I don’t meditate.

I wish I could. Really, I do. But the truth is perhaps I’m not evolved enough. Maybe I haven’t had the right teacher, maybe I haven’t tried hard enough – or, more likely, too hard to do it the “right way” – when perhaps there’s no “right way” at all.

But I think I know what it feels like. To me, it feels like baking chocolate cookies. Fully present. Senses heightened. Mindless & mindful all at the same time.

When I cook, my mind stops making lists. It stops worrying, planning, regretting, wondering. There’s something therapeutic for me about stirring a pot with all my strength, kneading dough, chopping garlic and ginger for curry, making soup made entirely from scratch, and the scent of fresh-baked cookies.

This isn’t the type of cooking done by most Americans I know in less than 30 minutes; that’s a nearly impossible feat for me, and completely unpleasureable. This is the type of cooking done on a Sunday afternoon for five slow hours, or, as it happened last week, a Friday afternoon, for more than three.

Normally, here and everywhere, I think everyone I know would call me “task-oriented”. There’s a distinction made in organizational psychology between those focused on getting tasks done, like me, and the “maintenance-oriented” who keep a team playing together nicely. No one has ever mistaken me for the latter. While we’re here in Tanzania, there’s a list of at least twenty things to be done – teaching classes, labeling & cataloging books so that the library can open the moment construction is finished, meeting with Mama Lucy & the architect to get the children’s home underway…but the truth is I relish moments when there is nothing that must be done. Friday, for instance, we baked cookies. Cookies aren’t necessarily on the critical path to our next big deliverable – but I think they may very well be the most memorable thing we’ve done in Tanzania so far.

Gladys had never even eaten a chocolate chip cookie. I’d baked them once before for Glory & Gideon, so they’d each eaten one. Gideon swore he couldn’t bake, but was more than interested to know how. The matron at the school’s rented 3-bedroom, 14-child boarding facility had taught Glory & Gladys to make chapati over an open fire in the makeshift kitchen-shed out back. That was all they knew of baking, though Glory had cooked bananas with her sisters too.

After I made them tuna casserole with Kraft macaroni & cheese for lunch (forgive me, I know, but, really, I couldn’t help myself but to bring it and share a tiny taste of America), we set about making cookies. We had no measuring spoons or cups, and they’d never followed a recipe, but they were, as always, quick learners. For the first batch, we helped them understand the directions, measure, pour, stir, and even taught them how to crack eggs. (Forgive me again, I know, but I may have let them taste a tiny bit of the dough, too, raw egg and all.) For the second batch, made much more quickly, they’d mastered the art and did it all by themselves.

They stared through the glass oven door as the cookies melted, in awe of the transformation taking place before their very eyes. In science, they’d just learned about the states of matter, and were transfixed as they watched the dough transform from solid to liquid and back to solid again.

Do you remember the first time you tasted a warm, freshly-baked chocolate chip cookie?

I don’t, but I’m not sure it could have tasted better than these.

As we passed each child a cookie, they waited, we counted to three, and they each took a bite. Gooey, still warm, I asked if biscuits (local sugar cookies) were better, or, their favorite food, chapati (a flat, warm, thick tortilla-like local bread). Nothing, they insisted, was better than this.

I asked Gideon, our future rocket ship pilot, if he preferred learning how to use Twitter, or learning to bake chocolate chip cookies. There was no contest. Cookies. How could anything compare?

Last year, when Gideon learned to use Skype, his father, Gidori, was working in a small internet cafe, and lived with his son in the back. The video was dark & blurred, the audio nearly indecipherable, especially when coupled with a language barrier, transmission was delayed and stilted, and the connection would cut every minute or so, so you’d have to redial. But Gideon was relentless. He’d dial again. And again. He’d stay on skype for hours while his father worked at the cafe. On Halloween, he snuck out from the back room at 3am, determined to make out from the shadowy figure on screen the costume my niece Zoe was wearing. We stayed on skype with Gideon at home while Zoe trick-or-treated for hours, dialing & redialing so he could catch a glimpse when she returned home. Suffice it to say, when he had access to the internet from his father’s cafe, Gideon’s interest in skype was tireless.

