Open Letter on Haiti Reconstruction

I sent the following letter to many major US news outlets, as well as Habitat for Humanity and the Clinton Foundation. Please feel free to either forward this yourself or suggest places to where I can send it. At this moment, I am exhausted, but I will update my blog tomorrow with the promised detailed story of the first days of the earthquake, including my (unenthusiastic) evacuation from Haiti on Friday.

Helping Haiti: Do it Right

At 453pm on 12 January 2010, my significant other and I were in our home in the Turgeau neighborhood of Port-au-Prince. Three minutes later, we were standing in the road outside, enveloped in dust, surrounded by the screams and cries of people surging through the streets.

Haiti has become my second nation; my partner is Haitian and I moved there to be with him, but it wasn't long before I came to love Haiti for itself. To see the devastation of the past few days has been nightmarish, but also heartbreaking. Finding the light at the end of this very dark tunnel has been almost impossible. The only possible prospect for hope that I can find is the fleeting opportunity for long-term positive change that this tragedy offers, in much the same way as the great fire of Chicago in the 19th century allowed them to completely reconfigure that now-great city.

It is indisputable that Haiti needs short-term aid (e.g., food, tents, water, etc.) at this moment, but what it needs just as badly is long-term planning for a better future. What is needed is to take everyone out of Port-au-Prince, raze it to the ground, and start anew, this time with urban planners and other skilled professionals. This sounds extreme, but consider that the city will have to be razed in any case. The buildings that remain are nearly all constructed out of fragile limestone-based concrete, which has rendered them damaged beyond repair. The wreckage of the buildings that fell contains unknown numbers of bodies that are even now becoming sources of bacteria and disease certain to compound an already disastrous situation. All of these places need to be bulldozed, burnt, and removed in the interest of public health and safety. It is not possible to effectively do this with so many people still living in the city.

But what to do with all of these people, how is it possible to remove them? The answer is a two-pronged response: repatriation to the provinces (where possible) and provision of temporary, but long-term camps. More than half of all people living in Port-au-Prince are not originally from that city, they hail from smaller towns all over the country and many still have family and friends in those regions. By assisting people in going back to the provinces -- through transportation and perhaps seed money to secure housing and/or start an enterprise -- a large percentage of the people are removed from the city and living in relative safety. For those who are from Port-au-Prince, another solution must be found, namely the creation of numerous 'refugee' camps outside of the city and throughout the country.

These camps would need to provide, at a minimum, food, water/sanitation, shelter, healthcare, and security to their inhabitants. They would need to be organized by urban planners, even if they contain only tents. Most importantly, it would need to be clearly communicated to inhabitants that they cannot build their own structure on or near the camps, nor are the camps meant to be permanent homes. Rather, they are meant to be temporary dwelling sites for no more than two years while the reconstruction of Port-au-Prince is undertaken. People living in the camps could be hired as laborers to participate in the rebuilding, which in addition to creating badly needed jobs, would also provide a sort of on-the-job training. The professionals involved in the reconstruction -- most of whom will likely come from abroad -- could work with Haitian professionals, government officials, and other relevant parties to not just advise, but also to educate. Skills learned in the rebuilding of Port-au-Prince could be applied in the aftermath of future disasters, including hurricanes.

Without question, the cost of such a project will be significantly higher than simply conducting food distributions. But it would also ensure an actual future for Haiti. Instead of contributing to long-term aid dependence and enabling the prevailing haphazard systems of construction and governance of public works, this plan would empower Haitians to contribute to their own recovery and provide them with useful skills for the future. This plan could save many lives now by sparing the populace from the manifold risks inherent to living in a disaster area, but importantly, it could also mean the difference between life and death for millions of future Haitians.

The global response to Haiti has been overwhelmingly generous, but to address the crisis only in the short-term is to deny that country the opportunity to truly recover. Untold thousands have died in this tragedy; let us make sure that their lives have not been lost for nothing. I challenge everyone involved in this effort -- the United Nations, USAID, the Haitian government, aid donors, and NGOs large and small -- to muster their resources, individually and together, to start these camps as soon as possible in order to both ensure public safety and to ensure a quick start to the rebuilding efforts.

If you reading this agree at all with what has been proposed, then I implore you to pass the idea to other people who may be interested. Contact anyone you know who may be involved in the recovery efforts. If you make an aid donation, include a short note saying that you support the evacuation of all residents of Port-au-Prince.

