Merry Christmas Eve and Happy Holidays!

Since I will surely not be industrious enough to call and/or email everyone today and tomorrow, I wanted to send my holiday wishes en masse here. Although I may not hear your happy voices on the phone, I am thinking of you all during this time.

And Lucy and I are off to a good start this morning: I gave her a Christmas box filled w/food (fun and practical -- cheese, Pepsi, powdered milk, crackers, cookies, etc.) and she is now outside scrubbing the laundry w/a big smile on her face. :) She seemed really excited, which makes me happy. I think she's even bringing her two sons by tomorrow morning to say thank you. Cute.

Happy holidays, everyone!

Unexpected beauty

Port-au-Prince, even by developing country standards, is a dirty, crowded, generally aesthetically unappealing place. There are specific exceptions to this -- le Palais National, several nice parks, some of the old gingerbread style houses -- but even most Haitians will agree that PAP is not an attractive city in and of itself. But there are things here that can make a person forget the ugliness of this cinder block city.

The things that redeem PAP are unusual sources of beauty. One of my favorites are the 'tap-taps', which are a sort of taxi made from busted old pick-up trucks with raised bed covers and benches lining the sides, usually packed like a clown car. A few of these look exactly like that -- busted old pick-ups -- but most of them are painted in bright yellow, red, and blue, with amazing designs and funny little Creole sayings or prayers to the driver's chosen saint (whether that saint is Catholic or the Voodou counterpart is sometimes not clear, but that's part of what makes it so engaging). Taps-taps are ubiquitous in Haiti, even outside of the city, and although their frequent, sudden stops make them rather annoying to follow, I personally can't help but enjoy seeing them. They remind me of flowers and bees in reverse, they are brightly-hued flowers darting through the city, pausing briefly every few seconds to collect a couple of bees.

The people on the streets are another great example. While no country is perfect, I must say that Haiti has more than its fair share of beautiful people. It seems somewhat simplistic to me when people describe Haitians as being Black. Certainly, most Haitians have some African heritage, but they are a blend of many races, which is also why they have created such an impressively textured culture. The variety of skin tones here is almost endless, from brown like milk chocolate to literally black, like this black velvet dress I had when I was little, to an almost Hispanic tan to white with just a hint of olive. It is a truly mixed society, although not so much in socio-economic terms, unfortunately. But it makes for a fascinating drive through the city. Haiti is a country of diverse history, and you can see this reflected in the faces you see every day. Haitians also take enormous care of their appearances; even Lucy got her hair did for the Christmas holiday this year. You probably won't see a lot of 'designer' labels here and a lot of the clothes are second-hand, but Haitians have some *amazing* fashion sense, males and females. I often feel like a shlub by comparison, walking out of my house in jeans a t-shirt. In fact, I started dressing a bit more nicely b/c I felt out of place walking among these beautiful people while I was dressed like a college kid late for class. But after I upped my fashion game, I noticed that more people were staring at me, not always in a nice way, and a Haitian friend of mine suggested that it could be b/c now I look like a wealthy white Haitian (who own most of the grocery stores and factories and are perceived, not entirely incorrectly, as being greedy and exploitative), not just a visiting missionary or something. I thought about going back to the jeans and t-shirts, but instead, I think I will just speak my very bad Creole and everyone will quickly realize that I am not a native. heh. Anyhow, I love going out in the streets here and seeing the people; there is far more to look at here than in the Netherlands where everyone was pale, boxy, and tall, or Britain where everyone was pale, flabby, and weak-chinned. (Just kidding, UK -- you know I love you, weak chins and all. ;)

Possibly my favorite thing, however, is this weird phenomenon that happens once or twice a month, right around sunset. I'm really not sure what causes this, I actually think it may happen when there is a high particulate count in the air -- that is, a lot of freaking dust -- but if so, I never knew dust could be so beautiful. What happens is this: as the sun gets lower, the air becomes more and more yellow, until everything seems as if it is wrapped in a golden shroud. And I don't mean that the buildings take on a yellow cast, or that the plants seem to absorb more of the sun's color. No, I mean the air itself turns gold. It looks as if you could touch it. The walls of the house are still white, the plants are still green, but the air around them has a color, seems to sparkle slightly, appears to become something you can touch. It makes me go quiet and simply stare.

These are moments when I think, I am so lucky to be here. And I am.