I asked him if skype was better than chocolate chip cookies – and he thought for a bit to determine his answer.

“No,” he said, with total conviction, “This is the best day ever.”

Wherever you are, and whomever you love, I hope today you find time together to get something done that can only be done when there’s nothing that must be done.

Posted: July 26th, 2010 under The Foundry.
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It’s 4:40am. The dogs have quieted now just barely – they seem to have some affection for the hour of 2am – as does my body, for some reason still jet-lagged even 4 days after arriving. Scratch that, the dogs were just taking a break. An hour ago, they were joined by a car alarm that’s now drained the battery of the vehicle to which it belongs. An hour from now, perhaps sooner, this canine concert will be overshadowed by a lone voice singing to God throughout the streets of Arusha.

I’m not usually a light sleeper. And jet lag doesn’t usually so affect me.

Chalk it up to the ebb and flow of a sometimes capricious universe.

I had a bad dream too – and some seriously itchy welts on my back that we’re attributing to bedbugs. Enough with the whining. Sleepy, itchy, whatever, somehow Arusha has come to feel like home. Nyumbani. As I reflect back on the first time we arrived, wide-eyed, apprehensive and totally overwhelmed with the constant rush of never-before-seen flashes of experience and insight, now is so very different. We are no longer wageni (guests), just old rafiki (friends) – though I’m sure our Swahili has, sadly, not gotten much better.

(Prayers have begun. It’s 5am. I was right, they do drown out the dogs, though they’re trying very hard to sing along.)

My sleeplessness could be a result of the fact that my mind is filled with so many ironies and so much cognitive dissonance both when I arrive and when I leave Africa each time…how could the same world hold so much and so little all at once?

This morning, as a lie awake, I’m consumed with…

My Super Sweet 16.
I flipped on the television earlier today briefly and found out that Yasenia (sp?) of New Jersey was having her 16th birthday party. Hooray. As her gifts, she received a 7-carat diamond ring and a Mercedes S550. (I don’t even know what that car codename means, except that her father paid over $100,000 USD for the privilege.) In addition, through the miracle of MTV, she gifted the rest of the globe with a radically ostentatious display of her conspicuous consumption. When she was finished, NBA stars gave even the poorest people in the world a tour of their palatial estates, er, “Cribs”.

A month or two ago, someone Mama Lucy follows on twitter was giving a 140-character inventory of their technology possessions – all the latest toys and gadgets they’d proudly acquired. Not one to shy away from important conversations, Mama Lucy subtly & graciously engaged the person, with whom she’d interacted many times before. She tweeted (I’m paraphrasing) – “Wow. You’re truly blessed to have so much. If you don’t need all that you have, the children at my school need technologies like these for learning.” The tweeter did not respond.

I wonder how the world would change if each time we consumed, we were required to interact with those who, through no fault of their own, could not afford our luxuries. What if, when we spent $100 USD on our next meal, we had a conversation with a child who hadn’t enough to eat, or, when we proudly purchased our next iPad, we spoke directly to the factory worker who constructed the machine?

We may call these radical inequalities the “status quo”, a somehow immutable evil. We may delude ourselves into thinking that somehow we or our ancestors have earned our relative privilege. We may blame or credit “the system” from which we benefit, as if we do not in our action (or inaction) perpetuate it. I wonder.

What is enough?
This week in class, I asked students in the 5th & 6th grades to write short paragraphs on their recent field trip to NgoroNgoro Crater. I passed a clean sheet of paper to each student on which they’d write their name and 5 or 6 short sentences about their trip, depending on their grade level. At the end of class, as I collected the work from each student, sixth-grader Vicky pointed out that six sentences had only taken about 1/4 of the paper, and asked if she should use her ruler to carefully tear the “used” portion of the page from the “un-used” portion. Since she hadn’t written on 75% of the page, she knew we could use it later for another assignment.

