I feel about thinking too.
I think about thinking,
and I think about feeling,
but because feeling is who I am
and thinking is just what I do,
I feel about thinking too.
Sheltered Views, Expanding Horizons
Sheltered Views, Exanding Horizons
I have edited this entry over and over with insight from many people and even more experiences, realizing that my reflection back on the U.S. is in fact jaded. I love my country, all that we have and hold dear. But I am challenged when I hear someone from another country hold the U.S. on an artificial pedestal of perfection. I feel the need to establish a balanced reality. Perhaps this is a knee jerk reaction. Perhaps it is my own frustration with the current state of affairs leaking through. I see the U.S. as an incredible marketing engine, its corporations and even the government excelling at the portrayal of a strong “Be like us!” campaign.
I recall a radio ad for a travel agency, a few years back, which closed with the catch-phrase, “So much like the U.S., you’ll never know you left home.” How horrible that instead of offering an experience, instead of offering the view to a new horizon and an opportunity to come home having learned something about another culture from which one may reflect and learn, this company sheltered its customers with the ease of travel.
At the bank yesterday, I spoke with the woman who greets the customers, explaining that I had Kenyan shillings to exchange to U.S. dollars. She gasped, exclaiming, “Were you scared? Did you feel safe?” I restrained a lecture, instead saying, “For every horror story you hear about on the news, there are a million people who enjoy completely fulfilling overseas ventures.” She nodded, hearing by not truly understanding what I had just offered.
Monday morning an NPR story told of the on-going battle for English v.s. Spanish as official languages in the U.S., even the Spanish speaking television station Univision caving to pressure to not ask questions of the presidential candidates in both languages, the post-event rhetoric stating that the candidates dual-language responses “diminished the quality of the event.” To see the presidential debates in Kenya in both Swahili and English was fantastic, the candidates flowing into and out of each language seamlessly. It did not detract from the debate in any respect.
How narrow a view! We are one of just a few countries in the world to not encourage, if not make mandatory a second language in the home, at school, and places of work, to not have street and airport signs, classes and manuals and tests in at least two languages. How can a country founded by immigrants who carried to this land dozens of languages come to uphold the statement that if one does not speak English, then that person is not American?
Language is beautiful! It is the fundamental foundation of our cultural heritage. It is the way we think, communicate, and live. A world that speaks only one language would be very sad, indeed, for it would quickly collapse the diversity of our unique cultures into a murky mix of lost identity.
I wish I had been forced to take a second language throughout grade school, high school, and college for I would be fluent in Spanish now, instead of good enough to get by. And my brain would be better wired to pick up a third and fourth language that much faster. I am a good writer, in part, because I speak enough Spanish, and learned some Thai, Polish, and Swahili in my travels. While not fluent in any of these, I can quickly recall the intonations, rhythms, and word orders, incorporating these into the way I think and write.
When a Kenyan aks, “How far behind is Kenya from the U.S.?” I laugh and say, “In some respects, you are far ahead. In others you are catching up.” The United States has a great deal to offer that is of benefit to others, but we have a great deal to learn as well. I ask only that as we continue to mature as individuals, and as a country, that we stop pushing so hard for everyone to be like us; that we stop long enough to ask, What can we bring home from where we visit? What do we have to learn from the rest of the world?
And with this world-view, perhaps inside our own borders too we may discover that we have a great deal to learn from those who live in our own town.
Shot in the back!
The real danger of home improvement … is your friends.
As I really do not desire to go through another winter waking to an ambient temperature of 42 degrees Fahrenheit (not joking) in the warmest place in my house, I am doing what I can before the Supercomputing trade show and the onset of winter to bring my insulation-less house back up to and then beyond its prior state. But installing fiberglass insulation is likely one of the worst jobs on the planet, even when wearing three layers, a respirator, and sleeves duct taped to gloves. And so I asked my good friend Sean to assist.
Last weekend we were installing batting beneath the new roof completed a year ago this October. We stopped to reload our mechanical staple guns every two or three rows. To make certain the gun again functioned prior to returning to the uncomfortable position created by the roof line meeting the ceiling of the room beneath, we sometimes held a good ol’ western shootout, right there in my attic.
