To Serve Rachella

It is about a quarter til New Year's Day, 2010, and I am happier than I've been in a very long time.

I'm at my BFF Marcy's apartment in Brooklyn, and we've both crashed after a great meal at a great neighborhood Thai restaurant with her friend Janet and two hyperactive, adorable daschunds, and now I'm sacked out on Marcy's couch watching the Twilight Zone marathon on the SyFy Channel. The "To Serve Man" episode, to be specific.

This is what I miss in Nairobi. Not the feeling of being in the Twilight Zone, but the comfort and love and support of dear friends. Of being heard and understood and validated. Of peace.

So I'm soaking it up over the next week. And I'm remembering that real friendship never fades. And that I'll be watching the Twilight Zone New Year's Eve Marathon whenever I can for the rest of my life, whether it's by myself or curled up in some man's arms. God willing, next year this time, it'll be the latter.

That would be MY recipe for a happy, healthy New Year.

2009, in Black and White

At the moment, I'm sitting in an overstuffed armchair at my friend Kelly's apartment on Central Park West, and I'm completely engrossed in an Alfred Hitchcock Movie Marathon on Turner Classic Movies. After about 4 days of running around New York City trying to see as many friends as possible, and consume as many of the flavors of America as possible, last night jet lag hit me between the eyes like a 2-by-4. I could barely move this morning.

It's been a wonderful, wonderful trip so far. Except for that whole "close brush with terrorism on Christmas Day" episode. And my Zanzi-buddy Ron flew in from Chicago last Monday, so we've had some time to hang out and get caught up, too. I've spent literal hours on the phone, on email and Facebook getting caught up with folks, too. There's never enough time to do everything during an international furlough, but I really tried until I got gobsmacked last evening.

In fact, near the end of the first act of my third performance of "In The Heights," the Broadway musical starring my hometown buddy Chris Jackson, I almost started snoring. Literally. But at a critical point in the action, all the lights went out, after a big "popping" noise that sounded like a transformer had blown. Most of the people in the theater were startled, but I just shrugged. Actually, I'd forgotten that the first act ends with a big electrical blackout in the Washington Heights neighborhood the musical is set in. While the rest of the audience experienced a few seconds' panic, I just thought I had somehow wound up back in Nairobi.

And then I awoke this morning to a blizzard. Well, not quite a blizzard, but it was definitely snowing, hard. Now I grew up in the Midwest, and it's only been about a couple of years since actually saw snow falling in person, but I have to say, that was one scary scene. I even had to beg off on a couple of "dates" I'd had planned with friends, using the convenient jetlag excuse. But there wasn't no way in HELL I was gonna leave that warm, cozy apartment to stumble around in an Arctic Nightmare.

So I've been chillin' like a stone cold villain all day so far, mostly in this overstuffed armchair, staring at this computer screen and thinking about life, the past year, and what's on deck for 2010. Ron and I just had a long chat about the way forward, especially in our personal lives. The bottom line is we'll have to make room for love and light, and banish fear and uncertainty, if we want to attract positive energy and lasting companionship. I think we're both very ready for that.

And of course now I'm watching "Psycho" on New Year's Eve, after catching "Shadow of a Doubt." Two Black and White classics that I could watch a hundred more times and still not tire of. All my life, there's always been something strangely comforting, even restorative about watching black and white movies. Even ones where psychotic, sexually confused young men stalk and fatally slash hapless young embezzling co-dependent hussies. And I'm recharging my own battery, to forestall a personal power outage. There's still way too much to do over the next week of my time in my homeland.

"Scenes of Wretched Excess: Take 4"

.....Speaking of which, here's one more thing I've been absolutely obsessed by this past week...electricity. Again, it's just something you take for granted in America that around Christmas time, everybody goes completely batshit loopy about flashing lights and ornaments and electric trains and non-stop holiday movie viewing on new 52 inch flat-screen TVs and such.

Cities light up, and neighbors compete for best outside decoration prizes. Department stores like Macy's cover every available surface with big-assed lighted displays that startle, stun, and hypnotize you into having a merry-fucking-Christmas, dammit, and leave your wallet at the door to help us pay for all this high-wattage holiday spirit.

Again, after the past 3 years in Uganda and Kenya, with their rolling blackouts and rationing, I just don't take electricity for granted any more. I just don't believe that it will always be readily available. I've lost that automatic expectation that all I need to do is flip a switch, and there'll be light.

Maybe that'll be a good thing for when I come back home for good. Maybe I'll take fewer things for granted.

Or not. After all, I AM Princess Rachella.

"Scenes of Wretched Excess: Take 3"

This picture really doesn't do the Macy's Mob Scene justice. It's just that this was the first time I was able to break free from the throng and actually reach into my pocket for the camera without having somebody jostle me from behind or bark at me for slowing down.

I swear to God, all I went in there for was a pair of warm socks. Sure, I peeked at the 75 percent off racks, too, but for the first time in a long time, I was actually repulsed by the act of shopping. I mean, there were more goo gobs of people in there than on the streets of Nairobi at high noon, and you can't imagine how many people there are on the streets of Nairobi at high noon. I'm telling you, you just don't even want to think about it, because a lot of them are, like, missing limbs or thrusting their mewling infants at you whilst begging for money, or ready to jack you at the first available opportunity.....

But I digress. I took this picture because it struck me that all the stuff I've been reading online about America's economic challenges seemed to be a flat out lie, based on the sea of humanity in Macy's. Kinda makes you wonder what to believe......

"Scenes of Wretched Excess: Take 2"

This is a shopping cart at the Gigantoriffic Bed Bath and Beyond near the Gargantuan Apple Story near 64th and Broadway. I usually enjoy browsing at Bed, Bath and Beyond, because you always come up with ideas for stuff that would make your life more organized and civil, if you are willing to sink a small fortune.

