Pancho's brouillons

Healing after an injury blog:

2012-01-29T05:30:00.001-08:00

Healing after an injury blog:
12 January 2012. Today I started a new exercise regime, for my leg. For my knee. In the afternoon: hamstring lifting of 10 lbs on ankles as I stand and look and pray, some people count I pray the rosary, and I do one decade then a break and the a another decade. I do this to keep myself positive. Yes I could have started earlier before the pain in my knee cap started during the bending, before I felt weakness I my hamstrings, I could have taken a Pilates band with me for home and made sure I did here in this apartment in Sofia Bulgaria, I certainly could have done that but I did not. And In case you did not know, I should have done this because my physiotherapist back home in Namibia taught me some lifting exercises to do and I did them and then stopped when I felt fine, when I felt strong.
now I see the month is half full and there is still hope and by God's grace I will make it. Afterwards I lie on my back and with a scarf I pull and raise my leg to stretch the hamstring. I keep that hollow in between my back and the floor as wide as possible, just like Rebecca taught me in her class. Even if this means my leg is not yet 90 to the floor, I am grateful for being able to raise it and for life and I pray another decade. And then Ivam done and unroll up my yoga matt. Then I tap my diary entry in this here phone.
In the morning I plan to do: leg lifts, two decades followed by standing hamstring stretch.
13 January
Woke up a little later than usual this morning. did my leg lifts for both quads and hamstrings and a quick sitting half forward fold on the injured leg. After lunch worked on the hamstring lifts and stretched. Did warrior 2 on both sides. I noticed I have a little pain in the injured, left knee when I activate the muscles and stretch them in the warrior pose.overall my progress is good, I can bend and walk without any pain. The 10 1b weights are ok, though I feel pain if I try and straighten all the way when lifting seated.

16 January
I did do my exercises yesterday morning as this morning though I did not post a diary entry. Since yesterday I am doing the leg lifts do quads and hamstrings in the mor ing with some yoga, followed by smooth tai chi with my grandfather. Amazing there is absolutely no pain left in my. Leg even when I activate it in the warrior 2 pose which is the same feeling as in the tendu. I should keep on doing these exercises however - stopping. Or it may lead to deterioration later on. I nonetheless feel the left leg to be a bit shaky when I do my Tai Chi prayer wheel right after the lifting - likely to be muscle fatigue. I do want to give both legs attention so this afternoon I did the warrior 2 and the "Indian triangle" according to Andy Chen, whereby one brigs the torso to the bent leg in warrior 2 and the twist and stretches the arm over.
I am excited because on Wednesday I am watching contemporary dance works here I Sofia. One of the is titled "Baredback" in English, not in Bulgarian, so I wonder what it is about, does it have anything to do with two men going at it without a condom? Does it have anything to do with HIV?
We will have to see.
18 January

I just came back from the performances of works at the concert of Arabesque. The company performed works of the contestants of the Margarita Arnaduova contemporary choreography.

19 January 2012
Bareback was truly fascinating cutting across themes of sex work and masochism as well as race in what I felt was a Balkan context. Stay tuned for more on this and other pieces I saw.
This morning I did my yoga poses, plank and triangle and warrior 2. I do notice some pain when I bend the injured leg when in the plank. I suspect it is because I have not been the exercises for the "end range " of my leg bending: when I left in a seated position I work the large range and hen extend fully I also work the end range, that the las few degrees that the leg moves through to straighten. forgive the detail but I believe it is important. Now I am doing the end range exercises as well .

It becomes increasingly difficult to stick to this exercise regime. I either have to wake up earlier so I can do both yoga on both sides of my body and the the quad and hamstring exercise for my left injured leg or I should do the yoga in the morning and the lifting in the adternoon, like I did today. I think that may work.

The fact that met the choreographer of "Bareback" , Alexander Georgiev , who is my age, was also really exciting. I said I would blog about the piece but I did not specify when,anyway perhaps I feel like I should put everything else aside and just write. But I am not at Princeton, I am visiting my grandparents here in Bulgaria and there are other things to do do and watch and learn ( cooking). And I also made contact with a professor at the London School of Hygiene. I would like to apply.

So may I please give myself the permission to save what I experienced last night? Saving performance, feelings and interpretations. Saved.
21 January
Yesterday i did not write in the diary and I did not do the exercises with the ankle weights either! In the morning I did more yoga and in the afternoon we went to my grandparents holiday villa in the nearby Hilda of Bankia . I did do quite a bit of shoveling.when we got back it was past the usual time I do my exercises and so I just did not do them. It seems quite easy to skip once you miss the regular time. And then there was me falling in love, writing a love email to a Spanish boy who does not dance the same dance as I do, even I think he does. Perhaps I should have just have written to him " I do believe we are practicing the same religion..." from George Michaels fast love. I meet him randomly after mass and we went for coffee ( I asked and he accepted).

Today I woke up at about the usual time and I unrolled my yoga matt did some forward bends and realized I should do the lifting of the weights since I missed a day. And boy did I feel it! for the first few lifts when seated, it was sore when I tried to fully straighten, but after indie a couple the leg muscles and knee was warm so there was nearly no pain in the knee cap. My physiotherapist Ronalda Duarte told me that I hurts cause when straight the tendon is flushed against the knee cap and I still an fully healed. But the car accident Was months ago on September 3 2011, can I still be hurt? Well she warned me that the knee will be vulnerable to repeated injury and perhaps I hurt it between now and then, or my muscles where not strong enough.

The stretches I do now are more forward holds from yoga , on each leg and forward lunges that get psoas muscles and quads.

Tomorrow will be better

22 January

I did my exercises today both of them. It is interesting how I actually sought refuge in my yoga today and I did these exercises in spite of everything. My grandparents drug end during the night and my grandfather had a hysteric episode in the morning. He is fine now and has come alright he regrets what happens and he hopes to take care more of himself rather than just his teenage grand kids.
He said will take more walks outside, start reading again and a get a social life.
In spite of this all I am still up now at 1:40 pm. In spite of all this forgot to tell him one thing: he tore up the evaluation given by the first aid people this afternoon, claiming it was part of a plot to put him in the mental hospital.He could not see then he had a problem and he accused those closest to him: my grandmother and I of plotting in a sense. That I forgot to say because it was painful , to see, I glued together the torn pieces and made 7 copies. My grandmother and cousin will keep some and they need to show it to their doctor. I will take my copies and show it to my mother. And I have that wretches original. I pray I can sleep now.

24 January
Today was a much more eventful day. I did my exercises in the morning, the lifts and then stretches. We went to Slaveykov brothers square withy grandfather and we talked about what happened and depression and health and the visit of ambulance service the EMT man yesterday did not matter so much. In any case
I am going to write about the things that matter that I am grateful for:
When my grandfather looked at me and said "philosopher" after I complimented him on figuring out how I balance a suitcase on scale meant for people: use a light rolled up plastic as support.

A baby at the bu stop today that was grabbing at my back actually in Bulgarian say it best бебето се закачасе с мене у на края кат се качих и му казах чао и то отговорило.
The baby said ciao a I said so as I got on the bus. Che carino!
So I guess this diary is about healing. I feel quite healed and my leg feels strong, though still a little bit of the after tingles left of pain here and there. Good night.

26 January 2012
I am sitting on an underground train next to my sister and it seems like I have been here before. My knee feels good considering I have not done any of the lifting exercises since two days ago. I do feel something like a ripple of pain now and then when I go down the stairs. Which remind me, I need to get my Pilates band. I left my ankle weights with my grandmother in Sofia and my yoga mat. Her current exercise regime does not include weights but I can't take them in my suitcase anyway.

26 January 2012
So today is the day I am going to go to LSHTM and talk to the professor. Of course I am a bit nervous but that is ok. I am up and reading about Math , stats, get my mind ready. I also know I cannot influence the past, how much I should have studied , I am only in the present. Now I have faith that this year the third one after graduation will even bear more fruit for me to study. I need to quietly begin my exercises too, for the body, today I will get a Pilates band , for now I will do yoga and tai chi. Che bella vita, tutto resta davanti a me e con l'amore di Dio ce la farò. (how beautiful a life this is! Everything lies before me and with the help of and love of God I will be able do it!)
Exercises:
Staff pose
Cobbler
Balance on butt
Knee bend and straighten 30 each side
Triangle
Tai Chi: series of temple exercises

Dr Nitsch gave me a tour of the school, very post post modern with a large lecture hall in a sun shapes auditorium. We talked to one of the students an she encouraged me to apply and articulate my reasons for applying right now at this point in my life. I did not give a run down of what I believe to be my mediocre math grades. I raised in the tube , while u looked at handsome man who looked rather worried and disorientated , I wonder if he was somewhat retarded. It dawned on me that Ives gong to apply anyway, Dr Nitsch said they looked for students who could do the course at this time in their careers. She reiterated they were not looking for the necessary brightest but those who wanted to do it and needed to. I am applying , inspire of the unknown probability of me getting a World Bank scholarship. So this is London and this is life. I loved the Sabbath dinner o sorts I had with my sister here, we had salmon and sweet potatoes and asparagus with mushrooms. She only had a taste of my creamy broccoli sauce.
Then there was the Pilates band. The bands I got today where so so, I can use them to standing lifts that work my hamstrings, but I need patience to do them well. Everything requires patience I guess. No it does.
Time to sleep.
Shabbat shalom.

28 January 2012
I am still in London. I leave on Monday. I think tomorrow night will be my last entry. After which I have to edit this blog as many of the sentences are wrong due to the fact I wrote this on the iPhone , all of it. Hey the photo of Martha Graham title "Think Different" still hangs in Hagan dance studio, and it is by apple, so using the iPhone is appropriate.
An update on my left knee that I was injured. Somehow it still feels weird and slightly sore when I activate the knee muscles . And there is that feeling of the knee cap clicking or locking in when I fully straighten. In terms of exercises, I used the pilates band to do bend my knee while standing and using the band as resistance. I feel the hamstring working and then I do it on the other knee, the one that was not traumatized last September during that car accident that we survived.

I watches for the first time ever the recording of the Hagan studio performance of "George's possession " that Alexis and I made in 2008. And too think I even for a minute regretted having taken dance that last fall semester! My math mark was unlikely to have been better, I would have probably lost it cause I needed to create, to move. I only watched this DVD now since my sister wanted to and she had never seen it. I wonder if Alexis is studying physiotherapy now? God knows we need more physiotherapists, thank God mine lives in my neighborhood.

Pancho

durante decepciones

2011-12-10T04:07:00.001-08:00

Orración en decepciones

O Dios, ayúdame a aceptar las cosas tales que son. Ayúdame a no gastar tiemp en remorrdimientos vanos y recuerdos tristes.

Ayúdame a volver a buscar universidades e a intentar otra vez. Ayúdame a no solo fijarme en mis propias cuestiones sino ayudar a los demás y a fortalecerlos para que también se animen con las oportunidades de las que estan frente. Ayúdame a aceptar las cosas que estan por detrás y a seguir adelante, hacia las cosas que están por delante (aunque ir hacia atrás no es nada malo es solo una dirección pero mirar por detrás yendo hacia adelante puede crear problemas).

Digo este por el amor de ti.

Update 21 Sept 2011

2011-09-21T13:02:00.000-07:00

‘Oh oh oh I’m in love with Judas, Judas’ goes the song by Lady Gaga that I listen to at work. I would be lying if I said it was how I feel, because I am in love with Jesus and right now it’s 5:05 am. A few minutes back, I had one of my fantasy sessions with my lover right after reading Psalm 63; the Psalm that speaks to true body and spirit desire for Him. In any case, the Gaga song is catchy, but I would disagree with it on the point she sings ‘Jesus is my virtue, but Judas is the demon I cling, I cling too’. Judas was certainly no demon. He was a human being who actually followed Jesus. He was the one who betrayed Him, but was this really so reprehensible? About three weeks ago, we had our Heroes Day weekend (26 Aug) in Namibia and I went up to the north of the country to visit my grandmother, have my cousin take her to the hospital (though my dad should have done but he is unfortunately pretty ‘flaky’ – unreliable – when it comes such things) but he did end up coming through in the end we took my grandma home in his car after we visited the dentist (who studied in Cuba – like many Namibians – and I spoke to a bit in Spanish, though ideally I should have spoken to in Oshiwambo (my dad’s mother tongue)). The north of Namibia is flat with palm trees and white sand, almost like beach sand. On the way to my grandmothers house my dad tried to ride up the side of the road and the car got stuck, on the ridge of this gravel road. We were there for about an hour and half. Thanks to the Lord and our efforts we managed to jack up the car and he could reverse. I enjoyed the sunset then as I could see this giant red, then pink, disk descend on the horizon. In New Jersey I never saw the horizon.

Well on the way home to Windhoek my dad, a singer called Blossom and myself had this discussion about this lady Gaga song. Blossom is an acoustic guitarist singer and my father is her agent of sorts. On the way we stopped on the side of the road to take pictures of her with the grassy landscape and his of the north central region. My dad started photography again by shooting these promotional pictures. Good for him. But our debate centered on the Judas song. Blossom eschewed the lyrics claiming they were evil, offensive to her as a Christian and incited evil actions. I did not agree. Eventually, we had this philosophical discussion on whether Judas was actually evil. My dad presented the case of Judas doing something necessary, even though he betrayed Jesus, it was not by chance, as if it were just by chance that Jesus was condemned to death. Blossom still argued that what he did was wrong and Jesus would have been killed anyway. But would He?

I wonder. Nonetheless, I loved that road trip with my dad. It reminded me of how when we were younger, he would talk about the Bible with us after reading it, questioning the obvious. My dad also loved the Jesus films. ‘Jesus is my hero’ I remember him saying.

Soon after when we got home, my dad returned to his busy life and so did I. I called him the next day to tell him I had gotten the Fulbright grant to do my masters in epidemiology and he was happy. I spent much time over the next few days writing up personal statements and thinking about where I would study in the US again. The following Saturday we were invited to a barbeque by my Venezuelan friend Raquel. I knew about the BBQ (what is a parilla in Venezuela, braai in Namibia) for about two weeks and told my mom. I prepared some guacamole, some Bulgarian yoghurt, dill and cucumber salad (tarator) and took some meat form the Freezer. We went off and picked up a young lady – Suama – who was from a rural town up north east. She told me she was writing her final grade 12 (senior year) exams soon. She wanted to do ‘something with the body’ , like a beautician of sorts. She told me this on the way. ‘Do you all have your seatbelts on’ Raquel asked us and I did, my mom did, Suama did not and she put it on. Not much later we were swerving of the gravel road. Another gravel road, but this one we had never been too before and it led to the Oanab Dam where the braai would take place. Oh how we rolled and then luckily landed back on the ‘car’s feet’. Do I describe in detail what happened next? Suffice it to say, Suama ended up showing she could calmly add disinfectant my mother’s head wound. I advised her later when were in the nearby Rehoboth St Mary’s Hospital to consider medicine. Actually I said that when were also at the accident, right after me and her got out of the car and she nursed my mothers wound.

So is now the time to say it? Praise the Lord. We survived. The stiches have been removed from my mother’s head wound. Suama is fine (she was shaken a bit), Raquel, I hope is recovering well, should call her, she has whiplash. I just have an inflamed tendonitis of the knee, but I am going to physiotherapy and icing so it should get better. Since then I have not been able to do my dance, the one I added too while my dad and blossom were taking photos on the side of the road and I was playing around. I praise the Lord for what I can do though, walking normally. This is my chance to come back stronger than I was before.

Surviving the accident really put some things in perspective. First I experienced what it meant to be hurt. I remember receiving and email update from Mana Christian fellowship and Sumin saying she got hurt in China (was during a concert, she fell in some pit or what) and I felt that. I realize now I could have prayed harder for her recovery – did I realize what exactly this meant? I had to come to terms with my own fragility. I am not only fragile, but as professor Cornel West so articulately put (I listened to a podcast with his 2006 Barry Ulanov lecture!) to be human is to realize I am destined for death and between now and then is my chance to do something. Do I just accept complacency, cowardice and the current circumstances or do I do something in spite of all that? Listening to a podcast by Bishop Gene Robinson, I found out, really the only thing I can offer other people is ‘the story of my own salvation’ especially members of this same Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex community I see myself part off.

The second thin in perspective is just taking it easy. ‘Relax take it easy…’ goes that song by Milka and I definitely agree! I may have problems at work of me not communicating well with my boss and colleagues, delivering after the deadline, up to the point of my boss doubting whether I am ‘the right person for the job’ which caused me a bit of anxiety yesterday, but you know what, it don’t matter because I am alive. I am alive and we worked out a good ‘action plan’ from now on. The type of work I do at this public health organization is like consulting and I am so blessed to be working with my colleague Natasha who has offered to mentor me in this field. ‘Our first year in consulting is our training year, so we do get a bit of stick…’ she was telling me. So how did I end up in such a job? It is very stimulating, but hey, still it is after all just a job and I will be taking care of my health so no more late nights at the office (which I did often before the accident) or anything like that. I am only human after all. And did I mention Natasha is Christian, from Aruba and we get to speak Spanish in the office?

The third I realized, (I now realize there are more than three things I learnt from this experience), is the shortness of life! Ok here I want to write about something. What is it? Falling in love. Am I in love? Right after the accident, I called up this boy – Michael – who called me just before it happened, but I did not answer his call. I was quite impressed with his concern though upon hearing about what happened to me. I wanted to go out on another date with him, as we had our first date the week earlier. That same Saturday of the accident, I had a date set with another boy, Riaan. Riaan though did not call me, as usual he just texted. I told him I was in an accident, but for some reason, which was kind off a turn off he asked ‘so are we still on tonight?’ We rescheduled for the following week, but he totally bailed on me, as he actually confirmed our date. So I went out on a second date with this black boy Michael and never heard back from the white boy Riaan. Race I think does matter, because my general attraction for white boys must stem from the years of indoctrination that presented white people as the pinnacles of beauty. Being with Michael on the second date made me realize it matters so little, actually. But I am not with Michael. After the seocnd date, I wrote this poem

How do I write this piece?
On a paper or just in my heart?

Perhaps neither – in this computer – will suffice.

How do I write about you when I am not in love?

I just wanted to be held and hold you in that embrace.

Outside the Church and in the light

What a beautiful night.

Questa non è una ossessione, anzi è solo il fatto che sei affascinante,

E non ce la faccio a rinnegare questi pensieri di te.

Questo fascino.

Un abbraccio erotico ma non satanico

Pieno di eros ma niente lussuria

Direi

So that was my second date, with the first guy I have dated.

Will we date, I don’t know, we’ll wait and see how I feel tomorrow.

He knows I still look at guys as they pass go

So we will have to see

But let it be, what should be.

I did not feel like I wanted him tomorrow. Honestly, not really. I dreamt of meeting a Guataemalan guy at my work who was waiting outside my boss’s office, where a meeting was underway. I did not dream of him. I never actually approached him – he approached me one day at the shopping mall. There is no reason to keep seeing him. Yes, I have resolved, I have taken the decision, that we just be friends. There is still much I can share with him. He is a believer too.

Now I want to move on to speak about people I miss. I miss Craig Schindewolf quite strongly. I dreamt of him sometime ago, some days after the accident. He had longer curly hair. I think I was projecting how I look now onto him. I tried calling him on his cell phone, but each time I get voicemail. Where is he? Is he alright? He wrote too me on that Manna poster with the big group photo ‘thanks for being a true friend’. But why ‘thanks’ and the ‘being’? Was that it? Should our friendship end? Just because of the physical distance, une separation de corps?

Alright its 5:59. Time to do yoga and ice my knee. Time to get ready. A new day. The break of morn.

P.S. I would also like to know about your love lives and I want your advice on what to do next. All of my non-Christian or let me say, non self defining Christian friends such as Chinonto, Mariel, Jacob Denz, Lady Adjepong, would give me feedback and affirmation. But I know that some of Christian friends may not, simply because they can’t affirm something they believe to wrong. I am glad though that Rich Lopez posted a video update of his to song ‘Firework’ by Katie Perry. I love that song and have it even more since then. The lonely guy in the bar who intrepidly goes up and kisses another guy amidst the crowd. Singing that video, Rich, is affirmation enough. Although I could never do that, well not only because I would not have the guts to do it, but more so because I am work in public health and I think about Hepatitis B…yes it can be spread through droplets in the air and in Namibia it seems about 6% or so of the working population is positive for the Hep B surface antigen, which means they are actively infected (correct me if I am wrong Peter, perhaps you can explain the Hepatitis B story in simple way for us all).

Diary of a Gay Blood Donor

2011-07-23T13:12:00.001-07:00

20 July 2011

Dear Diary
When I think of donating blood, I feel so good inside. I know some people are afraid of needles, while others are bit squemish when it comes to seeing their own blood flow into pouch that fills up to about a pint of liquid (as much as a dumpy), but I am willing to endure this so that another person may live. I asked my friend Henry to donate with me the next time I go. Like me, Henry is gay and he also believes in donating blood. But today I realized that to be gay and to donate blood carries a certain restriction one has to put oneself, a restrction on the desires of the flesh, if one could so speak:

Me: So we'll donate when u get back. Remember to use a condom and plenty of lube.
Henry: Ha ha lol, ur bad. I'll remember to tht whn I do my thang.

I remember sending him this text message when I found out he was on his way to Johanessburg, I know how easy it would be for him to find a man and have casual sex with him. It was then that I realized that Henry would not be able to donate if he had sex with a casual partner, even if it was protected! On the Namibia Blood Transfusion Service (NAMBTS) donor form there is question that asks:
'Have you had sexual intercourse with a casual partner in the last 12 months?' I therefore had to write Henry another message to warn him of what the consequences of casual sex would be:

Me: But if you have casual sex,you won't be able to donate blood with me ;(
Henry: Relax,Pancho, I'm not a manwhore, I'll donate with you.

The disclaimer on the NAMBTS form reads : '...because a condom is not 100% protection against HIV, you should not donate blood if you have had sex with someone who might be infected with HIV'. My impressions of gay men in Namibia is that they are actively disqualifying themselves from donating blood. They are having sex with short-term or casual partners, and I have approached by more than one of them on more than one ocasion. I chose to stay an eligible blood donor and I hope Henry will too.

When HIV first appeared in the US 30 years ago, contimated bloood transfused to unsuspecting hemophiliac patients,who often lose blood due to uncontrolled bleeding, was the unfortunate consequence of the actions of HIV positive gay blood donors who believed they were saving lives. Since then, our screening techologies for HIV in blood have improved considerably, but are still not 100% sensitive. And as for gay men and other men who have sex with men, they are still statisically most likely to be infected with HIV in the US. Hence the question on the US blood donation form:'If you are male, have you ever had sex with another man since 1978?' I was not even born then, but I would still answer no. But that may change once I decide to break the (unenforced) sodomy law of Namibia.
Then I would not be able to donate blood in the US.

