Broomﬁeld Baby Blog

Kicks?

2012-02-10T20:52:00.000-08:00

So, I've had a lot of gas lately, but in the last couple of days it's been feeling weirder than usual, like watery bubbles that don't actually go anywhere- they just sort of blurp around very low in my abdomen. I asked my sister about it today and she confirmed my suspicions that it's probably a baby swimming around in there, which is nice because up until now I've mostly just been feeling like a slightly fatter, tireder version of myself. It's good to feel like there's actually a person brewing in there, and reminds me we should get a baby book! I guess this blog will do for the time being.

Quad Screen Results

2012-01-30T06:39:00.000-08:00

Bridget's latest blood test -- the Quad Screen (which you can read about on the Wiki page for "Triple Test") -- came in.

They say everything is normal and healthy! Go Bridget!

Why Are We So Quiet?

2012-01-22T20:23:00.000-08:00

I know you've been biting your nails waiting for an update, but not much has happened, fetus-wise, since the last sonogram. But that doesn't mean there isn't other stuff we can tell you! Here are some assorted facts about the next year or so:

Baby Registry
First of all, since some folks have asked, Amazon.com is hosting our baby registry. WAIT DON'T GO THERE YET. See, we haven't really added much to it, because, well, we don't really know what to add. So in the comments, please let us know what you, readers with children, think is essential for the baby registry. Then, once that thing is jam-packed with the goods, we'll send out a general plea for help with the merchandise.

Summer Living
We have rented a summer-house-type situation in Harpswell, ME for June 16 - August 4. That's about 7 weeks, and we're due to have a baby smack in the middle of them. Harpswell is 15 minutes from Brunswick, ME, home to Deirdre, Marc, Fiona, and Myles Brown. The house will have room to sleep 4 others comfortably, and we sure as hell expect some guests during our stay. Like, constantly. So if you're interested in joining the fun, let us know so we can make up a schedule!

The Birth
We're aiming for the birth center at Mid Coast Hospital in Brunswick. We're looking into the possibility of using the infamous Natalie Rockwell, CNM to assist, because, well, we've just heard some awesome stories. Ask us, we'll tell ya. We're also keen to get our friend Sally Cumberland in the loop, but that's not solid at all, yet.

Quad Screen tomorrow. More news when we get it!

Blacking out the Blog

2012-01-19T14:53:00.000-08:00

In a promising early sign of progressive political leanings, our fetus today advised to us leave off blogging, just for one day, in protest of SOPA and PIPA.

Therefore, the following amazing image -- and the witty anecdote and caption that accompany it -- cannot be seen. This post will not "unblacken" after a day like Wikipedia. You will never see the amazing content obscured by this box. This post will stand forevermore as a reminder of why we must keep corporations from buying legislation that curtails our freedom.

Hey Guys! So as you may know we are not the only ones at the school expecting additions to

be the best of times indeed, Scooby-doo!

Stay tuned!

Sonogram from 14 weeks, 1 day

2012-01-15T13:47:00.000-08:00

This is the latest image, which we got about the time of the previous post, but I wanted the announcement to come out with the angry duck image so that you could be as amazed as we were at how much these things grow in only a month:

My favorite is the bottom image, which I have zoomed in on for your closer perusal:

An Official Announcement

2012-01-09T20:30:00.000-08:00

Okay, we're tired of carrying around a secret that we were not too good at keeping anyway, so here's the scoop.

We started trying to get pregnant just after coming back to school. Bridget missed a period and started feeling a bit ooky in early November. Halfway through our two-week school field trip (to work on an organic garlic farm and a free-range cattle ranch), Bridget peed on a stick and it came up positive. In a Tucson Radisson, we quietly, reservedly rejoiced, so as not to alarm the children.

Upon our return to campus, Bridget began to feel like hot buttered horseshit. She could barely make it through a room without lying down for a quick (or mid-length) nap. She felt nauseous almost constantly. We went to see Dr. Charles Rolle, OB/GYN, in Cottonwood, AZ on Dec 14, and he took this picture:

10 weeks, 3 days

Now that's just crazy. The little thing was swimming around noticeably (waving its "limb buds") on the ultrasound screen, but they could only print us a still shot. I thought it looked like an angry duck in an old Nintendo game. See:

Angry duck

But so he told us the due date was, and would always remain, July 8.

Yay!

Revival!

2010-09-05T15:21:00.000-07:00

As some of you know and some of you don't, I've recorded a lot of music over the years, releasing two albums in the process. Since 2003, my output has been minimal for various reason. But now, the most important obstacle -- a lack of free time -- has been removed (for the time being). But even though I have the time to make more music, my gear is hopelessly out of date! Help fund a revival through Kickstarter! Please click the link below for the page for my project:

In case you've never heard what I can do with a musical project, here is an example:

My 2003 song "What's Your Name?" with music video by Brian L. Perkins :

Traveling with Vladimir

2010-08-11T22:34:00.000-07:00

If you are thinking about writing an online travel diary while you drive across the U.S., you should not listen to the audiobook of Lolita in the car. Because Lolita is just the kind of thing that makes writing anything, ever again, seem like a tremendous waste of everyone's time. Try not to imagine Jeremy Irons reading your blog post out loud, and then try not to cringe at the toneless banality of your travelogue. Heck, we haven't even gotten to the part of the book where they go on their cross-country road trip! I'll probably just have to delete this post after we listen to that.

Working backwards: We are in Montrose, CO, where we watched Inception, which we thought was nifty. Bridget thinks Joseph Gordon-Leavitt looks too much like Heath Ledger. I say he picked up tips during the making of 10 Things I Hate About You. For dinner I think we had prepackaged Chex Mix. Things are getting a little fuzzy for us at this point in the trip. I think I drove for seven hours today; Bridget spent a while supine in the back of the station wagon, nursing an upset tummy after some Jerk Chicken Penne at Rasta Pasta in Colorado Springs. I saw some deer and I thought I saw moose antlers poking ominously out of a pond, unmoving. We peed on the side of the road. We passed the Smallest Jail in the US (not really, though) outside Ramah. Colorado didn't stop looking like Kansas until we'd gone 50 miles in.

Yesterday we stayed in a noxious motel in Oakley, KS that neither of us can remember the name of (we arrived in a total stupor at 1:20am, which was really 2:20am for us as we'd crossed a time zone earlier that day). We always, always seem to have a distorted view of how much lodgings will cost. Happened in India, Nepal, Kenya, so why not here? How much would you pay for a night in a place with a bathroom, an AC, a TV, and wi-fi? Not less than $50, I assure you. Even if it's infested with crickets. As they say in programming: that's not a bug-- it's a feature!

Day before that, I guess we were in Indiana. An Econolodge with disintegrating furniture.

I'm too tired to continue. Look for more later. Tomorrow should be a rest day in Ouray.

Don't Worry About the Government

2010-05-01T21:38:00.000-07:00

We are back in Kathmandu -- Boudha, actually. We arrived from Lukla airport in the mountains safely on Friday morning, and went back to the refuge in Godawari where we had been staying. We heard that the head of the organization was pleased with our work on the curriculum, and apparently his praise is rare and coveted, so that felt good!

We washed some of our stinky trekking duds and took showers and then met up with the other volunteer living there who told us the Maoists were planning a big demonstration and Kathmandu Valley-wide transportation strike to start the next day! So, we were given the advice to get as close to the airport as possible, as we will most likely have to walk there with all of our baggage on Monday. So, we had to get in a late-night, illicit-seeming taxi to Boudha and Pema's (our Sherpa) sons let us stay at his apartment. Last night we moved to a hotel.

Thus, we are in the nearest town to the airport, probably still a couple of hours walk, waiting to see how the strike will develop. It seems unlikely the Maoists will get their demands met, as they include things like the instituting of Maoist rule and the resignation of the Prime Minister. Hmmmmmm. The good news is, though there are no transportation options and most of the stores are closed, we don't seem to be in a dangerous area -- though there seems to be the possibility of violence in other areas of the capital. Mostly are just resting up for our "trek" to the airport.

We are flying to Arizona (travel time = 40+ hours!) and will be there until Saturday, at which point we will fly to New York. We haven't figured out much beyond that. It feels vague, but we are feeling pretty happy for all that. Adventure!

Anyway, as much as I regret not getting to SE Asia, after the trek and the strike and whatnot we will be happy to be among familiar places and faces for a while. We talk a lot about all the foods we are going to eat in NYC -- smoked fish, Italian, sushi, bagels, olives, pickles... the list goes on. And, we know we'll have good company to eat with. See you all on the flip side!

