On Impressing Donors

We had a donor come visit us this week and my boss asked me to take him out after work on Friday.  Within five minutes of his arrival at my office, we got reports of American Red Cross's evacuation from their building because of a 4.9 earthquake and shots were fired outside our office gates.  Hahahahaha!

On the Sweetness of I-Told-You-So

Less than two weeks after writing the last post it finally happened!  The imminent disaster I have been warning of like the cast-eyed village seerer suddenly became apparent to all!  The bosses are stricken by the news...those responsible are claiming innocence...and the department that has worked hard, sought my assistance time and again, struggled without a director, came out of the mess looking good.  I am so proud of them!

And me? I am enjoying the relief of finally being vindicated. See?  The world is coming to an end!  Told you!

On Giving Up and Collapsing Bridges

I'm writing this from work. I don't want to be here.  I give up.

Imagine spending 18 months waving a red flag and yelling, "Hey!  You know the bridge we're all trying to build?  I think we're all using different construction plans!"  Imagine going to person after person, from the builder to the architect to the mason and saying, "Show me your plans.  How are you reading them?  That's not the right way to do it - let me show you how," then see everyone go back to the old way of reading the plans.  Imagine going to the biggest boss, who agrees with how you're reading the bridge plans, and telling her "I am really afraid that no one else is reading them this way and we're going to have a huge mess on our hands."  Imagine doing this until you're hoarse from talking, until you're tired of the sound of your own voice.

And still construction on the bridge continues because the foreman was given instructions from big boss to change how he reads the plans but he didn't understand the new way and so could not communicate to others.  And you stand there, watching the disaster unfold.

On the Proper Way to Eat Bread

The supermarket is now baking fresh baguettes.  The ovens are shrewdly located by the deli section as you come into the shop, so the smell of freshly baked bread getstyour salivary glands going before you even have a chance to pick up a cart.  Even if you're just dashing into the shop for toothpaste, are you really going walk by a paper bag of piping hot baguette?  No.  No, you're not.

I usually carry a loaf of bread in my arms as I shop, munching away on the crusty top.  Well-bred people glance my way, appreciating the appeal of crusty, hot bread, but refusing to succumb to such behaviour themselves.  And that's the great thing about being an adult.  You can chose for yourself how you want to behave, rather than having behaviour prescribed for you.

Having said that, my mother, who otherwise demanded proper behaviour from me when I was a child, understood that certain pleasures lie outside of the realm of propriety.  My memories of the car ride home from the supermarket in Brasil were of this: sitting in the back seat, surrounded by paper shopping bags and biting off the top of a hot baguette so I could pull out the soft, fragrant insides.  I'd go as far into the baguette as I could reach or until we got home: which ever came first.  My mum always acted horrified when she caught me, but I knew that she knew that I knew that she didn't blame me and she not-so-secretly was envious.

I got home from the supermarket today with three warm mini baguettes and stood at the kitchen counter, devouring most of one with a ridiculously expensive and delicious piece of soft cheese.  Then I turned my attention to the other two mini baguettes and because I am a grown up and I make my own money and don't have to share my food with anyone, I methodically denuded the baguettes of their crusty bits on the lengthwise folds and happily crunched away at them.

My mum would have yelled at me, but I would know that she knows that I know that she doesn't begrudge me the pleasure.

On Enjoying the Process over the Outcome

I started a little painting a few weeks ago.  It was nice to pull out my paints.  It's been so long that I jumped right into applying paint to the canvas without going through all the prep work that used to be automatic: laying down newspaper, having water and paper towels aplenty, ensuring the wind won't flip something over onto wet paint. My carelessness became apparent when to my dismay, I found myself with yellow paint all over the wooden patio furniture, my shorts, and my hair.  I had fun, nevertheless, putting down the base coats and getting a feel for the thing.

Weeks later, during a particularly mind-numbing workshop I was observing at work, I used some crayons lying on the table to plan the next steps of the painting in my notebook and felt quite pleased with the crayon results.

That weekend, I set up my work space carefully before turning to the canvas, heartened by my crayon plan and inspired by some photos of light and shadow I took in a magical park in France.  But the minute the brush hit the canvas, I cringed.  Not really getting the same effect as I did with the crayons on my notebook.  Yikes.  How to salvage the situation?  Oh, well, I'd begun - no going back.  I worked without much hope of success until I started experimenting a little with dabs of paint.  And began enjoying the technique without the pressure of caring about the result. After a while, there was enough thick paint on the canvas that I couldn't do much else until it all dried.  I packed up my paints and put the canvas aside, no longer sure where I was going with it.

A couple of days later, I bumped into the painting and it was as if I was seeing it for the first time.  And...I kind of liked it.  Looking at it in the morning light today, I was pleased with my progress but identified a few areas I wanted to work on.  I occurred to me that I wasn't sure when I would consider the painting done.  Will I just haul the thing out every couple of months and dab here and there, changing the feel and direction of the thing as it morphs from dappled sunlight to, say, post-apocalyptic dawn?  Or will I leave it as is, enjoy what I like about it, and allow myself to contemplate the areas "to work on" as mysterious possibilities?

On Getting Sloppy

I am updating my resume. 

