dear friends,  

the second i got home from the airport, delirious, my father shoved a telephone into my head and said,

"CAN'T YOU SPEAK TO YOUR GRANDMOTHER FOR FIVE MINUTES AFTER NOT SPEAKING TO HER FOR SIX WEEKS, OR ARE YOU TOO TIRED FOR THAT?"

"no, no i'll -- "

"HERE SHE IS. TAKE THE PHONE, HALEY, TAKE IT!" 

"HELLO, DAHLING."

"hello, ba-noi."

"YOU HAVE BEEN AWAY FOR ALMOST TWO MONTHS, DAHLING, DID YOU LOSE MUCH WEIGHT?" 

"i mean, not that much but -- " 

"SO YOU GAIN WEIGHT." 

"we ate mostly tortillas. they -- " 

"WHAT IS TORTILLA?"

"they're made of corn. they're kind of like the guatemalan equivalent of bread, but they're flat, and -- "

"SO YOU EAT PANCAKES FOR SIX WEEKS."

"...sort of. except tortillas don't really have a taste."

"REALLY, DAHLING. WELL, HOW BORING."

"actually, they're quite nice when you're hungry."

"SO TELL ME ABOUT THE POVERTY, DAHLING." 

how does one respond to that? 

"well...it was very dirty in todos, but xela was cleaner than new york. in concepcion, there's trash all over the roads. but everyone was so kind to us, ba-noi. we were guests in their houses, they fed us, you can't even imagine how kind -- " 

 "GOOD. NOW YOU REALIZE HOW, HOW LUCKAY YOU ARE, YOU CAN APPRECIATE YOUR FATHER. DO YOU APPRECIATE YOUR HOUSE NOW, DAHLING?" 

"yes."

"NEXT SUMMER, MAYBE YOU GO SOMEWHERE MORE MODERN, OKAY? PARIS IS QUITE NICE, MAYBE SPAIN, YOU WANT TO GO TO SPAIN?"

"i'm not -- "

"AND THIS WINTER BREAK, YOU COME VISIT US IN HONG KONG, OKAY? YOUR GRANDFATHER IS GETTING OLD. HE MAY DIE ANY DAY NOW, SO IF YOU ARE NOT TOO BUSY, MAYBE YOU COME VISIT."

"yes."

"YOU TAKE CARE OF YOUR FATHER. I WILL SPEAK TO HIM NOW."

"good-bye, ba-noi." 

thank god, luispe, aaron, and colleen, that you made me into a peaceful person. thank god.

so i was sitting beneath an apple tree (!), and read something that made me think about coming home. 

"if the society doesn't install the values anymore, your happiness and pleasure is entirely up to you; you have to work and earn it and install your own moral values." 

-- hanif kureishi

by now, the effects of reverse culture shock are probably wearing off. your bed sheets might not seem as strange, your dishwasher isn't as fascinating. (favorite american rediscovery: elevators!). i expected to come home a revolutionary, or at the very least, a hermit. 

instead, i've discovered how easy it is to get reacquainted. when you're sleeping beneath a new down comforter, it's hard to remember what it feels like to sleep on the floor, or that billions of people sleep on the floor every day. i'm sitting in the kitchen eating apple turnovers -- is that a dishonest experience because other people are going hungry? 

i don't think that america is evil.  i don't think americans are evil, and i don't think that we come from an evil culture. rather, americans have an infinite amount of lifestyle freedom. have three boyfriends! have ten cats! be gay! make tofu stirfry in your pajamas! it's just like how, because we have freedom of speech, people can publish fantastic political papers, but they can also publish pro-nazi freestyle raps. go figure. 

what i mean to say is this: i know that so much of our lives here is excess, an excess that, in guatemala, was pared down to such beautiful simplicity. now that we've gone without functioning toilets, being in a sparkly clean bathroom again does not make us horrible people. the point of our trip was not to show us how much we can do without. rather, it was to pare down everything we didn't need and illuminate what we did need: each other. and although our lives at home seem so much more cluttered, our trip has given us the ability to sort through the mess, to grasp into the future and fashion it for ourselves. 

"if the society doesn't install the values anymore, your happiness and pleasure is entirely up to you; you have to work and earn it and install your own moral values."  

we know how to do that now. miss you all terribly.

xx haley 

For my ISP, I chose to research maternal healthcare in Cambodia.  My research was divided into two main parts: the week I spent observing my home-stay mother, a nurse, in Prek Pdao and my visit to the Sihanoukville Public Hospital to watch a birth.    Retrospectively, I think that, more than anything, my ISP research just opened up more questions for me.  I set out with a list of questions I wanted answered.  Some of them I found answers to; some of them I didn't.  The research really enforced for me the concept that it is the journey and not the destination that counts.  Originally, I wanted to find out the average number of births per Cambodian woman, the cost and availability of pre-natal care, the ratio of female to male healthcare workers in Cambodia, etc.  What I found out was so much more valuable.  I envisioned my research taking one path.  It took another and I am glad it did. I wanted to consider the differences between the American and Cambodian healthcare systems.  I was not interested in the obvious... the fact that, as a gross simplification, America enjoys state-of-the-art facilities, unparalled equipment, and the best doctors; in short, what the vast majority of Cambodia lacks.  It was not this ostensible difference, but rather the difference in psychology that interested me.  My entire experience with the American healthcare system has been documented, sanitized, monitored...  We surround our personal health with such privacy, almost as if it were sacred.  Here, the guest house owner, a recent acquaintance, will openly ask if you have diarrhea.  Women receive routine injections in their buttocks with family members, friends, and neighbors looking on.  And the space in which health needs are attended to is different.  In America, the hospital is a space entirely dedicated to improving health, almost sacred in its sterilized simplicity.  In Cambodia, IVs are set up under stilted houses with cows in the background and babies are delivered on straw mats in the family home.  Personal health is deeply integrated into daily life.  From what I have been able to observe, medicine here is a matter-of-fact business that appears, in my Western eyes, devoid of emotion.  In America, personal health carries a host of emotions: fear, dread, sadness, relief, joy.  Not so in Cambodia.  It was not acceptable for a six-year-old girl to cry as her wound was cleaned no matter how much pain she may have been in.  A new mother did not smile upon seeing her child for the first time.  Health is health.  Emotion is emotion.   My research led me to consider emotions in a new way, less as natural impulses and more as privileges.  By allowing ourselves to feel emotions, we are indulging ourselves.  It is a luxury not everyone can afford.  We can afford to be egocentric.  We expect a certain level of comfort in our hospitals.  People here, I imagine, do not.  It’s a cultural necessity.   

