Jerusalem

Warning: this is going to be a long post.

I arrived in Tel Aviv at 5:30 this morning and had an uneventful shuttle transfer from the airport to the Jaffa Gate of the Old City in Jerusalem shortly after sunrise. The scenery around here is lovely - rolling hills of vinyards dotted with green spaces and natural steppes of limestone rock. Every structure here is made of pale limestone which gives the city a calming quality. Especially at 7 am when you're one of the only souls wandering the narrow streets. I'm staying in a really sweet guesthouse that's a Lutheran Hospice. The best places to stay around here are apparently the ecclesiastical hospices for pilgrims who happily rent rooms to anyone regardless of religious affiliation. I picked St Marks because it was highly rated online, and the photos on their website made me swoon. Courtyard garden, roof deck with a panorama of the city, and recently remodeled rooms. All at a price that won't entirely break the budget.

Except that I couldn't check in until noon, so what to do besides hit the city and see what this place is all about. I brought no guidebook (didn't even look at one before I came), so I took a quick glance of the map in the hotel to get my bearings and set off. Old Jerusalem is divided into four quarters - the Jewish, Armenian, Christian, and Muslim. The guesthouse is more or less in the center of it all on the border of the Armenian and Christian Quarters. So I headed up through the Christian quarter, really only because I ended up following a group of kids make their way off to school, and realized I'd made one loop around and back to where I started. Back to George.

I'll start by saying that everyone here is extraordinarily friendly. I'm uber cautious, fully trust no one, and always have an escape route in mind. Also after 5 years in Boston and all my travels, it's hard to imagine anyone would want to just sit and chat without an ulterior motive. George was standing in for a friend as a tea and coffee vendor and had hit me up earlier in the morning, so I figured I'd stop off for a cup the second time around. He invited me to sit and visit, I figured I had nothing better to do with the morning, and thus started a charming conversation (through a smokers hack) with a sweet old guy who just likes people. He offered to meet me a few hours later for a personal guided tour, but while I like George and all, I couldn't see spending the rest of my day with him. So I bid a kind farewell and was off to explore further.

Not even knowing where I was going, another nice guy on the street quickly pointed me in the direction of the Western (Wailing) Wall. It was still quite wee in the morning, but the most devout of devout were out for the morning prayers. I went back by the wall in the evening, and it really is amazing to see all of the clearly different sects appear throughout the day from the various orthodoxies with tall hats and long locks of hair at the ears, or full beards with white stockings, shiny black robes, and big round fur hats that look like something from a car wash to rather western-looking young men wearing simple yarmulkes. People gather 24 hours a day to pray at and touch the wall - the men on the left and women in a separate and far smaller section on the right. A wide stripe along the lower margin of the wall is left from the hand prints of centuries of followers.

The outlook to the wall itself is an amazing vantage point for the religious aspects of the city, as from the wall - which is the most religious site in Judaism - one can see the Dome of the Rock at the Temple Mount (thought to be the ascension point of Mohammed as well as the site where Abraham was intended to sacrifice Isaac), as well as the Mount of Olives in the background. So from the wall, I wandered around to the outside of the Old City wall and up to where I could see enormous tour buses and throngs of visitors in the distance. The first site was the Garden of Gethesmane, where Jesus frequented with his disciples and went to pray the night before the crucifixion. The garden itself is still planted with centuries old olive trees, though I'm not sure if they're (probably not) the original olive trees. Though they look really old. From there I swam upstream to the Russian Orthodox Church of Mary Magdalene and the Dominus Flevit (The Lord Wept) Church. That is apparently where Jesus wept for the future destruction of the temple of Jerusalem. Onward and upward (all of the tour groups smartly start at the top and work their way down), I met Abraham, the streetside hawker, who gleefully showed me a panoramic poster and gave me a quick overview of the city skyline - for free because I'm from the same country as his new friend (and trainee) from New Jersey - and sent me on my way up the hill further to the Church of the Ascension. Unfortunately that was closed, but a nice young man whose name I didn't catch eagerly pointed me back down the hill to the Grotto of Gethesmane (where Jesus was arrested) and the Tomb of the Virgin Mary.

So I feel like I've had a whirlwind tour of religious history and saw so much so far, though I missed the Church at the site where the Lord's Prayer was taught to the disciples, and I missed the site of the Last Supper. Ah well, there's so much to see, and I'm doing pretty well without a guidebook. It's easy enough to pop in and out of enormous group tours and listen to their guide for awhile before wandering on to the next site. And the people watching is unbelievable - big groups of Fransiscan monks and Russian Orthodox Catholics in full religious regalia toting digital cameras and posing for photos in front of various churches and relics.

Evening here is hauntingly beautiful, and after a quick afternoon siesta, I headed back out for a dusktime stroll through the city again. It is really fascinating to hear each of the religions coexisting, if not completely peacefully then at least with some degree of respect. From near the Western Wall, you can hear the rhythmic chants of the Jewish followers, the Muslim call to prayer echoing hauntingly through the valley, and the various church bells clanging from all directions. But not all at once as if the mosques and churches are each patiently waiting their turn and one picks up moments after the last left off. I'm sure it's all random chance of clocks not perfectly set, but I'd like to think there's more to it than that.

Sardine can death traps

Public transportation in Kenya, particularly Nairobi, is a thing to behold with a small amount of awe and fear. Busses are limited, and in their place is a collection of thousands if not tens and hundreds of thousands of mini-vans called “matatus”. They’re unmistakable. From a far distance you can hear them rolling into stops, brakes squealing, side door sliding open with the tout shouting the name of the destination in rapid fire, and the horn tooting a quick beepbeepbeepbeep. And they’re thrilling. I waiting until I could get one of the students to take me into the city of Nairobi, since I didn’t feel bold enough to attempt the matatu by myself. They’re supposed to seat 14 but easily cram 25 passengers on board. They blare hiphop or reggae music. Some have a screen showing scantily clad women in the accompanying music video. And some are eerily lit from within by neon lights.

The first matatu we boarded was blaring hiphop at an extraordinary decibel level, but only in the high range. Annoying. No fear – about half a mile further up the road, we made a stop to pick up the recently repaired subwoofer. A few quick moments to throw it in the back and wire it up, and we had the full ear bleeding range.

Wednesday I had decided to go to Lake Naivasha with a couple of the gals from the workshops we were teaching. We got up and out and off to Naivasha town where we switched to another matatu to go the last half hour to the edge of the lake. Half way there, we pulled into a gas station, but not up to the pump. The driver and another guy came digging amongst passenger legs to retrieve two 5 gallon jugs that they filled and returned to fume up the inside of the matatu. Another few miles down the road, we pulled over to pick up a man and his young son and their stack of 5 ft logs that were slid in the back door, again in amongst passenger legs. All we needed was a match, and we’d have a pretty decent bonfire.

My goal for the day was to rent bike and cycle Hell’s Gate national park, but that didn’t go so well. One of the gals I was with wasn’t much of a biker and ate tarmac pretty quickly. I felt horrible for her, but she seemed to pick up ok and struggled on like a trooper. But it quickly became apparent that this was too much of an undertaking for her when we hadn’t even gotten to the gates of the park and realized we had a good 14k bike ride ahead of us with too broad a range of fitness, so we turned back to explore the backpacker lodge/campsite area and then made our way back into the little near village for dinner. And then drama ensued. I’m still not entirely sure what happened, but the one who pitched off the bike suddenly decided to go back to Nairobi, and her friend stumble stuttered and quickly followed. I was left with the quick decision – go back with them late at night or stay with the other foreign backpackers I’d already met and enjoy the rest of my visit at the lake. So I stayed, which was great. I ended up with a couple of ecology researchers – the guy is from Sydney, and his girlfriend is from Mozambique. They were lovely, we had a lot in common, and we just had a really nice relaxing day over lunch and a boat ride on the lake. I’m now wishing I’d stayed behind another day to visit Hell’s Gate with them on Friday, but I felt I should get back to finish work at KU – particularly to make a meeting with the ambassador. This was a re-scheduled appointment after we were trapped in traffic for 3 hours and had to cancel our first meeting. Unfortunately, with some schedule misunderstanding, I missed the second meeting as well. I guess it just wasn’t in the cards for this meeting to happen.

I am now lounging in the Amsterdam airport in an extremely long layover. New favorite airport. If you ever have to be stuck somewhere, this is the place to be stuck. I’m in an eggplant colored body hugging lounge chair watching music videos, and the whole airport looks like it’s got enough interesting nooks and crannies to keep me entertained for awhile at least. And there’s an art gallery around here somewhere that’s exhibiting “Dutch Cows”. Will have to check that out.

I’m home again in about 16 hours and looking forward to it. This has been a really exhausting but rewarding and fun trip. And it’s settled my wanderlust for at least a little while…

Giraffe Snot

This has been a pretty fabulous weekend. Of course, no trip to Africa is complete without the requisite safari. We departed on Friday afternoon with a fourth companion, Jen - a Canadian (the French part) who is 15 months into a 2 year round the world trip. Part of me is incredibly jealous and part of me is exhausted by the thought of being constantly on the move and unstable for that long. But most of me is jealous. I'll get mine in bits and pieces, I guess. The exhausted part of me is probably the "I'm not 22 anymore" part that's ready to be a bit more of a grown up. But not entirely. Not just yet...

