August 1: Last full day in Pommern.

(As written in my journal that day; grammar and minor edits only. Italicized portions are additions written after the trip.)

It's CTC day - and through Meggie's excellent manipulative conversation skill with Edward, she's gotten me out and about, assigned alone to the Clinic, and herself over to the primary school - where she has wanted to volunteer since we arrived. 

CTC means Counseling and Test Centres - the HIV/AIDS clinic that serves seven villages, including Pommern. My energy is too low to do justice in describing the inefficiency with which 62 AIDS patients were seen today, at this monthly clinic. It is actually every Thursday, but each patient is on a monthly rotation - first Thursday, second Thursday, etc. They get ARVs or other drugs. And it wasn't the plain, pitiable, understandable inefficiency of no shelves, drawers, computerized lists of patients, or drug inventory. It went far beyond that and I want to do it justice when I have the patience to walk through it in each excruciating detail. 

After a long morning of work, and a late lunch, Meggie and I said our goodbyes to the tech and athletics team at the secondary school, who made Zumba possible, Adrian and Flavian. And then to Nurse Patricia. Meggie's totally hellish morning in the primary school has moved her to an interesting place - from guilt or pity to frustration that people are not helping themselves. I remember my brother being there, then in another phase of compassion, and finally he moved into a sort of Zen acceptance. Acceptance by attrition, maybe!

To try to do this description justice... first you have to imagine a cold morning, and the cement clinic. People "line up" to be "checked in". I use quotes because they sort of stand or sit around, near the door to the children's ward - no kids here today, so apparently it will be the CTC clinic. Every person has already waited outside on the far side of the clinic - the shaded, coldest area - to be tested (I can't see this happening; is it a blood test? A weight on the scale? Something else?) and given a number on a scrap of paper. Then they mill over to the yard in the sunshine, in front of the children's ward, where I sit at a table with another huge bound book in front of me. 

The nurses bark, "Next! Next!" and snap fingers at each patient to hand over their CTC card. They shuffle in, sit down, hand the nurse their card and slip of paper. (Or they don't, appearing as if they've never done this before. The nurse snaps for the scrap of paper, then, too.) A CTC card is a battered piece of card stock bearing their name, village, CTC number (it's a national registry) and instructions on when their clinic meets (what week of the month, what location).

This second line I'm helping with is to create a hard copy record of who showed up today, and whether they'll be getting ARVs or not. So I write their CTC number down, reading it from the card, and then the nurse tells me their village and their age, to fill in the next two lines. The age is asked for (why is it not on the CTC card!?) and if the person does not know, it is guessed at. Then their mystery number is written down and by science I don't understand, I'm told whether to check "ARV" or "No ARV" on the sheet of paper. 

The person is sent out, back into the yard, to mill around in a large group. No order is kept. 

We get through all 62, recorded in the book - the youngest patient is 9, the oldest is 72 - and most are female. The average patient is a woman in her 30s or 40s.

The young man diagnosed on Monday, in front of me and Meggie? He was in the line.

Then, everyone - the nurses, me, all the CTC patients - are herded to the very front part of the clinic yard. We spread out on the ground and on the few benches, sitting just in front of all the junk that's been mysterious to me since we arrived (rusted bed frames, broken old-fashioned wheelchairs, rotted boards, smashed bookshelves), not just for the content, but also because I look at it every day and wonder, in a village with so little, what is the social contract that prevents any item from being stolen? These are not useful wheelchairs or good boards - but surely someone could repurpose them and get great value. However, that sort of theft seems to be neither considered nor allowed; the village rules are clear and illustrated to me, if definitely unspoken.

What we attend, I start to understand, is a lecture on the importance of treating HIV and AIDS. Taking medicine, getting partners and family members tested, and then the longest segment on how it is possible to give birth AND breastfeed, without passing the disease to the baby. There is a young mother, who has AIDS, nursing her baby, and she seems to be telling everyone the baby is regularly tested but is negative, since she is taking her drugs and taking care of herself (she mimes eating food). The lecturers are Nurse Nema and Doctor Elton - and it's not fair that I am hard on Dr. Elton; I mean, yes, he's a dentist, and so that's an easy thing to point at and tease - but he's probably had enough clinical experience to push himself right into internal medicine, right?! 

The lecture is about 30 minutes long - and I'm glad for a seated break, I won't lie. Plus the sunshine warming me a little; it is another cold morning (though the sun is back out today, after being hidden by clouds and drizzle for both days I was home sick). 

Then, all the patients form another half-assed line, and I go back into the children's ward with the nurses. We sit at a table with boxes of drugs, and each person comes in with an old pill bottle. They show the kind they've been taking for a month, and are given a new bottle of the same kind. They also might have a scrap of paper with other prescriptions written on them - usually antibiotics, ibuprofen. 

The people getting ARVs are shit out of luck today; there are none. I'm told the government didn't supply them. No nurse appears to explain whether they should come back next week, out of their usual rotation, or what they should do for a month, being out of pills and all. In my head, I'm screaming, "Of course there is a contingent of Africans who think AIDS drugs don't work and that Americans and Brits are just poisoning their minds! The drugs DON'T work if you don't take them properly!"

A couple people don't have their old pill bottles anymore. We spend 15 or 20 minutes trying to decide what to do. We have to give them what they are used to taking - how can we possibly know if they don't have the old bottle, nor can remember? (There are two choices, friends, of pills to take. Two.)

Nurse Patricia leaves for 20 minutes by my count, with no reason, and comes back so we can pick up again with distributing. While she was out, the other nurses chatted on their phones. The line just stopped outside our door. Meggie said later she saw Patricia having a Coke and a snack at the little coke stand. 

These other drugs are available, for those not getting ARVs - getting what I think is a simpler protease inhibitor combination pill. And hey, they don't send the CTC ARV patients away empty handed... they all get vitamin B12 pills! That'll cure your AIDS.

