from Kenya, with love.

Who:
Martin; 21 yr old Volunteer Mentor
Wilfred; 23 yr old Agricultural Development Coordinator
Maureen; hilarious God-send of a cook and washing woman
Pauline; single mother teacher
Lin; 28 yr old Chinese volunteer from Germany
Me; 21 yr old American from Uganda

What:
Volunteer project in community development

When: Dec. 15 to Jan. 5

Where: HAVOCO compound, top of the Hill, Wagusu Village, Bondo District, KENYA

Ready. Set. Go.

12.17.2010
the kids had a blast discovering my tattoos and petting thm- then flapping their arms around mimmicking birds like the ones on my foot.. taught al the kids to make fish faces…then joke of all jokes: Pauline had me ”teach maths” (me, the most numerically challenged person on the planet, teaching addition to the kids that don’t speak English…) also: i have committed to not shaving until I get to Sweden. I haven’t since i left Mukono anyway, i see no point in starting now.
12.18.2010
from The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho: ”No heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.”
Math problem: 3 people need to pay 180Kshs each on a bus to Kisumu. 2 decide to cover the fee for the 3rd…one pays 500Kshs for himself and ½ of the 3rds fee…then changes his mind and pays for 2 people. Needs change. The second pays 200Kshs to cover her fee, gives 90 to the 1st, asks for change. Ticket man is confused. Can’t imagine why.
12.20.2010
Martin took me to town today to see all the gold mines, and i came back to find Maureen washing all my laundry. She even did my delicates…bless her heart. ☺ i feel like i have lost MY language here, living on the compound entrenched in broken English, bits of Chinese and German, KiSwahili and the local language: Dmluo. I feel like i have severed all connection to MY mother tongue…
12.21.2010
thought process today: wake up homesick. Brainstorm finding a way to contact Ben & Sean, borrow a few hundred dollars, say ’screw it’ to Sweden and jump a plane to be home for Christmas. Take stock of fact that it will be ridiculous…that i will waste a paid-for ticket to Sweden, will disappoint Beatrice and let down all the people back home who supported me coming here, and let down this program. Reject thought. Take bucket bath. Dance to phone radio with Maureen and realize: i CAN, in fact, do this.
12.22.2010
this afternoon i drew elementary-style drawings of butterflies and boats and birds for the kids to colour in, since they have no colouring books. The donkey drank my bathwater tonight…furry bastard.
…and from there, sitting at the plain wooden table in the yard (still holding all the ½ eaten remnants of dinner), seeing the white plastic chair across from me just barely lit by what starlight can reach it- i think: maybe i should take a picture of this romantic glow of stars on plastic on a Kenyan night- until i see: a chair is still a chair. Even when there’s no one sitting there. Even when it’s dirt smudged plastic is glowing clean as doll porceline in the gentle light of the stars…but of course, ”starlight” does not have the same kind of maturity and poetic effect as the moon, ergo:

a chair
in the moonlight
is still a chair.

12.23.2010 turning point
today i was in all my glory as i ”taught colouring” to the kids. I was elated as i dispensed handfuls of crayolas to the kids and watched them fill in the pictures i drew. I almost cried seeing the pride in their eyes as they held up their pictures for me to ”grade” with a thumbs-up sign. it was beautiful. A true transformation, of white pages to coloured creations, and of my attitude here in Kenya.
12.25.2010
from Paul Auster’s ”The Locked Room”
…there was a certain pleasure in this, i believe- to experience language as a collection of sounds, to be forced to the surface of words where meanings vanish- but it was also quite wearing, and it had the effect of shutting me up in my thoughts…
12.28.2010 (un)HolyNight
the opened child’s game and the
boss’ neck tie lie discarded
in the same pile under a tree
of glitter and anniversary ornaments

the scent of cinnamon and
stale perfume crawls up the chimney-
blocking Santa’s way with all
of the weight of holiday temptations.

