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.