Above, a few shots taken around town in Papeete, the capital of French Polynesia and the main town on Tahiti. You can also see Moorea, a next-door island, in these shots as you could from the beach at my hotel, which is several miles back east or counter-clockwise around the island. Below are several shots of Papeete’s Town Hall, all decked out for Christmas — I took these shots on December 31st in Tahiti. Nice way to truly see out the old year, huh? 🙂 Tough life, but someone’s gotta do it…
Adieu 2008, from LA
After a lovely family and food filled holiday hosted at my temporary apartment in NYC, I hopped a flight for LA on Monday the 29th, where I had a bit of time to walk around my old haunts of Venice and Marina del Rey before hopping a flight the following day for Tahiti. It being one of those classically gorgeous LA winter days, with seaside temperatures in the perfect range, and skies more than clear enough to see the snow on the San Gabriel Mountains, I couldn’t help snapping a few shots.
Oh Beautiful for Spacious Skies
I’m still pretty deeply embedded in this north American continent, still quite deeply enmeshed in this project to set Mom up for a safer, gentler ongoing retirement by, well, nearly tearing down and rebuilding her house. This raises questions both deep and shallow. The most-common question asked by new acquaintances (read: usually guys I wish I could be dating) is ‘What do you do.’ For some time now I’ve taken disproportionate pride and joy in being able to say I’m a humanitarian worker – it usually launches interesting conversations, and it pretty well always garners me some approving feelings and comments from my conversation partner. However, for a guy of my years and experience to be…sort of an unemployed homeless person, formerly a humanitarian worker but now engaged in the humanitarian ‘Mom Project,’ – well, that just doesn’t come across quite so glamorous. There are deeper pleasures and rewards of family closeness and connection to my Mom, though; one came this past week, as my brothers and I gathered to help move Mom into her new temporary residence, and a few days later when I saw this house in which she (and we) had been accumulating detritus and stuff since 1975 emptied completely. It awaits now only building approval for the demolition and excavation to begin.
…some famous symbols of this city I’m again calling home are the George Washington Bridge, which connects Manhattan to New Jersey across the Hudson – the flag is only there on holidays – and lady liberty in the harbor. The shot below, and other green and treed looking shots further below, comes from the parks in northern Manhattan — the riverside park south of the bridge, Ft Tryon park a bit north of the bridge, and other parts of the area broadly known as Washington Heights because our founding president and first general retreated from British troops here early in our revolution.
And while, on the surface, none of this is as challenging or rewarding as – say – running a surgical and emergency hospital in the Niger Delta, it keeps me busy. In addition, whether I like it or not, it forces me to sit down with questions like identity, life goals, and what it’s all about. I’m one of those Americans who’s felt rather estranged from my country, which took a turn from bad to much worse when we allowed the most destructive president of all time to remain in office after the 2004 elections. It’s much easier, when traveling internationally, to act Canadian than to have to explain that we truly have NO IDEA how that managed to happen. And since that was true – I really have had no idea why so many Americans looked at this lying, incompetent man and said ‘yeah, four more years in the White House sounds like a great idea for him.’ So it’s been much easier to just act like I’m not really part of it.
Being back has made me recognize, again, the complicated reality that is America, that is being American. And that complicated multi-faceted contradictory reality is more than ever present in our current circumstances. We’ve passed a presidential election that’s brought hope to folks around the world for a more constructive, engaged and positive American influence in the world – not to mention more realistic and honorable policies at home. At the same time, the US has spurred another global economic downturn that’s clearly one of the worst in 100 years, and whose bottom we’ve probably not yet found. Four and six years ago, I was totally bearish on America when others were betting our stock ever higher and acting like the high-flying leveraged days of irresponsibility could last forever. Now I find myself unusually bullish and confident, at a time when many seem quite lost and fearful.
The Cloisters, bits and pieces of various medieval religious buildings from different parts of Euopre brought over by one of the Rockefellers and cobbled together here as a gift to the people of NY during the great depression, now houses most of the Met’s medieval collections.
The most worrisome aspect to me of our current situation is the deliberate know-nothing approach that many Americans take to our social and political realities. And I don’t say that lightly. A democratic nation whose citizens choose, quite deliberately, to show no interest in the complex and challenging realities of the world they live in simply cannot succeed over the long term. Those who’ve fallen deeply in love with Sarah Palin reflect a deeply-rooted, uniquely American idea that complicated answers are bad, and sound bites are good; that intellect is the enemy, irrational simplicity our friend. I’ve wondered constantly how mothers and fathers in middle America, who I’m certain can barely manage to find solutions to their own family’s belt-tightening crisis, can possibly think that simple sound-bite answers will be found for the largest economy and most complicated government structure the world has ever know. And YES, our government DOES need to be the most complicated the world has ever known, since it manages the largest military, biggest economy, and third largest population the world has ever known. How could there possibly be simple answers for such an entity?
