My storage space is now fully reorganized, and more belonging are being unloaded to those who need them more than I do, such that it leaves room for my bike and a few other items that hung out in the Shansi House basement at Oberlin and in my brother’s basement for the past two years (thanks, Deb & Carl; thanks, Steve).My various personal affairs and projects are wrapped up, t’s seem mostly crossed and i’s mostly dotted, so I feel I’m now able to spend the final month of my vacation purely and completely on vacation. Not that the past months haven’t been great, but there’s usually been some “work” mixed into the days in addition to lots of transcendant yoga classes, great tennis lessons, much-needed quality time with my great friends like Gary, Steve, Howard, Gene, Mike and so on and so forth.
In early July my friend Steve (one of the Steves) and I went diving with SoCal’s LGBT diving group out on Catalina Island. I’d never done cold water diving with a full wetsuit and hood before; despite the bulk of the gear, it’s well worth it as I hope these pix, all courtesy of Sharon and other members of the group, attest. Neal & Elizabeth: do consider going with me when you’re out here! 🙂
I’ve gotten fabulous ego rushes from all those people who seem to think my current career path makes me sorta special (why don’t cute guys like Matt Damon seem to think so, though?), and even finally had something that felt like a real date the other night. That was fun: holding hands in the movie theater! Since I didn’t get to do that in high school – at least, not with the guys I wanted to – it’s fun to make up for lost time now. The big shadow over my summer has been – and remains – my overly-frequent visits to the dentist’s office to deal with repercussions from a tooth I chipped while eating a guava in Sri Lanka in January. My lessons learned: if a dentist proposes anything major (and from my seven visits so far, I must say that crowns and root canals are major, NOT FUN, and EXPENSIVE), be sure to ask A LOT of questions, consider a second opinion, be completely confident that you know and trust the exact dentist who proposes it, ask questions of a few friends who’ve had similar experiences, and consider getting a second opinion before agreeing to it. I’m trying to get over my regret that I did none of the above until it was way, WAY too late…and I certainly won’t ever be going to this dentist again. Now I only pray that it’s all done and completely taken care of before it starts to affect my departure for Nigeria: please send up good energy for that to happen, one and all.
I’m the standing one, not the waving one, in case you couldn’t tell. 🙂
On the plus side, there’s been a glorious new addition to the spiritual side of my life that started to blossom when I found yoga teachers who pushed me to broaden my practice beyond the assanas. Thanks to Bruce & Jen in Indiana, and Shari here in Pasadena, I’ve been greatly enjoying as many services as I can take in at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Santa Monica. For any of you who’ve wished for a space where you can share your joy in life’s mysteries and magnificence without all the prescriptions, proscriptions and dogmas that seem to go along with most organized religions (not to mention that frequent requirement to turn your brain off and believe what someone else tells you blindly), I’ll say this: check out the UU congregation nearest you, whatever your faith background.
I’ll leave the introduction at that: there’ll be captions on some of the pics, and more about what’s next when the time comes. There are also a few pedantic and preachy texts about issues ethical, political, humanitarian and social down below. Feel free to skip those and just enjoy the pix. You all know how I need to vent every now and then; please don’t hold it against me. As always, thanks for the support, and spare a smile and kind word for someone you don’t know today.
One summer highlight was Mom’s visit, during which she convinced me to take her to Watts Towers, which I’d somehow imagined to be a 1960s-era urban renewal housing project, like coop city. NOT! For more than thirty years, a relatively uneducated Italian immigrant named Simon Rodia single-handedly constructed and decorated everything that you see here – to thank his adoptive country for providing a home and a living, to atone for things he’d done that he wasn’t proud of, to express his faith, and/or for other reasons that we may never know. They certainly stand out in the low-income neighborhood of Watts.
Island America
In history class, I learned that US history in the 19th and 20th centuries included several episodes of isolationist sentiment. One example was the American public’s unwillingness to get involved in what it viewed as a European war right up until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, years after the war started in Europe. What I find curious about the current context in the US is that our government has arrogated to itself the right to abduct citizens of other countries and hold them indefinitely at Gitmo under torturous conditions and without rights (such violations of basic rights are far, far worse than the injuries from King George that led colonists in Boston and elsewhere to revolt against England in 1776…and to start a military campaign that the traditionalist and more powerful British military viewed as ungentlemanly and rather uncivilized – the concept of terrorist didn’t exist yet then – in nature), to invade Iraq and Afghanistan despite, in the former case at least, very strong and legitimate international concerns about the invasion. 
