Okay, so I lied. So I'm still able to be reduced to a state of babbling idiocy at the sight of chubby chocolate cheeks. So the hormones are still firing up occasionally.
So sue me, already.
Friday, June 5, 2009
"We Are Not Tourists" - IDP POV
Like I said in the previous posting, today was the first time I was really struck hard by the contrast between the vast, verdant beauty of the area around the Maai Mahiu Internally Displaced Persons camps, and the destitute lives people are living there. This part of the Great Rift Valley is lush and green, ringed by the kind of awe-inspiring mountain ranges I see when I travel through the American Northwest. In fact, the area reminds me a lot of the landscape around Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
But there are no rustically charming vacation homes here, or trendy cowboy bars, or golf courses or nouveau cuisine restauraunts with moose heads mounted on the walls. And I wonder about the thousands of displaced Kenyans living in squalor and degradation in white UNHCR tents. They're still waiting for the government to help them relocate, after languishing in tents a year and a half after post-election violence. Can they see the beauty from their point of view, from behind the tent flaps?
Check out more photos from my Facebook Album, "We Are Not Tourists" - IDP POV at :
Lunch Drill
I went back to PCEA Muniu Primary this morning, to check up on how things are going for the kids. Watching one of the teachers line them up for lunch was really heartening. It felt so good to know that they're heading over to a full portion, rather than half a plate. I'm told that before the generous infusion of cash from Project Archangel Julie's "Initial Angels," school administrators were starting to ration the meals. The children were getting half, or even a third of what they would normally get, to try and make the rice and maize and beans last.
Today I brought the second installment of PAJ funds. All told, Friends of PAJ have contributed $1,000! I've mentioned the tremendous generosity of Ron, and Deb and Glenda and Joan, and now I must add a few new names to the roster:
*Jenifer and Joyce are two young women I met about 15 years ago at the Detroit Free Press. They were great mentees and pals then, as a high school and college intern respectively. Now they're both great moms, both have a boy and a girl (Joyce's kids are my godson Ty and his sister Talia; Jenifer is mom to Jake and Molly), and both wanted to help support kids thousands of miles away.
*Dorothy grew up with my sister Julie back in Cairo. She was actually one of Julie's first and only friends back then, because they were both raised by Jehovah's Witnesses and had to depend on each other! Dorothy's support and concern for me during Julie's passing touched my heart, and her generous donation made Julie smile, I'm positive.
Well, you'll all be delighted to hear that PAJ funds will make sure there are school lunches until the end of this school term in August! What a wonderful thing you've all done. Thank you.
The other evocative thing about today was that this view of the school and the surrounding area really plugged me directly into the tremendous beauty of the Great Rift Valley, and the ironic juxtaposition of struggle and visual splendor it contains. I'll write about it in the next posting.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Jammed Up and Jelly Tight
This is how I spend most of my life in Kenya. Stuck in traffic. Or, as I put it during those numerous occasions when I'm already late and some Minister of Parliament's entourage has blocked the roadway again,"F---ed in traffic."
This morning, it took 45 minutes to get from a meeting at the Panafric Hotel to Nation Centre. On the rare occasions when there's little or no traffic, the same trip would take 10 minutes, max. On Public Holidays, or most Sunday mornings before about 10 AM, road travel in Nairobi is a breeze.
And speaking of which, it's supposed to be early Winter over here, but you can't tell it from sitting in the back of a taxi. Ain't no breeze. It's always hot and stuffy, so you roll down your window hoping for a few quick blasts of moving air. Five minutes later you're gagging on diesel fumes. Or some hawker shoves a cheap geegaw up under your nose, and that totally skeeves you out, so you roll the window back up. And you sit. And you wait.
Fortunately, since acquiring my BlackBerry Bold 9000, I can at least feel like I'm getting something accomplished while I'm sitting there. Like taking the picture up top. (DAMN, I wish I could have gotten a picture of the rampaging cow that snarled traffic on Waiyaki Way yesterday morning!! But I was in the middle of a call at the time, and just didn't think it would be professional to ask that contact if I could call her back later, so I could photograph the Hoofin' Heifer outside my window.)