Settled in Nepal

2010-04-05T08:30:00.000-07:00

Okay! In case you've lost the thread: we were planning, for months, to volunteer with a program in Pokhara. Our contact had a death in the family and could not coordinate our visit. A week or so before going to Nepal, we emailed some random organizations we found on the internet and offered our services. We got the most enthusiastic response from the Esther Benjamins Trust, a UK-based org that rescues Nepali children who have been, or are at risk to be, trafficked into forced employment in Indian circuses.

For our first six days we stayed at a swank apartment in Thamel, the most touristy part of Kathmandu. The place was great for 21 hours of the day, but from 7 to 10pm, two cover bands on neighboring rooftops battled for stupid supremacy. We could not really imagine the clientele that would bother walking up three flights of stairs to hear "Love Me Do", "Even Flow", "Come as You Are," "Wild World", and a medley of your favorite hits by The Doors. Not only did each band play the same three-hour set list every night, but they BOTH PLAYED THE SAME SET LIST. Stupid. But the view was nice:

Here is an even prettier, if smoggy, view from the top of the monkey temple:

And here is a picture of the terribly polluted river:

And here is a picture of one of a billion temple statues around Kathmandu, this one in Bhaktapur's Durbar Square (we're really racking up the UNESCO World Heritage sites):

Bridget wanted to make sure you noticed that Nepali statuary carvers did not scruple to provide their subjects with ample genitalia. To draw attention to this tradition, it also seems that there are people who wander around temple sites slapping the statuary genitals with pink chalk, every day. Perhaps they make up a caste of their own!

Anyway, on the seventh day we moved into a room at the site of the Esther Benjamins Trust's refuge in Godawari:
View Larger Map

They are putting us up and feeding us for two and a half weeks while we try to create program-related teacher resources for use in the US and UK. We humbly acknowledge that this is a pretty amazing outcome. We are grateful! Make a donation to these folks!

On April 21st we head to Lukla to begin our nine-day trek, watch this space for more about that.

Shin Ramyun
Back in Brooklyn in the summer of '09, we discovered an amazing product called Shin Ramyun. Saying it's a brand of packaged ramen noodles would be like describing Bruce Wayne as a millionaire and leaving it at that. That's right, Shin Ramyun is the Batman of ramen noodles. Why? Cuz it's spicy. So spicy that you can water it down with twice as much water as the package recommends, toss in a bunch of fresh veggies and an egg and it will still spice your face right off.

How many packaged brands of ramen have their own wikipedia page? Don't answer that. Just revel in this unsourced claim on that page:

Like most instant noodles, it offers only minimal nutritional benefits.

Um, citation needed, right guys? Sounds like original research to me, in clear violation of wikipedia policy!

Anyway, I don't know why I wrote this except to say that Shin Ramyun is awesome, and has been available in every country we've visited so far, making itself a narrative through-line for our entire eight-month journey.

Kathmandu: First Impressions

2010-03-27T21:14:00.000-07:00

Turbulent Flight
Bridget, as we may have mentioned here before, cannot handle turbulence. Whenever the airplane ride gets bumpy, and especially if sudden it features 10-foot drops, Bridget gets a look on her face like she's already dead. The flight into Kathmandu was scary because a bunch of it was spent inside clouds, and it was very easy to imagine a Himalayan cliff face looming miscalculatedly out of the mist and turning us into gory atomized debris. So we did our in-seat dance to mask the exterior motion (which still worked, but if you're jitterbugging for 5 straight minutes you get a little self-conscious about whether the other passengers think you're a pair of chorea sufferers) and we repeat mental mantras ("safer than being in a car, safer than being in a car") or try to think how rarely you hear about giant airliners on well-traveled routes accidentally veering into the earth.

But we were considering going to Lukla at some point to start a trek. That would mean flying into Lukla airport. Here are two pictures of the runway:

Picture #1

Picture #2

The numbers I put after the pictures refer to the excretory function you would involuntarily experience while viewing the subjects of those images from within a moving plane.

As she treasures her continence, Bridget does not want to go to Lukla if that is the only way to get there.

Hazy; Crazy
The clouds never really went away. Kathmandu is covered with a fine, aromatic layer of smoggy pollution. A disconcertingly large number of people wear face masks, which makes me reflexively clutch my cheap Indian handkerchief over my breathing parts.

Also, this neighborhood (Thamel) is really crowded with tourists and the shops that try to sell them stuff. Of course, we are above all that. WE are not tourists. WE are different somehow. Stop trying to sell us shit, merchants! Can't you see we're different?

White Dreds and Hammer Pants
In Goa, Mysore, and now especially in Kathmandu, we are seeing a lot more of these visual abominations. We will attempt to collect some visual images, but it's harder to sneak a good pic of terrible fashion choices than of temples. Check this space.

UPDATE:

Not the best image. Keep Checking.

Sit Down and Shut Up

2010-03-20T21:14:00.000-07:00

We are at the Bodhi Zendo in Tamil Nadu. It is an amazing place -- serene, lovely Zen gardens surrounded by steep blue mountains. The sun is warm and the air is fresh and cool. We do meditation every morning, then work in the garden where most of the food we eat is grown, then meditate and rest and read. It’s great, it’s exactly what I had hoped for, and now I’m going to talk about all the ways it’s driving me crazy.

The food is delicious, vegetarian, lots of greens and what Ben calls “al dente legumes” that produce a tremendous amount of gas during digestion, so that while we sit in zazen my bowels make ominous bubbling noises like an air horn being fired up the ass of an elephant. I’m terrified to let out a fart, not only because it would be embarrassing to rip one in a room of 40 absolutely silent people, most of whom seem to have had humor-ectomies, but because the ones I actually let out smell bad enough that even I don’t want to meditate in a cloud of my own creation.

Lots of the day is silent. While in theory I like this, it’s almost worse to be doing made up sign language to try to indicate you want someone to pass the salt. It seems like even worse than just saying it. And it makes the simplest things — a bit of food on your face, stepping on someone’s foot by accident — like a Mr. Bean sketch. Sometimes I start laughing and can’t stop, like in church. The many Europeans here, on the other hand, seem to have no trouble at all keeping stone-faced, which makes me feel more awkward. Whatever happened to the laughing Buddha?

There is a really crazy thing about the way the white people here dress in Indian clothing. Granted, when I had a sari made for me I thought that was pretty cool, and then I wore it around and felt sort of weird, like dressing like a gangster and going down to hang out in the projects. It was just totally obvious that’s not my normal clothing. The people here are wearing more toned down, hippified versions mostly, like those ankle-length linen pants in turquoise or something. What really irks me, though, is the dudes-in-shawls thing. I just can’t dig on a guy in a pashmina, any more than a man with a low-slung pony tail — or worse, hair half-up, half-down. Yikes. Sorry, guys, but the fashion road is just a lot narrower for you.

As for the meditation, sitting in zazen is intensely physically uncomfortable. Most of the time I am thinking about my hips, or my knees, or lower back, and how it seems like a tendon is about to tear off my kneecap any second, and what would I do, blah, blah. When I’m not thinking about that, I get to see what’s going on in my mind, which appears on closer inspection to be kind of like a dusty garage full of TVs with broken screens playing the audio of commercials from approximately 1988-1998. Like, just a loop of “I believe in Crystal Light… cause I believe in me!” Or “Get in the zooooone -- The Auto Zone!” When I’m really reaching for the next spiritual plateau, I decorate rooms in my fantasy house, which is looking really awesome these days. I feel like everyone else in the room, sitting totally still with beautiful posture, is probably steadily inching their way towards Enlightenment, while I bend and squirm and itch and hear a line of Bon Jovi swirl around and around the drain of my consciousness. Each session is 25 minutes with a 5 minute walking break (the lady announces “kinhin” or “freakin’ hin” which I think is actually “free kinhin” when it’s time to walk around), and I spend at least half of every session praying fiercely for it to be over (and resenting the shit out of the woman who rings the start and end bell, wondering if she forgot to look at the clock, or if she’s drawing this session out to punish me, or what) or making plans for the future -- like, future bed linens, or porch furniture, or (winning first prize for irony) how I’m going to meditate a lot in the future.

