dirt under my fingernails

threads between thesis

2007-05-27T20:11:00.000-07:00

threads between thesis:

the thoughts of leaving and being, the famers' market, sword-fights with clothes hangers, sunshine, birds, walking in my barefeet from church, from class, from about anywhere, air after rain, hugs, the regeneration of toenails, tea and honey, what is happening to the bees?, casa, burritos, stir-fry at 1:30 am, chasing rabbits, hot. muggy. weather.

chocolate and cheese

2007-05-24T20:52:00.000-07:00

chocolate and cheese, i don't think they go together.

i like my riches balanced.

tell me if you beg to differ

today

2007-05-15T13:41:00.000-07:00

e e cummings XAIPE, 65

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of allnothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

god loves glasses, too

2007-05-06T17:32:00.000-07:00

last night, i was sitting in the upstairs of donkey coffee working on thesis stuff. most of the conversations had petered off, though a few moms were still going strong, and so too, were my two companions with laptops.

for awhile, i just sat and listened and picked up the conversation of two girls in the room across from me. they were talking about some fantasy series, dragons, magic, and whatnot, and looked like the stereotypes associated with people who play dungeons and dragons on a saturday evening. i kind of smiled and shook my head, but then stopped, feeling a bit bad for silently laughing. i then had this dreadful vision of me standing in front of a classroom teaching someday and there is a young girl in the back of my class, blonde hair with glasses, and i constantly ignore her because i don't want the other kids to think i favor the misfit.

but god does.

yea, as i was sitting there, it occurred to me no matter how hard i try, no matter how much self discipline i have or tactics i learn to deal with misfit children (or my misfit self), i will always fall short of loving those two girls.

but god won't.

he loves both of them,
and you,
and me,
perfectly.

and that's pretty amazing.

slugg-ed

2007-04-30T13:27:00.000-07:00

yesterday, when i walked out the door of my apartment, i saw a slug, spotted yellow and brown, on the concrete; dried out from the morning sun, guts smashed out the back - picked at by some marauding bird-

i wanted to pour water on it and say: i know how you feel.

a moment in expectation

2007-04-24T04:49:00.000-07:00

this morning i wanted to make my coffee with cream and sugar

as if to give the day a heads up that i wanted it to be

rich

but i waited -

and instead of checking my email

or the Times

or my appearance in the mirror,

i went outside

where

the birds greeted me

the air pricked a chill

and a brown leaf stuck to the back of my heel as i walked along the sidewalk still wet with

the morning's dew

or yesterday's rain.

i (don't) feel like chicken tonight

2007-04-23T08:52:00.000-07:00

dear all,

something i want to share from my sustainable agriculture class on the treatment of factory farm chickens:

http://www.chickenindustry.com/cfi/videogallery/

i am usually wary of seemingly anti-meat promotions that "tug on the heartstrings" but the sort of treatment towards chickens documented undercover in this film is inhumane and wrong. for example, the film brings up points that chickens are bred now to grow so fast (45 days) that the organs cannot keep up and the chickens die from congestive heart failure. chickens (and chickens for eggs, cattle, hogs, etc.) should not suffer in this manner; it is disrespectful to their existence and, i feel, not a biblical way to treat our fellow creatures.

however, i must say that i disagree with the end of the film promoting only vegetarian options. i am a vegetarian, but buying processed veggie foods is not really 100% great either, for your health (salt, etc) or the environment (transport, packaging, etc). i still feel at this point that killing an animal for meat is not morally wrong in and of itself, as long as it is done humanely and the animal is raised with respect (whether we should eat meat at all is another discussion).

bottom line from me: be mindful about what you eat and from where it comes. if you are in athens, ohio, we are very fortunate to have a great farmers' market that offers not only locally raised (some certified organic) veggies, but also locally raised (sometimes certified organic) meats and eggs. talk to the farmers selling the products you buy, either veggie or not, and think about this before you put the food on the plate.

if you live where locally raised products are not as readily available, there still might be alternatives. the first would be to cut down on meat consumption in general, and then, since we are talking about chicken here, many more stores are carrying "free range" and/or "organic" eggs and meats. as i learned today, the "free range" label is not regulated and could potentially mean several things, but generally, it suggests that the chickens have about 12 square feet each to roam. The USDA Organic seal is regulated. http://www.ams.usda.gov/nop/Consumers/brochure.html

some food for thought.

wasting time?

2007-04-21T16:27:00.000-07:00

i don't know what qualifies as wasting time anymore. i just came back from chatting on a porch with some good friends. the two girls, including me, were drinking water. the two guys were drinking beer. all of us were just chatting. so why did the guys classify their actions as "wasting an afternoon"? does the same go for leah and me?

earlier today, i woke up, worried a bit, got ready, went to the farmers' market and did some grocery shopping, put groceries away, helped out with earth day, heard a speaker, and then hung out with friends, oh yea, and there was probably some daydreaming in there.

which of the above constiute wasting time? why do we even have this phrase in our culture, what does it say about what we value?

friday morning threads

2007-04-20T06:28:00.000-07:00

yesterady i stopped by the htc commons room here on campus to chat with students about the viriginia tech shootings. there were about five students there, mostly first-years.

some important questions emerged during the course of our 40 minute conversation. How has the press handled this crisis, what is the media's role in giving/not giving the public information about these sort of events? What is the value, role of mental health services in our society? What determines wheather a person will "crack" like this young man did? Will there be a backlash against Southeast Asian community in this country? How will the nature of campus security change after this event? What is our reponsibility as studnets and faculty to report indiviudals with "red flag" behavior? What does an event say about the US? Or does it say anything particular to the US? Why are these 33 students given more coverage than the hundreds of soldiers/civilians killed weekly in Iraq? What does it mean when campus police crews are given SWAT training? Are we always living in a sort of undefined war zone?

But perhaps the most saddening one for me was posed by Dr. St. John: what does the coverage of this event say about the nature of grief in our society?

Is our "moment" of silence really 60 seconds?

Less than 24 hours after the shooting, before many of the victims were buried, the president of VT lead the commencement service. Less than two hours after the news of the shooting broke, as one student mentioned, there was already a debate on the airwaves about the need for gun control. Within an hour of the shooting, CNN had found and purchased cell phone video footage from a VT grad student and posted it on CNN.com.

I believe that a large part of it is that information has become a substitute for emotional outpouring in our society. We, in our-hyperactive need for production of....something.... stick ourselves into a constant feed of informationinformationinformatoninformationinformationinformationinformationinformationinformation to satiate the desire to feel, and most importantly, to feel as a community, with one another.

There are better examples. as I was reflecting on this last night with my housemates, my wonderful friend Margo mentioned that in the Jewish tradition, there is a process to grieving, all of which involve someone being with someone else. The first year of mourning is broken down in five distinct phases:
The time between death and burial
The three days that follow, when the family is given space to grieve privately
Shiva, a weeklong shared mourning with family, friends, and community members
Shloshim (which includes the shiva), a 30-day period after the burial, in which the bereaved person eases back into life
Yahrzeit, the commemoration of the first anniversary of death, at which time the headstone is placed, and things return to normal, relatively speaking

Professor st. John was mentioning a society in crete (i have to check on this) where two days after a tragic event were dedicated for the community to wail, mourn, cry out. There are vigils, like the one ou had.

and, then there are blogs.

sure, our information age brings with it wonderful connecting tools. but it also, i think, puts us at a grave danger of alienating the head from the hearts, so to speak, and ignoring the heart.

running at night

2007-04-13T20:24:00.000-07:00

i love running at night. even in the winter. there is something about moving under the cover of darkeness, under the stars that is both mysterious and liberating all at the same time.

there are some places on the bikepath where i have run many, many evenings; most, under the stress of some sort of writing deadline so that the grass literally holds words and phrases for me from these past escapes until i come back to visit them the next time. i guess these are an essay in and of themselves.

my favorite paths are the rougher grassy banks a bit farther from campus. i've also had lots of coversations with god in these places, asking him/her a variety of things, most of them preceeded by shouting or help! or what!!? other sorts of frusterated utterances. but whenever i go back and stop, breath, unplugg my ipod if i have it on, and listen, and yes, look at the stars, i feel that these conversations are not one way. it is good to remember to talk about thanks, to talk about joy, to talk about how something small went right that in the day.

writing all this makes me think about the poet mary oliver. somehow, i've just discovered her through a women and worship class i'm auditing at ou. anyway, she's good to slow yourself down and say thank you. i encouarge everyone to check out her why i wake early collection of poetry.

i'll leave you with one of them:

Bone
1.
Understand, I am always trying to figure outwhat the soul is,and where hidden,and what shape –
and so, last week,when I found on the beachthe ear boneof a pilot whale that may have died
hundreds of years ago, I though tmaybe I was closeto discovering something –for the ear bone
2.
is the portion that lasts longest in any of us, man or whale; shapedlike a squat spoon with a pink scoop where
once, in the lively swimmer’s head,it joined its two sistersin the house of hearing,it was only
two inches long –and thought: the soulmight be like this –so hard, so necessary –
3.
yet almost nothing.Beside methe gray seawas opening and shutting its wave-doors,
unfolding over and overits time-ridiculing roar;I looked but I couldn’t see anythingthrough its dark-knit glare;
yet don’t we all know, the golden sandi s there at the bottom,though our eyes have never seen it,nor can our hands ever catch it
4.
lest we would sift it down into fractions, and facts –certainties –and what the soul is, also
I believe I will never quite know.Though I play at the edges of knowing,truly I know our part is not knowing,
but looking, and touching, and loving,which is the way I walked on ,softly,through the pale-pink morning light.
~ Mary Oliver ~

(Why I Wake Early, 2004)

rainbows and coal

2007-04-13T16:13:00.000-07:00

a little story....

uncupping her hand, slowly, as if to keep something alive and jumping (like a toad), in, she waits for the flashes of pink and green and blue and purple to appear magically in the cold black stone as they had in her father’s callused palms just moments ago. seeing nothing but gray, she closes her hand again and squinting her eyes shut, shakes up the stone, thinking maybe the colors are playing a game with her – hiding. this time, she unfolds her fingers quickly and down, as if she were releasing a butterfly, but still, sees only the shiny gray and black of the stone.

worried, she tugs at the right braid of her pigtail and looks over at her father, sitting in a chair and leaning back towards the kitchen window, a bemused look about his face.

