Cape Town to Cairo to Cambridge: Ramblings

I Love the Smell of Victory in the Morning

2010-11-23T08:08:00.000-08:00

As some of you may remember, the World Cup was held in South Africa this past summer. South Africa was justifiably proud of itself for pulling off a major tournament, although perhaps that was only because the expectations were so low; after all, a number of developing nations, including Brazil, Mexico and Argentina, have hosted the tournament successfully. And South Africa is now faced with several stadiums built for the World Cup on which they spent billions of rand and the upkeep of which is likely to be in the millions annually, making it virtually impossible to recoup the cost. The stadiums in Cape Town and Johannesburg may be able to do so; Nelspruit and Mbombela, I think we can agree, are screwed.

But it stirred up a fresh wave of support for the national team, Bafana Bafana ("the boys"), which is good in that sports here tend to break down along racial lines: cricket and rugby are largely followed and supported by whites, and soccer by blacks. But for a brief halcyon moment, everyone rallied behind Bafana, which is nice because you don't have to be here long before you realize that under a thin veneer of courtesy people here actually freaking hate each other, and I'm all for anything that postpones the race wars, if only for a time.

It only took about a week for the bonhomie and good will to wear off and the sniping to start again, but it was nice while it lasted. So people were really excited when they heard Bafana would be playing a match in Cape Town against the US national team. Maybe it would resurrect the World Cup spirit.

But no one was more excited than I was. Because no one likes to win, and on the opponents' turf no less, more than I do. Look, I am all for global citizenry. I am a polite and courteous guest in this country. I try to confine my venting about the postal service, poor internet connections, crime and generally shoddy service to my American friends. I watch rugby; I don't really bother with cricket, it's a less refined version of baseball. I can greet people in Afrikaans and Xhosa. I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to explain to people how the American electoral system works and the phenomenon of Sarah Palin. But I draw the line at sports. You are allowed to be every inch the Ugly American when your team is playing. In fact, it's your patriotic duty. And when you win, you tell everyone to suck it, because we are GLEEFUL winners, we are EXUBERANT winners. It is part of the American charm.

So I readied myself for the game, wishing I had a really obnoxious American T-shirt that said something like "these colors don't run" and listening to Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red White and Blue," which you may remember for the delicate phrasing of this line: "We'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way." I was a little dicey about our chances, because we were fielding a very inexperienced squad that had only three members of our World Cup team.

Walking to the game was like being swallowed by a bright yellow whale. Yellow (Bafana's color) everywhere you looked; people in jerseys, face paint, wigs, wrapped in the South African flag. And the singing of the South African national anthem, which is in several languages, was truly beautiful. Just as beautiful was the American anthem, with all 15 of us Americans representing in the sea of 51,000. But we stood and put our hands over our hearts and sang and though some of the South Africans looked at us funny, like they weren't sure where we had come from, they were gracious and respectful of the American anthem.

The game itself was not really a promotion for the Beautiful Game. Our team looked young and raw; theirs could string some good passes together but couldn't dominate in the air or in the midfield and couldn't get many shots. And then, in a golden moment less than 10 minutes before the end of the game, a 17-year-old American reserve player who had just been called up from the junior team for this game knocked in a goal from about 7 years out. Oh it was fantastic. And there is something surreal about screaming and shrieking when everyone around you goes quiet. And by surreal, I mean awesome, because they were so cocksure that they were going to win this game. YES WE CAN. UUUU-SSSSS-AAAAAAA. WE ARE SPARTA. I might have yelled all those things in my euphoria whilst jumping up and down in my seat.

I then proceeded to heckle everyone from the dejected passersby on the street to my doorman, because that's the beauty of sport: it is the last arena of sanctioned aggression. Look, I am tired of unreliable internet, of not being able to go places by myself at night, of having my cell phone stolen, of crappy customer service, of spotty postal service, of segregation, of arrogant attitudes about Americans and American culture as they play on their iPhones and wear Levis, of instant coffee. I would like to start fights, but I don't. I just let that game be the catharsis I have needed for three months.

WE ARE SPARTA. YES WE CAN. AMERICA HELL YEAH. Brilliant.

I know, I'm late but I'm here!

2010-10-08T15:50:00.001-07:00

I've been in South Africa about six weeks, and am happily settled into my apartment with its pay-as-you-go electricity (seriously, you buy electricity at the 7-11, which I had to do at 7 pm the other night when suddenly all my lights went out and I realized I hadn't checked the meter in a week or so) and capped wireless. That's right, American friends, you pay by the megabyte here. None of your crazy limitless-free-wireless-in-coffeeshops-and-parks nonsense. We're obviously dealing with a finite commodity here and it must be rationed.

Welcome to the Third World.

I'm in Pretoria for the week, although I'm based in Cape Town, and I'm gaining traction on the research, things are good, I'll write more later when I'm not falling asleep.

I like South Africa. This isn't my first trip, it's about my sixth. South Africans always ask me eagerly, "how do you like South Africa?" Honestly, I have never seen a country so desperate for affirmation. That's really what the entire World Cup was about: spending billions of dollars that you'd spend years paying off so the cool kids would come, drink your beer, and like you, at least for a little while. It is panting to be liked, to be cool--even though, as every cool kid knows, the essence of coolness is not caring (or at least acting like you don't care) if you're cool. If a 15-year-old insecure freshman were a country, it would be South Africa.

So I tell them: lovely country, lovely beaches, lovely people. And--here's what I don't tell them--people who are inadvertently hysterical. Like the South African blogger in the US I read the other day who mentioned the foolishness over whether or not Obama was Muslim and said "don't people here understand the concept of reconciliation? Mandela could teach them a thing or two." The irony is too much for me, I rolled around on the floor and wished I could call friends in the States. With all our problems--and I'm the first to admit we have them--we've elected an African-American president; if African-Americans were to form their own country, their economy would be among the top 15 in the world; and yet a WHITE SOUTH AFRICAN, apparently oblivious to the seething anger and disdain I regularly hear voiced by black and Coloured South Africans who tell me with relief that they can talk freely with me because I'm a white American and not a white South African--is going to tell us about reconciliation? Do tell, we eagerly await. Until then we'll go on being the *real* Rainbow Nation (check the demographics, we're way more diverse). Oh, same blogger said Americans don't talk about race as freely as South Africans. Certainly this has everything to do with where you are and who you hang out with, but again--rolling on the floor clutching my sides. I grew up in integrated schools, had African-American teachers and friends from the earliest days, had an African-American mentor professionally, have worked, lived and worshipped in majority-black environments. A generation like that has not yet come of age in SA. Meanwhile South African schools don't really look much different than they did pre-1994, very few people have cross-racial friendships of any depth, and the surface politeness hides the fact that most black people will commute back to the townships in the evening and whites will return to their monochromatic neighborhoods and monochromatic friends. As a black American friend of mine said, "I didn't really appreciate Arkansas until I lived in South Africa." ARKANSAS, Y'ALL. Exactly.

So: I love being in SA, I really do. It's an absolute blast, I love the work I'm doing, I love traveling, I love meeting people and hearing their stories. But the very best part is that I don't have to stay here. Someday I will return to a place where people don't routinely get killed for their cell phone (I called my hostel from the street the other day because I was lost, and the guy said carefully, "you really want to avoid talking on your cell phone on the street"), where books and laptops and cell phones and blenders and software are cheap because that's what happens when your countrymen actually produce things, and where the people at fast food restaurants put enough ice in my cup without me having to send it back three times (which I do, because I'm the Ugly American).

Save me a peppermint mocha from Starbucks, kids, I'll be home for Christmas. (And then back here for another 9 months.)

More later on more substantial things, but really, the reconciliation comment demanded a response, no? I mean we can't just let absurdity go unchallenged, that's how civilization crumbles. That, and inadequate amounts of ice in the Coke. (Seriously, is there a shortage?)

World Cup Woes

2010-07-01T19:46:00.001-07:00

One of the great things about being a country which plays so many sports is that no single sporting disappointment can linger for very long. I was bummed for about 15 minutes when the Celtics lost to the Lakers, but then the World Cup started. Then I was kinda disappointed when the US lost to Ghana, but I didn't actually watch the match--I had a training all day--and anyway Argentina is my pick to win it, plus baseball is in full swing and there was that crazy Wimbledon match and the NBA draft (do we think Lebron James will stay with the Cavaliers? I say yes).

So what is souring the World Cup for me is not the US performance, but the round of commentary on why the US doesn't play "global sports," with the implication that it's because we're arrogant and don't care about the rest of the world. News flash: not being soccer-mad is not the equivalent of pulling out of the UN. Perspective, people, perspective.

It does not help that I regularly read a South African newspaper along with its comment section. I'm going to have to take a break from it, because I find the kneejerk anti-Americanism and misconceptions to be so exasperating that now I'm grossly overreacting. I realized this about myself the other day when someone said that he was glad to see the English and Americans cry when they lost because they thought they owned the soccer field, and the Americans need to start playing global sports and stop saying they are world champions at sports only we play.

Well. And then I lost my shit.

First of all, of the many places we are arrogant, soccer really isn't one of them. Americans always come in as underdogs, at least in our own heads. But here's the thing: soccer is now the most popular youth sport. We're going to be a force in global soccer very soon. And all the people whining about how Americans won't play their sport may soon have reason to regret when we do. As Time magazine said a couple of weeks ago, "Face it: the US is going to play, watch, market, manage and own your sport sooner or later." We have 300+ million people; we can have soccer be our fifth or sixth most popular sport and still be a top-10 team.

However, let's talk about this whole not-loving-soccer thing. We are hardly unique in this. As writer Matt Iglesias noted, "It’s worth pausing for a moment to note that the USA isn’t really that much of an outlier in terms of its relative lack of enthusiasm for soccer. For example in China the most popular team sport is basketball and there’s tremendous passion for table tennis. The most popular sports in India (and Pakistan and Bangladesh) are cricket and field hockey. I’m told that in Indonesia badminton and tennis are the most popular. In Russia and Canada it’s ice hockey. Which isn’t to deny that many people in those countries may enjoy soccer as well—many Americans like soccer. But 'the world' is not the same as 'Europe and Latin America.' Indeed, I believe the countries I’ve just been naming account for about half the world’s people."

So let's put to rest once and for all the canard that we are the lone nation resisting the siren song of soccer on which all future world peace and interdependence relies.

Secondly, why do other people care what sports we play? Do they know what they sound like? It sounds like a little brother whining "Come plaaaay with me, I wanna plaaaaaay with you." Dude, we're not bothering you, let us play what we want. Why do some people take it as an affront? It seems to speak to an inferiority complex: this strange seething resentment that the superpower doesn't think your sport is so super.

And third, if you honestly still think American sports are exclusively that--American--then you're far more provincial than the Americans you're criticizing. American football is the only American sport that is still uniquely American. Basketball is global. Eastern Europe has some of the best teams, European leagues are popular, and the NBA is packed with international players--German, Slovenian, Serbian, Chinese, Italian, you name it. We still win the Olympics but it's no longer by the 50-point margins it once was, it's a fight, because the rest of the world is catching up, and it's hugely popular. Baseball is less so, but even that is global--Japan, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, etc. Cuba has won the Olympics more times than we have. And if basketball is an Olympic sport and cricket isn't, then arguably one is more of a "global sport" than the other.

What gets me is that aside from soccer, the sports people always point to as "global sports"--cricket and rugby--are English sports. This comes back to my theory that most former English colonies don't know how to decolonize themselves and give the middle finger to England, and that part of our success was a very clear and decisive break with the mother country. We don't want your soccer, England; we took your rugby and made American football, and took your cricket and made baseball. (Then we changed how everything is spelled, and just for fun and because we can, we make sure American English is the default setting on computer software that we sell all over the world. Ha.) Other former colonies seem to maintain this weird love-hate adolescent relationship that we just don't have. But those are not global sports, they are English sports, Commonwealth sports. Let's call it what it is.

So clearly I care way more than is normal about what some halfwit said on a message board, and I need a break from South African media to regain my sanity. So, back to the soccer: good luck, Uruguay, represent the Western hemisphere well against Ghana; may the best man win in Brazil v. Netherlands (I think that will be a great match); Paraguay, I'm afraid you're outclasses by Spain but greater upsets have happened; and Argentina, I look forward to the clash with Germany but my money and my heart are with you, Lionel Messi. And I'm going to Austin tomorrow to see aunt and cousins (17-year-old cousin: "Nelson Mandela is like an adorable koala bear." Which a) he kind of is, and b) I was just relieved she knew who Mandela was) and a friend who had a baby a couple of months ago.

It's the first time in four years I'll be in the US for July 4. You will not believe this, fellow Americans, but July 4 is actually *not a holiday* in other countries. I KNOW. MADNESS. So I'm particularly excited to be home to celebrate all of us.

M.Div.

2010-05-27T18:46:00.000-07:00

And it's done.

Master of Divinity degree conferred, May 27 2010.

A Week From Today

2010-05-23T23:46:00.000-07:00

A week from today, I will be drinking mimosas and getting facials with my friend Naomi (congratulation on your MBA from Penn!) and my little sister (congratulations on being a cog in the giant corporate machine!) in Philadelphia.

And two weeks from today, I will be at the beach in Texas with my godson Torian, whose picture adorns this blog. (He is the one not wearing a cowboy hat and bikini.) Side note because it's funny: he was recently overcome with fear of "little people." I can understand that, it would have to freak you out if you were 4 and there were suddenly grown-ups who were your size. Tori saw his first little people in Target and was simultaneously terrified and mesmerized. He dragged his mom after them and, when he couldn't find them in the aisle, whispered earnestly, "Maybe they were magic."

Magic little people in Target. I would love to live inside that kid's brain.

Anyway, the most notable thing is that before I make it to Philly and then Texas, I will graduate from Harvard. All the graduates from every Harvard school will gather in the Yard on Thursday. Someone will give a speech in Latin, professors will show up in their colorful regalia, there will be pomp and circumstance, and you can mock it for pretentiousness but I will be part of a ceremony that is older than this country, part of a tradition that goes back to a mere 16 years after the first Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. For all the "liberal elite Ivy League" reverse snobbery that the Sarah Palins of the world like to throw at Harvard, there is no more American place, and I am proud to take my place among the ranks of its alumni, who are present in every field of endeavor and every corner of the globe.

Here's a glimpse of where I've spent the last three years:

In Harvard Yard in the Fall

Widener Library, where I spent more time than I care to remember.

This is the statue of John Harvard. You're supposed to touch his foot for good luck. You're not supposed to know that drunken undergraduates routinely have contests to see who can make their urine arc elegantly onto John's foot.

This is the view from the steps of Widener Library, across Harvard Yard to Memorial Church. It's a sight that makes an all-nighter at the library almost bearable.

Veritas.

What Price Freedom?

2010-05-16T22:05:00.000-07:00

Harvard has experienced its own tempest-in-an-ideological-teacup of late. Because anything that happens at Harvard seems to have traction beyond our ivy-covered walls, it has made the news and various blogs, and has me thinking about how free we really are in this place that makes such lofty claims to academic liberty and freedom of inquiry.

A third-year law student sent an email to some dinner friends following up on a conversation they had had at dinner. In it, she suggests that she is open to the idea that African-Americans are genetically predisposed to be less intelligent than whites, at least in such quantifiable ways as standardized testing.

She also indicates that she could be persuaded that cultural and social factors account for the achievement gap, but that so far, she doesn't find the science on either side to be conclusive. That's her big statement: she is unpersuaded by the studies coming from either direction, and she wants to stay open to all the possibilities. (As it happens, she did undergraduate research at Princeton with sociologist Thomas Espanshade, whose research focuses on race and achievement, so I'd wager a guess that she's actually given more serious thought to this topic than her dinner guests.)

The predictable happened. One of her "friends" forwarded the email to the Black Law Students Association, which then forwarded it to what seems like every Black Law Students Association in the country. It made it onto widely-read blogs like Jezebel and Gawker, invariably with headings like "Harvard Law Student's Racist Diatribe." Now various groups are putting pressure on the federal judge she is slated to clerk with to rescind her clerkship, the dean has condemned her statements, and one can safely assume she is persona non grata at HLS these days.

My concern here is not for Stephanie, who I'm sure will come through this just fine. My concern is for the message sent when the dean condemns a dinner conversation amongst bright, inquisitive students who have the gall to question the accepted orthodoxy. It is for the right to question the things that we assume we know, the right to be wrong even, the right to say "I'm just not persuaded."

The truth is, there is nowhere where this kind of debate and discussion should be more welcome than in the academy. We should be the absolute safest place for this kind of boundary-pushing. There should be nothing, absolutely nothing, that is off-limits; there should be nothing sacred, nothing that cannot be reinvestigated and criticized and examined. And it is intellectual death when we stop being that place.

At least Stephanie had the courage to say it out loud. That allows other people to argue back: to rebuke, to criticize, to challenge, to lay out their own position and the evidence supporting it. Because I promise you: for every Stephanie who has the balls to actually verbalize her misgivings, there are a hundred white kids who silently wonder, "But why *is* it that Africa is so underdeveloped and can't seem to get their act together? Why is it that even when you control for income and parents' educational level, there is still a racial gap in SAT scores?" They don't say it out loud; saying it out loud gets you branded a racist and that's the end of any career aspirations you might have had (not to mention any social life you had), as Stephanie's case has so starkly reminded us. But the questions will sit there. And if we're not willing to have those conversations in academia, with the best minds and best resources, we should not be surprised when the questioners find other people with whom to have those conversations. And you won't like who they're talking to. Rumor has it that various white-supremacist groups have already contacted Stephanie to offer their support. "Come to a meeting"--that's not where you want the conversation to be happening.

The tamping down on any line of questioning that violates our social orthodoxies should be chilling to anyone who cares about intellectual rigor and freedom. For one thing, it calls into question any studies and conclusions drawn from them that may emerge down the road: after all, if you were an academic investigating racial inequity and knew that having an undesirable data set would jeopardize both your professional and social standing, wouldn't you at least be tempted to make sure your study comes down on the "right" side of the discussion? And even if you didn't, doesn't the fact that I'm even asking the question throw doubt on the integrity of your research? Because if we can't ask the questions honestly, we can't trust any of the conclusions that follow.

In Stephanie's email, she wrote, "I think it is bad science to disagree with a conclusion in your heart, and then try (unsuccessfully, so far at least) to find data that will confirm what you want to be true." In other words: it's intellectually dangerous to decide what you believe and then manipulate the data to confirm it. We should all be able to agree on that, whether or not we like the particular questions Stephanie is asking. At least by asking, she's giving people the chance to answer. The next bright, questioning kid with an eye on a federal clerkship or a plum job at a firm won't ask the question, after seeing what's happened to Stephanie. He'll just quietly wonder, and draw his own conclusions.

And that's not good for any of us.

Of Derby Hats and Delightful News

2010-05-02T08:27:00.000-07:00

Last week I went to the annual HDS ball:

And yesterday I went to a Kentucky Derby party, where my horse finished in dead last place but my hat and dress were a blazing success (and you can't see it here, but I am wearing silver flats, which were A-DOR-A-BLE with the dress):

Sadly, I do not spend all my time gallivanting about like a debutante, since a) I don't come from an old-money family, and b) it's not 1882. In the midst of my social commitments, I also find time to write tedious final papers and secure summer employment and make plans for the next year.

Yes, friends, I have plans for the next year, humdullallah. Harvard, in a fit of poor judgment, is funding my independent study proposal and I will be living in South Africa for at least a year. It was such an insanely long shot when I applied for it so it's the understatement of the decade to say I am pleasantly surprised. I'll leave in August or September, no final date yet as I am waiting for the ridiculous World Cup-inspired airfare prices to approach normalcy again. My project is on the role of religious institutions in facilitating dialogue around issues of racial justice and reconciliation and adding their voices to the conversations in political science, sociology and international relations that have appropriated these words but don't recognize that they are implicitly theological...hello? hello? I have totally lost you, haven't I? I know, it's of interest only to me and, apparently, the Harvard committee on graduate fellowships. But that is enough. It's a variation on the old "me plus God equals a majority" line we learned in Sunday School. Me plus the fellowship committee=exactly as many people as I need to be interested in this project.

Anyway, more plans as they emerge, but obviously the door is open to any of you who want to visit.

Lesson for the Young'Uns

2010-05-01T11:50:00.000-07:00

I sat on a panel discussion this week of grad students who had spent time in Africa. We were talking to about 75 Harvard undergrads who will be spending their summers in internships and research all over Africa.

During the Q&A, I remembered a story that I haven't shared with you all, and it is still funny, so I'll share it now. It comes under the heading of "even when you are trying to be culturally sensitive, you will inevitably fail, and you have to be able to laugh about it."

On my last trip to SA, I was staying over at my friend Lynette's house. Lynette's housekeeper, Miriam, was making breakfast for me, and it just...kept...coming. Scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, yogurt, fruit, more toast. I'd been told it was very rude to waste food, so I was gamely eating everything that was served although I was starting to feel slightly nauseous, but before I could tell Miriam I was finished, she brought 4 more pieces of toast.

I couldn't eat them. I knew, in my heart (and stomach), that if I ate the toast, all my breakfast was going to end up in a puddle on the floor. So I did the only reasonable thing.

I kicked it under the sofa and told myself I would get it that night after Miriam had left. I knew I didn't have time in the brief moment her back was turned to make it all the way to the trash can and back.

Later that night, I remembered the toast and dove under the sofa to get it. Turns out Miriam is a very thorough cleaner: the toast was not there. I told Lynette what had happened and moaned, "She's going to think I'm the crazy American who hoards toast under the furniture!" Lynette proceeded to chastise me about how we come from different food cultures and you absolutely cannot waste food in South Africa, it's offensive, and I'm saying "I KNOW this, Lynette, that's why I was TRYING not to seem wasteful, YOU HAVE TO HELP ME FIX IT."

So we went over to Miriam's and I apologized and Lynette proceeded to speak with her in Xhosa, giving an explanation that, I later found out, did in fact amount to "she's a crazy American, they have strange and mysterious ways." Miriam gazed at me stonily the whole time. I'm pretty sure I never redeemed myself in her eyes.

