I was so hungry...

I ate a horse. Seriously. I ate horse meat tonight. I wouldn't have ordered it, and I don't feel so good about myself for doing it, but I believe in adapting and respecting a culture which includes eating pretty much anything (that's not obviously unsafe) that's put in front of me (with the exception of bugs). I had been invited to join another banquet in honor of an English couple and their son who are visiting to studying some of the chinese herbal plants. We went to a big multistory fancy "Uyghur" restaurant that's more in the Chinese style with Uyghur influence. The first restaurant I've been to here with security guards out front and a bag check before you walk in the front door. We were taken up an elevator to the third floor and ushered to a small banquet room where each seat had a hotpot burner with broth and the waitstaff passed out aprons.  What a scene. My good friend "Alice" (her English name) was instructed by the host to order, so a whole bunch plates of raw meat and vegetables came out onto the table. She seemed to take great pleasure in ordering some of the most expensive things on the menu knowing the host (a retired scientist and regional party official) wouldn't refuse. The meat and vegetables get dunked into the pot of boiling spicy broth until they're cooked and then fished out and eaten.  A small plate of what looked like sliced salami rolled around in front of me, and Alice gave a sly smile and said "horse". Really. Horse. So I took a piece to try it - in part so I can now say I've eaten horse.  It was already cooked - dry roasted and lightly smoked and tasted different from any other kind of meat I've had. Interesting.

Other than that I've just been spending my weekend in Urumqi arranging things to return to Fukang on Monday and dive into the dissections. I had to make a few solutions, so now all of that is done.  I needed to find a freezer and fortunately a professor here decided to buy a new small chest deep freeze for the lab and loan it to me first for a few weeks.  So we spent 2 hours yesterday and another 4 hours today running about between three different stores trying to find a freezer in stock that would be easy to get paid for by government money. As we were leaving the institute this morning, a throng of about 200 middle school students carrying pails of water rushed passed us led by kids holding red flags. I asked what in the world was going on, and my friends said it's international environment day. I thought they meant earth day, but that's not for a few more weeks.  I have no idea what was the holiday, but I saw so many ordinary people (not city workers) out cleaning things - street lamps, fences, bus stops. There was a whole line of about a dozen people with rags squatted down busy wiping the black grime off of a fence that runs between the street and sidewalk. All in business suits.  Common attire here.  Years ago I once saw a guy laying paving stones wearing a business suit and dress shoes.

And the first part of this week is the festival for the ancestors, so there are carts all over the city selling fake paper money, incense, plastic fruit, and small plastic trees.  The custom is to visit the cemeteries and give these offerings (burning the money) in honor of the ancestors. And since Monday and Tuesday are a holiday, everyone has had to work saturday and sunday to make up for the time. Fascinating...

Exhausted but satisfied

The breakfast bell rang early this morning, so I've only just gotten my shower this evening which is a good thing since I was filthy and covered in sand. We headed back to the spot where we set traps last night, and lo and behold I think we only lost one.  And I could be wrong on that.  I'm guessing because the spacing at one point was longer than it should have been, but I haven't yet counted.  It's too bad I have no interest in those stinking gerbils! Out of the 50 traps we placed yesterday, 12 had a gerbil in them but not a single jerboa. Some of that could have to do with the fact that we set them early in the day, and gerbils are diurnal.  So it's hard for a jerboa to land itself in an already occupied trap.  But regardless, fail. We did, however, see good jerboa tracks this time since the sand was dry.  They're pretty easy to tell since they are in pairs spaced about 10 inches between strides. The gerbils make scurrying tracks, so they're quite distinguishable from each other.  So the animals are out and now to catch them!

After collecting the traps, we drove up to the forestry station we'd been sent to where we thought the people were located who collected for me in the past. The driver didn't think the station was the right one when we passed it the first time, so he kept driving another 20 minutes or so until about 2 dozen pump jacks appeared on the horizon. Oil country.  The road was blocked off by a security station, and I muttered to one of my companions "this is not good for me" thinking they'd stop and check the car, but they just raised the arm and let us right through!  Super bad news. I recently heard a story (and my colleagues knew of the same) where an American was fined $4,000 for illegally obtaining GPS coordinates in Xinjiang. Military and oil field/refinery sites are particularly sensitive here.  And I'm not sure if my companions have a GPS in the car, but I hope not.  I could get in some trouble for having one "in my possession" even if it's not in *my* possession. So after I said "I can't be here", the driver chuckled a little but then agreed and whipped the car around to exit as quickly as we'd entered.

We headed back to the forestry station we'd passed after realizing that was probably the place we were looking for and waited and waited but no one showed up.  Turns out they had a kid turn sick and went to Fukang city for the day.  So we made our way back to the field station to wait for some phone calls to be returned and in the meantime got hooked up with the man I will call "The Fixer".  I remember him from before.  He's good at arranging things.  And he remembered me and the people we were talking about.  However it wasn't the family we had gone to visit today - it was another Kazakh family off along a different road.  So we loaded The Fixer into the car with us and went off to meet with the right family who did turn out to be the folks we've hired before.  A small leathery old man with green eyes and wearing a flat cap took us into a room to sit down for negotiations on the rug covered platform that doubles as the family bed. We came to an agreement for a set price per female jerboa they catch and bring to us for the hour drive to the field station.  Not a bad deal.  All were pleased, we provided them with nets and great headlamps, and we will see the outcome in a couple of days.