“come here, hoot, and let me show you something.” grasping her small forearm gently with his thumb and two fingers, he draws back the blinds and guides her still-open palms to the beam of mid-morning light filtered through the trees in the backyard. tilting her hands ever-so-slightly, she jumps as the reds and blues begin skirt across the surface and looks over at her father.

“the guys call it peacock coal because it looks like the feathers in a peacock’s tail.” yes, she knows the peacock, has read about it in one of her reading assignments: the bird with the funny black comb on his head who stole all the colors from the female. she had told her teacher that she didn’t think that was fair. “some oil or something gets on there and makes it shiny like that. it’s pretty rare.”

she turns the coal around and round in her palm until little sparkles appear on her skin and in the rivulets of sweat, building into faint, jeweled creases.

“thank you, daddy,” she whispers and kisses him on the temple behind his eye before she runs off to her room to place the coal on her shelf of treasures above her bed, between to her three-year-old sugar easter egg from the organist at their church and her t-ball trophy.

several times, even on rainy days, she would pick up the piece of coal, unhinging her palms in prayer trying to find her father’s rainbow in the slant of light from the bent slat of her bedroom blind.

(Back to) Soweto

2007-04-03T16:12:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a long time...

But here is a glimpse of my first trip to Soweto (SOuth WEst TOwnship) in South Africa.

“We can turn left up here,” said Dimpho, pointing towards a gravelish-looking road through a field that seemed either to be under destruction or abandoned construction. “Here?” I ask, uncertainly, looking at the ruts in the mud and smoke blowing across the field and the small group of people standing by. Soweto was not really the place I wanted to have a flat tire. Or spend the night.

“Yes, we can turn right here, yes, you are ok, and stay close to the left side that way we are out of the way, you know, if the bakkies want to come through.”

Dimpho was taking me through Soweto that afternoon, after I met her for the first time that morning about thirty minutes later than I was supposed to meet her because I, in my fear and general driving paranoia, could not find the parking lot for Carlton Center (the highest building in the Central Business District) in the CBD and because I was afraid to look at the road map for more than thirty seconds at the robot and to look, really, for more than thirty seconds for anyone and anywhere. So in my fear and general paranoia, I texted her for the third time, admitting, am lost : (, arranging to meet, instead, at the Market Theater complex: a five minute drive for me at that point and a twenty minute walk for her. And after chatting nervously with the car guard (well, a hozzit?, and molo and a very American attempt to talk about the sunshine) and anxiously kicking my right foot under a table in an outdoor café drinking tonic water, she had come, smiling and breathless and sweat dripping down her brow, and hugged me as if I were her sister, or at least her second cousin on her mother’s side.

Sitting down at a picnic table under a nearly- blooming jacaranda tree, I ordered a glass of mango juice and she, a glass of orange juice. And in the same breath, she began excitedly telling me about the meeting from which she had just come where the man was going to give her a several thousand rand loan towards her current project to build a bed in breakfast in Soweto. Our juices came: thought the cool velvety sweetness, we shared with each other about school, our families, being single, surviving Jozi, and why to keep going. “You know

And with that, I drove with her to Soweto.

Taking in my interest in coal mining, our first stop was in this field with two giant cooling towers, one painted brightly with people and trains, and the other, a giant advertisement for First National Bank. Known as the Orlando Park Towers, the two stacks were cooling towers for the Eskom station, providing electricity for Johannesburg’s white, wealthy northern suburbs. “And can you guess where all the pollution went?” Dimpho starts, angrily, sarcastically, putting her hands in her pants pockets and walking away, as I lock up the car and walk to meet her field by the towers.

Turning 180 degrees, from the towers towards the rows of Soweto settlements, I become slightly nauseated with a sharp smell of rotten eggs, garbage, smoke, and some other unidentifiable noxious odor blowing towards us with the wind. A couple of younger males in trousers and blue shirts walk by the road holding plastic bags; a few more bags are caught in the disturbed dirt behind us; one breaks free and blows up above me with the next trail of wind.

As I catch up to her in the field, Dimpho asks me if I recognize any of the figures painted on the mural, pointing specifically to a female near the top of the tower. I study it for awhile, and guess Miriam Makeba, about the only South African female musician I know besides Brenda Fassie. Dimpho laughs a little and asks how I know Miriam Makeba.

I tell her I have some of her music, and respond, rather defensively, “We isn’t she like, a famous South African musician? I mean, aren’t you supposed to know her? I wanted my iTunes purchases to count for something…

“Yes, yes, you are right. So is that what you think we do here in South Africa, dance around and listen to Miriam Makeba?” She is still laughing as I try to give her a serious response, then eventually corrects me, laughing, by telling me that the woman with the blue headdress is Yvone Chaka Chaka, a native Sowetan. Embarrassingly, I have to ask her to repeat it three times, and then, even though I don’t quite know why, have a good laugh at myself with her.

She points out a few other people, Nelson Mandela, soccer great, Jomo Somo, stopping a few more times quiz me on more of the brightly colored figures (all of which I fail). In addition to famous people, portraits of the yellow train running through Soweto and into the city, music stands, soccer balls, and street scenes fill up the space of the tower.

Looking beyond the right pictorial tower, I ask her what sort of building project is in the works. She grows serious, looks me in the eye, and shakes her head, kicking at a clod of grass, stirring up the dust.

”Yes, yes, about that one. That used to be the power station, you know, and now they want to turn it into another big shopping mall.” Because, you see, for them, that is the sign of progress – for them that is development. But this is not our sort of development, this is Western Development. Does this help my people here? I mean, yes, they say it will create jobs, sure, but what kind of jobs? The kind where you stand all day long and get nothing because they can always replace you with someone else if you want more rand or are sick or something, you see what I’m saying? Is this progress?

Her voice grows more animated. “I mean, sure it is fine to go shopping for whatever, but these are not goods from Johannesburg or even all from South Africa. How is this helping our economy here? Is this really what people want? I mean, we already have the Southgate (shopping mall), and that’s fine, people were excited about that because it will bring development, bring jobs. Do you think this is what people want?

I’m silent for awhile, thinking about the plastic bags in the dirt and the lady who tries to sell me a Sowetan every day as I leave Wits. “No, but maybe that’s only because it’s not what I want. I don’t like to shop too much, but I feel like I can’t say to people they shouldn’t want that.

She nods her head. “Yes, but you see what I mean, this is what people want. They want to spend their money in malls buying clothing that looks like, excuse me, what the girls in America wear. I mean, is this what we fought for, you know? Is this what the kids in June 1976 marched in the streets for…for this? For shopping malls? Is this what all these people on the mural I just told you about wanted? Is this our freedom? Is this helping my people?

“No. It’s apartheid again, keeping us in this Western market system. Why shouldn’t we be selling our own goods to the world, selling something that when you come here, you see something South African, something different that you can’t find anywhere else. My people, we should be offering goods that are unique, something of ourselves.”

I can only nod in agreement with her, offering here and there small bits of my own frustration with my culture of consumerism. But otherwise, I am silent.

“This is why I want to have my bed and breakfast, to have a place where people, local people, can come out and sell their crafts and have decent jobs, to come out and offer something unique, not just –malls.”

For the first time in ten minutes, I notice that she breathes.

Looking back again at the site of the future development, she shakes her head and turns back to face me. “I’m sorry. Maybe you think I am too much? Am I too much? I just think…

“No, not at all, I say quietly,” digging my toe into an exposed patch of red dirt. And we both turn our backs on the power station, the towers, facing full-on the largest black township in South Africa, in the mid-day sun, smoke blowing, and walk, heads down, back towards my car.

This picture belongs in another scene, but whatever. Dimpho is standing with me here in the top of the Regina Mundi Church where a great deal of the planning/meetings (and, unfortunately, shootings) took place during the struggle.

peace

2007-03-16T20:49:00.000-07:00

somewhere, in the middle of this week, between researching hezbollah and watching two ROTC guys walk across the street with Jimmy John's sandwiches, it hit me that everyday we are fighting a war. we are a country, fighting a war we initiated - and we have been and will be fighting for a long time.

we are fighting a war, everyday, but usually, when i read the front page of the times, i glaze over the headlines of x number dead in iraq; background. it's just there. expected. inevitable.

one of my wise professors once mentioned in a conversation a year or so ago that we, as a people, as a civilization, as a species, should have evolved, should have advanced beyond war by now.

duh, right?

there is a bumper sticker pasted on the back of a green honda civic that i see most everyday when i walk back to my apartment in the university commons: it has a picture of a broken heart colored as an American flag and reads: "my other half is in Iraq." i assume this is the car of one of the female employees.

for so long it just registered in my head as, well, bumper-sticker patriotism.

but recently, i have felt my heart tear a little bit more as i walk past, and i think of whoever is missing half of her (or his) heart in there a little bit more often.

as a community, as a nation, i think our hearts our broken over the iraq conflict.

but we still have another half. what are we going to do with it?

about a half and hour ago, i looked up peace in the back of my NIV. there are tons of entries for peace (peaceable peaceful peacemakers), peacable (peace), peace-loving, etc.

so i'll end with some bumper-sticker peacemaking:

Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness.

- James 3:18

Sweet Home Alabama

2007-03-09T18:01:00.000-08:00

I was reminded last week that to be a minority is indeed a state of being. Looking out from the backseat of a baby-blue Chrysler 300M (the rental agency all out of Civics) on route 80 West towards Selma, Alabama, I began to re-enter scenes driving along highways in Jo-Burg where I could feel my existence as a white person. I've not sorted out exactly what this means, but it was startling to me that my perception of control distinctly switched depending on the race of the driver passing me by, and I found myself disappointed when the driver was white because it turned me back into a view of shared assumptions and complacency.

I was in the South (Georgia and Alabama) all of four nights and three and one-half days to get a first-hand look at historic Civil Rights locations, people, and institutions. The invitation came at random towards the end of a long lunch conversation at Casa with Professor Michael Gray, the OU professor of African American and African studies who lead my first trip to South Africa during my sophomore year. So, of course I said, why not, and as I neatly placed my napkin on the table, looked up past the ceiling, shook my head, and grinned. (Requests for understanding sometimes have a funny way of working out)

So here are a few threads and pics from the trip:

I headed with Professor Gray along with bright, activist-minded freshman student Chelsea to Atlanta, Georgia on Thursday, March 1, arriving late in the evening after being delayed several hours because of stormy weather. Bedding down in a hotel right outside the airport, we woke early the next morning to a great sunrise- and news of a bus crash that killed several students from Ohio and tornadoes that had killed several people in the Alabama city of Enterprise. After wondering if our route would be hindered by the traffic backup from the crash, I went downstairs to the lobby to eat my oatmeal and gulp my daily dose of caffeine with Fox News coverage of Anna Nicole Smith blaring the background. Priorities?

