At 4:00 this morning, I received a phone call. From “Unavailable”. The first time, the rings cut short and I thought it was a mistake. The second time, I picked up.
“Hello?” I said.
“Allo? Daouda?” came the response.
“Oui! C’est Daouda!” I exclaimed.
You see, Daouda was the name given to me by the people in Kérouané. It’s quite common for Peace Corps Volunteers to adopt or receive new names from their village as part of the welcoming process. “Daouda” is just the Arabic form of “David” (it’s a palindrome in Arabic, too, just three letters da-wa-da, which is exciting). My new family name was Camara, which is one of the dominant family names around there.
The phone call was from Sery, the father of the family I had lived with. He is a blacksmith and farmer; his forge, a low hut with a bellows in the middle, was just behind my hut. Since today is Wednesday, I expect he was about to head down to the market to sell the tools he had made. Annie had told me she would try to arrange a phone call from Sery, when she described the weird alternate-reality Kérouané where everyone carries cell phones, old men in their boubous and kaftans shouting “Inike!” into their (or their grandchildren’s) phones.
If this doesn’t make sense to you, the notion of a rural town in a third-world country suddenly becoming equipped with cell phones, consider the following: when phones first started being used, there was a lot of physical infrastructure that had to be installed. Precisely the sort of thing developing countries had no manpower or use for. Now it just takes building and powering the appropriate kind of tower—no digging to lay down cables or anything like that. Why did cell phone use arise so much more quickly in Guinea (or, say, India, where some of the same effects held)? They weren’t already invested in the old technology. Plus, there are lots of people working right now to bring the “information gap”, which has been predicted to be at least as important in hindering development in this era as the “income gap”.
Sery sounded quiet and tired. We just talked for three or four minutes, mostly exchanging greetings. Greetings are an essential part of maintaining relationships in West Africa. At the time Annie and I were serving there, it seemed like such superficial conversation. But every society has glue, and some vocabulary that forms part of that glue. It’s just rude to cut the greetings short. I wanted to be able to talk more, but I hope the time we had was meaningful to him. He said he received the notes I had sent (via Annie), and he asked about Hannah, whom I had mentioned in my letters. He said his family was doing well. He asked if I could still speak Malinké (which I probably could, but not well enough to use it over a phone). It was sort of an incredible experience. I just thought I’d share it with you.
Showing posts with label Peace Corps. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Peace Corps. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Thursday, February 21, 2008
will we find Alice there?
This evening, a friend asked if I saw the lunar eclipse last night. No, I said, because I didn’t know about it. This was actually an unheard of state of affairs for me; for a few years, I caught every lunar eclipse I could, some unexpectedly. Here’s an email I sent to a friend after the last one I saw (October 2004):
Well, although it seems somewhat unfair to me, I only got to watch about the last 20 minutes of eclipsing. To make up for it, I think I have to stay up past midnight to watch the emergence of the moon from Earth's shadow. I missed the first part because I was teaching. Ah, well.
This is, I think, the sixth total lunar eclipse I've seen since 2000, but right now I can't remember where I was for one of them:
January 2000: Minnesota. A group of friends (who were still attending college in a town a little over an hour from Minneapolis) organized a eclipse-watching bonfire. Which is a good thing to have around when one plans on spending two to three hours outside on a January night in Minnesota.
January 2001: Guinea. This one was completely unexpected. I was sitting around with my host family having dinner, when we noticed it was time for the moon to be out yet remained quite dark. A few minutes later, we realized the moon was rising and eclipsing as it rose. It was incredible. I was super exciting [sic—but not inaccurate as you’ll see], hopping around and shouting in English, French, and Malinke how excited I was. The Guineans were afraid: their story for an eclipse is that a cat is eating the moon, and you have to play drums and beg for the moon to come back. I got to explain the process to a few people, however. It was not only a great astronomical experience, but a great cultural exchange.
May 2003: Memphis. My dad and I went out to a field to watch. On the way there, just a few minutes into the partial eclipse, our tire blew out, and we were changing it as the moon grew darker. We arrived at the field about halfway through the process, and stayed basically until it was done. The other time I went out to that field with my dad was when the Leonids were especially bright, in November 2002.
November 2003: Ithaca. I talked my friend Matt into driving out to Varna, where Cornell has an off-campus observatory. We figured there would be someone there manning the observatory, but no one was. About twenty or thirty other people showed up with the same idea, so we just enjoyed being out there together. I played resident astronomy expert for some folks, which was easy since I was basically explaining rotation and revolution. Also, of course, I took the opportunity to point out my favorite constellations. :-)
May 2004: ? This is the one I don't remember, even though it's the most recent. I figure I must have made an attempt to see at least part of it, but I can't for the life of me remember now where I was.
Tonight: I guess this is the last one until sometime in 2007 or 2008. I'll still be here then.
“2007 or 2008” seemed so far away back then. And now I’ve missed the last three I had a chance to see (since I was in Europe last March I could have watched that one—although as I think back, I may have known about it but it was cloudy—and I didn’t get up last August; see the link above for the list of eclipses this decade). The next one for me will I guess be in 2010, unless I’m in Africa this August.
A bit perturbed at myself for being so ill-informed, and remembering that I used to know when these things were coming because I used to visit Space.com much more often, I hopped over to that site and signed up for their RSS feed. Here’s the first headline I came across: Private Race to the Moon Takes Off. It turns out, Google and X Prize (the latter of which awarded a $10 million prize in 2004 to the creators of a privately-funded spacecraft that successfully reached >100 kilometers altitude twice) are jointly offering $20 million to anyone who can send a privately-funded robot to the moon and complete a set of tasks. It’s called the Google Lunar X Prize, and—to express the obvious—it’s awesome. It’s another example of how Google really is working to make the world of technology better in all the ways we’ve dreamed about. The competition is in the Space.com headlines right now because nine teams have just joined the competition, to join the first team that entered back in December. I imagine there are a few Cornell students aching to make their way onto one of these teams.
There has been a spate of moon-related media lately. Last fall, Hannah and I went to see In the Shadow of the Moon, a documentary that interviews the astronauts who were on the moon, which at this point in history was certainly essential to accomplish. (This movie, inexplicably, is not nominated for an Academy Award. Seriously, this is a fantastic movie. In the metaphorical, not the literal, sense, because it’s not fantasy.) It made Hannah want to watch Apollo 13. Almost everything makes Hannah want to watch Apollo 13. In 2005, Tom Hanks released Magnificent Desolation, an IMAX quasi-documentary that, while it had some good moments, was not the best IMAX film I’ve seen, mainly because so much of it was CGI and sound stage stuff rather than actual footage. (We just saw it this past winter in Memphis.)
And just in the last couple of days, with the landing of Atlantis just in time for the U.S. government to shoot down a potentially dangerous satellite, space activity in general has gotten a lot of news. I personally am still thrilled that we have a permanent human presence in space with the International Space Station. (I along with many others was nervous back in 2003 that the Columbia disaster would abruptly end that promise of a permanent presence.) And who wouldn’t be inspired by the immense success of the Mars Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, which are still chugging along (and providing images processed by—guess who—the Cornell Pancam Team).