However, I'm not in the US right now, I'm in Namibia. Here we can still donate provided we meet the criteria for low risk HIV infection, just like anyone else. This reason for this may be that the HIV epidemic amongst MSM in Namibia is thought to be just part of the larger generalized HIV epidemic amongst Namibians .This is not the case in Johannesburg (where Henry was going!). A study in Johanesburg found found men who have sex with men to have significantly higher HIV prevalence rates than that of the general population, a situation similar to that in the US and Western Europe. So while you can get married in those places, you can't donate blood as a gay man (though efforts are underway to repeal this, at least in the UK). In Namibia, we can donate blood and lets keep it that way. I pray that Not Another Man's Blood Test Seropositive (NAMBTS) for HIV. And as for marriage, it will come eventually.

--
Pancho Mulongeni
Communications Officer
Namibia HIV Clincians' Society
writinghealth@gmail.com
+264 814456286

July 16th

2011-07-16T14:28:00.001-07:00

I at home and in my room, just beyond the corridor I can hear my aunt’s (my mother’s friends speaking). The discussion is now about a different clans and the maternal and paternal systems. ‘We all belong to different clans’ ‘A group of your family has a name’ says Maria to Aunty Marta’s daughter, who is a teenager , born in the new Namibia and may not know about this. ‘Clan is your blood line’ says auntie Peggy, ‘You are a cow,’

Ofamilie ya tate gwoye (your father’s family), also says Aunty Maria. ‘Tell me I’m your mother’ says Aunty Marta to her daughter , ‘Aunty Maria already explained it to me’ came the reply from the irritable teenager

‘Why do they call you Makena?’

‘I don’t know!’ comes the moaning reply.

So here I am in Namibia, with my family, in my house, with my mother and brother. Sure I cannot do everything that I would like to do now, but still I should enjoy these moments.

I wanted to perhaps spend hours and hours writing more about my life, my failed attempts at getting a boyfriend (ok or getting a date), my advocacy (today I went round our neighborhood telling people about a biodiversity talk aimed at raising awareness about green open spaces in city coming Thursday – I got their emails and I will send out reminders).

There is only so much I can do in that department.

And then, I would love to continue my LGBT ideas – my picnic idea – the letter reading event and all.

Not to mention writing to the Namibian alumni of the United World Colleges and telling them about the Botanical gardens event and so many other events.

Then there is the mundane stuff: revising my budget, doing my laundry, fitting in the lock in my door which does not close (perhaps I should start with that!)

And today is Saturday evening the first day of the week, this week my father’s birthday week (somehow) I count the week according to the Jewish way, sunset to sunset. That’s why Friday one hour before sunset up to Saturday one hour after Sunset I try and relax from the about 9 hours a day I work during the working week

Its really crazy! And then I want to write to so many of my friends: Mariel, Emilie, Mohammed, Karlis, Ellen-Marie, Roderick, Marco, Danny, Michael Kowen, Josh Weinstein, Daniel (Molbio major in my class, black, studies medicine UNC chapel hill).

I feel this heaviness. This utter heaviness of being overwhelmed. Should I even go to the Christian youth group?

Devrais-je écrire à Rickie?

Oh mon Dieu, aide moi, parce que je ne reussirai pas autrement.

Fui andando por mi barrio sensibilizando la gente sobre el encuentro de la biodiversidad,

¡ Hay mi curso de español que empiece este semana!

Tengo que hacer planes concretos. Hay que hacerlos y prioritizar.

Y por lo tanto, no hago matemáticas todos los días, ¿estoy poniéndome menos flexible en mi mente ¿¿o qué efectos supone no hacer estos ejercicios todos los días?

Ok let’s do a priority list:

Replace the door handle in your room.
Poster: Town-Thumb tacks, Biodiversity meeting-WB
Go to Yoga (Sunday)
Door your laundry (and math while you wait)
Write the reminder for the Botanical Talk
Pray Pray Pray.
Go to the Office: Proofread Bophelo! Report
Email: Biodiversity invite to Dorado people.
Go to the HIV Society Meeting
Go to mass
Go home, rest.

Monday

Poster: MET Levinson Arcade, MET.

Plan work items: WHO paper, CoW issues/questions, ART study: tie up Uganda, NGO study: set interview times.

LUNCH DADDY BIRTHDAY

Spanish, Anuncio PolyTech

Dance

Tuesday

Lunch Claire of the FNCC

Wednesday

Spanish

Send reminder about BIODIVERSITY TALK

Thursday

Biodiversity Talk

Friday

Diaries of a gay blood donor

2011-07-16T14:26:00.000-07:00

So this is what you could call a hobby. Its Saturday, and I am using this day as one to reflect upon. More importantly, I use to as a chance to let my creative juices flow unbridled in my writing. I may even be inspired to choreograph from this, but let me write about it.

Diary of a gay blood donor

Monday 13 June 2011

Today was the day I gave my presentation on the level of HIV infection in the Namibian workforce. I remember though, before I gave the results of Wellness Program – through which this data was collected – the CEO of the Namibian Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS gave the introductory remarks. Listening to him as I say just to the left of the podium (dais) from which he was speaking, I remember ‘this year marks 30 years since the discovery of HIV in San Francisco…we should remember how far we have come…25 million people have died of AIDS and 30 million are infected, and as you know, Sub-Saharan Africa is where most of them live’. He was addressing the business community in the context of diminishing funding for HIV interventions in Namibia, where HIV is truly a generalized epidemic, affecting both men and women, straight and queer people alike. ‘Are you telling me my son is a queer?’ was the line of the father as he stood in front of the cadaver of his son, alongside a doctor – the lead character in the film ‘And the Band Played On’. That is the only scene I remember from that film which chronicles the way HIV devastated the community of men who have sex with men in 1981. The epidemic spread beyond that community in the 30 years since then, as we know, but in the US gay men still are statistically more likely to be HIV positive. So that’s why in US, I could never donate blood. But I donate here in Namibia. The Namibia Blood Transfusion Service has the acronym NAMBTS. For me it means may Not Another Man’s Blood Test Seropositive for HIV. Lest they also bar us from donating here.

13 Julio 2011

Para mí, hay muchas cosas buenas de vivir en Namibia, aunque la unión entre dos hombres no se reconoce por el estado. Sí que puedo caminar por la calle en plena luz y fijarme en los chicos que me pasen (¿y éste se dará también la vuelta al pasarme para mirarme mi?) Otra cosa bonita es no tener miedo de expresar su propio atracción siempre y cuando te encuentres en un sitio público tal como una tienda. Hace dos días conocí a un chico que trabaja como dependiente en una tienda portuguesa dónde íbamos a menudo antes de mudarnos al barrio en el que ya vivimos. Al inicio le pregunté por su aspecto cansado y él no hesitó decirme estar cansado dado que estuvo trabajando desde las ocho de mañana y entonces eran sobre las cinco de la tarde. Me pareció muy interesado en charlar conmigo, quizás porque le hacía falta el contacto con otro ser humano o simplemente porque era agradable con todos los clientes. De todos modos, me dí una vuelta en la tienda para comprar mi pan integral (hacen un pan muy rico y negro allá – adoro el pan negro y en cambio me gustan chicos blancos como él). Al volver, dí el salto de preguntarle si quería almorzar conmigo y pasó así:

‘Espero que tengas por lo menos tiempo para descansar’ le dije

‘Sí tengo una horita de almuerzo cada día’ me contestó y no de inmediato se lo pregunté a no ser que me pusiera nervioso o tardara mucho tiempo en decirlo

‘Entonces ¿te apetecería almorzar con migo algún día?

Me dio una sonrisa y me fijé en su cara dulce y sus dientes irregulares, unos más grandes que otros, me parecía que no se esperaba a que le preguntara está pregunta que acabó de salirme a mí, que expresé sin equivocarme – fue claro que me entendió. No recuerdo bien lo que pasó pero recuerdo que me quité la bufanda mientras estuve esperando su respuesta como si quisiera mostrar mi sinceridad, sin alguna apariencia falsa.

De repente se puso una cara más bien seria y me dije ‘Sí Sí’

“Vale, y si dijera mañana, ¿qué dirías tu?” le hice la pregunta tras pasar el primer paso en este juego de ligar con él.

‘Mañana no me viene bien’ me contesté

¿Miércoles? sugerí

“Tampoco”

¿Jueves?

‘Sí jueves está bien’

No pusimos de acuerdo y le dije que como hay un café afuera – a unos metros de la tienda – podríamos irnos allá.

Bueno pero ya es miércoles y no tengo ni son número de móvil ni una confirmación verbal pues no nos vimos desde entonces.

¿Se lo olvidó ya o sigue pensando en mí tanto como yo en él? No se.

Pero, sea cual sea la conclusión de está historia, hay muchos sitios bonitos en Windhoek. Mi consolación es la multitud de hombres que voy a conocer en los días por venir.

December 1 2011

Good Morning

Today is world AIDS day

Rights and freedoms lacking, but we have one right that gay people in the US, in SA and in most developed queer men (sisters are OK) can’t : donate blood.
To be able … and keep on being able
There are many things give up, but many ways of being queer.

July 2nd

2011-07-16T14:25:00.000-07:00

So many thing have happened since that eclipse. The week after I went to an event organized by the LGBTI network. I met Etienne. Oh did we have a real life conversation? It was magical and what a connection.

Today I was with my neighbor Lorentia, at her house. I sat outside in her yard, with my back to her fence, in the dappled dying winter sunlight, I wrote this poem for Etienne. I had sent him a message last Sunday, after we met, through facebook, but there was not reply. Do I assume he is not into me or is it just that he needs time or that he is just cautious. Yikes! Along came a spider, right now, on my curtain. I do love arachinids, but not this kind, they are wide and flat with stripped legs. I could have caught it and fed it to the brown widow (Lactrodectus geometricus) that is handing just beside my wardrobe, over here. She is there, suspended waiting for prey.

Next week the national museum will be open including the arachnology department, where I spent many a good afternoon with Erin Griffin and the arachnids I came to love. I think I will meet interesting people there, just like I met these two Americans today the monthly walk at the botanical gardens – one an anthro student and his professor who is a department chair of a big well known US university.

Do you remember the line from Trick, the movie, I need to get it!

Miss Coco Peru: ‘So he comes in my eye and the next thing I know he’s out the door. Do you know what its like to have cum in your eye Gabriel, it buns! So I call the number he gave me the next and you know what it turns out to be the number of the Brooklyn Botanical Garden’.

I never went there, I guess I still can.

9^th July 2011. (9 de Julio 2011)

Nunca me ha contestado ese hombre, pero ya no me importa. Hay que decir que unas personas te contestan a su modo, es decir, no contestan, te ignoran a ti y luego lo entiendes que no quieren ligar contigo. Quizás eso fue lo que pasó con Etienne. Pero eso no importa más ni Philip – un germano namibio al que invité a almorzar conmigo hace casi un mes al conocerlo en el estudio de camel art y a los pocos minutos conocí a su novio –Memo que es mexicano. Aunque no me lo dijeron directamente, que eran una pareja, eso se hizo bastante obvio y no había que decirlo sino aceptarlo y entenderlo.

Bueno, ya estoy muy harto de todo eso, de está búsqueda interminable (me parece) de una pareja, de un novio entre los escasos hombres potenciales que se encuentran en esta ciudad. ¡Basta ya! Dios, ayúdame por favor, que tu paz me llene el corazón y que no me aleje de tu camino. Amen.

June 7 2011

2011-06-07T13:08:00.001-07:00

Dear Blog,

There is so much one could write about so where do I start? Well, why don't I just begin by thanking the Lord. Thank you Jesus. That's a start. Now you may ask 'for what?' but is this as important. Well of course it is otherwise you would not be reading this blog post.

Thank you Lord for my brother and that tomorrow is his 19^th Birthday. Thank you Lord for Him in my life. I asked my parents for a brother about 19 years ago (I think) and they agreed. Our relationship is kind of frigid and cold at times, since I am twenty something and starting with my life as a gay man and he does not take kindly to the fact I am openly gay (or that I would be seen outside the house in tights or ladies shoes), but still I love his sarcastic approach to it 'How can you be Christian and gay...unfortunately you are going to hell,' He said that one day at the dinner table, I was moving past the fridge and he was still sitting down and the way he said it, especially the 'unfortunately' just made me crack up.

Then there is the way he sometimes swallows his words. Yesterday I gave him a pencil 'The New Otjihereo dictionary ' ( a new one from Otjiherero to English done by a Namibia Herero lady that lives in Rochester, NY) . That was what was written on the pencil – I got it from the launch. It was neon yellow (I guess I could have given him the neon pink one, I am sure he would still have taken it, I mean it's a pencil). He mumbled 'thank you'. The way he mumbles just melts my heart. When he does that I am ready to cook for him, even bring his food to his room (which I NEVER do) just because of how adorable he is. He has grown, much taller than me and I dare say more handsome.

Tomorrow, I think I will have some fun though – I am going to 'cake him'. My mother bought a cream, massproduced, cake for about U$3.15. I could hardly call it cheap given the number of people who live less than a dollar a day here, but honestly, its so mass produced, not that tasty and just about the right size for someone to smack it into your face. At Mana Christian Fellowship, I know how the students ,friends, fellow Christians used to that for each other. Somehow, I missed this rite of passage. I never was caked by them, though I do not resent that at all, because I still felt love there and still do from my friends and other members of the Mana fellowship (whom I adore, in fact, I love them all, how could I group into friends and 'others'?) .

So it is really cold, but I am sure my brother will still take his morning shower. My plan is the following: Wake up before him (at about 5:00 am) do yoga. Wait for him to open his door (my door is just next to his) and as he takes the step towards my mother's room I shout 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY!' and let him have it. Were it not for his birthday, I may consider this action wasteful and decadent, but honestly, this cake is of such poor nutritional value that it almost seems meant to be used for this very purpose. Oh am I gonna get it! My brother could beat me up if he wanted to, but will he?

He will take a shower anyway and then go to school. He is in his last year of high school now and next year he hopes to study law. I basically made him fill the application form for University in South Africa alone. Why? I wanted to instil in him the agency necessary to apply to University and I don't think holding his hand while he fills in the form would be helpful. I did offer to answer any questions he had,provided he had tried to fill in the form first by himself. This caused a lot of strife in my home, because my mother wanted me to just do whatever he wanted. But I held out. I know I may not be a parent, but honestly I am over just doing things for him. I really want him to be prepared for the world. And it seems to be working – just yesterday he told my mom 'No go back and click 'my computer' and try again, you did not do that, you need to do that, go back and do it!' after she asked him to help fix her internet connection (broadband). I think he realizes it's important to exhaust all of one's own capacities before going for help. If there was one thing I learnt at Princeton that must have been it.

Thank you Lord for my wonderful mom and my dad and my friends dear Lord (too many to mention by name here) and my sister and my cousins.

Then one more thing before I end this letter. At last, thank you Lord for answering my prayers! Thank you Lord for this boy Riaan I met (actually remet) last Tuesday. It was a cold Tuesday evening and I was heading home from the office (did I mention saying thank you for my awesome job that gives me a lot of work including the submission of abstracts, high level analysis of data and generally stimulation that I have not felt since Princeton?). He was in front of a bankomat, and I saw it was him. I passed on by. I had seen him there before, walking past that bank that has ATMS on the ground floor. I don't know if he noticed me. I knew he was gay, or at least into men, because I had met at the LGBTI party earlier this year. Then he was with his boyfriend Anthony. Flash forward. I wait for him to finish withdrawing his money and come back to his car, the only one parked on the side of this lonely road at this hour and cold temperature. He comes and I go 'Hey...'

I have to exercise great discipline not to relate to you our conversation, for it is private. Of course, I remember every detail, nearly every word uttered between me and him as he stood at the side of his car. And now I do recall his smile, he inquisitive look. Did he decide then? Yes he did because he volunteered his number and I took it, although only under the pretence that I would remind him of the picnic I was hosting the next day. Even though he said he was not dating Anthony anymore, I still thought of him as taken. You never know with couples, they break up and then get back together. So there was no need in thinking of him that way. Now, however I do. I think of him 'that way'. His advances have been welcomed. Though we have not seen each other since, we have communicated via 'text'. We've both been under the weather and I pray we will recover. We both want to see each other, I do believe.

Thank you Lord! How long have I waited? I now know my friends were right (about love)!

I do not know if I am love with him, let me first know him.

I do not know if he is the one, let first know if we will walk together hand in hand, under the sun.

I do not know what course this will go; would I be his second mate and he my first?

All I know is that I am happy for just the chance to date.

The rest I leave up to you and fate,

'O fate show thy force!'

May 7th 2011

2011-05-07T09:17:00.001-07:00

Saturday May 7th.

Two weeks since Holy Saturday and so much as happened again. I sit and wait for the light cascading on wall to move higher and higher giving way to the shadow. Espero a que la luz cayéndose en la pared del jardín vaya por arriba dejando paso a la sombra que anuncia el anochecer.

So I will read my friend Rickie Siegle’s blog instead! I will comment on her blog!

Holy Saturday 2011

2011-05-07T09:16:00.000-07:00

In as much as I know that I cannot possibly chronicle my life in a blog, I would like to take some time to write about it. Some time, not more than that and not less. Any more would mean I would loose out on life happening to me and any less would leave unsatisfied with what I write at the end of the day. Life has become so full, my cup is really overflowing. The different impulses for me writing come from nearly every single event that happens in my life, my life outside y room here in our house. I premedidate what I will write about and often the urge to write becomes really so strong it numbs that I just don’t know what to say. Well let me write about what happened inside this room of mine, for starters.

The room is on the lowest part of the house. I have the garden facing my window, or the back side of the garden, that part only we can see. There is a lemon tree infront of my window and next to a mango. We are really blessed with these fruits. Of course, those of you who come from fertile areas of the world, Tsheko – Zamibia, would perhaps think of the mango as banal. Here it is not that common in a garden.

My room walls are plastered with photos – rectangular snapshots – here and there. From my time in Italy to up to the day we went to that boy’s house in upstate New York (he graduated class of 09 – Denis yes that’s his name!) I actually don’t care for pictures at all. But I have always put them up since I went to the United World College of the Adriatic as a way of reminding me of the past and the people in it. Some of the photos are also from Bulgaria, with my grandparents, photos from my brothers christening into the Orthodox Church and others. That’s my decoration photos.

I also have some table cloths – one on my desk that faces the window – and two drapped down from shelf. Bulgarian red patterns, I love them. There is one that sis brown with purple embroided flowers that I gave to my mother for the birthday in 2009. She rejected it, not because she hated, but because I gave my father a plate as his Christmas present, a plate for him to use in his new apartment or wherever he stays (still don’t know, all I know are rumors, in deed I hear more about my father from my mother other people than I know about him). That is a whole story on it’s own.

I feel sometimes there is a whole backlog of issues I want to write about. As if experiences are saved in my mind, conversations recorded, movements remembered by my body all waiting for me to unleash them on this blog. Then I think to myself, did I blog about this can I go back and find it? I remember then that I do not remember what I blogged about, mostly. I remember that using a blog need not be an obligation. It is like a diary and I since I was 15, I always kept writing about things. This need not be a bad thing.

But last night I had just had dinner. The good Friday dinner at my house. The priest earlier at Church told us “ don’t go out tonight…don’t eat to much, just a little bit, and don’t drink to much, because you should suffer with Jesus tonight. Unless your doctor told you for medical reasons you have to eat this and this, then you can, but you can also choose to suffer with Jesus, if you want. But I always advise that you listen to your doctor, because if you don’t there will be consequences and then later Jesus will ask you ‘ so why did you not listen to your doctor?’

I love the Catholic homily’s always so pragmatic. So he did not prescribe us to fast as much as too just bear in mind the suffering of the Lord. Nonetheless, three of my mothers friends were over at our house and we had a dinner with them. Lamb with Spinach (a Bulgarian style of cooking) and an egg herb salad I made, with bread (whole weat: mine, white: for my mom). There was just enough food for all of us! Somehow there was. I had a torn slice of bread with penut butter as my desert, but that was it. So we did not plan to eat ‘litte’( such a subjective term, I am sure by the standards of many people here and most people in US, we would have eaten really little, but then for others perhaps this was indeed a feast). It just happened that way. I loved that we could eat together though on a Friday, the Sabbath, even though we had less than one would expect at a typical Sabbath dinner (but then again, I am assuming all Jews can afford to hold huge Sabbath dinners and perhaps this assumption needs questioning, seriously). I loved it. The friends of my mom have known me since I was a child. We would go to there houses. They are all Oshiwambo speaking women and they indulge me as I try to speak my father’s language. Two of them never married while the third is a divorcee and then there is my mom who is effectively divorced, but still legally married. And there was me. We had a family dynamic and that was us. Usually Friday nights it would be just me and my mother. My brother loves going out with friends and he took a trip to coast with his friends this weekend.

After diner as I washed the dishes I laughed and laughed as Aunty Martha (aunty is term used to show respect and it transcends biological notions of ‘aunty’) told me about the cumbersome process of recruitment in the public service. Had I not found the splendid job I have now, I would have gone for the interview to work in a lab for the ministry of fisheries. “…Even after the interview…” she said, “…there is still a long process of the application to be sent to the public service commission and for it to be approved…it usually takes four months.” The length of the entire process is more like 8 months – from the time of handing in your application to hiring, “…by which time many candidates have already found another job…”

Alright I will stop this blog post here.

I wanted to write about how I lost my modem (the size of memory stick) in my room and could not connect to the internet and how it spurred me to just clean up my room and vacuum certain areas…but I think you got the picture.

I can’t be sitting here and writing while I have stuff to do. I have math to learn (and use!) for my job as a research assistant – I am on the brink of a project that I have been dreaming of since senior year and I have to make sure I can do it (do the analysis of the statistics).

I’ll tell you about this project if you ask me.

I have to make a salad now. Guests coming over.

Closing prayer:

Oh Lord on this Holy Saturday, please help us all to grow closer to you.

O Dio aiutaci questo sabato ad avviccinarsi, sempre di più, a te.

The reluctant Buddha soldier

2011-03-27T07:49:00.000-07:00

Seeing myslef, my true self from the outside, seated, crossleged like some Buddha. I took part in a positive thinking course about three weeks ago. Exactly. I was there to find out about this organization called ‘Burma Khumaris’ lifelong university. And I did. They gave the course. Or should I say he gave the course, the one Dutch man that runs the house just across from Louis Botha store. I was seated there and really I listened to the tape he put on for us as we closed our eyes. My cousin was there, two of them actually you. They sat on chairs while I was on the ground on a cushion.

