if there were to be a Christmas wish list this year it would be this:
a copy of Ryan's plane ticket confirmation
a few small Moleskin journals
a hug from Daddy and Mama
a few nice pens to script into said journals
a hug from LeeAnn and Ed O'brien
a few mixed tapes, maybe including Rilo Kiley, My Morning Jacket, Flaming Lips and some Wes Anderson film soundtracks
foot cream
a call from Brandon Taylor
happy books
old and new photographs in ziplock baggies
a letter from Janna Thornberry (hint)
a polaroid of Patrick McLaughin in all of his glory
a trip to Segu to be flagged constantly by my two best friends in country, Daniel Dayton and Megan Pilli, for 10 days
a realization that i'm 6 months into 26! woo hoo!
some bacon, bit form will do nicely
a nice picture of SeanBerg and Lauren McAuliffe (also a mailing address!)
a kiss from Ryan O'brien, just above a closedm smiling eyelid, always a favorite
nice flipflops
full knowledge of Bambara
a new head lamp
a picture of Zoe, Tuk, Wyatt and Fisher, an ensemble of lovely and proportional sorts
letters from the kids in Austin... oh how i miss you all
a hug from Daddy and Mama
a long long talk with Skylar about politics and life and love and goodness and trouble and puppies and everything. he's a good one to do this with.
chapstick
a notice of Ginny Sednek's continued health improvement
an email from Katie Fay concerning the newest addition in San Francisco and and Oma and Laila update
a used baseball cap to cover my slowly growing hair which is sitting in a rather awkward stage right now
an update from Dale and Sadie
an eta from Brandon Taylor
love you all
*essentially, goodness via mail*
Friday, November 7, 2008
i ni ce kosobe
thanksgiving is on the horizon, just three weeks away and i'm feeling its looming presence. thanksgiving in the Schalit household has always been a really lovely time of year. i can only recall a few where Daddy wasn't present and fewer still where we didn't trek to Ft. Worth to see Uncle Joe and the Hart side of our family. its tough being here, missing the family and the friends and the FOOD and the love and the goodness and the conversations and the hugs and the football and the naps and the true loyalty reverberated throughout all aforementioned aspects. this time last year i met ryan and fell in love. this time 2 years ago i was unconscious through most of it due to my Vespa wreck and subsequent injuries. this time 10 years ago Aunt Diane was brightening everyones lives and eyes with buffont hairdo's, purple eye shadow and wicked nails.
this thanksgiving will be spent in village, most likely with my immediate and fantastic teammate Liza Clark (known locally as Awa). we've planned to purchase a guinea fowl and have a friend slay and clean it for us. Aunt Tootsie has generously sent more than enough spices, dried veggies and potatoes to last Awa and myself for days with leftovers. my recent purchase of a solar oven will hopefully produce some cookies or maybe a pie if we can find the right fruits.
needless to say, it will be a tough year for this holiday, but will always be filled with reminiscent thoughts of good family, friends and food. lucky for me, i've recently come across the concept that "Heaven is Gratitude Itself" and i do believe that this W. Blake quote will serve me well this year.
i have a hut. i have water. i have the support from america and from a few amazing friends in country to make this whole endeavor which started as a dream a true reality. i have love. i give love. i am happy. i am lucky. i am american and female and proud.
its going to be a good thanksgiving. full of tears of joy and of naustalgia and love.
please know that i appreciate you all, reading this, supporting me, supporting the Peace Corps, supporting my family and loved ones in my absence.
thank you for you. thank you for being exactly what and who you are and for your continued support.
Happy Thanksgiving. I ni ce kosobe. Merci Beaucoup.
this thanksgiving will be spent in village, most likely with my immediate and fantastic teammate Liza Clark (known locally as Awa). we've planned to purchase a guinea fowl and have a friend slay and clean it for us. Aunt Tootsie has generously sent more than enough spices, dried veggies and potatoes to last Awa and myself for days with leftovers. my recent purchase of a solar oven will hopefully produce some cookies or maybe a pie if we can find the right fruits.
needless to say, it will be a tough year for this holiday, but will always be filled with reminiscent thoughts of good family, friends and food. lucky for me, i've recently come across the concept that "Heaven is Gratitude Itself" and i do believe that this W. Blake quote will serve me well this year.
i have a hut. i have water. i have the support from america and from a few amazing friends in country to make this whole endeavor which started as a dream a true reality. i have love. i give love. i am happy. i am lucky. i am american and female and proud.
its going to be a good thanksgiving. full of tears of joy and of naustalgia and love.
please know that i appreciate you all, reading this, supporting me, supporting the Peace Corps, supporting my family and loved ones in my absence.
thank you for you. thank you for being exactly what and who you are and for your continued support.
