Sylvia's Journal

The team I helped to set on its leadership development course less than 2 months ago in Cote d’Ivoire is doing the second workshop in the series of 4 on its own. I am in frequent contact with the team and marvel at their enthusiasm. Despite being in a place with poor internet connections, they insisted I be part of the workshop.

After trying various ways to connect we finally settled on Skype and I found myself live in the workshop, presumably projected on a screen and with my voice amplified. It is weird to be in a workshop and yet not – they could see me but I was looking at my own video picture – remembering to look at the camera on top of my screen rather than the screen itself. I received the beloved West African clap (someone hollers ‘triplet’ which is followed by three small claps and one thunderous one with hands pushing the clap to the object of the clap) – twice even. I received them with a smile, knowing I was on camera. I am awed, amazed and honored by the way this community has boarded the leadership train.

I left work early to enjoy Lobster Cove on another beautiful summer day, before heading out into the steamy Sahel on Friday. Axel had not checked the lobster traps yet, which he had baited with the remains of the 40 pound striper. His 12 foot dory isn’t quite made for two adults and hauling in lobster pots– he usually does the lobstering on his own – but I decided to be his lobstering mate, more ballast than help. The ocean was choppy with big swells, which made for good exercise for Axel the rower. His months of exercise at the gym are paying off. It felt great to be out on the water and I counted my blessings – what a place to come home to.

Four of the five traps contained only undersize lobsters which we threw back to grow some more, replacing the two day old striper bait with freshly caught and still bloody herring. Wondering what we would have for dinner we hauled in the last trap which contained it: 3 lobsters, two of them a pound and a half. It is the time of the year when lobster start to molt, shedding their old hard shell and growing a new one that is soft for a while. For this they come in closer to shore.

One of the large lobsters still had a very hard shell, which required a hammer to open; the other large one had just molted and thus had a very soft shell. It splashed liquid all over me after it was cooked. We didn’t touch the third one yet; it is neither hard nor soft.

The perfect day was completed with a massage by our friend Abi who worked hard on my sore foot – the healing process of my ankle seems to have stopped for a while, even made a turn for worse. I have picked up my PT exercises again which seems to help a bit. I was told by the orthopede’s assistant that it is not unusual for such regressions, what with the other joints and muscles having to work harder with the main joint being fused. It may be the equivalent of a strike, a protest against the extra work.

We had caught many crabs in Axel’s new trap, with the tailfin of the 40 pound striper as bait. But the crabs are smart, especially the larger ones. One of them opened the hatch and all but the small ones escaped after having filled their bellies with decomposing striper meat, yum.

We returned the trap to the middle of the cove and caught another load. There is no lack of green crabs in our cove, which we already knew as the new generation of mussels have been eaten, leaving us with the same elderly mussels and thus diminishing returns. I suppose that eating the crabs is just another way of enjoying our mussels, a second hand way.

Steve and Tessa cleaned up the estate, we had one more meal, using up the leftovers from the party and then we parted. It was a wonderful celebratory weekend. Steve brought the crab trap up and I turned the inhabitants into crab bisque, an improvised soup that included all the vegetables in the refrigerator that needed to be put out of their suffering. It came out perfect and will feed us for a few days.

In the afternoon we went to the funeral service for Sita’s friend Shelby. It brought together the old high school group of friends, uncomfortable in their funeral attire and still grieving deeply about one more friend who was no longer there. It was a very Catholic service which to some was soothing and to me a source of distraction. The language was about joy and hope and reuniting with Christ; the imagery of sitting at the same table as God. It doesn’t work for me but I can see how these beliefs can be a comfort to others. Knowing Shelby I imagined her looking down and giggling about all the hooplala.

After the service there was the cemetery and then the Franco-American club where food and drink awaited us. Sita and Jim had driven out and parked Faro at his grannie; so we didn’t get to see him. His presence might have lightened up the mood but he was napping, saving the mood for later during the long ride back home.

Shelby was an artist and a very creative mind. Her portfolios were on display and her mom and I shook our heads, acknowledging how death is such a waste of talent.