The party’s over. Downstairs the record
Is still spinning beside a bowl
Of tinsel and tangerines…
Silent night. Holy night.

12.29.2010
helped with HAVOCO budgeting plans for 2011 term and started to look into revisions for the diet of the feeding program…
my legs are getting really hairy.
I feel fat from chapati.
My face is breaking out.
My feet look (and smell) like hell.
But God is good.

of mangoes and Nabokov

back in Nairobi. off to istanbul --> stockholm in just a few short hours!

i left behind the lakeside, but dusty, village of wagusu by night bus yesterday. it was a difficult (but in a few hours after treating myself to a real shower and a bar of chocolate, i'm sure i'll also say "rewarding") 19 days of surprises and challenges (including lack of water and cockroaches and latrines). i am sorry to leave behind a wonderful staff at HAVOCO - Home Adventures Volunteer Organization and Community Development Project- and the bright, toothy grins of all the children.
by day, at our little compound overlooking THE most glorious view of Lake Victoria and the surrounding mountains, i "taught colouring" to the 20ish kids at the centre- drawing boats and elephant butts and rocket ships each night by the light of my peppermint candle (thanks Mona & Michael!) for the kids to fill in with crayons the next morning. and by night, Wilfred (the agricultural development manager) and i would enjoy our dinner under the whole sprinkling of stars that the Kenyan sky has to offer.
there were many lonely and awkward moments, ergo my completion of a vast reading list from the cement stoop of my small room:
the alchemist- paulo coelho
the girl who kicked the hornet's nest- stieg larsson
She- Saul Williams (multiple times)
the new york trilogy- paul auster
the talking horse and the sad girl and the village under the sea- mark haddon
and approximately 30 short stories by Vladimir Nabokov

but despite the challenges, God provided many small reprieves, tender moments bursting with simply beauty- like Wilfred returning from the afternoon market on several occasions to set before me a bowl of fresh, juicy sweet mangoes as i lost myself in afternoons with my Russian literature.
i promise to write more, but for now i can't seem to quite step away far enough to properly mold the past 3 weeks into words...and in any case,
"sooner or later i will run out of words, you see.
everyone has just so many words inside him." (Paul Auster, city of glass)

radio silence

Joke of all jokes: someone from the campus maintenance crew decided, just yesterday afternoon, to install a mirror in our bathroom. As if, after this entire semester of checking ourselves out in random windows and shards of broken mirror only big enough to see parts of your face at a time, we really want to see what we look like now after our semester of dirt and greasy foods and sunburns. Very funny, UCU.

I apologize for the silent treatment I've been giving this blog site the past few days… Life has been running at rapid speed these last couple weeks that we have had on campus. Finals are over, I've started a collection box of unwanted clothing under my bed, and our dorm rooms look like the aftermath of a mild hurricane with all our clothes half packed and ziplocks suffocating all free space.

It has been a flurry of activity these past couple weeks around campus with the impending farewell looming over all our heads. I met a sterling group of individuals just about a week ago at a house party. After climbing a mountain to their place later in the week, they showed us around their used-to-be-hotel-now-rented-out-by-students apartments, took us a to a balcony of one of their friends' place to dance, and pointed out the night lights of Kampala and the dark abyss that was Lake Victoria under the moonless night in the distance. It has been a week of new friends, chilling with old friends, watching children throw stones at monkeys, laughing at the frazzled comments of all of USP students going slightly crazy here with the stress of the end of the semester, and eating all the chapati we can get our hands on- now that we realize we'll never be able to eat Rolex properly outside of Uganda. We have fought grasshoppers for showering rights, swapped clothing up and down the hallway of our dorm, said goodbye to host families, done our laundry by hand for the last time (I have decided I will pay someone in Kenya to do mine. I am so over this part of Africa!), and started going camera happy in efforts to capture all the little things we have been taking for granted all semester. There is excitement and heartache and a chaotic "cluster-cuss" (Fantastic Mr. Fox) of other emotions all jumping around our little community as sporadically and unpredictable as the twitching grasshoppers that have invaded our place like the plague of the Old Testament. (those little buggers may taste good, but I've decided that's about all they've got goin' for themselves)