We spent early Friday morning at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center in downtown Atlanta. The center is well done and here is a particular quote I remember from one of the signs in the King Center display because it caught my attention two years ago right before I left for Cape Town:

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of selfishness. This is the judgment. Life's most persistent and urgent question is, what are you going to do for others?

Carrying that thought with me, we headed out and strolled down King's old neighborhood, passing the Ebenezer Baptist Church where King's father, and eventually King himself, used to preach.

Then, "because it's all about the food" as Professor Gray says, the serious life question became turnip greens or collard greens? as I determined which three veggies would accompany my cornbread in a serious soul food restaurant named Kenley's. I eventually chose turnip and collard greens along with yellow sqaush - all wonderful and washed down with the best iced-tea I've ever had. I was so glad to feel okay in this restaurant with every inch of free space covered in framed pictures of the owner smiling with various African American national and local celebrities. The owner obviously noted that we were "tourists" and volunteered to take a picture of all three of us together.

After spending the morning in Atlanta, we headed about two and one-half hours south to Birmingham. There, we eased our way around the hoard of Secret Service to walk around Kelly Ingram Park where in 1963, Civil Rights protesters (many children) where hosed, clubbed, and harassed with dogs at the order of "Bull" Conner. The Secret Service was there to keep watch for a group of Congressional Delegates in the area and a press conference held in the park with prominent Civil Rights leader John Lewis.
John Lewis is a member of the House of Representatives and was president of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) that played a key role in the end of segregation.

Unfortunately, the amzing Civil Rights Institute was closed because of the delegation, so we left Birmingham after about an hour to drive on toward Montgomery.

Arriving there in early evening, just as the sun was beginning to set, we breezed downtown Montogomery which was bascially vacant, despite the fact that it was Friday evening. We did run into an intriguing group of three historians standing outside the historical Dexter Baptist Church who gave us some interesting snippets of Montogmery's Civil Rights legacy. After that, we stopped and ate at a Mexican restaurant and then met our wonderful host Denise Gabriel. Denise was formerly a faculty member in the theater department at OU and is now a faculty member at the Alabama Shakespearean Festival in Montgomery.

Saturday morning, we woke fairly early and went downtown Montgomery to a black barbershop, possibily my favority experience of the whole trip. The barber used to cut Dr. King's hair while he was in Montgomery. Again, I felt okay being there because we were with Professor Gray, but still aware that Chelsea and I were a bit out of place.

After the barbershop stay, we met Chris, one of Professor Gray's fomer students who is now a district attourney for Alabama'smiddle district, at Walt's diner.

Here is a picture of my breakfast. Grits and toast: serious stuff. As Chris noted, Montgomery is still a segregated city. One thing that I noticed right away in Walt's is the change of pictures hanging on the walls. Instead of Civil Right's leaders, they had old pictures of horses dressed up with ribbons, women in big dresses, and old stately homes. There were few African Americans in the place, though it was just down the way from the Barbershop.

After breakfast, Chris gave us a tour of the courthouse, the Greyhound bus station where the Freedom Riders were beaten, Maya Lin's Civil Right's memorial in front of the Southern Poverty Law Center (where we heard the some of the Congressional Delegation, Rev. Shuttelsworth and John Lewis sing "We Shall Overcome") and some other city landmarks. Professor Gray, Chelasea and I then went to the Rosa Park's Museum downtown.

Alabama is a very poor state in terms of public money to fund schools and state patrol. The public schools, with the exception of the few magnet schools, are terrible- real-estate taxes are very low, compared to Ohio (Chris mentioned that for his suburban $ 200,000+ home, he paid $300 a year in property taxes). Then, Chris estimated that there were probably only thirteen state patrol persons in the WHOLE state.

In the early afternoon, we headed up to Selma for quick experience Bridge Crossing festivities - mainly food, music, and stuff. I picked up my first copy of the Militant, a socialist, pro-labor publication, and ate plain rice since everything else was fried or meat. I did attempt fried eggplant, but once I peeled all the batter off, there really was no eggplant anymore. Oh, soul food....

On the way back to Montgomery, we stopped at a couple of campsites of the Selma-to-Montgomery and Viola Liuzzo's memorial. Liuzzo was a white civil rights activist murdered by the Klu Klux Klan after giving rides home to marchers in the 1965 Selma-to Montgomery march.

Rushing back to Montgomery, Chelsea and I prepared to go to Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman at 7:00 the Shakespeare Theater while Denise and Professor Gray had dinner. After watching a fair production of Salesman and generally feeling depressed about life and capitalism (wait, are they separate?), Chelsea and I chatted a bit with Denise and Professor Gray. Then, it was an attempt at an early bedtime to rise in time to see Obama speak in Selma Sunday morning.

We left Montgomery the next morning at 5:15, picked up Chris downtown at 5:30, and headed to Selma. Noting plenty of standing room outside Brown Chapel Church, the group went to McDonald's for breakfast. We then stood outside for about three hours to wait for a seat inside.

Let me try to set the scene for this event: Sen. Obama was speaking at Brown Chapel Church while Sen. Hillary Clinton was speaking across the street at the same time. The Rev. Jesse Jackson was also in town - so lots of energy in Selma. However, as Professor Gray constantly reminded us, none of these high profile people, with the exception of Bill Clinton and of course The Rev. Jesse, had been to Selma before this year.

Waiting was long, but also one of the highlights of the trip. This was my first real political rally, so to speak, and I loved the energy and comeraderie that surrounded it. However, my feet nearly froze because I stubbornly decided to wear my Tevas. Something about feeling the energy/historical ground through my feet....? I don't know, but after about 30 minutes, I wasn't feeling anything in my feet. But, true to Southern hospitality and what I think is the general compassion in humanity, a very nice teacher held my hands and piled her cloth bag around my feet in order to keep me warm. We had a good time joking about how slighly crazy I was: all the women around me just kind of laughed and shook their head when they noticed I had on Tevas. Then we talked about the neighborhood and volunteer projects, our families and school. It was a moment that I feel charachterized why we were all there in the first place.

Arriving at the church at 6:50am, we were fairly close to the doors when security finally decided to open them at 10:00. However, it was still a mad push to get inside as we battled people cutting in from the sides, etc. Chelsea and Chris were stubborn and lucky to find a seat inside: Professor Gray and I behaved somewhat and thus were sent to the basement to watch the program on a screen since all the seats for the public had already filled up. I was mad, to say the least.

Anyway, the program was okay and we basement convicts sang hymns softly along with the TV. Before Obama spoke, John Lewis and Bishop Kirkland had already prepped the crowd with some stirring memories and reflections of the past struggle.

Obama's speech was passionate, but precise. Compared to Lewis and others, he was not as charismatic, but as a Yale Law grad, I'm guessing that is not really his style. He opened by connecting himself to the Civil Rights movement, stating that his existence as the son of a white female from Kansas and a Kenyan would not have been possible without Selma (Civil Rights movement in general). Framing the speech in Biblical terms, he addressed the triumphs of the Moses generation, the giants like Lewis who lead the Movement forward, but stressed the important challenges of the present and future generations, the Joshua generation. On this note, I perked up as he spoke about a "poverty of ambition" in a materialistic youth culture, problems of educational achievement being perceived as "being white" by many youth, and problems of "economic discrimination", health care, family, and education. A key point in all of this was taking individual initiative: "not what the government can do for us, but what we can do for ourselves." And then, addressing strained and broken families where children are in poverty and fathers are not acting like fathers, Obama encouraged his listeners to push back the negatives that have been pushed on them in the past: "We must fight the opression in each of us."

Most people then exited after Obama spoke. Unfortunately, I also had to leave, but was able to hear "We Shall Overcome" through the doors while standing in line for the women's restroom. And - I got a close shot of Obama as he exited the building.

After that, we mingled in the hundreds of people outside the church and Professor Gray, Chelsea, and Chris all had some kind of pulled-meat sandwich. Soon after, we headed out where the three stopped at someone's porch grill for some Southern fried fish. Then we went back to the market/food area downtown area so that I could eat some more rice. This time, I think that lady had more compassion for vegetarians in Selma and served me heartier portion. :)

After browsing a few more tables and stands along the way, we hustled over across the Edmund Pettus Bridge to secure a spot from which to view the march. The Edmund Pettus Bridge is a particularly important marker as the site of March 7, 1965, known as "Bloody Sunday" where police brutalized peaceful Civil Rights demonstrators. Now, Civil Rights leaders and this year, Obama, Hillary and Bill Clinton formed the front line of the march. We waited there among a hoard of press and camera crews for about an hour before the dignitaries made it across the bridge.

Above: Obama in the white shirt looking towards the American Flag with some Black Power fists raised in the background.

Right: Bill and Hillary are buried in the upper left-hand corner of the picture.

Also to the left out of this picture was a journalist from the AP taking pictures from the top of a step ladder next to the side of the bridge. I am so thankful that he didn't fall in....sheeesh.

About 5:30 ish we drove back to Montogomery, stopping again along the way to take a few more shots. Dropped off Chris downtown and then drove on to Atlanta. Arrived back in Atlanta about 8:40ish and stayed with Nancy, another one of Professor Gray's former students now an attorney with Delta Airlines.
Left Nancy's about 7:45 Monday morning, caught our flight to Columbus, and headed back to Athens.

Searching for Big Muskie

2007-02-27T15:04:00.000-08:00

For me, the time after visit home usually feels like being stuck in the cross-eyed stage of a Magic Eye puzzle. Wanting to see something raised above the crazed, loud pattern, I draw myself closer, and then beyond closer, until nose collides with surface, breath drives back into mouth, and eyes somersault against sockets in a desperate attempt to tell my brain exactly how things have changed in this new perspective. But then I still can't see it yet, the hidden transcendence, the coherent form, the purported magic. Directions say to back away (now!) but slowly, while all the time trying to maintain the same sort of focus as being upupclose. And this is what gives me a headache: in the process of drawing away, eyes and brain are battling between two different messages to try to make sense of what I see. Sometimes, after several seconds, it works: a shape rises to provide wonder and form out of chaos. But often, it doesn't, and I have to start over again, maybe many times, in an attempt to try to uncover that something beneath the surface. So it was in this cross-eyed stage leaving my parent's home Sunday afternoon to return to Athens that I found myself taking exit 25 off of 77 south which, as a brown sign had noted a few minutes earlier, was the way to Big Muskie Bucket, the largest coal dragline ever made. Located about an hour south of my hometown, the sign for Big Muskie marks the point at which I am either drawing closer or drawing away: closer in the sense that once again rusty mailboxes, memories of lost jobs, warsh and ya’ll, highwalls, Carhart overalls, pick-up trucks broken down, beaten down, torn down – or proudly taken home with the opportunity of no-down, [payment], zoom me into a blurred UNDERSTANDING that this my home; drawing away in hopes that something from this, my own confused background pattern, will rise above to provide me with a another shape by which to define my identity.