This is always a chore and something I kick myself for not doing periodically.  Each time I am left having to think back on what has been remotely noteworthy in the past 12 months of work. 

It’s a bit depressing.

But hey, my system at least means that resume updates are correlated with upcoming change, which can be exciting.  Even when I had to leave Papua New Guinea prematurely, the chagrin of leaving was tempered by the excitement of unknown possibilities lying beyond those resume updates and job applications.

I look at resumes all the time – reviewing them for friends, when recruiting at work – so it was a bit of a shock to start working on mine this morning and come up short.  What goes in a resume?  My responsibilities?  Or what I’ve accomplished (cringe)?  How does this work, again?

My resume was first created centuries ago and has been updated and tweaked over the years but never really overhauled.  I looked at it with new eyes and realized it represented all the things I stand against in health communication:

·         it’s chock-a-block with jargon,

·         it’s wordy,

·         it’s tidy but doesn’t draw the eye to key areas, and

·         there are no hooks to keep the reader interested in reading on. 

How did I get to the point where the document that is supposed to reflect my career is so out of line with the principals of my work?  Yuck.  Makes me wonder what other parts of my life I’ve gotten sloppy with. 

On the Most Disorienting Place I've Known

Last, Vanessa, Emily, Gillian, and I took off to Curacao.  It's one of three islands in the Netherlands Antilles (along with Aruba and Bonaire) about 35 miles off the coast of Venezuela.  Picture a former slave trade hub on an island once inhabited by Arawaks, then colonized by the Netherlands and spitting distance from South America.  Yeah - that's a tough image to conjure up, isn't it?

World travellers that we are, it wasn't until we arrived in Willemstad airport that it occurred to us to ask each other what the local currency was (Netherlands Antilles Gilder) or the local language.  During our flight from Haiti, our flight attendants spoke to passengers in what at first would sound like French or Spanish then: gibberish.  I even heard a word or two of Portuguese in the mix.  Turns out the language is Papimento.  And everyone in Curacao, our taxi driver told us, speaks Papimento, Dutch, Spanish, and English.  After a while, I stopped trying to identify what language the words I recognized were in and just accepted that my brain understood the cost of the fare and that a particular advert was promoting BBQ chicken.  

We arrived at night and drove from the airport through Willemstad to our hotel.  The lights of the town center were charming and held a promise of afternoon strolls through cobbled streets.  And then we saw it: a cinema!! With multiple films showing!  Including.....Footloose!!!!  Too good to be true.  

Our hotel, the Kura Hulanda, was set up like a village with cobbled stone walks, courtyards, gardens, fountains, a town square, fountains, and lovely displays of ancient astronomy tools from telescopes to celestial disks. Emily and I had a room off a courtyard with a four poster bed and footed free-standing bathtub.  There were two pools, one snaking around a leafy courtyard and the other - the eco pool - was a series of pools and waterfalls ringed by rocks.  We were delighted.

Some of the buildings in the Kura Hulanda Hotel

Lots of random sculptures around the hotel

For celestial observation?

Emily blown away by the waterfront of Willemstad

 We stretched our legs, drank lots of coffee, marveled at the large Dutch people that worked in the cafes, went diving, drove around the flat/shrubby island, crashed the Maritime Museum art opening, and generally had a good time.  And guess what?  I won a roundtrip ticket from Haiti to Curacao on the flight back home!

Eclectic bar we heard about 

Dominoes, beer, and speed Scrabble after a day of wandering

Fishalicious: the restaurant that redeemed all others that we tried. 

On Blogging or not Blogging

Hi there.  It's been a while since my last entry.  Makes me feel guilty because there's no point in having a blog if you don't write anything and because blog-worthy things have happened since August.  Wonderful things, like having a blast celebrating Gunner's wedding in Philadelphia with old friends from boarding school.  Not-so-wonderful things like finding out through our internal jobs announcement that my boss is leaving Haiti in February - a year earlier than I had anticipated.  And bizarre things, like musing about what an earthquake in DC would be like an hour before feeling one in DC.  But I'm having a crisis of blog.  Not sure what it's raison d'etre is.  If my blog is struggling to understand it's role in the world, this doesn't bode we for me...

Nevermind.  Let's keep calm and carry on.

Philadelphia in August 

Greg, Josh, Gunner, and Brad

Laura, post-earthquake

On Stubbornness and Self-Deception

I like walking.  When I lived in Washington DC, I considered myself to be a Walker.  I walked 35 minutes to and from work each day.  An hour and a half- long walk to a museum or a pub on the weekend didn’t faze me.  I imagined I could walk foreeeeever.

                When I moved to PNG, I thought not being able to walk outside would be a difficult change for me.  When I say you can’t walk in PNG (or in Haiti), I don’t mean this in the way that some might say that “you really need a car to get around in the suburbs.”  I mean it generally is not advisable to step out of your car unless you are parking in a compound with armed guards.  I can count on one hand the number of times I walked outside from one place to another during my time in PNG.  And I didn’t miss it, which is strange.  I suppose if Port Moresby had wide sidewalks, shops, shaded walkways, or anything inviting to investigate by foot, I might have wished to have been able to walk.  I remember a field visit to a nearby province known for the moderate temperament of the locals and the relatively low crime.  I was allowed to walk down a hill from my guest house to the police commissariat, where we were having a training.  It was exhilarating!  I couldn’t wipe the grin from my face for the full 10 minute walk.  Of course, the very first day, two armed men robbed the bank across the street from our training site with several shots fired.  And that was the end of that in terms of walking.

