An excerpt from February’s monthly report (names changed and organization called AA). ‘Rents and a break get here tomorrow; thank god.

I am totally frustrated, fed up, and out of patience, feeling like I don’t want to be working in Ahmedabad any longer. There is no one event that tipped the scale. In the beginning months I was fine to do anything, handling (more or less) certain frustrations, trying to work hard, excited at times and looking to contribute however possible. Seven months in, my patience is lost and my nerves are on their last legs, sick of people hissing at me in the street, the chaos of our office, and most things in between. Within AA I am an english-speaking secretary and the expectation with which people ask me to do menial tasks is annoying. People still stare in the streets, are rude, the city is dusty and loud. I don’t like it.

What I like least about it is my reaction. In a previous life I was a happy, energetic, (relatively) patient, stress-free person with an optimist’s outlook on each day, an appreciation for human interactions, and a generally pleasant countenance. Now, my interactions are curt, sometimes rude. I hate this, I don’t want to be rude to anyone, in my office, rickshaw drivers – anyone -- but it is a coping mechanism, one that I have done my best to avoid for months and months but find myself reverting to. It is not nice to be unkind it is not how I care to live my life but, sadly, I am.

This infects everything, my work with and commitment to AA most notably. I’ve started looking ahead, counting the days until I run the marathon and leave right after that. This is not a good way to be here and I don’t know how to change it – it must improve – for the remaining time. Hopefully a week with my parents, a break (we just had a break), and some time away will reinvigorate me for the balance.

What I find most problematic is dealing with _____ji, a man I have grown to appreciate so deeply for his archetypal imperfection. He is such a good man, a sweet man with a caring heart and the best intentions, but he doesn’t know what he is doing running an NGO and makes it up as he goes. He is stubborn, sexist in ways he is not aware of, frantic, a great talker. In him I see someone struggling to lead, to support a staff where funding might be running out, to help these workers, to play a part – to act in a space that requires a skill set he does not have and he tries every day, as best he knows, to cover his bases. He is not dumb or naïve, he is cunning, manipulative at times (I think he has ADHD. I mean that. I have never seen the man sit still for more than 10 minutes and even when he is sitting his eyes constantly dart around the room, and his hands fiddle with something. He does not focus or listen. At first I thought it was just his personality, and in part it is, but so too do I think he has ADHD. Yes, this is my professional, psychiatric opinion).

Because of his character, I have a very hard time telling him no. When he asks me to do something, we are not really able to talk through why he/AA is doing it – language is a problem but the bigger problem is that he doesn’t work in this way - what he is getting at, any sort of broader strategy or plan, so I have two options; “_____ji, this is a good idea,” and his excited reply of, “Good good good, very good!” or my reply of “_____ji, I don’t think this is the best option” and his defeated admission: “As you like.”

Living Here

From the window of my room on the tenth floor I can see a lot. Facing the intersection, I see the empty plot next door sprinkled with litter and surviving plants. A stray dog and her puppies roam for food. Across the street on both corners are empty lots and high rises just beyond, tall buildings of poured concrete that don’t sweat and will soon buckle under the yearly stress of ten months of dry heat and two months of biblical rains. Opposite our compound is a party plot, a series of three grass cordons decorated with flowers, ribbon, music, stages, and gross amounts of food in an over the top, tacky show of wealth. Announced by blaring eight-person bands, horse and carriage, and dancing processions, arranged marriages unfold here, the platform for wealthy, exclusive families to broadcast their mergers. Love is absent. Motorbikes speed by, green and yellow rickshaws spewing fumes prowl in the search for customers. A man wearing a wrinkled white dhoti rolls along on his fruit cart smoking a bidi, absent-mindedly steering his camel. Each morning, this is what I see. This is where I live.

At the train station last night I dismissed a mother of no more than twenty, her infant child swaddled on her hip, when she asked me for ten rupees. My nod so fast, it was almost instinctual, a reflex.

Living here worries me. Every day I see things that are not right and they’ve phased from outrageous to normal, my reaction no longer disgust or sadness or indignation, but of shrugged shoulders and self-centered concerns.