I had learned about the Big Muskie dragline about a year earlier from some class research, though vague rumors of its existence have graced the edges of family dinner conversation and a high school classroom discussion. Since then, the idea to stand by this giant earth-mover in what I imagined to be some tired cattle field has both intrigued and repelled me. Deciding that this particular indifferent Sunday afternoon was as a good a time as any to go up-close, I followed the brown sign pointing right at the bottom of the ramp (which also reassured me that the Noble County Correctional Institute was in the same direction, just in case) and so began.

In cases, such as this once, where I don’t know exactly where or how far it is I am going, landscape is consumed in rapid, undigested chunks to make a guess at distance. A single yard ornament, one of those blue glass balls perched atop a concrete pedestal, is my first clue to where I am. Later, a trailer home to my left parked on the wood line with white and orange plastic porch furniture set off nicely with a banner of plastic American Flags and rusted cars. Yellow railroad bridge with tufts of grass visible from its top. In the bend of steep right turn, Jumper’s Corner invites me as a DEER AND TURKEY WEIGH STATION, with Hot Food! Cold Beer! Lodging! but not, of course, on Sunday. On my right again, a small white shed with a tin roof off to the side of an aging white farmhouse declared the “Mayor’s Office” in snide black spay paint: I knew that I was getting closer.

Reinersville. An almost full sized ceramic cow situated in the middle of six flag poles with the flags all held at a little below half-mast: “Quick Stop”: I stop. Wanting to ask about the flags and cow, and slightly car-sick, I step carefully around gas hoses and oil patches, my heels sinking precariously into the muddy gravel, and prepare to go in. Locked – but the sign says OPEN and the lights are on? Knock again. Peering into the window, I see strings of Bud-Light foam beer holders (with a drawstring for easier carrying) strung down a pole by the counter, plastic worms and fishing tackle, and a rack of some type of cloth covers in various patterns. The air smells strongly of wood smoke and wet dirt. In the whole rack, I notice only two done with the Confederate flag- must be popular. I leave, deciding that the SPARKY’s porta-potty outside is not worth the effort.

After passing though Reinersville, the hills became increasingly steeper and more densely covered in early succession hardwoods- maple, popular, beech- along with large groves of white pine; abandoned farmhouses, silos, and sunken barns added to the conclusion that I am driving over taken land. With each bump up to the top of a hill, I scan over the horizon for the abrasive diagonal of a dragline arm, accompanied by a sudden clear burst of bluegrass music from the D28+5 Sunday afternoon program on NPR. But I see nothing- nothing more than melancholy hills, some wooded, some bald, and many left with scars from mechanical mutilation.

After what seemed to be about thirty-five minutes of windy roads with no map and a mounting headache, the thought crosses my mind that I should really just turn around and go back: I’m not seeing anything. But then, some small signs pop up and catch my interest: Welcome to AEP’s Re-CREATION Land! Forest Loop à Camp Area ^ Miner’s Memorial ^. Sure enough, at the top of the next hill to the right, I notice a cleared space with a couple of pavilions and signs – and then a very large brown-red ark shaped structure. Must be the place, I think, and pull into the parking area by the restrooms, the only car in the parking area.

Getting out, I questioned the wisdom in ignoring my parents’ time-honored routine of church-change-lunch-nap in the interests of gaining a few more minutes for myself when my heels once again began to sink down into the gravel and my pantyhose lost its wind-breaking capacity in about 2.2 seconds. It was now after 2:00 in the afternoon, and, feeling hungry, I ripped open the TO-GO version of the Quaker breakfast classic and walked as daintily as possible towards the hunk of metal. Feeling a bit conspicuous, I hear a diesel truck approach, slow down, and then finally pass, satisfied that I was not up to any harm. Hurriedly, I swallowed the last bite of my bar, sticking the wrapper in my pocket, and continue walking.

NO CAMPING - NO CLIMBING ON ROCKS - NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ACCIDENTS AEP. This was it? There was no dragline, no mammoth machine, nothing besides an ugly, rusting discard perched rather awkwardly on a bed of rocks, it’s hulking attachment chains spread around it like a gaudy piece of costume jewelry hung on an elderly woman’s neck, setting off the worst attributes of both. Walking around from side to side, my heel clicks echoing back to me in the interior pit of the bucket, I tried to determine the best angle from which to experience it’s size. And so with this, I stepped inside. The size of a bedroom with high ceilings, Big Muskie’s most important part had been frequented by dozens of those who felt that the best way to leave their mark on this, the former pride of the area, was to inscribe initials, years, and attempts at wit or general crudeness. Four or so signatures in small, white paint, middle-school lettering on each side caught my attention first: Karen Waller (beside Russ and J.P.P forever 2002), Tyler Winkleman, Kevin Waller –n- Heather Winkleman August 17, 2006, Kobe Waller, and Trevor Allen Winkleman. Cousins, most likely, I thought, tracing Kobe’s signature. Pinning my hair back behind my ears against the wind, I imagined a scene similar to ones in my own childhood where all day could be spent scrambling over and around the huge piece of equipment, imagining that is was something bigger and better than it was, and that I too, was better with it.

Stepping out and down the Muskie’s claws, I walked over to the Miner’s Memorial, a plaque of names commemorating those individuals who contributed to the growth of the coal industry in the area. There were several panels of names in which I could see a mirror image of myself, similar to the effect of the names inscribed on the Vietnam Wall. Starting with C, I scrolled down to find a Cook, but none were listed; general workers didn’t make the list. Remembering the child-scrawl in the bucket, I moved on to the Ws, and not surprisingly, found several Winkleman’s listed. I smiled to think how Grandfather, or Uncle, or Dad would react if they knew their children were decorating with poster paint the machine that brought their industry (and the region) one of its greatest measures of respect.

Before I left, I stood for awhile in front of the bucket, taking in the view of all the now “reclaimed” land Big Muskie had stripped in 325 ton bites; in total, more than twice the amount of earth moved for the construction of the Panama Canal. And though there were many trees, and though the air was clear, and though I could hear the rumble of heavy trucks hauling things, hauling something up and down the road behind me, what rose out to me from this was a great sphere of emptiness. And it stayed with me, this image, as I turned with muddied heels to walk back to my car and to leave.

breaking sticks

2006-12-27T12:11:00.000-08:00

I could tell last night when I started examining the ceiling structure of my parents’ home, daydreaming about how much pressure it would take to blow the roof off of the house as my grandparents were talking about one of their friends, that it was time for me to get out for awhile. I have been home for nine days in a row now, minus a night that I spent at my sister's apartment in New Philadelphia. That is a lot. Now, don't get me wrong: I love my family and love spending time with them, and it has been an absolutely wonderful homecoming for me. But four days of sitting and chatting and eating (and yet more chatting) in small rooms with the same people; sleeping half the night on one couch and half on another; and waking up in the middle of the night- twice- in panic that my father's newly mounted deer head (graciously covered with a sheet for my benefit) was going to come alive and reclaim its body, I was staring to get a bit squirmy, to say the least.

I feel guilty when I'm angry and anxious, and I've been angry and anxious for several days now, maybe weeks. I haven't exactly figured out why. But there has taken root in me a strain of bitterness that wasn't there before. This disturbs me a great deal, especially during the Christmas holiday.

So this afternoon when all other forms of distraction- checking e-mail, reading, cleaning, leaving voice mails on cell phones of my friends, had failed to improve my mood, I finally decided that I should go out for a walk. The sun was shining, so there was no excuse, I told myself aloud. So I slipped on shoes without socks, a coat without gloves, and a hat without a top and headed out to the woods behind our house.

It was a good time of day for a walk, the time when the sunlight is just right to make everything softer and easier to take in, sort of like what a candle does to someone's face in an already lighted room. As I started walking through the tufts of brown grass in the Christmas tree field to get to the opening of the path, I thought about how odd it is that we refuse what we know to be good for us. Well, at least I do. Walking, being with friends, sitting still, saying hello to God, why is it that I avoid the very things that I know will help to make me feel somewhat better?

To be honest, I had come out for this walk with the intention to break sticks. (Not exactly the sort of serenity you expected, hey?) Along with visions of blowing off the roof, I had been daydreaming about whacking homeruns in a championship softball game, then jousting, and then chopping wood. I'm not even going to try to begin to analyze the symbolism in all that; all I knew is that I was agitated and felt like breaking sticks.

I passed up some fairly good-sized branches at the mouth of the path, where the wild turkeys always scratch around in the summer and the fall, figuring that I should save up my energy for something nearer a woodpile (so at least this might be a semi-productive venture). Then I walked by the maple tree with the large grapevine and brought my hand to my mouth to stifle a giggle or a groan, I'm not sure which, remembering how I had bloodied my gums after an attempted Tarzan swing on a vine some summer when I was younger. In the process, I spooked about four deer, their white tails flaring up in false flags of surrender as they bounded over the hill. Luckily for them, I had had no delusions of grandeur in spearing deer and so continued peacefully down the path.

Entering a clearing, I remembered my purpose and half-heartedly picked up a nice, semi-rotten branch and smacked it against the nearest sapling. Neither the sapling, nor the branch made out very well, and I felt so sorry for the tree that I gave it a little pat in an attempt to cheer (and straighten) it back up. The next branch I picked up, on the principle of my purpose, was a much sturdier piece of poplar. Bracing myself in the proper branch-bashing position, I pulled my arms back and - whack!- the other half of the branch promptly punched my right shoulder in return as I cracked the branch in two piece. Sucker! I could imagine the tree taunting. Rubbing my shoulder, I mumbled some choice words to the trees and kicked up a few leaves, deciding that I was over the whole branch-breaking thing and wanted to go back to the house.