I get a lot of emailing done while I'm sitting in Nairobi taxis. I send a lot of text messages. There's time to think about appointments I've made and why I forgot to put them on the phone calendar. There's time to Google information I need, or catch the latest AP and CNN headlines.
But there's also time to notice that, for some reason, no matter where you are on Nairobi roadways, there always seems to be a large fuel tanker nearby, just ripe for wide-scale immolation if nicked by an impatient matatu or a clueless Toyota driver. So I guess the bottom line is that riding in Nairobi traffic never fails to "spark" my imagination.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
"PLEASE, Rachel, Don't Hurt 'Em"
I really like the girl who re-locks my locks over here. Aida is as sweet as sweet can be, and always tries accomodate my often last-minute pleas for appointments.
But the next time she peeks under my dryer hood just as my eyes start rolling back in my skull, my flesh starts to bubble and I damn near faint and chirps, "Rachel, is it hot?" I am gonna punch her right smack in her cake hole.
And then, while she was trimming my locks this evening, Aida had the nerve to mention, "Rachel, the gray hairs are many. You need color on your roots." I fantasized about following that punch with a vicious head butt. I mean, a few months back, Aida is the one who left the first batch of toxic brew on my head so long, I came out with a depthless color best described as "Elvis, Circa 1967 Blue Hawaii Concert." That coal black helmet just didn't work for the lighter, more peppy attitude I'd been rocking since I first got highlights in September of 2006, so I eventually went back to my previous salon. That's where some goofy young new guy left peroxide on my gnarly tresses so long, I looked like Billy Freakin' Idol for about 45 minutes before the salon owner came over and calmed the straight up Ghetto Girl winds that had started to blow.
(In short, somebody was gon' DIE up in that spot unless they got me straight, I promise you.)
Truth be told, my hair hasn't been the same ever since those back-to-back color calamities. I tried to get the tone adjusted when I was back in the States, but my groovy DC stylist, Gary, refused to touch it. "That color is fierce," he hissed, even when I begged for a little more juice to ramp it down a notch or so. In fact, when he touched up my roots, Gary took it one color lighter. So now, I don't know what do do with my poor noggin. A part of me just wants to let it alone, but I also don't want to walk around looking crazy with half caramel colored highlights and half ashy gray roots.
I should just shave the shit off, right? After all, I've been embracing India Arie lyrics lately, right?
"I am not my hair/I am not this skin/I am not your expectations, no...I am not my hair/I am not this skin/I am the soul that lives within..."
Well, after an evening with Aida, thet soul that lives within ain't tryin' to hear all that pacifist noise. The only thing musical I'm thinkin' bout is the title of an MC Hammer album. See the above blogpost title.
Grrrrrrr.
Bag Lady
So this morning, I'm walking home from the gym I just joined on Saturday, feeling as smug as if I'd just finished the Iron Man Triathlon, when all of a sudden this hella-hoofin' Kenyan "Mama" darts across the road and dang near knocks me down.
There I was feeling all "righteous and ripped" (after only about 40 minutes on the treadmill and a few reps of free weights, mind you) when this chick who looked old enough to be my mother and who was carrying a good 50 pounds on her back starts trying to racewalk a sister. I was fixin' to set it OFF on that stretch of Rhapta Road before managing to snap out of that temporary bout of road rage. She actually reminded me of all the Kenyan women I see on a daily basis working like pack mules caring for the homestead, the kids, the cooking...everything.
Those women are so damned strong. Physically and mentally, and many of them well into their 6th and 7th decades of life. Of course, I'm only assuming the woman in this picture was significantly older than me. Actually, she could very well be around my age, or maybe just a few years older. Access to facials, sunscreen, soy-based cleansing products and an occasionally healthy diet have graced me with a relatively youthful appearance--for an old bag.
I thought about that a lot while I was in Kisumu, talking to women younger than me who were grandmothers many times over. Decades of the kind of arduous toil I can only imagine had added an implacable thickness to their girth, and etched something like a mixture of abject resignation and stony resolve onto their leathery, sun-weathered faces.
