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)

I think I'm both

There's always one person in the relationship that loves the other person more. And there's always one person in the relationship that needs to be loved more. But I think I'm both.

New country, new book, new poem...

A Woman Young and Old
by William Butler Yeats
(1865-1939)

I
FATHER AND CHILD
SHE hears me strike the board and say
That she is under ban
Of all good men and women,
Being mentioned with a man
That has the worst of all bad names;
And thereupon replies
That his hair is beautiful,
Cold as the March wind his eyes.

II
BEFORE THE WORLD WAS MADE

IF I make the lashes dark
And the eyes more bright
And the lips more scarlet,
Or ask if all be right
From mirror after mirror,
No vanity's displayed:
I'm looking for the face I had
Before the world was made.
What if I look upon a man
As though on my beloved,
And my blood be cold the while
And my heart unmoved?
Why should he think me cruel
Or that he is betrayed?
I'd have him love the thing that was
Before the world was made.

III
A FIRST CONFESSION

I ADMIT the briar
Entangled in my hair
Did not injure me;
My blenching and trembling,
Nothing but dissembling,
Nothing but coquetry.
I long for truth, and yet
I cannot stay from that
My better self disowns,
For a man's attention
Brings such satisfaction
To the craving in my bones.
Brightness that I pull back
From the Zodiac,
Why those questioning eyes
That are fixed upon me?
What can they do but shun me
If empty night replies?

IV
HER TRIUMPH

I DID the dragon's will until you came
Because I had fancied love a casual
Improvisation, or a settled game
That followed if I let the kerchief fall:
Those deeds were best that gave the minute wings
And heavenly music if they gave it wit;
And then you stood among the dragon-rings.
I mocked, being crazy, but you mastered it
And broke the chain and set my ankles free,
Saint George or else a pagan Perseus;
And now we stare astonished at the sea,
And a miraculous strange bird shrieks at us.

V
CONSOLATION

O BUT there is wisdom
In what the sages said;
But stretch that body for a while
And lay down that head
Till I have told the sages
Where man is comforted.
How could passion run so deep
Had I never thought
That the crime of being born
Blackens all our lot?
But where the crime's committed
The crime can be forgot.

VI
CHOSEN

THE lot of love is chosen. I learnt that much
Struggling for an image on the track
Of the whirling Zodiac.
Scarce did he my body touch,
Scarce sank he from the west
Or found a subtetranean rest
On the maternal midnight of my breast
Before I had marked him on his northern way,
And seemed to stand although in bed I lay.
I struggled with the horror of daybreak,
I chose it for my lot! If questioned on
My utmost pleasure with a man
By some new-married bride, I take
That stillness for a theme
Where his heart my heart did seem
And both adrift on the miraculous stream
Where -- wrote a learned astrologer --
The Zodiac is changed into a sphere.

VII
PARTING

i{He.} Dear, I must be gone
While night Shuts the eyes
Of the household spies;
That song announces dawn.
i{She.} No, night's bird and love's
Bids all true lovers rest,
While his loud song reproves
The murderous stealth of day.
i{He.} Daylight already flies
From mountain crest to crest
i{She.} That light is from the moom.
i{He.} That bird...
i{She.} Let him sing on,
I offer to love's play
My dark declivities.

VIII
HER VISION IN THE WOOD

DRY timber under that rich foliage,
At wine-dark midnight in the sacred wood,
Too old for a man's love I stood in rage
Imagining men. Imagining that I could
A greater with a lesser pang assuage
Or but to find if withered vein ran blood,
I tore my body that its wine might cover
Whatever could rccall the lip of lover.
And after that I held my fingers up,
Stared at the wine-dark nail, or dark that ran
Down every withered finger from the top;
But the dark changed to red, and torches shone,
And deafening music shook the leaves; a troop
Shouldered a litter with a wounded man,
Or smote upon the string and to the sound
Sang of the beast that gave the fatal wound.
All stately women moving to a song
With loosened hair or foreheads grief-distraught,
It seemed a Quattrocento painter's throng,
A thoughtless image of Mantegna's thought --
Why should they think that are for ever young?
Till suddenly in grief's contagion caught,
I stared upon his blood-bedabbled breast
And sang my malediction with the rest.
That thing all blood and mire, that beast-torn wreck,
Half turned and fixed a glazing eye on mine,
And, though love's bitter-sweet had all come back,
Those bodies from a picture or a coin
Nor saw my body fall nor heard it shriek,
Nor knew, drunken with singing as with wine,
That they had brought no fabulous symbol there
But my heart's victim and its torturer.

