My Spice Mountain

Where I'm comin' from, to know where I'm going?

2011-03-14T22:21:00.000-07:00

There are so many strange things afoot in the world. The truth is, life is perfect. But at the same time, I don't feel at peace, and am having trouble tolerating the soreness from a baby kicking and growing in my belly and have two and a half months to go!

Perhaps I feel strange because so much is pie in the sky, because best friends are new friends, the things I believe in sometimes seem so contradictory to the way the world runs, because I need a consistent schedule... I am not sure.

Vision boards. Sasha and I are determined to manifest our visions and begin with a day of vision boards. We've already begun. She has manifested the rustic playhouse and country living, I, after the country cottage, the community (Sasha, Luca, the Hardings and surrounded by old friends), and now flooring, a greenhouse, french doors, baby goat on the way, glorious garden to follow (but notice, all of this is in the future tense.)

I need to begin to focus on what I have.

That is what is getting me. The lack of meditation. The lack of serenity. It feels like absolutely everything is a reach for something that is not here yet, and it is destabilizing to be sure.

The MESA income, the CISA program.

The graduation, the dream career. The fellowship, the trip to Tanzania, the trip to the snow, the trip to Mexico, plans for friends/family to visit, the grants, the curriculum, the brochure to advertise the program! Phew! It all feels, not in my hands!

HEALTHY BABY.

I still fear the baby will be born cyclops, or flipper. I guess I remember sort of joking about that with Amani, but really, I don't take for granted that I will have a healthy, perfect baby again. Quite the contrary to the point where it might just be getting in the way. It is so hard to connect to this baby: no time, no stuff, trying to make sure Amani doesn't loose his place, no gender knowledge, fear of fever, age, diet, medicines, or luck affecting the little one.

I've spent about six weeks quite ill this winter, and the sun is finally coming out.

Amani's birthday Friday was perfection, thanks to the impromptu willingness of Sasha and Luca to hike with us, and the fantastic performance of Hillcrest students doing Beauty and the Beast.

Saturday was insanity and I was glad for it all to end at Chuck E. Cheese.

Sunday was a gorgeous day of going to Petaluma in the morning and picking up lovely flooring for the house and hopefully the play room for $50. Then breakfast at the Tea Room with Sasha and Luca. It was sweet! Austin's party was great, the kids in a good mood, teachers and students were great today, "That was the best Spanish class ever!" Personal connections on the computers again, love that, miss that. Keri is such a great principal to me, so exactly what I like to work with, professional, energetic, positive. Could I keep the job and go to TZ? Could I work part time or full? Could I teach there while staying on as teacher and grant writer at MESA, making money?
This would be great for a year while the baby is small.

Tino works on the farm, and interns as a phlebotomist, eventually landing a job as such.

The future doesn't sound bleak. At this point in time, I just want to be able to afford to go to the dentist, and have health care when needed, to be able to contribute in a meaningful way to the things I love, maintaining and building strong connections, and growing and expanding the ability to educate farmers and communities on ecological living nationally and internationally.

Got to get that brochure!

Got to stop. meditate.

Three years old

2011-03-14T22:19:00.000-07:00

Make your own digital slideshow

Rosemary for Remembrance, Dragonflies, Hawks and Sunflowers.

2011-03-05T23:26:00.000-08:00

Whatta day! This morning I woke up, got Amani ready to go to gymnastics with Luca and Sasha, double checked on the time for Morgan's memorial, and remembered it was Tino and my anniversary.

While Tino is always the one to ensure that my shoes are polished and clothes are pressed before we head out the door, he has been so busy studying, I had to beg him first to go to the memorial with me, then inform him that his work uniform was not appropriate. We are paying respects, look respectable, quite simply.

Morgan. How many tears I cried, and how close to you and all who love you I feel! Thank you thank you for giving me that closeness and that love. I've been overwhelmed, under the weather, feeling like I was losing touch, not reaching out to the things and the ones who made me... It felt very good to go to the memorial. It felt very good to see how many people feel exactly the same way. It felt very good, reiterating with them how Morgan could not possibly be forgotten, some of the very brightest that shines through me comes directly from her. What an angel, what a woman to know. How blessed I feel to have been seen and touched by her. With my stuffy nose, I went through a box of tissues on my own, crying until I was puffy faced. Then was able to see Jimmy, Mike and Kelly, and also Guy, and exchange good hugs, good love, good penetrating looks, and good words. It made me feel more connected. Then the hawk spirit sent all of the people I had been thinking of to our doorstep today, just about, and it was a fantastic day of impromptu visits and simple goodness.

Amani, Luca and I went to Oliver's to pick Tino up, and the cruised around Oliver's excitedly putting things in their cart. But under control, happily, choosing fruits, sweet potatoes, juice, milk, syrup for tomorrow's pancakes. It was fun. Then we all held hands and walked in the big drizzle drops through the wet, lamplit parking lot to the Chinese restaurant, and ate and ate and ate.

The entire time, I kept thinking back to Morgan, in that each shot of her, there is a special glow. That special glow that makes each moment flawless. That turns off the fluorescent lights of the restaurant, takes the stains off the floor, makes the lanterns glow red, with fireflies dancing and perfectly warm, delicious food. Obviously it wasn't like that, but I felt like it was. Playing house with Tino, while Luca and Amani practiced playing. We had a great time. I feel so completely blessed.

There are so many things we forget, and time does fly. I might enjoy my work, but don't want to forget why I am doing it, my other obligations, other talents, and other needs.

Overall, I feel in perfect gratitude.

And there is every reason in the world, to keep journaling, about the development of this baby, and of life. It makes it last longer.

Another Bridge

2010-12-12T21:02:00.000-08:00

It is December 12, 2010. My dad and Laurie just got back from Tanzania, a Peace Corps caliber journey they had. A quick phone call informed me that John has diabetes and Jubilathi has Parkinsons. We are, what now? 14 weeks pregnant? I had a fever of 102 off and on for about three days, so beside everything else to worry about, has an otherwise healthy baby been affected by some brain damage or other "birth defect"? We confirmed there is a heartbeat, so my greatest concern has been put to rest. But my goodness, deep down, I somehow feel invincible. Invincible enough to think that likely, nothing has happened, all will be well. And if something has, I am (we are) invincible enough to handle it.

Deep down, I am not sweating bullets, I am not obsessing. For better or for worse, that is just the way I am I guess. Does it make me less of a mother? Phoey on such thoughts.

But there are somethings that I've wanted to update about Amani's progress. What I should post here are some of his drawings. Beautiful drawings, his focus is so rewarding to observe. But just now, what he said inspired me to open this blog up again, who to tell? Facebookies?

Amani is peeling of the crayon wrappers again, and I am telling him not to, again. I tell him why, that the crayons will break, he will dirty the house. He interupts to say, "Mama, remember when I was peeling the crayons yesterday?" Yes, I do. "And I told you to stop talking to me?" Yes, I do (hoping he would acknowledge that "that wasn't nice").
"Stop talking to me." he says with a wry smile.

Ouch, I frown and get online to share my mothers pride at his wit.

Things Amani says these days: He still says "Fiskit" instead of Fix it, which I love!
He says Buzz Lighter, and quotes "To infinity and beyond!"
Today we said "reach" and he remembered woody, and quoted, "Reach by the sky." "For the sky" "No, by the sky"
ok.

His constant companion is Luca, which is wonderful, but they are certainly learning how to be mischevious together. He follows everything she does, and as she is 3 and a half, and her mama has already stated that she can see Luca being the one to hand her buddies joints when she is older, "C'mon! What are you afraid of?" I too relish the thought of my son's preserved innocence and total corruption by this older woman. They are a wonderful play team, Luca is very good to Amani, looks after him and definitely shows how much she loves him. We sometimes think they act like an old married couple, being mindlessly considerate of each other, and then bickering like dogs.

Amani began Preschool this year at Gravenstein, which was a big adjustment, but he seems to be doing quite well. What I am still hoping (trying) to do is to reach out to some parents and have play dates with his buddies at school, so he might feel better adjusted there.
He also still goes to Carmen's, but I really miss having Kique there.

Tino has finished his Phlebotomy course, but waiting for final results. So far, it is close, will he have to repeat, or not? Either way, I truly think he did a fantastic job. The job itself, if and when it comes, would certainly tie us to here, but my goodness, here isn't such a bad place to be.

I still often mention, "lets just go to Tanzania." But it is hard to compromise our life here. I also still regret, especially pregnant the second time around, after promising number to would be THERE, and it doesn't look like it will, I regret not having spent more time with Tino's family the first time around. Anna has already passed and never met Amani. Jubilathi and John, not doing well.... Its tough, this is intercontinental life. I don't know when we will get back. Next year? Next decade?

Amani just kissed my belly.

The sweetness and the blessings outweigh so much of the rest. But I fear it is "out of sight, out of ... mind."

It isn't on my mind so much, it is in the back of my mind. Perhaps seeing Dad's pictures will change that, but likely, nothing will be done. Tino is the one who is making the decisions these days on when to stay and when to go.

We are waiting for his citizenship, this is wise. We are penniless, and without jobs there. Moving unwise. So I have become obsessed with building onto our house, building the greenhouse, getting ducks and turkeys in the spring, baby goats, more eggs and chickens, spending time relaxing here after the baby is born. What do I mean relaxing? i mean, puttering around the property, hiking around the land, spending time digging in the dirt, and being with a new baby, breastfeeding as long as possible. Will we make it to Tanzania? If not, when will I be able to see Saidi?

If so, when will we come back? Will I work? Part time teach again? Make enough consulting for MESA? haha- dream dream.

It is different this time around. I was so strong last pregnancy. Now I am surrounded by support. I still have lots of deadlines, I am still studying, but this time it feels focused, not desperate. It feels purposeful and rewarding, not nerve wracking.

I like my work with MESA, and expect to graduate, but then what? What will I do? Keep teaching... ? will I work in general non-profit development? In ag? In health? Hard to know, but lots of work to do in the meantime, that I've hardly time to worry about these things. I have a general sense of faith. What we have now is delightful. There are many years of life to be lived, and life changes, indeed, it is guaranteed to do so, for our family sometime around June 2011.

2010-03-30T16:15:00.001-07:00

Free digital collage created with Smilebox

Recording, back on.

2010-01-24T18:55:00.000-08:00

It has been a rainy day in Sebastopol. The house is clean and organized (except for Amani's clothes, we'll get to that next weekend.) My homework is done, and it is time to prepare for my Principal's observation this Wednesday. I feel relaxed, well feed on roasted chicken, and still basking in a glow of "shukurani" that I've enjoyed all day.
How interesting that the last post I managed to make on this old thing was the day I lost the massage job!
"My Spice Mountain" was supposed to be about overcoming those hurdles, and yet I left it a big, dark place that not have I not really had the time to return to, but I haven't known how to deal with it. And what about putting all of my issues online? Should I be embarrassed about that?
Naw.....

It is amazing how things have turned around.

I am still crazy and have incredibly bad habits. But I feel so profoundly satisfied. I feel proud. Of my family and of my own accomplishments. It couldn't be a more polar sentiment to what I was going through during my last post.
Certain bad habits include that I sent in a resume and application for a job in Tanzania right now in the middle of my first year of teaching, and right after my husband found a job that he loves, working with friends, and we are all happy here. But, it is good practice and a bit of good fun, even if sleepless.

The, ahem, cue to action, for me to come back and begin work here has been an inability to send photos on gmail. Very annoying indeed. But I will try to post them hear.

Going on and on selfishly about my petty concerns is quite easy for me, but where to begin when it comes to bragging about my son?

there are so many amazing things that he does EVERYDAY, how can I summarize that growth? I've felt guilty for not recording things better.
As a toast to myself for simply getting back in the groove, and also to continue some necessary preparations, I will simply share my current favorite picture.

2009-05-23T23:37:00.000-07:00

It is exactly 11:37. On my clock, which is relative. I should meditate. Run tomorrow. Maybe that is what I will do. Or should I journal, look for jobs. Another one bites the dust. I lost my massage job today. So Tino, Elias and I went to the park. I made him go to the park with me, he almost bailed on me. I can't lose my job and come home and clean the house. Sit in the house. This is something I needed. Maybe. It is necessary to tell oneself such things in these kinds of times. But it certainly is making forward moving moves more difficult. Of course, I have felt that I have been peddling hard and fast, and getting nowhere. This is proof of that. So, whereas I initially felt that I had a lot of shit to work out, that this was journal time... I don't feel so much that way at this moment. Occasionally I will remember and feel sick to my stomach. But that has been going on for awhile. I have been wrestling with being a crooked person, aware of a dark, dark cloud that seems to have attached itself to me. It is coming between me and the world and makes me see things darker than they are, and to appear to others as darker as I am.

These cloud things can and do exist.

Tino told me today that he met one of our friends on the street. She asked if he had been able to land a job yet and he said no. She got a tear in her eye, and he laughed when he told me the story, "I just couldn't tell her about you too!"
It does have its humorous part too.

Well, I have been crooked, I have doubted myself, questioned myself, been creepy, and fiercely negative. I may have been able to make choices that would have made life easier, but it certainly is about what I do with these choices, and I haven't been proving myself worthy of the blessings so far. This must change. Something is shifting, somewhere between acceptance and perseverance, I am finally learning to be a strong woman.

baseline

2009-05-16T23:37:00.000-07:00

Think, indicate, then move.
Just follow those simple directions, and we will not have the couple's drama in the car every time we go home.
I found tonight that I was not able to simply close my eyes, release, and have faith that my husband would get me home safely. I had to annoy him with my directions, suggestions, and exclamations. How could I have come from such a lovely day, gotten in the car and turned into a monster? Of course, it was all resolved just fine, but on the 57 freeway, I was working very hard to try to find the peace within.
Instead, I found another picture entirely.

Issues...

2009-05-02T00:08:00.000-07:00

I never know where to begin. That is one of my issues.
I want to do it all, and say it all, but I find editing cumbersome.

Did someone say they were a little down in the last email? Possibly.

So, although our boy is the epitome of fun, and opened up the bedroom door today and walked all the way down the stairs by himself, at 13 months, smiling broadly the whole way, I will focus on the me this time around.

Uh, guess what? I have problems in my marriage. It isn't perfect. Ok, so now that the cat is out of the bag, the answer to the question, is that yes, it is partly cultural. It's cultural, and it's him, and it's me. There are some cultural stories I could tell, and I wish I had been telling more all along, but there were just so many! And sometimes, so many, it was just kind of embarrassing. Of course, I embarrass myself by saying such a haughty thing, but that is when I go back to saying, sometimes it's him, and sometimes it's me.
Usually, my husband's patience, quiet calm, unwavering goodness and dedication to family, and the fact that he responds to my outbursts with forgiveness and a back rub, or distance and a considerate chore, or quiet that ends in him sitting me down and telling me how it really is, using Swahili proverbs and simple truths. I see him as someone who has two filing drawers: on that will go directly out the window, never to be heard from again, never to be bothered by again, and the other, goes into feeding his soul. If it is not strengthening, he does not seem to use it. That is how I see him. Obviously, an oversimplification of my husband, but still, I do mean to emphasize the simple part of it.
Simple because that is what I longed for. When it came to relationships, I had begun to feel too judgemental, to doubtful, to insecure. I felt that love needed some basic ingredients, and after those were met, it was simply an issue of not letting the doubt come in. Doubt out the window.
So I fell for him, and decided, it was crazy, but we could make it happen.

Sure, that may be the case, but I have been absolutely riddled, RIDDLED I tell you with doubt and regret and longing for something else. Although I asked for precisely this. I asked for challenges.

There is so much material here that would do me well to explore, will I do it on the blog? Perhaps, what is nice is that it is safe, safely stored in the blogosphere where I can reach back in time and check in with my own progress, without having to organize my notes, or back up my files. I would like to think that most of the readership that I had created has fallen off to the wayside after my posts became sparse, and more or less boring.

Anyway,
how about a story?

A story at Tino's expense? Haha. Surely he will get over it....

So he got a car. That is the background. I was totally resistant, and the purchase of the car for a jobless man, married to an underemployed woman seemed totally fucking backwards, impractical and wasteful, and I was diametrically opposed, but he got it, and I said, ok.

One of the first nights he had it, he went out bowling with some neighbors. I ran off to my work to make some quick copies, and when I was driving back down my street, I saw a cop car had pulled someone over. The first thing I thought is, wow, maybe I will read about this in the local paper, I have never seen someone pulled over on this street before! As I pulled past, I noticed Elias's ball in the back seat of the car that had been pulled over. Tino! I stopped and wondered what to do. You can't just interrupt these things. But neither could I just drive on. That is when the second car, backup!, pulled up. I couldn't believe that they had called back up on him! Oh my god, are they taking away the car? are they taking away my husband? deportation? At this point, I got out of the car, and asked a police officer if I could approach, I was the wife, and thus I witnessed Tino performing a drunk test.
He wasn't drunk, though, no. He had been bowling with Evangelists, and had just come from ice cream. He couldn't have had a more wholesome night out, and here he was... DRUNK?! Well, as it turns out, he had been pulled over for, not having his lights on, getting lost and driving erratically, and not pulling over for the cop.
And he was sober.

Was it cultural? Oh, I admit I have had my run ins with bad driving, but the whole thing just felt so very kijiji, as I, once again, used Swahili for lambasting. But in reality, this time, I wasn't even that upset or embarrassed.

Well, that was a fun story, and of course, I promised I wouldn't tell anyone, so I told a friend of mine who lives far away, and I just posted it here, on the blog, for all who look to see. But like a tree falling in the forest, I think the secret is safe with us, right?

Elias walks!

2009-04-24T23:08:00.001-07:00

My aunt Sandy and Uncle Tom, who I haven't seen for about 10 years, came to visit. Elias began walking toward the door, me holding his fingers, and we heard him say, "I'm going." Next thing you know, he is walking. He walked well on Easter, we thought that would be the day, but it wasn't. Then in line for A Small World at Disneyland, but he didn't want to keep practicing after a string of successful steps. Now this, this might be it.

Bittersweet, of course. To add to the scenario, it was also Daddy's day: he gave another talk on Africa in a school, then went to a job interview that he was very pleased with at Rancho Santa Ana Botanical Garden, and then took his new car down to Dad's. Pretty good stuff. Myself, I took a test and suffered the day tired and absorbed in depression. Too bad.

The Usual Suspects

2009-03-21T20:50:00.000-07:00

Elias is Verbal! Strings of sentences with the intonation of emotion and correct punctuation, followed by giggles and sometimes guffaws, and sounding like Chinese. But he makes more sense in our languages, and is like a parrot really. He even busted me the other day for saying J-E-S-U-S. Ooops. Most famously, he says "Obama." His favorite word, because he gets more attention for that than, Mama, Dadda, and Hi combined. So we took him to see the President the other day, when Barack Obama came to visit Pomona. Michelle Obama is putting a school garden into the White House, and every time I hear any news of the this wonderful family, I am proud.
Anyway, he has said it to much, Tino finally told him that the word has expired and he needs to find another name... Elias promptly responded, "Kobe." So my mom was happy.
Several things he can name in both Swahili and English- though I think he still gets a little confused. He knocks on a door if we say "Knock-Knock" and also says "Hodi!" He will say "baby" but also "toto", he says dog and mbwa (which actually sounds a lot like the woof-woof, which I'd never realized before goes with my oniomipea theory of Swahili, but Elias does a good and distinctive woof-woof apart, when he is feeling goofy.) He says tree and mti, so similar I think he doesn't get the difference, and he says, tweet tweet for bird, which he doesn't seem to confuse, even though the birds are often in the trees.) Today he said 'boy'' and pointed to a picture of a boy in his nursery rhyme book. He loves his new Elmo book, and although he still needs to be prompted, says his name. This past week I think he has been missing his daycare, because he will suddenly come up with 'Hola.' He woke up on Wednesday, stood up in his crib, and said Hola to us. I could of sworn it was followed by Como estas? But, regardless, he obviously derives much joy from the word, which I think speaks to how much he enjoys his school. We all love the bright orange daycare. I must get them another docena of tamales. Everywhere we go, he points to a light and says 'Taa!' Which is correct, and we just really aren't bothering to teach him another word at this point. So it is with other perfect swahili words, "kuku' for chicken, ''saa' for clock. Its just easier. But all words will come. He says nyota. But I am sure that he understands "star' as well. I mean, here I am just going down my mental list, but it really is so amazing to observe the parroting capacity that we have as humans. If this pace of learning were to keep up.... man! But I am sure it does, which is exactly what becomes the problem. Learning, teaching, discussing, playing, resting, enjoying. Can we do this forever?

Another memorable day...

2009-02-13T00:06:00.001-08:00

Elias went to the hospital again yesterday. Daddy sang Happy Birthday for him in the morning (11 months) and later in the afternoon, it was his turn to ride in the ambulance with him. Now we are even, and lets pray that we are done!
The two of them were on the bike, riding downtown on a sunny day. They started the trip and Elias was singing in the backseat, but by the time Tino approached the colleges, he heard the baby grun and choke and looked around to find the blue lips and shaking body that terrify. Daddy quickly tore off baby's helmet and clothes and put him on the cool grass and called for help. Daddy had no cel phone at that moment, but luckily, everyone else in the world does, so it wasn't long before the ambulance was on the way. I feel a little like a schmuck. Partly I heed the words of doctors that some babies just seize easily, but partly I feel like a negligent parent. He is healthy now, healthy as a horse, but that doesn't change the fact that a day after this scare, I am home with Elias cleaning, and he crawls over to the wall and starts trying to plug the vacuum cleaner in! Sheesh! Then, crawls up four stairs to reach me while I am moving things upstairs. Ha ha. I think phew, crisis averted, but nooo. The fun has just begun...
Other fun things Eli has done this past week, he sings the tune of "No more monkeys jumping on the bed" and he shakes his finger like the Dr.
He woke Rhyan up and smiled at her and said, "Hello!"
He says "Hi" and "Mambo" "Poa" a lot, says bottle often when he wants a bottle and is pointing to family members by name.
Now, this isn't ALL the time, but he does it, has done it, and it is amazing to see what he is capable of. It doesn't surprise me that he can understand complex swahili and complex english at the same time, actually. But it is the third language of Spanish that I wonder about and was recently warned about.
Elias's favorite toys are, putting the tiny caps on ball point pens, drawing with them, playing the flute, putting the shapes in the right hole (still a challenge, but he gets into it!). I feel satisfied because although he gets frustrated, it seems to be a sign of pride and determination with his work, but it doesn't seem to be overriding his efforts. I am so glad.

Another thing I find interesting is that Elias's tendency is to put things together (like the pens) and to put things back (he likes to put things in a box, his toys in a basket, to file books back on the shelf.)
I am not saying that he won't create chaos, and certainly, I expect him to be a typical child with toys that are always in the middle of a game, and so, in the middle of the floor. But I am interested to see how this initial tendency might play out for him. The deal I made with him anyway was that he would have to help me keep it together if he came into the world as my son. Son, you will be the one who gets me places on time.

This is the challenge I lay upon myself in the coming week, as a tangible change I can make now that will dramatically effect my life. GOOD LUCK!

We love you Eli, you are so much fun to be with !!