This afternoon, on the way to the store to buy 500 rupees of phone credit, I passed a construction site. Under the noon sun, two young women worked together to haul bricks from the street to the mason 100 yards away. One of the women, in a yellow sari, her muscular mid drift exposed, bangles covering her biceps, shoulders pulled back with a strong, royal stature, stood with a piece of rolled cloth on her head and a plank of wood on top of that -- the cloth serving as a shock absorber and soft base for balance. The other woman symmetrically placed bricks onto the piece of wood, five across and four high. Without looking down and with twenty bricks stacked on her head, the woman in the yellow sari walked to the mason.

Nearby, on a pile of sand, two young boys in t-shirts and nothing else were playing, their hair matted and dirty, almost dredded in filth, snot crusted to their upper lips.

Every night around 10 p.m., our doorbell rings. I know who it is; when it rings I scamper into the kitchen and look for something to give. A piece of fruit, some biscuits, leftover food if there is any, I try to find something. The man at the door is a Dalit (untouchable) sweeper who works in our compound and the neighboring ones. Without fail, he, and sometimes his son, make rounds of the building to beg for food. People toss him one or two rottis, some daal, vegetables on a good day. What he collects will be his family’s food for the day.

These are easy examples, obvious examples of destitution that stands in the most marked contrast to Western norms of what is and what is not acceptable. These are the norms. There are others that are as obvious – the caste system – and countless subtler ones that also stand in contradiction to what I’ve lived: most middle/upper class families have several house help (cleaners, cooks, ironers, drivers, washers); it is ok to drive like a lunatic (yes, a comparative measure against a Western norm that could very easily be tame driving by Indian standards – like all norms); it is ok to harass women; blatant corruption; piss anywhere you want; litter; answer the phone in the middle of an important meeting; wear white denim, ass-hugging bellbottoms.

Maybe adjusting or adapting or accepting norms is a coping mechanism, something you have to do not to go crazy in a new place where the customs are different from what you know. Sometimes there is no choice and you eat what you are served. In this international volunteer game, this is often encouraged and called acculturation or behavioral fluency, substituting Skippy peanut butter for locally roasted peanuts, or jeans for a lungi, or your greeting for a more appropriate, local one. In so doing, foreigners try to fit in, to assume a normal life as dictated by what’s around them, to substitute some of what they’ve known for the new world they’ve landed in.

But, I don’t want to be rude (yes yes, conversations on what is rude, what isn’t rude, social

constructions, etc.) to people just because everyone else is and it is not right for children to shit in the street, for families of a dozen to live in one room, to grope women on the bus, to throw trash anywhere, or to wear ass-hugging, white denim bellbottoms in the year 2008.

Maybe it is a coping mechanism -- it is not that hard to relinquish Skippy peanut butter - but at what point is the acceptance of norms an excuse for a dulled sense of morality, responsibility, right and wrong excused by anthropological masturbation that permits you to write it all of as a local norm. When did I go from fearing the approaching beggar because of how uncomfortable he/she made me feel, to brazenly dismissing illiterate, dirty children with a motion of my arm because everyone around me does the same.

I missed something, I’ve tipped too far, gotten used to things that no one should get used to, neither the person seeing it nor the person living it.

Maybe accepting norms is buckling under the pressure, acquiescing in the face of enormity. But it is not about the enormity, it is about what I see everyday and reacting. This is about personal behavior in response to norms, about looking out the window each morning and rejecting comfort, refusing to say that the view from my window is acceptable. My answer should not depend on what those around me say.

I can clean my own apartment, wash my own clothes, and, no matter how many times I see someone jump into a sewer in their underpants, remain indignant about something that is normal here but loathsome, inhumane and unjust. Even though I live here, I can remain outraged at the outrageous.