I believe this work in space has to remain a priority. And I’m pleased Google has taken it on, as well. As usual, I don’t have any dreams myself to make it into space, but I will cheer and in fact support in any way I can.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
where to go part 5
Guinea’s back, so to speak. Not everything got resolved—it never does—but the worst of the protests stopped, Peace Corps went back (some of the Volunteers, but not all, who had been serving returned, along with a new crop), and along with that is the excitement of my friend Annie traveling back to our village! Annie served with me at the Lycée Almamy Samoury Touré in Kérouané (the name of the town possibly comes from the Maninka word “kayira”, meaning happiness; the school is named after a Guinean national hero). I taught math; she taught English. Now she and her boyfriend Matt, another RPCV (returned Peace Corps Volunteer) have returned in the other direction, to work on some writing projects. Just thought I’d direct you to her blog. Just the effort of getting into the country has spawned some good stories, and the writing is quality stuff. (Here’s hoping you can get some of it published, Annie!)
Friday, February 16, 2007
where to go part 4
I don’t know what to say. Things have gotten worse in Guinea. Conté has declared the country to be in a state of siege, and is entirely ignoring the fact that it is his appalling leadership, self-absorption, and reliance on sycophants that have provoked the violent unrest. Martial law has been in effect since Monday. The International Crisis Group has issued a strongly-worded assessment of the situation and list of recommendations for all parties involved, including ECOWAS (the Economic Community of West African States), the African Union, and the international community (the U.S. and France in particular). Anything more I could say would just be repeating the Friends of Guinea reporting, so I recommend you look there for a summary of news reports.
I never imagined this happening. But I guess the potential has always been there. Where do we go from here? What possible recourse do we have other than to pray the demonstrators, the looters, the government, and the military will shore up what’s left of decency and find a better solution than ceaseless turmoil?
I never imagined this happening. But I guess the potential has always been there. Where do we go from here? What possible recourse do we have other than to pray the demonstrators, the looters, the government, and the military will shore up what’s left of decency and find a better solution than ceaseless turmoil?
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
where to go part 2
The strikes in Guinea were ended at the beginning of last week. The union leaders apparently felt the government had met sufficiently many of their demands. But the news stories since then tell that Conté has not named a new prime minister to start taking some responsibility for the nation, as he had agreed to do. Peace Corps Volunteers’ blogs tell of hanging out in Bamako, waiting to hear if they’re going to get to go back. I still doubt it. I briefly hoped when the strikes were over, but I’m back to my skepticism.
Friday, January 26, 2007
where to go from here?
Peace Corps Guinea was evacuated this week. I’ve been anticipating this for a while. It still upsets me. The Volunteers are now in Mali, hanging out, waiting to see if the turmoil will blow over and they can go back to their sites, or if things will get worse and they’ll have had their services yanked out from underneath them. I don‘t know what to expect or hope for. But now that the Volunteers are out of the country, I suspect it’ll be a while before PC goes back. Côte d’Ivoire was evacuated shortly after I ended my service in Guinea; over the previous year, if I recall correctly, there had been a couple of in-country evacuations, i.e., the PCVs gathered in Abidjan. But once they were moved to Accra, Ghana, that marked the end. They haven’t been back since.
Some background: things in Guinea are bad. They weren’t good when I was there, and they have steadily declined since. Inflation and unreliable salaries have made both gasoline (hence transport and travel) and rice (hence eating) almost entirely unattainable. The state of affairs is blamed on President Lansana Conté, who for his part doesn’t seem to have had his country’s best interests in mind. He came to power in 1984 via a military coup following the death of the first president, Sékou Touré. He was officially elected in 1993, under a constitution that was supposed to limit the president to two five-year terms. But I recall November 2001, when a “national referendum” vote removed these term limits, allowing Conté to run again in 2003. I remember hearing the stories of soldiers watching people’s votes, and telling them, if they voted against the proposal to remove the limits, “Are you stupid, or did you just forget what to mark?” (We need to take the problems with voting in the States seriously, but we should also recognize how incredibly fortunate we are to have as reliable a system as we do.) Conté is a diabetic and has been taken to Paris multiple times while in a coma, and I don’t think anyone expected him to live out a third term. Problem is, no one knows who’ll fill the vacuum when he leaves, either by passing away or by finishing out his term.
On January 10, a “general strike” was begun, which as far as I can tell means just about everyone stopped working. No teaching. No bauxite mining (which is Guinea’s primary source of income). No transport. PC admin gathered up the PCVs from up-country, because (as you’ll all be grateful to know) Peace Corps really does make great efforts to care for its Volunteers. But things got bad before that. I found a blog by a current Volunteer, serving in Siguiri, which is one of the towns where I visited some friends during my service. She tells the events of when the street protests reached Siguiri on Tuesday. She reports that two people died in those protests. Many more have died in Conakry. Everyone in the country is suffering and stagnating and scraping by in this awful, awful situation. I taught over 200 students there, some of whom are probably at universities now.
You can find more about the strike, including the reasons for it and the terms to end it which the union leaders published, by looking at the Friends of Guinea blog, linked in the sidebar.
I’d like to say more, but I don’t think there’s anything we ordinary people can do Stateside (or even from here in France, former colonial power in Guinea), except perhaps petition for the president to step down? How on earth would that work? And even though that’s what most of the people of Guinea seem to want, it’s certainly not a good or sufficient solution. But I’m writing about this because the events really upset me and I feel the need to bring them up. I hate the state of affairs across most of sub-Saharan Africa. I’ve said to many people before that it seems somehow the colonizers convinced the entire continent that black people are inferior to white people. And the divisions among tribes and the selfishness of the rulers exacerbate what are already miserable situations. I will vouch that the people of Guinea are generous and rich in culture, but they are also frustrated. They do not see justice, and they do not see progress. The strike is a symptom of a nation deeply troubled, but it is also becoming a new source of destruction. How do we escape from this vortex?
Some background: things in Guinea are bad. They weren’t good when I was there, and they have steadily declined since. Inflation and unreliable salaries have made both gasoline (hence transport and travel) and rice (hence eating) almost entirely unattainable. The state of affairs is blamed on President Lansana Conté, who for his part doesn’t seem to have had his country’s best interests in mind. He came to power in 1984 via a military coup following the death of the first president, Sékou Touré. He was officially elected in 1993, under a constitution that was supposed to limit the president to two five-year terms. But I recall November 2001, when a “national referendum” vote removed these term limits, allowing Conté to run again in 2003. I remember hearing the stories of soldiers watching people’s votes, and telling them, if they voted against the proposal to remove the limits, “Are you stupid, or did you just forget what to mark?” (We need to take the problems with voting in the States seriously, but we should also recognize how incredibly fortunate we are to have as reliable a system as we do.) Conté is a diabetic and has been taken to Paris multiple times while in a coma, and I don’t think anyone expected him to live out a third term. Problem is, no one knows who’ll fill the vacuum when he leaves, either by passing away or by finishing out his term.
