Ink and Beans

Children of Arusha 2012 Fundraiser - School Sponsorship

2012-01-12T16:51:00.014-05:00

Help send former street children in Arusha, Tanzania to private school!

Filex (left) and Heven in class

From now until February 12th I will be accepting donations, by mailed check or through PayPal, to continue sponsoring former street children in Arusha, Tanzania for private school.

Take advantage of this terrific opportunity to give directly to those who have so little, and to see the joy you bring to little faces on the other side of the world.

Depending on how much you donate, you may also be entered in a raffle to win beautiful African handicrafts.

Who Are These Boys? (back to top)

During the summer of 2010 I volunteered at The Children of the Street Welfare Association (CHISWEA) in Arusha, Tanzania. For 16 years CHISWEA has been a source of food, shelter, responsibility and family for kids who wish to abandon their “life on the street”—i.e. not attending school, either having no family home or finding it better not to live there, surviving via the generosity of strangers, panhandling, petty scams and theft, and other unsavory means. Time that isn’t spent hustling is spent just hanging out, often drunk or high on pot and glue fumes.

Jim and his boys at CHISWEA

At CHISWEA, despite minimal resources, over 70 such children have discovered a more promising and fulfilling life. On this blog you can read more about CHISWEA here and here, and my experiences working with these exceptional children. You can also read about our previous fundraising success where, thanks to many of you and your generous donations last year, we were able to deliver new Tae Kwon Do equipment and also send twelve boys to Nairobi, Kenya to compete in the East Africa Taekwondo Junior National Championships.

And of course I invite you to read about my other Tanzanian adventures, including my first night, Operation: New Teeth in Arusha, and Operation: Eye Surgery in Moshi.

Why Private School? (back to top)

Every child in Tanzania, even those with no means to pay, are entitled to a public school education. So why is sending these boys to private school so important?

Government schools pay their teachers very low wages, so low that teachers can't really earn a sustainable living. As a result, government school teachers do not show up for class (yes, you read that correctly). Instead, they request that the children meet with them after school for private "tutoring" sessions, where the actual teaching happens. The children who cannot pay for these tutoring sessions, or who simply choose not to show up, do not receive an education.

Also, at government schools, kids can leave whenever they want during the school day. Besides the minimal adult supervision (as a result of their teachers not showing up), the schools don't have a fence or a gate. Often, the kids will end up roaming the streets, doing the same things (scamming, drinking, sniffing glue) that street children who are not in school do.

And finally, while corporal punishment is often practiced to a limited degree in private schools, it is far more prevalent in government schools. This usually takes the form of "the stick"--a thin stick carried by teacher and used for whipping.

What They Get (back to top)

Before I left the country, I registered ten boys for the Nakido School --- a private school within walking distance from the CHISWEA facility where they live --- and paid their fees for one school year.

Thanks to the help of their teacher, Matiko Benson, and my dear friends Georgina Tenga and Sonia Hanspaul, I have been able to get updates on their progress, including some wonderful photographs of the boys at school.


The crew (starting from top row, left): Frankie, Adam, Heven, Amani, Agostino, Musa (sponsored by my friend Hugo Macklin from France), Denis, Athumani, Bryan, Filex, and Kelvin (not pictured)

Standing (squatting?) guard over the school gate.

Now, with your help, I'd like to fund their next year of higher quality education. My goal is to raise $5,000. Incidentally, this figure is nearly half what it costs to send just one child to private school in the U.S. So what does your money buy?

$240 pays tuition fees for one year of private school for one child.

(from left) Athumani, Agostino, and Amani

$110 pays for lunches for one year, one child.

$90 pays for a school uniform --- a requirement for school and a source of tremendous pride for students! The uniform includes: 2 shirts, 2 sweaters, 2 trousers, 1 pair black shoes, 1 pair athletic shoes, and 3 pairs of socks.

$35 pays for school supplies for the year for one child. This includes: school bag, umbrella, exercise books and stationary, pencil kit and mathematical kit.

$25 pays for an annual school field trip, usually to one of the country's beautiful natural preserves, like the Serengeti, a national treasure which the children would otherwise never get to experience for themselves.

For just $500, one child gets a full year of quality, private schooling and all the food, clothing, and other resources they need. It's amazing how far a dollar stretches in this country.

What YOU Get (back to top)

How the raffle works

For every $30 you donate, you earn 1 chance to win one of the prizes below (e.g. if you donate $60, you earn 2 chances).

Every $100 donated = 5 chances to win.

Every $250 donated = 12 chances to win.

I will select the raffle winners after the February 12th fundraising deadline. I will announce, via e-mail in late February, the raffle winners along with the amount we have raised together.

Runner-up prize (3 winners): Banana leaf collages

Three of you lucky donors will win one of these gorgeous 5"x7" banana leaf collages, crafted by the tribal Masai of east Africa. The collages are made by layering banana leaf pieces of varying textures and shades to make an image.

Banana leaf collages made by tribal Masai

With the possible exception of African blackwood carvings, I personally found banana leaf prints like these to be my favorite of all the crafts I saw in Africa. You'll love them!

Grand prize (1 winner): Beaded table placemat set

Six placemats (two rolled)

The grand prize winner of the raffle will receive this beautiful, hand-crafted set of table placemats, which includes six placemats, six napkin rings and one central table runner.

The matting material is made of “raffia," or bamboo and banana leaves. The mats are beaded by a local group of 40 women in Arusha who earn much needed income, and the funds generated through the sale of these mats help sponsor additional children in Arusha for private school.

Want to buy a placemat set? If you are interested in purchasing one of these placemat sets, rather than taking your chances with my raffle, please e-mail Sonia Hanspaul to learn more. The sets range from $50-70, plus shipping, which can be expensive, but remember it supports a good cause! Over 100 style-and-color varieties are available.

Central runner and six napkin rings (included in set)

Interesting fact: Due to a shipping snafu, these particular placemats which I'm raffling off did not reach me the first time, and were returned to Tanzania before being reshipped. That means it traveled across the African continent and the Atlantic Ocean not once, but three times to get here. These are well-traveled placemats!

How to Donate (back to top)

There are two ways to donate.

Heven, Amani and Agostino with their teacher, Matiko Benson

1. Mailed personal check. Simply e-mail me, stating the amount you would like to donate, and I will reply with my mailing address where you can send the check. This method avoids the PayPal service fees and ensures your full donation goes toward the cause.

2. PayPal. You may also donate through PayPal which is fast and secure (please note that PayPal will deduct a 2.9 percent service fee from the amount you donate). Just click on the "Donate" button and follow the instructions.

Please note that your charitable contribution is not tax-deductible, as I am not a registered 501(c)(3) organization. The good news, however, is that since you are not donating through an organization, there are no administrative or overhead costs. It's just me. The full amount of your donation goes directly to funding these boys' private schooling!

Thank you in advance for your generosity, and for helping me bring joy and enrichment into the lives of these deserving children.

CHISWEA Fundraiser: Kids Clean Up at Tae Kwon Do Tournament

2012-01-02T14:32:00.002-05:00

I'm a year late in reporting the second major success of our Tae Kwon Do fundraiser for the junior warriors of CHISWEA.

First, by way of review, some of you will hopefully recall the first success of this fundraiser -- the purchase of new sparring and training equipment and locking storage unit. I invite you to enjoy (or enjoy again) this short movie I made where the warriors break in their new pads.

Well, on the weekend of December 18-19 of last year (2010), the TKD fundraiser scored another major victory. Using the money raised, we were able to send 12 boys to Nairobi, Kenya for the East Africa Tae Kwon Do Junior Championships.

Granted, Tae Kwon Do is a fairly niche sport in Africa, but bear in mind we're talking about an entire continental region here. For these twelve boys, this was not merely their first opportunity to compete in an official tournament, nor was it merely their first opportunity to compete with peers besides themselves. For most or all of them, this was their first time out of their home country. What an adventure!

Are you excited yet? Well hold on to something, because it gets better. We took home some medals. That's right. Three of our boys placed in their weight class -- two gold medals, and one bronze.

Did I mention these were the junior championships for all of East Africa?

Thanks to your generous donations, we were able to pay for passports, transport, lodging, meals, tournament fees and uniforms. Two CHISWEA volunteers (Thomas and Malene from Denmark) and took some photos, and though some of those photos were unfortunately lost to the technical gods, I am thankful to Thomas and Malene for salvaging what they could from their camera.

Congratulations to all of our generous donors for giving these deserving boys such a wonderful opportunity!

Shaking hands before the match ("I must break you.")

Always bow before kicking someone's ass.

Start with a low kick...

Then wind up for a "I break nose with big toe" kick.

The junior warriors get some guidance from their teacher.

Chillin' like villains between matches.

The kick I wish I could have seen in person.

Oscars 2011 - Movie Haiku

2011-03-01T14:47:00.002-05:00

To review, the Best Picture nominations were:

     Social Network
     The King's Speech
     True Grit
     Black Swan
     Inception
     Winter's Bone
     The Fighter
     Toy Story 3
     127 Hours
     The Kids Are Alright

And now the 10 haiku, not necessarily in that order.

* * *

This is just a dream.
So is this. And this. And this.
Ponder. Watch again.

* * *

Crackhead brother proves
dreams can come true, even in
Lowell, Massachusetts.

* * *

Canyoneer gets stuck,
misses party with hot chicks,
cuts arm off in rage.

* * *

Shy new monarch must
tell subjects: "We're going to
wuh... w-wuh... wuh... wuh..."

* * *

Day care! Bear-in-charge
seems nice; smells like strawberries.
Smells are deceiving…

* * *

Don't fret if Dad's gone,

'cause in the Ozarks, you've got

relatives to spare.

* * *

Sperm donor wants to
collect on his investment.
Lesbians say, "No."

* * *

The Dude gets eye-patch
in Coens' Western remake.
Makes bowling tougher.

* * *

Girl gets lead, gets head,
gets paranoid, gets deranged,
gets applause, gets dead.

* * *

Budding billionaires
make website. Lawsuits ensue.
Sorkin makes it cool.

My MFA Personal Statement (a.k.a. Statement of Purpose)

2011-02-15T14:13:00.004-05:00

The chatter over at the Creative Writing MFA Blog indicates some folks wish to see examples of personal statements, so I thought I'd post mine here. It's no golden ticket, but it has gotten me into a few reputed programs. I applied to 14 schools and received acceptances from LSU, Wash-U. in St. Louis, Vanderbilt, and Florida.

Notes: My letter was more or less the same to all the schools, but of course I tailored each according to their specifications. Below is the letter I sent to Vanderbilt, just shy of 500 words, which I believe is pretty standard.

I've also included a link to an earlier draft that includes edits and feedback from a consultant at Driftless House, which I found enormously helpful.

Finally, I have links to my teaching statement for Indy (also used for LSU and Syracuse), and my pair of letters to Michigan, which required a more academically-oriented "Statement of Purpose" in addition to the personal statement. Please bear in mind that I did not get accepted to Michigan or Indiana U., so those letters aren't "proven." And the teaching statement is reflective of someone who has no formal teaching experience to date.

Early draft of Personal Statement with edits
Teaching Statement (Indiana)
Personal Statement and Academic Statement (Michigan)

Personal Statement, Final version

November 30, 2010

Creative Writing
Vanderbilt University
411 Kirkland Hall
Nashville, TN 37240

Dear Selection Committee,

Once upon a Grade One writing test I composed "Chicky and Eggy," a nine-sentence saga that follows a hatchling and pre-hatchling as they explore the world outside their nest, flirt with danger, and discover the power of friendship and forgiveness.

More recently, I am making final revisions to a manuscript I have worked on for the past six years, an underground fantasy inspired by the humor of Richard Russo, the tenderness of Charles Baxter, the imagination of Chuck Palahniuk and the talents of so many other authors who move me. The journey has been nothing short of a gift, but even so, getting lost in the wilderness of one project for so many years has made me hungry for new terrain. Scraping together even ten hours per week to write is challenging when one works full time and tries to maintain a balanced lifestyle. It makes for slow progress, no matter if you measure by total words written or refinement of craft.

I long for sophisticated criticism from professionals and fellow aspirants, and for the emotional support of an impassioned community. In that spirit I am currently auditing a workshop at Harvard taught by Amy Hempel, and the perspective and inspiration I’ve found there has convinced me I am ready to be immersed in creative writing full time. If enrolled in your MFA program I would pursue short story projects to explore my written voice, as well as various character and plot ideas, with a long eye toward my next novel.

In my current position at the Harvard Kennedy School, I edit a weekly column on public management for the online magazine Governing.com, as well as a biweekly e-newsletter highlighting government innovations, reaching ~10,000 and ~8,500 readers, respectively. This work has honed my attention to syntactic detail and improved my ability to clarify complex ideas. Most significantly, it has taught me how best to make my criticism constructive and respectful.

My professional interests are eclectic and ever-changing. After switching majors twice, I graduated with a degree in psychology and for three years worked on a research project focused on preventing depression in children. I then came to the Kennedy School where, in addition to my editing roles, I produce web conferences for government professionals on topics ranging from land conservation to combating human trafficking. I have also been a nightclub bartender and a day camp counselor, built water collection systems in Africa, mentored children, tutored prisoners, and conducted supervised psychotherapy sessions with the developmentally disabled.

Throughout all of this, I have crafted stories. Writing remains my most enduring passion and defines sense of purpose. I have proven to myself that my commitment to the craft merits a higher level of instruction. I hope I have the opportunity to prove the same to you, and thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Jim Cooney

Applying to the Top MFA Programs: Back in the Saddle

2010-11-15T11:44:00.003-05:00

This is mostly just a place holder, as Round Two is keeping me too busy to document my experiences as thoroughly as last year (probably a good sign).

But I just wanted to note that after my 2009 experience applying to MFA programs, and coping with my subsequent acceptance to none, I am geared up to make a second go of it.

I just re-read the mostly self pep talk I posted back in April, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that I have followed my plan almost to a "T," the three main points of which were:

1. Write two new stories in accordance with my amazing feedback from Driftless House.
2. Re-invigorate myself by spending the summer in Africa.
3. Take a workshop taught by Amy Hempel.

As can probably be ascertained by my writings from Africa, my summer adventure was everything I'd hoped it would be. And I am in love, LOVE, with my class (and Amy Hempel). But more on that later, including some unexpected turns getting admitted to (and then finishing) the class.

For now, I shall take my leave to continue working on my applications. The earliest deadlines are December 15, and run through the end of January. I'm applying to 15 schools this time, and the Michener Center in Austin still tops my list. Wish me luck!

Results of Tae Kwon Do CHISWEA Fundraiser

2010-09-05T20:40:00.002-04:00

I’m pleased to report that the Tae Kwon Do fundraiser for the junior warriors of CHISWEA was a huge success!

Through your generosity, we were able to raise over $4,500 for new training equipment!

I’m also happy to report that a portion of the funds have already been put to exciting use. Thanks to Chris Lassonde and his massive hockey bag, we were able to transport the first batch of equipment via airline luggage, thus avoiding shipping charges. The boys are already breaking in their new focus mitts and sparring equipment, and we’ve got video footage to prove it. You’ll be amazed at the difference proper equipment has visibly made in their training.

Before I left I was also able to commission the building of a security cabinet for storing all the expensive equipment being donated. Over the next few weeks I’ll determine how best to apply the remaining funds and further investigate reliable yet economic shipping options available for getting the rest of the equipment where it belongs. I will also do my best to work with volunteers still on the ground to document the boys using more equipment as it comes.

Congratulations on making a such fun and meaningful impact on these children’s lives. Bravo!

Safari Za Emanuel Kwa Moshi.

2010-08-04T10:38:00.000-04:00

Before coming to Tanzania I read several articles calling into question the true value of short-term volunteering, often referred to as "volunteer vacations" or "voluntourism." In short, the argument is that a few weeks or even a few months are simply not enough time to affect change in a developing country. Between unfinished projects and short relationships that end abruptly, some critics posit that short-term volunteering may even do more harm than good.

This may very well be the case, but while I cannot say for sure what the actual value of short-term volunteering is, I feel I can speak confidently on its potential. Given some initiative, drive, creativity and communication/collaboration with other volunteers (and possibly a willingness to spend a little money), there are opportunities to make a small but significant impact.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have found medical "projects" to have the greatest cost-to-benefit ratio. Though none of the children I work with have severely crippling or immediately life-threatening illnesses, there are several who possess treatable maladies that, if corrected, could improve their quality of life. The answer to why they go untreated is always cost, and usually the dollar amount imposing this barrier is shockingly low.

Case in point: My housemate and fellow volunteer, Andreas, from Germany, and his eight year-old student Emanuel. Andreas exemplifies the kind of initiative I'm talking about, and for me has served as a vital source of inspiration. After administering an impromptu vision test to some of the students in his class (which he did by tracing an eye chart off his laptop -- amazing), Andreas decided to further investigate Emanuel's "lazy eye" condition, i.e. seeing with only one eye at a time while the unseeing eye turns inward. After three trips to three different doctors in Arusha (each nearly a full-day affair), paying all the costs every step of the way, Andreas was directed to Moshi (about 80 km away) to see a pediatric opthamologist, one of only two in the country capable of performing a surgery that could correct the problem.

