Off Stage Left

What happened to April?

2011-05-03T15:52:00.003-05:00

Wish I could end the blog posting drought with an onslaught of amusing and insightful posts and stunning photos. Instead, all you get is a quick recap.

On this day in the future:

June 3, 2011- I will return to Chicago!!! With a thesis to write.

May 24, 2011- I will fake 'graduate' from the University for Peace with an MA in Peace Education. Fake because my thesis won't be done yet.

May 21 & 23rd- I will have visitors! My brother John and his wife will be coming for graduation and Chicago friend Lauren Hirte will be here too.

On this day in history:

May 3, 2011- Lookingglass Theatre Company wins the Regional Tony Award!!! I'm so thrilled for the Company and really, really wish I could be in Chicago to celebrate with everyone tonight. And a sense of perspective is fine and all but today would be a good day to be surrounded by who know what a Regional Tony Award is and how exciting it is for us. It's like telling a joke, if you have to explain it too much, its just not the same.

April 30, 2011- The UPEACE women's football team wins 2nd place in the UN sponsored Central American tournament in Honduras! I was not there.

Also, the corpse of the very large dead spider (that might have been a tarantula) in our front hall is finally finished being dismantled by the ants after several days of hard work.

April 21-24- The Romans marched through Orosi. A lot. My friends Laxmi and Rich came to visit during Semana Santa (aka Holy Week, aka Easter) and we went to the lovely little town of Orosi where we got to experience traditional Semana Santa festivities. These include: all the stores and restaurants being closed on Thursday & Friday (except the supermarket run by the Chinese family); 3-5 processions per day; "fireworks" that are all big sound, no actual fire; & crosses on every lawn draped in purple. The processions basically re-enact the major events in Jesus' final days. They deserve a post all their own and will get one, someday. The short version is that 1/2 the town dresses up like Roman soldiers and escort a (statue? mannequin? giant figurine? don't know what to call it) of Jesus surrounded by men dressed as the disciples (with handy name tags- Pedro, Mateo, Simon- seriously name tags like they'd just walked out of a disciples mixer), while the other 1/2 of the town watches. The Romans and Jesus change outfits with each procession. The Romans also play drums and march very, very slowly. Until, that is, the He is Risen! procession. That one, which begins at 4:30AM Sunday morning, is very fast, full of shouting and dancing and includes a band in a truck and a LOT of fireworks. I'll post pictures as soon as Laxmi and Rich send me some.

April 23, 2011- I ride a mountain bike for the first time! On this day I also realize how very, very out of shape I am after 9 months of sitting in hammocks reading. Laxmi and Rich (tri-athlete, century riders) are very patient every time I have to give up on an incline and walk. I exhibit great wisdom in choosing not to have a heart attack.

April 11, 2011- We celebrate Juan Santamaría Day by not having class and not burning any gringos. Someday I'll explain that too.

April 13-20- I work on my thesis and my resumé. The end of days (in Costa Rica) is coming.

April 8, 2011- Peace Ed takes a field trip! We see cows and a house that gets its cooking gas from biodigesting cow manure.

This is what Peace Education looks like

2011-03-27T22:24:00.004-05:00

This is us getting ready to have our final group photo taken before ALP students leave. Diana is missing because she's setting the timer on the camera for the REAL photo. Haru, bottom right corner is manifesting our group sadness that our time together is coming to an end soon.
Someone took this picture during class. Our heads are heavy with knowledge. That's why we're propping them up. Not because we are exhausted from 3 weeks of class, plus final project. We're watching a group present a draft version of some of their guidelines and indicators for their project.

Goodbye ALP!

2011-03-27T22:17:00.002-05:00

This is Chisato, from Japan, one of the 3 ALP students in Peace Ed. She's flying back to Manilla tomorrow along with Haru (Canada/Japan). Myo (Burma) will join them next week. It's very strange to think of class w/o them. And it reminds us that we've got a lot more goodbyes coming up in just 2 short months. So not ready for that.

3 As hard at work

2011-03-27T22:08:00.003-05:00

This was my group for our Cultures and Learning final project. Myo (Burma) and Rosemary (Zambia). During the final week of the course we were meeting for 3 hours/day in addition to our 3 hour class and at least 3 hours of reading & writing. We named ourselves the 3 As because we are from Asia, Africa and (North) America.

Some things that have happened

2011-03-27T21:30:00.004-05:00

My group finished our giant final project for the class that ended Friday! A day ahead of the official due date, a day behind our self imposed due date. We wanted to have the full 4 day weekend but are settling for 3. Final page count for our complete Cultures and Learning toolkit- 105 pages.
We said goodbye to the students from ALP (Asian Leaders Program). They go back to Manilla for some Asia specific classes, then do an internship, then graduate in October. We're going to miss them very much! I will especially miss my roommate Por. The odds of coming home to the delicious smell of Thai food cooking are going to decrease significantly. The good news is she's in Media so she's staying 1 extra week til her current class finishes.
I read a lot.
The Peace Ed class put together a Brown Bag program for International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (March 21st). We did little scenes about discrimination and I played a racist realtor. We sang a South African protest song.
There was an earthquake in Japan. There are 7 or 8 (I think) students from Japan as part of ALP and we're all just heartbroken for what is happening in their country. Fortunately, all of their relatives are accounted for and alive, which seems miraculous. Midori, an amazing pianist and vocalist, is from Sendai, one of the coastal cities that basically got washed away by the tsunami. Having seen before and after pictures, I just can't imagine how devastating it must feel to think of your hometown being erased while you were away.
Libya is a mess and we talked about it in class.
I finished my re-revised thesis proposal! And it got approved!
I learned that outside of the US, no one knows who Glen Beck is. And I felt better.
I rode a bicycle! Two times! Borrowed from Michele, my landfamily's daughter. Hills. Yeah.
Noche Latina-a fantastic party thrown by our classmates from Latin America. So much dancing.
Africa Night- a fantastic party thrown by our classmates from Africa. Just so happened to fall on the day that Mubarak stepped down. Our Vice Rector, Amr, is from Egypt and was dressed head to toe in traditional garb, absolutely beaming.

Actually, thrown in a lot more "I read things" and "I wrote things" plus "I slept" and "I ate beans and rice" and that's pretty much everything that has happened.

International Women's Day

2011-03-08T13:46:00.003-06:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day. Inter-what for who? ask the Americans. Before going to work for Zonta Foundation (dedicated to the advancing the status of women everywhere) a few years ago, I had never heard of this day either. But now I come to find out that in other countries, particularly African countries, it's an actual 'things are closed, no school today' holiday!

At UPEACE we are celebrating the day by wearing red (men and women alike), women are wearing red flowers in their hair and there's an amazing display of art by women in the Atrium. Coincidentally, it's also LGBT Week here at UPEACE (the first one ever!) so there was a fascinating Brown Bag Lunch about the 'origins' of homosexuality. It was one of the most well attended Brown Bags I've seen and I was glad to see some students that I know are challenged by homosexuality in the audience. Some of our students come from countries where homosexuality is illegal and where, in some cases, the death penalty has been suggested as a punishment. In the Q&A session afterwards one student spoke at length about his perspective and his belief that homosexuality is something one is 'indoctrinated' into and not part of God's intent. Afterward I saw this student talking with the guest lecturer, who had identified himself as gay and had made a very cogent presentation about misperceptions and misinterpretations of, for example, the Biblical texts most often offered as proof of God's condemnation of homosexuality. The thing that struck me was that the two were laughing as they spoke and shook hands as they parted. Neither one had changed the other's mind but at the very least, they had a conversation and on the surface at least, were engaging with each other as human beings. I wish I were aware of more conversations like that happening in the US.

But back to International Women's Day. After my recent service with UN Women at UPMUNC, I'm more sensitive than usual to both the accomplishments of women around the world and the far distance we still have to travel towards equity and equality. And I mean in the US as well. For one of my recent classes we watched a documentary about how the media participated in the Bush administrations push for war in Iraq after 9/11. Every single one of the reporters that was interviewed was a white man. Every politician they showed- with the exception of Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell- was a white man. Every expert in the field of intelligence, terrorism, etc.- a white man. As far as we have come, its still possible to study a major US event in relation to 2 powerful institutions (government and media) and not even mention more than 2 women (Judith Miller got some coverage but declined to be interviewed). Sigh.

Happy International Women's Day everyone! Be inclusive! Hug a feminist!

UPMUNC Day 3: Return of Resolution!

2011-03-05T21:26:00.003-06:00

Dearest friends and family, it is a measure of my deep affection for all of you that I'm writing this post before I surrender to the oblivion of sleep. Being a delegate is exhausting!

UN Women was a hive of productivity today, passing 3(!) resolutions and issuing an official statement regarding the tragic, real events in Côte d'Ivoire when security forces fired on a large group of protesters, primarily women, killing 6 of them. The picture you see is of us working on our statement during an unmoderated caucus. Once it was finished I was selected by my peers to read it for the media. It was like a mini-press conference. I read the statement in front of our whole group plus a flock of journalists and 2 cameras and then answered questions for a few minutes. As a new UN body, in addition to responding to the string of incidents involving violence against women we felt it was important to put ourselves and our mission forward, making our mark as the sole UN body dedicated to gender issues. Then we got back to our other work.

We passed two resolutions re: mass rapes in Congo, one addressing immediate short term needs and the other addressing long term strategies. And in the final seconds of the day we passed a resolution re: property rights for women. Our first 3 resolutions were also approved by the Security Council but there wasn't time for them to be presented our final resolution. The day ended with a closing ceremony in which we heard from the Ambassador from the Netherlands, we all got participation certificates and I even got an award for Best Delegate of UN Women. I'm honored, of course, though I thought the delegate from Chile deserved it more. She's done a number of previous MUNs and was very well versed in the rules, procedures and language. We definitely couldn't have accomplished as much as we did without her.

Drinks and dancing, the standard way to close out any UPEACE event, finished up the evening. All the bands the UPMUNC Board got to play at our opening and closing receptions were really terrific- a great sampling of music from around the world with India, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean all represented. I wonder if the real UN ends their sessions with dancing. Maybe later I'll draft a resolution recommending it to them.

Photo taken by Joann Arawayan of the delegates from India, Chile, Haiti, Guatemala and France from left to right.

UPMUNC Day 2: Attack of the Media!

2011-03-04T19:12:00.002-06:00

Another hastily scrawled post after a hard day of negotiating.

Day 2 was nothing but committee work, all day long. Committee work constantly interrupted by breaking news from our simulated media. Not wanting to incite a War of the Worlds incident I'll say again, the following "news" is not real. When we arrived this morning we immediately received word that Libya had cluster bombed an opposition held area on its eastern border killing 300 civilians including 200 women. While our committee was drafting a resolution condemning this act and recommending the provision of humanitarian aid we received more updates. The Libyans crossed into Egyptian territory while pursuing fleeing opposition members and bombed an Egyptian highway; Egypt threatened retaliation; it turned out the initial bombing damaged an oil processing facility and oil was spilling into the Mediterranean Sea; 2 female Italian bloggers were kidnapped, apparently by soldiers from the Libyan government and videotape of their torture was released; the Security Council convened an emergency session; there was no end to the madness. With each incident we had to stop, decide whether or not UN Women needed or was empowered to respond, constantly distracting us from the topics at hand. While all of that was happening we were also receiving from journalists and bloggers- through UPMUNC's facebook page- stories and commentaries on what each UN body was and was not doing. The commentator from the Guardian was a particular thorn in everyone's side.

We managed to pass our first resolution- the one condemning Libya's actions- shortly after lunch and after some regrouping were able to get back to the topic of mass rapes in DRC. We decided to impose some structure on our consumption of information from the media, checking in every 1/2 hour. We also got better at issuing our own statements regarding our progress, ending each one with "and we continue monitoring the situation in Libya and Egypt" so that we couldn't be accused of ignoring developments. In the last 2 hours of the day we finally got to roll up our sleeves and dig into the particulars of what we could do to address the problem in both the short and the long term. At one point I had about 10 different windows open on my laptop, each with a different report, resolution or press release from the UN. You really get the sense that everything has been thought of, everything has been spelled out but only fractions have then been funded, implemented or acted upon. Today's 'shake your tiny fist at the absurdity of it all' moment was the realization that MONUSCO has already developed a comprehensive strategy for addressing gender based violence in DRC, which was approved by the government of the DRC in 2009, but 2 years later the strategy has received less than 20% of the $56 million it needs to be implemented.

And now the delegate from Haiti moves for an Unmoderated Caucus lasting 8 hours for the purpose of consulting with Haiti's pillow on important matters of state. Raising a Point of Personal Privilege, the delegate further requests that said consultation be conducted in a quiet room, as Haiti's pillow has a tendency to whisper and therefore be very difficult to hear. As a corollary and to increase the delegate's auditory faculty, Haiti also requests that the room be dark, the inhibition of the sense of sight being commonly held to improve the sense of hearing. The delegate from Haiti thanks the honorable chairs for their consideration and solemnly recommends the other delegates take this opportunity to consult with their pillows as well.

UPMUNC Day 1

2011-03-03T20:02:00.003-06:00

This is going to be a very hastily (and therefore not carefully) written entry offering highlights and observations of the first day of UPMUNC. That delightful acronym (pronounced up-monk) stands for University for Peace Model United Nations Conference and apparently it's a big deal in the world of MUNs (Model United Nations) because we are the UN mandated University for Peace and so our MUN is sponsored by a number of embassies here in Costa Rica and we get a personal message from the Secretary General. This is my first MUN and thus far the experience is both fascinating and bewildering.

I'm representing Haiti on the newly created UN Women's Commission and we've got mass rapes in DRC and property rights for women on our agenda. We had only a few days to give ourselves a crash course in our countries, the issues and our country's stance on the issues, in addition to finishing up our most recent course. Then we had one day to write a position paper synthesizing all of the above into our recommendation to our committee. Haiti, as you might imagine, is a depressing country to research, rife with conflict, corruption and some of the worst luck in the world with no resources or strategic position to balance the scales. We (for as a delegate I represent Haiti, not myself) are ourselves the subject of a UN peacekeeping mission and with a catastrophic increase in violence against women and girls since the earthquake last year we are also in a unique position to appreciate the situation in the DRC.

Procedure in committee is very formal- special language and phrasing abounds and pages and pages of parliamentary procedure must be adhered to. What's wonderful though is that in spite of all the strictures and structures corsetting discussions, we're all deeply invested in the process and in our roles as delegates. We continue strategizing through coffee breaks and lunch and even the after party, looking for ways to build consensus, advance our positions, sometimes by leaking stories to the press (yeah, we've even got a simulated press core with everything from television news anchors to citizen bloggers).

I've learned so much already about how the UN and UN peacekeeping missions work, including things I find tragic and shocking. For example, the UN has very little recourse when it comes to addressing violations committed by peacekeepers themselves. The nation contributing the troops conducts the investigation into charges against peacekeepers and they are under no obligation to even report their findings. Nations tend not to want to give up sovereignty over their own forces and if the UN were to insist on greater oversight, they fear no country would volunteer its troops. So a country to which peacekeepers have been posted knows, practically speaking, those peacekeepers are not accountable to them OR the UN.

Opening day wrapped up with a great reception and fantastic music from a kirtan band and a local Tica band. Dancing and hobnobbing with ambassadors ensued.

One last note: none of us was allowed to represent the country we're actually from, in order to maximize the learning. I was chatting with Francis at the after party- he's from Uganda and representing the US on the security council. He'd taken off his name/country badge because he was tired of being harassed by all and sundry. It's hard to be the US, he told me. Yeah, I said, when you're surrounded by people from countries you've interfered with, it hard to be from the US.

V-Pictures!

2011-02-22T14:58:00.003-06:00

I'm still camera-less so these all come courtesy friends who took pictures before, during & after the show. Dr. Myo took the cast photo and the one of me giving the post show wrap-up. Nate Tanes took the picture of Notes and Ayo & me to the right. I'm holding the most gorgeous and enormous bouquet of flowers I've ever gotten, a gift from Sarah Blakeslee, my fellow wife of Abraham (there are 4! of us at UPEACE).

V-Days

2011-02-22T14:38:00.002-06:00

For the past 6 years, UPEACE has been part of the annual V-Day experience, producing 2 performances of The Vagina Monologues, Eve Ensler's performance art, women's empowerment extravaganza. I directed this year's event and also performed the monologue "The Little Coochie Snorcher that Could" and I must say, it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I was overflowing with pride in our fantastic cast and gratitude for all the support we got from our fellow UPEACE students. I'm posting below my director's notes from the program:

The past month, working with our amazing cast of women has been an extraordinary experience for me, not just because I’ve been a privileged witness of unknown talents and unfettered courage but because of the many conversations we’ve all had, conversations that would have remained unspoken without the inspiration of The Vagina Monologues. Talking about vaginas and the taboos attached to talking about vaginas and the experiences that attach to having a vagina is a sensitive, difficult issue for many. There are social, cultural, generational and personal restraints at work. With this production, our aim is not to shock or upset, but to celebrate and challenge our relationships, men and women alike, with vaginas and the people who have them. We want to question our restraints and if it happens that we do shock or upset someone, we hope that can be the beginning of a conversation. For at its heart, The Vagina Monologues is not a series of monologues, but rather a chain of dialogues to which everyone in this room is linked. It’s a dialogue about gender and power and the construction of our identities, a dialogue we are always having, whether we know it or not, a dialogue we cannot escape, even in silence, because we speak with our silences too.

We look forward to sharing this evening with you and to hearing you speak with your laughter, your silence, and your engaged presence.

And here's a link to the V-Day website if you'd like more information: http://www.vday.org/home (ps. on the map, the little V in Costa Rica- that's us!)

Nile-Side View of Egypt

2011-02-01T19:36:00.002-06:00

I have been (and continue to be) ferociously busy with my current class- Curricular Design for Peace and Conflict Studies. I'm currently working on designing a course for high school seniors called Non-Violence: Practices and Processes. I love this class! (Both the one I'm taking and the one I'm making.) It has been an amazing experience bonding with all the GLP scholars from the Great Lakes region of Africa who design not one but 2 Masters levels courses as their final requirement for graduation. They will then go home and teach the classes they designed at their home universities. I don't have time to gush on and on about all the different reasons this is an incredible program. Really, I just hopped on the blog to say something about what's happening in Egypt.

Our Vice Rector, Amr Abdalla is Egyptian and it so happens he's in Egypt right now, having gone to visit family more than a week ago. We just got an email from him, which you can read online at The Peace and Conflict Monitor. He has a unique perspective to offer and we were also really glad to hear that he's well and hopeful.

I want to encourage everyone to watch the coverage at AlJazeera in English, which Amr points out (and I completely agree) is far superior to the CNN coverage. I've been checking in with AJE pretty regularly since Friday morning and it's both great and somewhat disorienting to get straight, spinless reporting from the streets. Just people telling us what they see and hear. Very few talking heads and the ones they do have are actually Egyptian, not pundits speculating from a thousand miles away. That's the badge of honor I want my news outlets to wear- Pundit Free!

Now back to my curriculum. It's a good thing I can actually use the Egyptian example as a discussion point for one of my lesson plans. I can be distracted and working at the same time.

¡Feliz Cumpleaños!

2011-01-18T18:40:00.002-06:00

Yesterday when I got home, a birthday party for José Pablo (turning 2) was in full swing. His brother & sister, cousins, neighbor kids and some of their parents were sitting on our newly (mostly) finished back patio, listening to music, eating arroz con pollo, and watching the toddler of the hour dance. He was kind enough to dance with me when I arrived until a plate of food was prepared for me. Once everyone had eaten, it was time for the piñata. Starting with José Pablo and then passing on from younger to older kids an effigy of Sponge Bob Squarepants was beaten with a broomstick. As the kids got older and the beating more brutal and the shouts of "¡Dura! ¡Dura!" got louder and louder, SBSp's giant smile seemed more and more inappropriate and the exercise verged on the macabre. Finally, José Pablo's dad decided the frenzy had gone on long enough and ripped open the back of the piñata, spilling from its guts a shower of hard candies and peanuts in the shell. The kids scooped goodies into little sacks with impressive speed and when they were finished, it was time for cake. A fine time was had by all and I even got a few candies to take home.

Much love and gratitude to my landfamily for including me in the celebration and once again filling me with food.

Worst Sentence Ever (so far)

2011-01-16T21:27:00.003-06:00

"Challenges to development are multiplying, often in dialectical relation to the fragmentary attempts at control inherent in post-Fordist regimes of representation and accumulation." Arturo Escobar, from Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World.

A semester later and Escobar still stands out to me as the worst perpetrator of offenses against clarity in academia. This particular sentence was where I drew the line and chose to stop enabling bad writing. Why on earth do I need to hack my way through the obfuscations of a writer who clearly doesn't care about being understood? This is what I love about being a student as a grown up- having a sense of perspective that allows me to choose not to finish a reading assignment. If you can't hold the attention of a willing and gifted reader such as myself, you clearly don't deserve that attention.

This post in honor of my return to reading assignments. I'm halfway through the reading for tomorrow's first day of class (Curricular Design for Peace and Conflict Studies) and Escobar remains the man to beat.

Dogs

2011-01-06T17:51:00.002-06:00

The thing is, I'm a cat person. I'm so much a cat person I probably have that cat parasite disease that some suspect is the cause of people really, really liking cats.

Costa Rica, however, is for dog people. People who like small, constantly barking, entirely undisciplined dogs. Most of the dogs I see have no collars and apart from having a tendency to sleep in the same patch of the middle of road don't necessarily seem to belong somewhere. I've been told that my street is somewhat of an anomaly but I've seen plenty of dogs wandering the other streets of CC too. There are also many strays(?), wanderers(?), out for a stroll(?) dogs up at school. They mostly like to hang out on the cafeteria patio, for obvious reasons but there's one in particular (we're told his name is Jorge) who also enjoys attempting to come to class. I think Victor Valle's is my favorite professor response so far. He looks at Jorge, gestures to the door and says, "It is not time yet for dogs to go to school."

Why, why, why are there so many dogs and why does no one seem to care how much or how loudly or how long they bark? My theory is that they are meant to be cheap burglar alarms and that their owners, if they have them, are willing to put up with a lot of crying wolf! (or person! or car! or thing in the street!) on the off chance that one day they'll cry burglar! But I still don't understand how they stand it, especially when it's that small dog, yippy kind of barking. Many times as I've sat trying to study or lain in bed trying to sleep I've had extremely unQuakerly thoughts of smacking some dog on the snout.

And someone must be doing something like that because I've noticed if some well intentioned (usually American- and yes I mean Canadian too) person sees a dog on campus, picks up and throws a stick for him, instead of falling over itself with rapture and running after the stick the dog will instead run away with its tail between its legs and a submissive look over its shoulder that says, "I'm going, I'm going, you don't have to throw that stick at me."