But this is the country where you can’t run for president without mouthing the mandatory ‘America is the greatest nation on earth’ formula. Do those mouthing or hearing the words have concrete ideas (as in, why we’re necessarily greater than Bhutan, Ethiopia or Italy?) in mind when they say it or hear it? I AM proud to be American; I DO think there’s much to be proud of in what we’ve done over the years. Sadly, there’s very much to be terribly ashamed of more recently, and those who re-elected Bush and brought more death and torture to remote corners of the globe, funded by their tax dollars, need to acknowledge their responsibility for what was done by the government they voted for, with their tax dollars. And I’d love to hear their list of concrete things that make them so proud, that make this the ‘greatest nation.’ I have my own list – though I reject utterly the notion that any nation is, or should expect to be, the ‘greatest nation.’ All citizens in all nations are doing what they can to put food on the tables of their families, and most governments, to a greater or lesser extent, are trying to find ways of meeting at least the most basic needs of their citizens.
Still and all, considering the fear and worry on the minds of many Americans, it’s a good time to remember things we can be reasonably proud of. This country, in creative dialogue with Franceth century, created a meaningful new model of democracy that helped fire political and social imaginations throughout the world. This country has been the leading nation composed of immigrants from all cultures, languages and ethnicities; and that diversity has usually given us the kind of health and creative vitality that most mutts have. At times we could learn well from our great northern neighbor, Canada, how better to create a cultural quilt that honors our differences rather than trying to melt them in a pot and fit everyone into the same mold; but still, we’ve done pretty well at taking the energies and experiences of people from all over the world and using them grow an endlessly creative and energetic nation. And we’ll need all that energy and creativity to find our way out of the mess Bush & Co have sunk us so deeply into. I could go on, but the point is made –like all nations and groups, we’ve made contributions both good and bad to the world as a whole, but consistent with our size and place in history, we’ve had a larger impact that most other nations in the past couple hundred years. And we can really be proud of a lot. But it’s been too long since our government did much that we can really be proud of: I’d say the last truly visionary thing we did was use the Marshall plan to invest in a devastated Europe (including Germany) and Japan at the end of World War II. We’ve been coasting on the good will that created ever since – and that well done run dry. We need to get out there and create some meaningful good will, by dropping help rather than bombs on people in developing nations around the world. In fairness to Shrub, he’s left at least one meaningful, positive legacy in the plus column – his serious commitment to AIDS help for nations in Africa. Would that he’d done more of that, and less of the bombs and torture.
Below and above, the NY Waterfalls was a fun public art project that linked the harbor in a new way, with four artifial waterfalls built around the harbor off lower Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Governor’s Island. Other shots include Ellis Island next to the Statue of Liberty, through which some of my ancestors certainly arrived as immigrants.
It’s clear the hope for renewal and meaningful leadership is shared eagerly all over the world, and this shows up in my own inbox with emails from friends all over saying things from ‘good on you, america,’ or ‘yippi yi ya for obama’ to ‘thank you all you american friends out there…you have made it for the whole of us!!!’ and ‘tears of joy and relief are in my eyes.’ I gave many hours to campaign phone-banks for Obama during October and November. I was born and grew up in Ohio, which was to 2004 what Florida was to 2000. I’m so happy to see the voters finally reject the hate, fear and consumption based approach to life we’ve followed for too long. (Don’t forget that W’s recommendation to citizens after 9/11 was that we should go shopping.) I was personally called anti-American and anti-troops by several people I thought of as friends when I opposed our imperial unilateralist war-mongering response to what, in 2001, could have been a very teachable moment for ourselves and the world. (How different would we and the world now be if we’d taken all those dollars we’ve now wasted in Iraq, and used it on a Marshall-like plan to provide healthcare, education and opportunity in the world’s most deprived places?)
Below, an historic Hoboken train station on the Jersey side just by the Statue of Liberty, through which some of my plains-bound immigrant ancestors very possibly traveled.
One thing I’ve become increasingly clear about is the need to speak out about my own beliefs and faith. Here in the US, religion is too often used as such a bludgeon to separate and judge – making folks like me very uncomfortable about speaking out for our own beliefs and values, which differ so starkly from those judgmental, narrow-minded religions that bludgeon, but that are no less deeply based in a deep spiritual commitment to right and ethical living in this world. I’ve become convinced that traditional, hidebound religions are a terrible impediment to progress in the US, and are limiting our vision and potential far too much. We are, after all, a nation formed by religious rebels of many stripes – so it’s unsurprising that religion and ethics play a huge role in our public life. Before church recently, I sat in the one of the adult education sessions I’ve so enjoyed; this was about Jewish theologian Abraham Hershel. In one passage, he recounted being told, as a 7-year-old, about the biblical story of Abraham taking Isaac up to the mountain to be sacrificed, as he’d heard his god demand he do. Naturally the 7-year-old was pretty horrified by the notion of a father killing his son based on the say-so of some voice in the air, and wondered what would have happened if the angel hadn’t told Abraham to stop before his knife struck Isaac’s neck. The rabbi’s answer? Angels are never late – humans, maybe, Angels never.
And that, my friends, is as good an illustration as any of why organized, judgmental religions have far outlived their usefulness to humanity. What sane ethical being would stick a knife in a son’s neck, for any reason, let alone because a voice spoke in thin air? And what sane person would put stock in a holy book that calls this a test of faith? Who needs a god that tests faith by insisting on human sacrifice? Didn’t Christians kill ‘pagans’ for thinking just that when they arrived in far-flung lands throughout the 19th century? What responsible human being would cede agency and responsibility for their own actions and ethics to an unknown angel, or an unknown god, whose existence must be taken on faith? If you believe in that god, don’t you suppose he/she/it gave you that head on your shoulders to be USED rather than turned off?
