to africa and other places I'm going

greetings from the mumbai airport

2011-08-13T01:44:00.001-05:00

I would have waved at you while I took this picture with my webcam or tried to situate myself to avoid the glasses glare, but that might have drawn more attention than I want. I've holed up for an hour or so in a very nice coffeehouse at the Mumbai airport as I wait for my flight to London. It's been several weeks since I've written in a coffeehouse, so I instinctively jumped at the chance to do it this morning/afternoon.

I was going to work on another project while I munched on french fries (from the KFC down the hallway) and my vanilla steamer (called "hot vanilla" on the menu), but as usual in airports I've been too distracted by all the interesting things around me to do any real work. It might be said that I'm in love with airports. They're really some of the most interesting places in the world...but then I think nearly everywhere is one of the most interesting places in the world, so perhaps my superlative doesn't really say much.

By the way, you're witnessing a moment of travel budgeting success: having just enough foreign currency to cover your needs until you're on the plane, but not so much that you leave the country with $10 worth of rupees you'll never be able to use. After my fries, steamer and the bottle of water I plan to buy, I'll have just 5 rupees left, which is worth, well, hardly anything in dollars. But what a relief to find that I had just enough rupees to get the essentials before my 10 hour flight. Yay!

So, interesting, distracting thing #1: When you order here, they ask your name so they can call it out when your drink's ready. That's good. Not unusual. Except this is the international terminal with names from all over the world. And nearly every name the barista calls out in his Indian accent ends up sounding the same to me. And apparently to other people, because no one's jumping to get their drinks. Speaking of names, I've decided that no one in the world should have a name longer than three syllables. When you add a fourth syllable, the name immediately becomes too long to remember. Take note please, parents of the world. :-)

Interesting, distracting thing #2: When I entered the coffeehouse, a woman--probably in her 50s, maybe British--I'd seen in line to check in for my flight, came up to me and said something I didn't understand. Turns out I think she was asking if I was "Jude." She's was looking for another woman and had thought a coffeehouse would be a good place to meet. She sat here for a little while and then left after finishing her drink. But a bit ago I saw her walking past with another woman. Apparently, that's Jude. Glad they found each other.

Interesting thing #3: This isn't distracting because it was observed on the rather long scenic bus tour I got traveling on the airport bus from the domestic terminal to the international terminal. There's a ton of building going on at this airport right now. Big stuff is being built. Pretty interesting to see all the workers. One of the buildings had a sign saying it's a parking garage. Does anyone know what the others are? India's on the move?!

Interesting, distracting thing #4: I overheard two British guys talking here in the coffeehouse's comfy chairs (when they parted ways it sounded like they'd just happened to run into each other here), and it sounded like one of them said something like "America won't let me into their country." He looked harmless enough, so now I'm curious whether that's what he really said and if it is why we won't let him in.

I guess that's enough interesting things to make you feel like you're here with me right now. It's about time for my last bathroom break on Indian soil this go-around (not on the literal soil, of course) as I saunter toward Gate 10. Catch ya from the next continent.

writing, writing

2011-08-07T14:57:00.000-05:00

Additional written fruit of this visit to India can be found at InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Blog, where I'm one of the summer's guest bloggers. Two more installments will make their way there this week and next.

July 25 installment - Heading East: Kami in India

August 1 installment - Do We See the People or Their Poverty?

Taking the night train from Coimbatore to Chennai with Sheela.

I told Sheela it felt like we were having a slumber party...but I had to explain what slumber parties are.

Twilight on the beach in Chennai = cool and peaceful.

John and Jenny helped Sheela show me some of the ancient temples (i.e. 1500 years old and more) in Tamil Nadu state.

Recreation of traditional village homes at a cultural center.

coimbatore, chennai and more

2011-08-07T14:28:00.001-05:00

Adventures have abounded since last I wrote. I've ridden in more autos, seen more beautiful buildings, learned that the bright house paint I've been admiring is intended to ward off evil spirits, eaten traditional Indian meals with my hand (turns out lefties can eat right-handed when silverware is not involved), tried to learn how to keep my dupatta (scarf) on my shoulders when I bend down to unbuckle my shoes, re-sprained my ankle, and met many lovely people.

I spent last week being immersed in Indian culture while being hosted by the good, good folks at Bishop Appasamy College of Arts & Sciences in Coimbatore for half the week. Then one of the faculty members and I took an overnight train into the heart of humidity in Chennai for the rest of the week. It's all been great, and I'll have to save more reflective comments than that for another time.

Enjoying a cultural dance program at BACAS.

More tradition during lunch provided by BACAS's catering department.

Banana leaves make great plates! Lots of "gravies" to mix with the rice.

When ice isn't available, cold bags of milk and curd work really well.

Flower seller in Coimbatore.

week 1 in India: a few of my favorite things so far

2011-07-24T15:10:00.004-05:00

I love riding in autos (full name = auto rickshaws). I love the way they allow me to see this place, be outdoors, and feel like I'm really in the middle of the culture. I'm also oddly enamored with the flow of traffic here. It doesn't feel quite as chaotic as other places I've been where road rules aren't quite as orderly as in the States, and beyond that there's an odd, beautiful choreography to it all -- a choreography via which somehow everyone mostly successfully and in one piece gets where they need to go.

As we drive around, I'm realizing that I really like a lot of the architecture in this city. It's a refreshing change from the cookie cutter neighborhoods that seem so popular among U.S. developers these days. Facades of homes and businesses here are often interesting and beautiful, with a whole lot of attention paid to artistic details and with interesting angles (instead of plain box shapes) and colors, all of which are right up my architecture alley.

Endless fabrics to select from, and salesmen eager to show
them. I'm a naturally a slow decision-maker, and all the
options sure didn't help!

Fashion is big business here, for good reason. I had not intended to add many Indian pieces to my wardrobe and, so, borrowed some Indian kurtas from Nashville friends to wear while here, but it's challenging to resist all the beautiful fabrics and embellishments now that I've arrived. My one planned purchase of a salwar kameez turned into two salwar kameez suits and two kurtas while my friend and I shopped yesterday. Shops and shops of beautiful clothes abound in the commercial district. I am humored by the fashion contradictions here, though: modest clothing for women (mostly kurtas, salwar kameez suits, and sarees) is intended hide their curves (to keep men from stumbling or something, I guess), yet it's a male tailor who measures you for your hand-made salwar kameez and men who sell women's lingerie. And sarees can leave quite a lot of midriff flesh visible, but that's apparently perfectly acceptable, even though you're supposed to wear your dupatta (scarf) with kurtas and salwar kameez to add another layer to hide bosoms that are already fully covered by material.

Decisions, decisions. I purchased the shirt hanging on the door on the far left. I didn't purchase the orange shirt I'm wearing. So hard to decide!

Striking a pose in our salwar kameez. My green one plus another for me and one for my friend were sewn by the tailor's stitchers within two hours of our dropping off the material.

While they're still definitely in the minority here, I have seen more Muslim women wearing full black burqas than I have other places I've been. The tailor shop that made my salwar kameez (the green one above and another) also had several burqa-wearing customers. When one of them passed by me to leave the shop, we exchanged smiles, which was just a nice moment of human connection and interaction, especially since I've been generally avoiding much eye contact with people until I learn a little better what's appropriate and allowable here. When I later happened to recount this moment to the friends hosting me, I suddenly realized how odd it was to say we exchanged smiles when all I could see of her face was her eyes. But unless her eyes were lying, her mouth was smiling too. And the moment of connection over the bridge of our smiles is now one of my favorite experiences so far, because for a moment I shared life with someone whose life is really different from mine.

no cannonballs please

2011-07-23T13:05:00.001-05:00

~~late Thursday, July 21~~

I’ve only been in India for three days, but already I feel behind. There’s so much to learn. Not least of which is the Indian head-bobble, which I have already fallen in love with because it’s really real (at least here in the south) and is itself a language that offers an unavoidable lesson in the power of nonverbal communication. I never realized before how much I rely on shaking my head no and nodding it yes until those yeses and nos don’t translate quite correctly. And until I can’t quite read what other people’s shakes and nods mean. And this is just the tip of the iceberg of what fascinates me here.

My feeling of behindness is rooted in knowing I have limited time to learn everything I can. Spending six weeks away from home—four of them in India—is a luxury many people can’t enjoy. Still, four weeks isn’t long to learn a place. This ticking clock makes me instinctively want to jump in. Whatever that means. Yet, there’s a level at which jumping in (I’m envisioning cannonballing off a diving board, creating a big, huge splash in my hurry to get into the water) is contrary to my observer, contemplative nature and, really, contrary to what makes someone a good culture crosser.

By hanging back a little and patiently observing for a bit, learning a few rules of this place during a meantime that masquerades as unproductive, slipping in becomes more possible. As much as I wish that I could literally slip into an Indian identity and bobble my head through a day as an insider in this culture, I can’t. No matter now authentic my Indian kurta or salwar kameez, I will not blend in here. So I’m left with waiting, listening, and observing as my slipping-in tools. Patiently.

And then I wonder if this is part of what the Bible means when it says that love is patient. Is patience how I love this place that’s let me, courtesy of granting me a visa, in to share life for a little while? This wonder has sent me scurrying to look up that famous (among many) love passage, 1 Corinthians 13. And now I’m struck by something more: the power of this whole passage as a guide for entering into a place that is not our own, that is different from home, that can feel disorienting and strange, whether that place is another country, another county, or another person’s home.

Try it yourself. Think of going somewhere new and strange, a place—or even a person--that might normally elicit criticism, critique or fear for its strangeness. Then think of using this as your lens: “Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly [ahem, American tourists who act like they own the world and give American tourists everywhere a bad reputation]; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness [thus, there’s still room in love to recognize that not everything in every culture is pure and good just because it’s “culture”], but rejoices with the truth; bears all things [even when people laugh and stare at you?! even when it’s culturally inappropriate to eat with your left hand even if you’re a lefty?! :-)], hopes all things, endures all things.”

Such a lens kind of changes everything. Here’s hoping I’ll manage to be patient enough to learn a little and love much.

the travel blog lives again

2011-07-13T20:35:00.001-05:00

July 12, 2011 - Café Nero, Cathedral Street, Borough of Southwark, London

It’s moments like this that there’s no question whether I hope to live in this city one day. After an early morning meeting with a new friend with whom I share an alma mater and a sense of fit here, I have time to sit, to write or read or think, before making my way to London’s western edges to visit friends of friends. I don’t know who wrote “It’s a Small World” or where the person wrote it, but it seems like that title should be the theme song for this city on the Thames. All clues indicate that if I'm ever here longer, an iota of effort will provide me with a very long list of potential friends here who already know people I know.

I’ve climbed the steps to Café Nero’s “additional seating upstairs.” Only one other person, book in hand and earbuds blocking out the pleasant piped-in classical music that’s adding to the moment’s perfection for me, is sharing this spot with me, though two others have just arrived.

Through the wall of windows to my left, I can see one of the brick-paved walkways that winds through the Borough of Southwark here on the southern bank of the Thames. This particular alley is called Pickfords Wharf. Now at 10 a.m. tourist-looking types are beginning to take over from the business-suited wayfarers who dotted the bricks half an hour ago.

Mixed in with my window view of Pickfords Wharf's newer bricks is a somewhat crumbly but beautiful wall, formerly an integral part of some building but now just jutting out from younger architecture, ostensibly suggesting that its stones are still necessary, like an elderly person condescendingly and sympathetically given a task on the sidelines that isn’t really needed and that anyone younger could do better and faster.

The wall dates back ages ago and is fronted by a spot of green space that may be one of the places around here where excavation has unveiled structures left behind by the Romans. I stopped to read the plaque at that spot last week but already can’t remember any details other than that the bricks and stones are old--old by European terms not American ones—and that I really like that wall.

The mishmash of time continues through the windows straight ahead of me. To the far right and almost touchable from Café Nero’s doorway, is the Golden Hinde, a ship or a replica of a ship that’s important for some reason. A pirate ship? A merchant ship? A circus ship? (The red and yellow striped decorations make this seem plausible, though I won’t be wagering any money on that option.)

I’m not sure what its story is as I did not stop to read its plaque when I wandered by last week (and clearly might not remember it if I had). And there’s no googling for details since Café Nero appears to be without free wi-fi. So the Golden Hinde simply increases the intrigue of this cozy, creative moment and serves as a pointer toward the Thames, which is just yards away with its waters flowing around the silhouette of the book-reading person who separates me from the window.

Occasionally, speedboats, police boats, canal boats, and others skim its surface, dashing with or against the current. The buildings fronting the far side of the Thames from me are also a mix of old, old and newer architecture, including the distinctive Gherkin with its elongated egg-shape decorated in glass behind an old unidentifiable-from-here classic columned building.

Red double-decker London buses add well-timed splashes of color as they cross London Bridge (which is not falling down) and disappear into the maze of tan and gray buildings. More-muted color is added to the scene by the green algae climbing a few feet up the river’s retaining wall across the way.

Not adding color is today’s weather. It’s gray this morning and cool, but perhaps the sun will yet make a way through the clouds. Gorgeous days have been leapfrogging gray days since my arrival here last week. Still, even the gray manages a loveliness here. And I’m glad this go-around to be seeing London by daylight. My previous visits were in February and October-December, when daylight manages only about 8 hours of glinting before darkness takes over.

It’s been strange to return here and find that this place is no longer quite foreign to me, but it’s also not quite yet as familiar as home, resulting in the subconscious yet weighty tension that comes when the polarizing categories—such as “home” and “away”--we unintentionally use to help us understand the world don’t work. A little of the inner tension was relieved several days ago with conscious realization of the cause of the inner quibble. All too often strict categories muddy our understanding of the world rather than aid it.

But, what then? Create a new category? Perhaps “foreign home” or “almost home” or “place where I have to relearn the cheapest way to ride the trains”? Or instead become comfortable with the in-between? Let London be what it is for me today even if that’s different from what it is tomorrow or even a minute ago? Let it be free to shift between categories, thus shirking them and freeing me from trying to create a definition? Does that help? Or is naming, defining, categorizing an unavoidable, inescapable part of being human?

As I head out now to catch my next train, I’m anticipating the effects of another category mismatch: summer clothes in Nashville and summer clothes in London equate two different clothing categories rather than one. And I think my packing relied a bit too heavily on the first. My reflective wanderings through Café Nero’s windows haven’t yet bought enough time for the sun to find a hole in the clouds. Add in the breezy wind that’s ruffling tourists’ hair, and the word “blustery” seems nearly apropos. I’m not sure I’m wearing enough layers to be comfortable in blustery.

Yet, despite any uncomfortableness, I’ll still be glad I’m here even if I’m cold when I step out the doors (and I really, really dislike being cold) and even if the tension from non-fitting categories persists. Given the choice between comfortable and uncomfortable, the best choice isn’t always the former. Choosing only comfort can cause us to miss out on a whole lot of good. Again, categories are rarely tidy, accurate inventions: getting to "good" sometimes requires being okay with some "bad."

So there you go. Give me a window, a bit of time, a mocha, and some old bricks mixed with new ones, and my inner philosopher is sure to come begging for an audience.

(Photos to be added later when I have a faster internet connection!)

what's your CQ?

2010-07-21T02:18:00.008-05:00

I caught the tail-end of an interview on NPR's On Point yesterday. It sounded interesting. Po Bronson was one of the guests. I've not yet read any of his books, but with sincere reading-intentions I did check one out from the library once and read the intro before the book reached overdue status (that's worth something somewhere, right?). I'm intrigued by and appreciative of what I know about his approach to writing, reporting, and people. Due to all these factors, I hit up http://www.npr.org/ to find out what I'd just missed.

Among the topics du jour was Bronson's recent Newsweek article: The Creativity Crisis. It's a fascinating article that dredged up memories of taking IQ tests as a seven year old to see if I qualified for my county school system's gifted program. It also dredged up memories (from much more recent files) of things I observed about education systems while traveling abroad.

For whatever reason, I asked quite a lot of questions of my hosts, especially in Africa, about what education looks like in their locales. Maybe I did this more intentionally once I learned that African school systems in the former British colonies I visited are mostly based on the British system in terms of nomenclature for grade levels, etc., which means the terms aren't completely interchangeable with those of the American system. The British system never completely made sense in my American head, mostly, I think, because no one ever offered to draw me the diagram my visual self needed (all that A-level and O-level stuff doesn't seem to have an accurate American parallel). Eventually, though, many questions later and even sans map, I managed to get the gist of it.

I also had opportunity along the way to spend brief bits of time in schools. The bulk of my exposure was in Uganda where I assisted an aid organization with distribution of some school supplies, including at some schools that had been bombed by LRA rebels; toured and interviewed students at a private school; taught a class of 50-some students for almost an hour; and saw some study materials when kids on an island in Lake Victoria showed me what they were studying. In Zimbabwe I spent two weeks interviewing students at a university. In Ghana we spent time in villages where our guides described the changes Ghana was making in their public education system and the challenges of helping people understand the importance of it. In Haiti I visited a Save the Children summer program set up to prepare rural children to begin kindergarten in the fall, interviewed some older school-age children, and spent time on the grounds of a private school interviewing its founder/director. In London I participated in a junior high career day (students lost a fair bit of interest in my career path when the learned how little we writers make :-) ).

There's just something about understanding schooling that is one of the foundational pieces for understanding a culture. One of the observation gleaned from my educational question-asking in Africa three years ago and more recently from Africa-educated friends who now live in America is that the education systems in the parts of Africa I visited (particularly in Ghana, Kenya and Uganda) are very much based on memorization and rote learning. Training in problem-solving tends not to be a regular facet of mass education in these countries.

And, unfortunately, that reality bears out in many of the contemporary challenges that plague these particular countries. People complain of infrastructure that isn't maintained, systems that aren't effective, and other problems that can result when situations inevitably arise that require some imagination to solve, situations for which the rote answers that were hammered into them during their formal education aren't adequate. This is the state of things not because of lack of ability in the people but because they aren't taught or encouraged to think freely, to think outside the box, to figure out innovative solutions. Freedom and encouragement are key nurturing elements for creativity. Doing things as they've always been done and following the pack are not.

These observations all jive with what is described in Bronson's Newsweek article. The disconcerting evidence presented in the article indicates that while countries like China are making the switch from rote, memorization-based learning models to creativity-building models, American education is reverting to a less imaginative, more straight-laced model.

I'll throw my hat into the ring of agreement to say that based on my cursory observations abroad of the way lack of training in creativity impacts societies, this shift does not bode well for America. I agree that it's imperative for our own future problem-solving good and for the good of the rest of the world for us to re-incorporate creativity while we still can. Start by reading the article and then thinking of ways to solve this new crisis. Don't be surprised if you also find yourself wondering what your own creativity quotient, your CQ, is and how you can grow it.

being welcoming

2010-04-20T18:23:00.000-05:00

You never know when you'll run into a good story. Who would expect that an errand-in-the-middle-of-rush-hour to replace a headlight you just noticed was out (I got tickets the last time my lights burned out before I noticed they were out, so there was no time to spare this time) would turn into a gem of an interaction?

As Lloyd helped me replace the worn-out headlamp, he happened to say something about welcoming people to America. He told me this as we walked out to the parking lot of an auto parts store not far from my house in the more immigrant heavy part of Nashville. There's a lot of Spanish spoken in this store, and probably some other languages too.

Lloyd prefaced his welcome-to-America story with a story of his own lack of welcome somewhere outside the States: As a soldier, years ago it seems, he was out and about somewhere in Europe when a man standing with a girlfriend asked Lloyd if he was "Americano." Lloyd, in his military get-up, said that he was. And the man spit in his face. Lloyd, as he tells it, is a redneck, so he charged the man. But the man's girlfriend held them apart. Some welcome.

Fast-forward to sometime more recently: Lloyd was helping a customer and asked the man where he was from. "Laos," the man replied. And Lloyd said, "Welcome to America!" And the man started to cry. Lloyd was afraid he'd said something wrong. But then the man explained, "I've been in America for 19 years, and you're the first American to welcome me here." Wow.

That gets you in the gut, doesn't it? Our pride in being American should translate into welcoming new people into our midst. Unwillingness to be welcoming sure looks a whole lot like insecurity and a whole lot like not loving our neighbor as ourself. How would you want to be treated if you were the new person in town?

keep following the news from Haiti

2010-01-29T11:58:00.001-06:00

Blogs from folks I crossed paths with while in Haiti in '08:

Life of a Blan in Haiti
Lemuel Ministries blog
Hopital Bienfaisance/Promise for Haiti

If you're looking for places to donate, here are some reputable options that, because they're small and well connected locally, can get aid to needy people more quickly than some of the big organizations. These are all organizations I worked with while in Haiti and can vouch for.

Hosean International Ministries - housing earthquake refugees in facilities at the camp they run; also working to increase the capacity of their schools in order to get displaced kids back in school; supporting needs at Hopital Bienfaisance; helping with the airstrip in Pignon that is providing another way to get relief supplies into Haiti (since the Port au Prince airport is so clogged)

Hopital Bienfaisance - well-equipped hospital in Pignon, which is outside Port au Prince and has been treating earthquake victims

Lemuel Ministries - one base in Port au Prince and one far outside; also connected to and helping affected ministries and missions closer to PAP

Michael and Karen Broyles - friends who hosted me in Haiti; Michael stayed for a couple weeks after Karen and Kaydence were evacuated; now Mission Aviation Fellowship pilots are rotating through in Haiti; MAF is well-positioned at the PAP airport, where they already have offices and a hangar; they are supporting a flow of relief personnel and supplies and helping with evacuations

Broyles: specific Haiti relief needs

Mission Aviation Fellowship - providing key logistics, communications equipment, and air support in the Haiti relief effort from their long-standing base of Haiti operations

Christian Reformed World Missions - my friend Jenny works for this org but happened to be in the U.S. when the earthquake hit; they've been in Haiti for a while and have a solid network there

One last blog to mention:
Emily Troutman - I don't know this person but her reporting from Haiti is very good. She was there shortly before the 'quake, had left, and is back again.

poetry

2010-01-27T01:51:00.001-06:00

I'm reading my way through E.M. Forster's A Passage to India (and need to speed up my reading since my third renewal is almost up, which means I'll have to give the book back to the library soon). For those who've not read it, the novel is set in India during the time of British rule and chronicles the relationships between various Indian and British characters.

