On Mouthfeel

Mouthfeel!  It gets so little attention in our food talk, but it's so lovely when you get it right and kind of a downer when you don't.  It's the onomotopoea of food!  Good mouthfeel is what makes eating memorable for me:

Foamy yeastiness of an unfiltered heffewiezen = good
Pasty, stiff risotto = bad
The soft chewiness of the inside of a croissant = good
Mealy apples = bad
really good, mineraly water = good

I just made a grilled ham and cheese sandwich on wheat bread.  The mouthfeel was overwhelmingly lovely!  I would have taken a picture, but I couldn't stop eating it.  The texture of the toasted bread and the consistency of the ham complimented each other so well that couldn't tell where one began and the other ended.  I interspaced the cheese so that the filling was more or less homogenous.  One advantage of sliced bread toasted sandwiches over real bread is that you don't get sharp or hard crust edges attacking the top of your mouth, don't you think?  There's also something to be said for a minimalist toasted sandwich: tomatoes, onions, or avocado add flavour but make the sandwich messy and hard to eat without bits and pieces squirting out.

So that's what I have to say about that.

On Tornadoes

On Friday, just as people were getting ready to leave work, the sky darkened and a strange wind started to blow.  We got calls from colleagues who had already left work that a tornado had hit one of the camps.  A friend who was in the camp his NGO manages was thrown 15ft in the air by the wind and the tents where uprooted.

On a Long Day

The day after the 4.4 earthquake that woke me up was so full that I'm only now registering all that occurred:

• A three and a half hour donor meeting (in French, of course) in which i tried to look engaged while a fever made me hot and cold in alternating waves.
• A presentation on our work by Emmanuella in which she did a very nice job in front of both the donor and our visiting Big Boss.
• News that Haitian citizens hoping to visit Trinidad and Tobago (even for business) must have the personal endorsement of Kofi Anana, the Pope, and Queen Elizabeth.  Or the equivalent.  Setback on our trip there.  
• Meetings that kept me from my computer during the entirety of the working day
• News that a friend of a friend with whom I had dinner just last week was hit by a car while on R&R in the DR with her boyfriend.  She was killed and her boyfriend is in a coma.
• Dinner with Boss and Big Boss that went really well.  I'm fortunate to have bosses that are motivated without being micromanagers.  I like them both and the conversation was both diverting and productive.  Also: the food was nice.

Can't wait for the weekend.

On a Restlessness Night

I have a big day today: the new regional director in in town and we have a donor meeting where we'll be pitching several ideas that will no doubt make the reps of the US government a little uncomfortable.  I have a hard time turning my brain off the night before big meetings and so tend to sleep lightly and dream vividly.  Last night this was compounded by stomach cramps and....my shaking bed?

It shook and kept on shaking ever so subtly.

You know that scene from Jurassic Park where they hear this deeeeep BOOM.  BOOM.  BOOM. of the T-Rex and stare all at the ripples in the glass of water?  I felt like I was in the middle of that glass of water. I've lived in a couple of earthquake-prone zones (why? why??) and always felt a thrill of connecting to something elemental any time I felt a shudder from the earth.  This time, it felt different.  I felt bad for the kids in the camp next door for whom there is probably no thrill in this experience.

There was another shudder later in the night but it's hard to say whether that one was real or a product of my restless mind.

On Getting it Done

It's been a busy week which is good in many ways.  We had some radio spots to air that fell through the cracks with the Procurement Department (a.k.a. Them).  This meant that the Communications team (a.k.a Us) had to run around trying to negotiate contracts with 23 radio stations, Procurement was up until midnight drawing up contracts, and Logistics had to figure out how to get the contracts to the little dinky stations in the middle nowhere.  In the end we Got It Done.  So on Monday we'll all pat ourselves on the back and give generous compliments to other departments, all in time for our big meeting with The Donor to whom we promised the radio spots would be up by September 1.  I think the players in the Middle East peace process have a lot to learn from us.

