About a week and a half ago, as I officially hit my sixth week in Africa, I realized that the blush was off the rose, so to speak.
I found myself, for whatever reason, suddenly incredibly annoyed with everything and everyone around me and very willing to pick a fight with just about anyone who dared step into my arena.
“I hate the Midwest,” I told S., for no apparent reason whatsoever and knowing only that this would provoke a fight…him being from the Midwest and me never really having been there.
“I am not coming home for Christmas,” I told my mother, “I hate our family.”
“I hate my job,” I told my boss, “I don’t think I am right for this position.”
Luckily, for the most part, no one really paid attention to me but, still, I was officially acting like the biggest brat on the planet.
I called my French friend who is currently stationed in a much harder post, Darfur, and told her about my sudden onset of bitchiness (which, honestly, is pretty uncharacteristic of me).
“I am awful,” I confided, “All I want to do is fight with everyone and I am in a terrible mood all the time…what is wrong with me? I am in danger of losing all of my friends and family and I can’t figure out why I am so upset.”
“How many weeks now?” she asked.
Six, I confided.
“OK, that is normal…that is when it kicks in.” “Just stay off of the phone and away from the internet and it should pass in about another two weeks, you’ll be fine.”
Apparently, unlike malaria or any number of other diseases I could have contracted, this one was completely normal and able to be diagnosed: homesickness.
“No!” I told her. “I am NOT homesick…I am just annoyed a lot lately…but, but, I LOVE IT HERE.”
She sighed, good-naturedly.
“Tell me how you love it there…”
I then went on to relate my week:
Tired of being dirty and sticky all the time, feeling like I am living on top of everyone and they are living on top of me, something breaks in my apartment on a daily basis, the kid next door pulled the fire alarm and it kept me up until 2:30AM and no one seemed to care to fix it, the next night an AIDS rally in the park across the valley had me up until 3AM and, while I am sympathetic, I wanted to kill them all and just be done with it, I don’t know how to cook here and I don’t understand a lot of the food, everything smells like curry and dust, I am tired of people asking me for money just because I am white, I am tired of the damn traffic police bribing me every time they see me, I hate being late all the time because ‘time’ seems to be such a fluid concept here, I miss my friends, my eyes are burning from the pollution all the time, the electricity goes off every day….and I locked the last traffic cop who tried to bribe me in my car and started to drive him to the US Embassy while he pleaded for his life in the backseat and eventually pissed his pants in absolute terror.
“Um, yeah, OK, you’re just fine.” She said.
Then, “Patti, it is time to get out of Africa for a few days.”
Oddly, because the Universe seems to love my stupid ass, I had also gotten a phone call from my former colleague and friend, Mark, the Thursday night previous asking me to fill in for another colleague on a European tour to launch a book I had written and co-edited a few months ago. I said, “yes, of course,” without ever thinking that this would save my soul.
So, last week, as I stormed about the house cursing everything and anything in my path, I realized, “Wait a minute! I am getting a free trip to Brussels and Geneva next week! How wonderful!”
Then, “Holy shit! I can’t go to Brussels and Geneva…I have not a stitch of winter clothes….”
You see, I had left any warm weather attire that I owned at my mother’s house in Florida, thinking I would be back there first and not in some cold weather climate that would require things such as closed-toe shoes and a winter jacket…I panicked.
I called my Ugandan friend, Jane, who is seemingly able to procure anything for me at a moment’s notice, and explained the problem.
She assured me that she could find a solution, just to give her the weekend, and got off the phone.
Two days later, she had indeed found a solution: a full length black (p)leather coat made about 20 years ago, about three sizes too big, and a pair of hiking boots that would be fitting if I were trekking moose in the Arctic.
At just over five feet tall, and weighing in at 120, my jacket and boots weighed more than I did and, quite frankly, I looked like something from circa-1983, Run DMC-style.
I looked like a complete asshole.
I called S.
“I can’t go to Europe!” I wailed. “I have no clothes!”
Mind you, this is a man who has been to war…real war…about a half dozen times and here I was wailing on the phone about my wardrobe malfunction…
Like I said, the Universe has a lot of patience with my ass.
“Love, this is NOT a tragedy. Call your mom, have her ship your clothes to Mark in Europe, and then just get them there. Or, or…if you want, I can go shopping for you here…I think I know what size you are and we can do it online together…”
“But, but…Patti, PLEASE go to Europe…you MUST go to Europe…you MUST get out of there for a few days…we will find the clothes,” he assured.
But IAM FINE, I insisted.
“Yes, OK, you are fine…but you deserve a break and Europe will be a break…plus, it is the book you wrote…you should be proud of it…and you are doing a favor for a friend…just please go to Europe…please?”
So I went to Europe.
When I arrived in Brussels last Thursday night, I was immediately struck by how clean and orderly everything was…two days later, in Geneva, I nearly refused to leave the bathroom…
“One more bath,” I said, “I will be down in a minute but the hot water works here….ALL THE TIME!!!!”
Mark, my former colleague and good friend, had a lot of patience with me.
As I dragged us through the rainy and frigid streets of Brussels and Geneva, Christmas shopping, and insisted that we eat cheese and drink good beer at every stop…he had immense patience with me.
“Look!” I told him, “I can step off the curb and run right into the middle of traffic and they STOP!” “Can you believe this shit?”
“Yeah, OK, please get out of traffic, Patti. I can’t live with myself if you get killed in Geneva, of all places.”
I wrote to S. and my mom immediately, “I love it here! I want to live in Europe…the water works all the time, I smell good and don’t have to take three showers a day, this is Paradise!”
Two days later, however, I was sensing something odd…specifically, I missed Uganda.
I found myself visiting the foreign currency exchange bureau, to talk the guy from Guinea about Africa.
“Europe is nice but the people are shit,” he declared. “No one looks out for you or pays attention to you like they do in Africa. People actually care about you in Africa…there, you are never alone.”
Oddly, that was what I was starting to hate about Uganda and, oddly, that was what I was starting to miss the most.
When I arrived at the airport in Kampala the other night, I nearly tackled Robert, my driver.
“I missed you! I missed Uganda! Can we go to the market please?” I pleaded.
“Um, it is almost 11PM at night, do you really need to go to the market now?” he asked.
No, I told him. Not now…but maybe tomorrow?
Then I told him about Europe, how much I had loved it and how much, at the same time, I had missed Uganda.
Later, talking to my French friend on the phone, I confided that I had missed Africa while in Europe.
Why? She had asked.
“Well, even though things break all the time, someone is always there to sympathize and you can borrow anything from anyone at anytime. And…you’re allowed to have a ‘bad day’ in Africa, you’re allowed to be late, in a bad mood, and feeling sorry for yourself. Oh, and I missed the fabulous curries and I felt too sterile…too clean…does that sound strange?”
“You’re fine,” she declared, like a doctor.
And she was right…I am fine.
I just needed, for four days, to be out of Africa.
10 December 2008
09 December 2008
A Holy Cow
Today, my first day back in Uganda after four days in Europe, I was sluggish.
Perhaps it was the heat after the blustery European temperatures, perhaps it was the fact that I felt compelled to eat about 10 pounds of cheese in every form available while there (Uganda doesn’t have good cheese, I love cheese, Brussels and Geneva have good cheese…go figure), or perhaps I was just tired after a day of endless plane travel…whatever. I was sluggish.
I called my driver, Robert, when I awoke and said that he didn’t need to meet me at our normal time and could come in the afternoon as I was going to work from home for the morning.
I actually did manage to get a lot done before retiring for a nap at noon to be ready for Robert at 2PM.
As I was getting ready, I happened to peer out my window into the parking lot and see that Robert had arrived.
With a cow.
“Holy Christ!” I thought, “I did not do nearly the amount of drugs my friends did in high school or college so I don’t think I am hallucinating and I have no reason to be jet-lagged with a two hour time difference but, I swear to God, there is a cow in my parking lot right now….how can this be?”
First, let me preface this by saying that I DO NOT live in a rural neighborhood in Kampala. Most of Kampala is pretty urban and, while you may see a chicken or two, there are certainly no cows roaming the streets. And not in my neighborhood…which is mostly populated by upper middle class Ugandans and diplomats.
I rubbed my eyes and returned back to the sink to splash some water on my face before looking out the window again.
Yep, dammit…there was a cow down there…tethered, by a piece of cord, to the side mirror on my jeep.
My mind started spinning,
“Well, I did tell Robert that I missed having pets and maybe this is his solution…but a COW? Really, a COW?”
So, still half-dressed, I decided to call him.
“Robert, is that a cow that I see down there in the parking lot tied to the jeep?” I asked.
He was ecstatic.
“Yes! It is a present to me from a cattle herder who I once drove to his home for free many years ago! He is wealthy now and he was bringing cows to the market to sell and he dropped one off for me…can you believe my good fortune?!! I have a cow now!!!”
Trying to be rational, and knowing that cows are indeed worth a lot of money in Uganda, although probably not a normal sight in an apartment parking lot in Kampala, I attempted to be happy for him.
“Robert, it is wonderful that you have a cow…but why is she tied to the jeep in the parking lot? And what are we going to do with her?”
He hesitated and I grasped the master plan immediately.
“Robert! The cow cannot go in the jeep, it cannot! You must not put your cow in the jeep, do you hear me? The owner will be very upset with me if I put a cow in the jeep I am leasing from him…please, please, DO NOT put the cow in the jeep!”
He sighed, recognizing the obvious: My boss is a moron.
“Madame Boss, the cow does not fit in the jeep, I shall not place her there. I never intended to place the cow inside of the jeep.”
Whew…
Then, “OK, well then what should we do with the cow, Robert?” “Because she certainly cannot stay in the parking lot.”
(All the while I am keenly aware that most of my neighbors are Hindi and I am worried what they will think of me and this cow tied to my jeep…sacrilegious, animal/dead relative abuser, heathen?).
“Madame Boss, I would like to request an hour off to take the cow to my home. I can call a friend with ‘a cow transportation truck’ now. Is that OK?” he asks.
I respond that it is MORE than OK…just get the cow out of the parking lot...NOW.
Ten minutes later, I watch (from ground level this time) as this poor cow is loaded onto a flatbed to be taken to Robert’s house (who, by the way, lives in the city so I have no idea how his poor wife is going to cope with this new arrival).
He comes back to pick me up an hour later.
“How does your wife feel about the cow, Robert?” I inquire.
“She is a bit surprised but we will arrange transport for it this weekend to my brother’s farm.”
“Is this normal?” I ask.
You give someone a ride and, six years later, they give you a cow?
He assured me it was not “normal” but that a cow costs about $400 in Uganda…almost the yearly salary of a middle-class Ugandan, so this was a huge gift.
He is giddy beyond belief. He tells me that since he has begun working for me, he has been blessed with a good and regular salary, someone who doesn’t beat him, a nice jeep to drive around in, and a new-found respect from his family and friends.
Oh, and that God seems to be looking favorably on this new arrangement.
Proof of all of this?
His new cow.
“I am going to name her Patricia,” he tells me.
“That’s nice, Robert, I appreciate that…but are you going to eventually kill the cow for food or money?”
He looks upset.
“Yes, eventually.”
“Then please do not name the cow after me, Robert, it is not good karma” I tell him.
“You’re right!” he says. “I will not name the cow Patricia…but I have to thank God for this gift!”
OK, then go to church or something…but don’t name the cow after me…
Two hours later, he calls.
Apparently his wife, Rebecca, was not so thrilled about having the cow in residence either (I can hear her fuming in the background). She has just given birth to their second child last week and a cow was clearly not something she wanted to deal with at this point…no matter how much money it cost.
“Madame Boss, I have to ask another favor,” he says.
I know…I know the favor already.
“Yes, Robert, you can have a few hours off in the morning to take the cow to the farm so your wife does not kill you. I understand. Just pick me up at 8AM and take me to the office and then come back for me at noon. Just get rid of the damn cow, please.”
As I was walking downstairs an hour ago to drop my trash off at the dumpster, I stepped in something unpleasant.
Cow shit.
Despite how disgusted I was…I also had to laugh.
And Europe is a million miles away.
Perhaps it was the heat after the blustery European temperatures, perhaps it was the fact that I felt compelled to eat about 10 pounds of cheese in every form available while there (Uganda doesn’t have good cheese, I love cheese, Brussels and Geneva have good cheese…go figure), or perhaps I was just tired after a day of endless plane travel…whatever. I was sluggish.
I called my driver, Robert, when I awoke and said that he didn’t need to meet me at our normal time and could come in the afternoon as I was going to work from home for the morning.
I actually did manage to get a lot done before retiring for a nap at noon to be ready for Robert at 2PM.
As I was getting ready, I happened to peer out my window into the parking lot and see that Robert had arrived.
With a cow.
“Holy Christ!” I thought, “I did not do nearly the amount of drugs my friends did in high school or college so I don’t think I am hallucinating and I have no reason to be jet-lagged with a two hour time difference but, I swear to God, there is a cow in my parking lot right now….how can this be?”
First, let me preface this by saying that I DO NOT live in a rural neighborhood in Kampala. Most of Kampala is pretty urban and, while you may see a chicken or two, there are certainly no cows roaming the streets. And not in my neighborhood…which is mostly populated by upper middle class Ugandans and diplomats.
I rubbed my eyes and returned back to the sink to splash some water on my face before looking out the window again.
Yep, dammit…there was a cow down there…tethered, by a piece of cord, to the side mirror on my jeep.
My mind started spinning,
“Well, I did tell Robert that I missed having pets and maybe this is his solution…but a COW? Really, a COW?”
So, still half-dressed, I decided to call him.
“Robert, is that a cow that I see down there in the parking lot tied to the jeep?” I asked.
He was ecstatic.
“Yes! It is a present to me from a cattle herder who I once drove to his home for free many years ago! He is wealthy now and he was bringing cows to the market to sell and he dropped one off for me…can you believe my good fortune?!! I have a cow now!!!”
Trying to be rational, and knowing that cows are indeed worth a lot of money in Uganda, although probably not a normal sight in an apartment parking lot in Kampala, I attempted to be happy for him.
“Robert, it is wonderful that you have a cow…but why is she tied to the jeep in the parking lot? And what are we going to do with her?”
He hesitated and I grasped the master plan immediately.
“Robert! The cow cannot go in the jeep, it cannot! You must not put your cow in the jeep, do you hear me? The owner will be very upset with me if I put a cow in the jeep I am leasing from him…please, please, DO NOT put the cow in the jeep!”
He sighed, recognizing the obvious: My boss is a moron.
“Madame Boss, the cow does not fit in the jeep, I shall not place her there. I never intended to place the cow inside of the jeep.”
Whew…
Then, “OK, well then what should we do with the cow, Robert?” “Because she certainly cannot stay in the parking lot.”
(All the while I am keenly aware that most of my neighbors are Hindi and I am worried what they will think of me and this cow tied to my jeep…sacrilegious, animal/dead relative abuser, heathen?).
“Madame Boss, I would like to request an hour off to take the cow to my home. I can call a friend with ‘a cow transportation truck’ now. Is that OK?” he asks.
I respond that it is MORE than OK…just get the cow out of the parking lot...NOW.
Ten minutes later, I watch (from ground level this time) as this poor cow is loaded onto a flatbed to be taken to Robert’s house (who, by the way, lives in the city so I have no idea how his poor wife is going to cope with this new arrival).
He comes back to pick me up an hour later.
“How does your wife feel about the cow, Robert?” I inquire.
“She is a bit surprised but we will arrange transport for it this weekend to my brother’s farm.”
“Is this normal?” I ask.
You give someone a ride and, six years later, they give you a cow?
He assured me it was not “normal” but that a cow costs about $400 in Uganda…almost the yearly salary of a middle-class Ugandan, so this was a huge gift.
He is giddy beyond belief. He tells me that since he has begun working for me, he has been blessed with a good and regular salary, someone who doesn’t beat him, a nice jeep to drive around in, and a new-found respect from his family and friends.
Oh, and that God seems to be looking favorably on this new arrangement.
Proof of all of this?
His new cow.
“I am going to name her Patricia,” he tells me.
“That’s nice, Robert, I appreciate that…but are you going to eventually kill the cow for food or money?”
He looks upset.
“Yes, eventually.”
“Then please do not name the cow after me, Robert, it is not good karma” I tell him.
“You’re right!” he says. “I will not name the cow Patricia…but I have to thank God for this gift!”
OK, then go to church or something…but don’t name the cow after me…
Two hours later, he calls.
Apparently his wife, Rebecca, was not so thrilled about having the cow in residence either (I can hear her fuming in the background). She has just given birth to their second child last week and a cow was clearly not something she wanted to deal with at this point…no matter how much money it cost.
“Madame Boss, I have to ask another favor,” he says.
I know…I know the favor already.
“Yes, Robert, you can have a few hours off in the morning to take the cow to the farm so your wife does not kill you. I understand. Just pick me up at 8AM and take me to the office and then come back for me at noon. Just get rid of the damn cow, please.”
As I was walking downstairs an hour ago to drop my trash off at the dumpster, I stepped in something unpleasant.
Cow shit.
Despite how disgusted I was…I also had to laugh.
And Europe is a million miles away.
