Avocadoes as big as your head.

As I begin this post I wish that I had been able to write one everyday since I have been here in Malawi. There is just to much to record, too much to reflect on, too much to share... All that I have bouncing around in my head are little snippets about the produce, the transportation, the people, the music, the churches, etc. At the moment, all of these things just seem like random pieces of a puzzle, where many are still missing. Oh, and time at the computer is short and expensive. So... given all that... what to say?

Since I have been here, I guess nothing has been like I planned. It has all been more confusing, more chaotic, more stressful, more beautiful, and more wonderful than I would ever have anticipated. Because of a major delay on the project that I was supposed to be working on at first, I have had about two (and maybe more) weeks to do whatever I want here in Malawi. A lot of opportunity yes... but when that means no one picking you up at the airport and no one telling you where to go or where to stay, then the reality of God's hand is just about the only thing you can feel between you and falling flat. And then you realize... you can't fall flat. You only have the choice to fear it or not.

So, dozens of unplanned opportunities have come along. Malawians are such friendly people and they are eager to make you comfortable and to teach you about their country. The poverty is, well, unfathomable. Initially, it was hard to seperate it from pictures I have seen--I mean, we all know from tv and magazines what poverty looks like. But when it is in front of you, in person... half of you feels too much and the other half, not enough.

I have been to an orphanage, a hospital, two churches, markets, a secondary school, on a mountain, in the middle of tea plantations, and in dozens of public transportation vehicles packed to the gills. It seems sometimes that everything, absolutely everything, is different here. And the hardest part has been how conspicuous I feel all of the time. It may just be forcing the natural self-consciousness right out of me--I already feel myself starting to care very little about how I look and if I'm liked or not.

I miss home more than I thought I would, and it still feels like a long time before I will get to see it again. But already I have been here more than a week and a half, and time is starting to pick up from the slow pace of the first few crazy days.

Africa, africa. What a big, overwhelming, heartbreaking, mysterious place.

Last post till Africa

Yes, I leave in a few hours from Amsterdam, arriving in Lilongwe Malawi tomorrow afternooon.

Yes, I am excited.

The trip from Amsterdam to Nairobi, Kenya is 8 1/2 hours. Then a couple short stops (Lusaka, Zambia then Lilongwe) and I'm there.

more soon, I hope!

Nieuw Bericht

That's dutch for "new post." Thankfully, in Amsterdam the blogger website looks the same, otherwise since it's all in dutch there would be no "nieuw bericht."

Having promised to blog more regularly now that my travels have begun, I begin with a bit about Amsterdam, on a bike, on a national holiday--ascension day.


This is my borrowed bike in front of some lovely graffiti...


...and this is me (bike in background).


Ascension day, btw, was yesterday; more explorations this afternoon:



A cat in a window--can you see him??




Gerber Daisies:


Possibly my favorite little street in the world, called "Kerkstraat" (church st):


The market:



Everyone's favorite neighborhood theatre costume store:



And last but not least, the Rijksmuseum:


More soon!

The Last Final and Other Things

Tomorrow I have my last final of my first year of grad school. Taking important exams is always such a wierd thing for me--at times, I've prepared very little and then gone in and rocked the thing and at other times, I've studied my brains out and gotten rocked instead. The thing is, you never know how prepared you are until you are sitting there, mono y mono (sp??), with mankind's most ingenious invention of mind-control and torture: the final exam.
So, at this point, about half of me feels like I have a full grasp on the material and the other half wants me to read over the textbook again. In grad school, though, they take it easy on us: I can bring the textbook to the exam. What I wouldn't have given for such a privilege in my undergrad years. I guess now, final exams are supposed to better imitate real life. ??? They've got some work to do.

...Cause all of this, it ain't nothing like real life, even if you define "real life" as just about anything you want that isn't a ph.d. program in sociology (yes, I know there were a plethora of negatives in that sentence--keeps you sharp). It's competition, assesment, achievement (and its frightening antithesis, failure), and annual reviews. Most of the time, I love this work because I can make my own hours, plan my own schedule, and I don't have to punch a timecard or have a manager breathing down my neck. When I filled out my "annual self-assesment", though, I realized that "they" still breathe down my neck--they just stand a bit further back than before.

Sociologists write a lot of critiques of capitalist culture, and merit-based systems, and increasing inequality between the haves and have nots. So it's ironic when they construct and maintain their own little market-system of knowledge entrepreneurship and that good ol' American work ethic. There is competition on so many levels: how many articles have you published, how many M.A.'s do you have, how many top researchers have you chatted up at national conferences, how many hours do you work in a week. Relationships become strained, women fight to get tenure and raise kids at the same time, and those with personalities other than type A struggle hard through graduate school. It just doesn't seem to fit the things that we're trying to say about what's wrong with society. It's not that we don't see it--we're trained to be observant. We know we're doing it. We just don't know how to stop.

I'm getting better at letting all of this roll off my back, though. And that is a huge accomplishment--just about all I could ask for, if I'm gonna stick this out. There's more to life than publishing in American Sociological Review. There's blogging, for instance.

An Empty Room

Today is moving day, and I'm taking a break with some food and some blog. Whenever I move (which is many, many times in the past few years) I always leave it all for one day and then, on that day, I enter "moving mode". Basically, what that means is I move (in both senses of the word) nonstop from morning to evening, getting into a zone where all else but the task at hand disappears from my head. It is hard, when I am in moving mode, to even get myself to stop and eat. But finally, at about 3 pm, I hit a stopping point and have let myself sit down for a minute.

I was going to post a picture of my empty apartment, but now I realize that I just don't have the heart (and also, I'm not sure where I packed my camera). This was not, by any means, the best place I've ever lived--real small, hard to keep clean, not too much light, not too much of a kitchen, and very good at letting in the texas-sized insects. Yet a lot has happened in this little room; and probably the most notable thing was how I made the most of the place despite change, stress, heartbreak, and loneliness. I remember the mixed feelings of coming back to this place from a month away for Christmas and calling it home; staying in this one room studio for two days straight during the January ice storm and gathering my thoughts and strength around me to prepare for my second semester. I remember when I first moved in, hours after I had arrived in Austin, realized my plan A was not going to work out, found the post online, and signed a lease. I remember how foreign and big and lonely this town felt. I remember "moving mode"--focusing all my energy on cleaning this place and making it mine despite all of the uncertainty of the future. And I remember a few sleepless nights and midnight walks around the neighborhood in the meantime.

I may have lived in happier places, brighter places, and bigger places; but these four walls will hold remnants of some of the most significant moments of my life. I made and was part of some beauty here, despite all of the obstacles. And one evening, in particular, on my cheap black futon with a guitar in my hands, I wrote this song:

These old shoes
Turned up at the toes
Have lived in four states
And traipsed through countless snows
And something I can't measure
Has shown them where to go
To get to here

This one-room
Apartment where I live
It's walls already saturated
It's air already thick
With sleepless nights and wonder
And all the grace you give
To get to here

This hard head
This stubborn rigid mind
Has walked through burning coals
And made it out alive
And after such a journey
It still ain't satisfied
To get to here

This blue book
It's binding now in shreds
It's older than these shoes
This room, This stubborn head
And it's waiting to remember
Every little last thing you said
To get me here

This small song
Is asking once again
Why always so hard
To be just where I am
Why such a huge treasure
That won't fit in my hands

These few words
I give up every night
That sleep won't come
And my body tells me, fight:
It's nothing that I've done
That has saved my wandering life
And got me here