Yesterday someone stole my bike. In the morning, like usual, I rode to work, listening to music, taking in some warm morning sun, dodging cow shit mines, cars, bikes, and camels, on my morning route that cuts through the village, over the train tracks and then parallel to them. I parked my bike, locked it, and went upstairs to start my day. Normal, it’s the same day I’ve been living since September. At our office, the parking deck is on the ground floor of the building, bicycles and motorbikes perched in-between concrete support columns, making it impossible to keep watch out the window (not that I would). Just above the back wheel, where bikes in the West have a rear brake and brakepad, sits a single handcuff serving as the lock, jamming the back wheel before it is perched onto the kickstand that really is a stand; the bike is locked to itself. It is a joke of a lock, the handcuff from a police officer Halloween costume. Not more than 20 feet long, the driveway leads to a busy street, making this the easiest of thefts – the bike parked in a sheltered place, the lock a formality but not a deterrent, no guard, no gate, and a waiting, bustling street to disappear into. Quick cash.

When I first got the bike everyone told me that I should get a second lock. In the U.S. I rarely lock my bike on the street, bringing it inside whenever possible, well aware that in NYC it is just dumb to think that a lock will deter theft. Here, I didn’t get another lock, thinking I was invincible, or that no one else uses a second lock why should I. I don’t really know why, but I didn’t. “I will be back in 20 minutes, I am just going to the post office,” I told my co workers. At the bottom of the stairs, jingling the key in my right hand, I turned the corner and didn’t see it. Maybe someone moved it. The corner, the nook where a bike can’t fit, the street, the neighboring balconies, pan parlors – I looked everywhere. My bike was gone. My bike is gone and it ain’t coming back.

What a shitty feeling. Maybe there should have been another seven locks, maybe I should have had an alarm system on it, it is a moot point. I was robbed and that feeling sucks. It was probably someone from the neighborhood, someone who watches me come and go and finally worked up the gall the make his move. Loosing my bike and the money sucks, but the world goes on – the feeling of being robbed and totally helpless to do anything about it is the worst part. I just hope he needs the money and uses it for something good.

With my tail between my legs, I sulked upstairs in search of a: “Sorry, that stinks.” Instead,“You should have had another lock,” was the response from everyone. Great. Thanks a lot. That is really sweet. Your right, getting my bike stolen was my fault. I apologize. They mean well but it wasn’t what I was looking for. When the director returned he went crazy, ranting about how that person is a bad man, he must be caught, my cycle will be replaced in one or two or three or four days, and that man is a thief and a bad man. He is such a sweet man and is extra careful when dealing with me, but this enthusiasm was more than I wanted to deal with right then. I just wanted for someone to say, “Sorry man, that sucks,” and then get on with it, take a few days to think about the best next move and let is pass with time. More ranting, I must call the police, file a report. In the middle of his best-intentioned tirade, I looked outside and chuckled – good luck finding my bike, the same bike that every other person in Ahmedabad rides. That’s not like looking for a needle in a haystack, it is like looking for a specific needle in a needle factory.

I walked home.

My Biggest Fear

BC answers the phone. It is 9 a.m. in Great Neck. I know he is just beginning to stir at this hour, awake but in bed, eyes open but not on, periodically bothering Lezley to see if the paper came, if he pissed the bed, or for no good reason. I see his bedroom in my head, the very empty bed next him, the remodeled bathroom to help him bathe, the Venetian blinds drawn, a shoe horn about, powder on his dresser, an oft used comb. Through the crackle of the connection, a wire carries my voice across the world. The distance remains. Immediately I miss him. Hearing his voice lets me see his face; his patent hello, an upturn in the O after the few seconds it takes for him to place the receiver to his ear. Whhhats happening, he asks not just with his voice but with his personality. I hear his wise cracks, feel the sweet gestures, the semi circle of the receiver somehow now resembling his mischievous smirk as it communicates his thoughts and I feel his warm smile amongst these cold lonely mountain clouds. Soft hands, blue eyes, thin hair. I think back to shooting baskets in the park, teaching me to drive, when he let me use the remote ignition on the Maxima, days at the pool, lunches at Scobee, his Pittsburgh hat, that bad moustache, bar mitzvahs, baseball games, days in the hospital for him, days in the hospital for Doc, Tobey Gale, playing drums in the basement, the first Thanksgiving after Doc died, the look of 50 years of love he gave Doc and Doc gave him when she was inundated with tubes and machines - my Simoney he said as she turned, somehow, even though the doctor said she was going to die -- Montauk, swims in the ocean, walks to the park, everyday is fathers day to me, how lucky can a guy get, take it take it take it, Chanukah, sleep overs, tokens for the bridge, birthday parties, stories of UVa, Fuzzala, driving backwards in a rental car, meeting Doc at Grossinger’s, the bungalows, eating at that Italian restaurant outside of Liberty, bagels and lox, foster kids, basketball games, support and advice. A perennial presence.