Other events of the past few days:
- Read aloud at Poetry Night- the final one of the semester. We set up desks on the open porch balcony of M-block and under one florescent light at an old wooden podium, surrounded by friends and strangers I've met through the various poetry readings I've attended, I was liberated. Completely.
I read aloud two poems I'd done this semester- one that I've posted, another that I wrote that day. And received the best feedback I could have imagined, and two pieces of candy :)
- The Bemba Boys headed up to Gulu last weekend for an introduction ceremony and gave Mark and I keys to their rooms. While the cats were away, Mark took it upon himself to throw a little house party… then a whole army of us went out dancing and I had two profound thoughts in my "Friday-night-state" of my mind:
1. How many people would have to be on this rooftop club before we got too heavy for the roof to actually hold us up?
2. There is a whole level of solidarity among dancers- this out-of-world connection that is just unique to every other scenario of strangers meeting. Now I've met strangers and had the time of my life in coffee shop conversations with bikers fresh from the road, taking a break for a sip o' Joe…there were the 3 wayward pilgrims I met at the Source of the Nile…and there's the occasional meeting on various forms of public transportation…but meeting other dancing fools at clubs in Uganda- now THAT's interesting. Friday night without our usual defensive line of Bembians watching our backs left us mzungu ladies vulnerable to…well…everyone. Now usually, that's an intimidating factor- being the only mzunugu in a club draws in attention that is generally undesired. However, something must have been in the air last Friday as everyone that approached us seemed to just be chill with dancing and carrying on with the evening respectfully refraining from inappropriate comments or advances. I spent hours having flashbacks to scenes of Save the Last Dance as I kicked it with Innocent and Isaac- two random gents with impeccable moves. We literally drew a circle of onlookers. Pretty cool. But I digress, there is this whole level of understanding and communication with people here that I meet at clubs- you don't need to know anyone's name, you don't need to know their profession, nothing about them is relevant if they can move their feet and keep the beat. Beautiful. Rooftop dancers: UNITE!
- I had a pair of pants made…African style.
- Photo shoot with Lauren
- Girl-bonding night of epic proportions with my crew: Taui, Esther & Lauren. We’re like Sex in the City…or maybe Celibacy in the Jungle is more appropriate…either way, I've been elected Carrie Bradshaw. After a certain Ugandan male tried to play not just one, but two of us (what was he thinking?)- we were brainstorming what sort of vengeance to seek…and Lauren had the brilliant, overly-sweet-chocolate induced revelation: "I know! Let's pour water in his bed!" <--(meredith/heidi: you'll appreciate that all I could think of was the Kate Nash song; "intelligent input darling/why don't you just have another beer then?")…after rejecting that juvenile attempt at a subliminal message prank, I Gossip Girl style texted my sister and Lauren and I headed to town to buy a ridiculous pair of panties which we all four signed and sneakily left on said Ugandan male's pillow..."from the girls!"…an appropriate response to the nature of his douchebaggery. To our surprise, upon visiting his hostel later that evening, we found that the light socket that has been pointedly empty all semester long, of all nights, finally had a light bulb installed in it and was casting a spotlight on the panties we had left which were GLUED TO THE WALL. Ergo the new version of the phrase "Hurry up before the fat lady sings…" becoming "Hurry up, before the panties are glued to the wall." At that point the whole situation just turned a whole corner of ridiculous that nothing could be taken seriously or furiously anymore. At least we got the last laugh.
- I met another prince. That makes four.