However, as I found out this week, the story is good for a laugh, and a cautionary tale: your best efforts at cultural sensitivity will still fail. Laugh about it and move on.

I'm off to a Kentucky Derby party shortly. Photos will be forthcoming.

Home Stretch

2010-04-17T15:07:00.000-07:00

I have lots of blogs saved up from the last couple of months, and I might actually get to them soon since it's the last month of school, in which I traditionally seek out anything to do other than the work that will allow me to graduate (which currently involves writing at least 100 pages and about 10 times as much reading in order to write the aforementioned 100 pages).

However, for now, let's look ahead, beyond graduation, to the Summer of Frivolity and Slackness I am meticulously planning. Boston is currently being a bitch-goddess intent on reminding her minions that they exist only at her whim, having teased us all with temperatures in the 60s and 70s and lots of clear, bright days, only to drop down into the 40s and dump a lot of freezing rain on us the last couple of days. I shake your dust from my feet, Boston, I am so OVER IT.

So, summer. For those wondering what I will be doing post-grad (if any of them are still reading, since I haven't blogged in 4 months), the answer is "God knows," said with utmost reverence. Honestly, I have no idea. In my ideal world, I'll win a fellowship that will fund a year of study in South Africa; I should know my fate in that regard by the end of the month. Failing that, I don't know what I will do. I'm not too worried, though. I come through in the clutch. Meanwhile, I am more focused on my summer of awesomeness, which I am planning whether or not I go to Africa (if I go, it won't be till August/September).

Summer delights:

1) Laid-back work that pays enough for gas and Starbucks and occasional forays to Sephora. I might teach swim lessons at the YMCA, might work with kids at church. Whatever it is, it will not be overly intellectual or isolated, it will be relational and physical. I'm trying to rebalance after three years in academia.

2) Beach trips. Lots of trips to Galveston, one to Padre, one to Mobile with Mijha which we are calling our White Trash Vacation as we intend to lay on the beach all day and gamble at the offshore casinos all night. PURELY AWESOME. Also, we have matching T-shirts for this vacation. They say "100% Pure American Infidel" with the word "kaffir" (which just means "unbeliever" in Arabic, not the racially pejorative term it became in South Africa) written in Arabic. I figure as long as we don't run into any Arabic-reading South Africans in Alabama, we're safe. Which means: we're safe. We will be rocking this look with bikinis and cowboy hats. We are insanely excited. Also, right after graduation I'm headed to the Jersey Shore with my little sister and brother-in-law.

3) Breakfast tacos. Maybe every day.

4) My parents have a new dog! A big one, which is the best kind. He is partly white and partly black and kind of a mutt and my dad wanted to name him Barack. Saner heads prevailed and his name is Harley. Harley will be my new running buddy.

5) Miller Outdoor Theatre, this great outdoor venue in Houston where they have concerts and plays and you can sit on the hill and bring food and drinks and enjoy the one time of day (nightfall) when Houston is not oppressively hot.

6) Reading things that are not assigned for class. My friend Jenny and I will be reviving our book club, which is really our margarita club. Also, I will be mixing in some old classics (Bleak House, Anna Karenina, maybe some Faulkner) with totally mindless chick lit. I may also try to tackle one author's ouevre, but I haven't decided whose; I'm leaning towards Elizabeth Gaskell or George Eliot. I'm accepting all reading suggestions now.

7) Did I mention margaritas? They're not confined to book club.

8) Movies, starting with Sex and the City 2 which I could NOT BE MORE EXCITED FOR. My sis and I are seeing it the weekend I graduate. We saw the first one together the weekend before I left for SA the first time, so I'm pretty pumped. I intend to see lots of fun mindless summer movies. Also, I have a summer movie project: epic films. I think I can drag my dad into this project with me. I figure we'll start with the Star Wars trilogy (only the original, natch) and Lord of the Rings and move on to both old-school epics (Lawrence of Arabia, Zulu--I considered adding Gandhi in here but I don't think you get to be an epic just because you're super long) and moving on to 300, Troy, Braveheart, etc. My friend Melissa, an epic connoisseur, will my advisor in this project.

9) First Fridays at Chacho's Mexican restaurant drinking margaritas and chilling with the girls in Third Ward.

10) Soccer at twilight. Perfection.

11) Apparently Houston has all these cool new parks, who knew? And most of them are great for playing with kids and have some sort of water component. I love Hermann Park's water park, I would go by myself except then I look like a pedophile scoping out the kids so I take my friend Roz's kid as a cover.

12) Sitting outside at Starbucks with Phenias and drinking frappucinos while we tease each other. He is a pretty good trash talker now and I take a lot of pride in that.

13) Church. I love my church so much it deserves its own post. I can't wait to be back with my church and my friends and summer evenings spent together at someone's house, cooking out and laughing and enjoying each other.

14) Sonic, which will go a long way towards helping me meet my summer goal: hitting 120 pounds and invoking my dad's promise to take me to Egypt when I got there.

15) Baseball games at MinuteMaid Field. Yeah, the Astros suck this year, which is unfortunate. But tickets are $5 and it's classic Americana, so you really can't beat it.

16) Road trip to Austin to see the cousins, go to the lake, eat more breakfast tacos in the city even the NY Times concedes is the breakfast taco capital of the world, and hit the outlet mall.

17) World Cup madness! I toyed with the idea of going to South Africa for the World Cup since I'd have a place to stay for free, but it was still going to be crazy expensive, and I hate crowds. I know, I'm 85 and you can call me Ma-Maw. However, I will be watching the World Cup the way the Beautiful Game was meant to be watched: in a bar with cheap booze and plentiful sunshine where one can watch one's favorite teams lose for free. (Or, alternately for the earlier games, on the sofa in my pajamas eating breakfast tacos.)

What are your ideas of summer fun? I'm compiling a list, so I'm open to all suggestions.

The TV Tells Me About Myself

2009-12-23T13:45:00.000-08:00

Do y'all ever feel that way, like you see uncomfortable glimpses of yourself on TV and realize there but for the grace of God, etc?

Intervention does that for me. I like to watch it with a drink and feel smug that no one has yet approached me to be in a "documentary about addiction." (By the way, when are the addicts going to catch on to that? I mean, they watch TV. Especially the ones on meth or coke where they stay up for 72 hours at a time, and Intervention likes to run middle-of-the-night reruns. You gotta know one of these days one of them is going to get approached and say "Waaait a minute, sucker, I've heard this song before" and it will be like Punk'd when Ashton Kutcher had to cancel the show because every time something weird happened to a celebrity they were like "Ashton?! ASHTON! Am I getting punked?")

On the other hand, as this week has shown, I am totally dependent on Klonopin which I've been on since I was 16 for Tourette's syndrome. I accidentally left my prescription up in Cambridge so I had to get a refill here in Houston, but it took several days. Meanwhile I had imsomnia, weird dreams, loss of appetite, irritability, nausea, anxiety, muscle cramps and fatigue, and tingling in my face. According to the interwebs, Klonopin is a Class 1 narcotic and has withdrawal symptoms similar to heroin. The things they don't tell you when they put you on mind-altering drugs during adolescence...sigh.

However, I am back on it and feeling fine now, and as I told my dad, we should just think of it as insulin, the kind of med you might be on your whole life but which enables you to live fairly normally and which, in my case, does a good job of controlling the Tourette's. However, I do watch Intervention now feeling like there's just a bottle of cheap wine between me and that shady hotel room with all my loved ones and the interventionist (who I will totally recognize from the show, duh).

So I'm switching my attention to Hoarders. I can still maintain my moral superiority there. There's a lot of crazy on that show, and I highly recommend it to those who need assurance that their little idiosyncracies are nothing to worry about as long as their back issues of Reader's Digest from the 1950s aren't threatening to take over their house and force them to find a new abode.

One Village Elder to Another

2009-12-06T20:37:00.001-08:00

This post comes to you courtesy of a few hours spent studying at Starbucks while various yuppie parents let their children run around like they were at Chuck E Cheese:

Raise Your Damn Kids.

I recognize that saying that puts me squarely in the category of Cranky Old People, which I'm totally comfortable with because I'm 33 now and I've made my peace with it. But at some point when I wasn't looking, it's like a whole mess of people decided that saying "no" to their children would suppress their little ones' creativity and spirit and life force.

What it might suppress is their badassness, and I'm fully supportive of this.

The Starbucks parents--and there were several of them in a steady stream--let their children wander around, yell, throw things on the ground, touch strangers' computers (NOOOOOOO), and then gave me dirty looks when I said firmly to their kids, "Do not touch this. This is not yours." (I bet you those kids didn't come back by me again, though.)

Raise your damn kids.

Or when I was waiting for the subway recently and a kid who was maybe 3 or 4 was jumping around perilously near the train tracks, with nary a glance from his parents:

Raise your damn kids.

A friend of mine once complained that his teenage daughter, who was still in high school at the time, had stayed out all night and not come home until 5 THE NEXT AFTERNOON and hadn't told them where she'd been. I asked if they had grounded her. "How do you ground an 18-year-old?" he asked plaintively. Ummm..."you're grounded"? How about "since you are entirely financially and emotionally dependent upon us, you can forget about using your cell phone or the car or the computer or any other item that renders your existence non-Amish-like until you remember how the house rules work?"

I cannot imagine trying to pull that on my parents when I was in high school. When I say "I can't imagine," I literally mean "the human mind doesn't have the capacity to go to that dark space." I don't know what they would have done. I just know, you see the face of God and you die. The most you can bear is a glimpse of the shadow as you hide in the cleft of the rock. You don't test it.

Raise. Your. Damn. Kids.

People who know me know that I have a lot of children in my life, but there is one that I have a particular measure of responsibility for, who has lived with me and for whom I make most of the educational decisions. Phenias is 13 now, and recently his school cracked down on porn on the kids' phones. My concerns about this are one of the reasons I advised Phen's dad not to let him have a cell phone (if you have an emergency, you can use an adult's cell phone, because you are 13 and you should therefore not be out of the reach of a responsible adult). He was one of the few kids not caught up in the sting. When his teacher asked him why, I am told he responded solemnly, "Shannon said if I ever got caught with porn, it was gonna be a shitshow. (Note: my pastor has said of disciplining children, "Do not underestimate the power of an appropriately timed curse word" and I was using that technique here.) I don't know what that means, but she never lied." HA! A little appropriate fear and respect goes a long way.

Now I am the first to agree it takes a village. (That sounds so wise-African-proverb/ubuntu-y/Hillary Clinton, doesn't it?) But from one village elder to another: stop letting the village children run the village council. Stop letting them vote. This is not a democracy. It is a benevolent dictatorship.

And if you can't get on board with that, your village needs to not reach beyond the confines of your house. Certainly it shouldn't reach all the way to my Starbucks.

Of TB and PhD

2009-10-30T20:45:00.000-07:00

I mentioned to my pastor back at City of Refuge that I was interning at a homeless shelter for my field education component. "Are you up on your TB testing?" he asked, which is an inside joke for all of us who have worked at the Star of Hope, where your annual performance review included a TB skin test. City of Refuge: if you haven't worked at a shelter and tested positive for TB, we probably won't hire you.

Here's the thing: I miss my annual TB test. And that encapsulates the struggle I am facing.

In the last year of my M.Div program, I am working on a thesis that I really find fascinating. And it has all these little tentacles which I also find fascinating: how churches can redeem a racially corrupted theology; what our theological resources are for doing so; how churches interact with other civil society agents and with government in developing societies, particularly young democracies; whether some kinds of Christianity seem to promote democracy and justice better than others; what role their theologies play in this or if we are in a post-theological dispensation when it comes to this; the emerging role of reconciliation and forgiveness as tools of statecraft, particularly in places like Burundi and Congo where punitive justice would mean incarcerating half the society, and the notable absence of theologians from these discussions about what are fundamentally theological concepts.

So I am thinking about going on for a PhD. And I am thinking about doing it in Africa. The University of Cape Town has a great program in Christianity and civil society and a slate of scholars I really admire, and I'd be within striking distance of the theological faculties at Stellenbosch and University of the Western Cape. I've talked to some professors and advisors here and they are enthusiastic: they think it's a logical next step given my interests, that UCT would be a good fit academically, that it would open a lot of doors both in academia and nonprofits depending on the route I wanted to take.

It makes sense. I'm seriously considering it.

But here's the thing: I really miss that TB test.

I miss being in the midst of lively, messy community. I miss feeling like what I did every day mattered. I've started playing the Christmas music, and one of the songs on my iPod is the London Philharmonic's version of "O Come All Ye Faithful." In my Star of Hope days, this was the song that the wise men processed in to as the grand finale of our Christmas pageant. We started practicing in October; every day after school, most evenings, some weekends, up until our December performance. I'd practice with the boys who were the 3 kings--we had a Red King, a Blue King, and a Silver King, with costumes I made myself, because there is nothing that cannot be accomplished with double-sided tape, Velcro, and a stapler--to make sure they came in at exactly the right moment, that they walked the right way, held their heads the right way, that they were *regal*. I prepared them over and over to ignore the crowd that would be there the night of the performance, to remember that they were men of great stature and wisdom, men who quested after knowledge, who carried themselves with dignity. And my rowdy 8-year-old boys, boys who were rarely in their school programs because their behavior was bad and their teachers didn't want to take a chance on them, became those kings. The first time we did it, when the music swells before the last verse and the choir sings "Yea, Lord, we greet Thee, born this happy morning," my Silver King made his dramatic entrance and the place erupted--cheers, applause, tears. And he never wavered. He didn't ham it up, he didn't wave to his mom; he kept his precise, stately gait, he looked straight ahead, he made it up to the stage and bowed to the Christ Child right at the perfect moment, as the choir says "Christ the Lord."

It. Was. AWESOME.

That kid's in high school now. All those 1st- and 2nd-graders are middle schoolers and high schoolers now. But there isn't a Christmas season that goes by that I don't remember how regal my little kings were, or how the wild-haired little girl who played Mary could make you cry with her version of the Magnificat, or how everyone fell in love with the angel-cum-gospel choir's rendition of "Jesus What a Wonderful Child" while the shepherds danced.

The kids were part of the salvation story that night, and as I told them over and over during rehearsals, it was because of this story that they were part of the salvation story that was unfolding over time and space, where everyone had a role to play and, as C.S. Lewis said, "each chapter is better than the one before."

Star of Hope had its frustrations--two of my friends took bets on how long it would take me to break a major rule, and I think the outside bet was two weeks--but I felt like what I did mattered, that every day I did something of eternal value. It's the way I feel at City of Refuge too--when I walk in, it's like realizing I'd been having trouble breathing and hadn't realized it until I could breathe freely again. What they do in that little corner of Third Ward matters. They are a glimpse of the Kingdom for those among us who have lost the vision.

I know my giftings are academic. I am a reader and researcher and writer and analyst; that is what I am gifted to do. And while I dread the prospect of being an academic who just writes in academic journals that other academics read--a community far too incestuous for my liking--I think maybe there's a place for those of us with those talents to delve into the theology and history and study and come out with the nuggets of wisdom to give back to our churches and communities, to say "Hey! This is where it went wrong, and here's how we can fix it."

That's the kind of academic I'd want to be. But the truth is, I've never been happier than I was at Star of Hope, playing Twister and nurturing the image of God in children and getting my annual TB test. And while I write this in my house in Cambridge listening to Christmas carols, I really wish I was trying to teach an 8-year-old rowdy boy to see with the eyes of a king.

Because one day, that is exactly what he will be.

Come, Let Us Reason Together

2009-10-21T21:45:00.000-07:00

We are an arguing family.

Growing up, I thought all families argued. In mine, we like to get the last word in. I remember realizing that perhaps this was not conventional when my little sister had a friend over in high school and he watched in horror as my dad and I yelled and shook our fists and stomped our feet about school prayer and carried the argument out of the house into the driveway until I ended it by slamming the car door. (After launching a particularly strong argument. Because I like to have the last word. And the first, and most of the ones in between.)

I was thinking of this recently because I think we, as a church, have gotten sloppy as arguers. We proof text. We throw around words like "liberal" and "conservative" as slurs without really knowing what they mean. And growing up in a family where vigorous debate and reasoning was valued and where you'd better be able to defend your position (as my dad has said, "Your mama may have raised a mean child, but she raised no fools") has made me realize that it's a rapidly disappearing art, and the church is suffering for it.

I have a friend recently who said the arguments against ordaining gay people or blessing gay unions were the same ones used by racists to justify apartheid. It's an argument I've heard before, and it's sloppy and inaccurate. Apartheid theology twisted Scripture to see something that isn't there: a vision of race before race existed. The Biblical writers had some concept of tribe, but not of race as defined by color; that was a European invention about 1500 years later. Even many evangelicals took issue with apartheid theology: apartheid apologists used the Tower of Babel and Pentecost as examples of God wanting people to remain separate, while evangelicals typically see Pentecost as setting right what went wrong at Babel--the sin that caused division was now being set right by the Spirit, speaking to all in their languages so they were brought together, not pushed apart, the beginning of this radical new venture in inclusion that was the early church. (Flawed and faulty, as we all are, but still radical. And an adventure. I do love adventure.)

The parallel doesn't quite work with homosexuality. You can say Scripture doesn't refer to homosexual relationships as we now understand them, but then that does one of two things: 1) you are inverting the race analogy and, rhetorically, putting those who support full inclusion of LGBTQ people in the same position as the apartheid apologists. In one case, we argue that the Bible is misused to justify an argument about race that didn't exist then; in the second, we turn around and use the Bible to justify an argument about homosexuality that we assert didn't exist then; ie in either case, we are alleging the construct of race or sexuality *as we understand them today* did not exist in Biblical times, but in one place we are using it as a critique and in another as a justification; or 2) you're wrong, and no less a Biblical scholar than N.T. Wright says it, who says that "there is nothing that we know now about either the condition or the behavior of homosexuality that was unknown in the first century." It was not just pederasty or sexual use of slaves, he asserts, but also "read Plato's Symposium: they have permanent, faithful, stable male-male partnerships, lifelong stuff, Achilles and Patroclus in Homer, all sorts of things--Paul, in Corinth, will not have been unaware, in a world in which private life only is for the very rich and the very aristocratic, everyone else does what they do pretty much in public--Paul will have known the full range of behavior." The dismissal of first century understanding of homosexuality is, he says, "Enlightenment arrogance."

Now. It seems to me if he is right, and I tend to trust him as probably the leading NT scholar alive and certainly one of the leading authorities on Paul and Romans, then the question is not so much what the Bible has to say about homosexuality, but what weight and authority we give it. And that is a valid discussion to have. But let's have that one and not the one in which we try to force Scripture to say what it doesn't.

As for me, I'd like to think I'm probably not so easy to pin down on this issue as some might think I am. Where I am unsure, I prefer to err on the side of grace; I think it unlikely that God will ever say to me "You took that grace thing too literally, you over-graced the world, it got out of hand." I am tasked with loving people; the Holy Spirit is tasked with transforming them. I am less concerned with whether homosexual behavior is or is not a sin and more concerned with how the church has isolated it as a sin beyond others while ignoring the sins in its midst. We have way bigger fish to fry, folks.

I am sorry that in our shouting at each other, we miss the opportunity to articulate what a Christian vision of human sexuality and sexual mores might look like. At least the evangelical tradition is still clear: it is covenantal, to be exercised within the sanctuary and safety of marriage, because letting someone quite literally inside your skin is not to be taken lightly and not something we do with just anyone. It's a very high view of marriage, of sexuality, and of the body. It is also, in a world where marriage now may occur 15 or 20 years after the onset of sexual maturity and may not occur at all, a very demanding view--which doesn't make it wrong, but it's worth exploring. And for those Christians (I hesitate to say liberal just because I think liberal and conservative are unhelpful terms in this context, they've become so polarizing and stereotyped) who have unloosed sex from marriage, what does a Christian vision of moral sexual behavior look like? What do Christian principles look like incarnated in our most intimate relations? That is also a conversation worth having and we're not having it.

When an activist friend and I have talked about it we get mutually frustrated because she frames the issue of gay inclusion in the church (in her case, the Anglican Communion) in terms of human rights and I say the church isn't about rights; rights is political language, Enlightenment language, but not Biblical language and not faith language. By that I don't mean I think the church should stand in opposition to human rights; it has just made me think that it isn't the question we are meant to ask. Scripture talks about laying rights down, not taking them up. And I think a better question is not "what are my rights" but "what is my responsibility to my neighbor"--which in the end is the more demanding and costly question, and hopefully one that leads us to the same place of protecting and celebrating human dignity and worth ("rights," in political language) in its fullness but gets us there together, each of us looking out for and protecting the other over ourselves.

We don't argue well anymore. I mean we as a church--perhaps it is the degradation of our political culture that has seeped into the churches, perhaps that we don't value reason ("Come, let us reason together") and the premise-evidence-logic strand anymore, perhaps that we haven't the discipline and attention for it anymore (remember Paul talks of discipline as a prelude to faith); but we are sloppy, lazy thinkers these days, and I am frustrated by it. And it wasn't always this way. The Anglican construct of the three-legged stool posits that Scripture, reason and tradition are the three legs that hold up the stool of faith, which becomes wobbly when any one of them is missing; the Methodists added experience but held on to reason. Because these things matter, they are worth reasoning through and reasoning through well; they are questions about who we are and what it is to be human and how to live well in this world. Our conversation is so impoverished and we do it so poorly.

I am postmodern enough to believe that these are not our only tools or the only legitimate way of arriving at a conclusion, that narrative and art and experience are also resources, but a well-disciplined mind is still so vital--I am just not willing to give that weapon up just yet.

"In the church of Jesus Christ there can and should be no non-theologians."--Karl Barth

Anglicans, Everyone Else Is Making You Look Bad

2009-10-11T20:06:00.000-07:00

**OK, I know it's been forever since I've blogged, so the next few blogs are going to alternate between finishing up my thoughts on South Africa and ruminations on the last year at Harvard. By the way, my housemate doesn't believe in using the heater, so I'm wearing sweatpants over flannel pajamas with an electric blanket. And still the mornings are painful.