Wildlife abounds, but jerboas?

If you want to see what life is like without the EPA, come to a large city in northern China in the winter. There was still some snow on the ground when I arrived since they'd just had a heavy fall a few days previous, but by now what is left of the snow is indistinguishable from the road since everything is black.  It was raining yesterday, and the black on everything is so thick that it's difficult to tell if that's how the water falls from the sky.  And all along the sides of the road lies the detritus of lost items and litter that lay buried for the last few months. I know there is always some stuff left behind after the snows in Boston, but this is different.  It's like the piled high snow bank is just replaced with a smaller but no less impressive trash bank. It's a sight to behold.

But we are now up to clean air and brown brown brown as far as the eye can see.  Spring has not yet sprung here, and while it's not so cold anymore, it's clearly still on the crest of warming up. We arrived at Fukang in the late afternoon and were greeted by the woman who has run this place for as many years as I know.  She's not the director but rather the caretaker - dorm mom and keeper of the keys.  She remembered me from before and seemed overjoyed that I was back. But I am apparently too skinny.  This is common in China - the topic of weight is never off limits, and I have had people let me know if they think I have gained or lost weight. Then she went on telling my companions about how she and I have always been able to talk to each other even though we don't speak a word of the other's language.  She's so vocal and expressive, and I've always been able to tell from her gestures and the tone of her voice exactly what she was trying to tell me - whether we were fixing my toilet or finding a way for me to do laundry. And I know quickly if she's happy or annoyed. So it's good to see her again.

And the cook is the same.  He was busy tossing a mound of food in a giant wok set over a blazing propane fire when I walked in for dinner, so I just stood behind watching the food and sweat fly.  The caretaker walked in behind him and must have asked if he saw who was back, because he turned around with a look of utter shock on his face and said "You!" in English. He couldn't seem to get over staring at me (and also saying I'm thinner) and invited me to sit next to him among some of the other students at dinner.  His English isn't very good, but he tries really hard.  I asked about his cat. "Mou?" I asked, because he had a new kitten the last time I was here. "Died" was his blunt answer.  Poor kitty.

This morning after a breakfast of fermented tofu on steamed buns, rice and boiled peanut soup, spicy strands of seaweed, and a plate of mixed onion, peppers, and tomato in vinegar, we headed off in the jeep in search of the right kind of desert for jerboas.  I knew one of the places where we'd trapped animals with snap traps before, so we went up the highway to some of those dunes and walked around for a bit looking for tracks.  It rained last night, so where we could see tracks they were too dampened down by the rain to tell if they were jerboa or gerbil.  There are a lot of gerbils around here.  Nasty critters.  So we decided to go back to the jeep and loaded up with 50 traps, peanut butter, and a bag of oats to walk along a trail and set live traps for the night. Every 20 steps I scooped some bait into the trap with a stick and set it, and at every 5th trap we placed a flag to mark the line so they wouldn't get lost.  I hope they don't get trampled by goats or stolen by herders since those are borrowed and will be expensive to replace.  But fingers crossed we have more than gerbils by morning.  The driver said there was no reason to mark where we started since he's sure to remember.  I took note of the surroundings just in case.  Road marker 535 between the radio tower and the big blue sign - past the third herd of camels on the left. Love camels.

On the way back to the field station, we stopped by a yurt on the side of the road to see if we could persuade people to do some catching for us tonight.  It was an older Kazakh couple who were crouched over a goat in a pen as we walked up.  They must have thought we were an obnoxious group of tourists since while I was just pleasantly smiling and doing my best to put them at ease, my colleagues were eagerly snapping photographs. It was something to see though - the woman was in a red/orange/pink brocade jacket with coordinating scarf over her head, and she and her husband where holding a goat down on the ground so her two newborn kids could nurse.  The poor little things couldn't have been more than a day old and still had recently dried bits of afterbirth attached to their fur and incompletely resolved umbilical cords.  One was stronger than the other and kept pushing his sibling away.  Neither could get firmly up on all four feet and kept stumbling forward on their ankles before toppling flat on the ground.  I hope they make it but they seem so vulnerable and stand only maybe 10 inches from the ground. It's a tough life out here. 

We asked about jerboas in the area, and the woman said she thought she knew what we were talking about and had a dead one.  She led us over near the remains of a fire where it seems the animal had been attracted to the light and was killed.  Gerbil. Stupid stupid gerbil.  So we thanked her and drove on to the local forestry station since I knew we had hired a family to catch for us before who work at one of the forestry stations.  The men at this station knew the animals, said yes we are in the right place, they are further into the desert, and there is a family at the field station further away who we should talk to.  I have a good feeling these are the people we hired before, and we are headed there tomorrow to investigate and negotiate. Fingers crossed...

Grassroots Diplomacy

Today was extraordinarily educational.  It started with a long meeting with a professor at the Academy who has spent his whole career studying the mammals of Xinjiang - including an extensive study of more that 70 species of rodents about 20 years ago.  He knows the jerboa habitats and how to catch them, so tomorrow I am going to buy a 200 meter long, 2 meter wide net to stretch across the desert and catch jerboas that get tangled as they're hopping across in search of food.  Apparently if you go in the early morning before they get a chance to chew their way out,  you can pluck them off the net unharmed and alive.  We will see how well this works, but I am of the opinion that just about anything is worth a try.  He seemed thrilled to teach me all he knows and wants to take me deep into the Taklamakan (one of the largest deserts) in search of more jerboas.  Unfortunately that's about a 2 day drive and not suitable for my current itinerary, but image search Taklamakan to see why that would be pretty freaking awesome.