Once I took some students on a trip to New York; one student kept asking me all the time “what are we doing later? What are we going to have for lunch? What are we doing tomorrow?” So I said, “look, maybe there won’t be a later. Maybe when we walk out of this museum you’ll get hit by a bus and die. So, let’s just enjoy what’s happening now.” I have come all the way to India to find that very child is the loudest voice in my head. Talk about irony.

More About India

2010-03-10T01:09:00.000-08:00

Dogs
Goa is overrun by the laziest, happiest, itchiest dogs we have ever seen. It's wonderful to see confirmed everything that Cesar Millan has said about what makes dogs happy. The dogs form a large community, and none of the dogs is the slightest bit misbehaved -- the pack has a standard of acceptable behavior that is expertly enforced from within. Only a tiny black puppy near the Rocket Cafe gets out of control sometimes, and when that happens, older dogs come along and gently shut him down. No dog has growled at me, tried to bite me, or run from me in abject terror. They all approach calmly, if they approach at all. Every once in a while all the dogs along the entire 2-mile stretch of beach start howling at the same time. It's awesome, and I hope to get a recording for you soon.

It makes American dog ownership -- especially any kind that does not happen on a farm -- seem really cruel and weird. I don't want one weird neurotic dog in my house. I want a pack of happy, balanced dogs in my yard, playing with the goats and cows and so on.

Frustrations
A day after we got to Kochi, Ben asked us two questions in a text message: "are you frustrated with India yet? Are you peeing out of your butt yet?" The answer to the latter is still, thankfully, no -- for me and Bridget. But to the former, we say yes:

Money
This hasn't happened to me much, but apparently Indians are weirdly squeamish or superstitious about their paper money. One newsstand vendor tried to reject a 100-Rupee bill because there was a small, 5mm tear on its corner. I directed his attention to the portion of the bill where its value is guaranteed by the Governor: "I promise to bay the bearer the sum of one hundred Rupees" and pointed out that nowhere does it stipulate "... as long as the bill is in mint condition."

Ben says that people also don't want to accept "old bills" -- and not old in terms of worn-out, or dirty -- old as in they were printed five years ago (or something), no matter what their condition. Indians will only grudgingly accept torn or old bills, because only banks (and foreigners, I suppose) will accept them. Dear India: this is stupid. If everyone just stopped being stupid in this way, everything would be a whole lot easier for everyone.

Text Messages and Advertising Calls
Our new Indian SIM card in our phone (which you may recall we had to show our passport and provide a new photograph in order to buy) lets us make calls all over the world, which is great. It was also pretty cheap, which is nice since we'll only be using it for 30 days. But we get around 5 automated calls and 10 text messages a day from the carrier, AirTel, telling us about all sorts of great features and products that could be mine. Each call or text costs me, the recipient, 1 Rupee (about
US $0.02) but it is just really really annoying. Luckily, there is an Indian Do Not Call Registry!

So I followed the instructions for registering our phone number, and this is what I got in return from the helpful registry:

Thank you for registering your phone with the NDNC. All promotional communications to your AirTel mobile should stop within 45 days from now.

Ha ha ha. You win this round, India.

Food
I didn't talk about food yet. Next time, maybe. Also: scooters, snakes, Israelis, and chilly peppers.

Malarial Risks

2010-03-08T21:25:00.000-08:00

Here's what the malaria risk looked like in Kenya:

In case you can't read the key, pink indicates minimal risk, with anti-malarials not usually advised, red indicates holy shit you'd better take them drugs! So since we were always in the red zone, we took our Lariam religiously.

Now we are in India, where we will mostly be in the light pink zones (except for this week in Goa, a darker pink but not red zone):

...And then we go to Nepal, where we are firmly in the green zone:

So we are pretty sure that we're going to take a break from the Lariam until we head out of Nepal for Cambodia and Laos:

...which are like the twin nations of malarial death.

Thoughts?

India

2010-03-05T23:11:00.000-08:00

At some point we will have to write our Kenya summary post, but it's hard, here on the beach, to muster the energy to think about the past. I think when we get to the apartment in Mysore for four days of air-conditioned, high-speed-internet livin', we'll find the time to supply you with our reflections of our five months in Africa. But for now, a few updates and observations about India.

India is hotter than Kenya. Okay, we knew this would be the case, I guess. Bridget's mom liked to tell a story about how when she got off the plane on a visit to India, she got blasted with the powerful heat of the jet's engines, only to realize that, no, that was just the local weather. When Sue told this story in my earshot, I would always catch Bridget making wild shushing ixnay gestures -- because I don't like being hot, and Bridget was afraid I might get wise to what was in store and divert our trip to Norway or something.

But seriously, it is hot. Four showers a day hot. Upper-thigh-chafing after a twenty-minute walk hot. Giant tongue-shaped sweatstains making my t-shirt translucent hot. Hot. But you can cool off a little with the omnipresent fresh lime soda under the omnipresent ceiling fans. Here is a picture of me after enjoying same in the Jew Town Cafe in Mattancherry:

As you can see, I look refreshed. What? What's that you ask? "Jew Town Cafe?" Well, there is a community of about 16 Jews in Kochi, and there is a synagogue, and lots of shops trying to capitalize on the exotic angle of Indian Jews. The "town" is really a tourist trap made of stores filled with overpriced, if nice, crap. The synagogue wanted us to put on all sorts of long-sleeved or -panted clothes before entering, and we thought it was not worth it. Because really, If we were already as sweaty as we were (whcih was very, very sweaty) then the chances are that the modesty clothes they offered to us, unlike your typical fancy-restaurant loaner necktie or blazer, would be absolutely rank. No thanks!

Weird Requirements. To get a SIM card for your phone, you must provide a copy of your passport, your Indian Visa, and a passport-sized photo. That's weird.

Kerala Backwaters. This is a picture of a dude poling us down the rivers and canals of the famous Kerala backwaters.

He's wearing a garment called a lungi, which looks reaaaaaly smart after an afternoon walking around in breezeless western-style shorts and underpants.

India is just unspeakably exotic, in a way that kind of loses its meaning after a very short while. Everything is lush and weird and colorful and there are temples strewn around with the frequency, if not the uniformity, of Starbucks in America. This picture above does as good a job as any at conveying this concept, even though we have 50 others that could expand on it.

12-Hour Train Ride. Being on an airplane for 12 hours sucks a lot. Without ever having been on a flight that long, I know this to be true, because I have been on seven-hour flights, and they sucked pretty hard. However! Taking a 12-hour train ride across India in an old-fashioned sleeper car? Not all that bad! One of my least favorite sensations is wanting to sleep but not being able to lie down. Another is being hot and sweaty without recourse to a shower, or fan-blown nudity. How about an air-conditioned sleeper car? Don't mind if I do!

Look at all that room! Pull that curatin closed, and you could flail your arms about wildly and no one would even see you, much less get injured by your flaily shenanigans! Go ahead and flail in cool, horizontal comfort!

Goa. Okay, I'll need to take some more pictures. Goa is a crowded, touristy beach town, full of goddman WHITE people. There must be a name for the syndrome in which I think of myself as an an open-minded and intrepid world-traveler while viewing other white tourists as unspeakably vulgar intruders and polluters. It's a challenge to live with this hypocritical mindset. But not as challenging as trying to imagine life without toilet paper and standard dining utensils!

Later: dogs, food, and pushy vendors.

How's This for Awesome?

2010-02-20T05:57:00.000-08:00

A reader was complaining that the blog had turned from an adventureblog to a visitingfamilyblog.
Well, sometimes the two go together. Check this shit out:

Yes that is a cheetah. Yes we are touching it. We are touching a cheetah. Unfortunately I can't tell you where this happened, because it was definitely not on the regular menu at this attraction.

INDIA UPDATE
The visas were awarded without much ceremony. Yes, it took three trips, several hours of waiting, and almost $100 apiece, not counting travel to Nairobi. But really: fine.