Without the distraction of looking for good branches to break on my way back, I began to notice how green the moss still was at this time of year. I had missed fall, so the brown emptiness of the woods felt too rushed. Sniffing the air, I tried to see if I could still smell fall, in the leaves on the ground, but could only detect a faint odor of cold. A few steps beyond, I bent down to peel a patch of moss off a small rock and sniffed gently, satisfied. Yep still smells like moss, wet and sharply earthy. Beside the rock, I roughed up a few leaves with my hand, but still couldn't smell anything, so I put both hands on the ground and stuck my nose right down on the forest floor. Smiling and wiping my nose, I decided, simply, that the ground smelled only like wet, rotting leaves, fall, or winter.

After a few minutes more, I reached the woodpile in the clearing in front of the back porch, empty-handed. The wooden bench where family and friends sat on to roast marshmallows or hotdogs, (or veggie dogs), had lost both of the armrests; the charcoal ring from earlier fires was barely visible with all the leaves. A few feet beyond that was the tree house my father had built for my sister and me, now missing at least half of the roof and piled full of rubbish and wood. Our initials, scratched with charcoal, were still visible by the stairs: RCL, Rachel Cook Leah, depending on how you read it. Looking once more to the condition of the tree house, I thought about how soon it would need to be taken down, broken, stripped, and maybe even thrown into the fire as fuel for some other gathering.

But not now, I decided. Now I will go inside, light candles, write thank you cards to my family, and ask my friends what they think of camp fires in December.

no, i did not get eaten by a lion

2006-11-19T02:47:00.000-08:00

well, i've neglected this blog for quite some time now, to my dismay and embarassment. rather than try to catch up on the month or so missed, i'll start with the most previous events and work backwards.

It is a rainy and relatively cold Sunday afternoon here in Jo-Burg, and I've just returned back from services at Melville Union Church and am sipping some rooibos tea. I'm also trying in vain to get the local classical music station to come in through my clock radio but getting mostly static and random bits of Indian music, traffic reports, and African language talk shows. To be really corny, I guess I could say that parallels what my own thoughts have been like recently: constant static while searching for my classical Western tastes and values, jumbled up by South Africa's complex realities of race, history, desparation, and violence.

This morning's message was entitled "Dealing with Doubt," focusing specifically on Psalm 73:

Psalm 73 (NIV)

BOOK III : Psalms 73-89

1A psalm of Asaph.
Surely God is good to Israel,
to those who are pure in heart.

2 But as for me, my feet had almost slipped;
I had nearly lost my foothold.

3 For I envied the arrogant
when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

4 They have no struggles;
their bodies are healthy and strong. ^[a]

5 They are free from the burdens common to man;
they are not plagued by human ills.

6 Therefore pride is their necklace;
they clothe themselves with violence.

7 From their callous hearts comes iniquity ^[b] ;
the evil conceits of their minds know no limits.

8 They scoff, and speak with malice;
in their arrogance they threaten oppression.

9 Their mouths lay claim to heaven,
and their tongues take possession of the earth.

10 Therefore their people turn to them
and drink up waters in abundance. ^[c]

11 They say, "How can God know?
Does the Most High have knowledge?"

12 This is what the wicked are like—
always carefree, they increase in wealth.

13 Surely in vain have I kept my heart pure;
in vain have I washed my hands in innocence.

14 All day long I have been plagued;
I have been punished every morning.

15 If I had said, "I will speak thus,"
I would have betrayed your children.

16 When I tried to understand all this,
it was oppressive to me

17 till I entered the sanctuary of God;
then I understood their final destiny.

18 Surely you place them on slippery ground;
you cast them down to ruin.

19 How suddenly are they destroyed,
completely swept away by terrors!

20 As a dream when one awakes,
so when you arise, O Lord,
you will despise them as fantasies.

21 When my heart was grieved
and my spirit embittered,

22 I was senseless and ignorant;
I was a brute beast before you.

23 Yet I am always with you;
you hold me by my right hand.

24 You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will take me into glory.

25 Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you.

26 My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.

27 Those who are far from you will perish;
you destroy all who are unfaithful to you.

28 But as for me, it is good to be near God.
I have made the Sovereign LORD my refuge;
I will tell of all your deeds.

Now, I'm still sorting this all out, but I became extremely sad and nearly angry after reading this. Melville Union is relatively new church, intentionally founded as a racially diverse, service-oriented congregation, which I really enjoy. So looking around during the service, honestly, all I could envision when I read verses 3 and 4("For I was envious of the arrogant, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For they have no pangs; their bodies are sound and sleek. They are not in trouble as other men are; they are not stricken like other men") was the speaker as a black South African and the "wicked" as white South Africans. I don't quite know what to make of this reaction. Certainly, while I've been here, serious questions of justice, God's will, and forgiveness have come up relatively frequently as I sit in church services, or small group studies, or in traffic behind stuffed taxis and just drop my jaw at the absolute inhumanity of apartheid and the ultimate humanity of forgiveness.

One of my first experiences in South Africa was wondering into some kind of Christian campus organization function at Wits and hearing past leaders of the group describe the changes of the organization over the last 20 years. Well, obviously apartheid issues came up (fyi: I was the only white student present in the group of about 425 people) . One scene that a middle aged man described continues to both inspire me and trouble me: members of his group - both black and white- would meet together in the mornings to pray. But often, as the gentlemen recounted, they would be praying for seemingly opposite things - a white student praying that his Afrikaans brother would not get killed in some government appointed raid on a township alongside a black student praying that HIS brother would not get killed by soldiers in that raid. Now how does one even begin to sort out ideas of justice in that?

By the end of Psalm 73, the speaker picks himself up and realizes that the things he envies are just "dreams" or "phantoms" in the RSV, and that God is his ultimate desire, that the day of justice will come.

I don't know what it is, but I just feel impatient and even guilty after this passage because the depth of suffering is so much greater for some than for others. So does increased suffering make their faith stronger or just more desperate? I don't know.

-------

In any case, last week, I took a bit of a holiday to Kruger National Park in the northeastern corner of South Africa. Kruger is one of the ultimate tourist attractions in the whole country and probably Sub-Saharan African in general. I travelled with a friend from the US who was visiting SA with her two other friends (all women who worked for the US Forest Service in some capacity).

We left early Monday morning to drive towards the northwestern edge of the park at the Phalaborwa gate. From Phalaborwa, we headed east to Letaba, then south to Olifants and Lower Sabie, and finally exited the park at Crocodile Bridge. The three ladies then dropped me off at Nelspruit where I caught a Greyhound bus back to Jo-Burg, while they headed further south to Durban.

The entire experience was amazing, and a bit too much for me to describe adequately right now, so I'll just give you some highlights. Basically, I felt like I was reliving the hours of National Geographic videos about Africa that I watched as a young tot.

My absolute favorite part of the trip was a sunrise bike ride at Olifants camp. Our gang joined an Austrian couple and two young male guides at 4:00 in the morning and drove for about 30 minuets in a safari vehicle to get to the trailhead. At 4:00, the sun is already starting to come up over the horizon in a sheer orange purple blaze across the sky, so everything looked grey and just slightly gilded. On the way to the trail, we spotted three hyenas and a leopard which is fairly unusual. By 5:00, the whole sky was lit and we began our ride through the bush towards a lake. Once at the lake, we stopped for breakfast with the hippos, literally. I munched Marie Biscuits and gulped Powerade about 20 feet from a herd of hippos and about 40 feet from a crocodile. There was even a little baby hippo playing around in the water, which received lots of oohhhs an ahhhs from the group of mostly women. Even I had to oohh and ahh a bit; I was such a tourist.

We ended up seeing all of the Big Five (lion, rhino, leopard, elephant, and buffalo) plus some other pretty amazing mammals and birds. The four of us combined took thousands of pictures - no joke. I can only post a few of my 200-some now because my internet bandwidth is very low, but hopefully I'll be able to post additional ones soon.

Well, scratch that, I can't post any pics.

things that make me smile after 5:46am

2006-10-29T21:29:00.000-08:00

1. the thunderstorm that woke me instead of a damp sunrise
2. that the mosquito i smashed about four hours earlier is still stuck to the wall
3. thinking of yoda's wiggling ears, but realizing that it was too early in the morning for me to even attempt to wiggle the one that i can (i caught the end of the SABC3 movie last night - some star wars episode)
4. having a second shower from the runoff as i stick my head out the door under the arboretum
5. black (clean) shirts
6. rediscovering accidentally songs in my itunes library that talk about rain -when it is raining
7. that 2% milk leaves just enough swirl in my nescafe to require stirring it away with a spoon
8. clothes hanging on the line that aren't mine
9. lacy suds from wet footprints mixed with spilled laundry detergent on my steps
(ending this list with nine instead of 10)

Eastern Cape: East London

2006-10-28T09:40:00.000-07:00

So my original post that I had typed about the Eastern Cape disappeared into slogger land, much to my dismay. However, the word must still get out, and I wanted to give you at least a general idea of what I did in the Eastern Cape before I move on to other interesting things...like Soweto (yes, a shameless plug for a future entry).

East London

Thursday, October 12

Flew from Jo-Burg to East London, a city along the southeastern coast of South Africa, where I met and stayed with the Vasi family. The Vasi's were my East London hosts during my previous trip to South Africa, so it was wonderful to reconnect with them again and have more time for conversations other than very early in the morning and late at night.

Nolan, the father, is a manager at Nedbank; Lee-Anne, the mother, runs her own events management company and is also teaching business management at Damien, a private high school/college; Tyrren, at 10 years old, is one of the sweetest and most considerate girls I've ever met; Kaitlyn, at 8, is just downright ornery and full of energy, but always ready to give a hug or a big smile to anyone who will take it.

Thursday evening was mostly spent catching up over a dinner of hot lamb curry, going with Lee-Anne and Nolan to church, talking to Nolan about BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) and East London development, and catching a bit of sport.

Friday, October 13

Went with Lee-Anne to Damien for the morning. The students were around 18 and learning basic percentage rules. The atmosphere was a bit tense because the day before, a group of girls from Lee-Anne's first class stormed out to verbally and physically attack a girl in the next room (I'm not sure why...I think something to do with a guy). In any case, Lee-Anne gave them an ear-full about that in between calculations. And, as I told her later, the students listened because I think it is one of the few times that an adult has actually cared what happens to them.

In both classes, the students were pretty jolly and polite to me. I talked with them a bit during the classes and then during break time outside, and they could not believe that I looked like a "normal" person (I'm guessing that was supposed to mean that I didn't look like the American girls in movies). All in all, the bunch is a little rowdy with some serious family/personal issues, but an energetic and fun group nonetheless.