On January 10, a “general strike” was begun, which as far as I can tell means just about everyone stopped working. No teaching. No bauxite mining (which is Guinea’s primary source of income). No transport. PC admin gathered up the PCVs from up-country, because (as you’ll all be grateful to know) Peace Corps really does make great efforts to care for its Volunteers. But things got bad before that. I found a blog by a current Volunteer, serving in Siguiri, which is one of the towns where I visited some friends during my service. She tells the events of when the street protests reached Siguiri on Tuesday. She reports that two people died in those protests. Many more have died in Conakry. Everyone in the country is suffering and stagnating and scraping by in this awful, awful situation. I taught over 200 students there, some of whom are probably at universities now.
You can find more about the strike, including the reasons for it and the terms to end it which the union leaders published, by looking at the Friends of Guinea blog, linked in the sidebar.
I’d like to say more, but I don’t think there’s anything we ordinary people can do Stateside (or even from here in France, former colonial power in Guinea), except perhaps petition for the president to step down? How on earth would that work? And even though that’s what most of the people of Guinea seem to want, it’s certainly not a good or sufficient solution. But I’m writing about this because the events really upset me and I feel the need to bring them up. I hate the state of affairs across most of sub-Saharan Africa. I’ve said to many people before that it seems somehow the colonizers convinced the entire continent that black people are inferior to white people. And the divisions among tribes and the selfishness of the rulers exacerbate what are already miserable situations. I will vouch that the people of Guinea are generous and rich in culture, but they are also frustrated. They do not see justice, and they do not see progress. The strike is a symptom of a nation deeply troubled, but it is also becoming a new source of destruction. How do we escape from this vortex?
Friday, December 15, 2006
world-travelers, we
Sarah just left this morning for the States. I was going to drive her to the airport, but the car we were borrowing wouldn’t start. She took a taxi because her flight was at 6:45 and the first bus from the train station doesn’t arrive at the airport until 6:00. I’ll have this same problem next Thursday when I go home. I’m not sure I’ll take the same solution, but we’ll see.
I tried to go back to sleep after she left, but didn’t quite manage it… partly I was thinking about things I need to write and post here. So I signed on, and found that Blogger has been updated (it’s better integrated with other Google services now), and discovered that there’s a blog being written by a current Peace Corps Volunteer in Togo. Excellent! I thought. It’s even better than I thought, because he has videos! Here’s the latest one, of the market in his town.
From YouTube, you can look at “More from this user” to see other videos. I highly recommend watching the school visit. The conditions of the schools in West Africa are often hard to describe to Americans. Somehow learning gets done, despite the remarkable challenges and lack of resources.
I haven’t read through all the archives yet, because he’s been there for almost a year and a half. But I’m always in favor of resources that can give people a better idea of what it’s like to live there. This (the ability to blog easily) would indeed have been awesome six years ago when I was there. He mentions in a few early entries that there’s far too much going on to effectively choose what to write about. It’s true; every single week, every single day of Peace Corps is charged with experience and activity. For the first several months of our service, Annie and I would meet for dinner every night to debrief and decompress. I’m looking forward to reliving some memories through Aaron’s online records.
I do have things I want to write. All in good time. I hope the Advent season (Christmas shopping season, end-of-fall-semester season, whatever applies) is treating you all well.
I tried to go back to sleep after she left, but didn’t quite manage it… partly I was thinking about things I need to write and post here. So I signed on, and found that Blogger has been updated (it’s better integrated with other Google services now), and discovered that there’s a blog being written by a current Peace Corps Volunteer in Togo. Excellent! I thought. It’s even better than I thought, because he has videos! Here’s the latest one, of the market in his town.
From YouTube, you can look at “More from this user” to see other videos. I highly recommend watching the school visit. The conditions of the schools in West Africa are often hard to describe to Americans. Somehow learning gets done, despite the remarkable challenges and lack of resources.
I haven’t read through all the archives yet, because he’s been there for almost a year and a half. But I’m always in favor of resources that can give people a better idea of what it’s like to live there. This (the ability to blog easily) would indeed have been awesome six years ago when I was there. He mentions in a few early entries that there’s far too much going on to effectively choose what to write about. It’s true; every single week, every single day of Peace Corps is charged with experience and activity. For the first several months of our service, Annie and I would meet for dinner every night to debrief and decompress. I’m looking forward to reliving some memories through Aaron’s online records.
I do have things I want to write. All in good time. I hope the Advent season (Christmas shopping season, end-of-fall-semester season, whatever applies) is treating you all well.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
an unsent letter
While moving, it is inevitable that one will unearth old letters. I sought this one out among my boxes. It is probably the last letter I wrote during my Peace Corps service. I never sent it, not because it’s too personal, but because I talked with the addressee about these things at other times.
I’ve lived in this apartment in Ithaca for three years now. That’s the longest I’ve lived anywhere since I left high school 11 years ago. The next longest time I’ve lived in the same place was two years in a hut. So while the story of this letter may better parallel my time next spring when I’ll be preparing to come back to the States again, I feel the same challenges of uprooting now as I did then.
*******
Kérouané
26 May 2002
It really is almost over now. I COS in just over three weeks (COS means “close of service”, but here it’s been turned into a verb.) I’m done teaching, done grading, and have only to turn in grades. The laboratory isn’t completely put together yet, but it’s organized and we’re just waiting to get bookshelves built this week to take everything out and make sure it all works. More than anything nowadays, I’m saying goodbye.
This morning, for example, I asked to say a few words to the congregation. (It’s Trinity Sunday today.) Actually, I had asked last week to do it this week, and when I arrived and the catechist wasn’t there, I thought I would have to wait. Apparently he left a note to the celebrant, because during the announcements he called on me. So I went up and rather nervously read out what I had written. I of course thanked them for the welcome they had given me. I also responded to something they have said to me frequently—that is, being the first (or at least a rare case) among all the ex-patriots [sic—I know how to spell this word now] to come through Kérouané, to present myself to the Christian community as a fellow believer. I said that, in fact, it is I who should thank God for the presence of a community where I could worship with fellow believers. For me, church is neither an obligation nor a duty, but a joy, and moreover I need the presence of God. (At least some things haven’t changed in two years.) Then I said what God had added to the gift of His presence at church: the chance to know the people and the cultures of those who attend there. Christians are more often than not from the forest, and here in this Maninka/Konianké dominated area, I would have had little opportunity to know of Kissi, Toma, or Kpelle traditions. I closed by talking to the youth, several of whom are my students. I said that God has given them great responsibility, but also a special place in His heart. I read 1 Timothy 4:12, saying that it is a passage often given to youth in our country.
Sery, the father of the family with whom I live, says it hurts him to hear how soon I’m leaving. I only have in fact at most two weeks here before COS, and after COS I’m coming back for a week. Then, toward the beginning of July, I’ll leave the country to travel a bit before meeting my parents in Spain. (I won’t be able to send this letter to you until I’m in Conakry for COS, so I’ll probably be out of Guinea by the time you read it.)
