Greetings everyone from Leh!!
Michelle and I left Addis Ababe late on Saturday night and arrived in the steam of Delhi early Sunday morning. We explored that magnificent city for that day and Monday before flying up here to Ladakh on Monday morning. Since then we have been getting used to the 11,000+ foot elevation, continuing to eat as much Indian food as possible, and visiting monastaries. We are hoping to head tomorrow to visit a lake at 14,000 feet to the south east of which 70% stretches into Tibet. Then on the 3rd (Michelle's Birthday) we head out with some Canadian friends we met at the Leh airport for a two day trip north to the Nubra Valley. The road goes over the highest motorable pass in the world at more than 18,000 feet!! We return on the evening of the 4th and then immediately head out for Srinigar in Kashmir. Then its a steady journey to the south ending in the southern province of Tamil Nadu from which we are thankfully flying back to Delhi and home. I will try to again post over the course of this adventure!
Ethiopia was totally unlike southern Africa and an amazing experience. The country is incredibly unique with its own religion, language, text, calendar, time format, and national grain. None of which are in use anywhere else. The time system actually makes a lot more sense as 12:00 corresponds to our 6:00 am or pm resulting in a system that directly counts the hours of daylight and dark.
For a man who loves bread products, spicy sauces/condiments, cold beer, and coffee, Ethiopia was like heaven. Though I was in serious southern African Nshima withdrawal, I came to love the Njera and the various spicy piles of oily sauce madness poured all over it. However, we were incredibly shocked to find that meat made up such an enormous portion of the diet (veggies were only really available two days a week on the traditional fasting days of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church). In southern Africa chicken was the special occasion food and meat was almost unseen. Mufumbwe for example had no butcher in the entire district. In Ethiopia on the other hand, we were very hard pressed to find anything else to eat. Needless to say, oily fried chunks of beef for multiple meals a day can do some very strange things to the digestive system.
The tourist economy focuses mostly on the incredibly rich history of the country leading continuously back to the pre-Axumite periods in the 4th century BC. The Orthodox Church which was started in the 4th century AD still uses many of the same churches made during that period. Some of the later and most impressive churches (8th-13th centuries) are literally carved out of solid stone and have been in near daily use since their completion.
We had a particularly interesting time in the Tigrai region bordering Eritrea where there were extraordinary churhes carved into the top of Monument Valley-esque protrusions.
The tourist economy in Ethiopia is vastly more developed than that of Zambia though completely non-existent in comparison to India's. It has been really interesting to see the different phases and how things play out. We have come to the conclusion that "responsible tourism" is probably a myth and to visit a place and hope to somehow not influence it is rather absurd. There seems something wrong in the growing fascination with the "authentic" and the "traditional." IN any case, I will cut myself off before any rants develop unexamined.
I have to cut off now though I hope this finds everyone well. I will do my best to get another one before I leave India. If I do not, I am not planning on continuing this business once I am back in the states so this may be the last. Thanks to anyone who has read. Much more for all those who have supported me during my time in Africa. I love you all and can't wait to see everyone in person.
Love,
Kevin
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Leaving Tanzania tomorrow
Greetings everyone! Michelle and I are currently in Dar es Salaam and are headed to Addis tomorrow evening. We just spent a week and a half in Zanzibar relaxing and investigating the beach front realestate market. It was a wonderful to have a chance to relax a bit after the very hectic last weeks in Zambia. My next update will be from Northern Ethiopia!! I am very excited to be on my way home and am looking forward to seeing everyone. Stay well and I will see you soon!!
Best,
Kevin
Best,
Kevin
Monday, July 20, 2009
Thank you!!!!
Greetings everyone!!
As usual, I must beg forgiveness for neglecting to post any new material in such a long time. I have been completely consumed by work in the best way possible. I am no longer a Peace Corps Volunteer as of two hours ago!! I sadly have to keep this relatively short as am running from place to place preparing to finally leave Zambia. I am leaving tomorrow on the train to Zanzibar with Michelle to begin our 3.5 month trip home. We are headed from there to Ethiopia for a month and then on to India for another 6 weeks. I will finally arrive home in Albuquerque on November 14th. I literally could not be more excited for the trip, coming home, seeing everyone, and the future stretching out before me. I plan on getting on here as often as possible over the next few months to update everyone on my whereabouts and how things are going. I am not sure how the internet will be, but based on its fairly common availability in Zambia, I think it should not be too much of a problem.
I have been dreading writing this last message from Zambia. I feel pressure to produce some sort of final wrap-up of my experience in Zambia. I will sadly dissapoint in that task. I am still troubled by what I have come to see of the world and what I have been doing for the past two years. I am overwhelmingly grateful for having had the opportunity to come here and live for two years. Such a thing would be impossible without the Peace Corps. I will be eternally grateful for the relationships I have made and the learning experiences I have had. I have to thank the Peace Corps, the United States State Department, the Congress, and ultimately, the tax-payer for supporting me here. It is embarrassingly easy to lose sight of how lucky I am when I am upset by what I find myself doing. In my final interview yesterday with the new Country Director, I stated my opinion that the rural work I was engaged in was deeply flawed in two main ways. Both of these flaws lead to the undermining of the stated goals of development and teh acceleration of the rapid urbanization of Zambia. This urbanization is already producing enormous compounds of unstable housing outside the towns spread along the back-bone of this country (the veins of natural resources). These completely unplanned housing areas have the highest rates of all the problems in the scope of the development industry. I could elaborate on the issues of urbanization but will spare everyone. The point was I contributed to it by: 1. my mere presence, though in some senses positive in the role model/friendly neighbor kind-of way, was inevitably negative on the whole in that I provided a constant and highly visible piece of evidence that their community had a ton of problems. This evidence can have many affects not least of which is the reinforcement of the desire on the part of everyone in the area to leave as soon as financially possible. 2. the actual work, if successful, has the ultimate goal of helping people in the community continue to live IN THE COMMUNITY but with healthier, more prosperous, and ideally, happier lives. In reality however, none of the community members want to stay there (excluding retirees who return home from metropolitian areas near the end of their lives). The extent to which the work is successful, (which it is in many cases) it provides people with more means to either get out of the community themselves or to get their children out. This troubles me a great deal and I am trying to keep such complicated outcomes forefront in my mind in all my decisions from now on. I am very grateful though to know this and would never chose to un-learn what I now know. Such is knowledge.
