backlog, July 2: arts and exploration

Mama Rocio, the local director of my exchange between Columbia University and the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo, invited the four of us fellows on a day trip to the second largest Dominican city of Santiago. After leaving the capital at the crack of dawn, we arrived in Salcedo, for a tour of el Museo Hermanas Maribel. This museum, which is actually an estate, is something of a national landmark and stands in tribute to three women, regarded as national heroines, for their resistance to and opposition of, and ultimately their assassination by the dictator, Rafael Trujillo.

Daughters of an upper-class family, who felt the sting of Trujillo’s reign, the Mirabel sisters formed a group of opponents to the regime. Aside from being empowered and fierce women, an interesting and home-hitting aspect, for me, about these ladies was that they were known as Las Mariposas (or the butterflies) within their underground movement and were referred to as such within their political dealings…During the visit we had the good fortune to meet and speak with Dedé Mirabal, the one sister of four who was not assassinated in 1960. Her life’s work has been dedicated to preserving the memory and legacy of her sisters Minerva, Patria, and Teresa (for the record, I’m assuming that she was a major contributor to Julia Álvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies). For a woman of more than 80 years, her spirit was so uplifting and her attitude positively pervasive. I only hope to be able to live as strongly as she has… this said - visiting the estate, which is covered with both ornamental and living butterfly tributes - a month after the three-year anniversary of losing Katelyn, was particularly powerful for me. It was gorgeous.

Our day continued with a visit to the art and cultural center in the city of Santiago. I wont lie and tell you that I found the arts more exiting than the action – witnessing the rolling and preparation of fine Dominican cigars was the best!

The day of exploring Dominican arts and culture and history continued with a visit to the Candido Bido Museum in the town of Bonao. Bido is evidently a master artist in the DR and has started a great organization teaching creative arts to youth from all economic walks of life. The collection within the museum was surprisingly impressive and I found myself taken aback by the quality and sophistication of some pieces. In particular, check out the crazy furniture design, Los Angeles, by Julio Valentín.

balancing act

Subsequent visits to the Bateyes have been less shocking and more as per my expectations. The Mobile Health Clinics enter the community bright and early, encounter a long line of patients waiting to see the doctor, there’s an intake/documentation system, the patient is seen, referrals written, repeat.

It’s not exactly fun to see the pregnant teens who’ve not had any pre-natal care and are in their 6th month. It’s painful to see people’s faces when they realize that the prescription they’ve just been given is in fact not available from the mobile clinic and that procuring such drugs will mean a long, long walk into the capital to spend money on drugs that are unaffordable. It’s terrible when at 3:00, after 8 hours and 40 patients have been served and the one doctor is ready to leave, a family of four show up wanting to been seen, yet are told they’re too late and need to wait until the next visit, two months later.

In comparison, it’s so easy to forget all this misery as soon as one leaves the Bateyes and returns to the Capital. It feels light years away. I’m guilty of forgetting too, given how much more comfortable it is to work here in comparison to other field assignments I’ve had the privilege of working on. Given that I’m enjoying my time spent here in which I’m NOT Working, and how permitted and encouraged this enjoyment is, it’s difficult to stay focused on the numbing inequalities and social injustices, when I’m not standing in the middle of them. What I really mean is that the comforts of the ex-pat lifestyle here - with friends, modern public transportation, lux beaches, and wi-fi – are keeping me significantly distracted from the misery and circumstances then I’ve ever been within a developing country.

And this blog has suffered for it accordingly. Evidently, it’s only when I feel able to compare things here with things somewhere else that I feel able to write something interesting. As I head into the field with surveys to implement and photos to take, I’m promising myself to stay more connected to the realities on the ground. Vamos a ver.

p.s. Is anyone even reading this?

back from the beach

I ran away again this weekend, this time to the north coast. The waters were crystal clear and more placid than imaginable, the vistas refreshing and the company perfect. Motorcycle rides through national parks, fresh catches for dinner, and new friends are nothing but reinvigorating.

A Night on the Town in the Zona Colonial

Every Sunday night something rather magical occurs in the middle of Santo Domingo's Zona Colonial, the first settlement made by Columbus in the New World: a wild dance party of hundreds of well-heeled Quisqueyanos take over a plaza in front of ancient ruined Monasteries of former splendor, sipping Presidente Light and snacking on pastelitos. A live band plays Bachata and Salsa and Merengue for hours and hours and old friends reunite with new ones. Balmy summer night delight, indeed.