Haiti needs help. Any form of assistance is appreciated. But to truly help Haiti, invest in its future, not just in relieving its present suffering.

Embassy bound

One of Stephane's cousins is in charge of logistics for the UN and has to go back to PAP to do that. He has agreed to drop me at the Embassy on his way. They are currently evacuating Americans, so it is possible that I will be evacuated, but I do not yet know for sure. I will let you know when I know something. THis is not really my first choice, but after some discussion, we decided that Stephane would be more flexible/effective in his decision making over the next few weeks if I am not here.

I know many of you would like more details about the situation here and I will give a full account at some point in the near future, but due to time and emotional constraints, I will give you only a few descriptions now. To be honest, I have avoided telling you much b/c there is nothing hopeful I can tell you. Port-au-Prince is essentially destroyed, even Hotel Montana, Hotel Karibe, and other 'posh' places in PAP; nothing escaped. The South is gone -- Jacmel, Leogane, Ti Goave, Gran Goave, etc. are all flattened. It is very difficult to imagine how the recovery efforts will proceed, given the lack of resources and government efficacy.

We have slept on the ground two nights, last night in the car. On the second night, the Public Works Ministry was concerned that people in PAP were not getting water (good thought), and so opened all of the water reservoirs at full blast, not thinking that since so much of the city was in ruins, much of this water would end up spilling out of broken pipes (bad implementation). THis led to the streets in downtown (Lavil, Carrefour, etc.) filling w/water, prompting a panic among the people there, who believed that the ocean was rising and flooding the city. We were located about a mile inland and slightly uphill and were quickly overrun by thousands of panicking citizens. It was very difficult to get reliable information, even the police didn't seem to know if there was a problem or not. And that is typical.

Most of the grocery stores were destroyed and there in only limited produce and meat coming from the provinces. Although food aid deliveries have already started, feeding 3million+ people is a daunting task. Given the lack of organization among the police, I do not predict a good security situation in the coming days and weeks.

Aftershocks continue, further panicking people and destabilizing the wreckage.

This is the worst thing I have ever seen.

Update

We have changed location (several times, actually) and are now outside of PAP at a missionary compound. We are safe, but do not have regular access to the Internet anymore. However, I will continue to keep you updated as regularly as possible. Please keep praying/thinking good thoughts.

I am okay.

The earthquake was not nearly as bad here PAP as it was south of here; much of Haiti is reportedly destroyed. Our neighborhood specifically was very lucky compared to the rest of the city, but our house is not really safe, so I am not staying there. We are currently staying at a restaurant secured by the UN, which is probably the best we can hope for at the moment. Please try not to worry too much, but prayers are certainly appreciated. Phones are not working right now and I don't know how reliable the Internet will be, but I will try to keep updating the blog.

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.

Joyeux Noel d'Haiti!

Arrived in one piece, and minus one piece of luggage, on Sunday. Things are going well (luggage was recovered yesterday, so I now have more than two pairs of underwear -- woohoo!), Haiti is a fascinating, somewhat contradictory place and I'm having a good time being introduced to it. I've had three Latin dance lessons and can do a respectable imitation of the salsa and chacha (less so the bachata), we went to a very nice Haitian music concert last night, and I have a meeting today w/someone about my research. Tomorrow we will have Christmas with Stephane's family and I am looking forward to my favorite Haitian food, accra (it's like a saltier, bigger, tastier hush puppy -- sort of). For the weekend we may be going to Cap Haitien/La Citadelle, or if we can work it out, I will be meeting up w/some Americans who are going to Gonaives (one of the areas hardest hit by the hurricanes) to do mental health work and spending a day or two at the beach. Not too shabby!

Hope your holidays are as good or better than mine, miss you all.

Charity Ball 2008

These are best viewed from the bottom up -- forgot that blogger loads them in reverse order. The Charity Ball is held every year to raise money for scholarships for students from less-developed country. So some of us paid for a ticket that was then used to pay us -- haha...

My back, which apparently the photographer really liked b/c he took two pictures like this one.

Me telling the chef that I don't really like dessert -- he took it better than I thought.

Seda and I waiting in line to pay for our winnings.

Denisa and me walking out of the bidding room like we had already won everything in there.



Apparently something was really funny. Or I couldn't breathe. Not sure.

That old horse...

Saw 'The Devil Came on Horseback' tonight for the first time.

