half-african princess, storm goddess

Every time I've dyed my hair while living in East Africa -- given the limited options for "blonde" sold in stores, and by stores, I mean Nakumatt -- I end up looking like Storm from X-men, who is actually half-American and half-Kenyan!!! And for some reason, at first its really embarrassing, because even though I look relatively the same, I feel so... different, but then at some point, I still feel different, but it feels really badass...

all her women students are double majors

The story that prompted the NPR interview...

“There’s a typical idea that it’s all about zeroes and ones, or it’s all about the hardware and knowing how to fix a computer. We actually don’t do that at all. Computer science is about working with data, which doesn’t sound very cool until you start thinking about it, and then it’s really cool. It’s applicable to anything and everything and is about how to do things most efficiently and effectively.”

Sprenkle said that she was particularly struck by the fact that all her women students are double majors, combining computer science with another subject such as journalism, math or physics. “Last year we even had a double major in computer science and classics,” she said.

“I think many of the women students are excited about what they do in the introductory courses,” said Levy. “I attribute a lot of that to Sara Sprenkle. She's been especially good at getting students involved in research and publications, and that’s important. Also, it’s been consistently observed that when you have women teaching a subject, you get more women involved in taking it as a major. Twenty-five percent of our computer science department is women...”

http://news.blogs.wlu.edu/2012/01/17/wl-women-in-computer-science-continue-to-buck-national-trend-2/

...left feeling very empty.

"As someone who swings between her introverted nature and her extrovert’s life, I am frequently left feeling very empty."

http://fatmatters.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/getting-round/

a girl can never become a woman until...

A girl can never become a woman, a true woman; until she finds the girl.

"Lawino has to sing in her strange melody, without chorus and accompaniment. Indeed hard to sing for a woman jilted, and an impossible song to orchestrate on stage—lawino’s song. Her lamentations, like the traditions that have been trampled by the new civilisation, cries that if you abandon your culture in one hill, then it will be expecting you on the next hill!"

Song of Lawino by Okot P’Bitek.

overplayed songs I never want to hear again...

except the part about overplayed songs I never want to hear again...

lullaby

I was getting coffee downstairs, which happens sometime around 11am, and I heard Laetitia, who's been hiding for 5 months that she's pregnant, singing in her office, and it was really soft, and sweet, the sound of the way she might sing a lullaby soon.

heart hangover

Yesterday I woke up, not with my head pounding, just my heart pounding, and pounding. My mind was wandering Kigali city, running far from Rwanda, past the DRC, the CAR, past Nigeria, and Ghana, all the way across the Atlantic Ocean back to somewhere home. I spent too long in Joanne's bathroom at brunch, I was just sitting there, furrowed, sighing. And then when I came out everyone was making fun of whether its appropriate to take a long time in the bathroom at someone else's house, so I claimed I was pooping and that it takes awhile, and everyone laughed, and no one cared, and no one knew, all they knew was that I was really hungover after I initially walked into Joanne's apartment wearing dark sunglasses and didn't take them off. Then later I was outside and it was raining, and I was running late, waiting for the rain to pass, and I was sitting on the front porch wall, watching it rain, and Nic came outside and brought me an egg sandwich, and then he came outside and sat on the front porch wall with an egg sandwich for him, and we talked about relationships, and I cried a little after confessing that I'm a mess, and that when you're drunk and an idiot and decide to dive down a deep, deep hole of unprocessed processing, when you're sober you're stuck dealing with it, but sitting together outside, talking with it raining softly, the egg sandwich; sometimes its freshly-baked scones, sometimes its freshly-brewed coffee, its just how Nic sometimes nurtures the souls around him, I just didn't know that at some point I would really, really need it, like that quote from My So-Called Life: "Sometimes someone says something really small and it just fits into this empty place in your heart."

Today I woke up feeling dread, or dead, or feeling like maybe I should just pretend *he's* dead, but really, I need to consider that *we're* dead, that we died. Did I break us? Were we broken?

Is it like Nic's dog Root destroying the stuffed Big Bird animal in this ignorant bliss of euphoric ecstasy, only to realize all that's left is one lone, limp orange-and-purple-striped arm (or leg, they all look the same) to play with in the driveway.

