Back in Bawlmore

I’ve been back in Maryland for less than 4 days now and so many things have struck me, but I have limited computer access, and while I could write a substantial blogpost on each of these topics, I’m going to focus on 3, and be brief about each one of them.

Customs Agents

Every time I land at BWI, customs agents pull me aside, and ask to open my bags and look through them. This doesn’t happen to me at other US airports, and they don’t seem to ask many other people - I’ve never seen them ask to look through a white person’s stuff, but have seen them look through other brown people’s belongings. I know the TSA, or whoever is in charge of customs officials will say they don’t profile, but just admit that you do, at least at BWI. I’d rather be told I’m going to be checked because of what I look like than be lied to and feel like I’m being singled out ‘randomly’ whenever I arrive in Baltimore. Apparently, coming in from the UK and working at a university doesn’t trump that I have brown skin and dreadlocks. It’s such an unwelcome - and racist - way to welcome people to your city. I’m to the point of thinking about not flying through BWI anymore, and always going through D.C. because if this isn’t bordering on harassment, I don’t know what is.

Ravens

I first noticed it on Friday morning. I was at a grocery store and almost all the employees were wearing Ravens gear. It went to another level when I went to see a performance at Maya’s school and saw these parents, doting on their children, coming straight from work, with their work clothes on - and a Raven’s jersey on over their work clothes. I saw the jerseys everywhere on Saturday, the flags on houses and cars - I felt like I was back at Michigan State.
The Ravens were relocated from Cleveland after I left Baltimore, so I’ve never been a big Ravens fan - I actually was rooting more for Peyton Manning (having watched him from his college days) to put a spanking on the Ravens yesterday, which he did. I think the extreme Ravens support in a city that still feels like a baseball town in my 1990s eyes just feels odd. I’ve only been in Baltimore for Ravens games a few times, and it always just seems so odd to me, like I’m in a city I just don’t know anymore, which I don’t.

Walking

Americans always walk on the right side of the sidewalk. Because of that, I would guess that most Americans assume that people in the UK always walk on the left. This is not entirely true. I would guess that about ¼ - ⅓ of people in the UK walk on the right. As an American, I’ve found this frustrating over the past couple of years - I try to be militant about walking on the left in the UK, and so I’m constantly bumping into people because that’s just not how it is.
It’s now, of course, ingrained in me to walk on the left. Now, back in the US, I look like the idiot, who’s bumping into people, because my brain hasn’t re-adjusted to walking on the right. Driving, however, hasn’t had that effect on me yet - because I don’t (yet) drive in the UK.

To Pod and to Plod

Lauren and I were walking to work the other day. We walk together for about 10 minutes then we go our separate ways, so for the last 5 minutes of my walk, I walk alone. The other day, as we split, I noticed that I left my headphones behind. I seriously thought of walking back home to get them, but then remembered that I had ear buds at work. I rarely use my ear buds at work, but have them there for the occasional times I want to listen to something at work. I mainly have them there as a back-up, for just the situation that happened walking into work that day; so I can listen to podcasts at the end of the workday, since I couldn't before it started.

I listen to, at the very minimum, 15 hours of podcasts per week. I would actually guess that it's probably more in the neighbourhood of 20-25 hours most weeks.

I don't remember when I started listening to podcasts, but I feel like I can't live without them now. I'm like that teenage girl who can't get enough One Direction, except my One Direction is the podcasts I subscribe to. The few times I've walked around town by myself, without listening to podcasts, have felt like this other world, where I don't hear Dan Savage or Men in Blazers talking to me, telling me about their Movie Date, or tales of This American Life. I've reached the point where I am listening to podcasts while cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry. I even make a point of always using the self-checkout at stores that have them, mainly because I don't want a break in my podcast to interact with the cashier - I don't want to fall even further behind on my podcast listening than I already am. If that's not sad, I don't know what is.

A few years ago, on a day when I took the bus to work at De Anza, I was walking across campus on my way to work with my headphones on. A student mentioned in class that he had seen me walking but didn't say hi, because it looked like I was into my music. 'What kind of music were you listening to, Mr. Shirley?', he asked. I said I was listening to a podcast. He gave me a look that I've seen quite a few times since. One of 'Oh, OK' looks, where he wasn't really sure what I meant by that. I've found that there is a relatively big group of people out there, who know that podcasts exist, but don't really know what they are; like how I am with Pinterest and Instagram, which seemed to have passed me by without me being the least bit pinterested. Like many things, there are podcast people and non-podcast people.

The thing about podcasts is that there is enough variety out there, that when you tell someone who is also a podcast listener that you are one yourself, there is the 'what podcasts do you listen to?' question that is likely to come up. In the few times I've had this conversation, I found that I had very little interest in what types of podcasts the other person listened to, and the feeling was probably mutual.

