Why Dogs Smile in Africa

It's true. Earlier this week, it occurred to me that every dog I've ever seen in Africa has been smiling. Or at least it's my interpretation of a smile. I guess it is hot, and perhaps they're all merely panting and thus their mouths curl upward with just the slightest grin, leading one to believe that they are indeed happy. As if they know something we don't. As if they're on the best walk of their life, minus the leash and the pedantic owner.

Something I've always loved about the three places in West Africa I've spent the most time--Ghana, Togo, and Benin--is the way the animals just roam around at will. I get great amusement out of the chickens who run in and out of restaurants and the small pygmy goats who wander across the road--sometimes even looking both ways and baying to their kids, "DON'T DO IT! OBRONI (universal word throughout most of Ghana for WHITE PERSON) BUS COMING!" The clusters of sheep and cows who all look hot and miserable. The small, sickly looking cats who seem to linger a bit too long at your feet while you eat. And at times, even a monkey or two ballsey enough to sneak a bite of whatever you're eating. And there is a casual nonchalance about it among the locals to the mere chaos these animals bring to the atmosphere. The layer of absurdity that three baying baby goats can add to a scene. Or a chicken who can't contain her squawks.

And I'm assuming that this statement could be interpreted as shallow or insensitive to the plight of the third world. Didn't you know? Only developed countries are allowed to use fences. And pastures. And cages. How could I have been so ignorant!?  And of course I know these animals are here because they serve a purpose--something Africa seems to have gotten right (as most things here appear to serve a practical purpose rather than a frivolous, superficial one).  These animals provide food and nourishment, fibers for clothing, and a rudimentary system of currency (I'll trade you three goats and a chicken for a cow). But I can't help but giggle when I see goats climbing to the top of a building or when chickens interrupt my dinner. Particularly when my dinner IS chicken.

The title I've given this post even has me giggling. Having now made this journey many times, I'm become just a tad sensitive to the topic of "fill in the blank here in Africa", like "mission in Africa" or "study abroad in Africa", which are phrases many people use and almost everyone interprets differently. (Newsflash: Africa is a massive continent with many, many countries. All different and unique). And I'm certainly not suggesting that I've become an expert, or that I travel "the right way", but I can't help but cringe when I overhear comments in the international concourse en route to somewhere on the continent or even sometimes in my own workplace about "fill in the blank here in Africa".  Where are you going?  What are you doing?  Let's be specific here, folks.

There are three huge mistakes people make about traveling to Africa. And let me be clear, I'm guilty of all three on some level and have only learned from my own privileged, American stupidity. First, the largest carry-on item we Americans bring with us on these trips is pity. A massive bag full of pity that we've packed specifically with the intention of leaving it behind before we re-board for our flight home. That we'll share with all the locals who don't have McDonald's and TiVo. The clothing we'll leave behind that we bought on triple discount from the store that keeps the developing world busy with orders for more cheap clothing for people who don't want to spend what thread is really worth.

The second mistake comes in the form of assumption; in assuming that everyone we encounter in Africa is hungry or desperate. That the kid on CNN with the flies in his eyes (who does exist, somewhere, I'm sure) is EVERY child on the continent. And that all these kids want is to have YOUR life. And YOUR iPod. Well, okay. They probably do want your iPod. I want your iPod, too.

The third is embedded in the second mistake, and requires that you assume that the people you encounter are also less intelligent than you. That you've bought in to the message that because our education system has better infrastructure, that we're smarter. That because we practically have the internet streaming through our eyeballs, that we have more information. That we've somehow figured it all out. And the reasons theses places can't make progress is because they haven't "figured it all out". Which is crap.

I secretly think dogs smile in Africa because they've actually figured it all out. They know all the secrets. And they're fully aware of what idiots the rest of us truly are.

Over the last few days, I've watched my students stumble into the realities that exist here. Hunger has a horrifying face. Third-world poverty translates to sights and smells you've probably never encountered unless you've been here; a mixture of rotting fish, human feces, hot urine, and the unidentified smells of burning trash. Watching children urinate in the street, not because they want to but because they have to can be a thirty-second life changer.  All of this probably sounds really horrible, and unfortunately it truly is until you know this place. Stepping over piles of trash because no real waste management infrastructure exists. Crossing streets jam-packed with cars and motorbikes, fumes and smoke clouding the air, because this is what rush hour in the developing world looks like. No amount of romanticizing what this experience is about can negate these facts.

But then there is the contrast. This delicious contrast that can leave you feeling shaken and confused.  There is something alive in the air here.  These are communities who are inclusive to each other and who function collectively, raising each other's children and supporting each other emotionally, physically, and financially.  People seem to be more passionate and joyful.  And then there is the music and the dance. Intricately beautiful dances that are truly so embedded in life that barely-walking toddlers are better than I am at the fluid, organic movement. And a constant, chaotic throbbing of music in the background. An endless pulsing of drums, bells, horns, hip-hop, synthesized noise, and reggae.

And I've watched them battle the pity in their suitcases. Trying to intellectualize their choices and emotions. Trying to make sense of what feels like a bleeding heart or an infected cut somewhere that they can't reach. Also trying to understand what feels so perfect about this place.  And what seems to work, in the middle of so many thing failing.  Trying to understand the difference between helping or learning, saving or teaching, fixing or listening. Trying to understand where they fit: Am I here to DO something or am I here to LEARN something? And is there really a difference?

When I was little, I watched the movie Sabrina over and over again. I dreamed of being like Sabrina and going to Paris and finding myself the way she did. And when I traveled to Europe for the first time, I tried to figure out how I was going to have that experience. And when it didn't happen, I just assumed it would happen later.  In Paris.  I never realized that my "Sabrina" moment would happen right here in Ghana, in a developing country, with no small cafes or endless cappuccinos or Harrison Fords. But that's the thing about life. It just happens.

I completely found myself on this continent. And in this country. I've learned, and continue to learn, so much about what it means to be a human from the people I've met here. To be a woman. To be alive. When I'm in Ghana, I find myself smiling more for many of these reasons. Make no mistake about it. These trips are exhausting. I sometimes crash into my bed at 9 or 10 o'clock at night so exhausted with what I've seen that day and so overwhelmed with what my brain is processing that I have no other choice but to sleep, if I can. If the images of something I've encountered in my day don't keep me awake. But there is a freedom that I feel here that I rarely feel at home. It's an escape (an escape that I fully acknowledge as a condition of my own privilege). For many, this place is far from an escape. But perhaps far too few locals can see the forest for the trees; far too few know what blessings exist here and how rich this society really is.

