Time to fill it back up.
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I started this "10 writing contest adventure" back in April last year. I have entered 6 so far, again - no wins and waiting on 1 result. I will try to at least enter the last 4 before this April. Look for that coming up.
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Two perspectives of malaria.
I have had malaria twice while working: first time in DR Congo, second time in Kenya. The routine when you are in the bush is to find someone to look at a blood slide, get some meds and rest (no big deal). Malaria fevers come in cycles. Mornings are clear, afternoons wreck you- so in Congo I would go to work in the morning, then go home in the afternoon and cry about my crazy sick malaria induced nightmares and headaches. Total cost: 10$ maximum.
The third time I had malaria, I was on vacation: I was 4 days back to "the homeland" from Haiti this past November. In the great United States, malaria was deemed "a life threatening condition". Emergency room, ICU, specialist infectious disease doctors, CDC reports, more doctors and visits from students. Monitors of all sorts of vital signs, IVs, worries about my low blood pressure, but never enough pain meds to eliminate the incredible headaches. Total cost: 36,000$ minimum.
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Next leg of the vacation was Syria for Christmas time (and a weekend in Beirut, Lebanon). I was somehow surprised, and somehow not surprised, to find that Christmas in the Middle East is just as commercialized and tacky as it is in the states. Almost identical. Neighborhoods where neighbors compete with extreme lights displays. Sales. Carols in the malls.
Mario and his family were superb hosts to this intrepid in-law-come-tourist. We visited many stark, dusty, open, sunny, quiet, old sites... St. Simion church where a man stood on the pillar for 40 years and today rests an obilisk, the Citadel in Aleppo, Ain Dara site, Rasafa and Jabbar castle on a pristine lake. I guess because of the season, there was no one around.It was as if all these ancient walls, rooms, stables, churches, mosques existed only for me to crawl around in. Mario was a good sport and waited patiently while his wife turned into a kid crawling down, down into water cisterns and up, up onto falling down walls where I thought the slight wind might blow me over.
Driving to and from such sites gave another view of Syria. Not the upper middle class apartments and Christmas lights. Not the ancient antiquities and tourists sites. Mud houses, nomadic tents of farm workers, bright clothes on the lines, black dirty workshops tucked into a tiny unfinished room, bus stops with tiny shade. Men working, drinking tea. Stooped women in heavy clothes. Boys collecting sticks. Girls collecting water on their backs, with donkeys. Agriculture. Rain fed. Irrigation- unlined canals, lined canals built parabolas leveled just so, weirs, gates, control valves, drip systems, boreholes, rotating sprays like Nebraska.
Syria is under drought.
Like Kenya. Like Afghanistan.While others are under water.
To the right is me in a huge water cistern. Long ago it was filled with rain water, collected runoff in a desert in northern Syria. While differing in construction and style from those in northern Kenya, it is basically the same thing as what is called a birkad in Somali.
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Then the great return to Kenya for 2 weeks. A week at the beach. Few days in the mountains. Our old haunts. Saw lots of wonderful friends.
Driving in from the airport to town, some things seemed to have changed. Some roads were repaired. A new overpass and bridge was under construction. Many new apartment buildings going up too quickly to be built to code. The slums are so big, you don't notice they grow.
Reading the paper, nothing seemed to have changed. The International Criminal Court has publicly named 6 politicians for inciting the last bout of ethnic violence associated with the 2007 elections (see post from 2008). The unity government promptly dedicated millions to defending them and is on a major campaign to keep the 6 in Kenya for trial. Meanwhile, the northern areas of the country is being thrashed by more (repeated without recovery) drought, animals and livelihoods dying, people are threatened by lack of food and water, while the farmers in the bread basket area of the country have ruined crops.It isn't as simple as one paragraph. Or even two.
It never is.
Unemployed men still seek out small shadows under trees, bushes, skinny lamp posts on every median, every corner, every small park in which to curl and hide from sun and sons and wives during hot afternoons spent waiting.
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Next up, first impressions of my new home, Cairo.