Me and Jean, a dear friend from ATL days, serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer here.

backlog - June 20 - Gaga in the Bateyes

It took me all of half a second to understand that “agárrate” meant “hold on” when the random man with a motorcycle took off, heading against traffic, on a 6 lane highway. I guess he decided to help me as I was wearing a black dress and running late to my first meeting with the executive director of MOSCTHA. The wind in my un-helmeted hair was a welcome rush after the cab, which a police officer put me in, dropped me off in the middle of no where, following a 15 minute walk in the wrong direction, after exiting the subway at the incorrect stop. A good start to this first meeting as the ED, el Doctor, kept me waiting for 45 minutes insisting that I, “la jovencita,” drink orange juice.

The work may not be as exhilarating as the moto-ride, but it’s becoming interesting and I’m finally getting my feet wet. Literally. Who knew that a trip to a batey meant traipsing through mud and cow paddies to get to the latrine?

Picture this disparity: a five minute drive off the perfectly paved road, lined with mini-malls and car dealerships, lie crop-fields after field only punctuated by trickling rivers and the shrillness of Dominican kids laughing. Houses with tin roofs, rotting wood walls, and a burnt out edifice or two are all that constitute the neighborhood. Perhaps a brightly painted “Palé” sign indicates that one can buy lottery tickets, and a small “colmado” – the ubiquitous Dominican general corner store-cum-bar - sells warm soda, sugar, eggs and toilet paper in the center of town. Kids run about with muddy toes and snotty faces, some lucky to have shoes, but most not. Old men sit and watch the road as if it were television, and mid-twenty year olds are unanimously missing from the scene. My first visit to Yaco, one of the Batey communities that MOSCTHA works with, felt so similar to an east African village, I almost felt the culture shock that I never seemed to experience there, because there, the reality was merely the manifestation of long-standing expectations of mine. That was Africa; this is 600 miles from home.

I stayed surprised when they kids were first shocked by my whiteness, but then adoringly curious – patting my skin and hair, fascinated by the camera and babies wide-eyed and frightened – and was completely caught off guard upon realizing that the Gaga performance that we went to visit could have been rolled out directly from TASO’s cultural performers.

Little did I know that the Gaga, originating from the Haitian ‘rara’ music and dance street festival stylings, is in fact derived from a celebration of African ancestry of the “Afro-Haïtian masses.” Wikipedia informed me that Vodou is often part of the processesion which serves to unite communities across cultural divides and bring people together (details which were unfortunately lost in translation from Kreyòl, to Spanish to English. Regardless, it was really a fun introduction to a Batey and hopefully you’ll find it interesting and curious as well. Check the video and photos below, more photos here.

June 10 - 15

We finally went out on our own – no accompaniment from friends of friends, or students of the university tasked with entertaining us – and had a blast. Everyone has talked to me about living it up at the bars of Santo Domingo, and naturally we wound up at the most Miami-esque venue imaginable.

Picture this: three gringas emerge from a taxi during a rain storm and enter an Italian restaurant full of beds. The roof was open, allowing for deafeningly loud house-music (with a bit of trancey dancey pop thrown in for good measure) to escape to the sky. Within thirty minutes we made friends with a slew of artists – photographers, cinematographers, and rock stars (from an, evidently, acclaimed band) – who showed us how to have proper fun, Dominican style (Merengue lessons included).

Little beats a dance party with new friends – except maybe having an unexpected, mid-week feria/holiday day-off from work! Accordingly, Margaret and I spent a relaxed afternoon exploring la Zona Colonial, the area almost “overflowing” with colonial history that borders our neighborhood (Gazcue).

The next day, another unexpected surprise and I was out the door to Cabarete, the Domincan Republic’s Kite-surfing capital. Even though I spent last weekend at the beach, and have a big week ahead of me, who could say no to a free ride? We rented a condo in the middle of gringo-landia – I barely spoke a word of Spanish the entire weekend, oops – and, again, stared out to sea while lazing about. I’m finally realizing why people have Caribbean relaxation dreams! And for someone notoriously bad at relaxing, this is serious progress.

June 9 – Movers and Shakers, the Health System and a visit to San Juan

I turned on the television for the first time today and was a bit taken aback when shots of the Brooklyn Museum were the first images to pop onto the screen. I shouldn’t have been: it’s not easy to miss the connections between NY and the DR. Though, in a country of approximately 10 million people (a country boasting the biggest economy in the Caribbean and its leading tourist destination), it’s still wild to realize that the diaspora of approximately 1 million Dominicans is mostly concentrated in the City I left.

Nearly everyone here has family there. The people talk in the streets about Washington Heights! I’m clearly learning a lot about things I never anticipated: the DR is the largest exporter of immigrants to the City, with (evidently) 10% of the public school system servicing Dominican-Yorkers who are the second largest Latino population of NY; according to historian Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof (read his very interesting series of Q&A’s on the DR and NY here ) the musical culture of Merengue was “intensely shaped” by NY’s rock and disco eras; and, perhaps more interestingly, the powers of racial politics, in terms of resisting a black and white divide (though not so much in terms of racism and discrimination against Haitians) between the full-color-spectrum population here, has manifested in NY in a similar way, in that the sheer number of Afro-Caribbean populations within the five boroughs enables rather homogeneous enclaves where such distinctions are not necessarily required.