The safari was truly amazing. We saw everything we could have asked for - huge herds of elephants and even a little little baby less than a month old. Dozens of giraffes towering from as close as 20 feet away. Lions and lions. The first night it had rained before we arrived, and the cubs were playful. I have spectacular video of six cubs play fighting in a flowering tree. It doesn't get any more stunning than that. And we saw loads of other animals - hippos, a crocodile (huge and from really far away), jackals, hyenas wallowing in a mud hole, zebras, wildebeast kicking up their heels, all sorts of gazelles, exotic birds, dikdiks, mongooses (mongeese?), and crazy blue lizards with pink heads.

For two nights we stayed in a tented camp managed by the local Massais. It was quite nice - a platform tent with proper beds and a concrete structure bathroom at the back with shower and toilet. Rather nice by backpacker standards. And our hosts were delightful. The Massai are one of the minority tribes of Kenya but what most people think of when they think of traditional native Kenyans. They're nomadic herders, and each clan has hundreds of cattle, sheep, and goats. In this part of Kenya, it is very common to see extremely tall and thin men wrapped in brightly colored blankets herding animals with a long staff. These guys kept a fire going at camp all night with one sitting sentry aside a long spear usually used for defending the herd against big cats. It felt extremely safe and reassuring.

We visited the nearest village which is open to guests for a fee of about $12. The fee is supposedly distributed amongst all of the local villages and goes to support services such as the local primary school. I didn't take many pictures, because I don't like for this sort of thing to be a spectacle and to dehumanize people even though they're opening their village to us. But it was fascinating. The houses are short and squat mud structures with straw roofs and are build by the wives before marriage. There is a big termite problem (we've seen loads of the flying nasties), so they have to pick up and move the entire village about every 9 years. It's a polygamous society, and the chief's son who led our group told us his father has 4 wives and over 20 children - 7 of whom were born to this man's mother. The clan are all related descendants from one grandfather, so any of the men have to take wives from other villages. The first wife is arranged by the parents of the son, and if he chooses to take additional wives then he gets to pick those himself. The dowry is 10 cows, but that can be reduced if the man is particularly fit and able to jump extraordinarily high in a contest among his peers. The Massai men decided that Jimmy's jumping skills should drop Amanda's dowry to a mere 8 cows.

Speaking of cows - the landscape and wildlife in the Massai Mara is unforgiving, so special care must be given to the livestock. They are let out to graze during the day but return to the village at night so none are eaten by lions, cheetahs, or leopards. The entire perimeter of the village is walled off with thick interwoven tree branches, and there are corrals in the center made of tall tree branches where the goats are kept separate from the cattle that roam freely among the houses. Each small house in the village has a closet-sized room where the baby calves are kept and another internal room where the baby goats and sheep sleep. I image it's a cacophanous menagerie at night with hundreds and hundreds of livestock packed in with people, but probably becomes as much of the normal background as city street traffic to some of us.

We made our way back to Nairobi after an early morning game drive on Sunday, and on Monday visited the giraffe park. It's a non-profit breeding program to reintroduce the endangered Rothschild's giraffe to the wild. There is a feeding platform where you can give them bits of pelleted food which brings them right up face to face. They don't want to be pet, so the only way to get up close is if you have food. As one of the guides told some spanish visitors "No comidas, no amigo". Well, I got super up close and personal in a Ghostbusters sort of way when I was face to face with one of the adult females as she got a tickle in her nose. Literally 6 inches away, full face slobbery snotty blast that left my glasses looking like I'd been through a rainstorm. Ew. We were later told that giraffe slobber is highly antiseptic, so I'm hoping I got *some* good benefit from the experience that'll keep me extra healthy for the rest of the trip :)

Sweet success

I think we're all feeling quite pleasantly self-satisfied. The two weeks we've been working here have been extraordinarily challenging, and I said early on that I'd be satisfied if we impacted at least one person through these efforts. It's been fraught with the challenges of scheduling meetings and identifying the right people with the authority and motivation to get stuff done. We started to feel a glimmer of hope early last week when the Director of the Centre for Research Development offered to follow up on the equipment distribution and usage. He's a really fantastic guy with a lot of experience both in Kenya and overseas. He's also got the right skill set and position to make a lot of positive change around here. He enthusiastically agreed to coordinate the chairs of the different departments, inventory the equipment, oversee a website that will detail the locations and contact info for each piece of equipment, and regularly check on the usage of log books so we can see that the equipment is being used and properly maintained. So if that all happens, win.

He also connected me to a number of people on campus he's recognized as needing extra assistance with grant writing. I had a meeting on Tuesday evening with a group of three women and was expected scientists. So I was pretty surprised when one said she's in the School of Fashion, another was in Finance, and the third was in the library. The woman working in fashion has a proposal to develop a skills training program for high school drop outs. The finance woman is writing a proposal for materials and support to increase alumni giving to the university so they can establish scholarships for orphans and disabled students. The woman from the library is writing a proposal to increase availability of library resources for the blind by developing a recording studio to turn some of the frequently used materials into audio books. So of course I was honored to help - and incredibly intimidated and a little terrified at first. But a lot of the essential principles of grant writing are consistent across disciplines, so I think I was able to be helpful. I'm scheduling another meeting for Friday through the research development office to follow up on these few and help others that are identified this week. And there's some talk of having me perhaps come back in the future for an intense one week grant writing "boot camp". We'll see. I said I'd be happy to come if they could provide the financial support for my trip. That puts some of the motivation in their hands and means they'll make the most of my time if they put the resources into having me back again.

But the most satisfying part of the entire two weeks was our final "wrap up" on Thursday afternoon. We plastered the place with flyers openly inviting all of the faculty, staff, and students - including the director of research, the deans, and all of the chairs. We were a little worried it wouldn't go well because of the hierarchy here - students and faculty wouldn't speak openly in front of each other. But we were encouraged by all of the higher ups who wanted to hear what we had to say and were intrigued by the unconventional format. So we put together a handful of slides highlighting our key observations and used that to guide discussion. It was fabulous - beyond all expectations. We have had a core group of about 15 students at all of the workshops, and they rose to set the tone. They talked openly about all of their concerns and frustrations - the faculty don't challenge them enough, they don't get enough mentorship, they'd like the opportunity to assistant teach. I watched the faces of faculty for the first half hour or so, and a lot of them looked pensively sour. But they sat there, and they listened. Then one of the lecturers who is deputy director of one of the research offices spoke up and thanked the students for their insight. She said she'd never heard these words from the students before and felt it was eye opening to realize their perspective. Then more and more faculty started to speak up, and before we knew it they were all engaged in a really frank discussion about their expectations of each other and hopes for the future of KU. The director of research, dean of sciences, and several faculty made little speeches about their new vision of collaboration at KU, and the director of research encouraged everyone to strive not only to be the best in Kenya or Africa, but to see Harvard as a benchmark for success.

Afterward, the students and faculty said that nothing like that had ever happened at KU, and they felt empowered. It was awesome. I emailed the group of students afterward to thank them for taking the time to be with us for the full two weeks and encouraged them all to remain in contact with each other and with us. Most of them have since written back with thanks and appreciation for our time and efforts. Several of them said that we have shown them that research is difficult but worth the effort. They say we've open their eyes and changed their lives. So even if we only impacted this small group of students and encouraged them to keep striving, I feel like we've done a pretty amazing thing.

Weekend in Mombasa

Mombasa is along the coast of Kenya, an old port town with a multicultural history that includes the Arab slave traders and British colonists. It's also a resort location, since it's reported to have great beaches. We didn't actually go to the beach, even though it was oppressively hot and humid, but it was lovely anyway. Hours and hours strolling through the narrow streets of the old part of town gazing at intricately carved doorways and elaborate balconies with the occasional stop to goof around with some random group of kids animatedly playing soccer with a long worn and mostly deflated ball. Everywhere we went, we heard calls of Jambo! (Hello!) and Karibu!(Welcome!). Even from windows several stories above where it was unclear anyone had noticed our passing. A significant portion of the town is Muslim, so there were the frequent calls to prayer competing with the hustle and bustle of street life and traffic. I was disappointed by the fact that the haunting reverberations can't quite reach deep into your bones like it does in Urumqi or Kashgar (China), but then this morning I drifted out of sleep at about 5 am to hear the dawn call. That was pretty special - the faint haze of early morning light, silence of the streets below, and a lone voice calling to the faithful in melodic tones.

We are back in Nairobi now. I am really enjoying my work here. It's a challenge - an immense personal challenge that I find to be really fun. I'll give you one example by way of my day today: we decided last week that it would be useful to call a meeting of the chairs of the science departments that have benefited from the equipment donation that was made by Seeding Labs in the spring. There are some complications and apparent misunderstandings that would be efficiently addressed with everyone present. The departments fall under two schools - Health Sciences and Pure and Applied Sciences. So first we talked to the dean of PAS who was on board and ready to schedule the meeting. But she said we should first coordinate with the dean of HS. We walked all over this immense campus on friday trying to find the office because we couldn't reach him by phone, failed until the day was nearly done, and resumed an attempted phone contact upon return from Mombasa. That still didn't work, and the internet for the campus was down (again), so we again made our way over in person and got an audience with the dean. He didn't seem to understand our request but finally said he could call a meeting of HS chairs but couldn't involve PAS. Finally, we got the full story from a faculty friend of ours - hierarchy. Each office on campus has a flow chart of the administration. Each person knows their place, who is above them, and who is below them. And there are rules. Chairs cannot call meetings of other chairs because someone above the chairs has to oversee the meeting. Deans can call a meeting of chairs, but only within their own department. So a meeting amongst chairs of two departments involves two deans. But deans can't call a meeting of other deans, because again you need someone above the deans to oversee the meeting. So that sends us up the food chain to either the deputy vice chancellor or the director of research. We are only here for three more days, and hectic schedules fill up quickly, so we'll see if this meeting actually happens, or even gets scheduled, while we're still around.