Even Lauren, who I would say I have a great deal in common with, has very different tastes in podcasts. We overlap on a few, but I know that she doesn't care what Dan Patrick has to say about the Heisman Trophy race, and probably isn't too interested in the Cobra Effect. Likewise, I don't particularly care what stuff my mom should have told me.

My tastes in podcasts are primarily in sports and films. Those two categories make up about 1/2 of the podcasts I subscribe to (3 of my sports podcasts come in every weekday, so much of my work week is spent listening to sports podcasts). I also have some popular science type pocasts, story telling, advice giving, news, talk, and politics.

Sadly, only two of my podcasts have some UK connection (one is actually two British guys who live in the US, so I'm not sure that even counts). I wish I subscribed to more UK podcasts, but who has the time? As it is, I'm a month behind my non-sports and non-news pods. There is only so much time I can spend walking the streets of Edinburgh, as I plod and pod my way from place to place.

Thinking of Thanksgiving

I've never been a big fan of Thanksgiving. Being vegetarian and not much of food person, makes it a holiday that's easy to care about. Living in the UK makes that much easier to forget, because almost no one here knows when it is and, just the other day, someone asked me what people 'do' for Thanksgiving; do people exchange gifts at all?

In late October, I went to Jenners because I was told that they are one of the few stores that sells canned pumpkin (I found a cheaper place to get it, but that's another story). I was surprised to see the beginnings of Christmas decorations already. It's late October, I thought, how come we have Christmas stuff already, what about Thanksgiving? Ah....no one cares about Thanksgiving, it hit me half a second later.

That's a minor bit of cultural difference that I have noticed this year, but oddly, not the past two years of my living in Edinburgh. I wonder if this means, I actually am missing Thanksgiving - that can't possibly be.

The Christmas advertisements start up in early November, people starting talking about shopping for Christmas gifts (something I hate doing - I'm using the word 'hate' here), Christmas parties start to be discussed, and the John Lewis annual Christmas TV ad is put out there.

The US has it's three monthly holidays to end the year - Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas (or whatever holiday you want to insert for late December), we don't have that late November holiday, so the Christmas starts right after Halloween, or before, in the case of Jenners.

Because there is no Thanksgiving, there is no Black Friday, or anti-Black Friday (as a person who hates shopping for gifts, every day is anti-Black Friday for me). The same person who asked me about Thanksgiving traditions, also asked about Black Friday; didn't someone get killed last year? I feel like someone gets killed every year.

Because of this lack of a holiday, and crazy day of shopping, Christmas preparation is spread out over two months. I'm not sure if I like this or not. Do I like the intense Holiday Cheer for one month, or the slow build over two. The Grinch that I am, I don't really care for either. I do like the John Lewis Christmas ads though, so here is the one from last year (the one from this year is just 'meh', for me at least)....

Careful and Carless

The other day, Lauren and I were looking up hotels in Mesa, for when we will be visiting in December. We found one that was 3.7 miles from where my Grandmother lives, and our first thought, when seeing was 'that's not too far'. Our California minds had kicked in - 3.7 miles was nothing when we lived in California. My 7-8 mile commute to work every day was considered very short by many standards.

On Sunday, Lauren and I went to visit her colleague who lives in Pencaitland. According to Google Maps, the village is about 14 miles from where we live. I didn't really look forward to the journey. My Edinburgh mind was working when I thought this - 14 miles, I thought; that's SO far.

My commute to work in Edinburgh is about 1/10th of what was in California -  0.7-0.8 miles. This change of scale changes the way you think about getting around.

A couple of weeks ago, we decided to use a Hotel coupon we had, for a hotel that was less than 15 miles from our flat. We said we would get away for the weekend; get out of the city. 15 miles is about the distance from where we lived in Mountain View to down town San Jose. I NEVER would have considered going to San Jose to 'get away' from home. I would have thought, why am I staying so close to home?

Not having a car really changes how I do just about everything involving getting around. You have to think about how long it will take to walk the two miles to go to the kitchen store to look for a waffle maker. How you have to dress because you don't know if it's going to rain or not. How you don't really consider trying to wait out the rain when you're on the other side of town and have to walk for 30-45 minutes to get home. How you have to make sure that you head out early enough that you can walk back home before it gets dark (which is going to be an hour earlier next week). Over the weekend, when looking for said waffle maker, I told myself I had to leave home by 3, if I wanted to be home before dark. I also had to carry my umbrella and several layers of clothing that went on and off and on and off several times during the waffle maker excursion (which was fruitless by the way, but that's another blog). That sort of thought would have never occurred to me, living in the United States.