I was recently struck by the following passage:
"[Aziz] held up his hand, palm outward, his eyes began to glow, his heart to fill with tenderness. Issuing still farther from his quilt, he recited a poem by Ghalib. It had no connection with anything that had gone before, but it came from his heart and spoke to theirs...The squalid bedroom grew quiet; the silly intrigues, the gossip, the shallow discontent were stilled, while words accepted as immortal filled the indifferent air...Of the company, only Hamidullah had any comprehension of poetry. The minds of the others were inferior and rough. Yet they listened with pleasure, because literature had not been divorced from their civilization."

I happened to mention this passage this morning during the wide-ranging discussion of a faith & arts book group I'm part of. We've been reading Lewis Hyde's The Gift and somehow this morning we came to discuss the way the easy access of entertainment has affected people's patience with and access to real art. I confessed that I sometimes wish I could gather friends at my house on a Friday night to read poetry aloud together, because poetry should be communal and audible, but the few times I've sacrificed my coolness ;-) enough to suggest such a thing, there have been no serious takers. :-) Which made me think of this passage. I don't know whether this respect for poetry was ever really true in India or whether it is now, but whether in India or elsewhere there must be places where I might not have such a hard time convincing people to partake of a poetry night. Perhaps I'll get to find those places one day.

oh, haiti, we weep with you again

2010-01-13T01:12:00.006-06:00

As images of Haiti's newest devastation trickle in, the photograph that has thus far resonated most for me in terms of representing this newest chapter in Haiti's hard story is this picture of the collapsed top levels of Haiti's National Palace. (Photo also available here.)

One day at the end of the month I spent in Haiti in July 2008, my Haitian-American friend Jack took me on a field trip to downtown Port-au-Prince, an area that had been the site of riots over food shortages a few months earlier. Even among some of the missionaries this was an area that didn't have the best of reputations. Jack knew the lay of this part of the city's land, though, so we hopped aboard a tap-tap that would take us from Petionville to next-door Port-au-Prince.

And when we arrived in downtown Port-au-Prince what did my wondering eyes behold? Nothing that was remotely scary. Sure, the riots had really happened: there were lingering broken windows as evidence. But there are not riots every day here. The day I was taking in the sights people lounged in the park like they do on nice days in parks down the block from the office I used to work at in Washington, DC; people went about their business; people sold souvenirs; people went to and fro; people were not menacing.

After nearly four weeks in Haiti, I had been impressed by all the things that don't make it into the bits of news we usually get from the country. I had met Haitians who were working hard for their communities and families. On two occasions new Haitian acquaintances who learned that I was in Haiti as a journalist asked me to tell stories of the good things in Haiti, too, rather than only telling the same stereotypical stories that are always told.

By the time I sat on the tap-tap, frustration was formulating over the reality that the only thing most of America and probably most of the so-called developed world routinely hears about Haiti is that it's the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. This is how the country is identified in nearly every news article that covers anything that happens in the country, which usually means some sort of natural disaster or an account of more political instability. These things are true, but Haiti is much more than these things alone.

And so, on that late July day when I stood in front of the National Palace that I had not previously heard of or seen images of (apparently not as famous as its White House cousin in America) I was surprised by its beauty. I loved its architecture and its gleaming white facade, even its nicely contrasting green iron fence. Regardless of whatever political realities it represented, for me it represented the unexpected beauty I had found in Haiti. It symbolically said that Haiti is not only poor, make-shift shacks stacked upon each other. There is hope for Haiti yet, it said, because there's beauty, pride, ability and hard-working humanity here.

So when I see photos of a demolished National Palace and think of the long rebuilding ahead for that one symbolic building, I weep for Haiti. Once again for me it symbolizes big things: why must Haiti's hard-won beauties be stripped away? How I hope that her people will survive this new blow and build a stronger country in place of the one that collapsed around them today. How I pray for God's mercy on these poor, beautiful people, people created in His image just like the rest of us.

*All photos are from my late July '08 visit.

receiving well and a Christmas message

2009-12-28T14:13:00.000-06:00

Some friends of mine recently moved to Rwanda and, thankfully, are recording their Rwandan journey online. Check out their most recent post, To Know Him is to Know Peace, describing a beautiful expression of thankfulness expressed by some Rwandan women who understand intimately that nothing but Jesus can give them peace.

things I haven't had to worry about yet

2009-12-02T01:52:00.008-06:00

When this kind family offered tea to my fellow trekkers and I last May while we were visiting some of the small villages tucked among India's Himalayan Mountains, I never thought of not accepting their offer.

Last week while collecting interviews for a fun-to-cover article about cultural engagement for BestSemester magazine, I heard from Kara, a Peace Corps volunteer in Mongolia, who described a sticky cultural situation I've yet to encounter:

"It's very difficult to know when to conform to another culture and when not to. This battle occurs every day for me! It's not just about major topics and issues, but about the everyday things. For example, here in Mongolia, if you are offered food or beverage it is considered very rude not to accept it and then consume it. But when it's something you know is going to make you sick, must you eat it? What if it's vodka, which is very popular here? I don't really want to encourage excessive drinking, and I definitely don't want it to appear like I condone alcoholism, which is rampant, but if I refuse to take a shot of vodka, I may be offending my hosts. What do I do?"

Tonight I ran across a related tidbit on the blog of a traveler/photographer I don't know (greetings, Mitchell, in case you ever discover this link to your nice site) who is recounting some Romanian adventures:

"I was reminded a little of India, when the locals almost forced their hospitality upon us, only in India the hospitality takes on the form of tea and food, while in Maramures you have to drink their toxic home-made “Tsuika”, a 50 + degree alcoholic beverage, strong enough to burn a whole in your stomach. After drinking five or six shots of it in the first day I decided that in reply to future offers it would be better for me to drink a tiny bit of it, make a face and say that it is too strong for people from my country, which is not far from the truth."

I'm thinking Mitchell's suggestion of a way out of this particular cultural engagement predicament sounds pretty good, so I've decided it's something worth adding to my bag of traveler's tricks in case I'm offered something stronger than tea the next time I'm on the trail somewhere in the world.

So far I haven't encountered any real food fiascoes in my travels. Thankfully. Of course, there were those small fish I ate in the village of Kisaba on Bukasa Island in Africa's Lake Victoria (I blogged about that here), but fish are not bugs. Or vodka. In that same town, though, I had the only experience I can recall of deciding not to eat something, even if not eating it could be considered impolite. It had more to do with exhaustion and dim candles, though, than with what was on my plate:

Sometime around 11 pm or midnight the night we stayed in Kisaba, we were finally led to our hosts' home/shop for supper. We wound through the dark fishing village on the edge of the lake and eventually passed through a covered storage room/kitchen area and entered a dark room of their home. I think it was the same room they used as a little shop during the day. It was lit only by a small light that, as I recall, was some sort of small oil lamp kind of thing. Whatever it was it emitted the amount of light of a small candle. Hence, when they brought our food, it was nearly impossible to see what was on our plates.

I was really tired at that point in the day and not so hungry anymore. And it was the chicken, of all things, that forced me to the brink of impoliteness. I decided I couldn't eat it because I just couldn't see it well enough to pick around the bones and such, and it was probably a pretty skinny chicken, so one had to do a lot of picking. So, I ate some of the other things on the plate and hoped it would be too dark for my hosts to tell what I hadn't eaten. I never noticed any dirty looks and everyone was still nice to me, so I guess no offense was taken.

And that is pretty much my most exciting food story thus far. (You were on the edge of your seat, weren't you?) Well, other than the secretly stealthy, invisible spices in the food at our Indian hotel, the food they kindly tried so hard to Americanize for our group. But that's another story for another day, maybe. And now that I think about it, there was that other dimly-lit meal that I ate in Maissade, Haiti, but other than the dimly-lit part and not being able to participate in the dinner table conversation because my Creole language skills are non-existent, that meal was really tasty.

So, anyway, the real moral of this blog story is that sneaky, hot spices and chicken-in-the-dark are a far cry from tsuika. And I'm glad some other travelers have gone before me and called back warnings about the more tipsy variety of hospitality I might someday encounter.
*Top photo: India, photo courtesy of Leigh Greer.
*Bottom photo: view out the door of a church in Kisaba, Uganda.

roots

2009-11-06T23:38:00.004-06:00

For a few days I'm back where I began. It's a good place to be. Especially while still-cheery autumn sun glints down on Upper East Tennessee's hills and hollers. Today for barely more than a moment I did something I've done all too rarely here, during either my growing-up days among the narrow, windy roads or on my regular return visits to see my family.

In places other than this one, I explore (old-school style, sans GPS). I take the long way home. I take roads I've never driven on before, roads whose destinations I don't know, roads that start out heading in directions I want to go without offering any guarantees they'll continue that way. I walk along sidewalks that may or may not deposit me somewhere I recognize. I meander by foot or by wheel. And I make delightful discoveries. Exploring offers you things you wouldn't receive otherwise.

Post-nice-conversation this afternoon with a fellow traveler who doesn't hail from these parts but has made a home-base here I was reminded how little I've explored the nooks and crannies of this place I still refer to as home, in the way of "home-home" that references roots rather than where my books are shelved. I haven't done things here that I have done in lots of other places I've lived in and visited. Mostly, I haven't meandered with eyes willing to see the wonder of this place. Instead, I went to high school and sewed 4-H aprons and babysat and went on youth group retreats here. Good things all but not really the same as exploring. Living, yes. Exploring, no.

In Cape Coast, Ghana, two years ago now, I stole away for some solitary moments spent overlooking the picturesque coastline, watching colorful fishing boats bobbing on the sea as two men carried fishing paraphernalia down a path and then along the beach. I wondered then if they recognized the beauty they walked in the midst of every day or if they only pondered whether the day's catch was enough for their family's supper.

When I tell people where I'm from, those with any knowledge of this place comment on its Appalachian mountain beauty. I agree. Yes, it is beautiful here. But deep down I feel a bit insincere as I nod my head. Because I'm not sure I ever stopped long enough to take in the beauty while I lived in its midst. I don't think I paused on many mountain paths in the middle of my daily tasks and looked around myself, absorbing just a bit of the prettiness I'd been plopped into courtesy of birth. I certainly didn't explore beyond the usual routes from place to place.

When I've returned to Nashville after various travels abroad, I've come back with eyes eager to see my home (in the home-du-jour, single "home" version of the concept) through a traveler's eyes. What would my new friends think of this place? What would they notice? What would seem odd and incongruous? What would seem intriguing? What would seem beautiful? What would seem similar to their homes? What would be strange and different? What would surprise them and crack their stereotypes?

Today, for perhaps the first time, I momentarily turned those questions toward my home-home in the northeastern tip of Tennessee. I explored just a little. I exited the interstate one exit early and headed toward a nearby road that appeared likely to take me to the farm-fenced, sun-brightened hills that were beckoning. I wound along the narrow asphalt for just a little while, crossing a railroad track, passing old Boone Station, and meandering deeper into the hills. That bit of time was long enough to decide there must be more of it. There is wonder here too.

It's sometimes easy to sell home-home short. To miss its charms for its daily grind. To miss its cow-dotted pastures and friendly-looking houses--scattered in delightfully un-cookie-cutter fashion along shoulderless roads--for grocery store runs and "i"s to dot or for family to visit.

But that's the beauty of travel. Done right, it brings you back home, back to where you began, just better equipped to recognize the wonder of the world you walk in every day as you catch your daily fish and finish your geometry lessons and visit your new niece. Here's hoping for more time spent exploring my beautiful home-home.

rockin' it country style in sudan

2009-10-25T22:53:00.006-05:00

I've been moving photos from one computer to another tonight and came upon this bit of video. It made me chuckle, for the pleasant memory it holds, so I decided it's time to share it with you. There are so many stories yet untold from my Africa travels, and I'm still hoping to give those stories life here over time. This is a start.

I met Kennedy during a quick overnight trip to southern Sudan from my base-for-the-month in Uganda. I've been curious about and captivated by Sudan for a long time, so I was really glad things came together for me to get at least this brief bit of time there. Kennedy is the Ugandan aid worker who hosted us in this very remote town. As we flew in, it was clear this was one of the more remote places I'd yet been during my Africa sojourn. The terrain was parched and filled only by scrubby growth. No other spots of concentrated life were visible from the air, outside of the town we were visiting.

Kennedy was great and had such a fun sense of humor. We spent a good bit of time being driven by him between aid sites in the SUV that's so necessary for driving in such places. There'd been some rain recently, leaving behind some very muddy, deep water spots on the dirt road. Kennedy had to do some fancy driving to get us through them. After he'd successfully gotten unstuck in some spot or other, I called up to him from my perch in the back of the vehicle: "You're having fun, aren't you?" He grinned in response.

So in all this driving around, I barely noticed the music lilting from the vehicle's speakers. Someone else commented on it first. I didn't notice it because it just seemed so normal to hear Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, and more singing to me. I'd just assumed it was the radio playing all this time. I didn't stop to realize that it was unlikely that there was a country music station broadcasting in remote southern Sudan.

Turns out that Kennedy is a huge country music fan. He was pumping his tapes of country music through the speakers. Kennedy offered me an unexpected bit of home in the middle of this hardscrabble locale. It was fun to tell him about my Nashville home and the country music stars who used to come through my Starbucks line. I was supposed to come back to Nashville and tell them all about the big fan they have in Sudan. :-)

a little more NOLA

2009-10-24T23:42:00.000-05:00

One more New Orleans post is live! There's even a recipe included this time. It's clearly a must-see post. Hop on over while the hopping's good. ;-)

voting for pork chops

2009-09-15T13:24:00.002-05:00

More from my July travels to New Orleans here!

Haiti story

2009-09-03T11:15:00.002-05:00

One of the pieces I wrote based on my experience in Haiti last summer is now live: Seeing into the Future. Enjoy! And then pray for the folks in Haiti.

trying to get it right

2009-08-27T01:22:00.007-05:00

Tonight I chatted with a writer friend who just returned from a couple weeks in Southeast Asia. We talked about many things, of course, and among the richness was conversation about how to tell stories of people we meet in such places, that are so different from our homeplaces, without descending into unfair cliche and stereotype. How do you tell stories of far-away people and places to people back home who've never visited them? How will they understand?

Relatedly, we talked about photographs, as she considers which photos to share from her trip. She realized that in Southeast Asia she wanted lots of photos of people, but when she and her husband stopped off in Paris for a couple days, she specifically didn't want people in her photos. Was she exploiting the people in Southeast Asia?

Oh, how I understand what she's wrestling with. So many people who visit points in Africa or Haiti or other developing countries return home armed with photos of themselves posing with cute kids. I'm sorry to say that I have a harder and harder time with these photos, as well-meant as they are and as much as they populate my own photo album. And it's because of that exploitation question. That sense of white Westerner showing off the good things they're doing for the poor little kids of Africa is something I find increasingly troubling. And it's sometimes all too embodied in these photos.

The fact is that kids are easy to come by in many developing countries. To explain: particularly in warm weather cultures, much life happens outdoors. That's where children play. So they easily notice the strangers walking through their village or down their street. Warm weather cultures, where many developing countries lie, are also often very communal, so communities watch over children and children watch over each other and everyone is friendly to strangers. It's just not so easy to take pictures of children in places like France because culturally the children aren't so likely to be running around without adults hovering over them. It's just all so different. On a related side note, I think that people in India and many parts of Africa, for example, are some of the most beautiful people in the world. So photos of many of them make for stunning portraits. And that's partly why so many people are able to take compelling photos of them. But...

After working alongside a photographer while in Uganda, I've started paying a lot more attention to the kinds of photos that make their way into the literature of development and mission organizations and into newspapers and other media. My photographer friend is a very good photographer, but the reality is that I see his photos repeated again and again by other good photographers. The faces are different but the photos tell the same story. But it's not necessarily a true story.

You see, there's no way photographs can tell a whole story. In the same way movies are almost never as good as the books they're adapted from, photographs need words to give them context. Photos on their own aren't fully contextual. They can be artistic and amazing, but as sole tellers of true stories, they can be, well, misleading. Everything going on outside a picture's frame is lost, unable to be considered by the photo's viewers. All the viewer can see is the way things looked for a split second of time within the space parameters of the photo. Photographs rarely provide back story. They rarely explain what prompted the smile or frown captured by a snapping shutter. All of this missing information can tell a story that isn't true at all.

As I seek opportunities for further work abroad, I'm coming to a frustrating suspicion: I need to be a photographer in order to be certain to be sent to points outside the U.S. Photographers must necessarily shoot on location. There's no way around it. Writers, on the other hand, well, if you're looking to save on travel costs, it's much easier to ask the writers to stay home and gather quotes via email. At a loss, I think, to true story-telling. There's nothing that can substitute for being on the ground in a place, gathering the back story and the outside-the-frame action that the camera can't possibly capture.

Sure, writing has limits too. There's never space to tell everything. And some photographers do an amazing job telling stories through their lenses. But though a picture may be worth a 1000 words, as the saying goes, there are 1000 other words the picture misses. And I think it's those words, composed thoughtfully, that protect a photo subject's humanity and ward off exploitation of the poor people the world loves to photograph.

domestic travels too

2009-07-07T09:14:00.002-05:00

I didn't need my passport to go to New Orleans, but my work there over the weekend was not so different from my writing work abroad. I was there on a little media familiarization tour, along with five other writers and photographers. As in Africa and Haiti and London, I had too-few days to try to learn New Orleans, specifically its food culture, enough to write about it later. As in those other places, I discovered that the story is best learned by talking to a city's people.

I've posted some photos and bits of the story on my other blog: www.kamirice.blogspot.com. Today I'm writing up more of the New Orleans stories that I was hired to write. Eventually I'll post links to those stories.

mountains, oh, mountains

2009-06-21T20:41:00.009-05:00

India makes me want to hike more. In our prep for our trekking in the foothills of the Himalayas and in our time actually doing the trekking, I discovered or perhaps relearned or maybe was reminded that I want hiking/trekking to be a more regular thing in my life. I grew up in the mountains, America's small ones, so hiking should be in my jeans, right? (yes, yes, that was an intended pun. after all my genes are midwestern ones not Appalachian ones)

What a beautiful place we had the chance to traverse during our too few days. In some places homes were scattered along ridges, reminding me of the hollers from my homeland Appalachians, the ones my school bus lumbered into to pick up classmates. Except the Indian version wasn't accessible for school buses or anything with more wheels than a donkey has. In other places we entered real villages with homes clustered together and beautiful, friendly people who made us all want to come back for a few months of village life and work on their picturesque terraced farmland. Oh, someday, perhaps.

Our bamboo hiking poles were essential tools of the trade. Without them the trails would have felt more treacherous. Of course, the locals need no poles and also need no catch-your-breath breaks at embarassingly regular seven minute or so intervals on the climb out of the valley.

Somehow trekking takes on much better purpose when you're hiking through villages and past homes of people who invite you in for chai and chatting. So much more enjoyable than it'll-do hikes around my local Radnor Lake. In India I felt like I was going somewhere as we traversed trails. Here I'm reminded that my normal everyday life is more sedentary than is healthy.

And then after not nearly long enough we were back just a little over a week after we went. And we were the better for it. In more ways than a few. And hopefully we left behind some good news.

faster than a speeding bullet

2009-05-10T16:19:00.002-05:00

In less than two weeks, we're off to India! Check back later and if you're lucky, I'll add the team's bathroom picture. ;-)

reunited. in more ways than one.

2009-01-18T23:01:00.002-06:00

I've spent much of this week being reunited with my long-stored belongings. And it's mostly a happy reunion, except for the part where I'm a little overwhelmed by how much I still own even after all the work of purging I've been doing these past couple years. It's mostly books, though, so once those are on the shelves, the pile of boxes waiting to be unpacked will be vastly smaller. As I unpack, I'm enjoying discovering a few more things I can get rid of but am not enjoying disovering the things I did get rid of but now need again. It's much more expensive to re-buy things you once owned but don't anymore. Grrrr.... I mostly guessed right in my purging, but there are a few things I missed on. For example, is there anyone out there with an extra ironing board? :-) I sold mine at one of the myriad yard sales, and now I have an iron but no board and none available in my new home. And ironing on a desk just doesn't cut it long term. Mostly, though, I purged okay.

Today as I unpacked, I participated in a very unexpected reunion, versus all of the expected ones of the day (like the cool mugs I haven't used in ages!). You see, sometime about two years ago I purchased a ring from my sister who was selling jewelry. I loved the ring. It was the perfect style for me, and I could wear it everyday. It was one of the few pieces of jewelry I wore during my four months of travel in Africa in '07, and it was fun to enjoy something pretty. Well, fast forward to the summer of '08, and suddenly I realized one evening that my hand was naked. The pretty little ring was gone. And I had no idea where I lost it and only a slight idea of when. I looked and looked for it, but never found it. And I couldn't afford to replace it. $50 to re-buy something like that just wasn't in my budget.

I hate losing things in general and don't do it often. So it really bugs me when I do. Especially when it's something I really like. You can probably see where this is going....

Fast forward to today. When I felt like the woman from Jesus' parable in the Gospel accounts who celebrated when she found her lost coin. As I unwrapped mugs from a cardboard box, something rolled to the bottom of the box. Hoping it wasn't a piece of broken mug, I was shocked when I discovered that it was my lost-for-good ring. It's amazing what a pick-me-up it is to find something you thought you'd lost forever. I want to tell everyone that it is found, so they can celebrate with me! And now I have an object lesson every time I look at my ring-ringed finger: my joy at finding this silly little bit of lost metal is miniscule compared to Jesus' joy at welcoming new children into His fold. And as I worry and fret about checkbook balances, my ring-ringed finger is also a reminder that God isn't an austere, miserly God. He delights in giving His children good gifts, which sometimes means giving things that aren't necessities.

surprised

2009-01-09T11:43:00.002-06:00

I've been back in the States for 2.5 weeks now. And I'm surprised. At how clear it is that it is the right decision to stay put for a while. Because I'm tired and full.

Over the years I've slowly, slowly been growing better at first recognizing and then trying to live within the boundaries and limitations inherent in humanness. This isn't an easy thing for me as I tend to live life full with poor ability to recognize it's fullness and only end up wondering why I'm so tired all the time. Until times like this when I stop for a bit and realize that for two years I've been planning major travels while simultaneously growing my freelance biz from part-time to full-time, growing into a new church community in Nashville, deepening old and new friendships, volunteering in my community and then absorbing millions of impressions and interactions as I travel around the world. Oh and trying to learn French. And accepting assignments that I've never done before and have to learn (or fake, at least that's sometimes how it feels) my way through. And trying to read more and actually being successful at that, courtesy of my book group. And trying to cook more. And any number of other things. All while living temporarily (that means home and office are on the constant move which also means constantly lining up manpower and vehicle power for shifting belongings) in one house after another.