2009-02-03T04:27:00.001-08:00

Tino likes to say that Elias always wakes up with a new idea. It is amazing to watch that clothes and pajamas that fit him yesterday, I was squeezing him into last night. When he wakes up, he calls to us, and stands up in his crib, peaking over the rim, smiling at us. He eats well and sleeps well and grows well and at 10 months no longer fits into his 18 mos pajamas. And he always wakes up with a new idea. He has always smiled sweetly at his stuffed animals, but now he picks them up and cradles them! He likes to repeat what we say, and, while I thought we would be using the sign, or the word for milk in whatever language, he now distinctly says 'bottle.'
We are so lucky, again and again. Not only is Elias the healthiest baby, he is the happiest, and whenever we go out, he is filled with smiles and songs. When it comes to mealtime, he will eat anything, but he needs to feed himself or be fed only what we are eating. He's a big boy. His favorite finger food right now is peas or edamame.
We read to him of course... all the time, and his favorite books are:
Brown Bear, its a favorite for all of us. He loves to hear it, but you can't trick him and read it twice! Since he was a few months old and we would read it, as soon as you start up again with Brown Bear, Brown Bear, he would shut the book on you! He slaps the pages to the rhythm of the book, he will imitate a 'woof woof' and a 'meow' and sometimes a 'quack quack' but not consistently yet, and he will point to what I point to, but not what I say. I feel like pretty soon I will say 'Point to the yellow duck,' or 'Point to the nose,' or 'What does the dog say?' and he will be able to answer all of these.
He has a wonderful sense of humor, and when he goes to bed at night, I'll put him in his crib and we will smash out faces against the mesh walls and give each other kisses and giggle. I don't get to put him to bed every night, we all get a chance, even Grammy sometimes. I put the puppy to bed four nights a week, and its a total treat. We do our bath ceremony, massage, reading, playing in the crib, and then we say a prayer of gratitude and love for the world.

Thanks Elias for putting me to bed right.

September in Sonoma

2008-09-15T21:00:00.000-07:00

And when September hit my hands were empty. I took a breath and watched the ash settle. Then took a week off work and drove the family up the coast, just in time for September sunsets, peak season produce, the yearly potluck with friends and
the samba party of the year. Everything went off without a hitch, other than two missing baby hats and the ten additional hours missing from each vacation day.
But Elias and Tino are perfect vacation buddies, my friends are incredible, and I am the luckiest girl ever.
This is how it went:

Our first time touring outside of LA, we stopped for breakfast and found a true piece of Americana for the boys. At a truck stop diner, we choked down some biscuits and eggs as the folks at the next table savored the newly announced nomination of Sara Palin for Vice President. I strained my ears a bit to get a inside perspective on Palin fever, and instead, got hit with the 'N-word.' McCain and Palin seemed like purdy good people, and at least they would keep that Nigger out of office.

Tino and Elias posed for a picture and we cherished the first leg of our trip.

We continued on up PCH and made a couple more pit stops:

Daddy kept telling me to get his baby away from the edge of that cliff.

We swung through Santa Cruz just long enough to pick up with fellow Peace Corps vet, Scott, and go to th Power to the Peaceful Concert in Golden Gate Park where we met up with other movers and shakers with the African connections (including two other PCVs from Tanzania *gasp*! that were randomly sitting directly behind us, my incredible friend Margaret who opened an eye clinic in Camaroon, and, well, Barack Obama no less.)

We returned to Santa Cruz, also known as 'Paradise' to my husband, and had more good times with the great Scott Pietka and the orange parasol:

Elias loves Scott.

2008-09-15T20:00:00.000-07:00

Next stop was Pigeon Point Lighthouse. I think these hostels are such treasures, to be able to stay in beautiful places for a bargain. After a giggle fit with Elias, one of the hostel workers, Sparrow, convinced us to go in the private hot tub while she stayed with Elias. You could tell it meant a lot to her, and we were certainly glad to enjoy the outdoor tub at the top of a craggy cliff and listen to waves crashing. We stayed up with Sparrow for awhile and listened to her tell her own story: she was working at the hostel as away to life at a place she loved and was attempting to write a book. Her own son had died of cancer when he was twelve. It was a remarkable story and one of those reasons why its nice to stay in hostels, in close proximity to others. One of the downfalls of hostels, however, is the thin walls which meant that the next morning everyone was commenting on what a happy baby we had. They had heard his giggle fits.

Serious Elias.

Giggly Elias.

Pensive Alison.

Happy Family.

2008-09-15T19:59:00.000-07:00

Monday morning it was breakfast at Tartine's! Tino was scared driving downtown San Francisco. Maybe he was remembering the earthquake he recently felt, and the history of San Francisco, but I think it was that he had never been right in the middle of so many 'skyscrapers.' He took more pictures of the streets from inside the car (it would be funny to post the plethora of pics that we have of a blurry landscape outside of a window that reflects our messy dashboard but here is one to give some flavor.)

They did show the silly paper flowers from Olvera St. in LA that I hauled up to give to Amy for her birthday. Silly silly.

Anyway! Tartine's, one of the tastiest bakeries and breakfast nooks on earth, was the meeting spot for the betrothed bride and groom, Lyla and Elias. And it was also wonderful to see Lucia and Shawn, an incredible couple.

I got an incredible massage from Margaret, we cruised around some more of the city,

and Shawn gave Tino a guitar. It cost ten dollars to repair, and is the perfect evening medicine to alleviate a fussy baby, Tino sits outside in the evenings and plays.

Oh your mamas rich, and your daddy's good lookin!

2008-08-10T00:39:00.000-07:00

Last night the family went downtown to watch a friends band, The Sugar Mountain Mamas, play outdoors. The night was warm, the moon was purdy, and kids splashin away in the fountains all around. So many kids and babies, yikes! Two of the band members have babies, a 6 mo. old and a 1 mo. old. Elias is such a late night partier, and ladykiller, it is ridiculous. Besides making the mamas squeal with his devious dimples, he shared a kiss with a doe eyed three year old named Chloe. Oh they were so cute, he just kept looking at her and smiling big and trying to touch her, which she liked, but bashfully pointed to the waterfall. Then she looked up at him and touched his cheek, ever so softly with the back of her hand. That was it. Elias leaned in for the kiss, and it was wet and sloppy and tongue and everything!
Mama would've taken her camera out if she hadn't been orchestrating the whole thing, smooth guy lean in and all. hehe.

Well life is beautiful, and short.

Eight years with an asshole for a president have gone by quickly, 14 years since I went off to college have gone, where have they gone?

Anyway, I'm not much in a philosophy mood, and no new pictures to post. I'm in no position to whine, and really, there is nothing brand new to celebrate. But there are too many things that happen and they happen quickly and I just want to get some of them down for myself.
In fact, it would do me well to re-read some of my old messages.

I was having a very hard time about a week ago. Tonight I heard Kate Winslet describe the feeling of a broken heart to Jack Black, (you figure out the movie.) Its not the first time a broken heart has been described. If I were to describe the sensation I was feeling all week, I wonder if I would be describing the feeling of longing, or regret, or geographical separation, lost time, or what, but I tell you its something akin to ants crawling around under the skin. This is going on in conjunction with being nauseous and unable to eat.
How could I have spent to much time trying to prepare for a job that I can't get?
A whole year of preparing, trying to set up a good future, when it may have been the last time to give birth and raise an infant under the banana trees, with my buddies still around in country??

Spent the year in preparation I did. Miss a good opportunity to be in Tanzania I did.
But I am sure that I would have gone through my usual swings of insecurity and not sure if I was doing all that I possibly could to set up a good future.
Anyway, I knew that the best way for me to end up in that situation was to come back to the States and really accomplish something first. That to go back and have number two in Tanzania, in 5 years, hopefully, was the plan.
Set up the house, and be chill.
I don't see how we will be able to be in a position to take time off in 5 years, but if I tell myself now that this is the goal, it doesn't hurt so bad.

I fell in love with Tino, and made the decision not to look back.
After we made it, after we spent a few years together and proved this thing could work, thats when I want the wedding.
Yeah, thats usually why people live together and wait to have kids. That and its ridiculous financially.
But I was afraid that if I didn't commit myself fully, then there would always be a way to escape, and I saw my dreams line up on this man. There was no reason in the world, other than being illogical! that I shouldn't be with Tino.
I know me, and I doubt too much.
Tino proves himself time and time again to be a steller lover, a fuckin good daddy, a loyal, cheerful and hardworking husband, and a spiritual rock. My commitment to him has redoubled.
My mom has continued to be essential perfection, and I am totally in awe of her, and frankly embarrassed that I haven't worshiped her more thoroughly and done everything I can to be just like her.
She is fun, funny, wise, forgiving, giving, loving and beautiful.
Elias is perfect.
I am the crack head in the house, o yes I am.
When it became obvious that a teaching job was not going to happen, I began to spiral downward fast. I lashed out at everyone with bitterness and hostility. I regretted everything. I missed Bjarke, I regretted the phone call I took from the Peace Corps, when the asked me when I wanted to go. I still didn't know where, but if I had said a different when.
IF IF IF.
It is so AMAZINGLY useless.
I had waffled, wanting to study ag, or education, or health care (and then the question was, public health or nursing)
o my god have I waffled for years.
That was why I WENT to the Peace Corps (if only I had gone earlier...! bah!) and came home with, of course! the same problem.
A Global Public Health course is not far from here, but I kept thinking of any excuse why I should do something harder.
The thing is, my decisions did what I suppose I had somehow hoped- they pushed me to a wall and when I realized that this was a good option that was still available to me, you wouldn't believe that physical feeling of ants, gone.
The feeling of shukurani, of appreciation, of gratitude swept through me like the golden sun of dawn, and it felt so good.
I hadn't felt that in long enough.
That day at work I made loads.

Oh my oh my, I have a lot of practice that I need to do on living better!

Feed me Seymour!

2008-08-07T01:52:00.001-07:00

I guess it started with ice cream at my dear friend's 80th birthday, when Elias was three mos. old. Followed up by a taste of yogurt, some watermelon, when mama wasn't looking.
But finally, mama had to give up on her ideas that keeping this eating machine from food until 6 months was the best way. He was undeniably ready to eat. Chomping down on those Yoda gums whenever we chomped down food, pizza, whatever!
I thought that sweet potatoe would be the best start, but Grammy bought oatmeal cereal, and, the same night that we had both decided would be his first spoon-fed dinner, he wanted out pizza so badly, that there was no time for boiling and mashing a sweet potatoe. Elias ate with chubby cheeked gusto and his daddy was so proud. Each bite has been preserved on video, so we will have a public screening of the big event soon.

Expressway

2008-08-01T01:06:00.000-07:00

I am a slow reader and a slow writer. I type quickly but write slothenly.

I am also a disappointingly slow reader. As many books as I devoured as a kid, they were piled up by my bed, usually several going on at one time, reading in the dim light. Whereas one might have guessed that I would have ended up with glasses and book savvy, just the opposite is the case.
I am a painfully slow reader. But I enjoy it. Depending on the book. When I was young, I couldn’t stop reading a book until I reached the end. I now put down whatever book does not catch my interest. Especially now, it needs to be really sharp, else I am satisfied with halfastory.

Not much else about me has changed since I have grown up. Still dorky and awkward in all the other ways I had hoped I would grow out of at 14.
Not too long ago I was listening to a radio program where a radical rabbi was being interviewed on his god out of the box theories. His point was to get folks in touch with their spirituality, beyond atheism and religion. He told us listeners to take our age and half it. 16. Now I am supposed to reflect back and spiritually advise my 16 year-old self.
So the first reaction of course is to look back and visualize that young woman, who she was and what was on her mind. I was convincing my parents it was a good idea, then saying good bye to friends and boyfriends (yes, in the plural) and going to Mexico for one year as an exchange student.
At 32, I feel like I need to take advise from her. Pre-adventure I think I am always at my strongest, and we always look back with nostalgia, but it is really tragic that, as spiritual as I think I may be, I can’t say that I have gained anything since that time. Philosophically I think I am probably about at the same level. I had left our family church two years before, and done the bulk of my ‘god’ search. In Mexico, smoking weed with a bunch of the European exchange students on a crowded bus out to some beach, I found I had come to pretty much the same conclusion as the rest of those blokes. There is no god.
Yet I still prayed. Dear Lord this and that. This masculine image that didn’t seem quite right, yet wasn’t shakable. Justifiably so. I had felt god strongly, and there was still the feeling that some an omniforce was on my team.
I no longer claim to be atheist, and where I called god a crutch I would now say that it isn’t god, but religion.
So I am a slow reader and a slow philosopher.
Half of my life has passed since I made these conscious decisions, one to abandon the religion of my youth, and the other to abandon my family and country.
Both decisions I embraced with a whole heart, and never ever felt an ounce of regret, no matter how complicated or lonely my situation got.
A few years after my parents divorce (also happened when I was 14…) we had to give up the house I grew up in. Later, the memory of lying in that bed, safe from any feelings of regret was achingly painful. I would never lay in that bed again.
Doubt is the greatest hindrance. Knowing the words doesn’t make the concept any more real to me. I doubt myself to the extreme nth.
I have spent so many years choosing so many paths that my resume either looks like circus confetti or swiss cheese. A colorful smattering of things, or an unaccomplished milky blah.
Sometimes I doubt, and that makes me regret the past, and that makes me needabetterfuturelikerightnow. I get pissy and to combine phrases my parents have offered me, I have a chip on my shoulder like I have something to prove.
Its true. I am afraid of wasting all the opportunities I have been given.
In that same childhood bed, I would often cry myself to sleep. I wasn’t comfortable being comfortable. I felt no guilt at my own doing, but guilt because I was born. Guess I could blame church for that one, but I really think it runs deeper than religious guilt tripping. It’s the human bond that doesn’t allow one to sleep while the other is hungry. When we are young, and we see visions of Ethiopia, it affects us deeply.
This is a good thing.
But somehow I got it in my head, and I am sure it was a direct result of images on the evening news combined with a soft heart, but it was in my head that I, as a young girl in Africa, had stood to the side while I watched my family suffer, and promised the dear lord our god whatever he is, that if I were given the opportunity, I would come back and help.
Bam! A child is born in Southern California with a purpose.
So I sometimes look back and wonder what took me so long to go there.
And then I see the answers. Justifiable they must be, because this is my life.
But I feel regret for being 32, with a ready to go family with nowhere to go.
What could the future possibly bring?
How is it that I am no closer to accomplishing anything at this age than I was at 16?
Lately, I have been looking around me and seeing that things are going too slow as far as building a life that suits my family as well as my own dreams. So I get impatient, ansy, bitter, quiet, weepy, hot-tempered, aloof, hyperactive and clumsy. To name a few symptoms of the syndrome.
But tonight, I took my medicine: the family loaded into the minivan and we jumped on the expressway, all the way to swing dance night, had a wonderful time and came back and made love.
I knew that I needed things to be a challenge for me. I needed to overcome a challenge in order to escape the torture of privilege. But at the same time, my devious self insists that if I were on the right path, everything would be very Tao and fall into place. So obstacles become cosmic omens saying WRONG WAY!
I analyze my pattern for making big life decisions. I find none, sometimes it is confident, sometimes I hem and haw into paralysis (my career!) and sometimes I jump right of the boat, headfirst without looking (my family).
Either way, when I am feeling anxious and embittered that I need to be moving a litter faster down the ol life path, I take a little southern California medicine and jump on the expressway, and totally enjoy the night, and the now.

Summertime and the living is easy

2008-07-14T23:31:00.000-07:00

Monkeying around at the beach.

2008-07-14T23:11:00.000-07:00

LA Summary

2008-06-16T00:03:00.000-07:00

Elias watches the Lakers vs. Celtics with Grammy. Tino plays basketball on Tuesday nights, but I still think that these two are the biggest sports fans in the household. Check out the intensity that Elias has for the game already.

LA Story?

2008-06-14T14:48:00.000-07:00

Husband and Heavens

2008-05-20T23:04:00.000-07:00

My idea of heaven:
(taken from an email to my sister)
Lemme tell you a little about my mother's day:
I went to Anthropologie.
Wow.
There were long sundresses, fabulous belts and orange and yellow and green all over the dressing room.
Anthropologie dressing rooms, AHHHH!
The only other shopping spree I had there was when I got the jean skirt. Which is, like, a family heirloom as far as I am concerned. I swore up and down after that day that Anthro pipes happy chemicals into the dressing rooms, because I had never had such a positive body image/fun experience in a dressing room before. Well, of course, add to that the golden light that makes even my skin glow, the skinny mirrors, and the fabulous gay fashionista serving us endless mimosas and the whole experience made me reevaluate my favorite places to be in the world:

An Anthropologie dressing room with a check in my pocket.

Heaven.

It was a good day. I love everything about being a mommy. We celebrated with my mom, then my brother, Marshall and sister in law, Jenny came up for dinner.

Husbands.

Such an awful, dirty word. Really, I did used to think that. I tried to avoid using the word in grammer school. Husband. It just sounded perverse, like saying penis. I only dreamt of getting married once, so I guess that would be my 'dream wedding.' It was somewhere in a white, institutional basement. Like an evangelical church without much financial support, shamed to the basement of some community center for sunday service. It had a yucky feeling inside. Nothing poetic, romantic or beautiful. I remember that at my 'dream wedding' I felt sick. People had come to see us but I didn't know who they were, and we were late, I had forgotten something, probably my dress.

Anyway, I didn't much fall for the idea of weddings or husbands till I had one. And the funny thing is, the wedding was a lot like the dream: an un-architectualy inspired strip mall library, that turned us down for being fifteen minutes late the night before, so I tied up my beauty salon hair and tied the knot in pants with Tino the next morning. I am so glad I did.
Then we got ice cream.
It was the best ever.

Tino is a fabulous husband. He just made me dinner of ugali and beans, which we ate at 10pm, which was so nostalgic it made me want to farm rice the next morning.

Home is where

2008-05-08T21:24:00.000-07:00

I am here because my family is here. If it weren't for them, I would be in a very different situation, somewhere, somehow. I can't imagine what it would be like to be without their umbrella, no matter how far I have gone to try it out. I may want to live on a cobblestoned, lamp-lit street somewhere with a boulangerie downstairs from my flat and a park across the street. Or to live in a warm town by the sea, where people surf in the day and salsa dance at night. There are a million versions of an exotic lifestyle that I can imagine, and I can curse myself for not setting it up to have the enviable career.
But if I had anything else, would there be a perfect little boy in my lap, breastfeeding in his fuzzy white sleeper, a husband who is cleaning up our dinner that I made, and we ate with wine while watching Sex in the City, the show we watched in our village, when the battery of my computer was charged and we lay together under the mosquito net, dark and buzzing all around? Would there be a community garden with chickens and eggs for us to harvest? Friends to go swing dancing with on thursdays? Mom cuddled up with her cat downstairs.
For four weeks, I once had the luck to go to Cuba. My luck to travel, my luck to see this country. Where did this luck come from and what did I do to deserve it. Cuba is picture perfect, gorgeous, and would be proud to be from such a country. The people I met, for the most part, admitted that they wanted to get out. By economics and geography and economy, they are trapped on the little island. It doesn't matter how great a place is, it is prison if you are trapped.
But we don't all get to chose our place of birth, and even having many opportunities that I have had, we may not be able to chose where to live.
I live in paradise in the concrete jungle. It feels good to be home.

Sometimes I have to remind mys

Daddy

2008-05-05T10:51:00.000-07:00

Still processing to get Tino's status adjusted. If we had simply tied the not while I still had residence in Tanzania (which has become harder to get in the past year) he would already have a green card and driver's license. As it is, we have to spend $1,000 to change his status now, and it will take up to a year. That and he has to answer some very revealing questions about himself and his intentions in the states, such as the following.
Have you ever or do you intend to:
Knowingly commit any crime of moral turpitude?
Engage in drug trafficking?
Prostitution?
Polygamy? (just say no, Tino.)
Espionage? (some kind of reverse psycology?)
Genocide?

Did you, during the period from March 23, 1933 to May 8, 1945 associate with Nazis?

These are rather personal questions I think, and I am offended that the government meddle into our marital intentions this way.

Anyway, there may be some challenges (and some regrets I try not to focus on) but we are so extremely lucky to be together, that every single thing that Tino does for us is gigantic. He is champion of changing diapers, and soothes Elias daily with a bath. But he is mostly occupied with teaching Elias his first word: Daddy.

What mountain??

2008-05-04T21:32:00.000-07:00

When hiking up a steep mountain, it helps endurance to look just a few paces ahead rather than straight up to the top. Of course, looking around and taking in the view is the whole point, but that is not always possible.
So this past week I have been trying to be conscious about meeting deadlines, but taking baby steps and staying in the moment.
So I took the baby steps while Elias had huge leaps in development.
I have so much fun being around him. This week he began to reach out and hold and even shake a toy, and he loves to hold long conversations. It is absolutely delightful to reach this stage in development, when he still coos and cries and twitches like a newborn, but he responds to us with smiles and conversation, and sleeps through the night like an adult (still). I love to dream of him as he will be as he grows, and at the same time feel like there should be someway for me to bypass nature and not let him grow old. Elias is seven weeks, and for those of us with years on us, thats a flash in the pan, but at the same time, its a lifetime.
I often feel like we communicate perfectly and that we are both ageless.
Then I suddenly realize how in love I am and I want to preserve the moment forever, and thats when I go into a tailspin and cannot fathom that this little guy, and this moment, may change. He is serene about it so I try to be too.
Going back to work was a lot easier than I thought it would be. Tino and i have a great schedule: he goes to ESL in 8-12, comes home and we have lunch, I go to work in the evening, and come home at 6.30 and he goes off to class again.
Amazingly, I had the foresight to leave him with emergency contact numbers. It must be the new mom side of me. So I explained to him the bit about 911.
Later in the day, I called home. So, I asked, do you remember the emergency number?
Yes, uh, 119?
Well, it just sounded funny considering how ingrained into us it is.

The first week back at work was fun to see old clients, hear how much I was missed, and slide right back into the old gossip. Already I was beginning to line up some private massages.
I also started running this week, not a lot, not far, but it feels good, with some yoga. It feels good to be healing and to be finding a healthy schedule with Elias.
Tuesday I found out I had the highest test score again.
Wednesday I was able to work all day, cook dinner and get Elias's feedings all perfectly timed that he didn't need a bottle.
On Thursday, Tino and I sped out after work to Pasadena and went swing dancing with Elias in tow. It was great fun for me.
However, if anyone has ever seen The Jerk, my African husband is Navin when it comes to rhythm. But I will be patient and hope that his desire to be there, and to dance like the studs on Dancing with the Stars, is enough to make a sexy dancer out of...such a mover.
On Friday, we went to take a family shot with ourselves and two other couples who we are trying to do the Zero Emission Lawn Care business with. Our plan was to print out a brochure that could be passed around at Saturday's local Folk Music Festival.
When we went downtown to see if we could get tickets for the night show (of Jackson Browne, Ben Harper, and Taj Mahal) we ran into a friend who offered us what I was hoping for: two volunteers had just backed out, and we were needed to sit at the Food Not Lawns table, talking about our new community organization, while promoting our new business. So we were in.
Saturday, I gave a massage to a woman who was also a Spanish major in College, who also lived in Puebla, Mexico, and who wants to start a Spanish lit. book club this summer. From there we went to the show, where we saw a bunch of new friends, I was interviewed about our business for the local cable channel, and we danced it up, Elias loved the music and all the attention.
So my week was good. But always at the cost of:
studying biology or french, so I log off to do that now,
feeling however that the mountain is more of a path, with a rainbow at the end.