Our hosts in Mancankani, a past Dragons home-stay community

Toubacos on the dancefloor before wrestling in Kounkane

Lion from the "Simb" festival in Dakar

On Jarama!

Liza Wiig and I are currently awaiting our flight back to Colorado from Senegal, where things have aligned more beautifully than we could have ever imagined, allowing us an indescribable past couple of days with the group.

Not long ago, we set out from the Colorado office with a hand-drawn map of Senegal, a homemade Pulaar “phrasebook” (both thanks to our Africa Program Director, Megan Fettig), and a brief set of directions from the instructor team. As a couple of seasoned travelers who had been cooped up in the Dragons office for a busy winter, spring and early summer season, our hearts were bent on adventure, and we were determined to rough it on our own in a country (and on a continent) where neither of us had before set foot! Our goal was to find the Dragons group where they had settled for home-stay: in Kounkane, about 14-15 hours from Dakar, somewhere on the other side of The Gambia along the highway that stretches from Kolda and Velingara. Admittedly, nervousness lay beneath our excitement and determination; no matter your experience as a traveler in this world, Africa is wild…and SO radically new.

Provided with an invaluable connection in Dakar (Dragons’ dear friend Babacar), and more help than we first expected (Inbal and one student had actually traveled to Dakar for a clinic visit the night that we arrived), our adventure was unexpectedly shaped for us, and we were easily pointed in the direction of the others. Our hand-drawn map became quite useless (although a great conversation-starter nonetheless, and a hilarious memento of our whirlwind trip).

In Kounkane, we were greeted with mangoes, bisap popsicles (made from the Hibiscus flower), and a group of troubadours named Mamadou and Jean, who had ventured from Kolda to meet the group and teach about the musical traditions of Senegal and Mali. The rest of the group returned from their visit to a nearby fishing village by nightfall.

The next couple of days mostly revolved around revelry: drumming, singing, dancing, laughing and eating. A series of special events were invoked by the chief of the village, Balla Balde, in celebration of the unique home-stay opportunity. On top of endless music-making and dancing, the mystical “Concoran” was on a rampage – storming through the village on numerous occasions chasing away bad spirits…and women and children. The Concoran wears a wild costume made from the bark of a tree, and accompanied by a troupe of drummers, he runs madly through the streets brandishing machetes. Traditionally, it’s a game that is played during the height of the rainy season – accompanying a massive celebration of circumcision, when village boys aged 9-11 are officially welcomed into “manhood.”

On the last night in Kounkane, a huge number of village residents (including the Concoran) gathered in an open field to celebrate with a few matches of traditional Senegalese wrestling. To start, every “toubab” or “toubaco” or “westerner” (that is: every Dragon!) was pulled out to dance.

And now, as quickly as we were immersed into the wonderful and intricate rhythms of this country, Liza and I are heading home – back to the office, where we will be within a few days’ time. Not to worry, though, we have been imbued with an energy that is sure to live on.

And we are so excited for YOU, as parents, to feel the power of Senegal as it has now manifested itself in your sons and daughters. All of their excitement, passion and newly-discovered knowledge surely enriched our experience here. For this, we are so grateful.

Heading home!

Ryan and Liza

We left Cusco this morning, and on the plane I found myself torn between two very different, very strong emotions: the desire to stay here with my group and my instructors and not let this whoel thing end, and the desire to be at home eating at Olive Garden with my parents with my ipod in my hand. The latter at the time was definitely stonger, I really really really want my ipod back, but now that I think about it, this place has seen so muhc of me and it has had to grace to show me a little of itself that I dont know how I feel about leaving. When something takes a little of you, you are naturally a little reluctant to leave that piece of you behind. I have left sweat in Perus jungles, tears in its hostels, and blood on its soccer fields, and somewhere up in the foothills of Apu Ausungate I left what was left of my fears about this world and my place in it. I left the person I was when I got here somewhere on the side of the road from Puerto to Cusco, or on a boat on the Madre de Dios, or in a shady, peaceful corner of Macchu Picchu, I´m not quite sure where, and though I feel infinitely lighter with the girl gone and the new young woman ready to sprint into that infinity we call the future, I still feel a slight sorrow at the loss of what I was.

It was thoughts such as these that filled my mind as we touched down in Lima. Feeling slightly melancholy, I stepped off the plane, until I remembered that one of the things the new me does is not let the world get here down, realized that no matter what happens I will be OK because the new me had been to the place the old me thought she couldnt go beyond and stepped over that line, looked back, and saw that there was really nothing to fear. I smiled as I thought this, and then I smiled wider because at that moment I also realized that 48 hours from now I will be on my way towards my parents, my friends, my bed, my dogs, the sweet refuge that is my house and then soon after that my other refuge, my school, and finally, and perhaps most exciting and comforting, YES, FINALLY, AFTER A WHOLE MONTH, my ipod.

:) Liz