I make a point of only going to the grocery store after work, and not doing anything else - the weight of the groceries, plus the walk home, plus the darkness, leads to this kind of thinking. In Mountain View, I regularly made a trip to Costco, Safeway, Trader Joe's, and the Milk Pail; in one go (a total distance of 4.5 miles). I often walk 4.5 miles in a day in Edinburgh, but I wouldn't be able to carry very much. I would assume it would take a big part of the day to walk the 4.5 miles and to go to 4 different stores in the process would be crazy.

When we went to Pencaitland, we had to take a bus that comes once an hour. I burned my arm in the process of rushing to make Pumpkin Bread to take with us. The bread was still very hot as we ran out of the door to the bus stop. On the way back from Pencaitland, we again rushed to catch the hourly bus back home. The idea of a leisurely Sunday visiting people doesn't quite sound the same when you throw in rushing to catch a bus, with a burn on your arm.

The view on my walk to work

A car would have made the trip to Pencaitland easier, but I wouldn't want a car as a part of my life right now. I like my 0.7-0.8 mile commute. I like the beauty of the city one can only see while moving at a walker's pace. I like seeing the people of the city on my walks about town; it gives the city more of a sense of community, and more character. I like not having to spend the equivalent of 2-3 months of our mortgage on car costs per year.

I even like having to be careful about managing my time and the stuff I carry around with me, as I get around town carlessly.

It's alright to be little bitty

 Little Bitty

The song 'Little Bitty', by Alan Jackson, always reminds me of my mom. Not only because she was little bitty, but also because her life took her from a little home town to a big old city. This blog has very little bitty do with my mom, but I wanted to mention that before I talk about my little bitty city experience...

The population of Edinburgh is just under 500,000. This is not small by any means; the population of the city is larger than that of Oakland, California, for example.

People describe Edinburgh as a small city. Not because of the actual population, but because of how often you run into people you know, or kind of know, in places you don't expect to. This might be because the city is far more of a pedestrian city than any city of comparable size in the US and public transportation is also used far more frequently than most US cities. Even knowing this, I'm still thrown when I see someone in a place I don't expect to see them.

There are cons to this smallness, I'm sure - running into someone in a place where you probably don't want to be seen is probably not the best situation to be in. But, it is kind of cool to feel like you 'know' someone, because you see them in random places around town, and not just because they stand out in some way (like being the most pierced woman in the world, who lives in our fine city).

When I started working at the National eScience Centre, I met a guy; let's call him Iain (because that's his name), who left the Centre a few days after I started. I then saw Iain EVERYWHERE. I would see him crossing a street as the bus I was on waited at an intersection. I would see him driving by in a van as I was walking along a street. I told him how much I had seen him, the next time I was able to actually talk to him (several months after the last time I was close enough to talk to him). He said 'why didn't you say hi?'. I really couldn't in every scenario in which I saw him over the previous few months.

After I started my current job, a couple of months in, who should walk into our building but Iain. He came into our building a couple of times after that, and I ended up talking to him in those instances more than I had ever talked to him when we were actually working in the same place.

Yesterday, I was attempting to help a student who had run into a wall of bureaucracy in trying to solve several problems. I tried to help her as best I could, but all I could really do in the end, was offer her our office phone to use. She was grateful for that, said she might take me up on the offer, and left the office - she seemed happy that someone had listened to her, but without being able to be of much help, I can see how she would feel like she hadn't gotten very good support by coming to the student support office. She was the last student that came into the office before I closed up for the day.

I went home, started wheeling in our trash bin, when who do I see standing at the front door of the building right next to ours. Iain? No, I actually haven't seen him in a while. I saw the student. She was on the phone, probably telling someone of the woes she'd had during the day. I said 'you live here?!?', she nodded yes, we said our hi's and bye's, and I went home for the day.

It was odd, and I was again struck by the little bittyness of Edinburgh.

To contradict Alan Jackson, Edinburgh is  not a little hometown or a big old city; it's more of a little bitty city. There's something I really like about that. So we might as well share, might as well smile. Life goes on for a little bitty while.

on the fringe

i'm experiencing my third fringe festival this month, having moved to edinburgh in the middle of the 2010 festival. the population of the city is double what is normally is, with tourists in town. odd people in costumes walking around town, people passing out fliers ever few steps, street performers doing their thing. tourists get a taste of what edinburgh is not like 11 months of the year. some may go home with this image of the fringe as representing edinburgh. thankfully, for those of us who live here, edinburgh in august is a completely different beast from edinburgh during the rest of the year.

people in sci-fi suits, on stilts, passing out fliers to a show

i've decided to try and see a number of free shows this year as part of the free fringe - you watch the show, and when it's over, the performer stands by the exit with a bucket, or pale, and you donate what you feel is right. the free fringe is like the fringe to the fringe; the fringier fringe, if you will.

i feel like, in a number of ways, i'm on the fringe.