The breathing I experienced was unbelievably profound. I realized my potential is so infinite and it starts with me and the thoughts I bring into this existence.

It was as if I hovered above myself and saw me from afar.

I especially want to recall that experience now. I can now hear the voice of that man on the tape, a calm, soothing voice as if he came straight from an aristocratic residence in the 17^th century.

I am a person. I have a great deal of potential. I am free to do what I want.

So then I am free to approach my role within the new organization, LGBTI as I see fit. The founder, or one of them, of the organization wants me to do a hell lot more. He came up to me , or I actually came up to him at the end of the party last night to say good bye. It was particularly successful party for our community and I was set to leave, with my friend Chinonto who came from his party just to drive me home. Then this man, whom I had first just known as a face on a social network who I then came to know as an impassioned individual began talking to me about how I need to take the lead:

“From what you wrote on your blog, it seems you want nothing to do with LGBTI. You must take the lead – look at this, we had to create the forms ourselves and do it all ourselves.” I could only listen though I felt how unsettling this conversation had become. “Don’t shy away from your duties, take the lead…” he kept on saying, like papa bear talking to baby bear or a teacher to a student or a boss to his new employee. But he is not any of these to me, so why this tone? Now when I think on it, it seems rather insidious like someone trying to lure me into his cult. A cult! “Just imagine, the gays have dragged me into their, OUR, cult!”

But I know it is not so. I am just reacting to how I felt. He wants more from me that I am willing to give and that was all I could actually say to him then in there, amongst all those people and the loud music and I leaned to him so I could be heard “I am willing, but I don’t how much I can give.”

“Well than ask for help, we are all volunteers.” So he did say. I realize now I was subjected to an unnerving charismatic talk. It was unnerving because I did not make my self heard. I wanted to say that I when I agreed to join as a ‘research co-ordinator’ I was elated at the prospect of ‘research’ – as generic as it sounds – without realizing what I was getting myself into. The whole organization needs support. I am willing to help get there on its feet, but beyond that I would like to exercise my autonomy. I want to chose what projects constitute as research for me. I know there are a slew of operational things that will need to run once a whole ‘monitoring and evaluation’ department starts. I do not want to that. Not me.

There are a lot of challenges one faces when joining any new movement. Especially when it is a new movement and especially when it seeks to achieve a social aim. I wonder what experience the revolutionaries faced when they enlisted. What am I revolutionary? But I have thought of the members of the movement as ‘rainbow warriors’ so I believe it is not such a far fetched metaphor. All I want though is to learn more about research in epidemiology and anthropology. I can put myself to the challenges of adopting statistics capture software to questionnaires created by the organization or following a same-sex couple’s journey through the adoption process. Yet I realize that to have an organization that is operational a lot more hard work, even monotonous, work is needed. Moreover, I sense they (the trustees of the organization) want a lot more from me. They want what I am willing to contribute.

“The trustees don’t trust you, they have a lot of faith in you, but don’t trust you. You have to prove yourself.” Prove yourself. I heard that so many times when I spoke to this same person who (co)-founded the movement. I dare not mention his name, lest someone identify who he is.

Prove myself. I am not here to prove myself to anyone. Honestly. That was what I wanted to say. This man, though, has such a charismatic way, that his smile quelled any efforts to resist. Estuve ante su discurso, callado y por esto de acuerdo con todo lo que decía. I was dumb befote him and tacitly showing my consent to all that he had to say. And of course, he closed of the conversation with a grab to my shoulder, a gentle pat so that he could say “I like you” as I walked away.

I had just experience charismatic leadership first hand, I am sure my father experienced years ago with SWAPO, the movement that defined his youth (and perhaps even now).

What I do now? I just keep myself low key. I will be what the anthropologists call ‘a participant observer,’ and wait to see what will happen. Upon their request, I will make my position clear though, about my research objectives.

I am at peace though, knowing this is all part of my experience. If I am to ever to anthropology, I need to be prepared to work with people and enter into their worlds and negotiate when their agendas don’t correspond with my own. Is this what it means to observe and know human beings? Go in deep enough for you to have a good look, but still not so deep that you can’t come out to tell everyone you have been there

Somwhere over the Rainbow - you'll find a job

2011-02-26T05:13:00.001-08:00

“Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high, there’s a…..lulaby”

When I woke up today, after my usual wondering around, I turned on the radio-phone and I heard the voice of Judy Garland singing this song from the Wizard of Oz.

I loved it and with it I moved stretching out my arms into the heavens, peering through the glass of my window at the tree outside, collecting together the my blankets of the floor (where I sleep).

Thank you Lord for this beautiful day! Thank you for Judy and the songs she sang

“…somewhere over the raindbow...”

“When I wish upon a falling star…..” she sings quickly, with a bouncy melody to slow down and stretch out the words “…that’s where you’ll find me!”

Judy, I am glad I am writing about it! The last time I heard this song was in my head a few months ago when I was walking back home from the city center and there was a rainbow, c’era un arcobaleno magnifico che sorgeva da una parte, alzava verso l’alto dei cielli per lo spazio sovrastante e poi scendeva per incontrare la terra dall’altra parte. Che bellezza!

I now heard it again

This post is about thanksgiving.

Thank you dear Lord for that song.

Thank you for my birthday dear Lord that I could live another year! Thank you that you put the people in the right place and I was there at the right time.

I went to a meeting I dressed for it, because I felt it would look bad for the HIV Clinicians’ Society if I just showed up in shorts and a T-shirt, and I took the minutes. We met with Pharmaccess and by the end of the meeting, the lady from this NGO asked me to call her about chatting. As I walked out of the door I turned once more to say goodbye. And then she said “Yes, please call me, not only because of the health facility census [my last job] but because we are short of staff”

“Can I send you my CV”

“Yeah do that.”

This was about a week ago Wednesday.

Yesterday was my birthday and my new colleagues at Pharmaccess treated me to a cake! They also gave me a birthday card. And that lady I met last week, she is my boss.

I am a research assistant/intern and the best part is I am doing what I was doing at home – studying statistics and aiming to analyze data collected in Namibia – but I will be paid for it. What a blessing!

So what’s the moral of the story? Always dress well for a meeting.

Lemon Fell yesterday

2011-02-13T00:04:00.000-08:00

The drop of the lemon – Thud! It came just as I put down the phone after my father spoke to me. “That’s a good answer” he said (I translate from the Bulgarian, our secret language so he could ask without much fear of being heard za6to si gay?) The lemon green with one side yellowing came down just as in me the desire for tears was swelling. The fall came so abruptly like Newton’s apple. I looked outside my window and decided to go and collect that lemon just next to another one I had seen earlier. So I went round the house, and I walked towards the tree, round the back, I could feel how picking up those right lemons would be like therapy. Inside me, the ebb and flow of my emotions meant I was dealing with this. What was it? Relief? Satisfaction? We had finally spoken about it.

My mother had called him earlier “Your mother is annoying with these messages, saying I am the reason for your orientation, but you must tell her, tell her this is the way I am, but leave daddy alone. She thinks I hate gays. I do not have a problem you are my son. I cannot ask you, ‘ why are you gay?’ why are you not a man? I cannot punish you like that. Why are you gay?”

“Are you asking for real?”

“Yes”

“I don’t know”

“That’s a good answer”.

So there were the too lemons, nearly ripe yellow and I could tell that more were coming. This was just the very beginning, the start of it all. I know my relationship with my father will continue to ripen and mature, after all he considers me to be all grown up now.

“You’re a big person now, we can’t be seeing each other all the time.”

“But when was the last time we saw each other? Last month?” I pleaded.

“OK, we’ll see” he said, as always

Avenue of Desire! (based on what happened last weekend!)

2011-02-05T09:34:00.000-08:00

The Avenue of Desire

I took a walk on a Sunday day, down a street in down-town,

and there across the shop that dresses men,

I met, I accosted, I said

“ I like your style, would you teach me?”

“Red Shirt, brown pants and sandals to match your hair” I said

And that led to more talk about shopping and your bag:

“I got it from the guy by telecom”

“How much?”

“A hundred dollars”

“That’s decent (for a black bag with a reggae flag)”

All I wanted to to do was wave my PFLAG, and utter

“You’re gorgeous, yes you are!”

Maybe that’s why I saw you approaching from afar,

But there was nothing in your tred

There was no flutter

It was like that of a man,

But that’s not say you don’t have a rainbow fan

(at home, in the closet or wherever it may be)

See!

I followed you after we parted

My heart, because of your guileless nature, was darted

And I, as it bled, said

“I’d like to see you again”

Some hackneyed phrase I’d read or heard

But was it just from a song?

Was it absurd?

A man for another man to long?

You are beareded and black haired,

When God made you, nothing did He forfeit

In drawing your portrait,

“Nothing’s gonna work (but it did!)”

You said, somewhat overwhelmed,

“All of these strange people talking to me, but I just want to be one my own

After I read you and called you “Ruan!” (not you another-one)

Maybe it’s because you are gorgeous

I should have said

And pled that we meet again

Instead,

I laughed as I walked away, ahead of you,

What does it matter if you not are gay?

It’s just that it was so fun!

To walk and admire

And kindle that fire

Does it burn for you as much as for me

in my open furnace,

burning with bliss?

(Is dit rooi? Ja dit is!)

Ruan, do you yearn to meet me again?

Strolling down-town on the avenue of desire?

Sandals Extreme

2011-02-05T09:33:00.000-08:00

The straps of the sandals slit open and the beads fell off

To hit the ground,

Click click, tick tick

Do you hear the sound?

On the ground I sit, crouched and my fingers roll bead after bead

As I pray “Ave Marie…”

Now its all over

…madre di Dio…

I had my turn to cry

I still remember

And I sigh

The sandals you slit (brother)

Why did you have to kill them?

Yet no-one died in my house that day,

Lord was this a becoming end for a man?

Mr Kato died,

A death as sudden as the drop of beads on the floor

He was hammered

Those sandals were not build for me,

“These are women’s plakkies”

I knew that when I bought them, silly,

But I took them not so they could die

And it would be my turn to cry

Thank Lord for mother Mary,

With life (and Lord) I am still enamoured,

The Rosary

The prayers

Set us free!

But some of the pain still lingers

And there is (or is they not?) a way for it to recede,

Can blood return to the wound from whence it came?

Can we just go on, all the same?

I’ll never wear a pair of those again,

Till become like those singers

Who sing where thou shall not step

Tick tick, click click

Do you hear the sound?

Un blog incompiuto – se desideri leggerne di più, lascia un commento qui giù. (In complete blog, if you would like to read more, leave a comment

2011-01-30T22:29:00.002-08:00

The difficulty in putting something to posterity. I find myself at odds with the desire to write, because I too strive to do other things. Studying mathematics, learning to programme with R…, reading novels (I am reading En l'absence des hommes, La ciudad de la Bestia) and an enthnography Agor Medicine. But still I need to write.

I want to first of all say these will be very terse entries from now.

It is morning now, Monday morning, at home. My mother will soon be off to work and today there will be no need to make her a sandwich, as she will go off to a workshop on child labor where she will be fed.

Last Friday:

I collected applications for the United World College scholarships here in Namibia.

Cooked a bean and split pea soup for dinner – Shabbat dinner. I now fondly look forward to dinner every Friday because though I usually cook something that is far from Kosher (I am Catholic, after all) it still reminds me of the tranquility of the Shabat I spent at the CJL at Princeton with my friends.

Monday: Today I dreamt of a copy of the Flamingo before me, lying on the ground, and the magazine had a section about HIV in it. The Flamingo, in case you did not know, is the magazine of Air Namibia and I do freelance writing for them (for which they pay me well). My dream I think speaks to my desire to synthesize my writings about Namibian people with that of my interest in HIV. I did do that, in the last article I wrote about the Red Cross, but I long to do it again. My dream though also featured another man, with delicate skin. He was my lover and we kissed with the magazine in the background.

Samedi: Nous sommes allés, moi et ma mère, au parc national du parlement de la république de la Namibie. Comme on faisait toujours, on y jouait du badmington, un loisir qu'on pratiquait depuis mon enfance ici en Namibie. Alors qu'on jouait, il y avait un touriste, un homme, lequel s'approchait de nous, en descendant les escaliers qui menaient au parc ou menait au parlement en les montant. Il s'est attardé un peu au bout des escaliers à nous regarder. J'ai ressenti son regard sur moi et je lui ai donné aussi quelque coup d'œil, il était jeune, assez haut et blanc, vraisemblement…

Monday : I just got this message : Good morning Pancho. I was given your number by Mukariko [ I helped her prepare for GRE last year this time] I will be writing a GRE exam early march and she thinks you can help me pass the exam exceptionally. I am gunning for a scholarship so I really need to do very well. Can u help me? It would mean intense work and preparation.

Sure I can help her, provided she pays me a pretty penny for my efforts – after all if go to Spain this July (to do an intense course of castellano) I'll need the cash..

Si, certo che ti posso aiutare carinissima, anche se non ti conosco – se me paghi bene, ti posso aiutare con i tuoi problemi matemattici. Ne profiteremo tutti i due...

Una oración por Egipto

2011-01-30T22:29:00.001-08:00

Dios ayuda el pueblo egipcio a lograr una solución a esta crisis. Protege a los miles de manifestantes que se congregan en las calles y huyen a los policías (y protege ellos también).

Amen

LGBT PICNIC MID JANUARY

2011-01-30T22:28:00.001-08:00

Writing now is like a drop of rain on barren ground. For some days I have not indulged in my blog. I work on reading and learning the R computer language in the week and any writing, well I always some to think of it as of little import. But in fact it is quite invigorating, empowering and meditative. What matters little is what I cover in these posts: Whether or not I capture the essence of moments effervescent is trivial. Let I just write.

It is Sunday today and I am just coming back from the park, from a picnic. There was much pleasure and all of it begins with the fact of me being gay. Put aside those thoughts of debauchery in the bushes, but think of me and two other friends on a blank spread on the grass. We told each other stories – our own and some invented – and lay the in the bliss of the afternoon in the shade of the palm. My palm caressed Detlef's head, passing my fingers through the smooth grey hairs he has left and his palm, in turn, caressed my leg below the knee. An exchange of affection, which I know by writing now, was nothing more than affection. I also earlier hugged Chris De Villers and Wimpy who greeted me with delight "Hi Wimpy, nice to finally meet you, give me a hug!". We spoke in Afrikaans, when the Afrikaans boys Chris, Wimpy, Jan and François came, but also in French. We spoke of our lives, the inauspicious prospect of Namibian gay porn, eating Steers on a Sunday ("What so you don't gain weight on a Sunday? Chris asked Jannie), I sang Dancing Queen and danced to the last chorus to escape my destruction of the song, and later I read a Psalm. " O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you, my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, a dry and weary land,…,On my bed I remember you, I think of you through the watches of the night,…your right hand upholds me" Detlef remarked it starts off like a story in Namibia, the dryness and bareness, but then ends up like something pornographic. Why? I asked, it need not be, just because of the hand. Eugene balanced my view on porn with his, saying you need not watch it alone. Perhaps it was the loneliness that was what caused the sin, or rather created the idea of the sin. But still I would not watch bodies comodofied and digitized. I rather feel the Spirit of God moving in me and bringing me to orgasm. Remember, there was no orgasm at this picnic, ok, it was the first picnic for support of LGBTI people that we had.

I am off to Catholic Church now. Hoped you liked this entry. Short and Sweet.

Mas de queso – una aventura que tuve en mediados de Diciembre 2010

2011-01-09T04:35:00.000-08:00

Hoy ha sido el día – por fin – en el que he llevado a cabo mi deseo de reverte. Había olvidado tu cara porque al día de conocerte hace una semana – he perdido gradualmente tu imagen. A lo largo de la semana vine una, dos, tres veces pero no estabas, “ya se ha ido” me dijeron las camareras (¿o dependientes, como trabajan dentro de un supermercado que tiene un café?). Ahora sigo una de ellas, esa mujer es muy agradable y sin preguntarme mucho me dirigió “Venga, esta allí” gesticulando me dijo “sígame.” Tenía un poco de ansiedad “¿si no te reconozco?” O peor, ¿si no me reconoces a mí?

Pero al verte, el imagen borroso que tenía fue revitalizado y te reconocí sin problema. Como aquel día, ibas de cocinero, con el buenísimo vestuario que llevabas. Chaqueta blanca y botones negros que reflejaban el color de tu pelo – negro, pero mezclado con unos canosos. No puedes tener más de treinta años y por eso tienes que ser una persona especial a la que salen los pelos canosos temprano. Y tu cara madura y a la vez joven. Y tus ojos azules maravillosos bajo de cejas gordas me parecían místicas. “Peter, hay alguien que desea verte” te dijo tu colega y mi mirada te llamó la atención a ti, dejando de hablar con un hombre mayor, sin duda tu colega, sino tu jefe. Luego te acercaste a la salida de la baja pared que te definía una especie de despacho abierto.

“¿Si?”

“Hola Peter ¿te acuerdas de mí? Nos conocimos hace una semana…”

“Si, pediste el bocadillo con brie”

No te has olvidado de mí. Sí, te llevé el queso brie y te pregunté si era posible hacerme un bocadillo a partir de el, como no había brie en el menu del café-sito de Woerman brock. Ya sabía que podía pedir un bocadillo especial a una dependiente cualquiera, pero a los pocos momentos de verte, no quería salir del supermercado sin hablar con tigo o hacerte fijarte en migo. Y ahora, nota que conseguí. Sí, te llevé el queso brie y te pregunté si era posible hacerme un bocadillo a partir de el, como no había brie en el menu del café-sito de Woerman brock. Tu respeusta fue positiva y tu voz dulce y cutre. La atención que me prestaban tus ojos me robaron el corazón. Y por eso me encuentro aquí a delante de ti. ¿Por qué has dicho “gracias skattie a tu colega al agradecerla por hacer mi bocadillo? Esa es una expresión que solo un homosexual usaría ¿no? Pues, espero que seas como yo. Y por eso estoy aquí delante de ti.

“¡Si! Fue yo, ¿Y cómo te lo acuerdas?...el brié y sobre todo quedé impresionado por tu servicio agradable y profesional y pues es muy difícil conocer a alguien en terreno laboral y por esto quiero invitarte a salir a tomar un té frío conmigo…” ¡Ahora me doy cuenta que en realidad tus ojos eran marrones! Y en seguida, antes de que mi ansiedad pudiera crecer has destruido mi otra ilusión. Levantaste tu mano mostrando el anillo argente que llevaba tu cuarto dedo y dijiste:

“Es que estoy casado” desvolviéndome la sonrisa que tenía en mi cara para esconder qué tal nervioso estaba. Me echaste una mirada caliente y así no me daba vergüenza de tomar la palabra otra vez.

“Bueno imagino que le dabas alegría a tu mujer ¿no?”

“¡Sí! Y tuvimos nuestro primero hijo este año.”

Increíblemente, no tenía la sensación que la gente estaba pendiente de todo lo que decíamos – continuaban haciendo la compra mientras tus colegas siguen hablando entre ellos detrás de ti. Pero estabas más buen fuera el despacho, no exactamente al lado, pero tampoco dentro, es decir, habías salido del espacio formal para hablar conmigo. Entonces le pregunté

“¿Y no estas ofendido?” Se suponía que entendieras lo a que me estuve refiriendo. “No, al contario, es un piropo”

“Muchas gracias, por haber entendido”

“De nada, y bueno, ofrecemos siempre servicio bueno a nuestros clientes” añadiste.

“Bueno, pienso que ahora conviene que vaya a buscar el brie…”

“Vale, y te podría hacer un bocadillo de brie si quisieras”

No he respondido a tu propuesto ya que estaba dirigiéndome hacia los quesos y no quería decirte “no está bien, no hace falta ya que no me te puedo traer a mi”

Y así pasó mi intento de ligar con alguien que trabaja como cocinero en un supermercado en el barrio más pijo de Windhoek. ¿Quién podía saber que iba a ser tan agradable y majo?” Al salir de la tienda, le estreché la mano a él saludándolo y me desvolvió el saludo. Un historia que se acabó bien, decimos ¿no? Bueno tengo muchas ganas de conocer los chicos por venir.

Gatekeeper Dance Review 2010

2010-12-30T09:11:00.000-08:00

Dance is supposed to leave something behind. After a performance is long over, I think back to the images of moving bodies that remain etched in my mind. So it is after more than three weeks since the performance of “Gatekeeper” by “The First Rain Dance Company” that I write my reflections on the performance.

I remember seeing the dance open on the proscenium stage. People at different spaces doing different things. A woman at the fore turns one leg and reaching forward to go around while her back leg tails in the air behind her. A young ballerina? A man sleeps, another woman stomps backwards furiously and comes down to the hit the ground with her fists, while another lets her chest jut to the floor while her back legs goes up like a scorpions tail. All the while a tall man walks around these characters, enclosing them in a rectangle of a sand trail along his path. What is going on? Then one by one, starting with the ballerina, they begin to walk with long legs, plodding each of slowly in front of the other. Very much aerial, they move like a line of slender giraffes to one corner of the stage. I guess this animalistic feelings unites these diverse characters, as well as there black roman soldier style skirts and red ribbon around one leg.

The musical accompaniment to this opening section is a mere array of sounds, clicks, whines and myriad of other articulations of the mouth, by Lize Ehlers. Quite original and unheard of in what was meant to be a dance performance at the National Theatre. That is why I say it seemed the dancers were doing something and I would have loved to see that story develop. Instead, what followed was a series of dances to set musical accompaniments, where it was evident they were dancing. I saw pyramidal formations, of dancers shift through space in hops, skits and slides typical of modern dance. Somehow it evoked the dances of Jerome Robbins in West Side story, and I wonder whether the choreographer of Gate Keeper, Hamisch Olivier, found inspiration in Robbins. The only thing that reminded me of that captivating opening was the way things were often done in series. They would do a movement, like rolling backwards, one by one. And I noticed differences – while some rolled with long legs end in feet as sharp as still, others had softly bent knees and relaxed feet. Why such a difference? Was there a meaning to these differences, or where the dancers just performing it differently? Did some just loose their balance on leg before the others or did Olivier want us to notice the differences in how long they held one foot up their behind the other knee, before coming down? Beats me.