Part of the reason I wanted to go to London this fall instead of waiting until 2009 or some other time is that I wanted to return to the States in December. I came back from Africa in December too. And the dark days and contempletive aspect that can accompany the Christmas season, Advent, is the perfect aspect to return into from a long sojourn. I am thankful that this year I didn't have any pressing work assignments during the remaining holiday season, so I could arrive back into my family's arms for Christmastime and then rest with some dear and very fun college friends in a lake cottage in northern Indiana while we rang in the New Year. I needed that time more than I even knew when I scheduled it.

And then I returned to Nashville feeling desperate to secure permanent housing, unsure how long I could muster continued survival in the land of the temporary. Though a generous friend long ago offered me a place to stay for the month of January, until I could figure out more long-term digs, I returned unsure how I could force my way through another whole month of trying to find things in packed and unpacked and repacked bags, of how I could do my work while sitting on an air mattress on a bedroom floor, and in general of how long I could hold on a little longer. The extent of this feeling has surprised me.

Thankfully, thankfully, things have come together in good fashion for me to move into good housing next week. So I've been forcing myself to hold on for just a tiny bit longer. But this is hard. I am not at rest. I am not settled. I am thankful to be able to write at all today because I haven't felt I had the capacity for writing, even for journaling, for what feels like a while but is probably only a couple weeks. Yet I am glad that the visceralness of these feelings will make the contrast of settledness so visceral too.

I am also eager to stop for a while and listen to and process all that's been poured into me these past two years. I am still in Nashville, and I am still writing, and many of my friends are still the same. Yet everything has also changed. These two years of fullness have launched new things, and I am excited to stop long enough to learn what these new things are.

I am thankful, too, for friends who affirm my weariness, who tell my always-onward self that it's okay to retreat a little for a while, who understand why all I want to do right now is sleep and read and sit with my friends.

Originally, I was planning to return to England this year, hoping to get in a full six months abroad. But over the fall months in London, though that continued to be the plan I wanted, I never felt full peace with it. So I proceeded with it until God made more clear that instead I need to stay in Nashville for a while. And as much as I would love to head back to London so soon, I've found a bit of relief in the rearranged plans, and I am very excited to participate in Nashville life through the larger eyes and heart I'm bringing back to my city. And I'm excited to trust God for all the places and people I hope to get back to some day and for all the new ones I hope for too. And I'm hoping and trusting that stopping for a while will better equip me for those places and seasons even as stopping works out it twin purposes for my right-now life too.

break a leg

2008-12-13T20:47:00.000-06:00

You might as well hear the news straight from the horse's mouth, or so the saying goes and is going tonight: I was very happy to be flying under the radar of the flu/cold causing viruses floating around London infecting my friends. But my luck didn't hold. Those little pests found me. In an act of defiance at not wanting to let them ruin my last week-plus of London explorations (which they have been disrupting since Thursday), I accepted my friend Beth's last-minute invitation to join her for a bit of London theatre, courtesy of a generous friend of hers.

Cold or no cold, how could I say no to enjoying one of the very-London things I haven't yet partaken of these three months past? So I said yes. And am very glad I did (especially if I wake up miraculously mucus-free in the morning). Beth and I found our ways separately (her by bus, me by DLR) to a hidden gem of a performance space that would have been a treat in itself even if the play had been rubbish, which it wasn't, of course.

On tap was The Cordelia Dream, a production by the Royal Shakespeare Company. It's too late and I'm coughing too much to try to offer a review of the play, so I'll just say: it was interesting, intense, dramatic and worth seeing. And it was especially worth seeing at Wilton's Music Hall, a nearly derelict old space with a colorful history that folks are trying to keep alive. Far from the glitz and the suffocating, look-how-fashionable-I-am crowds of theatre central around Leicester (pronounced "Lester," just for future don't-sound-like-a-tourist tips when you visit London) Square, the hall is tucked inside a brick-paved pedestrian road called "Grace's Alley." As you walk down Cable Street in East London toward Ensign Road, there are no real clues that you're anywhere near a theatre. Which means you feel like you've been let in on a secret when you pass through its barnlike and almost miss-able main doors into the warm yellow glow inside. And perhaps you have. One of the best kinds of secrets.

the front doors

Grace's Alley

don't get excited. it's just rain, not snow. it's okay if you get excited about the theatre banner, though.

fyi: go to the right of the staircase to enter the main performance hall.

kitchen reflections

2008-12-13T20:27:00.001-06:00

If I lived in London's City of Westminster rather than its Borough of Lewisham, I might have heard Big Ben chiming twelve as I returned from my theatre jaunt, but I don't. And neither did I hear any less famous substitute, as there don't seem to be chimes in this corner of London. Only occasional sirens that are more than occasional (think "very normal") during rush hour. Anyway, my eye caught this intriguing sight after brewing a cup of pre-bed tea (chamomile, vanilla and honey. Yum!) and grabbing a literal midnight snack. My camera was on hand and the lighting was sure to be different in the morning. It was a now or never moment. And like the worst storytellers, I won't leave you in suspence. I went with now.

You might call it "Still Life in the Kitchen."

You might call this "Alien causes flower stems to grow mysterious bowl of oranges. (No one has been able to get to the bottom of this yet.)"

hot off the presses!

2008-12-13T09:19:00.000-06:00

One of the things among many that I've loved about London is its newspaper culture. This is a city of not one, not two, but many major newspapers. And there's a way in which that gives life to a city, I think. Or maybe the city gives life to its newspapers.

I suppose it helps that London is a city of commuters who don't have to pay attention to their driving while they the travel to and fro and, instead, can pay attention to their news. But, even DC, which is also a city of commuters, never seemed to have the relationship with the newspaper that London does.

There's some thoughtful, witty writing in some of these newspapers. I especially appreciate that because my city's primary newspaper is increasingly hard to appreciate in terms of quality or coverage. And Nashville's not exactly a sleepy little hamlet with nothing going on. These London newspapers leave make me less resistant to being called a journalist (I prefer the term writer, as I think it has more depth and more possibility) because they actually showcase some excellent writing. (as does the New York Times, by the way)

From my new friend The Evening Standard, which comes out later in the day instead of in the morning, to the freebies London Lite and The London Paper that are distributed as the evening commute begins to the well-respected Guardian and Observer, newspapers and newstands abound. (and that's not all of them!) Most of them are also printed tabloid style which I personally think is much, much easier to handle and read than the broadsheet layout of most American newspapers (I think I got those terms right!). Maybe that's the reason for declining newspaper readership: give people something that's not so ridiculously bulky to manage, something you can still see around while you're reading it, something that doesn't require a table the size of a football field (American football, that is) to hold it when you read it while eating.

I also love living in a city where magazines I might want to pitch stories to actually have offices. Even if I never meet the necessary editors, there's something so hopeful in the possibility of not being dependent only on emails (which inevitably get snagged by over-zealous spam filters) or phone calls to plead your case. It's possible, if needed for some reason, to drop by the offices of these media mavens. It makes access to work for a freelance writer feel much more probable.

And for all the moaning and pontificating about the end of the reading culture, I still see lots of people reading books everywhere here and in lots of other places too, and those are just the public places where people read. Although I will admit that I also see lots of people with earbuds tucked inside their eardrums, a habit I have yet to appreciate. Do you really need music with you so constantly that you must drown out the rest of the world whenever you're in the midst of it? I want to engage with my surroundings too much for that, always watching for a chance to exchange a smile with a stranger or something. That's less likely to happen if the stranger's eyes are closed and their ears are plugged and beats are emanating from their body.

Anyway, that's the soapbox. The real point is "long live newspapers!" ;-)

field trip

2008-12-09T18:20:00.001-06:00

I'm not normally a fan of modern architecture or skyscrapers or anything close. I also don't really know what quays are except I think they're pronounced "keys." But tonight I took a field trip up the DLR (Docklands Light Rail) to a place called Canary Wharf/West India Quays. And I'm glad I went.

Though I left the house around 4:45-ish, it was of course already pitch black making it feel like evening when it was still late afternoon. So I only saw the quays and scrapers in the dark. Which is a beautiful, if probably incomplete (that whole thing about darkness hiding things) way to see them. The Docklands are basically across the Thames from Greenwich in the spot where the river twists down and back up in a deep capital "U" shape. The London guidebook I picked up in Bratislava's Next Apache used book shop explained to me (while I sat in a Canary Wharf Starbucks) that the whole area has been fairly recently developed away from the shall-we-say disrepair it had fallen into. Apparently the quays were (are?) part of London's shipping biz. I think they're man-made, but I'm not sure. Perhaps I should go visit Wikipedia, but I don't feel curious or awake enough for that right now.

Tonight the trees outside the high-end shops at the Canary Wharf DLR station and outside the high rise buildings housing offices of people who work late-ish trying to figure a way out of the world's financial free-fall, tonight those trees twinkled with subtle, elegant bluish-purple lights that I think are in honor of Christmas season but could be there all year for all I know. Either way, they're nice.

And unexpectedly, so are all those high rises with office lights mostly still on even as the offices emptied (I'm surprised they get away with that in environment-conscious London, but it would be less striking if they were all dark). It's definitely a different facet of London than the others I've visited thus far. Perhaps I'll make it there in the day time. Sometime before Dec. 23 when I will end this go-around of London life.

In other news, I've been discovering little tricks of the trade lately, little tricks that I'm learning about too late to take much advantage of. Like tonight, for example, I discovered that Lewisham station's DLR entrance boasts TWO ATM machines that are a good five minutes closer to my house than the one I usually go to to get my rent money and other cash. For WEEKS now, I've been walking FIVE whole minutes further (that's TEN minutes round trip of course) than I've needed to!!

Also, tonight in less of an annoyed tone I discovered that the movie theater (aka: cinema as they call it here, probably because this is actually a place that has lots of real theaters where live people perform so that saves any confusion) at West India Quay is actually pretty cheap as movie theaters go. PLUS it's only a cheap DLR ride away. And I've finally firmly concluded tonight that I like the DLR a lot. It just feels more gentle and easy and less grinding than the train I usually have to take to get to places like cinemas. For those of you who have no way to test my theory on this, just trust me. You would agree if you were here. I just know it.

So I concluded my field trip tonight by trying to catch up with my book group in Nashville that read The Secret Life of Bees for November and then went to see the film together. I've handled that book in book stores so many times but never succombed to purchasing it or checking it out from the library. Since I'm still finishing October's book group book and want to read January's book, I decided here was my chance to skip the book and just catch up by watching the movie. It's a good flick. And it was a good night for such a flick.

So there you go. Field trip done. On to tomorrow.

happy thanksgiving!

2008-11-28T18:19:00.000-06:00

My cousin Melissa arrived in town Wednesday night, just in time to make it feel like a holiday weekend. She is stopping by on her way back home following a few weeks of travel in Madagascar and Mauritius.

On Thanksgiving Day we headed out to Cambridge for a few hours on our way to Thanksgiving dinner.

Since I don't actually have any pictures from our dinner, I figured I should include this food picture from a market in Cambridge in honor of the meal. From Cambridge we proceeded to Huntingdon where we joined a proper American feast courtesy of a friend of mine who was visiting his aunt and uncle and invited us to join in.

Nearly at the end of our Thanksgiving Day, we were thankful to be able to wait indoors for our next train instead of out in the cold.

And to you and yours....HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!! (a day late)

things in Europe that have made me smile

2008-11-28T13:44:00.000-06:00

Italian stop sign - obvious, isn't it?

First, you should know that I’m easily amused. Second, you should know that these aren’t the only times I’ve smiled. Just in case you were worried. ;-) In recap style, here you go:

*Stop signs in Italy, or at least in the part of Italy I was in, are in English, exact replicas of stop signs at home. Why? Did some American stop sign maker score a seriously good business deal when he convinced the Italians that everyone has watched enough American movies to know the English word for stop? (Incidentally, this same stop sign maker’s sales person apparently scored deals in Slovakia too, though I didn’t catch photographic evidence of that, only saw it.)

*Another strange sight: Jessica, Stephanie and I walked past a nicely situated house during our walk along the Tuscan country roads near their house. Upon passing back by the house, I noticed a red mailbox just like the black one outside my growing-up house. Upon further inspection, I discovered that this mailbox in the Italian countryside also said “U.S. Mail” on the mailbox door, just like the box at home. Upon even further inspection, I discovered that all the names on the side of the mailbox were Italian names rather than something like “Smith” that would have made more sense. Perhaps they picked it up as a souvenir during a jaunt to America?

*Watch your TV listings for a special Geraldo Rivera special on going undercover as a Bratislava tram driver. While Julie and I waited for the correct tram one Bratislava day, a tram approached that was not the one we were waiting for. And sitting in the driver’s seat wearing a warm-looking, off-white, cable-knit, high-necked, zipped-up cardigan (it seemed odd that the tram drivers in Bratislava didn’t wear uniforms, just normal clothes) was a dark-haired, mustached dead-ringer (at least from a side viewing from a distance of a couple yards away through tram glass) for good ol’ Geraldo. And who would put it past him to be doing a special on a week in the life of a tram driver? I’m sure it was him. Definitely. Except that the necessary camera crew was doing an amazing job of being incognito.

*During one of my first couple weeks here, I think I saw a chimney sweep during my walk back home from the Brockley train station. I’ve already been enamored with all of London’s chimneys, so spotting a soot-covered (face, clothes, everything) man carrying a broom toward a van parked beside a quiet stretch of residential city road only added to the old school charm of the chimney culture. (And, of course, started such tunes as “chim, chimeree, chim, chimeree, chim, chim, chi-ree” singing through my brain.)

*Walking to the train station one mid-day (the Lewisham station I use most often), I turned left off Brookbank Road toward the short stretch of road leading to the pedestrian tunnel under the train tracks. As I passed halfway down the block, someone was carrying things into their house or something. Their front door was open and suddenly, loudly out the front door rang an exuberant line of song that transported me back home as I chuckled: “Ain’t nothing but a hound dog…”

*Late last night as cousin Melissa and I walked back up the hill on Brookbank road, two guys were petting the orange cat who’s been my friendly greeter on several of my very regular jaunts up and down the hill. I hadn’t seen the cat lately and have been wondering if it’s been locked inside since it’s been so cold out. Yesterday was warmer. I stopped and asked the guys whether it was their cat. It’s not. And they aren’t sure where it lives, but perhaps five doors down, they said. I explained that the cat had accompanied me down the road the morning I was rushing downhill with my suitcase at 4 am to catch the bus to the airport. That is not the time you want a cat rubbing up against your legs for a friendly morning greeting. I was more generous when it greeted me during my 3:30 am return from my travels two weeks later. I stopped to pet it that time. As we walked on up the hill from our brief conversation, one of the guys called out, “Happy Thanksgiving!” I guess our American accents were pretty obvious.

What determines a mailbox's nationality? Where it's located or what it says on it? And for that matter what if you put non-US mail in a US Mail box?

just for fun and because the music's good

2008-11-25T07:30:00.000-06:00

Here's a link to the MySpace page for the band I wrote a bio for while I was in Italy: St. Lola in the Fields. They've posted the bio, and you can also check out their music. Good stuff!

round 1 of italy photos - from jessica's camera

2008-11-20T13:48:00.001-06:00

When you work in the kitchen, you get to eat scrumptiousness before the retreat kids arrive: hot brownies, real raspberry sauce, chocolate chips melted by the hot brownie and whipped cream on top of it all.

Apparently cutting and serving pizza is serious business in Italy.

The logistics/teaching team for the retreat: Jessica (MCYM staff person), Kami, Cheryl (Jocelyn's mom), Jocelyn (MCYM staff/main teacher/speaker for this retreat), Jaime (Jocelyn's friend), Tido (MCYM regional director).

I enthusiastically manned the "Olive Oil Shop" for a couple hours at the end of the retreat. This is grown and bottled across the street from the retreat place by the Ammirabile (sp?) family I mentioned having lunch with. Notice how green it is? That's what olive oil looks like when it's first bottled during olive harvest time, but the green part (the chlorophyl?) settles out by the time it reaches American store shelves.

View from the back of the main retreat building. Even more stunning in person. All those gorgeous Tuscan pictures you've seen are true.

Pretty stand of trees along the nice country walk Jessica and roommate Stephanie and I took by walking down the road from their house. (i.e. they could see this every day if they wanted to!)

The Leaning Tower of Pisa is really in Pisa! (confession: Before learning that I would be in Pisa, I had never before stopped to realize that the "leaning tower OF PISA" was anything other than a name. I never realized that that probably meant there was a town called Pisa somewhere.)

We were trying to make ourselves look nearly as interesting as gorgeous San Gimignano in the background in it's stony, towery glory.

next apache is the name

2008-11-18T12:33:00.002-06:00

Life feels as it should today. I’m in Bratislava in a slightly smoky, cozy tucked-away café (that gets extra points for having a roomful of used books—in English--for sale), and I’m typing away, working to tell the story of a great London-based charity, wishing I could spend more time with their clients and have more space for words to tell their stories. The room I’m in was mostly empty until just a bit ago. Julie is in another room meeting up with some women for a Bible study. The main room of Next Apache has filled up, but since the other patrons are speaking Slovak to each other, I’m not so distracted as usual as I try to block out the conversations around me. In this cozy space, Slovak sounds prettier than it has to me most of the time here.

Two other quick anecdotes before I jump back to what I should be working on…

My Italy travels produced a new entry in the story of my crazy job. Thursday afternoon after my arrival and after one hour of sleep the night before, I was doing a quick email check in my friend’s office while she shopped for retreat food. Then I planned to take a nap to shake off a bit of the fog of small sleep. Well, the email account I check less frequently contained an email from a Nashville acquaintance-friend asking if I did musician bios and if there’s any chance I could write one for his new band by the next day. They’d decided last minute to apply for a music festival and Friday was the deadline. I generally don't turn down assignments unless there's really just no way to finish them on time, and I've been on a working holiday more than a vacation these past two weeks. So with a couple email exchanges we decided to go for it.

I collected a bit of info from him via email, took a quick little nap until my friend returned to her office, emailed Jeremy her office phone number, and then participated in a conference call: me in Italy, Jeremy in Nashville, and his bandmate in Canada. Then, between that night and the next morning before Jessica and I left for the retreat, I whipped out the fun assignment. And it was more fun for the fact that I had to get it done so quickly that it never even made it onto my to do list, so I could never feel behind on it. :-) And it was nice to have a connection back to Nashville for a few hours.

Anecdote #2

Sunday was a really lovely day here. After church Julie and her roommate-ish/co-worker-ish/friend Heather and I went to lunch at the home of some friends of theirs from church. Karen is from New Jersey, and Lubo is from Slovakia. They have a nine-year-old daughter Alexa. They live in a lovely house outside Bratislava in the village of Marianka. Our lunch party was rounded out by Nick, an Australian ESL teacher, and Roger, a British businessman in Bratislava for a week who found the church on the internet. So it was quite an international collection of people.

We had a really delicious and leisurely lunch followed by our choice of coffee or caramel espresso. I chose the espresso courtesy of my week in Italy (not courtesy of my five years behind the Starbucks bar). Then late in the afternoon as dusk was arriving we all went for a walk to the village center, stepped inside one of the oldest churches in Slovakia, and toured the stations of the cross set up along a path bounded by tall, old trees. We returned to the house and sat around on very comfortable couches enjoying hot drinks and good, thoughtful, wide-ranging conversation. Such a nice, leisurely way to pass a Sunday.

However, Heather, Julie and I thought we’d been trapped in the Slovakian Bermuda Triangle on our way home. The buses and trams we needed seemed not to be working, and what should have taken us an hour tops took about 2.5 and included multiple walks back and forth between different bus and tram stops. Not so lovely, but it ended well since we got home eventually. :-) Oh, and by then it was raining. And cold. Everyone’s favorite end to a really nice day. :-)

Okay, that’s all for now. Next entry will be posted from London. I’m off to pack up for my evening flight. (Oh, yeah, I’m no longer at the cute, cozy café. A few hours have passed since the beginning of this entry. :-) )

continental recap

2008-11-17T18:30:00.001-06:00

Tomorrow is the end of my first continental visit, and I've decided to tell you about it speed style since I'm unlikely to find any more time for recapping after I get back to London than I have during my visit.

Here goes....

Where
1 - various locations in Italy's Tuscan region, mostly in the vicinity of Pisa and Florence
2- Slovakia, primarily in Bratislava, the capital

Impressions
1 - Like everyone else in the world, I like Italy. I'm trying to figure out if a cute little apartment in Florence should be my next writer-base-du-jour (or month or three or six). The exchange rate between the dollar and the euro is better than it is with the pound and surely I could pick up enough Italian to get by, right? :-)
2 - I'm not adding Bratislava to my list of possible writer-base-du-jour spots, though it does have some charming old-Europe parts of town and though I do think the manhole statue is very clever. Unfortunately, it doesn't help that I just don't find Slovak to be a pretty language in how it sounds or how it looks. So Slovak has not made it onto my list-of-languages-I-want-to-learn.
1- In general, people are friendlier in Italy.
2- In general, people on the streets are less friendly in Slovakia than in Italy.

Highlights
1 - Eating lunch with the Ammirabile family (spelling?) and Jessica and a couple other guests. The Tuscan countryside was in view, and the olive oil and wine were born and bred on the land surrounding our table. I also quite enjoyed participating in the real post-meal Italian espresso tradition.
2 - Going to Vienna (yep, that would be Austria) for a few hours and meandering around town instead of being in consume-everything-you-can-in-a-day tourist mode.
1 - Going on a walk with Jessica and Stephanie in the Tuscan countryside around their house and visiting San Gimignano, an old and still lived-in city built of towers and warm-colored rocks.
2 - Today's 3 or so hour hike to Devin castle, somewhere west of Bratislava near the Austrian border. The hike through the woods was gorgeous, the company was fun, and the village we finally found was nice. The castle was mostly a pile of falling down rocks too high up to see much of at dusk. :-)
1 - Reconnecting with college friend Jessica.
2 - Hanging out in Europe with my old friend Julie while we both contemplate where God's directing us next.
1 - Meeting a new culture and its people.
2 - Meeting a new culture and its people.

So there you go. Hopefully, photos will follow before long.

backtracking

2008-11-16T16:55:00.000-06:00

October 30, 2008

Portal

The door to human nature captivates me as I sit chilled by
their disregard
their oblivion
their uncertainty
Their lack of simple courtesy
Their pinpoint focus in this big-canvas world.

The outside cold doesn’t have to reach inside.
But it does
as they exit,
open door in their wake.
Minds uncluttered by concern for the comfort of those behind them,

The ones they never noticed during the moment of their co-existence
and couldn’t be expected to remember
Upon parting.

can we say: behind?