And as I've led this group of undergraduates all over Ghana for the last two weeks, I've learned just as much as they have.  I've been tested everyday by the questions I'm asked and the experiences I'm having.  I continue to stumble into things I don't understand, languages I don't know, and situations that have no words.  And I'll be honest, I'm almost ready to go home.  To fully re-charge.  To return to the things and people and spaces that I love and that bring me comfort.

I'm astounded by how much I learn each and every time I come here.  By how much I grow.  By the things that become crystal clear with distance, like love and what's really important. 

And experience has taught me that many of these lessons can't possibly begin to make sense if you're too busy thinking about how broken everything is first. If you can't see that there is a richness to what lacks. A beauty to what seems ugly and unwanted. A light in a person's eyes that I hardly ever see at home, a warm hum that fills the grey, over-stimulated void of not playing enough. Not laughing enough. Not dancing enough. For packing your suitcase with pity instead of walking shoes. With assumptions instead of sunscreen.

For seeing the dog with the shit-eating grin and not winking and saying, "I know, buddy. I've figured it out, too."

Lucky, by Fiona

A Christmas Post

Over the last few years, my trips to the mountains have become few and far between.  Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, I can’t decide which, I’ve become increasingly more embedded in Baltimore.  It was just a few short years ago that I made threats of all levels (serious, idle, petty, etc.) that I’d pack up my shit and move back to the Carolinas where life felt quieter; more peaceful and tolerable.  Where I was sure the grass was greener.  And though I joked about the double-wide on the back of my mom’s property, it would be a lie to say I hadn’t actually thought about how to make it look “less trailer-y”, just in case.  But now that Baltimore is home, it has become harder to pick up and head south on a whim.  It’s no longer as easy as unplugging the refrigerator in my dorm room, shoving all of my dirty clothes into the backseat and drinking three red bulls to drive through the middle of the night.  Oh no.  Now there are bills to pay before I leave town.  And phones to forward.  And a dog to worry about.  And “out-of-office” email statuses to put in place.  Not to mention the compulsive need to clean my house before I leave it—because apparently once you become a “grown –up”, it no longer becomes acceptable to bring home dirty clothes for the holidays (and heavens knows, no more dirty dishes…last time I did that I really got the stink eye).  Prepping to go out of town for anything more than overnight requires at least three days of planning and list-writing.  Oh the epic lists I’ve written. 

Yesterday I began one such journey, and made the ten-hour trek south for Christmas.  Winding down the Shenandoah and into the Blue Ridge, I was remembering how beautiful this drive was just a few short months ago.  Back in October, autumn had taken those hills hostage and turned every last leaf a vibrant color before letting them go.   Now those leaves were gone, quickly turned into dust and mulch.  Now, in December, the hills were speckled with the slightest dusting of white snow, as if a baker had been flying above and had accidentally dropped a pound of confectioners’ sugar gently over the rolling peaks. 

And though I despise these long drives, mainly because I despise driving, I’ve almost become dependent on the built-in reflection this time alone in the car affords me.  This time to let my brain talk as much as it needs to, without anyone calling the cops to report a crazy lady talking to herself.  I just assume everyone driving past me thinks I have on a wireless handset, or that I’m singing out loud to the radio.  The drive north is much less satisfying.  Once I get about halfway through Virginia, the landscape becomes increasingly less interesting and the mountains get smaller and smaller in the rear-view mirror.  But heading south is another story all together.  The mountains get bigger and more beautiful with each mile marker.  By the time I get to Tennessee I often have the urge to pull over and just get outside.  I want to inhale deeply and purge all the toxicity that builds up in my little city brain.  I want to find a way to wrap the purple-blue mountains up into a little marshmallow that I can eat.  Like wonka-vision. 

And because these trips are seasonal, they often coincide with a holiday, which generally involves family, which generally means things get complicated, which generally means I’m anxious for days leading up to my departure.  By the time I hit the mountains I’m desperate to release my anxiety.  To just pour it out in the river and watch it rush away in the blue-green murk of the rapids.  To feel comforted.  To let the mountains absorb my burdens.  To carry what feels so heavy.
 
Christmas has notoriously been a hard holiday for me.  Which is not to say that I don’t enjoy Christmas.  In fact, it’s quite the contrary.  I recognize that I’m almost 28 years old, but I can’t make that six year old girl inside me contain my excitement over Christmas morning.  When I was little, I’d wake up at 4 in the morning and was forbidden to actually touch the presents.  Instead, I’d quietly tip-toe my wild-curly-haired self out into the living room and sit on the couch and just look at them all with awe.  All the precious boxes so tidily wrapped and carefully stacked.  Then I’d sit and watch black and white movies on the television until it was bright enough outside and I could get away with waking up my college-age sisters without them biting my face off.  Come to think of it, it’s probably no wonder my siblings didn’t have kids until their 30s.  I probably was the best birth control they could have had.  I was totally oblivious to any signs of hangovers or a lack of desire to “care about Christmas”.  Oh no.  I cared about one thing and one thing only.  PRESENTS.  And I’d like to think I’ve finally put that little girl to bed, but to be honest, I’m just as excited to open presents tomorrow as I ever was.  Although perhaps far more aware of what presents COST now that I have to pay for them, too.

But in more recent years, the holiday has become harder, despite the little girl inside me who still believes.  For my family, it isn’t as simple as everyone gathering in one place to celebrate.  Christmas, and most holidays, get spread out over several days (sometimes weeks), and several cities, and I sometimes find myself eating three or four “Christmas dinners” before it’s all said and done and the ball drops for the New Year.  We’re the modern American family, facing the modern American dilemma, in all our re-married with kids glory.  Christmas gets more complicated, too, because it’s no longer the focus of the other 11 months of the year.  Other obligations pile up, you run out of time to properly Christmas shop (and you never had the money to begin with), and you start to realize just how much crap there is out there to buy and by given (and just how much YOU DON’T WANT any of it).