It seems with each piece of music, the dances attempted to show something different. They can follow the music, even if means stomping their heels close to the ground to keep with the time and languidly stepping in a zig-zag pattern that ballerinas would do in lightning speed. There were jumps, some of them high with jagged legs curving behind the back of the dancer. But I have seen people jump higher and break the stillness of the air at the top. In short, I’ve been there, seen that. What is that this company, that aims to integrate contemporary dance with Namibian dance forms, brought for me? In the ending, I see a return of the animalistic sense, where some dances creep away while others walk with those long giraffe like steps. And the last dancer to leave caught my eye as she darted her head from one side to the other, her writs limp and hands held as paws, like some mouse-like creature, before running of stage. Here was something intriguing. I would have like to have seen it developed along the lines of Netherland Dance Theatre’s “Journey to the Stomping Ground” where the dancers mimicked different animal movements inspired by Australian aboriginal dances. I think that would have been interesting for the director of the French Cultural Center, who commissioned Olivier to create “Gatekeeper” as a Namibian contemporary dance work. I doubt he would want to see a replica or mediocre imitation of contemporary dance of Europe or the Americas. After all, the aim of French funding is to develop local art for the purpose of bringing local and world audiences something unique. I did see something unique in that performance and that is what I have chosen to remember.

Endnote:

“Gatekeeper” performed at the National Theatre of Namibia show titled “Fractures” on December 6^th, Windhoek, Namibia

Stephanus Chirche Mid December

2010-12-28T11:50:00.001-08:00

“You’re so beautiful” said the Damara man, this black Namibian man, as he smiled at me. “Thank you, you too, “ I replied rather flattered, not knowing what to say. Just a few moments later I gave him a hug and he embraced me, his arms clutching at my torso the way a woman hugs. I could tell that he was of my persuasion. He wore tight blue genes and I could see red, chapped nailpolish on his toes that protruded from his sandals. It was a summer morning that we met, so we both wore sandals. I needed to encourage him, he had walked all this way from Okandja park just to where we stood in KleinWindhoek. He was searching for donations.

“Why do are looking for donations” I yelled behind him as he walked away. He turned and smiled “For what are the donations?” I ask again and he approaches me. I came to understand that it was for his Church “ Paulus //Gowaseb” in Okahandja Park. That place is a shanty town on the edge of Windhoek, I think to myself. And this gay man goes there? I was not certain of whether he was gay. He may have been transgender or perhaps bisexual. But from the way he spoke English and his whole demeanor, he fit the mould a Damara gay – the stereotypical black Namibian man. They needed donations for a trip to Swakopmund on Christmas day – just over one week away. “How do I know this is a real Church and you are not just collecting for yourself?” I interrogated, but with a smile on my face. “That is why I have this cellphone,” he said holding an outdated green screen phone. “You can call this number” he said pointing to a name of a donor – some man with a German sounding name – and a landline number. He tried to explain to me his reasoning, but I could tell from the way he spoke in spurts – starting and stopping – that the problem was English. So I asked him in Afrikaans and he gave me quite believable explanation. I barely understood it, because I bet he used the Afrikaans words for “trutworthiness” and “accountability”, which I do not remember right now.

I cannot even remember this man’s name. He was no older than 25 and he had gone to Church that day in Okahandja park. Thereafter, he promptly walked more fifteen kilometers at least from Okahandja park – on the Western outskirts of our city – to the eastern suburb of Klein Windhoek. Klein Windhoek is like the upper east side of New York city in the sense that people that high flying financially live there. He was not alone, there a girl with him, but she stood a little ahead of us, close to the Nandos take away. “…She has the pen..” he answered when I asked him if I could sign my name on the sponshorship form..” but I told him to not bother with that. What was two dollars anyway? To me there was just change, but I am sure to him they meant much.

“Not even one dollar” he uttered with a touch of desperation, after I said “no” to his request for donations. I was reading my newspaper on the corner of the service station and why did he have to come up to me? Just another one of those skelm beggars. But wait, I see from the sway in his stride and the contour of his legs inside those jeans that this man is moffie, just like me! Moffies don’t cheat! So I decided I to run after him and find out more about these donations he wants.

Earlier that Sunday morning I had just come from Stefanuschirche. I spoke with the woman pastor or priest, as a man from the Church told me earlier. “When she is in the service, she is a priest and I guess when she comes out she is a pastor.” He explained when I asked him about the Church. Does this women actually play two gender roles during and after the service or what exactly did this man mean? Perhaps in German they have two different words to describe a clergy(wo)man during and after the service.

This woman was very much like a priest and I understood what she was doing, even though she recited in German. As she went through the motions of holding up the small white circle bread body of Christ, she uttered German words that filled the room. Her voice was most soothing to listen to. Unusually, she made German so peaceful, the words coming out in mellifluous streams, with zzzs and kks and rrs that were soft and non militarized. So here I am in this Church and I realize that life is beautiful. The room is beautiful in its entire gay splendor. Purple and red smoke intermingled on the walls and before us was an image of Christ on the cross in a blue green hue. Him on the cross on red brown hill, while his spirit like image in warm yellow hues that meld into the warmth of a sunset looks straight at us.The whole room exudes soothing cool colors like the freshness of her German words. German is cold and really refreshing. Who says that just because I had all planned out – to go to Spain or France next year and study in those languages was God’s Will. Oh my Jesus, let your will be done. What if I were to learn German?

I came to the Stefanuschirche in search of a man. I heard that this was an open minded Church from my gay friend Fanni Dorling – a choirmaster – and I believed him. When I entered and found only a handful of people, most of them old women with just one young, albeit, straight couple, I knew I would find my man today. But this Churched was definitely for us queers, just by looking at the people who led the service – three women clad in white and blue priest like attire. Well, might as well stay and see what I can discover.

Writing around Christmas 2010

2010-12-28T11:49:00.001-08:00

“Write Pancho, Write” she said as I watched “Anchor Away” on the TCM channel, focused on the scene of a several pianists playing furiously at the same time

I noticed she said write – I remembered then that I had wanted to go and write before the TV grabbed my attention.

“Write? Write what?”

“Write whatever draws you” was the response, but of course we spoke in Bulgarian and my translation is but a mere approximation of the meaning of what she actually said. (pi6i tova koeto te vulnuva, mi kaza tq I neznam koi e na tochnia prevod tuka, mojebi “whatever excites you” ili “impassions you”)

So here I am, typing away. What will I write? I have quite a number of things I penned down in notebooks over the past few months, especially during my trip to the North of Namibia the last two weeks. But I think I will start by writing my story of seeking a man at a local (or actually quite distant) grocery store and the outcome. But in Spanish.

Perhaps one of you can translate it.

Or I will write about the suicide that happened in my neighborhood. On my street, on a house on the same side as ours. LIBRA. In large black capital letters was the first thing they showed on the news after reporting on the suicide. That was the street sign on the corner of our street. Then they showed the wide open street, with our house on the left, before they moved to show the house where it occurred. Yup, surburbia. Urban decay.

And this happened just two days before Christmas day! Tomorrow, I will bake a cake and bring it to the like a good neighbor should. That is what good neighbors do. So I will omit my mistake of going Christmas caroling just outside their house on Christmas Eve singing “Feliz Navidad” as people started and turned away from inside the yard or just gave me a quick expressionless look as they accompanied friends to their cars. That was I guess a mistake. Nonetheless, a young man came from the house to greet me. He affirmed the importance of what I was doing, but made it clear that people were not going to appreciate it, not now. He was calm and warm. “Yeah she committed suicide” he said quite coldly. Why was he visibly calm? How could he even talk to me? Were I a family member, I would not even be able to face the world.

Tonight they had a real big memorial service. Cars parked outside our house, on the other end of the street, round the bend of Andromeda street and right to the end of Libra Street, where the house is, right up to the dead end – the cul de sac. What does the house being close to a dead end have to do with it? Nothing.

I planned to be terse in this post. I have rather been quite exhaustive.

Yet still brief. Life is what happens to you while you are making plans, John Lennon you were so right.

Human Rights day

2010-12-11T00:39:00.000-08:00

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

Spirituality again

2010-11-12T13:05:00.000-08:00

So what happened to me – I was under the “bondage of sin” as I struggled to kick the habit of consulting pornographic websites. I am actually doing a kind of revisionist historiography of my life and I realize that the whole pornography thing was less of a problem in my time at Princeton than I thought it was. It was just the more stuff I was doing at and the better time organized I was, the less I needed it. I think it was just a product of me being badly organized (dealing with my dance course and the demands of ‘academics’) and general lonliness. There was of course the fact that my fascination with the male body was really badly directed.

I guess that is why I fell in love with Jesus and decided to make Him my lover. Rather than suppressing my homoerotic urges, I took Jesus and imagined Him being with me.

These fantasies – or visitations of his divine presence in my mind – are actually quite different to what I saw in porn videos.

I have written about this difference before, but in case you are interested here I will write it again.

A Jesus that truly is a supernatural lover passing right through me (I think these were inspired by a Jesus Culture Song where the lead singer goes “he cuts right through me”) and his sacred heart is bare for me. His love making is physical – I do imagine him moving inside me as his supernatural body interacts with my insides. Oh and usually, he pushes himself into me, but there have been times I have imagined myself inside of Him.

These have really been the most powerful moments – really ecstatic and orgasmic for me. Sometimes, its not so great, like the time Jesus was blank, expressionless, before me as I imagined us moving together under the covers – was he asking me “Have you reduced me to you f*** buddy?”

In any case, I stopped looking at pornography and part of was breaking bad habits. I think that’s where the band “Tenth Avenue North Came In”. I heard them on this gospel channel from South Africa we have on satellite TV – Love is Here was the song. I went on their myspace page and played that at night. I also played “Healing Begins” and it really spoke to my process – I was now healed.

I am still healing the wounds from the “Highlands Assemblies of God Church” my local Church down the road where I met lots of great young people and where I went for a Friday youth group. Till the youth leadership met with me and eschewed the fact I was an openly gay man. Then I left. I did not realize it, but I bear a lot of bitterness for that Church, and I am healing through that.

So now what am I? I am a way out there Christian, more way out there than I have ever been.

During the past month, I doubted whether I should still call myself “Christian” or “Catholic” so I changed my facebook profile to “Syncretic Christian without a Church but still Catholic”. I realize now how redundant that is because Christianity, especially Catholicism, is syncretic to start with, while Church affiliation is not a must.

Today I was walking down independence avenue in Windhoek – our main street – when this man just suddenly calls out to me “wow, where are you from?” with a brightness in his eyes. I could tell he was one of us – the gay kind – but I really was not interested. He had a cigarette, was taking a smoke break outside of a store amidst the scores of people just walking on buy. “Are you from here?”

“Yes I am why do you ask?”
“Then you must have studied outside, when did you finish?”

How did this man know my whole story, without ever having met me? Was it my really curly hair, or the fact that I walk around with half torn sandals and an open back pack (one of the compartments is broken and always open)?

I did not even have my ankle bracelet from India that Andy Chen got me sophomore year (another gay man , who actually left Christianity)!

I told him about smoking and the dangers, but he just said “it was his choice”. As I was being kind off preachy, which I really hate, I stopped. But then I remembered speaking with a boy named Isaac outside Murray Dodge one time at Princeton and I told him “I pray you will find the courage to stop” Isaac scoffed and looked at me funny. About two weeks later we had a conversation on our way to Forbes and he told me I was much more understanding and less judgmental than the Christians he knew from his part of the US.

So this man now in Independence avenue, trying to flirt with me, and I just need to go. So I do. I do tell him to join the LGBT network Namibia (on facebook( and I ask him to look up facebook. Do I share the gospel of Jesus Christ? No. That would be really preachy. While we talked he told me he studied psychology – he asked me if I had “psychosocial support” and I said yes – in fact I go and see a psychologist – Dr Annandale – monthly. I asked him the same question and guess what he studied psych but “practices without working as one”. So I wonder what Rich would make of that.

In any case, I left, feeling rather flattered. But of course, Jesus should be one that takes all the credit, he is the one that puts people in my life and brings them to me.

Earlier in my life, since Freshman year, I though it was my mission to evangelize to the gays in a way that was there very own. In a way that gives primacy to our homoerotic nature and how this finds expression in our Christianity. But then I found myself disillusioned with Churches and even with the whole gospel thing.

I would actually deny that I am a Christian if someone put a gun to my head and said “deny Christ or I shoot!” I feel life is important and if I were to say no, I would just be committing suicide for a silly reason – I would still love Christ in my heart and no-one can take that away, no matter what they force me to say. Honestly, I think Jesus is much more mature than to say “Well you lied about me that day to save your life, so it’s over between us.” I really suspect that this interpretation of the gospel – about “saving your life to only lose it” attempts to control people and keep them Christian, even it means losing their lives. This is religion at its worst. It’s something I want no part off! Obviously, I would be willing to die for the good and for doing God’s Will – as people have done throughout history – but I hope you realize how different that is from suicide. I had a dream about this and suicide. It was surreal; it was about a woman who commits suicide because she is told to by the people around her. At then end they say it was for “love” but I heard in the song a sinister song with the lyrics “be wary of love.” Love that drives you to kill yourself – what love is that?

So now I am slowly picking up the pieces of my spirituality and I am going to still find a way to spread Christianity. I want to focus on prayer. Prayer is always there, where you are Christian or not, its part of being human, it’s the expression of that deepest desire for the universe to have mercy on you and the entire human race.

I have been so blessed this past quarter. Here is a picture of me receiving a certificate for “Health Advocacy and Social Mobilization” from the mayor of Windhoek on October 28. It was part of the World Health Day 2010 which was held in March and which I promoted a little. The main thing I did was to find an urban health champion – Mama Agnes – who has done so much for babies and toddlers affected by HIV. You can read my article on “Baby Haven” at www.flamingo.com.na Honestly, who care about the background, here is my photo. Mama Agnes was also a winner!

Lograr

2010-11-06T23:16:00.001-07:00

No he logrado ligar con un chico que conocí mediante Facebook. También lo conocí mediante facebook y no nos vimos nunca. Es muy interesante y me divierto mucho cotándoles esta historía, pero antes de que la cuente, permiten que les digo porqué escribo en español en facebook.

Hace más de tre años de una tarde durante mi tercero año en Princeton cuando fui a buscar a mi amigo Zachary Marr. Hay gente que no tiene buenos recuerdos de sus años en universidad, pero para mi era un época buenísima porque llegué muchas cosas que me apasionaban excepto aprender español – era mi asignatura pendiente. Zachary no estaba en su dormitorio, pero la puerta estaba abierta y entré por allí (sin que lo supiera porqué soponía que no le importara – eramos buenos amigos). Y creo que al encima de su cama había unos cuadernos de español con fotocopias. Me encontré con una lista de verbos españoles y había el verbo “lograr” con su traducción en inglés - “to achieve or succeed” . Al pesar de que Zachary tiene una madre mexicana que por supuesto es una hispano hablante, Zachary hablaba más inglés que español – aunque estudiaba este idioma para sus estudios de literaturas comparadas nunca lo oí hablar este idioma. Quizás fuera solo una lengua académica para él y no como una lengua viva por la que se expresaba en su vida diaria. No pienso que le costaba hablar. Es más que le resultara extraño y artificial hablar este idioma. Ya que sabe que hablo y escribo español ¿vaya a escribirme en este idioma? ¿Zachary, vas a responderme a mi, por fin, el idioma de una parte de tu patrimonio cultura, aunque no te consideres como un “chicano?” Chico oye, ¡te extraño mucho, te echo de menos!

Por mi parte, también tengo una batalla con mi patrimonio lingüístico. Al principio del año he dado el salto de aprender Oshiwambo – el idioma de mi padre y he cargado un libro gratis desde el Internet para aprenderlo. Me ha resultado bastante útil aquel libro, como tiene las reglas gramaticales y las explica muy bien. También he aprovechado del hecho que hay una mujer Oshiwambo que viene limpiar nuestra casa dos veces a la semana y habla muy poco inglés pero mucho Oshindongo – el dialecto de Oshiwambo que mi libro enseña. ¿Porqué no la he ayudo a mejorar su inglés? Con respecto al español, quedo casi todos los día con un español que se llama Juan en café para hacer un intercambio de lenguas – hablamos inglés y luego español. Pero no hago este con Ndeapo – la mujer “alma de casa” (pero no es la esposa de mi padre que tampoco vive con nosotros – se mudó el año pasado) ¿Porqué? A lo mejor deriva de que todavía no me ha preguntado hacer un intercambio – le vaya bastante bien sólo hablar conmigo en Oshiwambo y charlar, porqué antes de que empezara estudiar este idioma muy diferente del español e inglés, solía callarse.

Por este chico que de Facebook, se llama Ruan y lo conocí porque se fijó en el “post” sobre la mutilación de dos niños en un pueble en el norte de Namibia, porqué han cometido el pecado de la sodomía, y Ruan respondió a mi mensaje expresando su pena y horror. Me solicité un artículo sobre este caso para la nueva revista del movimiento para derechos para los homosexuales en Namibia – LGBT network. Luego le mandó un intento escrito y mientras me enamoré del. Era como una obsesión – la de aventura – y he incluso escrito dos poemas para el pero no ha quedado muy impresionado por ellos, respondiendo en una manera equivoca al recibirlos. ¡Por fin me ha escrito algo concreto hoy! diciéndome “no te conozco y por eso no puedo ayudarte con las cosas personales. Es mejor que tengamos una relación profesional.” Se refiere a mi última carta en la que le dijo que quería conocerlo para poder enamorarme del.

En su modo, mi ha rechazado el intento de ligar con el. Bueno pero, prefiero que me diga simplemente “no puedo, tengo novio” y si no tiene uno solo “no puedo” , como la cantante en la canción “obesesión.” Durante todo esta búsqueda a una pareja, me he dado cuenta de ser un poco como el cantante de esta canción.

“… mi única esperanza es que oigas mis palabras…” canta el y ella responde enseguida “No puedo tengo novio” que provoca “no me enganches por favor” de su parte

I must write

2010-10-24T13:05:00.001-07:00

I must write! A lo largo de un día, como hoy, domingo, paso horas pensando en las cosas que podría escribir en este blog, pero al fin no les escribo porque ¡hay tan mucho que escribir! Sería imposible escribirlo todo.

Je ne sais pas pourquoi mais au tours d’un jour tel qu’aujourd’hui je passes d’heures entière à penser à ce que je pourrais écrire ici au blog, mais je finis toujours par rien écrire, puisque il serait impossible de l’écrire tout.

Non lo capisco per niente pero tutti i giorni, come questo – è domenica – passo un ora all’altra pensanda a le cose che potrei scrivere in questo blog ma alla fine non ne scrivo niento perchè tutto mi viene troppo, mi sembra una cosa così dificile da fare che non la faccio. Pero qui scrivero qualcosa per mettervi al corrente della mia vita.

I do not understand it. The three paragraphs above all discuss the same thing, though the one in Italian expands upon the first two. I often feel overwhelmed by all of the things that happen to me, not because they are bad, on the contrary they feel my life with happiness. But because I feel the need to write them all this is impossible. Nonetheless, through writing at least I allow some of my memories to come back to life.

Today was a most wonderful day! I realized how blessed I am – again, but I was also convicted of how I take so much for granted. I spoke to my grandmother this afternoon, while I was alone at home. My mother has left to the coast for work and my brother, as per his habit since I got here from Princeton, is out on the weekends. In any case, my grandmother in Bulgaria lamented how none of us, neither me nor my brother, had even made a mention of the clothes they sent us via my mother who was in Bulgaria. I apologized and she accepted it saying “it’s ok this is just a critique from one friend (comrade) to another (how would you translate “drugarska kritika”?).

I feel this post must come to an end. But yes, I am grateful. For my family, for my ability to run to move as I did when I ran home this late afternoon from the cathedral, through town, through Windhoek West up the hill, past the open space set aside for our park – in Dorado Park (my “suburb” – but its just a stones through away from the city, so not a suburb in the American sense) and down the hill to my street. No I am going to give you my street name, next thing I know you’ll be stalking me psycho (actually if you are reading this you could only be a friend, because I give this address to friends only.)

I am applying for the Fulbright grant, at long last. I need to write a personal statement, but write now I am torn between two different directions. One will be to speak about AIDS and prisoners and how I want to do research that will contribute to our knowledge about people on the margins who are effectively “invisible”, João Biehl put in “Will To Live: AIDS and the Politics of Survival”. The other approach would be write about malaria and how it represents a problem that has to be approached from multiple aspects – population genetics of the parasite and people, statistical inquiries into indicators of disease and survival, medical diagnostics and diagnoses and of anthropological (sociological) aspects. But I do not yet have any experience with malaria in any way, while my job at the ministry of health last year brought me close to the problem of the marginalization of the prisons. But actually, I do have an experience with malaria! The two malaria professors at the University of Namibia! They both took me out to lunch on separate occasions.

The first time, the molecular biologist I spoke too (Professsor A) wanted me to volunteer in his group for his lab projects. This would have entailed doing Western blots and other lab procedures that take eons to do, such as knock out as well purification of certain plant matter in search of antimalarial activity. I turned him down because I am really more interested in the anthropological side and the very reason I am here in Namibia after Princeton is because I want to explore ways of research outside of the lab. Alright, he understood. So when Professor B (his name actually starts with B as well!) came and asked me if I would be willing to help him and A write a

review article about the anthropological aspects of malaria, for a pioneering Namibian academic journal, I was excited. But I soon realized I would need formal recognition – as member of their research group – for me to publish anything with them. When I asked them to give me formal status and a transport stipend (the cost of traveling to the University of Namibia each day from my house should be covered by them, since they approached me and I am volunteering, for Pete’s sake! – Do I know a Pete? Peter yeah, but no Pete, anyway). So Professor B said he would contact the head of the research group and he would come back to me. He never did, in spite of my calls.

I was then close to doing cool research on the primary literature – and looking at collected data from the ministry of health – for a malaria review article, but it feel through. Had I had my masters in epidemiology already, things would have been different, perhaps? So that is what I will write about for my Fulbright!

Dinner is ready! I baked rice with ground beef, carrots, peas and onions! I wanted to make really Bulgarian and ended up with something generic. Except there is 4ybritsa (Chubritsa) our signature Bulgarian spice in it.

I have switched off the oven, but I am not hungry. I had tarator (look it up) – a great Bulgarian dish – earlier and I feel somewhat full. Need to sleep!
Oh as for my GRE general test ! Maximum ponage, ETS will scarcely believe they were whopped by a test taker in Namibia! Perhaps both us whopped ETS’s ass, myself and this other young lady who took the test with me, it was just us too. She works for an American study abroad program that brings students to do a semester abroad in Namibia doing different social science research projects. I met three participating students – all lovely young ladies, Ruth-Anne Dohner, Jasmine and Jessica (do I remember their last names, no, but I pray they are doing well!). I may write to them soon.