There are cats here too, and on campus. I just don't see them as often or as many of them, probably because of all the stupid yappy dogs.

I get asked this a lot

2011-01-05T22:33:00.010-06:00

Here's what's funny to me- when I was a stage manager I met a lot of people who didn't know what a stage manager is, what they do, or that such a job even exists. And now when I say I'm studying peace education, a lot of people tell me they don't know what that means or what a peace educator does.

Here's a video from the Teachers Without Borders website (a UPEACE Ed alum works there) that gives a brief overview:

I Got Mail Today!

2011-01-05T17:44:00.002-06:00

Ian & Mele, a thousand thanks for your Christmas wishes and the addition to my room decor. I super swear I'm going to stop being a postal hypocrite and send out the postcards I've been accumulating. I just need to learn the word for stamp.

I was able to pick up my mail because I was back on campus for the first time (while it was open) since classes ended. I was meeting w/some folks from DAA to help out with the Orientation for the new students from American University. All of which means I've reached that crucial turning point in a long break when my perception of said break shifts from, "What a long break stretching out before me. There will be time to do everything I want to do in a relaxed and leisurely fashion" to "I can see the end of this break coming at me like a freight train! I have accomplished nothing! Time to buckle down."

Buckling down has commenced. To Do List spreadsheets have been made. The alarm clock has been reinstated. Helpful Post-it note flags have been purchased (Here's what I asked for at the office supply store- a shy person's nightmare where virtually everything is behind the counter and must be requested, in Spanish- "the small things with many colors, like a 'Post-it', (gesture showing putting a flag in the margin of a book)"). I apologize for that punctuation.

In further news on the learning Spanish front, traveling w/Rebecca to Monteverde and La Fortuna provided great opportunities to practice. Before I've always traveled with someone who spoke Spanish much better than I do. This time, I was the go-to Spanish speaker. I think we did all right. In the four days we were traveling, only twice did a Spanish speaker give up on me and switch to English. I still struggle mightily, a lot because I want to have my vocabulary, to say things the way I would say them but instead am trapped in the vocabulary of a 5 year old. A five year old with pronoun agreement problems. (Sigh, I just said, "They want to walk" when I meant "We want to walk.")

RIP, Canon Coolpix 2000

2011-01-03T15:25:00.003-06:00

(Christmas 2002-December 2010)

I would like to say a few words.

Coolpix 2K was my first digital camera. If memory serves, the first picture I took with it was of my dad, sitting at the desk in my apartment on Glenwood, loading the drivers for my new camera onto my computer. It traveled with me across the US- Maine, NYC, MN, Colorado, Joshua Tree, San Francisco and Seattle to name just a few. It has been to England, Scotland, Burundi and Costa Rica. With it, I have taken photos I deemed worthy of color printing and taping to the walls of tour apartments.

Subject to an indifferent owner, its full potential was never realized; many of its settings including Party Favor and Snowman, were never used and it was often forgotten, left hanging in its case on the closet door handle while Meaningful Events went unrecorded except by memory.

In its final months it suffered the indignity of taunts from other photographers, because in our ever slendering Age of Planned Obsolescence, it was more than 3 years old and did not fit in my pocket. We may never know if the humid climate here in Costa Rica hastened its end or if its time had simply come. Over the last two months there were a few warning signs that all was not well- the occasional striped, pixelated view screen, an error message, a few photos unable to be read after importation. Finally, in the middle of a hanging bridge in the cloud forests of Monteverde, it was used to take it's last photo.

It is survived by a carrying case, four batteries and two memory cards, which may or may not contain retrievable data.

To honor its passing, I post a few of my favorite photos, not previously published on this blog.

Feliz Año Nuevo!

2011-01-01T00:31:00.002-06:00

Having just celebrated the New Year Costa Rican style, I wanted to take a moment to say to my friends and family all over the world: Happy New Year! I hope your 2011 is wonderful, adventurous, fulfilling and, of course, peaceful.

I had a splendid evening. I popped in to the party my landlord's family was having in the newly finished barbecue area behind the house and then walked over to Diana's house where she was entertaining her newly arrived friend Trish. On the way I passed dozens of other houses , spilling party lights and sounds out of windows and patios. At Diana's we had homemade sushi and chocolate ice cream and then went for a stroll in time to hear Ciudad Colón wishing each other "Feliz Año Nuevo!" with cheers and fireworks. Some of the house parties moved into the streets to light or watch fireworks and we paused here and there to watch too. It's a lovely, mild and clear evening and it reminded me of walking back to my house after watching the Foster Beach fireworks for the 4th of July, scouting the individual fireworks lit from backyards. I can hear tons of kids are still up and why not? It's the beginning of their 'summer'- no school again until February.

Thinking back on my New Year's declarations from last year, I feel mostly satisfied. I only had three:

Start grad school. Check.
Write a play. I'm giving myself a 1/2 check for this one. I wrote 2 drafts of an adaptation of a play.
Bike 100 miles in a day. 3/5 check- I think 60 miles was the most I managed in a day before leaving for Costa Rica.

For 2011, I'll go w/three again.

Finish grad school.
Get a job. Preferable one that involves peace and education.
Write a play. But this time the one I was actually thinking of when I made declaration #2 last year.

And sure it would be great to reach my 100 mile biking goal and my fluency in Spanish goal and my take a picture of a monkey pretending to be me while I pretend to be a monkey for Griffin goal, but I think focus is helpful.

Love & Peace to all and sundry on this beautiful New Year's Day.

Lady Centaur's Lament

2010-12-24T13:31:00.002-06:00

The last time I was unable to ride my bike for a while (2 weeks waiting for it to get back from Kansas City) I remarked that I felt like a lady centaur, cursed to live as a human. That first ride once I got my bicycle back felt incredible- once again I was able to travel faster, further and taller than my merely human self. It has now been more than four months since I’ve been able to ride and my inner centaur is not happy. I’ve been looking for cheap, used bike but haven’t found one yet. And there are other potential obstacles:

The rainy season=bad weather for biking, though thankfully that has now ended. However windy season is also giving me pause.
Usually when I see cyclists here, they look like they are in training for something daunting, like the mountain stage of the Tour de France. They tend to travel in packs and they ride serious bikes, wear serious gear and have serious muscles. If that’s what it takes to be a cyclist in Costa Rica, I won’t have the time or the money.
The drivers here drive very fast and they do not seem to care how close they get to pedestrians let alone cyclists. It’s as if every driver were a cab driver. I think this is why the cyclists travel in groupsL. It makes them more visible and increases the odds of there being someone available to call an ambulance.
The road up to school has a lot of steep ups and downs, but not enough of the latter to push me up the former. In fact, someone told me it’s one of the most difficult mountain biking roads in Central America. Chicago, as many of you know, is flat. Flat, flat, flat. In order to actually bike to school, I would need to go into training. As if I were training for the mountain stage of the Tour de France. (I can hear my friend and fellow centaurian Laxmi right now saying, “Do it! Bike up the mountain! Come on!)

I’ll keep looking for a bike. Maybe a bunch of people will get new ones for Christmas and I can pick up someone’s spare. I could at least bike around town and I could work on climbing the mountain on the weekends. I want my lady centaur legs back.

Happy Holidays!

2010-12-20T22:26:00.003-06:00

Me & Diana at the benefit Christmas Concert. We were frequently photographed because of our adorable matching antlers. Avra Heller took this picture.

Even though it doesn't feel like Christmas to me here, I realize it's less than a week away. My poor grad student gift to you all is that I will try very hard to post often during the break and catch you up on my long overdue reflections on my classes and life in Costa Rica.

So for starters, a week ago Maeve and Ben (both coincidentally from the UK) organized a Christmas Concert/Open Mic to raise money for the kids at La Escuelita de Esperanza in San José. You can read more about them here: http://sites.google.com/site/laescuelitadeesperanza/

I sang with the UPEACE singers and also helped out my friend Rosemary on "Oh Christmas Tree" so she wouldn't be singing alone. Oskar's (local bar) was our host and offered 2 for 1 deals on certain cocktails to help us get people in the door. Tons of UPEACE students showed up, dressed in Christmas cheer and we raised about $3oo, which is pretty great based on my experience of several New Suit fundraisers at The Spot.

Last night my housemates and I went to another Christmas Concert- this one at the little theatre/concert hall next to the church. It was very much a local, child centered event. There was a children's choir, a youth orchestra and youth string ensemble- all playing/singing Christmas carols, mostly in Spanish and quite charming. I'd say the songs were about half and half traditional songs that most of us know and Spanish or Costa Rican carols. I was surprised to hear "White Christmas" and "Sleigh Ride" just as I continue to be surprised to see snowmen and ice skating Snoopy decorations in the windows. It's really strange to me that Christmas in this super Catholic country is also associated with a phenomenon (cold) and substance (snow) that neither Jesus nor most people here ever experienced. What is that about? I understand why I associate Christmas with those things, but why on earth do the Costa Ricans? Unless the North/West has colonized Christmas.

Look, no one is forcing you to live where it's cold

2010-12-19T17:34:00.004-06:00

This could be you if you come for a visit.
Playa Hermosa, my first black sand beach.
Prior to the Unfortunate Incident.

Yesterday was the first day of my holiday break. My original plan was to sleep in and then spend the rest of the day reading and relaxing but my friend Avra proposed a slight alteration to my plan. Instead of sleeping in, she suggested I get up early and catch a 7:30a bus to San José and then a 9a bus to Playa Hermosa and then spend the rest of the day reading and relaxing with friends on the beach. And that is what we did.

It was a gorgeous warm, sunny day so the black sand was very hot but once we got our feet in the ocean, all was right with the world. Fresh avocado, tomato and cheese wrapped in tortilla for a picnic snack and then casado con pescado at a beach side restaurant for lunch and piña colada at sunset before the bus ride back to San José. Thanks to a fellow student who purged her reading collection before heading home I got to read a somewhat recent New Yorker cover to cover in between trips into the water. We couldn't go out very far because the waves were intense but watching the surfers get in some amazing runs made up for that.

The one Unfortunate Incident of the day came when we got unexpectedly swamped on our towels by an ambitious wave. I fared pretty well, covered in wet black sand but rescued my bag before my camera got wet. Avra, unfortunately, didn't get to hers in time. Eventually water and sunlight cured everything but the camera woe.

Starting Monday I'll get back to work on my research project, The Vagina Monologues and other writing adventures so I can be relatively free for Rebecca's visit on Friday. We're going to Monteverde to visit the Quakers!

I'm sorry for everyone traveling right now getting stuck at snowed in airports but I'm feeling pretty good about my decision to stay in CR for the break.

Time is Swiftly Teleporting into Alternate Dimensions

2010-12-10T16:25:00.002-06:00

I’m experiencing a lot of cognitive dissonance right now. We’re nearing the middle of December, there are Christmas lights and decorations everywhere and we’re all counting down the days until the long holiday break. But it’s also 70 degrees, mostly sunny, entirely green and I’m wearing the same summer dresses I packed in August. I’m starting to realize how much I have depended on the weather and corresponding changes in wardrobe mark the passing of time.

Which is not to say that the weather here hasn’t changed. We have definitely- and in spite of dire predictions- moved out of the rainy season and into the transitional windy season that precedes summer. The nights are usually clear now so I get to see the stars lying strangely a-kilter. The wind rattles windows and corrugated metal fences and threatens to blow my laptop closed when I work outside. This is how December and January will be, I’m told. It just doesn’t feel like Christmas or that 4 months have passed. And the more I see Christmas trees and read snowy statuses on facebook, the more it seems like I’m living in another space-time dimension.

In other time related news, I have finally acquired a past. A past tense, that is. In the last two weeks my Spanish class has reached the preterit tense, ending my ‘only the present exists’ Zen sentence constructions. “Yesterday, I buy food.” “Two years ago, I live in Burundi for a month.” “I write a paper last weekend.” The verbs accompanied by a hand motion of throwing something over my shoulder as gestural indication of tense. A tense mudra. (Laxmi and Ellen just laughed, probably Mara too.) I’m still not practicing often enough and my hoped for fluency seems far away- especially with time quietly evaporating behind my back.

It’s the University’s 30^th anniversary and alumni are in town this weekend for the first ever reunion. We’ll all be hobnobbing with our counterparts from years past, looking for connections that may lead to jobs when we graduate before we know it in July. That’s the true reality, the past and the present and the future all wound up together in a tangle of snakes swallowing each other’s tails- or their own, but who can tell? Hmmm. Does that sound grim? It doesn't feel grim, just true.

Care Package

2010-12-02T19:06:00.004-06:00

I got a care package!!! I can't begin to tell you how immensely and thoroughly happy I was when Edy told me I had mail today. I sprinted to the office and was literally hopping with excitement while they looked for it. It was sent by the wonderful Lauren (whose birthday is today, coincidentally- Happy Birthday Lauren!) with contributions from several of my other Chicago friends. I had requested cards or pictures to put up on my giant bare wall and terribly talented Tate came through with mixed media artistry and the watercolorful word art at the top right. Thanks to everyone at the LTC retreat who signed my card. (btw, the three pictures that did not come from the care package are the cornucopia and sailing ship- props from the Thanksgiving pageant- and the Japanese characters that spell my name- from Asia Week)

I am currently wearing the three friendship bracelets also enclosed and you know, these are my first ever friendship bracelets? I think I just missed that particular fad era of school. But now it's back! And I'm ever so very much looking forward to eating the chocolate and nuts, which are expensive enough here that they are luxury items for a poor indebted grad student like myself. Speaking of indebted, a thousand thanks to Lauren and Tate and everyone else, it really made my week and came just at the right time.

Now since I'm here and waiting for my potato pancakes to cook on this slow electric burner, I will tell you how things are: busy and borderline overwhelming but also really good.

We finished Research Methods and I spent the long weekend writing the research proposal for my final project. It may not bode well for the project itself that after six out of seven days hammering away at my proposal I was ready to mail it to the ocean in a bottle, never to be seen again. The class we just started is: Formal, Non-formal and Informal Education: Peace Building Action. I love this class and I love our professor who's methods match her message. Goodness I'm in an alliterative mood tonight. We're reading Paulo Freire- a real treat after the more scholarly and technical writing from the last class. When we start reading A. Boal I'll need to keep one hand free so I can constantly shake my fist at W&M for not requiring me to read him in undergrad. I just love this tension of being constantly torn between wanting to stay for at least another year to learn more of the everything there is to learn, and wanting to fly straight to a CPS school and start teaching right now.

In addition to regular class and Spanish class, I have choir practices each week to prepare for singing Christmas carols to children at an upcoming holiday event, I've volunteered to come up with some ideas and activities to make Orientation more interactive and engaging, I'm slightly behind on organizing the annual Vagina Monologues performance and starting to think about kicking some kind of job search into gear. It's a dilemma. I want to focus on my studies and do my absolute best work & sharpest writing. But I also want to take advantage of all the opportunities I have to do exciting/important/fun things. I know it's a wonderful dilemma to have, I just wish I could get to a more centered, peaceful place in accepting that I can't do everything.

Potato pancakes are almost done. Then I will eat. Then I will do homework. Then I will sleep.

If anyone else wants to contribute cards or pictures to my wall and inspire more jumping for joy in the DAA office, here's my mailing address:

Sara Gmitter

c/o Department of Academic Administration

University for Peace

P.O. Box 138-6100

San José, Costa Rica

Central America

My cultural context

2010-12-01T22:11:00.003-06:00

At school we spend a lot of time talking about our different cultural contexts, which is one of the great things about going to an international school. You learn to see things from entirely new and sometimes unexpected viewpoints. For most of my classmates, their cultural context is most strongly connected to the country they are from. For some, religion is their cultural context. I have a culture too, of course, and what I've been realizing is that my culture is not 'US' or 'Chicago.' It's theatre.

For example, in my culture the 'audience' (students in a classroom) is not supposed to talk during a 'performance' (lecture) unless the 'performer' (professor) invites them to do so. Whenever I hear people talking in class, even very quietly, I feel the urge to give them the 'irritated fellow audience member' look I give to people talking behind me at the theatre. And if someone tries to talk to me in class, my visceral response is to ignore them or make an "I don't know, pay attention" gesture exactly as I would do in the theatre. My culture also frowns on getting up to go to the bathroom during a lecture. Why can't that person wait until 'intermission' (mid-class break)? I ask myself. My culture is highly sensitive to distracting sounds like crinkling plastic bags. My culture expects listeners to 'give focus' and speakers to 'project.' My culture applauds that which it approves. I am the lone representative of my culture at UPEACE. I am a Thespian-American.

The following posts brought to you by...

2010-11-22T00:10:00.002-06:00

Other people's pictures!

Sometimes, I forget to bring my camera. Sometimes I bring my camera but forget to take pictures. Sometimes I bring my camera and am too busy to take pictures. So here's a little catching up w/photos taken by fellow UPEACE students: Benjamas (Por) Boonyarit, Kendra Bruno, Marion Brastel and Samantha Wapnick.

Musical Afternoon (back when we had time for things like that)

2010-11-21T23:59:00.003-06:00

My roommate Por took this picture, which I love! That's Por in the bottom left corner on the computer screen. Deepo is the other guitar player you see. This is from an afternoon months ago when Por and I went over to Kwanghee's house to sing and play. Haru joined us and we all had a blast. Deepo, Por & Kwanghee are all MUCH better guitar players than I am. But at least I was having a good hair day.

Asian Culture Night

2010-11-21T23:50:00.003-06:00

Me at Asian Culture Night, sitting next to Diana (from Canada) with Diana (from Uganda) right behind us. We are waiting for the excitement to begin. Once it started we saw: a parade of fashion from some of the 14 Asian countries represented at UPEACE; dances from China, Korea, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines and India; & a martial arts display. We also ate a large amount of amazing, spicy food. Kendra Bruno took this picture.

Cartwheel on the Beach

2010-11-21T23:47:00.003-06:00

Marion Brastel (or maybe Rose w/Marion's camera?) took this photo on the beach at Santa Teresa. I'm sure Sylvia will say my hands should be further apart. But look how fast my legs are moving!

North American Culture Night (aka Early/Combined Thanksgiving)

2010-11-21T22:40:00.005-06:00

Now before anyone gets appalled or offended, this picture is from a scene in the Thanksgiving pageant I wrote, pre-deconstruction (literal and metaphorical) of the racist and misleading stereotypes of the classic Thanksgiving pageant done in elementary schools. I made the 'hats' with help from some of my fellow Peace Ed-ers. I think the bonnets, in particular are adorable. Cast from left to right is: Sara F, Samantha W, Maricelly M, Mackenzie B-R, Haru S & Maham H. Not pictured- Sara G and Carly S. I'm guessing this photo was taken by Samatha's fiancé Arvil. The evening also included music by Sara F, Midori & Haru, a hip hop dance choreographed by Allison M (danced by yours truly, among others) and vats and vats of mashed potatoes, stuffing, mac & cheese (photo courtesy Samantha W), chicken (turkey too expensive) and vegetables. Also 41 pies.

Our 11 year old hero

2010-11-06T21:27:00.003-05:00

I know you can't tell from the US news, but we're having quite an exciting time down here in Costa Rica. While everyone has been watching Tomás approach Haiti, wondering if the already beleaguered nation would get hit by more misfortune, we were getting pounded w/rains, courtesy Tomás. Yesterday we were sent home from school early, again because they were worried about landslides blocking the road. People living within 100 meters of the river closest to downtown (the one I cross on the way to school) were evacuated- rumor has it as a precaution in case the dam broke. We had no running water and so started collecting rainwater. Today has been thankfully rain free but sadly much of it was also water and electricity free. Around 7p as Diana and I were sitting in my kitchen around a candle wondering what we would do for the next several hours, we heard a knock on the door. It was Daniel, the 11 year old son of our landlords, come to tell us that there was light upstairs. He was home by himself and had set up the family's battery contraption to run a desk lamp. Once we got upstairs he suddenly said, "Idea!" He knew how to make the battery run the television and DVD player so we could watch a movie. From the selection of kids movies, Diana chose Herbie: Fully Loaded (w/a pre-disaster Lindsay Lohan) and Daniel thoughtfully switched the language to English for us. About halfway through the power came back on. 15 minutes after that, the rest of the family came home. His mom asked us if he'd been scared to be alone in the dark, but I'd swear he was more looking out for us than hoping we'd look out for him.

At the moment we've gotten both electricity and water back. It turns out there was a landslide on the el Rodeo road so we're waiting to hear if we'll be able to get to school on Monday or not. I guess that's the downside of going to a university with such spectacular views.

My new tradition

2010-11-04T22:46:00.001-05:00

Bananagrams, girl drinks & good company.

All this for $17/night

2010-11-04T22:38:00.004-05:00

Santa Teresa

2010-11-04T22:20:00.002-05:00

Over the long weekend between courses I traveled w/a group of fellow students to Playa Santa Teresa on the Nicoya Coast. We rented a house (at a ridiculously low off season price) from a Swedish woman suspected of being a duchess. The house was absolutely gorgeous, with an open first floor- living room, dining area & kitchen- surrounded by tropical foliage, a hammock, a pool and a view of the ocean. Upstairs were 3 big enclosed bedrooms and an outdoor sitting room with a pull down movie screen for watching movies projected through the window of one of the bedrooms. Halfway between the house and the beach was a yoga pavilion. Yes. A yoga pavilion.

The first two days it didn't rain at all and we got to see a beautiful sunset. The next two day it rained on an off but we still managed to get to the beach and thoroughly enjoy ourselves.

We had fabulous group meals, played games and generally relaxed ourselves into puddles. I will let the pictures do the rest of the talking.

La Fortuna

2010-11-04T22:03:00.004-05:00

For my first real trip out of Ciudad Colón I traveled with my friend Diana to La Fortuna near Arenal Volcano to relax in some hot springs. We got a super cheap room in a hostel and after being mildly evangelized by the woman who ran it we headed to the Baldi Hot Springs Resort, having gotten a great deal on admission from our hostess. For $21 US dollars we got an all you can eat buffet dinner and all you can lounge access to their huge assortment of hot springs (of varying temperatures) and cold pools. The next day we had wanted to go on a hike to the waterfall but since it was raining we went instead to Los Laurales, a hot springs frequented by locals. Well, locals, and us. That's the wonderful thing about hot springs; it doesn't matter that it's raining if you're sitting up to your shoulders in warm/hot water. Los Laurales is basically an outdoor park with a bunch of different hot springs and at least one cold pool. There are also tons of little picnic pavillions (complete with electrical outlets) so people bring their rice cookers, coffee pots, electric grills and crock pots to keep themselves fed during their day of lounging.