In just a week, I head back to West Africa with 18 undergraduates.  While I’m so excited, this simultaneously makes me enormously anxious because I’m basically responsible for ensuring that these guys all come back in one piece, and that they’ve all had a relatively awesome experience, and that no one is pregnant or married.  This requires months of planning, hundreds of neurotic, alphabetized, highlighted lists, and lots of white wine (for consumption during planning, not teaching).  But it’s also more than that.  Though I’ve traveled back and forth many times now, I can’t ever seem to quite prepare myself enough for what really happens to my spirit in this place called Ghana.  I have to begin to prepare my heart for what I see, for the unthinkable poverty I encounter and for the breathtaking beauty that I see.

And I’m preparing myself for the next few days of siblings and too many cookies, and the noise of children happily ripping open wrapping paper.  And drinking too much wine and eating too much butter.  And trying to make sense of it all just a week before heading to a place where what I have can make me feel heavy and glutinous.  Where the giving I’ve done in the holiday season can leave me feeling shallow and vain.  But where I feel alive in a way that is raw and enlightening.


And somehow it's already Christmas day (although it is still very, very early).  And frankly, I'm in a bit of a state of disbelief.  At my feet, the dog has buried herself under a handmade quilt and snores in a slumber that is deep and heavy.  I've just come home from midnight service, wrapped a few last minute gifts, and am sitting awake in a fit of anxiety trying to make myself go to sleep.  Trying to remind myself about the six year old girl in my soul who will wake me up in just a few hours to go and sit and admire the gifts.  About the little girl inside me that still believes. 

Merry Christmas, friends.  Wishing you and yours a blessed Christmas and health, happiness and peace in the 2011.  And may we all believe just enough to keep us honest.

Thanksgiving

It seems my last few posts have been pretty heavy, and I have to admit, life has felt pretty heavy lately.  I’ve had to make a lot of those real-live grown-up life choices, and the outcome isn’t always what we want it to be.  We surprise ourselves with how much we still care about what others think.  We surprise ourselves with how easy it is to make really bad choices.  How hard it can be to stay true to yourself and others. 

But today, as I sit in my childhood home, surrounded by the sights and smells I’ve known as home since I was 2, I find myself feeling overwhelmingly lucky.  And seeing that it is Thanksgiving, it seems a fitting time to post something to this blog that I've ignored for too many weeks now about just how blessed I really am. 

Two nights ago, as I drove up the mountain range and back down again into the valleys of Western North Carolina, I had a moment of forgetting all the things and people that have been resting heavily on my heart and my conscience.  I’ve written about this experience before—this “coming home” moment when the whole world seems to feel right again.  When I can take a deep breath and relax.  When I feel like no matter what’s happening in the big, bad world around me, that it’s likely it’ll all be okay, at least for the next few days. 

Even in darkness, there is something startlingly beautiful about these mountains.  The way the fog wraps around the curves of the landscape, like cotton batting settling into the corners of a well-worn quilt.  The way the moonlight shines off the rocks and the purple-blue hues that in sunlight twinkle in shades of lavender and periwinkle become rich and deep like midnight blue and eggplant.  The way the rivers and creeks wind through the hills like long, thin snakes in search of lower ground.  The way that white-boarded churches and stone houses nestle on the edges of sloping land, and despite the darkness, these places feel full.  How the outline of the mountain range dances with the night sky, and there are spots that are indeterminable as land or cloud or tree.

These images and the cool, autumnal mountain air provide space for pause.  And reflection.  After a few days of being home, I begin to relax.  I begin to turn off my Baltimore brain and think about the things that are really important.  Granted, as everyone in my family has gotten older and life has become increasingly more complicated, my holiday time has become sacred and my time has become divided.  Life mandates that I divide my vacation weeks into clumps of mini-vacations with all the people that I love all around the world.  And despite not seeing everyone at once, I remember how lucky I am to have so many places to visit; so many people to call family. 

And though it still feels like the world may be going to hell in a bobsled, there are still things happening all around us for which we must remain thankful. 

I remain thankful for my friends and family.  You are the macaroni to my cheese; the people who keep me going, who keep me laughing, and who keep me grounded.  For reminding me when I’m being a giant, gaping asshole and for reminding me, too, when I’ve done something right.  When I’ve done something good.  I’m thankful for all of our blessings and I’m even thankful for all of our flaws (as my family reads: “Huh!? WHAT FLAWS!? DON’T WRITE THIS SHIT ON THE INTERNET!”).  It’s useful to be reminded just how close we all are to being cast in Days of Our Lives.  And how lucky we are to have natural good looks, in the event that a camera crew ever shows up.

I’m thankful for the community of thinkers and artists I find myself surrounded by everyday.  I’m thankful for the inspiration and creativity I find in my students and colleagues, for the idealism they hold for the future, and for the change they want in the world— and the possibilities they find so imminent and real.

I’m thankful for all the men and women who wake up everyday and contribute something back to their community.  Who raise their children to be kind and honest.  Who fight for justice and equality.  Who don't lay back and accept the status quo but who use their voices and their brains when they’re outraged.  Who vote.  Who listen.  Who care.

I’m thankful that someone invented boxed cake mix (because it's just so good and cheap).  And that when you add butter to sugar with cream, you get frosting.  And how nicely bacon compliments bourbon.    

I’m thankful that I can see the humor in life.  That I can laugh everyday.  I’m thankful that Sarah Palin’s reality show will likely be her demise.  I’m thankful that people with a lot of time on their hands still make ridiculous videos on Youtube so that I have something to watch in the middle of the night when I’m battling insomnia. 

I’m thankful for the little things.  For the challenges we face, so that we better know ourselves and our world.  For the hardships we encounter so that we have appreciation for what we do have.  For the disagreements we engage in, so that we can come to an agreement.  For the messes we make as we grow and learn and try to make sense of the spaces that don't make sense, so that when we clean up it feels that much more satisfying.

I'm thankful for these mountains, for these moments of calm, and for places that feel like home and people who feel like family.  For love and kindness.  For generosity.  For memories.  For the future.

Happy Thanksgiving, friends. 

