Showers are a very culturally specific thing. (I'm speaking here of the kind
one takes to wash oneself, not the meaning used to indicate a light
rainfall.)
Sometime in my pre- to early teen years it became the truth of the universe
that a person needed to shower every morning. Anything less than that meant
you were dirty, disgusting. This included washing the hair. I spent the fall
semester of my senior year on high school in France and one the most
difficult things to adjust to was the fact that the family I lived with did
NOT have a shower and the bathtub was only available once a week (how
primitive!). I don't know where this rule came from since my parents did not
follow it. My mother took a nice long bath once a week and had her hair
washed at her weekly salon appointment. Perhaps I learned this from my older
brother? Or from "Seventeen" or "YM" magazine? I don't know, but it was an
ironclad truth.
When we lived in Rome in the early 90's, there was this gripe amongst many
Italians. It was common at that time for well-off Italians to have Filipino
housekeepers, many of them "live-in". It was one of the vagaries of
"globalization" that a well-educated Filipino with a professional job in the
Philippines could make so much more money as a housekeeper in Rome that many
came and did that for a few years, returning home with the funding needed to
send their children to university. Anyway, the gripe was that the Filipinos
were *always* taking showers (2 a day was the norm)! I'm not sure if there
was a practical reason given for the complaint. It could not possibly have
been that they were wasting water in a city where the nasino (water
fountains) do not have any "off" valve. It might have been cost, since we
were charged for household water service (though it was a fairly nominal
fee). This was, however, quite the culture clash. At the time, all I could
think was, "wow, Filipinos are really into being clean" but it did seem a
bit excessive to me to take two showers a day.
When I lived in Cameroon, I had a shower in two of the three houses I lived
in, although after the first one, I stopped taking showers because the water
was cold and after running and having the sweat evaporate from me, I was
most often cold also. With a bucket bath, I could warm the water up, which
was much preferable. But I would bathe every day that I ran, which meant
usually 6 days, but sometimes 5 days a week. However, my hair was becoming
much dryer as I aged, so I stopped washing it every day and eventually
reduced down to twice a week.
Here in the Solomons, I tend to follow the Cameroon routine (wash hair a
couple of times a week, bathe when I run). Interestingly, the increased
humidity has not seemed to add any moisture to my hair. However, here the
cold shower is a wonderfully welcome refreshment, which led to the flash of
insight that caused this musing.
Oh, one other thing to mention. I have never been one to take a "quick"
shower, apparently. My definition of quick is probably 10 minutes, which
everyone else tells me is not quick.
But now. Now, I know the virtues of a quick shower. And I understand the
Filipinos. Because in this humidity there is nothing quite as refreshing as
a quick shower. People here take showers all the time. When I was in Honiara
and had to walk up the hill to get home at the end of the day, I couldn't do
anything until I'd stripped off my clothes, jumped in the shower and hopped
back out. All I needed was to get wet with something other than sweat. Why
does that make all the difference? Why doesn't toweling off have the same
effect? I have no idea, but it's not the same. So you take a shower in the
morning after a run and many times another at the end of the work day, which
makes you feel ready for a whole new adventure.
In a tropical climate, showers are your friend.
I have a Kindle. Did I mention this back when I got it right before I left
San Francisco for the Solomon Islands? A Kindle is a book reader made by
Amazon.com. Go to the Kindle store on Amazon.com to check it out.
I love my Kindle. It's pretty awesome. It is really comfortable to read from
it. I find it better than magazines which often have glare and better than
some books which have rather dark paper. I can read on the Kindle without my
reading glasses, and I don't even have to make the font really big (although
I could if I needed to). But the best part is just being able to carry
around so many books with me. I really look forward to building my
collection. There is nothing more horrible than trying to move around the
world with a bunch of books. You just cannot carry enough to last very long
in a place where that is your major form of entertainment and they are so
heavy! The other great thing is that the books are very small - most are
smaller than 1 mb which makes it quite reasonable for me to download them,
even on my current dialup connection.