                A couple of weeks ago, I returned to DC for the first time in a couple of years.  I have lived there on and off for four years and was eager to walk.  Two things became apparent rather quickly:  In the years since I lived there, I haven’t magically grown up and acquired the ability to wear heels all day  - I’ve just been wearing heels in places where the farthest I walk is to and from my car.  Oh – and rain coats and umbrellas?  Foreign objects.  I’m never under the open sky!

                But undeterred, I set about walking through DC as I did when I lived there.  One day, I walked to a coffee shop and then to another coffee shop.  Sidewalks, blue skies, trees….so exhilarating!  I walked to the National Gallery of Art (East) and then (West) and then to Penn Quarter for lunch and then through Chinatown to look at shops and then…

…my feet hurt.  My legs ached.  I wanted to sit down.  I wanted to sit for a loooong while.  And yet I had planned to walk across town to Dupont Circle – another 50 minutes or so.  But the thought of that was shockingly unappealing.  Where’s the metro?  By the end of the day, when I got back to Maggie and Jason’s house, I all but collapsed into their arm chair by the front door.

“I was just about to walk Fossil around the block,” Jason said, putting on Fossil’s leash.  “Want to come?”  I took a deep breath and hauled myself out of the sofa.   “Sure,” I said, trying not to wince as I put my shoes back on.  Because I love walking, right?  I’m a Walker.

                

On the Awkwardness of Company

While I was in transit at the Miami airport on my way to DC, I stopped for a beer.  Across the bar from me were a couple of guys in their early 20s.  It was a square bar and they were sitting on adjacent sides, several seats down from each other.  I didn’t realize they were travelling together until one guy got up to show the other guy something.  Strange that they were sitting so far apart, each staring fixedly at his own phone.  Then I realized all at once that they were colleagues travelling together, experiencing that awkwardness of sharing taxis, adjacent airplane seats, and dinner tables, but not friends.  A third guy (also staring at his phone) eventually showed up to fill the gap between the other two.

Watching them made me remember what it was like to travel to tiny Midwest towns with colleagues I had nothing in common with during my first post-college job doing environmental site assessments.  The worst was the end of the day when we’d all meet up in the lobby to get dinner together at some chain restaurant, if we were lucky enough to find one within a 20 minute drive.  After spending all day sweating in some field somewhere together, most of us had nothing left to say.  So we’d either order one more beer than we really wanted, or get Geoff to tell that story he loves about giving CPR to a guy who had a heart attack in the emptiness of Wyoming.

I was willing to bet that the guys at the bar were probably on Facebook, finding it easier to connect to people far away than with the ones sitting two stools down.

On the Best Lazy Sunday Ever

It was Maite’s last day as a resident of Haiti before starting a new adventure in Montreal.  I got up early and started my pancake-making routine.  In mid-assembly, realized I had no eggs.  A few very silly Skype minutes with my parents later, I steeled myself for an eggless and unglorious outlook for breakfast.  Just then, Maite stumbled out of the guest bedroom in search of coffee.  Oh-oh.  No coffee.  No coffee on a Sunday morning?  Say it ain’t so!  We reluctantly looked towards the tea cupboard. 

Saved by a ringing telephone!  It was friend Emily.  “Watcha doooo-ing…?”  She was fishing for something with which to fill her Sunday.  After confirming that she had eggs, I hailed her over with instructions to bring supplies for the day. 

Banana-walnut pancakes were made with sides of bacon and mango and we settled into the living room to tuck in.  We talked about fraud.  Fraud in Haiti.  Fraud in organizations working here.  Fraud among co-workers.  There is a lot of money pouring into Haiti and while the government may not be equipped to absorb it, that doesn’t mean it isn’t getting sucked up.  The country hasn’t earned a name as one of the most corrupt countries in the world time and time again for nothing (Somalia, watch your back).  And if you thinking talking about fraud on a Sunday morning sounds depressing or heavy….it actually was kind of like an anthropological discourse on perplexing local practices.  It was fascinating and shocking enough to illicit some dramatic intakes of breath from me.

Phone rang again.  Friend Emmett this time, en route with coffee.  Sunday is saved!

Coffee was made, new batch of bacon was turned to carbon (Emmett stepped away to add his two cents to our discussion) and it was time for…..Blockbusters!  That’s right!  I had no idea what it was, either.  But from her goodie bag, Emily pulled out a board game that set the other two clapping with delight (that’s how I remember it, anyway).   Blockbusters was apparently a British trivia game show when we were kids and my three friends had fond memories.  Trust Emily to have the board game version.  In Haiti.  Along with the game show music to accompany it on her iPod.  So we broke into teams with Emily as the announcer and as I recall, Maite and I thrashed Emmett soundly.  Because I’m the one telling the story.

Maite as a beer model

Several enthusiastic rounds later, we took a break to quench our thirst with the latest batch of beer, an English Strong Pale Ale called Stay a While.  Then we did what is probably the most common expat social activity (after eating and drinking): we each pulled out our laptops and swapped TV episodes and movies. 