Anyway, this blog post reflects on a project I was working on in June and July, viewing a major anti-apartheid march from 1989 through a theological lens.
*******************************************************

I love Reformed theology and thought. And I am not one who is usually enthralled by theology. I have little interest in debating the finer points of TULIP or whether Jesus became Christ before or after His crucifixion and resurrection; they can be interesting intellectual challenges, but in general, they are things we will not know the full answers to while we are yet on this side of life. I have come to the point where if a certain precept doesn’t help me in my basic mission to follow Jesus and not hurt other people—a mission that keeps me fairly well occupied most of the time, because sometimes it feels like I look up and totally unintentionally I have left mass carnage in my wake and I think, hmmm; that did not work out as well as I’d hoped—then it’s going to have to take a back seat to those things that do.

But spend a little bit of time with Anglicans and you’ll come to have a whole new respect for a robust and vigorously articulated theology, because it’s so sorely lacking in some of their circles. (I don’t say all, because they still have N.T. Wright, and that counts for something.) Even if you disagree with it, at least it gives you something of substance to actually disagree with.

As part of a project I was working on, I interviewed two former Anglican priests, both of whom served in fairly high positions in Cape Town’s diocese. One of them, when asked about the theological themes that drove church resistance to apartheid, said dreamily, “Faith.” Errrr….what? What did that even mean? Is that seriously all he’s going to give me? Not even a verse of the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love,” which would be more profound than anything I’d hitherto heard from him?

Unfortunately, no.

Then he launched into an explanation of how we were all energy moving at different frequencies and when we come together all that energy…blah blah blah my ears are bleeding…something about E=mc^2…and he rambles on and I think, do I still remember the Nicene Creed? Or the lyrics to “Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam”? Because I think he is actually sucking the faith right out of my spirit. Along with my will to live.

Then I talked to another Anglican who freely said, “I don’t really do theology, it was never my thing. It used to worry Tutu, he was always asking me when my next retreat was.” But, he continued, he just really wasn’t into the whole spirituality and theology part of being a priest.

Huh. I'm thinking the spirituality-and-faith part of being a priest is, I don't know, A MAJOR PART OF THE JOB. Who was in charge of ordination during these years? Because someone seriously fell down on the job, and apparently poor Tutu was trying to hold it together with string and duct tape. Anglicans, you should be pissed. This doesn’t show well.

So you can only imagine how I felt when I interviewed Allan Boesak a couple of weeks later. Boesak is one of the anti-apartheid luminaries, a founder of the United Democratic Front, fiery speaker, and a pastor in the Coloured branch of the Dutch Reformed Church. He did his Ph.D in the Netherlands and has done some great research on Bonhoeffer.

What I am telling you is, Allan Boesak has some theology.

He immediately started talking about Calvin and Kuyper and Bonhoeffer and about how the Reformed understanding of Christ’s Lordship of all things is the paradigm under which he operated. There is no private zone for the church separate from society, because society is also under the Lordship of Christ, whether it recognizes it or not. And Christ is steering things to His desired end. (A little bit of Calvinist predestination kicks in here.) I wasn’t sure if I should clap or kiss his ring.

And we were mutually smug about the nebulousness of much of Anglican theology.

I'm reading his memoir now which reflects on a major public scandal in which he was involved, so I don't want to comment on that until I've read his defense. But Boesak-Part II is coming soon.

Faithful

2009-07-29T05:40:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, in spite of yourself, you end up exactly where you need to be.

I was tired the other night after a day that included working furiously to meet a deadline and two meetings, one of them with the same people who made us fingerpaint about apartheid so, you know, I was already on my guard. I wanted to come back to my room and take a shower and fall asleep early. Instead I let myself get dragged to some church in Athlone, one of the Coloured townships (as opposed to the black townships). There was a 20th anniversary memorial service for two young people who had been killed by the security police in 1989, my friend said. She is a struggle veteran, so one feels it is poor form to say “I don’t really care about your history, I was kind of hoping to find a rerun of ‘Gilmore Girls’ on TV,” so I went.

We arrived at a church already packed with people. Desmond Tutu was there; so was Trevor Manuel, who basically runs the country (come on, we all know it’s not Zuma) and Farid Esack. They gave great speeches, passionate and pleading, their power to sway a crowd undiminished after all these years.

But it was not the luminaries who fascinated me, though I am something of a hero worshipper. It was the crowd.

Many of them—perhaps most—were struggle veterans. Some had been part of the nonviolent, civil society resistance; others had been part of the guerrilla armed struggle. A handful of them were dressed in the fatigues of Umkhonto weSwizwe (Spear of the Nation), the military wing of the pre-1994 ANC that led the armed struggle. We tend to think of the South African freedom movement as very like our own civil rights movement—nonviolent in its orientation, convinced that violence only begets more violence. For many in the movement, this was true. But others believed without the fear instilled by an element of insurrection and violence, they would never achieve their desired ends.

The violence gave the police a reason to come down ever more harshly and a way to justify it to the public. The two MK kids who died were 20 years old. They were killed by a security police bomb. Their bodies were almost unidentifiable. And their stories are unremarkable. Things like this happened to struggle activists all the time. Someone I interviewed said, “There was a time when we thought we’d never stop going to funerals.” Twenty years on, I think I would still be filled with rage—corrosive, poisonous rage.

Instead, they rose as one and sang “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.”

Perhaps you haven’t heard the lyrics in a while; so few churches sing old hymns anymore.

Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father
There is no shadow of turning with Thee
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not
As Thou hast been, Thou forever wilt be
Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning, new mercies I see
All I have needed, Thy hand hath provided
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me.

I struggle with the armed resistance. I understand, of course, why 20-year-olds rage against oppression that brutalizes their parents and families and communities. But I wonder if it didn’t do more harm than good. People died, went into exile, were detained and tortured; of course, this happened to the nonviolent activists as well. Yet I wonder if MK wasn’t the best propaganda tool the apartheid state had: concrete evidence that the revolution was at the doorstep and any means was justifiable in pushing it back, even if it meant killing kids and deploying the army into people’s neighborhoods. And on a moral level, I struggle with armed resistance. Christian tradition is not monolithic on this—Aquinas writes of just war, while the Franciscans and Mennonites and others are pacifists; Bonhoeffer struggles to hold the two together and ends up realizing that one can only act, in the full knowledge one may be absolutely wrong, and then throw oneself on the grace of God. There is no way, in a broken world, to get it perfectly right. And that’s no excuse to sit it out on the sidelines.

Summer and winter and springtime and harvest
Sun, moon and stars in their courses above
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love

Robbie and Coline, the two cadres being memorialized, were bright, brave, ambitious kids, by all accounts. They still have friends and family who miss them, who know that there is a seat missing at the family table at Christmas, who know they lost grandchildren and nieces and nephews as well when they lost Robbie and Coline. They are frozen in memory as they were at 20: hopeful, determined, with all the zeal and idealism of youth. The comrades at the service—those who fought in the same struggle, whether armed or not, and made it through to the other side—did not meet the same end, but they are not unscathed either. A woman I interviewed said they are “a scarred generation. But we wear our scars like badges of honor.” It may be true, but though they have built up normal lives for themselves, have kids and jobs and mortgages, the scars are never far below the surface. Some are tormented by what they’ve seen. Some are tormented by what they’ve done. Some are tormented by what was done to them. All are, in some way, tormented. And yet they sang.

Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth
Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow
Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside.

I grapple with the armed resistance from a moral perspective; I believe it’s essential for Christians to do so. And I don’t think you can easily dismiss a Jesus who says “Blessed are the peacemakers.” But it is theoretical for me: I am not in a position that requires me to make such a choice. And as David Russell, a former bishop, said to me, his nonviolent protests were protected by MK. Our ability to take such a stance is often ensured by those who have taken a different one. The pope is a pacifist, but is protected by the Swiss guard, after all. So I am learning to temper my tendency to pontificate with a bit of humility. Those who fought, in whatever way their consciences led them, bear the scars of their suffering on behalf of others. Is that not part of being remade in the image of Christ?

When people went up to light candles, they sang the MK anthem that was sung when a cadre dies. I looked at two of my friends: one who was an organizer for UDF; one who, though a priest, ran MK missions into Botswana. Both are scarred. Both are luminous. Both challenge my understanding of Christian witness. We clasped hands to sing “We Shall Overcome,” the old civil rights song, and I found myself hoping desperately that they would—overcome their own hurts and scars, but also that this wonderful, wounded country would overcome, that the deep challenges it faces will be turned into opportunities for moral imagination and agency. Because the price they have paid has been so high, and I want the reward to be commensurate.

In some form, perhaps not the one any of us envision, I am confident it will be. Because our faithfulness falters; but there is One who never does.

Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me.

Gonna Be a Lovely Day

2009-07-19T10:21:00.001-07:00

as Kirk Franklin would say. If you are on this site, you received an invitation to be. I had a couple of, shall we say, unexpected South African visitors to the site (feel free to email me for more info on that one), and it was hampering my ability to talk about what I was doing here and, more importantly, my ability to be snarky about it. New readers are welcome, they just need to email me for access. So take heart: you're a small, select group, the elite in-crowd, just like you wanted to be back in middle school.

SO: what's been going on? I am working on two projects here in Cape Town. The first is creating a document for an organization called The Foundation for Church-Led Restitution, to be used by churches becoming interested in a restitution-vs-charity paradigm. It's very interesting, although I have some ideological problems with it the deeper in I get. I'm eyeballs-deep in finishing a draft of it by Tuesday so I'll write more reflectively about it later.

The second is the script for an exhibition St. George's Cathedral--known as "The People's Cathedral," or more colloquially to most of us, "Desmond Tutu's church"--is creating to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Peace March of September 13 1989, which was one of the biggest marches Cape Town had ever seen and one of the death knells of apartheid (it happened just a few days after F.W. de Klerk, who would ultimately win the Nobel Peace Prize with Mandela, had taken over from P.W. Botha--apparently Afrikaner politicians are only allowed to have initials, not actual names). The Cathedral is creating a Space of Memory and Witness, which is a nice and slightly theological way of saying a museum, to commemorate the role it has played in justice movements over time, and this is its first exhibition, so I'm pretty excited to be the author of it. It's also allowed me to meet and interview some really interesting folks, including Allan Boesak--there's a post coming up on him--and the then-mayor and a lot of struggle activists. Who are a screwed-up lot as a whole, an observation which deserves its own post.

I have a script due tomorrow for them, which is obviously why I've chosen to blog now.

Anyway: welcome to the newly selective Cape Town to Cambridge! Consider yourself a VIP--I sure do.

And the Bible Metaphor of the Day Award Goes to...

2009-07-19T02:04:00.001-07:00

Dionne, for this advice when I lamented the occasional moments of surreal, "are they crazy or am I? am I really here? can you see me?" absurdity that threaten to intrude on my placid life:

"When you get your boarding pass at the airport, keep facing forward. When you walk up to the gate, face forward. When you sit on the plane and take off from South Africa, face forward. Don't look behind you, lest there be a pillar of salt in your future."

Bwahahahaha.

Happy Sunday.

I Have a Patron Saint!

2009-07-08T10:51:00.000-07:00

I passed a church today called St. Martini’s and I almost passed out from the wave of reverence that came over me. Surely the presence of the Lord is in that place, y’all. I can hear the rush of angels’ wings, I see glory on each face…I was overcome. I have a patron saint! My PresbyBaptist self can still embrace liturgical traditions! On his feast day, do you wear little black dresses at swanky bars or lounge around the house in silk dressing-gowns drinking martinis from one’s own sterling silver cocktail shaker? (I’m a shaken-not-stirred kind of gal.) Then I found out it was just St. Martin’s in Afrikaans and my religious aspirations wisped away like so much gossamer. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.

Also, I am acutely feeling the sadness of missing Michael Jackson's funeral. I tried to stream CNN but there wasn't enough bandwidth. Or as Runako said, "Lots of little South African students couldn't do their homework on Wikipedia because you were using up all the bandwidth trying to watch Michael Jackson. I hope you're happy." Which I absolutely WOULD HAVE BEEN if it had actually *worked*.

And now I am trying to pull an all-nighter, or at least a late-nighter, to finish a draft of a project due Friday. But how am I possibly to do that in a land without Starbucks? And no coffee maker in my room? This is going to be a subpar product, South African friends--that's right, I know you're reading--just prepare yourself for it now.

Hey Kim, Farid Esack remembers you. Which suggests to me you did not maintain our hallowed undergraduate tradition of sleeping/not paying attention in class. I'm gravely disappointed.

Random Encounters

2009-07-02T13:14:00.001-07:00

I'm having communion with Desmond Tutu Friday morning. Eat your hearts out, suckers. I'm secretly hoping for a better picture with him than I got last time, because as you can see, I had kind of Mufasa hair in that picture.

Also, every photo I take has that glare off my Tyra forehead, I can't do anything about that. I can't be cute at 7 in the morning, it's just asking too much. I do wish I knew what happened to that fleece I was wearing, it's one of my favorites.

Also, at the laundromat today a couple of old men actually just stopped and watched while I was sorting my delicates. Apparently no one told them the rule about how in public places like that we all keep to ourselves and, if we must look, we do it surreptitiously. It was creepy. Yes, dude, it's red lace underwear. Keep moving.

And I ran into some of my people today. I was going to get lunch, and two 40-something men approached me. In an accent you could cut with a butter knife, one of them says, "Excuuuse me, maaaa'aaam, buuut will thiiis strate take us to Laaawwng Strate?" I immediately recognized him as my people and made a quick guess: Mississippi or Alabama. "Where y'all from?" I asked. "The U.S.," he responded. Yeah I get that. "Where in the U.S.?" I clarified. Sure enough, folks, we have a winner: Mississippi! "I'm from Texas!" I exclaimed and we immediately started to taaawwk sloooowweerr and with bigger hand gestures, and use phrases like "like to had" and "fixin to" while lamenting Cape Town's lack of barbeque or Mexican food. (I did tell him where he could find Dr. Pepper, for which he was appropriately grateful.) The second guy piped in, "I'm from Colorado." Dude, who cares? Mississippi is Faulkner, Elvis, civil rights workers, and brilliant writers who drink themselves to madness. Colorado is...skiing. And Focusing on the Family. No one's impressed.

I even walked them part of the way to Long Street, since they were nowhere near it. I kind of wanted to ask the Mississippi guy, who was *definitely* Old School Mississippi, not part of the New South AT ALL, if he was freaked out by all the Coloured people, since at home they would just be black. (He might identify some as "high yella" or "redbone," but beyond that, probably not making a lot of distinctions.) But I'm a nice Southern girl so I figured it was best to stick to safer topics. He was already a stranger in a strange land.

If Desmond and I take a better photograph tomorrow, I'll be sure to post it.

Mark Sanford is Determined to Destroy The Last Shreds of Hope for His Marriage

2009-07-01T12:00:00.000-07:00

That is all one can deduce from his fatal proclivity for continuing to talk to the press when he needs to just pipe the hell down and ride out his last year as governor before disappearing quietly from the political landscape. This latest round of “tearful, emotional” interviews (per the Associated Press) has him saying that this wasn’t just any affair. Oh no y’all, nothing so tawdry as that. This was a “tragic and forbidden love story.”

I KNOW. I KNOW. I’M DYING TOO. CAN. YOU. EVEN. IMAGINE. When did he start taking his cues from the back covers of Harlequin romances? When did the A.P. become his pastor/therapist/bartender? And don’t you feel like he’s somehow trying to create a moral high ground in which this is not in the same class with other people’s affairs, because it was True Love?

And then he said that she wasn’t the first woman he had “crossed lines” with.

Well, of course she isn’t. Who ever is? She’s the first one you got caught with, Mark. We were all clear on that without you saying it and further embarrassing your wife.

And THEN, because apparently he has never heard of the phrase “no comment,” he said that he would “go to my grave knowing I have met my soulmate” but that he owed it to his kids and 20 years of marriage to “try this larger walk of faith.” He is, and again I quote, “trying to fall back in love with Jenny.”

Well.

Well then.

I bet Jenny is awful grateful for that, Mark. It must have warmed the cockles of her heart. Why don’t you toss her some more crumbs from your table?

Remember how people got upset when Bill Clinton wouldn’t answer questions like these and said he was irate that people even had the nerve to ask? A little of that outrage would stand Sanford and his family in good stead right now. Why won’t he just stop answering questions? Why the public confessionals? Aren’t we all uncomfortable enough?

This guy doesn’t need a press corps, he needs a therapist.

Favorite tweet seen on this: “We can’t judge until we too have slept with a woman in Argentina. Who’s up for a road trip?”

Maureen Dowd at the New York Times is apparently sharing a brain with me on this, and does it better than I do, so go read her column "Rules of the Wronged" at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/opinion/01dowd.html?_r=1.

I will post about actual South African things soon, including my work, and how I am hoping to mobilize some people to put on our Barack T-shirts and go be obnoxious Americans for the 4th of July. Even though I really try and live as if loving one's neighbor transcends all borders and nationalism leads us to war and destruction, there is a tiny (but, it turns out, oftentimes loud, particularly when it's had a couple of drinks) voice that feels like on general principle, but *particularly* since the November election, I should get free drinks on July 4. Like on my birthday. Come on, we're the country that brought you brilliant constitutions with kickass bills of rights, Michael Jackson, blue jeans and iPods/iPhones/iMacs. We deserve to be a superpower.

Coffee, Winter Days, and My New Political Crush

2009-06-30T04:32:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, in quiet moments, I reflect on John Newton’s statement that “I know but two things: I am a great sinner, and Christ is a great savior.”

Other times, I reflect on how I would take just about anything from the Starbucks menu right now, and on what grave desperation must have driven the man who invented Nescafe.

I used to wonder why South Africans seemed to adopt the worst aspects of British culture. Like tea. I mean, I like tea fine, and I certainly like it a lot more now that I’ve figured out you can put a lot of cream and sugar in it. But why weren’t people here coffee drinkers, I asked in bewilderment? And then I realized that if all you knew of coffee was Nescafe, you would turn to tea as well. (Theological analogy here: you know how we’ve all been told that “you’re all of Christ that some folks will ever see?” And you think to yourself, wow, that is unfortunate for them, because I am not Jesus’ best foot forward, as it were? We are the Nescafe to Jesus’ Arabian coffee, y’all. Ponder that rich insight for a moment.)

There used to be a coffeehouse in Cape Town that served real coffee, but it closed down, no doubt because of my patronage. I am the Typhoid Mary of Cape Town coffeehouses; two of the ones I frequented in the past have since closed. I almost want to apologize to the café I’m sitting in right now because they are just darling and obviously their days are numbered. Now all I can find is Nescafe, which lo, is an abomination unto the Lord, who hath made all coffee good in His time. But people don’t *call* it Nescafe; they call it coffee, so I am deceived. Then I saw “filter coffee” on the menu and I thought, score! Nescafe is not made with a filter, right? It’s instant, that’s the whole point, so this must be the real thing. But then it came and it had that distinctive light brown film over the top of it. You’ve never seen real coffee with that film, right? It’s the Nescafe giveaway. So all I could figure was maybe they filtered the water before they mixed it with the Nescafe. Or they put Nescafe in the filter basket. Either way, there was no mistaking that bitter taste. My hopes rose briefly when I saw “café americano” on the menu because I thought OK, American coffee. That’s what they call filter coffee in Egypt to distinguish it from Nescafe; maybe Cape Town is taking its cues from their neighbors to the (far) north. But it arrived with the same light brown film. Hopes: dashed.

A young friend of mine here, who is 20, drinks the stuff like it’s the last drink on earth. I honestly want to stage an intervention for the kid. “We’re all here to let you know we love you but we can’t enable this lifestyle anymore, because it’s so far beneath you and you’re not living up to your potential and we just can’t watch you do this to yourself. Have a latte.”

I worry that I’ll eventually get used to it and even come to like it, the way the Israelites in exile forgot the old ways and assimilated into Babylon. I try to hold on to the memory of real coffee, so that like Nehemiah, I’ll be ready when it’s time to return. (I’ve been spending some time in the Old Testament lately, if you can’t tell.)

On another note entirely: you know who’s glad Michael Jackson died? Mark Sanford. That guy’s news cycle got drastically abbreviated by Jacko’s death, and you know Sanford is lighting candles in church for him in thanksgiving and remembrance. I’m kind of sorry, because I was really looking forward to the inevitable parodies of “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina,” after he said he’d spent five days crying in Argentina. Of course that was after he’d said he was just clearing his head in Buenos Aires, driving down the coast. My friend said that’s when he knew a woman was going to come out of the woodwork: he’d been to Argentina and said, “There’s no coastline in Buenos Aires. I knew then we didn’t have the whole story.” Which was itself after he said he’d been hiking the Appalachian Trail, after leaving without telling anyone where he was going or conferring his gubernatorial powers upon the lieutenant governor. I guess it’s a good thing no one needed a death sentence commuted or the National Guard called in for those five days.

Which brings me to what I loved best about this story: I loved Jenny Sanford. Y’all, Jenny Sanford is my new favorite political wife. (Before her, Bill Clinton was my favorite political wife. Hee.) All those press conferences where betrayed political wives stood with pained smiles plastered on their faces while their husbands publicly copped to various forms of infidelity, be it with men (Jim McGreevy, I’m looking at you—FYI he’s in seminary now to become an Episcopal priest), women (John Edwards and a whole raft of others) or boys (that one’s you, Mark Foley), had become so painful to watch. I love that Jenny basically said, “I’m going to the beach house, and you need to man up and take your licks on your own. Peace out!” I saw a parody of a Facebook page that cracked me up: it said “Mark Sanford has added ‘Buenos Aires, Argentina’ to his ‘Places I’ve Been’ application,” followed by, “Jenny Sanford has added ‘Not Your F****** Press Conference, Mark’ to her ‘Places I’ve Been’ application.” (See it here at http://www.slate.com/id/2221581/. Ha! If Jenny Sanford ever runs for office, I am working for her campaign, and I’m not even a Republican. That girl’s got spunk. (And personally I think she's the one who sent the incriminating emails to the newspaper, since they were forwarded from Sanford's private account. She went all Thelma-and-Louise-driving-off-a-cliff on him: if we are going down, it will be in a blaze of glory and press coverage, mo'fo'.)

