stopped dripping, we sat down at the table and looked at the day’s menu. everyday had some standards: fufu with soup, douboy and soup, GB, and then there was a daily special available. monday was potato leaves, tuesday cassava, wednesday palava sauce, thursday jolof rice, friday collard greens, etc. so palava sauce and rice it was, and it was good. much better than royal hotel, i think, and much more human. later, my dad and i had a really wonderful and stimulating conversation on the benevolent prejudices which often plague missionary or charity works, whether overseas or in your own neighborhood. it poses an interesting challenge.

so it is another rainy day in monrovia. i don’t think that i will get to know and love monrovia nearly as well as i have already with freetown, but i am very happy to be here, to see the extended family of mercy shippers that i have missed so much, and to reconnect a bit with the past. my prayer today is with everyone involved with the anastasis’ final voyage. it’s not an easy task to be the bearers of so much scrutiny as everyone is really deeply invested in that beautiful ship. it’s never easy saying goodbye...

another day on the ward...

2007-06-21T09:27:00.000-07:00

i can't believe that this week is already nearly over. it has gone so quickly, but at the same time, the days have been so long. i've spent the most part of the week sorting out everything for my study.

monday started off with a bang. i spent the morning structuring the questions and doing research online. then suddenly i heard that there were two women waiting to be screened who had been here before. i dashed off to talk with them, and i had my first two interviews done.

tuesday was also spent in research and helping helen with the vocational training. mostly helping the girls who have had some education to read and write a bit more. then two more previous patients were there, and i had four women in the study.

yesterday, i spent the most part of the day helping with the vocational training. we were doing embroidery, little fish and flower designs on some plain cotton fabric. the girls loved it. it was also gladi-gladi day, and it was a small, intimate group of five as opposed to the eleven or so last week. it was really special, and i got some really good photos - but i haven't been able to get them online yet. still working on that...

and today. what did i do today? in the morning, i sat for a while in the ward and chatted with several of the patients. one girl asked about my hair - she couldn't sort out how i had gotten my hair this way. she puts special creams on it, one of the staff told her. ahhh..., the patient replied. every day i feel more at home in the wards. the patients stay here for an average of one month - what with waiting for surgery and the post-op care, the women stay long enough to build a relationship, which is really wonderful.

then i spent the other bit of the morning cataloguing OR meds and reading with two of our more literate patients. After reading a page, i had to explain to them in broken Krio (or really, really bad english) what they had just read. it was pretty hilarious, i must say. :)

then it was time for chop - pumpkin. i asked if they had pumpkin all the time, because we only have at home in the fall, and the cook said just in the rainy season. it's actually a really good way to eat pumpkin. i'll have to see if i can sort out the recipe from one of the cooks so that i can make it back at school. it's funny, when i say 'school' here, everyone thinks secondary school, so i have to extra sure to say 'university.' :)

my apologies that this isn't more thrilling. it was just another day on the ward...

weekdays and wheelchairs...

2007-06-19T12:19:00.000-07:00

It’s been a few days since I’ve written. The power has been up and down, and, honestly, there hasn’t been heaps about which to write. Not that a lot hasn’t gone on, but it’s funny how quickly life, no matter how extraordinary, becomes routine, and you never think to write about the routine.

My research study is well underway. I started on Monday, pulling things together and doing some research online, mostly from the WHO database. Then late Monday afternoon, I was told that two of the women waiting to see the doctors after the surgical day was done were returning for follow up after having gone home. Absolutely perfect! Then there were two more again today, plus one woman already on the ward. I’m so happy for the ease with which it has all begun, but I have to say I’m a bit wary about how long it will be able to go before I’ve exhausted the realm of my reach.

Today was really a day for realizing things taken for granted.

I’ve never felt more the frustration of being a single, young, white girl. I was talking about it today with Stefani, an OT from Tyler, and it’s so true. Where you can go and what you can do is delicately contained within the balance of daylight and company. At home or at school, there are always the dodgy places which are best to avoid if you’re out and about alone, but the limitation is only a thin line just below your field of view. Occasionally you see it, but for the most part it’s out of sight and out of mind. Here, though, it’s rather difficult to just blend into a crowd. People watch you, even if you are just walking down the street. Growing up in Central America, it was the same, but then I was a young girl, I never had any inclination to go out and about on my own, and I thought it was all rather funny. Now, a bit older, I realize a bit more of reality, perhaps.