Something that discomfits me about the unitarian church I’ve been attending here in NYC is that the G word comes up rather often in services. I’m tired of whether we do or don’t believe in G – and I think actions matter more than spoken beliefs. It’s totally clear what sane, intelligent and ethical human beings should be doing in this world — taking care of one another and the planet, reducing conflict, bringing more and more deprived and impoverished people from developing nations and deprived parts of our own nations into our communities of opportunity, restoring the earth and our human world to a more sane balance and distribution of opportunity. To those in Kansas or Alabama who want to parrot that old Puritan saw about predestination, and basically say that their god has blessed them by allowing them to be born in this rich land of milk and honey, while those poor kids in [name of developing nation here] are just shit out of luck in this life…well, I say yours is not a religious practice worthy of the name. Because if religion serves any purpose in human life, surely it is to bind humanity together and increase the safety and security of us all, not just of one people or one community, but of our ever-more-connected global village. So learn a bit more about the world, get out of the Wal Mart and off your butt and do something to help the world become a better place – and start by reducing your own consumption, and using the saved money to donate to reliable charities that give food and medicine to needy people – and not bibles, since those don’t cure tuberculosis or hunger. While you’re at it, you might get around to admitting that hormones are hormones, and abstinence-only ain’t never gonna work…but I won’t ask too much.
Above, you’re looking up the length of Wall Street itself, from the East River to Trinity Church where Wall meets Broadway. And below, the World Financial Center, inland from which sits the site that once housed the World Trade Center. I used to take the subway to the WTC/Chambers station, then cross the street to have lunch at the WFC’s Palm Court restaurants for a lovely view on a cold winter’s day.
In Clint Eastwood’s new movie Changeling, the main character says ‘I didn’t start this fight, but I’m going to finish it.’ I’m feeling much that way now. For many years now, I and other liberal and progressive Americans have felt judged and rejected by what the media like to call ‘values voters.’ I’m tired of that – I am what I am, my values tell me to take care of my friends, family, community and world, and yes I’m proud to be far to the left and far more knowledgeable about what goes on in the world than most other Americans. Deal with it. We all have the right and responsibility both to live the lives that feel right to us – and to accept, without complaint, the consequences of those lives. For many Americans, right now, that means finding ways to tighten belts and develop some goals and values in life that involve something more than non-stop consumption, trips to the mall, and heaping more junk into their houses that will end up in the trash. There’s a lot to see and do in the world that doesn’t increase you carbon footprint. Try it – learn a little, explore a little; you might find that you like living a bit smaller in a larger world.
Sculpture & Summer Gardens Around NYC
Pride & Prejudice
The day after our national election on 4th November, I flew to LA. The main purpose, honestly, was to retrieve winter clothes from storage: and the trip came not a moment too soon; these last weeks I’ve worn little other than the sweaters, jackets, mittens, scarves and other annoyingly bulky items I dug out of the hidden corners of my storage space. It’s been quite horrifyingly cold lately in NYC, even more so to one whose nerves and body had become accustomed to gentler equatorial climes these recent years. But I digress.
California, as many even outside the US are now aware, was the scene of perhaps the most disappointing electoral loss for the equality-minded on that night of otherwise glorious and liberating news for us all: by a simple majority on a ballot measure, the California state constitution was amended to eliminate equal access to marriage for lesbian and gay people — thereby relegating us to second-class status, even within California which has a good civil-union law for us 2nd-classers, let alone in other states whose laws are far more restrictive and discrimatory — not to mention federal laws which take no account of our families and relationships, whether for taxes or immigration or any other civil matter . Fired up by our disappointing loss, progressive spirits of all stripes (not just the LGBT community by any means) have begun to organize and try to reach out to those who voted in favor of restricting equal rights. There are many reasons we lost on this ballot measure and thus lost our equal rights — we didn’t reach out enough to religious and other communities who feared that our equal rights might infringe on their free practice of religion (whereas the campaign in favor of restricting our rights played actively on that fear among religious communities, and was very strongly funded by members of both the Catholic and Mormon churches), those of us who might have devoted more attention to education and outreach about the issue were focused on work, our economic and career fortunes, or trying to get a responsible and honorable president elected for the first time in this millennium. Be that as it may, we have some catching up to do.
I’ve always been afraid to reach out as a gay person to my non-gay/lesbianfriends about my need for equal access to rights like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. (I’m not joking — Matthew Shepherd was killed not all that long ago for the crime of wanting to love the wrong person, a fear of which has certainly affected my ability to reach out to those I find attractive and interesting.) Some inner voice has always said my equal rights matter less than those of others, because it’s always been this way and after all, I could fake it if I wanted to. (About as well as one of my uncles and all those others who leave behind broken families and shattered dreams when they finally give up on trying to be what they, quite simply, cannot be.) But these voices rest on misbegotten notions that we queer folks can, or should, change who we are. I don’t necessarily plan to marry any time soon or think it’s right for everyone of whatever love interest, but I don’t see that my right to do so should be different from that of my brother, cousins and best friends who’ve been married for years – in some cases more than once.