I had to do a capstone project this week for my Faith & Action class that was done by the USP staff this semester… it was essentially supposed to be an essay asking about our experience and how we're processing our stay here in Uganda. Big fat joke. I can't even begin. Especially while I'm not even going home yet. I can't quite step back from this big oceanic mess of experiences and cultural lessons and begin to paint a serene picture of a beach sunset because I'm still swimming- I'm here for a few more days and then start my three week solo trek in Kenya. I can't quite walk away from East Africa and begin to process yet, like the staff is practically begging me to do, because I'm still in it. That's a weird feeling.

Sunday morning we leave for Entebbe for a couple days of debriefing. A Ugandan asked me what debriefing was…I just told him, "You know when you get pants-ed? And someone just rips your pants down as a joke? Ya…it's like that. But with your emotions."
Our debrief goes until Tuesday, then some of the Honours Students are coming by to wish us one final farewell before everyone flies out about 2am Wednesday morning. I will be staked out at the airport…all day… (Bea: many thanks for the Swedish Mystery Package at the hotel, I'll be glad that day to have those books you sent!)… until my flight to Kenya @ 3.00pm. Please pray that after all this my program in Kenya is not a scam and there WILL actually be someone waiting to pick me up at the airport that afternoon. It's not the end of the world if things don't work out, but it would be a hell of a lot easier if I don't have to figure something else out. :)

From here until the point that I have access to an internet café or new SIM card for my phone in Kenya, there is no communication available to me. I hereby enter radio silence.

classroom full of poetry

Today was a complete accomplishment.
As the semester is wrapping up, today was our last African Literature class with the beloved and endearing Dr. Mukakanya- gem of a man…oversized clothes, big glasses, a cane, and a voice that makes you want grandchildren just so that he can read them fairytales and short stories. The encouraging and enthusiastic professor and lover of teaching that he is dedicated this afternoon's class to letting us "perform" pieces with the whole class. Poetry was invited, short stories, even plays- though he had little faith that we could accomplish a whole play in a semester's time… the classroom that has been our academic prison all semester (hosting every USP class that we have and thus trapping us time and time again daily in it's four blank, uninspired, white walls and ink splotch under the chalkboard which never quite gets erased) today breathed life for the first time- excited, inspired, intimate LIFE expressed - raw and vulnerable- in our rhymes, our cadences, our lines, our voices. It was fantastic to have "sharing time" with the whole class. And moment of all moments- today I did the unthinkable. At the end of class, when I could no longer remain hidden in the back corner- try as I might- the professor called on me to come share with the class. I frantically whipped out a poem I had jotted down in the middle of my beloved, worn, weathered, leather journal- and I read aloud the piece that was hidden between doodles and prayers and notes which I never thought would emerge to others' ears. I've never read anything I've written (that's that personal or…poetic) aloud. Ever.
Mark Corey- the token writer of our group whom I had confided in about my shyness of my own written words- was proud and beaming like a father should at his child's every recital, sports game, award ceremony, anything.
It was exhilarating.

My heart grows fonder, still, but weak-
weak from the always present
state of caring
observing
feeling.
When this, my heart, was designed
did the Craftsman know
to what aches it would be subjected-
what great cares it would carry?
But carry it must
must carry on, carry on
on to the finale,
on to the finish line (then)
line them up!
All the burdens we've carried
(my heart and i)- all this way…
that was the only way… to carry the loss
carry the pain
carry the cross
carry the shame
carry the joy
joy to the world,
world without end:
You carried my heart, again and again.

swing life away

So let's pack our bags and settle down where palm trees grow.
We live on front porches and swing life away…

I have tried to refrain from blogging mundane activity, as I don't think most people would find daily things very interesting to read about. I try and capture beauty and accentuate it by sharing beautiful experiences on here, but to be fair: I find just about everything beautiful… ergo a slightly less exciting, but nonetheless meaningful few days to share with you:

This post coming to you from my perch on my bunk-bed; where I have spent the past few afternoons since it is literally too blazing hot to be outside in the mid afternoon. (conveniently I don't have classes at this time, so I get a few hours of relaxing, reading-- Stieg Larsson currently- and taking in as much water as I possibly can) Today I'm finally coming down from an exciting weekend that really stretched to yesterday (it feels like) in exhilaration and exhaustion simultaneously.
Last Thursday was Lauren's birthday- thus warranting another night spent out on the town with some USP & Honours alike friends. Friday class was converted to a theater for the filming of Cry the Beloved Country (a film severely lacking in creativity as far as dialogue was concerned…) and after that class I received mail from my beloved Roommate Heidi back home-- a card complete with bits of dried lavender from the flower shop she is currently working at back in Massachusetts. I stuck the pocket of lavender into my journal - now riddled with the scent. Beautiful. I think if I were ever to actually sit down and record an album of my piano music, I'd name the album Dried Lavender. Just throwing that out there.
Friday night was another epic adventure with the boys from Bemba Hostel. There's nothing like dancing on a rooftop under the stars. And there's nothing quite like the smells of a night at an African club:
The smell of cologne and perfume mixed with that slightly sweet and ever so familiar scent of body odor (not the stinky kind of body odor like you smell when that one gross kid walks into a classroom full of freshly showered people, but the sweet kind that just happens out of your pores as result of a fun night of dancing, or when you've been running, or just moving…)
Cigarette smoke (the un-suffocating kind that allows you to pick up the waspy aroma but still breath clean night air)
Beer on the breath of whichever mzungu-stunned guy comes over to dance with you (because as one of the two mzungu in a crowd of at least 200 Africans…you're kind of a novelty)
The ever present smell of trash burning in the distant- a sweet musk of wood, citrus, nutty smells and potatoes…? Maybe…
All the enticements of the senses just produce the sort of night that makes you catch your breath in the abrupt, overwhelmingly lovely realization that "O my gosh…I'm in Africa". ((this is what dreams are made of))

Saturday was almost less of a productive day than Friday, and then Saturday night was a night of pure glamour. The 5th Annual Honours College Alumni/Reunion Dinner was hosted at the Red Rose Hotel in Kampala. It was a marvelous afternoon of getting back in touch with my feminine side (a nice break from Spartacus) as Esther dolled me up -complete with eye make up, Heidi be proud!- she and I and Taui all swapped dresses and earrings until we could passably make ourselves look cute in all each other's clothing. Then listening to Eminem and wearing a bakini top in rebellion of putting on clothes while there was still preparation to be done for Lauren, I sat and stitched up a dress for her to wear that night and just nearly pierced my lip with the sewing needle for all my loss of common sense in my deep, rap-music-induced concentration. Finally, all of us ready- we jumped ship and went to grab coffee before the dinner…but coffee turned into the best milkshakes of our lives!- then we joined the dinner of all our friends from Honours in their absolute best dress. It was a fun night, but at one point I leaned over to Mark to express with agony how old I felt… There we sat, at a dinner with a high table and honoured guests giving speeches…making announcements about marriages, engagements, and births of the past year and giving recognition for career advancements made in the past year (including appointments to the top gas & oil company in Uganda, International Justice Mission, and the United Nations- no small feats) and asking alumni to donate money to this and that for the college… it was the sort of dinner that I only ever had seen in movies where the socially and financially elite attend and carry shiny little clutches and scrape liver pâtés around on their plates until the speaker is done and the classy music starts up… I just felt so old being old enough to sit with my peers as they talked about career advances and babies popping left and right and pulling at the purse-strings of alumni. When did this happen? I miss the sort of dinners where I was pushed over to the kids table, expected to do nothing less than fling food, cause raucous, and try and wipe my mouth on the table cloth instead of my napkin…who am I kidding… I totally wiped my mouth on the tablecloth Saturday night, let's be real.
After the dinner a whole crew of us went out to meet the Bemba Boys at a club in Kampala, where Esther and I both lost 20,000/= to a pick-pocketing fat man in a white sweatshirt. So today I spent the afternoon sewing a pocket to the inside of my jeans…complete with a button. Ain't no hands rippin' me off while I'm bustin' a move again. Nuh uh. We literally danced until 6am… I think I may have sat down on a bar stool for 1/2 a song. Maybe. Between climbing these hills and this mountain that I live on multiple times a day just to get back and forth from class to my room I'm building up rock-solid calf muscles and with all the dancing, my legs have never been in such good shape. Shazam.