The doctor determined that he could see perfectly well, but emphasized the psychological benefits of corrective surgery -- those with lazy eyes as extreme as his are less likely to be married, less likely to get a job, less likely to be happy, etc.

The surgery involves anesthetizing him, then detaching and reattaching the muscles around his eyes. all of which costs a whopping twenty-seven dollars, U.S.

The catch was that the earliest surgery date available was after Andreas returned home to Germany. While this was very unfortunate for Andreas, since he would not be able to witness the culmination of his noble efforts, it turned out to be a gift for me, who had the distinct pleasure of taking Emanuel for surgery myself.

Some day I intend to write a more detailed and reflective account of our three-day journey, but for now allow me to share some pictures with captions.

Outside the eye clinic at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center in Moshi.

Emanuel getting one last look from the doctor the day before surgery. Dr. Leigh Woodward, referred to as "Dr. Leigh" by everyone at the hospital, hails from Texas and has been working in Tanzania for just over a year.

Here's a good before shot. If he was looking with the right eye, it would be the left that was turned inward.

Emanuel's corner bed in the eye ward, where we spent most of our time. The ward was huge -- six or seven rooms with a dozen beds each. This is Eye Central in Tanzania. Oh, and that little piece of tape on his head indicated what surgery he was supposed to get. I kept hoping he wouldn't unwittingly trade head labels with another patient.

Awww.

Emanuel and his ward buddy, Kasimu, playing a memory game with UNO cards. I am so grateful they were able to entertain each other. Certainly took some of the pressure off me.

Curled up in his overlarge patient's smock, outside the surgical "theater." This is not fear, by the way (he never once the whole trip seemed anxious or scared); this is him hamming it up for the camera, which he does quite often.

Andreas, this one's for you. Remember the zombie nurse from our first visit? SHE LIIIIVES!!!

Getting wheeled out of surgery -- out like a light.

After some failed attempts to wake his sleeping friend, Kasimu sits diligently by his bedside. Take a moment to grab a tissue if you need to.

First look in the mirror, post-op. He did not appear delighted or surprised. Just curious. Perhaps he is too young to have been all that self-conscious about his eyes.

My favorite picture: Chocolate cream cookies... the first meal (that he was able to keep down) in nearly a day. An hour earlier he had polished off a bowl of warm porridge in small little sips. When I refilled his mug and asked if he wanted more, he vomited on my shoes.

"'C' is for cook-ie, dat's good e-nough for me..."

Team CBM implored us not to leave until they got some photos of our grand exit.

Back home at last, with his primary caregiver (a nearby neighbor). Abandoned by his mother and father, Emanuel now lives with his elderly grandparents.

Meet the grandparents. They may be old, but they're also traditional Masai, which means they're tough as nails.

And of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't end with a close-up of the final result. Prepare to get a little misty-eyed.

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Yaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just kidding. Here he is:

Ready for Hollywood.

I offer my deepest thanks to Andreas for making me a part of this endeavor.

Tae Kwon Do CHISWEA Fundraiser

2010-07-21T11:24:00.005-04:00

The junior warriors of CHISWEA need training equipment! From now until August 7th I will be accepting pledge donations by e-mail to bring training equipment to former street children in Tanzania who are currently receiving professional tae kwon do instruction.

Take advantage of this terrific opportunity to give directly to those who have so little, and to see the joy (I’ll be taking pictures and video) you bring to little faces on the other side of the world.

The Children of the Street Welfare Association (CHISWEA) has for 15 years been a source of food, shelter, responsibility and family for kids who wish to abandon their “life on the street”—i.e. not attending school, either having no family home or finding it better not to live there, surviving via the generosity of strangers, panhandling, petty scams and theft, and other unsavory means. Time that isn’t spent hustling is spent just hanging out, often drunk or high on pot and glue fumes (to learn more about CHISWEA read this previously posted account).

At CHISWEA, despite minimal resources, over 70 such children have discovered a more promising and fulfilling life. With your help, I'd like to make that life even more fulfilling.

Why Tae Kwon Do?
What They Get
What YOU Get
How to Donate

Why Tae Kwon Do?

For the past five years Ezekiel Kaswalala has served as Director at CHISWEA, overseeing day-to-day operations and developing long-term relationships with children still living on the street that may one day choose to live at CHISWEA.

Besides his passion for working with street children, which he’s done for the past 15 years, Ezekiel also possesses an impressive (you might say intimidating!) martial arts resume. He has trained in judo, karate, wrestling and his first passion, tae kwon do, from the time he was 18 years old, won second place in the East Africa TKD championship in 1985, and has served as an instructor of martial arts for nearly 20 years, primarily for soldiers of the Tanzanian military.

Since coming to CHISWEA Ezekiel has generously lent his expertise to the boys he loves so much, running full-length training sessions as often as three times per week. And I can tell you first hand, these kids are seriously into TKD. As Ezekiel has pointed out to me, TKD is a source of discipline, self-defense skills, enjoyment and exercise for the kids. Perhaps more importantly, it gives them a niche, and in a poor country during a tough economic climate a niche can be a lifesaving advantage. Martial arts training (TKD or otherwise) is not widely available in Tanzania, so even those who do not go on to become an international champion may find themselves a successful instructor in the military, at a school or an orphanage, or even in their own studio. They will also have a competitive edge in getting a job with the Tanzanian police, the military, or with a private security firm.

Unfortunately, without the proper equipment, the boys are very limited in what they can do. Training consists primarily of postures and kicking and punching the air. Given how much the kids love TKD, and what an underutilized resource Ezekiel is, I have pledged to do what I can to get the boys additional training equipment.

As you might have guessed, the greatest challenge is getting the equipment here. The Tanzanian postal service is a nightmare, and most suppliers will not even ship to Tanzania. Ezekiel has identified a source in Nairobi from which we can purchase equipment, but the import costs have raised the prices substantially. Depending on the results of negotiations with the Nairobi provider, it may make more sense to ship the equipment to my own address in the States and then forward them to Arusha (crazy, I know). Thankfully, we have the opportunity to transport some equipment via airline luggage (thanks Chris!) which will reduce the cost a bit, but apart from that most of the equipment will be 2-3 times more expensive than it would be if purchased in the United States.

But that’s Africa. And from what I’ve observed, the higher prices still do not outweigh the benefit the children will derive from this equipment. So I’m asking you to assist me in this worthy undertaking, and to donate whatever you can. If we can obtain the equipment before I leave, I will document the “christening” through photos and video.

To further sweeten the deal, I’m giving you the opportunity to get your hands on some authentic and beautiful African crafts. Keep reading!

What They Get

The prices here are based on estimates, since negotiations are still pending. This list is meant to motivate you, the potential donor, by illustrating the possibilities available depending on how much we raise—I have no expectations of raising enough to purchase everything on this list, but I am very optimistic about how close we might get! The more we raise, the more of these essential training items we can purchase.

If we raise $200, they will get 4 focus mitts (these are hand-worn targets for kicking and punching -- currently the boys just put sandals on their hands).

If we raise $400, they will get the focus mitts and one kick shield (for more forceful kick training).

If we raise $700, they will get the focus mitts, kick shield, and one punching bag.

If we raise $1300, they will get the focus mitts, kick shield, punching bag and two full sets of sparring gear, which includes headgear, chest protector, shin guards, forearm guards, and groin protector.

If we raise $1800 they will get the focus mitts, kick shield, punching bag, sparring gear and 10 uniforms (to be worn by the most dedicated warriors).

If we raise $2300 they will get the focus mitts, kick shield, punching bag, sparring gear and 20 uniforms.

If we raise $4500 they will get the focus mitts, sparring gear, kick shield, punching bag, twenty uniforms and protective floor matting (enough for one sparring pair).

If we raise $7000 they will get the focus mitts, TWO kick shields, punching bag, FOUR sets of sparring gear, twenty uniforms and enough protective floor matting for TWO sparring pairs).

In the event we have leftover funds after making our purchases, I will place those funds in a savings account in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, we can one day help send these kids to Nairobi, Kenya to participate in the East Africa Junior Tae Kwon Do Championship. With the bus transport, hotel, regional passport fees and event registration fees, the total cost will be substantial, but so will the payoff. For one thing, many of these children have never been outside the city of Arusha. But the most important reason to get them there is so they can experience a true culmination of all their training and hard work: observing and participating in official matches and meeting other TKD trainees from across the East African region.

What YOU Get

For donations of $30 or more, you get a bracelet by Izack.

These adjustable bracelets are all the rage among volunteers in Arusha. Remember when those cheap plastic yellow “LIVESTRONG” bracelets were all the rage? These are way, way cooler. People constantly ask me where I got the one I wear, and when I tell them it was made by a resident at CHISWEA they often beg me to purchase several on their behalf.

Izack learned how to make these by watching other craftsmen at work over the years. He’s a man of many talents—besides bracelet making, Izack also raps in Swahili and is a fire-eater.

* * *

For donations of $100 or more, you get a bracelet by Izack and a Maasai blanket.

These blankets most commonly come in rich reds, purples or blues and are the traditional garb of the Maasai, the most visually spectacular tribe found in East Africa. Even non-Maasai Tanzanians can often be found with one around their shoulders.

* * *

For donations of $200 or more, you get a bracelet by Izack, Maasai blanket, and an authentic hand-carved and painted soapstone bowl (approximately 6 inches in diameter).

Besides their trademark dress, the Maasai are known for their fine craftsmanship including painting, jewelry, footwear, and sculptures in wood and stone.

* * *

For donations of $500 or more... well, let's just say I'll try to find something extra special for you.

* Please note: Given the limited space I have in my luggage bags, I cannot buy and transport items outside of this fundraiser.

How to Donate

Simply e-mail me, stating the amount you would like to pledge and your shipping address (to receive your thank-you gifts). I will make the purchases using my own funds and collect a check from you when I return home in September. I’m using the pledge-system to expedite purchasing and to avoid having to refund your money should things not work out. This is Africa after all.

Please help me to bring some more joy into the lives of these most deserving children, and thank you in advance for your generosity!

Meno Bili, Tafadhali.

2010-07-14T11:31:00.001-04:00

Inside the dental unit at Arusha’s St. Elizabeth Hospital I sit on the waiting room floor in a circle with three children. To my right, observing our proceedings with rapt attention, are six wide-eyed adults. Some of them lean so far out of their chair there’s room for another person to sit. I sense that some of them wish they were sitting where I am instead of just watching, which pleases but also perplexes me, because what has snared their attention for the past hour is a board game called Snakes n’ Ladders.

Snakes n’ Ladders is the fugazi version of the classic game Chutes n’ Ladders. If yours was a deprived childhood, allow me to explain: The game board features a hundred square spaces arranged ten by ten. Scattered across the board are pictures of twisty chutes (or snakes) and ladders of varying lengths. Players begin at the bottom of the board and take turns rolling a die, advancing their pieces the appropriate number of spaces in a zigzag pattern up toward the final space at the top. If your die roll lands you on a space that contains the foot of a ladder, you get to climb it and jump ahead to the space at the top of that ladder. If you land on a space that contains the top of a chute, you slide down to the space at the bottom of that chute, negating much of your progress. The first player to reach the final space wins the game.

Part of the magic of Snakes n’ Ladders is that it somehow excites delicious anticipation and fierce competition though there is no skill whatsoever involved in the playing. The winner is simply the player who has the most fortunate sequence of die rolls. But anyone who has played the game knows there is no thrill like climbing one of those especially long ladders and finding yourself suddenly at the front of the pack—and you don’t just place your piece at the top; you slide it up the length, guiding it like an ice cube across a narrow plate of warm glass. This person also knows the cathartic relief that comes from watching the leader take that sad, slow plunge halfway down the board on a cursed chute (unless of course that leader is you).

So yeah, I understand the appeal perfectly well. But the notice we’re attracting at St. Elizabeth’s seems extreme—we’re not performing open-heart surgery here. The adults are enjoying the watching even more than the kids are enjoying the playing. When one of the children stumbles onto a snake, mere spaces from the finish, it triggers a startling explosion of laughter and chatter and I have to wonder, is it merely the hours-long wait and lack of well-thumbed magazines that has allowed this little toy to become such a source of stimulation? Or is it more to do with the Tanzanian lifestyle, its simplicity and deprivations?

Physically speaking it is a sad little game—a thin square of cardboard with crude illustrations, four plastic colored tokens light as air and a die smaller than a pea. But it’s easily the best 1000 Tanzanian shillings (about 77 cents) I’ve spent so far on this trip. I had picked it up from the supermarket just hours before, knowing that trips to the doctor in Tanzania tend to be half- to full-day affairs. I am proud of myself for demonstrating such foresight.

I’m also proud of my boy—my man, Bahati, for his willingness to make our game inclusive and allowing it to develop into the public event it is now. Today, he alone is my charge, and since it is rare that a boy from CHISWEA has the sole attention of an adult, I naturally assumed his first instinct would be to hoard it. So when first we were arranging the pieces on the floor, and I noticed another boy looking on intently, it was only a sense of obligation and politeness that compelled me to ask him if he wanted to play too. The boy grinned, said no, and though it was obvious he was just being modest or shy, I was perfectly willing to accept his declination. After all, I may love Bahati and many of the other children at CHISWEA, but I don’t love children. Suffice it to say I’ve never bought into the notion that children are inherently fun and fascinating, so why the hell should I have to entertain some stranger’s kid? I’m already doing my good deed for the day.

But Bahati, sweetheart that he is, urges in Swahili that the kid get over his inhibitions and sit down with us. I’m so impressed, so proud, that I no longer resent having to play with both of them. Later, a little girl takes my place at the board and I take a break. I open up a pack of cookies and motion to Bahati that he should have a few. After taking two for himself, he wordlessly places two each at the feet of his gaming companions. Shucks.

Bahati at 14 years old is a rail, skinny like his peers but lacking the thin layer of adolescent muscle most of them pack. He’s modest in temperament but not shy; personable, and generally chipper like most of the CHISWEA stock. When excited he speaks very quickly and with a hint of helium in his voice, so that what is actually Swahili sounds more to me like some Gnomish dialect. He has a few inconvenient medical maladies, his eyes for instance. He looks with only one at a time while the unseeing eye tends to turn outward, a condition he shares with his younger brother. There’s also something going on with his left ear, which he frequently stuffs with cotton. When I ask him why, he points to it and says, “maji,” indicating there is water inside, but the chronic nature of this fluidic blockage makes me think there’s more to it. I wish I could ask him questions like, “Can you hear well out of it?” or “Does it ever hurt, get infected, etc?” but those conversations are beyond our mutual capacity to understand each other, as they would be with most of the boys at CHISWEA. At some point I’d like to get his eyes and ears looked at too.

But today we’re tending to his front teeth, or rather his lack of them. Two years ago a friendly Tae Kwon Do match resulted in his falling face first to the floor, knocking out his two most prominent choppers and leaving him with the gummy smile that is now his trademark. As an outside admirer I am reluctant to “fix” this adorable quirk, but for him it is an ongoing concern. A few days ago, while helping me and some of the other boys paint one of CHISWEA's bare cement walls, Bahati turned to me asking, “Jimmy. Jimmy. Tomorrow… you take me to hospital… and get me… teeth?” He grinned wide and pointed to the vacant space to make sure I understood.

The other boys had a hearty laugh (so did I). It wasn’t a cruel laugh, thank God. Still I know it must be difficult for him to have his face be the focus of attention in this way, a regular source of chuckles, cruel or not, for his friends and even for me.

Searching for words I thought he might understand, I tried to explain that it was probably a long process to have his teeth replaced, that I didn’t have much money and was spending a lot on other projects at CHISWEA, etc. Either I failed miserably or he’s just a tenacious son of bitch because he asked a second time with the exact same wording, gestures, and even the same pauses: “…and get me… teeth?”

Virtually every boy at CHISWEA, young and old, has asked me for something—chocolate, cookies, a bicycle, my hat, my shoes, my pants, my shirt, my UNO cards, my phone, money, money for clothes, money for shoes, money for school uniforms, etc. It was mildly insulting at first, as if my mere presence, my volunteered time, was not gift enough. But I’ve learned not to take it personally, and try to remember that all kids habitually ask for things they want. That’s where we start, crying out for milk or a diaper change and getting served. Manners are counterintuitive and come later. Besides, the boys rarely seem disappointed when I politely decline, and I’ve known them long enough to believe that they are, in fact, very grateful for my mere presence.

Due to my financial limitations, and that their requests rarely constitute a necessity, and that I’d be encouraging impolite behavior, I make a point of declining virtually every request. This is my initial reaction to Bahati’s wish for teeth but this is one of the few requests I’ve received that has seemed especially worthwhile and, hell, the kid is just so adorable. After asking his question a second time as if my first response had never happened, my defenses crumbled, and a few days later I told him we would visit the dentist together “just to ask him some questions.”