A hurricane’s passing east of us produced a lot of rain on the 3rd and 4th of July. For the first time in years it wasn’t sweltering hot during the 4th of July parade and for the first time in years we weren’t even there to witness it. Axel had promised Sita and Jim we would babysit while they made music with many other bands and friends in the afternoon of the fourth. And so we drove out to western Massachusetts on the 3rd and passed the 4th as if it was an ordinary day, made extraordinary by being in the presence of our grandson. We are now teaching him where Ouagadougou is – after a little thinking he responds, Burkina (we dropped the Faso part to keep it simple, not wanting to overtax the developing synapses). By the time he is 6 he should have the map of Africa in his head!

When we returned home the preparations for Tessa’s annual beach birthday bash were in full swing. It is now the fifth year of the Silent Disco as the center piece of the celebration. Tessa made a special sweatshirt, reminiscent of Endless Summer with its yellow, pink and orange hues and SDbTS V printed in between the lobster claws (Silent Disco by the Sea, 5th year). Silent disco allows for a dance party with a DJ but without disturbing the neighbors, as the music is only heard through headphones. It’s one of those party innovations that makes so much sense – one can dance to loud music and then have a quite conversation just by removing the headphones.

While Tessa’s party was starting with people tricking in from noon onwards, we dressed up to go to Axel’s 50th high school reunion. He is considered part of the class even though he left before graduation. It was a bittersweet affair, with happy reunions and sad tales of loss of life partners and health. The goodbyes were particularly difficult as everyone knew some people would not be there for the next reunion.

Back at home the pace of the party had picked up. There was much coming and going all through the day, the night and even the next day. This is a party that looks like a bell curve, with the top of the bell curve somewhere between 10 PM and noon the next day. When the weather is as perfect as it was this weekend, the party goes on until it is over. Now, on Monday morning, one more tent remains, with two occupants who really know how to party.

On Sunday morning, one hour before dead low tide, two friends of Tessa went out in a canoe and caught a 5 feet striper. The striper did not give up the fight easily, capsized the boat and broke the rod. The capsized boat also contained an iPhone, a camera and another rod. All were retrieved later except for the iPhone which is now, I suppose, a curiosity for the creatures on the ocean floor.

The story of the fish, and the fish itself, were shared for the rest of the day. Last year a large striper was also caught, so this is now the new tradition, and although the process by which the fish was caught was a little scary, we hope Tessa’s fishing friends will continue the tradition. Fish cooked on the grill at the beach, along with bacon and eggs, made for a nice morning-after breakfast.

I am back at work after a wonderful few days at home with my family. It is a bit of a slow time, with deliverables delivered from the previous assignments and the next one, though only 9 days away, not ready for action yet.

I am taking care of small bits and pieces of work, promises I made and trying to refresh my memory of how to work a database that has been languishing since before Afghanistan because of a false move between computers. No database expert has been able to help me so far so I think I am going to return to my notes from an internet course, more than a decade ago, given by our local community college.

One of the more difficult bits and pieces on my to do list is writing a letter in support of an Afghan colleague who is applying for a visa to the US because he has received threats that make living in Afghanistan increasingly dangerous; something about kidnappings and kidnappers being killed and revenge. I realize how lucky I am to live in a place that has a functioning legal system, recourse for wrongful actions and some basic protections. He has none of that, in spite of the billions of dollars that we have poured into Afghanistan. Such basic stuff that we take for granted.

I look out of the window and count my blessings: green, sun, water, a good job here, and 30 miles to the north more of that.

One of those blessings is Tessa who arrived on July 2nd 29 years ago. I remember the day like yesterday. First there were the croissants that Axel had intended to crisp in oven of the birth center. But the oven was defective and it went into self-cleaning mode which means the oven locks and heats till 500 degrees. It brought the fire trucks out instantly and was a nice distraction to the more and more sever contractions. It made for a memorable birth, as if one needs to be made more memorable.

That little redhead has now grown into a confident and competent 29 year old owner of a graphic design firm with an ever increasing cast of clients, engaged to a wonderful man and with two sweet dogs, our grand-dogs. What more could I wish?