No, I've not given up the blog (but I do want to give up my maid)

Yes, yes, I know it has been a (too) long time since I last wrote and, to be honest, I didn't know it had been so long until I realized the other day that I have now been in Haiti for almost five months and I have written only 1.5 posts (the turtle doesn't count, gut busting though he may be). I invite you all to imagine the best possible apology I could make and pretend I said that to you. And allow me to further make up for it by saying 1) I have been *thinking* about the blog, even in my neglect, and I have a huge list of things I have seen or thought since coming here that I meant to post; 2) although said list of things will probably be less amusing now that many of them are long done and I don't remember all of the details, I AM committed to posting all of these little tidbits in the coming week or two b/c 3) it is my New Year's resolution to keep up better w/my blog, and I'm planning to get a head start this week!

To be frank, I am not feeling particularly inspired at the moment, but I do feel capable of telling you a bit about the maid, whom I believe I mentioned in connection w/my scrubbing the kitchen til it hurt story. All I can say is, she is a lovely person. Truly, a lovely human being. But the woman can't clean, which seems a bit contradictory since her life's work is apparently cleaning. For the purposes of this blog, we will call the maid Lucy. Lucy was recommended to me by some friends, all of whom are related somehow and all of whom have used Lucy for some time now and seem perfectly satisfied with her, although I was warned that Lucy is not the brightest of ladies. Somehow, these friends did not foresee that Lucy would become the bain of my Haitian existence.

She comes every Thursday, sometimes inappropriately early, lets herself in with a gigantic smile that I find endearing despite myself, and then insists that no matter what I am doing, I kiss her, hug her, and talk to her (in Creole, of course) about what's been happening in the life of Lucy since last Thursday. Once, I was in the middle of getting dressed when she arrived and she just walked right in to the bedroom, went through her usual protocol, me all the while covering my bare breasts with my arms and trying to finish putting on my pants. This is somewhat remarkable considering that Lucy, who is supposed to wash my clothes as well as clean house, refuses to wash my underwear, bras, or even bathing suits, ostensibly b/c it would be embarrassing for me to have her see these private bits of clothing. I'm not sure how her seeing the clothing can be more embarrassing than her seeing my actual private bits, but somehow in her mind, that all makes sense. (Incidentally, Lucy *does* wash guy underwear, which in my opinion can be far more disgusting than ladies', but whatever. Also, Lucy does a horrible job washing clothes and ruined at least three articles of clothing before I stopped giving her anything besides jeans and pajamas. Yes, this means that I spend about five hours a week washing my clothes in my bathroom sink, marveling the whole time that Lucy is getting paid for the job I am doing.)

Usually, Lucy likes to start her day at my house by doing the dishes. However, after discovering that the dishes were almost never actually clean after she got ahold of them, I started trying to do any dishes the night before, leaving her maybe a bowl or pan so that she still feels like she's doing something. Which reminds me of another fun exchange I once had w/Lucy, shortly after I realized that her dish-washing was more like dish-rinsing: Lucy arrived bright and early and headed straight to the kitchen, where I intercepted her and delivered the Creole phrase I had practiced to be sure that she would understand what I was saying -- 'M'ap fe vaysel yo, mwen vle fe yo, mwen pa vle ou fe sa,' or, 'I going to do the dishes, I want to do them, I don't want you to do them.' Perhaps not delicately phrased, but clear. Lucy laughed at me and said, 'Se travay mwen, m'fe vaysel yo.' ('It's my job, I do the dishes.') The only other thing I could have said to her was, 'You do a bad job, get the f**k out of my kitchen' but I just couldn't bring myself to burst her little bubble like that, so I sighed and left the kitchen and spent an hour re-washing the dishes after she had left.

So now that Lucy no longer has much to do with the dishes, she quickly moves on to 'dusting.' As near as I can tell, this involves her moving every item in my living room, wiping whatever they are sitting on in a wholly ineffective manner (I wiped floor-to-ceiling cobwebs out of every corner of my living room just the other day), and then replacing everything in a way that in no way resembles the original order. Sometimes this is b/c she just doesn't pay attention or somehow doesn't realize that everything has an actual place, but I have noticed that there a few things she *always* puts back in the same (wrong) way, and I think this is b/c she likes to arrange things in my house as *she* thinks they should be, rather than as they actually should be. For example, my landlord left a number of very pretty ornamental china pieces, which I have displayed in the living room on a wide shelf. Knowing that my cats also love said shelf, I moved the china pieces back far enough so that even if my awesomely bad cats knock something over, it won't fall off the shelf, BUT the pieces are still visible to people who might have a particular interest in blue china (whoever they may be). EVERY week, Lucy not only moves these pieces forward toward the edge of the shelf, she also rearranges them in a way that makes no sense if she is concerned that people are not able to see the pieces. And EVERY week, I go behind Lucy and fix this and whatever other nonsense she has perpetrated.