We drifted in and out of our sofa command center as the breezy afternoon turned to evening.  Best lazy Sunday ever.

On Loving the Toyota Hilux

Dear Toyota Hilux,

Firstly, I would like to apologize up front for maligning you with such frequency and vehemence during our previous acquaintance in Papua New Guinea.  Yes, you did fishtail all over the road, even with 15 villagers in the back.  It's true that you had zero traction in the mud and getting out to lock your wheels before putting you in four wheel drive was a pain, and usually fruitless, besides.  And it's also true that your shocks were so hard that the poor souls in the back looked like they were riding broncos, even at 15kph (I deliberately didn't do headcounts so I wouldn't know how many people bounced off the cab on the way).

But to be fair, you got us through cane fields, over lava plains, and across ditches in one piece. What's more,13 months in Haiti among our bedraggled fleet of patched together vehicles has given me some perspective.  Your renowned big brother, the Land Cruiser, is a fine vehicle, but fishtails worse than you do and is geared so low that I can start it from third - not a comfortable ride on the stop-and-start streets of Petion-ville.  And let us not forget the crap-tastic Nissan Navaras that were my first companions in Haiti: stained fabric seats with springs so shot that I had to haul myself out of the seat using both arms and legs, bouncy shocks that sent me shooting to the ceiling at the slightest bump, and windows and doors so ill-fitting that it rained inside as well as out.

But you, rented blue Hilux...you were the highlight of my day!  Your doors keep out the rain and the dust so well, it's like being hermetically sealed in there!  Your 17,279 miles have done little to affect the youthful (yet moderate) bounce of your shocks, so much so that I intentionally took The Road Most Cratered for the sheer delight of doing so in comfort!  Your A/C works and you shift gears without fuss and you don't emit high-pitched squeals that send pedestrians screaming in fright.  You don't smell like armpit and no sticky mystery substances coat your interior.  Thank you, Toyota Hilux, for the most enjoyable 1.3 km drive home I have ever had.

Yours sincerely,

Carla

On Computers and Other Imaginary Objects

I'm going to tell you a story that sounds crazy to me but it might not sound crazy to you.  If that's the case, apologies in advance.

There are very few hospitals in Haiti, and given how rural the population is, most people's access to health care is at a rural health center that often has no water or electricity, much less medical supplies.  In many cases people are afraid to access counselling services for things like family planning for fear that they will be judged by health workers.  In other cases, people have no idea that they can go to health centers for these services.  We have a radio drama on the air to encourage younger women use a modern form of family planning and to seek advice from a health professional before trying family planning.

Last night I met up with the visiting director of an NGO that produces radio and TV serial dramas with social and environmental messages, especially family planning messages.  I worked with them on a radio serial drama in PNG and was eager to share notes on how to do this work in Haiti.

When I arrived, the director was with the owner of a research company based in Miami who will be doing the baseline survey for the NGO.  Let's call the owner Fred.   I mentioned that we are currently airing a radio serial drama with family planning messages and apropos of nothing, Fred began a lecture of what we should do to show whether our radio drama is driving listeners to go to health centers.

Fred, who made it a point to tell me that his company has worked internationally in 11 countries, informed me that we should do exit interviews at clinics to collect data on what encouraged the patient to seek care.  The exit interviews with be self-administered, meaning patients would be given a sheet of questions and asked to fill in the answers themselves.  I opened my mouth to protest that our target audience is likely to be either illiterate or uncomfortable reading and writing.  And why would a health worker would be willing to add to their duties (for free!) by managing these exit interviews for us?  How many rural health centers across the country did he imagine doing this in and who would be responsible for it all? But I had no opportunity to vocalize any of these questions because Fred was powering on:

Fred assumes there is at least a computer in every health center (!!!!!!!), so the health workers would then input all the information from the exit interviews into an Excel spreadsheet and e-mail it to us.  Fred conceded that not all rural health center may have internet (my money is on none have computers and if they do, the computers are used as a door stop because no one knows how to use it or the monitor went missing years ago) and said that in those cases, the health worker could copy the Excel files to a flash drive (who makes sure those don't disappear in 5 minutes?) and DHL the flash drives to us in Port-au-Prince.  DHL? Paid for by whom?  Sent to us at what intervals?  With what incentives to the health workers????

At this point, my mouth was hanging open. What he proposed so offhandedly was akin to proposing that anyone can film Avatar - just get a Mac and a few billion dollars.

I opted to keep my mouth shut, down the rest of my rum sour, wish them luck, and head off to find people who speak my language.

Thanks for the party, pep Ameriken (and China)

The US Ambassador had a 4th of July party last night.  We were invited, as recipients of USAID funds, to set up a stall at the event.  Guess who got to man the stall?  It was a hot and muggy afternoon of setting up our materials and hoping it wouldn't rain.  But once people started coming to the stall, I began to enjoy myself.  The first visitors were our stall neighbors, many of whom were from faith-based organizations.  It was fun to earnestly explain that the pretty boxes on one side of our table were contraceptive pills and contraceptive injectables.  Those visitors usually took an involuntary step back and moved on before I could talk about our condom promotion materials on the other side of the table.  Hee, hee. I didn't know any of the dressed up invited guests (well, other than the ubiquitous Sean Penn) so it was fun to deliver my blithe spiel on our work and see what kind of reaction I got.  In some cases, people lost interest when they realized we weren't giving anything away, which is a good screening mechanism, I discovered.  