The picture is Diana holding the granddaughter of our hostess on the patio of our hostel. Diana was a fantastic traveling companion. Not only was she just as excited about Bananagrams as I was, she has a similar love of literature, is a font of information and speaks Spanish. It was nice not to be the only person reading a book while sitting in a hot springs pool.

In case you were wondering...

2010-11-04T21:44:00.004-05:00

This is the kind of woman I am. The kind who plays Bananagrams while sitting in a pool at a swim up bar heated by hot springs, drinking a piña colada. At a certain point during this particular game I heard giggling coming from somewhere above me, looked up and saw the bartender and two other employees of the resort standing on the bridge leading to the bar in the center of the pool. I don't know if they were laughing at one of my words, or the fact that we were playing Bananagrams in the middle of a hot springs pool. I will let you be the judge. By the way, vanity compels me to say that this was not my finest hour of Bananagrams words. Aside from mew.

This Influx of Posts and Pictures Brought to You By: Surprise Day Off!

2010-11-04T21:29:00.002-05:00

Many exciting and wonderful things have happened and gone undocumented because of busy busyness and my disinclination to look at glowing screens after a day of reading. So here's a quick catch up.

I have now finished 2 more courses: Theory and Practice of Peace Education & Change in Education Systems. We just started Research Methodologies and I have to say, I'm much more looking forward to it than I thought I would be. This is the class where we form our ideas and plans for our final research project/thesis. I'm already sensing an affinity for the case study as my project of choice.

I have been on a trip! Twice! My friend and fellow Peace Ed-er Diana and I went to La Fortuna near Arenal Volcano during a 3 day weekend in the midst of our last course. We spent the better part of 2 days soaking in hot springs. Then this past long weekend between courses, I joined 8 ladies from various programs for an excursion to Santa Teresa on the Nicoya Coast. More on both of those trips later.

I have also been taking a hip hop class, studying Spanish, preparing for North American Night (aka Thanksgiving 2 weeks early), started coordinating the annual V-Day performance of Vagina Monologues, lost my just repaired umbrella, played Charades, organized a series of performance/public presentation workshops (the first of which was supposed to be today), planted a tree and written the first draft of a Thanksgiving pageant. Plus study, study, study.

Life is full. And wondrous.

Landslide

2010-11-04T19:32:00.003-05:00

Escazú Landslide Leaves at Least 20 Dead, 10 Missing; C.R. on Red Alert / Daily News / News / Costa Rica Newspaper, The Tico Times

So, this is what's happening where I live today. We lost power last night around 10p and I woke this morning when one of my housemates knocked to say that school had been cancelled for the day because of landslides on the road up to el Rodeo. At that point we still had no electricity and only trickles of water. Fortunately, we have a really amazing landlord family who brought us a little camping stove and some bread after an out of town shopping trip. All of Ciudad Colón was without electricity (hence no bread at the local bakeries) and many were completely without water. Our house group (five students now that Kendra has moved in to Mai's old room) had coffee, ate bread w/butter and honey and discussed water conservation. OK, some of the discussion may have been more like arguing.

The rest of the day I spent reading and then took a nap. By the time I woke up an hour ago, the power was back and I learned through emails and updates that many people in Costa Rica did not have such a pleasant free day. Escazú is two towns away from us, towards San José.

The rain has mostly stopped for now and we believe we'll be back in school tomorrow, provided the roads are clear and the state of emergency is lifted. Now I'm going to try and finish the reading (for class) that was interrupted by napping.

Waiting for the 5:45

2010-10-26T18:32:00.004-05:00

Oh friends, I know I've been a very inconsistent blogger; I'm so far behind in all the things I've been wanting to tell you. Right now I have just 10 minutes or so until the 5:45p bus back to Ciudad Colón. I'm sitting on the cafeteria patio, looking out at the mountains in the twilight. Because of the rain, it's not often we get a relatively clear view at this time. Right now it's merely cloudy and there are flashes of lightening in the distance. Past the trees at the bottom of the hill there are amber lights from houses and towns in the distance and they get more sparsely scattered as the mountains get steeper. It is just so beautiful.

I'm half listening to a conversation in French between a couple of African students and a student from the US. I've almost finished my Power Point presentation on GZT, a German development organization. On my way home I'll stop at the verdulería and pick up a tomato and some kind of green vegetable to make dinner. I'll read my assignment for tomorrow on education for special needs learners, work on our group presentation (educational reform under Michelle Rhee in DC) and read a little bit of North & South before I fall asleep.

As I walk across the little bridge towards my house I'll say to myself as I do every day, "I live in Costa Rica. I'm a student at the University for Peace getting a Master's degree in Peace Education. I am exactly where I want to be."

Here's the bus.

Making Chapati

2010-10-20T15:55:00.008-05:00

I learned to make chapati in Burundi but then I must have forgotten because the chapati I made when I got here was all kinds of wrong. So one night Diana M. (left & right) came over along with Kendra (center, who will be moving into Mai's old room) and we all made chapati together. The soda in the background was left over from the potluck. This is my kitchen, by the way. Our chapati was delicious, which reminds me, I'd like to make some more.

The Less Glamorous Side of Life in Costa Rica

2010-10-20T15:39:00.003-05:00

I was starting to detect signs of mold in my books so I've instituted a weekly dehumidifying session. Don't they look like little acolytes gathered at the feet of their messiah?

The books, if you're keeping track are: Thomas Cobden-Sanderson's "Credo" (more a pamphlet than a book); The Elements of Style (illustrated edition), a biography of Gandhi, 2 journals, Faith and Practice, and the AP Manual of Style (very helpful for reminding me to capitalize Internet, how to address Queen Elizabeth II and when to hyphenate). Wish I'd brought more books and few clothes. Clothes you can just keep washing and make do w/ a few. However, not enough books, is not enough books.

Fiesta!

2010-10-20T15:33:00.003-05:00

No time to write, so I'll post pictures instead. This is from the potluck we had a my apartment, almost at the end of our first Peace Education course, 2 or 3 weeks ago. That's Diana on the left, Maricelly playing Diana's guitar and teaching us a song about a cactus and a flower and fish in the sea. Destiny and Myo on the couch. Mackenzie on the floor in front of me. Soooo much delicious food. And I, as the host, cleverly ended up w/the leftovers.

My class!

2010-10-12T13:25:00.003-05:00

This is my Peace Ed class and our Programme (we use the UN spelling) Director, Virginia.

From the front left Diana (Canada), Celine (Rwanda), me, Gobina (Cameroon), Rose (US), Destiny (US), Mackenzie (US), Marianne (Costa Rica). 2nd row from left. Rosemary (Zambia), Virginia (Philippines), Mercedes (Argentina), Camila (Colombia), Chisato (Japan), Ignatius (Zambia), Niina (Finland), Jessica (US- her sister was a wardrobe intern for Arabian Nights!), Maham (Pakistan/Canada), Carolyne (Costa Rica), Myo (Myanmar), Maricelly (US/Puerto Rico), Haru (Canada/Japan). The pink flags on the map show all the places we are from and as you can see, several people locate themselves in more than one country.

I am famous for my striped boots.

Doolittle Epistolaries

2010-10-08T20:51:00.002-05:00

To the Lizard in my Window Well:

Please don’t look so concerned; I promise not to squish you when I slide the window open. In fact, I’m glad you’re here. Eat all the insects you want: somewhere, someone is making more.

Thanks again,

Sara

To the Ants in the Kitchen:

Let me begin by saying, I admire your work ethic. Really. It’s an inspiration to us all. I am supremely grateful that the cockroaches haven’t learned to follow your example.

Now then, on to business. I thought we had an arrangement. I agreed not to destroy you and your families on sight and further ceded to you the territory of the sink. Any of the food clinging to plates or forks in the sink waiting to be washed, you are welcome to. In exchange, you were to avoid the territory of the clean dishes and silverware in the dish drainer. Though it is helpful when you point out an insufficiently washed fork I would prefer that you and your brethren not take advantage of the opportunity to crawl up my arm.

I have no desire to initiate hostile actions, but if we can’t respect each other’s personal space, I fear it may come to that. If there is no trust in a relationship, I’m not sure it’s a relationship I care to maintain.

Sincerely,

Sara

To the Spider I Found in My Bed the Other Morning:

Your insect eating services are not required at that location. However, if you wanted to open a franchise in the kitchen, I would be happy to suggest a few locations.

Regards,

Sara

PS. Do you like ants?

To the Cockroaches:

Long time no see. I am ok with that.

Sara

To the Dogs. All of you.

If little Timmy has fallen down a well, or if there is currently a stealthy band of landlocked pirates crawling, knives clenched between their teeth, towards the unsuspecting, drowsy children of Ciudad Colón, please, disregard the rest of this letter.

If little Timmy is fine and the pirates are all in movies where they belong, then please be so kind as to knock it off. Or at least walk over to the dog you are conversing with so you don’t have to shout.

Thanking you in advance for you attention to this matter,

S. Gmitter

To the Monkeys (please forward):

Where are you?

In peace,

Sara

Now I understand why the rainy season just got rainier

2010-09-30T21:31:00.005-05:00

Since Monday we've been having even more rain than usual for the rainy season. No morning sunshine, rain starting before we even get to school and heavy downpours during class- so loud it's hard to hear people talking. Yesterday they cancelled the buses after 3pm and asked us to head home before that because they were worried about the road not being passable after that because of the rain.

Here's a link to the weather report, but don't worry. We sang "Here Comes the Sun" at the beginning of class today and it seemed to help. Didn't need my umbrella on the walk home this afternoon.

http://www.thirdage.com/news/tropical-storm-matthew-will-hit-costa-rica-hard_9-24-2010

There have also been reports that the rainy season will be hanging out a bit longer this year- 'til December or possibly even January rather than November. I thought about this and decided I'd still rather have a rainy season than a Chicago winter.

Recap

2010-09-27T00:26:00.003-05:00

It's been a very busy week and all signs point to this week being the same, so I guess if I don't post tonight, I won't get another chance til next weekend. Maybe.

Monday- the last day I was caught up on readings for class.

Tuesday- International Day of Peace! Great success, excellent participation from our class, I helped teach and lead the singing of a peace song in Spanish. Also attended a career workshop in resumé/CV writing.

Wednesday- finished writing a paper in time to attend Cultural Dance event sponsored by a bunch of embassies in Costa Rica. About 30 UPEACE students piled into a mini-bus and headed to Escazu to see our classmate represent Bolivia with some energetic dancing. While there, we sampled food from the nations represented (Nicaragua's chocolate drink was my favorite) and the man at the Russian table failed to be impressed that I spoke to him in Russian. Granted, it was only three words but he had know way of knowing I didn't have more where those came from.

Thursday- my first Spanish class and my Spanish nickname is now "gringa en las botas" because of my striped rain boots. Another career workshop in finding internships.

Friday- in class my group turned our summary of the plight of landless farmers in the Philippines, analysis of the underlying causes and recommendations for action into a 3 verse song set to the tune of "Memory" from Cats and performed for the class. Peace Ed is WAY more fun than International Law and the Settlement of Disputes, and this is why there are those who do not take us seriously. I totally meant to be social and join people for a drink at Oscar's but a guitar came to my house! So instead I stayed in, tuned Por's new guitar and when my landlord heard, he brought down his guitar. I tuned that too and he said I could borrow it since he's never actually learned how to play. One of these days I'll learn not to fall out of practice on the guitar because re-acquiring those fingertip calluses is painful.

Saturday- a trip to San José with Diana (not Ugandan Diana, Canadian in my programme Diana) to check out one of the San José markets where I find avocados at 2/$1 and we split a couple bunches of enormous rosemary leaves. I hacked away at the reading, trying to get caught up. In the evening many of us went into town to see our classmate Midori play the piano with a violoncellist at the local performance hall. Beautiful, world class classical music and quite a treat.

Sunday- reading all day. All. Day. Still not completely caught up but getting close. And I discovered what you do with cheese that doesn't melt. You cut it into small cubes and fry it and it's just like the baked cheese they have at the Andersonville farmer's market. Delicious with my beans, rice, tomato & red pepper concoction for dinner.

Tomorrow- I've been asked to read a poem at the memorial service for Robert Mueller who was one of the founding benefactors of UPEACE. And people who like to sing are gather for the first time to see if we want to form a group! I'm very happy about this. Now, back to reading.

Independence Day- Costa Rica Style

2010-09-17T19:06:00.007-05:00

Wednesday was Costa Rica's Independence Day and I woke to the sound of drumming. The Independence Day Parade was moving through the center of town, down the street between the church and the soccer field. I threw on some Costa Rican colors (red, white and blue), grabbed my camera and went to see the celebration. I only saw the last 20 minutes or so, which means I can't make too broad a generalization.

What I saw were half a dozen youth groups either drumming, playing the bells, carrying flags or dancing in traditional dress. I think every child old enough to walk on his or her own was in one group or another. Michelle, my landlord's daughter, was one of the bell players and Daniele, the oldest boy, was a flag carrier. The final dance gave a chance for audience participation and each dance break brought more and more people from the crowd into the dance. Afterwards everyone headed to the plaza for food, cotton candy (which is not food) and more drumming. I ran into Maria, José and Pablo and they said they thought everyone in Ciudad Colón was out in the street.

And now, in honor of Costa Rica's Independence Day, a few of the many things Costa Rica has to be proud of:

Former President Oscar Arias Sanchez won the Nobel Prize in 1987 for his work ending the civil war in Nicaragua.

Current President Laura Chinchilla is the first woman to hold that office in Costa Rica.

Costa Rica and Great Britain were the two countries that sponsored the UN resolution creating the International Day of Peace on the 21st of September.

In 1948 at the end of its civil war, Costa Rica abolished its military and has not had a civil war or military coup since.

Plans for International Day of Peace

2010-09-17T16:21:00.002-05:00

The Peace Education Programme is responsible for planning activities for International Day of Peace on Tuesday, September 21st. One of the things we're doing is teaching student how to make paper cranes and helping us make a bunch of them for an activity we'll do on the IDoP itself. Not sure what it says about me that I kind of love these colors- at least to look at. It's been nice to get out of my thinking brain for a bit and using my crafting head instead. Seems like the other students agree because they've been great about learning, helping and teaching newcomers. We've got a ton of other plans still in the works and that's what I'll be spending most of my weekend on. Except when I take a break to make a few more cranes.

Al Gore is not the only one in love w/Power Point

2010-09-14T21:50:00.002-05:00

Apparently it is THE latest thing in NGO, NFP presentation making. Part of the instructions for our presentation assignment for the Foundation Course was to use Power Point, which I have never used, except when I was taking a test for a temp agency. Most of the other groups got fancier than we did. Not just bullet points but zooming into place bullet points, cross fades, graphics, movies. My section of our group presentation seemed a little My First Presentation in comparison. Just pictures with titles. I think I think of Power Point as the set, and I’m the show, where for others it’s more of a 50/50, PP and presenter are both the show.

I stand by my pictures though. Our conflict was the Tamil/Sinhalese in Sri Lanka and I managed to work in a pretty pair of Mandelbrots and a diagram of quantum truth vs. quantum uncertainty. I got metaphorical on them and had a great time. I suppose I understand why people don’t believe I’m an introvert because I really do love to perform- provided I have confidence in the material. To me, there’s a world of difference between giving a presentation (fun! thrilling! satisfying!) and meeting strangers or asking for directions or going to big party (not fun! I don’t want to! I’ll be the one standing next to the food looking uncomfortable!). It’s probably a control thing. Anyway, score one for team theatre, the presentation went really well, in spite of the bullet point deficit.

And now for the words

2010-09-14T20:40:00.001-05:00

It is a measure of my love for you all that after working on a paper for 3 days straight I am once again clicking away at my keyboard to update my dormant blog. Well, my catnapping blog. If I haven’t used up all my organizational brain molecules on structuring my paper (Three Kinds of Violence: Challenges to peace for minority students in Chicago Public Schools), I’ll try to make this several short focused posts, instead of one long rambling one. I’ll start with:

Foundation Course, That’s a Wrap!

Friday was the last day of the Foundation Course. We did our group presentations in the morning and celebrated the end of our first course in the afternoon. Discussions at the party generally fell into one of two categories- What are you doing on the break? and What did you think of the Foundation Course?

Unfortunately my answer to the first question was, “Writing my paper, working on my group presentation for the next course and trying not to fret about International Day of Peace.” My answer to the second question is much longer. There was a certain cadre of people who did not like the Foundation Course. They either found it too basic (people who either studied this stuff in undergrad or have been working extensively in the field) or too far from the work they plan to do (pretty much everyone in the Natural Resources and Sustainable Development program and some of the folks in the Environmental programs). And all of that makes sense. For me, it was great- a combination of learning terms and definitions for concepts I knew without knowing I knew them and discovering totally new ideas and models. We learned a bunch of different conflict models, some theories on conflict persistence and escalation and the beginnings of methods for conflict resolution. We had some really interesting discussions in our seminar group (and to be honest some failures at having any kind of conversation, interesting or otherwise). The best part was hearing from classmates who’d been out in the field (Sudan) or were from a country with recent conflicts: South Korea, Indonesia. The perspective is very different and in some cases much more cynical than mine. It’s too soon to say if that’s coming from who they are or what they’ve seen.

Morning Walk up the Big Hill

2010-09-14T18:50:00.009-05:00

Now here are the pretty pictures you really want to see.

I took a walk this morning up past where Avenida 2 stops being paved and becomes a gravel and dirt road running up the hill. All the way up on my left hand side is the cinderblock wall separating the fancy people from the not fancy people. You can see it in the picture below on the right hand side. I'm looking down the hill back at Ciudad Colón. The road is very steep and just keeps going up and up. I didn't set out provisioned for a long hike, so I turned back before I got to the top. Perhaps tomorrow, if no more exciting opportunities present themselves.

I think I've mentioned that there are a lot of butterflies. Here's two of them. I tried to get a picture of the black and green butterfly I saw, but he wouldn't hold still for long enough. These two practically posed.

I don't know what these gorgeous flowers are, but we see them all over the place. You can't tell in this picture, but they are huge.
Sorry the layout is a little boring. Weird things happen when I try to get fancy and change things up.

The Street Where I Live

2010-09-14T18:33:00.012-05:00

These are some of the things you can see on the street where I live. There are many incongruities.

End of the road.

A cow lives here.
Not so fancy houses.

Fancy house.

No parking.

Pictures from Poás

2010-09-05T13:39:00.004-05:00

This is the main crater of Poás Volcano, the second or third highest volcano in the country. Underneath all that steam and smoke is a lake. The smoke comes out of little fissures all around it.

This is the lake that formed in one of the craters of Poás. The large plants in the foreground are called 'sombrilla de pobre,' poor man's umbrella.

21 days, 0 monkeys

2010-09-04T20:09:00.002-05:00

Sorry Griffin. No monkeys yet. But I did see a volcano. And a giant mall. And a $30 pint of maple syrup. I'm going for a hike in the morning, maybe I'll have better luck then. Pictures of volcano and nearby lake, coming soon.

Why the blogging has slowed

2010-09-01T22:11:00.005-05:00

Here are a selections of the reading I've been doing for my Foundations in Peace and Conflict Studies course:

Ramsbotham, Oliver; Woodhouse, Tom and Miall, Hugh. 2005. Contemporary Conflict Resolution

Mitchell, C. R.1981. The Structure of International Conflict.

Abdalla, Amr. et al. 2002.Understanding CR SIPABIO a Conflict Analysis Model.

Bohm, David. 1980. ‘Fragmentation and Wholeness’; ‘Appendix: Resume of Discussion on Western and Eastern Forms of Insight into Wholeness’ in Wholeness and the Implicate Order.

Escobar, Arturo. 1995. ‘Conclusion: Imagining a Post Development Era’ in Encountering Development: the making and unmaking of the third world .

Capra. Fritjof. 1982. ‘The Newtonian World Machine’, in The Turning Point

Pruitt, Dean & Kim, Sung Hee. 2004. Social Conflict: Escalation, Stalemate and Settlement.

Grad school doesn't seem so glamorous now, does it?

Welcome to the 21st Century, Student

2010-08-28T21:08:00.000-05:00

The last time I was a student enrolled in a university, Bill Clinton was the president. No one I knew had a cell phone or an email address. Laptops weighed six and a half pounds. When I needed to read a newspaper article for research, I looked it up on a microfiche and used a microfilm machine to read it. And although the Internet had been invented at that point, I had only ever been there to look up hints for how to help Gwydion escape from the evil wizard Manannan.

These days our lectures are accompanied by Power Point presentations and are broadcast to an overflow classroom. I take notes on my MacBook using the Notebook feature in Word that automatically formats notes in outline form and even gives you a tool to doodle in the margins. (I’m kind of in love with this feature and can’t believe I had my laptop for 3 years and never discovered it. It feels like one of those dreams you have that you find a new room in your house. Except I don’t have to wake up.) I read my chapters for each class online using the course reader posted on a Moodle. I send meeting notes to my fellow Peace Ed students simultaneously using a group I created in our gmail supported student email account. I arrange to meet up with friends to go shopping via facebook chat. I IM with friends back at home, 2200 miles away. I blog. And Barack Obama is the president. Life is pretty good.

Sara v. Las Cucarachas

2010-08-27T00:46:00.004-05:00

Some of you have expressed interest in the kinds of things I’m studying so I will illustrate my newfound knowledge by using the CR SIPABIO conflict analysis model to examine the conflict between myself and my unofficial roommates, certain cockroaches.

Sources

Las cucarachas and I have a relationship conflict caused by negative perceptions as well as repetitive negative behavior.

We also have an interest conflict characterized by competition for resources, in this case, space.

Interests/Issues

My issue is that I don’t want to see las cucarachas crawling around on the floor in any room of my apartment.

Las cucarachas’ issue is that they need freedom of movement in order to pursue their goals of eating and procreating.

Parties

The primary parties are myself and las cucarachas.

The secondary parties are my official roommates Benjamas and Mai. They may also have a primary party conflict of their own with las cucarachas but that will not be the subject of the current analysis.

Tertiary parties include the entire species of cockroaches, my landlords and the nation of Costa Rica.

You will also be introduced to a third party intervener- Ingmar, the dinner guest.

Attitudes

On my part, the attitudes are primarily negative. I feel mildly threatened by the presence of las cucharachas in my home because I have a need for cleanliness and health. I also feel apprehension about stepping on a cockroach in the dark and experiencing the unpleasant sensation of its carapace cracking under my foot. I have an expectation that the few cockroaches I see will breed many, many more.

Setting aside for now considerations of whether las cucarachas have the capacity to ‘feel’, I imagine they might feel threatened and fearful, judging from what I interpret to be their frightened scurrying when I discover them. I will dismiss for the moment any possibility that they have the capacity to form expectations.