Tails in English
Before moving to Uganda, I insisted to anyone who would listen, “I am NOT going to Africa to have an ‘Out of Africa’ experience. I don’t want drivers, house help, maids, gardeners…I will not have any of that!” Most people, particularly those who had spent any time living in Africa, rolled their eyes at me, knowing better. My former boss, Pauline, who spent well over a decade in Nigeria, said, “It is not viewed as strange there, you are going to need some people familiar with things until you get the lay of the land…and even after that…don’t think about it as denigrating.” Even people my own age, idealists and do-gooders alike who, in the US, would never even consider hiring “help” even if they could afford it, said to me, “You’ll be thankful to have a driver and some help around the house, trust us.”
No, I had insisted. Not happening.
Well, it happened.
I hired a family. I now have a housecleaner who comes every Saturday and my own driver, Robert.
Robert, who has been working for me for about six weeks now, is wonderful. He is sweet and attentive and, although I wish he would be a little more aggressive, he has been a great driver and I enjoy his company. The thing I enjoy best, however, is his English.
Most Ugandans are fluent English speakers, growing up bi-lingual or tri-lingual in their own tribal language as well as English. They speak an interesting, lilting form of British English that is quite easy on the ears and I love listening to them. It’s the same with Indians…whose British English is full of fantastic euphemisms and words that neither a Brit nor an American would likely ever use in normal conversation. Ugandans, like Indians, have a lot of fun with the English language.
“Have you a provision for a lock on your sliding door?” the property manager asked me.
“Are you finding this meal to your inner contentment?” the waiter asks.
“Please do not allow your car to pass here, the motorway is quite turbulent and we foresee an unexpected calamity,” the sign on the highway says.
I love it.
Robert, however, does not use these words or phrases. Largely because, Robert doesn’t really speak English…he speaks Chinglish.
For the seven years prior to coming under hire with me, Robert worked for a Chinese factory owner who did not speak English well at all. He was also a complete asswipe and was both physically and mentally abusive to Robert. This, of course, accounts for some of his timid nature but it also accounts for his language, as he was forced to speak in pidgin English for seven years to someone who had the linguistic grasp of a first-grader. Thus, his English is broken and twisted…something he is very ashamed of and his fellow Ugandans tease him about mercilessly.
For the first week, he barely spoke to me at all and I kept asking my friend, and his sister-in-law, Sarah, if he spoke English. It was worrisome because I needed to be able to communicate with my driver in case an emergency came up and, as sweet as he was, I could not employ a mute.
“He does, I promise,” she assured me. “Just give him another week.”
And, as it turned out, in another week’s time he had gotten comfortable enough to begin speaking to me.
“I will come to retrieve you at the nine-o-clock position on the time piece…for it will be then when the sun has woken up and the bird begins its song and the traffic will be a little sleepy…like a new baby.”
What?!
“Robert,” I said, “I speak English, I don’t need examples like that.”
“Just for you to be watching the time piece! I shall feel quite awful inside of myself if we are missing the meeting because you have not watched the sun or the time piece!”
So, because I was amused and also saddened by the fact that his previous employer had been such a dipshit, I cut him some slack.
“Robert, do you speak English?” I asked.
He looked at me like a kicked dog.
“Yes, but right now my English is a bit broken…I am taking lessons again at home from my wife who used to be a teacher,” at this he pulled out a high school English textbook and showed me his lessons. He keeps the textbook in the glove compartment along with the Bible, which he reads constantly.
OK, I will give him a month…let’s see what happens, I thought.
Over the next month, his English had indeed improved…with one caveat: he now seems to only understand me and my accent.
When a colleague of mine visited from the U.S. a couple of weeks ago, his thick northern Georgia accent proved problematic for Robert.
“Dude, it is sure as heck nice to meet you! How ya doin’ up here in the pilot’s seat driving this monster? Ya liking it OK?” Mick asked.
Robert smiled the whole time and kept saying, “yes, yes” but when we dropped Mick off at the hotel, he was mortified.
“Madame boss,” he whispered (I hate that he calls me that but I can’t get him to stop and it is better than what he used to call me, ‘My Dearest Mistress,’ which made me feel like a cross between Kim Jung Il and Isak Denison), “why does that man sound so strange? I cannot understand anything he says to me!”
We then had the talk about American regional accents and he came to understand that my American English was not the only form out there.
“Which monster, though?” he asked.
“Nevermind, Robert, it was slang…there are no monsters. Just forget about it.”
The next day, Mick, who is a former Army colonel, decided to go man-to-man with Robert.
“I must say, dude, you got some fine looking tail here in Uganda…yes indeed, Ugandan women are not hard on the old eyeballs…but you should come to my home in Tennessee…talk about fine tail! My wife, of course, is the finest of them all, but we got fine tail in the US too!”
This sent Robert over the edge.
“Does he think that African women have tails?” he asked, when we were alone again in the car.
“I didn’t think Americans thought that way! I thought Americans were nice!” He was bereft.
“No, Robert, it was slang again, it was actually a compliment but please don’t use it in the future…especially not with your wife or mother.”
In my head I wanted to kill Mick.
Robert, relieved, then said, “But he wants to bring me to America to look at their tails! This is wonderful! Can I call my wife now, please, and tell her? We have always dreamed of going to America!”
Fuck.
I made a mental note to have a talk with Mick the next day about this problem.
Despite these slip-ups, Robert’s English is greatly improved and he is getting more confident every day.
However, in his attempts to please me and my guests, he recently showed me a book he had purchased second-hand at the market entitled, “American Slang: Regional Expressions from
Across the 50 States.”
It was published in, oh, 1977 or so, and it contained phrases I had never even heard of along with ones I sure as hell didn’t want Robert using on any of my visiting colleagues.
“Give me that, Robert,” I demanded. “Please do not read that book, it is not a good book.”
He was crestfallen…he wanted to be able to speak “all of the Englishes of America” to my colleagues.
No, I insisted, you don’t need that damn book. Then, for added measure, I told him, “God doesn’t like the language in that book, it will make Him mad.”
(I know this is duplicitous but Robert is very religious and I could not get the book away from him by any other means)
He surrendered it immediately.
Then, “Madame Boss, are you constipated? Is there something I have done to make you have a constipation?”
Sadly, I knew EXACTLY what he meant.
“No, Robert, I am not constipated…and the word, by the way, is ‘annoyed,’ but I am neither annoyed nor constipated. I think you are doing a great job.”
And I meant it.
Only I fear what is going to happen next week when my colleague from the Midwest arrives.
An entirely new English lesson, to be sure.
No, I had insisted. Not happening.
Well, it happened.
I hired a family. I now have a housecleaner who comes every Saturday and my own driver, Robert.
Robert, who has been working for me for about six weeks now, is wonderful. He is sweet and attentive and, although I wish he would be a little more aggressive, he has been a great driver and I enjoy his company. The thing I enjoy best, however, is his English.
Most Ugandans are fluent English speakers, growing up bi-lingual or tri-lingual in their own tribal language as well as English. They speak an interesting, lilting form of British English that is quite easy on the ears and I love listening to them. It’s the same with Indians…whose British English is full of fantastic euphemisms and words that neither a Brit nor an American would likely ever use in normal conversation. Ugandans, like Indians, have a lot of fun with the English language.
“Have you a provision for a lock on your sliding door?” the property manager asked me.
“Are you finding this meal to your inner contentment?” the waiter asks.
“Please do not allow your car to pass here, the motorway is quite turbulent and we foresee an unexpected calamity,” the sign on the highway says.
I love it.
Robert, however, does not use these words or phrases. Largely because, Robert doesn’t really speak English…he speaks Chinglish.
For the seven years prior to coming under hire with me, Robert worked for a Chinese factory owner who did not speak English well at all. He was also a complete asswipe and was both physically and mentally abusive to Robert. This, of course, accounts for some of his timid nature but it also accounts for his language, as he was forced to speak in pidgin English for seven years to someone who had the linguistic grasp of a first-grader. Thus, his English is broken and twisted…something he is very ashamed of and his fellow Ugandans tease him about mercilessly.
For the first week, he barely spoke to me at all and I kept asking my friend, and his sister-in-law, Sarah, if he spoke English. It was worrisome because I needed to be able to communicate with my driver in case an emergency came up and, as sweet as he was, I could not employ a mute.
“He does, I promise,” she assured me. “Just give him another week.”
And, as it turned out, in another week’s time he had gotten comfortable enough to begin speaking to me.
“I will come to retrieve you at the nine-o-clock position on the time piece…for it will be then when the sun has woken up and the bird begins its song and the traffic will be a little sleepy…like a new baby.”
What?!
“Robert,” I said, “I speak English, I don’t need examples like that.”
“Just for you to be watching the time piece! I shall feel quite awful inside of myself if we are missing the meeting because you have not watched the sun or the time piece!”
So, because I was amused and also saddened by the fact that his previous employer had been such a dipshit, I cut him some slack.
“Robert, do you speak English?” I asked.
He looked at me like a kicked dog.
“Yes, but right now my English is a bit broken…I am taking lessons again at home from my wife who used to be a teacher,” at this he pulled out a high school English textbook and showed me his lessons. He keeps the textbook in the glove compartment along with the Bible, which he reads constantly.
OK, I will give him a month…let’s see what happens, I thought.
Over the next month, his English had indeed improved…with one caveat: he now seems to only understand me and my accent.
When a colleague of mine visited from the U.S. a couple of weeks ago, his thick northern Georgia accent proved problematic for Robert.
“Dude, it is sure as heck nice to meet you! How ya doin’ up here in the pilot’s seat driving this monster? Ya liking it OK?” Mick asked.
Robert smiled the whole time and kept saying, “yes, yes” but when we dropped Mick off at the hotel, he was mortified.
“Madame boss,” he whispered (I hate that he calls me that but I can’t get him to stop and it is better than what he used to call me, ‘My Dearest Mistress,’ which made me feel like a cross between Kim Jung Il and Isak Denison), “why does that man sound so strange? I cannot understand anything he says to me!”
We then had the talk about American regional accents and he came to understand that my American English was not the only form out there.
“Which monster, though?” he asked.
“Nevermind, Robert, it was slang…there are no monsters. Just forget about it.”
The next day, Mick, who is a former Army colonel, decided to go man-to-man with Robert.
“I must say, dude, you got some fine looking tail here in Uganda…yes indeed, Ugandan women are not hard on the old eyeballs…but you should come to my home in Tennessee…talk about fine tail! My wife, of course, is the finest of them all, but we got fine tail in the US too!”
This sent Robert over the edge.
“Does he think that African women have tails?” he asked, when we were alone again in the car.
“I didn’t think Americans thought that way! I thought Americans were nice!” He was bereft.
“No, Robert, it was slang again, it was actually a compliment but please don’t use it in the future…especially not with your wife or mother.”
In my head I wanted to kill Mick.
Robert, relieved, then said, “But he wants to bring me to America to look at their tails! This is wonderful! Can I call my wife now, please, and tell her? We have always dreamed of going to America!”
Fuck.
I made a mental note to have a talk with Mick the next day about this problem.
Despite these slip-ups, Robert’s English is greatly improved and he is getting more confident every day.
However, in his attempts to please me and my guests, he recently showed me a book he had purchased second-hand at the market entitled, “American Slang: Regional Expressions from
Across the 50 States.”
It was published in, oh, 1977 or so, and it contained phrases I had never even heard of along with ones I sure as hell didn’t want Robert using on any of my visiting colleagues.
“Give me that, Robert,” I demanded. “Please do not read that book, it is not a good book.”
He was crestfallen…he wanted to be able to speak “all of the Englishes of America” to my colleagues.
No, I insisted, you don’t need that damn book. Then, for added measure, I told him, “God doesn’t like the language in that book, it will make Him mad.”
(I know this is duplicitous but Robert is very religious and I could not get the book away from him by any other means)
He surrendered it immediately.
Then, “Madame Boss, are you constipated? Is there something I have done to make you have a constipation?”
Sadly, I knew EXACTLY what he meant.
“No, Robert, I am not constipated…and the word, by the way, is ‘annoyed,’ but I am neither annoyed nor constipated. I think you are doing a great job.”
And I meant it.
Only I fear what is going to happen next week when my colleague from the Midwest arrives.
An entirely new English lesson, to be sure.
28 November 2008
I live in Africa
16 November 2008
So after three and a half long weeks of being in a semi-comatose state, the reality hit me on Saturday night: I live in Africa.
I panicked.
I called S., sort of forced him to stay up all night with me, as the reality sank in.
I was like a three-year old.
“I live in Africa,” I kept repeating. And then, on occasion, “I am all alone.” Then, just for some added drama, “I don’t know what the hell I am doing here. What am I doing here? I am alone living in Africa.”
S. to his credit, was immensely patient with me. He stayed up all night with me on Friday, all day on Saturday (night for me), and even was decent enough, realizing that I had decided to get completely drunk off my ass on Saturday night, to join me…although he wasn’t terribly pleased on Sunday when the whole exercise in “staying up with your girlfriend who is normally very calm and self-assured but has suddenly turned into a panicked and freaked out mess” had handed him a ruthless hangover.
Because, ultimately, I am too vain to admit that I am ever afraid at any given moment, I decided to delve into his entire past history in an attempt to distract myself from my own terror and, honestly, because when you have had ten glasses wine in four hours, you kind of lose any sense of what might be appropriate or inappropriate to broach with your significant other (women are GREAT at this…or at least the women in my family).
“Why did you get married to your ex-wife?” “Tell me absolutely EVERYTHING about every single relationship you have been in up until you met me.” “Why do you love me?” “DO you love me?” “Do you love me more than them?” “Why do you love me more than them?”
p.s. “I live in Africa.”
Good shit.
S. to his credit, drank the six bottles of Coors Light needed to get him through those questions and then said, exhausted some time during his afternoon on Saturday and my middle-of-the-night, “Love, can we please just go to bed? Or, rather, can you please just go to bed? Or, or, maybe we can talk about something else? I know you live in Africa, I know you are losing your shit a little bit, but…please?”
I slept. For three hours or so. Then I called him back.
“You awake?” I asked.
“Um, no…but yes, I am awake. I am here. What’s up?”
“I live in Africa. I am scared. Can we talk for ten more minutes, please?”
Naturally, ten minutes turned into another three hours.
To say that I am not normally “like this” is fairly accurate. I tend to go the opposite of ‘needy’ when faced with some cosmic crisis like the discovery that I had just moved to Africa…a month after the case.
I tend to clam-up, hide, become inaccessible, and silent.
“Patti: the insecure chatterbox” was interesting to me. I haven’t seen a demonstration of this side of myself since, oh, high school or thereabouts.
Finally, after I had worn myself out, I granted my poor S. release from this insane woman that he had no idea he was in love with.
“I’m tired,” I announced, “I need to go to bed.”
“OK,” he said, “sleep well and I will talk to you tomorrow.”
Then, because I had tortured him for a few hours with my own torture, he wrote me one of the most brilliant and introspective emails answering all of the questions I had forced upon him over those long hours on Friday and Saturday night. Quite plainly, I had no idea that a male of our species was capable of this sort of introspection.
So, of course, I called him back.
It was in the middle of the night, my time, and very, very, early, his time.
“I got your email, I want to talk about it.”
“OK.”
“And, by the way, I just had an aborted talk with my mother and I told her to call you since we are able to speak and she and I are not because she hasn’t set up Skype yet…hope you don’t mind.”
“No, it’s OK.”
I managed another hour or two with S., until, finally thoroughly exhausted, I decided to go back to sleep.
Today, Monday morning my side, I got another email.
My mother had called him almost directly after he had finished (or thought so) an entire 48 hours of meeting “Patti: the Wreck,” and they spoke for two hours.
Dutifully, he reported the entire conversation to me in an email.
Naturally, I called him back.
It was about 0900 my time, 0100 his time.
“Hi! It’s me!” I said.
“Yes, I know. Are you OK?”
I said yes.
I meant no.
He stayed up with me for another couple of hours.
Somehow, somewhere, I wonder if I saved a bunch of drowning orphans in a past life to be granted this level of tolerance from another human.
I kept telling him, and I meant it, “I know I am exhausting you right now, I know I am pulling on all of your reserves of strength and tolerance, I know I am depleting you in my neediness…but, I promise, I will always do the same for you.”
He knows.
Still, I wonder who this strange person is sometimes. I wonder why, clearly knowing that S. is about at the end of his rope with me, that I called the local taxi cab driver and asked him to take me to the mall…
There, where anyone would listen, I announced,
“I live in Africa.”
“Yeah?” they said, “so do we.”
I am afraid again for the first time in about a decade.
Oddly, it feels OK.
Because I feel alive again.
So after three and a half long weeks of being in a semi-comatose state, the reality hit me on Saturday night: I live in Africa.
I panicked.
I called S., sort of forced him to stay up all night with me, as the reality sank in.
I was like a three-year old.
“I live in Africa,” I kept repeating. And then, on occasion, “I am all alone.” Then, just for some added drama, “I don’t know what the hell I am doing here. What am I doing here? I am alone living in Africa.”
S. to his credit, was immensely patient with me. He stayed up all night with me on Friday, all day on Saturday (night for me), and even was decent enough, realizing that I had decided to get completely drunk off my ass on Saturday night, to join me…although he wasn’t terribly pleased on Sunday when the whole exercise in “staying up with your girlfriend who is normally very calm and self-assured but has suddenly turned into a panicked and freaked out mess” had handed him a ruthless hangover.
Because, ultimately, I am too vain to admit that I am ever afraid at any given moment, I decided to delve into his entire past history in an attempt to distract myself from my own terror and, honestly, because when you have had ten glasses wine in four hours, you kind of lose any sense of what might be appropriate or inappropriate to broach with your significant other (women are GREAT at this…or at least the women in my family).