Charting & Pill Dispensing:

I stay at the Clinic until about 1:30 PM. So in 5 hours, we've made people line up three times. Once to get their number determining ARVs or no. Another time to get registered at attending the clinic, in the big useless book. Then they attend a lecture - and all I can think is, is this something required by USAID or the Tanzanian government, and is the same lecture every week? - and we've made them line up AGAIN to get handed the right pills. When I leave, 9 of the 62 have their pills. It takes until about 4 PM to get all 62 through the lines and process here.

It appears as if this is the first time such a clinic has happened - and we know that's not true. We know this happens Every Single Thursday. 

Why line up three times? Why not see one patient at a time? Why not have pills counted out in a 30-day's supply, instead of waiting to count them out for each person? Why ask their age each time - why not ask them to be ready to supply it? Why record the check-in process in one large useless book, and then record who gets what drugs in a SECOND large useless book? 

And the best part? The second book records only what was prescribed. ARVs? Check. They were prescribed. The fact that they're not fucking available is not recorded anywhere. Check the books, and all looks well. This is Tanzania. 

So - I'm writing this so long after the actual day, I know I've forgotten some details of all the other tiny inefficiencies I witnessed. And as frustrating as it was - and, oh, lordy, it was! - in the middle of it, I sat there, patiently, for hours, waiting for bursts of activity, waiting to be told to record certain data, and generally not trying or wanting to tell anyone what to do. I just took it all in, and with the exception on the one mental scream above, I felt useful in recording the data - because it was something. It was freeing up a nurse's set of hands to actually chat with patients, and touch their shoulders, and look into their eyes. But for me to not want to tell someone what to do, how to do it faster, better, more efficiently... well, that's basically an African miracle! 

July 31 in Pommern.

(As written in my journal that day; grammar and minor edits only. Italicized portions are additions written after the trip.)

At breakfast, Edward tells me I'm not allowed to work today. "One more day to rest. You don't leave the mission house this morning."

I'm so disappointed. To lose a second day!? Nearly my last?! But within thirty minutes of breakfast - one plain slice of bread (so oddly sweet, I need some sourdough up in here!) and 1/3 of a banana - I find I'm ready for a nap. So perhaps Edward knows best - and perhaps he's been through this before with a previous volunteer (ha, ha, ha - that's a joke; I know he has).

So today I find stillness, whether I want it or not. And it ends up a very powerful day, connecting with fellow volunteers. 

We're finally discussing openly our frustrations with African time versus American time, and our complete inability to understand how teachers can fail to show up for class, say, as happened today - there was a prominent death in the village. Then everything stopped. And so students go without teachers and lessons, while Nurse Patricia is in a fog (tells Meggie, who has been there yesterday and today without me) and can barely work. Most volunteers were sent back to the mission house. Everyone is feeling useless. 

Rather than find this stoppage an admirable sense of community, we volunteers are mystified and frustrated. You can't stop everything, every time a person dies! Or can you?

Oh, and on another note, Dr. Elton leaves a line of eight sick patients while he watches a tree being cut down, using a rarity here - a chainsaw. It seems that every, and any, interested person has the right to be involved in any decision or event - and so we have a village, region and country possibly incapable of making forward progress. Every voice is heard, maybe, but also everyone who wants to stop working to watch how cool it is to see a tree get cut down can take a break. A break, a break, a break.

I believe in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and we get into a group discussion meandering around it. Is there true happiness without emotional knowledge of the full self, and are we here to help, to hurt, to be neutral observers? Can we forge personal connections with villagers when the need to manipulate us is so great? (And so justified.) 

We asked each other if we'll try another Global Volunteers trip - yes's and undecided's. 

We discussed how this is called a volunteer vacation, or voluntourism, and can that phrase take a little pressure off (of, ahem, me)? Did white, Western colonialism create a culture of dependence - and are we reaping what we've sown? 

And then my great revelation - in which I realize, truly, for the first time, that for all the talk of global natural resources and the water wars we're sure to see - only one thing seems certain to me; we in the West aren't going without our hot showers to help anyone here. We'll absolutely let them die, and the clean water and availability of oil will winnow down to being available only over America eventually, and probably zoom right down on D.C. as the last place with modern comforts. 

I didn't write this to be heartless - or inflammatory - or because I think it's OK to let people die so we can have hot showers, cars, plastic baggies in our lunch everyday. I wrote it because it smacked me hard as truth. We will absolutely watch people die if it means we get to keep our Stuff. If it means we have to give up a lot, including the comfort we're used to, for them to live lives we don't understand and don't respect, I just don't think we're gonna do it. One of the problems a volunteer wants to solve here is to get the children to eat with a spoon, not their fingers. Porridge is wasted, it's messy and dirty, she argued. Tell me we're going to give up life as we know it for them? 

In the afternoon, I convinced Edward I was feeling recovered fully, and that I was ok to go to Zumba with Meggie - her last class, and my last chance to see the high-school girls. I promise I won't dance - I've been sick, I need to rest, I know. I'll watch. Lies! All lies. I dance one song, and that's where all the YouTube videos previously posted are from - not exactly in my best form dance-wise, and it sure tuckered me out - but it felt great to get my blood flowing a bit, to dance with the girls, to watch Meggie leading them in total joy and confidence. 

Tonight Edward gives a little lecture on Tanzanian migration patterns (of the Bantu and Masai, largely, and some Indian and Arabic), and then on modern society here. Of course the most interesting part if the Q&A - yes, polygamy is common. Yes, the 1964-65 history of integrated education, that sent people all over the country to school, to learn Swahili, broke tribal loyalties and thus has prevented civil war. Yes, men here think American women are funny - they hear in our country we talk more than men. How can that be?! Men do the talking! And that women in America expect to do all the same things as men - they get it in concept, but really can't picture it.