Truth be told, once my decision was made I was utterly grateful for the opportunity. As could easily be expected, my weeks in Tanzania are among the most exciting I’ve ever had, but no matter how far I travel the slick demon Boredom is never far away. He creeps in everywhere.

* * *

I’ve often wondered whether this is true for adults with Attention Deficit Disorder—and I’ve long considered myself borderline symptomatic—but for me, boredom is largely a physical condition. If I go understimulated for too long, my brain begins to slowly die. It is a painless death, but not without physical sensation. I can feel my head begin to swell, resulting in a dull pressure that builds and builds. I call it the “milkshake” effect because it feels like some contaminant has been introduced into the normally fluid mechanism of my brain and, acting as a deadly thickening agent, slows down every mental process beginning with the most developed cortical functions like analytical thought on down to motor functions, and, eventually, even primal medullar duties like breathing and heartbeat.

In real time I may experience this as, first, finding myself unable to understand what people are saying even though I sense, through my eyes and ears, that they are talking to me. The individual words may even seem familiar, but they no longer fit together in any meaningful way. If the boredom continues, it becomes more difficult to manipulate items with my hands, and I have a greater tendency to bobble and drop them. My coordination and depth perception also deteriorate, so that I’m more likely to walk into parking meters and door frames, causing my companions to say, “Ouch, that looks like it hurt. Are you okay? Jim?"

Huh? I think. Oh, yeah. No, wait—huh?

Now my boredom has become a social and interpersonal crisis, and though I am by this time at least aware of what is happening I am nearly powerless to reverse the process, since my addled brain now has a limited capacity to seek out and process the stimulation it requires. Someone could be telling me the most riveting story of a subway mugging he just witnessed, including drawn guns, a hail of bullets, an injured conductor, a derailed car, a shower of sparks in a pitch dark tunnel, screams, blood… but the story is beyond me. “Hmm. Yeah. Hmm,” I reply automatically, and my vacant expression makes the storyteller wonder from which planet the aliens who body-snatched me came.

Around this time it becomes harder to breathe. And, irrational as it may seem, my last traces of awareness fixate on the possibility that my heart may stop beating. This is the pinnacle of a deeply, deeply internal panic. I’ve read accounts of people with ADD who experience a similar correlation between boredom and anxiety. They describe it as so intense they entertain acting upon outrageous impulses, like suddenly screaming out during a conversation or dumping their drink on the person speaking, just to reassure themselves that they are still a living, breathing human being.

And I do experience days, even weeks, when I indeed feel dead to the world, when my body is simply a shell of what I used to be. There is something that resembles a rudimentary sort of memory collectively contained within the cells of my flesh and bones, causing my body to mimic gestures and motions from my living past simply for their own sake. I am a machine that no longer serves a purpose, my treads turning nonstop as I bump, bump, bump into the same wall over and over. This is where attention-deficit and anxiety meets low-grade depression. I don’t necessarily need to have one of the aforementioned episodes of boredom attack to reach this dead zone, but I’m sure the two are loosely connected. I participate in the routine of daily life without knowing whym since I have no motivation to do so. I derive pleasure from little, look forward to nothing, and lament that I gain no satisfaction from what appears on paper to be a charmed life.

These are the intense sensations I hoped to escape, at least to some degree, by coming to Tanzania and immersing myself in an experience so foreign, in every sense of the word, that I would not have to work nearly so hard to find that stimulation my body craves. There’s a risk involved, because it’s easy to overstimulate and overwhelm myself, producing an equal but different sort of panic. And I must be careful not to focus so heavily on stimulation-seeking that I forget to give myself that minimal amount of comfort and familiarity which I also need to function. (Incidentally, this is why I am writing to you from Africafe, Arusha’s best attempt at a Western-style coffee lounge and diner, where I have spent nearly every Sunday for the past few weeks. That the home fries, pancakes, and even the scrambled eggs taste a little “off” is not nearly so important as the knowledge that I am eating a diner-style breakfast in a plush chair with the sound of clanking plates and a whooshing espresso machine in the background).

After my first few weeks though, I figure the high-risk period for overstimulation has passed. And as I grow more comfortable at CHISWEA, such that I can now tell the boys apart and remember their names, better tolerate the language barrier, trust that they respect and like me, etc., it becomes apparent to me how difficult it is to fill a five-hour day. I teach the kids how to play UNO cards; that’s good for an hour per day. I work on improving my embarrassing soccer skills, whether it’s playing a game or just dribbling the ball with them a while; there’s another hour. We point to things and trade the English and Swahili terms for them; a half-hour. We identify cities and countries on the world map; fifteen minutes. Now what? Lots of sitting around, is what.

And lo, there He looms, grinning and galloping sideways on all fours, back and forth, on those gnarled feet and heavy knuckles, eagerly waiting to infect my brain.

On any given day I’m bound to drift several times in to (and hopefully out of) at least the earliest stages of boredom-induced brain death. Under the right circumstances, however, these early stages can be an asset. Because my brain still preserves most of its functions, and senses danger, it is capable of taking swift inventory of all available resources, internal and external, in the hopes of developing an original solution to reverse the death spiral. Viewed in this way, creativity is something of a survival mechanism, one that produces interesting and occasionally useful byproducts. CHISWEA has already benefited much from the threat of boredom. Maartje, a fellow volunteer from Holland, raised funds to have a layer of concrete poured over the dirt lots inside the compound. Sarah, from Australia, organized a talent show.

Me? I bought forty liters of paint to liven up the drab alley between the boys’ dorm and the common room. I found someone to fix the stove and chimney so that the kitchen hut does not fill with smoke. And with any luck, I will begin my own fund raising campaign to get the boys some proper Tae Kwon Do equipment (STAY TUNED). In many cases these mini-projects require paying a little out-of-pocket, but I don’t consider it charity and I doubt my fellow volunteers do either. Once the idea occurs, acting upon it is usually a no-brainer. It gives us something worthwhile to do for people we like whose gratitude runs deep, and the costs often range from surprisingly to shockingly low. So it’s simple economics really; a small investment with a high rate of return. I cannot, for instance, begin to describe how much satisfaction I derive from watching, every day, smoke come out of that chimney instead of out the door. If only all donations were so personal, the results so tangible and dramatic, charitable giving would be triple what it is now, but alas the abounding opportunities for such charity are separated from us by thousands of miles and vast oceans.

Don’t get me wrong. I will find a way to casually mention my list of angelic acts abroad to every attractive woman I ever meet. But it’s not false modesty to claim that the giving I’ve witnessed and practiced here is hardly charity, at least not in the sacrificial sense of the word. I encourage you to plan such a trip and see for yourself!

Not every problem is so easy to solve, however. I have been frustrated to discover, for instance, how difficult it is to sponsor a child for school despite the reasonable costs. Payments are required annually, if not monthly, and unless you are physically present to handle the transactions you cannot trust your money will end up where it’s supposed to go.

Still, if you keep your eyes open and make Boredom work for you, little projects present themselves. Among these, I have found medical projects to have the greatest cost-to-benefit ratio. None of the children at CHISWEA have severely crippling or immediately life-threatening illnesses, but there are several who possess treatable maladies that, if corrected, might significantly improve their quality of life. The answer to why they go untreated is always cost, and usually the dollar amount imposing this barrier is—again—shocking. Not long ago I accompanied a fellow volunteer and his eight year-old student to Moshi, about 80 km away, to visit one of only two pediatric opthomalogists in the country capable of performing a surgery that could correct the child’s “lazy eyes” (his condition is similar to Bahati’s except that the unseeing eye turns inward, not outward). The surgery involves anesthetizing him, then detaching and reattaching the muscles around his eyes. The price tag on this delicate procedure? Twenty-seven dollars.

So, really, how expensive could a pair of replacement teeth possibly be?

* * *

If I may return to Boredom and brain death one more time, I have two basic theories to explain my frantic relationship with mental stimulation. The narcissistic theory is that my brain is extraordinarily unique and highly advanced, and that this is both a blessing and a curse. My exceptional output requires greater input, and if these higher input demands are not met the whole system breaks down. For my brain, it’s all or nothing. The gifted are often mad, no?

The second theory is that I am a symptom of developed, and perhaps over-developed, society. I think most would agree that the body can and will get used to almost anything, bad or good. Hence, what serves to bring stimulation or pleasure initially may, over time, lose its effect the way many drugs do. It’s as if every stimulus in the world is a mild narcotic. First it was hanging dangly things over my crib, then action figures, then video games, television, textbooks, the Internet, gourmet cuisine, horsepower, hi-defintion, screen size, surround sound, faster Internet, travels abroad, culture tours, post-graduate education, much faster Internet. Can a brain developing under those conditions possibly experience stimulation in the same way that that a brain which develops within the bounds of a “simple life," limited to the same mud huts, talking to the same ten people, working the same profession and selling the same array of items, eating the same meal day in and day out, walking about within the same half-mile radius?

No one can deny that the average Tanzanian possesses little or nothing above what they need to survive, and yet my general observation has been that they are every bit as content as Americans are. I don’t want to sound naïve— I probably lack exposure to the most destitute and desperate in Arusha and I’m sure there is trauma, both collective and individual, buried so deep that a visitor of three months could never possibly begin to ascertain them. But joy is joy, I can sense it in others, and I’ll be damned if Tanzanians are more wanting of it than we are. If that’s true then it raises some pretty big questions, like what the hell am I doing here in Africa in the first place? What is it that I think I have, and that I want to offer to those who don’t? Even in America there’s plenty of skepticism around how much happiness one can ultimately derive from luxuries and material possessions (not that this stops us from trying). But what about privileges we consider more fundamental, like education? I can’t say with any certainty that I and my college-educated friends are any happier than the mostly uneducated street merchants I pass every day. Is it best to pack as much experience, exposure, enlightenment into your life as possible, to never be satisfied, to always be striving? Or is it better to live simply, to experience boredom as completely routine, to find that you occasionally have to struggle—struggle not to cope with disappointments and hardship and identity crises, but struggle to survive?

Carpe diem? Or hakuna matata? Who am I to say?

At any rate, this distinction may provide some framework for understanding why the Tanzanians who are practically falling out of their chairs at St. Elizabeth can extract such excitement out of a pleasure as simple as watching children play a board game. I am at once envious and sympathetic.

We’ve been playing for nearly three hours when we are finally called in by the doctor. I’m pleased that the office appears clean and organized, perhaps not to the standard I’m used to but nowhere near my imagined, worst-case house of horror. Bahati lies in the long chair and the doctor begins to poke around in his mouth with gloved fingers. I stand off to the side observing, trying to determine whether or not this guy knows what the hell he’s doing. He has a few exchanges in Swahili with Bahati, pokes around some more. Eventually he sighs, sits upright in his chair, and to my utter astonishment he says, “Today we will take an impression of his teeth. Tomorrow or maybe Saturday he can come back to have the teeth fitted.”

“That fast?” I blurt out

Yes. This will be a removable denture, he says, which is better suited than a fixed denture for a mouth that is still growing like Bahati’s. The doctor proceeds to dial someone on his cell phone, and after a short conversation he hangs up, and tells us to wait an hour for another doctor who is coming to take the impression.

He begins speaking in Swahili again to Bahati, who is now standing against the wall with his hands in his pockets, looking toward the floor. The doctor is talking for a long time, and soon his assistant, a heavy middle-aged woman with thick glasses, begins talking to Bahati as well. Her tone is stern; in fact she seems rather angry, which confuses me since the kid hasn’t said more than ten words in the last five minutes.

Eventually the doctor looks at me and smiles. “We are counseling him.”

“Counseling?” I ask

He explains that Bahati’s appearance is a little sub-standard, that his clothes aren’t pressed and a little dirty and that his hair is uncombed (what hair?). The woman is still going at it with Bahati, scolding him. I think back to earlier in the morning, when I asked Bahati if he was ready to go; he beamed and said “Wait,” then disappeared for over five minutes to change into the clothes he wears now.

I wish intensely at this moment that I knew more Swahili than I do, so I that I could counsel both these assheads that they ought to focus on their job instead of offering unsolicited advice.

I (politely) assure them that Bahati took his time this morning and that he’s a real, real good kid. We exit the office and wait for the next doctor to arrive, playing another round of Snakes n’ Ladders followed by some UNO cards (where I suspect Bahati and I are both secretly attempting to let the other win). An hour passes and we are back in the office again, where the new doctor is pressing a tray full of stiff blue goo against the roof of Bahati’s mouth. Doc Number Two strikes me as a nice man but his hands seem unsteady, and don’t inspire the confidence I’m used to in a doctor’s office. I grow acutely aware that he is not pulling his instruments out of sealed plastic, and rinses the goo-mixing bowl with hand soap and water instead of using a new bowl and disposing of it after one use. For all I know, Western practices like these are largely for show. Regardless, I start to hear the sounds of all the bacteria in the room, buzzing, chatting, doing cannonballs into Bahati’s mouth as if he were a pool party. I suppose these are parental instincts kicking in. I haven’t had much experience with these (I assume that’s obvious) and make a mental note to discuss it with my therapist when I return to Boston.

Our walk back to CHISWEA is quiet. Bahati makes a point of thanking me a few times, in his fast and small gnome voice: “Thank-you-ve-ry-much.”

We return the next afternoon, and before we can even get through one game of Snakes n’ Ladders the Doc Number Two arrives and beckons us in to the office. After a few unsuccessful jabs with this thumb and some behind-the-scenes adjustments, the doctor is able to slip the denture securely over Bahati’s front teeth. My latest worry has been that the denture, which cost a mere 30 dollars, was either going to be extremely uncomfortable, look totally ridiculous, or both.

But Bahati does not appear uncomfortable, and from where I stand he appears to have a full set of natural teeth. The overweight assistant from the previous day, who is still on my list but I’m about to forgive, approaches Bahati smiling and carrying a small mirror, which she hands to him. He takes a hard look and exclaims something in Swahili, bouncing a little in his chair. I think he is smiling but I can’t tell for sure.

In a voice approaching a whisper I ask the doctor, “Is he happy?”

“Yes,” the doctor smiles back.

Bahati grins wide and looks hard in the mirror again, seriously, as if needing to confirm that his first glance was not a fluke. He breaks into a smile again, chatters something and then this boy, this teenager, begins tap-tap-tapping his feet together as if he were five and had just been sprinkled with pixie dust, ready to float off his chair and out the window. I didn’t cry, but I came awfully close.

Talk about your simple pleasures.

Upigaji Picha.

2010-07-03T09:55:00.000-04:00

God bless the iPhone! Prior to this trip I ordered a digital camera that never came, so I've been using my iPhone as a backup to capture some visuals. I'm sacrificing a some image quality but on the whole it has served me very well. I've been recording more videos than I've been taking photographs, and plan to piece together a short film when I get home that is sure to win a Pulitzer Prize and Oscar. But my photo collection is far from comprehensive. Even so, here are a few shots to fill some of the gaps in my written accounts, focusing (for now) on my volunteer work at CHISWEA.

A note on Tanzania and cameras: Taking photos in this country is a little tricky. For one thing, many Tanzanians, especially those from rural areas, get anxious around cameras -- I don't know who started the rumor that getting your picture taken means losing your soul, but I can tell you it has taken a firm hold here. I've already had instances where I've taken a picture and visibly upset someone (I assured them afterward that they were not in my picture, which fortunately just happened to be true). Many don't even want their houses or livestock photographed.

Another challenge is that those who aren't opposed to having their photo taken often view it as an opportunity to make money off of Mzungus, and will request compensation accordingly. This would not be so exhausting except that many Tanzanians tend to view everything as an opportunity to make money off Mzungus, but more on that later.

I sense that even those who do not believe literally that their soul is taken do feel that something has been taken from them, unduly and without their permission. Perhaps they have a point.

And finally, cameras are easy marks for thieves. In short, I have to be discrete, and sometimes downright secretive, when I decide to pull out the camera.

The exception to many of these rules are children, especially the children I work with, who are complete hams.

Frankie (left) and Chumanchuka pose beside the CHISWEA colonnade.

Ezekiel (CHISWEA Director) and Maartje (volunteer from Holland) have lunch with some of the girls. The special today, like every day, is rice and beans.

In the kitchen, Issa (seven years old) gives the pot a stir. Incidentally, this is the one I'm stowing in my bag when I come home.

In the boys' dorm, hangin' with the boys. From left to right, Namanga, Issa, Chumanchuka (what a name!), Joshua, and Adam.

Here we have Bahat, missing the teeth, and... his friend. (Cut me some slack, I can't remember everyone's name in four weeks)

.
Zacharia, presiding.

Izack, business tycoon and creator of finely crafted wristbands, shows us how the doughnuts are made.

The CHISWEA yard. Also some laundry.

Another look at the yard, including the main gate.