starting with where we live. we live on the fringe of the most touristy parts of town, just behind the palace, just a short way from the base of arthur's seat. this kind of fringe living is great. we are close enough to everything, but can retreat to our quiet street, where we don't hear the fringe tourists walking the streets, cars, or drunks at all hours of the night. the only loud noises we hear overnight, are seagulls arguing in the early hours of the morning (i should say, this isn't necessarily the nicest sound to hear at 5 am, but still).

i've been at my job for over a year, but still feel on the fringe somehow. part of it has to do with our office being in a different building from the rest of our colleagues in the undergraduate office. but even beyond that, i feel on the fringe. i've had more responsibility over the summer and leading into the new school year because i've been the only one in my office who was around from june to september. i've been asked to represent the office a few times, and have had to do something i haven't done since teaching - stand in front of a room and talk to people. you would think that this would make me feel more like i belong, but i still don't quite feel that way. there's a kind of insecurity i've felt with my job that bothers me, and i won't get into here, but i think as long as i feel that sense of insecurity, i'll continue to feel like i'm on the fringe in the school of education.

two years ago, i wrote this blog. i reread it yesterday and it prompted me to write the blog you are reading right now. i am a bit amazed of how much the third segment of the blog remains true. i've learned that scottish people are hard to get to know - they don't seem to want to open up much. i'm very much the same way; i'll be the first to admit that i'm a very difficult person to get to know. and so, two years later, i still feel like the number of scottish people i know is very small. i have these ideas of going to a pub regularly, or joining some sort of group. i've tried the latter several times, but went once and never went back - i'm just not social enough to enjoy trying to make friends and feeling uncomfortable trying. so i remain on the fringe of scottish culture and society. still feeling like a tourist, looking in on this world that doesn't seem quite right somehow; the way tourists must see the street performers when they come to edinburgh in august.

Olympics: Part I (of possibly II, if I'm not too lazy about writing another post)

I love the Olympics!

I hear people who talk about the Olympics and how cool it is to see obscure sports, like handball, badminton, or synchronized diving. Those are okay, I guess, but I like races. Maybe it's because I was a decent sprinter in high school, and I like that feeling of thinking 'I'm going to beat you' as I pass the guy on the outside of a turn (I did that quite a few times and it was the best feeling).

So I've been watchig a lot of swimming. Being a fellow Towson High Alum, I have to root for Michael Phelps, and I do, but what I've really enjoyed is watching the way the BBC covers the races and swimmers in it, as compared to how I remember NBC covering races and swimmers in 2008.

In 2008, Michal Phelps had the most amazing swimming race I've ever seen. I remember screaming at the TV and jumping up and down, watching the race on tape delay (NBC will have it no other way, of course). What I don't remember, and I could be wrong, is the commentators openly rooting for Phelps on the American broadcast. That kind of thing doesn't seem to happen on the BBC.

The other day, I was watching a race with a British woman in it. She had the potential to medal in the race. The commentators were openly sayig 'Common Rebecca. You can do it!'. It was great to hear the commentors show a rooting interest in one of the racers. I understand being impartial, but it's the Olympics! You have to root for your country. I feel (and again, maybe I'm wrong) that American commentators are told not to openly cheer for Americans. This is a case where I think you have every right to be as patriotic as you want to be. Cheering for your country (while not booing other countries, of course) is what the Olypmics are all about. A chance to see your country-folk against other countries-folk.

I just feel like sports commentators in the US don't show feeling for one athlete/team over another, and when they do, they're called a homer. In the Olympics, I want you to be a homer, if you're broadcasting your country's best.

Another thing I've enjoyed in watching the BBC broadcast is the post-race interviews.

In the US three types of athletes are interviewed after a race: the person who is expected to do well and does; the person who is expected do well and doesn't (those are always fun interviews) and the person who isn't expected to do well, but does. You never see the interview of a person who lives up to not-so-great expectations.

I saw a number of British swimmers interviewed by the BBC, who didn't win a medal, and weren't in tears. They loved the experience and loved being cheered on by the mostly British crowd. I really liked these interviews. It was good to see a person come in 6th, or 7th, or 8th, and be happy about it - they showed that the games are more than medals or being number 1. They are about competition, and competition is not just who wins, it's also being a good sport when you don't.

I was on a 4 x 400 relay team that made it to the state championships (I was also on a 4 x 200 relay team that qualified, but my coach didn't want me running that event even though I was a much better 200m runner than 400m runner - as you can probably tell I'm still bitter about that). Anyhow, our 4 x 400 team was placed in the fastest group - we didn't have semi-finals and heats in the Maryland state championships in 1994 - you ran one race that you were placed in on based on qualifying times, and the fastest time at the state meet was declared the winner. We were in the fastest heat.