Here is what we have in store for our trip to India:

Feb 26: Depart Nairobi, 5 hour flight to Dubai, 4 hour layover, 3 hour flight to Kochi (aka Cochin)
Feb 27 - Mar 1: Three days stay at the Hotel Excellency in Kochi, travel around some "backwaters" and get ourselves an Indian SIM card. We will be 10.5 hours ahead of you, so expect phone calls in the late evening from the following month or three.
Mar 2 - 3: Overnight train (11 hours) up to Goa. Romantic! Air-conditioned!
Mar 3 - 10: Stay Palolem Beach, South Goa at the Laughing Buddha Cottages with our friends Ben Dahlberg and Katie Lazarowicz! This will be awesome. We we regain the tan we lost. We will get spiritual. We will do yoga with Ben, who is training to be a jedi master. I mean yoga master.
Mar 11: Travel by train with Ben and Katie to Mysore (with a stop in Bangalore), where Ben has been living and studying to be a jedi master.
Mar 12 - 15: Hang out in Mysore.
Mar 16: Travel to Kodiakanal so that we can....
Mar 17 - 23: Go to the Bodhi Zendo for a week of awesome zazen!
Mar 24 - 26: Travel up the East Coast to Chennai. Hopefully something dreadfully scenic should appear. Ruins, or temples, or something.
Mar 27: Fly from Chennai to Kathmandu.

So that should be fun. I hope to write a Kenya wrap-up post soon, but I may not get to it until i'm on the beach.

Blog Fail

2010-02-08T01:33:00.000-08:00

So it's been long enough since the last update that people have actually started complaining. What can I say? We're just so freaking cosmopolitan and in-demand that we've simply been too busy living, dahlings, to bother about blogging doncha know.

The house is now at its fullest strength: 11 people total in the same space that Bridget and I were occupying all by our lonesomes for the first 2.5 months. Much of the readership is family, but for those of you who don't know the cast, here's who we've got:

Jeremy (our hero)
Bridget (our heroine)
Debby Rooney (Bridget's aunt, founder of BEADS)
Bill Rooney (Bridget's Uncle, Debby's husband, BEADS Treasurer, Eagles fan (the band, not the football team))
Sue Heersink (Bridget's mother, given the nickname Fisi Wakitabo ("book hyena") for her rabid efforts in bringing books, maintaining the library, reading out loud to kids, and running book clubs during her annual month-long visits)
Dr. Ben Heersink (Bridget's father, Sue's husband, volunteering his opthalmalogical expertise at the local clinics and killing an average of 20 flies per day in the house -- with his bare hands)
Alexandra Heersink (Bridget's youngest sister, helping out in various ways, but mostly teaching two Maasai warriors, who are particular friends of BEADS, how to read)
Dr. Deirdre Heersink-Brown (Bridget's immediately older sister, lending her medical expertise to the clinics, too)
Marc Brown (Deirdre's husband, lending his special education expertise to the school)
Fiona Heersink-Brown (age 6) and
... Myles Heersink-Brown (age 3) (children of Deirdre and Marc, here to attend classes for a month of serious adaptation)

Whew! It's exciting.

JEREMY'S HEALTH UPDATE
Since many readers seemed captivated by tales of parasites, I will provide more detailed info on my health. Two nights ago I felt nauseous around bedtime, and at 1am I got out of bed and threw up. Now, this wouldn't be such a huge deal except that I haven't thrown up since... (pause for calendar check) ...at least October of 2008, the date of my first hiatal hernia surgery. One of the side effects that some people experience from the surgery is an inability to vomit, which if you check out the wiki entry for the Nissen Fundoplication you can see why. So I've been living with the fear that when I needed to vomit I wouldn't be able to. Good news! I can vomit! Well, good news because it's good to be able to throw up when your body wants you to. But potentially bad news if it indicates that my second surgery -- which, if you haven't heard, I had TWICE because it failed the first time -- also failed. Which, honestly, I think we already know it did, because I still have bad enough heartburn that I am back on daily Prilosec to control it. Sigh.

But so I threw up, then spent much of the following day unconscious on the couch, drifting in and out of a light fever, not hungry, with slight nausea. Today, I am better.

YOU NEED VISAS FOR INDIA
Okay, so we probably should have known this. But as I said above, we're very busy, cosmopolitan people. We're going to India on February 28, according to our plane tickets. But they will put us right back on a plane unless we get some visas. Tomorrow's trip to Nairobi will include a visit to the High Commission of India, where I suspect we will stand in very long lines for very long times. We will surrender our passports (and our will) to the Higher Power of Visa Issuance and hope for the best. It may mean we won't get to go to our favorite shopping place! But we love an adventure, even a bureaucratic one. Wish us luck!

Walkathon

2010-01-20T00:34:00.000-08:00

Jeremy here. We just got back from the walkathon, which was, as expected, full of challenges.

WARNING: This post has some explicit and disgusting content. Do not read if you are easily upset or revolted.

PRE-WALK
Debby, Bill, and American Sponsor walkers Mary, Linda, Carmen, and Hatley arrived at the house in Isinya. The house is much more crowded with eight people than with two. We pack and get ready.

DAY 0
Before the walk began for real, we have a short day walk just down the road from Isinya. This was where I discovered that I needed to wear my better shoes for the real walk. This was also the day that when I asked a 7th grader from my singing club how her Christmas break had been, she reported that it had not been good -- because her stepmother had murdered her father. Immediately, I realized we could stop complaining about the cold weather of Europe.

DAY 1
Walkathon proper began with a walk to a church where the BEADS girls who just finished high school were given a graduation ceremony complete with "Pomp and Circumstance" performed on kazoos by the wazungu [white folks]. Unfortunately I spent the entire ceremony squatting in a concrete outhouse with my first real attack of diarrhea since arriving in Kenya. It was... unpleasant. Exhausting. The kind of diarrhea where I thought to myself "I will probably never be able to leave this outhouse" and "I hope that whoever finds me in here will pull up my pants before taking me to whatever passes for a hospital nearby so I might expire with dignity" and "you know what would really hit the spot right now? Morphine." However, after an hour or so and a dose of Lomotil, everything was really fine.

Later, at the Namanga River Lodge, I discovered that I have been colonized by intestinal worms! (Do not ask me how I discovered this.) When I asked the nurse about it, she said "oh, you haven't been taking worm pills regularly?" Sigh.

DAYS 2 & 3
We camped in Amboseli outside the manyatta of the girl whose alternate coming-of-age ceremony BEADS is sponsoring. On the way to the camp we were joined by a sponsor from Sacramento named Betsy and her 19-year-old daughter Jessica. In addition to the white folks on the walk, there were 40 or so 8th grade graduates; about 20 warriors providing protection, support, and amusement; 3 drivers (for the 2 passenger vans and the supply truck) and a cooking staff of like ten. Here is our cook tent:

Here is Saitoti, the Maasai night watchman at Top Ride, slurping blood directly from the carcass of the special cow killed for the ceremony:

DAY 4 & 5

Our second campsite was near the "big rocks," so we climbed them:

We celebrated Linda's birthday with an amazing night of dancing (and showing-off) by the girls and the warriors. No pictures, unfortunately.

Somewhere along the line Bridget and I got very good at sneaking up on and grabbing tiny baby goats and sheep. Here is one of those. This is probably our favorite thing to do. We love picking up baby animals. They're so SOFT.

DAY 7
We walked for a ways but had to drive for an hour to get to our campsite inside of Amboseli National Park. Hyenas, elephants, giraffes, cape buffalo, zebra, wildebeest, etc, all visible. More delicious goat stew. I get hit with another case of diarrhea, but though I didn't think I was going to die, I went to bed with a fever, shaking with chills. Man, I haven't had a fever in so long!

DAY 8
On the last morning (for me and Bridget, anyway -- the others went on to the fancy Serena Lodge) the light seemed way weaker than it should have been for a cloudless 9am near the equator. Turns out: solar eclipse! Since it's hard to take a picture of an eclipse without jeopardizing the intergrity of one's camera (and retinae) I could only take a picture of the shadow cast by the lattice of a plastic chair. See those crescent shapes? That's the shape of the sun with the moon in front of it!

We rode back to Isinya in hired matatus, with frequent stops to allow me to void more of my apparently endless supply of liquid shit. I sleep feverishly for another night.

This is not a very complete travelogue, but I wanted to give you something. The walk was a lot of fun, and filled with adventure, which I may have failed to convey. Perhaps Bridget will fill in some of the gaps! Hooray for Bridget!

It's Just Another Day for You and Me in Paradise

2010-01-08T10:28:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow we leave on a week long walk-a-thon, covering 100 kilometers, tenting out in the soggy plains (it finally started raining, 3 months/3 years late), and eating a lot of goat stew. I would feel less trepidation about it if there weren’t so much tension circulating amongst the Americans; in fact, I think that might be the thing in the world that I find most unpleasant, interpersonal friction… which goes to show how charmed my life really is. Everything outside of that seems to pretty much take care of itself for me -- when I’m hungry there’s food, when I’m tired I rest, when I’m angry or lonely I have a little tantrum and get attention or love. I am blessed.