Today was just a relaxing, breezy day. Class was cancelled so I thoroughly enjoyed tea time with Tony & Esther - complete with INCREDIBLE instant coffee mix from Starbucks (thank you Mona). In the States, I would have scoffed at the idea of this VIA coffee, but here- combined in milk tea…it's just about the most sacred thing around. Hallelujah for caramel flavoured coffee mix and fresh boiled milk :)
Spent the rest of the morning curled up in a nightgown (because yes. Those are normal here.) eating Swedish fish, stitching up my pants, and doodling cityscape concepts for painting when I get home. Note to self: start bringing acrylics with me everywhere- no matter what.
Walked down to pick eggs with Tony for our baking date later today; there is a massive Thanksgiving feast (expected 70-80 people) for all USP and the ex-Pats on campus tomorrow so the job of the USP students is to provide desserts. Tony, Mark & I made pumpkin chocolate chip cookies this afternoon with real pumpkin listenin' to the beats of Citay and Bach. It's a long way from recipe-testing these kinds of cookies with Allison Kavin year after year in preparation for the staff-Thanksgivings we always have at the Phed Farm. Kavin- I'll miss experimenting with spices with you this year.
I'm dreading leaving the simplicity of life here. Where afternoons are casually spent on hostel balconies listening to jams, looking out at the sunset over the valley, chatting with anyone walking by on their way to and fro the local well at the bottom of the road. Where time is spent gently swinging on the swings up the hill, or walking about ten minutes or so to get a cold Fanta (which just somehow tastes so much better in a glass bottle), or doodling and listening to De Capulet (you're welcome, Hannah).

