I never really thought about Rwanda before. I mean, I saw the movie and considered the genocide but I never really thought about the country, especially not as a place where I would vacation; but here I was, last Friday, on an Ethiopian flight with my husband and SMP to Kigali.
I had no hand in planning this; my husband got obsessed with the idea of gorilla trekking after some guy from the US Embassy told him about it. I just half-assedly agreed to the trip and SMP decided to join us even though she had seen gorillas in Uganda before. After landing, clearing passport (no visa required for US citizens) and getting our bags, we were out in Kigali. The city is clean (plastic bags having been banned years ago) and spread out. We went to the genocide museum (more on that soon) and after a car breakdown we were on our way to Musazana to the extremely overpriced lodge from which the next day we would set off.
After nearly dying from exhaust being piped into the vehicle and frozen from cold wind blowing in through the window, we arrived about 9pm. The lodge being the only site on the main power grid, I could not see a damn thing and had no idea what was around. After a terrible meal and a much-deserved hot shower we got into bed to be prepared for the next day. By 6:45am we had eaten our terrible, overpriced breakfast and arrived at the Volcanoes National Park office with the 70 other white folk who were going to see golden monkeys, gorillas and (strangely) Dian Fossey’s grave. Our lack of planning and forethought was clearly evident in how we were dressed: although the other tourists were decked out in GoreTex, gators and Patagonia, I was wearing jeans and a gabardine pea coat, my husband had his fleece and SMP had on her trademark plunge neckline and hoop earrings.
As luck would have it, the husband, SMP and I were the only three of the 70 said white folk interested in gorilla trekking that day. We decided to go and see the largest group, which was also the farthest away. We loaded up with our guide for a 30-minute exhaust-filled ride to a small village near one of the volcanoes. We got out at the ranger base, got our armed guards and walking sticks and set off.
Contrary to what you might think about a place like Rwanda, it is really a beautiful country. As we began our walk up the terraced hills where villagers were planting potatoes and chrysanthemum (as mosquito repellant), we started to see the green, rolling landscape and low clouds. After about two hours of climbing at a 75 degree slope and having children run out and scream “ferangu” at us, we reached a big pile of rocks. This, the ranger/guide told us, was the national forest. After this point there could be no eating, no smoking (which we weren’t), no loud talking, and no defecating without first digging a 30 centimeter hole. One of the soldiers hacked down the wall and we went in. Now, I ain’t never been in a rainforest before and the brush was thick; before I could even enter I was besieged with spiders and insects. The guides had to hack their way through the vines and bamboo to make a path for us while radioing the trackers who spend all day with the gorilla pods. We trudged on for about another hour, all the while getting smacked in the face with wet tree limbs, getting hung on vines, having rain trickle down on us, freezing in the cold. It seemed like we were walking in circles, but then we saw it: gorilla poo.
Before long, we stopped and the guide told us to put down our bags and walking sticks. We were here and the gorillas were close. We did as we were told and I stepped around a tree and there they were.
A member of the Susa Group
It was like they were waiting for us, all 21 of them. I saw Poppy (a gorilla researched by Dian Fossey) and her baby first. The rest were stretched out in a clearing, relaxing. It was literally a scene out of the best-staged documentary: the mist rolled in, the younger members of the group played with each other and ran towards us. It was simply amazing. We were able to spend an hour with the gorillas, during which time they were mainly eating, yawning, sleeping, scratching themselves and farting. They are extremely sedate creatures (or at least this group was too familiar with humans after years of being researched). There were three silverbacks we could see and the one closest to us had a cold and spent the time we were there picking his nose and eating it. One of the 1-year-old twins ran towards us, turned around, peed in our direction, and then began to make kissing noises and shake her head back and forth with her mouth wide open. The younger gorillas climbed up the trees while the mothers nursed their babies. It’s hard to believe that I actually got to be that close to them—less than four feet from a booger eating silverback!
One of the babies.
We took tons of photos (which I swear I will post) and it was not long before we had to leave. We set off back through the forest and it was a full-on rain by the time we got back to the rock fence boundary. Walking back down, I fell once while SMP fell a record four times down the muddy sides of the hills. When we got back to the car and received our certificates, we were beat, covered in mud, cold and completely wet. Although it took a long hike through the rain and a few thousand dollars, it was worth it.
This morning, while getting ready for work, I saw last night's Nightline program, concidentally about the same trip. You can read about it here.
The Culprit
Here I was, Saturday morning, minding my own business, when I spotted something gray in my front yard. Thinking it was another cat trying to pop a squat in my marigolds, I ran outside. It was a monkey. I saw the first couple of monkeys two weeks ago. They were walking along the front wall of my yard, not bothering anything.
I live in the capital of Ethiopia. I live in the city. I am truly puzzled as to how these primates are making their way into my yard. Moreover, I am pissed off that the little motherfuckers are eating my flowers.
I used to like monkeys--buy pyjamas with monkeys on them, subscribe to Monkey Wire news alerts, enjoying looking at them in zoos--but when they start destroying my property by pulling up plants whose seeds my husband brought from China, well, a monkey ass is going to get a hammer thrown at it.
It's on.
From the NYT--I knew that the Ethiopian Government was restrictive and authoritarian, but sanctioned rape and torture?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
June 18, 2007
In Ethiopian Desert, Fear and Cries of Army Brutality
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
IN THE OGADEN DESERT, Ethiopia — The rebels march 300 strong across the crunchy earth, young men with dreadlocks and AK-47s slung over their shoulders.