It takes him a while to place my voice. Today he answers the phone without his dentures. "As far as I can tell I am all right." His words slither off his gums, aspirating his syllables. I’ve called too early. He is out of it, unsure at first who I am, where I am, or what hour it is. But, when I close my eyes and see him, my blue eyes just like his, I see the glitter in his eye looking for trouble the way he always does, his mind witty and ever ready with a sarcastic retort. Those quips don't come as fast now and their delivery is unreliable. This month he turns 89 and with each day his momentum increases, no longer aging with the invincibility of youth but aging in a real, mortal time, in units of faded memories, panicky midnights and medications required.

His routine is paramount, without it he is easily disoriented, rattled, confused, stressed and worried, inconsolable by anyone other than my mother, Lezley, or Big G. No more snooze buttons, he gets up when he is ready and eventually makes his way to the shower, already thinking about what to have breakfast. He eats the same thing every morning. Once dressed, he thinks more about what to have for breakfast, filling at least a half an hour and the empty room. Wheat Bran, half a banana, skim milk and his medication. That takes him to about 10:30 or 11, the perfect time to read the paper and start thinking about what to have for lunch. But, such a monumental contemplation definitely requires a change of scenery. From the kitchen, he goes to the living room to sit on the old couch in the white slip cover closest to the front door. Near the phone and with a clear view of the street, he is ready for action. He asks Lezley: “whatta we got?” He will eat lunch, take a nap, think about dinner, maybe watch jeopardy, worry about things, talk to my mom and my uncle, and get ready for bed. Small things like a note in the mail, a call from his grandkids, trip to the barber shop or supermarket, the occasional visitor or a walk to the park when it is warm, make his day, an event to rattle the monotony.

Such is aging I suppose – I don’t know - and the glass is overfull, an unbelievable life ripe with good fortune, love, health, and family. I think, but don’t really know, BC is living the last years of a wonderful life. His health is good and his medical coverage comprehensive – there is no immediate reason to think this - but at 89 the thought is there.

I don’t want him to die. This is my biggest fear and the single hardest relationship to be away from.

It pains me to be so far away. During university I saw him during the breaks and between summer forays, called often and felt nearby. Now, I call but it is not the same. Before I left my mom asked me what I would do if BC got sick. It was on my mind and yet her asking made gravity seem real, the thought holding more weight if she too was thinking about it.

I am here, I chose to be here and I try to stay in touch. It is not the same and in these important years it is not sufficient. I miss BC; thinking about it melts me into a 11-year-old child at sleepover camp for the first time, whimpering, helpless, a pain the rests just behind your stomach when you curl in your sleeping bag and try to fall asleep. What I fear most is the onset of some sort of Alzheimer’s (his memory is still sharp – there is no reason to think that he will develop it now) or another stroke, the fear that he is alive when I return but does not remember me. Or, of course, that he might die, that I might have said goodbye to him forever. I don’t pray often, but I pray to see him soon.

A Eulogy for Toi Market

Outside of the black gate, take a left, walk by the nursery of ferns and every color green, follow the path as it heads to the Adams Arcade roundabout, bumping and dipping, closer to the road at times, spackled with litter. Cross the street to the right, the petrol pump on one corner, the furniture maker on the other. Watch out for stopping matatus – you will probably hear Shakira not lying about her hips before you see the likeness of Wesley Snipes airbrushed on the side door – and the gutter that serves as a latrine. In the cold air of Nairobi’s July winter, shops open later in the morning, women with their over-bundled babies strapped on their backs dust off vegetables to make them look extra fresh for one more day, men gather around one newspaper and read about the latest celebrity scandal out of Hollywood, children on their way to school walk in groups of three or four, their uniforms perfectly assembled, their shoes somehow spotless despite the mud and puddles. Stray dogs that don’t know the difference between Monday and Thursday stay close to the butcher shops, sometimes venturing out to see what they can find but always close enough. The bag seller unpacks his duffels, rucksacks, knapsacks big and large, stuffs them full and hangs them carefully. A stall of hats next to a stall of shoes, then pants, then children’s shirts, then men’s shirts, then a heap of children’s clothes. The big Church on the right side of the street. The homemade church to the left, as big as the one on the right, is forever expanding and the only thing more certain than construction its lumber walls and plastic tarp roof is some sort of witch healing ceremony.