The reason I decided to get the Kindle (it was pretty expensive, so I
definitely needed a good reason) was because I am engaged in a 2-year
program in spiritual direction (called "Tending the Holy" through Christos
Center in Minnesota: www.christoscenter.org). I didn't find all the books I
needed, but I was able to get about half of them in Kindle format. And since
my original flurry of purchases, I have easily found many old spiritual
classics like Julian of Norwich's "Revelation of Divine Love". The selection
of current fiction is even better and I've found quite a few running-related
books, too. And, at the moment at least, there's no reason to ever delete a
book. I'm nowhere near the internal memory limits and I have a 2gb SD card
that I can use also. That will hold thousands of books. Thousands of books.
In a device that weighs, how much? A few ounces.
Totally cool. I haven't read this much in years.
Last week the Santa Isabel Provincial Assembly had a special extra meeting
(they usually only meet in March and September). On the last day, the
Speaker invited them and all the Provincial Administration staff to his area
for dinner. He lives in Kubolota, a village about 1 mile from Buala village
(actually, exactly 1.2 miles from my house -- I know since I run by there
all the time).
It was a very efficient celebration. An hour of gathering and speeches and
then an hour of eating and socializing. And the meal was great. All the
normal food, but the fish was the best I've had here and they had this nice
dish I like that is made from greens and coconut milk.
The photo is the Speaker giving his speech. One thing I loved was the way
that they decorated the compound, notice the greenery attached to the trees.
They even made a fence around to contain the area.
Last evening I was listening to an NPR Music podcast (thank you Brett!)
which included an interview with Jonatha Brooke about her newest album, The
Works. Sitting there thinking, "wow, this is really good. Oh, hey, wait a
minute, didn't I download Jonatha Brooke's newest album???" Checked my iPod
and oh yeah, there it was, unlistened to!
Now I've listened to it 4 or 5 times and I just want to let you all know
that it is excellent. The lyrics are all previously unrecorded songs of
Woody Guthrie's which she was allowed access to and allowed to write
original music for. Musically, it's more Jonatha than Woody, and I think
it's her best work. The lyrics are great and different than the stuff I
usually associate with Woody - these are more personal or individual, less
group or political.
I highly recommend it.
I just read this story in the Christian Science Monitor:
and thought I would share it with you. It made me cry, actually. I read
another short story about these bikes and saw a couple when I was back home
this summer. When I was at Bay Area Bikes buying my folding bike, a guy came
by with a three-wheel scraper bike, fitted out with a huge amp & boombox on
the back. Pretty amazing to see (and hear!).
As a former resident of East Oakland, there's just something about a young
Oakland man saying his goal is to win the Nobel Peace Prize that chokes me
up big time.
This is a great little blog post from a Canadian Anglican friend of mine who
is working in western Kenya:
http://patandrodkenya.blogspot.com/2008/12/is-this-obscene-or-what.html
It's been nice to be livin' the high life this week. I've got television
(with 6 different channels!), a hot shower, a wide variety of vegetables and
cold beer in bottles. Ah, yes, the good life! One really learns to
appreciate the small things in life living in a village.
Before coming over to Honiara for this training workshop, I had started to
lose weight, which I was pleased with. I need to lose about 15lbs or 8kg and
I had started on that path. I thought I'd set a goal for how much I'd lose
before getting back to Buala and my scale, but that went out the window. I
decided it was better to take advantage of the opportunity to load up on
vitamins (in the form of tomatoes, greens, eggs and all sorts of delectable
foods that are rare in Buala). I also noticed that eating a lot of carbs
made my run the following morning much stronger and faster (hmm). So now my
goal is simply to maintain the few pound loss I'd already achieved, which I
think I have, but I'll know for sure on Wednesday morning.
There was a little "blub" in the June Runner's World which I was just
reading which said that when people cut back on their training, they gain
weight (duh) and that women need to run at least 30 miles a week to lose
weight. Aha! This past week I ran 32 miles, so I'm right on track.
The training workshop I came to Honiara for was on Planning and Budgeting
for the folks in the Provincial Governments who are involved in our program.