This is the Ogaden, a spindle-legged corner of Ethiopia that the urbane officials in Addis Ababa, the capital, would rather outsiders never see. It is the epicenter of a separatist war pitting impoverished nomads against one of the biggest armies in Africa.
What goes on here seems to be starkly different from the carefully constructed up-and-coming image that Ethiopia — a country that the United States increasingly relies on to fight militant Islam in the Horn of Africa — tries to project.
In village after village, people said they had been brutalized by government troops. They described a widespread and longstanding reign of terror, with Ethiopian soldiers gang-raping women, burning down huts and killing civilians at will.
It is the same military that the American government helps train and equip — and provides with prized intelligence. The two nations have been allies for years, but recently they have grown especially close, teaming up last winter to oust an Islamic movement that controlled much of Somalia and rid the region of a potential terrorist threat.
The Bush administration, particularly the military, considers Ethiopia its best bet in the volatile Horn — which, with Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea, is fast becoming intensely violent, virulently anti-American and an incubator for terrorism.
But an emerging concern for American officials is the way that the Ethiopian military operates inside its own borders, especially in war zones like the Ogaden.
Anab, a 40-year-old camel herder who was too frightened, like many others, to give her last name, said soldiers took her to a police station, put her in a cell and twisted her nipples with pliers. She said government security forces routinely rounded up young women under the pretext that they were rebel supporters so they could bring them to jail and rape them.
“Me, I am old,” she said, “but they raped me, too.”
According to Georgette Gagnon, deputy director for the Africa division of Human Rights Watch, Ethiopia is one of the most repressive countries in Africa.
“What the Ethiopian security forces are doing,” she said, “may amount to crimes against humanity.”
Human Rights Watch issued a report in 2005 that documented a rampage by government troops against members of the Anuak, a minority tribe in western Ethiopia, in which soldiers ransacked homes, beat villagers to death with iron bars and in one case, according to a witness, tied up a prisoner and ran over him with a military truck.
After the report came out, the researcher who wrote it was banned by the Ethiopian government from returning to the country. Similarly, three New York Times journalists who visited the Ogaden to cover this story were imprisoned for five days and had all their equipment confiscated before being released without charges.
The violence has been particularly acute against women, villagers said, and many have recently fled.
Asma, 19, who now lives in neighboring Somaliland, said she was stuck in an underground cell for more than six months last year, raped and tortured. “They beat me on the feet and breasts,” she said. She was freed only after her father paid the soldiers ransom, she said, though she did not know how much.
Why is it no matter where I go I get cat-called? I can be wearing anything, any time of the day in any part of the city and men cannot help but yell something at me! Walking back to my office from lunch with my husband a man pulled up next to me in his car and yelled, “sexy!” And last week, wearing sweats with greasy hair going to play Frisbee a man in a minibus taxi pulled in between me and my husband just to holler at me (I was walking with him and three Ethiopian men, but the driver was undeterred): “Hey baby, how are you?”
What are these guys thinking? Seriously, is there some myth about white women that I have not heard? Do they think that I am going to talk to them? What gives them the fucking right to walk past me and whisper, “sweet, sweet sister”? What gives them the right to even talk to me at all? I just want to yell “LOOK, I AM WALKING WITH MY HUSBAND, THE ONLY WHITE GUY WITHIN A TEN MILE RADIUS AND I AM WEARING BUSINESS CLOTHES. I AM NOT A PROSTITUTE AND I HAVE NO REASON TO TALK TO YOU. FUCK OFF.”
I really need to invest in a tazer.
Whenever I read a story like this, I feel like I have been kicked in the chest.
I have been out of Afghanistan now for over four months. Still, I can't tear myself away from the stories--stories so fucking bewildering they make me want to cry. Why would anyone gun down schoolgirls?
I think about the time I went to a school opening in the same province where these two little girls were killed. My organization had built a primary school for boys and one for girls and a few colleagues and I were invited for the ceremony. Dozens of little girls lined the walk as we approached the school--handing us flowers, singing and shaking our hands. They were all wearing the traditional green headscarves and maroon dresses with gold trim. After we toured the new school, one of the girls read a poem she had written and the teachers provided us with sugar coated almonds, raisins and green tea even though it was Ramadan and all of the Muslims were fasting--not eating or drinking until sundown.
Two months later, a rocket hit the school at night. No one was hurt and there was minimal damage, but it was a warning.
I guess things are getting worse.
Stories like this also remind me of the Afghans who really meant a lot to me--the civil engineer I worked with who broke down crying when he heard I was leaving for Ethiopia and told me, "I have three daughters. The youngest, she is like you. I always encourage her to be like you." The Afghans who called when the riots happened to make sure I was OK, the friends who offered to take us into hiding. I also think about Sharif, a driver at my work. Sharif did not speak English, but taking me and my husband home one day my husband noticed a Zemfira tape in his car.
"Ti gavareesh pa-ruskii?" ("you speak Russian?"), my husband asked, using the informal "you" which always pisses me off. "Da", he replied--a friendship was born.
Sharif went to university in Leningrad and finished his degree in history in 1987--two years before the Soviets were run out of Afghanistan by the Mujahadeen. He had five daughters, a real misfortune for an Afghan father. Since I was the only expatriate Sharif could communicate with (the only one who spoke Russian), he often asked me what was going on within the organization--the hirings, firings and other gossip and he told me what was going on in Afghanistan--the corrupt police, the bombings, the rumors.