I had some trouble indentifying with the narrator sometimes, this ex-Marine who found a job on the internet 'monitoring the peace' in Sudan in 2004-2005, who at one point wished for a gun and ten other men b/c he would surely then have been able to protect these villages in Darfur from being raided by the Janjaweed. While his obvious overestimation of the US Marines and underestimation of the Janjaweed annoyed me, what I did feel from him and what I totally understood was this sense of helplessness and increased disillusionment.

After he could no longer stand photographing the genocide day after day after day after day, this guy went back to the US armed with thousands of pictures, with reports that were faithfully sent to superiors in the AU central command and were sometimes forwarded to the UN or the State Department. He had unfathomable quantities of concrete evidence of the atrocities committed in Darfur, almost from the beginning -- and truly, these pictures will haunt your dreams -- so one can understand why he thought that if he shared this information, something might actually happen. And nothing has. Not a f-ing thing.

Since he is now persona non grata in Soudan (imagine!), he decided to go to Chad to talk to some of the refugees there. It looked like he was in Bahai or Farchana, not where I was, but the story is the same: All these people, looking to the UN, to the US, to anyone for help. And guess what -- it's not coming. These children who watched their families burn to death, these women who were raped repeatedly and mutilated, these men who managed to hide or run and actually escape -- these people are sitting by the hundreds of thousands, waiting.

But they're waiting for something that is not coming, they need to start to understand that and to rebuild where they are or where they can. Which is why when I was in Chad, I became so angry at the realization that the UN isn't helping these people, it is not being honest with them, it is not empowering them or helping these people make the most of the lives they had to work so hard to save: The UN and many of its implementing partners (not all, but many) are exploiting these people and their donors. They are making money out of a culture of dependency. They are taking advantage of one of the most horrific tragedies ever to stain the pages of human history.

The first crime occurred when the government of Soudan persecuted this vile campaign against the people of Darfur, and the Chadian government isn't too far behind its neighbor, as it does nothing to stop the Janjaweed from deranging their own citizens as well as the refugees that have flooded its borders. But the second and more insidious, despicable crime is that perpetrated by the people who are supposed to help. What are you helping exactly when, three years after these people fled their homes, you have yet to assist them in re-building the social networks they so desperately need now, or you have yet to encourage them to begin learning how to feed themselves through farming or bartering*, but instead leave them dependent on your irregular distributions of insufficient food?? What are you helping when you spend less money on education than you do on encouraging the government to draft Parliamentary bills and statements on human rights that mean *nothing* to these people?? Give me a break.

Toward the end of the movie, the narrator says that after doing everything he has done, he still feels like it has achieved very little and he says all he can say now when he encounters refugees is he 'supports' them, but that seems so empty to him. That's exactly what it feels like: empty. You want so badly to help these people and they need so desperately for someone to help them -- to *really* help them -- but you begin to lose hope. When you've tried so much for so long, and nothing happens, you begin to lose hope. But the part of the movie that really got to me was when the narrator was going back to the US and he assumed that of the thousands of NGO workers operating in the Darfur region at the start of the genocide, at least *some* of them would have been talking about it, would have been trying to make the press and the people know what was going on. But they weren't. In fact, when he got back to the US and started sharing his pictures and documentation, he was asked by the State Department to *stop* these activties, for fear of causing offense. No one in the system wants to talk about the problem, not really.

I was 'released from my contract' for trying to share this sort of information, for putting light on a situation so deplorable, no one should tolerate it. And I still don't know why people do tolerate this. But they do.

Knowing this, bearing the consequences of this, leaves a dark feeling in my gut, and my heart shrinks away.



*There is in fact a US organization that is attempting to do these sorts of activities, but they have met w/limited success b/c for the majority of refugees, it is easier to just go to WFP or HCR for handouts than it is for them to do the work themselves. And in case you thought this was just human laziness, get familiar w/learned helplessness -- people who once were able and willing to take care of themselves lose the will and/or the ability to do so after repeated traumatization, loss, and/or depression. It's not always that they're lazy, it's that they can't do anything else, at least not without a lot of help in the form of psycho-social counseling, skills training, etc.

Charming.

Today is the Dutch celebration of Sinter Klaas, or Saint Claus, a day which makes me want to check the encyclopedia for the difference between this guy and the Saint Nicholas we AND the Dutch honor on Christmas Eve (they say there's a difference, but I'm really not convinced). And how do Dutch celebrate Sinter Klaas? Well, settle back, boys and girls for a tale that could only have been concocted in the Netherlands (or maybe the US prior to civil rights).

