The best mojitos are made in Skopelos

Ever since watching Alexis Bledel as Lena in Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants  fall into the (what I was sure could only be photo-shopped) blue water of a small island harbour surrounded by boxy white stone houses, and be rescued by a shirtless Greek man who takes her driving on a motorcycle and dancing in a little Greek Taverna  – I’ve dreamed of going to Greece.

I hate admitting such shallow reasons for wanting to visit the cradle of Western Civilisation, birthplace of the Olympics and a country that, though still recovering from the global financial crisis of the late 2000s, is currently doing what it can to help with one of the worst refugee crises in recent history. But I won’t lie. An American teenage coming-of-age movie was the origin of my inspiration. However,  my reasons for admiring and feeling curious about the country have matured over the years; Greece is the exotic, beautiful, friendly and ancient family matriarch with a lifetime of stories and a good sense of humour, that I’ve always wanted to meet.

This year that meeting finally took place.  

In choosing which of the 1400 Greek islands to visit, our criteria included small, good beaches, easy to get to, and less touristy than others. We settled on Skopelos, which happens to be where Mamma Mia was filmed – a fact that had no bearing whatsoever on our choice to visit.  An easy 3 hour flight from Manchester got us to Skiathos island, which has the smallest runway I have ever flown onto. It saddles one end of the island, connecting the sea on each side in a small arc of tarmac. Slightly terrifying.

We stayed one night in Skiathos, walking down to the docks in the evening to watch the swaths of hip tourists mix with fashionable young locals in the harbour night-life. The next morning a ferry took us to Skopelos in less than an hour and while we did have to wait longer than that for a bus into town, the sun and relaxed island vibe made the wait more pleasant than it would be in a gloomy England bus terminal.

The bus arrived more-or-less on time and got us from Glossa port to our Airbnb maisonette in the little town of Neo Klima. Our hosts were Vasoula and Babis, staying in the apartment next to ours, she a retired anaesthetist and master-decorator, he an architect whose smile shone through his eyes and who had built the sixteen apartments in the complex where we stayed. This couple made our stay in Greece a unique, rich experience. We felt like distant cousins, welcomed with ice-cream and sour cherries on our arrival, and given a bottle of Skopelos honey to take back with us on our departure. We were invited for a fish barbeque at their house, with fish caught fresh that morning and grilled to salty perfection, and we watched the Euro semi-final (Portugal  vs Wales) in their living room while drinking scotch whisky. One afternoon, Vasoula made us the island specialty, ‘Skopelos cheese pie’ –feta cheese wrapped in dough and twisted into a coil, deep fried and drizzled with honey before consumption. Not for the faint of stomach. It lasted us the entire week.

Most of our time was spent on the beaches and in the water – so warm you could swim for hours before feeling any sort of chill. On our first day we rented a quad bike, definitely the best decision of our holiday. The roads twist up-and-down and while the buses are inexpensive, they only run every 1 to 2 hours. The quad bike was perfect: it gave us freedom to explore the island independently in the open air and sun, with the warm smell of vegetation and sea coming to us on the wind. Cars share the roads in equal measure with mopeds, motorcycles of all sizes, buses, and quad-bikes and we zoomed from beach to beach – swimming over the white stones of hidden Hovolo beach, sizzling our skin on the sands of Agnondas, or lying in the shelter of umbrellas at expensive beach bars. We climbed up through the brilliant bright houses of Skopelos town, each street a piece of living art and we even made it to the chapel where Meryl Streep runs up some dodgy looking stairs in Mamma Mia. The climb up those stairs is worth it for the view at the top, where you can stare down into blue waters that haven’t been photo-shopped but look like God painted them that morning with his own special colours.

Our only disappointment was that the best meals we had on the island were the ones we cooked ourselves or that Vasoula made for us – I’m sad to say that the restaurants were disappointing. I am an adventurous eater and self-proclaimed foodie, but was let down by the lack of flavour in most of the meals we tried, especially considering the incredible fresh ingredients at hand on the island – goat, feta, olives, herbs and a sea of fish. We did however, find the best mojito I’ve ever tasted, and I’ve tried them in bars and restaurants on three different continents. This one was made by a proud, middle-aged Greek lady in Skopelos town who claimed to make the best cocktails in the world, and wasn’t lying. Her tiny café-bar is a short climb up the edge of the town and smells of fresh mint. That mojito was worth every cent and more.