IX
A LAST CONFESSION

WHAT lively lad most pleasured me
Of all that with me lay?
I answer that I gave my soul
And loved in misery,
But had great pleasure with a lad
That I loved bodily.
Flinging from his arms I laughed
To think his passion such
He fancied that I gave a soul
Did but our bodies touch,
And laughed upon his breast to think
Beast gave beast as much.
I gave what other women gave
"That stepped out of their clothes.
But when this soul, its body off,
Naked to naked goes,
He it has found shall find therein
What none other knows,
And give his own and take his own
And rule in his own right;
And though it loved in misery
Close and cling so tight,
There's not a bird of day that dare
Extinguish that delight.

X
MEETING

HIDDEN by old age awhile
In masker's cloak and hood,
Each hating what the other loved,
Face to face we stood:
"That I have met with such,' said he,
"Bodes me little good.'
"Let others boast their fill,' said I,
"But never dare to boast
That such as I had such a man
For lover in the past;
Say that of living men I hate
Such a man the most.'
'A loony'd boast of such a love,'
He in his rage declared:
But such as he for such as me --
Could we both discard
This beggarly habiliment --
Had found a sweeter word.

XI
FROM THE 'ANTIGONE'

OVERCOME -- O bitter sweetness,
Inhabitant of the soft cheek of a girl --
The rich man and his affairs,
The fat flocks and the fields' fatness,
Mariners, rough harvesters;
Overcome Gods upon Parnassus;
Overcome the Empyrean; hurl
Heaven and Earth out of their places,
That in the Same calamity
Brother and brother, friend and friend,
Family and family,
City and city may contend,
By that great glory driven wild.
Pray I will and sing I must,
And yet I weep -- Oedipus' child
Descends into the loveless dust.

from Kampala to Kigali

from whence 7 Hills turned into 1000...

"we're 3 years to 30...weird, right?"

happy crazy ugandan birthday!

i love you to the moon and wish you so much joy. keep living it up.

and here's a good reminder from rilke:

...I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903
in Letters to a Young Poet

love of the forever and always kind,
karis

stay hungry, stay foolish

stay hungry, stay foolish

"I’ve seen people come and go, I’ve shared my dreams with them, I’ve given my all to see the companies grow and blossom, even at the expense of “a life”, but somehow, everytime, at the end of the day, it’s just God and I left standing. I know He brings people in our lives for a purpose, and when that purpose is fulfilled, they leave. Their work in your life is done, and your work in their life is done.

But, like I told some team members at Node Six, it is a very lonely place, being at the leader of any organisation. You watch the tides turn, you watch the storm come in and you watch the waves rise. Everyone else is allowed to react naturally, to flee the impending disaster, but not you. Nope, like the captain of a sinking ship, you stand at the bow, and face the storm. You stand your ground, and let the maelstrom destroy everything around you.

When it’s all over, you huddle in a miserable water-drenched pile in a corner and cry a bit.

And that’s when God taps you on the shoulder and says, 'Dude, whatagwan? I’m still here.'"

Whether there is a God, or there isn't, and there are undoubtedly lots of gods to choose from, they're either here or they're not, and believing they are, or believing they're not, is just a choice. You choose beliefs, for as long as those beliefs serve a purpose, and when that purpose is fulfilled, you choose, that choice is still (and always) there.