I’ve also been surprised to learn just how historic this place is. The first site of permanent European settlement in the Americas (in part by the French in Haiti, the other half by the Spaniards), the island of Hispaniola is dotted with colonial reminders: handfuls of cobblestone, narrow streets, copious churches and cathedrals, and familiar sounding names like Bolivar and Ramirez. Independence from the Spanish was followed by a Haitian take over, then by a US occupation (between 1916 -24), and subsequently by a military dictatorship, before bringing about the current democracy (If you’re interested in more history or details of this place, wiki can tell you about the pre-Colombian days of the indigenous Taíno peoples).

The Ruins of the San Francisco Monastery - the oldest Monastery in the Americas

This all said, there are big schism-like divides here. This country abuts Haiti – only 560 miles away from my home state of Florida and the poorest country in the hemisphere - in which everything appears to be abysmally worse (details on the Haitian/Dominican relationship when my summer research solidifies further). And while you can travel by Mercedes, use high-speed wireless internet, and drop $600 a night at an all-inclusive resort, this place is still teeming with poverty and underdevelopment.

During this past week, the complexities of this country have become more forthright. As guests of the Ministry of Health, Vivian, Margaret, Kate and I travel to San Juan de la Maguana, the capital of the province of San Juan near the Haitian border, to visit their system of public-health care delivery in rural communities. As for contradictions and calamities – it was good, really good, for me to get out and see some legitimate social and economic need to mentally locate this country as a “developing” one – it was very curious to travel as guests of the state (more or less) and visit the proclaimed best-resourced and best-run public health clinics in the country.

Only two years old, the system is a network (o “red” en español), of small health clinics that serve individual communities and refer patients in need of follow up or laboratory services to the appropriate venues. While this sounds rather basic and logical, the majority of persons with health issues here still go directly to the Emergency Room or Hospital, creating a terribly over-burdened system that doesn’t function properly.

One of the primary health centers, a doctor, and an epidemiological mapping shot:

A visit to the Hospital was rather unnerving at points, as we witnessed bloody footprints on the ground, abandoned corridors, and extremely malnourished children. However, on the whole, the place functions remarkably well and seems to run fine:

Backlog – June 7 – Beach Babes

Kate told me at 9 am that we had to run away for the weekend. Unable to counter her with a logical reason to stay in the city, I haphazardly packed a bag primarily consisting of beach gear. We didn’t know where we were going, only that we were getting out! Within an hour, our “mama,” Rocio, had us getting in a taxi with sandwiches and mango milkshakes, heading to a bus station. Three hours later we arrived in the “sleepy” fishing village of Bayahibe, a cute waterfront with a strange minority population of Italian shop keepers and laid-back island folk. The neighboring beach hotspot, Playa Dominicus, proved a bit more rowdy and up our alley for a stroll. Get jealous:




It was a glorious escape from the chaos, pollution, and general madness that makes up Santo Domingo. We spent the time staring out to sea, eating incredible Italian gelato, and finally enjoying the island lifestyle.

Making a return by Gua Gua:

Backlog, June 3 - Lost en La Sirena

Today was the first time the Dominican Republic felt anything like Sudan – encouraging me further to re-enter the blogosphere - I was rather desperately walking in circles looking for vegetables, longing for leaves full of more than beta-carotene (mangos are everywhere here…) and something more nutrient-rich than rice and beans. The main difference between this experience and that which it reminded me of, was that today I was standing in a four-storied, air-conditioned, Walmart-esque super-center called La Sirena in which I could buy just about anything I could conceivably need, except for spinach. In a way, this is somewhat representative of how I’m feeling about, and what living and working as a gringa within, the DR is all about: everything is so close, but just seems to miss the mark.

For all the hours studying theories of intervention-mapping, or processes for planning service delivery, it’s rather ironic that I’ve been tasked with creating deliverables that move against the spectrum preferred by “the public health agenda” by a program actually run by my school. I tried explaining this in Spanish and it made even less sense. Cual yo quiero decir es [my new favorite expression: “what I mean to say is…”] that I’ve been told to produce things that are unsubstantiated theoretically which basically goes against everything I’ve studied for the past year. More specifically, the organization I’m working for has asked me to design a health brochure without doing any of the background processes or development of logic models I’ve been trained to do. More on that later.

backlog: back on the boat

My cheeks are a bit pink with sunburn – a visual manifestation of the only real expectation I brought with me this summer here in the Dominican Republic. Six days in and I’m finally feeling more accustomed to the tropical humidity, catcalls, and Dominican Spanish.