No Sense of Urgency

Late last night, lying in bed and thinking about all the Halloween debauchery I had witnessed in Fells Point, my blackberry buzzes from my bedside table.  I’ve become accustomed to this nightly buzz, as the early morning’s onslaught of the day’s coupons and sales and news stories begin to fill my inbox, and I generally ignore it, waiting for the next morning to purge most of it over my morning coffee.  I happen to still be awake, and pick up the phone to see what Williams Sonoma has put on sale or what Bluefly.com is demanding I must have before the week is out.  I see it’s a message from a dear friend in Benin, and I quickly sit up and read it.  It’s titled “flood”.  He started his email, “As I’m sure you know by now, the rains this year have caused so much havoc to us all.  My roof has been touched and water is entering the rooms; the sewage system and the compound have been flooded.”  He goes on to talk more about what’s happening, and more importantly about what’s not happening.  There is a sense of urgency in his tone, desperately trying to figure out how he can try and fix this for himself and his family.  Wondering, very innocently and almost embarrassed by it, what role I play in that, as his good American friend.  

I pick up my laptop, and swing it open as my heart sinks.  I quickly open the browser and Google: “floods in Benin”.   Three or four articles pop up at the top, with headlines like “Floods ravage Benin” and “Floods generate humanitarian crisis”.  I cringe and wait for my heart to stop pounding.  I didn’t know.  I had no idea.

Benin has become a place I love; a place I consider a second-home.  To think of this place under water, and people dying, I’m suddenly feeling like throwing up.  Amidst feeling sick, I start to feel guilty, too.  I, like most of my well-educated and politically engaged friends, like to stay abreast on what is happening around the world.  I actively read the newspaper and watch the BBC.  I check the NYTimes updates all day long.  I read political blogs and international headlines and I like to think I can carry an intelligent conversation with most people on domestic and international issues.  I’m finding myself angry that this news story, now days old, hadn’t trickled into a single one of my feeds.  Hadn’t made it to a front page of anything that I read every morning.  That I didn’t hear about it and more importantly, that most people wouldn’t even begin to notice.  I forced myself to lie back down, ignoring the gnawing agitation in my gut, and prepared myself for another restless night of sleep, knowing my loved ones, 5000 miles away, were fighting a natural disaster.  And more importantly, that this country’s lack of infrastructure was ultimately it’s largest enemy.  And that just a few months ago, I sat on those shores, drinking beer and eating local nuts, journaling about the rustic beauty and the traditional charm of these dusty, rural villages.

Upon waking, I read many of the articles I’d thumbed through at 2 am and really let this news settle in.   I respond to Alex, wondering what the state of his health is and if his family is okay; I ask, “How bad are the cities?”  My colleague also writes to him, almost simultaneously, as if we’re in each other’s heads, asking many of the same questions.  And now I wait.  And check the web obsessively for updates.  Waiting for a time-delay to catch up, so that I can correspond more. 

In the mean time, it seemed an appropriate time to begin lesson-planning for the upcoming class in a few weeks on slavery and racism in West Africa.  In January, my colleague and I will take 18 undergraduates to West Africa, Benin included.  In this time, we do our best to teach an intensive course in History and Culture and, naturally, slavery and the slave trade are a necessary element of that.  It’s probably the most difficult portion of the program, for a wide variety of reasons.

For starters, race is something everyone talks about and thinks about on different levels; the conversation is often based in an individual’s own personal story and experience and encounters with race.  Secondly, the history of slavery in America is grossly distorted, and most North American children learn the history of slavery as only a companion to the Civil War and largely in association with the Deep South, the cotton industry, and plantation life.  Rarely is the true story of slavery told; the story that includes most wealthy families that dotted the entire East coast, the critical role of the North, and the trade of slaves that spurred American commerce well past the abolition of slavery.  Lastly, this conversation is hard because it involves blame.  And emotions that have yet to be quelled.  Conversations that have never happened and a desperate need for a paradigm shift.   

Today I decided to preview a documentary I’d like to show in class.  I’ve read the accompanying book, and the story outlines a family in Rhode Island coming to terms with it’s own past as the descendants of one of the largest slave-trading families in North America.  The documentary is quite good, albeit largely based on some serious white privileged guilt, but I find it relevant.  The story outlines a journey of a family to Ghana and then to Cuba and then back to Rhode Island, and documents much of their experience.  I couldn’t help but relate as I watch them stand awkwardly in the slave dungeons; knowing the feeling I’m seeing on their faces as they try to discern what their role is and why it hurts so bad.  Watching young Ghanaians challenge their presence:  Why are you here?  Don’t you feel bad?  Hearing stories of the way they’re treated by African-Americans on those shores; the way they’re rejected and battered as if they’re continuing to commit a crime just by being present in such a sacred place.  I’ve done that journey five times now.  I’ve sat on those white-washed walls and felt the aching in my center over something that I inherently feel responsible for and simultaneously searching my heart for resolution.  For reconciliation.  And felt the same sense of embarrassment, and of guilt, as I attend events intended for descendants of the African Diaspora.  The same sense of displacement, which has taught me more than anyone could ever understand, but perhaps is still inherently selfish of me.

I couldn’t help but start tearing up as an intense dialogue spurred between these desperately overwhelmed white Americans and a frustrated black American woman.  She argued, “If white people were paying more attention, they’d be just as pissed as we are.  The fact that they aren’t reads that they aren’t paying attention.  That there is no sense of urgency.”  The conversation is heartfelt, and not hostile, but strong.  The racial intensity in the film is tangible; I can feel it in my own heart.  In my own memories.  In my own experience.

I can’t count how many times I’ve thought the same thoughts.  How many times I’ve desperately questioned, “Why aren’t people more outraged?”  As I’ve counted quarters out of my own wallet for city school kids who don’t have enough money for the bus or as I’ve listened to parents who work three jobs and can barely make rent.  As I’ve watched the way a system ignores an entire class of people; and how easy it is to forget what privilege affords you.  As I’ve watched young women and men of color struggle in a world that still caters to the white.  And to the elite. 

Lately, this has been about the rest of the world, as I’ve tried to make sense of how easily we can shut off the bad news.  How American media has been designed to sing and dance until we forget that we’re at war in two countries.  That Americans, and our insatiable hunger for cheap products, fuels some of the most incredible worldwide hunger and poverty and yet we continue to buy it, because we don’t see it.  It’s 5000 miles away in a small, hot building that’s currently under water. 

They symbolism of my entertainment choice this afternoon is biting.

There is no sense of urgency.  I didn’t know about Benin.  It took a frightened, sad email from 5,000 miles away for me to understand what was happening there.