Behavior

Cucarachas

On 4 separate occasions una cucaracha has scurried along the baseboards of my room within my line of sight.
On 2 occasions una cucaracha was seen crawling through the rug in the living room.
Two other cucarachas have been found either dead or dying on their backs.

Sara

One instance of mercy killing or cockroachslaughter (depending on your belief in the good will of the human party) when I threw a weakened cockroach (found on its back) into the toilet and allowed it to drown.
Several instances of stamping in a threatening manner while verbally assaulting the cockroach.

Intervention

On one of the above mentioned occasions where a cockroach was seen crossing the rug in the living room, all three official roommates were present and our dinner guest, Ingmar was leaving. Said guest was induced to collect the offending insect and without killing it, forcibly evict it from the premises. Again this is conjecture, but I believe being pursued by a 2 meter tall German man wearing a black motorcycle helmet bearing some resemblance to those worn by the Nazis during WWII, may have been terrifying in the extreme even though lethal force was not used. Watching this spectacle did elicit certain feelings of empathy from me and I was able to envision a time when I might set aside my cultural baggage and view las cucarachas as fellow creatures worthy of at least as much tolerance as I give the ants in the kitchen.

Outcome

The conflict has not been resolved but has moved from a manifest to a latent state.

Contextual Factors

In place of Ethnicity I will note Species as a contextual factor. I am human. Las cucarachas are cockroaches. The other applicable contextual factor is Culture. I was raised in the US where there are certain popularly held negative ideas about cockroaches and what their presence says about the house you live in. Las cucarachas on the other had were ‘raised’ in Costa Rica where there is an entirely different tolerance level to insects and other animals.

Relationships

Bond- Does not apply in this case as las cucharachas and I have no special bonds of kinship or any other association.

Power- A key factor in this relationship is the asymmetrical power dynamic. I am much larger and stronger than las cucharachas and also have the advantage of the ability to use and access to tools, such as shoes and toilets. Las cucharachas have an advantage in numbers but lack the cognitive function to coordinate those numbers to form a threat.

Patterns- Though general opposed to violence of any kind, I do have a pattern of tolerating violence against insects.

Las cucarachas only patterns of any kind involve eating, procreating and scurrying.

So there you have it everyone, this is what I'm learning. Next week we start getting beyond analysis into actual conflict management, resolution and transformation.

Try Not to Be Mad

2010-08-24T19:22:00.007-05:00

This is Hammock Row, a passageway between 2 classroom buildings. The steep roof keeps out the rain, the translucent panels let in light, and the sides are open and lined with plants. Maybe the best feature of a university campus ever. It is only empty because I was on the first bus this morning and got there before anyone else. There are at least 3 more full hammocks strung between trees in addition to the chair hammocks around the buildings and courtyards.

This was an initiative from the Student/Faculty/Staff Committee and they only finished putting them in over the last year or so. Thank you SFSC. Thank you from the tips of my toes to the top of my head.

By Request

2010-08-24T19:07:00.009-05:00

I've been asked for more pictures so, here you are. On the left is the view from the Council Room where we have our lecture in the morning. Can you see the mountain? I think it's actually a volcano. I know at least one of the mountains we can see is a volcano. Because the morning lecture is broadcast to a classroom, they've papered over a bunch of the windows so Amr won't be backlit. But this is what we were looking at all during Orientation. On the top is the view from my seminar classroom. It's a bit washed out because it's so bright.

I Love School!

2010-08-23T16:51:00.000-05:00

First day of class today. So wonderfully, exactly what my hopeful imagination pictured.

For the first hour & 15 minutes the whole class of 2011 (all 180+ of us) are together for a lecture. Or as close to together as we can get- most of us in the Council Room where Orientation was held; those that don’t fit in Classroom #1 with a video feed. UPEACE may be small but we rock the technology. Amr Abdallah, the Vice Rector, gave the lecture this morning about the beginnings of conflict and peace studies as an academic discipline. After the lecture we had a ½ hour break, then met in smaller seminar groups of 22 (minus, of course our African contingent) for discussion. So there we were, 16 of us from all over the world sitting in a classroom with windows all over three of its walls looking out at gorgeousity everywhere talking about the nature of peace and conflict and whether there is such a thing as a ‘Western’ or ‘Eastern’ perspective. Having exactly the kind of rich, juicy discussion that I came here for. The time flew by.

Over lunch I met with some of my fellow Peace Ed students to start brainstorming plans for our program for International Day of Peace on September 21^st. I naturally took up the role of note taker and spent a ½ or or so after lunch typing up the notes and emailing them out. Then bus home to Ciudad Colón, talking with Manuel from Honduras/Montana about how our days had gone and how an influx of wealthy Californians is starting to liberalize Montana.

So yeah. I love school. I love what we’re reading about and talking about. I love the totally international group in which we are doing all of these things. I love the beauty of the location in which we are working. Love, love, love where I am right now.

Good news!

2010-08-22T20:56:00.003-05:00

Just got word via my roommates that at least our 4 Asian classmates still awaiting visas have been approved! If all goes well they'll be arriving this Thursday or Friday. This is especially a huge relief for the rest of the students in the ALP who have been fretting over the fate of their friends. One of the students coming will be in the Peace Education program with me. His arrival will double the number of men in our group. The arrival of the Africans (fingers still crossed) will double it again. The female to male ratio at school is pretty high in general and particularly in our Department, which also includes the Gender and Peace Studies program. However the breakdown of our professors is slightly more males than females. So is our class a trend in the peace and conflict resolution field or an anomaly?

Once upon a time...

2010-08-22T12:31:00.004-05:00

One of the things we learned in Orientation was the history of the University for Peace. Here’s what happened. Pardon me while I geek out for a moment. In December of 1980 the General Assembly of the UN gathered in Rivendell to adopt resolution 35/55, calling for the establishment of a University for Peace. Rodrigo Carazo, then the President of Costa Rica stepped forward to say, “I will carry the ring to Mordor!” A philanthropist by the name of Bennett then stepped forward to say, “You will have my wallet!” And then Costa Rica stepped up to say, “And our support!” They looked around to see if six more entities would step forward and there was an awkward moment while other countries and people with money looked at their shoes and mumbled things about needing to make a phone call. Then President Carazo and Mr. Bennett and Costa Rica all set off together while the UN waved goodbye and wished them luck and there followed many highs and lows including a dark time when it seemed all might be lost. But then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan flew in on a giant eagle to re-organize and re-structure the University so it would be a real place where real students could take real classes and get a real degree. Since then, other universities around the world have established partner relationships including the horsemen of Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Korea, the tree people of Ateneo de Manilla University and the tower dwellers of American University in DC. And now we all live happily in golden light and slow motion, laughing and jumping on the bed.

Roommates

2010-08-21T21:28:00.002-05:00

My roommates made dinner for us tonight and invited over another friend of theirs from the Asian Leaders Program, Munty. I have really lucked out. Everything was delicious though Benjamas kept apologizing that she couldn't find coconut milk so her curry was as good as it could be. We ate family style with four different dishes in the center of the table and each of us with our own plate of rice. I took a little bit of everything right from the start, like dishing up at a potluck. I noticed that they spooned one bite at a time from the center. Right now they are Skyping with another friend from ALP who is stuck in Manilla, waiting for his visa to come through.

Benjamas is from Thailand and is in the Media and Peace Studies Program. At home she's led workshops teaching various aspects of media. She says she is like many other people from her country because she is very outgoing and loves to talk. Mai is from Vietnam and is in the International Law and Settlement of Disputes Program. She's studied law in Vietnam and France. Benjamas jokes that she is a professional student. Mai seems always to be looking out for her friends and I'm glad that now I'm one of them. I wonder what will happen in March when all the ALP students return to Manilla. I think we'll all be quite sad. The whole school will get smaller and our apartment will be a lot emptier. But there's plenty of time to worry about that later. Meanwhile, I'll enjoy whatever food comes my way.

Oriented.

2010-08-20T20:34:00.002-05:00

Just a quick post to say orientation is over! We met with our Programme (I guess we're British?) groups this afternoon so I finally got a chance to see who my Peace Education cohort is going to be- minus the 5 Africans and 1 Sri Lankan who are still awaiting travel visas. I look forward to getting to know all of them over the next 11 months.

We've already got our first group assignment too. September 21st is International Peace Day and the Peace Education class is in charge of coming up with a 45 minute program for the whole university to observe the day. Classes will stop and all eyes will be on us.

I picked up my reader for the first course, which starts on Monday. It's a foundation course in Peace and Conflict Studies that we all take together in the morning and then break down into smaller seminar groups for the afternoon for a total of 3 hours/day of classroom work. We'll spend the rest of the day on homework and organizing our group activities. The reader is enormous and I've already started tackling our first assignment.

This morning's trip into San José went very smoothly. We all got copies of our Costa Rican police records and turned in our birth certificates and home police records. Next step on Tuesday is fingerprinting. Then we wait to be processed and hope our colleagues waiting in Africa and Manilla will have a chance to catch up. Please send happy visa thoughts their way.

Orientation Days 1 & 2

2010-08-19T21:02:00.002-05:00

See, this is what happens. A thousand things happen, which means you have a thousand things to tell but then you're exhausted from all the things happening and the thought of telling them all makes you more exhausted and then you don't tell anything at all. So what follows will be a few snapshot impressions, rather than an attempt to catalogue all of the last 2 days.

Yesterday was our first day of orientation. Because I’d somehow failed to reset my watch correctly, I left the house an hour earlier than I needed to in order to catch the bus. An hour earlier than 7:30am. After several times walking up and down the street where I thought the bus (and a bunch of other students) would be, I began to suspect my mistake. I asked the man sweeping the street what time it was- in perfectly good Spanish, by the way- and was somewhat disappointed when he felt it necessary to hold up 7 fingers, in addition to saying, ‘siete’ as if I might not know what ‘siete’ meant. The whole incident, however, serves as triumphant proof that I am a braver soul than I was at 15 when I once waited for a bus for three hours on the wrong side of the street because I was too shy to ask anyone why the bus wasn’t coming.

Speaking of shy, being delivered into a teeming mass of 185 strangers with no other task than to meet people is an excellent way to torture a shy person. I’ve been looking forward to meeting my classmates and learning all about where they are from and what they did before coming to UPEACE, but huge groups are really not my scene. It has to do with the approach. If I were stuck in an elevator, say, with one other person, I could successfully engage that person in conversation and be very charming. But show me a lawn full of people, all of whom seem to be already engaged in the most fascinating conversations of their lives with their new best friends, and I have problems. How do you cut in on that? So one at a time I sought out the other shy souls who seemed to be similarly at a loss. Now me, I love being rescued like this. Others are not talking to anyone because they just don’t want to talk to anyone right at that moment. By the end of the day I’d used up every once of my “faking extroversion” energy and gave myself permission to revert back to my natural state. We’re all going to be here for a while. There will be other opportunities in more Sara-friendly settings to get to know everyone.

Here’s the other intimidating thing about getting to know all these people. They are very impressive and accomplished individuals. And so are you, Sara, you’re all saying to yourselves because you’re my friends and you’re like that. And you know what, I even agree with you. However, I have never been arrested protesting for freedom of speech in Beijing. I do not speak four languages fluently. I have never bottle fed a baby elephant. My list of things to do just got longer.

The campus is so beautiful I can hardly believe it. As we sit in the Council Room- the back wall of which is all floor to ceiling windows and sliding glass doors- we can see mountains in the distance, green tropical foliage everywhere and huge birds of prey (hawks? eagles? rocs?) swooping not so very far away; it becomes pretty difficult to concentrate on the Power Point presentation about the Costa Rican health care system. The classroom buildings are built around courtyards so even walking down the hall there are gardens and fountains. And hammock chairs. Hammock chairs tucked away here and there wherever there’s a spare beam or substantial tree branch. I’ve found 6 so far plus a full fledged hammock out by the entrance.

We’ve been introduced to the staff and resident faculty. We’ve stepped through the Student Handbook. We’ve been warned about earthquakes, theft and skin fungus. We ended the day with sign ups for student activities. These are all pretty much in our own care with tons of support from the Student/Faculty/Staff Committee. And think about it- in a four year (or even 2 year) program, the seniors and juniors basically run things while the freshman and sophomores learn the ropes. But here, we’re all seniors and freshmen at the same time. So our groups and activities need to hit the ground running with people ready to be organizers, driving things forward. I’ve volunteered to organize the annual V-Day presentation of The Vagina Monologues to raise awareness of violence against women. Students and possibly some staff &/or professors? will be the performers. I won’t let myself get sequestered back or offstage though. My stopwatch stays in retirement.

Off to sleep soon now. Tomorrow we have an even earlier day heading into San José to get started on our student permits. For all the anxiety I had about getting my paperwork together, I see now how relatively easy I had it. Diane, who is from Uganda (north of Burundi and I know you all know where that is) had to travel all the way to South Africa to get her documents authenticated. There are about 20 more African students and 4 Asian students who haven’t even been able to get their entrance visas yet so we’re still awaiting their arrival. For me, just a few more bureaucratic hurdles to jump.

This is Where I'll Study

2010-08-19T20:58:00.001-05:00

Conveniently located right behind the computer lab. There is also a fountain to the left.

Green Season

2010-08-18T22:31:00.002-05:00

I didn't want the frightening shower head picture below to be the only picture on my blog of this beautiful country, so here's a view of the stream I cross over on my way into town. I'm much too tired to even begin to write about our incredible first day and have an early start again tomorrow. I'll bring my camera and take some pictures of the campus. It is truly breathtaking and perhaps the most idyllic setting on the planet for a university.

Suicide Shower

2010-08-18T21:51:00.003-05:00

It looked like a bad idea, even before I knew what it was called. Yes, that's electricity, connected to water; two great tastes that usually do not taste great together. However, I have been assured by my landlord and the internet that this is simply how things are done, throughout Central and South America. There's no hot water anywhere else in the house- not for the sinks or the washing machine. Water for the shower gets heated right inside the shower head and requires so much current, it has to be connected directly. For the past 3 days I've been unable to get mine to work so I've had to make due with cold showers. But tonight José came over and made some adjustments and sure enough I saw the initial blue spark and dimming of the lights that signals the water is being heated. So tomorrow morning I hope to start my day by surviving a warm shower.

Cena con los Morales

2010-08-17T14:20:00.002-05:00

Last night our landlords made us a welcome dinner and they and their 3 kids joined us in our dining room. Michelle is 11, Daniel is 9 and Paolo is 18 months old. Like many kids his age, Paolo is very excited about his newfound ability to walk and spent most of the dinner exploring the apartment before climbing up onto the couch and falling asleep. At one point he proudly pushed the rolling dehumidifier into the dining room, just to show us he could.

Dinner was arroz con pollo, bean paste and ensalata de papas. All very good, especially the potato salad. I've never seen potatoes so white before, I thought at first it was jicama. Costa Rican's don't like things too spicy, in perfect accord with my own spice preferences. José and María told us they have been renting apartments to UPEACE students for the past 10 years. They started off with one apartment and one Italian student back when the school was much smaller. Since then they've added more apartments onto the building, which accounts for its piece meal layout. They've had many good experiences and look on it as an opportunity to meet people from all over the world and learn about different cultures. They also seem very pleased with their own country and happy to share it with visitors.

Benjaman and Mai (totally guessing about the spelling) both say they like to cook so I look forward to seeing how they adapt their Thai and Vietnamese recipes to the local ingredients. And Ben promises she won't make things too spicy. I, however, once again find myself without an oven so I won't be able to show off the greatest of my own culinary talents by baking for them. Fortunately, at least one of the studio apartments has a slow cooker and since I figured out how to make Tuna Hotdish in my crock pot when I was in Kansas City, I WILL be able to share some quintessential Midwestern cuisine. They have no idea what they've been missing.

Settling in

2010-08-16T17:37:00.002-05:00

Now that I've been in Costa Rica for a full 24 hours and have had a little time to settle in, I can tell you all something about where I'm staying.

I flew out at an insane early hour of the morning on Sunday. Many thanks to Marty & Mele for volunteering to pick me up at 3:45am so I and my 4 bags could get to the airport. I really do have the most awesome friends. All the air travel went very smoothly, everything on time, all my bags arrived and nothing adventurous at all happened until my taxi got to Ciudad Colón. The thing you need to know about rural Costa Rica is that there are no street names or addresses. So the directions I gave to my driver were- 'de la Casa Cural, 400 este, mano izquierda porton verde, casa beige al fondo'. Basically- 400 meters east of where the priest lives, on the left a green gate, beige house on the bottom. What are you supposed to do with that? You drive to Ciudad Colón and ask the first person you see where the Casa Cural is. You follow the first step of his directions. You ask the next person you see, where the Casa Cural is, you follow the first step of her directions. You find the Casa Cural, drive 4 blocks east and start looking for a green gate. The first one we tried was locked and no one answered our honk. My driver then tried calling the numbers I had for my landlords. No answer. Then he drove around a bit and just started asking people if they knew Jose Morales or his wife María. Eventually someone pointed us in the direction of another green gate and once it was opened, I recognized the patio of my apartment from the photo I'd seen online. All was well.

I'll be living in a 3 bedroom apartment with a nice living room, dining area and small kitchen. My two flatmates arrived today after traveling 27 hours from Asia. They are both part of the Asia Leaders Program and so have been studying together elsewhere for the past 4 months. Our apartment is at the bottom of a jigsaw complex that includes two studio apartments; the living quarters of our landlords, their kids and extended family; María's beauty salon and some kind of construction business. Most of our windows look out on stairways or outdoor storage areas but I do have a nice little window looking at the green field next door in my room. The view from our patio is currently a small cement mixer and a pickup truck filled with dirt. Not far beyond our house you can see steep green hills with the occasional fancy house nesting in a valley. I believe somewhere further up those hills is where UPEACE is located.

This morning I walked into town, a short 4 blocks, mostly downhill. I crossed over a little stream at the bottom of the hill and all along the way there's green everywhere and many different kinds of butterflies. Town is quite small, at least by my American standards. The area of shops and banks and etc. is about 6 blocks long by 2 blocks across. Lots of little storefronts selling fruits & vegetables, meat, baked goods. Two grocery stores. Two banks. I passed a pet store that in addition to puppies and a kitten had crates and crates of chickens (on the way into town I saw a lot of chickens roaming among the houses and into the street). The center of town is the Catholic Church with the football pitch in front of it. And by football pitch I mean of course, soccer field. I bought groceries at both supermercados plus a panadería and a frutería. Our landlords are making a welcome dinner for us tonight, so I'll soon get my first taste of Costa Rican cuisine.

I'm feeling pretty good about my adventures in Spanish so far. There are whole sentences where I know exactly what to say and I find I understand the gist of what people are saying to me even if I don't always know the words to answer them. I bailed into English once at the bank though if I'd taken a moment to think about it, I did actually know the words I needed. It's both funny (peculiar) and wonderful to think that the Spanish conversations, which now wash over me in line at the bank, on the radio and so on, in 11 months will be concrete images and ideas. I'm looking forward to that.

The weather was exactly as has been described to me. Warm and sunny in the morning, then just after noon light rain intermittently turning to heavier rain for a few hours. Now in the evening, overcast. It's quite humid but out of the sun the temperature is pleasant enough that I was far more comfortable today than I have been for the past sweltering week in Chicago. I think I see my first mosquito right now but it's staying safely out of my way at the moment.

I haven't seen many people biking, only two or three and maybe the rain has something to do with that. I'm still hoping to get a bike for myself here, both to explore further and to free myself from the UPEACE bus schedule. Once I've made the trip a few times by bus, I think I'll know enough about the route to determine how safe and ridable the roads are. I've just gotten the schedule for Orientation starting on Wednesday. Wish it were tomorrow. Listo. I'm ready.

Buenos Días, Costa Rica!

2010-08-16T14:35:00.003-05:00

Buenos días rooster. Buenos días dehumidifier. Buenos días little stream I cross on my way into town. Buenos días butterflies. Buenos días hablando español. Buenos días todos verdes. Buenos días montañas y colinas. Buenos días lluvia en la tarde, cada tarde. Buenos días streets without names and dogs without collars sprawled asleep in the middle of the road. Buenos días handfuls of coins. Buenos días nueva vida.

Good night room

2010-08-15T01:52:00.002-05:00

Good night sideways closet. Good night alley light. Good night wall of books and reading nook. Good night writing at Kopi and ice cream at George's. Good night puppet bike. Good night LFP. Good night Foster Beach. Good night Printer's Row, Bughouse Square, Magnificent Mile. Good night Jabin & Tate's pillow corner. Good night Griffin's curly hair, Wednesday lunches and Friendly dinners. Good night getting walked in. Good night winter, fall & spring. Good night, Chicago. Good night.

Closure

2010-08-11T12:01:00.003-05:00

Now it's getting very close. I've already marked off my last Sunday, Monday and Tuesday in Chicago. I've gotten all my visa/student permit paperwork in order. My room is sublet. All that's left is packing and a lot of saying goodbye.

I said goodbye to my capital F Friends at Evanston Friends Meeting this past Sunday. They've been a wonderfully supportive community for the past 3 years and I owe so much of my inspiration and fuel for this new chapter to them. I said goodbye to my Lookingglass family last night over a delicious meal, enlivened by stories from the days of old, including 2 I'd never heard before, a thing I'd not thought possible. I bid farewell to my other theatre company, New Suit, on Monday at our last Company Meeting, officially downgrading my status from Tier 1 (Willing to put in a lot of time and be in charge of stuff) to Tier 4 (Out of town, in grad school, in a coma or any combination thereof). And every time I see one of my close friends I ask, "Will I see you again before I leave?"

One of those friends recently observed that I've been talking as if I'm leaving forever. Or dying. Things like, "This is my last Monday." Or, "This is my last chance to eat Ronnie's mom's delicious falafel." Or, "This is the last time I'll forget to see if there's a day game before biking down Clark Street." It's not that I don't think I'm coming back. I'm planning to come back. I have a return ticket. It's just that I like closure, marking the moments and acknowledging, "This has been meaningful to me." I think of it as if I'm leaving a party that Chicago and various communities within it have been hosting for the past 15 years. The courteous thing to do before leaving the party, is to thank my hosts and say good night.

Note to self and others

2010-07-16T17:19:00.000-05:00

When you are at the library looking for Spanish language tapes, do not write the call numbers on the outside of the folder containing the important document you just had certified by the Secretary of State. The one you need to get your student visa. You will set it down on the shelf while searching through bags of book/CD packages and you will forget it. Later, as you are waiting in line at the DMV thinking about how you will reward yourself with a DQ dipped cone in the food court after all this is done, you will look in your bag for your 2 proofs of address (also in the folder) and you will be distressed. You will then pedal madly back to the library, all the while thinking that you may have accidentally ruined your own life. Even though you will find the folder right in the stacks where you left it, this is not behavior you will want to repeat. Because many pedestrians are now mad at you and you are lucky you didn't get doored by that cab. Still, buy yourself a dipped cone anyway and try not to be too disappointed that they don't have butterscotch. It could be worse. You could have just ruined your own life.