Mom and I also visited the newly-reopened Getty Villa, up on a cliff above the Pacific near
Malibu; this museum now houses the Getty’s classical collections from ancient Greece and Rome, and reminded me after two years spent absorbing the wonders of China and south and east Asia that we westerners have much to be proud of in our history as well. All visitors to LA should have both the Getty Center (the more famous building) and the Getty Villa on their itineraries; both can easily be full-day or nearly full-day excursions, and are well worth all the time you can give them. And their cafes have excellent food at very reasonable prices – so why not make a day of it, with lunch in the middle!?
But where am I going with all this soapbox, you ask…quite rightly. My experience of the US is of an almost surreally ripe, rich and spoiled country utterly isolated from the realities with which so much of the world lives every day. On one hand, I love the ease of life here, the ready availability of all consumer commodities, and so on. But the issues, the concerns, the things that Americans get excited about just seem so alien to me. Standing in line overnight for I-Phones? Hello, I’ve seen farm families in China who work their rice fields 14 hours a day 330+ days a year and are rewarded with rice gruel and smoky fires to light their breakfasts and dinners. Do they merit less access to consumer commodities than we do? Do so many of us truly not recognize that we’re a small part of the world’s 6+ billion inhabitants, yet we’re consuming WAY more than our share of the world’s precious resources…and, whether viewed from an ethical lens or a purely utilitarian realpolitik one, this simply cannot continue? When I got to Cleveland, a participant in an online chat room tried to get people motivated to protest against high prices of gasoline. Hello? How about protesting against government subsidies for military adventures that ensure short-term oil supplies but do nothing to develop longer-term renewable energy sources and grow public transportation?
In late June, as part of my volunteer work with Oberlin Shansi, I had the pleasure and honor of driving down to San Diego county to meet the abbot of Metta Forest Monastery, a Buddhist Monastery in the Thai Forest tradition founded by a very deep Buddhist thinker who grew up in the US and studied in Thailand. These are pictures of the mountains, valleys and orchards surrounding the hilltop where the monastery is located. What a perfect place to retreat from the world and ponder one’s essential self.
After I drafted this section, I posted the news clippings you see below from Sri Lanka, and always spectacularly-loyal reader Ondrej blew my mind by reading it the very same day and posting a wonderfully thoughtful, long comment on it the very same day. (To read his comment, simplyl click on the “comments” link at the bottom of the post, down below.) To summarize his argument: viewed from Australia (already a developed, rich country closely allied to the US), it seems American news gets way more air play than it merits, given how much or little it may affect the lives of people there. If white Australians feel this way, imagine how much less an inhabitant of, say, most parts of Africa, or occupied Iraq, feels that Paris Hilton’s jail time touches their lives – as opposed to their ability to vote safely in a meaningful election, get a meningitis vaccine for their kids, or find food for the family’s dinner. Yet we march blithely onward, acting like the price of our gas, access to developing markets for our corn and soybean products, and above all (for the Bush Greedmeisters and his cabal) our military companies’ ability to sell weapons where they want, when they want with tax subsidies from Joe Taxpayer in Kansas should matter more to those folks than their own dinner tables and paychecks. No, George, it’s not our “freedom” that the world resents…it’s our selfish monopolizing of the world’s resources and blind ignorance of the consequences for everyone else…or even ourselves. So yeah, Ondrej – I agree. Americans are in store for a hard dose of reality somewhere down the line.
I’m so grateful that I get to live in places where luxuries are still luxuries, and the essential elements of everyday life are simple person-to-person contact, over a fire or a candle’s light or the rising sun’s rays. Three months a year here in luxury land are more than rich enough for my blood right now, and I’m already beginning to long for what I’m sure will be a simpler life of conversations around a dinner table with colleagues with whom I work all day long. I know I’ll miss all the things I usually miss when I’m not here – bagels, tennis, Mexican food, canyon hikes or walks in parks with my US friends.
The second weekend back in LA my friends Howard & Gene treated me to a weekend at Ojai, in the mountains between LA and Santa Barbara sort of; it was Ojai Music Festival weekend and in three evenings and two days we heard five glorious concerts of truly wonderful music in this gorgeous town, in addition to going on a nice hike and having a wonderful breakfast by Lake Casitas with a group of good friends.