The rest of the evening was spent in fascinating conversation with a dear friend of mine from years past.  I told him that I was back in Urumqi, and we were planning to see each other, but I happened to run into him on the sidewalk yesterday just by chance.  It's been three years, so he looks older and has  suddenly turned from a fresh faced young college student to a young man. I recognized him but didn't want to make the assumption in case it was just someone who looked very similar, so I smiled big, and his face burst into shock and disbelief followed by a bright grin.  There are two different cultural reasons why the Chinese and Uygurs don't hug.  The Chinese have more personal space in individual interactions (though not in a crowd) and exhibit less physical affection.  The Uygur women who are my close friends will hug me and hold my hand.  But Uygur men of strict religious faith won't even touch a woman who is not a wife or relative.  My friend isn't that strict, but I know better than to throw my arms around him in a big bear hug, even though I think I could tell he sort of wanted to do the same.  Instead we approached each other with one palm out face forward to intertwine our fingers and clasped each others' hand in a way that was like the best hug I could have gotten.  It's so good to see him.

We took a long walk yesterday but spent most of the time just catching up on the civilities of the last 3 years.  What each of us has been up to professionally and future plans.  Today we met up again and went to dinner where we spent at least 2 hours lost in conversation like old times.  I have had the best conversations with him about cross-cultural comparisons, and we joked today that it's like we are cultural ambassadors for each of our groups. He told me some pretty amazing things that he's been taught in his community lately.  That the Free Masons have met as a secret society in the UK to discuss the problem of overpopulation and what to do about it - distribute poisoned medication as charity in developing countries to kill off large numbers of poor people.  So some people here will no longer take medicines that are made overseas.  He knew that Lady Gaga had worn a meat dress, and his imam said this is considered normal in the West and is an example of why young people here shouldn't have access to the internet. And that the US military was somehow responsible for the earthquake in Sichuan. He seemed to be telling me all of this as if he hoped I would refute it all but he didn't quite know what to believe.  I reassured him that this is me.  I am American.  This is American.  Not these propaganda stories he's been hearing.  But it goes a long way to explain the mistrust and downright hatred towards us in this part of the world.

But I also explained to him that it goes both ways and that I am doing my best to do the same for him and his culture that I hope he is doing for me and mine.  That there are a lot of Americans who think all Muslims are violent extremists.  That most Americans have never met anyone who follows Islam and don't understand that it's a different culture, but we are all the same at the core.  We had a really long and fascinating conversation about comparative religion and the steps from Judaism to Christianity to Islam and how similar it is to the story of the Tower of Babel - a story that is common to all of our religions because we start from the same book. And I learned a lot about the Islamic belief of conversion and redemption and how they see religion as a choice of free will. And we talked about how faith is not the problem, and at the core each of the religions is really not so different.  But just as some Christians choose to believe the parts of their faith that support their personal ideology and thus have started many of the world's most brutal wars, many Muslims now do the same.  People are the problem.  Lack of education and mutual understanding is the problem. Every time I come here, I have some of the most insightful and educated conversations with him, and it's always a delight.

Other than that being the same, a lot of the neighborhood where I have lived before is different.  I will refrain from writing more while I am here, but suffice to say there is a lot of new development.  A lot.  The people are still the same.  The culture is still the same.  The context is different.  And it's interesting.  Makes me wish I'd taken more pictures.

Bed for now and off to the desert tomorrow...

Forbid nippingcurved and roll over and close to the heat source

Instructions on the back of my hotel room card.  Apparently in Chinese it says "Do not bend the card or place it close to a heat source".

The last couple of days were eventful. Friday morning I was met at my hotel and escorted to the main building of the CAS to give a seminar on my research.  It went really well.  I had a lot of interest and some pretty good questions all around.  Most were interested in how to catch and how to raise the animals.  There is a lab here that is interested in studying hibernation in the jerboas, so I'll be doing my best to advise.  That same lab is also doing genetic barcoding of a variety of species in Xinjiang, including the rodents, so it looks like I have extra company for at least part of the field collections.  Fantastic for me.  I could use as much help as people are willing to offer.

After a tour of the lab spaces, including a room with five small areal surveillance aircraft and another room with a nice new fancy scanning electron microscope, I headed back to my room to rest for a bit before the scheduled tour of the natural history museum. They have a fantastic museum here, a really wonderful educational resource. The animal rooms have mounts of many of the species that are native to Xinjiang, and they were incredibly well prepared.  The feathers and fur are in excellent condition with really good eyes and mounted in postures that make them look ready to leap right off their perch and out the door. More importantly, they have about a half dozen jerboas that are all in accurate postures.  This is in stark contrast to all of the mounts I've seen in the US and in London that are contorted and weirdly posed in ways you just really don't ever see of a live jerboa.  So I guess it does make a big difference for the preparator to actually see the animal their stuffing while it's still alive.