To clarify: I’ve come to the glorious island of Hispaniola for a summer internship facilitated through an exchange program between Columbia University and the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (UASD). Dr. Linda Cushman started the exchange 10 years ago, as a program to provide public health students the opportunity to “gain an understanding of the culture, and the social and health factors affecting Latinos on both sides of the ‘Air Bridge’ (NYC and Santo Domingo), through class instruction, observation of public health practice sites, and the practical application of public health methodology in local non-governmental organizations.” The 10 week practicum is designed to meet the needs of health professionals who will be working with Dominican and other Latino youth and families whose experience with the US is characterized by circular migration, and accordingly to improve the capacity of practitioners serving Latinos. At the same time, participating fulfills my academic requirements of a 280-hour practicum and lets me bring my Spanish up to a working/functioning level.

We spent the first week meeting with various important types – someone from the ministry of health, another big up from the university, meeting local university students – and trying to get settled in – trying mofongo and mangú, purchasing cell phones, and signing two month leases on terrazzo floored apartments. Concerning the latter, Margaret and I got lucky with our apartment: a spacious fourth floor 2 bedroom set up, full of rattan wicker furniture and ceiling fans. We even have a respectable maid’s quarter adjacent to the “washing machine” (which is a funny contraption worthy of a separate entry). Kate and Viv were not as lucky, and after finding *their* place too dismal for taking, have started looking elsewhere (something of a nightmare here in STO DMG, evidently) and have spent the week sleeping at our pad. It’s been a full fun house.

As we have yet to begin our actual work we’ve spent our time eating ice-cream, walking along the Malécon, and fantasizing about future weekend trips to the popular tourist destinations with aquamarine waters (evidently the sea and sands closest to Santo Domingo, the capital where I’m living, are heavily polluted and the water is too rough for swimming…). Vamos a ver.

Some images from week one:

At the Ministry of Health:


The four of us (Kate, Margaret, Vivian, y yo):


In the neighborhood:


Out and about -- preparing for a night of Bachata y Merenge:

Locals:

Exhibition Opening!

Drawing Connections

Multiple times a day I’ll start this blog entry in my head. It’s startling to think that I’ve been doing so for a month.

In Dubai I wanted to write about my transition from the Judy of the logic-devoid, sensory-assualting jungles of Kenya, Sudan, and Ethiopia to the Judy of sweltering sands and capitalist construction capital of the world. The transition into the uber-developed Emirate was easy; Sudan felt light years away. I wasn't at all astonished by the fluidity with which I transformed from bush-woman to high-heel wearing, 300$-a-night-hotel sleeping tourist. I forgot all of the mosquitoes, mudboots, and yellow-cabbage instantly. Seventy-two hours later, in Manhattan, with 72 hours before my flight home to Florida, I saw friends, took cabs, bought expensive toys. Only four days later, bathing in Siesta Key's sunshine, did I feel a bit stunned and moved by it all.

I suppose it's contrived to acknowledge that. White bloggers always seem to reflect and comment on their departures and the symbolism of picking up and peacing out: always able to do what the people around us can not. I've been processing that, but like most other bad-bloggers, have been of course too busy to make meaningful entries, overwhelmed by this pace and that offer and those assignments, to take time and concentrate on writing out all of these nonsensical blabberings.

But then, small things start happen.

A headline about Castro winning a humanitarian award was one thing. A 'dictator' we chastise consistently, won the Ubuntu award? Ubuntu - an ethos based on our interpersonal relations with other humans, generosity, community, and fairness - in the headlines transported me instantly back into Addis Ababa's Bole Airport, where chance circumstances exposed me to that spirit, the spirit held by "those people," those who can't get up and leave, and who by their categorical circumstance have every reason to want to do such things, but, who, by their inherent senses, take graceful stock of their situation and don't choose to flee the way I have. Without losing you too much, dear reader, I'll divulge this 'Ubuntu in the Airport' experience:

After all the hullabaloo with immigration and the ministry of the interior and the court house and lost paper work and my laptop being held up in immigration, I wasn’t expecting a smooth departure. When I arrived at Bole International Airport, with two hours before my flight to Dubai, and an immigration officer was unwilling to return my computer to me, we called Save to intervene. When Save gave the go-ahead to release to me, the officials couldn’t find the computer. One hour til take off and they found the computer in the dusty storage holding chamber and told me to pay up. I had been told a price, and naturally, it was wrong. And, naturally again, all the airport banks were all closed. There were no ATMs. My flight out was in 45 minutes and I had no way of paying off my fine. I began debating getting on the plane and leaving my laptop in Africa, in order to escape myself. I tried raising my "what am I supposed to do" voice in desperation just as a handful of immigration staff approached me with an offering.