But there’s greater simplicity to that life, and I appreciate it. Here, it seems I rush around impatiently, just so I can spend more time in front of the computer answering emails and sitting in chat rooms. That’s not really what I need my life to be about, and watching more television is certainly not I want my life to be about. So I feel incredibly blessed: that so many of my pre-MSF friends remain in touch with me and spend time with me when I’m back here, and that with each new assignment I learn about some new part of the world and some new context of humanitarian intervention, meet new colleagues from the developed and developing worlds, and constantly expose myself to newness, variety and challenge that causes me to evaluate and reexamine what really matters to me in my life.
I couldn’t, and I wouldn’t want to, deny my basic American-ness. It’s who I am, it’s where I grew up, and it’s what I know best. But I remain chagrined that so few Americans, citizens of the country that so dominates global decisions and economies, bother to get really outside our country and see, firsthand, more of the world that’s so affected by our daily decisions and periodic electoral votes. Thomas Jefferson felt democracy works best when only educated citizens can vote. If citizens of the world had a choice, I suspect they’d think Americans – whose votes directly affect lives far beyond our borders – should be required to pass some basic tests in world events, history and politics in order to earn and retain the right to vote. Or, at the very least, some basic tests in the history of American foreign policy. Instead, we have a president who revels in his lack of understanding of global issues, and a populace that seems to think this is just fine.
I’ll end with a few miscellaneous images from the summer: inside and outside views of the LA Central Public Library, one of my favorite downtown buildings; and, below, pure pandering to some of my audience: shots of Dmitry Tursunov – one of my favorite tennis players because of his game, his personality, his looks and yes, his body – warming up at the LA tennis tournament I spent the better part of a week spectating in July. One friend describes Tursonov as being “the closest of all the men on tour to the Greek god ideal.” Yeah, there’s that.
Final Visual Aids: Sri Lanka
It’s pretty much a year since I suddenly left China to work in Sri Lanka, and a bit less than a year since the drama of being nearly kicked out of Sri Lanka engulfed my life. Having now spent a full two months in LA, surrounded by the many good acquaintances, tennis hitting partners and others who formed the warp and weft of my LA life prior to joining MSF, I’ve realized how many people aren’t aware of the challenges the Sri Lanka assignment presented me (and my other MSF colleagues in Sri Lanka, plus any other NGO folks trying to do similarly neutral and independent work). In so public and documented a medium as this blog, I can’t relate details of the challenges we and other NGOs (non-governmental organization: this is what the world calls those entities we Americans know as “non-profits”) faced in trying to provide neutral, impartial, and independent humanitarian assistance to those populations most needing the kinds of assistance we’re best at providing (in our case, usually specialized emergency medicine).
Saturday, 30 September 2006, a day that will live long in my memory: I was up earliest in the house and brought in the papers, seeing this article before I even poured my first cup of tea. It seemed to validate rumors we’d been hearing for some weeks about some sort of “NGO black list.” Later that morning, the postman brought a letter from the Dept of Immigration & Emigration giving us a very short time to clear our expatriates out.But having had a few very rewarding conversations about humanitarian space here in LA, most recently with former colleague and friend Bree and one of her current colleagues, who regularly supports MSF and thus keeps her ears more tuned to events and policies affecting the ability of neutral humanitarian actors to do their jobs, I thought perhaps I could safely put up for the edification of my friends and readers a few articles scanned from the English-language newspapers in Sri Lanka last fall. Since these are public record, and the comments I’ll be adding are information available from public sources, I hope I’m not in any way compromising the position of my successors and colleagues still trying to work in Sri Lanka.
Know that these are only a small selection of clippings directly about international NGOs that appeared during what I experienced as the worst months of anti-NGO publicity in the English press, mostly October of last year. Colombo has three English-language dailies; one can be seen as a channel for the GoSL viewpoint, another as the essentially Sinhalese-nationalist counterpart to the Murdoch-era New York Post; and the third is the only one my experiences lead me to believe attempts to research and report stories with some impartiality and neutrality. As far as I could ascertain, none of the plethora of Sinhalese-language papers carried any of these stories last fall: it seemed all to be a domestic political shadow-play put on for the benefit of the English-speaking elite and expatriate residents in Colombo. This changed a few months later, when events caused both Save the Children and Oxfam to come under public criticism for trumped-up reasons, when the Sinhalese papers carried some stories that I personally thought could be quite dangerous for people working at those NGOs. (If I remember correctly, as one example, when the army overran some southeastern LTTE-controlled zones very early this year, they found Save-the-Children distributed fishing boats in a few LTTE camps: these boats had been broadly distributed in areas most affected by the tsunami back in 2005, in areas under both GoSL and LTTE control, and what agency could possibly control the fate of every one of hundreds of boats distributed more than a year earlier? None of the explanatory facts appeared in early media reports about these events: those that I saw all chose to portray these agencies as actively supporting the LTTE. This in an environment in which extra-judicial killings against people perceived to be acting for or against any of the various sides in this conflict are extremely common, thereby making it ever more dangerous for NGOs to work in Sri Lanka, especially for any Sri Lankan citizens to work with the NGOs. Example – in the Jaffna Peninsula which is under government control, a hand grenade was thrown into the compound of the International Committee of the Red Cross last fall, on the same day that the Island article, shown above, appeared.