The other day we were in Nairobi in a car we hired on account of the matatu (public transport) strike. From the corner of my eye I saw someone at the car window. I looked away, ignored them, ate a piece of bread, started to polish my apple. I perceived it was a woman, young. She swung her baby from around her back and pointed to it, and some terrible cynical voice inside me said “yeah, nice ploy”, but really what I felt was fear -- afraid to make eye contact with her, to have her see me look and do nothing. The traffic started to move and Jeremy handed her one piece of bread through the window, and she took it not with the disdain or disgust I had expected, but saying “thank you, thank you,” almost bowing to us, and the car began to pull away and I was suddenly full of panic, thinking why didn’t I give her this apple? Why didn’t I give her these dried pears for her child to eat? How could I be so fearful and selfish, when it means nothing for me to get enough to eat? I really felt like a piece of shit. I don’t want to be afraid to look at those who are suffering, and I know there will be more of it to come. I hope I can do the right thing when it comes.

New Year's in Holland

2009-12-31T10:43:00.000-08:00

Here is what I am eating right now, that I must wipe off my fingers frequently in order not to gunk up my keyboard: Oliebollen.

Here is where we have been for the last week: Marix and Mary Heersink's House in Dieren, Holland:

View Larger Map

This is what two crazy-cute nieces look like singing "Silent Night": (videos now on YouTube instead of Facebook, so even people over 40 can see them!)

This is a toilet with a little platform so that you can examine your poop before you flush it away!

This is me standing next to Van Gogh's The Sower at the Kröller Müller Museum. (This probably didn't need to go to YouTube, but the still camera was out of batteries.) There was a poster of this painting -- from the Met's Van Gogh in Arles exhibit -- at Spring St. since 1984. It gave me quite a flashback:

Here is the Heersink family hockey game in progress in Arnhem. Twenty Heersinks battle it out for dominance of the ice and bragging rights until the next game:

We will be leaving the land of free high-speed internet Saturday morning and returning to Kenya. We have so many great DVDs that Bridget's parents brought -- hopefully they will last us for a while! We miss the dogs and the sun, though our time in Europe has been filled with hospitality, generosity, and copious piles of high-lipid foods. We are filled with gratitude! Gratitude and meat!

Germany is not Kenya

2009-12-20T09:09:00.000-08:00

The first day we arrived in Germany we were so jazzed just to eat in a restaurant. We made a little video to commemorate that blessed event:

Actually, the instant we landed in Berlin's Tegel Airport it was clear we were fully submerged in capital-c Civilization again. But it's somehow more civilized than America, so it's more like all-caps CIVILIZATION. Here are some things that we like about Civilization:

Running water
Running HOT water
Mercedes-Benz taxicabs (with integral seat-warmers) that whisk you – in a leathery, silent, but thrumming embrace – to your hotel
Electricity
More specificaly: lights at night. Lights at NIGHT! Like, not from petrochemical lanterns, or battery-powered headlamps, but from hot tungsten filaments connected to a municipal power supply that – if you can believe this – never turns off.
Refrigeration
The produce is huge. Like mutant huge: The Incredible Carrot; The Incredible Fennel; The Incredible Bunch of Cilantro that Ate Cleveland!

After our two-day transitional stay at the art'otel, our first hosts were great, thank you Lynn and Eric! We were the first houseguests to crash in their Prenzlauerberg apartment, as they only recently moved to Berlin. Their couch was awesome and the six-floor walk-up was a much-appreciated way to warm up after being out on the frigid streets.

Our second hosts, Utz and Silke Schernikau (plus children Jacob and Lara) were also awesome. People are awesome! We have noticed that German kitchens should have three faucets: one for hot water, one for cold water, and one for Nutella, which everyone we've visited has a GIANT jar of Nutella in an easily accessible place in the kitchen. And if you finish the Nutella, in a late-night spoon-snack scenario? You will wake to find it replaced with a full jar, as if by elves, by the time you wake. German morning magic!

Nutella
the meat aisle of German supermarkets, which hopefully I will photograph tomorrow.

Stay tuned.

Wherever you go, there you are

2009-12-14T01:54:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we were in a cafe having a delicious, expensive, gourmet lunch. I had nothing to do but enjoy myself and spend time with my brand-spanking-new husband tootling around a beautiful European city and spending money given as wedding presents. So, I figured it was a good time to do some existential worrying about those pressing questions, like: what is the point of life? I mean, do any of our efforts really make a difference -- what would it even mean to "make a difference" -- like, a difference in what? What would I even be shooting for if I could magically produce any outcome I wanted this instant? You know, things that need to be figured out here, today, at this cafe table.

At times like this, I can really experience being my own worst enemy. There was this irritatingly audible, vapid-seeming young American girl at a table next to us, telling in syrupy tones the poor young German man (who either was unable to perceive her vapidity on account of her foreignness, or whose foreignness was obscuring his own vapidity from me) that "you can't run from yourself," which, despite being trite, is nevertheless true. Even having everything I could imagine wanting at this moment, I am still just myself.

It's illuminating to shift suddenly through such different cultures. In those last days before we left Kenya, I romanticized my projection of Europe, a place where everything works and we can get everything we want and I won't be frustrated by what I was experiencing as this insane apathy on the part of the Kenyans, this sort of radical acceptance of suffering that seemed to allow for the unacceptable. For example, riding a matatu into Nairobi is the equivalent of a 90 minute mechanical bull ride: do you picket the president's office in outrage about the state of the country's roads? No, you accept that this is how things are. Someone breaks your dog's leg: do you get bent out of shape and start trying to change the way people in your town treat animals? No, you just hope that the dog's leg gets better. Or, fuck it, get rid of your broken dog and get a better new one. I mean, you didn't even give him a name anyway. The educational system is based on slavish regurgitation in preparation for the incomprehensible standardized exam that will determine the entire future of your students: do you demand changes to this archaic and unreasonable system? No... you get the idea.

But now, here in the lovely city of Berlin, there are just a new set of circumstances that grate on me. The air hurts my body and makes going outside unpleasant; the sun barely lightens the gray pall of the sky, making everything the weak color of despair; I feel useless, like my only purpose is to take pleasure, to use up stored "happy capital" when my instinct is to hoard and save it for some hypothetical "later." It reminds me of the following poem:

The Obligation to be Happy

by Linda Pastan

It is more onerous

than the rites of beauty

or housework, harder than love.

But you expect it of me casually,

the way you expect the sun

to come up, not in spite of rain

or clouds but because of them.

And so I smile, as if my own fidelity

to sadness were a hidden vice—

that downward tug on my mouth,

my old suspicion that health

and love are brief irrelevancies,

no more than laughter in the warm dark

strangled at dawn.

Happiness. I try to hoist it

on my narrow shoulders again—

a knapsack heavy with gold coins.

I stumble around the house,

bump into things.

Only Midas himself

would understand.

Chocolate, Cheese, and Hot Running Water

2009-12-10T00:18:00.000-08:00

We are experiencing a little bit of Africa burnout. It started, as I knew it would, as soon as the school term ended and our day-to-day feeling of usefulness was harder to sustain.

Little things that wouldn't have irritated us before all of the sudden seemed almost intolerable, like the intermittance of the water supply to our house. When we arrived, we expected no water! We washed our dishes in buckets for the first two weeks! But ever since it started raining a tiny bit more, we've come to expect an unfettered flow.

Whatever: my point is that we are on edge. We have started to be WAY critical of the people and culture around us. We are starting to feel like colonialists, looking around and thinking "This is not the right way to do things! Here, let us tell you what you are doing wrong!"

Time for a break. Tomorrow we fly to Berlin. A week and a half later we go to England, then after Christmas we go to Holland. With ubiquitous access to wireless internet, it is possible you will see more posting from us over the next three weeks. But it's also possible that we will be too busy eating chocolate-covered cheese while soaking in tubs, and we will not post at all.

Scorpio!

2009-12-03T06:34:00.000-08:00

For a while there, just after it got dark, we could see the constellation of Scorpius really clearly on the Western horizon from the porch of the house. It was bright, obvious, harmless, and helped me learn to find Saggitarius.

None of these things were true about this guy:

...who I found on the porch, lurking under my rain boot as I prepared to go to the computer lab at 8am this morning. I "found" him using a sophisticated technique wherein I reached for my rain boot and, with the lightning-quick reflexes that have elevated my species to the top of the food chain, extracted the poison from his barb with the pad of my left ring finger. That's the finger on which I wear my wedding ring, so I knew he'd go for it -- scorpions are notorious romantics.