Joshua draws water from the well. Issa shows us his handheld mirror because, yeah.

Outside the gate, overlooking "CHISWEA Way" and "The Stadium" just across the road.

A closer look at the Stadium, with a football (soccer) game in progress.

Two cocks brawl it out in a back-alley along CHISWEA Way. There is civil unrest in Tanzania after all.

At the CHISWEA farm plot, about 3 km outside of Arusha, we (yes, I helped) gather enough beans to feed over 70 people for the next few weeks.

A fire to cook a lunch of fresh-picked maize after our morning of gathering beans.

Unajua CHISWEA Way?

2010-06-24T08:32:00.001-04:00

At CHISWEA, my tolerance for conversational impasse grows quickly.

“Uhuru,” Dickson says. His face contorts the way it does when he gets stuck, and he looks away, sucking air through his teeth. “In English…”

We are crouching on the ground outside, in the alley between the boys’ dorm and the common room. At our feet are the Tanzanian and American flags, rendered in dirt. Shapes within the rectangles are labeled their appropriate colors. Dickson drew the flag for America, correctly remembering there are thirteen red and white stripes, but for simplicity’s sake we settled on drawing six stars instead of fifty. I drew the Tanzanian flag, which is divided into two right triangles, green and blue, by a diagonal band made of one thick black stripe and two thin yellow stripes.

Dickson is now trying to tell me what one of the colors on the Tanzanian flag represents. “Uhuru,” he repeats, and makes a tsk tsk tsk sound. He once told a fellow volunteer that he is fourteen years old but this seems incorrect. For one thing, he has the physique of an eleven-year old. And his eyes, set wide and dipping at the outer corners, belong to a person far older, someone who has seen a lot. Whatever Dickson has seen in his short lifetime has left a trace of exhaustion in his face.

Dickson strikes me as the most introspective of all the children I have met at CHISWEA. When we’re together in silence or when I observe him from a distance, I often wonder what he’s thinking.

Usually, when I am talking to one of these boys and encounter this kind of stumbling block, he or I will throw in the towel if several repetitions or rewordings fail to yield that eureka moment—that smile and wide-eyed “A-ahhh.” Once I realize that reaching an understanding is hopeless, at least in this particular instance, I utter a slightly embarrassed “Sowa sowa,” which translates to “Okay, okay,” but really means “Sorry, this ain’t happening.” They in turn give me a reassuring fist bump and walk away.

These failures to understand each other are indeed sowa sowa, because we have our connecting moments. At first, it’s just me finding a flat spot on their bony backs to give them a hard pat, or winking at them and saying “visuri sana” (very good) when a spontaneous little performance grabs my attention. It takes only a few days to broaden my repertoire with most of them. I’m amazed to find how much can be communicated through creative use of a few basic words from plucked from two languages plus an infinite well of sounds, drawings and gesticulations.

Of course, none of this is possible without the freedom to fail, to say “Si fahamu” (I don’t understand) two or three, or even five times, and “Sowa sowa,” when I’m ready to give up. I can recall several social occasions where I found myself conversing with a partner who spoke imperfect English. When I unwittingly stumble into such a dialogue, I naturally assume it is my duty to politely entertain the poor soul who is now ruining my night, no matter how awkward, and feign interest in a conversation that progresses at a half a mile-per-hour. My guilt over participating in such a ruse is compounded by feeble efforts to suppress, as long as possible, the need to excuse myself and escape, escape, escape: “I’m just… going to find my other mink at the barrrithroom. Nice meeting you!”

Obviously there are a million things wrong with this mindset, but if I take one trick away from my time in Tanzania, I hope it is this: Whenever I encounter a language barrier amid friendly conversation, I should approach that conversation as if it were a puzzle or a game, something where I score points for each idea conveyed successfully, where the learning curve is steep and progress builds upon itself and the scores get bigger and bigger. If at some point I must grimace and say, “Sorry I just don’t understand,” or “Sowa sowa,” or use some gesture to convey finality (if they don’t beat me to it, that is), then I simply start a new game.

I sense the sowa-sowa moment approaching as Dickson searches for the English word that eludes him, and I feel bad—he thinks it important otherwise he’d have dropped it already—but at length he raises his arms to cradle an imaginary object, something heavy and lengthy. The object begins to kick.

“Eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh!” he says as his body vibrates.

A machine gun. In my mind I see him firing his gun from a hilltop, raining bullets upon some military jungle village, Rambo-style. It makes me smile.

Dickson lowers his gun and begins waving his arms, “No. No.”

“No war,” I say happily. “Peace!”

“Yes, peace.”

(Actually, “uhuru” means “freedom,” but close enough).

The significance now makes sense. Except for a brief invasion of Uganda in 1979, meant to check the aggression of Idi Amin, Tanzania has never been at war, with other nations or with itself. This makes the country an important source of stability in East Africa, not to mention a source of pride among Tanzanians.

My tolerance for conversational impasse has definitely increased; so has my addiction to progress.

“Uhuru,” I repeat. “How do you say war in Kiswahili?”

“War? Vita.”

“Vita. Uhuru. Vita.” In my head I search for ways to push the conversation along. “In America,” I say, holding up two fingers, “we have vita bili.”

I can see in Dickson’s face that this is news. I pick up the stick we used to draw our flags in the dirt and begin to draw a world map. I capture North America well, but from South America onward my continental outlines get progressively worse.

Dickson must think so too because he waves for me to stop and beckons that I follow him.
In the CHISWEA office he asks for something in Swahili and is handed a large, rolled up map which we unfurl on a table in the common room. I point out Afghanistan and Iraq. It’s not long before a large group of boys have gathered around us. Together we begin locating home countries for other CHISWEA volunteers, past and present.

CHISWEA (Children of the Street Welfare Association) is home to over seventy boys and girls aged between 7 and 21 years. They are not all orphans but, as the name implies, they all came directly from “life on the street”—that is to say, they were not attending school, either have no family home or choose not to live there, and survive through the generosity of strangers, panhandling, petty scams and theft, and probably even less savory means. Time that isn’t spent hustling is spent just hanging out, perhaps drunk, or high on pot or glue fumes.

Coming to live at CHISWEA is voluntary, and doesn’t suit the taste of every street child, who at the very least enjoys a near complete freedom from authority. Residents must adhere to rules and adopt certain responsibilities in exchange for benefits like regular meals, a roof, and a de facto family. The kids speak varying degrees of English, and those who (a) so choose and (b) can afford it (usually because someone sponsors them) will attend school for part of the day, while others are content to just hang out in and around the compound. Most of the girls are also at school during the day, though their instruction is more vocational (cooking, sewing, etc.). They also tend to stay inside their dorm after school lets out, so I don’t see as much of them as I do the boys.

The facility is cordoned by a ten foot wall made of concrete and iron fencing, though the door at the main gate is almost always open during the day and the kids come and go as they please. Within the walls are three main buildings: the boys’ and girls’ dorms, where they sleep barracks-style in closely packed bunks, and the common room where the kids do everything from eat their meals, to play games, practice tae kwon do, draw, and (sporadically) have English lessons in a space not much bigger than a typical American high school classroom. Sectioned by the girls’ dorm, the common room, and the northeast corner of the wall is a dirt courtyard where I’ll often find residents doing laundry in buckets or fetching water out of the well.

Outside the compound, across the main road (and I’ll define “main road” more specifically in a moment) lies “The Stadium,” an empty dirt lot nestled between two cinderblock skeletons—unfinished construction projects that were probably intended to house shops and domiciles but for now remain abandoned. When the weather is dry the boys from CHISWEA and kids from the neighborhood come here to play soccer (which if you’ll recall is “football” to the rest of the world). Soccer matches and related games often make up the larger part of their day.

The facility is located on a road that, lacking any formal name I’m aware of, I have come to call CHISWEA Way. The road begins where most maps of Arusha end, and to walk it for the first time as a Westerner who has never before set foot in the developing world is, in a word, fascinating. There is no pavement, only dirt and stones. Even a brief, misting rain in the morning can leave large pockets of slick mud for a goof like me to leap over and sidestep when the occasional car or moped comes bumbling along. As I progress down this street the shops get smaller, and smaller, until most are mere concrete cubicles inside which you may get your hair cut, purchase shirts, buy some produce, or have a beer. I pass small movie huts where a half dozen people may sit on the dirt floor and watch American films dubbed poorly (but live) in Swahili. The windows and doors to these oft unmarked huts are sealed, but the over-amplified and distorted narrator, frantically yelling over explosions and screams of agony, is a dead giveaway. Grimacing old men with stringy biceps pull two-wheeled carts piled high with shoes or rods of sugarcane. Pairs of chatting women stroll by with heaping bundles balanced effortlessly upon their head. Stray dogs nose around in small piles of burnt refuse, or curl up in the dirt to nap. A family of goats trudge the side of the road looking for the rare sprout of grass. On some days I see a cow, or perhaps a trio of donkeys. And the chickens—my God, the fucking chickens—they’re everywhere, bawking and bobbing across the road in front of me, pecking with precision through trash after the clumsier dogs lose interest, sitting like water balloons in small blocks of shade. Incidentally, chickens are a valued source of protein in these parts, and it is hard to find a well-to-do house in Arusha that doesn’t keep a pen outside stocked with the cluckers, so perhaps the burgeoning population found along CHISWEA Way shouldn’t surprise me. But these chickens roam so freely it seems impossible they would have an owner. Perhaps these Tanzanians can recognize their own chickens better than Westerners can recognize their own pet in a park full of dogs—“Ah, there you are Eggward!”—but that seems unlikely, given the limited attachment one can hope to develop with a creature who’s head you plan to lop off.

There are people at every doorstep, cooking cassava or maize on tiny hibachis, dumping a water bucket onto the street, sitting in a chair in the shade looking at the passers-by. Looking at me. It seems each one of them takes specific notice; for some it’s merely a glance, while others may fix their gaze on me unabashed for seconds at a time, falling in their walk to a near dead stop and turning around so as not to lose sight. This kind of celebrity turns out to be unsettling only for the first day or two. After a week in Arusha it barely even registers how much I stand out. Every few minutes a group of small children will squeal as I pass, waving and shouting “Good morning!” regardless of the time of day, or more commonly, “Mzungu! Mzungu-uuuu!” Given there is a wide variety of customary Swahili greetings, and no one in particular stands out as the most popular, I think it’s fair to say that “Mzungu,” meaning European or white person, is the most common word a Mzungu will hear in Arusha. On CHISWEA Way I am far from the city proper, where Mzungus (the correct plural form is “Wazungu” but here’s a rare instance where I prefer the bastardized Western version) appear with greater frequency, but for the people living here, especially those that tend to stay close to home, I may be the only white person they see all day.

After a mile the road opens up a bit, and there’s more breathing space between structures, more room for some of them to grow. Occasionally I pass a small school, church or mosque set behind the standard gated wall, and farm patches big enough for a perhaps a hundred maize stalks, or a few avocado and mango trees scattered among bean plants. Though the street is never intersected by another road I can now see that much activity exists beyond the street front shops and houses. Rectangular mud huts, growing larger, stand close together and form narrow alleys where I see children darting back and forth, disappearing around corners and behind hanging laundry.

Before long I am approaching the cinderblock skeletons around “The Stadium.” Mild anticipation tickles me as the dirt lot comes into view, and I wonder whether I’ll see a scatter of familiar faces on slender bodies kicking the ball around. If I do, they will each pause to raise an arm in greeting before returning to their game. They never look delighted or excited to see me. Rather, their wave or smile upon my arrival conveys a certain kind of peer respect, the casual sort of gratitude you feel when you smile at a friend you see every week or more, and have for years. I prefer this. I know these kids need more affection and love than they would ever let on, but there’s no way they’re going to betray that need, least of all to me, who they’ve only known a few days and who will certainly leave before long. These kids are nothing if not self-sufficient, and it suits me well, because I’m still not comfortable being the center, or anywhere near the center, of anyone’s world. If I show up, they appreciate my presence. If I don’t appear, they may take notice, perhaps even be a little disappointed, but their life will go on the way it has without skipping a beat. I guess I’m just grateful they don’t treat me like shit, that even though we’re still feeling each other out they are willing, even happy, to share some of their world with me.

It is here, on this dirt lot where I encountered the most beautiful and mesmerizing thing I have so far seen in Africa. It’s my second day at the center and I am playing soccer with twenty boys, some from CHISWEA and some just from the neighborhood. My fellow volunteers look on, chatting with some younger tots on the sidelines, while I skid back and forth in the dirt and occasionally gasp for air, lamenting how much I took my boundless boyhood energy for granted. It’s obvious I suck but none of them seem to mind. Occasionally I earn my keep by throwing out a long leg on defense, stripping the ball from an agile ten-year old before he can take a shot. CHISWEA has one soccer ball but it’s inaccessible at the moment, so we play with a homemade substitute—a spherical web of twine stuffed tight with plastic shopping bags. It’s smaller than a soccer ball but the weight and bounce are astonishingly comparable; a few of the boys have become very adept at making these. Some of them own sneakers but on most days open-toed is preferred. Mismatching pairs and broken straps are common, and all are coated in a film of dried mud. To kick the ball is to lose your footwear, and at any given moment I can spot at least two players running to retrieve an errant flip-flop.

Tempers never flare. Not one argument develops. This is a friendly game, and if they’re keeping score I can’t tell. But for sure they play with intensity, and in every minute I observe a highlight reel-worthy lunge that I’m certain will result in injury. But no bones break—I don’t think any of these kids even scrapes a knee. Where I come from, virtually everyone subscribes to the notion that we as adults must constantly save kids from themselves, that an inevitable chaos ensues when a large group of children have no supervision. But here there appears to be a method beneath the chaos, a guiding force even, that makes it impossible for these children to hurt each other as they release their brimming energy stores, strengthen bonds of brotherhood and express themselves through this bony athletic dance.

As additional players and onlookers begin to gravitate towards us, I notice a little girl approaching from up the road. She is no more than four or five, and has a scarf around her head. As she draws closer, I see that she has an infant wrapped securely to her back. She smiles softly at the activity ahead of her, and when she reaches the corner of the lot she pauses to observe it all. A few of the tots equal to her in size sidle up to her and say a few words. I cannot tell if she knows them or says anything back. I am trying to keep at least some of my attention on the game but I can’t stop looking at her. Is the baby her sibling? Where are her parents? Does she have any? Where is she going? Coming from? For a moment I think how tragic it is that a small child can be burdened with responsibility so early in life, that somehow it steals her innocence away… but who am I to make such a judgment? Me, who has been in this strange country for only a few days, who doesn’t know the first thing about what it means to be a child in Tanzania, the pains and the joys that accompany it.

In looking at her I have slowed down long enough to register how exhausted I am. I drift off to the sideline and lean on my knees to catch my breath. The little girl begins to cut diagonally across the lot, still bearing the same expression of joyful wonder on her face. She seems silently delighted by what she sees, or at least some aspect of it, as if she were wandering through a butterfly garden. I grow nervous when I see that the game has not paused for her passing, nor does anyone take it upon themselves to usher her out of harm’s way. They simply play around her. I am about to step in myself but am hesitant, recalling that I am a visitor here, that I probably understand little and should just let people do what they usually do, the things they did before I got here and what they will continue to do after I leave. Just let it be.

As if to further test my resolve, she stops again, almost in the very center of the lot. She turns a bit, facing toward the road. I am nearly breathless. I feel a sense of urgency, like I am witnessing some magnificent spectacle that must be shared before it vanishes, or before I burst, or something. No one else, not even the other volunteers, seems to take special notice. Do they even see her? My concern for the girl’s safety is still present, but distant now, out of my hands, as if she were on a movie screen. I hope that she will look at me just once, that we might share a moment, but her gaze remains panoramic, transfixed by everything. And there she stood, she with her charge, letting her hand float upward until several of her fingers rested inside her mouth, charmed and charming amid a flurry of shouts and dust and broken sandals. After a few minutes she finally continued onward, crossing the field with gentle little steps and disappearing into the narrow space between two houses.

As the days of my Arusha stint tick by and I settle into a comfortable routine at CHISWEA, remembering a few more names each day, arm wrestling, drawing in dirt, playing cards, sharing a lunch of rice and beans, I keep my eyes out for her, wondering whether I will see her again. I hope that I will, and by equal measure hope that I won’t, that she is type of thing one sees once in a lifetime, becoming grander, more inspiring, with each recall.

Karibu Sana.

2010-06-13T10:40:00.000-04:00

The plane touches down Kilimanjaro airport at approximately 8:30 pm, Tanzania time, ending a 17-hour journey by air from Boston with a connection in Amsterdam. The large jet carries several hundred passengers, half of whom appear to be non-natives. Some are dressed in boots and khaki colored clothes as if they’re about to begin exploring the Serengeti plains the moment they step off the plane. Others are younger, college students or recent graduates—how old am I that I can now peg them as college students?—wearing matching t-shirts identifying them as part of a Duke engineering project or else a Christian youth mission. The early camaraderie among some of these volunteers makes me nervous, and I wonder if any them are working with my organization, Projects Abroad.