I knew we had no chance of winning, I would have been happy with 6th. We came in 9th - one team from the second fastest heat was faster than us, the slowest team in the fast heat. To this day, that track meet is the one I remember most. Not because we were beaten by a team that was not even in our race, but because it was the state championships. If there were camera crews there interviewing people, I would have been one of those people who don't get interviewed - the person who isn't expected to do well, and doesn't. But I was very happy to be there.

that tuesday night in march

my last blog post was about the people i met in bonthe, and the town. my trip to bonthe was overshadowed by my father's accident, as i alluded to in my previous post. these are my memories of that night and the days that followed....

we arrived in bonthe in the late afternoon on that tuesday, after a day-long journey via car to yagoi and boat to bonthe (and several hours of waiting, for unknown reasons, for us to board the boat that was just sitting there). we walked around the town, my dad pointing out places he knew of, and we got a picture of him in front of a house he lived in.

i had a migraine.

if it were up to my dad, we probably would have walked around a lot more, but we were going to be in town for two more days, i said. if we see everything now, what are we going to do tomorrow, i said. i kind of regret saying that, knowing what would happen in the next several hours.

we ate dinner, and went to the hotel. bonthe doesn't have electricity, and we had to argue with the hotel worker to turn on the generator to our room. he didn't want to, but we struck a deal - he would let the generator (and thus the fan) run until 10.

my head was throbbing.

i took a tylenol pm and was ready to go to bed. my dad said he wanted to look at the stars. he took my flashlight, the key to the door, and locked me into the room. made sense - it was impossible to close the door without locking it and i might be deep asleep when he got back, locking him out.

i don't know how much time had passed, but i heard my dad saying, what i thought was, 'hello, hello'. great, i thought, he's been locked out of the outside fencing of the hotel, or the building - he sounded far away. i went to the window and shouted 'come to the window. come to the window and throw the keys up to me'. my thought was, being locked in, if i could get out of the room, i could get him into the building. he kept saying 'hello, hello'.

then, it all of a sudden hit me. he wasn't outside. he also wasn't shouting, he was speaking, and he was just down the hall from our room. and he wasn't saying 'hello', he was saying 'help'.

i went to the door, but i was locked in. i could hear him. he said he fell, he thought he had fainted. i shouted through the door 'you have the key. open the door'. he sounded confused, not sure why i would be locked into the room.

there was movement in the hall, as he made his way to our room. he unlocked the door and by the time i opened it, he was walking back down the hall. i didn't know why, and still am not sure why he turned around and walked away from a door he had just unlocked.

when i caught up to him, i could see he was holding his hand to his forehead. there was blood on his hand, his face, and on his shirt. he lay back on the floor where he must have been calling for help. his stuff was scattered around - his shoes, his glasses, his binoculars, and my flashlight.

my migraine didn't matter anymore.

i wanted to see his head and asked him to move his hand. there was more blood than i've ever seen in person - i should mention that i'm squeamish about blood. it freaks me out. he was far more injured than i would have guessed.

he said 'i was looking at the stars, and then i think i fell. i remember stairs. i think i fainted.' my response was to try and keep him calm, try to make sure his mental capacity was okay by asking him things like 'do you know where we are? how many fingers am i holding up?' he answered fine, then said 'i was looking at the stars, and then i think i fell'. he said that sentence, or some derivation of it, at least 15 times in the 10 minutes that followed, like he was telling me for the first time. i was scared.

as soon as i saw how bad he was, i called the only person i knew in town, alpha (yes, that is his name). he came over, saw the cut, gave one of those 'oh my god!' faces, then called someone else. eventually, there were 4 of us around my dad - me, alpha, the guy who worked at the hotel, and a guy who had been called to take my dad to the hospital - on his motorcycle. there are no cars in bonthe.

he was bleeding pretty heavily, throwing up, we were trying to clean him up, and he had didn't really want to try getting up to get him to the hospital. we were eventually able to pick him up, carry him down a very narrow spiral staircase, get him on the motorcycle, with me behind him, supporting him, and get him to the hospital which, of course, had no electricity or running water.

my dad was stitched up by flashlight, with about 8 people standing around him - most of whom were just interested in looking and not involved in the procedure. i stood back. it was like a war movie, the way it was done. i was amazed.

i walked back to the hotel in pitch black at about 1 am and woke up at 5 next morning.

the next day felt like four.

my dad was the grumpiest i've ever seen him because he didn't sleep well and he was in pain. he was certain he had somehow gotten appendicitis. the doctor waved that thought off, but my dad did have some sort of stomach bug, the doctor discovered. he was drugged up that morning and spent the day in and out of sleep.

i spent the day negotiating with people - to get my dad out of the hospital, to get my dad out of bonthe, to get my dad out of sierra leone. i talked to locals, i talked to people in freetown, i talked to the u.s. embassy - thank goodness i brought that phone with me.