From what I can gather -- and bear in mind that I have done very little fact-checking on this am relying entirely on the various accounts I have received here -- Sinter Klaas arrives on a boat from Northern Africa, via Spain, every year to give special treats to the good children and to whack the bad children into unconsicousness with a rod. He then stuffs the bad children into his sack, in which he will transport them back to Africa where they will work as his slaves. Oh, and did I mention he already has some special little unpaid, permanent 'helpers' who are of a skin tone rather darker than his own? Do a Google Image search for 'Zwarte Piet' and see what you get...The Dutch insist that they are not being racist by dressing in black face and bright red lipstick whilst skipping along next to old Klaas, but I have to say, I am just a bit taken aback every time I see what really looks like a character from Little Black Sambo grinning at me like a fool.

But back to the naughty and nice bit. If one manages to be worthy of a treat rather than a one-way ticket to human trafficking, this treat is delivered into your waiting shoe, which is left out at night before the children go to sleep. This bit is not entirely weird to me -- after all, we do hang stockings every year, which are now mostly symbolic, but once were actually worn by people on their feet.

What I did find weird was what happened when I participated in this tradition. Last night, one of the few Dutch people at our school organized a little Sinter Klaas party, where we watched a movie and set out our shoes, which were to be filled overnight by Sinter Klaas and his Piet with some sort of goody. I dutifully brought a shoe and set it next to the others and was looking forward to a bit of chocolate or other yummies. The weirdness is what came next: What I found in my shoe this morning was indeed chocolate and other yummies, but it was just loose in my shoe -- my obviously USED shoe. WHAT THE HELL AM I GOING TO DO WITH A BUNCH OF UNCOVERED FOOD IN MY SHOE?? My shoe that I have sweat in and worn in the streets of many different cities and at least two continents and which now carries untold billions of germs. WTF, Sinter Klaas?? Ever hear about infectious disease, or do you not come from *that* part of Africa?? Or maybe they just don't have Ziploc in those parts.

Sadly, there was a moment where I considered at least tasting what looked like a nice bit of chocolate, but then I recovered my senses and headed straight for the nearest bin, where any interested party can now find my presents.

I'm not really sure that this is better than a blow to the head.

Fun w/European Rap

If Missy Elliot and Pink had a French baby:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPn_kgSfvwA

If Dr. Dre (circa 1991) was white and German:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2_eVZKu28g

Contradicting what I've heard, Berlin must be a pretty cool city if it produces this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9b2j2g42nQ

'If you can't say anything nice...'

Many of you have been asking me to tell you about where I am living now, and you may have noticed that I have not done so. In keeping w/the old adage referenced in the title and in an effort to demonstrate that I did, in fact, learn a lesson or two from the whole Chad fiasco, I have not yet given any info or anecdotes about Maastricht. But since no situation is ever wholly bad (even there is not much good), I offer the following:

-- I like the town. Maastricht is a medium-sized city that is a bit of an oddity in this region. The Limburg region of the Netherlands is not unlike the Southeastern US -- poorer, less educated, and its inhabitants identify more w/their region than they do w/the rest of the country, but also friendlier and more easy-going than the rest of the country. Maastricht, however, is quite wealthy, populated mostly by posh middle-aged and older people, along w/a large college community. The city itself is small enough that a person does not need a car, but also has a lot of bigger city attractions -- TONS of shopping, lots of cultural events/festivals, restaurants, etc., not unlike Charleston.

-- The River Maas runs through the town, leading to very picturesque daily walks across the bridge. I live in a nice neighborhood on the 'new' side of the river (it's still medieval) and my office is on the old side (initially settled by the Romans -- holy crap!), so each day I walk across the river at least twice and have been treated to lovely sunsets, cloudscapes as the rains move in and out, and this amazing fog that fills the streets and settles on the river in a layer so thick, you cannot see the end of the bridge on which you walk. You all know how much I love water, so this makes living inland seem not so bad.

-- The buildings in the older parts of town are great -- medieval, Renaissance, and 18th century stone contraptions w/slate roofs...Very nice. Oh, and the streets are nearly all cobblestone in these areas, which is quaint.

-- I like that they have hung and lit the Christmas garlands across the streets and now the stores are open past 5 and on Sundays.

-- I LOVE my favorite cafe/pub where the owners know my name and I only pay for half of my drinks, and they always have good music -- Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald, etc. Also, it is the smallest cafe in the Netherlands and is super-cute.