We were released from duty for the speeches, anthems, Marines doing their color guard thing, and.....FIREWORKS!  Not just a few token fireworks, but big, splashy, bang-y fireworks that went on and on and on!  My first thought was that I hoped no one in the city would think this was gunshots.  My second thought was how thankful I am to the ancient Chinese for inventing fireworks.  My last thought, before my brain stalled out from the pure enjoyment of the display, was that I bet in places where there is actual mortar fire, fireworks are not so popular.

The packing up phase was made more agreeable by the champagne and the discovery of micro burgers.  That's right - micro!  The size of a large marble!  Complete with pickles!  Amaaaaaazing!

Happy birthday, America!

Ma and Pa Lopez just had their first visit to Haiti!

My mum cooking an Indian food feast for friends.  How many chilies?

I have been asked by so many people here what I had planned for them and then what we ended up doing.  It wasn't a doing kind of holiday.  We went through a stack of Bon Appetit magazines, drank coffee, bought plants, went to a couple of art galleries, took a drive up the mountain for lunch, had birthday dinner for my mum, worked on the the jigsaw puzzle and spent a lot of time sitting around and reading.  It was, for me, perfect.  I'm looking forward to their next visit but not to the inevitable scolding I receive when they see that half my plants are dead.

My dad at a gallery.  Not sure he's impressed.

My dad and Maite telling stories.

Before they arrived, I didn't really think much about what my parents' reaction would be to Haiti.  They have lived in and visited some pretty underdeveloped places (the town I was born in is no paradise) and it's not like I live in a tent camp here.  Nevertheless, my parents visited the Dominican Republic a couple of years ago, and though I can see the border from my terrace, the DR is a lot more developed than Haiti.  I meant to tell them that, but I don't remember if I did.

In any case, the recent visits by The Santas; my old friend, Pete, who was working in another town for a couple of weeks and spent a few days with me on his way out; and now my parents, has made me realize how blind I am to much of the Port-au-Prince scenery.  On our way out of the airport, my dad was taken aback by the tent camp that surrounded us.  I don't even see it any more.  Perhaps that sounds callus, but without becoming somewhat inured to the tent camps, the markets atop heaps of rotting rubbish, the drainage canals choked with styrofoam containers, and the collapsed piles of rubble, I would be completely dysfunctional here.  I see it.  But it doesn't affect me anymore.

(cringe) I know how that must sound.

Traffic in the city is not great.  You have to be assertive on the road or you'll never move.  But aside from the inconvenience of how long it takes to get anywhere, there's something almost satisfying about driving here.  You have to be creative, bold, clever, and skillful.  I can't say I'm often challenged like that in many other facets of my life.  So traffic is not great, I know that.  Nevertheless, I was startled to hear my father tell a friend in Brazil just how awful it is here.  Is it really that much worse than my hometown in Brazil?  And is the badness of it that much of a surprise?

I'm curious to hear what my parents have been telling people about their impressions of Port-au-Prince.  I suspect that their comments may echo a lot of what The Santas mentioned: it's dusty and dirty and the poverty is ubiquitous.  There are armed UN troops on the road and rubble on the street sides.  But people are pretty and care about how they look, even if they are living on a pile of rubbish.

My pretty apartment on the 6th floor of a building in the largely functional part of town gives me some buffer from the less picturesque sides of Port-au-Prince.  Even unaffected as I might be, I'm grateful for this buffer every single day.

On Governments and Donors

After another silly and large set-back related to donor bureaucracy, I have finally realized that representatives of government donors will always be overly cautious and slow in granting permission for us to do our work.  This is because they will be taken to task if we spend too much money on the wrong thing or create a splash that offends the wrong person, but the consequences of overly conservative, slow, and unimaginative work will fall on our shoulders.

Beer! Beer! Beer!

I've been wanting to brew beer for a long time.  I love beer, but hot weather countries tend to specialize in unremarkable, highly carbonated lagers that are best enjoyed very cold as a way of replacing electrolytes lost to heavy perspiration.  Or in the ocean.  That's always nice.

Despite having had all the equipment and ingredients for making beer for many months, and despite having finally collected enough empty beer bottles, I hesitated to do it.  It's intimidating.  There are many steps.  Sanitation is emphasized again and again.  Haiti is not known for sanitation.  I had organic chemistry flashbacks and that was not a class I excelled in.

I took advantage of The Santas' visit to enlist free labor for the brewing process.  This was not as glamorous as you might think.  In fact, Stacey, [who despite working on some of the most important research in HIV prevention, still giggles at the word "vagina"] kept making references to diarrhea.   She's not very mature.

There were lots of different steps and timing and temperature needs and I was grateful to have The Santas there to help out.

The beer smelled best during the addition of the malts but the hops were pungent and less appealing.  They could double as smelling salts.  We made wort, cooled it fast-like, added yeast, and put the beer aside to ferment for a couple of weeks.

The Santas left and I lured another group of willing assistants for the bottling phase.  I had already invested a lot of elbow grease to scrub all the old Prestige bottles, take of the labels and glue, and sanitize them (I underestimated how laborious and messy this step is).  