Four Ethiopians came to rescue me - a woman who cleans, a man who runs the x-ray machine, a man who blew smoke at the tourists, and a woman with beautiful curly hair gave me the money I needed to pay off my computer fine. They pooled together and paid off the four dollar equivalent that was going to cost me either a laptop or a flight out of Africa. In the face of this humbling experience, I could only offer thanks and a conscious appreciation for this atypical salvation, as I ran with my reunited machine to the terminal.

This spirit of giving, and unified action, and doing good in the name of positive living and positive change in humanity, has been repeatedly evoked within the concrete jungle of Manhattan over the past few weeks. I've gone with friends to see the incredible off-broadway production Fela, and was moved both by the afrobeat rhythms of my favorite musician and by this showcasing of the power of concerted efforts to create change. If you know me, you know I am a believer and advocate of the arts for education, advocacy, demonstration, and for generally shaking-people-up to make things different and better for humanity. Seeing Fela's messages against corruption, military-might, human-rights abuses, and the collapse of Nigerian traditional norms, performed for hundreds of people in such a captivating format was overwhelmingly awesome. As was the month-long showing of children's art from around the world at the United Nations headquarters, of which my work in Uganda was a part.

Small signs on the internet have been abundant, but reading this beautiful op-ed piece, about a teacher at an international school in metro-Atlanta, Georgia - in the community of resettled refugees, within which I first began my work in the arts for social change and my work with Sudanese, and my work with refugees and community development - brought my experiences over this summer, in a way, full circle. The writer's look at lives transformed resonated with me so strongly; her "testimony of transformation" concerning both her life and that of her Sudanese student, echoed powerfully with my journey, and in calling attention to the undeniable truth that we are all interdependent for these highly sought after transcendent moments, within which we see our own power and that of those around us cultivated most beautifully.

Ultimately, be it through churches in Ethiopia, obnoxiously common capitalistic-cultural phenomenons (shopping in Dubai), to nature at its finest, to well-crafted music and the arts, this shared vein of give-and-take connectedness and utility can be felt. And it is this constant balance, that I hope to shed light upon through this writing, as well as learn to craft with more beauty through my thinking, that will take me both around the island of Manhattan and around the world, back to Africa, yet again.

Feeling spirited and spiritual in Ethiopia:





UAE/Dubai:
Indoor skiing, shopping, sunning, and stirring (at the airport)






At home in Sarasota; simple, sunny.



And back to NYC; exhibitions and exaltations:

Backlog, August 15: The Great Escape

On my last night in Africa I feel that I should feel differently. More inspired, transcended somehow. Hungrier, more determined, or learned would be appropriate.

I guess I am feeling human, though barely. In the face of all the suffering, poverty, derision, and disease in South Sudan, it's really been these two weeks, stuck in Addis Ababa, that have make me feel a bit bereft of my spirit, my humor, my sense of humanity. Much like visitors to ground zero, I feel like a tourist visiting death. I drink the green-gold crop – bottomless cups of it – while watching CNN coverage of famine across this land, and can't help feeling ridiculous.

Luellen and I spent moments aplenty reflecting on our respective summers; moments that carried a fleeting sense of inspiration, transcendence, hunger, determination or learning.

I've learned about myself, it's true, and I've learned about people, and about seeing through as opposed to around and over. I recognize changes in myself and stronger ideas and convictions. My patience will always be limited, but it's certainly expanded and has grown softer. I'm more conscious of my professional tangent, in that my resolve for avoiding halogen lights, cubicle corners, and anything termed 9 – 5 has never been stronger. I can assert that I don't want my cynicism to prevent me from reaching people, but I also realize that my ability to state the obvious can be an asset in an industry plagued by obfuscation. A dashing Irish-man with a dream job convinced me that not all dreams are enviable.

My instinct to escape is as palpable as ever. While I can taste this unending need-to-flee, what it is that I'm escaping remains as mysterious as ever.

Off to Dubai.

I know why the caged lion sings

It’s startling to me that it takes a shell-shocking BBC-World News special on China’s “arming of the killers,” for me to see an element of sophistication in the wars of both the South of Sudan and that in the west, given the experienced daily impacts, rooted in fairly rudimentary measures of violence. In both cases, the humanitarian disaster hangs in the air, amidst dead trucks and a bullet riddled ground, with human tragedy looming everywhere. The stories and individuals profiled on this television special, Hilary Andersson’s inquiry into the role of China in Darfur, sound so similar to those I heard and spoke to every day. “I lost my husband and four children when the bombs dropped,” “I was raped with my sister while fetching water,” “Our home was destroyed, along with our neighbor’s homes, during the fighting.” War and Sudan are dizzying.
Then again, so is Ethiopia and forced tourism. While I’m happy to be far away from the bush I am looking forward to getting out of Africa, even if only for a minute, to get my spinning head to stop.



With that said, the spinning stalled on Tuesday, after my ten days in Ethiopian legal limbo; I went to court and immigration, and then court, and then immigration, and then court, and court, and court, and more immigration.