-- I have met nice people and really like my living situation. Our apartment is awesome -- three stories and everyone has their own room -- and well-located (you can Google it if you want: Wycker Grachtstraat 24, Maastricht). Since my roommates are also students in my program, we are all often busy and therefore do not usually have logistical problems like bathroom-sharing or laundry issues. But when we are home, we often cook together or watch movies (or Gilmore Girls if Melissa is in charge) or just chat and hang out. We also do fun things like bicycling or dancing (well, everyone else bicycles all the time, but I only bike when it's above 60/15 and when we are not in the busy parts of town -- haha -- and we only go dancing when the School has an event w/a DJ b/c the only dance club in town is called 'Dance Club for Students' which tells you all you need to know). We go to places w/other people from the school, like the shisha bar or the Turkish restaurant a few towns over or this neat movie theater that plays only indie films and is staffed entirely by volunteers. I now have good friends from Uganda, India, Turkey, and of course the EU, so I will have lots of interesting vacation options in the future!

-- There is a small nature preserve not far from my house where wild horses live. I was disappointed the first time I went there b/c I did not see the horses, but every time I have been back I have seen them and they even followed me around one time, which made me happy except that I wasn't sure how wild they really are and I was worried that they would start chasing me or would bite me if I petted them -- haha....

-- What I like best is that I will be here for only one year.

Democracy in Action...?

Being the good citizen that I am and wishing to keep my legitimate right to complain about all things political by actually participating in the funny little system we call American democracy, I requested my absentee ballot as soon as I arrived here in the Netherlands. After confirming that I am both myself and not resident in my voting precinct at this moment, I settled in to wait w/great anticipation for my ballot to arrive.

A month later, I am still waiting. Becoming concerned (and annoyed, but that goes without saying), I called the elections office yesterday. You can imagine my happiness when my phone call was answered by a recording informing me that all elections officers were busy helping other citizens and to call back. You can imagine my further happiness when I did call back -- 20 times -- and received the same message each time. Becoming convinced that this was a trick on the part of our civil servants to devote more time to watching soap operas than to serving me, the public, I decided to deploy a two-pronged communications attack. So I sent a rather terse email 'requesting' someone to get back to me right away. Dangit.

Just after sending the email, I decided to try calling again and this attempt technically met with success. I say technically because I did in fact get through to a human being, but the information given to me was somewhat less than satisfying. The exchange went something like this:

Me: Hi, I'm jules, [big story leading to Where the heck is my ballot??]

My Tax Dollars at Work, in Southern drawl: Wayl, hun, ya know, once that ballot is in the mail, there's nuthin we can do about it.

Me: Okay...So there's no tracking number or anything?

MTDW, as if I had asked if dogs can marry cats: Oh, no!

Me: Um....Well, if it doesn't show up soon, can I request another one?

MTDW: Oh, no, hun -- we have a missin' ballot out there, we can't just send you another one when that one's not accounted for.

Me: Right, but that is sort of the problem -- my ballot is missing and I can't vote.

MTDW: Well, ya know, we've had ballots that took a week just to get across the county, so why don't you give it a little more time?

Me, sensing this was going nowhere fast: Yeah, okay, good idea. Maybe I'll just give it two more weeks, eh? Have a good day.

Feeling remarkably underwhelmed by my election officials, I was pleasantly surprised to check my email just after I got off the phone and find a response from another member of the election bureau staff. The contents of this email are pasted as follows:
You may have to go the FPC (federal post card) way, this can be done by e-mail....look it up on Google and basically follow the instructions,just make sure you sign it.

Yes, that's right -- the official answer to all of my problems? Google it! Amazingly (or not), this actually worked, so it looks like a) American democracy is now powered by Google, and b) I will get to vote after all, which, oddly, still excites me, despite my too-deep knowledge of the inner workings of the American political machine and the further knowledge that when you're registered in a state like mine, your vote doesn't really matter anyhow. But by golly, I want my stinking ballot and if I have to go to Google to get it, then so be it. Maybe I will vote for Google for some local office. Like court clerk. Or coroner.

Let's get indignant!

The four of you still bothering to read my blog are probably hoping for some sort of update or description of my new living arrangements, which I have been tempted to do, but could never be bothered. But I can always be bothered for a bit of outrage, so I am writing instead about the $700 billion bailout that somehow miraculously, mercifully failed to be passed yesterday in the House of Representatives.