Things Fall Apart (so what?)

2008-04-28T01:14:00.000-07:00

Oh, let me say it again! Thank god for friends and family. Tonight I specifically thank my mom, and the cool girl in my Biology class whose daughter is named Elia. Sometimes, I just need to break. To fall apart. Yet the fear of doing so was making it all so much worse.
Today the mountain seemed less like we are climbing Kilimanjaro, and more like a brick wall that I am slamming my head on. Today was sweltering hot as we buzzed around in the car, trying to get things done, but failing. It felt a lot like my mental state, pressurized heat, desperately trying come up with ideas to figure things out and getting nowhere. In my low state, I get tired of calling all the shots for the little family unit, and I doubt my abilities to do so.
It is late, my only hour for blogging, or for much of any computer work, although I feel like I am on this thing all the time- too much!! trying to make some headway.
Let's see, what is silly me up to that keeps me away from myspicemountain? Elias sleeps so well, I feel obliged to be sleep deprived like other mums, and so I stay up late studying Biology, or French, researching business plans, and looking for a job.
Tonight was Biology class. Yes, two weeks before Elias was born, I started the semester at the local JC doing basic bio and I am proud to say, birth and baby aside, I am top of the class. There are far less Spanish teacher positions than Science teacher, so I figured the course would not only prepare me for the test to certify me in science, but its also a prerequisite for other science classes (which are prerequisites to a FNP program... who knows?!) Then I found that schools often want a Spanish teacher that can teach French as well, so there's that, then starting a zero emissions yard maintenance biz, Tino wants to do tourism in TZ, I've wanna increase massage business, and find a teaching job for Sept. 2008. That and work, Tino learn English, prepare for assessment tests, change status with the Dept of Homeland Stupidity...

But its not the tasks that disrupt my peace of mind, but the guilt of feeling like, at 32, with all the opportunities I've had in life, I should have set myself up to be financially stable, and a million more 'should haves.' These tasks that take up my to do list are peanuts compared to what we will be taking on once I begin full time work and Tino full time school.
The real stupidity however is how all of this sounds. It takes up one boring paragraph in a blog, but has commanded far too much mind space.
So my goal, as always the goal is to be in the present moment as much as possible, playing and enjoying and connecting, while still managing to set aside smart time to accomplish my tasks, instead of time worrying about them. We'll see how that goes, on alisonisabsorbedwithherself.blogspot.com

Journaling

2008-04-17T23:46:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, my nights were empty, long, insomniac nights. Ironically, now that the baby is here, my nights are filled...with...SLEEP! My bed is also filled, and so is my little heart, and these small details, along with Elias's insanely grown up sleep pattern must be why.
However, it seems that in my experiment with journaling, I became a bit addicted. I expected to be chronicling our son's milestones online, which is a good intention, but I also miss the downright self absorption that is what an online diary is all about.

The days time is absorbed by a painfully boring to do list of phone calls, forms, letters, to slowly slowly cut away at red tape. Already time consuming as I wait on hold, get improperly filled out forms back, etc. All this continuously interupted with diapers, nursing, rocking, the tasks that already took me a long time take even longer. I am still totally not over the joy of changing diapers and being consumed by a new baby.
Sometimes I feel that my position is miraculous, every detail a stroke of divinity.
Othertimes I feel that I am somehow working on borrowed time, borrowed luck.
How could I have so much good and keep getting more? I have put to much trust in 'the universe', I didn't do enough to prepare, sooner or later my luck will catch up with us and we will be screwed.
These are good thoughts and they encourage me to try even harder.
Of course, it is not always this way,
and though they may be fragments of various dreams that have flittered through my mind, sometimes I see signs that show me that, everything is, in fact, divine.

Beautiful, beautiful boy

2008-04-16T11:11:00.000-07:00

Everyday you are a song, usually a Beatles song, but always its always a song to see you. I am thrilled to watch you grow, and enjoy every moment, every challenge, every joy. While at the same time, I get tearful that I can't keep you this size for longer, perhaps forever.

Elias, 5 weeks old.

Chuchu

2008-04-09T22:00:00.000-07:00

Look at me. This is all I do. I am a perfect angel and my mommy has no excuse not to have posted all these adorable pictures of me before now! Shame on her!
She says that now that picture posting is easy, and she can be SHAMELESSLY liberal about posting ALL the cute ones, beware: she is also about to get shamelessly raw about her nipples, married life, and other observations and torments of life.

Thanks for staying tuned.

ps-chewchew is what I do all day on my mama's nipples. That must be why they call 'em "chuchu" in swahili.

Elias Easter Sunday, 12 days old.

The apology for 3 1/2 weeks of silence.

2008-04-03T20:27:00.000-07:00

So many minutes, days and weeks have gone unrecorded. I tick things off in my mind-'Must write that down later,' yet here I am, grasping for the time to keep up with my formerly disciplined journaling sessions. Now that all the real juicy stuff is coming to head. (sorry for the zit imagery)
Elias is starting to get cuter and cuter, and somehow, deeper and deeper into my heart. It may be directly related to the fact that in the past two days, he has been playful and smiling in the morning (only three and half weeks old!) doing baby yoga with me and delighting in kisses and massage. That and he is no longer snapping at my nipples, and I am starting to feel a good sensation when he latches on and breast feeds, that and I am learning how to breastfeed and do other things at the same time. Which is highly satisfying considering he likes to suck away for hours on end. Another boob guy.
As for Tino, there are so many ways that I have fallen in love with him all over again, there are so many cute stories of a Tanzanian experiencing America for the first time, and plenty of stories of shock and frustration as well.
Then there is the ghastly list of accomplishments that we have risen two in the newborn days. It is all fun, and I don't actually feel over worked and over tired, though sometimes frustrated and wanting my nipples back. I am proud and excited about the challenges we are meeting together, but my mind still drifts to wonder, what would it be like to be following the Tanzanian tradition of staying at home for 3 months with my mother in law cooking bananas and coconut stew for me everyday.
Let us simply say that I hope to record as much as possible. Posterity can be ignored or deleted if need be, but in the meantime, for the sake of my family, I will be frequently posting.

The Birth Story (The extend-o version)

2008-03-20T20:17:00.000-07:00

As Elias was finally pushed past the pubic bone, I sang Johnny Cash defiantly to myself,
Go down down down, through the burning ring of fire,
It burns burns burns, that ring of fire, that ring of fire!

What an amazing experience. I feel so lucky, so lucky. Perineum ripped to my anus, but what a lovely birth. Every one of my needs have been met. The three of us spent our day in the hospital, and everyone was quite satisfied to spend the day eating, napping and go to the bathroom.
We got to the hospital last night at 10pm and Elias was born this morning, March 11th , at 6:16. Things went incredibly smoothly, just a couple of kinks, but this was just about the best birth I could have imagined. There were also some things that surprised me. More about that later.
The night before, Tino and I had been reading about the role of the father in Birthing From Within, and he even read over my birth plan. Being together for only 10 days before the big day, we didn’t have much time to discuss these things. His openness and grace continue to impress me, and I could not have asked for more love and support, more massages and caresses from a man. My birth is the first time that Tino has ever been in an American hospital, and even compared to the top expatriate hospitals in the Tanzanian capital, this little community hospital is truly elegance. He is also the only man he has ever known to go into the labor room with his wife Now, before I came to the hospital, I was happy as a laboring clam at home.
So, after another night of honeymooning and discussing birth, I started having mild contractions. They were more exciting than painful, more like a cramp than the huffing and puffing of a TV labor. I slept on and off, awake more in anticipation than discomfort.
We spent all day the next day (10th) planting flowers in the garden and cleaning up the house. Tino laughed at me while I hobbled about, not buzzing around like my usual self, and doing more directing and supervising than actual planting (I could blame it on the early stages of labor, but was really just preparing him for the laws of our matriarchal household, as he mopped the floor, I sat on my yoga ball and ordered him about! Ha! No better way to get what you want out of a husband than to go into labor with his son,) My doula showed up at 4pm, my mom came home early, and we sat around chatting over tea and quesadillas until my doula insisted again that I stop doing and start resting. I was gonna need it. So Tino and I went upstairs to listen to some guided relaxation. My contractions had been about 5 min. apart nearly all day, but after I got out of bed with Tino, I don’t remember feeling them. From there I got into a hot candlelit bath, Juanita, my amazing doula, counted my contractions, the rest of our cargo was put together, and when the count reached 411 (for minutes between, lasting a minute, continuously for one hour), I decided it was time to check my progress at the hospital. (I had missed an earlier doctor’s appointment to labor at home.)
The whole memory of the day was completely happy, comfortable and calming.
I waddled into the hospital feeling confident and communicative. I had a huge support group gathered in the triage room, my husband, my two mothers, my father, and my doula. The nurses checked me and told me I was already 7 centimeters dilated. I knew I was a bout to transition and go to the hard part, but somehow, I equated the last 3 centimeters with like, three short hours, the first 7 were just so easy. Quickly after arriving at the hospital, I lost any desire to chat. I went deeply into myself and I barely remember walking down the hall to my room. It was a great room however, spacious, pretty comfy, and with internet access! It didn’t take me long to turn on the hot water in the shower and sit on my yoga ball as my back was soothed with the hot water stream. Tino and I had brought one of those plug in Himalayan salt crystals that emit such a lovely pink glow. So that is how I remember the first half of my labor at the hospital, pink and wet with pretty music. At 1am, I was checked again and told that I hadn’t progressed at all. This was extremely discouraging. The pain had seemed tolerable because I had known that it wouldn’t last forever. Suddenly my time frame stretched indefinitely out before me, and the pain was constant. I started to doubt my ability to do this. But that quickly changed. That is where I went from ‘Ahh- natural process’ to ‘This is labor and I have to work to get Elias out.’ They told me his head was turned and that was why I was so slow to progress. There was constant pain and pressure, and surges of intensity that made me feel like I was going to vomit or pass out. Juanita, my doula, Tino and my dad alternated shifts of pressing on my back. But if they moved even the slightest bit, I would snap at them. It didn’t really matter how they held the pressure, but when it lifted, it hurt more. Change was bad because I was trying to take my mind off of it. But everytime a shift occurred, my attention would go back to the intensity of my back labor, rather than the soothing wave of my breath. When contractions would hit and I might start to whimper, Juanita was always right there to tell me to breath. That coaching helped. The pain made me feel like I deserved to whimper, but whimpering didn’t help the pain, breathing did.
I don’t know what time I got the ok to start pushing, but I was tired. I asked them to tell me when to push, and I would fall asleep between times. I had righteously laughed at how every labor info pamphlet says that laboring on your back is the most painful, inefficient way to deliver, and I had set myself up with the necessary gadgets for my imagined squatting birth. When it came down to it though, it was too tiring to hold myself up. I did some squatting pushes, but I couldn’t squat for hours. When I lay down on my back, I felt I had a pretty powerful push (from my cheering squad) and I could sleep in between. The nurse told me that when he starts to crown I would feel a ring of fire. So I pushed and looked forward to that burning ring of fire. The doctor was a wee late, and I just think that after all that work, waiting to push is a bit cumbersome for one guy to get all the glory, so I paid the price and pushed. In my right ear where Juanitas whispers of encouragement en espanol, ‘go ahead, push if you feel the urge.’ And in my left ear I could hear Tino sniffling with emotion as he whispered encouragement and endearments in kiswahili and held my hand.
I felt the ring of fire, so much so I didn’t realize it when I tore my perineum and labia.
A smooth creamy baby suddenly slipped out after all that, and I will never forget, the feeling of our skin touching, and he simply looked at me, and I looked at him, for what seemed like forever. I saw the dark eyes of the being who agreed to let me raise him. There was trust, there was a calmness in not knowing. In his little tadpole body that trailed behind, I felt his active future spread out before him, and I felt so excited for him, and so thankful to be allowed to give it all. I gave him a nipple and he took it. It felt so graceful. Tino cut the cord and Elias was whisked away to the unnecessarily bright lights.

It would have been easy for my dad to video tape the birth, and sometimes I wonder why I asked him not to. That would have allowed me to get a glimpse of all those who agonized as they witnessed me labor, hour after hour all night long. My parents’ was the most impressive labor, to stand by silently and watch me labor, knowing that I could do it and not jumping in to try to save me from my pain. I’m blessed that they were there, and so is Elias.
Now however, as I finally finish this birth story that had been started while I was still laying in the hospital bed, I realize that although I was fully aware for the birth and many details have been played and replayed in my mind, the whole experience has ended up in a smoky bubble of pink tinted magic. The salt rock glow, the whispers of my family, the dark shining eyes of my son. There isn’t anything that I need to see. Tino brought pictures from home, and the youngest picture that he has of himself, at all, on the planet, is a picture from high school. No baby pictures, no childhood photos. Sometimes I feel cheated by this. I want to be able to see this a young daddy Elias that I never knew. What will the connections be between father and son? Then I enjoy the opportunity to love someone who hasn’t had every phase of his life documented for posterity. The memories and the feelings and the stories remain, allowing the visual obsession to rest.

Because the circumstances allowed so many different possible birthing scenarios, I still am often transported to what would (or what will?) birth be like in Tanzania. Tino’s sister in law had a baby a month before Elias was born. At this point, we were still unsure when Tino would arrive, and I was beside myself with longing to be there for her, with her, to go through it together. She had gone to the government clinic to give birth. The government hospitals are free, except for the ‘donation’ for supplies like rubber gloves.
Things like this I would remember as I tossed in the Biohazard Waste Bin another one of the gazillion disposable pads, and all around me, disposable, disposable, disposable. A victim of a wealthy consumer society, I was drowned in more ‘gift’ sacks complete with formula samples, diapers, crappy baby wash and a bunch more that irritated me to have to find the space and opportunity to use. Bu my eco-righteous cynicism was fleeting, and leads my first point: I surprised myself. I was very thankful for during this experience to have been giving birth in the hospital. My first instinct was to stay in the States and give birth in a hospital, thankful for what resources we have, and convinced that the pain or beauty of a hospital birth largely depends on your communication and perspective. After reading a pile of natural birth books, I had all but come to believe anything short of a water birth at home would be icy cold. In reality, I was thankful to have every luxury of knowing nurses were constantly checking to make sure that anything that could go wrong, would and I could relax my mind and focus on a natural birth. I still wonder if there will be a next baby, and will the next one be conceived in the States and born in Tanzania? I will be older, I will have scar tissue from a hefty tear. That and you never know what else. But it is too soon to allow my mind to wonder very far: it still hurts to sit down or stand for long periods of time, and it I am currently still basking in having a wonderful magical birth.

Patchwork process

2008-03-18T08:26:00.000-07:00

Blogging has become has become cerebral rather than cyber. And it isn’t Elias’s fault! He is, of course, the perfect baby. And Tino, a classically adoring father, “He is so strong already! Look at how he holds his head and looks around! He is already smiling!” Our baby is so advanced, bien sur. This of course is the time to be posting pictures like mad. But the contentment of nursing in front of the fireplace, and soothing my baby with little songs is too tempting. No one has ever loved my voice so much. And I’ve never loved singing so much. It is quite a lovely feeling to be able to soothe my little baby with a poor rendition of John Lennon.
Besides emailing, phoning and blogging every detail of a incredible family dynamic, sending thousands of ‘thank you’ notes to all the thoughtful supporters of Elias and his family, I am, all on Elias’s first week birthday, going to a job interview (gotta do it!), teaching about Africa with Tino at my mom’s school, learning how to pump breastmilk, and taking a Biology test at my Bio class. But I feel so in love. And still sometimes a little fearful, though, its sort of just like an old habit that is losing its power. There is so much that I want to write, my falling in love all over again story, cute details of Tino’s adaptation to the US, reflections on parenting, and most of all the hearts and fireworks that are going off all over the house. I hope you all are well, and I miss all of you as dearly as I love you. Here are some photos to satiate.

Heaven has alighted.

2008-03-17T03:59:00.000-07:00

Recap:
Feb. 29th. Tino arrived safely at the airport looking like a 1970’s Afro-ed disco cowboy= Sharp!
Minor glitch- After waiting for three hours at the International Gate, we get a call on Random Stranger’s cell phone. Tino is headed out of the airport and unsure of where to find us. Says he was never even in the International Arrival receiving area. Life mystery remains=unsolved.
March 1st-4th. Days are spent resting, organizing our cozy room for three, and spinning around the southern California hot spots. Highlights- the freeways, huge cars, parking structures, escalators become a normal affair, debit purchases still an American stroke of genius. We rode the chairlift up to Mt. Baldy on the 2nd, over frozen snow and dedicated snowboarders to be greeted by 60 mph winds at the top, hot cocoa and chicken noodle soup. We attended my nieces 11 year birthday dinner at the Old Spaghetti House with her friends and spent the next two days shopping for wedding clothes.

March 5th- Parents dress for the occasion and arrive to take us to the courthouse for our wedding ceremony.
Minor Glitch- We are two minutes late, literally, and the courthouse refuses to marry us. Undeterred, we swing by the gardens of one of the old Claremont colleges, take pictures before the sun goes down, exchange rings, and go to dinner.

March 6th- Wedding ceremony successful in less formal attire, with friend and her 4 month old baby as witnesses. Ice Cream and a visit to the OB/GYN to celebrate. 1 cm. dilated and the honeymoon task of encouraging labor continues.
March 7th- First trip to the Pacific Ocean. Surfers are insane and everywhere we look is another breed of dog, from a teacup Chihuahua to a St. Bernard.
March 8th- Trip to visit our garden plot at the community garden with local friends.
March 9th- Purchase of many seeds to start and plants to put in at home. That night I am up with regular contractions. The rest of the birth story is in the next chapter.

2008-03-02T20:11:00.000-08:00

Breaking Story, stay tuned for more...

2008-02-22T21:54:00.000-08:00

I cannot say that I am clear headed right now. Have I been at all for the last year?
With all the hoohaw over the family unification, the visas, the lessons learned, mistakes made, obstacles,
magic has happened
and this special day that I have carried around in my head for months,
February 29th, Febraury 29th- something special is going to happen that day.
Will my baby be born, (thus, as I joke, saving us a birthday party until every fourth year!)
It sounds silly to say that I knew that Augustino would be arriving on that day, but somehow, I feel like I knew that he would. He will board a plane for the first time in his life and fly half way around the world, for two days, and arrive in Los Angeles Friday February 29th at 4:40pm.

NOW the adventure begins. All this other stuff was just killin time. Dreams, pontifications.

I may be ridiculous, but I get something in my head, and, I dunno, it becomes me.
Like having a wedding with a big belly.
Now I think I am pushing it. (haha)

Anyway, I think we will soon have many more pictures to post on here soon, so keep checking back over the next coupla weeks!
The baby can't hold on that long, and I don't think anybody has the time. But some of my worst nightmares have been about having a wedding ceremony, and no, I have never fantasized about my own. The closest thing I have come to fantasizing about it is to picture myself in a white, satiny dress that shows off my big, pregnant belly. A bouquet of cala lilies. The man I love. A ring? Something round. Maybe a random stone.
So, after the landing, we will take a day or so of rest, involving cuddling, staring at each other, spooning, but no talk! no catching up on the millions of stories.
Come Sunday, times up!
Welcome to America- you'll sleep when you're dead! We will begin to tour the land: "This is a mall, the heart of Southern California." Thats a tour that I fantasize about taking him on every time I go mallside. And what more fun than to buy a spiffy 'fit for our union (read wedding not strike)? Then to the beach, feel how cold it is, look at the rough waves of the Pacific, take some pictures, tour the maternity ward, and take my baby daddy to the courthouse and get hitched.

I believe in marriage. I believe the romance of marriage, the commitment of marriage, and the community unity (Ujamaa!) of binding such a love together in front of those who you love the most in the world, and who know you the best. Those who keep you in check, and give you support. Those who you inevitably end up hurting, over and over again without meaning to, goshdarnit.

But I believe that something like this will involve a little more planning, and well, when my dreams come true, I mean, these obsessive yet beautiful images that I get in my head dreams, when they happen, they usually involve more spontaneity and luck than planning. And that is what feels most perfect to me.
That and I don't believe in choosing between cake and ice cream. I'll have both, thank you.

JOY!

2008-02-22T21:41:00.000-08:00

Caili Mae

Every time I see you, I fall in love with you all over again.

Dear Bloggoramma,

2008-02-22T20:00:00.000-08:00

Thank you x100 for always being there for me when I need a friend. When I need to organize my thoughts, whine, jump for joy, you are always there for me regardless of time zone, regardless of my insomnia, irregardless of vocab choices. My fingers don't hurt after typing, and my writing hasn't taken on 12 different styles until ending up a cross-eyed chicken scratch. You correct my spelling, organize my photos, waste no paper, and have no embarrassing food stains on white pages. I can tell you anything, and then you go and tell everybody. Its great. You really have fulfilled your purpose, so I thank you. And all who read and give me feed back, thank you.

In spite of taking maternity leave at my part-time job, all the baby books and baby prep, in spite of the late nights scanning documents at Kinko's or on the phone with the Embassy, there has been plenty to fill my head.
I got to go see two very inspiring authors speak this week. One is Greg Mortenson who wrote the book Three Cups of Tea, which I would buy and send to each person I know if I could. It is about his life path that brought him from growing up in Moshi, Tanzania (Augustino's home town!!) to trying to climb K2, saving lives, and ultimately, having his own life saved by the surrounding community who lives in the starkest conditions of poverty, and how his promise to build a school for the village children, turned into one of the most successful NGOs operating in that part of the world. He is amazing, his story is amazing, and you will be inspired and educated to read it, and certainly can contribute knowing that sending money to Greg would be the most efficient use of aid money you could imagine. Go to threecupsoftea.com to see why.
(Also, when I went to see him speak at the Huntington Beach High school gym, which was packed, I ran into a friend from Sonoma County, and was pleased, not just to see her, but that I saw her at an event that inspired me.)

The other author I met is Heather Flores, of Food not Lawns. She is a foodie-activist-superhero of saving souls through gardens, diving into dumpsters, and making food not bombs. She came to speak to the Holistic Moms group I associate with, and I followed her to a workshop she was doing at Pitzer college, one of the beautiful top-tier colleges clustered here in downtown Claremont, and so I am now connected with some space in a community garden to get my hands dirty, munch on herbs, crush and inhale lemon verbena, listen to the chickens, and share stories and potlucks with the bearded and beanied. I have been going a little crazy not having any soil under my fingernails or smelling the dirt for so long. So, after many spring days driving past blossoming tulip trees and other springtime blossoms, I pulled into a nursery and spent an hour drifting around, grinning foolishly and eating all the ripening clementine oranges, and finally picked out a lovely dwarf peach tree with pink blossoms that are about to pop and planted it for Elias with some strawberry plants below. It felt so good. It is raining these days, and I AM about to pop, but I now have this space to go to clear my head, and to bring my husband and baby, and to be there, with people like Lisa, who is also working a plot there and told me today about a Tent City settlement of 400+ homeless people here in Claremont that I knew nothing about.

So as the family comes together, and the world is coming together, the community is coming together, and this
is good.

Back to the village...