I suppose – I hope – books will be written about all this one day, because the issues involved are typically complex and many-faceted. NGOs in Sri Lanka and elsewhere make mistakes as do all human organizations, and it’s not my goal to portray them as infallible victims of politics or circumstance. But it is my goal to sensitize those reading this to the fact that the space for truly neutral, independent, and impartial humanitarian actors to operate in the world’s many zones of conflict continues to be challenged, restricted, and attacked by all sides – by both governmental and non-governmental actors in almost any context that I’ve read or heard about. And if we’re going to say, as supposedly civilized societies, that noncombatant civilians in these contexts have rights to basic necessities like food, shelter and medical care…then, well, somehow we have to re-forge some global recognition of these rights and of the responsibilities of humanitarian agencies to meet them when necessary. To the many well-meaning friends and families who continue to worry about my safety and well-being in these potentially-dangerous contexts where I work, I challenge you to recast your imaginations and ask why it’s OK for a kid born in these places to live, and (more likely than me) possibly die unremarked in these places, while I’m supposed to be some kind of hero for just going there and doing a little work there, always knowing I’ll be able to leave when my assignment is over, and spend a summer taking yoga classes and playing tennis in LA. There will always be a spectrum of haves and have-nots, but must the gulf between them, and our developed-world perception of the most have-not zones and their worthiness of attention, be so extreme?
Quatre Semaines a Paris
Well, that’s that. Outta Sri Lanka, outta Europe, back in the US, which I must say feels as unreal to me (after ten days) as any place else I’ve been in the world. Actually, in many ways more unreal since the US floats through the world in a bubble of its own making, blithely ignorant of what so much of the rest of the world experiences and lives. Here we still drive hummers and SUVs and don’t ponder that ignoring all speed limits burns gas far more rapidly…at the same time as we expend more energy screaming about gas prices than lobbying our congresspeople to invest in public transit (duh) or letting AAA know we think they’re evil for not having gotten behind higher public spending on pubtrans decades ago, and lower subsidies for roads, armies in Iraq, and all else that prioritizes individuals behind the wheels of cars, rather than in seats on trains. Duh. Enough soap box for now, and sorry to start that way…it’s just, the US and its issues are sometimes so unreal to me.
The Musee d’Orsay remains one of my very favorite places in Paris, and it’s clearly been added to Mom’s favorites list. Above you see the view from within the clock of this former train station now housing one of the world’s finest collections of art, including the ever-popular impressionists; look closely and you’ll see runners in the Paris marathon on the other side of the Seine: this was a great vantage from which to enjoy the marathon! I take this opportunity to remind you that I listen and respond to my beloved readers. Ever-loyal and supportive Ondrej commented some months ago that he wants to see “Paul here, Paul there…” so here you have the first of many self-portraits I took during this period: me reflected in mirrors while taking in the cultural highlights of the museum. Rather artistic, don’t you think? 🙂 
To answer the most FAQs I’ve had since returning: Yes, I’m done with MSF for the time being. Yes, I’ll be heading back out with MSF, most likely in the fall (Sept) and most likely somewhere in Africa. Most likely for six months or so. Yes, it’s definitely the right thing for me at this point in my life. Yes, I do get a bit lonely every now and then and it’d be nice to find someone (a gay someone, that is, preferably cute but if wishes were fishes…) as interested in the (out there) world as I am. No, I don’t think doing the work I do makes it any less likely I’ll meet Mr. Right, since staying in LA on the off chance I might meet Mr. Right one glorious day, while doing work that was putting my soul slowly to sleep, wasn’t really working either. Yes, Sri Lanka was depressing and challenging, but I’m incredibly glad I did it and proud that I’ve learned everything I learned there. Yes, it was hard and sad to leave China so suddenly, especially just when my Chinese reading and writing were making major headway…and no, I’ve hardly done anything with my Chinese since last August. Yes, I’ll be in LA all summer. I’m incredibly tired, even seven weeks after leaving Sri Lanka, and I need to just settle in some place where I can sleep and have no obligations, no responsibilities, no one needing anything from me.