Nolan picked me up from Damien in the afternoon and I went back home to chill and read the paper. After Lee-Anne returned home, we chatted for a while about the students, teaching, racial issues in the classroom, etc, and then went to pick up the girls from school. From there, we did some grocery shopping, picked up the girls from school, and then went for ice cream and waffles.

Returning back home, Nolan was in a rush trying to prepare for his Burger Bash that evening. After organizing the groceries, I assisted by frying bacon for the first time in my life and then making hamburger patties for about the second time in my life. Kaitlyn graciously provided me with directions on how to do all three of these tasks.

Both Nolan and Lee-Anne have large, extended families. Nolan’s family is Indian and most of his immediate family lives in the same neighborhood so they get together quite often. Lee-Anne’s family is colored (term for mixed-race) and is split between Cape Town and East London, but they still make it a point to have family reunions, etc. Similar to situations in the US, this family togetherness is becoming more unusual in many middle-class families as the children leave to work in Jo-Burg, Cape Town, or Durban.

So as a result of all this happy family stuff, I spent half of the evening trying to remember the in-laws and sister’s names, and whose kids were whose. I put my success rate at just under 50%.

The other half was spent trying to eat discreetly around my burger (I soon gave that up…Nolan’s mother was giving me the motherly eat-up-your-food-stare), and trying to decide if I should join the women who were talking about church, hair, perfume, etc, or the men who were mainly concerned with the cricket match, rugby teams, cars, etc. After trying to add something to each (and learn cricket rules at the same time), I finally gave up and went to play blind-man’s bluff upstairs with the kids (more fun, anyway).

After everyone went home relatively early (9:30, 10:00pm), the evening ended with Lee-Anne and me catching the last part of Jeepers Creepers II (Friday 13^{th, remember}).

I went to bed quite content. It had been awhile since I had been part of a family, with all the quirks and charms that come with it.

Saturday, October 14

I was awakened early with Nolan looking for his golf clubs or something (golf on Saturday mornings with his brothers) and finally coaxed out of bed by Tyrren peeking and giggling through the door. Saturday was sleep-in day for the rest of the family, so Tyrren and I made ourselves comfortable with cartoons and coffee, respectively.

Later, Lee-Anne and I went downtown to the Ann Bryant Gallery to view the opening of the MTN Messages and Meaning Exhibit, which has since received good reviews. The exhibit features beadworks, paintings, and works from major African artists including William Kentridge (South Africa), Kwesi Owusu-Ankomah (Ghana) and Yinke Shonibare (Nigeria).

(http://www.buffalocity.gov.za/news2006/oct/oct4_mtnexhibition.stm).

The Ann Bryant Gallery is a beautiful Victorian style mansion, and as we were walking around in the garden area, Lee-Anne mentioned that many couples have their wedding pictures taken here. But then, she matter-of-factly added that she and Nolan were not able to have theirs taken in the garden when they were married since they were not white. Walking around in such a beautiful area, looking at art, interpreting the pieces with the Sesotho-speaking student, everything seemed happy and fine and together, and this comment snapped me back to remember that what I was doing just then would not have been possible twelve years ago.

After we finished with the gallery, we took a bit of a stroll along the beach area, and then Lee-Anne dropped me off at the shopping center while she had her hair done. I generally just walked around in a daze and then found my way into a bookstore. Luckily, Nolan rescued me from the mall about an hour later and we went to his Mom’s house for the family ritual of Saturday samp and beans lunch. The stuff wasn’t bad, but whatever sauce I put on it required me to drink about five glasses of water. This was cause for much giggling among everyone, but I joked that it must be part of my initiation into the family.

Lee-Anne and I were supposed to go with her friend that afternoon to Mdantsane, the second largest township in South Africa, but the friend cancelled, so we went back to the shopping center. Now granted, East London is a sleepy town compared to Cape Town or Jo-burg, so shopping is one of the main forms of entertainment, but sheesh! Actually, no, shopping is a major activity among middle to upper class South African families and the malls are packed on weekends with people buying—everything. South Africa is experiencing a consumer boom at this point, as more and more people have enough disposable income to buy things that they couldn’t buy before. You can see this as you walk around in the mall: people are dressed way up to go shopping and the whole atmosphere is just loud with BUY BUY BUY. I may be over exaggerating a bit because I personally find this obsessive consumer craze a bit sad and discouraging not only in South Africa, but in the US as well. But that is another matter and I shouldn't be so harsh...

However, there is cause to be concerned with all of this shopping because the consumer craze is also fostering huge percentage of people with enormous amounts of credit card debt. Gael Beckett and I were talking about this one afternoon and she gave an example of furnishing a living room. Instead of getting a couple of pieces at a time, what many families are doing is buying everything for the room and then charging it on a card. There are obviously several factors that go into that decision such as a sense of entitlement, reaction to not having, etc, as Gael the psychologist explained, but really, it is a huge cause for concern.

[In fact, as I was riding around in the truck in Mthatha a few days later listening to the SABC, there are now several radio adds and programs encouraging people to save money or invest it and to pay off credit-card debts, as the interest rate is going sky-high].

But enough of my grumbling about shopping. Lee-Anne and I had a good time and we even chatted with two of Nolan’s sisters while were there (imagine that!).

From the mall, we went to another family gathering where the guys were catching the end of the rugby game and once again the ladies were chatting about stuff. Unfortunately, I did not have my swimming costume, but I played outside with the kids for awhile by the pool before coming inside to do the men-and-women conversation hop again. After a quick snack and a brief synopsis of the game from the men, everybody piled back into their cars to get ready for an extended family member’s 21^st birthday party.

21^st birthdays are a big deal in South Africa—everybody is invited and everybody comes. This one was no exception and the sisters joked that the entire Indian community of East London was in attendance.

To turn 21 without a child is a cause for celebration and part of the reason for big 21 birthday bashes. 21 is also the coming of age marker. At this particular party, each family member and a few friends made a short speech about this girl and how she has grown up, etc. Then there is a toast and the feast begins. (I must say that by Saturday, I had grown more accustomed to strong curry.) We (Nolan and the family gang) left just as thing were getting started at about 12:30am – these 21^st bashes usually last through morning.

I slept pretty well that evening.

Sunday, October 15

Tyrren and I were once again up in the morning – after making her some coffee (and drinking it for her), I packed up my things, said my goodbyes, and boarded the Greyhound from East London to Mthatha. I have a feeling I’ll be back in East London again, sometime, so for me it was more of a see-you-later, rather than a goodbye.

East London left me with warm fuzzies, home-made cards, thoughts about the challenges of being mixed-race in South Africa, my quota of shopping malls, and habit of saying "is it?" and "yesses!"

a couple of pics

2006-10-23T04:39:00.000-07:00

Okay, so here are just a few pictures from the Eastern Cape...more coming...it just take a long time for them to load here.

This is once of my favorite pictures from the whole trip. I took this shot after we finished a meeting with the villagers and hiking our way back up the hill to pass out the fruit trees. The lady was thrilled to pose for me :)

In the village shown here, all of the men had been involved in some type of mining (mostly gold or platinum) and all of the women had husbands who were miners at one point.

waiting to cry

2006-10-23T04:35:00.000-07:00

I have been waiting to cry for a long time now. And yet, the tears do not come. I want to cry for the old lady who sells The Daily Sun from a tattered cloth bag by the Wits robot for R5 (which I have yet to buy: not today, Mama, not today); the boys I run past in the morning, still sleeping under the trees in the park just beyond the chichi Moyo café, just beyond the young father with his two children feeding yesterday’s bread to the ducks. I want to cry for the deepened creases in the young mother’s face as she struggles to readjust her suckling child just as I am poised to shoot them both with my digital camera. I want to cry for toes sticking out of shoes, shoulders sticking out of sleeves, ribs sticking out of torsos, and for my own distracting fear of sticking out. I want to cry for these things, because these are the things for which you are supposed to cry. And yet, my eyes are dry. And yet, I have no tears.

The closest I came was at a bus stop at a village I failed to take the name of on the way to Mthatha. But I guess maybe it doesn’t matter that much – the name—the signs become the same. The din of broken taxis and hawkers and women muttering in the street. Dogs and cows with too-obvious bones. A grim confetti of Coke and Fanta bottles and orange peels and plastic bags and plastic wrappers in every color, all mixed in among silver condom packets dressed-up in red AIDS ribbons. The billboard ads featuring youthful couples behind the banners of If you love me, wait, or Protect. For me; just below them, at eye level, tacked on the street signs by the fruit vendors and liquor stores, the more matter-of-fact signs proclaiming Safe Abortions, Call 096 442 1196 in yellow lettering splattered across a faded blue background.

And it was only because a man was wearing two different colored shoes that this place, this particular bus stop, has stayed in my memory as a place for tears. And it is only because I had to lower my head to see around EMERGENCY EXIT and below it, ns) that my gaze encompassed his crippled stride. And it is only because the dirty tennis shoes with the heals cut out (hooked to the bottom of two skinny legs in cut-off blue sweat pants) were different colors- the left one white, the right black – that this person has existed for me as a human being, as an individual, as a man, rather than another line of texture within the dingy collage framed by my exit window.

In front and behind me, gunshots blared from a TV screen where Denzel Washington is playing a character that has just shot three men in an attempt to save a girl from being kidnapped in Mexico City. The noise caused me to jerk my attention from the man out the window to see a chubby young boy in front of me, laughing.

A place for tears, but my eyes remained dry.

---

I think the first time I cried for Africa was when I saw the children fall into red dust at the end of Cry Freedom. The second in a squatter camp outside Port Elizabeth. Then, it was over the dainty pink flowers on toilet paper after finishing Hotel Rwanda. And the last time came suddenly as I walked through a stack of African literature on the sixth floor of Alden library two weeks before my flight to Jo-Burg. I had just placed a book of black and white photos of South African townships back on the now nauseatingly orange shelf when I had this sudden stab of despair for the sadness I will never understand. Head down, I stretched out my hands as far as they would go to brush the spines on both sides of the aisle in an attempt to know and ease this suffering at the same time. Whether it was because I couldn’t reach or a particular title I came across, I don’t remember, but I ended up on the tile floor, sob-gagging, for the better part of an hour.

I have not cried since.

---

Where are those tears now? Where are they now that I am in the red dust?

Where are they now that I am here and want to cry for this place; for these people?

Maybe the problem is that I cannot yet cry for myself.