At the end of the week we said goodbye to our faithful quad-bike, packed the honey and some fresh oregano (picked by Babis on his walks into the mountains), and left Greece feeling brown and happy.

Dream fulfilled. Next stop, Israel.

More Than My Whiteness

Race is never not a part of my interactions and identity in Zim. And I’m constantly gob-smacked when I encounter a person living his/her life in oblivion to the colour of their own skin and the weight of history that it carries, the invisible implications etched all over, and the reality of their own prejudices.

The other day, I crossed from one side of Harare to the other; from one racial and social existence to another, from one world and life to another.

It was a little strange to realize that I don’t belong in either world.

On Wednesday, I spent a few hours “down-down-town”, shopping with a friend in the part of town where streets are crammed and crowded with people. We bumped and wended our way through the striding, shouting, grabbing masses, being called after to buy coat-hangers, phone-lines, onions, men’s belts, passport-holders… you name it. It’s the part of town where you can buy flats/pumps for $4, where you don’t hear a word of English being chatted, where shouts of “hey sissi” (sister) and “I love you, baby” follow you around if you happen to be female. Oh yeah, and white. There is nary a white person around, downtown. Except that day, there was me; a shining beacon of whiteness that didn’t belong among the brown bodies flowing and shouting their way through the streets. My friend and I drew stares and comments and whistles. Oh the joys of being female. My friend – a stunning black girl with high-cheek bones, smooth, dark skin and a fashion sense I envy – was the perfect companion and guide. We laughed at some comments, shook our heads at others, ignored most. A few times, however, when I refused to engage with some idiot male, someone would shout after us in Shona and she would interpret: “You with the dark skin, tell the other pretty one to come here” or, from a man leaning out the window of a kombi, “why is it that one is born light and the other born dark?” Appraised and valued like goats or hats, all based on the colour of our skins.

And then from there I drove across town to Borrowdale Village – a shopping centre with prosperous businesses, high-end shops, fancy restaurants and the city’s newest cinemas. It’s the part of Harare where pumps/flats cost $20-50, where white ladies meet for tea and black business men for lunch, where money is no object, and brand-name-clothed teens stroll through the shops with iPhones in hand. In the coffee shop where I parked myself for the afternoon to write e-mails, the waiters are all black and the only person working the cash register was (and is always) a white guy. (OK, maybe that was callous, but it’s reality). It’s actually one of my favourite coffee places – the service is excellent, the food and drink good and the wifi decent. I can sit myself there for a few, uninterrupted hours with my computer.

But. It’s also a place where I feel the scratchy, sticky feeling of being a rich, white young woman – there is always a keen and heavy social/racial divide between myself and the waiter who serves me. I feel just as uncomfortable and out-of-place there as I do downtown. The waiter speaks to my whiteness, my assumed wealth, my supposed higher social standing. Server and Served live in separate realities and only interact as goods and money exchange hands, relating as through an unbreakable window of one-way glass. There’s no relationship, no conversation as equals, no way for me to cross over or reach out. Once again, I, we, are appraised and dismissed by the colour of our skin.

My race is important, it’s a huge part of me, but it’s not all there is to me. Or you. Or the person standing next to you in the grocery queue. I think, realizing that I don’t belong on either “side” of town is kind of cool. It lets me step into each one, every now and then, to discover how to go deeper, how to share the beauty of our differences instead of letting them define and divide us. 

Peace, Salem

It’s funny how you only start to truly appreciate something (someone, a place) when you are about to leave it. You manage to overlook all its faults, the things you found infuriating just a few months ago. (Like the fact that nine months out of the year this place is so cold your extremities are in constant pain and you miss the sun so much you forget what it’s like to be hot. But that’s beside the point, for now.)

One thing I’m going to miss about Northeast America is its oozing-character towns where anything goes. God bless America, land of free (as long as it doesn’t interfere with anyone else’s) self-expression.

Each time I’ve come into the city of Salem – and I regret it hasn't been too often – I’ve wished I lived here. If I was going to settle in this this part of the country, it would be in Salem. The place has so much character; it’s overcrowded with delicious unexpectedness.  