2008-02-20T11:48:00.001-08:00

This was written one night, laying under the mosquito netting, after Augustino had killed all the mosquitos that always snuck in. The cheap foam mattress pulled us together towards the center, and downwards toward the planks of wood that lay across the bed frame. The kerosene lamp was turned down low, but the room still smelled of its smoke, and of rotting wood being eaten by the termites. The cement floor was cool and dusty, my clothes stacked on shelves made of sticks and twine, with mouse droppings that inevitable appeared in the morning. Everything was quiet. Wait, some crickets. In the distance, the cry of a baby, the bleating of a goat, and I wrote,

If you werent here right now, I would be asleep, or I would be reading,
I might be worried about what would happen after a few months, after a few years.
Where will I be, and with whom?
I have wonderful memories,
I have wonderful friends.
I have a wonderful family.
But…..

Now, that you are staying here with me,
I think,
Thank god for the minerals..
That kept you here.
I enjoy right now,
And I try to always
ALWAYS
Enjoy right now,
With or without you,
But nevertheless,
My thoughts

Begin to drift into the future,
I cannot help it,
And that is where I find you.
Here and there.
And it makes me happy.

on my cheap foam mattress.

I very well may have two boys due on February 29th.

Thats fine with me.

I still believe I can have it all.

NOIR

2008-02-15T22:06:00.001-08:00

Hello mon petite papillon,

Quelque fois, je pense du Madam McClellan. Je record un jour, le garcon et l'enfant d'elle avez arrivee dans le lycee. Sa garcon, il est noir.
J'ai pensee q'elles sont tres belles: tous le famille.

I really haven't spoken french since high school, I hope all that is put-together-able.
But I have recently watched two movies , Paris Je t'aime and The Diving Bell et le Papillon.
I don't even know what the diving bell is in English, much less French, so...
Anyway, I harbor dreams that I will still someday have a need to learn the lovely language.
I think you would like both movies very much. I especially hope you see and love Paris Je t'aime,
(or was it Je t'aime Paris? Je ne sais pas)

I went through some hard days, aching with all my body and soul that I wasn't in Africa.
Doing better now though, really its just about choosing to believe that I am in the right place.
Nothing new, I suppose.
Elias is doing wonderful, we are healthy, I can't complain, never could,
Tino is in Dar es Salaam, and trying to get things processed. Maybe we will have some news before the end of the month.
Things take time, so I am not sure who will make it here first.
Everyone seems ready for me to give birth but I am not.
Of course, all will be updated as soon as there is news to tell.
My sweet,
how are you?
I am glad you are warm inside. Is winter more bearable now?
How are your days?

Sometimes I want to send you boxes of Cheez-its, in little portion sized packages, of course.

The Diving Bell movie tonight said something about the dangers of believing in personal miracles. It makes you self important.

I am an egoist. I notice it in how many sentences I begin using the word "I" when I write.
I find myself looking for personal miracles to confirm my existence and every action. My need for self importance....
A sign of weakness I guess? Is it the crutch the comes in later years to replace religion that I accused of a playing the crutch role when I was very young?
God, miracles, self/Self. No difference, just a continuity of opinion, or semantics that makes us more comfortable with ourselves as the years go on. And makes others more comfortable with us, as we can be understood.
My life is finding new color with miracles....
And finding patience....
and the internet...

Once upon a time, I thought of everyone I met, everyone in the world, as a competitor. I mean, I couldn't know of someone without comparing myself negatively to them.

That is the worst kind of egotism, and I gladly exchange it for a new one, no matter how much an indication of my continued weakness.

If it is.

Whatever.

Bon soir mon chou-chou.

PS I heard today that in Barak Obama's first book, he had to choose to be Black, raised by his white mother, and is 50/50.

Valentine's Day

2008-02-14T23:14:00.000-08:00

When I found out that Tino's visa would be "expedited" I started getting hopeful that he might even be here today. But, another day has passed alone of seeing beautiful things: women walking in tall 'Valentine's Day" heels, arm and arm with boyfriends, taking them out to one of the many Claremont restaurants, couples making out in cars, pretty clouds through an evening window, and the gluttonous amount of pink and red foo-foo and sugar.
And "Paris J'taime." A gem of a movie, je pense.
But it is never alone. He is with me with every thought, and Elias is with me with every rush of sugar that makes him start to wiggle and squirm. (Thats right, I am no purist. Bah!)
Lately, as I so quickly find myself a rock of positivity, or banging my head on the door and wailing franticly (truly.)
I wonder to myself, am I weak or strong?
I am weak when I am weak, and I try my hardest to come back to strong.
But what is weak and what is strong?
Honestly, I have pretty clearly identified for myself the difference:
Weak is when I am squirming under my skin to be somewhere I am not.
I am filled with desperation and doubt. I question why, WHY AM I HERE?!!! Why not there, with him, to patiently go through the waiting process, rather than all the anxiety, to have eyes watching our baby grow inside of me, eyes that are just as thrilled as mine, hands to feel him move, a beautiful voice to sing him lullabies, and lips to kiss his little feet when they dance around. I look up plane tickets online, and think, it is not too late, I will lie to the airports, tell them I am only 7 months, jump on a plane, give birth in some Moshi hospital. I am the healthiest pregnant woman I know, be darned! We will visit with his family, and fly back with together, side by side, baby in arms. We should be together the first time he boards a plane and flies half-way across the planet! I should be there to see my friends who united in Zanzibar, I should be swimming in the Indian Ocean, and walking through the banana trees.
I can romanticize this over and over, and as a friend of mine tells me, I can have another child there. Thats one way to try to calm down.
But regret. Regret and longing for what is not, and what can no longer be, are WEAK.
I am strong when I know that to love is to hurt. To be an adult is to make decisions and make the best of them. It is to have faith that no matter what happens
(like, WILL Bush delay his trip a week later in order to fight Congress for his right to tap our wires, further delaying operations at the US Embassy in Tanzania, where he is expected, and thus further delaying Tino's arrival? Pest!!)
it will work out. No matter what happens, if I am present, here, where I am, making the most of it, there will be RESULTS. I was tempted to say "MAGIC," and I don't know if either word is correct. Where there is presence of body and mind, there is LIFE.
For instance, I have a class tomorrow morning on African History. It is a Friday morning, and lucky for us, both my dad and step-mom who went to visit Tanzania have the time and interest to drive here and attend the class with me.
It is a great opportunity to be with them, one of my BIG GOALS of being here, and as we become used to seeing each other (since I've lived far away for 13 years), and used to the idea of my motherhood (it was a surprise, to say the least!) my charmed life becomes more real. The class is filled with a crowd of retired Claremonters (self proclaimed Claremontsers) who are mostly ex-missionary liberals. Great combo, I say.
I have certain fantasies regarding my life here. We are in the hub of a several well-reputed universities, and living alongside a great many older citizens like those I described earlier. We are in the throws of a sensationalized presidential race, which is in danger of losing any and all substance, if it hasn't already, and there seems to be (as usual) a lot of confusion in the sound bytes that are picked up about the candidates. What will happen between McCain, Clinton and Obama? Can we take California's history as a democratic state for granted? Why do we keep drawing these Conservative/Liberal GOP/Democrat lines anyway, and who can accurately describe McCain's positions and how does he really stand up to Reagan, and for that matter to Clinton, or to Obama who is trying to be electable to republicans?
Can we bring together people in this community across generations and across political parties to discuss these issues? Can we host debates/forums where we can intelligently and fearlessly discuss the issues? (Without the American tendency to remain too PC, or to be defensive/offensive?)
How about all the people around here who are stuck in Condos? All the pavement, and lack of outdoor time? Can we take a lot, maybe one of the many retired quarries, and build a community garden space? Or a school garden?
I think so, and these are things that I CAN try to do.
In fact, I can also further study Trigger Point therapy for pain relief (my Clinic is going to put a big add in the Yellow Pages for my practice,) I can acquire and utilize essential oils for my baby and the household, I can take a watercolor course, I can join a runners group, I can go sailing with my brother-in-law,
I can be the change I wish to see in the world,
while I wait.
To be a wife and a mother.

Personal journal entry on insecurity/plans

2008-02-11T09:53:00.000-08:00

I spent an entire day yesterday longing for the past few months of my life to have been in Tanzania rather than here. Oh, it was so hard to get over. It was beautiful weather, I spent the day shopping at an outdoor mall, that I am sure Tino will go ga-ga over when he gets here. Strollers were everywhere, carrying babies, multiples, and even small dogs. None of it made me ga-ga.
I wasn't shocked at all the consumerism when I got here. I knew it was here, and it has only grown, in spite of the downturn of the economy and obscene amount of money going towards war instead of building communities.
Many of my friends in Tanzania, good people trying to make it work with their families, spent large amounts of time apart, sacrificing the joys of togetherness for the hope of a financially secure future. In some cases, it might be a sad additional contributer to the spread of HIV (separated families.)
I continue to think of what the best choices are for my personal adventure in life, including enough time to love and cuddle with baby and husband, enough time to enjoy laughs with friends and family, enough time to breathe fresh air, and to improve the lives of those I love and those in my community.
Wishing things were different is a natural phenomenon of life, but I've been feeling so grounded and so strong lately, that it really shook me up. I spent all day idealizing what it would have been like to have gone back and lived with Tino's parents at their mountain shamba (farm) on the foothills of Kili, helping around the house, staying fit, and bonding with his family. Tino would visit from Arusha on the weekends. His sister in law that lives there too, who is a spunky beauty from Kenya, just gave birth yesterday and it would have been great to be there with her, and to share our experiences. An opportunity I am not sure when I will have again. Instead of taking the 5,000 Peace Corps to survive in TZ for my pregnancy, I brought it home, and in a frantic rage to take advantage of opportunities to set up income possibilities (and realize lingering dreams) I spent the money living for a few weeks in San Francisco and getting certified in massage. Then I had no money to go back.
I lamented my drive to do do do.
Of course, Tino was lovely when I called him crying and I really
don't ever want to be apart again.

During our separation, I landed a successful gig as a massage therapist here in Southern California, learning a lot and helping a lot of people with chronic pain. I have Cleared a teaching credential and I can't help but think of what to do next.
I am afraid of being too busy, while I am afraid of not taking advantage of time and opportunity to get ahead. From immigrants to America, I still learn that America is a truly a land of opportunity if you are willing to work hard. This is a positive perspective to what I usually see as a rat race, paying a elephant portion of the paycheck every month on housing, not to mention taxes and healthcare. We are left with toys to distract and put on a credit card.
I don't want to get caught up in this. I don't love shopping enough.
But there is education to take advantage of, though it might mean working of loans for the rest of eternity, and while your chained for an eternity, you might as well buy a house.
I guess today, Monday, I am still lingering in yesterdays lack of security.
In the past, I've had fantasies about going into health care and incorporating my experience and belief in holistic living with allopathic care and international needs. On my way to becoming a teacher and putting Tino through school, I still think about it, especially as I continue to learn about healing through massage.
I wonder sometimes if it would be a waste of time to teach for just a few years, only to start up with school again. When would I actually begin to master a career, changing so often?? When will I have time to raise my son (future children??) in the rural setting that is part of what I love and part of their heritage?
If it takes Tino four to five years to become a nurse, I can work on taking the necessary prerequisites to get into a Nursing course now. By the time he is done, we could both get good jobs in Moshi (hospital and international school respectively), work for a couple of years, before coming back to the states to pursue a Masters in Nursing, renting a little place in Northern California, perhaps. From there, our family could fulfill dreams in any part of the world.
But in doing so we will always sacrificing being somewhere, with someone we love.

As for now, I feel much better getting it out. Often, I am embarrassed to discuss my wishes for the future, fearing that I will fail, or that I am making mis-steps.
But now, I feel strong again. There is nothing like pregnancy: it is the embodiment of possibility. Everything is possible, including, who little Elias will be, how well Tino and I will get on once he gets here, how exhausted I will be, how I might not get a teaching job, and well, basically failure. Failure is an option.
But I have had enough of being a dreamer and not trying to make the dreams come true.
I have wanted to be a language/science teacher in high school with a black international husband and a cute son. I have wanted to be a teacher and teach some yoga classes on the side. I have wanted to experience teaching and go on to work internationally (Medicines sans Frontier) as a health worker.
I have wanted to be a catalyst for someone to come to the United States and show me the beauty of opportunity.
I have wanted to be closer to my family and give more support to my mom.
I have wanted to raise a child while taking classes and doing massage for income.
That will be my next few months.
I have wanted to participate in running a marathon. A half.
By summer time, we will be bonded and happy and healthy as a family, I will be teaching yoga and running a marathon, Tino will have done English prep and will be enrolled to begin his AA, I will have a teaching job, and we will have a workable system of childcare and transportation.
Manifest THIS!

Fwd:Fwrd:Forward: Backward?

2008-02-06T22:08:00.000-08:00

There is maybe a little too much in the news with the primaries, but a positive of what it portrays is American faith in elections, and interest in seeing a change in the government. It also shows our interest in sensationalism, fame, gossip, and competition, but whatever.

I am pretty sucked in too, in spite of the fact that I think we give any person too much credit if we think they can make such a difference as president. Maybe it is an ancient longing for a hero, a king, a mascot who represents who we are. The president does not work alone, and so much of what he accomplishes during his 'reign' is determined by a domino line of circumstances that was set up before he got into office.
Anyway, sorry to post political stuff twice in a row, but I just received this email, and I thought I would post it. It is too prevalent in the good ol USA that people really opine this kind of extreme... racism. I would be laughing if I wasn't crying, as everything the email states is negated on the very website it cites for validity.

This was forwarded to me by a friend who served with us in the Peace Corps in Tanzania, she didn't stay for all two years, should she have stayed longer?

From Within???

READ THIS: Don't wait until it's too late.

Who is Barack Hussein Obama?

Very interesting, and something that should be considered in your choice.
If you do not ever forward anything else, please forward this to all your contacts...
this is very scary to think of what lies ahead of us here in our own United States...

better heed this and pray about it and share it.

We checked this out on " snopes.com". It is factual. Check for yourself.
Who is Barack Hussein Obama? Probable U. S. presidential candidate, Barack
Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr.,
a black MUSLIM from Nyangoma-Kogel, Kenya and Ann Dunham, a white ATHEIST
from Wichita, Kansas.
Obama's parents met at the University of Hawaii. When Obama was two years old,
his parents divorced. His father returned to Kenya. His mother then married Lolo Soetoro, a RADICAL Muslim from Indonesia. When Obama was 6 years old, the family relocated to Indonesia. Obama attended a MUSLIM school in Jakarta. He also spent two years in a Catholic school.
Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim. He is quick to point out that, "He was once a Muslim, but that he also attended Catholic school."
Obama's political handlers are attempting to make it appear that he is not a radical. Obama's introduction to Islam came via his father, and that this influence was temporary at best. In reality, the senior Obama returned to Kenya soon after the divorce, and never again had any direct influence over his son's education.
Lolo Soetoro, the second husband of Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, introduced his stepson to Islam. Obama was enrolled in a Wahabi school in Jakarta. Wahabism is the RADICAL teaching that is followed by the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad against the western world.
Since it is politically expedient to be a CHRISTIAN when seeking major public office in the United States, Barack Hussein Obama has joined the United Church of Christ in an attempt to downplay his Muslim background. ALSO, keep in mind that when he was sworn into office he DID NOT use the Holy Bible, but instead used the Koran.
Barack Hussein Obama will NOT recite the Pledge of Allegiance nor will he show
any reverence for our flag. While others place their hands over their hearts,
Obama turns his back to the flag and slouches.
Let us all remain alert concerning Obama's expected presidential candidacy. The Muslims have said they plan on destroying the US from the inside out. What better way to start than at the highest level - through the President of the United States, one of their own!!!!
Please forward to everyone you know. Would you want this man leading our country?...... NOT ME!!!

My response to her:

Eileen,

Do you believe this?

How do you feel about Muslims in America in general?

I think that this kind of information increases the kind of stereotypes that fill the planet with hatred, which is the express reason why we went into the Peace Corps. Half of my neighbors were Muslim in my village, which is the experience of Barak Hussein Obama while living in Indonesia.
What does RADICAL Muslim mean?

How about the RADICAL Christians,
and Christian Fundamentalists?

How different is Christianity from Islam anyway,
check the history,
the essence of the two are much more alike than different and
I feel that it is shameful of us to continuously make Others out to be Evil.

There are many checks and balances in out government.
We should have used them more with Bush,
we should be sure to use them with any president. We must be sure that the government is transparent, no matter what color, gender, sexual orientation, religion or political party the pres represents.

Some care if the pres is Mormon. why?
Some care if he is Baptist, Evangelical, or Catholic.
We care if he is female, black, too young, too old, not black enough, not good hair, and so on.

The president can only do so much.
We have to look at what he represents, and try to represent ourselves the change we wish to see in the world.

For me, Barak symbolizes America. If my son, born to a Green Party member, Athiest from california, and an immigrant tribesman from Tanzania, can know that Barak was president when he was a baby, he would have a wonderful example.

Did you know that Bush is finally going to Tanzania? He will be in 5 countries in E. Africa for six days. How can the man get a clear picture of anything in that kind of a whirlwind trip. He might as well make a conference call. And while he is there, he is avoiding what was a big ally for America in Africa, Kenya, who represented economic progress, political stability, and handed over Muslims suspected of terrorists links.

Bush sends not his condolences, and tries not to help reestablish peace and democracy.
Not even a visit, no meeting with Odinga and Kibaki.
But he will spend lives and trillions of dollars to 'establish peace and democracy' in the middle east.

Do you think he has established Peace and Democracy?

Do you think that Barak is going to infiltrate our country and destroy it?

How well do you think Bush did as president?

I hope to hear your thoughts.

Father or son

2008-02-05T22:14:00.000-08:00

The race is on!
(and I am not talking about Super Tuesday)

Who will arrive first?
Tino or his son?

~The doc says Elias is due to be born on the 29th.

~Tino has his visa interview at the US Embassy in Dar es Salaam on the 20th.

A couple days after the interview, if all goes well, he should get his visa, then he needs to get a plane ticket, pack, and say good bye to family and friends, and make it here safely on his first plane flight ever, flying alone across the world.
If he doesn't get lost somewhere in Europe, he might just be here the first week of March.

And Elias and I continue as our usual harmonious team. Besides a little diaphragm pressure yesterday, we feel like we could hang out like this another month. I have been doing mad yoga (with some good teaching prospects for post baby), lots of massage calls, lots of walking, and craving Acai protein smoothies. All in all, I still feel great.

So who will get here first?
It is looking like Elias is ahead, but the wise little one might have some daddy sympathy and hold out till the first week of March.

Place your bets. (Ha! And people actually get so into the Super Bowl?? We got a whole spread here, you can choose your square based on date instead of score. How fun.)

Even as Immigration is as All-American as Football, allow me to continue the unique thread of American patriotism and Thrash My President.

You see, it is Bush's fault that my fiance won't be here any earlier:

W. is planning to visit 5 African countries; Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana and Liberia, and the US Embassy in TZ's capital is not processing visas as they are on security lock down awaiting the arrival of this very unpopular president, who, traveling to Africa for only the second time in his presidency, calls it the jewel in the crown of his legacy. Nothing else he can claim but having poured 15 billion into the highly controversial PEPFAR (see earlier post on HIV in Africa for more). Now, amidst American war debt and economic crises, he proposes to double that money. Fine, fine Bushie. They will gladly take your money, but you have no respect from even the people of Africa.

To take some quotes from the Embassy website in Tanzania,
Bush has been "very attentive" toward Africa, "but in a way that provides dignity to the Africans."

Sure, he has given money, but with his own moral and religious stipulations that deny African realities.

The Embassy site says,
"If you look at the countries he has chosen -- they are all stable democracies and open markets. These are precisely the countries that need to be supported."

Sure, but there is a crisis in what was formally the 'Beacon of Stability' in East Africa: Kenya's breach in democracy and resulting civil unrest. Even though he has a chance, our leader, the supposed leader of the 'Beacon of Democracy' for the world, will be too busy doing a 5-countries-in-6-days PR tour, rather than helping to negotiate for peace.
Spending some time trying to be a positive force of influence in Kenya would be 'attentive' and 'dignifying' to 'precisely the countries that need to be supported.'

Ok, so Bush's dad isn't from Kenya (but his dad does have plenty of friends named Hussein!) but Barak Obama, amidst being a rising star with a ways to go in the most intense primary race in history, has managed to stay active in trying to pursue diplomacy and promote peace in Kenya, communicating on a daily basis with African leaders.

So I laugh. How ironic is it that this Bushman can continuously annoy me so? He spends his whole presidency at the ranch, and all of sudden decides to take a six day jaunt to the jewel of his legacy right when I need some shit done, and a week of time has never been longer (and at the same time shorter.)

There is no other reaction than to laugh. Its funny.
It reminds me of the time when I finally had my own legal visa to visit Cuba, and what happened? The Pope decided to share my itinerary. Last minute, three days before I was scheduled to depart, (and the day of my birthday) I got a call saying, sorry, Fidel pulled all visas, Security lock down. Maybe you would like to go to Spain instead?
Fuck no. The trip turned out to be good anyway: I kept my ticket for Cancun and rode through Chiapas with some motorcycle hotties from Guadalajara. Life is great like that, it is what you make of what you get. and luck! Cuba happened a few years later, a wonderful wonderful trip. And Tino, maybe he will get a ride back to the States in Bush's personal jet!

So at this point, I just smile. I have everything I need. A supportive family and supportive collection of women to help me through labor. (see earlier blogs for views on female support in labor) If Tino is there, it is simply another miracle. If he is not, it will be beautiful to present his son to him at the international gate at LAX just a few days later. (and if he is denied, well, I will enjoy flying back to Africa and seeing all my besties that are still there, and walking through the misty coffee and banana farms at our home at the Kilimanjaro foothills in Moshi while we figure out plan D. or G.)
I know that, in spite of my lack of a traditional plan, I have done everything I could to prepare: school and jobs and community, all lined up.

But the best preparation of all is being ready for anything.

So, who wants to place the first bet?

Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi

2008-01-29T06:05:00.000-08:00

Lord make me an instrument of thy peace,
where there is hatred, let me sow love,
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope,
Where there is darkness, light,
Where there is sadness, joy.
Oh Lord, grant not that I may so much
seek to be consoled, as to console,
To be understood, as to understand,
To be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
And it is in dying of the self that we are born to eternal life.

Dreamer

2008-01-28T23:31:00.000-08:00

I had lots of dreams featuring fuzzy little baby diapers. That is no wonder. I've dreamed of massaging backs and collapsing in ecstasy onto someone's dark smooth skin. That doesn't confuse me in the least. Last night in my dreams, there were two other pregnant women, the three of us each carried two babies in our wombs, and it was up to me to find the right place for everyone to give birth. I drove a plane, getting out of an unsafe place at the last minute, but, it was too late for the births, I had to turn around and come back to a bedroom, that was mine, but borrowed, with a second hand mattress on the floor, old blankets, and although it seemed like the perfect place, a place where they would be comfortable, now we had to wait. To wait for that comfort to incorporate itself into their bodies so labor could begin.

No news is not good news in case of visa processing, and I wonder how long this thing is going to sit around someone's office. The Embassy is only accepting calls on the matter for two hours a day. Meaning I have to set my alarm for 4am if I want to try to get through. Sounds like the type of phone call that one spends long distance rates to wait on hold. I just want to know the estimated processing time. What can I begin to work on?

My doctor's office doesn't want to treat me because ( just found out) I have an outstanding bill for part of an office visit that wasn't covered by Peace Corps. The REST of the visit was covered, but Peace Corps claims that I wasn't covered at that time. My current insurance, under the Department of Labor states that the cover anything pregnancy related. But the hospital and doctor say they don't approve any services until they are billed. The doctors say they need approval in order to treat, and then they bill.