Annie is leaving the country after me, but leaving Kérouané before. She’s traveling right now, in the Fouta and then to Conakry to pick up a visiting friend. She should be back mid-week with her friend, and we’ll be together for a few days. I think the last time I’ll see her this side of the Atlantic is on June 8, at a party in Kankan. I hadn’t realized how little time we had left as sitemates until the day before she left for this trip. That night we took a couple of hours and talked about what we’ve observed and learned, and to thank each other for support and friendship throughout our service. I know I wrote last year that I didn’t feel particularly close to Annie; now I do. We’re extraordinarily different people, yet we’ve come to appreciate who we both are, and to realize that we even represent different American subcultures. I told her she is one of the oddest people I’ve ever known, and she reciprocated. :-)
How much has changed? How much have I changed? I’ve long said that people don’t, in fact, change; rather that they become more or less themselves. So am I more or less myself now? Two years in Africa has certainly touched me more than three weeks in Martinique or a week in France. If I haven’t changed, I think some of my values and views on international affairs have. I have seen more of the inequality in the world, and I have seen more of the causes that keep it in place. I know a bit about how complex the issue of, say, education is, and I have a greater respect for those whose goal is to make it universally available. Personally, I have become more self-motivated, self-confident, and self-aware. I know the value of clear expectations and good presentation, because I have seen what those things can accomplish. Conversely, I have a greater appreciation for the value of honesty, because I have seen what falsity can erode and destroy. I suppose it is inevitable for such changes to occur during such a service, and it is often said that the greatest benefit Peace Corps gives is not to the people served, but to the Volunteers who serve.
Back to my first question: how much has changed? I can say at least this: in a corner of a library, in a school in a corner of West Africa, there are now boxes holding wonders to enliven a student’s imagination. But such wonders have always lay around them and have gone unused and unnoticed because they aren’t taught to observe properly. I hope the same fate doesn’t come to the so-called laboratory. After that, there are a handful of students, perhaps four or five, who have gained confidence in themselves, and perhaps enjoyed discovering a few things along the way. It’s small, but it’s a start. That’s all a Volunteer can do: make starts.
There’s a group of African children who sing an English folk song (in a very African manner) and dance around to it. There are scattered residents of Kérouané who can say they’ve seen the mountains of the moon and the Hunter drawn in the sky. There are ladies in the market who have had an American client, for a time. There is a father who has seen corners of the world that truly few Americans have seen. Things have changed. Some things are eternal, but other things change, and those that change never seem to do so fast enough.
And I have little idea of what’s changed at home (for, here at the end, the States are becoming “home” again). I expect that it’s changed more than I expect. It would have done so anyway, even without the events of the last year. [I meant Sept. 11.]
We will have things to talk about when I return, will we not? I promise next time we are together not to run around trying to catch all the sights and sounds. With the universe to be found in a grain of sand, I will want to again know the wondrous variety to be found in you. I have just reread the letter you sent me from November―March. I hate that my time here makes you feel that our friendship has weakened. Then again, perhaps it is a bit true. I still forbid you to make yourself difficult to find before I come back.
You wrote that your plans haven’t changed. I, too, have a direction [graduate school], though its location is undetermined, and I do not know if the direction itself will remain unchanged. Wherever I am, even here, you are close in my thoughts and heart.
*******
I never signed the letter. I think I could never quite figure out how to close it.
It’s good to remember that I’ve been through leaving before. That I've dealt with the changes in relationships that come with time apart, even though they may be painful. That I left somewhere feeling I’d made a difference. I suspect if I were to carefully consider my time here in Ithaca so far, I would find I had some small influences, and those would make it easier to leave to do something else.
Some of you may find the above letter interesting as a summary of my time in Africa. For me, its present purpose is to help me reflect on times of transition so that I feel better prepared to go to Marseille.
I’ve lived in this apartment in Ithaca for three years now. That’s the longest I’ve lived anywhere since I left high school 11 years ago. The next longest time I’ve lived in the same place was two years in a hut. So while the story of this letter may better parallel my time next spring when I’ll be preparing to come back to the States again, I feel the same challenges of uprooting now as I did then.
*******
Kérouané
26 May 2002
It really is almost over now. I COS in just over three weeks (COS means “close of service”, but here it’s been turned into a verb.) I’m done teaching, done grading, and have only to turn in grades. The laboratory isn’t completely put together yet, but it’s organized and we’re just waiting to get bookshelves built this week to take everything out and make sure it all works. More than anything nowadays, I’m saying goodbye.
This morning, for example, I asked to say a few words to the congregation. (It’s Trinity Sunday today.) Actually, I had asked last week to do it this week, and when I arrived and the catechist wasn’t there, I thought I would have to wait. Apparently he left a note to the celebrant, because during the announcements he called on me. So I went up and rather nervously read out what I had written. I of course thanked them for the welcome they had given me. I also responded to something they have said to me frequently—that is, being the first (or at least a rare case) among all the ex-patriots [sic—I know how to spell this word now] to come through Kérouané, to present myself to the Christian community as a fellow believer. I said that, in fact, it is I who should thank God for the presence of a community where I could worship with fellow believers. For me, church is neither an obligation nor a duty, but a joy, and moreover I need the presence of God. (At least some things haven’t changed in two years.) Then I said what God had added to the gift of His presence at church: the chance to know the people and the cultures of those who attend there. Christians are more often than not from the forest, and here in this Maninka/Konianké dominated area, I would have had little opportunity to know of Kissi, Toma, or Kpelle traditions. I closed by talking to the youth, several of whom are my students. I said that God has given them great responsibility, but also a special place in His heart. I read 1 Timothy 4:12, saying that it is a passage often given to youth in our country.
Sery, the father of the family with whom I live, says it hurts him to hear how soon I’m leaving. I only have in fact at most two weeks here before COS, and after COS I’m coming back for a week. Then, toward the beginning of July, I’ll leave the country to travel a bit before meeting my parents in Spain. (I won’t be able to send this letter to you until I’m in Conakry for COS, so I’ll probably be out of Guinea by the time you read it.)
Annie is leaving the country after me, but leaving Kérouané before. She’s traveling right now, in the Fouta and then to Conakry to pick up a visiting friend. She should be back mid-week with her friend, and we’ll be together for a few days. I think the last time I’ll see her this side of the Atlantic is on June 8, at a party in Kankan. I hadn’t realized how little time we had left as sitemates until the day before she left for this trip. That night we took a couple of hours and talked about what we’ve observed and learned, and to thank each other for support and friendship throughout our service. I know I wrote last year that I didn’t feel particularly close to Annie; now I do. We’re extraordinarily different people, yet we’ve come to appreciate who we both are, and to realize that we even represent different American subcultures. I told her she is one of the oddest people I’ve ever known, and she reciprocated. :-)
How much has changed? How much have I changed? I’ve long said that people don’t, in fact, change; rather that they become more or less themselves. So am I more or less myself now? Two years in Africa has certainly touched me more than three weeks in Martinique or a week in France. If I haven’t changed, I think some of my values and views on international affairs have. I have seen more of the inequality in the world, and I have seen more of the causes that keep it in place. I know a bit about how complex the issue of, say, education is, and I have a greater respect for those whose goal is to make it universally available. Personally, I have become more self-motivated, self-confident, and self-aware. I know the value of clear expectations and good presentation, because I have seen what those things can accomplish. Conversely, I have a greater appreciation for the value of honesty, because I have seen what falsity can erode and destroy. I suppose it is inevitable for such changes to occur during such a service, and it is often said that the greatest benefit Peace Corps gives is not to the people served, but to the Volunteers who serve.