Before my husband and I left Afghanistan for good Sharif invited us over to his house for dinner. He lived in the "unplanned" area of the city where people squatted on public land in mud houses. He lived on the side of TV hill, on the third floor of a lopsided building with no running water and no sewer (wastewater ran down a trench in the center of the dirt road). We met all of his beautiful daughters, including the smallest, Arazu, who was five. Sitting there drinking tea with Sharif and his family, I could tell how much he loved his daughters.
They brought out dozens of dishes from their small kitchen in a genuine display of hospitality. After dinner, Sharif's daughters presented me with some jewlery they had made for me and Sharif brought out his photos.
The pictures broke my heart. Here was Sharif--twenty years ago with more hair--in Sochi, with his college friends (big Soviet women lounging in bikinis in the background, obviously scandalous for an Afghan). Here was Sharif in Red Square, in front of Lenin's tomb, in his obshezhetye (dorm) with his friends from Pakistan, China and Kenya. Here was Sharif, so full of hope, thinking that the world was ahead of him with no idea what was going to happen a few years down the road.
Now he is a driver earning $125 a month and supporting his wife and five girls.
When I hear terrible things about Afghanistan, I think about people like Sharif. I think about people who just want to raise their children and celebrate their weddings, to play with their grandchildren and sit around with friends and drink tea. I think about how the bombings have killed the family members of friends. I think about the little girls who sang songs for the foreigners when they got their new school. I think about Sharif sitting in the window of his small, two-room house, holding his little Arazu.
Ethiopia has the lowest number of cell phone subscribers in Africa.
The country where my husband is has the lowest number of internet subscribers. While what is wrong with Liberia might be easily explained by years of war that decimated the infrastructure, Ethiopia (besides a few skirmishes with Eritrea) has not seen the conflict on the scale of say, Sierra Leone. No, the situation in Abyssinia comes down to three letters: ETC. Ethiopia Telecom will not allow competition--all of the telecommunications systems go through the government. This is why it took four months for my employer to take pity on me and give me the "consultant" SIM card (the whole time I was in country there were none available and ETC refused to issue new ones) and why, as I write now, I am on a slow dial-up.
The government shut down Skype, blogspot.com, and streaming video seems at least three decades away.
Last week the internet, cell phones and land lines shut down for the whole day. My Ethiopian colleagues thought Somalia had invaded. After living in Afghanistan, I believed them.
So, as you all know, Somalia did not invade. However, after this post I this blog might be shut down.
(from the BBC)
US targets Ethiopia for sanctions
Correspondents say Ethiopia has come in for increased criticism over its human rights record since the violent crackdown on post poll protests in 2005; opposition leaders imprisoned as a consequence have subsequently been released.
And since Ethiopia's went into Somalia last December to help the transitional government- a rebellion in its eastern Ogaden region which borders Somalia has escalated.
'Correct wrongdoings'
The US representatives approved the Ethiopian Democracy and Accountability Act on Tuesday, which puts Ethiopian government officials at risk of being denied entry visas over human rights violations.
It also threatens to withhold military aid of at least $1.5m
Mr Payne said the bill was bipartisan and secured unanimous approval.
"It's something that's been discussed ever since the killing of civilians, gunned down in the streets of Addis [Ababa] almost two years ago," the Democratic Congressman told the BBC's Network Africa.
"There was a feeling that Ethiopia, being an ally of the United States, should have an opportunity to correct some of the wrongdoings, and that has not happened.
"Two years later people are still being imprisoned. There's still problems in the Ogaden region. People are having food kept away from them. That's why we finally said we need to move forward with it."
Samuel Assefa, Ethiopia's ambassador to the US, called the bill "irresponsible" and said it would hamper efforts to improve things.
"The legislation also would undermine regional stability in the Horn of Africa by jeopardising vital security cooperation between the United States and Ethiopia," he said in a statement, Reuters news agency reports.
The BBC's Elizabeth Blunt in Addis Ababa says as Ethiopia is such a strong ally of the US in the Horn of Africa, it is unlikely that President George Bush's administratation will be sympathetic to the bill.
I now have an answer as to why I have been unable to eat since my husband went to West Africa: a peptic ulcer.
I awoke Monday with chest pains. Nonetheless, I got ready and (being the Pionerka that I am) went into the office at 8:30. By 10:00, I was doubled over in pain and thought it was a panic attack. My boss instructed one of my Ethiopian counterparts to take me to St. Gabriel’s hospital, less than 2 kilometers from the office and a block from my house. We entered the hospital and explained to the people behind the registration desk that I was having chest pains; they regarded these symptoms with the same urgency they would give an ingrown toenail.
I paid my 60 birr registration fee and was instructed to go and wait in the “waiting area” which consists of a narrow hallway leading to the cafeteria with several worn leather seats and which smells of fried fish and bleach. I sat down and turned my attention to one of the overhead TVs, inexplicably tuned to CNN rather than ETV. After 15 minutes Tamrat (my Ethiopian coworker) told me to go to the nurses’ station where they took my blood pressure and weight and again treated my chest pains nonchalantly. I was given a card with the number 22 on it and instructed to return to the waiting area/hallway.
For two hours I waited among 50 coughing, sneezing Ethiopians to see the doctor. Finally, when it was my turn, the doctor asked me about my symptoms and listened to my chest. When Tamrat left to ask the office about payment, the doctor decided to ask me a series of personal, probing questions Ethiopians can’t help but ask when confronted with a captive ferangi (white person): Are you a worker or a volunteer? How long have you been married? Do you have children? Why have you been married seven years and do not have children? Where is your husband? What is he doing there?