If the churches don’t want to sanctify my relationship, that’s fully a matter for them and their adherents to debate and hash out — as is happening, globally and visibly, within the anglican and other churches. But just as any church can deny religious marriage rites to non-adherents of its religion, so too it OF COURSE can decline to sanctify my marriage or my existence. But for a civil society based, finally, on equality for all — for a nation that 90 years ago finally allowed full ballot access to women, that 30 years ago legally overturned bans in many states against interracial marriage, that has struggled for all of its existence to overcome the inherent barriers to full participation in citizenship and society for all the many ethnic, cultural and religious groups who find their homes here and especially to all the Americans of African ancestry — how can such a nation, let alone one of its most progressive and leading-indicator states, still actively relegate me and my community to second-class status in a clear matter of equal access to civil rights and full particpation in civil society?
In the heat of the moment, I penned an angry letter to the head of Park City’s chamber of commerce – a lovely city where I had a great ski vacation once. Encouraged by a friend, I posted the letter on the blog and called on friends to join the boycott. I still feel this way, but I’m less fired up now and perhaps almost embarrassed at the youthful energy and righteousness of that letter. I understand there are those whose religions say I’m abomination. Personally, I find their religions abominable but I’ll fight to the death for their right to practice them, so long as they leave me alone to live my life without causing harm to others. And that’s what it’s about, for me in this. But I do think we need to find ways to communicate constructively with those who aren’t comfortable with us and our demand for equal rights. Just as other minorities over the years have overcome ‘scientific’ or religious explanations of their natural inferiority (heck, it wasn’t until the late 1970s that the mormon church noticed that black skin pigmentation was, in fact, not punishment from god), we too shall ultimately overcome the prejudice that still says we’re somehow different or unequal. But to do so, we’ll need help and we’ll need to reach out. Now’s a good time to start.
…Above and below, shots from one of the largest spontaneous marches the weekend after the election, through Hollywood in LA.
On the same day, a majority of Californians voted for a ballot measure that will require chicken farmers to allocate a minimum amount of space per chicken in their coops, so as to avoid overcrowding. 🙂
Sojourn in Sequoia
Being in California usually makes me feel better and more whole: more of my friends are there, it’s easier to do the things I most love to do (hiking, tennis, outdoor swimming all year long, etc.), and though I’m slowly rebuilding a social network in and around NYC, in general it’s just easier for me to find things to do and people to do them with in SF or LA than here in NYC. To my long-planned visit to the SF Bay Area for the Cabrillo Festival (see below), I added a leg to Los Angeles in order to attend the wedding of my friends Joezen and Steve. What a wonderful experience to be there with good friends for a wedding that, in the state of California, finally has legal weight! And such a generous, connected and concerned wedding it was — all about equality and conserving our planet’s limited resources, all about friendship and family. I’m glad I was able to be there.
Having added that LA leg, I then signed on for a sojourn in Sequoia National Park, the less-visited and somewhat less-known southern neighbor to California’s blockbuster Yosemite National Park. My friends Howard and Gene, along with others whom I enjoyed meeting in the park, had arranged three out of six tent cabins at Bear Paw high sierra camp for a few nights, which dovetailed rather nicely with the wedding: I got myself up to Sequoia with help from Gene, we hiked the eleven miles up to Bear Paw, and spent two nights there before hiking the eleven miles back down. In between, I did an absolutely amazing 16-mile hike with 4500-foot elevation gain going up and then back down, up to Mt. Steward on the Great Western Divide (the crest of the Sierras). The higher alpine-tundra looking shots below and above are from that day’s hike, with high alpine lakes and so forth. The rest are generally shots of the Sierras in Sequoia, including a shot of me in front of one of the big, wide redwoods that give Sequoia its name. Believe it or not, I’ve actually sorted through these shots and excluded many from this entry — still and all, there are a lot of shots, but I hope you’ll agree they’re worth enjoying. 🙂
California has two varieties of redwoods still growing: mountain redwoods, or sequoias, which grow much much larger in girth but generally not quite so tall as the coastal redwoods, which can be seen just north of SF in Muir Woods, or in other spots along CA’s northern coast.
John, David & I took a few short swims in this glacial (almost literally — there are snow packs that are still melting, just next to it) lake.
I nearly stepped on this six or seven-foot rattlesnake. Eek!
…the alpine flowers, as you can see, captured my imagination.
Above, I’m trying to convey the steepness of the rocks over which this water is falling. That’s basically a self-portrait of shadow, with the lower upper body much farther away because it’s a few hundred feet down a vertiginous drop.
A waterfall and pools much lower down in which we took a muchj-warmer swim on our way out of the high country.
Music, Missions & Mountains Around the Bay
If it’s early August, the Cabrillo Music festival is happening in Santa Cruz and other areas in and around Santa Cruz, just south of the SF Bay Area. My friends Howard & Gene go most years, and I join them whenever I’m close enough to make it feasible. The final concert each year takes place at the old Spanish mission at San Juan Bautista, a small town south of San Jose — hence the bell tower, above. I take advantage of the week in between the two main festival weekends to enjoy SF and see my friends Amy, Nancy & Kip — from whose lovely hilltop neighborhood of Bernal Heights these sunset shots of the bay and city, above and below, were taken.
