On Life as a Racist Extremist

I've been called a feminist in tones varying from rueful to angry, but never have I been called a racist or an extremist, and certainly never in one phrase.

Until Summer Solstice 2017.  I will remember this date forever.  Or until tomorrow, at the very least.

Martyrdom

It's nice to be loved.

But I sometimes wish it wouldn't manifest itself as N2O hurrying up behind me when I'm alone in my office and asking for kisses.  This inexplicable behaviour has intensified since her marriage, so I've politely asked her to confine her antics to her bedroom.  (Or I've wheezed this while fighting to hold her hands away from my ribs.)

She just laughs and continues attempting to fondle me.

Defeating the Leopard – Part II

Then participants shared challenges they'd faced on the field and asked how to deal with them.

Example 1: An organisation handed out contraceptives to fight HIV/AIDS.  Catholic churches spoke out against this, and another organisation offered 200Fc for each contraceptive handed over to them – which they then burned.  The organisations started offering $20 to people who would decorate their cars for one camp or the other.

“Retreat!  Strategically.  Learn from more successful partners in the area, bring real-life cases to justify your position – so people cannot blame horrific deaths on some neighbour's hairy eyeball.  Seek support from trusted members of society – remember, we don't have the perfect recipe.  It's up to you on the field to work this out.”

Example 2: Similar to the first, but the speaker just wanted to add a catchy slogan:  'Say no to contraceptives; yes to body on body!'

“Great, explain to them that this means syphilis.”

Defeating the Leopard – Part I

I have been part of a few conferences and seminars by now.  I've mentioned them here, but I've mainly taken them with a Canadian winter's worth of salt because I know the leaders to be either corrupt or flippant about the topic at hand.

This one was different.

Head Space

People are difficult to understand – their motivations are so obscure.  At times, I see more clearly than the people themselves what they're searching for in all the wrong places.  At others, I can ignore a plea for help in perfect innocence.  I suppose this is the human condition.

And sometimes it's just because people are bat-guano cray-cray and I'm the only bastion of sanity in this fire-lit cave.

As the Pearl is to the Oyster

I had a vexing week.

While diligently working on a mental health promotion project, I somehow came perilously close to being propositioned by a man who is very cute - for a leggy bullfrog.  N2O can never talk about him without puffing out her belly and shuttling around at high speed.  I asked her what she'd do if I actually loved him; she sincerely assured me she didn't care.  Then she hurtled across the room again, stomach-first, cackling all the way.

Re-Evaluation

My coordinator so enjoyed our internal evaluation that he decided we should do another this week.

On one hand, the organizational evaluation had been informative and fun, and was vital to accountability and good work practices.  On the other, I was due to have an internal evaluation of my own soon, and have never been able to adequately justify my flagrant disregard for potential lives at my monthly shareholders' meeting.  Perhaps I should recommend Butters' phone company and its wide variety of apps to our leadership?  I could include it in my evaluation report, but this would require that my coordinator actually read it...

There and Back Again – Appendix A

Finally home, in a fugue state that had begun the first night that Butters had kindly woken me, I could finally begin to process everything we'd seen and heard in the course of three days. 

...Again

Our drivers soon looked like rusting androids – with all that dark skin and the copper dust that we threw up caught in their curly beards.  I would have laughed if I wasn't busy squeaking.  I loved the 15km stretch covering rough green hills under a bright sky, but the guilt of dirtbiking without helmets marginally spoiled my fun.  I'd dreamed of this view, this heat, this exhilaration - only with friends or possibly a man I loved – not a rather weedy-looking youth who only spoke Swahili.

But he was serious about his responsibility.  He rarely talked, didn't flirt at all, and laughed at others' misfortune – basically meeting all my criteria for a close friend.  We were third in the line of motos and arrived safely past rickety wooden bridges that sincerely made me question my intelligence and sanity.  The team sent off the drivers to amuse themselves in one of the shacks of the tiny village while we conducted the evaluation at the local clinic.

...and Back...

The day dawned bright, but not early enough, so I lay in bed and plotted Butters' untimely demise.

After breakfast, we carried out some evaluation activities; I will outline what I saw as the major challenges and lessons of this work in a later post.  40km (one-and-a-half hours) later, we were in one of the nearby villages to meet the beneficiaries and local partners of our project in order to glean strengths and weaknesses.  There were two stellar points that morning.

There...

The following three posts about my field mission may be liberally laced with expletives.  I don't really use them, but sometimes it's so satisfying to just leave a gap between words for emphasis.