Happy Thanksgiving. I ni ce kosobe. Merci Beaucoup.
an attempt at justifying my underlying thought processes
i've reached a point, here in my early twenties in west africa with long dry days pushing my thoughts in directions otherwise left for those dealing with boredom, with which
i'd like to share with the dedicated fans and scrutinous critics of this web logged life of mine. there is something to be said for what some may call boredom and that thing is this: its awesome. boredom is something that stateside, or more, in any developed country, that can come from too much stuff. (typical peace corps preachiness, i know but bear with me) for example, when i want a cool glass of water i cannot merely go to fridge, pull out the Brita, reach into the cupboard, grab a sturdy glass and pour away; instead i have to go to the pump, find that the key is missing, go find Tati, the 80 year old key-holder, greet him for 5 minutes, coax him off of his bamboo cot, help him find his sole-less shoes and walk for 25 minutes to the pump which lays 40 feet from his door, pump water into a 5 gallon bucket, carry it home, put it through the filter, wait patiently, and pump it into my water bottle. not cool, not in a glass, but damn is it good water. another example, in the US, i would arrive at Whitis or Walling or one of the satellite homes of said groups, walk in, greet on the way to the fridge, ask for a beer after my first sip and sit with one or two or five friends on a couch or bench or floor and converse during commercial breaks and over taco shack or maudies take out. here i show up, sometimes accidentally in someone's concession, sit on a freshly swept dirt floor and quietly watch as they pour shotglasses of very dense tea in and out of a tiny perfect teapot adding more sugar than water and continuing the pour until there is more foam in the glass than room for tea. people come and go and we greet and send them on their way, commands are thrown across concessions and donkeys cry in the distance (worse yet, near by).
hours move like snails across grass and days include countdowns to my usual 2 hour break from it all (where i curl up on a mat on the floor with a book and a pillow and a 2 liter bottle of water and make myself get through both before napping a bit to avoid some of the hottest parts of the day) and to bedtime, which was 8pm but has recently been revised and moved back to 10pm. its tough to fill your days here because everyone only speaking slang bambara south of Kita, no one does anything when they say they will - if they're within 20 minutes of said time, they're on time. if they're within an hour, they're a little late; only if you end up spending the night due to someone's tardiness are the reprimanded - and its just fucking difficult. you have to reaffirm your purpose day in and day out. countdowns, check marks, to do lists and letters abound here and sometimes its really tough to persuade yourself that you're right in choosing to leave behind everything. your whole life. and for me, that is a lot. friends who adore me, parents who respect and love me, a brother full of encouragement and pride, and the man of my dreams, waiting wide awake in Salida, Colorado, loving me from afar. its easy to get caught up in it all - the things we miss. but its fun to review those things and find out that they're not things at all, they are people. oftentimes, though, those things are legitimately food items and that is absolute.
i should be bored. many people are bored. volunteers here in mali have a tendency to get extremely bored. there are many reasons that they will spout out just as easy as the pledge of allegiance but i feel that it has been misdiagnosed. some of their reasons tend to include the trouble of everything (more, the lack of ease. everything you do, including fetching water, takes lots and lots of effort), the lack of friends (though i'm told that this will change soon with the influx of our language skills) or things to do with them that doesn't include superior amounts of sweat and sand, and the continuous, repetitive, exhaustive way in which many things, including the greetings and farewells and making of tea, are done... although not always completed.
although these reasons are quite valid, i find myself never bored although i suffer from the same symptoms.
want to know my secret?
Ryan O'Brien.
yep, the man himself. he is far far away, in a cool and soon to be cold place, living with his wonderful, bright, beautiful soon-to-be two year old in a home made house at the foot of the collegiate peaks. (many cringe at just these words both with jealousy of his surroundings and rage that i would even utter them) we are able to speak on the phone every two or so weeks and as wonderful as it is when we do, its made all the more wonderful by the times in between. the times when i should be pulling my hair out and reading 6 novels a week like the others. but i'm not. Ryan, just by name, brings a smile to my face. the thought of him, of our past, of our future, fills my mind at every waking, and sleeping, moment. he underlies everything, from my morning coffee, to my trips to the fields with the women's group. somehow, i always find him on my mind and making me smile.
once, when i thought i was bored and i was laying underneath a hangar made of bamboo and grass, my hand dangling in the sand, my eyes unfocused and my head even loopier, i reached for my water bottle only to find a giant, fist sized, shiny like a pearl but black like charcoal, spotted with vibrant, king's cape blue dots, 5 legged beetle sitting inches from my bottle. horned, bright eyed and walking in long, lazy, loopy circles (due to the lack of its 6th leg), i sat in awe of this creature. i was terrified. i was memorized. and my first thought was : Ryan. he would love this, but i couldn't bring myself to loose eye contact with it and take a picture (sorry Patrick). i smiled a big, comfortable, easy smile (the first thing i'd done with ease all day that day) knowing that he would want not to see it in picture form but hear about it via script and scripture, because he would know that if i were to get up, scramble to find the camera and return, this beautiful cripple would have spiraled out of my life and i would be without a memory of such cyclonic enormity. Ryan brings ease to my life. Ryan brings smiles to my face. Ryan brings peace to my sleep and sweetness to my coffee every morning.
of course i'm bored, i'm not mental. but in my boredom i think not of how bored i am but how grateful i am for this man who fills every thought with triumph and joy and goodness and introspective sight and i could go on forever but the keyboard won't let me. everyone is bored, but here boredom is something with which you can gain triumph over and although its not easy, nothing is. however, i will be a devil's advocate here and claim that it is easier here than in the US. for here, the activity of fetching water is just that - an activity, its a conscious effort to do something for yourself and upon its completion, you get to drink cool (meaning not 116F like the air) water and be refreshed so that you can go to another's concession and sit with Malian friends and eat corn off the cob and peanuts you may have pulled from the ground and drink overly sweetened tea on a floor thats dirt and yet clean and be content because you are there. you put yourself on that floor with that water bottle and around those people and ryan ryan ryan would love this. everything that is done is a triumph over nature and self. also, there is no tv. there are no computers. i can't even get radio reception where i live. we don't have phones. we don't have electricity. there is nothing to pull us out of ourselves, so many go nuts inside their heads (and i must admit, i'm victim to this as well) but because we have to light a match to get a flame inside a lamp instead of flipping on the switch, and if you've got the right mentality, everything done here is a triumph. all of it. making it through each day. triumph.