Tomorrow: hopefully I get to go back to work!

July 30: Recovery in Pommern.

(As written in my journal that day; grammar and minor edits only. Italicized portions are additions written after the trip.)

My day of rest. I sleep deeply for most of it - with a few little breaks, starting with chamomile tea (oh, blessings on the volunteer who brought it!), dry toast and the other two oh-my-god-I-am-beyond-glad-I-brought-it chicken noodle soup packets.

Today is the first cloudy day we've had in Pommern, and I can feel a rainy day restlessness set in - I wake off and on to hear the kids constantly nitpicking, arguing, sticking things in the fire - and then getting yelled at for it. Joann has come down with a terrible cold - later I learn she is 74!  I get up at one point to brush my teeth and it's enough effort to prompt a nap. I obsess all day, at any point I wake up, about the need to feel better soon - now - faster - there's only tomorrow and Thursday left! We leave Friday for Dar. Saturday night we fly away.

I read a little bit, finally finishing up with Paul, and I am happy to be done with him. At least I like when he says, "The best writers are scrupulous and pitiless observers." I've long known that "not much gets past me" but it is nice to hear Paul speak of that as a common trait among the writerly species.

The smell of cooking fires has already been a little gross to me - and today I can't take it. The smoke drifting in, and the oil I experience as rancid-smelling, though it's probably not - there were fried doughnuts for breakfast, more greens stewed in it for lunch. I've moved back into my little solo room which is great - but it is also closest to the cement-room kitchen, where cooking is half inside and half in the backyard. I think of Kimi and Bradley, and how tired of oil they are after two months in India each time, something I couldn't truly understand before - and now I can't imagine more of this, much less another six weeks. Every wafting wave of smoke or oil turns my stomach.


Mamatony brings in some mandazi at one point. "Eat! You need to eat." I want to scream at her - get that oil-soaked dough out of my face! I say, "Oh, no, Mamatony, I'm ok."

"No, no, you need strength. Eat - eat." She pushes it at me. I point at my dry toast and tell her I'm starting with that and soup. She looks at my powered soup very skeptically. I tell her that American stomachs always heal with that kind of soup, and I promise I will eat her food when I feel a little stronger, but I need to start here.


Marie gets me a Sprite from the little pop stand up the dirt road, and it is the best thing I've ever tasted. (She gets me a Coke too; also freaking delicious.) I manage to get up for dinner - a feat! - and thank god Mamatony has included plain white rice on the menu tonight. Although nothing is really plain - there's some margarine or cooking oil in this, I can feel a little sheen. I can't stop thinking about Shelly's Vegan Wrap from Elephants Deli in Portland - something tart and vinegary, with sweet grapes and crunchy apples. I lean against the wall during dinner and am happy to get back to bed - with high hopes for tomorrow.

And because if you're my mother, or happen to be someone else who is wondering... no, I didn't attempt a sun shower. So I've been lying in the same outfit, with the same dried sweat, since 4 PM on Monday, and it's now 9 PM on Tuesday, and I'm just going to ride it out until tomorrow.

Just Pictures.

Oh, we'll get to the sickness story! But a few photos I forgot to post first. Below, with Emmanuel in the safari jeep - only 18! But so mature and thoughtful, and how I hope he does get to South Africa to train to be a chef, and make his dreams come true.

Where there's no copyright, there's Obama everywhere. Yes we can chew strawberry gum, my friends! 

Everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. Women carrying the stuff of life - water, food, and firewood.

And an amazing baobab:

July 29, A Pommern Monday. Part 3.

Not written in my journal, but a couple quick stories. First, stool samples. Meggie and I did not witness one. We saw the slides, and we saw the specimens. They keep a couple formaldehyde jars of examples, either to impress visitors or to illustrate to parents the importance of treatment - or both.

Also, when urinalysis was ordered by the doctor, the man or woman had to give a sample. And what are you given to collect your urine in? A now-empty insulin jar. As pictured above (small ones on the left) with worms in it. Think of the size of the opening on those little jars. Have fun peeing in that! Oh and I'm sure hands get washed...

Also during our day, one of our cases negative for malaria, negative for typhoid fever, was an old woman - oh, probably about 300 years old. To my eyes. Her grandson was with her and he was in his late teens, so that would make her in her 70s at the oldest - if he were the youngest child of her youngest child.

The woman was asked to give a stool sample and when she left, Patricia engaged in a long conversation with her grandson. As an observer with no language, I relied on body language and tone of voice. It appeared like she was lecturing him. He didn't want to argue with her, he maybe even knew she was right, and he felt ashamed, but stuck. She showed him a Bible passage. Once he left the room, she explained to me. "He has completed his secondary school and it is time for him to go teach. To go away to a new place and to have a job. But every time he has made plans and found somewhere to work, she gets very sick. But no tests come back. Sick with what? Sick to keep him home? I tell him he needs to go; he cannot cancel again his plans and his life. Again and again."

Nurse Patricia:

The rules:

July 29, A Pommern Monday. Part 1.

(As written in my journal that day; grammar and minor edits only. Italicized portions are additions written after the trip.)

If there was only one day to journal about in Africa, this would be it, hands down. I'm writing late on the 30th and you'll see why. This is going to stretch over a few blog posts, partly to prevent an epically long post that only my parents would fully read! Meggie and I were assigned to the clinic today - the first volunteers, yet again, to take on an assignment. Somebody sure trusts us.

After Dr. Elton, a dentist and also the presiding medical officer in the village (actually, in the whole area - this clinic serves seven villages and he's in charge) introduced us to the three nurses - Nema, Patricia and Farajah - I learned from my past eagerness in the secondary school, and instead sat on the bench to wait for an assignment. When Patricia began to mop, Meggie and I jumped up to do it for her. Something we can do!