 

The bottling process was a lot of fun!  We didn't finish until about 11 pm, but by the end, we had 38 bottles of beer neatly stacked to bottle condition for 2 weeks.

The nest morning, I sat bolt upright with the realization that I had forgotten to add the sugar solution to the beer, without which the yeast can't carbonate the beer.  Skype call to my dad, frantic combing on internet home brewing sites later, I was uncapping all my bottles and adding sugar to each individual bottle.  Which, with a freshly sanitized spoon and home-made funnel, resulted in a lot of clumpy, suggary messiness.  Had this been an organic chemistry lab exercise, I would have gotten an F.

Two weeks later, I opened the beer: Haitian Vacation Petite Saison.

Aside from variable carbonation from bottle to bottle, the beer is good!  It's floral on the nose, but dry and refreshing.  Very drinkable, not too hoppy, and decidedly better than Prestige.

Thanks, Santas and other helpers!

Early Life Crisis Part II

Remember your mid-20s?  When you sat around wondering:  what am I doing with my life vs what should I be doing with my life?  What’s the next step at work?  Stick it out or find a new job?  Should I go to grad school and if so, for what? 

I rather naively assumed that after overcoming that crisis, I was home free until my mid-life crisis – and I’m not even sure on when that’s scheduled and what it involves.

Not so, it seems.  The visit from The Santas made me realize that many of us are going through something similar once again.  Late night conversations over several glasses of wine didn’t really help answer the nagging question of: what’s next?  The discussions continued after The Santas went back to the US.  It is a relief to know that that many of us are mulling over this question regardless of job satisfaction, marital status, number of children, location, mortgages, or ambition.  

The Santas

"Come visit me in Haiti" is kind of like saying "I want a pony for my birthday".

So imagine my surprise when two of my [++heart++] friends informed me that they were coming.  To visit me.  In Haiti!  Yaaaaaay!  I was so excited, I couldn't sleep the two nights before they arrived.  I haven't been that excited since Christmas Eve circa 1991.

Stacey and Laura arrived with an air of good humor and enthusiasm for loafing and it was so so strange to see them in my house, sitting on my sofa, getting a drink from the fridge as if it were totally normal to be in Haiti.  To visit me. 

Katharine indoctrinating Laura to the good life in Haiti.

Stacey accepts Haitian seafood into her heart.

They hung out by the pool and drove around town with a six-fingered man while I counted down the minutes to my work day.  We went on a HASH and listened to RAM at the Oloffson and brewed beer.  It was AwESomE.

Happy Haitian Anniversary!

Today is my first anniversary in Haiti.  Happy Haiti to me!

Last week I was in Guatemala where our big boss asked me point-blank if I planned on extending my contract past my June 16, 2012 end date.  I'd been trying not to think about that, so I dissembled.

In truth, there are some wonderful things about living and working here, but they have been overshadowed by two things:

1) The few good friends I have here are all (ALL) on their way out.  Yes, I know this happens everywhere to everyone and we all bounce back.  But my life in Haiti moves in very tight circles and it's really hard to meet new friend candidates.  I'm doggedly pursuing any and every friend possibility.  I can't afford not to.

2) My work is plagued by one combative, aggressive, defensive, difficult co-worker.  Walking on eggshells around her, triple editing e-mails to ensure they are sanitized of any words that could [even when read in reverse and in Ancient Greek] give offense, and mimicking the reasonable and calm tones of TV hostage negotiators for the past year is exhausting.  Exhausting.


But then, on the eve of my first year in Haiti, guess what happened?  She resigned!  She resiiiiiiiiiiiigned!!  I wish I could say it had something to do with me, but she has been widely advertising her displeasure with PSI since 2009.  I am so, so relieved.

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

Haiti Year Two starts today!

On Possessed Fruit

This morning I walked into the kitchen and heard an unusual sound.

Like the sound of gas escaping from something wet.

I looked in the direction of the sound and all that was there was.....a watermelon.

The watermelon was making noise.

I am not ok with fruit making noises.

Not ok.

On the Pleasures of the San Juan Ritz-Carlton

I'm not sure why people think it's a great idea to have work conferences in lovely destinations.  It doesn't really encourage a strong work ethic, nor does it make long days of presentations in freezing cold, windowless conference rooms more pleasant.

Am I complaining about spending a week at in lovely San Juan at the Ritz?  Never.  In fact, I would like to take time to note the four things I most appreciate about the San Juan Ritz-Carlton:

Thing 1: The artwork is fantastic.  What was the last time you loved the art on the walls of a hotel?

Thing 2: Today I left the hotel in gym shorts and a tank top, prominently carrying a wallet, and walked by myself down the block to a Walgreens pharmacy [where I spent $104 on fun nice-to-haves].  The Ritz may not be directly responsible for my safety, re-invigorated sense of liberty, or the convenient location of the Walgreens but I'm feeling generous.

Thing 3: Hot water.  Hot water comes out of the taps with 0 wait time! Amazing.  And a good way to save water.  But maybe not energy?  Whatever.  I love it.

Thing 4: There are short toilet seats in the bathrooms by the conference room!  My knees are at right angles when I sit down on the seat!  Thanks, Ritz-Carlton!