My window to Rwanda

The last few days have been an unbelievable cultural experience, and not just because it's Culture Week at Kenyatta University. Truthfully, we couldn't have picked a better week to come. Not only is it like we're touring all of Africa without leaving the campus, but I'm also getting the chance to meet some truly inspiring people. Two nights ago, I was sitting alone on the balcony updating the last blog post when a whole group squeezed past me to a table, and each one said "hello" on the way by. After a while, a very soft spoken, shy young man came over to talk and ask who I was. He was quietly enthusiastic and a little bit intense. He told me that his performance group is here from Rwanda to be part of culture week. Then his whole group convinced me to join them and proceeded to burst out into song and folk dance. It was indescribably beautiful. They said this is a sort of oral tradition that is a "pastoral poetry". Many of the songs and dances are performed by rural farming cultures to recognize their appreciation for the land and the cattle. The vocalizations are deep in the throat and nasal passages with a lot of harmony, and the body postures of the men evoke the horns and mannerisms of the cattle while the angular arms of the women and flowing movements are like stately trees and running rivers. It was beautiful and special because it was spontaneous and genuine. One of those unique cultural experiences you couldn't pay any amount of money to experience in a theater.

Last night, I joined them again for dinner and a couple of drinks, and we started talking about *everything* - academics, politics, family, culture, etc etc. After a while of discussing when I felt comfortable, I asked the question that had been racing through my mind from the moment I heard "Rwanda". Not "what happened?" We saw the news and heard the stories, and I'm sure that was only a fraction of reality - but that is precisely why I could never ask. It's only a fraction and yet a horrible story. Instead I asked "What's it like now?" I feel like I saw a lot of Cambodia, a country that also came through a massive genocide, and what I've seen was dark and deeply saddening. Depression, alcoholism, low economic growth, prostitution. It's a country suffering PTSD and not realizing it. So I wanted to know how Rwanda is progressing by comparison since our news doesn't cover what's happening there now. What I heard was inspiring - they credit the president that rose from that time for saving the country and in fact each of their own lives. Things are stable, lives are moving on, and while nothing is perfect (by their own admission), it's still like they have created "heaven" when before everything (even before 1994) was hell. Since the Belgian colonists left in 1963, there was one university in Rwanda until after 1994. Since 1994 there are now 14 universities. The One Laptop project has been incredibly active, and many of the Rwandan children are at least minimally computer literate. They're proud of their progress but see that there is a lot of work left to do. In fact, they feel like their country has come so far but fear that it won't continue to move further.

I'm actually really sad that I won't see them again after tonight. We are leaving for Mombasa in the morning, and they are returning home the same day we get back. Each of them has warmly invited me to visit them in Rwanda any time, and I think I will really have to consider it. From what I've seen of their hearts, enthusiasm, intelligence, and kindness, it seems like a beautiful country to visit.

One small step

I think I made an incremental amount of progress today that may have a monumental effect at KU. I gave a grant writing seminar for about 25 participants and went through the general structure and preparation as well as the expectations of reviewers and granting agencies. The whole presentation went really well, and I clearly had an interested audience actively taking notes and asking really insightful questions. A good conversation followed about international collaborations and preliminary data. (How are you supposed to get preliminary data when you don't have the resources or equipment to do some of the the first fundamental experiments?) One junior faculty member even gave me a grant he was about to submit to ask me for feedback and suggestions, and I think I can expect several more to follow. So I felt overall quite useful in expressing that this is a learned skill that takes years to acquire, that it's worth the investment, and that individuals shouldn't get frustrated by failure and give up. They seemed surprised by the rejection rate in the US.

Two things came out of these conversations that were particularly striking. One was a question - "Are there mechanisms built in that recognize when you have difficulty with an approach and spend too much of your money troubleshooting before things start to work?" That's something none of us really have to worry about. Grants in the US are *huge* by comparison, and we can spend a lot of time trying different things without worrying about the funds running out too quickly. We can be at least a little bit innovative and risky day to day. Here, a grant that is $20,000 is quite good. But that money has to be wisely and carefully spent, and there isn't much wiggle room for trial and error. It was a really good question and one I wasn't sure how to answer other than "lean on the experience of others to work out technical issues more quickly so you can move forward more efficiently".

The most animated conversation that came of the day was surprisingly focused on the budget. I hadn't planned to talk much about administrative specifics until I was in a conversation with a faculty member this morning who said that the university "takes" from the research money they receive. She really didn't like this. So I explained the way it works in the US and probably most other places - there are "direct costs" like salaries, equipment, supplies, etc and "indirect costs" that are the institutional overhead (space, administration, electricity, water, etc). The indirect costs at KU are about 15% of the total grant, but the communication between the administration and the researchers hasn't clearly stated what that money is for and how they should budget accordingly. One of the grants administrators (also a research faculty) was present, which was fabulous because she was able to clear up a lot of misconception. And I was able to back her up so they wouldn't be so suspicious. The researchers at KU had started applying for grants independently and taking money directly rather than go through KU because they thought the university was "stealing" what they'd worked so hard for. Or they stopped bothering to write grants at all. I can understand that. I feel that way about Harvard sometimes also where the indirect rate is far far higher. But I was able to explain the purpose for including those funds, and the administrator from research development was able to explain to the audience that they should budget 15% beyond what they think it will cost to do the work so that it doesn't feel like the university is "stealing". Win.


On a less serious note - it's Culture Week! This is fascinating. One week each year, the campus of KU becomes a festive environment of multiculturalism. They have performances each night from all over Africa, so we're getting to feel like we're traveling the whole continent in our very short stay. There were dancers, musicians, and martial artists from Nigeria, Tanzania, and more in addition to the students at KU. Even salsa dancers! Here I was captivated by the students from the school for the blind dancing a traditional African dance in grass skirts when the announcer enthusiastically introduced the KU salsa dancers as "probably the only students on the campus who know how to do this dance." Exotic is clearly a matter of perspective!

Splitting rocks

There is a lot that can be changed at KU but also a some internal resistance. Oddly, the resistance seems to come from some of the same people who want change. There’s an initial resistance that melts a little when you start to ask questions, but then I gently poke and prod and make suggestions, and people open up and start to talk. And I start to feel like I’m making a little bit of progress. The best example is use of faculty time. KU wants to expand their research program and start to be more competitive for grants and increase publications. But when you start asking faculty about the structure of their day, all they do is teach. Some are teaching three classes in a semester at KU and another two short courses at other campuses, plus over seeing the “open learning” courses that are essentially self-tutorial students who work and can’t come to class. Then they’re supposed to be supervising masters and PhD students, many of whom are not even working on this campus because they’ve gone to other institutes or campuses with better resources.
I had a meeting this morning with a faculty administrator. The first thing I asked is how the time is being managed for faculty and if he thought research expansions was feasible. He said that the lecturers complain that they teach a lot, and he sounded dismissive. But his face changed, with some surprise, when I said “Well, it sounds like they do teach a lot”, and I started to ask about his own teaching load. He listed off his responsibilities and said that he actually used to do research before the university started taking more and more students, and his teaching and administrative loads increased. Now he has no time for research and was only able to dedicate about 24 hours to writing his own grant. So I start asking about having graduate students take some of the undergraduate teaching load, and various faculty say “the graduate students won’t teach without being paid, and the university doesn’t have the money”. So then I went to a few of the masters students and explained to them how we structure graduate school in the States – how students are required to teach as part of the curriculum. They liked the idea and said they would actually enjoy teaching and being trained by faculty on how to teach. So there goes that straw man. Slowly slowly, bit by bit, I’m going to jostle this place around and see what happens. The resistance will come from the old folks who say “but this is how it has to be done, because this is how it’s always been done”, but the hope comes from one of the young masters students who said he wants to go through all of his schooling and professional training so he can eventually be an administrator and change the education system of Kenya. And another student who said “if you want to break a stubborn rock, you have to hit it harder”.

On being an American overseas

This was a fascinating day of perspectives. Evans was our gracious host (along with his two beautiful and energetic children), and we were out and about the city of Nairobi. We started with a hillside view of the city where he pointed out the major buildings, including our second destination – the former site of the US Embassy that was bombed in 1998. The site is now a memorial garden and museum. A marker in the garden lists the 218 casualties of the bombing, and the striking thing is that all but about 7 of those names were Kenyans. It’s sad and disturbing when any lives are lost, but even more striking when those lives aren’t even of the nationality the terrorists are bent on destroying. People who are just doing a job. Inside the museum, one of the placards reads off the story of a Kenyan guard of the garage gate who is credited for saving even more lives. The original intent was apparently to drive the van full of explosives into the underground parking garage, but this quick thinking guard avoided gunshots and grenades and managed to keep the van out of the garage. Instead, they detonated on the street and took more lives of passers by – but it didn’t take down the whole building full of people.

After a visit to the very well done Kenyan National Museum (complete with exhibits of venomous snakes!), we drove back to the KU campus through “Embassy Row”. The location is stunning. The embassies are scattered throughout small valleys with all sort of lush tropical vegetation. They look more like garden estates (albeit walled off) than any embassies I’ve ever seen. Until we got to the new US Embassy. Wow. The previous embassy was an unassuming concrete block office building in the center of Nairobi. The new embassy is a gianormous structure with minimal landscaping surrounded by high gates and guards that keep anyone without granted access at least 100 yards from the building itself. It’s a military complex. Understandably.