Ah!! Well, as we can see, a rant was produced inadvertantly. I must present my sincere apologies. I have to run now as Michelle is waiting for me to go out for our last supper together in Zambia.
I want to express now that I am so thankful for the support I have recieved from countless family and friends. I am so sorry if I seem upset about this whole thing. It really has changed and made me more motivated to act productively than I thought possible. Please don't be discouraged. We can make a difference. It is just really really difficult. I love you all so much more than I can express here. Thank you so much for all you have done and please just come find me for a hug and free dinner (cooked most likely and probably mostly rice in the short term). I will try to update everyone on our whereabouts. Stay well!
Salutations from Zambia!!!
Love,
Kevin
As usual, I must beg forgiveness for neglecting to post any new material in such a long time. I have been completely consumed by work in the best way possible. I am no longer a Peace Corps Volunteer as of two hours ago!! I sadly have to keep this relatively short as am running from place to place preparing to finally leave Zambia. I am leaving tomorrow on the train to Zanzibar with Michelle to begin our 3.5 month trip home. We are headed from there to Ethiopia for a month and then on to India for another 6 weeks. I will finally arrive home in Albuquerque on November 14th. I literally could not be more excited for the trip, coming home, seeing everyone, and the future stretching out before me. I plan on getting on here as often as possible over the next few months to update everyone on my whereabouts and how things are going. I am not sure how the internet will be, but based on its fairly common availability in Zambia, I think it should not be too much of a problem.
I have been dreading writing this last message from Zambia. I feel pressure to produce some sort of final wrap-up of my experience in Zambia. I will sadly dissapoint in that task. I am still troubled by what I have come to see of the world and what I have been doing for the past two years. I am overwhelmingly grateful for having had the opportunity to come here and live for two years. Such a thing would be impossible without the Peace Corps. I will be eternally grateful for the relationships I have made and the learning experiences I have had. I have to thank the Peace Corps, the United States State Department, the Congress, and ultimately, the tax-payer for supporting me here. It is embarrassingly easy to lose sight of how lucky I am when I am upset by what I find myself doing. In my final interview yesterday with the new Country Director, I stated my opinion that the rural work I was engaged in was deeply flawed in two main ways. Both of these flaws lead to the undermining of the stated goals of development and teh acceleration of the rapid urbanization of Zambia. This urbanization is already producing enormous compounds of unstable housing outside the towns spread along the back-bone of this country (the veins of natural resources). These completely unplanned housing areas have the highest rates of all the problems in the scope of the development industry. I could elaborate on the issues of urbanization but will spare everyone. The point was I contributed to it by: 1. my mere presence, though in some senses positive in the role model/friendly neighbor kind-of way, was inevitably negative on the whole in that I provided a constant and highly visible piece of evidence that their community had a ton of problems. This evidence can have many affects not least of which is the reinforcement of the desire on the part of everyone in the area to leave as soon as financially possible. 2. the actual work, if successful, has the ultimate goal of helping people in the community continue to live IN THE COMMUNITY but with healthier, more prosperous, and ideally, happier lives. In reality however, none of the community members want to stay there (excluding retirees who return home from metropolitian areas near the end of their lives). The extent to which the work is successful, (which it is in many cases) it provides people with more means to either get out of the community themselves or to get their children out. This troubles me a great deal and I am trying to keep such complicated outcomes forefront in my mind in all my decisions from now on. I am very grateful though to know this and would never chose to un-learn what I now know. Such is knowledge.
Ah!! Well, as we can see, a rant was produced inadvertantly. I must present my sincere apologies. I have to run now as Michelle is waiting for me to go out for our last supper together in Zambia.
I want to express now that I am so thankful for the support I have recieved from countless family and friends. I am so sorry if I seem upset about this whole thing. It really has changed and made me more motivated to act productively than I thought possible. Please don't be discouraged. We can make a difference. It is just really really difficult. I love you all so much more than I can express here. Thank you so much for all you have done and please just come find me for a hug and free dinner (cooked most likely and probably mostly rice in the short term). I will try to update everyone on our whereabouts. Stay well!
Salutations from Zambia!!!
Love,
Kevin
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Time in flight
Greetings everyone!