On Wedding Awesomeness!

stay tuned to photos of fun

On Strange Hotel Guests

The staff of the hotel in which Beta (American mother, Brazilian father, multi-lingual friends) and Cris (Brazilian parents, multi-lingual friends) had their wedding were used to having Brazilian guests.  Or sometimes foreign guests who didn't speak Portuguese.  But all these guests for the wedding were switching between languages, sometimes while talking to the same person!  They looked at us in wonder, like a looking at a mouse with leopard spots.

My mother came in to see me while I was getting my nails done and after she left, the manicurist said, "I was listening to you and your mother making all those strange sounds and I wondered to myself, 'can they really understand each other?'"

On Waves upon Waves upon Waves....

Poetry is not for me.  I find it tiresome and unnecessarily convoluted. But every time I step out onto the beaches of Ilheus, the scene inspires nothing short of love.  The beaches are unlike any others I know:

The sand is a modest brown, but so fine that it packs down hard and flat - you can easily ride a bike on it or even bounce a basketball.  The beach is so flat that at low tide the water recedes dramatically.  The waves break in simultaneous rows of five or six: thunderous ones that only the surfers brave farther out to sea and subsequently smaller ones that break over each other until they are barely ankle high.

I love how the waves come in in sweeping arcs with lacy edges - sometimes like the borders of an egg fried in butter and sometimes more delicate, like a crepe.  The water is too turbulent to be blue but occasionally a shy wave will venture out to kiss my feet, as crystalline as a layer of clear nail polish.

For every meek wave, there are those assertive ones that may only come up to mid-shin but rush in with such force that unless you stand your ground, you risk water shooting up your legs and soaking you thoroughly.  You have to walk a far way out to actually get half way submerged.  Those of us who know the sneaky way of these waves, like this weekend's bride and my childhood friend, Roberta, can master wave jumping while still keeping our possession of our bathing suits.

I didn't expect to spend any time with Beta during her wedding weekend, so I was thrilled to slip away with her to the beach not once, but twice.  The first time, we went for a walk, like countless walks we have taken on these beaches, usually with some combination of mothers and sister.  The hard sand leaves your feet baby soft afterwards!  The second time, we went out to wave jump like the pros that we are.

Simple pleasures...

On Old Friends and the Pleasures of Language

The beach in front of the Butlers' property

My father has been in Brazil since February, tying up lose ends we have here and hanging out with two sets of family friends who my parents have known since they moved to Brazil in 1975.  Unlike Judy and Roberto, who I  have known since birth, David, Sueli, and David's Land Rover from the UK were mostly characters in my parents' stories to me.  They moved back to Brazil a couple of years ago after living abroad, most recently for 12 years in Trinidad.  They have a house on a small lot on the beach that includes a workshop where David and a few workers put together frames for high end bicycles for physically handicapped cyclists.  These get shipped to his son, Graham (business owner), in California.  My dad has been doing...well, I'm not sure what there.  Perhaps having breakfast with a horse.  My mother did inform me one day that he took one of the bikes out on the beach and found himself waist deep in a creek.

On my first full day in Ilheus, my parents picked me up to take me to David and Sueli's place.  None of us could remember the last time I had met them, but they are lovely people. Vanessa, the youngest of their four kids, had just arrived from England.  All three of them are warm and generous - the kind of people who take in strays of all shapes and sizes.

My father with a cocoa pod which I later devoured.

Sueli with an encomenda of kibe, coxinha de galinha, pastel de carne and pastel de frango

Chapati making operation:  my mother on Step One

David, Vanessa, and my father handling Step 2 (I was too busy taking care of Step 3 to photograph it)

It was also really nice to be in a household that spoke English and Portuguese interchangeably.  I tend to get lazy with language when I'm in Brasil and scramble my words, using those that seem most appropriate regardless of language.  Rare are the times when I'm around people who do the same thing!

On Rainy Days in Tropical Beaches

Just the other day I was defending sunny days and blue skies to Miranda, who feels like they create too much pressure to go out and seize the day.  She prefers overcast without the threat of rain.  No surprise - she lived many years in Washington state where the sun is a semi-mythological entity.

After Miranda and I said our goodbyes in Salvador with promises of a New Years reunion in Vegas (any takers?), I headed south to my old 'hood: Ilheus.  Well, I was born 20 minutes northwest of Ilheus, but the beaches of Ilheus were where I honed my crab-eating and wave jumping skills.  This was also where the wedding I was going to was taking place.  Before the madness began, though, I resolved to spend at least a couple of days on my own at a little lodge on a hill overlooking the water.

After the rain clouds cleared.

My parents met me at the airport and we met up with our family friends (including bride and groom) before having dinner by the sea.  My parents informed me that it's been raining cats and dogs, which could put a damper on my dreams of long walks on the beach and brushing up on my wave jumping.  Nevertheless, there's something about watching the rain come in over the sea and hearing the cacophony of tropical rainstorms that suited my need for some down time.  I read an excellent book (Brazil on the Rise: The Story of a Country Transformed), which was all the more fun to read while in Brazil, and enjoyed some quiet time with no obligations other than refilling my coffee.