Goodridance GRE, yes it is true what they say “third time’s a charm.”

P.S. I miss a lot of you my friends, at this moment, I am thinking of Christian Milan, Kate Poole (2D – co op people) and my wife Amanda Howard who more than three years ago proposed to me “ Do you want to have a facebook marriage?” after I remarked that so many of our peers at Princeton had hitched on the internet. Of course, I accepted to be her lawfully wedded wyfie.

I miss making bread – which I did not do much of at the co- op, except in the last few weeks of my life as student at Princeton. I made it about twice or three times and it was great!

Also, as for my aim to make Sunday a busy – normal weekday – where I am ultra productive: fail. This will not work, even if I do keep the Sabbath Friday- Saturday, in my own Jesus is my lover kind of way.

Languages

2010-09-28T13:31:00.000-07:00

In discussing the way our indigenous languages are undervalued, I would like to begin with the following questions:

Why is it that indigenous languages are only offered for study at government schools in rural areas?

Why is it that there are events about the intricacies of the French language and culture (nuit de l’écrit – feast for the readers) but there are no events dedicated to Namibian indigenous language and their rich oral traditions?

Why is that we have to pay more than three times more (N$1700) to study a Namibian indigenous language at Polytech than we have to pay for Spanish (N$ 400)?

And most of all, why is that as a young Namibian, I am more drawn to learning Spanish than my own Oshiwambo?

I remember my experience at recent opening of an art exhibition at national art gallery of Namibia. As usual, there were quite a few foreigners at the event, and this time the majority happened to be Spaniards, as their embassy sponsored the exhibition. I recall being in the midst of Spaniards and also hearing two men speaking Oshiwambo nearby. I was about to gravitate to the Spaniards and continue to refine my command of the language of Cervantes, but then I opted to go over to the gentlemen. I tried to make out what they were saying, but it was just a stream of Oshiwambo, some of which I understood, to my ears. So I moved to look at the sculpture and speak with Spanish lady, who described her multiple interpretations of a large flint shaped rock with a hole in it, as a bird that was about to take off. Currently, I cannot describe an artwork in Oshiwambo – that is just beyond the level I have reached studying with the aid of a free book “Te ti! - a manual for Oshindonga” that I downloaded free of charge from the internet. Kudos to the Namibians who collaborated with American Peace Corps volunteers to write that book and then put online for all to access. But it is somewhat ironic that I am learning the language of my fatherland through a book designed for foreigners.

Why am I writing this piece? I need to find a way to express my fear that we, including myself, are mesmerized by European languages at the expense of appropriating our own. Indeed, there are benefits to learning those languages, including a successful career in the hospitality sector or access to foreign institutions of higher learning. But do we realize we are buying into the hegemony of these languages? Let me explain clearly. In my Spanish we had to comment to on following statement using the future tense:

Los expertos opinan que ingles, español y chino serán los idiomas dominantes del futuro y las lenguas minoritarias desaparecerán.

“Experts relieve that English, Spanish and Chinese with the dominant languages of the future while the languages of minorities will disappear”.

I guess that seems possible, at least in the case of Namibia, where we are still coming to grips with what means to be a multilingual society with only one official language, which by the way, nearly no one claims as their own. Perhaps this is just a phase in development and one day Namibia will be developed and English will be our forte. Welcome to the United States of Africa, where “ethnic languages” are mere vestiges of our primitive past.

Update after UNAM humanities and Social Science Conference

2010-09-26T03:05:00.000-07:00

I went to the conference of the humanities and social sciences of UNAM on Thursday and Friday. It was deeply satisfying and enriching, I not only learnt a lot but I had a chance to network with sociologists who are keen for us to push for a scientific presentation of the sentinel survey results of 2010 – I am excited at the prospect!

Finally, I will have a chance to do something really epidemiological in Namibia. I think I have done quite a few med anthro things (at two published op pieces, which you will find in this blog). A rigorous treatment of the sentinel survey of HIV prevalence amongst pregnant women is what I need. Perhaps I will have access to the data and I will manipulate in R! How fun.

Rather than elaborating at length about the conference, I wish, for the sake of time, to speak about the work of a visual artist. She presented on her exhibition “Images of Fertility and Abundance”. A cross between a mandrake and an octopus with branching tentacles is what some of the works resemble. Then there are prehistoric like images of mother figures with burgeoning wombs and opened seed pods that resemble the female genitals. “Nature is fool of images that I find erotic” said the artist. Of course, she did not elaborate on exactly how they were erotic.

I enjoyed this exhibition, because of its earth-like references and how it valued the human body. Spirals of colored wind that flew all over a canvas comprised one of her paintings, in my perspective. It was also great to see how as an artist, she connected her works with sociologically relevant themes. She spoke of how she aimed to counter “the culture of consumerism and materialism” that is becoming dominant in Namibia: “We all want to live in a big house in Ludwigsdorf [affluent suburb of Windhoek] with a four by four car and many accounts, but I just want to question that – can everyone in Africa do that and what will happen if they did?” Her artwork – full of the colors in the wind – was inspired by abundance and it drew you in with the warm red, orange and yellows. To me it illustrated how consumerism draws people in.

Her references to alternative, pre-Christian, forms of spiritually were equally intriguing. She had an “earth altar” that she was inspired to create by the personal, home, Christian shrines that people employed in the Byzantine empire, at some point in time. Her shrine of an open white carnivore jaw – like an ivory serrated V – affixed to a brown earth background. Bones in the dirt, a fossil or the first human shrine in Africa tens of millennia ago? I really enjoyed this and I feel moved to explore the connection my own spirituality has to nature. Indeed, I feel I have been overburdened by patriarchal, heterosexist forms of Christianity. Apart from valorizing the inherent validity of homoerotic relationships, I need to also explore the role nature has in the sacred.

Alright, that’s it for now!

Pancho

Save Tonight (Zach you'll love this!)

2010-09-18T11:38:00.000-07:00

I know that end of the Sabbath has come. For me, who is accustomed to keeping the Sabbath on Friday to Saturday, the working week has official begun. But remember, I am not Jewish in the first place, so I should be allowed some flexibility right? And more importantly I would like to savor these last few moments of evening – I want to save to night, though I won’t fight the break of dawn. I will post this letter, rather than writing my progress report of my life post Princeton to my former advisor or continuing in my search for admission to a Masters program. I will save the night, I will extend that one hour after sunset so that the Sabbath goes on until I finish this letter to you my dear readers. Especially for Zach Marr – this is for you.

It is from my friend Zach Marr that I learnt about music and how it connects to faith. On his blog, you’ll find it’s all about that. Now I am writing about how there is a song “Save The Night” by Lenny Kravitz which defies the dichotomy of “secular and Christian” music. It also defies the dichotomy of music that is “gay or straight” and the unison of the two former concepts the dichotomy of a “straight devout Christian or a disgruntled homosexual non-Christian”. In this song, I feel gay and Christian themes coming out strongly.

If you have heard this song you will know its about Lenny Kravitz singing :“Save the Night and fight the break of dawn, come tomorrow, tomorrow I’ll be gone”. It is insightful for me to say these lyrics are modern, hip version of the Gospel, where Jesus tells his disciples to keep the vigil as he goes to pray in the garden, the night his passion began. In the Gospel, it recounts how Jesus roused them to wake up when he came from prayer and they were sleeping. This occurred, according to the Gospel, moments before the guards came to cease Jesus. Now Lenny Kravitz is saying what Jesus would have said back then, but in a way that invites us to enjoy his company. But then there is an apparent incongruity that of Lenny singing “Girl you know I got to go” and that of Jesus speaking to his disciples who, as far as the gospel suggests were all men. Mary Magdalene was absent that night.

For me, this is where queer theory comes into play. Though Lenny may sing “girl” this term is broad enough to include both women and gay men. As gay men, we often call each other “girl” or “girlfriend” as we shun traditional genders that for centuries have been thrust upon us – the prerogative of being “men”. At first I never understood how this could be possible, but then one day at Wilcox dinning hall at Princeton, I meet Nour and he was wearing a generic rubber wrist band, except it was pink with the words “mamma I’m a big girl now.” “Nour, you are not a girl, are you, why do you have that wrist band,” I asked him, genuinely befuddled “I am a big girl Pancho, aren’t you?” he answered rather amused. I did not get it immediately, and I protested “no I am not a big girl, I am boy” and he insisted “One day you’ll realize you are big girl too.” The dialogue was somehow different, there are not exact citations, but let that not detract from my point: we are also girls as gay, bisexual and especially transgender wo(men). Later it dawned on me that I had a feminine side that I had overlooked. So Jesus or Lenny Kravitz could be singing to a man, a gay, bisexual or transgender wo(man).

I take you understand the complexity of it all. Well I hope you also understand the simplicity : The song, as the Bible, speaks to an individual who interprets it as function of his identity and circumstances. In this sense, I believe Christ encompasses all sexualities, because he invites us all, to partake in his supper just before his imminent departure. Indeed, the song also alludes to the last supper. Lenny speaks of saving the night with “me, you and a bottle of wine”. How much closer to the sharing of the blood can you come to now?

Alas, the one hour after Shabbis is over and I feel the need to conclude and go forth to do all the other things I need to do. “Girl you know I got go, Lord I wish it wasn’t so, save tonight and fight the break of dawn, come tomorrow, tomorrow I’ll be gone.” An call for us to carpe diem and live for Christ now. Christ is worth saving the night for and I have spent many a night in his presence, though his physicality eluded me, I have visualized him with me. Much like Madonna’s like a prayer “In the midnight hour I can feel your power just like a prayer, you know I’ll take you there”, I feel the deep thrusting of lovemaking in my mind. Like A Prayer, it goes without saying, is another of those songs that seems secular, but is actually a praise song. I realized this when I was 16 and I always dreamt of singing this song at my Christian youth group (run by wonderful Baptist missionaries, in spite of our divergence of views on homosexuality). Back then, I did not venture to contemplate the sexual overtones of Like A Prayer, but now I understand that subconsciously, the sexual and spiritual were one, which meant I could not distinguish one from the other. Do you think I can now?

God Bless

Pancho

Il Vangello per i Gay

2010-09-13T02:05:00.000-07:00

To: Isacc Martinez-Perez, Sagrado Nova Flores, Angelo Castello, Diego Cominazzini, Coleman Conelly.

Carnissimi amici e fratelli in Gesù Cristo,

Volevo mandarvi questa lettera tanto tempo fa, ma non ci riuscivo per tutti gli altri impegni – quotidiani ed altri legatti alle mie ambizioni – che me sequestravano il tempo. Comunque, oggi mi metto a farlo. Spero che stiate bene e sapiate che voglio bene.

Ho scritto questa lettera quasi quatro mesi fa.

La lettera nasce del mio desiderio di parteggiare la mia fede e la mia esperienza come un cristiano gay con gli, soprattuto con voi, amici miei che ho conosciuto durante gli ultimi cinque anni della mia vita. L’uso dell’italiano è anche un modo di ricordarmi di voi, siccome siete italiani o italofoni (grazie al Collegio del mondo Unito o altre istitutuzione, ad essemip Princeton University, dove ci siamo conosciuti.) Tra l’altro sto imparando lo spagnolo è se non mantengo activamente l’italiano, sarà conquistato come fu l’America (in effeti, il verbo ser di spagnolo sta sostituiscendo essere)

Ecco la mia lettera:

Questa mattina è lucida qui Namibia e profito benissimo del sole di Agosto. Vi scrivo perchè mi sento davvero comosso, convinto dallo Spirto Santo che devo parteggiare con voi la buona novità del vangelo.

Magari, alcuni di voi vi chiedete “Ma che ne voglio sapere di Dio, non sono mica religioso” Io, invece, ho bisogno di Gesù. Il suo messagio ci ricopre della garantità di un more abbondante per la sua salvezza. Adesso potrei parlare della vita a venire – nell’alto dei cieli – pero penso che l’aspetto della vita vita attuale sia più importante.

Quante sono state le volte che noi – omosessuali o bissessuali – abbiamo perso la fiducia in Gesù? Magari siamo passatti per la mezonga che Gesù ci condanna a una tortura eterna del corpo. Tutta una storia di intoleranza che portiamo con noi nei confronti di qualunque cosa cristiana.

Adesso vi invito a accostarvi insiemi a Gesù. Chi bussa alla porta? Puo darsi Gesù che vuole cenare alla tua tavolla: “Ecco sto alla porta e busso. Se qualcuno ascolta la mia voce e mi apre la porta, io verrò da lui e cenerò con lui ed egli con me.” Apocalisse 3: 20 (Revelations 3:20).

Invece di constringerci ad accolgierlo, Gesù ci chiedi il permesso d’accoglienza. Questo è fondamentale perchè scelgiamo noi la fede.

Chi di voi possa pretendere di vivere una vita complettamente soddisfatta? Nemmeno io, posso dirvelo. Pero, piano a piano, il senso della mia vita appare. Più che camin accanto a Gesù più che provo un amore piena agape e eros – il quale nessuno mi pùo togliere. Considerate questa frase: Jesus in Love with Lesbians, Bisexual, Asexual ,Gay and Transgender people -JILL BAGT (Se facessi un giorni un spettacollo di drag, vestito da donna, questo sarebbe il mio nome alternativo). Tutti noi abbiamo bisogno di Dio o dobbiamo imparare a essere umili per capire quanto siamo bisognosi.

Volevo scrivervi una lettera ispirata a San Paolo, il quale (a proposit) era ‘gay’ secondo un blogger che tratta temmi sulla sessualità e il cristianismo (www.gospelforgays.com). Ho perfino scritto un contribuito in questo blog, si chiama “My comming out story”, è tutto in inglese. Vi devo una spiegazione, lo so, come mai vi scrivo tutto un discorso sul critianismo senza nessuna notizia della mia vita quotidiana? Controlate i mieie blog pmulonge.blogspot.com e writinghealth.wordpress.com se volete sapere un po’ più dei miei progetti e pensieri

Rispondetemi in qualsiasi lingua, se non la capisco che google a tradurla.

Attention à la tension!

2010-09-05T03:46:00.000-07:00

Attention à la tension!

Le Blog « Pancho’s Brouillons » à été mis sur pieds pour m’aider à réfléchir à traves l’écriture. Alors, je vais m’en servir maintenant car je me sens au bout de quelque chose inévitable – la perte de ma motivation pour étudier la langue de mon père des mes ancêtres récents africains (je dis récents puisque nous sommes tous africains les hommes), le Oshiwambo. Je ressens que cela soit inévitable en raison du fait que je m’occupe de plus en plus de ma quête pour une bourse d’étude de master en France. Et voila n’est-il point ironique que j’écris ce brouillon en français ?

D’habitude j’étudie l’Oshindonga le matin chez moi en ma chambre (l’un de deux dialectes d’Oshiwambo que on peut étudier formellement en Namibie). J’ai trouvé un livre de méthode de langue, c’est-a-dire un texte complet pour l’apprendre tout seul y compris des exercices dans l’internet. Ce livre-là est aussi gratuit à chacun qui le désire, ce sont des américains volontariats de « paix de corps » à le mettre en ligne pour tout le monde. Ce qui s’est passé ce matin c’était que j’ai du aller voir le directeur du centre culturel franco namibien. Je lui a parlé de bourses pour faire un master en France et je suis tellement content que finalement j’ai la chance de préparer une candidature pour en master en France ! Quelle joie ! En effet, c’est lui qui s’est rapproché de moi une journée quand j’étais la dans le foyer avec mon amie Fabrice Laurentin et il m’a posé la question :

« Est-ce que tu voudrais étudier en France ? »

« Mais oui, » j’ai répondu, d’après ce que je m’en souviens, mais la citation exacte n’est pas importante. Ce qui je veux souligner c’est que depuis cet rendez vous informel, je me suis mis à écrire ma lettre de motivation vu que il m’a dit « ramène-moi une lettre de motivation et ton CV » c’est jour là et aussi et ce qu’il a répété ce matin au cours de notre réunion plutôt décontractée malgré je lui accordais tout le temps le ‘vous’ alors qu’il m’a tutoyé lors qu’il répondait à mes questions.

Effectivement, je ne me plains pas. C’est juste frustrant que je ne parle autant bien l’Oshindonga que français ! En outre, les enjeux autour l’apprentissage d’Oshindonga sont ceux de la famille, de pouvoir me communiquer avec ma grande mère, laquelle j’ai vu cette dernière fin de semaine au nord de Namibie. En revanche, quant au français je l’apprends toujours et j’intensifie mes lectures en cette langue parce que je veux capitaliser sur l’opportunité d’étudier l’épidémiologie en France. Par conséquent, je pense que je vais finir par vendre mon âme au français en oubliant mon patrimoine et en échangeant le capacité de manier bien l’Oshindonga contre la maîtrise d’une langue colonisatrice et hégémonique.

Par contre, l’Oshindonga est aussi hégémonique vu que tous les autres dialectes d’Oshiwambo sauf qu’un n’ont point de même les plus basique ouvrages écrits. Pas de publicités ni des labels en ces dialectes-là les. En Namibie, il n’y a que l’oshindonga et Oshikwanyama dans le domaine public, à la radio, en la télé, dans les journaux.

Alors, maintenant je pense d’avoir parvenu à un point que je peux dépasser, au-delà du quel je n’arrive pas à grimper. Ce brouillon s’arrête ici. Mes études d’Oshindonga vont continuer, mais pas au même rythme, celui du commencent, de la découvert de cette langue tellement différente du français, mais qui partage, d’autre côte, beaucoup de choses en commun.

Il faut que j’aille. Un jour, peut être, je vais reprendre ce brouillon-ci et mes études sérieux d’Oshindonga.

En commencent ce brouillon, j’ai voulu écrire sur la tension entre mon désir d’aller en France pour étudier et d’apprendre l’Oshindonga. Désormais, je me rends compte du fait que cette tension n’existe plus. Je l’ai cassée. J’accepte la domination du français et en l’acceptant je conquiers contre lui.

Las Tensiones que animan mi vida

2010-08-31T03:20:00.000-07:00

Alvarez, not Juan my friend, former roommate (for a week in Arezo) and classmate, but Alvarez the name of a woman writer who once said “it is through writing that we live the many lives that we cannot in real life.” I read this at the American Cultural Center one day when I was perusing the shelves – favorite procrastination pass time. I was supposed to be doing something related to my GRE prep (only a month and half left to go and I will be done with them!).But I cannot sit on the computer (good thing I am doing the paper based GRE), I hate it, and yet I am here, because the notepad I find too tedious. Ironically, I believe the notepad is doomed to disposal and with it my scribbles, while the laptop has some enduring quality. In fact, laptop bits and bytes are no less ephemeral than the writings on paper, if not more. At a click of a button they are gone, a the drop of water in the inner workings of the machine and they are scrambled forever.

Today was a fairly beautiful day. I was fortunate enough to run in the Italian lady I met here – signora Barbara Castelli. We had so much fun catching up, since she was away. Wait, should I be writing this in Italian now? How can I best conceal that fact that I am actually deeply an English thinking person, though I pass much of my time speaking and pondering in other tongues? Non importa, l’unica cosa che conta è che ti arrichia la vitta, la esistenza parlando in altre lingue, bensi che non le comandi, non le parli o pensi quanto bene che l’inglese, ma in fatti, pensiamo più profandamente in queste lingue straniere di quanto uno pensa, siccome possiamo usarli per esprimere quei desideri i quali sessuali o volgari che temiamo dire nel linguaggio materno per la stigma.

Lo spagnolo è più difficile di quanto uno pensa - Spanish is more difficult that one thinks it to be (said Barbara). Now I will surely be able to maintain and develop Italian whilst learning the langauge of Cervantes (its linguistic “cousin”. And what of my own language, Oshiwambo? I am learning it, albeit, at a slow pace, my own pace, using the book I downloaded from the net – that treatise of language Te ti, a self teaching guide complete with exercise that certain intrepid and dedicated peace corps volunteers put together with the help of the Oshindonga speakers they met here. There is so much tension between my learning and wielding of these languages. Like there is in between me composing my dances, writing to friends about Christ and our gay identity, being Namibian and Bulgaria, man and gay and who knows what else. “Sometimes, this tension threatens to tear us asunder”, says Alvarez.

I hope it will not. Yes, I will say, because I believe it, by the Lord’s grace I will find what is best!

I want your love!

2010-08-07T10:14:00.000-07:00

“I want you love, love, love, love, I want your love…Jesus” Really I do and not just because Lady Gaga sings about it. She is caught in a bad romance, without sex, which is why she laments throughout the whole song. I, on the other hand, am in a relationship where sex and love – Eros – imbues it with meaning. Jesus is my lover!

“That’s crazy!” was what Abdul said yesterday when we were talking about sex with Jesus. The conversation over the dinner table in our small kitchen astounded me: we were really going deep into what it meant for me to fantasize and experience the Holy Spirit in the most orgasmic of ways. We were talking about Christianity, and yet we ventured into territory some would consider blasphemous. We were have a Shabbat dinner, but it was not Jewish – Pork and beef with Greek tzitzaki – totally not kosher. We ate well, but we did not indulge or overeat: Bienque d’habitude je suis un gourmande, cette fois-là la gourmandie n’a pas figuré au cours du diner : On a résisté à tout manger, puisque il fallait qu’il y avait de la bouffe pour mon frère qui était ailleurs. Néanmoins, on s’est bien remplie surtout avec le buffet que la bonne compagnie nous a offert.

Nous avons mangé et parlé et marché dehors pour lui trouver un taxi et on a prié ! Quelle joie !

So Jesus thank you so much. Si il mio amico è rimasto un po’ perplesso del mio discorso del eros con Gesù, ma nonostante tutto ciò, l’amore di Dio – quelle che è al di là di ogni piacere fisco, ci collegava in una compresione straordinaria. La fraternita. Poi oggi, il mio fratellion, si fratellina bensì sia più grande e alto di me, mangiava la zupa di fronte a me alla tavola. La zupa che io avevo preparato e reso bella – proprio da mangiare in un ristorante – ordonata da tre foglie de menta su un cucchiaio di yoghurt messo nella zupa arancione di lentiche. Appetizzante!

Now, is the time I conclude this blog entry. I need to write letters. I accumulate so many letters, many of them unfinished, or transcribed on paper and never sent. I often feel burdened by the vastness of it all, the cyber facebook universe and how many people I can write to as a result. As for the post, I use, but I guess I never post letters that I was supposed to. So now I will write some letters, those that are overdue. And then I will request mailing addresses for those who have written letters waiting for them.