On Two Exciting Arrivals

Last seen in Papua New Guinea on May 26, my air freight arrived at my apartment yesterday!  That's right: my AIR freight!  The one that they put on a plane so that it gets to you very fast!  With it comes my trusty red

can opener, so my days of coaxing out black beans from a can one at a time through a tiny slit are over.

Yesterday I also received another lovely surprise: a letter from my friend Miranda containing.....

On Mr Consultant

Mr Consultant has been working with us in Haiti for several months.  He's an American expat raised in many places and has an infuriating way of talking.  He likes to tell me about funky places he's discovered around town but never commits to showing me, despite my requests.  He makes reference almost daily to going out with colleagues for drinks after work, but doesn't invite me.  Instead, I get text messages from him when he's out, telling me how much fun he's having.  When I needed a new computer, he gave me the option of going to the shop to pick one out, which I told him was unnecessary.  He said he wanted me to be able to pick out exactly what I needed.  The next day, he followed that up with something like"from my experience international staff are very picky about these things."  Huh?  I give up.

At one point, Mr Counsultant had to look for housing and it was looking kind of grim in terms of cost and security.  The option of him staying in my spare room was there, but it was one I think we both wanted to avoid.  He would bring up his hunt for housing every day, suggesting this was a worry for him, and each time I would feel obliged to say "feel free to stay with me if you don't find anything."  He would then respond by saying something like "Nah - I don't want to put you out.  I don't mind sleeping on the office floor if I have to," or "Oh, I've slept in dumps in Indonesia - don't worry about me."  And so it would go.  Every day.

He found housing eventually, but his confusing style of talking still baffles me:  I was in the meeting room today with him where there are a couple of nice office chairs.  I asked him what he thought of them.  His response: "Yeah, I've seen these in many places...but you know, I've sat on stumps in Sudan."  I had no choice but to laugh out loud at him.

On Bombing My First Writing Assignment

My friend, Pete, asked me to write a blog post on what it's like to repeatedly make a new life someplace and then leave it.  I was excited to be given a creative writing assignment - my first since college - but after mulling it over for a couple of days, I am stuck.  I've moved around a lot from a young age but I'm not sure I have anything remotely insightful or fresh to say on it.  We all have had to make friends from scratch, to find our way around a new place, to say goodbye to important people in our lives.  I suspect Pete and I have had similar experiences, even if the circumstances have differed. 

Other people's life experiences can often be easier to appreciate than our own, no? During last weekend's hot tub party, one of the members of our group asked about coping mechanisms for with living in difficult places.  I was surprised to find he was talking not only to our friend, Alex, but also to me.  Just to be clear: Alex has lived in Iraq. He had earlier told a story about a suicide bomb attack on the mosque next door to his house.  He and others in the hot tub covered Pakistan, Sudan, Jordan, Sri Lanka,  India, the Balkans.  I was confused about why my opinion was being sought out.  Did I misrepresent myself and give the impression that I lead a much more dramatic life than I do?  

I guess one person's mundane is another person's exotic.  As a child living in Grenada, I had a family a friends who were born and raised in the same town in Michigan.  Their grandparents lived there, their cousins lived there, and they were returning to that town, that house, after Grenada.  I was in awe of that kind of life: of being so grounded to a place and so connected to people who have known you all your life.  My friends never really understood what I found so fascinating about that.  

I talked about that again with one of those kids a couple of years ago.  Joe went to university in Michigan and then taught there before moving to DC to work on the Hill where we reconnected.  His parents still have the farm in Michigan and Joe and his siblings are still very much Michigan farm kids.  Joe has gotten married and bought a house in DC but unlike 10-year-old-Joe, he is truly appreciative of his strong connections to the place he grew up.  He gets why I marvel at his life and find it exotic!

This is a long and rambling post to say, Pete, I don't have an answer to your post request (I suspect a moderate amount of alcohol plays a role) but I would be interested to hear what your experience has been.  How about doing a guest post?