“Why did you get married to your ex-wife?” “Tell me absolutely EVERYTHING about every single relationship you have been in up until you met me.” “Why do you love me?” “DO you love me?” “Do you love me more than them?” “Why do you love me more than them?”
p.s. “I live in Africa.”
Good shit.
S. to his credit, drank the six bottles of Coors Light needed to get him through those questions and then said, exhausted some time during his afternoon on Saturday and my middle-of-the-night, “Love, can we please just go to bed? Or, rather, can you please just go to bed? Or, or, maybe we can talk about something else? I know you live in Africa, I know you are losing your shit a little bit, but…please?”
I slept. For three hours or so. Then I called him back.
“You awake?” I asked.
“Um, no…but yes, I am awake. I am here. What’s up?”
“I live in Africa. I am scared. Can we talk for ten more minutes, please?”
Naturally, ten minutes turned into another three hours.
To say that I am not normally “like this” is fairly accurate. I tend to go the opposite of ‘needy’ when faced with some cosmic crisis like the discovery that I had just moved to Africa…a month after the case.
I tend to clam-up, hide, become inaccessible, and silent.
“Patti: the insecure chatterbox” was interesting to me. I haven’t seen a demonstration of this side of myself since, oh, high school or thereabouts.
Finally, after I had worn myself out, I granted my poor S. release from this insane woman that he had no idea he was in love with.
“I’m tired,” I announced, “I need to go to bed.”
“OK,” he said, “sleep well and I will talk to you tomorrow.”
Then, because I had tortured him for a few hours with my own torture, he wrote me one of the most brilliant and introspective emails answering all of the questions I had forced upon him over those long hours on Friday and Saturday night. Quite plainly, I had no idea that a male of our species was capable of this sort of introspection.
So, of course, I called him back.
It was in the middle of the night, my time, and very, very, early, his time.
“I got your email, I want to talk about it.”
“OK.”
“And, by the way, I just had an aborted talk with my mother and I told her to call you since we are able to speak and she and I are not because she hasn’t set up Skype yet…hope you don’t mind.”
“No, it’s OK.”
I managed another hour or two with S., until, finally thoroughly exhausted, I decided to go back to sleep.
Today, Monday morning my side, I got another email.
My mother had called him almost directly after he had finished (or thought so) an entire 48 hours of meeting “Patti: the Wreck,” and they spoke for two hours.
Dutifully, he reported the entire conversation to me in an email.
Naturally, I called him back.
It was about 0900 my time, 0100 his time.
“Hi! It’s me!” I said.
“Yes, I know. Are you OK?”
I said yes.
I meant no.
He stayed up with me for another couple of hours.
Somehow, somewhere, I wonder if I saved a bunch of drowning orphans in a past life to be granted this level of tolerance from another human.
I kept telling him, and I meant it, “I know I am exhausting you right now, I know I am pulling on all of your reserves of strength and tolerance, I know I am depleting you in my neediness…but, I promise, I will always do the same for you.”
He knows.
Still, I wonder who this strange person is sometimes. I wonder why, clearly knowing that S. is about at the end of his rope with me, that I called the local taxi cab driver and asked him to take me to the mall…
There, where anyone would listen, I announced,
“I live in Africa.”
“Yeah?” they said, “so do we.”
I am afraid again for the first time in about a decade.
Oddly, it feels OK.
Because I feel alive again.
Obama
Now that I finally have internet at home and can post again...my thoughts on the election written the day after....
It can only be characterized as “strange” watching your country have a monumental, history-changing, election from someone else’s country. You feel at the same time an ambassador and perhaps a traitor, depending on who you voted for. You walk around amazed that, even though the US is still the most powerful country in the world, people who have never laid eyes on America actually sit up with you to watch an election from hundreds of miles away.
I have nearly spent two elections on someone else’s soil. The first, in 2004, sent me into such a deep depression that I chose to spend this one alone and, oddly enough, NOT in the company of my fellow Americans. I watched Barack Obama get elected President alone. Alone in my hotel room in Kampala, Uganda, thousands of miles away from my home. Directly downstairs from me was a huge Embassy party that I had been invited to, put on the VIP list, actually, but I had declined. I chose celebrating victory or accepting defeat on my own, not in the company of my own countrymen. Thousands of miles from home, I chose my own solace. Just in case…
That day, 4 November 2008, found me and my boss racing around Kampala to interviews. It was an odd predicament because, as much as I adore Paul, he is of a different political persuasion than me so there was a certain tension in the air between us that day.
Kampala was crackling with electricity. From the early morning onwards, everyone who recognized us as Americans asked who we had voted for and tried to push Obama stickers on us.
For me, I had already been canvassing. I had bought, in a train station in northern VA before departing for FL, about $700 worth of Obama paraphernalia. My mother, who was traveling with me, said, “Are you fucking nuts? That was a hell of a lot of money to spend to give people gifts that they probably won’t appreciate.”
For once, and I do say this sincerely, as it is usually my mother who is the wise one…she was wrong.
For the two weeks before the election, I handed out my bumper stickers, t-shirts, hats, and other assorted crap that I had purchased.
The night of the election, two of the staff at the hotel where I was staying knocked on my door to show me their children, decked out in the Obama stickers and t-shirts I had given to them. Uganda is a religious country and everyone evokes God at the strangest times…these two women, with their four and six-year old boys with bumper stickers plastered on their bellies and foreheads said, “We have been praying to God that Obama will win, we thought you should know that.”
It was the first time in my life that I had ever seen the world so ecstatic. And, mind you, after seven years of traversing the globe only to hear, at almost every single stop: “You’re American? That’s too bad, we hate your country and George Bush,” seeing the world so excited about this election gave me pause.
First, because I am not a traditional Democrat. I describe myself as a moderate because I have always liked the foreign policy and social welfare ideals of the Democratic Party while simultaneously upholding the fiscal and military policies (mind you, pre-“the Neo-Cons”) of the Republicans. I support the death penalty, I am pro-military, pro-the right to bear arms, all that good stuff that makes my Democratic friends cringe and reconsider why they associate with me at regular intervals….
Second, I am from a long line of Republicans. Hell, my great-great uncle, as unproductive as he was, was the President of the United States back in 1909. Every one of my family members, on my paternal side, have been Republicans.
Except my grandfather, of course, he bucked the trend and almost was elected to the Senate as the first Socialist candidate from the state of Connecticut.
So, along with my grandfather, I decided to buck the trend and voted in my first election for Ross Perot. Not even Clinton. I thought Ross Perot was sound fiscally and, as any 21-year old in 1995 would tell you, radical. I liked “radical.” I thought it was different. When Perot lost out to Clinton, however, I can’t say I was sad. There was something a bit odd about that cat…
But what most affected my life. and my political persuasion, was that I grew up, and came of age, during the years of President Bill Clinton. I applied for college loans and secured them easily. When I wanted to travel, and then live, abroad I was encouraged to do so by our government. My student loans were shelved for a couple of years and I was given loans to support myself while I spent over a year teaching English in a post-Soviet satellite country. I had, in the brief eight years that Bill Clinton was president, the opportunity and the ease of being well-educated and facilitated in world travel.
Did this change my life? Yes, I would have to say. I wouldn’t be living in Uganda right now. I wouldn’t have ever accepted the job I have now…helping the government implement a peace agreement after a two-decade-long war, if I hadn’t cut my teeth early on by living abroad. I was able, in those years and on very little money, to see what the world looked like. I gained experience that changed my life and made me, sorry to sound so cheesy here, “a global citizen.”
Then, over ten years after I graduated from college and spent time my time traveling the globe, my own brother had to beg for college loans. And he is smart. Just as smart as I was when I applied for my first college loan in 1992 if not more so. But my family, well within the “middle class” income bracket that has come to define our culture, had trouble trying to get my brother a college education. What the fuck was that about?
Then, it became even more personal.
My own per-monthly payment on my college loans doubled and then tripled under Bush. My country had become paranoid of letting its own out and letting other citizens in. My best friend from graduate school, Christophe, was kicked out of the US because he was Swiss and was in jeopardy of overstaying his student visa. Although he had wanted to stay, and would have been a benefit to our country, he was very smart… he had to leave immediately after he had graduated.
And he is Swiss.
Swiss, for fucking Christ’s sake!
Anyway, I talked to S. before I left the US about our odd predicament. We are both (despite the decade that separates us) not part of any “labeled” generation. We are too young to be Baby Boomers and too old to be Generation X or Y folks. We lived, and became adults, in that twelve to fifteen year gap in-between. We can identify with the Baby Boomers (my mother being one and my father, dead now, having straddled that gulf between the WWII and Baby Boomer time period) and we can identify with Generation X…but we are somewhere between.
For S., being in the military, he has had an entirely different experience, functionally, than me. But, in terms of philosophy, we are similar. We wonder where we fit, understanding both of these historic time periods. We spend hours upon hours talking about tales of his family and their integration as multi-generational Americans in the Midwest, and mine, as first and second-generation Americans living in wealth (paternal side) and Italian ghettos (maternal side) on the East Coast. We take lessons and values from each of our collective histories, as all Americans do.
But still, we are the generation that got stuck between.
Personally, and I know I am biased, I think people born in that time warp, from perhaps 1960-1975 “got it” better than the Baby Boomers or the WWII “Greatest Generation.” We came of age, individually as well as collectively, when walls came down but while we still had the wisdom of our parents. We also, at least for me, looked upon the “radical” Generation Xers and found that we could identify with them too. A foot in each territory, straddling a gulf in-between.
But…back to this election.
I will admit, I supported Hillary from the onset.
I didn’t like her personality, per se, or what I perceived to be her shrill manner, but I am loyal and I somehow hoped that having a Clinton back in office would return us, and our country, to the days that I remembered. Where education, social welfare, and the freedom (hell, even the encouragement) to travel would once again reign.
But then I saw something else. I saw, for the first time in my life, people younger than me engaged in the political process.
Those Generation X and Generation Y folks were inspired. They had left their mantra of being apolitical behind…suddenly, they were very political.
Never having seen this happen in my lifetime, I remembered my mother’s stories from the Baby Boomer generation and some of my father’s stories from the WWII generation.
I saw, for the first time in my adult life, Americans carrying around a hope and inspiration that I had only heard rumors about. I saw, voting in the primaries in Northern Virginia, kids, fucking kids, standing out in the driving rain to try to convince people to vote for Obama. Although at times they equally annoyed me as inspired me, I looked around in 2008 and saw an amazing thing: young people, the ‘next generation,’ if you will, giving a shit about politics. Giving a shit about their lives and their destinies. Somehow, from somewhere, Obama had woken them up.
Ultimately, what changed my mind about voting for Hillary versus Obama, were two things:
The first was a speech Obama gave in Philadelphia last spring where he talked so blatantly and honestly about race. Having been a Philly native for almost two decades, and, as my beloved and adopted state, I know Pennsylvania. Philly is one city in the US that still fights race wars every day. Philadelphians are rather cosmopolitan but even they carry within them a streak of racism. Like Boston, Detroit, and some other cities around the US. I never, in my wildest dreams, thought that PA would go to Obama. Nor did I think FL, my mother’s adopted state, would either. When that happened (and I admittedly only stayed up late enough to watch the PA and FL results) I knew history had changed.
The second reason that I left Clinton and voted for Obama was the fact that he can give a soaring and inspiring oratory. We, as Americans, have lost so much of our power in speaking and writing. I have read every single Obama speech, scrutinized his words, and fell in love with the power of a well-delivered speech. (Which, by the way, is one of the reasons I loved Bill Clinton…great speaking skills do a lot for me.)
When, when, did we start to equate poor grammar and poor oratory skills with greatness? I am not just talking about the East Coast or the West Coast…but when did Americans, in general, lose our very greatness in speaking, as a nation? When did we decide that someone who spoke “plain English” and used incorrect grammar was what we were about? When, given that we are a country of immigrants, did we lie down and disgrace our forefathers, who struggled immensely to learn a language and master it as a means of progress? Why is it suddenly “OK” to use bad English, improper grammar, and made-up words?
We don’t have to be pretentious about the whole thing but we are fucking AMERICANS. We are here, and as powerful as we are, because we have faced down all adversity and become the best of the best. Why did we, for eight long years, decide that we were arrogant and righteous enough not to live up to our own best example? The one we set for ourselves?
Watching the Presidential debates from Jakarta, Indonesia and Manila, the Republic of the Philippines, in 2004, I bore witness to this sickening trend. I saw John Kerry, who, I will myself admit, was a little “stiff,” lose the election because he, as one American friend who was watching them with me, said, “talked too fancy.” And, and…people voted against him because his wife, who I actually found both amusing and ballsy, was a “foreigner” whose first language was not English but Portuguese.
“What the fuck?” I remember thinking. My grandmother’s first language was not English. Hell, a majority of our population’s first language is not English…but we are still great. Why is this a disqualifier? Isn’t that what our country is about?
Or maybe I slept through all those years of History class.
Anyway, the power of a great oratory and the ability to inspire is why I love Obama.
His speeches remind me of some of the best I have read in my life.
One of them being Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech, “Free at Last.”
I first read his speech when I was in sixth grade. I didn’t understand it then but it gave me goose bumps.
I read it again when I was in high school and it made me cry. I carry it around with me as one of the most inspirational speeches I have ever read. It still makes me cry.
The speech Obama gave in Philly, while not of the caliber of MLK Jr’s speech, gave me goose bumps and almost made me cry. He spoke to our collective identity as Americans, as Dr. King had, and not as individuals. He reminded us, that day, that we are better than we currently think we are and that we, as a country, can overcome anything.
After that speech, I could not vote for Hillary.
I could not let this historic moment pass.
So I spent it alone.
At 0600 Uganda time on 5 November, I awoke to screaming, tears, and celebration.
I hadn’t attended the Embassy party the night before but one of the Ugandans (who has since become my friend) who was working at the hotel that morning burst into my room and dragged me out of bed.
She pointed me to the balcony where the sun was slowly coming up on a throng of Ugandans dancing, with Americans, in the streets.
The singing and the screams were almost deafening.
“That is your party, too,” she whispered. “The world is so proud of your country now, especially Uganda, so go celebrate!”
I did. She came with me.
We cried and hugged a lot of people during those long, very early, hours of celebrating.
She said, “I think the world thought that America was asleep for a few years. But now, as always, your country has proved itself to be the best in the world. I am so proud to know an American.”
Yep.
Or rather, “Yes we did!”
It can only be characterized as “strange” watching your country have a monumental, history-changing, election from someone else’s country. You feel at the same time an ambassador and perhaps a traitor, depending on who you voted for. You walk around amazed that, even though the US is still the most powerful country in the world, people who have never laid eyes on America actually sit up with you to watch an election from hundreds of miles away.
I have nearly spent two elections on someone else’s soil. The first, in 2004, sent me into such a deep depression that I chose to spend this one alone and, oddly enough, NOT in the company of my fellow Americans. I watched Barack Obama get elected President alone. Alone in my hotel room in Kampala, Uganda, thousands of miles away from my home. Directly downstairs from me was a huge Embassy party that I had been invited to, put on the VIP list, actually, but I had declined. I chose celebrating victory or accepting defeat on my own, not in the company of my own countrymen. Thousands of miles from home, I chose my own solace. Just in case…
That day, 4 November 2008, found me and my boss racing around Kampala to interviews. It was an odd predicament because, as much as I adore Paul, he is of a different political persuasion than me so there was a certain tension in the air between us that day.
Kampala was crackling with electricity. From the early morning onwards, everyone who recognized us as Americans asked who we had voted for and tried to push Obama stickers on us.
For me, I had already been canvassing. I had bought, in a train station in northern VA before departing for FL, about $700 worth of Obama paraphernalia. My mother, who was traveling with me, said, “Are you fucking nuts? That was a hell of a lot of money to spend to give people gifts that they probably won’t appreciate.”
For once, and I do say this sincerely, as it is usually my mother who is the wise one…she was wrong.
For the two weeks before the election, I handed out my bumper stickers, t-shirts, hats, and other assorted crap that I had purchased.
The night of the election, two of the staff at the hotel where I was staying knocked on my door to show me their children, decked out in the Obama stickers and t-shirts I had given to them. Uganda is a religious country and everyone evokes God at the strangest times…these two women, with their four and six-year old boys with bumper stickers plastered on their bellies and foreheads said, “We have been praying to God that Obama will win, we thought you should know that.”
It was the first time in my life that I had ever seen the world so ecstatic. And, mind you, after seven years of traversing the globe only to hear, at almost every single stop: “You’re American? That’s too bad, we hate your country and George Bush,” seeing the world so excited about this election gave me pause.
First, because I am not a traditional Democrat. I describe myself as a moderate because I have always liked the foreign policy and social welfare ideals of the Democratic Party while simultaneously upholding the fiscal and military policies (mind you, pre-“the Neo-Cons”) of the Republicans. I support the death penalty, I am pro-military, pro-the right to bear arms, all that good stuff that makes my Democratic friends cringe and reconsider why they associate with me at regular intervals….
Second, I am from a long line of Republicans. Hell, my great-great uncle, as unproductive as he was, was the President of the United States back in 1909. Every one of my family members, on my paternal side, have been Republicans.
Except my grandfather, of course, he bucked the trend and almost was elected to the Senate as the first Socialist candidate from the state of Connecticut.
