late february.

i am back in snowy, frozen wheaton now, filling my days with the following:

1) seemingly endless hours on the internet: job-searching, job-search correspondence, cover-letter writing, blog surfing, you-tube watching, bbc & ny times reading (note to self: take a serious break from the internet when this phase of life is over!).

2) thinking myself in agonizing circles regarding my continuous quest for the next thing in life.

3) absorbing myself in harry potter: almost finished with book 7!

4) cooking, trying to get my grandfather to eat more than his requested of "oh... just half of that please" of even small servings we give him --- he looks as though just a gentle breeze might blow him over; also, participating in the filling of his hot water bottle - he requests it to be refilled at least 20 times per day.

5) listening to my grandmother's stories, most of which i've heard at least 10 times prior; once in a while, i hear a new one or glean some new piece of drama or information (although i'm not so sure that these are not embellishments, added by her often imaginative memory), but she's a fabulous story teller, so i'll listen on.

5) knitting: below are two projects i just finished, one a scarf for an aunt, the other a blanket for a new little girl due to arrive soon at wazoo. kim & martin, i shouldn't spoil the surprise before i put it in the mail, but the finished products have been among the most satisfying things in my life lately, so i thought i'd post (just please don't let beatrix in on the secret!). i realize that creating beautiful things brings me contentment and joy like few other things (another note to self: always make time to create beautiful things).

6) today, i added a new activity: looking at animal shelter web sites. maybe i'll get a puppy. we'll see where i end up moving first, but its fun to look.

eileen scarf


beatrix blanket

durban questions.

i traveled to durban, south africa 3 weeks ago, with two other nurses, as a "nurse mentor" on a PEPFAR (presidents emergency plan for AIDS relief) grant being managed by the association of nurses in AIDS care or ANAC (of which i am a member), and georgetown university. i have mostly been working with nursing students and "enrolled nurses" (equivalent to licensed practical nurses or LPNs) on the medical wards at st. mary's, a catholic district hospital just outside of durban where probably 90% of the patients have AIDS. my time here leaves me with only questions, and their unsatisfactory, often contradictory responses (i refrain from calling them answers).

do i know, after 3 weeks, that there is a desperate need for better nursing and medical care at the facility where i have been working? most decidedly, yes.

do i feel like my being here was very valuable? no (sad and very humbling to feel this way).

do i feel that i really connected with and was helpful to the nurses that i was working with? no (i didn't think this would be the hard part, but it was).

were there a few good, meaningful interactions? yes.

do i feel like the money spent on my plane ticket, on my much-nicer-than-i-need accomodations, on the driver that shuttles me to and from st. mary's every day, should have been used instead for a nurse's salary, for more pain medication, for extra blankets, etc. at st mary's? yes.

do i continue to feel confused about and uncomfortable with the appropriateness of most outside "development," (public health or otherwise) interventions? yes (more than ever).

did i take out a loan (that i'll be paying off for a while) to study these very interventions in public health over the past couple of years? yes i did.

do i think that study was worth it? i don't know.

did i see and experience and feel the sadness and weight of how unbelievably overwhelming HIV/AIDS is in South Africa? oh yes.

can i even begin to fathom how the nurses i worked with, and the families of the patients i met and talked with, deal with this sadness and weight each day? no.

did i see and experience moments of hope? yes.

did i pay money to see some beautiful places on several occasions? yes.

did i feel guilty about this spending on myself, in the context of the rest of what i was experiencing? yes (but the draw of beautiful places is too much for me to resist).

a wise and lovely person i met here told me, "be gentle with yourself as you wrestle with the challenges of caring in a context where people don't quite know how to receive what it is that you have to offer. trust in the mystery of life and intention and that love is given and received even if it is hard to see or define how."
do i question whether i really do have something worthwhile to offer? yes.
do i also ask whether maybe i do not know how to offer it if i do? yes.
am i trying to trust in the mystery of life and intention? yes (or else i'll feel quite despairing).
do i believe intention is always enough? absolutely not.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
in the drakensberg mountains...













the south durban beach


on a drive to a clinic in the "valley of 1000 hills"


the entrance to st. mary's hospital


yesterday, at cape vidal: there are few things, in my experience, as good for the soul (at least mine) as spending an hour in the warm waves of the indian ocean.

super tuesday from durban.

writing from durban, south africa tonight. a storm passes through after a day of hot, humid 35˚C temperatures: thunder, lightning, hail even, fantastic, catharsis.