After the tour I was whisked away in a black towncar to a restaurant on an upper floor of a highrise building and down the hall to a private dining room.  Ahhhh, the Chinese banquet.  They lulled me into a false sense of comfort with their low key first evening when in fact I was not getting off easy. I know enough by now to linger about the edge of the table while everyone fusses and argues over the seating arrangement.  I sit where I'm told to sit, when I'm told to sit.  The custom is that the seat furthest from and facing the door is reserved for the host.  The seats to the right and left are seats of honor.  And then it goes around the table from there.  I was second to the right of the host.  Not bad.  The other, more important seats were reserved for directors of the Xinjiang Normal University. Chinese banquets are lavish affairs with about twenty times more food on the table than the guests could or will ever consume.  There is a lazy susan at the center of the table, and you just grab whatever looks appealing as it glides by.  Fortunately, I am happy to just eat whatever lands in front of me without asking what it is.  One of the first things I picked up was what I thought was some kind of mushroom.  The taste and texture was not inconsistent with that inoffensive thought...and then the professor to my right leaned in to tell me I'd just eaten chicken stomach.  Delightful.  But you really never know what you're going to get, so it's best to keep an open mind.

And while I didn't get the highest seat of honor, I did get the fish.  The last dish to hit the table is the whole fish.  And the lazy susan gets turned about until the head is pointing straight at the guest of honor. The person who gets the head gets to take the first bite of the fish.  I asked to be sure that didn't mean I had to actually eat the head.  But what they failed to tell me until later is that if the honored guest takes a full drink of baiju (I'll get to that later), he or she can then order the others at the table to take certain parts of the fish - the eyeballs, lower jaw, dorsal fin.  Each has some specific symbolism that I can't remember because by that point I'd had too much baiju.

Ah, the baiju.  Chinese for rotgut white lightening. 65% alcohol served in tiny little eyewash glasses.  The glasses are deceitful and make you think you aren't drinking as much as you are.  This is also the first time I was introduced to the culture of the three toasts. At past banquets, the host gives a speech and everyone drinks. Then another important person will speak, and everyone drinks. Then the guest gives a speech, and well, you get the picture.  This time there were those same kinds of speeches, but the host gives three speeches that can be interspersed with other speeches, but they are all group speeches.  Once the host gives the third speech, then the party can move on to the one on one more casual toasts.  The foreigner is always the target in curiosity - how much can you drink? And it's very critical to doing business in China.  I heard this time that there is a written law in Beijing that says no business can be conducted without baiju.  I think the top politicians in this country must have liver disease by now.  It's a way of showing your strength, your happiness, your honor.  I managed to show remarkable strength and made a good impression on my hosts without spilling my "honor" in front of anyone. Business has officially begun.

But that made yesterday kind of sort of suck. I crawled out of bed at 10:30 only long enough to get breakfast before they closed and then crawl back into bed until 1 pm. Then I managed to hook up with Sarah and her boyfriend Charles to go to the Texas Cafe for a real hobbit style "second breakfast" of honest to goodness authentic biscuits and gravy.  That helped quite a bit. Later in the afternoon, I disappeared off with Xu Feng to do some shopping for the fieldwork, and we ended up in the most awesome market area ever. We wandered through the lumber yard, past the flower market, and into the pet area to see turtles, salamanders, tons of fish, some frogs, loads of birds, puppies, kittens, and the very very unfortunate cages that barely contained rather large dogs.  We were searching for large fishing landing nets to catch the jerboas and found them in this spectacular multistory megamall that was all fish stuff.  Store after store after store of fish, aquariums, and aquarium supplies.  I still do not understand the Asian phenomena of shopping areas where every business sells the exact same thing. But it was a wonderous thing wandering three floors of expensive aquariums wondering who in this area could possibly afford this, but as I've learned there are apparently a lot of folks in this region with a bucket ton of $$$.

And then it was off to the Fubar! I first discovered the Fubar 4 years ago and have since become good friends with one of the owners.  Read back to the end of my last time in China to see why Hiro is my hero - he got my food poisoned and dehydrated self into the "best" hospital in Urumqi.  So it was good to see him and to see the old bar and do some people watching for the night.  Again, more changes have come in the years since I've been gone.  Affluence.  Unbelievable affluence. This used to be a backpacker bar.  It still has its share of foreign travelers and expats, but it's gotten too expensive to be a watering hole for the vagrant westerners.  Instead it's full of large groups of multinationals from around this region - lots of rich Russians in particular.  As well as upper class Uygurs and Chinese. And there's an attitude that pervades - an attitude of snobbishness that says "I'm better than all the rest of you, and more importantly I can *buy* you".  Hiro tells me he had to start putting a price to "buy" a table (minimum order) because fights were breaking out when the occasional rich Russian would come in and demand people who weren't spending the kind of money he was willing to spend should vacate their table for him.  Perhaps not the way I would have handled it.

So last night ended at 3 am, I'm completely beat after two nights out on the town, and perfectly happy to turn in early and quietly. More planning and preparing tomorrow, and we should be leaving for the field station on Tuesday. Off to the peace and quiet of the desert.