I rode my bike in through Beverly this morning and what a contrast! You go from neat, family-filled Beverly, all kids in prams and dogs walked on beaches and in parks, to Salem; a place with ship shops and advertised "tarot readings by Shirley upstairs" and people with Eastern-European accents listening to pink ipods in hipster cafes. The bubbled redbrick sidewalk starts just as you leave Beverly and you ride over a giant-bellied bridge over the harbor. Driving in a car, you miss the beauty, it’s over too quickly; you don’t see the gold sparkles on dull green water, the shirtless Asian men catching fish off the edge of the pier, the sea going far on the other side. And when you reach Salem there are girls in carpet-patterned skirts and tights, a group of children in tie-dyed shirts climbing over the Pickering Wharf rocks, a bright-costumed troupe of people standing in the gazebo in the park, dressed like characters out of a pirate animation movie. Everyone has an iced-something attached to their arm – this is America, after all, and a hand is incomplete without a paper-or-plastic-cupped drink in it.

I think some of what I like about Salem is that it doesn’t apologize for its differences. Here, you can be different, you can be imperfect – wearing thrift-store clothes, or talking to yourself, or old and listening to music on an ipod as you shuffle along, or young and a little on the pudgy side but in bright, tight clothes – and still be normal. Beautiful.

Part of that might have something to do with Salem’s history. Its first white settlers named it Salem from “Shalom” (peace in Hebrew), a lovely name for the fishing, farming village. Now, however, it is most famous for the terrible Salem witch trials of the 17^th century. Tourists that visit can see a dramatic reenactment of the first of those trials, the trial of Becky Bishop, in a play called Cry Innocent. I am ashamed to say I’ve never seen it, doubly ashamed because it was written by one of my all-time favourite professors, Mark Stevick, once described by an unnamed source as a cross between Dr. House and Jack Black.

Salem was also a key maritime trade point (hurrah for ship-building and codfish), is apparently the birthplace of the U.S. coastguard and (definitely) the birthplace of novelist, Nathaniel Hawthorne (Scarlet Letter, anyone?). The city was also devastated by a terrible fire in 1914 which destroyed 400 buildings. There's your brief history lesson.

And here I sit in Salem. 
I'm drinking my green tea bubble smoothie from Jaho's Coffee, all this history beneath my bum, the largest wooden, Coast Guard-certified, New England sailing vehicle (in about a century) just outside the door. 

God bless America.  

My West Beach

Yesterday was Thanksgiving - an American tradition that takes place on the fourth Thursday of November each year. Apparently it's also a Canadian holiday (in October) and an English one (?) but don't quote me on that.

My first Thanksgiving in America (four years ago) was the first time I saw snow; my brothers went running outside in their pajamas and bare feet while I watched from the window and sipped my tea. At 40 degrees Fahrenheit, however, the weather of yesterday's Thanksgiving permitted a morning run on the beach.
And I'm taking advantage of every non-freezing day to enjoy that beach before the temperature plunges to hideous depths.

I've always loved the ocean - maybe because I'm from a landlocked country and associate the sea with childhood holidays in South Africa and Mozambique, or because it's feels like an enormous, unpredictable and beautiful monster. And even though my little beach has smelly brown seaweed, a 6.30am dog called Max that isn't my favourite being in the world, a sad lack of shells, and seagulls that try to end my life by dropping oysters on my head (ok, slight exaggeration...it was just one gull), I'm still becoming fondly possessive of it. And of the early mornings we share. It's my beach.

Each morning on West Beach is different. Sometimes the sun takes-over the sky and smears it with colour. Last month there was a sunrise so shocking I didn't bother watching where I was going and stared sideways across the water as I ran. That day the sun elicited more than the regular "'morning" from me and my walking buddies as we passed each other;
"Isn't it beautiful!?"
"It's gorgeous!"

Another day, the beach was foggy and eerie, the seagulls standing in silence on the sand, watching me. I saw a single headlight zigzagging across the beach in front of me. When it finally passed me the middle-aged man on the bicycle gave me a sheepish grin.

Yesterday was another special morning, with large waves that seemed particularly antsy and restless. It was a high tide, forcing me to run higher up on the small width of the beach than I usually do. My track was a narrow band of hard-ish sand (I avoid the soft sand) between the water, the brown weeds of yesterday's waves and the forbidden territory beyond the beach's edge - territory of those who possess a beachfront home. I felt like I was racing those loud waves, like they were throwing themselves onto the beach and reaching for my feet grey, wet hands.