Kind of an insurance catch-22. One that leaves me, walking into my doctors office, to be treated like a trouble maker.

Just to make things easier.

So, maybe my dream was another prophetic one for the pregnancy.
I cry and I picture where I would really be happy. In Tino's arms, in his mountain house in Moshi, with his mother and sister-in-law (also due soon) there to support me.

I don't even look pregnant with this High School Sweatshirt of mine.
Reminds me of the girls who really had it tough, like the 15 year old honor student, who no one knew was pregnant until she gave birth in the school bathroom. She is being tried for manslaughter. Abortion wasn't allowed without parental consent, and she was afraid of her parents.

Yeah Jen, why are you so bent on news, the truth and the Congo?

2008-01-26T20:37:00.000-08:00

By Amy Goodman

January 24, 2008, TruthDig.com

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080123_the_invisible_war/

It's the deadliest conflict since World War II. More than 5 million people
have died in the past decade, yet it goes virtually unnoticed and unreported
in the United States. The conflict is in the Democratic Republic of Congo,
in Central Africa. At its heart are the natural resources found in Congo and
multinational corporations that extract them. The prospects for peace have
slightly improved: A peace accord was just signed in Congo's eastern Kivu
provinces. But without a comprehensive truth and reconciliation process for
the entire country and a renegotiation of all mining contracts, the
suffering will undoubtedly continue.

In its latest Congo mortality report, the International
Rescue Committee found that a stunning 5.4 million 'excess deaths' have
occurred in Congo since 1998. These are deaths beyond those that would
normally occur. In other words, a loss of life on the scale of Sept. 11
occurring every two days, in a country whose population is one-sixth our
own.

Just a little history: After supporting the allies in World
War II, Congo gained independence and elected Patrice
Lumumba, a progressive Pan-Africanist, as prime minister in 1960. He was
assassinated soon after in a plot involving the CIA. The U.S. installed and
supported Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled tyrannically for more than 30 years,
plundering the nation. Since his death, Congo has seen war, from 1996 to
2002, provoked by invasions by neighboring Rwanda and Uganda, and ongoing
conflict since then.

A particularly horrifying aspect of the conflict is the mass sexual violence
being used as a weapon of war. Congolese human-rights activist Christine
Schuler Deschryver told me about the hundreds of thousands of women and
children subjected to rape:

'We are not talking about normal rapes anymore. We are
talking about sexual terrorism, because they are destroyed-
you cannot imagine what's going on in Congo. We are talking about new
surgery to repair the women, because they're completely destroyed.' She was
describing the physical damage done to the women, and to children, one, she
said, as young as 10 months old, by acts of rape that involve insertion of
sticks, guns and molten plastic. Deschryver was in the U.S. as a guest of
V-Day, Eve Ensler's campaign to end violence against women, in an attempt to
generate public awareness of this genocide and to support the Panzi Hospital
in Deschryver's hometown of Bukavu.

Maurice Carney is executive director of Friends of the Congo, in Washington,
D.C.: 'Two types of rape, basically, are taking place in the Congo: One is
the rape of the women and children, and the other the rape of the land,
natural resources. The Congo has tremendous natural resources: 30 percent of
the world's cobalt, 10 percent of the world's copper, 80 percent of the
world's reserves of coltan. You have to look at the corporate influence on
everything that takes place in the Congo.'

Among the companies Carney blames for fueling the violence
are Cleveland-based OM Group, the world's leading producer of cobalt-based
specialty chemicals and a leading supplier of nickel-based specialty
chemicals, as well as Boston-based chemical giant Cabot Corp. Cabot produces
coltan, also known as tantalum, a hard-to-extract but critical component of
electronic circuitry, which is used in all cell phones and other consumer
electronics. The massive demand for coltan is credited with fueling the
Second Congo War of 1998-2002. A former CEO of Cabot is none other than the
Bush administration's current secretary of energy, Samuel Bodman.
Phoenix-based Freeport-McMoRan, which took over the Phelps Dodge company's
enormous mining concession in the Congo, is also in on the game.

The United Nations has issued several reports that are highly critical of
illegal corporate exploitation of the Congo's minerals. A Congolese
government review of more than 60 mining contracts call for their
renegotiation or outright cancellation. Says Carney, 'Eighty percent of the
population live on 30 cents a day or less, with billions of dollars going
out the back door and into the pockets of mining companies.' An important
question for us in the U.S. is: How could close to 6 million people die from
war and related disease in one country in less than a decade and go
virtually unnoticed?

[Amy Goodman is the host of 'Democracy Now!,' a daily international TV/radio
news hour airing on 500 stations in North America.]

Imagine having a smart and successful person, who knows the system inside and out, calling you on the phone to tell you all the ways they are working to make things happen for you. It feels pretty good, I say, and whenever I thank him, he says that his job is to serve me. That is my congressional representative, who is trying to get Tino here before the baby is born. Elias could be born any day now, but still, I have hope...
This exchange that I have built however, for the first time, with the office of MY Congressional representative, has made me realize that I do have a voice that could somehow reach Washington. Anyway, with as much anger and frustration at politics and foreign policies that I have felt, it is balm to know that there are still people working for us. I have never been a writer of letters, journals or otherwise. Blogging has stimulated a journaling habit, while email and the desire to stay in touch with loved ones all over the world has forced me to sit down and write more letters.
But sadly, I have never, outside of a classroom assignment, written a letter to a politician.
I am about to bring another human into this world, and to make an African man a US citizen.
Here, I am able to read the newspapers and magazines, listen to independent radio, watch primary debates on youtube, watch documentaries on inspiring Americans like Sergent Shriver and Martin Luther King Jr., and good films like 'God Grew Tired of Us' (2007) about the Lost Boy in Sudanese refugee camps, and many others that make the emotional connection with how human lives and culture are affected by political greed and corruption (Wind that Shakes the Barley(2007) about the Irish Republican Army, and The Constant Gardener (2005) are two others I've seen this week.)
A letter isn't much, but after reading the following report by Amy Goodman, I will do my best to be a citizen who shows appreciation for what I do have, by vocalizing my opinion to those who are paid to hear it, and by continuing to shop with canvas bags and stay healthy in body and mind.

Often, living in the United States, I am left with a despondency that there is too much to do know about; too many negative things to stand up to. I feel small and voiceless, on a bike up against this huge machine that drives genocides like the Congolese one, Polar bears to extinction, the funding of 'Vietnam the Sequel,' and a big ugly Hummer. By riding this bike, I've been trying to speak out through my actions rather than ranting in front of supermarkets and driving people in the opposite direction. What I find instead is that I have become lazier. Often, I don't know the right thing to do. But I am no longer to intimidated, or too apathetic to write a letter.
I feel that it is important to continue conversations with each other. Even when I am frustrated to tears because the conversation is nothing new (recycling, composting, conservation, diet and exercise!!).
The dialog must still happen with renewed enthusiasm every time, patience, love and ideas. It must happen with invigorated anger, every fucking time.
Bush may finally be at the end of his term, but the most powerful and greedy country is still our own, and the only way it can be affected is through its citizenry. The world knows this, but we ignore our power by ignoring our opportunities and privileges.

So read this, and have a conversation with your local congressional representative about any issue that is bothering you.
Thank you to Amy Goodman, a long time hero of mine. True reporters are the gems of our civilization.

My ice Mountain

2008-01-21T23:49:00.000-08:00

Showering Baby Elias with Love

2008-01-21T23:41:00.000-08:00

Old friends and new. (Emily, Amber and I)
Besides all the reasons listed below, a baby shower is another lovely addition to pregnancy. I guess my head has been wrapped around simplicity. (Spinning on a million things and pretending that I am trying to keep it simple. Hah! Sometimes my staunch instance on a lack of needs is really an escapist's digression from giving, I now finally begin to realize. If that makes sense. If it doesn't, I simply quote St. Francis of Assisi- "For it is in giving that we receive," and likewise, if I dare, it is in receiving that we give the opportunity for others to be Givers, and work towards a loving and interdependent community, empowering ourselves by empowering others, rather than hiding away in a supposedly self-sufficient self-reliance of modern Americanism.)
That tangent stated, I add, 'Kinatakiwa kijiji kimoja kulea mtoto.' It takes a village to raise a child. That is the quote we made into a bookmark and gave out to those who attended the shower. (Deciding not to use the swahili proverb suggested by Tino-'If a child asks for a razor blade, give it to him.')
Neighbors attended, old family friends, family friends I hadn't met yet, friends from Peace Corps, friends from high school, friends from college that I didn't meet until a couple of months ago, siblings, parents, nieces, nephews, and everyone giving lots of love, wisdom, and cute little fuzzy gifts. The biggest expense at my feet so far for the baby (if all goes well with health and insurance) is a diapering system. Instead of bringing presents, the shower invitation requested donations to my cloth diaper system. I have wanted to go cloth since always and was barely considering doing anything else... until I started all the research! There are just too many options to choose from, and too many expensive diapers. I stuck with it though and finally put together a report on what it was that I felt I needed to have a diapering system that will last about 6 months and brought it to the shower. Let me stress that no one had seen this request list and total, which came to needing $287.55 . I opened gifts and set cards aside for crying over later (I cry too easily, and I did cry all over again reading messages inside the cards, and poems written, etc.) Inside many of the cards was a generous donation to the diapers. At the end of it all, I counted up Elias's cash, and low and behold, I held $280.00!

Again, let me reiterate these thoughts that I have often, if I haven't said them before, let me say them again and again. Babies are miracles, and babies beget miracles.

Enormous thanks to everyone who was there, everyone who wanted to be there, and everyone who is reading this who is somehow or other a part of the greater village that will become a part of the child is to become a part of this world.

In the words of Walt Whitman, read to me by my brother and abbreviated here:
"There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became.
And that object became a part of him for the day or a certain part of the day, or for many years of stretching cycles of years.
(From the) early lilacs (to the) quarrelsome boys.
(From) his own parents,
he that had father'd him and she that had conceiv'ed him in her womb and birth'd him, (to the) men and women crowding fast in the streets, if they are not flashes and specks what are they? ...
These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes and will always go forth every day."

To my son Elias, may the planet be his classroom and the world be his village.

TOP TEN REASONS WHY BEING PREGNANT KICKS ASS

2008-01-16T08:44:00.000-08:00

One woman’s experience…

1.) Naps are necessary and glorified.
2.) Eating lots of food isn’t gluttony, its altruism.
3.) Bad gas can be blamed on the baby.
4.) Emotional outbursts can be blamed on the pregnancy.
5.) You’re already a mother, but with no sore nipples, no diapers, two free arms and free time!
6.) Nobody cares if you have to pee all the time.
7.) People always want to carry things for you.
8.) Sleeping is extra comfortable with all these new pillow modifications that you should have incorporated years ago.
9.) Bigger tips.
10.) If you go into a crowded bathroom, you will be shuffled to the front of the line!

Tunamshukuru Mungu. (We thank God)

2008-01-14T13:14:00.000-08:00

We have jumped the 9 month queue and Tino's visa is being processed RIGHT NOW!!

This what magic occurred all within the time I loaded the pictures below:
1.) I pressed "Upload"
2.) I went upstairs to get the phone number of the Congress representative who has been advocating my case. (I had asked my doctor to write another more urgent letter regarding the "High Risk" aspect of my stressful pregnancy. I wanted to call and see if we could add it to the current application they are reviewing for expediting. (I had already sent in one letter, but because it simply said that the situation stressed me out, and wasn't a matter of 'Life or Death' (isn't it tho?) I was told that the chances of my visa being processed quickly were not good. They gave me until around next September.)
3.) While upstairs, I missed a call from Tino.
4.) Called him back. It is 11.30 pm his time, and he's never sounded so down. He just called to say good night, wondering if I had any good news. I told him the baby is healthy and I am happy and missing him, and haven't given up trying to get him here.
5.) Carlos (the congress rep.) called me and told me he had good news and bad news:
They were going to expedite the visa, but had to do a background check on Tino first which could take anywhere from 2 weeks to over a month. I cried with joy and tried to ask intelligent questions.
6.) I called Tino back and told him, he may not be here for the birth, but at least when I go back to Tanzania, we all be able to come home together! He laughed and sent me kisses.
7.) Carlos calls me back (pictures are still uploading, it is like minute 4 now.)
He says that the background check was easier than they thought, and I simply need to wait for the next packet of information to arrive from the Department of Homeland Security. (This will include documents assuring financial stability, but luckily, I think they take co-sponsors, since I am obviously, not quite there as a massage therapist. I thank him.
8.) Photos uploaded and I thank god (thats right) and write to tell you all.

(This is a miracle. I hoped and tried but no one thought it would work! I just got this email:
*** DO NOT RESPOND TO THIS E-MAIL ***

The last processing action taken on your case

Application Type: I129F , PETITION FOR FIANCE(E)

Current Status: Approval notice sent.

On January 15, 2008, we mailed you a notice that we have approved this I129F PETITION FOR FIANCE(E). Please follow any instructions on the notice. If you move before you receive the notice, call customer service.

Sincerely,

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)

Preggo Pics at Laguna Beach, Sunset

2008-01-14T12:47:00.000-08:00

Life/Love/Embrace/Deny

2008-01-12T23:26:00.000-08:00

We always hear that it’s the little things that count~ the small moments in life.
Small moments have become monumental eternities for me in the past 6 months.
While having babies, changing jobs, moving, moving abroad, and marriage are all mutually agreed upon MONUMENTAL life transitions. These are the things that lives are defined by, years are measured by, and that can cause a panic attack in the unfortunately predisposed.
I thrive off of them. (Like any good ADD American with an adrenaline addiction.)
Like a little sailboat on the waves, the larger events are like rolling waters, that are so big, you hardly notice them, but are soothed by their presence, they remind you that you are sailing, and every once in a while, you might lose your stomach, which is a highlight. The smaller moments however, can be the choppy waves that jar your spine and make you want to get off the boat but you can’t because there is no land in site, so you just puke. Other times, I imagine you got your sailors legs on and it doesn’t matter what kind of weather you are having, but you are connected to the rhythm of the sea, and perfectly content with your sailor life. Except, perhaps for your red leathery skin.
For me, the small moments have always punctuated or defined the larger experience by crystallizing a colorful electric synapse of a memory that the mind gravitates to in reflection. As a teenager, I lived in Mexico for a year as an exchange student. The transition was no big thing. What was huge was walking the streets alone and enjoying the different smell of traffic, the glitter of broken glass bottles lining the walls, the aromas of street vendors selling elotes smothered with mayonnaise, cheese, lime and chili, and savoring a fresh tortilla with a pinch of salt. These are the colorful moments that I recognized, that made me feel at peace, no matter how lonely I really was, and are the electric memories that I go back to. Living in Sonoma Country offered a million ‘precious moments’ (after finally getting out of college and getting my head out of my butt.) My parked car on a spring day beneath a plum tree carpeted white with blossoms was perfection. College parties? Graduation ceremonies? No thank you. But waking up at 5 in the morning to put on a wetsuit, still cold from the day before, and go out into the violent violet waters of the Pacific was heaven. Moving to Africa for two years was the most natural of transitions. The big moments were walking the red dirt paths through the green mountains covered with bananas and hillsides covered with rice paddy. The view was loveliest when pink African clouds rested on the tallest peaks, but it wasn’t the same without my dog. It was better yet with the little boys who would hold my hand and tell me endless stories I half understood.
It was the best with Augustino.
The little moments, I began to feel, where not as deeply impressive when experienced alone, as they were when shared.
I became jealous, I mean achingly impressed, with the mama’s who had their babies strapped to the back at all times. And when I carried the babies, I felt beautiful. I joke that in Africa, the woman are complimented, “You look pretty with that baby!” as if a small child is the most couture of accessories. My sister Megan, the height of fashion sense, says it’s the rage of Hollywood for women to be strolling Rodeo Drive with their multi-cultural adopted babies in a designer sling, a la Angelie Jolie I suppose. Considering the costs of international adoption, and the fad of international humanitarianism, I can see how a foreign born child is taking the place of a little dog as the ultimate accessory.
Out in the village, I suppose the fashions started growing on me the same way the ridiculous hip hop and gaudy fabrics eventually did, (which I feared would happen no matter how much I tried to keep it in perspective.) Puffy sleeves and muumuus are gorgeous on African woman. They are not appropriate for me. In my roundabout way, what I am trying to say is that, although I laugh at myself, I was less sold on the idea of having a baby and starting a family because of a warped sense of style, than a sense that all beautiful things are shared.
Eventually, when the two years were up, I would be making a decision about what I am going to do next. I wanted to be close to my family, I wanted to get a Masters in International Agriculture in Germany, I wanted to train as an Ayurvedic practitioner in India, I wanted to sail the Carribean and spend time salsa dancing and surfing on the islands, I wanted to become a Nurse Practitioner in Puerto Rico, I wanted to work in Public Health in Mozambique and learn Portuguese. I wanted a family. All of my whimsical life dreams are as varied and half ripened as a produce department in an American supermarket. (It can be argued that a benefit of my veritable marketplace of dreams is that with so many, at any given time I am living one dream or another.)
So is my (ADD!) problem that I didn’t know what to do, or wanted to do several things? I had become enthusiastic for certain career paths, which inherently means to the sacrifice of others. Again, the point is, NONE of them had any meaning if I had to do it all alone.
I now have a little boy I carry with me everywhere, who scoots around in my belly and is a perfectly behaved angel. I also have a man in Africa, who envelopes me with a wonderful smelling, soft handed embrace and never wants to let me go. Or would if he could.
What really challenges me is not even the usual self-doubt about the past and future (if only I had done…!!!, etc.) but the millions of moments that pass by, unshared. To many moments that I want to experience enveloped in the soft hand of the man who loves me. It leaves me feeling that these are monumental precious moments that are passing me by unshared, and thus, life and love are being wasted. That is what makes me want to wail with the desperation of the bereaved. And I wonder, if I try to be content without relying on that space being filled, am I denying the pain that is the beauty of love? And if allow myself to feel it fully, am I ignoring the beauty in the reality that surrounds me, and thus denying life?

The power of touch.

2008-01-03T00:12:00.000-08:00

Dad and Laurie's pup Rascal. We love him. Can one imagine a baby being cuter than this guy?!!
Today I met with Jaunita. She will be my doula. Whatta resource is a doula, and how lucky I am to have found HER. I went to a holistic mom's meeting and she sat next to me, a lovely Peruvian woman, who left LA to live in Marin, and came back to LA to be close to the family. Her first child was with a man from Germany. She was in her eighth month, and the visa papers had still not processed, so he came to be with her on a tourist visa. Lucky Europeans. All this and with a plastic bag over her shoulder that she crocheted.
Collecting the plastic bags that littered the roadsides and creating a co-op of women to crochet them was long one of my dreams (one of many) while I was in Matombo, TZ.
Well, considering I may soon be spending a lot of time there, hoping to make myself useful, it is a great time to learn now! So I am very much looking forward to spending more time with my new friend.
I also went to work today. What a wonderful job I have! It certainly is nice to really enjoy this work, and feel that my clients really appreciate me. My business is growing and I am convinced that I could develop a good clientele if I could continue like this. But so much of the future is unknown.
How can I nest?
The money I am making is good for survival, but it is also optimal in regards to WHO I am serving, or massaging, lets say.
I never made it happen in Sonoma County, feeling that my heart just wasn't into following what my hands loved to do. What I enjoy now is working therapeutically with people who otherwise wouldn't know about, or be able to afford massage.
Now I work on people who come in with pain and/or physical injuries that are usually directly caused or compounded by instability at home, financially, or psychologically. I feel that what I can reflect as a non-judgemental listener, who responds merely by sensitive (or elbow deep! But still SENSITIVE) touch is an under valued therapy in the medical world. Not to replace talk therapy, but even that isn't able to provide what massage offers, which helps to release old patterns of holding, memories and negative reactions that are stored on a cellular level. The caring touch of massage also releases the more pleasant neurochemicals that flood the body in a new way. All of this, and if the client is simply able to lay down in my relaxing environment for 20 minutes in the day, it is has a big impact.
So, all in all, three cheers for massage,
and as I cruise more of the web, registering for classes I will soon take, and job offers in Africa, and daydream about all the ways I COULD have done this better, DIFFERENT, CLOSER to Tino,
I will allow myself to turn it off for the night, cuddle up between all my millions of pillows for a little meditation, and then sleep, basking in a satisfying day, and that there is more to come tomorrow.

Tanzania dreaming, on such a California day...

2007-12-30T22:22:00.000-08:00

I have felt toxic since last night. Went to a gorgeously swank place, the Hip Kitty for 'jazz and fondue' with my brother last night, and nothing to drink, but a good cry and felt hung over all night and day, with minimal movement from Elias.
It made me very depressed.
My son is perfect love in the core of my body.
My heart pains, my mind pains, my thighs grow fat,
but he is nothing but positive dreams, kicking gently to remind me.
And when I cannot feel him,
I feel fear.

Not being able to have solid, reliable communication, NOT TO HAVE TOUCH, with Augustino drives me mad. But I hold on tight, and relish the treasures.
Two nights ago, I had the delicious pleasure of hanging out with two of the sweetest boys who served as Peace Corps volunteers in Tanzania while I did.

Scott, Jacob and I

Every day devirginization. That has been my motto in the past, and it felt good to pass it on to a friend. First time for Tapas, first time for saki, (no I didn't partake) first time to touch a pregnant belly, and Elias immediately started kicking.
We sat through the Kite Runner, and although I cried so hard during the book I could barely make out the letters on the page, with his sweet hand on my belly, I was all aglow and not but a sniffle during the movie.
(Usually during most movies I am a silly sobbing wet sponge, so to not cry during Kite Runner was either Jacob's blessing, or due to the bad acting.)

Other friends I have heard from include a Zambian god who I met randomly at an ag. expo then re-met randomly on facebook, and a touching email from a South African comic genius that I grew to adore during my time in Morogoro, TZ (he was teaching at the University). He read my blog and I hope he doesn't mind if I post his encouraging words below.

"so. i met up with albert on his way through dc this week and during our catchup he mentions your mail. i said yes, i'd seen it. and then says, no did you REALLY see it. and told me to check out your blog and that you were pregnant. i rarely read blogs (i'm losing my relaxed african-ness and increasingly adopted the rushed anal western approach that puts work above all else) and so didn't make an exception for yours. but my utter disbelief at albert's words made me look at the blog with the usual emotions of pity or "tough lesson learned" aimed at your direction. and what do i find instead? probably one the most empowering courageous examples of motherhood i've probably ever seen. i know you were an empowered strong female figure - but in a single unfettered way that i could never imaging you married or with child. it seems you have taken that in your stride and make mothering look like it probably should be (and was intended).

so, i say wow. and congratulations. and not really sure what else except "you, go girl".

c
p.s. if you keep the good writing up, i'll keep reading your blog."

The blog itself is a touch of journal and a touch of 'keeping in touch.'

Some of the reasons why I wasn't blogging in Tanzania was that every time I felt I truly had a story to share, like riding a motorcycle (illegal!) to a remote vanilla village where I have since dreamed of buying property, or taking an unpermitted trip, doing whatever unconventional project that didn't follow regulations etc etc, I was in constant danger of my blog being used against me...hahaha or the US government.
So I began here with the goal of scathing honesty.
But there are still lines that can be crossed.
How personal can I be?
What is too revealing, inappropriate? How. much. can. I. say. of. other. people?
I guess these are guidelines that I myself set. There are no internet laws, and internet etiquette, not a class I have yet taken.