I mopped the laboratory, the children's ward, the IUD insertion and sterilization room, and the delivery room. (Sterilizing of materials, not people. As far as I could tell.) It was amazing that last week, on our first day, during the brief clinic tour as part of village orientation, I was horrified at the filthy conditions. Too-small sheets on rusted frame beds with mattresses about 2 inches thick. Peeling paint. Pitted cement floors, windows so covered in red Pommern dust you can't see outside. A stained, torn and dirty curtain over the window, if you're lucky. Chipped metal bedpans back from well into the last century. Side tables with the tops smashed in but nothing to replace them, chairs missing armrests. But then...

This is where your baby is weighed and checked, immediately after delivery:

Ladies room...

'

Inside the men's ward...

Need an IUD? There are instructions on the wall, so don't worry. And this is the room speculums are sterilized in too (in something that looks a lot like the cooking pots, to be honest). But it smells like the Piniest Pine Sol ever.

For the gents...

This pretty room is the maternity ward, where you'll labor and recover (though to deliver, you'll be moved - only two beds, not four, in there.

Ladies' ward...

Meggie making beds.

... after I straightened everything to my beloved right angles, and tucked in corners, and mopped it carefully with the most intense-smelling disinfectant yet (and that's saying something!), I look around and think, hey! This is pretty clean! It looks decent! Ah, satisfaction.

Just like coming through Iringa Town the second time yesterday, after being in mud-hut rural villages, I thought, yeah, this is pretty modern. Fairly organized. I'd rather live here than in a hut, I see why people come to live in towns and cities. I would too.

If in only a week my perspective can shift that much, what will a second week bring? And how those Peace Corps or State Department folks must feel after two or three years away? Unimaginable. Though I can try. What else is being a writer about?

July 28: Back in Pommern.

(As written in my journal that day; grammar and minor edits only. Italicized portions are additions written after the trip.)

How can you give a gift when the balance of power is so badly weighted as to basically be a straight vertical line? For we Americans, we wealthy and confused (are we generous, guilty, or desiring of sharing the things we love and put so much meaning into?) little Americans, with our language taken from us - we want to give. But we want to give the things we treasure - to show gratitude for allowing us to come into the community and for being so patient with our cameras, our energy. But how CAN we give? We're so far from the first to bring boxes of school supplies - and yet, there are none in any of the classrooms. But if you got a pen, and were hungry, wouldn't you sell the pen for crackers? So how can our gifts make sense?

Edward asked me what I was sorting, when I was inventorying medical supplies before Zumba class the other day, and it was a pile of dental floss (many small packages, a few yards each). When I explained, he asked me to put it in the clinic pile because if given directly to the people, they'll use it as fishing line. The things I don't about about this kind of generational poverty - and the things I don't even know that I don't know! - make me useless. As a giver of any kind. People say, "Oh, I learned so much from 'them'" in reference to a poorer or less powerful society and I've always - and still do - take that to mean that any people with less than us will teach lessons about what is really important - love, family, laughter, connection to the community. And I've thought that was total crap. And to be honest - I still do. 

But my head is figuratively spinning tonight as I come to grips with low little - how nothing - I'll contribute here. I'm stunned and embarrassed to realize that what will be learned here will ONLY be learned by me. But not the sweet things in life, not at all a reminder of the simple profound pleasures. Instead I'm learning the profound depth of sameness the third world endures. The pain of meeting daily needs with nothing leftover at the very best, or a debt as the sun falls, at the very worst. But never two pennies to rub together - never enough to have one task done for a week or a month. Every day is exactly the same and you're lucky to just catch up every 24 hours. My human desire to communicate with the person in front of me, but the overwhelming reality of a boggingly large group of individuals in front of me.

By way of hard details, the flickering generator light tonight makes me laugh - it's terrible illumination that gives me a headache, and it is still more than all the people here have. 

Most of the women volunteers swapped clothing stories tonight - yup, most of us are heavier than we were a week ago. And in our Rose & Thorn sharing tonight, my rose was the baobab trees and their evocative emotions. My thorn was reaching wifi for the first time in almost eight days only to have it be down today. I really want to hear from John - about his backpacking trips and plans, that he is OK, that all is well at home. It's 9 PM here, 11 AM Sunday there - and he is so close to me right now. I can't feel if it's because of nerves or a problem, or if he just wants to hear from me, too.

Finally tonight, I am burdened with a good bit of despair. I feel so much like I'm letting you all down. I've put on music for the first time since arriving in Africa - Sigur Ros - in order to let these intense feelings of disappointing you flow through. 

Don't get me wrong - enough of you warned me. 

"I hope you don't think you're going to help/save/affect anyone." 

"You know you're not going to make a difference, right?" 

"What can you do in two weeks?" 

"It's arrogant to do this." 

"Just go to any town and you'll find someone who needs help. Why go with an organization, that costs money?" 

Oh, I came with much caution and pessimism - those are all direct quotes from professed friends. I haven't thought I would save anyone. But now I feel I owe you - you who sent me and Meggie off with contributions, and so much excitement and love. How can I come home with nothing tangible to show you? How can I come home broken? 

There's the septic tank, thanks be, and the joy of Zumba. And that very well might be it. So if it is - I have to let go as this second week starts. If that is all there is show for it, by way of successes, then that is the truth. Or all there is for others. The soul lessons have been great, as I can even understand them so far. And the affirmation of intuition as a guiding force has been deep. Within ten minutes of meeting all the volunteers, I was immediately drawn to Leslie - the world is full of soul connections and one here is a sweet surprise, a little reminder that life as it was ticks on and on, and I'll rejoin it - but the Tanzanians won't. 

