On Pretty Malawi

Lake Chilwa

I just spent a week in Malawi. It's so quiet.  And clean.  And...quiet.  The drive through the residential part of Zomba in the south was all nicely paved lanes shaded by tall trees.  Tranquility.  Seemed like the kind of place you would love to ride your bike on.  Your bike with a little basket.  People are very polite and attentive.  Instead of the unfinished, gray, cinderblock houses of Haiti, you see little red brick houses with windows, window panes, and curtains.  It's been a really pleasant place to visit.

On "Classic" Films

[lifted from a recent e-mail]


Emily's dad just gave her the old school Planet of the Apes box set.  A movie marathon seemed appropriate (who knew there were so many?).  So I got the projector from work and Emily and Emmett came over to watch the first (1968) Planet of the Apes.  Translation: I fell asleep multiple times during the film.  Movie watchers in 1968 had muuuuuuuch longer attention spans than we do now.  Walking through the desert.  Still walking through the desert.  Yep.  Desert is vast and we're walking through it.  Look.  More desert.  I'm down with the artsy-ness of it (make the audience feel as if they're slogging through the damn desert with the characters) but then don't turn around and tell me that when someone thinks they've landed on a planet 2000 light years from Earth and find humanoid intelligent life form that READS AND WRITES IN ENGLISH, they don't bat an eyelid.  For heaven's sake.  You know what else came out in 1968?  2001: A Space Odyssey.  Pretty sure the first half an hour of that film is all white with no sound.  Make the audience feel as if they are travelling for six months in a comatose state with you....

On Worrisome Old Age

Emily and Emmett came over the other night.  Don't ask why they got started talking about savings and investments and retirement accounts but all of a sudden they had whipped themselves into a worry frenzy.  One of them has not even started saving for retirement yet.  The other has a humongous amount of money sitting in....a bank account.  Even I know that's not ideal.  As I type this, they are bouncing around on the sofas, out-worrying each other.

"Somehow we've got to get money for when we're old"

                    "So basically I have to work out how how long after retirement I want to live"

Old Emmett

Old Emily

On the Increased Backlog of Stories

It wasn't until I got to Haiti that I realised that making new friends in my early thirties is different from making new friends in my early twenties.  A surprising amount of life experience has transpired during that time (good thing, I guess) and so it takes longer and longer to hammer out details of the past with new friends.

As part of my fellowship application process, I had to submit something visual to tell IDEO.org "more about myself."  After much head-scratching and long discussions with friends, I decided on a treasure map that follows the path I took from childhood to public health.  A few months after I submitted it, a couple of Haiti friends asked to see what I submitted.  I showed them a few images so they could get the idea and before I knew it, they were pouring over the entire thing, muttering things like "I didn't know you studies marine biology."

I felt a little exposed - it's not as if I was learning about their hidden pasts as spelling bee champions or commercial pilots at the same time.  It was also startling to realise that these two friends, who know me well enough to anticipate what I'm going to say (and make fun of me for it), were ignorant of so much of my foundation.  How many hours have we whiled away together?  Is it just that there's so much ground to cover that we haven't gotten to everything yet or do we just tend to talk more about the present?  And what does this mean for making friends in my 40's and 50's?

Maybe I'll just put a moratorium on new friends after the age of 40 and work on the backlog of stories among my existing friends.

On Kites and Kiting

My friend, Kevin, needed to buy 25 kites for the kids at the orphanage where he volunteers.  He figured that as a brown person, I would be able to negotiate for a better price from the street vendors than he would.  I tactfully did not mention that aside from being white, he does not speak any languages that the street vendors might know and despite his military appearance, is a big softie, liable to pay the first price demanded, without hesitation.  I agreed to help him.

Kite buying on Rue Panamerican

We drove to the corner with the chicken wire fence where the vendors display their kites.  I told Kevin to stay put in the car and jumped out to start negotiations.  I usually don't like negotiating, but it's different when it's someone else's money I'm playing with.  And I usually don't hang out on the street corners of Port-au-Prince, surrounded by guys on the street, but it's different when there's a conspicuous security-type sitting in the car behind me.

I had fun!  I negotiated with the kite guy, got some commentary from an old man with a smattering of teeth, then negotiated with the string man.  I'm sure I was royally ripped off, but Kevin got his kites and these guys had a good weekend sale.

The only thing I can tell you is that the red pipes are horns.

The next day, new boss (Martin), Kevin, and I drove up through the southern mountains to get out of the city and breathe some piney air. I love the twisty drive up there.  We got out at treehouse-like bar/lounge place owned by an acquaintance.  A RaRa band showed up out of nowhere for what I can only imagine is pre-Easter-voodoo thing.

After a while, we took a stroll along a ridge to have a look around.  Life up in these mountains is agricultural.  The produce is wonderful, but the land is not the easiest to cultivate.

See the person in the red shirt?  We walked down there to check out the view and found some boys flying kites.

Kevin, and the kid in charge of the kite.