there are many things to say about my time in durban, but tonight i write this blog entry in support of senator obama on the eve of super tuesday. each evening, during my stay here, i have been listening to his recorded autobiography, "dreams from my father." (a small aside: the book is read by the author & won him a grammy for best spoken word in 2006!) he tells the story of those things that formed his identity and inspired his work: a kenyan parent and an american parent, childhood years in indonesia, discomfort with racial and cultural categories that might "claim" him, difficulty finding a place in which to root himself, spiritual journeying, time spent working in chicago. personally, these themes touch strangely on themes in my own life and issues about which i am thinking at this time. politically, his story compels me to believe he is the type of person i believe would be able to lead the united states well.

several weeks ago, i spent an evening at obama volunteer headquarters in chicago. the headquarters is housed on the tenth floor of a building across from the sears tower: large rooms almost frantic with activity and energy. the diversity of the many people working there was quite lovely: i observed teenagers, and very elderly folk, college students, and middle-aged professionals: every color skin imaginable. i observed impassioned people, and listened in a little to their articulate telephone conversations with voters from illinois and nevada. early voting in illinois had just opened and the neavada caucuses were just four days away at the time. mayor daley dropped by, thanking the volunteers for their work. i made a few phone calls myself. I, who often balks at phone-calling, actually enjoyed those that i had with perfect strangers whose telephone numbers appeared on a list handed to me when i walked in the door. i thought much of the evening --- mostly strangers, talking to one another, organizing support around someone they believed might bring good change: democracy at its best. i should have done more!

during this u.s. primary campaign, even though at this time I sit an ocean away, i find myself caring quite a great deal more than usual about casting my vote where my vote counts. regardless of the fact that my birthplace is a mission hospital in a small town on the edge of the rift valley in kenya, and that i lived almost 2/3 of my life in that place , i do carry a united states passport. senator obama, for many reasons, is a candidate in whom i quite firmly believe.

words for the season

An excerpt from "Mass for the Day of St. Thomas Didymus"
by Denise Levertov

ii. Gloria
Praise the wet snow
falling early.
Praise the shadow
my neighor's chimney casts on the tile roof
even this gray October day that should, they say,
have been golden.
Praise
the invisible sun burning beyond
the white cold sky, giving us
light and the chimney's shadow.
Praise
god or the gods, the unknown,
that which imagined us, which stays
our hand,
our murderous hand,
and gives us
still,
in the shadow of death,
our daily life,
and the dream still
of goodwill, of peace on earth.
Praise
flow and change, night and
the pulse of day.

traveling II.

arrived to missoula just before the first snowfall of the season...

many hikes in the snow with family and friends (yes, i think i am about to get hit with a snowball here)...


some of the beauty of montana: while i was in missoula, i thought often, "why would i ever leave?"

stunning moments caught on film...

traveling in style (amtrak) with my friend katie ...

visiting lovely relatives in vancouver...

dinner with aunt and uncles aboard uncle johnny's, aka., "scuppers" (for explanation, see below) boat-home.

a reading of family favorite Margaret Wise Brown's "Scuppers the Sailor Dog."

a little blurry, but a beautiful sunset from the train (western north dakota i think) on my way back to the midwest...

traveling.

i am on the road. Just 2 weeks ago, I loaded my car with my clothing and important papers.

Oh, and a beautiful and very large hoya occupied the back seat of my little corolla. this hoya lived at my aunt and uncle's house in a DC suburb for some 10 years until they moved out of the country. It passed into my care 2 years ago, where it promptly found itself attacked by fat, yellow aphids, against whom i have been waging war ever since. this summer, we made some headway when i relocated it to the fresh air of our postage-stamp backyard --- the aphids disappeared for several months, and the downtrodden plant managed one lovely bloom. yet, in recent weeks, i found some of the pretty new shoots covered with the little buggers once again. when i decided to move from baltimore, my sister announced she did not want the responsibility of caring for this problematic plant and decreed that it must be taken to our mother for safekeeping and eventually back to our aunt, its original owner, who now resides in kansas. anyway, i was glad for the green company throughout my drive

so, i drove west, leaving baltimore in the rain, feeling a certain disbelief that surrounds those moments when we actively do something we've long thought of or spoken of. i wondered what the devil i was doing. taking some time off sounded good and appropriate after these 3 stressful years, yet student loans loom a little too close and large for comfort, and i think that at almost 30 i am entering yet another time of transition (shouldn't i be settling a little / buying a house?). coworkers asked me why i was leaving. my answer: "its time." coworkers asked me if i had secured another job. my answer: "no." coworkers asked me where i would be living. my answer: "i have no idea." i do not know if they thought me a) crazy, b) irresponsible, c) evasive, or d) possessing some strange sense of adventure.