Mornings like that always make me feel obliged, pushed, left with no choice but to thank God for His beauty.  Sometimes I think, "gosh, thank goodness I'm here to see this! Otherwise no one would appreciate this beauty". But then I realize, the waves, the sunrise, the seagulls, the fog - they're already praising Him, just by being. If I wasn't there, His beauty would still be there. It's always there. It's huge.

So, thanks Lord, for the sea and the beach. For giving me a glimpse of your huge beauty. 

Texting Girls

I love working at an American Christian College – it’s amazing the conversations you overhear. Take this morning for example:

Two friends, both male, sitting just inside my office, waiting for an appointment. Both have their phones out.

Eli: So, there’s this girl and –

Mike: wait, stop. Did you just say girl?

Eli: yeah. Girl.

Mike: oh. Thought so.

(pause)

Eli: So there’s this girl and she’s been texting me.

(pause)

                She’s been texting me -

Mike: You should reply.

Eli:  - but it’s, like, really weird. I think someone’s using my phone to text her and then deleting the messages and then she’s replying. (reads from his phone) “OMG. You hungry? Come get my ID card from MacDonald.”

(pause)

Mike: you know her?

Eli: yeah but…

(pause)

Mike: Maybe she’s just into tall, gangly, hickville kinda guys.

Eli: Maybe.

(pause)

ok, I said, “which Macdonald, the auditorium or the building?”

Mike: You texted her?

Eli: Yeah.

Mike: that’s like...weird.

Eli: What?

Mike: Yeah man, that’s like, mean.

Eli: Well you told me to.

Mike: I feel like there’s so many times where I’ve told you to do stupid things and you’ve done them.

Eli: Really?

Mike: Nah.

Running: a cultural education in canine-care

This one made it into the Salem News last week. Woo hoo! Pity they don't pay for Op Eds...

I've discovered that you can learn quite a bit about a country's culture when you're a runner. For example, I've recently been struck by the two extremes of dog-care: the non-interference, leave them alone, sometimes leave out scraps of food attitude of people in Thailand, and the take them to doggie-daycare, wrap up their poop in little, blue plastic bags, hire a dog-sitter/walker protectiveness of people in America.

If you're a morning runner - like me - you get to see all sorts of things that the late-risers don't. Like the people who walk their dogs on West Beach despite the "Absolutely No Dogs Year Round" sign at the entrance. In fact, I've become nodding-hello-as-we-pass friends with a brown-haired woman who walks her highly-energetic collie on the beach every morning. The collie's name is Max.

Max races up and down the beach, sniffing and panting as though each morning is his first time there, barking with ecstatic urgency at the gulls and plovers. Max doesn't find me very exciting. Thank goodness.

Dogs can be a runner's nightmare. They bite, they chase, they bark. They're unpredictable. And unlike the gulls and plovers, I can't fly away when I'm chased, an ability that would have come in very handy during the six months I lived in Thailand.

Chiang Mai, a beautiful, modern city on Northern Thailand is full of dogs and there's no pound or animal shelter to keep them in check. They roam the streets in packs, sleep inside people's doorways, live in temple grounds where monks (and tourists) won't chase them away. Unlike the dogs here in the U.S., those dogs aren't pets; they're mangy, scrawny street dogs. Some Thais do keep dogs as pets in their homes but most of the canine population lives on the streets.

I had to be on hyper-alert mode when I ran in the mornings in Thailand, crossing over to the other side of the street whenever I saw a pack of dogs ahead of me. Most of the time they were docile or sleepy and completely ignored me. But not always.

One morning just before sunrise I was running around what's known as "the old city"  - a square block in the middle of Chiang Ma that is surrounded by an ancient moat and remnants of stone walls. I turned a corner, my MP3 music pumping in my ears, sweating in the lovely Asian humidity, when a small part of my consciousness registered a faint shout somewhere (some kind soul taking pity of the poor farang girl was about to be attacked).

I took out my earphones and turned around to see a large, white dog running straight for me. And it wasn't 'oh-look-someone-to-play-with' running, it was 'I'm-gonna-bite-this-girl-in-the-leg' running.