I freaked out a moto this morning when I shook off my helmet revealing big tears rolling down my face, and then apologies spilling out, because I worried that he would worry about the girl crying on the back of his moto. He said sorry a lot and I said sorry a lot, and then I waited, standing outside the office, and I cried, and I kept saying to myself "ok, ok, ok..." and then I stopped staying "ok", and then I stopped crying, and walked the rest of the way up the steep driveway where the day guard was chopping away at the bits of grass that grow between the cobblestones, the same bits that the day guard at home was also chopping away at, and I went to work. And (thankfully) sometimes absolutely nothing here reminds me of him or home.

This writer from Kampala might be coming to Kigali at the end of the month, maybe this is the universe consoling me with some real-life Marie Calloway fantasy, maybe its just the universe mocking me by dangling some hypothetical Marie Calloway fantasy.

something Julie Delpy would say

When I fall in love with my work, I fall a little bit more in love with my life.

The Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.
I dunno why she swallowed that fly,
Perhaps she'll die.

There was an old lady who swallowed a spider,
That wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
But I dunno why she swallowed that fly -
Perhaps she'll die.

There was an old lady who swallowed a bird;
How absurd, to swallow a bird!
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider
That wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
But I dunno why she swallowed that fly -
Perhaps she'll die

There was an old lady who swallowed a cat.
Imagine that, she swallowed a cat.
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird ...
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider
That wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
But I dunno why she swallowed that fly
Perhaps she'll die

There was an old lady who swallowed a dog.
What a hog! To swallow a dog!
She swallowed the dog to catch the cat...
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird ...
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider
That wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
But I dunno why she swallowed that fly
Perhaps she'll die.

There was an old lady who swallowed a goat.
Just opened her throat and swallowed a goat!
She swallowed the goat to catch the dog ...
She swallowed the dog to catch the cat.
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird ...
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider
That wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
But I dunno why she swallowed that fly
Perhaps she'll die.

There was an old lady who swallowed a cow.
I don't know how she swallowed a cow!
She swallowed the cow to catch the goat...
She swallowed the goat to catch the dog...
She swallowed the dog to catch the cat...
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird ...
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider
That wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
But I dunno why she swallowed that fly
Perhaps she'll die.

There was an old lady who swallowed a horse -
She's dead, of course.

big mistake

In the past 24 hours, my inner feminist dragon has officially been awakened and is breathing fire today...

It started with Penelope Trunk's crazy career advice:
blueprint-for-a-womans-life
what-women-can-do-when-theyre-young-to-be-happy-later-on
and, of course...
plastic-surgery-is-the-next-must-have-career-tool-maybe

and then followed by some bigoted Girl Scout Troop in California:


and then followed by indifference to the fact that not a single female showed up last night to KODEVE:
"The thing I like about KODEVE is that it's not a project with an agenda. It's just coders hanging out... and well things naturally happen. A few of the guys last night were making plans for a tourism app. And later we all got into a great discussion about why Eric's SMS app idea wouldn't work ;) [...] people will come if they are interested in coding. And if they're not... then I'm not particularly interested in them coming."

And as I was listening to Natalie Imbruglia's 'Big Mistake' I suddenly just felt like, why the fuck does it have to be so hard?

try not to

Try not to fall in love with people you haven't met. -Michelle Orange's advice to Stephen Elliott

Also, Marie Calloway, how did I miss this?

I need to read/write/word more. Like, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more.

late at night

I like working late. I like Kigali at night.

out of the lucy loop

Lucille Clifton died 2 years ago around this time. Did I already know this? Did I forget? Anyways, it hurts, as though for the first time, but maybe hurts again. Because, she just... She mattered.

I listened to her read this poem aloud back in college, and as soon as I felt her death on the hairs of my skin, I instantly remembered her voice that night, and all of the tiny flecks of detail as she moved through it.

homage to my hips
BY LUCILLE CLIFTON
these hips are big hips
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top!

Lucille Clifton, “homage to my hips” from Good Woman. Copyright © 1987 by Lucille Clifton. Reprinted with the permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd.

Source: Good Woman (BOA Editions Ltd., 1987)