Part of the PGSP (Provincial Government Strengthening Programme) is a grant
for development work in the Provinces called the PCDF (Provincial Capital
Development Fund) which is funded 50% by donors and 50% by the Solomon
Islands government. There are rules about planning, budgeting, procurement,
accounting, etc. related to the PCDF which we intend that they implement not
only for this fund, but more generally in the Provinces. So this workshop
was part of our capacity building along those lines. Of course, the whole
project has been very delayed, so the planning process for 2009-2010, which
should have begun back in June or July, they were just getting trained in at
the end of November. Before we came over to Honiara, I met with the Premier,
the Deputy Provincial Secretary and the Treasurer, and we looked at the
planning and budgeting process and timeline. We decided what things we would
cut out of the process and what we had to do in order to have a reasonable
development plan to present to the Provincial Assembly in March. There is
still a ton of work to do between now and then - and at least a month when
most people will be on holiday - so (hopefully actually) it's going to be a
busy time when we get back.
It is particularly important that Isabel Province gets all its ducks in
order because they did not pass the minimum conditions set for 2008-2009 and
did not receive the PCDF for this year. Each Province is assessed on the
minimum conditions each February. This is part of making the PCDF a
"performance-based" grant. It is interesting to see the attempts that people
make to try to get around this, but the program is firm. And the minimum
conditions really are "minimum"-a successful annual audit, necessary staff
in place, following the processes as laid out in the planning & budgeting
and procurement manuals, that sort of thing. Isabel did not pass for this
year (even though there was an exception made and they were given a second
chance) because they didn't really have a development plan. That was because
there had been a UNDP project here previously-the Isabel Province
Development Project (IPDP)-which created a 3-year "development" plan without
including any Provincial Government staff in the process. So the Province
was given a document which is basically just a list of nice, unfunded
projects which no one on staff was involved in planning. I'm not sure if
there are any project plans or not. I think the IPDP is one of those great
examples of how *not* to do a development project.
This is some of what I'll be working on in the next few months.
I'm looking forward to see how Christmas is celebrated here. Grace, the
Provincial Treasurer, my neighbor and my roommate here in Honiara, told me
that Buala village is divided into 5 neighborhoods, each of which is
assigned a particular day for their Christmas party in the village hall. And
it sounds like there are a lot of parties, visiting each others' houses and
drinking that happen. Church-wise, they have the usual services and
apparently the youth are preparing liturgical dances for the Christmas
service, which is a new thing. I think she said someone from the Mother's
Union learned liturgical dance at a recent conference somewhere. I love this
aspect of the Anglican Communion-the sharing of liturgical innovations like
that around the world.
Last Friday, I (along with the Planning Officer and Treasurer) flew to
Honiara for about 12 days for a training workshop. The workshop started
today (Tuesday), so we had a few days to do other business, which was great.
One of my great accomplishments was to get my computer on the Internet and
download all sorts of updates. . . Of course, since I had access to a decent
connection, I took advantage and got some new music, too :-).
Saturday morning I did a (relatively) long run of 7.75 miles. It was nice to
run on a paved road that was flat. After the mud, hills and rocks of Isabel,
I had a new appreciation for the roads of Honiara. Sunday, I went to church.
Since we are staying at the Pacific Casino Hotel on the east side of town, I
decided to go to St. Barnabas, which is the Cathedral. I was surprised at
how nice it is inside, because from the outside it looks like most Solomon
Islands churches. Cement pillars with a roof (no walls). Inside, though,
there were nice wooden pews with kneelers, large lights on the roof beams,
ceiling fans hanging at frequent intervals and very large speakers bolted to
the pillars. It's a big place and as I was trying to decide where to sit,
one of the ushers came to indicate a large portion of the pews were reserved
for guests. Guests? Yes, because as part of the service, there were going to
be the ordinations of 6 transitional deacons to the priesthood!
I should be used to this by now. It seems very common in places other than
the US, that the "regular" Sunday service is often used for all sorts of
special events. You just never know what's going to happen when you show up!
The Cathedral is the church of choice for most of the foreigners and other
"big men" in town. In fact, it was announced that at Evensong that evening,
there would be a send-off for the current Australian High Commissioner and
his family as they are leaving the Solomon Islands. So there were a lot more
foreigners at St. Barnabas than I had seen in any Church of Melanesia church
before.
