New Year's Resolution

I'm home.  I'm loving seeing my friends.  I have a final interview next week in DC.  I've lost my tan.  I miss Buja.  I wrote about a dozen other entries that will never make it to the blog.  I have a New Year's resolution that reflects the most important thing I learned last year.  It's especially inspired by a few recent experiences:

1. In Cairo, because Garza speaks Arabic and gives people the benefit of the doubt, I had encounters with Egyptians as opposed to just having encounters in Egypt. One of them fed us dinner in his home (which doubled as a kitten refuge), one of them made Garza cry with libido-spiced tea and and one of them almost attacked us when we got out of the cab.
   
2. I had written Nairobi off as a city full of overpriced services, underwhelming sites, and a night life unsettling in its abundance of cutely dressed white Kenyans. Then Dan took me out to some burger joint and we danced and laughed in a room crowded with relaxed beer drinkers and he wore a t-shirt and the city was redeemed.
   
3. During my lunch break in Bujumbura, Lizzie and I would go to the pool together and swim for an hour or so. I taught her to do the butterfly and she inspired me to back flip. We let ourselves be amused by the swimmers wearing biker shorts under their bathing suits who did some blend of breaststroke and dead man’s float. Her car doors don’t open from the inside and she would hop out from the drivers’ side and open mine for me and I laughed at her.
   
4. Jenny said I should get in touch with her friend Wendy in London and so instead of eating alone in a cheap Indian restaurant before Avenue Q, I crammed myself into a noisy pub with some young British professional and discussed the best way to make a Bloody Mary then ate some of the best (and most expensive) sushi I’ve ever had. 
   
5. Livy brought boxes of Zatarin’s mix from home so we hosted gumbo feasts in the house before leaving. With Italians, South Africans, British, French and Burundians, we dined on homemade Cajun cuisine and desserted on duty-free chocolates.
   
6. Stephen helped me meet up with Reem in Bethlehem on an afternoon when we could actually see the wall. From Manger Square, we drove past the refugee camp on our left and the cab waited for us as we walked past the freshly painted graffiti. Banksy and friends taught us how sometimes difficult issues are best communicated through absurdity.
   
7. Brian got close to Prof. Nasser Isleem in Arabic class so Nasser put him and Stephen in touch with his childhood friend. After we ate dinner there at his home one night, with a vatful of tabouli made especially for me, Nasser called from Durham and we all talked to him in the Ramallah living room. “I never thought…” he said, “that Taylor Steelman would be in my best friend’s home!”
   
8. Ben’s Spanish was good enough to understand the shopkeeper’s Portuguese and he discovered that a Christmas Parade was about to pass us by. Instead of walking over the bridge to the other side of Porto we waited as 4,000 Portuguese people dressed as Santa Claus cascaded down the road behind a trail of confetti snowflakes. Then we got cotton candy popcorn.
   
9. Not only does Pauline have the most adorable apartment tout pres to Bastille that let me pretend to be Parisian for a few nights but she staged an impromptu intern reunion with her, myself and Valerie.  We had dinner of good bread and assorted spreads, including fresh West Bank olive oil and zattar, in the picture-spotted and pagne-covered one room apartment.   And since she didn’t have pierced ears to house the earrings I brought her, we went on a search through the Marais for the best jewelry store to pierce her funky double lobe.
   
10. Kyle showed up late to Bryant Park and in spite of reason, aggressiveness, and being cute, the yellow coat security guy wouldn’t let us in to the ice rink. I waited for 2 hours in all to get into the rink but then we skated until midnight to Christmas music and stories about boys.
    
11. My Aunt Nancy creates beautiful sparkling necklaces and Sarah was there in her Upper West Side apartment to see the demo of the "Kaleidoscope Collection" with me. Nancy decided to start a business when a woman bought a necklace off her neck for hundreds of dollars. Now when I wear the one I won during the Christmas exchange at least Sarah will appreciate how special it is. 
    
12. The best sunrise I ever saw followed a delicious dinner at Tanganyika and a night of dancing at Archipel. It kicked off a day of walking around the coast with Juliette’s family, a matutu ride with me smushed up beside Fifi who told me about the love she lost in Congo, dancing to YMCA with Alia and Alex and Adam and Renaut and half the guards from work, a stolen wallet at Havana, peach shisha with Matt and another sunrise… which might have been even better than the first.
    
13. On the way back from Kenya I met a couple with two big bags like mine. Both of them about 27 or 28, they were on their way to Mount Kilimanjaro. I think they’re from California. On a ticket around the world, they’re traveling together for a year and spending 3 or so weeks at each stop-off. They’re young and in love, tired and happy, climbing mountains and collecting postcards.