Cleaning the bathrooms follows next, which consists of cleaning the toilet (hard to mess that one up, thank God), sink, and shower. The shower she has apparently decided to take a pass on. I believe she is somewhat afraid of the shower in my room -- a brand-new, stand-up, glass-walled thing that looks a bit like a space pod -- and I am partly relieved, as I have a feeling she would find a way to break it. Why she does nothing w/the guest shower, I am at a loss to explain. It's just a regular tile shower, easy to get in, around, and out of, no real reason to neglect that one. But she does. Cleaning the sink seems to entail using too much water, not enough soap, and then putting back the countertop items (in incorrect order, of course) and allowing them to sit in the puddle of water that remains. I'm sure you, my brainy readers, can guess what happens next, but in case you need it stated for you, I spend on average one hour per week cleaning the bathroom that has supposedly been cleaned already, and I regularly try to explain to Lucy that there is an order to the way the towels, sheets, etc. are arranged, that she can't just throw them on the shelves wherever she sees space.

Lucy does make a bed very nicely.

Because Lucy would like to be employed more often at my house, but in the capacity of cook, not maid, she sometimes takes a break from her 'work' to make me lunch. Since vegetarians are scarce in Haiti, she is often a bit puzzled about what to make, a dilemma usually resolved with rice and beans or pasta. A couple of weeks ago, Lucy went into the kitchen to make lunch and came to me w/a can of pate that was leftover from a party I had hosted, asking me 'ki kalite vyann?' I told her it was pork, she went back to the kitchen, and I assumed she was making lunch for herself. Twenty minutes later, Lucy emerges w/a plate of rice and beans (unseasoned b/c she only knows salt and pepper and can't figure out how to work the grinders I brought back from the US, although I have shown her), that she proudly sets before me, accompanied by.....the pate! The pate actually looked pretty good, as those things go; I think she had sauteed it in some hot sauce, but of course, I was not going to eat it. I told her thank you very much, but pointed out that she had served me meat and asked if she would like to have it. Her eyebrows shot up and then together, and she confusedly said, 'Non, se pa vyann, se Spam,' -- 'It's not meat, it's Spam.' I laughed and tried to gently explain that Spam is (technically) meat and I therefore do not eat it, but I actually wanted to ask her if she was completely retarded, as we had *just* established very clearly that the can she showed me contained *pork*, a *meat* product. I didn't bother trying to explain to her further that not all canned meat is Spam, as that really would have been masochistic on my part.

The number of incidents I could write about relating to Lucy are almost innumerable, but I think you get the idea by now. She sucks at her job, and Thursdays have come to be a day I dread if I know I will be at home when she comes, but I can't fire her b/c a) it would be offensive to the friends who recommended her to me, as if I was saying that she's good enough for them but not for me, and b) she really is sweet, not to mention poor, and w/two children that she is trying to send to school (which is not free here). So instead, this woman is getting paid to drive me crazy on a weekly basis, and I vascillate between wanting to throttle her and appreciating that she is an honest woman trying to make a living in a really hard country.

The thing that really puzzles me is that Lucy does work quite hard while she's here. I mean, I see her doing the work and she's doing quite a job, it's just not actually achieving the intended goal. Sometimes this makes me wonder what is going through her head. Does she like her job? She seems to take pride in it and put real effort into it, but are there ever times, maybe when she is going home at the end of the day, tired from a long day of mopping floors and washing clothes in the sun, where she thinks, 'Is this all my life is to be?' Often people here in Haiti seem so happy just to have a paying job, no matter what that job is, that it doesn't occur to those around them to question whether or not these people are actually happy themselves or fulfilled, but maybe when you're this poor, you don't concern yourself w/things like that. I also try to regularly remind myself that Lucy has never been to school, she was never even formally trained as a maid, so it's almost to be expected that she has no real idea of what she's doing. But almost the whole country is like this. Because only 15% of Haitians ever go to school (and that is not saying that they all graduate), what you have is a population that for generations has had no formal training or education, no fostering of intellectual abilities or constructive problem solving. That is not to say that they are stupid, b/c they certainly are not (well, I think Lucy may be, but she's exceptional) and you do see quite a bit of resourcefulness here, but you see people resourcefully solving problems only in the short-term, never thinking about how they can fix things in the long-term or even how they can prevent the problems from occurring at all. They're just not taught to do that, and many of them don't know if they will be around for the long-term anyhow, so what concern is it of theirs?