I was asked by Emmanuel if all us Americans - can we all afford most of the things in most of the stores? How to explain a platinum ring, a vacation house, owning two cars for two adults? WalMart versus Saks? How do I talk about disposable diapers and throwing away food? Or closets of clothes so big we probably could not make an accurate list of every tee, every pair of panties, every coat, sock, shoe and baseball cap that we own? I actually didn't recognize Moses tonight, when he came to stoke the fire, for he was in a new jersey! After I got back John said, when I was explaining how I struggled to explain poverty in America to Emmanuel, "Oh, I get it! It's like, how do you explain the difference between flying ON a plane and flying on your OWN plane? How do you explain the difference a Bentley and a Ford Focus?"

If the choice had to be made right now, I wouldn't come back to Tanzania. It is so broken, and I am so small, that my little dollars to the deaf women who make crafts, or to Mamamorrie for doing my laundry, just seem to make it worse. Dangling the prize in front of Wile E Coyote but never, not once, letting him win. And we are the roadrunners - moving too fast. Someone said to us, during one of our evening lectures, "You need to slow down, America, or we really will never catch up." 

So I guess I want to apologize for how little - or negatively - I might effect Pommern, when you sent me with such enthusiastic support. I want to apologize for possibly bringing back more pain, a deeper understanding of grinding poverty, dirt, smell, anger from those who watch us zip by in a private vehicle. 

I'm groundless again tonight and so I took in a little Pema Chodron reading... she's right about one thing... how can I be both so big and so small? How can I stay right where I am without resolution; how I need resolution! Ah, but how Pema wags her finger at me lovingly - no, no, no; you don't. Resolution is bad for you; better always to sit in it. And get softened because of it. 

July 25/26, Before the break, Part 1.

Before our two nights away, this is part one of my last evening of journaling in Pommern - after the first full week. I may be repeating myself a bit here, but it's as-written, knowing the next day I'd work a half day on the septic and then go... on a safari! 

I find that having secure shelter, safe food, clean water and English speaking friends means I can remain in a heightened state of observation more often than not. There's nothing rote here; there's no single unconscious action, from food to sleep.

Also: the showers that Joe and Marie and their family brought might be the greatest possession ever and I vaguely feel like I OUGHT to be ashamed of the daily 3 minutes of waist-height better-than-lukewarm water. But it's one thing I'm not embarrassed about. it's too powerfully restorative to feel guilty.

So during my peek into Lutheran choir practice today, and then hearing "Hey Ho" on Mamatony's battery-powered tinny kitchen radio - both bring me to tears. It's that heightened state, and I write this after working, after showering, feeling reborn. The tears come for scope of Africa's problems that I can't help - like how these women, their girls, and their girls' girls will live almost this exact life. I know I won't be able to fix anything of consequence for them, the ones right in front of me, even. Tears for the health, their hopes, for how they get smitten and fall in love but it probably does not make life much better. Again and again the beauty continues to pain me - more literally at times when I see this gorgeous place, with vibrant life humming in the very air, as also the source of their pain - geographically isolated from the power, but rich in natural resources ripe for the thieving.

And it becomes, over these days, apparent how we'll each divvy up the personal resources when they get scarce. Fellow volunteer Joe is wildly generous - having brought not just the sun showers for us all to use, but thousand (truly) of dollars in medical supplies. But when they are sorted and divided to take half to the clinic near us, and half to the Roman Catholic clinic across the village, he comes back harshly certain it was not only done wrong - ah, our attachment to literally giving the gift, to seeing the joy or appreciation or the reverence for the plenty we bring, the plenty we think we innately are - but that even more importantly, his personal medications were accidentally given away.

Now, look, I don't want to lose my Ciproflaxin either! But the pure possessiveness is both funny and part of the constant state of high alert I'm in, this constant open wound I am.

I see suddenly, my God, exactly what you would do with two servings of porridge and three kids.

And perhaps, at some point, what you would do with those two servings when one child becomes ill. And then gravely ill.

How Joe - and all of us - love our little things, things, things - and how our fresh-showered good humor and ability to poke fun at ourselves is there - until a very genuine threat arises. Someone gave away my pills, vitamins, medications. Then the entitlement to OUR items flares like Bilbo Baggins clutching after his ring, baring his fangs at a dear nephew.

And with that - Mamatony says dinner is served. I peel myself off the back deck and away from my rumination, away from my imagining of scarce, scarce food and what it would do - to me.

July 24 & 25: Onalina

Not written in my journal in-country; this entry is filling in the 5 W's, post-travel. I met for two different class periods, both days after the English class, with Onalina - the general secretary of the school.

Because "executive assistant" is a first world job title, when people ask what I do here, I tell them, "I'm the secretary to a man who runs a company." That satisfies their curiosity; no one has asked what that company might do.

Edward told us that people in his country do not believe, cannot believe, that Americans ever sweat. Meaning: we never have to work hard. We are all secure. And I assume that when they hear "company" they assume a successful, thriving, easy-street company where nothing ever goes wrong, no one has get their hands dirty with labor, and we sell all the widgets our hearts desire. And while I work at a successful and growing company, I also work with people who physically build and configure lots of different computers and servers every day, and our sales goals are assuredly NOT a guarantee each quarter. Explaining any sort of first-world stress though, is an impossibility and I wouldn't even attempt it. So here, I'm a secretary, and that's a nice, soft work that's easy to understand.

I assume this is why Edward assigns me to meet for two days with Onalina, the secondary school's only secretary.

Her little office is outside the headmaster's office; she literally keep the keys to his. She keeps the school calendar, the students' permanent records and teachers' applications, diplomas and pay schedules. There is a fat folder housing permanent records, and it is labeled "Pregnant Students".

