Human Rights day

Human Rights Day

This post is dedicated to Danny Llewelyn, Amanda Jane Howard and Efe.

Human Rights day is today in Namibia and this means a public holiday. I am formally unemployed, but please people, note that I still have stuff to do. One of them being math, since I have to keep my mind in shape for when I start my epidemiology degree (in 2011 or 2012). There will be a mathematical discussion in this post and so Danny brace yourself…

So this has been a fairly relaxing day so far. Great in fact. I do not have to think about writing something for money (for the Flamingo Magazine) or contacting the center for disease control and prevention in Namibia about a scientific presentation for the sentinel survey results or to claim my money for the meeting I attended for the Namibia HIV Clinicians Society. The best of course is not having to worry about being inefficient and packing as much into my day as possible. I have just been at home, in the living room, in the kitchen, sitting room and rude to my mother.

I have been rude to her lately. What is it about me? I believe it’s because my family took a rather dysfunctional turn at the end of last year (this time) when my father moved out. My mother was initially not coping well with this – with his life in open infidelity and the fact she wanted to know “the truth” about my sexuality made things worse. I came out to her and she does not accept it. Not that she rejects me as son. She does not believe it. It being my homosexuality. My brother believes but he does not really care. Any piece of advice I even try to give him is struck down by comments such as “no you are gay, there is nothing you can tell me.” Once we are in the dinning /kitchen area of the house and again they raised the topic – my sexuality. I tried to tell him about how I have faith as a gay person but I ended up bursting out in laughter when he said, quite ironically:

“Unfortunately, you are going to hell.”

My 18 year old brother, I adore to him. Some of you know I love dwelling on things that crack me up and I have been dwelling on this one since two months ago.

Well I constantly struggle with being civil to my mother, since she provides me with free accommodation and even money (in spite of my protests – I want some sort of independence!). I am becoming more patient with her and yesterday we had a great time. I ignored her outburst about my father and instead started singing to her – as if we were in a musical – and she indulged me in song. She hates musicals with a passion, but we made fun of the idea by talking in song.

Danny, remember how much the 5 pound coin with the Queen’s image made me laugh? I can barely remember what was so funny about it. Now we have 10 dollar note with the image of our founding president Sam Nujoma. Somehow, it is just not that funny.

So I did do some human rights campaigning today. I sent a petition to the Slovak Republic that I got signed back in July. It is about scholarships that Slovakia offers to Namibian students with the condition that all applicants furnish their HIV test results. Clearly a blatant slap in the face of human rights and efforts to destigmatize HIV.

You can find this at my other “professional” blog: writinghealth.wordpress.com

One thing I want to write about here is how I am now officially an openly gay man. And I am looking! Honestly, I believe it is time I change my facebook status; First of all, I will have to divorce myself from you Amanda, my wife (Mi español influye mucho en mi ingles, no se dice “divorce yourself” en ingles, sino “divorce” con rispecto a divorzarse en español) . I remember accepting your proposal for a facebook marriage “Pancho do you want to have a facebook marriage” you said with a grin in that dormitory of yours in Scully and of course I accepted. But times have changed. I cannot be a man on “the down low”. Its time I tell you – I am gay! I know this may come as a shock to you and your whole construction of me as the epitome of masculinity, but please allow me the freedom to find a partner. So please let us have a facebook divorce.

I want you guys to join the new social networking site called “1love.org”. It was started just this week in the memory of Bob Marely and I think it allows people to connect while giving to charities around the world. There are some great shots of Bob Marely too.

So that is how I came to think of you – Efe – today. I remember you told me how much you liked Bob Marely when I visited you that night in your room in Lourie Love Hall. That moment is no more and that building, that room, no longer exist in space, but I still remember how I ended up in your arms. I needed affection and I knew I could get it from you, because you kept on asking me “come to my room, come to my room” that whole first semester of sophomore year. It was the toughest semester for me at Princeton and perhaps we could have faced it together as an item. That, however, is another “if only” moment and as the French say “avec si on peut mettre Paris dans une boteille” (with “if” we can put Paris in a bottle).