The list could go on and on. The thing is that books and cozy evenings in will be there all the time. My grandmother had a perfect corner on her sofa beside the coffee table adorned with a jar always filled with M&M’s where she sat and read on country nights. And a tree might not fall in the forest if no one if there to hear it and disappointing experiences are made better if someone can laugh about them with you and it’s more fun to walk down a cold street if you can cranny one arm around someone else’s elbow and reach the other arm up to point out a famous monument or a funny haircut or a sliver of a fingernail moon to them. “Psst, check that out.” 

In these things I've found the most intense beauty: Not knowing what you want to do and asking lots of questions. Pretending to know how to answer them. Reading maps and disagreeing and hiding a smirk when you discover you were right. Falling asleep and getting poked awake. Body heat and long debates. Splitting the bill and following What-If conceits to the point of exhaustion. Posing for pictures and piercing ears and being unsure if you should really do this but coaxed into doing it anyway. They have one thing in common.

When interviewers ask me what I want out of the job I tell them I have three objectives: to be challenged, to learn something and to be useful (in a benefit-the-world kind of way, not in a get-the-coffee-for-the-boss way). And it's the truth.  In the pursuit of those steadfast goals, here is what I want to do next, more or less but not necessarily in chronological order:

• Work... someplace useful
  
• Build up an arsenal of vegetarian recipes
  
• Climb a few mountains
  
• Learn Arabic
  
• Go back to Africa
  
• Stop speaking English
  
• Travel the world with a big bag
  
• Get into grad school
  
• Turn 30

My New Year’s Resolution is to spend as much of that time as possible with friends.

I'll vote for the candidate with the best cookies

Sorry to not write for so long. It'll be a little longer yet for anything substantial. I'm in the middle of processing a bunch of things (my research, job applications, the meaning of life...) so I haven't given much thought to story-telling here. In short, all is good. In the past few weeks I have been in a 1,200 year old mosque, strolled along the Mediterranean, applied to grad school, smoked Red Bull shisha, drank Tuskers with my mom, danced in a Nairobi burger joint turned night club, made two homemade pumpkin pies, ate Thanksgiving turkey and lost my phone and camera. I'll analyze-verbalize it soon enough.

In the meantime, I have found confirmation for my strongly held belief in the power of cookies. From The New Yorker:

At each caucus, any candidate who does not gain the support of a certain percentage of the attendees—typically, fifteen per cent—is considered nonviable, and supporters may disband and align with other candidates. “Realignment” is a chaotic moment when campaigns descend on each other’s groups and try to poach from them. The arguments used during realignment are notoriously haphazard, ranging from the high-minded (“Join my group because my candidate opposed the war”) to the pedestrian (“Join my group because I loaned you a snow shovel last week”). This, Waliser explained, is why every Obama group needed a corraller—to ward off the poachers. “This person will in a polite and respectful manner physically contain the Obama group and ask them to stay in their place,” she told her precinct captains. She suggested feeding them in case they got restless. “The name of the game on caucus night is stand and stay, so this is where the chocolate-chip cookies are crucial.”

See, it's not just me.

Ten things

1. I’ve moved in with two amazing women. Eva is a 30-ish year old française who works (really hard) for UNPD and salsas like she's trying to hypnotize. Livy is a 25 year old grad student from Southern Mississippi who swears like a sailor and dresses in J. Crew.
2. My roommates and I sharing a car. Driving is soooo nice (compared to being driven everywhere). I’m getting good at averting potholes.
3. I leave Saturday to go to Nairobi to see my mom and then to Cairo to see Garza. Expect full-on giddiness for the next two days.
4. I have found where to go for good hot chocolate. With the rainy season underway, my new favorite retreat will be to sit under the awning at Botanica hotel and watch the rain with a cup of thick drinking chocolate.
   
5. A little crisis occurred at work when I realized that the surveys – the core of my evaluation – that I thought were sent to the police officers a month ago (you know, only because someone told me they were sent) were actually still sitting in sealed envelopes in a filing cabinet at the Police Headquarters. All 250 of them. This week has been full of damage control meaning me calling policemen and saying, yeah that due date of October 22, you just want to ignore that…
6. Work otherwise is getting interesting. I've done about 20 interviews so far and some are duds (completely useless, officers trying to sound impressive but never actually answering the questions) but some are really quite rich. This is one area where I particularly appreciate the Burundian tendency to, shall we say, soliloquize.
   