I have now been in Lusaka for about two and a half months which is hard to believe. I am now definitely comfortable riding in traffic and even more shockinly, wearing a tie every day. I certainly no longer fit the perfect picture of the filthy, hairy, somehow wounded Peace Corps Volunteer. Which, considering the issues I have with the romanticism of such things, is definitely not a bad thing. Life in Lusaka is very interesting. The collision between dramatically different objective standards of living is the most visibly interesting part of the city. It has made me (and by me I mean this was Michelle's observation) realize that poverty is much more visible to everyone here than in the states and it is becoming less so through the process of select economic development. The compounds make up literally 50-60% of the area and the vast majority of the population of the City and yet are like isolated islands of dense humanity kept from view by walls and such terrible ally-roads that none of the upper-clase (commuter-car owning) people would ever drive there. There are obviously many exceptions to that, but the divisions are obvious and growing none-the-less. How this plays into the self-image and levels of satisfaction of people is very interesting to me and I am not sure whether such trends can clearly be judged as good or bad. Such are most things these days. In any case, we (at the Men's Network) are starting to send weekly groups of guys to the Sunday soccer games in the compounds to do sensitization about men's role in sexual and domestic violence. We start the first one this weekend so lets cross our fingers. (anyone know the history of that superstition by the way?) It is a part of our matrix of programs going simultaneously to instigate a shift in the content of Zambian masculinity. I will try to post a link to the 2009 explanatory text for the Men's Network budget on the blog so you can read the details if you are really interested. I can ramble about it for many hours if I am not careful. (no suprise there) The project in general is going very well but we have run into a bit of a snag related to the actual transfer of funds to get the program running. As it involves parties of some considerable import, I will not divulge here but email me and I will tell all. Sorry if that sounds mysterious. I promise that the truth is far from it.
Other than work, I have been moving around the country a lot in the past month+. I have been back to Northwestern twice including once to introduce Beth, the replacement volunteer for my village. She moved in on Tuesday I believe. I of course remember my first week in the village alone and am hoping her time has been comfortable and fun. That drop-off can be a pretty big shock to the system. I also traveled twice to Eastern province to visit Michelle. As I am now in Lusaka, it is much easier to see each other and we are averaging around once avery two weeks which is amazing after a year and a half of once every 6-7 weeks. It also only takes one or two days of transport which is amazing after the four-day one way marathon it used to be. Our close of service trip is getting finalized. We have our plane tickets! The plan right now is to leave Zambia around Aug 18th on the train to Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar which was made infamous by two complete scoundrels who took it in the last days of 2007. We fly from Dar to Addis in the first few days of September and then immediately north to Lalibela. From there we travel over-land to Bahir Dar over the course of 3.5 weeks. Then we fly back to Addis and on to Delhi. From Delhi (late September) we fly immediately to Leh in Ladakh (Northwestern India). From there we travel south through the mountains back to Delhi (avoiding Kashmir so don't worry). En route we are going no a 5-7 day trek at a more reasonable elevation than Leh. We hope to spend around three weeks in and around Delhi and then home on November 14th. Its hard to remember a time when I was more excited about something. Well, maybe not thinking about pre-Peace Corps but still. Point is, really excited.
In any event, I have to run to work which looks wierd on the screen but is true. (Though I don't get paid obviously) I hope this finds everyone in great health and happiness. I look forward everyday to seeing everyone and boring you to tears with countless stories of Zambia.
Love,
Kevin
I have now been in Lusaka for about two and a half months which is hard to believe. I am now definitely comfortable riding in traffic and even more shockinly, wearing a tie every day. I certainly no longer fit the perfect picture of the filthy, hairy, somehow wounded Peace Corps Volunteer. Which, considering the issues I have with the romanticism of such things, is definitely not a bad thing. Life in Lusaka is very interesting. The collision between dramatically different objective standards of living is the most visibly interesting part of the city. It has made me (and by me I mean this was Michelle's observation) realize that poverty is much more visible to everyone here than in the states and it is becoming less so through the process of select economic development. The compounds make up literally 50-60% of the area and the vast majority of the population of the City and yet are like isolated islands of dense humanity kept from view by walls and such terrible ally-roads that none of the upper-clase (commuter-car owning) people would ever drive there. There are obviously many exceptions to that, but the divisions are obvious and growing none-the-less. How this plays into the self-image and levels of satisfaction of people is very interesting to me and I am not sure whether such trends can clearly be judged as good or bad. Such are most things these days. In any case, we (at the Men's Network) are starting to send weekly groups of guys to the Sunday soccer games in the compounds to do sensitization about men's role in sexual and domestic violence. We start the first one this weekend so lets cross our fingers. (anyone know the history of that superstition by the way?) It is a part of our matrix of programs going simultaneously to instigate a shift in the content of Zambian masculinity. I will try to post a link to the 2009 explanatory text for the Men's Network budget on the blog so you can read the details if you are really interested. I can ramble about it for many hours if I am not careful. (no suprise there) The project in general is going very well but we have run into a bit of a snag related to the actual transfer of funds to get the program running. As it involves parties of some considerable import, I will not divulge here but email me and I will tell all. Sorry if that sounds mysterious. I promise that the truth is far from it.
Other than work, I have been moving around the country a lot in the past month+. I have been back to Northwestern twice including once to introduce Beth, the replacement volunteer for my village. She moved in on Tuesday I believe. I of course remember my first week in the village alone and am hoping her time has been comfortable and fun. That drop-off can be a pretty big shock to the system. I also traveled twice to Eastern province to visit Michelle. As I am now in Lusaka, it is much easier to see each other and we are averaging around once avery two weeks which is amazing after a year and a half of once every 6-7 weeks. It also only takes one or two days of transport which is amazing after the four-day one way marathon it used to be. Our close of service trip is getting finalized. We have our plane tickets! The plan right now is to leave Zambia around Aug 18th on the train to Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar which was made infamous by two complete scoundrels who took it in the last days of 2007. We fly from Dar to Addis in the first few days of September and then immediately north to Lalibela. From there we travel over-land to Bahir Dar over the course of 3.5 weeks. Then we fly back to Addis and on to Delhi. From Delhi (late September) we fly immediately to Leh in Ladakh (Northwestern India). From there we travel south through the mountains back to Delhi (avoiding Kashmir so don't worry). En route we are going no a 5-7 day trek at a more reasonable elevation than Leh. We hope to spend around three weeks in and around Delhi and then home on November 14th. Its hard to remember a time when I was more excited about something. Well, maybe not thinking about pre-Peace Corps but still. Point is, really excited.