Now, I'm certainly not brave. But I can be immensely practical, and in that moment - as this strange dog raced towards me - my practical mind pushed the cowardly, heart-racing, petrified girl inside of me aside and took control.

I ran forward towards the dog, clapped my hands hard and shouted, "EY!!"
The dog stopped, completely surprised and stared at me in confusion.
"Don't!" I yelled.

Then I did something that made the the cowardly, heart-racing, petrified girl faint inside me. I turned around, and kept running. Thank heaven the dog didn't follow.

Jogging on the beach in Beverly, watching Max yap at the gulls, I am constantly reminded of that dog-chase in Thailand. I've realized that jogging is something of a cultural education, it requires not only physical but also mental energy. You have to abide by the unspoken cultural, social, every-day  rules around you and accept that they are necessary. You have to learn the flow of the country and ride along with it in order to survive. Or avoid being bitten in the leg by dogs.

Home for Christmas

I recently wrote this Opinion piece for the Salem News, a brilliant local paper here on the Northshore, and since I've been feeling the guilt of a less-than-faithful blogger - especially compared to my sister (thanks Beks) - I thought I would reprieve myself a little by publishing something I've already written. 

I learnt who Bing Crosby was in 2005, during my first Christmas in America. Crosby’s Colgate-commercial smile and rich, deep voice floated out from my grandparents’ television as he sang, “I’ll be Home for Christmas.” My family had come from Zimbabwe to live in New Jersey for 10 months and I’d seen my first snow 30 days earlier on Thanksgiving morning. It was quite a change from the sunny, 70-degree December-weather I was used to. In Zimbabwe we don’t get snow and Christmas isn’t white, it’s wet. As children we always hoped for a rain-free day so we could go swimming with our cousins. Even now, grown up, living in Massachusetts and having experienced my share of New-England winters, it still feels surreal to be wrapped in sweaters and blankets, sipping tea and watching the white-coated world outside.

My feelings about Christmas are not the same as they were five years ago. For most of my life this holiday evolved around family, home and Jesus. December was a time of warm weather, stockings at the end of my bed, mince pies with cream, special church services and, of course, a huge family gathering of aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents. But our last few Christmases have seen dwindling numbers back home; Grampa is no longer with us and the cousins have been dispersed through several countries and colleges.

Christmas has changed. I’ve changed.

I’m starting to see an ironic twist in the carol “I’ll be Home for Christmas.” The song was first released by Crosby in 1943 during World War II and it touched the hearts of soldiers and their families who were separated by the war. At that time everyone was hopeful that the end was in sight and all could go home. Today, with over 200,000 American military personnel currently deployed in foreign countries as of last June (according to the Department of Defense), many American families feel the same way.

However, it is not only soldiers that are separated from their families this December. About three percent of the world’s population – over 200 million people – currently lives outside their birth country, according to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Some of that three percent are international students (like me) studying far from home, staying on the campuses of colleges like Gordon, Salem State and Endicott. Others are fathers, brothers, daughters and mothers working in foreign countries worldwide to send money back to their families. We all won’t be home for Christmas.

I have discovered, however, that some of the things I miss most about Zimbabwe at Christmas can be found on the other side of the world too, right here at Gordon College. Family, home and Jesus are everywhere. I have been invited, welcomed and temporarily adopted by several faculty and staff members of the college. I have also discovered an eclectic family of internationals, students from Korea, the United Kingdom, Kenya and other places who, like me, are strangers in America and living at Gordon we have been able to find a home here, together. Most importantly, I have found people who have a similar heart for Jesus, who understand why December is so special to me.

So even without the hot weather I’m accustomed to and though I cannot go swimming with my cousins, Christmases away from Zimbabwe are not necessarily Christmases away from home because I seem to have found families all over the place.

Apparently there's a "correct" way to eat pizza

"You eat your pizza backwards."
I've been told this fairly often. Apparently there is a correct way to eat pizza and I've been doing it wrong all my life. Ever since I was small, and our family would get our favourite kinds of pizza as a special treat, I've been eating it backwards. We'd get pizza from Pizza Inn, the Zimbabwean version of Pizza Hut...kind of... (see the picture below). They once had ostrich-meat pizza. But we got Margarita (cheese and tomato), Hawaiian (pineapple and ham) and Four Seasons for mom who likes olives. I never really understood what Four Seasons was... I've always eaten my pizza by taking one bite off the end, crunching through the crust, and then chomping slowly through the remainder, savouring the gooey, cheese-soaked middle for my final bites.