The service and the ordinations were very similar to the liturgy followed in
my own Diocese of California. The Archbishop presided, in full regalia, only
removing his mitre (that's the funny hat Bishops wear, for those of you who
don't know) when he actually prayed over the bread and wine. One interesting
difference to what I have seen before was that when the candidates were
asked about their vows, each vow was asked of each candidate, one at a time,
and they each had to respond in full voice (rather than all the vows being
read through and the candidates responding either all together or once for
all vows). The other thing I thought was interesting was that they were all
dressed in white: white stoles, white chasubles. When we do ordinations
where I come from, it is a festival and everyone ends up dressed in red.
One unique aspect of these ordinations was that all 6 of the men were being
specifically ordained as non-stipendiary (that means unpaid) priests. All
were older men, and as I learned later, had been longtime lay readers and
then lay preachers. They did not go through the usual seminary training but
were ordained deacons and now priests based on their "on the job training",
if you will. It made me wonder what need they were trying to fill that
prompted the decision to bypass their usual process for these 6 priests. And
it seemed a bit strange to ordain someone as "non-stipendiary". We have lots
of unpaid priests where I come from, but that is a matter of circumstance or
choice or calling, but not something they are necessarily locked into by
virtue of their ordination. Even myself as a Deacon, although the current
understanding is that we are non-stipendiary, that is not by virtue of our
ordination and can differ from Diocese to Diocese and that
understanding/rule can change over time.
It is always interesting to see what different Dioceses or churches in the
Anglican Communion do with regard to ordination in order to address the
local situation.
The sermon was given by a Bishop Brian McDonald. I think he was Australian,
but I'm not sure because he preached in pidgin, so I didn't get much of a
sense of his accent. His sermon was great, though. He talked a lot about the
priesthood of all believers (although he didn't use that phrase). He said,
"iumi priests" (we are all priests), and he counseled the candidates that
"iu no boss" (you're not the boss), in fact "iu same same haus boi" (you are
like the houseboy), you are ordained to serve the parish.
A final thing to share that I really liked. In the Lord's Prayer and a few
other places when the liturgy in my country uses the phrase "the kingdom of
God", in the Church of Melanesia they use the phrase "the rule of God". I
like that so much! I have never been able to relate to some idea of a
kingdom. As an American whose ancestors came over 300-500 years ago, the
whole idea of kings and queens is not much more than a quaint story from
history books. One friend of mine replaces "kingdom" with "reign" (as in
"the reign of God"), but frankly, that's the same thing. Who reigns? Kings
and queens. Presidents don't "reign," Prime Ministers don't "reign." But
"the rule of God" instantly made me think of "the rule of law." Hmm, where
do I obey the rule of law rather than the rule of God? Where is the rule of
law governing my life rather than the rule of God? Wow, suddenly I think I
finally understand what all those conversations in the Bible where it talks
about the kingdom of God are about!
One thing folks in the Solomons can do amazingly well is sing accapella. Here is a clip of the Buala church choir singing "Oh God Our Help in Ages Past" at the inauguration of our new cargo ship, the MV Ortega. The first verses are in their local language, the last in English. Enjoy!
Well, the good news is that I had plenty of time to dig into the
reading for my Spiritual Direction course ("Tending the Holy" through
Christos Center www.christoscenter.org). The bad news is that even
though the rechargeable battery in my Logitech speakers for iPod lasts
(supposedly) 10 hours, I ran through that on Saturday. . . So Sunday
was a very quiet day.
Because there is no power in Buala. Because SIA doesn't have any fuel.
Because their office in Honiara doesn't send them enough. And so now
we just wait until. . . when? I don't know. We actually had 3 ships
deliver stuff last week and none of them had any diesel for SIA. So
only God or (more likely) the Honiara office have any idea when we
might have power here again. I don't know what SIA stands for and I
don't know if it's a private enterprise that contracts for this
service or is a government entity. Not sure it would make much
difference because clearly their contract isn't with the Provincial
Government, so either way all the power is with someone in Honiara
who, I am certain, couldn't care less whether or not we have power out
here.
