Sitting here in limbo...

Some of my posts are about writing.
Some are about personal things.
Some are about work.

Lately I've sort felt as if I am in limbo, between here and there, in all these subjects.

(Some of my posts are about places too, but there is no limbo about that. I'm in Egypt.
Egypt, herself, may be in limbo, but I'm simply an observer.)

* * *

On writing: 

Well my 10 contest adventure is coming to a close. I have now entered 10 contests online... Actually 11: I submitted an extra one because a previous entry seemed to be to a defunct organization. So, on the countdown, I will cut out the defunct submission and now say 10.... Results so far: 1 win, 8 losses and awaiting 1 result.

The limbo: Am I encouraged? Am I discouraged? In the scheme of things, am I a loser or a winner? Hell if I know. 

* * *

On Personal Things:

Limbo at it's finest. Somewhere between being a daughter and being a mother.

Building a cabin with my mom and sister.
Building a baby with my husband.

Both make the earth shake in strange ways that I like.

* * *
On work:

As a workaholic, the past months of not working have been a little hard for me. I admit it. I miss working. I miss toilets. I miss staff. I miss being on the phone for 18 hours straight. I miss logical frameworks. I miss bullshit meetings.

I read a lot about work (about aid work). I read technical documents that I never had the time to read. I read aid blogs. I read criticism of aid work. And there is a lot of criticism out there. Sometimes it tires me. Sometimes it excites me. Sometimes I agree, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I think it's crap-dribble from ignorant people... (and not only when I disagree).

But why's that put me in limbo?
Because I know I am lucky as hell to be able to take this time off to be pregnant and to be a mom for the first time, but I still miss it.

* * *

I have a choice: either be okay with the limbo or do something. I don't much like conclusions, but as long as they are vague enough, maybe they can be useful. So since I've been reading a lot about work, since I don't know where to go with my writing adventure and since my mom is coming to visit me for a while and will probably motivate me...
I should just try to write more about work here.
We will see. I don't want to end up a crap-dribbling idiot.

Footloose

Loose, footloose
Kick off your Sunday shoes
Please, Louise
Pull me offa my knees
Jack, get back
C'mon before we crack 

Sometimes on Facebook or here I link to blogs or information on aid work and discussions about improving aid.  Here on my blog I tend to talk about what I do, on Facebook I try to steer my friends toward information on good giving. Today's post sort of connects the two.

One of the blogs I've shared before, "Good Intentions are Not Enough" from Sandra, has started a blog campaign to counter a silly advertising campaign. This post is in response to her call to arms. I suggest reading the whole thing, and the comments at the bottom are worth a gander as well.

But here's a summary of the counter campaign from her page:

"It’s time again for TOMS Shoes’ annual advertisement (awareness raising activity) called A Day Without Shoes. Every year TOMS gets celebrities and college students to walk around barefoot so that they are more aware of the plight of people without shoes. And of course, what better way to put shoes onto the feet of these shoeless people than to purchase a pair of TOMS Shoes.

As you’ve probably guessed, I’m not a fan of this annual event. So this year I’m proposing a counter-campaign called A Day Without Dignity.

On or around April 5th – the same date as A Day Without Shoes – we’re asking aid workers, the diaspora, and people from areas that receive shoe drops and other forms of charity to speak up in blogs, on twitter, or at school."

* * * 

Dr. Strangeshoe or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Shoe Shopping

I come from modest hippy roots, ripe with barefoot, naked, free-loving childhood memories. After a teenage bout with Guess? jeans, hairspray and make-up (my form of rebellion), I returned to my roots, joined the Peace Corps and wore nothing but home-made clothes and Chacos. When I got a paying job as a professional aid worker, I expanded my wardrobe (peace-drobe, as my uncle says) to include NGO/donor branded t-shirts, flip flops and gum boots.

As I moved up the ranks and out of the bush, I had a "need" to look nice for donor meetings, coordination meetings and "representation". The dirty aid worker look wouldn't hack it. So, for my highest goal of saving the world, I went shopping.

I was a big spender. I bought red Converse low tops from the rasta DJ for ten bucks. I bought wooden wedge heels from the fat mamma on the corner for five-fifty. I bought basic black flats from a nondescript guy for a dollar. Despite haggles, I am sure I paid the "muzungu price" (foreigner price), probably twice of normal.

"Have I sold out?" I asked myself, as I put on black linen slacks and name-brand button up shirt.
"No, it's for the children." I justified to myself, as I tied the laces on the super-stylee red Converse. "You're gonna wow those donors! You're contributing to the local economy, feeding those people's kids," I added to really convince myself. I added a locally-made red beaded necklace to complete the look.

* * * 

 You're playing so cool
Obeying every rule
Dig way down in your heart
You're yearning, burning for some...