so, like so many other things, i got wordy and windy and apologize. the point to this log, however, is this: if there is one thing in your life that you can focus on that makes you extremely happy under any and all odds, and you link that thing to every waking moment, every possible, plausible and strange thing, you will find that boredom becomes a vacation, a trip down memory lane, and a good use of time.
and in the immortal words of Wayne Campbell, "i once thought i had mono for a whole year... turns out, i was just really bored."
i'd like to share with the dedicated fans and scrutinous critics of this web logged life of mine. there is something to be said for what some may call boredom and that thing is this: its awesome. boredom is something that stateside, or more, in any developed country, that can come from too much stuff. (typical peace corps preachiness, i know but bear with me) for example, when i want a cool glass of water i cannot merely go to fridge, pull out the Brita, reach into the cupboard, grab a sturdy glass and pour away; instead i have to go to the pump, find that the key is missing, go find Tati, the 80 year old key-holder, greet him for 5 minutes, coax him off of his bamboo cot, help him find his sole-less shoes and walk for 25 minutes to the pump which lays 40 feet from his door, pump water into a 5 gallon bucket, carry it home, put it through the filter, wait patiently, and pump it into my water bottle. not cool, not in a glass, but damn is it good water. another example, in the US, i would arrive at Whitis or Walling or one of the satellite homes of said groups, walk in, greet on the way to the fridge, ask for a beer after my first sip and sit with one or two or five friends on a couch or bench or floor and converse during commercial breaks and over taco shack or maudies take out. here i show up, sometimes accidentally in someone's concession, sit on a freshly swept dirt floor and quietly watch as they pour shotglasses of very dense tea in and out of a tiny perfect teapot adding more sugar than water and continuing the pour until there is more foam in the glass than room for tea. people come and go and we greet and send them on their way, commands are thrown across concessions and donkeys cry in the distance (worse yet, near by).
hours move like snails across grass and days include countdowns to my usual 2 hour break from it all (where i curl up on a mat on the floor with a book and a pillow and a 2 liter bottle of water and make myself get through both before napping a bit to avoid some of the hottest parts of the day) and to bedtime, which was 8pm but has recently been revised and moved back to 10pm. its tough to fill your days here because everyone only speaking slang bambara south of Kita, no one does anything when they say they will - if they're within 20 minutes of said time, they're on time. if they're within an hour, they're a little late; only if you end up spending the night due to someone's tardiness are the reprimanded - and its just fucking difficult. you have to reaffirm your purpose day in and day out. countdowns, check marks, to do lists and letters abound here and sometimes its really tough to persuade yourself that you're right in choosing to leave behind everything. your whole life. and for me, that is a lot. friends who adore me, parents who respect and love me, a brother full of encouragement and pride, and the man of my dreams, waiting wide awake in Salida, Colorado, loving me from afar. its easy to get caught up in it all - the things we miss. but its fun to review those things and find out that they're not things at all, they are people. oftentimes, though, those things are legitimately food items and that is absolute.
i should be bored. many people are bored. volunteers here in mali have a tendency to get extremely bored. there are many reasons that they will spout out just as easy as the pledge of allegiance but i feel that it has been misdiagnosed. some of their reasons tend to include the trouble of everything (more, the lack of ease. everything you do, including fetching water, takes lots and lots of effort), the lack of friends (though i'm told that this will change soon with the influx of our language skills) or things to do with them that doesn't include superior amounts of sweat and sand, and the continuous, repetitive, exhaustive way in which many things, including the greetings and farewells and making of tea, are done... although not always completed.
although these reasons are quite valid, i find myself never bored although i suffer from the same symptoms.
want to know my secret?
Ryan O'Brien.
yep, the man himself. he is far far away, in a cool and soon to be cold place, living with his wonderful, bright, beautiful soon-to-be two year old in a home made house at the foot of the collegiate peaks. (many cringe at just these words both with jealousy of his surroundings and rage that i would even utter them) we are able to speak on the phone every two or so weeks and as wonderful as it is when we do, its made all the more wonderful by the times in between. the times when i should be pulling my hair out and reading 6 novels a week like the others. but i'm not. Ryan, just by name, brings a smile to my face. the thought of him, of our past, of our future, fills my mind at every waking, and sleeping, moment. he underlies everything, from my morning coffee, to my trips to the fields with the women's group. somehow, i always find him on my mind and making me smile.
once, when i thought i was bored and i was laying underneath a hangar made of bamboo and grass, my hand dangling in the sand, my eyes unfocused and my head even loopier, i reached for my water bottle only to find a giant, fist sized, shiny like a pearl but black like charcoal, spotted with vibrant, king's cape blue dots, 5 legged beetle sitting inches from my bottle. horned, bright eyed and walking in long, lazy, loopy circles (due to the lack of its 6th leg), i sat in awe of this creature. i was terrified. i was memorized. and my first thought was : Ryan. he would love this, but i couldn't bring myself to loose eye contact with it and take a picture (sorry Patrick). i smiled a big, comfortable, easy smile (the first thing i'd done with ease all day that day) knowing that he would want not to see it in picture form but hear about it via script and scripture, because he would know that if i were to get up, scramble to find the camera and return, this beautiful cripple would have spiraled out of my life and i would be without a memory of such cyclonic enormity. Ryan brings ease to my life. Ryan brings smiles to my face. Ryan brings peace to my sleep and sweetness to my coffee every morning.