It's Not Dead Yet!

2010-06-14T22:36:00.000-05:00

Yes, I will attempt to revive my long comatose blog now that I'm preparing to leave for Costa Rica. One of the few things I can promise re: said blog, is that I will not be posting as often as I did in Burundi for the following reasons:

1. I will have homework.

2. I don't think Cuidad Colon has a 'mzungus home before it gets dark' curfew, this was very conducive to having time to write.

3. How many different ways can there possibly be to say: I am working hard and it's beautiful here?

I leave on August 15th and start orientation at UPEACE on the 18th. 'Til then I'll sporadically write about the process of getting ready to leave Chicago- my home for the past 15 years. Sporadically because:

1. I'm actually supposed to be writing a play right now.

2. It's a lot of work- leaving the country for a year.

3. I've got a lot of goodbye fiestas to have.

More to come...

My teachers

2008-08-02T00:09:00.001-05:00

Jonathan & Katia at the clinic.

The Long Goodbye

2008-07-31T22:00:00.000-05:00

Friday morning Jocelyne, Red & I went shopping again for the rest of our gifts for friends and family. I start to finish bargained for a pair of masks from the Congo all on my own and though I'm sure Jocelyne could have gotten a better price I'm still pretty proud of getting the price down from 20 for one to 17 for 2. We went fabric shopping in the big market without any further incidents of spontaneous Sara dressing. This time the woman attempting to sell me a dress tried it on herself. I was quite exhilarated by my bargaining experience but I think I would find it both stressful and time consuming if I always had to bargain anytime I wanted to buy something.

When we got home it was time for our farewell lunch. Claire and Maxim who had not been able to join us on our trip came over along with Jocelyne, Marcelline, Desire, Eric and Samual. We were given a gift of African cloth and many speeches were made. Desire's speech was part dance, part game of Simon Says, all funny. When it was my turn I slowly gave my whole speech in Kirundi. Much was recycled from the radio show the previous day (recycling- very Burundian of me) and there was a lot of repetitive sentence structure (very Aaron Sorkin of me) but it was full sentences and I was quite pleased with myself. Then as each person took his or her leave there was hand shaking and picture taking and promises to write. Unfortunately there was some confusion I think about when I was leaving so some people who promised to see me the next day did not arrive before I left for the airport. So I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to Eric, Odette, Jonathan or Katia. I'm particularly sad not to have been able to thank abagisha banje beza (my good teachers) one last time for all their help and patience.

The next morning on the way to the airport there was one final speech from Marcelline and you know the rest. I got on several planes and flew home. And everyone wants to know, the Burundians, my family and friends here, will I go back? To which I answer, yes. I don't know when or quite how but yes. Because Jocelyne says I'm no longer a muzungu but umurundikazi, a Burundian woman.

Putting the 'Camp' in Workcamp

2008-07-30T22:49:00.000-05:00

Ok, break's over.

Last Thursday we went up country with a bunch of people from the clinic. Up country, by the way, is pretty much anywhere outside of Bujumbura. The way I think of it, Bujumbura on Lake Tanganyika is the lowest point in the country. So pretty much anywhere you go from there is up.

We got a bus with 18 places and here is who we filled it with: me, John, Red, Alexia, Odette, Jonathan, Katia, Jocelyne, Samual, Marcelline, Jeanne, Adonis, Clovis, Eric, Grethe, Dina, Mireille and a young woman whose name I never got who had been volunteering at the clinic for the past few days. We were not quite as shoe horned in as on the regular bus to Kamenge- we were 4 to a seat instead of 5 but it was still quite cozy.

Our destination was Source du Nile, one of several purported southern sources of the Nile River. I did not wear a watch for my entire time in Burundi so the nearest estimation I can give of how long it took us to get there is about 1/2 the day. On the way Jocelyne would periodically pull some snack out of the magical bag at her feet and pass it around the bus. Bowls of peanuts, a bag of cookies, these great doughnut tasting things I may have mentioned before, muffins, bread with jam. And Fanta. Of course Fanta. Katia and I took advantage of some of the time to actually write down the words to the song she'd been trying to teach me. So now though I'm still a little shaky on the tune, at least I know all the words.

I think my favorite part of the whole trip was Jocelyne and Odette's radio program. An hour or so into the trip Jocelyne decided we needed entertaining and so she announced the beginning of her radio program with co-host Odette. It was periodically a bilingual program in Kirundi and English with each taking turns translating for the other. They had a theme song, they had callers (most frequent call in guest- Jonathan, call in name- LoveYou, very funny), they sang songs on request, gave news reports, did person on the bus interviews. For hours and hours they cracked themselves up (not to mention the rest of us) in a tour de force performance and I wished for the millionth time that knew more Kirundi because, alas, they did not always translate. Late in the day's programming they called upon me to give a report in Kirundi. I summoned up all my vocabulary reserves and managed to make a statement in 4 complete sentences expressing my appreciation for the country's tall hills, its good children and it's many people. Each sentence was greated with applause which almost never happens when I speak English.

At the first police roadblock (of maybe a dozen throughout the day) the officer decided that there was a problem with the papers of the driver. Alexia, Samual & Marcelline got out and had an extensive discussion with the officers of the roadblock. In the end the 'fine' was paid and we were allowed to pass. As we approached the next roadblock we happened to be singing one of the Kirundi songs I know, "Imana yacu irahambaye" (Our God is an Awesome God) and the officer waved us right through without stopping us at all. After that as soon as we approached a roadblock, Odette or Jocelyne would launch into that same song and the rest of us would join in and keep singing until we were through. Though we were still usually stopped, no one had any issues with the driver's paperwork from then on.

We arrived at Source du Nile which is commemorated with a smallish pyramid on the top of a hill- no water of any kind in sight. We climbed the hill, some of us also scaled the pyramid, took many many pictures of each other and sat down for a lunch of meat pastry and, yes, Fanta. We walked back down the hill to the bus and a local man offered to walk us to the place where you can see the water. Turns out they collect water which runs down from the top of the hill and channel it into a pipe which spouts out of a concrete block onto a concrete slab and then runs down the rest of the open hillside until eventually it finds a stream which joins another and so on, until it joins the Nile. The point of the pipe, I take it, is to give everyone something to point at and say, "There it is, the source of the Nile." We all rinsed our hands in it.

Then it was time to pile back into the bus, resume the radio program and head home. This was easier said than done. Somewhere fairly early on we took a wrong turn- easy to do when none of the roads are paved, let alone marked. We drove quite a while out of our way before we realized and after that we stopped at every crossroads. Inevitably this would draw a crowd of locals- not even because of us muzungu. A bus of city folk from Bujumbura was by itself an unusual occurrence and cause for pointing and staring. By the time we reached the lake road which we'd follow north all the way back to Bujumbura it was quite late in the afternoon.

The officer who stopped us at the next roadblock spoke to the driver for some time. Not because of any knowledge of Kirundi but simply by reading the universal language of gesture as he pointed to his wrist where a watch would be if he had one, the sky and the road I could tell he was saying he didn't think we'd make it back to Bujumbura before the roads closed for curfew. And it turns out he was right.

We were about two hours away when the roads closed and we had to stop in the town of Rumonge. Alexia called a friend she knows in the town to find out where 18 people plus a driver could spend the night til the roads opened in the morning. Now here's what I find really amazing. Once we realized we wouldn't get home and our day trip had turned into an overnight trip, there was not one word of complaint or concern or frustration. This in spite of the fact that we had several mothers among us who had children at home and Odette had an exam- the final exam of her final year at university- at 8am the next morning. People just calmly made phone calls and alternate arrangements went along with the thing they had no control over anyway. I think I can safely say this would not have happened on a bus full of Westerners. And I think the thing is, any of the adults who were alive during the war, most likely had to hide or relocate themselves on short notice for their safety. (In one informal and admittedly small survey I read 100% of the people said they'd had to hide during the war.) The benefits of a sense of perspective. And Alexia told us in the morning too that people were not worried because there was so much more security now.

Alexia's friend directed us to a guest house run by a Pentacostal church where we secured 3 rooms and the Burundian sense of hierarchy divided us up thusly: John and Eric in one room; Alexia, Red and I in another- each of us in our own small bed; and everyone else in a large room with 5 small beds. They pulled four of the foam mattress onto the floor to make one large mattress, leaving one bed for Jeanne (an older woman). All the others piled in together. Except for Adonis, too abashed or too proud to sleep in a room with women, who after an hour went to John and Eric's room and asked if he could stay with them. I have to say, I think it would have been fun to be in the big room and was a little sad to be sequestered away from the others. We all ate together in the big room a meal- as I've mentioned before- pulled together from the leftovers of the days snacks. Then early to bed so we could get up at 6am to get back into town. Odette made it back in time for her exam and believes it went well.

So that was our trip up country. It's strange to think and write of it now, a week later from my Chicago sun porch. It feels very far away in many senses and also sad to think of how long it may be before I get to hear the next episode of Jocelyne and Odette's radio program.

The (insert name of African migratory bird) has landed!

2008-07-27T14:25:00.000-05:00

I'm here at the home of my brother and his wife in DC having survived the kajillion hours of flying without suffering either deep venous thrombosis or a pulmonary embolism. However, Step Up 2: The Streets was the most entertaining of the 5 movies I watched on the plane. Seriously. It addressed the major problem of Step Up 1- not enough dancing.
Welcome back to American culture!
I'm not actually awake right now by the way. This message is brought to you by a semi conscious, time zone displaced, culturally disoriented human. And by the letter Y.

Final morning

2008-07-26T02:57:00.000-05:00

For the last certain time, I woke this morning at 6am to the sound of roosters crowing, male voices speaking Kirundi, the whisper-scratch of Jean Yves father sweeping up the leaves and blossoms of the plumeria tree which had fallen in the night and the smell of a charcoal fire burning.

Last breakfast of egg, bread and fruit- bananas, alas instead of pineapple. I would have liked one more pineapple. Maybe four more. Last cold shower.

I'm wearing a watch for the first time in a month and have only a few hours before I leave for the airport and have one last set of goodbyes.

I'll try in this time to catch up a little more regarding our trip up country on Thursday but in case I don't finish before I leave I just wanted to say, the blog will continue! I'll post pictures once I get home- it was too hard to do from here and try to finish out the at least several more thoughts I have about all of this. Whether it will continue past that is difficult to say. It requires a rare confluence of circumstances to give me both interesting things to write and time enough to write them. So read on while it lasts and I'll see some of you very soon.

A brief addendum on the subject of trash

2008-07-25T15:07:00.000-05:00

I was packing this afternoon and generally tidying up my room here. I had a little plastic bag of the trash I've accumlated which I'll add to the larger plastic bag in the office which eventually Ciza will set on fire. As I was clearing the table of some things I'd used up I became transfixed by my empty sunscreen bottle.

It's one of those completely sealed, post CFC regulation aerosol kind of sprays. Therefore the bottle can't be opened and used again. The bottle is made of metal, which means it can't be set on fire. What is going to become of it? There's no place here for it to go. Then I reminded myself that there's no place for it to go in America either, it's just that where it hangs out while it's going no place is in some landfill where I can't see it and therefore no longer think of it.

Last night as we were cobbling together a dinner for ourselves from the leftovers of our traveling food, I brought out 3 ziplock bags of trail mix bars I'd been advised to bring to Burundi for myself in case I had a craving for something sweet or wanted the emotional comfort of some familar kind of food. Turned out I didn't need either so I'd brought them along on our trip intending to share them around as part of our traveling food. As they were passed around and opened (and in most cases, enjoyed) I became horrorstruck by the amount of trash that was being created by the growing pile of wrappers from each individually wrapped bar. I looked at the other food we'd brought. Peanuts we'd been scooping into bowls out of a single large plastic bag. Itambura- these delicious doughnut tasting balls of fried dough which also came in a clump out of a single plastic bag. Loaf of bread, single plastic bag. Glass jar of jam. Many bottles of Fanta. Three plastic bags in their first stage of life with other stages, previously discussed, ahead of them. Glass jar/bottles all destined to be reused. 18 single use wrappers.

I must leave Burundi before I destroy it with trash. I'm afraid I may pass out when I get home and am reminded of how much we throw away, that really isn't going anywhere at all.

On education- mine & Burundian

2008-07-25T11:10:00.000-05:00

Here's what I was going to write on Wednesday night.

I must introduce the newest faculty member at the University of Teaching Sara Kirundi. Her name is Katia, she's Jonathan's older sister and she's been joining us at the work camp for the last week and a half. She has huge almond shaped eyes, closely shaved hair which is the fashion for young girls and though she is much more shy than her brother her extremely innocent face hides a sneaky side. She's the inventor (near as I can tell) and master (certainly) of a game with which we occasionally while away the time we spend waiting for things to do. It involves tossing a small pebble into the lap of whoever is not looking at you. Then when you try to figure out who threw the pebble, all you see are fingers pointing at someone else. All while you're trying toss pebbles into someone else's lap without getting caught. This sooner or later devolves into a tickle off and the exchange of the English and Kirundi words for the phenomenon of tickling. (In Kirundi the infinitive is Kudigadigwa- very onomatopoeic.)

She joined in the Kirundi vocabulary lessons and when she saw that I was interested in learning songs in Kirundi she proceeded to attempt to teach me an entire, complicated song by rote. Fabrice, my other Kirundi song teacher and a grown up has only ever given me the chorus to learn, four or five lines at most and we write them down first. This was a full song and though I started bringing a little notebook with me to keep track of vocabulary, I didn't happen to have it with me the two days Katia was teaching the song.

She's pretty amazing. She'd sing a line for me and I'd try to sing it back. When I got it wrong- and I always did- she'd repeat more slowly. I'd try again and get closer. Not good enough. She slows down even more and carefully enunciates each syllable. She has it down to a science the breaking down and then stringing back together of words and phrases. If I get it right she says, "Encore" and makes me do it again. If I get it wrong and try to laugh it off, oh isn't it funny how I'm making a hash of this line, she never cracks a smile but gives me this total teacher look which says "Laugh all you want missy, we're not leaving til you get it right." Duly chastened I listen to her repeat the line and try again. By the end of our second session I was able to get each line individually but couldn't remember the whole song at once. She then taught me a simpler song, a children's song which is basically various repetitions of "I love you Jesus" in Kirundi, Swahili, French and English. All the songs I have been taught are church songs, everyone we've met is devout to their bones.

Tuesday David Zarembka, the founder of AGLI came to the clinic to visit and meet with the FWA staff and check in on things so Adrien, Jonathan and Katia's dad, was at the clinic all day and walked with us to lunch at the restaurant. On the way Jonathan and Katia showed me off to him like a prize spaniel. I was put through my paces of tree identification (which let me remind you involves not only knowing the Kirundi names but also being able to tell the difference between a mango and a papaya tree- without fruit!). Katia and I sang the easy song and Adrien pronounced it all well done.

Time and time again, Burundians have asked me why I'm bothering to learn Kirundi when I will be here for just a month and it is only spoken in Burundi. There are at least five answers: that it's something to do at night as a change from writing or reading, that I like puzzles, that I like to learn things, that every word I learn is one more little thing to pick out of the conversations going on all around me, that it's something fun to do with Jonathan and Katia. But the real and true 6th reason is that I'm delighted by how happy it makes the Burundians to hear me speak their language even if it's only a few words. And not just the people I've come to know who have watched my vocabulary grow, have tracked my progress and helped to teach me. Strangers on the street to whom I say Mwiriwe instead of Bon soir, even beggars to whom I say Oya instead of No or Non will laugh and ask how I know Kirundi. The effort to payoff ratio is very high.

I want to speak of Burundian education because it is so very important to the Burundians. I think if you ask any given Burundian what their country needs most, 'Education' would come second only to 'Peace'.

So here's my understanding of how it works. Starting at 6 years old in Bujumbura, 7 up country, kids go to primary school. This is free and lasts 6 or 7 years. The free part may only be recent, a program of the current president. Then comes secondary school and here's where it gets different. There are a small number of public schools which are inexpensive, good schools to which a child must apply for acceptance. If he or she is not accepted, private school is the only alternative. It is expensive and sometimes not very good because once they have your money they have little incentive to teach well. It is in secondary school that children begin to learn French, unless they are taught at home. Secondary school is therefore necessary to get any kind of government or service sector kind of job. It also takes 6 or 7 years to complete. University can take anywhere from 4 to 7 or 8 years, depending on what is being studied and is very expensive. Throw a 13 year civil war into the mix and you have a lot of people desperate for education and mostly at their wit's end about how to get it.

Part of what this means is that students both in secondary school and at university are older than their American counterparts. Some because the war interrupted their studies, some because they can only take classes at night or a few at a time as they work for the money to pay for them. It sometimes seems as if everyone we know here is a student. Odette, Jonathan and Katia's mother, just took her final university exam this morning. Marcelline is taking classes, so is Desire, so are both Marie Claire and her husband. Grethe just finished university. Fabrice hopes to go back soon.

Everyone takes their studies incredibly seriously having paid so much in both effort and money just to get in the door. I noticed it even just in our AVP workshop. We were each given a little paper notebook, the kind we use in the US for taking written final exams. The Burundians were avid note takers. They copied every word of everything posted on the wall, drew diagrams- sometimes even staying in through a break to finish- and also of what was said. These are people for whom education- any kind of education about anything- is a gift not to be squandered. And the part that kills you is that once they graduate, even with a university degree, jobs are still incredibly difficult to get. But what else can they do? Just keep putting one foot in front of the other on the path to the only hope they know.

Catching up

2008-07-25T10:40:00.000-05:00

Well we've had some adventures the past few days which is why I've been unable to post til now.

On Wednesday night the power went out early in the evening and didn't come back on til well into Thursday. So I got my wish to write by candle light after all. And eat dinner. But since we didn't know how long it would be out, it seemed wise to save the computer batteries for actual work. It wasn't the whole city's power this time, just our compound. It was funny actually. The youth church service was in full amplified swing and didn't miss a note when they lost power. Just kept on singing and playing. Then as soon as that song was over someone ran out and cranked up the generator and they were back in electrified business. But just them, the rest of the compound went about their affairs in the dark but it was deemed essential that the choir be amplified, even though attendence at the Wednesday night service is less than 2 dozen and everyone could sit close enough to hear acoustically. It's something I've noticed in all the churches we've been to. They may have tin roofs or be made of earth bricks but they also have a mixer, speakers, electric guitars and at least 3 wireless microphones. Given Sunday attendence in the hundreds to over a thousand, depending on the church, I guess it makes sense. Just chalk it up to another thing I wasn't expecting.

Thursday we went up country for a day trip to the Source du Nil with a bus load of our fellow workcampers and FWA people. I'll tell more about that in a separate post. The thing was that we made a wrong turn on the way back which took us very far out of the way. This meant we couldn't make it back into Bujumbura before the roads close at 8pm. So we stopped 2 hours outside of Bujumbura in a town called Rumonge and stayed the night in a Pentacostal guest house.

Rather than do one huge long post, I'm going try to do a couple tonight as I leave in the morning. Yes, it's my last night in Burundi. And what better way to spend my last long sequesterment than churning out tales of the last few days?

Creative Reuse

2008-07-22T12:45:00.000-05:00

Labor in Burundi may be plentiful and cheap but resources are not so when a thing gets used here, it gets used. And reused, and then used for something else until it can no longer function as any kind of useful object at which point like a dead Viking warrior, it is burned. Without the boat and arrow part.

We could learn a thing or two about resource management here. Take the ever present Fanta. There is a Fanta bottling plant right here in Bujumbura from whence comes the blessed blessed Fanta in glass bottles. When you and or your guests have consumed a case of Fanta, you bring your case of empty bottles to the store and get a discount on your next case. The bottle are washed (one assumes, and why not as there are plenty of inexpensive bottle washing humans available) and refilled and resold. So you'll get a bottle sometimes that looks like its 30 years old, and maybe it is. Even if you buy only one bottle from a street vendor, the vendor will expect the bottle back when you've finished. Really you're only buying the soda, the bottle belongs to Fanta. There also seems to be a bit of a whim factor in the kinds of Fanta which they bottle on any given day. Somedays you can only find Citron, in all of Kamenge. Sometimes there is no Sprite or only Orange and Coke. One terrible day there was no Fanta at all, of any flavor within reasonable biking distance of the clinic. And the people had to drink water, and they were sad.

Many of the caps also live long happy lives after they've been pried off the bottle. They become checkers or poker chips or stand ins for football players in a game scratched in the dirt. I've seen some flattened and used as washers.

The universal water carrying container was, in its first life, a yellow cooking oil jug.

I've already talked about what becomes of empty water bottles in the hands of children though adults too will ask us for our empties. I assume they want them for the more prosaic purpose of carrying water.

On the bus sometimes the metal piece which is welded onto the single seats to act as a rest for the flip down seat is covered with a small car oil bottle (like a Penziol bottle, but not that brand) to protect the passenger's ankles from jagged welds.

I saw another kite today, this one quite successful made from a black plastic bag torn into a diamond shape and stretched onto a T frame made of who knows what. Again the string was made from tied together bits. It flew high enough for us to see it from a block away on the walk home from lunch. It got caught on a power line and we washed the boy who was flying it try to coax it back into the air. The carcasses of 2 similar kites, draped over the same line spoke of this being an ancient struggle.

At the workcamp site they've been using the same pieces of of wood and board maybe since the construction started 2 years ago. The boards that create the channels guiding the cement around the rebar cages are carefully pulled apart once the cement has dried, nails saved and hammered straight and then all are used again to make the staging for getting at the upper levels of the walls. A word about this staging. It would not be OSHA approved. Tree limbs with one nail make one cross piece, another two with another precious nail make another. The short ends rests on top of the wall and 2 boards are laid across them. They bow and bend as we pile bricks, mortar and masons on them. We reuse the bags the cement comes in to carry cement and the mud mortar. Nothing gets wasted. We had a sad moment yesterday when at last the oldest, dullest, most worn pair of wire cutters I've ever seen, wire cutters so done with life even the Lookingglass scene shop would have told them they could retire, they died in the trenches when the head snapped off. Then and only then was a new (used) pair of wire cutters purchased. I wonder what has to happen before they decide to buy a new bucket? The current already has a hole in the bottom so it can only be used to carry thick things like mud and cement. For water we use a separate, sacred, only to be used for water bucket. At night, anything which might develop legs and walk away including the old oil drum we use as a water cistern gets moved into the back room of the clinic and locked up.