I feel very aware of my age. I ponder, as I often do lately, all the people I seem to meet who are my age or younger and yet have traveled far more extensively, existing out of country for months or even years at a time. Some earned their experience through academic merit, others by virtue of their medical skills or professional expertise, or, in the case of the Peace Corps—it seems like every other person I meet lately was in the Peace Corps—by their willingness to dedicate a significant portion of their life, two full years, to extremely simple-living in an alien world, a prospect that has always intrigued me but scared me more.

When I think such people, their exposure resumes sitting in an ink-heavy stack next to my single sheet of mostly white paper, the idea that I must pay for my 90-day “volunteer vacation” seems cheap. I’ve been suppressing these feelings of inadequacy for the last year or two it seems, and though one of my hopes for this trip was to alleviate such insecurities, often it seems to bring them into deeper focus.

As I file behind the next generation of hero travelers stepping down the aluminum staircase onto the tarmac, I’m fighting these feelings again. I try my best to replace them with thoughts like, “Wow, I’m touching Africa right now.” The heavy warmth of night is probably similar to what I find when I visit my parents in Florida but I convince myself it somehow feels different, like Africa. I observe my surroundings out of the corner of my eye, careful not to turn my head since I don’t want to be the only person wearing a stupid expression of wide-eyed wonder the first fucking minute I’m here. Africa. Whatever.

The tiny airport appears to be the only source of light in the world, which falls into total darkness a hundred yards (er, kilometers) in every direction. It seems this world will remain largely a mystery until morning.

We enter a small one-story wood building. A couple of small fans pinned to the ceiling struggle to push the air about. Insects circle and dart beneath the fluorescent lights. I applaud myself for being well-prepared on this front, packing as I have my 0.5 percent permethrin spray to treat clothes and bedding, my 23.0 percent DEET spray and 34.34 percent DEET cream for skin, my 1.2 percent sodium lauryl sulfate spray specifically for fleas, my 2 percent diphenhydramine HCl itch relief gel (in case some critter gets lucky), my portable, repellant-impregnated mosquito net and of course my anti-malarial 100 mg capsules of doxycycline hyclate (in case they get very lucky). Standing behind the mob of tall backpacks crowded around the visa office window, rolling back and forth on my heels, I begin to whistle softly: There ain’t no bugs on me, no there ain’t no bugs on me. There may be bugs on some of you mugs...

After a half hour of slow progress a uniformed man begins processing travelers at the back of the line, collecting a few passports and fees at a time. Eventually he takes my passport along with a few others, but when he returns with receipts and stamped passports for everyone else he looks at me and holds up his hand, saying, “Just wait. Just wait.”

Okay, I reply, and wonder if they’ve discovered something suspicious, which is unlikely since there are no computers on the other side of the glass. Still, I feel a twinge of excitement as I imagine being escorted to a back room, forcefully seated in a metal chair and interrogated in heated Swahili, while a guard silently trains a long black rifle on me from the corner.

Nearly an hour has passed since landing and virtually everyone has obtained their visa, free to move past customs into the luggage area. The same man has now told me twice to “Just wait, just wait,” and the rifle scenario is starting to seem less ludicrous. But finally he emerges bearing my passport, shows me the stamp, and says, “Enjoy Tanzania.” I grin, say “Asante,” and brace myself to discover whether I’ve wasted countless hours listening to Learn Swahili! podcasts.

“Karibu sana,” he replies, smiling back. I assure myself that none of these other whippersnappers bothered to learn a single word of the native tongue.

In the adjacent area I am relieved to find my luggage almost immediately, but struggle to find the promised friendly face holding a Projects Abroad placard. Perhaps they have left without me, which means I must call the office and wait another hour or two for my rescue ride, spending the better part of my first night in Africa sitting in a hut while the kids who have earned their Africa adventure in the proper fashion, at the proper time in their lives, begin wading into their amazing life experiences without me. The rifle and metal chair grow ever more appealing.

I swallow my pride and tell an uniformed person that I’m supposed to be meeting a ride, and he points to another section of the building that, in my defense, is somewhat hidden behind a partial wall. Oops. There are in fact many placards waiting for the newly arrived, and the “Projects Abroad” sign is obvious enough, with its familiar logo printed in color. I wave to the man holding it, who is small and fit, his skin especially dark. “Hujambo,” I venture, more confidently this time, and introduce myself.

“Hello James. Thank you for choosing Projects Abroad. My name is Regan,” he says in a thick accent, shaking my hand in what I will eventually discover is the customary manner for Tanzanians: gripping each other’s knuckles in the familiar Western manner, then angling upward to grip each other’s thumbs, and finally back down returning to the starting grip—one, two, three. I’m slightly distracted by the man’s blinding white smile and the fact that he hasn’t reacted to my Swahili greeting, but I manage to pay attention as he introduces me to a fellow volunteer who has arrived from Holland. His name is difficult to pronounce and I repeat it twice after him.

There’s a second Tanzanian with them who does not introduce himself, nor am I introduced to him. I assume for the time being that he is of little consequence since I’m still repeating the Hollander’s name to myself. I can be polite tomorrow.

The unnamed man loads our bags onto a push cart and wheels it out to the parking lot. The Hollander and I make small talk, trading obvious questions: How long are you staying in Tanzania? Are you volunteering at an orphanage, school, or hospital? Where else have you travelled?

The small city of Arusha where we’ll be living and working is an hour-long car ride from the airport, and the prospect of sharing it with two people who are not native English speakers when I am both tired and preoccupied with the rush of new experience is unsettling. If there is any blame to place in communication difficulties, after all, it is with me, the over-privileged, under-cultured American who needn’t be bothered learning heathen dialects. It’s true, I want to confess, I cruised through four years of high school Italian and can’t speak a word of it, probably because it never really mattered to me in the first place.

But I also took great pains to learn Swedish in college, and not just because my graduation depended on it. I sincerely wanted to make penance for my ignorance. And yet, as my professor astutely observed during her office hours (which had essentially become a weekly appointment with me): “I can tell you’re not very good at learning languages, are you?” I thanked her for recognizing the canyon between my willingness and abilities. Eight years later, in spite of the hundreds of flash cards I’d made and poured over every night to improve my vocabulary, the only phrase I have left in my rusted toolbox is a perfect irony: “Jag kan talar Svenska mycket bra,” (I can speak Swedish very well).

I get into the backseat of the car next to the Hollander. His English is good enough that conversation is easy. I even find his accent and occasionally eccentric grammar to be quite refreshing. I’m just starting to feel relieved when Regan, my Tanzanian host, slips into the backseat to my left, the front passenger seat being occupied by my embarrassing rolling refrigerator of a suitcase which doesn’t fit in the trunk, which leaves me stuck in the middle.

“Actually, um,” I say as the car starts to pull away. “Would you mind if you and I switch seats? I’m deaf in… I can’t hear in my left ear and I’m afraid I’ll have trouble hearing you on this side.”

“Oh,” he says and nods, the smile fading from his eyes but not his mouth. “No problem. No problem.”

I hope he means that it’s no problem because we’re going to stop the car and switch seats, but we continue on past an armed guard to the edge of the parking lot, and turn on to the open road. The driver flicks on his highbeams and we ride without speaking for a while. I sense that the Hollander, who stares straight ahead, understood my request to switch seats and is silently sympathetic.

Eventually Regan offers some facts about sites and attractions in and around Arusha, many of which I know already thanks to the feverish research I have conducted these past few weeks. The Hollander, who is a medical student, explains some of the differences between medical training in Holland and in the States. For a moment I’m unsettled by the fact of his youth, his promising career and that he’ll be “volunteering” professional expertise during his stay, but I remind myself that he too is paying for this experience. Also it’s becoming apparent that I know more Swahili than he does.

Regan seems impressed that I’ve come armed not merely with greetings but things like “You are an Amer—no, I am an American… but… I speak Swahili a little,” and “Excuse me, where is please Arusha?” and of course “Yes, miss,” which is my favorite because the Swahili translation, “Ndiyo, bibi,” sounds a lot like “Indeed, baby.” I explain this to my new friends, who smile politely in return. There may be a lesson here, but I know that I’ll continue sharing my cute and clever observation with people until it receives the appreciation it deserves.

At one point Regan asks me something I cannot make out. “You understand” I say in Swahili, shaking my head. He says nothing and smiles nervously, his disembodied teeth and eyes glowing softly in the near pitch dark of the back seat. “You understand” I repeat, then realize my error. “I mean… shit. I don’t understand. I don’t. I don’t.”

He asks the question again, using more words this time, and I cannot even tell which language he is speaking. My neck is twisted so far around to point my good ear towards him that I’m practically staring straight out of the rear window. The Hollander mercifully rescues me. “You are asking why we decide to come to Tanzania?”

Oh. Figuring some humility would do America good I decide to be my usual disclosing self. I explain that I’ve lately been meeting lots of well-travelled people and was starting to feel I was missing out, and that life was getting routine. I say tell them I want to shake things up. I tell them I want to see what it’s like to live and work in a developing country. I hesitate on the word “developing” and wonder suddenly if this is insulting. Will it seem I’m implying that, because I come from the “developed” world my decision to come to Tanzania is somehow an intentional stepping down, an act of charity, of martyrdom, before the eyes of my friends and family? Especially since it is, to some extent, precisely those things? I am sacrificing money and certain comforts to acquire what I cannot get at home: perspective, cultural awareness, natural wonders, spiritual cleansing, personal development and, most importantly, a real adventure. “Developing” doesn’t mean inferior, not to me.

Still, explaining—even in my own language—this enlightened stance without sounding grotesquely patronizing and pathetic seems impossible, like trying to assure a seasoned, capable man in wheel chair that he’s not handicapped but “special.” Since I can’t seem to say it without wincing I decide I will simply avoid the term in the presence of Tanzanians.

Fearing that I have confirmed a conception of American arrogance, I confess that I also have tremendous difficulty with other languages and am grateful I can go somewhere to receive a culture shock without being dismayed by the language barrier. “I want to be challenged,” I say eagerly, “but not overwhelmed.” Pleased with this new momentum, I add that I wanted to go somewhere that people would be exceptionally patient in communicating with me. To convey utter sincerity when saying this I meditate on my vacation last year to Madrid and Barcelona. Despite preparing with Spanish podcasts, and sympathy of many waiters and museum attendants, and the great number of Spaniards who speak English, by the end of a week even the briefest of verbal engagements exhausted me, my confidence and sense of self-sufficiency so eroded I was reduced exclusively to pointing and silent gesticulations even when I knew enough Spanish to communicate my needs.

I suspect this difficulty stemmed from a comparative disadvantage, since many visitors to Spain, including many Americans, speak the language well. And here I was, a “special” child with a severe language handicap trying to play in the linguistic big leagues. I was setting myself up for frustration and disappointment. Swahili, on the other hand, is a niche language. As a Westerner in East Africa I’m starting on a level playing field, and every advance gives me an edge.

Hujambo? Sijambo. Habari gani? Nzuri sana, asante. Take that Spain.

When we reach Usa, an Arusha suburb, we turn down a narrow dirt road. The car rattles as we crawl over the rocks and bumps. Occasionally a dog trots across our path, glancing at us before passing through the headlight beams into darkness. We illuminate walls and one-story houses made of solid concrete on either side as we pass. After a bumpy five minutes the vehicle pulls up to a gate that looks similar to others we’ve passed, made of painted sheet metal and embedded in the stone wall that protects the house within.

The Hollander gets out and fetches his suitcase as Regan bangs his fist against the metal door. A woman flanked by a small boy and girl answers. “Jambooooo! Karibu sana! You are most welcome!” she bellows. Though this is not my host family, the strength of her greeting encourages me. I hope I will be received the same way.

The little girl pulls one of the Hollander’s bags, a small one, out of the trunk. She pauses at the open car window and pokes her head in to look at me. “Hello,” she says. She is perhaps eight years old. I smile back at her, and open my mouth to reply but I am caught somewhere between English, Swahili, and her pretty face, so nothing comes out. She continues to look at me for a moment, the way children do when they’re glad to have your attention but unsure what to do with it. She returns with the bag to her mother’s side.

I introduce myself to the family and bid good night to the Hollander, who I will see again tomorrow. We return to the main road. After a few miles the dark street springs to life, busy with pedestrians and shops and taxis and pounding music. Most of the structures appear to be unpainted concrete like many of the houses I have seen. Much of the modest, unlit signage is in English but is difficult to read, and the merchandise cluttered in each of the storefronts makes it difficult to determine what exactly they are selling. Here, food and shoe. Next door, bicycle parts and DVD’s. I sniff hard at the air. It smells like any big city neighborhood, mildly sour, thick with people and refuse and car exhaust. Occasionally there is a waft of food cooking that passes too quickly to identify. I see more dogs, strays I think, since they accompany no one in particular.

We turn down another bumpy road, driving only fifty meters before pulling up to another metal gate, set a few meters back from a row of tiny shops and restaurants. Regan tells me this part of the city is called Sakina. I’ll be living only a few steps away from a supermarket and internet café, and can pick up a “dalla dalla” (the famed fleet of boxy, overcrowded vans that constitute Tanzania’s public transportation) from the main road.

My host family is a single mother living with her two younger sons and a boarding nephew each in their early 20’s. The gate is open so Regan leads me in towards the back yard. As we’re waiting at the back door a young man appears silently behind us. I introduce myself and unlocks the door. He and Regan speak softly in Swahili. The inevitable feeling of mild trespass settles over me.

Inside I meet Julianne, my host mother. “Hujambo,” I whisper, afraid to wake anyone sleeping. Regan says good night and reminds me that he will pick me up the next morning at 10:30.

Julianne shows me her home and assures me it is also my home for as long as I am here. Her English is not as good as Regan’s but we understand each other well enough. I am shown the kitchen; there is a plug-in electric stove with two burners for cooking. We walk through a door and up three steps to a raised dining area, then back down three steps to a spacious living room with three small sofas where a second young man is watching television. We exchange waves.

Returning through the kitchen we enter a corridor with a few closed doors on either side. Here is where she sleeps, where her son sleeps, where the other son sleeps, where the volunteer from Germany sleeps. She shows me two bathrooms. One has a sink, tub and shower, and a sitting “Western-style” toilet. In the other there are two separate chambers with doors: one is a tubless shower, the other is (I think) a squatting toilet, which to me resembles a painter’s tray embedded in middle of the floor. A softball-sized hole at the deep end of the tray brims with water. From where I stand this dark portal appears to stretch on forever, straight down into the darkest nether regions, guiding one’s little deposit to the very center of the earth.

She shows me my room. It’s spacious, unadorned. There are two beds, a small table and a nightstand. A rug lies at the center of the concrete floor. Suspended over one of the beds is a bundled mosquito net. I ask her whether another volunteer will eventually be sharing the room with me but she says no, it will just me. She excuses herself and says she will be going to sleep. The two boys I have met are going to bed too. I say that sounds good to me. It’s about 11:30 at night.

I close the door to my room, lusting for the solitude of sleep. I fiddle with the net above my bed, figuring out how to tuck it under the corners of my foam mattress. I turn off the lone bulb dangling from the center of the ceiling, duck under the net and tuck in the last corner, sealing myself in a mesh cocoon. I draw a thin blanket over my legs. A cool, perfect air pours silently over me from the window above. Though I’d prepared myself to bear it, I am filled with gratitude that I will not have to sleep these next three months in extreme heat or cold, that no matter what befalls me day to day in Africa, good or bad or just different, my bed will be comfortable, a familiar sanctuary to which I can retreat when rattled.

I hear the bustle of the main road outside, but it’s distant and uniform enough so as not to jar me as I drift off. Occasionally a lone dog will cry out, setting off a brief and stunning chorus of barking that might very well include every dog in Arusha. Whether they are attempting to be heard over the others, or chanting in unison, I can only guess.

All at once, as rapidly as it started, the barking dies away.

Preface to Updates from Tanzania

2010-06-13T10:12:00.000-04:00

I'm attempting to write my accounts of Tanzania in more memoir-ish tone, which may be a mistake since it's somewhat time-consuming. It's overlong, especially for a blog -- the first 2,500 words don't even take me through the first evening, which is probably just as much a testament to my long-windedness as the wealth of experiences and observations packed into the first few days.

If I wait to edit it down I'll be back in the States before I post anything, so I'm just going to put it up. Please forgive the lack of polish, and bear with me as I figure out what works best.

Also, the internet here is abominably slow, so I won't be doing the same amount of formatting and I usually do, for instance, breaking up long pieces into several posts. I'll try to get photos up soon but that's proving difficult as well.

Most importantly, as always, thanks for reading and taking an interest!

Iko wapi Arusha?