very early on thursday morning, my dad left the hospital, on a motorcycle ambulance (one regret i have is not getting a picture of the motorcycle ambulance - it was awesome in a very weird way). we got on a speedboat, back to yagoi, where an 'ambulance' was waiting for us and took us back to freetown. it was a van, with nothing but a wooden bench in the back of it.

that day, i moved around with a very injured man in a speedboat, in an ambulance along very bumpy roads, to the u.s. embassy, to a travel agent in downtown freetown, argued with a taxi driver, and back to the school that was also our guest house.

on sunday, three days after leaving bonthe and less than five days after he fell, we left freetown - me to the edinburgh and him back to baltimore. i left him at the airport, looking back as i boarded. he looked awful. he hadn't shaved, his hair was disheveled, and he had a gigantic bandage over his right eyebrow. he said he would use the way he looked to get pity from all the airline people.

i was worried about him travelling alone. i called my sister multiple times the next day, prepping her for what she would see when she picked him up at the airport. he got home without incident.

i've seen my dad twice since that march night, when i boarded the plane in freetown. when i saw him in april, when i went to baltimore, he still didn't quite look himself. when i saw him in june, when he came to edinburgh, his face looked fine, but he had discovered (a couple of months after the fact) that he broke his wrist in the fall - he was wearing a cast, which has since come off.

we'll never know exactly what happened that night. my first thought was that he was looking at the stars, came upstairs, fainted from the heat and lack of food eaten that day, and hit his head as he was fainting. that's not what happened. 

the day after he fell, i spent a lot of time looking around the hotel and i think it happened like this: 

while outside, he turned off the flashlight (as he's admitted) to get a better look at the stars. he fell off of an unrailed walkway, about an 8 to 10-foot drop, into a basement entrance to the building, cutting his eyebrow on a metal thing that stuck out of the wall. he climbed the stairs out of the basement entrance, up the narrow spiral staircase, to the hallway where our room was. that's where he fainted, then started calling for help. I saw drops of blood and bloody hand prints through that entire path, with a small pool of dried blood, right next to the metal thing he hit his head on. i still don't know how he negotiated his way back to where i found him, in the state he was in, in complete darkness.

i learned a lot from that tuesday night. i learned that it's good to have a phone with you, because in this day and age, even villages with no electricity get mobile phone service. i learned that i am a good negotiator, even when there is a language barrier. i learned that evacuation insurance is a good thing (all our expenditures to get him out were reimbursed). i learned that doctors trained in cuba, who work in hospitals with very few resources are amazing. i learned that if you ever fall, or get injured in small town with no electricity, and you're with me, i'll get you out.

i learned more about my dad the person, in the days after, as he recovered in freetown, but most of all, i learned that my dad is one tough guy. 

 my dad and i in june, a little less than 3 months after he fell

bonthe

i thought about writing what happened to my dad in bonthe; his fall, my finding him after it, getting through one the scariest nights i've experienced, and the series of lucky events that led to getting him care, getting him out of bonthe, and back to the u.s.

this blog is not about that though, this blog is about bonthe, or at least what i probably would have written about bonthe, if my trip to sierra leone wasn't overshadowed by my dad's accident.

my dad taught at bonthe secondary school about 40 years ago, when he was in the peace corps. he lived in the town for two years.

the school where my dad taught when he was in the peace corps

growing up, bonthe was this mythical place; the place that made my dad fall in love with west africa, a major reason why he was willing to move to nigeria, where he met my mother, where i was born, and how i came into existence. because of this, i've always felt that bonthe was like oz to me. this place that held answers, that would, in its own way, take me back home, and connect who my father was then, to who his family came to be.

when my dad said he was going to go to bonthe earlier this year, i really wanted to go. to see this magical place, see what it meant to my father, see what it might mean to me. so we went....

bonthe is on an island and is very difficult to get to - we had to take a 5-hour car ride on not-so-great roads, wait for 4-5 hours for a boat, then take a 2 hour boat ride to get there.

because of how removed it is from the rest of sierra leone, it's kind of different from the rest of the country.

the town has something i'd never seen in an african town before; a perfect grid system of roads, like the 'block' system in parts of the u.s. it amazed me to see house numbers on houses, perfectly matching this block system: 51 on one block, 61 on the next, 71 on the next. the odd thing is, there are no cars in the town, so these roads are for the few motorcycles and bicycles in town, but mainly for pedestrians.

however cool the block system is, the town is greatly lacking in a number of facilities the rest of the country has.

i was told before heading to sierra leone not to expect to have electricity or access to clean drinking water while in bonthe - internet access was completely out of the question. ironically, everyone has mobile phones in bonthe, the one form of technology that seems to have made it there, although i have no idea how people keep their phones charged.