2008-11-16T16:42:00.000-06:00

Greetings. I'm hopelessly behind here. I've been busy with work and travel these past couple weeks, too busy to visit my lovely little blog. For now, I'm finally adding a post I wrote weeks ago now: way back when it was still October. I first wrote it on paper, which was actually a nice change from the usual: writing on computer screen. It's a nicely tactile experience to write on paper. And it's also nice because there's less chance of losing everything you just wrote as I just did at the hands of two wrong keystrokes or something sinister like that. Long live paper. And now for that promised tome from October. Oh, and for the record, I've been in Florence/Pisa, Italy for a week and am now wrapping up a week in Bratislava, Slovakia. So far my first visit to the "continent" has been quite brilliant. There are plenty of impressions to type your way. Some day. For now, here's October.

Thursday, October 10, 2008

Four weeks into this venture I’m nearing a better rhythm for my days – beginning to better juggle the work in front of my computer with the non-computer work of relationship-building and experience-gaining. I’m also learning slightly savvier was of getting around. It’s good.

Yesterday I wrote a piece I think I feel really good about. Today I finished it and sent it on its way to its editor. And then I headed out – feeling liberated after writing the kind of piece that leaves me feeling most alive – to meet a friend at an art gallery in a part of London I haven’t been to yet.

By only paying for the train to and from Victoria Station and walking 15 minutes instead of jumping on the Tube that would have taken me one stop closer to the gallery, I saved money, got exercise and soaked up another bit of London’s streets. And now I’m sitting in a Starbucks on a busy street corner near Victoria Station not minding the early darkness or the cold because it’s cozy here and I’m stopping for a bit. Sitting. Reading for more than a 10-minute stretch, which I’ve been aching to do since I arrived. Splurging on a mocha instead of the cheaper hot chocolate. Lingering.

And speaking of rhythm: when I get home in an hour and half or so, I’ll still catch business horus in the States and can return some emails I left when I dashed out for the gallery. Brilliant indeed. That’s the part of being five hours ahead of eastern time that I like.

The frenzy of arrival and settling is starting to ebb. I’m adjustable and go-with-the-flow enough that I tend to underestimate the time it takes to re-rhythm things in new places. So I need to keep learning to plan time for that, when time’s available for that. The weekend with the house to myself while my landlord family was away for a wedding was a good time for working my head out of guest mode to renter mode. I have ownership in this home. I’m paying to be here so shouldn’t have to tiptoe around. I’ve never lived with a family as a lodger before, only as a guest, so it’s been unexpectedly challenging to figure out the difference in those roles.

Now just as I’m settling into more productive days that are sprinkled with cozy moments like this one, I’ll be disrupting my schedule with a little jaunt to the Continent. Next week I’m the willing participant in an unplanned (before I arrived in London) trip to the Tuscan region of Italy. I’ll be there nearly a week before I fly back to spend a day at Stansted Airport in London and then leave on an evening flight to Bartislava, Slovakia. This trip to Slovakia was the one big excursion I was planning for this fall. An old friend is there just until the end of November, and we knew we had to visit if we were both going to be in Europe for the same few months. Hopefully I can jump back into my infant rhythms easily upon my return, even if I’m a bit fat with new images and experiences.

I continue to be amazed—in spite of the ever-present challenges of this way of life—that this is my life right now. I feel like I’ve been given the most exquisite, generous gift. I hope I will enjoy and celebrate it well.

The gallery, Saatchi Gallery, was a really nice experience. The rooms were big with only a few pieces in each room, on white walls or light-colored wood floor. The pieces were shown off well by their simple, clean surroundings. They were more accessible than I expected. Most of the pieces were very large but were enjoyable partly because they weren’t all crammed in together. The rooms of the gallery felt more peaceful than the usual museum/gallery display because they did not feel like sensory overload. The current Saatchi exhibit is all by Chinese artists, but for me that wouldn’t have been obvious based on the art. A surprising amount of it felt Western-themed to me.

apparently i'm not the only one who thinks it's cold

2008-10-29T19:49:00.001-05:00

I saw what appeared to be either sleet or maybe even snow last night. But I was snug inside a cafe at the time, and by the time I left, the cold, drizzly rain was no longer sleet-ish. Apparently snow/sleet did happen, if not last night, then tonight. And apparently this is "highly unusual" in London this time of year, as this story attests: "Octobrrrr: London Hit By Flurries" This might beat the time I was in Brazil while it was the coldest it had been there in 25 years. Lovely vacation package for someone who uses a heater in the summer (that would be me). Anyway, we have continued to have a surprising amount of sunny skies here, so who can really complain about the chill when the sky is bright?

The reason I was in the cafe last night was to meet with my French friend Lauriane. About the time we saw the sleet-ish stuff out the window, she was correcting my pronunciation of one of the most basic words in the French language. Apparently I was pronouncing "un" (the masculine word for "a") like "en" (a word for something else). And apparently this mispronunciation will make me unintelligible to French speakers. And no matter how many times she said it, I could hear little more than a minute difference between what she was saying and what I was saying. And even when I could imagine I was hearing a difference, I couldn't figure out how to consistently say anything different than what I was saying. Which continued not to be the right thing to say.

And I think I appreciated this moment, and Lauriane's help, most because in September I was on the teacher side of the "un" "en" lesson. And Farah and Albay (in the ESL class I helped with for Somali Bantu refugees in Nashville) were immensely gracious in letting Shane and me try to help them distinguish the difference between the short sounds for all the vowels. I think their short "e" sound was coming out exactly the same as their short "o" sound or something like that. And the reality is that it makes a difference in how understandable their English is. So we spent part of the class trying to figure out and then describe what was going on in our mouths and our throats while we made the correct sounds. So, thanks to Farah and Albay's example, I accepted my lesson more appreciatively than I might have otherwise. Let me just say that it's much harder being on the student side of this lesson.

In other news, last night I also went to a science and religion lecture at St. Paul's Cathedral. It was nice to be inside the stunning cathedral (which you normally have to pay to enter but the lecture was free). To be honest, though, I was a bit bored with the lecture. I mean, they were trying to answer questions that can't really be answered anyway, and it sort of felt like all the panelists were basically saying that. And there were a lot of people who came all the way to hear them say that. I'm oversimplifying a bit, but that's how it seemed.

The night was redeemed for me, though, when I got up to leave just before the final statements (because I needed to go meet Lauriane) and asked the usher people where the bathroom was. I kind of wondered if there was one in such an old building but figured there was no way you could have so many people gathered in a place with no loo. I was right that there were bathrooms, but I didn't expect that I would be escorted down to the crypt to get to them. And the conversation with my escorter was pretty much the most interesting part of the lecture.

As he led me to the elevator, he said something to the effect of "Christopher Wren didn't think about this when he designed this building." He wondered aloud what they did for such facilities back in the day. Then he went on to explain that Wren also didn't think about heating--because he was a mathematician or something, not an architect--so someone used to have to pull a cart full of coal (I guess some sort of portable coal stove) up and down the cathedral floor to heat the place. I said something about "did he plan a way for the smoke to get out?" And usher man said that the walls, etc. had to be cleaned because everything was blackened by the smoke from the coal cart.

When we reached the crypt level, the security/usher person there told us the women's bathroom was closed. So I had to go into the small disabled person's bathroom that was just inside the door to the men's bathroom. (Apparently everyone else knows to visit a loo somewhere else before they come to free lectures at St. Paul's.) The usher man waited to escort me back to the main level. When I came out I asked something about what he and the usher lady were saying when I reached them. He said that he wasn't sure what he thought about the lecture (that's what they'd been talking about). He thought that he would rather sit down with all the panelists over dinner and ask them what they really think after they've had a couple glasses of wine. He felt like they were all being a little too polite and politically correct that night, and so weren't actually really saying much. As the elevator rose back up from the crypt, I asked if he worked at the cathedral all the time. He does. How long has he been there? Two years, he said, and it's a wonderful place to work.

As for me, I think I'd rather sit down with usher man over dinner than with the panelists. He strikes me as plenty interesting, and he could probably tell me some more things that Christopher Wren didn't think of. As for the panelists, I'm not convinced they'd really come up with any certainties about the relationship between the body and soul, even after a couple glasses of wine.

quick trip to oxford

2008-10-23T10:12:00.000-05:00

birthday: english style

2008-10-22T08:07:00.000-05:00

Okay, it wasn't really English style, but I liked the title so I went with it anyway. Yippee, I'm thirty-three!

Here's how the day, Saturday the 18th, went:
*fun writing workshop for three hours in the morning. Yah! In the class are two Americans, two women from Poland, a woman from Russia, a woman from Australia, a guy from South Africa, and one born and bred Brit.
*a birthday phone call from my dad
*birthday lunch with Jarrod and Beth, below. More on that story later.
*hanging out at a Nero's coffeehouse working on a project and interrupted by another birthday phone call from a friend from home
*a movie (How to Lose Friends and Alienate People; perfect film to watch in Britain) with Beth and Tim
*review of the day: a really nice British birthday was had by all, or at least by me

Yes, that's Angelina Jolie trying to kiss Tim. Lucky him.

The aforementioned (in another post) Ikea pillow that just pulled all the colors in my room together into one cheery greeting.

buried

2008-10-16T17:57:00.001-05:00

So I'm buried under a pile of work right now. And then I've gotten sick this week: one of those allergy/cold/blow-your-nose sicknesses. And now I'm barely keeping my head above water (if "to do list" and "work" and "desk" equal water), as they say. Which is always a good time to write on the ol' blog.

Today I laughed at myself as I expressed my growing confidence on the train/underground/Tube/sidewalk system by feeling annoyed at the tourists who slowed me down when I got behind them. After just over two weeks here, I have apparently moved myself very definitely into the resident category.

Today I also moved into the I-live-here category when I ran into someone I know at a bookstore cafe! In a city of however many million people, of whom I know about 20, I randomly ran into someone I know. And I was a train and Tube ride plus a walk away from my house! I met Beth on Monday night at this mixer thing for full-time media people. I only met three people total that night and only exchanged contact info (or "details" as they call it here) with two of them, Beth and her friend Amy. Beth's a writer too (among other things) and is also American, fairly recently arrived in London and living nomadically too. We had made plans to meet up tomorrow for a hang out/study date. But then ran into each other today. I was at the cafe to do an interview, and she was there with a friend.

So these two things are how I know I'm somewhat settled in here now. Oh, and I finally found the soup aisle at the grocery story last night. After only my, oh, 12th visit to the "supermarket," as it's more correct to say here. I figured it must exist. So I didn't give up. And speaking of supermarkets, most things are sold in smaller quantities here. And the cereal aisle is MUCH shorter than the wall of sugary goodness at home. And less of it is sweetened, it seems. There's more of the healthy stuff that was always the last to get eaten from the cereal cupboard at home when I was growing up.

This week, among other projects, I've been doing some interviews of some arts folks for a story on contemporary art here in London. It's for the arts magazine back in Nashville that I started writing for regularly this year. Writing for this magazine has turned into a good way to slowly grow my art knowledge. And getting to do such a story so soon after arriving is another great way for getting to know this city better. Fortunately, the church I'm going to is located in a little hub of working class artistry, so I found my interviewees through people I've met at church who knew some appropriate artist types. Fortuitous all.

Hard to believe that this time last year (is it only a year ago? feels like a lifetime!) I was in Zimbabwe getting ready to celebrate with strangers the completion of my 32nd year of life. I wonder where I'll celebrate next year's birthday now that I've started this different-continent-every-year trend.

trains and southall

2008-10-09T09:33:00.000-05:00

leaving London's Paddington Station

three trains passing in the night, er, afternoon

blue sky!

the precious travelcard

the largest Sikh gurdwara outside India

a Hindu temple

p.s. Don't miss the older entry I snuck in in it's correct place chronologically. I wrote it on the plane but only just now got to type it up.

out and about in the sun

2008-10-08T23:20:00.000-05:00

Last night I honored the Good Citizen Award I got my senior year in high school and dutifully took a nap and then got up at 2 a.m. in order to see the debate that would cement my decision on who to vote for, and also take me back to Nashville for just a little while. Alas, the debate didn’t make things as certain as I’d hoped, and time’s ticking away since I have to mail my ballot from here in time for it to be received by election day.

One accomplishment in the wee hours of the morning, though, is that my appreciation for the BBC increased. They carried the whole debate live. How nice of them. And they even sent a reporter into the torrential downpour on debate night in order to pontificate on things with her lovely British accent. And after the debate they even interviewed two undecided American voters living in London. The debate didn’t turn them into decided American voters either. It really was kind of nice to watch a bit of post-debate coverage that wasn’t hideously partisan one way or the other (as American coverage always requires time for some representative of each side to explain why their candidate won).

A very few hours after the debate was over morning dawned here, and I dawned with it because I had to be out and about today. And was an excellent choice for a day to be out and about. Sunny ALL DAY LONG!!! We’ve had sun other days in the past week, but it does seem like the clouds usually take over by midday or so. But not today. In fact—wait for this one, folks—at one point today I even stripped off so many layers that I was sitting very comfortably in the sun in my short-sleeved shirt!! I thought I’d missed all such days here, so I’m happy to report that I didn’t quite miss all of them.

My out and about adventures today included two main purposes that required lots of train riding in order to get my money’s worth out of my travel card (a travel card is like a day pass; you pay one flat rate to do as much traveling—on the above ground train, underground train or buses—as you want within certain zones in a single day). Purpose number one: IKEA!! I’ve actually never been to one in the States, but as there’s no Target or Walmart here it seemed to be my best option for finding a couple relatively inexpensive things to organize my English garret office space and to add just enough touch of something artsy and pizzazzy to feed my little artist soul. So I traveled the hour or so there with Anne and Joffie (who was home from school today).

Adventure number two: Southall!! I traipsed over to west London in order to meet up with some lovely friends of friends who are working over there with World Harvest Mission. Their part of town is home to many of London’s Indian and Pakistani and, now, Somali immigrants. Some of the families have been here for several generations now. On my little tour of Southall, I learned about Sikhism and a bit more about Hindi. And I had a very nice time getting to know Amber and Jason and little Elliott and ate a delicious Indian meal with them.

I made it to all the places I needed to go today but was very glad I wasn’t on strict time schedules. I don’t know how anyone ever learns this crazy train system. I didn’t make any mistakes really, but it just seems like such a complex system, and though it is actually well-organized it doesn’t feel like it because it’s so much harder to figure out than Washington, DC’s lovely Metro, the subway system of my experience.

autumn

2008-10-08T22:50:00.000-05:00

being too friendly at the library

2008-10-07T22:15:00.000-05:00

The internet's been a bit finicky lately at home, so last night I decided that if it was working this morning then I'd go for a quick walk in the morning and explore a nearby park and then come back home to work. If it wasn't working, I'd load up for the day and head to the cafe the church I'm going to runs during the week.

It wasn't working.

To the cafe I went. I'd heard the church was in walking distance from where I'm living and figured this was a good day to test that information: a day that I didn't have to be there by a certain time. So I pulled out my new best friend, a very handy A-Z London map, and found my way there. After crossing a couple busy roads and passing some appealing London row houses, that have probably been smiling onto their streets for a hundred years or more, I found Deptford High Street.

Quick side note here: there are High Streets everywhere here. What's so important about this street and why is it called that? I mean, it's got some sort of poetic appeal for me, but why? I finally asked someone about it and eventually discovered that it's apparently the equivalent of our Main Street. So you know when someone talks about something that's true of all the ordinary folks in a given place and uses a phrase along the lines of Main Street, USA. Well, in England, you'd insert High Street, or it THE High Street, into that phrase (they seem to put a "the" in front sometimes). And they do seem to use it similarly as a generic term.

So, anyway, I arrived on Deptford High Street and wandered past lots of interesting shops that included a number of seafood shops with fish on ice laid out to be purchased. Interesting. And smelly. I wouldn't want to work in the shop next door. Eventually I made it to The Bear Cafe, after 35 minutes or so of walking, and was greeted by a not-so-lovely-for-me sign that said they were closed today. What! After 30 minutes of walking? Grrr.... And I don't know yet what other places with tables and internet access are nearby. The only other place I know of is the library that's in the opposite direction.

Well, I started walking in that direction, not knowing what else to do. And I happened to walk down the road that took me past a different library. Yippee! And it's part of the same library system as the other one, so I can log on there. Great! I settled into an afternoon of work but was eventually interrupted by an old Irish man who probably just wanted someone to chat with. Irish accents are harder to understand, by the way. Eventually he moved on. Then later, while trying to work away, I was interrupted by a Nigerian man who's been in England for a long time now. Once we started chatting he was even more persistent than the Irishman. I'm sure he's a very nice man, but I needed to work not talk. And then he started offering to show me around London. And I'm so horrible at not being nice and friendly, which is a funny thing to say but it can really work against you now and then. And this was one of those times. Some problems follow you from one continent to another.

I eventually left and headed home for tea (aka: supper with no tea involved whatsoever). I took a slightly different route home and walked down Friendly Street. Wouldn't it be fun to live on such a street? Alas, no one greeted me as I walked past their homes.

So, that's that. A lesson in the potential downsides of walking most everywhere you go: it's really disappointing to arrive at your destination and have things not be as you'd anticipated. It took a lot of effort to get there, after all. And now I have to shake a persistent man from my trail.

globalization?

2008-10-03T18:53:00.000-05:00

First, the news: Kami Rice has apparently really settled into life in the UK, as she now reaches the "UK & Ireland" version of Yahoo (that would be uk.yahoo.com) when she types in yahoo.com to reach her email account. This means she will now be reading much more UK news as, in a rather sad state of affairs, most of her news reading consists of perusing the top news stories Yahoo chooses to show her when she logs in or out of her email account.

This news bulletin has been brought to you by eggs, which is currently one of the few things in Kami's pantry.

And in other news, this same Ms. Rice experienced globalization in full force today when she met up for lunch with the Brazilian husband of her (American) college roommate. Said husband and wife live in Texas. The husband was in London briefly doing work for his company which is based in London but has offices in Shanghai (or somewhere in China), Singapore, Houston and New York. Lunch was eaten at a restaurant spawned in Portugal and visited by Ms. Rice (she thinks) during her travels in Africa last year. Based on today's experiences alone, Ms. Rice can say nothing bad about globalization. She is hesitant, though, to call this her last word on the subject.

scenes from a new stretch of life

2008-10-02T09:34:00.001-05:00

Home Sweet Home #1,600,875

The view from the skylight window in my garret bathroom. Yes, the sun does come out here!

One of yesterday's stops and where I am right now as I upload these images.

Another of yesterday's stops. And another of today's stops too.

I love the chimneys, so you may find many pictures of them here, though they may not all be taken at dusk with lovely purple clouds in the background.

maybe i have the wrong passport

2008-10-01T23:01:00.001-05:00

On Full Day in London (this go-around) #1, I started the day by sleeping. Until 1:30 pm. I’ve averaged about 3 or 4 hours of sleep per night since last Thursday, as a lovely lead-up to the all night flight to England. So, needless to say, I was bushed. And decided today was a good day not to set any alarms and instead sleep as late as needed. Also, I didn’t go to sleep until about 2 am or so. Not because I couldn’t but because I was doing things.

I awoke to lovely sun streaming in the sky-lightish windows on the angled-with-the-roof ceiling (I’m living in an attic, more poetically referred to as my English garret), but as I prepared for my shower I began to hear faint pitter patters on those same windows. Yep, a glance out the western windows confirmed that gray clouds were moving east into the territory of the sunny skies. Man, I should’ve woken up earlier to enjoy the sun I’m told is pretty shy here.

Eventually the sun sort of returned, but it brought along some very gusty wind. Finally around 4:30 or so I ventured outside to find the library and some internet access in case someone wanted to hang out tonight. I don’t quite know this place well enough yet to be initiating invitations. And the internet AND home phone went down today, the two means of communication I’ve distributed to the folks I’m hoping to hang out with most immediately. I’m glad I emailed my parents last night to let them know I’m here. Sometimes I feel like internet challenges follow me around. Surely that’s not true, but it really feels like it sometimes. For now, the only contact info people have for me doesn’t work. Lovely way to feel isolated in a new country. Oh well. Onward to the library to remedy part of the problem.

I had an enjoyable time getting a British library card. How great! Libraries suddenly take on greater value when you’re traveling, giving you access to all these books you couldn’t bring with you and making you feel like you’re part of the local community. The guy who helped get my card was very nice. Once I had the card in hand I was able to sign up for the queue for internet time. And was awarded a grand total of five minutes. Whoa. Generous. But then I chatted with a different nice librarian who noted wryly that the whole internet queue system is very complex (which is why I was somehow given only five minutes; they were very busy today) and that’s why they have to employ people like him to manage it. :-)

This same librarian also asked me if I was from Australia or New Zealand. I admitted that I wasn’t. He said I had a very unusual American accent and asked where I was from, then acknowledged that he really doesn’t know much about such things and probably mostly hears East and West Coast accents in movies.

Post-library success (the getting-a-library-card part not the five minutes of internet part) I moved forward in my next quest: getting my cell phone set up. I entered the local Lewisham Shopping Center and suddenly remembered that the shops there seemed to close fairly early (by 5:30 or 6) when I was there in February. I managed to collect a bit of information about my SIM card options but didn’t manage time to make a decision before they closed. Tomorrow. Hopefully.

So I moved on to Woolworth’s, whose window displays suggested they might have a couple of the things on my shopping list. Among other things I found a priceless light bulb for one of the lamps in my room. I wasn’t sure it would fit the lamp because the lamp socket looked like it wouldn’t accept a normal bulb. Maybe it’s an antique lamp or something. After all I am in Britain now. And everything here is supposed to be old. As I looked at the light bulbs, I slowly put 120 and 240 together and realized light bulbs that run on Britain’s 240 electrical current could probably reasonably be expected to have different-looking connectors from light bulbs for good ol’ American 120 current. The things you learn abroad: light bulbs aren’t the same everywhere. I guess I always have taken light bulbs a little for granted.

Then as the workers were trying to find a price for the light bulb (it was really priceless), I chatted a bit with one of the cashiers. She, too, asked me if I was from Australia. Again, I had to admit that I was not. She was surprised that I was American and told me I had such a lovely accent. How fun. And funny that in the US we always think it’s the Brits with the nice accents. And it has also humored me that to we Americans accents from England, South Africa and Australia all sound about the same. And it seems impossible that anyone could think an American sounds like an Aussie. So I never stopped to think before that perhaps other speakers from native English speaking lands aren’t able to distinguish the difference between all the other English-speaking accents besides their own.