So then I said "Shit! Fuck! God damn it!" and went back in the house.

Bridget hates it when I walk back into the house shouting obscenities for no apparent reason, because she always expects that something Really Bad has happened (decapitated student, black mamba bite, government overthrown by military coup), but usually I've just forgotten to bring some mildly-important piece of paper with me.

But this time I was shouting obscenities because I'd been stung by a scorpion. I wasn't shouting because of the pain (which hadn't started yet) but because literally one minute earlier I had made a joke wherein I predicted that our rain boots, so long unused, had probably been colonized by giant, mutant, hybridized Spider/Scorpions in the interim -- and that I'd better shake them out extra-well and be prepared to do battle. It was a classic early-morning not-very-funny joke that seemed funnier because we had only just had our coffee and our brains were only functioning at the level of like gibbons.

Which is how I explain going from joking about scorpions to being stung by one in under 60 seconds. Under-caffeinated gibbon-brain.

To be fair, I had already assiduously checked and shaken and banged around my first boot, and was satisfied that it remained uncolonized by arachnids. I was about to repeat this procedure with boot #2 but the sly scorpion seen above, probably awakened by and in a state of high alertness as a result of the banging and shaking of boot #1, got all UNDER the boot instead of inside it.

Anyway, one trip to the clinic and almost 10 hours later, it still hurts, but I have to assume it hurts less than it would have without the local shot of lidocaine to the sting site, the IV shot of hydrocortisone, the Aleve, and the Panadol.

The guy above is dead, by the way. My mercy has its limits. (Not really. I just wanted to bring his carcass to the clinic so they could see what had got me.)

Teacher frustrations: the same everywhere

2009-11-24T09:30:00.000-08:00

There are many rewarding things about being a teacher, but there are also things that make you want to pull your hair out, no matter where you are.

One of the main things I am here to work on is the writing programs at the schools BEADS works with. I have been trying to compile some of the best student writing to put in a little booklet, because we figure the students will be inspired by seeing their work in print. But I'm feeling a little irked by the local standard of good writing. It seems as though what is most prized and encouraged in the students' writing -- the skill they work hardest to hone -- is the lavish use of similes. Not original similes, but a sort of standard list that everyone must get issued at a "here's how to write like the pros" seminar held sometime around fifth grade.

Also, in sifting through eighth grade writing I was given, I was at first amazed by the number of really exceptional experiences these students have had, such as multiple homicides, gang violence, terrible accidents, mysterious deaths -- until I realized that no one writes about things that have actually happened. I think the usual assignment consists of giving the students the title of their story ("A Narrow Escape" seems popular) and having them loosely transcribe the plot line of a week's worth of Guiding Light. Kind of like this:

I awoke and jumped from my bouncy bed and went to the frog's kingdom. I took a shower as cold as ice and then felt as fresh as a daisy and as cool as a cucumber. I was as happy as a lark when I sat down to a breakfast fit for a king. I was as busy as a bee washing the dishes. It was as quiet as a grave. Then I heard a noise and shook like a leaf [where might be added in red pen "on a tree in the wind"].

I will spare you now, but that's a taste of the agony. The thing is, the little kids, the ones who haven't yet "learned how to write," there are some great stories from those guys. For these, there is yet hope, and in such hope we soldier on, and may God have mercy on our souls.

Boring list of animals we've seen in Africa

2009-11-24T09:18:00.000-08:00

...with a bonus puppy picture to keep you interested.

We've seen more than this, but check out the awesome pictures of the dik dik and klipspringer.

African wild dog, camel, cow, dik dik, dog, elephant, giraffe, goat, hyena, impala, klipspringer, maribou stork, olive baboon, ostritch, pygmy falcon, sheep, superb starling, Thomson's gazelle, warthog, waterbuk, white-bellied go-away-bird, zebra.

(L-R) Bridget, Rufus, Piglet.

Dog...s....

2009-11-08T09:58:00.000-08:00

When it comes to puppies, the old phrase "one is too many, a thousand is never enough" seems to apply. After spending a few days with our yet-unnamed dog (Winston? Doggert? Egon? He hasn't responded reliably to any of these) we realized he would be a lot happier if he had a friend from his pack to be with -- something to bite and chew on other than my arm, and to jump around with or cuddle with as the mood strikes.

So, we went by the house where the dogs were and asked after another -- a girl, so we could name it Sonmi-451. The first dog they pulled from the box was runty and shivering, and making very soft pig noises, like that first scene where Fern gets Wilbur and he's all wrapped in the blanket and stuff. And then they pulled out another girl, a grey with bluish eyes, bigger, beautiful, and sturdier seeming, and then we asked them to please stop or I would want to take every one of them home. How can you look into the tick-swarming eyes of a malnourished pup and say "yeah, I think I liked the other one better"?

We decided to take the first one, as she seemed more in need of attention, and more submissive, which might have just been a state of hunger-induced lassitude; she gets feistier with each bowl of kibble. She is adorable -- see picture of her tiny body next to Jeremy's hand -- but she likes to crawl around on my head and bite my hair in the night when I'm sleeping. Hard. Like she's trying to eat my brains through my skull. I don't really like it. We found out that the puppies are only 6 weeks old, so they are just getting weaned and she's probably trying to suckle my follicles, which is disappointing for everyone involved. Tonight we'll try again to get the sleep situation worked out, as I don't do well with sleep deprivation. How will I ever have human babies? I've heard they're even more demanding than dogs....

New Puppy

2009-11-03T22:56:00.000-08:00

Yes, we went to Amboseli National Park and assisted with BEADS's famine relief efforts. Yes, it was a moving and inspiring and beautiful experience.

But then we got back to school and within three hours of our return, we were presented with a small, flea-covered puppy:

So I went and bought some flea shampoo and the only dog food they have in town, a noxious dry mixture of grains and bonemeal called TOP DOG which must be mixed with water and boiled for 5 minutes before it is fit to serve to a discerning canine.

Dogs are mistreated in Kenya as a matter of routine; people throw stones at and kick them... just because. As a result, most mature dogs you see flinch and retreat if you so much as look at them. This has made us sad. So when a group of students hands us a tiny, unspoiled puppy, it takes a hard heart to tell them to put it back in the gutter in which they found it mewling pitifully.

So now the dog lives with us. When we thought it was a girl, we were going to name it Sonmi-451, after our favorite character from Cloud Atlas, which we just finished reading. But now we kinda think it's a boy, and none of the male characters in Cloud Atlas have good dog names.

What the hell are we going to do with this dog when we go to Europe for three weeks in December? What about the months we're in India, Nepal, SE Asia, and road-tripping back across the USA? This remains unclear. Once, while working on a movie in New Mexico for a month, my girlfriend Rachel and I did not tell a stray puppy to scram. It lived with us and the rest of the movie crew for a month and when it was time to return to Los Angeles, we abandoned it. This memory makes me sad. I do not want to make the same mistake.

I mean look at this thing. All it wants is to be cute and to steal some of your body heat.

It's Highway Butchery, I Tell You!

2009-10-29T06:48:00.000-07:00

This joint is on the main drag in our town.

New, More Upbeat Famine Relief Video!

2009-10-27T02:42:00.000-07:00

BEADS asked us to make more hopeful video about what people can do to help! Here's what we came up with:

If you are so moved you wish to make a donation, try the functional beta of my new, supereasy, user-friendly BEADS for Education Famine Relief Donation Page!

The Singing Club's First Song!

2009-10-26T02:29:00.000-07:00

As a break from "look how different Africa is!" posts and depressing famine-related video, I offer you the first recording of the Top Ride Academy Singing Club!

You Won't See Me

Be patient... the first eight seconds are silent.

Safety First

2009-10-22T10:24:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of things that are different about the way children are treated in Kenya. Almost every day Jeremy and I go “Oh, my god, I can’t look at that” as we watch three-year-olds clamber up a pile of precariously balanced building materials, or two-year-olds in soiled miniature prom dresses holding hands while walking unattended down the road as a truck comes careening over potholes and speed bumps directly at them. I do a double take when I see the children in first grade grasping at their neighbor’s hand which clutches the double-sided razor blade they use to sharpen their snacked-on pencil stubs.