In any event, I have to run to work which looks wierd on the screen but is true. (Though I don't get paid obviously) I hope this finds everyone in great health and happiness. I look forward everyday to seeing everyone and boring you to tears with countless stories of Zambia.
Love,
Kevin
Thursday, March 19, 2009
One month in the big city.
Greetings from Lusaka!!
I have now been living here for a month give or take and am getting used. I came down on a Thursday to celebrate valentines day with Michelle and get the house set up. I have been unbelievably fortunate in the housing department and have been put up by PEPFAR (President's Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief) in a three-bedroom house very near the Peace Corps office. Coming from my rather decrepit hut in KamaButa, its unlike any shift up in living standards I will ever experience. Needless to say, I am grateful for it as I realize now that a full jump into electric sink disposal and human-size fridge land would have made me epileptic. Under no circumstances should that sentence be taken as a complaint. Running water is simply amazing. I have been working for 4 or 5 weeks now at the YWCA Men's Network and it has been an adventure of a totally new kind. I have been fabricating tons of record-keeping documents, helping them organize their position within the larger YWCA Zambia, and plan all the activities they want to get started. In short, we are fabricating an NGO office with outreach education, media sensitizations, and on site counseling services. This mass of activities we are conjuring of course will need funds of which we have a current account balance of less than 2$. There are three other men who come to the office with me every day and none of them receive anything at all for it. There has never been enough organization from our office in the past 5 years to get any funding from the National Office or anywhere else. So trying to cross that bridge. The sustainable plan is to start a typing school on site with funds going to support our programming. The hurdles in the grant-writing process as a sub-office of little reputation within an overburdened program are considerable. We will probably figure it out at some point but right now we are swamped with trying to launch a male counseling center (paralegal, sexually violent perpetrators, domestic dispute resolution, and more!), an extensive male targeted community outreach education program Lusaka-wide, an integrated media sensitization program, a peer-mentoring program (think "big brother big sister in the states"), among others. We had our first client today and hope to start handling the offender cases (prison deferrals from Ministry of Justice) next week. We are doing a preliminary male attitude research survey at the nearby secondary school on Monday preparing for our pilot 4-part sexuality facilitation program. If you or anyone else you know wants information about our work, or knows programs operating in southern Africa we might work with, please contact us at ywcamensnetwork@gmail.com. In any event, there is a serious volume of stuff going on everyday which could not be a more dramatic shift from my past 2 years of life. So far so good.
Though I have hardly had time to critically analyze the project I am engaged in, the findings so far are not too distressing. I am appeased to some extent by the fact I am assisting Zambian men in this project and am not engaged in any ideological projects of my creation. However, my ignorance about the process of sexuality education in Zambia is nearly complete and I can't help feeling like we are going to miss something fundamental and end up just making ourselves feel better (the existence of avoidable self-deception is the paradigm anxiety of a skeptical mind). In any event, we are engaging in as careful work in the research department as is practical under the circumstances. Available statistics about incidence rates are very very few. The other muzungu intern at the YWCA is actually engaged in the creating of a femicide register for the Police service. There is no current distinction between murder and the killing of a spouse under circumstances of domestic violence. Similarly, there is no distinction between general physical assault and sexual assault. This categorical shortfall is dramatically exacerbated by the institutional roadblocks of Zambia. In any event, we are doing our best to target our programs to the "critical periods/locations/relationships" of sexuality education with the goal of shaping the content towards a more peaceful egalitarian form. This "ideal" content of a sexuality education raises fundamental questions. It goes beyond beyond the (undoubtedly irritating) issues over the non-existence of a concrete morality. The connections driving our education of sexual morality are so complex and integrated into so much of our experience that simply attempting to change something about it could easily encourage some dynamic of power that itself leads to violence. Action itself, the deliberate act, a volition directed at implementing a shift in the form of sexuality in a society is an overwhelming thought. I am not sure if it is even theoretically possible and no one wants to find themselves spending their life looking for the answer to a how question that really is a why.
In any case I will not subject you all to the full pile of rubbish in my head on these issues but, know that I love it and also the work itself. I am in an office of all Zambians (except Sana the Swedish volunteer I mentioned earlier who is awesome) who all speak perfect English. I can't describe how wonderful it is to be able to communicate easily with the people I work with. In addition, Zambians are beyond wonderful and hilarious. We have a complicated and absurd role-play joke that has been going on for weeks now. One guy is supposedly married to the receptionist with anywhere from 10-15 children. Everyone else is engaged in a constant series of ploys to steal her from him with various imaginary children coming into play from time to time. Seems somewhat inappropriate considering our work circumstances and that both are in mid twenties and not dating but, it is certainly above board. I would say 9 out of 10 sentences uttered at work are jokes or trash talking about people in the room. I really do love being there.
In any event, I am sorry if this post has been less than brilliant but I can promise to make it up to you all soon as computer access is now easy. A pleasant change of pace that.
I hope this finds everyone doing well. I can't believe how soon I will be back in the States. November 14th! Thank you for all the wishes and support. I do not deserve it all but am very very grateful and will always be so. Until next time.