The other thing I have taken for granted is my education. Today, I worked for a bit with some of the literate girls, reading a children’s book and checking for comprehension. There were about five of us gathered about. After the story was done, everyone dispersed except for one, Jinneh – the one that captured my heart last week.

She was sitting, staring at the ground, and I could tell that something was wrong. Thinking of her recent surgery, I asked her if she was in pain. No, she said. After a few moments of silence, she turned her face toward mine and asked me if I go to school. Yes, I said, I go to university in the United States to become a nurse. When do you leave, she asked. Middle of August, I replied. Oh, she said. Silence. Do you have a camera, she suddenly asked. Yes, I answered. Can you take a picture of us for me to have so that I can remember you when you have gone? was her request. I ran to the office where my bag and camera were waiting, and returned to “snap” her. Then we got Helen to “snap” us together. We sat together for a long time, in our sisterly embrace. She’s my age, after all. Then, in a small, small voice she said, “I would like to go back to school. More than anything else.” She left shortly after that. I went to the bathroom and cried.

Another of the girls, Seray, told me her story. She lost her father, probably during the war, and her mother had to care for all of the other children in her family, and could no longer pay her school fees. So she married a man who promised to pay. Then she became pregnant. Now she has a fistula, no husband, and definitely no money for school. How much is school? 35,000 Leones. At the current exchange rate, that adds up to a little under $12.

So Tuesday was a hard day, another one to add to the pile. But the hardest thing is, that when I look into their eyes, I see only my own face ridden with guilt. I am going home on 10 August. I can leave.

One time, as a kid, we visited a hands-on science museum. One of the exhibits was on wheelchairs, and you could get in one and had to try your way around an obstacle course of household things – chairs, tables, books on the floor. It was really fun, and I told my teacher that I really liked being in a wheelchair, and I wished I had another go. Yes, she said, you like it because you can get out when you are done...

from orphanage to market...

2007-06-16T11:55:00.000-07:00

Weekends. Always a lovely break from the week, and in Sierra Leone, it’s no different. Sleeping in an extra hour, eating breakfast in your pajamas, having plenty of time to wait for the water to heat in the boiler. Little luxuries which make the weekend such a wonderful time.

I didn’t post a blog yesterday because, comparatively to the earlier week, very little happened. I went with Helen to an orphanage run by a Canadian couple out in Regent. We left a little later in the morning, took a taxi to the main bit of Regent and then hiked for a good half hour up to the top of one of the nearby hills. About fifteen or twenty orphans live in the compound set up by this couple after the war. They are there for various reasons, into which I didn’t really pry.

In any case, we arrived there only to find that no one knew of our coming and the proprietress had gone away for the day (which we were expecting) and she had taken the key to the school room with her (which we were not expecting). So we made do for the morning, practicing some basic math and reading from some of the books collected in the house. I worked mostly with two younger girls, Kathy and Kadiatu. Probably kindergarten or first-grade reading and math level. It kind of reminded me of when I student taught the first-grade kids (Emily, Will Donner, Tim Clark, and Miranda) on board the CBM. :)

We had a fun time, but then the kids all went off to do their chores, and Helen determined that it would be next to impossible to get them all back together again with any kind of focus for work. So we left there a little earlier than normal. Helen had contacted the vocational educator at another VVF centre, but she wasn’t available to meet up, so we headed back to the team house. We couldn’t get transport in Regent, so we walked to IMATT, an international co-operative training center for the Sierra Leonean military. It was a good walk, probably another half-hour or so. Then we found a taxi there that would take us to Mamba Roundabout, a ten minute walk from the house. A lot of walking, but it was really nice to get out and about and see some more of the country.

I was really exhausted, and crashed around four, after attempting to read and stay awake. I woke up a short time later, but never really got my energy back. The sun and heat had drained it all away! :)

Today, I enjoyed a leisurely morning and was sitting out in the verandah when an old colleague of Annekoos and Bastiaan came to visit with his four year old daughter, Esther. It was really nice to sit and talk with them. It was really enlightening to hear his opinions on George Bush, Tony Blair, Salone (Sierra Leonean) politics, superstitions, etc. He explained that he loves Tony Blair because he is crafty, and has so much power in his speaking. He told me he hates George Bush because of his pride and how he has stumbled into the Middle East, leaving a “scar,” as he put it. He says that the next president should do everything possible to bring reconciliation. I couldn’t agree more.