I remember when I was getting ready to come to America for the first time and an American missionary in our church warned my mom that we would have to learn the correct way to open a milk carton or we would be laughed at. Apparently there is a correct way to open milk cartons.
I didn't know all these rules; why tomato sauce (ketchup) is so popular or why everyone craves Mac n' Cheese and I'm still amazed by the slices of flavourless (sorry), pre-cut, neat orange and yellow squares of cheese that come packaged and separated individually by films of plastic.

I knew how to eat sadza though, rolling the steaming white paste into a ball with my fingertips, dipping it in the meat stew or vege relish and popping it into my mouth, keeping one hand clean. I knew to wash the rich, dark mud off the carrot before I crunched my way through it and throw the green, leafy hair on the compost pile or giving it to the chickens. I knew my mouth, hands and feet would be stained pink, red and purple for days if I went to the mulberry tree.
But none of this helped in America; you can't pick fruit off the trees unless you pay an entrance fee and there is no mealie-meal for the sadza. Pizza's one of the few things you can eat with your hands and there's no "double-dipping" allowed. It's a new world with its own rules.

I don't have a picture of Pizza Inn, but here's the ice-cream version; "Creamy Inn". Zim has Pizza Inn, Creamy Inn, Chicken Inn and Bakers Inn.

Ode to my Feet

I am currently very happy with my feet. I realize that almost everyone has them, and usually they are associated with dirt, smells and sweat. We often try to adorn them with bright, painted toe-nails or perhaps a toe ring, I've even seen some very creative tattoos. 
However, though they carry us about in our day-to-day activities they seldom receive the praise which they deserve. Since coming to Thailand I have begun to pay more attention to my feet. 
In this country, feet are considered the dirtiest and most offensive part of the body; shoes are removed before entering any house or temple, feet are to be kept clean out of courtesy to others, and it is rude to point ones feet at another person, and even more offensive if done to a Buddha statue.

Because of the need for constant vigilance concerning the state and direction of my feet, I have began to pay closer attention to them and I feel as though I have been ignoring them all my life. The other day I was reminded not to take them for granted.

It was a day when I put my poor and uncomplaining feet through a great deal of walking - first from my apartment to Kad Suun Keew mall and back - about an hour walk each way - and then all around the Sunday night Walking Street for a few hours. If this was not enough, I then took the long trek home from Tapae Gate (another hour's walk)! It was only after showering and laying myself down in exhaustion, that I turned my attention to the appendages at the end of my legs. I stared at them in wonder; sore and swollen they had carried my towering body across the city as I trudged back and forth. What strength and perseverance! With a new appreciation I lay on my bed and massaged those tired and faithful friends. 

Thank God for my feet!

Airports and Coffee Shops

Have you ever felt happy with the present? Not 'The Present', that large, general and ambiguous category of time that we stick somewhere in the middle of Past and Future, but the present moment. As if you are suspended in time, not even thinking about time at all really, but content just to be? Its a wonderful feeling; to be thrilled at this amazing thing called existence, grinning for no apparent reason at the world - so full of normal, every-day, average life! I suppose that is what it really feels like to "live in the moment". It's not simply taking life as it comes by being spontaneous and crazy, living with a live-for-anything attitude, but rather it means standing still. Stopping. While everyone else rushes by you just look at the world around you. We seldom have time to remember the present. We're always rushing to and fro, from one task to the next, always planning the future or regretting the past. We forget the present and how wonderful it is to simply be, now.

There are certain places I have found, where this "living in the present" feeling comes on quite strong, places that contain a lot of fodder for this craving for life. One such place is airports. Having done a fair bit of travelling in the past five years or so (the latest of which has brought me to Asia, to a 5 month semester abroad in Chiang Mai, Thailand), I have come to appreciate these fascinating places. Airports are like giant spice shops or spice cookies; the flavours of the world come to mesh momentarily in delicious, often surprising combinations. (Incidentally, spice cookies and spice shops are not for everyone...)
Airports are portholes, existing unattached and not really part of anywhere. There is a certain universal quality to them for though each one carries the particular flavours of the home country, they are essentially the same from country to country. Airports hold combinations of languages, fashions, smells, generations, styles and every state of human emotion and interaction you could think of - humanity in all its glory and misery! You have prim and proper air hostesses, travel-worn families, tanned tourists, suited business men, flurried officials - travelers and workers all suspended in time, waiting for the destination, for the journey to be over, for 'real life' to continue. Or begin. 