the autumn colours looked extra bright, i thought, in the october rain. thank goodness for their colour, or the day might have seemed all together too dreary-melancholy. despite a readiness to move on, i left many good and loved things in baltimore.

i stopped in for tea at wazoo. lovely. too short.

spent the night with friends in ohio, after driving into a beautiful sunset that brought tears to my eyes.

listened to barbara kingsolver's "animal, vegetable, miracle" on tape for most of the drive, a charming and full-of-often-idiosyncratic-good-sense book. she writes about her family's farm in appalachia, about the vegetables they grow there, about the goodness of living off what they themselves grow. she describes the goodness of eating locally, of enjoying each vegetable at the exact time when it ripens and is plucked from the plant or pulled from the earth, and the sometimes peculiar processes of growing, tending, and eating these home-grown vegetables (and poultry). asparagus, zucchini, and pumpkins came alive as some of the main characters. i imagined a lovely and productive garden all my own in whatever place life might take me next.

spent the weekend with parents and grandparents. made them pumpkin soup in its own shell (from a pumpkin i picked just for this occasion at a lovely family farm in montgomery county, maryland) until the bottom of the shell gave out and i blended it all and put it in a soup pot. delicious.




i visited an old and dear friend in colorado. we spent long hours catching up on 4 years of life, i held her sweet five month old son, played a good game of rook with her and her husband, and drank coffee with the front range of the rockies in my sight out of their dining room windows.



i met up with another friend in san francisco and we explored the colorful city, enjoyed the idyllic weather, climbed the city's steep streets, bicylcled across the golden gate bridge, and drove out to wine country, toured a winery and tasted some wine.





now i am up late in orlando, florida, alone in my grandmother's house. she sleeps tonight in a nearby hospital, having just undergone a minor surgery. i find little to recommend orlando - endless strip malls, suburban look-alike subdivision after suburban look-alike subdivision - i do not find it a choice destination to visit --- but i am needed here for this week. i drive my grandmother's car to her hospital every morning, take her a thermos of good coffee, encourage her to eat, rub good lotion into her dry skin, sit with her, knit with her. sometimes i think i would rather be somewhere else. yet, i try to sit with this time patiently and fully, knowing that time with my quirky, stubborn grandmother will not last forever. i surmise that this is the way it should be - generations together, the young caring for the old in startlingly similar ways as these same old once cared for these same young. this grandmother bought me my first knitting needles and yarn and taught me to knit, a hobby i love. two days ago, i bought her some knitting needles and yarn, printed out a pattern and put them into her hands. if i remember correctly, the yarn in both cases was almost the same color.

canvas, firelight, friends.

i spent this past warm october weekend with dear friends in the mountains in west virginia. for me, sleeping under canvas, and chatting and laughing around campfire are things inextricably and long-linked to contentment.

the autumn colors were bright and lovely...


the campfire-tending lasted from dawn until late into the night...



the friends are good good souls...






and the bluegrass and beer were hearty.



more days of work lie ahead. but just now, a blustery rainstorm blew into the city, blessing this quiet evening.

rooted?

during the past week, we enjoyed several golden, peaceful late-september days when a chill lightens the air hinting at a new season. as i have become acquainted with the four seasons during the past 10 years, the first chill of autumn, although accompanied by these types of almost-perfect days, also unsettlingly reminds me that winter lies ahead, a season with which i am not friendly.

last sunday, the crisp, sunny air announced the change and transition that seem to be enveloping me once again. change is the strong wind that i cannot seem to resist every several years. and change is indeed some sort of wild thing - not something i seek - but something that blows in as a rainstorm, a clap of thunder, or a cold and silent snowfall.

i just gave notice that i will leave my job in about one month; i am leaving baltimore for some yet-undetermined place.

i have accomplished much in these last 3 years - all, really, that i came here to baltimore to accomplish - but this time has also been difficult. i have not felt my roots deepen in this place, i do not yearn to stay. i feel that my path lies somewhere out ahead.

but now that yet another leaving lies just around the corner, now that plane tickets have been purchased, now that my last day of work is just 8 day shifts and 3 night shifts away, i do feel the tug of even shallow roots that might have grown down into the alleys behind the rowhomes where i have lived, into the garden i tended this summer, into a workplace where i felt a part of a meaningful legacy of care for people living with HIV/AIDS. i also feel the tug of deeper roots touching people i love. i sit here on the porch of this cheerful second floor apartment i shared with my closest friend and sister this year, i live a short hour from steadfast college friends, just a four hour drive from a farm called wazoo. these are all people i would like to see often, people with whom i'd like to share daily mugs of tea and coffee with, people whose children i want to see grow and change and recognize me easily.