Love,
Kevin "sharpdressedman" Malone
I have now been living here for a month give or take and am getting used. I came down on a Thursday to celebrate valentines day with Michelle and get the house set up. I have been unbelievably fortunate in the housing department and have been put up by PEPFAR (President's Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief) in a three-bedroom house very near the Peace Corps office. Coming from my rather decrepit hut in KamaButa, its unlike any shift up in living standards I will ever experience. Needless to say, I am grateful for it as I realize now that a full jump into electric sink disposal and human-size fridge land would have made me epileptic. Under no circumstances should that sentence be taken as a complaint. Running water is simply amazing. I have been working for 4 or 5 weeks now at the YWCA Men's Network and it has been an adventure of a totally new kind. I have been fabricating tons of record-keeping documents, helping them organize their position within the larger YWCA Zambia, and plan all the activities they want to get started. In short, we are fabricating an NGO office with outreach education, media sensitizations, and on site counseling services. This mass of activities we are conjuring of course will need funds of which we have a current account balance of less than 2$. There are three other men who come to the office with me every day and none of them receive anything at all for it. There has never been enough organization from our office in the past 5 years to get any funding from the National Office or anywhere else. So trying to cross that bridge. The sustainable plan is to start a typing school on site with funds going to support our programming. The hurdles in the grant-writing process as a sub-office of little reputation within an overburdened program are considerable. We will probably figure it out at some point but right now we are swamped with trying to launch a male counseling center (paralegal, sexually violent perpetrators, domestic dispute resolution, and more!), an extensive male targeted community outreach education program Lusaka-wide, an integrated media sensitization program, a peer-mentoring program (think "big brother big sister in the states"), among others. We had our first client today and hope to start handling the offender cases (prison deferrals from Ministry of Justice) next week. We are doing a preliminary male attitude research survey at the nearby secondary school on Monday preparing for our pilot 4-part sexuality facilitation program. If you or anyone else you know wants information about our work, or knows programs operating in southern Africa we might work with, please contact us at ywcamensnetwork@gmail.com. In any event, there is a serious volume of stuff going on everyday which could not be a more dramatic shift from my past 2 years of life. So far so good.
Though I have hardly had time to critically analyze the project I am engaged in, the findings so far are not too distressing. I am appeased to some extent by the fact I am assisting Zambian men in this project and am not engaged in any ideological projects of my creation. However, my ignorance about the process of sexuality education in Zambia is nearly complete and I can't help feeling like we are going to miss something fundamental and end up just making ourselves feel better (the existence of avoidable self-deception is the paradigm anxiety of a skeptical mind). In any event, we are engaging in as careful work in the research department as is practical under the circumstances. Available statistics about incidence rates are very very few. The other muzungu intern at the YWCA is actually engaged in the creating of a femicide register for the Police service. There is no current distinction between murder and the killing of a spouse under circumstances of domestic violence. Similarly, there is no distinction between general physical assault and sexual assault. This categorical shortfall is dramatically exacerbated by the institutional roadblocks of Zambia. In any event, we are doing our best to target our programs to the "critical periods/locations/relationships" of sexuality education with the goal of shaping the content towards a more peaceful egalitarian form. This "ideal" content of a sexuality education raises fundamental questions. It goes beyond beyond the (undoubtedly irritating) issues over the non-existence of a concrete morality. The connections driving our education of sexual morality are so complex and integrated into so much of our experience that simply attempting to change something about it could easily encourage some dynamic of power that itself leads to violence. Action itself, the deliberate act, a volition directed at implementing a shift in the form of sexuality in a society is an overwhelming thought. I am not sure if it is even theoretically possible and no one wants to find themselves spending their life looking for the answer to a how question that really is a why.
In any case I will not subject you all to the full pile of rubbish in my head on these issues but, know that I love it and also the work itself. I am in an office of all Zambians (except Sana the Swedish volunteer I mentioned earlier who is awesome) who all speak perfect English. I can't describe how wonderful it is to be able to communicate easily with the people I work with. In addition, Zambians are beyond wonderful and hilarious. We have a complicated and absurd role-play joke that has been going on for weeks now. One guy is supposedly married to the receptionist with anywhere from 10-15 children. Everyone else is engaged in a constant series of ploys to steal her from him with various imaginary children coming into play from time to time. Seems somewhat inappropriate considering our work circumstances and that both are in mid twenties and not dating but, it is certainly above board. I would say 9 out of 10 sentences uttered at work are jokes or trash talking about people in the room. I really do love being there.
In any event, I am sorry if this post has been less than brilliant but I can promise to make it up to you all soon as computer access is now easy. A pleasant change of pace that.
I hope this finds everyone doing well. I can't believe how soon I will be back in the States. November 14th! Thank you for all the wishes and support. I do not deserve it all but am very very grateful and will always be so. Until next time.
Love,
Kevin "sharpdressedman" Malone
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Moved Out of Village!!!
Greetings from Solwezi!!! I moved out of my village in KamaButa yesterday! I will have to plead more time than two days to try and formulate any sort of coherent commentary on the experience of living and working there but I am doing surprisingly well. My last two weeks were very stressful on account of leaving but I have no major regrets about the things I managed to do there or the things that I have left undone. I hope to return at some point (with imagined children) not only to search for vain confirmation of my existence but to find people who I will undoubtedly not be able to contact without actually going back.
I want to take this moment to thank everyone who supported me and my village during my many months there. It has all been appreciated and though the long-term is nearly impossible to predict, I am comfortably proud of what WE have done. My time there and anything I was able to even attempt would have been truly impossible without all of you and I cannot express in words how grateful I am for that. The sense that so many people believe in my ability to do something "good" has been truly unbelievable and has dramatically influenced my ideas about the world and the change possible in it. I will probably call on you again, for one thing has certainly become clear to me from my time here, I will be engaged directly in service to society and humanity for as long as I am able to. That might sound dramatic and self-aggrandizing and for that I apologize. I hope my actions will be able to stand judgement in the future. Point being, Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the love and support that has brought me through everything. I would not have managed without it and doubt sincerely that I or anyone alive deserves to be so spoiled.