I just got back from downtown. I went with Anne, Bas, and Sandra to the fabric street. I bought some really lovely print and batik for a skirt and a shirt-dress. I think the tailor is coming later this week, and I can give it to him.

It was really great to walk around the market. So much life and color concentrated in one place. The markets in Central America were similar, but this was much bigger, and the wares much more diverse. I don’t remember ever seeing pig’s feet in Guatemala! :) It was really fun, though. And it was great to get out of the house for a little while. The other three have been here for so long, and are really knowledgeable about how everything works. It’s so great to have them as a resource, and I’m ruing the day when they will be gone. But until then, I’ll try to learn as much as possible, and if I make some mistakes a long the way, then that is also a way to learn…

I wish that all of you could be here with me, or that I at least could connect your mind and your senses to mine. Sierra Leone is a full sensory of experiences. I haven’t taken many pictures as of yet, because I find them so inadequate to convey every part of that moment. What picture, for example, can tell you about the sounds outside the window which have become so common place – the birds, the wind in the trees, the children’s voices, the clinking of rocks being broken down, the distant techno music, laughter, crying, all at once. How can you know the smell of Sierra Leone? The sort of campfire smell mixed with earth and, oftentimes, rain. I don’t want to lose these moments, because I know that they will all pass by fast, fast. But, I suppose, the nooks and crannies of memory will have to suffice. Man has not learned how to capitalize on that God-given system…

plenty pikin and apple pie...

2007-06-14T14:16:00.000-07:00

We opened the door to the house and were instantly greeted with the smell of apple pie. A little out of place in this African setting, but welcome, all the same. It was a nice gift at the end of a long day, to be sure.

Today I had the special treat of sitting in with Sandra and Annekoos in the Outpatient Pediatric Clinic which shares a property with the Fistula Centre. It was really, really great for me to get a taste for what a clinic such as that takes to run on a daily basis, and what the work is like, especially since it’s part of my heart to work in such a clinic focusing on maternal-fetal care and well-baby care. I saw lots of babies, lots of young children, and there were a lot of tears. :) But I think that I would cry, too, if I felt crummy and had no other way to express it.

I don’t even remember all of the kids that I saw, but there were a few cases which stood out from among the rest.

One was a three day old baby with a clef lip. Upon giving birth, the mother, one of five wives, was instantly ridiculed and derided by the other women. She packed everything up, I suppose, and headed off almost immediately because she was in Freetown today. She had come to visit her sister, but upon arrival, she found her sister’s house empty. Her sister had gone to Kambia – another town up country, close to Guinea. So she had stayed the night with the neighbor and had come today after someone at another clinic told her about Mercy Ships. The Africa Mercy will be in Sierra Leone in February, and I’m hoping that she will get a surgical spot. Sandra added her to the list of patients she is referring, so we’ll just have to wait and see. It was so sad to see the mother so crushed by the ignorance of the other wives. I can’t even begin to imagine the weight that she has carried since delivery, all the way coming here, believing her child to be completely abnormal, not understanding how this could happen or what it means, blaming herself for doing something wrong during the pregnancy or during delivery…I think that when she left, a lot of that had gone. A beautiful transformation.

The other was a young boy. Really sweet, quiet, and very intelligent-looking, he had come in for various complaints of unknown origin. He came with his father, whose love and deep concern for his son was written all over his features. It wasn’t very long before the father told us that the boy had lost his mother about ten months ago. And suddenly, the pain was there, the uncertainty of suddenly being a single parent with two children, having to do things you’ve never had to do before. And now one is sick, and you’ve never had to sort out the medicines. And you look at the boy, and you wonder how many times he has cried himself to sleep at night.

Here, now, in my room again, I am surrounded by the exuberant sounds of the community around me. I hear the children calling to one another, a mom calling for her son, and men talking business across the road. The clouds roll in to bring more rain, and the room grows dark, only illuminated by my computer screen. My life is so incredibly far from that of the mothers and fathers and children that I saw come through the clinic today. But for a moment, here and there, I understood, and I shared a bit of their life…