2010-06-07T10:39:00.001-04:00

As mentioned previously, part of my contingency plan will be to volunteer this summer in Tanzania. I’m using an organization called Projects Abroad, which coordinates volunteers who can finance their own trip to work on any of over 200 different projects in 60 countries – part of the recent "voluntourism" trend, an encouraging if somewhat controversial phenomenon (but more on that later).

I’ll be working on two different projects. For six weeks I’ll serve as an extra pair of hands at a “care center” which is essentially an orphanage, followed by four weeks building water collection and sanitation system. All the Tanzania projects are located in the city of Arusha, a significant factor in how I came to choose Tanzania in the first place.

For one, Arusha is a highland city, and so their climate is quite pleasant, especially this time of year – our summer is their cool, dry season. Also, Arusha happens to be a great launch pad for doing fun touristy things in my final two weeks, in particular going on safari through Serengeti national park and possibly climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. From here I can even take a short flight out to visit the island province of Zanzibar, a small tropical paradise that is also perhaps the richest concentration of Tanzanian culture and history one can find, or a certain slice of it, anyway.

As far as why I chose Africa, I’m not entirely sure, but I think I have this sense that Africa will provide the greatest culture shock without killing my resolve to absorb and adapt to it. I am absolutely seeking stimulation first and foremost on this trip, and I can’t do that without challenging myself. But a recent vacation to Spain taught me that even a week of fighting a language barrier can be overwhelming and draining. English is spoken widely (to varying degrees) in Tanzanian cities, and my understanding is that Tanzanian citizens are often very eager to practice their English in conversation with a native speaker.

What’s more, Tanzanians are highly receptive to even modest efforts to learn Swahili, the national language—can you imagine if foreigners struggling through their first words of English were greeted with the same level of enthusiasm in America?

I know from past experience that learning languages is especially difficult for me, and these are exactly the optimal conditions I may need to finally pick a language up that will actually stick with me for a while and not have it be a grueling, unpleasant experience. Words in Swahili are almost always spelled as they sound, and basic rules of pronunciation and grammar are highly consistent, with very few exceptions to confuse things. Over the last few weeks I’ve been trying to get a head start by listening to language-learning podcasts, and I’ve actually found it fun. Very promising!

Is LOST Complex or Just a Mess?

2010-05-21T14:20:00.004-04:00

I just read this article railing against the TV Series Lost. I have to say, I feel quite relieved. I have only watched the first three episodes of Lost in full (I catch bits of other episodes when my roommates watch) but that was all it took to develop a deal-breaking suspicion that the show was creating a false mystique, generating a million questions about mysterious island forces and character histories and space-time warps, but rarely offering any insights, or tie-ins or answers, not because that's "the point" of the show, but because they had no good answers to give.

The alleged grounding in philosophy and mythology and the supplemental material online just makes it seem all the more like bullshit to me, smokescreen to mask poor plot development. It seems less like an intellectual show than it merely poses as one. A good story should not tie up nicely like a bow, but it must have a worthwhile resolution or resolutions of some kind. The resolution may be inspiring, tragic or ambivalent as long as its relevant, and to some degree unexpected. That's why writing endings to stories is often the hardest part. The resolution fulfills the contract between reader and author, a promise that if you continue reading (or watching) I will resolve, in some fashion, the conflicts I have proposed here.

I recall giving up on the show (and tearing up that contract) after the first few episodes because they introduced so many mysteries and dilemmas in rapid succession that they started feeling unconnected and arbitrary. Instead of weaving a plot, they appeared to be spinning a wheel to see what crazy new circumstances would befall the gang this week -- they stumble on to an ancient sculpture of a mantis-like god, and then the hull of a spacecraft, and then a book of dark magic, and then a crash survivor who turns out to be a high-maintenance schizophrenic off his meds (but also knows something others don't about the island), and then a man-eating palm tree...

At what point can the reader or viewer safely decide there is no method, that all these questions and conflicts are just one big stall on the way toward a grossly unsatisfying, slipshod ending? If there was a method -- some vision guiding the show's creators, ensuring that all new plot developments were not arbitrary but in fact served to move the story and characters toward realizing that vision (however imperfectly formed) -- I wasn't convinced as such after three episodes.

Perhaps I'd have been willing to wait it out longer, to let the show convince me there was a vision after all, were I only enticed by character development in the meantime. But there's another problem, because the characters on Lost are so numerous and archetypal there was no way I was going to identify with them after three episodes. Observe now, the dashing doc, the tough and edgy hot girl, the drug addict, the mystic, the noble and unassuming ugly guy, and so much more! The show's attempt to be all-inclusive from the get go, rather than adequately developing one or two and letting the others come in time, made the show feel jumpy, scattered and shallow. Perhaps character depth improved as the show progressed, but again, how long am I supposed to wait?

A fan can legitimately and easily refute my criticism of Lost, based as it is on just a few early impressions. But this wouldn't be the first time a TV show was so preoccupied with twists!, twists!, twists! that it quickly obliterated any chance for a meaningful and resolved story arc. The second season of 24 comes to mind (I stopped watching halfway through), though at least there at least some clumsy attempt to connect the dots. An essential appeal of Lost seems predicated on mystery, and the notion that "all will be revealed" in the end. For mysteries, the resolution must include one or more revelations, but I suspect that in many cases the twist or mystery preceded the source (if there ends up being one). In other words, the strategy was, add sensational details to the plot (a new trait of the invisible monster, a dark episode from a character's past, etc) and reveal them in drips and drabs (especially at the end of an episode) to hook the audience, and work out some explanation for why these details are relevant and connected long after the fact. There's no rule against building a plot in this way, but it's a huge gamble, and you'd better be able to pay up when the time comes -- pay with connections and revelations tantamount to the mysteries themselves, or else the ending, and by extension the whole story, feels "cheap."

Given the show's popularity I feel a strong compulsion to watch the whole damn thing just so I can confirm my suspicions that the show is *not* complex but is, as Adams claims in his rant, simply "a mess." Hopefully if that time ever comes I will either finally "get it" and become an indoctrinated fan (which I doubt) or I'll be able to criticize it more openly, . For now, I'll rest a little easier knowing this dude who has watched the whole thing seems to feel the way I do.

*Image (but not cartoon thought bubble) from www.abc.com.

Addendum: I'm not typically inclined to make such bold criticisms based on so little evidence or experience, but it was a decent excuse to talk about the virtues of good plot development, even if I am entirely wrong about Lost. I also don't take contrarian viewpoints often enough, probably because I'm scared of exposing any ignorance whatsoever, so you might equate this ill-informed appraisal to holding my hand over the flame to see just how much I can tolerate, in order that I may begin risking even bolder claims.

Having conceded all that, I will also say that I trust my instincts that the show is highly overrated. I don't deny there's a chance if I simply watched more of the show I'd be evangelized, nor am I above pulling such a 180 -- I relish such moments. But I'll bet 100 dollars I'd feel exactly the same way that I do now, whether I watched a full season or the full series. The only change would be that I'd have specific examples to cite for why I think it's a weak show, and . There's a lot you can tell about a TV show's potential from a single episode, let alone three.

I do agree though that there's an increasing complexity within television in general, that in fact we're in the Golden Age of television, not only because there seems to be a greater tolerance for shows that break the mold, but also because shows are allowed to end, instead of just fizzle out. So many times in the last ten years I have watched a show for the first time and after 15 minutes knew I was going to fall in love with it.

Truly, I had that hope for Lost when I started Season One, lo those many years ago, but... ugh, I just found it so frustrating, and eventually, lame. I saw no indications of brilliant, progressive thinking or writing, the kind of evidence that would have compelled me to leave aside the aspects I didn't connect with right away, at least for a while. I did not sense bold experimentation in a new medium, as you put it, but a smattering of cheap sensational tricks guided by no great vision in particular so much as a need to hook, hook, hook the audience at the end of forty minutes each week.

Perhaps they did have answers to their "big questions" before posing them in the unfolding story, but as a viewer I didn't find myself remotely interested in the answers because there was so little that was compelling about the story and it's early questions in the first place, be it a character or an unexpected (if minor) connection or revelation, something that earns my interest, emotional resonance, and trust.

I had a clinical psych professor who pointed out that, in therapy, deep healing and lasting change may take years of work and slow progress, and so patience is a virtue. But, he said, as a therapist you should aspire to "give them something" by the end of the first session, an insight that earns some of their trust, their respect, and their belief that maybe you can do something for them they cannot do on their own. Otherwise, why would they come back? It's hard enough for most people to make the first step into therapy. How long are they supposed to wait for a sign that some magic might happen for them in your care?

By the same token, it's an investment of time and mental energy to read the first pages of a book, or the first episode of a show, and as the writer of the story, it is your responsibility to forge some sort of early bond, if only enough so that the viewer or reader will follow you for another couple of steps. And to forge that bond, you have to do *something* remarkable.

The only remarkable thing I can remember about the early episodes of Lost was some dude in the opening minutes surviving the catalytic plane crash only to get yanked by a rush of air into the still-churning jet engine like an ant into a vacuum tube (I admit that was pretty intense).

I'm sure that even in Picasso's earliest works within his new medium there were traces of unrefined brilliance. Regardless, there is a canyon of difference between experimenting in a medium and a show that's worthy of broadcast in the first place finding its stride several episodes in. Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Wire, Arrested Development, The Office, Dexter, Seinfeld, The Simpsons, Sports Night, West Wing, most of my favorite shows broke the mold to some degree, and they all got better as they went on (at least for a while, before some of them got worse). But if I go back to the first three episodes of any of these I can find much that is valuable, much that make the episodes worth watching in and of themselves, but also make watching the next episode a no-brainer investment.

I'm not the one to be making the argument that the complexity of Lost is a sham, but there are clearly people out there who have watched the whole show and feel exactly that way, for example the writer of the article I referenced and one of the commenters (besides me). They are a slim minority perhaps, but it appears to be a legitimate position.

I also hated the Lord of the Rings trilogy though, so… what the hell do I know?

A Quasi- Literary Photo Tour of San Francisco

2010-05-06T13:13:00.001-04:00

Here's something a little different. A few weeks ago I visited San Francisco for the first time. Lovely city. One of my goals for that weekend was to take a literary tour of the city with a good friend (who also happens to be "First Editor" for Max Underground) as a belated birthday present.

According to the website this was allegedly the only guided literary tour in town, and was given once every weekend. The site gave a number to call. I called. The voice greeting said: "It is imperative that you leave a message and a phone number to call back in case I need to cancel the tour, for instance when I'm going out of town." I left a message, said I would plan on showing up unless I heard from him, gave my number. I went to the meeting point the next day with my editor friend as well as the friend I was staying with.

No call. No show.

I won't name the tour/tour-guide that left us hanging, out of writerly respect, but I was peeeeee-issed.

So we went on our own literary tour, sort of, and thanks to iPhone -- Love you! (*kisses* phone) -- I've got some photos and mini-movies documenting the experience.

I share them here -- both the photos with a literary bent and... well, everything else.

Let's start with the resident sea lions on Pier 39. This actually is a literary photograph of sorts, when you consider the verse that the lions inspired (which deserves its own post, forthcoming).

Not far from the sea lions we found Musee Mecanique, the most pleasant surprise of my trip. I didn't even know it existed, and happened upon it almost by accident. The place boasted well over a hundred antique, coin-operated arcade amusements. Stained oak, tarnished brass, clinkety, clunkety, what a time warp! A variety of penny peep shows (now a quarter; god, inflation) which were thoroughly un-arousing, and enough old fortune telling machines to transform every San Franciscan into a goofy, mean-foot-piano-playin' Tom Hanks.

It's at the Musee where I shot all my mini-movies. We start with the scariest attraction, Laffing Sal. I think she may be married to Pennywise the Clown from It.

Moving on to the only slightly less scary English Execution.

The coin-operated carnival.

I discover foosball 1.0

And here's an old-fashioned player piano. You'll notice among iPhone's myriad talents is that it actually dances to music.

Back to photos...

Even with the ominous clouds gathering over Alcatraz, it didn't look that hard to escape from.

The first bridge I've ever seen that I would call "beautiful."

These next eight are terrible, but amusing. When the button is on the opposite face of the camera and intangible (just an image on a touchscreen), taking the self shot is really challenging. A flexible wrist helps, but only so much. Just wasn't meant to be.

You can see my frustration mount as I try to capture myself and the Golden Gate in some kind of aesthetically adept fashion.

Nope.

In this one you can almost tell there's a bridge behind me.

Golden Gate Park the next day.

This fish was determined to sneak up on the black duck, about half its size, but soon after this shot the duck flipped out and monster-pecked him back down into the depths.

A closer look at the duck's eyes explains the violent behavior -- this bird is clearly infected with the rage virus.

The Botanical Gardens. This is what happens when trees play too close to electrical outlets.

Japanese Tea Garden. Serenity now!!!

Caffe Trieste, where many a Beat poet and writer hung out; also where Francis Ford Coppola is said to have written much of the Godfather screenplay. None of that holds a candle to my finally mastering the iPhone self-shot. Just look at that balance.

Here we are standing in front of the City Lights Bookstore waiting for a tour that never happened. This is the store that originally published Allen Ginsberg's Howl, for which the owner later went on trial.

We went across the street to the Beat Museum. Fuck the tour.

Early editions of Beat classics.

Yeah, Fuck Tour! Or Hate. Whatever.

Ginsberg's organ, on display.

Ginsberg's organ, on display.

(I didn't take this one -- Elsa Dorfman did -- but I've been waiting weeks to make that joke. This dude loved getting naked)

The Howl Trial

Manuscript with edits.

Atop the cliffs in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (the peninsula on the other side of the Bridge, opposite San Fran)

The lovely Ashley.

And the lovely Andrew.

The moral of this story? Fuck the San Francisco literary tour.

Reapplying to MFA Programs – Part 2

2010-04-28T21:25:00.001-04:00

Continued from Part 1

One thing I have already done is hire a consultation service, Driftless House, to look at my application writing sample. Even more than identifying areas for improvement, I just wanted to regain some sense of control over this whole process, and as soon as possible. The cost wasn't cheap at $360, but it was worth it, so much so that I have every intention of using the service again in the fall.

I felt like I'd been given nourishment that I'd been lacking for years. The consultant, a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, had obviously spent ample time reading and thinking about my work. Feedback came in the form of in-line edits, margin comments, a six-page single-spaced critique letter and follow-up Q&A. It covered everything from the placement of commas to big-picture plans for next year.

I thought I'd be more resistant to at least some of his criticism, but the truth is virtually all of it made perfect sense to me. The consultant was gracious enough to offer some of his own personal experiences, hoping they might lend me some perspective, particularly as it pertains to my novel. After making some astute assumptions about me and my book (based on reading one chapter and skimming two others) he said:

"These assumptions move us toward a larger one: that Max Underground is sort of the quintessential post-college novel, where a twenty-something writer tries to write a novel, their first, that is to some degree a more exciting rendition of their own life. (If you're actually fifty years old, my credibility has just been completely fucking shot...) These novels range from half the Fitzgerald canon to Chabon's Mysteries of Pittsburgh through plenty of lesser contemporary works by twenty-something “it” authors of questionable merit, down to an unquantifiable mass of unpublishable works by self-involved dabblers, many of whom you will be competing with for MFA spots and should easily beat."

Does this guy know how to package a hard truth or what? See how he flattered me right after telling me that my novel wasn't groundbreaking?

His point was not to discourage me from finishing or trying to publish the novel, of course. Rather, he was suggesting that I might be "putting a great deal of energy and care into a pretty small vessel." He shared that he too wrote this kind of novel after graduating. After spending three years on it he was finally compelled to take a break. In anticipation of applying to MFA programs, he spent the following year working on just two short stories, and in transitioning from novel to stories he experienced a "leap" in the quality of his writing. Apparently, this leap resulted in stories good enough to get him accepted into several great programs.

In truth, from early on I had the sense that Max Underground was "typical" in the ways he described. Since having that minor, unsettling revelation, I've been fighting to make my personal, quintessential post-graduate novel as exceptional as I could, so desperate was I to save it from becoming the unpublished "starter novel" that seems like an unofficial prerequisite to becoming a successful fiction writer.

But I've been at it so long, and I think I've been needing a break for a while. The consultant's feedback made me feel surprisingly at ease with letting the novel go, if only for a while.

I've decided steal his game plan -- between now and November I will attempt to complete two short stories, and hope that one of them develops into my best work, and subsequently my ticket to MFA bliss. I'm also going to make my best use of his feedback on the epilogue, continue submitting it to journals, and will consider it my backup in case the other two stories don't turn out so well.

So the beat goes on. Da-da-dum, da-dum da-dah.

*Image is Sarah Palin's gubernatorial resignation speech, as copy-edited by Vanity Fair.

Reapplying to MFA Programs – Part 1

2010-04-28T21:11:00.003-04:00

The passage of the April 15 acceptance deadline and the lack of any celebratory posts probably makes this obvious, but I didn't get into to grad school this year.

But don't worry. I promise I won't flip out.