I now will regale you with a brief tale of adventure from my time with Phil, Pat and Curtis as per my promise last post. I would first like to reiterate my gratitude to those guys for coming all the way out here and all their loved ones for letting them go during such an important time of the year. We had many adventures but one will always stand out clearly in my mind in vivid detail for the duration of my life. People may judge that we were reckless, others may say we were downright stupid, others may say those are compliments, while I choose to say freedom and time are illusion and leave it at that with regards to judgment. On our last night in Kafue National Park we decided to go on a lion hunt. This is not an African brother to our childhood bear game but a serious operation involving tracking skills rivaling Kaonde hunters of old. For background, Kafue national park is the second biggest in Africa, one of the most undeveloped, and with some of the greatest concentrations of wildlife on the planet. It also happens to be under the management of the Zambian government and for the sake of my position in this country I will leave it at that. We had heard the lions roaring in two directions over the course of the previous two nights and had heard many stories from the park scouts about seeing them lounging on the roads near the camp. Following the indisputable genius of Patrick Johnson, we loaded up the 4x4 pickup truck with some lawn chairs and embarked on a slow stalk for the king. After about a half hour of creeping along jungle roads our headlights brought out in detail from the trees ahead the hindquarters of the largest land mammal on the planet. The male African elephant. Upon hearing our vehicle, it slid deceptively quietly into the trees. Obviously excited by our first close sighting of an elephant, we crept up to the place it entered the trees and killed the engine. Pat "cobra-strike" Johnson was at the wheel and I was riding shotgun. Phil was on the right standing in the bed with good ol'C-monster on his left flank. All four of us were now sitting quietly searching for sounds of the massive creature. Our senses on the full alert that can only be attained under un-fettered, un-armed engagement with jungle creatures, we could hear every sound coming from the active jungle around us. Despite this, we could hear nothing of the massive creature that had just disappeared in the exact position we were taking on the road side. Then, after a few minutes of silence, we heard a few small crunches and brushes similar to that a kitten would make moving though the forest. This small sound slowly grew into shakes of small trees and even a crack or two. These sounds could not possibly be from the elephant coming towards us? Such a large animal? Of course not. Yet, it kept coming closer and, more disturbingly, growing in magnitude. We began to hear whole trees moving and then breaking, the crashing became intense until we were sure that it was almost upon us in the near pitch darkness of an African sky filled with stars. Then for moments that will always be in my memory, we heard nothing. These moments seemed to stretch to eternity but then, just when we thought nothing was going to happen,the trunk, face, tusks, and ears in full expanse emerged from the trees feet from the side of the truck! Framed in starlight, the full grown male African elephant then blew a violent trumpet of challenge that made at least one of us nearly soil themselves with terror. I don't know what would have happened had Pat not been faster than light in not only turning on the truck but screaming away to safety but the rental car agents would have had something to talk about at the very least. Needless to say, we were not too depressed to fail to find lions until the next day. That of course is another tale for another day.
All adventures and tomfoolery aside, having three men who know me so well here to not only experience a slice of my life but to witness and via reaction give me a much needed snapshot of how I have changed. That snapshot has taken some time to digest. After making my last post, I returned to KamaButa for my last as a resident with more than the usual laundry list of topics to ponder. I have changed a lot since coming to Zambia and I like myself less in some ways for it. The changes in my capacity for social interaction with other Americans, as indicated by more intense swings from narcissism to empathy are not too worrisome as I have faith merely being around people who understand me all the time will rectify. The greater worry for me is my current manner of manifesting the changes in perspective I actually value. To explain, I have had a number of painful realizations about the systems that govern our world. Painful because for me, based not only on my upbringing, but on my personal history of philosophical thought, there have existed simple, codified rules by which a person of good intentions could always minimize "harm" and maximize "good". Though that may sound like utilitarianism, I tried for most of Junior year to actually live according to Kant's Categorical Imperative as ridiculous as that may sound. I began my foray into philosophy exclusively in ethics as my desire to pursue a virtuous existence had never been satisfied my any of the organized religions. Philosophy, predictably, has proven to be a veritable black-hole with the viability of a concrete code of ethics one of the first structures to fall to critical analysis. At each earth-shattering phase of my journey, insult has been added to injury by writers and compatriots who not only have realized all these things before, but but find them obvious.
To make a long story shorter I am not a pacifist any more. This is not because of any change in my feelings about violence, but due to a dual realization that absolute positions of that sort are not logically defensible, and that feelings completely unhampered by reason can produce more harm than benefit even if they are utterly pure. I have long tried to regulate my emotions towards such a purity of purpose. I have realized recently, the innocence of that and the sincerity with which I pursued it was the basis for much of my positive influence on others. From my time in Zambia I have, more than anything else, come to see that the purest of intentions are the easiest for a system of inequality to cooperate for use in its own perpetuation. Needless to say, that cynical sounding sentence was not written by this hug-loving Quaker without pain. However, it is a sentence I truly believe and furthermore, my painfully large pill of reality has come with a clarifying of purpose, regulation of thinking, and an organization of drive to shape that pure intention into tangible results not despite the complexity of the problems, but through the subversion of that system itself.
The issue, and reason for dragging you all through this, is that I am very much still dealing with anger and disappointment with the world I have come to see. As a result, I owe an apology to anyone I have defensively attacked in argument or ruthlessly depressed via correspondence for demonstrating some of the pure sincerity I have valued above all else my entire life. Please be patient with me. Thank you to everyone for already being so. The path I still have to tread is the resuscitation of that hope and optimism as it is not only essential to the project itself but to my ability to be happy (which are of course interrelated). I can say without a doubt that I would be lost completely without the love and support I have received since coming to Zambia (not to mention my whole life before that!) I love you all very much and promise I have not become a total cynical jerk.