I found a dimpled spider, fat and....brown

2006-09-29T05:30:00.000-07:00

So I had my first exciting encounter with African wildlife early this morning. A rather serene and peaceful beginning of the day by all normal standards, as I stepped out of the shower, I noticed something quite large and spindly situated in the space between the door and the wall. On closer inspection...JEEPERS!... a huge spider! (no really, like bigger than the palm of my hand...to me, this counts as big) After a quick moment of panic, I stealthily slipped around the door, armed myself with some denim, cotton, and plastic bags...and sent an SMS to Matt, asking if the thing was poisonous (knowledge is power, right?!) After twenty minutes of me checking my phone for a reassuring message and the position of the spider, I decided to suck it up and handle the situation myself, or else the thing was going to end up either in my bed or my drawer the next morning. I rigged up an impressive set of spider trap gear, I must say: plastic bag fashioned to a bent clothes-hanger for the capture basket, double plastic bags wrapped around my hands (no poisonous fangs could puncture two layers, for sure), and a cooking spatula from the sink, still with remains of last night's curry on it. I would have added a bag over my head for extra protection, but then there is that whole suffocation thing....

In any case, after only a few false starts and one itty-bitty scream, I managed to nudge the thing into my handy trap bag and promptly deliver him through the bars of my bathroom window. All those concerned with the spider's well being will be happy to know that he/she crawled off just fine into the bushes and will hopefully spread the word about my inhospitality.

Matt, gentleman that he is, came by about 45 minutes later to make sure that I was still alive and to offer the comfort that it was probably not a poisonous one. Great, I thought, at least I don't have to feel guilty for releasing him near your bedroom window.

The end. I guess as long as I don't come across any sting-rays, I'll be fine.

Lesotho Hike

2006-09-26T02:38:00.000-07:00

Over the long weekend (Monday was a national holiday - Heritage Day) I went on a three day hike with the Wits Explorers/ Explorers Society of South Africa (ESSA) to Ts'ehlanyane Park in Lesotho, the country in the southeastern part of South Africa.

We were a party of seven: Two Wits Students from the USA (myself included) and five ESSA members. Leaving for Lesotho from Jo-Burg late Friday afternoon and returning late Monday evening, we covered about 35 kilometers (~ 22 miles) of rugged uphills and downhills in three days.

This was my first overnight hike and I had an amazing time. We followed a really old route through the mountains, complete with stone path structures and cattle/donkey scat from who knows how long ago. On both Sunday and Monday, local Lesotho men joined us for lunch. These guys were incredible: one of them trekked up and back down the mountain every day for something (?) and the other walked up and back in a day to gather what looked like long reedy plant stalks for building materials. The trip leader guessed that we were the first Caucasian people to take our specific route: I don't know if that makes us crazy, arrogant, or ambitious- probably all three.

This is at the crest of our first summit on Saturday afternoon. It was quite warm during the day, but dipped below freezing at night.

At the crest of way point five on Sunday morning. From here, we continued up along a ridge a bit more and then made our way down into a steep valley to camp for the night.

Sunrise in the valley on Monday morning, about 6:15am. Some of the foggy stuff is actually smoke from a veld fire that started the night before.

One of my favorite parts of the trip was actually heading back through Lesotho after we finished the hike late Monday afternoon --- not because we were done scrambling down 45 degree angles (okay, maybe I was a little glad to be done with that), but because we were driving along the roads just as all the schools let out for the day. We received, returned and initiated several enthusiastic waves from schoolkids and other people near the road. My favorite response was from a group of young boys playing alongside the road. One boy was particularly excited to wave:he was wearing what looked like a belt of soda cans strung together on a piece of string and was banging on them like drums while chasing the other two kids around with a little walking stick/pole. But once he saw us wave, he dropped the pole, bent his knees in the air in what I guess what a jump, threw up his hands above his head, and gave us one heck of a smile and a loud yell as we passed. I must have been smiling for at least three minutes afterwards.

This is a shot from the road through Lesotho looking into the valley and mountains from where we just hiked.

An attempt to capture an amazing sunset heading back Monday evening on the N5.

what AM I doing here

2006-09-22T02:33:00.000-07:00

I am living in a "cottage" next to the private residence of Denis and Gael Beckett. They have three children: Meave, Emma, and Matt. Denis is an author and journalist, Gael is a psychologist, and Matt (who still lives at home and attends University of Jo-Burg) is a semi-pro cyclist and sports trainer. Other members of the family include Billie (the handy-man), Stella (the house-keeper) and Jonah? (the gardener). There are also two white dogs, but I forget their names.

Here are some pictures of my living area, kitchen, and bedroom:

a hug

2006-09-21T05:44:00.000-07:00

Yesterday afternoon, about 16:00, I went out for a stroll around Zoo Lake, a nice park area about a seven-minute walk away from my residence on Westcliff Drive. Several signs throughout the area note that the park has - and continues- to pride itself on being a place where people of all races gather to enjoy the outdoors.

One of the most obvious changes that I have noticed in my thinking while I've been in South Africa is a distinct consciousness of my race. I have suddenly become white. I analyze and attempt to control my actions based on the inescappable knowledge that I am white in and African city, in an African country. This awareness started even before I arrived: I remember sitting in the waiting area for South African Airways in Washington, D.C. debating whether I should type on my laptop, should strike up conversations with the various different people around me, etc. When I did end up talking to the future passengers, they were all white: tourists heading on safari, farmers heading back to review their crops and manage their estates, and a couple of other white students like me. All the time I was talking to them, I could not help but feel a little ashamed, wondering what the African lady sitting behind me was thinking about our conversation...

Since I have settled in my suburb of Jo-Burg, I continue to struggle daily with how my facial expressions, body language, and even the tone of my "hello" comes across to the African people I see daily on walks down the street, in the local Spar grocery store, and on the street corner outside the church. I think that really this worry has made me paranoid to the point of being less friendly: the harder I try to appear friendly, or more accurately, the harder I try to communicate my apology and some sort of acknowledgement that somehow I understand (which I will never fully be able to do), the less friendly, or whatever, I become.

With this worry and fear in mind, I must admit that I was startled about what to do when a small black African girl, a toddler of about two, ran over to the path where I was walking and gave me a hug. Walking hand-in-hand with her mother, a graceful lady in a denim jacket and dress pants, she had smiled at me with a huge-fearless grin and I graciously returned her smile and gave a little wave. But then she broke away with her mother and ran about 10 feet down the hill to where I was standing, I was worried that I had done something--wrong.

While I admit that I am not the most graceful with children, normally, if a young child approachs me in that way, I would immediately bend down and obligingly talk back to them in whatever little gaggle he or she happens to be speaking. However, when this girl ran towards me, I just sort of stood there and looked down at her. But, disarming my fears with her cute little hair-bows and still-glowing smile, I warily looked over at her mom, who was still standing the 10 feet away from me and not looking at me, and bent down to "talk" and smile. She immediately responded by grabbing my shoulder and babbling on. I must have stood there for about five minutes, intermittingly talking to the girl, looking over at her mom, standing back up, and then crouching back down again. Finally, I attempted to make gestures that she go back towards her mom, but it really tood her mother's call and eventual hand to convince her that she should go. Still smiling back at me, I waved goodbye and offered several compliments to her mother on her cuteness, etc. She smiled softly at me, and then proceeded to lead her daughter up the hill.

I stood there for a couple minutes more afterwards, thinking, with a bit of shame, about how my fear of how I would come across to this lady almost made me shun a small child just wanting a hug.

No wonder people so often say that their hope for the future is in children.

Tallulah

2006-09-21T03:25:00.000-07:00

The signs tell me that I can rent almost anything around here. Rent-A-Painter! Rent-A-Realtor! Rent-An-Attorney! Rent-A-Dog!

I fell for the add that said Rent-A-Wreck, and that has made all the difference.

Rent-A-Wreck is a car-hire service specializing in cheaper rental cars – with the first 1000 Kilometers Free! Recommended to me by my landlord and neighbor Denis, the least I can say for the company is that there is no fear of me renting-an-attorney and suing for false advertising.

I called the place about four days after my arrival in Jo-Burg. Crippled by my lack of standard shift driving skills, I had to shame my little female American self into asking specifically for an automatic car. For all of the other car-hire services, this (I’m assuming the automatic) immediately made the price go up almost double.

“____ (rental car service) Yes, how can we help you?”. The voice is usually male, with some mixture of a British, Sesotho, or Zulu English accent.
“Yes, I wanted to get some monthly quotes on a rental car.”
“Okay, we have a nice car here for only R 595 per month. It comes with insurance, power windows, power steering…”
“Sorry, is it an automatic?”
“Ahhh, no ma’am,” drawing the hhh steadily higher until it finally drops into the no. You need an automatic car, hey?”
“Yes,” I grumble, sheepishly, silently admonishing myself for never having learned to drive one of my father’s numerous standard-shift vehicles.
“Okay ma’am. An automatic car gonna cost you R 950 per month.”
“Oh. All right, thank you anyway.”
“Ja, So you want the car, ma’am?”
“No, thank you.”
“Allllrrright…..”

Rent-a-Wreck, my last resort, was much more egalitarian in its pricing and service.

“Allo… Rent-a-Wreck.”
“Yes….Hello??....”
(an unmuffled pause, during which I can hear a metal clanging like a dozen wrenches have just been dropped on a concrete floor, and some incomprehensible shouting).

After about three seconds, the clanging stops.
“Hello?” I try again, a bit louder and more British, as if that would help.
“Yeess, Rent-A-Wreck,” answers a high, nasally voice. “Can I help you?”

Eventually, the guy tells me that they have a white automatic car coming back the next morning. He reassures me that he will give me a call when it comes in, and if not, to call him.

“Okay, great. Thank you.”
“Pleasure….”

Three phone calls and two-and-a half days later, a reddish car arrives at 9 Westcliff Drive. I paid R 100 extra to have it delivered to my residence, and as it rolls through the gate down the drive, I wonder if the fee was actually to drive it or push it.

The car is a shiny orange red, 1983 Mazda, hatch-back automatic. It looks like it has had its fair share of bumps and bruises along the way: the rear bumper is twisted up on the right-hand side into a sort of demure half-grimace; the lower edge of the body is not exactly straight, or solid; and as I was signing the forms on the hood of the car (promising that I’ll pay the R 3000 if the car is stolen, noted twice, so “sign here, too”), my hip found a rather accommodating dent along the right side of the front hood.

“Great,” I said, finally finished signing my name to all the blank spaces in the Terms of Contract. “Anything else?”

