July 29, A Pommern Monday. Part 4.

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

The feeling of being in the right place, at the right time, lasts all day. There were two more working events. First, a clothes-sizing and second, the latrine again. The clothes-sizing was for the 13 orphans at the other primary school (not the one near the mission house, where our fellow volunteers have been working).

I have visceral trouble, coming from the land of 25-cent BINS at Goodwill and corner sidewalk FREE BOXes and even piles of clothes strewn near homeless encampments, with this first task. How can I understand the importance of two pieces of clothing per child? We're told many of these orphans have one single outfit. These orphans live with grandparents or aunts, and a shirt might be 1,000Tsh, Edward says. It might take a month to save that up, after buying food and cooking oil and fuel and matches and salt.

So Meggie, Marie and I slapdash our way through the kid's clothes Marie tossed in a suitcase back in New York (and some very small adult clothes chipped in from the rest of us).

We hold things up to each child, lined up by size, erring on the side of "too big" so they can grow into it. I'm able to give one of the big girls, maybe 12 or 13, a training bra - a thin, grey, shelf bra, a castoff of the girls in our volunteer family, and as much as she'll let herself express emotion, her eyes light up at it.

This is also the nicer part of Pommern, I'm shocked to discover. The school grounds are really quite pretty, the homes are neater, all the grounds are kept up, fences are more common. The school was built by the Roman Catholics, and there's a big difference between it (below, in the background) and the buildings built by Global Volunteers. Interesting to find out we're in the poorer section of a poor village. And I resist making jokes about things Catholics build versus things Lutherans build.

(After giving away clothes:)

For some reason, I like the picture below of us talking after giving away the clothes; it shows the intensity of conversation among volunteers the whole two weeks. Experiencing, analyzing, discussing, stretching - a lot. Beyond comfort. 

And I wrap up the day's work with a couple hours back on the latrine - and how much progress we've made! I also find out that Thomas and Moses call me The Commander. They're busted by a bilingual person who tells me this at the construction site, and I turn to them in mock insult, eyes wide and mouth open in shock. Then I laugh and they laugh, and Moses says, "Commander njema!" But our bilingual companion says, "Oh no, not true! When you walked up they said, 'Oh no! The Commander is back and now we'll die!" And here I thought I was working slow and matching their pace. Apparently, as my pal at home Mikey says, I've been mushing their butts uphill! 

As we're wrapping up, as the mortar is running out, around 4 PM, I start to feel - a little  - off. 

I walk slowly back to the mission house alone. I hope it's that I didn't drink very much today, or that I pounded my lunch of peanut-butter-sauce-with-local-cabbage over noodles (yes, it was that weird). Maybe it's the smell of the latrine, especially pungent today. 

I come home. I pound some water. I take a half-bag-shower and then absolutely MUST lie down. I'll feel better if I just rest through this terrible weighted feeling.

I get up a couple hours later for dinner, which I don't really want to do. I take only a slice of papaya - papaya!  Good for the digestion, too, right?! And I heat up a cup of the powdered chicken noodle soup I brought from home. The packing list recommended soup packets for "homesick tastebuds" and though I was sure that would never be me, I said to John, "If someone gets sick, wouldn't it be nice to give them chicken noodle soup? I'm bringing four of these."

I have to leave dinner early and lie down.

And at 7 PM, it begins. Truly violent vomiting and top-of-the-line diarrhea.

Quit slouching! Part Two.

A few days after the eye-opening video experience (below), I attended two work events, in rooms full of tall men.

That is to say... I read once there is a high correlation between very financially successful men and height. At both these events, filled to the brim with lawyers, bankers, financial planners, CEOs turned consultants, some who's who of Portland (including those that actually live in Vancouver because it is cheaper), there were A Lot of Tall Men.

And the truth is, no one like to schmooze. No likes small talk. No likes, as we say back in politics, to work the room. (If you really do love it, well, ok: I believe you; you're just not of the race that knows Joseph, and alas, I am).

But there can be a little thrill, a little fun, in playing the game of Schmooze. It's like acting in a play, and there's a little fun (and a little terror) in that!

So in this room of Very Tall Men, and then again a couple nights later in another room of Very Tall Men, I chuckled to myself quite a bit. Playing the part, working the room, pretending not to be shy - it is so much easier when A, you stand up straight, and B, you have tall people to look in the eye and project confidence to. Score a second lesson for the week - it is time to quit the slouching.