Happy Dance

I know maybe I will jinx myself by getting too excited too early, but so far this visit is going exceedingly well. I was met at the airport in Urumqi by the young assistant professor (more like a postdoc by the American system) who will accompany me to the field station and assist with the work.  He's kind and quiet with really good English. I think he'll be an excellent companion.  After getting me checked into the hotel and a nice rest for a bit, he met me again to take me to dinner with the two older professors who have been helping to arrange all of this planning.  Read back to previous entries to understand my past experience, and you'll know why I was expecting a private smoke filled room with a giant round table of excessive amounts of food and people in suits who speak little English.  I was stunned to walk into a nice recently renovated restaurant where I was led to a small table to join the two professors and an American woman working at their institute.  Everyone was casually dressed (and me in my suit), and they were light hearted and fun sharing travel stories and jokes about the difficulties of learning new languages.  The American, Sara, is working at the Institute as a manuscript editor so that she can improve her already very good Chinese. After a really fun meal, where I applied my previous knowledge of how it is impolite to discuss work over the first dinner party, Sara and I went to the local KFC for milk tea and shared stories about our experiences living and working in this strange land. She's great fun and enthusiastic, and I think I have her interested enough to overcome her fear of camel ticks and perhaps join us at the field station.  I am going to pitch the idea to our colleagues of how useful it would be for her to learn more about the process of science and to develop a relationship with me and Xu Feng while we work in the desert so that perhaps she can help in the future with establishing international research connections and helping to write international funding applications from the Chinese side.  Plus it would just be good to have another set of hands to help set traps and catch rodents. And more good company for me.

This morning I gave a seminar at the Chinese Academy on the work that I'm doing and included some ideas for collaborative projects that we could work on together.  I think I generated a lot of interest and got a ton of questions at the end.  Several people here are studying biodiversity and cataloging the wildlife that is found in Xinjiang, so they are interested in perhaps sampling some of the species with me.  I think this could turn into a much bigger project than just what I am planning for myself, which would be really great for them and great for me to generate even more enthusiasm and offers of assistance. I'm just overjoyed by how helpful everyone has been already and look forward to getting out into the desert and getting busy.

It's been an eventful 36 hours since I started this post, but since it's 3 am here and I'm exhausted, I'm turning in and will update again soon.  Suffice it to say all continues to go well, and I'm having an excellent time.

Nihao from Shanghai

First, 14 hours is longer than any person should ever have to be trapped in barely more than their own immediate personal space in a semi-upright posture when you really really really want to sleep.  But I made it and managed to sleep just enough in transit to not be completely wrecked on arrival. Now that I'm showered and refreshed, I'm looking forward to a good night of solid horizontal sleep.

It's been three years since I was last in China, and while I've only been to Shanghai once for a couple of days, I can already feel that China is (to borrow my favorite Thai phrase) "same same, but different." I can't pin it just yet, but it does seem to be the effects of the lurching economic boom.  So many of the cars leaving the airport were Audis, VWs, and big Buick SUVs. It's still the same place - dirt and soot tainted buildings, ladies on rickety wooden chairs selling phone cards, street vendors grilling all things on sticks and littering the gutters with the skins of pineapples.  But there's an air all about that things are happening here.  For one, the corner grocery store I'd been to before is now a Walmart...

Me and my three enormous pieces of luggage toting live animal traps are checked into a hotel with my friend Zhe near the campus of East China Normal University.  I finally got an answer for what the "Normal" means.  Seems so weird to a native English speaker that "Normal" would be chosen as part of a University's name. What's considered an "Abnormal" university?  Apparently it means that it's a teaching college.  Still not sure exactly where the "Normal" arises out of "teaching college", but I'm satisfied enough with that answer.

We went to dinner with Zhe's advisor here who is an outrageously outgoing with a huge personality.  He hugs me whenever he sees me.  That's the first and biggest thing that makes him stand out.  He's traveled extensively and says he has to get out of China every couple of years.  I can completely identify with that, however I can't even wait two years between trips. So he's seen a lot of the world and explained to me last time I was here that he hugs me because "Americans like to hug". He's extremely, and rightfully, proud of his lab.  He has a magnetic board with all of the lab publications, and across the top of each in red marker he's written "I.F.=" and a number indicating the impact factor of the journal.  He was a little bit distressed that some of his best papers are missing, but that's apparently because there are 8 new fresh faced prospective masters students who are on the Chinese university equivalent of "Survivor." I guess they're brushing up on what the lab does and trying to out compete each other to make a good impression since only 5 can stay. He had them all come over and introduce themselves to me so that I could assess their English and tell him who he should take.  They were all so cute and enthusiastic and impressed on me how much they REALLY REALLY want to be chosen for "Mr. Zhang's" lab. As if they thought my opinion could make or break their future. I couldn't give an opinion and crush any single one of them, so when Shuyi went one by one asking of a few "what do you think of this one? and this one?" I just kept saying "very good". So he pointed at himself and said "What about me?" to which I responded with a half cocked brow, "Ehhhhh..." and he burst into laughter and hugged me again.  I think we get each other.

But truthfully, his surged to near the top of my favorite labs when I had the sudden realization looking at his publication wall of fame that *THIS* is the lab that published the bat fellatio paper last year!!  I told him I thought that was cool because it got so many people in the general public interested in the oddness of it, and he told me they got an IgNobel prize for that work. Also hilarious. 

