Sylvia's Journal

Last night we reunited with friends who also travel and also know the USAID world. Sometimes we don’t see each other for months even though we don’t live that far apart. In our conversation the topic of how people in other countries see America came up; we all have stories about that. It reminded me of sitting with a group of Iraqis, at a time that bombings in Baghdad were common and planes spiraled into the airport to avoid hits. We were in the lobby of the Marriott hotel in Amman and I skyped with Axel in Manchester. The Iraqis crowded around me and questioned Axel about the danger of living in America. It was such a contradiction and showed, once again, that was is unknown is dangerous, an old reflex probably form the stone ages.

The soap opera Dallas did much to export the notion that America is all about sex and money, greed and aggression. We could think of many instances where sex and money were the main themes in conversations with foreigners (beyond Europe) when we talked about America.

I was one of those people once who only knew about America from second hand sources. In my young age America and China were the two exotic places I dreamed of visiting. I knew America from the weekly Donald Duck cartoon that my family subscribed to and which was the focus of a bicycle race home between my brother and I. He always won so I had to wait until he finished. It is from this that I learned a few things about America:

• The front door leads straight into the living room (no halls)
• The mailbox sits on a stick by the road
• There are yellow buses that take kids from home to school and back
• Boys wear little caps (I later learned were called beanies)
• It is a place full of inventors, odd balls and rich people (in Dutch they were called respectively Willie Wortel (William Carrot) the mishap-prone inventor, Goofy (pronounced khowfie)the oddball and Dagobert Duck (Uncle Scrooge).

When I finally made my first visit to the US in 1973 I often said, “wow, it is just like in [the] Donald Duck!” So that is how America was exporting its culture then. Movies did the rest, and McDonalds and Dunkin Donuts of course. And now much of the world is homogenizing or already homogenized (I am thinking of Manila) to a culture that America can no longer call its own. I am sure I will find it in Ulaanbator too.

I have been busy this week adding things to and scratching others off my to do list before my next trip which will take me from Boston westwards to Korea and then Mongolia and then further west to Moscow, Paris, then south to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and then back home.

It took us several weeks to get the itinerary right and within budget limits. This was no small feat and the travel agent and I got very chummy. And then just when we got me routed back via Nairobi and Amsterdam because Air France doesn’t fly daily to and from Kinshasa, our security people put a stop on all Nairobi flights. And so I leave a day earlier than planned which hopefully no one minds.

The Mongolia trip is a repeat of the Philippines sequence of events although I am sure the context is quite different. For one, we will need to work with translators and secondly, I can’t even pronounce the currency. The good thing is that it is Asia which holds the promise of some wicked good and inexpensive massages and having my Filipino toe nails redone.

After Mongolia I have to take a deep breath and plunge into long stretches of flying and waiting: 7 hours to Moscow, 5 hours waiting, 4 hours flying, 8 hours waiting, 7 hours flying and then unknown hours in a car before I can crawl into a real bed, hopefully, in Kinshasa. After that I will request a medal.

Memorial Day came and went. The saturday before did the usual honoring of the ancestors – cleaning the graves, planting geraniums and then a toast and some spilling of some strong liquor – Dutch old genever this time instead of Vodka. We want to create some variety in their afterlife. And as usual the elder Axel and his wife Alice (Axel’s grandparents who I only know from stories) would disapprove, teetotalers as they were. Diane whose house adjoins the cemetery joined us, also as usual, for part of the proceedings and regaled us with stories about some of the people resting alongside Axel’s ancestors who have become mine too, by marriage.

Memorial Day itself is all about rituals as well. The dropping of flowers in the ocean, the march to the cemetery, the speeches and recitings, the taps, the roll call, the high school band and the greetings of people whose names I forget every year. Everyone knows Axel and he knows everyone. He is a local kid and it shows.

The minister gave a nice speech full of metaphors that resonated with me, such as kindling embers. I can’t remember the context but the imagery was wonderful.

Six months after my ankle operation I made my last visit to the orthopedic surgeon. It took me two hours in traffic to arrive at his office. I had an Xray done, waited a bit and then saw him for about 5 minutes. He wiggled my ankle, said ‘congratulations’ and then I was done. For this I sat 2 hours in traffic and the doctor billed 350 dollars. This is what is wrong with the American Healthcare system. If I had been responsible for the whole amount rather than my 15 dollar co-pay, I would have forgone this useless visit.