Oh, and giving birth to 6, or 7, or 8, or more kids. And digging and scratching and clawing out a meager living every day, often while their husbands sit around in the marketplace, or at the local pub. And no, I'm not just being a feminist bitch by saying that. Sky high unemployment rates, coupled with a culture where women are expected to shoulder most of the burdens, results in the above-mentioned scenario, where women literally work like slaves while men don't. In fact, the husband of the woman in this picture was probably sitting somewhere under a shade tree, and she had probably been up and hauling heavy bags like these for 3 or 4 hours already.
There I was feeling all "righteous and ripped" (after only about 40 minutes on the treadmill and a few reps of free weights, mind you) when this chick who looked old enough to be my mother and who was carrying a good 50 pounds on her back starts trying to racewalk a sister. I was fixin' to set it OFF on that stretch of Rhapta Road before managing to snap out of that temporary bout of road rage. She actually reminded me of all the Kenyan women I see on a daily basis working like pack mules caring for the homestead, the kids, the cooking...everything.
Those women are so damned strong. Physically and mentally, and many of them well into their 6th and 7th decades of life. Of course, I'm only assuming the woman in this picture was significantly older than me. Actually, she could very well be around my age, or maybe just a few years older. Access to facials, sunscreen, soy-based cleansing products and an occasionally healthy diet have graced me with a relatively youthful appearance--for an old bag.
I thought about that a lot while I was in Kisumu, talking to women younger than me who were grandmothers many times over. Decades of the kind of arduous toil I can only imagine had added an implacable thickness to their girth, and etched something like a mixture of abject resignation and stony resolve onto their leathery, sun-weathered faces.
Oh, and giving birth to 6, or 7, or 8, or more kids. And digging and scratching and clawing out a meager living every day, often while their husbands sit around in the marketplace, or at the local pub. And no, I'm not just being a feminist bitch by saying that. Sky high unemployment rates, coupled with a culture where women are expected to shoulder most of the burdens, results in the above-mentioned scenario, where women literally work like slaves while men don't. In fact, the husband of the woman in this picture was probably sitting somewhere under a shade tree, and she had probably been up and hauling heavy bags like these for 3 or 4 hours already.
But this post is not so much about the seemingly unequal division of manual labor between Kenyan men and women as it is about me, and my own off-and-on quest for physical fitness and strength. I really wish I could claim a consistent commitment to it, but the truth is I'm most likely driven to the gym when I can't fit into most of my clothes. And that's got to stop. Not so much because I want to be working like a pack mule when I'm 70 years old, but because if I had to, I could.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Deconstructing Susan
You know, I'm tempted to just make a brief, sheepish reference to my earlier blogpost about Susan Boyle by saying,
"Never mind!"
So much for my projecting a canny level of seasoned self-awareness and innate confidence onto that poor woman. Apparently, The Talented Ms. Boyle was the quintessential deer in the headlights, and all the worldwide scrutiny and pressure finally broke her down to a mass of quivering nerve endings.
I felt so sorry for her this morning, as every news report on every TV and radio station led with the story of her ingnominious journey to a psychiatric facility yesterday, following her second place finish in the "Britain's Got Talent" competition. I suspect that even more than the constant harassment by the press, the meddling-cum-support from her handlers, and the expected amount of Byzantine performance anxiety, what finally drove Susan Boyle over the edge was the fear that she had disappointed all the family, friends and fans in her hometown.
Put yourself in her shoes...or, the "hideously unfashionable footwear" mentioned in all the early stories about her. Susan Boyle rang in 2009 living in a modest flat with her cats, singing at the occasional pub but generally living a lonely, uneventful life. 6 months later, she's known worldwide, she's having microphones shoved under her nose and being blinded by camera flashes wherever she goes, and she's reading and hearing herself being described not only as divinely talented, but with other colorful descriptors like the "Hairy Angel." That's a level of scrutiny and critique that 95 percent of the population simply could not withstand, no matter how much money and fantasy makeovers were being offered.
Eventually, Susan Boyle will be just fine. I hope. Once she's pulled herself back together, she'll probably make goo-gobs of money from book, movie and record deals. But I hope Susan is able to move forward on her own terms. And I hope she's able to figure out what those terms are, because I get the sneaking suspicion that as much as the Simon Cowells of the world wave their magic wand and make dreams come true for undiscovered talent, they will still get seriously paid whether a Susan Boyle wins a Grammy or fades to black as the most talented, "Village Crazy Cat Lady" in history.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