i have a friend who tried to live away from a place where she was deeply rooted. after college, she traded the kansas plains for the chicago lakeshore, gridded farm roads for rides on city buses and the el. unsettled, she soon moved back to the place of her childhood and once again lives solidly rooted to her mennonite community, her family, and her farmer-husband.

i do not have such a place or such a coherent community to return to. growing up, i knew no other home than nairobi. but all that that home meant to me is now scattered. east africa does indeed beckon me back. some of my roots will never be pulled from that place, but i am compelled in many directions... a bit of a tumbleweed i guess.

what is next?

a journey to see friends and family:
chicago---san francisco---vancouver---missoula---lawrence & newton kansas---san diego...

soul-searching---job-searching.

i'm not sure where this wind will take me. i feel excitement as it picks up, and a bit of a fright not knowing where i will land. i think, though, that the movement feels right.

on nursing and why it is good for me

i admit i have a complex - a fear about being unhelpful, lazy, or "useless" in life. rather, i want to be legitimately helpful, productive and useful - and somehow this is part of why i became a nurse. i think i wanted to feel needed, and to have a marketable skill, in my post post-liberal arts, what-do-i-do-with-an-undergraduate-anthropology-degree funk of feeling useless (please don't get me wrong, i have nothing but high regard for anthropology). yet, nursing as part of my unfolding notions of vocation and even "calling" (although i hesitate to use this word, i do believe in it at some level), has taught and shaped me in ways i could not have foreseen three years ago.

as a nurse, i encounter people in very visceral ways during their strongest and most courageous moments, but also when they feel deeply vulnerable and fearful; people who appreciate every small thing you do for them, but also people who (often not so pleasantly) refuse care and treatment for many complicated reasons; people who will heal and people who will not.

yes, i have been called a dumb-ass (for no apparent reason) by a patient after dealing with his copious (and need i even say unbelievably unpleasant) diarrhea all night. one patient, after being told a certain diagnostic test would be postponed, left AMA (against medical advice), and threatened (in my face of course) to blow the hospital and its staff away sometime in the near future.

yet, more often, i have experiences that touch me and teach me such as the following: a while ago, i cared for a 37 year old woman, dying from a degenerative neurological disease that does not affect her mind, but affects her physical functioning: from everything from walking to speech and swallowing. she was admitted late at night, without family members, was very anxious, and began coughing uncontrollably. although i am sure there were physiologic reasons for this episode, it was made all the worse by her anxiety. because of how her speech was affected, she was not able to communicate easily to me about how she was feeling. i was unsure if she was ok, and felt myself getting worked up over her condition, so i snapped into action, checking her vital signs and paging the on-call physician.

and suddenly, after being so entirely focused on numerical results and concrete tasks - 98% oxygen saturation, 130/74 blood pressure, 37.3 temperature, 24 respirations per minute (all normal) - as the patient continued her distressed, shrieking cough, i took her hand, made eye contact, and asked what she needed. she replied by making two simple requests that i was able to understand despite her distress and uncelar speech: (1) a damp washcloth for her forehead and (2)"can you rub my back?" i placed the cool washcloth on her forehead and pulled a chair up to the side of her bed and rubbed her back. almost immediately, she stopped coughing, her breathing became slower, she closed her eyes, and i felt her body relax. i stayed with her, rubbing her back, for maybe 10 or 15 minutes until it seemed she had slipped into sleep. i quietly stood up to leave the room, relieved, and as i turned, she (almost inaudibly, but unmistakably) said "thank you. don't forget about me now." she slept the rest of the night.

nursing grounds me, as a person for whom it is so easy to get caught up in internal, sometimes endless thoughts and life-analysis. for one night a week, i am forced to "listen" to the immediate physical needs of sick individuals, to watch for subtle changes in the workings of their bodies. i've learned to ask patients in a matter-of-fact manner about such life details as their last BM, the last time they had sex and whether they used a condom, and if they inject or snort heroin.

so, when i go to work (often dreading the long night ahead and the struggle to stay awake), i find myself compelled to try to imagine life perspectives and experiences fully foreign to my own. what is it like to be hopelessly addicted to injected heroin? what is it like to live with HIV and/or AIDS? what is it like to be homeless? what is it like to be a dialysis patient? what is it like to have had one's children taken away and placed into foster care? what is it like to have been incarcerated multiple times? what is it like to be bipolar? what is it like when these things define one's reality?

for one night a week, i cannot live inside my own head, and this is good for me.

small planes, remote spots

it has been a long time since i flew in a small airplane, although growing up in kenya, i used to do it rather frequently. small planes took us to spectacular and remote spots i feel privileged to have visited.