And now I’m settled back in my room flipping through the TV trying to tire myself enough to sleep before a very busy day tomorrow. It’s news hour. All of the channels are showing local Kenyan news. Except for one. Al Jazeera. It’s fascinating. What’s striking to me is that we hear at home about how it’s a horrible station that’s run by terrorists, but you know what? The anchors are all British and American. And the news they report has largely nothing to do with us. Most of the news is just news – riots in France, cholera in Haiti, Chinese protests against the Japanese. Truthfully, it’s probably far more world news that what anyone in the US ever pays attention to (there is a whole great big world beyond our borders). And even the ones that are about us are quite well done and to the point – like the current story on the impact in public schools of cutting property taxes in Arizona. Of course, I've only watched an hour or so, but I just found it kind of surprising. Something to chew on.

Aminals!

We’ve only been here for 48 hours, and we’ve had a fabulous time already. Yesterday, we met the director of the Center for Linkages which is the office that oversees international relationships at Kenyatta University. She’s arranged everything for us and introduced us to the chairs of the various departments. After lunch, we got a tour of the campus which briefly included the departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry and a long tour around the department of Zoology. The new chair has been in office for only one week, and his enthusiasm shines through. The chairs here only serve four year terms, so I imagine there’s a lot of change and a little turmoil every 4 years. He showed us around a few of the teaching labs with gorgeous dark wood benches and old brass gas fixtures. They were sparse spaces because the equipment is all stored away unless class is in session. I’m looking forward to next week and hope to sit in on a few classes.

But this weekend is all about fun, relaxation, and getting to know Kenya. Hudson picked us up this morning for a 2 hour drive north to the Nakuru Wildlife Park to see the animals! It was the first time we got to see outside the gates of the university, and the road we came in on is even more impressive by daylight. It will eventually be a major highway with four lanes going in each direction, but right now and for the last year and a half it’s been a red swath of dirt. The sides of the roadway are bustling with people on foot, and there is a large outdoor produce market not far from the university. There were hundreds of people milling about mountains of cabbages, bananas, potatoes, etc all stacked inches deep in thick red mud from the rains last night. Mmmm, tasty.

From the corrugated metal shanty towns, we turned down a road leading through a nicer neighborhood that got progressively nicer until we were in the “Runda Estates”. This is apparently the wealthy part of Nairobi, and it shows. The grandeur of the mansions competes with the extravagance of the US with one exception – heavily reinforced gates and high walls that gained razor wire and then electric fences as the houses got nicer and nicer. I had a chuckle at one that had invested in a “green” security system. They’d instead planted 8 foot tall cactus bushes all along the perimeter of the wall.

And holy missionaries, Batman! Ok, I know that I tend to exaggerate for emphasis sometimes. Just a little bit. But I think about one in ten non-residential buildings outside of Nairobi is some sort of religious organization – a church, school, orphanage, something. Seriously. They’ve got the Baptists, the Pentacostals, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Quakers, the Shakers, the candlestick makers. How many souls are there to save in this place? You’d think they must be fighting over the lost, and a main weapon seems to be fear. I saw plenty of signs about the wrath of God and the turmoil of humanity. Yowza.

About an hour north of Nairobi is the Eastern escarpment of the Rift Valley. Stunning view. That was one of those wow moments. Scenery you can’t do justice with a photo because the enormity of it all can’t be expressed in a two-dimensional image. Flat expanses of plains rimmed by volcanic mountains with a tiny little dot of a satellite station in the middle that I am sure seems far more impressive up close when not competing with the space surrounding. Further north, the Nakuru Wildlife Park surrounds Lake Nakuru which is just south of the city of Nakuru. Way hecka cool. I wasn’t sure what to expect but was sort of two minds about the whole thing. Either the animals would be spoiled by visitors feeding them from cars and would swarm in a very unnatural sort of way, or they’d be so skittish they’d be hiding in the bushes and we wouldn’t see anything. My how wrong I was…

This is a moment in literacy when I’m going to break the rules banning “laundry lists” since there is no better way of conveying what we saw: baboons, rhesus monkeys, pelicans, flamingos, zebras, antelope, gazelles, ostriches, rhinos (black ones and white ones), a hippo, giraffes, AND a lion. It was like the zoo but not at all like the zoo. Because they belong here. That’s what kept blowing my mind. This wasn’t the “Texas Safari” gamepark I went to as a kid where some rich eccentric weirdo imported a bunch of exotics to some random location. It wasn’t a zoo with “natural” enclosures where the animals looked bored.

The baboons had babies. Cute nursing babies that clung to mom’s chest until they tired of nursing and clamored up to cling to her haunches. Zebras ecstatically scratched their bums against well-worn trees. Flocks of hundreds of thousands of flamingos made the banks of the lake look painted in pink. Crowds of pelicans fishing in groups that swam together and suddenly circled and dove their heads under the water in unison to scoop up schools of fish. Enormous tank-like rhinos looked like a giant boulder with a snow plow for a head. A slow lumbering hippo surprised us wandering through the grass away from the shore of the lake. They look so goofy and non-threatening when they’re out of the water, but are one of the most deadly animals in this country. The giraffes were quite well-camouflaged in amongst the tall thin trees resembling their necks. And finally, just as we were leaving the park, we spotted a lioness that was only about 6 feet from our van and on a ridge right at eye level. Amazing.

Tomorrow we are touring Nairobi and visiting the national museum, so I am sure there will be much more to share. This post could get longer and longer depending on how the internet goes here. Theoretically, there is wireless internet, but it seems to not be working reliably. The connection in the hotel hasn’t worked since we arrived, but the graduate school next door has a separate router. Millie said it was working this morning, so us email junkies went on an excursion this evening after dinner – to no good end. We snuck through a closed gate and made so much racket we alerted the security guard who was super nice and let us wander around the outside of the building, through a barbed wire fence (there’s a lot of barbed wire here – keeps the students out of the landscaping. Well, clearly not very effectively). After much giggling and finally lining up our laptops in the dark along a low rock wall, we got the router connection but no internet, so I’m just going to be collecting these little stories until I can make a massive upload all at once.

Ga! Ga!

Hello from Nairobi. We made it in last night just fine - after a 6 1/2 hour flight from Boston to Amsterdam, a 2 hour layover, and another 7 hour flight to Nairobi. I was feeling pretty travel scuzzed by the end of that, so the hot shower in the Conference Center hotel and firm bed were very welcome.

We were met at the airport by two of the faculty who were our guests in Boston for the summer - Hudson and Evans. They couldn't have looked any happier to see us, and the warm hugs all around were very welcoming. Kenyatta University is on the other side of Nairobi from the airport, so we got a little bit of a tour of the city - albeit in the dark. What I can tell you of Nairobi so far: small shacks and old concrete buildings juxtaposed with glass highrises and a smattering of Mercedes dealerships selling giant SUVs. I have a feeling this is a country of contradictions. The main road leading from the city to the university is under construction, so it's mostly a two lane dirt highway that is variably converted to three or four lanes depending on the urgency and boldness of the drivers. There don't seem to be many small cars on the highways - mostly passenger vans and mid-sized buses. And a lot of the buses and lit up on the inside with brightly colored neon lights and have and odd combination of corporate advertisement and Bible verses blazed across the rear window.

Waking up in a new country this morning was blissful. It's peaceful but with the soft clamor of folks milling about the hotel. The landscape around at least this part of the campus is gorgeous, and it seems like every piece of vegetation is different from all of the others. The title of this post is referring to what Amanda has called "the Lady Gaga bird". It appears to be some sort of crow or raven but HUGE with a white breast, and it's very verbal. There seem to be a number of verbal birds around here, and they're roosting up in these gorgeous trees that are heavily loaded with purple flowers.

We're off soon to meet with our hosts at the university and get a lay of the land. I think the weekend plans are full of wild animals and a daylight tour of Nairobi, so we're excited to see what there is to see around here! More soon...

One step closer to home...

Well, it's been an eventful past few days. The guts have decided to behave themselves again, and I just managed to stomach a whole sandwich and a handful of fries.  That's important.  It's tough to make a recovery when you can't eat enough to maintain your strength.  It's also sort of a crap way to spend my birthday weekend, though everyone around me was really kind and made it as fun as possible.  On Saturday, I re-visited the English training center where I went last week and had another chat with their students. The best question this time was "Do you believe in UFOs and life on other planets?"  That continued on to "How big is the universe and is it shrinking or expanding?" and "What's beyond the edge of the universe?" They were also very sweet and arranged a cake for my birthday, and several of them sang songs.  In English and terribly off key.  Is was an incredibly sweet gesture, but something more traditional would have been nice.  Then my friend Nigar danced a Ughyur dance for us.  That was really special.  I got it on video, so I'll have that memory for years to come.  Unfortunately my stomach didn't cooperate and started to cramp again, so after grimacing through a round of photos I managed to get back to my hotel and crash for the night.

The day of my actualy birthday, Sunday, all I wanted was to go to the Fubar and chill with some good Western comfort food and relaxed company.  I didn't want to have to smile and show my happiness.  I didn't want to have to make or receive speeches about how much we're all appreciated for the hard work we've put into this project.  But that's Chinese custom, and therefore I had to seeing as my birthday was also happened to be my last night in Urumqi with our colleagues.  So I pre-arranged an "out" with my friend Hiroshi that would let me escape the banquet early while allowing my colleagues to maintain face.  I told them that a party had been planned for my farewell and birthday weeks earlier by a college classmate who lives in Urumqi (true, Hiroshi and I did go to Cornell at the same time but didn't know each other).  I then informed the professor that I asked my friends to wait for me since I had a very important banquet to attend with my colleagues. That made him feel important, it made me look good for keeping my appointments, and it got me out of dinner after only about an hour and no baiju.  I was particularly happy about that last bit.  I've been hugging the sink a little too much lately to want any Chinese rotgut in my stomach at the moment.

