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.