at least once a year, my family and i would fly from nairobi to a town called bunia, in eastern then-zaire, and on to where my grandparents lived in the middle of the ituri rainforest, to a village called itendei. we flew on small mission planes, that often seated just six passengers. at itendei, we landed on an airstrip that was neatly carved out of the thick forest, and covered with rich, green grass. if i close my eyes, i can remember the smells and sounds of an arrival to that airstrip - the sharp, fresh smell of mowed grass, the just-rained-on-damp-earth smell that never faded in that place, the popping sound of the plane's propeller starting up again after we had unloaded, the swahili and french greetings of all the children that came each time to observe the landing and taking off of the plane. I can see the way the grass flattened as the plane accelerated back down the airstrip for take-off. i can feel the cool, humid forest air on my face as i sat in the back of my grandparents' old ford truck as it jolted down the muddy track that led to to their house, and smell the wood smoke that hovered about the homes by the side of the road.

we also took small planes to northern kenya, the site of my father's dissertation research among the gabbra people, a nomadic pastoralist group. the setting is far different than that of my grandparents' home. flying north from nairobi, by mt. kenya, the north side of the mountain gives way to an ever-more arid landscape: first, miles and miles filled with low, scrubby, acacia trees and almost-always dry riverbeds, then to the chalbi desert, an old lake bed covered with crusty, white, alkaline deposits, and the rocky, lava-fields surrounding it and continuing north. just south of the ethiopian border, sits a serene cluster of old volcanic cores responsible for the lava fields around them - the hurri hills. in contrast to the surrounding desert, they are soft and green, and the air there is chilly; thick mist covers them each morning. on the hurri hills, i always imagined i was on some sort of tolkien-esque journey.

last wednesday, i flew to visit my brother in the northwoods of wisconsin. i flew to milwaukee and then boarded a beech 1900 airplane (a 20 passenger plane) to a small county airport in rhinelander, wisconsin. the plane lurched and swayed and we made two failed attempts to land in fog, before being turned back to milwaukee, sadly.

i finally did land in rhinelander at the same time the next day, which turned out to be crystal clear after the fog of the day before, and i spent one day, instead of my hoped-for two in the beautiful northwoods of wisconsin. the transition from winter to spring is much more dramatic there. the lakes, although showing signs of melting, were still frozen, and the ground was saturated with the snowmelt from several feet of snow, but it was lovely. the different varieties of pine and spruce, deep green on the sunny day, contrasted with the brightness of the snow and ice that still lay over their roots. the air was fresh and crisp, i went for a run on a deserted road in the afternoon, scared up a few deer, and we paddled in a canoe on an unfrozen channel in the quiet of the late afternoon.

my brother always ends up living in stunning places. just take a look at the pictures on his blog, if you get a chance. his next move, i might add, is to missoula, montana. on the other hand, i have ended up living in cities. i do love urban life - i enjoy the true variety of interesting and quirky people, i like the good radio stations, i like ethnic restaurants, i like feeling surrounded by others, yet anonymous at the same time, i think the urban landscape is fascinating...

but, when small planes have taken me to lovely, remote spots, i discover a longing in myself to live closer to the beautiful earth, further away from the built environment, to live with more quietness, and fresher air.

In defiance of winters last hurrah!

my sister (rlr) and i went on a lovely outing to harpers ferry today for a hike on the maryland heights trail. she is feeling inspired to tell about our day, so here she is:

rlr

So Harpers Ferry seems to be where we end up when we need a quick getaway from Baltimore... it has all the necessary components of 'a quick getaway'--a cute town with fun shops and good food, trails for hiking and biking and rivers for tube-ing down... This morning, confident that spring was here depsite the nor-easter that blew through this part of the world Thursday/Friday... we hit the road. Its a two hours-ish drive to Harpers Ferry...

Neither of us were fully prepared for the cold... we wore only minimal layers, breathable running shoes and left our winter coats safely back in Baltimore-- determined that spring ought to be here. Winter dosn't pay us any mind...

The wind was cold. BITINGLY COLD.



We came across these pour little souls that seemed to have gotten all hung up in branches, the last little ghosts of winter melting slowly away:



It was glorious to hike upwards, to get out of the wind, on the backside of the mountain (hill..?) and feel the sunshines' warmth...


... and find beauty in the blowing snow and sparkling ice...



The view, well the wind really, from the look out took your breath away.



We snaped a photo together-- before my shutter froze in the wind...

ONE of us was brave enough to make a lovely snow angel...



I can't think of a better end to a better day... but I'm ready for SPRING and bare feet and brown skin.