A friend of mine has coined a phrase for what you see in Haiti -- Deprivation Syndrome. The persistent, deep deprivation that is normal life for most people here has created some interesting, not very nice behavioral responses in those people that you can see in a variety of situations. Take driving here for example. In Port-au-Prince, driving is a nightmare not only b/c of the usual big-city issues, but also b/c people are only out for themselves once they are behind the wheel. Since you know traffic is not going to stop to let you back out of an on-street parking spot, it is normal to just start backing out and slowly wedge yourself further and further until traffic has no choice but to let you out. Of course, what would make more sense is if the oncoming traffic would just stop for 30 seconds and let the person out. But they don't. I have even seen cars nearly cause accidents as they try to swerve around a car entering traffic, rather than just stop and let that person out. It's not that they're bad or mean people generally, it's just that they are so used to struggling for everything, that it does not occur to them to allow someone else to have something, even if it is just an easier entrance into traffic. The inability to think too far into the future or to use critical reasoning are also symptoms of the Syndrome. As an example of the latter (besides the ones I provided by Lucy), I was driving home the other day and came to an intersection that has a gas station on one corner. It seems that this gas station is where the Port-au-Prince police vehicles fill up (since, ya know, they don't have their own gas station like a real police force) and a large number of them were going to the station at one time. Unfortunately, they did not have the ability to a) predict that such a large number of slow- or un-moving vehicles in this intersection would cause a traffic backup; or b) to then respond appropriately to the situation by having one of their officers get out and help direct traffic, and so instead what I witnessed was two cop trucks sitting in the intersection waiting for the trucks ahead of them to finish filling up, making it impossible for my lane of traffic to move until they did so, AND two other trucks who had attempted to turn around in the middle of the street in order to try to get in the fuel line, and were thereby blocking two other lanes of traffic. And these are the police, the city's first responders in times of crisis! I'm not sure that I ever had much confidence in them before, but what little I had went out the window after that debacle.

So sometimes I look at Lucy's latest incident of faulty reasoning (or outright idiocy) and I try to convince myself that there is a way to overcome the Deprivation Syndrome. Dear God, please let there be a way.

Mysteries of tortoise coitus revealed!

Today I was taking a nap on the couch when someone put on this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cc7UbPwhRI8
Apparently I was asleep, but not totally disconnected from the world b/c I definitely had a dream where I was in an airport and there was a message on the overhead system saying, 'We don't want to cause a security concern, but we think you would all want to take a look at this. There are some turtles gathering at terminal C, take a look!' And then about eight turtles showed up and started making the noise featured in the video. And I totally thought I had made up some crazy nonsense about turtles in my dream, when in fact I could blame this dang video -- heh.

If you have some extra time, check out the 'remix' of the original video -- pretty f-ing hilarious.

And apologies to those of you who already got this in email form...No, wait, I'm not apologizing, you should be reminded of how hysterical this video is!!