And to end, it is about 70 degrees here today. In the dead of winter. And people are actually walking around in scarves and mittens. Every time I come here, my Cape Town friends warn me that “it’s freezing! It’s bitterly cold! You must bring warm clothes!” And I think, hmmm, I seem to recall Cape Town winters as being quite mild, but maybe my mind is playing tricks on me. Maybe they’re worse than I remember and it’s just that they pale in comparison to Boston winters, where it actually hurts your skin to go outside. And then I get here and no, it is as mild as I recall. It’s like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown, in which I am Charlie Brown and either my memory or my local friends’ deeply skewed sense of “bitterly cold” is Lucy. Here’s how Cape Town looks today:

And here's how Boston looked as recently as April:

Exactly.

Cape Town Catch-Up

2009-06-29T14:02:00.000-07:00

Hey peeps! I know I’m grossly late on the posting, and it’s been a busy 4 weeks so I won’t try to sum it all up. But here are some random musings over the last weeks:

1) Lauren and I are in locked in a death match to see who can gain more weight for her wedding. Counterintuitive for most brides and bridesmaids, I know, but we never claimed to be a normal family. She wants to be fit and toned for her wedding, which has spiraled into an obsession with weight-lifting and protein supplements. (Money quote: “I eat as much protein as a mid-size Texas ranch. If you slaughtered every animal on that ranch and ate it, that’s how much protein I take each week.”) Never one to be outdone, I am also lifting weights and eating at McDonalds nearly every day in an effort to pack on the weight and not look skeletal in the strapless bridesmaid’s dress she has chosen for me. Clavicles can be sexy but not if they’re jutting out three inches from the skin. So far she’s winning, but I have hit 111 pounds!—which puts me over the 110-pound mark I have not been able to break in well over a year, and within reach of the 115-120 pounds that is my normal weight. We’re both drinking the protein shakes but I haven’t ventured into the territory of the pill supplements because they all seem to have a lot of testosterone, and I’m afraid I’ll grow a mustache. And maybe a penis.

2) I have located a store—possibly the only one in Cape Town, lo, in South Africa—that sells Dr. Pepper. Behold, the beauty of my dietary staples:

Yes, that is a can of Dr. Pepper—doesn’t it just gleam with the promise of goodness?—and Nutella. I eat them both, frequently together.

3) It has been pointed out to me that every time I leave the country, significant Americans die. Last trip, it was Tim Russert (oh Tim, I missed you all through the elections). This time, it’s Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and the guy who sells OxyClean.

And Michael Jackson.

Y’ALL. MICHAEL JACKSON. I can’t even tell you how done in I was. “Thriller” was the first real album I owned, along with the soundtrack to “Annie” (the Smurf and Strawberry Shortcake singalong albums I had earlier in my childhood do not count as real albums). I was 5, maybe 6 years old. I wanted the floor to light up when I stepped on it like the street did in the “Billie Jean” video which technically I wasn’t supposed to watch since I wasn’t allowed to watch MTV but which I watched in total awe at friends’ houses and at my grandparents’ in the summer because they didn’t know the rules. (This, children, was back when Music Television actually played music videos. I know it’s hard to conceive. Also, gas used to be less than a dollar and there were only like 30 cable stations. And we walked to school uphill in the snow and we liked it.) And even as he brought the crazy as the years wore on, that early luster couldn’t be tarnished.

Frankly I felt like Cape Town wasn’t sufficiently mournful. I mean, my friends back home were all talking about commiserating with people on street corners and parking lots, and here? Nothing. I had a brief moment of connection with a car park attendant who sang “Beat It” with me in the middle of the sidewalk, but otherwise nothing. Possibly, though, it’s because Capetonians are simply holding to the same belief as the guy who sold me new earphones for my iPod the day after Michael died. I mentioned the sadness and he informed me MJ was not really dead. He just needed a rest, so he faked his death and has gone to Cuba with Tupac.

Clearly, this man is my new boyfriend.

Can I briefly mention how excited I am for the funeral? Elizabeth Taylor, Diana Ross, Liza Minnelli—it’s going to be like every VH1 diva concert rolled into one.

I will finish by noting that I attended a meeting recently in which people were asked to fingerpaint their emotions regarding apartheid and the struggle. Maybe for my next act, I’ll knit my reaction to the Holocaust. Or perform an interpretive dance about Tianenmen Square. I’m a lot more cautious about the meetings I attend now.

Bridal Shower Hilarity

2009-05-20T22:44:00.001-07:00

I was in Philadelphia this weekend for my little sister's bridal shower. Lauren is moving on up, guys. To a de-luxe apartment in the sky. No seriously, a 10th-story condo in the ritziest building in Philly. The Jeffersons only dreamed of such grandeur.

(You're all humming the song, aren't you? "Fish don't fry in the kitchen, beans don't burn on the grill, took a whole lot of tuh-ry-in', a-just to get up that hill...")

So the bridal shower. Lauren doesn't like to be the center of attention; in fact, when she has to be, she actually channels her alter ego, who is named Rhonda (sort of like Beyonce becomes Sasha Fierce, except imagine Beyonce without the talent or, you know, anything resembling rhythm). She refused to let my mom's friends give her a shower. She told her mother-in-law she didn't want a shower. The mother-in-law, whose name--I lie not--is Wenchie, decided to host one anyway.

So Lauren? A little peeved.

But Matt, the peacemaking fiance, assured her she would like it because the theme was Mexican food and margaritas. Our girl does like a good margarita. Or a bad one. Any margarita really, she's not terribly discriminatory.

We arrive at the shower, and it turns out the theme is not Mexican-n-margaritas. The theme is Ladies Who Lunch. There is a lot of pink everywhere, and food like curried chicken salad and brie, and not a bit of liquor in sight.

I know this because as I am making do with raspberry lemonade, Lauren is practically looking under the tablecloths for the margaritas. Alas, there were none. (This could be an issue in their marriage, based on what I saw the rest of the weekend, ie "Lauren, will you walk the dog?" "No, Matt, because you said there would be margaritas and there were no margaritas and I hate you.")

The rest of the time was spent watching Lauren fake enthusiasm over carving knives and serving trays, though by the end I feared she might commit hara kiri with one of the knives. Boy, it is wasted on a girl who is perfectly happy to eat pizza off of a paper towel.

However, the photos are cute, particularly the one of her wearing the hat made out of all the ribbons and bows from the packages. I like to call this photo "I'm smiling on the outside, but I'm slowly dying inside."

And here is a cute one of the two of us in our springy dresses, which I will take with me to Cape Town and admire all through the next two months of winter, because I am resigned to the fact that summer has disappeared from my life.

Really, South Africa? Really?

2009-04-30T08:15:00.000-07:00

Today I received an email from a church where I have worked in South Africa warning against unnecessary travel due to swine flu.

If this is a subtle invitation not to come because living in the same hemisphere as most of the swine flu victims obviously makes me a threat, I would like to remind the AIDS capital of the world that they have bigger fish to fry. I'll be just fine.

And I'm still coming.

I'm Baaa-aaack...

2009-04-26T12:55:00.000-07:00

So...I haven't blogged all year. Brief rundown: there was school, and then there were tests, and more school, and some papers, and sometimes I skipped class, and it snowed like I lived in the Arctic tundra, and then it snowed more, and more school, and did I mention it snows a lot here? Because it does.

HOWEVER. Today it is in the mid-80s and sunny, and I laid by the Charles River in my shorts and bikini top and read a mindless novel that had nothing whatever to do with the loads of final exams and papers about to descend upon my head, and I ate ice cream and now I will take a nap. And as I write this, I am eating chips and queso while I wait for a pizza to cook. And then I might eat ice cream again. It's how I get ready for swimsuit season, y'all.

SPEAKING OF swimsuit season, I could not be more excited for the next several weekends. Here is my rundown: May 2, I will be chilling at the Country Home with Kim and her family for her sister-in-law Mandy's baby shower (Mandy, fair warning: I find newborn gifts to be a wee bit boring. They are pastel and lack panache. I am hoping to find a disco-ball-themed mobile for the crib because that? Would RAWK.) Weekend after...so far nothing, but I've not given up hope. Weekend after that, I fly to Philadelphia for my little sister's wedding shower. We fully plan to drink our way through the shower anyway, but just in case we're not *completely* slobbering drunk by the time it's over, we'll be heading to Sonic for a cherry limeade with rum. Mmmm, summertime. Then comes Memorial Day, which is in Atlanta with Mijha and Runako and also involves rum, though perhaps not with cherry limeades, and laying by the lake. My tan will be killer, y'all, and not just in the melanoma kind of way. And then the weekend after that I am going back to Philly to hang with my sister and her fiance at the Jersey Shore. Somewhere in there are three 20-page papers to write and two final exams to take, but I haven't really figured out how they fit in yet.

And then...I head to South Africa. Where my tan will disappear like so much gossamer in the wind because it is winter there and it is wet and rainy and gets dark at 5 pm, much like the last six months of my life.

So in an effort to fend off the anticipatory Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD...awwww) brought on by the prospect of YET MORE winter, here are the things I am really, really excited about my return to SA:

1) The minibus cab. Oh, beloveds, the minibus cabs. I don't have words for the glory of a vehicle that is meant to seat seven, easily seats 15 along with children and sometimes livestock, and blares hip-hop music at rocket-launching decibels, all while adorned with airbrushed pictures of Tupac. And costs you roughly sixty cents to ride.

2) The little bakery that sells lemon meringue puffs and milk tarts, which I ate every day last summer and are exclusively responsible for the fact I didn't die of malnutrition.

3) The Labia Theater, which is NOT EVEN A PORN THEATER, Y'ALL. The name misleads, no? Instead, it is a fabulous mix of first-run releases from the US and artsie/independent flicks from all over. Love. It.

4) South African soap operas. To die for.

5) Learning to drive a stick shift. Those of you who know that I can manage to get in wrecks in my own country, where I (ostensibly) know the rules and the roads are wide and flat, can only imagine how I might fare learning to drive stick shift while also remembering to look the opposite way for traffic (an omission that has nearly cost me my life on more than one occasion) and remember the Capetonians regard traffic laws as suggestions more than rules. Hints, if you will. But I have been told I should learn to drive a stick shift there and get my international driver's license, and I might just undertake it. Or I may just rely on the aforementioned cabs.

6) Evensong at St. George's Cathedral. Beautiful, mystical, as high-churchy as you could want.

7) The beach, which is stunning even in winter, and watching the sun set into the water is one of my favorite experiences in Cape Town.

8) Breaking the code for the 14-step tea making process that one of the Cathedral parishioners has. My tea making process has three steps: 1) boil water; 2) pour over tea bag and sugar; 3) add milk. I am dying to find out where the other 11 steps fit in.

9) Eating lemon meringue pie on the floor of Lynette's office. I eat and crack jokes, she works. It's a system that works for us.

10) And finally, the experience I most hope to recreate in Cape Town: the last time I was there, Lynette, an older gentleman named Jack and I went to eat fish at Hout Bay. As we drove back, comfortably full of fish and chips, Jack put on his favorite CD. What was it, you ask? Was it the music of the resistance? "Amandla," perhaps? Bob Marley? Gum shoe dancing? No, friends, no, don't be so provincial. It was "Kenny Rogers Sings Your Favorite Love Songs." Now they were not *my* favorite love songs, or they would have included the classic "Islands in the Stream." Also? "Back That Ass Up." Timeless love songs both. But as we drove past the beautiful Cape Town coast, Table Mountain looming above us, and Kenny crooning "Endless Love" (for the record, Kenny is not as adept as I am at singing both parts of a duet. See my version of "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" if you really want to know how it's done), I got tickled, y'all. I was like: it's AFRICA, and I still can't get away from Kenny Rogers.

And then he launched into "Unforgettable," because you know what? IT TOTALLY WAS.

So there you have it...10 things I am really excited to revisit in Cape Town. 5 weeks and counting!

Whose Bible is it anyway?

2008-09-25T17:36:00.000-07:00

I know, I've been a slacker about posting, so here's a summary of the last three months: work, home, summer, family, hurricane, back to school. Also, I ABSOLUTELY will post about Mijha and Runako's wedding but I am waiting until I have the photos.

This post is about something else, though. I am taking a class with the illustrious Peter Gomes: pastor of Memorial Chapel at Harvard, author, "Colbert Report" guest, and invoker of the best offertory plea I have ever heard: "The good news is, we have all the money we need to do all the great things we are called to do. The bad news is it is still in your pockets!" The course is on the Bible and the history of interpretation. It is not a Scriptural interpretation class per se--we are not examining the historical-critical method vs. the literary method vs. the Jesus seminar we-vote-on-what's-true-with-colored-beads method (a rigorous academic and spiritual discipline, to be sure); we are looking at the way Christian communities have understood and interpreted Scripture over time. It is raising questions that I have grappled with before, but that are always worth looking at again, namely:

Whose Bible is it anyway?

For most of Christian history, the Bible was purely the province of educated men, monks and theologians, those who had devoted their lives to its study. Even pre-printing press, they were leery of letting just anyone have access to the Bible; even the very wealthy, who could afford a handwritten manuscript, were discouraged. They opposed the translation of the Bible into the more accessible Latin, and later into various vernaculars.

The thing is, this is not because they held Scripture in low esteem; it's because they held it in such high esteem. They understood that this complex, mysterious, esoteric, inspired, opaque, illuminating, maddening collection of 66 books in three languages written over 1500 years (at least) was incredible powerful, and incredibly difficult. And in the wrong hands, a powerful, difficult book becomes a powerful, dangerous book. Anyone can get a book wrong. And misinterpretation leads to misappropriation and then that's where the fun really begins. So, believing that the gospel had been conferred by God, received by the apostles and proclaimed by the church fathers, they saw part of that charge as protecting Scripture by keeping its study and interpretation in the care of those who had devoted their lives to the languages, history and hermeneutics of Biblical study.

I'm more sympathetic to this than I once was. Maybe it's because I'm in my third semester of Greek, which means I am up to my elbows in translating Matthew and Mark--and we haven't even gotten to Paul yet, whose first-rate mind and delight in wordplay has challenged and perplexed translators for centuries. Greek has a complexity that English cannot begin to grasp. A word can have several meanings; translation is more art than science. My tortured Greek translations from last night's homework sounded something like "The men who were destroying democracy once a long time ago continuously are considering killing the public speakers now but maybe in the future by themselves or maybe with their friends because they are not to be trusted, insert random pluperfect participle with no relation to any of the previous clauses here." Tragic, and totally normal for Greek. Or consider a common phrase in Scripture, "agapeo tou Xristou"--the love of Christ. Does that mean our love of Christ, or Christ's love of us? Whole theologies hinge on this, and the English gives us no hint of this.

Or consider something I came across in a reading for another class, the reading out of Exodus of Moses' call to return to Egypt and command Pharaoh to let God's people go. It's a passage I've read a dozen times, but I noticed something this time I had skimmed over before. As they are journeying to Egypt, God decides to kill Moses. Doesn't tell us why. Doesn't warn him. Moses is about to get the holy smackdown--IN HIS SLEEP--when Zipporah somehow senses something. So she cuts off her son's foreskin and lays it across Moses' genitals, saying "Surely you are a bridegroom of blood." (Modern translation: "Ain't this a bitch.") What are we to do with that? Do you want that in just anyone's hands? Whose hands are the right hands?

So I have a greater sympathy than I had in the past for this perspective, this sense that to handle the Bible responsibly, we must know its history, its culture, its languages, its traditions, its history of interpretation through the ages. It is the work of scholars and sages, men and women who devote their lives to fathoming an unfathomable book.

But.

I can't entirely get on board with this, perhaps because I am still an evangelical at the core--as Gomes says, in the end, we are where we came from, and I come from a Southern Baptist home and church that inculcated Scripture as soon as a child's mouth could shape the words. I think in Biblical rhythms; its language is as natural to me as my own. And as a result, I have access to wisdom I could not have on my own. I know, when my emotions are haywire, that "the heart is deceitful above all things; who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9), assuring me that the heart is not always trustworthy, and that there are depths in me unknown to any but the One who created them in me. I know in difficult times that "when He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold" (Job 23:10). I know that I am engraved on the palm of God's hands (Isaiah 49:16) and that He stores my tears in a bottle (Psalm 56:8). I think of the David narrative, which I have loved for years, and the different angles and lessons I find in it every time, like a prism.

I think, too, of the teachers I have had who were not Biblical scholars, who were just ordinary people who loved God and the word, and the insights they have offered me that rival any I have gathered from the scholars who write the commentaries. Like the woman who noted that when Revelation 19 tells us that Christ "has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself," it means there is reserved a name for Christ that has never been blasphemed, never been uttered casually or as a curse, never been defiled by the actions of His church. Something has stayed sacred, something is yet untouched. What a beautiful idea.

But go beyond the Bible as individual devotion and imagine what Christianity would be if we did not have the liberation narrative of the African-American slaves, whose telling of the freedom story of the gospel transformed and sustained their community, whose spirituals were modern-day psalms of lament, and who cracked open the gospel for us in a way from which we are still learning. Could we have counted on the scholars to do that for us, or did we need an illiterate, oppressed people to see what the wise of the world could not?

As a Southern Baptist kid, you learn about what we call "the priesthood of the believer." That means that the Holy Spirit and I can read Scripture together and I don't need anyone else to tell me what it means, I can stand before God on my own. It's very populist, which I like. It's also wide open for abuse. Anything powerful can become powerfully misused. Water is a good thing, until a hurricane washes away your city. Fire is a good thing, until it burns down a forest. The greater the power, the greater the potential for destruction. And certainly the many folks--Creflo Dollar, I'm looking at you--who misappropriate the gospel, who preach a false gospel of prosperity and affluence that I believe is anathema to a God who loves the poor (who, by the way, make up most of the world) are evidence of what happens when Scripture is misinterpreted and misappropriated.

So we need checks on it. Scripture should be interpreted in community--we need people to rein us in, to say "whoa, we're getting kind of crazy here, I don't think that's what it means." We need the elders in the faith who have wisdom and experience, and we need the young folks who have zeal and an openness to new things. We need each other in this venture of reading God's word, and I suspect that is what He had in mind all along.

I have a dear friend who is a priest and tells the people in his confirmation class that the Bible is "not one book but 66, not English but in Hebrew and Greek, not a written record but an oral tradition, not Western but Semitic, not individual but communal, not democratic but patriarchal, not self-seeking but seeking the good of the group." I think he is right, but I can't help thinking that if I were a 13-year-old confirmand in his class, it would put me off ever tackling the Bible. We must have a healthy respect for its complexities and subtleties, but not so much that we are afraid to approach it, and willing to allow what we are told on Sundays be the extent of our dealings with it. And we should be more Biblically literate--we shouldn't be afraid to talk about the culture in which Scripture was written, or how traditions and understandings of human psychology have changed; we should take very seriously the task of translating ancient texts into a 21st-century world. And we should stop--please, please, let's stop--referring to it as a manual. People, no one has ever been inspired or transformed by a manual. Whether it is for my digital camera or my DVD players, I usually a) don't know where the manual is, and b) only look for it when something's gone wrong. Let's get rid of the manual metaphor, this is not a new Toyota I'm talking about where I'm just trying to figure out how to get rid of the child locks. Most of all, let's not be afraid to say that it doesn't make sense and we don't get it. I'm still not getting that whole Moses story. In fact, I'm trying not to think about it too much.

The thing is, the early church fathers were right: the Bible is a dangerous book. But maybe we are meant to be a dangerous people. Not in the way we sometimes are, where we are dangerous in a toxic, oppressive, my-way-or-the-highway-to-hell kind of way; but dangerous in the way that turns this broken, hurting world on its ear by proclaiming that there is a different way of doing life together, and that the Kingdom of God is a new world being birthed in the shell of the old one, and things can never be the same. That is the most dangerous message I can imagine. And the most exciting.

So whose Bible is it? It's mine. And yours. Together. Let's do this thing.

What doth it profit a man

2008-06-28T04:01:00.000-07:00

I had dinner last night with Lynette, who is my primary colleague on the project I'm working on here, and her friend Sandy, who had been the curator of the District Six museum here and was advising us on fundraising.

Sandy and Lynette are both old lefties, as many who were part of the anti-apartheid struggle here are. They don't believe in unfettered capitalism; they believe it leaves behind too many people and that that creates simmering tensions that will eventually explode into social chaos. It's easy to criticize that from an American perspective, but Africa is not America, and not everything translates flawlessly.

At one point Sandy was saying, wide-eyed, in a tone of hushed disbelief, "You won't believe it but all they care about is money!" I giggled, y'all. I did. It was almost cute. I explained that in America, corporations can actually be sued if they act in opposition to the shareholders' interests. It is not moral or immoral; it is amoral.

But I have been thinking about it more and more. What if we were more shocked that corporations only cared about making money? What if we believed that the shareholders' best interests were served not only by a fatter portfolio but in a healthier planet, a more peaceful world and a more stable population? What if we said amoral is not good enough?

My dad sent me a piece the other day called "Why I Am A Republican," which I could just as easily have renamed "Why I Am Not A Republican." But one of the things that caught my eye was that the writer of the piece said he'd started his own business at 24 and was willing to work 60, 70, 80 hour weeks in order to give his family a better life.

What that really means is "to give my family more stuff." Because that's usually what we mean by a better life: more and cooler stuff. 80 hours a week is almost 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. Who really believes his family was better off being essentially fatherless and husbandless? Who really believes his kids might not rather have had him at their swim meets and spelling bees than have him just be the signature on the checks that paid for their lifestyle?

South Africa is challenging companies here to have three priorities: profit, people and planet. It wants them to consider investing in its people and its ecology as important as third-quarter earnings.

It's a radical idea but it may be no less true for that.

Why are you crying? You're a Christian now!

2008-06-22T13:48:00.000-07:00

Let me preface this by saying I don't blog for my health, people. I blog to have my ego stroked by positive comments and feedback so I know you guys are reading and I'm not whistling into the wind.

I went to Friday mass at 7:15 am this week. I think we all know what it takes to get me dressed, out of the house and someplace ON TIME that early in the morning. Phen had a slateful of tardies because of my inability to get the boy to school on time, and that was when school was three blocks away and I drove him there in my pajamas.