of course i'm bored, i'm not mental. but in my boredom i think not of how bored i am but how grateful i am for this man who fills every thought with triumph and joy and goodness and introspective sight and i could go on forever but the keyboard won't let me. everyone is bored, but here boredom is something with which you can gain triumph over and although its not easy, nothing is. however, i will be a devil's advocate here and claim that it is easier here than in the US. for here, the activity of fetching water is just that - an activity, its a conscious effort to do something for yourself and upon its completion, you get to drink cool (meaning not 116F like the air) water and be refreshed so that you can go to another's concession and sit with Malian friends and eat corn off the cob and peanuts you may have pulled from the ground and drink overly sweetened tea on a floor thats dirt and yet clean and be content because you are there. you put yourself on that floor with that water bottle and around those people and ryan ryan ryan would love this. everything that is done is a triumph over nature and self. also, there is no tv. there are no computers. i can't even get radio reception where i live. we don't have phones. we don't have electricity. there is nothing to pull us out of ourselves, so many go nuts inside their heads (and i must admit, i'm victim to this as well) but because we have to light a match to get a flame inside a lamp instead of flipping on the switch, and if you've got the right mentality, everything done here is a triumph. all of it. making it through each day. triumph.
so, like so many other things, i got wordy and windy and apologize. the point to this log, however, is this: if there is one thing in your life that you can focus on that makes you extremely happy under any and all odds, and you link that thing to every waking moment, every possible, plausible and strange thing, you will find that boredom becomes a vacation, a trip down memory lane, and a good use of time.
and in the immortal words of Wayne Campbell, "i once thought i had mono for a whole year... turns out, i was just really bored."
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
ameriCAN
i'm so proud to be an american after the events of yesterday.
watching the election at an expat bar in the capital city of the world's 3rd poorest country with 40 other peace corps volunteers under the guies of sleepiness (we had to stay up until 530am to see the final call and historic speeches), hope, fear and pride, we all came to tears, we all clapped and hugged and when we emerged this morning, hungover and happy, we were congratulated by absolute strangers on the streets.
we are american's and we are very proud of that fact.
especially knowing that we, americans, are able to make history, one by one, as a group and for the greater good.
pride doesn't describe it correctly, but it gets you close. to have had the opportunity to witness that, to participate in that, from abroad and while serving in JFK's dream, was beyond moving. was beyond good. was absolutely amazing.
Patrick Dentler - congratulations! all of your work paid off. i'm so proud of you.
watching the election at an expat bar in the capital city of the world's 3rd poorest country with 40 other peace corps volunteers under the guies of sleepiness (we had to stay up until 530am to see the final call and historic speeches), hope, fear and pride, we all came to tears, we all clapped and hugged and when we emerged this morning, hungover and happy, we were congratulated by absolute strangers on the streets.
we are american's and we are very proud of that fact.
especially knowing that we, americans, are able to make history, one by one, as a group and for the greater good.
pride doesn't describe it correctly, but it gets you close. to have had the opportunity to witness that, to participate in that, from abroad and while serving in JFK's dream, was beyond moving. was beyond good. was absolutely amazing.
Patrick Dentler - congratulations! all of your work paid off. i'm so proud of you.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
to: Patrick McLaughlin with Love
So, as some of you already know, Ryan has a 2 year old son, Fisher. due to his amazing and wonderful parenting techniquies, we are with Fish often and thus he poked his pretty head into many a photograph. As I settled into my community in Mali, a polygamist, animist and Muslim community at that, I busted out the old photo album if for anything the ability to show off the fact that I could in fact describe one or two things, be they pretty, tall, black or white, in the local language Bambara. Anywho, most of my favorite pictures of Ryan are of him and Fisher and so, by both default and lack of vocabulary, the people of my community see Ryan, locally known as Wyna Obyna (Ryan O'Brien) and Pisen (Fisher) as my immediate family; meaning, Fish is my son.
Following the multitudes of blessings that follow the assumption of parenthood, women were curiously staring at me below the collar bone. Some happen to get rather close, so close that their noses nearly touch my "clevage" (if we can still call it that - I'm still under 130 trying to recover from an illness in August) and sit up, profoundly, much like judges finding lawyers in contempt of court, and announce that "no, you cannot bear children with little tiny teeny weeny breasts like that" - I truly wish that this was not a direct translation... alas, here we are.
Anyhow, about a week after first showing off my family and beautiful friends from home, I was on my way to the pump as Kontie, a 35 year old female, mother of 15 (not kidding), wife of the community chief, president of the local women's association, three toothed, terror of a woman flagged me down from the near by well. Mid pull (meaning, amidst her 150 foot 1.5 gallon pull of water from the well) she dropped the bag, laughed out loud, shouted my local name "Umu! Umu!", and proceeded to pull her left breast out from underneath her oversized traditional Malian shirt, shover her left nipple into her nearly toothless mouth, and chewed, all the while mocking me, yelling "you couldn't do this if your life depended on it."