But it's Monday morning and I was thinking it's not so bad. I survived
the weekend and now I'm back at work where we have a generator. But
the DPS (Deputy Provincial Secretary) told me this morning that they
were going to turn it off at noon because they are running out of
fuel. So far it is 2pm and the generator is still on, so I keep
plugging away. But if the power goes off, I really have almost nothing
to do. I have the Isabel Provincial Financial Management Ordinance
that I want to read, but everything else I have is on my computer.
Hmmph.
I did survive the weekend with no power and now realize that there are
downsides to having mostly ecologically correct, rechargeable
electronics. Batteries can always be bought, but things cannot always
be recharged. Now I really wish I had been able to get a second
battery for my laptop (ordered it 3 times, but it never came before I
left). Maybe if I make real nice with the RAMSI guys I can recharge
stuff at their place. They run their generator 24/7.
RAMSI = Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands. One of the
"arms" of RAMSI is military and police presence. Actually, the police
are advisors to the local police. So they are supposed to help them
develop a more professional and effective police force. But here on
Isabel it's not going so well. Personally, my theory is that crime is
so low that there's no outside motivation (and apparently, from
talking to the RAMSI guy stationed here, there's no inside motivation
either). The most prevalent crime is sexual assault (that is, rape).
They say it's skyrocketed, and people are shocked that it is happening
to young girls (13-14 yrs old) but I have no idea where they started
from, so I can't tell how bad it is compared to anywhere else I've
lived. I find it puzzling that that particular crime would increase
dramatically while there is virtually no other crime. I really would
like to know what is driving that. Is it alcohol -- simply alcohol? To
me it points to some major cultural breakdown, but I wonder what has
broken down. No one has mentioned that it is particularly incestuous.
Anyway, I'd really like to find out what is at the root of it.
Sunday, the RAMSI folks were going to take some detectives down to
several villages to do a bunch of investigations and I was going to
tag along to see some places and go for a boat ride. But the Sgt.
Detective, and organizer of the trip, didn't show up on time and just
sent a message that he wanted to leave later and another of the
detectives came and said he couldn't go, so the RAMSI folks cancelled
the trip. It takes a lot of fuel to spend a day on the water and they
didn't want to waste it. They have to be off the water by 16:00 for
safety reasons and besides, in their effort to try to train these guys
to be a professional force, this was an opportunity to help them
understand that there are consequences to acting so unprofessionally.
Too bad for me though, my big adventure got canceled. . .
Friday nights in Buala there is always (almost always?) a dance in the
social hall. This past Friday, I was also invited to a fundraiser for
the doctor's brother who is soon to be ordained (and so the family
needed to raise money to pay for the ordination party). Saturday
morning there was again a fundraiser for the church. A fundraiser is
not much different than the regular Friday night party, except that
the profit goes to whomever the fundraiser is for. So, there is a dj
who plays music (really awful music, I have to say, and I can take
most anything. But this was loud, vapid, cheap electronic keyboard pop
reggae. It was really bad.), beer for sale, great food for sale (I got
the small plate and it was twice as much as I could eat), and then you
could pay to play darts for beer or pay to play "High Card". It was
like casino night in the church hall, except with real money. Check
out my Flickr page for photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tlongacre/
I danced for at least an hour between the two places (the regular
social hall dance which was just a couple of huts away, and had
marginally better music than the fundraiser), much to the delight of
the children who thought it was just hilarious. The great news is that
Isabel folks dance like me! Interestingly, and this was most
pronounced at the social hall, guys danced with guys for the most part
and women danced with women. There was a bit of crossover -- and a
couple of old guys who loved dancing with me (and had the nerve to
ask) -- but not much. Clearly people were there to dance and have a
good time. And it was all ages. Little boys and girls, young men and
women, all the way up to old folks. It reminded me of a bar I went to
in Brussels (years ago -- geez, 1983!) with my friend Bill Salmon --
remember that place Bill? where people of all ages were just dancing
and having a good time. I danced with a couple of brave old geezers
there, too.
Buala is a sleepy, sleepy place, so it's nice to know something
happens one night a week. But next time, I've gotta create a playlist
and bring my iPod because these people clearly need to be exposed to
better music. Eegads.