But I went, because rumor had it Desmond Tutu would be leading the mass. Father Terry--whom you will remember, children, as the man who did *not* introduce me to Archbishop Tutu last summer--made sure I knew about this one well in advance. So I go in to the little side chapel, just a small room, where weekday masses are held. Pretty small crowd on a Friday morning. The dean starts the service with the opening prayer. And then, nonchalantly, from the back of the room, Archbishop Tutu walks in, in his vestments and with his little cap.

I almost lost my breath. It was the real, live, Nobel-Prize-winning, cover-of-Newsweek Desmond Tutu, and he...is...a hobbit.

It's true. He's like two and a half feet tall.

And did I cry when he read the gospel? Of course I did, because Desmond Tutu *lives* the gospel. Do things looks terrible and it seems like evil and brokenness and pain have the upper hand? No, the Kingdom of God will carry the day! And in the meantime we must laugh! Hobbit Tutu giggles. He does not laugh, he giggles. Delightedly. And when you hear it you think, that is how he managed not to go crazy under apartheid. The gospel delights him. He does not merely think it is true, he thinks it is delightful. And he distributed communion and you could tell he loved it, just thought it was the coolest thing in the world that we all got to share it together. He seems so awestruck by it himself that when you go up to receive communion and he says "The body of Christ" you are almost taken aback, you think, "It *is* amazing! This is extraordinary!"

Why are we not awestruck and delighted by the gospel more often?

At today's main service in the Cathedral, he did the baptisms. all done up in his gold vestments and pointy Archbishop hat that is probably supposed to make him look really holy and actually makes him look like the King of the Hobbits. If I were a retired archbishop, I would do the same thing: I would just show up to do the really cool stuff like baptisms and weddings. But my favorite moment came when one of the babies cried when they were baptized and he said, in his heavily accented English, "Why are you crying, eh? You are a Christian now!"

It was an off-the-cuff comment and everyone laughed, but I have been thinking about it all day. I'm not saying Christians should be happy all the time. There are times when our hearts are meant to break with the things that break the heart of God. There are times when we should rend our garments and beat our chests (metaphorically, of course, because that is no longer a culturally acceptable form of grieving) over the grief and injustice in the world. But we should laugh, and we should laugh a lot. Because baptism reminds us that our sins are buried with Christ's death and we are raised with Him into newness of life. We share a common table and a common bond. We get to be the heralds and celebrants of a new way of living, a way that says the Kingdom of God is pressing in all around us if we have eyes to see, a way that assures a broken world that its grasping, frantic way is not the only way to live. We are in on the great secret that God's love will sweep away every ugliness and injustice and He uses us to do it. We are confident of a day when "he shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, nor pain, for the former things have all passed away. He that sits upon the throne says, Behold; I make all things new."

I make all things new. Raised to the newness of life. Our holy laughter should echo around the world. We should never get over it.

Why are you crying, eh? You're a Christian now!

A Medical System You Can Love

2008-06-19T01:12:00.000-07:00

This story, if one thinks about it too long, is slightly horrifying. So don't think about it too long, just take pleasure in the fact that it worked out for me.

A medication I use purely for vanity purposes--i.e. so I won't break out like a 15-year-old--did not survive the cross-Atlantic trip well. I had had to have a prescription to get it from my dermatologist, but who knows how things work here? In Egypt there was nothing you couldn't get over the counter, so I decided to give it a shot. I walked into the pharmacy with my bottle of no-longer-functional acne lotion and said look, this apparently doesn't travel well, and do you happen to have the same thing here? So the dermatologist looked at it and came up with something that isn't exactly the same, but had basically the same active ingredients, so, you know, close enough. But she said, "You have to have a prescription for it." Damn. "But I don't have a doctor here in Cape Town," I said, thinking to myself, "and I'm pretty sure my Harvard student traveling insurance is meant to cover things like dengue fever and bot flies, not acne medication." So the pharmacist leaned in and said, "This isn't exactly legal, but welcome to South Africa." Already I'm loving her. "You can't get this without a prescription at any *public* pharmacy. But go right across the road here to this private pharmacy and sometimes they'll just let you pay cash for things without a prescription."

This is awesome.

So I trek across the street to the private pharmacy and it's packed. And it is packed with people who are seriously sick and trying to get stuff like antibiotics and anti-retrovirals (is that stereotypical of me? It probably is. You know it's true though.) So I'm packed in line and I'm scanning the pharmacists, because you gotta pick the right one. Definitely not the old white guy with the Dutch last name, he looks like a rule-follower. Also not the harried-looking woman arguing with an increasingly agitated woman who can't afford her toddler's medication; clearly she's having a day. Nope, the guy at the end, the young one who is flirting with all the women--that's my guy.

So I roll down to him and offer my most charming smile and guileless stranger-in-a-strange land affect as I tell my story, and he cheerfully turns around, takes it off the shelf and hands it to me with a smile and says "That will be 112 rand, miss." Which is literally $14. WHICH IS LESS THAN MY CO-PAY ON THIS MEDICATION AT HOME.

If I needed, you know, insulin or Xanax or anti-hallucinogens, this system would distress me. As it is--$14! I might stock up before I leave here!

By the way, I am having breakfast with Desmond Tutu tomorrow morning, for any who were feeling like their lives were pretty cool and needed to be put in their place.

...And Brief Tirade About Crazy Old Leftists

2008-06-14T17:23:00.000-07:00

I went to a panel discussion today about xenophobia in South Africa and how the Zimbabwe crisis is contributing to it. Elinor Sisulu, a native Zimbabwean who married into the very powerful South African Sisulu family, and two guys were talking. All were in some way involved in the anti-apartheid movement, or what is here often simply referred to as "the struggle."

So all due respect.

HOWEVER. Crazy old leftists annoy the heck out of me. These three are going on and on about imperialist agendas and how the US and UK just want a piece of Zimbabwe and resistance, struggle, imperialism, fight the power, ad infinitum. And one well-meaning little American tourist (not me, because at this point I'm too annoyed to ask civil questions) asks, "What can we do as Americans to help the situation in Zimbabwe?" And one of the panelists said, "We truly thank you for your solidarity with us in our struggle, but the best thing you can do is work on your own country." And some people applauded.

Now look here. My country is not perfect. We have our share of shady machinations, to be sure. Do you know what we don't have? We don't have A) hordes of people rising up to torture, maim and kill political refugees, or B) a country that over about 15 years has totally degenerated to a state of nature where the life expectancy is the lowest in the world (just think about who you have to beat out to be the lowest in the world--it means you are better off in Chad or Sudan or Burma right now than you are in Zimbabwe) and the currency is totally worthless. What we do have: a PEACEFUL TRANSFER OF POWER AFTER ELECTIONS. Can you even imagine, in your wildest dreams, an American president saying, as Mugabe did today, that he will simply not cede power, no matter the outcome of the election? Try and imagine it. You are laughing, aren't you? Because it's absurd.

So maybe the glare from your glass house is blinding you a little and you want to put down those stones, crazy old leftists. That's all I'm saying.

I talked to one of the guys afterwards. I said look, let me freely admit I'm a bratty American. I think we're kind of awesome. I might note that people flee *to* us and not *from* us, ahem. But here is my question: what do you think the imperialist agenda is? Do you think they want to take over Zimbabwe again? Because here's what I think: I think they want to invest in it. I think in a global food shortage, they'd get those farms back up and running. I think the mining industry would take off again. And I think investment is preferable to aid and more sustainable. So Ol' Boy says, "I disagree." Riiiight...depending on aid for...ever? Is a sustainable solution? And he said, "The people who profit there are the mining companies and the industrial farms, not the people." Ah, leftists, always with The People. Well, I pointed out, The People do not currently have an infrastructure or the machinery or skills to go about mining or farming on a large scale. This is not a kibbutz we are talking about, these are highly skill-specific industries that will require a significant outlay of capital on the front end. (Papa, are you reading this? And you thought I didn't know anything about economics.) So of course they will get something back, but I think the country benefits too. And I would point to our very own lovely South Africa as an example. Mbeki, who is crazy and disappoints me every day, nonetheless has done a lot to make South Africa attractive to foreign investors, and I think South Africa has benefitted from it. By, you know, being the only thriving economy in the region. And this guy actually said, "Sure, there's a tiny slice of a black middle class now, but it's about 11 million people. That is only about a quarter of the population."

I was floored.

Fifteen years ago--FIFTEEN YEARS AGO--as in, when Bill Clinton was president; as in, not long ago AT ALL--this country's people were being strangled by the apartheid regime. They were grossly undereducated, poorly housed, underemployed, and had their psyches damaged in ways many of them will never recover from. Yet a short 15 years later, a quarter of them are middle-class. I'm not saying the work is done, there's a long way to go. But 15 years in, a full 1/4 have reached the middle class. And that number is only set to grow as education improves.

I'm sure the Old Left has something valuable to contribute to the process. All voices are welcome in the marketplace of ideas. But I would say of capitalism what Winston Churchill said of democracy: "It is the worst form of government, except for all the others."

Brief Ode to America...

2008-06-14T17:14:00.001-07:00

I met this really cool guy at a Harvard gathering for Cape Town alums the other night. (Side note: Father Terry--my supervisor at the Cathedral and whom you may remember, children, as the man who did *not* introduce me to Desmond Tutu last summer--had asked what I was doing this weekend and I said "I'm going to a Harvard alum gathering at the Mount Nelson hotel." He: "Oh, what are you all Obama supporters or something? What brings you all together?" Me, staring blankly: "Uh, the fact that we all went to Harvard." He: "But that place is posh! Seriously posh!" Me: "OK, you know what? I do own clothes that are not cargo pants and hoodies. I can dress up and mingle with the hoi polloi, thanks so much.") Anyway, back to Cool Guy: he is originally from Nigeria and came to the US at 8 years old speaking no English. Did his undergrad at Princeton, got his MBA at Harvard, and is now working at establishing a presence for JP Morgan here.

Now I know America is imperfect, gap between the haves and have-nots, unequal education, etc etc. None of it minor, none of it to be sneered at, and we have a lot of work to do as we strive toward that "more perfect union" part of the Constitution. But we are still the place where a bright 8-year-old kid who speaks only Ibo can, 10 years later, go to Princeton. And we deserve to feel a little bit good about that.

Fear Factor, African Style

2008-06-13T06:08:00.000-07:00

I am living this summer at a convent. If you put together all of your stereotypes of what a room at a convent that also boards young women, and protects their chastity, would look like, you would have a rough approximation of my room. The walls are a sort of two-shades-lighter-than-Pepto-Bismol pink, the carpet and draperies are a dusky rose, and the two chairs that sit by the doily-covered sitting table are covered in an upholstery that may be familiar to you if you have a 150-year-old great-aunt. However: private furnished room and bathroom, full-length mirror, private entrance and exit (meaning the 11 pm curfew does not apply to me! In loco parentis my ass, chumps!), and a TV and DVD player—yeah, I can make this work. And it’s walking distance to work.

So let’s talk a little about South African television. Big into sports, I’ve watched a lot of the European soccer championships, and rugby matches are on regularly, but that’s no different from home—I mean the sports are different, but not the ubiquity of them. There are soap operas—mostly South African ones, which are hilarious because they have subtitles as the characters regularly slip into languages other than English; but also a healthy dose of “All My Children”; and I woke up the other morning to the disconcerting sight of Sesame Street in Afrikaans.

But what is most bizarre to me is their unyielding affection for, and apparent insatiable appetite for, American reality television. And not even the really fun ones, like “I Know My Kid’s A Star” or “Celebrity Fit Club: Boot Camp.” No, we’re talking “Survivor” and “Amazing Race” and “Fear Factor.”

“Fear Factor” is the one I don’t get. Really? In Africa? I mean, I get that if you are an overfed, overprivileged American, watching people face down spiders and eat bugs pretty much sums up all your nightmares. But if you’ve survived apartheid, or live in a shanty with no plumbing or electricity, or you’ve fled a neighboring country because of oppression or lack of opportunity or because your currency is roughly 2.5 billion dollars to one American greenback (yes, Zimbabwe, I’m looking at you, and yes, that is the actual exchange rate now, not an exaggeration—wrap your mind around that if you can), then is watching someone eat a slug really going to freak you out? I mean aren’t you just like, “amateurs, when I was making my 1500-mile trek here from Congo after having my hands cut off I would have *killed* for a slug to eat”?

Imagine what an African version of Fear Factor would be like. Seriously, what’s even left to be afraid of?

Back to the Mother Land

2008-06-13T04:44:00.000-07:00

Hello again, cats and kittens, greetings from Cape Town! I have been here about a week, for a longer stint this time, 10 weeks interning at St. George’s Cathedral. Again, in the dead of winter. Oh, for a swimming pool and a chick-lit novel. (Do you hear that, Mom? It’s all I want when I get home.)

So I got in Saturday night, got settled at my hotel, and went out to the corner store for something to eat. I was kind of morose—28 hours of travel, jet lag, hadn’t showered; it was cold and kind of blah and I was missing home and all my peeples and Phen and thinking longingly of all the summers of the past that I spent playing in the swimming pool and at the beach with kids and taking them out for ice cream and having dance parties in the classroom. I’ve got a great picture from that era of a 6-year-old Michael Breaux (admit it, all of you who know him just went “Awwww” at the mention of his name), a slight sunburn across his tawny cheeks, who had spent the day building sandcastles and playing in the surf and flying kites at the beach and had fallen asleep at Sonic with his head on the table…in a pool of melted ice cream. That, my friends, is what contentment looks like.

Anyway, so I’m missing the old days and wondering if I shouldn’t have stayed home and worked at my own church this summer and rerooted myself in my community, and I am in the grocery store, which for me is one of the primary places one can feel isolated in another country, because *their* food is never *your* food. Even if it is in name, it is not in fact. The packaging and look is different, and you realize that you had not reckoned on how much of the predictability and security of life was bound up in the familiarity of the packaging of Dannon yogurt or Doritos. Oh, they have Doritos here. They have Sweet Chili Doritos. What in the name of all that is holy is sweet chili, you ask? I don’t know, and I will not be finding out. If it’s not my Nacho Cheese Doritos, or perhaps Cool Ranch Doritos, I have to leave it alone. (Doug, I am thinking here of the ketchup-flavored Pringles you encountered in Palestine.) And of course one’s culinary wanderings are exacerbated by people like Dan Walmer, who is supposedly a man of God, who likes to flaunt his regular trips to Sonic to get the Route 44 Watermelon Slush knowing there is not a Sonic on your whole damn continent. Dan, you owe me a Route-44 cherry limeade at the Sonic happy hour when I get back in August.

I’m wandering the aisles, forlorn and displaced, a stranger in a strange land, and then I see it. Shining in the refrigerated aisle like a beacon of sweet, sweet goodness. Friends, I see Dr. Pepper. Those of you who followed my adventures of yesteryear know that it could just as easily be called Quest for a Can of Dr. Pepper. And here it was, in all its glory, and it even had the right packaging. I mean beloveds, the CAN even looked the same. Do you see the hand of the Lord here? Do you see how He heard His child’s cry in Egypt (well, South Africa, but same continent) and came to deliver me, as the Israelites of yore? I mean the only thing that could have surprised me more is if there had been a Starbucks in the store. (By the way, the presence of Starbucks in stores like Target and Kroger? Is what makes us the greatest nation on earth.)

I snatched up that Dr. Pepper and willingly paid the 14 rand for it, even though that is almost $2, which would be usury for a 12-oz can were it anyplace but here. Here, it was a bargain, plain and simple. And I drank the Dr. Pepper. And it was good.

Unitarians: What's the Point?

2007-11-06T18:59:00.000-08:00

Hello from the hallowed halls of Harvard! Harvard sure thinks they're hallowed, I'll tell you that for free. I've never seen such a self-satisfied place. I am becoming more conservative by the day just to push back against the group-think orthodoxy here. Soon you'll hear I've joined the NRA and started giving my student loan money to Focus on the Family.

But there will be plenty of time to talk about the many foibles of this joint. First, let's talk about the Unitarians.

Why? Why, Unitarians? What's the point? Why bother? By my lights about half the M.Div students are Unitarian, which is roughly 60% of the Unitarian population in America. C'mon, you know you've only ever met like 5 outside of Massachusetts. It's not really a religion that ever took off, except here. I'll hazard a couple of guesses on why that is: 1) Unitarians believe people are basically good and becoming better, while those of us who stayed awake through eighth grade history are a little more skeptical, and 2) their music sucks.

A basic primer for the uninitiated: Unitarians, who are properly called Unitarian-Universalists, or UU's, believe in one God (hence the Unitarian, as opposed to Trinitarian) and that S/He can be found everywhere and in everyone (hence the Universalist). Things Unitarians Don't Do: they don't have a creed. They don't have a sacred text. They don't believe in divine revelation. They don't believe in redemption and sanctification or anything about Jesus except he seems like a nice guy. They don't believe in hell; not sure about heaven. Things Unitarians Do: recycle. And go to antiwar rallies.

I play a little game with my classmate called Spot the Unitarian, in which when you think you've identified another Unitarian in class, you hiss "Unitarian!" and slap your hand on the desk like you're buzzing in. We can pick them out by the inane things they say. I believe my favorite was last week, when we were talking about various ways of conceptualizing sin: sin as rebellion, as sickness, as brokenness, as violation of creation, etc. Girl in the front row raises her hand. "I don't find sin to be a helpful concept," she said. "Unitarian!" my classmate and I hissed, buzzing in (I narrowly won). "Apparently she doesn't find truth to be a helpful concept either," I whispered. "Or common sense," she whispered back. Unitarian Girl, oblivious to the fact that I was now 10 points ahead in the game thanks to her, droned on, "My mom's spiritual mentor said she thinks of sin as being untrue to your authentic self, and I find that more helpful because it calls people back to their own selves," she said. Yeah, people, you can ponder that all you want and it won't make any more sense on the tenth read-through than it did on the first. I lobbied unsuccessfully for double points based on the fact that she was like Unitarian squared.

When I go back to my authentic self, I find someone who's pretty selfish and petty and argumentative and arrogant, not to mention prone to making fun of foolish people on her blog. Is this the self Unitarian Girl would have me go back to for truth and light? Because this is what I'm working with, people. It's what we're all working with.

Having established that UG didn't really have much use for sin, redemption, salvation, or God, my classmate leaned over and whispered, "So why does she want to be in ministry?" And that's really my question.

Here's the thing: I totally get that you want to make the world a better place, Unitarians. I get that, and I applaud it. You should be social workers, and Legal Aid attorneys, and inner-city teachers, even though honestly I don't think you'll last very long in any of those careers because they will all challenge your belief in the innate goodness of humanity, but you should give it a shot. And you should recycle to your heart's content, and go to protests, and put bumper stickers that say "War Is Not the Answer" (really? doesn't that depend on the question?) on your hybrid cars, and I will support and applaud you. But don't call yourself a church. That's all I'm saying: you're not a church. Churches are communities bound by common belief and a common Savior, redeemed from our common sin and called to live uncommon lives. We don't always like each other, but we're tethered to each other, so we stick it out, bearing one another's burdens, encouraging and holding each other accountable, sometimes disciplining (I know, Unitarians! Disciplining! It's CRAZY out there!), sometimes edifying, celebrating and grieving together.

A common belief in recycling and the Democratic Party does not a church make (though, church folk, we should recycle more and give the Dems another look, just so we're clear on that). So don't call yourself a church. You can be a club! Or a convening! You can get matching hats! I'm with you, Unitarians, I would totally support all of that!

But if you can't say "I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting," then church maybe isn't the best description of what you are. Give it some thought.

Back by popular demand

2007-08-02T03:09:00.000-07:00

Sorry I've been so slack on the posting, guys, I promise to be better.

So let's play a game called "What Have the Egyptians Invented?" Here's the short answer: everything! At least according to Tariq, who is our guide on our Thursday field trips, which so far have included the pyramids at Saccara and Giza, the Sphinx, Coptic churches, some mosques, and medieval Cairo. And at every stop, Tariq informs us that Egypt was the innovator or leader in some great cultural advancement we all take for granted. Example:

"Do you see these steps leading up to the platform of the pyramid? They are the first steps in the world. Egypt invented stairs."

"These arches hold up the building. Egyptians invented arches." And so on.

My friend Steel and I got a little tired of it after a while. I mean, we get it, you were a great and magical country, although now you survive only because of American foreign aid, but you did not invent everything in the whole world. So now on field trips Steel and I riff on Tariq, like this:

Tariq: "The way they preserved the internal organs of mummies was the first..."
Steel: "Egyptians invented modern medicine."
Me: "Egyptians invented *death*, Steel. And possibly resurrection."

Tariq: "These lamps are the very finest in the world."
Steel: "Egypt invented lamps."
Me: "Egypt actually invented light. And the sun."

Tariq: "This hieroglyph is the first piece of art to depict children as they actually are, with rounded bodies and softer features."
Me: "Egyptians invented modern art."
Steel: "Egyptians invented *all* art, Shannon. Just make it easy on yourself. ALL art."

So on the last field trip, we are standing in a circle around an arched ceiling in some mosque, and Tariq is going on about the workmanship and the innovative architecture, and he says "Egypt invented the squinch," which is apparently some architectural thing but I believe also a Dr. Seuss character. And I start looking around for Steel, who is on the other side of the room, and he catches my eye, and he is smirking. "The squinch," he mouths, and points to the ceiling with mock awe. And I just lose it--at exactly the time Tariq decides to turn his full attention to me (I am standing near him) and act as if he is giving a lecture for one. So I stand trying to look properly interested and respectful, but my laughter is hovering between my face and mouth, and I am SO BAD at hiding what I am thinking, and it does not help that Steel and Michael, who have watched this whole exchange but are standing across the room far from Tariq, have turned their backs to the group and are laughing so hard I can see their shoulders shaking. I finally step back behind someone and shriek with silent laughter. Later on Steel says "That was the worst imitation of someone trying not to laugh I have ever seen. You actually have *no* ability to hide what you are thinking!" I was like, Steel, you are only one in a long line of people to have discovered and mocked this in me.