Alas, Kontie, this beast is dead on. I will never be able to pull an empty mamory gland 2 feet out of its way to mock an innocent, able and trying American volunteer, and no, I haven't breast fed anyone yet, and no, I can't shut up 9 year olds with my overused nipples as pascifiers. However, I can take this with a grain of salt and will forever think of the reaction that Patrick McLaughlin might have had to this (continuous) abuse and with that, I smile and walk with Kontie to her peanut fields everyday, take the abuse, smile and almost pee my pants every time she whips it out like American moms pull out mp3 players and ADD pills.
Following the multitudes of blessings that follow the assumption of parenthood, women were curiously staring at me below the collar bone. Some happen to get rather close, so close that their noses nearly touch my "clevage" (if we can still call it that - I'm still under 130 trying to recover from an illness in August) and sit up, profoundly, much like judges finding lawyers in contempt of court, and announce that "no, you cannot bear children with little tiny teeny weeny breasts like that" - I truly wish that this was not a direct translation... alas, here we are.
Anyhow, about a week after first showing off my family and beautiful friends from home, I was on my way to the pump as Kontie, a 35 year old female, mother of 15 (not kidding), wife of the community chief, president of the local women's association, three toothed, terror of a woman flagged me down from the near by well. Mid pull (meaning, amidst her 150 foot 1.5 gallon pull of water from the well) she dropped the bag, laughed out loud, shouted my local name "Umu! Umu!", and proceeded to pull her left breast out from underneath her oversized traditional Malian shirt, shover her left nipple into her nearly toothless mouth, and chewed, all the while mocking me, yelling "you couldn't do this if your life depended on it."
Alas, Kontie, this beast is dead on. I will never be able to pull an empty mamory gland 2 feet out of its way to mock an innocent, able and trying American volunteer, and no, I haven't breast fed anyone yet, and no, I can't shut up 9 year olds with my overused nipples as pascifiers. However, I can take this with a grain of salt and will forever think of the reaction that Patrick McLaughlin might have had to this (continuous) abuse and with that, I smile and walk with Kontie to her peanut fields everyday, take the abuse, smile and almost pee my pants every time she whips it out like American moms pull out mp3 players and ADD pills.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Snail Mail Mali
for those of you who wish to send me something to brighten my day, lighten my heart and plaster a smile upon this filthy face, here are some options that you might have not thought of before:
a simple note... easy as pie
dried fruits or vegetables
loofas or pumice stone type things
pictures in ziplock baggies (my new framing technique)
cut outs of information or really great new styles from magazines (to continue my already stellar since of style)
nice teas (ie: not lipton)
love to all. i hope you know that knowing that i have friends, family and loved ones at home is enough to get me through some seriously shit times.
thank you.
a simple note... easy as pie
dried fruits or vegetables
loofas or pumice stone type things
pictures in ziplock baggies (my new framing technique)
cut outs of information or really great new styles from magazines (to continue my already stellar since of style)
nice teas (ie: not lipton)
love to all. i hope you know that knowing that i have friends, family and loved ones at home is enough to get me through some seriously shit times.
thank you.
Victory is Mine...
there are some tiny victories that i would like to share with my loyal readers. things that, as they are, simply
turned my life out here in the sub saharan bush around.
victory no. 1
every evening at 5 pm i gather water in a bucket for my daily bath (i only put in this determining detail for those
who may have wondered about the status of regularity of my baths. you know who you are.). if its been execptionally
hot, 120F for example, i find that i'm not only covered in sweat, but a bit of a forcefield lies betweeen me and
the air that so dirties my skin. from head to toe, a thick, scratchable almost pealable layer coats my body. the
dander on my scalp has exponentially thickened and due in part to me always bending over, bugs (spiders and their
webs to be exact) tend to get mangeled in my thick hair. when i reach for the face scrub, which has the texture of
eggs and salt and sand - thick, gooey and gritty - i find that i need to two rounds of what the FDA won't even
allow in the USA for fear that sandpapering one's face may become all the rage. the lines of grit found on my neck
act as the necklaces that i no longer adorne myself with. the feet and lower calves, thats the real nastyness - some-
times, i'm not sure whether i'm that tan or that dirty. the line between funny filthy and just filthy has been not
only crossed, but is so far behind me that when i turn back to see it, its like a tiny speck in the far off distance.
in the US, the joy of the loofa is found in the amount of suds and bubbles that come from its tiny little head. one
squeeze of the right type of soap and boom, slosh, bam, you're covered in froth from head to toe. i need to loofa,
and all of its glorious suds-making crevaces, if only to reassure the 20 layers of sweat-sand-dirt-ick that i am
determined to go to sleep with only 7.
the pace of the bucket bath is the beauty of it. its truly a process, begining with the fetching of the water.
there is a pump in my town, one pump to provide potable water for 450 dehydrated and dirty Malian southerners.
needless to say, it breaks often, and when that happens - to the well we go! the wells, according to our in-country
medical staffers, are some of the dirtiest places on earth. especially the ones which are uncovered (er - all of them)
and although there is only one pump in my town there are 17 wells. the water that rises in the cowstomach sacks from the
depths of often times 150ft, comes one pull at a time, sloshing greyish, soupy water that, oftentimes, is littered with
waterspiders and everyonceinawhile, frogs. eewe. (those 20 layers of ick are starting to sound pretty nice, no? almost
like a protective suit... yea, thats it! my body's suit of armour. ook, back to the topic at hand.) the process continues
in simplicity with the heating and treating of the water. during the time that the water is being boiled, i take my
supplies, towel, and tape player with speaker, to the nygen and push play.