I am disappointed in myself. My flabby thighs and my wandering mind.
I have now spent more time apart from Tino pregnant than we ever had together as lovers. I am a California girl, with all the opportunities in the world. Those opportunities create certain expectations, and I had begun to adopt the easy expectations of life in a village, where falling in love and starting a family are as natural and uncomplicated as the daily chores. Will we be able to survive together? Will I resent him, because to him, this whole situation, having a white and wealthy wife is his dream come true, prayers answered, unfailingly better than anything else, with the opportunity to come to the US and study.
Back there, it was that simple for me too.
But now I find myself afraid of the very judgment and doubt that I try so hard to avoid.
With Tino, I put the questions and the doubt on hold to allow myself to fall in love.
There will never, I thought, be a relationship that I am not ANALYZING.
Why not take this one? So true, so pure. It has the essence of everything we need, the integrity, the joy, the chemistry, the magic, the memories, shared goals. All the other challenges, cultural, financial, geographical, educational, they will be the mountains that we love to climb together.
Instead of picking apart another California boy out of boredom,
or tearing down myself because I don't measure up,
I made a decision to settle with a man with whom I felt beautiful, loved, appreciated, and confident.
But towards the end, I was anxious to get home. I was anxious to be close to family again, to see my brother in love and married, to spend time with my mother, to have a smoothie in a to-go cup, to smell the Pacific Ocean, go swing dancing, and to tell the family my news. I was pregnant and I couldn't wait to be big. Everything would work out and I wanted it all to start NOW!
After 5 months of being in California (is that all!!!??? How short it really is!!)
I am finally round, but there seems to be nothing that is closer to being known.
Will my baby be healthy and safe? Will I be able to fulfill my own goals and provide for him, being a good wife and mother? I felt for so long that I had everything in the world to offer. Now I wonder if I am really just a bitter woman. Have I gotten pregnant out of boredom? Because I didn't feel like I had ever created anything else worth while in my life, I made a baby~ might as well try that.
Daily Devirginization.
Haven't had a baby yet...
DOUBT!

Doubt is the only hindrance.
This Buddhist saying is signed to the bottom of every email I send.
Doubt is MY only hindrance it should say. It has begun to fill me and I cannot even feel Elias.
I think it will be good for me to get back to Tanzania, even if that puts us 'behind.'
Maybe Tino could have gotten here and started school while I was home with the baby, and we would take evening walks as he got to know California, and I helped him perfect his English.
But the reality is, after birthing here alone (I meet with a great woman who I hope to hire as my doula on Tuesday. She crochets plastic purses, a hobby I long wanted to start in TZ, her name is Juanita. She is bilingual. maybe a water birth, maybe a hospital birth. What family will be there and who do I want??) Then I will have six, to hopefully no more than 8 weeks of nursing and taking walks with my baby, and I will be on a plane back to TZ. Parents may join me. Will they attend a Chagga wedding, or a traditional Tanzanian one, replete with pink balloons and tapestries, and no smiling from the bride and groom? Then family will leave and I will stay until Tino's visa clears. Will it months? A year? Will I get a good job and we will stay on? Will we live in a room in a village together, where it will be like the Peace Corps all over again, but this time, I will have a baby on my back, and no prestigious org backing me? Maybe it will be the perfect opportunity to start off motherhood, without the congestion of cars and pressure from the States. Time to allow my husband to take care of me. Allow me to spend time nursing my son in his infancy. Time to make quilts, have a garden, and engage in development projects that I loved, or was never able to accomplish while I was busy doing other things. Maybe I will have time to take distance courses, like Biology, or an Ayurvedic course, and volunteer in a clinic. Maybe I will be a doula.
I hope to come home with a deep bond with my family, and a sense of well used time. I hope to come back to a job as a Spanish teacher, and/or Health teacher, and be able to spend enough time with my son and my family. I hope to earn enough money to pay for Augustino's schooling, pay off my debts, and pay rent, put double paned windows in my mom's house and buy her a new fridge. I hope to work for several years and love it, while preparing myself to enter grad school when Tino is done. I hope to be able to travel in the summers and/or winters with him and the baby.
I hope to keep a healthy mind and body throughout, and go to school to be a Nurse Practitioner. I hope to collaborate with Tino as we work towards improving health in TZ. I hope to collaborate with the Universities, to improve health education in TZ.
I hope to have some land and collaborate with others to offer a refuge for the sick and dying and their families. Here they would learn to connect to one another, to better take care of themselves and each other, to heal emotionally and make the transition peacefully to a better life or to death. I hope that this land will be able to serve the needs of farmers who can improve their lives, health care workers who can be better trained, foreign students who are looking for innovation and inspiration, healers who are looking for a new way to use their talents, volunteers and tourists who are looking for a way to be with people, and AID organizations who are looking for grassroots projects that work. That or travel the world with my family working on various health projects. Live in Cuba and Mozambique.
Most of all, I hope for satisfaction with myself.
I hope for true love and mutual admiration in my family.
I hope that the distance I feel between my brother and I can be bridged, and a loving relationship will develop with my sister in law.
I hope to not live life with a chip on my shoulder, because I am pissed off that I am not good enough.
I hope to be satisfied with who I am enough that I can be excited about the rest of the world, and not afraid of it.

Now, able to have avoided the scathing truths, I feel satisfied for the night.

Blessings and Happy New Year.

Holidays Happen

2007-12-26T21:53:00.000-08:00

With the addition of my sister-in-law's family, there are more dinners to prepare, and more plates to put down. Stressful, not for me, but I did wake up on the 26th feeling like I was on vacation. Here are some photos from our days of Christmas...

The family in Claremont...

Two Santas,
Two Elves,
Children who got coal...

in the stockings hung from the chimney with care.

Hoping my family will soon be here.

New nephew Dylan

And that we will fit in with the rest of my wonderful family, where mothers and daughters are best friends.

Sister Lisa and her beautiful daughter Taylor.

Happy Kwanzaa!

2007-12-26T01:31:00.000-08:00

I had to investigate what the hell Kwanza was all about, this Swahili word that I identify with, and for which wrote a tongue-in-cheek greeting card last holiday season. I am not ashamed to say, I had no idea whence this holiday came.
It was like the realization of the celebration of Cinco de Mayo. There I was, 17, living in Puebla, Mexico, where the May 5th war had been bravely fought, and lost against the invading French colonizers. In a land with so many holidays, and excuses for a party, is was virtually ignored. Day of the Student was a bigger deal.
Being whitie, living in Orange County and then Sonoma County,
Whitie, whitie, whitie.
I hadn’t a clue what was being referred to in our efforts at PC holiday greetings that attempt to include all religious (Happy Chanakah!), cultural (Happy New Year!) and seasonal (Happy Winter Break!) holidays. Luckily for Capitalist Christian America, Eid al Fetir, (the Islamic holiday following Ramadan) is always a couple of weeks earlier than it was last year, (since ours is the Gregorian solar calendar rather than the Islamic lunar one, thanks Wikipedia!) and too complicated to recognize.
So, getting into the holiday spirit, and wanting to understand a little more about American culture (I will have to know how to answer Tino’s questions!! And he surely will be curious about a holiday whose daily greeting is Habari gani?! Swahili for What’s up?) I looked into it a little bit. Anyone can google Kwanzaa like I did and get the story, the point is, that although it is a holiday that was invented by a single man, a Long Beach State Professor in 1966, and celebrates African-American culture (thus the two A’s at the end of the word, instead of the correctly written one,) now that Tino and Elias are part of the family, I can see myself celebrating it. Actually, I feel thankful for it. Sure I subscribe to the basic tenents, which I’ve posted below. But I also appreciate the fact that we can continue a tradition together that acknowledges our diversity, and how, somehow, the Swahili culture is alive and appreciated as part of an alive and appreciated culture of being Black in America.
I sometimes do fear that I will be able to raise a boy that will feel at home in two worlds. The goal is not for him to feel at home in Tanzania and the United States. That, I think, would leave one with the isolation that a Chicano relates to, neither here nor there. Rather, it is to focus on being a citizen of the world, and unique and crucial part of the Universe. Neither better nor worse than those who grow from Kindergarten to High School with the same group of kids.
I always wanted something different for myself, which is part of why I loved going to live in Mexico for a year at age 16. But it is also a way of life that I have always hoped for, for myself and for my children. Never have the wise words of those who regard stability and fences shaken my differing desire.

So, let us light our candles, whatever the reason, ‘tis the season.
Copied directly from Wikipedia, because its an easy format with good translations of the tenents.
Kwanzaa celebrates what its founder called "The Seven Principles of Kwanzaa", or Nguzo Saba (originally Nguzu Saba - "The Seven Principles of Blackness"), which Karenga said "is a communitarian African philosophy" consisting of what Karenga called "the best of African thought and practice in constant exchange with the world." These seven principles comprise Kawaida, a Swahili term for tradition and reason. Each of the seven days of Kwanzaa is dedicated to one of the following principles, as follows:

* Umoja (Unity) To strive for and to maintain unity in the family, community, nation and race.
* Kujichagulia (Self-Determination) To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves.
* Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility) To build and maintain our community together and make our brothers' and sisters' problems our problems and to solve them together.
* Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics) To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to profit from them together.
* Nia (Purpose) To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
* Kuumba (Creativity) To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.
* Imani (Faith) To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.

(Looking at Ujamaa, the term for the socialist villages that Tanz. Pres. Nyerere enforced when he came to power, it is a highly controversial concept, especially to a western mind. But I will say, that although I was a bit struck at the ‘our own stores’ bit, sounding like a Black community excluding itself, rather than empowering itself, it is just the concept of economy that I truly love and have lived for, forever. Dedicating many years to Community Supported Agriculture and finding a beautiful town, only that which offers its townspeople the diversity and character of shops and restaurants that aren’t AnyStripMall from Anytown, USA.)

Imani was an alternate Swahili name suggested to me for Elias. It is beautiful, who knows, after all this, maybe Tino and I will change our minds at the last minute.

Elias is Pro-Choice!

2007-12-16T23:48:00.000-08:00

To begin, an old photograph of mom, dad, uncle Gary, brother and me, chubs in my mom's arms. Isn't she lovely and petite? She had me at 31, only 14 months apart from my brother.

What a great week, connecting with old friends and new.
It is really amazing what a charge of energy and hope it can be. When I start to think of who to acknowledge, the list goes on and on.
My inquietude of last week has been resolved (for the day!!)
Tomorrow I will make an be in touch with my Congressional representatives in the last shot at sending in a rushing the visa application due to my pregnant circumstances.
Because they are now processing applications that were received last April, there is not another reason to wait around here in the US for 9+ months in order to reunite the family. Therefore, 6 weeks after baby Elias is born, if Tino still has no visa, we go see daddy! All family members who can will join Elias and I for the long trip, and we will arrive to meet up with the other half of the family.
My situation does make meeting difficult,
but holidays will possibly be easier!

I also talked to Tino for awhile today, which was so nice.
We actually talked about his penis and I felt tingly all over ;-)
But it wasn't a sex skype! Unfortunately not...
but we talked about his opinions on circumcision for our son.
He said that basically, it was Elias's choice.
(I live in a constant state of Elias's choice right now. He is very helpful with everything. Should I have a molten chocolate cake Elias? A little bit of wine?
Take a walk? Do a cartwheel? He is down for everything, this one! And well! I am obliged to follow his every whim)
Tino himself did not get circumcised until he was in 4th grade.
He gave three reasons for why he chose to.
1.) Usafi (cleanliness. Say no more, number two?)
2.) Penetration. (Here I laugh, ask how he knew and we move right on to
3.) Utamaduni (cultural influence. The most powerful argument for anyone, especially a fourth grader. And when will Elias be given the decision, and what culture will he be basing his decision on? Maybe, for his fourth grade sake, we will leave that post off when the time comes. Maybe not, but either way, I am happy for now and...
yep, so is he!)

Until the waterfall

2007-12-14T14:43:00.000-08:00

What do I do with my days?
I spend a lot of time on hold. I now have my Congresspeople on my side, who will try to help advocate for me to expedite my visa.
But I am still feeling a sense of wrongness, in my body, in my heart, and more and more often, in my head, that, as the final days approach where getting on an airplane will be possible, I should get on a plane and be reunited with Tino.
I have the freedom to travel. He does not. It is my attachment to the safety and security that we
well, that we like to feel is around us when we are in a place. The US has better health care than TZ. Period. I am covered here. But I can still have a baby there. It is done everyday, and I am not afraid.
It amazes me how much time has passed since this video was recorded. My thoughts are there, so here is a little clip for all the world.

The other day I read an article about a man who started journaling the first year of his son's life, 18 years later, when his son was moving off to college, he found that he still could not stop. With every change, with every stage of growth, and wit from his son, he felt the need to memorialize it. I suppose this blog could turn out that way.
And from THAT perspective, there is a lot of editing to do!
Actually, when I thought about what I write, and who it is for, I realized that while it is principally for myself, for my own processing, I want to give the boy a good love story about his parents.
And my efforts to be very practical and follow the rules, endure life and do the right thing have not yielded one blog about my absolute adoration for my fiance. Fiance itself being a word only used in reference to visa applications.
That and I am not romantic.

Last night, I drove out to the old and lovely town of Pasadena, for a night of swing dancing. Every Thursday night, all ages get together for what must be one of the biggest swing parties in the area. Last night was 20bucks as opposed to the usual 7 I had in my pocket. It was a holiday party. I am getting a big belly, but felt good, felt I looked good (new clothes, new hair-do) and was torn between going to get out the extra money for the show or go home. I don't really know people in there, but I know you meet up, dance, get some exercise...
Still, a slight wave of wanting my man by my side came over me. A slight wave of feeling like a freak walking in to such a social event, on such a social holiday, along and pregnant made me wince. I left.
I had what to go home to? Decorating a Christmas tree. The only time it will be seen will be on my birthday, by my brother's family who is coming. Half-heartedly, and still feeling quite alone, I put things on the tree until I broke. I left the house, wailing. I walked to the mountains, and the more I cried, the more I cried.
The levee broke. It was fabulous and it scared me. I can be a very quite woman. I feared that the loudest and strongest that Baby Elias would hear his mother before he was born was crying. Not laughing or singing, but wailing.
How will that affect him?
What character will he have?
Will the fact that I have been unsettled make him as ADD as I am?
Will he be as happy and smiley as his father?

Thank god for herbal medicines and friends, there whenever you need them.
I realized that I have been maybe a little too complacent in my efforts to remain peaceful, grateful and strong. I distract myself by going dancing. That was not my reality. My reality is that the whole of three, my family, is divided, and it aches.
I have chosen my challenges, and I believe they make up for a beautiful, fulfilling life and will lead to more and more of the same.
But it is my life and I must continue to chose the best course of action, or the one that feels right.
God help me make good decisions.

Work is Love Made Visible

2007-12-09T20:34:00.000-08:00

These are the types of birthing images I was really looking for. (as opposed to the Brittany Spears statue posted earlier, tho I am glad I that one too.) Thank you to the friend who introduced me the artist's work today. The artist is Mara Friedman.
They are images of the first three chakras. Those areas of the body which are highly charged and in need of strengthening while relaxing, listening to while directing postively.

This weekend was filled with:
Beautiful weather
Trying to figure out a webcam.
Delicious Vietnamese food and new clothes for Christmas.
Feelings of helplessness and dissapointment that baby daddy couldn't find a working webcam in all of Arusha. (For an accurate description of Arusha, read Tait Davidson's blog who is living there for her third year Peace Corps volunteership.)
A lovely two hour massage from a lovely new friend in Huntington Beach.
Missing out on sailing under the clearest blue sky in Southern California's recent memory.
Driving home with an exquisite clear sky view of the snow capped San Gabriel mountains the whole way, growing larger and brighter as I neared home.

Today's horoscope in the Times (thanks mom!) read:
Money is attached to projects that are progressive and pioneering. Luck focuses on new friends, foreign correspondence and Internet journeys.

Is that so?

In any and every case, I raise my white fists to the rugged white mountains before me, and cry, from the depths of my muladhara chakra,
"TUPES!"

and plan for my next progressive project contribution, no commonplace thing, but one
which, to paraphrase Jack Keroac, will 'burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding' like stars within my solar plexus.

And because,

"Work is Love Made Visible."- Kahlil Gibran

Ooh, sorry, I gotta work. Can we reschedule?

2007-12-03T23:39:00.000-08:00

I got a job! The principal of Servite High School, and old rival of my alma matter (as if I give a flying fig or even know what that means.) They want me as a long-term substitute for Spanish III!! Impressed with my resume, he told me that the position was filling in for a teacher who was going on maternity leave at the end of February. Funny. That would be MY maternity leave. If I were to have a job. Never mind.

Oh, I do have a job! I go hired again today as a waitress at a local happening restaurant. Then I warned them of my pregnancy, and eyes diverted. Well, not exactly. The poor assistant manager was still nodding eagerly, knowing that she didn’t have enough help to do the schedule, and what with all the requests for Christmas breaks…. While the owner, who came out in her chef coat and a walker, told me that this was mighty strenuous work for someone in my condition. I thought to say the same to her, but instead, left. Who knows, maybe they find themselves desperate for my extensive food knowledge, restaurant experience, elegance, poise, and good looks.

Ok, so that’s not really a job I GOT either. But I DID get a job! I start tomorrow, working as a massage therapist in a Chiropractic Office. I am actually really excited about being their official massage therapist, with a room that I will be sprucing up a bit before I start, and then can use at my convenience. Meaning, that I can now advertise down here as a massage therapist, working in a respectable clinic, with what seems like a great team, who worries none about their clients becoming my clients. In fact, it is good PR all around.

So today I was called about a Site Coordinator position for a non-profit tutor/after-school program. $33,000/year, benefits, great experience.

And I am about to have a baby, and the teaching positions, and real work, will come when I am ready.

Birthing Partners...

2007-12-03T23:38:00.000-08:00

I finally met my doctor, and I chose my hospital. The hospital is right down the street, is small, has lovely birthing rooms, and the halls are decorated with antique baby clothes, which I love. That and at the maternity tour, I won the raffle for the lion baby shoes, which I wanted, and when it comes down to it, there isn't a whole lot more to base the decision on!!
The doctor has shaved his mustache from the photos I saw of him. Which is a good thing for me. He shook my hand warmly and took time to listen to me cry even when I did not have an appointment with him. He offered to write a letter to the Department of Homeland Security to tell them how much Tino's absence is stressing me out, and could they please hurry up the process and get him here before I give birth??
I don't have a lot of hope in the letter, exactly, because DHS says they only consider expediting applications for immigrant visas for life or death situations. And have forgotten that birth is life. Why do we say life or death if we only mean death? Why do people who are coming here to stay get bumped to the back of the line?

In the meantime, I continue to lay the foundations for the birth.
One of those is exactly that, having a strong foundation. Staying healthy and fit for the endurance challenge of a lifetime (shame I didn’t do that Kilimanjaro marathon. Some other time I am sure!) Doing exercises to improve muscle tone, kegels and squats, and attempting to connect ever more fully with my meditation, and thus, with my body’s sensations, without the needing to react to them, or run from them. Mediation in the past has enabled me to transfer the interpretation of an intense pain, the intense pain of sitting in one position for hours on end, into simply a strong sensation that is a positive thing, because it focuses my awareness, and signifies a release, and moving through, as I remind myself that nothing is permanent.

Another thing that I have visualized is WHO to be birthing WITH.
If I were to have it my way, who would I be with?
Who had the right to be there?
For me, close female mothers would be the optimal choice. This is a female thing. Powerfully so. When it comes to who will be able to assuage my fears, a woman who has been there seems to me to be the most likely answer. Reinforcing the female ring of support, rather than competition, makes sense to me.
Maybe it was influenced by being in Tanzania for so long, but there are certain female roles which I am thankful for. I am thankful to be a woman and to be able to give birth, and I want to experience that with other women who can do the same. This to me is powerful.

Thankfully, I have some amazing friends. I know of at least three women who would be willing to be on a plane and fly down to southern California to be there for me during my birth. The difficulty being that this is not necessarily something that can be planned. No matter how great some folks are at manifesting their vision “I will be laboring for 8 hours, get on plane now and you will make it!”
These women would be thoughtful and powerful and help me to own a birth plan, own my body, and ‘Stand and Deliver’ with dignity when the time came.
If they could make it on time.

Now there is also the option of Tino. If he were here…
I would have loved to have taken the hospital tour with him, he would have been so highly impressed with the hospital, (not to mention so proud to walk around with me in there as an expecting couple!) He loves the idea of supporting me, and always sends me notes about how he wishes he could be massaging me, holding my belly and holding my hand.
But that he is not exactly sure how he can be supporting me.
He can’t do any more than he is doing.
And if he were here to fulfill his wishes, he could not be a better support person, nor a better doula.
He is a sensitive guy, who wants to study nursing, and the more I thought about it, I could see him becoming a nurse mid-wife.
I was picturing him laboring with me through my birth. Would we be traveling from a distant village to a hospital? Would we be close? How would the doctors and nurses there perceive this man who is holding me, supporting me, and massaging me through labor?

To tell you the truth, I initially thought that all this male in lieu of female support is a little unnatural. That we are putting so much pressure on the male partner to understand something that he will never understand, while instead we could be bonding with the other mothers. Bonding with the partner came when we made the baby, are pregnant together planning for the baby, and ultimately, raising the child together. But the chance to bond with our female support team is during the birthing process itself.
However, when I think of male/female relations in Tanzania, not just within the birthing process, but within the marriage relationship and co-parenting, I reconsider what it might mean to have men be more involved in the birth of their children.
Sure, it is a concept that is far from its time there. However, when a man comes to realize that his presence is helpful, and even necessary, and he learns how to respect himself in the context of the family. To support the woman and to love her in order to help her, and to become excited about being a father and forming a family, this is the change that brought about father involvement in the birthing room in the 1970’s. This is a change that developed with the desire of a man to more fully participate in the family dynamics. This may be the sort of change that needs to develop in Tanzania.
Tino would be a great example of that.

Tanzania in the news...