I need to send a letter to my mother who is on holiday in Bulgaria. But she will be back before it reaches her, so then I will then just wait.

So then I need to get the addresses of :

Rickie Siegel

Coleman Conaley

Sagrado Nova-Flores

Mohammed Soushi

It is dusk, the Sabbath is almost over. I like to spend these last few moments writing to my dear friends.

Posts for End of July 2010

2010-08-01T06:44:00.001-07:00

Frid 30 July

I AM AT THE LAST STAGES NOW - JUST HAVE THIS FEE TO PAY . I applied to grad school in South Africa at WITS University! Prasie the Lord, after so many obstacles, bureaucracy has not triumphed over my resolve to apply.

Sat 31 July

Chisha’s Birthday! I need to call her, I almost forgot. But this is what is great about a blog, it allows you to reflect on the day and not just on the events, on the actual date itself which in itself reminds of things. Chisha is one my best friends, we met here in grade 1 (first grade). She was so slender like a deer – and just as elegant – then. Very intelligent and still is. I wish her all the best of health and happiness!

I just spoke to Chisha. She is at the beach in Walvis Bay by the waves “Can’t you hear the waves” she asked as I spoke to her over the phone, imagining her by the shore with Chister, he boyfriend by her side. They went skydiving this morning! That was her surprise birthday present. Imaginate, si sono lanciati da un aereo a migliaia di metri sopra la terra e per trenta secondi, second lei, cadi liberamente e poi ti appre la paracaduta e atteraggi al corso di cinque minuti piano piano.

I just realized that I have a life. I have always had one, even when I was at Princeton. Even when I wrote my thesis in that week of weeks – the last week of April 2010, I still had dinner, still had conversations, even though I felt quite stressed. This weekend has been great so far. The Sabbath was peaceful yesterday evening this afternoon. Though I keep the Sabbath, I am not a convert to Judaism and its beliefs – just now I was having a pork Goulash and it was delicious. I am Christian. But since I have a number of Jewish friends, at Princeton I learnt to go to the CJL and spend time with them. I could not keep the Sabbath when I was a student, really my life was just overloaded and not conducive to doing it. Now I can.

Pakistan is experiencing the worst floods in collective memory. I should do something – so I am going to donate to the Red Cross. I was having a lovely dinner with Claudia, an Italian lady who lives in Finland who is the legal guardian of Marta, a four year old Namibian girl who was orphaned. People are scrambling, trying to flee the flooded areas and seeking their loved ones. I was at ease knowing my brother is safe in our house and that we live a semi arid land where floods are unheard off. People are at risk of water borne disease. I take my health for granted often. Is there anything wrong with this picture?

Lord help me to be your light.

During dinner we spoke of a Giovanni. “Giovanni Giobbe” ho ditto io, “È Sicilliano” “Come lo sapevi?” le ho chiesto stupidito dal fatto che riconosce le origini del unico Giovanni nella mia vita – quello “del collegio” colla barba e i baffi – il bello tipo che ear il compagno di stanza “il roomo” di Dro di cui ero inamorato per i primi tre mesi della mia esperianza indemnticabile “al collegio” in Italia. Mi piace poter pensare alla gente, che posso vissualizzarli – i miei amici – anche se sono lontano fisicamente e poi che posso pregare per loro. Le preghiere contanono, si contano e aiutano.

Grazi a te o Signore.

I also had a chance to go to Church youth group today! I danced in the grass.

Soy ballongo y cuando empiezo no paro de ballar. En el jardín de nuestra iglesia hay un árbol alrededor del que hay es verde y estuve balando mientras que los “hermanos” – aquellos hombres que desean ser curas – cantaban y tocaban las tamborines

Me puse alegre siempre cuando la gente toca o canta y quiero moverme

¡La vida es carnaval y las penas se van cantando!

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,

Life is great, without you it would be meaningless,

Please help always to invite to dinner when I say grace, as I did tonight and let me mean it!

Apparently, the Virgin Mary at Fatima said that we must pray for souls to be saved. In her words, this means praying “Oh My Jesus, save us from the fires of hell, bring all souls to heaven, especially those in most need of your mercy.”

I am not sure whether this entails conversion or just plain salvation, no matter what the person does. I think it means both.

In any case, I think the essence of this prayer is that people are really in trouble, on this earth, suffering, because of the human condition. To bring them to heaven, to save them, is of course to redeem them from the human condition – what some refer to as evil or the devil. I pray this is what we can do, because whether or not you care about the afterlife, people in this life are suffering and need us!

Bloody Saturday

2010-07-25T03:43:00.000-07:00

What in the world is going on here? Drops of blood on the floor of my house. The door was wide open and those red spots on the floor were my welcoming to the evening. “My friend was hurt” was Branden’s reply as he buzzed passed me to the outside. I took a mere two steps and there he lay on the couch. In blood I saw him reclining back, his arm in the blue purple hues of blood, the darkness of it all. On his body, on his ear, the left side of his face and in that wound on his neck. A slit no wider than a pocket knife blade opened up his neck and to reveal the deep dark red. It was Joshua, my brother’s friend. “He was stabbed” came a reply from where upon my questions.

He was breathing deeply. “Please call” came the moan when I announced in the house “Did someone call an ambulance?!”

What I found that night was different from what had happened in the daylight before. I was away from home with an Italian lady and her adoptive daughter. How joyous was our afternoon in the sun! There was climbing of a cargo net outdoors, eating bratwurst, lamb and even bean banana salad in the open air. There was no appetite for me that night, when I returned. Perhaps I had enough before, but perhaps it was just that smell of blood, as I cleaned it all up afterwards – when the ambulance had already gone with him to the Hospital. And my brother’s other friend – Robert – who was apparently lucky to have gotten away with just a scratch compared to what befell Joshua. Why such a wretched evening? What about the day? The devil surely has his way.

Quattro anni fa una cosa del genere capitò nella nostra cosa. Era anche di notte quando l’amante di Peggy, una amica della nostra famiglia, venne arrabiato per trovarci. Saltò sopra del recinto del giarno invece sonnare alla porta. Perchè non mi rendí conto del fatto che fosse agressivo e pericoloso? Invece, come uno scemo, l’ho fatto entrare in casa dovè eravamo tutti noi tre. Mio fratelllo, Daniele, Peggy e Io. La mamma era in Bulgaria e il Pappa simplicemente non c’era. Tutto fu sconvolto , la sua ira l’ha fatto sconvolgere la cena, buttare i piatti per terra. Peggy è rimasta male. L’ha spinta per terra e lei è caduta sbattendosi la coda – la parte tra la pancia e le gambe – contro la terra ceramica della nostra cuccina. Non sono riusciato a impedirlo, mi ha solo spinto via. Poi arrivarò la guardia (security guards) che Daniella chiamò premendo il “panic button” nella camera della mia mama. Ieri non nessuno ha invaso la nostra casa. Anzi, sono statti pichiati fuori, a uno centri metri della casa, quando stavano andando al negozino del nostro quartiere. Non so come Joshua cel’ha fatta a caminare fino a nostra cose con quelle piaghe addosso.

Ma mia mamma era in Bulgaria è mio padre non c’era. E come quel dia quatro anni fa, non fu raggiungibile – non ha risposto alle mie chiamate al suo telefonino.

Remarkably, I maintained my calm as I saw this young man lay there before me. Immediately, I remembered that we had a first aid kit and so I retrieved from the kitchen medicine cabinet. The thought of calling a doctor – our family knows two very well – ran through my mind. Putting the red pouch on the kitchen table before the wounded boy, I rushed to the telephone. As he was in agony, a dilapidated state, I dialed the number of Dr Star. No answer. What to do, should I call or put on some bandages first. I need to act and so I did, I decided to go for the first aid kit. It unzipped in mere seconds and in split seconds I noticed the different items: the gauze bandage, the sterile compresses in packaging – I need a scissor, where ? Here it is. But my hands – they are not sterile and this is, but what they will never be. There were not visibly dirty so I just went for it. Oh these plastic tweezers should help and here is a sterile alcohol swab. “Joshua this is going to sting a little” I said with a remarkable sense of confidence, as if I knew what I was doing. Then I saw the wound in his neck. It had blood in it, like it was minuscule lake of red on his sand colored skin, but it was not flowing or gushing. So what use would this serve? Non serviva a niente! I swapped the wound with the alcohol swab and all I did was to dab in that crimson red. Then I put on the patch of gauze like material, only a few millimeters thick on it, and then I began winding around the bandage. I went rough the bend, where his head leaned against the couch and I asked him to lift his head, and he did, and I went round again, and he lifted once more, and I think I did this twice more till I realized I did not know what to do next.

J’ai dressé sa blessure mais franchement, cela n’a pas servi aucun fonction médicale, puisque le sang ne coulait pas, je me suis rendu compte que c’était juste pour le soigner – il a servi à ce qu’il savait que quelqu’un prend soin de lui.

Would this wrap around bandage stay on ? How? Taking a moment to focus, I realized I needed to just cut it and then tuck the end in to the other layers already on his neck. And it held. I believe only the Lord helped then to focus before such a wounded person. I wished I knew what I was doing; I wish I had some first aid training or something that could guide me. That was what I lacked. I plan to be trained in first aid, because I want to be empowered. For what? Next time? I don’t want there to be a next time, but sadly there is this thing called the human condition, some people call it evil, others call it the devil while still others are just plain indifferent to it all. That is why I need to be certified.

So I have put this to posterity on my blog. Now I can get one with me life. I can continue applying to grad school, I continue looking for a job, I can continue living a meager existence. No. The last item on that list will not continue.

Lord, help me to find in you the strength I need to go on. I know I am weak without you. We are all weak. Was any of this my doing Lord?

Leave home in the morning. Have a splendid with another family, knowing your brother plans to have a barbeque at home with friends. Accept that your father is busy at a retreat that is tangentially related to his actual job, but still primal to what he does. Come back home feeling blessed. This was perhaps the recipe for disaster.

I don’t know. I really don’t.

I woke up last night, thinking about this. The boy, the poor boy Joshua, my brother’s friend. But he could have been my brother! In fact, in the grand scheme of things, we are brothers, we are all humans, we are both men (albeit that my brother asks me to “be a man and not a moffie”) and we are both children of God.

Now that I got this all out, let me go and see what I can cook for today.

Las Sunday

2010-07-25T03:42:00.000-07:00

El domingo de la semana pasada.

Hoy estuve buscando algo en el supermercado he visto a un chico que me parecía ser español. Era moreno y tenía el pelo más bien rizado y bastante largo. Mi parecía que el estuviera buscando la pasta italiana y al principio no quise ser distraído por él ¡Pero era muy guapo! No pude resistir a hablar con él, y por fin, decidí de me acercar a él, como estaba a algunos metros de mí en el negocio. “Perdón, ¿eres español?” le pregunté.

“No” me respondí. Ah si, entonces tiene que ser Italiano, pero me dije “no tampoco, soy de Israel.”

Ahora me dí cuenta del hecho que los Israelíes también son particularmente guapos y morenos. Pues, podría ser Judío de origen español.

¿Y eres sefardí?

“Si soy sefardí” me dijo confirmando mi pronóstico. Por supuesto – un sefardí que es efectivamente un español.

Luego no le dejó en paz – ¡como podía no hablar a un hombre que tal guapo!

Empecé a charlar con él “¿Has más ido a la sinagoga de Windhoek?”

“No, ¿dónde está?” Ahora podía explicarles las direcciones para ir a la sinagoga, no quería perderme esta oportunidad

“¡Está al lado de esté supermercado!” Pero no era fácil de explicárselas. Cómo no él conocía la ciudad, tuve que hacer un gran esfuerzo para explicarle donde estaba la sinagoga. Al fin, espero que haya entendido mis intentos de comunicar el camino más fácil para ir a la sinagoga. Pero, me pedió otras direcciones: ¿Dónde podemos comprar cosas para hacer camping?” Le dije que en Windhoek, casi siempre nadie trabajo el domingo y que mañana él podría ir a Marua Mall o Rhino Park para encontrar las cosas les que necesitaba. Luego, nos dijimos adiós y continuamos nuestras búsquedas en el gran negocio. Pero una cosa faltó. ¿Porqué no le preguntó de casarme en Argentina? Podríamos hacer una boda bonita, a lo mejor a Ushuaia – el punto más sur de la América – donde la naturaleza es preciosa y romántica. Pero en aquel momento no pensé a eso.

Hay siempre la próxima vez ¿No? Si y no me parecía nada gay – era algo macho, un hombre verdadero.

Además hay otra pregunta – ¿Porqué no hice un esfuerzo para mostrar mi cristianismo? Antes que me fuera, ¿porqué no le hablé de Cristo? Sé porque. Dado que no soy ese tipo de cristiano que se preocupa por la salvación de los demás, no necesitó hablar de eso. Sí, es verdadero, para mí, es importante que una persona me conozca y que yo sea abierto y comprensivo. Supongo que Dios ya tiene un camino par alcanzar a ellos. Por Cristo, cuento con el hecho que mis amigos encuentren a Cristo un día, a través nuestra amistad que viene del amor divino. Pues, por los judíos, pienso que Dios ya les tiene junto a él.

Estoy cansado. Voy a acostarme. Es tarde.

Jill bacht is alive!

2010-07-16T14:56:00.000-07:00

Monday 12 July 2010

Jill bagt is alive! I am writing to you as Pancho Mulongeni to tell you about other persona, my nickname, my feminine character – I dare not say woman, because I am a man - Jill bagt.

On the 17^th of July from 18:00 Jill will model in a fashion show for the Catholic Church Youth Group Gala Dinner. At Cathedral Hall, on Mandume Ndemufayo, just behind St Mary’s Cathedral, I will make a shameless statement of my disregard for hegemonic notions of gendered clothing right on the catwalk.

Why did I choose Jill bagt? Well her name actually means Jesus Loves Lesbians, Bisexuals, Asexuals, Gays and Transgenders. The ‘I’ in Jill is open to interpretation, I like to think it means “in” for “Jesus in love with…” or it could be “is the lover of…”

In any case, I want to affirm sexual minorities in and through our Christian faith. I hope you can come and join me and my friends at the Gala dinner (it costs only N$ 20) and support us! So far, I am not making a big fuss about it and I believe the Catholic Youth Groups will not either. I mean, women don’t make a fuss about wearing jeans, so should I?

Granted, Jeans wearing by women is not met with the same social animosity, at times, as men in skirts, but I believe in the goodness of people. I will not be dragged off the stage, come and see! Depending on the interest, I am thinking of also making Jill bagt into a “group” where we can meet and share our feelings and thoughts about the Christ who loves us, but who we are often told does not.

I hope you can come! Message me for any more information. I am modeling:

Winter wear, summer wear and a 60s look. If you have any suggestion for dressing, (any) please contact me!

Love in Christ

Pancho

Friday 16^th July 2010,

Tomorrow will I go onto the catwalk as Jill bagt? I believe so. But I am not so excited anyomore. Tell you why – there are things more important in life than that

Hoy me encontré con Morné, es un chico un poco más viejo de mi que hace el teatro (el drama) en el colegio de los artes. No lleva pelo – su cabeza es desnuda, ¿en español como se dice?

Morné Spike to me as he stood very close and in that time, it was just me and him, without all those people passing us by on their way to participate in consumerist culture edified by the shopping mall.

There he was talking to me and I was listening. I had seen him twice before. Once when I was in the dance class and he came to speak to Angie “That’s Morné “ she said.

I had seen him walk past me in Hochlandpark, on the street, past the grocery store and past the pink church where I used to go every Friday, till I found out they did not want me to talk about me being gay.

I told him “..but then I made Jesus my lover and he gives me everything.”

“Do you know [ don’t remember who he mentioned] he has a Christian group …[somewhere I don’t remember what Morné said]” he asked in reply

“No and I am not sure If I want to go to any group now. I know I have been at a group before, but now what I want to do is start one for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people, actually for anyone, but especially for us so we can have a place to talk about it.”

He agreed by the enlightening of his face and added “yes, because Christians will say in the Bible…”

I vaguely remember what I said, but I discussed how Christianity varies on interpretation of the text

“…Yes but there are so many interpretations…”

Then he amplified by saying “yes you could even argue Jesus was gay!” I did not say anything as much as smile at the proposition.

Earlier he told me how he was so busy last year and became addicted to drugs:

“I did about nine plays last year with Avalon, here and in Germany and then I got involved in drugs, I am now in rehab, recovering.” His frankness at the moment, in the shopping mall astounded me.

That is why I too reciprocated

“Last year I also had a problem with pornography, but I don’t know how addicted I was, but then I made Jesus my lover and he gives me everything.”

“I have a lot doubts about it all and I find it hard to accept” he expressed, his face making the gestures of incertitude.

“It’s a leap of faith,” I said as I tried to light up my face in glee.

Then we hugged and parted after some more conversation. He told me he had rehearsal with students tomorrow and that they would perform on the 22^nd of July. He invited me.

Our conversation actually began about performance, he stopping me as I walked briskly and telling me how he enjoyed the performance of the college of the arts, in which he said I danced in almost every piece. Our conversation, however, broke new ground when he told me about the drugs.

How did he do that?

Why?

I pray for him, I immediately told him I would. I feel drawn to him, even though I sense he is straight. How do I feel about him? Does it matter, let me pray. Lord protect us.

July 3rd 2010

2010-07-03T04:13:00.000-07:00

Blog roll.

Well I have not much time for this entry as in about 17 minutes, (about) I have to get ready to go to the theatre and perform there!

Nonetheless, here is a low down of what my week has been like.

I am applying to the WITS University. They have a great public health school and epidemiology program. If Joao Biehl cited them and if Phillip Tobias (doctor, anthropologist and scientist) studied and taught there then it should be good.

Before I can apply, I need to have my degree evaluated (yes, they have “never heard of Princeton”, I called and asked.) So much for prestige. The process of doing the evaluation was lengthy – just to have it sent to SAQA, cost me a lot of energy. I did not even start writing my personal statement for the application, which by the way, I will also use for an application for the Collins Trust.

Fore, all of a sudden an image of Fore came into my mind and I recall the yellow cream buildings, green creepers on the walls.

In any case, let me write something that will flex my writing muscles.

Paragraph 1 : A reflection on having to make a certified copy of my degree at US embassy for the evaluators.

Whoever invented telephone sure knew how to disappoint people. Invariably, this person was American, because voice recorded messages are American – we see people leaving them for others in the movies as children, or at least I did. Oh Goodness, I cannot even finish this entry, because my mother wants to find the damned electronic cigarette charger. Will write more later.

Pargarph 2: Jesus I love you. Why did i not turn to you oh Lord? At three yesterday I prayed “Oh Jesus, all day I have been with Martha, now let me sit at your feet with Mary and just look at you , but Lord I am still busy with Martha”. This was at the 3:07, a few minutes are the death our Lord on the Cross, which was also on Friday at 3:00pm. I could have stopped arranging my electronic bank transfers and form filling, my checking off the to do list and my mental calculations of time, to do yoga as I pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy. I did not manage to send off my application to SAQA yesterday. I did it this morning. There was not need to rush.

How annoying it is to hear my mother call “nyama go chargera, nyama go” – “ there is no charger, there is no charger”, as I write.

I am annoyed, and Lord, how can I find your peace to respond kindly, with patience, with Love, rather than in irritation? Lord please give me your peace.

Ticked off? Ask the Lord for His peace.

In one piece that I dance tonight, I am security guard, patrolling a park at night, when he comes across a woman crying on a bench. I wake her, we dance, we go into a fantasy and I realize that I am gay, but that I also am not under pressure to be her man. Somos amigos y ella no me necesita construir una identidad ilusadora.

Quotations – Tsitazi – Citations 3 July 2010.

“Si come no la maggior parte dei ballerini sono bambini”

Io rispondendo a Claudia, un italiana che è in corso di addottare una bambina namibiana, Marta, con la quale e insieme due o tre altre famiglie, verrano al mio sptaccollo di danza –“ Just Dancing”. Si preoccupava della possibilità che lo spteccallo non sia adequato per bambini e l’ho rassicurata che completatmente il contrario di quello che pensi. Dovevo dire “la maggior parte dei ballerini è costituita da bambini” per dirlo grammaticalmente correto, pero chi se ne frega?

“Taka ne mozhe da buda Pancho, ne mozhe!” Tova beshe maikaimi. Tai vikashe ot yat che ne mojeshe da nameri neinia charger za elektronic cigarette. Az i podarix tazi electrona tsigara za nova godina i tya zapochno seriozna da e pushi ot skoro, no ot nyakolko dni e beshe zagubila. Az tuko shto e izvadih ot dalbochinite na neynata chanta, puxnax si ratsete v enda “uronova dupka” kadeto sa i izchezvali mnogo chervila himikalki i drugi neshta. Sled kato izvadix neinata electrona tsigara se setixme che nyamal chargera. “Az go turix tuka vchera na cabineta, sega i nyama”. “Tuka e turix , tuka , kade e sega? Dyavola krie neshtatani.” Ne e li ironichno? Ne za naz, to va normalna, za tova maikami izpishtia “tova ne mozhe da produlzhi taki,” smeieke si.

Comming out story Published to Gospel For Gays

2010-06-26T11:12:00.000-07:00

Hey, this blog is now about spiritual stories and their sexual underpinnings. Here you can read "My Comming out story" it is well edited, unlike the version in this blog

http://gospelforgays.com/?p=910

Here is some background

Dear Pancho,

Thank you very much for both this comment and your wonderful coming out story. I published the latter today; I trust you'll be happy with the very minor edits I did - basically adding a couple of pronouns you had omitted, along with a couple of periods. I resisted my own temptation to create paragraph breaks, where for example you had dialogue: I felt that you had set it up the way you wanted it to appear, and that it was a very successful piece of writing as it stood.

More importantly, far more importantlly: it's a beautiful and courageous story. I'm privileged to have it on my site.

Re. Paul. I've been thinking a lot more about him since returning from a three week trip/course that followed his itinerary in Greece and Turkey. I learned a lot. But my fundamental sense of him has not changed, and here it is:

1. I think he was basically homosexual, before the word 'gay' existed. I think that orientation gave him huge anguish, that he tried every way he could to repress his sexuality, but I think in the end he accepted it, always in a chaste way. I don't think he had sex with Timothy or others: that would make him a hypocrite. Masturbation: well of course. I think that was his 'thorn in the flesh'. He has the high energy and high intensity of a man with a good sex drive.

2. The more I learn the less I understand why the church puts Paul on the same level as Jesus, in terms of the authority of his very few utterances re. our sexuality. It makes no sense. I've started to address that in a couple of postings, and I intend to continue that line of inquiry.