For more than a year now, I have grumbled about the smaller bailouts -- of banks, of companies, of people who foolishly took out loans they could not afford -- on the principle that you do not reward poor decision-making. All of these entities made very bad decisions, took very big risks and now must face the consequences of these decisions. To give them money or pick them up and dust them off is simply to deprive them of a valuable lesson they would otherwise have learned and to encourage them to continue the very practices that led them into trouble before.

This most recent proposed bailout is staggering in size/cost, it is provocative in its absolute lack of accountability mechanisms (you really think it's a good idea to give one man complete discretion for how to allocate an amount of money nearly equal to the GDP of the Netherlands?), and it is almost ridiculous in its complete opposition to the very liberal economic tenets America is so fond of touting and imposing on others. Further, the fact that the American taxpayer is now being asked to pay for the mistakes of corporations not renowned for their social sensitivity is offensive. These people should pay for their own mistakes, not the American public. (For example, a 'securities transfer tax' similar to the one currently used in Britain and previously used in the US in more financially responsible times would both inject cash into the market -- the primary aim of this bailout -- and would generally spare the average American the burden of providing this liquidity.)

This crisis, if it can be called so, has been building for more than a decade. It did not just happen. What just happened is that people realized the hole they were digging was rather deeper than they had intended and are now being forced to ask for help (or in the case of Lehman, have the dirt thrown on top of them). But this whole situation has been looming, but between public reluctance to question what is perceived as 'easy money' and corporate reluctance to disclose their dealings, the whole matter was left to spiral, and not in a positive direction. We are paying now for our self-imposed ignorance and irresponsibility. But rather than face this and make an attempt at accepting responsibility for a problem that took years to reach its current level, our politicians proposed a plan that absolves people from culpability and which was hastily thrown together and advocated a plan that can only be described as a 'quick fix'.

You don't fix decades of mismanagement with a plan influenced more by politics than economics and slapped together in a matter of days. You are facing a systemic failure, you change the fucking system.

This bailout was proposed as a 'drastic measure' to address what is apparently seen as a drastic situation. What about other 'drastic measures' that will effect long-term benefits socially, environmentally, AND economically? For example, decreasing consumption through rationing, decreasing subsidies, and getting serious about decreasing America's foreign debt by decreasing the amount of cheap foreign goods purchased. Americans are always crying about China and Japan and India, but they never seem to make the connection that they are financing their supposed aggressors. Here's an idea, 'budget shoppers': Start checking the labels on the things you're buying and consider whether it is worth it to you to spend an extra dollar to buy something not made by a foreign competitor. For too long, Americans have simply consumed everything presented to them, demanding increasingly lower prices even for goods with increasingly limited supplies (hello, gasoline!), without bothering to understand how corporations are able to provide them with these cheap goods in an increasingly expensive world.

Many people at this moment are stating that the government must provide a cash infusion to the financial markets in order to prevent a credit crisis, which would cause the economy to shrink. What these people fail to point out or understand, depending on your level of cynicism, is that maybe a smaller economy and less credit is exactly what is needed right now. Maybe, and I know this is a wild idea, maybe it is time for people at all levels -- individual, governmental, corporate -- to re-learn fiscal responsibility and stop expecting easy money, cheap everything, and a consequence-free existence.

Donnez-moi un instant de faveur (juste encore une fois)

If I were a different kind of Christian, I would be 'called' or 'convicted'.

But I'm not that kind of Christian, so all I know is that deep in my belly, in the primordial churning of my gut, I feel like my purpose in life is to facilitate, improve, and create mental health services in developing and/or post-conflict countries.

I also know that mental health is not on the first level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and that other things must be taken care of before people want to think about mental well-being. But I don't feel like those other things are my purpose and in any event, there are many people far better-qualified than I to carry out that mission.

For me, the single thing I want to do with my life, the single focus of my life for the last four years, is/has been to give what skills I have to those who need them most. That's all I want to do. I don't want to read newspaper or journal articles and have civilized conversations about them in my insulated, glossy world. I don't want to exploit people or gawk at or sensationalize their situations. I don't want to make money off of the suffering of others. I don't want to sit in an air-conditioned office or hotel room talking about what is best for people I have probably never seen. All I want to do is take my skills to the places they are needed most, and use them.

And despite the unfortunate end of my tenure in Chad, I do have much-needed skills (and I now have important lessons learned, as well). I want to go to these places for all the right reasons, I have a relevant skill-set and a deep, unwavering desire to use it and yet....