I felt like standing up on his desk and screaming: THIS IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. FOR YOUR INFORMATION AND FOR THE INFORMATION OF EVERYONE IN THE COUNTRY, I DO NOT HAVE CHILDREN BECAUSE I CANNOT STAND THEM. I WOULD RATHER LOSE A LIMB THAN LACTATE. I AM ONLY ENDURING THIS ON THE OFF CHANCE YOU ARE GOING TO PRESCRIBE ME SOME VALIUM.
After what seemed like an eternity, Tamrat returned and explained to the doctor in Amharic that my employer would pay because I didn’t have any cash. The doctor took out a photocopied sheet of paper and wrote, “lab”, “EKG” and “observation”. I told him there was no way in HELL I was going to stay overnight, that I would rather die of a heart attack. He scratched out the last word and sent me on my way.
The first thing they wanted to do was the “labs”. I walked into the laboratory which smelled like urine and the technician grabbed two vials. I stood up and walked out. There is not a chance in hell that I would let a public hospital in East Africa stick me with a needle.
The next day, I slept in and went to work about 11:00 thinking that the symptoms would pass. By 3:00 I was about to die: pains were coming every five minutes. I rallied my strength and drove myself to a private clinic near my office. The Israeli doctors gave me an exam, diagnosis, prescription and completed insurance forms and sent me on my way in less than an hour.
A few days after beginning treatment and I am still hardly able to eat and experience excessive pain when I do. An American co-worker had the dickheaded comment, “well, if you wanted to lose weight this would be the way to do it”. It has been the week for dickheaded comments.
So if you, by chance, find yourself in Addis Ababa with a health problem DO NOT go to St. Gabriel’s hospital, especially if you have a potentially life-threatening and time sensitive health problem. Ethiopians are the slowest people in the world and never treat anything as urgent. Consider yourself warned.
There is a reason why you never hear the words “dentist” and “Africa” in the same sentence. There are few places in the world where you would be better off letting that rotten root fester than actually seeking professional help and pretty much the whole continent (except for South Africa and one hospital in Nairobi) qualifies.
Let me start from the beginning: about a month and a half ago, I was lying on the couch one Sunday night, watching Dr. Phil, drinking a St. Georges and eating popcorn when I broke the back off one of my lower front teeth (which was cracked during a raspberry verenyi incident in 2004) by biting down on a kernel. Since I had been medevaced back to my cute little Tennessean dentist, Dr. Gregory, less than a month before for an abscessed tooth, I had little choice but to suck it up and visit a dentist in town.
During the said abscessed tooth episode, which involved a lot of swelling, pain and visits to the dickhead South Asian dentist Dr. Raina (yeah, that’s right, I used your real name) who withheld information about treatment options, I was advised by an American working for a Christian aid agency about a Chinese dentist on Bole Road who did good work. Crumpled in my chair during the food security workshop from the pain, I decided I had nothing to lose by visiting Dr. Ling. Although she could do nothing to help me with my abscessed tooth except pull it (since a root canal had already been done) or “make a little window” to clean the roots by drilling into my jaw, she decided it was in everyone’s best interest to send me back to Dr. Gregory and promptly filled out my insurance paperwork (which Dr. Dickhead Raina refused to do).
This episode solidified the bond between me and Dr. Ling. Inside I swore that if any other dental problem arose I would go to her.
Back to the broken tooth—in August I went to see Dr. Ling who drilled down my two front teeth to little nubs before I knew what was happening or was able to ask for anesthesia. She then made impressions of my teeth, put in temporary (but nice looking) caps, and informed me that my new ceramic teeth would be back from China in a month. Those teeth came in last week and were installed. They looked good, but were a little too big. Dr. Ling told me to wait a week and see if I still thought they were too big and she would sand them down. That visit took place today.
This morning I got up, threw on some jeans and got in the car to Bole. By 9:00 Dr. Ling had ground down the teeth and I was on my way. Looking in the rearview mirror, I realized a mistake had been made—there was a considerable gap between where my top and bottom teeth met in front. I thought about it for a while, got ready and went into the office. By 11:00 I was distraught. Here I had fucked up the only front teeth I would ever have-- I went back to Dr. Ling. She was reassuring, we would fix it, she told me. The next hour was the worst, and nearly the most painful, of my life.
I have a high pain threshold: I have suffered peptic ulcers, burst ovarian cysts, and dry sockets and taken them all like a Pionerka. Something about this visit today made me squeal like a five year old. It took Dr. Ling about 35 minutes to drill the teeth, crack the ceramic, reassure me, shoot me up with anesthesia, and do some more drilling. I screamed, I cried, I squirmed, I bled. I was ashamed of myself for acting like such a big baby. I was mad because I was having this done in East Africa instead of East Tennessee. After what seemed like an eternity, Dr. Ling took impressions and put in temporary caps. I decided there was no way I could work for the rest of the day and packed it up to come home. Here at my dining room table, four hours later, my jaw and teeth are still aching. The pain and the humiliation of the whole day ranks only behind the riots in 2006 and losing my job three years ago. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Never see a dentist in Africa, NEVER.
Nothing left to do but light up a sheesha and have some wine.
The Culprit
Here I was, Saturday morning, minding my own business, when I spotted something gray in my front yard. Thinking it was another cat trying to pop a squat in my marigolds, I ran outside. It was a monkey. I saw the first couple of monkeys two weeks ago. They were walking along the front wall of my yard, not bothering anything.
I live in the capital of Ethiopia. I live in the city. I am truly puzzled as to how these primates are making their way into my yard. Moreover, I am pissed off that the little motherfuckers are eating my flowers.