And it also humored me that we tend to think of Brits and Europeans in general as being so cosmopolitan and world wise, especially compared to we backwoods Americans. Yet, librarian man reminded me that that’s probably not the case. Hmmm, stereotype in serious danger of being broken.

I’ve long wished I could, for just a little while, experience life as something other than an American. If I keep sounding Australian to people perhaps I could pull it off. And then I won’t have people asking me non-stop about McCain and Obama and bail-outs. I think the cover would be blown, though, the second they asked me anything about kangaroos or the outback.

I’ve only been out twice now, last night to the grocery store and this afternoon, but I’m loving walking places. The train station and its next-door-neighbor grocery store are probably 15-minutes-ish away. And they’re downhill on the way (but uphill on the way back, of course). The family I’m staying with is superb. Very friendly and welcoming. Great. I think the two boys (6 and 4 years old) think I’ve come just to play with them. I’m working to convince them they’ve got plenty of time to show me all their toys. Today the oldest said he can’t wait until the weekend when he can see me all day. :-) Yesterday they peaked into my room when they got home from school to see if I was awake from my nap yet (I hadn’t closed my door, which is at the top of the garret stairs, tightly). When I later got up, they excitedly gave me a full tour of T & J’s many enterprises, from hotels (which I’m staying at) to post offices and other Limited businesses.

another beginning

2008-09-30T08:30:00.000-05:00

We're landing: the Great London Adventure is about to begin in earnest. Probably beginning with wrestling all 120 lbs of my luggage into my friend's car. Hopefully he'll still be my friend after that.

How different it is setting out on this journey than on the Africa one last year. For one, I'm a more seasoned traveller after a year plus of training, so the travel part of this trek feels easy and straightforward now (though there's something about going through immigration anywhere that's slightly nerve-wracking, even when everything's on the up and up).

Also, as I think I mentioned somewhere before on this blog, it's been quite different to prepare for living in a place instead of travelling through it. I think part of the reason it's all felt so surreal during the days of packing and preparation is that on one level life's not changing much. After a couple days off-line for travel and settling in, I'll be jumping back into much of the same work I've been doing. I'll just be living in a different setting.

Another difference is in me. God has grown and changed and unveiled me over this past year of travel. There's more me that shines through now, though it's challenging to articulate what exactly is different. Perhaps it's in those invisible internal places. The couple years leading into this year and a half of traveling held some of the most painful episodes of my life, but those episodes have launched me into this incredible season of healing and of shedding both physical belongings and internal baggage. And into a season of growing in confidence and freedom and deepening sense of calling.

I've also been surprised to discover the way travel--and perhaps the related growth in me--has actually facilitated deep growth in so many friendships, new ones and old ones. What a gift this has been! Though I've been away from Nashville approximately seven of the past 14 months, I actually feel more deeply rooted there than ever. In fact, I was planning to move away from Nashville in more permanent fashion because of the lack of rootedness I felt there, but rootedness has grown so much in these past few months that, for the forseeable future, I'm keeping Nashville as my home base, a base that is essential for staying healthy in this life of nomadacy I've adopted.

This sense of rootedness and deep friendship was on full display two nights ago (counting the night that just passed on the plane and that barely rates as a night) at the early birthday/bon voyage shin-dig I organized mostly as an excuse to see as many friends as possible one more time before heading off. And as I hugged people good-bye, it was so good to feel the sadness of knowing we won't get to hang out for three-plus months. And I'm awed by the amount of support and connectedness they offer me, which again is essential for healthiness in this crazy life I've got going these days.

I felt similar feelings this weekend when my mom and I visited my siblings and their families (my dad couldn't get away from work). Though we don't always see eye to eye and my life looks pretty different from theirs, I feel like we've also all grown closer over the past couple years. I'm more comfortable not giving into pressure to look like them, and I think they "get" my life just a little bit better. And that's drawn us closer and our times together are even happier.

[By the way, we've now landed. We had to do a go-around. Someone else didn't move off the runway fast enough. We were ahead of schedule anyway, because of a tailwind across the Atlantic or something.]

Another gift in this season of constant change has been a growing ability to be very present wherever I am. I've felt that when I'm in Nashville I'm really there, with an eye to the rest of the world, sure, but not trying to live there. And I expect to live that same way in London. To be fully present there. My work requires connections all over the place, so that doesn't mean I'm not connected to the world outside where I'm living for the moment. But there's this sense of really living life planted where I am for whatever period of time I'm there. And that's been a gift to me that also makes this lifestyle possible in a healthy way. I aim to contribute to community wherever I am and to be with the people who are in front of me right now, while of course maintaining relationships with those who aren't.

So we'll see how it all goes in this new place. After we see if I pass through immigration with flying colors (or perhaps I should start spelling it "colours"?). And perhaps we'll also see if I acquire a taste for Marmite. (To confess, I really don't expect to become that present in this new place.)

on the road again

2008-09-26T02:38:00.001-05:00

I'm typing this from probably the worst posture position ever, sitting on the floor leaning (as much as you can) back against an inflated air mattress, reaching forward to reach the laptop on my legs. This is what you get when you are once again having to pack up a room and store belongings all around town while also preparing to head out of the country for a lengthy stay.

This whole nomad thing is officially very hard. Two years in a row now I've had to pack up all my belongings while simultaneously packing for a short-term stay in another country or countries. I'm not sure how many more times my mom will help me do this. While we have our run-ins during packing day(s), I still couldn't do this without her help, and I'm immensely grateful for it. But it's stressful for her too.

This year is better than last year, and I had way less to deposit in storage this year but still there's so much. And I'm taking lots of stuff to England with me. It's so challenging. Take books for example: I'm working on so many different projects at once that the stack of helpful books is very large. And then there are the things I want to learn and the books related to that. Then take clothes: I really have no idea yet what my life in London will look like, what clothes that life will require, or even what the temp will really be like while I'm there. So, as with the books, I probably am packing more than I need, but that's largely because of the not knowing. I expect to have a pretty diverse London life, so that calls for a pretty diverse wardrobe.

I suppose that's all for now. I need to go to sleep for about three hours, then get up and trek forward on some things that need to be done, then jump into the day of moving more stuff to a friend's house, then driving with Mom to visit all the siblings in eastern Tennessee. Then back to Nashville on Sunday night for a little early b'day/bon voyage shin-dig. Then more last minute errands on Monday and then it's time to head to England. Craziness.

Anyway, I just needed to acknowledge that this is a hard way to go. Really hard, inspite of all its world traveler glamour. And I couldn't do it without a massive team of generous people backing me.

what not to say about your mission trip and other tales

2008-09-17T12:50:00.002-05:00

My essay "What Not to Say About Your Mission Trip" is available at Neue's website. It contains some (just a few! there are many more! :-) ) of my post-Africa reflections about how the church engages people who live in cultures other than ours.

I'm gearing up for my next travels. In less than two weeks--on Sept. 29--I head off to London where I'll live until two days before Christmas. I'm very excited over the opportunity really to live in another culture for a slightly extended bit of time. Though I was in Africa longer, I was traveling the whole time I was there, moving from place to place and staying with generous hosts. In London I'll really be living there, paying rent, preparing my own meals, creating my own life (instead of just going where I'm told to go when I'm told to go there).

Some good pieces are in place for the London excursion. I've found a good place to live. I have a church to plug into. It looks like I may be able to do some sort of volunteering with an organization I crossed paths with in Uganda). They're working in west London among some of the immigrants from places like Pakistan and India. I've found a French girl to trade language lessons with: she'll help me with French and I'll help her with English. And I've got a fairly long list of friends of friends who I'm looking forward to connecting with once I get there.

Finances continue to be dicey, but God is generously providing on so many other fronts: my mom is coming to help me pack up; generous friends have offered their basement for storing my belongings; another generous friend is storing some bits of furniture and has already offered me a place to stay when I return to Nashville in January; other friends are letting me borrow their truck for moving things; I have a ride from the airport in London; and others are praying, praying, praying with me.

deluge in haiti

2008-09-05T18:12:00.000-05:00

Hi, folks--
I still have more to report from my month in Haiti, but I've been so, so busy since returning that more than a month has passed, and I've not gotten back here. I haven't given up hope of adding some more photos and reports eventually, though.

For now, please pray for all the Haitians who are suffering from the severe flooding the country has experienced at the hands of the three hurricanes that have dumped rain on them. While I was in Haiti, farmers were suffering because they'd had so little rain. Now they have way too much. Please pray that God will spare them from being hit by the new storms forming in the Atlantic, and that God will help all those working in relief efforts to know where and how and who to help first.

to market, to market

2008-07-31T22:24:00.001-05:00

Over the next couple days I'll try to get the posts posted that the ailing internet connection kept me from posting my last week in Haiti. On Sat, July 19 I accompanied Michael, Kaydence and their friend Jack to the market in Petionville, where they live. The market is open every day, and you can buy just about everything there (as you'll see in the photos!). The Broyles sometimes shop at the market and sometimes shop at Caribbean, a supermarket-style store in town where you can buy just about any of the major foodstuffs you can get in the U.S. except that they're more expensive in Haiti.

This market building is fairly new and much bigger than the old market. People had spilled out of the old market to fill the street around it with wares. Now police patrol the area periodically to keep people from setting up along/on the street. In other parts of Petionville/Port-au-Prince, it seems to be okay for people to sell things along the sidewalks.

Looking down into the market.

As in Ghana, people carried lots of things on their heads in Haiti. I still haven't perfected the technique yet, but it's on my list of things to do in life.

Michael negotiating prices with the merchant lady. Kaydence and Jack.

Houses outside at the edge of the market.

Those black spots are flies (there were lots of flies around). Yum! ;-)

This was where we got our meat for supper. Michael said he told the butcher guy he need a pound, and the guy cut off a piece of meat and had pretty much exactly the right amount when he weighed it on the scale behind him. That guy has apparently cut off a few pieces of meat in his life. There was something close to a whole cow laying there around him.

These are voodoo dolls and some of the powders used in voodoo ceremonies. Apparently after we walked by, the lady running this stall said, in Creole of course, something to the effect of, "Those are the people who've run the evil spirits out of Haiti." Cool.

Back at the car parked across the street from the market.

internet mostly out

2008-07-24T11:50:00.000-05:00

Hey, all--
Just trying to let you know that the internet is barely working here right now. Something to do with the provider switching from one satelite to a different one and the new one doesn't reach Haiti as well. The problem isn't likely to be fixed before I leave on Saturday, so I probably won't get to add any new entries until I get back. You'll just have to check back next week for more photos and updates. Also, my email communication is very limited and hit or miss right now too. My flight leaves Haiti around 9:30 am on Saturday. I'm currently scheduled to get back to Nashville around 10:45 Saturday night, but I'm going to try to hop an earlier flight so I can make it to the wedding of some friends that evening.

Some highlights you can look forward to when I can ever post again...market day last Saturday; going Haitian and having my hair braided (very painful!!), which I may or may keep for a few days after my return to Nashville; and tomorrow I'm supposed to go with Michael and Karen's Haitian-American friend Jack on a tap-tap (the public transportation here) and see some of the sites of Port-au-Prince (national palace, cathedral, some museums, etc.). Tonight I'll share a few thoughts with the MAF team during their staff meeting and meet with the son of one of the missionaries. The son is a recently graduated aspiring film guy. We'll talk creative shop.

This week I've mostly been writing, writing, writing. All total I've got at least 10 assignments to do from my time here, plus a couple other less formal things to write up for Karen and Michael. I've finished 6 of the 10 assignments and am hoping to get at least 2 more finished before I leave.

--Kami

some of haiti's faces

2008-07-17T08:17:00.001-05:00

Today I'm heading by car to a place in northwestern Haiti called Anse Rouge to meet up with folks with Lemuel Ministries. I'll just be there overnight and am scheduled to return to Port-au-Prince by MAF plane on Friday. In the meantime, here are some photos of people I met on Monday and Tuesday in Maissade while conducting interviews for Save the Children stories.

Gary Cemelia, 10, with the soccer ball he and friends were playing with when we arrived.

Miclise Charles, 11, outside her house.

Miclise's mother, one of her brothers and one of her sisters. I really liked her pleasant, smiley mom and would have loved to chat with her more.

Julianna Albert with her orphaned niece Gina Antie-flore Michaelle Thebeau, 22 days old. Gina is a very beautiful baby. Her mom died from AIDS complications, as I understand it, but so far Gina is doing well. I also really liked Julianna and would have been glad to spend more time with her. When I asked to take her picture, she agreed but first wanted to change from her tank top into a nicer shirt. She also didn't like the way her hair looked, so she added the hat. She's much prettier than this photo does her justice for.

Leveillege Beauge and one of her five sons in the doorway to their home.

Odlin Fanord, 17, is living with his aunt, uncle and cousins since his father died in 2000. His mother died sometime when he was young. It's a cultural norm here for families to take in nieces and nephews when they are orphaned.

Odlin with his uncle and some of his cousins near the garden part of their home plot.

Elsa Michel, 4, and her doting father Charles outside one of Save the Children's rural health centers.

Hubert Louis, the Cazec (elected leader), for a community called Cinquieme. He spoke of how hard things are for their community, and he's been working to find a development organization who will help the community find a potable water supply. Currently residents must walk a long distance to a river for water, and it's water isn't clean, he explained. He's also searching for funding to help more of the community's children be able to go to school. He seemed to really be concerned about the community's needs and to be actively working to improve things.

Evelina (sp?) is the daughter of Izania, the cook/housekeeper of the Save the Children guest house. Evelina found me in the dining room of the director's house where I was plugged into the internet router. She saw my camera and wanted me to take her picture. Then she took one of me.

pray for rain

2008-07-16T22:58:00.000-05:00

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

This afternoon, after visiting a rural community leader who also works as a farmer, I was thinking that I really should ask all of you to join in praying that God’ll bring rain here. The central plateau here—or at least the Pignon area and the Hinche/Maissade area—have not had enough rain this year, and I think that’s actually true for much of Haiti. The corn crop and others are nearly past the point of no return, but from what I hear it might be salvageable if enough rain comes really soon. Or at the very least farmers need enough rain to sustain the next growing season. With the difficult economic times here and crazy high food prices, it’s just another really unneeded challenge when the food people are trying to grow isn’t harvestable.

Well, in very cool fashion, before I had a chance to ask you to pray or even to fully form a prayer myself, a soaking thunderstorm has descended upon us this afternoon (which means the satellite internet service has been blocked out by clouds). I think it’s good rain, though I’m no expert on such things. It seems to be a soaking rain that isn’t a total downpour, though it sounds like a monsoon because it’s being amplified on metal roofs around and over me.

So please do pray that God’ll provide the rain these farmers need and that they’ll still be able to harvest food this year. It seems that a majority of people here plant at least corn and other crops around their homes, even if they’re not planting large fields of crops. So people try to provide for themselves. When you pray, you can thank God for today’s rain too. :-)

Later on Tuesday…

This evening I spent some time talking with Joseph, the Save the Children director here. I learned some interesting things. For one thing, he noted that there’s not a lot of aid money available for agricultural projects right now, for projects like training people in better farming methods, providing better farm equipment and seed, etc. There’s money for health care and education projects but not for agriculture. There’s a lot I don’t know about how things work, but it sure seems that supporting people’s efforts to feed themselves would sure be a smart way to address the world food crisis.

I also learned that there used to be farmers in Haiti, in the Artibonite River valley, growing rice. However, Haiti began importing rice grown in other countries by farmers receiving various economic aids and farmers working with technology that produces more rice at lower cost. The farmers in Haiti had to sell their rice for a higher price than the cost of the rice that was imported, so they were basically driven out of business. How crazy is that? Imported rice is cheaper than local rice? Something seems amiss in all that. (This is exactly the kind of thing author/farmer/poet/advocate-for-local-economy Wendell Berry talks about.) And now that the cost of outside rice has risen there’s no longer enough rice being produced in Haiti to provide an alternative.

There was more to the very interesting conversation, but those are a couple of the highlights that have been added to the files in my head.

Patrick, my Save the Children guide (2nd from left); Kevens, one of the Save the Children drivers/mechanic (orange shirt); Hubert, the community leader for Cinquieme/farmer (2nd from right)

The tree we chatted under on Hubert's farmland, and some of the women and children who gathered to watch as we talked.

Lots of people around Maissade use horses and donkeys for transportation and for hauling things. Many of them have these woven baskets straddling the horse/donkey, and many of the saddles are made out of banana or palm leaves or something like that.

The twilight view of the mountains, from near my guest room door at the Save the Children compound.

maissade

2008-07-15T16:07:00.002-05:00

Monday night, July 14

When I had supper at about 4 pm, I thought it seemed a little early, but I’m a guest so I accept what’s offered. I didn’t expect another meal tonight. Then at about 8:30 a guy knocked on my door and told me in English that they were waiting on me to eat. Oh, there’s another meal? (I’d been taking a little nap to make up for the short night of sleep last night, before jumping into some work.) I don’t know what meal times are normal here, but supper #2 was appropriately light for a later meal: some sort of delicious soup of who knows what color (it was too dim by the one energy efficient light bulb to tell) and some tasty flat bread. I waited until after the meal was over (in case it was somehow impolite to ask during the meal) to ask what the soup was. I asked the guy I’m claiming as a friend because he seems to be the only one here tonight that I can mostly have a full conversation with. He asked Izania (spelling made up by me, but it’s a cool name that I’m remembering because it sounds like lasagna without the “L”) who said that what to me tasted slightly like lightly flavored cinnamon oatmeal with the consistency of thick soup was actually made out of beans and plantains. I sure didn’t taste the beans. Anyway, it was a tasty mystery, and it was fun to try to guess what it was. My lunch and supper #1 were tasty too.

Today has been go with the flow day, and that might even be an understatement. The day’s been more reminiscent of some of my Africa travels in that regard. It has particularly reminded me of Layton’s (the British photographer I worked with in Uganda) and my travels to Kalongo and Patongo. We were dropped off by a MAF plane and knew very little about how things were supposed to proceed from that point. Someone from Kalongo Hospital was there to pick us up, and from there we felt our way around and managed to get our job done, making up a plan as we went. While in Kalongo and Patongo we spent time with GOAL and Medair, both relief and development organizations.

Similarly, today I was dropped off in Hinche with little confirmation of who would be meeting me there and who was expecting me on the other end. Two Save the Children employees were in the plane with me, returning from spending the weekend back home in Port-au-Prince. So the driver, Sylvester, picked the three of us up and drove us the hour or so to Maissade (pronounced something like mah-ee-sahd) where Save the Children’s offices are. The road, by the way, took us through rivers at least three times and through some spots that were muddy even though it hasn’t rained a ton. It seems like it wouldn’t take much rain to make that road pretty nearly impassable, even for a driver with skills like Sylvester’s.

When my work for Save the Children was being coordinated, no one ever asked whether I speak Creole or even French. And Patrick, my guide for the day, has only moderate English. So he was appropriately nervous when he found out I can’t conduct interviews without some serious assistance. But we decided we’d do our best, and off we went to visit a summer camp program that helps prepare kids who will start first grade in the fall and to meet some of the children in Save the Children’s sponsorship program. Between my fledgling French, Patrick’s probably better-than-he-thinks English, and one consultation of the French-English dictionary (the word cabinetmaker had us stumped; I didn’t know that French word, and Patrick didn’t know it in English), I think we managed to get what I needed for those assignments. It was one thing to do interviews through translators last year, but it’s quite another to do them with only half a translator.

Since I’ll never be Haitian (isn’t that a news bulletin?!) and I don’t know enough Creole to have an in-depth conversation with someone who is, this adventure is about the closest I can get to tasting Haitian life right now. And I love it (the getting to taste part). Though it’s also very hard not knowing what to expect and just deciding to be okay with anything and there are moments of overwhelmedness at being thrust into a day like today, I also feel like I’m really experiencing Haiti today. There’s no buffer of other Americans to lean on. And I actually enjoy the challenge of trying to communicate when there’s not a full vocabulary of shared language to use. Because then anything you do communicate is rewarding. And it also helps me learn a few more words. My new friend gave me a little Creole lesson after the second supper (as opposed to the Last Supper), so that in the morning (“de meme matin,” however that’s spelled in Creole) I can nicely ask for some water (“mwen vle dlo”) and check to see if people slept well (“ou bien dormir?”…the Creole may not have the “r” on the end).

I have to say, though, that I’m very glad to be having this adventure in a country whose language is related to the only one I’ve ever formally studied. At least I know what most of the signs say and can figure out every tenth word of the conversations I try to understand. Put me in Russia or Saudi Arabia or China, and I wouldn’t have so much to work with.

And I’m trying to figure out how to articulate what I feel tonight and how it relates to what God’s calling me to. But I don’t think I can sort it out all the way yet. Basically, life is different here, it’s true. I’m staying in a room at the Save the Children guest house/compound. I’m happy to have electricity, a fan, a little desk/table, a surprisingly nice bathroom in a structure that looked like it would be an outhouse, wireless internet, and lizards everywhere that are hopefully eating the mosquitoes I’ve seen flying around. But the water isn’t working in the nice bathroom tonight, I haven’t been able to view a web page through the wireless connection yet, I couldn’t talk much with people over supper, and folks here just walk from their room to the outhouse bathroom wrapped in a towel (I’m thinking I’ll keep some clothes on for my bathroom trek). The roads are bad, food is tasty mysteries, and I’m just trusting that they know how to make clean drinking water if they’re an organization that teaches people about good hygiene and such. But somehow all the things that are different from home don’t seem strange or like a big deal. They are how life is here. And part of me fits that. That part of me doesn’t feel like I’m supposed to stay here long term, but it’s strange how, after this past year, this life almost feels normal now too.

I guess maybe the strange thing I can’t quite sort out yet is that Nashville life feels fully normal when I’m there, yet now this life feels normal too, even though I don’t know completely yet how this developing country life works. And it seems like it shouldn’t be possible to feel so reasonably comfortable in places, in lives, that are so different from each other. The comfort level is such that they don’t actually feel that different after all, even though cognitively I know they are, at least in external accoutrements. And maybe that’s the thing I can’t figure out, the thing that doesn’t make sense: that it doesn’t feel that hard to flit between worlds.

I’m thankful that, during my months in Nashville between returning in March and leaving for Haiti, I feel like I was really able to be fully present in and fully committed to the people and place of Nashville. And now here in Haiti, I feel like I’ve been able to do that too. And I’m thankful for God’s gift of that. I think only coming to Haiti for a month is helpful in that it’s long enough to really taste the place but short enough not to be overwhelmingly long and short enough not to need to pay bills or have someone pick up my mail while I’m gone. And somehow enjoying and being fully present in the normal life of Nashville doesn’t keep me from wanting to come to places like Haiti, while enjoying and being fully present in the new normal-feeling life of places like Haiti doesn’t keep me from wanting to return to Nashville.