The final, official word came on April 1st. I contacted the last two holdouts, Florida and Virginia, figuring from the MFA Blog that they had finished notifying all of their accepted and waitlisted. Thankfully they both got back to me within the day, and confirmed that my application was denied.

Near pure, unadulterated relief best describes my reaction to this news. I'd mostly resigned myself to this fate three weeks before, but only mostly, because it's impossible to really move on until the outcome is certain. Oh, how the days dragged on.

It didn't help that there were occasional cases of applicants who, after losing all hope, get a call from a school that appeared to have finished notifying weeks before. Like New York Lotto, "Hey, you never know" (but you kinda do).

I'm grateful that I was able to share the experience with so many other writers, many of whom are in my position, and moreover, many who were in my position last year, reapplied, and have now been accepted into great programs. That sure makes it hard to throw in the towel.

So reapplying is kind of a no-brainer for me at this point. What can I do in the meantime?

First, RE-ENERGIZE! That I won't be moving in a few months has made me realize how badly I need relief from my daily grind, so I'll be taking leave from work over the summer to volunteer in Tanzania (more to come on that).

And when I come back, I'll finally take advantage of Harvard's tuition assistance program and take a workshop -- I sent a letter of inquiry to the lovely (Professor) Amy Hempel about her workshop, and she just got back to me today. She's a great fiction writer, and she's my hero's hero, so her tutelage would be sublime.

Continues to Part 2

*Photos courtesy of (in order) Lolcats.com, letstravelradio.com, and Harvard University

Blood Sacrifice: Captain O-Neg Doubles Down

2010-03-15T20:21:00.006-04:00

Weathering rejections from MFA programs has compelled me to find frequent and creative ways to feel empowered. Giving blood was a no-brainer, and today I did it in style.

As I covered in a post a while back, I'm a proud carrier of Type O negative blood, which makes me a martyr of sorts since I can give to anybody but can only take my own type. Moreover, my blood is chock full of caffeine, antidepressants and acne preventative antibiotics, so we're talking premium octane blood here, with a nitrous boost. If patients requiring transfusions were able to make a consumer decision regarding what kind of blood they received, my blood would be the luxury brand: "Treat your body to JRC SuperPlus. Look better. Feel better. Have more energy for your day."

"JRC SuperPlus. Don't just survive. Live."

Because I'm a giver by nature, and have such a valuable commodity to lend, I was delighted to learn that medical advances have made it possible for the Fountain of Life that is me to be effectively tapped twice in one visit -- a collection method known as the "double red" donation.

The Red Cross attendant hooked me up to a white box that from a distance looked like a lie detector, with buttons and dials and spinning wheels. She warned me that the needle was slightly bigger for a double-red donation but I waved her off, declaring that no amount of pain was too great a price to pay for saving more lives (it did fucking hurt though).

The machine proceeded to draw out a pint of my blood, which traveled through a long clear tube before disappearing into the side of the white box. It reemerged as two substances, collected in separate bags. The first bag contained a dense mass of my red blood cells. The second contained my plasma which looked, I kid not, exactly like beer -- amber colored with a thick foamy head.

Seeing my blood rendered thus was cool enough on its own, but the best was yet to come. The machine proceeded then to pump the plasma, along with some saline solution, back into my body. It's fitting that my plasma was so lager-like because this part of the procedure definitely induced a funny, head-inflating sensation.

The full cycle -- draw, separate, inflate -- was repeated a second time, resulting in a bag full of red blood cells that is comprable to that found in two pints of whole blood.

The donation called to my mind a particular zombie dream -- yes I have many zombie dreams -- called to mind a particular zombie dream that ended more horrifically (and awesomely) than most. These zombies zombified their prey not by biting them, but through blood transfusion. I was forced to watch as a team of zombies strapped my last surviving friend to a table, stuck him with a couple of tubes and proceeded to draw his blood out while simultaneously replacing it with zombie blood. Transformation complete, my now undead friend moaned and staggered off, and I awoke just as the zombies were pinning me down to the table to perform the same procedure on me. Hell yeah.

Incidentally, this is the first video I'm posting that I've shot with my new, exquisite iPhone, the God of all mobile devices.

Coping with MFA Rejection (Part 2): Support and Perspective

2010-03-10T15:06:00.003-05:00

Read "Coping with MFA Rejection, Part 1: Reality Check"

The dimming prospects for getting into an MFA program this year have compelled me to develop an acceptable contingency plan. This includes possibly taking leave from work this summer to volunteer overseas, enrolling in a writers workshop in the Fall, and reapplying to programs for 2011. At the very least, outlining a backup plan offers me some psychological armor as I prepare to endure the final outcome. I am confident that no matter what happens I'll continue to write and that "things," whatever they be, will work out fine.

Ultimate faith in myself notwithstanding though, I feel pretty gloomy. I whine to myself about all the hours and money I invested applying to nine schools, lament how underappreciated my talent and efforts are, etc. This process has been nothing short of a burgeoning humble pie and I doubt if I'm done eating it.

The MFA Blog, as I've often mentioned, was an indispensable source of information for me while I was applying. Recently it's become much more than that. The comments section has exploded into a lively forum (about 10,000 posts in a month) teeming with dozens of eager, anxious, disappointed -- and occasionally joyous -- MFA hopefuls.

If the mere fact of my rejections is not enough to sufficiently ground me, then I should think the resilience, generosity and undaunted hope I've encountered in my fellow applicants should finish the work. Truly, I am inspired.

Had I not discovered these writers sharing their fears, disappointments and joys, I think I'd be in big trouble right now, emotionally speaking. At times like these I lose perspective fast and repeatedly, and can only cope so well on my own.

If I feel moved to self-pity, I need only recall the circumstances of my peers -- which are often far more frustrating than mine -- and the grace with which they handle it. One writer, for example, whose prospects for this year also look bleak, is a single mother with two jobs who works 80+ hours per week. She still makes time to write every night and vows she will continue to do so, regardless of this year's outcome.

And a few days ago, one particular commenter really blew me away. Like me, he has been out of school 8 years. He has several publications and awards, has participated extensively in workshops, and applied to 24 (holy crap) schools.

At the time of his posting he'd been rejected by fifteen schools. As of this writing, he's been waitlisted at Indiana, and has two answers left pending.

I can't comment directly on the quality of his writing, but given his efforts and accomplishments it staggers me that 21 schools could turn him down. Certainly this is a very subjective process involving extremely selective programs, and of course no one is entitled to a MFA slot. Yet his situation seems most unjust. The tone of his initial post was admirably restrained, I thought, and his follow up even more gracious.

I thanked him for inadvertently lending me valuable perspective, and with his permission I'm reprinting his two posts here, in the hopes that other applicants might get out of it what I did.

phillywriter said...

@Seth (and others who are curious)

I'm finally posting my list of 24 (yes, 24) schools to which I've applied in fiction, and from which I've heard no good news so far:

Brown - rejected
Texas - rejected
WUSTL - rejected
Wisconsin - rejected
Syracuse - rejected
Alabama - presumed rejection
Michigan - presumed rejection
Minnesota - presumed rejection
Indiana - presumed rejection
Cornell - presumed rejection
Ohio State - presumed rejection
Virginia Tech - presumed rejection
Vanderbilt - presumed rejection
Purdue - presumed rejection
Iowa - trying not to presume a rejection, but hope is fading fast
Hunter
Brooklyn
LSU
University of Florida
University of Virginia
Johns Hopkins
NYU
Columbia (even though I don't know how I could afford it)
University of Oregon

I know I applied to very competitive programs, but I thought that by applying to 24 I'd come out OK in this subjective process. I did lots of research into my programs, read the MFA Handbook, planned the application process out for a long period of time, and worked hard for months on all my application materials. Most of the writing in my sample has been published, all of it has been workshopped extensively, and I truly felt it was my strongest work. I've been out of school for 8 years, always with the intention of getting my MFA, and I've been in writing workshops and working with mentors this entire time. I have a nice list of publication credits in halfway-decent lit mags and a couple fairly prestigious awards. I majored in English with a Creative Writing concentration at a very good school, with a high GPA, and I did very well on the GREs.

Yet here I am with not a single positive word from any of my 24 schools.

I say this just to let you all know how crazy this selection process is. I know my writing doesn't suck; I've had plenty of external validation. I excel in the objective criteria (GPA, GRE), and I spent months working on my SOPs.

Sorry for this really long post, which has been boiling up inside me for weeks now. I've waited 8 years to apply to MFA programs because I wanted my writing to get stronger, to gain life experience, to get more feedback on my work, and even have a few publication credits as evidence that I'm on the right track. I've done all that. I decided that the timing is finally right, and I only wanted to do this application process once, so I put everything into it and applied to 24 schools. And it's increasingly looking like I'll be doing this all over again next year.

The one thing I'd do differently, besides adding a few less competitive programs to the list, is have ALC/DH look at my sample and SOP. That's the only thing I can think of that I didn't do, even though I had plenty of people (including someone who's a professor in an MFA program) review it all and provide valuable feedback. But perhaps ALC/DH could give me that extra insight that I'm somehow missing. I don't know.

This is devastating. But no matter what, I'm going to keep on writing and I'll just keep applying until I get in.

Sorry again for the long post; it's clearly been festering for a while. As tends to happen with dreams deferred.

March 5, 2010 7:36 AM

phillywriter said...

Thanks, all. And no, I haven't given up hope yet. Initially I was just posting my list of 24 schools for Seth's information - and the rant just spilled forth....

No matter what, I'll keep writing. And I know the MFA isn't necessary to do that, but I long for the sense of community and the opportunity to focus exclusively on my writing for a while. I'm an academic at heart, and the idea of discussing writing at length from a writing craft perspective (as opposed to the deconstructive literary analysis of my undergrad English major days) makes me positively giddy. I hope someday to teach writing, and an MFA would help with that.

But I'm not giving up. I know this is what I want to do, so I just have to keep at it. So, yes, Ink and Beans - it's a deal! We'll both keep writing and keep trying.

And I truly am happy for all those who've had acceptances. I'm in favor of anything that helps generate great literature, and I hope that all of us keep working and writing and that those of us who go through MFA programs will emerge on the other end with even stronger writing. To me, it's not a competition. It's about creating something powerful and lasting. And I'm almost as happy reading an amazing story written by someone else as I am writing one of my own.

March 5, 2010 8:26 AM

*Addendum: Talk about the eleventh hour! Phillywriter was eventually waitlisted at Indiana and LSU, but it was weeks before either school made their final decision. Indiana informed him on signing day (April 15) that he didn't make it. Then at 9 pm that night, LSU notified him that he was accepted.

Doubtless the man now has two ass cracks from sitting on the razor edge of his seat so long. Congratulations phillywriter! You are an inspiration. April 15, 2010.

Coping with MFA Rejection (Part 1): Reality Check

2010-03-10T14:30:00.002-05:00

The MFA situation is looking increasingly bleak for me.

I’ve received five definitive rejections (3 by standard mail and 2 by e-mail). Of the remaining four, two are finished or nearly finished notifying the accepted and waitlisted—I know this because my fellow applicants are prompt in reporting their news, good and bad, in the comments section of the MFA blog.

For me, that leaves two schools, which are no less selective than the other seven—all of these programs accept 1-3% of applicants.

UT-Austin – rejected
Wisconsin – rejected
Michigan – rejected
Brown – rejected
UMass-Amherst - rejected
Indiana – presumed rejection
Florida – presumed rejection
UVA – ?
UC-Irvine – ?

Some programs notify acceptances by e-mail but most do it by phone. Yesterday around lunch time I received a call from an unknown number (gasp!). It was an automated message, asking if I was interested in a professional carpet cleaning service.

I’m pissing on the next carpet I see.

Getting turned down by my top choice in Austin was a big reality check. Since then I've had more reality than I care to acknowledge. Here's a difficult confession: I thought my getting into at least one of these programs was a virtual guarantee. I was that confident. But sharing the experience of the past three weeks online with other applicants reminds me how long I’ve not been part of a writing community, how vital feedback is, and how many other talented writers exist out there.

A range of negative feelings accompany these rejections. There’s disappointment, obviously. Also anger, that my work has now been rejected by forty-plus journals and seven grad schools. Jealousy, over the success of some of my fellow applicants—a few rock stars received offers from multiple top programs, most of which were on my list. Anxiety, and self-pity, as I watch my chances slowly dwindle.

And shame. I’m ashamed at feeling jealousy and self-pity, even if it is only natural. And I'm ashamed I may not get in when I’ve spoken about little else since September. Whenever conversation demanded personal news, mine was always grad school: my reasons for applying, my top choice and why, etc. That’s a lot of anticipation-building to arrive at such a disappointing verdict. Can we all just pretend I was playing indoor soccer or learning to knit for the past six months?

If things don’t work out, I’m confident I’ll be able to cope and move on to Plan B. In fact, I’m already proud of myself for how quickly I’ve been able to process these feelings and emerge resolute.

The problem is that each lull between rejections is enough to get my hopes up again, and each new denial enough to sink me anew. It’s bringing out the worst in me—I’m mopey and asocial with my friends, I'm irritable and spacey at work. I’m unmotivated to have fun, to be productive, and especially to write (fiction at least). I want this process to be finished so I can deal with it and move on, for the full disappointment to sting me as swiftly as the proverbial Band-Aid. Instead I feel like a strip of duct tape has been applied and torn off my inner thigh seven times with a long pause between each, and two rips to left to go.

Incidentally, my avoiding workshops for the last six years was a conscious decision, and in light of current events I have to be careful not to regret that choice. On my best week I could only muster about 8-10 hours to work on the book. If I were in a workshop I’d have spent much of that time reading and critiquing the work of others. Moreover, I knew that much of what I wrote was weak, but I pushed through for the sake of finishing, knowing I'd come back to it later and with better perspective. Until I get a passage worked out to my satisfaction, I’m my own best editor. It’s when the work appears near-perfect that I need others to see what I can’t. In short, feedback on such an early draft would have been largely wasted, and possibly overwhelming.

I’d always intended to get back into workshops, hence the MFA applications. But maybe I need to clock some workshop hours before I can go full time. So be it.

Read "Coping with MFA Rejection, Part 2: Support and Perspective"

DJ Pauly D Does Me a Solid

2010-02-23T21:52:00.001-05:00

Serendipitous timing that I just reported on my two year progress days ago, pointing out that in that time the blog had received about 25,000 visitors total. As of yesterday morning that total had, predictably, changed little.

I looked at my Analytics just now and saw that yesterday I had over 9,000 hits. Hmm, I thought to myself, this is the first time I've ever seen Google malfunction. What's the world (wide web) coming to?

But it was no malfunction. It took a little detective work to figure out the catalyst since the traffic seemed to surge from several sources... but much of it came from Facebook. A little more digging and behold: Pauly D shared the link to his Lifetime Achievement Award on his Facebook page.

[cue chorus of angels]

Just the nod alone would have been enough to rock my world. But 9,000 hits? And as if that wasn't enough of a bonus, Pauly boosted my Google cred big time. Previously whenever I googled "jersey shore quotes" I was anywhere from number 8 to number 14 on the list. Now I'm number one.

You heard that correctly. For the moment, according to Google, Ink and Beans is THE authority on quotes from the Jersey Shore.

DJ Pauly D, I don't know about the effect your beats have on other guys' girlfriends, but you just made me c** in my pants.

Addendum: It's two days later and all is back to normal, both in terms of my traffic and Google rankings. But still, that was fun.

Rejection Road: First MFA Responses

2010-02-21T14:08:00.000-05:00

Got my first two responses from MFA programs - a rejection from top choice Austin on Friday, and another from the University of Wisconsin the Friday before that. Even though I have seven more applications pending, I am predictably more nervous now about my prospects of getting into any program at all. Just gimme one in the bag so I can calm the F down!

At the very least it has spurred me to begin formulating -- if only for the psychological benefit -- a Plan B that I can live with, in case I get into none of these programs.

One detail included in the note from Wisconsin that surprised me that was surprising is that they received over 600 applications, for six spots! Less than a 1 percent acceptance rate. Wisconsin's MFA program is unusual in that it only accepts applications for fiction every other year, but I wonder how much this reflects the economy. Did the recession inspire everyone to become a writer?

These responses from schools arrived much earlier than I anticipated. Some how I got it in my head that answers would come starting mid-March and through mid-April. But Seth Abramson's generous application response time database -- which helps one estimate when they'll hear from various MFA programs based on their response times from last few years -- tells me that I am actually more likely to get most of my responses between now and mid-March.

It seems Indiana University is already making acceptance phone calls, but according to the discussions raging over at the MFA Blog (over 4,000 comments in the last two weeks!) Indiana hasn't finished their selection process either.

I may very well hear from UMass-Amherst and Michigan this week. Brown and UC-Irvine in mid-March. UVA will probably come last in late March. And Florida's past response times were all over the place, so who knows?