I used to like monkeys--buy pyjamas with monkeys on them, subscribe to Monkey Wire news alerts, enjoy looking at them in zoos--but when they start destroying my property by pulling up plants whose seeds my husband brought from China, well, a monkey ass is going to get a hammer thrown at it.
It's on.
The excerpt below is from CNN. In Ethiopia we have had thousands of people stranded on high ground surrounded by water with crocodiles and poisoned snakes over the past two weeks. The US is only pledging 100K to help the people affected by the disaster, which is bullshit. I give money to MSF whenever there is a similar crisis--I suggest you do too.
AMURIA DISTRICT, Uganda (AP) -- Aid agencies were appealing for millions of dollars Friday to help more than 1 million Africans affected by deadly floods that have swept across the continent.
The United States planned to send $100,000 for Uganda -- one of the hardest hit countries -- and Europe announced more than $15 million in aid for flood victims across 17 countries. The floods have killed at least 200 people and displaced hundreds of thousands since the summer in central and eastern Africa.
"If we don't get food people will die in this place," Francis Aruo, 28, told The Associated Press in eastern Uganda, one of the hardest-hit regions of Africa. "All our crops are rotten."
The United Nations asked for $43 million for Uganda, where 50 people have died. Theophane Nikyema, U.N. Humanitarian coordinator for Uganda, said the money will help address the "devastation left behind by the rising tide of water."
The European Commission is planning to send $15.45 million in humanitarian aid to help flood victims, said Louis Michel, the European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid. The United States was sending $100,000 for Uganda, said Steven Browning, the country's U.S. ambassador.
In Uganda's Amuria District, which was put under a state of emergency this week, more than 500 people were taking shelter in a seven-room schoolhouse, which was meant to open for a new term last week.
"It's a struggle for accommodations," said Gilbert Omeke, the school's head teacher. "Some people are fighting for space. I have designated one classroom for expectant mothers and the elderly but so many more don't find space."
UNICEF was distributing basic disease-prevention kits, including plastic sheeting and water purification tablets, but medical officials said illnesses were spreading.
Florence Asega, a nurse at the closest health clinic to the school, some three miles away, said children were increasingly suffering from malaria and diarrhea.
"In the cramped, wet conditions coughs and infections spread quickly," she added.
In nearby Katakwi District, latrines were overflowing and hundreds of mud huts had collapsed. The nearest World Food Program distribution site was nearly four miles away, through waist-high floodwater.
Aruo has made the journey twice so far, returning with 65 pounds of maize, groundnuts and cooking oil for his wife and three children.
"It's a very tedious journey because it is water the whole way, the food is very heavy and some people have to leave some behind because they can't carry it," he said.
In addition to writing proposals, reviewing proposals, developing assessments, creating presentations, drinking coffee and reading Perez Hilton, one of the most tedious, but relatively amusing tasks that I have is reviewing job applications. Now, the first vetting isn't something I do regularly, and would only usually do it if I were filling my own position; however, serving as Project Manager for the project I totally made up I feel like I need to have greater control on how this whole thing kicks off.
So, ladies and gentlemen, without further adieu, I give you excerpts from applications:
Makes what swell?
“I have done my second research paper had a title of ‘Hot romance movie and its impact on the swell of HIV/AIDS’”
&*#@! I hate ampersands.
“I have a Bachelor degree in STATISTICS as MAJOR and COMPUTER SCIENCE as a MINOR from ADDIS ABABA UNIVERSITY. Therefore, I have very interested and best hood in working in the vacant position, which I am applying for being competitive & successful in the position. Attached here with, I enclosed all my documents that witness about me.”
Alright—at least three applicants talked about “exerting [their] efforts” (not in my office you don't):
“I would be glad and most powerful if you give me a chance of employment so as to exert my effort with dedication & honesty.”
“…to exert my effort with dedication and honest.”
At least it is better than being a “steamed” organization:
“I am writing this letter of application to request for an open position in your estimated organization…”
Fill in the blank, we aren’t picky:
“I am interested to work as (in pen) Monitoring Officer in your school/college /organization…”
Finally, the respect I deserve:
“Dear: Sir/Madam
I have the honour to inform your Excellency that I am very interested to employ in the position of Monitoring Officer…”
It always starts innocently enough.
Last Sunday my husband, cat and I were enjoying a sunny day in the yard. I was slightly hungover from the five gin and tonics I had consumed during the course of our Thanksgiving dinner and subsequent Thanksgiving trip to the Platinum nightclub the night before and thought that lying around in the hammock would be a good way to recover. We had only been outside for about ten minutes when my husband yelled, “sweetie, look!” and I turned around to see this on the wall behind me:
Alright, it was actually more like this:
Who knows how long the evil primate had been surveilling us. It had something furry and long-dead in its hand, which it threw down on the ground and came after us, its teeth bared. We sprung up and ran towards the porch and the front door. (A girl I went to high school with died from monkey poo--I shit you not and no pun intended.) Thinking quickly, my husband grabbed Snega (our cat) and threw it at the rabid monkey, but it was not deterred. It came closer and my husband picked one a metal chair over his head ready to knock the living monkey shit out of it. It scampered up one of the porch columns to a monkey friend waiting on the roof (a coordinated attack).
After the narrow escape we went over to examine the dead furry thing. It was a baby monkey. Abush, our guard, picked the carcass up with a stick and flung it at the monkey who then jumped over the neighbors’ fence.
So, what was learned from this experience?
1. Monkeys will rip your face off without notice or provocation;
2. Monkeys are sneaky little bastards and surprisingly quiet;
3. Chucking white cats at monkeys will not save you (however, cats of other colors have not been field tested and may prove effective);
4. If you are hungover from drinking too much gin the night before you are better off staying in bed.
Ah, the excitement of living in Africa…
This is a big deal.