I came home to my favorite place and people of the world on what we call a 10+ day. And these days stayed through the weekend. But I also came home to the most devastating news that yet another very close friend of Sita had died. Thirteen years ago this scenario played out and now these wounds are ripped open again and we are once again grieving and wondering how all this could have happened again. This young woman too was an only child of a single mother and Sita and Jim, with their other friends have circled around her to lighten the load of dealing with the aftermath.

This was, with all the sadness, a bonus for me as I had not expected to see Sita, Jim and Faro this soon. They drove down to be with their friends who live near us, sharing their sadness and memories.

Faro, oblivious to all this, was in seventh heaven; having an opa and oma who have a beach and a whole ocean to play in, is his bonus. Axel and Faro walked the beach – a dream come true for Axel and a nice memory in the making for Faro. He is less interested in the crabs than in the stones – a whole beach full of stones that can be picked up and thrown to make a splash in the water. But then he got sick on Saturday and has kept us all busy since then; worried parents who never had a sick child, interrupted nights and a very unhappy child.

The weather has allowed us to find distraction in gardening. While I was away weeds had invaded the newly planted garden, overshadowing the seedlings of carrots, beets and chard. I spent about four hours on my knees pulling weeds, thinning the seedlings and removing the many volunteers that had picked some choice sunny spots. Axel worked on his boat so he can start putting out the lobster pots again.

To make the family fest complete, Tessa and Steve showed up with their two dogs and Axel put their bed together in the studio so they can now stay overnight. The cheap IKEA fold out we had bought for this purpose had chased them away – too hard and too short for long-legged Steve. I am anxiously awaiting whether the new arrangement, made from our old bed, was satisfactory.

We had a joyful dinner with everyone around the table, the center piece (for me at least) a huge salad of micro greens, results of the thinning process. The four carnivores in our family probably thought the sirloin and angus steaks were the center piece. It is so good to be home, even with all the worries and sadness.
 

We completed our rounds of interviews on Friday and put together the agenda and materials for the stakeholder meeting. The basic provider workshop has entered its practical phase and students were busy fitting clients who were brought in from outside with the appropriate wheelchair. It remains a moving experience to see people in wheelchairs helping other people in wheelchairs get more comfortable with posture-supporting adjustments to the chair. They were busy changing wheel position and height, making support cushions, and adjusting foot rests. After that they helped them practice going up and down ramps, steps, turning and doing wheelies. I am so awed by all this.

We were invited to dinner by the ministry people at a Mongolian restaurant and tried some of the most typical foods, like sukhuur, a kind of hot pocket with meat or vegetables. I was glad I choose vegetarian as Maggie reported plenty of gristle in her pocket. She kept pushing the food around her plate to give the impression of eating. We started with tea (mesh teabags in tiny boxes imported from Arizona believe it or not), ate our pockets and then finished off with a Ghinggis Khan draught.

The food is starchy and meaty with pickles and salads occasionally as side dished. After a week I am starting to crave fresh vegetables. It is understandable that veggies are not part of the diet in this country of nomads, deserts, steppes and harsh winters but this would make it hard for me to thrive here.

We spent a beautiful Saturday morning sitting in a circle around 5 candidates for various high level state jobs (governor, lieutenant governor, treasurer, attorney general). Few people showed up so it was an intimate affair in which we could interact closely with the candidates, ask questions and observe them in action. It was worth giving up a morning that could have been spent planting and gardening. Up close the candidates were all impressive and believable, something flyers in the mail and TV ads don’t accomplish. Axel is an alternate delegate at the Democratic State convention a week from Saturday and so all the candidates are vying for delegate votes. They address him rather than me when they find out I am not a delegate, and we are inundated with dinner time calls from the candidates. You really have to want to do this campaigning, or at least put up with it, if you want to go into (elected) public service.

On Sunday morning my calendar alerted me that my vacation was to start in less than 18 hours. I didn’t need to be reminded. I have been trying to take a week off since March and this was the last chance to use vacation time that I would otherwise lose after June 30 when our fiscal year ends.

I am using my vacation to take care of a lot of domestic chores and wishes and have been puttering around the house. I also have been gardening, reading, knitting, and puzzling to my heart’s content. I am only checking email twice a day, primarily to make sure that my trip on Saturday is still on and preparations are under way in Kinshasa for my arrival and assignment.

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.