So, anyway, those are some semblance of thoughts-in-progress. I should probably wrap up for the night since I’ve committed to playing basketball at 6 am in the morning with the new friend. He does physical education programming for the schools and kids connected to Save the Children. I think that’s why he was asking at supper, the second one, what exercises people liked to do in the morning. According to him, other sports that are popular here are soccer, of course, badminton, and ping pong. No baseball here, that’s for Dominican half of the island and for neighboring Cuba.

If you want to pray for Mr. New Friend, you can. I discovered in our conversation tonight that he’s still deciding what religion to choose. I don’t really get the sense that he’s on the verge of making a decision or is ripe for the harvest, so to speak, but it’d still be cool if God chose to plant some seeds through our interaction until I leave on Wednesday. He knows I’m a Christian, but we haven’t had any theological discussion of what that means or anything yet.

12,000 words worth of pictures

2008-07-13T21:40:00.000-05:00

This is a mostly-all-photos post because I don't have time to write any of the things I want to write tonight. And you probably don't have time to read them anyway. So it's really better for all of us for me to stick with pictures. :-)

I'm headed off to Hinche tomorrow. Back to Haiti's central plateau. I'll be meeting up with Save the Children there. Back to Port-au-Prince on Wednesday. We're working on finalizing the rest of my schedule from there. Happy photo viewing!

Some ladies at church last Sunday in Bohoc. Between my fledgling French, their Creole and a bit of Yverta's help in English, I finally understood they wanted me to take their picture. They're standing in front of a mural painted by the California team we overlapped with.

Back at JeanJean and Krissy's after church: Yverta, Michael, Kaydence, Natalie, Jacob, Karen, me.

Making fresh passion fruit juice after church with some of the California folks. It was a lot of work, but the pay off was worth it.

The come-as-you-are-service that meets at JeanJean and Krissy's place on Sunday afternoons. This is for folks who don't feel comfortable coming to or can't get to the Sunday morning service that's further away. It's also for people who can't afford to dress up the way people typically dress up for church in Haiti. Krissy was very excited to see so many people at the service last Sunday. It's been growing steadily but this was record attendance!

The sign for the Pignon airstrip. The Rotary Club of Pignon helped build the strip. I noticed Rotary Club signs all over Africa during my travels, too. They seem to be busy beavers with chapters all over the world doing humanitarian work. Cool.

Loading up to leave Pignon last Sunday.

The view as we climbed out of Pignon.

Flying over some of Haiti's mountains.

A glimpse of the Haiti's very serious deforestation problem, which has caused a severe erosion problem.

The coastline near Port-au-Prince.

Back on the ground in Port-au-Prince!

Outside the MAF hangar.

being a girl

2008-07-11T16:13:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I don’t like being a girl.

There, I’ve said it. But before you start worrying that I’m planning a sex change so I can one day hit the headlines as the second “man” to give birth (did you see the news that the pregnant “man” had his baby?), you should know that my dislike of girlness is really only true when I’m traveling and when I need to go to the bathroom where no toilet is available. Otherwise, I’m quite satisfied with it. Well, except maybe when I can’t get a jar of something to open. Any other time, though, it’s a good way to be.

I suppose the bathroom part is pretty obvious. Guys just lucked out on God’s design on that one. And the jar part probably is too. So let’s just jump into the travel part. I’ve traveled quite a lot over the years, though mostly domestically until this past year. I’ve also lived in cities, well, mostly just DC, I guess. But, still, two years of living in a place with one of the higher murder rates in the country teaches you things about being savvy as a single girl who can’t always get home before dark. My mom used to be quite concerned if she found out I was going to the grocery store by myself at night. I tried to help her understand that it’s not possible to avoid going places by yourself when you live in the city. And besides, as much as I love people I also need my alone time. Perhaps it was living in DC where I first really learned how much I like walking along streets and taking in a place, being alone but not really alone, free to talk with strangers or just to ponder observations.

Most of my traveling has been by myself, the part from my home to the home of the person I’m on my way to visit. That’s just how life’s worked out. As I’ve grown into a savvier traveler, solo travel hasn’t held too much cause for nervousness, and sometimes I welcome it for that same walking-along-streets opportunity to be alone but not alone, to interact or instead to just observe and ponder.

At the end of my DC life, I had occasion to travel to Illinois for a friend’s wedding. My first stop was Chicago where I was catching up with some other friends. From the airport I had to catch a train into the city where I think I had to catch a cab the rest of the way to my friend’s office. And on that train ride, I had my first, and so far only, real experience with the reality of the vulnerability I have because I’m a girl.

The shortish version of the story is that the man who sat down beside me, a me who was loaded down with luggage and couldn’t move away quickly or easily, was surreptitiously touching the side of my body. And he continued to do it even after I twice looked him straight in the face and asked him to stop. I even tried to be respectful and give him an out, telling him that I didn’t know if he was doing it on purpose but his hand was touching my body and it was making me uncomfortable. And with his violation of me, minor though it was, he took away some of my naivety. He taught me that it’s not always true that if you’re respectful toward a person, they’ll be respectful back. He taught me that people will do things to women that they won’t do to men. But I also saw God take good care of me and allow a big lesson to come at a comparatively very small cost. As I sat there praying about what to do, the husband of a couple who’d also gotten on the train at the airport stood up and asked if I’d like to trade seats. His wife told me she’d seen what was going on and had told her husband to do something. And fortunately the bad man got off the train before any of us, so there was no danger of his following me.

And so from all of that I’ve learned that wisdom requires acknowledging that women are more vulnerable than men, as physical danger goes. It’s not a truth I like, but not liking it doesn’t change it. And, so, here in Port-au-Prince/Petionville I find myself chaffing at that truth.

Michael and Karen, my hosts here, aren’t super-paranoid types, so I feel like I’ve got to respect their judgment about what’s okay and what’s not. But I really hate it that I can’t go explore Petionville and head off to jaunt around downtown Port-au-Prince, walking along streets and absorbing sights, sounds, and observations. The fact that I can’t speak more than about five words in Creole and can remember only a small bit of French vocabulary would, admittedly, make the talking with strangers part of walking city streets difficult.

But, all of this is why I don’t like being a girl when I’m traveling.

Added to all of these things is my own journey with fear. In recent years God has done very good work in releasing me from a pretty hearty battle with various versions of fear. And there is great, great freedom in that release. And so, by God’s generosity, in all of these travels of the past year, I haven’t felt afraid. And, honestly, I don’t actually feel afraid of venturing outside the walls of the seminary campus the Broyles live on. While I’m not a throw-your-cares-to-the-wind daredevil type who thinks nothing bad will ever happen, I find it a bit challenging in such situations as my current one to weigh other people’s unnecessary fears against their real wisdom and against that reality that I’m vulnerable as a female out wandering unknown streets.

Yet, also added in is the reality that God sometimes calls us to do things that aren’t safe, that are risky and that fly in the face of wisdom. On the flip side, it’s no good to play with risk unnecessarily, just for the rush. God doesn’t promise us safety, but He also has the power to fully protect us in dangerous situations.

After saying all of these things, you should know that I’m not planning to disregard Karen and Michael’s admonitions, but I’m obeying quite grudgingly.

summing up my last night in bohoc

2008-07-08T12:05:00.000-05:00

Sometimes fewer words convey more than many words.

Midnight in Haiti

The last one up,
Left alone with a sky full of stars
I can’t see from home,
I came into the darkness
To catch a new view.
On my back, looking up
The sounds are similar—
Dogs barking, bugs singing, leaves whispering—
But the lights are different—
More bright, more multiplied, more beautiful.

The former witch doctor told us,
“Night is when I worked—
Before.”
He’s only 32, like me,
But that’s enough time to find the truth.
Now he sleeps at night
With his family
With all those beautiful stars over them,
New lights smiling through the
Darkness.

The last one up,
I came into the darkness
For cool air and quiet.
I found them both and was refreshed
In the darkness,
A darkness made friendly
By lights freckling a night sky,
Even though this same darkness
In this same place
Is when unfriendly work is done.

bohoc/pignon

2008-07-05T21:32:00.002-05:00

I’m sitting outside on the front porch/veranda steps of JeanJean and Kristie Mompremier’s home in Bohoc, outside Pignon. The night time air is cool enough and there’s a breeze often enough that, for my easily cold self, the temp is reasonably pleasant. And would be even better if I didn’t have a hot computer on my lap. Lights here are minimal which means the bugs may soon flock to my computer screen and force me inside. We’ll see how long my evening reverie lasts. But also because the lights are minimal, the night sky here is surely full of more stars than the night sky at home. Unfortunately, I haven’t spent as much time as I’d like tipping my head upward, partly because that’s hard to do when you’re brushing your teeth. (That’s when I first noticed the stars. The first night I brushed my teeth outside here. There’s no sink, so you brush and spit outside with a cup of water to rinse.) Perhaps tonight, though, I’ll remember to look up after I spit down.

JeanJean and Kristie are good friends of Karen and Michael’s. They were the Broyles’ first hosts here. Michael and Karen lived in Bohoc at the Mompremiers’ home for their first six weeks in Haiti, their first six weeks of language learning. This is why coming to Pignon and Bohoc is always a bit of a homecoming for them. They have many friends to catch up with here.

Semi-ironically, the Mompremiers are also hosting a twenty or so person mission team from California this weekend. This is ironic because my travels this past year have partly intentionally (and partly because of opportunity) not been with mission teams, intentionally because I don’t like the insulatedness that comes with team travel. If I’m going to be outside America, I want to be outside America and spend time with non-Americans. That’s harder to do when you’ve got relationships to build within your mission team. So it’s been a little frustrating and a little humorous to be surrounded by 20 other Americans in spite of my solo travel plans.

But God works in the midst of these things too. The team has been very kind and welcoming, which has been great. I just wasn’t anticipating spending relational energy on other Americans, besides the ones I came to visit and support. That’s unavoidable, though, when you’re sharing bunk beds with them. Though my schedule has been different from theirs, our meals have been together, and I’ve had a late night conversation or two.

It’s been good to be confronted by my pride even as I feel my frustration with “typical” approaches to missions, with the clichés that tend to emerge as people describe their first experiences outside the US. The “these people must be so poor because their houses are smaller than ours” comments are frustrating to me. See my devozine blog for more on this frustration with how we define poverty. I’m also frustrated with the “oh, they’re so cute” tourist mentality toward those poor people we petted during our trip to Haiti. Instead of an approach that truly sees people here as equals. It’s a subtle difference of attitude, one of entitlement rather than humility, that is very hard to shake, even by the most supposedly enlightened among us (um, yeah, finger pointing at myself, sardonicly).

Mostly, I just feel like there’s something off in how much of the West thinks of people not from the West, from the places we call “developing.” But I don’t know yet fully how to call it for what it is or what to call for instead or quite how to articulate it all. But something is wrong that needs to be fixed, something is wrong in an injustice type of way.

In the vein of these things, among the cool things of the last few days is that, in addition to slowly getting over the hump of being ready to absorb a new culture, I’ve begun my interviews, which has gotten me outside that group of 20 other Americans. This has been nice. Two of the folks I’ve talked with have been Haitian men who break those stereotypes that all-too-often exist when Westerners think of people in places like Haiti, places the news always reports as being in turmoil. Both men are from Pignon, left to get training and then returned to invest in significant ways in their community. And they’ve done and are doing these things for God’s glory. And they are contributing to change in their community. These are good stories to tell, so I’m excited to write them up, though they’ll be cursory versions of the stories because my time with them was so limited.

Also today I spent time with a missionary couple who first arrived in Haiti with an organization but have stayed on here more recently as independent missionaries because they couldn't find a missions organization that would let them invest in the ways they felt God calling them to care for people. They are doing cool work of training and empowering folks in business, without offering hand-outs. One of the things that stood out to me when I spoke with some of the businessmen is that almost all of them mentioned being excited to and looking for opportunities to pass on the business lessons they were learning to other people in their community. This is how community change happens.

Tomorrow afternoon we will fly back to Port-au-Prince/Petionville. This coming week is likely to be my lightest week travel-wise, which will allow time to write up this weekend’s stories. We’re also planning a beach trip day sometime during the week.

Guess I should wrap up before some mosquito bequeaths a less-than-fun disease my way. :-) (I’m testing out how much natural repellent my skin contains.)

Kaydence cheesing for the camera while we weighed in for our flight to Pignon.

me, Yverta, Kaydence, Natalie, Jacob waiting for our Pignon flight. The luggage to the right was not ours. We only got about 100 lbs of luggage between us.

Thursday evening on a prayer walk with the missions team, distributing rice and beans and praying with people. JeanJean is in the yellow shirt. The man in the white-ish shirt was a former witch doctor who became a Christian while Michael and Karen lived in Bohoc.

Michael and Karen catching up with JeanJean's mother, Madame Tobisco.

Kaydence, the center of attention with the kids at Madame Tobisco's house.

Barb bringing me back to JeanJean and Kristie's on her four-wheeler.

Barb's transportation.

On the road, sitting behind Barb on the four wheeler. This was the good part of the road, where I could afford to let go with one hand long enough to take a picture.

Some of the new people I've met in the past couple days: Caleb Lucien, Jim Howard (Barb's husband), JeanJean and Kristie Mompremier, Lydia and Debbie Lucien.

beginning

2008-07-03T09:57:00.002-05:00

The beginning is always the hardest, it seems. The beginning of anything: figuring out where to start a story you’re writing, beginning a new relationship, learning something new, entering a new culture. And so it is here. The beginning is hard. Where do you start? What do you take in? How do things work here? What is okay?

Haiti, and Port-au-Prince specifically, isn’t the safest place in the world, so there are some things I’d like to do that I probably won’t get to do, like walk down a street by myself and chat with people. I’m getting the impression I won’t be doing a lot of that. Oh well. You learn so much about a place by walking on its streets and learning its personality. Driving on streets is never quite as effective. I’ll probably have a little more freedom in the villages, though, which will be nice.

That said, though, first impressions are not so scary as one might expect from the things we hear on the news. The woman, Abigail, sitting next to me on the plane with her eight-year-old son said that the news only shows the bad parts of Haiti, but that there’s much more to Haiti than that. That jives with my Africa experience too. Abigail now lives in Florida and is an American citizen. She’s working to get her husband through immigration’s hoops, but right now he and other parts of her family are still in Haiti, so she comes back to visit them every year.

My friends Karen and Michael live in a house on the campus of a Nazarene seminary that is actually in a city called Petionville which is a little southeast of Port-au-Prince. I think they live on the nouth side of Petionville, the Port-au-Prince side.

Last night we went out to eat at a very nice Chinese restaurant in Petionville. The drive through the streets reminded me most of Cape Coast, Ghana, with a European edge to coastal, Caribbean architecture. It’s interesting how we always search through the files of other things we’ve known to help us understand the new things we encounter. So now I compare everything here to what I experienced in Africa in order to help me understand and describe it.

Today we’ll be heading to Pignon (pronounced something like Pee-OWN), north of here on Haiti’s central plateau. Someone asked me if there are mountains in Haiti, and I wasn’t sure, though I had read something about a central plateau. Well, in case that person’s reading, I have a better answer now. There are two mountain ranges, one on the south edge of the central plateau and one running somewhat horizontally, as I understand it, along the southern part of Haiti. (see the Haiti map I posted a few posts ago to help with the geography, or look up a better one)

We’ll stay in Pignon until Sunday. I think this will be my busiest stop in terms of the number of different organizations I’ll be in contact with. Michael and Karen and their daughter Kaydence are going, as well as Jake and Natalie, 16-year-old twins visiting Michael and Karen. Jake and Natalie were youth in the Broyles’s church in Tennessee. Their family now lives in China, which is part of the reason we went to a Chinese restaurant last night. Also going with us is Yverta, Michael and Karen’s house helper. So it’ll be a full plane.

I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to use a little French here and pick up a little Creole. In Africa I was around so many languages for such short amounts of time that it was pointless to try to learn much. But I’ll have over three weeks around the same two languages here, so that makes it worth trying to learn and remember things. Bits of high school and college French are still trapped in my brain, which gives me a starting point. I can usually get the jist of written French, but I never had nearly as much practice understanding spoken French. By the way, I’ve learned that Haitian Creole and the Creole in Louisiana are two different languages. Both have some relation to French, but the two languages developed separately, so they’re not really the same language.

Also, by the way, I’m currently on the same time as central time in the U.S. I think Haiti is actually in the eastern time zone, but it doesn’t participate in daylight savings time, so we’re the same as central time right now.

Jake, Natalie, Karen, Kaydence, Kami at Chez Wou

Kaydence and Kami, self-portrait

Karen and Kaydence

Chez Wou's cool ceiling

in transit

2008-07-02T05:01:00.001-05:00

I finally know I'm really headed to Haiti. I didn't expect to discover it this way. I mean, it wasn't really when I left Nashville that I knew I was headed to Haiti. It wasn't when I arrived in Fort Lauderdale. It wasn't after I spent the night in the airport catching up on email. It wasn't while I stood in the check-in line with people who had dark hair and may or may not speak English fluently. It wasn't even when I ordered a bacon and egg sandwich for breakfast.

Instead, it was most unexpected. All I was doing was cleaning breakfast-feeding hands that hadn't been cleaned in a while. I pulled out the Germ-X and suddenly, surprisingly, tears nearly formed as its distinctive scent washed Africa over me. And that's when I knew I'm really going to Haiti: when I smelled Africa.

During my Wal-Mart run earlier today, well I mean yesterday which is still today since there was no sleep to mark the changing of the calendar block from one day to the next, my list included hand sanitizer. The 2.5 oz Germ-X bottles were $0.88. The 10 oz bottles, which came with 20% more for free!, were $1.95. I really didn't need 10 or 12 oz because, as I noted to myself, I don't really use Germ-X when I'm in the States. I usually get to wash my hands often enough. In the end, I had to buy the larger bottle. I mean, seriously, that much more sanitizing power for the price of 5 oz? It's a no-brainer. But I think that's also why I smelled Africa which told me I'm heading to Haiti in a couple hours. Because I don't use Germ-X at home. Though I didn't know its scent was making such a potentially sappy mark on me, it and I did spend a good bit of time together during the latter quarter of 2007.

And now we'll be hanging out some more.

And speaking of hanging out (not really, but it does sound like a good segue doesn't it?), below is a photo to hold you over until I have Haiti pics for you. This picture is oh-so-originally titled "End of an Era." Can you guess what era it's the end of?

If you guessed "the era of gas under $4 per gallon," you're right!! Woohoo! Name your prize and it's yours! It seems highly unlikely--as in, in the realm of miracle-requiring--that gas will still be findable under $4 three and a half weeks from now when I return. Therefore, I decided that as a good historian I should take a photo of my last under-$4 fill up. So there you have it. We'll see if I still feel sorry for us and our heftier gas prices after I use enough Germ-X that it makes me think of Haiti instead of Africa.

Smelling Africa and knowing I'm going to Haiti has aroused another emotion in me: the one I felt upon arriving in Ghana. As we rode in the dark from the airport to our hotel a day later than we were supposed to, exhausted me looked out the window and, in spite of my international cultures loving ways, struggled to muster up the energy to want to absorb this new culture. I wanted to want to, but I felt overwhelmed at the thought of four months of having to. And I was surprised. And disappointed. But there was no turning back at that point. And I felt that feeling again this morning when I realized I'm really going to Haiti. I want to go there. But I'm feeling overwhelmed at arriving into it. That will pass. But it's real for now.

p.s. Just so you know: I can pretty much barely keep my eyes open right now. I really want a bed bad.

Acknowledgements: This lovely post has been brought to you by the kind people who decided the Fort Lauderdale airport should provide free wireless internet access in its terminals. Thank you, you kind people.

countdown to haiti! (one week!)

2008-06-24T19:06:00.000-05:00

I'm down to one week before I take off for Haiti. I'm excited! I'm busy working through to do lists that won't be finished before I leave. C'est la vie. ;-)

It is good to be approaching July 1 and know that I have to go to Haiti. I thought, when I began making plans, that it was what I was supposed to be doing, but making decisions regarding plans for later this year kind of grabbed all the attention during that time. As I've shifted my focus to Haiti, it's been good to find that this trip feels very necessary and important for all kinds of reasons, ranging from what I can take to and do in Haiti and then bring back to the States to the way God can use this trip to provide another bit of clarity regarding what decisions and opportunities are down the road.

It's really great to be going for only a month (compared to Africa's four) because now, post-Africa, that feels so easy logistically, which allows me to focus on the work I'll be doing rather than the logistics. I'm excited that there'll be less adjustment, that traveling is less new to me know, so I can dig into the stories more quickly and better. I'll also be heading off to Haiti much less tired and somewhat less stressed than the shape I was in when I struck off for Africa. These are good things.

Over this week, please pray that I'll get done what needs to be done and won't stress about what's not crossed off the list and that I'll stay rested and healthy so I can arrive in Haiti in tiptop shape for working. Please also pray that the remaining support money will come in, and that I won't stress about finances in general. God's taught me a lot about trusting Him during the slow months financially, but it's still hard when you encounter a slow month financially. :-)

I likely won't have time to write much more here this week but am looking forward to sharing Haiti's stories and photos with you soon!

Also, if you're in Nashville, you're invited to join us this coming Sunday night at 7:30 at Grace Community Church for a pre-trip prayer time. If you're not in Nashville, you're welcome to join us in prayer from wherever you are.

two things

2008-06-13T11:58:00.000-05:00

Thing One:
You can now click here to go to devozine's Web site to read my "I Dream of Africa" series of articles and blogs. One article and one blog are online now. The remaining six stories will be added over the next few months. Devozine is a teen devotional magazine published by the Upper Room.

Thing Two:
A Facebook group I joined is organizing a prayer vigil of sorts for Zimbabwe as they approach the June 27 presidential run-off election. Reports coming from the country are describing increasingly desperate and terrible acts being committed against people to keep them for voting against the current leadership. Whether you "officially" join the vigil or not, please pray for God to intervene in Zimbabwe. What I heard while I was in Zimbabwe last fall is that the people of Zim really don't want a war. The current administration continues to commit physical atrocities, though. How are people to defend themselves? There are many Christians in Zim. Please support them by praying for their country, praying that they will get good leaders. The message below offers some specific ways for praying.