On Going to the Beach

For NGO workers here, Haiti is a land of contradictions.  On Saturday evening, I found myself in a palatial house, sipping wine in a hot tub while discussing the cost of renting latrines for a number of camps ($20,000 USD per day for one organization).  

On Sunday, my friend Maite and I were determined to go to the beach.  While the coast is only about 5km away from my house, access to a safe beach takes about two and a half hours.  I drove and Maite navigated.  We got out of the city and took a long road along the coast at the foothills of a range that used to be covered by trees.  The hunt for wood for charcoal is such that even bushes are scarce.

We found the beach club we were looking for without incident.  Once we drove through the gates, we passed manicured lawns and flamboyant trees.  We paid $20 to get in.  The place had the feel of a mediocre family apart-hotel in Florida: unglamorous but well-organized.  Everywhere around me, I heard Brazilian peacekeepers speaking Portuguese.  Off to the side, a capoeira workshop was being conducted.  It was bizarre.

Maite and I passed the pool area and made a bee-line for the beach.  It was narrow, sandy, and dotted with coconut frond shelters.  The entire place was crawling with roving packs of UN soldiers on break.  It was bizarre.  Did I say that already?  I've never see so many dogtags in my life.  The only thing that differentiated them was cut of their swim wear.

The water was turquoise, calm, and pleasant.  I was about to comment that it reminded me of the waters of the Caribbean until I realized I was in the Caribbean.  Heh.  I enjoyed the much-needed break from the bustle of Port-au-Prince.  At the same time, it was also weird to be completely surrounded by reminders that while I might be in the Caribbean, it's a doppleganger Caribbean where the beaches are crawling with soldiers.

Bizarre.

On Sushi and Foosball

Last Friday, our deputy country rep surprised me by inviting me to go out for a drink with her husband and her.  She is a smart, friendly person but she comes from the Haitian aristocracy, has two kids, and seems very proper: what on earth were we going to talk about?  I knew she invited me out because of my limited social life and, grateful, I resolved to be charming and entertaining.  Or, if nothing else, not utterly embarrass myself.

They picked me up at around 7:30 and we drove to an old hotel at the top of the hill that survived the earthquake unscathed.  It had an air of [modest] former glory.  You might not even know it was a hotel when you pull up.  The lobby was a small alcove with an unattended desk.  Black and white photos of movie stars and politicians I didn't recognize haphazardly adorned the walls.  No staff were visible.  We made our way through the building and came out onto a huge terrace overlooking all of Port-au-Prince.  The view was amazing.  This was undoubtedly where the movie stars and politicians sipped their gimlets and chatted with aspiring dictators!

The hotel was a maze of tiled stairways leading to various levels of the terrace.  I followed my hosts down a few stairs, wondering what glamorous site awaited me next, to find myself.....in an open air sports bar.  A sports bar!  Complete with flat screen TVs showing American football, pool tables, loud music, and raucous groups of friends letting loose on a Friday night.  I was stunned.

I recovered enough to scrap my plans to behave like a lady, ordered a beer, and proceeded to gape.

At one point, after we had met up with a friend of theirs, my deputy country rep's husband, a mild-mannered be-speckled man, turned to me with ill-suppressed eagerness and asked if I played foosball.  We ended up playing several heated rounds with all the trimmings: bravado, dramatic wins, miraculous recoveries, and high fives.  Then our food arrived: sushi!  Sushi, I was told with a wink and, I'm sure, to the surprise of most Haitians, was invented by Haitians!  A few of the rolls we ordered came wrapped not in seaweed, but in fried banana.  The resulting sweetness was a lovely compliment to spicy tuna and salty prawn.

I had such effortless fun that I forgot where I was entirely.  It was only when my hosts wistfully spoke of the days when it was possible to [safely] go dancing at a club that the illusion of normalcy wavered for a minute.