And yet.

I write you unemployed, despite numerous attempts at finding a position (including unpaid internships) that might allow me to once again feel as if I were in my right place. The closest I have thus far managed is to gain admittance to a university to study for a Ph.D. in a field that I am praying will allow me to put my foot back in the door. But I'll have to use the other foot, b/c this one has been crushed by the repeated slamming of said door.

While I appreciate the singular opportunity that has been offered to me by being allowed into this Ph.D. program, I must still ask the question: Why? Why is it that a person like me cannot even successfully beg for a job in this field, a field I now know to be populated by the self-interested, the self-righteous, and the just plain pragmatic, while I just want to give as much of myself as I can offer? But more than that, why do I feel so strongly that this is what I *must* do to feel complete, why is this the only part of my life that has offered some odd sort of fulfillment when it is seems at this moment that it is simply not going to happen for me? Why would God/Fate/Karma/Whatever do this? Why make every bone inside me whisper that this is my desire, this is my place -- why make me feel out of place in my own country, in my own culture -- when it is becoming increasingly plain that I am not permitted to live the life I could swear I was made for??

Yes, this is self-indulgent.

Yes, I am whining.

And yes, it is possible that I am catastrophizing just a bit.

But I just don't know what else to do when my heart is still breaking and the best I can hope for is that the gamble I've made by embarking on this Ph.D. program will pay off and I will one day be allowed back to the world I so unwillingly left five months ago, the world I finally scratched my way into only to be turned out again, the world that, although so wholly foreign from the physical surroundings in which I was raised, was the closest I have felt to home in my entire life. It was home b/c it was what is right for me, and I may never see it again.

Made me laugh

Here are two of the most amusing things I've seen on the Internet lately. The first one I should probably not find amusing, but I do -- I'm insensitive, whatever.

The latest in swimwear: http://www.ahiida.com/index.php?a=subcats&cat=20

Was randomly on the APC website and found their frontispiece both entertaining and unexpected. I think the military should consider this one!: http://www.aperfectcircle.com/ If you hit Refresh, new ones come up. Some are more snide than others....heh.

What is this unfamiliar spectacle?? Could it be...progress?

Some of you older, more loyal readers may remember me ranting on about cluster bombs waaaay back in August of 2006, and for those of you who are new or wisely decided to clear space in your brain for more important things, here is the link: http://everythggoodwastaken.blogspot.com/2006_08_01_archive.html

The point of that post was to point out the barbarity and senselessness of these weapons, using the July 2006 conflict between Israel and Lebanon as an illustration. At the time, I stated that the use of cluster bombs was unacceptable, particularly when one considers the great risk they pose to civilians unlucky enough to be caught in wars many of them would rather sit out. Apparently 111 countries agree with me, as today a treaty banning the use of cluster bombs was signed! The agreement even calls for all current stockpiles in signatory countries to be destroyed within eight years and could potentially lead to the removal of US inventories in signatory nations where the US military operates. If I wasn't so tired right now, I might actually have cried a little bit -- this treaty represents a rare moment of clarity and progress in the loooong struggle toward a universal concern for human protection, these moments are few and far between and this one ever-so-slightly warmed my cold, cynical heart.

Naturally, the US did not sign this treaty, deeming cluster bombs far too critical to their vaunted military operations. While disappointing, this is not especially surprising. What I found more annoying, though, were the following quotes (found in this article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080530/ap_on_re_eu/ireland_cluster_bombs) from a person who heads what I'm sure is a reliable, impartial think tank on par with, oh, Fox News. Ahem. This genius (and real humanitarian!) offered the following in response to this historic, shockingly progressive treaty:

"This is a treaty drafted largely by countries which do not fight wars," said John Pike, a defense analyst and director of GlobalSecurity.org.
"Treaties like this make me want to barf. It's so irrelevant. Completely feel-good," he said.

Asked whether U.S. forces would ever ban or restrict cluster-bomb technology, Pike said, "It's not gonna happen. Our military is in the business of winning wars and using the most effective weapons to do so."