One more day in Shanghai, and I travel onward to Urumqi on Thursday. Incidentally, I forgot that blogspot was also banned in China in 2009, and it apparently hasn't come back online. As such I'm posting this via an email submission so if anyone gets a chance to let me know if this posts okay, I'd greatly appreciate it.

London and Spain

Monday morning initiated phase 3 of the trip - London! I'd decided to stop off in London on the return home so I could make a side trip to Santander to visit friends and colleagues as long ago promised. In a passing conversation, I'd once told Paul that I hated London, so he was determined, in a day, to change my impression of one of his favorite cities. I'll have to say that he succeeded. My last trip to London was a whirlwind in not great weather chasing two very dear but very tall and fast moving friends through the city. This time was far more leisurely. And it was actually sunny! We started off the morning with a breakfast picnic in Hyde Park and continued on to the Natural History Museum. He had gotten tickets of a special exhibition of wildlife photography that was fabulous. It is an annual competition with a dozen or so different categories, and the photos are stunning. Plus the presentation is really nicely done such that the room is dimly lit, and the photos are strikingly backlit so the colors pop and everything is sharp. That also makes them really easy to photograph, so I got some nice images of my favorite ones. The winner of the whole exhibition was a great shot of leafcutter ants captured from through the leaf so you see just the silhouettes of the ants with a few peeking through a hole they've removed from the leaf - their little hairs glowing from the light behind the leaf. Simple and gorgeous. After the exhibit, we made a pass through a few of the permanent exhibits to satisfy my geek needs and saw the taxidermied jerboa they have in the mammals collection. I have yet to see a jerboa mounted in true posture, and this was the worst of them all. I may have to write a letter of complaint :)

On from the museum, we caught the tube to Westminster and walked across the river to the Thames river walk. There weren't as many mimes and street performers this time as when I was there last, and we apparently missed the Mime Convention by about 6 weeks. Disappointing. But the river was lovely, and it was a splendid walk with a stop for meat pies - mine was steak in a red wine gravy with just a hint of Stilton. Mmmm, good food. Yes, I know I write a lot about food, because that's one of the greatest things in life, and dinner was no exception! After a stop for pints of English ale in a truly authentic pub, we made our way to an amazing north African restaurant that is a favorite old haunt of Paul's. With good reason. The atmosphere was beautifully decorated and cozy, and the staff were lively and fun with great North African/Middle Eastern music playing in the background. Suddenly, in the middle of dinner, the lights went down and the music went up, and the whole staff were dancing joyously between the tables. Turns out it was someone's birthday. And they took their sweet time celebrating. After a couple of warm up songs, a cake with candles made its way to one of the tables, and the strikingly beautiful hostess pulled a lucky man from his seat for a quick dance before returning him to his dinner companions. Great fun. And the meal ranked up there as one of the very best ever - starters of chicken livers with smooth hummous, pomegranate seeds a walnuts, delicately fried little triangles of cheese wrapped up in pastry with an apricot paste, and my favorite was the savory pidgeon pastry gently dusted with cinnamon and powdered sugar over slices of fresh tomato and orange. Followed by the best lamb tagine ever that fell away in heavenly tenderness. I'm now inspired to perfect my culinary skills with that dish.

Following in the food pilgrimage, I made my way solo from London onward to Spain where I was picked up at the airport and whisked away to yet another fantastic dinner. Croquettes! I'd forgotten how lovely are the Spanish croquettes. And chorizo, jamon, and cecina. A heavenly trio of meats. On Thursday, Marian, Federica, and I drove up into the Picos de Europa for a stroll through some of a old farm villages with the white peaked mountains looming over. Lunch was the long awaited cocido. It's a stew made with chickpea and cabbage that has about 6 different kinds of meat including hunks of pork, fat, chorizo, and morcilla (blood sausage) that was sooooo yummy. And coma inducing for the long drive back down the mountains to Santander - fortunately I was not driving, and the narrow windy road with nets to stop the falling rocks was enough to keep Federica white knuckled and awake. Friday things had to turn away from food and fun and back to work as I visited the lab and gave a talk for the institute. It was in part to bookend a great collaboration that will soon result in what we hope to be a really nice publication - with more work to be done on future potential projects, I think my stomach and I will have to return to Spain for longer next time.

These trips get more and more surreal with each one as it feels like I've been gone far longer than I have while I'm away, but it seems like a dream and I never left by the time I'm home again. Unfortunately, there's not another on the immediate horizon, so the itch will just have to build for awhile as I'm grounded back in reality.

Petra, Day 2

The second day of Petra was a little more leisurely but still an invigoratingly active day. We got off to a slightly later start at around 10:30 am, which put us at the gates as large busloads of tourists were pouring in. It's common for people to visit Petra in one day by coming over from Israel and then back again. Seems ridiculous to me when you consider the border crossing and 3 hours of round trip driving. And the fact that the entrance fee is almost twice as much for a single day as it is for two days. A lot of the package tour folks also seem to see only a 10th of the site. They work their way slowly through the Siq listening to a sarcastic tour guide make the same jokes day after day and pass through to the Treasury in processional line to exclaim "WOW!" on cue as they catch their first glimpse. But while it was different and perhaps not as serene and mystical as our first day, it was a hoot to join in on a group and laugh at what a different experience they were having to what we'd had just the day before. And it gave us a chance to learn a little bit about the history of the site. But we quickly ditched the masses and continued our climb through the rocks to explore some of the royal tombs and return up the mountain to the Monastery for a second time.