of pianos and proposals

Yesterday was Eid al-Adha- the Islamic holiday celebrating the story of Abraham and honouring his willingness to sacrifice his son before God. The holiday is dependent on the moon cycle, so it was not announced that this holiday was actually occurring until yesterday, Monday night. Gwyn had all of us USP students over to her place Monday night for a feast of desserts (chocolate chip oatmeal cookies and delicious, dark chocolate brownies) and a game night. After this, Lauren and I strolled down to fetch rolexes and came back to sit and read our Eat.Pray.Love books in each other's company.
We brought in the Muslim holiday with our form of indulgence and recognition of sacrificial living. We jumped a taxi into Kampala and promptly went over to the Serena Hotel- Kampala's (and for that matter, I think Uganda's) only 5 star hotel. The place was an absolute palace of beauty and warmth and relaxing, spacious architecture. We had been told by a friend that he plays piano there occasionally and so I went in on a quest to find my heart and soul back in the eighty-eight. We traipsed all through the upstairs lobby in search of this piano, which was rumored to be in the lounge, and finally I spotted it. I kid you not- my heart stopped. It literally did a little flip- the likes of which my full body has only ever been able to replicate on a trampoline with the assistance of serious spring action. Before annoying all of the hotel- I went up to the woman sitting at a table near the lounge and asked, "Nnyabo, could I please play (quietly!) a bit?" and she smiled and nodded, "Kale, kale. Is ok." I gingerly lifted the cover, took the felt strip off the keys, and sat on the small, squeaky, undersized-barstool style seat.
In a flash second when my fingers touched the keys I remembered freshman year at Gordon when I discovered the magnificence of the recital hall in Phillips. I vowed not to play in that hall until the first snow- so that I could fully embrace the majesty of that place overlooking the pond with perfect floor-to-ceiling windows and it's high, intricately designed ceilings of perfect acoustics. The first time it snowed, as luck would have it, I was working a six hour shift in the dining hall and couldn't get to the piano. By the time my shift was over it had rained and all the snow was gone. But the second time it snowed- by God- I raced down there and just let the perfect winter envelop my soul through the snow on the pond, the snow falling, the snow still stuck to my shoes as I kicked them off to sit at the grand and lose myself in playing. The scene should have been in a movie.
All this jumped across my mind in a split second and then the noise. All the noise. I forgot how much of a power surge it is to sit, quite still- straight, controlled- and produce such sound with the very many delicate flicks of one's fingers. I could have balanced M&Ms on the backs of my hands all the while filling that whole hotel with a small interlude in the key of D that made many fine suited young businessmen come to stand and listen with polite interest. (Mary, my piano teacher when I was 8, would have been so proud…I was always more interested in eating those M&Ms than balancing them during lessons)
It was a miraculous, emotional, holy few moments of reuniting my heart and soul- as I feel they've only been drifting aimlessly from each other since being here and having nothing to ground them. Once I felt like a whole person again, I closed the lid and stood, the miniature barstool creaking obnoxiously, announcing my finale. Lauren and I went to the bar downstairs and had a lovely chat with Richard the amicable bartender, and ordered Irish coffee- which was complimentarily served with a small array of olives and cheese. So classy. As we sat amidst the leather couches and polished wood and classy African stone carvings on the wall, delicately sipping our Irish coffees and occasionally pretending like we had the attention span to get through our copies of Eat. Pray. Love., Lauren piped up: "You know, I'm not ready to go home yet, but this is so nice!" <-- just the ability to be in a Westernized kind of environment where there were Americans and Brits in business suits, a fully stocked bar with familiar libations, and a general air of comfort. That is not to say that everything in America is comfortable, or by any means that Uganda is not comfortable (I actually am more relaxed 95% of the time HERE than in the States), but just an acknowledgment that, like it or not, we were both born into Western society and (quite unfortunately…or maybe not) that is what puts us at ease now- the going back to that sort of familiarity. While it is not with an air of self-sacrifice that we have come to Uganda, we are slowly realizing all the things that we have indeed given up in coming here. It is yet undecided in my mind if I feel like these are sacrifices are detrimental to my mental health (or physical health), but living without such things as used to be staples (easy transportation systems, ever available caffeine, reliable communication systems, certain appliances) is taking it's toll. Again: not in a sad or painful way, just in a noticeable way. I do, however, stand by my former declaration of loving life without a mirror here. In my building the only mirrors around are the small hand held mirrors that individuals have purchased themselves in markets, or even just broken shards of mirror. I never considered myself a very vain person before coming here, and never wore make up so there was no cause to ever really look in a mirror that often, but even so- I find a massive relief and self confidence in not knowing what I look like everyday. I also have this immense sense of self confidence that is just paired with living in a culture where self image is not about your face but rather how you conduct yourself socially. In addition, I (and other USP girls I have been talking to) feel, for quite honestly the first time in a long time, completely content with being single here. With the extreme taboo of public displays of affection here, there are no couples making out on park benches or even holding hands here- and with that total void of public emphasis on relationships I find that I don't feel pressured at all to be in a relationship- which I can't say I've ever felt in America. For the first time in years I feel like no one is pushing me to rush into some relationship, yet on the flip side- a good chunk of African men are indeed begging for me be in one with them… strange paradox to be in. I will say, on that note, that it will be a self esteem shock to go back to America where every other man is not proposing to me from the side of the street. Ah well.

of instant coffee and swedish fish

hands down: best package sender award hereby goes to Mona & Michael Holsapple.
all USP girls of Josephine Tucker Hall thank you- not only for the beautiful American delicacies which were sent that we are all enjoying- but we thank you immensely for the atomic BOMB of explosive joy that rippled through the building as we unearthed, together, all these tasty gifts. there has not been such screaming, shrieking, laughter, and overwhelming ecstasy in many moons here!
thank you M&M :)
much love.