Back to my first question: how much has changed? I can say at least this: in a corner of a library, in a school in a corner of West Africa, there are now boxes holding wonders to enliven a student’s imagination. But such wonders have always lay around them and have gone unused and unnoticed because they aren’t taught to observe properly. I hope the same fate doesn’t come to the so-called laboratory. After that, there are a handful of students, perhaps four or five, who have gained confidence in themselves, and perhaps enjoyed discovering a few things along the way. It’s small, but it’s a start. That’s all a Volunteer can do: make starts.
There’s a group of African children who sing an English folk song (in a very African manner) and dance around to it. There are scattered residents of Kérouané who can say they’ve seen the mountains of the moon and the Hunter drawn in the sky. There are ladies in the market who have had an American client, for a time. There is a father who has seen corners of the world that truly few Americans have seen. Things have changed. Some things are eternal, but other things change, and those that change never seem to do so fast enough.
And I have little idea of what’s changed at home (for, here at the end, the States are becoming “home” again). I expect that it’s changed more than I expect. It would have done so anyway, even without the events of the last year. [I meant Sept. 11.]
We will have things to talk about when I return, will we not? I promise next time we are together not to run around trying to catch all the sights and sounds. With the universe to be found in a grain of sand, I will want to again know the wondrous variety to be found in you. I have just reread the letter you sent me from November―March. I hate that my time here makes you feel that our friendship has weakened. Then again, perhaps it is a bit true. I still forbid you to make yourself difficult to find before I come back.
You wrote that your plans haven’t changed. I, too, have a direction [graduate school], though its location is undetermined, and I do not know if the direction itself will remain unchanged. Wherever I am, even here, you are close in my thoughts and heart.
*******
I never signed the letter. I think I could never quite figure out how to close it.
It’s good to remember that I’ve been through leaving before. That I've dealt with the changes in relationships that come with time apart, even though they may be painful. That I left somewhere feeling I’d made a difference. I suspect if I were to carefully consider my time here in Ithaca so far, I would find I had some small influences, and those would make it easier to leave to do something else.
Some of you may find the above letter interesting as a summary of my time in Africa. For me, its present purpose is to help me reflect on times of transition so that I feel better prepared to go to Marseille.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Øieblikket Part 3
One might wonder why I haven’t been talking much about France. Why am I still prating about philosophy, eternity and politics? Don’t I realize I have to prepare for a big trip?
I do, actually. Sarah and I are currently gathering the necessary documents for our visas. We’ll have to get temporary (3-month) visas, then apply for student visas once we’re in the country. We’ve decided to look for an apartment once we arrive; Dr. and Mrs. Hubbard have generously agreed to let us stay with them while we search, and word on the street is that the best way to find a good place is to make contacts who’ll know about places you can’t find online. The Ithaca practice of signing a contract to lease an apartment 4–6 months before you move in is apparently unheard of in Marseille. Once you’ve got a place, you move in right away. That’s what we hear, anyway. We’re playing this by ear; it’s only 9 months of living, after all.
The thing is, time and transience are on my mind precisely because of the upcoming trip. I have gone through several moves in my life, and I was sure some of them would carry radical changes. I’ve learned that I adapt quickly to a change in environment. But I’ve also observed that the change is never quite as sudden and shocking as I expect it to be.
Take Peace Corps. I was more nervous about teaching than I was about living in an African village. Living just means taking care of myself; teaching means the responsibility to imbue (or preferably educe, as some of the Cornell faculty would have it) understanding in whole classes of students. “Begin teaching” was the great barrier. But you don’t become a teacher all at once, as I was afraid I’d have to do. During training, one day in the first few weeks, I went from being someone who’d never stood in front of a classroom before (not entirely true; I did audit the math teaching methods course at St. Olaf, where I had to give a couple of sample lessons—thanks, Dr. Wallace) to someone who’d given a ten-minute lecture on some 8th grade algebra topic. By the end of training, we’d had to plan four week-long courses, two at a time, on fuller topics (one of which was Thales’ theorem for 10th grade, as I’ve mentioned before; the others were a 7th grade session on decimal numbers, an 11th grade session on analytic geometry, and a session on probability for Terminale—like 13th grade). Moreover, we’d practiced writing out a plan for an entire year. When I got to Kérouané, I still didn’t know what I was doing. But neither did my students; I didn’t find out until a couple of months into school that my 9th graders had not had a math teacher in 8th grade, and after I learned that I was amazed they were doing as well as they had been. We seemed to be able to guide each other in useful directions. No moment came that declared, “Now you are a teacher.” Being a teacher came in small steps.
I use this as an example of adaptation. It’s not sudden; it’s not a time when everything must come together in an instant. I’m having to remind myself of that. I expect adjusting to France will take almost as much effort as adjusting to Guinea did, particularly since the time in which I’ll have to do so is more compressed. But I don’t have to fit in immediately. The necessary steps will come. One day I’ll look back and realize, “Hey, I’ve become a French grad student.” Which isn’t nearly so great as becoming a teacher, but will be nice to reach anyway.
I do, actually. Sarah and I are currently gathering the necessary documents for our visas. We’ll have to get temporary (3-month) visas, then apply for student visas once we’re in the country. We’ve decided to look for an apartment once we arrive; Dr. and Mrs. Hubbard have generously agreed to let us stay with them while we search, and word on the street is that the best way to find a good place is to make contacts who’ll know about places you can’t find online. The Ithaca practice of signing a contract to lease an apartment 4–6 months before you move in is apparently unheard of in Marseille. Once you’ve got a place, you move in right away. That’s what we hear, anyway. We’re playing this by ear; it’s only 9 months of living, after all.
The thing is, time and transience are on my mind precisely because of the upcoming trip. I have gone through several moves in my life, and I was sure some of them would carry radical changes. I’ve learned that I adapt quickly to a change in environment. But I’ve also observed that the change is never quite as sudden and shocking as I expect it to be.
Take Peace Corps. I was more nervous about teaching than I was about living in an African village. Living just means taking care of myself; teaching means the responsibility to imbue (or preferably educe, as some of the Cornell faculty would have it) understanding in whole classes of students. “Begin teaching” was the great barrier. But you don’t become a teacher all at once, as I was afraid I’d have to do. During training, one day in the first few weeks, I went from being someone who’d never stood in front of a classroom before (not entirely true; I did audit the math teaching methods course at St. Olaf, where I had to give a couple of sample lessons—thanks, Dr. Wallace) to someone who’d given a ten-minute lecture on some 8th grade algebra topic. By the end of training, we’d had to plan four week-long courses, two at a time, on fuller topics (one of which was Thales’ theorem for 10th grade, as I’ve mentioned before; the others were a 7th grade session on decimal numbers, an 11th grade session on analytic geometry, and a session on probability for Terminale—like 13th grade). Moreover, we’d practiced writing out a plan for an entire year. When I got to Kérouané, I still didn’t know what I was doing. But neither did my students; I didn’t find out until a couple of months into school that my 9th graders had not had a math teacher in 8th grade, and after I learned that I was amazed they were doing as well as they had been. We seemed to be able to guide each other in useful directions. No moment came that declared, “Now you are a teacher.” Being a teacher came in small steps.