Vi Ayisyen Mwen

Finally arrived to Haiti and finding it amusing so far. My Haitian life seems to be working some rather interesting changes of character:
-- Spent four days cleaning the kitchen with a toothbrush...and it's still not really done. I sincerely hope it wasn't just mold and dirt holding that part of the house together, otherwise we're in some trouble now. Some of you are probably raising an eyebrow of surprise at the thought of me, notorious cleaning hater, spending so much time on this activity, and I would not blame you. But that's how dirty the kitchen was: even I could not bear it. What makes this all a bit funnier is that there is a maid who is paid to clean the house once a week. I actually spent most of Friday morning trying to be unobtrusive while she went about her business, taking four hours to clean a total of about 800 square feet. And yet, when I went into the kitchen afterward, it was dirtier than before she came, leading me to spend another hour w/toothbrush in hand and a bit of time generally wiping things down. Imagine -- a world where *I* am a clean freak! And what has my effort won me? A somewhat less repulsive cooking space and some Nas-ty heat rash. I thought only fat people and babies (who are really just tiny fat people) got that, but apparently spending four solid hours scrubbing a windowless kitchen in 100 degree heat can do the trick, too.
-- Given my complete inability to tolerate temperatures below 78 degrees and my reptilian need for heat and light, I had more or less decided that there was no place this side of Hell that was too hot for me. I was wrong. Port-au-Prince in August is, at times, too damn hot. We don't have hot water in the house, so we have to take cold showers, which during past visits I found disagreeable, even when it was warm out. No more. I have finally come to appreciate the value of a cold shower. In fact, it has been so hot the past few days that the water at the top of the cistern gets quite hot, meaning that when I turn on the shower, I get about two minutes of HOT water, which I neither enjoy nor dislike, but do find rather bemusing. I also get a slight happy sensation when I get in a car b/c that's the only time of the day that I can enjoy the wonder of air-conditioning.I spend a good portion of my day trying to strategically position myself to catch a good breeze coming through our barred windows and trying not to scratch my sweaty, itchy skin for fear of provoking another wave of heat rash. But I would still choose this over another winter in the Netherlands!!
-- Although I would hardly call my days regimented, I have developed a bit of a schedule, which starts with getting out of bed around 8am every day, a marked departure from my lifelong preference for late rising. I wake up around 8, watch CNN for about half an hour until Creole television takes back over, spend about an hour doing yoga or working out (funny how 'hot yoga' no longer sounds like an appealing challenge), an hour (or more) cleaning up around the house, take a shower, eat breakfast, spend an hour working on my Creole lessons, spend some time thinking about working on my thesis before deciding I can't be bothered with it (that bit of the schedule will have to change this week, sadly....), and then knit or read for a bit. Oh, and I am working diligently on being a better email correspondent/blogger while I have some free time, so keep an eye on your inboxes -- I may finally answer that email you sent me months ago! I have dinner in the evening with friends, when I get to practice my rudimentary Creole and my only slightly less embarrassing French, then I watch some television and read or knit until I go to bed about two hours earlier than I'm used to doing. Sounds boring, I imagine, but I'm kind of digging it. I won't be sad when I start working for real, it would be nice to get out of the house a little more often, but overall, being a stay-at-home-person isn't nearly as bad as I always thought it was. For now.
-- Despite my unfortunate history of herbicide, I have decided I want to grow a garden. I will have to wait until I move house, as there isn't space for a garden here, but I am planning a modest garden to include tomatoes, basil, thyme, hot peppers, arugula, and maybe asparagus. The produce in the markets here is rather disappointing and I don't yet know enough Creole to effectively negotiate w/the ladies on the streets, so I was thinking I should just grow my own crap. Or at least try. Even if it's a failure it should keep me busy until I can bargain a little better...I've already started growing some chili peppers, using the garden-in-a-pouch some of my lovely Maastricht ladies gave me for my birthday. The instructions were all in Dutch, which made for some linguistic fun on top of my adventures in Creole and French, but I think (hope) I got it off to a good start.

Overall, I really am excited about being here, cleanliness and thermoregulation issues aside. I had a great summer in the US (and a week at Haitian beaches) before coming here, revitalizing me after my nine month hibernation in Maastricht, and I regard as good omens the facts that I neither procrastinated in packing to move here (unheard of for me), nor experienced my usual last minute freak-out prior to making the move. It's a bit early to declare it a success, but I'm feeling pretty dang good about my new life, which is, I believe, not a bad way to begin.

I don't think this is relief...

Just defended the infamous research proposal and was expecting to come out of it feeling better, but instead my stomach hurts a bit and my mouth is dry and I feel more like I have just been given a parking ticket than like I just completed, for better or worse, a critical part of my studies here.

I don't think things went badly. The external reviewer took up most of the time asking questions that seemed reasonable and relevant, a marked (and welcome) change from past discussions of my research proposal. I feel pretty confident that I answered the questions well and demonstrated some capability. Our nefarious head of research was as usual negative, but this was expected and since the external guy took up so much time, her venom was enhanced by irritation at having only five minutes to inform me that she still does not see the scientific value of my proposed work. (I was amused to see the external reviewer's eyebrows shoot up wonderingly at this remark.)

Going in to this whole affair, I felt like it was akin to a visit to the dentist: Nothing to worry about too much, but not pleasant, either. I still think that's true. And yet my stomach is knotted and gurgling with concern.

Moving on to more important things, let's chat a bit about this swine flu issue. Specifically, let's chat about how it is being blown out of all proportion and for the first time in a while I wish someone would muzzle the media. I understand that this virus is having a devastating effect in Mexico and that it clearly has the ability to spread quickly between hosts. However, there is another important phenomenon not receiving nearly enough attention: Although the flu does seem to be spreading in the US, its lethality is far less there and in all other developed countries where it has been so far identified than it is in Mexico, a *less*developed*country*.

This should be no surprise. Influenza of any kind is most threatening for vulnerable groups, such as the elderly, the undernourished, and other people with generally lower levels of health. Less-developed countries are by definition populated by people with generally lower levels of health and/or malnutrition. So of course a particularly mobile strain of flu could be catastrophic for these people. This is sad, tragic even when one considers how preventable issues like malnutrition and poverty are -- or should be, if people were willing to allocate resources more effectively and fairly.