So let's make a quick list of the MANY problems w/these statements:
1) Not since middle school have I heard someone imply that people who do not fight are somehow inferior.
2) Barf??? Really??? You said, 'barf,' in an official interview??
3) I am curious about Mr. Pike's definition of 'irrelevant'. More than half of all recognized states, including most of our NATO allies, signed this treaty, which to me seems the opposite of irrelevant. But maybe he is of the school that considers all things irrelevant until they are endorsed by Amerrrica.
4) Recent conflicts would suggest that the American military is more in the business of protracted, obtuse struggles with no clear outcome, not 'winning wars.'
4b) If these cluster bombs are integral to the current American strategy of how to win wars, the military should re-evaluate their effectiveness since, um, they don't seem to be working.

You know what? I'm sure there are far more eloquent, less propagandized critics of this treaty who could have defended the American decision not to sign, but I'm glad it was this guy. It makes it all that much easier for me to ignore the nay-sayers and delight in the fact that for once, common decency and concern for human life found a place in politics.

Diff'rent Strokes

At many points in my history, I have found myself thinking, "Well, *I* wouldn't have done that." Usually this is after being subjected to a reality TV show or seeing a new picture of some st(harlot)'s snatch, but periodically this utterance is issued when someone I care for does something puzzling. Puzzling to me, I should say.

Because I am now a little afraid of my own blog and its apparent power to disconcert, I do not wish to provide examples for fear of upsetting someone, but let's just say it has become increasingly apparent to me that I need to learn to accept the fact that I do things differently from most people, for good and ill.

Festered over this situation whilst having soup, salad, and beer at a little pub near my hotel room and was terribly amused to observe the following:
Two black men walk into a British-ish pub in Manhattan. Moments later their waitress comes to the bar asking if Remy VSOP is available. The barmaid replies in the negative. The waitress returns shortly to ask if Hennessey is available. The barmaid rolls her eyes as she reaches for the bottle and then says as she hands the glass over to the waitress, 'Let me guess -- they're black." I laugh hysterically at this, mostly because the barmaid is right, and then I am further amused when the waitress hisses to the barmaid, 'She just heard you!' and I was tempted to start singing a medley of rap songs that mention Remy and Hennessey as desirable beverages.

Also, I have to be honest, although there is a lot going on w/me these days, I lack the means of making it seem amusing -- mostly b/c it's not -- so I am afraid the blog will be rather lackluster for the foreseeable future. I recommend a monthly (at most) perusal so as not to waste your time. Am hoping to get it back in order, but...well, I just don't know.

Let's party like it's...1939?

Appalling. I have no other words for this: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080412/ap_on_re_eu/belarus_jewish_bones_1

Back by popular demand...

...and against the protests of others.

Really nothing that interesting or controversial to relate here. But then again, I never thought there was. So what the fuck do I know.

Currently back in the US (excitement scale: 3) and looking for a new job (excitement scale: 5.5) with some interesting opportunities (excitement scale: 7-10), waiting to see what happens (excitement scale 1-10). I can say that when I was interviewing w/one of my many former employers, all of whom have hired me for work most people would find distasteful, one of them said, 'Even those who have not renewed with us have felt that their experience w/us changed their perspective on life.' Well, I will say that Chad changed my perspective on life, although I will not say that the employer who said the previous statement was the employer who sent me to Chad.

As many of you may know, I am looking at new jobs in Haiti, Sudan, and, yes, even Chad. Maybe during the rainy season we will get along better. Either way, not looking domestically or even European-ally in the near future. We will see who will take me. My money is on Haiti.

Either way, I never thought being 'released' could be such a liberating, positive experience. The only thing left to ponder is whether or not I told them enough. I think not.

No cell phone

And therefore no long distance to call most of you. Am in the US, but still waiting for either Chester or Eli to work out the cell phone situation (the latter b/c he screwed it up in the first place and the former b/c he's got the mad hook-up), but until then, if you lovelies could call me, I would appreciate it. 410.451.2376. Miss you all like the dickens!!

Incroyable!

My amazing friend Marion has been selected as a finalist in the Nature Conservancy's Nature Photo of the Year Contest! Her picture really is amazing and you can see it and VOTE FOR IT at this address:

http://support.nature.org/site/PageServer?pagename=bestnature2007_ph6

The other ones are obviously pretty good, too, but Mar's is truly superior, a mon avis, so go vote for it!!

Also, I learned yesterday that my US cell phone has taken a holiday in Korea (don't ask) and I am not sure that it will be back at my house by the time I arrive on Tues. Since my brain stopped remembering numbers about three seconds after I got my first cell phone and became completely reliant on my contacts list, I don't have a number for most of you. Therefore, if everyone who would like to hear from me would email me their numbers, that would be great...(Totally channeling Office Space right there, heh.)