I am now moving to Lusaka for my last phase in Zambia and will hopefully be in much more frequent contact with computers. I hope this finds everyone well and happy. Thanks again for everything.
Best,
Kevin "dumpstump" Malone
I want to take this moment to thank everyone who supported me and my village during my many months there. It has all been appreciated and though the long-term is nearly impossible to predict, I am comfortably proud of what WE have done. My time there and anything I was able to even attempt would have been truly impossible without all of you and I cannot express in words how grateful I am for that. The sense that so many people believe in my ability to do something "good" has been truly unbelievable and has dramatically influenced my ideas about the world and the change possible in it. I will probably call on you again, for one thing has certainly become clear to me from my time here, I will be engaged directly in service to society and humanity for as long as I am able to. That might sound dramatic and self-aggrandizing and for that I apologize. I hope my actions will be able to stand judgement in the future. Point being, Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the love and support that has brought me through everything. I would not have managed without it and doubt sincerely that I or anyone alive deserves to be so spoiled.
I now will regale you with a brief tale of adventure from my time with Phil, Pat and Curtis as per my promise last post. I would first like to reiterate my gratitude to those guys for coming all the way out here and all their loved ones for letting them go during such an important time of the year. We had many adventures but one will always stand out clearly in my mind in vivid detail for the duration of my life. People may judge that we were reckless, others may say we were downright stupid, others may say those are compliments, while I choose to say freedom and time are illusion and leave it at that with regards to judgment. On our last night in Kafue National Park we decided to go on a lion hunt. This is not an African brother to our childhood bear game but a serious operation involving tracking skills rivaling Kaonde hunters of old. For background, Kafue national park is the second biggest in Africa, one of the most undeveloped, and with some of the greatest concentrations of wildlife on the planet. It also happens to be under the management of the Zambian government and for the sake of my position in this country I will leave it at that. We had heard the lions roaring in two directions over the course of the previous two nights and had heard many stories from the park scouts about seeing them lounging on the roads near the camp. Following the indisputable genius of Patrick Johnson, we loaded up the 4x4 pickup truck with some lawn chairs and embarked on a slow stalk for the king. After about a half hour of creeping along jungle roads our headlights brought out in detail from the trees ahead the hindquarters of the largest land mammal on the planet. The male African elephant. Upon hearing our vehicle, it slid deceptively quietly into the trees. Obviously excited by our first close sighting of an elephant, we crept up to the place it entered the trees and killed the engine. Pat "cobra-strike" Johnson was at the wheel and I was riding shotgun. Phil was on the right standing in the bed with good ol'C-monster on his left flank. All four of us were now sitting quietly searching for sounds of the massive creature. Our senses on the full alert that can only be attained under un-fettered, un-armed engagement with jungle creatures, we could hear every sound coming from the active jungle around us. Despite this, we could hear nothing of the massive creature that had just disappeared in the exact position we were taking on the road side. Then, after a few minutes of silence, we heard a few small crunches and brushes similar to that a kitten would make moving though the forest. This small sound slowly grew into shakes of small trees and even a crack or two. These sounds could not possibly be from the elephant coming towards us? Such a large animal? Of course not. Yet, it kept coming closer and, more disturbingly, growing in magnitude. We began to hear whole trees moving and then breaking, the crashing became intense until we were sure that it was almost upon us in the near pitch darkness of an African sky filled with stars. Then for moments that will always be in my memory, we heard nothing. These moments seemed to stretch to eternity but then, just when we thought nothing was going to happen,the trunk, face, tusks, and ears in full expanse emerged from the trees feet from the side of the truck! Framed in starlight, the full grown male African elephant then blew a violent trumpet of challenge that made at least one of us nearly soil themselves with terror. I don't know what would have happened had Pat not been faster than light in not only turning on the truck but screaming away to safety but the rental car agents would have had something to talk about at the very least. Needless to say, we were not too depressed to fail to find lions until the next day. That of course is another tale for another day.
All adventures and tomfoolery aside, having three men who know me so well here to not only experience a slice of my life but to witness and via reaction give me a much needed snapshot of how I have changed. That snapshot has taken some time to digest. After making my last post, I returned to KamaButa for my last as a resident with more than the usual laundry list of topics to ponder. I have changed a lot since coming to Zambia and I like myself less in some ways for it. The changes in my capacity for social interaction with other Americans, as indicated by more intense swings from narcissism to empathy are not too worrisome as I have faith merely being around people who understand me all the time will rectify. The greater worry for me is my current manner of manifesting the changes in perspective I actually value. To explain, I have had a number of painful realizations about the systems that govern our world. Painful because for me, based not only on my upbringing, but on my personal history of philosophical thought, there have existed simple, codified rules by which a person of good intentions could always minimize "harm" and maximize "good". Though that may sound like utilitarianism, I tried for most of Junior year to actually live according to Kant's Categorical Imperative as ridiculous as that may sound. I began my foray into philosophy exclusively in ethics as my desire to pursue a virtuous existence had never been satisfied my any of the organized religions. Philosophy, predictably, has proven to be a veritable black-hole with the viability of a concrete code of ethics one of the first structures to fall to critical analysis. At each earth-shattering phase of my journey, insult has been added to injury by writers and compatriots who not only have realized all these things before, but but find them obvious.
To make a long story shorter I am not a pacifist any more. This is not because of any change in my feelings about violence, but due to a dual realization that absolute positions of that sort are not logically defensible, and that feelings completely unhampered by reason can produce more harm than benefit even if they are utterly pure. I have long tried to regulate my emotions towards such a purity of purpose. I have realized recently, the innocence of that and the sincerity with which I pursued it was the basis for much of my positive influence on others. From my time in Zambia I have, more than anything else, come to see that the purest of intentions are the easiest for a system of inequality to cooperate for use in its own perpetuation. Needless to say, that cynical sounding sentence was not written by this hug-loving Quaker without pain. However, it is a sentence I truly believe and furthermore, my painfully large pill of reality has come with a clarifying of purpose, regulation of thinking, and an organization of drive to shape that pure intention into tangible results not despite the complexity of the problems, but through the subversion of that system itself.