On Teabagisms and England

My friend from Haiti, Katharine, went to graduate school in London and would often speak longingly about the pubs and ales of her glory days. Before she left Haiti last June, we decided a trip to England to conduct some beer research (beersearch?) was prudent.  With a considerable amount of arm-twisting (uhm, not at all), my friend, girl-Alex, decided to join the research team. Aaaand, before we knew it, we had a team of research assistants to help us out: Gillian (Scottish, recently of Haiti, headed to Rwanda), Vanessa (Italian, recently of Haiti, relocated to London), Desiree (Canadian cousin, now of London, fellow foodie), and Sam & Ivan (English cousins, game for anything).

The week consisted of the following:

1. Wandering around Soho and Covent Gardens

2. Random acts of champagne

3. Good, good, food

4. Ales

5. A weekend trip to Haworth in West Yorkshire to drink more beer

The weather was sunny and our pace was set on "ambling".  In describing the trip to friends in Haiti, I was a bit horrified to hear myself sound like a herbal tea bag: "spent time with people I like, doing things we like to do, and not knowing when I would see them again made it all the more fun."  But, hey - it's true.

The cousins.

Beer garden in Haworth and Timothy Taylor's Landlord, first beer I tried to replicate.

Bronte sisters's awkward moors.

On Unexpected Conversations

Yesterday, the malaria team's assistant approached me as I was walking between buildings with a sense of purpose.  I expected her to tell me she had an urgent cheque that needs to be signed (I sign when the boss is away).  But no.  She came to tell me that I should consider taking Kreyol classes.  I told her I was still working on my French.  She ran through a string of Kreyol words I should know (which I did, because they sound like French), made me promise to try learning Kreyol, and walked away.  Ok, then.

I then went out for a coffee with our Finance Director who told me he doesn't have time to read e-mails at work, then gleefully informed me that he checks them every night on the toilet.

On Kindergarten Walls

Have you ever noticed that 99% of paintings on the outside walls of kindergardens in developing countries are of Mickey Mouse and his friends?  Why Mickey Mouse?  How would kids in Haiti or even in places with TV know who Mickey Mouse or Daffy Duck are?

On Functional Self-Deception

There’s a certain amount of self-deception intrinsic in my job.   I know that the culture gaps and language differences between myself and my colleagues means that only a certain percentage of what I think is being said and done by them is real.

In Papua New Guinea, my project tried to promote discussions of topics and behaviours that went against the grain of what is typical, acceptable, and comfortable for any Papua New Guinean: what happens in marriages in PNG.  To do this, I had to hire people to work on this program, promote the message of marital harmony, and preferably not behave in a way that contradicts the messages we are trying to promote.

It wasn’t obvious, for example, that getting plastered during a work function with donors present was not ok.  But that was the easy stuff to spot.  Our sessions were conducted in Pidgin.  I understood most of what was being said but what worried me was that I didn’t understand how phrasing things one way or another could change the nuance of what was said.  I worried, for example, that when one of my trainers would say that anal sex is dangerous, that it would be interpreted as a condemnation of homosexuality.  The best I could do was intone time and again that anal sex was not something only men did and to make sure my team made it clear that it was not using a condom that made anal sex dangerous – not homosexuality. 

I knew that there was a risk that some of what my team said in the field was not what I would have wanted them to say, or worse – they could be saying the opposite of what I would want them to say.  Part of me worried.  Part of me chose to believe that my team members understood our radical message – that hitting your partner was not ok, that forced sex is rape, that women are entitled to just as much happiness as men.

My friend who now is responsible for all the programs in PNG told me a few weeks ago about a drama unfolding at the office that involves a member of my former team.  Ben was a police officer for 26 years and his wife is also in the police force.  Every now and then he would mention a story from his time as an officer that made my skin crawl – not because of how disturbing the stories were, but because the unemotional delivery gave me no indication that the storyteller perceived the stories as awful, too.

Long story short, someone was anonymously accusing Ben of having an affair/his wife showed up at the office with a posse of her colleagues/the woman Ben was accused of having an affair with was accosted by another posse at the airport and all hell broke loose.   Ben was sent to a satellite office on his native island for his safety and that of all involved.  A few weeks later, Ben didn’t show up to work and stopped answering his phone.  Turns out he decided to stop working for us.  His work phone and computer were apparently destroyed and in an altercation with his wife, her eye was damaged to the point of needed surgery.

I am not surprised to hear this.  I am, though, so, so saddened by it.  

On Talking About Yourself

The day I left Haiti for the Christmas holidays, I was told I was accepted into the second phase of an application process for a fellowship.  Great!  Instructions for phase 2?  “Tells us more about yourself.  Use a visual format, be creative and concise.”

Everyone I spoke to about it seemed enthusiastic.  But.  What would you say?  What story would you tell?  Personal?  Professional?  Not how, mind you.  I wasn’t so worried about the “visual format” part.  But what story to tell?

I really enjoyed talking to other people about what stories they would tell, to hear what stories they thought I should tell.  What story would you tell?