Imagine if our children were so careful, so conscious. Vicky is no Yasenia – and yet, our culture, and its exports, may sadly imply she should aspire to become her.

It’s not what you know…
While we’re here, we’re hoping to open the school’s first library and move the technology lab from its current classroom (which will be used to house their first seventh grade class next year) into the same space to create a library & technology learning center. To give Mama Lucy a few ideas on finishing touches, yesterday we visited three other local schools to see their libraries and computer labs. The schools we visited were founded nearly the same time as Mama Lucy’s, and had nearly the same number of students.

One, founded by an Australian, was funded by millions of dollars from abroad. Millions. Admittedly, the facilities are gorgeous – surpassing even most US schools I’ve visited. I’d wager, though, that Mama Lucy has spent less than 10% of that budget, perhaps less than even 5%, to build her school. Mama Lucy’s students have also outperformed students from this comparatively extravagant campus for both of the past two years in which they’ve participated on national exams.

As Mama Lucy, Sanjay and I talked about our visit on the way home, we reflected on the differences between her school and it’s comparatively extravagant counterpart. We wondered whether Vicky’s conscious regard for resources would be found there, whether that proud aspect of her culture would be maintained.

We also discussed changemakers we’ve met from across the globe. Indigenous changemakers from emerging economies are often incredibly resourceful, scrupulously efficient, and able to create remarkable outcomes on a shoestring budget. They also tend to be able to negotiate the best prices for local goods and services; here in Tanzania, when I’ve mistakenly tagged along to request estimates for construction or materials, we’ve been quoted a mzungu (foreigner) price that may be 10 times the going rate for a local.

Yet it is vastly simpler for Western changemakers to attract resources to their projects than for an African or Nepali, for example, to forge the relationships required to attract investment from abroad.

I wonder if Vicky or Yasenia, if they set their mind to change the world, would sooner find funding for their endeavors. Would we laud Yasenia for her generous heart and lavish even more resources upon her if she set about changing the world in her own image? Would we be impressed by her audacity when she sought to raise $10M for her project? Would Vicky even be heard? Would her relatively meager request for $100K be brushed aside, dismissed as small potatoes in comparison?

So many questions dancing right now. I fear I’ll have to sleep to hush them. If sleep would ever come.

Of course, my more common path to quiet these incessant internal inquiries is to keep so busy that I won’t go absolutely mad in my attempts to resolve unanswerable questions.

While I wait for sleep to return, I’ll text friends to set up email, twitter & tumblr accounts for 20 fifth graders, and type up the short essays they wrote…

I wonder if I do these things as distraction or progress.

Posted: July 16th, 2010 under The Foundry.
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I’ll probably never see them again. Don’t even know their last names.

But two days ago, they saved my life. And I’m not even exaggerating…

Before I get to that part of the story, I must first share that the last two weeks have, for the most part, been bliss.

A few things I have not done:
(Seriously, not at all.)

• Dial – or even touch – a phone.
• Use the internet.
• Turn on a computer.
• Send a text message.
• Tweet.
• Blog.
• Use Facebook.
• Watch television.
• Interact with a screen.
• Taken a photo, or a video.
• Stay up late to finish the work – or get up early to start it.
• Eat hurriedly to get back to a task.
• Make a to-do list.

A few things I have done.

• Swim in the ocean and in a freshwater spring that’s 72 degrees all year long.
• Hike. Alot. Through swamps and mangroves and hardwood forests.
• Eat mangos freshly-picked from a tree on a hidden trail – and wild blackberries too.
• Cook meals slowly over an outdoor fire.
• Have a romantic dinner on the water under a canopy during a thunderstorm at a delectable indian restaurant where we were the only customers.
• Get my skin kissed by the sun. Over & over & over again.
• Chase raccoons and turtles.
• Run from snakes and big hairy spiders.
• Fall asleep exhausted and salt-covered.
• Read 2 books. Purely for pleasure. (loved The Omnivore’s Dilemma & didn’t love Little Bee)
• Run with my dog in the grass and on the beach.
• Lose 5 more pounds. To add to the 11 I lost last month.
• Toast marshmallows.
• Play with kids – and people – I love more than anyone in the whole wide world.