The issue, and reason for dragging you all through this, is that I am very much still dealing with anger and disappointment with the world I have come to see. As a result, I owe an apology to anyone I have defensively attacked in argument or ruthlessly depressed via correspondence for demonstrating some of the pure sincerity I have valued above all else my entire life. Please be patient with me. Thank you to everyone for already being so. The path I still have to tread is the resuscitation of that hope and optimism as it is not only essential to the project itself but to my ability to be happy (which are of course interrelated). I can say without a doubt that I would be lost completely without the love and support I have received since coming to Zambia (not to mention my whole life before that!) I love you all very much and promise I have not become a total cynical jerk.
I am now moving to Lusaka for my last phase in Zambia and will hopefully be in much more frequent contact with computers. I hope this finds everyone well and happy. Thanks again for everything.
Best,
Kevin "dumpstump" Malone
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
FOUR WEEKS LEFT IN MUFUMBWE!!!! also, Johnsons and PDC just left and all limbs are intact.
Happy New Year!!!
Hello everyone, I am in Solwezi and just put Philip David Crouse himself on a bus to Lusaka for the beginning of a very very long journey back to NYC. He and I were able to spend this weekend in my village while the Johnsons (Pat and Curtis) took off last thursday for an adventure in Cape Town South Africa. All I know is they let you cage dive with Great White Sharks down there and those guys never say no to adventure. We had an amazing time here in Zambia and I cannot express in words how lucky I feel to have friends with the freedom and desire to travel half-way around the world to enjoy the rainy season with me. The Johnsons arrived on December 17th and PDC arrived on the 30th. We spent Pats birthday (24th, as strangly, I also spent Majeed's Bday last year in Zanzibar) and Christmas in the Village with Michelle and a few other North Western Volunteers. I then had a huge going away party for my village involving two goats, an oil-drum vat of nshima, two chickens, a big fish and 60 gallons of monkoyo. All was easily handled by the 100+ guests and all went off without a hitch thanks to the amazing help of my Zambian mothers who toiled over various fires for two days to get all the food ready. Hopefully some of the Johnsons' pics from that will make it up here soon. It was amazing to have visitors from home and Michelle from across the country to be there for such a big moment in my time in the village. I was never expecting to have to leave so early but the excitement about my project in Lusaka is growing daily along with anxiety about having to leave what has been my very intense home for the last 1.5+ years. This will be my last post as a village based Peace Corps Volunteer and as such I have to keep it short if I aim to make it to that village today. Thank you thank you thank you thank you to the Johnsons and PDC for coming to visit me. It means more to me than words can describe no matter how eloquent the metaphor. Also, thank you so much to everyone who sent goodies for me via those clowns. I will have difficulty eating all of the american food before leaving the village which is quite the pleasant paradox. I promise to spend time writing out some of the stories from our adventures this past month but the lions and elephants have not grown sufficiently enough yet in the telling from their already impressive and terrifying size to that worthy of a Majeedesque story. So, stay posted for that. I can now say that I will be home to the states this year and look forward daily to being able to bear hug you all into rosey-faced submission. Stay well and have a wonderful January.
Love,
Kevin "faster than a lion" Malone
Hello everyone, I am in Solwezi and just put Philip David Crouse himself on a bus to Lusaka for the beginning of a very very long journey back to NYC. He and I were able to spend this weekend in my village while the Johnsons (Pat and Curtis) took off last thursday for an adventure in Cape Town South Africa. All I know is they let you cage dive with Great White Sharks down there and those guys never say no to adventure. We had an amazing time here in Zambia and I cannot express in words how lucky I feel to have friends with the freedom and desire to travel half-way around the world to enjoy the rainy season with me. The Johnsons arrived on December 17th and PDC arrived on the 30th. We spent Pats birthday (24th, as strangly, I also spent Majeed's Bday last year in Zanzibar) and Christmas in the Village with Michelle and a few other North Western Volunteers. I then had a huge going away party for my village involving two goats, an oil-drum vat of nshima, two chickens, a big fish and 60 gallons of monkoyo. All was easily handled by the 100+ guests and all went off without a hitch thanks to the amazing help of my Zambian mothers who toiled over various fires for two days to get all the food ready. Hopefully some of the Johnsons' pics from that will make it up here soon. It was amazing to have visitors from home and Michelle from across the country to be there for such a big moment in my time in the village. I was never expecting to have to leave so early but the excitement about my project in Lusaka is growing daily along with anxiety about having to leave what has been my very intense home for the last 1.5+ years. This will be my last post as a village based Peace Corps Volunteer and as such I have to keep it short if I aim to make it to that village today. Thank you thank you thank you thank you to the Johnsons and PDC for coming to visit me. It means more to me than words can describe no matter how eloquent the metaphor. Also, thank you so much to everyone who sent goodies for me via those clowns. I will have difficulty eating all of the american food before leaving the village which is quite the pleasant paradox. I promise to spend time writing out some of the stories from our adventures this past month but the lions and elephants have not grown sufficiently enough yet in the telling from their already impressive and terrifying size to that worthy of a Majeedesque story. So, stay posted for that. I can now say that I will be home to the states this year and look forward daily to being able to bear hug you all into rosey-faced submission. Stay well and have a wonderful January.
Love,
Kevin "faster than a lion" Malone
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