And will lesson three be about The Chop? (As in - the hair. Chop. Is it? Isn't it? Being cut off to a tiny, tiny, boy-like length? I'm undecided. Still.)

True Story

Here I am, downtown, headed back to my car, on a recent Sunday - a famous Portland "sunbreak" in progress - and so the rays are reflecting energetically off the wet pavement, the people are smiling from their Sunday benedictions. It's only mid-morning so we have the day ahead of us to be useful, productive, goal-oriented. I wait patiently for the crosswalk signal. There's a man about my age on the other side, also waiting patiently. He's Indian-American, perfectly normal and well-groomed*, and he smiles at me, and looks away. I smile and look away. We wait for the walk signal. (*I point this out because hey, downtown Portland on a Sunday morning? There are plenty of unstable or homeless or still-drunk or plain ol' crazy people out and about. This is just a neighborly-seeming, regular dude.)

Just as we pass each other in the crosswalk he flings his arms wide and gestures loosely from my head to my toes, and says, "Beautiful! Such a beautiful woman!" and keeps walking, and doesn't look back. It burst forth from him; he says it in a way that he just HAD to tell me he thought I was beautiful. It couldn't remain unsaid, and he wanted nothing for it - nothing but to say it and move along with his day.

Do I think I'm particularly beautiful, especially worth such a joyous outburst? No, that's not why I'm sharing this with you, of course. I'm sharing it because I wonder what could happen this week if I'm compelled to share a loud, brash, big, silly compliment with someone - especially someone I don't know well, or at all - and what if I go ahead and do it? Will you do it with me, and tell me about it? Maybe it'll motivate me out of my straight-laced box and I'll be ready when I see someone do something nice, dance something beautifully, wear something crazy-unique, say something really funny in a public place. I'll be ready to shout out to them that they are wonderful! And then I'll share about it here, too.

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.

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!!

Boys will be Boys

Not everything in the world is gendered, or has to be, but honestly, only two boys (under the age of 25) would take a brand new coffee pot out of the box, a gift to all office workers here in our humble digs, and make coffee in it.

No rinsing of the carafe, no test run through with hot water, no cleaning at all. Box. Open. Coffee. Made.

This is not a surprise, however, because I had the foresight to ask if they'd washed it, and the predictable "no" that followed prompted me to skip coffee this morning at work.

And then, one boy said to me, not three minutes later, "Well now it tastes different! It tastes weird to me! Should I throw it out?"

Weinergate.

In a world filled with goldfish-length attention spans and 140 character tweets, I do get a kick out of our very, very first reactions to things - to news items, to gossip tidbits (and in this case, the latter pretending to be the former).

Gleefully full of schadenfreude and tuned into today's Anthony Weiner press conference, I was still shocked, however, when two people in the room, awaiting the good Congressman's turn at the podium, repeatedly said, "His wife is so beautiful, though," as if that had something to do with it!

As for my first reaction? A little shock, I admit, last week - he's Jon Stewart's friend after all! And then laughter today, and then a Wikipedia visit to find out he has been married for NEARLY ELEVEN MONTHS. Time for a vow renewal, I suppose?

M v W

I write a lot about femininity, but trust me, I think about it even more. What is it, what does it look like, what does it feel like. Can it be also powerful and authoritative, or does that negate its very existence? (That's a real question, by the way, because we say, oh, of course it can be!, but society and blogs and magazines and coworkers and friends tossing off thoughtless comments lead me to genuinely ask it.)

But for all that, the silent, and very real, other side of this coin of conversation is masculinity. And how broad a spectrum men are given to be real men, to be considered and seen as manly. This lovely tribute to Patrick Swayze on Jezebel has comment calling his masculinity (partly born of a football playing father and ballet dancing mother, both activities he did very well) "unforced masculinity".

This is now a phrase I love.

Because it IS the "unforced" part that makes a man so delightfully masculine, whatever kind of man he may be. (And it's not about being sexually attractive, though he may be, because it's much more expansive than a dual hetero-homo view of the world.) It's a little bit of self confidence, it's a lot of devil-may-care, it's a dash of choices made well - and if not, of lessons learned with humor - and it's an effortless grace with and true interest in talking about, experiencing, viewing, reading, feeling and enjoying both ends of the gender spectrum in ways we see it - weeping and punching, nurturing and seizing, listening and talking, dancing and footballing.