In just a few days, America votes in the primary election.  This election has been nasty, and the nation’s wickedness seems to have ratcheted up to near-toxic levels.  In an election that has been increasingly fueled by polarized parties, racially-charged commentary, and large quantities of mud and feces slinging , I find it ironic that we’re still not talking about things that really matter.  We’re still not focusing on what it takes to get bread on a table, how to go to college when you’re a homeless teenager, and how to bail water out of your flooded compound.  How to prevent Cholera from killing your children.  We’ve watched the whole world experience tragedy over the last few years.  From Chile to Haiti to Pakistan, we’ve seen quick clips of tragedy in between America dancing with the stars, and occasionally, we host a telethon and pat ourselves on the back for our American humanitarian efforts.  For the overwhelming generosity of our country. 

And then we attend the funerals of the young men and women who are so bitterly bullied about their sexuality and their gender that they take their own lives, and we question:  Where is our sense of urgency?  Where is that overwhelming American generosity?

A part of me doesn’t even want to participate anymore.  Doesn’t want to go to the polls.  To vote for a governor and a senator, who regardless of their party, will still not answer my questions.  Will still not drive through the boarded-up blocks of my city without judgment, attempting to seek solutions to what slavery REALLY did to this country.  To most urban cities. 

There is no sense of urgency.

And I admit it's crushing, even for myself, to have these feelings.  This is coming from me, a girl who so ardently talks about civic engagement and building community.  A girl who fundamentally believes in justice and in effective systems.  Who can watch 200,000 people from all races rally in Washington, D.C. to "restore the sanity" and feel inspired and then turn around and feel so uninspired.  So cheated by my own home.  And I can't do anything but write about it.

And wake up tomorrow and continue to fight for justice in a place that feels bigger and more enormous and more complicated, everyday.

Lessons in Knot-Tying

For the last week, I’ve felt tested in my patience and in my capacity for understanding.  Once again I find myself tangled in systems that have been designed to serve people who need help; who need assistance; who need a system to start working so that they, too, can start working.  These have become familiar feelings over the last five years, as I’ve fought, sometimes hand-in-hand, with angry parents and incongruous systems and frustrated and displaced people.  As I’ve tried to understand what it all means from where I sit in the world. To empathize, to grow, and to hopefully do something about the injustices I encounter.  But it’s never that simple: identify the problem, propose a solution, and enact it.  Step one, step two, and step three.  Because these tangled, mangled webs we call “systems” make such a mess of these "social issues" as they loop around these problems like string; wrapping and weaving until tight, unruly knots form and somewhere in the tangles both ends get lost.  Suddenly the problems no longer have beginnings and ends but soft, rounded edges that go on forever.

Sometimes I can’t name the things I feel.  I feel a series of words that live somewhere in between outrage and disbelief; sadness and embarrassment; fear and intimidation; courage and faith; idealism and hope.  They’re words that don’t always exist in the English language; words you can only feel in the way a child who is scared grips your hand or the way it feels when someone who is hungry looks you in the eyes.  These are words that get lost in human connections, because hunger has a hundred meanings and fear has a thousand sources.  Sometimes they’re things you can only feel.  And sometimes the words do exist but they’re ugly, nasty words like racial discrimination and educational inequality.  Ignorance and bigotry.  Domestic violence and substance abuse.  Racial profiling and gentrification.

And sometimes I feel downright strange feeling the way I feel, wondering if I really have the right to get so angry or to get so outraged about issues that aren't even mine to begin with, as I drive away in my car.  As I stir the pot of my dinner and contemplate what failed to happen today that could have done something for tomorrow.  As I sit inside my house, in my warm bed, and process my anger, my frustration and my disgust over people's ignorance and over middle-aged-white-men-and-their-corporations through this blog, on this laptop, with this wireless internet connection (knowing full and well that I come from a long-line of middle-aged white men, and probably am destined to marry one, too).

This is when I really start to beat myself up.  Perhaps I don’t suffer enough to ever understand the half of it.  These are the moments I remember the first time I got cussed out by a parent, got called a “white bitch”, and felt like I honestly deserved it.  The first time I honestly felt scared walking to my car at night.  The first time I witnessed police brutality, and I wasn’t the recipient.  These are the moments when I challenge my intentions the most:  Why AM I here?  What AM I doing?

Earlier this week, I went to hear Sister Helen Prejean, an anti-death penalty nun in the Roman Catholic Church, speak to a room full of Catholics, college-students and activists.  She’s a talented and powerful speaker.  After just twenty minutes of hearing her strong New Orleans' accent share stories about her book, Dead Man Walking, why she’s been called to God’s work, and why we all have to wake up to the injustice in the world, it becomes obvious why she’s such a good spiritual adviser to men on Death Row.  She's funny and smart AND a woman of God.  And while her talk mainly focused on the issue of the death penalty, speckled with some tragic and incredible stories about her interactions with death row inmates, she embedded an overall message into her platform about social justice that left everyone in the room changed, if not somewhat shaken.  She’s inspiring.  She makes it all seem okay.  Despite all she’s seen, and all she’s done, she still maintains hope for the future.

I always feel like there is no mistake made when these things all happen at once.  I'll refrain from the obvious serendipitous religious reference.  Here I am, having a horrible week, feeling all kinds of conflicting feelings about everything I’m doing.   I’m thinking I’ll take a quick break and just pop in to hear this nun tell a little story about the movie she inspired, and bam: I’m sitting there listening, letting all the anxieties and to-do lists of my life hang loose around my body, my over- caffeinated limbs practically twitching with exhaustion, and I’m having one of those god-damned light bulb “ah-hah” moments that I generally detest (can you say god-damned in a sentence about a nun?).  Her words hit me so far into my heart that I could hardly sleep.  I laid awake half the night thinking about all the things that were wrong with the world and consequently, all the things I wasn’t doing to fix any of it (okay, that’s a lie.  I do a lot, but sometimes it feels like nowhere near enough). 

Turns out, the world is kind of falling apart.  And turns out that I’ve decided to love a city that so many have written off as too violent and too dangerous.  Turns out I’ve decided to care about kids that so many have already decided have failed.  Turns out I’ve decided to continue to try to solve problems that so many have written off as unsolvable.  Turns out I’ve decided to turn in my brain and my worker-bee skills to be overworked and underpaid because I can’t seem to think about doing anything else for a living.