I think the Monastery is my favorite of the two major buildings, and that is primarily because of its location and grand scale. It's about a 40 minute climb up the mountain to a point where you come around a corner, and the Monastery just appears before you in all it's splendor. It's not as elaborately carved as the Treasury but is perhaps twice the size. All impressively carved in one piece out of a solid rock face. Across from the Monastery and up a hill just a bit is a gift/tea shop that I think has the best view of most any tea shop of the world. They have rows and rows of low sofas with comfy pillows and delightful black tea with fresh mint leaves, so we got a couple of tea cups and unpacked our lunch picnic. Paul has accquired an appreciation for the picnic and has been collecting beautifully staged food photos from various travel destinations. I think this will turn out to be one of the best - fresh pitas, tinned sardines, dried apricots and figs, salted almonds, and amber cups of tea set against a backdrop of the Monastery. While we sat enjoying our lunch and view, a couple of the local Bedouin boys bragged that they could reach the top of the Monastery and set off to scramble like mountain goats up the rock face and to the very top of the spire 30 meters from the ground below. It was nervewracking and exhilerating to watch. And not something I'd EVER dare attempt.

The view from the top of the mountain to the surrounding area is again stunning. Not something a photo can even remotely do justice. They've called the best lookout point the "View of the End of the Earth", and it truly is. Not a tree in sight and jagged cliffs all around dropping off to the valley between the mountains of Jordan and Israel and the Dead Sea far out of sight in the distance. We made it back down the mountain and through the park to the entrance again right as they closed at dusk and were welcomed into the city by the haunting call to evening prayer. A delightful dinner of the best tabouleh, falafel, and hommous ever, a good rest, and we were off at daybreak to return to Israel.

And here came the next hiccup. We'd calculated our combined finances to cover everything down to the last Jordanian Dinar thinking, on my failing, that the exit tax was 5 JD per person. Between the two of us we had 11.5 JD remaining when we got to the border with no ATM machine, no willingness to take foreign currency, and a request for 16 JD to cover our exit. Oops. Fortunately, we crossed at just the same time as a good natured Kiwi couple who had enough to get us up to 15.5 JD, and the border agent reluctantly let us pass with the short change. Thank goodness for that since we had a 10 am flight to catch to Tel Aviv and not a lot of time to spare. Especially considering the Israeli airport security. Wow. Before we could even check in for our flight, we had to wait in a long line for security clearance that placed us in front of a grim-faced young woman who wanted to know where we'd been, why we were traveling, and how we knew each other. Then she asked Paul to step out of earshot to wait for her colleague and started in on me with the Spanish Inquisition. Another woman came along to give Paul the same questioning. How did we know each other? How long had we known each other? How did we meet? Why were we traveling? Where had we been? Where had we stayed? Where had we eaten? What did we do for a living? Why were we at the conference? Who had invited us? Why had Harvard decided to send me rather than someone else? Did I have a business card? (no, scientists don't carry business cards) Did I have proof of the conference? Would I show her my presentation? And each time I had to dig for a hotel booking or meeting roster, she started in on another question that would distract me from finding the first answer, and she re-asked the same questions several times trying to find inconsistencies in my story. After a good 15 minutes of drilling us both, the two women conferred on whether our stories were consistent and released us to catch our flight. They apparently do this to ensure we aren't using each other, or no one else is using the two of us to compromise their security. And they're really good at their job. Once the woman questioning me was satisfied, her whole demeanor changed, and I was joking with her that I couldn't have kept anything from her if I'd had anything to hide. Super intimidating!

Onward to Petra, Jordan

So as I said, primarily I was away for the conference, but those of you who know me well know that I will take every opportunity for adventure as it presents itself. A good friend for years had been to this same conference when it first occurred 3 years ago and had decided that if it happened again he wanted to hop over to Petra. I don't have to be asked twice. So since I enjoy trip planning so much, and life had taken over his time, I just decided to take on all of the arrangements for that leg of the journey - border crossing, taxis, onward flights, etc. With only a couple of minor hiccups that really amounted to no worries. We realized a day before departing the conference that the border closed 2 hours earlier that I had thought. Stupid military time. So it was a little bit of a rush getting there and getting across to Jordan, but ended up being perfect since we avoided any of the border traffic. Out of Israel, down the long walk through "no man's land", and into Jordan in about 15 minutes. The driver was supposed to be waiting across the border when we arrived, but no one seemed obviously expecting us. I called the number I'd been given. No answer, and the vultures were descending. I called the hotel owner who I'd made the arrangements with, and he apologized profusely that he'd forgotten to finalize the time with the driver who was at that moment 1.5 hours away in Wadi Musa (the village near Petra). Oops. The collection of drivers at the border told me one of them could take us for 60 JD. Uh, no, I had an agreement for 45 for the driver I arranged, so why should I pay more? They nodded in admiration of the good deal I'd made and insisted on talking to the hotel owner. So after some discussion and negotiation, a deal was struck that one of the drivers at the border would take us for my pre-arranged price. So we hop into a cab that takes us into the city of Aqaba and into a residential neighborhood to behind an apartment building where we hop out of the one cab and into another to make the rest of the drive. Don't ask why we had to change cars. Sometimes these things just don't need to be known.