I use this as an example of adaptation. It’s not sudden; it’s not a time when everything must come together in an instant. I’m having to remind myself of that. I expect adjusting to France will take almost as much effort as adjusting to Guinea did, particularly since the time in which I’ll have to do so is more compressed. But I don’t have to fit in immediately. The necessary steps will come. One day I’ll look back and realize, “Hey, I’ve become a French grad student.” Which isn’t nearly so great as becoming a teacher, but will be nice to reach anyway.
Øieblikket Part 2
In the last couple of days, the following lines have come to mind, and I realized it would have been most appropriate to include them in my last essay on time. From William Blake's “Auguries of Innocence”:*
Blake finds a completely practical meaning to the apparently mystic notion that a grain of sand can hold the universe: respect. All the worth of the world is poured into each and every living being you encounter. He does not say it here, but I suspect he’s thinking of our being made in God’s image. This is not mere confusion of scale, but a reflection of what we know, when we take the time to consider such things, about ourselves (for we know our own worth) and morality (for we know how dreadfully important it is to treat others properly). In the middle of the poem, immediately following the lines about truth and lies, Blake turns from the particular to the general:
I was even more struck by the content of the poem because it highlights the importance of using the moment well, as I was discussing in my previous essay. This topic has arisen also in several conversations I’ve had with friends over the last week, some occasioned directly by my essay, others by world events. For hardly anywhere is the moment more important than in the world of politics.
In each of my (lamentably infrequent) forays into studying history, I have become more convinced that people do not change. Individuals change, and cultures change, but the middling ground of “human nature” does not. (I call human nature “middling” because it affects both individual and cultural behavior, and seems to provide a link between those two.) Politics will always be necessary to manage the gap between cultural forces and individual lives, and it must do so by taking into account the immediate situation.
I will relate a story here, which is relevant to the current political state, and which also is an archetypical example of how great an impact a moment can have. Two conversations in the last week have led me to tell my experience of September 11. That was a day when the whole world was changed in an instant, and you knew it. I think my experience was different enough from that of most people I know that it bears retelling here.
In the summer of 2001, I was halfway through my Peace Corps service. Classes were not due to start until late September, so I was planning a trip to the capital, Conakry, to work on my secondary project: providing lab materials to the school. Guinea is about five hours ahead of New York time. In the early afternoon of the 11th, after lunch, I was getting ready to take a nap (as one generally must do while living in Africa). Just before lying down, I had BBC playing on my shortwave radio, and I heard unclear reports about a plane having hit the World Trade Center. No one knew what was happening at the time, and at that point it was still assumed that a poor pilot of a small private plane had had a terrible accident. Unfortunate, I thought, and turned off the radio.
Four hours later, the proviseur (analogous to the principal) of the school I taught at was visiting my hut to write letters for me to take to Conakry. As he was preparing the letters, I turned the radio back on.
Chaos.
By that point, the towers had collapsed. Reporters on the scene were managing to describe something of what was going on—but what was going on was panic and horror. The sounds in the background were awful. For ten minutes I stood over my radio, the proviseur writing at my desk, and I tried to listen and learn what had occurred, while translating what I heard into French for the proviseur’s benefit. He was silently stunned and incredulous. How could either of us have expected a routine meeting to become the occasion of such terrible news? Finally, I insisted on leaving to find my sitemate, another Volunteer who was teaching English at the school.
She was cleaning her hut. She had not had the news on; she was listening to music. Still in shock, I told her she must turn the radio on. And we sat and listened.
The world had changed.
My most desperate desire at that moment was for more connection to Americans in general, and to the immediate events in particular. We would not leave town to meet other Volunteers for another day or two. Our search for more information took us to the compound of the diamond mining company Rio Tinto. In Kérouané, our village, Rio Tinto has an office and a compound, where we had occasionally been invited for dinners as fellow expatriates. (Their staff come from various nations of the Commonwealth—the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia, etc.) They had a satellite TV. We rushed across town on our bikes to find out if they would let us watch. Once we found someone we knew, we had difficulty explaning what was happening. How do you tell someone in the middle of an ordinary workday that Washington and New York City have been attacked? A bit perplexed, he gave us permission to go in and watch. A little while later, he came and joined us to find out what we were talking about. We spent the evening watching news and replays.
I know many people have said those images looked unreal, like scenes from a movie. That’s not how I saw them. To me, they conveyed a truth that I couldn’t believe. My mind refused to accept that it was seeing what it saw. Nothing changes that much that quickly. No one has the power to alter or end that many lives that completely. Yet they did.
Not all of the Volunteers in Guinea learned of the attacks that day. I know of at least one who didn’t hear until a week later. She had been traveling in Côte d’Ivoire, and while she was crossing back into Guinea, one of the border guards asked, “Did you know your country is under attack?”
For about a month, it seemed, we were fully galvanized and unified. We would brook no discord, and we needed to mourn, to act, to pray, all at once. Nor were we alone; the world was with us. An editorial in Le Monde declared “Nous sommes tous Américains.” Of course our friends in our villages supported and grieved with us, but even when we went to the regional capital of Kankan, people would stop us and say, “Are you Americans? We are all touched by what happened to you, and we are saddened and sorry.” Incidentally, we lived in a heavily Muslim region.
This is how it seemed from overseas. I’m sure the situation was more complicated here.
The world may have changed that day, but people did not. The last five years have borne away the unity which was forged so quickly, and divisiveness and acrimony seem to rule. It is worse in some nations other than our own. I cannot bear to retell the stories I have read recently about the battles between Israel and Lebanon, or of Sunnis and Shi’ites and vendettas. A friend asked me last weekend, among several other “on-the-spot” questions, what I thought of the situation in Iraq. After substantial thinking, and relating the story above, I answered (not very well at the time) that I don’t believe any military can stop the hatred there. There is no reason, no rationality behind that hatred. They and we urgently need diplomacy of the finest kind, and that is not what the situation is getting. I admire those who serve in our military, and I mean them no disrespect, but I think Blake was right that it is no honor to us that “Armours iron brace” is necessary.
So I come back to politics. But I have said enough about these matters. I am the world’s least qualified person to discuss diplomacy in the Middle East. I know the importance of politics, however, for it is what gives civility to the horrendous state of relations that people seem naturally to attain.
At the other end of the spectrum from a moment that fills the world with sorrow, and no less important than it, is a moment that fills an individual with joy. A friend of mine was baptized this weekend. I have never seen a live childbirth, but I have witnessed this second birth many times. It is awesome every time. It is, in fact, one of the most beautiful sights I have beheld. To watch God’s family in Christ growing. To gain a new spiritual sister or brother.
I was not able to witness this friend’s baptism, but I know she received it with excitement, a bit of trepidation, and happiness. Anyone who remembers their baptism (I am among them) can tell you that it is a sharp moment, full of anticipation and longing and thankfulness. I do not mean to say that baptism is the advent of salvation. That is an entirely different theological discussion. But in that moment, you know you are sealed by God. You have confessed your willingness to join a worldwide, timewide family, and that family accepts you marvelously. As the hymn says, “How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed!”
In this case, the baptism is especially wonderful, because a year ago my friend did not believe in God at all, or only hardly. She and I have talked about the difficulties of believing, and about how religion cuts to the marrow of the self, reaching mind, heart, and spirit. Of all the things I do with friends, worship is the most important, and I am thrilled to be able to join another in praising God.