Part of the complexity of this whole thing is just how easily these problems can seem to disappear.  How seemingly invisible these communities can be and how comfortable people can be on the outside.  How unengaged.  How unaware people are of what exists just beyond their reach and how sometimes the people just beyond their reach are truly suffering; are truly hungry and living in a world that doesn’t even look like America, even if you got drunk and squinted.

How I have to make a conscious choice to see what I see, to dig where I dig, to engage.  And these feelings I get are embedded in this choice.  A knowing that I’m not always welcome where I go and that it takes time for people to trust me because I’m an outsider.  And I’ll always be outsider on some of these issues.  And how the issues can feel so huge.  All the -isms can feel so heavy.  And yet it all seems so simple: all humans should have access to all the things they need to be safe, to be successful, to be healthy and happy.

How sometimes working in urban education, I feel like I’m just trying to unravel the knot.  I’m playing that game where everyone holds a part of a massive piece of yarn and we’re told to roam around the room, winding and tangling ourselves (with the intention of unraveling ourselves later).  Except the room is a really, really big room, and the people holding the yarn didn't listen to the instructions, and without talking we’re supposed to figure out how to unravel ourselves from the massive human knot we've formed by bending around each other and non-verbally communicating and someone you don't trust has to crawl between your legs, while the yarn around your arm just gets tighter and tighter.  And every time we get one piece of the yarn untangled, a knot forms on the other side.

And there are days when I only wish I had scissors.  But something tells me, the Sister would advise me otherwise.

Pause

In church this morning (I know…my blogs have never started with these words…bear with me, please), the pastor gave a sermon on imperfection, greed, and dishonesty; on the impossible world we live in and how difficult it can be to do the right thing and how sometimes doing the wrong thing isn’t always such a bad thing (apparently Jesus did it, too).  Now I don’t go to church often, and I’m currently in a stage where I’m deciding whether church is the right place for me right now, but today it was like the sermon had been hand-crafted for me and where I’ve been these last few weeks. 

Since I turned 25, I’ve been on a bit of a spiritual journey.  Something about hitting that number made me realize I needed to have more to my life than stories about foggy Saturday nights spent with too much wine and I’m-not-sure-what-his-name-was-but-he-made-me-laugh.

So for the last few years I’ve attempted (strong emphasis to be placed on the word attempt) to begin making healthy-life-choices, like “I really shouldn’t smoke that cigarette, even though I’ve had enough booze to sink a ship” or, “I should totally get the garden salad WITH the cheeseburger ”.  "Does running away from the police count as exercise?" Or, “No, I really need to pass on the birthday cake.  I’ve had three donuts for breakfast already.”  Somehow, I feel these choices redeem the thousands of bad ones I’ve made since I turned 18.  I get the salad dressing on the side, don’t I!?

In line with such healthy living, I’ve had this sneaking suspicion that I should find a spiritual community, too (which is not to say that when my girls and I have had enough to drink that we aren’t about as spiritual as it gets), but I'm talking about a community that can help me continue to make these healthy choices.  And I can’t lie that I have another reason for seeking a church community:  maybe I’ll find a nice young, independently wealthy church-going man who likes children, folk art, and wine and who wants to let me volunteer professionally and sit on committees and boards for the rest of my life and spend all of our winters in Africa (Jesus made wine out of water, people, have some faith). 

I’ve been church-hopping for a few years now and I've struggled to find just the right congregation for me—somewhere that feels comfortable, and safe.  Somewhere that supports my diverse lifestyle, and the lifestyles of my loved ones (read: a lot of my friends are really, really gay and I really, really love them and really, really lack the tolerance I need to be around people who are intolerant), and a church that focuses on peace-making and justice.  And that's not to say that I haven't found churches that I like.  I’ll find a place that seems nice enough, but beyond a powerful sermon or two, I find there’s really no one like me there—someone who believes the same things I believe and who even begins to understand what I do for a living (which I can totally understand, because I can barely explain it myself). 

Partially, I wonder if this lack of church success is because I can’t seem to decide what I actually believe these days.  And despite everything I’ve seen, and everything I’ve done, I feel like I’ve just begun to scratch the surface of what exists out there for me.  So church has been low on the totem pole.  And it doesn’t help when there are crazies out there burning religious texts in the name of “God”.  I know they’re only about 40 people deep, but 40 people deep too many, I think.

These last few weeks have been challenging and exhausting and at times, painful.  I’ve been working impossible hours and facing pretty impossible to-do lists for just one person.  I truly love my job, but there are weeks when there are never enough hours and certainly not enough hands to actually get what we need done.

A pretty horrible tragedy happened last week, too.  One of my dearest friends and colleagues L. lost a close friend, C., suddenly and tragically, at the hands of a domestic dispute.  Though I didn’t know C. well, I had met her a few times through L. and I can’t help but feel devastated by the loss, not to mention the loss for this woman’s children, family and friends.  Domestic disputes should never lead to the death of two parents—regardless of who was responsible.  It’s eerie to hear the news and know the people that they’re talking about.  One would think that I'd become immune to the tragedy of everyday life, when you deal with it as much as we in Baltimore City do, but it never stops hurting.  Or stinging.  Or biting.  It forces you to pause and take a deep breath, even when you haven’t allotted that pause and deep breath into your schedule for the day.

Death is never something we’re truly prepared for, and even when we know it’s coming, it stings hard and shuts down life temporarily (and sometimes a bit longer than temporarily).  I know because I’ve grieved for friends and grandparents, students and mentors.  I’ve felt the sting.  The sinking stomach.  The numbness.  I started writing this blog about this time last year because my grandmother was dying.  I used this space, and you, my readers, as a way to cope with what didn’t make sense.  And in the process, I rediscovered a voice I’d lost over the last few years of academic writing and grant writing and all the writing that had nothing to do with me. 

And a year later, I’m still using this space to process the things that don’t make sense and to celebrate the things that work and to share the things that don’t work.  And this public stage is refreshingly raw and revealing.  There are times where I hesitate to write what I’m thinking because I wonder how it will be received, or who might read it, but I generally push forward and think, “if not now, when?”  And what is it that causes the hesitation?  What kind of super human expectations do we have on ourselves if we can’t be true to ourselves?  If we can’t be honest with our friends and families about our stories?