But while this is a sad, sad fact for Mexico and countries like Mexico, this is NOT cause for panic or for 'pandemic' designation. What you have is a national health crisis in Mexico, NOT a reason for people to sell all of their airline stocks or for the media to start using phrases like, 'World health officials race to stem deadly flu.' Maybe you could use, 'World health officials race to stem deadly (in Mexico but nowhere else) flu.' Anything beyond that at this time is just panic-mongering and these people -- journalists and to a lesser extent health officials -- should be ashamed of themselves for using their positions in such a way.

I will be the first to revise my position in the future if the cases in the US and Canada become more serious (in fact, I'll probably be among the first to contract the damn flu if it gets that bad), but for the moment all you have is a flu virus that is affecting a vulnerable population in a predictable way and NOT affecting a healthier population in an also predictable way. The effects of viral mutation and adaption make it entirely possible that the strain will strengthen and become more deadly, even among 'healthy' people. But these same effects could equally lead to a weakened virus, so I still say there is no reason for such hysteria at this time.

Now go outside and cough on someone you love.

A thaw

My long-standing dislike of the Netherlands has been tempered lately by an unusually lengthy stretch of sunshine and warm temperatures, in combination with the lovely long days that do my light-starved psyche good. I am almost considering the possibility that this place is not determined to kill me. With only five weeks left it's nice to think I may leave on a pleasant note...

Of course, any progress the Netherlands has made is likely to be somewhat undone when I make a quick trip to Scotland next month!! Yes, that's right, returning briefly to my Happiest Place on Earth, after which the Netherlands will once again pale in comparison. heh. Melissa and I will be staying in Dundee, the larger, less attractive city near the incomparable St. Andrews, and I am looking forward to visiting some of old favorite spots before leaving Europe.

This trip is made possible mostly thanks to Melissa, who offered to subsidize my plane ticket as a farewell gift, a thoughtful, generous act which reminded me once again that not everything about my experience here was terrible. After all, I did live in the Best Apartment in Maastricht, a physically excellent abode made even better by the people who live in it. Even at my most dissatisfied, I was never unhappy to go home at the end of the day, which is pretty good, really.

It also helps that today I finally had an unequivocally good time riding a bike here, spending most of the day outside on what is sure to be one of the finest weather days all year -- mostly sunny w/temperatures around 23C/75F. My lungs breathed air so fresh you could almost taste it, my skin saw more sun than it did during my last trip to Haiti, and the views of the canals, fields, caves, and castles as we cycled in and out Belgium were almost surreal in their picture-perfect beauty. Good stuff.

I maintain that the Netherlands is the worst place I have ever lived, but it -- or at least certain people/places within it -- is carving out a tiny piece of my heart nonetheless. But just a tiny one.

(A kind of) Spring in the Netherlands!

Friday was a very important day in my life as a resident of the Netherlands: Although I had to wear my coat in the morning, by the time I skipped along home at 630pm, I was footloose and coat-free! Yes, that's right, for the first time in four months, all one needed to wear to avoid hypothermia was a sweater and sturdy blazer! Also, it was still light at 630, which was almost as lovely. We are gaining an average of five minutes of daylight per day now, so when we switch the clocks forward on the 29th, it will be light out until 830pm!!! If only you could see the gigantic smile on my face right now, it's rather pathetic that this country has reduced me to being ecstatic over natural changes in the Earth's rotations...Incidentally, this 'warm' snap is set to be ruined by the return of single-digit (Celsius) weather later this week, but I am hopeful that within another week or two, my coat will be enjoying a well-deserved vacation in my suitcase, set aside for cold days FAR in the future...

Pedestrian (me) vs Bike (the rest of the Netherlands)
Today as I was going about town running some errands, I was increasingly irritated as I found myself having to stop before crossing every street, NOT because of cars, but b/c of all the people on bikes, tearing ass around town as if they were the only ones mobile. This is v. typical of Dutch towns (Utrecht is apparently the worst -- I would surely have an aneurysm), and while I admire the commitment to exercise and cleaner transportation, I can't help but hate these bike-riding jerks. Possibly this is b/c bicyclists here are quite rude, but more likely my antipathy springs from a much more primitive source: I know that I could totally take them. Seriously, if I were to decide to not stand aside as they come barrelling toward me, heedless of the fact that I was in the street first, or if I were just to jump on one of those wheel-borne monkeys, they would be eating pavement. Obviously, I would probably get knocked down in the fray, as well, but, in the words of physics, their body would tend to stay in motion until acted on by the outside force of the cobblestone street under their face. And b/c they would be moving at a higher rate of speed at the moment of collision than my walking self, the force of the impact would be far worse than mine. In other words, I would totally win. With a car, I don't have this knowledge pricking at the aggression center of my brain, so I stand and wait my turn more or less without emotion. But those bikes...Oh, man. Bring it on.