She has a cell phone - a certain sign of reliable income and wealth - and lives about five houses down from the school grounds. The first day we meet, neither of us are sure what we're going to do. She has to hand me a stool to sit on through the window of her office; the door can't open all the way because the stuffed and dusty cabinet is too big, it blocks the door. She shows me how to file a piece of paper. There does not appear to be ongoing work; just little piecemeal assignments and in between those she texts, she goes for a walk to visit the librarian, she rests. She'd like computer lessons, but it has not been sunny enough for the solar power to be fully charged, so I can't assist her there - the lab is down.

She processes a petty cash request - gasoline for a trip to Iringa to purchase school sundries (rice is on the list), and she does a beautiful set of three bureaucratic Tanzanian steps to get it approved (we walk from one building the next, getting various signatures and stamps from people who don't even look at the piece of paper, and then take it back to the door right next to hers, School Treasury, where the applicant can return to pick up the cash; we take the paperwork back with us and add it to a stack comically high and disorganized).

Over the two days we meet, for about 90 minutes each time, we speak a bit about our lives - she has two boys, which is the ultimate achievement and she is so happy when I congratulate her, hugging me into her bosom. She is confused that I am married but have no babies. "But to be a happy wife, you must have babies in the house," she says, and I don't say out loud that I think to be a happy mother you must have babies, but to be a happy wife you probably need other things.

We speak a bit about our jobs - she tells me that sometimes the headmaster is available when someone comes to see him. But if she can tell they are hot, and upset, she will say he is not available yet - and she will invite them to speak a little first to her, to get them cool, before she will allow them in. I tell her it's 100% exactly the same as a secretary in America, and she laughs and laughs. She leans in to hold my hands, squeeze them, and half-hugs me again as she laughs. Connecting with someone in Tanzania is not just an intellectual or emotional experience; it's a full-body one.

The second day, she takes me to see where the mandazi is cooked for teacher 10 AM teatime. I was not comfortable taking photos, or asking to take photos, of either Onalina or of the woman who makes the daily mandazi. So these Google Image photos are approximations...

Picture a blackened and battered pan, similar to below, but about three times bigger. Filled with a couple gallons of cooking oil, brought to a boil over thick, long logs on fire, and then the triangles of mandazi are dropped in. Inside the hut near this cooking fire, I see the hundred or so triangles laid out on a dirty wood table, ash drifting in and settling, bugs granted full access, waiting to be fried. But I know that perceived dirt is not a problem - the boiling oil will kill anything. So when I am offered a mandazi by the older, toothless chef (who smiles proudly when I tell her how beautiful they are, and how beautifully she cooks them to a perfect, consistent golden brown) I take one.

Onalina and I walk back to her office, each holding a hot mandazi in a scrap of newsprint. We sit to eat them, and I finish mine first, mimicking the way she eats hers - ripping off a small piece to blow on and then consume.

It is incredibly tasty. I mean, how can it not be? It's Indian fry bread, it's puff puff, it's vada, it's sopaipilla, it's beignet, it's elephant ear! It's the delicious, hot, oily doughnut-like food you find all over the world when flour, fat, sugar and salt are the only shelf-stable and affordable foods. 

Onalina offers me her last chunk. Knowing that this is all some people get to eat between waking and supper, I wave it away, "Oh no, that is yours, you have it, you enjoy it." She is somber and says, "It's OK." She mimes pulling it apart. "You can have. I only touch with my hands, not my mouth." As if I was saying no because I was afraid of her germs, of her saliva. Rushing to apologize, I take it gratefully, smile as I finish it, and mmmm over its goodness.n

After our first meeting, I tell Edward, when he asks how it went, "Oh, fine, I guess. We didn't do anything, though. I'm not really sure what we can teach each other about our jobs. We just visited and spoke in English and talked about our lives a little." He lit up.

"Yes! That is exactly what I wanted. She is a leader here, but she does not know that always. She has not been much out of the village. I want her to be exposed to the world, to have your world shared to her. That is why I send you."

Ah! Understanding that visiting WAS the purpose lets me go back happily the second day. I can enjoy my time with her. I don't have to DO anything. I don't have to check off a box or train anyone or keep notes. Talking is the assignment, and if I can do anything after watching a bunch of kids get the shit kicked out of them, it's talk slowly - kindly - calmly - to a woman exuding maternal warmth.

I tell her what happened in class and she just nods, "Yes, it is normal here. Not for you?" I tell her no, in America, we (almost) never hit schoolchildren - and many, many parents never hit their kids at all. It is growing out of our culture in many places. She looks like she hears my words, but I must be mistaken in what I say. Couldn't be.

The recommended packing list for Pommern included "photos from home to show the local people". I brought nine random photos, now embarrassedly stuffed into the bottom of my suitcase. But today I was grateful to bring them to Onalina so I could show her my John, Oregon, our wedding, my mother and aunt, my brother and his fiance.

"So green!" she says of all the Oregon photos, even ones I don't think of as very lush. "So handsome!" about John.

She is confused by the photo of Bradley and Kimi; "Your brother. Yes, handsome man. Tall. But who is this?"

"His wife." I see the gears turning, as she studies the picture, regarding an interracial relationship. Amazing. "And babies?"

"Ah, no, no babies yet."

Then, "Very young - and very smart?" she says about my mother. I think she says smart because my mother wears glasses. And that she looks young because people in their 40s here look like they are in their 60s at home. My mother must look like a model to her, and Onalina cannot believe her age when I tell her.  "She's beautiful, isn't she?" I say. She nods her head and she laughs, so impossibly young looking. She grabs my hands and leans in, touching foreheads.

Taking the Advice

I've been trying to figure out the best way to wear a bike helmet and not be annoyed about sweaty, matted, swinging-into-the-eyes hair. I looked at bike helmets with a ponytail cut-out. I looked at bike helmet airbags that you wear around your neck like a scarf, and they sense unusual/extreme motion like a car's airbag (or your MacBook's internal drive-saving-device) and pop out when needed. I read Bike Portland's advice for new riders forum, their women's forum, and various cycling fashion forums.