Like the UN getting blown up in Baghdad, this incident portends much worse for Afghanistan. Thank Allah (most merciful) I am not living there anymore.
The only question remaining is: how can someone who works for Save the Children afford gym membership at a 5-star hotel?
Here's a way to provide educational opportunities to girls in Africa.
(I am not affiliated with this organization. The founder is a former student of a colleague of mine.)
Malawi is the "Warm Heart of Africa."
Won't you warm someone's heart this
Valentine's Day?
The Advancement of Girls' Education Scholarship Fund (AGE)
is offering a different way to show your love to someone this February 14th.
Purchase a small gift box for $20 or more and support a girl's education in Malawi.
A beautiful gift box will be sent to the recipient of your choice with information about AGE, a photo of an AGE Scholar, and a small, sweet surprise inside.
Give a gift with meaning...empower a girl through education.
All orders and payments must be received by 5:00PM EST on February 8, 2008 to ensure delivery within the US by February 14th. Please complete the attached order form and e-mail it to Katrina Sison at Katrina.Sison@tufts.edu. All payments must be completed on the AGE website (http://www.ageafrica.org/contact) through PayPal. Because of the short turn around, we are unable to accept checks for this Valentine's Day campaign.
1 box: Minimum donation of $20
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Zikomo!
(Thank you!)
I love MSG. I think that people who decry its use are stupid and ill-informed. I worked in a Chinese restaurant throughout high school and college, and bloated customers would saunter in and order entrees with NO MSG and then order fried rice. "But the fried rice has MSG", I'd explain; they didn't care, "a little wouldn't hurt".
To this day, all I can say in Mandarin is "bu no wei jin"--no MSG.
At long last, I AM VINDICATED. Today's NYT has an article about MSG:
March 5, 2008
Yes, MSG, the Secret Behind the Savor
By JULIA MOSKIN
IN 1968 a Chinese-American physician wrote a rather lighthearted letter to The New England Journal of Medicine. He had experienced numbness, palpitations and weakness after eating in Chinese restaurants in the United States, and wondered whether the monosodium glutamate used by cooks here (and then rarely used by cooks in China) might be to blame.
The consequences for the restaurant business, the food industry and American consumers were immediate and enormous. MSG, a common flavor enhancer and preservative used since the 1950s, was tagged as a toxin, removed from commercial baby food and generally driven underground by a new movement toward natural, whole foods.
Even now, after “Chinese restaurant syndrome” has been thoroughly debunked (virtually all studies since then confirm that monosodium glutamate in normal concentrations has no effect on the overwhelming majority of people), the ingredient has a stigma that will not go away.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go boot up for my daily dose of MSG.
March 8 was International Women’s Day, although few Americans knew it. All over the world, women were dressing up in their best clothes, receiving chocolates and flowers from men, and drinking themselves silly.
In Ethiopia, the day passed with little fanfare—a rally in Meskel Square against gender-based violence, some isolated gatherings celebrating women as “mothers, sisters, daughters” and the usual claptrap which accompanies the day. The events only started to scratch the surface on the hardships women in Ethiopia face. The statistics are alarming and disheartening:
71% of Ethiopian women have, at some point in their lives, experienced sexual or physical violence at the hands of a family member or intimate partner. (Demographic and Health Survey, 2005)
About 80% of Ethiopian women have had their genitals mutilated. Some of the girls are as young as seven days when they have their inner labia and clitoris cut off and sewn shut; some are as old as 15. As a result of this practice, girls experience psychological problems, difficulty giving birth (resulting in fistula), and increased susceptibility to HIV infection. (Demographic and Health Survey, 2000)
Female Genital Mutilation is practiced throughout Africa, and in some parts of Asia and the Middle East.
69% of marriages in Ethiopia are the result of abduction. In parts of Ethiopia, 46% of girls are married under the age of 15; for the country as a whole the average stands at around 31%. (UNICEF/NCTPE 2004).
Ethiopia’s fertility rate is the highest in the world at 5.9 children per woman. (World Bank, 2007)
The maternal mortality rate is 871 for every 100,000 live births; more than one-fifth of all deaths of women aged 15-49 are pregnancy related. (Demographic and Health Survey, 2005)
But aside from the statistics, I can’t tell you how horrible it is to be driving down the road and seeing a woman bent over under the weight of fuel wood; how devastating it is to see women begging while breastfeeding their children, sitting on the side of the road; and how awful I feel when I hear that just last week a four-year-old girl was raped by the guard at her expensive, international preschool.
So although International Women’s Day has passed for another year, be thankful for the women who came before and made all of your freedoms (and my freedoms) possible. Understand there is still a need for feminism in this world, no matter what the media or the Republicans try to tell you. There is still need for action and advocacy and agitation. We have not arrived.
“Enabling Communities Abandon Harmful Traditional Practices”. UNICEF/Ethiopia and the National Committee on Harmful Traditional Practices, 2004.
World Bank, Ethiopia: Accelerating Equitable Growth Country Economic Memorandum, Washington DC, June 2007, pp. 5-6.
Central Statistical Agency [Ethiopia] and ORC Macro, 2006 and Ethiopia Demographic and Health Survey, Addis Ababa, 2005
I just don't fucking learn, now do I?
I got bitten by a monkey.
It was the innocent looking one on the left.