My other adventure in the mosque occurred when I noticed people sleeping there--because apparently, if it's not prayer time, it's OK to duck into your local mosque and take a nap. I point this out to Steel, and immediately his eyes gleam. "Go lie down next to one of them and I'll take your picture," he says. "It would be the best picture EVER." Absolutely not, say I, but I am already thinking that it actually would be an awesome picture. But there are other people around, including the mullahs, and I'm pretty sure this would be seen as inappropriate. But Steel and Michael are tag-teaming now. "Best. Picture. EVER," says Michael, and Steel chimes in, "I'll pay you 100 pounds. Please do it, you'll hate yourself if you don't." And I say, guys, if this guy wakes up while we're doing this, I'm pretty sure he has to either kill me or marry me.

Steel: "I feel like if he married you, *you* would kill *him.*
Michael: "One of you is definitely not coming out of this alive, but smart money is on you."
Steel: "Because you persevere."

And so on. In the end I stood firm, but then I regretted it all day. So next time we go to a mosque we're totally on for it. We're just going to make sure that as soon as the photo is taken, we make tracks out the door and back to the hotel. And it will be the picture that goes on the Christmas cards.

Why Am I 30 and Taking Quizzes?

2007-07-18T07:18:00.000-07:00

I have three Arabic teachers, and my favorite one is Nancy. Seriously, if I could shrink her down and make a pocket Nancy, I would. She's the most exuberant, affectionate person ever, and we compare notes on kids because she asks me every day, "How is your walad (little boy)?" and so we chat. And she pats my face and strokes my hair because Middle Easterners seem to be just a little more tactile than we are. They also get right in your face when you talk, but that's another post.

Here's the thing: she's a fantastic teacher, we're learning tons, we're perking along in our class being all productive and go-team-go, and then she feels pressure from another teacher who gives her class daily quizzes, which they DREAD, because no one is 12 anymore. So yesterday Nancy announces we may have a quiz today. Except here's how she announces it:

"I think tomorrow maybe we have a quiz. Maybe I give you the Arabic and you give me the English, maybe I give you the English and you give me the Arabic. Maybe it is matching. Maybe it is finish the sentence. Maybe I divide you into teams and we keep score. Maybe you make a play or a song. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week..." At this point I'm like, maybe we fight in the caged ball at the Thunderdome! I mean seriously, what the hell?!?! How do you even prepare for that? So we said Nancy, what might be on this quiz-that-may-or-may-not-happen-tomorrow-or-at-some-point-in-the-indefinite-future? And she named off...everything we've covered in the last three weeks of being in class for four hours a day.

So today was in fact a quiz. And there was English-to-Arabic, and Arabic-to-English, and matching, and fill in the blank--it was a veritable smorgasbord of quiz options. And I only missed one! But still on the evaluation forms I filled out today, I wrote, "No quizzes, Nancy. Quizzes are not for grown-ups. Let Yvonne torture Class A if she so chooses." So we'll hope for the best.

Meanwhile you'll be glad to know I can say "My father works at the United Nations" in Arabic...because that's a phrase I'm sure to have ample use for.

Guitars and Overheads in Egypt: No Escaping the Evangelicals

2007-07-17T11:50:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to church for the first time since I've been here. It appeared to be a nondenominational community church; my Arabic teacher, who I went with, just kept saying "It's Protestant, it's Protestant," and I couldn't get her to be any more specific than that. Maybe they don't have as many flavors of Protestant here as they do at home.

So we walked in and were immediately greeted with--wait for it--a worship team led by a guy on guitar with the words on the overhead projector! People, I was so at home. It's like the evangelical version of the Mass or Communion: wherever you are in the evangelical world, you're home, because they too will have guitars and overheads.

There was a section where we sat that was labeled "For Foreigners," which I'm going to assume sounds more inviting in the original Arabic, but it was because those pews had headphones where you could listen to an English translation. It felt like sitting at the U.N., so I chose to eschew the headphones and trust in my ability to follow the basic arc of a worship service. Since I've been to a few in my life, you know.

What I found was that not understanding most of what was going on was actually refreshing, because I felt like it bypassed my rational mind and just went straight to my spirit like a healing balm. I just wanted to be in church. I have finally made peace with the fact that no matter how far afield I am tempted to wander, Jesus has caught ahold of me and is not letting go.

When you are not absorbed in understanding every word, you can hear the brokenness and desire in people's voices when they pray. You can hear the passion when they sing. There was one song where I understood exactly three words: walidi (my father), kul boum(every day), and alleluia, which apparently translates the same way in every language. Alleluia, my Father, every day. It's pretty much all you need to know.

I looked around that church at these brown-skinned people singing in a language that is so close to the one Jesus actually spoke when the Word was made flesh, in this land where He fled to safety as a child and where so many of our spiritual forebears--Abraham and Sarah, Moses, Joseph--have sojourned, and was so struck by the reality that of all the places to go and people to be born into, He chose the poor, the dispossessed, the marginalized, those in turmoil, those who are seen as "other" by the people around them--and He chooses them still, and your best chance of seeing Jesus is to do like Zaccheus did--fight your way into the midst of those people and find a perch. I can meditate on that forever and give intellectual assent to that truth but sometimes I just need to sit and experience it happening around me, and last night I got to.

Alleluia, my Father, every day.

2007-07-07T07:43:00.000-07:00

I went to Luxor this weekend, in southern Egypt, with several friends, because there are a ton of pharaonic ruins here, including the Valleyof the Kings. And yeah, the temples and tombs were great, but here's the best part.

We climbed up a mountain to get a better look at some ruins, and I looked out on some kids below us who were playing soccer barefoot onthis rocky field. "I want to play!" I squealed, and promptly bailed on the ruins to join the game. There were 10 of us, all the rest of them Egyptian boys between about 11 and 15.

In pickup games, you don't ask to join, you just jump in. I jumped in. An older boy took command: "One, two, three, four, five," he counted, naming off teams. "Wahid, etneen, talata, arbaah, khamza," I returned in Arabic, and earned a grin, and we were off. Now I am not a brilliant player, friends, but I know how to exploit an opponent's weakness, which is that when I walk on the field, and I am smaller than everyone but the youngest kids, and a girl, and an American, I know they have no expectations. If I can make a few strong moves before they decide I'm worth marking up on, maybe score a goal or make an assist, I've made an impact on the game.

I played for about 45 minutes, in the heat of the day. At the end, Iwas slick with sweat, my hair had fallen out of my ponytail and wassticking to my neck, my face was that dark red color that used toalarm Mom when I played as a kid; my feet were cracked and bleeding from playing barefoot on rocks and I was covered in dust and I had a scrape all the way down my elbow from getting knocked down just as I made a sweet cross to center (I tucked and rolled to my feet like Ilearned as a kid, Daddy). And I had scored twice and had one assist. When I left, they called out, "Good soccer, madam, good soccer!""Good soccer, shebab (young ones)!" I called back. "Masr kwaiis!"(Egypt is great!") They cheered in return, "Amrika kwaiis! Welcome to Masr!"

Sometimes you get a moment of pure grace. I got 45 of them today. We cheered when we did well, we cracked on each other when someone juked or got juked, and we high-fived after goals. Pure love of this game that we have all played since we were knee-high to the ball was more important than where we came from or what language we spoke. It is one of the things I love best about sport: the team, the community, is more important than the differences between its members. These kids have probably heard some things said about women and about Americans that I would find deplorable, and when I am honest, I have ideas about Middle Eastern teens that I'm not proud of. But today, we were just teammates. I laughed when I set up the youngest kid for a goal and he jumped into my arms, I almost got teary when I scored and one of the older kids on the other team nodded with respect and said "Nice soccer, madam, good soccer," and for a minute we were all better than we usually are. As the old lady said during the Montgomery bus boycott, "My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest."

Frederich Buechner, by way of my friend Linc Ashby, says the gospel should make you laugh, make you cry, and make you believe impossible things, like a fairy tale. Today I saw the gospel on a dusty soccer field in Egypt. And friends, it really is good news.

I am not a sentimentalist who believes these moments are all it takes to create global peace and affirm the humanity of all mankind. I just believe in naming things when we see them; and we spend so much time naming the bad. We must remember also to name the good and true and holy, the perfect moments, the moments of grace, to celebrate and commemorate when we catch a glimpse of the way things should be.

To those of you who are my compatriots, happy Independence Day as we celebrate 230 years of fumbling and striving for liberty. For my friend who has just celebrated a landmark in his own country's liberation movement in June, blessings as we all seek a more just and honest world. And to all of us who are citizens of the Kingdom of God, as Paul writes, and know our allegiance is not to a country but to a King and a Kingdom of peace and justice, may we all continue to live into the grace and liberty of God. Grace grows in unlikely places if we have eyes to see it.

Thoughts After A Week in Cairo

2007-06-29T00:23:00.000-07:00

1) It is one of the great ironies of life that Africa produces some of the best coffee in the world, and then everyone drinks Nescafe instant coffee. I have drunk more Nescafe in the past six weeks than ever in life. Where is the Ethiopian blend that Starbucks sells? Oh, right--it's at STARBUCKS, in the U.S. And here there is only Nescafe. I think that could come up on Judgment Day, guys.

One of the guys in my group was complaining about it, because it gets served at every mid-morning break, and I explained that you can't think of it as coffee, it will throw you off completely; you have to think of it as a drink unto itself. "Awesome, Nescafe!" I find that it's much more palatable that way. And honestly, if you put enough cream and sugar in anything, it will taste OK. Much like you can't taste the nail-polish-remover vibe of Egyptian vodka if you mix it with enough mango juice.

2) Bakshish. Bakshish means tipping, and EVERYONE gets bakshish. The culture of bakshish is what makes Egyptian life go round. You bakshish the guy who cleans the room, the guy who picks up the laundry, the guy who brings back the laundry, the guy who gives you directions on the street, the guy who walks you to your destination because you didn't bakshish him when he just gave oral directions, ad infinitum. I think the first gesture little kids learn here is the upward-turned palm: "Bakshish?" Sometimes we are just the Ugly Americans who refuse to bakshish, like on our field trip yesterday when this woman was standing at the door of the bathroom so she could push the button on the automatic hand dryer for you. We were all like, united we stand guys, there is no bakshish for that.

3) Insh'allah. It punctuates every sentence, because an Egyptian will never tell you he is going to do something without adding "Insh'allah" at the end--"if God wills it." So my friend Michael and I throw Insh'allah into every conversation now, whether it makes sense or not, and I may not be able to break the habit when I get home. "I wonder if it's used for puntuation, like Americans use 'like,'" I speculated one day, and Michael immediately launched into a whole riff on it: "And she was, insh'allah, 'Why you can't answer your phone?' and he was, insh'allah, 'Bitch please,' and she was insh'allah 'Oh hell no.' Insh'allah." Today Michael and I are going to sneak into the Hyatt to go swimming. Insh'allah.

First Day of School!

2007-06-24T07:10:00.000-07:00

I started Arabic classes today. It's an incredibly hard language, and I don't want to be presumptuous, but I might be good at it, people. The conversational teacher thinks so. She appreciates that I am willing to make mistakes in oral conversation, which has really always distinguished me as a language learner: my ability to make mistakes. But I have learned to say "I am not Egyptian" in Arabic. In case anyone thought I was trying to pass.

And so the second phrase I'd like to learn is "Back the f**k off" which until now I've had to use in English, and I feel it would be so much more effective to communicate with people in their native tongue. Because we are DAWs (see post below), some people were trying to get a little handsy in the bazaar yesterday. I ignored it when it was just people stroking my hair and even when someone grabbed my thigh, mostly because I couldn't see who it was, but when someone pinched me from behind, I said "F**K OFF" very loudly. (The asterisks are for my dad, folks, he likes to believe I don't use words like this and I like to humor him.) And it seemed to do the trick.

Egypt was partially redeemed, though, when we took a boat ride on the Nile and ate mangoes and apricots. I have to say I geeked out a little. Everyone thought it was cool, because it's the Nile, but they'd have thought the Amazon was just as cool, whereas I was like "This is where the baby Moses drifted! This was all blood once! Those reeds could have been where Miriam hid to watch him!" Yeah, I Bible-geeked on these poor people, who basically humor me without really knowing what I'm going on about. Except for one guy who is doing his grad work at Baylor and also grew up Southern Baptist and between the two of us we can name all the books of the Bible, the 10 plagues of Egypt (that one was all me--we were stuck until I remembered boils), the Old Testament kings, and we were both sword drill champs as kids. I don't think I need to tell you we've really established ourselves as the cool kids in this set.

Cairo is wild and chaotic and energetic, it sounds like a block party every night, with horns honking and people yelling and music playing, and it's great. I can't get over how different it is from my travel in South Africa, though--we are not encouraged to mix with locals, we have a security guard with us at all times, they won't let us out of the building where we study during our lunch break--in fact they won't even let us linger on the stoop--and we have to let someone know where we are at all times. We are the State Department's delicate desert flowers, apparently, but I'm sure my parents aren't the only ones breathing a sigh of relief.

Oh, and our Fourth of July celebration is--wait for it--at the British International School! Could it be any more perfect that Independence Day is being celebrated with the Brits?! Apparently the American Embassy is being reupholstered or something, there's some reason it's not there this year, so the Brits kindly offered their facility. We're going because we're fiercely patriotic and, you know, free booze.

Dirty American Whores

2007-06-21T09:19:00.001-07:00

OK, so there are a few posts below that I wrote while in Cape Town but just put up. I'm in Cairo now, where I've been since Wednesday night. We're at a kind of shady hotel, but in a really good neighborhood, since as one of the program coordinators told us, as Americans we're automatically considered upper class, and class is VERY IMPORTANT to Egyptians. I am always aware that being white and American opens a lot of doors, and it's good to openly acknowledge it, but not necessarily in a "GOOOOAAAAAALLLLL!" kind of way. I mean, she was really psyched to let us know that we were all upper-crust as far as the unwashed masses were concerned.

We are also, of course, Dirty American Whores, forthwith shortened to DAWs, in their view. I mean the women in the program, of course--the guys are fine. But the women wear pants, and short sleeves, and we are bare-headed. And those of us who have been to other countries are like whatever, we know that's how we'll be viewed, you ignore it and go about your business. But some of these poor girls are out of the country for the first time and they can't understand why they're being stared at. I very helpfully explained, "We are the Dirty American Whores. Embrace it. And remember that since you can't understand what they're yelling at you anyway, you can let it roll of you." It is funny, though--you can immediately pick out those of us who have been out of country and know that we are objects of interest because we are American women, and those for whom it is a brave new world.

What I have also realized is that it's really hard for American women to be discreet, even when they want to be. We have all been talking about how short-sleeved shirts are usually cap-sleeved, and V-necked, and pants sit low on the hips, so even as you aim to be conservative in your dress--no one's trying to wear a burka, we're just trying not to draw undue attention--you're kind of hampered by American fashion choices. Oh well. Dirty American Whores. And what makes it worse it that when someone smiles at me, I smile back. Women don't do that here, they look away because no one should smile at them, because you shouldn't see them. But I am cheerfully American, and I have a Pavlovian response to smiles, even skeevy ones--I smile back. Whatever, I know I'm a cultural ambassador, blah blah, but they need to know there's another way.

I have been glad, though, that I dyed my hair a darker brown. The blondes are definitely drawing more stares. Although "more" is really relative at this point.

Classes start Sunday. We're just kicking around getting the lay of the land until then. There are some very cool people in this program, which makes all the difference.

Still in top form

2007-06-21T09:09:00.000-07:00

A couple of recent incidents, just so you don't think I've lost my form:

1) Father Terry drove me out to Khayelitsha recently and was asking after my (nonexistent) romantic life. And I was saying, you know, I don't stress about it too much, but it's a little disheartening, because I'm funny, I'm bright, I'm pretty cute--and then I realize that he has only ever seen Traveling Shannon, which is to say Scrub Shannon, with no makeup and a baseball cap and wind jacket. And I am inexplicably seized by a desire to make it clear that I Do Not Always Look Like This. So I blurt out, "I mean, you haven't seen it here, but at home I'm totally cute! I have good hair and my clothes fit and--I'm really cute with a little bit of effort!" And he, poor man, is saying, "Yes, of course you are!" And I think, I am an ASS. Really no way to salvage that one.

2) I was waiting for the elevator the day we left for Cairo and we had the morning free. I'm feeling particularly buoyant, listening to my iPod; I have just run 5 miles, so I'm feeling strong and high-spirited, if a bit flushed and sweaty, and I am heading to the swimming pool, so I am wearing my bikini top and short shorts. And the iPod is playing booty-shaking music, so I doing the full-on booty-shaking dance, because I think I am alone in the hallway--until I turn around, mid-dance move, and three guys in my program are staring at me. Fortunately the elevator arrived then to swallow me in my ignominy. Because I am an ASS. And damn you, Ciara, for making such irresistible booty-shaking music.

The State Department has plans for me

2007-06-21T08:55:00.000-07:00

So we had a day-long orientation for Cairo, where I will be studying Arabic for two months, on Monday. There are 30 of us, and the group is weighted a little more heavily toward grad students than undergrads, so we have already sorted ourselves into the "over-25s" and the youngsters. At one point in orientation, the girl next to me said, "I'm really glad to see there's an age spread." "Yeah," I agreed, "I was afraid everyone would be 19, and I'd be the old lady at 30."

"Oh, but you look young, so you'll be fine," she said.

I LOOK young? You know I almost stabbed her in the eye with my pen. I AM young. Ridiculous child.

Orientation included a panel that should have been called "The State Department Has Plans for You." Turns out it is costing them about $17K a head for each of us this summer, and the panel was about career options in--surprise!--the foreign service. They've probably got retinal scans and blood vials on all of us already.

Here's the thing: I am an academic crackhead. EVERYTHING is interesting to me. When they spoke about careers in foreign service and how you would have to study Arabic for at least 10 years to be proficient, I go, "That is AWESOME! How much would I love to do that? I could totally be in the foreign service!" And I have to remind myself that I have that reaction to every new career option that comes along: I could totally be a historian! Or a clergy member! Or an attorney! Or a public health specialist! Or an AIDS educator! Or...and then I have to remind myself, Self, you already know what you are really, really passionate about, so let's not get sidetracked. But it's hard, because I feel like I am dominated by my inner 4-year old who is like "I want to be an astronaut and a ballerina and the president of the world" and doesn't realize those first two are mutually exclusive careers and the third doesn't exist.

So I will probably not join the foreign service. But let's not rule anything out.

Last Day in Cape Town

2007-06-21T08:48:00.000-07:00

Today was my last day in Cape Town. I walked around the botanical gardens, went for my last cup of coffee at Seattle's Best, where they were so sad to see their best customer go that my coffee was free, and chatted with Father Terry. Before I left, I said, "I want a blessing." I mean, that's part of the gig as a priest, right? I figured he'd just rattle off a brief prayer in his offices, but he said, "Meet me down in the cathedral." He put on his collar, and then I knelt in front of the altar in this great church that has been such a voice for justice and joy--in short, such a voice for the gospel, in this broken, beautiful place. He made the sign of the Cross on my palms and forehead, and said, "In the name of the God who created you, the Christ who died to redeem you, and the life-giving Spirit who breathes on you" before speaking a blessing over me. Seriously, Anglicans do it up right. When they bless you, you know you've been blessed.

Then we walked out in the brightness of day, and he hugged me and said, "All right, girl--safe home. Take care of yourself. And don't be too good." I believe I will keep him as a friend, which is the very best thing I could have brought back from South Africa.

Headed home in the evening. 48 hours until I head to DC and then to Cairo.

Shoes and Jackets

2007-06-21T08:32:00.000-07:00

My mom and some of her friends sent money so I could buy winter coats and shoes for all the kids at the group home where I have been volunteering. So now every kid has a coat and shoes, and they are ridiculously cute.

Working with the kids has been an interesting experience. In some ways it's been very like working with homeless kids in the U.S.: same emotional outbursts, same desire for affection, same core loneliness. And frustratingly, same lack of expertise on the part of many caregivers. The caregivers at this home are wonderful, nurturing people, but like at home, childcare doesn't pay much, so you're not getting people with masters' degrees in child development. I've already posted on how they discourage volunteers from holding the babies because "they'll get spoiled," so now let's talk about education.

There are 4 school-aged kids at the home, but only two are in school; two are basically being home-schooled, minus the education part. The two who are in school are woefully behind. Ani is 7 and her brother Ctaum is 6, and one day when they got home from school Ani was supposed to practice writing the numbers 1-10 and their names on the chalkboard. She did that, although she's just copying from a chart because she can't read yet, and then she started making up nonsense words, stringing together letters and saying "What does that spell?" Then a new one: "What does this spell?" She was really enjoying herself, until one of the caregivers snapped, "Ani, you are not taking it seriously. If you're not going to copy your lessons, go in and take a nap."

If you have a modicum of child development knowledge, you know what she was doing is a critical preliteracy step. She is making the connection that these squiggles we call letters are each associated with a sound, and when you string these sounds together you get words, and words have meaning. And you learn to make nonsense words before you make real words. Frankly she should have been doing it at 4 or 5, but since she's finally doing it now, let's not shut it down.

In another instance, I was working with CarRlo, who is 7 and has only been at the home a month or so. "He doesn't know anything, he hasn't been to school," one of the caregivers said in his hearing. "He doesn't even know his numbers." Well, true enough, CarRlo can't write every number. But if you put a pile of crayons in front of him, he can count them all. If you take some away, he understands that you have less. If you add some, he understands that you have more. He has the basics of numeracy and he's actually pretty sharp; he just can't yet associate the amount with the number that stands for it.

It is frustrating to watch this and know these caregivers, so well-meaning and so loving, just aren't equipped to help these kids the way they need. And as a visitor and a white person, I can't jump in and say "No, what she's doing is an essential part of learning" or "Actually, he knows quite a lot." I say it to the kids quietly when I get a chance, and I tell the caregivers in private about what I've observed and what might be done to help them. But they're not well-educated themselves and they don't know how to assist kids who have so many gaps--kids who remind me so much of their Star of Hope counterparts.

It has made me really, really glad that Phenias is at KIPP, and really, really despairing that there are just not enough KIPPs for every kid in the world who needs one.

Apartheid

2007-06-18T21:55:00.001-07:00

I went to the Apartheid Museum the other day, which is a really good way to recognize the absurdity of racialized laws, and also a good way to make you feel that your own country has its crap to deal with, but hey, you're not South Africa, and that's gotta count for something.