Standing back-to-back, we counted off three paces, spun (careful not to lose balance and fall through the ceiling into my living room), and fired. Completely harmless, for at ten feet the staples would bounce from a balloon without damage.
But when Sean was lying on his side, struggling to force the batting to catch the last few inches of the rafter before it met the joist, I could not help but notice that his shirt had come un-tucked. At a distance of two feet I fired off three or four staples onto his back.
“Hey! Cut that out!” A few obscenities flew in good humor of the moment, Sean concluding with a “Just you wait!”
A few minutes later I had let down my defenses, again focused on measurements for the next run. He jumped behind me, pulled up two of my three shirts just as I turned to see the staple gun a few inches from my back and BANG!
“OUCH! Man! Are you crazy?#! That really hurt!” I spun circles like a dog chasing its tail trying to see where he had got me.
Sean responded, “You big pansy! You shot me three times! That was just one!”
I was still trying to reach the spot with my gloved hand for the pain had not subsided, “No. Seriously. That was way too close. That was –” And then I felt the staple in my back, “Oh! What the –” (now laughing) “It’s still in me! You shot me in the back and it STUCK!”
“What? No way. You’re bullshitting me. I wasn’t that –Oh man! You have a staple in your back!” Simultaneously horrified and laughing so hard he could hardly see straight, “Hold still. I’ll get it out.”
The staple removed, my shirt once again detached from my body, the sting quickly reduced to tingling. Still laughing, I reloaded my staple gun, shot Sean a few times for good measure, and continued into dusk, headlamps aiding us until we could no longer tollerate the fiberglass penetrating our clothes.
While this supposed one day job will drag into three half weekends, the interior of my nearly hundred year old roof neither simple nor regular in any respect, there is a sense of accomplishment in doing things with my own hands … and the enjoyment of working with a good friend.
Over the Rim …
… and into the Canyon
One week ago I returned from an eight days backpacking trip with the Grand Canyon Field Institute for which Christa is a founding instructor some fifteen years ago.
I cannot fully describe the intense learning experience coupled with the phenomenal beauty of the north rim of the Grand Canyon where we carried heavy packs through more than 12,000 feet elevation loss and gain. It is the sharp contrasts from rim to river, the rich, exposed geologic and dynamic human histories that create such a compelling, raw story.
An Open Book
Nowhere else on this planet can one witness such an open book to so many years of history, from the ruins of mining expeditions just decades past to the bedrock formations 1.7 billion years old. In this place Christa wove a story eight days and at the same time 4.6 billions years long as we hiked from the rim down through limestone, sandstone, shale, and confusing mixtures of all three that tell an incomplete story of mountains rising and falling, rivers flowing east and then west only to be temporarily blocked by volcanic eruptions. Ultimately, the Grand Canyon was formed, yet even today the full story remains elusive.
I grasp what I saw through the magnifying lens, the shapes of ancient trilobite tracks, crinoids, worms, and brachiopods, but even after three years of exploring the Southwest with Christa, whose profession it is to teach geology, archeology, and paleontology, my brain struggles to fathom the one variable that makes all things possible—time. I am overwhelmed by consideration for the quantity of creatures that must have lived and died in the ancient oceans to build a thousand feet or more of the standing limestone cliffs, now painted red in flood by the overlying, frozen sand dunes and river floodplains.
To Thunder River, Tapeats, and Deer Creek
Out of the limestone comes rivers. Not just seeps, trickles or flows, but rivers that pour from slits and mouths and gaping caves of limestone walls, rain water filtered through overlying layers reaches an impasse and moves instead horizontally. These rivers gain volume, momentum and pressure, and—with time—emerge from underground caverns and caves to refract the rays of the high noon desert sun. At the base of the falls are cottonwoods, juniper, maidenhair ferns, grasses, and pools of water that have not for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years run dry.
We found refuge there, as did the Native Americans in decades and centuries past, for our needs have not changed so much in the intervening generations that we cannot appreciate something so incredible, authentic, and rare. It is good that our inventions have not replaced in us the basic appreciation of pure water and cool air.