So, what's wrong with TOMS barefoot "awareness raising" (advertising) campaign? Isn't it cute? Not really. I'll just point out two things:


It perpetuates the image that poverty stricken people live undignified lives of squalor and need any handout they can get. "Those poor African children don't even have shoes!" Um, Maybe they don't even want shoes.

Generally, if you're really trying to help people - giving money is better than giving stuff. Even if you're dead set on shoes, send money to buy them locally - it's cheaper and more efficient and the person you're trying to help can choose the stylee shoes she likes herself.

The issues and debates are long and complicated (and really interesting!), so I encourage you to look around Sandra's Good Intents site, as well as the other blog posts participating in this campaign.

It is sexy to give in these "trying times" of earthquakes, tsunamis, droughts, floods, epidemics, civil wars, revolutions, ongoing conflicts etc. So do. But also have a good conversation over dinner about it. Disagree with me. With whoever. Just ask questions. And keep your damn shoes on.

Everybody get Footloose.

Pissed off

This may be my most explicit post. I do hold back and usually keep it pretty clean. But not this time. It's not that I am having a bad day, it is just that today I will share my judgment and rancor.

* * *

Looking up, the remnants of tropical storm Gaston makes the clouds churn, black and full of rain over the mountains, while towards the bay is white and puffy. Not unique, simply a beautiful, complex sky.

Looking down, the steep street is dirty and the smell of urine flows uphill. Urine in the street is ubiquitous, not unique to Port au Prince (see posts about Kabul and Kenya), and today is no different than any other, except that I have to blame someone.

I blame the men around the world who whip it out and piss along the concrete walk.

I drove about an hour to a meeting and (just like any other day) along the way I saw at least seven men pissing in the open. Not behind a tree, not tucked away somewhere, not in the woods. Along the street. I could see the streams of their piss sparkle in the sun.

They disgust me.

* * *

The bitch with black spots,

her white coat brown, rough and crusted,

mangy red teets swing, panting

while she squats

over discarded plastic,

rotting fruits and a flat styrofoam box.

The man with oil stained jeans,

has no coat, steps over that same debris,

and shields just his cock, pausing

while he pees

upright, upon a busy street

exposing his sequined stream.

* * *

One could attack me as a hypocrite. And that is fine, perhaps I am. But an honest one.

I grew up peeing in the woods, I pee in the bush on a long car ride, I am an expert and rarely wet my feet. I also have no aversion to excreta (that's my job) or even to the smell of urine (which is in fact sterile). But there is something disturbing about city-scape, concrete laden, public man-pissing. Some of what bothers me deeply, perhaps, is seeing the pee raining down without regard to the throngs of strangers who are forced to watch this display. Forgive my sexist tendency, but no woman anywhere in the world would take a piss on a busy street. (Yes okay, indeed if she is ill or completely wasted.) There is something to be said for respect and dignity.

An Optimistic Pre-quel

Back in 2006, I arrived in Kenya and was on my way to the wild northeastern bush- Mandera. I didn't know much about Kenya or Nairobi and, more importantly, I didn't know much about Mandera... just that it was dry, there was a strict curfew and nothing to do anyway but sit on the roof and gaze over the hills at Ethiopia or Somalia. I'd need some entertainment.

In preparation, I dutifully went to the bookstore downstairs from the movie theater and started picking stuff up.

It was here that I discovered "Kwani?" - the Kenyan literary magazine.

It is full of fantastic writing in English, Kiswahili and Sheng (an evolving slang language of the youth). Okay, let's be honest, I can really only say the English is entertaining, I can't read Kiswahili or Sheng.
It has poetry, stories, cartoons and other sort of creative stuff.

It has a pulse.
It is political.
It is gives an insightful perspective into the thoughts of Kenya and - to me personally - a bit of optimism for this country.

Since the post election violence at the end of 2007 (see Kenya Quickie)- Kwani? has sponsored and lead some of the most moving efforts at showing and questioning what really happened to people, as well as peace building and reconciliation through art. Take a look around thier site.

So there I sat on my way to Mandera with the 2005 edition of Kwani? in hand, in a yellow, 7-seat, twin-prop plane. There were plasic jerrycans of fuel stored in the nose and wings of the plane. The fumes wafted back. The big people were spaced in the plane to balance it out. Someone's daughter was on the lap of the Head of Mission. It flew low but finally did make it. The flight was 5 hours long (or more?) and I didn't read a page. An interesting beginning to my relationship with Kenya...

Since then, there has been at least 3 more Kwani? published, as well as some feature length books, some of which I bought - and then at some point I seemed to have lost or given away somewhere.

(And a historical note, it was on my way out of Mandera when I started this blog.)