And in the end, I just took the overriding advice, and went for what people kept saying will work every single time, no rider excepted, for beating helmet hair, helmet sweat and helmet crankiness:

That said, there were honestly more reasons, bigger ones, that I decided to go for The Chop. But with each passing day (it's been a week now!) I love it more, and on the warm bike ride to work this morning, I was rewarded with a perfect coif at 8 AM and no need to carry brush/gel/pins/elastic bands. No matter how cliche it is, this is liberation.

Sometimes I get emotional.

Like over there, on the fundraising website for my trip to Tanzania. It's an emotional topic!

So, one month from today, I will have traveled 27.5 hours by air (Portland - Chicago - Zurich - Nairobi - Dar es Salaam) and then 6 to 8 hours by car (Dar es Salaam - Pommern) to arrive in the Iringa District of Tanzania, ready (?!) to volunteer.

But in case you don't want to (understandably) sully your soul by visiting a fundraising website, I'll share the sentimentality here, too:

ONE MONTH! We arrive in Dar Es Salaam in one month. What are we doing to prepare? Well, we've both shopped for quick-dry underwear and hiking boots, we've stocked up on Bonine and Imodium and bug spray. But right this minute? Well, Meggie is in France with 30 parentless fifth graders, as part of her last week teaching her regular students. And Emily is reading Paul Theroux's DARK STAR SAFARI, as if it will prepare her properly for German East Africa, later called Tangyanika, later still known as Tanzania.

But to the real point... having reached the goal of $3100, we're stunned. It's hard to express at times to people who ask why fundraising is humbling, but perhaps this might explain it... 

By going away from work, and family, to do this trip, by attacking our bucket list with a BIG entry marked off, we could have financially set ourselves back a year, or more, of all disposable income. But insetad, we have your help. And your help lets us continue to have a life in Portland - it lets us buy baby shower gifts and buy a round of drinks for birthday girls; it lets us put a tiny $20 bill into the ROTH IRA this month, and lets us get takeout on an exhausted Friday night. It allows us to still remain a part of this daily world, the social and professional and personal, while ALSO scratching off the bucket list item, and THAT is humbling. It is not us alone in the world taking this trip; it is only with your help that we're able to go (literally) half way around the world to volunteer and immerse ourselves in a wholly new experience. YOU are letting us be in both this world, and that world, and you are helping us take it all in with our huge, patient, loving, very scared hearts. 

So - thank you. Thank you for sponsoring and thank you for considering it. It means, quite literally, the world to us.

Quit slouching! Part One.

At work recently, I had the opportunity to view myself speaking in front of (most of) the company about an hour after I'd done the speaking.

When the memory is that fresh, watching a video is incredibly powerful.

I've always liked public speaking... the baby of the family often does. I mean, hey, we never got the gavel growing up! So to command attention and be able to say your say - it is enjoyable, it is fun, and I've never been too afraid of it.

That said, I am also new to this job and company. And I don't want to be a pushy know-it-all, so in my head, I was speaking in a consciously unintimidating way. I was casual, I was calm, I was asking for people's attention but not demanding it. I had something to say, but I wanted to invite you in, too, to ask questions and feel comfortable, not dominated by a gaudy speaker.

Well. Well well well.

One hour later, I watched the video with this experience-memory vivid in my mind. And lo and behold, no amount of "projecting casualness" is going to come from this woman. I am, to the slight disappointment of that gendered-shy-feminine-fragile piece of my Self, undeniably authoritative. No amount of tucking my chin down, no amount of peeking out the tops of my eyes, no amount of shrugging or smiling is going to convince anyone I'm not in charge. I clearly am, on that video, and frankly, I'd be all those other things I'm going for - likable, affable, funny, charming - if I just listened to my mother and grandmothers, and "Stood Up Straight!"

If I threw my shoulders back,  lifted my chin, and really spoke - I could actually be great at this public speaking thing, and not just decent. Whether or not this qualifies as a realization, or as a blog-worthy piece of self-awareness is up to you. But before you weigh in, try it. Record yourself in front of an audience and then watch it just as soon as you've had a little snack and a walk around the block. You might be shocked at what you find!

That settles it.

When you're wearing something you're not really sure about, style-wise, and then someone whose style you abhor sees you and immediately blurts out, "Cute skirt!!" you know it's time for it to go to the clothes swap. Decision: made.

But I'm NOT Sorry!

In the last month, I've noticed an uptick in saying sorry. Someone bumps into me; I say sorry. Someone emails me incorrect information; I reply, "Sorry, can I clarify, you meant the 19th not the 18th, since that is Friday, right?" Someone paid to provide a service arrives with a smile; I begin the interaction by apologizing for needing their service at all.

I don't think, typically, I'm a very apologetic woman. (Ask my husband.)

Whence does this uptick come?

Perhaps it is that as I embrace the start of middle age, I find everything greying out... not in emotion; far from it. Rather, I see things are more complicated - I am less sure of the black and white in life - I can understand another point of view even if I don't, or won't ever, share it. With this grey, is this apologizing some sort of uncertainty in my own authority creeping in, too?

Or perhaps it is sheer laziness. Plain ol' backsliding into the fierce cultural habits we're raised with as girls, all sugar and spice and everything nice. I'm certainly more tired than I've ever been - because it's true! It takes longer to recover from injuries, illnesses, nights out partying in middle age - and so maybe I'm putting my energy elsewhere and just forgetting to Stop Saying Sorry.

When was the last time you apologized? Were you really sorry? Was the error one of your making?

A thing I did not see on the street while growing up in Montana, which I saw today in Portland.