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On Morning Ramblings, Globalization, and Being/Not Being from Bahia

Ah....the joys of being back in Bahia do not extend to the sometimes blunt and graceless way that I am sometimes addressed:  Indiana!

As in: Indian girl!

I've been asked where Miranda is from a lot - we speak to each other in English and are tourists.  When I say she's American, there is an immediate assumption that I learnt English in the US and that is how we met (neither of which is true).  This isn't a crazy assumption, I suppose, but is perhaps a sign that in these days of hyperglobalization*, the most cogent of conclusions may be the farthest from the truth.  Assume the craziest of connections!  Minnesota small town fashion-merchandizing/journalism major finds herself running a Global Fund malaria prevention project in Papua New Guinea where she befriends her colleague, a Brazilian of East African parentage who grew up speaking English at home.  That must be how they came to travel through Brazil together!

Where was I?  Oh.  In Bahia, the curiosity extends to me, because I talk like a Baiana but look different.  In the market, one man yelled O, Indiana! to catch my attention, much like he would have yelled "hey, yellow shirt" or "hey, Palmeiras fan" or "hey, baldy" to anyone else.  I hate it.  Last night, while waiting out a rain storm in a little bar, someone else asked me where I'm from.  I said Bahia.  He said, "Baianos come in all forms these days."  I said, "These days?"  He said, "Yeah, this new generation is really diverse."  The man couldn't have been more than 10 years older than me.

So what's my point?  I don't really have one, I guess.  Maybe it's that for all the creativity that Baianos are famous for in music and dance, they remain unimaginative about other people and other backgrounds?  Nah.  Maybe it's just that I don't like people to associate me with a culture I know nothing about, just because I look Indian?  That's probably it.

* hyperglobalization: I thought of this term, real or not, while looking over some bowls and beaded bags that were very craftily made - probably in Taiwan - such that they could have been sold in a shop in Brazil, India, Swaziland, Indonesia, Haiti, Spain, Belize, South Africa, Myanmar, and possibly any country ending in an "a".  Brilliant!  Miranda really only wanted to buy things made in Brazil, which on one hand, I understand, but on the other hand....hyperglobalization makes all that moot, no?  Even our energy could be coming from a hydroelectric dam in another country....

On Being a Visitor in Brazil(s)

I'm traveling through Brazil with my American friend, Miranda.  It's her first time in Brazil and she doesn't speak any languages that would help her understand Portuguese.  Traveling with her has made me appreciate some of the idiosyncrasies of the language.  It's not until I was forced to translate everything I was reading or hearing that I realized, for example, that a strapless bathing suit is called an "I hope it falls down." 


We have just come from spending four days in Rio Grande do Sul's wine country.  It's a beautiful region of Brazil that I had never been to.  It is different from Bahia, my state in the north, in every way possible: the climate is mild and dry, the people talk funny and are unfailingly courteous, the streets are clean, people are fair-skinned, order prevails, polenta and pasta are common on the menu, people seem embarrassed to accept tips, and free courtesies (like coffee) were common occurrences.

"Ladies! Before you go!  Here are the mushooms that were in your lunch!"

 When we got lost and I asked for directions from some policemen at a gas station, they turned on their lights and showed us the way!

The street behind our guest house.

I was apprehensive to then bring Miranda to Bahia, the land of loud, effusive people; rubbish on the streets; pick-pockets; drumming; Afro-Brazilian culture; spontaneous dancing; and tempers as inconstant as the weather.  Good thing Miranda has Sudan, Malawi, and Papua New Guinea under her belt: to my relief, she fell in love with the historic part of Salvador at the first sight of its windy cobbled streets and its ornate [but gently dilapidating] houses.

Miranda and Carla in the Pelourinho.

Miranda becomes a Brazilian!

I introduced Miranda to her first acaraje, which we ate during a flash downpour.  We then spent a couple of hours in the Mecado Modelo, an indoor craft market catering to visitors.  I usually dread bargaining but doing so on the behalf of someone who does not speak Portuguese allowed for all sorts of subterfuge and theatrics.  It was fun.  I understand now that it's not about the R2.00 that you saved on that last trinket - it's about a sense of pride and accomplishment you feel having battled the vendor to a lower price.  After a good day's shopping, I'm pretty sure I only paid 50% more than I should have.

On How I Ended Up This Way

E-mail from my father (in its entirety):

had b fast with a horse

 
I have said this before and I'll say it again: I turned out quite well, considering.

On Discovering the First Brasilian Syrah.

You heard me.  The first Brazilian Syrah!  The first vintage (2010) of the first Brazilian Syrah, even!

My friend, Miranda, and I are travelling through Switzerland.  I mean - Germany.  Oops - Italy.  Wait.  They speak Portuguese in Italy now?

Ha, ha.  We're in Brazil.  On holiday.  In wine country.  Miranda is coming from Papua New Guinea and I am coming from Haiti and we're on holiday in wine country.  It's too much to take in.

Italy.  I mean - Brasil.

"Did you see that goblet of wine that man has?"

Wine tasting!  Yay!

The first Brazilian Syrah at Almaunica Winery.

Yesterday, we drove around tasting wines, found a little Italian biscuit factory the size of your bathroom, and ate lunch at a churrascaria.  This morning, we went walking through the woods with a puppy I named Porky.  I am overwhelmed.