Junipero Serra was the Catholic priest who decided to set up missions a day’s ride from each other all up the coastline of what was then Alta California, part of the Spanish colony of Mexico. These days the missions serve as parish churches in many places, and historical points of interest from San Diego in the south all the way to Sonoma in the north. Considering the history of near-utter extermination of the native inhabitants of California (surely an earthly garden of eden in the pre-European-invasion era, I’d think) in very short order after their exposure to Europeans and their diseases and culture, I personally think Junipero Serra’s legacy is as freighted with death and destruction as that of the rest of the church. But that’s just me. He’s certainly an important historical figure, and the missions certainly add interest and history to California. OK, soapbox time, with apologies to those who’ve heard it before: what is it about American liberals that allows them to feel comfortable driving around in cars with “free Tibet” stickers while living in big houses in the hills of California, on land that’s far more stained with blood and cultural genocide than Tibet? I know, we can’t roll back history here in the US – or can we? is there some creative we could retroactively create a little more justice and space for the first nations that remain and whose land, culture, languages and resources we have shamelessly stolen since our ancestors first landed on these shores? – but could we at least be a bit more humble, a bit more nuanced in our approach to the complex histories of territorial expansion and conflict occurring on the other side of the world, in regions with millennia of history that make our own expunging of native Americans from most of their former homes and zones seem like a highly-efficient blitzkrieg?
No, these are not Anasazi dwellings in the US southwest. They’re formations in a big limestone rock that’s been eroded by rain and water to form these fascinating images. I forget the name of the this particular type of rock formation: help me out, someone.
Above & below, me & Russ at the mission concert; Howard, John and Gene on the hike; Howard, Russ and Gene at the mission.
…you are looking, though you may not know it, at the San Andreas fault, which runs right through the valley next to San Juan Bautista.
Hills & Mountains of LA
In June, and again in August, I spent some time in LA – a city many outsiders love to imagine as little more than a smog-ridden, traffic-overwhelmed sprawl. While it does have plenty of smog, traffic and sprawl, those of us who’ve lived there and learned to love the city know its many hidden jewels in the mountains and along the coastlines of California. With my friends George, Pierre and Ed I had the chance to enjoy two hikes along segments of the Backbone Trail, which follows the Santa Monica mountains to connect the uphill, inland portion of Will Rogers State Park (better known for the beach portion) to Point Mugu up the coast past Malibu. The hilly portions that are flowery and greener are from the June hike, and the drier ones are from the August hike. I’m also including some shots of a visit with my friend Gary to Descanso Gardens in La Canada Flintridge, at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains — the closeup of lavender berries, plus the shots above and below looking at big tall mountains in the background are from that visit. The sunset shot of a hilly arc of palm trees was taken in Gary and Rick’s lovely central LA neighborhood of Silver Lake. See how smoggy and ugly LA is!?
The backbone segments began or ended in Topanga Canyon, probably my favorite part of LA’s canyon country — home also to the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum. Yes, if you visit LA, you should use this entry to help guide you to some of the more interesting and less-touristed sections than, say, Hollywood Boulevard. 🙂Take That, Carmen Miranda! Out & Proud in NYC
My first-ever pride parade came when I was 23, and since I had learned that week that my roommate had been diagnosed with AIDS, I remember crying as I watched the march. Before ARV’s, of course, this meant his prognosis was very poor indeed. In the late 80s and 90s, the parades were still fairly militant because of our anger and grief about all the friends we were losing to AIDS – I still have a picture taken at the parade in 1990 or 91 of my friend Kevin, on whom I’d had a big crush when I first met him. He had finally starting getting thin from AIDS wasting, and this was the last time I saw him; a year later a friend showed me his obituary, which contained a photo I’d taken of him on a trip to Storm King sculpture park. Things have changed during the decade or more that I’ve been away from the pride events: the fact that AIDS has become more of a chronic disease managed with ARVs has really breathed both literal and figurative life into our community. Pride seems now really to be a parade, a strutting of our confidence, variety, sexiness — and, above ALL ELSE (this is the US, after all) our purchasing power, or at least our credit cards’ purchasing power.
But this year, too, I found myself crying. I’m not sure why — maybe for Kevin or the other people we’ve all lost. Or the fact that there are still people out there who think the way we love is wrong. Or maybe in relief, inside, that I was finally among my own people. As this blog attests, I deeply loved my time in Nigeria and the people I met there. But, though my expat colleagues in general knew I date guys (or at least hope to, again, some day!), I took care not to be out to my colleagues there, since I’m pretty sure it would have had a negative impact on how I was viewed. I’m used to doing this when in the field, even though here in the US I’m pretty comfy with who I am. So I think I cried, to some extent, in relief at being able to be all the parts of me again, rather than just the hard worker and boss who has no personal feelings or desires, much. Now that I’ve been here longer, I feel my field self going deeper under ground, and I’m sort of mourning that even as I try to establish some pattern of life/work, social life, and – hey, maybe even a dating life again. And this makes me wonder who I am when I’m not a field worker with MSF – even though I firmly expect I’ll be back in the field again, doing work that challenges and enlivens me, whenever this looooooong house project is over. (Hey, maybe I’ll even find time while here to meet some fascinating smart guy who not only wants to date me, but to join me in field work — hehe, we can all dream, right?) Oh well, it’s all about balance and we’re all seeking it all the time. Enjoy the pics: an unusual set, for this blog, I know. Never fear: there’ll be shots from the mountains and hills of coastal and inland California soon enough.