7. December travel plans are finalized! On December 7^th I hop from here to Addis Ababa to Ramallah to Paris to Portugal to London to New York to home on December 23^rd. It’s about time I fill up that passport. Also I’m broke.
8. I’ve applied to 7 jobs in the past couple weeks and will be spitting out cover letters and resumes until someone responds. I know it takes a while but seeing as I’ll be unemployed and broke come January I could really go for a quick response… Don’t these people know how good I am at things? Just give me a chance (and a paycheck), you’ll see, I’m really good at things.
   
9. Clarification: the dress broke before the Marine Ball. About 30 minutes before, to be precise. After trying it on and having it fit perfectly that afternoon, I put it on at home to feel the zipper pop, followed by a cluster of girls descending to fiddle and fix until after several more pops we gave up and I borrowed clothes. Thank goodness for roomies with cute clothes. And arrrgghhh.
10. As for the Marine Ball, the best part of the evening was probably when the Marines formally paraded a cake in with pomp, circumstance and swords. And yes, they used the sword to cut the cake. It was a treat to see pastries put on such a high pedestal. And I finally met the American Ambassador who was sparkling in a hot little strapless dress and, if I'm not mistaken, fishnets. That's my kind of diplomat.
    

How do you use "shorty" in a sentence?

Last Saturday morning I went to Willy's English class. Willy is a 24 year old guy from Cibitoke suburb of Bujumbura who decided he wanted to learn English. He has an amazing mastery of the language that reflects someone who learned a lot but has obviously taught himself. For instance, he'll make small grammatical errors but will toss out vocabulary like “extemporaneously” and “whet my appetite.” He also decided he could teach others, so on Saturday mornings, about 50 Burundians from ages 15-30ish cram into a small school room and create an English class for themselves.

The entire lesson is made by the students: they bring in the vocabulary, the prepare the exposes, they find stories to read aloud to the class. Willy and a couple of his friends act as facilitators, but otherwise it’s completely collaborative. Which is impressive, first of all, but also incredibly amusing. For example, take some of the vocabulary of the day:

• Sex maniac: a man who wants to have sex all the time
• Gold-digger: a woman who uses the fact that she is attractive to get money
• Demoniac: stupid person (which dictionary.com defines as “of or relating to a demon” but I swear I’ve never heard)

If anyone has a question he will thoroughly discuss the word as if he was debating social policy – from the heartfelt explanation you would think pinpointing the difference between “hear” and “listen to” could save someone’s life. The facilitator for the day responded to good comments and the exposes by calling them “breathtaking” over and over again. Burundians take the things they say very seriously and these kids are passionate about learning, which is admirable but means there is a lot of exaggeration.

And then there was a whole religious part to it which I didn’t expect but you know, why not? Three guys got up to sing a worship song, one with a guitar, and if a little out-of-place for an English class, it was wicked cool. They had great voices and in the cloudy morning classroom set a beautiful scene. Best part was the second song they sang: they went to front of the class, one started beatboxing, the other shouts “You know we’re back! This is the remix!” and they rap (pretty well!) for a bit before busting into “Lord I lift your name on high.” I get the feeling they practice this for ten hours a week but it totally pays off. My face hurt from smiling at the end.

Computer lessons

Everyone has guards. If you’re a muzungu or if you’re wealthy, you have guards at your house, pretty much all office buildings have guards and since my office is in a compound with UNESCO and a section of USAID, we have about 10 of them at any time. Adrian made friends with some of the guards last year when (being Adrian) he worked late. Arthemon and Elie in particular were tight with Adrian, so when they met me and knew of my association with him, we were instant friends.

One of the things that Adrian had helped them with was a computer lessons. So at some point I offered to pick up where he left off. These are some of the highlights from last week’s lesson with Arthemon and Elie.

In trying to master the double left click on the mouse, Elie was clicking and dragging icons all over the desktop. “No, here, you have to hold it still….” I clarified. So he would gently move the cursor up to the icon, let go of the mouse, and click straight down on the mouse button with his pointer finger. They were both fascinated by the squiggly auto-spell check lines, realizing that when you make a mistake Word can just fix it for you! Arthemon read Adrian’s email out loud and the two of them responded verbally to his comments.

