Why post now, after such a long hiatus?

Because if my blog stays on the internet in the future, even if it's covered in digital dust and cobwebs, I want to be able to look at it and read what I was thinking on what may end up being the most important night of my lifetime.

Barack Obama was just elected the 44th President of the United States. As soon as the election was called on the news, I started crying happily and in disbelief and didn't stop for two hours. I watched millions of people fill the streets of New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Washington DC on television, and then stepped out of my apartment onto the streets of downtown Berkeley to see thousands of Americans, most notably young voters, our future leaders, celebrating this historic moment.

While California's Proposition 8, a proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, may very well be passed by the majority of Californians tonight, I am encouraged by how overwhelmingly young people voted against Prop 8. Whatever may happen when all is said and done tonight, I am convinced that we, who will be the ones making the decisions in the next twenty, thirty, forty years, are more united than ever in the fight for equality for all.

As President-elect Obama noted in his subdued victory speech, we all face unprecedented challenges. But despite how easy, reasonable, even prescient it is to be discouraged and cynical about this world, on this night at least, Americans have given a voice to that part of us that believes we can do better and be better than we are. Barack Obama's victory represents the part of us that has hope and believes in change.

It's things like this...

...that make me cynical about our politics. I have to be honest and say that my interest in this whole federal investigation stems from the fact that Gov. Siegelman is the father of a friend of mine, but whether you have followed what's happened with his case or not, and whatever your politics may be, it is really disheartening to watch the Attorney General of the United States blatantly ignoring questions that, in a theoretically free and democratic society, should be answered. Also, in a democratic society where justice reigns, Karl Rove should not be allowed to ignore a subpoena to testify about his involvement in some really, really shady business. And if he does choose to ignore the subpoena, he should be held in contempt, like everyone else.

If he is innocent, he should have nothing to worry about, right? And even if he was found guilty of being involved in illegal activities, President Bush would almost certainly pardon him before he left office, so nothing bad would happen to Karl Rove, and at least the truth would come out.

Watching this video made me want to vom on my life.

Watch it, think about it, and figure out what you think is or is not wrong with it.

Those of you in the Los Angeles area...

Save the date -

Top 5 Things I’ll Miss Most about Ghana

I’m not putting “Ghanaian people and all my new friends” on this list, because that’s too obvious. Keep in mind, though, that if I did put it on the list, it would be #1.

5. Street sellers. Specifically, doing all my shopping through the tro-tro/taxi window while stuck in traffic. Simply life-changing.

4. Walking through outdoor markets and transport yards, seeing, hearing, and, um, smelling them in all their chaos and glory. In my opinion, this is life at its most alive.

3. Mangoes. And pineapple. And other unprocessed, non-pesticided, non-packaged foods. I plan a moratorium on the purchase and consumption of tropical fruits for a good while.

2. Not being judged for a) looking like crap, b) choosing a pace of life that makes me happy rather than a pace that makes me ‘successful’, and c) making mistakes.

1. This last one is the hardest to explain, but also the most important. I will miss the way that I feel about myself in Ghana. I’m happier with my attitudes, the way I treat others, and my outlook on life. I have to work on maintaining this, but in Ghana, it has been easy… For this reason, I will always have a piece of my heart there.

Top 5 Things I’ve Missed Most about Home

I’m leaving my family and friends off this list, because that's too obvious.

5. I’m mad at myself for putting this on the list, but it’s the truth: reliable, frequent access to the internet.

4. The relative peace of mind that comes with knowing you have at least some recourse with the law if people commit criminal acts against you (strange addition to the list, I know, but man are we fortunate in America).

3. Not standing out in crowds.
   

2. California (to expound: diversity, tolerance, sublime weather, Mexican food).

1. Not sweating profusely all the time.

Two Blog Entries Today :)

Yesterday I was at Sarah and Craig's place hanging out with them and the kids when some of the neighborhood kids came over to play. It's always fun to watch 5 year olds interact, and after videotaping the girls singing some Ghanaian songs, I tried getting them to pose in the eyes-closed-peace-sign-unnaturally-large-smile method perfected by, well, me and my grown adult friends in America. What followed was confusion and hilarity, for your enjoyment.

Rachel? Well, she's a pro.

Spencer? He's working on it.

Mistakes in Masai

“English? No. Swahili? No. No no. Sorry. Masai.”

He was convincing enough that I started to feel guilty about my cynicism and skepticism. I had seen him earlier that afternoon walking across the white sands, the deep red and burgundy of his dress in vibrant contrast with his dark skin and the turquoise water splashing at his ankles. Despite the visual brilliance of his walk across the beach, I had rolled my eyes as I sat reading in the early afternoon gloominess of rained-out Zanzibar.