for the first 3 weeks, a bucket of water was delivered to me by a team of 4 or 5 girls, all preteen, all smiles. i didn't
know who they were, where they came from, or whose bucket i was using, but for the time being, it was a nice little
surprise and made life easy cheesy. then, one day, i decided to take a bath at 630 instead of 6 - amazingly, in those
30 minutes, the sky changes, the air ceases to bite your skin, and the temperature drops about 4 or 5 degrees - and on that
fateful day, i came to find out that the girls were not delivering bath water over these past 3 weeks, i was stealing
it.
seeing as how the world does indeed revolve around one miss sydney schalit (soon to be sydney o'brien, ps) i assumed that
their timely, daily trips by my house every evening were, obviously, to give me a bucket of water so that i could be comforted
by the cleanliness that only exPats can appreciate and bathe when, in fact, they were meerely coming by to do their evening
greetings and made the grave mistake of showing their true colors and setting down what is a truly heavy bucket of water.
oops.
feeling the instant and insane pangs of white guilt and sudden urgency of my need for water i came to the conclusion that,
contrary to popular belief (which is that white people cannot carry heavy things, cannot find water, and in essesnce, should
have gone extinct long ago due to their innate laziness and were only saved by their inability to let any man, woman or child
go unorganized and unmanaged - sadly, true right), i could go to the well, take off my shoes, climb to the cement landing,
drop the black cowsack down, realize the actuall distance of 150 feet, dip it a few times, and pull up 6 gallons of greyish
(lucky for me no frogs, yet) murky water and tote it back to my huts where i would treat the hell out of it. followed up by
taking out a pot-full and bringing it to a raging boil then placing it in with the rest of the bucket, now treated with
1 ounce of bleach; this adds just the right amount of warmth to the whole bucket that you sense, upon suds'ing up, that you are
actually taking a bath.
in case the victory of this soapy story got lost amongst the multiple tangents taken, it was the fact that although i'm
white and filthy, i am capable of taking a nice, warm bath under a big blue, pink and cloudless sky, without problem and
now, with a lot less guilt.
victory no. 2
although time here moves slowly, it flies when one is reading a good book. the library in the Kita Stage House is pretty funny,
an obscure treasure chest of lsat books from the early 90's, jane austen novels taped together and harry potter giants
smothering the smaller steinback novels of yesteryear. its stuffy and packed to the top of the ceiling and amazingingly (some
what) organized. although the dewey decimal system has elluded west african book banks thus far, there is a bit of humor found
in the ease with which peace corps volunteers can find their way around this mess of a room. with books acting as bookshelves
themselves, there is little actual knowledge of where things are, but somehow, we manage.
i happened upon a book called The Island by Aldus Huxley. not sure if it has anything to do with the movie and enjoying the
fact that the cover acted as a bookmark, i picked it up and read the back. what i found was something special indeed: a book
that, state side, i would have laughed at and mocked the reader who surely would wear black skinny jeans, black slim boots,
and a black turtleneck at the spiderhouse in austin, smoking handmade cigarettes and demanding soy milk partially steamed in
his quadruple espresso and would sneak in a sugar cube only when sure no one was looking. this books back cover states that
"Mr. Huxley has said his final word about the human condition [...] the readers reaction will depend on his own postulates
[...] in short, can man save himself?" upon reading this heady back cover, i laughed to the tune of this "i'm going to get
my masters in english literature and only so that i can laugh at english literature while smoking my handmade cigarette and
licking up the spare particles of tabacco with a damp pointer finger" and picked up this novel of self exploration.although
there are pages made solely of adjectives, painful pronunciations and overuse of semicolons, this book, single handedly,
changed my perception, my self and truly my thoughts on the "human condition."
let me elaborate, for those of you still reading this blog, god bless you : if i had read this, say, at UT, i would have
barfed. the way its written is so that you have the option of "realizing" that you're reading it or just plain reading it.
you can be "here and now" and take in the surroundings and the smells and sometimes find that you've spent twenty minutes
of your sacred alive time with your nose in a book that telling you to go and live and live a life worth living. sometimes
you find yourself dowsed in tears, sweat and smiles. the realization that you come to, while truly reading this book, is
that your surroundings can make or break any novel. for me, if i'd read this is college, i probably would have taken up
smoking just so i could use these pages as papers and sat in my sundress drinking white wine at the spiderhouse secretly making
fun of the fellow in black. however, when sitting on a dirt floor, in a mud hut, escaping 123F heat, and sahara-red-stained
winds, in a very small village in west africa, one reads to a different tune.
there is a part of this book where the main character trips on a local drug that enlightens your senses and he finds all the
things that have plagued his life, all of his lifes baggage, all of the terrible things mankind does, whether it be to a loved
one or a stranger, he finds peace and terror simultaneously. he quotes william blake in saying "Gratitude is Heaven Itself."