The judge ruled in my favor – according to my ‘representatives’ – sticking me with a one thousand Birr fine for entering the country illegally. I’ve been provided with a temporary business visa which requires me to be out of the country within the week. The plans Luellen and I made for traveling in the north of Ethiopia are being put on hold – indefinitely? – and we’ve been getting to learn Addis Ababa most thoroughly.

It's not the historical route, but the smack you in the head route. My friend Marcin coined it “dirty poverty.” The destituteness that is teeming across Addis Ababa is filthy. Of the 25 + countries I’ve visited, including a handful of African capital cities, I’ve never borne witness to such an upsetting and unending array of troubles; poverty’s grip on A.A. – ranging from the horrendous prevalence of leprosy to school children peddling banana-flavored chewing gum at every intersection - and the daily grey skies are wearing on me a bit. All of the polio, elephantitis, and psychosis is haunting.

This critique is all, of course, a partial justification for our activities, which will henceforth be referred to as the excellent adventures of Ju and Lu. During my half working-days, we luxuriated with posh cocktails at the Sheraton, lazy price-haggling for jewelry and market purchases, and glamour treatments at a range of spas. Lu’s friend, Lee, brought us out of the city for a waterfall-fed beer-factory tour. We were the only people in AA eating Chinese food during the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. We’ve been learning about Rastafarianism from the source and practicing our shoulder shaking. Marcin arrived from Khartoum, via Kampala, and put us in proper tourist mode. Orthodox churches, museums, more salient observations forthcoming. Photos for now.

Backlog, August 5: Addis dissin’ me

Addis is cold. Both in temperature and temperament. The immigration authorities took my passport upon arrival. This, following three days stuck in Gambella because a) my passport was stuck in Nairobi, b) my contact person traveling with my tickets missed his flight, c) the plane was full, etc etc etc., was not exactly the warm, post-Sudan reception I had hoped for. After last round battling immigration and being deported back to Sudan, overland, one would ask why I traveled via Gambella, where there is no immigration office, again. I would tell them that there was no other way, that south Sudan has no roads connecting Upper Nile to Juba, that the rains were so heavy I couldn’t leave by air, that the armed banditry on the roads between my town and the neighboring town meant I couldn’t travel inland, that I didn’t want to go to nasty, malaria-riddled Gambella by quadbike, that THEY should have immigration offices at their borders, but they wouldn’t listen. They would, however, berate me, asking if Mexicans attempt to enter the US without visas, and then yell at me some more, in Amharic, when I told them we have a fence. So I’m off to court now. Hopefully I’ll have a passport and visa sometime within the next two weeks so that I can leave this continent. Thanks for beating me up this round, mother Africa.



Backlog: August 6: and the saga continues.

So I went to court, twice and someone suspected that I had been in trouble in Ethiopia before. Evidently it’s not so common to get a white lady causing such trouble. No resolve. Back to court on Friday for my ‘hearing’ or trial if you will… and if you wont then…well, I’m out of answers. Nothing here makes much sense. Except for good food and friends. And
company expense accounts (haha, humanitarianism, psssh, jk).





Hopefully someone is on my team.

Backlog, August 2, Paddling my Own Canoe.

I really couldn't have picked a more appropriate day to re-read
Slapstick, Vonnegut's wry, satirical auto-biography about the tiresome
boredom of humanity and how often those of little power or fortune are
the bearers of the most resplendent pleasures, than today, my first
day out of South Sudan.

In the crumbles of a future Manhattan – Skyscraper National Park -
plagued by death and stupidity all around him, he talks about how the
time flew and how we're all really fighting against a virulent
lonesomeness, and how family neglect is the bane of civilization. He
jokes of the future deference we will all pay to the miniaturized,
flying Chinese: "I await your instructions. You can be anything you
want to be. I will be anything you want me to be." And all I can think
of is the complexity of relief and development and what we are trying
to prove and who we are trying to serve and why we are doing what we
are doing in this industry.

In my journal I wrote about the idea of not spoiling the
"neanderthaloids," Vonnegut's self-description of futuristic
simpletons, lest we destroy all the simply joys of existing. It feels
particularly salient to me at this hour. Maybe it's because I spent
the whole two hours on the quadbike laughing as mud hit me in the
face, birds flew past me, and kids smiled at seeing a white person
turned brown. The people seemed fine. I felt fine. And I didn't even
care (for about two hours) that I couldn't take the airplane and that
I didn't have a visa to legally enter nor a flight out of Ethiopia,
and that I had no computer. I felt fine living simply (ok, the moment
was barely there, but it counts!), and the people around me were so
much happier than any of you reading this at your air-conditioned desk
with high-speed wireless. Accordingly, and as a result of all these
other experiences this summer, I can't stop nurturing my internal
crisis in accepting the post-conflict reconstruction model. I find
myself deeply quizzical of the ethical trajectory of this engagement.
Are we really helping these people 'improve' their lives somehow? What
does improvement really mean in a society where the people don't
really want to live as the rest of the west or the rest of the world?