The second place in which you can suspend yourself above time and watch the rest of humanity - those poor souls still caught up in its grip - is at coffee shops, or cafes. Here you can see the anxious businessman, late for a meeting but not willing to give up his caffeine, the  students - a gaggle of girls on their phones and ipods, giggling and texting. The silent young male sent by friends to get all the orders - he leaves with 5 drinks in a bag or a box to take back to work or to the party or the video-game marathon. There's the old man, a teacher with his laptop and books, the shy couple, the mother with her espresso and daughter with her fruit juice. 


I am currently enjoying a large iced mocha (or  มอคค่าเย็น if you want the actual Thai name), courtesy of Groon Cafe. I'd like to boast about this little cafe, of which I have become extremely fond. Over the past three weeks it has become my favourite coffee shop in Chiang Mai. It is a small, one-roomed cafe off of Suthep Road, soi 4, with delicious drinks, free wi-fi and friendly female baristas. The  inside of the cafe is decorated with old pictures - scattered photographs of the King and his wife when they were young, and also shelf after shelf of random collections - magazines, empty drink cans, old toys...there's even a couple ancient-looking television sets. The place is frequented primarily by young people; students of the University and a few resident Farang/foreigners like myself and is a perfect place to sit and observe (and judge, let's be honest) the life around me. In fact, I would suggest that everyone follow my example, give it a try: perch yourself in the corner of your favourite coffee shop, preferably with a view of the door and one of the road/sidewalk outside, order a nice iced latte or hot chocolate or a fruit shake, arm yourself with an ipod, a book, a laptop, a notebook and pen, even a text book - its not important, its merely the facade you'll be hiding behind. Once you have assumed this position you can sit and enjoy. And just watch life and people.

A Woman's Arsenal

One of my high school teachers once told me, "there are two things that a woman must have in this world; education and a driver's license." I was bemused, and mulled over her words, particularly the necessity of a driver's license. Despite my confusion, I dutifully labelled her statement IMPORTANT and filed it away in the cabinet of my mind.
This teacher - a woman I admired and respected - intended or realized the lasting impression those words would have on me. They soon became etched into my subconscious, released to the roiling caverns of my mind where, for years they have been buffeted about as by a restless wind; appearing suddenly in my memory and then vanishing again.


The statement deserves careful scrutiny for it makes a bold claim, stating that a woman must posses two particular things in order to be a success. Many would argue against equating a license with something as valuable as eduction; possessing an education in this day and age is invaluable for obvious (and much talked of) reasons. It provides job security and advancement, the chance for self-sufficiency, to be released from reliance on a husband as sole or primary provider. Besides the economic and social opportunities, education furnishes the woman with a mind (See Martha Nussbaum's Woman and Human Development for more more on this) - with the intellectual capacity to make her own decisions, to question the status-quo, to strive for change. Much has been said on the subject of education and women and I will not add to the volumes of information and opinion.
The driver's license however, is much more of an oddity and requires further puzzling. What would make it a necessity? What does it offer to a woman that other assets (such as education, wealth/land, political independence etc) do not?


I have had a hard time getting my license. My brother and I got our provisionals (i.e. permits) at the same time and he was far more confident, competent and eager in driving. I had a general fear of driving and was quite happy to let him commandeer the practice time. Furthermore, what with my father's sabbatical and my  own move to college, the past half decade has not been the most 'settled' time. Add to this the fact that Zimbabwe changed its license-obtaining laws (adding several more steps and making it even more difficult and terrifying) and you have a world of giant fiends all bent on keeping me unlicensed.
Last December however, after five years of battle, I finally triumphed, conquering the opposing forces and claimed the prize! I cannot tell you the thrill, the wonderful happiness, the feeling of immense accomplishment and pride. I felt like the imprisoned captive who, having been beaten down and humiliated, assailed by doubts, fears and failure, at last climbs the wall, faces the monster and wins her freedom! The glow of pride still sits in my heart.