At dinner, I made my best attempt at a good show to keep up the honor and happiness. It was my farewell dinner, but it was also a welcoming dinner for a professor visiting from Shanghai.  He seemed to be a nice guy.  He spent 7 years at Rutgers as a postdoc.  He name dropped someone at Rutgers, and I didn't clearly understand the name with his accent.  He gently scolded me in that "you should know him because he's done blah blah blah" sort of way.  Okay, fine, maybe.  So later we were talking about his work, and he said he worked on genomics as a postdoc and is now working on plant and algal genetics and is interested in alternative fuels.  I said "Then you must know George Church who is at Harvard and works on blah blah blah" - all stuff that is directly relevant to his field.  He stumbled just a little and said "I'm not always so good with names."  I just smiled and said "I understand.  I'm the same way sometimes."  And with all of the pretention off the table we had a nice coversation about crop-based energy production and energy input versus crop yield for rice versus corn - his plant of choice.  I think I did well for my host professor.  He is establishing a collaboration with this guy to work on plant engineering, and having a bright young researcher from Harvard make a good impression on his guest was important to make him look good. I think it also went a long way toward strengthening our working relationship since he suddenly seems to be a bit perkier and more enthusiastic when speaking with me.

The escape to the bar was a little tricky.  One of the students was tasked with getting me into a cab except that she flagged one in a turning lane in heavy traffic and had to jump in with me.  She kept dropping hints on the way to the bar that she would like to be invited in to my "party", but I just kept playing clueless and said "I'll pay for this cab so that you have enough money to get home."  I hated to send her off that way, since she's a really sweet gal, but it would have looked *horrible* for her to find out that the "party" was me, Hiroshi, the other surly Irish owner Manus, an aged and decrepit old cat, and the resident drunk who laughs at all the wrong moments and keeps falling of his bar stool.  But all of that sounded like heaven to me, because I could belly up to the bar, toast myself with a weak vodka and soda, and enjoy the specially requested tomato soup that Hiroshi so thoughtfully had his kitchen staff prepare for me.  Not a bad 31.  And no harm, no foul.  Everyone is happy and feels honored and respected.  It's one thing to "know" the customs.  It's another to be able to manipulate them...

And now I'm in Beijing. It was kind of funny to get on a flight full of Ughyurs in the western frontier excited for what is probably their first trip to the big city.  I think they were all part of one big group, since the whole plane seemed to know each other.  I seemed to be the in-flight entertainment.  I kept getting funny looks and big smiles and heard "hello" and "thank you" from random directions once in awhile.  But all I wanted to do was sleep since I had woken up with stomach pain the night before and hadn't slept well.  My seat mate had other ideas.  I requested a window, but when I got to my row there were two men sitting in the window and middle seats.  No way, dude.  That's *my* seat.  So I politely pointed at his seat and handed him my boarding pass.  He pointed at the aisle seat, and I smiled but shook my head.  So they moved.  And then he tried to chat me up for awhile.  Not in any verbal language that either of us understand, but in a combination of fractured english, attempts at chinese, and lots and lots of hand gestures.  "Where am I from? How long have I been here? Where am I going? Am I married? Do I have kids?" Standard questions.  And then he indicated that he's married with two kids.  Very nice man.  With very sharp elbows that he proceeded to jab into my protruding ribs every time he wanted to get my attention.  As I said before, all I wanted to do was sleep, but he made it his duty to be sure I woke up for the drink cart and meal.  He got agitated with the flight attendant when he thought she was overlooking my empty water glass.  He gave me all of his cherry tomatoes as well as his travel companion's when he realized that's all I was eating from the dinner tray.  And at one point in the flight when he got up, he put his flight blanket over my lap.  But then I didn't see him again.  He must have disappeared to sit next to some one else, because we landed and he never came back.  It made me a little sad that I didn't get to say bye to Mr. Sharp Elbow Man.

I am now in the lap of luxury and loving every moment of it.  I decided that after "roughing it" for two months and my slow recovery from food poisoning, I deserve a little extra care.  So "Harvard" booked me a room for two nights at the Crowne Plaza by the Beijing airport.  I've seen enough of Beijing in the past that I don't care to do any touristy things and should reserve and increase my strength.  And I'm only about 10 minutes from the airport which makes catching my flight tomorrow a piece of cake.  The room is fabulous by any standards and especially compared to my adequate but meager accomodations recently.  A real king sized mattress.  That is the number one most exciting thing.  I've been sleeping on an inch thick cotton pad set atop a particle board frame (twin sized) that leaves me less than rested and with an aching back and hips every morning.  International cable TV with limited channels, but there's HBO and Cinemax which far surpass the CSPN (Chinese knockoff of ESPN) and the English language government run station that only plays Chinese language lessons and fluff news pieces. Though I may still have to flip back to CSPN for the World's Strongest Man competitions and the Snooker World Championship. I would love for the interior designers of the Crowne Plaza to come design my bathroom someday. It's all sandstone marble with a dark brown granite countertop and an in-set deep white procelain sink.  Very modern Asian and very cool. But my two favorite bathroom features are the enormous deep bathtub that would only be better if it had jets and the proper shower stall (separate from the tub) with two shower heads.  There are few places in this part of the world where you can find a bathtub, and even if there is a tub it is rare that you'd want to get in it. Usually there isn't enough hot water to fill it, or more often the water there is to fill it smells so badly that soaking is not appealing.  And it's nice to be able to shower in a stall without getting the whole room wet.  Most places have a shower head mounted on the wall and a drain that is often at the highest point of the bathroom floor.  Add to that the fact that the sink, floor drain, and toilet often share the same piping system, and it makes for a rather odiferous experience.

The next time you hear from me, I will be back on US soil.  My flight is tomorrow afternoon to Newark, straight over the North Pole, and then I'll be connecting to Boston by Wednesday night.  It will be soooooo good to be home.  Darren and I have spent 5 weeks together since the first of January, so this travel blog is going to come to a screeching halt for awhile so that I can stay home and get back to my normal life.  It's been fun though.  I'm glad to have you guys out there reading along with me.  It makes the world seem a little smaller...

Be thankful for your healthy intestines...

I am so happy to be feeling better today, but it was a little dicey there for a while last night.  I don't know what hit me, but it feels like an 18 wheel semi-truck. I went with a friend to climb the red mountain to a pagoda on the edge of Urumqi and then to lunch before a visit to the regional museum.  Lunch was pullo with carrot salad (cooked) and yoghurt.  Okay, so maybe the yoghurt was homemade which makes it a little suspicious, but it tasted fine.  And the carrot salad was cooked.  And it was a nice clean restaurant (by Chinese standards).  So that's the thing.  We're told as foreigners "if you can't boil it, peel, it or cook it, leave it", and I'll admit that I'm not always as diligent as perhaps I should be.  But it gets exhausting after two months, and you get a little careless sometimes.  I do avoid most street food (except kebab and fresh cut watermelon).  I eat in nice modern restaurants.  But I think the biggest problem in this country isn't even the water or the street food versus restaurant food.  It's the distinct lack of soap anywhere.  It is very very rare to find a bathroom in china with soap.  I carry a little bottle of hand sanitizer, but that's just me.  The guy cooking my food doesn't have his pocket cleanser.  And if he happens to have an infection, goes to the bathroom, rinses quickly with water (at best) and goes back into the kitchen, well, that's when all hell in my digestive system breaks loose.

I started feeling unwell in the evening, and then everything in my stomach came back up.  I called a friend to come over, and she brought me some bananas to ease my stomach and try to soak up the grease from the pullo thinking it just hadn't settled well.  Pullo is rice with lamb, and it's boiled for a long time in a big metal wok with oil.  So it's kind of greasy and heavy and sometimes doesn't agree well.  But an hour after she left, I lost about 2 liters of fluids and suddenly got dizzy and parched.  I called her back because by this point I had lost so much water and wasn't able to keep anything in my stomach and knew I was in danger.  I travel with antibiotics, so I popped a couple of those but knew I needed an IV to replace my fluids.  Mmm, that's fun.  Needles in developing countries.  So when that friend arrived, we called my other friend, who runs the foreigner bar, to ask about hospitals. He's Japanese and also lived in the states through high school and college.  In fact, it turns out that we were both at Cornell at the same time.  And he's been living in Urumqi for 6 years.  So not only does he know the good hospitals in town, he also knows my western expectations of medical hygiene.  So we hopped in a cab and met him and his girlfriend across town at the ER. Well, there was no hopping involved.  There was me doubled over with stomach cramps dragging myself into the cab.

I got checked in, and the doctor, who spoke decent English, started asking me questions. "Have you been drinking?" "No"  "Is your heart pounding" "Yes, a little bit".  So she hooked me up to a heart monitor.  "Hooked me up" is a very accurate description.  I felt like a car battery.  She took four clamps and connected one to each of my wrists and one to each of my ankles.  Then she lifted my shirt and put five little suction cup electrodes in various places over my left torso.  I'm not sure what she read, but I guess it was fine.  Then they did a blood test, which I guess came back fine.  Most of this got explained in Chinese to my friends.  I just sat and let them poke me and stick me hoping that eventually I would rejoin the world of the healthy.  But I did see needle packages opened in front of my eyes.  Very good. 