for whatever reason, lying on my dirt floor, swarmed by flies, troubled by sickness, dealing with emotions that i didn't know
i had, i wept happy tears. terribly happy happy tears. wrote and rewrote this quote. gratitude is heaven itself. what truth,
what sadness, what joy, what simplicity! coming to this quote, on this floor, at this time in my life, while dealing with the
suchness of poverty, the truth of democracy, the beauty of love, the pain of sickness, all of this and i am happy. happy to have
a hut, happy to have water, happy to sleep well, happy to sweat healthy salty sweat, happy to find people in every community
who are worth time, worth dignity, worth joy.
gratitude overwhelmed. graciousness, although often times hard to come by, flooded me. many of you will get letters that spawned
from this epiphany, this moment of truth, these feelings of immense gratitude. for i would not be the person i am, i would
not be here, i would not be happy, if it weren't for the friendships i've discovered over the past 23 years, the loves i've had,
the family i come from, the goodness that is life-in-sydney-land even when deposited in the bush in west africa.
gratitude is heaven itself - and i am thankful for that.
victory no.3
in short - i can walk home from my djatigi's house by myself, without a flashlight and i don't pee my pants in fear of darkness, bugs, toads, kids, blackstranger's calling my name... i can do this.
its sounds minute and simple, but it took a month (and a full moon) before i was able to talk myself into doing it. and when i got into my hut that night
and only then flicked on my flashlight, i wondered "how did i find the strength and personal power it took to do that terrifying and terribly simple thing? damn, i'm good."
i cried, as i find myself doing often and easily, but this time, the tears were of pride. pride because this simple stroll in the dark represents a very big, terrifying stroll in the darkness of uncertainty, fear, doubt and me.
dibi te ne fe. darkness is not in me. hooray!
due to the terribly annoying nature of french keyboards, i've given up entirely on editing... apologies all around.
turned my life out here in the sub saharan bush around.
victory no. 1
every evening at 5 pm i gather water in a bucket for my daily bath (i only put in this determining detail for those
who may have wondered about the status of regularity of my baths. you know who you are.). if its been execptionally
hot, 120F for example, i find that i'm not only covered in sweat, but a bit of a forcefield lies betweeen me and
the air that so dirties my skin. from head to toe, a thick, scratchable almost pealable layer coats my body. the
dander on my scalp has exponentially thickened and due in part to me always bending over, bugs (spiders and their
webs to be exact) tend to get mangeled in my thick hair. when i reach for the face scrub, which has the texture of
eggs and salt and sand - thick, gooey and gritty - i find that i need to two rounds of what the FDA won't even
allow in the USA for fear that sandpapering one's face may become all the rage. the lines of grit found on my neck
act as the necklaces that i no longer adorne myself with. the feet and lower calves, thats the real nastyness - some-
times, i'm not sure whether i'm that tan or that dirty. the line between funny filthy and just filthy has been not
only crossed, but is so far behind me that when i turn back to see it, its like a tiny speck in the far off distance.
in the US, the joy of the loofa is found in the amount of suds and bubbles that come from its tiny little head. one
squeeze of the right type of soap and boom, slosh, bam, you're covered in froth from head to toe. i need to loofa,
and all of its glorious suds-making crevaces, if only to reassure the 20 layers of sweat-sand-dirt-ick that i am
determined to go to sleep with only 7.
the pace of the bucket bath is the beauty of it. its truly a process, begining with the fetching of the water.
there is a pump in my town, one pump to provide potable water for 450 dehydrated and dirty Malian southerners.
needless to say, it breaks often, and when that happens - to the well we go! the wells, according to our in-country
medical staffers, are some of the dirtiest places on earth. especially the ones which are uncovered (er - all of them)
and although there is only one pump in my town there are 17 wells. the water that rises in the cowstomach sacks from the
depths of often times 150ft, comes one pull at a time, sloshing greyish, soupy water that, oftentimes, is littered with
waterspiders and everyonceinawhile, frogs. eewe. (those 20 layers of ick are starting to sound pretty nice, no? almost
like a protective suit... yea, thats it! my body's suit of armour. ook, back to the topic at hand.) the process continues
in simplicity with the heating and treating of the water. during the time that the water is being boiled, i take my
supplies, towel, and tape player with speaker, to the nygen and push play.
for the first 3 weeks, a bucket of water was delivered to me by a team of 4 or 5 girls, all preteen, all smiles. i didn't
know who they were, where they came from, or whose bucket i was using, but for the time being, it was a nice little
surprise and made life easy cheesy. then, one day, i decided to take a bath at 630 instead of 6 - amazingly, in those
30 minutes, the sky changes, the air ceases to bite your skin, and the temperature drops about 4 or 5 degrees - and on that
fateful day, i came to find out that the girls were not delivering bath water over these past 3 weeks, i was stealing
it.
seeing as how the world does indeed revolve around one miss sydney schalit (soon to be sydney o'brien, ps) i assumed that
their timely, daily trips by my house every evening were, obviously, to give me a bucket of water so that i could be comforted
by the cleanliness that only exPats can appreciate and bathe when, in fact, they were meerely coming by to do their evening
greetings and made the grave mistake of showing their true colors and setting down what is a truly heavy bucket of water.
oops.