Best Quotes from MTV's Jersey Shore - Episode 2

2010-02-21T13:57:00.001-05:00

Episode 1 quotes
Episode 2 quotes
Episode 3 quotes
Episode 4 quotes
Episode 5 quotes
Episode 6 quotes
Episode 7 quotes
Episode 8 quotes
Episode 9 quotes

I'm finally caught up, and what a treat it was viewing this episode again with a full season perspective.

The Situation continues to court Sam the "Sweetheart," who is completely tickled by all the attention until her fall from grace and reemergence as Darth Sammi. Was the Situation guilty of brazen cockiness in the matter of Sammi? Obviously. But her coldness is still hard to believe -- making out with Situation at the club and then minutes later making out with Ronnie. When the Situation sees this and grows angry she is utterly unapologetic, deriding the guy for even thinking she was ever interested at all. Angelina, who until her premature departure was the show's moral compass, decides she wants to push him off his high horse too, and makes his night even worse by chasing a few consolation girls off the roof.

Speaking of Angelina, the Forgotten Bitch, she certainly gives Sammi a run for her money, though to her credit Angelina makes no claims of "sweetness." She has a fun night at the club which she cannot recall the next morning, and worries she's cheated on her boyfriend. She calls him in a panic and is angered when he says he's in a meeting and must call her back. She dials him repeatedly, spitefully, offended he won't take her call and assuage her guilt and anxiety immediately.

Snooki struggles to repair her reputation in the house after her wild first night, and gets a pep talk of sorts from Sammi. Vinny gets pink eye the morning of his first day of work at the t-shirt shop. Ronnie has a theory how it happened. Jwoww gets a taste of Pauly D despite her boyfriend back home. And Pauly D throws the first punch of the show (which I'd totally forgotten). Lots of action.

Best Quotes

7. "Me and my friend Robbie wanted to watch the sun set... no, the sun RISE." – Snooki

6. "I don't give a fuck if you're fat, you're ugly, you're forty-five years old, I'll dance with you." – Vinny

5. "I'm a cock block. Mm-hmm." – Angelina

4. "Time to get some Ron-Ron juice in my system." – Ronnie

3. "I just saw your penis." – Jwoww (to Pauly D)

2. "They don't call me Sammi Sweetheart for nothing." – Sammi

1. "In a weird Snookers world, like, me and Snookers would make like the best little guidos and guidettes… little poofs and blowouts on our little kids." – Pauly D

Honorable Mentions

"The party's in Pauly D’s pants tonight." – Pauly D

"I left the club early because I didn't want to cheat on my boyfriend... and, I felt like eating ham and drinking water." – JWoww

"Look at me. I'm all fucking natural baby, and I'm hot." – Angelina

"I hit him right in the nose. That's the best spot to hit someone. Only takes nine pounds of pressure to break a nose." – Pauly D

"Holy shit. That's like a whole drama situation right there." – Pauly D (referring to Sammi's switch from Situation to Ronnie)

"Don't let the spiked hair fool you. Like, I'm not a bitch." – Pauly D

"This is what you get for putting a fat girl's ass in your face." - Ronnie (to Vinny when he reveals he has pink eye)

"You figure diving through the fat chick's legs maybe she let something out when he was sliding through and particles got in his eyes or something." – Ronnie (referring to Vinny's pink-eye)

"She didn't sell anything, so Danny put her on, like, hangers duty." – Pauly D (referring to Angelina's poor salesmanship)

"I am the fucking princess of fucking Poughkeepsie." – Snooki

"I just feel like I'm not, like, mature enough to be on my own right now." - Snooki

"I just want to have a good time. I'm an amazing-ass, gorgeous, tan guidette." – Snooki

"My ideal man would be Italian, dark, muscles, juicehead, guido... if I found that guy I would snatch him like that." – Snooki

"There's not really much between her ass and the guy-she's-grinding-on's..." – Vinny (referring to Angelina)

"She wants to have fun AND she wants to have a boyfriend. Like I want to have my cake and eat it too. And like I'll play that game. I'll be that guy. I don't care." – Pauly D (about JWoww)

"It was like a Johnnie, or like a Donnie." - Sammi (trying to help Angelina remember who she left the club with)

"I think I might have my hands in your Kool-aid tonight brother." - Ronnie (to Situation, joking that he might move in on Sammi)

"She has a boyfriend at home, but I predict her not having that boyfriend anymore." - Pauly D (about JWoww)

Lifetime Achievement Award

And thus begins the Situation's Auerbach-like dominance of the Lifetime title.

"So I guess you're a negative three, eh?" – The Situation (to Angelina, when she tells him that every girl he brings home is a "zero")

"As far as I know everyone loves the Situation. And if you don't love the Situation. I'm going to make you love the Situation." – The Situation

"Even though I am a little bit of a player... at the same time she does see that I'm a sweetheart and maybe that, you know, we could vibe enough for, you know, I can cut that out." – The Situation

"If you want to look like someone like the Situation - which is definitely going to be pretty hard – ah, you need to get that protein in your diet." – The Situation

"I could sell t-shirts standing still. As a matter of fact, I just sold one, right now." – The Situation (during interview)

"You like the Situation now? Me too." – The Situation (to Danny, his boss)

"Everybody loves me. Babies, dogs, you know, hot girls... cougars." – The Situation

"I just have unbelievable mass appeal." – The Situation

"Me and Sam were vibin'. It's not a matter of 'if,' it’s a matter of when I decide." – The Situation

"Ronnie, he's not an ugly dude by any means. I’m not a hater at all. It's just sometimes you got it, you got the lingo, you can talk to girls, and sometimes you ain't got it." – The Situation

"It should be very interesting tonight, considering Sam is in love with me and Ronnie is also in love with me probably too because, you know, he wishes he had what I had." – The Situation

"What is going on right now???" – The Situation (when he witnesses Sammi making out with Ronnie)

"Snap. Yeah. That’s what happens." – The Situation (referring to Pauly D’s right cross)

"You're attracted to other people whether you have a boyfriend or not. Okay? You add a little bit of liquor in that and, wow, what's up, you just cheated on your boyfriend." – The Situation (referring to Angelina)

Royal Bitch Tiara

This new award goes to Sammi, for obvious reasons, but also Angelina, for her seemingly arbitrary decision to further ruin the Situation's night by verbally bashing him and the girls he's hitting on upstairs.

"There's nothing wrong with what I'm doing. Like if a girl's a slut, she should be abused." – Angelina

"I don't know why he thinks I like him like that. Like, I don't want nothing to do with you Mike. Honestly? Like, yeah I hooked up with you, but I went to Ronnie." - Sammi

"Mike I love you because you're my friend for a long time [read: less than a week] but I'm like really not having respect for you anymore." - Angelina

"Like, Mike, you turned into like a total bitch. Like you were jealous, throwing me middle fingers like we were something. We were nothing." - Sammi

Worst Exchange

Ronnie: "You crushed him tonight. Do you realize that?"

Sammi: "I was never his thing."

Ronnie: "You crushed his life, like, he doesn’t know what to do with himself right now. He's hating life."

[both laugh maliciously]

Ronnie: "You hooked up with him?"

Sammi: "No."

Ronnie: "Heh heh heh, it’s what he keeps saying."

Best Exchange

Second Place

In retrospect these dialogues are both hilarious and heart-wrenching. Ronnie is unabashedly sleazy before Sammi gets her hooks in, and the Situation, claiming he's unconcerned, still cunningly puts out feelers to see whether he's got competition.

Ronnie: "I kinda can't wait to get out. I'm going to get so much ***."

Situation: "You had your chance last night."

Ronnie: "If I was just going to get sloppy I should have just pounded out what's her name on Friday."

Situation: "Which one?"

Ronnie: "I mean on the first night. Schnickers."

Situation: "I just think you like Sam. Not necessarily like her. Maybe want to hook up with her..."

Ronnie: "I'd pound out Sam."

First Place

Again the Situation is digging, even tries a little preemptive sabotage, and is... less than successful.

Situation: "What do you think of Ronnie?"

Sammi: "I like him."

Situation: "He's like, raw."

Sammi: "You think he’s raw?"

Situation: "Like he says some..."

Sammi: "Yeah..."

Situation: "...some like, crazy shit."

Sammi: "He’s badass, a little bit. Like he doesn’t care what he’s gonna say."

Situation: "He just says like some like… I want to pound out every girl in Seaside... -type stuff, that's how he is... he just talks shit."

Sammi: "I think he's funny."

Situation: "I will admit that he says it in like a funny way."

Dalai Lama Humility Award (note: Award is bestowed for shunning purposes only)

"I'm not a strong person, like, I look." – Snooki

Famous Last Words Award

"I was like, do I have a little competition I was thinking, with Ronnie, but then I was like... nah, I don't, ah heh." - The Situation

Lord Byron Award for Romantic Verse

"I'm not kissing you because you have throw-up breath." - Snooki (bidding good night to boy from club)

WTF Award

"I want to bring home guys and it's hard. It shouldn't be hard but it is hard because it's the Jersey Shore. You know?" – Snooki

Jersey Pride Award

"When I think of the Jersey Shore I think of a playground, like, this place, this is not a place that you come to work." – Angelina

Staggering Ambition Award

"I feel like this job is beneath me. I'm a bartender. I do, like, you know, great things." – Angelina

Amnesty International Compassion Award

Loses something without the sentimental piano chiming in at "whole other person" but still touching.

"Did I not like you the first night? I'm gonna tell you honestly. No. I did not like you. I'm like, is she that sloppy girl? The next day when I was like don't get your throw-up breath on me, cause I was like so eww about the first night, but that's just me, like I get like that, like I don't like girls that got like problems like that. I throughout the day like saw a whole other person and you made me change and realize, I don't know this person I'm not gonna judge her." – Sammi (convincing Snooki to stay)

*All photos courtesy of mtv.com.

Best Quotes from MTV's Jersey Shore - Season Finale

2010-02-21T12:42:00.003-05:00

Episode 1 quotes
Episode 2 quotes
Episode 3 quotes
Episode 4 quotes
Episode 5 quotes
Episode 6 quotes
Episode 7 quotes
Episode 8 quotes
Episode 9 quotes

"May the Shore rise to meet you, may the Grenade always be at your back, may the tanning bed shine warm upon your face..."

And so we bid farewell to Jersey Shore, though apparently not for long. The credits for the final episode barely began to roll before a tidal wave of supplemental Jersey Shore content -- from reunions, to spoofs, to cast-member commentary on spoofs, to guest appearances -- swept over MTV, late night TV, and the Web. As early as two weeks before the finale, it was leaked that negotiations for a second season were already underway. One week after the show wrapped up, MTV announced that Season 2 was a go for launch.

But back to the Season at hand. The finale was perhaps the tamest of all the episodes, and certainly the most sentimental. To me it went down like a flat beer -- but not so flat that I'd prefer to have no beer at all.

Arrested after having knocked out a loud-mouthed thug (where last week's episode ended) Ronnie spends the night in jail. Sammi picks him up the next morning, brings him to bed, and sweetly whips him into ever deeper submission by pointing out there were two victims of his assault, not one (see below for quote about sleeping alone).

The gang hits the beach for the second time in their 30-day stay at the Shore. JWoww and Snooki hunt for juice-heads, while the Situation hits on a nymph of questionable legality.

The remainder of the show observes the group as they convene a circle of reflection that migrates from a barbecue on the deck to an unidentified lounge to the rooftop patio, infusing as much significance as possible into their month-long odyssey. Snook and Sitch take their last late night dip in the jacuzzi. Her top comes off. They make out.

The final morning bags are packed, there are hugs all around and more warm fuzziness. The housemates leave one by one until only Snooki is left to close up shop.

Best Quotes

5. "I don't know if I can last five hours with you in the car." - Vinny (to Situation when he suggests they car pool to visit Pauly D in Rhode Island)

4. "Then I end up spending the night in county for, ah - not even a night, a few hours in county - for, for, overreacting, I guess, like a degenerate that I'm not." - Ronnie

3. "Fuck my life." - Snooki (at the end of her solo dance party on the boardwalk)

2. "I had like the best summer of my life. Girls on the rides, girls on the beach, girls in the house, the hot tub... girls after girls after girls. That's an ideal summer for anybody." - Pauly D

1. "Yo, it's gorilla central out there. Get the fuck up." - JWoww (to Snooki, who's lying in bed)

Honorable Mentions

"Give me a call back tomorrow when you get this -- or I'll give you a call like a stalker." - Snooki (to Irish Cowboy's voicemail)

"I see a bunch of gorilla juiceheads. Tall, completely jacked, steroids, like multiple growth hormones. That's like, the type that I'm attracted to." - JWoww

"I don't see any fucking guido juicehead. You woke me up for nothing." - Snooki

"Where's the juiceheads?" - Snooki (repeatedly while walking down the beach)

"Even though we fight, and we hate each other at times, you know, when it comes down to it we really love each other." - Snooki

"Those were the best fights in the house... until AC." - Pauly D (meaning that the frequent spats between Angelina and The Situation were upstaged by JWoww delivering a spinning, backhand slap to The Situation in an AC hotel room)

"This was a life changing experience whether you like it or not." - Pauly D

"Bye make-out friend." - JWoww (to Pauly D as she's leaving)

"Goodbye everyone!" - Snooki (to empty house)

"I really think I made that house, honestly." - Snooki

"I'm just like, all right, this is it. Like, you know, like I had a summer with seven strangers and they all became my friends, you know. So that's pretty cool." - Ronnie

"The Jersey Shore changed me. Whaddaya know." - Snooki

Lifetime Achievement Award

No surprises here. To our reigning champion.

"The dude was face down though. I'm sure you had a better sleep than he did." - The Situation (to Ronnie when he says he's tired, referring to kid Ronnie cold-clocked night before)

"Hey what's up Cassandra. It's ah, Mike. Um, I was wondering if you could actually bring out your, you know, one of your, your actually ah, third friend... a ah, total of three.. it would be me, you, your two girlfriends, aaaaand my two roommates." - The Situation (leaving a voicemail)

"If you live on the beach you should be going on the beach a lot. I kinda realized that the last couple days, I'm like, fuck, it's nice as hell out." - The Situation

"Eventually I make my way over to some cute girls and do what I do best. And that's pimpin'." - The Situation (at the beach)

"It's bros night tonight at Captain Hook's. It's got like ah, some air hockey games, some basketball games. It's sort of like a Chuck E. Cheese... for dudes." - The Situation

"I laugh it off because nothing really bothers me. I mean, what that means to me, is that I'm on your mind twenty-four/seven." - The Situation (referring to bulldog Vinny hung up in the living room with a t-shirt that reads "The Situation's # 1 Girl")

"I mean she was totally butt naked here and there and I-I-I didn't wanna... you know what I'm saying?" - The Situation (referring to himself and Snooki in the hottub)

"This whole summer has been pretty wild, pretty crazy. Lots of fights. Lots of hookups. Lots of drama." - The Situation

"Maybe we should get a shore house next summer." - The Situation

"You know, I ran the house from start to finish, whether people liked it or not." - The Situation

"It is un-describable the time that I had here. I had a ball, okay. You know I ran this house. We call it Sitch's house." - The Situation

"I was king of the castle right there. That's how it gets done. That's how it gets done." - The Situation

Pythagoras Award in Profundity

The last episode was bound to inspire deep reflection and profound musings galore, so there was a lot of competition for the Pythagoras honor this week. But in the end it went to the person who more or less nominated himself, and justifiably so.

"This bond that we share brings us together, and no one can ever take that away from us ever, we take that with us for life, that bond." [long, self-reflective pause] "That was deep. That was fucking deep." - Pauly D

Amnesty International Award for Compassion

"I regret that I got caught. I don't regret that I hit the kid." - Ronnie

Meryl Streep Award for Best Performance in a Dramatic Series

Goes to Sammi, twice over, determined as she was not to let her own agony go unrecognized just because Ronnie has to spend the night in jail and some other guy has a grade three concussion.

"Like, why? I don't get it. Like, why?" - Sammi (lamenting Ronnie's arrest)

"Don't do that to me again... It was the first night I slept alone." - Sammi (to Ronnie once they're alone in bed)

Best Exchange

Third Place

Situation: "If you're hungry try a Snickers?"

Snooki: "Yeah, try me."

Second Place

Vinny: "If Pauly ain't gettin' a date, I don't feel bad, because he's like ridiculously, ridiculously good looking."

Pauly D: "You got such good taste in men."

First Place

Snooki: "Should I call 9-1-1?"

Sammi: "Don't call 9-1-1. I think that's emergency."

Lord Byron Award for Romantic Verse

"I was thinking about maybe getting down with Snooks real quick. But then I was like, you know what, it's like almost like my little sister and um... you don't do that." - The Situation

Jersey Pride Award

"Down here at the Shore, one minute you got three girls in the jacuzzi, the next minute somebody's in jail and you have to bail them out. That's what happens down at the Shore." - The Situation

Famous Last Words Award

"The Snooks is out." - Snooki (as she pulls away in her car, last to leave the Jersey Shore house)

*All photos courtesy of mtv.com.