So frankly, however we interpret his scant references to men having sex with men - I don't think they deserve the kind of absolute authority that people give them.

I hope you're doing well. You are in my prayer.

In Jesus,

Jeremiah

Dear Jeremiah,

Thank you so very much for your personal reply. You must be quite busy and I feel honored to have you reply directly. I am about check the posting of the story, in the event my name is not there, please post it! I would also like if you could post my location, Windhoek, Namibia. I want to refer this site to members of our LGBT network here and I want to see that someone from here has already posted. Thanks for doing the grunt work of the editing! The periods and pronouns always get me.

Your idea about Paul is intriguing. I wonder if I read his work whether I would come to the same conclusion. Could he not just have been ascetic?

Queer readings and traditional readings, which ones are inspired by the Spirit. When Christians speak of letting the Spirit guide our readings of scripture, what do they actually mean? I still wonder, because just as I found out when I danced at mass when no one else was dancing – it was a youth mass here in Windhoek and really joyous - people disagree as to when the Spirit acts. My fellow youth member, Paulcheria, felt that I was just dancing cause I wanted to and that I was using the Holy Spirit as an excuse.

I have published the letter you sent me on my blog : pmulonge.blogspot.com

If you would like me to remove it, please tell me so and I will. I assumed you would not mind.

Thanks again,

And you are in my prayers too!

Pancho

Home Stories 2: Mothers lipstick

2010-06-18T13:21:00.000-07:00

The First Time I put on my mothers lipstick – age 24 . First I put on her overcoat, it was black blue and exactly what the French would call a vest. It trailed down to just above my knees and had no buttons, making it distinctly for women. Inside it I felt warm, for it was winter and because it was my mother’s. Her hairs were on, many of them and I brushed them off. In one of the pockets I found tissues – she always has them for blowing her nose, a roll of zambuck herbal lip balm, a splinter of chewing gum with three or four gums remaining and a un-capped lipstick. I could not resist and so I put some one as I admired myself in the mirror. I puckered my lips afterwards as I had seen her and other women do so many times. The lips in the mirror resembled Tutankhamen’s but a violet pink. I wondered whether it would be noticeable, whether I would be beaten in the street – as I always walk on foot – or whether my brother or anyone would notice. I then took a tissue and wiped the pink away and it quickly came off to smudge the white tissue in my hand. It would not be complete if I had not done that – had I not removed then and there while I was looking in the mirror. That is part of growing up gay – the excitement of being intrepid, but then covering your tracks afterwards.

After writing this, the lipstick putting event has already happened. It is part of my past and so that feeling of it being novel, it being new is gone. I now question whether this was the first time, or is it just what I think.

Home stories series 1

2010-06-18T13:20:00.000-07:00

Is it necessary that I make my mother upset? I woke up at 7:30am, after having gone back to sleep at 06:30 am when we spoke to my grandparents in Bulgaria over the phone.

I went to the kitchen to find my mother ready after just staying a bit in my room and thinking about what I dreamt, about graduation and giving away the food that was not eaten by us at the reception here in Klein Windhoek, instead of at Princeton – merging of times and realities in my dream.

After I began making the sandwich, she really wanted me to hurry and so shouted at me
“ po burzai, phlegma takava!” (hurry up you phlegmatic one!)

Then shouts and outburst that followed included “ oh your are a soiled seed, soiled seed, you get this from your father.” And “ please God, return to him, let everything he did to humiliate me come back to him, God will Punish him, God will Punish him, God will Punish him!” came the words from her stern face.

Before this, I could have just hurried up and kept quiet, but I opened my mouth and out came provocations “Well don’t worry, relax, chill, I will make it now, you are still making coffee are you not?” She was, as she moved from the kettle to the sink from the sink to where I was at the table. I added “why do you wish bad for someone, that is not good.”

“I am not wishing bad!” she exclaimed, “that everything he did to me to come back to him, and that he will be humiliated how by his kurvas (hores) the way he humiliated me.”

So why did I have open my mouth. Before all of this, I could have remained silent and obedient, then perhaps when I was busy smearing that peanut butter on her bread she would not have said “you don’t honor your mother”.

When she left, she was upset and in tears, I was rushing behind her to give her the plastic back with her bread. Peggy our family friend, was taking her to work. And they drove off. Me in the kitchen, with the scene of the dirtly plate, the breadnife and the butter and peanut butter on the table. The dishes dirty from lasts night’s birthday dinner party for my brother.

My comming out story

2010-06-11T15:25:00.001-07:00

This is my coming out story. It is about me telling my mother what was already hanging in the air, in all those moments when I just remained reticent to those questions “Don’t you like girls?” or statements “One day, I want you to give me grandchildren”. I told her one night, when I did not keep silent, but I talked back until the air was dripping with truth and all came down, the truth. I will now proceed to tell you this story, but it will not be chronologically. Instead, I will move back and forth, in and out of different parts of the process, just like how Jesus makes loves to me. Indeed, late at night on my mattress, I imagine him – I contemplate him and his body against my own. The love making takes Him through me, I see his vibrant glowing eyes and I take off that crown of thorns to dry up the red rivers that streamed down the contours of his face. “I know because I am in love with Jesus, I have prayed about it, I wanted first God to change me, but then I realized there was nothing wrong with this,” said I in response to my mother’s question “How do you know you are gay.”

I was already under the covers on my way to sleep when my mother knocked: “Pancho there is one more thing I want to tell you,” said my mother as barged in “No I am going to sleep, now, not now,” I protested from where I was lying on the mattress down below “Well you are not yet asleep so listen. I have green eyes and people with green eyes can tell the future – you are not gay. I see somewhere a woman who will find you and she will have sex with you!” she prophesied.

“O.K so, she will rape me?” I replied sarcastically

”Not exactly, but she will be more assertive than you and you will see it will happen.”

“Alright, goodnight” I said as I resigned myself to respecting her rather than reacting to this comment. I wanted to honor her, I longed to honor God. “Honor they mother and father, so that you may long in the Lord your God is giving you” was my solace. I had just come out to her as a gay man and yet I wished to honor her aspirations rather than tarnish them by aggressively asserting my identity.

Earlier in the evening her green eyes peered into me when I stood before her at the outside table beside the hanging branches of peach tree and she questioned me: “Tell me the truth” she asked calmly. Now this day had come! Was I ready for it? I trembled inside at having to answer truthfully, but then I knew what Christ had told the Pharisees “When he lies he speaks his native language, for he is and the father of lies.” Jesus was speaking about the devil in rebuking the Pharisees for not believing Him. I too told lies to my mother, always in Bulgarian, my mother tongue. Now it was time to end this, but I could not bring myself to say it plainly so instead I relied on a piece of the Gospel: “Mother when you are ready to hear the truth, I will tell it to you, ‘for the truth shall set you free’, as Jesus said, when you are ready to accept it, but now I feel you do not want to hear it.”

“Now I am ready, more ready than I will ever be” came the reply and my inner trembling subsided. She knows the truth already, I thought and so that’s what I told her “You already know the truth, you just have to accept it.” She was my mother! How could she not know? “So the truth is that you are gay?” she said calmly before she denied the fact “I don’t believe you are, Pancho, someone confused you, you will find a nice girl and then…”

“I am a homosexual, I am gay.” I jutted in, breaking her talk about how I would change. I was grinding my teeth – I was so fed up of this – why is still denying it? So I had to say, I had to assert it – for the sake of the truth.

And that was it. Since then all has been the same, as if nothing was said regarding this thing. The power of denial is immeasurable and only time will tell whether she will overcome it. I will continue to pray for both of us, and by the way, I did pray after she left my room that night. I asked in the darkness of my shut eyes and streaming thoughts whether I was wrong and whether I was not meant to be this way. The silence was only broken by own thoughts “What the Bible discusses is men who lust for each other as a result of God’s displeasure with them and not what you are.” I do not believe that Paul is referring to “homosexuals” when wrote that letter to Corinthians about those who will not inherit the Kingdom of God. If he was, then I guess I will be grinding my teeth for all eternity, as I am cast away to the outer darkness. But the primacy of us being Christians who are gay men was probably alien to Paul and his contemporaries – the idea of sexual orientation had not come into being. Leaving aside the tension between notions of identity predicated on our experience and Biblical interpretation, I am confident of the validity of my gay Christian identity, “because I am in love with Jesus”. I invite your minds to wonder what it means “I am in love with Jesus” in the context of my homosexuality. The wandering thoughts of your mind are probably not far from the truth. There is Agape and there is Eros - he is my friend and my lover.

The kisses I have imagined with Christ are not sordid like the kiss of betrayal that Judas gave to Jesus. They underlie my passion for Jesus and my choice to put him in the center of sexual desire instead of relying on imperfect men – whether real (hookups) or fake (pornography). Making love with Jesus is a transcendental state through I experience Jesus touching me, my soul and all my members. I imagine some of you Christians may recoil in disgust at such thoughts, but then you probably are not a gay man. In any case, I ask that you pray for me that my “heart may burn within me and that the Lord will open the scripture” to me, as he did with two of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Right now my reading of the Gospel is unequivocally queer. I ponder why the author of John is referred to as “the disciple Jesus loved.” Does not Jesus love all of the disciples? Is there any difference in the way he loves that disciple from all the others? I believe Jesus still loves that disciple right now, just as he loves all of us. But are they differences in the relationship we share with him to the extent that for certain gay men He becomes our lover?

Conception, Immaculate or in General (Wed 26th)

2010-05-29T04:22:00.000-07:00

Do I know where I was conceived? No, my parents were the type who told us “you know when you were conceived, we were in…” not at all like the mothers and fathers in some movies from the United States. There will be at time for everything, even for discovering that fact. When I see Jesus, I believe, he will reveal all the answers, irrespective of how many questions we have asked or are yet to ask. Then we will make love, but I will not conceive.

This blog is about me maundering, writing, in between those obligations of having to study statistics for my own interest, watering the garden, talking and living in my home. I would write about how I live in Windhoek and thereby write “proudly Namibia”, but I think it would be best that I leave it to belong to the world.

There is so much, an immense amount of writing to and yet it is not possible to do it all. However, we can by writing transcend this corporal, space time limitations and “live all those lives” we cannot live, at least according to a write with the last name Alvarez, a woman who speaks about writing as a craft in a collection of essays on writing in the American cultural center.

I would write about how I did not let a professor, who is just called a lecturer in Namibia, cut in front of me in line today. I was waiting in a long que to pay my overdue fee for the library book that I should have renewed by calling, but failed. He had to pay as well, and he just cut infront a long, winding, que of students in the dingy, stygian office building. I stood up for my rights and I wish there was a courteous form in English so I could say : Signore come osa mettersi davanti a tutti noi? Aspetto da due ore per raggiungere questo sportello per pagare e lei non sene frega?

I think I will write more. Affirmative, my next piece will be on the invisibility of men who have sex with men in the public health campaign “break the chain of multiple concurrent partners”. I want to write it in plain simple English, without being too academic, because this is how I will reach a wider audience. The Lord sends out signs and even though I want to begin relearning and deepening my knowledge of CSPro, really I have to write! Gotta write!

Take Care!

Pancho

Morning Wounds

2010-05-29T04:19:00.000-07:00

Wounds are delicate. When you wake up after sustaining a wound the day before, it still feels tender even if you are better. At any moment it can sting if you move too much, the puss coming out and the flesh crying. That is what happened this morning, when my mother burst out shouting “don’t mention his name, that dirty bastard, that dirty dog, dirty dog!” as I was on the phone talking with my grandparents , her parents. She would come out of her room and take two steps into the corridor where I was seated and speak close to the ear piece “that dirty dog, dirty dog.”

I upset the wound by speaking about him saying “we were at the concert yesterday that my father organized.”

The household was roused – my little brother so annoyed by all of this, he shouted back, rebuking her like a prophet: “you are just shouting here, what can we do if you two don’t want to live together, people separate all the time….when he is here (was here) you are just quite but then behind the scenes…nonsense man!”

She conceded: “I’m sorry.” But he was not appeased, “next time I will also be noisy.”

He went into the bathroom and me and my mother into our respective rooms. Now the hallway was empty. The wound, but the wound, is still full of puss.

Prayer

She prayed “please God, punish him, the dirty dog, the bastard punish him.”

I look at the string of black beads of my rosary and I want to pray for all these times this has happened, this disruption of tranquility, when my brother was here and now. I want to pray in words, but I feel my heart has already said it all – the “groans that cannot be uttered, that the Spirit prays for us,” which is what St Paul wrote.

Malaria Journal club idea

2010-05-24T07:14:00.001-07:00

To: Davis, Scholastica Iipinge, Tom Fox, Kudzai, Dr Hina Mu Ashekele, Prof Enos Kiremire, Dr Ronnie Bock, Percy, Chinsembu

Let us start a malaria journal club! I met with Professor Davis Mumbengegwi and one of his graduate students to speak about his research. It emerged from the meeting that we have common interests in understanding malaria from a variety of angles, namely the evolutionary genetic, pharmacological and anthropological perspectives. It therefore donned on me that a Malaria Journal Club would be the ideal place where researchers, students and prospective graduate students in some field related to the intersection of science and anthropology (that’s me) can learn about how the world is researching this disease.

I sent this email to you because I believe you would be willing to attend and present a paper from the primary literature in the malaria journal club. On a rotating basis, a journal club member will select a paper on malaria, invariably within his or her discipline, and distribute it electronically to the other members. Thereafter, the researcher would present a scientific talk that will present the paper and lead us in an exegesis. I am modeling this on the journal club I attended as an undergrad in the biophysics laboratory of my adviser Eva-Maria Schoetz.

Logistic wise, we can have the meetings in every two weeks in a room where we have access to a projector for a powerpoint presentation. I think UNAM should have such a venue, but how would we go about securing a space? Let us chose a day in the morning when we are able to have the meeting. I do not believe after working hours is a good idea, because the traffic is likely to delay attendance and people may feel exhausted. In addition, I have noticed that people in Namibia often leave the workplace to attend workshops in the morning, so this would not out of the ordinary.

I hope you can all participate in this endeavor so that we will find an multidisciplinary understanding into malaria, whether it be treatment-seeking behaviors of people or the unraveling of the Plasmodium’s best kept secrets at the molecular and cellular level. It is my hope that these different perspectives will yield and most edifying understanding of the problems at hand.

I volunteer myself to present the first paper on the salient finding of Plasmodium vivax malaria is infecting a population group that was until recently regarded as immune: Plasmodium vivax clinical malaria is commonly observed in Duffy-negative Malagasy people, Ménard et al., PNAS, Feb 2010.

I will enjoy presenting this paper as it relates directly the molecular biology I studied for my Bachelor’s degree.

I hope you can reply as soon as possible we can begin.

Regards

Pancho Mulongeni

LGBT letter writing

2010-05-22T11:12:00.000-07:00

The earth is hollow. The crust separates the nothingness of outer space from nothingness inside. If the earth was an apple and you bit into it, you find that you were biting into nothing. No that it would pop or explode like a balloon full of air, it would maintain the shape of an apple with a bit missing – like the apple logo, but there would be nothing.

In writing this post, I am returning to the true meaning of Pancho’s brouillons – a blog about nothing and everything that constitutes that nothingness. There is no more to say except:

Yesterday was Friday a very eventful day. I woke up to the sound of my cellphone and a voice in my head saying “you set the wrong alarm!” It was my friend Abdul who sent me an sms about Jesus or the Bible, it was a verse in Ezekiel 33 about death. Heavy verse about punishment and death. So I read the story about Lazurus in the Gospel to remember how the Lord brought the dead back to life.

I found out my letter in The Namibian about the launch of the LGBT network in Namibia and its shortcomings – exclusivity – was published. The fear inside me that I would now have to face my mother and father and who knows else about why I was writing about gay issues swelled up. I felt my article was too critical now, reading it from my room, why did I not talk about public health issues, men who have sex with men, heterosexism emerged in my mind as self critiques. All the while I was just covering up the fact that this was a letter about Lesbians Gay Bisexual and Transgender people having access to the network, it was about gay issues period in general, without specifying too much. I did mention churches, workplaces and places of learning as places were gay people need recognition i.e. they are invisible, as invisible as my article to my parents who did not say a thing, I even wonder if any of them read it! (My dad probably did, he reads The Namibian daily). Then the music started playing as I was there thinking, from the neighbors house across the yard and over the fence, club music, a house song that would be heard in any gay club. This was my indirect way of “coming out” and yet no one saw it. Denial, the power of denial, the veil of denial, the denial of denial; all these things protects them from the truth. That is why I published it – with my name – because I do not underestimate the power of denial. It was as if nothing happened, no letter came out. You may ask why did I not just tell my family about this letter. No. It would be too much for my mother right now, I would just bring her further anguish. For nothing.

I am planning to contact the LGBT network and write to them about how I still want to get involved. Today I found out that yesterday, Friday, the chair or director or whoever sent me an email on facebook asking me to join the fill in a membership form at the facebook group. It was a generic message, my name did not appear. Well did I actually make some waves? It seems so.

Now reading the letter in the paper, I notice so many errors! Oh La, La, oui je l’ai érite sans réfléchir bien que j’aie pensé pendant une heure, marchant dans le magasin et par les rue jusqu'à ce que je me suis mis à écrire la lettre au derrière d’une vielle affiche que j’ai trouve sur le pianoforte dans le studio de danse au collège des arts Windhoek. Comme mon ami Fabrice m’a dit, il aurait fait mieux dire, brièvement et avec élégance : « Malgré tout (la exclusivité de la boume du lancement du réseau LGBT ) c’est une bonne initiative, mais il est important qu’il soit plus inclusif »

Ils l’ont publiée sans avoir rédiger la lettre – avec toutes mes fautes !

I am grateful that The Namibian both advertised and covered the launch of Lesbian Gay Bixsexual and Transgender (LGBT) Network of Namibia. The launch party of the organization was a queer affair – both in the contemporary and antiquated sense of the word. The guests had to fork out N$ 450 dollars to enjoy the dolphin cruise on a boat that brandished the six colored rainbow flag. Lavish and unapologetically gay the event lived up to the flamboyant consumerism that underpins the notion of queer in metropolitan cities around the world. Such decadence, however, was out of place in the launch of a campaign of “equality for all Namibian citizens”, given that at least 40% of Namibians struggle to feed themselves. This made the event strange – queer in the old sense of the word. Racially, it was also strange to see only white people in the photos of the party, because our LGBT community is as multicolored as the LGBT flag.

The origins of the acronym LGBT derive from an attempt at inclusion, rather than the exclusivity evident in the LGBT launch party. The acronym was adopted to encompass the all same sex loving persons who were until then conflated into term “queer”. Accordingly, the LGBT community of San Francisco adopted the six colored rainbow flag (no indigo) to reflect their cultural, racial, sexual and social diversity. Unfortunately, the LGBT network of Namibia appears to have bought into the consumerist aspect of the LGBT subculture that has emerged in the United States, Western Europe and South Africa. I therefore appeal to the LGBT Network of Namibia to launch the organization for the remainder of the Namibian LGBT people who could not afford that Walvis Bay Party of April 24^th.

Given their campaign for equality, I am confident that the LGBT network did not intent to be exclusive, but how many marginalized, poor, LGBT people did they expect to attend this event? The LGBT Network did place itself in a box, in spite of its intentions to do otherwise. To an outsider, the LGBT Network is proof of the homosexuality being a concept foreign, mostly wealthy, white people brought to Africa. Indeed, the organization invited Mr Charl van der Berg – Mr Gay World 2010, whose white South African origins unfortunately play right into the hands of the homophobic discourse of this country. I hope they will find a local Namibians who are representative of the countries polylingual, multicolored people for the second launch party, which I hope to attend.

There is a need for an LGBT network in Namibia, a network that goes beyond facebook, beyond parties. LGBT people are in need of recognition in our universities, schools, armies, churches and a myriad of other places. Though I have my reservations, I must commend the LGBT Network of Namibia for attempting open up opportunities for the minority of same-sex loving people in Namibia. Let us all unite under that goal.

Nonostante tutto cìo non ancora compiuto tutte le cose che volevo fare, rimangano ancora tante cose a scrivere, sopratutto lettere ai miei amici. A Domenic Petrella volevo scrivere : Ciao Domenica come stai ? (Ogni bella lettera si comincia così, anzitutto quando si vuole rimettere in contacto con una persona)

Ti devo dire Domenico che in questi giorno, da un mese fa, circa, penso spesso a te. Non so perchè, magari è dovuto al fatto que sulla RAI international si parlava recentamente del terromoto che aveva colpito il Sud d’Italia due anni fa. La vita in Abruzzo (il tuo paese, vero?) si fu peggiorata a causa del seismo que aveva lasciato tanti edifici distrutti - mucchi di pietre, legno, plastico, vetro e cemento (“cement?”).

Tra l’altro l’impatto psicologico del terremoto sulle diverse communità che ci vivono è imisurabile e grave.

Come stai, ti chiedo ancora una volta, perchè non l’ho fatto quando dovevo in 2008 quando fu sucesso tutto quanto.

A proposito, mi sono laureato da Princeton quasi un anno fa e sono rimasto molto potente, cioe, mi ritengo in grado di fare qualsiasi cosa, grazie alla mia formazione a Princeton. Adesso, uno delle cose che faccio e aiutare mia cugina a superare l’esame del diplomia di scuola media superiore in Namibia. Spero che il mio aiuto – le mie spiegazioni e delucidazioni della matematica che studia – le consenta l’accesso al mondo del lavoro formale. Mi sono reso conto che potevo farlo alcune settimane fa quando ci siamo riuniti per studiare le frazioni (fractions?) a la casa della nostra altra cugina dove vive. Nangobe, la cugina che aiuto, ha di colpo fatto uscire un baratollo di caffè “Illy”, imagina, quello alumino, cilindrico con la parolle “Illy” dipinta in rosso e argente. Mi sono accorto delle opportunità che fin’addesso Dio mi ha consegnato e mi sono detto “Sì lo posso fare, posso aiutare Nangobe.” Nangobe è solo due anni più giovane di noi, ma ha gia un bambino di cui prende cura.

Domenico, prova un piacere dell’anima scrivendoti adesso. Un altra cosa che ti voglio dire prima del termine di questa lettere: Sei bello, sei veramente bello è spero che nessuno ti convincera a pensare altro. Al collegio, lo pensavo ma non ho mai osato dirtelo!

Hello!

2010-05-15T14:26:00.001-07:00

Kwathela ndje Kalugna kandje! (Help me my God!)
This is the first sentence I am writing in Oshiwambo – the language of my father – on this blog. And yet, it is just a dialect of Oshiwambo, since Oshiwambo does not exist a single language, unless you consider the mixture and misuse of dialects together as a language.