When one of the desks in the HROC office split apart, an event any American would look upon as a sign it was time to buy a new desk, a carpenter was called in and over the course of 2 days he repaired the split and restained the desk top. I'm telling you, if something gets thrown away here, it really must be trash.

And speaking of trash. I will also say that there's an attitude toward trash here which would have entire tribes of American Indians crying rivers. Anywhere outside, anything designated as trash is mostly just dropped on the ground. There's not really anywhere else for it to go. Then when it reaches whatever critical mass is necessary to designate it a 'pile' sooner or later, someone will set it on fire. Prior to that moment, however, one steps over a lot of trash in the street. Little bits of wrappers of things and small pieces of paper and toothpicks and plastic bags that have not yet been salvaged into kites. Or bags that have already been through their bag stage, their keeping capati warm while the rest are being cooked stage, their kite stage and are in their post entanglement with power line stage. You know, the one that comes right before the being set on fire stage.

A market day

2008-07-21T13:56:00.000-05:00

Well my friends, first let me say that I have the true answer to the question of what I said when I was trying to say thumb. And now I can't even bring myself to write the mistaken word. We'd gotten back on the subject because every now and then Marite likes to tease me by holding up his thumb and saying (correctly) "urukumu". And today I said in Kirundi, "I know, I know urukumu, not (the other word)." And there's Marite dying of laughter again. So I turned to Adonis and asked in French, "OK, what is so funny?" Adonis told me in English, "It's a very big sin to say this word" and then in French tried to explain a little more but was clearly too embarrassed to get further than to say it was a word for a feminine thing. "You understand?" he asked desperately hoping I did so he wouldn't have to elaborate. Abashed me said yes I did understand and I said in Kirundi, "Please excuse me." He told me it was ok because it was not my language. Still. So my advice to anyone coming to Burundi: to be on the safe side avoid speaking about thumbs at all.

After workcamp Red and I went shopping with Jocelyn. We both wanted to get some little gifts for friends and family before leaving so she took us first to the object d'art market. It's a couple of little stands grouped together which basically sell little gifts for people to take back to family and friends. Candlesticks and baskets and wooden carved things and jewelry and dolls and painted maps of Burundi and so on.

Now the majority of the things bought and sold in Burundi are bargained over. I've only ever seen fixed prices in the little grocery stores. Everything else is a process and Jocelyn near as I can tell, is a master of said process. I've even seen her bargain down our bus fare and you'd think that'd be a pretty firm standard. So first of all the merchant tells you a price. It is absurdly high (and we've been told that if a muzungu is the purchaser it's extra absurdly high) and Jocelyn laughs. Then she makes a counter offer which seems absurdly low and the merchant laughs or looks insulted. Then there's a lot of offering and counter offering which gets pretty creative as it's not just a back and forth of numbers but suggestions of other things to throw in and then different combinations of those things and explanations of what the things are made of as justification for price and so on. Then when Jocelyn is satisfied she turns to me and asks, "It's ok?" and I say yes and pay. The part that's hard for me to judge is that even the initial (I'm certain) absurdly high price, doesn't seem that high to me because I'm used to thinking in terms of American money and how long I'd have to work to earn that amount. To have any chance of bargaining well, you have to think of it in terms of Burundian money and how long a Burundian would work for that amount.
While Jocelyn was helping Vanessa bargain for something in another stall I tried my hand going solo. I'd been looking at a couple of things and asked how much (en francais). The man told me 25000f (about 25 dollars) for two. I said this was too expensive for me and was about to walk away. (Being about to walk away, I neglected to mention, is a key component in the bargaining processs). The man sighed a little and patiently explained that first I must make counter proposal- the clear subtext being, "Amateur." So I offered what I thought was an absurdly low counter of 15000f. He came back with 17000 and I knew I had not gone absurdly low enough. But again I have to say, 17 bucks for 2 of these things felt like a good deal even though in my head I knew as only the 2nd counter, it couldn't possibly be. So I was thinking about whether to counter back or hold firm at 15 when Jocelyn came in and put an end to my independence. She said many things to the man in Kirundi, ascertained the state of affairs and told me it was time to go. He tried to argue with her and I believe as we were walking out he said he would take my first offer of 15, but it was too late, the master of the bargain was having none of it.

We then went to the main Bujumbura market to look for cloth. We've been to the market twice before but always right at closing when most of the stalls have already been closed and even today we were only 20 minutes from closing so we've still never seen the market at full tilt. I've got to say, almost closed tilt may be enough for me. Picture a huge open building with a very high ceiling, like for example the United Center where the Bulls play. Now, cram it full of tall, narrow wooden stalls arranged in close aisles, with whole rows selling generally the same things so you've got, Shoe Row, Hat & Belt Row, Toiletries Corner, Wine Row and so on through all the things a person could ever need to purchase that can fit in a shopping bag. For bigger items like bikes or furniture there are other, open air markets. At least I've seen those things in other places but for all I know they DO sell them at this market, they'd just already packed up for the night.

Anyway we wove through the crowds past all these things and past the 4 or 5 kids with hydrocephalus who've been parked on blankets along the wider center aisle in hopes of wringing change from the hearts the stampeding consumers. We went to about the center of the market where African cloth and clothing are sold (distinct from the used Western clothes for sale along the outside perimeter of the market). We stopped a moment at one stall to look at some African shirts which Red wanted to get and in a matter moments we were surrounded with men holding up African shirts and saying things like, "Look at this. It's very nice. This is a nice shirt." Then, and I really couldn't tell you how this happened or what set it off but phalanx of women holding dresses came at me and in 1.5 seconds I was wearing an African print sundress over my clothes. They literally dressed me like a doll, six women at once picking up my hands, guiding them through armstraps and then pulling the dress down over me. There was no asking, I hadn't looked at a dress or even entertained a portion of the thought, I wonder if there are dresses here. I looked to Jocelyn and she didn't seem concerned so I decided, "This is just how this goes."

Now this is very interesting because this growing crowd of women do not work together, they each have different stalls selling similar dresses, the styles each a little different and the patterns. Their first job, which is a joint effort, is to convince me that I want a dress in the first place. They've accomplished this step towards this goal, I'm wearing one. Then everyone agrees, "It's beautiful. It's very beautiful. It's good for you this dress." And it works. I came with the intent to buy cloth and now I've shifted into dress buying mode. As soon as they read this in whatever signal I inadvertently send, it's every woman for herself and each one of the now 30 women around me is holding up a dress saying, "This one Miss. This is the dress for you. This is a beautiful dress. Very beautiful. " The lighting is a little dim so I hold up the hem of the dress I'm wearing and ask "Is this blue or black?" I'm told it's blue and I smile. There's a churning amongst the women and now all the women closest to me are holding up dresses that have blue in their pattern. I look more closely at one with a more squared off neckline and the women churn again and now I'm looking at square necked dresses. A woman holds up a dress to me and I say I think it is perhaps trop grande pour moi. All the women with smaller dresses agree and start up a babble towards the women holding large dresses, "Oui, trop grande, elle est petite. This dress, miss, this dress is the size for you." And again I don't know what starts it but someone decides it's time for me to try on another dress so 5 women pull off the one I'm wearing while 5 others hold down my blouse from underneath so it doesn't get pulled off as well and 5 more put a new dress on me and the whole operation takes about 3 seconds and requires not one iota of voluntary movement on my part. Now I'm wearing one of the smaller dresses. The whole time Jocelyn is bargaining and keeping an eye on me and waving some people away and examining the hem and casting aspersions on the workmanship which the sellers as another joint effort wag their fingers at and point to other parts of the hem. She gets a price of 30,000f for 2 dresses. But I only have 22500 with me so then she starts trying to get me both dresses for this price. And here at last a line is drawn, it cannot be done so I buy one- the 1st dress, for 15,000. 1 second later I'm no longer wearing the 2nd dress and the 1st dress is in our shopping bag. And still there are women holding up dresses as me, each of them saying, "This dress, miss, this is the dress you want. For 10,000 you buy this dress." Even though they know I don't have 10,000 left. I guess they wanted me to give back the 15,000 dress and buy theirs instead. I can only imagine how that would have gone over. But it's time for the market to close so we press out with the rest of the crowd and leave cloth buying for another day.

I wanted also to quickly tell this story from this morning. We're on the bus with Jocelyn and I notice that the conductor- who usually has a huge wad of bills of all different denominations has only a few bills in his hands. And as I watch people pay I notice that many people are giving him very large bills- 10,000 and 5,000f notes to pay a 300f fare. The riders had read the situation and were all pulling out their largest bills in hopes that he wouldn't be able to make change and would let them ride for free. He often couldn't make change right away but would take the money and keep track in his head, who he owed what amount and as other fares were paid he'd pass the money in installments to the people he owed. Everytime he got another 5,000f note he'd sweat a little more but he managed to stay ahead long enough to get to the Kamenge market stop where he dashed over to a stall and made change for 2 of the 10,000f notes he'd gotten. The riders knew the fun was over and after that the fares were paid in the usual clumps of 20, 50 and 100f notes. The games people play.

Failures of expectation managment

2008-07-20T12:44:00.000-05:00

With a full three weeks under my belt and heading into the final one I thought I'd write a bit tonight about the things which are not what I expected. Any of my students know that expectation managment is a key theme for me. Before coming to Burundi I talked to people who had been here, read what I could of the news and the history all in the name of managing my expectations of life in Bujumbura. Here are the things I missed.

1. Yes the stars are different but I can't see any more of them than I could in Chicago.
This is maybe one of the biggest disappointments. I thought Africa, developing, not as many lights, many more stars. I was not counting on the haze of a hundred garbage fires burning, mixed with the exhausts of however many hundreds of thousands of cars, buses and motorcycles equipped with maybe not the latest in exhaust technology. And it is after all a city with lights for many of its 800,000 residents. So I have not learned to identify the Southern Cross.

2. Perpetual dance party next door.
I've mentioned it several times I know but you have to understand that in the evenings when I write these blogs it is the soundtrack of our lives. The driving beat of western techno-ish dance music. At least once a night we hear a song sung by Celine Dion, which if you think about the whole French thing makes a kind of sense. John says that last year it was not like this. I guess peace has to have a downside. Ironically, it's more noise.

(I will pause in my list making to tell this story from last night. I was writing an email to my friend Ian about my fond memories of farm sitting for my friend Eva- hi Evs! I was speaking specifically of the charm of evenings lit by kerosene lamps. I typed the sentence, "Now it is time to light the lamps." And everything went dark. The entire city lost power for about 20 minutes. The dance music was silenced. It turns out there are crickets or some chirrupy night insect. I'd never heard them before. John lit a candle, there was rare quiet, just like back on the farm.)

3. It's not that hot.
In fact the weather has been more consistently pleasant than any given 3 week span of Chicago summer. Yes the equatorial sun is strong but that's what hats and shade and sunscreen are for. I listened tonight to Vanessa explaining sunscreen to Jean-Yves. It was pretty hilarious and somehow lead to a discussion of what had happened to Michael Jackson's skin.

4. Omnipresent Internet.
The workcamp handbook talked about internet being available via internet cafe so the way I pictured it, every 3 days or so I'd pop in for an hour, write a quick blog and catch up on any news from home. Little did I know that our digs were about to be upgraded- thanks to a bunch of donated laptops and a wireless router, portions of which we each brought in our luggage. So here we are from 7pm on with hot and cold running internet. Consequently I am blogging more and reading less than I'd thought. We've only played cards once. Hence also my midterm yen for more missives from home.

5. I've already talked about the cooking and cleaning thing.
I will throw into the general category of food that I was not expecting to eat quite so much. The Burundians are very concerned about being good hosts and so we get 3 hot meals a day. And if a Burundian happens to be eating with us and we don't eat mounds of food they want to know if we are not feeling well. Elie talks about the African stomach. He says if you offer food to an African he will keep eating as long as there is still food on the table because he is never certain when he will eat again. Someone else told us the same thing. We were offered Fantas that day we waited out a rainstorm in the park and Vanessa and I both turned them down. Vanessa explained that she'd just had a Fanta an hour ago. The young man said if someone offered him 20 Fantas he could drink them all because what if there was no Fanta tomorrow? Did I tell that story already?

6. Mosquitoes only really bother us at night.
During the day we lead a relatively bug free life. And in spite of what I was told, even the night mosquitoes are not superfreaks impervious to all but 100% DEET extreme condition repellant. Regular old 25% is just fine.

7. I don't actually notice water going the other way down the drain.

The count down begins

2008-07-19T10:35:00.000-05:00

A quiet day which is nice every once and a while. To stay close to home where we are known and greeted warmly as friends and not stared at as oddities. (OK I have to say that just this moment I am experiencing a charming, uniquely Burundian moment. I hear coming down the street the unmistakable sound of Burundi drummers probably accompanying a wedding procession and sure enough as it passes the opening of the compound I see them in their red, green and white traditional dress, banging away in the back of a pick up truck as it speeds down the street).

Vanessa wrangled herself a trip up country to the dowry ceremony of Fiston who will be married next Saturday. I'll miss that wedding since I leave that very day to return home. It's very strange to think of my time here winding down. Pastor Elie invited John and I over to his house for lunch this afternoon and asked us if we have plans to come back. And I don't know how to answer. It's bizarre to think that I might not come back, I feel such a sense of investment in these people and the work they are doing. Plus I always want to know, what happens next? So for the moment I set aside practical thoughts about mustering the time and resources to return and simply believe that somehow, some day I will.

Elie and Marcelline have prepared a little surprise for us and when we arrive at their home they unveil a cake, a real, frosted and decorated with our names, cake which they must have ordered at a bakery days ago. Clearly they were still feeling the need to make up for not being able to find a real cake for my birthday. And having seen our disappointment in failing in our own efforts to provide cake for our 4th of July celebration they determined that cake is important to us, so cake we must have. It was quite delicious though I think that some of their family members found it too sweet for their taste. How people who drink Fanta every day could ever find anything too sweet is a mystery of the Burundian taste buds I've yet to solve.

We talked a bit about Barak Obama and Elie asked what I thought his chances were. Being a True Believer from his hometown I of course went into rhapsodies of hope. We also talked about the possibilities for Burundi's next election in 2 years. Elie believes that if things continue to improve Pierre Nkurunziza will remain the president for another term. His government is making efforts toward improving public health and education and Elie say that even if the FNL does walk away from negotiations- which they've been threatening for the last week or so- that they no longer have enough support or large enough numbers to have much impact on the president's standing.

Driving up the hill a bit to Elie's neighborhood it strikes me that there is little middle ground when it comes to housing. If you have any means at all, enough say to build a house, it seems to be just part of the plan, de rigeur that you build a high wall around it as well often topped with jags of broken bottle pushed into the cement. The intent is clearly for security but the side effect is also the creation of privacy. In Kamenge the walled house is the exception (and as likely to be topped with razor wire as glass) and privacy non-existent. All of life it seems happens outside on the patches of earth in front of and behind the houses. We see children getting baths or make shift showers poured from a cup. Hair is braided, laundry washed, meals cooked, a thousand romping children play their games.

I keep darting over to my email account to see if there's news from my friend Jennie who went into labor last night (my last night, her yesterday afternoon). And for the thousandth time since my arrival I bless the technology which has let me stay connected to friends at home.

And now Vanessa's back so I'll go eat dinner and hear her tales of up country.

Lost in Lack of Translation

2008-07-18T12:36:00.000-05:00

I can't tell you the number of times I've had deep, meaningful conversations of which I've understood next to nothing. Curse the lapsement of my French studies! Curse my knee jerk listening response of smiling and nodding leaving the speaker no clue that I have no idea what he's saying! Curse my (yes I'll say it) excellent French accent which makes people think I understand as well as I pronounce! The language problem is a problem. There are so many people I want to get to know better, who no doubt have incredible stories to tell- should they chose to tell them- but we're stuck with only broken pieces of language between us.

Today, for instance, I heard Adonis and Theo (or maybe Deo I'm never really sure about the names I just make guesses based on how they sound and sometimes I'm wrong for days. Pink shirt Confise for example is actually Clovis, I think and tomorrow I could find out that's wrong too. I'm starting to see the appeal of name tags.) singing a song together as they worked so I moved closer to listen. Adonis explained to me (en francais and this part I believe I understood correctly) that the song was an old Protestant hymn from America, translated into Kirundi. Then there was something about spirituals sung by slaves in America. He said he likes very much to listen to Theo because he knows many proverbs. He also liked to listen to his grandfather. And here, where it gets interesting, is where I fall further and further down into the spaces between the words I know and can only just get the gist of things.

My sense is that he was talking about how much of his country's history is lost because there are so few people who live to be old. That stories don't get passed down. That even the number of people who remember the time before independence, the days of the Belgians (which was only 40 years ago remember) is small and getting smaller. He has an idea for a project to talk to older people, ask them questions about not just what they remember but what perhaps their parents and grandparent might have told them. And I'm sure there was more and I wanted to ask so questions but didn't remotely know the words and was pretty sure I wouldn't understand the answers.

It's hardest with the masons and other workmen who only speak Kirundi. Study hard as I may in the 4 weeks I'm here I can't possible get to the point of having a conversation. I'll be lucky if I get much past being able to tell them that the woman and her daughters are hoeing in their small field. I can say good morning and see you tomorrow. I can say "I give you bricks" and "I bring small stones over there?" and "I am not tired." But I can't participate in or even understand their long and jovial conversations with each other. My kingdom for a Babel Fish.

But there was also this at the end which Adonis said in his halting English: "To see mzungu here in Kamenge, to see John who is a professor working like we do, to see you working here with us is a good thing. Our country is poor. We need help and you come. We are happy to see you in our country."

It has happened several times walking down the street, and today even on the bus, we are drawn into conversations with people, usually in French, about the state of Burundi. Everyone knows and everyone says, "Our country is poor, can America help our country?" What can we do but say, "Nous essayerons. We will try."

Tonight I have no title

2008-07-17T12:50:00.000-05:00

No theme tonight, just some moments from the day.

While I was handing up bricks today Samual called me over to him. We'd been listening to some music on a transistor radio. Usually the songs are either in French or Kirundi but we'd just heard a few English songs in a row and there was another on at the moment.
"There are many American songs about love" Samual said.
"Yes," I said, "That's true."
"Why?" asked Adonis who was sitting next to the radio.
I was a little stumped. "Well, lots of people are in love or have been in love so many people can identify with love songs." Then after a some more thought, "What else do we have to sing about?"
Samual translated this into Kirundi for the others who were listening who didn't speak any English. There was much shaking of heads. Adonis told me, "In our country we sing about war, about poverty and being hungry." And sure enough when a Kirundi song came on I was told it was about death. The singer was telling how his brothers and sisters and parents had all been killed and he was warning death not to come for him. I told them there were some American songs which were about serious things but those didn't seem to be the songs that make it to Africa. They did not mention it but there are also a lot of songs about God as well religious programs on the radio. I can tell they are about God because I'm becoming very familiar with the Kirundi words for things like God, Savior, Lord and so on.

The way I study Kirundi in the evenings is to work on a series of lessons written by a woman named Betty Cox who was a missionary in equatorial Africa for about 40 years, starting in 1944. The lessons come in nice bite sized pieces and interspersed among translation assignments like, The man and his sons are hoeing in their field are things like, I have the light of Jesus in my heart and Our God is very great. I also finally got someone to teach me a song in Kirundi which it turns out is actually an English song that's been translated- Our God is an Awesome God.

John stayed home from the work camp today since his hand is still pretty swollen and Red and I came very close to getting to go to Kamenge on the bus by ourselves but Jocelyn came to take us. But then to come home Alexia asked me if I thought we would be all right going into town by ourselves. Yes! I told her, absolutely and enthusiastically yes, I have the money, I know how to pay and I know the way home from the market where the bus ends up. It wasn't a total foray into independence because she still walked us right up to the bus door but I'll take my little victories where I can get them.

Now probably because I felt I had a little something to prove (both to myself and our hosts) about being capable of doing things without an escort I paid particular attention to the change I was given. Jocelyn warns us all the time that people will charge us more for things because we are mzungus and either we won't know the difference or we won't care. She checks in after we pay the fare to be certain we are given the correct change. So when we were charged 300f instead of the usual 280 I polited objected- en francais. He told me I was mistaken, that the fare was 300f per person. I told him it was 280 yesterday. The passengers right around me all said, no, no it's 300. We went back and forth and soon 1/2 the bus was part of the discussion. I was constantly worried that I'd be hit with a barrage of French I didn't know and would not be able to answer or make my point but if there's one thing that foreign language instruction in America teaches you, it's how to buy things. I explained (patiently I think) that I understood the fare to be 300 to go to Kamenge and 280 to come back. They told me the fare had gone up. Today? I asked. Last week they replied. But yesterday I paid 280. Monday and Tuesday, I paid 280. My friends have all told me to pay 280. Your friends lied to you, they said. I don't think so I said and I know I have only ever paid 280 in the past. He must have given you a special price because you are a visitor. Every day? From 3 different people? The same special price? And tomorrow? How much will it cost me tomorrow? That at least made them laugh. Of course in the end, what could I do? It was mzungu vs. abantu and mzungu lost. Now the punchline to all of this is that the amount of money we were discussing was less than 4 cents. But as I said I was fixated on being about to come home and tell Jocelyn I had taken care of everything. Oh well, if only I'd been able to conduct the exchange in Kirundi. They'd have been laughing too much to argue.

On labor

2008-07-16T12:33:00.000-05:00

The rock gospel music coming from the church downstairs is pretty intense tonight. Wednesday is the night for the youth choir service. And when I say rock, I mean, ROCK. Drums and electric guitars are involved. So I'll try to write this in the lull between the end of service and the beginning of the nightly dance party at the Hotel Bouquet across the street.

The problem of labor and unemployment here in Burundi is huge and it's led to us having many weird gray area questions for ourselves. There's a large, disproportionately young population here (what does that mean? According to the CIA Fact book 46% of the populations is 14 years old and younger, about 50% is 15-64 and only 2% is older than 65. So pretend that 1/3 of the people in Florida were all the people in the whole US over 65). So there are not nearly enough jobs to go around. What that means on an observational level is that I see a lot of people everywhere, standing around, not having a job. What it means on a personal level is that 3 people cook our food for us and one of them also washes and irons our clothes. Hence the gray area.