In short, I was thoroughly human. And it has made all the difference.
I feel like a whole new girl.

Of course, as I mentioned, there was the one near-death experience.

I left one activity off the list above:

We canoed for more than 7 hours in alligator-infested waters.
Of course, I’m not really sure you can call it “canoeing” when you:

• Tip the boat 7 times in 7 hours.
• Swim as often as you float. (Did I mention there were ALLIGATORS in the water? Like, ones that have eaten people in this very creek.)
• Cut your hand so badly that you’re rendered nearly incapable of rowing.
• Use your hands more than your oars to steer and grapple with low hanging trees that threaten to decapitate you if you lose focus for even a second.
• Sink into over 4 feet of mud as you claw your way onto an uninviting shore where snakes and who-knows-what-else await.
• Once toppled, feel your feet tangled in tree roots under water as you scramble to get a life vest to your boyfriend who’s not a great swimmer and whose face, barely surfacing above the water, wears a look of sheer terror.
• Stand on the muddy banks looking for a nonexistent hiking path to safety or motorized rescue.
• Watch powerlessly as a torrential downpour and thunderstorm open up overhead.
• Hang perched in a tree crying & blowing a useless emergency whistle while your boyfriend, whom you can no longer see, holds your flipped canoe against a current whose speed is being multiplied by the power of the storm.
• Hold on for dear life to each passing branch and threaten not to go on as you sob and say “i just can’t do it.”
• Lose glasses, a flip camera, hat, sunglasses, and your dignity in a creek that we’d later learn is the “most challenging canoe run in Florida”. Nice.
• End up floating somehow backward down the creek as more low-hanging and fallen trees greet you at every zig and zag.
• Scream like a little girl while you watch alligators pass under the boat & swat away spiders that are bigger than your hand.
• Get back in the boat 7 times in 7 hours, each time more terrified that the next time you could get tangled in the jaws of a hungry reptile or roots that threaten to drown you.
• Get rescued by gracious kayakers named Tanya & Larry who shepherded you slowly down the rest of the course as you cry in gratitude and a fear that won’t relent until you reach dry land.

(Maybe this description from another unsuspecting canoeist on this run will fill in any missing details.)

Larry would right our boat twice after kayaking up and downstream searching for oars we lost in the upturns.
Somehow, through it all, he maintained his sense of humour, saying the last time,
“You know, the open part’s supposed to be on top, right?”

Tanya kayaked calmly, encouragingly behind us whistling to Larry when we needed his help to surmount an obstacle.

Larry and Tanya had once been rescued by helicopter as they crossed a raging river in Northern Georgia.

For me, the whole experience was just a reminder that people rarely get where they’re going all by themselves. (Not even me.)
Especially when they’re going somewhere they’ve never been.

The stories of rugged individualism that surround our entrepreneurs, heros, athletes, leaders – and even ourselves- are only myths and legends. The self-made man is a fable. Behind each one is an unseen, unheard, rarely celebrated legion of friends, families, employees, supporters, fans, educators, coaches & more – who’ve invested in dreams not their own to make them possible.

While I was out, several folks pitched in to help. Many people had my back – Betsy, Tori, you know who you are.

It’s good to be reminded that you’re not in this alone.

When you need it most, and when you least expect it, there’s a Tanya, Larry or maybe even a helicopter waiting just past the next bend to carry you home. As long as you keep getting back in the boat, stay on the trail, and keep rowing.

Thanks, to all of you who have been my Larry & Tanya over the past two weeks – and over the last three years.

My gratitude is deep and abiding.

And I’m back.

Off to Africa again on Friday…

Posted: July 6th, 2010 under The Foundry.
Comments: 2