Directly ahead is storage, the safe where everyone’s wares are stored nightly in overstuffed burlap sacks the size of offensive linemen. Each morning the sacks are loaded onto carts and delivered to their owners who carefully unpack the carefully packed goods. At the corner it is more like J walking, a quick left and the next right just as quick, the street straight but snaking momentarily. The first strip is a locksmith on the left and fruit and vegetable sellers – all women – on the right. Red tomatoes, that beautiful purple of eggplant, interior decorated eggshells, parsley, mustard greens, avocados, mangos, bananas, onions, garlic, pineapples, potatoes stacked five and six on top of each other readying for a sharpshooter contest. This stretch of the road gets bumpier. Just past the vegetables starts the coat sellers, and a long stretch of men’s shirts. These shirts take you to the corner capped by a large pile of socks. Rose’s house is in the compound through the gate on the right and the school children file through the gate to the secondary school on the left. Running between the wall of that compound and the retaining wall of the school is the entrance into the heart of the market, as if this street is one finger leading to a forearm, the elbow intersection now towards the core. Now the path is jagged.but mkokotenies push on, hissing from behind, they have the right of way. Often, the stop, look for a smoother path, rock back, redirect and push their wheelbarrow forward. The bicep starts with a shirt seller with shirts on three levels in parallel lines to the ground, as if out to dry. Trees canopy over the path and the light sprinkles through. Cackles from the school yard rain down, shirts now untucked, footballs entertaining by the dozens. Stalls only one the right hand side, next is another locksmith who also sells radios, then a stand for women’s undergarments, a place of necessity and embarrassment, women trying to try on bras over full sets of clothing.

Oily smoke enters your lungs at the shoulder. This corner is mad, an gulf of an intersection, people speeding from the many rivers, tributaries, brooks, and streams that empty there. Bubbling, frying cauldrons and tea stands. A sharp right leads to the most dangerous part of the market, food kiosks, billiards stands, and checkers depots, all made out of wood scraps, tin or plastic bag roofing. There are few colors there and many young men with the stayed look of glue fumes in the eyes. Paths don’t go straight for more than several steps. Music blasts. It is here that salaries are gambled away and drown in alcohol.

If you go straight you head directly into the heart of the market, down a wider row of shops that has constant, surprising, smaller paths emerging where you think they can’t. A left takes you past more vegetable stands, live meat marts, and confusion. A left is alive, churning you through total confusion, spitting you out higher up on Kibera Drive near a popular hang out for drunk matatu drivers, high beggar children, a huge, smoldering garbage pit.

Most days I went straight, right through to the end, a right passed the hotels, empty homemade churches and avocado seller, stepping on the precariously placed piece of wood bridging the latrine trench, and towards what looks like a dead end. There is a blue kiosk there and a path to the left, next to the woman who sells hair brushes and wire sponges for scrubbing. These shops are sad, poorly stocked. At the end, women often sit to have their hair plaited just opposite the woman selling fish. Stepping just beyond her, the market stops but never ends. In Kibera, on Ngong Road, in lots of Nairobi Toi Market is connected to everyone by the goods it supplies to hundreds of thousands of people, the jobs it provided, commerce it facilitated, the institution it was.

Most days, whether it had rained or not, that street had a huge puddle, making it a tip toe on one section of concrete to pass the shop where Tommy would sit chewing miraa. Then Salim’s old house, and right, through the blue gate that advertised the video arcade that doesn’t exist and out to the almost-main road that, down at the bottom of the hill, forms the corner with Kibera Drive.