More than one person has told me that the Nuer consider their culture
to be 'the best' in the world – something that kind of makes me and my
anthropological background laugh a bit. When a child is orphaned, he
is immediately absorbed by the community. Despite that husbands and
wives don't talk to one another after their wedding night (I'm being
100% literal on that…) family units are cohesive. People know each
other. Even if there were more than one 'bar' in Pagak town, everyone
would feel like a living episode of Cheers or a to the Max or the
Peachpit. As I sit here thinking about how emotional my departure from
Uganda was and how different this has been, I can only wonder how 20+
years of violence halts the desire for forward-thinking change, and
how, just maybe, the people don't see our oil-dependence, and our
gender-equality, and our commercial exploits as something desirable.

I'm certainly not sad to be leaving. I don't see myself paddling my
own canoe here in the bush, nor in Morningside Heights for that
matter, as particularly enviable. If nothing else, Sudan has been a
trip. A brain shaking, heart-pounding nightmarish-at-times hoo-haa
trip. And now I've arrived in Ethiopia. More adventures forthcoming.

Hi ho.

Enjoy my final pictures from Sudan and the journey.

Princess of the Mud, Elated by departure:


The Broken Bridge separating Sudan and Ethiopia –
only kind of unlike the Brooklyn Bridge:


Sudanese Sky:


Stuck: Saving the Children or Saved by the Children:



Covered in Mud in Kuergeun, Ethiopia – border town survivors!


After effects/shock


Hi Ho Happy

backlog, July 27: Art Days Continued

We hit bumps in the road. Trying to create ownership of a project is a tremendously challenging endeavour, when the ownership is not innate. Working with Dang was difficult too – translator, intermediary, and 6’9” beneficiary at once does not a simple solution make. But in kind and patient form, he was always eager to participate in finding the solutions and helping us move forward with the program.

After negotiating that we would provide new footballs, volleyballs, and netballs, and continuing to stress that this program/project was one for self and community benefit, the kids regrouped. The art projects continued. From our portraits and connect the shapes experiments we moved onto talking about the role of youth/adolescents in community development, how parents can support schools and educational infrastructure, and in which ways the youth participants could best share their findings/images with people in the community.

Introducing new technologies may have sealed the deal as well. While in Uganda someone criticized my work – or rather that of my organization – for focusing on economic development through agrarian policy and practice reform. “How will Africans ever move up the food chain when they’re still ploughing fields instead of entering fields in Excel?” the Manhattan-based photographer-come-philanthropist barked at me via email. He raised a valid and tricky question that still haunts me. It’s obvious that in Sudan there is no way to drop in a computer training facility and see rapid results – most people have never written their name on paper, let alone do they have spreadsheets to tabulate nor emails to send. But I do lean on pro-globalization winds and hope that introducing some bits of the modern world will – if nothing else – inspire these kids to think bigger, brighter thoughts, and aspire to do, see, and live more. Who doesn’t love an ipod or digi-cam? Their pictures were remarkably awesome, for the record.




The kids’ images and messages continued to surprise and impress me. One participant noted the importance of ‘multiculturalism’ that can flourish within schools, depicting me in his image. He told me about the community’s own diversity, between tribes and varied experiences of war.

From my informal research and casual discussions with people here, I’ve uncovered how sensitive the role of returnees in the community is. While refugees in Ethiopia, Kenya, or Uganda, many individuals gained valuable skills and were trained in different areas, such as soap-making, education (as teachers), tailoring, brick-making, etc. Their eyes were opened to new things that the ‘stayees’ have never seen. Tensions exist between those that return to the Sudan that the “stayees, stayed and fought for.” Anyway, an example of this trouble is in the reality that the military mite that stayed and fought the war occupy protective positions (like a guard for a compound) and are unable to offer deference to a person – be it their supervisor or not – who was not in the military, but who may have higher managerial and or technical skills or authority. This of course has come forth through the youth’s art creations and messages, when they tell me that school is for everyone, and that all must be treated equally. We’ve worked together to cultivate and draw forth these messages to generate a final, collective message from the group:

We the adolescents of Pagak Payam would like to share our artwork with
you to spread an important message for our community:

Through education our children and community can see a better future.
Growing peace and the return home of many people provide opportunities for
education and cooperation to create change for all people by working together in
unity.
Education improves our community and living standards. Education is
for all people, young and old, boy and girl. Children should go to school
and parents must support their children's education, even from the earliest
ages. Through community education and working collectively we can overcome
harmful practices and move from old traditions, like keeping the girl-child at
home and boys with the cattle, to let the children of our future become educated
participants in our communities and strong society. It is a shared
responsibility, requiring the participation of the community to build, maintain,
support, and improve schools. It depends on all people working
together.