I ran into a friend yesterday who said she was checking on her daughter, just 'cause she recently got Typhoid. When I expressed condolences she seemed aware but unfazed. She assured me it was just because the small ones put so much dirt in their mouths, and they play around the latrines and whatnot, and she assured me her daughter was better already -- as if I needed to be reassured rather than her. I sometimes conjure up the ghost figure of a Manhattanite Jewish mother and imagine what she would say/do if she could get a load of her child doing any one of these things -- or even what I would do if I felt their well-being were actually within the sphere of my responsibility. I think I would never cease saying “no” and/or “stop.” And yet, the children seem to generally be just fine. On a campus of 401 kids, many of whom are under 10, or on the streets of Isinya, or around the rubbish-pile playgrounds, you almost never hear a child crying. They smile up at you from their dirt-castles, run after you calling “wazungu!” like you are a circus train pulling into the station. They seem so… happy. Strange, isn’t it?

Dueling Famine Videos!

2009-10-22T10:22:00.000-07:00

Bridget and I made our first lo-film -- that is, a video self-shot with no plan, self-edited, and released to the public within days. Morgan reminded me that this is the kind of thing to mention on the blog.

It is a little darker than your typical lo-film, but it is for a good cause. We made two versions. We don't care whose you like better. We like both.

Coming soon: an EASY way to donate money to BEADS for Education towards its famine relief project.

Religion, rain, and the snake story

2009-10-15T01:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, while the bulk of the students in my scheduled singing group attended the biannual Catholic Mass that happens when the priest decides to visit the town, I spoke at length with a teacher named Cecilia about rain, religion, and animals.

It was a little weird to talk about religion; in fact, Bridget and I had decided we should maybe avoid the topic. But when someone asks "what is your religion?" it's hard to just say "I'm not comfortable discussing it." The thing is, when people here ask what your religion is, they really seem to be asking "what kind of Christian are you?" Since the closest answer I could give to that is "Quaker" (or maybe "Unitarian Universalist") I usually say that. But despite the fact that Wikipedia says Kenya has more Quakers than any other nation, there is no Quaker meeting house in Isinya (there like 50 other little corrugated-metal churches) and a lot of people here seem dubious when Quakers come up, like they either haven't heard of Quakers, or they don't like what they have heard. So maybe I'm going to stop claiming to be Quaker.

Anyway I changed the subject to rain, because the lack of it is always obvious. We talked about how the drought affected the animals around here, how cattle were dying in droves. Then she told me about her cow.

(NB: Keep in mind that many of my stupid-seeming questions arise from the language barrier. Almost everyone speaks fluent Swahili, some English (with British flavour), and a tribal language. But it's common enough to ram up against some misunderstanding or mistranslation -- Bridget listened uncomprehendingly while her students repeatedly described a person in a book as wearing "spectacles"; when I asked shopkeepers in town if they sold "butter" they kept quizzically replying "what size bottle?")

CECILIA: I had a cow. But it died. It was walking around the compound and it got bitten by a snake.
JEREMY: I'm so sorry. When was this?
CEC: Last week. I was very sad.
JER: It was a small cow? A calf?
CEC: No. A grown cow.
JER: Geez. How big was the snake?
CEC: Very big snake. (Makes vague "big" gesture)
JER: How big?
CEC: Very big. Sometimes they eat sheep.
JER: Like, baby sheep?
CEC: No, grown sheep. After they bite, they wrap around you and crush your bones so they can swallow. (Makes much more vivid enveloping/rending gesture.)
JER: ...
CEC: (Sighs.) They killed the snake after it bit my cow. They had to use an excavator to kill it.
JER: An excavator? Like a shovel?
CEC: No, no. Very big machine. A... tractor.
JER: ...
CEC: And the snake, he still try to fight the tractor.
JER: The snake attacked a giant steam shovel?
CEC: Yes. And if had bitten the driver, he would have died.
JER: Wow. Well... Isn't there an antidote for the bite? Anti-venom?
CEC: No. Your only hope, if you get bit? You must be rushed to the hospital, where they must amputate the leg that was bit.
JER: I see.
CEC: Yes and there are many Hindus in that area, who will not kill the snakes because they worship snakes.
JER: Hrmph. Is this nearby?
CEC: No, no. On the other side of the greenhouses. (She points to the flower farm's greenhouses, less than a mile away.)

I have a good story about a snake, but....

2009-10-14T11:08:00.000-07:00

...I don't have enough battery to type it today AND watch Kill Bill Part 2 tonight. I will type it tomorrow. In the meantime, I will just gloat about another home-cooked meal.

I know this shit is boring. I've read food blogs before and wanted to fork my own eyes out. But when you make peasant food in New York it's different from when you make peasant food because you have no choice. So! Tonight I made gnocchi and Bridget made a sauce out of butter and the rosemary that grows in front of our house. Bridget steamed up some unidentifiable greens we got for 5 Kenyan Shillings (about 7 cents) and I sliced a tomato. It was alllll delicious.

Baby Animals are Being Born in our Backyard

2009-10-12T11:24:00.000-07:00

Today we spotted a herd of cows in our backyard. See, last week some workmen unstrung a bunch of our barbed-wire fencing -- we presumed to fix it in some way, though what was wrong with it we could not say -- and they have yet to finish their task and restring our wire. But who knows, maybe unstringing it and making a big hole in our fence WAS their task. They're not telling; we haven't seen them in four days.

Anyway so there was a herd of cows back there. Cows are big. We waved to the old Masai herdsman (mzee is Swahili for "old dude") and he waved back. But when he saw me taking a video of the herd, he excitedly waved us back outside and made a series of confusing hand gestures and we were mightily confused, at a communicatory impasse until, with good old fashioned figure-it-outiveness, Bridget divined that a baby cow was just over yonder.

Here is a video of that cow:

But that wasn't all! He then urged us to trudge just a little farther into the hot, dry flatness and we were rewarded with a view of this freaking just-borned baby goat! Feast your peepers:

Africa is freaking CUTE.

Gender Bending Couple Shocks African Town

2009-10-07T12:12:00.000-07:00

When Jeremy was first coming to visit me in St Thomas, my friends liked him a lot. They told me what a great guy he was, and always invited him to be the sole guy at girls' night out and stuff -- but one day, a friend of mine told me, "It's cool that you and Jeremy are going out, but you do realize that he's gay, don't you?" No matter what I said, I couldn't convince her that a man who can talk about feelings, cry at a movie, and doesn't consider fixing a leaky faucet the extent of his commitment to housekeeping could also be a heterosexual.

Interactions like that, even amongst people who are from essentially the same culture as me, remind me that our relationship doesn't really fall within the bounds of the stereotypical, gender role-wise. Here in Isinya, it's more pronounced for both of us. I think I am the only woman in town who wears trousers. When I wore a dress the other day, I was greeted with "you look smart!" and nearly audible sighs of relief from teachers, who just seemed kind of unsettled, rather than actually offended, by my insistence on dressing like a man from the waist down -- like seeing some hapless foreigner wandering your town with their shoes on the wrong feet or mittens on their ears or something.

The other day Jeremy went to pick up some groceries at the stalls of the "mamas" in town; when our friend Jacky at the Mpesa phone store saw him, she left her store -- you know, to keep him company during his errands, giving him helpful pointers like "put your yoghurt in your bag -- don't just carry it around in your hand," by which we later realized she meant to save him from the embarrassment of being a man buying foodstuffs (other than a side of goat).

Last night we brought dinner over to eat at Jacky's, where she lives at the back of the phone kiosk. We were talking about our one month anniversary, and responding to her question about how our marriage is "going," when a couple of male friends of hers stopped by. I was saying how my wonderful husband brings me coffee in the morning, and we almost made the guys barf up their nyama choma. More than disgusted, they just seemed... well, baffled. David, a Masai, said "in my culture, a man never cooks for his wife -- even if she is sick, he can call his mother and have her do it. If my father saw me in a kitchen, he would ask me if I had lost my mind." And my wonderful husband said, "if my dad saw me in the kitchen he'd ask 'What's for dinner?'" David told us that in his culture, a man's wife is like another child, which seems to me like it would just be sort of boring. Who wants to have only other children to talk to? All in all, it was a really interesting conversation -- no rancor, no problem (which actually is hakuna matata in Swahili). It was just some people chatting about the different ways of seeing a thing like marriage. As we walked home arm in arm in the spectacular moonlight, talking and laughing together, I felt so grateful that we got to be who we are -- husband and wife because we are partners and friends first.