I am often amazed that what a person experiences most intimately and intensely is precisely what is most universal among humans—such as love and faith, or unfortunately also hate and doubt. It seems a great joke of God that our individuality can only lead us to our commonality. Because He has chosen to order things that way, Blake is not mistaken that eternity lies in an hour.
* I have followed The Norton Anthology’s practice of printing the poem as Blake printed it, without editorially adding punctuation or changing spelling and capitalization.
To see a World in a Grain of SandI had always assumed, since hearing these lines in high school, that they were the end of a sentence, perhaps the end of the poem. But I was surprised when I looked them up and found that they are the opening lines of the poem. And I was even more surprised to find what follows. It is not some mystical jaunt; most of the rest consists of couplets essentially instructing the reader in various ways to take care of the world and its creatures. A few selections:
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
A dog starvd at his Masters Gate
Predicts the ruin of the state
A Horse misusd upon the Road
Calls to Heaven for Human blood
He who shall hurt the little Wren
Shall never be belovd by Men
He who the Ox to wrath has movd
Shall never be by Woman lovd
A truth thats told with bad intent
Beats all the Lies you can invent
The Babe that weeps the Rod beneath
Writes Revenge in realms of death
The Beggars Rags fluttering in Air
Does to Rags the Heavens tear
He who shall teach the Child to Doubt
The rotting Grave shall neer get out
He who respects the Infants faith
Triumphs over Hell & Death
Nought can deform the Human Race
Like to the Armours iron brace
When Gold & Gems adorn the Plough
To peaceful Arts shall Envy Bow
Blake finds a completely practical meaning to the apparently mystic notion that a grain of sand can hold the universe: respect. All the worth of the world is poured into each and every living being you encounter. He does not say it here, but I suspect he’s thinking of our being made in God’s image. This is not mere confusion of scale, but a reflection of what we know, when we take the time to consider such things, about ourselves (for we know our own worth) and morality (for we know how dreadfully important it is to treat others properly). In the middle of the poem, immediately following the lines about truth and lies, Blake turns from the particular to the general:
It is right it should be so
Man was made for Joy & Woe
And when this we rightly know
Through the World we safely go
Joy & Woe are woven fine
A Clothing for the Soul divine
Under every grief & pine
Runs a joy with silken twine
I was even more struck by the content of the poem because it highlights the importance of using the moment well, as I was discussing in my previous essay. This topic has arisen also in several conversations I’ve had with friends over the last week, some occasioned directly by my essay, others by world events. For hardly anywhere is the moment more important than in the world of politics.
In each of my (lamentably infrequent) forays into studying history, I have become more convinced that people do not change. Individuals change, and cultures change, but the middling ground of “human nature” does not. (I call human nature “middling” because it affects both individual and cultural behavior, and seems to provide a link between those two.) Politics will always be necessary to manage the gap between cultural forces and individual lives, and it must do so by taking into account the immediate situation.
I will relate a story here, which is relevant to the current political state, and which also is an archetypical example of how great an impact a moment can have. Two conversations in the last week have led me to tell my experience of September 11. That was a day when the whole world was changed in an instant, and you knew it. I think my experience was different enough from that of most people I know that it bears retelling here.
In the summer of 2001, I was halfway through my Peace Corps service. Classes were not due to start until late September, so I was planning a trip to the capital, Conakry, to work on my secondary project: providing lab materials to the school. Guinea is about five hours ahead of New York time. In the early afternoon of the 11th, after lunch, I was getting ready to take a nap (as one generally must do while living in Africa). Just before lying down, I had BBC playing on my shortwave radio, and I heard unclear reports about a plane having hit the World Trade Center. No one knew what was happening at the time, and at that point it was still assumed that a poor pilot of a small private plane had had a terrible accident. Unfortunate, I thought, and turned off the radio.
Four hours later, the proviseur (analogous to the principal) of the school I taught at was visiting my hut to write letters for me to take to Conakry. As he was preparing the letters, I turned the radio back on.
Chaos.
By that point, the towers had collapsed. Reporters on the scene were managing to describe something of what was going on—but what was going on was panic and horror. The sounds in the background were awful. For ten minutes I stood over my radio, the proviseur writing at my desk, and I tried to listen and learn what had occurred, while translating what I heard into French for the proviseur’s benefit. He was silently stunned and incredulous. How could either of us have expected a routine meeting to become the occasion of such terrible news? Finally, I insisted on leaving to find my sitemate, another Volunteer who was teaching English at the school.
She was cleaning her hut. She had not had the news on; she was listening to music. Still in shock, I told her she must turn the radio on. And we sat and listened.
The world had changed.
My most desperate desire at that moment was for more connection to Americans in general, and to the immediate events in particular. We would not leave town to meet other Volunteers for another day or two. Our search for more information took us to the compound of the diamond mining company Rio Tinto. In Kérouané, our village, Rio Tinto has an office and a compound, where we had occasionally been invited for dinners as fellow expatriates. (Their staff come from various nations of the Commonwealth—the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia, etc.) They had a satellite TV. We rushed across town on our bikes to find out if they would let us watch. Once we found someone we knew, we had difficulty explaning what was happening. How do you tell someone in the middle of an ordinary workday that Washington and New York City have been attacked? A bit perplexed, he gave us permission to go in and watch. A little while later, he came and joined us to find out what we were talking about. We spent the evening watching news and replays.
I know many people have said those images looked unreal, like scenes from a movie. That’s not how I saw them. To me, they conveyed a truth that I couldn’t believe. My mind refused to accept that it was seeing what it saw. Nothing changes that much that quickly. No one has the power to alter or end that many lives that completely. Yet they did.
Not all of the Volunteers in Guinea learned of the attacks that day. I know of at least one who didn’t hear until a week later. She had been traveling in Côte d’Ivoire, and while she was crossing back into Guinea, one of the border guards asked, “Did you know your country is under attack?”
For about a month, it seemed, we were fully galvanized and unified. We would brook no discord, and we needed to mourn, to act, to pray, all at once. Nor were we alone; the world was with us. An editorial in Le Monde declared “Nous sommes tous Américains.” Of course our friends in our villages supported and grieved with us, but even when we went to the regional capital of Kankan, people would stop us and say, “Are you Americans? We are all touched by what happened to you, and we are saddened and sorry.” Incidentally, we lived in a heavily Muslim region.
This is how it seemed from overseas. I’m sure the situation was more complicated here.
The world may have changed that day, but people did not. The last five years have borne away the unity which was forged so quickly, and divisiveness and acrimony seem to rule. It is worse in some nations other than our own. I cannot bear to retell the stories I have read recently about the battles between Israel and Lebanon, or of Sunnis and Shi’ites and vendettas. A friend asked me last weekend, among several other “on-the-spot” questions, what I thought of the situation in Iraq. After substantial thinking, and relating the story above, I answered (not very well at the time) that I don’t believe any military can stop the hatred there. There is no reason, no rationality behind that hatred. They and we urgently need diplomacy of the finest kind, and that is not what the situation is getting. I admire those who serve in our military, and I mean them no disrespect, but I think Blake was right that it is no honor to us that “Armours iron brace” is necessary.