After the blood draw, I was moved back downstairs where we were told there are no beds.  Instead there was a big room full of sick people sitting in uncomfortable chairs hooked up to IVs.  Then all of a sudden there was not only a bed, but a bed in an empty room.  Apparently Hiroshi's girlfriend knows someone on the staff at the hospital.  That's how this place works.  You get things far easier if you know someone or have money.  So I got a bed, hooray.  And 1 ½ liters of saline plus glucose and an anti-nausea drug which rocked my world.  I started feeling better almost instantly.  Well, almost instantly after the nurse actually found a vein.  My veins are very very small as it is, and I was dehydrated to the extent where they were almost non-existent.  She stuck me in my right hand but missed.  I can't watch when they do this, but after she withdrew the needle and I saw that she was switching to a smaller guage, I said "*I* could have told you that was too big."  Second attempt worked, and by 7 am I was discharged and on my way back to the hotel.  I'm feeling a little weak and empty, but my veins have all reappeared, I can eat small bits of bland food, and my "functions" seem to be slowly returning to normal.  Hooray…

On being American in the Muslim world...

Things have been…eventful lately.  I've been fully immersed in Ughyur culture for both the good and the bad.  First the good.  A couple of days ago, one of my friends invited me to her Ughyur dance class.  That was fun.  We went across campus and up a hill to the arts school where she takes a beginning dance class.  The campus is fabulous – like any arts school anywhere, you see students sitting outside jamming, but the difference between here and home is that they're playing traditional instruments from this region.  First we saw a group of men with one playing the dutar and the others singing in chorus.  The dutar is a two-stringed instrument with a fat gourd-like body and a very long and delicate thin neck.  The sound is very evocative of its middle eastern roots.  And I think the young men enjoyed the audience.  The dance class was fun to watch, since I had been to the big dinner theater here where it was brightly lit with fabulous costumes but a little overly produced.  The authentic experience is in watching ordinary people learn and perform because, as I have been told "every Ughyur person knows how to play dance." Dancing and music are integral to the culture, and it's a deep heritage far different from the concept of "dance" in the US. After the dance class, we came upon another group of men playing a traditional hand drum.  It's round and flat, much like a tambourine except that it's stretched with sheep skin that has metal rings hanging from the edge.  It is played by both shaking and thumping the hands against the sheep skin and has a deep drum-like and metallic rattling sound at the same time.  Very cool.

Then today I arranged to meet another friend in the morning to visit her English class.  She is an assistant instructor at one of the language centers in town, and when her students learned that she had a new foreign friend, they all wanted to meet me.  So we walked toward the center of town into a highrise building, up four flights of stairs into a winding suite of classrooms.  They teach English, Chinese, Ughyur, and Russian, and apparently most of their students are Ughyur with a few foreigners from time to time.  But not many.  Only one of the students had ever spoken with a foreigner, and word spread like wildfire through the school that I was there. Before I knew it I was perched on a stool on a stage with a microphone in my hand.  The questions started simply. "What is your name? How old are you? Why are you here? How long have you been here? Do you like Xinjiang? What do you like about Xinjiang? What is your favorite Ughyur food?"  And then they got a little more complex as students warmed up and felt more bold.  The first challenging question was "Do you believe in God?"  Imagine answering that to an audience of about 80 Muslims.  I gave a delicate and truthful answer about being raised Christian and yet believing that all religions are cultural interpretations of the same "God".  That seemed to go over okay.  Their language skills are just about good enough to understand me, but not good enough to carry on a discussion about the topic.  Then I got "Is Michael Jackson Muslim?"  That was a stumper.  Good question.  Uh, yes? No? How do you explain that the Michael Jackson version of "Nation of Islam" doesn't really have much to do with the centuries-old Muslim faith.

But the real winner was "Why does America hate Afghanistan?"  At first I didn't fully understand his accent well enough to get the question, and my friend started to try to explain it. One of the teachers had a pained look on his face and said "No, no, don't.  Don't tell her." I had caught enough to understand the question and said "No, I want to hear what he asked and would like to talk about this."  I assured everyone that it was okay, smiled at the very embarrassed student, asked for the question to be repeated, and gave a long but simply worded answer trying to explain a little bit about America.  I started by saying that no, Americans don't hate Afghanistan.  In fact, the average American can't even find Afghanistan on a map (laughter from the class).  I explained that decisions were made by my government that a lot of people in the United States don't agree with. I talked a little bit about the election process and how we all get a chance to vote and change our government and that enough people were unhappy with American policy to vote for someone who will hopefully do things differently.  I tried to explain that, contrary to China, the American government can change dramatically in a short amount of time, and that I hope this is one way that we are changing - by having a better relationship with Muslim countries.  But at the same time, I explained the concept of "you break it, you buy it" and told them that we have contributed to an unstable situation and now have to stick around until we can make things right and give the countries (both Iraq and Afghanistan) back to their people.  He seemed okay with my answer, but I'm not entirely sure how much he understood.  He's a beginning English student.  Some of the more advanced students clearly understood and were smiling and nodding at points, so I hope that they can at least discuss it with him.  In any case, I felt bad because he left soon after that.  I'm not sure if he didn't like my answer or if he was embarrassed because the teachers tried to stop him from asking the question.  He lost a lot of face in feeling like he had crossed a line, and I feel bad for that even though it was out of my control. 

Most importantly, it's one little step in the big goal of "winning hearts and minds".  And it's critical if we're going to make progress.  People in this part of the world have a narrow view of the Western world – particularly America.  They believe what they're told and see in movies and on the news, and most have never seen evidence to the contrary.  I hope that through my being open and communicative, I can convince one by one that we're not evil and hateful people bent on a Crusade against the Muslim world. A lot of misconceptions here (and in the US) are due to lack of dialogue and lack of education.  At least this experience ranked second in nerve rattling to the guy in Kashgar last year who told me he hates Americans and wants to move to Afghanistan to marry a Taliban woman and raise sons to kill American soldiers. That was an eye-opener as to just how much damage has been done to our reputation and how far we have to go to win back even basic respect.

Was it something I said?

I am now having to post my blog entries via email, because the dear PRC internet police have censored blogspot.  Hooray.  So in addition to not being able to post, I'm not even able to access my blog to see if this is working.  I'm just thankful that google at least has the email publishing option available so that I can keep this going for my last week here by sending the updates to blogger via email.  Thanks to Darren and his creative creation of my "post to" address.  I married a man who thinks he's funny.  So not funny, Darren...

I spent a great day with my friend Meripet a few days ago – shopping again.  I think I've shopped more in two days than I usually shop in a whole year.  But I'm looking for a dress for a friend's wedding, and it's best to do that here rather than in the three days after I arrive home and before the wedding while recovering from jetlag.  And I found the dress.  And two other shirts.  But the shirts were about $3 each, so that's awesome. 

After dress shopping, Meripet and I headed to the Ughyur market to look for shoes.  She told me you can find guys on the street selling shoes for about $5 a pair.  That sounds like a steal to me.  So we headed back to the area near the university where I was walking with Nigar.  More throngs of people and men shouting "Besh kuai, besh kuai, besh kuai!" "Besh" is apparently five in Ughyur, and "kuai" is the monetary equivalent to buck.  Just about everything is five yuan, which is about 80 cents.  Also awesome.

We cut around a corner away from the busy market street and down a side alley with a bunch of food vendors and ended up in a Ughyur medicine shop.  Meripet thought they might have a particular tea I bought last year in Kashgar. She started talking with the guy and explaining what I was looking for, and he said he knew and started putting together tea and rose and saffron into a giant metal urn that he ground with an equivalently giant metal pestle.  I think that gets used to grind everything in the shop from flattened lizards to bull testicles, so it'll be interesting to see what this "tea" tastes like and what it does.  I wonder if it could be mildly hallucinogenic just from the contact with other weird ingredients.  Unfortunately, the subtle hints of rose and saffron are a little overpowered by the trace contact with cloves, but it was the experience that counts most.  After pouring the strongly scented fine powder into a sheet of paper from a Ughyur magazine and folding it up into a neat little triangular package, he and Meripet started to talk about her health.  I sat watching with interest, precariously perched on a tiny stool next to a bucket of writhing, fighting, and generally pissed off live scorpions.  Apparently they're a good remedy for arthritis.  The guy was explaining to Meripet her early onset anemia, etc and then asked if I would like to have my medical conditions read.  Sure, why not?  So I moved to the stool across the doctor's table, and he took my wrist in his hand, fingers over my pulse, inspecting my nails.  He's looking me over for a while and then said that I have back pain during my monthly cycle.  Um, not so much, but I keep listening.  Then he says that my appetite isn't so good.  This is pretty true.  It comes and goes, and some weeks I am completely ravenous all of the time.  Most of the time I eat little bits of a lot of things, but I'm never really hungry enough to sit and mow through something.  So I'm still listening (all through Meripet's translation), and he said that I have trouble sleeping at night.  But in particular he said that it's because I have trouble turning off my mind.  He said that I think too much in my sleep.  I do have some of the absolutely strangest dreams.  At this point, I asked Meripet to ask him what it is that he sees in me that allows him to say these things.  In some ways it's like going to a "psychic", but I do think that they are just really observant men who pay attention to the tone of your skin, the health of your hair and nails, the circles and spots on your face, and they read all of those little signs that something's not settled.