And so I am now dismissed from his care. I am 75 percent there, he said, with the remaining recovery requiring another 6 months; one year in total, was what I was told when I signed up for the ankle fusion. It’s pretty good right now so another 25% seems like a bonus. If you saw me walking you wouldn’t have guessed I had an operation 6 months ago. It was a good decision.

I am back at work, managing the in-between-trips period to take care of wrapping up the last trip and preparing for the next. The travel is not letting up although I am not complaining – these are interesting assignments that let me be creative and make new connections: another trip with wheelchair service providers, this time to Mongolia, and an effort to get our colleagues in the Democratic Republic of Congo to become a learning organization. Some of this is chartered and some of it unchartered territory – a perfect combination. I have never been to either one of these places and I am looking forward to them. Axel does not and I don’t blame him – it’s a choice between sitting at a desk in Medford and exploring the world for me; for him it is me at home or being by himself. It is an uneven arrangement and will stay that way for a while.

Every year around May 15 I put one year of writing to bed and start a new document, called blog_May 2014-2015. This is a bit like December 31, a time of looking back and reflection. I do re-read some of last year’s writing.

Sita, Jim and Faro are over for our belated annual Easter Party. This is the first time in 30 years that we don’t have a hunt with people combing our land for small brown bags with their name on it and Easter candy inside. My travel schedule got in the way and now the Easter candy is gone. So we have to think of something else. We had some ideas but I was am still in recovery from a long and intense trip and low on energy. We will think about it over the next year, some sort of treasure hunt – holding on to the hunt part but not the part of the bad quality candy.

This morning I followed Faro to the beach. It is one of his favorite places when he comes to see us. He is like an ant, circling back and forth, stopping from time to time to pick up a rock. Having only two hands is a dilemma. You can see his little brain work hard when he spots an interesting stone among the thousands available to him. Both his hands are full, so one has to let go of its stone in order to make place for the new one. He could go on for hours like that. This is indeed the perfect young explorer’s beach. His beachcombing (for rocks only, seaweed and sea gulls are briefly observed but of less interest at the moment) is interrupted by his parents’ ritual trip to the Atomic Café in Beverly for their daily latte. Faro has accepted this as part of life – going to get papa’s latte – he comments matter of factly, as if he was the indulgent parent.

He is now wearing his mom’s sneakers, the first real sneakers I bought when she was 2 years old and getting used to living in Brooklyn. I remember buying the tiny blue sneakers at Zayre’s, a chain that no longer exists. I don’t think they cost more than 5 dollars and here they are, still serviceable after 30 years. Now that is quality. He also wears the Abdou Diouf tee-shirt that Sita received in Senegal after the longtime president Senghor made way for his successor Abdou Diouf in 1981. The tee-shirt no longer has its vivid Senegalese colors and the photo is a bit greyed out but the material is in good shape after all these years.

I hardly had time to get back on my feet. Monday saw me work half the day to take care of unexpected and urgent business. It was supposed to be a vacation day as I stand to lose many days by June 30 if I don’t use them. I am trying to do this since April but have not been very successful.

We drove back from Western Massachusetts later Monday after a lovely lunch with Sita and Jim. We drove home in two cars, picking up one that Sita had used. Making the trip back home from Western Massachusetts is no fun on your own, except when you have a good book to listen to. Axel did but I did not. Our ride home was badly timed. Axel took a better route, while I ended up in the worst traffic jam only 20 miles from home which took me one hour and a half to complete. I tried to not let it affect my mood.

On Tuesday we had planned to work in the garden, trimming bushes and planting seeds. But the long list of ‘to dos’ and the relentless stream of emails that demanded instant responses kept me inside. Worse, they produced so much tension, all in my shoulders, that I called up my masseuse, for an immediate and long appointment. She kneaded the knots out of my upper back and got me to breathe freely again.

Back at home we had our first (of many) asparagus meals: eggs, ham, potatoes and asparagus dribbled with butter – a near daily treat for about one month.

I joined Axel in his weekly meditation class in Gloucester. It seemed like a good idea to focus a bit on stilling the mind after all the franticness. It helped and eased the way into a good night sleep before going on another trip that got inserted at the last minute.

I am now in Washington for a couple of days. Here as in Massachusetts there is much pollen in the air and it interfered with my smooth adjustment to East Coast time. Axel is struggling with an inner ear infection and bad allergies and I just plain got sick from whatever. I hope it is the 24 hour kind of malaise and that by the time I get back to Manchester, all will be well.