Honestly, a lot of the stuff at the museum just brings home how awful American segregation was because there are so many parallels, and somehow you can get so outraged at other people's flaws and forget your own. That way lies madness, friends. And self-righteousness, which is the same thing. So I'd be in the museum going "They separated out the black children and gave them inferior educations--that's AWFUL! Oh, yeah, we did that too." "Look at how they didn't allow people of color to choose where they lived and they paid them less...wait, never mind."

But the craziest part was that when they assigned race to people after the apartheid era began in 1948, and you had to carry a pass book that said your race and where you were allowed to live and work, etc., so much of it was arbitrary that people could, and did, successfully appeal. "I'm not colored, I'm white" and then they'd win. By the way, the prize is getting to be human.

So speaking of colored, that was one of the three main castes under apartheid: white, colored, and Bantu , or black. Colored was the in-between caste: people of mixes origins. While they had nominally greater rights than blacks, they still suffered discrimination, relocation and most of the other ills of apartheid, and were a significant part of the liberation struggle. I've heard it suggested several times that the colored are the people who have suffered the most psychologically, although perhaps not materially. Under apartheid, they were too black to be white, and now that the ANC is running things, they are too white to be black. It's like having a whole social class of mixed-race kids, and they never know where they belong.

Father Terry--you will remember him, children, as the priest who *didn't* arrange for me to meet Desmond Tutu--is colored. He married a white woman when that was still illegal. I believe in order for it to be OK--and this is where we truly see the absurdity of the race laws--she had to voluntarily give up whiteness and become colored. Incidentally, can you even imagine what a weapon that could be in a marital spat? "I gave up being white for you and you can't even walk the damn dogs?" Wow.

I went with him yesterday to drop off some donations to a parish in Khayelitsha, a township outside Cape Town. He was talking about the parish priest, who is black, and the great work he is doing, and then added "He's a great chap, but he's said that colored people have no culture, so I really want to kick his arse." Now, aside from the fact that people saying "arse" is always funny, and that he said it somewhat in jest, there was an undercurrent of hurt there as well. The apartheid government did a really good job of pitting tribe against tribe and black against colored, and they are still reaping the whirlwind.

This country is beautiful and wretched, with such big problems and such vast potential. Like all of us, I suppose.

Hitching a Ride in Soweto

2007-06-18T21:42:00.000-07:00

So you immediately know Johannesburg, consistently rated one of the most dangerous cities in the world, is an entity unto itself when you get to the airport. There, amidst the food stalls and tourist kitsch, is a place where you can drop off your gun--because so many city residents are armed. Presumably you can pick it back up on your return to Joberg. That's some municipal service, I tell ya.

I stayed at one of the only, if not *the* only, backpacker hostel in Soweto. It's really just a house, run by this really enterprising young guy named Lebo, who turned his parents' old house into a hostel, and it's great for getting a feel for the area instead of just trundling around on the day tour.

I had another unfortunate run-in with my sense of direction. I walked to the Hector Peterson museum, which is about 10 minutes from Lebo's. Now since Soweto streets are not often marked, and in fact do not always exist, the directions went something like "So cross this vacant lot, and then there's this footpath--well, not really a footpath, it's like a dirt mound, and you'll walk by that and climb the hill and cross the train tracks." The only way I found the place is that it's housed in an old church, so I could follow the steeple. The museum commemorates the student uprisings that started in 1976 over the introduction of Afrikaans as a language of instruction for black children, and ended up giving the liberation movement its second wind when so many of the leaders were in exile or prison. So I went to that, and then to Mandela's house, and Tutu's house, and I buy some stuff at the craft market and now it's getting on toward dusk, so it's time to head back to Lebo's. Except here's the thing. Vacant lots all kind of look the same, and there are lots of places to cross the railroad tracks. So I am wandering all over Soweto. And people are incredibly kind--they stop to ask if I am lost, and if I need a lift, and I'm all brave and confident like they say you should be, saying, "No, no, I'm fine, thanks." And then I notice that this particular vacant lot has children foraging for scrap metal, which Lebo's does not, so I've hit a slummier area. Another car stops and a man and his wife say, "Are you lost?" Yes, I say, but I'm sure I'll find it. "Are you safe?" they ask. Well, you probably know better than I do, I think, but I nod enthusiastically. They offer a lift, I decline, they drive off. I head back towards the museum.

One of the craft sellers at the museum recognizes me, and asks again if I am lost. Yup, I am, I say, and since I can't remember the name of Lebo's street, which probably doesn't *have* a name, I'm just going to sit there until Lebo comes looking for me. So this guy says, My brother and I will give you a ride. You bought something from me, we are friends now, is no problem. And for a minute I think, there's a chance I could end up in pieces in one of the countless vacant lots in Soweto. But you gotta take chances. So I let him drive me home--which he actually did, because sometimes people are lovely.

One of my favorite sites in Soweto: children flying kites they have made out of sticks and plastic trash bags. Aren't we marvelous creatures?

Soweto!

2007-06-11T12:19:00.001-07:00

So the blog silence has been because I have spent the last four days in Soweto! Soweto, site of the student uprisings of the 1970's and '80s that gave the liberation movement its second wind when most of its leaders had been jailed or exiled; Soweto, synonymous with resistance and struggle; Soweto, slum of the world.

No, no, kidding on that last part. But Soweto is fascinating in its contradictions. Some parts look like fairly well-kept lower middle class neighborhoods: brick houses, cars in the driveways, well-tended lawns, kids playing in the street. Many of the houses were built around World War II when the residents had to rent them from the government--blacks weren't allowed to own property--but they've now become homeowners, and it's a sign of prosperity to have made renovations to your house, like replastering it or replacing the tin roof. Then a block away will be vacant fields where kids scavenge for scrap metal to sell, and at night the sky gets heavy and hazy with smoke as people start their fires because there's no electricity.

There are many things to say about Soweto, and I will touch on some of them in future posts. But here's one that stands out:

I ate kota, also known as bunnychow. Yeah, exactly. It's designed to be heavy, substantial food for very little money--5 rand, or about eighty cents. For that you get about half a loaf of bread filled with mashed potatoes, unidentified meats, chicken feet--the FEET, people, not a drumstick, not attached to a leg, just the feet, complete with little chicken toes and little chicken toenails--and some vegetable stew, all crowned by a piece of American cheese and a slab of bologna. When I ordered it at one of the little roadside stands where it's sold, the lady thought I was mistaken because white people never eat it. She kept trying to redirect me to the sandwiches. But I had been told that my Soweto experience would not be complete without eating kota, so I ate it. I ate it all. I even ate what little meat I could find on the creepy little chicken feet. And here is my conclusion:

Black people are not nearly angry enough.

We all know that in the U.S. we did the same thing: during slavery, whites gave whatever was left over of the animal to blacks. And I have always focused on the creativity and ingenuity of American blacks in taking that meat and making delicacies out of it. But having now eaten some of these inferior cuts of meat, which here was called "boysmeat" (i.e. the meat you would feed to your house boy) I say again: you should be much, much angrier than you are. Really, it should be a rallying point. And while people have done a great job of making it palatable, even tasty, I mean there's no lack of effort here, you can just tell it's not good meat. Taco Bell would reject this meat, is what I am saying. And by the way, you can pile anything you want on top of tripe and it in no way diminishes or disguises the fact that it's sheep intestines. The tough chewiness gives it away every time. Yeah, I've eaten that too.

Off to Jo'berg

2007-06-07T00:01:00.000-07:00

I am heading to Johannesburg tonight for a few days, and am staying in Soweto. Will post more from there.

Ships Passing in the Night

2007-06-04T13:37:00.000-07:00

So apparently I've barely missed several chances to meet Archbishop Tutu. My mojo for meeting famous people is waning. I'm entirely blaming this on Father Terry, though, who has been hanging out with him all week. They saw "Amazing Grace" together, they were at a funeral, and Tutu officiated at Friday morning mass, which is, I don't know, THREE MINUTES from where I stay and I would totally have gone, had I known. But did Father Terry mention it? No, he did not.

So when I took him to task for this, pointing out that it was a long-held dream to meet the archbishop and he might have given me a heads-up, he said, "I had no idea! You should have told me!"

Now on the one hand, I like that Tutu is apparently just one of his boys and he forgets that he is, you know, a towering moral figure and Nobel Prize winner. However, when you're talking regularly with a pilgrim who has come 12,000 miles because of her fascination with the South African freedom movement, you would think it would occur to you to let her know when her hero is around.

"But you should have said something!" he insisted. Look, Father Terry, says I, I didn't say anything because I thought it was a pipe dream. It would be like if you came to America and told me you wanted to meet President Clinton; I probably can't arrange that for you. If, perchance, I am having lunch with Bill, I would probably tell you where to be and when. If you came as a student of the civil rights movement and I was having coffee with John Lewis and Andy Young, I don't think you would specifically have to tell me you'd like to meet them for me to know that would probably be a big deal to you. I'm just saying.

So I said look, since you favor explicit requests, if you're having a friendly game of cards or a round of drinks with Mandela, I WOULD VERY MUCH LIKE TO MEET HIM. Geez.

So bummed. I was this close to receiving communion from Archbishop Tutu. I would have talked about that for the rest of my life. For that reason alone, you can probably all be grateful that I missed it.

Touring

2007-06-04T13:21:00.000-07:00

So I've been quite touristy lately--went down to the Cape of Good Hope the other day, where Vasco de Gama sailed around Africa to complete the trade route to the East. Bartolome Dias had tried before and failed, naming it the Cape of Storms. When de Gama made it around, it was rechristened. All those fifth-grade lessons on the conquistadors really do come back to you.

The Cape of Good Hope was long believed to be the southernmost tip of Africa. Actually, Cape Argullus a few miles away is, but it's not nearly as good a name or story as Cape of Good Hope, so we'll keep believing the myth. So I have stood at the end of the world. You know how when you're younger you make lists of "Things to Do by the Time I'm 30" because you'll be so old and decrepit by 30 you won't be able to accomplish anything significant after that? Standing at the end of the world was on mine. Check that one off the list. And it was just as cool as I had imagined it would be. Some of the dreams you had at 16 you look back on later and think, "Why on earth did I ever think I wanted to do THAT?!" But sometimes it's just as satisfying as your 16-year-old self had hoped.

I went on a day-long safari on Saturday at a game reserve about two hours outside of Cape Town. It's so strange to see animals just wandering around like they belong there. Giraffes, lions, cheetahs, ostriches, antelope, rhinos, zebras, wildebeest, it was like the road show of The Lion King. What's disconcerting is that it doesn't feel like Africa--it feels like being in a movie of Africa. You half expect Meryl Streep and her Afrikaaner accent to pop up. You drive past a herd of zebra and say, "Wow, it's just like 'Out of Africa,' except not so long and boring!" I guess that's because Africa has taken on such a mythical quality for us that even when you're here, it feels a bit like living in a myth.

There were several Americans on this tour. Let's start with the bearable one--and yes, that was singular. The guy next to me was a very interesting man, in town for the World Association of Newspapers convention. "Oh, which newspaper do you work for?" I ask. The New York Times, he replies, and explains he is not a journalist, he is on the business side. "So you were part of the Times going digital?" I ask. He confirms. So I did what any of us would do: I launched into a tirade about Times Select. I'm like look, you're basically making me pay for Kristof and Friedman and occasionally Dowd. Who the hell reads Krugman? Or Rich? And I can't even remember the others. It's only after he takes me to dinner and gives me his card to keep in touch that I find out he is the PRESIDENT of the news division. I harangued the president of the news division of the New York Times about the $8 a month the Times online costs me.

People, I think we all know there's a change a-comin'. I think he heard me, and through me, the will of the people.

This brings me to the other tourists, who are the reason the world hates Americans. We really are dreadful in groups. I won't dwell on the woman in the "It's good to bee Grandma" shirt festooned with bees, or the chain-smoker, or the couple who talked loudly about how they couldn't figure out their camera while everyone else was trying to listen to the tour guide. No, I think I'll just leave you with this exchange:

Loud American Tourist: The Africans, how many of them have AIDS now?
Me: Well, it varies by country. South Africa and Botswana have the highest rates at around 25%.
LAT: Yeah, and just think about who's fixing our meals.

Wow. I mean, wow. I thought we were past all that. Does she know you can't get it from toilet seats either?

NY Times guy said later that my face was priceless, so Kim, you'll be glad to know I haven't lost my inability to keep my thoughts from appearing on my face.

Less Than Two Weeks Left

2007-06-03T12:31:00.001-07:00

For the last several days, I've been debating whether to head for another country. Maybe to Namibia to see the sand dunes, or over to Zimbabwe to raft Victoria Falls and then come back through Botswana.

Confession: I am a passport stamp junkie.

In fact, I'm disappointed that they no longer put those colorful exotic stamps on your passport. I want as many as I can get.

And realizing that has made me realize something else. We all have status symbols we revere. For some, it's Gucci shoes or a Prada handbag. For others, the opposite--a certain simplicity of wardrobe that suggests the wearer is too absorbed with the grand and lofty things of life to be bothered by something so frivolous as fashion. For me, it's the passport. A well-worn passport suggests sophistication, worldliness, a certain cultural hipness, a propensity for risk-taking.

This is as unfounded and trivial a way to judge someone as judging them by their handbag would be. Well-worn passports also suggest great privilege, both the time and money to travel the world in a way most people will only ever see in books.

It is easy to condemn other people's status symbols, but hard to own up to your own. On safari yesterday, I met a very interesting guy whom I later had dinner with. He's originally Chilean, educated in the States, and is the president of the news division of the New York Times. I like to think that I would be friends with him no matter what his station in life were, but I have to admit that I mentally checked off all the status symbols he hit (international background: check, Choate for prep school: check, Ivy League undergraduate and graduate degrees: check, well-traveled: check, and double points for the Times affiliation). And having checked them off, thought, "I could be friends with this guy." I'm not proud of that.

I didn't come to Africa to raft the Zambezi or hear Namibia's roaring dunes. I came because I think this country is at an extraordinary crossroads as it decides that kind of nation it will be and reckons with its legacy of injustice and oppression. I came to see what the church is doing. I came for the people--people who are doing everything from tentatively starting dialogues to those who are in the trenches of land reform and AIDS.

I want to go to Johannesburg and see the apartheid museum and the site of the Soweto uprising. I want to stand in the place where the Truth and Reconciliation hearings were held. I do want to see Namibia's sand dunes and Victoria Falls, and I will come back to see them. But not this time. For now, I stay in South Africa.

Rite of Passage

2007-06-01T11:43:00.001-07:00

For those of you worried that at 30, my marriage prospects are waning, fear no more. Emmanuel has stepped in the gap. Or something.

Emmanuel teaches African drumming with his friend at my hostel on Thursday evenings, and last night I took his class. By the way, when the other drummers are drunk British guys, it doesn't take much to be the standout of the group. Anyway, I go, because I am all about blending in with the local culture. (On the local culture note, someone said to me the other day, in tones of genuine consternation, "You really don't speak any Afrikaans?" I was like mmm, you do realize it's basically a Dutch patois used exclusively in this nation? I mean, it's not like I don't speak the lingua franca. Which, in fact, I do, because it's English.)

Anyway, back to Emmanuel. Turns out he is from Congo. I tell him about Phenias. He gets really enthusiastic about this and insists that I tell him more, because the Muhimbaras might be long-lost family. Seems unlikely to me, but what do I know. Then he asks if I have children with Phenias. No, I say, I would be in jail were that the case, and explain again, painstakingly, that Phen is 11. He watches wrestling and wears my pajamas when it is cold. He is my heart, but he is not a marriage prospect.

This apparently opens the door for Emmanuel, though at this point I am unsuspecting. He tells me he wants to know more about his potentially long-lost relatives and asks if I'll go for a beer with him on Long Street, which is basically Cape Town's Bourbon Street and is a block or two from the hostel. What the hell, it's Africa, take a chance, I reason. Besides, I'm carrying Mace in case it goes left on me.

We end up at a place called Dubliners--because when you're in South Africa, you should totally hang out at an Irish pub. Better yet, an Irish pub with a one-man band covering '80s hits. This is when Emmanuel decides to profess his undying love for me. I must stay in Africa, he implores. We will get married and MOVE BACK TO CONGO and help rebuild it! Congo needs young, bright people who are tired of the fighting to rebuild it, he says enthusiastically. I agree, but I don't think I should help rebuild it by living in a failed state rapidly approaching the Hobbesian existence in which life is "nasty, brutish and short." I think I should rebuild it by sending money to aid agencies and conscientiously reading the foreign coverage in the New York Times.

So he is pressing his suit, and I am giving brush-off answers and trying to make it clear that I am far more interested in the soccer match on TV between Japan and Germany, which I am regarding as a referendum on the respective success of the Axis powers. (Japan won narrowly, 2-1, which seems about right. But it was Germany's B side. When Germany brings its A-game, everyone else can just leave the field. I am just using soccer as a metaphor here, people.) All this against the backdrop of the one man band playing Billy Joel songs and "I Shot the Sheriff," while donning a Rasta wig and hat. I am drinking my beer as quickly as possible--and you guys know how I feel about beer, I'd as soon drink cold pee--and of course because it's an Irish pub, the drinks are twice as large as anywhere else. Damn alcoholic Irishmen. I then insist I have to get back to the hostel because I have a mythical early morning appointment. We part only when I assure him I will come to hear him play at Zula's on Monday night. I don't know where I'll be on Monday night, but I know where I won't be--Zula's.

I'm kind of annoyed too, because I really just wanted to talk about the Congo with him. Really I just wanted to talk about Phen. Do you hear that, Cheeky Monkey? I talk about you to everyone! You're a legend here!

Sipho's Lovely Letter P

2007-05-26T10:11:00.000-07:00

So people have been asking about my work at the group home for HIV infected/affected kids. Here's the skinny: about a dozen kids up to age 8 live in this group home supported by the Anglican diocese and other churches. Some are HIV-positive, others have parents who are, most were removed by the state (whatever their version of Children's Protective Services is) because they weren't being properly cared for. They stay at the home up to two years, ideally being placed with adoptive parents or reunited with rehabilitated birth parents at some point in the process, very much like foster care in the U.S. I go there four days a week for six or seven hours a day. I help with general care, but more specifically tutoring the 5-7 year olds, who are school-aged but not in school. This leads us to the week's big victory: I taught Sipho to write his name! And he is only 3! He writes his S properly every time, which leads me to believe he is dyslexic, since little kids never get their S's straight. Sipho is what would be considered Bantu, or black, and he speaks Afrikaans, like all the children and caretakers at the home, but when he does speak English, it's the Queen's English. So it throws me off when he turns and says earnestly, "Is it a proper S? Must I practice?" Sipho is one of my favorites. I got a little annoyed the other day when one of the caregivers was admiring his name, but then tried to improve it, i.e. "your P shouldn't be as tall as your H, and you must make the tail longer." I'm like, HEY, he just learned what a P *is*, and that it makes a sound, and how to write it, and that he has one in his name. Back off, it's been a big day. I said, "It's a *lovely* P, Sipho, a *marvelous* P." He stood by the blackboard chanting to himself, "Lovely, lovely letter P, Sipho's lovely P."

The arm babies are Ipondo, Abu, Jason and Christopher; Candy is 2; Wendell and Sipho are 3; Chad is 4; Julian, Crissy and Ctaum (pronounced Stohm, such a cool name) are 5, and Ani and CarRlo are 7. Is that a typo, you ask? It may be, I haven't figured it out yet. That is how CarRlo writes his name, and he has some problems with his letters (we have just learned to consistently distinguish a 6 from a P). However, I have known my share of kids with innovatively spelled names, full of apostrophes and capital letters, which translated to Brandon or Tiffany, so who am I to say that's not exactly what CarRlo's mom had in mind? CarRlo he writes, so CarRlo he is.

A couple of observations: 1) AIDS meds have gotten so much simpler since I was dosing Juwan 6 times a day several years ago. Now it's just once or twice a day. 2) These kids' biggest problem isn't that they have HIV; it's that they haven't got stable homes or access to decent education. Even a good group home is an abnormal situation, because the caregivers are paid; it's not a family. When the babies cry, they tell me not to pick them up, because there's nothing wrong with them, they just want to be held. I would argue that that is developmentally appropriate for babies. The caregivers (who, to be fair, are very affectionate with and fond of the kids) say they won't get anything done if they are toting babies all day, and the kids will get spoiled. Kim, tell your mom I can hear her voice saying disdainfully, "Fruit spoils; children don't spoil." So I teach Sipho to write his name and work with CarRlo on B and D while bouncing Candy or rocking Abu. I think babies should be held. Life is tough enough, eh?

I'm sure as the days go by I'll have more musings and observations on South African society and HIV and available resources vs. need, but for now, there's your cast of characters.

Waffle House Nation

2007-05-26T03:53:00.000-07:00

Some of you know of my prodigious affection for the Waffle House, that enduring American institution of greasy cheap food. Its menu prices have not changed since 1958. You can get eggs, toast, grits, a waffle, and coffee and it's still under $5, with tip.

This is a Waffle House NATION.

Need blue jeans? You can get them for $10. My friend James bought a pair of sunglasses for 10 rand, which is like $1.40 US. And last night 4 of us went out for a nice dinner, where I had steak, 6 king prawns, and dessert and coffee.

It cost me less than $20.

The only things that tend to cost something approximating US value are services catering specifically to tourists, like internet cafes or American coffee shops. (I am writing this from a Seattle's Best Coffee joint, so those of you concerned about my coffee jones can be at ease--I won't have to brave that sludgy Turkish coffee for a few more weeks. And even here my chai latte is about a buck less than in the States.)