In fact, the timing of everything was perfect, so getting into Jordan in the evening meant we could be at the gates of Petra by around 7:30 am. That let us get the amazing morning light and avoid the hoards of tour groups that pass through at the mid day. The entrance to the city of Petra is through the Siq - a long and narrow canyon with dramatic red sandstone cliffs rising on both sides that form a passage through loosely joined puzzle pieces. The city itself was build by the Nabateans more than 2000 years ago and was a central location for trading in the region. It must have been absolutely amazing at the time. This was at a pinnacle of art and science in the middle east, and the evidence for their advanced society is impressive - water channels were cut into the rock face that were covered to prevent contamination and had built in filtration for sediments. They even somehow calculated the gradient of the slope so that the channel is level throughout the city, thus controling the rate of water flow. And looking around the absolutely barren landscape, it's obvious why water was so precious.

The first "wow moment" is at the exit from the Siq into the front of the Treasury. This is one of the two most famous buildings at Petra, and it really is breathtaking to walk through the narrow rock passage and catch the first glimpse of the columned building. Made even better by the two resting camels in front and no people littering the view. We hung around the Treasury for quite awhile watching the sunlight rise over the rock wall to briefly bathe the glowing face of the Treasury. It's beautiful how the color of the rock changes depending on the light. The building itself is the best preserved of the site, and the intricate carvings of the pillars and sculptures just reinforce the amazement that all of this was done more than 2000 years ago, not built from stone but carved out of a solid rock face.

Onwards and further, you start to appreciate the massiveness that must have been this city at it's peak. There are caves and elaborate tombs carved into every rock face stretching through the valley for miles. We had decided to clamber up a mountain to the High Place of Sacrifice (where I managed to avoid the threat of bloodletting) to see the view of the surrounding valleys and then passed over the back side of the mountain past other monuments and tombs to work our way back around to the main route. I had thought that would be the end of our first day, and we'd save the major tombs and the Monastery for day 2 but was easily convinced to climb up to the Monastery with plenty of afternoon remaining. This meant a grand total of about 20 miles of hiking and probably over 5,000 feet in total elevation gain. I was pretty proud of my endurance and refusal to be "broken".

We reached the gate precisely at the closing hour and passed on offers for a cab ride up the hill into town. When you've already walked so far, what's another mile or so? Good decision, because as we passed through town we came across a bakery and decided to pop in for some bread to complete our picnic the next day. The shopfolks were extraordinarily friendly and gave us tastes of various sweets, so we purchased a couple of extra treats along with our pita breads. Off in the corner of the shop, there was a guy at a long table bagging pitas as they fell from the ceiling. Somehow we thought this was just the funniest thing ever - pitas raining from above, and I was taking video while we laughed and marveled at the whole thing. So some young guy came over and asked if we'd like to see where they come from. I said absolutely, and we followed him up two flights of a back stairwell into a room that was a maze of machinery. Every pita in the surrounding area must be made in this one bakery. Hundreds of pitas at various stages of production snake through the room, and they are running the marchinery from 3 am until 8 pm each day. The guy enthusiastically led us around to show us where the dough comes out in balls, how it gets flattened into pancakes, and where it travels along layers and layers of conveyor belts into the flaming furnace oven to be cooked. He even took our four steaming fresh pitas and replaced them with four that were straight out of the fire - doesn't get much better than that.

The lowest place on earth

I'm actually back in Boston now but sad that I wasn't able to keep this up while I was away, so I've decided to "back blog" the last couple of weeks since I last wrote from Jerusalem. 7 flights, 6 hotel rooms, 4 countries in 14 days, and maybe it's not hard to imagine why I found it difficult to find time to write. It truly felt like the Amazing Race at times. So here come a few catch up installations...

The primary purpose of the trip was an integrative musculoskeletal meeting in Ein Gedi on the Dead Sea. Best conference location ever. The meeting itself was fabulous - good speakers, good colleagues, and a great chance to catch up with old friends. But it also raised my standards for future speaking engagements...you cannot beat spending the afternoon before giving a talk relaxing at a resort and floating on the bouyant sea in the warm sun. A group of us, smaller than I'd expected, spent the free hours between sessions at the spa. Fantastic people watching. Folks from all over the world, and particularly the old israeli ladies, come to the dead sea spas for what are purported to be the great health benefits of the mineral rich mud and salty sea. So we joined right in the mud bath which involves slathering your whole body in slimy sulfuric mud that dries and cakes in the sun and makes it difficult to move. I joked about doing a slow "running man" until I froze in statuesque position. The guys took the mock mud wrestling approach. And then we strolled down to the sea to rinse off the mud and float. When I say "float", that's an understatement. It is impossible to sink on the Dead Sea. It is the craziest feeling ever. You aren't in the water. You're on top of the water. You can assume a full crucifixion position, fall completely asleep, and not drown. You might end up floating across to Jordan, but you'd arrive safely at least. But next time I will be bringing a little pair of surf socks since the shoreline is encrusted with thick salt deposits. The sea is apparently about 35% salt, which is pretty much super saturation, so the water's edge is almost like a coral reef of salt. Not fun on the feet, but worth the pain for the reward. And I do think my skin is radiantly healthy now!

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”.