When I thought about coming to Burundi, not as a tourist but to work and to help and to witness I didn't really think about cooking and clothes washing. There are some workcamps where people stay with host families and it makes sense that those people would just fold into the daily life of how that family accomplishes those tasks. For us, we live in rooms in and around the HROC office and I guess I just assumed I'd do what city people do, make my own food and wash my own clothes in whatever facilities were available. But the powers that be at AGLI being far more familiar with how things work here have arranged otherwise. In the first place, the need for jobs is, as I said, enormous, so part of the helpfulness of our being here is that our presence creates and pays for 3 people to have jobs which we're told also gives them good experience and references for getting the next job when we leave. In the second place, when I cook and clean for myself at home as I have done for my entire adult life, I do so with the benefit of a modern kitchen and a washer and dryer so it doesn't take all the live long day to make 3 meals and wash a weeks worth of clothes. So what at home are incidental activities, here are concerted endeavors.

It's peculiar when you think about it. Here we are in a city. There are SUVs instead of horse and carts, AK47 rifles instead of spears or arrows and cell phones instead of... nothing. But the cooking and the clothes washing are still done the way they were done at the dawn of the inventions of charcoal and the wash basin. I don't know of anyone here (maybe some rich people we haven't met) who have a kitchen like we think of a kitchen. Here we have, for example, a room with a refrigerator and a sink and a countertop. How does one cook, you ask? Over a charcoal fire in a metal brazier on the floor is the answer. It gets pretty smoky which is why I think more often in actual homes the cooking takes place outside. The charcoal is not the barbeque briquettes that we think of but wood which has been burnt down. I watched tonight as Mirielle lit the fire- she uses a twisted up plastic bag which she holds burning over the coals until they catch. Then there's a lot of fanning and waving and waiting for enough heat. The pots and pans sit directly on the coals. To adjust the heat she moves a few coals from one side to another. There's nothing like an oven so if you want bread or anything baked you get it at nearby bakery. I imagine there probaby are places too where you could bring things to be baked as well.

All the food is local and of course there's nothing packaged or pre-prepared so what with all the washing and peeling and chopping in addition to the actual cooking, dinner is, on average I'd say, a 2 hour endeavor. That doesn't include the shopping. After dinner Dina and Mirielle wash the dishes and put everything away. Our contribution is to get to clear the table and bring everything into the kitchen. I'd love to at least pitch in and wash the dishes but I guess the point is not to give people 1/2 a job or 3/4 of a job but a whole actually job and all the tasks that go with it because that's what they'll be hoping to do when we leave.

Clothes washing is another intensive labor because it too is all manual (and no John it is not done with rocks on a river bank). I haven't been able to watch the whole process but it involves wash basins and hanging things up to dry which takes about 2 days with no spin cycle to wring out the excess water and then of course, ironing. Now none of the clothes I brought with me have ever seen an iron and if it were up to me I'd say that step could be skipped. But Ciza (pronouced chee-za) is a pro and must do his job to the nth degree or it stops being a job he's doing and therefore something to be proud of and and becomes a charity he's being given and something to feel indebted about. At least that's how it has been explained to me, but I'm still not really comfortable with the feeling it gives me. There's an air of hierarchy about it.

(Man I am getting good at killing mosquitoes. It's too bad they don't live long enough to tell their friends and children that I am not to be trifled with.)

All of which is why it was such a joy and relief tonight when Jocelyn offered to come over and teach me how to make capatis. They are the Burundian version of that age old stand by- flat bread. We'd had some at the restaurant one day which we all really enjoyed and I asked her if she'd show me. So tonight I spent a happy hour in the kitchen, rolling out dough with a Fanta bottle and kneading in oil and then frying it over the charcoal fire. In spite of the smoke I found myself breathing easier, me and Jocelyn and Mireille in the kitchen together.

The workcamp is another labor quandry. Jobs being so scarce I'd feel pretty terrible if I thought my volunteer building was putting someone out of a much needed job. But looking around the worksite each day and judging from the (lately at least) small amount of work there is for us to do, it seems to me that they've hired enough people to do the work, without factoring us in, and then whatever we and the other voluteers do is just that much less which has to be done by the others. So then I get into this whole quandry of the necessity of us in this equation at all.

The times when we're actually working, whatever it is we're doing- like today pretty much all I did was hand bricks up to the masons on the staging- are the times when I feel most concretely helpful. I am helping to build this wall and it feels good. But the point of the endeavor is not to make me feel good but to build the wall and since there are enough paid assistants to keep the masons adequately supplied then am I just being humored in my fanciful mzungu desire to build something in Burundi? I mean in some ways it is exactly the problem you want to have. We have so many volunteers now including some women from the neighborhood who want to help and probably also don't mind the lunch for themselves and the children they bring along, that there are ever smaller and smaller amounts of work for each person. But instead of turning people away, we just each do a little bit less. This in some ways decreases my sense of personal accomplishment at the end of the day at which point I just remind myself, that the walls and the clinic and the community are the endgame so I can feel personally accomplished about that rather than the number of bricks I personally hefted. I'm not 100% satisfied with the answers I've found to the questions we ask ourselves and maybe I won't ever be. But I do know, speaking only from an utterly selfish, Sara-centered point of view, I am so glad to be here, doing any kind of work, with my Burundian friends.

PS. Jocelyn swears that 'urukuma' doesn't mean anything and that they were only laughing at me essentially saying a nonsense word. But really, how funny can saying "thamb" possibly be?

Chicago Connections

2008-07-15T14:06:00.000-05:00

Remember how I said the buses have names painted on the back? Several times I've seen the New York Yankees bus and I kept thinking if ever I met someone who was looking for a name to paint on his bus, I'd suggest Chicago Cubs. Today coming home the bus parked in front of us in the Kamenge dock was named Chicago Bulls. This after seeing someone walking down the street with a Chicago Bears sweatshirt and someone else with a Chicago Bulls t-shirt. Now the thing you have to bear in mind about all this is that at least as far as the clothes go, 99 times out of 100 I'd say people here have no personal relationship with the things written on their T-shirts. Or for that matter with the brand names of their other items of clothings. Africa is where your clothes go to die. Huge shipments of cast off, second hand clothes come in and are sold in the markets and are worn until they no longer serve the function of being clothes. I have no earthly notion what decision making process people go through when picking things out but I know it has nothing to do with logos or messages. This makes for some pretty interesting juxtapositions some times. A grandmother wearing a "What Happens in Vegas..." t-shirt over her traditional printed skirt. A young man wearing a 'play girl' t-shirt. A older man wearing (I kid you not) "My grandma went to Texas and all she brought me was this lousy T-shirt." Plus I'm guessing that Eminem doesn't actually have as many fans here in Burundi as you'd be lead to believe by the number of people wearing Eminem t-shirts. Something else I'd read and was reminded of tonight is that whenever there's a big sporting event like a SuperBowl or World Series or whatever they make a gajillion shirts for either outcome and then ship the ones that turn out to be wrong off to Africa's T-shirt market. So it's possible that somewhere here in Burundi someone is wearing a t-shirt celebrating the Chicago Bears as the SuperBowl Champions of 2007. If I find it Lauren, I'll bring it home. It's weird to thing about the whole message of a message tshirt being rendered meaningless along with the finer distinctions of brand. Gap, Adidas, Sean John, Izod, whatever, have all been stripped of their cache or stigma. Generally speaking the men and boys here dress exactly like the men in boys in America. They are in fact, wearing the exact same clothes which were worn by men and boys in America, except that shorts are still a rarish sight. It's just that for them, a shirt is a shirt. Pants are pants. And the variable which has meaning is cleanliness or degree of wear. Women's wear is a whole other story- as is so often the case. You'll see women in full on traditional dress, a large patterned print skirt with a matching patterned blouse with maybe even another wrap on top of that. You'll also see lots and lots of women in the aforementioned oversized T-shirts with a traditional skirt. And more and more now, at least in the city you'll also see women in full on Western wear, including pants which apparently as recently as a year ago you never saw.

My other Chicago connection of the day is that we spent the better part of the evening hanging out with Jefferson Mok a fellow Chicagoan here in Burundi. I came across his blog (which I highly recommend by the way) in my Burundi alerts and had to laugh as I read through his accounts of being at some of the exact same events we'd attended. So we made a Fanta appointment to swap learning Kirundi notes and of course celebrate being from Barak Obama's home town. We did a pretty good job of not entirely monopolizing the conversation with all things Chicago, mostly because the work he's doing is so intriguing. He got here three weeks ago- just a week before we did- and is working on setting up a shelter with programs for former female child soldiers who have now been demobilized. Like I said, check out his blog for further details.

It was a very slow day at the work camp. John had sprained his wrist yesterday from a fall and spent the day inside reading. Workwise, he didn't miss much. The masons in their own special way re-asserted their supremacy in the brick laying and budongo troweling department working so concertedly on one wall section at a time that there was literally no place for us to edge in and help with that part of things. So it was a little bit of brick and budongo shifting to make sure their piles stayed full and a lot of waiting around. Plus new volunteers keep popping up, women from the community who want to help and who then join us for lunch and today a young woman who just finished at university- in social work and community programs- and is hoping to get a job working with FWA in the future. Her English is very good and she was quite happy to help me work on my Kirundi which is great because explaining to Kirundi only or even Kirundi/French speakers that I would like to learn to conjugate the verb they just told me in 1st person singular form has led to some pretty funny who's on first type, roundabout conversations.

Jonathan, taking his role as umwigisha wanje very seriously today did actually quiz me on the way to lunch, which reminds me I'd better know the word for 'door' tomorrow or he is going to flunk me. Not satisfied with simply knowing that 'tree' is 'igiti' he requires that I also know the Kirundi names for the different kinds of trees. I couldn't explain to him that the harder part of that equation was me being able to tell the difference between a mango tree and an avocado tree and an orange tree with out the fruits themselves in evidence, never mind remembering the Kirundi names.

My hilarious Kirundi moment of the day: Maxime was quizzing me on Kirundi for different body parts. I felt pretty confident about this since I'd been working on it with Jonathan. Hand I got, head, heart, ear, nose, finger. And then I said crooking my thumb, "urukuma" for thumb. And Marite who'd been listening the whole time nearly fell over laughing. Maxime was laughing too as he corrected me, "urukumu." And there's Marite still fit to be tied. So I asked Maxime in French what was so funny, why was Marite laughing at me? And he replied that I had said something else. But did not elaborate what, precisely I had said. It is now my mission in life to find out.

A day in the life, largely concerned with food

2008-07-14T15:21:00.000-05:00

Well here we are at about the 1/2 way point in our sojourn so it seems like a good moment to describe what our day is generally like. I also hope to dispel a few misconceptions, mostly held by my brother, about how things would be.

We get up around 7am dress and have breakfast which is bread and usually some fried egg and fruit. Recently we also starting having a kind of pineapple juice blend which makes a nice change from water, all the time water (I generally pass on the Fanta). I guess the Burundians, and we're told Africans in general, only eat one meal a day so they don't quite know what to make of this whole 'breakfast' thing. When we mentioned one evening that we really liked the soup, we got soup the next morning for breakfast. And now whenever we have soup for dinner, it usually also shows up for breakfast the next morning. Then we walk to the market where we smush into a bus. Sometimes Jocelyn comes with us- which is nice because then she can translate the conversations going on around us. Many conversations end up involving the whole bus. If you're half sitting in someone's lap, you might as well insert yourself in their conversation too. We get off in Kamenge and walk to the clinic accompanied by the usual children's chorus. We walk the same way at about the same time every day and see pretty much the same kids but they get excited every time.

At the clinic we go around and greet everyone with a handshake. If their hands happen to be full of mud or brick dust or cement they'll offer up their forearm and we shake that instead. See there's even a formality for being dirty. Then John changes into his work shirt and I change into my work clothes. I've been wearing the same shirt and pants at the work site for 6 days now. So I fit right in with the paid Burundian labor who do pretty much the same thing. It makes it a lot easier to remember everyone's name. Guy in the pink shirt. Confise. Every day. Pink shirt, Confise. Now somehow when Claire and Jocelyn and Odette pitch in- usually wearing skirts by the way- they manage while doing exactly the same work I'm doing, to stay clean. I end up covered in red dirt and cement and now mud. They say when you have to wash your own clothes without a washing machine, you learn to keep clean. And I have noticed that the Burundians never sit down on the ground. Even when we were working on the rebar cages for the cement which is all clipping and tying wire really close to the ground they always chose to hunker on their feet rather than sit cross legged.

We work on whatever the task of the moment is- hauling cement or mud or bricks or stones or laying bricks or slinging mud or whatever until about 10:30am when it's time for a Fanta break. Also a little snack, usually bread and margarine. But it's only the voluteers and sometimes the clinic staff (us and Eric and Odette and Jonathan and Samual, etc.) who come inside for Fanta. There's a whole thing we haven't quite figured out about differences between the paid skilled labor and the rest of us. Anyway then it's back to work til lunch time around 12:30. (All times by the way are approximate. I haven't been wearing a watch and few of the others do though I have found that there is more of a concept of time than I was led to believe. Someone always knows what time it is. Just not me.)

And sometimes there's not a lot of work for us to do. When they are working on laying the corner bricks, that has to be pretty precise so the four masons do that and the rest of us wait around, ready to bring them bricks or mud. During these down times I'll try to get Jonathan or one of the others to teach me a new word or two. Since I can't really write things down I need a lot of repetition and very often I find I must be altering the words slightly as I repeat them (like playing a game of telephone with myself) so that by the time I repeat them back to Jonathan an hour later, they've evolved into entirely different words and he shakes his head at me.

For lunch we (again just the workcampers, clinic staff we) walk about 10 minutes to the FWA restaurant. Three months ago FWA opened a restaurant to give employment to women from the clinic with HIV/AIDS. It's very simple, 2 rooms with a couple of tables, a store room and a place for the pots and pans and things. The cooking is done outside over a charcoal fire. The menu is a piece of notebook paper tacked up to the wall which in a combination of Swahili and Kirunid offers: Rice and Beans 400f (about 40 cents) Rice and Beans and Cabbage 500f. There's a meat option and then a couple different combinations of rice, beans, cabbage and meat. The most expensive combo-rice, beans & meat is 1000f. There's no electricity which means there's no fridge which means there's no Fanta, so that's probably hurting their business a bit. We just bring our own water. For us they like to experiment with new food options to maybe add to the menu so though we usually have some combination of rice and beans and meat there's also some form of potato, sometimes the rice is replaced with pasta and sometimes the meat is goat meatballs in a tomato sauce instead of stewed cow in a tomato sauce. While we eat there's often lively conversation in Kirundi which eventually Odette or Claire translates the gist of for us but things must get left out because the translation is never nearly as funny as the conversation itself apparently was. Then after conjugating our way through from I am hungry, you are hungry, he is hungry, etc. to I am full, you are full, he is full etc. in Kirundi, we walk back to work for another couple hours til 3pm. Then we wash our hands and change our clothes if we have them, smush back into a bus and come home.

At home it's cold showers and clean clothes and usually a walk and some errands before its time for dinner and darkness. Dinner comes out lined up in matching matrushka pots- from a big pot of rice, down through potato option, peas & carrots, and stewed beef in a tomato sauce in the last little baby pot. Every night, pretty much exactly the same thing. Every now and then the rice is pasta shells, the peas become a local green spinachy thing or the stewed beef is meatballs. Always in a tomato sauce. Sometimes there's green soup. Oh and fruit. Always some fruit option. So for those of you who have been keeping track the answer is no, no dairy. No cheese, no milk, no actual butter. That day we were up country we did try a bit of a thick yogurty drink which Pastor Sara offered us (sorry Nurse Karen for breaking the no unpasteurized dairy rule). And we tried to buy some ice cream for our 4th of July party but a pint costs $30. Yes, 29500f the equivalent of just under $30 US dollars. So yeah, no dairy for us. Also virtually no refined sugar- aside from the Fanta which as I've said I avoid when I can without being rude. And I have to say I don't miss it nearly as much as I thought I would, probably because of the fruit. I'm not saying I won't be stuffing my face with ice cream the moment I get home right after I take a hot shower for the first time in a month (note to roommates: get ice cream. By the way did I ever tell you guys that the strawberry cheesecake ice cream in the freezer was a buy one get one free thing and please eat it because it will be all freezer burned by the time I get back? Sorry to subject the rest of you to that but I just this second remembered about that ice cream and everyone's so scrupulous about not eating other people's food I just know it would still be sitting there, not good anymore. Anyway if you're not one of my roommates, now you can invite yourself over for strawberry cheesecake ice cream.)

Then after dinner we have many quiet hours of reading and writing and studying and skyping or chatting and then bed to start the whole thing over again. Speaking of which it is way past my bed time.

Personal Space

2008-07-13T14:22:00.000-05:00

A shortish (for real this time) entry tonight as we had an unexpectedly long day.

Alexia invited us to the first mass of her cousin who was ordained as a priest in the Catholic Church yesterday. This also included the reception afterwards. Now, once upon a time I myself was Catholic and I recall that mass lasted about an hour. But I guess first masses are different and I'd imagine the Burundian fondness for speech making also had something to do with mass lasting 3 hours and the reception another 3 after that. I will also say that no Catholic mass I have ever been to had 2 dancing troupes- 1 girls in bright colored flowing robes with flowered headbands, 1 boys in traditional dress including tall grass headresses; drum, trumpet and flag waving fanfare for the presentation of the host; or applause. The trumpet, drum and flag waving fanfare was my favorite because a few times early on the trumpet would end on a bit of a sour note which caused the audience to laugh and then every time they played after that the boys sitting behind me would giggle in anticipation of the final note.

The reception was very much like the wedding reception we went to. Audience was split in two and looking at each other. Fanta was offered. Also beer, the Catholics having no problem at all with alcohol. There was more dancing and singing and also some traditional Burundian drumming. Which brings me to my observation about personal space.

I had noticed at the big Independence Day reception with the president that people got really close to the drummers while they were performing. Not really close to watch, really close while they were walking by or chatting with a friend or setting down a drink. Really close while seemingly not paying attention at all. Several times I was certain someone was about to be bashed in the head with a drumstick. Today while the drummers were processing in and while the dancing girls were dancing, people would walk right through them, I mean right through the middle of the dance to go and greet the new priest or set their glasses on the table. On the street too I notice people will maintain their trajectory even if it means brushing right past you. It's as if the entire nation has a personal space index of 0. How else do the buses built for 24 people fit 30?

What's even more unnerving is that this goes for the drivers too. If a car or bus or motorcycle is making a turn where people are crossing, well, it just makes the turn which is its business and expects the people to not get hit which is their business. They'll honk, but they won't swerve and they certainly won't slow down.

And what seems odd to me is that it sort of works. No one did get bashed with a drumstick, the dancers didn't miss a step and rarely, rarely have I ever seen a Burundian scurry out of the way of anything. Sure we see about one accident a day on our way to or from the clinic but given the fact that there are no traffic lights or speed limits and the 3 stop signs I've seen were all completely ignored (and I don't just mean Chicago rolling stop ignored, it's really as if they aren't there at all) and there are no lines in the streets and as far as I can tell 'drive on the right' and 'wear a seat belt' are the only rules at all, wouldn't you think there'd be accidents much more often? It makes going for a walk (or, you know, anywhere) more of an adventure than I'm usually looking for but it all seems to work out in the end.

And now for something completely different

2008-07-12T12:56:00.000-05:00

We had a relatively quiet day, resting up after a week of hard work. The treat for the day was that Adrien invited us to join him and Jonathan at a football game- Burundi v. Cameroon. We then asked Eric, one of our Burundian workcamp counterparts, to join us. After watching much of the World Cup 2 years ago I must say I was very excited to see my first live game. It's quite different from watching, say, a Cubs game.

1. It costs the equivalent of $5.
2. Policemen with guns check your ticket.
3. You watch from inside, essentially, a giant cage.
4. There's only an announcer at the beginning and the end and no place I could see where anyone keeps score. Though considering the kind of scores football usually has, it's not at all hard to remember.
5. No one gets up and walks around during the game.
6. During the entire 1 st 1/2 no one tried to sell anyone anything. At half time 2 guys went around with cardboard boxes filled with a variety of sweets. No beverages were for sale.
7. No one was drunk.

Cameroon won, 1-0, but it was still great fun to watch. There was constant commentary going on all around us- in Kirundi of course so we understood none of it. Occasionally Adrien would lean over and give us the gist of the conversations, people are mad at the coach, the players don't get paid very much so how can you expect them to play well, seriously what is the coach thinking? I like that it really felt like a community event. People weren't just talking to their neighbors but to everyone within hearing distance. There was lots of back and forth like friends watching a game in a bar. If you happen to have 200 friends and go to a bar that serves no drinks, just Tootsie Pops and foil packets of cookies.

After the game all the players on both sides had plastic bottles of water which they drank and then threw down on the field. In minutes the field was rushed by about 3 dozen kids from the bleachers. I thought they were coming to mob the players but what they were really after were the bottles. In about 20 seconds they'd collected them all and then just generally romped around on the field. A bunch were doing cartwheels and I even saw a few back handsprings- clearly self taught. The rest just threw themselves at the ground, I guess enjoying the spring in the grass. Eventually one lone policeman- unarmed- came to shoo them away and I had to laugh at how soundly he was ignored. The three kids closest to him would look like they were starting to walk off the field but then as soon as he turned around to point at someone else, they'd come right back.

On the way home, right by our corner we passed 2 piles of burning garbage. One of the things I will not miss about Bujumbura is the frequent smoke and smell of burning garbage. The first couple of nights I was here I kept thinking someone was standing right under the window, smoking a cigarette. Turns out it was just garbage fires down wind of us (or is it up wind?). There's a haze over the entire city from the hundreds of smoldering piles. That's what you do it seems if there's no public garbage collection service, if you can't reuse it, you burn it.

Once we got back home Jonathan gave me a vocabulary lesson, teaching me the Kirundi words for head, hair, hand, fingers, mouth, nose and of course, butt. I called him umwigisha wanje (my teacher) so I'm guessing I'd better study because he'll probably quiz me when we return to work on Monday.

There are children here

2008-07-11T12:30:00.000-05:00

In 1991 Alex Kotlowitz published a book about 2 kids growing up in the projects on the South Side of Chicago called, There Are No Children Here. I haven't read it yet- though I hear it's great- but I gather that the premise behind the title is that children who grow up in poverty forced to face very grown up issues like death and violence, are robbed of their childhoods. I've been thinking about this a lot lately as we walk each day through Kamenge.

If I said it at the beginning of each and every post I still don't think I could convey the full weight of the following statement: There are a lot of children here. In Burundi, in Bujumbura, in Kamenge, there are a lot of children of all ages. From babies tightly wrapped to their mother's backs (Someday I want to see how this is done. It seems like it would have to be a two person operation but I know the mothers can do it by themselves.), to toddlers teetering like drunken sailors, to all knees & elbows adolescents, there are a lot of children here.