when we arrived, the guy who helped us get there, alpha, told us that during the civil war that plagued the country from 1991 to 2002, thieves took all the copper wiring out of the town, to sell for scrap. today, you can see poles where wires could, and should, be, but aren't.

while my dad was in the hospital, i got into conversations with a number of people, learning about their views of the town, how they felt they were treated by the rest of the country, and teaching me about the town itself. the town's doctor told me how he had mapped the plumbing in the town and had discovered that a large number of people in the town don't have access to plumbing, how there are a number of people who don't even have access to a regular well, and how he himself didn't want to be placed in bonthe to work because of its lack of facilities.

i discovered that it was impossible to find bottled water in the town and i took a risk by drinking water sold in plastic pouches that some say are simply tap water put into a plastic pouch. it was hard to find bread and fruit for my dad while he was in the hospital - the kind of thing i thought could be found in every market in west africa.

someone told me, 'we have a lot of sand. sand is cheap, but you can't build with sand alone, and it's hard to carry cement on a boat'. this was the kind of infrastructure problem that the country as a whole seems to have a hard time with, since the war ended. cars can't get to bonthe, the small airport the town has is burned down, the town is not just literally, but figuratively, an island; removed from the rest of the country.

the burned down airport (and plane)

as i walked home from the hospital at night in pitch black, with my flashlight, i would see people, like ghosts, all of a sudden appear on the edge of where my light was shining - people who seem to be able to walk around town in complete darkness, without the need of a light, on uneven dirt roads. alpha said he often would ride his bike around, in complete darkness. this sort of adaptation to your surroundings amazed me, especially since my dad was in the bonthe hospital because he couldn't see the stairs he fell down, at night.

i met people who have lived their entire lives in bonthe, in complete darkness at night, without a toilet in their home, probably some who had never seen a car.

i found out, days after i left bonthe, that when my dad lived there he had electricity. that the town, in many ways, went backwards in time during the war, at almost the exact time when so much of the world moved forward at a rapid pace, with technology reaching many corners of the world.

as sad as all this may sound, all the people i met seemed happy, and asked if i liked their town. no one asked me for money, as is so often the case in places that see more tourists. almost everyone i talked to asked me how i liked their city, and you could see their bonthe pride on their faces.

i've been a bit torn about bonthe since leaving - people who are there seem to be happy living a simple life and people who leave don't seem to want to go back, even to visit, because the life may be too simple for them.

i'd like to think i'm an exception to the latter - i want to go back.

the sun setting over bonthe

baked

when people find out i'm a vegetarian, especially if it's one of the first things they learn about me, they often think i'm some kind of healthy eater. the thing is, i just don't like the texture of meat. and last time i checked, french fries and ice cream aren't made of meat, and very few people would describe them as healthy.

my main vice, when it comes to vegetarian eating, is sweet baked goods.

i grew up the child of a baker, and so there was always something baked in our house. and i, the only son of my baker-mother, seemed to be the one who got the baking gene. not that my sisters can't bake, i just don't think they enjoy it as much as i do. when i bake, i'm at peace. i bake to relax - it's something i very much enjoy doing.

i'm by no means an awesome baker, but i would bake as a job, if it was offered to me. i'm the guy who spent a big part of his last trip to baltimore baking for a bake sale. i'm the guy who's biggest complaint about our current flat (which has bad floor boards, is way too cold, and sometimes gets an odd smell of grease and smoke in the hallway) is that the temperature knob on the oven is unreadable.

with that as background, it was very hard for me to do what i decided to do for the month of february - i decided to not take a single bite of any sweet, baked good. no cookies, no cakes, no pies (i did find some loopholes - pancakes and waffles are, technically, not baked). the month is coming to an end today.

i decided to do this because i thought it might affect my weight. i have been working out regularly since august and lost some weight, but then seemed to level off about 1-2kg above my goal weight. i thought giving up this vice of mine would do the trick.

on the last day of january, i had some digestive crackers, and then swore off baking for a month, and that was it.

i'm not the kind of person that has a hard time giving up stuff. i became fully vegetarian on a bet i made in 1999 - i gave up mammal in 1996. i gave up ice cream for the entire year in 2003, just because. this, however, was the toughest for me.

there was the office coffee break where someone brought in professionally made cupcakes and i had to just say no. there was the meeting i went to yesterday, where carrot cake was staring me down, but i stayed strong. there were those digestive crackers that look at me every time i opened the cabinet that has our plates and bowls, but i don't cave.

the month is now about to end. i think i lost about 1 kg, but i'm not the kind of person who keeps detailed track of my weight, so i might have lost it for other reasons, including that i have intensified some of my workouts.

as much as i may sound like the unhealthy guy, i think that extra 1 kg of weight is worth me eating baked goods; worth baking, which is when i feel most at peace. i've been losing sleep quite a bit over the past week - maybe baking will cure my insomnia.

i'm going back to eating baked goods tomorrow. in fact, as i'm writing this, i'm thinking of what to buy tonight, to bake tonight, to eat tomorrow.

in march, i've decided to give up movies. trying to see all the best picture nominees before sunday was a bit much.