2007-12-01T22:00:00.000-08:00

Students enter for World AIDS Day Matombo, 2006

Tino is too busy to call me because he is organizing events for World AIDS Day. There is no doubt that with all the money backing HIV/AIDS prevention education, WAD has come to be the biggest, most widely and lavishly celebrated holiday in the country.
I am very proud that he is spearheading the activities to acknowledge this day for the Tanzanian Farmers' Network (MVIWATA, who he works for) in his area. It is an important day and an opportunity to utilize extra dollars and attention to continue the endless discussion on behavior change that must ensue in order to experience, some degree of changed behavior. Mama Laurie told me about a PBS special AIDS Day report, focusing on Tanzania and Rwanda. I was pleased to see that this report likened the mountainous efforts towards behavior change programs (largely funded by US's PEPFAR, as mentioned in earlier blogs) to similar efforts here in the States. One never has to look far to find reports on obesity in America, the importance of diet and exercise, etc. But behaviors have changed, and smoking is down in America, (largely due to luxury taxes and the inconvenience of smoking being prohibited just about everywhere.) HIV infection rates have stayed under 1%, and I think that condoms have become accepted as what smart and responsible people do. The LA Times even reported that, wow, for the first time in several years, obesity rates have not risen. No, they have just plateaued. Just like someone putting on unhealthy weight might.
If anyone read the blog that I tried to create this time last year, they might remember that I too am guilty of spending lavish amounts of money to put on the event of a lifetime for a three day World AIDS Day extravaganza in my little village of Matombo. That day included HIV testing and counseling, Red Cross coming out and educating the public on the importance and safety of donating blood, the local health clinic making an appearance to inadvertently reiterate just how unhelpful they really are in the face of AIDS or just about anyone's health issues. Farmers groups came to show the projects that they have done on new crops, community groups came to show what resources are available, from Women's Rights Education, to micro-financing, to how to fix to the roads. Schools came and performed, local theater groups and mama's groups strutted their stuff, and it was all wrapped up with the King of Bongo Flava performing a free concert right there on a special stage we built at the primary school. In my front yard.
It was a great show of what money will do, not necessarily what people can do. It was a great show of what village leaders are capable of doing to make a few extra bucks.
What good came out of it? I found out about some amazing things that were going on in my area that I hadn't previously known about, and through this event, established a great working relationship with the amazing people making them happen.
The limelight fell on the area, testing was done, results were high (15% of women, men were below the national average, but the only ones who got tested were young high school students. Not the men who felt they were at risk), and word got out that Matombo, a district of 30+ villages and over 50,000 people living in the mountains on subsistance agriculture, had no services whatsoever to speak of.
I really don't feel so cynical about World AIDS Day, per se, but what frustrated me today was the fact that this is the only news that is available about the entire country. Maybe I need to by watching more Al Jazeera online, but I have had a hell of a time finding news stories in Tanzania. Of course, finding good news stories about news in Tanzania was hard in Tanzania. Newspapers are poorly funded and poorly written.
Then again, so is this blog.

My surrogate son, Saidi, needed me to wire him some emergency money because his three little brother and sisters and himself were unable to return on the train he had bought tickets for. He blamed the pres. Kikwete to selling the railroad to the Indians, and now, instead of picking up people who have tickets, the train was already loaded with all sorts of goods, stuffed to the point the passengers that got on early in the trip where stiffled, and one infant suffocated to death.
I did find in the news that when Kikwete came into power, he transferred more of the ownership of the railroad to the Indian company that was helping to run it. The ownership went to 30% TZ/ 70% Indian Company. There were strikes in Dar because of this. But THAT IS ALL I COULD FIND. Saidi was trapped for a week. Every morning he said he went to try to get on the train but it was already full, and noone would refund his ticket.

These are the kind of stories I like to check out.
These are the kind of stories that need to be covered as well.
It is a funny time to be saying this as most of the time, I am simply overwhelmed with the amount of shit, and follow up stories, and "for more information, check out our website at www..."

And yet, with the same laugh/cry that I am experiencing about my own situation, about my own desperation, I am reminded, once again, how many aspects of the country are so so so far behind where they should and could be.

According to me. And Saidi.

Imagining birth...

2007-11-30T21:09:00.000-08:00

In imagining birth, and searching for stealable images of what I have not yet done myself (and don't imagine I will be taking pictures of, and certainly not posting!) I sought squatting and traditional birthing positions. This controverial statue from 2005, you may have already seen. It was actually one of the best depictions of what I am reading the midwifes propose for birthing positions, and delightfully went along with this comment summing up the general response to it:

"WTF? Who has a baby on all fours??? I'm sorry this is just fucking ridiculous. A bear-skinned rug, a nude Britney-looking girl, clay, pro-life??? What about the fuckin bear!! I can read into art just fine, and how this represents pro-life or anything is beyond me. Worthless."

:-) To continue...
When it comes to this whole back and forth that I have done half-heartedly about whether or not to return to Tanzania, and when,
What I really am putting off here is visualizing where to birth.
When I picture myself giving birth,
I have pictured myself rolling around on the birthing ball, walking around, and ultimately, squatting down as I hold onto some cloth ropes that have been hung from the ceiling. Or a tree ☺ At first, I though I would just hold onto one, but as I further envisioned it, I realized that with two loops of the sheets, I can sling my arms through to help relax, and even loop my body or legs through.
So when I went to Pomona Hospital on the maternity tour, (the one where I had to stop myself from asking any more questions, in order to get out of that painfully quiet and boring tour, and to stop looking like the annoying question asking hippie) I noticed that there were no beams on the ceiling, and no realistic place to attach a rope. When I asked if we could have the baby NOT on the bed, NOT lying down, she said yes, but seemed annoyed and didn’t offer any alternatives, or anecdotes.
I know my jerry rigged birthing fantasies sound crazy, but sheesh. So does an institutionalized supine position that has been proven over and over to be more painful and less helpful in the opening up process of the cervix.

Department of Homeland Security

2007-11-26T22:00:00.000-08:00

This dramatic image dates from a time of world war. A time when most Americans still understood that liberty, not security, is the source of opportunity, peace and prosperity. In today’s mad rush to hand over liberty in hopes of winning security, it is time for a reminder of America’s real strength and beauty.

When I look back on many aspects of this situation, one thing is for sure, I felt that whatever happened, things would work out, and we would all be, not just ok, but all the better for it.
I have laughed and cried a lot in the past couple of weeks.
Mostly I have cried.
The scariest part, I have started to cry alone.

Little by little, tidbits of information are being revealed. Little by little, I am becoming weakened.

Awhile back I thought about putting a poll on my blog.
To stay in the States or to go back to Tanzania to have my baby?

Then I dropped it.
Here I have health coverage of sorts. The US Department of Labor is covering my birth, (pregnancy in the Peace Corps was finally filed as a workers comp case.)
After that, I can sign onto Healthy Families, children's insurance for families below the poverty line, meaning the baby would have pediatric care until Tino gets here, and I can begin to work.
Until then, I use my time to clear my teaching credential, and get hired in September.
Even if he can't get here until then, I had reached a point emotionally where this was all part of our international struggle, and in the arms of family and friends, I would have a baby, nurse an infant, and try to be outdoors, active and happy as much as possible.

Splendid. In the meantime, I try to get over having taken so long to fruitlessly and fearfully investigate another means to get Tino here faster. The lawyer had said my best option was a fiancee visa, and it was impossible to say how long that would take.

So I processed it. I paid $455 to the Department of Homeland Security. A month passed with no check cashed, no news whatsoever. I began researching a student visa. Aha! It looks like it will be a cinch to get him accepted to the local Junior College, no he doesn't have to have his TOFEL after all, and with a little rearranging of parental bank accounts, we can make it look like there is plenty of money set aside for our Tanzanian friend Tino to come to the CA to stay with us and get a degree in nursing. No problem! The first year, at a JC, will simply be around $16,000. (!) I called the school and the DHS, and everyone said that he would probably be here before February. Great! Then I am thinking, I should cancel the fiancee visa petition, so that this case is tossed in the trash, I don't have to pay $455, and we don't present a conflicting story to our beloved protectors of Homeland Security.
Nope, the check was cashed the next day. But my case still rests with no accessibility to its status nor to those who will be deciding.
So, not only did I learn that, yes, I could have gotten him here faster and cheaper, and he would have been able to start school right away, but now that I am processing an immigrant visa and asked a bunch of questions, I am afraid to try my luck on a non immigrant visa. If I get caught processing both, that will be the end of... both.
Tino can come here quickly if he is a student and school is starting. DHS simply needs to be assured that he has financial support and that he will be going home once he is done (non immigrant.)
However, because our intention is marriage, we not only need to prove our love, but we need to prove financial stability again (here, not so easy, because I need to have an income, and signing up for welfare programs that leaches off the state, like Healthy Families is a mark against us.) One way to prove our dedication is to take a really really long time processing the visa. Sometimes, a premium processing time is allotted to those applicants who are in a life or death situation. Strangely, birth does not qualify here, not the fact that, were he to get here earlier, I could work earlier, and therefore, leach off the state less. Instead of a pro-family and economically more feasible solution to expedite his visa, they see that Tino would be coming here as another immigrant, possibly financially instable, and as we all know, we have got enough of THOSE here!

So, I am back to square one I suppose. Except the guy on the phone told me one YEAR is the likely processing time I am looking at.

Back to square one, but everyday, a little more defeated than yesterday. Now I know, once again, that I COULD have and SHOULD have done things differently, and that Tino might just be here far after my longest estimated time.

So today I cried as I served up the sweet potato gnocchi with pesto sauce tonight. I could barely stand all day I felt physically ill.
Luckily, I guess, I got a letter today as well that approved my pregnancy as a workers compensation case, and I get to make an other clinic appointment tomorrow.

If I hadn't heard that news, I probably would have been using this time to research plane tickets. LAX to DAR.

I still think I will stay, do what I can to take some classes I will eventually need for a clear credential. Try to stay happy and healthy, and have my baby here.
Six weeks after the birth, a passport will have been issued to my infant, and by seemingly by all my research, we will be ready to travel together. So if Tino is not here by then, I think that will be the best decision for us. To go.

Although, half of me wants to go now.

I am no more afraid to have my baby here than there.

I am just too defeated to have any real opinions on the matter anyway.
And I don't trust myself.

Thanksgiving

2007-11-26T21:43:00.001-08:00

It was so much fun. I am very grateful. I mean, just look at these beautiful people.
My dad, Laurie, myself, Jennifer, Marshall and my mom.

Skypescraper

2007-11-24T21:37:00.000-08:00

Skype, how fun. Allowing the family an opportunity to gather around a time delayed computer and listen to a conversation filled with delays in sentence formation and delays in comprehension. Yet, there is something exciting about the international connection with baby daddy, a handsome man who has my love and my endorsement but whom the parents’ve never met. Everyone put on your positive face and hold back in the name of civility! Lets go!
Ok I did. I had a go: 30 minutes into the conversation, my folks thought I had taken my face off in the other room to reveal a temperamental monster, an argumentative control freak. Not so 'civil.'
It’s true. I am a little emotional these days.

The distance and the unknown are driving me crazy.

Its true, I feel actually crazy right now.
Like I cannot turn off my mind and I cannot come to my senses. What does one do in this situation? Oh, there are many options.
Swimming in the cold Pacific Ocean- Was good, but surprisingly didn’t solve my situation. Talk to friends and family? Sometimes talking isn’t venting, it just makes me come up feeling exposed and incurable.
But, taking a passionate tone with Tino, now that felt good.
It is hard for me to take a sexy tone with him, I just wasn’t cut out for phone sex. Or maybe its just what I should try, but not with the folks in the next room, whispering about my tone.
So passion becomes a temper, drivenbyallthefrustrationofbeingaloneandfiguringoutpastpresentandfutureandtryingtodoitbyadeadline,andyouaresoinnocenttoallofit,anditjustmakesmewanttowringyourneck,and AAAAHHHH!
Release.
But mama said, and the Dalai Lama said, momentary satisfaction is not a good indicator of having done the right thing.
I used that Swahili tone that I promised myself, as I learned the language I would never use. It is the patronizing tone of a teacher to a student, or a government official to a peasant. It is a tone that you hear so often. It is a tone that I found myself using with my future husband, as I insisted that paying for Saidi to go boarding school was not something I considered logical.
I don’t want to set up a relationship that leads to me, LITTLE OLD ME, becoming a matriarchal controlling bitch.
Just to let you all know.
But Tino said, no problem, we love each other. He didn’t even notice that I was getting upset.
Is that a good match or a potential problem?
I guess everything can be characterized as such.

So my conversation gave me release, but not so much relief.

I still had the craziness.

Random shots of love

2007-11-13T22:41:00.000-08:00

All the help you can get

2007-11-08T01:39:00.000-08:00

Thanks to all of you,
I was feeling very silly and embarrassed, not only to be in this situation, but then to publish the depths of my desperation for all to see. Thanks for being positive supporters rather than shocked pity people.

If you all don’t mind, I just wanted to paste up a couple of my favorite responses. But I didn’t get official permission for this midnight whim, so again, sorry if I am braking internet etiquette.

ÿ Since you're into being an exhibitionist these days, you could get someone to Live-Cam the delivery and he could go to an Internet cafe and... maybe you already thought of that. :)

ÿ 5 minutes on your blog and i know two times as much more about you, your ideas and your dreams. it was about time. i'll comment a lot i guess.(-from an ex lover I have known for fifteen years.)

ÿ 1)ACCEPT ALL THE HELP YOU CAN GET w/o any guilt or worrying about "paying people back" (that was a big lesson I've learned this year). Anyone, especially family, who wants to offer you help and hospitality does it because they love you, and won't need anything in return (you can double-check that from the get-go to make sure there's not funky unsaid expectation). There are times when we are able to give, and other times when we are most able to receive. Both times are important and deserve their glory.

ÿ keep your awesome attitude up, you gave me some grins today.

You are a wonderful writer. I read the whole blog…Your posting on male circumcision was thought-provoking. I still not sure I understand why AIDS is a raging epidemic in Africa, but not in the US… (this article was linked:http://discovermagazine.com/2004/feb/why-aids-worse-in-africa)

YEAH!!! Thanks for challenging me on the circumcision/PEPFAR issue. (With different risk factors in the states, and a different parenting culture my child will ENDURE, I have not thought that considering circumcision is an issue…if I have a son. But maybe someone has other ideas I should evaluate. Maybe I should just focus on more pressing issues, like an income. Anyway, in an exercise my Italian friend calls a Sega Mentale (mental masturbation) I attach here some more research, perspectives, and responses to the pro circumcision outfit.

All the following italics are excerpts from the article link above.

MALE CIRCUMCISION AND HIV
For years researchers have puzzled over why most West African countries have lower HIV-infection rates than southern and East African countries. They thought it might have something to do with the Muslim religion, widely practiced in West Africa, which imposes restrictions on women’s sexual freedom. However, another likely factor is male circumcision, which is ritually practiced by Muslims and many others.
Several studies suggest that male circumcision protects both men and their sexual partners from HIV infection. This is not true of female circumcision, or female genital mutilation, which is extremely dangerous. In African countries where male circumcision is common, such as Senegal, Mali, Ghana, Benin, and the entire region of North Africa, HIV rates tend to be much lower than in countries such as Botswana, Malawi, and Swaziland. In countries with high rates of HIV, provinces and districts that have high rates of circumcision, such as Inhambane in Mozambique or Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, tend to have lower HIV rates. Two African tribes with very high HIV-infection rates are the Zulu of South Africa and the Tswana of Botswana. Before colonial times, men in both tribes underwent circumcision rituals during adolescence. But when King Shaka united the Zulu tribe in the 1820s, he abolished the ritual, and when Christian missionaries settled in with the Tswana in the late 19th century, they declared circumcision a barbaric practice.
Circumcision removes mucosal tissue and cell types in the foreskin that contain special “receptors” for HIV. Some estimates suggest that circumcision may cut a man’s risk of contracting HIV by 70 percent. If true, this would mean that male circumcision may prove more effective than any of the HIV vaccines undergoing clinical trials. It would also be much cheaper, carry few side effects, and require no booster shots. Randomized, controlled trials of circumcision for HIV prevention are under way in South Africa, Kenya, and Uganda, and the results should be known within three years. —H. E.

So snip it! This is my immediate reaction. 70% risk reduction, cheaper, few side effects and require no booster shots! Lets do what we can!!
Although condoms are 90% risk reduction (10% being lost to human error) it is hard to get folks to actually USE the condoms, and so the investment in circumcision, if estimated risk reduction is actually 70%, makes sense.
But guess what, I agree with Bush that the focus should be on reducing the number of partners.
Oh how shocking to say!!
I am so conservative! In the name of women’s rights, and better economics, this approach does more than to simply focus on barrier methods (circumcision being counted as such here because removal of the extra mucosal membrane creates a barrier of more resistant skin.)
I don’t mean to say that I am opposed to male circumcision as a preventative action for HIV infection.
What I unfortunately can’t find online (but surely it is out there) is an analysis of the cost difference between PEPFAR’s funding for condom use is vs. funding for circumcision education and procedures.
The issue is that family planning…that’s so politically correct, I mean WOMEN’S health clinics are not getting funding because the clinic chooses to serve (the) prostitutes (that the men are visiting.)

And check out these words in that article:
Half the Thai men in Morris’s survey (an epidemiologist trying to figure out the right mathematical equation to explain the reality of the AIDS epidemic.) said that they had sex with prostitutes but rarely the same one twice. On average they saw five prostitutes each year. Although many Thai prostitutes are HIV-positive, the men’s risk of infection was relatively low because Thai men generally had sex with each one only once. (Oh is THAT why? My, how oversimplified)
The likelihood of contracting the virus during a single sexual act is believed to be quite low, between 1 in 100 and 1 in 1,000. (Notice-no differentiation between m/f) So if an HIV-positive man has sex once with hundreds of different uninfected people, chances are he will infect only one of them. (Leading to this faulty reasoning.)
Anti-AIDS campaigns warn against contact with prostitutes, but Morris says simultaneous long-term relationships are far more dangerous.
I am all for facts above morals, but I don’t believe what is being presented here is hard facts.
What is being presented is a faulty reasoning. Thai men generally had sex with many prostitutes only once. His rate of GETTING infected does not relate to his rate of INFECTING OTHERS, because of the biological differences between male/female genitalia. (as you mentioned)
What is being concluded is that sex with prostitutes isn’t necessarily dangerous, it is long term relationships that are.
Again, we are investigating and talking about this backwards. In the name of HIV prevention, we are giving men yet another tool to control sex. They have Choice, Condoms, and Circumcision. While women are still the ones more likely to engage in a long term simultaneous sexual relationship in order to keep her family fed, because the man is out using these tools, and his larger income, with the expert endorsed low-risk prostitutes, who they themselves are receiving no US funded intervention. Wow. While women, in my experience, are the ones to go to the health clinics where the education programs are, or the ones willing to organize themselves and learn about community health when there is no profit motive other than…Health. The men have the tools, but are not the ones who are receiving training on the dangers of promiscuous behavior, the importance of communication and partnership in marriage, etc. (Another project that I was proud to have attempted in PC, and worked with Tino on) They get these billboard messages, and then get free condoms, free circumcision, cheap women, and control in the bedroom at home.
Little about this AIDS epidemic has really changed anything in development. Wheels are spinning to find the most effective solution, when of course it is a blend of all that we can do. Like development, HIV/AIDS prevention is still fundamentally about creating equal rights and economic opportunities. Yet, this time around, what if our financial focus was to create dialogue and counseling groups for men for behavior change? Funding another tool like circumcision, which puts them more biologically in advantageous has its pros and cons.

Here are some more fun tid bits:

Some estimates suggest that a person who has been recently infected with HIV may be as much as 100 times more likely to transmit the virus to a partner than someone who has been infected for a long time. African-style simultaneous long-term relationships may therefore be even riskier than Morris’s models assume. If one member of a Ugandan sexual network becomes HIV-positive, the virus will spread very quickly to all other members of the network in a very short time.

Actually, this seems to prove to me why the Thai model of multiple partners in a prostitution network is more at risk, yet the infections rates are so low.

One thing that was not mentioned in this article on why infection rate was so high in Africa comparatively was the lack of health services, including testing, and the lack of hope get tested and to make a plan to live HIV-free.

The following bar interview was spot-on with what I found in TZ about male perspective on female loyalty:

I asked him how many girlfriends he had, and he told me he had three, one real girlfriend and two secret girlfriends. He had been seeing all three for at least two years. He used condoms with the secret girlfriends but not with the real one. How many secret boyfriends do those secret girlfriends have? I asked. He said he didn’t know, but you can never trust women, and that’s why he used condoms. And the real girlfriend? “As I said, you never know with women, but if she has other partners, I hope she uses condoms with them.”
Several other men I met had similar sexual arrangements. Most women I spoke to denied that they had partners other than their husbands or fiancés, but the men frankly assumed that women conducted their affairs much as they themselves did.

Meanwhile, a woman may draw on more than one man to help pay her family’s bills.
It is a twisted relationship between fear of betrayal, and fear of scarcity, leading to betrayal and scarcity.
And the most devastating truth across Sub-Saharan Africa…
Girls are particularly vulnerable. Roughly equal numbers of men and women in Botswana are HIV-positive, but the HIV rate is much higher among teenage girls than among teenage boys, although boys and girls become sexually active at roughly the same age. A study in 2001 found that 20 percent of girls in one region of Botswana had been asked by their teachers to have sex; half said they accepted, fearing lower grades if they said no.

Rose tinted shades...

2007-11-07T23:01:00.000-08:00

Jason Horn, of dentaldingrepair. Globe trotting surfer dentist comedian.
These guys look too cool. You on the other hand Jason, look like you have a secret plan for pulling their teeth out.
My my.

Jason went to Tanzania in 2004, a year before I went, with a volunteer group of dentists who did great work in two weeks. He came back suprised at the two years and general inefficiency of Peace Corps. That and that the office is full security, unmarked, with all cars going through bomb inspection upon entry.
If we weren't a bunch of pothead spies, that might be overboard.

How to write about Africa

2007-11-06T23:51:00.001-08:00

By, Binyavanga Wainaina

Some tips: sunsets and starvation are good

Always use the word 'Africa' or 'Darkness' or 'Safari' in your title. Subtitles may include the words 'Zanzibar', 'Masai', 'Zulu', 'Zambezi', 'Congo', 'Nile', 'Big', 'Sky', 'Shadow', 'Drum', 'Sun' or 'Bygone'. Also useful are words such as 'Guerrillas', 'Timeless', 'Primordial' and 'Tribal'. Note that 'People' means Africans who are not black, while 'The People' means black Africans.

Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel Prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these. If you must include an African, make sure you get one in Masai or Zulu or Dogon dress.

In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don't get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn't care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular.

Make sure you show how Africans have music and rhythm deep in their souls, and eat things no other humans eat. Do not mention rice and beef and wheat; monkey-brain is an African's cuisine of choice, along with goat, snake, worms and grubs and all manner of game meat. Make sure you show that you are able to eat such food without flinching, and describe how you learn to enjoy it—because you care.

Taboo subjects: ordinary domestic scenes, love between Africans (unless a death is involved), references to African writers or intellectuals, mention of school-going children who are not suffering from yaws or Ebola fever or female genital mutilation.

Throughout the book, adopt a sotto voice, in conspiracy with the reader, and a sad I-expected-so-much tone. Establish early on that your liberalism is impeccable, and mention near the beginning how much you love Africa, how you fell in love with the place and can't live without her. Africa is the only continent you can love—take advantage of this. If you are a man, thrust yourself into her warm virgin forests. If you are a woman, treat Africa as a man who wears a bush jacket and disappears off into the sunset. Africa is to be pitied, worshipped or dominated. Whichever angle you take, be sure to leave the strong impression that without your intervention and your important book, Africa is doomed.

Your African characters may include naked warriors, loyal servants, diviners and seers, ancient wise men living in hermitic splendour. Or corrupt politicians, inept polygamous travel-guides, and prostitutes you have slept with. The Loyal Servant always behaves like a seven-year-old and needs a firm hand; he is scared of snakes, good with children, and always involving you in his complex domestic dramas. The Ancient Wise Man always comes from a noble tribe (not the money-grubbing tribes like the Gikuyu, the Igbo or the Shona). He has rheumy eyes and is close to the Earth. The Modern African is a fat man who steals and works in the visa office, refusing to give work permits to qualified Westerners who really care about Africa. He is an enemy of development, always using his government job to make it difficult for pragmatic and good-hearted expats to set up NGOs or Legal Conservation Areas. Or he is an Oxford-educated intellectual turned serial-killing politician in a Savile Row suit. He is a cannibal who likes Cristal champagne, and his mother is a rich witch-doctor who really runs the country.