That summarizes the answers I’ve given almost everyone since landing. Can I sign off now?
Nah, I guess I’ll say a bit about the Europe trip. 🙂 ColomboàDubaiàParis went reasonably well; despite a four-hour delay leaving Colombo in the aftermath of the below-mentioned small-aircraft strike on the air base next to the CMB airport, I just barely made the connection at DXB and landed on time at CDG. Debriefing at MSF Paris: check, a good experience all round. Ten days of class at MSF: check, a chance to talk about humanitarian issues (gosh, my French really must be getting better) with other folks who’ve been facing similar issues, and to put them in broader context and with some historical considerations.
Then Mom came in to celebrate her birthday! And this is what you’ll be looking at: pictures of Paris and what we saw there; Switzerland, Germany and Holland and what I saw there after escorting Mom back to CDG for her return flight to NYC and so on and so forth and so on. There’ll be captions explaining most of what you’re seeing…and if you have questions, drop a comment on the blog and look again a day or two later, and you shall see a response from yours truly.
Long time readers of SMW, SLT will recognize Max, my former head of mission in China who’s now settled with his wonderful family back in Paris, where he works for Action Against Hunger and Delphine works with MSF HQ. I think Mom really enjoyed meeting a lot of my Paris friends…and I’m only sad I didn’t get pix of our outings with Thierry, Judith & Xavier, and Xavier & Delphine. (Yeah, reading the list of my friends, you get an idea of what names were popular in France 30 years ago or so, huh?) 
Before it all gets stale, I want to ponder a few developed world vs. developing world “top ten” type lists. I’m stunned that so much time has zoomed by since leaving Colombo, and I’ve chosen to use my last full afternoon in NYC sitting in a café with reliable WiFi in order to post all these photos and these thoughts so that I can cross this off the to-do list, thus leaving me free for other items on said list while I visit Steve in Pittsburgh and then do my whistle-stop drive back across the country, re-accreting all the detritus that I deposited in basements in Pennsylvania and Ohio 2-1/2 years ago so that it can then be unceremoniously dumped back in that lovely storage space in Marina del Rey. I’ve realized the summer, too, will pass too rapidly and all too soon I’ll be off in Chad, Central African Republic, Niger or Democratic Republic of Congo trying to figure out what it means to be a field coordinator as opposed to an administrator. So better get this done while I still can!
What I realized I love about the developed world (European version):
–great trains that run on time
–bathrooms in the trains that are other than disgusting
–plentiful supplies of toilet paper in said bathrooms
–drinking water straight from the tap!
–ability, even in larger cities, to go for extended runs without asphyxiating oneself
–tennis on television!!!!!!
–supermarkets full of great cheeses, pastas, sauces
–many varieties of olives! (Colombo featured green and black, period; some Beijing foreign-food marts would have kalamata or imported Italian olives of OK quality)
–clean streets usually free of dog souvenirs
–the ability to be anonymous, since my skin color doesn’t make me stand out
What I (already) miss about the developing world:
-whole families coming home from work and school together on one motorcycle
–negotiable pricing in most places
–outdoor fruit and vegetable markets that kick butt
–vibrant community life on the streets, even in the big cities: from Beijing grandpas in their pj’s out walking their birdcages in the morning, to the neighborhood cricket boys in Colombo and everything in between
–bicycle fish vendors in Sri Lanka’s towns and villages
–learning new things every single day
— the sense of being special because my skin color makes me stand out
After two days of debriefing in Paris, I hopped Eurostar for a weekend at Peter’s place (thanks, as always, Peter) in London. Watching the rolling green fields slide past outside my window, I realized I’d also missed the kind of rolling green glaciated landscapes in which I’d grown up. Though Sri Lanka and China are both remarkably beautiful and I was constantly thrilled and excited to live and learn in them, and indeed I came to feel at home in so many ways, somehow they were always alien landscapes that my heart knew weren’t really mine, so to speak. I hope you enjoy these pictures. A few friends have informed me they’re eager to see the updates, and I’ve certainly been eager to get them up here. I have no idea if I plan to post over the summer or not. Consider me on summer vacation, from the blog as from all other obligations, until further notice. Get in touch personally, if you’d like to: I’m sure I’d love to hear from you.
(so much world, so little time....) 