We hiked beneath Thunder Falls and up Tapeats Creek where we found a living cave rich with stalagmites, stalactites, and an underground river thirty feet wide and a few deep; to the muddy brown Colorado River and to Deer Creek where the Piute dead pass back into the underworld through the narrow, winding water way. We came back up more than six thousand feet by way of Surprise Valley and a sandstone plateau where driving rains drove those of us without a tent to the shelter of the sandstone ledges.
Each evening Christa read to us—stories from the river, the Hopi, the Mormon settlers, and those not of books but of the rocks and stones themselves for they have recorded the coming and going of entire continents afloat on a semi-molten goo. If only I could learn the Latin names of plants, the age of the rocks, and the lineage of the peoples who have made this place their home as easily as I memorize the speed of a new processor or interconnect fabric, I could tell you a more complete story. For now, my photos will have to do.
Sadly, only for a few days each year do I go without cell phone or internet connection. But these days I cherish most, for my mind is no longer concerned with the timing of things, the overlapping conference calls, nor the financial health of my company. It seems then, during these brief, true vacations, that if every microwave oven, cell phone and TV, if every embedded CPU and laptop on the planet would spontaneously disappear, the world would be a slightly better place.
Thank you Hank, Midge, Steve, David, and Christa for a most educational, light hearted, and enjoyable time.
Raymond Kruse, 1917 – 2007
A Celebration of Life
My grandfather, the father of my mother, died this past Sunday, his heart no longer desiring to contract and expand. We had believed (or hoped) he was recovering, for he had readily beaten two years of cancer by way of a combination of the simplest of treatments (a positive, can-do attitude and ultra-high doses of vitamin C injected directly into the blood stream, the resulting hydrogen peroxide toxic to cancer cells) and the most modern of technological weapons (a real-time CaT scan coupled with an electron beam generator to perfectly target and destroy cancerous cells with minimal damage to surrounding, healthy tissue). But in the end, when traditional chemo therapy was applied, it was pneumonia that reduced his heart’s capacity to a bare minimum, eventually non-functional state.
Just three or four months prior Grandpa had climbed ladders to patch the roofs of twenty, thirty, and forty foot tall barns by day, rebuilding the engine and transmission of an antique tractor by evening in the old hog house. His life had been an active one; his body, strength, and spry humor portrayed a man of many, many years less than ninety for he remained handsome, strong, and as quick on his feet as he was with his wit.
My grandfather taught me more about how to lead a meaningful life than any other person I have known. He died with no enemies and no one who would not claim to be his friend. He could fix anything, and without a high school eduction was one of the smartest men I will ever know. Taking his lead, every morning that I am able, I eat oatmeal for breakfast; my body, like a tractor engine, needs proper fuel and care.
I must admit that I dreaded the funeral for what I assumed would be a time of mourning in a fairly conservative church in a small, mid-western town. But I was pleasantly surprised, my judgement incorrect, for those two days were indeed a celebration of life more than clinging to the loss. Two hundred and fifty people gathered to eat, tell stories, and laugh.
Following the funeral, the family drove to the farm. We spent the afternoon driving the old Ford tractor down through the timber, chasing sheep (and being chased by the llama). We climbed to the top of the silo and to the hay loft of the big red barn. We talked, laughed, and ate more food. When the sun set, my aunt, uncle, cousins, parents and grandmother gathered between the farm house and the artesian well to shoot all the fireworks that remained in storage. With each explosion of light and crack of black powder against the even darker sky, our hearts lifted just a bit, and we knew it would be ok.
The next morning, we woke well before the sun touched the shimmering, moisture laden fields. As we drove away I accepted that it is time for the next generations to find solace in those beautiful hundreds of acres along the Raccoon River where the Pride of the Valley Farm yet grows healthy soy beans and tall corn. The mulberry, apple, and walnut trees continue to feed those who know when to reach into the branches. Great blue herons and sand hill cranes glide swiftly over the brown water while deer, raccoons, turtles, snakes, and foxes leave tracks on the sandy, river bars. Without computer nor even cell phone reception, this is my heritage, the one place that I feel most at home. This is where my story begins, and some day this is where it may end.