taxi strike and nursery rhymes

Yesterday, I worked in the morning, but then I blew off work had some things to do in the afternoon, but there was a taxi (matatu) strike. I got a call from Alex, through a surprising (because we both have MTN, a giant telecom in Uganda) and yet unsurprising (because MTN is a giant telecom in Uganda) amount of static, saying that I'd have to take a boda to Makindye. The cost of a taxi is 2,000/=, and the cost of a boda is 4,000/=, and while neither are expensive, boda rides can add up, and they're more dangerous. But danger being relative, when I got off the boda, to my right just down the street were about 15-20 men banging on the sides of the empty and unmoving taxi, and by that time it was around 1pm, so I don't doubt they were not only angry, but some of them were probably also drunk. Makindye is a suburb south of Kampala, and it has a little bit of everything, from impoverished slums and crowded orphanages, to lower class Ugandans, up to middle-upper class Ugandans, and all the way up to (relatively upper class) muzungu families. But Ugandans heavily rely on taxis, so a day without transport means a day without work, and a day without work can mean a lot of different things for a lot of different people, so when taxis go on strike, it is something that is truly felt.

Luckily, taking a boda on a day when there is a taxi strike means there was no (traffic) jam. The extremely ambitious plan (for an afternoon in Uganda) was to go and meet a lady --- who knows Sapheen, who is Ramadan's mother, who is Alex's friend, who is my friend --- who works at a bead factory. When I arrived I found Alex, Gerald, and Jamil as I usually do, Alex listening to music on my iPod (and singing or dancing, often both), Jamil scrawling in a notebook, often writing a letter or drafting a document to raise money for the Makindye Ultimate Frisbee Club or in hopes of starting a business, and Gerald, today looking on as Jamil wrote, but often aligning himself with one or the other according to his mood. I was greeted by being enveloped in a hug from Alex, continuing to dance and persisting to sway me with him before he let go to tell me that because of the strike, the woman at the bead factory might not be there, and the bead factory might be closed. I felt stupid for not connecting the dots (no taxi, no factory, no beads), but that being just 1 of 3 things planned for the afternoon, I told Alex's mom for months, who runs a kindergarten, nursery school, & day care, that I would visit her class and teach the students some new songs, we headed over to Alex's house. I had thought the night before about what to teach such a developmentally broad range of kids (ages 1-5), but capacity building is such a core fundamental at IDI, and in Uganda as a developing country, that I didn't worry too much as some of the older students that learned more quickly could teach the others and the younger ones. It made me think of summer camps songs I used to sing, as a microscopic sting of sadness swept through my consciousness that I don't really remember any songs that I used to sing back when I went to nursery school. (Note to self) I remember more the songs that my parents used to sing and teach to me, and even more the ones that my grandparents used to also sing to me, like the one involving my feet, and going toe by toe (technically called fingerplay by the experts) singing: "This little piggy went to the market, this little piggy stayed home, this little piggy had roast beef (you know you've been in Uganda for too long if, when you fail to remember the words roast beef, you substitute gold teeth), this little piggy had none, and this (the pinky toe) little piggy went wee wee all the way home." I didn't want to deal with feet though, so I settled on 3 songs: I'm a Little Teapot, Johnny Whoops, and The Princess Pat, the last song of which I could only definitely remember the first 2 verses, which equals a total of 4 verses, but the first 2 songs proved to be more than enough material, and so that was my injection for the day, steeping some Ugandan children in some American culture with nursery rhymes!

[insert video here]

Dream, Child

Dream, Child by Solomon King

Dream. Like never before.

Dream, child. More fiercely and wondrously than the dreams of yesteryear. Dream and listen not to the taunting voice of careless mistake past, but rather, heed the cheer of lessons learned and a path well troden.

Dream of the impossible. And dream of the insane. Dream of crimson skies blazing with a thousand cold suns. Dream, the fiercest heats of numbing cold. The blinding clarity of the scent of zero.

Dream.

The kaleidoscope dances of midnight rainbows. Dream the whispers of thunder and the roar of silent laughter.

Remember the dreams that filled and gave purpose to your yearning soul. Remember the dreams that woke you up to furiously scribbled midnight epiphanies.

Remember those dreams, and remember well. Gossamer wings and scarlet flight. Inky space and time’s turbulent ordered chaos. You remember don’t you?

Those fleeting dreams, child… those dreams that you rejected so carelessly… they were the first rays of a brilliant dawn.

So. Dream, child.

Again. Like never before.