Not sure you can solve this problem by putting your finger in it...
Since January, I have been trying to get my Dutch taxes filed. I was given an email address of the person who was supposed to help me, but it has become quite clear over the last eight weeks that this person, like most other Dutch 'professionals', is a moron. Or maybe just lazy, which is actually worse than being a moron, since it involved some level of choice, whereas stupidity is often a basic matter of physiology. Anyhow, I have gotten nowhere with this person, and decided to join several of my colleagues for a visit to the office in question to demand assistance. Upon arrival, we ascertained that the only person physically present in this office (which is technically staffed by about 10 people) was a woman who had been working there for only two weeks and had no ability to assist us beyond recommending that we email someone else. At this moment I could not help thinking that this country is a monument to inefficiency and incompetence -- it's as if they have enshrined those two things as their national values. I am amazed that the dykes still work. The water ones, not the lesbian ones; like all other Dutch people, I imagine that the Dutch lesbian dykes work only part time, and probably not very well even then.

Coming to America

But my adventures in this magical place are coming to a blessed end; I daresay the Dutch will be almost as relieved to see me go as I will be to have the proverbial door hit me on my proverbial ass on the way out. Yes, folks, I will be Stateside as of 15 May, for a couple of months anyhow. I will be in MD from 15-21 May, then GA from 21-25 May, then SC from 25 May to 7 June, then MD from 7-23 June, then Bea and I are taking her inaugural visit to Haiti from 23 June to 1 July, then I will be going to GA and VA sometime in the beginning of July, followed by Maryland for a week or so before I move out of the country once again, this time for more inviting climes than those of northern Europe -- the discordant but lovely Haiti. And I will be in Haiti for at least a year, so if you would like to see me before then, send a girl an email and we will work it out. Naturally, I plan to see most of you who still read this drivel while I am in the US, but you could still send an email, make me feel all warm and fuzzy. Which would be nice since my usual feeling here in Maastricht is hot and enraged, alternating with the ever-pleasant 'dead inside'.

Life in my office
There was a small discussion today about my weird fruit issues and Sachin impressed himself (and me, really) by remembering two of the three fruits that I actually eat. The one he missed was grapes, to which I had to add the critical qualifier of 'only seedless grapes'. Sachin agreed that this a reasonable condition to grape-eating, unlike my other neurotic reasons for not eating most fruits. From there, the conversation went roughly as follows:
Me: But I do like to pick the seeds out of seedy grapes (with my fingers, not my teeth) and then spit them.
Sachin: Spit them?? Spit them where?!
Biniam: Oh, you know, who cares? Wherever!
Me: Yeah, mostly I spit them in people's faces.

Good music

My roommate Flo makes really nice music, mostly electronic, but also using some guitar and violin and other things. Check out his MySpace page and encourage him to post more b/c I promise he's holding the really good stuff back!!

www.myspace.com/elmstuff

I'm Old(er)

Yes, yes, today is the birthday. 27. Weehaw. It was actually a pretty big year, but most of it I don't feel like re-hashing (here or elsewhere, really), so let's just say I hope 27 is better than 26. B/C 26 was pretty much a stinker.

Positively, today is the first sunny day in weeks with temperatures well above freezing (46F/8C), so this seems like a more auspicious day for a birthday than last year's Waiting for the War theme....Also, I've had some professional and personal breakthroughs in recent weeks, so I guess you could say 26 ended better than it started.

Haiti was fantastic, I almost didn't get on the plane when it was time to leave. Of course, that is partly b/c I was put on stand-by when I got to the airport, which I was tempted to interpret as a sign from God that I should stay, but instead it meant that I got to fly first class to JFK, which was pretty sweet. Thanks to Stephane's amazing skills as a tour guide/chauffeur, I was able to see a lot of the country, especially north of Port-au-Prince. It's amazing how much that country has to offer, especially geographically and culturally. In Port-au-Prince you're an hour from pristine Caribbean beaches and 30 minutes from beautiful mountains and fresh air, and in the north is a town called Marchand Dessalines tucked between mountains and rice paddies. We went for a hike of sorts in the morning when we were there and there was an amazing mist rising off the paddies and swirling around the mountains, with the blue sky and bright bright sun above -- it was an astonishing vista of sparkling green, blue, and yellow so bright you had to close your eyes, softened with the diaphanous grey of the mist. It was almost appallingly beautiful, especially when compared to the poverty and neglect that permeates Haiti. It is nothing short of tragic that the country is in the state it is; so much potential and beauty just wasted, utterly. Do a quick comparison of the Dominican Republic, which takes up the other two-thirds of Hispaniola but is pretty much identical to Haiti in terms of natural resources, and you can see what *could* be in Haiti but just isn't. And might never be.