Adrian's email: You'll have to forgive for not writing for so long...
Arthemon: Oh, it has been too long, you must be busy.
Adrian's email: Did Elie get married yet?
Elie (in stitches): Noooooo!!! Not yet! Hahahah, oh Adrian, you'll come to my wedding when it happens!
Adrian's email: Are your classes hard?
Arthemon: Yes, they are my friend, but we make it through.
Adrian's email: I think of you guys often, I hope you're doing well.
Arthemon: You are so kind. God bless you.
Elie: I can't believe he thought I got married! What a great guy, Adrian...

I probably jinxed it.

The dress broke.

Searching for a ballgown

Fifi told me she knew a good couturier who could help make my dress. We planned to meet on Monday to go look at fabric stores together.* What I didn’t realize beforehand but was most pleased to discover was that the dressmaker was coming to be my personal shopping assistant. All I needed was a little dog in a handbag to round out the scene.

We started by going to her studio, (Atelier de Hippie, which Neela and I found amusing), to look at some examples of her work. Adèle tried to get me to try on a tiny gold dress she had made for a friend of hers. I stepped behind the curtain, pulled it up to my hips and called out that it ah, wasn’t going to work. Incredulous, she stepped back to assist – here, try it from above, wait, just hold still – and gave up when, with one of my arms in and one out, the fabric refused to wiggle over my ribs and we started laughing. Then Fifi tried and it fit like a glove and she stepped out looking stunning. Please though, I’m American. The comparison just isn’t fair.

Adèle took us from shop to shop, greeting her friends behind the counter and introducing me to all the luscious fabrics that could be wrapped all around my body. In one shop were a bunch of colorful African and Indian batik prints, patterns and colors that made me feel like I was in a candy store and instantly imbued me with visual ADD. In another was a little girl singing songs to herself and jumping around with a doll. Her mother, the saleswoman, told her to hush but I hoped she wouldn’t because her voice was almost as cute as her bashful two-foot high smile. In the last one we visited we were helped by an Arab woman who spoke a very nice English and French and laid out soft and shimmery fabrics that glided just so over our fingers.

As I gushed over fabric at the final store and told Fifi “There are so many pretty things!” she dryly responded, “Then which one do you want?” I got the message - they’d had enough. Some might call my indecision exhausting, but I like to think of it as careful deliberation which (usually) leads to a wise and well-informed course of action. But you say tomato, and so after two hours and with a fistful of samples to consider overnight, I let them go. I spent the rest of the afternoon browsing Anthropologie and Nordstrom.com and wrote Hannah to find inspiration.

And sitting there mid-search, it donged on me that here I was, liberated. Having a dress made means I can indulge in complete creative license. With the maker right there at my disposal, anything I could imagine is possible, along with a lot of things I can’t. Torn asunder from the rules of fashion and cultural conformities that pinch us in the shape and size of the moment! No going into the store and having to choose among racks of redundant designs that everyone and their mother wears for me! Right here in my grasp: ultimate freedom, the chance to make and own something totally unique. I turn my back on the bland, I refuse to settle for what’s in season, I outright defy the style du jour. What did I do next?

I went with the simplest design possible. Full circle, came I. By scrutinizing bushels of pictures and pawing through armfuls of fancy fabrics, I either got scared and retreated back to my first option or felt like the first one was just more and more validated. I mean, of course, it was definitely the latter.

I went to the market the next day with Livy to pick out a classic yet classy African fabric. We swept past the unidentifiable and nauseating smells at the entrance, past the distended-belly babies and the legless men with collection cups, past the stands with a 12-foot high assortment of foreign condiments and straight into the canopies of color. There, unavoidably, we disappeared into the narrow aisle, feasting our eyes up and down either wall of us to scan all the possibilities against a soundtrack of “Hey sista, this one very pretty!”

I felt like I was in a paper store, surrounded by pretty things and not really having a use for them but wanting to scoop them all up, take them home, and be happy in the fact of having so much prettiness in my possession. I ended up with a black fabric with large bold abstract flowers (or petals, I’m not really sure) in red and yellow. I talked the seller down from $20 to $15 and gave him $16. I thought Adèle would kill me when I showed up and said I had chosen something entirely apart from the dozens of fabrics we saw yesterday (and I didn’t dare mention that I found it in a quarter of the time). She smiled, understood, and went to taking my new measurements. I realize I really enjoy having measurements taken.

I pick it up on Halloween to wear to the Marine Ball on Saturday. If anybody from home wants something made and can send me measurements and a request, I’d be delighted to go shopping for you!

*Sidenote: Monday was a holiday to commemorate a massacre of schoolchildren that took place in 1993. The assassination of then President Ndadaye occurred the day before as a signal for the killing to start. These events precluded the quick descent into genocide and a decade-long civil war.