…and the mandatory ‘Self Portrait with Parade’
Farewell to Nigeria
Well, my friends, here you have it. So Much World, So Little Time has landed back in the US of A. If I can do some early-morning lounging in a comfy bed in my good friends’ George & Pierre’s beachside bungalow in Venice, enjoying streaming KRNN on the headphones and uploading photos to the blog via WiFi, then it seems to suggest I’m no longer in one of the developing-world towns I’ve lately been calling home. You’ll note, in the non-italic text below, that I wrote it about three weeks ago while sitting in Hong Kong en route to China; as you can guess, all this travelling I’ve done in the month (wow! yes – it was EXACTLY one month ago that I left PH, the 9th of May…) has left me quite exhausted and rather mentally whiplashed, coming as it did after a fulfilling and hard-working eight+ months in Port Harcourt. (I hit four continents in less than four weeks and averaged about two hours per day airborne – not counting terminal time and gate-but-not-yet-airborne time — over that period…) I know the sequence of these shots may seem off to some people – after all, I went to China after I left PH. But it simply does not seem right to let these wonderful shots that bring the PH & Nigeria era of this blog to an end, come after the photos of China, which though impressive and important represent only a couple weeks of my life, rather than the investment of time and mental energy I made, and was well rewarded for in experience and enjoyment, in Nigeria. So…herewith, SMW, SLT presents some final shots and thoughts from Nigeria…and Paris….and China. J Don’t expect to see much more on here for quite some time to come. I’ll be helping Mom with this house-reconstruction project, so am unlikely to have many experiences that merit the SMW, SLT treatment. (Though life often surprises me.) Take care…and though I’ve said it before I shall say it again: you all – and you KNOW who you are – are the most wonderful group of friends and family and supporters that anyone doing what I do could ever dream of having, in fact far more wonderful than I or anyone has any right to even dream of.
It feels well-nigh trite to say of Nigeria that it’s the people that make it great, and a wonderful place to spend some time working. Photos of African children looking happy are standard fare in tour books and tourists’ photo albums the world over, so it’s truly with some trepidation that I present these portraits for your enjoyment. But it’s all altogether too true. Relaxing (what the Nigerians would call vacating, cognate of ‘vacation’) at my desk in Los Angeles last summer, I read with some trepidation the stories of violence, crime and near-anarchy in Port Harcourt, Lagos and other parts of Nigeria. While excellent books like This House Has Fallen present very good portraits of Nigeria, they are by nature geared toward the dramatic. And if I’ve learned anything, it’s that most of the time life somehow manages to go on in most places, in usually rather undramatic and mundane ways.
In point of fact, Nigeria rocks and its people rock even more. Sure, it’s messed up and full of corruption, and no Nigerian will deny it. Heck, even the politicians admit it; they’ll just say it’s all the other politicians who’re corrupt and not them! 🙂 I find this in many ways more palatable than the US, where so far as I can see everything about our foreign and domestic policy since the ascension of Shrub George II has been all about how best to enrich the companies in whose shares his friends have invested…while the folks in Kansas and Texas still seem to think he’s trying to keep Americans safe. Yeah, whatever. And this has involved the deaths of hundreds of thousands in Iraq and around the world, while all Nigeria’s troubles have done so far is mess up Nigeria…oh yeah, and raise the price of oil even higher, which is the only time the developed world (and especially Americans) ever seems to notice Nigeria. But don’t misunderstand me to be suggesting that you head off on vacation to Nigeria any time soon – one colleague says, of Senegal (one of the more tourist-friendly countries in West Africa, one is given to understand), that ‘it’ll be a while before tourism here is really enjoyable for the tourists.’ This is even more true of Nigeria: if you get to work there, it’s great. I wouldn’t go there as a tourist any time soon.
Still and all, I’d certainly be delighted to work again in Nigeria, with Nigerians. A colleague – pardon me if I’ve mentioned this before in these pages, but I do love the quote – says he describes his experience in Nigeria as ‘a minimum security prison with a work release program.’ He adds that he loved it – one of the most enjoyable and engaging jobs he’s had, at least with MSF. I fully concur. Yet another said that Port Harcourt presented in many ways the most unattractive surroundings in which he’d worked – but that the work and hospital presented the most enjoyable and engaging work he’d done; another statement with which I quite concur. And that’s always it with MSF – it takes me to these crazy places, far from potential dates or even potential bean & cheese burritos, where I run a bit more daily risk than when I’m walking down the streets of San Francisco or London…but where the things I get to learn, the work I get to do and the people I get to meet just hands-down beat anything else I’m likely to have a chance to do at this point in my life.
When I was sent to China more than three years ago on my first MSF assignment, I remembered with some worry all those things I hadn’t loved about China, Taiwan and the Chinese in the 1980s – noisy, nosy, brash, often olfactorily dense (that’s a politically-correct way of saying things and even people often have very strong odors in China, something to which we Americans tend to react very adversely), etc. But I’d forgotten all the things I love about China and the Chinese – fascinating, culturally rich, often open and very friendly, full of surprises. MSF seems to keep sending me to these superlative countries – most populous in the world, most populous in Africa, etc. And of course I grew up in another superlative — biggest economy, most populous outside Asia, most fucked-up of the major economies, etc. Whether from these roots or from some other aspect of my personality, this seems to work for me: I end up loving these big, loud countries. I dream of vacations and retirement in Iceland , Ireland and New Zealand (places I picture as quiet, peaceful, clean, unpolluted, green…), but I seem to thrive when my work takes me their diametric opposite.