“Goodbye Grandpa, and thank you for everything. You should know that Grandma is still baking cookies. Just a few more for the rest of us now!“
A Shifting Perspective, Introduction
Challenging Questions
While yet in Kenya I reverted the “A Shifting Perspective” (originally posted as “Not all Peaches & Cream”) entry to Draft mode for further editing. Since then, I have worked on it daily (leaving the original post date in tact in order that the entries remain contiguous). Not because what I wrote was completely inaccurate nor offensive (at least I don’t believe it was), but because in prior posts I offered my experience of Kenya, Nakuru, and Pistis through stories of interaction with less of my own interpretation.
In Shifting Perspective, I try to understand what I have experienced through contrast and comparison to the norms of my own upbringing and culture within my country, asking hard questions as many were also asked of me.
“I have heard it is dangerous to be Black in the United States. Is this true?”
“Why is your government trying to define who can and who cannot be married? I thought the U.S. became independent from England to keep the church separate from the State.”
Perhaps the most challenging to answer, which I have been asked during other ventures overseas, “Is it true that your government kills people with electricity?”
I was asked several times, “Is it [cold/hot] in the United States?”
And my favorite, “Is there still manual labor in the United States? Or is everything done by machines?”
Some of these are funny, even fun to answer, but some are very challenging. While I can quote statistics or give my personal opinion, I cannot pretend to know the experience of African Americans nor fully explain the history of how the church and State do share government. Often I was asked questions that do not have a single answer, explaining that in many respects the U.S. feels like the union of small countries, each with their own weather, laws, culture, and languages. I always made clear that I am but one person with my own opinions and experience and that I represent only me and perhaps my family and a few friends, with any level of certainty.
In the same respect, I bombarded my Kenyan host family and new friends with my thirst for knowledge, seeking understanding of what I saw and experienced there. They were more than patient, answering what they can from their own points of view. In so doing, I realize too how much anyone takes for granted, how much we accept as the norm where we are born and raised.
So when someone asks, “How far behind is Kenya from the U.S.?” I laugh and say, “In some respects, you are far ahead. In others you are catching up.” The United States has a great deal to offer that is of benefit to others, but we have a great deal to learn as well. I ask that as we continue to mature as individuals, and as a country, that we stop pushing so hard for everyone to be like us; that we stop long enough to ask, What can we bring home from where we visit? What do we have to learn from the rest of the world?
This post is continued with A Shifting Perspective.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
Home Alone
Leonard tells me that one becomes Kenyan when you can sleep the duration of the road from Nakuru to Nairobi. If this is true, then I am may be on my way, having slept through most of the nasty road (I find near death experiences simpler to accept eyes closed) my head once or twice bobbing onto the shoulder of the woman to my right, an attorney who passed opportunity to practice traditional law (and make a great deal more money), choosing instead to help bring equality to women, gays, and lesbians through protective law, workshops, and conferences. We talked briefly while at the Nakuru depot about the boys at the orphanage who are gay and how they may or may not be accepted in the confines of a fairly traditional church.
Leonard’s high school friend, the taxi cab driver who helped us retrieve the solar panels two weeks prior picked me up at the Mololine depot and whisked me to the airport. I departed at 11:30 pm on Lufthansa airlines. A bit overwhelmed for I could again understand most of what was being said, the touring Americans speaking in a relatively high volume (we are known for this, world-wide). My brain suffered from stimuli overload.
From the relative chaos of Nairobi to the organized sterility of Zurich Switzerland where open interior spaces are defined by sharp lines of reflective silver, black, white, and glass. Modern architecture neatly matched modern advertising, store fronts, and products, the bold faces of high contrast, moist model photography compelling “Be beautiful, like me.”
With another transfer from Zurich to Munich and then the final leg to Denver, the passenger nationalities transitioned from Kenyans and a varied host of tourists to mostly Germans visiting the U.S. and U.S. residents returning from a weekend of German pub tours, the low cost of U.S. to Europe flights making possible an international weekend get-away.
And with this transition the long hand shakes and inquisitive eye contact gave way to personal space defined by iPods and head phones saying, “I am in my world now. Leave me alone.”
My good friend Sean was gracious enough to drive to the airport, finding me at a pay phone for the firmware upgrade to my cell has apparently killed its domestic function.