I’ve written a lot about expectations in the past—expectations that sometimes feel unfair and that confuse me and that overwhelm me.  Expectations that cause me to wake up at four in the morning and pace and write emails (and sometimes online shoe shop or bake muffins).  Expectations that we women weren’t told about when we were whispered stories by our mothers about someday being Wonderwoman.  The things they didn’t tell us when they taught us to idolize the suffragists and to become good feminists—to raise the bar for ourselves and to destroy the glass ceiling.  I mean, I almost hesitate to compare our lives now, as modern women, to the lives of women one hundred years ago, or even fifty years ago, but I can’t help but wonder if the expectations now are almost too high.

The things we women are expected to want to do—don’t you want to pump your breast milk with your automated breast pump in your $600 tailored suit in between meetings?  Don’t you want to be expected to want children but to also want a career, too?  Don’t you want to have the burden of figuring out how to fit it all in—the growing up, the going to graduate school, the finding of someone who isn’t a total freak and/or apeshit NUTS that you actually want to share a life with (and then the follow-up dating that needs to happen), the marriage (the planning), the birthing of babies, and then the subsequent raising of said babies, while not giving up on the education you spent $200,000 on (okay, you, your parents, that bitch Sallie Mae, and the federal government)?  Don’t you want to have a conference call on your iPhone while you’re waiting in the carpool line?  And we're supposed to do this in high heels, something gracefully feminine, without ever looking tired, and without ever falling victim to the all-day-yoga-pants and arch-supportive-shoe.  Or without going into debt.  Or without getting too fat.

These last few weeks I’ve been running around at breakneck speed, zooming in and out of meetings, eating lunches out of plastic wrappers, working fourteen, fifteen hour days and planning every minute of my day, down to the exactly three times I’ve allowed myself to pee.  My dog has been so mad at me that she pooped in the house twice last week (and I admit, I’m jealous that I too can’t take out my anger by pooping in the middle of someone’s floor) and she keeps giving me this look that screams, “go ahead and leave again.  I’ll just be here at the house.  Doing absolutely nothing while you’re gone.  All day.”  My Blackberry has become my best friend.  My confidant.  And my accomplice to this messy lifestyle.  She never leaves my side, even when she's been silenced.  Sometimes her little red blinking light is like my very own personal lighthouse. 



And a part of me feels so accomplished when I survive these weeks.  This is, in part, what they wanted, I think.  This is what those women, for so many years, fought tooth and nail, so that I could run around with a Blackberry, saying the things I’m supposed to say in meetings, looking the look, with that ease that says, “oh hey, yeah, I made these muffins from scatch at three a.m. when I couldn’t sleep.”  I’ve conquered not only one domain—but TWO.  I can work AND bake.  Hand me a breast pump.  I’m a modern superwoman.

But theres the part of me that hates it too, and hates what it does to me.  The me who doesn't ever want to be like the women in Sex and the City or the women in a bad Bravo reality series.  The me that hates that we're expected to pull all this off; to be smart and feminine, sexy and maternal, nurturing and understanding, successful and yet, still simple, and low-maintenance.

But then when we're forced to pause, when the cycle gets disrupted, we're allowed a finite window of time in which we can really evaluate our lives.  We can challenge our own truths and be critical of ourselves:  Am I doing the things that make me happy?  Am I doing the things that fulfull me?  That enrich me?  That propel me forward? 

This morning we talked about a parable in Luke that deals with a shrewd manager and a greedy landowner.  The sermon went deep into the story, theorizing all the ways it could be interpreted, but more importantly, discussing the many, many ways in which our world is imperfect.  That we’re guided towards choosing wealth and greed because we’re supposed to advance ourselves and grow our bank accounts and 401Ks and become someone.  But that Jesus tells us that we need to get in the habit of making choices for the good, even when what’s good doesn’t seem clear.  This, of course, led us to a discussion about how to even know, or understand, what good and bad means anymore.  The many, many ways in which we’re expected to make smart choices when there actually aren’t always smart choices to be had among the handful of choices we’re usually being asked to decide between.  We make the best choices we can, with the best of intentions, and hope that we’ve done the right thing.  And ideally, the take-home message for someone like me is that the expectations I’ve put on myself for anything above and beyond just doing the right thing shouldn’t consume me anymore.

I laughed inside because I’ve spent so much time convincing myself that there is no place for me at church, and here I am, at church, feeling like the sermon was written for me.  Feeling like the sermon was written for C. and for all the women around me who are expected to accomplish the impossible, everyday.  For all of us who keep ourselves awake at night, worried that someone will punish us for having made the best choice out of the choices we were given, even though it might have been the wrong choice.  That someone will pull the tablecloth out from under us and surprise us with a mandated "stay-at-home-and-bake" day and secretly give our jobs away.

Which causes me to pause.  And think.

Two-headed monster

Sometimes after I’ve been on vacation for a while or, say, I've spent two weeks in another country (or on another continent), I have this sobering re-entry into the real world.  Into my real life.  For the short amount of time I’m away from my daily life, I disconnect just long enough to remember what life can be like when it isn’t a total bat-shit crazy race.  I’m reminded of another kind of life that exists—“Island Life”, I call it.  And I lust for ways to integrate island life into my Baltimore life.  My noisy, has-and-wants-too-much wandering life.

When I was in college I’d sneak away to my quiet, picturesque mountain town during holidays and breaks and I’d so quickly fall back into my old patterns.  I’d hang out with the people I’d known since toddlerhood, cracking the same old jokes since 1985, and falling into a kind of lazy comfort that only comes from years and years of life shared with friends and family.  I’d drive the long way home just to see the sunset over the mountain ridge.  I’d leave my house and take my ancient Honda station wagon, covered in liberal, peace-mongering bumper stickers, “up in the forest” (which is what we’d say when we’d take the windy road up into the mountains and into the national park that covers a large portion of the county) and park my car along the side of the road.  There are hundreds of spots where you can just wedge yourself between the trees and the river and listen to the noise it all makes when you’re quiet.  And I would sit, often stunned, next to that river, comparing my two worlds.  The noise of the water just loud enough that I was comfortable thinking whatever I wanted—no one else could possibly hear it.  Here was this life that was really quite charmed—safe and secure, nestled between the river and the valley.  I knew everyone I needed to know—and they knew me.  I didn’t have to prove much to anyone anymore because they’d known me since I was in diapers.  They knew what I was capable of (and they knew my faults, too).  Life, in general, was pretty quiet and slow.  Things happened gradually.  People lived pretty simply.