So, along with my grandfather, I decided to buck the trend and voted in my first election for Ross Perot. Not even Clinton. I thought Ross Perot was sound fiscally and, as any 21-year old in 1995 would tell you, radical. I liked “radical.” I thought it was different. When Perot lost out to Clinton, however, I can’t say I was sad. There was something a bit odd about that cat…
But what most affected my life. and my political persuasion, was that I grew up, and came of age, during the years of President Bill Clinton. I applied for college loans and secured them easily. When I wanted to travel, and then live, abroad I was encouraged to do so by our government. My student loans were shelved for a couple of years and I was given loans to support myself while I spent over a year teaching English in a post-Soviet satellite country. I had, in the brief eight years that Bill Clinton was president, the opportunity and the ease of being well-educated and facilitated in world travel.
Did this change my life? Yes, I would have to say. I wouldn’t be living in Uganda right now. I wouldn’t have ever accepted the job I have now…helping the government implement a peace agreement after a two-decade-long war, if I hadn’t cut my teeth early on by living abroad. I was able, in those years and on very little money, to see what the world looked like. I gained experience that changed my life and made me, sorry to sound so cheesy here, “a global citizen.”
Then, over ten years after I graduated from college and spent time my time traveling the globe, my own brother had to beg for college loans. And he is smart. Just as smart as I was when I applied for my first college loan in 1992 if not more so. But my family, well within the “middle class” income bracket that has come to define our culture, had trouble trying to get my brother a college education. What the fuck was that about?
Then, it became even more personal.
My own per-monthly payment on my college loans doubled and then tripled under Bush. My country had become paranoid of letting its own out and letting other citizens in. My best friend from graduate school, Christophe, was kicked out of the US because he was Swiss and was in jeopardy of overstaying his student visa. Although he had wanted to stay, and would have been a benefit to our country, he was very smart… he had to leave immediately after he had graduated.
And he is Swiss.
Swiss, for fucking Christ’s sake!
Anyway, I talked to S. before I left the US about our odd predicament. We are both (despite the decade that separates us) not part of any “labeled” generation. We are too young to be Baby Boomers and too old to be Generation X or Y folks. We lived, and became adults, in that twelve to fifteen year gap in-between. We can identify with the Baby Boomers (my mother being one and my father, dead now, having straddled that gulf between the WWII and Baby Boomer time period) and we can identify with Generation X…but we are somewhere between.
For S., being in the military, he has had an entirely different experience, functionally, than me. But, in terms of philosophy, we are similar. We wonder where we fit, understanding both of these historic time periods. We spend hours upon hours talking about tales of his family and their integration as multi-generational Americans in the Midwest, and mine, as first and second-generation Americans living in wealth (paternal side) and Italian ghettos (maternal side) on the East Coast. We take lessons and values from each of our collective histories, as all Americans do.
But still, we are the generation that got stuck between.
Personally, and I know I am biased, I think people born in that time warp, from perhaps 1960-1975 “got it” better than the Baby Boomers or the WWII “Greatest Generation.” We came of age, individually as well as collectively, when walls came down but while we still had the wisdom of our parents. We also, at least for me, looked upon the “radical” Generation Xers and found that we could identify with them too. A foot in each territory, straddling a gulf in-between.
But…back to this election.
I will admit, I supported Hillary from the onset.
I didn’t like her personality, per se, or what I perceived to be her shrill manner, but I am loyal and I somehow hoped that having a Clinton back in office would return us, and our country, to the days that I remembered. Where education, social welfare, and the freedom (hell, even the encouragement) to travel would once again reign.
But then I saw something else. I saw, for the first time in my life, people younger than me engaged in the political process.
Those Generation X and Generation Y folks were inspired. They had left their mantra of being apolitical behind…suddenly, they were very political.
Never having seen this happen in my lifetime, I remembered my mother’s stories from the Baby Boomer generation and some of my father’s stories from the WWII generation.
I saw, for the first time in my adult life, Americans carrying around a hope and inspiration that I had only heard rumors about. I saw, voting in the primaries in Northern Virginia, kids, fucking kids, standing out in the driving rain to try to convince people to vote for Obama. Although at times they equally annoyed me as inspired me, I looked around in 2008 and saw an amazing thing: young people, the ‘next generation,’ if you will, giving a shit about politics. Giving a shit about their lives and their destinies. Somehow, from somewhere, Obama had woken them up.
Ultimately, what changed my mind about voting for Hillary versus Obama, were two things:
The first was a speech Obama gave in Philadelphia last spring where he talked so blatantly and honestly about race. Having been a Philly native for almost two decades, and, as my beloved and adopted state, I know Pennsylvania. Philly is one city in the US that still fights race wars every day. Philadelphians are rather cosmopolitan but even they carry within them a streak of racism. Like Boston, Detroit, and some other cities around the US. I never, in my wildest dreams, thought that PA would go to Obama. Nor did I think FL, my mother’s adopted state, would either. When that happened (and I admittedly only stayed up late enough to watch the PA and FL results) I knew history had changed.
The second reason that I left Clinton and voted for Obama was the fact that he can give a soaring and inspiring oratory. We, as Americans, have lost so much of our power in speaking and writing. I have read every single Obama speech, scrutinized his words, and fell in love with the power of a well-delivered speech. (Which, by the way, is one of the reasons I loved Bill Clinton…great speaking skills do a lot for me.)
When, when, did we start to equate poor grammar and poor oratory skills with greatness? I am not just talking about the East Coast or the West Coast…but when did Americans, in general, lose our very greatness in speaking, as a nation? When did we decide that someone who spoke “plain English” and used incorrect grammar was what we were about? When, given that we are a country of immigrants, did we lie down and disgrace our forefathers, who struggled immensely to learn a language and master it as a means of progress? Why is it suddenly “OK” to use bad English, improper grammar, and made-up words?
We don’t have to be pretentious about the whole thing but we are fucking AMERICANS. We are here, and as powerful as we are, because we have faced down all adversity and become the best of the best. Why did we, for eight long years, decide that we were arrogant and righteous enough not to live up to our own best example? The one we set for ourselves?
Watching the Presidential debates from Jakarta, Indonesia and Manila, the Republic of the Philippines, in 2004, I bore witness to this sickening trend. I saw John Kerry, who, I will myself admit, was a little “stiff,” lose the election because he, as one American friend who was watching them with me, said, “talked too fancy.” And, and…people voted against him because his wife, who I actually found both amusing and ballsy, was a “foreigner” whose first language was not English but Portuguese.
“What the fuck?” I remember thinking. My grandmother’s first language was not English. Hell, a majority of our population’s first language is not English…but we are still great. Why is this a disqualifier? Isn’t that what our country is about?
Or maybe I slept through all those years of History class.
Anyway, the power of a great oratory and the ability to inspire is why I love Obama.
His speeches remind me of some of the best I have read in my life.
One of them being Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech, “Free at Last.”
I first read his speech when I was in sixth grade. I didn’t understand it then but it gave me goose bumps.
I read it again when I was in high school and it made me cry. I carry it around with me as one of the most inspirational speeches I have ever read. It still makes me cry.
The speech Obama gave in Philly, while not of the caliber of MLK Jr’s speech, gave me goose bumps and almost made me cry. He spoke to our collective identity as Americans, as Dr. King had, and not as individuals. He reminded us, that day, that we are better than we currently think we are and that we, as a country, can overcome anything.
After that speech, I could not vote for Hillary.
I could not let this historic moment pass.
So I spent it alone.
At 0600 Uganda time on 5 November, I awoke to screaming, tears, and celebration.
I hadn’t attended the Embassy party the night before but one of the Ugandans (who has since become my friend) who was working at the hotel that morning burst into my room and dragged me out of bed.
She pointed me to the balcony where the sun was slowly coming up on a throng of Ugandans dancing, with Americans, in the streets.
The singing and the screams were almost deafening.
“That is your party, too,” she whispered. “The world is so proud of your country now, especially Uganda, so go celebrate!”
I did. She came with me.
We cried and hugged a lot of people during those long, very early, hours of celebrating.
She said, “I think the world thought that America was asleep for a few years. But now, as always, your country has proved itself to be the best in the world. I am so proud to know an American.”
Yep.
Or rather, “Yes we did!”
04 November 2008
Uganda: What I know for sure.
Well, I am here.
Actually, I have been here--Kampala, Uganda--for exactly two weeks now. It has sort of taken until now for it all to sink in and, even at this moment, I am not sure it all has.
I have been getting emails from friends and family asking, "So how is it? What are your first impressions? Do you love it or hate it? How do you like your new job? Who do you miss the most? What are the people like? What is the food/weather/shopping like? Etc., etc."
Because I am still in a state of suspended animation about 25% of the time (down, thankfully, from 85% of the time for the first week I was here and couldn't kick the jet lag), it is hard for my brain to parse those kind of details yet. I have some ideas, however.
I am going to attempt to be slightly creative (or slightly lame, who knows?) and use a very simple technique at ferreting out how you feel about something/someplace/someone that, oddly enough, comes from Oprah. No, I am not a woman who watches Oprah daily and I gave up on her magazine once the "Everyday Finds" section started regularly displaying items that cost over $1500, but I have always liked her "What I know for Sure" guidance. Basically, instead of over-intellectualizing a topic and letting your mind crowd out your heart/soul...just ask yourself, "What do I know for sure?" and see what pops up. Simple request: hopefully, simple response.
So I have been asking myself, over the past three weeks since I left my job in DC and moved to Uganda, what do I know for sure? Here is the initial list.
1. I am no longer terrorized by stress. I read back over my blog posts and almost didn't recognize the person who wrote some of them. Sure, I am still experiencing stress...moving to a new country will do that...but I am not longer paralyzed by it.
2. Uganda has the most beautiful light I have ever seen and it so very green. On the Equator, it has the most picturesque blue skies and the light is so clear and so gentle, and there are trees, plants and flowers everywhere. All thriving. It is like living in a watercolor painting.
3. I own nothing. Everything I own (besides my car, which I really don't own to begin with, the bank does) fits in three suitcases. I have given away everything else. I own nothing. Sometimes it is terrifying, sometimes it feels liberating, depends on my mood.
4. I miss my mother, S., and my friends like crazy. Not getting to talk to them (8 hours ahead of US EDT here in Kampala) is difficult. However, it also has caused me to turn to myself a few times for answers instead of seeking advice from outside. Still, I miss them and talking to them.
5. I do not miss my old job but I miss the people I worked with a lot. I miss the daily camaraderie of a team that has worked together for years. Oddly, however, I look back on the day-to-day routine of my former job and it seems like something lost in a dream...fading. I don't feel negatively about any of it, it is just beginning to fade, probably because...
6. My new job is challenging as all hell. I am learning something new every single day. I love this but it can exhaust a mind used to traveling its familiar hallways in search of answers filed away in drawers it knows how to find. Here, I am forced to create a whole new filing system. Sometimes I fear I look stupid, but at least I am not deadened.
7. I am grateful that the Universe has previously allowed me to travel as extensively as I have. If not, I would be flipping my shit right now. I am firmly re-acquainted with "Africa time" and, amazingly, I have not gotten annoyed. Everything takes 2-3xs the amount of time that it would in the US (three weeks to install internet, two weeks to find someone to turn on the cable, ten calls to confirm an appointment that turns out to be a no-show, lines, lines, lines....) but, oddly, I am being patient. I don't know, it might still be the jet-lag...but I am oddly temperate these days.
8. I smell like curry. Uganda has fantastic Indian and South Asian cuisine, produced by its sizable South Asian population. I love Indian food and I am still getting used to Ugandan food (read: mashed roots, mashed roots with peanut sauce, mashed roots with hot sauce, oh...and tons of bananas...I HATE bananas) so I have been eating Indian daily. Last night I woke up and thought: "Damn, someone is cooking curry!" Then I realized it was me. I was the curry. May need to lay off for awhile but better than smelling like a banana.
9. Ugandans might be some of the friendliest people on the planet. I know...I hate writing that sort of stuff because it sounds so colonial, so...white...but it is true. Uganda and Ugandans are friendly, upbeat, fiercely intellectual and proud, and just down-right nice. They also, once you crack the formal exterior, have marvelous, bawdy, senses of humor.
10. I think I like it here. I am in small parts terrified, exhilarated, intimidated, and relieved. I am not having mood swings, per se, but just passing moments of waves that wash over me to the tune of, "Psst...you own nothing and you have nothing--material---to return home to!" or "Psst...you now live in a place that every great adventurer, writer and politician who has made it this far has referred to as 'one of the single most stunningly beautiful places on the planet' and you can go explore any weekend of your choice. You are FREE,"
11. I live here. I live in Uganda. For better or worse, this is my home...at least for the next 11 months. I kinda like the way that sounds...
Oh, did I mention the Ugandan pigeon? A tale for another email...
10.
Actually, I have been here--Kampala, Uganda--for exactly two weeks now. It has sort of taken until now for it all to sink in and, even at this moment, I am not sure it all has.
I have been getting emails from friends and family asking, "So how is it? What are your first impressions? Do you love it or hate it? How do you like your new job? Who do you miss the most? What are the people like? What is the food/weather/shopping like? Etc., etc."
Because I am still in a state of suspended animation about 25% of the time (down, thankfully, from 85% of the time for the first week I was here and couldn't kick the jet lag), it is hard for my brain to parse those kind of details yet. I have some ideas, however.
I am going to attempt to be slightly creative (or slightly lame, who knows?) and use a very simple technique at ferreting out how you feel about something/someplace/someone that, oddly enough, comes from Oprah. No, I am not a woman who watches Oprah daily and I gave up on her magazine once the "Everyday Finds" section started regularly displaying items that cost over $1500, but I have always liked her "What I know for Sure" guidance. Basically, instead of over-intellectualizing a topic and letting your mind crowd out your heart/soul...just ask yourself, "What do I know for sure?" and see what pops up. Simple request: hopefully, simple response.
So I have been asking myself, over the past three weeks since I left my job in DC and moved to Uganda, what do I know for sure? Here is the initial list.
1. I am no longer terrorized by stress. I read back over my blog posts and almost didn't recognize the person who wrote some of them. Sure, I am still experiencing stress...moving to a new country will do that...but I am not longer paralyzed by it.
2. Uganda has the most beautiful light I have ever seen and it so very green. On the Equator, it has the most picturesque blue skies and the light is so clear and so gentle, and there are trees, plants and flowers everywhere. All thriving. It is like living in a watercolor painting.
3. I own nothing. Everything I own (besides my car, which I really don't own to begin with, the bank does) fits in three suitcases. I have given away everything else. I own nothing. Sometimes it is terrifying, sometimes it feels liberating, depends on my mood.
4. I miss my mother, S., and my friends like crazy. Not getting to talk to them (8 hours ahead of US EDT here in Kampala) is difficult. However, it also has caused me to turn to myself a few times for answers instead of seeking advice from outside. Still, I miss them and talking to them.
5. I do not miss my old job but I miss the people I worked with a lot. I miss the daily camaraderie of a team that has worked together for years. Oddly, however, I look back on the day-to-day routine of my former job and it seems like something lost in a dream...fading. I don't feel negatively about any of it, it is just beginning to fade, probably because...
6. My new job is challenging as all hell. I am learning something new every single day. I love this but it can exhaust a mind used to traveling its familiar hallways in search of answers filed away in drawers it knows how to find. Here, I am forced to create a whole new filing system. Sometimes I fear I look stupid, but at least I am not deadened.
7. I am grateful that the Universe has previously allowed me to travel as extensively as I have. If not, I would be flipping my shit right now. I am firmly re-acquainted with "Africa time" and, amazingly, I have not gotten annoyed. Everything takes 2-3xs the amount of time that it would in the US (three weeks to install internet, two weeks to find someone to turn on the cable, ten calls to confirm an appointment that turns out to be a no-show, lines, lines, lines....) but, oddly, I am being patient. I don't know, it might still be the jet-lag...but I am oddly temperate these days.
8. I smell like curry. Uganda has fantastic Indian and South Asian cuisine, produced by its sizable South Asian population. I love Indian food and I am still getting used to Ugandan food (read: mashed roots, mashed roots with peanut sauce, mashed roots with hot sauce, oh...and tons of bananas...I HATE bananas) so I have been eating Indian daily. Last night I woke up and thought: "Damn, someone is cooking curry!" Then I realized it was me. I was the curry. May need to lay off for awhile but better than smelling like a banana.
9. Ugandans might be some of the friendliest people on the planet. I know...I hate writing that sort of stuff because it sounds so colonial, so...white...but it is true. Uganda and Ugandans are friendly, upbeat, fiercely intellectual and proud, and just down-right nice. They also, once you crack the formal exterior, have marvelous, bawdy, senses of humor.
10. I think I like it here. I am in small parts terrified, exhilarated, intimidated, and relieved. I am not having mood swings, per se, but just passing moments of waves that wash over me to the tune of, "Psst...you own nothing and you have nothing--material---to return home to!" or "Psst...you now live in a place that every great adventurer, writer and politician who has made it this far has referred to as 'one of the single most stunningly beautiful places on the planet' and you can go explore any weekend of your choice. You are FREE,"
11. I live here. I live in Uganda. For better or worse, this is my home...at least for the next 11 months. I kinda like the way that sounds...
Oh, did I mention the Ugandan pigeon? A tale for another email...
10.
10 October 2008
A day of passings
I woke up this morning not to be a wreck about giving Bella away to my pet sitter, Chris.
I refused to cry (except at about 3AM in the bathroom when she was sound asleep in bed) and acted this AM when I left for work as though I would be back like any other day.
But, of course, it wasn't any other day.
I hugged her after our walk, scolded her once again for immediately proceeding to jump on my expensive couch pillow and devour it, and then hugged her good-bye. Normal day.
Then I got in my car and lost my shit. I cried all the way to the parking garage at work and then the two block walk to the dentist where I had three dental procedures (just in case any of you are keeping track, as I CERTAINLY am NOT: I have had six fillings, twelve vaccinations, every blood test imaginable to man in two weeks, one root canal, one external biopsy and one internal biopsy, and am on two different anti-malaria's as well as some other shit that supposedly counteracts some river virus found in Uganda.
For a woman who doesn't go to the doctor regularly, this was traumatic as hell.
Yes, I am glad all my results have (finally) come back normal. No, I am not happy that I have had so much dental work that my mouth looks like someone who has had a stroke when she talks and that my arms and ass are so sore from shots that I have to decide whether to sit or write everyday. I hate all of this.
So, today, I think I hit my moral "breaking point." Bella was gone, I had spent two hours at the dentist, two hours at a my "farewell" lunch where everyone teased me (which normally would be cool but I was NOT in the mood) for not being able to keep food in my mouth because I couldn't feel my lower jaw from all the Novocaine, and then worked for five more hours.
Then I cam home to no Bella, a hell of a lot of packing to do, and the recognition that my body was asking me, "please, please...can we just take a break?"
Sadly, the answer is "no." We can't take a break. One more day. Just one.
Then, maybe a break for about five days.
Then, "next."
But tonight, I miss Bella the most. I know I can't keep crying because I know I am doing/did the right thing.
But being alone to face this is as terrifying as it hold the glimmer of being OK.
Another Xanax perhaps?
I refused to cry (except at about 3AM in the bathroom when she was sound asleep in bed) and acted this AM when I left for work as though I would be back like any other day.
But, of course, it wasn't any other day.
I hugged her after our walk, scolded her once again for immediately proceeding to jump on my expensive couch pillow and devour it, and then hugged her good-bye. Normal day.
Then I got in my car and lost my shit. I cried all the way to the parking garage at work and then the two block walk to the dentist where I had three dental procedures (just in case any of you are keeping track, as I CERTAINLY am NOT: I have had six fillings, twelve vaccinations, every blood test imaginable to man in two weeks, one root canal, one external biopsy and one internal biopsy, and am on two different anti-malaria's as well as some other shit that supposedly counteracts some river virus found in Uganda.
For a woman who doesn't go to the doctor regularly, this was traumatic as hell.
Yes, I am glad all my results have (finally) come back normal. No, I am not happy that I have had so much dental work that my mouth looks like someone who has had a stroke when she talks and that my arms and ass are so sore from shots that I have to decide whether to sit or write everyday. I hate all of this.
So, today, I think I hit my moral "breaking point." Bella was gone, I had spent two hours at the dentist, two hours at a my "farewell" lunch where everyone teased me (which normally would be cool but I was NOT in the mood) for not being able to keep food in my mouth because I couldn't feel my lower jaw from all the Novocaine, and then worked for five more hours.
Then I cam home to no Bella, a hell of a lot of packing to do, and the recognition that my body was asking me, "please, please...can we just take a break?"
Sadly, the answer is "no." We can't take a break. One more day. Just one.
Then, maybe a break for about five days.
Then, "next."
But tonight, I miss Bella the most. I know I can't keep crying because I know I am doing/did the right thing.
But being alone to face this is as terrifying as it hold the glimmer of being OK.
Another Xanax perhaps?
09 October 2008
Ciao Bella
Tonight I am so devastated that my heart can barely write the words but I simply have to so at least I remember them someday.
No, it is not a man, it is not my job (current or future), it is not a friend, it is not a family member, per se; tonight I say goodbye to my dog, Bella.
I have been thinking of a thousand words to describe Bella but none of them do her justice. I sit here tonight, the last night I will likely ever see her again, and try not to cry. One, because I am so emotionally worn out by the past two months of turmoil that my own soul has just about moved to an emotional Tahiti because no matter how much Xanax I take, nothing is enough right now. Second, because she is going to a happy home and me sitting here crying is going to nothing but upset her too and that's just not fair.
But Bella...my Bella. How I will miss her.
I love animals. Hell, it is even fair to say that I love/like animals more than humans sometimes. I worked as a veterinary technician for almost 13 years of my life, have, along with my best friend, Connie, saved about every animal out there that there was to save, and, in the meantime, have had a few "real special ones."
The first one was my dog, Emily, a black Shih Tzu mix who found me when I was seventeen and as close to insanity and suicide as I could get. I think, rather than describe what she meant to me, I will let you read the "Author's Note" to the serious of essays I once hope to publish:
These stories, invariably written in Austrian airports, Vietnamese hostels, Thai hotel rooms, or at my own kitchen table, are not meant to reflect historical or cultural accuracy. Rather, they are my own musings and observations on life. If I have offended anyone in the process or have gotten some of the details wrong, I offer my wholehearted apologies.
I owe this collection, and the inspiration for it, to thousands of people in dozens of countries who let me be a voyeur in their lives for a few weeks or a few years and provided me with fodder for writing. I can’t list everyone…but you know who you are. A special shout-out goes to my friends in Hungary. Thank you for tolerating me, adopting me, and showing me what, ten years later, I still think is the best country in the world. You have my heart forever.
In particular, I dedicate these essays to four people and to one dog.
First and foremost, to my mother, who agreed to bring me into this world and, upon being my mother for the first 24 hours of my life, declared, “Holy shit…this one is going to be a HUGE pain in the ass!” Nevertheless, without her guidance and constant willingness to set me back on the right path when I lost my way, I wouldn’t have made it this far.
To Connie, my best friend since I was 17 years old. Words cannot express the debt of gratitude and friendship I owe, but thanks for being one of the first people to recognize that I had talent and encourage me to write. And I am truly sorry about burning up your living room that time; I promise I will repay it in Depends and Sunday drives.
To Ed, my friend for over a decade who patiently read every one of these stories, often to his own chagrin, and endured me asking, “Is it funny?...Why aren’t you laughing?” And who let me go so far away so many times only to always meet me when I came home.
And finally, as far as humans go, to Jason. I know we have fought like soldiers at times but I am happy we can finally be friends. Thanks for taking a chance on me.
But I dedicate these essays to Emily above all else. She was a small black dog who agreed to be my friend and companion for about ten years. She loved me when I thought everyone else didn’t and loved me just as much as I thought everyone else should. Dogs (and animals) are special to all of us and this dog was so important to me. She got me through graduate school by sitting at my feet late at night and saying, “You can do this, just give it another hour…” when I wanted to collapse. She had an amazing soul and was my first audience.
Emily died two weeks after I returned from Africa in late 2003 in a freak accident. I miss her spirit perpetually but feel her love constantly. I now have, in no small part thanks to Emily, a wonderful new companion who has very much the same happy soul that Emily did…I never thought I’d get two chances at this kind of love. Just goes to show you how kind life really is.
Her name is Bella…and she sits here under my feet tonight as I write these words.
Life is kind but, mostly, life is beautiful.
It’s our job to find the beauty.
I got Bella in January of 2008 and have not stopped loving her for one minute. Not even when she ate the most expensive piece of artwork I had ever purchased, shit multiple times on my Oriental rug (not the cheaper rugs, mind you...if you're gonna potty train, take the Turkish wee-wee pad from 1910, right?), destroyed my brand-new couch in two days of eight-week-old chewing, and then threw up on my head in bed that night at 3AM after too much upholstery.
But, to be kind, as much as I want to take Bella with me to Africa, it just wouldn't be fair. There are myriad reasons, and none of them have to do with money or effort, but just a "gut feeling" that Bella would be better off here. So I have decided to give her to my wonderful dog sitter/pet walker, Christina, who has two young boys who will provide her with all the attention she needs and Chris and her husband, John, are animal lovers to the extreme (and I know animal lovers). I know she will be well-loved, well-cared-for, and happy, ultimately.
She's just not going to be mine anymore.
And I know, I get the "we don't own people or pets or things, ultimately," lesson, but god it hurts so bad. She wants to play fetch non-stop tonight and has decided to skip her normal bedtime of 10PM to stay up with me. She doesn't seem depressed and I am still managing not to cry but...jesus...this is hard stuff.
Bella is one of the happiest dogs I have ever met....she was just born that way. And I regret now all of those weekends when I could barely pull myself out of bed to take her on the long walks she wanted because I was so consumed with myself that I discarded all the opportunities she gave me to play and get out of my own head...
But even happy, smiling Bella couldn't do that either.
That's another reason why I am going to Uganda.
And ultimately, that's why I am so in her debt and I think that, although she senses my sadness, she is happy I am going to Uganda too and still willing to stay up with me tonight, one last night, and be happy. Or at least put on a good show.
But, Lord, am I going to miss her and her happy, smiling face every morning and her willingness to snuggle with me every night...even when I was crying and miserable.
Maybe, just maybe, I do have good karma with animals. I have saved a bunch in my time, as has my friend, Connie, and a whole bunch of other folks.
I only pray the Universe is kind enough to help me find another Bella.
But, for now, ciao Bella. My beautiful
No, it is not a man, it is not my job (current or future), it is not a friend, it is not a family member, per se; tonight I say goodbye to my dog, Bella.
I have been thinking of a thousand words to describe Bella but none of them do her justice. I sit here tonight, the last night I will likely ever see her again, and try not to cry. One, because I am so emotionally worn out by the past two months of turmoil that my own soul has just about moved to an emotional Tahiti because no matter how much Xanax I take, nothing is enough right now. Second, because she is going to a happy home and me sitting here crying is going to nothing but upset her too and that's just not fair.
But Bella...my Bella. How I will miss her.
I love animals. Hell, it is even fair to say that I love/like animals more than humans sometimes. I worked as a veterinary technician for almost 13 years of my life, have, along with my best friend, Connie, saved about every animal out there that there was to save, and, in the meantime, have had a few "real special ones."
The first one was my dog, Emily, a black Shih Tzu mix who found me when I was seventeen and as close to insanity and suicide as I could get. I think, rather than describe what she meant to me, I will let you read the "Author's Note" to the serious of essays I once hope to publish:
These stories, invariably written in Austrian airports, Vietnamese hostels, Thai hotel rooms, or at my own kitchen table, are not meant to reflect historical or cultural accuracy. Rather, they are my own musings and observations on life. If I have offended anyone in the process or have gotten some of the details wrong, I offer my wholehearted apologies.
I owe this collection, and the inspiration for it, to thousands of people in dozens of countries who let me be a voyeur in their lives for a few weeks or a few years and provided me with fodder for writing. I can’t list everyone…but you know who you are. A special shout-out goes to my friends in Hungary. Thank you for tolerating me, adopting me, and showing me what, ten years later, I still think is the best country in the world. You have my heart forever.
In particular, I dedicate these essays to four people and to one dog.
First and foremost, to my mother, who agreed to bring me into this world and, upon being my mother for the first 24 hours of my life, declared, “Holy shit…this one is going to be a HUGE pain in the ass!” Nevertheless, without her guidance and constant willingness to set me back on the right path when I lost my way, I wouldn’t have made it this far.
To Connie, my best friend since I was 17 years old. Words cannot express the debt of gratitude and friendship I owe, but thanks for being one of the first people to recognize that I had talent and encourage me to write. And I am truly sorry about burning up your living room that time; I promise I will repay it in Depends and Sunday drives.
To Ed, my friend for over a decade who patiently read every one of these stories, often to his own chagrin, and endured me asking, “Is it funny?...Why aren’t you laughing?” And who let me go so far away so many times only to always meet me when I came home.
And finally, as far as humans go, to Jason. I know we have fought like soldiers at times but I am happy we can finally be friends. Thanks for taking a chance on me.
But I dedicate these essays to Emily above all else. She was a small black dog who agreed to be my friend and companion for about ten years. She loved me when I thought everyone else didn’t and loved me just as much as I thought everyone else should. Dogs (and animals) are special to all of us and this dog was so important to me. She got me through graduate school by sitting at my feet late at night and saying, “You can do this, just give it another hour…” when I wanted to collapse. She had an amazing soul and was my first audience.
Emily died two weeks after I returned from Africa in late 2003 in a freak accident. I miss her spirit perpetually but feel her love constantly. I now have, in no small part thanks to Emily, a wonderful new companion who has very much the same happy soul that Emily did…I never thought I’d get two chances at this kind of love. Just goes to show you how kind life really is.
Her name is Bella…and she sits here under my feet tonight as I write these words.
Life is kind but, mostly, life is beautiful.
It’s our job to find the beauty.
I got Bella in January of 2008 and have not stopped loving her for one minute. Not even when she ate the most expensive piece of artwork I had ever purchased, shit multiple times on my Oriental rug (not the cheaper rugs, mind you...if you're gonna potty train, take the Turkish wee-wee pad from 1910, right?), destroyed my brand-new couch in two days of eight-week-old chewing, and then threw up on my head in bed that night at 3AM after too much upholstery.
But, to be kind, as much as I want to take Bella with me to Africa, it just wouldn't be fair. There are myriad reasons, and none of them have to do with money or effort, but just a "gut feeling" that Bella would be better off here. So I have decided to give her to my wonderful dog sitter/pet walker, Christina, who has two young boys who will provide her with all the attention she needs and Chris and her husband, John, are animal lovers to the extreme (and I know animal lovers). I know she will be well-loved, well-cared-for, and happy, ultimately.
She's just not going to be mine anymore.
And I know, I get the "we don't own people or pets or things, ultimately," lesson, but god it hurts so bad. She wants to play fetch non-stop tonight and has decided to skip her normal bedtime of 10PM to stay up with me. She doesn't seem depressed and I am still managing not to cry but...jesus...this is hard stuff.
Bella is one of the happiest dogs I have ever met....she was just born that way. And I regret now all of those weekends when I could barely pull myself out of bed to take her on the long walks she wanted because I was so consumed with myself that I discarded all the opportunities she gave me to play and get out of my own head...
But even happy, smiling Bella couldn't do that either.
That's another reason why I am going to Uganda.
And ultimately, that's why I am so in her debt and I think that, although she senses my sadness, she is happy I am going to Uganda too and still willing to stay up with me tonight, one last night, and be happy. Or at least put on a good show.
But, Lord, am I going to miss her and her happy, smiling face every morning and her willingness to snuggle with me every night...even when I was crying and miserable.
Maybe, just maybe, I do have good karma with animals. I have saved a bunch in my time, as has my friend, Connie, and a whole bunch of other folks.
I only pray the Universe is kind enough to help me find another Bella.
But, for now, ciao Bella. My beautiful
07 October 2008
How do you pray?
So tonight I get off the phone with my friend Lilly, after deciding that my heart is broken in so many pieces that it cannot possibly be prepared to move to Uganda, and I am attacking another box to pack since I do not sleep these days/nights until at least 3AM. Some of it is anxiety, a lot of it has to do with the mega-milligrams of caffeine that are in the anti-malarial drug I am taking now...but the last thing I expected was a phone call at 1AM.
No need to disclose the caller but the phone call struck me as odd because I had had the EXACT same conversation with my mom two hours prior.
Here's the gist of it: This is an old friend from college/grad school, foreign, military intelligence officer, and someone who I love dearly but only speak to about twice a year because of his job and mine...we just don't "need" to talk on the phone that often....if something is wrong, one of us knows. It is that kind of friendship.
So when the phone rang, I pulled myself up from the boxes, packing tape, and other debris, and was surprised by the number. I knew it was him immediately. He is currently stationed in North Africa although he is from Germany.
"Whoa...this is a surprise," I say. "To what do I owe this pleasure?" I ask.
He goes through the details of his job (I hear how his impeccable English has been slightly infiltrated by the French he has had to speak over the past two years), he updates me on his family, his girlfriend, all the normal stuff. Then he is completely silent.
I am tired. Even though I can't sleep yet, I am still pretty tired so I decide to cut straight to the chase:
"What's up, K? Is something wrong? You are German and NEVER call me without a lot of advanced warning and certainly not at 0100 my time...what's going on?"
"How do you pray?" he asked.
I found this to be rather amusing as he is about as agnostic as they come and I have never heard him mention prayer, God, or any Higher Power, once in the seven years I have known him.
I find it even odder because, despite my drama with S. tonight, I did have an hour to talk to my mom and she called me to ask, "How do you make specific requests from the Universe? Because my world is falling apart and I know that I need to ask for help but I want your advice, you have always seemed to have known that channel....any tips?"
So, in the midst of my drama with S. and me feeling like a complete fool, now two people are calling me and asking me for spiritual advice. I find this ironic.
I gave the same advice to both:
Do you understand the basic principles of how energy interacts with other energy? Do you know that what you think about (repeatedly) will eventually draw to you exactly what you are thinking about because that is where you are putting your energy...good and bad?
Both of them understood that one, no problem.
Next up (and believe me, I am not a guru, I am just using my own understanding of 'prayer' here):
Do you understand that there is no such thing as evil? Or evil energy? Unless you are looking out the window and lusting to mutilate your neighbor's Labrador or dying to have sex with his/her two year old...nothing that you open yourself up to will manifest itself as evil, as we define it, unless it already exists in your soul. Got that?
If it does, then you know it is there and you need to deal with it. But I know (both) of you (one who kills for a living and one who does not) and there is no evil in your souls, got that?
Next: Ask.
Just don't make the "asking" confusing. Most people pray by saying, "Please God/Allah/Yaweh/Buddha/whatever, I am so fucked up right now because X and Y are wrong with my life and I know I did X and Y wrong to get to the current X and Y and I don't know how I got here but I know I am not a bad person but I don't understand why the Universe is so unkind to me because...review of X and Y again....so I need your help.
That IS NOT how it works. The reason you are experiencing X and Y is because you CHOSE that part (either consciously or unconsciously) and the way to pray is to be direct:
"Look, I know X and Y are bothering me right now, but I need your help in this/these areas and I will trust you to show me the signs and I will follow your guidance, as screwy as it might seem to my rational mind at the moment."
That's about it. For me, that is how I pray.
I am NOT religious but I am deeply spiritual and have been in touch with the Divine a few times in my life and these experiences encourage me to keep going.
My mother always cracks, "You are a witch, you decide what you want and you get it almost immediately. Otherwise, you are tested almost immediately."
This is true. But it is not because I hold some "secret power" to accessing the Universe or the Divine. I just know how to pose the question correctly when I "pray."
So, I told my friend, as I did my Mom, the Universe knows why you are upset...there is no need to lay down a litany. Just get as clear (and not through drugs or alcohol) as you possibly can and just say, "This part of my life isn't working, and show me a better way."
That's it. No voo-doo or any other crap. Just ask. And, of course, trust that you will be answered.
Now, after that second phone call, maybe I need to re-ask a few questions of my own.
But back to packing for now.
No need to disclose the caller but the phone call struck me as odd because I had had the EXACT same conversation with my mom two hours prior.
Here's the gist of it: This is an old friend from college/grad school, foreign, military intelligence officer, and someone who I love dearly but only speak to about twice a year because of his job and mine...we just don't "need" to talk on the phone that often....if something is wrong, one of us knows. It is that kind of friendship.
So when the phone rang, I pulled myself up from the boxes, packing tape, and other debris, and was surprised by the number. I knew it was him immediately. He is currently stationed in North Africa although he is from Germany.
"Whoa...this is a surprise," I say. "To what do I owe this pleasure?" I ask.
He goes through the details of his job (I hear how his impeccable English has been slightly infiltrated by the French he has had to speak over the past two years), he updates me on his family, his girlfriend, all the normal stuff. Then he is completely silent.
I am tired. Even though I can't sleep yet, I am still pretty tired so I decide to cut straight to the chase:
"What's up, K? Is something wrong? You are German and NEVER call me without a lot of advanced warning and certainly not at 0100 my time...what's going on?"
"How do you pray?" he asked.
I found this to be rather amusing as he is about as agnostic as they come and I have never heard him mention prayer, God, or any Higher Power, once in the seven years I have known him.
I find it even odder because, despite my drama with S. tonight, I did have an hour to talk to my mom and she called me to ask, "How do you make specific requests from the Universe? Because my world is falling apart and I know that I need to ask for help but I want your advice, you have always seemed to have known that channel....any tips?"
So, in the midst of my drama with S. and me feeling like a complete fool, now two people are calling me and asking me for spiritual advice. I find this ironic.
I gave the same advice to both:
Do you understand the basic principles of how energy interacts with other energy? Do you know that what you think about (repeatedly) will eventually draw to you exactly what you are thinking about because that is where you are putting your energy...good and bad?
Both of them understood that one, no problem.
Next up (and believe me, I am not a guru, I am just using my own understanding of 'prayer' here):
Do you understand that there is no such thing as evil? Or evil energy? Unless you are looking out the window and lusting to mutilate your neighbor's Labrador or dying to have sex with his/her two year old...nothing that you open yourself up to will manifest itself as evil, as we define it, unless it already exists in your soul. Got that?
If it does, then you know it is there and you need to deal with it. But I know (both) of you (one who kills for a living and one who does not) and there is no evil in your souls, got that?
Next: Ask.
Just don't make the "asking" confusing. Most people pray by saying, "Please God/Allah/Yaweh/Buddha/whatever, I am so fucked up right now because X and Y are wrong with my life and I know I did X and Y wrong to get to the current X and Y and I don't know how I got here but I know I am not a bad person but I don't understand why the Universe is so unkind to me because...review of X and Y again....so I need your help.
That IS NOT how it works. The reason you are experiencing X and Y is because you CHOSE that part (either consciously or unconsciously) and the way to pray is to be direct:
"Look, I know X and Y are bothering me right now, but I need your help in this/these areas and I will trust you to show me the signs and I will follow your guidance, as screwy as it might seem to my rational mind at the moment."
That's about it. For me, that is how I pray.
I am NOT religious but I am deeply spiritual and have been in touch with the Divine a few times in my life and these experiences encourage me to keep going.
My mother always cracks, "You are a witch, you decide what you want and you get it almost immediately. Otherwise, you are tested almost immediately."
This is true. But it is not because I hold some "secret power" to accessing the Universe or the Divine. I just know how to pose the question correctly when I "pray."
So, I told my friend, as I did my Mom, the Universe knows why you are upset...there is no need to lay down a litany. Just get as clear (and not through drugs or alcohol) as you possibly can and just say, "This part of my life isn't working, and show me a better way."
That's it. No voo-doo or any other crap. Just ask. And, of course, trust that you will be answered.
Now, after that second phone call, maybe I need to re-ask a few questions of my own.
But back to packing for now.
30 September 2008
An altercation in Ohio
Yesterday, oddly enough, I found myself in Ohio.
No, not for any special reason other than that I booked a late flight to FL and the cheapest option required strange routing (New Jersey to get to Florida, Ohio to get from FL to DC).
I had spent the weekend with S., and, for all practical purposes, it was a lovely weekend.
As I was passing through the security checkpoint at Cleveland airport, the normally nice (hey, it's Ohio, people are just nice to begin with) TSA guy took a look at my license and my boarding pass and said, "Oh, you live in DC, huh? You going fix this goddamn mess that your folks up there have put the rest of the country into?"
I tried being polite first. One, because I am normally always polite and, two, I wasn't sure what "mess" he was referring to. There are a lot of messes these days.
"Yep," I said, and smiled broadly.
He wasn't done. He wanted to vent.
"Good, because this whole goddamn economy has gone to hell in a hand basket and it's because we, good working class people like me, put our faith in you assholes up there to guide our country and now most of us are faced with losing our homes and our jobs...what do you think about that, missy?"
I was trying (so help me God, I was trying), so I said, "It wasn't ME who put you in that situation but I feel for you and I am sorry, my mother is going through the same thing right now."
"You work in the government?" he asked.
Not really, but sort of, I answered...close enough without being that close.
"Well, it's you smart asses up there in DC that have caused our economy to crash, our boys to get killed over in Iraq, and this whole country to look bad...what do you have to say to that, missy?"
Maybe it was the "missy" or perhaps it was the direct assault accusing me, ME, of having caused this man's (and perhaps all of Ohio's) woes. But I cracked. Lost my temper.
By this time, three other TSA guys had crowded around, sensing a hazing.
"Did you vote?" I asked him, looking him square in the eye.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" he asked, "What, are you accusing me of being unpatriotic or some such shit?"
He turned to one of his fellow TSA goons and scoffed, "Typical DC lingo."
"I am not FROM DC, with all due respect, sir. I am actually from Philadelphia, I just happen to work in DC."
"Whatever," he responded, sensing he might have picked the wrong fight with the wrong person.
"I agree with you that the economy is in the shitter, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not going well, although I do think Iraq is getting better, and, for your exclusive information, I was one of the people who actually suggested how to execute the war....after I and many of my 'DC asshole colleagues' argued vociferously against it'...and was told to 'go to hell.'"
"I have stayed in DC for almost eight years, even though I hate it, to try to help fix the fucking mess that our country finds itself in. But let's be clear on WHO started this mess in the first place."
Now we had a crowd, and he was suddenly more than happy to push me right through the security line but I wasn't budging. A 'throw down' is a 'throw down' in my book. AND I had given him the chance to escape.
"Look," he says, "I didn't mean to be rude but you all up there, or those folks from DC and New York, have caused my house to devalue 45% since me and my wife bought it four years ago, I have taken a bath in the stock market, and two of my friend's kids have been killed in Iraq, I am a little pissed off at you folks in DC, that's all I am saying..."
I ask again, "Did you vote...like in 2000 or in 2004?"
"Of course," he snaps.
"Well, this is a democracy, as fucked up as it appears right now." "If you voted for George Bush, not once, but twice, then this is as much your fault as it is mine right now."
(I did not vote for Bush either time....and, although I am a lot more conservative than most of my friends on certain topics and I AM NOT a frothing Democrat...I knew/know a moron when I see one.)
"Oh...so now your gonna blame Bush, huh?" he asks.
"Yes, and I am also blaming you. I realize that you have a job that probably requires you to work 12 hour days and not get a lot of time to read the newspapers---New York Times or even the Cleveland Plain Dealer---but our country is fucked up right now because we are more prone to turn on the TV, believe the sweet talk, and blindly listen to the rhetoric instead of coming to our own conclusions"
"In short, we have become a nation of people that act like sheep. We follow a herder blindly without ever considering that we are being led far, far, astray."
"I grew up in a sometimes poor, sometimes wealthy, normal middle class family and I was taught, from the time I could read...to pay attention and read the paper and formed my own opinions instead of just trusting the words of the cute anchor on Fox or CNN...that's how I was raised."
"If you are pissed off that our country's economy is in a meltdown, that your house has lost nearly half of its value, and your friend's kids are getting killed in a war that was never sold to us correctly from the onset (And, believe me, this one is VERY near and dear to my heart), then I would suggest you start reading the paper and paying attention."
"And STOP accosting people at the security line at the airport because somewhere, deep down inside, you know this is much your fault as it is mine or anyone else who passes through this security line (let's give the French a pass here)."
Him: eyes down, clearly ashamed and regretting he had picked a fight with this one particular traveler.
Me: feeling bad but not so bad. I spoke the truth. My truth.
Him, recovering: "OK, I hear what you say, Missy, but don't think I am going to vote for that Islamic maniac, Barack Obama...or whatever his name is...It is not time for a radical Muslim black man to be running the U.S. of America!"
At this point, one of his colleagues, a black woman, smacks him on the back and says, "You gotta problem with Blacks now?"
He hands me my license and boarding pass and I head to my departure gate.
I hope she castrates him, I think.
When did we become such a nation of fools?
No, not for any special reason other than that I booked a late flight to FL and the cheapest option required strange routing (New Jersey to get to Florida, Ohio to get from FL to DC).
I had spent the weekend with S., and, for all practical purposes, it was a lovely weekend.
As I was passing through the security checkpoint at Cleveland airport, the normally nice (hey, it's Ohio, people are just nice to begin with) TSA guy took a look at my license and my boarding pass and said, "Oh, you live in DC, huh? You going fix this goddamn mess that your folks up there have put the rest of the country into?"
I tried being polite first. One, because I am normally always polite and, two, I wasn't sure what "mess" he was referring to. There are a lot of messes these days.
"Yep," I said, and smiled broadly.
He wasn't done. He wanted to vent.
"Good, because this whole goddamn economy has gone to hell in a hand basket and it's because we, good working class people like me, put our faith in you assholes up there to guide our country and now most of us are faced with losing our homes and our jobs...what do you think about that, missy?"
I was trying (so help me God, I was trying), so I said, "It wasn't ME who put you in that situation but I feel for you and I am sorry, my mother is going through the same thing right now."
"You work in the government?" he asked.
Not really, but sort of, I answered...close enough without being that close.
"Well, it's you smart asses up there in DC that have caused our economy to crash, our boys to get killed over in Iraq, and this whole country to look bad...what do you have to say to that, missy?"
Maybe it was the "missy" or perhaps it was the direct assault accusing me, ME, of having caused this man's (and perhaps all of Ohio's) woes. But I cracked. Lost my temper.
By this time, three other TSA guys had crowded around, sensing a hazing.
"Did you vote?" I asked him, looking him square in the eye.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" he asked, "What, are you accusing me of being unpatriotic or some such shit?"
He turned to one of his fellow TSA goons and scoffed, "Typical DC lingo."
"I am not FROM DC, with all due respect, sir. I am actually from Philadelphia, I just happen to work in DC."
"Whatever," he responded, sensing he might have picked the wrong fight with the wrong person.
"I agree with you that the economy is in the shitter, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not going well, although I do think Iraq is getting better, and, for your exclusive information, I was one of the people who actually suggested how to execute the war....after I and many of my 'DC asshole colleagues' argued vociferously against it'...and was told to 'go to hell.'"
"I have stayed in DC for almost eight years, even though I hate it, to try to help fix the fucking mess that our country finds itself in. But let's be clear on WHO started this mess in the first place."
Now we had a crowd, and he was suddenly more than happy to push me right through the security line but I wasn't budging. A 'throw down' is a 'throw down' in my book. AND I had given him the chance to escape.
"Look," he says, "I didn't mean to be rude but you all up there, or those folks from DC and New York, have caused my house to devalue 45% since me and my wife bought it four years ago, I have taken a bath in the stock market, and two of my friend's kids have been killed in Iraq, I am a little pissed off at you folks in DC, that's all I am saying..."
I ask again, "Did you vote...like in 2000 or in 2004?"
"Of course," he snaps.
"Well, this is a democracy, as fucked up as it appears right now." "If you voted for George Bush, not once, but twice, then this is as much your fault as it is mine right now."
(I did not vote for Bush either time....and, although I am a lot more conservative than most of my friends on certain topics and I AM NOT a frothing Democrat...I knew/know a moron when I see one.)
"Oh...so now your gonna blame Bush, huh?" he asks.
"Yes, and I am also blaming you. I realize that you have a job that probably requires you to work 12 hour days and not get a lot of time to read the newspapers---New York Times or even the Cleveland Plain Dealer---but our country is fucked up right now because we are more prone to turn on the TV, believe the sweet talk, and blindly listen to the rhetoric instead of coming to our own conclusions"
"In short, we have become a nation of people that act like sheep. We follow a herder blindly without ever considering that we are being led far, far, astray."
"I grew up in a sometimes poor, sometimes wealthy, normal middle class family and I was taught, from the time I could read...to pay attention and read the paper and formed my own opinions instead of just trusting the words of the cute anchor on Fox or CNN...that's how I was raised."
"If you are pissed off that our country's economy is in a meltdown, that your house has lost nearly half of its value, and your friend's kids are getting killed in a war that was never sold to us correctly from the onset (And, believe me, this one is VERY near and dear to my heart), then I would suggest you start reading the paper and paying attention."
"And STOP accosting people at the security line at the airport because somewhere, deep down inside, you know this is much your fault as it is mine or anyone else who passes through this security line (let's give the French a pass here)."
Him: eyes down, clearly ashamed and regretting he had picked a fight with this one particular traveler.
Me: feeling bad but not so bad. I spoke the truth. My truth.
Him, recovering: "OK, I hear what you say, Missy, but don't think I am going to vote for that Islamic maniac, Barack Obama...or whatever his name is...It is not time for a radical Muslim black man to be running the U.S. of America!"
At this point, one of his colleagues, a black woman, smacks him on the back and says, "You gotta problem with Blacks now?"
He hands me my license and boarding pass and I head to my departure gate.
I hope she castrates him, I think.
When did we become such a nation of fools?
27 September 2008
Pressure Cooker
I am not dying.
Not a big surprise to most people who have put up with my theatrics for the past week, but I did, FINALLY, get the results of my "inconclusive" and "conclusive" blood tests and I am going to be OK. Everything awful, terminal, debilitating, came back "negative." The thing that had kicked off the "you must call me immediately" phone call from the doctor was simply that I had decided to stop eating (nerves) enough about ten days ago while supplementing myself with equal doses of everything in vitamin supplements that I determined food should be doing for my body (OK, and some beer too), and my digestive enzymes were all out of whack. Because everything else was normal (no auto-immune or other diseases) she wanted to know if I was inflicted this upon myself or whether I needed a bone marrow test.
I fully owned up to inflicting it upon myself.
Bone marrow test? Hell no.
"So your stomach is in knots, you can't eat regularly, you are taking probably two to three times the amount of supplements that you need because you are not eating, which is throwing your enzymes all off course, and then, you have decided, when you feel the need, that 'beer is food?' Am I correct?"
Yep. She was dead-on. That was about the story.
Luckily, she is a trained Navy doctor and none of this came with a particular reprimand or "scare the shit out of you" lecture.
"OK," she said, "Start eating again...I don't care if it is pancakes or hot dogs, don't drink excessively, get away somewhere and relax for a few days, and just calm the hell down...it's not like you're going to Iraq."
Put that way, I was ashamed.
No, not ashamed because I was freaking out...who the hell wouldn't be? But that I had spent the past week pacing my apartment like some Dickensonian character scaring my closest friends and family with my my musings on my imminent demise when, intuitively, I knew what was the cause of my "inconclusive" blood results.
So I booked a flight to Tampa to see S. and my family. I know I have a ton of things to do, a ton of matters to clean up and legal affairs to take care of, a ton of...well, just a ton.
But the minute my flight landed in Newark (where one naturally goes to get from DC to Florida...due north to go due south), I felt the decompression begin to happen. By the time I got to Newark, I was ravenous. I only had time for a bag of Oriental rice crackers and a handful of cheese popcorn (alright, we all have our things when it comes to preferred snacks) and then, waiting for S. to get off of work to pick me up at the airport in Florida, a chicken salad (and, OK, a beer too) at the TGI Fridays at the airport, but I was out of the pressure cooker. I was out of DC long enough to leave the rattlings behind and feel human again. And hungry.
Last night we all had a great Lebanese dinner and, today, to my surprise, I was starving by 11AM and went to the local market to buy ingredients to make pasta e fagioli for us for dinner so we could watch the Presidential debates...and also pick myself up a very tasty tuna hoagie which I ate more than half of (it was a big one) in ten minutes. I also found that, sitting on a porch overlooking the water, I could think and work again.
I need to leave DC. I have loved (and appreciated) my time and opportunities there...but I need a break. Yeah, OK, that break is Uganda and a whole new set of challenges...but it is a much-needed break.
Tomorrow I will spend the morning on the balcony looking at the bay and finishing my work. And probably eating breakfast while he is at work.
I think my enzymes are OK now...and I also know what I need to do to make sure they stay OK in the future.
I hear the goat is good in Uganda....
Not a big surprise to most people who have put up with my theatrics for the past week, but I did, FINALLY, get the results of my "inconclusive" and "conclusive" blood tests and I am going to be OK. Everything awful, terminal, debilitating, came back "negative." The thing that had kicked off the "you must call me immediately" phone call from the doctor was simply that I had decided to stop eating (nerves) enough about ten days ago while supplementing myself with equal doses of everything in vitamin supplements that I determined food should be doing for my body (OK, and some beer too), and my digestive enzymes were all out of whack. Because everything else was normal (no auto-immune or other diseases) she wanted to know if I was inflicted this upon myself or whether I needed a bone marrow test.
I fully owned up to inflicting it upon myself.
Bone marrow test? Hell no.
"So your stomach is in knots, you can't eat regularly, you are taking probably two to three times the amount of supplements that you need because you are not eating, which is throwing your enzymes all off course, and then, you have decided, when you feel the need, that 'beer is food?' Am I correct?"
Yep. She was dead-on. That was about the story.
Luckily, she is a trained Navy doctor and none of this came with a particular reprimand or "scare the shit out of you" lecture.
"OK," she said, "Start eating again...I don't care if it is pancakes or hot dogs, don't drink excessively, get away somewhere and relax for a few days, and just calm the hell down...it's not like you're going to Iraq."
Put that way, I was ashamed.
No, not ashamed because I was freaking out...who the hell wouldn't be? But that I had spent the past week pacing my apartment like some Dickensonian character scaring my closest friends and family with my my musings on my imminent demise when, intuitively, I knew what was the cause of my "inconclusive" blood results.
So I booked a flight to Tampa to see S. and my family. I know I have a ton of things to do, a ton of matters to clean up and legal affairs to take care of, a ton of...well, just a ton.
But the minute my flight landed in Newark (where one naturally goes to get from DC to Florida...due north to go due south), I felt the decompression begin to happen. By the time I got to Newark, I was ravenous. I only had time for a bag of Oriental rice crackers and a handful of cheese popcorn (alright, we all have our things when it comes to preferred snacks) and then, waiting for S. to get off of work to pick me up at the airport in Florida, a chicken salad (and, OK, a beer too) at the TGI Fridays at the airport, but I was out of the pressure cooker. I was out of DC long enough to leave the rattlings behind and feel human again. And hungry.
Last night we all had a great Lebanese dinner and, today, to my surprise, I was starving by 11AM and went to the local market to buy ingredients to make pasta e fagioli for us for dinner so we could watch the Presidential debates...and also pick myself up a very tasty tuna hoagie which I ate more than half of (it was a big one) in ten minutes. I also found that, sitting on a porch overlooking the water, I could think and work again.
I need to leave DC. I have loved (and appreciated) my time and opportunities there...but I need a break. Yeah, OK, that break is Uganda and a whole new set of challenges...but it is a much-needed break.
Tomorrow I will spend the morning on the balcony looking at the bay and finishing my work. And probably eating breakfast while he is at work.
I think my enzymes are OK now...and I also know what I need to do to make sure they stay OK in the future.
I hear the goat is good in Uganda....
23 September 2008
Inconclusive
The Universe is having a party with my ass, that is for sure. Testing my mettle or something.
Today's adventure started at 7AM when I pulled myself out of bed.
I was NOT in good form. There is nothing quite like spending all hours arguing with the man you love---both of us at fault and stressed by my move to Africa and his "minor" responsibility of defending our country as one of the most brilliant military minds out there---but I was determined to see the day through. I heard the phone ring while I was in the shower listening to the radio and being reminded of how our economy has become the investment equivalent of a cat's litter pan after a month of no scooping and decided not to break my neck trying to grab it. First, because I assumed it was S, my love, who normally calls me every morning on his way to work (we're in two different U.S. states right now) to leave me a message saying that he loves me and is certain I will kick ass no matter what I am doing that day (Note: GOOD MAN). Second, because, if it wasn't S, then it was probably some sales call that I didn't want to hear in the first place. Who the else calls me at 7AM, I thought?
Well. It was the doctor.
I have gone through some of the most extensive medical examinations over the past week that I think I have ever undergone in my life. Anything that could possibly break, malfunction, fall out, fall off, turn over, turn a different color, or develop a life of it's own and sit up and start telling jokes...well, I was tested for it.
By nature, mostly because of how I was raised (thank goodness) by my mother, I am not prone to hypochondria and I basically never think about being or getting sick. I know this sounds like some strange guru mind-over-matter- thing...but, hey, that's just how it works for me. Luckily, because I do not put any focus or attention on illness, I rarely get sick. I visit doctors for the normal preventative stuff (eyes, teeth, girl parts) on a yearly basis, but I have not, in the past ten or so years, had many reasons to go to a doctor for any real, "serious," illness. Sure, I get the occasional cold or allergy, and two weeks of spicier-than-hell food and too much wine upset my pancreas last summer, but then I just re-focus on whatever my mind created to make me have a certain affliction that caused me to pause...and I deal with it that way. And NO, I am not some Tom Cruise/Scientologist "don't vaccinate your children or give them antibiotics if they are ill" type of folks...I totally believe in medical evolution...I just don't choose to participate in the "you have high cholesterol, prostate cancer, breast cancer, a dick that doesn't work, high blood pressure, low blood pressure, explosive diarrhea, pre-asthma symptoms, a bladder that might fail..." shit that seems to occupy just about every television commercial these days.
So the message from the doctor today says: "We have some results that we need to discuss with you immediately, not critical, but very important. We also have others are inconclusive so we need you to come back and have more blood drawn this afternoon at 2PM...but this is an urgent matter, so please reschedule all other appointments for the day. I will call back after appointments this evening to discuss what we know right now with you."
I am still for about ten minutes and then I flip. Lose my shit in a major way.
First person I call, of course, is my mom.
"Mom, I have Ebola virus, AIDs, Hepatitis, cancer, something awful...how can this be?"
Her: "No, probably not. Your blood sugar, liver or kidney enzymes, or something was off...you are not dying or you would have known before this...relax."
Then: "Are you off your Xanax? You sound pretty fucked up, go take a pill, have something nice for lunch, read a good book, and sleep until you have to go back to the doctor."
"OK, " I say, "I can do this."
Ten minutes later I call my boss, same conversation. She says, "Do you have any Valium in the house? Go take one, have a good lunch if you're allowed to eat, and go to bed for few hours."
Next up is S, via email, "I am dying but, by this point, have taken a tranquilizer so I am happy...or at least metaphysical... about my dying...but I am dying. Just thought I would let you know as this might effect the future of our relationship."
No response from him for a few hours as his job entails him to be in a sensory deprivation box, away from email and text messages.
For the next twelve hours, I pace. Yes, the Xanax takes the edge off but it doesn't completely control the terror. I look at the six pack in my fridge around 11AM and think, "Does having a beer at 11AM make me an alcoholic? Does having a beer AND a Xanax make me an alcoholic AND a druggie?" Oh my god, of my god, oh my god.
I skip the beer and try to meditate. After years of spiritual practice and quite a bit of yoga, I figure I can accomplish at least some level of Zen that will get me through this, this....waiting.
No dice. I try for about an hour and can't stop the dialog in my head that ranges somewhere between what color I might be allowed to paint the walls in my new apartment in Uganda to how to best clean my Oriental carpet.
I carry my cell phone with me everywhere....waiting, waiting, for the phone call...my life or death sentence...what is "inconclusive" and, worse, what is "conclusive." Then, around 8PM, I leave the cell phone behind for THREE minutes to attend to a minor matter and....of course....I hear it ringing from my kitchen counter as I am about ten feet away from it. I scramble, trip over the dog, go careening into the side of the armchair, rush my kitchen and....missed the call.
FUCK.
Message says, "Please call back between our normal hours of 8AM-8:45AM. While the results are not critical, it is very important we talk to you as soon as possible."
I slide down onto my kitchen floor and start to sob. Not out of sadness, but sheer terror and frustration. I look at the Xanax, look at the six pack in my fridge and the half bottle of wine on the counter, and open them all at the same time. Then I call my mother and explain what happened.
"You should have had that damn cell phone up your ass," is her response.
This is true, I should have. And, while not literally 'up my ass,' it was a permanent appendage for the entire day....but one moment of not thinking, of stepping away from it for three minutes maximum...and now another night of terror.
S. says, "You're fine, it's probably no big deal...or else you'd be dead by now. Or you'd at least look like shit...and you look great, you are beautiful...so just don't worry about it and get some rest."
I actually do happen to love this line of thinking...but it doesn't help.
Another night of pacing...
Today's adventure started at 7AM when I pulled myself out of bed.
I was NOT in good form. There is nothing quite like spending all hours arguing with the man you love---both of us at fault and stressed by my move to Africa and his "minor" responsibility of defending our country as one of the most brilliant military minds out there---but I was determined to see the day through. I heard the phone ring while I was in the shower listening to the radio and being reminded of how our economy has become the investment equivalent of a cat's litter pan after a month of no scooping and decided not to break my neck trying to grab it. First, because I assumed it was S, my love, who normally calls me every morning on his way to work (we're in two different U.S. states right now) to leave me a message saying that he loves me and is certain I will kick ass no matter what I am doing that day (Note: GOOD MAN). Second, because, if it wasn't S, then it was probably some sales call that I didn't want to hear in the first place. Who the else calls me at 7AM, I thought?
Well. It was the doctor.
I have gone through some of the most extensive medical examinations over the past week that I think I have ever undergone in my life. Anything that could possibly break, malfunction, fall out, fall off, turn over, turn a different color, or develop a life of it's own and sit up and start telling jokes...well, I was tested for it.
By nature, mostly because of how I was raised (thank goodness) by my mother, I am not prone to hypochondria and I basically never think about being or getting sick. I know this sounds like some strange guru mind-over-matter- thing...but, hey, that's just how it works for me. Luckily, because I do not put any focus or attention on illness, I rarely get sick. I visit doctors for the normal preventative stuff (eyes, teeth, girl parts) on a yearly basis, but I have not, in the past ten or so years, had many reasons to go to a doctor for any real, "serious," illness. Sure, I get the occasional cold or allergy, and two weeks of spicier-than-hell food and too much wine upset my pancreas last summer, but then I just re-focus on whatever my mind created to make me have a certain affliction that caused me to pause...and I deal with it that way. And NO, I am not some Tom Cruise/Scientologist "don't vaccinate your children or give them antibiotics if they are ill" type of folks...I totally believe in medical evolution...I just don't choose to participate in the "you have high cholesterol, prostate cancer, breast cancer, a dick that doesn't work, high blood pressure, low blood pressure, explosive diarrhea, pre-asthma symptoms, a bladder that might fail..." shit that seems to occupy just about every television commercial these days.
So the message from the doctor today says: "We have some results that we need to discuss with you immediately, not critical, but very important. We also have others are inconclusive so we need you to come back and have more blood drawn this afternoon at 2PM...but this is an urgent matter, so please reschedule all other appointments for the day. I will call back after appointments this evening to discuss what we know right now with you."
I am still for about ten minutes and then I flip. Lose my shit in a major way.
First person I call, of course, is my mom.
"Mom, I have Ebola virus, AIDs, Hepatitis, cancer, something awful...how can this be?"
Her: "No, probably not. Your blood sugar, liver or kidney enzymes, or something was off...you are not dying or you would have known before this...relax."
Then: "Are you off your Xanax? You sound pretty fucked up, go take a pill, have something nice for lunch, read a good book, and sleep until you have to go back to the doctor."
"OK, " I say, "I can do this."
Ten minutes later I call my boss, same conversation. She says, "Do you have any Valium in the house? Go take one, have a good lunch if you're allowed to eat, and go to bed for few hours."
Next up is S, via email, "I am dying but, by this point, have taken a tranquilizer so I am happy...or at least metaphysical... about my dying...but I am dying. Just thought I would let you know as this might effect the future of our relationship."
No response from him for a few hours as his job entails him to be in a sensory deprivation box, away from email and text messages.
For the next twelve hours, I pace. Yes, the Xanax takes the edge off but it doesn't completely control the terror. I look at the six pack in my fridge around 11AM and think, "Does having a beer at 11AM make me an alcoholic? Does having a beer AND a Xanax make me an alcoholic AND a druggie?" Oh my god, of my god, oh my god.
I skip the beer and try to meditate. After years of spiritual practice and quite a bit of yoga, I figure I can accomplish at least some level of Zen that will get me through this, this....waiting.
No dice. I try for about an hour and can't stop the dialog in my head that ranges somewhere between what color I might be allowed to paint the walls in my new apartment in Uganda to how to best clean my Oriental carpet.
I carry my cell phone with me everywhere....waiting, waiting, for the phone call...my life or death sentence...what is "inconclusive" and, worse, what is "conclusive." Then, around 8PM, I leave the cell phone behind for THREE minutes to attend to a minor matter and....of course....I hear it ringing from my kitchen counter as I am about ten feet away from it. I scramble, trip over the dog, go careening into the side of the armchair, rush my kitchen and....missed the call.
FUCK.
Message says, "Please call back between our normal hours of 8AM-8:45AM. While the results are not critical, it is very important we talk to you as soon as possible."
I slide down onto my kitchen floor and start to sob. Not out of sadness, but sheer terror and frustration. I look at the Xanax, look at the six pack in my fridge and the half bottle of wine on the counter, and open them all at the same time. Then I call my mother and explain what happened.
"You should have had that damn cell phone up your ass," is her response.
This is true, I should have. And, while not literally 'up my ass,' it was a permanent appendage for the entire day....but one moment of not thinking, of stepping away from it for three minutes maximum...and now another night of terror.
S. says, "You're fine, it's probably no big deal...or else you'd be dead by now. Or you'd at least look like shit...and you look great, you are beautiful...so just don't worry about it and get some rest."
I actually do happen to love this line of thinking...but it doesn't help.
Another night of pacing...
22 September 2008
Love...let me count the ways
When I was a kid my grandmother used to play this game with me called, "Love, let me count the ways."
Every Friday and Saturday night, after a bath, she would sit by the edge of my bed and make me put my feet in her lap and my hands in hers. Then the game would begin.
She would methodically go through each toe and tell me one thing that she loved about me at that particular moment. She would ask me to do the same with the corresponding finger on my hand. Sometimes I came up with crazy shit, "I love that Blowpops just invented a new flavor!" and sometimes I was a bit more profound, "I love the fact that I am able to walk in my new ballet shoes and no one else can seem to master them!" Other times it was, or it seemed, mundane, "I love you, my family, and my dog..."
But every Friday and Saturday night, from the time I was about three to the time I was ten, we played this game.
This was a game that taught me to love. This was a game that when I saw a particularly pretty flower blooming, I would say, "I don't know if I will love that tonight but I love it now...should I take off my shoes?"
I guess my whole point in this post is to realize who you love and who, exactly, taught you to love. Or to do what my grandmother did with me...find something to love at least twice a week, if not more.
My grandmother crashed into a horrible cycle of suicide and depression and eventually did succumb to that.
I miss someone who takes the time to lay in the grass with me and count my toes...even if they don't have ten things to say about how much they l0ve me.
Every Friday and Saturday night, after a bath, she would sit by the edge of my bed and make me put my feet in her lap and my hands in hers. Then the game would begin.
She would methodically go through each toe and tell me one thing that she loved about me at that particular moment. She would ask me to do the same with the corresponding finger on my hand. Sometimes I came up with crazy shit, "I love that Blowpops just invented a new flavor!" and sometimes I was a bit more profound, "I love the fact that I am able to walk in my new ballet shoes and no one else can seem to master them!" Other times it was, or it seemed, mundane, "I love you, my family, and my dog..."
But every Friday and Saturday night, from the time I was about three to the time I was ten, we played this game.
This was a game that taught me to love. This was a game that when I saw a particularly pretty flower blooming, I would say, "I don't know if I will love that tonight but I love it now...should I take off my shoes?"
I guess my whole point in this post is to realize who you love and who, exactly, taught you to love. Or to do what my grandmother did with me...find something to love at least twice a week, if not more.
My grandmother crashed into a horrible cycle of suicide and depression and eventually did succumb to that.
I miss someone who takes the time to lay in the grass with me and count my toes...even if they don't have ten things to say about how much they l0ve me.
Settled and settling
I am going to Uganda.
Told my boss last week and she took it with a grace and level of support that humbled me. I have always loved my boss, although occasionally she has given me cause to want to throw myself out the nearest window, but I was most scared of this part. I spent two days, after signing my contract to go to Uganda, with my hands shaking, my jaw clenched, and a stomach in knots over the idea of "telling." That day, actually, it was ten days ago, I walked into her office no fewer than six times and then chickened out. I was about to chicken out again when a good friend, a Marine Corps officer, took me to lunch and, well, "Marine-d me." That, coupled with my dear friend, Kim, a former Army MP, who told me that "You may be a white woman with the soul of a black woman, but you are demonstrating nothing but pure white woman insecurities here... you are way stronger than this...now get your back up and get going" finally got under my skin and bucked me up enough to do the deed.