So I come back to politics. But I have said enough about these matters. I am the world’s least qualified person to discuss diplomacy in the Middle East. I know the importance of politics, however, for it is what gives civility to the horrendous state of relations that people seem naturally to attain.
At the other end of the spectrum from a moment that fills the world with sorrow, and no less important than it, is a moment that fills an individual with joy. A friend of mine was baptized this weekend. I have never seen a live childbirth, but I have witnessed this second birth many times. It is awesome every time. It is, in fact, one of the most beautiful sights I have beheld. To watch God’s family in Christ growing. To gain a new spiritual sister or brother.
I was not able to witness this friend’s baptism, but I know she received it with excitement, a bit of trepidation, and happiness. Anyone who remembers their baptism (I am among them) can tell you that it is a sharp moment, full of anticipation and longing and thankfulness. I do not mean to say that baptism is the advent of salvation. That is an entirely different theological discussion. But in that moment, you know you are sealed by God. You have confessed your willingness to join a worldwide, timewide family, and that family accepts you marvelously. As the hymn says, “How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed!”
In this case, the baptism is especially wonderful, because a year ago my friend did not believe in God at all, or only hardly. She and I have talked about the difficulties of believing, and about how religion cuts to the marrow of the self, reaching mind, heart, and spirit. Of all the things I do with friends, worship is the most important, and I am thrilled to be able to join another in praising God.
I am often amazed that what a person experiences most intimately and intensely is precisely what is most universal among humans—such as love and faith, or unfortunately also hate and doubt. It seems a great joke of God that our individuality can only lead us to our commonality. Because He has chosen to order things that way, Blake is not mistaken that eternity lies in an hour.
* I have followed The Norton Anthology’s practice of printing the poem as Blake printed it, without editorially adding punctuation or changing spelling and capitalization.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Name change and originality
I originally launched this blog as “My Thirtieth Year.” Because, y’know, that's when I started writing it, and as I mentioned in my first essay, my travels over the next year are the main reason for having it. But it turns out a lot of other people turn 30, too, and think about turning 30, and think it’s a good idea to blog about it. Also, who knows but that I might keep writing once I’m back from France? So I went looking for a more “individual” name for my blog, one that wouldn’t end up leading people to someone else’s musings.
The blog world is bursting right now. Hundreds of thousands of people are writing about their lives. And a lot of them are quite creative. Just so you know: you may be unique, but each small part of the unique you is probably duplicated in someone else. It’s nigh impossible to do something clever or original when you’re competing with everyone on the Internet. Here are the other names I tried before I got Thales’ Triangles to work:
Okay, so where did this name come from? And do I expect anyone to remember it? (Not much of an answer to the second question, I’m afraid.)
Thales was a Greek mathematician, possibly the first mathematician in recorded history. Wikipedia and the MacTutor archive have great long articles on him, so I won’t give a biography here. Instead, I’ll say what connection I have with him and his triangles.
When I was in Peace Corps, teaching math in West Africa, at the end of training we had a 2-week “practice school,” with volunteer students from the neighboring community. One of the weeks I was teaching le théorème de Thalès to the troisième class (essentially the equivalent of 10th grade). As usually stated, it runs something like this: Suppose M, O, and P are colinear, and N, O, and Q are colinear, and MN and PQ are parallel. Then the triangles OMN and OPQ are similar. I didn't actually like teaching this theorem that first time. I taught it again later when I was at my site and had more fun with it. The story is told that Thales used this property to measure the heights of the pyramids in Egypt by measuring the length of their shadows and comparing them to the length of the shadow of a pole stuck in the ground. So on their test I had them compute the (fictional) height of a mosque the same way.
In the U.S., a different theorem is usually known as “Thales’ theorem.” (If you read the MacTutor biography, you’ll see that five theorems are generally attributed to him.) The U.S. prefers the theorem that if one side of a triangle is a diameter of the triangle’s circumcircle, then the opposite angle is a right angle. This is also a good result, although I don’t know of any good stories to go with it.
Triangles are the key to understanding almost any geometry. As a mathematician, I’m following Thales’ footsteps. And, since I’m going to France to work on math, a reference to something mathematical I taught in a former French colony has at least a tenuous connection with my present life. Hopefully the blog’s name is now clear as mud.
As for the pronunciation of Thales’ name, I still hear it in my head as the French “tah-luhs.” But in English I think it’s usually said “thay-leez.”
The blog world is bursting right now. Hundreds of thousands of people are writing about their lives. And a lot of them are quite creative. Just so you know: you may be unique, but each small part of the unique you is probably duplicated in someone else. It’s nigh impossible to do something clever or original when you’re competing with everyone on the Internet. Here are the other names I tried before I got Thales’ Triangles to work:
- Polytropos— from the opening line of the Odyssey, where it is used to describe Odysseus. I’ve seen it translated variously as “many-traveled” and “many-talented,” but most consistently as “many-turnings.”
- Ebenezer— everyone’s favorite 19th century grouch. Which makes people confused the first time they come across it in a hymn, in the second verse of “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” It’s actually a reference to 1 Samuel 7, and was the name of a stone, raised as a testament to God’s help.
- Joie de vivre— ’cause it’s a good thing to have, and, well, I’m going to France…
- Geometer— no explanation necessary. Although I don’t quite understand why it wasn’t available, since Blogspot doesn’t seem to have a blog by that name right now.
- Horocycle— a kind of curve in hyperbolic geometry. It’s surprisingly useful. And very nifty.
Okay, so where did this name come from? And do I expect anyone to remember it? (Not much of an answer to the second question, I’m afraid.)
Thales was a Greek mathematician, possibly the first mathematician in recorded history. Wikipedia and the MacTutor archive have great long articles on him, so I won’t give a biography here. Instead, I’ll say what connection I have with him and his triangles.
When I was in Peace Corps, teaching math in West Africa, at the end of training we had a 2-week “practice school,” with volunteer students from the neighboring community. One of the weeks I was teaching le théorème de Thalès to the troisième class (essentially the equivalent of 10th grade). As usually stated, it runs something like this: Suppose M, O, and P are colinear, and N, O, and Q are colinear, and MN and PQ are parallel. Then the triangles OMN and OPQ are similar. I didn't actually like teaching this theorem that first time. I taught it again later when I was at my site and had more fun with it. The story is told that Thales used this property to measure the heights of the pyramids in Egypt by measuring the length of their shadows and comparing them to the length of the shadow of a pole stuck in the ground. So on their test I had them compute the (fictional) height of a mosque the same way.
In the U.S., a different theorem is usually known as “Thales’ theorem.” (If you read the MacTutor biography, you’ll see that five theorems are generally attributed to him.) The U.S. prefers the theorem that if one side of a triangle is a diameter of the triangle’s circumcircle, then the opposite angle is a right angle. This is also a good result, although I don’t know of any good stories to go with it.
Triangles are the key to understanding almost any geometry. As a mathematician, I’m following Thales’ footsteps. And, since I’m going to France to work on math, a reference to something mathematical I taught in a former French colony has at least a tenuous connection with my present life. Hopefully the blog’s name is now clear as mud.
As for the pronunciation of Thales’ name, I still hear it in my head as the French “tah-luhs.” But in English I think it’s usually said “thay-leez.”
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