On the day I got my license my teacher's words - naming my prized license as one of the two essential assets of a woman's arsenal - came back to me with new meaning and power. What began as simple acceptance of and agreement with a respected teacher had gradually became belief. I had come to adopt her words as absolute fact, as Truth and thus felt it imperative that I achieve them. Anything less would be failure.


And what have I gained? How has obtaining the license empowered me, and why did I strive so hard to get it?
The bronze disk (Zimbabwean licenses are cast in bronze metal) has bestowed on me a new status, making me equal with my brother and increasing my value in the eyes of employers, friends and family, for now I can be called on to perform a valuable service.
The license has given me wings; the freedom and independence to fly away when the need arises, the mobility to escape or even pursue, to provide for myself without having to continually rely on others. I have a new limb - I was crippled with immobility and had to be carried around by others, but now I am the one doing the carrying, I am armed with a new power and strength.
More personally however, my driver's license has given me identity. At long last I have a legal, recognized document to counter the bias which denies that a white girl can be African. My claims to home have been recognized, my sense of belonging has been validated and proved.


So my teacher was right, though she did not realise the effect her words would have on my life. As a white African woman, my recently obtained drivers license is just as important an asset as my education. In fact, in one instance it is even more important, for it offers power, freedom and identity that my education could never give.

Aware of my Alienness

I have been living in America for two years now and people often ask me, "So, how has it been adjusting to America?"
My routine answer is usually something like, "Well, I don't think I'll ever fully adjust."
Most will then nod and smile sympathetically, knowingly.
But they don't know. They don't know what it is to be a stranger, in a strange land.


There are moments when I feel an uneasiness tingling through my body, like a cool chill that raises goosebumps on my flesh. In these moments I seem to awaken from as if from sleep, look out at the strangeness around me and wonder, 'Where am I? What on earth am I doing here, in this unreal world?'
It is at these times that I feel my alienness most acutely, and my foreignness seems to rise to the surface, seeping past the mask of normalcy in which I have shrouded myself.
This feeling is triggered by the most mundane, simple and every-day things of American life - men in baseball uniforms, the overflowing isles of Wal-Mart, the smell of a cold, air-conditioned room, the sight of snow - things that, to an African girl from Zimbabwe are wild, extraordinary and other-worldly. They make me feel that I am living in a dream or experiencing the unreality of a Hollywood movie.


Travelling on the train into Boston this weekend I felt such a feeling creeping into my consciousness. The city of Boston, with its graffiti words spray-painted on the back walls of apartment buildings, its black fire-escapes, reminiscent of movie stars like Tom Cruise or Matt Damon, its slim, well-dressed, high-heeled females carrying Styrofoam mugs of Dunkin Donuts Coffee - this city often sparks off an awareness of my own alienness. It churns up buried emotions - a disquieting mixture of excitement and fear. Excitement at the plethora of possibilities and opportunities this rich, wide world has to offer, with its accessibility to wealth, possessions and travel. In such a place I sometimes feel that I could truly do, have or be anything! The future is open to me and its unknown potentials are exhilarating!


But there is fear too - fear of losing myself, of forgetting where I have come from, or worse, of being forgotten. This world is changing me; I am no longer the girl I was when I left Africa two years ago. Even now, when I speak to my family on the phone and hear their voices filled with duty in taking my calls, when the e-mails become less and less as they become busier... when I am not missed - then I know that I am being subconsciously forgotten. 
My ultimate fear is that the alienness that I feel here in America will return with me when I go back, manifesting itself in new, terrifying ways in that place I call home. To be an alien in my own land, my own family - that is my fear.

Goodbye 7 Pine

I have been house-sitting for a couple of my professors for the past 2 weeks. Being so far from home and living in the campus dorms has made me miss some of the simple things of a "normal" life; taking care of pets, having my own kitchen & pantry, sitting outside drinking ice-tea and reading the paper (or just doing the cross-word in my case...). But house-sitting gives me a chance to do some of the "domestic" things I've missed. It was two weeks of wonderful relaxation!


Sadly the two weeks is done.
This poem is a little tribute to my time there :)




This place has been my own;

A space

In time and life to be alone;

To escape and hide myself

From reality.

I shared it with no one;

It was solely mine,

For a time.

I shall miss you, 7 Pine.