A woman walking toward the MAX train, pushing a baby stroller. The baby was asleep inside, covered in blankets, and both handles had swinging grocery bags hanging off them. Her hijab was maroon and very tight; so tight, in fact, that she had a flip-phone cell-phone tucked into it, and was chatting away. Take that, Bluetooth!

It's (d)Evolved to This

My day job, increasingly, causes me to be less and less interested in political conversations. Now that we are a bit over one month out from Election Day 2012, this is what passes for a political conversation in my house:

Me: But at least I get to see Gloria Steinem speak! I think everyone should see her once. It's something I'm glad to check off the life list.

John: How come?

Me: Because she is one of the mothers of feminism! She was there! She, like, helped start it!

John: I think feminism is a failed experiment. Like California.

*cue laughter*

*cue gratitude for a witty joke rather than any attempt at a serious discussion of 

feminist history in the U.S. over the last 40 years*

It's Bleak Out There

So I was out this past weekend and I was the wingman. Being happily married means you can't give one speck of advice about how to approach a cute guy at the bar - heck, you can't even give advice about how to tell if he is cute enough to approach, but not so cute he's going to be a douche. This wingman business, clearly, is not my area of expertise. In fact, I prefer the "be dead honest" approach, be it with a lot of charm and humor and snappy, broad jokes... but I now am seeing that's not exactly how this flirt-at-a-bar thing goes, at least not typically. Being married means you get to be fearless... and I don't think that's the hallmark of a successful interaction at 12:30 AM for the wingee (or whatever you call the woman on the prowl who has a wingman in tow).

And after talking to exactly three guys - only three! - I came home exhausted. This is a lot of work.

So three things kept running through my head as I made my way home.

First, the guy who said he works in financial services and only when pressed with numerous questions finally told me he manages an emerging markets mutual fund, requiring odd hours to do business in different time zones... hey plaid shirt dude, why say financial services? Why make me dig? Why not just say what you do instead of talking down to a dumb girl? And what's with the resume keywords?

Second, when your name is typical, easy to pronounce and probably familiar to people, as mine is, you never, ever, ever, not one time, think about awkward it can be to start an interaction (not to mention all three) like this:

"Hi, I'm Josh, what's your name?"

"Jenae."

"Renee?"

"No, Jenae."

"Like Renee?"

"Sure. With a J though."

"OH! JUH-nay?"

Sigh. The name is accented on the second syllable, so actually, it is more like Juh-NAY... but the point is that it shone a light on how when it is loud, and dark, and late, if your name isn't Megan or Jennifer or Elizabeth, it can be tough to start the witty, funny, flirty fun part of the night, full of the banter you're seeking, when instead it skids and stutters over name pronunciation at the start.

And finally - third - perhaps answering Point #1, is when Mr. Financial Services, with too-close a shave and too-popped a collar, walked away and said, "I'm a registered Republican," I laughed and said, "I know, I could tell." But I SHOULD have said, "I'll forgive you."

If I'm gonna be a wingman, I have sharpen my claws wit.

Just ignore that part.

Some people take a hot bath to relax. Some go for a long walk, take a nap, bake a cake or meditate. My escape, in times of stress, as you may already know, loyal reader, is to re-read the Anne of Green Gables series. 8 books, 8 great phases of a person's life, a romantic setting from the 1890s through the end of WWI.

The books are still a total escape for me - while also being completely memorized and comfortingly predictable. The world falls away and I'm simultaneously 10 years old, reading the story for the first time, and also 15, 17, 20, 21, 23, 25, 26, 28, and 29 - putting the stresses of those times on the back burner for the few minutes I have picked up the story that day, at whatever point I find myself.

Some of the religious overtones are neither for me, nor offend me - I read past calmly. But in the first, most famous book, one part gets me every time... Anne's best friend Diana has told her that Moody Spurgeon MacPherson told his mom she (Anne) is the smartest girl in school, and, Diana proclaims, "It's better to be clever than pretty." Anne retorts that is it not!, "feminine to her core."

Ten times? Twenty?... that I've read this book... and every time that line jolts the hell out of me!

Don't try to game the system.

Sure, at 30, you'd think I would already know this. But this year, after thinking about it for almost twenty years, I decided to try laser hair removal. My specific combination of Latvian and black Irish heritage, plus a unique endocrine system to lil ol' me, has equaled a lifetime of anxiety and worry about all the kinds of body hair that women might worry about. If they worry about it, if Jezebel writes about it, I struggle with it. Sure, I've gotten used to it - to a degree - and become more accepting of it - to a degree - but in the mid-1990s when laser hair removal went commercial, I said, someday I will try that!

It took the invention of Groupon deals AND a generous spouse to finally take the leap.

And I thought to myself, well, I better start somewhere that doesn't hurt, doesn't show, and doesn't feel too private. Underarms it is.

But there are two ways you can't game the system, my friends. First, the woman will tell you it feels like a rubber band snapping against your skin. She is right. If that rubber band were on fucking FIRE. And second, don't pick based on perceived pain when you have no context for it. At treatment number 2 - of 6! - the lovely woman told me that she turns up the laser each treatment a bit, and that underarms are, "probably the most painful area to treat." Oh, how I lose. System games ME.

(OK - not true. I don't lose. Because P.S... this stuff WORKS, people. At least on me. After 2 treatments I am already stunned at the effects and look forward to a lifetime of hair-killin' treatments all over the place that have begun NOW!)

A dash o' the 'belle

I don't read Jezebel like I used to; I'm not as much of a Jezebelle as I used to be, due to more limited time online each day and week for pure personal surfing.


But this essay is worth clicking over there for, and made me cheer, for great concepts and killer wording, like: "for a society that produces ads and photospreads so airbrushed that they're technically cartoon" and "for men who believe that a woman is only as valuable as she is interesting to their dicks" and "once again, we'd be well-served to emulate Hillary's "give zero fucks" example."


Yeah!!