When we go anywhere in Kamenge, children call out to us from all sides, from down the street, from blocks away, "Mzungu!" Often there's a chant, started by a few and picked up by others, "Mzungu bon BON! Mzungu bon BON!" You must be able to tell we're coming for half a mile. Santa Claus walking down Main Street in July would not get more joyful and excited attention than we do. And though their chant is a plea for candy, and though they'll also ask us for cake or cookies or sweets, they never seem disappointed when we say no. They seem happy enough just to shake our hands. Each child must have his or her hand shaken, must be told Jambo or Bonjour or Hello, a wave and a general greeting will not suffice.

Here's the thing. I could tell you all the awful parts about being a child in Kamenge. I could tell you that every other child has a runny nose and a cough. That most only have one article of clothing and it's filthy and coming apart at the seams. That I saw 2 sisters sharing a single pair of shoes, each with one shod foot. That I saw a four year old doing her own laundry in a tub in the front yard. That I saw an 8 year old with a baby strapped to her back and a huge bag of onions balanced on her head. I could tell you about mysterious conical protrusions from stomachs and white patches on scalps. I could tell you about scabs and scars and the smells of the gutter. But it's too hard to write that when I know I'll be back on Monday to see some more. Someday I'll try to describe that part, but not today. Instead I want to write about how these children still, still manage to snatch a childhood from the jaws of poverty.

With all the thousands of kids and all the nothing they have you'd think the sound of Kamenge would be an incessant wail of wants and needs. There is a constant soundtrack, but whenever I pause a moment from our work at the clinic what I hear is the sound of permanent recess. Children talking, children laughing, children shouting for other children to come and join them. Primary school doesn't start until kids are seven and it's summer anyway and their parents are working every moment which means the children are mostly left to their own devices. So here's what they do, when they aren't running after mzungus to ask for candy.

The other thing they always ask us for is our water bottles. A water bottle is an incredibly versatile item. They can be flattened and crumpled and bundled together to make a ball suitable for playing football (that's soccer for the American impaired). It can be filled with sand, tied with a string and hung from a tree as a kind of tether ball. It can be blown like a flute or beaten against anything like a drum. Today Jonathan taught me a game kids play which is like jacks but they use only stones and the left hand crooked like a croquet wicket. There were other kids who had scratched into the dirt a model of a football field with stones standing in for the goal posts and bottle caps for players. They also know how to make a ball out of scraps of fabric or plastic bag tied around some other hidden piece of refuse. There's a game which looks something like checkers, also played with bottle caps. And, proving that all children everywhere throughout all of time know a good game when they find it, there's always rolling a semi inflated much patched bicycle inner tube down the street by running along side and knocking it with a stick.

Two more pictures. As we were leaving today I saw two little girls with red ribbons clutched in their hands, those thin plastic ribbons you most often see tied to balloons. They did not have balloons but the other end of the ribbons hovered in the air beside them. They were each tied around the abdomen of a live dragonfly. I was somewhat taken aback and a little apalled but also intrigued by what a strange and delicate labor that must have been, to catch and tether a dragonfly.

Two days ago I saw a child (impossible to tell if it was a boy or girl, so many of them have the same close shaved hair and boys and girls shirts are worn interchangably by either) trying to fly a homemade kite. The kite itself was a piece of notebook paper, the tail a strip of something lighter and crinkly- could have been a piece of plastic bag or even toilent paper. But the thing that got me was the string. A piece of string long enough to fly a kite is hard to come by and is far more likely to be put to a useful purpose- like keeping the lines of a brick wall straight as you build it. So this child must have collected every little bit of string he or she could find (I imagine it taking a week, or at leat all day), 20 bits tied with 40 knots to make frayed and fringing string. It didn't get very high but the way this child was laughing on the run- and it didn't just drag on the ground this kite, it flew, however low- it seemed to be worth the effort.

I don't understand how they keep smiling, how they keep laughing and playing and making kites unless maybe they don't know, it's not supposed to be like this. Or that it is possible to become accustomed to that which no one ought ever be subjected. And I don't know if it's a blessing or a tragedy that in spite of poverty and deprivation, in spite of the worst that war can do, there are still children here.

Another Brick in the Wall

2008-07-10T12:44:00.000-05:00

Well my friends, a number of you have sent emails to say hi (thanks by the way) and have mentioned that you are behind in your blog reading. Can't imagine why. It's not like I go on and on for paragraph after paragraph about, oh wait. I guess I do. So I'll spare you the blow by blow account of how I learned to make a brick wall today. Here's the short version.

A lot of us were sitting in the shade watching the bricklayers work and waiting for the exciting moment when one of them would say "Amatafari" and then we'd all leap up and ferry a bunch of bricks for about 10 minutes and then sit back down to wait some more. Fortunately Red, probably with visions of us sitting around listening to the Burundians chatting in Kirundi for hours, boldly went where no one had gone before. To ask Samuel if she could learn how to lay bricks. Now laying the bricks on the ends was clearly a precision operation requiring 2 levels and lots of little taps here and there. This part could only really be done by the professionals but laying the bricks on the wall between the two ends is a little less exacting. They'd stretch a string (umagoze) taut from one end to the other and use this to make sure things stayed straight. Ultimately most of the actual brick laying was still done by the professionals but the rest of us could plunge our hands into the mud (budongo) and throw small blobs at the cracks between the amatafari and then slather more budongo all over the top once that was done. Along would come the bricklayers with their trowels poking and tapping at things, up moves the umagoze and the whole operation starts over. I wonder if the Masons will come after us now. Certainly Nurse Karen at the Northwestern Travel Clinic will probably have things to say about spending hours digging around bare handed in budongo made from Kamenge dirt and Kamenge water. A person might as well go swimming in Lake Tanganyika. I know, I said it would be the short version. And you believed me. House of Lies opens its first international franchise.

My Kirundi accomplishement of the day was learning how to conjugate I am tired (we are tired, you are tired, he is tired) even though I felt less tired than any other day this week.

Once we got home and cleaned up I took my journal out to the giant tree on the corner (an acacia? Andrew the amateur plantiologist thinks?). It has these huge gnarled roots that come up out of the ground like little walls and a few worn boards have been bolted to some of them creating little seating areas all around. I sat for half an hour or so and watched the traffic go by. A coulple of times men who'd seen me at Kamenge church came over to shake my hand and say good evening. Greetings and how are you's all being safely in the land of Kirundi I pretty much understand and can say.

Here are a couple of things I saw.
A man with a double decker crate of chicks balanced on his head.
A man with an armload of folded 2nd hand clothes in his arms. Stopped by another man who picks out a pair of pants and holds it up to himself to see if it will fit.
A dozen different white Land Rovers and Land Cruisers with the logo's of NGO painted on the doors and etched into the glass of the windows.
A bicycle, its gears squeaking as it toiled up the hill loaded with manioc.
A big group of fancy dressed folks- men in sharp suits, women in bright national dress, wraps draped over one shoulder, wait on the corner til they can cross. Nearest thing I've ever seen to Burundians hurrying when they cross the street.
Dozens of motorcycle taxis, drivers in helmets, passengers not, the helmet they're supposed to wear still tucked between the handlebars.

I really will stop now.

How many guns have you seen today?

2008-07-09T13:18:00.000-05:00

Me? I saw 12 in the half hour it takes us to walk to the bus and then ride it to Kamenge. All AK47 rifles held by policemen, usually in a casual way. Slung across the back, laid crosswise in a sitting lap, upside down by the handle, stock on the ground, barrel against the leg. They may be used to it but I'm still not. The other day we were in a craft market and I almost bumped into a rifle carrying soldier and still had a moment of thinking "Hey that guy's got a huge gun" as if I hadn't been seeing men with guns ever since we arrived in Africa.

There are police everywhere, usually in pairs, recognizable by, well, the guns and their cobalt blue uniforms which are essentially the same as the army uniform without the camoflauge pattern. You see them on most street corners, walking down the street, at the entrances of government buildings and riding around in those converted pickup trucks with the two outward facing benches. You know the kind I mean, for when you need to deploy 8 men with guns at once. I have also seen them riding buses, bicycles and motorcylces. I will say too that not all of them have the rifles. Some have nightstick/batons. And I wonder as I look at all these policemen, what do they do? Most often I see them either sitting or standing, just watching, waiting for something to happen I guess. Sometimes they say hello to us if we say hello to them. Most look young and some have a kind of inaccessible expression on their faces. Maybe its the naif in me which makes me think these are the men who have killed someone. Foolish I suppose to think I'd be able to tell. It reminds me of a line from a play. The character says something like, "I thought everything would change if I killed a man but the only thing that changed, was thinking anything would change." I want to believe that's not true. And I suppose it's not really the policemen themselves or the fact that there are so many of them that makes me think of it. It's those AK47 assault rifles.

On the trip up country we had to pass through 2 police roadblocks. There'd be razor wire coiled across the road and we'd stop. Fidel would hand over his papers and then he'd have to go through a test of the car. Right blinker, left blinker, hazards, windshield wipers, horn, lights. First with the officer standing in front of the car, then behind it. We were always able to go through and had no problems at all but there's something about being asked to follow instructions given by a man carrying a rifle that just can't possibly feel routine.

I say men with guns by the way because the very few female police officers I've seen in Bujumbura were of the nightstick carrying persuasion. During the Independence Day parade the police processed in troops just before the army. I saw 4 women among the hundreds of officers. Eli tells us they come from the bush where they were soldiers. There are also some women in the army, same story but I didn't see any of them in the parade. Eli says they're probably still out in the bush.

The work camp update is that the bricks arrived yesterday! And what a production it was. A huge truck backed up to the clinic gate and 1/2 a dozen men from the brick factory started unloading stacks of bricks. By the time they were done maybe an hour later they were all covered with a fine white dust from the bricks. While they were unloading Samuel would keep an eye on the stacks and count to make certain there were 30 bricks in each. Sometimes I'd see him add 2 or 4 bricks to the top if he found it short. Then a minute later I'd see one of the men unloading the bricks pulling 2 bricks off the top of a pile to start the next stack. A constant battle of perserverance. Nor was it over once everything had been unloaded. Then the counting of the stacks began. The Florida recount of 2000 was not conducted with more negotiation and accusation of wrong doing than counting these15,000 (or16,500 depending on who you ask) bricks. I wasn't watching the whole thing, I only saw 2 counts including the last one in which each stack was marked with streak of charcoal to prove it had been counted. John says there were 2 other counts prior to the ones I'd seen. I'm not even sure what the final result was but I did get a lot out of hearing someone count that many times in Kirundi. Now I can count to 10!
I also had my first successful communication of a non greeting/leave taking with Martin who only speaks Kirundi. To him it probably sounded like this: "Stones street, stones (gesture to indicate 'here')?" I'm like the Tarzan of Kirundi.

AVP and 1 More Plea

2008-07-08T13:00:00.000-05:00

Here's the little recap of our AVP workshop that I promised.

Last week for 3 days a group of about 15 people gathered at the clinic for an Alternatives to Violence Project workshop, facilitated by John, Adrien and Virginie. There was the 3 of us workcampers plus Andrew, everyone who works at the clinic and then some folks from the neighborhood. One woman came all the way from up country in hopes of bringing some ideas back home with her. For the 2nd half of the first day we even had the chief of Kamenge, who looked like he was all of 15 but must at least have been in his twenties.

AVP originated as a program in prisons in New York several decades ago and has spread out considerably from there. There's a whole section of it that's pretty much word for word the same as Marshall Rosenberg's fundamentals of Non Violent Communication. Start with an observation, communicate your feeling using 'I' statements instead of 'you' statements, explain the why of the feeling (the need not being met) and make a request. There were exercises for approaching other peoples difficulties with empathy, illustrations of the ineffectiveness of combative communication, intense discussions and games.

Lots and lots of games. They're meant to help everyone operate at the same level (that of a child) as well as break the ice and provide a physical respite from sitting around talking.
And you know what most of the games were? The same games theatre students have been playing for generations. We played Zip Zap Boing, we played Donkey/Elephant (except here it was Igiti (tree)/Inshovu (elephant) and there was also a Skunk involved, we played Big Wind which is like a cross between musical chairs and Steal the Bacon. We played Molasses Tag. We even did the one where everyone stands in a circle and you create a tossing pattern and then add in more objects til everyone is always either throwing or catching. We did the count to 20 thing where on impulse you each say the numbers from 1 to 20 in order and if anyone talks on top of anyone else you have to start over. This is particularly difficult when people are counting in 3 different languages and not everyone knows all three. Who'd have thought, theatre games, healing the wounds of the world.

It was quite an amazing experience and because of our group agreement about confidentiality I can't really go in to all the reasons why except to say that hard questions were asked, we thought a long time about the answers without coming to any real conclusions (they weren't really the kinds of questions which have definitive solutions) and left feeling much more strongly connected to each other than when we'd started 3 days ago. I will also say it's a whole different ball game having discussions about violence with people who've lived through a civil war in a developing nation. During any exercise when we were asked to use examples from our own lives, I couldn't help but feel, well, lame for say talking about getting someone not to yell at people.

Anyway I think its a really helpful way to start our time working together. Now I just wish that the skilled labor construction guys could have been a part of it too. I haven't learned most of their names even and they pretty much only speak Kirundi so without the benefit of the constant translation we had at the workshop all we can do is point at things and work. We did have a nice little moment today though while I was sitting in the back and we were all waiting for the next wheelbarrow full of cement to come from the front. I started juggling some stones and one of the guys who pours and shapes and spreads the cement picked up some stones too and tried to show me he could 'shower' and then indicated that his failure to do so was because of the stones. Jonathan was also impressed which was what I'd been going for in the first place.

Last thing. We were talking to Alexia today about the work the clinic does and she explained that in the hospitals a person has to pay before they receive any treatment, even in the emergency room (which by the way is the free market economy approach to health care taken to its worst case scenario endgame). Sometimes doctors and nurses will pay for medicine or supplies for patients out of their own pocket when the hospital administration won't admit someone . At the clinic, everyone gets treatment and if they can't pay the clinic has a little fund they can dip into to cover things. There are limits though to what the clinic can do since it's not yet certified. They can't, for example distribute anti-retrovirals for HIV/AIDS. That's why it's so very important that these three rooms get built. Unfortunately, Alexia is worried that we don't have enough money. The Burundi workcamp is the smallest one you see and was supposed to have at least one more person who backed out because of the rebel action that was going on in April/May. Anyway the point of all this is to say that if you've been reading these blogs and thinking, "I'm sorry I missed my chance to make a donation" let me tell you, it's not too late! You can still go to www.aglionline.org and make a contribution. Just be sure to earmark it for Burundi and the Kamenge Clinic. Not that everything AGLI does isn't worth supporting, it is, it's just that these are the people I know. Anyway most of you have already been super generous and the people of Kamenge and I thank you for it. Just want to be sure everyone has an opportunity to participate.

Putting the Work in Workcamp

2008-07-07T12:45:00.000-05:00

At some point I do want to tell you about the AVP workshop we did last week but we're all so excited about starting to work today, I'm going to talk about that instead.

We started in right away, just walked through the gate and started picking up stones. Today we were laying the foundation for the new brick wall going around the clinic. If you've ever wondered how people used to build those old stone walls you sometimes see, I've now become something of an observational expert. During the AVP workshop we'd seen people digging a deep 2 foot wide trench behind the clinic. This morning when we arrived the skilled workers were piling large stones in the trench and putting a mud made of red clay & sand mixed with water in the cracks. They had small mallets which they used to chip pieces off the stones to get them to fit they way they wanted to. Often they'd search around a bit for the right shaped stone and then chip away at it to make it just right. Like reverse engineering a puzzle. So our first task was bringing them stones along with buckets and wheelbarrows full of mud. I learned the Kirundi for small stone (amawiye ritoya) and large stone (amawiye rine). Before long we were pretty much covered with red streaks from the mud. By we I mean the mzungus. Somehow Odette, Eric, Alexia, Claire and Maxime all managed to stay clean while doing exactly the same work we were doing.

Then for a while John and I worked with Samuel on making the rebar supports for the cement bracing of the wall. The rebar comes in long pieces bent like a paperclip several times over. So first Samuel has to straighten the bar, first by hand and then after it's cut with a mallet on stone. Then we measured out marks every 20cm and with bits of wire attached square pieces of rebar to four long straight pieces, creating a column. The columns get put in at the corners and in the middle and then filled with cement. Another one lays along the top of the stone foundation in between the columns. Then I believe bricks go on top of that. Stay tuned to find out.

All of this work by the way is done with one hammer, one real mallet, one hacksaw, two pairs of pliers and a couple of improvised mallets for the stone workers. There's no trough for mixing the cement so the sand, rocks and cement mix are poured in a heap on the ground and mixed with shovels (we've got 2). They make a well in the center of the pile (like when you're making muffins) and water is poured in. Again it's carefully mixed using the shovels while maintaining a bit of a water well at the center. We've got one large metal bucket and one small plastic one for hauling the cement so we also used the cement mix bags themselves, cut open and laid flat with a person on each end twisting two corners together. Pretty amazing how much we manage to do with so little. By the time we left this afternoon the whole back foundation had been laid and the side wall foundation was on its way, being laid out with string stretched between bamboo stakes.

We tend to attract crowds of children wherever we go and today was no exception. As we were hauling stones from the street a bunch of kids came to watch. Then before you could say jambo they were picking up stones (the ritoya ones) and following us back to the side wall. At one point I think there were at least 15 kids, carrying stones in a line looking quite pleased with themselves. Who says child labor can't be fun?

Speaking of which, Adrien's 8 year old son Jonathan was with us all day working just as hard as anyone, carrying stones, the small plastic bucket of mud, picking up bamboo sticks and even helping to wire the rebar. It seemed he was constantly on the lookout for something to do and he kind of put the rest of us to shame.

It was such a great feeling today to be working on something concrete (ha!) seeing women coming and going from consultations with Claire (when she wasn't hauling stones), knowing that Maxime was in the lab testing blood for HIV (when he wasn't hauling stones) and really getting the sense of the work the clinic does in the community.

Tomorrow we'll bring at least one camera so we can get a few pictures and we have some 'before' & and 'after' illustrations. Andrew leaves us tomorrow to go on a research trip to Kigali and then to Gomah. He's collecting information to write a grant for AGLI and will be gone for maybe two weeks. We'll miss him very much but look forward to many stories of his travels- he's going by himself, a recipe for adventure if ever there was one.

N'ahejo! (See you tomorrow!)

2008-07-06T10:34:00.000-05:00

This morning we went to church in Kamenge (the same church where we went to the wedding). It's maybe 9 times bigger than the church at Rohero and was packed full. We sat up at the front with the pastors, Alexia, who is also the Clerk and the people giving the readings and sermons. Fortunately we were each sitting next to someone who could translate for us so we were able to understand the basics of the readings and sermons.

Both sermons were given by women (one of them was Odette, Adrien's wife). Odette even spoke at the beginning of her piece about how all the sermons would be given by women that day, that it was an appropriate thing for a woman to do, although it doesn't happen in other churches. The reading was from the Book of Daniel and she spoke about making difficult decisions when people were urging you to do something wrong. She gave some personal examples. When she was studying for her exams to get into university she failed her French test the first time through. Friends of hers got a copy of the test for the next time she would take it and urged her to use it but she refused, studied hard and got the highest mark on the test. Then she was glad to know she had earned those marks. She told about another time when she was asked to pay a bribe so that she could get her passport. When she asked Adrien for the money (about $80) he told her no, she would have to go through the process the legal way and later she saw he was right. She also talked about how there were some men who would ask their fiance for "an advance" was how my translator put it on their marriage and that women must be strong and refuse. My translator then asked me if such things happened in my country. When I said yes she looked very sad for us.

The service is completely different from the non-programmed Quaker meetings I am accustomed to. But the wonderful part about that is the singing. There are five or six different choirs and they each sing several songs. Sometimes there's also drumming and dancing. There was a visiting choir from up country and they even had props and a story. I love the way they begin. From the audience one person will start to sing and the rest of the choir will join in around her. Then they stand and walk up to the front singing. Often as soon one choir finishes the next will begin. When people know the words they join in with joy and enthusiasm and a fine time is had by all. Dave Zarembka told us in our orientation that church on Sunday is the entertainment for the week and I can see what he means. Today was a particularly long service, Alexia says, 4 hours long. I guess it has to last you all week.

Once again we got up and introduced ourselves. I ventured forth with a tiny bit more Kirundi than last time and did the rest in French. My hands were shaking a bit since speaking in front of a crowd of 900 people even in my own language is not exactly what I'd chose to do for entertainment. But I think it all went over well.

Once we got home we went on a little walk to the market to get some string to hang up laundry. (The one Rebecca loaned me is full! Thanks Rebecca!) But we had to walk away from the mzungu price of $8. We walked to the Public Garden and got rained on. It's unusual, we're told to have so much rain, twice in 3 days, during the dry season. We took cover in the gazebo in the park met a bunch of students who came over to talk to us in English and French. There were also a bunch of young children running around playing tag and evidence of a picnic that had been moved to the shelter of the gazebo. We were told it was an outing from an orphanages and all of the children had lost their parents in the war. We were offered Fanta (of course) and by the time we left I think we'd shaken hands with every man, woman and child in the gazebo. We passed on the Fanta and the students wanted to know why, did we not like it? Red explained that she'd had one at lunch. They said for Africans when you like something, you take it whenever it is offered because you don't know when it will come again. One young man said he could drink 20 Fantas in a day if he had the opportunity.

I'll close with two quick things. I'd read in the Unlocking the Horns book about how in the villages of Burundi there had been a long tradition of certain people acting as peace makers. They were called 'wise men' and people brought their disputes to them, they listened to all sides, conferred among themselves and then would restate the issues, pointing out where the two parties disagreed. In the end the two would drink from the same cup and there'd be a sort of party of forgiveness and the matter would be settled. When we were traveling up country and Adrien was telling us about the work that HROC is doing to bring about reconcilliation in the aftermath of the war. I asked him if there were still 'wise men' in the villages who could help. He said that during the war soldiers or rebels would come and force the wise men to kill people and then the other in the village lost their faith and trust in them. They saw that the wise men were like everyone else- powerless in the face of violence and the tradition was essentially killed off. So the war not only destroyed the present peace, it handicapped the hopes of future peace.

I will say though that there is a feeling of hope here now. During the Independence Day celebration (theirs not ours) the leader of the rebel group was sitting on the grandstand with the President. The president spoke in his speech about how this was a special Independence Day because as they looked at the mountains in the distance they did not have to fear what was up there. When we talk to the people that we meet, like the students in the park they all say they believe things will get better now. Let's all say "Amahoro" to that.

The other thing is to suggest if you're not Burundi blogged out you check out Andrew's blog. I believe you'll find it at www.quakerfront.com. He's got pictures from the parade and other things. Including, if you scroll down far enough, a bunch of cyclists hitched on to a truck.