Sat in piles of three or four empty tires, the Car Wash staff say what’s up. For some reason, this corner also always has someone pissing in the bushes. Up the hill towards the matatu stage. This hill is tough for those same mkokotenies, grueling to get their goods up the hill. Stalls all along the left, groups of men up along the fence behind the bus stop to the right..Left. Straight for a while and either further straight towards Kibera Primary and the path that leads down from Olympic towards the heart of Kibera, or right, past the junkyard and new sparklng, Coke-built, usually locked toilets, and Swahili Dishezz. Straight goes by the travel agent and the man with a copy machine and as you curve to the right you pass MoMos supermarket, the military outpost, some abandoned cars, and the woman making samosas just before reaching the CFK compound. If you go right, there is a barber shop on the right, several general provisions stores, a hair salon or five, furniture maker or three, and then the CFK compound.

No more. Toi Market was burned down in the violence that is corroding Kenya’s core. All of it. Emails tell me: “Toi Market was burned down”; “Toi Market doesn’t exist.” No more socks, squawking chickens, 15-year-old Lacoste polos, avocados, hideous jeans, bootleg sneakers. My memory is erased. Now, in my mind, where to I walk? Those lives, those shopkeepers, that heart of Nairobi.

--

Things in Kenya are bad. People are murdering each other for no reason. Both politicians rigged the election, both are corrupt, neither care for the people: they are killing them. Triggered by politics but now largely unrelated, the hate has exploded. This is a festering hatred that rots people’s insides over years, fermented in the toils of poverty, destitution, malnutrition, waiting to explode at the given chance. Raging at the world, at living in their filth, at having no drinking water, of siblings dying of diarrhea, of no electricity, chaos creates someone to blame, someone to kill, someone to, at last, stand over. Mob violence conflagrated.

NGO work is stopped. Adolescent girls’ health takes a back seat to murder, rape, robbery, and burning, erasing years of work, creating a new set of victims and issues. Bed net distribution schemes can’t happen during flaming ethnic violence.

Think of what people carry in their hearts that they can do what they are doing, for how long they were mad at the world, a hatred so pernicious on a low boil. For so many in Nairobi life is a pressure cooker and it is exploding.

Good Morning February

I got back to Ahmedabad on Monday and back from the toilet three minutes ago. It feels good to be back, refreshed after a nice break, and that, just the third time on the shitter this morning, is a vast improvement from the record-setting shits-in-a-day pace I’d been on since Monday night. On Wednesday I went to the doctor, shat in a film canister which presented lots of logistical difficulties, at one point the initial blast almost knocking the container into the abyss, peed in a film canister (why do they give you two containers, the same size, for two jobs that are very different… different angles, pressure releases, smells, colors. One of those lab techs should try managing explosive diarrhea into a small plastic container and they would soon learn to provide a receptacle that is better suited for the work), had my blood pulled and thanks be to the lord I don’t have Typhoid or Malaria. Instead, I’ve got some other creature, or colony of millions of creatures, living in my body in a place that survived the nuclear Cipro attack. The doctor called in for back-ups, air cover, ground fire, two new types of antibiotics, 4 days in bed – these suckers don’t stand a chance. Forget world peace, I just hope I stop peeing out of my butt. It’s the small things in life.

My mind is in a good place. Leaving and returning lets you see things more clearly, realize what you do and do not have. I don’t like Ahmedabad, work is not good, and this is not the life I want. But, it doesn’t matter. Somehow, with your help (thank you for the packages, letters, emails, calls, comments), I made it through the most lonely, confusing five months of my life and here I sit (near the toilet), refreshed, just back from a 10-day gallivant to Mumbai, Bangkok (it was very weird to be reading magazines in the international airport terminals of the most famous cities in the world, waiting for my flight, and not be on my way home) and Goa, looking at February, my parents’ arrival in three weeks, and then three short months beyond that. This year has been good for me and taught me a lot about how I want to be in the world, what is important, what is annoying and stupid, etc, and I am still trying to understand all those lessons, there are many more still to come and I will be working to understand this period of time for many months and years after it concludes. But, the labor of getting through simple tasks, the burden of communicating is gone; now, instead of frustration and confused confusion, I laugh. Go ahead and state; I don’t care. I ride my bike in peace, joke at work, able to manage the little things and the larger thoughts in an engaged and healthy way.