I need to learn more of it. I believe I will dedicate myself to learning more of it, but then I am also learning Spanish. There is indeed a tension between more of this or that, hay una tensión entre más de este o ese.

That is it for today. Going to bed.
As opposed to a week update, sorry. I prefer to wake up early and do yoga, when I can mediate on the Lord and perhaps on my new dance. It is about me being a fifty something year old lady whose image probably derives from Patracia Hoffbauer, the choreographer and performer of Yvonne Rainers pieces, who teaches at Princeton University. I never took the dance criticism class in my senior year that she taught and yet my dance I am doing here started of as an exercise of physical, performance, criticism.

There is a ballet book called “Princess Ballet Tina” in which Burmese dance is described as unique and beautiful. It is a dance tradition that is relatively unknown to the West, but which is centuries old, just like the ballet. In so far as the dancing is described, emphasis is placed on how it relates the life of the “old imperial court” , the “life of the villages” and “classical Buddhist tales”. The implication is that Burmese dancing is an exotic, eastern, form of ballet, where folk tales are preserved through movement. This assumption is rooted in the narrow minded, occidental view of Burmese dance, one that overlooks the significance, the sacred aspect of this dance for its people. The dance describing the life of the Buddha can only be justly compared to the Bible in the West, rather than to fairy tales told in Ballets. Hence, I was thoroughly incensed by this superficial perspective of Burmese dance.

The dance was analogy a caricature of both ballet and Burmese dance. Having little knowledge of ballet and a stereotypical view of Burmese dance – influence by the popular media – I sought to emphasize how this book caricatured Burmese dance. However, now I have personalized the piece. It is about me, that middle aged lady, fighting back, kicking, pushing, repelling, deflecting all the Christina hegemony. Now I am tapping into movement of disgust – on my face – and in my limbs. Then I am tapping into the feeling of being a locust, one that moves its limbs away quickly when touched in a sign of discomfort, but then stretches them out again. Like when you prick your foot, that type of feeling. I am still working on it.

So I went quite a while here.
That was Thursday
Friday I applied for a job as a lab assistant. Do I really need it? If I were desperate, I would be living of writing, like my father did when he was a student in Bulgaria. He told me so as he paged through my article in the “The Flamingo” magazine, the one he said was good when he first read my first draft. It is published, I was paid about $160 for it and they editor said I could write more – even about health champions – the people the WHO is looking for in 1000 cities around the world (1000 LIVES, 1000 CITIES)
I am going to sleep. I would tell you about how I sent in my application and found out today that the person on other end of hr@polytechnic.edu is on leave. I question whether what the lady told me on the phone in pleasant tones on Friday “yes , if you emailed it to us, it is ok” is actually true. I will check again on Monday.
Why I am applying? Health insurance. What’s the point in writing about health when you have no health insurance?

Letter to Leen

2010-05-08T10:55:00.000-07:00

Hey Leen, Happy birthday, belated as it is! Check out my blog! pmulonge.blogspot.com
The Love of Jesus, may you feel it overflow.

Leen was a friend who I fell in love in grade 9. Now I love Jesus, all the time.

Weed Friday 30 April

2010-05-01T09:11:00.000-07:00

Pancho Mulongeni

A description afternoon

I wanted to weed the garden observing how they were crowding my growing tomatoes and pumpkins. I thought it would be therapeutic, removing the things in my life that were just suffocating my potential to grow, throttling them and pulling them out, very much the action described by the French verb dérracher – which actually is my own invention, a combination of the verb arracher which is the action of weeding and déraciner, which is to uproot.

I almost did not end up deweeding anything, because I thought that I best come to writing work reviewing an old draft before the workshop today. So I just decided to make a quick pass by the lemon tree to collect that fallen lemon I see under its branches outside my window. But as I walked passed that serrated leaved weed – one of the many in the garden – I reached for its stalk. Spiny it was and I feared that it would prick my hands so much so that I would regret grabbing it later. The image of Jesus and the thorns, however, calmly entered my mind and I realized that through this pain I would rid myself of a nuisance and that I need not fear, because this was nothing compared to the crown of thorns! I pulled it by the base and its thorns turned out to be nettles that broke under my grip. It came out with not too much effort.

That felt like a desirable thing to do again, it was soothing to core of my various sins. I had just weeded out my want for pornography and I was hooked. I came to the others amongst the grasses just under the shade of the low wall. I pulled them all out, one by one, feeling the rush it gave me. There was no more pain or regret or planning of what to do here I was removing it all.

They were troublesome though, those weeds. Though there spines were not hard, they did lodge into my pink’s soft skin. Then I would just try and pull them out quickly to reduce the pain to a quick pinch, but sometimes this would lead to the snapping of their stems. Then I realize these were demons indeed, with white blood and probably healing powers if I did not deracine them! I threw them on the ground, with the clumps of earth at their roots. I did this all along the length of the wall, coming across a little grub rolled up like a snails shell and I reveled in the loamy smell of humus.

The garden was alive with warm wet soil, since it had rained yesterday. It was a dark brown earth and nearly as soft as clay. I realized it would be ideal to cover these weed bodies in the earth and burry them – vanquishing back to the earth, back to the carbon, nitrogen, the CaFeCHOPKINS (and other elements) from whence they came. I did not want them to just lie there in the open. But perhaps it would have been interesting to see how they would like three weeks later, like the old orange I came across. It’s orange peel was covered in a white and green dust here and there and when I squeezed it, puffs of white smoke came out from a small hole in its surface. I wondered whether any creatures lived therein.

In any case, this exercise proved useful for my writing. Now I can hear that “voice” they speak about in writing, emanating from the text. It is an American voice, sadly or fortunately – depending on your stance. Nonetheless, I am a better writer for having weeded.

Old ways

2010-05-01T09:09:00.000-07:00

It seems I am going back to old ways - trembling before the computer.While I am writing this post in an attempt to sublimate my desire to go on to porn, I was about to download a porn video of a star called "Spencer Reed". Now I realize I do not want that on my hard drive, apart from the fact I am not aroused by this, any of it and yet I still seek it.

Reed speaks about his life on his blog: "Philip and I are moving in together, it is so great to have such a person in my life...". Yes, while I and others fawn over his videos, where he is absent, he is present somewhere in space, going about his business (apart from pornography) and living his life.

Why did I click "I understand and I wish to continue" before I entered his blog. I am still navigating the google search I have typed in, as always do, but now I am not trembling, or quivering, I am typing. I feel empowered, but at the same time I am aware that I am not disciplined enought to just pull out the modem and stop. I already did that earlier and here I am back again. This blog is my saving grace.

I still seek it and I wonder why. Yes I just clicked on a "I do not wish to continue". Great stuff!

And guess what by saying "no" I end up at the blogger dashboard. The two tabs I have open are harmonized, they are both on my blog! Rather than spiralling out of control and searching for other sites, I found my stable place, where I am writing. There is harmony and the modem is out.

It is over. It is really over.

No matter the fact that I want to see more, really there is nothing for me to gain. Nothing that I can benefit from here, nothing that will bring peace to my spirit or satisfaction to my body. Only the Lord can do that. It is 11:40pm and I going to bed.

Poem-Prayer Time Out Jesus

2010-04-24T02:30:00.000-07:00

Time Out Jesus, Time Out!

I need some time out Jesus, some time out.

David knew when it was time to move the ark to the city of David,

Jerusalem,

And he did, putting in the tent he pitched for it.

Now is the time that I sit here naked like a fresh creature of the mud,

your Golem,

as I was before you finished creating me

to tell you I need time out

Like all the earth before the Lord I ought to tremble

And the heavens rejoicing the earth glad,

I am a trembler, you know it, you saw it, touched it – my body – as it quivered

my body in ecstasy (or orgasm)

your divine touch combing my soul

How though I am to fear you? Y

You are my lover, I sought you and my fears you delivered!

Lord,

How could you ever come with the sword?
Or will it just be the blazing fire from heaven

To punish those of my brethren

Who do not obey the gospel

I need Time out Jesus Time Out@!

There are sheep and there are goats

And I know you as my shepherd

You took me down to lie in pastures green (with you),

But what of those who do not profess you?

Gored

I just cannot apprehend

How you would vanquish anyone to this end!

Is hell their fate?

Time Out Jesus, Time Out!

Make me humble and give me again your peace,

Remember how one year ago,

In the night I wandered,

My faith wasting away,

Because of these thoughts – inconsistencies – they would not go away,

But you let me dance before you at Manna au large group

What a collage of movement, song and people!

In one swoop,

You took my heart

But now,

I want Time Out!

I tear before you, because you gave me so much,

And now I chose to depart from your touch.

Time Out Jesus, means Time Out!

I need to shout it out – Time Out!

No more (m)aking time with you

No Churches, youth groups only quit(e) time

Aching with no pain,

Just an emptiness and disquietude

Cause I don’t accept a lot of things,

The only pain is that I must be a man, but I don’t

I don’t say “dude”

I am not firm enough in handshake and spirit,

But this is discussion is outside my aim

I just want to say, I love you – still

You to the world meant no ill

And I do not believe anyone you will kill

Now or then,

Just that I need to some time to ponder you

Outside

(though I prefer your bedside)

I felt like sharing this poem with you readers. So I did, infact I did write it to be shared.

Peace be with you! I am praying for you my friends. Still pRAYING.

Etanga from last week

2010-04-20T07:23:00.000-07:00

I wish that I could just chose without much thought, chose the tracks of the hours of recording of music, of hands clapping, feet pounding, stone grinding red ochre – Otjithe. Then I would move on and read my epidemiology and statistics and genetic aspects of Medical Anthropology. But it is exactly this anthropological interest that compels me to write now and break from my plan of reading that. I will read those later.

I just compiled a digital CD with a 80 minute sampling of the recordings I made during the course of six days before August 26 2008, when I left Etanga. I hear it every morning when I let the cold shower water spray onto my body and I belt out a roar as I dance – within that space – some of what I learnt there. I have been doing every since I left there.

Now I am writing about it.

Do you know how much though goes into selecting? This is what Danna Bullington, a missionary wife and a missionary in her own right, said to us all as she recalled what one of her close friends used to say whenever someone asked her whether she baked it herself “I selected it. Do you know how much thought goes into selecting?”

Baking. My dance professor Rebecca Lazier told us “I could be bake it for eight”, or did I just mishear and she meant “make it for eight.” Eight dancers, including me. But then again, she told me how technically challenging it would and in any case I was going to Africa, the place I am from, and I would my whole study that would be basis of my own senior dance thesis work. I would not need to be in her piece that was made for her professional company. I got over that, the desire to be in her piece, the fact that I did not make my own dance thesis and the consequences thereof – that I would not be a dance professional. At Etanga I met imwe at Mbunga’s shop while I showing and doing glissades to my translator Hoveka. Imwe had a swollen leg and he wanted to carry his plea for treatment back to Windhoek, because he had received no treatment so far. Then I knew something in public health had already pulled me away, piqued my interest such that I was never going to be the same again.

Last Tuesday was World Health Day. I was there at the march and at the ampitheatre where it was celebrated. I say celebrated because there was a lot of dance. Including a Herero speaking group called bullet, clad in animal skins around waist and on head, they danced with bent wobbling legs and bouncing steps while their behinds bounced and arms jiggled. It was amazing.

I wish I could have joined in (that was condoned as other people were dancing in the ampitheatre), but for me it was a performance. And so for me it was like at the proscenium stage, I just watched and absorbed.

Now I am going to write mini biographies or nanoethnographies of people who wish to be called “the Windhoek Urban Health Champion” as part of the “1000 Cities, 1000 Lives” campaign of World Health Day. I do not know how to do ethnography, but it seems that will be fine. They want “a brief description of activities (1 page) and their results” for each public health champion nominee. In any case, it will give me a sense of what this thing called qualitative research is and whether I want to purse it further…

Saturday 10 April

2010-04-12T02:53:00.000-07:00

So I am about to go to sleep. Let me just tell you I had a great day today as I went to national botanical garden and then to the WIKA carnival.

Earlier in the week I met a peace corps volunteer, who I mistook as one of the “born frees” I speak about in the last post. He seemed interesting, really. And he did bio.

The internet seems bizarre, so many forums, so disappointing, that someone can genuinely listen without judgment!

Goodnight

Dear Lord protect us and keep us all safe please in YOUR NAME I pray.

Amen

Excerpts of life

2010-04-12T02:24:00.000-07:00

How do I tell you what is going on in my life in about 5 minutes?
Well there is an aim to this post and this to reflect on the driving lesson and my poor performance on it. We drive in the morning and this morning again my instructor came, pulled up infron of the small gate in his ligh blue fiat city care. We swapped places and we drove off, slowly because the street is sloped down, so the clutch and the break are both pressed down, the clutch in completely and the break only so far that I can descend safely to the place where I turn into the main road.

I only became aware of the fact that one can pull out of the clutch smothly yet quickly today. I used to pull away ever so slowly and that apparantly translated in me being "too slow for conditions", as it is known technically, according to my driving instructor. My turns were too slow as made my way around the bend within the junction of two roads to begin moving along a road that is perpedicular to the one I was in just moments before.

So this post serves as a way for me to reflect on what I need to do. When I approach the robots, what you call traffic lights in the US and elswhere, I slow down, downgrade and go to first gear to stop at the read light. Cluth and break in. However, I need to just every so slightly lift my foot from the clutch so that I "vibrate" meaning I feel the reverberations from the engine the steering wheel. Then when it is green I go into the gass and the car will move forward while I feel that reving sound and the vibrating subsides, then I can slowly pull away from the clutch. I do this, but too slowly. I am not phlegmatic, no. It is just that today I did not vibrate at the junction of Hendrik Witbooi and Moses Garoeb (look it up on Google Maps for Windhoek), while waiting or the red to turn green. As a result the car that was supposed to give me right off way just turned ahead to left and I went after him. (From his perpsective he was turning right and he was supposed to yield to all incoming traffic, and by the way, we drive on the left side of the road here, as you might have inferred).

I am learning and I have about 4 lessons left before I go to the test. That translates into about 45 minutes per lesson (although they should be an hour long, but my instructor arrives earlier than our agreed time and we drive for less than an hour. It is incumbent on me to speak with him and tell him that he should come at the agreed time. He has never cheated me though, I think I will be able take all those minutes and get an extra lesson, hopefully. I pray he feels better though, he is experiencing leg pain).

I think I can do, YES, I can get the liscence. But as my psychologist said, there are things that are important yet not urgent. My liscence is one of those. I would love to have it as soon as possible and it is certainly not going to become easier to attain it, but I realize it is not urgent. So I will take it easy. I also nearly did not spot a stop sign today! I need to drive alot more to become accustomed to it all, but my confidence should not dwindle when I make "blunders" as Dolly, my instructor says. He is a nice man. There is something I saw in his appearance, that resembled the deamounour of my grandmother, I don't remember what,b ut maybe it was just the way he was looking at road from the drivers seat when I saw him driving with another student another. This sounds weird, but I had to throw it out there.
So I will make sure that I know how to drive when I get my liscence. Driving is no trivial task and nor is safe for the driver or others around him or her. It can be safe. I hope to do it right. In Bulgarian we have a saying called" doing something like the people", napravi go kakto horata which entails doing something like good, decent people would.

Oh Lord I pray for your guidance here. Let my heart not be troubled but strengthed by faith in you, you have already overcome the world (and driving tests).
Pancho

More about Passover

2010-04-10T15:09:00.000-07:00

I was at my first Passover seder on Monday. It was a really multitude of experiences for me. At the end of the meal, we sang songs. We were serenaded by Ari – a young man that just graduated from Grinnel college and was playing the guitar wearing a kippa made of colored aluminum of soda cans. He was singing in English and Damara-Nama along with Elsita, a young woman is at once Jewish and Latin American, having being adopted by her mother Lucy Steinitz, who invited me to her house. The dinning room where we were seated listening to this song came alive with warmth as they sang this “Passover !Tyre, Passover ! Tyre, Passover !Trye, !Trye mamma !Ta ! Ta ! Ta” The exclamations are a but a poor substitute for the clicking sounds that are made at the start of the word that we heard. This is a popular Namibian song where !Tyrae means good “We are just saying good at the start of every word,” explained Ari after he strummed his has chord having included “Passover”, “Marov (the bitter herb)” “Elijiah” and “Dayenu” in the song.

Did your Passover have any local variations based on where you live?

What I want to ask you though, is whether you have heard of adding an orange to a seder plate? I am not familiar with how the plate should be, but I was told that unlike the parsley, the egg, the bone (we had a sweet potato) , the orange is a strange addition. Apparently, the orange represents the lesbians and gay men within the Jewish community who are “marginalized” according to the letter that was read at the table, a letter from a woman Rabbi of the Hillel movement written sometime at the end of the 1970s. The organe is peculiar yet it is not chamitz so it can still be added to the plate, I think the reasoning goes. I felt a mixture of discomfort and humor when Dianne, an expat American, was reading the letter, especially when she mentioned that the orange is peeled, shared, eaten and the seeds are spat out so as to reject prejudice and homophobia within the Jewish community. It was funny because it reminded me of the talk about homosexuality at the CJL two years ago, the one Isaiah derided jokingly saying “there is no-one there that will say anything from the Orthodox perspective” when I asked him whether he would go to the talk. It was uncomfortable because in Namibia homosexuality is a taboo and though I wanted to come out to everyone in the subsequent discussion, I knew I could not because I knew some of the guests very well and they knew my family, to whom I was not out to.

Holy Thursday and the Passover

2010-04-10T14:59:00.000-07:00

Tonight is the night of the last supper. In all my years a Catholic, I have never had the opportunity to have my experience of this evening be informed by my experience of the Passover, till this year. Tonight, I went to the mass and I ate the “body of Christ”. I know that St Paul wrote the “But food does not bring us nearer to God; we are not worse if we do not eat it and no better if we do.” If I cannot come nearer to God by the eating of the unleavened bread – the body of Christ today or the matzah of the Passover, it can led me remember God.

Passing the matzah around the table, in pieces for each one to take, I partook in the Passover of the Jews. Though some of the guest in attendance at Lucy’s house told me “We are those other Jews” when I questioned whether my non-kosher Bulgarian stuffed cabbage leaves would be suitable, I found out that order of the meal – the seder – is ancient regardless of contemporary comprises and accommodations in other aspects of the Passover. We took the irregular shaped pieces of the thin crusty bread and added the bitter herb to remind us of the bitter times the slaves endured. There was also haroset , the mortar used for the bricks, as a reminder of the life draining labor that was enforced upon the Jews. I wish I could write “the labor that we endured”, but I was just an invited outsider. On the other hand, my Christian and Jewish brother in heaven – St Paul – wrote that we are “all grafted to one tree” through Jesus Christ destroying the “middle wall of separation” between Jew and Gentile. Nonetheless, I am unable to self identify with being enslaved in Egypt. My mind is instead wandering back forth from the image of a slave working under the whip and the flagellation of the Jew called “Jeshua”, apparently the name of Jesus in Hebrew (cf "Passion of the Christ").

When Jesus ate the Passover as described in the Gospel of the New Testament, how did he and his disciples eat it? I wonder whether that sacred passing of the bitter herb, haroset and matzah was observed. Sounds plausible. They probably had all been numerous seders in their lives and they probably ate according to the order that had now existed for probably over seven centuries, assuming Moses left roughly Egypt seven hundred and fifty years before that Passover meal, the so called “last supper”. And the Gospel speaks of the disciples and Jesus “reclining at table eating” (Mark 14:17), which is what happens at a seder, “you are supposed to actually lean on pillows” Lucy said explaining to those of us invited who are not Jewish and not familiar with this ritual. I can only imagine what Jesus though of during the dinner. The connection between himself, slavery in Egypt and the writings of Isaiah was perhaps on his mind. He knew that the servent of the Lord who Isaiah speaks about was ostracized and subjected to pain, like the Israelites in Egypt: “³He was despised by and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering.” Isaiah 53:3. Amidst the chatter at the table, much akin to the Passover I attended, speaking to Ari to my left and Elsita to my right, was Jesus withdrawn and solemn as he mediated on the writings of Isaiah: “Surely he took up our iniquities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Isaiah 53: 4-6. Indeed, this man was convinced he was the Messiah and his mission of bearing all of humanity’s iniquity – and all the wounds he would have afflicted on him. This drove him to pray at Mount of Olives where he was in such state of fear of his imminent death that he sweated blood and perhaps hallucinated seeing an Angel later the same evening. Even during the dinner, I would wager, fear may have welled up inside him and mingled with love for his disciples, which maybe led him to exclaim: “ Take it, this is my body!” (Mark 14:4) after he gave the thanks to God and broke it. Was this like when Lucy broke the Matzah and distributed it to all of us? Where did Jesus add his own wish for him to be eaten yet not cannibalized? It seems this happened during the heart of the meal, while I was adding the raddish and wasabi peas and haroset (one Ashkenazi and one Sephardi one -the thicker one) to my plate because the Gospel says “While they were eating, Jesus broke the bread and said… (Mark 14:22). But he could have done it at a later time, during the main meal, when we were gulping down the vegetarian lasagna made with matzah meal, ratatouille and my Bulgarian surmi. There were times when I was talking with either Matilde, a sprightly Colombian woman in front of me in Spanish, or chatting to Ari who graduated last year like myself or Louis, a young mid career international American about his work with special Olympics in Namibia or for Care International in Gaza as the only Jew to ever work for them, and imagine if during one of these moments, Lucy just interjected and broke the bread telling all of us to do something that had never been done before during a seder , but was nonetheless imbued with intent, not a mere game or the offering of an exotic dish. In the Gospel of Luke it says that Jesus told the disciples that “my body is given for you,” once again associating himself with the servant described by the prophet Isaiah. But he went a step further, instructing them to “do this in remembrance” of him and thereby adding something to the Passover. Adding extras to the Passover, like the conspicuous orange on our seder plate in solidarity for the Lesbian and gay men in the Jewish community as per the initiative of some Jewish feminists from the Hillel Organisation in the late 1970s, can be controversial and not everyone does it. In another vein, the remembrance of Holocaust victims at various places during the seder such as during the part about questions from the smart kid, the rude kid and the simple kid, where a child from the Holocaust asks a question to which there is only silence, are accepted universally. I wonder what Jesus was thinking when he said “do this in remembrance of me”. Instinctively, I believe he wanted to be remembered as a person who saw himself as the Lord’s servant and who did not want to die, whether or not he was a blasphemous phony messiah or the Christ for those who keep him in recollection.