Some of the more amusing moments of my trip:
-- Getting off the plane in Port-au-Prince, I realized that living in the Netherlands may have caused permanent physiological damage. Those of you who have lived in Northern Europe know that by the middle of December, you're lucky to have five hours of good daylight, the effect of which is usually weakened by cloudy weather and the fact that the sun doesn't rise very high in the sky, just sort of skims across the horizon. So after living with that for the last couple of months, my body had apparently lost the ability to react to full sunlight -- I emerged from the plane and was nearly blinded when my pupils did not immediately contract -- I felt like a mole person!

-- It seems that a common form of campaigning in local elections is to simply spray paint the candidate's name and slogan on buildings (houses, businesses, whatever) or walls. A great example of this was someone named Bob Manuel whose slogan was 'Securite'. The irony of this made me laugh every time -- apparently Bob's definition of security does not include the protection of private property.

-- Most of the buildings in PAP are the sort of shabby, structurally unsound, poured concrete constructions you often see in less-developed countries, but there are a few really nice ones, including some of the old colonial buildings and a few new ones that were built either by foreigners or by Digicel, the big mobile phone company. There was one building that was maybe 10 or 15 stories tall, obviously modeled after office buildings in the US or Europe (albeit circa 1985) that I believe was attacked in last April's unrest. It is still standing, and there was an armed guard outside of it, which makes me think it must still have some things of value inside, but it has a lot of broken windows and looks generally like trash. Anyhow, spraypainted on the gate was the word 'Babel', which I found enormously clever and accurate.

-- One day we went up into the mountains to see Fort Jacques, one of the oldest forts in Haiti originally designed to allow the general in charge of PAP after the revolution to keep an eye on the whole port in case the French tried to attack that way. The view was astonishing, you could see so much of the region, including the whole of PAP, which is pretty impressive since it sort of sprawls in a disorderly fashion between the mountains and the sea. Our tour guide was pointing out places of interest in the city -- the airport, the US Embassy, and an area of town called Cite Soleil. If you do a quick Google search of Cite Soleil and UN, you will see that this area has a history of confrontation and violence, largely b/c it is a very poor area (even for PAP) with a large gang and organized crime presence that the UN responded to poorly and inconsistently. Anyhow, as we are standing on the top of lovely Fort Jacques, our tour guide is pointing everything out for us: 'To the left is the Cathedral, the US Embassy is next to that sort of empty area over there, the airport is straight ahead...Oh, and that area over there, the one with the big smoke cloud is Cite Soleil.' I'm sure they were just burning trash or something, but it seemed somehow fitting that it had the appearance of being on fire. :-/

-- Stephane, his cousin Leitzia, her husband Steve, and I all went to the nicest hotel in PAP (really, it's nice even by US standards), Hotel Montana, for some wine one night. Located on one of the mountains that surround PAP, the hotel has a beautiful view of the city, especially at night when the lights are on, which is not all the time since PAP has rolling blackouts throughout the night since they don't have the infrastructure to keep the power on all the time. (In fact, you could watch this happen from the terrace of the hotel, which was sort of fun. You also notice that there are some areas of town where the power rarely goes out -- one guess who lives in these areas...) Anyhow, we were enjoying some wine and fresh air on the terrace and looking at the city below, where there was one building that clearly put a lot of effort into decorating for Christmas. It was a big building, sort of modern from what I could tell, with lots of Christmas lights hanging from the roof to the ground, all lit up, and Leitzia insisted this was the Presidential Palace or Congress or one of those. Even I was a bit skeptical about this b/c this building did not look anything like those buildings and my rudimentary sense of direction in PAP told me that was not the right area. Stephane and Steve agreed that this building could not possibly be what she thought it was, but Leitzia was so sure that she bet Stephane $200 it was. Our waiter was then consulted for his opinion and he laughed and said, 'No, of course that's not the Palace!' So Leitzia was embarrassed and Stephane was gloating and THEN our waiter brought the entire wait staff over to look at the building and laugh as a group when they heard that she thought it was the Palace -- haha...I think Stephane is still waiting for his $200.

So, yes, it was an entertaining trip, I'm looking forward to going back in a couple of weeks for Carnival, the cultural event of the year in Haiti. Gary and Ron think I'm crazy for wanting to go to places like Haiti, but it felt a lot more comfortable for me than most of the places I've lived, more like home than many places that were called by that name.