“He’s prostituting the culture,” I had even muttered to the Danish girl sitting next to me in raffia loungers on the sea. I assumed that the man I had just seen, dressed in all the stunning garb of the Masai people of East Africa, was a fraud, a cheat, a tout posing as a Masai warrior to extract money from the many picture-crazy, camera-toting, culture-straved tourists on the Spice Island. The Masai are what people have in mind when they imagine colorful African tribes, and many are willing to pay top dollar to take pictures with this tribe of cattle herders (Note: these pictures are from the internet). I continued ranting, undeterred by my companion’s head burrowing deeper into her book: “The Masai don’t even live on Zanzibar. Doesn’t he think people know that?”

After shaking my head in indignation, I had gone back to reading my book until the setting sun beckoned me to dinner at the hotel where I was staying. It was an atmospheric place, eccentrically decorated with abstract African art, four-poster ebony beds, and bright orange curtains in thatch bungalows right on the sand. My dinner of fried octopus in green tomato puree was fresh, exotic, and spectactular, and I was ready to retire to bed when I noticed him, the Masai wannabe, approaching the bar for a drink.

He stepped aside to let me pass, and I quietly thanked him for his politeness with one of the few Swahili phrases I had managed to learn in Tanzania. “Asante sana,” I said, and was surprised to note a different accent when he responded in kind with “Karibu sana.” Standing not more than two feet away from him, I had also noticed that he was very tall, about 6’3 or 6’4, and much taller than most of the other men I had met in this part of the world.

“You speaking Swahili?” he tapped my shoulder as I walked toward the exit.

I stopped and turned toward him. “No, I wish I did, but I don’t.”

When he stayed silent, I grew confused. I broke the silence. “Ah, but you speak Swahili and English, so I should thank you or I wouldn’t know how to communicate in this country.” And that is when he told me, strangely, I thought at the time, that he spoke neither English nor Swahili. Only Masai. He said so with no hesitation or guile, and at that moment I began to wonder if my earlier indignation, my self-righteousness, had been nothing more than arrogance. My budding sense of guilt was soothed only by his extended hand, and a moment later, “Nice to meet you. I am called Richard. Sorry for bad English. My tribe, Masai,” uttered slowly and unsurely, but with a warm smile.

“Nice to meet you. I am Ana. My tribe, Armenian. But I come from America.”

“America. Nice place.”

“Yes. Great place.”

“Kili?” he extended a bottle of the Tanzanian beer Kilimanjaro toward me as a gesture of friendship or flirtation, I could not tell which, an invitation for conversation at the least, but I was too ashamed of myself, of my preconceived notions and judgment about his character, to accept.

“No thanks. I was about to go sleep. Goodnight.” I started to turn toward the exit again, but rethought this and turned back toward Richard. “You’re really Masai?”

“Yes. Masai.”

“Can you teach me to say ‘sorry’ in your language?”

He stared at me blankly.

“Like, to apologize. When you feel badly about something. I want to say sorry.”

More blankness.

“Okay, how do I say ‘hello’?”

At this, a smile. He understood this one, and proceeded to say a word so complicated sounding that I can’t even begin to try to spell it out. Our conversation carried on for several minutes, with a lot of hand gesturing and pointing to objects, because his English was broken and my attempt to pronounce words in Masai was pathetic, to say the least.

Between our jumbled conversation and translation from the barman, I got enough information to figure out that Richard was from mainland Tanzania, had grown up in a Masai village, and had left for Zanzibar to find work and money because there were too many men in his village and not enough traditional work. He worked as a security guard for one of the hotels down the beach from where I was staying, and wore his traditional Masai dress because it was an integral part of who he was. When I saw him walking on the beach, he had been walking to work, not scouting tourists to extort.

I wanted to ask how to say “I am a huge douche” in Masai, but didn’t think it would translate well if I asked. Instead, I did my best to make friendly conversation for a while, and then bade my new Masai friend farewell and went off to my room.

It hit me on the short walk between the bar and my room, with my toes digging into the damp sand, that I had spent the majority of that afternoon being what I hate the most – a self-righteous, ignorant, insensitive, judgmental, know-it-all prick who thought she had someone figured out without actually knowing a single thing about that person.

It was a lesson in

shut-the-hell-up-you-don't-know-as-much-as-you-think-you-do

that I will not soon forget, because the person Richard was - friendly, kind, unassuming, someone trying to do honest work in a new land while preserving the culture of his old land - is the opposite of what I would have allowed myself to believe he was if it weren't for that chance encounter in the hotel bar one evening.

The last year as a whole has been a lesson in

let-go-of-your-attachment-to-being-right

that I hope I will not soon forget, because it has been a humbling, difficult, refreshing, and fulfilling lesson to learn.

Due to my voracious appetite for reading lately, I found this in the writings of Michel de Montaigne and I will end this post with it:

“Traveling through the world produces a marvelous clarity in the judgment of men. We are all of us confined and enclosed within ourselves, and see no farther than the end of our nose. This great world is a mirror where we must see ourselves in order to know ourselves. There are so many different tempers, so many different points of view, judgments, opinions, laws and customs to teach us to judge wisely on our own, and to teach our judgment to recognize its imperfection and natural weakness.”