In other news, one of the things I am loving about my hostel are the people I am finding who are interested and active in issues very similar to mine, but who come at it from a different enough angle to make it a valuable and provocative perspective. (Because it they were just like me, one of us would be redundant.) Sure, there are a good number of people who came to drink and party their way across the continent; but there's Tim, the Duke grad student interning at a policy think-tank on justice and reconciliation around land reform; Brandon, who just finished 3 months here studying international development and is thinking of divinity school; and Aubrey, the brooding Irishman who's lived here 5 years and runs a nonprofit for HIV/AIDS education, and who started our conversation being very critical of what he thought was going to be my American save-the-world idealism and do-gooder Christianity and ended up sending me off with a Great Commission to harness the power and good will of American Christians to do development work in a more sustainable, empowering way than we have done it in the past. "I had you very wrong," he admitted during our very intense 2 am conversation; "if you had thought you had it all figured out after 2 weeks here I'd be very suspicious of you, but you've said all the right things, most significantly 'I don't know.'" Oh, Aubrey, if only you knew how regularly I use those three little words.

And then there's the grab-bag of random folks: James, the London university student who's wrapping up a month-long overland tour in Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Botswana and Swaziland, and who got mugged yesterday for his Coke (not his wallet, not his cash, not his jacket or sunglasses; his half-drunk can of Coke); Simon, who when he's not cavorting about the globe runs 1/3 of the London metro system--he RUNS THE LONDON UNDERGROUND, people, I am so travelling for free next time I'm in London; and Ingrid, the Swedish girl I immediately sized up as the pretty, vacant au-pair type, until I found out she's writing her master's thesis in political science on African development; thou shalt not judge a book by its fair-haired cover, children. The four of us went out to the beach to watch the sun set over the Atlantic yesterday, a great flaming ball sinking into the sea, and it was one of those moments when I think "I'm in Africa!" and it's surreal, because it's too good to be true.

Running for the (mini)bus

2007-05-26T03:44:00.000-07:00

Mijha and her Puerto Rico experience are bearing out, as there is some universality to developing world travel. As it happens, I not only have adventures with buses, but with trains and taxis.

Trains are no big deal--they mostly run on time, they just don't seem to have any sort of fire code capacity laws. Thursday I rode with so many people I could have lifted my feet off the ground and and still been born aloft by the crowd. At some point, we were so full the train doors wouldn't close--which doesn't mean the train won't run, gentle reader; it means it runs with the doors wide open and the people closest to the door clinging to the ceiling straps to avoid being sucked out. Among my fellow travellers were a guy bleeding from a fight, a guy carrying a TV, and a street preacher who yelled over the ruckus that Satan had kidnapped our souls.

Ah, but the real adventure. The real adventure is the strange hybrid known as the minibus taxi. It is a minivan designed to seat maybe 8-10 people and regularly seating twice that, with people perched under the dashboard, crushed against the door, and sitting by the driver with someon else's toddler in their lap. There are, need I say it, no seat belts. Here's how the minibus taxi works: you, the prospective rider, stand on the side of the road aimlessly like a common prostitute. As cabs packed like clown cars go by, they flash their lights and yell out their destination. If they're going where you're going, you wave casually. They then stop for you to get in--or they don't totally stop, they slow down, and you jump on the running board of the car and the passengers pull you in.

People, I LOVE IT. It is an adventure every day.

The train and minibus are how I get to the AIDS group home for kids that I am now volunteering at 4 days a week. I take the train part of the way and the minibus the rest. Round trip it costs me less than $3 a day. And what price entertainment, really? Yesterday a woman got on with a chicken, and no one even looked at her funny.

I have not yet seen white people on the minibus or the train, so it is a refreshing change from the hostel and the touristy areas. Whites seem either to drive cars or take regular taxis. If they ride the train, they ride first class. The minibus is a response to apartheid, when townships were built outside the city and seen as a steady supply of labor, but arrangements weren't made for getting people into and out of the city. So it still remains quite segregated. I am gate-crashing as usual.

And our worst cultural exports

2007-05-22T09:06:00.000-07:00

This is simply the requisite post, because Dionne had hoped against hope that hip-hop culture had not made its way across the Atlantic, to inform you all once again that hip-hop culture is GLOBAL youth culture. The street kids at the soup kitchen where I have been volunteering all sag their pants and wear hoodies and knit caps. And they sing American rap songs. I grabbed one kid by his pants and said, "Do you even know where this fashion comes from? It's a prison fashion because prisoners aren't allowed to have belts. PULL UP YOUR PANTS!" And he's laughing and going "Miss, miss, it's in the videos!"

I keep forgetting that SA cars are like British ones in that the driver sits on the right, so hilariously as I went to get into the right side of the car the other day, my cabbie says, "Like Beyonce say, 'to the left, to the left.'" I about fell out. This man had to be 50 years old, but he was all over the latest Beyonce.

I went today to the home for AIDS orphans where I will be working! When I tell you it is in a slum, people, I mean a straight-up slum. As in, there are no street signs because they steal them for scrap metal. Father Terry (my previously alluded to beloved minister) got all turned around and he had grown up in the area, which was a colored neighborhood under the Group Areas Act. "I guess they don't care if you can get around inside the township, as long as there's one entrance and exit they can seal off," he said drily. I told him American projects were built the same way. We sat in silence for a moment, and I said, "I suppose evil looks pretty well the same anywhere you go," and he agreed.

And the young men stood around in their sagging pants and knock-off FUBU sweatshirts. Oh, fear not, Dionne, hip-hop culture blooms everywhere!

Harlem, Alabama

2007-05-21T12:37:00.000-07:00

I went by the Slave Lodge today, a museum about slavery in South Africa. Interestingly, the slaves here weren't the indigenous people, the San and the Khoi--the Europeans didn't want to enslave them because they wanted to trade with them. So they imported slaves from Central Africa and Malaysia and Southeast Asia. One particularly compelling exhibit was about the civil rights movement in America, particularly school segregation, and its comparisons to apartheid in SA. And the BEST MOMENT--Mijha, you're so bummed you weren't here because you'll think I'm making it up--was when this African guy was saying it seems like the South always gets depicted as the only region with racial issues but that he thought it was because whites in the South were more threatened by blacks since blacks made up such a significant portion of the population and therefore were a substantive threat to political and social hegemony. Bravo, African guy! (not to mention he was elucidating one of my pet peeves, the vilification of the South as the only home of American racism) And then this AMERICAN GIRL--oh, the shame--proceeded to explain to him that it was because at that time, there were NO BLACKS IN THE NORTH! None! Apparently the Harlem Renaissance happened in Harlem, Alabama! Mijha, does your dad know? Why then is he in exile in New York? And the African guy looked confused and said, "Not even after the Civil War?" Again, we hang our heads in shame that he knows more about our history than we do. And she allowed that there were a few after the Civil War. I tried to stay out of it, I really did, it was a private conversation and all. Except it was the civil rights movement, and there were photos of Ruby Bridges and Barbara Johns and Thurgood Marshall everywhere, and I just couldn't let her go on being ridiculous all over Billie Holiday singing "Strange Fruit." So I sketched a brief history of the Great Migration for them, and residential segregation in the North, and busing in Boston, et al. I couldn't help it. She can't be helped but he seemed like a bright young man.

Oh, and there was a video with Ted Shaw so I waved at your uncle, Runako.

Let's talk about how much I love Father Terry. He is the sub-dean at St. George's Cathedral, and he sees me abour every other day for chats about South Africa and the church's role in rebuilding it. Or at least, we talk about that for like 10 minutes, and then we're on to Sudan, and liberation theology, and do I really think G.W. is a Christian, and do I think he is stupid or crazy like a fox, and the evangelical response to homosexuals. I tell you, I am FASCINATING to Father Terry. He is taking me to the diocese's home for AIDS orphans tomorrow, and today he set me to work in the church's soup kitchen for street people, which led to an interesting conversation on mercy ministries vs. justice or long-term restorative ministries. I met a couple of other American and European volunteers there, and it was intriguing, and a bit troubling, how jaded they were. This 19-year-old Swedish kid said he thought he'd feel more sympathetic to street people after working there, but he feels less, because none of them are trying to do anything better with their lives so he figures they deserve it. I think he wanted them to be the "deserving" poor, sort of Oliver Twist-y with large eyes like in Keane paintings. And instead he found that hard lives make hard people. I didn 't find them troubling--the kids in particular had the same mix of charm and menace I'm used to in the kids I know, where if one tack doesn't work they'll use the other. And the older guys just aren't entirely there. Although Bouje, the most flamboyantly queenly street guy I have ever seen with his sparkly pink turban, deserves his own TV show.

Love from South Africa and its lovely, tragic people. As Shane Claiborne says, "We are all wretched, and we are all beautiful. May we see in the faces of the oppressed our own faces, and in the hands of the oppressor our own hands."

Jane

2007-05-19T11:28:00.001-07:00

I do not like poor people. I don't like how uncomfortable they make me with their naked need, how overindulged and selfish I know myself to be in their presence. I don't like how they destroy my illusion that I have some power to make things better. I do not like their unflinching witness that life is more often brutal and unjust and casually violent than otherwise.

I was on my way home from St. George's Cathedral Thursday night when a young woman approached me, asking for money for food. "You can even go in and buy it for me," she said, her way of assuring me she wouldn't spend it on drugs or beer, I guess. Now, it did flash through my mind that this could be one of those set-ups in which an unthreatening woman approaches you so your guard is down, but she's just the decoy and then her menacing partners in crime emerge from the shadows to rough you up and take all your money. But she was tired and young, no more than 19 or 20, and about 4 or 5 months pregnant (yes, Runako, I am as uncannily accurate in pinpointing pregnancy stages as I am at guessing children's ages. I am just that good), and I decided I would rather risk being mugged than be the person who turns away a pregnant woman. So I gave her 50 rand, which is about $7 US, and a pretty cheap price to pay to assuage your conscience. And in a move that is very uncharacteristic for me (VERY. I do not have the gift of evangelism) I prayed for her and her baby. Look, it's Ascension Day, you step up your game.

So I saw her again tonight, and she called out and waved to me. I walked over to say hello, but I really don't want to be bothered, so I lied and said all I had was 1.5 rand in change, which is, like, $.0004 US. And she nodded and said thanks and said, "Enjoy your evening, miss." Crap. I'm holding a takeout bag with chicken and rice, and I am going back to my hotel that finally got a heater installed in the room today, so it is toasty and warm and outside it is cold and rainy and I suck. I rounded the corner, and doubled back, and said, "What's going on?" And she told me her grandparents (parents are dead, you always wonder here if it's from AIDS) put her out when she got pregnant because they didn't like the guy. Then that guy left. "I hate his guts," she said softly. Yeah, me too. Her grandmother would take her back, she said, but her grandfather won't until she has the baby and gives it away and he doesn't have to be reminded of what a disappointment she was to him. And her eyes filled up and she said softly, "I hate my life. I can't keep living this way, begging for enough rand to stay at a backpackers' lodge."

I am so not the Christian for this, because I can't do the "But God loves you anyway, all evidence to the contrary!" thing. I am more of the "Yeah, I don't know why God lets lousy stuff happen. I keep believing He loves us through it simply because the alternative is too awful to contemplate." I would not make a good crisis counselor.

I asked her if she had tried the shelters, and she said she had but they were all full, which I have heard is a problem here; unemployment is at 25%. "I really do go to the shelters, miss," she said earnestly. Now it could all be a well-rehearsed story, and maybe she's just a skilled scam artist who honed in on the naive and well-meaning American. I can take that chance. I gave her 120 rand, less than $20 but enough to stay in a hostel and get something to eat, and she agreed to go to St. George's after services tomorrow; it's a very socially conscious church and maybe they can help her find a more long-term solution. Stop laughing at me, Runako, it was cold and rainy.

There's never a good answer to what to do in these situations because there's no good answer to why the weak and vulnerable suffer and always have. If I see her tomorrow, do I give her another 100 rand? For how long? I wouldn't do it in America because at home, I'd know how to get her into a shelter or a young mother's home. And in some cities like Calcutta, you'd be inviting every beggar in the city to follow you, although I'm not sure that's reason enough not to do it.

Anyway, if you have any ideas on how Christians ought to handle things like this, I'm all ears. Meanwhile, her name is Jane. Pray for her if you think of it. And if you want to wish bad things upon the boyfriend and grandfather, that would be OK too.

Scaling great heights

2007-05-19T01:38:00.000-07:00

I climbed Table Mountain yesterday, the great landmark of Cape Town. You can take a cable car up, but I am young and fit and robust, I'm not one of these fat tourists with their baggy t-shirts and plastic visors, I can climb the mountain. Except it's 1,050 METERS UP. WHICH IS A KILOMETER. Which is some relation to a mile, I can't remember the conversion, but I believe it must be more. It felt like more. It took two hours of climbing up a sheer cliff hanging by my fingernails. OK,not quite, there were stone steps and ledges to pull yourself up by, but it was no joke, people. Between that and the mile-long run for the bus yesterday, this is turning out to be like training camp.

It was gorgeous, though. Steep cliffs, bubbling springs, and beyond that the Atlantic. It was stunning. Some hikers probably like to enjoy it in reverent silence, but not me. I like to enjoy it while breathlessly singing "This Is My Father's World" to let any snakes or rodents know I am coming.

At the top, I met three American girls from Texas and Tennessee who also go to Presbyterian churches and are involved in urban ministry and one of them teaches at an urban public school and one's boyfriend is principal of a KIPP school in Nashville. I tell ya, wherever you go, there you are. It was great though, we hung out together for the afternoon and we're trying to connect to go to church tomorrow in one of the townships since they have a friend who worships there. And then we took the cable car down the mountain, which takes about 2 minutes and really minimizes your achievement in getting to the top.

Then I walked along the beach front and walked the several miles home because I am a cheapskate and I don't pay for taxis for places I can walk to, even if that walk will take me two hours. I mean, you pay for lodging because you can't build yourself a hut, and you pay for food because you can't plant a garden or shoot a deer, but I can sure walk.

This morning I had coffee with the priest at St. George's Cathedral. He finds me very interesting and is introducing me to people I can talk to about what faith communities are doing to deal with racial and economic inequity in post-apartheid South Africa. I'm going to volunteer at their soup kitchen a few days a week because it will give me a chance to talk to some folks about life before and after, and the diocese also runs a home for AIDS orphans. I'm hoping it all falls into place because the townships are crazy hard to get to, and there's no place to stay once you get there. It would be easier to stay in the city. But we'll see.

By the way, the place I'm staying right now is this old Victorian house and the door handles and locks are about 2 feet off the ground. It's like it was built for hobbits.

It's pouring rain today, so while some hardy souls might go out and be productive, I believe I will read and drink coffee and try to find old American reruns on TV. So far I've found Desperate Housewives and Days of Our Lives. Add to that the constant loop of old Michael Jackson and Beyonce songs they play on the radio here and I am genuinely proud of our cultural exports, people.

Running for the bus

2007-05-17T11:53:00.000-07:00

I took a bus tour of Cape Town today, one of those where you can hop on and off at several stops. I got off at the District Six museum, which commemorates this multiethnic, multireligious community that thrived peacefully until the government decided it was a whites-only area in the 1960's, razed it and displaced all the residents to townships. Oddly, they never built on the site, just leaving a scar on the land. There is a large map in the museum where former residents can come in and write down where they used to live. Now the government is considering moving some of these people back in. There's considerable support for it; one of the most striking things in the museum is a large wall where former residents have written their thoughts, and over and over is the refrain "I would love to return home." But I wonder if they can. They can build homes, but they can't rebuild that community, where people worked and worshipped and sent their kids to school all within a few square blocks. What they want back is their community, or even their sentimentalized memory of what their community was in the 1960s, and you can't get that back. Any reconstructed neighborhood will be subject to the same gentrification and property values and market forces that every other neighborhood contends with. Sometimes you can't recover what was lost. You just grieve it and start building again.

Then I left the museum and realized I had missed the bus by five minutes and another one wasn't coming for 1 hour 15 minutes more. I start heading to the next stop to meet it there, except we all know my sense of direction, and it is faltering. And then I see it, down the road: the big red double-decker bus, stopped at a traffic light. And I break into a light jog. And then a dead sprint. I am hauling tail down the street, and it is raining, and apparently American girls chasing down a bus are not a common sight here because I am the show of the boulevard. Cars are honking, people are laughing and yelling, I am yelling; I am bumping into fruit stands and women with babies; I am vaulting barricades like an Olympian and crossing six lanes of traffic as people hoot and clap, because I will not...wait...for this...bus.

And do I catch the bus?

People, I think you know that I do not. I am tempted to lie and say of course I do, I am victorious, but after a mile I was winded and the bus was pulling away from me and I gave up. When I finally gave in, flushed and breathless, the spectators cheered and applauded. I did all I could do: I waved, and took my bow. And spent 30 minutes relocating the original bus stop. I stopped for a minute at the court house, because there was a covered pavilion where I could duck in from the rain. A 12-year-old girl was a few feet away, watching her little brothers and sisters while her mom was inside. In her hooded sweatshirt and sneakers, she was like my 12-year-olds at home. Her sullenness was universal to 12-year-olds everywhere. I put on some lip gloss, and held it out to her wordlessly: the unspoken girl code that transcends race, culture and age. She took some, smeared it on her lips, and we chatted about school and parents and little sisters. I am a bridge-builder, a bridge-builder with MAC lip gloss.

This evening I went to St. George's Cathedral for the Feast of the Assumption, which commemorates Jesus' assumption into heaven. It includes the reading from Acts in which he tells the disciples they will be witnesses for him "in Jerusalem, and in Judea, and in Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth." And in this multiracial church, in this country, where I received communion from an African priest, it seemed so appropriate to be reminded that for all humanity has done wrong, all the ways we have degraded ourselves and the Imago Dei within us, the Assumption tells us that God will receive us into His divinity for eternity. In the church where Desmond Tutu preached against apartheid as archbishop of Cape Town, it was about perfect. So I close with his words, engraved on the wall of the church:
Good is stronger than evil
Love is stronger than hate
Light is stronger than darkness
Life is stronger than death.
Victory is ours through Him who loves us.

First day in Cape Town!

2007-05-16T12:16:00.000-07:00

I rolled out today to the South African Museum and the art gallery and botanical gardens (thank you, Cecil Rhodes, you crazy old racist, you do plant a lovely garden). In the museum I was looking at an exhibit on the Bantu people, which is what they lumped all the native South Africans together as for a long time, and they called them bushmen. And there were video interviews with them and I noticed these clicks and pops in their language and all of a sudden I went OH MY GOD, IT'S THE CLICKING BUSHMEN! I mean you've heard of them all your life, but sort of as a mythical thing, and then there it is. Then I noticed that all the people walking by me were clicking too, because it's not a dead language, folks! I could not have been more surprised if a dodobird had waddled up and laid an egg next to me. It's very fluid and part of a recognizable language, not just a series of clicks and taps like I'd imagined (yes, Sonia Sanchez, I'm talking to you, and Mijha, you know I immediately re-indicted her).

Now let me take a minute to say that the British and the Dutch are some devilish people who have committed some heinous human rights abuses in their time, but those people can build you an infrastructure. They are some managerially gifted people, because by sheer dint of will they looked at the land and said, "We will build another Amsterdam, it will just be hotter than the one in Holland." And folks, they did it. You've got to admire that kind of drive. You're particularly grateful for it when you're finding that ATMs, grocery stores and Internet cafes are readily accessible, and that planes run on time and the roads are decent. Have you noticed that the former French colonies are all falling to crap and the British ones pretty much thrive? I mean, France: Algeria, Morocco, Haiti, Vietnam. Shitholes all. Britain: USA, Canada, Australia, India, Zimbabwe, South Africa. All thriving, except for Zimbabwe, and we blame that squarely on you, Robert Mugabe. The French can't get anything right.

To cap the day, I was walking through the botanical gardens and joined a pickup soccer game with a few guys. Soccer in the park in South Africa, in the shadow of Table Mountain, with some guys who a generation ago I wouldn't have been able to speak to. I played till it was dark. A perfect moment.

Pocket Texan

2007-05-16T12:05:00.000-07:00

I got into Cape Town on a Tuesday night after two days of travel and an impromptu overnight in DC, occasioned by a mechanical problem with my flight which led to missing the London connection. I shared my flight to Johannesburg with a clutch of undergrads going to a medical conference, including that one girl, you know the one, loud and over-gesticulating and DON'T YOU KNOW YOU SOUND LIKE A HOWLER MONKEY, YOU SHREWISH HARPY?! On the other hand, I caught up on several romantic comedies I'd missed, a rerun of "House," and "Blood Diamond" (you were right, Mijha, it was mostly about the relationship between Leo DiCaprio and Jennifer Connely. Your instincts were sure and true.) I love international flights.

My cabbie from the airport was colored--that is an official designation for people in South Africa who are neither all black nor all white, children, not a derogatory term. (Older friends, if this blog is didactic at times, it's because I have some fifth-grade readers.) So mixed-race, Indian, Asian, they're all colored. My cabbie was undone, totally flabbergasted, that I was from Texas. Apparently I am too small to be a Texan. All the ones he's driven, including the 300-pound woman who broke his seat in November, have been grotesquely obese. It's the Texas beef, he opined, so I must be eating Texas celery. He was full of the funny, this guy. "Smallest Texan I ever drive," he kept saying. Also, he accurately surmised that I am a Democrat because of my cargo pants and T-shirt. "Republicans, they come in white shirts and black shoes and lots of money, but we see khaki, we know you are Democrat and you are OK." Apparently in South Africa at least, Democrats are still the party of the common man. Also, a joke courtesy of the cabbie: what's the difference between South Africans and Americans? Answer: South Africans were raised in the bush and Americans are run by one. He'll be here all week, folks, try the veal.

He did say something I found interesting: he said you can immediately tell the difference betwen Europeans and Americans. "Americans, you are looking outward," he said, which I figured out meant that we look up and out at the world. "You are walking boldly." He grinned. "Like you own the world." And he said we smile a lot. Grinning idiot has long been the rap Americans get, but you know, there are worse things to be known for then being friendly and confident.

A week from today...

2007-05-06T18:46:00.000-07:00

I will hop a plane to South Africa and spend a month there before I spend two months in Cairo and then head to Cambridge to study for my Master of Divinity degree at Harvard. It promises to be an exciting few years. I should be able to post pretty regularly from Africa (and *very* regularly from Boston) so check in to see what I'm doing. Talk amongst yourselves (and with me) in the comments section, and leave your name or I won't know who you are.

Phenias is downstairs watching TV after swimming. He smells of chlorine and spices and his own 11-year-old Phenias-ness. He is one of the hardest things to leave behind.