We are inviting you to join us in the Zimbabwe Global Prayer Network for the Zimbabwe Presidential Runoff Election. The purpose of this network is to mobilize God's children to set aside time to pray and intercede for the nation of Zimbabwe. The prayer network will start on 8 June 2008 until 27 June 2008. To be part of the spiritual movement all you have to do is follow 3 simple steps:

1. Choose any time of the day which you will pray.
2. Specify your 5 minute interval of prayer.
3. Send us your details - Our goal is to have 1 million people praying for Zimbabwe all over the world at any given moment in time. In order for us to keep a record of all those committed to this movement we need to know:
1. Your name
2. The interval of prayer that you have committed yourself to
3. Your location
So please email this information to us at presidentialrunoffelection@gmail.com or presidentialrunoffelection@yahoo.com ors us on +27 78 323 3579.

Please encourage your friends and family to set aside time and pray for restoration to be brought to the nation of Zimbabwe.

PRAYER POINTS
1. Successful, peaceful and conclusive presidential runoff elections (1 Timothy 2:1-2)
2. Economic and social restoration and prosperity of the nation of Zimbabwe (Jeremiah 29:11)
3. Reconciliation of all tribes, races and political parties leading to all Zimbabweans living in harmony (Psalms 133:1-3)
4. A spirit of forgiveness where the lives of the people are rebuilt in a constructive and empathic manner to achieve national unity (Luke 4:18)
5. restoration of human dignity and respect for human life (Genesis 1:26)
6. The ability for every individual to have the choice and access means and resources to achieve their God given purpose. (Philippians 4:13)
7. A peaceful transition after the elections (1 Thessalonians 5:23)

another article for your viewing pleasure

2008-06-03T19:42:00.000-05:00

I finally have another bit of evidence for you that I really did write "official" articles from my Africa months. :-) I think if you click here you'll be taken to a soon-to-release-in-print article I wrote for devozine. This article is the first in a series of four Africa-related articles and four blogs I've written for them.

uganda photos

2008-05-29T14:31:00.000-05:00

There are obviously many, many photos from Africa that I haven't gotten to share here. I'm slowly, slowly working to make more of them available online. To start, click here to access an album of Uganda photos. Enjoy!

tilapia is the coolest word of all

2008-05-26T23:00:00.001-05:00

(For photos to accompany this post click here or scroll down to the January 8 entry.)

Two weeks ago tonight I enjoyed one of the perks of my job. My writing-assignment-of-the-week was a profile story for Nashville Arts Magazine on a couple of Nashville’s restaurant owners. Mid-afternoon I met them at one of their restaurants and got to know them a little as we chatted and I wrote down their answers to my questions. Very pleasant people.

As we ended our interview time, they invited me to come back to that restaurant, the one in Sylvan Park, and to their other one in, the one in East Nashville, and enjoy a dinner on them, noting that experiencing their restaurants would be helpful for writing the profile story on the owners. Very wise people.

I decided it was a good week to take them up on their offer, even if it was going to take up more of my time and even if sure-to-be-scrumptious meals are better enjoyed with dinner companions than alone. My cupboards were fairly bare, and my meal-creating energy almost completely depleted. Taken together, this created a good moment for a job perk. A good meal is surely nearly as great as health insurance, right?

So Monday night I enjoyed a drive through East Nashville streets that always make me want to own a little front-porched house on a side-walked, tree-lined street with neighbors to wave at and nearby coffeehouses to haunt. And a neighborhood café that serves delicious fare would be nice too.

I ended up choosing an entrée from the list of specials for the night. The tilapia dish attracted my attention, and when the bartender recommended it, I was sold. Choosing tilapia dishes is one of the residual results of my world being opened up by my Africa travels. Tilapia. I learned I liked it. And guacamole and avocados too. These foods have been added to my list of choice foods, courtesy of Africa.

I was not disappointed. The tilapia special was scrumptious indeed, as were the cheesy grits served with it. (I always thought I didn’t like grits either! And I kind of enjoyed not liking them and being a rebel southerner. Hmmm, is there any other kind of southerner?) This tilapia was much tastier than the last tilapia order that Africa prompted me to choose and that I tried to write about on this lovely blog.

On that occasion, ‘twas the night before Christmas and I did some thing I had never done before. I ordered fish at a restaurant. My parents, my sister and brother-in-law, my nephew and I ate supper at Applebees before they closed early for Christmas Eve. I perused the menu and saw the parmesan tilapia. It made me think of Africa. Just 23 days or so removed from that continent, I was happy to take my mouth and mind back there and to have an excuse to do something I’d never done before. Actions in the service of sentimentality can be nice.

Tilapia makes me think especially of my couple days on islands in the Ugandan waters of East Africa’s vast Lake Victoria. Fishing is one of the major industries of the people who live there. And I was told that they were catching mostly tilapia and Nile perch. I don’t know what either of those fish look like, so I couldn’t check out the veracity of my informants, but I’ve decided to trust them.

I had fish quite often while in Africa. I don’t especially dislike fish, but I usually don’t choose it when there are other options. Like chicken options. And I definitely don’t like picking out those spindly fish bones. But since I usually was eating whatever was offered me during my travels, I ate fish and learned that I like it. And I particularly learned that I like tilapia, at least tilapia recently pulled from the lake. I also learned how to spell tilapia, which is a good thing to know because it’s such a cool looking word.

My novice palatte still can’t distinguish well between different kinds of fish, but now I feel like I have a fledgling relationship with one specific member of the general fish category. It’s a pretty one-sided relationship, but a relationship nonetheless. So I must now take advantage of any opportunity to deepen that relationship. So Applebees tilapia it was. It arrived with accompanying rice pilaf and veggies and earned points for choosing good friends. It had nice texture, looked good and was thankfully boneless, but when its parmesan blanket was scraped back, well, it was pretty one-dimensional. Boring. Bland.

And I have to confess that part of me was a little bit glad that looks were deceiving. Because actually, the blackened, salt-preserved fish that appeared to take hours of preparation around a wood fire was tastier than that fancy, boneless Christmas Eve version. The island tilapia was served sans head but with fins to accompany its sliverly fish bones. Fins aren’t exactly appetizing-looking, but memory says that the fire-cooked fish tasted much better and had much more character than the nice American restaurant version, which made me proud of my island hostesses. And made me feel connected to them again. Which made me wonder if my Applebee’s tilapia had been caught by one of the island fishermen I met. Which made me feel connected to them too.

And so I think it’s now a done deal that tilapia will always take me back to Africa and to kind and smiling hosts who labored over my meals and reminded me that we’re all alike on the inside no matter our outer trappings. Those are memories that make me smile and feel warm inside, whether the tilapia proves to be tasty or not.

haiti on my mind!

2008-05-21T14:18:00.001-05:00

(Credit where credit is due: this map came from here.)

Greetings! Just a quick update for now. Someday I'll hopefully have time to write again. For now time seems filled with admin and organizing tasks that aren't such good food for the creative parts of a person's brain. :-)

I'm working today to nail down my plane tickets for the Haiti trip, so I can finally make those plans official. If you stumble over to this post and send out a quick prayer that I'll make good decisions as I sort through the price and schedule options, I'd appreciate it! My tentative Haiti schedule is July 1/2 through 26. (Right now it's possible I'll leave Nashville on the 1st but not arrive in Haiti until the 2nd.)

Also, I'll eventually get this posted in the sidebars, but here's the link to the website of the missionary friends who will be hosting me and coordinating much of my trip while I'm in Haiti: Michael, Karen and Kaydence Broyles. Please pray for them and their work in Haiti, as well as the extra work that comes with hosting and coordinating things for a visiting friend.

Okay, back to the airline websites!

updates all around town

2008-04-30T00:24:00.004-05:00

Greetings! Sorry again for a long delay here. I still have nearly-finished posts that were started in Africa and that I've not been able to complete yet. Some day, perhaps. Some day.

In the meantime, please continue praying for Zimbabwe and for Kenya. Here are a couple sources of info that I've recently discovered:

The Zimbabwean (I think it's published from the UK)

Rising from the Ashes: A Kenyan pastor who lost his home in post-election violence models forgiveness (from AIM, one of the organizations I overlapped with in Kenya)

******

Life is full these days as I work to be fully present here while preparing for the next stops on the road. I have two big hurdles of tasks to get through before I can dig deeper into plans for Haiti. Please pray with me that those things will be completed within the next week. It's time for Haiti planning to begin. I hope I'll be able to be mentally and prayfully prepared for that trip and not let it get lost in the larger and probably much more long-term impending move to England. With food prices rising around the world, the poor in Haiti have been among those suffering from rising grain and rice prices. Please pray for God's provision for them. Things feel unsettled enough here in the US with our ghastly gas price increases, but imagine the bit of fear you feel as you watch the price increases you can't control applied to your staple, and previously cheap, food for your family.

And speaking of being present here, I'm about halfway through an eight-week commitment to help with an ESL (English as a Second Language) class for a group of Somali Bantu refugees living in Nashville. I tried to help out with a class last summer but just couldn't squeeze out the time to do it. I was excited to find that the dates for this round of classes fit just right with my Nashville months. It's fun to have an Africa connection here. The woman teaching the class is from my church, and it's great fun to have the chance to get to know her better. And it's great fun to welcome and help some new Nashvillians.

Many Bantu people from Somalia speak a language that's never been written down, so in addition to learning English, which would be hard enough on its own, many of them are learning to read and write any language for the very first time. This makes language acquisition, at least in a culture that places a premium on literacy, infinitely harder. Please pray for them as they try to learn the language that will make their transition here easier.

Thanks, folks! More later!

keep Zimbabwe in mind

2008-04-04T11:47:00.000-05:00

Hey, friends...Just another update on Zimbabwe's elections. If these news reports are correct, everyone (opposition and ruling party both) recognizes Mugabe didn't win the presidential elections, but apparently the opposition candidate didn't win enough votes to take the presidency outright. Now there is to be a run-off election, and it sounds like the ruling party may be up to their old tricks of intimidating voters and worse in order to stay in power. It seems Zimbabwe's on the brink of change, so let's pray with the Zimbabweans that change will come without more suffering and that those who need to be courageous will be.

The country is a beautiful place and the people are great. There is much bad stewardship of the place in these days, with land and infrastructure and people not being used well.

This photo was taken from the yard of the bed & breakfast I stayed in while in Zimbabwe last October.

zimbabwe's recent elections

2008-04-01T14:38:00.000-05:00

It's quite a moment for Zimbabwe right now. Their elections were held on March 29, and, surpisingly, it seems there's a chance Robert Mugabe, the country's dictator/president of the past 28 years, is on his way out. I've had a hard time finding Zimbabwe news since I've been back, but the recent elections and the wait for results has the country back in the news. If Mugabe does leave power, who knows if the new regime will be any kinder to Zimbabwe's people and economy, but perhaps there's hope. Please join in praying for the people of Zimbabwe, that things will remain peaceful, that change will come that releases them from the terribleness they've been living in.

I was cautioned by friends and relatives against going to Zimbabwe last fall, mostly because the news reports suggested the place was in chaos. I'm so glad I still went because I found a different situation than I anticipated. Life for me, a visitor, was fine. I had plenty to eat and never, ever felt unsafe. In fact, I generally felt more safe and at ease there than I did in many of the other cities I visited. However, it was clear even in the briefest conversations that life has been terrifically hard for the people of Zimbabwe. When you ask someone how they're doing, it wasn't uncommon for the reply to be: "Half-half. So-so. Things are really bad here. This used to be a good place to live." Someone commented that things were better when the white farmers were still there. With the astronomical inflation rate, students at schools and universities were receiving extra tuition bills part way through the semester because the amount they paid at the beginning of the semester was no longer enough to cover the school's expenses.

What struck me, though, is that somehow people were making it. Somehow they were soldiering on. And that is to the credit of the resilience of Zimbabwe's people. In spite of the heaviness, people still laughed and smiled and welcomed a stranger into their midst.

The part of Zimbabwe I visited is located near the border with Mozambique, so it's possible things were even more dire in the Zimbabwe's interior than what I experienced. The people on the eastern edge of Zimbabwe could go over to Mozambique and down to South Africa to get the supplies and foodstuffs that had stopped being available in Zim. People in the interior would be less likely to be able to do that.

Here are links to some election news:
Zimbabwe bloggers react to delays
Deal 'close' for Mugabe to leave
Zimbabwe opposition leader: no talks

happy reunions

2008-03-25T00:13:00.001-05:00

Since returning from Africa, I've been asked fairly often whether it's been difficult to readjust to American life. Generally, my answer has been "no." I'm apparently adaptable enough that I can recognize that life there and here are different from each other without really being thrown by it. This week, though, I've discovered a bit of readjustment that has been trickier than I expected: the shift from the mindset of guest to the mindset of resident.

I hadn't realized quite how deeply eight months of living in the always-flexing and always-trying-not-to-be-a-nuisance non-rhythms of the traveler have infected my person. It's turning out to be a less-than-immediate shift in my head as I work to let myself settle into a place again. The challenge is less in settling into my city and more about settling into a particular abode. It just feels so foreign to have furniture and large amounts of belongings again (these things really belong to me?!), to sit down at the same desk every day to do my work, to really unpack. I’m excited to cook my own food, for example, but I'm struggling to figure out where to start in a kitchen again when I'm not just offering to help someone else with the meal they're preparing. What did I used to fix for myself when I was choosing and preparing my own meals? I'm struggling to remember.

The positive side of settling, though, is showing me just how real it's been that working while traveling is really challenging. Efficiency is nearly impossible. God's generously provided me with a great living situation with my friend Alice. My room boasts a window perfectly situated for my small desk. I get to look outside, watching people come and go (which keeps me from feeling so lonely when work keeps me holed up) and enjoying the currently white-blossomed, soon-to-be green-leafed Bradford pear tree. It's awfully nice when you're in a stage where you're a beggar who can't be a chooser and you end up with an inspiring view out your window in a room that feels good for working in (the feel of the room is quite essential to productive writing, mind you). I'm so excited and hopeful to begin to slog through to do lists that have been taking way too long to get through and to work on writing projects that are part of my processing of these past months of experience.

Perhaps partly increasing the challenge in resettling is the reality that I finally know I'm not resettling here for very long, so there's still an aspect of temporary to it all. I expect to be in Nashville only through the end of June, but that's still long enough to practice "being" for a few months. And readjustment issues aside, I'm really excited to relish these next months in my city. Now that I know where I'm going (defined loosely) I can relax and enjoy where I am. And I can enjoy where I am better because I know that rather than boxing me in it's launching me out.

Because of being in one place, I can finally begin to soak in and sort through the experiences of the past eight months, particularly the four of them that were in Africa. Up to this point, I've felt like the trip wasn't really over because I've still been traveling. And even though I'm pausing for a stretch of time, I actually feel like the trip still isn't over, because I feel like four months in Africa was really just the beginning of a new season of life. In this new season, I'm working as a full-time freelancer with no other sources of income, and I'm exploring cultures and living into this part of my life that's been waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting for the God-ordained moment to bloom. There's such a sense of energy and momentum and celebratory life in this part of this season; these are the things that cover over the awkwardness of readjustments.

As I reunite with the belongings that have been allowed to hibernate this winter, I’m discovering another bit of growth that Africa has brought for me. Traveling without so many things as I’m normally surrounded by has produced a healthy lessened attachment to my things. On a practical front that’s helpful as I embark on further purging; the purging is a bit less painful than it would be without that disconnection. On another front, though, there’s freedom. One of my lifelong challenges has been letting other people use my belongings. Perhaps it came from being the big sister of little siblings who might break things they borrowed or from living with people who are less careful with things than I am. Who knows. Whatever the reason, it’s plagued me. I’ve wanted to be generous with my belongings and have appreciated the generosity I’ve benefitted from when I’ve borrowed someone’s ladder or book or paintbrush. But, though I’ve improved over the years, I’ve continued to struggle. I expect the struggle’s still not over, but these months of being a traveler have certainly provided a bit of breakthrough.

As for what’s next, here goes the announcement I’ve been hinting at: I’m making plans to move to London this fall, in mid-September, in order to continue living cross-culturally as a writer and mostly because as much as I can understand His voice that’s where God’s directing me to go. I’m slowly getting used to saying with some level of confidence that this is what I’m doing. But, I suppose it could still fall through. My freelance life has taught me not to live in the world of the definite until after the thing has happened, and my language about future plans tends to reflect that.

In addition to that big news, I’m also planning to spend most of July in Haiti working with some MAF missionary friends to do what I did in Africa. I had to figure out what was happening with England before I could figure out Haiti, so I haven’t talked about it much, though it’s been sliding around in my grey matter (that would be brain not hair—yet!) for months.

There are many details to work out on all these fronts. Those will come. For the moment, I’m first relearning how to live in a place. It’s an important thing to relearn.

emptying suitcases. woohoo!

2008-03-21T14:54:00.001-05:00

Greetings! Just a quick update for now to let you know I'm finally in one place for a little while. Traveling is wonderful but so is unpacking. ;-) For the first time since last July I'm actually settling into a room for longer than 3-4 weeks (most of the time my stays have been two weeks or less). I'm looking forward this weekend to moving some of my very own furniture over to my new abode off Nolensville Road in Nashville, where I'm living with my generous friend Alice. It's quite amazing to shift gears in my head from being a constant guest in people's homes to living in one again. I'm excited to cook for myself and use my own towels! I suppose it's true that traveling helps you appreciate the simple pleasures of life.

Nashville's blooming Bradford pear trees and other flora are announcing that spring is here. It doesn't seem time for it yet, but that's because I still feel like it should be fall. My timing's still a bit off seasonally. I'm glad to welcome spring, though. And glad to be in Nashville for it.

Plans are afoot, but I'll wait for a future post to announce them. Stayed tuned. All signs are saying that more adventures are still ahead!

meeting england

2008-03-01T18:55:00.001-06:00

Just wanted to let you know I've been continuing my traveling ways in England the past couple weeks. Somehow it just didn't feel quite right to post an England post here on my Africa blog. This time, anyway. Instead, I decided to give the post to my other blog, the one that's been languishing away from lack of attention these past months. So, if you're interested in England or in spires or in how England and Africa are linked in my life, brew a nice cup of tea and go read along on my other blog. Cheers!

Africa Upper Room story online

2008-02-09T13:00:00.000-06:00

Another of my "official" stories is available online as of yesterday. Click here to read all about how "Africa Upper Room director guides growing ministry."

Last night was my first group report on my travels. My generous hosts for these first couple weeks back in Nashville are part of a group that meets monthly to follow Wycliffe missionaries and missions in general. They invited me to be the "guest missionary" last night. I enjoyed meeting the small group of folks who were there and getting to tell the story of God's work in this season of my life as well as describe some of the impressions I gained through my travels. They were a generous audience!

Today I'm wrapping up the last really pressing article assignment from Africa. There are more assignments to finish, but after today the biggest, hardest, most immediate ones will be done. Hooray! Also today I need to finish a story on the relationship between the church and the arts for a local arts magazine. So, it's a very full day that seems a bit impossible but that's when optimism comes in handy. After today, I'll hopefully be able to breathe (and sleep) again. Here's hoping!

are we so different?

2008-02-04T13:08:00.000-06:00

During the month of January, I was busy writing up stories from information I collected while I was in Africa. Until now, I didn't quite realized exactly how much work I lined up for myself during this trip. Normally, I might be working concurrently on 4-5 stories at the very,very most. I might have other stories lined up to work on after those stories were completed but wouldn't have to work on them until the first set was done. I didn't get to order things that way this fall. Instead, I just had to collect mounds of information, trying to make sure I collected the right information, and then sort through much of it once I returned to the US and finally had time to write.

The result of that process has meant that, as I write the stories, I've been revisiting places I visited months ago, places I didn't get to sit in for long before having to move my head and heart (and feet, too!) on to the next stop. It has been good to go back to them now with slightly more time for listening to what they told and taught me then.

While in Kenya, I interviewed two men who are government employees, perhaps accurately categorized as mid-level manager types, one more senior than the other. I met with them in their offices in the main government building during my fourth or fifth week in Kenya. By that time, I'd heard plenty of stories about government corruption, misappropriation of funds, road projects uncompleted because of the corruption and misappropriation, etc. (And I'd ridden on said roads and experienced their terrible state.) I'd heard stories of Kenyan pastors exhorting their congregations to pray for the evil spiritual hold on government to be broken--particularly in light of the upcoming election--,citing reasonable evidence that political leaders have to take oaths and make agreements that amount to pacts with the devil, something that stems from Kenya's (and much of Africa's) spiritist history. Additionally, I heard stories about the growing violent, gratuitous crime in Nairobi, in particular. The things that are happening with increasing frequency there sound very similar to the reports that come from Johannesburg, one of the most dangerous cities in the world. I heard stories about a former president who was a friend to the church yet was considerably shady.

So, to be honest, based on the things I heard when I was in Kenya, the things happening there now, though nothing short of tragic, aren't surprising to me. The seeds for all of it, from rigged elections to awful violence were there. In many ways the reports about how stable Kenya was and how surprising all of this is don't feel correct to me. Perhaps it was stable by the numbers or on economic fronts or on world diplomacy fronts or something, but in just a few weeks of listening there, one could hear a very different story.

However, in spite of all that, when I interviewed the government guys, I came away hopeful for Kenya. It seemed the government was working on some important reforms, and these guys were excited about them. One of the reforms was a shift from process-based management to results-based management, a shift from services getting bogged down in the process but never delivering to government entities and employees being evaluated on the actual delivery of services and products. Employees were being given performance contracts with expectations for work to be completed. Additionally, both men spoke well of ways to address other issues and of the possibilities for pan-Africanism (greater cooperation economically and otherwise between African nations, perhaps in the spirit of the European Union) to help solve some of Africa's challenges.

One of my interviewees gave me a copy of a brochure describing "Kenya Vision 2030, a competitive and prosperous Kenya." As I read it in January, in the midst of the post-election violence, I found it sadly ironic. The Vision 2030 development process was launched by Pres. Mwai Kibaki in October 2006. Here are some quotes from the first page of the document I was given [emphasis mine]:

Kenya Vision 2030 is the new country's development blueprint covering the period 2008 to 2030. It aims at making Kenya a newly industrializing, 'middle income country providing high quality life for all its citizens by the year 2030'...The vision is based on three 'pillars' namely; the economic pillar, the social pillar and the political pillar...The economic pillar aims at providing prosperity of all Kenyans through an economic development programme aimed at achieving an average Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate of 10% per annum over the next 25 years. The social pillar seeks to build 'a just and cohesive society with social equity in a clean and secure environment'. The political pillar aims at realising a democratic political system founded on issue-based politics that respects the rule of law, and protects the rights and freedoms of every individual in the Kenyan society.