'food for thought so get a buffet plate...

...the lyrics are so phat you might gain weight'

those are lines from digable planets' 'where i'm from'.

i've always liked that song, from the first time i heard it, back in the early ninties.

one of the reasons i like it, is because i can't really relate. i can't say that where i'm from we do this, or we do that, as the digable planets do in that song. there really isn't a 'we' in where i'm from; at least not a consistent 'we' that has been in the different places i've might say i'm from.

i think i get asked where i'm from at least once a week since being in this job, and it's such a tough question to answer, because i don't really think i'm from anywhere.

i'm most recently (sort of) from california. when i say that, people start talking about if i can handle the cold weather. then i have to say that i lived in michigan for seven years and the weather in edinburgh is not really that bad. this often leads to me going through where i've lived in the u.s. by saying i went to high school here, university there, worked there. then they ask 'but where were you born?'. when i tell people i was born in nigeria, that opens another can of worms, because i don't look, or sound, like a nigerian. at that point, i have to talk about where my parents are 'from', which is actually an easier question for me to answer.

all told, this leads to a multi-minute answer to a question that most people around here can answer in a word or two. throw in that i've been heavily influenced by my mother's culture, but have never lived in it, and the answer is even longer.

don't get me wrong, i actually like having this conversation with people, if they don't mind listening. i like talking about where i've lived, and i've liked everywhere i've lived, to some degree (De Kalb, IL isn't a place i'd recommend anyone go on vacation to), and brings back fond memories of those places.

in the end though, i feel like i never have answered their question because i'm not 'from' anywhere - i'm from everywhere.

maybe from now on, i should just say i'm from jeffersonia, then they'll think i'm some kind of nut.

both sides now

going into high school, i told my mother that i wanted to join the school's 9th grade choir. she told me (although she brought up several times after, that she never said this) that i couldn't sing. i never felt angry at my mother for saying this - when you have a son that is so incredibly shy that everyone worries about him, the thought of him standing in front of an audience, singing, doesn't sound too good.

i joined the choir, and i did well. in my second year, and for the rest of of high school, i was in the school's top choir, which was pretty highly regarded in maryland in the early 1990s. i got solos, was told by choir judges that i was a very good soloist; had the most embarrassing moment of my life when my voice cracked in the middle of the 'beauty and the beast' duet. to this day i feel that my duet partner held it against me for the rest of her high school career, because it made us both look a little bad.

someone in high school once said that the reason i never talked (and i really never talked) was because i was saving my voice to sing. i was in 3 musicals, and if you ask people from my high school what thing they would most associate me with, i would guess that most would say singing, if they remember me at all.

i probably would have minored in vocal performance, if i went to a smaller school. but i didn't. i went to a university that had a fairly good music reputation, and i ended up singing in the low-level choir at michigan state. even in that choir, there were guys who sounded (and looked) like opera singers. my singing career ended when i left college, and i haven't been in a choir since.

in an effort to get to know people in edinburgh, my office mate suggested rock choir. a choir that doesn't have very high expectations for its participants (no audition and you don't need to know how to read music). i thought it would be fun because i would not feel like i was competing with the person next to me, and rock/pop music is more fun to sing. never having sung in any kind of pop choir, that appealed to me, because i wanted to sing stuff i would actually want to listen to. i was hoping that by joining a choir, i would meet people who were different from most of the people i interact with at work; people from another side of life, i guess. i'm not really sure what i had in mind, just something different.

i signed up for a taster session and made my way there. we were going to be doing one song that night, 'both sides now', by joni mitchell. i thought this was an ironic song choice. i wanted to see a side different from the people i worked with. also, thing song always reminds me of my childhood because my dad had a judy collins version of the song that i heard many times as a boy. music from my childhood always reminds me of my mother, the woman who said i couldn't sing, but was also the person most proud of me when i did.

i sang with the choir, sitting behind some people who were so into it that they has sweatshirts that said 'www.rockchior.com'.

i decided not to go back.

it turns out that both sides were the same side - when i walked into the room after signing in, after committing to be there for the next hour and a half, i scanned the room, and scanned it again, not believing my eyes. there were about 50 members of this choir, and all of them were very similar to the people i interact with at work every day - they were all women, every single one of them. so i sat there, sang 'both sides now' as the sole male voice in the choir, the only one from that side of the gender divide, and decided that rock choir is not the choir for me.