We Eat Better Here Than We Used To

2009-10-07T10:17:00.000-07:00

Seriously. Check out tonight's dinner:

...All homemade from local produce, homemade by US, without help! By lanternlight! Clockwise on the plate: a pile of fresh avocado chunks; a vegetable curry topped with homemade onion relish; sukuma wiki (sauteed kale); a Kenyan spiced rice dish called rice pilau.

To give you and idea of how cheap this all is, the avocado cost us about US $0.20 and the total cost of the meal's ingredients must have been under $5. And it was freaking delicious.

Most importantly, however, I feel like I am learning how to cook for myself in a way that I have always wanted to learn, but was too lazy (scared?) to try. You listening, Paula? I have a newfound respect for the way that you cook, with your "buying vegetables" and "making food out of them." Hooray for learning!

Time Moves Quickly!

2009-10-06T00:20:00.000-07:00

How much do I hate it when I write a big, funny post only to have it get gobbled up by the internet? I hate it a lot. But no worries. I remember most of it! Ahem. Begin again.

SLEEP
I bragged when we arrived about how I was impervious to jet lag, but apparently mine was just a late-onset variety. For the first few days in Isinya I would be overcome with fatigue in the middle of the day, passing out for an hour at a time, unable to be roused. I had trouble falling asleep at night and I woke frequently to the sound of a single helicopter-loud mosquito (mbu in Swahili) on the other side of the net. Per my travel doctor's orders, we had dipped the net (as well as all of our clothes) in a solution of Permethrin, which is supposed to kill insects on contact. But they seem gleefully undisturbed by it.

Since then we've settled to a good sleep pattern. Sleeping late is not very easy because on one side of the house the sun rises with the strength of a hammer hitting an anvil, and on the other, the first shift of flower-farm workers (1,500 strong) uses the road right on the other side of our fence, and they are very chatty with each other. But that's okay; we don't need to sleep late. We have opted for the sun. Clang!

DRUGS
Many people shared their horror stories about nightmares caused our antimalarial drug, Lariam (aka mefloquine), which we take weekly. My friend Kate told us of an acquaintance who woke to find herself being strangled by her spouse, who was in the grip of particularly bad Lariam-induced night terrors (which: thanks Kate!). But so far, we have experienced nothing scary except for Stephen King's The Shining, which I am reading aloud to Bridget a chapter or two a day. Other friends, concerned for our sobriety as well as our sanity, warned us of mefloquine's hallucinatory effects, but so far we have seen nothing remotely trippy. So what gives? Did we get a dud batch? We bought it stateside so we're fairly sure it's not counterfeit. I guess we'll just see if we get Malaria.

FOOD
We are learning to cook with the locally-available produce, which does not offer a huge variety. But we can get and cook with tomatoes (nyanya), carrots, onions, potatoes, rice, dried beans (soak for six hours, cook for 1.5), kale-like greens (sukuma wiki), and tiny hot peppers (pili pili). UHT milk needs no refrigeration, and we use a mountain-climber-style french press for our coffee. My doctor (who Bridget thinks is an overly fussy alarmist, probably of weak moral fiber) also advised us to soak local produce in a dilute bleach solution for an hour before eating it. Unless, of course, we boil it. Anyway -- we are eating well and have suffered no drastic gastrointestinal distress.

SERVICE
Ah yes, the entire purpose of our visit! This topic deserves its own post -- probably several. I will just say that I am excited about having gotten myself up and running to the point where I can now reliably connect to the internet, keep my computer charged, and even print out documents on the one local (laser!) printer. The local PCs still need a lot of work and care, and hopefully some of them can be resurrected.

Tonight, I will teach my first special class (i.e, not just guest-teach an existing regular class). We announced our extracurricular offerings yesterday (which the kids will have to take during the afternoon "games" period) and my Tuesday singing class drew a huge crowd. Our first song will be "You Won't See Me" by The Beatles. I am nervous! Wish me luck!

Africonnectivity

2009-09-30T10:25:00.000-07:00

It is difficult to get on the internet in rural Kenya. We knew this would be true, but the fact that it is not impossible makes the difficulty more irritating.

SUNDAY: Hey Aunt Debbie, back home in the U.S. Can we get on the internet? Yes, there is a satellite modem thing kicking around. Can we have it? Yes, ask Rukia; it should be in your house. Hey Rukia, where in the house is the modem? It is not in the house. Lawrence has it; ask him.

MONDAY: Hey Lawrence, do you have the modem? Yes, it is at my house, I will bring it tomorrow. Great. So we will be able to use it with our computer? No, you will have to use the computer in the computer lab. [The "computer lab" is one of the only rooms on the school grounds that has electricity. It contains ten computers, only two of which seem to work, though I hope to change that.] The modem won't work with our computer? No, you will have to buy a new modem, because to prevent theft, each modem is keyed to work with only one computer. Very smart, I admit. Can we get a modem in the local town? Wah ha hah! No. You will have to go to Nairobi for that.

TUESDAY: Here is the modem. In order to make it work, you will have to put money on its SIM card, just like the phone. Oh and how do we do that? You walk to town and buy little cards in small denominations and punch a little code into your phone. Okay, so that's for the phone, but what about the modem? I do not know. Ask them in town.

WEDNESDAY: Jacky, at the store in town that sells minutes, can I put 2,500 KSH worth of minutes on my modem's SIM? Yes but the largest denomination I have is 100. And I only have 14 of those so after that you will have to key in 50s.

I will spare you more complainy details because -- if you are reading this -- it seems like the modem is working! I can't stay mad at you, Kenyan internet!

Watch this space for updates unrelated to technological obstacles.

Baby Wipes

2009-09-24T00:40:00.000-07:00

Here is what 90% of people who have been to Africa will say when you tell them you are going to Africa: "baby wipes." They will look very serious when they say this. People who have not been to Africa will ask you if you got all your shots. But seasoned travelers to the dark continent will look at you as if your fly is undone and say "baby wipes" until you nod knowingly.

All of these people know that Bridget and I do not have a baby. So why do we need baby wipes? I refuse to demonstrate my ignorance by asking. But I have some theories:

In Africa, you are expected to wipe off other people's babies.
Holding a baby wipe in each hand while waving your arms is an internationally-recognized distress signal.
Storing fruit in baby wipes keeps it fresh when you have no refrigerator.
Baby wipes are accepted as local currency in certain regions.
You can make a delicious emergency crêpe by filling a baby wipe with hand sanitizer and malaria pills.

Getting ready

2009-09-13T10:15:00.000-07:00

Packing stuff for a trip is like trying to do a jigsaw puzzle by imagining where all the pieces go before you start moving any of them -- trying to picture what I might want to wear six months from now to teach a writing class in Isinya or to work in the garden of the Zendo or to walk around Pokhara. Will I be hot? Cold? How modest or formal should I be? What can I imagine washing in a sink, or wearing 20 days out of 30, or wearing to a Hindu temple or on the beaches in Malindi? Packing is the manifestation of my desires to control the future, which is still unknowable and beyond my influence. I want to be able to pack everything into these two suitcases- the security of my home, my friends and family, my favorite foods, fellowship and recovery, sanity, safety, comfort. But this is not how it works.

My grandfather used to say "take less stuff and more money", but one also has the feeling that it might be difficult to obtain what we want in the isolation of Isinya -- unless we are looking for kangas or pangas or school uniforms.

If I step back to look at what we are actually about to do, it all feels a bit abstract and overwhelming but also incredibly exciting. I have had the experience before of tossing myself into the waves, diving headlong into an experience and hoping for the best, but now it is the two of us standing on the high dive, staring down into that abyss that seems unfathomably far and dim, holding hands, starting the countdown -- ten, nine, eight....

Pre-travel introduction

2009-09-10T20:22:00.000-07:00

Though our big travels haven't really begun, Bridget and I got married 4 days ago in Adirondack State Park in upstate NY, after having driven there from Newburyport, MA and Brooklyn, NY, respectively. We drove to and honeymooned briefly in Mystic, CT. To get back to Brooklyn, I did my first real long-distance drive operating a standard transmission, which Bridget basically tricked me into by going limp, civil-disobedience-style, whenever I suggested she drive. It was tough love, like tossing your infant into the pool to trigger his ancient, ancestral memory from when we were water apes. I made it the whole way stalling only once, surviving a trafficky Kosciusko bridge and a parallel parking job.

Tomorrow we are supposed to drive 7 hours to Lake Winnipesaukee, NH. We travel a lot.