feeling the instant and insane pangs of white guilt and sudden urgency of my need for water i came to the conclusion that,
contrary to popular belief (which is that white people cannot carry heavy things, cannot find water, and in essesnce, should
have gone extinct long ago due to their innate laziness and were only saved by their inability to let any man, woman or child
go unorganized and unmanaged - sadly, true right), i could go to the well, take off my shoes, climb to the cement landing,
drop the black cowsack down, realize the actuall distance of 150 feet, dip it a few times, and pull up 6 gallons of greyish
(lucky for me no frogs, yet) murky water and tote it back to my huts where i would treat the hell out of it. followed up by
taking out a pot-full and bringing it to a raging boil then placing it in with the rest of the bucket, now treated with
1 ounce of bleach; this adds just the right amount of warmth to the whole bucket that you sense, upon suds'ing up, that you are
actually taking a bath.
in case the victory of this soapy story got lost amongst the multiple tangents taken, it was the fact that although i'm
white and filthy, i am capable of taking a nice, warm bath under a big blue, pink and cloudless sky, without problem and
now, with a lot less guilt.
victory no. 2
although time here moves slowly, it flies when one is reading a good book. the library in the Kita Stage House is pretty funny,
an obscure treasure chest of lsat books from the early 90's, jane austen novels taped together and harry potter giants
smothering the smaller steinback novels of yesteryear. its stuffy and packed to the top of the ceiling and amazingingly (some
what) organized. although the dewey decimal system has elluded west african book banks thus far, there is a bit of humor found
in the ease with which peace corps volunteers can find their way around this mess of a room. with books acting as bookshelves
themselves, there is little actual knowledge of where things are, but somehow, we manage.
i happened upon a book called The Island by Aldus Huxley. not sure if it has anything to do with the movie and enjoying the
fact that the cover acted as a bookmark, i picked it up and read the back. what i found was something special indeed: a book
that, state side, i would have laughed at and mocked the reader who surely would wear black skinny jeans, black slim boots,
and a black turtleneck at the spiderhouse in austin, smoking handmade cigarettes and demanding soy milk partially steamed in
his quadruple espresso and would sneak in a sugar cube only when sure no one was looking. this books back cover states that
"Mr. Huxley has said his final word about the human condition [...] the readers reaction will depend on his own postulates
[...] in short, can man save himself?" upon reading this heady back cover, i laughed to the tune of this "i'm going to get
my masters in english literature and only so that i can laugh at english literature while smoking my handmade cigarette and
licking up the spare particles of tabacco with a damp pointer finger" and picked up this novel of self exploration.although
there are pages made solely of adjectives, painful pronunciations and overuse of semicolons, this book, single handedly,
changed my perception, my self and truly my thoughts on the "human condition."
let me elaborate, for those of you still reading this blog, god bless you : if i had read this, say, at UT, i would have
barfed. the way its written is so that you have the option of "realizing" that you're reading it or just plain reading it.
you can be "here and now" and take in the surroundings and the smells and sometimes find that you've spent twenty minutes
of your sacred alive time with your nose in a book that telling you to go and live and live a life worth living. sometimes
you find yourself dowsed in tears, sweat and smiles. the realization that you come to, while truly reading this book, is
that your surroundings can make or break any novel. for me, if i'd read this is college, i probably would have taken up
smoking just so i could use these pages as papers and sat in my sundress drinking white wine at the spiderhouse secretly making
fun of the fellow in black. however, when sitting on a dirt floor, in a mud hut, escaping 123F heat, and sahara-red-stained
winds, in a very small village in west africa, one reads to a different tune.
there is a part of this book where the main character trips on a local drug that enlightens your senses and he finds all the
things that have plagued his life, all of his lifes baggage, all of the terrible things mankind does, whether it be to a loved
one or a stranger, he finds peace and terror simultaneously. he quotes william blake in saying "Gratitude is Heaven Itself."
for whatever reason, lying on my dirt floor, swarmed by flies, troubled by sickness, dealing with emotions that i didn't know
i had, i wept happy tears. terribly happy happy tears. wrote and rewrote this quote. gratitude is heaven itself. what truth,
what sadness, what joy, what simplicity! coming to this quote, on this floor, at this time in my life, while dealing with the
suchness of poverty, the truth of democracy, the beauty of love, the pain of sickness, all of this and i am happy. happy to have
a hut, happy to have water, happy to sleep well, happy to sweat healthy salty sweat, happy to find people in every community
who are worth time, worth dignity, worth joy.
gratitude overwhelmed. graciousness, although often times hard to come by, flooded me. many of you will get letters that spawned
from this epiphany, this moment of truth, these feelings of immense gratitude. for i would not be the person i am, i would
not be here, i would not be happy, if it weren't for the friendships i've discovered over the past 23 years, the loves i've had,
the family i come from, the goodness that is life-in-sydney-land even when deposited in the bush in west africa.
gratitude is heaven itself - and i am thankful for that.
victory no.3
in short - i can walk home from my djatigi's house by myself, without a flashlight and i don't pee my pants in fear of darkness, bugs, toads, kids, blackstranger's calling my name... i can do this.
its sounds minute and simple, but it took a month (and a full moon) before i was able to talk myself into doing it. and when i got into my hut that night
and only then flicked on my flashlight, i wondered "how did i find the strength and personal power it took to do that terrifying and terribly simple thing? damn, i'm good."
i cried, as i find myself doing often and easily, but this time, the tears were of pride. pride because this simple stroll in the dark represents a very big, terrifying stroll in the darkness of uncertainty, fear, doubt and me.
dibi te ne fe. darkness is not in me. hooray!
due to the terribly annoying nature of french keyboards, i've given up entirely on editing... apologies all around.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)