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!
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.
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 17th 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
“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.
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
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?
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?