That has to be the biggest B, B and B I've ever seen in my life, with more doo-dads, travel-sized items, health and beauty products, linens and things, and all and sundry other junk than you and 1,000 other people could use in a decade. It was big as a small East African village.

More than all the stuff, one thing that left me agog was this escalator thing-y type contraption for shopping carts. I'm probably so far behind the rest of civilization that this thing may be standard issue these days. But I actually stood there for a couple of minutes wondering what the hell it was. It runs parallel to the regular escalator, but I couldn't decide if it was for wheelchairs, or for loading delivery boxes or what.

Then I saw this young woman nose her cart into the entry of this contraption, and some little gizmos attached to the front wheel, and then the whole thing glided along beside her as she moved to the upper level. I'm sorry, but the whole process was vastly more entertaining than most of the content of Kenyan television! Leave it to Americans to keep finding ways to make spending more money than you earn a much less physically challenging experience...

That is, unless you are fool enough to enter a major department store like Macy's during the after Christmas period, which is where the next Scene of Wretched Excess occurred....

"Scenes of Wretched Excess: Take 1"

The past few days in New York have amounted to insane sensory overload, to say the least. When you've spent most of the past 3 years living in developing countries, and then your re-entry is into cities like New York and DC, you can't help noticing just how much of everything there is.

And the weirdest thing is, stuff you used to take for granted starts to look really excessive and over the top bourgeois. I'm labeling the next few quick posts "Scenes of Wretched Excess" not because I really think that about them, but because when you've experienced so much lack, and deprivation, and desperate need for basic stuff, you begin to wonder if a 10 year old kid really needs to spend a morning at the gargantuan Apple Store on Broadway and 64th Street learning how to use his new Garage Band software??

This is the scene I witnessed the other day. I'd been pondering trying to increase the memory on my Macbook, but after peeking into the massive cavern that was only the entrance lobby before the huge store one floor down, I almost faltered. Still, I steeled my nerves and headed down the escalator, where about 7 bajillion people were wandering the aisles or peering at sleek laptops placed conveniently on every available surface.

The two boys in this picture were having the time of their life playing around with their music software, but I couldn't help thinking that their laptops at home were probably top of the line, and loaded with way more memory than my basic starter unit. And once this lesson was over, their parents probably let them pick up a few more goodies on their way out of the store. Meanwhile, I got so overwhelmed by the vast range of electronic and technological doo-hickeys that I eventually just asked someone for the 1800 My APPLE number and fled.

To the nearby Bed, Bath and Beyond store, locale of the next Scene of Wretched Excess....

Hunger is a Relative Term

Pardon the blurriness of this picture. But I can't stop thinking about it. It's the first one I took once the plane touched down at JFK, from the TV monitor near baggage claim. I almost dismissed it as just more CNN background noise until I looked up and saw the backpacks.

In case you can't read the blurry lettering, it says "Hungry Kids." It reminded me of a story I had pitched, but didn't get to do, for NPR a few years ago. In fact, it may have been about one of the very first programa in the country that sent poor children home with backpacks full of canned goods and other simple foodstuffs over the weekend. I pre-interviewed one of the teachers who started the program, and she said it began after she was working in her classroom one weekend and some of her students came to her window and asked if she had anything to eat. She gave them some peanut butter and crackers, and that was her "lightbulb moment."

This was why some kids were extra lethargic and hard to teach on Monday mornings. They hadn't had much to eat over the weekend. The teacher figured if they could go home with a bit of extra food to help tide them and their families over, it might improve learning and performance.

I thought it was a great idea, which is why I pitched it to editors. And I also thought it spoke volumes about the things we Americans take for granted. I think that's part of why my editor didn't greenlight the story. He probably thought it was just a small pilot project, and surely not a big enough problem to warrant a national feature story.

Well, that was before the Fall of 2008, and the Global Economic Crisis. Clearly, my timing was off, because it seems that all across America, food banks are running out food, soup kitchens are reporting triple the clients, and for poor kids, hunger is a growing problem.

In America.

That's why CNN was doing the backpacks story. It was quite a wake-up call for me, arriving in the Land of Plenty after a year and a half in a poor Third World country. There's actual famine in Kenya now, thanks to a major drought, and theft of emergency grain reserves, and overwhelming levels of intense poverty. I see hungry, desperately poor women and children in the streets of Nairobi every day. You get to the point where you simply accept it as part of the scenery. If you tried to help every one of them, you'd find yourself in a financial bind.

But the CNN story reminded me of the energetic discussion at Cousin George and Cousin Carole's Christmas Eve supper, right before I headed to the airport. One of the other guests, an African American professor at a Nairobi University, was arguing that the obscene political corruption in Kenya was threatening the country's future development. When Education officials steal so much money, it means Free Education for kids will be suspended, that has a direct, negative impact on the country's future.

Cousin Carole's argument was that corruption in Kenya was no worse than the policies in the US that lead to layoffs, lousy educational systems, high unemployment and other ills faced in American society. She said it's even worse, because on the surface, America has so much. Yet when millions of American kids either drop out or leave high school having no skills and barely able to read, that's corruption. It was an intriguing take on a topic I've focused on for years--Poverty in America.

You see, I've spent a lot of time feeling inundated and overwhelmed by just how much lack and need and desperation there is in Kenya. So it was quite a wake up call to touch down in America and be reminded that there are many people struggling here. Is it any better or worse to be poor and hungry in America? Should we be just as disturbed about an American kid tapping on his teacher's window and begging for food as we are about the child in a Northern Kenya village who's malnourished and suffering?

I don't know. I guess hunger is a relative term.