My house welcomed me with creaking hard wood floors and the aroma of since burnt incense. The fifty or more plums on my backyard tree not yet ready for picking one month ago are now gone, the remnants lying on the ground beneath its branches. I should have emailed my neighbor to collect them in their prime. The peaches and apples suffered a similar fate. Sad, for this winter’s tremendous snow fall gave way to blossoms of fruitful burden. Summer is done, fall quickly taking its place. We can receive snow as early as the first week of September, the taste of winter not too distant on the whispers of cooling wind.
I could not sit at home, alone, for I longed to be around people again, my definition of personal space redefined by the constant holding of hands with both men and women, shoulders rubbing and seats shared on the musical matatus, standing in line, and when walking in town. I drove from Loveland north to Fort Collins and to Mugs internet cafe where I now write this entry. In those fifteen miles I counted a total of six people standing outside, a stark contrast to the hundreds I passed in just one kilometer in Nakuru.
Here, we surround ourselves with the wood and brick of our homes which grant us cover from weather into the steel and glass safety of our cars where we travel alone, talking on cell phones in order to compensate for contact lost.
I sit now next to a man to whom I will never speak while a dozen people have come and gone to my front. The conversations I overhear include a girl saying, her voice rising at the end of each phrase “Dude? I was soooo drunk? I could not even stand up?” pausing to point to a photo on her computer screen, “And she was like c-o-m-p-l-e-t-e-l-y wasted,” while someone on the other side offering a really bad “walks into a bar” joke. Few make eye contact with someone they do not already know.
A bluegrass CD is interrupted by an espresso machine and blender. The evening, public attire is comprised of a university sweatshirt, white with pink heart pajama bottoms, flip-flops, and a baseball cap to cover unwashed hair. I enjoy the casual college atmosphere but also find myself missing the dignity and pride with which the Kenyans carry themselves, from mud and tin home through trash lined streets amidst violent rains. I miss the beautiful Kenyan accents presenting carefully articulated British English, the words “like” and “fuck’n” not included in their vocabulary.
While I am pleased to again breathe fresh mountain air, to enjoy hugs from my friends who wonder where I have been, it is strange to feel relatively alone in an occupied space that for a half dozen years I have called my second home. I miss my Kenyan host family dearly and will return soon.
Pistis Projects –UPDATE
I offer this final update for my August 11 to September 8 work with the live-in children and staff of Pistis and local contractors Steven, Charles, Peter and Weissman.
Food Storage System
The food storage system works! With more than 50 bags in place, the revised and greatly improved food storage shelf has held.Workbench
The workbench is complete! John and I put in a few long days pounding nails through wood so hard, it makes Cherry, Oak, and Maple look like butter. Last night, by head lamp, I finished the wiring of a work lamp and room lighting, John finishing the adjacent shelves.
Municipal Water to Kitchen
The Pistis boys buried the water pipe which carries fresh, municipal water from one corner of the compound to the kitchen. The pressure is very low, an issue likely at the source with the municipal. But the water flows!Financial Review
Gladys, the Bishop, Leonard, David and I have reviewed the cashflow spreadsheet I prepared for them to assist with an improved level of financial efficiency as Pistis moves to become self-sufficient, receiving donations for large projects only. We have also prepared spreadsheets to manage compound upkeep and another for volunteers.
Cook Stove Repair
The cook stoves are now three years old and were just yesterday (Saturday) cleaned for the first time since their installation. The black smoked poured from the hatches as the stove pipes were blocked and too often pieces of wood too green and/or too long are used, reducing burn temperature and burn efficiency thereby increasing the amount of wood consumed and associated cost. I am working with the stove manuacturer, Botto Solar to rectify the situation one step at a time, the total estimate over 30,000 shilling to replace the fire bricks and grills. We are also researching alternatives, such as industrial oil fuel which burns cleaner and is reported to be less costly. As Kenya has but 3% of its native forests remaining (not unlike the U.S.), wood is simply not a viable, renewable resource for cooking as it now stands.But most of all, I am concerned for the immediate health of the cook staff and boys who live in the dorm adjacent to the kitchen, their air filled with a black cloud day in and day out, every day.
The Pistis Arm Wrestling Champion!
I hereby declare that I, Msungu Kai Staats, Vegetarian Extraordinaire, am the reigning, all-time, Arm wrestling champion of Pistis! For any who dare to oppose me, I give you fair warning — I will crush you!