Support children going to school!
Support school development!
Working together as a community is the best step for
change!

We decided that to drive the good message home we would distribute the works of art and have a public function to discuss the matters of serious importance. The artists selected the 10 best, most representative images from the collection of over 100.





I’m hopeful that this work will continue to move forward after my departure this week and that I can count on my colleagues and partners to carry the vision out: we’ve scanned the pictures, translated the above message, and are creating small flashcard-sized, laminated, color cards to distribute throughout the community.

It’s exciting to see such a project come together. I feel like the social-marketing output from this engagement is far more sincere than those of the art-projects with refugee youth I’ve facilitated in the past. This was certainly the most challenging and thought provoking as well. In really seeking to look at the role of returnees in community development, and acknowledging that by community development, I actually mean regenerating social-capital within a system where the political infrastructure and standard government social services are provided by the international aid community, I’ve come to see a mix of bleak prospects as well as striking possibilities. Of course I believe in the power of youth as the strongest agents of change, but here in South Sudan it feels as though they are the most critical actors to seeing any progressive changes for this place at all. I’m honoured to have had the chance to work on this project and see the capacity and insights that these young people have to offer and I have nothing but hope for the changes they can bring about.

i <3 NY

i
Originally uploaded by judester1213.

I tried to leave today.
The plane didn't come.
It would seem I love Pagak.

not exactly.

Backlog, 3 pm, today

A lot of friends have written about their monumentally moving experiences this summer, these Hakuna-Matata, revelatory moments where all the synapses are in sync and the linkages that traverse humanity glow vividly under the sub-Saharan sun. I’ve just been complaining and posting photos, it would seem. Today was somehow the same as any other day here and at the same time a tad bit different.

I’ve been struggling to write a success story – max 600 words – for the past three hours. This is both a result of my incorrigible distractability – ooh new news in the google reader! A bird I don’t yet have a photograph of in the waterhole! FACEBOOK!! – and that it’s really hard to write this narrow focused piece giving a succinct example of our organization's direct impact on one individual. The writing style requested is completely not my own and the content requested isn’t something I’ve thoroughly borne witness to either.

So I moved to my room to try and write from there. All of a sudden a foreign sound filled the air: a tiny charter plane was descending! I looked at the computer calendar to make sure I hadn’t insanely confused the days. Charters come on Thursdays. No movement. Today is Wednesday. I looked up and blinked: it's really a plane and it's landing. I ran to find Joseph who was running toward me, shouting, “Pack your bags! You go! I’ll go tell them you’re coming!”

I darted for my external harddrive and scrambled to back things up from the comp I’ve been using since mine died my first week in Sudan. I started cramming lenses and ipods and prescription drugs into my neatly and anticipatorily-well-folded clothes. I ran and grabbed all my wet clothes off the line and was ready to use the latrine one last time when I heard the propellers. I climbed atop the big mound of dirt adjacent to our toilets and saw Joseph amongst the 75+ onlookers surrounding the plane. A military man yelled at the kids to scram out of the way of the excitingly foreign technological delight while I stood watching from inside the fence that separates our compound from the airstrip.

For about 60 seconds I had one of those feelings of hakuna-matata connectedness.

Though we were physically separated by a dilapidated fence and some muddy puddles, I stood with those kids, gazed silently while berated by the general, and watched the world take off in front of us, with no one to grab and nowhere to go and nothing to say but to utter a slight sigh as it left us longing for something more.

The rain started falling as soon as the plane lifted and the moment in which I felt the weight of the world outside coming and going passed just as quickly as it had come. All the onlookers began running for shelter as their likely only t-shirt became instantly saturated; Nyaraka ran to hand me an umbrella and my gumboots. She took my wet clothes and walked barefoot through the mud.

It’s still raining an hour later. If the other charter lands tomorrow I’ll get on and go, and leave this place and these people like so many before me have done. Maybe in a week’s time, or a month’s or a year’s, I’ll think about Pagak, never really missing the place, but with a slight sigh at the tragedy of waiting for something that never comes. And I’ll feel I accomplished so little for this place, seeing that I can’t even write a one page story on the lives affected, except my own.

lots o pop

Today was really stressful, but somehow popcorn made it alright. I had been holding the precious kernels since Nairobi and had basically forgotten them in my suitcase. And yes that means I'm packing up in Pagak. I'm writing final reports, burning CDs of photos for nearly everyone that knows me, and enjoying some good pre-departure hijinks. Joseph broke out the Ethiopian wine and East African tunes.

It's time to return to the partying - before we cut power - enjoy the fruits of globalization:





and my absolute favorite: