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.
28 November 2008
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.
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