See, I had to do a rapid assessment of a high-risk corridor in Northern Ethiopia last week and the husband and I decided to take some time to see Lalibela and Gondar. (You all know Lalibela--it's home to the rock-hewn churches and has been part of the Amazing Race TV show [the season with the professional wrestlers when Joyce and Uchenna won].) At any rate, in Gondar there is a woman who runs a charity which includes:
1. Primary school for 27 children
2. Donkey rescue
3. Cat and dog rescue
4. Veterinary facilities
5. Income generation for people with disabilities
6. Sponsorship for poor children, young adults and the elderly; and
7. Primate rescue.
It's the last one that was a problem. While the donkeys, cats and dogs were relatively docile, the monkeys are mean. I knew this and I went and tried to get my picture with one anyway. The bastard monkey ran up and bit me on the leg. My husband got it on film.
Someday we will look back on this and laugh about the fact that I just don't understand that monkeys are not cute, they are not pets, and they are not friendly. In the meantime we will be calling the center and checking to make sure none of the monkeys exhibit signs of rabies.
No wonder the people who used to own them got rid of them. Damn monkeys.
I came in this morning and had gotten a copy of the article referenced here about Muslim women having their hymens reconstructed. I shared it with my friend Hareg who informed me that infibulated women go to the doctor to have their infibulation "tightened up" for the husbands as a holiday gift. (If you don't know what infibulation is, it's when a woman has her clitoris, labia majora and minora cut out and then sewn together to ensure she remains a virgin until she marries. See my post on International Women's Day.)
Y'all, what the fuck? At least Judith Warner knows what time it is.
From today's New York Times.
June 12, 2008, 11:37 pm
Pure Tyranny
Tags: chastity, patriarchy
Righteous indignation is so easy, so pleasant, when you can sit back and fling it overseas.
I had that edifying experience on the D.C. Metro Wednesday morning, reading in the Times about the Muslim women in France who are going to cosmetic surgeons for hymen replacement surgery so that they can bleed as seeming virgins on their wedding nights.
It’s a practice that has, apparently, become relatively common in the immigrant communities of Europe. But, of course, it seems like hair-raising news in a country like ours, where a young woman’s right to do with her body as she sees fit has, for decades, been enshrined as perhaps the most essential part of her God-given human dignity.
As my 11-year-old says, Yeah, right.
Right after I finished reading the Times piece, I called the French Embassy to find out under what conditions French social security would pay for the hymen-restoration procedure. (It’s “mostly done in private clinics and in most cases not covered by tax-financed insurance plans,” said the Times article; “Oh la la!” said the receptionist to whom I relayed my query.)
I then started rifling through my desk. And there, beneath a report showing paid family leave to be on the decline, beneath a Newsweek article on a new children’s book, “My Beautiful Mommy,” that tells the story of a mom who becomes even prettier after a nose job and a tummy tuck, I found the story that the hymen news had immediately brought to mind.
It was also from The Times, from May 19, and featured 70-odd girls, of “early grade school to college” age, with their fathers, stepfathers and fathers-in-law-to-be, at the ninth annual, largely evangelical “Father-Daughter Purity Ball.”
“The evening, which alternated between homemade Christian rituals and giddy dancing” – and which culminated, for at least one father and his daughters, with a dreamy walk in the night around a lake, “was a joyous public affirmation of the girls’ sexual abstinence until they wed,” said the Times article.
“From this, it’s only a matter of degree to the man in Austria,” I’d scribbled across the first page.
The “man in Austria,” of course, was 73-year-old Josef Fritzl, who was around that time also making headlines after it was discovered that he had kept his daughter, Elisabeth, 42, locked up in a cellar for 24 years, during which time he’d raped her regularly, and had her bear him seven children.
(“It was a lovely idea for me, to have a proper family … down in the cellar, with a good wife and a couple of children,” he said in his confession.)
Fritzl, a self-described “man of decency and good values,” had imprisoned his daughter after she began staying out all night and drinking. “I had to create a place where I could keep Elisabeth by force if necessary, away from the outside world,” he confessed.
“Fathers, our daughters are waiting for us,” Randy Wilson, one of the ball’s organizers, said at the Colorado Springs “Purity” event. “They are desperately waiting for us in a culture that lures them into the murky waters of exploitation. They need to be rescued by you, their dad.”
I don’t want to take this analogy too far. I don’t mean to imply that there’s any equivalency between Josef Fritzl’s acts and the Purity Ball. Fritzl’s actions were uniquely horrific, and I am not accusing the men who danced in Colorado Springs of any crimes. But there is nonetheless a kind of horror to their obsession with their daughters’ sexuality. There is a dangerous boundary violation contained in their vow “before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity.” And there is even greater danger to the fact that this particular aspect of the nationwide “abstinence movement” has not been broadly denounced as the form of emotional violence against girls that it indisputably is.
Judith Lewis Herman, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, whose work with and writings on incest victims in the 1980s revolutionized the understanding of the crime and its perpetrators, believes that incest, like rape generally, has to be viewed within a wider context of power relations. Incest, she says, is “an abuse of patriarchal power,” a criminal perversion of fatherly control and influence. It is perpetrated, in many cases, by men who present themselves as the guardians of the moral order. And it isn’t always physical; in her 1981 book (with Lisa Hirschman), “Father-Daughter Incest,” she writes that the violation can be emotional, too, as when a “seductive father” oversteps his boundaries and goes places he never should in his daughter’s head.
“Something I need from dad is affirmation, being told I’m beautiful,” said 19-year-old Jordyn Wilson at the ball. “If we don’t get it from home, we will go out to the culture and get it.”