So Efe, I do remember you, quite fondly. Since that time in your room, I saw only from time to time, but I never thought of you romantically. Nonetheless, I also avoided you because I feared I would go “all the way” with you and so I kept my distance. I also was not head over heels in love with you. But then I was not with anyone. Since my freshman year, I found a way of looking a gorgeous men and seeing their humanity. Effectively, I saw them as they were – imperfect, ugly, human beings and then any crushes faded away.

So (the third so in this series), I want to ask you how you are doing. I imagine you may be writing poetry someplace in a far away city. You are truly romantic. Your poetry, your collection of poetry (remember the Bulgarian poets whose books I brought you? Who were they again – remind me? If we meet again, under whatever circumstances, I hope I can read those poems to you). There is really something so alluring about the way you talk and express yourself. I imagine you are thinking (nearly two years have passed since we talked and now this guy wants to get in touch with me?) I agree. I am not expecting a reply. I will keep you in prayers, because I need to also figure out how I feel about you. Know this: I want to find out – whether or not anything will be possible, a meeting, a letter, an email. I cannot say I am in love with you, but truly speaking, my spirit longs for you. But “if this is love that I am feeling”, I would like to hear from you, because “I don’t want to wait in vain for your love”.

Time for Math:

So Danny, I am so glad that you wrote to me. At the time I was just again exploring math.

Today in Namibia, or at least in my part of Windhoek, a bear got married. What I mean is that it rained on a bright day. In Bulgarian we have a saying “rain is falling, sun is shinning, a bear is getting married”. I went outside topless jogging with my dog, Snowy. She loves the exercise (she is overweight cause we feed her with our leftovers) and I wanted to exercise my human right of jogging without a shirt on in Windhoek. Were I a woman, I would have done it all the same. I mean literally, in Namibia, there are women who walk around topless. These, however, are dressed in traditional wear and usually have red ochre on their skin – the Ovahimba. In 2008 I went up to an Ovahimba village for about a week to do a study on the relationship between the recreational and spiritual dance of these people. It was cool (I kept a diary that I may transcribe for this blog one day).

But here is the math, I am loosing sight:

Well, what if you had four cups in a row, all different color and you wanted to see where the first five rain drops fell. Imagine that raindrops only fell one at a time at these cups. How many ways are there of dropping these first five raindrops? All we care is the water we find in these cups after the five raindrops have come down. Imagine, we could have all five drops in cup number 1 or we could have one drop in each cup or we could have some other distribution of drops. I found out you can use a type of graph theory to answer this question . First you draw five lines evenly spaced from each other – the space between these lines is a cup – you have four cups. There | | | | | you see the four cups? Then you put in 0s for the drops | 00000 | | | | - this is the case when all five go in the first cup. Now what you have to do is count the number of configurations possible. Well you use combination counting. Basically, you notice that the two outer | | are the borders of the row of cup and inside you have 5 0s and 3 |s Then the problems amounts to how many ways can you arrange the 5 0s and the 3 |s. This meants having 8 spaces, where each space can accommodate any one of the eight items (5 0s and 3|s). If we place all the 0s, we automatically know where to place the |s and vice versa. So we can just think of it as 8 choose 3 or 8 choose 5 (8 factorial over 3 factorial times 5 factorial). Its that easy!

But my question now is what if we had instead of 5 raindrops, 3 raindrops and 2 pebbles. How do we work that problem? So now we have in between the borders | |. 3 0s 2 * (* denoting pebble) and 3 |s.

I think I have an idea – you first do the placement of one of the items and the other. I first place the 0s and I know I have 8 choose three ways of doing that. Then I left with 5 open spaces where I have to place my 3 *s and 3 |s. Now I can place the pebbles 5 choose 3 number of ways, and that also places all my |s. So the answer, by counting theorem is 8 choose 3 multiplied 5 choose 3. Does that make sense, since I do one activity (placing the 0s ) before the other (placing he*s) and the total ways of doing activity A made up of doing activity 1 followed by activity 2 is n1 x n2, where ni denotes the number of ways you could do activity i.

Here I am confident of being correct, but I would appreciate your imput.

Ok have to go!

Love

PANCHO. I am going off to see a movie screening at a house an American Expat who lives practically in my neighborhood. This morning I jogged over to his house – quite a beautiful pink villa (he is married, come on people no, pink is perhaps the color his wife likes) and he saw me, invited me and showed me his paradise of a garden with its bonzi trees.

Take Care

Pancho