…And, below, a bunch of shots of me and the team out and about around PH and the creeks spreading the word about our trauma clinic and services for victims of violence & sexual violence.
Above & below – this is more or less in the heart of PH, in a section that borders the creeks…obviously. Seen from this perspective, kinda hard to conceive that it’s a 3-million inhabitant city that’s by far the largest city in the Niger Delta, which houses the world’s eighth-largest identified reserves of petroleum, huh?
Better late than never may be a good motto in the case of these photos. It’s a gray and somewhat drizzly Wednesday afternoon in Hong Kong as I write this, and Nigeria and my dense and rich experiences there during more than eight months seem a world or maybe a lifetime away already. Two weeks ago I was still in the swing of handing over to my replacement in Port Harcourt; a week ago I innocently expected to be back in NYC the following night after a few days of helpful debriefing in Paris. Right now I was supposed to be in Oberlin, getting ready for the weekend’s 100th anniversary festivities for Shansi (www.oberlin.edu/shansi for the uninitiated) and enjoying a slight break before taking up the home-reconstruction project for my mother. But – well, the earthquake in China happened and it seemed a good idea for someone with my experience of China and knowledge of the language to be available to help the team that’s ascertaining how and whether MSF can do more than we already have (www.msf.org for those stories) to support populations affected by the earthquake in Sichuan. It strikes me that the contrast between China‘s official response to the earthquake – massive, swift, and generally quite thorough – and that of the junta in Myanmar to the destruction in the Iriwaddy Delta could hardly be more stark. Perhaps this means I’ll get to be home sooner rather than later, after all. But I’ve learned, again, that the future is unpredictable and often surprising. May we all experience surprises more pleasant than unpleasant in the coming months.
Empty market stalls on a non-market day in Oil Mill Market, where we frequently went on outreach to spread the word of our free-of-charge services for victims of violence & sexual violence. Below: a tree full of swallows’ nests in a creekside part of PH, and some of our outreach team posing with the local snack-stand manager in Abonnema, who it turns out happens to be the mother of two of our staff members. I remember my American friends all thinking I was crazy to go to Nigeria, and I remember my own worries; indeed, there is violence and there is danger there, as there is almost anywhere, but when we got into some of the smaller towns, again and again we found patients who’d been to us and welcomes our services, and/or friends and relatives of our own colleagues, if not our colleagues themselves on their days off. (On the day of this outreach, we were helped by one guy who happened to be in the market there in Abonnema, and just naturally grabbed some fliers and started helping out even though it was his day off.)
Creeks & Towns of the Niger Delta
…by the pier, the end of the dirt track that links Krakrama with some of the surrounding villages, though none of them are linked by road to any outside, larger towns. (More about that below…)
Above and below, a small fishing camp in the vast riverine network of the Niger Delta.
Below and above are a number of shots from trips into some of the creek or riverine towns I visited. The shots are mostly of Krakrama, a small town just off the roads and accessible only by boat; Abonnema, the largest town in the Kalabari Kingdom area, including a few shots of me and colleagues with the Amayanabo or King of Akuku-Toru/Abonnema; and Buguma, the traditional seat of the Kalabari Kingdom and its Amayanabo (different from the Amayanabo of Abonnema, though both are Kalabari town; Nigeria is a country rich in traditional rulers, chiefs, and kings – rather un-English, one might say…). In one shot you’ll see a large bridge crossing the river; this bridge links Abonnema, on one side of the river, with the road that leads to Buguma and other towns like Port Harcourt, as seen from Krakrama, which will need one or two more bridges built before it’s reachable by road. Even Abonnema and Buguma were only linked by road to the rest of the state when a new bridge went in about a decade ago.
…our wet pants tell you it was a rainy day on the creeks.
This is a fairly typical example of the type of evangelical protestant church that has sprung up, apparently, throughout West Africa. I found the Christianity of my Nigerian colleagues quite interesting — in the US, all the born-again evangelical types would never dance as fantastically as my Nigerian colleagues do; most certainly not to tunes with such lyrics as “I like that booty, I like that booty…” So our parties were sometimes a bit confounding to me: truly excellent dancing to songs whose lyrics were really quite forward; yet I had to remind myself that a very high percentage of those doing the dancing were very strongly Christian. I also noted that a lot of it is about power and success and winning — winners chapel is a typical name.
…me in the riverine equivalent of the corner bodega: in the plastic container is fried dough, yum!
Most of the boats on the river, in numbers, are still wooden dug-out canoes or pirogues (dunno if they really are pirogues or not, but that’s how I think of them…) that are obviously going about their fishing or taking- yams-to- the- market in the timeless way they’d have done long before British colonizers and missionaries starting showing up. But obviously, in this day and age, there are plenty of motorized transports on the creeks as well, hence the floating gas station right by Buguma Town, below.
These guns would have been used by slave-traders around the time that the guy represented in the statue below was Amayanabo (King) of the Kalabari Kingdom, a vast section of the Niger Delta in what is now southwestern Rivers State.