Sexual abuse – judging by statistics mostly based upon reports of incest – has greatly decreased in our country in recent years. From 1992 to 2003, substantiated cases went down 40 percent, according to the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. Lisa Jones, a research professor at the center, says she thinks the impressive decrease isn’t just due to changed reporting patterns or data collection methods. “We feel like it’s very suggestive of a likelihood that there’s a real decline,” she said.
There are many possible reasons for this improvement. But one, I think, that has to be considered is that girls’ and women’s status has risen. Acceptance of sexual assault and insult has declined. In a world where girls and women are stronger, “abuses of patriarchal power” are less tolerable, acceptable, and possible.
Or should be.
In highly secular France, the reaction to the drama over young women’s virginity playing out in Muslim communities has been public and profound. Justice Minister Rachida Dati recently had to fight off calls for her resignation after she upheld a ruling by a regional court that had annulled the marriage of two French Muslims because the bride turned out not to be a virgin.
Our condemnation of cultural practices and beliefs in our own country that violate girls’ and young women’s dignity and most intimate personal boundaries should be no less total. For, when it comes to female chastity, much of what passes for “protection” is nothing less than sick.
It was Saturday before I heard something had happened. Already for 72 hours dozens of baby faced teenage boys with bullets in their shoulders, and pregnant women with gunshot wounds to their knees had been bundled over the border by family members. Thousands more stood waiting in no man’s land by the time Al Jazeera reported on the shootings on Saturday morning.
At the time I wasn’t surprised—after all, things like this happen in Kyrgyzstan regularly now. The point about ethnic conflict was not really being reported until Monday morning. Even at that point the media said the violence was due to some gang activity, they didn’t mention men in Kyrgyzstan military uniforms were the ones setting Uzbeks on fire and pulling out their eyes.
By Monday, I was writing indignant emails to friends about how I had not one single message or phone call about the situation, and I work for the main aid organization in Uzbekistan! My boss sent an Uzbek colleague out to review the situation on Sunday and he returned Tuesday with sterile facts about the camps: 3,248 people in Jalalquduq, 4,200 people in Poktabod. My colleague didn’t mention anything about the rapes or the mutilations. He also didn’t mention anything about the toilets, shelters or meals at any of the 40-odd refugee camps being set up along the Kyrgyzstan border. My boss sent me out to investigate along with our health project manager, Adolat.
By then, late on Tuesday afternoon, I had some idea of what was going on. I knew the basic facts—37 camps, 80,000 refugees, mostly women and children—but I also had heard some of the rumors that were being reported, about the decapitations, shootings, and beatings of Uzbeks. I and my colleague drove the 5 hours out to the Fergana Valley and settled into our hotel in Margilan about 10pm. We had no idea what exactly we were doing, with whom we were supposed to meet, or what the implications of this trip (I am talking on a personal level) might have.
At 9:00 we reported to the Andijon airport where the main coordinating center had been set up. Adolat and I sat there for 3 hours waiting for someone to be identified by the government to accompany us to the camps. In the small “press center” where we were waiting, a DVD was being looped showing men and women being carried into the Andijon emergency hospital with gunshot wounds. The time stamp on the footage read June 10, 3:10am. Until this point, I thought the shooting had started on Friday rather than Thursday. Yes, the three press men sitting next to us confirmed, it started Thursday. The DVD lasted for an hour and showed at least 100 people dead and dying, and was accompanied by a small set of laminated, bound pages of pictures of corpses. These photos included men with gunshot wounds to the head, women severely beaten and the charred corpses of toddlers wrapped in blankets.
Our first stop was the emergency hospital where the injured were brought. We donned the requisite white coats (Adolat's actually an MD) and visited the wounded. Everything was white, clean, quiet and bleached. Young men stared languidly at the ceiling while doctors explained their treatments and the surgeons produced before and after x-rays to show to the American what action was taken. Thankfully, we were spared visits with the rape victims but were allowed access only to the ICU where the worst injuries were still recuperating. 170 people were brought to this hospital with gunshot wounds.
So no more Ethiopia, no more Africa. Bacca, bas, halas, vso, that's it.
I am back in the Soviet Union, working for an organization I swore I'd never work for again.
They made me an offer I could not refuse.
Still, it's nice: with my white complexion, round face, lean build, tight skirts and high heels I fit right in. It is so pleasant to walk down the street and have no one scream "foreigner!" at me every few minutes like they did in Ethiopia--and the sour cream is amazing.
I am not really sure why I did it; I already had one from when I was 23 (and one is usually enough for most people). I was in-between jobs and desperate, so I took a drastic step: I got another Master’s degree.
After three years of running off to take exams while my husband lounged by the pool in Kigali, lugging statistics texts to my office in Kabul, and declining friends’ Friday night invitations to Harlem Jazz so I could write reports, it’s all over. Now my business cards read:
Confection Marzipana MA, MPH
A tad anticlimactic, no?
Three years of my life, countless hours and thousands of dollars for three little letters. And--get this--I am not even employed in the sector of my new degree (but rather in the discipline of my former Master's).
Yeah, so now that it’s all over I am a little bit at loose ends. Without the demands of writing a thesis and taking courses I am not sure what to do. However, I have some ideas (in no particular order):
-Get a pilot’s license (impossible for Americans in former Soviet Union)
-Write a cookbook
-Take up violin again
-Learn to kick-box/cage fight
-Improve my Russian grammar
So heed my advice: if you have one Master's degree and are considering getting another, don't. It's really not worth it. Plus, you get yourself worked up into a frenzy of being active and studious on weekends that is really hard to undo.