I was expecting the worst but got the best. I got support, a hug, a thanks for my professionalism in how I told and the arrangements I had made, and for all that I had accomplished in my job. Then, my boss who never cries, cried. Hugged me, said that I would have her support and recommendation for the rest of the days I walked the Earth, and then cried. Then I lost my shit and cried too. And cried, and cried. For an entire week, I did nothing but cry...and I am not the weepy type.
This, by far, has been the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life.
Not difficult because I don't think it's the right decision (I would never have done it if I hadn't), but difficult in the fact that these moments make you realize how much you love people and how much people, who you never expected, actually love you too.
OK, before I get too Zen on your collective asses, I should disclose that I am also slightly medicated at this moment.
Following my "telling," and all the things that went along with it...I had a bit of a breakdown. My mind started spinning over all that I had to do/accomplish in three short weeks so I decided the best remedy was to tune into the food network, get a bottle of wine, and sit and stare for four days while the enormity of what I was about to do sunk in. I was paralyzed. I had a list of about 400 things to accomplish, but remembering to take the dog out and go to work everyday seemed overwhelming. I did manage to take the dog out but, work, well, I was about 50% on that one.
I went to the doctor last week for an initial pre-trip screening and she took one look at me and said, "What the hell is going on? Are you going through a divorce or some other trauma? Your blood pressure is up and you have a strange look about you..." I handed her my clutched, sweaty, "Lonely Planet Africa" guidebook and said, "No, I am fine, I am just moving to Uganda for a year or so...feeling a little panicky."
Then: "I am going to write you a prescription for Xanax, you indicated in your initial paperwork that you have been on this medication before and you are certainly in a state of high anxiety so this might help."
Me: "Um, I don't take drugs. Like: none. The last time I took a Xanax was in FL while visiting my brother (who, at one period in his life, could not be trusted not to sniff your home air freshner in need of a high) and I spent the entire evening drooling and extolling the virtues of a boxed cheese dip he had made for us for dinner and pointing out to him that I had just discovered my feet...no, I don't need to be medicated."
Doctor: "This will not hurt your mind, it will take the edge off so you can function, and I will write you the lowest dosage possible but, if you don't do something, you are going to have a stroke...so please, trust me here."
I took the prescription, ran to the drug store, waited the two hours to have it filled (and really, how long does it take to count out thirty pills?) and then picked it up and drove around with it in my car for three hours, looking at it suspiciously. Then, when the heart palpitations and the gag reflex kicked in again, I decided, "What the hell? It's my day off, if I need be, I will buy cheese dip and look at my feet for a few hours, better than this...the heart palpitations, the need to throw up every ten minutes..."
It kicked in about an hour later and, amazingly, the racing heart and the constant feeling of needing to vomit subsided. My hands stopped shaking and I was able to string together coherent thoughts. I actually went home and made a "real" list of what I needed to do...and I starting doing it. Later, that evening on the phone with my mom, she said, "You sound like YOU again...not like some wigged-out, hyper, incoherent, scared, nutcase. You finally sound like YOU for the first time in weeks."
OK, so, no, I am not extolling the virtues of anti-depressants. I have only dabbled in them once, back when I embraced bulimia as a good way to get attention for a few months back when I was 12, so I am no pro.
But tonight, as I sit here and write this blog, my head and my heart finally feel like my own again. I am calm but not strangely so...I am still looking at my bookshelf, my closet, and my dishes and thinking, "How the fuck am I going to take care of that in two weeks?" but...luckily, it is not having the normal physical side-effects that it normally does. Nor am I envisioning pink elephants flying outside my window that I am sure I can touch if only!!!....no, not feeling that at all. I can eat, I can have conversations with people without feeling rising paranoia, and I can finally begin to become excited about Africa and the fact that I am about to live there.
I can look at pictures of Uganda, write friends of friends who live there and get the "goods" on where I should live, the office I should rent, the places I should shop. I can schedule doctor's appointments, vaccination updates, the dog's spay appointment, and generally attend to my life.
Sure, I am still scared out of my mind. But, now, finally, I am also excited. I want to see my new home, meet all of the kind people who have spent hours of their time emailing a stranger and saying, "Dinner at our house the first night!," "We are going white-water rafting on 1 November and reserved a spot for you too," and, most of all, "We will meet you at the airport and make sure everything is OK...don't worry, it is going to be an incredible year!"
If I had any more tears left in me, I would cry. Not out of sadness but out of how kind people really are...and these "people" are not just Americans...but mostly Brits, Aussies, Germans, etc., etc. They are trusting that they will like me because one of their friends happens to like me. They don't yet know that I was/am the woman who had to take a prescription for Xanax to get through my terror...they don't know that I am about 1/4 as brave as people think I am. But, they don't seem to care.
And, their not caring and the love that I have received from all corners in this strange move somehow makes it all OK.
I don't think I will need the Xanax much longer...because Life is kind. And, ultimately, if you follow your heart, you'll probably end up where you are supposed to be.
For me, for now, that is Uganda. But the army of friends and angels who are on my side give me strength.
And the shopping is good, I hear.
Told my boss last week and she took it with a grace and level of support that humbled me. I have always loved my boss, although occasionally she has given me cause to want to throw myself out the nearest window, but I was most scared of this part. I spent two days, after signing my contract to go to Uganda, with my hands shaking, my jaw clenched, and a stomach in knots over the idea of "telling." That day, actually, it was ten days ago, I walked into her office no fewer than six times and then chickened out. I was about to chicken out again when a good friend, a Marine Corps officer, took me to lunch and, well, "Marine-d me." That, coupled with my dear friend, Kim, a former Army MP, who told me that "You may be a white woman with the soul of a black woman, but you are demonstrating nothing but pure white woman insecurities here... you are way stronger than this...now get your back up and get going" finally got under my skin and bucked me up enough to do the deed.
I was expecting the worst but got the best. I got support, a hug, a thanks for my professionalism in how I told and the arrangements I had made, and for all that I had accomplished in my job. Then, my boss who never cries, cried. Hugged me, said that I would have her support and recommendation for the rest of the days I walked the Earth, and then cried. Then I lost my shit and cried too. And cried, and cried. For an entire week, I did nothing but cry...and I am not the weepy type.
This, by far, has been the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life.
Not difficult because I don't think it's the right decision (I would never have done it if I hadn't), but difficult in the fact that these moments make you realize how much you love people and how much people, who you never expected, actually love you too.
OK, before I get too Zen on your collective asses, I should disclose that I am also slightly medicated at this moment.
Following my "telling," and all the things that went along with it...I had a bit of a breakdown. My mind started spinning over all that I had to do/accomplish in three short weeks so I decided the best remedy was to tune into the food network, get a bottle of wine, and sit and stare for four days while the enormity of what I was about to do sunk in. I was paralyzed. I had a list of about 400 things to accomplish, but remembering to take the dog out and go to work everyday seemed overwhelming. I did manage to take the dog out but, work, well, I was about 50% on that one.
I went to the doctor last week for an initial pre-trip screening and she took one look at me and said, "What the hell is going on? Are you going through a divorce or some other trauma? Your blood pressure is up and you have a strange look about you..." I handed her my clutched, sweaty, "Lonely Planet Africa" guidebook and said, "No, I am fine, I am just moving to Uganda for a year or so...feeling a little panicky."
Then: "I am going to write you a prescription for Xanax, you indicated in your initial paperwork that you have been on this medication before and you are certainly in a state of high anxiety so this might help."
Me: "Um, I don't take drugs. Like: none. The last time I took a Xanax was in FL while visiting my brother (who, at one period in his life, could not be trusted not to sniff your home air freshner in need of a high) and I spent the entire evening drooling and extolling the virtues of a boxed cheese dip he had made for us for dinner and pointing out to him that I had just discovered my feet...no, I don't need to be medicated."
Doctor: "This will not hurt your mind, it will take the edge off so you can function, and I will write you the lowest dosage possible but, if you don't do something, you are going to have a stroke...so please, trust me here."
I took the prescription, ran to the drug store, waited the two hours to have it filled (and really, how long does it take to count out thirty pills?) and then picked it up and drove around with it in my car for three hours, looking at it suspiciously. Then, when the heart palpitations and the gag reflex kicked in again, I decided, "What the hell? It's my day off, if I need be, I will buy cheese dip and look at my feet for a few hours, better than this...the heart palpitations, the need to throw up every ten minutes..."
It kicked in about an hour later and, amazingly, the racing heart and the constant feeling of needing to vomit subsided. My hands stopped shaking and I was able to string together coherent thoughts. I actually went home and made a "real" list of what I needed to do...and I starting doing it. Later, that evening on the phone with my mom, she said, "You sound like YOU again...not like some wigged-out, hyper, incoherent, scared, nutcase. You finally sound like YOU for the first time in weeks."
OK, so, no, I am not extolling the virtues of anti-depressants. I have only dabbled in them once, back when I embraced bulimia as a good way to get attention for a few months back when I was 12, so I am no pro.
But tonight, as I sit here and write this blog, my head and my heart finally feel like my own again. I am calm but not strangely so...I am still looking at my bookshelf, my closet, and my dishes and thinking, "How the fuck am I going to take care of that in two weeks?" but...luckily, it is not having the normal physical side-effects that it normally does. Nor am I envisioning pink elephants flying outside my window that I am sure I can touch if only!!!....no, not feeling that at all. I can eat, I can have conversations with people without feeling rising paranoia, and I can finally begin to become excited about Africa and the fact that I am about to live there.
I can look at pictures of Uganda, write friends of friends who live there and get the "goods" on where I should live, the office I should rent, the places I should shop. I can schedule doctor's appointments, vaccination updates, the dog's spay appointment, and generally attend to my life.
Sure, I am still scared out of my mind. But, now, finally, I am also excited. I want to see my new home, meet all of the kind people who have spent hours of their time emailing a stranger and saying, "Dinner at our house the first night!," "We are going white-water rafting on 1 November and reserved a spot for you too," and, most of all, "We will meet you at the airport and make sure everything is OK...don't worry, it is going to be an incredible year!"
If I had any more tears left in me, I would cry. Not out of sadness but out of how kind people really are...and these "people" are not just Americans...but mostly Brits, Aussies, Germans, etc., etc. They are trusting that they will like me because one of their friends happens to like me. They don't yet know that I was/am the woman who had to take a prescription for Xanax to get through my terror...they don't know that I am about 1/4 as brave as people think I am. But, they don't seem to care.
And, their not caring and the love that I have received from all corners in this strange move somehow makes it all OK.
I don't think I will need the Xanax much longer...because Life is kind. And, ultimately, if you follow your heart, you'll probably end up where you are supposed to be.
For me, for now, that is Uganda. But the army of friends and angels who are on my side give me strength.
And the shopping is good, I hear.
25 August 2008
What I won't miss
Tonight, as I was carting my laundry into my apartment from the basement, I noticed an announcement on the billboard.
It has been there for months, of course, and I have read it before, but in all of my musings about taking leave of my country and moving to Africa for a year...this announcement seemed to sum it all up.
It was the Pool Rules.
I live in a condo that has a wonderful pool which I take much pleasure from each summer. I will miss the pool but think Lake Victoria might be a decent stand-in for awhile. Anyway, it had nothing to do with the pool, per se, it had to do with the rules.
So precisely laid out, so silly, that it reminded me that Americans seem to have lost their way and need specific guidance on things that would have never occurred to our forefathers.
Here are four of the twelve Pool Rules (no shit, will PDF and include a copy on this post soon):
1. "If you have a visible medical condition, such as a venereal disease or pink eye, please do not use the pool. Please seek medical treatment before subjecting your neighbors to anything contagious or potentially contagious."
2. "If you have any open lesions, sores, rashes, or skin ailments, please seek treatment before enjoying our pool at Arlington Commons. Rashes can be serious!"
3. "Please remember to shower before you enter the common area...it is a courtesy to your neighbors!"
4. "If you have any obvious discharge, please do not use the pool."
Again, I have seen this announcement about six dozen times before but I think tonight was the first time I read it.
Discharge? Pink eye, a rash...or, perhaps, a visible venereal disease or obvious discharge? Are you kidding me?
Wait a minute...I really AM still in the United States and these rules, by and large, are for an American audience. Holy shit...
("Hey, honey, is that there razor burn on your inner thigh or do you have herpes?" "Oh my God...whatever is that obvious discharge??!!" "What do you mean you haven't showered since this morning? You are climbing into a pool with a chlorine content so high that my new blonde highlights are turning green but don't you dare contaminate me with your unwashed skin cells!")
Then I got to thinking...who the fuck was in this pool before me that compelled someone to write these rules? Or, if that is not the case, who has WAY TOO MUCH time on their hands? Or, even worse, are these things really NECESSARY and need to be so spelled out??
These things scare me, really.
Just like the labels on the back of the frozen pizza box that remind you to take it out of the cardboard before sticking it in the microwave...or the label on my new hairdryer reminding me not to use it in the bathtub or while showering...
Do these people really exist out there? If so, where are they and can we have them isolated as soon as possible?
I know, I know...not very spiritual of me today but, honest to God, who the hell is tempted to don a bikini and parade an "obvious discharge" or "visible venereal disease"" in front of one's neighbors? Who, one morning when rushed on the way to work, decides to multi-task by drying their hair while still showering? Who, I ask?
Then, just a few minutes ago, I glance over at the TV and see our President grinning foolishly while he swaggers around his ranch with some known dictator and human rights abuser and think....
Ah-hah! There's the man who explained his black eye a few years ago as the fact that he got so riled up by watching the football game that he choked on a goddamn mini pretzel and fell off the couch and knocked himself unconscious thus resulting in a black eye (C'mon, George, you and I both know that Laura socked you...fess up) and then I think,
These rules, they are a good thing.
Because really, as my dear friend says, Americans are slowly becoming a race of "sheeples" or "sheep-peoples," blindly trusting and following as long as they don't have to think too much and the directions aren't too complicated or at least very clearly laid out...
(OK, OK, back to being spiritual...I promise...but that is one bit I won't miss ;)
It has been there for months, of course, and I have read it before, but in all of my musings about taking leave of my country and moving to Africa for a year...this announcement seemed to sum it all up.
It was the Pool Rules.
I live in a condo that has a wonderful pool which I take much pleasure from each summer. I will miss the pool but think Lake Victoria might be a decent stand-in for awhile. Anyway, it had nothing to do with the pool, per se, it had to do with the rules.
So precisely laid out, so silly, that it reminded me that Americans seem to have lost their way and need specific guidance on things that would have never occurred to our forefathers.
Here are four of the twelve Pool Rules (no shit, will PDF and include a copy on this post soon):
1. "If you have a visible medical condition, such as a venereal disease or pink eye, please do not use the pool. Please seek medical treatment before subjecting your neighbors to anything contagious or potentially contagious."
2. "If you have any open lesions, sores, rashes, or skin ailments, please seek treatment before enjoying our pool at Arlington Commons. Rashes can be serious!"
3. "Please remember to shower before you enter the common area...it is a courtesy to your neighbors!"
4. "If you have any obvious discharge, please do not use the pool."
Again, I have seen this announcement about six dozen times before but I think tonight was the first time I read it.
Discharge? Pink eye, a rash...or, perhaps, a visible venereal disease or obvious discharge? Are you kidding me?
Wait a minute...I really AM still in the United States and these rules, by and large, are for an American audience. Holy shit...
("Hey, honey, is that there razor burn on your inner thigh or do you have herpes?" "Oh my God...whatever is that obvious discharge??!!" "What do you mean you haven't showered since this morning? You are climbing into a pool with a chlorine content so high that my new blonde highlights are turning green but don't you dare contaminate me with your unwashed skin cells!")
Then I got to thinking...who the fuck was in this pool before me that compelled someone to write these rules? Or, if that is not the case, who has WAY TOO MUCH time on their hands? Or, even worse, are these things really NECESSARY and need to be so spelled out??
These things scare me, really.
Just like the labels on the back of the frozen pizza box that remind you to take it out of the cardboard before sticking it in the microwave...or the label on my new hairdryer reminding me not to use it in the bathtub or while showering...
Do these people really exist out there? If so, where are they and can we have them isolated as soon as possible?
I know, I know...not very spiritual of me today but, honest to God, who the hell is tempted to don a bikini and parade an "obvious discharge" or "visible venereal disease"" in front of one's neighbors? Who, one morning when rushed on the way to work, decides to multi-task by drying their hair while still showering? Who, I ask?
Then, just a few minutes ago, I glance over at the TV and see our President grinning foolishly while he swaggers around his ranch with some known dictator and human rights abuser and think....
Ah-hah! There's the man who explained his black eye a few years ago as the fact that he got so riled up by watching the football game that he choked on a goddamn mini pretzel and fell off the couch and knocked himself unconscious thus resulting in a black eye (C'mon, George, you and I both know that Laura socked you...fess up) and then I think,
These rules, they are a good thing.
Because really, as my dear friend says, Americans are slowly becoming a race of "sheeples" or "sheep-peoples," blindly trusting and following as long as they don't have to think too much and the directions aren't too complicated or at least very clearly laid out...
(OK, OK, back to being spiritual...I promise...but that is one bit I won't miss ;)
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