Above and below, two of PH from the water: a very different aspect of PH than the usual daily view en route house-hospital-house-hospital. An expat colleague, once, even asked how we came to have a patient with a motorboat-propeller injury – that’s how distant the reality of the Niger Delta was from our daily routines sometimes. 🙂
Port Harcourt Miscellany
…These shots just don’t fit very well into any other category I could think of, so here they are: two shots of me and Clara being mobbed by a group of kids at one of the schools we did some outreach to (above, early — the camera had just come out so not too many kids figured out that pix were being taken; below, just a few short seconds after…), a couple of the primary-school kids right next to the hospital who used to love nothing more than chant “Oyibo! Oyibo!” (= foreigner, white person) at us as we drove in to work each day, a goat looking curious, and a random shot of one of the many overstuffed vehicles that crowd the roads of PH. Sorry, this one’s really very moderately overstuffed: I’d wish I could have gotten one of those where the ropes are containing plantains and yams and other stuff that’s sticking a good couple meters out the back of the vehicle…but one takes what one can get. 
Social Life in Port Harcourt
Often, departing expats spend virtually half a day taking photos with members of the staff and saying farewell. My friends who’ve noted my quiet disappearances from parties know that farewells are not my favorite thing, so it won’t surprise anyone that I slipped out of Teme rather quietly on my last day. My replacement was there and well settled in the job; my debriefing and weekend in Paris called; and I had new travels and new responsibilities to move on to. But I couldn’t resist a few final farewell shots with some of the staff I’d worked with most closely over the months, including the whole outreach and sexual-violence team, above.
Al, Michiko, Junko and I greatly enjoyed working with each other for the five months that all four of us were there — I overlapped with Michiko and Junko even longer, but Al just couldn’t hack it so he got out early. (Hehe, just joking: he was in far more demand back home than the rest of us, it seems.) On the last night before his departure, I treated us all at the nice Chinese restaurant in town, and we dressed up in our Nigerian finery: don’t laugh! Outfits like that look NORMAL on guys in Nigeria, and I know enough not to try wearing it as one outfit now that I’m back in the boring ol’ jeans and t-shirt US of A. 😦
…Above and below are a bunch of pictures of my colleagues and friends at farewell party that five of us (who were all leaving in the space of about four weeks) threw for ourselves and our Nigerian friends and colleagues. Dancing! Lots of fun! Beer and good times and good friends!
A Paris Interlude
Leaving Port Harcourt and Nigeria, I headed to Paris for what should have been some debriefing and a chance to catch up with my friends Howard & Gene, who’d kindly rearranged their schedule so we could spend a little time together after not seeing each other for nine months. As always, they rather overhwelmed me with their generosity and kindness — it was such a treat, after eight months of performing-arts deprivation, to see on my very first afternoon back from Nigeria, a truly fantastic dance performance at the beautiful (is it rococco? I think so) opera house (Palais Garnier) with H&G – as their treat, no less. Thanks, guys!
…This is another favorite new museum in Paris, as foreground for one of the more renowned symbols of the city of light: Musee du Quai Branly, a truly exquisite museum both in collection and in architecture and gallery layout. It houses an enormous collection of art and artifacts from traditional cultures in Africa, Asia, Australia and the Americas.
An Earthquake in Sichuan
I am deliberately leading with this photo, to remind us all that life does go on even in the midst of such tragedy as a 7.9 or 8.0 earthquake. Returning to the US with its continued willful obsession with the tragic events of 9/11 and sheer stubborn unwillingness to, as it were, move on…well, it seems there are things our leaders and fellow citizens could learn from the good folks of Sichuan about accepting tragedy and moving on constructively and engagingly with life.So , as it happens, I was in Paris debriefing from my eight+ months in Port Harcourt, when the earthquake in China happened. Having studied Chinese language and history in college; having lived in China for more than two years if you add up my time there with MSF and my student days in Taiwan, and being readily to hand in Paris for the emergency desk to ask if I’d be willing or able to help out with any relief effort we decided to try to launch…well, let’s just say that rather than returning as planned to the US and enjoying Oberlin’s graduation weekend and the celebration of Shansi’s successful fundraising campaign, in which I played an enjoyable and not insignificant role for the past four or five years, I headed off to Asia less than a week after returning to Paris from Africa. Everyone’s read the news reports, I’m sure, and knows that the government’s response has been impressive and thorough. I won’t get on the soapbox for long, but let’s just say the citizens of New Orleans would have fared far better under this regime, which so many in the US delight in criticizing endlessly, than under the band of thieving incompetents we’ve allowed to run our country for the past eight years. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves here.
…Above, you can see the mountains in the hazy background — they’re really quite close, as this town butts more or less up against them, but there was always a lot of haze (or was it pollution?) in the air. Below: I do, always have and always will, love the countryside of China. I just love rice fields and wheat fields and the small low-tech way they’re still run in China, by contrast to the superfarms that have driven American small farmers out of business…while allowing us all to pay nearly nothing in cash for our food and put off the real environmental and social costs of such factory farming for future generations to sort out. (Ooh…sorry, I’m really in a soapbox mood today, aren’t I? Sorry!)
(so much world, so little time....) 