And then he said that my "womb is cold".  I'm still not entirely sure what that means.  Meripet tried to explain, but I think it's one of those cultural and language things that may have no direct translation.  It isn't a specific temperature cold, but it isn't a metaphysical cold.  He said I should have no trouble having children, but I would still like to know what a "cold womb" means. Apparently it has something to do with me being "out of balance", and I have to change my diet to eat more "hot" foods to warm it up.  Apparently coffee and fried things are considered "hot".  Mmmm, fried chicken…

After leaving the kind doctor to his curled up dried snakes and starfishes, we continued down the street, turned on another block to buy meat on sticks (kebab on real sticks – as in tree branches) and up another street to a really big herbal medicine shop.  This place was like the Costco of herbal medicine.  They had everything – herbs, minerals, corals, teas, lizards, snakes, turtle shells, starfish, seahorses, flowers, roots, tree sap, etc etc etc. And in HUGE jars and bins. I wandered the room asking "what is this? What is this?" and came upon a small table stacked with reindeer antlers.  Very sad, because those reindeer aren't running around in the wild now with no antlers.  They're not running around at all.  Next to the gray fuzzy antlers were three half-liter bottles of a gray liquid that looked like powdered reindeer antler - until I went to pick up the bottle.  I was expecting the bottle to weigh the same as a bottle of water, so it was roughly the same experience as taking a step down and realizing it's a little further than you'd estimated. The bottle weighed a ton.  I had to put it down the inch I'd managed to lift it and try again with both hands.  Mercury.  Great.  I picked up a half- liter bottle of pure liquid mercury.  I said "this is toxic" and they guy said "no, the toxin has been taken out."  Okay.  Mercury is an element. And mercury is toxic.  So how exactly does one take the toxin out of mercury? I mean, I understand that liquid mercury is "less toxic" than mercury vapor, but it's still a little unsettling when you realize you're holding about a thousand thermometers' worth of the stuff.

 

my suddenly overflowing social calendar

This plan of mine to acquire meals seems to be working out nicely, and I'm making tons of new friends. Nigar, the female law student, and I went for dinner two nights ago. She's super sweet and outgoing. She wants to study international law so that she can use her language skills. We met up again today and spent hours and hours shopping in the clothes markets. Not really buying anything, just sort of wandering. Tomorrow and Saturday I have plans either with her or with two other friends. The two other friends are also May babies, so the three of us are going to a nice dinner to celebrate our birthdays. Then Sunday for lunch I am meeting the Japanese owner of the Fubar - foreigner owned bar in town. And Sunday night I am meeting up again with Anwar, the Ughyur student who I had dinner with a few nights ago. So that's the next three days worth of social events and meals already scheduled. Rock on.

So not surprisingly, my outlook on being here for the next two weeks has taken an up turn. Funny since it's usually the other way around and I enjoy my time overseas until the last two weeks when I'm starting to look forward to being home. Since I'm getting out a little more, I'm falling in love all over again. Though I'm still so looking forward to being home. Xinjiang really is a unique place. It is China and therefore Chinese, but it is also an incredible melting pot of diverse cultures and therefore not so much Chinese. The area right here around the school is mostly Ughyur, so you can walk down the street and snack on samsa (like samosas - baked dough wrapped around lamb and onions), kebab and nan, pullo (rice mixed with red peppers and lamb), or stroll through the street carts for noodle dishes, slices of watermelon, nuts, raisins, any other assortment of fruits. The sidewalks are also jammed full of people hawking clothing, belts, watches, shoes, hats, balloons, toys, etc. It's a sea of bodies. A sea of bodies without much concept of deodorant, but a sea of very interesting people nonetheless. I don't blend in but at the same time it's a very international-looking crowd. There are people with light brown hair, red hair, fair skin, light colored eyes. The eyes are incredible. Some of the people around here have dark rings around the iris and a light golden eye color that looks like it glows hauntingly from within. And the sounds are incredible. In addition to men standing on stools shouting the prices for their wares, there are CD stores blaring Ughyur music into the streets. You could easily and quickly imagine you're in an entirely different country. Until you catch sight of the Chinese paramilitary police camped out with assault rifles on a street corner...

And speaking of a melting pot of cultures, the Fubar has to be the most fascinating bar in all of China. I wandered in again last night, and the place had me and the Japanese owner and then also Chinese, British, Dutch, Kyrgyz (from Kyrgyzstan, not Chinese Kyrgyz), a couple of guys from Africa (who claim they're from New York), and I'm sure more that I just hadn't identified. The Kyrgyz were funny. They were complaining that the vodka they ordered came in a glass rather than a bottle, and they weren't served shot glasses. They also apparently order vodka in grams in the former Soviet Union, and it was a big problem with them that things here aren't done the same as at home.

Then there are the Chinese locals that frequent the bar. There are a few women who seem to have claimed the place as their own. They burst through the door in an attention grabbing "look at me" show, speak loudly in english to all of the foreign expats they know, put their handbags behind the bar, and order "the usual". Then they proceed to make themselves an annoyance to anyone who will listen. They are not like the average Chinese and almost seem to be having an identity crisis trying to emulate what they see of foreigners from watching too much television. One gal last night came in with puffy eyes and bedraggled hair complaining about her hard day at work because she had to stay past 7 for a dinner meeting. Another gal a few days ago shoved me over to make room for her friend at the bar and put her hand on my lower back calling me "sweetie" in a very condescending tone. And then proceeded to blow smoke directly in my face. Fun fun. But it's fantastic people watching and an incredible psych study in the rising middle class spoiled brat phenomenon. It is an expensive bar by Chinese standards (about average for an American bar) and so the local patronage doesn't have a lot to complain about their lot in life. But it's also a bar and therefore a place where a certain category go to look for an ear to bend against their woes. True in any country, I guess, but particularly fascinating here.

new food finding strategy

Food. It's the most stressful thing about being on my own here. Getting around is no problem. I can ask someone to write addresses in Chinese that I can show a cab driver. There isn't much that I can't reach on foot anyway. And I have my hotel key card with the name and address so that I can always get to my temporary home again. But eating is stressful. I think about my next meal all day long - can I find someone willing to eat with me? Will I actually be able to suck it up and point at a stranger's plate to say "I'll have that" if I get that needy? Can I be patient enough to find that goldmine restaurant with an english menu or at least pictures of the food at which I can become a repeat customer? Besides the foreigner bar on the other side of town, which I do love but would feel strange frequenting every night of the week. And I have to plan in advance so that I don't get too hungry which always turns me very moody and emotional. So far I'm doing okay, but I keep getting lucky.

This evening I decided "okay, I'm getting brave. Time to get out there and just look for a place on my own." So I wandered down the street looking in the windows of all of the restaurants. Most are too small and local and look a little dark and intimidating. But the big restaurants are full of people who will stare at me - also too intimidating. I had finally settled on a place I'd been to with friends before that has outside seating, so it seemed a little more comfortable. I turned around to go back in that direction when a young man walked up next to me and said "do you have time to talk with me?" English practice. This happens all of the time. Multiple times a day I get approached by young college students wanting the opportunity to practice their English. 99% of the time, they're Ughyur. The Chinese are too shy, but the Ughyurs seem to have much more outgoing personalities. Perhaps because they know their pronunciation is very good. The pronunciation of the Ughyur language is more similar to English than is Chinese, so they do have a much easier time communicating with me. I have had a few women come up to me, but most of them are men - again, more bold and confident. The hairs on the back of my neck are very well tuned, so most of the time when someone comes up to me, I make pleasant chitchat with them for just a moment and then quickly extract myself. I just get a weird vibe sometimes that the first question they want to ask is "are you married?" This guy, Enwar, is the first man I've met lately who didn't give me that feeling. So we spoke for a few minutes, and I told him that I was looking for a place to eat but that I do not read Chinese or Ughyur, so the menus are challenging. He offered his suggestions, and then I just decided to ask if he had already eaten dinner. I clearly surprised him, but we agreed it would be a nice favor to me as well as an opportunity to practice his english, so we settled in a very crowded, very public, and very well-lit restaurant (that's for all of you who are going to worry that I take too many chances :) Over dinner, he gave me a lecture about safety, and then he walked me to the gates of the university but not all of the way to the hotel. He seemed to have a good sense of what was appropriate. It was a nice conversation, a good dinner, and now I have a new friend. Everyone here asks for my phone number, so it's kind of nice that I don't have a chinese number. I give them my email address instead. I've given my email address to half a dozen people already, and none of them have written to me. But it would be nice to keep in touch with a few people.

And tomorrow night I am meeting a woman who approached me yesterday in the same way. She is a law student here at Xinjiang University and wants to go to dinner with me. Score another meal. It's my treat for anyone who wants to come eat with me, since they're doing me such a huge favor. I can't afford to become the Incredible Shrinking Woman in my last two weeks here. And it's far nicer than eating alone anyway.

On the short walk from the university gate to the hotel, I encountered a woman carrying a basket of flowers that was half her height and a third of her weight. Poor thing. She was taking 10 steps and stopping, again and again. So I felt sorry for her and decided to take the handle of the basket to share the weight and get her where she was going. Little did I realize that was going to be clear to the *other* side of campus. At least a half mile walk. I didn't mind, and I'm glad I did. She'd probably be struggling with that basket until tomorrow morning at the rate she was going. But she kept trying to talk to me in Chinese. Not much point to that. I just kept smiling and trudging on with her gianormous floral arrangement, chuckling to myself at all of the strange looks we were getting.