Then there was this new life I’d discovered in this bizarrely large city called Baltimore and this small, wooded, suburban college campus.  I could never find my way anywhere (accept around the one loop road that outlined my college), the city roads made no sense to me, the drivers honked and drove too fast, and these “beltways” that wrapped themselves around Baltimore and Washington, D.C. felt more like boa constrictors than highways, slowly choking the life out of the communities they “belted”.  But there was this group of people I’d met who were so much like me it scared me (because that didn’t happen often in that small town of mine).  They were liberal and progressive and snarky and thought the same weird things I thought were funny to be funny, too.  There were things in this city that were wholly new to me—things that scared and excited me, equally.   I encountered people and situations I thought only existed in movies (uhh…lesbians are real!?).  I made all kinds of messes.  And mistakes.  It was exciting and shiny and new and I had to work, for the first time in a long time, to have an identity—to find that same “comfort” I’d had in my cozy little hammock of Western North Carolina.  Oh and did you see The Wire? Yeah.  It was like that, too.

I’d take the flight, or ten hour drive, back to Baltimore, fretting over the transition that would inevitably happen in the coming days.  The giving up of what I knew for the gnawing discomfort of the unknown.  The speeding up of life.  The loss of my sweet, subtle southern accent.  The lack of understanding people had about where I was from and what real life could look like without giant shopping malls, access to designer anything (because we had Sky City and Wal-Mart…take your pick), or anything too complicated, really.  Not to mention there was this charming naïveté I’d come to love about the people I grew up with.  It couldn’t be more different from the cynicism and biting commentary I was growing to love from my new Northeastern friends (although I wasn't entirely sure I really liked it just yet).  I almost felt like the two worlds couldn’t possibly share space in my identity.  It was too exhausting to go back and forth.  It was basically culture shock, every single holiday and vacation.

And I’ve discovered, for better or for worse, that gradually, I’ve shifted my identity.  I’m still from that small mountain town and my childhood is an inescapable part of who I’ve become—but I’ve modified my home base.  I’ve allowed a lot of complication into my life.  It’s messier and noisier than I ever expected it to become.  I care too much about the brands on my feet and the realness of the pearls in my ears.  I still fall in love with all the wrong people (and some of the right ones, too).  Baltimore has become my home, without asking (rude), and while I’ve come to love the noise and rats and quirky appeal of Charm City, there is still something wonderful about getting away.  About sneaking out at the crack of dawn and watching the harbor fade in the distance as I head south (or just out).

It never fails, though, that the getting away triggers all these questions and leads me into this deep, dark journey into the “person I’ve become”.  And it awakens the Piscean gypsy in me that feels uncomfortable with being so settled—so embedded in a lifestyle that I can’t quickly pack up and leave from without a moving truck and at least a month to do laundry and buy boxes.  It makes me think questions like, “Have I become the asshole I never wanted to become?” or “Would I like me if my high school me met me now?”

There is no doubt that Baltimore has changed me.  Working in a low-income urban community in an inadequately resourced public school system will change your life.  It changed the way I think and the way I talk and the way I see the rest of the World.  It changed how I think about systems and education and accessibility.  In fact, it changed my whole path.  I never intended to stay this long.  I had a one year plan.  This turned into a five year plan.  And it looks like it’s quickly become a ten year plan.  I think I suck at plans.

And the timing of this internal babbling is pretty spot on.  For those of you who work in higher education, you know what the months of August and September are all about.  It’s like our January.  Our spring.  Our Easter.  Also, our living hell.  We are reborn into a new academic year with a new freshman class of students, so wide-eyed and brimming with excitement and fear and all those feelings of being torn between their old life and the new life they’ve yet to realize.

These last few weeks have also been trying, to say the least.  These are the weeks where we all cuss under our breath, all day long, wondering why the hell we pissed away June and July with retreats and half-days and week-long vacations (although if I recall correctly, my summer wasn't particularly quiet, either).  These are the weeks we work 10 hour days and weekends without even realizing it (what day is it, anyway?).  These are the days we deal with hovering parents and toxic levels of anxiety and lots of tears and lots (and lots) of whining.

But these are also the days where I find myself questioning, just like the first-year students, "Where have I come from?" And "where am I going?"  Sometimes the motivational talks and speakers and events continue to reach me, and to move me (perhaps more than the students?).  The messages of "explore with wonder and awe" and "challenge yourself to grow" are messages I have to remind myself every morning.  Because it's easy to become okay with the mundane routine.  It's easy to get caught in the cycle of blah and to forget that a part of living life is actually enjoying it.

As I've been readjusting to a new semester, a new year, and frankly still trying to process all the things I'm thinking and feeling about this last trip to West Africa, I'm feeling contemplative and like I'm just on the verge of some new breakthrough--some new insight into my world. 

When I'm traveling or headed home, I often don't look at a watch.  I try my damndest not to have a schedule or a plan.  I try my best to go with the flow (although the "work" me has been so well trained that it often takes days to really slow down and disconnect).  But coming back is like a slap in the face.  My inbox has piled up, I've forgotten just how mean people really are, and the soft, quiet, subtlety of not really caring what happens is replaced by the loud, blinking, anxiety of my working life. 

This week I've been having lots of long talks with friends and colleagues about the nature of life and the nature of our work in higher education and in the community.  These have been deep, philosophical conversations that ebb and flow somewhere between, "why are privileged white people so stupid!?" and "does the work we're doing even really accomplish anything?"  And somewhere in those discussions, too, is this private battle of mine between these two people inside me, like a two-headed monster; the "Baltimore" me who has become hardened and bold; the small town girl who still remembers what the frogs on the pond sound like at night and how the dew smells first thing in the morning.  The girl who empathizes with the urban poor and all the issues wherein (and has become pretty vocal about it, too) and the girl who understands small-town values and who wasn't shocked when George W. Bush was elected again.  The girl who has spent months of her life in places like Ghana and Benin, experiencing new cultures and religions and tastes and sounds and people and the girl who remembers being afraid to drive to the other side of the county because it was too far away.  The girl who still smiles anytime she smells honeysuckle and the girl who doesn't even notice anymore when a rat darts across her path in the alley.   

The girl who is still trying to figure out how to have the best of both worlds.  And how to be happy about it.