Among your characters you must always include The Starving African, who wanders the refugee camp nearly naked, and waits for the benevolence of the West. Her children have flies on their eyelids and pot bellies, and her breasts are flat and empty. She must look utterly helpless. She can have no past, no history; such diversions ruin the dramatic moment. Moans are good. She must never say anything about herself in the dialogue except to speak of her (unspeakable) suffering. Also be sure to include a warm and motherly woman who has a rolling laugh and who is concerned for your well-being. Just call her Mama. Her children are all delinquent. These characters should buzz around your main hero, making him look good. Your hero can teach them, bathe them, feed them; he carries lots of babies and has seen Death. Your hero is you (if reportage), or a beautiful, tragic international celebrity/aristocrat who now cares for animals (if fiction).

Bad Western characters may include children of Tory cabinet ministers, Afrikaners, employees of the World Bank. When talking about exploitation by foreigners mention the Chinese and Indian traders. Blame the West for Africa's situation. But do not be too specific.

Broad brushstrokes throughout are good. Avoid having the African characters laugh, or struggle to educate their kids, or just make do in mundane circumstances. Have them illuminate something about Europe or America in Africa. African characters should be colourful, exotic, larger than life—but empty inside, with no dialogue, no conflicts or resolutions in their stories, no depth or quirks to confuse the cause.

Describe, in detail, naked breasts (young, old, conservative, recently raped, big, small) or mutilated genitals, or enhanced genitals. Or any kind of genitals. And dead bodies. Or, better, naked dead bodies. And especially rotting naked dead bodies. Remember, any work you submit in which people look filthy and miserable will be referred to as the 'real Africa', and you want that on your dust jacket. Do not feel queasy about this: you are trying to help them to get aid from the West. The biggest taboo in writing about Africa is to describe or show dead or suffering white people.

Animals, on the other hand, must be treated as well rounded, complex characters. They speak (or grunt while tossing their manes proudly) and have names, ambitions and desires. They also have family values: see how lions teach their children? Elephants are caring, and are good feminists or dignified patriarchs. So are gorillas. Never, ever say anything negative about an elephant or a gorilla. Elephants may attack people's property, destroy their crops, and even kill them. Always take the side of the elephant. Big cats have public-school accents. Hyenas are fair game and have vaguely Middle Eastern accents. Any short Africans who live in the jungle or desert may be portrayed with good humour (unless they are in conflict with an elephant or chimpanzee or gorilla, in which case they are pure evil).

After celebrity activists and aid workers, conservationists are Africa's most important people. Do not offend them. You need them to invite you to their 30,000-acre game ranch or 'conservation area', and this is the only way you will get to interview the celebrity activist. Often a book cover with a heroic-looking conservationist on it works magic for sales. Anybody white, tanned and wearing khaki who once had a pet antelope or a farm is a conservationist, one who is preserving Africa's rich heritage. When interviewing him or her, do not ask how much funding they have; do not ask how much money they make off their game. Never ask how much they pay their employees.

Readers will be put off if you don't mention the light in Africa. And sunsets, the African sunset is a must. It is always big and red. There is always a big sky. Wide empty spaces and game are critical—Africa is the Land of Wide Empty Spaces. When writing about the plight of flora and fauna, make sure you mention that Africa is overpopulated. When your main character is in a desert or jungle living with indigenous peoples (anybody short) it is okay to mention that Africa has been severely depopulated by Aids and War (use caps).

You'll also need a nightclub called Tropicana, where mercenaries, evil nouveau riche Africans and prostitutes and guerrillas and expats hang out.

Always end your book with Nelson Mandela saying something about rainbows or renaissances. Because you care.

(and props to my amazing dada Diana for sending me this funny example of why I started blogging AFTER I returned from Africa.)
Diana supplied Quote:
--
"Africa has always had things that other people wanted,
thought that they couldn't live without,
and didn't want to pay for."
-John Henrik Clarke-

No problem!!!

2007-11-06T22:36:00.000-08:00

Gorgeous photo props to Eric Peterson, RPCV TZ

Here is my situation:
1.) I am broke. No, in debt.
2.) I am unemployed.
3.) I am single
4.) I am pregnant.
5.) I have no health insurance.

Today, I spent $455.00 on a fiancee visa, $75.00 to get fingerprinted (in hopes of resolving the unemployment catch), $400.00 to get my car fixed (didn't start on my way out to job hunt yesterday), and paid off a $635.00 phone bill.

Do I sound like white trash? Sure, ok, whatever. All this goes on top of an incomeless bank account of zero, and a loan repayment of nearly $5,000.00.

As Borat would say, Welcome back to the US and A!
Ah, the good old days in Africa, where at $200.00, I was livin' large and supporting three, and traveling, and giving gifts. (I was the wealthy one. How can you not take your grandpa to the hospital, pay $5 for a family's health insurance for a year, and here and there for meds or whatever.

Truth be told, I am not complaining here.

There couldn't be many in the state of California who would envy that list. (Though, sadly some might...)

Again, I say all of this with a laugh. It is the truth! And to enter it in on the internet is certainly not a way to get dates or make friends. I did google a similar string of words however in a quest to find health care, and I found some great websites and services. But they were all in the UK. HAHA! And I still haven't seen SICKO, but I should let Micheal Moore know that one.

I suppose I am writing this because I want to log my real situation. That was part of my day.
I log it, because in some way, I want to convey the feeling that I have right now amidst all this: gratitude, optimism, enthusiasm, excitement, joy!, and just the smallest, occasional creeping in of the Doubt.
That doubt, however, I have become stronger and stronger at recognizing and stronger at quickly removing.

Still, I analyze a million situations. In 48 hours I have
1.) Considered moving back to Tanzania (buying the plane ticket with a credit card) marrying Tino, living with him, and allowing him to take care of me and the baby until papers are in order and we can return home together. Downside, I just don't know how I would pay that credit card back while I was there...

2.) Considered going anywhere outside of the US to have the baby. Didn't really think that one through.

3.) Going back to school and taking out a loan so that I can spend less time away once the baby is born, yet live off loans and get some studying accomplished.

4.) Work now and live off a credit card once the baby is born, until Tino makes it out here, or I get a job in September.

5.) Find a really cheap source of childcare and work as soon as possible and as much as possible, with 6 weeks of post natal bonding.

The final option really blows, but the last two are heading toward the finish line, and I am rooting for living off a credit card and breastfeeding and cooing as much as possible.
I mean really, I will be spending nearly as much as I am making on childcare, and at this point, feel very emotional about leaving the baby with someone (who?!!) at seven weeks of age.
Of course, there is health insurance to think about and well,

Maybe it is time to apply for another credit card...

I know, it sounds scary!
But I am convinced that when Tino gets here, (and who knows when that will be, a secret compartment in me is still harboring the hope that he will make it before the birth... but judging from average processing times, it doesn't look like it.) I will be able to work full time as a teacher and have benefits for the whole family and pay off debts, and ultimately, start paying rent, and putting him through school.
Thats right, paying rent.
Remember the grateful part of my rant? I am grateful to my mom for a rent free place to live, indefinately, with my husband and child. This may sound even more white trash than my debt to you, but I am a big fan of the family reuniting, and although I regret the fact that at 31, it is not MY house that I am providing for my mother, rather than the other way around, the relationships are really the most important part, and in my optimism, I tell myself that someday while we are all still healthy and young(ish), I will provide for her.
I am also grateful to my father. Thanks for the mini van dad! The ultimate family roadster.

Another thing, back to the job, and this is one thing that I would like to spread to the Peace Corps world... I am grateful that my Peace Corps service may apply for a Preliminary Credential. This means that I can teach in California based on my training and experience in Africa rather than going through a University credentialing program. Sure, I still must prove myself with CSET exams and whatnot, but this is a huge gift and I am grateful to whomever lobbied for this little deal.
I simply wish I had known about it in the Peace Corps. This could have affected my focus in my service, and how I drafted my final Close of Service (the official PC 'resume' that 'proves' the work you have done.) I could have started looking online and turned in forms months ago in order to process this credential.

Yet again, information that could have been more useful MONTHS ago. The theme of my days. Anyway, the wheels are in motion, things are happening, the cards will fall where they may, but nothing is permanent. Not even the negative thought patterns that we allow to dominate our minds and cement into our bodies, although, this is the biggest problem, no CHALLENGE, that an individual can face.

In my sincere belief.

Forget about debt. It's all in the mind.

Some photos

2007-11-01T00:19:00.000-07:00

Note:
1.) Tino and I
2.) Tino and Saidi and boys swimming at river with homemade floatation device. (hehe)
3.) Sonogram at 4 mos.
4.) Zebra! ;-0
5.) Besti Erin and I. Contrary to misguided belief, Erin is in fact a NATURAL blonde, thank you very much, and is NOT pregnant. But we got some cute bellies, eh?

Eluded; Bay Area travels

2007-10-17T22:03:00.000-07:00

Done up by her loveliness Ketzia, and her BOYfriend Gavin (first time to not see him out in drag!) I show off my pregnant belly at my favorite swing dancing locale in San Francisco.

Today was an interesting day. I am sometimes still eluded by the reason behind my triggers for tears.
I awoke exhausted again, stressed about making it to massage school on time through rush hour traffic from Berkeley to San Francisco. Though I love the rainy weather of fall in Northern California, this morning I was just sick of being tired, sick of being on the move, wishing I was more stable, with a stable routine and my boyfriend Tino to meet me at home to walk our dog in the evening and drink tea together in the morning. I am annoyed at being annoyed for having the early morning hassle of massage school. School is something that is far out of my financial capability right now, especially considering my slim chances for making money doing it when I get down to Southern California to live with my mom and be close to my family. I am taking a real leap of faith to do something I enjoy, so I might as well enjoy every step of the process. But getting up is getting harder to do.
Snoozing past the alarm, I awoke, and set off in a rush, and in the rain, to find that my usual parking spots had been taken next to school. Quickly, I found a little curb with a two-hour limit and pulled in, making it to class on time. Two hours later, in the rain, I went to move the car, and the house I had parked in front of had decided to call the towing company to take care of the six inches that blocked their driveway.
Fine, fuck. I went back to class and gave and received some great rubs, and well, money comes and goes, but life is sweet like this ain’t it? I certainly learned a lesson, and certainly there are worse things in life. With stride and a sense of humor, and help from a friend, I went to retrieve my car at lunchtime, paid a fortune, and came back for more fabulous, really fantastic massages, and ended the day with a bigger smile on my face than anyone.
Ahhh….
But when I called my dad to tell him all was well, instead of being together girl, I fell apart crying on the phone with him. For the second time.
I guess it started when a wave of unexpected emotion arose, talking to him about a tentative trip that he and my step mom Laurie might take to Tanzania in January.
I guess I have been feeling walls. I really don’t know what triggered the tears. I have been missing Tino, my fiancé, very strongly lately. I had been sure that we would be together for the birth. Sure that we would be able to work, study, and raise a baby together amongst family. But little by little, I feel that options are being weeded out and obstacles were popping up. The letter from my insurance saying my prenatals may not be covered, not possibly any of the birth bills. Tino can’t just fly out here and marry me. And I can’t just go there and bring him back. It all involves months of INS paper processing, and by that time… baby is born.
Well, there IS a positive to options being weeded out, slimmed down. I am very easily distracted by any opportunity (go ahead, that’s right. ADD.) Yet am also easily contented with a simple life. I am grateful for what I do have, family, friends… healthcare? (Everyone seen Sick-O right?)
Many go through this separation, or worse, and I am harkened back to bygone days of partners separated because of war, or to the young working teachers, who, living in a socialist government, must

Discovery, Male circumcision in the US, Africa and PEPFAR

2007-09-20T23:28:00.000-07:00

Discovery, Male circumcision in the US, Africa and PEPFAR
(Taken from a blogging flurry on myspace...)

Don't worry. Seriously, I am not going to be a five-a-day blogger.
I spoke in my last post about how,
well,
I gotta a lotta shit to figure out.
Among the job hunts, school hunts, and get-the-fiancee here from Africa investigation,
are some other fun things that a little more internet time than the normal human should have are enabling me to investigate.

Such as: What are the perspectives and multiple truths for the economic changes that come about in the movement towards East African Unification? This for a dreamy project to promote EA artists...
How about things I should know for a baby... Will I need to address the cicumcision issue?
Vaccinations?

Well, one thing at a time.

From my piddly understanding of circumcision in the States, it was rooted in the religious, mostly Jewish efforts to decrease sexual drive, and although in the mid 19th century is was deemed an unecessary medical procedure, it was not until the end of the 20th century that the procedure changed from being standard to optional. All the information seemed to show that it was psycologically harmful, men lost penile sensitivity (and therefore had higher resistance to using condoms!), and there were no signs that circumcision was prophylaxis for any disease.

While I was in Tanzania, being a community AIDS educator, loads of research was coming out on how male circumcision reduced HIV tansmission. This made me a little sad, but the research was overwhelming! Circumsized men showed a 50% (av. as low as 10% high up to 88%) reduction in HIV infection. Hmm. Occasionaly one of these reports would venture as to why this is, citing more sensitive and therefore penetrable mucous membranes, which, post erection, could enclose viral infected fluids within the folds, as opposed to the cut and 'cleaner' penis. Basiclly, they described the same biological reasons that a vagina is more prone to HIV. The medical community does not want men with genitals that are as sensitive as vaginas.

Already in Tanzania, a country that is 50/50 Muslim/Christian for, with a smattering of Hinduism, traditional believes etc, circumcision is a common practice. All my friends babies were taken to be circumsized, with no more explaination than an American would have: for hygiene. Cha!
I wondered why this is, but I have no new answers. It is a procedure that becomes an accepted norm, and a mother does not want to feel neglegent. Still, I typed some things in, and a new tidbit popped up. PEPFAR is now funding safe medical procedures for adult male circumcision.

A little background:

The money that funded my particular position in the Peace Corps came from the Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which was announced to be a 15 billion dollar project to deliver HIV/AIDS prevention education and relief. Since the Plan coincided considerably with the announcement of the war on Iraq, the financing comparisons in the following paragraph is a bit interesting. In January 2003, in his State of the Union Address, Bush proposed an unprecedented amount of money for the war on AIDS:$15 billion over the following five years, for prevention education, treatment, and support for people living with the virus, orphans and vulnerable children. The next topic in the address was how we are winning the global war on terror. Ahem! Bullshit.
That March Bush said, "My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger." The war on terror had already vowed to stay the course until terrorism was a thing of the past.
The same amount of money spent in three years on the war on AIDS was spent in three weeks warring in Iraq. Ok, just a sad fact that hopefully makes one ask oneself, 'What exactly are we trying to do here? Make the world safer for our children? Hopefully we can all see that furthering war does not do this.

PEPFAR has been criticized for being too idealogical. Bush is no stranger to this criticism. His Abstinence Only programs in Texan schools prove to result in a reported higher incidence in teenage sex. So 33% of PEPFAR funding goes to abstinance only campaigns, and all funding is withheld from organizations who advocate for the safety and health of sex workers. Many of these orgs may have formerly depended on US funding.

Stick with me, I get conservative for a bit, and I do go back to the topic of male circumcision.

I have found myself defendeding the program, not because it paid my $200 a month salary, (haha) but partly becuase it did enable a PC Health program and myriad projects in multiple villages that otherwise wouldn't have been there. It is true that Condom distribution was bundled up into a fringe percentage of funding, that mainly was focused on high risk groups. It is true that in Africa, a married woman is in a high risk group. EVERYONE is considered at risk of the epidemic, and yes, getting married increases that risk for a woman. But talking to them about using condoms seemed like an embaressing approach to solving the problem. They would smile and nod at me and tell me they heard all about the condoms, but if they suggested to their husbands to use them, they would be beat. Plain and simple. Rape does not exist in marriage, and neither, therefore, does a woman's right to her own body exist. So I didn't waste energy lamenting the fact that I couldn't get more money to send them all home with a year supply of rubbers, (which I am sure I could have weezled.) I felt it was more important to put on facilitated discussion forums where women could gripe amongst eachother, learn about their rights, feel empowered and invite their husbands to be a part of the converstation about family health, marital relations, and equality. Men were notoriously absent, but the women continued to be active and visit neighborhing households to make sure their sisters' households were being taken care of properly. Great! The HIV/AIDS situation is complex issue. The US offered up huge money. There are many groups working on AIDS, using different approaches. All of them are necessary. Now, like myself, many good orgs rely on the PEPFAR money for their projects. Meaning they need to follow the ideologies. Personally, I do not subscribe to the discrimination of sex workers, nor ignoring data on the importance of condoms, and I never witnessed a shortage of condoms. I saw my anti-HIV programs as needing a more holistic approach. Everyone has heard ABC until they get blurry eyed. It is like an American hearing that more exercise leads to weight loss. We are not ignorant. But we are fat. More and more so. Most people have a general idea on how HIV is spread, though it is still convuluted with a lot of rumors like it is spread through infected condoms as a western ploy to polish off Africa, and that if you are infected, sex with a virgin will cure it. Repeating the same old mantra, AB, AB, AB, AB (c-shhhh) is simply boring for all and what we need is behavior change. In order to change behavior, we need to build life skills. That is what most of Peace Corps funding went to. And life skills ed. isn't just about teaching elementary kids abstract concepts like self esteem and how to make goals, but it is to help build their esteem and give them a future by establishing income generation projects, gardens, extra-curricular school activities. This builds hope and self reliance, increases health and community. All of these things are core to the efforts. Good old fashioned Peace Corps development, as it has been since the 60's.
So often in the village, where there is no infrastructure, to support anti-HIV efforts, you find that solving one specific problem creates a whole set of new ones. If you bring testing, then you must now worry about counseling and support for those who have recieved answers, then getting them to town to recieve treatment and CD4 tests if necessary. There are constant weak links in what funding will do. It would fund education on stigma and abstinance, but not testing itself. It would not fund transportation to HIV+ groups to get to town for treatment, but it will fund educational seminars to teach those groups all about the services are offered in town, services that, too bad, they can't access. It would fund education on ways to prevent transmission, but not condoms. Well, as I long as I know that large amounts of funding are being used to create a vaginal microbicide gel that can be easily accessable to women, fine. But this is not the case. In fact, funding for that research has declined. Funding for health and reproductive services has declined. The latter because these services do not descriminate. They do not descriminate, therefore they are descriminated against by PEPFAR, who will not fund them unless they sign an oath that states they will not support sex workers. Guess what? In Tanzania, sex is one of the most popular and prosperous means of income for a girl. Period. In Tanzania, there is a phenomonal amount of young people on the streets. And they best way to make money? Sex. But lets stick to absitnance only.

Now, what my research on the history of male circumcision found out is bringing me back to my former work with nauseated interest: PEPFAR is listening to all the research that shows that male circumcision can prevent female to male transmission. They are now funding safe medical procedures to circumsize men.
What I ask must know, what are YOUR reactions to this issue?

Mine? We are now paying for a procedure that widens the gap between male and female susceptability. Men are now told that they are safer having unprotected sex with infected women (sex workers. It takes two to tango. So no we don't support sex workers, but ensure men are protected from their interactions with them.) Yes, that is exactly what the men will hear. We don't want their penises to be biologically vulnerable like a vagina. Now, how does this new funding fit within the abstinance, be-faithful funding ideology? It doesn't, and therefore, its presence is another powerful slap from the war hungry boys club.
This widens the gap, culturally and biologically, and it is confusing. Seems we are telling guys to just follow the advice of ex debuty president of South Africa, Mr. Zuma and feel free to have sex with HIV positive women, because you can always wash off with soap and water!
Yes, he said this after being charged with raping a woman who was HIV positive!
And while we are talking about THAT, what might the implications be on a renewed PROMOTION for circumcision? Is that going to affect the efforts to combate female genital mutilation? The way the confusing world works, and strange facts are translated into stranger acts (ie, the war on terror) I could imagine pro-circumcision being mistakenly interpreted to be a reason to support clitorectomies.

Anyway, to sum up, I never have seen a reason to do a circumcision on a boy, and therefore, if I have one, he will not be put through that trauma, but instead, hopefully lead a life of fulfilling and responsible sex and masturbation!

I also wondered why my Christian friends in Africa all were doing circumcision, and how Tino might respond to all of this. As the popularity of circumcision seems to be on a downturn in the States, is just the opposite in Africa.
And we talk of appropriate expenditures, and gender equality in development, I feel that this new area of PEPFAR is another glaring and embaressing example, like conservative Christians supporting war, that we are positioned along the axis of evil.

In my book.

In my blog.

Fresh Start; an introduction

2007-09-10T22:01:00.000-07:00

Golden kids, Erin Sauders and Curtis James Tester enoying each other and the last of the sun on a Sonoma County fall day

Web logging… Why? Why not?
Because I am jobless really.
And though I generally feel emotionally clear, my head spins with goings on, high times, low times, hopes, plans, regrets, gratitudes, and fears.
Blogging. Because I am a believer in the benefits of a diary, of a journal, of reflection.
But I have never really been able to keep a diary because I get bored. It becomes to do lists, or lists of complaints. I create several ‘themed’ journals, and end up having various notebooks piled up wondering how to organize them, and how to ever find the time to properly dedicate myself to each. I end up throwing them away.
I am an enthusiast, but not a practitioner.

I am also a believer in journalism. Often I have told journalist-aspiring friends that it is the one of the most important jobs in the world. But I certainly do not write. Woah no.
To have the passion, and the insight to drop everything, investigate, and then communicate your views to the world, is an admirable skill. Somewhere I heard that true success is communicating to others what you have seen, said or done. Maybe this is like judging whether a tree that falls in the forest without anyone around makes a noise.
The tree falls. Sound is not only perceived by human ears. The reverberation occurs, and it is god’s guess the effects that eventually ripple out.
A deed is done. A barista is tipped. You have felt appreciative and generous, whether or not she notices you putting your dollar bills in her tip jar.
I made a promise to myself, really a promise to the US government now that I think about it, to communicate my experiences to friends, family, schools…hell, the world at large with this new blogging thing. Peace Corps is mainly about three basic, and undemanding goals:
1.)To assist the host country however possible.
2.)To bring cultural understanding of America to host country.
3.)To bring cultural understanding of host country to America.

I did not fulfill the final third of my bargain with the US Peace Corps while I was in Tanzania, I did not blog, keep a journal, or do a good job at emailing (much less letter writing!)
But like I said: now I am jobless. I’ve got more time, and certainly I feel a more interesting perspective on what it means to bring Tanzania home to America, as a part of it grows inside of me, and I wait in line with the INS to bring my Fiance here.
And I love to read blogs when I can. I love to see pictures and hear stories of what others are doing. It takes time and effort to weed out the billions of other distractions that arise in a typically American day. But when I can connect to a friend or a stranger’s brutal honesty about an issue, I generally find that I walk away feeling touched and more fulfilled, and more enlightened in general than simply listening to the news.
I blog now because I have intended to, because my time allows, and because right now, I need to journal, (without having to worry about notebook clutter.) I blog because it will be an easy way to look back on this time, (and maybe someone can learn from my experiences.)