It's frustrating that the current president could have endorsed such a plan and then act as he has in the current situation. And Raila Odinga seems little better. From afar it sure seems like neither of these men really has the best interests of their dying and displaced countrymen in mind. It's hard not to believe they're not both motivated mostly by a desire for their own power.

It's also hard to understand the depth of hate that spawns ethnic violence. (I found an excellent BBC radio report here that was helpful. It's just over 20 minutes long but is worth listening to.) On Friday, though, I was reminded that we're not immune to such things here in the US. The Graduate Christian Fellowship group I'm part of at Vanderbilt University invited a speaker on immigration issues to address our group gathering.

I've struggled to follow the immigration issue that has been a fairly hot topic for a couple election cycles now (senate/congressional and now presidential). Mostly I just know I've heard things from people and commercials and sound bites that seemed pretty uncaring (to put it mildly) toward the immigrants in our midst. Plus, I'm increasingly confronted by the reality that my closest relationships fall within a fairly small subset of the American Christian community, so there are things being espoused by American Christians that I don't think of as widespread because I don't hang out with people who talk that way.

Our group discussion on Friday night included an attempt to understand what Scriptural exhortations are relevant to this issue. We discussed Biblical commands toward love, hospitality, and care for both neighbors and strangers and commands against from selfishness and hoarding what we have away from others. We talked about addressing the in-country issues and economic disparities that prompt people to try to get into the US. People shared stories of Christians they know who actually say that people trying to cross the border should just be shot. We talked about how many of the illegal immigrants are hard-working people who are less likely to be involved in crime than American citizens. We wondered how many people who advocate "keep 'em all out, shoot 'em if they come in" type measures have ever considered themselves in the shoes of those trying to get to America. We discussed how much racism plays in: why do we always only talk of Mexican immigrants when there are Canadians working illegally in the US, too? We talked about how Americans want to be free to go anywhere they want but want to keep other people from coming here. And, we're all immigrants to this land anyway, so where to do we get off trying to keep other immigrants out? We talked about how much fear feeds and plagues all of this: economic fears, fear of "the other," and so many more fears.

We acknowledged that the issue is complex, and we didn't solve it or figure out which immigration policy to endorse. (Though I wish we could just let whoever wants to come, come, I guess I understand why we can't do that.) It was good for me--in a this-is-the-truth kind of way--to be reminded of how much hate still exists in our country. We can take a moral high road and condemn what's happening in Kenya. But, perhaps we should consider how far away we really may not be from something similar here. Bad things must certainly follow when we don't love our neighbors, be they like us or not like us.

whereabouts

2008-02-04T11:56:00.000-06:00

Sorry for my pretty lengthy delay between posts! I've got much I want to get written for this blog yet, but I've been very covered up with writing assignments, most of them still from information gathered in Africa.

I wanted to give you a quick update on my schedule, though. (Partly so those of you in Nashville will know when I'm in town!) I arrived back in Nashville last Wednesday night. I plan to be a good citizen and vote in the presidential primaries tomorrow. (That information isn't particularly relevant to this post, but, hey, I don't see any editors around these blogger parts. ;-) ) I'll be in Nashville until Feb. 18 when I'll head to the UK for two weeks of hanging out with friends and investigating options. Then back to Nashville for a couple days before heading up to Illinois to spend some time with all four grandparents and extended family. Then back to Nashville for a couple months at least.

It's a strange thing to be living this bohemian nomadic existence for a little while longer. I've had friends who've done it in the past, and I always wondered quite how that worked. And, now, suddenly, without planning for it, that's become this stretch of life for me.

I continue to be amazed at God's provision and presence in the midst of all the great unknowns of this season. There's much molding that happens in a year of sleeping somewhere different every couple weeks, in a year of depending heavily on the generosity of others (both friends and strangers!), in a year of learning to receive well, in a year of soaking in all the little provisions that add up together to be God's great care for me, in a year of hoping to steward that care by passing it on to others.

This month and next I'm beginning to do a couple group reports on my trip. Mostly likely Sun, Feb. 17 in the afternoon will be the date of the "report gathering" for my church, but others here in Nashville are welcome to come to that. Email me or leave a comment in my blog if you'd like more info. On Fri, Mar. 28, I'll be the "speaker" for the Vandy Graduate Christian Fellowship large group gathering. Then, in March or early April, I'm hoping to hold some other sort of gathering for Nashville friends and supporters who aren't connected to either of those groups, though any of you are welcome to come to the groups' gatherings, too.

I welcome your prayers in this season. I'm still praying through what's next. Most up in the air is where I will live, as I expect to continue freelancing. I'm in a reasonably rare spot in life in which I have a great deal of freedom. I have no home. My belongings have already been packed. I'm almost at a point with my work that I could live almost anywhere (add in a bit of God-orchestrating on the work front and I could live anywhere). I don't have a husband or children to consult. I'm not in great financial debt. I have a current passport. And, to top it all off, my immunizations will continue protecting me for a while, and my travel luggage has already gotten some travel experience! I feel a sense of responsibility to steward well this moment, this time of opportunity. So, please pray with me that I would do that.

Here's the recap of the schedule things I mentioned above:
now-Feb. 18: Nashville
Feb. 18-Mar. 3: UK (London and Oxford)
Mar. 3 - ?: a couple nights in Nashville
approximately Mar. 5-15: Illinois
Mar. 15-at least mid-May: Nashville

Feb. 17: tentative "tell about my trip" gathering for Grace Community Church folks and anyone else who wants to come
March 28: Vanderbilt Graduate Christian Fellowship large group speaker

from zimbabwe back to kenya

2008-01-17T20:26:00.000-06:00

To update, my parents' town does, after all, have a coffeehouse, and I did a bit of work there today while drinking an adequate hot chocolate that wasn't as tasty as the "luxurious hot chocolate" I enjoyed on several occasions at my South Africa coffeehouse spot of choice. But, as the saying goes, beggars can't be choosers, and I was glad for a coffeehouse-ish place to go.

The coffeehouse has about five tables. As I was the last to exit after the "morning rush," I overheard one of the two workers comment excitedly that they should have taken a picture because at one point all the tables were full! It was nice to be part of an historic Independence (Kansas) moment.

On my way out I quickly browsed the retail tea section (the coffeehouse also is equal part retail establishment selling health food type stuff) and happily discovered that they sell Celestial Seasonings Bengal Spice tea. I discovered this tea when I visited a friend in Denver and she brewed a tasty cup of it for me. I picked up my own box at the Celestial Seasonings gift shop after our tour of their Boulder, Colorado, plant. I've never found it in stores, so I've been rationing my one box, which is now packed away somewhere in a box labeled "kitchen stuff." It might be time to replenish my stock.

Anyway, on to the real reason for this post. I've just revisited a blog I discovered a number of days ago and have decided it's time to tell you about it. The blog writer keeps her identity fairly anonymous, but it's apparently written by an African woman in Nairobi. It's very well-written, so I recommend it to you first on the merit of its writing and second because the writer is providing some helpful overview of what's happening in Kenya. I'm sure there are other good blogs out there, but this is the one I'm frequenting: What An African Woman Thinks.

a bit of published material

2008-01-16T21:21:00.000-06:00

I'm holed up in my parents' house in Kansas for a couple more weeks, trying to push through a long list of writing assignments without a desk and without coffeehouses to use as writing haunts! Eventually, I'll recreate the post below that was lost, but there's no time for that at the moment.

In its place, I'm offering a link to one of my Africa articles that's available online now, so you can see a bit of the "official" fruit of my Africa labors:

"Zimbabwe economic crisis cripples mission station" from the United Methodist News Service's site

tilapia is a cool word

2008-01-08T23:55:00.000-06:00

A post and accompanying captions will be forthcoming. Blogger's being a bit obstinate, and beyond that I pushed the magically mysterious combination of keys that made my blood, sweat and tears (to be a bit melodramatic)-consuming post go "poof" and refuse to be found. Which makes the tears want to be more real than dramatic.

appreciating what you've got

2008-01-07T16:41:00.000-06:00

One thing my Africa travels taught me to appreciate is the American political system. As frustrating and fallible as it is, it still gets some things right. I now appreciate term limits that can't be changed at the whim of a head of state. I appreciate election days that stick. I appreciate a Constitution that set up some good safeguards. I appreciate not being afraid to go to the polls on election day. I appreciate a country in which all jobs are not "government jobs" because the government doesn't run everything. I appreciate decentralization now that I know what it means.

When I left for Africa at the end of July, candidates were campaigning and the media was pontificating. It all seemed like a little too much too soon. I mean, it was still a year and a half before the presidential election! Calm down, folks. Besides, I was busy packing and writing and planning and sorting and preparing and organizing. So, I didn't pay much attention to the fine details of campaigning. Plus, I'm fairly cynical about ever being able to get real information from the campaign machinery anyway.

In Africa, though, especially in Kenya and Uganda, some of my new friends and acquaintances asked me about our elections. Mostly the Kenyans asked me about Barack Obama. (I didn't know until I was in Kenya that his father was Kenyan.) And mostly people asked me who I thought was going to win: Hillary or Barack. Still, it was a sobering reality check on the way the world follows our politics. What happens here affects them.

The week I returned to the US I happened to read the Atlantic cover story (December issue) on Barack Obama. I don't know yet who I will vote for, but this article did raise some interesting points. This one hit me with more force than it might have otherwise, since I was fresh off the plane from international travels:

What does he offer? First and foremost: his face. Think of it as the most effective potential re-branding of the United States since Reagan. Such a re-branding is not trivial—it’s central to an effective war strategy. The war on Islamist terror, after all, is two-pronged: a function of both hard power and soft power.... The next president has to create a sophisticated and supple blend of soft and hard power to isolate the enemy, to fight where necessary, but also to create an ideological template that works to the West’s advantage over the long haul. There is simply no other candidate with the potential of Obama to do this. Which is where his face comes in.

Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can.

Interesting.

Since returning, in light of all the things I newly appreciate, I've been trying to catch up on the candidates. It's hard going. I watched part of the Democratic debate on Saturday night. Until it reached the point that all debates seem to reach: candidates repeating their catch phrases in answer to every question, not saying anything new after the first half of the debate. Like I said, our politics aren't perfect, but as I pray for Kenya, I'm glad for what we have.

kenya continued

2008-01-02T13:55:00.000-06:00

A Kenyan friend from my travels this fall sent out this note earlier today...

Dear Beloved Brethren,
New Year Greetings to everyone. Please allow me to appreciate those of you who have been praying with us. So far, my family and I are fine. I have also checked with our church members and ministry partners from across the country and no victim yet, except for one brother who has been in hiding since December 30th.

I have been trying to reach him on phone but have not succeded. This morning, I received a call from him and I thank God for him that he is alive. I suspect he has not had anything to eat since then so I'll be monitoring the situation.

Beloved of the Lord, the situation here is so uncertain we live one day at a time since no one knows what is likely to happen. There are no stores from where to buy food, fuel pumps are dry, transportation is difficult. From tomorrow, January 3rd, 08, things could go out of hand especially in Nairobi where there is likely to be a face off between the police and the supporters of ODM.

In closing, let me request for your continued prayers for our motherland Kenya. Innocent blood has been spilled, inocent people have died, children all over the country are crying for lack of food, they do not understand what is happening, people are going hungry and are living in fear of uncertainty, women have been raped as people continue to lose their lives. In God's merciful hands and care, we the people of Kenya entrust ourselves and I appeal to our brothers and sisters out of Kenya to stand with us in prayers. Please pray with us earnestly and sincerely for God's divine intervention to prevail upon the situation.

more from kenya

2008-01-01T13:37:00.000-06:00

Here's a link to the blog of Adele who lives in Eldoret, Kenya, though she's apparently not there right now. I was supposed to connect with her while I was in Kenya, but those plans fell through, so I never made it to Eldoret.

Lisette is blogging from Tenwek Hospital, where I spent two weeks.

Trena is a college friend of mine who's headed to Kenya sometime early this year. She's been in touch with some of her Kenya friends and has posted some updates as well.

Here are a couple news articles:
"Kenya church fire kills 50 who fled mob"

"Kenyans burned to death in church"

Mathere slum, one of the places experiencing violence, is a place I visited while I was in Nairobi. There are photos of it under the "photo posts" and "kenya" labels.

Please pray for the people of Kenya, pray that a desire for power won't keep leaders from working together to quell instead of incite violence, that tribal tensions will ease, that no more lives will be lost.

where in the world did 2007 go?

2008-01-01T00:26:00.000-06:00

Or perhaps I should say, Where in the world did I go in 2007? As the clock launches us into a new year, I find myself wondering, Where in the world will I go in 2008?

After spending Christmas week with my siblings and their families, I've traveled with my parents back to their home in Kansas. It's good to be here and to feel like it's the closest I've currently got to a physical home. Even though I didn't grow up in this house and don't know which kitchen cupboard holds glasses and which one holds bowls, at least the bowls and glasses inside the cupboards are the ones I grew up drinking and eating out of.

I've unpacked my clothes, and tomorrow I'll start sorting through files and bills and other fun things. Nothing like celebrating the arrival of a new year with file folders! Yippee!

This is a thick time of life. There's so much opportunity, yet so much to be done in order to capitalize on it. There are so many unknowns, yet I don't want to rush too quickly through to the other side of them, back into the known (though my life tends to linger mostly in the unknowns even when things are in order).

I'm glad for the short days this time of year and glad that we get to live in Advent and Epiphany during the dark, cold season, in contrast to my African friends. Somehow those conditions outdoors are good for cozy reflection and prayer indoors.

It's been good to be with family, to have them ask me about my travels, my impressions, my experiences. It's good to talk about it. Yet, I understand somewhat what some of my missionary friends in Africa said about how hard it is to explain things to people, how hard it is for people who've never been to Africa to understand stories about Africa. But I guess that's probably true of anywhere.

Now that I've reached a place I'll get to sit still in for a little while (though this month is sure to speed by faster than I was when I got my last speeding ticket ;-) ), I'm able to better feel the yearning to go back to Africa some day, more than once and hopefully sooner than later. But, it's not time yet, and I don't yet know what will be the particular context for my return trips.

These past months have taught me some good and important things about the vocation and calling God's made me for. But, pieces of those lessons are still a little unclear, dangling just out of reach, not quite grasp-able. I look forward to taking the steps to reach those dangling things.

One of the little things I can do in the aftermath of my Africa months is pray for and with new friends across the ocean. It's challenging to stay informed sometimes, but it helps when I get emails from folks in Kenya asking us to pray for their country. More than one of the countries I visited during my travels was gearing up, like the U.S., for presidential elections. Kenya is the first of those countries to hold their elections. Many were hopeful that Kenya could be a model for fair and peaceful elections and governmental transition. However, that hope hasn't been met positively. Please join our Kenyan brothers and sisters in praying for their country, for an end to the chaos that has erupted following the vote counting, for tribalism not to divide people, for truth and peace.

May 2008 be a year that God's grace and truth and mercy are newly absorbed by places and people that have dark histories.

subject to change

2007-12-13T23:35:00.000-06:00

Where I'll be when over the next few months and beyond is still being sorted out, but for those who want to know (and for those who don't but wander over here anyway!), here's the plan I've got so far:

now - Dec. 22: livin' it up in Nashville
Dec. 22-sometime after Christmas: finally catching up with the fam in East Tennessee, the land of my birth
sometime after Christmas-sometime in late January: keeping my parents company at their Kansas digs
late January/early February: back to Nashville for some work and a "report from Africa" gathering of some sort
February: some traveling for such purposes as scouting out future options and saying thanks to supporters
March-ish until sometime: livin' it up in Nashville

I appreciate your prayers as I also pray and listen, seeking to hear where and to what God's leading me next. I plan to continue freelancing, but beyond that the road ahead's wide open. I've got ideas, but they're not quite blog-worthy yet. Mostly, I'm praying I'll be a good steward of the opportunity I've got to move almost anywhere or to stay where I am, the opportunity to re-evaluate and make an intentional and hopefully obedient decision.

pray for the folks in bundibugyo

2007-12-10T14:08:00.000-06:00

Please join me in praying for the World Harvest Mission team in the Bundibugyo district of western Uganda. I spent a brief two days with them in early October (here's my post from that visit). Last night I received a message from one of my friends from that visit. Amy has returned to the US since I was there, but she's stayed in close touch with what's going on there.

You may have heard news, as I did, that there had been an outbreak of the Ebola virus in Uganda. In the midst of my travels and minimal internet access, I never had a chance to check further into that report. However, Amy's message brought that report slamming into my very recently re-acquired American life.

Bundibugyo is the location of the outbreak. The World Harvest Mission's team leaders in Bundibugyo, Drs. Scott and Jennifer Myhre, as well as a short term staff person and physician assistant, Scott Will, are working in the thick of the outbreak. The district has few doctors and the Myhres serve as doctors supplementing the staffing of the government medical providers. Scott Will had worked in Bundibugyo previously. When we flew to Bundi for our information-gathering visit, he was with us, fresh from his flight from the States and excited to be returning for another short term stint in Bundi.

I didn't know much about Ebola prior to today, but today's lesson has explained that it's a virus mostly confined to Africa. Previously, four different strains had been identified. Early indications are that the Bundibugyo strain is a new one. So far it's never been found to be airborne, and it's transferred by contact with body fluids and dead bodies of infected people. Early indications are such common-seeming symptoms as fevers, vomiting, and diarrhea, but the disease progresses to internal and external bleeding. The death rate of those infected is typically very high--50-90%--but so far the numbers in Bundibugyo have been closer to 25%. From what I've read, it sounds like one of the greatest dangers is to people caring for the sick before they know what they're dealing with and know to use extreme measures of protection. The virus resurfaced earlier this year in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but I think that was more in the western part of DRC. Bundibugyo borders Congo on the east.

All members of the World Harvest Mission team, including the Myhre's kids, have been evacuated to Kampala except for the two Scotts and Jennifer.

One of the greatest costs of this crisis has been the death of Dr. Jonah Kule. We met him while we were in Bundibugyo, though I didn't interview him. The Myhre's described him as their best friend in Uganda. He was working as a medical officer, and the Myhres/WHM helped fund him through medical school. His return to his hometown in remote Bundibugyo to practice medicine was significant, as he could have made much more money practicing medicine elsewhere. The Myhre's described him as a man of great integrity.

Please pray for physical protection for Scott and Jennifer and for Scott Will and the rest of the health care providers. Please pray for the Myhre family as they are separated from each other. Pray for the WHM team as they grieve the losses and live in the intense uncertainty of this time. Please pray for the spread of the virus to be stopped, for the patients who are already ill, for people grieving lost family and friends, that Dr. Jonah's death will somehow bring glory to God's name.

You will find more information on Scott and Jennifer's blog and on Scott Will's blog.

I didn't take many photos in Bundibugyo because I was so busy collecting information, but here are some of the photos Layton took.

the airstrip facing the Rwenzori mountains

the excitement generated by the plane's arrival

one of the buildings of the Nyahuka Health Center, in the town where the WHM team is based. the isolation wards for Ebola patients are at the Bundibugyo town (the district and its main town have the same name) hospital and another hospital.

Drs. Scott and Jennifer Myhre

almost home

2007-12-08T10:15:00.000-06:00

I’m sitting in the airport waiting for the final flight of this trip. It’s been delayed, giving me time to sit by myself and ponder, giving me a moment of pause before I fully re-enter a version of my old life. Though I’ve now been back in the U.S. for almost a week, it’s the return to Nashville that will signal the real end of this Africa trip. Even there I’ll still be in transit, surrounded by suitcases and without a physical home, but in spite of that I will have to take up some version of normal life and responsibility again. I have Africa assignments to finish, but I’ll be buying my own milk and cereal after driving myself to the grocery store. I’ll be checking in with clients and facing a mountain of mail. Though I’ll still have Africa in my head and on my fingers, I won’t officially be traveling anymore.

I’m nervous as I head back, though less nervous today than yesterday. Still, I don’t think my old life will fit me anymore. More honestly, I’m hoping it won’t, and perhaps I’m more afraid that it will fit. I don’t think I want it to.

I don’t know yet exactly how these four months have changed me. Has it been in big ways? Or small ways? Or somehow not at all? It’s in returning to Nashville, it seems, that I’ll begin to see what’s changed in me and what hasn’t. Though part of me doesn’t want to go back there, part of me knows I have to for a little while at least. I don’t think I’ll be staying there. That’s not certain yet but seems likely, which makes returning “home” even more odd and full of mixed emotions. After four months away, I’ve disconnected from the place. It seems a bit tiring to think of reinvesting there for a blip of time before fully moving on. But, at the same time, I need that reinvestment and reconnection. And, don’t get me wrong, I really like Nashville. It’s been a good place for me to be these past five and a half years. So, thoughts of leaving don’t come without sadness.

Already Africa seems a long way away. I know I was there, and I have the stories and pictures and souvenirs to prove it, but already it feels like another lifetime. What was so real in those moments has begun to morph into legend and fairy tale. I guess that’s what happens when you travel through time, when 6 pm to 6 am is 19 hours instead of 12 and you enter your time machine on one continent and exit it on another.

I want the true Africa stories--the everyday, unlegendary, this-is-what’s-in-front-of-me-today stories--to live long. Now removed from Africa, my time there seems too short, too cursory, too much of an overview, like a summary rather than a book. And while I hope to go back some day, perhaps for longer, perhaps under different specifics, I can’t really live in that desire at the moment because I also just need to be home. I need to be with old friends. I need something solid under my feet. I can’t yet strike out on the next adventure. And I’m not comfortable acknowledging these needs, but it feels important to voice them.

Home. I’ve struggled with knowing what language to use as I try to say I’m going back home. With no permanent address other than my p.o. box and no house for my bookshelves or dresser for my clothes, language about home seems false and fake. I watched the movie The Terminal while I was in South Africa. It’s a nice movie to watch while you’re traveling, and I feel increasing empathy for Tom Hanks’ character who’s stuck in an airport without a country, without a citizenship, without a home.

I’ve read some things lately about our home being in God. That’s true. I buy that. And there’s settledness in that. But, whether because I haven’t fully lived in the reality of that yet or because I’m still a human being living on this earth, it seems that however true my God-home is, my feet still yearn for a place to slip off their shoes and prop themselves up on a familiar coffee table when they return from their adventures. They’re not looking to end the adventures, just to have a safe, quiet, familiar place to come back to. But, perhaps being greeted at the Nashville airport by generous, caring friends will be that safe, quiet, familiar place more than I expect.