The middle-aged guy (I forget his name) grins, and the caps and fillings along the front of his mouth briefly catch the glare of the late afternoon sun. “No, no, ma’am,” he chuckles. “But now, I teach you about the car, okay?”

He folds my signed forms, passport copy, and other various forms of documentation with a crooked crease and stuffs the pile in a yellowing scrapbook alongside another stapled stack with a passport photo showing a guy with a beard and a turban. Well, at least I’m in good company, I think to myself, as he slams us together in his book.

Sitting in the driver’s seat, the guy proceeds to explain how to start the car, set and release the handbrake, lock and unlock the gears, and something to do with the alarm. When he finishes, I lift my head up which he takes to be understanding, though I’m really still trying to figure out how plugging something called The Immobilizer into the right side of the dash actually turns the car on. Nonetheless, I reassure him that I understand, and yes, I see the after-hours phone number.

Right before he goes, he points again to the license plate and registration number on my yellow copy of the form.

“Make sure you tell them this number if you are in an accident, a fender-bender, whatever,” he grins.

“Okay, right, I think I have it,” I reassure him and shake his hand, African style, to seal the deal. As he walks away with the scrapbook under his arm, I cannot get rid of the feeling that I’ve somehow been had. So I return his cap-and-gap grin with a toothy smile and shut the gate behind him.

Driving

After my friend from Rent-A-Wreck leaves, I inspect the car a bit further and determine that its most redeeming quality are the black plastic slip-closures, the kind that might be used to hold shoes together in a store, that secure the hub-caps to the wheel. I then open the car and sit in the driver’s seat, pretending that just sitting in the seat and looking around at the mirrors looks like I’m doing something semi-constructive towards the process of driving. After exhausting all possible angles with which to view the car from the driver’s seat, I take a deep breath, insert the key, and turn it to on position. Click. Click. Click. Nothing.

Oh, right, The Immobilizer, I remember, and plug the little chip into the dash and try again. After a deep pneumonic shudder, the car turns on and I brace myself for drive position, only to find that I cannot put the car into drive. Oh, right, I remember, the gear-lock. Sucking in another gulp of air, I cautiously undo The Immobilizer, turn the key again to off, unlock the gear-lock and start again. Looking behind me, I put the car into what I think is reverse, give it some gas, and move… nowhere. Wonderful. Not wanting to plow the car – and the house post – that are both about four feet from my back bumper (or to fry my nerves any more), I relinquish the idea attempting to drive (after all, there is always tomorrow!) put the car in park, turn the key to OFF, take out The Immobilizer, and step out of the car. A bit shaky from the whole nervous ordeal, I am still trying to regain my composure when:

Brrrr!! Brrrr!!! Brrrrrr!! Brrr!!!! Brrrr!!! Brrrr!! Brrrr!!!

Looking quickly to the door of the house, to the gate, to the electric fence, and then to the sky for good measure, I finally realize that the sound is coming from my car. Oh right, I remember, The Alarm. Turning dizzily on my heels, I stumble back to open the car (which is, of course, locked), turn the key to START, plug in The Immobilizer, and finally turn off The Alarm.

As I am surveying, once again, the view from the right side of the car, Matt Beckett (the son of Denis and Gael) emerges out of the house and asks incredulously, “Everything okay here?”

As I jump out of the car and excitedly explained me sitting in the car, trying to reverse, The Immobilizer, the parking and gear thing, the proximity of the house-post, etc., he calmly asks if I would like him to back up the car – and does so without trouble. Right, I think, feeling a little sheepish. No problem.

“Good luck driving, okay?” says Matt, standing a safe distance away as I put the car in drive and inch toward the gate.

“Thanks!” I attempt to say in my most courageous voice, but it comes out instead a muddled “Spanks” like I am chewing food or something. As I pull out of the gate and gas the car into a right-hand turn, I taste the saltiness of blood and realize that I must have bitten my tongue.

The Great Trek

So my first adventure on the left side of the road began at about 15:45 the afternoon my car arrived. Assured that I had plenty of daylight still left for the spring day, I bravely gassed the little red bugger out onto the great wide world of Westcliff Drive. The first thing that I noticed was a) “gassing” the car equals maybe accelerating at 20 k/hour – downhill b) power steering must not have been standard when this thing was put through the production line. In any case, I only backed up traffic just a bit until I arrived at a Traffic Circle. A traffic circle, to my knowledge, was supposed to work something like a stop sign only you didn’t have to stop depending on who has the right-of-way and which direction everyone is going…the exact rules are a bit fuzzy to me. In any case, the reality is that whoever is the boldest car seems to declare the right-of-way, even if you were there at the same time and it seems like you are supposed to go first. The result for me, was, of course, I went last, because neither was I bold, nor could I out-gas (out-petrol?) the BMWs and Mercedes facing me around the circle. So I waited patiently and swung around the circle, straining my back and coming clear off the seat with the effort of steering the thing 180 degrees. Thankfully, I recovered quickly and remarkably ended up still on the correct side of the street. Bravo! I congratulated myself and flashed anyone who would have been paying attention a big smile (hey, I needed all the self-confidence I could get).

The plan was only to go around the block making as many left-hand turns as possible, but of course, between me muttering to myself left, left, left I’m driving on the LEFT side of the road and keeping a keen eye out for pedestrians, dogs, and sudden kombie stops, I inevitably got myself turned around somewhere around Westmeath and ended up facing a great string of rush-hour traffic – in the right turn lane - along Jan Smuts (the main highway next to my neighborhood, named after a famous Afrikaner General and government official).

I looked to my left, traffic. I looked to my right. More traffic. There was no turning back, no way out. Trying to plan out both my exit strategy and my exiting prayer, I sucked in as much of the veracity of Smuts as I could, looked right, looked left, and looked right again, and in light of all the voortrekers before me, floored the puppy in a right-hand-turn up a hill. When I finally recovered the sense to notice my bearings, I realized that I was not only still alive, but accelerating up the hill at a blazing 40 k/hour. With all the obstacles confronting me (um… a right-hand turn?), I thought the fact that only two busses passed me and one car honked in my direction to be signs of a fairly well-managed escape route. Even better, the radio had suddenly risen out of static-land and was blaring some gospel-sounding music in an African language. I chimed in with the one word I could understand: “Hallelujah, Hallelujah!”

Needless to say, my route home was a bit more of a challenge. After about five more wrong, right-hand turns and several chances to practice driving in reverse when roads suddenly turned into private driveways with scary gates, dogs, and large warnings in Afrikaans, I was once again back on Westcliff drive. Making it successfully through both gates, I managed to put the car about where it was supposed to be, park it, de-mobilize The Immobilizer, turn the key to LOCK, and lock the gear shift. Feeling a bit smug about still being alive, I stepped out to see Denis stiffing the air with a humorous, but concerned look on his face.

Ambling around the back of the car, he stated matter-of-factly, “Smells a bit like oil, doesn’t it?”

Yes, I agreed that it smelled like something was something burning. But at that point, as long as it wasn’t me, I didn’t really care.

When I asked Matt, who owns an ancient Ford Truck named Billie (that still takes leaded petrol), what to name my car, he referenced the following scene from Cool Runnings:

Sanka - So what should we call her?
Junior - How about Tallulah.
Sanka - Tallulah, sounds like (something cheap). Where did you come up with that?
Junior - It's my mother's name.

Tallulah it is.

Afterword (or Foreword?)

So after my first driving experience with Tallulah, the others have been progressively more...interesting. Mastering the route to and from Wits University with the fewest tours of private drives and fewest friendly greetings from kombie drivers and other people in a hurry has taken about a week -- not bad, considering.

It is when the thing is parked that it turns into a bad comedy show, with me as the unlikely (and unwilling) emcee.

It goes something like this:

(the comforting sounds of spring - auto traffic and numerous squawking hadedas - blanket the serene spring afternoon at Westcliff drive. Rachel, the American student, has just arrived back from school)

The gates open, one, then two, and the little red car, Tallulah, barrels down the brick lane with enough clanking and gurgling to assume that everything is okay. The car is placed in park, the key turned to LOCK, The Immobilizer out, the gear shift locked, and the car door shut. Ahhh...quiet descends on the lovely front garden and tucks it neatly away...

For about 15 seconds.

Then:

Brrr!!! Brrr!! Brrr!!!

Oh right, the alarm. It has gone off so many times, no matter which combination of LOCK, The Immobilizer -out, shut, walk; The Immobilizer-out, LOCK, shut, walk away; Walk away, Brrr!! Brrr!!, ON-OFF-LOCK, The Immobilizer-out, shut, run away, Brr!!! Brrr!!; ON-OFF, The Immobilizer -out, crawl through the window, and run, Brr!! Brr!!; that I'm beginning to wonder if it is (friendly) reminder from the car that I should not be driving.

More important than the car's concerns for me, of course, is the relative sanity of everyone else around the neighborhood. Since the alarm sound comes from INSIDE the electric fence-guard-dog-ADT-Armed-Response-System-double-gated-walls, I'm just waiting for 1)everyone to switch their systems 2)some guy in a black armored suit and a gas mask to pop over the fence and shoot me (well, I guess at least I have the dogs on my side).

Also, with Gael running a psychological consulting business right next to where my car is parked, I'm fearful that somehow my car alarm is going to go off right in the middle of someone's life epiphany and sent them through the roof for good. On the more positive side, however, I could be bringing in more business.

A Jump-Start to a New Beginning

So, after a series of about ten alarms in a row, I finally called Rent-a-Wreck to ask them how to get the alarm to turn off on a regular basis. Their advice: switch a knob on the overhead dome light to the middle position: ON-OFF, The Immobilizer-out, shut. Okay, I said...I'll try...

The trick succeeded in shutting off the alarm, but of course, the dome light came on - and stayed on. Faced with the choice between dome light and insanity, I let the light shine.

The result was that the next day ON = click, click, click. Nothing. Luckily Billie, who helps with odd jobs around the house, was around that morning to push his own worn down bakkie over to my car to jump it. Tallulah lives again!

Today, however, was the last straw. All had been going fairly well, really: the night before, the light was off, the alarm was off, and the window was even rolled all the way up.

But this morning: Key -ON-The Immobilizer -in - START- nothing. No nothing. Not even a whimper. The gardener could barely contain his amusement - and he is here to see the show only once a week.

Needless to say, Rent-A-Wreck has taken away Tallulah. May she (and Denis, and Gael, and Matt, and Rachel, and the rest of Westcliff Drive) rest in peace.

Now all that remains is--what to name this white wreck of a car....