Identity Crisis

The student I came with left yesterday for another collection in southern Xinjiang, so I'm more or less on my own now. I'm still working in the lab here, and I have a little duckling troop of assistants for anything that I need, but for all intents and purposes I'm alone. This is good and bad. Good because the peace and independence is kind of nice. Bad because now I have to feed myself and find ways of accomplishing what needs to be done. First for feeding myself. I do okay for the most part. I can't read Chinese or Ughyur, so menus are a bit challenging since English is a rarity, but I'm easily able to convince some of the students to join me on occasion. I've gotten a couple of instant noodle bowls from the quickie mart across the street just in case I find myself in a bind. And otherwise I'm planning to just go places on my own and point at what other people are having. No big deal. Eating alone sucks though. I think this is why I like street food so much. I love to be able to get something on a stick that is mobile so that I can give myself sustenance while wandering about and not have to sit sadly at a restaurant table in a foreign country by myself. But I will do what needs to be done. The cool thing is that I do know of a foreigner-owned bar/restaurant in town that I've been to a couple of times. That's going to be nice every once in awhile. I met the owners when I was in kashgar last year, and they're cool guys. The food is okay - not great but at least I can read the menu. And they have a full bar which rocks. A full bar including a very well stocked top shelf of scotches. And considering the currency value difference between here and home, I think I may have to make my way through that shelf over the coming weeks. It's a good opportunity to try to new scotches without going completely broke.

So that's all okay, but somehow obtaining money this morning was a colossal pain in the butt. I needed to pay the driver who brought me animals this morning, and my student was supposed to leave me with funds before he took off. He forgot but then told me that I should just use my own money. Fine except that I hadn't yet withdrawn any of my own money because his funds were covering everything, and I only had about $30 in cash. So Mr Ma, the driver dude, took me to the bank this morning. Two hours later, I finally have funds. I was nervous about it being a problem because I wasn't able to withdraw from the Bank of China ATM when I first got here. I emailed my bank, and they said I had input something wrong. So this morning I tried again. FAIL. Ok, no big deal. I knew the money was there and my account is fine, so we took a number, and I went to the cashier window to have them withdraw the funds. I hand over my bank card and my passport. She looks at the back of the card and my passport signature and says "The signature is not the same." The signature stripe on my card says "see id". Something I've been happy with up until now because at home it makes people ask for my license more often. She also seemed okay with this until she looked at the name in my passport and said "This name on your card is not your name." Crap. HUGE problem in China - they don't get the concept of a middle name. My bank card says "Kimberly L Cooper", and my passport says "Kimberly Lynn Cooper". I showed her that the signature in my passport says "Kimberly L Cooper", and the photo is clearly me, but she just kept saying "no no no, it's not the same." I almost didn't get on a flight in China last year because my ticket said "Kimberly Cooper" instead of "Kimberly Lynn Cooper." So I asked to speak with the manager. Same thing. "This is not the same, you can't use it." He said I have to call my bank and get a new card with the correct name. Okay, yeah, let me get right on that. So I kind of lost it a little bit. I managed to keep my temper in check, but not my tear ducts. Something about being soooo tired and ready to be home and then having someone question my identity was just too much to bear. I just wanted money. I didn't want to explain the American tradition of middle names and initials, and it wasn't doing any good anyway. I just wanted money.

Two banks later we finally found an ATM that took my card in exchange for cold hard cash, so all is well. No one needs to panic that I'm destitute in the streets. I'm glad I was with Mr. Ma though. He was our driver last year and is a very nice young guy who speaks quite good English. All very good because he and I were able to communicate to get this done, and he knows me well enough to not freak out when I sort of lost my composure.

Surviving transit

Riding in a car in China is a bit like being helplessly trapped in a rocket playing a game of “chicken” with oncoming traffic on a narrow winding road with bicycles, children, and old people on either side and with the occasional herd of sheep thrown in just for fun. There’s also the bonus that I almost always get the front seat, since I’m considered an honored guest, so I get to be up close and personal with the visions of my life flashing before my eyes. The roads are potholed and bumpy, so often cars traveling in oncoming directions will swerve partially into each other’s path to avoid the same obstacle or to pass another car, and there’s a constant sound of horns warning those slower and more vulnerable to stay the hell out of the way. Add to that the joy of flying in a beat up old car with a whining engine, a seat that isn’t firmly bolted into place so that you can feel your whole body shift with every swerve, and a seatbelt that’s really just for show. For real – I’m shocked by the number of cars with non-functioning seatbelts. And if it does work, and you decide to be conscientious and latch it into place, you often get a hurt “What? You don’t trust me?” look from the driver. Though on occasion when we pass a police officer, the driver will reach over and drape the shoulder harness over himself in a mock attempt to look like he’s wearing it. As if it takes so much extra effort to complete the action. However, by some miracle I cannot recall ever seeing an auto accident here.

From the rural roads to the highway it gets no better. Three lanes of traffic all going in the same direction may, for the most part, solve the problem of oncoming vehicles, but then a new problem arises in that the lane markers are really just “suggestions”. Much like stop lights and crosswalks. Purely optional. In heavy traffic, three lanes can be considered four or five as drivers half merge in and out and between looking for an opportunity to get ahead of everyone around them. Turn signals are meaningless since so many cars are using their hazards and hence have flashing lights that aren’t so useful for warning against sudden lane changes. Or they turned their turn signal on five miles back and forgot about it. Or they just can’t be bothered. And why was there traffic to start with? Because a buswas stopped on the side of the road for a leg stretch, and everyone driving past had to rubberneck to see what was going on. Meanwhile it seems that I was the only one who even blinked at the truly shocking sight of the ride. We pulled up alongside a truck traveling at a slightly slower speed, and I glanced over to look. Sheep. Cool, some guy heading to market with his sheep. Then I realized that the operative word here is “head”. No, not a truck full of sheep. A truck full of sheep heads. Decapitated crania of ovines. Just the heads. More than two hundred of them all piled in on top of each other with no tarp or cover and open to all manner of insects and the hot midday sun. I do not want to know where they were going or what purpose they will serve. But that is a sight that will take a long time to purge from my memory.

Happy Loyalty Day

Today was Labor Day in a significant portion of the world. Yes, I know Labor Day in the US is the first Monday of September. Apparently in the US, as I just learned, May first is “Loyalty Day”. As per Wikipedia: “The holiday was first observed in 1921 as "Americanization Day,” and was intended to counterbalance the celebration of Labour Day on May Day (May 1), an internationally celebrated holiday which was perceived as communist.” Hmmm, Red Scare, anyone? But for us here, Labor Day was yesterday. Xiao Lin, the graduate student from our colleague’s lab who has been assisting us, invited us to her family’s home in Changji which is about 2 hours away just on the other side of Urumqi. So we caught a cab to nearby Fukang where we were met by her uncle who drove us the rest of the way to her parents’ house. I can only describe the visit as one of those never ending meals where your hosts are not satisfied they’ve fed you enough until you’re so full than an emesis is near. We started with a huge spread of two types of chicken, fish, and several dishes of vegetables. I’m a little suspicious of the chicken. If I’m correct, then it was an incredibly sweet gesture. A couple of weeks ago I was missing Darren’s fried chicken and started to wax poetic about the recipe and the texture and flavors of his masterpiece. For anyone who hasn’t had the opportunity to try it, you’re missing out. Melt in your mouth juicy goodness in a crispy shell. Mmmm. So after that conversation, I think Xiao Lin may have said something to her mother because what we had was not quite fried chicken but could be seen as an attempt. It was dredged in flour and loads of yummy spices but not quite fried golden. The reason I’m suspicious is that it’s the one dish they kept pushing my way with glee. It was super tasty.

Then for dinner was home made Xinjiang noodles. I got a chance to watch them being made which was fun. Though I was told there wasn’t enough time to properly teach me. I’m sure that’s true. It looked pretty intricate and like one of those things for which there is no recipe. You learn from your mother who learned from her mother and etcetera up the matrilineage. The dough is rolled out into a long snake, then pulled thinner, then stretched to the final noodle thickness. Then they’re boiled quickly and come out soft and slightly chewy. They go perfectly with whatever vegetable or meat dish is served to accompany drizzled with a touch of vinegar. Yum.

The day had a somber tone though. I had one of those conversations that sometimes happens when you’re an American traveling in a developing country. Xiao Lin’s aunt has breast cancer, and her family saw me as a beacon of hope. It broke my heart to tell them that I don’t know that there is anything I can do. They started by asking if I can buy medicine in the States to send back to them. They said it’s not an issue of money, but they think there must be better treatments in the US. I tried to explain that I can’t just go buy cancer drugs and put them in the mail. Someone in the US would have to see her, and she’d have to be under a doctor’s care there for weeks if not months. After talking to them more, it sounds like her cancer is metastatic already, and her doctors are putting her on a regimen of chemo and radiation. She’s seen another doctor in Beijing who told her that her doctor here is doing exactly what they would do there, but she thinks that Harvard must have advanced technologies that I would know about. She’s worried about the treatment making her really sick and about losing all of her hair. I tried to explain that people in the US with advanced stages of breast cancer also go on really nasty drugs that make you sick and lose your hair. I’m not an MD, so I couldn’t advise with any sort of medical knowledge, but I told them I would at least try to see what I could find out about the best doctors in China – perhaps someone trained in the US. The gentle pleading look in her husband’s eyes when she wasn’t there to see is what dug into my heart. If anyone knows anything that could help, please let me know. I feel the need to try to do at least something.